The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

Just finished reading The Jungle by Upton Sinclair for 52 books in 52 weeks. I was actually pretty surprised by this one, I had always heard it was about the horrors of the meat packing industry, but it really is so much more than that. The book follows the story of a Lithuanian named Jurgis and the rest of his immigrant family through their trials of trying to survive during the early 1900s in Chicago. They seemed to have problems at every turn, and were tricked many times by people who promised to help them in someway or another. I did have a few issues with this book though, many of Sinclair's characters seemed rather flat, such as Ona, Elizabeta, and Marija. I know the story is supposed to be mainly about Jurgis, but I do wish the others would have had a bit more personality.

I did find the actual bits about the meat packing process to be horrifying. Hearing that they used sickly animals as well as continuing to run the grinding machinery even if a worker fell in and was crushed shouldn't have surprised me all that much, but it did. I know things were bad for everybody back in those days, but the amount of filth and sickness was astounding to me. I wasn't fond of the end of the book with all the socialism rallying and events. It isn't that I have issues with the ideas of socialism, I just found it to be terribly boring and really didn't move the story along, but it made sense for Sinclair to put it there since the book was originally published as a serialized novel in a socialist newspaper. It is also interesting to note that this book caused the creation of the FDA.

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 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 Girl who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson

Just finished reading the Girl who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson, and all I can say is wow. This one started off a little slow as we learned about Lisbeth's new life, but once things started happening, there was a mad rush of activity and suspense until the very end. We finally get answers to the questions we had from book 1, such as "What is "All the Evil" and "Why is Lisbeth the way she is", as well as the explanation for why Bjurman did what he did in the first book. Again as with book 1, I wasn't too fond of Berger, and even less so in this book, but it is ok as she doesn't really appear all that often in this book.


I'm excited to start book 3!!

Rating 5/5

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert Massie

Just finished reading this today and I really enjoyed it. I liked how the story is told through the writings of people of the court. It felt more "alive" to me than just a book of names and dates. I really didn't know too much about Catherine the Great before reading this book, but now I feel like I understand her and the daily court life a lot better.

I will say that I regret reading this as an ebook instead of the dead tree form, as it made flipping back to the family tree section a bit annoying and time consuming.

Rating: 5/5

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Just finished Girl With the Dragon Tattoo earlier today. I'm still not quite sure what I think about it.
(Spoilers Follow---Caution Caution Caution):



I liked the majority of the plot, and while part of the ending was satisfying, I wasn't sure how I felt about the convenient ending of Martin Vanger. I wish we could have seen him brought to justice. I found the characters quite intriguing, I think Salander was my favorite, I'm interested to learn more about her past, hopefully the second book (which I just started) will let us know more. I didn't really care for Berger much, and wished that Henrik would have had a more interesting role in the second half of the book. I liked the writing style, I found the book quite engaging and would definitely rank it as one of my favorites.

Rating: 5/5

The Light Horseman's Daughter by David Crookes

Just finished reading The Light Horseman's Daughter on my Nook last night. It was a free download from Barnes and Noble a few months ago. I enjoyed the book quite a bit. It is the story of Emma McKenna and her family (mother and 2 brothers) during the Great Depression in Australia. After her father dies while the family is being evicted, Emma is left to care for her mother and her two twin brothers all by herself. Emma is a very strong character, doing whatever she can to survive and bring the family back together through multiple hardships. I did like learning about the Australian Great Depression, as I do not know much about Australian history. I liked the way that David Crookes handled the romance scenes with the "fade to black" method reminiscent of old movies.

Spoiler Alert!


I did think that some of the plot was rushed through, such as some of the revelations near the end about parentage and the Mary Wells Society, and I think that most of the character's reactions to them were rather blase. Coltrane was the only one that seemed to really be affected, the other characters didn't seem to care too much, which was surprising given how race was treated in the 30s. Also, I wasn't too fond of the last chapter that said "this person is now..." for every character in the novel. I mean, I understand that he had to tell what happened to everybody, but it just seems like a last second addition. I also wasn't a big fan of Stephen or Bill, neither of them seemed like good matches for Emma, but being a romance, she had to end up with one of them. I also wish we would have learned more about some of the secondary characters like Strickland and Eleanor.

 All in all though, I found the book rather enjoyable, and it was a good story to read to wind down at the end of the day. Rating: 4.5/5