Sarah
I love these two. Listening to this was the best because they just could not stop laughing the whole time! #relationshipgoals
This was a fascinating book to read. Hearing about this man's experience as a “hermit” was deeply interesting and compelling.
I was bothered throughout by the reporting methods utilized at times. It felt like the author was harassing Knight and his family at times. So while he did get a good story out of Knight, it felt unethical how he pursued it at times.
Holy crap. This was fantastic and quite possibly the most stressful book I've ever read. It was so nerve-wracking and intense, but so so good. It was surprisingly very funny and entertaining, despite the fact that it's such a depressing situation. I could not put this down and I was so immersed in Watney's little world that I was actually sad when it ended. I want more of Andy Weir's writing, it was amazing and this book was fantastic. Seriously highly recommended, it's way funnier and more entertaining than you'd ever expect. Gotta go watch the movie now!
Okay, so this wasn't the most amazingly written book or anything, but it was so, so good. I adore the two main characters and there were many points throughout where I laughed out loud at their interactions. They made an amazing and wonderfully entertaining couple, and the whole story was incredibly entertaining. This is definitely one of my favorite books now. The characters were so fun and so likeable, and the various settings throughout were amazing. This isn't a masterpiece work of classic literature, but it's so good and so entertaining in its own right that I had to give it 5 stars because of how much fun I had reading it. Can't wait to read the next one!
This was recommended to me because of the ideas, which honestly could have been summed up in one blog post. I like the idea, but the execution was awful. Find a short summary instead and don't waste time reading this.
What a curious book. I still don't know entirely what to make of it, and I don't know if I'll figure that anytime soon. I was struck by Hughes' depictions of innocence and childhood. He certainly conveyed the randomness and strangeness of children that is often left out in romanticized versions of children. This was somehow a really beautifully written book and a grim and gruesome one as well. Some of the death in this book we shockingly violent and vivid, and I was genuinely uncomfortable and sad when the animals died or were being mistreated. Hughes' writing was beautiful and evocative, and I am surprised by how much I enjoyed this tale, despite its intense darkness and not so happy ending.
“Truth is, this has never been about the murders, not the killer nor his victims. It's about us. About our minds and how they dance.”
I've always been fascinated by Jack the Ripper and all the mystery surrounding him and what happened. Who was he really? We'll never know. But it's always fascinating to see the many ways in which people try to explain this story. This graphic novel tells one of those potential stories, in thorough and compelling detail. I loved Alan Moore's take on Jack the Ripper and Eddie Campbell's art could not have been more perfect for the story. It was very dark and very gory and very much what one would expect to see in a close-up look at London in 1888 at the height of these murders. It is so interesting to me how much these murders have significantly impacted our culture since then and how far we've twisted these events to make them into so much more. Moore was right, it's nor about the murders, killer, or his victims. It's about how we see them and consume them and turn them into endless hysteria and obsession with events that happened over 100 years ago. As crazy as some of this book was; despite the entire chapter devoted to depicting the murder of Marie Kelly, I found it compelling and a fascinating look at how many different ways there are to tell this story that has become an integral part of our culture.
I had really high expectations for this because of its classic-ness. In some ways, it was met - the writing was really excellent and impressive. But the actual plot, the story of the crime, was suuuuuch a let down. I expected (and tbh, wanted) something more sensational, intense, mysterious, confounding, etc. It ended up being very straightforward and left me wondering why Capote wrote about it in the first place.
I don't even know where to begin with my thoughts on this book. The writing was excellent, for the most part, but I found the story to be kind of slow and dragging at some points. It was so easy to get immersed in this novel and to feel like it was real. I still want to think that Cordova and all of his films are real because of how much detail the author described them in. The scenes are The Peak were amazingly suspenseful and exciting, and made up for a lot of the slowness of the earlier parts of the novel. So much was left wide open at the end of the novel, but I completely understand and appreciate the author's decision to do that, as it reflects the mysterious Cordova's directing style. Cordova is the main focus of the entire novel, yet he remains mostly a mystery and a complete stranger by the end. He's just like the locked briefcase described in one of his own movies that never gets opened. I also loved the ambiguity of Scott's entire investigation. He goes into it firmly believing in reality and refuses to get caught up in others' beliefs in supernatural and demonic explanations for what's going on. Yet over time, he changes completely and is so caught up in the case that he starts to lose touch with reality. I loved that the novel led me in the same direction, and I started believing (somewhat) that this case must be more than it seemed. In the end, it turned out that there was nothing paranormal about the case, and Scott's original belief in reality was the right one. But finding the final truth of it all didn't really matter at all, and I loved that this novel was one of the first ones I've read where that didn't disappoint me. While this novel wasn't as suspenseful or scary as I was expecting, I was surprised by how much I ended up enjoying it and would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for something that's likely very different from anything they've read before.
“What I want us to protect isn't just the distinctive range of consciousness within each of us but also the ability to share that distinctiveness with each other. That's the only way I've found to feel less alone. That's the deepest way to look at the stars together. To recognize how fundamentally alone each of us is, locked in a separate body and a separate mind, and in that recognition to have the chance to feel all that reaches across the space between us, all the earth-deep connections among us that are real.”
This felt like reading Henry David Thoreau but in the digital age. And it really, really works.
Gillian Flynn always writes the craziest stories. But after a while, they all feel the same. The protagonists are all essentially the same character and it gets old. Still, the twist at the end was good and I appreciate her ability to make me want to know what happened.
This reminded me a bit of Gail Carson Levine's Ella Enchanted, and I loved that so much. It felt like a piece of my childhood, grown up a bit and changed, but still with the same enchanting qualities mixed in. I really enjoyed this story and found myself wholly caught up in it. I loved Agnieszka and Sarkan, and Kasia too was a wonderful addition to the story. This book felt so much less traditional and predictable than anything I've read in a while. It felt like a fairytale, but with a modern twist that didn't make it black-and-white good and evil. There was tragedy throughout, on all sides, and I was surprised by the number of deaths throughout as well. But I loved how this story refused to let anyone be unimportant. At one point in the heat of battle, Agnieszka sees a boy on the other side who is her age, and she is deeply troubled. She thinks of how “they all had stories. They had mothers or fathers, sisters or lovers. They weren't alone in the world, mattering to no one but themselves. It seemed utterly wrong to treat them like pennies in a purse... I felt the soldiers understood perfectly well that we were making sums out of them – this many safe to spend, this number too high, as if each one wasn't a whole man” (346). This is something I don't notice often in fantasies, or any novels involving wars and battles and such. We're never made to think about how each person matters, in fact, we forget that they matter at all. So I really loved how this book drew attention to that and constantly reminded us that everyone does count. It was really a wonderful novel, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
Margaret Atwood is a genius. This adaption/homage to The Tempest is astounding in so many ways. I love how meta Atwood went with actually including a staging of The Tempest within this retelling of it. It's genius! I just saw The Tempest put on by the Royal Shakespeare Company this January and it was an amazing experience. The Tempest was one of the first Shakespeare plays I ever read (aside from Romeo and Juliet. I know, I know.) and it has long been one of my favorites. But I never felt like I truly understood it until I read Hag-seed. Atwood's insight into the play through her retelling is magnificent and wonderful. It makes me want to go back and reread The Tempest again!
A different way to approach depression that's entertaining and oddly realistic. Yes, Novak says, it's okay to spend days in bed feeling like a piece of garbage. It's okay to doubt if your medication works at all. You'll inevitably feel like shunning all forms of human interaction and that's normal. But each little step you take to feel better is monumental too. I loved the way Novak approached this book as a kind of satire on self-help books and, dare I say it, it made me feel a little better? But, thanks to Novak's disclaimer, I do not hold her liable for that fact.
Thankfully, not devastating at all like I was expecting. A cute story and I'm happy that everything worked out happily and didn't end at all depressingly. I liked this book, I liked Noah and Jude and Oscar and Brian. I found some of it a little too cheesy for my taste, like all the poetic and artsy descriptions and stuff that Noah and Jude would say. But overall, it was entertaining and well-written.
I loved and hated this book at all once. Loved because it was adorable and funny in how the Visions were as a family and trying to fit into human life. Hated because dammit it was depressing and the Visions just could catch a break. I loved Paul Bettany's Vision in the movies so I was excited to read this. He was still so cute in how he would try to be human but kind of fail but its endearing and I loved it. I loved how this book made me love the Visions and laugh at all of their attempts at being human but also made me so sad for all the depressing stuff they had to deal with.
Not bad, but not my favorite. I like Kate Bishop, but I wish this had more Clint Barton. I liked his stories a lot more than these, although Kate wasn't bad!
Loved all of these issues and the art in them. The writing in these were fantastic and I couldn't put this down! Can't wait to start the next volume. I think my favorite was the one where Matt struggles to cope with Elektra's death. Really well done and just all around awesome.
I love love love Daredevil and was so excited for this (thank you, Jason!) I love the Netflix show about Daredevil and it was cool to compare that to this origin story to see how faithful they were to it. It was awesome, so cool to read, especially with all the clear ties to Miller's other Daredevil stuff I've read. So good! I want more Daredevil now!
Didn't seem so “plain and simple” to me... too many complex metaphors and confusing ways of repeating the same thing over and over. I think this just wasn't the best written guide out there and there are many others that would be more helpful
This is one of those books that you simultaneously can't put down yet you never want it to end. It was so well written, the concept was amazing, and the characters were awesome. I grabbed this book on a whim at work and I'm so glad I did! Amazing read, can't wait for the next one!
I thought this would be about Area 51 with respect to the alien stuff and exactly what happened to create the suspicion and conspiracy. Instead, I got a long winded history of all the aircraft developed there. Yawn.
Oh, Carrie. She has such a gift with words in explaining her often really sad and tragic life story in the funniest way possible. I'm glad I'm finally getting around to reading her memoirs because they are spectacular.