It takes more than a great story to write a good book
348139
A 24 year old man, Deo, escapes Burundi's genocide and arrives in NYC with $200 in his pocket. He speaks no English and ends up going to medical school in the USA. This, by itself, is an amazing story. The book is partially the story of Deo in the USA and partially about his life prior to arrival in the USA. Unfortunately, by the end of the book I did not feel that I knew the man. For example, at some point he abruptly drops out of medical school but we never find out how this important decision came about. Incredibly, the author fails to convey to the reader convincingly how Deo was able to become adept enough in English to attend medical school.  Is Deo a genius or incredibly hard working?

Kidder also tries to tell Deo's escape story from Burundi while the genocide was going on in Rwanda and Burundi. The lack of maps and poor way of telling the story left me confused and even bored at times. He also tries to explain the politics and history of the region and how the massacre came about. Interested readers perhaps could gain more understanding of these issues through Wikipedia.

The story of Rwanda and Burundi are important for the world to know. Deo's story is also very fascinating. I appreciate Kidder's effort to tell these stories but I was disappointed with how he accomplished this job. Perhaps it was too rushed.
681290
As an aspiring writer, I have to say the career I hope to have for myself would be nothing like that of Grady Tripp's.  Sheesh, man, take a nap!  It's a good book, well told, and an interesting story, but watching Grady  abuse himself all weekend was exhausting and, after a time, a little  frustrating.  I'm not suggesting the story should have been any other way,  however -- this is the story that is told, these are perhaps even the  emotions targeted and I applaud it all.  Just warning you: it's a wild  weekend; the kind of weekend books are written about.
Yet as ruthless  as his adventures are, my main criticism of the book is the most sedate  part of his weekend.  I won't ruin it for anyone, but suffice it to say,  it's somewhere around the middle, it's long, it's tedious, and, yes, in  this case I am suggesting the story should've gone some other direction.  YAWN!  Books should not have intermissions, but that's what the middle of  this one was -- you're just not allowed to leave during it.
I also felt  Chabon didn't know what to do with James Leer.  After being set up as one  of the more interesting characters, Leer remained almost always present  but, more often than not, passed out or spaced out.
However, the  beginning and end of the book form worthy entertainment (albeit of no great  social importance), in a writing style that makes the book worth a couple  reads.  It's the kind of book movies should be made from and I look forward  to the theatrical release without fear that the story will be compromised  beyond its original message.
Will definitely read Chabon's first  book now.
3912056
When I think about memoir, I often think about what a difficult genre it must be to write. Like all good writing, a quality memoir has to be honest and intimate, it has to find truth in character and narrative. But where fiction allows all of that to spring from some sort of hypothetical creation, memoir demands the writer to find it in their own experience. It's difficult enough to be honest when writing fiction, and being honest with one's own life represents an even greater challenge.

But somehow, people do it.

In THAT HIDDEN ROAD, Rocco Versaci pulls together disparate thoughts and experiences into a cohesive whole. He writes about his bike ride across the United States, but just as he writes of his mind wandering while biking on lonely roads, the narrative wanders back and forth across time. It's riveting stuff, and it slowly builds into a narrative about hardship and endurance, about making mistakes and navigating out of the mazes you create for yourself.

And it's all kind of inspiring. I don't think I would ever voluntarily undertake something as difficult as riding a bike across a continent, but I (and everyone else on this dumb planet) have a habit of getting myself into sticky situations, of making mistakes and taking wrong turns. THAT HIDDEN ROAD is a book about how being lost is not the end of the world. It's about searching for a way out, and about how we sometimes stumble into exactly what we need.

It's just up to us to realize it.
751834
A well written story which proves that multiple writers can write a good book. I want to see more of them
709560
The writing is good, but the book takes too long to engage the reader and there is too much content that doesn't move the story forward.  It does get better in the final 25%, but had I not been reading it for book club, I would have put it down after the first 20%.  (Can you tell I read it on a kindle?).  There needs to be a hook at the start to pull the reader in and keep her.
547279
Mr Karas has a wonderful story to tell. Its the story of so many of our grandparents who left behind everything they had ever known to journey to America and start a new life. I can't begin to understand how courageous these people were.
That said, it's too bad that this story was not written by a competent writer. Mr Karas' fanciful use of punctuation, poor sentence structure and often unfortunate word choices make it sometimes difficult to follow what is clearly a splendid saga of two immigrant families. I am guessing that the book was self-published-a competent editor could have salvaged this effort.
1297745
In these days of self-publishing, I am often disappointed in poorly written books with otherwise good stories to tell. This book is not just a beautiful story, but is artfully written as well! Hurray!
4639320
I'm not quite sure what to think of this book overall. I'd be interested to see it after it receives much-needed editing. Self-published books should be given more slack than traditionally published books. But this book wasn't ready for self-publication yet due to a lack of editing.

As a first-time novelist, Newbery has apparent strengths and weaknesses. He usually has a fluent style of writing and seemed to do well capturing antique turns of phrase and some archaic vocabulary items--in mimicry of Dickens and nineteenth-century writing. One aspect that continually impressed me was Newbery's expansive vocabulary--often seamlessly woven throughout the dialogue and description. Newbery's ability is far beyond the average writer in these respects. The opening of the book grabbed my interest with a strong first chapter, drawing me in to Tim's life and gently filling the reader in on the main events of the intervening years since Tim was a boy in Dickens' classic.

Concerning some weaknesses, the book struggled to hold my interest after the first chapter. Newbery sometimes says what should be shown. Most of Tim's conversations with the spirits involved too much repetition and reiteration of the importance of believing in oneself and seeing the value one has. Certainly, these things are as important as Newbery wants the reader to grasp, but he should find a way simply to show the reader their importance without having the spirits verbally rehearse it so much. Subtly is something Newbery knows how to use, though, since he uses it to good effect in other places and scenes, especially in the final chapter. Indeed, the first chapter and the last were the strongest and were where Newbery demonstrates his greatest ability and potential.

Ultimately, one thing I increasingly couldn't get past was the clear need for copy-editing and proofreading. Overall, text was littered with grammar, spelling, usage, punctuation, and formatting mistakes or inconsistencies. No publishing novel author should forgo copy-editing and proofreading, whether by an employed editor or just a knowledgeable friend with a keen eye for detail. Even the most competent and meticulous writers and grammarians will miss a few mistakes in their writing, which are worth trying to correct before publishing. One always becomes blind to certain things in their own text due to familiarity. So every text needs a couple fresh sets of expert eyes to catch the little mistakes scattered throughout a manuscript. The first chapter had only a few such mistakes, but the remaining chapters seemed to multiply the errors to the point that some readers will be unable to immerse themselves in the text. Readers who don't notice editing mistakes or inconsistencies can probably ignore this paragraph of my review, but others will probably want to wait for a revised edition that is copy-edited/proofread. Perhaps things were simply rushed a bit at the end of 2015 to get the book out in time for Christmas.
253985
Takes a little bit to get the story really going, but it is great when it does
4140733
It is not a fast-paced book because the way that the story is told draws out the story itself.  However, it was still over too quickly.  The characters are well-developed, and that is the biggest draw.
4828371
I'm not sure why this book won the Pulitzer Prize.  While I appreciate the effort that went in to writing this novel, for me, it was too long, with too much description, and while some writing was good, I found a lot to be cringe-worthy. The writer wanted to show off her research, which to me is a burden to the reader. Overall, Goldfinch is not worthy of adult fiction, in my opinion. I was never 'lost' in this novel.  For me, it was always her voice speaking through these characters - the voice of an educated, adult female. For some time now, I have been mulling over what makes great literature.  I have a vast library of great works and whenever I look at the tiles of these books I am filled with wonder and love in my heart.  Whenever I pick up such books, I can open them at any page and feel inspired by the writing, feel goosebumps at the turns of phrase, the honesty, the brilliant use of words.  I will never pick up Goldfinch again.  Goldfinch did not feel like an honest piece of fiction to me.  It felt contrived. Perhaps the intention was to write a bookt hat could be turned into a movie?  How many times can people possibly bump into each other in the street?  This was a lazy way to move the story along.
However, many people love it, and it can only be a good thing that books are being read.
1480138
When an author places a book in something other than the world with which we are familiar, he/she challenges him/herself in a unique way.  The author knows this constructed world, be it fantasy, future, alternative history, or other ...but the reader doesn't, and needs to understand at least its basics quickly, so that acclimating to the "world" doesn't inhibit enjoying the story.  Catching the reader up is a challenge, because if the author provides too much information in the form of explication, the story line gets buried, and the reader could well become bored.  If the pendulum swings the other way, the reader may well be confused for most of the book, and judge it based on that confusion, and not on the real "meat", the story and characters.

This means that the entire gestalt of the book must include all the expected elements, *plus* the world itself, which, though it is the background against which the action takes place, has become, by the very nature of its uniqueness, one of the major elements, and must be treated accordingly, but in such a subtle way that it doesn't overshadow any other elements.

All this to say that one of the few flaws I found in this otherwise very engaging read is that the author spent way too much time telling us about the world, it's make up, its politics, etc., and not enough time showing us the world in action, so to speak.  Even so, the book is more than worth reading, because once it really gets started, it *really* gets started, and the action fairly flies.  In addition, the characters are interesting, and the author does a fairly good job of fleshing them out, so that it is easy to think of them as people, not just actors on a page.  The plot is filled with twists, turns, little alley ways and surprises, and the author has combined several stock plot lines into something unique.  As someone, somewhere, once said, there are a finite number of story ideas, but the ways in which those ideas can be combined is infinite, and it is the combination of these ideas, which include "world conspiracy and domination by an uber secret organization", Nazi inspired scientific experiments gone out of control" cloned, genetically enhanced operatives", Manchurian candidates" and others that caught, and held my interest.  True, I had some issues with the dichotomy of the main character's personality, and kept wondering how on earth he survived the training process ...surely *someone* would have caught certain traits that made him a bad choice for certain aspects of what would become his "career", but I could see what the author was doing, and, in the long run, it did make for a much more complex and interesting character.  Perhaps the most interesting person in the book was the female lead ...an innocent dragged, kicking and screaming, (literally) into the thick of the action, and it was her plight and her reaction to her impossible situation that hooked my emotional involvement in this book.

The writing itself is very good.  It flows nicely, and the author is deft at describing scenes, especially fast moving action scenes, so that we can follow along, without feeling as though we are listening to several pages of "breaking news".  I did find too many "fortuitous"instances, coincidences that either got the heroes into even more trouble, or saved the day ...and I'm not fond of coincidences.  Sure they happen, but the really fortuitous ones are more rare than they were here.

Having said all this, I do recommend this book!  It's a good adventure tale, and I very much look forward to reading more from this author!
2020657
I have this to say about Scott Nicholson.  I don't like his writing style.  He is no Charles Dickens.  His sentences and sentence fragments are oftentimes jagged and tough to piece together.  It makes for a very simple, yet quite clumsy read.

Nicholson does some things well, though.  He really portrays characters thoughts well.  And that leads to good character development.  When I read a book, I find that good character development can oftentimes overcome a weak story.

Now this story isn't necessarily weak.  In fact, I think it's a very strong story that could be told a little bit better.  It wasn't a "page turner".  In fact, a large part of what kept me interested was the fact that the chapters were so short.  If this book had longer chapters, I might have put it down never to return.

And that brings up the most pressing issue.  This story just took so long to develop.  I really didn't feel like I knew any of the characters until the end.  The first half of the novel is just strange occurrences happening to otherwise anonymous people.  It's only in the second half of the book, when the characters all really start interacting with each other, that I really started to get a feel for who they were.  And that's when the story started to get interesting.

Now there is one giant folly with the ending that I can't divulge because it would give away the plot, and that's the reasoning behind my three star rating.  It loses a star due to its lack of literary value, and it loses a star because of the giant folly at the end.  I'd say it's an above average read, and I have come to care enough about the characters to read the sequel.  After all, there were a lot of loose ends to tie up.  I just don't think it's much more than a story.
2279598
Framed in a story of the authors creation, Philip Martin sets off to do what all good mentors teachshow, not tellin this case, authors, how to create a good story that enchants.

Story should rise above narrative, Martin writes; more than groups of words, more than a series of events. It is also an art form. Quoting liberally from ancient to modern works, Martin employs his background as a professional gatherer of stories and histories to show how story works across culture and time to draw listeners in to a communal experience. Writers are more than purveyors of phrases. Writers offer a promise and provide the worthwhile payoff.

As an experienced editor of writers advice books, a former editor for best-selling mainstream authors, and the director of Great Lakes Literary, Martin shares his advice and technique for creating memorable works that hopefully attract an agent or editor. He takes a three-pronged approach, and so this book is divided into sections: start with a quirky hook; keep the middle more than readable by using delicious details, and finally, provide a satisfying ending.

Martin is not a fan of Plot. Plot, as a mechanism for writing a book, will make your workmechanical. Contrived. Agenda-driven. Unimaginative. I believe his emphatic dissing of the term throughout the book is more a rebellion of the idea of plot, an issue of interpretation. After all, experienced authors are familiar with the idea of a novel being plot-driven, as in genre work, or character-driven, as more often describes non-specified fiction, aka literary work. No real matter, as Martin does make allowance for necessary underpinning of a story, whether compared to a sensual meal or a spider web. Plot is simply structure, whether an author uses it for a flexible framework, or discovers it after the story is complete. Structure works to create a commonly understood or shared experience. Too many authors use plot as a controlled formula, which Martin insists must be avoided.

Whether cyclic or arced or linear, a story has a beginning, middle, and an end. Its the promise of a fine meal promised and fulfilled. Start with a desire or a want. Bait your hook with enticing morsels. Help the reader invest, establish resonating characters in intriguing environments. Give them a problem to work on. Create anticipation; offer satisfying surprises. Delightful details keep the readers interest and should build upon the premise. Detail should triumph plot, Martin says. Even while he dismisses Plot, Martin embraces Theme. Theme should tell you what the ending should deal with, he writes. Dont try to find it until you're well into your story. Theme is a message that answers why the story is important. The end of your tale should let the reader know this journey has been worthwhile, that he has returned better for having taken it with you, the story teller.

The book is well written with an easy-to-appreciate style. As mentioned above, he spins a story to show us how to create interesting characters with interesting problems who need interesting solutions to achieve desired outcomes. Martin also shares examples from well-known work to exemplify his points. While geared specifically with writers in mind, those who practice verbal story-telling would certainly benefit from reading and studying Writing Your Best Story. The premises and examples Martin lays out in the book apply to all kinds of writing from short story to full length novel, even on a certain level to non-fiction.
4050789
This book weaves a good story but it takes way too long to get to the meat of it. The author uses too many ten dollar words and includes side stories that aren't really necessary to the plot. Take away the unnecessary side stories and its a great book.
4737075
Every book can be a first chance for a reader to encounter an author's work  and so it is hugely important for a writer to make sure the story is at its best. Get it right, and you may have a fan for life in the new reader. Get it wrong, and they may snub the rest of your work.
The Memory of Lost Dreams has a promising premise. A naive young man from a rural community in a distant future stumbles upon the remnants of the pre-apocalyptic civilisation of Imperia when he discovers a functioning computer device in the ruins of a library.
Malik finds himself flung back through time to the fascist days of that culture of Amerika, locked in battle with the rival nation of Themisia. A faceless, almost nameless opponent. Them. Seemingly existing only so that citizens can be told there is an outside threat that justifies their repression.
In essence, the story plays out as if Gulliver's Travels took him to Orwell's 1984, by way of a mind-warping trip through Harlan Ellison's back catalogue.
Malik finds himself drifting between factions in this trip through his past, shifting by decades as time slips around him. As he tries to grasp who or what is guiding him, he finds his own life hangs in the balance and he must choose sides to ensure his own future.
In terms of ideas, Davon Custis has a lot going on here. It's in terms of execution that this book is under-served. It is desperately in need of a thorough edit  there are far too many errors and typos that even a cursory proofreading edit would have picked up. It could have done with a full developmental edit too  there's foreshadowing that goes nowhere, for too long the lead character merely drifts as a passive observer without any feeling of who they are and why things matter to them, and progress happens too often with something happening suddenly or Then.... Things seem to happen because the author needs them to, not because of any impetus from the character. These are the kinds of things that can alienate a reader and they just get in the way of letting the story shine.
This feels like a good book in progress that needed an extra couple of drafts. I like the ideas that Custis has to offer, but this diamond remains resolutely unpolished.
4280256
The story and characters are very interenting.  It's certainly a page-turner.  The author's writing style has lots of positives.  He is skilled at creating atmosphere and tension.  However, he falls victim to pretensions.

For example, the prose is full of short, choppy sentence fragments.  Sentence fragments can be effective.  To provide emphasis.  If used sparingly.  But too much.  Is a bad thing.  (See my point?)

Another example: He constantly switches between first, second and third person.

Bad writers often believe that gimmicks such as these (sentence fragments and voice switches) make their writting good.  They don't.  Certainly, experienced writers can and do use these gimmicks to great effect.  But less experienced writers often mistakenly believe that peppering their work with these gimmicks gives their writing more weight.  It doesn't.

Bottom line: I would recommend the book because the plot is entertaining and the writing is mostly good.  Just be forwarned that you will cringe at some of the cheesy writing gimmicks.