Eva
I was a big fan of Sittenfeld's debut ([b:Prep 9844 Prep Curtis Sittenfeld https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386925666l/9844.SY75.jpg 2317177]), apparently didn't think much of her first romance novel as I rated it one star ([b:The Man of My Dreams 72622 The Man of My Dreams Curtis Sittenfeld https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386924531l/72622.SY75.jpg 978325]), and then thought her other one was fun but rather silly ([b:Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride & Prejudice 25852870 Eligible A Modern Retelling of Pride & Prejudice Curtis Sittenfeld https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1460477855l/25852870.SY75.jpg 26428236]). But now she totally won me back with this book. I absorbed it within 24hours, and thought it funny, warm and really excellently written. There seem to be so many romance novels out there were character's insecurities are the unrealistic roadblocks thrown into the narrative to elongate the angst. Yet they are constructed so feebly all you do is roll your eyes. Sally and Noah - the protagonists of this novel - also come with insecurities that pose obstacles, but they at all times feel genuine and realistic. So, is it all just in the quality of the writing? The protagonist at one point proclaims she wants to write “non-condescending, ragingly feminist screenplays for romantic comedies”, which she would achieve mainly by the quality of the writing, and the character development. No cutesy female characters with flour on their nose from baking cookies, no messy disaster characters. She wants to write about people who aren't flawless but aren't ridiculous or incompetent at life. Well, mission achieved. And some. I also really enjoyed learning about the day-to-day mechanics of the SNL-like sketch show, even without being a fan of SNL. And I might have cried some tears about Jerry.
C'est une histoire pour les detectives en herbe, pour les hackers, pour les constructeurs, pours les gens interesses par les systemes de transport, d'expedition et les frontiers. Au centre il ya deux femmes. Une qui a grandi parmis des outils, et qui est capable a construir tout. Et une autre qui tombe sur une enigme qui la reveille et se met a resoudre.
J'ai vraiment apprecie l'intrigue de ce livre.
Le terme “claustronaut cookbook” est parfait!
Russia's story of the first half of the 20th century - participation in WWI, the revolution and civil war, followed by Stalin's reign of fear and violence - is told through the protagonist's life story. Of course Filipenko writes about the terrors of the Russian regime, its culture of interrogation and denunciations, leaving it up to the reader to draw direct comparisons to today's Russia. And for that reason I would have liked the book to be a bit more straight-forward, maybe leaning heavier on historical facts. Instead of making me question the narrator's reliability by structuring the story in interweaving segments of interrogation transcripts, diary entries, and official reports.
DeLong's long 20th century goes from 1870 up until right after the financial crisis of 2008. In those 140 years humanity has made massive strides forward in technological improvements, quality of life and accumulation of wealth. The key change makers are: the research lab, corporations, and globalization. And so we're climbing towards an utopia, yet the further along we get on that climb, the more it becomes clear that a) we'll never be satisfied, and b) we don't agree on how to get there.
History and economic development is an oscillating climb. Two steps forwards (the gilded ages from 1870-to-WWI and WWII-to-1970) one step back (world wars). The highs seems to be tied to the lows and also the other way around. We need creative destruction in order to reinvent ourselves. And if we're doing too well, we reset our benchmarks for success, those on top get cocky, and discontent start to brew below. Economics growth followed by depressions.
This book is a fascinating attempt at a summary of the economy of the last 140 years. DeLong mostly tried to give a global picture, but still is too US-centric (it's always the same), especially in the last chapters. In addition, in the final chapters, he dives too deep into specific US political decision making, and loses his objective focus. Which was the guiding light for all the previous chapters. Still, I feel I learned a bunch, even though a lot of it was a bit overwhelming.
I feel I should read a primer on Keynes, Hayes, etc now
“The Market Giveth; The Market Taketh Away: Blessed Be the Name of the Market?”
What an intriguing novel. A politician's daughter, our heroine is spoilt and restless in her Soviet satellite state of the early 80ies. Simultaneously pampered and surveilled, she and her friends try to make the best of the jet-set live they are offered within the communist limitations. After a tragedy, she follows a poor British poet and escapes to a new life and love in London. Yet the surveillance apparatus keeps track of her. And that new life of freedom in the west, is harder than expected. Especially when that one person you're hinging all your expectations on, turns out to be all charm and no practicality.
I liked all the small details that sometimes made you wonder if the novel would transform into a spy story. While that did not happen, it still left some of these possibilities open. And betrayal is betrayal, if in love or politics.
A Ukrainian family story told in two timelines, by grandmother and granddaughter. It's an easy-to-read pageturner, especially the grandmother's retelling of her family's escape to Siberia and the hardships to endure during WWII. The family dynamics are a good mix of interesting and messy, yet feel not fully developed to their potential. Larissa and her sisterly guilt. Natasha and her mother's unlived dreams. The Orlov brothers and that love triangle which wasn't that great that it warranted mysteriously leaving out paternity details from the list of characters at the beginning of the book. Still, it was very enjoyable. Even if it is another one of those, where I am disappointed because it feels it could have been more.
A really solid space station mystery with asteroid mining, industrial espionage, space terrorism, AIs and mech suits. It very much feels like it belongs to the Expanse universe with its cast of Belters, Martians and Earthers, and its pragmatic space world that is made of metal, money and corporations.
I do have to say that the big plot reveal has been telegraphed from a a mile away. And either the audiobook narrator overdid the emotional voices, or possibly I would have enjoyed the writing more if it hadn't been set in the first-person perspective.
Still, very plot-driven and good entertainment.
I am not quite sure what to make of this. A granddaughter rediscovers her long-lost grandmother, spends two weeks with her that are full of leisure, gardening and semi-philosophical discussions, and in the process finds herself reinvigorated with a new joy for life. Seems all perfectly fine, and the grandma is indeed a great character, with her successful weed business, her sexuality and general teasing nature. But there were lots of character and plot moments that felt too flimsy and were neither quirky (the random door labelled ‘centre of the universe'?) nor substantial in their message of mindfulness. Maybe the solution would have been to make the story longer and fill it with more strange characters and moments, because the few it had (the count, crawling on his knees) were quite fun.
We are not just our personalities, we are also our cultures. And the way we communicate, evaluate, persuade, lead, decide, trust, disagree and schedule is most often cultural.
Some behaviours can be explained historically. People from Japan are high-context communicators, as the country was on lockdown for a long period where it perfected to talk to each other between the lines. Germans are sticklers for punctuality, as it was one of the first countries to industrialise and needed its workers to arrive on time for all their machines to synchronise. In Nigeria trust is build through relationships, because they can't rely on a functional legal system in case business contracts aren't honoured.
Coming from one culture to live and work in another - which on surface doesn't appear all that different - I can now see that certain differences I noted down to personality are in fact cultural. My Austrian education was principles-first, and I always feel a bit ungrounded when confronted with Canada's application-first approach. I communicate in super low-context and get frustrated if not all details are spelled out literally. My trust is given by appreciating someone's skills and reliability, while I don't see the need for relationship-building chit-chat. And I absolutely get frustrated if plans are broken and schedules are not kept :)
It's hard to acknowledge if one comes from a culture that's usually hanging out at the edge of the scales, but obviously - same as with personalities - there are upsides and downsides to all types of behaviour. And major conflict emerges from the friction when different cultures clash, which happens more often now, as the world becomes more and more global.
Super fascinating!
Clearly Jennifer Egan is not for me. She's a great writer, and for the first half of the book I enjoyed getting to know her characters, but as soon as I got comfortable in one perspective, she shifted to another. And then the actual focus of the plot somehow went from own-your-unconscious to an intricate game of connections across families and time. And it started to feel like a puzzle exercise, but without any payoff?
Eccentric women dealing with trauma. One messy and unhinged, the other blunt and stoic. And yet somehow they fall into a relationship.
This was wonderfully entertaining, funny and sexy. But I also have to agree, that the ending was somehow anticlimactic.
Why, Om, why - would you hire a local transcriber, and not one that lives far far away, from all your messed up clients?
Now I just have to imagine that Arnold Schwarzenegger also takes comfort from listening to his two miniature donkeys chewing.
Un avion traverse un tempete et atterrit a New York en mars. Trois mois plus tard, en juin, le meme avion - avec les memes passagers a bord - atterrit a nouveau. Et tous les passagers pensent que nous sommes encore en mars. Le monde est confronte a plus de 200 sosies et a un phenomene inexplicable.
A la fois thriller international et etude de personnages, car il examine les gens et leur vie individuelle et comment ils reagissent a la presence d'une autre version d'eux. Etes-vous jaloux que une autre rivalise pour l'amour de votre famille? Etes-vous hereux de trouvers enfin quelqu'un qui partage vos secretes? Etes-vous pret a apprendre des trois mois d'experience de votre sosie? Etes-vous menace par votre double parce que vous ne pouvez exister qu'une fois?
J'ai le trouve une histoire fascinante, meme si c'etait un peu insatisfaisante qu'il n'y ait pas de conclusion.
Another beautiful Wharton heroine that expects more of high society than high society seems to be willing to give her. Yet while The House of Mirth's Lily Bart makes us root for and shed tears for her, Undine Spragg isn't likeable at all. She's a self-absorbed social climber, lacking all empathy, even for her own family members. While she's craving a world of spending and constant entertainment, she slowly absorbs social etiquette by imitating others. She makes the mistake - twice - to fall for old money and titles, before realizing a world stuck in old customs is too rigid for her needs. Yet luckily for her, there's the new ‘custom of the country' that allows her to reinvent herself again and again. Only to find herself wanting again, wanting something else, something more.
Yes! Edith Wharton! I guess I'll have to read more.
I really liked the book for its social critique at the start and I admired how bonkers it went at the end, and yet I felt adrift in the middle where the book kept the reader guessing as to which way it would turn while stalling with too many mundane rituals and thoughts. This might be one of those, where I like the concept more than some of the execution.
At a certain point I managed to ignore my irritations at all the hyperbole, and fully bought into this. And then it was a wonderful and entertaining romp!
Yes, she's an obnoxious mouthpiece from today, speaking to the world of yesterday, but who cares. It's fun. Yes, the precocious daughter is way over the top. And yes, the mysterious family connection was telegraphed from miles away. But 6:30 is a delight, and all the tearjerk moments at the end were worth it.
If we're low on resources (money, time) we ‘tunnel', we focus on the crisis at hand and blind out all other distractions. This can be positive, as it helps us get stuff done. But at the same time it makes us bad at long-term planning. We borrow time and money from the future, to fight the fires of the present. Only to have to fight a new fire next week. And that's how people short on money and time tend to be stuck in a perpetual loop of catching up.
It's an interesting problem of behavioral economics. But there's a lot of repetition in this book, as if the authors were desperately trying to hit a word goal. Also, It felt a bit forced how the authors attempted to expand the concept of scarcity into the domains of diets and loneliness.
The book could have profited by featuring more studies around poverty. Because nothing seems harder than escaping poverty. And governmental support systems seem to burden those in need even more with badly designed processes demanding bandwidth of those who have none to share.
This was a perfect compact mountain thriller about the famous Swiss folk hero. Where the hero got his shining moment, yet is far from perfect and glossy as transmitted tales usually make heroes out to be. The story being told through an alternation of many eyes and voices was surprisingly effective.
A strawberry blonde beauty in a leather suit kidnaps a priest, takes him away in her sidecar motorcycle, ties him to a tree on a secluded meadow and over the course of a few days proceeds to tell him her life story which includes the confession of the seven murders of her seven ex-lovers. Oh, and she's called Magdalena. While the murders teeter from justified to revenge-fueled, we - and the priest - learn to love Magdalena. She's escaping suffocation - by family, provinciality, Austria - and rides her motorcycle all across Europe on the search for adventure and connection. While her relationships start out fulfilling, they all quickly take a turn, with her lovers exhibiting different shortcomings that are variations of men's expectation for women to be domestic and demure.
Not as pulp as that description might make it appear, but rather a covertly mischievous tale, occasionally wordy yet never boring, with very entertaining biting takedowns of Catholicism and the patriarchy.
Hard not to visualize Magdalena as Marianne Faithfull in The Girl on a Motorcycle.
I read it in one sitting on a long plane ride, and it was the perfect book for that. An easy read, full of charm (loved Buchholz's laconic and witty voice), mysterious, sexy. It almost dove too deep into the magical realism well, and I could have done without the stage play at the end, but I certainly had a good time reading it. Not sure I'd raise it to the cult-level as some want to, but it definitely is unique.
A la fin du 19ieme siecle les puissances europeennes se partagent l'Afrique. Un jeune geometre est envoye pour tracer la frontiere nord du Congo. En souffrant de multiples maladies locales, il est fascine par la nature sauvage et violente et les personnages colores qu'il rencontre. Alors que son expedition monte lentement le fleuve Congo, la nature violente du lieu et la violence des colonisateurs envers la population locale s'imposent a son esprit. Tous les personnages dont le chemin a conduit en Afrique, semblent fuir les obsessions de l'esprit, du coeur ou de la chair. Alors que les habitants se battent pour leur liberte face a la repression, les envahisseurs fous tentent de trouver leur propre liberation dans la pratique chinoise du tatouage et de l'art de la decoupe humaine. Un roman grotesque et magique comme un reve fievreux!
If a creative mind seeks inspiration, it's always fruitful to look into the past and find inspiring personalities who stand out due to their tenacious execution of their vision. Kankimäki finds her heroines in a series of 19th and early 20th century Africa/World travelers (Karen Blixen, Isabella Bird, Ida Pfeiffer, Mary Kingsley, Alexandra David-Neel, Nellie Bly) and a few Italian Renaissance painters (Sofonisba Anguissola, Lavinia Fontana, Artemisia Gentileschi). We get biographical portraits about these women, interspersed with the author's own travels following into their footpaths.
All these women are fascinating, and the book starts out strong with a long focus on Karen Blixen (part of this destroyed my overall romantic vision of Blixen that obviously came from the Sydney Pollack movie). But after a while the other women start to blend into each other, as their experiences feel too similar (even if admirable). And then it becomes more about the author herself than about her ‘night women', as she struggles to write this exact book.
This book definitely could have been shorter, or divided into two parts (the travelers, the artists). It's always sad if a book that starts out great drags towards the finishing line. Nevertheless, I loved learning about all these women. 3.5