James
Beautifully written, with clear direction from the authors. The pacing and structure guide the reader seamlessly through the narrative. It's a unique concept that captivates, offering a refreshing departure from the ordinary. As for the ending – it was perfect for me.
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Writing & art direction: 4.5 ⭐️ (above expectations / above average)
Story & narrative: 5 ⭐️ (exceeded expectations / excellent)
Impact & memorability: 3.5 ⭐️ (met expectations / average)
Semicolon is an informative and lighthearted read arguing in favour of the much-derided ‘semicolon'. Watson's writing is clear and direct; and successfully achieves her aim. For anyone who takes a particular interest in both English grammar/punctuation and the history thereof, I would recommend this novel. It is short and enjoyable: at no point bogged down by minutiae or jargon.
That said, there is nothing particularly remarkable about this book; nor is the topic a must-read by anyone who falls outside of the above niche. Thus, if you are looking at this book—and seem interested—then I think that is all the information you need to know that this book is for you.
PS: Since I am not American—and would find this noteworthy myself—most of Watson's examples and historical cases come from American usage. As Watson is an American author, I am sure that is because she is most familiar with that writing, but I would've certainly been interested to hear more about the semicolon's usage and history in other English dialects, or even other languages that make use of the semicolon.
The author employs a pleasant and enjoyable writing style that is well-paced, clear and easy to understand. The book maintains an appropriate length for the story being told. However, there are instances where characters engage in unnatural dialogue, occasionally veering into monologues that reflect the author's “philosophical voice” rather than the character's authentic expression. Moreover, the overall structure of the book can be categorised into two distinct aspects: the fictional narrative and the italicised author's thoughts. While these italicised segments offer the author's opinions on the fictional story, they sometimes disrupt the flow of the narrative and appear contrived.
The blend of fiction and non-fiction in The Course of Love is intriguing, and when successful, effectively conveys the author's argument. Unfortunately, the fictional aspect can be rather dull. While the characters are mostly believable, with the exception of moments of monologuing, their portrayal greatly accentuates their flaws. Whilst acknowledging that people can indeed have negative aspects, the novel tends to overemphasise these flaws, dwelling excessively on the negative aspects of their lives. It is apparent that this is the author's intention in advocating for an “anti-Romantic” worldview, but the narrative goes too far in this direction, sapping all joy from the world.
Ultimately, if you have watched any School of Life videos on this topic before, this novel does not say anything new; nor does the fiction/non-fiction hybrid justify its existence.
The novel's central thesis is thus: Life is challenging, and we should give up romantic ideals; not because it will make us happier, but because it makes this disappointing world “good enough”. However, in this pursuit, the novel over-emphasises this aspect of life, portraying a pretty miserable existence. There's very little depiction of the happy moments in life from this anti-Romantic lens, with the one or two exceptions where the main characters enjoy a fancy hotel dinner or a family photograph. Even here, though, this joy lasts merely the evening at most. In fact, I would almost be willing to argue that de Botton's anti-Romanticism romanticises misery. I would have liked to seen the novel explore a more positive, happy rendition of what an anti-Romantic worldview looks like. In its current rendition, it seems pretty depressing.
P.S. The author kind of justifies infidelity and lying about it, because that is the more correct representation of the character's love for his partner, rather than telling the truth and destroying the marriage.
———Writing: 4/5, story: 2/5, and impact: 2/5.
I really enjoyed this book and I definitely recommend it if you're interested.
I felt that the characters were well-developed: each had their own unique characters and the decisions they made were sensible for their context. The world itself was also quite vidid in detail. The central story is satisfying and unique, and an accurate portrayal of the feelings, thoughts and emotions that victims of abuse experience (e.g. shame, guilt, love, remorse, hatred, anger, etc.), and the complex interplay between each.
The kinda novel that grows you as a person. Well worth the time.
My only gripe was I felt that the author was building towards the main character having found new magical powers, but instead it was all explained that her father was orchestrating her memory loss and her new “powers” were, in fact, all explainable because of this. I guess it's not that kind of book though where there is an escalation in power and a final epic confrontation.
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4/5 for writing, 4/5 for story and 4/5 for impact.
An enjoyable read. If you like this premise—people having one last chance to talk to someone—then I'd say go for it. However, perhaps it's not something everyone would enjoy. It's not slow, we move quite quickly through each character's story, but if you're looking for something “exciting”, then perhaps you won't find it here.
However, the characters are well-developed and each is unique in their experience and the “loss” they experience. Importantly, I didn't find any of the character POVs worse than any other. For this kind of book, this is essential I think and Kawaguchi nailed the balance.
Essentially, I'd pitch this book as an exploration of one central theme: saying goodbye. In some form, each chapter's POV character must say goodbye to someone they love. As we progress through the chapter they learn to accept and move-on in their lives.
No matter who we are, and no matter how we will say goodbye to the people we love—whether through death, illness or life circumstances—everyone will go through this experience over and over in our lives. And the question is: how do we overcome this loss?
I think Kawaguchi's answer to this is simple: it is good to be sad in saying goodbye, because it meant we had something to say goodbye to. If we can appreciate this, then we realise it's better this way because the alternative is never having had someone worth saying goodbye to. A reality that is perhaps even sadder than saying goodbye.
In my opinion, Before the Coffee Gets Cold provides a convincing persuasion of this idea. If this theme is something that interests you, then this book is a subtle and satisfying exploration of it.
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4/5 for writing, 4.5/5 for story and 3/5 for impact.
Pretty good, hard to fault. I struggled with recalling characters and their plot significance; there were many of them, and they influenced Kovacs (the main character) in both significant yet subtle ways, often through small details. Reading through the novel more quickly might have alleviated this issue, but, regardless, I enjoyed my time here.
Fundamentally, it presents an intriguing world and narrative—a blend of cyberpunk, noir and crime mystery.
Our main character has been shipped off-world as Digital Human Freight (DHF) to assist in the investigation of the mysterious death of Laurens Bancroft, an approximately 300-year-old “Meth” with substantial influence over the UN.
However, there are others like him, plotting and scheming. And it's all up to good ol' Takeshi Kovacs to unravel it all if he wants to regain his freedom and save his loved ones.
Oh, and his consciousness has been downloaded into someone else's body, introducing another layer of conflict for him; where he doesn't know his own body's past, but everyone else does.
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4/5 for writing, 4.5/5 for story and 3.5/5 for impact.
I feel like, in a way, JK Rowling went back to her roots. For me, the previous book, the Order of the Phoenix, was such a slog it took months for me to get through. In its attempt to become darker, it became boring; it lost its charm and character that made the Harry Potter series unique and fun to read. I feel like the Half-Blood Prince managed to keep the darker tone interesting because it was able to better keep that sense of magical, high-school wonder whilst navigating the darker aspects of the plot.
It was ok. Had it been longer I wouldn't have finished it, I don't think. The premise was interesting - a boy who can talk to ghosts that can't lie - but I didn't feel like the story really did it justice. It was a bit plain; not much happened. It was written in the first-person, similar to a diary, where the narrator (the boy who can speak to ghosts, Jamie) sort of just outlined the times throughout his life he'd talked to ghosts and something mildly interesting occurred. There he would also sort of talk about his mum, his mum's ex-girlfriend, Uncle Harry and some others.
I think I just finished it because King is a good writer, but overall fairly boring story, in my opinion.
Of the trilogy, this was my least favourite; however, it is still very good. Whilst the first two are very “story” driven, this one serves mainly to explain everything. It's a very “explain-y” kind of book, this one. It's cool and I was still enjoying it but I found it quite different from the first two.
i really enjoyed this. i read it pretty much over the course of a week reading for 1-2.5 hours each day. it was fairly simple, but executed perfectly. pacing is quite fast, but i think it works well here since it means we get to consistently stick with the action despite it feeling at times a bit ‘telling' over ‘showing'. the emphasis is for sure on plot & character not descriptive, slow world-building (think lord of the rings, a song of ice and fire, the wheel of time, etc.).
Probably my least favourite of the harry potter books (at least so far) taking me almost 3 months to finish. The middle is super slow, the start disconnected from everything else, and it doesn't finish with much payoff. Umbridge, who is supposed to be a shitty person, is also just a shitty character who ultimately bogs the story down significantly. For me the beauty of Harry Potter is in the way it captures the magic of childhood/teenage-hood and all that spirit is stripped here with her character. I'm aware the latter books are darker than the first few, but this wasn't so much “dark” as it was boring and dull. Still, the foundation set earlier in the series manages to carry it through.
Open Water (2021) is a beautifully written love story and exploration into race and identity. It is about finding yourself in a world where a person is only seen for what they look like. Taking place in the second-person (‘you'), Open Water navigates the struggles of a Black man crafting his own unique space within the collective Black body that homogenises him as he falls in love with another Black woman.
Nelson's prose has the lyrical beauty of a poem and the narrative structure of a book. It really is beautifully written. It's also short, which I liked as sometimes author's drag their ideas for too long and the book stretches. Here, however, Open Water doesn't overstay its welcome. Short and concise, as it should be.
I also really enjoyed the the second-person ‘you'. I found it suited the prose naturally, and allowed it flow elegantly to its full potential.
Most importantly the characters are great and I found myself quite attached to them.
However, I had hoped for more plot. Whilst the characters are great and I found myself quite attached to them, I unfortunately was much more engaged in the romance plot than the books greater themes. Here, the romance serves merely as a plot device for Nelson to explore his ideas surrounding the self, identity and the Black body. Whilst this is undoubtedly great for many, I found it a little jarring as we, the reader, are taken chapter-to-chapter from concrete, plot-centric, action that push the story forward to abstract, dream-like descriptions of thought and mood. Instead I would have preferred if Nelson had been able to weave the abstract and concrete together to form a more cohesive narrative.
Overall, I enjoyed this book enough to finish. It was beautifully written and I felt a genuine connection to the characters. However, a stronger plot line with a better weaving of abstract and concrete together rather than seperate would've lead to me feeling more attached to the story. Unfortunately, I don't see this book being particularly memorable going forward.
That said, if plot is less important to you or you resonate strongly with the premise and its homages to Black art (especially music), then I think this could be a very special book for you.
Well that was fairly rubbish until the last 70 pages or so.
There's 3 POV main characters (and 1 POV side character) but one of the main characters is completely disconnected from the story. She could be omitted entirely with every one of her chapters removed and the story would remain exactly the same. It's 2 separate stories in one book.
It's a follow on from Bardugo's Shadow and Bone Trilogy but it reads like slightly above average fanfic. The magic is beginning to suffer from power creep, resurrections (which is stupid - entirely defeats the purpose of Shadow and Bone), forced romance, puns that aren't funny, and too many references to her other books.
Read this book because I was interested in challenging some commonly held worldviews. It was interesting to learn about such an alternative lifestyle and I definitely learnt a thing or two.
A lot of this book discusses how to behave ethically either in friendships or more serious relationships and there is actually a solid amount of good relationship advice - particularly pertaining to communication, respect, consent and asking for what you want. For me personally however the writing style was a little grating at times and the last third of the book increasingly become less and less relevant (and interesting) for me. This book is also much more applicable to a female perspective than a man's, and even though they use a lot of gender-neutral language, the overall style is geared towards a female reader (general language, use of examples, stories, etc.).
2-stars. It was alright. Some good parts in it.
This was a fairly enjoyable read, although I thought it would be creepier and I wished it it was. Despite it being pretty good already I felt it had potential to be even better. The creepiness could be scaled up a notch, and references to eugenics, race, etc. could have been used with more substance to deliver on that uncomfortable/unsettling feeling I was seeking in this book.
Characters are well done each with a unique voice and interesting enough design. The plot is solid and was perfectly capable of driving the story from start to end. The writing is really well done. It was very descriptive and very visual which I thoroughly enjoyed. Giving it a solid 4-stars.