Eva

Le suite de l'histoire des jumeaux Lucas et Claus. La preuve est un epreuve pour voir s'ils peuvent survivre quand ils sont separes. L'histoire est remplie de caracteres lateraux qui capturent tout le spectre de la tristesse. Le simplicite et la franchise de l'ecriture d'Agota Kristof est tout a fait parfait pour mon niveau de francais.

At one point one of the characters refers to the small dusty Texan town this novel is set in as “this horny town” and she is right. Sex is on everyone's mind. There's teenagers and their first times, pranks to get the local simpleton laid, various May November affairs, secretly gay teachers and a mild case of molestation. There's even bestiality as farm boys will be farm boys (the casual way McMurtry dropped this in, was really disturbing).

And despite all the sex, this novel is infused with sadness and sad characters. That are stuck in their limiting surroundings, drudging along, yet never self-pitying. With a few scenes they become lively and memorable. I especially enjoyed his Ruth, and Lois. Sam. Billy. Genevieve.

My second McMurtry after Lonesome Dove (which i LOVE) and really enjoyed this one too.

Une histoire de la tentation de l'inconnu. Un group de quatre experts scientifiques entreprend en expedition dans une zone naturelle ou des choses inexplicables se produisent. Il y a des jeux d'esprit psychologiques, des situations de suspense, tout es raconte par la voix d'une biologiste, qui essaie de donner un sense a tout en etant de plus en plus influence par l'environment.

Le langage d'une atmosphere d'horreur poetique et mes competences limitees en francais etaint la combinaison ideale pour l'ambiance mysterieuse du livre.

Le livre se termine par une fin ouverte, ce qui est parfait pour cette histoire. Je me demande meme pourquoi VanderMeer a ecrit plus. Je n'ai pas besoin d'en savoir plus de la Zone X, je prefere rester ignorant.

Loved the visuals, his fluid way of drawing bodies. The collection of small and sometimes disturbing moments definitely reminds me of [a:Nick Drnaso 14056321 Nick Drnaso https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]. But it needed at least double the length, the make the stories less fractured and the characters more impactful.

A tentative summer love between shy and simple Harriet and careless and cruel Vesey falls apart before it can bloom. Two decades later they are brought back together again, discovering they had held on to their long-ago feelings.

I really thought the narration of Harriet and Vesey's adolescent love was exquisite, capturing the awkwardness and fast heartbeats of crushes and first touches. Taylor's writing has a unique style, observing and subtle, detached yet also sharp. She makes jumps sometimes, inserts you right into situations, without connecting the dots, it was intriguing.

I loved the first part more, for its shy romance. The second part features too many secondary characters, I mainly wanted the attention back on our main protagonists. Towards the end everything becomes gloomier and gloomier, plot and my perception of it, but the ending was great again.

In 1917 Sigmund Freud claimed that the unconsciousness is “the third blow” to narcissistic humanity (after Copernicus and Darwin). That free will, rationality and a sense of self might be mere illusions. Soon after Freud fell out of favor and so did the notion of the unconscious. But it is very much on its way back, considering the amount of recent related scientific experiments and published books. Tallis' book from 2002 was probably a frontrunner.

The subtitle fits: a history of the unconscious. Tallis presents in informative and insightful way how we discovered, studied and tried to make sense of all the processes, memories and knowledge that lie below our awareness level. How the concept of the unconscious went from philosophy to spiritualism to scientific knowledge. From Mesmerism, dream interpretation, lucid dreaming to subliminal stimuli, Libet's half second and the evolutionary advantage of self-deception. There are definitely stories to tell, and Tallis' book was a interesting read.

The story of a little town in Quebec that is built to support a hydroelectric power plant, and is subsequently shut down 50 years later when the government nationalizes all electricity and automates the dams.

Compendium piece to Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag's multidisciplinary sonArc::project. Besides documentation of his installations the book mainly consists of a collection of German essays by Wolfgang Hagen, Friedrich Kittler, Verena Kuni and others, that were part of the “electric salons” at tesla-Berlin in 2007. The salons were titled “domesticated lightning” and brought together scientists, media theorists and engineers. The essays deal with the nature of electricity and its impact on media, art, music, philosophy, communication ... They trace the history of electricity and focus on the romantic, haunted and strange, early instruments, ghost detectors, philosophical toys.

I could have done without the experimental layout of interlacing the essays across the pages.

Not that compelling. Somehow the storyline stagnated after a quite interesting first half of the book. And the big reveal at the end didn't add much either. The only thing that got me excited was when McEwan build the Monty Hall problem into the story. - And at least i got to train my Swedish skills.

Une collection amusante de courtes bandes dessinees, en particulier pour les ecrivains et tous ceux qui aiment les livres.

Shirley Hazzard's writing style really floored me. It is playful, wry, elegant, concise and full of emotions. Each sentence seems to be carefully constructed, each sentence could be THE artful sentence in another book. And put together, they are not intellectual and highbrow as one might expect, but hold this strange magic and a timeless quality. It takes a bit to get into, and one has to slow down, but it's so rewarding, cherishing those lines.

My favourite thing might have been her unfinished sentences. Sentences where everyone already knows where the plot is going, so she just drops them mid sentence. She doesn't do it often enough to become repetitive, just so perfectly sporadic that every time I stumbled over one, I was delighted by the cleverness.

I'll say the writing tops the plot, even though I enjoyed my time with Caroline and Grace, their entertaining aunt Dora (who's self-pity could come straight from a Jane Austen novel), and the men around them.

The multi-generational saga of the German family Salz whose destiny seems tied to their relationship to their shadows. From a mother's shadow portrait gallery, to a young girl's imaginary friend to a sibling's war tragedy and the trauma that sequentially ruins multiple family generations.

This was a decent winter-time yarn, even though it sometimes felt a bit aimless. It could have used more positive stories as well, because not many of the Salz family members were likeable. Surprisingly I enjoyed Aveline's chapter the most, even though it was written in the second person.

This book had quite an influence on me and my path.

In order to get more serious about my financial planning, I read this guide book from 1989 :) But it's a big Canadian hit apparently, though I gave it a try.

It's common-sense finance knowledge packaged with a few characters and minimal plot. The jokes are aged yet still chuckle-worthy. Less chuckle-worthy is the fact that back then it was quite realistic to get 10% interests on mutual fund investments.

Definitely helpful in getting you thinking about savings, rsps, insurance, taxes, etc.

A not-unrealistic Germany of the near future, post Merkel, with a right-wing government that focuses on efficiency and slowly eradicates democracy. While the population is more and more disillusioned and disinterested, the suicide rates are rising. Our protagonist - who has long since dropped all political engagement - leads a successful business that on the storefront helps people with suicidal thoughts, while in the backroom makes big bucks by connecting the unhelpable to terrorist organisations.

Smart social critique, very political and cynical.

A not-so-distant dystopian future about a couple living alone in the wild, trying to create some sort of normalcy, after everyday life blew apart in terrorist attacks, war etc leading to destruction of infrastructure, making cities uninhabitable and unsafe. The woman gets pregnant and fears of being able to raise a child in the wild makes them go look for others.

The setup has potential, first focusing on the peace but also negative effect of 2 people living isolated, only having each other. There are small beautiful character moments. Then the couple, reaching a settlement that is clouded in mystery and strict rules to ensure survival, bit for bit drifts apart through the stress of secrecy.

The novel has a lot of psychologically interesting aspects, what would happen with humanity after an apocalypse, the lord-of-the-flies vibe, going feral, what rules do you abide by to pay for safety, falling back into a strict men/women division, etc. it's all there in bits and pieces, but ...

... but the execution is lacking. I felt a lot like I wanted to read a better version of this book.

Only got 15 pages into this, but every third sentence reads like a young person's emo poem.

Got up to 23% because this came as a recommendation, but there is too whimsical and cute and predictive for my taste. Or maybe I am just exhausted from listening to the Elena character.

Italien im 19.Jahrhundert. Fabrizio del Dongo, landet im Gefaengnis, verliebt sich in die Tochter des Gefaengnisvorsehers. Seine schoene Tante, die in Fabrizio verliebt ist, und deren Partner, der Premiereminister des Fuersten von Parma, schmieden Ausbruchplaene und Intrigen in der Hofgesellschaft von Parma. Clelia und Fabrizio verlieben sich, sie verhilft ihm zur Flucht, sie muss jedoch einen anderen heiraten. Sie haben am Ende eine heimliche Affaere, einen Sohn, der jedoch wegen weiteren plaeneschmieden verstirbt. Clelia folgt bald, und Fabrizio nach einem Jahr in der Kartause von Parma.

D-503 ist Bürger des Einzigen Staates, der von dem Wohltäter und den Beschützern kontrolliert wird. Das tägliche Leben passiert für jeden in den selben auf die Sekunde geplanten Abläufen. D-503 ist der Konstrukteur des Weltraumrakete Integral, die zur Ursache einer grossen Revolution wird. Die Liebe zu der geheimnisvollen I-330 zeigt ihm wahres Glück und bringt ihn dazu, die einzige ihm bekannte Welt anzuzweifeln. Die Revolutionäre fliehen hinter die Grüne Mauer in die wilde Welt, während D-503 sich in einer Operation die Phantasie entfernen lässt, wie es der Wohltäter vorschreibt, und wieder in sein bisheriges kontrolliertes Leben zurückfällt.

Sometime towards the end of the novel, when our protagonists are in a smuggling ship crossing the Mediterranean, the narration tells us that it's the middle class who attempts this life-threatening escape from war-torn nations, because they are the once who once learned to expect better from life.

This book does a good job at making you empathise with refugees by following the heartbreaking fate of two Syrians who - despite their beauty and success and a lifestyle mirroring Western ideals - get uprooted and mixed up in the Syrian revolution and subsequent war.

I fault the book sleeve synopsis for making me expect that our two protagonists - Amal and Hammoudi - would meet sooner, and for longer. I read anticipating more of them, and subsequently was slightly disappointed. Even though they got their bittersweet connection.

Despite being told with a detached tone, this was very memorable and powerful.

L'histoire d'une femme mariee avec une addiction sexuelle, qui a un effect destructeur sur sa psyche et son mariage. Adele suffoque dans sa vie stable et apparemment parfait, elle ne trouve sa liberation que dans les aventures sexuelles avec des inconnus. Quand son mari le decouvre, elle est devastee et soulagee en meme temps.

L'ecriture de Slimani est vraiment parfaite pour ma lecture en francais. Ses phrases sont courtes - mais pas simplistiques - et la narration et vif.

L'histoire multigenerationnel d'une famille francaise qui transforme une pauvre petite ferme au debut de 20ieme ciecle a une grande ferme porcine a la fin du ciecle.

La premiere section du livre se concentre sur Eleonore, qui grandit comme une enfant unique avec des parents durs et taciturnes dans des conditions economique difficile. Malgre tout elle persevere. Elle aime son cousin aine Marcel qui vient aider a la ferme, mais son experience de la WWI le laisse devaste, corps et ame.

Dans la deucieme section on rencontre la famille trois generation plus tard. Il semble que la douleur psychologique etait transmise de generation en generation. Maintenant la ferme est dirigee par le patriarche mourant qui l'a transformee en machine de production de viande de porc. Alors que le betail est lentement envahi par un virus, la famille et l'entreprise elle-meme s'effondrent en raison de ses nombreux secrets et afflictions.

A travers tout cela est un portrait de la relation des humains aux animaux et a la nature. Si vous grandissez dans une ferme d'animaux, vous developpez naturellement une immunite contre les cruautes de votre travail. Del Amo's ecriture est tres beaux, viscerale, natureliste et brutale. Les representations des mecanisms d'une ferme porcine moderne (~annees 80) sont revoltantes.

Le symbolisme du verrat echappe etait merveilleux. J'ai adore que le livre se termine sur la perspective du “la bete”.

After having read [b:Girls of Riyadh 1476261 Girls of Riyadh Rajaa Alsanea https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1184005681s/1476261.jpg 1570261] I thought I check out another female voice from the Arabian Peninsula. Gargash is definitely the more skilled writer. She offers us a portrait of 3 members of an established yet secretly scandal-ridden Emirati family: the chauvinistic old patriarch of the family, his illegitimate daughter, and his niece. The novel is set in the 90ies and shows the struggle of the two girls to escape a deeply misogynistic culture. We witness the lack of respect and violence shown towards women when we go into the head of the hateful family head, and we also see how these patriarchal values trickle down to the new generation of young Arabic men. The writing is feminist yet nuanced and quite engaging in weaving together the storylines by switching between the three characters. And for a change I actually didn't mind the different POVs. Another great window into a different world.

This was a slug of a book, and I can't quite understand why it's such a classic. Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Gogol .. are all heavy reading, but you can appreciate the quality of their writing and plotting. But this one just fell apart into disjointed segments of people's lives, their hardships during and after of the Russian revolution, told in different voices and styles. Sometimes going into heavy unnecessary detail with mundane conversations, sometimes glossing over life-changing events with spare sentences. And all that never made me care one bit about the characters.

Or maybe I did like them a bit at the beginning. But then the book become such a bore, that I simply got angrier at it, than it deserves?