Helpful Score: 5
Months - well, almost a year later - and I still am thinking periodically about this book. It deserves a re-read, almost demands it, in order to watch the story unfold again with more knowing eyes to catch the small details that mean so much more now... Love the time twists, the whole concept, just a really neat book.
Helpful Score: 4
I am giving up on this book after about 100 pages. Even 100 pages in, I am still trying to figure out who is who. Main new characters are still being introduced. The primary character is referred to by multiple names (a given name, full family name, nickname) making it more confusing. The writing is also very verbose and unnecessarily ornate. Here is a one sentence example..."Vienna was, and had long been, as the Haze described it, a community of contrasts in which the privations and squalor of the proletarian mass contradicted the splendors of an affluent minority."
I picked up this book based on a recommendation and because the "blurb" was interesting. Perhaps, it still might have been if I had kept going. I don't like to give up on a book, but when I find myself not reading for a few days, it's an indication that the book is not for me. So, unfortunately an abandoned book.
I picked up this book based on a recommendation and because the "blurb" was interesting. Perhaps, it still might have been if I had kept going. I don't like to give up on a book, but when I find myself not reading for a few days, it's an indication that the book is not for me. So, unfortunately an abandoned book.
Helpful Score: 2
I put this book on my wish list after reading a recommendation connected to a book search on time travel. Pretty much I'll read anything which revolves around time travel. But this book disappointed me.
The time was the perfect era for what I like: late 1800s, and in a city which sounds like a place to put on the bucket list but failed to keep my attention.
I could have lived without Freud in this book at all. It just didn't add the dimension to the book that I believe the authors thinks it does. The characters all had names, and nicknames and there were so many characters it was easy to get confused.
All in all, good bones for a book but fell short for me.
The time was the perfect era for what I like: late 1800s, and in a city which sounds like a place to put on the bucket list but failed to keep my attention.
I could have lived without Freud in this book at all. It just didn't add the dimension to the book that I believe the authors thinks it does. The characters all had names, and nicknames and there were so many characters it was easy to get confused.
All in all, good bones for a book but fell short for me.
Helpful Score: 1
Fun to read just on its originality--time travel, plus some...I enjoyed reading it very much. The story and all the well-written major characters were great. I could visualize each and every one of them.
Helpful Score: 1
Is this book interesting or irritating? A question I asked myself repeatedly as I read it.
Irritating won. The ending is particularly lame. There are too many instances and areas when our hero Wheeler is judged to be extraordinary. It got to be a bit tiresome.
Irritating won. The ending is particularly lame. There are too many instances and areas when our hero Wheeler is judged to be extraordinary. It got to be a bit tiresome.
Helpful Score: 1
I had high hopes for this first novel, based on Pat Conroy's comment on back cover: " Selden Edward's THE LITTLE BOOK is a wonderful novel and I think it has a chance to become a famous one. I've never read a novel like it. And I felt like my life was changing forever as I savored its many delights and mysteries."
I seldom give up on a book, ever thinking of Nancy Pearl's advice to stop reading after 50 pages if the book hasn't grabbed you by then. But it was such an EFFORT to read this one, that I finally gave up after 145 pages. Life is just too short to read something that is 'work'.
I seldom give up on a book, ever thinking of Nancy Pearl's advice to stop reading after 50 pages if the book hasn't grabbed you by then. But it was such an EFFORT to read this one, that I finally gave up after 145 pages. Life is just too short to read something that is 'work'.
Helpful Score: 1
I really liked it, as did my mother: started off kind of slow, but "picked" up and I couldn't put it down.. ;)
Just couldn't get into it although I'm sure its a cute story.....
Fantastic! I loved it!
