Dave
A superb treatise on finding yourself again after burnout from overwork.
The book gathers together a collection of characters who, in some way or other, have been the victims of overwork (and a teenager who worries about joining the workforce), and how they manage to change their lives to deal with the issues it has caused. They meet in Yeongju's new neighbourhood bookshop - beautifully described throughout the book and a place anyone would want to visit and start to heal again with the power of words and reading.
A great book to read - all about healing, the nature of work, how, why, and when we work and for what purpose. And how work is related to happiness and finding out what happiness actually is for each individual.
Ok to pretty good. Book told from the point of view of narrator Eliot of his last night at university and the ensuing pub crawl. In three sections, we move from Pub to Bar to Club. During this we meet his friends, Jack (his bestie), Sanjay, Scott, Megan, Ali, and Ella (the object of his desires). Through flashbacks we learn of the key moments of his three years at Oxford Uni and of Lucy, his hometown girlfriend that he struggles to deal with as he grows up at home.
The privileged upbringings are all pretty obvious throughout so if you can deal with those, you'll enjoy the text mostly. There's plenty of poetry diatribe to get through though (Eliot is studying English) and you have to wonder why it's necessary to the book. The writer often indulges himself in long witterings that I'm sure he thinks help describe the situation but often confuse matters entirely. Throughout you eventually end up hating Eliot as he is mostly a complete dick, unable to communicate with others properly without losing the plot and ends up causing fights with all and sundry. He also has a disturbing habit of lapsing into very weird daydreams and you wonder for his sanity.
However, it is a good read and for those who attended University you'll see plenty of yourself in it. Coming to terms with being away from home, the tear between those you left and the new people you find yourself with, and then the worry of what to do when it all ends.
Great premise for a story as everyone at the age of 22 is suddenly able to find out when they will die. Of course the world loses its mind. The participants in this novel are in the US so they act even more irrationally and seek to marginalise those with shorter strings (the measure of a persons life).
Could have been great but ultimately loses its way an£ doesn't explore the bigger story within. Why?
Interesting
Didn't really like the art but the story was interesting. Sort of Bad Jelly the Witch meets climate change. Worth a read.
Great idea for a sci-fi book (the earth is encircled by a mysterious, impenetrable shroud that blocks all sunlight). Enjoyed the writing but ultimately fell a little flat at the end when it just stops with nothing resolved.
What happens if the AI that runs the galaxy determines that your world would upend the permanent harmony enjoyed everywhere and Earth needs to be expunged?
It's an excellent idea, and I enjoyed the rebel army fighting-for-a-cause-against-impossible-odds angle the book mainly sets itself in. But as David Mitchell said, “Are we the baddies?”
It got a little lost with alternate realities in the middle but brought it all back again with an exciting roller coaster end.
A genuinely funny book about golf with huge laugh-out-loud moments. There are side pilots of drug deals, gangsters, affairs, tourettes, and family relationships, but they don't detract from the golf. Some fantastic descriptions of the kind of madness that envelops people who are addicted to a sport, especially one that seems so incredibly random and difficult to be good at as golf.
I give it five “smoke my big fat **ing dobbers” out of five.
This book is about a writer who borrows notes on a book idea from her dead friend, writes a bestseller based on that, and then spirals into madness when social media figures out that the work is ‘plagiarised'.
I'm not sure she did anything wrong.
It's another book about the evils of social media, more than anything. It's well written, and I sped through it.
First, it is definitely not like the hunger games. Which doesn't make it bad, but it shouldn't be sold on that.
A wellness health retreat gone mad is the most apt description for it. It is difficult to like any of the characters in the novel, though. Possibly that is the point, everyone is flawed and struggles with mental health issues.
It could have been five stars, but the book just ends without any conclusion, kind of like the author got bored or wrote himself into a corner.
A ramshackle collection of anecdotes from the author's life of meeting, hanging out with, and writing about rock stars for Kerrang! I wasn't expecting it to be a memoir, but it definitely is and is all the better for it. Ian Winwood reveals his battles with mental health, drinking, and drugs caused possibly by the trauma of his father's death and almost certainly by hanging out with rock stars. His life aptly demonstrates that everyone the music industry touches gets damaged. The stories are excellent - full of tales of excess and sadness, from old rockers Thin Lizzy, Motorhead, and Metallic through to Green Day, Blink 182, Lost Prophets (what a shame, they were an excellent band), and contemporary acts Creeper and Goat Girl - plus heaps of others.
A really hard read.
There are so many characters involved that it is impossible to understand what is going on.
Essential,y a book of short stories of which two are interesting.
Avoid.
This successor to the circle lost its way after a promising beginning. The never-ending society destroying apps became increasingly depressing, making the book hard to get through. I felt sorry for Delaney, who, despite her good intentions, was getting slowly boiled like the rest of society. Let's hope technology never gets this entangled in our lives, he wrote as he entered a review on one of the jungle's websites.
Much better than other reviewers have given it.
Sure, nothing much happens but it was easy to read and I enjoyed the unusually dense writing style and been stuck in Anna's head.
That said, at the end, I still had no idea if any of it was real. Was she a lunatic? Was he a controlling freak? Or had it all been imagined?
Anyway, I now know a lot more about opera and singing, so that was cool.
I feel obligated to leave a review to warn others how dull this book is.
That's it - that's the review.
Great book about the life of a sex bot in a dystopian future. There's no sex but plenty of finding out what it is to be alive, what is sentience, what is love, etc.
One star off for failing to write an ending.
Tedious
Long, slow, and uninvolving..As ever, Adrian's concepts are amazing, but this time let down by too may characters I had no interest in. This took forever to read and I'm glad it's over.
This is an enjoyable read of Britain (specifically Birmingham) in the 1970s through teenagers' eyes. From first love, strikes, riots, racism, class, terrorism, affairs, and music we get to relive those terrible times. It's probably a five-star book, but the last chapter... jeez, it's like 50 pages of stream of consciousness, one single run-on sentence, and it is hard work.
Tedious junk.
Repetitive nonsense spread out over 700 pages featuring a gormless idiot as the hero.
Needs massive editing and a new writing style that doesn't mention every characters inner thoughts every few seconds.
Utter complete drivel.
What's worse than teenage vampire books? Teenage vampire books with different types of vampires in them.
A fun workplace dramedy, written in a heartfelt manner from the point of view of the lead, Jolene. I enjoyed reading about the Persian culture too and the pressure to succeed and have a rich life. Cliff the MMC was a cool dude too and loved his nerdiness.
PS. Supershops sounded like a horrendous place to work. No idea if it's real but if you work there, move on.
A straight-up traditional biography of Andrew's life so far. There are a few chapters on his childhood and education, but most of the book details his various business failures and successes. There isn't much business or financial advice, but the book's central theme is the pursuit of more. More for the sake of it and having got more, what to do with it? And why did he get more? And is it morally wrong to have more? And how much more is enough?
It's a great read. Andrew comes across as a nice guy, even if he is a billionaire.
A dystopian novel set in the near future where a lunatic Musk type seeks to control women and their purchasing behaviour through a huge range of super-addictive sex toys. Yes, it sounds mental and mostly is.
It romps along in typical Palahniuk style, and there's a twist at the end as usual. Read it in a few days.
I liked it, although it could have been better as it got stuck a lot of the time in explaining the sex very scientifically and when it wasn't scientific in description, it dropped into mad mysticism.