Reviews by Hourglass Women

If you've read other accounts of the U.S. Civil War and want it in more detail, then this is the book for you. It took the author 20 years and over 3 million words to write this account. He tells the story in an interesting manner.

About the only area that I was disappointed in is that he doesn't talk very much about the causes of the war. Prior to the war, he follows the two eventual leaders (Lincoln and Davis) .. but does comparatively little to look at the broader landscape.

This is a minor point, though. It's an excellent account.

If you want to know what it is like to be a woman in Afghanistan, this is the book to read. If you wonder whether what the NATO troops are doing over there (keeping the Taliban out), I highly recommend this book as background.

It's a great story in and of itself.

If you like time travel stories, this one has a very interesting twist. Overall, I definitely found it a worthwhile read.

I like some of Ken Follett's stories but this one was definitely in the bottom half. The two main "bad" characters were caricatures, not real people. It detracts from the whole story. If those characters had been written more believably, then he might have had a decent story.

It's a very good story that describes how micro-lending started -- the practice of making small loans to people in their world country so they could get capital to start up small income-generating businesses.

I didn't like the second half of the book as much. Too much justification about why he needed power to run his organization, etc.

Overall, a very worthwhile read.

After reading a good story, I sometimes investigate it. I was disappointed to learn:
1. The genealogy to the original man (Kunte) was wishful thinking at best since Kunte died a couple of years before Kizzy (Haley's ancestor) was born.
2. The story on the African side (about a quarter of the book) took material very heavily from a previous book and Haley had to pay a large settlement to this author.

A solid movie from start to finish where an Amish boy witnesses a murder in the big city .. and higher-ups don't want this crime solved.

My favourite part was the ending. A man and a woman may have gone through something stressful and significant .. and even like each other. But that won't bridge the huge gap in their lives (a big-city cop and an Amish woman). They recognize this and part. It's not the usual sloppy Hollywood ending where love supposedly conquers all (Hollywood being the divorce capital of the world).

The movie is more scary for what you don't see and what is implied. Much scarier than slash flicks where you expect a regular stream of blood and guts.

I thought they did a good job showing a balanced view of death row and the death penalty in this film. Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn do an outstanding job in their roles.

Of course, Michael Moore is over the top but I generally agree with his overall thrust. Far too many innocents get shot when gun ownership is rampant.