The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro De' Medici
Book
"Nothing in sixteenth-century history is more astonishing than the career of Alessandro de' Medici."...
Mark @ Carstairs Considers (2316 KP) rated Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies in Books
Aug 15, 2024
The premise of this one sounded fun, and I was intrigued when I heard that there are footnotes in the book. Sadly, the footnotes didn’t add anything; in fact, they came across as self-indulgent at times and lazy at others, like when the author put character descriptions in them. And I’ll call out the foul language, which was especially excessive at the beginning. (See your footnote complaining about calling out foul language didn’t work.) The characters were shallow, and some of their relationships and issues seems like issues that could have been resolved quickly. Eleanor herself doesn’t seem to fit her backstory. Yes, the characters grew, but it wasn’t quite enough for me. The pacing in the book was off as well, although there were some good twists. I did enjoy the virtual trip to Italy. In the end, this book wasn’t nearly as clever as it thought it was, so the result wasn’t as entertaining as I hoped it would be.
Dancing Bees: Karl Von Frisch and the Discovery of the Honeybee Language
Book
We think of bees as being among the busiest workers in the garden, admiring them for their...
Your Keys, Our Home
Michael Campbell and Debbie Campbell
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If you’ve ever dreamed of casting off your worldly possessions and traveling to your heart’s...
Lyndsey Gollogly (2893 KP) rated The Redeemed ( Jenny Cooper 3) in Books
Apr 2, 2023
Book
The Redeemed (Jenny Cooper 3)
By M.R. Hall ( Matthew Hall)
⭐️⭐️⭐️
A man's body is discovered in a church yard, the sign of the cross carved into his abdomen. Later he is found to be Alan Jacobs, a troubled psychiatric nurse. It seems to Jenny Cooper, Severn Vale District Coroner, this is likely to be an open and shut suicide case, but something tells her to probe a little deeper ...Then an enigmatic young priest, Father Lucas Starr, entreats Jenny to hold an inquest into the death of reformed porn actress, Eva Donaldson. Jenny's investigations will lead her to a powerful new religious group The Mission Church of God; and when it later emerges that Jacobs was also a member of the church, Jenny realises that more could link the deaths of these victims than she could have realised. Meanwhile Jenny must finally confront the demons of her past; and as her private life threatens to shatter, faces intense pressure from all angles to cease her investigations. But to Jenny Cooper, whose whole life has been governed by deception, the truth is everything..
I really like this series I really do but this one while it was good and I enjoyed it to a point it was just lacking a little. Seemed very rushed at the end and I’m not quite sure that the ending with Craven was needed. Maybe it’s just me? Overall I like the writing style and detail in his books I just wanted more from this. Still a decent read.
The Letters of T. S. Eliot: Volume 3: 1926-1927
Valerie Eliot, T.S. Eliot and John Haffenden
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In the period covered by this richly detailed collection, which brings the poet to the age of forty,...
True Believer: Stalin's Last American Spy
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"Kati Marton's True Believer is a true story of intrigue, treachery, murder, torture, fascism, and...
The Girl with Seven Names: Escape from North Korea
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An extraordinary insight into life under one of the world's most ruthless...
The Gift: The Story of an Ordinary Women's Extraordinary Power
8.0
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Book
The extraordinary life story of psychic and clairvoyant, Mia Dolan, the new Betty Shine. Contents *...
Mia Dolan Fortean Ghosts psychic medium clairvoyant
James Koppert (2698 KP) rated Rattlesnake (2019) in Movies
Nov 15, 2019
So the concept is great, any artform which makes you think what would I do and helps you empathise with the characters is usually on to s winner but that's where it starts to be let down. It's right here where some amazing philosophical debates could start to begin. Could you find someone evil and feel ok about killing them when there is an opportunity that this person could change in the future and positively impact others? Is it right you should take the life of another when fatalists and people of religion may say you are going against god's plan. Or is it ok to take the life of someone seriously ill when there may be opportunity of miraculous recovery you are taking away. All these a brilliant film would make but it doesn't explore or question the situation at all, there is only acceptense. It's a shame really, opportunity lost.