Wed 17 Mar 2010
Why do eight-hundred page books take twice as long to read as four two-hundred page books? (To be fair, when my life gets crazy enough that I’m lucky to get twenty pages of pleasure reading done in a day, then anything at all will take forever.) On the other hand, the last third picked up the pace in a big way. Nice job. Still waiting for book two to show up in paperback.
Sat 27 Feb 2010
The third in a series of mysteries set in the White House kitchen and featuring the executive chef. This book takes one more step in complexity. It also feels as though the author is taking her characters a little more seriously. It still feels more like a television script.
Sat 27 Feb 2010
The second in a series of culinary mysteries. This one is more developed than the previous. Still not quite my thing.
Sat 27 Feb 2010
A culinary cozy detective story set in the White House kitchen, complete with recipes in the back. It’s a simplistic story but it gets the job done. In an ideal world, this is the sort of book I would have “read” as an audiobook.
Sat 27 Feb 2010
I forget sometimes how enjoyable a novella can be. There’s no room for puffery in the story, but there’s still room for development. Scalzi handles it well, and hits on some themes that I find interesting. Just be aware that this is a dark book.
Sat 27 Feb 2010
A very long culture novel that moves at a stately pace. If Anthony Trollope had written a culture novel, it might have looked like this. I happen to like Anthony Trollope’s novels, but this one was short on culture content for my taste. And I’m still not sure whether I really like the intensely clever ending. All that said, I liked this book, but mostly for the process of reading it rather than as a whole.
Sat 27 Feb 2010
I just keep being more and more impressed by Jim Hines. High quality fluff.
[powells]
Tue 12 Jan 2010
Frustratingly, I didn’t really start to care about most of these characters until just as the book was ending. Just as I was ready to get invested in the story, it ended.
Tue 12 Jan 2010
This was one of those books where I was glad to get it done so I could go read what other people were saying about it. Yes, an interesting book. My biggest complaint is that the beginning of the story, the coming of age of Green, doesn’t meld well in my reading with the rest of the book.
Tue 12 Jan 2010
This feels like two books stuck together, or maybe even three. All of them were good stories but I wanted more of each of them. I also suspect that not having read the novel before this didn’t help.