Jukka

I enjoyed this. In some ways this is a continuation of the [b:The Khan Series 5-Book Bundle: Genghis: Birth of an Empire, Genghis: Bones of the Hills, Genghis: Lords of the Bow, Khan: Empire of Silver, Conqueror 13573316 The Khan Series 5-Book Bundle Genghis Birth of an Empire, Genghis Bones of the Hills, Genghis Lords of the Bow, Khan Empire of Silver, Conqueror Conn Iggulden https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1355078822s/13573316.jpg 19154285] which i finished some time ago. The wars a maybe slightly less bloody and Sundaresan is concentrating on other things, such as politics and relationships, but I like the fact that there was and is a link to Ghengis. The Mughal Empire was the last great empire of that lineage. It is an Empire that you do not come across with in history lessons and the Taj Mahal trilogy will be an awesome way to dig deeper on that topic. And those who want a great love story (Not usually my cup of tea), well here is something for you.

I made the mistake of reading the book in english, whereas it would have been much more lively in german trough the use of Berlin dialect.

You need to survive to approx. page 150 to have the book get traction.

A neat little thriller/detective story, a genre i do not usually read. I mostly enjoyed the cultural and societal history aspect of this book of the three sisters bumping into a new york/new jersey gang of organized crime. The home page of this book series has pictures of that time and the main characters. It brings it all closer for a history junkey like me.

Not as good as the first to books.

This book, this classic is utterly boring. Boring to the bone, really. However at some point you get the feeling this book has the whole world in it.Everything that has been written before. It has elements of Nietsche (With Modern times, railways and such, God dies), It has elements of absurdism (Life has no meaning), it has biblical miracles, the whole history South America, it tackles ideologies and the fact that revolutions tend to eat themselves and that history is cyclical rather than a progression. And So Much more than that

This was not a conventional reading experience at all. The pace was so rapid and the characters so weird that you it was not possible to develop much of a relationship with the characters. This was something that I found unbearable last night thus giving it only 3 stars. If I would reat this again, this would most likely get 5++ stars from me.

Yet another book of Dostoyevsky where the main character is a young man who is a little bit out of balance mentally. The difference to the “Idiot” and the “Double” is that the underground man knows that his thinking patterns should be different but at the same time he loathes the conventional. And by doing so he appears to make himself unstable. It is hard to be the one who swims against the stream. In it extremes you have it as a new “normal”, poisoning everything. I would advice reading the second chapter first and first chapter second. In this particular vintage classics edition the foreword of Pevear offer further insight.

A classical fantasy hero tale without being too much of a cliché. Must read for them Fantasy junkies.

A great book, and a great edition of it. One of the interpretations highlights that this is a highly based of Hesse's own thinking and experiences, like dancing. In every person there is a steppenwolf, for more it is more hairy than others. I recognized a LOT of myself in Harry. I could not put those things anything remotely like Hesse did, and therefore I am very grateful to have read it.

Lately I have read a lot of Camus as well. The most important philosophical question for Camus was This: Does life have any meaning and if not, as it appears to be the case, then why not kill oneself. Harry has pretty much the same experience. The endings that Hesse Produces are often dreamy deliriums and this certainly was one of those. At the end Harry liberated Hermione. She too, wanted different things from life that she did end up developing herself and therefore was not happy. She kind of knew that Harry loves her enough to kill her for that.

Great series. The character development here is fantastic. It appears that those who in first book were complete assholes appear to be the better ones in the end but agonizingly constrained by reality and vise versa.

Here there is an ugly sense of realism instead of a hero who makes everything great.

a Big minus was that i have not read kafka, kierkegaard or dostoyevsky enough to fully absorb the references. However there were some great notions and remarks about life, the meaning and meaninglessness of it and a postmodern view into Eurpean (western) culture.

Although this is a personal history, I felt that this was like the fourth part of achebes Africa Trilogy, where he describes what from his point of view went wrong with Africa. Would the Biafra-Nigeria, where a staggering amount of 3 million lives were been avoided or at least had a thorough analysis within the Nigerian society afterwards, The place of Nigeria and Africa on the world stage might be different now. According to Achebe the situation is similar than that of China 500 years ago, where it could have risen to world domination. Instead China went into internal turmoil and through 500 years of relative weakness. Achebe thinks Africa got a similar chance when the Colonial powers left, but painfully did not took the chance. One can only hope that It does not take 500 years for Africa to get on track.

If you choose to, you of course can read this as a highly political peace, but I read this as a poltical testament of a generation that screwed it. Achebe Is not a defender of colonialism but at least it brought some fixes too, like possibility of education, healtcare, infrastructure and so on instead of the fear of terror, corruption, ecologic catastrophies and mediocre apathy right now having the overhand.

*The appendix consists of 1/3 of the books length.

Camus bases his philosophy on the absurdity of life. In my view these short stories paint a picture where at the end everything is just empty vanity. If nothing else, Exile and The Kingdom really makes the reader to think about the meaning of life. The Question of all question, the basis of philosophy.

I love how Nabokov has created the internal world of the main potagonist Humbert Humbert who clearly is conflicted with himself. The dead of his first girlfriend clearly leaves a mark on him making him and he keeps his passion for young girls even at a later stage of his life. The book is an entertaining mix of comedy and tragedy.

Considering that English is not the native language of Nabokov, the use of it in this book is brilliant.

Meh, too confusing.

Much like [b:Mikael Karvajalka 3821069 Mikael Karvajalka Mika Waltari https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1310402237s/3821069.jpg 236793] or [b:Sinuhe the Egyptian 23773276 Sinuhe the Egyptian Mika Waltari https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1418366007s/23773276.jpg 2072467] by [a:Mika Waltari 33472 Mika Waltari https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/authors/1206680550p2/33472.jpg], meaning the physician is a magnificent historical novel and adventure. From difficult childhood travelling trough much of the known world in search of wisdom. I just love such stuff :)

This is somewhat enjoyable read when you keep constantly in mind that this is the story of communism (Building the pyramid is the path towards communism) in disguise.

A second star comes from the notion that this book made me study the pyramids.

Such a vast and philosophical book. All the common themes of religion and the struggle of Russia between east and west are there. unless you do not know the philosophical and ideological movements of that age you are probably not going to finish this book. I was relieved myself when i got to the end and understood so little that i had to look for analysis and go back to some chapters and read again.

It is basically about an anarchistic revolutionary society, that creates a lot of excitement in the high society in a time where lots of new ideas are circulating around. But when you give a little finger to the devil it might take the whole arm, and i can assure you that the book offers havoc and destruction in biblical proportions..

Ps. This edition was not annotated. Make sure you get an annotated one unless you are not fluent in french.

Jim Dixon is a fantastic character. He is a history teacher at some outback university, yet he studied in a grammar school. He tries to step up the ladders of class in society so he takes part in high society gatherings, yet he would much rather escape to a bar and get wasted. He somehow gets into trouble but is a master of somehow getting out of it.

I should think this book captures something very real about the 1950s and it makes you smile why doing it.

This is probably the main work of Albert Camus. He was one of the great minds of the 20th century.

A great youtube introduction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97gSwtbBI-w

I rest my case.

A solid 3.5 stars. Finally picked up the sequel for the [b:The Twentieth Wife 27298 The Twentieth Wife (Taj Mahal Trilogy, #1) Indu Sundaresan https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1441836224s/27298.jpg 27945] and i was not disappointed! Although I am certainly not the target audience as I usually loathe love stories, I kind of made an exception here. This one ends the story for mehrunnisa in a thrilling story, surprisingly accurate historically.

Very enjoyable childrens story.

This is book is the best mockery of humanity and human nature that will ever exist. What a great testament by the great Bulgakov.

Satan causes a mayhem, Jesus forgives, Master and Margarita find peace, and there are one or two days in the life of pontius pilate that could have gone differently..