en-US Mon, 28 Apr 2025 17:16:40 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Review7513450481 Mon, 28 Apr 2025 17:16:40 -0700 /review/show/7513450481 Ellen gave 3 stars to The Bloodless Boy (Hunt & Hooke, #1) by Robert J. Lloyd
Convoluted and too long, but still had some fun in it. Probably won't read the sequel, but you never know. ]]> ReadStatus9364225452 Mon, 28 Apr 2025 17:16:35 -0700 /review/show/5986931876 Ellen started reading The Fraud by Zadie Smith
]]> Review7513450481 Mon, 28 Apr 2025 17:16:13 -0700 /review/show/7513450481 Ellen gave 3 stars to The Bloodless Boy (Hunt & Hooke, #1) by Robert J. Lloyd
Convoluted and too long, but still had some fun in it. Probably won't read the sequel, but you never know. ]]> Review7508045900 Wed, 23 Apr 2025 15:47:14 -0700 /review/show/7508045900 Ellen gave 3 stars to Cleavage: Men, Women, and the Space Between Us (Hardcover) by Jennifer Finney Boylan
OK, but pretty repetitive. ]]> Review7495919781 Mon, 21 Apr 2025 18:35:51 -0700 /review/show/7495919781 Ellen gave 3 stars to The Night Guest (Hardcover) by Hildur Kn煤tsd贸ttir
Very. Weird. 3.5. ]]> Review7505206300 Sun, 20 Apr 2025 20:05:33 -0700 /review/show/7505206300 Ellen gave 4 stars to The Bright Sword (Hardcover) by Lev Grossman
]]> ReadStatus9319448589 Thu, 17 Apr 2025 07:24:26 -0700 /review/show/7495919781 Ellen is currently reading The Night Guest by Hildur Kn煤tsd贸ttir
]]> Review7481754432 Thu, 17 Apr 2025 07:18:42 -0700 /review/show/7481754432 Ellen gave 3 stars to How to Read a Book (Hardcover) by Monica Wood
Sigh. I really don't know how to process how I feel about this book. There were things I really liked -- like the parrots, and the book club, which felt surprisingly not faux, but it also reminded me of the worst of this genre, the disparate-lonely-lost-curmudgeonly-people-meeting-in-a-book-store-and-creating-a-family genre. Definitely too heart-warmingly positive, and weirdly hetero-normative -- every single relationship, good or bad, was heterosexual right out of the 50s. And I don't do well with wish-fulfillment plotlines; I am a 65-year-old woman who is alone, and I resent how easy it is in wish-fulfillment books for such women to find satisfying relationships. I sneer at this.

Anyway, the 3 stars are for the saving grace of the parrots and the book club. ]]> Review7476156003 Fri, 11 Apr 2025 20:51:54 -0700 /review/show/7476156003 Ellen gave 3 stars to I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition (Kindle Edition) by Lucy Sante
Another memoir of the self-obsessed, although I guess to write a memoir you have to be self-obsessed. Really, an article in Vanity Fair would have been enough. ]]> Review7468831595 Wed, 09 Apr 2025 14:49:34 -0700 /review/show/7468831595 Ellen gave 2 stars to The Underground Library (Hardcover) by Jennifer Ryan
Bleah.

Bad writing, ridiculous wish-fulfillment plot, idiotic anachronisms, actual mistakes -- there's no such thing as "matzo soup" and if you're so ignorant you don't know that, you shouldn't be writing about what you don't know about, and the fact that no editor caught that is personally offensive -- and mostly, it cheapens the time period and the reality of the time it's attempting to portray by fashioning it into a romance for three young women who all get their man while becoming independent and strong-minded! Grrr.

I never choose books on spec, but this one passed through my hands at work just after I'd returned from a personal odyssey in Bethnal Green and the fact that it took place in Bethnal Green during the war made me take it home. More fool me. I need to remind myself -- frequently -- why I don't read books on spec. ]]>