"He might wish and wish and never get it-- the beauty and the loving in the world."

The entire Forsyte Saga does a wonderful job in describing the passing of an age. On the one hand, ít's very clearly about why the age must pass but on the other it is kind to those who mourn the going. Even the Man of Property himself is sympathetic at the last. Time judges people like him harshly enough, Galsworthy seems to say.

Irene has been the animating spirit of these books-- an agent of change to the Forsytes in a way that one of their own (June) can never be. When she at last raises her hand in forgiveness to Soames before her final departure, it's a kind of triumphant benediction-- a kindness come too late. The Forsytes are all but dead and she's departing with her own to a new land.

I suppose that the next generation of Forsyte books will be aobut people with the will and temperment of the family, but without the supporting time. I wonder if it will follow Fleur or Jon, Imogene or Val.

Galworthy does a superb job of capturing the restlessness of love-- the smell of warm grass that you look for-- as though the harmony of the weather is proof of love's constancy. And that wonderful moment in _To Let_ when Fleur puts her face out the window into the night and smells only petrol. A real moment.

Under-rated beautiful books, these.

If I were to tell the protagonist from The Tunnel that I had issues with his book, he'd probably just wave me sideways towards the Party for Disappointed People. Get in line, he'd sigh. Life is disappointing.

I liked the conceit of the Party for Disappointed People. I liked many of the one liners. I admired Gass' writing ability. Mostly I admired the project even if I confess that I couldn't like the book.

652 pages of dense (often unreadable) prose with a grotty poorly-endowed main character who has affairs with his students, kills his wife's cat and generally feels sorry for himself. Whoosh. It took me weeks to read, and *nothing* takes me weeks to read. I genuinely tried to follow everything in the book, but I have to confess that my grasp of his German experiences is spotty and I never really got Susu. The clearest and most readable bit was the bitchy backbiting about his colleagues in the department where he teaches. That was at least funny.

Generally, I felt like it tried way too hard to be a huge sprawling classic. I agreed with much of what it said about history and how you approach it-- again, the project is what I admired. Maybe I just couldn't feel too much for a book that seems to reject any ability to feel joy or to be anything except disappointed. I mean I *love* Beckett, but Gass isn't Beckett and I never got the feeling that he earned all that bitterness. Kohler isn't sympathetic either as a hero or as an anti-hero and while I guess that's part of the point, I didn't find that I admired the point.

Maybe I'm just not literary enough. Maybe I'm just getting old and cranky. Anything is possible. Read it yourself and see.

Hobb is consistently such a good fantasy writer and this book is not an exception to that rule. It isn't her best, which is why I'm giving it four stars instead of five, but I'm impressed at the number of books that she's managed to write while still keeping me enthusiastically attached to the series. I was actually pretty seriously disappointed that the final book in the trilogy won't be released in paperback for another six months.

People have pointed out that this is a character development book, and that's clearly true. But there isn't anything wrong with that and endless saga writers like Rober Jordan should take a lesson about how it's done.

Bosch is back and this time he's an official outsider instead of just the department lone wolf. Combine an injured cop and a cold case and throw in a little bit of Eleanor for good measure and you've got a classic Bosch book.

Perhaps a little *too* classic-- while I enjoyed the book I didn't approach it with the same delight as I did the first few books. Some of the schtick feels a little too much like schtick. It (like Harry) feels like it's getting a little bit old and tired.

The ending of this book implies a change in the weather for Harry, and I hope that Connelly follows through. Bosch has done his time and deserves to have a little bit of comfort in the world.

If you haven't read Harry Bosch before, start with _Black Echo_ or _Black Ice_, but if you're already a fan this should deliver the fix that you need.

Like many of the reviewers, I really enjoyed Revelation Space and wanted to like this book a lot more than I ultimately did.

The problem was that the story doesn't really hold together well. The interesting details and backstory keep you reading, but I found that in the end I had rather forgotten what it was actually about and didn't have the sense that it held together very well at all.

Reynolds remains a talented and interesting writer, and this won't dissuade me from reading another of his books, but I certainly wouldn't *begin* here if I hadn't read Revelation Space yet.

My first, second, and last thought after reading this novel is that Zelazny and Dick are a strange combination.

This is not entirely a bad thing-- who else could have an armless legless muralist out on a quest to paint the God of Wrath? A God who lives with an idiot girl and doesn't want to be found in a world where the mutations run wild after WWIII.

The good: sulky automatic car repair robots, concept, relations between the characters, and moments of beauty among the dystopia.

The bad: Zelazny and Dick like talking to each other more than they like talking to us. I generally really enjoy Dick's digressions on religion, but this was a bit more bewildering and harder to read than usual.

Still, a must-read for Dick fans.

This book looks dauntingly thick when you pick it up, but some brief exploration will show that including the interviews only 311 pages are the Jack Welch story-- the rest of the book is Afterword, GE Timeline, GE Shareholder Reports, Bibliography and finally a section meant to be applied to your own business. I suppose that there are readers out there who wanted that level of completeness in their history of GE. I didn't. I stopped reading after the afterword.

The book covers GE during the period of Jack Welch's reign. Specifically, it charts his efforts in five major initiatives: Services, Six Sigma, Digitization, Succession, and the Honeywell acquisition.

I found it interesting and readable, although I was left with the feeling (despite the author's best efforts) that these were very difficult achievements to duplicate if you weren't Jack Welch. Although ostensibly a business biography, I still had much more of a feel of personality than facts when I was done. I would have been pleased to have a less broad-ranging treatment which delved a little bit more deeply into some specific numbers and consequences. Although this information might have been contained in the investor reports, I didn't have the patience to page through it and find the information.

The Daniel M. Pinkwater books seem to have lost some of their popularity with subsequent generations-- too bad, because this was (and is) one of the funniest children's books you can find.
Eugene Winkleman goes on vacation to Rochester, NY with his Uncle Mel-- a confirmed junk food junkie and vending machine repari man. While there, he gets involved in the search for Yobgorgle, the mysterious monster of Lake Ontario. Along the way he meets Professor Ambrose McFwain, Colonel Ken Krenwinkle, Captain Sinbad Weinstein and the Flying Dutchman.

Rochester natives will get extra points out of the book for recognizing the secret room in the children's library and the circular ramp parking garage ("He agreed that the spiral garage was the best thing in town.")

Pick it up if you can find it-- well worth the money!

The Daniel M. Pinkwater books seem to have lost some of their popularity with subsequent generations-- too bad, because this was (and is) one of the funniest children's books you can find.

Eugene Winkleman goes on vacation to Rochester, NY with his Uncle Mel-- a confirmed junk food junkie and vending machine repari man. While there, he gets involved in the search for Yobgorgle, the mysterious monster of Lake Ontario. Along the way he meets Professor Ambrose McFwain, Colonel Ken Krenwinkle, Captain Sinbad Weinstein and the Flying Dutchman.

Rochester natives will get extra points out of the book for recognizing the secret room in the children's library and the circular ramp parking garage ("He agreed that the spiral garage was the best thing in town.")

Pick it up if you can find it-- well worth the money!

_The Mill on the Floss_ (1860) was George Eliot's third published book (after Scenes from Clerical Life and Adam Bede)and tells the story of Maggie and Tom Tulliver, two children who grow up in the middle-class rural community of St. Ogg's.

It's been a while since I've read Mill on the Floss, I think that the last time I did I was in my early 20s, just graduated from school. I got a lot more out of the read this time, I think it's probably a book that profits both with re-reading and age. The first time I read it I identified so strongly with Maggie that I practically skipped over everything dealing with the other characters. I found Tom loathesome and the ending of the book appalling.

As a slightly more adult human, I was able to read it for more than just Maggie's story and enjoy it even more. I was surprised by how compulsively I read it. I'd had every intention of stretching it out over several days, but I literally found that I couldn't stop reading it and carried it with me from room to room in the house. I was able to laugh more at Eliot's sly humor and more able to see people like the Gleggs as people and not simply stock appendages of the story.

I think what makes Mill On the Floss such a powerful book (aside from the writing style, which is excellent) is this notion of the divided self which is being worked out both through Tom and Maggie. Tom has a firm clear sense of right and wrong and is always being forced to question or do injury to that sense because of his very difficult sister. On the other hand, Maggie can't seem to find the right balance between self-indulgence and renunciation. She can't ever manage a way to negotiate between the sharp emotions that she feels and her desire not to inflict the consequences of those emotions on her family and friends. It's a tragedy that neither of them ever really manage to understand each other and are constantly hurting and being hurt in their drive to do the right thing and be who they really are.

Interesting how Eliot plays with the tropes from all the popular women's sentimental novels of the time. A young girl who's unattractive because she's dark-haired overcomes poverty and goes on to attract the eye of the most fastidious and eligible man in town... However, in the world of St. Ogg's (unlike the novels of the sentimental sisters like Mary Jane Holmes) Maggie is unable to overcome her obstacles to happiness and is as trapped by her beauty and popularity as she was her unattractive hoyden girlhood. Given the position of women at the time and the strength of the social norms, it's unfortunately a much more believable view of the outcomes of things.

If you haven't read Eliot, I'd agree that it isn't her best book (that's still Middlemarch, for me, and I would begin there first) but it's hugely thought-provoking and honest. It should make many a young woman of today count their blessings and thank the stars that the world has changed since the time Maggie Tulliver was a girl.