Big Enough Umbrella

Comfortable and engaging story with a likeable heroine and a great cast of supporting characters that for the most part managed not to sink into the mire of "quirkiness."

This wasn't one of my favorite Anne Tyler books. I couldn't really get into the characters' vague motivations. It is fun to read Baltimore resident Tyler's books, though, because the settings are all familiar.

This frank but touching story of a special needs child's first year of life told a bigger story about the delusion of "normal" and how real love acknowledges and celebrates differences of all kinds.

I thoroughly enjoyed the teenage heroine and narrator of this book. The diary format brought me along with her as she dealt matter-of-factly with her quirky poor family, her earnest would-be suitor, and her first pangs of love.

Sequel to Meely LaBauve and Junior's Leg. Another round of colorful and excitiing story-telling from the bayou. i enjoyed this a lot but I still think Junior's Leg is my favorite of the three.

This tour of sites relevant to three presidential assassinations offers up history in a witty and relatable way. The drawback to me is when the author throws in an often heavy-handed dose of her own current-day politics.

Maybe if I had read this on my own before it was a "phenomenon" I would have given it more of a chance instead of coming into it prejudiced. As it is, I thought the writing was immature and the characters flat, and a plot didn't even show up until the last third of the book. The only good reading moments, for me, came in that final third.

The 11 year old heroine of this book sold me on it in the first chapter. This mystery didn't always move along at a good pace but I enjoyed all the characters, especially the precocious but unpretentious Flavia.

My first Nicholas Sparks book -- and I didn't like it. I thought the writing was wooden and colorless, and rolled my eyes at way too many scenes.

This is the kind of book that reminds you why you read at all -- to enrich knowledge, to see life through another's eyes, to experience the universal emotions. This is the first time this year that a book made me cry.

I expected a ghost story and got a documentary. Less of the book concerned the investigations themselves (which still didn't involve ghosts or poltergeists) and more described the director/founder of the parapsychology lab's ultimately futile quest to gain acceptance from the scientific community.

I was engrossed in this mix of Indian culture and American thriller until the end, which threw in a big surprise and then tailed off without wrapping much up.

Funny but bitter tale that starts off as an indignant rant and ends up as a confessional -- heartbreaking when you recognize (and fear) the author's same hopelessnesses and failings at life.

Wildly entertaining story that borrows from Harry Potter and the Chronicles of Narnia, but puts them into a grown-up, gritty, honest context where there are no real heroes and magic complicates rather than saves the day.

Easily read in my free time, but not particularly memorable. The story concerned a writer with writer's block, but seemed very much like the author was working through her own writer's block using this as an exercise.

I enjoyed the many anecdotes -- a mix of humorous, touching, maddening, sad, and uplifting -- taken from the over two thousand births that the author attended during her 40-year career as a nurse and then an independent certified nurse midwife.

I don't mind a self-deprecating tone in an narrator, but this one succeeded in making himself not very likable. I liked his pets, though, and enjoyed reading their stories.

First romance novel I've read in ages, and it was guiltily enjoyable. This Regency romance was formulaic but fun.

Good premise although sloppily executed in places. Still this was a fast-paced, fun summer read.

This book was terse and sparse in its divulging of dialogue and plot nuance, but overflowed with words evoking setting. Good story of a way of life I can't fathom.

This book was a little too precious with the narrator directly addressing the reader and its name-dropping of movies, books and music. It seemed to me to unfairly misuse one character's sadness to tell the fluffier story of another.

Fascinating and entertaining. The author goes above and beyond in her exploration of the world of scientists studying sex throughout history -- what motivates them, the difficulties and pitfalls of their work, and most importantly, what they discover.

A little longer than necessary. The last third of the book went quickly as the tension built towards the climax, which I saw coming much earlier on. I enjoyed this book but something about it left me unsatisfied.

The characters I cared so much about at the beginning of this series have now, in the ninth book, become too predictable and close to annoying. This particular storyline was passably interesting but the characters were tedious.

I felt guilty laughing at the obviously delusional narrator, recently released from "the bad place" (a mental hospital). The single-mindedness of his devotion to his estranged wife, his loyalty to the Philadelphia Eagles, and his violent hatred of the abhorrent "Mr G." were by turns funny and sad.

This was a great Gothic spooky story -- took its time building tension but never dragged. I had hoped for a more climactic conclusion, but in place of that were questions and theories that were satisfying to puzzle over. This book delivered several nights of nervousness in my own old creaky house.

I read this in one evening. Guessed most of the plot from the beginning. It was a perfectly passable novel that didn't require a lot of concentration and generated just enough interest to keep me going.