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Search tags: to-read-fiction
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review 2016-07-24 20:06
Not at war anymore - but also not quite at peace
Krieg und Frieden - 'Leo Tolstoi', 'Hermann Röhl'

Never before has it taken me that long to finish a book as it did with War and Peace. I started this work an unbelievable 8 years ago! I didn't read it during all this time, there were long breaks and several attempts to finish it. The main reason why it took me so long was that I had this huge one-volume edition which just was too big for my hands and too heavy for my handbag. But the end of last year my library finally had it as an ebook and this really helped! Now I'm just glad to finally be done!

I had watched a miniseries of War and Peace before reading the book which made reading it a lot easier: I had the character's faces on my mind and this helped remembering who was who. There really are a lot of characters!

War and Peace is an enormous work and it deserves to be read. It's just that tiny bit too long. The peace parts can be read fairly quickly, but the war parts are often very very slow going. I'm not really interested in battle descriptions or at least only up to a certain point. When they are hundreds of pages long with every detail and often repetitive that's a bit too much. He reaches the peak when he even uses mathematical equations! What I didn't like about Tolstoy's style is that whenever he uses an image or an example he explains it. It seems like he doesn't believe his readers can understand what he's saying. He's also often quite preachy which isn't my cup of tea.

I was at war with this work for a long time, now I'm finally at peace with it but only barely. After all the effort I put into reading it I just hoped that I would love it in the end. It's a good book but it will never be one of my favourites.

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review 2016-07-24 00:00
Gotta Read It! - Five Simple Steps to a Fiction Pitch That Sells
Gotta Read It! - Five Simple Steps to a ... Gotta Read It! - Five Simple Steps to a Fiction Pitch That Sells - Libbie Hawker Writing descriptions can be very hard, especially once you've written the book and your head is full of the nuances of the story. This book takes you through the steps you need to take to create a description that says "story", paring away the extras to get to the meat, and help interested readers connect. After that, it's up to you. I would definitely recommend this book to authors struggling to create descriptions for their books, whether for sales pages or queries.
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review 2015-11-03 00:00
Well-Read Women: Portraits of Fiction's Most Beloved Heroines
Well-Read Women: Portraits of Fiction's Most Beloved Heroines - Samantha Hahn A beautiful collection of quotes and illustrations from fictional female characters in various books. In Well-Read Women, Samantha Hahn uses her elegant watercolor style to bring to life characters such as Emma from Jane Austin or Cosette from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo just to name a few.

This is only a collection of portraits and quotes and not a novel. It's great coffee table book to flip through for the art and inspiration.
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review 2015-07-10 14:18
Book Review: Boywatching by Chloe Bennet
Boywatching - Chloe Bennet

Chloe Bennet’s Boywatching is a charming, touching and often hilarious young adult story about the friendship of four teenage girls and their boy watching project. The highly entertaining characters and conversational style storytelling had me engaged from start to finish.

The novel is narrated by the protagonist, Chloe Bennet, an intelligent, witty and sarcastic teenager who loves literature, especially Jane Austen. She has three best friends, Amy, Gemma, and Sally and the four of them create a boy watching spreadsheet and award points based on predetermined positive and negative attributes of the boys they meet. The concept began after the girls had a frustrating and disappointing experience at their annual school dance, or as the students call it, Snog Fest.

The girls aren’t all about boy watching. They have their own band called Overgrown Throttle and the Tempted Obscurity, OTTO, and they have typical teenage problems. They have annoying siblings and they obsess over their hair, makeup and wardrobe. This novel is more than a story about boy watching. It also weaves in layers about dysfunctional families, alcoholism and bullying. They have broken families; Chloe hates her stepfather, Gemma hasn’t seen her mother in eight years and Sally’s mother is an alcoholic. The four girls are victims of cyber bullying when their classmate Maggie posted seven candid photos on a Facebook page called Snog Fest – the Losers. Maggie is constantly humiliating Chloe, which causes her anxiety at the thought of bumping into her.

Chloe Bennet blends social issues with humorous moments in a delightfully balanced fashion. It was refreshing to not feel overwhelmed by potentially poignant scenes that some writers use to create sensationalism. I felt the pain and anxiety whenever Chloe had to reluctantly deal with her brother or had to confront her bully and whenever Sally’s mother’s alcoholism made her absent in Sally’s day-to-day life. Those moments weren’t so anxiety provoking that it was unbearable to read, but the reader still sensed the affects it had on Chloe and Sally.

There were many laugh out loud moments throughout the novel. Some of the incidences were hilarious, not just because of Chloe’s comments or actions, but because it reminded me of similar teenage moments of my own. One day at the park, Chloe slid in a huge pile of dog poop just as a cute boy was approaching. On another day, she tried to dye her hair herself only to endure school with orange hair. I felt devastated as a teen whenever I suffered through similar embarrassing situations, but now reading it as adult, I found it hysterical. If Chloe wasn’t doing something funny, she was saying something funny. She’s the queen of clichés and took pride in the fact that she can use three clichés in the same sentence. She commented that one of her friends was on cloud nine and she immediately started to wonder what was wrong with clouds one through eight. The novel is full of Chloe’s funny observations and opinions.

Although I found the novel entertaining, there were writing issues that prevented me from rating this novel higher than three stars. There were times when I wasn’t sure of the girls’ ages because sometimes they sounded younger than high school teenagers. Pacing was an issue since time advanced too quickly during certain sections and too slowly at others. There were moments when it felt like a couple of weeks or months had passed, but it was actually an entire school year. The ending was unrealistic and too easily resolved, which left me feeling a little disappointed because I thought it was a cop-out.

I’d recommend this book to YA fans who want an entertaining, light, humorous read without any complexity.

Jenny's Book Bag Boywatching review.

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review 2015-03-29 00:22
Meh
Dismantled: A Novel - Jennifer McMahon

Another reviewer put it perfectly, I feel like I worked way too hard to get to the end.  It was painful and boring at times but I love the two other books I've read by McMahon so I felt obligated to see this one through.  While I was interested to see how she pulled it all together, I was fairly disappointed in the ending.  I also wasn't as invested in the ending as I usually am with her.  I wasn't excited when I realized I had been correct in my ending guess.  

 

In the interest of full disclosure, unlike on Booklikes, Amazon has tons of positive reviews for this book so don't necessarily turn down the book because of us reviewers here.  I would recommend you chose Promise Not To Tell or Island of Lost Girls both by McMahon instead.  If you do pick this book up, I recommend you take it out of the library.  

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