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Summary: Please read this one!
Review: I finally took a break from Oprahs selections and checked out "Cold Mountain". What a wonderful experience it was! I highly recommend this one!
Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating Characters
Review: I thought this book was really well written. The female characters particularly intrigued me, and I found myself looking forward to the Ada/Ruby chapters more and more as the book progressed. Inman's chapters were interesting, too -- I'm glad I read them, but their tragic nature made them difficult to read. It's an original story, and for the characters alone, I recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: What's The Hype All About?
Review: I found this book to be dull and tedious. Really over-hyped, as most books are. The characters are not really developed enough to make us care what happened to them, and the plot is extremely thin. As such, it is way too long and I found I had to force myself to finish. I had to read it several times to make sure I caught everything. Frazier is a novice writer and it shows. His style needs a lot of work, to say the least. Reading "Ada said," and "Ruby said," tacked on to the end of every sentence was irritating. For all those who think this is "literature," try Umberto Eco's, "The Name of the Rose."ΓΏ
Rating: 
Summary: Cold mountain left me cold
Review: In my modern fiction English class i was thrilled to hear that we would be among the first to read Cold Mountain. After reading such books as Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad) and In Our Time (Hemingway) I was deeply disapointed with this selection. As I trudged my way through this book I found it harder and harder to read each chapter. My eyes became blurry as I wondered why Fraizer didnt just re-edit homers odesy instead, because that was a much better book then this modern version. And as I neared the end I started jumping for joy, untill I had to read the epilouge. The book truly ends before that, the epilouge is all fluff for those readers who have to have a sugar coated ending. So if you enjoy a slow book whose two main characters don't really have much in common untill the end, and that the ending is purely fluff then id suggest it. If not then go read Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Conrad,Tim 'O Brien, or something else and skip Cold Mountain, unless you want to be left out in the cold
Rating:
Summary: Simply Excellent
Review: This book is simply excellent. The story is compelling, the writing is so rich and detailed it is an endless banquet where many other popular works are simple fast food. Like very few books that I have read, I couldn't put it down, and I was saddened to turn the final page and realize that I was done. Truly enjoyable!
Rating:
Summary: A major disappointment
Review: This book came highly recommended to me by a close friend whose opinion I regard highly. And, of course, I had been exposed to all the hype. I was therefore shocked when I discovered it to be dull, repetitive, and riddled with cliches. The prose is plodding, and I found it an effort to read. Having recently completed some supposedly "difficult" books, such as Underworld and Mason & Dixon, I was surprised at how difficult it was to wade through Frazier's lumpy, overstuffed prose. The characters are cliches as well. Inman is the archetypical American loner, with an inner life of the approximate depth of an old John Wayne character. Virtually all the situations he confronts during his chapters involve his having to deal with cardboard "bad guys" straight out of a western. He copes with them with the unfailing competence of an old Clint Eastwood movie. He has no inner life worthy of the name. I know that he has PTSD, but it is clear from the flashback sections that he has always been inarticulate and distant. I found it extraordinarily hard to care what happens to him. Even more troubling are the Ada/Ruby chapters. The chapter that I thought most interesting in the whole novel was Ada's first, in which her despair and desperation are deftly presented. Alas, Ruby shortly appears. She is the supremely intelligent illiterate so beloved of all anti-intellectuals. Not only is she masterfully competent at all aspects of running a farm (with no satisfactory explanation of how a desperately neglected child could learn so much), but her observations of nature are so keen that she independently works out Darwinian adaptation (cf. the scene in which she explains why dogwoods change color earlier than other trees). This anti-intellectual theme is very strong. Frazier is forceful in his contrast of Ada's pretentious, Emerson-obsessed father with the strong, simple wisdom of the country folk he encounters. What a tired theme! It's almost as over-worked as the idea that "war is hell." Gee, the Civil War was destructive to the social fabric of the United States! Imagine that! I could go on, but I'm sure that this review will be offensive to Mr. Frazier's many admirers. I wish them well, and I am honestly happy for them that they found the book so rewarding. I considered one star, but I applaud any instance when a book that aspires to literature can interest so many people. I reserve one star for the utter trash that gluts most publisher's lists.
Rating:
Summary: Cold Mountain
Review: Best book I've read in years. This book left me keening about the central charecter. Inman, the Confederate soldier, had great integrity and a profoundly kind spirit in an otherwise brutal world. This was an achingly beautiful book, not to be soon forgotten.
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Summary: My fave book of '99
Review: Excellent book! Probably the best novel I've read in years. This one is captivating. You will find it extremely difficult to put down. A number of my friends and I kept fighting over who's turn it was to read it. I suggest finishing it before introducing it to others. Very well written. Frazier can truly transport the reader in to book. You'll feel like you took every step of Inman's journey with him. I am looking foreward to his next piece.
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Summary: Plodding and dull...
Review: Even leaving aside the ridiculous ending that's an immense let-down after finishing the book, Cold Mountain is mediocre at best. I won't say it's horrible -- some of the descriptive passages are quiet well done -- but it's so far from the "best book I've ever read" that I don't know where to begin. The characters aren't particularly interesting. The plot is less so. The setting may be of interest to Civil War or American History buffs but the events of the book aren't themselves all that memorable and what little theme or message can be found from the book is nothing deep or thought-provoking. In all, Cold Mountain's not _bad_ so much as it is mediocre. Read it if you've got time or nothing else is in at the library (or Amazon.com, of course), but if you really do find it the best book you've ever read, I'd suggest asking around for recommendations. There's a whole world of great literature out there, and I've read four or five books that were better than Cold Mountain in the last two months alone.
Rating:
Summary: Really boring!
Review: Because some professional reviewers give 'good' reviews to a book doesn't mean that the book is in fact good or interesting. However, the public is often mislead or easily persuaded into purchasing these books because they are often described with such forceful words as 'huge, monumental, out-of-this world'. As far as this book is concerned, it's none of these. If it wasn't given to me, I wouldn't have purchased it. When I can't get involved in the characters and storyline after a few chapters - out it goes! There are too many other good books out there, that don't get the attention simply because they haven't been marketed well, or Oprah hasn't chosen them.
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