Reading time: 4 hours
Rating:
New knowledge 1/10
Need to pay attention 2/10
Emotional connection 6/10
Unquantifiable satisfaction 4/10
Overall 4/10
This supposed psychological drama has a solid premise - the book is told in four narratives which are clearly labeled by each person's name and given equal time on a rotating schedule throughout the book. The story told involves two married couples - how they meet each other, the circumstances of each wedding, the minutia of each relationship as well as the tensions that begin rising between all four characters when an affair is introduced into the mix.
While the premise is solid, the execution disappoints. The story becomes slightly sordid and tawdry towards the end, failing to deliver a satisfying ending. However, the subject matter is never light and the characters are there for you to root for and relate to. The book is very easy to read and has emotional appeal. I'd wager that the target audience for this one is primarily those who enjoy overanalyzing relationships.
Reading time: 4 hours
Rating:
New knowledge 2/10
Need to pay attention 4/10
Emotional connection 5/10
Unquantifiable satisfaction 7/10
Overall 8/10
This hilarious take on the vampire genre doesn't require that you pay attention or care about vampires - all it requires is a dark and sarcastic sense of humor. The story concerns two modern-day vampires who have to worry about things that never bothered Dracula or Lestat - how to pay rent and where to make friends. They have to balance their social life and manage to keep their young relationship afloat - not to mention having to deal with the annoying vampire fad that is sweeping the nation.
You will know from the first few pages whether this book is for you. If you don't laugh once, this book isn't for you. However, if you smile to yourself while thinking "Why hasn't anyone ever written this before?" - you will devour this book within hours and have a higher standard for humorous fiction from then on. This is not a novel to pick up when you want something to get your intellectual juices flowing, nor will it provoke any deep thoughts within you (except for "What would I do if I was a vampire?"), but it will give you many laughs and help you relax if you've spent all day reading boring memos or impossibly tedious documents.
You Suck on Amazon
Sometimes I go to the library with the sole intention of browsing the aisles until the perfect read jumps out at me. Yet other times I have less than ten minutes to grab a book and an hour long subway ride ahead of me - and I desperately wish I knew that the book I was grabbing off the shelf would entertain me for at least that long. Most book reviews and most book reviews websites concentrate on glowing positive reviews that are of no help when it comes to actually choosing a book that will monopolize your precious free time. I want to provide the world with reviews that will actually make them realize, before they even crack open the book, whether it's for them.
I will describe the plot and feel of the books in short concise paragraphs. I'm not here to tear apart the book or criticize specific elements - this blog will serve exclusively to give you a feel of the book. My multi-rating system caters to several different reasons why people pick up books. I will rate each book on the amount of
- knowledge that could be garnered (1 - absolutely nothing could be learned, 10 - it's a veritable goldmine of new facts and trivia),
- need to pay attention (1 - book is easy to read, something for the beach, 10 - a more dense and complicated creation, requires more attention),
- emotional connection to the characters or situations (1 - the book doesn't focus on the emotional, 10 - feeling connected to the characters as if they were old friends),
- unquantifiable satisfaction - that part of reading where you finish the book, put it aside, and feel either satisfaction or disappointment without knowing what elements brought this feeling about (1 - the feeling of time wasted, 10 - the feeling of time well-spent)
- and the overall rating, which focuses on how the book worked overall, taking all elements into the account (1 - a not particularly enjoyable read, 10 - a most brilliant maserpiece). I will rarely assign 10s to any category, leaving them to books that truly wow. Anything above a 5 should be considered a worthwhile read, whereas anything under a 5 is not recommended by me.
