astrangerhere's Reviews (1.31k)

I've read alot of Bryson. But now I'm not sure how apt I am to read more. He spent the entire book emphasizing and building up stereotypes. He was as brutal to my home state as he was to New England, but it bothered me immensely to hear him refer to entire swaths of the country as one collective (and beneath him) unit. Of course there is the normal racist, stupid, poor, just as soon kill you as look at you South and the ultra violent, sheister northerners. People of any religion do not escape his agnostic ire either.

This is discomfitting to me to suddenly find myself so disgusted with an author I had previously liked.

Fantastic vision of a new kind of apocalypse. Not for the kiddies, but a great visual read.

I am sure I didnt like this book as much as I was supposed to. It just did not move me like all the reviewers I saw before me. Perhaps it was because I never found Nicola Tesla or his chambermaid to be particularly sympathetic characters. The story was well-written, and I can't complain about the tightness of the plot, but I just didn't care for the story.

Fantastic. Sometimes a book has such depth and emotion that it can be hard to read. This was one of thos books. I am a better person for having read it.

Read over the course of a Sunday afternoon/evening. I find myself enjoying Marsh's Alleyn more and more. He has the wit of Poirot without the oddities. Nice way to spend a fall afternoon.

While I had expected this book to be a little _more_ about New York, I still enjoyed the narrative thoroughly. It felt rather like a Winter's Tale on a much smaller scale. Actually, as I type, it occurs to me just how much like a Winters Tale it was... point to ponder.

I will always have a soft spot for PD James' Dalgleish, and this has not changed with this book. I felt a greater sense of closure with this novel than many of the others. I suspect the aging James is leaving herself plenty of room to not write another Dalgleish novel.

I'm still not sure what I think of this one.

"There's a Good Book about goodness and how to be good and so forth, but there's no Evil Book about evil and how to be bad. The Devil has no prophets to write his Ten Commandments and no team of authors to write his biography."