citizen of now
I enjoyed this, there were a lot of nice reflective moments when the author philosophises on the nature of passion in all its forms. The book is in many ways a love letter to passion, however self-referential that might seem. I can see why some people would give it 5 stars, it's written with a keen observation of human, well, passions that are just the sort of mysterious forces we seek to understand in ourselves. For many I'm sure it could be a special, moving book. Life-changing maybe! It has that potential so I would recommend reading it, just in case it touches you like that. I'm not sure why it didn't quite move me. Maybe too understated, gentle, ethereal? In those qualities lie beauty, yes, but also a lack of a kind of solid, satisfying, substance. I'll probably read it again, and I wouldn't be surprised if I fell entirely in love with it next time - but for the moment at least it's just OK. It's like looking at a great painting that still yet just doesn't quite strike you.
If you want to read a book about an idiot wandering aimlessly around a giant, mostly empty, statue museum then boy do I have a recommendation for you!
Ok so idiot is unfair. Piranesi's childlike naivety is at once endearing and frustrating. But what is this book? It feels like a concept piece, as in abstract and metaphorical and not fleshed out at all. That's the problem with allegories. They're all too often paper thin.
Let's assume the House is a metaphor (if it's not, then it really is just a book about an idiot trapped in a house). Once you get that, or begin to suspect it, what else does the book offer? Really, nothing. Nothing much else happens. Piranesi eats some seaweed. Pieces together at last the idea that Other is abusive. Uses the word Vestibule twelve million times. Gets rescued. The end.
And even now, I'm not sure it really is an allegory because, and I cannot stress this enough, nothing happens. There's a whiff of an idea that it could be about exiting an abusive relationship, and the half-broken, half-free way you might continue to exist after that. But the House is benevolent and actually somewhat yearned-for by the people who've visited it. So I think it's a metaphor for a life-changing enlightenment from which you can't return to normality, such as a religious or philosophical awakening that at the same time traps you within its world view and whisks you away from reality.
But it's only a hint! Only a possible interpretation, if you squint. Maybe it's just about a guy trapped in a House.
edit: Oh, wow, I've just read a review that suggests the House is a metaphor for drumroll the worlds you enter when you read books. So. It's worse than I thought.
I've given worse books 2 stars, I didn't hate it like some of them, it just passed through me without leaving much impression.
Other reviews have praised the ‘world building'. What world building? It's just endless halls full of statues. The occasional bird. What have I missed? Was there a chapter I skipped where something other than birds, water, and marble existed in the world?
Stunning, exciting, emotional. Touching. Incredible moments of beauty and desolation. One of those books you need a while to recover from. And maybe a shower.Sure, it’s not a strictly accurate account of true events like the excellent in a different way [b:Moonless Night 34725 Moonless Night The Second World War Escape Epic B.A. ‘Jimmy’ James https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348187279l/34725.SY75.jpg 34696], but what it is is a captivating, tearful, poignant, inspiring, devastating, emotional story about love, bravery, and regret in the face of unimaginable adversity. Hannah has folded together many aspects of the occupied French experience and woven a poignant and deeply touching tale.It’s magnificent. Raw, painful, traumatic even, but ultimately… I feel a sense of closure here. I’ve been through family trauma myself and I think that closure, acceptance, and moving on are what happy endings in the real world actually look like. So I hesitate to call it a sad book, despite it being full of sadness.I cry easily at movies and almost never otherwise, but this book brought tears to my eyes in the final chapters. Is it sad? Heart-wrenching yes. Maybe that’s the same thing, I think perhaps my capacity for sadness has been mined so deeply over the years that I can’t tell the difference. A sad but victorious ending? A sad but inevitable ending? I don’t know. Something about it felt right, and what’s right can’t be sad, can it?
I enjoyed this. It felt like an original world-setting, it was nice to encounter a fantasy world that didn't lean on well established tropes. I want to learn more about the world, so I'll probably read the other 2 books at some point. The story was quite... limited? Felt like a short story more than a full novel. Not that it felt like it was dragged out, but just that it was a very simple plot.
But that makes way for good themes, setting, and the development of the main character. LeGuin packs in a sense of time passing and emotional maturing to this short novel. There's a tender and realistic demonstration of what loss of hitherto-unshakable faith is like, and mixed into that a critique of dogma and religion as well. It's nice to see deeper themes like this in YA fiction.
As well as being, to a lesser extent, a journey of events, people, and places, it's also an emotional journey from darkness into light, with Tenar ending up a very different person at the end; less sure of herself, wounded by her past, but free and more whole. One thing I really love to see is complex, flawed characters, and Tenar feels real and alive in this book. It's my first time reading LeGuin, but I can tell already they have a way of capturing the human spirit, and I look forward to exploring more of their work.
It's been a while since I've read short SF stories. Decades ago I read a bunch of short story collections from the 70s - they were filled with idealistic futurism or abstract visions so fantastic as to be removed from anything relatable. Fun, but ultimately pure escapism concerned more with the science than the fiction.
What Gibson creates here, behind all the chrome and neon, are stories rooted in humanity, not tech. Characters with desires, drives, flaws, and pain. The stories in Burning Chrome, for all the superficially slick brightness of their settings, are dark, lonely, tech-noir tales of hubris, love, lust, betrayal, and failure. That's not to say they're wholly bleak. There is a feeling that self actualisation is the ultimate goal of his characters, and indeed that they believe it to be within their reach, which I think is why I'm left with a feeling of hope from the worlds presented here, if not from the stories themselves.
And, yes, the highest of tech is present too. Minds merging with the net, holographic firewalls, augmented reality, trading hot data for cold hard cash and dodging vastly powerful corporations who'll stop at nothing to get it back. Gibson coined the term “cyberspace” within these pages and even though the tech is presented in a quaintly physical way - with cartridges, disks, tapes, and wires - it somehow doesn't feel outdated. You're experiencing a hallucination of an alternate future that we've already sidestepped, but it doesn't matter because it's the concept and characters that matter here. It's not how a personality is transferred into cyberspace that matters, it's the questions that raises, and where it leaves the people who loved them. That kind of philosophy of personal identity is timeless. It's because Gibson's so grounded in the human experience and implications that he gets away with slamming data cartridges into your protagonist's arms without it feeling cheesy.
Every one of the 10 stories here is excellent. I tried to pick my favourites and ended up with a shortlist of 8. I could write paragraphs in praise of each one. If you really push me, I'd say my favourites were New Rose Hotel, The Winter Market, and Burning Chrome but man it was tough to pick just 3. How could I leave off Johnny Mnemonic or The Belonging Kind?
When I was a kid I would spend ages on dialup downloading hacker text files to read offline. One of them recommended Neuromancer and Snow Crash and while I didn't take the advice at the time something stuck and the names bounced around in my head for about 20 years. Finally taking the advice and discovering these authors after all that time, it's rekindled a sense of wonder and love for the web in me. A technological frontier with a feeling that it makes anything possible. That it's an important thing for humanity. Somehow the web had become mundane to me. Reading Gibson is changing that, making me realise that, perhaps, there's still time for it to change the world again.
Great concept and started strongly but tailed off around halfway. Once they landed in France it just became increasingly bogged down. Got repetitive in the descriptions (please don't tell me Leon has speckled wings any more I can't take it), and the plot didn't resolve in a particularly satisfying way, it very much ended halfway through the story. More the first in a series rather than being self contained. It was OK, but dragged on a bit - could have been a lot shorter. The sentences weren't easy to read out loud either, sometimes being quite long and meandering; “Spreading their enormous wings, the owls leaped from their lookout posts one by one, gliding silently through the air with their cruel beaks and talons malevolently glinting in the moonlight.” It's quite a mouthful.
It made its point early and didn't develop much further, feeling at times a blunt instrument, trying a bit too hard to convey to horrors of war. Also the best 2 characters were given the least airtime Dickin and Hans. Some parts I found a bit distasteful too; a camp with a tall smoking chimney and gas canisters, where bony men in striped uniforms rushed for freedom after being freed by the animals? Didn't sit well with me.. My kid (8) enjoyed it but for me it never really clicked. A lot of the plot felt pretty contrived too Pip just happens to land in France on top of the HQ of the resistance? Near France's only concentration camp? And runs into Peter? (for an unnecessary side-quest).
Not as good a mousey adventure as Redwall, and not as good a kids war adventure as I am David, or The Silver Sword. So where does that leave it? Well, for all my critique, it's still a decent enough adventure story with plenty of action and emotion. It was fine, there's just better stuff out there covering similar ground.
I've been wanting to re-read this for years and the time finally felt right this October. I hesitate to say that Gaiman ‘builds' a compelling world for that phrase seems to imply some of the scaffolding is visible. It's not. The world Gaiman describes exists so wholly and so well painted that you never once think of it as something constructed but just, a place that is. It's a treat to be allowed a glimpse into it all. The story itself is actually a lot simpler than I remember, allowing the reader to drink in the world and characters and bob along with the story without having to concentrate too hard. Which is fine, but compared with the richness of the world, the plot itself does feel a little secondary. 5/5 for world, 5/5 for language, 4/5 for characters and 4/5 for plot, that's all I'm saying. Still an absolutely wonderful book. Oh, and Richard is a boring character, I feel the book would have been better without him and just wholly about London Below. I get that he has a function as muse and narrator and reflector of audience's perspective, but bleh he's just really naff.
A fun, light read. I enjoyed it, but didn't fall completely in love with the world and characters. It had some marvellous ideas like the swarms of migrating bicycles or Mr Map, but they were lightly touched upon and then swept away into the wind never to be heard of again, which is a shame because it is a rich and original world, and these creations deserve a fuller fleshing-out. The art of saying just enough and promising more perhaps, but still I did want more out of it. I initially gave it 3 stars but having looked at the other books I've given 3 stars to, it's definitely better than those.
No spoilers, but it had a more emotional ending than I was expecting, and I think the book got better as it went on and the plot developed more. Again, could have been deeper; at times it felt like a lighthearted romp, but in the background were these dire and serious perils swirling around. I suppose really I wanted a more grownup, less YA read, and it's unfair to judge it on that basis.
The feel of the book was lovely, an autumnal twilight world with glimpses and glimmers and everything dusted with sugar or magic or poison. There was a phrase that really struck home; about leaving your heart somewhere and never having it back, I felt that way for many years about my undergraduate university town. Eventually I think your heart finds its way back to you, or perhaps you grow a new one, ready to be filled and lost and found again.
Probably not the best way to re-enter the Discworld after 25 years away from it. If you're immersed in the world and well-versed with the Witches books, especially Witches Abroad, then it's probably one of the better books. None of the repetition and laboured explanations that I remember from some other books in the series. Steers clear of being too much of a satire on the real world, too, which I think some of the other Discworld novels suffer from. The trouble was that Sir Terry sort of assumes you already knew who the characters are and what they're like. But that was my fault for jumping in the middle all careless-like.
The actual story was a fun enjoyable and quick read - nothing majorly special but fun all the same. Takes a while for much to happen, but the author has such a flowing way with words that you don't really mind just bobbing along while the characters muddle about.
Fascinating, well written, and well researched, I really enjoyed this exploration of the role of Lancaster bombers in the war. Striking a perfect balance between discussions of strategic and operational matters and the more personal stories of the crews and support staff, it leaves you with a full picture of the importance of the Lancaster bomber. Speaking of balance, I did appreciate the author's mentions of German casualties and effects of our bombing raids, all too often overlooked.
The back blurb and introduction does rather lead you to believe it'll be some kind of detective story about piecing together the stories of the crashes at RAF Syerston, but in fact it's a lot more broad reaching than that, all for the better I think.
A hidden gem of a book, would definitely recommend. I picked mine up at RAF Cosford on a whim and am very glad I did.
I mean, yeah, it's a good book. Lifts the lid on the sources of wealth from a random sampling of unbelievably rich / landed families. Bangs you over the head with the point a bit and gets repetitive; jumped over a wall, discussed the dark history of the owner's wealth, smoked a joint, had a sausage, repeat for the next chapter. The chapters when he talks about other trespass movements like Greenham and Kinder Scout are a lot more engaging, the stuff where he's just having a cheeky overnighter in someone's woods while justifying it by reference to the fact it's all built on stolen riches... it gets a bit self indulgent. There's an amusing bit where he says something along the lines of ‘seeing the keep out and private property signs gave me a weird feeling I was doing something wrong for a moment'. Bit of an odd, one-sided mindset. I enjoyed it overall though, it did contain some really interesting stuff and it does make you see walls and fences in a different light, as implements of oppression. The Calais chapter was great. Notice the pattern though, the best bits are where the author gets out of the way of the topic he's trying to cover.
Oh, and the illustrations - beautiful, unique, wonderful illustrations! You can really breathe them in and spend a moment gazing at these worlds. Except whoever put the book together decided these double page spreads should be placed mid-sentence, so when you turn the page you either have to skip the illustration to carry on reading, or have to stop reading to look at the picture and then flick back a page to pick up where you were cut off. Why not put them between chapters?!?
Despite the fact I've said a lot of negative stuff I did enjoy it on the whole, the source and distribution of much of the nation's wealth is an important thing to address. The overall theme of examining how land ownership interlinks with rights and power more generally is really interesting. The fact that this land and these rights were taken from common ownership and essentially privatised should be more widely recognised and taught.
I initially gave this 4 stars but I've bumped it to 5 because I keep thinking about how good it was.
When I finished it I wanted to immediately reread it to pick up on everything I missed, and see it again with the knowledge of what's going on, because I definitely lost the thread a bit in the middle, this spoiler-stuffed comment on Reddit really helped me https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/comments/bx6lug/comment/eq4w4n2/
Having read that, I saw the brilliance of the novel, it's really expertly put together. I just missed a lot through inattentive reading. Even with that though, the character of Dietz is engaging and human, and Hurley has obviously gone to some effort to flip gender norms in some places, and play down the importance of gender in others which is really refreshing. A little hard to visualise some characters, and sometimes you have to retroactively change the gender you imagined someone to be, but that's quite fun actually.
What's less fun is losing track of who is who and what's happened already, but the writing is so good that even if you don't know what's going on you still enjoy it. Again, I lay the blame for losing track at my own feet, I should have read it in bigger chunks and without taking days off.
Glad I read it, would read more from Hurley.
A really beautiful book, it takes us on a tour through the history of London by way of the objects found on the Thames foreshore, unearthing fascinating little stories about everyone from royals to paupers. Truly enchanting, it gives a sense of the sometimes meditative sometimes exciting and always unexpected nature of mudlarking, and also reveals the unique history and character of each different location along the river. While there is a lot of the author's own personal experience laid out in the book, it never feels self indulgent or affected, there's a truth and honesty to the book that's very endearing. I've read books by others where I wished the author would get out of the way of the story and disappear into the background, but this author's presence was never intrusive and just naturally blended into the story of the river. In terms of genre, the author has found a special sweet spot here, not trying to be a history book or forcing anything, but just letting the story of each found object trickle through the pages and settle where it wants to. I really enjoyed it :)
ehhhhh what do I say about this? Nothing happened for the first two thirds of the book, while it was a pleasant easy read with a few ‘setups' promising a later payoff, and then all of a sudden the author tried to cram 3 more plots into the last third. And the payoffs never happened. I'm not disappointed, it was an enjoyable enough read, inoffensive and with a nice turn of phrase... but what was it really all about? Did I miss something, or was too much was left hanging in the air unsaid?
I get the themes of retribution and making peace and consolation and all that, but... and what?
There's a lot of themes swirling around in the book, like ink in water. But no picture emerges.
Gave up on this about 3/4 of the way through, just after the whacky circus was introduced. The misogyny and racism just got too much and there wasn't enough else to make me stick around. Some cool ideas, kinda, but it had neither the kind of quaint charm of many vintage SF books nor a gripping enough plot to keep me hooked. The SF ideas were ahead of its time but behind ours - space opera and teleportation being about all there was to it. It felt severely dated both in terms of the pure science fiction aspects and the societal attitudes. I'd rather read the Stainless Steel Rat any day.
An incredible read that captivates from the very start! Beautifully descriptive language, fully realised characters, and a plot that circles inexorably towards its conclusion in the most beautiful - and at times haunting - way.
I really enjoyed how Doerr brought the magical potential of radio to life, and how they shone light on occupied French civilian life as well as the life of a young German in the war. Incredible to see people swept along by larger narratives which often seem too strong for them to hold any sway over.
A very beautifully written book, which rapidly builds its world and brings the story out in full.
Full of wonder. A sensitive tragedy with what seems at first glance to be unsatisfactory endings, and yet those endings are fully intentional. There's a death at the end that feels somewhat throwaway and pointless, but the character only wanted redemption and release. The diamond remains lost, and I'm still working out why that was done..
Explained the main thrust of Taoist writing (I hesitate to add -ism as it's not really something you can - or can't - follow), along with a little historiography and comparisons to Zen and Confucian philosophy. Also had a few preachy diversions into major issues of the 70s like eco-friendliness and nuclear power. I mean still true and relevant, but just, what's that got to do with the Tao, Alan?
While I came out the other side with a little changed perspective on things, and finding myself using nature-driven metaphors a lot more, I'm not sure I really gained a lot more than that... the true Tao can't be expressed or forced, real leadership doesn't lead, ideas of separate things are illusory. Maybe that's all there is to it, but I kinda wanted there to be more.
Maybe mountains really are just mountains.
I stole this off my mum's shelf when I was about 12 and for some reason kept the book all these years. It's moved from shelf to shelf throughout various house moves but I've never re-read it, until back in December it suddenly popped into my head again. I think my brain somehow remembered its soothing, reassuring nature, and knew it was the right book for this time in my life.
Four years ago my son, now nearly 8, fell ill with JDM. The symptoms are very much the same as how Harriet's illness is depicted (no spoilers - this is page 1 stuff!), it's a muscle weakening condition that appears in childhood. Our path through diagnosis, treatment, and recovery has been extremely long and, frankly, harrowing at times. But in the past year we have finally allowed hope to settle, and been a bit more comfortable with the idea of a full recovery in our future.
I couldn't have read this book a year or two ago while we were in the middle of it, but now he is on his way to a full recovery it resurfaced in my mind. I still had tears in my eyes in certain passages, but not in a painful way.
You know, not a lot really happens but it is endearingly written and the story bobs along pleasantly enough. Obviously it has a lot of personal meaning being both a childhood book of mine and taking on a new aspect recently, so any attempt to review this as a book in its own right is going to be hard. It's a nice story, with keenly observed childhood characters and relationships. It forms a charming window into a certain type of 1950s world, though aside from the house-staff it has a timeless quality to it and could just as well be set today. The ending's wrapped up nicely enough, but I'd have liked to see Harriet pass her tests, to be privy to a real sense of her embarking into her future.
Objectively, whisper it, it's probably a 3 star book, but it'll always have a special place in my heart.
Hard to collect my thoughts on this one. Took a really long time to get going. The 2nd half was better and more connected. The world was cool, a high tech low life corporate America ad absurdum. The central idea of a latent root language in the brain, that if mastered can be used to program people, is interesting but its expression in this novel is layered in a tonne of religious-historical discourse which at times both hampers the action and labours the point. The full extent of the philosophy of language behind the idea wasn't really brought out. Then again, it's not a philosophy essay.
The book could be cut down a lot and not lose anything. A tonne of the novel is just building up the mafia, building up YT, building up Raven. Does the final confrontation pay off? Not..really. The ending is fine enough, a little rushed, the baddies get their comeuppance, the heroes poon off into the sunset (... I never did get over that word). If you're already sold on how cool the world is by the first few chapters, which I was, you'll slog through a lot of the book like “yeah I get it, get on with it now”.
But there's a world changing, understanding-of-humanity changing idea at the core here. A reimagining of the reasons behind the evolution of all language, culture, and religion. So despite it being a bit bloated, it's still a 4 star book in my mind. Slimmed down and streamlined it could have been a 5, there's plenty to think about here.
The 17 year old me who downloaded hack/phreak text files over dialup really wanted to read it, and I know he wouldn't have been ready for it back then. The 38 year old me who just finished it for the first time... he got it, but maybe he's too old to get excited about it any more.
Maybe it's the right book at the wrong time. But I'm glad I read it.
Interesting subject matter, filled with some very moving tales. The book is oddly split in half, the second part being completely different and simply a collection of standalone chapters with various war stories ranging from bomber crew tales to accounts from occupied France. But that section was just as gripping and moving as the first.
I don't want to criticise, as it was an enjoyable read and was written fairly well, but I did feel that the author inserted themselves into the story a little more than necessary, with accounts of how and when they met the interviewees, and also sometimes it wasn't clear if sections were quoted verbatim from primary sources, or if there was artistic license at play.
Overall though a very interesting book well worth a read for anyone interested in the resistance.
A good story but felt like it was missing some depth. I mean it's a kids book so I understand, but while it's been compared to [b:The Dark Is Rising 210329 The Dark Is Rising (The Dark is Rising, #2) Susan Cooper https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1349051230l/210329.SY75.jpg 1530651] series I don't think it quite has the same impact and world-building. Still enjoyable and easy to read though. Was fun to re-read it, but probably not worth getting the sequels, for me.