Ketutar
The beginning was fun. Reminded me of A Trekkie's Tale :-D
The visit to “our world” was a bit boring.
The codas... very nice. :-) I love the first, second, and third person :-D (you know, while they are stories of three different persons, they are also written in 1. 2. and 3. person POV :-D Brilliant!)
This is the story of “Bertha”, Rochester's wife in [b:Jane Eyre 10210 Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1557343311l/10210.SY75.jpg 2977639]. It helps to have read Jane Eyre first.This is painful. Horribly painful. I have to say that I didn't like Rochester much in Jane Eyre. Now I hate him. I feel sort of bad for Jane, but I believe she is good enough to stand up to that POS.
"Once she had a talk with her friend Natásha about Sónya and about her own injustice towards her.
‘You know,' said Natásha, ‘you have read the Gospels a great deal – there is a passage in them that just fits Sónya.'
“What?' asked Countess Mary, surprised.
“‘To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away.” You remember? She is one that hath not; why, I don't know. Perhaps she lacks egotism, I don't know, but from her is taken away, and everything has been taken away. Sometimes I am dreadfully sorry for her. Formerly I very much wanted Nicholas to marry her, but I always had a sort of presentiment that it would not come off. She is a sterile flower, you know – like some strawberry blossoms. Sometimes I am sorry for her, and sometimes I think she doesn't feel it as you or I would.'
Though Countess Mary told Natásha that those words in the Gospel must be understood differently, yet looking at Sónya she agreed with Natásha's explanation. It really seemed that Sónya did not feel her position trying, and had grown quite reconciled to her lot as a sterile flower. She seemed to be fond not so much of individuals as of the family as a whole. Like a cat, she had attached herself not to the people but to the home. She waited on the old countess, petted and spoiled the children, was always ready to render the small services for which she had a gift, and all this was unconsciously accepted from her with insufficient gratitude."
You see, Sonya is poor, so she doesn't have any feelings.
This book is mostly about Pierre Bezukhov, his thoughts, adventures, friends and marriages, and about the war with France. That bit is OK. What is not OK is Natasha. She is a f-ing spoiled drama queen. In this book she manages to fall “unconditionally and irrevocably” in love with three different guys, get engaged four times before she's 20, get her heart “unconditionally and irrevocably” broken 2 times, tries to kill herself because of it, and everyone loves her, tries to save her, coddle her, comfort her... and... I just hate her. I f-ing hate her!
After having read this book I am convinced Tolstoy didn't much like women.
My father died of cancer 2014. This book reminded me of too many things I'd rather had forgotten for always. It was cruel. None of the descriptions prepared me for that. So - I'm going to warn you. Graphic description of the effects of cancer, cancer treatments, last days of a beloved one dying, all the pain that you can witness, but not do a thing to alleviate.
But, it was good. Honest, deep, touching. Real. And gave me yet another insight to the Korean culture. BTW, watch Maangchi on YouTube. She is wonderful. Lovely :-)
This is hopepunk. I'm sitting here with tears in my eyes. This book is beautiful. Full of love and hope and... everything good and nice. This woman is amazing. I wish I had this book when I was 10. Everyone should read this when they are small. And then again and again, every time they feel discouraged and lost. This is among the best books I've ever read. I recommend it to everyone. (It's just 181 pages. It won't take much of your time, even if it doesn't give you anything. But I believe it will give you something. I don't think reading it will be waste of time.)
WARNING FOR ANIMAL ABUSE
Also, sexual abuse, incest, rape, murder, torture, and other such things, but I suppose that is to be expected. The animal abuse was a biggie to me. I wasn't prepared for that. Luckily it wasn't especially graphic.
So - I liked it. I love Lisbeth Salander. I don't like Mikael, though. It's not that he's a bad character, he just isn't my kind of person. I like that he is kind and smart and has decent boundaries, doesn't push, etc. but he just doesn't work for me.
The mystery was interesting.
Very cute little story of four kittens born with wings because their mother was worried about their safety, living in the city, with people and dogs and cars and big, feisty rats, and so little food to be shared with everyone living in the city...
The pictures are wonderful.
It's not really a picture book, it's an illustrated short story for kids.
DNF. Managed 2/3. It didn't get any better. sigh Total waste of time.———————-Basically, all the negative reviews were “This author is liberal and hates Trump, won't be reading more of his books”. Huh? It was free on Amazon kindle, and with reviews like that... sounds interesting.———————All the negative reviews were wrong. “This author is liberal and hates Trump” doesn't even touch the problems with this book. The author has two obsessions. 1) Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact (he is a former Director of the New England Antiquities Research Association (NEARA), which is a hobby society for “amateur archaeologists” who try to prove pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact.and 2) [b:The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image 455992 The Alphabet Versus the Goddess The Conflict Between Word and Image Leonard Shlain https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348440082l/455992.SY75.jpg 1309759] and the right side of the brain = feminine, left side = masculine. Both are full of BS, but as David S. Brody is obsessed, he doesn't care. He will use anything to confirm his theories, interpret anything to support them, and invent things if there isn't enough data to be used. For this book, he invented a diary written by Henry Sinclair that proves he visited North America. Here's an excerpt from the diary:“My father has named this river Mary-Mac to honor our Lord. He has taught this name to the natives and hopes they will adopt it.”Yeah, those red injuns didn't name any rivers, it was all white men who done it.“The word “mac” in Scottish meant “son of”, so the name Mary-Mac translated, apparently, to Son of Mary”Except that “Son of Mary” in Scottish is mac Màiri. He uses a lot of “etymology” in this book, and it's all this kind of garbage.“Mary is the most important woman in Christianity. The root of her name is mer, meaning the sea.”Except that it's a Hebrew name. Sea in Hebrew is not mer.“The name Magdalene is the Westernized version of the original Hebrew name, Migdal. Migdal in Hebrew means “tower”. So the name Mary Magdalene translates to the Tower of Mary”No. It translates to Mary from Magdala.“The root of the word is mat, from the Egyptian goddess Maat. Other words have the same root, like matriarch and matron.”No, it isn't. The root of the word is medha, mendh, to learn, wisdom, as a product of learning. Egyptian is not an Indo-European language, and maat, ma'at means truth, balance, and justice. Neither word has anything to do with mater, mother, which is the root of matriarch and matron.That's the kind of “science” he pushes throughout the whole book. For example, he has this theory that the Phoenicians built the Stonehenge and the “American Stonehenge” and that they are connected with a straight “sunrise line” to the “Phoenician Stonehenge”, or the “Israeli Stonehenge” (Rujum al-Hiri)The problem is, of course, that these things are not in line if you remember that the sun rises in due east on Spring Equinox... “What Cam believed, and taught, was that waves of European and Mediterranean explorers had crossed the Atlantic prior to Columbus - Phoenicians, Irish, Norse, French, Scots, perhaps even ancient residents of Atlantis.”Atlantis... Yeah, sure... Sorry, I wouldn't hire you as a history professor either. So - some university apparently had hired him to teach history. He's a lawyer. He teaches this pseudo-history based on very shaky grounds, fairytales, and conspiracy theories. The university didn't renew the contract, and he's p'd off, because “the history he was teaching was not considered politically correct by the liberal-minded faculty”. Atlantis. rolling eyes“When people first learned to read, that caused us to use the left side of our brains much more than we had been. As I said earlier, the left side of the brain is what men use most. So when we began to read, we became more masculine in our thinking”Yeah... things governed by the left side of the brain: maths, science, language, not just reading and writing. Language. But, no language is good, women invented maths, it's just letters, the alphabet that's bad. rolling eyesThen there's the problem with the fact that David (A graduate of Tufts University and Georgetown Law School) made his main character an attorney. (“My name is Attorney Cameron Thorne” Your name is Attorney? Such an unusual name.) The problem is that David doesn't know how the law works. He makes Cam bully people by using legal threats that wouldn't work on anyone with the least knowledge of the law and their own rights. He doesn't know how to handle criminal clients. He doesn't understand what client-attorney confidentiality entails. He doesn't know how to talk about things without mentioning certain things. It's really ridiculous.“This was not like fighting with one hand tied behind his back. It was like fighting with no hands at all”. Nah, it's like fighting with no brains at all.Then there's the pseudo-feminism. “Scientific studies show women, generally speaking, really are more intuitive than men”Yeah... what is this thing called “intuition”? Attention. Noticing small, insignificant details. Association. Understanding. Drawing conclusions. It's not something magical, incomprehensible, supernatural, or paranormal. It's just seeing more in the world than your own navel. If the guys like David here knew this, they would insist men are better at “intuition” than women because it would be called “observation, deduction, and logical reasoning” - like Sherlock Holmes.“I think when people think about Goddess worship, about making the godhead more feminine, they get this vision in their head of everyone standing in a circle holding hands and singing. And then afterward talking about their feelings. But I don't think that's what the ancient Goddess represented. Sure, she was compassionate and kind. But she could also be aggressive and strong when necessary”.(Compassionate and kind? WTF are you talking about?)Amanda blinked, considering Cam's argument. “Okay.”“Think about it this way: what's more aggressive than a mother bear protecting her cubs?”“Good point”.(What? “Good point”?)“We shouldn't think of Goddess worship as necessarily being synonymous with passivity. Cultures that worship the Goddess can be aggressive.”Now, that's insulting, David. Women are not passive and submissive and gentle by nature, and you know nothing about the ancient Goddess worshiping cultures. No wonder considering your source material. Maybe try reading books written by actual historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists talking about actual scientific discoveries and history, (and preferably written by women), instead of finding literature that confirms your theories. “Cam made an interesting observation. “Notice how he uses words like stem and root and honey. All things from nature. As if nature itself were evil.”“That's what they believed”.Yeah. “And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots”. So evil. And then the stupid jokes. “Did I tell you one of my ancestors, Bertrand de Blanchefort, was a Templar Grand Master?” His pronunciation of the name made Amanda think of cheese fondue.“We call it the eggscroll”Either the language barrier prevented him from getting the joke, or he just didn't think it funny...They are all stupid like that. Some are more questionable than others. Most are of bad taste. None funny.
Another difficult one to rate... It is well written, but so damn... not misogynist, but something like that. It was somewhat scary and clever, but also somewhat aggravating and frustrating with all the mansplaining and “logic and rationality”. It was hard to stay in the story with all the eye-rolling. Maybe I'm getting too old with this crap :-D
I also watched the 1962 movie Night of the Eagle or Burn, Witch, Burn. The book was better :-D
I recommend this as a Halloween horror reading.
BTW, this is not a good cover for this story, but it's so dang pretty that I don't have the heart to choose something better. :-D
I was very excited to read this book. Adventures of a pine marten sound great! But - it wasn't great.
It has been very much influenced by Redwall. But being influenced and inspired by something doesn't make it as good.
There are some good ideas here. It ends well. Yes, I am somewhat interested in reading the rest of the story. But probably I won't. Because there were so many bad ideas there. Like - an evil owl wants the price, so you'll hide it in a tree. It's not as if owls flew, is it?
I am bothered by speciesism. The MC a pine marten, is a good animal. All the other pine martens are nice people. All the badgers mentioned in the book are good, and all the otters are good. But all the weasels, stouts, and ferrets mentioned are bad. So, what about minks? Are those “good” or “bad”? Or sables? What about skunks or wolverines?
And then foxes. The villain is a silver fox. Does Cherith know that silver foxes are red foxes who happen to be black? Is she aware that she made the melanistic form of a species evil, while the non-melanistic forms are good?
Then there's the “oh, they see me with these villains, so they won't like me...” “oh, there's no use trying to explain that I'm their prisoner and slave, they wouldn't believe me because I'm with them...” sigh What about not assigning attitudes and words to people before talking with them?
And lastly, the whole village immediately knew the fox and his gang were bad. Just as Vair knew immediately that the villagers were nice people.
I like Steinbeck. (Or what of his I have read. It's not much.)
This short story (very, very short, three pages) is an excellent example of how to write a short story. It is structurally perfect. It has everything.
And now I want biscuits with bacon gravy for breakfast. To eat it out in the open with a cup of coffee, and finish the breakfast with a small libation to Mother for providing this pleasure for me :-)
And I don't even like coffee...
FINALLY!This was one of those reads that feel like being forced to eat something, you chew and chew and it grows in your mouth, a mass of something you need to swallow and you just can't... I kept reading and reading and there was always the same amount of pages left to be read. A nightmare.Nothing happens in this book. 300+ pages about nothing. I would give this book one star, had it not had its moments. Some of the things were said very beautifully. Some sentences made me feel and think about things. But I hate it. I don't want to read another Virginia Woolf in my life. I loved [b:Orlando 18839 Orlando Virginia Woolf https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1443118010l/18839.SY75.jpg 6057225] and [b:A Room of One's Own 18521 A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327883012l/18521.SY75.jpg 1315615], but that isn't enough. Anyway, this book can be divided into three parts. The book opens with James Ramsay, a toddler or so, 4-5 (Don't know, don't care), wanting to go to the lighthouse, but his father says no because it will rain. The rest of the first part is basically his mother's thoughts about things, with inserts from others. Then we have an interlude about the house, some 10-15 years or something. (Don't care to find out.) War happens. People die. The house is empty, abandoned, and slowly deteriorating. Then we have the second part, the family comes back to the house. Mrs. Ramsay has died, and we get the POV of the other characters. Her place is empty, but somehow she's still there. And James gets to the lighthouse. I don't feel my life has been in any way enrichened by reading this book. I don't care about any of the characters. I was irritated by “her Chinese eyes”. (One of the characters has “Chinese eyes”, whatever that means. I can't help but think it's racist. I assume they are black, small, and slanted. I think Virginia said something like that. sigh (Again, can't be bothered to go back and check. I hate this book so much, I'm just relieved I've finished it. Now I know it wasn't worth reading.)
Uh. I think I thought he was someone else. I read this because it has the same name as the book of the month for the “Everyone has read this but me” group. I thought it was an interesting coincidence.
I find Aldous Huxley extremely boring. Sorry. I said I wouldn't use that word, but - there it is. Maybe these essays might have been more exciting 60 years ago - it's hard to believe we have lived in the 21st century for over two decades... right now it reminds me of one of my dad's boyhood books, about science and future and stuff like that, written in the 40s. They thought we'd have underwater tubes to transport people from Europe to USA. I think I'd like that. Glass tubes with glass ceiling train cars, so that one can look at the masses of water above... and then they could be making catastrophe movies about the tube cracking...
This is the story of Tom who likes to fool around. His aunt Fidget Wonkham-Strong thought he was playing, and that too much playing was bad for kids. So she called in Captain Najork to teach him a lesson. But - it turns out fooling around was the exact thing to do to teach Tom what he needed to learn. It's a great story with a happy ending and I just adore Quentin Blake's illustrations!
So... this is Colleen's retelling of [b:The Blue Castle 95693 The Blue Castle L.M. Montgomery https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1442108651l/95693.SY75.jpg 1298683]. It's not very good. There are things I like about this, but the things I don't like are more. Missy isn't clever like Valancy. Her situation isn't the same. We don't get the same urgency or desire or need, to live, as in The Blue Castle. Her awakening just doesn't sound real. We know Valancy had been seeing and thinking these things, all the time condemning her silly relatives, so when she finally has her outburst, we understand it. She just says out loud what she had been thinking. Not so with Missy. With her, it just comes out from nowhere. And it sounds mean, stupid, and childish. Valancy sounded exactly what she was. “I'm not going to play these games any longer”, she says. Missy... There just isn't any base on her reactions.The same thing with her mother and aunts. Their “awakening” also happened without any reason, explanation, any justification. At the beginning of the book, there is no trace of any revolt, objections, discontent, or resentment - all the ladies are silently and submissively accepting the situation as it is, and almost adoring their brothers and male cousins who run the place. Then, suddenly, Missy tells them about things, and they change to the almost total opposite. And then... how she “got” John. Through lies and deceit. And the book ends with “don't tell him, don't ever tell him”. We are assuming she never will. In The Blue Castle, Valancy didn't get Barney through deceit. She was as shocked as he was about the truth. There is no reason why Missy couldn't have told John the truth. We have no reason to believe her tenacity wouldn't have worked without the heart disease plot. Now I'm left with a bad aftertaste. If John ever finds out, he will question everything about their relationship. He already believes all women are liars, now it would be confirmed that Missy was just one of them. He already believes the Hurlingfords are b-ards, now he has reason to think Missy was a true Hurlingford and played him to get his money and to keep Byron with the Hurlingfords. After all, that's what happened. And then we have Alicia. I don't like the sexualization of her. In the beginning, there is no reason to believe she's a biche, so when she turns out to be that, it doesn't fit the image we have received of her. Olive was very well characterized in The Blue Castle, and she was just being a conservative bimbo. I don't see the reason to why the Italian driver was introduced to the story, and why he had to grope Alicia in the bright daylight... uh. That was another stupid thing with this book. I don't understand why Colleen thought that was an improvement to Olive. She could have changed the looks of Missy and John. Make Missy a grey mouse, wearing greys among the flower colors of the other girls, make the other girls English roses with brown hair and blue eyes, and John the son of a Jew, dark and mysterious. Then Missy could have worn green, blue, and brown and other colors that fit well with the Australian forest. The red lace dress... sigh Eh, no. Just no.I like Una. Though I don't understand how that worked.
They Came to Baghdad is not a murder mystery, it's a spy novel.
I think it's ingenious. Agatha was so clever!
It is a bit... well... how to say it. A pastiche? Parody? Hanging on the line between a parody and a non-parody. How Victoria just stumbles over a trouble and how she manages to get out of it, for example, she never needed to pay her hotel bill :-D I mean, I wouldn't mind having adventures like that.
But it was nevertheless thrilling.
So... this is “hopepunk”. I like it.
I am not quite sure about the bit about the cure... He seemed to be OK with the results, but it was still not OK. This kind of justifies violations of bodily autonomy with the “they'll thank you later” explanation.
I like the love stories. Very warm, soft, lovely. All of them. Yes, I cried. Of course I cried.
Also... I read a review where the reviewer talked about the attitudes about disabilities. I have Aspergers (or, I am autistic, as it's properly said nowadays) and I wouldn't want a cure for it. Now, I cannot see being blind or deaf as anything that people wouldn't want to “cure”, but I am not blind or deaf, so I wouldn't. To me, an able-bodied person, a future without disabilities sounds like a great thing, but... it would mean a future without autism, ADHD, and other things like that. My husband has ADHD and that is one of the reasons why I love him. I wouldn't want him “cured”.
I have to say I don't quite understand this, but, well... I'm going to listen to disabled people and take their word on it. I'm probably ableist without being aware of it, because of my privilege.
