eBook Reviews

The Paris Wife Paula McLain. I skimmed most of this book because I thought it was boring. Why I even kept reading I don't know. At some point a book has to be interesting on its own, but this story revolved around the reader's knowledge of its "famous" characters. It tells the story of Ernest Hemingway and his first wife and presumably we're supposed to be interested automatically because it's the "famous" Ernest Hemingway. There was no point in this book that I cared. It was as if all of the excitement was supposed to come from me reading about these characters interacting with "the famous" Ezra Pound and F. Scott Fitzgerald. I didn't find that interesting. In fact, I was thinking Ezra Pound, that guy made college English miserable. The writing...drab. The dialogue...blah. The descriptions...eh. Not recommended. Unless you are Ernest Hemingway's biggest fan and have to read everything about Ernest Hemingway.

A Visit from the Goon Squad Jennifer Egan Once again, despite my general dislike of short stories, I managed to get a book of short stories. (This is due wholly to the fact that most of the books I choose I get from different book blogs and I barely even know what they're about when I start to read them, since I haven't been perusing the book store shelves in forever....which is one of the things that I miss about real books. Preferably, I think, I would like to go to Barnes and Noble, find the books I wanted to read and then download them from LA County Library.) Anyways, once again, a series of short stories in which you find out about characters from other characters' stories. I'm not a huge fan of that technique. The subject matter and writing reminded me of Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby. BUT, this book is recommended solely for the chapter about a 12 year old girl written entirely in graphic organizers. Having used the graphic organizer many o times in the classroom, I appreciated the nod to public education. Graphic organizers...that's funny and original.