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sarahetc's Reviews (1.17k)
This is a nice little piece of pop-hagiography. George Washington was indeed an extraordinary man and this book tells about some of the more interesting, strange, and providential encounters of his life as a solider and eventually as commander of the revolutionary force, then president. It's historical, but not history. And once certainly cannot ignore the constant demand to become George Washington.
Beck's books are nice, so far as they go. Which is to say, they are just perfect for an audience looking for guidance and answers from cable television, satellite radio, and popular novels. I cannot fault him or them. That I simply have a broader, deeper education does not make me different. It simply makes me somewhat more critical of the form, if not the message.
Beck's books are nice, so far as they go. Which is to say, they are just perfect for an audience looking for guidance and answers from cable television, satellite radio, and popular novels. I cannot fault him or them. That I simply have a broader, deeper education does not make me different. It simply makes me somewhat more critical of the form, if not the message.
Well, I managed to stretch it out just over a week. The last of the book was very tense in that I knew there couldn't be much more, but I wanted there to be so very much more.
I had never read any Waugh and I didn't precisely have any expectations when I started the book. I had bought it because it was on dollar sale and I knew it was a "classic." I started reading and thought, "This is like some serious Wodehouse." And the more I read, the more I fell in love with the words and the characters and the book as a whole.
It really is something that has to be experienced. Aside from the amazing language and structure, it's one of those rare books that induces all sorts of feelings simultaneously. There's a constant thrum of nostalgia and, page by page, you are treated to anxiety, gaiety, melancholy, yearning, scorn, hilarity and everything else. Through it all, the nostalgia never wanes, even when the melancholy peaks hard, and it does.
I am so glad to have read this.
I had never read any Waugh and I didn't precisely have any expectations when I started the book. I had bought it because it was on dollar sale and I knew it was a "classic." I started reading and thought, "This is like some serious Wodehouse." And the more I read, the more I fell in love with the words and the characters and the book as a whole.
It really is something that has to be experienced. Aside from the amazing language and structure, it's one of those rare books that induces all sorts of feelings simultaneously. There's a constant thrum of nostalgia and, page by page, you are treated to anxiety, gaiety, melancholy, yearning, scorn, hilarity and everything else. Through it all, the nostalgia never wanes, even when the melancholy peaks hard, and it does.
I am so glad to have read this.
At first it was exciting. Then it was tedious. Then it was jingoistic. Then it was really tedious. Then it was massively tedious. Then Jesus turned up and it got really really good and now I have to read the rest of the series. I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE JOEL C ROSENBERG!!
Perhaps my expectations were too high, but I am disappointed that a book about zombies, politics and technoblogging culture was so thoroughly meh. The book ends, ostensibly, on a cliffhanger after a series of dramatic, though predictable, turns and I find that I do not care at all about what happens next. Not only that, but looking back, I don't much care about the dramatic, though predictable, turns. I want to like Grant, since I assume she's a fellow Firefly fan and her character Shaun is clearly a younger stand-in for Malcolm Reynolds. But just no. This is a book I could have written in my ficcing days if, like her, I were alone all the time with cats and a bunch of virology textbooks and a constant, low-level thrum of "take this set of tropes and bring it back to Earth in the somewhat current." Oh well. I gave it a shot!
This is the first book in a long time I don't feel bad about giving up on. I got about 1/3 of the way through and at that point it was clear that I wasn't going to be able to like it. I enjoyed our book club discussion and am happy to now know what the climax is and some of the details I was curious about. In the end, the amazon completely even distribution of stars is pretty apt. I'm just on the one-star end.
