Goran Lowie
Interesting! Was expecting some boomer-level cliché talk about the internet, but what I got instead were genuinely funny, moving and thoughtful musings.
Reads like The Lady Astronaut meets Von Trier ‘s Melancholia. What would happen if news of a humanity-eradicating comet were to spread worldwide?
This book has many of the same old tropes you've come to expect from similar titles, but is very much a product of our time. A solid read, even if its characters didn't work for me and the ending didn't entirely convince me.
This is a fun courtroom drama. I particularly liked the characters. I already had distinct impressions of some of them in this novella, especially Thuan, and enjoyed the setting- effortless worldbuilding with themes of power abuse, justice and buraucracy.
It's 80 pages of people talking a bunch, which is great! Thuan and Asmodeus have an interesting relationship (the main appeal of the novel), although I'm not sure how well it works as a standalone. This reads like it was supposed to be mainly a mystery-based story, although I wasn't too intrigued by the mystery itself.
Read it for the characters, not for the plot.
(Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this in exchange of an honest review)
This was a cute and fun little read, but much too short. Some novellas manage to perfectly construct a world, story or character in their full length. Very rarely, a novella managed to nail all three of them.
Fireheart Tiger doesn't really execute either of these well. I think it could only have been saved if it had been at least twice its length.
Though it has a bit of a simple plot, it's interesting how much this book is able to pack in so few pages, especially for a children's book. I really got a feel for the characters. Thank you so much Darla for the rec!!
DNF– only after DNF'ing around 1/3 of the way through, I find that I'd already read this book 5 years ago and hated it then, too. Very well.
A year ago a friend and I saw BURNING (2018) in the cinema, and absolutely fell in love with it. Now that it's out on 4K, we decided to do a Burning Night where we rewatched the movie after reading the original short story (this one, barely 13 pages).
My friend has never really read anything for pleasure but he really enjoyed this. It really is a pretty great short story, with the adaptation being surprisingly faithful as well (as faithful as a 2 and a half hour movie can be to a 13-page short story).
Well worth reading!
Eentje om te herlezen, enkele pagina's per dag, te laten bezinken, om luidop te lezen, op een rustig moment in de avond, wanneer de nacht roept, maar we nog een momentje willen wakker blijven.
A fantastic ending- yet I feel like it did too much in one book; this could've easily been another two books. With all the time skips it felt more like a “best of” compilation jumping from one big event to the other, as opposed to the slow but fitting buildup of the first two books. Still a good ending though.
This book made me think about time travel and space exploration like no other book has done before.
Pre-ordered this but put it off for months because I'd heard some bad stuff about it. It's okay, nothing particularly amazing (certainly the worst Novik I've read so far, and I've read most of her major works), but some captivating YA fun. Went in with very low expectations and it exceeded those, so I'm happy.
Bit too much telling for my taste, especially early on. Would've probably loved this as a kid.
I really enjoyed the first novella but this just feels like more of the same. I still enjoyed it, I was just hoping for it to be more different.
This is an amazing book. It handles so much more than just what happened to her- it focused mostly on what happened after, it focuses on victim blaming, on how the system failed Miller and countless others, about the impact on her family and friends, about her battle to regain a sense of peace, about reclaiming your voice.
It's a stellar book and a must-read. If you don't have time to read it, at the very least take some time to read her viral letter:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katiejmbaker/heres-the-powerful-letter-the-stanford-victim-read-to-her-ra
Can't say I liked this one as much as the first. Don't get me wrong: it's still good! But it's vastly different, and I don't always like the way it differs from the original.
This one was a lot less atmospheric and focused a bit more on plot. It felt shorter, for some reason, but I think that was mostly a result of the structure being pretty different as well. There is a bigger focus on romance on this one, so if you like that you might like this one more.
I've been wanting to read Camus' work for years because I thought I agreed with most of his ideas. I tried reading The Stranger once before, a few months ago, and stopped around 25% through. I picked it up again today and it just clicked. Such a fantastic book. It's a depressing read and yet it's strangely comforting. If you've ever thought that life was meaningless or nothing matters, you should definitely read this book.
One of the best political SF books, filled with complex ideas and thoughts- certainly one of Le Guin's most accomplished works. I had forgotten the majority of this book (or perhaps never fully realized much of its content) and re-reading this was perhaps an even better experience than the first read.
A masterpiece.
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PRIOR REVIEW, NOVEMBER 25 2017:
I'm studying to be a morals/ethics teacher and I'm always dissapointed with the fact that so many scholars/professors dismiss fantasy or science fiction because they're nonsense books or pure escapism. Books like The Dispossessed show how things like philosophy aren't just present in SF/fantasy, but sometimes they're essentially what the book is about!
A must-read, despite (or maybe especially because) it being written from a very different perspective and a very different society than we have now.
Definitely a letdown after Station Eleven but still fairly interesting. The similarities are all there: a quiet book without a strong plot, flashbacks, different POVs, atmospheric, ... Ultimately, it just didn't do much for me. It essentially felt like Bernie Madoff's biography turned up to 11 in the Mandel way.
Started strong but then it just kind of mellowed out.
This is a fine ending to the trilogy. I didn't love it, even though this series managed to grab my attention so much that I devoured the whole thing in a couple days. There are many aspects I really enjoyed here, but I think my biggest problem was mainly that it felt overambitious.
This book was almost non-stop action. It went from plot point to plot point to plot point. Which is fine, but it just made me feel like this series would've really just been a whole lot better if Kuang had split this book into two.
It's intense, action-packed and it has the usual grimness you've come to expect by now. But unfortunately, it failed to deliver for me. I still really enjoyed it though. Looking forwrd to what R.F. Kuang cooks up next.
This is a good sequel. It explores many of the same themes from the first book, but it also goes further. Overall these books just do some really interesting stuff and I'm really curious to see what Martine will write next.
This book is a very depressing read because Chantal Akerman was obviously very depressed while writing it. It's almost paralyzing– filled with regret, anxiety and a lost sense of purpose. A sobering read.
A shocking disappointment. I had heard bad things about it, before, and adjusted my expectations beforehand, but as the book went on I really grew more and more tired of it.
Aciman likes to write about the same things. In this book alone, I counted three or four relationships between people with a huge age gap, with both parties reflecting on that. (Which was also an element in Call Me By Your Name, of course).
Where I loved his style of writing in CMBYN, and even enjoyed it in Enigma Variations, here I found it to be painfully pretentious. The plot often ridiculous, clearly Aciman's own fantasies, near-mindless drivel.
That's not to say this book is wholly unreadable. There were some solid moments, some interesting lines, some hints of a better book. But those were rare, and all-in-all, this was a completely unnecessary sequel, if you can even call it that.
This is the kind of book that kind of sells you just on the concept. It's even better when the execution of it is good as well. Shafak weaves together political events with the memories of Leila, crafting a beautiful and interesting work.
Unfortunately, it doesn't stay like that. The last 40% or so of the book takes place after the “10 minutes and 38 seconds”, and becomes this kind of melodramatic adventure story in a very different tone compared to the first half. It didn't suit the much stronger first part of the book, and kind of baffled me in why the author decided to go this route with the book.
Despite some flaws, it's still an enjoyable read.