Indira
I wanted to love this book but just couldn't. It just wasn't as good as the first three in the trilogy.
Klara and the Sun is set at some point in the future, in a world where humans have developed Artificial Friends (AFs), solar-powered humanoid robots commonly sold as companions for children. The story is narrated from the perspective of Klara, a Girl AF, and in a way, it's her coming of age story.
One of my favourite things about this book was the “world-building”. I absolutely loved the way Ishiguro slowly revealed bits and pieces of this futuristic world, careful to reveal just enough but not too much so that readers can fill in the gaps and interpret the story however they want.
At the root of it all, this is a thought-provoking story that explores what it means to be human. I'd highly recommend this book!
I have so much respect for Greta Thunberg however I would not recommend this book. This “book” is a collection of her various speeches and although listening to one or two of them can be inspiring, listening to 20+ of them is not. Her speeches all sound the same and unfortunately, I didn't feel like I learned anything new.
A well-written wake-up call on the loss of our planet's biodiversity and its impact on our climate.
First of all, I'd highly recommend listening to the audiobook. If you love Sir David Attenborough's documentaries, then I think you'll really enjoy hearing him narrate the book. I normally listen to audiobooks at 1.5x speed or higher, but this was one of the only books I listened to at 1.0x speed because 1) it didn't feel right to listen to it any faster than that, and 2) Sir David's voice is so calming!
The book starts out somewhat like an autobiography as Sir David takes his readers through how he became a well-known naturalist. Eventually, through his work showcasing wildlife around the world, he starts learning about the deteriorating biodiversity, and that's where he starts delving more into the topic of climate change.
You can really tell that this book is written by a natural historian because of its focus on animals and biodiversity. I recently read Bill Gates' How to Avoid a Climate Disaster and though both are of the genre “intro to climate change”, it felt like they were approaching the topic from two different angles. Sir David's book talks more about the impact of deforestation, illegal trade of wild animals, etc whereas Bill Gates' book had much more focus on innovation.
I absolutely loved reading this book; could not recommend it enough!
I stumbled upon this book at a small souvenir store in Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada. What caught my attention at first was how beautiful the book is. The cover is beautiful, and the side of the book shows the cross-section of a tree (hard to describe, but it was just beautiful). I didn't end up buying the book at first, but I realized that this specific edition is the Canadian version, and I wouldn't be able to find it back in the US. So the next day, I went back to the store and bought it.
The story itself is chefs kiss. It's follows four generations of the Greenwood family and the format of the book is incredible. At the beginning of the book, you'll see a picture of the cross-section of the tree where each ring corresponds to a year. The book is told in the “same format”, we start with the outer ring (the year 2038), then move to the iner rings (2008, 1974, 1934, and 1908), then back out to the other side of the outer rings. It sounds cheesy and strange, but the way Michael Christie executes this is just perfect. At the beginning of the book, you hear bits and pieces about Jake Greenwood's family, and as you go back in years you start to discover more about Jake's family tree and how everything is tagled together (like the roots of a tree in a forest). The characters in each generation of the family are well-developed and complex, and at a certain point I just couldn't put this book down.
I also love how this book touches on the environmental damage that humans cause. As the book begins, you hear about an environmental catastrophe known as the “Great Withering,” and you hear about how humans around the world have trouble breathing due to the air pollution. All the characters in this book have a strong relationship to nature too, albeit in very different ways.
All in all... this book is simply fantastic. 10/10 would recommend.
I had high hopes for this book because I saw that one of my fav BookTubers rated this a 5/5, but honestly I thought this was bang average.
TL;DR
In order to stand a chance against catastrophic impacts of climate change, we need to fundamentally change the global economy. Seriously, this book is a great read.
I do think the book was unnecessarily long; she could've gotten the point across in fewer words (and I would've been able to finish the book sooner lol). I lost motivation to read a couple of times due to this, but hey! I made it in the end. This is ultimately what made me go from a true 5/5 rating to a 4.5/5 rating.
I also lowkey loved the sass
the Geoclique is crammed with overconfident men prone to complimenting each other on their fearsome brainpower. At one end you have Bill Gates, the movement's sugar daddy, who once remarked that it was difficult for him to decide which was more important, his work on computer software or inoculations, because they both rank “right up there with the printing press and fire.” At the other end is Russ George, the U.S. entrepreneus who has been labeled a “rogue geoengineer” for dumping some one hundred tons of iron sulphate off the coast of British Columbia in 2012.
Homo Deus is an engaging and thought-provoking read that explores the evolution of Homo Sapiens into the god-like Homo Deus. I would say that it's not necessarily an “easy read” as there were multiple points in the book where I had to stop to really digest the content. Overall, very provocative.
Not quite what I expected; but then again, I wasn't really sure what to expect. I associate the word “anthropocene” with climate change because that's the context which I've most often heard it in... but I know that John Green isn't a climate scientist so wasn't exactly expecting this to be a book about climate change either. Turns out, it's about a lot of things! I suppose it's somewhat of a memoir, but written through reviews on various things in life. For example, there's a chapter on Diet Dr Pepper, another one on the song You'll Never Walk Alone, and a chapter on Indianapolis.
Overall I thought it was an enjoyable and light read, and I got to learn a few things about John Green as well.
3.75/5
I picked up this book after hearing Jack Edwards describe it as possibly the best memoir he'd ever read, and it definitely did not disappoint. Such a powerful book with so many learning points.
This is different from any book I've ever read. I found it really insightful and inspiring, and would recommend it!
What a great follow-up to The Sixth Extinction. Whereas The Sixth Extinction is an explanation of—as the title suggests—the current ongoing mass extinction, Under a White Sky talks about all the problems that we humans have caused while trying to solve other (climate-related) problems. As in The Sixth Extinction, I love Kolbert's storytelling style, and how she uses different examples in each chapter to demonstrate her point. Instead of giving you a hypothesis in the beginning, and then continuing with different pieces of information to back up her point, she does it the other way round so that you form your own understanding of the topic without her having to make it so obvious... if that makes sense?
Under a White Sky mentions direct carbon capture and climate geoengineering quite a lot; I'd love to read more books on these topics to get a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the challenges that we face.
Overall, I think this is a great book and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about climate change.
Wow. What a beautiful story! I know the story is fictional, but it was told with so much detail and soul that if you had told me it was an autobiography, I would have believed you. Historical fiction is my favorite genre of fiction, and this book hits all the right spots for me.
I can't believe it took me this long to pick up an Isabel Allende book; I will definitely be back for more!
I'm a big fan of Simu and his work (and, his love for boba) but not gonna lie, I wasn't expecting this book to be this good... but it is! The story of his childhood is quite sad, yet the journey he took to get to where he is today is so inspiring.
If you get the chance, listen to the audiobook! Simu is a great story-teller (and actor), and it really shows in his audiobook.
This one's an Indonesian classic and I picked up a copy whilst visiting Hamka's old house which has now become a museum.
Honestly, I found this extremely hard to read, and not very exciting in the beginning. It wasn't bad enough that I couldn't finish it though, and when I did finally get to the last third of the book it finally got more interesting. Not sure if I'd actually recommend this to other people though, I thought it was just OK.
An interesting (and sometimes weird) collection of stories! More of a 3.5/5, but rounded up to 4/5 here.
Another great work from Andy Weir! This is the kind of book that I found hard to put down despite being almost 500 pages. The story is just so fascinating. The only reason it wasn't a 5/5 for me is because at times it just felt unrealistic. I know this is fictional, but still — the book feels so realistic in some parts yet unrealistic in others and I think it's the fact that it didn't just pick one side that feels off to me. Overall, I'd still highly recommend this book though!
4.5/5 rounded up to 5/5.
In my attempt to learn more about Indonesian history, I decided to buy this at Gramedia the other week and I'm glad I did because I ended up finishing this in a day! It's succinct and well-told.
Not bad, but I felt that it was a little confusing. Somehow it just didn't flow well enough for me.
I read this book on August 17th; how apt as it's also Indonesia's independence day!
I enjoyed it, but I didn't feel like I learned much. Perhaps it's just because Sukarno is such an important figure in Indonesian history, so I already knew a lot. But perhaps this book is just lacking
3.5/5
This is a really interesting insight into the evolution of gene editing and what that means for our future. The beginning wasn't as interesting to me, but it definitely picked up as the story continued.
3.5/5
I didn't know much about Madeleine Albright (or her politics) aside from the fact that she was the first woman to be Secretary of State of the US, and that she was also an immigrant. This book mostly covers the last stages of her career, so I still don't feel like I know all there is to know about her, but I did enjoy reading the stories she told in this book. There were some chapters that were more interesting than others, but I would say the interesting ones heavily outweigh the non-interesting ones. It's also interesting to hear about the behind-the-scenes stories of some important political milestones in US history.
Recently I've been thinking that I should try to expand my reading choices somehow, so that instead of always reading books that I've heard a lot about and are highly rated, I should instead be more spontaneous. So when I saw this in a bookstore in Oaxaca de Juarez, México, I thought, why not. Thankfully, it did not disappoint!
It's a wonderful retelling of the Spanish exploration of La Florida from the perspective of a black slave. At the beginning, I wasn't sure how much of the book is factual vs imagined, but the book piqued enough interest in me to go down a Wikipedia rabbithole afterwards to learn more about the expedition mentioned in the book. (It turns out Mustafa/Estebanico is indeed a real person with a Wikipedia page!). Being in a country with a lot of Spanish influence and reading this book really made me want to read more about the Spanish inquisition!