octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

I always think that there's a lot this book slips over. We really don't see much of Anne's university life - Anne of the Island is far more concerned with her friendship with her flatmates and her developing romance with Gilbert Blythe. And it's all very enjoyable, as the Anne books tend to be, but I think it's an improvement upon the previous in the series. Basically because Anne, here, is surrounded by a variety of different characters. Most of them are utterly sympathetic, but still - she needs that variety of personality to sort of leaven all of her over-imaginative nature. In a sense it's a shame that so much of the book is spent away from Green Gables, as Marilla - who has always been the character who best sets Anne off - is absent from most of the story. On the other hand, it means that the awful Davy is also barely present, which after Anne of Avonlea is nothing but relief. If nothing else, though, the romance with Gilbert is done very well. Granted, the execution of that last bit is full of melodrama, but it's Montgomery writing it and not Anne, if that makes sense, so it has just enough restraint to be effective.

After the really not very good trilogy about Han Solo, I was not holding out great hope for this, but it's much better. Probably because Smith treats Lando as a hero who relies primarily on his brains rather than his brawn - that is, he doesn't like to rely on guns and avoids fights if he can, which means we end up with a story that isn't just a vehicle for ridiculous scenes such as appeared in the Solo series. (There are only so many explosions and chase scenes a girl can take.) So in comparison, this was actually enjoyable. It's not perfect - Smith has taken Lando's habit of calling other people "You old [whatever]" and beaten it into the fucking ground, for example, but the exploration of the pyramid and the changing geometries and scales of Sharu architecture was pretty interesting. I also liked the tentacular droid companion.

I read and reviewed each of the two books collected here separately, so this is basically just for my own records. The rating is an average of the ratings I gave the individual books, rounded up because Goodreads doesn't do half stars. Green Gables earned four stars from me, while Avonlea earned three. While I like Anne a lot, she's rather over-dramatic, with a tendency to purple prose, and needs to be surrounded by more practical types who make her shine by contrast. Marilla is a particularly effective foil, but Avonlea seems to me to be slightly unbalanced, with too many Anne-like characters for that contrast to work as effectively. It also has the execrable Davy, a truly horrible little boy who Montgomery (and Anne!) seem to have an inexplicable fondness for. Personally, I think he needed to be thrown down a well.

I read and reviewed each of the three books collected here separately, so this is basically just for my own records. The rating is an average of the three individual ratings - Green Gables and Island both earned four stars from me, while Avonlea only earned three.

Looking back over the trilogy, these are the Anne books I really remember from my childhood, when I read them quite a lot. I know there are more books in the series, and I read them too at some stage (at least most of them) but they never quite stuck in my mind the same way. These first three are generally charming - extremely goodnatured, and with an enjoyable cast of supporting characters. Really that supporting cast is quite large, and it's to Montgomery's credit that they don't blur together. The whole thing really does feel like the portrait of a genuine community, rather than a thinly painted backdrop tacked up behind the protagonist, and that's something I've always appreciated.

Absolutely a popcorn read, which is why I enjoyed it. I read this on Boxing Day, sluggish like a crocodile that's just swallowed a wildebeest, which is pretty much the effect that Christmas dinner generally has on me. So you can see I was not up to much, and this is the kind of brainless entertainment that's really appealing today. Smith continues to do for Lando Calrissian what Daley consistently failed to do for Han Solo, which is to provide a fun, character-building prequel story. It's not subtle at all and minor elements are overplayed - at one point I briefly wondered if Smith was aware of this tendency, as he has a droid complain to Lando that his quip wasn't funny the first hundred times he said it and hasn't improved on the hundred and first, but honestly I think that's probably a little too much narrative awareness for this.

It's slight, but it's fun. That's all I ask for and more than I expected, honestly. Roll on the next in the series.

This is just fascinating. The twentieth century, in particular, had a lot of people willing to follow monstrous dictators without question, and there's apparently a branch of psychology that's interested in what makes individuals so easily swayed by authoritarians. The author, a psychologist involved for decades in experiments with authoritarian followers, discusses them and their characteristics here. What makes this particularly credible is that he goes into the details of each experiment, and while I know very little about psychology the results are both convincing and, frankly, chilling. They also explain a lot of the things happening in politics today, where insular in-groups are completely unswayed by factual evidence, because they prioritise obedience and social cohesion above all else. Also, I have to say that this is particularly well-written. My own background is in science communication, and if all scientists could communicate as clearly and effectively as Altemeyer no-one would need me! His prose is clear and informal and chatty, and it was a pleasure to read.

Seriously, this book is fascinating. And it's free, so go to his website and get a copy. You won't be sorry.

For this truly enormous compilation, Attallah interviewed close to 300 women, on subjects as varied as feminism, sexuality, creativity, motherhood, professional life, and so on. As such, it well and truly puts women's experiences at centre stage. It's quite interesting, but despite the variety of opinions on every subject, the fact that it's getting up to 1200 pages can make it seem rather repetitive at times. There's a good range of subjects, though, if you look at the women through their professional achievements - Attallah has gathered together a number of educators, artists, scientists, businesswomen, politicians, and so forth. It is much less diverse in other ways, however. The vast majority of women included here are from the UK or the US. There's a small handful from Europe and the Middle East, but other Asian women, South American women, and African women are vanishingly rare, which is a shame.

It is also very definitely a product of its time. Published in 1987, there is a notable focus on, for instance, what the surveyed women think of Margaret Thatcher. Whether they liked her, loathed her, or were generally indifferent, she was the public example of an influential woman of the day. Notable also is the awareness of AIDS that is running through the book, especially when it touches on sexuality. As such, it comes across more of an enormous snapshot of a time and a (rather limited) space more than anything else. And because it's so giant it's taken me literally months to read...

This was riveting. I knew barely anything about the integration process at Little Rock Central High School - it's the history of another time and another country - apart from, of course, the handful of really famous photographs that resulted from it. So when I came across this book on a list of recommended nonfiction, I thought it would be an enlightening read, and it was. What struck me, more than anything - more than the sheer viciousness of the white response to black kids getting an education, which was sadly not much of a surprise, for all the horror of it - was just how long the entire process was. I had this nebulous sort of idea that when the ruling came down, troops were sent in immediately and it was all over fairly quickly. Readers, it was not. It was, instead, a long miserable battle that went on for years and inflicted enormous trauma on the protagonists. It's very clear from the author's story that she was profoundly affected, as was her entire family.

And while this was an excellent and thought-provoking read, I am a little sorry not to have had the perspective of that family included here. Walls' parents, for instance, must have been absolutely terrified for their daughter, and while their continued refusal to burden their adolescent child with their own struggles was clearly born out of a desire to protect her, that refusal seems to have extended well into adulthood, as even decades later their half of the story is not really here. Some of it can be seen through gaps and empathy, but even so it is I think something which might have made a very strong memoir even stronger.

I hesitated over whether to give this two or three stars, and the truth is there was a lot I liked about it. Particularly, I liked the giant space-faring aliens, which hit that sense-of-wonder button pretty well. But ultimately, this wasn't quite as good as the previous two volumes. Primarily this is to do with the antagonist, Gepta. He's never been particularly convincing as a villain, but this time he's firmly stuck at cartoon levels of evil and it's a bit hard not to just roll my eyes at him. Villains don't need to be layered to be effective, though it does help, but they do have to be more than caricature. This lack of subtlety really does stand out, but it doesn't stand alone, and I say that in the full awareness that this is not a subtle series. It's meant to be a fun action romp, but Smith is particularly heavy-handed here in that a number of his decent characters supposedly Learn Lessons about Life and it is all so very lumpen. Not to mention that pretty dreadful Deus ex Machina ending...

I read and reviewed each of the three volumes collected here separately, so this is basically just for my own records. The collection rating is an average of that given to the individual books - both Mindharp and Flamewind earned three stars from me, while Starcave only earned two - it had a pretty terrible ending and an increasingly silly antagonist, and the giant likeable space-dwelling aliens didn't make up for either.

Look, these books aren't rocket science. There's not a lot to them and they're absolutely popcorn reads, but they're still entertaining enough if you want something fun and undemanding, and they serve to round out Lando's character a little more. They are too, it must be said, light years ahead of Brian Daley's Han Solo trilogy, so if you only get the chance to read one of these introductory series, do yourself a favour and pick Smith's.