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gregory_glover's reviews
314 reviews

Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land by Toni Jensen

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challenging dark emotional funny hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

It builds slowly.  Maybe I should say the weave of the various strands of the narrative slowly tightens into a beautiful tapestry.  I need to sit with it a while before offering a full review, but it made me think the whole journey through.  I would love to discuss this with some other readers at some point to hear what others caught and think of this way of writing memoir.
Resurrection Walk by Michael Connelly

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adventurous hopeful mysterious fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

Faithful and Virtuous Night by Louise Glück

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challenging emotional inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

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challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

The language is beautiful.  The run-on sentences piling up, give a real sense of the tragedy spinning out of control.    I thought the inhuman treatment of people caught in impossible circumstances was very convincing.  It is contemporary dystopia on a par with the classics, but with a realism that is almost too much.  I hated the ending, but do understand how it got there.  A very disturbing book.
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Phantoms by Joanna Grisham

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adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? N/A
  • Strong character development? N/A
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

5.0

Brilliant, beautiful, challenging, joyful and poignant poems about Southern life, family, religion, and loss.
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

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dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

On a par with Dickens.  It will become an annual read along with a Christmas Carol.  Beautiful.  Sad.  Beautiful.
Kantika by Elizabeth Graver

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emotional funny inspiring reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I loved the cultural aspects and the character building.  The story takes off when Luna enters the narrative and “sings.”  Beautifully written.  I prefer a little more action and stronger emphasis on plot, but the story is a good one and the final chapters do reach a satisfying climax.  Well done.  Very much worth the time and effort.  The use of French, Spanish, etc., were masterful and the reader didn’t miss a beat.  Virtuoso performance.  It has been a while since I read Chaim Potok, but the cultural milieu put me very much in mind of his writing.
Proofs and Theories by Louise Glück

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challenging emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

5.0

Wow!  I wish I had started reading Glück’s work decades ago.  I’m glad to have found her poems now.  This set of essays is among the best I’ve ever read on the work of writing.  It is well worth the effort.  Her prose is as distilled as any poetry.  Every sentence must be savored.
Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

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emotional reflective relaxing sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? N/A
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.25

An Interior and Relational Drama 

I thought the story well done; very simply told. I did wish for greater depth and liveliness of plot, but what is here is very good. The confinement of the story to the cafe mostly worked, but I found myself chafing a bit at the constraints and hoping that the rules would change or that there would be some clever breaking of the rules. The worst part was the difference between the audio and the published novel. Some of it may have been the correction of errors (or simply errors in the audio), but some of it also clearly related to matters of translation and the differences between American and British English.
Poems to See by: A Comic Artist Interprets Great Poetry by Julian Peters

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dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.75

Beautiful!  The ONLY caveat I have is that I would prefer to have the full poem printed as nearly as possible to the way it was originally published, before seeing the poem presented alongside the interpretive art.  But that is trifling.  This is an incredibly beautiful and moving presentation of deservedly famous poems.  Well done!