Rating: 
Summary: Had to read it for a book report....
Review: Normally book reports are the last I want to do, but I picked this book up and could hardly put it down. Exciting, moving, with lots of imagery. Aaron D Haehl
Rating: 
Summary: Such a sad ending for the human race and the animal kingdom.
Review: I have never been taken to a lower state of emotion by a book. Shute does a great job of character creation. I empathized with every one. I can understand how people in such a situation would create fantasies to deal with their inevitable demise. I would like to recommend this book to the leaders of the world who have a nuclear program. Maybe they will feel the pain of the characters in this book and change course. Probably not. This book has been available for forty years, and it hasn't worked yet.
Rating:
Summary: Good Book!!!! A deffinate good read!!!
Review: This was a wonderful book. It showed the world how to treat their surroundings before it was too late.
Rating:
Summary: So great because it could have happened
Review: This book is so good because it shows what could have easily happened, and could still happen.
Rating: 
Summary: For Shute it's awful, Everything else by him is 5 star plus!
Review: I haven't been able to understand why this book is so popular! Nevil shute is a REALLY great author, and has written books that are much more thought provoking like "In The Wet", "Round the Bend", "The Rainbow and the Rose", "A Old Captivity" and many others I have read and re-read over the years. He writes books about common people, very heartwarming stories, which when you finish, make you think the world might not be in such bad shape after all. Many of his books revolve around aviation, as he was one of the first aeronautical engineers, and one of the original employees of DeHavalland Aircraft. His book "Slide Rule" is basically an autobiography. The period covered by his novels varies from just after WWI - "Marizan", many of WWII era "Landfall", to the early 1950's "The Far Country" set, like many of his later novels, in Australia. "On the Beach" is so out of character to the rest of his works, it is almost difficult to realize it is written by the same author. If you have read it, read some of his OTHER books, they're MUCH better!
Rating:
Summary: Strong and thought provoking, lacking on the personal aspect
Review: After a nuclear war, The world is dying. People are waiting near the beach in australia, for their own inevitable death. Such a story can be viewed in two aspects. One is the global aspect. Demonstrating the horrors of a nuclear war and its consequences. In that sense the story is quite effective and thought provoking, depicting the death of our planet in a realistic understated manner. The other is the personal aspect. How do the people deal with their own inevitable death? In this sense the story is really weak. The people react to their death in a mostly one-dimentional way, on the range of denial/indifference/acceptance. The author sketches the way people react to the situation right in the begining of the book, and doesn't tell us anything new in this aspect throughout the book. And this is the biggest problem of the book. Another problem I had was with the subplots. Some of them were quite boring. However, overall, this is a good book, and worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: At the end it was really dramatically book.
Review: We gave the book an 8,and this consists of the lower note for the first part of the book(for us it was only a 6),and for the end of the story,which was really exciting and for us a 9. Some parts at the beginning were really boring,for example when Peter Holmes talked about his cart with the man,who sold the milk.It had nothing to do with the storyline.But on the other hand we were really shocked by the way,in which the people and the characters of the book had to die or to kill themselves.At the end you feel with the characters ,and you think about that,what you would do in such a sitation. We are a class of german pupils who have read the book in a simplified edition. So sometimes it was a little bit boring,because of the easy language. If we had read it in German,it would have been a better grade for the book. END
Rating:
Summary: Please, don't come true
Review: This book sometimes is very interesting, but we think that we can't give the rating 10, because, we in our class didn't read the original version, we only had the school edition available. During reading some bad motions grew up, and this motions became stronger as we heard of the nuclear test in India and Pakistani. The story has now become more topical in this world. This book reflects the motions from the people in such a situation. It consists of the bad reactions of a nuclear war. We can't ever understand some behaviours of the people, since we are in such a situation.Megamuff sein Sohn!
Rating:
Summary: Memorable years later
Review: I read this book one September years past. I felt at the time that the dignity and civility of the civilitation were the main fictional elements in the book. I have no faith that we would have power, water or food to the end. But I liked that world better and wanted it saved more that the current one. It was a book that made you take time to look at family, friends and your tiny world to examine its fragile nature and listen to a bird sing. Read it and you will remember it in 2010.
Rating:
Summary: Not his best but still very good
Review: This is probably Nevil Shute's best known work in the US. Many people think it is his only book but in fact he wrote 24 novels plus an autobiography.
|
