emilysk

• Rated 3 stars

“aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

Very disturbing book. It's told from the first-person point of view of a five-year-old boy who has lived his entire life inside one small room with his mother. He cheerfully describes their life inside Room in detail - and it's clear to the reader that he and his mother are captives of a creepy man who comes in to force himself on the mother every so often.

Just about the time that I started to find it unbearable, the child escapes! And then a bunch more stuff happens Outside. It ends up being not as horrifying as I expected at the beginning... but it's still a heart-rending book. ”

emilysk wrote this review Thursday, January 12, 2012. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 2 stars

“Tough slog to get through, but it still managed to hold my interest. It's the story of a young woman (the eponymous Iola) who is raised as a proper young Southern girl, the daughter of a plantation owner... but discovers at the time of her father's death that her mother is actually a former slave who has been passing as white with the help of the father. Iola and her brother are outed as being black, and are shocked and dismayed at the unexpected change in their circumstances. Eventually they find their extended black family and reunite with them.

The thing that surprised me the most is that so many slaves or former slaves looked white enough to pass... that's not something that is discussed in much detail in modern classrooms when discussing Black history. ”

emilysk wrote this review Thursday, January 12, 2012. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 5 stars

“Loved it! It helps that I've been reading Michelle's blog since forever... but I was pleasantly surprised that the book was not a simple retread of the blog. It's the story of a young woman who goes to medical school, meets another doctor and marries him, and has adventures in medicine both poignant and hilarious. Oh yeah, and has a couple of kids. If you're considering going to medical school, I would absolutely recommend reading this book. Bonus: she includes several of her hand-drawn Scutmonkey comics, satirizing the experience of being a medical student. ”

emilysk wrote this review Thursday, January 12, 2012. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 2 stars

“Truthfully? Kind of boring. But I am a nurse and I work with doctors... so maybe this was kind of redundant for me. It's another of those collections of essays by different people in the medical field, some interesting, some not. ”

emilysk wrote this review Thursday, January 12, 2012. ( reply | permalink )

1 of 1 members found this review helpful.

• Rated 3 stars

“The first book of a trilogy about the awakening of a self-aware Internet. The main character is Caitlin, a teenage girl who is a genius at math and has been blind her whole life. She receives an experimental brain implant that is supposed to give her the power of sight, but instead of seeing the world around her, she sees a web of interconnected light - the world wide web, that is. And over time, she begins to receive messages from a being of some sort inside her brain....

I was interested enough that I'll read the other books, but not so interested that I rushed out to get them. ”

emilysk wrote this review Thursday, January 12, 2012. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“Okay, so this won a Pulitzer Prize. I kind of wish I'd read it before it won, because I think my expectations were too high. Don't misunderstand, I liked it - it just didn't change my life.

The book is divided into several sections that take place in different times periods. Some of the characters recur in multiple sections, others do not. Each section could almost stand alone as a short story, but they do all fit together into a bigger whole.

Some of the bits that stood out to me (this is the most random review ever) - suave ladies' man Lou picking up teenage girls at the beginning of the book, then only pages later, decades have gone by and he is on his deathbed. The woman who compulsively stole things and slept with her date just to distract him from the apartment full of stuff she had stolen... but he ended up taking a bath in the bathtub in the kitchen (one of those odd New York things). The POV story of the mentally ill young man who ended up dead in the East River. The last chapter from the future, with communication devices marketed toward pre-verbal kids. ”

emilysk wrote this review Thursday, January 12, 2012. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“I have to agree with the other reviews I've read - cool concept, decent writing, likeable characters, but it feels unfinished and ends rather abruptly. This makes sense when you read the postscript explaining that the idea was originally meant for a television series and was later recrafted into a book.

Joey Harker is a normal kid with a knack for getting lost... until one day he walks right out of this world and into a neighboring alternate universe. He is quickly spotted by both good guys and bad guys, and the adventures start immediately. Turns out there is an entire multiverse with millions of alternate universes, and Joey, or the edition of him that exists in each universe, has the unusual abilites to Walk through the boundaries between them. He meets many of his doppelgangers and does battle with the forces of evil that want to destroy the universes that don't meet their criteria. ”

emilysk wrote this review Wednesday, July 27, 2011. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“Good straight-ahead mystery, with a nice helping of forensic anthropology on the side. It was not terrific, but it was a fun read and I liked the main character.

Dr. Bill Brockton, university professor & head of the Body Farm (research facility studying the decomposition of human remains), gets summoned to a rural Tennessee county to investigate a corpse found in a cave. The corpse turns out to be a woman who disappeared from the area 30 years ago - and she was pregnant. The mystery veers through twists & turns, with the identity of good guys & bad guys unclear until the very end of the book. ”

emilysk wrote this review Thursday, July 14, 2011. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“The piano teacher of the title is Claire, a young Englishwoman in the 1950s who agrees to marry the older and boring Martin chiefly so she can get out of her family's house and go on an adventure to Hong Kong. She takes a job teaching piano lessons to the young daughter of a wealthy Chinese couple, the Chens. As Claire gets to know the Chens and their social circle, she meets a mysterious man called Will...

...and the novel cuts back and forth between the early 50s and the 40s before WWII reached Hong Kong. Will is a younger man, drawn into the orbit of the fascinating and unconventional Trudy Liang. Their love affair is interrupted by the war, with the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong when British citizens are herded into POW camps.

I liked this book but didn't love it. Claire made a lot of decisions I failed to understand or identify with - but I've read other books (like many of A.S. Byatt's novels) that feature young post-war British women breaking free from their social constraints in often messy and confusing ways. Perhaps I lack the context to understand the behaviors. Anyway, it's pretty well-written, and I certainly learned about Hong Kong and WWII through a non-American viewpoint. Plus, I read it for a book club and we had a great discussion with wine and snacks. ”

emilysk wrote this review Sunday, May 1, 2011. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“A collection of essays from doctors about being, you know, doctors. It was okay. Some of the essays were terrific and some of them were boring. I identified with the essay about the young female doctor who was caring for a patient with multiple organ failure with the family that was in denial, and expressing their confusion and grief by being angry. I was bewildered by the story by the doctor who watched a patient who had reached the end of possible treatment die, and walked away feeling like a failure. ”

emilysk wrote this review Sunday, April 3, 2011. ( reply | permalink )