Not of local interest.
593475
Intended for French consumption largelyadvertising did not indicate thatbut sincere in it's feelings and so the rating of one star.
4661305
pleasant reading with a slice of life from multiple charActers in a small town. No sense of story line or reason for the book. .No climax. A description of a small town and life over several months time
2877931
Meh.  Neither here nor there.  For the money, I guess I'll use something else next time.
1024267
This book was mostly a personal / family memoir, not a professional history of Slovakia.  It is predominantly focused on the second half of the 20th century which made it of little use to me, as my interest is in ancestors who left in the late 19th century.  Also, this book is set in Bratislava and, since our ancestors did not live there, that was another missed connection.  So overall, I got little out of this book.  It's probably fine for what it is, but I wish I had known before I bought it how narrow and irrelevant it was going to be.
1265804
This is one of those books that has been suggested to me and it sits on the shelf.  It doesn't interest me!  I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in this.
3032738
There wasn't much driving interest to the somewhat lazy plot.
Sorry.....have to be truthful here. Otherwise it was a pleasant story.
1800844
Sorry, I couldn't get into it.  May be interesting to others, but with what is happening in the world today it just didn't appeal to me.
3155724
I didn't really get that interested in this book, felt the story really did not have any purpose. It seemed to be someone was killing just because the person annoyed them and you never found out who it was that was doing the killing. Found it too be a boring, slow moving story but the characters and their pets were likable.
4643232
it's ok not interesting. Me and my daughter did not lik it. It should be more attractive and pic should be more impressive
598210
This book is not really very interesting. Did not care for it at all. Didn't really have much of a plot.
4115901
A Western??  nothing to write home about.  Not your John Wayne or Clint Eastwood westerns.  If it wasn't for watching the thoroughbreds race, it would be boring.
4555968
Okay, nothing amazing.  Most of the interest lies in its age, not in its sage.
2860980
Local histories walk a very fine line - they have to be location specific, but not parochial; they can't focus on inside jokes or assume that their readers know anything about the area that their writing about, even if the readers have lived their all of their lives.  In Musical Service, The Life and Times of the Franklin Silver Coronet Band, Peter Greene shows in that he understands the concept of these dual natures.

As a resident of the area, I can tell you that local history is a broken record and has been for years (currently espoused by local historian Neil McElwee)- the robber barons were super, the workers were all happy, the drunks were all loveable, there were no Bolsheviks, anarchists or communist, even Pithole, the wickedest town in the East has been reduced to a one note joke - no whores or opium addicts here; it's a friendly sort of wicked.

Greene dodges the whitewash by focusing on the lives of these musicians - these aren't famous people, they're workers in the community.  The same people who you see in your schools, at the mall, or at gym.  He makes the point that the band, like the small town of Franklin, is made up of the individual, idiosyncratic, members.  While he could have focused just on the band leaders, he also brings in the members of the Clown Band - an off shoot made of members who ". . . were expected to dress silly, act silly, and on more than one occasion, drink until they were silly" (314).  Greene also avoids the pitfall of delving too far into national events.  I don't care about national history it's all too broad, the only history is local history, but Greene does his topic right with his assiduous research, for example tying in the upheaval of the 60s and 70s with how it was felt in a small town:

There's no question that at the age of 115 the band's concerts were a very old fashioned sort of activity, but they could still raise a small controversy or two.  A continuing concern in the city had been "hippies" hanging out in the parks and just sitting on the grass.  That summer, this item ran on the News Herald:

Two city patrolmen reported being stopped Thursday at 9 p.m. by two "hippies" who complained about the old people sitting on the grass in the city park.

Police said two "hippies" stopped them and wanted to know why old people could sit on the grass in the park and they couldn't.

Police said they stated they were run out of the West Park for doing the same thing, just having their own concert.

Apparently the young people referred to the concert last night by the Silver Coronet band (315).

In this short section, Greene shows off the strengths of the book - clear writing, diligent research and an appeal not just to small town life but, as he does in his other books, Venango Tales and Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, how the small town life digests and reflects the tumultuous world that rages outside its (forcibly created) peaceful faade.

A final encouraging note is that Greene is an educator and, at least, 18 years ago, when I was his student, he teaches his students the same skills in writing.  Our class had an assignment to research and write about a time period in our small town of Franklin.  My project partner was my best friend, Mark McClusky.  Today, McClusky is an editor at Wired and I make my living writing and teaching others to write.  The guy must be doing something right.
2188678
Not nearly as exciting nor interesting as Game Change. I put the book away after reading approximately half the stories.
4523555
I would not recommend this book because it is just ordinary, nothing exciting in the pages to give some decorating suggestions. Probably some from New Orleans would like it because that is really where the rooms mentioned in book are.
3369729
"Shakespeare's Christmas" is not the strongest entry into the Lily Bard series. The main problem is that the story is not set in Shakespeare, AR among all of the quirky, small town characters we have come to know & love. Lily travels back to her hometown of Bartley, AR, so we have a new cast of characters to deal with. They just aren't as charming or interesting. Couple the Bartley setting with a so-so mystery, and the result is boring. I recommend this book only to those who are already fans of Charlaine Harris.
380483
Mildly interesting but not worth the effort for a non Chicagoan.