52 Books

This page accompanies the thread "One Book a Week Club in 2007" in the LibriVox Off-Topic forum, and collects reviews posted there so they don't get lost. Feel free to add your reviews here, whether you've posted in the thread or not.

Suggest we group alphabetically by author, then by title, in format:
Last Name, First Name. "Book Name"
Reviews or links

Alcott, Louisa May. "Little Women"

Review by katyleah:
http://kathrynlm.blogspot.com/2007/01/sisterly-love-in-literature.html

Bennett, Arnold. "The Grand Metropolitan Hotel"

Review by ExEmGe:
I like A.B. and was looking forward to this but Oh What an unutterable load of tosh. Quality of writing - Poor. Characters – Cardboard. Plot – Implausible and convoluted. Page turner? I really wanted to put this one down but I promised the person who lent it to me and liked it that I would finish it. Overall 0/10 and I resented wasting my time.

Dawkins, Richard. "The God Delusion"

Review by hugh:
http://dosemagazine.blogsome.com/2007/01/06/bookreview-the-god-delusion/

Review by CarlManchester:
Agree with Hugh's assessment, basically. The purpose of Richard Dawkins is that I don't have enough spare time to spend my whole life studying evolutionary biology, so I want him to tell me about it. In the bits of the book where he's doing that, it really comes to life. But there's just too much tittle-tattle, and when he moves away from biology into philosophy or cultural commentary, he's not so impressive.

On the other hand, perhaps, given that I know quite a bit about the subject, I shouldn't have been reading the book. It seems to be designed more to inform a certain class of Americans that religion isn't really all the great. In that, he's made a flawed but admirable attempt. And he's definitely not a bigot.

Defoe, Gideon. "The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists"

Review by LibraryLady:
http://www.anniecoleman.com/bookblog/2007/01/01/the-pirates-in-an-adventure-with-communists-by-gideon-defoe/

Murakami, Haruki. "Kafka on the Shore" (transl. Gabriel)

Review by hugh:
Talking cats, raining fish, death, trapped souls, parallel universes, a confused fifteen-year-old, and of course a good smattering of sex. Among other (sometimes heart-breaking) oddities. With Kafka on the Shore, Japanese novelist and fabulist Haruki Murakami continues his metaphysical exploration of the odd underside of human and not-so human experience, getting at the raw truth that lies obscured by everyday reality. The writing seems less assured than in the masterful Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which might be blamed on the translator: Philip Gabriel replacing Jay Rubin. The prose is a bit clunky (possibly Murakami, possibly Gabriel), but the narrative transcends those problems, much as his characters, willing and not, transcend physics.

Lloyd, Seth. "Programming the Universe"

Review by Hugh:
http://dosemagazine.blogsome.com/2007/01/12/bookreview-programming-the-universe/

O'Neill, Heather. "Lullabies for Little Criminals"

Review by Hugh:
http://dosemagazine.blogsome.com/2007/01/17/bookreview-lullabies-for-little-criminals/

Pearl-McPhee, Stephanie. "Knitting Rules!"

Review by Kri: http://www.crafty.greenkri.com/knitting-rules-by-stephanie-pearl-mcphee

Pratchett, Terry. "A Hatful of Sky"

Review by Peter Why:
The next Tiffany story [after The Wee Free Men]. Tiffany travels to a distant witch to start her apprenticeship. An ancient disembodied force follows her, seeking the power of her personality and mind. The pictsies race after her to help her defeat the apparently unkillable hiver that tries to invade her. ... and Granny turns up, too, to show Tiffany how to find her own strength.

So many little pieces in the story that make me smile.

Pratchett, Terry. "The Wee Free Men"

Review by Peter Why:
An easy flowing story of a young girl being drawn into witchcraft as she struggles against the Queen of the Fairies .. who is not at all a maiden in a tutu with wispy wings, but whose power comes from her power over dreams .. and not the nice ones. ... Oh and Tiffany does have the help of a tribe of distinctly unmagical fairy pictsies .. "who you callin' a fairy, pal? Catch a faceful of head!" And then there's her first meeting with Granny Weatherwax, possibly the most powerful witch on the Discworld.

I like it. Not as strong a story line as most of his Discworld novels, but gentle fun, and with a strong undercurrent of the power that is waiting for Tiffany as she grows.

Stephenson, Neal. "Snow Crash"

Review by DigiSage:
Snow Crash has to be one of the best books ever written. I absolutely LOVED it and will probably re-read it as part of this!

Stoker, Bram. "Dracula"

Review by ChrisHughes:
http://readear.blogspot.com/

Stoker, Bram. "The Lair of the White Worm"

Review by thislechick:
While this book was very suspenseful and kept me wanting to read on, there were a lot of holes in the plot that left me scratching my head. At times, it was difficult to know which character was speaking, and the transitions between scenes were often so abrupt that I felt as if something were missing from the text. The characters were certainly interesting, but their motivations did not always seem clear or valid. This book felt more like an outline for a longer book... I would love to have read a more complete version. I read (and recorded) this book to my husband from Jan. 1st to Jan. 7th (he said he'd seen a movie version with Hugh Grant and wanted to know how close it was to the book... not even close, was the verdict, but the movie was even worse).

Wozniak, Steve. "iWoz"

Review by ceastman:
http://amethyst73.livejournal.com/565.html