Timo
A wonderful book. Randy Pausch's story touched and inspired so many people. I'm now one of them. Throughout this book, you really get to know Randy and his whole family. It's bursting with lessons about life. So many that I felt kind of overwhelmed and unimportant though. This man is so full of advice and lessons, and I could give you few to none if asked right now. But maybe that's what this is all about. To make you think and find the advice that matters most to you. I'm also still pretty young. I will make sure to re-read this, once I'm a few years wiser. Rest in peace Randy.
It was okay. A few interesting ideas and thoughts, but nothing that's life changing for me. Most of it is pure logic.
Ever sat on a train or bus, looking out of the window and imagining what's going on in those houses? I'm a bit like this. Sometimes I stop and wonder what all those people around me are up to. They all have a life as complex as mine, and for them I'm just an extra in a movie, instantly forgotten. This is where this book starts.
“I watch the people I pass - the two men running, backpacks on, training for the marathon, the young woman in a black skirt and white trainers, heels in her bag, on her way to work - and I wonder what they're hiding. Are they moving to stop drinking, running to stand still?”
I enjoyed it immensely. It's a clever written thriller that is very fast paced but doesn't leave character building behind. There are different viewpoints from 3 main characters which are perfectly spaced, giving you just enough information to keep you guessing.
People keep drawing comparisons to Gone Girl, but I don't think that gives Paula Hawkins's work justice. While Gone Girl has loosely a similar tone and story, The Girl on the Train is a different kind of beast. Yes there are twists that I didn't saw coming, but it's less of a heavy character study and more a realistic chain of events where bad things happen to good (or are they?) people.
And this is why this book gets 5 stars from me. It's realistic. So realistic that it's scary. The Girl on the Train must be the first thriller I've read, where every action from every character just made sense. Everything done and said happened exactly like I thought it should. And not needing to shout at the characters for their foolishness, was a nice change.
I had high hopes for this book at the beginning. It started out interesting enough, and I hoped that it would be some clever play with dialogue. I hoped that the main protagonist would use the situation he created, to change the perspective and view of things of the people he kidnapped.
But all my hopes got flushed down really fast. The main protagonist turned out to be a self absorbed maniac, trapped in his own private circle jerk. Literally none of his actions made any kind of sense. I understand that he has some serious mental issues, but even with that in mind I couldn't find one part of his thinking that I could reason with.
I just felt bored the whole way through and only finished it because it's short enough. Still a waste of time.
What a heavy book. Heavy in so many ways. For once it felt pretty long. Especially the first half. Don't get me wrong, I've read and enjoyed longer books, but with this I felt like I've read so much, when in hindsight not very much happened story wise. But what happens is character development. And it's so good in it's own dirty way. Which brings me to the second heaviness: the setting. My god is this setting dark and depressing. There is not one(!) main or side character with a happy background. Nobody's experiencing something good for them. It's just a endless down spiral right to the end. And it fits perfectly. There should be nothing happy in all those topics.
The book keeps you on the edge and guessing. And the ending is so perfectly written, that I totally forgot the slower pace in the first half.
This book is awesome. Randall Munroe does a really good job with explaining science to everyone (everyone who knows xkcd already knows this).
The topics are short but informative. You always get way more information than you thought, and with its on point humor it's just fun to read.
I really learned some new stuff, and even though most of the topics are really crazy, I already could shine with some knowledge or facts around my friends.
I really can recommend this to everyone. Fun!
Goodreads recommended this for me. So I had no idea what to expect, other than a YA series. And boy what an effin adventure. At first I really disliked the writing style and the narrative voice. But the more I read, the more it grew on me. I really appreciated it later, because it gives you that last grain of salt that makes the world much more alive. As soon as Ness included a bit of scifi I was hooked. The characters grew so well that my heart nearly broke at some twists. The story stays interesting and tense until the heartbreaking and crazy abrupt ending. And after seeing that the other two books are even better rated, I can't wait to continue the adventure!
Brilliant.
Although it discusses serious topics, Wolf in White Van is a brilliantly written book full of beautiful descriptions. It's a book about rash decisions and the consequences that follow. It's about growing up and the time you spent inside your own head while doing so. It explores regions we all have wandered in at some point in our lives, but goes farther.
“My parents would have asked the younger me, what do you want to be safe from? After the accident nobody would ask. That was, to put it harshly, the best thing about the rifle blast that destroyed most of my face.”
Wolf in White Van is a character study if you will. After finishing it, I felt like there is more depth in there than I thought. I feel that if I read this again, now knowing where it's headed I will reveal even more layers of the labyrinth that is the protagonists mind.
It was one of those kind of books, that really impressed me with their writing style and left me with a bit more than a engaging story. It left me something to think about, be it for just a few minutes or even days. I love those kinds.
This book. I didn't know what I should think about it at the beginning,and even halfway through. I even would've stopped reading if there weren't some pages so beautifully written. I continued and thought I would give this book 3 stars max after completing. Then came the ending. The last 10-15% of the book were a river of beautiful words, arranged to heartbreaking sentences. Each new page became more powerful, beautiful and sad. I closed the book and said: “Wow”.
And here is my 5 star rating. If books aren't here to provoke such feelings, than I don't know why I am still reading.
This was my second book by Zusak. Although not as powerful as The Book Thief, I still really enjoyed it. Zusak does some things with words that really touches me. Even the shortest sentences are beautiful.
The Story was fresh and entertaining. I loved the mass of different characters with different lives. It all felt real.
I've always loved the woods. I love the mostly untouched nature and all it's beauty. I love it when the sun's shimmering through the trees during the day, and I respect and fear it during the night. When trees and branches get distorted and forming shadows, that your brain interprets as pure terror.
I think everyone feared the woods at night as a child, and many adults still do. They were/are the perfect embodiment of all our fears.
Through the Woods captures this feeling of fear and terror, I felt as a kid in the most perfect way. Even though not really centered around the woods, they're still in every story one way or another. Every tale has its own distinctive art style, and different feeling. But they're all so beautifully detailed that it's easy to get lost in them. The panels are cleverly used, and between illustrations of beauty there are drawings of horrors from deep within your nightmares. But still, the horror elements are more subtle, left to flourish in your head rather than graphic. It's like your every childhood fear come to paper.
“I dreamt a Captain dressed in greyI dreamt I wore a long white coatI dreamt a stone caught in my throatI dreamt I chokedand chokedand choked”I recommend this beauty of a book to everyone, that still knows about the now embarrassing things that we feared as a child. This book makes you revisit them and who knows, maybe they weren't so reasonless?
Incredible! It's been a long long time since I devoured a book as much as “Bird Box”. I couldn't put it down. I won't give too much away, because I think everyone should get into this without reading too much about it beforehand.
“Bird Box” creeped me out more than any other book so far. It's the combination of hopelessness and emptiness with the ever present danger waiting for you to lower your guard and make one small mistake. Just as the characters in the book, you never know what the danger is, but you sure as hell know there has to be something because people die horribly. So you'll have to barricade yourself, you have to put on a blindfold, and you have to try to leave the house as little as possible. But in the same time you want to fight it, you want to try and make sense of it, all while keeping your eyes closed.
And this abundance of sight that Josh Malerman introduces, is an incredible medium of horror. Every moment outside the house, from small visits to the well, to the incredible voyage on the river is pure terror. Outside of your blindfold is the beautiful world with its vibrant colors that you haven't experienced for years. But you know that it's empty of most human life. But there has to be something with you, because you can hear it...
The story follows a handful of survivors as they barricade themselves in a house and try to cope with their losses and the hopelessness of the future. The characters are strong and you can feel the heavy burden on all of their shoulders.
It all feels realistic. You can easily believe that it would all play out like this, in such a scenario. Hope, love, hate, distrust, anger...
For me one of the best books I've read in years.
A cozy little story about the life of a small town book store owner which fully changes after a baby gets abandoned in his store. It's a story about choices that we make and the people that we choose to have around.
Even though there are some heavy themes, the underlining message and theme is hopeful and happy.
Books and the love of reading are an essential element to the story and are elemental in every characters life, and that's where I couldn't connect in the same way. I like reading, but not in the same life fulfilling way and I'm not as literary as all those characters.
I got this book through a giveaway from the author.
Although not usually my genre, I thought I give it a whirl because 1) it sounded interesting enough and 2) I like to read as many different books from different genre that I can.
I really liked the easy and light writing style. Light enough so that the pages fly by, but also mixed with some more deep and beautiful passages so that you don't feel bored. I also liked the viewpoint from the different characters, at different ages, about their culture.
But in the end I just give it 3 stars, because I don't really felt moved or sucked into the story. Maybe because I cannot connect enough with the women as a man, or maybe because it isn't my genre after all.
“Hello, I'm Bear Grylls and for todays special episode...we're going to Mars” or “Well...shit”.
One of those two would be enough to describe The Martian. As someone who loves scifi and everything space this really tickled all my spots. It's a really thoroughly researched story FULL of science and survival. It's really interesting to see how Watney finds ways to overcome everything that Mars throws at him.
I don't nearly know enough about chemistry, physics or botany to understand everything that he comes up with, but that's the point. If Andy Weir would let some average person get stranded on Mars, the story would be over after 10 pages. I'm really impressed with what's possible in the face of death, if you have some scientific and mechanical expertise.
To not get the reader too overwhelmed or bored, the story is mixed up with the viewpoint from earth, where the whole world and especially NASA works hard to contact and rescue Watney. There could have been more emphasis on the human connections but that's okay. The story focuses on physical survival. But it helps that Watney doesn't loose his sense of humor and throws around some funny jokes here and there.
Especially the ending had some “Gravity” like action which was the icing on the cake for me.
Shocking tale of violence and abuse. It could (and is) happening right to the girl next door. That's what makes it shocking.
I'm really torn between 4 and 5 stars.
This was a terrifying book. Terrifying in the most primal way. The fear it builds does not come from a wicked beast or something paranormal, it comes from something that's all to real and can't be fought: a virus inside you.
The writing style really felt like a Stephen King book, with its background character development and interviews and case file parts (which was on purpose, as the author acknowledges). That said I really loved it.
The transition from innocent childhood where the adults handle everything, to the sad truth that adults are sometimes as lost as children, was really well done. Every kid had its own fleshed out character and took a reasonable part in the story.
The gory and disgusting “action” parts were evenly spaced out and believable.
But it's also a sad book. There's nothing good happening to any of the characters. All they got left are memories of better times, on which they cling on while going through hell. It doesn't have a happy ending, which I really like. Life isn't like the fairy tales.
So why not 5 stars? Because all the animal cruelty left a bitter taste in my mouth. I know that it WAS there to do just that, and for a few characters those scenes were crucial, but it was a bit too fleshed out for my tastes. Like the author really had fun writing sites full of those stuff.
Yes yes, I know that drawing the line on animal cruelty in a book where kids slaughter themselves is weird, but that's just how I roll. I can't help it.
You did it again Mr. Gaiman. It seems like I can only enjoy the shorter books from you. But that's not a bad thing, because those are awesome. After loving “The Ocean At The End Of The Lane”, this one transported me once again right back into a magic fairy tale.
It's really fast paced and many of the adventures are just hinted at, so you need to form them in your head. But this really blends perfectly with the style. It feels like reading a more awesome Grimm tale.
The main protagonists are lovable and all the other people, creatures and animals are full of fantasy.
I really didn't want this to end. But the ending was once again fairy tale style, which left me happy.
Quite interesting inside look into the life of an adventurer. It's like a climbing documentary with a twist.
I recently got the itch to read more non-fiction to broaden my horizon and learn a thing or two. To start this off, I picked up this highly praised book. Why not start the journey to more knowledge with deadly viruses?
Of course I've followed the news and knew about Ebola and its symptoms and consequences. But I never really digged deeper into it. And boy it is as fascinating as it is terrifying.
Although based truly in facts and history, “The Hot Zone” is written like fiction which immensely helps to terrify you. It was really fascinating to learn about the place of birth of filoviruses and how they're adapting to survive. Preston describes in detail what happens to a human being and/or animal once it catches one of many different strings of filoviruses. If this would be a fiction book, many people would be appalled of the cruelty and brutality that happens to animals and humans. The fact that it isn't makes this story so haunting.
What can you learn from this book? Besides the story of the discovery of different deadly viruses and a look behind the scenes of scientific animal tests, you learn how hauntingly helpless we humans are if nature decides to get rid of us. We can battle it, but it's a fight against windmills. Nature can adapt and change and we will never know where it's going to strike next.