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Book Reviews - GoodReads.com
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This is a group for library patrons and staff to review books they've read and share what they are currently reading.
Non-Fiction Reviews: (View All)
- The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City & Sparked the Tabloid Wars
- Author: Paul Collins
- User Rating: 4
- Review: Teton Co Call No: 364.152 Collins P
Julia's rating: 4 stars
What a page turner! True crime junkies, get your fix!
Collins, whose other books I now must seek out, has done insanely extensive research (there are forty pages of sources and notes) to retell a scandalous tale of Gilded Age New York that was followed in newspapers around the globe.
Picture New York in 1897 where Harlem is a land of farms and a place to go berry-picking. Picture the newspaper magnet William Randolph Hearst as a young and ambitious contender willing to do anything to stake his claim in the newspaper biz - above Joseph Pulitzer. McKinley's not yet gone to war in the Phillipines. Teddy Roosevelt is still freshly remembered as the NYC Police Commissioner. Picture a barber shop, a soda shop, the local bakery, the piers, the Bowery, tenement houses and the Fourth of July - all this (and more) plays into this intriguing tale of a murder fueled by infidelity, jealousy and deception, and an investigation that takes you from Manhattan to Harlem to Long Island and back again. And tabloids, called "yellow newspapers," had the story that would put them on the map and in the money.
The crime is grisly, the characters shady yet strangely sympathetic, the evidence and methodology questionable, the public interest at a fever-pitch and the drama rather unstoppable. The narrative is packed with quotations taken from first hand reports and trial transcripts diligently researched and documented. These details add so much color that you can practically feel the street mud on your boots, the nickle for the paper in your pocket and hear the newsboys crying out another headline. 
- A History of the World in 100 Objects
- Author: Neil MacGregor
- User Rating: 3
- Review: Teton County Library Call #: 930.1 MACGREGOR N
Stephanie’s rating: 3 stars
This is a book I recommend for those of you that JUST like to glance over things. Its 658 pages of superfluous information…unless you’re doing research you might find it interesting and more importantly bearable. The 100 objects discussed are intriguing, although I felt as though maybe a few more modern objects could have made it into list. Like the advent of the light bulb…how are you going to skip over it and jump right into a solar-powered lamp? Just saying. -
Fiction Reviews:(View All)
- Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake
- Author: Anna Quindlen
- User Rating: 4
- Review:
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- Maisie Dobbs (Maisie Dobbs, #1)
- Author: Jacqueline Winspear
- User Rating: 3
- Review: TCL Call#: MYSTERY Winspear
Madeleine - 3 stars
Recommended to me as a book for someone who liked Downton Abbey, I have to say I'm not disappointed on that count. It's very Upstairs/Downstairs with the maid who rises above her station - kind of like the first season on Downton.
This book loses it for me a bit in a contrived writing style. The author starts off fully staging a mystery and then just full stops and begins a historical section, not as flashbacks, but fully stops the narrative. We're taken backwards in character time and spend several chapters living there; then just as suddenly we're transported right back into the mystery which then chugs along only to end up trying to marry the two narratives. I'm not saying it can't be done; it's just not well done here.
Looking forward to book #2 in the hopes that now that the back story is out the author will no longer feel the need to tell two stories on independent tracks. -
