I've always used the goodreads star rating:5=it was amazing4=really liked it3=liked it 2=it was okay1=did not like Which means that I ruin the scale for all the books I review, because most people seem to use the following scale:5=liked it4=it was okay3=it was boring and/or poorly written2=it had huge flaws, and was barely readable.1=I don't like the author/disagree with the author's opinion on a politicized subjectI sometimes feel guilty about all my average "liked it" star ratings in a world o...

Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/4.5 Stars “In everyone’s life there are people who stay and people who go and people who are taken away against their will.” This is the story of three siblings: Rosemary (who stayed), Lowell (who went), and Fern (who was taken away). The only reason I even gave this book a chance was because some of my Goodreads friends were reading it and giving it many stars. I mean, the other book I recognized as being written by the auth...

Further proof that the 2014 Man Booker Prize was an absolute farce. I was enjoying this novel until it went all Jane Goodall. I applaud its use of an unconventional narrative structure and Fowler's humourous prose but the plot just bored me. Like a sandwich from Quiznos, I had to really force myself to finish it. It would be fine without all the monkey business.

I just settled a debate with myself. If you don’t know the premise of this book already, I decided not to be the one to tell you. As it happened, I did read this with foreknowledge and suspect I would have enjoyed it more without knowing the twist. Fowler gets to it soon enough. And if your jaw doesn’t drop, expect, at a minimum, to crack a smile.Sans spoilers, I can still set the stage. Rosemary Cooke is a university student in California and in most ways fairly typical. She deviates most notab...

A dysfunctional family story used to consider primates in research. It falls somewhere between a soft agitated oo oo and an outraged shriek over animal rights.The first 100 or so pages reminded me of a former co-worker. He had long, loud personal telephone calls in a shared workspace. They were awkward and convoluted because he avoided personal pronouns as well as names using “this person” and “that person.” When he later made his big reveal, it didn’t get much reaction. Just polite comments abo...

Okay. So if I was to give Karen Joy Fowler advice on how to write a great novel, I'd tell her to come with an engaging, intelligent and witty narrator and have her tell a captivating, moving and timely story and do it in a compelling and original way. Oh wait. I don't have to, because she just did all that in her latest totally wonderful novel entitled We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. This is a novel that is best read with as little pre-knowledge as possible. It starts out as a seemingly

There is no rating because I did not finish. I decided not to put myself through books I do not enjoy or at least make me feel something so you will probably see me abandon more books from now on. I decided to read this novel because the title sounded so interesting and it was shortlisted for The Booker Prize (why I can’t imagine). The novel heavily depends on a big reveal (at around 25%) which was spoiled for me by many reviews. Because of that, I highly recommend anyone who wants to try this t...

5 Stars.I am Completely Overwhelmed with Emotion. And this is, without a doubt, one of my favorite books of the year. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is the story of the Cooke’s, a wholly dysfunctional family, narrated by the youngest of three children, Rosemary. Rosemary grew up in a household, surrounded by attention, chaos and love. She and her siblings were incredibly close, and Rosemary and her sister Fern did everything together. And they adored their big brother Lowell. Rosemary wa...

Update: $1.99 Kindle special today! I loved it. --- For those who missed this book - it's a great discussion read! I'm sure my other review must be around some place .... either way, this book is terrific ... less money than a cup of Starbucks latte! Where the heck is my original review? I read it when this book first came out...Seems we had a long discussion going!I say WOW!!!!! Emotionally charged!!! It's a terrific book club pick!Much to discuss! Many side themes as well as major themes!!

“She’d just rear-ended a cop car and she said that only the week before she’d been arrested shoplifting tortillas and salsa for a Sunday afternoon football party at her house. ‘This is so not good,’ she told me. ‘Honestly, I have the worst luck.’ ”Luck? That's not luck, that's typical stupid choices leading to disaster. I started laughing almost immediately because this sounded so familiar. I am a longtime fan of Fowler’s work going back to Sarah Canary. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves wa...

I have an addiction.It's a little something called "buying every book I see in a used bookstore that has won a major award and excusing it under the guise of becoming a genius / vague self-betterment / pretension."Which is what happened with this one.And this was...a strange reading experience?I mean, it was fine. It was cool. Okay no not cool but yes fine. Average.I liked the theme of anti-animal cruelty.But otherwise this wasn't much up my alley.Bottom line: Not bad just not for me et cetera a...

I dont know what i was expecting when i picked this up but im so glad i did.I loved this book. Such an unusual story. Short chapters.Learned so much. Lots to think about the welfare of animals.Very emotional.I knew nothing about this book going in and im so glad. The less you know the better.

I could not relate to the characters and the choppy writing style! Wanted to like this book, and there were interesting elements, but I couldn't connect to the way the story was told. Forced myself to even skim the book. Am I the only person, it seems, who did not like it?

Yep, I was beside myself!Kept imagining I was not still reading this!!Borrrring ... dulllll ...teeeeedious ... and more than a little drawn out.I really wanted to like it as I was excited to see a new release from Fowler. I enjoyed The Jane Austen Book Club (although it is one of those rare books where I actually liked the movie better).The whiny main character (the voice of this first-person narrative) got on my nerves; no wonder she had difficulty forming even fictional friendships. I couldn't...

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves has generated a lot of hype and gathered a large amount of positive reception, including praise from authors such as Ursula K. Le Guin and Andrea Barrett. But undoubtedly the biggest boost of all was the inclusion on the shortlist for the Booker Prize. This year's Booker was the first of its kind, as it has controversially accepted works by authors from outside the UK and the Commonwealth - and for a moment it looked as if the book by Karen Joy Fowler, an A...

This book got me out of my very long reading slump. It was such an easy book to read, yet it was wonderfully complex. I sank into it as I hadn’t sunk into a book for a long time. It felt wonderful. So, so funny. So wise. So psychologically smart and sophisticated. So entertaining. Not a false note, though the very ending wasn’t perfect for me, but it was okay. I loved all the literary and psychology/science references. Devastating too as it was emotionally raw. Complicated in a perfect way. It’s...

…you've arrived smack in the middle of this review. I decided to skip the beginning where I might have discussed the plot, the writing, etc., and I’ll probably skip the end too because if there's no beginning, there’s really no need for an end. So here we are in the middle, taking time out from the usual review stuff for a little reflection on reading, and life in general. What about a catchy ritzy aphorism to kick us off:Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.(...

Rosemary Cooke talked non-stop as a child in Bloomington, Indiana but grew up to be a quiet student at The University of California, Davis. She's been in college too long, unable to settle on a major and troubled by the long ago disappearance of her sister and brother. We come to learn that Rosemary's father was an experimental psychologist and - around the time Rosemary was born - the Cooke family took in an infant chimp to raise as a member of the family. The chimp, Fern, was reared as a siste...

What a surprisingly interesting read. There's plenty of food for thought, right from the announcement that Rosemary had her "Own personal Schrodinger's Cat," to her insistence that memories cannot be trusted. Even so, these minor reveals are not the important pieces that frame this narrative structure. They may be emotional and harrowing, but the novel is much more than just this.It's really about our place in the universe and how "Others" fit within it, as well.I was confused from the very star...