My Review of "The Bad Beginning": 4 Stars   Love the prose, the tongue-in-cheek way he stops to define any big words, and the way he translates baby-talk into complex sentences... so dry and witty! I did, however, stop reading as soon as the author gave the disclaimer that the ...
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My Review of "Learned Optimism": 5 Stars   Really interesting! I read this in installments over months because I lent it out when I wasn't finished with it, but Seligman makes the simple but profound point that a lot of "depression" is borne out of our individualistic culture. Real ...
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My Review of "The Life of Pi": 4 Stars   I liked this book, but didn't love it... I was always interested in the story but never so much that I couldn't put it down for stretches at a time. Parts were really creative, and I wondered more than once if it was based on a true story (but ...
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My Review of "Peter Pan": 4 Stars   It was lighthearted and fun. Although ***SPOILER ALERT*** for some reason I had it in my head that Peter Pan came to the real world, grew up and married Wendy, and I was disappointed when Wendy married somebody else and Peter was still hanging out ...
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My Review of "The Great Divorce": 5 Stars   Love, love, love. I read this years ago but recently picked it up again because I remembered it was such a keen description of the different kinds of psychological "blinders" people wear, and a truly fascinating take on the concept of heaven ...
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My Review of "The Graveyard Book": 4 Stars   Very interesting narrative structure: it was episodic, like a TV show. The story follows Bod (short for Nobody), a boy who grows up in a graveyard, throughout multiple episodes of his life, but there is an overarching storyline of the man who ...
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My Review of "Gone With the Wind": 5 Stars!!!   Oh! Gut wrenching!!! My good friend warned me that I would grieve when it was over, and I read it anyway... and on one hand I wish I'd heeded her warning, on the other, it is such a great story that it's worth it. The characters are ...
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My Review of "Persuasion": 3 Stars   I'm usually a big Jane Austen fan, but I suspect this must have been one of the first books she ever wrote. Almost the whole thing is in the passive voice, and she does lots of "telling" rather than "showing," which made it hard for me to focus and ...
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My Review of "The Screwtape Letters": 5 Stars   Brilliantly done, super creative... I'd read it years ago, but it's funny how I found myself highlighting very different passages this time around. Lewis manages to encapsulate the way that people find themselves in bondage to lies in such ...
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My Review of "The Horse and His Boy": 5 Stars   I just love C.S. Lewis. His insight into characters is spot on, and he manages to put into words traits that I'd observed before but never fully described or explained. It all becomes so very clear coming from his pen! This was one of ...
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