Customer Comments

Excellent overview of what the lives of women were like at the time--and the injustices they suffered as well as the lack of rights.

A little slow-starting as a mystery book, but certainly with a great background setting.

IT'S ALWAYS GOOD TO GO BACK TO THE CLASSICS FOR A GOOD READ.

The book is an interesting account of the water siren's life from the "backstage" perspective. She gets taken advantage of by men--it's those times--but she always bounces back, learning some, but not all the right lessons along the way. It's amazing how at the time when she was young & at her prime, she could be in a show & her partners constantly harrassed her & got away with it, while her managers pocketed more than two thirds of her salary--& got away with it--which she only found out about when one of her rejected partners in a pique told her the sordid details.

There's a lot in this book that stretches the imagination beyond credulity (& not in a good sci-fi way), but there are a lot of good parts too. The main plot with Lily & her paintings & her brother coming to the rescue to protect her from the husband that seems to want to kill her for them is what really makes the book. The rest is bestseller thriller material that could have been left out & made this a better (& shorter) book to read.

A very important book to read, especially for feminists, Native Americans & poets.

A beautiful if depressing book of poetry & essays in response to the 1989 Exxon oil spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound.

This short narrative makes for a realistic read of a historical time period, when the yellow fever was running rampant in Philadelphia in 1793. The narrator is a young independent girl--probably moreso than she would have actually been allowed to be at the time, but it makes for a nice feminist punch for the person reading it today.

A delightful children's book that can also help with self esteem issues!

There are no end of surprising plot twists and tunrs in this book, especially the final one. A little grusesome to read at times, but the characters are solid and real.

This is an excellent introduction to feminism. hooks really defines what sexism is all about in this small but seminal books.

An important book for our time

The book has many fascinating premises--and tries (sometimes very successfully) to explain them. For example, how does some fashion suddenly become so trendy that everyone is wearing it? How does a restaurant suddenly become the place to eat? Most of the answers boil down to people--and how some folks just hook up two intersted parties altruistically--and help the trends along.

The opening premise makes for an intriguing & complex plot line. It's a little too rah-rah, flag-waving of a point of view from the way it's written, but still a good read.

A very important & timely book on a tremedously important moment in history by an excellent and socially concerned writer.

There's much of interest in this book, and a lot of word padding. But in these harsh economic times,all theories are welcome--and everyone is eager to read about them.

An interesting read.

Medawar writes in a true Native American voice that is immediately compelling--and humorous. You won't want to put this book down till you finish

The first few pages to this book aren't all that exciting, but then Hiaasen takes the reader on a wild journey with a crazed cast of characters whose adventures you just won't believe.

Intriguing detailed history of how the canal was built.

Intriguing personal story of a journalist who unexpectedly falls in love and the things that happen to her when she is living with her new husband in Iran.

Elizabeth George writes with beautiful subtlety about the human emotions and the various relationships between people. She voices into prose the nuances of fleeting or tantamount thoughts between people--sometimes many of them easy to miss if you don't read VERY carefully, especially in this book. And against this background there is always the intriguing mystery plot she weaves.

Dan Brown has Italian monuments as clues to solving this mystery thriller that he wrote before The Davinci Code. You won't be able to put it down. Then go see the movie & compare notes.

The premise and solution to this mystery book is an interesting one--Martha Grimes always delivers a good read.

A beautifully written but very sad book.

This little book does exactly what it says. It presents an amazingly interesting & concise summary of Britain's history in pithy, short little chapters. What a surprise that a book like this can be a page-turner that you can't put down!

An interesting mystery to read, if a bit pat. But the premise of a series of antique stores as a setting makes for good background material.

An interesting analysis and behind the scenes look at modelling, though it does sometimes get somewhat repetitive over its over 500-page in-depth examination.

An interesting read--especially for those of us in Chicago right now who are bidding for the 2016 Olympics. Some, like our mayor, want it desperately, taking the Committee around the city. The rest, like reporters writing open letters to the Committee in the papers, are asking them to please, please take them elsewhere Anywhere!), as our already financially-ailing city will go bankrupt if we host them.

Sometimes the classics are the best--they remind you of the measure between everyday fiction and timeless fiction. Gatsby is not only expertly written, but full of philosophical passages that are a sheer wonder. I recently saw Elevator Repair Service's marathon performance, reading the whole novel, and it was a true revelation of words. If they are performing anywhere in your vicinity, run to see them do this book, the ultimate "talking book" experience. In the meantime, read The Great Gatsby yourself--for the sheer pleasure of it.

A winner all the way around!

An intriguing blend of what is and isn't real--or sci-fi!

Price always delivers, as in this book!

The latest of the many interesting books produced by Achy Obejas--and a very timely one.

An interesting page turner that manages to come up with some surprises in the end. It's a little long-winded in spots as well as a little repetitive, but definitely a good read.

A book that talks about many of the major issues of our time that need to be addressed in a big way!

Winona LaDuke always efficiently and eloquently speaks for the land, from the earthkeeper's point of view.

Anne Rice's books are always a compelling read, and this no less so. And worth a second audio go-round.

This is really a timely book to read, which is its main good point. The end is somewhat of a lame let-down, though. Especially given the fact that the book is the fifth in a series (though I haven't read the others).

A good, quick reading. It has, in a way, the proverbial--albeit bittersweet--ending.

Pam Houston knows how to write a good story, and how to grab your attention while you read it. It will be hard for you to put this book down.

A book that really captures the spirit of what fighting was like in the Viet Nam war, and why so many vets are still so troubled.

An entertaining book that comes complete with recipes for crepes

An interesting analytical book

A book for our times. There is an intriguing photo in the book that shows how smog camouflages a city to the extent that it disappears when photographed aerially.I think nothing speaks more eloquently how we should become more green right now.

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez writes with a sharp wittiness that is always engaging. Her book is full of equally engaging and witty characters, going through the turmoil and joy of life.

Despite its somewhat pat happy ending, the book is a good read. You are rooting so much for the main characters that you want to see them winding up with some semblance of happiness at the end.

Very entertaining little "mystery" with some realistic characters inhabiting it

An entertaining little page-turner, despite a bit of a slow start. It's set in a murder mystery bookstore in a row of bookstores in a sleepy little New Hampshire town. And there's a cat named Miss Marple.

A true-life account of one woman's Holocaust survival. Barely more than a child, she tells the story of how she lost all of her immediate family, and those who became her adopted family as the war progressed. Sad as the account is, there is so much beauty in the human spirit that she also focuses a truthful lens to, that it isn't as depressing to read about as one would think. It is really a beautiful book--and an important one, because of its eyewitness answer as to why people didn't all immediately flee when they began to see the handwriting on the wall.

An interesting mystery novel, tho a little too pat. Still, a good read.

The book is just too entertaining--and much more feminist than the movie version, it that's all you've done--seen, not read, that is.

The homeless--and the rights of these disposessed,that they often lose as a consequence--is the central issue of this book. The central character, the eponymous street lawyer, becomes their legal benefactor by way of giving up his lucrative position in one of the country's top law firms.

Douglas Adams writes with wit and wisdom about the sad plight of the disappearance of a myriad of species on this Earth that we, as humans, are promulgating. It's a sad, heart-breaking but fascinating read. The only thing wrong with it is that there aren't more photos of the fast-disappearing endangered animals he and his cohorts go in quest of finding to document them in words.

Intriguing "love" story written in a unique way. Some very penetrating characterizations of people and places, too.

A book that everyone should read--that touches very intelligently on a critical issue of our time.

A simply incredible book to read--fascinating and important, too!

A good read

Written to be read before or after a meal

A must read

An essential read for today's rising worldview/global economy and all its peripheral issues

An atypical book for an economist--even in subject matter--coming as it does from everyday life.

A book by one of the important voices in American poetry today. Alice Notley always gives her poems a sensitive woman's point of view, an extra twist that makes their lyricism shine.

This is a beautifully engaging poetry book

A wonderfully written book overshadowed by the author's ever-popular All Quiet on the Western Front. It deals with post-war Germany where inflation makes money go up by the millions daily and quietly explains toward the end why a lot of the people's dissatisfaction led them to follow Hitler. Because they wanted to believe that he really would help things improve.

Paretsky's books are always a compelling read, but this one is even more so. In these times when a new kind of blacklisting is a real threat, it's also a cautionary tale, superimposed on the gloss of the murder mystery. She intelligently interweaves tangled layers, approaching her subject matter not just from Point A to B, but allowing the necessary tangets of A1 to A10 and lots more footnoted plotlines in-between. She is also always contemporary, throwing a paragraph into the plot that quickly condemns what needs to be. For example, when she needs to buy a quick outfit change & some other sleuthing materials, she visits a certain megastore & buys it all for less than $30. She lays it on the line--of course it's made by slave labor. How could it not be, at those prices. But we conveniently ignore the truths we want to for convenience. Thank God Paretsky is there to remind our conscience not to!

Some rough edges with a lot of violence to this book, but it's worth reading just to meet Bob, the armadillo son of Leonard

In A MIRROR FOR WITCHES, Esther Forbes (best known for her book JOHNNY TREMAIN) has crafted a book in which the reader has to engage her intellect to follow along completely. She very cleverly gives the "real" story between the lines (as it were) of the main narration (in realistic 17th century style). She documents how easily neighbors and townspeople fell into the witch hunt mentality, crying out against the "absurdity" of the real facts. The careful reader knows that the main premise of the book--that the girl-witch, fictional Doll Bilby, has a demon lover--is false. Early in the book, Forbes has the town crier telling of the escape of some pirates. One of them pretends to be a "demon fiend from Hell" in human form in order to seduce Doll. When his mother at the trial cries out the truth, she is summarily dismissed as a madwoman, hallucinating the very fact that she even had a son at all. The wonderful sudbued ironies like this throughout the book make it a very engaging read--though the reader, of course, cringes at all the preducial injustices thoughout it.

This book is just too funny. God and His Son (Jay) decide they need some time off after eons of hard work running the world and post a "Gone Fishing" sign off a constellation to any interested parties. The trouble is that Kevin--the other, younger son, like all young kids left home alone--gets in trouble playing with the home computer, Mainframe--which just happens to be the reason God is omniscent. It runs the world for him. Chaos ensues (England's Prime Minister becomes a lemming, a Duke of Hell becomes a vicar) and Uncle Ghost isn't much help (or obviously much of a babysitter, either). Tom Holt has crafted a hilariously humorous book that you just can't put down.

Catherine Arnold has crafted an intriguing page turner here, with all sorts of loose plot lines that all ultimately come together very cleverly--and with an O. Henry-like whopper of an unexpected (and pointedly ironic) ending.

Sara Gruen really paints a picture of a society (the circus) and an era (The Depression) as if she had actually inhabited both. She writes from a man's point of view with an authority that makes you think she's just taken on a female pen name, reversing the George Sand thing. All the "every-day," exotic details she has filled the book with make for wonderful reading.

An intriguing tale--true or false

A book so appropriate for our times it could be aptly called Clockwork Bush. Everyone should re-read this!

A book that is so appropriate for our times it could be called Clockwork Bush. A must to re-read.

A book about a major 20th-century figure in the world of dance

Surprisingly easy book to read--a bit of an intellectual page-turner.

Surprisingly easy read that keeps you as interested as if it were fiction--but unfortunately isn't. That's the part that's difficult to deal with. A very honest and hard-hitting tale about being a marine in times of war.

Intriguing book that's part mystery and part thriller and part sci-fi--all in one. The sympathetic protagonist adds a lot of flair to the narrative action.

A seminal work of literature that began the environmental green movement as we know it today

And to think this man who wrote this book could have (and should have been) our President, instead of the man who now sits making bad decisions in the Oval Office...what else remains to be said?

50's/60's Southside Chicago in all its multi-faceted, mosaic glory (good and bad) captured here cleverly by Stuart Dybek

A book in which the author opens up a whole new world--of sympathetic characters

Violence begets violence. There's a morality tale at the heart of this novel, and it's not that more violence is what curtails it. Too much of what Burgess wrote about so many years ago that was ironic and fictional then has unfortuantely become factual today.

This is truly a genre-crossing fantasy/sci-fi book with a beautiful love story at its heart.

A classic book to get reacquainted with

Scary but required reading for every American today.

A classic that always needs to be revisited.

The book (and movie) that has made global warming a household word--and is FINALLY inciting people to take some positive action against it!

Preview

Read (or re-read) this book and see how close (unfortunately) it sounds to our own very real world. The imagined society's slogans could have been torn from our newsmedia headlines from our own administration's propoganda.

A classic that always needs to be read

A very poignant and moving book to read, inspired by a lot of real-life experiences (though they don't dovetail his life enough to be non-fiction, of course).

It's a classic that applies all too well to our times today. Reread it and cringe.

It's Julia Alvarez at her historical best, making the ultimate analogy of the smallpox plague of yesterday to the AIDS plague of today.

The book is written in Alvarez' inimitable trademark style--very funny but with very serious overtones--like life itself.

A very important book because it draws attention to an important cause that the major media ignores. There are, of course, no oil wells in Burma, so we don't need to start a war with the military force there ruling with oppressive force, and keeping its rightful ruler, Aung San Suu Kyi, jailed and under house arrest for many decades.

A fascinating look into what drove the poet into writing her poems the way she did, what caused her traumas--and how her psychiatrist betrayed her (and might ultimately have been what drove her to her very final and real suicide).

A thriller that delves into the wars of the hip-hop music scene. What's most interesting about the way this book is written is that when new characters are introduced (and there are some pretty wild ones), the story backtracks and narrates their whole life story--but because it's written as well as it is, it doesn't slow down the action.

For this book, I think even the title alone says it all!

A potboiler epic, melodramatic and mesmerizing, that's hard to put down.

Very interesting, unexpected ending to this book by a veteran writer

A classic that unfortunately REALLY needs to be reread in our tumoultous, war-torn times!

A book that brings to the reader's attention a female writer from the Harlem Renaissance not as well known as the major figures. Very interesting reading, if a little melodramatic at times. Most of the material--her few short stories and her two short novels--end with surprising twists at the end of their plots.

A very entertaining mystery novel to read, especially for dog lovers!