SandyQ

I just couldn't stop reading - I was so intrigued by what was happening and how it would play out that the book just pulled me along - "one more chapter, then I'll go to bed." Couldn't help comparing it to House - what happened to the author would be tailor-made for a House episode!

I enjoy Malcolm Gladwell's books. And, overall, this one was interesting and enjoyable to read as well.

This collection of his New Yorker pieces really left me thinking, though, that it's a mistake to believe that just because someone gets to be a writer for a prestigious magazine, they know what they're talking about. Too often it seemed that he just pushed the idea/philosophy/solution of whomever he interviewed, without critically examining it. And, maybe if I were reading his pieces in the context of a magazine, with lots of other articles, it would be clear that that was all he was doing. Somehow, when the pieces are collected like this, there seems to be an implication that we should pay attention and that he's giving a serious evaluation of whatever the topic is.

To be fair, he starts out in the introduction saying that all he is trying to do is to get you thinking about things, not to convince you that he's right. And, from that perspective, he succeeded. And I did wind up, after finishing the book, saying "this guy doesn't know what he's talking about."

One piece in particular really annoyed me. A play was written, that received great acclaim, and was apparently based heavily on a book, with some statements in the play from an article Gladwell had written about the book and the subject. No credit given to the author of the book or to Gladwell. He had an interview with the playwright, in which there were apparently a lot of lame excuses - "I forgot where I got the material," "I didn't think I had to give credit to anyone else," "I lost the file with my material," and so one. He then basically gives her a pass, because it was a really good play, and because it was a different medium than a book or article, and because, after all, other people might have used the same words at other times in the past.

To top if off, the woman who originally wrote the book (about her experiences) was portrayed in the play as having had an affair with the subject, which was complete fiction. She was upset about this, since apparently it was fairly obvious that the play was based on her work and her experience and friends who had seen the play contacted her and told her that there was a play based on her work - so she was identifiable. Gladwell felt that she was unreasonable to be upset about this, because after all, the play was fiction and it wasn't about her, just about a character based on her.

Hmmm....wonder if Gladwell would feel the same way if someone wrote a really great play about a writer for the New Yorker (who had, of course, a completely different name) who took bribes to write pieces that spoke favorably of certain companies or consultants or experts, and in which pieces of his articles were spoken or lightly paraphrased by the character? And if his friends kept saying, "gee, that play is all about you. Is that stuff really true?" Hey, it's fiction, nothing for him to complain about.....

Maybe it's because I've been quilting a long time, but I didn't find anything here that was new or different or particularly creative. The ideas for storing/sorting scraps have been around for a really long time, and I thought the patterns were boring and repetitive of many, many others I've seen. Fortunately, I checked this out of the library, rather than wasting $$ on it.

We saw the play the other night and I realized that I had never read the book, only seen the movie and now the play. Unfortunately, I thought that this was one of those situations in which the movie was much better than the book.

I thought this book could be fascinating - I have 3 children of my own, and in the wake of some of the horrendous shooting in the last few years, I've often thought about the families of the shooters and how a parent would cope with  knowing that her child had done something like this. Unfortunately, this book is not particularly illuminating or thought-provoking. The author has everyone express the responses that one would expect, but it felt as if everyone was just going through the motions.

I didn't feel any emotional connection to anyone in this book - all stereotyped characters, all mouthing the words that you would expect from them, but none of them with any depth. I got very tired of the narrator/father's whining about how he was getting older - well, yeah, that's gonna happen whether your kid does something awful or not.

I also got tired of the long discussions of other assassins/mass killers throughout history. It seemed as if the author couldn't decide whether he wanted to write this book, or a treatise on notorious killers. Since the book stated about a million times that the father, a doctor, had to treat this like a diagnosis, I assume that the point was that he had to examine all this stuff to try to understand, but it felt a lot more as if the author had done this research and he didn't want to waste it by not cramming it all in.

And I also wish the author had done a little more research on other details. For instance, the parents keep talking about how they might file an appeal of the conviction if he won't, but they don't because he is so opposed to it. They can't do this! He was 20, he was convicted as an adult and found legally competent, and his parents can't file an appeal of his conviction. Similarly with FOIA requests - they try to FOIA someone's military service records and the request gets denied on some sort of "security" reasons - well, there's a privacy exception to FOIA requests as well.

Overall, I thought the book relied on stereotypes and pat answers.

Wow. One of the most thought-provoking books I've read in a long time.

As I read it, I kept asking myself whether this is REALLY science fiction/dystopian or whether it's just a novel involving current events.

The way you feel about this book may depend on how you feel about things like the Patriot Act, but however you come down on that question, there's a lot to think about here.

I don't know how much the cat laughed, but I laughed out loud throughout. Fun book!

While this was interesting, I didn't find it all that helpful. It's an interesting perspective - that all of the clutter is because of one's emotional/psychological "stories" and that once you clear that up, you'll be able to deal with the clutter with no problem - but I had trouble buying it.

Sure, some of this is true, like the difficulty in dumping something that was a gift, even if you don't like/need/want it. That's a problem with emotions, not with practical reality.

But, you know, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. There's a pile of stuff on the kitchen counter to be sorted and pitched/recycled/filed/dealt with - and that's not because of psychological issues about mail. It's because it's boring and I'd rather spend my time doing something else. Sure, it's got to get done, but I don't really have to work through emotional stories to do it - I just have to do it.

The authors also seemed to miss the point that some of the clutter and having "too much" of something isn't because there are deep emotional/psychological issues involved. Sometimes, you just see it, love it, and haven't had time to follow through on your idea for it yet (I'm thinking in particular of craft type supplies here). I guess you could get into deep psychological issues, but maybe it's just a question of not having the time to follow through right now, and not having an effective way of storing the things until you do have the time.

Interesting, but too long on pop psychology and too short on practical solutions.

These were fun. Needless to say, I enjoyed some stories more than others - that's the nature of an anthology. But none of the stories were awful, and some were by authors I've never read before - the best part of anthologies, adding more authors to my "look for more" list!

I really enjoyed this - it was fun reading about the disguises and the characters she developed. And I found myself wanting to go eat all these elegant and wonderful sounding foods - even the foods that I really don't like! She has a real gift for describing a meal in a way that had my mouth watering.

I was really disappointed in this book. I love the Sharon McCone series, and I've read a couple of the Nameless Detective books by Pronzini and liked them as well, so I had high hopes for this one.

It seems that with the current vogue for "period mysteries," there seems to be a huge emphasis on the "period" and not so much on the "mystery." Fairly weak stories, characters who aren't particularly compelling, but loads of details to show how much the author has researched the period. For me, at least, if there's not a good story with an interesting mystery and interesting characters, I just don't care how many details the author(s) cram in.

The other thing that got tedious was that I sometimes felt that this was a street directory of San Francisco. Really? Do we need to know the name of every single street that is in any particular area, or that the characters ever walk on?

The problem with this book is that the characters all are stereotypes and the plot is absolutely predictable. A formula book. Certainly readable, but completely forgettable.

I thought this was pretty bad. The characters were stereotyped and I couldn't work up any interest in any of them - and then, suddenly,the author would throw in some things that came out of nowhere, to try to make the "villains" less villainous.

The plot was inherently unbelievable - no matter how hard I tried to "willingly suspend my disbelief," I couldn't get around the problem I had with believing that the whole central event of the plot could actually happen as described. I'll accept almost anything in a fantasy/sci fi novel, but not in one that's supposedly a "real world" mystery - it needs to have some plausibility. And, whenever things got impossibly lame, the author would toss in some other bizarre facts.

I find it very hard to abandon a book once I've started, so I stuck with this one to the end, but am grateful that it was relatively short. I was delighted to come to "The End." I got this one free on kindle, and it was worth every penny I paid for it.

I don't think I've ever read a book by Neil Gaiman that I didn't enjoy. The characters are interesting, the plot moves right along, and I'm always interested in seeing what happens next. One of my favorite things about his books in general, and this one in particular, is that everything that happens makes sense in its context - that is, of course it's fantasy, so not true to "real life," but the actions are true to the context that's been established. No jarring "now, wait just a minute" moments, when the action doesn't make sense even in the specific context of the book.

The characters were flat, unconvincing, and really uninteresting. The plot was not particularly well thought out, everything was predictable. It seems as if the author just wanted to write a "period mystery" so she could go into lots of detail about fashions, servants, etc. - but there was nothing to make the book worth the time it took to read it (fortunately, a quick read!)

This book was a lot of fun.

I've read 4 or 5 of Greenwood's Phryne Fisher series, and enjoyed them as well - Corinna Chapman was a very different sort of main character. Fisher is pretty much perfect - drop dead gorgeous, rich, can do anything, almost like a cartoon heroine - not a problem, fun reading about her, but nowhere near realistic. Chapman, on the other hand, is a much more realistic heroine - heavy build, grouchy in the morning, has to work for a living, not always perfect. And these books are modern day, unlike the Fisher series. So, best not to expect one series to be the same as the other.

I enjoyed the cultural references, the fact that the main characters were intelligent, the quirkiness of many of the characters. Some of the Australian political comments escaped me completely, but they were certainly not essentially to the plot, so no big deal.