Tag: 5 stars
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The Toughest Show on Earth
Review: 5 stars throughout. Could not put this down. I love, love, love opera but there is no way I could do any of the jobs involved in pulling one off. The story of a man married to his Metropolitan. So much more than a book of anecdotes (although it does not lack for those). Read more
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Waiting for Godot
Review: An extraordinary piece of literature. Challenging, touching, depths of meaning and yet still humorous and readable. Reading the study guide was helpful in supplying context about the play, the author, the background. Wouldn’t add or change a single word. Brilliant This book made me want to: read or see other works by this remarkable Read more
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Watership Down
Review: A wonderful adventure tale. Could not put it down at times. Long, but not needlessly so. A lot of good sensible material mixed in with the adventure yarn. Charming, with glorious descriptions of the English countryside. 5 stars and earned every one of them. This book made me want to: eat rabbit Overall rating: Read more
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Great Expectations
Review: The life and adventures of Pip the Orphan. It made me feel like it was always raining. Always grey, and dismal as can be imagined. Magwitch, Miss Havisham, Mr. Jaggers, Wemmick the Clerk, Pumplechook, the characters are so engaging, all slightly tragic and flawed. Loved this book. Would never read it in the summertime. Read more
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Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Review: Brilliant in every sense. This book sparkled from cover to cover. If I had read this first I would have been a little less confused when reading Ulysses. Which I will read again at some point. Ireland, politics, religion, alcohol, and the glorious countryside. Youth, education, and the ways of young men. A boy Read more
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The Decameron
Review: Called a masterpiece, and deservedly so. 10 young people, 7 women and 3 men, set out for their country villas to escape the plague in Florence. They elect one of their number as King for the day and he or she sets the rules of the day and the subject of the tales they Read more
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The Giver
Review: A Newberry Prize winner and for good reason. Heartbreaking, heartwarming, dystopian, utopian. A book written for children that will challenge every adult that reads it. I won’t even summarize it here (sorry Brant 🙂 ), it just needs to be experienced. Will definitely check out the author’s other books. I award it the rare Read more
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The Name of the Wind
Review: Superb! Finally an epic fantasy series that is not a hack reworking of LOTR! Magic is not magical, more like science and a bit of alchemy with a little bit of supernatural thrown in to make things glow a little. Thought it was going to devolve into Harry Potter for a bit, but it Read more
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One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch
Review: Read this in one day, just like the book is a journal of one day in the life of a Russian imprisoned under the Soviet regime in 1951. A brilliant, terrifying document, but captivating and gripping. I could relate to so many aspects of the prison experience, conditions for my incarceration were improved by Read more
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The Beautiful and Damned
Review: A rare gem of a book. All the glory and drama and sadness of the end of the Gilded Age. Exploring the ephemeral nature of the present moment, of each generation discovering its youth and beauty, and then slowly seeing it pass away. The slow descent into alcoholism was like looking back on my Read more