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AliCorbin

AliCorbin@bookwyrm.social

Joined 2 years, 5 months ago

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reviewed Mink river by Doyle, Brian

Doyle, Brian: Mink river (2010, Oregon State University Press)

Review of 'Mink river' on 'Goodreads'

I truly loved this book. My only regret is that it took me this long to get around to reading it. It's got a plot, more or less, but is more a poem than a novel. Or a fairy tale, about a magical place were crows converse and bears read the New York Times, wrapped around countless other tales. Salish, Irish, human and non-human, all mixed and mingled together.

reviewed Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life by Spencer Johnson

Spencer Johnson: Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life (2002)

Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and …

Review of 'Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life' on 'Goodreads'

A fable for adults.  Purportedly about how to deal with change, and with a gushing introduction that told how it helped people.  "It saved my job!"  "It saved my marriage!"  "It saved my life!"  But I found it boring and simplistic.  The lessons that I heard in the text were:

Change is good.
Learning is fun.  (Well, duh!)
Motivational posters are useful.  (As jokes?)
Keep your head up, and run at the first hint of trouble.  In other words, quit before they get around to firing you.
Don't overthink.  In fact, don't think at all.  The best and quickest success comes from action without thought.

I don't think the author thought this through very well.  In fact, I kept being reminded of Animal Farm, and almost wondered if the whole thing was actually a parody.  

The book kept harping on overcoming your fear of change.  And maybe some people do …

reviewed My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki

Ruth Ozeki: My Year of Meats (1998, Viking Press)

My Year of Meats is the 1998 debut novel by Ruth Ozeki. The book takes …

Review of 'My Year of Meats' on 'Goodreads'

Ozeki's first novel. So she hadn't hit her stride yet.

I got the feeling that she'd wanted to write an exposé about the dangers of hormones in meat production, but decided to wrap it in a novel, to get more people to read it. And so ended up writing a novel about a woman who creates an exposé about the dangers of hormones in meat production. She created a plot to showcase all the horrible things that go bad in feedlots and slaughterhouses, and then set up stock characters to populate the story. The male characters in particular came across as stereotypes.

reviewed Queen Isabella by Allison Weir

No cover

Allison Weir: Queen Isabella (AudiobookFormat, 2005, Recorded Books)

Review of 'Queen Isabella' on 'Goodreads'

An intriguing book.  Very heavily researched, with possibly too many details.  (Do I really need to know which nights Isabella spent in which manors, and how much each item that she bought cost?)  On the other hand, it was filled with assumptions and speculations, telling what Isabella 'must have' felt, and stating that her tyrannies after Edward II was deposed were obvious proof of her infatuation with Mortimer.  But the kicker comes when she convinces herself that Edward was not murdered, but escaped to Europe and lived as a penitent hermit for the rest of his days - even to returning to England to meet with his son. She quoted a great deal of source material, not in the original French or Norman French or Latin, of course, but translated into English. But sometimes it was rendered in modern English, and sometimes in what sounded like Elizabethan English. This was …

reviewed A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

Fredrik Backman: A Man Called Ove (Hardcover, 2014, Atria Books)

TW : Suicidal thoughts & actions

A grumpy yet loveable man finds his solitary world …

Review of 'A Man Called Ove' on 'Goodreads'

Fluff.  A pleasant, and predictable, read, in which everything turns out well in the end.  Ove is a type - the strong man who doesn't want to talk about his feelings, and is more at home with a screwdriver than with people.  And one that we all know, in our family or friends.

reviewed Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner (The Modern Library classics)

Wallace Stegner: Crossing to Safety (2002, Modern Library)

Crossing to Safety is a 1987 semi-autobiographical novel by "The Dean of Western Writers", Wallace …

Review of 'Crossing to Safety' on 'Goodreads'

An interesting novel. In which there is hardly any plot, and just a wee bit of overblown conflict. So it's basically a novel-length character study.

But what a study. The characters were so finely drawn that we all recognized them. In ourselves, our spouses, our parents and our friends. We spent the evening talking about couple dynamics and gender roles, and even the interplay between friends.