A Book to Loose Your head over
934418
This was a delightful twist on a classic saying. My daughters loved helping the town find Bobby's brain as it ran all over. The illustrations were inventive and the story entertaining. Well done! -Daddy's Girls Book Reviews.
3171605
Lonely Polygamist is one of the longest books I have read in quite some time. I have a theory that when I am wanting to read really long books, I am trying to fight off my inevidable death (How can someone die while in the middle of a book?). This in nonsense, and I know it, but most of the time I avoid reading anything this long.

The 600+ pages breeze by, and the story, though a little underwelming, is quite an intersting cache of characters. You have four wives and 20+ kids, you have a fireworks maker, you have a renegade 12 year old, you have a brothel owner, you have an ostrich, and you have God of course. All of these things work together into a mesh that becomes a tangle and this tangle is not really as important or as good it could be, but it still becomes a pretty decent story.

Some of the best parts of this book are the symbols. Particually windows. There is an sense of sadness that comes when the characters look out of or in to windows. This sadness is fraut with desire, desire to run away but the panes of glass are keeping them prisoner, making them deal with the problems in their lives.

The worst part about this book is Golden Richards, the husband, liar, cheater, loser of the bunch. He is a big bumbling wimp, and there is really no reason why any of the women should be attracted to, let alone married to, him. He seems more like the guy who got a lucky break, found a wife, found three more wives, and does not know what to do with himself. He is such an dolt that it is more likely that he would not try to run from his family, but to his family, since they are the only people who, most likely, care about him. If he were a person in my life, I would see him as he is, a man who has alot, but is too stupid to figure it out. I probably wouldn't be friends with him though. In some moments of his story, I want to punch him in the face. Not because of anger but because someone needs to.

In all, I find that The Lonely Polygamist does has some merit, maybe literary, maybe to shed some light on the secrecy of plural marriage, but to say this is the best book I've ever read or that I would read it again is far from the truth.
1889074
This book is convoluted for the sake of being convoluted and allows pseudo eccentrics to continue bolstering their own nihilism.

Oh my goodness, I had to turn a page upside down to read it... So scary. Give me a break.

If you bought your kid a Toyota, and he/she complains that his/her life is ruined because it's not a BMW, they will enjoy this book.
4475012
I am such a sucker for psych thrillers and maybe it's because this book was overhyped, but what a disappointment. The author keeps beating you over the head with the whole THINGS AREN'T WHAT THEY SEEM bit while giving away every character's intentions in the first 1/4 of the book, then pulling what could be the most ludicrous "twist." It felt like a really contrived genre switch within the last 50 pages, and everyone who said "wtf that ending" wasn't kidding - it was truly out of nowhere. There are few books I've felt angry about wasting my time reading - this was one of them.
2861601
If you are looking for a cosy read, this is not it.
If you are looking for a dark read on the wrong side of humanity, this is it.

If you are looking for something to curl up with, this is not it.
If you are looking for something that you hate reading but compelled to carry on, this is for you.

I make no bones at the fact its an easy straight forward book to read. It really stretches you emotionally.

It takes a slooow while [and yes I did drag out the slooow] while to piece each character and it takes a slooow while to see how they are interwoven. You NEED to concentrate when you first start this book for the first [quite a few] chapters.

The relationship between student and teacher was quite complex and got me REALLY thinking.

This book is piled with layers, as you take one off, there is another, as you take off that one, there appears another, you do wonder when you will get to peel off the final one.

I was thrown in the first couple of chapters, I really thought I had either missed pages or opened a completely new book, it was quite bizarre.

I am not saying I didn't like this book, because I did, but it wasn't an easy book to follow, as a reader you really needed to stay with it. At times it was like finding my way out of a maze only to be thrown back to where I started.

Yep, I know this is a funny review, I can hear you asking:

Sue, did you like it?
Yes

Sue did you not like anything about it?
Yes plenty

But would you recommend it?
Yes, but with caution to whom

Is it good?
Yes

Is there some awful bits?
No

Is it slow?
Yes but picked up towards the end

So Sue, would you say it was good or bad?

I DUNNO!!!

Yes it was good, no it was slow, yet the finale was good.

With that, I'll leave it to you :)

I would like to thank Bloomsbury Publishing Plc (UK & ANZ) via Net Galley for my copy
2917389
Basically a "slice of life" kind of book where all of the main characters complain for pages and pages about how life sucks. Told in present-tense prose, the book goes on for almost three hundred pages of downward spiral until the author slaps a happy ending on the last thirty pages or so that feels really out of place, like it comes from out of the blue.

The main character Jonathan obsesses about the giant squid he hopes to find, the narration getting bogged down in biological science. He has a bit of a nervous breakdown holing up in a tent made out of sheets in the family's den, and that's where he basically stews throughout the middle of the book.

His wife Madeline is also an animal researcher whose research revolves around the social order of a pigeon colony. At first it seems there's a bit of a mystery there -- some of the pigeons are murdered and raped by other pigeons. I'm not sure if it's possible for pigeons to rape each other, but that was a minor point, especially when Madeline's story swerves away from the pigeon thing so that she can follow a man-shaped cloud as it walks around the sky above the city of Chicago. Say what? I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be aliens or some kind of dream, but I kept reading to find out what the heck it was. When what the heck it was was finally explained, I was even more confused.

Jonathan and Madeline have two daughters, also with their own problems. Amelia is seventeen (and yet there is no discussion in the novel of things a real seventeen-year-old might be thinking about like the future and college). Instead, Amelia stews about the pervasiveness of corporate America, these angry rants that in the end go nowhere. Along the way she has an oral sexual relationship with a professor whose class she sneaks into, and she also spends some time fashioning a pipe bomb, but both of those ideas fizzle out and go nowhere in particular.

The younger sister Thisbe is also an annoying whiner who puts her faith in God. Her faith is tested, however, when she meets and becomes attracted to another girl.

There's also a grandfather character who is so sad he's trying to just disappear. Clouds and moths both figure prominently as metaphors, and there is also some delving into Jonathan's ancestors (oddly though these trips are also told in present tense) to point to Jonathan's fear of clouds as well as his apparently genetic inability to move forward.

For the most part, I didn't enjoy the book too much, but perhaps that's just me.
4326028
I enjoyed the first book, but this one rode off the rails.  I enjoyed the characters and the family in book one, and the plot remained within reason (its a zombie book, so take that with a grain of salt), but with this book the plot and characters lose what tenuous connection they had with sanity.  Its turned from a story about surviving the apocalypse to a story about a group of demigods set on saving the world.
835022
I believe the author was trying for twists, but it just came across as silly. Some of the "explanations"  were like after thoughts to the story-right up to the last page. The main character and her younger sister had come from a dysfunctional home. That kept popping up to remind all the way through the book. The characters constantly brought up things in conversation -with the reader, I suppose. There was no one else it could have been. The conversations then caused one to feel like they should KNOW already about what the character was talking about yet there was no way to have known at the time.
In real life, if you asked someone a very important or critical question, you would pursue till you got the answer. You sure wouldn't allow people to walk away if it was a life or death situation. But that's what the main character did several times. And that was only ONE of many frustrating, maddening things about her.

I would not recommend this book to a friend. I doubt I will read any others from this author, Then again I might give her another chance sometimes. A few chapters should tell me what I need to know.
2904562
From page one until the end of the afterword, there is one
story after the next, pitting the unconscious versus the
concsious mind in the decision-making proccess.  I thought
it was a tough booK to read aaannnddd understand all of it.
The whole face-reading / mind-reading portion was wwaayy over-
the-top.  I would still like to read ""THE TIPPING POINT"",
though!!
4185276
Borrrrrrring.  I read over a third of this yawner and still couldn't figure out what the heck the story was about.  Too many good books out  there, so no time to waste reading this one.  And the characters don't stick in one's mind, they sort of flitter around and never seem solid. I'm sorry I paid for it, I should have gotten it at the library.  I mistakenly believed some of the other reviews---too bad for me.
1364356
Hard to stay with this one. There is SO much head hopping. One second one person is thinking/talking and the next paragraph it's someone else. It jumps timelines etc so much too that it is really hard to follow. I finished it because it did intrigue me enough to want to know how it ended but I hate books that head hop like this. Could be an excellent book with some rewriting.
4740823
Usually I either love, like a book or just plain don't like it, but this is the most indecisive I've been over a book in a long time. I finished the first 50 or 75 pages during my first evening's reading, and couldn't wait to get back to it. The rest of the book didn't go quite so fast at all.

The overall story concerns Madeleine Hanna and her relationship with fellow student, Leonard Bankhead, in the 1980s when they meet at Brown University in Rhode Island.  There is also student Mitchell Grammaticus who feels that Madeleine is destined to marry him.  Leonard is into science and Mitchell is into religious mysticism while Madeleine is an enthusiastic English major, and the question is are there no more great love stories like the ones in nineteenth century literature.  The author tries to approach the answer in a new, more contemporary way through his characters and their lives.

Since the story starts with a college graduation, Madeleine, the central female character, is rude and disrespectful to her parents on such an occasion as her college graduation day.  Her parents are annoying and Phyllida, the mother, puts on such airs that I couldn't stand her.  Alton, Maddie's father, reminded me very much of a deceased family member and I will not speak ill of the dead.  Despite their uppity ways, Maddie's parents' home was held together by the grace of duct tape and they made no excuses about that.

What I like the most about the book is the discussions among students and the classroom discussions of French philosopher Jacques Derrida and his theory of deconstruction, and the semiotics seminar.  My degree is in nursing rather than English, and I was fascinated by all of this new information that I had never heard of, and so I read up on it and actually learned something new from this book. That I enjoyed very much.

What I personally felt about "The Marriage Plot" overall as a complete novel is that it is elitist, too long and too detailed in parts, especially Mitchell's and Larry's trip to India.  It might not have been so bad if the trip had more of a purpose than what it did, and if it had made more sense.  Madeleine enabled Leonard many times and put herself into such bad situations with him.  Mitchell was in need of help, too, in my opinion.

"The Marriage Plot" is enough of Jeffrey Eugenides for me at the present time, and perhaps later on I will read another of his books.  I gave this one three stars for being okay, but I couldn't justify giving it any more than that.  The book may shine in more scholarly, academic circles, I don't know, but reading it for pleasure the book seemed to have a pall hanging over all the characters and the atmosphere in general.  After the first 100 pages, I'd recommend it, but after finishing the book, I wouldn't.
3562961
Oh boy! This was another Imaginary Girls incident all over again!

As much as I intrigued by the premise of this book, it really didn't do it for me. I was confused and frustrated from the very first page, right down to the last grueling word. So many tangents and ramblings, things that had no place or reason to the plot, but I suppose were put there to make the character seem more eccentric, like she was supposed to come off as such. Now you know I have a serious problem with having to finish a book, even if I don't like it. I know I need to break this habit one day, but lucky for this book, I haven't started yet. I seriously had to push myself to finish this book and stopped so many times it was ridiculous. If I didn't remind myself that I had to review it, I would've truly considered this as my first DNF book.

The author does a number on you so you don't even know which twin you're dealing with for the first quarter or so of the book, then when you figure it out, you find yourself questioning if she's playing a trick on you because whoever the lead character is, her mind is a bit unhinged and questionable. Honestly, I was getting really confused while reading this book as to how people, especially her sister, weren't as concerned as they should be that the girl was missing. Granted, she has been known to rebel and do her own thing, but I swear, so many other things happened and the sister who is telling the story gets so distracted by the littlest things that I was beginning to wonder if the fact that her sister is missing was even relevant to the story!

I couldn't connect with any of the characters and seriously disliked the main one. Everyone seemed very odd, like they were all in some kind of parallel universe or Twilight Zone episode and I could see the spinning swirl of black and white stripes. A lot of things happen in this book that make you question the main character's sanity, and as she slowly breaks down, more pieces of the puzzle painstakingly come into light until the very dramatic ending.

The only thing I'll give this book, is that the ending was pretty intense and you could finally see where exactly the author was going with how the main character was falling apart. I kind of already figured out who was behind the kidnapping. I'm sure there are those who will like this one, especially those who like books that throw you for loops and are filled with random bits of fluff, but this one really wasn't for me.
1138408
I wanted to like this book.  I really did.  It has a great concept.  Roman mercenary fighting against the Greeks in the war with Persia gets injured so that he loses his memory.  Not only loses his memory, but cannot keep his memories from day to day.  He is given a stylus and scroll and the book is all about his writing down what has happened to him by day so as to weave the narrative for the reader.  He finds he offended a god in her temple and must make amends. So his journey begins.  He meets a lot of people and sees the ancient Greek countryside and is present at many historical events.  What's even more exciting, due to his injury, he can now see the world of the gods and no one else can until he touches the being.  He realizes how interwoven the supernatural and divine world is with the natural world.

Sounds great right?

The problem is that the teller of the tale is the guy with the lost memory and the story is told in the first person.

He loses his memory each day and he doesn't always write in his scroll each day.  So the plot is disjointed.  You get to know characters and their names one day then with the next chapter's reading, all you have is a description.

You as the reader, cannot be sure who the cast of characters are in Latro's life on the day he is writing each morning, because he doesn't either.  He doesn't know why he is where he is and is doing what he's doing.  You, as the reader, might think the action is continued from the chapter before, but then you realize as you read, no, he didn't write down events that day and the chapter is picking up a few days later so he's now describing some other event.

It's incredibly frustrating.  This isn't a book you can put down and return to later, because you'll have forgotten the disjointed plot-line and the main character is no help in jogging your memory, because he doesn't remember either.

I've tried at least 3 times to finish this book but each time, no matter how determined I am, I get bogged down in the slow pace, flat narration (Latro is a solider not a poet so his narration of what is going around him is less than lyrical) and the confusion of events.

You will need a good memory for names - and they're ancient Greek names - a good eye for descriptors, a lot of concentration and a lot of time to slog through this one.  Good luck.
2308033
This book was not what I expected at all.  I expected some sort of witty romp in a cosy mystery type of style.

Instead, The Rabbit Back Literature Society is odd, surreal and impossible to pigeonhole.  The plot is inconclusive and ambiguous, with a most unsatisfactory conclusion that explains nothing.  The style is disjointed and jarring.  The characters are flawed to the point of unlikeability.

There is a dreamlike quality to the prose, and also to the logic of the plot; for example, why would the truth-telling of The Game provoke such extreme physical reactions in the participants?  Obviously there is a lot of symbolism here, but it is presented as if realism, which makes for a disconnect in the reader expectations.

Yet despite these apparently insurmountable objections... I did enjoy reading it to some extent.  I couldn't stop reading; I wanted to know what happened next, what the answers were.  The lack of clear answers forthcoming left me working out my own, which meant engaging with the text in a way that I normally wouldn't otherwise with such detached characterisation.  I felt somewhat disappointed at the conclusion that none of the various mystery threads are resolved at all, and many that were introduced do not even get started (i.e. Ella's fertility).  Leaving everything to the reader's imagination (real, or paranormal) is an interesting literary device, but does not result in a satisfying reading experience!

I would recommend this one as a book group read, as there is loads of discussion fodder here, but would say that otherwise it is a quirky, difficult and somewhat unrewarding read.

Everybody knows that no healthy person would take up writing novels. Healthy people do healthy things. All this darned hoopla and hot air about literaturewhat is it really but mental derangement run through a printing press?

 Pasi Ilmari Jskelinen, The Rabbit Back Literature Society

(Review by Steph Warren of Bookshine and Readbows blog)
787131
A book that will drive you "nuts" as it skips back and forth in time.  However, it will keep you on the edge of your chair as it drives toward its climax.
4689178
First of all ,this book falls completely outside my reading genre. I rated it 3* for the simple reason that I have no idea if it deserves 1* or 5*s. I have also read all the other reviews ,thinking it might enlighten me somewhat as to what the author is attempting to get across to the reader;but that didn't help either. I am an engineer,retired and 76 years young;and live in the world of reality and surrealism is simply something I don't connect with; along with most Rock Music ,Impressionism in Art,and drugs and hallucinations in general.
 In University,I had was subjected to a course in Philosophy which dealt with the Philosophy of St Thomas Acquinas. I sat through the lectures taught by a Professor who had a PhD in Philosophy;and although I understood every word he spoke, as well as every word written in the text,and was mesmerized by the way the Professor could string these words together;I was left completely dumbfounded as to what it was all about. The sciences of Mathematics,Physics and Engineering were logical and realistic;but that Philosophy "stuff" was "something else. Reading this book brought back similar memories. I read the book,understood the words ;but but got no sense whatsoever as to what the aurhor was attempting to say or what meaning he intended to convey to the reader.
 At some points,I felt I was looking into the wild, vacant or glazed eyes of a crazed person in a mental institution and this was what was going on in their head.
 In summary,all I can conclude ,is if this is what surrealism is,and surrealism is your thing,you may enjoy it. However; if you are a realist and live in the world of sanity and realism;maybe this book is not for you.