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Our current tag for December is: Satire

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  • member since February 16 2008

Reviews

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Displaying 1-10 of 2537 reviews
  • The Grapes of Wrath
    • Rated 3 stars

    “Regina L said: 3 stars
    Tom Joad returns, released from prison on parole, hitches a ride home. Tom discovers the home place abadoned and in disrepair. After visiting with one of the neighbors, who has stayed behind to "keep an eye on thing," Tom learns that the family has moved in with his uncle. It has become impossible for farmers to sustain a living under the conditions of the dust bowl. Tom sets out to reunite with his family and learns they have plans to head west to California with visions of land abundant in grapes and oranges dancing. Although on parole and prohibited from leaving the state, heads out with his family on Route 66 towards California.

    This is a much different book than other Steinbeck books that I have read, but is an important read in American Literature and historical fiction.

    ”

    Play Book Tag Shelf wrote this review 4 days ago. ( reply | permalink )
  • A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
    • Rated 3 stars

    “Isabelle S said: 3 stars
    The first few sentences give you a summary of the story: "Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blond Ukrainian divorcee. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside."

    The narrator is Nadezhda, a late-40s professor at a polytechnic university. She has a husband and a daughter and shops at Oxfam. Her sister Vera, ten years older, has two daughters and the spoils of three rather lucrative divorces, and carries Gucci bags. The sisters rarely speak, particularly after a row over the division of their mother's bequest. But the appearance of Valentina, she of the "superior, Botticellian breasts" and rapacious greed, unites the sisters against a common enemy.

    This book is difficult for me to categorize. It's billed in several places as a comedy - "hilarity ensues." But while the saga of Nikolai and Valentina is written in many places as farcical, but for the most part to me the humor wasn't black, just grey and sad. Valentina's a grasping wench, but she's clawing her way out of "Ukraina' any way she can, wanting better for her pampered, self-important teenage son. Nikolai wants to pretend he's still young and vital and desirable, and if it's only for his money he's prepared to deal with that. But his daughters aren't, particularly when Valentina becomes abusive when the money isn't there.

    Lewycka is great at writing family dynamics. I especially related to the way Nadia, as the baby of the family, finds herself reverting to a "bogey-nosed four year old" in her interactions with her perennially big sister. And perhaps because my own father is Nikolai's age and recently widowed, I was moved at how well Lewycka portrays the quandary an aging parent presents for an adult child - that mix of childhood hero, his own personal history and the infirmities (physical and sometimes mental) of the aging. Just when Nikolai is at his most illogical and childlike, Lewycka lets him read another short excerpt from his history of tractors, and insightful look at the economic, political and social impact of this simple machine on an entire country. Or Nadia uncovers another memory from the family's escape from Stalin-era Ukraine, and the dangers and deprivations faced by ordinary people just trying to survive. And I liked how she let Nadia come right up to some family truths, but didn't unpack and belabor them, just set them aside as Nadia (finally) matures a bit and decides what really matters.

    The audio version is read by Sian Thomas, who does an incredible job with the Ukranian accents.
    ”

    Play Book Tag Shelf wrote this review 4 days ago. ( reply | permalink )
  • The Wednesday Letters
    • Rated 3 stars

    “LibraryCin said: 3.25 stars
    Jack and Laurel are married and have three grown children. Jack has cancer and will not last much longer. When Laurel has a heart attack and Jack can’t get to the phone to call for help, he lies down beside her, where they die together. When their children come home for the funeral, they discover that their father has been writing a letter to their mother every Wednesday since they were married. As they read through the letters, they uncover some of their parents’ secrets.

    It was good, but I had to knock off just a little bit in my rating when the end got quite preachy. The rest of the book wasn’t like that, but it was a little too much for me at the end. It was a good story, though. Not only does the story focus on Jack and Laurel, but also on their children’s current lives.

    ”

    Play Book Tag Shelf wrote this review 8 days ago. ( reply | permalink )
  • The Land of Mango Sunsets: A Novel
    • Rated 4 stars

    “Colleen S said: 4 stars
    Miriam Elizabeth Swanson is in a snit. Her husband left her for a lingerie model who's barely an adult and her grown sons are busy with their own lives, her tenant Liz is sleeping with the husband of a society acquaintance of hers, and her best friends are Kevin, the head of visual displays at a department store and her pet parrot Harry. Miriam decides to make some changes in her life so she heads south to Sullivan's Island to spend some time with her mother. There, she meets a man named Harrison Ford (no, not that Harrison Ford) who makes her laugh and calls her Mellie.

    I started out not liking this book too much, which surprised me because I usually love Frank's books, but once Miriam stops feeling sorry for herself and makes some changes to her life, I wound up not being able to put it down.
    ”

    Play Book Tag Shelf wrote this review 8 days ago. ( reply | permalink )
  • The Metamorphosis
    • Rated 4 stars

    “Kristel said: 4 stars
    This is really a short story, but an excellent example of Kafka's style. Franz Kafka was born in Prague. He was a member of the well to do middle class Jewish merchant. Kafka worked in the insurance business. He was always impressed with his father's successes and always felt inferior. This story is about a son in a family of two parents and a sister. The son is working in sales and travels. He is the main provider for the family. He doesn't like his job but feels powerless to quit. One day he wakes up and he is a dung beetle. His family, at first are in horror, but then try to care for him and great cost to their well being. They finally as a family group wish to be rid of him. Kafka's style is one of great detail. This story read as a possible autobiography of Kafka of his relationship to his father and family.
    ”

    Play Book Tag Shelf wrote this review 8 days ago. ( reply | permalink )
  • Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (Bertie Wooster & Jeeves)
    • Rated 3 stars

    “Nayla M said: 3.75 stars
    Bertie Wooster grows a moustache and Jeeves is not happy with it. Florence, however thinks its very becoming and forces her fiance, Stilton Cheesewright to grow one much to Stilton's displeasure. Stilton also suspects that Bertie grew his moustache as a ploy to win over Florence. And Bertie doesn't feel very comfortable with Stilton on the scene, specially since he had threatened Bertie more than once to break his spine in "four, no five places".

    Somehow the gang, with additional members get invited to Aunt Dahlia's residence in the country. A.Dahlia needs to sell her newspaper to Mr. Trotter who has a domineering wife and a step son madly in love with Florence. Bertie is called up to rally around and put a smile back on the stepson's face to speed up the selling matter. Anatole serenades the guests with his cooking as usual, and you end up feeling a tad hungry.

    Jeeves manages to save the day and tie up the numerous side plots. An enjoyable Jeeves and Wooster read.
    ”

    Play Book Tag Shelf wrote this review 8 days ago. ( reply | permalink )
  • Stalking the Dragon: A Fable of Tonight
    • Rated 3 stars

    “WonderBunny said: 3 stars
    The Eastminster pet show is in town and the favorite to win has gone missing. If Mallory had only closed up early he wouldn't have to be out on Valentine's night looking for a missing toy dragon. But something is smelling fishy with this case and Mallory doesn't think it is Felina. With a collection of new helpers to help figure out where the dragon is, Mallory is in for a long night.

    This book had the potential to be just as great as the previous book in this series was but something fell a little flat. I didn't care for so many new side kicks and felt that they didn't all add to the story. I still enjoyed this and liked the humor but some of the laughs that I got in the previous book with conversation between Felina and Mallory weren't there. While still enjoyable, this didn't live up to the previous book.
    ”

    Play Book Tag Shelf wrote this review 8 days ago. ( reply | permalink )
  • The Gum Thief
    • Rated 4 stars

    “JudithAnn said: 4 stars
    Once I got into the story, it was really interesting. It deals with a middle aged man, Roger, who has lost everything and works a low paid job in a office supplies store. He keeps a sort of diary and when one of his co-workers finds this, a 20 something woman called Bethany, she starts writing in this diary too.

    Meanwhile Roger has started a story which he hopes to publish as a book, that is presented in parts throughout the book, and Bethany encourages him to go on with it. Things happen that change both Roger's and Bethany's quiet existence.

    An interesting interaction between these two people (and some other people too, later on).
    ”

    Play Book Tag Shelf wrote this review 8 days ago. ( reply | permalink )
  • Generation A
    • Rated 3 stars

    “Susan T said: 3 stars
    What's the buzz?

    I can't say I've loved every word Douglas Coupland's ever written, but by and large I enjoy his work quite a lot. His novels are observant, quirky, and very funny. So, I was looking forward to Generation A. And I enjoyed reading it, but I wanted to like it so much more than I did. I think my biggest problem is that I felt like I was reading two different books. The first half of this novel did not seem to match up with the second.

    The novel is primarily told from the points of view of five individuals from five different lifestyles and countries. What bonds them is that they all share an extraordinary experience. They are each stung by a bee--at a time (roughly the year 2024) when no one's seen a bee for five or six years. They've long been assumed extinct, and the world suffers for it. Fruits and flowers are incredibly rare, and must be labor-intensively hand-pollinated. Honey is like gold. The bees are essentially the canaries in our coal mine, and the future isn't looking too bright.

    This is so much an issue, that there's a new, hyper-addictive drug on the market called Solon. It keeps users in the present, instead of all that pesky worrying about the future. It also makes time pass quicker, and helps alleviate loneliness so that users can "live active and productive single lives with no fear and anxiety." So, it is in this near future that Zack from Iowa, Samantha from New Zealand, Julien from Paris, Harj from Sri Lanka, and Diana from Canada become instant worldwide celebrities--and subjects of scientific scrutiny.

    And I was really engaged in this somewhat bizarre story. I was digging it! But as things moved forward, the plot veered off into left field. For reasons I won't get into, the B5 (as they are called) spend the second half of the novel telling each other quirky stories they've made up. Very little happens as a series of sometimes charming short stories are recited, and the ideas behind Coupland's satire are driven home.

    Eventually there are revelations that somewhat tie the two halves of the novel together, but I found the ending to be weird and somewhat grotesque. There were definitely pleasures to be had in the reading of this novel. Coupland is just too darn good for that not to be the case, but Generation A never quite came together as a cohesive work.
    ”

    Play Book Tag Shelf wrote this review 8 days ago. ( reply | permalink )
  • Lady Windermere's Fan
    • Rated 3 stars

    “Isabelle S said: 3 stars
    This play was Wilde's first, and while it's not as witty or funny as The Importance of Being Earnest, it definitely has its moments. It opens on Lady Windermere's 21st birthday, with plans in full swing for a party in the evening. But Lady Windermere's happiness is marred by well-meaning friends who drop by to commiserate with her about the rumors concerning her husband and a certain Mrs. Erlynne. At first, Lady Windermere doesn't believe it. But then she finds confirmation that her husband has been paying Mrs. E. rather large sums of money. When she confronts him, he not only denies wrongdoing, he insists on inviting Mrs. E. to the party that night.

    This setup gives Wilde opportunity to display several facets of marriage among the party guests The Duchess of Berwick splits her time between trying to calm the scandals of her husband's constant infidelities and trying to marry off her daughter to the most promising prospect. Lady Plymdale is looking for someone to seduce her husband because she finds his devotion oppressive and annoying. The infamous Mrs. Erlynne has forsaken matrimony altogether. Then there are the Windermeres, deeply in love but trying to suss out what level of subterfuge is necessary for a healthy relationship.
    ”

    Play Book Tag Shelf wrote this review 11 days ago. ( reply | permalink )
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