Eva
A climate fiction told through 3 perspectives set in Canada's cold north, where the oil embargo left previous digging sites sitting empty. The world is ravaged by climate catastrophes, while the super wealthy huddle in smart cities floating in the ocean. But that life of luxury still needs rare earth metals.
A story about power dynamics and exploitation. A secret mission to infiltrate an architect's building sites of a new utopia in the north. Tech billionaires and visionaries who can buy everything including their women. A survivalist commune of women finding peace within yet who stop at nothing to get their necessary supplies.
I loved the White Alice parts, and how it all tied together. Rose has played too many roles and felt a bit empty. And there could have been less of Grant.
As I am not into horror, i thought reading her funny memoir about raising young children in the 1940ies was a good introduction to Shirley Jackson. And I was delighted by these domestic adventures and misadventures of raising a band of little precocious rascals speaking quaint English. Jackson's narration is straight out comedic and also cheeky. And even though at times she slightly overuses the comedic technique of repetition, I came out of it insanely charmed by Laurie, Jannie and little Sally.
A good time. A good listen. Like watching a really good black and white movie.
If you blend out the authors' slightly new-age-y tone, this is a good resource for various studies and initiatives that deal with the positive impact of arts practices and arts experiences.
The range of what is considered ‘art' or ‘aesthetics' is wide in this book. A walk in nature, gardening and coloring helps calm our minds. Humming helps release endorphins. Storytelling, singing and dancing helps us form connections. Encounters with art pieces challenge and widen our state of mind. Carefully designed Virtual-Reality experiences can help soothe pain.
I especially enjoyed the chapter on ‘flourishing', which focuses on ‘awe' research done by Beau Lotto and his Lab of misfits, the architecture of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, the multisensory adventures of the Nomadic School of Wonder.
What's missing from the book is a more critical perspective. That art practices help ease physical and mental stress hasn't been a secret. Yet it's clearly now gaining more acceptability, in light of more tech-equipped and ‘professional' studies.
It also doesn't help the book that they're mixing hippie-practices with science studies and unironically call algorithms ‘sophisticated'. Every time they cited a study about the positive effects of art, I wanted to ask if the control group also had the resources and care that equals the resources and care provided by arts programs?
I clearly would have enjoyed a more scientific version of this book, but it's still a great overview, and offers lots of departure points if one wants to go dig into the mentioned research or projects.
Je connais, mais je n'ai jamais lu ni regarde aucune adaptation de ce celebre conte canadien. Parce que c'est une conte pour enfants ou jeunes adultes, et donc un recit direct utilisant des mots simples, j'ai pense que ce serait un bon exercise d'ecoute de livre audio pour moi. Et du success! J'ai vraiment aime ecouter ca. Meme si Anne etait un peu trop bavarde dans ses premieres annees, j'ai apprecie son caractere curieux et studieux. C'est une histoire chaleureuse, ce n'est pas une surprise si elle est si populaire. J'etais un peu consterne de voir il ya 8 volumes de histoire de Anne. C'est evidemment trop pour continuer, j'ai en fait ete choque a decouvrir que l'histoire la suive meme jusqu'a un age avance. Helas, c'est a cela que servent les resumes Wikipedia ;)
After an Irish girl living [b:Exciting Times 50175419 Exciting Times Naoise Dolan https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1572990447l/50175419.SY75.jpg 73236926] in Hong Kong, we now have a British man in Ireland about to marry an Irish girl in London. Everyone's a millennial, queer, and the usual kind of messed up that makes for that laconic Dolan love-drama style. We start with the Happy Couple - Celine and Luke - and might not end up with a wedding. Examining along the way all the reasons why the couple makes or doesn't make sense. By the end, the only happy couple ending I wanted, was Celine and her piano! Sally Rooney and Naoise Dolan character would definitely hang out.
An author escapes the ailments of family members and books herself into a motel close to the desert. On a hike she encounters a cactus. What follows is a hallucinogenic desert survival story infused by grief.
Broder's writing is very funny in a deadpan way, and her audiobook narrator voice fits that style perfectly too. So there's a lot to chuckle along with. And yet I wanted more plot outside the navel-gazing and the drugged fever dreams. Thankfully the meta of the protagonist also writing a novel about a women going to the desert - was kept light.
Change in society comes at a slow pace, and those first brave ones trying to argue for it, mostly have to fight an unwinnable uphill battle. This novel is about the illegality of homosexuality in the late 19th century in London. The “impossible love”, “Greek love”, or “sexual inversion” is repressed or hidden, as gay men fear prosecution. Largely based on real people and events, the novel is about two writers (John Addington Symonds and Havelock Ellis)who set out to write a scientific book that should help bring change to society. One of them is bold, the other is painfully shy, and as the Oscar Wilde trial throws oil on the fire, they each question, how far they are willing to go.
It took me a while to get into it, possible expecting a different kind of novel, but once I realised this was all based on reality, it became a lot more interesting!
Le dernier chapitre de l'histoire de Vernon Subutex ! J'étais reconnaissant pour l'index des personnages au début du livre, parce que Despentes aime élargir le réseau des personnages impliqués dans cette histoire sinueuse de musique, de politique et de violence.
L'histoire est toujours très ancrée dans la réalité française, avec des thèmes de religion et de radicalisme, et maintenant les actes de terrorisme sur le sol français, influencent beaucoup les personnages. Et puis leur petit unite de paix est aussi menacee par l'arrivee d'un heritage. Rien de bon ne semble durer eternellement.
J'ai vraiment apprécié passer du temps avec Vernon et ses partisans et ennemis pendant les derniers annes. Même si la fin finale a des qualités folles, j'aime ça aussi. Il est peut-etre temps d'explorer d'autres livres de Despentes maintenant.
This has been a journey! The first 200 pages are very dense and slow. You're immersed in a universe, that's evidently much larger than just the focus of this novel. And Cherryh does not hold your hand and explains - neither the politics nor the scientific innovations that run this world. There's talking and scheming, so much politics, and everyone is very careful and eternally suspicious about every single bit of communication. So, a bit of slog. But, then it gets more human, our heroine is young and you grow into the story with her. The world is exciting, as you slowly grasp it. Training with ‘tapes', the ‘azi' and their focused mind states, ‘specials' and their protected status, being able to ‘Work' others and always watching out from getting ‘Got'. And then, the last 200 pages are a pure rush, of elements coming together, and Cherryh turning up the action to 100. So you speed to the end, to discover ... OMG there's no clear ending to so many plot points!! You're mad but you're also stimulated because the story tickled your brain in just the right ways, and then you're on the way to the library on a rainy Sunday afternoon, because you discovered Cherryh wrote a sequel 20 years later!!
A girl escapes oppression and sickness to flee into a wilderness of extreme weather, near starvation and humanly and beastly adversaries. Through sheer force of will she battles on against all odds, carving herself a slice of life that's pure survival. It's beautifully written, a highly visceral experience of the harshness of early settler North America, but ultimately I missed something that would elevate it. On the women-alone-against-nature shelf, yet shelved behind: [b:The Wall 586852 The Wall Marlen Haushofer https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1435260852l/586852.SY75.jpg 573687] and [b:I Who Have Never Known Men 11996 I Who Have Never Known Men Jacqueline Harpman https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1636235968l/11996.SY75.jpg 14356].
I enjoyed this entertaining dramedy about an early-thirties woman in London trying online dating and failing. Featuring the messy and hilarious girl-friend, the ex-boyfriend-turned-best-friend, the seemingly perfect boyfriend who disappears, the father who's slowly disappearing too, and her nemesis neighbor. But then there was somehow too much ranting at the end of it, that made it feel like the author had built this novel around a dating grudge of hers.
Wham! -The Edge of Heaven
A future where humanity is numbed by medication and entertainment. While robots are programmed to serve and govern. The book is about the awakening of our two human protagonists, who go off on an adventure which is primarily fueled by the rediscovery of the act of reading.
This was perfectly fine, but too clear-cut for my taste.
An enlightening and often frightening and overwhelming book on the complicated global network of our waste industry and its sins of the past, present and future.
Waste out of sight is waste out of mind, as affluent nations buy themselves free of their guilt with their second-hand donations and recycling initiatives. In a novel form of waste colonialism, we're simply pushing our waste onto nations without environmental regulations nor the infrastructure to cleanly deal with it. And while waste should be visible and front and center, it secretly trickles into our underground waters, is emitted into air as toxic particles, or causes death and sickness on the other side of the world.
The only sensible solution for the average person is to consume less. As long as the waste industry is somewhat opaque, you can never be sure if your waste ends up in a landfill, incinerator, or material recycling plant.
Is your city's sewer network connected to the stormwater pipes?
Where does your city's recycled plastic really go?
Where has your country buried it's nuclear waste of the past?
A strange and hypnotic novel about apathy, human connection and EU directives about to change the Norwegian postal system. Politics, bureaucracy, ennui of the mundane, finding purpose. A workplace novel featuring a heroine who finds herself a stranger in her own life. My favorite part was the story about the school teacher asking her summer school pupils to write essays about unhappiness.
Over a stretch of a few days several characters' fates entangle in the luxurious Grand Hotel in Weimar time Berlin. Those who live in glamour and riches tangle with those scheming or dreaming of a future without worries. There's a drollness and melancholy in the characters, and their adventures are just perfect for being in a black and white movie starring Greta Garbo.
Rounded up, to support the rediscovery of female writers of the past. Thankfully Vicki Baum was already quite successful in her day.
Hm.. I feel I learned something about the Silicon Valley IPO life, but this novel leaves a bitter taste, with the end message being that you don't need to have a vision or an idea to become a SF bigshot, you only need to want to be in control. And instead of being an empowering message - the protagonist is an Asian woman after all - it comes off as a bit hollow. Especially since it didn't feel clear that's what the novel was building towards.
A quiet and contemplative book that's part essay part travellogue, as the author draws on his visits to many spiritual places on this earth. Observing how our strive for a paradise and the sites we associates with it, are often surrounded by warzones or amidst other forms of human suffering.
• Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad
• Jerusalem, the eternal city of many religions and eternal conflict
• Sri Lanka, often seen as the Garden of Eden
• Srinagar in Kashmir, in contested territory by India and Pakistan
• Ladakh, Himalaya
• North Korea
• Bridge of Heaven outside Osaka
• the holy and polluted waters of the Ganges in Varanasi
The book stays feather light, as he gives us vignettes of his travel experiences. There's possibly another version of this book out there, that looks a bit harder at the connections between religious paradises and violent fanaticism.
The gradual awakening of a housewife and mother in a very patriarchal mindset of 1940s Italy triggered through the reflective act of writing a diary. Her husband calls her ‘mamma', her son affectionally receives all the favors he asks for, while her daughter despairs her with her modern attitudes. Their small apartment has no space she can call her own, only in her diary she finds a refuge for her thoughts, as she slowly starts to question her role in her values and her relationships. Working in an office to contribute to the slim household income, she takes pleasure in feeling appreciated for her contributions. That, and her children starting adult lives of their own, contribute to her burgeoning desire for a self that's more than just wife and mother.
I'd say this book is a perfect execution. It shows how small transformative steps are, and how there's a constant push and pull between the old and the new, her internalized misogyny and her new sense of independence. Which is especially present in the way she treats her own children and their love stories.
Wonderful audiobook narration.
A family saga tinged with magical realism set around the beginning of the 20ths century in rural Mexico. Rich in characters and folklore, the story features a lot of historical details of that time: the Mexican Revolution, the Spanish flu epidemic and the agrarian land reforms.
Simonopio, his bees, his wild ways and his wisdom-from-nature were naturally a charming center of the story. And I really enjoyed all the little character arcs, like Nana Reja's or that of Lazarus (the one who came back!). Yet the second part of novel spent too much time focusing on the fight of lion and coyote. It seems to expand more and more, until I realized it takes over the whole rest of the book. And after, it left me wondering what purpose all that sacrifice had. Helping rich land owners hold on to every parcel of their land? What did that son do, that was so important saving him?
Nevertheless, this was a fun read (if you don't think too hard about the messages).
Valerie Perrin maitrise parfaitement le cliffhanger, creant constamment des rebondissement emotionnels ou des secrets revelants, qui te donnent envie de lire plus vite ou presque de sauter en avant. Ce qui est parfait pour une lecture sur la plage. Ce qui ca rendre en fait le premiere livre en francais que je n'ai lit pas par petites portions. C'est histoire des trois amis, qui tous appellent les “Trois” car ils sont inseparables dans l'enfance et l'adolescence. Quand ils grandissent, ce sont leurs secrets qui les separent. Tout emballe dans un histoire de passage a l'age adulte basee sur un intrigue pleine d'amitie, d'amour et de drame. Comme dans [b:Changer l'eau des fleurs 38735127 Changer l'eau des fleurs Valérie Perrin https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1519476656l/38735127.SX50.jpg 60320931] Perrin raconte des histoires de renaissances. Des gens qui traversent des moment difficiles and qui ont besoin de trouver le courage de sortir de leurs prisons (de violence, de regrets, de honte) et de se reinventer. En particulier le sort de Nina et de son mariage presentait des similitudes avec celui du protagonist de Changer l'eau des fleurs.