Saturday, February 21, 2009

Review Catch Up

There are still books that I read in 2008 that I haven't reviewed yet so I'm going to have to play catch-up with one long list of reviews. I prefer to post one review at a time but desperate times call for desperate measures. :)

After the Funeral by Agatha Christie was my second mystery by this legendary author. I didn't enjoy this one as much as the first one I read but it was still pretty good. I do like mysteries. Sometimes I try to guess "who dunit" and sometimes I just enjoy the story. So far with Agatha Christie's novels, she has kept me guessing til almost the end. That's fun for me.
Audiobook
4/5 stars


I found The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck to be a very sad book. I'm glad I read it but it was not a happy book. It made me think a lot about money, pride, greed, women's rights, love and family. I think this would make a good book club selection.
Audiobook
Rating: 2.3.1
4/5 stars
Hallelujah by J. Scott Featherstone was our book club's selection for December. It probably wasn't the best choice for that month because it is a chunkster and only a few of us were able to finish it. We were not very impressed by the overall writing of this book. It's a little too sentimental and fluffy in parts as well as being repetitive but I did still like it quite a bit. Despite it's problems, I really liked learning about Handel and especially about The Messiah oratorio.
Rating: 1.1.1
4/5 stars
I listened to this audiobook while traveling. French Women Don't Get Fat is a book I'd heard quite a bit about a couple of years ago. I thought it would be interesting and it was. If you are the kind to be easily offended about the stereotype that most Americans are fat, then this book is not for you. When I listened to it I felt inspired to try to look at food in a different way. The author has some great ideas and I can see how they could be effective in weight management. They don't really work for me but that's not saying a lot.
Audiobook
3/5 stars
Our book club read How Angel Peterson Got His Name together with Hatchet by the same author, Gary Paulsen. In Angel, Paulsen tells several stories of his growing up in a small mid-western town where he and his buddies pulled some really crazy stunts. This is the kind of book that pre-teen and teenage boys love but makes their parents worry. All I can say is that Gary Paulsen is lucky to still be alive today. It was interesting to read these books together to get an insight into the author's life.
3/5 stars

2 comments:

Shelley said...

I loved The Good Earth, and I also found French Women Don't Get Fat interesting, but I'm still fat, so I don't know how much good it did me! I think it did influence me to try to eat a little bit of high quality food rather than a whole lot of low quality food. And I think this was the one with the leek soup? I made it and it was truly disgusting!

Jeanette said...

I must admit that Pearl S. Buck was forced on me in high school in such a way that I came to hate her books. I've been thinking I need to try them again now that I am, hopefully, a little more mature than I was in high school! :-)
I have a copy of the French Women book that I picked up at a library sale but have not read it yet.