Barb Martin > Recent Status Updates

I've finished 11 chapters, nearly 100 pages of John Grisham's latest drivel.

I DON'T CARE!

He's trying to do too much. He has an indictment of for-profit law schools and student loans, which should be sufficient for a book. However, he also is throwing in an immigration story. Plus, there's a suicide.

Sounds like plenty to keep things exciting, but the book is soooo boring. Why am I reading this?

I wanted to really like this book. "The Orphan's Tale" draws its inspiration from real stories of Jews who hid from the Nazis in traveling circuses and from stories about a train of Jewish babies destined for the concentration camps.

Unfortunately, some of the overly dramatic dialog and events in the story meant it fell short of being really good. It was fine.

Given the 2016 presidential campaign and its overtly racist overtones, reading this book can be difficult. Although "Small Great Things" has a compelling storyline, the racist language sickens me. Knowing that the attitudes and incidents depicted in the novel are true to life only serve to stir the anger I feel at the injustice and inequality in our society.

I just finished Spirit Dance and gave it 3 stars.

Really didn't need the slur against gays. To refer to something you find lame as "so gay" is so wrong and so inappropriate. I considered just slamming the book closed and giving it an awful review. I still might. Perpetuating hatred is not my idea of a sophisticated author.

Carl Hiaasen really didn't need to use the word "retard." It's offensive, particularly the way it's used, and added absolutely nothing to the mix except to upset readers who object to offending terms such as this. He should know that words have power, and this was a poor use of that power.

Turns out this book isn't as good as I had hoped. Stella Duffy's use of vulgar language seems aimed at disrupting sentence flow and shocking the reader rather than as believable dialog. Her characters are not drawn well.