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Tricia

Tricia

has 31 followers and is following 30 people

Please don't judge a shelf by it's covers! I have such an eclectic reading style and I think it appears exaggerated in a forum such as this.

(Quick bookkeeping note...please don't request friendship without a little hello note. This is not an application process but it could at least tell me a little about yourself and what we have in... more »
  • TN, USA
  • member since November 7, 2007

Reviews

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Displaying 1-10 of 59 reviews
  • Their Eyes Were Watching God
    • Rated 4 stars

    I have such a hard time reading in a dialect. However the love story transcended the irritation I felt. Not sweet and cheesy. Real, gritty, raw, funny, tragic, passionate, and true.

    Tricia wrote this review 6 days ago. ( reply | permalink )
  • Things Fall Apart
    • Rated 4 stars

    Great read. So many different trials affect Okwonkwo and his reaction is always the same, perseverance mixed with anger. He's a man that gets things done, he is "successful" in his own eyes, but happiness has never entered the picture. It's tragic, really. Loved reading about the entrance of the white man into the tribes. Humorous in spite of the sadness.

    Hard book to review because there isn't a lot of "plot"....it's a book of a man's life.

    Tricia wrote this review 6 days ago. ( reply | permalink )
  • The Night Circus
    • Rated 5 stars

    I was entranced from the beginning. The descriptions were amazing and the circus was just so enticing!

    Magical...mixed with a bit of dark but not scary or horror. Just a bit eerie.

    NEEDS to be a movie.

    Tricia wrote this review 9 days ago. ( reply | permalink )
  • The Year of Magical Thinking
    • Rated 4 stars

    It was like a conversation with a very friendly, very intelligent person. I did not find it oppressively emotional but it does resonate. That is a delicate balance that I appreciated. I wasn't wanting to read something that left me wrecked.

    Tricia wrote this review 10 days ago. ( reply | permalink )
  • Love Walked in
    • Rated 0 stars

    I'm holding off on stars. Here is why:

    This was total chick lit. I don't like chick lit. BUT, I really, really, REALLY liked how some things were written. The word choices, I mean. The phrase choices. Something about it really reminded me of Marilynne Robinson's writing (which I love).

    That said, so much about this book (including it being chick lit) was annoying to me. Everyone was beautiful. Truly. It would be interesting to add up all of the words spent describing the physical beauty of every single major and minor character and see what percentage of the book it encompasses. Probably not less than 10%. It's a LOT of beauty! In fact, you don't need the infamous spoon in order to gag.

    Also, it's completely, completely, (did I say completely) unrealistic. Not one single adult acted as any real life adult would act in the situations presented. From beginning, to end, every adult (and kid, for that matter) read as perfect and, therefore, completely unbelievable.

    But wording and phrasing - yeah - I even teared up a couple of times. She did that pretty darn well.

    Tricia wrote this review 13 days ago. ( reply | permalink )
  • White Witchdoctor
    • Rated 2 stars

    The book of the back reads "The best book on life in South Africa." It also leads you to believe this is about living in SA during apartheid. It's not. It's a doctor's medical memoir about working in a hospital (a black hospital) that happens to be in Johannesburg and he happens to be working there during apartheid. It reads just like any other medical memoir. There are a gratuitous 15 or so pages, at the end, that are SA history. It's so strange. You jump from reading medical memoirs, to reading a few pages on why he chose to leave, to a history on the area.

    I didn't go completely one star on him because the medical stuff was interesting. But I was tempted!

    Tricia wrote this review 2 weeks ago. ( reply | permalink )
  • Coming of Age in Mississippi
    • Rated 5 stars

    Once I started to adapt to the writing and get beyond being uncomfortable w/ the words used I settled in to one of the best accounts I've ever read of life in the pre-Civil Rights south. In particular, Mississippi was horrible.

    Ms. Moody's childhood was so lonely and deprived. When I first started reading it I didn't realize we were even mid-20th century due to living conditions described.

    My favorite aspect of the book was the last section "The Movement". Reading her account of being inside on the grass roots efforts of the Civil Rights movement. Reading her description of the March in Washington and MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech were especially eye opening. Reading her anger and her exhaustion and her fear. Just outstanding.

    Tricia wrote this review 2 weeks ago. ( reply | permalink )
  • Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
    • Rated 2 stars

    I gave it 2 stars because I loved the idiosyncrasies of the protagonist, 9 yr old Oskar Schell and I loved what the book could have been.

    Beyond that, I didn't like it at all. I didn't like the writing style, I didn't like how unbelievable it all was, I didn't liike the pictures that were thrown in (I understood what the author was trying to do but to me it was incredibly disjointed and distracting and pulled me even farther out of the story than I already was.), and I didn't like how unresolved I felt about the whole thing.

    It's also very forgettable. I think this is one that the movie, because it's Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock, definitely has the chance of being better than the book. If it's not then it wasn't worth their time. I liked the book so little that I will wait for the movie to arrive at the cheap theater.

    Tricia wrote this review 3 weeks ago. ( reply | permalink )
  • Disgrace
    • Rated 5 stars

    Slow paced yet riveting. I loved it.

    Tricia wrote this review Tuesday, January 17, 2012. ( reply | permalink )
  • To America
    • Rated 3 stars

    History lessons combined w/ personal memoir/reflection type reading. Fascinating to learn more about Ambrose, in his own words, but felt disjointed as I was reading it. Actually, it was like reading a lecture. In spoken form this would have been a great overview of American history but the stories of his own past lost some sense of personal ownership. He wrote of his first wife's suicide much in the same voice that he wrote of Crazy Horse.

    I LOVED reading some alternative and changing viewpoints of history that happened to him, in particular. It was interesting to read how his understanding of a particular even evolved as he either aged or researched a topic.

    I was also introduced to Eisenhower in such a way that I will definitely be reading more on him, starting w/ Ambrose's own works.

    All in all, I'm glad I read it but it was not what I was hoping it would be and I found myself rushing through, at the end, so that I could move on to my next book. I definitely think it's possible that I'll pick it up again and read in short chapter sessions as the mood hits me. I'm glad I own it.

    Tricia wrote this review Sunday, January 8, 2012. ( reply | permalink )
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Displaying 1-10 of 59 reviews