The Emancipation of Robert Sadler by Robert Sadler

Just finished reading The Emancipation of Robert Sadler. It is about Robert's life, starting when he was a young child sold into slavery by his father. This all occurred in the early 1900s in South Carolina---no that is not a misprint. I found the first 2 parts of the book quite interesting detailing his life as a slave and his life after he escaped as he struggled to acclimate to the outside world. I wasn't as fond of part 3 of the book about his ministry, I thought that part was rather disjointed and was lots of little stories about how miraculous various things were.

Rating 3/5

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Just finished the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins---not too impressed. I found the first section interesting, when they were explaining how they were preparing the tributes for the games, but the actual part about the games was quite dull. Yes lots of people died, but you knew almost nothing about most of the characters that were killed so I didn't really care. Many of the tributes were only known as the male (or female) tribute from District #. After reading the book, I still felt I didn't know too much about Katniss and Peeta.

SPOILERS to follow:

I found the rule change that occurred halfway through the book (the one that allowed two tributes to live as long as they were both from the same district) a bit too convenient. Does Katniss really love Peeta? Nobody is sure, least of all Katniss, and nobody seems to really care as long as she pretends she does for the TV viewers. The awkward teenage love bits between the two of them were rather annoying to read. I guess I'm just not a fan of the YA genre. I have no issues with the dystopian themes in the book, those were the interesting parts for me, but I couldn't care less about the characters in this one. I don't think I'll read the others unless someone can convince me it is worth it.

The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest By Stieg Larrsson

Just finished reading the third book in the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series and I was quite impressed. Larsson still delivers nonstop action like in his first two books, and keeps you wondering all the way to the end. Though I am rather sad that this is the end of the book series since the author is dead---I wouldn't have minded another few adventures with Salander and Blomvkist. There really isn't too much I can say about the book without presenting some major spoilers, so I'd just recommend reading it :)

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

I just finished reading "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot. It tells the story of the woman behind the HeLa cell line. These cells have been around for 60 years and have been used in hundreds of different studies. Quite a bit is known about the cells, but not too much was ever known about Henrietta Lacks or her family. It was interesting to learn about what happened to Henrietta's family because of the cells, and sad to know that they never benefited from the millions of dollars that the cells have been sold for over the years.

Rating: 5/5

The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr

I heard about this book from a forum that I read and thought it sounded interesting so I picked it up. Carr goes through history explaining some of the great thinkers while also explaining the development of the computer and the Internet. He does say that our attention spans in general have decreased because we are so used to skimming articles for content and clicking between tabs (Quick: how many tabs do you have open right now? I have 15 including the one being used to write this post). He states that we jump from item to item never focusing on one task long enough to be able to make sufficient progress on it. He also states that the Internet makes it harder to focus on books because of the lack of interactivity. I did find the studies about interactivity with text and comprehension of the text interesting (apparently people do worse comprehending an article with hyperlinks than they do comprehending a plain text article because they keep clicking around.

However, I was not happy that there was no real solution given in this book for the problem of decreased attention spans due to the Internet (besides avoiding it altogether--which is not really possible in today's society). I wish he would have provided ways to work around the problem.


Rating 3/5

Open by Andre Agassi

Just finished reading Open, Andre Agassi's autobiography, and I was very impressed. His writing style made me feel like I was right next to him, whether he was hitting balls on the court, or dealing with his perfectionist father. I was surprised to learn that he really did hate tennis for quite a while, and that his trademark big hair was actually a wig. Before I read his book, I didn't know too much about him---I had watched him when he played in the late 90s through his retirement, and knew that he built a charter school, but didn't really know much about his early life and early career.

I think that the title itself speaks volumes about the book. His life is about playing tennis in the Open era, in the 4 major tournaments (Aus. Open, Wimbledon, French Open, US Open). You get a very good view of everything in his life, he shows everything---his failed early loves, his dark years of tennis, his drug use---he's putting everything out in the open for his fans to read. I'd really recommend this to anyone who is a tennis fan.

Rating: 5/5

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

I really wasn't too fond of this book. It started out ok enough, but I was expecting more of a murder investigation instead of a girl watching her friends and family grow up without her. Many of the characters seemed flat to me, probably because we are only seeing what Susie sees instead of knowing what the actual characters think.

SPOILER ALERT:

I'm also not happy that justice is never really served for Mr. Harvey. It would have been much more satisfying for him to have been found earlier on instead of just dying by accident at the end.  About halfway through the book, I really quit caring about the characters because of their one-dimensionless.

I'm just not quite understanding why there was so much hype around this book a few years ago.



Rating 2/5 stars