Absolutely wonderful. Her enthusiasm is infectious and makes you wish you could time-travel to France in the 1950s just to visit the markets in Paris and piers in Marseilles and enjoy the small-town life on the Mediterranean before it got overrun with tourists.

Yet another Trollope! Not as addictive as others I've read in the Barsetshre series, but still entertaining.

This was a fun read, but by the end of it Bourdain's protestations of non-excellence began to sound like false modesty.

I gave this up after 30 pages or so. It's hard to describe the writing style, but it didn't really agree with me.

Reading 'My Dungeon Shook': beautiful. "And if the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it."

Forster is one of the few authors I re-read; his prose is so dense and thought-provoking that each re-read is almost a completely new experience that reflects more on my state of mind than on the author. When I first read A Room with a View I thought it was nearly perfect; after a second reading, I'm not so sure. I wonder about some of the characterizations -- are the flashes of insight by Cecil toward the end consistent with his charcter? I was also surprised at Mr. Beebe spurning Lucy at the end. George is a bit of a non-figure, which I found disappointing this time around; I would love to read more about him. Lucy's great, though, as is Charlotte -- I think her probable transformation is brilliant.

Great ending. I had expected the political events to be more prominent in the book, but most of the story centered upon the Major wandering around the rundown Majestic hotel. Still liked it very much, though, and expect it to stay with me for a while.

Reading this book is like spending time with distant relatives who, though unconventional and eccentric, are soothing to be with.

Thought the movie was strangely light on plot, so I wanted to find out what else happened in the book.

Enjoyable so far, but I'm having trouble shaking myself out of my 19th and early 20th-century lit reveries and back into contemporary fiction.

The last several stories in this collection are the Ashenden stories about a WWI British spy based on Maugham's own experiences. They were entertaining as always, but I somehow felt that Maugham was still experimenting a bit with structure and style -- they just didn't seem completely polished to me. But then Maugham wrote these in his 50s having started publishing in his 20s, so I'm sure he would disagree.

All done. I teared up a bit at the end and started to tell my husband about it, but he said, "No, don't! I'm going to read it next!"

Almost finished with this. The last 50 pages dragged a bit (the only slow spot so far) with the Louisiana reconstruction issues, but Sherman just captured Atlanta, so I'm eager to press on. Hard to believe that even in the summer of 1864 the Union victory looked doubtful.

One of the many interesting aspects of this book is McPherson's analysis that the evolution of military weapons (particularly the development of rifles to replace muskets) and the delay in a corresponding evolution of battlefield tactics were significantly responsible for the huge number of casualties in Civil War battles. The beginning of the war was fought using Napoleonic techniques (since that's what the officers were taught in school) while the end of the war was much closer in fighting style to that of World War I.

This was a great book to read on vacation. Long (but not too long) and enough of a page-turner to keep me occupied on the beach. Based on my mother-in-law also liking it, I think it's a good book for anyone who wants to start reading more 19th century fiction.

Started this a few days ago. I gotta say, politics in the 1850s makes today's debates look comatose by comparison! And the rhetoric from the pro-slavery states, while expected, is still shocking to read.

So the ending of "The Author of Beltraffio" was not as shocking as I had hoped. Still, not bad, though not as good as the two previous stories in this volume.

Both "Lady Barberina" and "Pandora" were great. I just started the last story, "The Author of Beltraffio" and it's so good that I can't help reading a little of it during work.

One of my lifetime goals is to read all five volumes of James' stories. I'm not going to hit that any time soon, though I've made a good dent in the first and second volumes. Last night I started "Lady Barberina" and was reminded that it always takes me ten or twenty pages to get comfortable with James' style.