Kyle
This review, despite using insulting words, is entirely written with awe and love.
The story is filthy and disgusting. People spontaneously change sex, the world is polluted, they eat bugs, society is regressive, the youth age unnaturally fast and suffer from many ills, government doesn't serve the people, and extreme isolation is everywhere. It's awful. What a terrible world to live in, and what a foreseeable future for us it is.
And that's what makes it so good. The author's creative way of treating these things as completely normal, through the eyes of its main characters, Yoshiro and Mumei, who are great-grandfather and great-grandson.
Don't read more about this anywhere. Go in blind and read it. It's amazing.
I understand why this novel is important and great, but it doesn't change the fact that there were chapters I just felt like were a chore to read, even as there were also chapters that were very fun. The narrator rambles and does virtually nothing the entire book, which night work for some people, but not for me. I did enjoy the fact he was incompetent at living.
Basically, every man in his social circle is a total loser. In that sense, I was really reminded of The Sun Also Rises, a story full of characters I had a distaste for.
A good read if you're a fan of Murakami. It's not an autobiography, but there are passages that behave as such. It's more his thoughts on writing, using his own work and life as examples.
If you're a writer or interested in writing as either a hobby or profession, I think this is a nice book to read.
A sweet ending to a manga that had become my guilty pleasure, as I'm over double the age of the kids in this story. I enjoyed over the course of 20 volumes seeing the antics of everyone, and watching the characters grow.
Special shout out to the utter lunacy and hilarity of every President appearance.
Really sympathetic to the main character, who is a dirty teenager obsessed with a pop idol. I got vibes the whole time that she might be autistic, and the author's treatment of her fixation was respectful and harrowing.
The ending completely snuck up on me bc my edition has a number of additional sections after it ends. Because of the layout of the book, it left me feeling like I missed something, so I went back and re read the last few pages and it was much more impactful.
The kind of book you can read easily, but you can really take your time to luxuriate in the author's creative descriptions and character's emotions.
Perfect. Zero flaws. Unreal how good this is. If you like Arrival for the linguistic aspects, you'll love this. This book was made specifically for me, my linguistic proclivities, and my similar experience questioning the meaning of a year spent abroad in Japan before returning to my life back home in the States.
The art. The emotions. The way the author presents a...quadri- or quintilingual story visually. It's just
READ THIS READ THIS READ THIS!!!!!!
I read this without having any idea what it was about going in. The words are a fast read but you can linger on the art, which is beautiful. It is certainly a fairy tale for adults.
Look at the length of the book and judge whether the cost is worth it to you, if you consider a book's worth a function largely of how long it takes you to read it. It is a very fast read. I did not regret spending $20 on this, but I think a lot of people might if they're expecting lots of dense text for this length.
Beautiful artwork, a story that doesn't shy away from dark subject matter, and a number of delightful visual transitions. This story had me more emotional than I expected to be going into a graphic novel.
To those of you who have read the graphic novel Blankets, it's the best comparison I can make. Emotionally honest coming of age story.
Highly recommended.
An extremely accessible book about the history of Tokyo (then Edo, 江戸) during the Tokugawa shogunate with a brief afterward bringing us into the Meiji era and modernity. Highly recommended for any amateur interested in the history of Japan. I can't speak to academics about this book's value bc I'm not one.
This is not a book to read if you want an overview of Germanic religion. It is an academic text written for specialists, and is very difficult to follow if you do not have knowledge in various cultures religious domains. I do not, so it was a struggle and the section on Heimdall feels quite speculative at the end of the book, but that's okay because the author acknowledges that there is virtually no evidence of his existence and Germanic mythology, implying that he will be speculating.
Still, if you read it casually, you will walk away with a basic, tenuous knowledge and understanding of Germanic as well as indo-aryan, and Celtic mythologies. It might inspire you to read more layman friendly books, or maybe even the Icelandic sagas. But you probably will not learn a lot from reading this book unless you already have an understanding of the material via some introductory course.
If you are not looking for a real intellectual challenge, I would steer clear of this book and look for something written more for a lay audience. My understanding is that Neil gaiman has done this for Norse mythology, but I've not read his book.
Rating is so i don't get recommendations like this. Review is for others: i respect the book but it just wasn't for me. It's more textbooky than i expected and quite a slog to get through. I gave up about halfway through. It's more a collection of names and dates and publications than anything. Just wasn't for me. Might be for you, though!
As a chronicle of a family in Australia with no native German speakers creating three bilingual children, the book achieves it's goal admirably and shares a lot of useful information.
Also the window into various attitudes in Australia in the 80s toward the experiment makes me grateful i don't live there at that time!
This book takes a two-star hit because it's in dire need of editing. The author clearly is an expert in the field and communicates a lot of interesting ideas.
My favorite chapter is the one on security.
However, whenever Clark gives concrete examples of lessons learned or reasons for decisions the Internet's architects made, the book shines. This is how the book has been marketed, so that's definitely good that it meets its promises.
But for a book so dense with technical discussion, it is lacking in visual aids (which hurts understanding) and it needs better headers and signposting. A textbook on network architecture would have plenty of visual aids, and (in my opinion) this is a textbook advertised as a book for a passionate and knowledgeable lay person.
No matter how layered the headers get, they always are fully left-justified and in exactly the same font size and weight.
Sometimes you get a space before and after a header. Sometimes you get one just before. Sometimes the header is Not In Title Caps but just in Normal sentence capitalization. Sometimes you're left wondering if there's a typo or if the upcoming section is nested below the previous.
Other times, the headers are not useful or confusing. For example, in the section on Network Management and Control, there is a section entitled “What Are Management and Control?” Two short sections later, another is titled “Management and Control.” This is a sign that the information could have been consolidated or removed.
At one point in the book, I ended up making a note that the author seems to keep repeating himself. “Didn't I just read this?”
I was very excited to read this book because of the positive press it had gotten and the interesting subject matter that was promised. I was disappointed by editorial choices (or oversights) that made reading this a lot harder than it should have been.
If there were a second edition where the above issues were fixed, I wouldn't hesitate to give it a 4/5, if not more.
As it stands, do NOT get this book expecting it to be one you can pick up and read. This book requires silence, and is so dense that it should be read more like a companion text during a policy course. It's not meant to be read in full at once, but in sections, ideally with discussion with other people. It requires too much stamina.
Or maybe I'm just stupid. That's certainly a possibility.
