Have you read this monstrosity of a book? at times it is beyond fucked up it blows my mind that i actually managed to finish Green, let me tell you it wasn't easy, there was much struggle and will power involved. I'm not saying this is a bad story, or really completely unrealistic, I know in certain parts of the world similar stuff to what was in this book occurs, but it was just... so difficult to read and accept. I was constantly asking myself why? why continue reading? the answer is I'm a stubborn bitch and i was determined to finish this damn thing, no matter how unpleasant it was at times.

Now forget what i just said, let me tell you the world JL has created was pretty amazing, i absolutely loved exploring the different cultures and races. learning how different they were to each other. The characters... well they were interesting and unique, i despised pretty much all of them, but they were certainly something.
I wasn't super keen on the writing style, and that caused me a bit of issue's at the beginning, slipping from future to past, and 3rd POV all in one paragraph took a while to get the hang of. Plus JL apparent need for extreme descriptions on everything drove me slightly bonkers, yes i get it, most fantasy lovers crave that, such a detailed world, me personally.... well i could of used less detail.

So with all that done and out of the way, I'll just let you know i won't be giving this book a rating, from the sheer unpleasant-ness that occurred on occasion, in saying that this book doesn't deserve a low rating just because of it either, i managed to read it, if it was completely horrendous i wouldn't of bothered.
So for now it shell remain un-starred.
I almost definitely won't be continuing the next book.

This reader's personal opinion, ©2012, all rights reserved, not to be quoted, clipped or used in any way by Google Play, amazon.com or other commercial booksellers* 

I'm not rating this one because I think the intended YA/NA audience is likely to have a completely different opinion than mine.

 

I slogged thru this one because a friend swore I needed to perservere and it would get good. I want those tortured hours back.

 

The book itself was like three different stories, possibly even not the same author -- less than 3% the almost interesting Mayflower/pilgrim connection, another 5% (mostly towards the end) with the Schuyler character to like and some potentially good world building and the rest -- dreck, pure dreck with paragraph after paragraph of brand name dropping (Jimmy Choo, etc.), outfit descriptions, mean girl blech, and cardboard teenagers not caring about stuff that, guess what, the readers aren't going to care about either.

 

Potential for some really interesting paranormal world building even if you had to get past the über rich environment -- but not going on with the series.

 

This is a collection of one novella, the title story "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag," and five short stories, among them some of Heinlein's strongest. I really loved the opening novella, which is a mix of science fiction, fantasy, horror--and noir mystery. It focuses on a husband/wife detective team, Teddy Randall and Cynthia Craig. They really are among Heinlein's best drawn couples--I'm sorry we never saw more of them. At times I have my issues with how Heinlein drew women, but not in the case of Cyn. She comes across as brave and competent without ever being kittenish. I'm not particularly impressed with the story's premise or plot, but the characters made it for me. "The Man Who Traveled in Elephants" is a sweet tale, and pure fantasy, not science fiction, but not to me a standout. "All You Zombies" is about a "temporal agent"--it's a twisty and memorable time travel story. "They" is an interesting study in paranoia--a theme that runs through most of the stories in this collection. "Our Fair City" features one of my favorite Heinlein characters--"Kitten"--a whirlwind. I'd call "And He Built a Crooked House" unique--and unforgettable. A story surely only an engineer such as Heinlein could have conceived. All of these stories are well worth the read--particularly if you're a science fiction or Heinlein fan.

If you were like the 99% of kids (according to the blurb) who hated middle school, then this book is full of ouch. Actually, even if you were one of the 1% (the cool kids who were not only popular but had neither academic nor family problems), then this book is full of at least second-hand ouch.

A compilation of short comics written and illustrated by a variety of cartoonists, most of whom are about my age or a little younger, so I could relate to the 80s setting of most of the stories, this book is basically all about how middle school sucks. I guess this is supposed to comfort the target audience, to tell them that they are not alone in being awkward, miserable, unpopular, inferior, and lonely?

Of course with an adult's perspective we know that for most of us, the trials we imagined we were enduring were not really that bad, that everyone else was too preoccupied with their own issues to be giving us nearly as much attention as we thought they were, and that every adolescent ever has been awkward and embarrassed and self-conscious.

The stories are your usual trials of middle school hell: being the new kid, the outsider, the freak, the geek, the loner, experiencing the betrayals, the drama, the discomfort, the creepy old teachers and the well-meaning teachers who are equally annoying to kids who want nothing to do with adults, the parents who range from loving and understanding to abusive but who likewise are always the last people on earth you want to associate with when you are 13. So much of it was familiar, of course.

But while there were some amusing and touching stories in this collection, nothing was really laugh-out-loud funny, nor was anything truly poignant. We have all been there and done that and know that middle school sucked, and mostly what the stories reminded me of was how absolutely inane and self-absorbed most kids are. Not their fault - I was certainly inane and self-absorbed. But I didn't really enjoy the stories that much, I was too busy wincing from Fremdscham.

The artwork also ranged toward the sketchy and cartoonish. So, maybe this is a good volume to give your suffering adolescent child to let her know that she is not the only one in the world to feel this way and no, the whole entire world is actually not watching every move you make and judging how you eat and talk and walk. But I prefer longer stories with more of a moral than "Yup, sucks to be 13."

Bernard Shaw excels himself once again. Okay, one might ask what is a Christian doing reading Bernard Shaw. Well, ever since I read Pygmalion I have simply loved his work, and in fact he is one of the best modern playwrights to have ever walked this earth. His plays are well structured, characters very realistic, and themes very topical. The theme that seems to run through most of his plays deals with the rights of a woman. To understand this theme one does need to understand the context in which these plays were written.

My Dad had a quick read of one of the prologues to these plays and noticed his comment upon marriage, which immediately confirmed our suspicions that Shaw was not a Christian. However he is not antagonistic towards Christianity, and his Christian characters in the plays are not evil or manipulative. In fact, many of them are very noble characters. However, it is to the theme of marriage which we will look because that is the key to understanding Shaw's attitude towards women.

Simply put, Shaw considers marriage to be little more than white slavery. Once again we need to understand the cultural context. His plays were written around the turn of the 20th Century in England, and if you were a women in that time you had no rights whatsoever. This is the key to the final play in this book 'Mrs Warren's Profession'. The prologue is an explanation as to the play, because the play itself is about prostitution. As he explains, unless a women were to get married she would either live her life as a pauper or a prostitute. If the woman had money she could not hold onto it - she had to get married, and when she did the rights of all her property would instantly transfer to the husband.

It is the male characters in these plays who are unpleasant. The first play, The Widower's House, is about a landlord. Is he dodgy? It is questionable as he defends his actions by saying that if he were to properly maintain his houses then the poor who live in them would not be able to live in them. Therefore he believes that he is providing a community service, albeit a suspicious one. The male in the second play, The Philanderer, is much more unpleasant. The play opens with him sleeping with one woman, and rejecting the advances of a second, and closes with him losing both of them. He only becomes interested in the second woman when she decides she wants to marry another man. At the end of the play we have no sympathy for him - he brought it all upon himself. As he said, he will always be a philanderer (the English definition, not the Greek), and he does not say this with pride, but with regret.

While the theme of two of the Plays Unpleasant are with the treatment of women, the theme of the Widower's House is of the exploitation of the working class. Further, the man who, at the beginning of the play, ends an engagement over dirty money made from a slumlord ends up selling his soul in a business dealing and marrying anyway.

It is also noteworthy that despite Shaw's polemic against the institution of marriage, he did end up having a long and happy marriage. I guess it had to do with his desire not to behave like the society that he spent his life criticising,