2/5- Just Okay Archives - Page 6 of 30

The Hopes of Snakes

and Other Tales from the Urban Landscape

by Lisa Couturier

I can’t quite put my finger on why this book fell flat for me. It’s a collection of essays describing the landscape and encounters with wildlife the author had when living in New York City and the area surrounding Washington, DC. Some of the encounters are brief- just a glimpse of a coyote- others are more personal- helping a researcher find and catch snakes in a field, following crows to locate their roosting site. Interspersed with quotes that felt meaningful (and I recognized many of them) but were a bit too frequent- I would have rather heard more of the author’s own words. Also interspersed with details or asides about her personal life- including what felt like a disconnect with religion while being surrounded by religious people- but just a glimpse of this, never felt connected enough. It always loops around again to the animal the chapter is about, but sometimes in such a skipping, circling manner I didn’t feel it strongly. She describes a longing to know wild animals better, to know more details about their lives- and shares what she’s learned from reading (I was interested in the insights about coyotes. For example- I always thought they rebounded from intense “predator control” by having larger litters but this book tells me it’s also because if a dominant pair is removed from an area, all the younger coyotes are suddenly free to breed, no longer held in check by their social hierarchy). This book is full of the type of material I usually enjoy- personal encounters with wildlife and interesting facts about them- but the analogies didn’t speak to me, the descriptive language often felt too flowery, the wanderings asides left me feeling lost. I shut it at the end feeling disappointed. Maybe it’s just that this author’s writing style is not to my taste.

In case it is of interest, the animals featured in this book include mice, red-tailed hawks, crows, snakes, coyotes, peregrine falcons, canada geese, vultures, a barn owl, gorillas (in a zoo), ants, pigeons, cockroaches, toads, bald eagles, foxes and deer. I just wish I had liked it more.

Rating: 2/5

160 pages, 2005

More opinions: Page 247
anyone else?

Tags: 2/5- Just Okay, Animals Nonfiction, Current Reads, Nature

Whimsy the Talking Pony

by Sandy Duval

Cute story about Jamie, a boy on a ranch who gets a pony for his birthday. Rather like in Summer Pony, he brings home a thin, scruffy pony with overgrown hooves, even though his father urges him to pick out one of the many well-groomed and healthier horses. This is because he feels sure he heard the pony talking to him at the auction ring, urging him to buy it. It\’s long hard work to get his pony in shape so meanwhile another kid at the neighboring ranch teases him about having acquired a useless pony. Jamie is further frustrated when he can\’t coax the pony to talk again, until he\’s almost certain he dreamed it. He didn\’t- it just doesn\’t want to talk unless there\’s a real need. Well, eventually the pony\’s feet are in better condition and he can ride- so they go on secret night-time adventures. They find a herd of wild horses that the pony originally came from (with a lame explanation for why the pony can talk). The wild horses are finding it difficult to live because ranches surrounding them are fencing off the best pastures and watering places. So Jamie and his pony lead the herd to a safer place- with the help of the kid next door, who gets in on the secret, and Jamie\’s parents (who don\’t). Spoiler! I kind of liked that in the end, things aren\’t perfect for Jamie- the pony goes back to live with the wild horses. But the closing page has Jamie at the auction with his dad again to buy another pony, one that winks at him, suggesting he\’ll soon have a new equine friend.

This little book was a fun read on a rather dull day, but it\’s not a keeper for me. While the story has a lot of nice elements (including some realistic equine behavior and details on their care), the whole thing feels rather awkward and unpolished- the pacing, the dialog, even the illustrations. I\’m sorry to sound harsh, but it feels like a book written by a high school student, or by a parent for their kid\’s amusement, rather than one that went through publishing avenues. Although considering the age group (early middle grade) it\’s aimed at, I doubt young readers would notice anything about the quality.

Rating: 2/5 100 pages, 1980

Tags: 2/5- Just Okay, Animals Fiction, Current Reads, Juvenile Fic

A Small, Elderly Dragon

by Beverly Keller

Amusing little story about a kingdom with a foolish king, a smart but drab princess, and a lurking dragon on the mountain. They all get into a mess of trouble when a sorcerer is brought in to deal with the dragon (who doesn\’t want to fight knights or eat sacrificial victims). The sorcerer has soon ousted the king, banished the king\’s advisor and locked all the knights in the dungeon. It\’s up to the princess and a few stout young men to defeat the sorcerer, if they can only free the dragon! First he gets trapped under a landslide in his own cave, then he gets shrunk by the sorcerer and locked in a birdcage. It\’s funny and quirky, but events move through the scenes so fast I sometimes wondered what the heck was going on. There\’s secret identities and unspoken love interests (which I didn\’t at all see coming, so that threw me a bit at the end). I did like a lot of the wordplay, especially when characters offered other words in rapid succession when they didn\’t understand what someone said- made me chuckle. My favorite character was the grumpy dragon, however after his second entrapment he doesn\’t do much. A quick read.

Rating: 2/5 144 pages, 1984

Tags: 2/5- Just Okay, Current Reads, Fantasy / Sci Fi, Juvenile Fic

Dragon and Liberator

by Timothy Zahn

Sorry book, I skimmed most of you. The more convoluted the plot got, with suspicions abounding about who knows what about whom, who is infiltrating or conniving or scheming about what- well, I just lost interest. Kayna and Taneem stow away inside a bomb-rigged safe to get aboard the enemy spaceship; Jack and Draycos wind up in jail, then get sprung and for the bulk of the story are hiding on another ship in a gap between the hull and the inner wall- each party spying on the crew and those in charge, sowing unrest in the thin alliance their enemies hold, and attempting to sabotage the ultimate weapon. There’s lots of sneaking through air ducts, and using sophisticated tools to eavesdrop. Kayna isn’t who we thought she was (no surprise) and Jack finds out a few more obscure secrets about his past. Taneem realizes she can slide onto other people’s skin without them even being aware (the guy was asleep) which was kind of weird, but not really explored much. In the end more about the K’da background and their bond with humans came to light, which is really why I pushed through this. My main curiosity was about the ongoing development of the K’da/human relationship, and the interactions between the four main characters- but this book was much more about the tension and excitement of space battle. Not really for me. However fans of the author like how this wrapped up the series with drama and speed, so there you are.

Borrowed from the public library.

Rating: 2/5 364 pages, 2008

Tags: 2/5- Just Okay, Current Reads, Fantasy / Sci Fi, Young Adult

A Thousand Miles to Freedom

My Escape from North Korea

by Eunsun Kim

with Sebastien Falletti, translated by David Tian

A simply told memoir about a young woman whose family was starving in North Korea. Her grandparents and father died during a famine, and she literally though she would also starve in their apartment. No food in the city. With her mother and sister, she made several attempts to cross the border into China, then make a difficult journey to South Korea where she hoped to live in freedom. They had to pay enormous sums to smugglers, suffered at the hands of human traffickers in China, and when finally reaching South Korea spent months in detainment as the government interrogated everyone to ensure they weren\’t spies, then gave them lessons on assimilating into South Korean society and how to live in a capitalist system. Eunsun Kim tells how she nearly died of hunger, was forced as a child to watch public executions, and only gradually realized afterwards that she\’d been brainwashed in her homeland, that life was really different elsewhere and the regime in power oppressed the common people. She relates how the trials of attempting to leave North Korea strained her family, and how desperate she felt to reunite with her sister who initially stayed behind in China. How confusing living in a new country with a totally different system was, let alone having to learn a new language. I have nothing but admiration for someone who went through such hard times, and kept trying again even when their first attempt failed, when they barely had any energy, when they had to wait months or even a year for the next step in their journey. And yet the book left me rather unmoved. Whether the plain writing style, or the fact that it\’s not only co-authored but also translated, it just wasn\’t very engaging and lacked depth. However there\’s others on my TBR list now about the same subject: The Girl with Seven Names, Nothing to Envy, In Order to Live or Under the Same Sky.

Rating: 2/5 228 pages, 2015

Tags: 2/5- Just Okay, Bios / Memoirs, Current Reads

The Return

Animorphs #48

by K.A. Applegate

I didn\’t like this one. SPOILERS!

It starts with Rachel, Jake and the rest on a field trip tour of the White House- when the aliens bust in, chaos ensues, the President is in a helicopter trying to take off while aliens attack it, Jake tells Rachel they\’re leaving but she keeps fighting, gets mad and starts fighting Jake as tiger, in her grizzly bear morph, on the White House lawn. Snap- it\’s all a dream! but things aren\’t quite right- Rachel goes about her day feeling that everything\’s off, arguing with her friends, hearing rats in the walls, seeing red lights flash- turns out she\’s having another nightmare. Or is she? After being attacked by hordes of rats and nearly drowning in a pond she wakes up in a dungeon, locked in a small plastic cube. David-the-rat returns and threatens to force her into becoming a rat forever, just like him. Cassie appears nearby, also locked in a cube. Rachel has to choose between following David\’s demands, or loosing Cassie. Except- how does a kid trapped in a rat body acquire or build perfect locking plastic-box cages? It was really too far-fetched. There\’s other plot holes, too. Which turns out to be explained because most of it isn\’t real–

Meanwhile Rachel is reliving all her bad moments, agonizing over how much she enjoys fighting, facing the maniacal violent side of herself. Crayak shows up- the evil all-powerful counterpart to the Ellimist- and it turns out he\’s playing mind games with Rachel. He morphs her into a superhero version of herself, then back into the cage as a rat, back and forth, until she\’s going crazy. He pits her against Visser One in an arena, where they battle it out, using their morphing powers. This was kinda interesting, and kinda eye-rolling. Aliens and mind games and shape-shifting abilities in this series, and now we have superhero powers too? I just wasn\’t on board with that. Why did it have to introduce another fantastical element that hasn\’t been a part of the worldbuilding in this series at all to date? Like when they gained dinosaur morphs but then couldn\’t use them after travelling back through time. Pointless. Unless there\’s going to be super-Rachel in one of the last few books too? I have my suspicions though. It was an interesting look at Rachel\’s deepest inner fears, facing the part of her that is eager to use violence and her conflicting feelings about group leadership, how she feels used by the others sometimes, etc- but I got tired pretty quick of the repeated angst and the ridiculous fight scenes. In the end, Rachel is left in an alley facing David-the-rat, who is begging her to just kill him, he\’d rather die than go back to the island. Rachel is agonizing over what to do, and the book ends without disclosing her decision. That really irritated me too.

Rating: 2/5 148 pages, 2000

More opinions:

Tags: 2/5- Just Okay, Animals Fiction, Current Reads, Fantasy / Sci Fi, Juvenile Fic

The Weakness

Animorphs #37
by K.A. Applegate

Wow, it\’s been a long time. I didn\’t really feel like reading Animorphs again, but my other current read is a tough book- so I need breaks between chapters, and this happens to be a good alternative, in an odd way. Turns out I read half of The Weakness months and months ago, then put it down and forgot about it. Don\’t remember why. Skimmed a bit to remind myself of the storyline, but didn\’t bother to re-read entire chapters again. Jake is absent so the team decides to put Rachel in charge when a report comes in of discovering the Visser\’s secret feeding spot. They can\’t pass up the opportunity to try and get the enemy. Rachel is all for just trying to chase him down (using a new cheetah morph) but of course they fail. Also meet a new alien creature, the only good thing here being that the Visser and this new enemy the Inspector appear to despise each other, which is to the Animorphs\’ advantage. Then they decide to rush around town storming different shops and locations one after the other making it appear that they have much larger numbers than in reality, so the Visser will look bad in front of the Inspector. Causing a lot of conspicuous damage and probably hurting innocent people (not like them at all). Then to bash in on a meeting of high-up Controllers, all of them using polar bear form instead of their usual battle morphs. It goes badly. Cassie gets captured and almost forced into the Yeerk pool. The others barely save her in time- using bird of prey morphs and one cobra. They pretty much only escape because when Marco-as-cobra takes the Inspector down, the Visser and all his underlings just stand there staring, instead of grabbing the Animorphs who are exhausted and injured. All these frenetic attacks without much planning were Rachel\’s push, but she has doubts the whole time and feels terrible about putting her friends in danger and afterwards when Jake returns asks him: how do you do it? how can you stand to make those decisions, putting your friends\’ lives on the line? He flinches for a moment then closes it off and says: I just don\’t think about it. Well, I could have done without all the hectic nonsense fighting scenes, but the ending had a more serious note.

Rating: 2/5 144 pages, 1999

more opinions:
The Library Ladies
Arkham Reviews
Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

Tags: 2/5- Just Okay, Animals Fiction, Current Reads, Fantasy / Sci Fi, Juvenile Fic

A Pigeon and a Boy

by Meir Shalev

I didn\’t realize this when I first picked it up (at the Book Thing), but it\’s a love story. Two love stories actually- past and present which have an almost too tidy connection, but also confused me at first keeping straight who was who. Doesn\’t help that the narrator sometimes addresses his mother in second person, other times referring to her in third. Not just in the same chapter or paragraph, but often in the same sentence. This is also a war story, and pigeons have a key role, because several of the main characters work in pigeon lofts. Two of them start as young people, boy and girl in different cities, sending love notes to each other via the birds (even though they\’re only supposed to carry official messages). I did like the parts about the pigeons and how they are kept, the symbolism quite strong as a lot of this story is also about home. What makes a home, what holds you there, what draws you back when you\’ve been away. And a large part is also about one character (present day) having an old house remodeled to suit his tastes exactly. Some parts were interesting and others bored me a lot and then a key event occurs which seemed so implausible (plus the pigeons start talking to people- and this is not a talking animal story- maybe they were delusional?) that I really had difficulty finishing the book at all. Well, it certainly was a romantic idea, but kind of ridiculous too. I did not like the ending. Characters did things that seemed really unlike them, made no sense, and even angered me. This one\’s not staying in my collection.

Rating: 2/5 311 pages, 2007

Tags: 2/5- Just Okay, Animals Fiction, Current Reads, General Fiction

Maverick Cats

Encounters with Feral Cats

by Ellen Perry Berkeley

The author and her husband lived in a rural area of Vermont, and soon noticed cats around their property. At one time or another they fed or closely observed six different cats, and here describe the feline characters. Some only came to eat and they left again without much interaction. One brought her kittens, which disappeared within a few days. An obviously ill black cat staggered onto their driveway, laid down and died (while the author watched from inside, considering shooting the cat to end its misery but unable to bring herself to do so). Two male cats- one that hangs around for a while then goes off to make its individual living elsewhere- they often see it at some distance in a field later on- and another which starts to act pushy towards a female cat they really admire- are prominent characters. The cat that gets the most pages is a female tortoiseshell that gradually became very friendly and eventually lived inside their house. In alternate chapters the author discusses facts about feral cats. There\’s several studies on feral cat populations on individual islands mentioned, how the cats do or do not affect other animal populations. Other studies on feral cat numbers in different areas of the country, how prevalent disease is among them, how old they live, etc etc are also referenced. This book was written before trap-neuter-release was really done, so other methods of control- and questioning the need for it at all- is gone over. Reports on findings inside the stomachs of feral cats are given, indicating that they don\’t kill many songbirds- the vast majority of their prey is rodents. It\’s a nice little book, but seems to have so many unknowns stated, especially in those chapters on studies that don\’t have any consensus- because many of them were not finished, or done extensively enough, or had different results in different areas. The main conclusion I drew was that cats are definitely survivors, they don\’t really need people, they are very much individuals, and thus is all the more a mystery and pleasure when they share your home. But I would have preferred more detail about the cats the author personally knew, then reading all the people she quoted. Maybe this is one of the first books to consolidate research on feral cats, but if so it\’s done rather casually is my opinion.

Rating: 2/5 142 pages, 1982

Tags: 2/5- Just Okay, Animals Nonfiction, Current Reads

Grow More With Less

Sustainable Gardening Methods
by Vincent A. Simeone

This book looks nice, but was a disappointment for me. It has thick, glossy paper and clear photographs, but they\’re often not identified so you might not know which of the plants in the text is pictured. As the material seems aimed at beginning gardeners, this felt lacking. I do appreciate the message, to use gardening methods that are environmentally friendly and cost effective: saving water, selecting plants that require less care, encouraging wildlife etc. However there wasn\’t much new material in here for me. It wasn\’t interesting until page 90 where I was looking forward to the chapters about integrated pest management and attracting wildlife, but even that felt bland. I dutifully finished the book hoping to glean something, and noticed after a while that a lot of the text is repetitive, there are quite a few typos, and the information never gets deep enough to actually be useful. For example, the charts never tell you much more than the text itself did. One section in the book says you should survey insect pests on your plants regularly and lists things to gather for the task, but then doesn\’t tell you how to use the items. Also, the chapter intros have a printed background of burlap texture, which makes the text annoyingly hard to read (might have worked if the font was bold for those pages). It also tends to veer slightly off-topic sometimes, into other ways you can make your home and landscape more \’green\’. Not just about gardening, and I didn\’t learn a bunch of new ways to recycle and save in the garden like I\’d hoped. So I can\’t recommend it, except to absolute beginners who want a nice general introduction into organic, sustainable gardening.

Rating: 2/5 192 pages, 2013

Tags: 2/5- Just Okay, Current Reads, Gardening / Food

Tag: 2/5- Just Okay

and Other Tales from the Urban Landscape

RATINGS / SUBJECTS: