A major disappointment
938266
Dmitri Shostakovich's 24 Preludes and Fugues is one of the major pianistic statements of the past century.  The emotional range of these pieces is immense, from the luminous joy of the 7th fugue to the bleak landscape of the 14th prelude.  There is rude humor here, pastoral bliss, great sadness, all culminating in the angry defiance of the final fugue.  (Curiously, though, Shostakovich doesn't really mine all the TECHNICAL possibilities of the fugal form.)  As the cycle requires incredible breadth of understanding, it's hardly surprising that there hasn't been a single cycle that has conveyed everything.  The best so far has been Konstatin Scherbakov's cycle on Naxos.  But, I had high hopes for Melnikov, who has done wonderful Shostakovich elsewhere.  They were greatly disappointed.

From the very first piece, it's clear that delicacy will be Melnikov's guiding rule.  It's a curious choice, as it results in downplaying a lot of the emotional content.  Melnikov certainly produces a beautiful tone, but 'prettiness' isn't something most people will associate with this composer.  There's no nobility, no aching sadness, no cheeky humor.  Melnikov manages not to miss the angry defiance of the last fugue, but compared to the composer's own recording, he seems far too polite.

There's more to complain about than simply emotional rigidity, though.  Melnikov seems to have no understanding of Shostakovich's idiosyncratic harmonic thinking.  Especially in the fugues, events just pass by with no perception of their importance or the harmonic direction of the entire piece. Many of them seem to peter out rather than coming to any conclusion. Occasionally, Shostakovich is ambivalent in this sort of way, but most of the time he is definitely not.

Melnikov also seems to phrase everything the same way.  There is no attempt to appreciate Shostakovich's puckish rhythmic sense, no sense of the arch of musical phrases.  Periodically, there's some oddly applied rubato that sounds more like his fingers getting tied up than resulting from any musical considerations.  In fact, with the exception of a few places, Melnikov seems to choose the same TEMPO for most of the fugues.  It's all amazingly bland.

Even the 'beautiful' recorded sound doesn't really help the situation.  There is a 'wet', slightly blurry acoustic, which makes the piano sound beautiful.  BUT, and it's a big 'but', it results in a lack of clarity in the contrapuntal writing, particularly when Shostakovich indulges in close counterpoint.  Subsidiary voices disappear in the blur, making it difficult to hear any of the interesting things Shotakovich does to his material.  In addition, Melnikov over emphasizes the entrances of the fugue subject to the point where the pieces actually sound repetitious.  Given the flat emotional aspect, this is deadly.

Overall, this is a major disappointment.  Gramophone's wildly positive review of this is laughable.  It's near the bottom of the pile of complete sets.  I keep hoping that someone like Marc-Andre Hamelin will take up this music, which deserves far more attention than it has gotten.  That none of the great pianists of the middle of the 20th century took it up is truly sad. But, hopefully, someone will come along who can capture all the beauty and pain of this music.  Melnikov, sadly, is not that person.
1489048
A big disappointment from a writer who is much better at social commentary in non-fiction forms.  The prose is stilted (and, for some reason, all in present tense), the plot is creaky, unweildy, and implausible, and somebody at his publisher should have gotten him a good editor.  This book doesn't read as if it is by an author who has read or enjoyed thrillers.  The "cliff-hanging" chapter endings are silly. It got a long review in the New York Times by someone who didn't know that a black bourgeoisie class existed.  Maybe the book will be entertaining for this small and naive audience.
4937337
what a complete let down. after reading rainbow six, my first clancey novel, i was tempred by this one. bad move.
in rainbow six at least there was enough action to laugh at the endless repition of cliches and sermonising.
its a long uphill struggle to get to the end, when the action actually starts about 1000 pages in, it makes for the biggest possible let down.
About halfway through you get to the point where you dread any piece of the story involving jack ryan or numerous other characters as you just know its going to be more ultra right wing sermonising which youve read already enough times before the end of the first chapter. the book would have been improved considerably by complete omission of jack ryan. what tom clancey needs is a good editor, and some respect for the intelligence of his readers.
1815165
What a disappointment ! ! !  With all the books published over the past fifty years on comic art in general, one would would expect more useful reference material to exist on the subject.  Other than the publications of Brian Walker, Bill Blackbeard, Richard Marchall, and precious few others, most authors and editors, including those who produced this volume, fail to understand that not all art that is described by the terms comic and cartoon appeals to the same audience and that  these various art forms are not all appropriately discussed in the same book.  As an inevitable result we get books which do not fulfill the expectations of those interested in any of the loosely related fields.

Comic strip art and comic book art are closely related -- the initial and constant appeal of both lie in the existence of continuing characters who develope over time, thereby becoming small parts of the lives of the readers.  Animation art can be similarly ingrained into the viewer's psyche, as the films that are the ultimate product of such art are viewed and reviewed over the course of many years.  But it is hard to do justice to both comic stiip/book art and animation art in the same book, given the very different manners by which the two forms of art are produced.  Political cartoons are even less compatible with discussions of comic strip/book art, since they serve a very different purpose and are intended for a markedly different audience.  Very few comic strip or comic book fans have more than a passing interest in political cartoons.

Few readers seeing the title "Cartoon America" would expect a volume wherein at least half the text and illustrations deal with political cartoons.  Aside from the reproduction of some important comic strip originals, this book will probably fall short of almost everyone's expectations.  The animation and comic book chapters are particularly weak, not because of the commentary but because the examples of such art in the Library of Congress (specifically the Art Wood collection) are not at all distinguished.  Even the chapters devoted to comic strip art are somewhat disappointing.  It is becoming increasingly apparent that the vaunted Wood Collection was neither as broad nor as deep as most people assumed and that a large number of the thousands of items in that collection consisted of political cartoons, not comic art.  Perhaps the collection would have appeared more impressive if it had been presented through serparate books on the various subjects. It is too bad that we have been given just another in a long line of books that fail to do justice to any of the art forms because they are lumped together in what is an inherently inapropriate mix.

Craig Englund
2368366
It's been almost a year since I've read this book, but I wanted to throw my $.02 in and say that this book is a major stinker.  In the ROLLING STONE interview with Anne Rice that came out around the time of the book's release, it was revealed that Ms. Rice wrote the novel in a span of about four weeks; anyone reading the novel will be able to know that on instinct.  Furthermore, to even call this a novel is stretching it too far.  This "book" is nothing more than the pseudo-theological ramblings of a person who has come to view her position as a writer as indestructible, and laying this work out for the general public to buy under the impression that it is another Vampire Chronicle is misleading and greedy.  The plot is barely there, the characters are boring, and the overall tone of the book was so dull that I haven't been inspired to buy or read the two books that followed this one.  If Anne Rice wanted to write a book about what she thought the afterlife would be like, she should have promoted it as nonfiction, not the fifth "Vampire Chronicle".
3765874
This book was a huge disappointment, and not just for the reasons everyone is saying.  The plot, the writing, the failure of the two narrators, and yes, the ending -- they all made this book horrible.  I am very disappointed and wish I had stopped at the second book.  I hope the movie changes not only the ending but the entire story because this revelation about genetic experiments is just plain stupid.  Epic fail times ten.
971281
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Maeve's books when her yarns were spun of silk thread. Unfortunately, in this novel, "Nights of Rain and Stars" Maeve traded in her imported silk threads for polyester. I'm sad to say, it totally fell short and on its face. In past novels, Maeve's yarns unraveled naturally to reveal the tale. This story was utterly simple, way too elementary, far too predicatable, downright unbelievable and much too straight forward. As the reader, I was insulted by the ignorance she perceived her audience to possess. She wove four foreign tourists into the beautiful Greek countryside. Each of them  could have had their own identity but turned out to be flatter than Gumby. No depth. I feel that Ms. Binchy just typed in a few details and names onto a story map from her computer and created this book. How can each of the tourists just happened to be either a mirror image of a Greek character or lead a parallel life? David and Adonis were mirror mages of one another leading parallel lives. The remaining three tourists all bore uncanny bits of their lives to the main character, Vonni. Fiona was the young Vonni with a happier ending. Elsa gave up everything like Vonni to escape. Elsa fled from a man (Deiter) and Vonni fled into a man's (Stavros) arms. Lastly, Thomas and Vonni were estranged from their sons. Thomas knew enough to return to his son,Bill whereas Vonni was hoping against all hope to have her son Stavros return. Prayer was her vehicle. Not action. All in all, I found the novel a disappointment. An easy, somewhat enjoyable read, but lacking realism, interest, complexity and subtleness for Maeve Binchy to have penned it! I expected more.
2383098
As most of readers of "Ready Player One", I was harboring great expectations for this book!
What an unexpected and total letdown!
It is hard to believe that the writer of a book so readable and interesting such as "Ready Player One" was allowed by his publisher to fall so low.
A movie by Steven Spielberg is such a recognition that literally creates a new genre and a golden streak of sequels.
Ernest Cline missed the opportunity by making three major mistakes:
1) He set the story in more or less contemporary time, making it totally unrealistic and anachronistic to the point of being risible.
2) He filled up his narrative with so many clichs, so many stereotypes and "feel good" situations to make the reader sick.
3) He failed to create a credible (in pure fiction lore) and endearing character such as Wade "Parzival" in his previous book.
I forced myself to wade through three quarters of the story before giving up
This book doesn't even qualify as "pulp fiction".
Sorry Ernest, for the time being I give you the benefit of the doubt and wait for your next, hopefully better work.
1122810
[Kindle edition review] I was very disappointed in this book. I had high expectations to see a great walkthrough of the history of the park and its many attractions.  But this book barely has any of that,  It barely counts as a retrospective.  I've seen online photo galleries with deeper content.
My main issues:
- Hardly any work was done formatting it for the Kindle.  Instead of matching the captions to the pictures, the author just decided to throw all of the pictures at the end with no context or discussion. But the author did not change the text to reflect this. So we have short, broken up passages that discuss specific images and scenes with no context at all.
- Major sections of rides are barely discussed. In addition, the history of the rides (what I really came for) - their building, design teams behind them, early concepts, etc. - stuff usually in retrospectives and histories was almost completely missing. What exists can pretty much be summed up as "Hey remember this? Here are a few things the ride did. It was around for this time period before it changed. Here are a few pics."

Granted my expectations may have been too high. this is "unauthorized". but I expected at least a minimum amount of work put into this.  Save your money, just look online on wikipedia and online photo galleries. you probably won't find any better info in this book.
3866873
The ONLY reason I finished reading "The Casual Vacancy" is because I purchased it as soon as it came out - i.e., the "new hardback" version, and didn't want to have completely wasted my money.  I expected SO much better from this author, but was horribly disappointed.  With any good, enjoyable book, I can stop at most any point & know there will be something exciting to get back to.  In "The Casual Vacancy", I had to search the entire book for just one paragraph which called me back to reading.  Sadly, I found none.  My recommendation is - SKIP THIS ONE - entirely.
3810225
I was pumped up to start reading this book when I got it in the mail this week.  Boy was I disappointed.

First of all, the story doesn't really know where to go.  The author tries to lay this out like a documentary using dates to frame her chapters.  It tries to show on just two or three pages what transpired over the course of a month or so.

Secondly, aside from "Bird", the characters are not developed.  You really do not get a feel for anyone else.

Petty drug deals, gun sales and talks of how the Hells Angels normally would do business, really don't carry the story.  I came into this book expecting to read about murder, assault and a voyeuristic view into the club.  I was instead, left with a huge disappointment.

If you are looking for a brief summarization of a court case that never amounted to anything major, read this book.  If you are looking for a book that goes into depth about the inner workings of the Hells Angels and the day to day workings of a motorcycle club, skip this book.
3324750
I started reading this book with a small fragment of hope for the return of the original kick butt Anita from the beginning of the series. What I found was massive disappointment. As of late many of Laurell K Hamilton's books have been less about plot and actual story lines and more about sex, sex, and more sex. And not even just sex but kinky orgies that have nothing to do with the actual story, but more about whining and stroking character egos. The story in this book went absolutely NOWHERE. She covered in one book what would have taken merely a few chapters in some of her original Anita books. Those "few chapters" were stuffed and fluffed and drawn out between several chapters of excessively long and boring description, sexual encounters, whining, and a lame mind battle with Marmee Noir which was nothing more than a puppy pile. Needless to say I'm upset that I actually went out on a limb and paid for this book. I doubt I will buy any more... and this coming from a true Laurell K Hamilton fan who has read them from the very beginning and owns all of her books, until now.

Long story short. It was disappointing.
2594967
What a disappointment and frustration! As a fan of both science fiction, time travel stories, England, WWII, and the Blitz this seemed a tailor made story and what a let down. There is some good. It does a good job in showing the bits and pieces of personal life during the blitz - trains that would be hours late and descriptions of  Anderson shelters and sheltering in the Underground. However as the book progresses, much of the descriptions are lost in the moaning of the strangely uniformed historians that have time traveled to
London and the surrounding countryside during the Blitz.

One of the huge disappointments were simple mistakes in vernacular English., i.e. cots are baby cribs, not something an adult sleeps in and the biggest historical lapse was claiming Queen Mary said" "The children won't go without me. I won't leave the King. And the King will never leave." Queen Mary was King George's mother, his wife, Elizabeth, the queen consort, the mother of the present queen Elizabeth said this and has become one of the legends of morale building during the blitz.

The other huge frustration is that the book just ends and leaves on hanging literally. One almost looks to see if discs or page are missing. This is a horrendous thing to do to a reader and at least makes this one so mad I would not purchase the sequel. It's like false advertising to present to an interested reader an unfinished product
2340137
The author crammed too much into one story.  This was a major disappointment.
1804241
As some have said, what a disappointment. Although I didn't care for the convolution of the racial issues(overkill)in the first book I still liked it.  So much so I thought what the hell let me give this a try (regardless of the sensible voice inside my head). Boy, was I wrong. Victoria tried my nerves in the first book but what I've read in this one is downright idiotic. I guess I should say I only got up to 40% before I decided I'm done because I could see where this sorry plot was going and couldn't stomach it one more page. This book is entirely too pricey for the lack of the quality I had expected. Therefore as another reviewer stated don't waste your money!
654963
very basic and poorly written book...the plot is not well developed, characters are weakly outlined and the conversation are too formulaic and predictable.  a big disappointment!
4757032
You know, I *really* wanted to like this book, as I'm a long-time gargoyle lover and collector.  Unfortunately, the book was a major disappointment.  The story is disjointed and confusing in parts (there are more than a few "Huh?" moments that are never explained or fleshed out), the dialogue and phrasing is amateurish, and there are DOZENS of misspellings and grammatical errors that should have been caught and corrected by a professional editor and/or publisher.  I'm sorry, but I have to say it was quite a struggle to get through this, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.  I'm just glad I only paid $3.00 for my copy and not the $12.95 retail price.