lory_enterenchanted's reviews
506 reviews

It's a decent enough fairy tale but not really an Oz book! 

I enjoy this Wimsey mystery because of the setting and the snarky commentary about advertising. 

This has gotten much acclaim, but I thought it was just okay. I liked Tova a lot as a character, but there was so much that was unbelievable, and I don't just mean the octopus who could read English and count past 1000. The "mystery" was also implausible.

Well done historical fiction with a thread of myth. Alenka and Jack were wonderful characters, but the Teddy character was not convincing to me. Too much about him was just designed to provide an impediment to the meant-for-each-other couple, and it was irritating how Alenka allowed him to act like he owned her. The interpretation of the "minotaur" was interesting, although I was also not convinced that he wouldn't have been killed long ago as an informer.

I learned a lot about how awful the war was for the Cretans. I am surprised they could ever again allow Germans on their shores. Truly monstrous.

France revealed a wild and dangerous side, in the days when it was mapless and only partially civilized, that I had never encountered before! Really interesting explorations.

The first half was rather exceptional, well written and insightful in exploring the emotional trajectory of a girl displaced and in mourning after WWII. This included tensions with her older sister and the difficulty of moving in with an aunt in an abusive marriage. The second half -- in which the "secret" comes to light -- I found less compelling. As soon as the story just became about killing off scary external monsters it lost its appeal for me.

The later Moomin books have much more mature themes and command of language and imagery as well. This is an odd little fable in which Moominpappa pulls everyone along in his dream of living on an island and taking care of all of them (without regard for whether they actually want this). There are challenges, there is growth. There are mysterious transformations and a bit of magic. I especially love what happened with the Groke, and with Moominmamma's garden. 

 This was better than The Sea Fairies in terms of having a plot, but the unpleasant people of both sides of Sky Island were not much fun to be with. 

I found this first Moomin novel to be a somewhat weird combination of whimsy and horror ...  Helpful to read for the origins of some characters and relationships, but I think Jansson settled more into her stride with later books. 

What can I say about Madame Bovary? I read it in French this summer to redeem myself for not having read it in French class years ago (I got impatient and read the translation). I am glad I did, even though I think I still missed a lot and could use another go-around to feel I've really taken it in in the original language. 

I can see why it is a great novel -- innovative in literary technique for the time, full of powerful imagery, masterful at indirect expression -- but I can't say I enjoyed it. 

Emma is a morally empty person, not because she has affairs and desires something more from life, but because she takes no responsibility for the suffering she causes others. Her treatment of her child as an object -- to be used as a prop when it suits her, ignored when not, or even hated --  is reprehensible. The incident in which she pushes her husband to operate on a boy with a club foot out of ambition, and then blames Charles entirely for the disastrous outcome, adding to her disgust for him, was truly verging on evil. Charles is a fool, but Emma is inhuman. 

Flaubert's realistic treatment of her decline and fall is tremendously detailed, and yet we never understand why she is this way, what in her background caused her to develop so. "It was fate," Charles says at the end, but surely there is more to it than that. Some more psychological insight would have been welcome.

A pessimistic view of a spiritually impoverished world, of characters without hearts, except for Charles, who ends up actually dying of a broken heart at the end.