Blue sky, green trees.
Deadly boring. The most interesting thing was how in the first chapter the author goes on and on (and on) about how hugely fat, how morbidly obese, Mercy Goodwill is; you don't see much talk like that these days. I made it to 100 pages (3rd chapter) for the sake of my book club, but that's as far as I could force myself to read. Looking at the wiki entry for the book, it seems like I didn't miss a thing.
Es gefällt mir sehr, dass die Perspektive der Erzählung (3. Person) folgt nicht nur Grant sondern auch andere Charaktere. Gutes Buch, klassische "cozy mystery", unbedingt empfehlenswert .
I mean it's a good book, very disturbing and sad. But I just couldn't get into it. I found myself scrolling on the internet instead of reading, and that's my sign that I need to move on to a different book.
Contains spoilers
Good book, I liked reading it. The jump cuts between the past and present were a bit jarring, but I understand that they were necessary so that we could see the complexities of Kinga's relationship with her folks. After awhile I did find myself skimming through the parts set in the past, I wanted to get back into the story of the present!
*********SPOILER*********
The ending wrapped up a little too easily and neatly. I mean, the whole book her parents are horrified that she's dating a Turkish guy, then her father goes on a racist rant at the boyfriend - in front of everyone - and then less than 24 hours later both parents are giving the relationship their blessing? Not believable. I get that she wanted to give us a happy ending, but we deserve a believable one.
Das Buch hat sich als etwas anderes herausgestellt, als ich erwartet hatte.
Außerdem:
Ich fand es nervig, diese aggressiv selbstbewusste und selbstzufriedene Erzählerin in meinem Kopf zu haben; ich mochte sie nicht, dann mochte ich sie doch, und dann wieder nicht, und noch mal so weiter.
All white people are bad. There, I saved you 542 pages, now you can go read an actually good book.
Slow burn. I was growing frustrated by the slow pacing, and maybe I would have given up but it's the only book that Nick has read twice so I stuck with it and, god, I'm glad that I did. Goddamn.
It seems like recently the trend in writing has been to over-explain and overshare, telling us every little thing that happens as well as 12 random thoughts the characters have while the little thing happens. This book was so different, so refreshingly different. A cigarette is tucked behind someone's ear when a scene opens, a few paragraphs later the person blows smoke out of their nose, and on the next page it's mentioned that the person lights a second cigarette. Do you see? The author never mentioned the lighting of the first cigarette. That is good writing, that is show don't tell, that is an author trusting us as readers.
Ich kann nur sagen, dass das Buch hilfreich bei meinen Deutsch-Übungen war. Interessant war es leider nicht, und ich habe es nicht erledigt.
I find it very difficult to rate and review this book. On the one hand the story is great and the writing style is FANTASTIC. On the other hand all of the characters are depressing and Miren in particular is poisoned by envy and bitterness; it was truly upsetting to read about her verbally and emotionally abusing her family and friends.
So, a great book but also very difficult. Proceed with caution.
Absolutely incredible. I loved that it covered so many aspects of life, from theft to theater to love. I suspect that many readers will be extremely curious about denazification, as was I, and the chapter does not disappoint; frankly, it stunned me.
One thing that I particularly loved was that Brigitte Eicke's diary was one of the sources of information for this book. See, she grew up on the street that I now live on, in fact I can see her door from my living room. So her input for this book had particular meaning to me, and gave me a little thrill every time I saw her name. For the curious, Eicke's diary is called Backfisch im Bombenkrieg (Teenager in the War), available only in German as of this writing.
Interesting and well-written science book. I did find it to be overly long, some of the diseases discussed could have been cut in order to keep it lean and zesty.
I also have to say that in the chapter about typhoid, I thought it was irresponsible of the author to declare that Mary Mallon (aka Typhoid Mary) had a mental illness when there is no indication that she was ever diagnosed with one - a fact that the author freely admits immediately after asserting the mental illness claim. Just because someone has a disagreeable personality, and sometimes doesn't conform to social norms, doesn't mean they have a mental illness. The willingness of the author to label people as mentally ill, having never met them and coming from an entirely different cultural period, is deeply troubling.
It's like the love child of a fairy tale book and an inter-generational novel about mothers and daughters - I loved it.
This book can be divided into four parts: the lead-up to the disaster, the disaster, the immediate afterwards, and the long-term afterwards. The first part, the lead-up, is quite repetitive, with facts and elements repeated a minimum of three times (per my personal counting). Don't let this stop you! The rest of the book is fantastic, by turns horrifying and sad and uplifting, and at every point fascinating.
Quite interesting. When it got to the testimonies of the defendants I started skimming because I figured it was all lies, and by the time we were in the closing statements I was heavily skimming because it got very repetitive. I skimmed basically everything after that until it came to the epilogue, which, along with the afterward, returned to new and interesting points.
Final thought: I was surprised and titillated at how much the author threw the cops under the bus, it must have been quite controversial at the time.
I found all but a few of the people in this book completely horrible. That makes it a weird ride, to hate people who you are spending many hours learning about, but also to still be interested in the story.
Also, I felt like the author was quite the apologist for Sam. He never says it explicitly, but the vibe is very "Sam is an asshole and treats people like shit but it's okay because he's smart!" This made me lose faith in the author and in his perspective on the story.
Glad I read the book, but even more glad that it's over.
I liked it, it was a fun read. There was A LOT of boating terminology, which I don't understand; at first it wasn't so bad, but I found myself having to skim entire paragraphs that were simply describing how parts of the boat were working. For this I'm knocking off a star because it really did take up quite a lot of the book. Aside from that I found the plot and writing charming.
Really great mystery! I recognized one of the clues as being a clue, which made me feel smart, but I didn't guess the ending, which kept me in a state of suspense throughout. In short, a perfect combo!
Contains spoilers
It was a really good book, and I enjoyed the structure of the story with its two time periods and one extra time period nested inside one of them; it was a treat to read.
****SPOILERS******
I did feel a mix of sadness and frustration as the mom ended up living the exact life that she never wanted, just basically checking everything off the list one by one. And the frustration came in because it's not like she actively chose any of those things, she just failed to make a decision and let herself be carried along with things - which is in itself a decision process, but a piss-poor one to live your life by.
Things really get bogged down in the middle third of the book, Miller is just repeating himself endlessly about getting the actors to "be real". The choice was either to fail to finish reading the book, or just skip pages until it got to the previews and opening night. I chose the later, for both closure and out of curiosity, and I'm glad I did.
