Candlefox

I'm not quite sure I understand all the hype about this book.  My issue is not with the book's horrendous events, but with it's sloppy and trite writing.  The movie is equally disappointing with the exception of Stanley Tucci and Susan Sarandon, but still felt like a tampon commercial.  What may be saddest about the book is that it is included on summer reading lists for some local high schools.  Because poor writing needs to be encouraged. 

Terrible.  Absolutely terrible and really disappointing.  The writing was sloppy and disjointed.  The entire book was telling what happened and never showing.  A page turner this was not and I have no idea why I finished this instead of pulling the bookmark after 100 pages.  An excellent idea for a novel that could have been great had it been in the hands of a more capable writer.  This is up there with stinkers like My Sister's Keeper and The Time Traveler's Wife.  Definitely not recommended.

If hating this "classic" means my taste in books is terrible, I'm okay with that.  These were 800+ of the most boring pages I've ever turned and I'm still a little mad at myself for not pulling the bookmark after 50 pages.

The big "O" logo on the cover should have deterred me since Oprah is indeed the devil herself, especially after she trapped me in Chicago during her Oprahpalooza.  Those 3 hours spent in hellish traffic combined with my time wasted reading this monstrosity are hours wasted and make me want to kick things.

Hated this so much, and not because of its dark subject matter.  After finishing this book I ripped each and every page out and shredded the entire book.  That was the only part of reading this that was enjoyable.  Like the previous Hamilton book I read, When Madeline Was Young, this too bored me to sleep.

What I learned from The Book of Ruth: Jane Hamilton cannot write an interesting story to save her life, and that I should have pulled the bookmark out after 20 pages.  And there was a reason why the used book store bad a boatload of copies of this that they were practically giving away.

I think I deserve a prize for reading this behemoth of a book.  Oh wait, the prize is moving on to another book that couldn't possibly be as unpleasant to read as The Distant Hours.  The idea for the book sounded fantastic- an old almost forgotten castle, some spinsters, a letter previously lost in time, and some familial secrets.  My problem with this book is that it was slow to get going, nothing really drew me in and made me want to keep reading.  The characters felt flat and never ingrained themselves into my mind, even with an awesome name like Juniper.  The highlight for me was the story about the Mud Man in the prologue, and the rest of the nearly 700 pages was a chore to finish.  Overall the book felt unnecessarily long and sloppy.  Based on the other reviews, I'm obviously in the minority for despising this book.  If architectural details get you all hot and bothered, this is the book for you.  Otherwise, skip it no matter how pretty the cover looks.

How this book won a Printz award is beyond me.  It was poorly written and I guessed the ending after 20 pages.  Troy Billings is a fat kid who wants to commit suicide by jumping in front of a train because apparently at 6'1" and 300 pounds he's too fat to do anything.  Curt is a semi-homeless, skinny drug addict guitar god kid who sees Troy in the subway and saves his life.  Naturally these 2 become friends and Curt wants Troy to play drums in a punk band.  The rest of the book is filled with unrealistic fat kid stereotypes and constant mentions of said fatness. 

If there were a musical equivalent to this self indulgent dreck, it would be any of the Tori Amos offerings after The Beekeeper.  There were a few paragraphs that were really pretty but overall this was terribly flat.  Characters didn't seem real, especially the teenage narrator who apparently must not be teeming with hormones like others his age.  Let's not overlook the fact that nothing really happens in the book.  It takes forever and a day for Elio and Oliver to get together.  This was nearly 300 pages of people sitting around drinking Grappa and eating fruit. 

This book is just a hot mess.  The title and description trick the reader into thinking that this is a story about an adult woman and her family coping after her brain injury, when it's more about well nothing really.  Seinfeld was a show about nothing that admits it is a show about nothing.  This book is akin to Seinfeld, only it's just not entertaining in the slightest.  Madeline is such a minor character and it made me feel cheated to discover that.  Mac the narrator is just awful and sounded quite feminine to me.  The only character that stirred up strong feelings in me was Buddy, Mac's cousin, who I found to be despicable.  Other than that, none of the characters were of any interest. Mac's mother Julia was so off-putting.  To me this book seems like it was just phoned in.  There was no effort to develop any characters and the plot goes in so many different directions that it can be confusing to remember what is actually going on.  I can't count how many pages I re-read just to remember what time period it was supposed to be and what was happening.  I'm one of those people who hates not finishing a book, just in case there was something good later on.  Had it not been for my book club, I don't know if I would have finished it, since there was nothing decent about this book.  To those who have called this book disjointed, I wholeheartedly agree.

Seriously what's with all the hype about this book?  It was overly indulgent and took a concept that could have made a phenomenal story and totally flattened that.  Like sitting on a whoopee cushion and not getting a fart noise.

After finishing this, I have a pretty good idea of what Audrey Niffenegger's ideal man is like.  He must love punk rock as evidenced by the author's incessant need to name drop punk bands, be a cool city boy, know how to cook and eat with class, and likes using the same German phrase over and over again.  Enough already!  We get it, Henry likes punk...really likes punk without being a poseur about it.  She doesn't have to beat us over the head with all the band names.

This book was entirely too long.  All the parts about Clare making paper and whatever art project were unnecessarily detailed and torturous to read.  And it seems that the author forgot about the show not tell part of writing.  There were so many monotonous parts of minutiae that could have easily been omitted saving at least 100 pages.  The repetition of that German phrase und so wieter was too much and the paragraphs in French or other languages left untranslated gave this a snooty feel.

My librarian friend wants to know how the hell Henry was able to keep his job while disappearing for lengthy periods of time and reappearing naked while many real life librarians are hoping to avoid being laid off due to huge budget cuts.

Up until the part about all the miscarriages, I just wanted to punch Clare.  Of course she is a trust fund brat, and an artist, and the house she grew up in has books written about it.  Oh and her family has hired help (insert stereotypical ethnic persons).  And she meets a naked Henry when she's just a kid.  If I saw a naked guy appear out of nowhere when I was 6, I would have run screaming for my life.  The multiple miscarriages struck a chord in me and that was the only part of Clare that I identified with and liked (slightly).  It was also the only time Clare felt real.  Although being a trust fund brat, she could have easily afforded fertility specialists that us regular folk can't afford and insurance won't cover.  Of course she still gets her baby Alba, since Clare is perfect.

The only positive in this book and the only reason why I gave it a full star instead of a half was largely due to the time traveling mice that Kendrick cloned and the Kendrick character himself.  Time traveling mice!  It would have been a major feat for the author to screw up time traveling mice.  And I have to give her credit for keeping track of the times and dates during the story.  Other than that this book was a huge disappointment.

Oh how I hate this book!  I finished it quite a while ago and am still pissed at myself for wasting time on this steaming pile of a book.  I read it because so many of my friends were raving about how wonderful it is and how great Jodi Picoult books are.  This book was so terrible I asked all the people who recommended this if they valued our friendship at all.  The worst part is that this could have been a decent book under strict circumstances...that Jodi Picoult had not written it.  The writing is trite, the characters are so formulaic and stereotypical and the plot is just flat.  Why Picoult felt the need to include the little love story with the lawyer is beyond me.  The only character that I liked was the service dog.  The only reason I finished this was because I thought there has to be something decent in the book...how wrong I was.  The ending is such a cop out and left me wondering how in the hell this book even got published.

This is what happens to bad little trees.  They get turned into books like this.

Meh. Well written yet boooooooring. I really wanted to like this book but the pacing made it easy for me to put down. The lack of real closure didn't work here either.

A rather apt book to take along with me during my travels following a band.  So far Jonathan Tropper can do no wrong by me, and while this isn't as laugh out loud hilarious as This Is Where I Leave You, it is just as good only in its own way.  The characters are quintessentially dysfunctional, as one would expect from Tropper, funny, sad and fully fleshed out.  I could picture the group of sad sack men sitting around the pool shooting the shit and ogling the college girls just as I could picture Silver making a total ass of himself at a funeral or wedding.  If you've ever been hurt or disappointed by a parent, this book might ring true even if said parent isn't a former rock star.  Highly recommended unless you're offended by foul language.

I should have known better than to read a book with a dog on the cover while at work.   Even one of my co-workers saw the book and asked if she should get me some tissues.  A box and a half of tissues later, I finished the book on a quiet afternoon while the boss was out.

This is such a sweet love story in smells about a little mutt and the one true love of his life, and how no matter how long the two had been apart their love never ended.  What I had a hard time with was separating Nelson from my dog, Homer.  Nelson's story could have been a lengthier version of my big guy's.  My guy was found wandering the streets with a group of other strays in a rural town in Indiana, no collar no microchip.  He was a skinny, stinky dog with an unknown history.  No one knew where he came from, no one knew who his mom and dad were, nothing was known about my dog other than he needed a home ASAP.  My husband and I drove 10 hours round trip to a shelter full of dogs and cats all on borrowed time.  Our guy picked out my husband as we were walking the kennel aisles. We took him out of his pen and he acted like the perfect gentlemen, not jumping or pulling on the leash. So we took him home only to see his true colors as a real wild man. Seven years later he has finally chilled out and become one good dog. Here's when I get up on my soapbox about spaying and neutering your dogs and cats and microchipping them, and adopting instead of buying from breeders or pet stores.

This is what happens to bad little trees. They get chopped up and turned into shitty fiction and phone books.

Here's my theory...Jodi Picoult read The Book Thief and realized how great the story is and decided to try and cash in on Holocaust fiction, she wrote this abomination.

I hated this book from start to finish with the fire of a thousand suns, so much so that it required a list of all the awful parts.

Reasons why this book sucks out loud:
- implying that only people of Jewish exraction should be offended by Nazi uniforms
- the names...Sage, Pepper, Saffron
- the hippie who only speaks in Haiku
- Jodi Picoult thinking that she's going to score points with readers by "teaching" us about the Holocaust
- New Hampshire being a good place to hide if you're a Nazi (WTF?!)
- Sage reads like a bratty teenager with a serious case of butthurt even though she's supposed to be 25
- the incessant pop culture references and name dropping
- the vampire story within the book was beyond absurd
- the ridiculous and completely unbelievable and unnecessary love story between Sage and Mr. FBI detective
- the book reading more like a book report
- the usual cop-out ending that you could see coming a mile away
- all the baking details
- not one likeable character, nor any character development.

I think Jodi Picoult forgets that not all of us are a bunch of troglodytes and learned about the Holocaust in school. And if I really wanted to learn more about it, she would be the last author I would turn to. Her books are formulaic crap, this one reading a lot like My Sister's Keeper. This is absolutely the last book of her's I will ever read. For whatever reason, women seem to looooooove her even though all her books are the same. She could probably write a book about dishtowels and her lemmings would still bow at her feet.

Oh, and real bakers don't keep spreadsheets of their ingredients. Trust me, I married a pastry chef who called shenanigans when I asked him baking questions while reading.

Quite possibly the dumbest fluff read ever. Characters are stereotypical and the dialogue is ridiculous. Who says highfalutin any more?! Certainly not a 23 year old. Maybe it's because I'm from the midwest, but what the hell does 'eah mean? The writing is amateur at best. If anything, this book showed me that Bella Swan and Katniss are not the worst female characters in fiction. That title goes to Beth in this series for being a total moron. Shame on me for not pulling the bookmark after 20 pages.

Well, well, well GoodReads I see how it's going to be.  What used to be a safe playground for all us readers has now become a hunting pen.  Those who dare call out a book for being awful or an author for going all batshit over a "negative" review are now being censored.  All this just in time for Banned Books Week!  Epic Failure. 

Soon GoodReads will cease having any purpose when reviewing there becomes no different from reviewing on Amazon.  Way to shoot your site in the foot.