Ninett

The author is very playful with the information she withholds from both her characters and from her readers, which creates a fun dynamic between reader and character. I loved that the story was light and full of absurdity.

I found it especially silly that the book is essentially about a time-travelling cat causing chaos, yet it is named with a reference to Cyril instead, who doesn't drive any of the plot, making the title extremely apt. I hated Tossie, even her name is distasteful to me, and her mother was an even more detestable figure. I did manage to guess Tossie's ending about 2/3 of the way through after more than one mention of the Butler Did It trope.

Overall I found this to be clever, well written, and lighthearted. My only qualm was that maybe the pacing was a bit too slow for the content.

Quite rarely does a book affect me on such a deep level emotionally. I cried while reading some parts. But maybe not the parts you would imagine. Certainly, this is a sad story, but for me the sharp portrayal of what eastern european culture is like was the catalyst for the tears. It's very rare for me to think well of my homeland, but repeatedly throughout the book there were little snippets of scenes of life that gave me a sense of loss at having left. I will never move back, but this is the first sliver of homesickness I've felt in a long time.

The writing was utterly beautiful to me. Novic's prose glides smoothly. The events are portrayed with sensitivity, but without compromising the unflinching realism that this gruesome topic calls for. My only criticism is that the ending leaves so many threads unfinished that I had to check another copy to see if mine was truncated somehow on my kindle... I feel that at least the storylines with Brian and Marina should have been tied off properly.

I love the character dynamic between Howl, Calcifer, and Sophie, and would have loved to see more books featuring these characters front and centre. They do make an appearance in this book, but the main characters are two young magicians tasked with looking after a multi-dimensional house while the wizard who owns it is away sick.

Even so, the storytelling was full of the hallmark whimsy and adventure of Diana Wynne Jones. The magic in the book is classical in every sense of the word, and her books feel like touching grass to a fantasy reader.

I love the whimsical storytelling style of Diana Wynne Jones. It's absolutely written for kids, but I think the best kinds of children's books are still good for adults, too. I loved the twist on the classic 'save the princess' tale in which the many princesses essentially rescued themselves. I imagine that if Abdullah hadn't gotten to the castle, then his princess would have found her own way out sooner or later. I also liked Sophie and Howl, both in disguise.

This is the kind of writing that allows an adult to relive the magic of childhood, and that's quite a rare quality!

I've read a lot of books recently that have not been up to par. This one lands squarely in that category. I don't even know where to begin. The premise drew me in instantly - so much could have been done with such a strong premise! Instead, what I read was a janky story about an idiot at the end of days. Allow me to elaborate, I spent a long time brewing this review.

The main character, Artyom, is a complete automaton. A slave to the plot in every way, he exists only to serve the storyline and never to drive it. He is entirely characterless and entirely pointless. Devoid of a single characteristic whatsoever, excrutiatingly boring, I cannot stress enough how poorly written he is, and this becomes a pattern with every other character.

It's hard to rank the awful things about this book, because at varying points they all bothered me equally in turn, but the lack of female characters in the book is bizarre enough to merit second place. Are you telling me that this man has schelpped through the entire metro system and failed to encounter a SINGLE woman other than a (1) prostitute that he then considers paying for? The only three lines of dialogue spoken by a woman in the entire 450 page sinkhole of a book are spoken by a comrade's wife chiding her child and then by one trying to hock her child. Absolute piss, Dmitry. Get a grip.

Sexism aside, we also have some abhorrent descriptions of some races in this book as well - hardly a surprise given the track record.

The structure is true to Russian style - enormous walls of text, even the rare dialogue threatens to turn into a chapter-long philosophical monologue and you are lucky when it doesn't. Some of the chapters are used as a thinly veiled opportunity for the author to proselytise to the reader.

Every single side character is a plot device contrived to deliver our passive idiot of a main character to his next destination safely, and then to die immediately after while the moron lives. Each one of these characters would have been a better candidate for the mission our hero is on than he is.

Now for the plot.

Hunter comes to Artyom's home station and asks him to risk his safety and life to get a message to a far flung station. Our main immediately agrees and sets off because he is an automaton. Then, in a long series of episodes that are not linked in any way save by coming one after the other chronologically, the main character goes through lots of trials and tribulations that do not lead to any personal development. By the time we reach the end of the book (a mere few weeks in book time), the trip that took him days in the outset now takes him an hour or so going back the way, and the dangers along that same path are conveniently gone.

The reason I gave it that half star is that the premise is great, and the ending was actually surprisingly good. The rant is over but I could throttle the author.

An incredibly emotive collection of personal accounts from the Chernobyl disaster. There are testimonies from people of all walks of life: scientists, rural grandmothers, wives of first responders, communist loyalists, doctors, resettlers, politicians, and those who came in to do damage control (risking their lives in the process).

The story unfolds piece by piece, and each voice adds to the rich tapestry. The author does not shy away from including perspectives that are distasteful to us in the west and in the 21st century, and I think this is necessary and good. This tragedy was the result of human tensions - to brush tensions under the rug and write a single sided story would do it a disservice.

The categorisation at the back of the book is business, and a lot of the advice is about how to be successful in the business sphere. I'm not in danger of becoming a businesswoman any time soon, since I still have years left on my degree, so I did skim those parts. The personal development chapters at the start of the book taught me a few new things about self-actualisation and productivity, so I did enjoy those parts. My sister said she wishes Steven Bartlett wasn't such an ass, and I think I echo this sentiment in general, but the ass-ness doesn't come across in this book :)

Nothing brings it down, really, I just didn't have an application for the advice in half the book. I think I'm the wrong audience.

PS I am aware I chose a business book and then found fault in it being a business book. Bite me.

Immune was a big job for me to read, for two reasons.

Firstly, I take notes on all popsci nonfiction I read, noting down things I didn't know before, and I knew nothing about immunology, so I took many notes. This is a good thing, because I learned a lot from the book!

The second reason is a bad one, unfortunately: I hated the authorial tone in this. The vibe is that of a teacher who tries very hard to be down with the kids and makes liberal use of slang that's just a touch out of date. I really did not jive with this, it took away from the topic and made me mistrust the authority of the writer on the subject. It was certainly done to be more accessible, but it comes across as cheesy and condescending.

The illustrations were of a very high quality, and they added so much to the narrative, always presented at exactly the right time, spread evenly throughout. This brings the rating up to three stars.

Hobb's writing is definitely a slow burn. I got stuck near the middle, not sure if the story was progressing onwards or just stagnating, everything felt like a side quest. I put it down for a few days before picking it back up and plowing through the 'training arc'/setup sections.

Given this early floundering, I thought I wouldn't be rating the book higher than three stars, but the second half more than made up for it. I rarely read more than an hour of a book at a time, but this gripped me completely. The ending was unexpected and sort of beautiful in a way.

Though I never liked him much, I was devestated that Shrewd died after such a long suffering. I really thought he'd shake his tormentors and make a comeback. It was a great piece of writing to have Shrewd apologise for what he has made of Fitz. I am not a fan of the Molly storyline, once again I think it detracts from the story, but I reckon she'll be back - and pregnant - in the next book. We also didn't get any inkling on whether Nighteyes will be back after that ending, poor fella.

The writing has emotional depth and the characterisation is impeccable. Everyone is a real person, people with flaws, realistic motivations, goals, and agendas.

I reserved this online at the library and was so surprised when I received it - it's TINY! I read it in 16 minutes, with time included for perusing the beautiful illustrations. It isn't bad at all, but given that the book costs as much as a novel on amazon, I feel that the cost-benefit scale doesn't favour a higher rating for it. I may just not be in the know about the lore around Susanna Clarke's fantasy universe, but I found this to be only a very small story, without much content.

The entirety of the story can be summed up as: girl goes to the woods and adopts a bear cub selflessly, knowing she faces death. With fantastical elements.

My expectation was too high for what I actually got out. The illustrations saved it.

It's always hard to rate someone's life story, so the rating I've given pertains mostly to the writing itself. It was immediately obvious that the book is, like almost all celebrity memoirs, ghostwritten. There is nothing inherently offputting about the fact itself, but a lot of the time, the writing felt ungenuine, detached from the emotional depth that Cher experienced in some of the most pivotal moments of her early career.

Additionally, I felt there were parts with maybe a bit too much self congratulatory narration, and some of the classic 'not like other girls'-esque thoughts. Maybe the memoir genre is always like this, I don't read enough of them to know. Writing a whole book about oneself is probably always going to cast the writer in the role of the egotist. And Cher did achieve a lot.

The story itself is inspiring, and the magnitude of the achievement comes across despite the writing. In particular, I really love the image of Cher at the awards show, wearing the midriff revealing outfit with a fur coat, Sonny looking at her in rapt admiration. That speaks volumes of her nonconformist persona much better than a lot of the writing does.

This book came to me at the exact right time in my life for me to be able to appreciate it the most. I hadn't read much about Bayes previously, but my work has started to veer towards a direction in which I felt knowing more probability and stats would be useful. I have a background in engineering, so now that I am equipped with an intuitive understanding of what Bayes' theorem says, and what sorts of problems it can be applied to, I'm well placed to read further into the nitty-gritty of what I've read in order to apply this to my work.

I loved that this book wasn't written exclusively about the mathematics itself, but featured biographical elements of Bayes' life, places the story in a well fleshed-out historical setting, and shares anecdotes about the applications and development of the theorem.

Probably the most notes I've taken on a book in a long time.

The cover has a quote from George R.R. Martin proclaiming this book to be a breath of fresh air, and I am inlcined to agree. The pacing is quite slow, but the focus on creating realistic, engaging characters and building a story that readers are able to invest in won me over by the time I was a quarter of the way through. The writing is beautiful for a fantasy book. It may be because this book was published over 20 years ago, and different styles were en vogue at the time, but I liked that there was only a wisp of a hinted romance, but Hobb doesn't plow indiscriminately on in that direction at the expense of storytelling and worldbuilding as happens in many modern fantasies.

Lastly, the first person perspective doesn't usually work very well for fantasy because you are so limited in scope in what you are able to see from one character's perspective, but here I think it works well because there is such a focus on the characters. Plus, there are some 15 books still including the novellas - more than enough to find out about the world.

I cried at the last paragraph.

I like Simon as a guest on podcasts. He has a lot of good things to say and the empathy and kindness with which he approaches disparate topics while still remaining informative and sharp is enviable. 

BUT I did not like this book. I feel bad because it is an older piece of his and he has probably come a long way since this was published, but this book was repetitive to the extreme. The only point it made was the titular point: start with why. You could have stopped there instead of hashing out myriad ways in which this same concept can be described from a different perspective. The central idea is solid and a good one, but a book based on it was not merited in my opinion. I didn't learn much after the first chapter.

There are lots of sort-of outdated scenarios in the book as well, as much of the content is centred around 1990s-2000s era tech companies.

Lastly: There is some pseudoscience in there as well. I really do not think for a second that Simon knows much about neuroscience and I hope no one else thinks he does either. Get your neurosci bits from people who are qualified to dispense them :)

As much as I understand it's the product of its time, I simple cannot read so much sexism and not be put off. The story is interesting, but every character is odious and there's not that much comeuppance. I would have loved it if Dorian were slewn by the brother of Sibyl, but I know this would have deprived us of the dramatic self-kill at the end and thus could not be the ending.

I read this book as part of a halloween readathon challenge on bookly. In keeping with classic gothic style, it's set in a manor house and the weather is awful the entire time. I felt Paver really did her best here to personally antagonise me with the absolutely despicable man she wrote to be Maud's father, and I am sure that getting lobotomised is comeuppance enough for this man, but I do wish something happened to him to make him regret his actions more desperately...  
I liked how Ivy was written in as a multifaceted person who had motivations in line with her very unfortunate circumstances, not just as a bitch whole and pure. 
Poor Maman, poor Clem, poor Jubal, poor Chatterpie

I kind of hated it. I don't mean to be a pearl clutcher here, but I did feel it was in bad taste to make the suffering and subsequent death of a little boy (albeit a boy looooong dead) into such a weirdly perverse story. It's grotesque to me. I nearly gave up on it at page 30 because I had no clue still what was going on and the narrative style never grew on me. I get that the afflictions of the bardo dwellers are symbolic of the personal limbos they faced, but I still just didn't connect with it. 

I love a good dark and whimsical piece of writing. Even if it's technically probably for kids. This was a rare instance in which I was genuinely sad the book ended because the characters grew on me so much: I felt the gut wrenching sadness of being left behind with the Owenses when Bod and Silas left at the end. I resented that the crew was scattered in the wind with no promise to ever again reunite. And the death of miss Lupescu- absolutely tragic.
All in all engrossing and I guess even though the Jacks' motivation felt like an afterthought it still held my interest all the way through. 

This was good! Not really my usual genre, I read it because GPT recommended it as part of a Halloween reading list. I wasn't really sold on it until about at least a quarter of the way through, and I didn't like the main character - I thought she had a childish, spiteful streak that I didn't succeed in warming up to. The premise is great, and I was really into the gothic manor-on-a-hill vibe. I recently read Entangled Life, so the fungus aspect of it was also right up my (current) alley. Dark and at times disgusting, the evils were well fleshed out, I could practically smell the decay at times.

I wasn't sure what to expect going in, and I read the copy in which China Mieville wrote an introduction as a prelude to the introduction written by the author herself. I think for me, I couldn't find the feminism in the story, which was promised in Mieville's introduction. Maybe it is because I am reading this in 2024, which Mieville hints at when he says we may not perceive it as ground-breaking in light of what came after its publication, and I think this must be the case with me. The use of male pronouns also made it challenging to view the characters as anything other than male, despite the author???s intentions . 
Aside from that, it's creative and innovative in its storyline, and I understand entirely why it is such a pillar of this genre. It is hard to write a believable, realistic sci-fi, and I think the focus being on the characters rather than worldbuilding (not that it lacks that, either) is what lends the whole thing so much credence. 

I wish I had read this as a child! It really threw me for a loop. I truely hated the main character, the further down the path of brattiness be went, the more I despised him. But the story brought a series of enlightenments to the reader and to the boy, which shed light onto his actions and kind of vindicated him.
I enjoyed the pace and the sheer creativity that went into building this story, which gave an unusual sort of met-experience involving the reader herself as well as the characters. As a child I would have doubtless rated this five stars, and as a somewhat jaded adult I can still award four.

My first Vaclav Smil book, which I enjoyed in small doses with plenty of time in between. 
I appreciate that the chapters were divided into topics, because it can be a labour in itself to read 71 short essays on disparate themes due to the mental switching involved, and the subdivisions lightened this mental load. As an engineer, numbers and figures do not really phase me, and in fact I found myself wishing for a bit more of an elaboration on the stats, though I understand that this was written for everyone to enjoy and not just numbers people.
I did end up skipping some sections, which were to do with my area of expertise: electrical and electronics engineering (the electric motor, moore's law, integrated circuits, comms, etc), but the rest were a great refresher for things I knew but never thought about, or as an intro to topics I am quite hazy on.

Maybe this rating is unfair because I did just read two Ken Follett tomes almost back-to-back, and I was able to predict the outcomes of the story from extrapolation based on what ‘usually' happens in a Ken Follett book. Regardless, an enjoyable read, and would certainly be perceived as more complex and frustrating (in a good way) if I hadn't just read a very similar story from the same author. 
I haven't read another book set in this specific time period, so by that token I am pleased, as I have managed to understand a lot about the age (hopefully true things) - especially the everyday lives of those who lived through the first industrial revolution. Some of the themes in this novel have a lot of bearing on us today as well, with the advent of AI and its ability to replace a lot of ‘clicking' type tasks.

A collection of short stories set in the universe of the original trilogy, featuring side characters from the original. It includes an origin story for Goddard. I'd say well worth reading to eke out a few more drops from the world built by Shusterman, and some of the short stories are really great in their own right, though some did fall a bit flat for me. I was comfortably able to read it in two train journeys and return to the library within a few days.

Good, simple fun.

A very average Ken Follett book. Good, with some tense bits, and some loathe-worthy characters and heros to root for. The writing is quite formulaic if you read more than one book from Follett in a row, so I would advise waiting a few months between books. I enjoyed the 10th century setting, it's not often that fiction goes back that far.