Helpful votes received on reviews:
92% (7,662 of 8,325)
Location: New York, NY
Birthday: February 1(Saved Remind mePlease RetryPlease Retry)
In My Own Words:
I'm a dedicated bibliomaniac and professional writer with eclectic literary tastes. My biggest nightmare? Being stuck on an airplane for hours with nothing to read... I'll rate something 5 stars if it is either a superb example of its genre or is, in my opinion, the kind of book that everyone should read because is just simply excellent. 4 stars? That's a book that is very good, albeit with a fe… Read moreI'm a dedicated bibliomaniac and professional writer with eclectic literary tastes. My biggest nightmare? Being stuck on an airplane for hours with nothing to read...
I'll rate something 5 stars if it is either a superb example of its genre or is, in my opinion, the kind of book that everyone should read because is just simply excellent.
4 stars? That's a book that is very good, albeit with a few significant flaws or shortcomings. Most "good" books go in with a working assumption that they are worth four stars; some may lose a star or even two; others gain and go up one star by the time I finish. Again, this applies to both good for its genre and good overall.
3 stars: Ho-hum. Either a book didn't live up to what I know the author can do or the promise of the plot. Typically there's some larger flaw -- a hole in the narrative, clumsy writing, poor research, etc. But overall, for people who like the author or are very interested in the topic, this is still worth reading. For those who are just casually interested, 3 stars means move on to something else.
2 stars: Significant flaws in some dimension. Either the writing is horrible or the plot fatally flawed and characters wooden. Unless you feel you must read this for a book group, etc., I'd suggest not bothering (unless you find a library copy.)
1 star -- Don't even bother. Waste of paper, ink and your time.
I'm most likely to review fiction, history, biography, current affairs, business and financial books, as well as some films & music.
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Contributions
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Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Inspector Walter Day, the newest addition to Scotland Yard's newly-formed Murder Squad, is contemplating a rash of violent murders, including the slaying of one of his new colleagues (whose body has turned up in a trunk at a railway station), when he utters those words. But he might have been describing this novel, in which he is one of the main characters, which a messy assortment of plotlines that diverge and converge but never really managed to cohere into anything that resembled a gripping read for me. A large part of the problem is the fact that the author has chosen to deal with too much. We view events through the eyes of Walter, his wife, a couple of his colleagues, a… Read more
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Rukhsana is a fairly typical young woman in many ways -- she's worried about her mother, who is unwell, and unhappy about being separated from the man she loves. But then comes the really hard part -- it's about 1999 or 2000, and she lives in Kabul, under the Taliban regime, where she can't leave the house without being escorted by her younger brother or another male member of her family. What makes this even tougher is that Rukhsana worked as a journalist until a Talib commander sent her home from work, telling her that "women should only be seen in the one and the grave." Now she is sending stories about the oppressive regime to Delhi, where they are being printed -- and it seems Wahidi,… Read more
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Today, Isabella of Castile is known as the queen who financed Columbus's voyages to the "New World" and, in the process, opened up a horrific era of slavery and exploitation for large swathes of what is today South America and Latin America, with consequences that still shape their societies today. As half of the duo that became known as the "Catholic kings/monarchs", she and Ferdinand of Aragon oversaw the institutionalization of the Spanish Inquisition, the expulsion of non-Catholics from their joint kingdom and an end to a policy of covivencia, a medieval version of multicultural tolerance. From our point in the 21st century, knowing what we do and what came of Isabella's decisions and… Read more
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This will be a work in progress, since there will probably be a number of books that I discover I desperately want to read as the months unfold. So I'll add to it as these cross my path...
2009 was a rather good year for reading; these are some of my favorites. Oddly, some of those books I was most looking forward to reading proved disappointing; others that I hadn't even known were out there knocked me sideways. An eclectic and highly personal list. (I'm trying to minimize overlap&hellip Read more
Sometimes, a good book and an active imagination are all that it takes to catapult us out of our humdrum daily lives and into a parallel universe. These days, especially, with a recession looming large, it may make more sense to stay at home and curl up with a travel book than head out on the roads&hellip Read more
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Favorite Items
How to choose only five???? Some relatively recent reads, but far from representative of the vast array of stuff I read & enjoy.
| | | | | Rondo by Kazimierz Brandys |
I don't order most of my music from Amazon, so my options here are limited. I'm currently reveling in a lot of Bach, esp. his cello suites.
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![Enchanted April [VHS] <b>VHS</b> ~ Alfred Molina](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51GQ94W5EYL._SL500_SS90_.jpg)
![A Taxing Woman [VHS] <b>VHS</b> ~ Nobuko Miyamoto](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51PQ6RWGWQL._SL500_SS90_.jpg)
