Book Reviews

Whatever I Like and Love

Will End Up In Here.

I’m nervous about giving negative reviews,

and I’ve used up my bravery on other things,

so we’re just not going there.

This page probably won’t be updated terribly often, since I’m doing more writing than reading at this point.  Hopefully I will get around to fixing that imbalance, soon.

To be honest, most of what I will talk about here will either be books I already own, ones have been loaned to me, or that I downloaded for .99 cents or free off Amazon.  And before you go and bash me, please remember that there is a big difference between cheap, and broke.  I’m the latter.  As soon as this life fact changes for me, many other things will as well.

Thank you for reading.  I hope you enjoy!

 

In Real Live I’m Just Kate

By: Barbara Morgenroth

“To most people it would be the sort of life daydreams are built on. To be one of the bright young stars of the increasingly popular afternoon soap opera. To have articles written about you in the magazine Daystars.  And to know the glamorous people who appeared with you each day, in person. It sounded great. But not to Kate. She had never wanted to be an actress.

Kate’s father was an actor, Kevin Rafferty. He had been the resident bad boy on “Life to the Fullest” for many years–until his character was killed off. That left the Raffertys with an expensive way of life and no income. The only answer was Kate. And before many weeks had passed, sixeen-year-old Kate found herself on the same soap her father had left. His leaving had precipitated a downturn in the ratings, and the decision had been to hire younger people and attract a new young audience. Kate was part of that new look.

She didn’t hate it. But it was just a job, just something she was going to do until her thirteen-week contract ran out. until her father pulled himself out of the dumps and found work again. But that was before the character Carey Cross was introduced. In real life his name was Fitch, and he was everything Kate had ever waned in a friend. And besides, he was a good actor. Acting with him uncovered talents Kate had never known she had. Yet something told her that Fitch was only passing through. And what would she do when he left?

This is the inner world of soap-opera making, the real lives of people who appear on TV for an hour five days a week. I is no a glamorous life, but sometimes, only sometimes, it does offer compensations.”

Several days ago I finished reading In Real Life I’m Just Kate.  I had read it when I was a teenager, and wanted to see if it left me with the same feelings.  It did not.  It was better!  Apparently I had confused the endings of a couple of books and remembered this one as having an annoyingly ambiguous ending.  Nope, that was another book (I think called Green Sleeves? I can’t remember the author).

It’s easy to pick up on Kate’s feelings about the soap opera industry as she learns lines and deals with several different kinds of acting styles.

I liked the fact that the writer kept her as a teenager, not trying to make her deep or putting her into overly ridiculous situations just to watch the character squirm.

Having been around acting hams since my mid-teens Kate’s father feels very familiar.  He also seems to be a perceptive dad, without crossing into something mushy and unrealistic.

The ending is comfortable and consistent with the characters you’ve come to know.  Just for myself, because I have come to like the people so much, I wouldn’t mind a short story sort of epilogue just to know where the author thought everyone would be in five years. (But since it was published in ’81, if it hasn’t happened by now it most likely never will.)

A very successful first person view.

I will probably re-re-read this book in a couple years.  🙂

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Dodger

By: Terry Pratchett

(Tuesday, December 11th, 2012)

    I finished reading Terry Pratchett’s Dodger last night.  Loved it, loved it!  Totally going through a book hangover.  If you get a chance, get a copy of this book and give it a try.  Sir Terry sucks you in on the very first page, and doesn’t let you go until the very end.  It took everything in me to Not read it in just three sittings.

Here’s the blurb from the front cover flap:

“A STORM.  Rain-lashed city streets.  A flash of lightning.  A scruffy lad sees a girl leap desperately from a horse-drawn carriage in a vain attempt to escape her captors.  Can the lad stand by and let her be caught again?  Of course not, because he’s…Dodger.

    Seventeen-year-old Dodger may be a street urchin, but he gleans a living from London’s sewers, and he knows a jewel when he sees one.  He’s not about to let anything happen to the unknown girl–not even if her fate impacts some of the most powerful people in England.

    From Dodger’s encounter with the mad barber Sweeney Todd to his meetings with the great writer Charles Dickens and the calculating politician Benjamin Disraeli, history and fantasy intertwine in a breathtaking account of adventure and mystery.

    Beloved and bestselling author Sir Terry Pratchett combines high comedy with deep wisdom in this tale of an unexpected coming-of-age and one remarkable boy’s rise in a complex and fascinating world.”

If you like historical fiction, historical fantasy, romance, adventure, comedy or just like a good book, you will also love this novel. 

Now I just have to remember to get this copy back to my mother!  Thanks, Mom! *giggle*

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