Diana Holquist
Autore di Sexiest Man Alive
Serie
Opere di Diana Holquist
Etichette
Informazioni generali
- Sesso
- female
Utenti
Recensioni
This story is definitely like nothing I have ever read before; a crazy old lady (I totally see myself turning into her because of all the regency books I read), a Duke of Whatthehell, and frumpy schoolteacher. I'm three chapters in and feel like I should write some comments but honestly I'm flabbergasted as to what to say, not because it is awful but because it is so damn good and intriguing right now.
When someone asks you to waltz, you waltz. I understand Ally's fear for her grandmother (grandmother ran away and has dementia) but she did find her safe and sound and with so many people around it would have been safe and ok to have a night waltz in central park with Sam. Yeah, yeah I get the author is trying to establish and make known Ally's personality here. She has issues from her parents abandoning her, I get it. Just please let the lady waltz!
Awesome stuff, when Sam is imaging Ally's "garden" (personality/environment) and how it differs from Veronica's and is possibly full of poison ivy but doesn't care and wants to scoop her out of it and carry her to his jungle. Funny, Funny.
Up until ch. 11 I kind of brushed Sam off as carefree, rich, and good looking male but after he reads "The Dulcet Duke" (regency romance book Ally's grandmother thinks she is living in) and proceeds to get drunk at the pub the reader gets an insight into the real man. These couple of pages that show Sam's thoughts, feelings, and past are fantastic and add some much needed heft to his character and the story.
The trip in a horse carriage through New York seemed kind of crazy and a bit fortuitous how everything worked out perfectly for them. However, in the pursuit of the greater good (storyline) I was able to forgive the author for these nagging little unbelievable parts.
I liked Ally's friend June, great secondary character doesn't try to take over the story but adds something and is intriguing in her own right.
Very touching how Sam is hurt that Ally doesn't think him worthy. He is also bothered that he and Ally had to role-played as a duke and princess in order for Ally to sleep with him. After they sleep together he just wants Ally to respect him and see him for who he really is. So touching; story becomes about breaking through walls to get to the true essence of a person.
Oh the late night conversation between Ally and Sam when they are at the Brazilian hotel is where I felt like the fun, frivolous aspect of their relationship stopped and it started to become meaningful. Ally wants him to tell her about his past but he argues he is his own man and his past doesn't matter (even though it's obvious it affects who he is and his actions) and that only what they feel and do here and now matters. This little part was incredibly meaningful and brought this couple out of "Chik-lit" for me.Oh Sam what a hero sigh sigh sigh. I refuse to tell you what made me type this, you must read for yourself.
Oh letter writing such a lost art form! When Sam writes his "prologue" my eyes watered for some weird reason. The last chapters of this book are guaranteed to make your heart clench. Ally is the focus of the first half of book then Sam last half, it worked, sort of. Mateo (carriage driver) was nice character but his soccer story was unnecessary. The quotes from a regency romance called "The Dulcet Duke" was just about one of my favorite things from this story. I want to read that story!
LOVED the ending (I really want to waltz) just sigh, sigh, sigh.Read this book people. Sure it's a little fluffy, glossed over heavier tones the author tried to introduce in regards to her character's background, a hero/heroine not fully flushed out, and some unnecessary secondary character drama. But the overall story is wonderful from it's humor, sheer romanticism, and sigh inducing moments. Simply a modern day fairytale. This book is going in keeper purgatory. Meaning it was really, really good but I don't know if it is quite keeper worthy. I have a bad feeling that the magic and sigh worthiness will fade after the first reading. You all know books like that where some dialogue loses it's weight with a second reading. Time will only tell, we'll see after I read it a second time in the distant future.… (altro)
When someone asks you to waltz, you waltz. I understand Ally's fear for her grandmother (grandmother ran away and has dementia) but she did find her safe and sound and with so many people around it would have been safe and ok to have a night waltz in central park with Sam. Yeah, yeah I get the author is trying to establish and make known Ally's personality here. She has issues from her parents abandoning her, I get it. Just please let the lady waltz!
Awesome stuff, when Sam is imaging Ally's "garden" (personality/environment) and how it differs from Veronica's and is possibly full of poison ivy but doesn't care and wants to scoop her out of it and carry her to his jungle. Funny, Funny.
Up until ch. 11 I kind of brushed Sam off as carefree, rich, and good looking male but after he reads "The Dulcet Duke" (regency romance book Ally's grandmother thinks she is living in) and proceeds to get drunk at the pub the reader gets an insight into the real man. These couple of pages that show Sam's thoughts, feelings, and past are fantastic and add some much needed heft to his character and the story.
The trip in a horse carriage through New York seemed kind of crazy and a bit fortuitous how everything worked out perfectly for them. However, in the pursuit of the greater good (storyline) I was able to forgive the author for these nagging little unbelievable parts.
I liked Ally's friend June, great secondary character doesn't try to take over the story but adds something and is intriguing in her own right.
Very touching how Sam is hurt that Ally doesn't think him worthy. He is also bothered that he and Ally had to role-played as a duke and princess in order for Ally to sleep with him. After they sleep together he just wants Ally to respect him and see him for who he really is. So touching; story becomes about breaking through walls to get to the true essence of a person.
Oh the late night conversation between Ally and Sam when they are at the Brazilian hotel is where I felt like the fun, frivolous aspect of their relationship stopped and it started to become meaningful. Ally wants him to tell her about his past but he argues he is his own man and his past doesn't matter (even though it's obvious it affects who he is and his actions) and that only what they feel and do here and now matters. This little part was incredibly meaningful and brought this couple out of "Chik-lit" for me.Oh Sam what a hero sigh sigh sigh. I refuse to tell you what made me type this, you must read for yourself.
Oh letter writing such a lost art form! When Sam writes his "prologue" my eyes watered for some weird reason. The last chapters of this book are guaranteed to make your heart clench. Ally is the focus of the first half of book then Sam last half, it worked, sort of. Mateo (carriage driver) was nice character but his soccer story was unnecessary. The quotes from a regency romance called "The Dulcet Duke" was just about one of my favorite things from this story. I want to read that story!
LOVED the ending (I really want to waltz) just sigh, sigh, sigh.Read this book people. Sure it's a little fluffy, glossed over heavier tones the author tried to introduce in regards to her character's background, a hero/heroine not fully flushed out, and some unnecessary secondary character drama. But the overall story is wonderful from it's humor, sheer romanticism, and sigh inducing moments. Simply a modern day fairytale. This book is going in keeper purgatory. Meaning it was really, really good but I don't know if it is quite keeper worthy. I have a bad feeling that the magic and sigh worthiness will fade after the first reading. You all know books like that where some dialogue loses it's weight with a second reading. Time will only tell, we'll see after I read it a second time in the distant future.… (altro)
This is a fun, quick read. Although this book is not just a book but an interactive experiment. Before you even start this book, there is a introduction in the beginning that explains the different font and how to read this book. Yes, this book does come with instructions.
I found myself reading the book like it was meant to be read. Just to see if and how it made a difference. It did make a difference in how the story was projected to the listening audience. Although, I can't say that I felt any stronger in my desire to want to go to Harvard. Yet, all of the characters in this book were good: Ronald, Mommy Rabbit, Adderall Aardvark, Kollege Koach Kitty, and Admission Officer Owl.… (altro)
I found myself reading the book like it was meant to be read. Just to see if and how it made a difference. It did make a difference in how the story was projected to the listening audience. Although, I can't say that I felt any stronger in my desire to want to go to Harvard. Yet, all of the characters in this book were good: Ronald, Mommy Rabbit, Adderall Aardvark, Kollege Koach Kitty, and Admission Officer Owl.… (altro)
I need a reality check on one thing. What does the title of this book say to you?
I assumed it was a book by the daughter of an Amy Chua-type mom.
It isn't. It's by a mom and her teenaged daughter. Well, technically it's all by the mom, but she interviews her daughter and then weaves her answers together into coherent chapters.
I wasn't sure I'd like it at first. The whole first chapter is a smug, pompous brag about how Diana Holquist totally rejects the tiger-mom ethos and lets her children watch TV and play video games, and those kids are still mad overachievers.
Swell.
She rattles off examples of her kids' amazingness, giving a looong paragraph to each of them. Then she chides readers for being impressed:
The second reason my kids are awesome is that I don't care about achievement. That dull list of exploits I rattled off a few pages back? Those accomplishments are the least interesting aspects about any of us.
I almost stopped reading right there, but the book's short and I did pay for it. Still -- wow, was that above and beyond the call of obnoxious. Your kids get straight A's; one of them plays elite-level soccer, and also the cello; the other does every kind of handicraft under the sun, plays the viola well enough to be invited to join her school's chamber orchestra, and is already earning scholarships to take classes at "a prestigious art college," as well as running her own business selling handcrafted fashion accessories -- oh, but it's just too boring to focus on these trivial aspects of their lives.
Insert barfy-face emoticon here.
(And for the record, people have aspects. Saying something is an aspect "about" someone is weird and wrong.)
Still, I gave this book three stars, and would have given it four if it hadn't been for moments like this one. Because this book became a lot of fun to read almost immediately after this admittedly painful chapter.
Although first it got kind of misleading. Holquist explains that she read some of Amy Chua's book to her kids. They all got a good laugh out of it. Holquist asks them if they wish she would be tougher on them, like the tiger mother. Conditional yes: each kid wishes Mom would be tougher on the other kid, which is pretty funny, as is her son's suggestion that a book about her should be called Off-key Ditty of the Sloth Mother.
Then Sloth Mother makes a confession:
"You know," I told my kids. "It might surprise you guys, but I used to a tiger mother."
Yes, she left out the word "be." There are a few such minor but irritating errors throughout the book. Later, in an otherwise wonderful passage, Holquist tells her readers, "You have to love your children for whom they are." Some writers think that "whom" is the intelligent version of "who," rather than just another word that it's sometimes correct and sometimes incorrect to use. (For the record, this sentence is the pronoun equivalent of saying "Love him for who him is.")
But I digress. The point of the passage above is that Holquist insists she's a reformed tiger mother. And she really isn't.
Being a tiger mother isn't about believing that your baby is the most amazing baby ever born. This sort of localized insanity is expected, at least in America, and amusing as long as it doesn't get out of hand.
A tiger mother wouldn't spend time watching her baby cooing and decide that her baby cooed the best of all the babies in her play group (as Holquist does, quite entertainingly). A tiger mother would never think her child was the best. She'd tell her child that she'd better be the best – the best when it came to school, and playing the piano or violin, and competing in the science fair, and scoring the highest on all possible tests.
A tiger mother wouldn't tell her daughter, "No one cares if you miss a note" at a violin recital. A tiger mother would have died of shame – or, more realistically, demanded her daughter practice more and be given more lessons – if all the other kids who'd started lessons at the same time were songs ahead of her in the first Suzuki violin book. She certainly wouldn't have let the daughter in question quit violin.
If a tiger mother got the news from her daughter's teacher that the daughter "isn't learning to read as quickly as we'd like," she wouldn't just let the kid learn at her own pace. She'd sell whatever she needed to, including the house if necessary, to hire whatever tutors were needed to catch her daughter up to grade level and beyond. (Or, more likely, she'd sit down and tutor the daughter herself, for hours and hours and hours every day.)
A tiger mother would never say her daughter "can't learn her times tables to save her life." See above re tutoring. She certainly wouldn't smile contentedly as her daughter's teacher taped a multiplication chart to the front of her daughter's notebook. If that teacher told a tiger mother cheerily, "Some kids just can't memorize math facts. No need to torture them," the tiger mother would eat her alive, possibly without bothering to chew.
These are all things that happened when Holquist was supposedly in tiger mother mode.
The thing is, she tells a terrific story. She's passionate about children being given the chance to shape their own lives and pursue their passions, and she makes her argument forcefully and beautifully. The pain she feels when her daughter Hana struggles both academically and socially is wrenching; and the reader wants to cheer as Holquist learns, step by tiny step, that everything's going to be fine as long as Holquist lays off and lets her daughter sort things out for herself, already.
This book would be worth reading just for the story of the birthday spent skating through a frozen forest. I will never forget that, and it didn't even happen to me. I get real live actual chills just thinking about it.
But there are plenty of other reasons to pick up Tiger Daughter. This book is a fast, humorous, often moving read that gripped me a lot harder and left me a lot happier than I'd ever expected it to, given that initial unpromising chapter.
But please let the record state: Diana Holquist was never a tiger mother. Not even once. Not even a little. Worrying about how your kid's doing in school and wanting the best for her doesn't count, or we'd all be tiger moms.
Read this book, especially if you've already read Amy Chua's Battle Hymn. If you haven't, read them both. You'll have a great time, and then you'll have a lot to think about.
… (altro)
I assumed it was a book by the daughter of an Amy Chua-type mom.
It isn't. It's by a mom and her teenaged daughter. Well, technically it's all by the mom, but she interviews her daughter and then weaves her answers together into coherent chapters.
I wasn't sure I'd like it at first. The whole first chapter is a smug, pompous brag about how Diana Holquist totally rejects the tiger-mom ethos and lets her children watch TV and play video games, and those kids are still mad overachievers.
Swell.
She rattles off examples of her kids' amazingness, giving a looong paragraph to each of them. Then she chides readers for being impressed:
The second reason my kids are awesome is that I don't care about achievement. That dull list of exploits I rattled off a few pages back? Those accomplishments are the least interesting aspects about any of us.
I almost stopped reading right there, but the book's short and I did pay for it. Still -- wow, was that above and beyond the call of obnoxious. Your kids get straight A's; one of them plays elite-level soccer, and also the cello; the other does every kind of handicraft under the sun, plays the viola well enough to be invited to join her school's chamber orchestra, and is already earning scholarships to take classes at "a prestigious art college," as well as running her own business selling handcrafted fashion accessories -- oh, but it's just too boring to focus on these trivial aspects of their lives.
Insert barfy-face emoticon here.
(And for the record, people have aspects. Saying something is an aspect "about" someone is weird and wrong.)
Still, I gave this book three stars, and would have given it four if it hadn't been for moments like this one. Because this book became a lot of fun to read almost immediately after this admittedly painful chapter.
Although first it got kind of misleading. Holquist explains that she read some of Amy Chua's book to her kids. They all got a good laugh out of it. Holquist asks them if they wish she would be tougher on them, like the tiger mother. Conditional yes: each kid wishes Mom would be tougher on the other kid, which is pretty funny, as is her son's suggestion that a book about her should be called Off-key Ditty of the Sloth Mother.
Then Sloth Mother makes a confession:
"You know," I told my kids. "It might surprise you guys, but I used to a tiger mother."
Yes, she left out the word "be." There are a few such minor but irritating errors throughout the book. Later, in an otherwise wonderful passage, Holquist tells her readers, "You have to love your children for whom they are." Some writers think that "whom" is the intelligent version of "who," rather than just another word that it's sometimes correct and sometimes incorrect to use. (For the record, this sentence is the pronoun equivalent of saying "Love him for who him is.")
But I digress. The point of the passage above is that Holquist insists she's a reformed tiger mother. And she really isn't.
Being a tiger mother isn't about believing that your baby is the most amazing baby ever born. This sort of localized insanity is expected, at least in America, and amusing as long as it doesn't get out of hand.
A tiger mother wouldn't spend time watching her baby cooing and decide that her baby cooed the best of all the babies in her play group (as Holquist does, quite entertainingly). A tiger mother would never think her child was the best. She'd tell her child that she'd better be the best – the best when it came to school, and playing the piano or violin, and competing in the science fair, and scoring the highest on all possible tests.
A tiger mother wouldn't tell her daughter, "No one cares if you miss a note" at a violin recital. A tiger mother would have died of shame – or, more realistically, demanded her daughter practice more and be given more lessons – if all the other kids who'd started lessons at the same time were songs ahead of her in the first Suzuki violin book. She certainly wouldn't have let the daughter in question quit violin.
If a tiger mother got the news from her daughter's teacher that the daughter "isn't learning to read as quickly as we'd like," she wouldn't just let the kid learn at her own pace. She'd sell whatever she needed to, including the house if necessary, to hire whatever tutors were needed to catch her daughter up to grade level and beyond. (Or, more likely, she'd sit down and tutor the daughter herself, for hours and hours and hours every day.)
A tiger mother would never say her daughter "can't learn her times tables to save her life." See above re tutoring. She certainly wouldn't smile contentedly as her daughter's teacher taped a multiplication chart to the front of her daughter's notebook. If that teacher told a tiger mother cheerily, "Some kids just can't memorize math facts. No need to torture them," the tiger mother would eat her alive, possibly without bothering to chew.
These are all things that happened when Holquist was supposedly in tiger mother mode.
The thing is, she tells a terrific story. She's passionate about children being given the chance to shape their own lives and pursue their passions, and she makes her argument forcefully and beautifully. The pain she feels when her daughter Hana struggles both academically and socially is wrenching; and the reader wants to cheer as Holquist learns, step by tiny step, that everything's going to be fine as long as Holquist lays off and lets her daughter sort things out for herself, already.
This book would be worth reading just for the story of the birthday spent skating through a frozen forest. I will never forget that, and it didn't even happen to me. I get real live actual chills just thinking about it.
But there are plenty of other reasons to pick up Tiger Daughter. This book is a fast, humorous, often moving read that gripped me a lot harder and left me a lot happier than I'd ever expected it to, given that initial unpromising chapter.
But please let the record state: Diana Holquist was never a tiger mother. Not even once. Not even a little. Worrying about how your kid's doing in school and wanting the best for her doesn't count, or we'd all be tiger moms.
Read this book, especially if you've already read Amy Chua's Battle Hymn. If you haven't, read them both. You'll have a great time, and then you'll have a lot to think about.
… (altro)
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Statistiche
- Opere
- 6
- Utenti
- 323
- Popolarità
- #73,309
- Voto
- 3.3
- Recensioni
- 10
- ISBN
- 17
Some of the most humorous parts of the novel came from when Jasmine would fangirl over a certain design or fabric. I have clothing designer friends, so I could easily picture how many tubs of extra fabric or how lovingly she takes care of her sewing machine.
The romance I think was just a shade too unbelievable. The chemistry was there, but I couldn't believe in Josh as a character, so it threw the romance flat. He didn't act like your typical Hollywood hunk, but he didn't act like a guy who wanted to prove himself either. He spent more time trying to get Jasmine to loosen up about her fear of men then he did practicing his so-called 'serious' acting.
Jasmine felt real, until the end at least, in her behavior and her mannerisms. Though the trauma that made her so afraid of men, or groups of people at all, seems flimsy it really is the small things that affect you the worst. I think she got over it a little too easily, but I could relate to it.
The backstory with her parents and two sisters was a confusing jumble. Her parents divorced when she was young, she was carted off with her mother to India while her two sisters went with their dad. Jasmine lived the life while they struggled. Then when she went to go live with them as a teenager something happened to make her realize that they didn't want her or could forgive her so she ran away again. It stayed like that for ten years until the sisters reunited. I have a feeling there is a first book I am missing that may have explained some of these things better.
Overall it was a fun diverting read that was perfect to just relax and not bother thinking too hard on. Jasmine was a likable character and I enjoyed reading about how she overcame her social anxieties.… (altro)