Rafael

This book reads like it could have been one of the inspirations for Game of Thrones. With all the intrigue, political games, maniacal masculinity, and graphic descriptions of some pretty disturbing imagery, it is only missing the fantasy elements.

I went through this book in just a couple of weeks, and as soon as page 20 I wasn't able to put it back down. The way this book presents its story as lived by different characters didn't feel forced, and gave it all a good balance and pace.

All in all, very nice read.

Teilweise schon interessant. Das Buch untersucht unsere Beziehung zu Dingen, physischen Objekten, und argumentiert, dass die Gesellschaft diese Verbindung langsam verliert. Als Beispiel werden unter anderem Bilder verwendet, die früher gedruckt wurden und heute nur noch digital zu sehen sind.

Für Byung-Chul Han ist das keine gute Entwicklung. Mit dem Bezug auf Dinge verlieren wir etwas grundlegend Menschliches, einen Halt in der Welt. Anstelle von Dingen häufen wir "Undinge" an - Erlebnisse, digitale Medien, Posts etc. - die von Natur aus vergänglich sind.

Ich persönlich fand die Argumentation sehr interessant, auch wenn ich nicht immer mit dem Autor übereinstimme. Das Buch ist recht kurz, dennoch hatte ich nach der ersten Hälfte das Gefühl, dass der Inhalt bereits vollständig erklärt war. Auf den letzten Seiten werden nur noch Argumente und teilweise ganze Beispiele wiederholt.

Ich schreibe diese Rezension etwa zwei Jahre nachdem ich das Buch gelesen habe und eines ist mir auf jeden Fall im Kopf geblieben: Byung-Chul Han vermisst seine Jukebox sehr.

This book is very addictive. In the first part it carefully sets up the story piece by piece, and after a while you just watch in amazement as it all comes together. The characters are well fleshed out and act the way you'd expect them to act.

Both Michael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander's side of the story are interesting to read. I enjoyed when both threads were written in parallel, jumping from one to another inbetween paragraphs. What I think this book excels at is pacing.

When I say I couldn't put the book down, I mean it. When the dominoes started to fall, I had a hard time stopping to read. I'm a little afraid to buy the next one...

I've just finished this book and I already feel that it will stay with me for a long time. The story takes you through several countries, wars, relationships, hardships and loves. George R.R. Martin said, "A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. [...]" If we take this quote literally, A Long Petal of the Sea brought me much closer to that goal.

The book also gave me a much better understanding of the past of Spain and Chile. Allende wrote a novel, but it touches on a lot of important real history. I sometimes checked what I'd just read on Wikipedia to see if it was true and to learn more about the events described. The author did her homework so well that you get a novel and a history lesson in one. The book also portrays the sadly ever-present issue of people being forced to flee their own country. It helps the reader to see other perspectives.

If you are interested in love stories, the hardships of war, people being both good and very, very bad, this book is for you. One of the criticisms I've heard about Isabel Allende is that her writing sometimes gets in the way of the story by using too many or convoluted metaphors. At least in this book, I don't agree with that. The writing was good, flowed with the story and never took center stage. The characters and environment did the telling.

Two things bothered me a little. One was the ending, it felt rushed and the book could have been finished a few pages earlier and I think it would have left a better impression. The second is that most of the time I couldn't hear the characters saying their dialog. With a few exceptions, it felt like they were mostly there to move the plot along.

All in all, I highly recommend this book and I'll probably try another one by Isabel Allende in the future.

This is a children's book, but a wonderful one. I didn't expect to like this book or find its language accessible, considering it was written over 150 years ago. But I was wrong, it's easy to see how this book has held its place as a classic for so many years.

It's made to be read to children, it has a story that will have most kids asking for "just one more page" instead of falling asleep.

First of all I want to say that I will not support Exurb1a in the future. I recommend that you search for "Pieke Roelofs" online for the reasons behind this. In short, after some research on the subject, I am personally convinced that her story is real. And what a horrible story it is.

I'll now do my best to review the book on its own merits. The star rating is my opinion of the book. It has interesting concepts. What originally caught my attention was seeing Buddhist principles in a sci-fi setting. Theories of resource scarcity and this book's take on a society that consumes itself to death are good at points.

Given the subject matter, I wanted to like the book. Space Buddism was enough of a hook for me to finish the book, just to find out where "Geometry for Ocelots" was going with it. In the end, unfortunately, I just didn't like the book that much. The story and its characters are dragged through the plot without having time to breathe. The characters, instead of being believable or, in my opinion, relatable, are mostly used to move things along. Issues such as alcoholism and suicide are not handled well and are normalized or even glorified throughout most of the book.

For a book that deals with complicated issues, it lacks nuance at every turn. The main characters are all some extreme on a spectrum. Evil, good, drunk, or lacking any agency. After the first few chapters there is also very little world building.

The first few chapters were promising, I liked how the characters were introduced and the core ideas this book was trying to tackle. "Geometry for Ocelots" just had no idea where to go with it. So it ended up going nowhere interesting.

I started reading this book after someone recommended it to me. It is a strange one. Written like a diary with office emails, doodles and photos in between to create a believable world where Janet doesn't like her photo. It just didn't pull me in. At least not the first time, I stopped after two or three chapters. A while later I looked at what ebooks I had with me and decided to give this one another chance.

I'm glad I did, "Deadlines don't care if Janet doesn't like her photo" feels like watching "The Office", except instead of selling paper, they're a design agency. Thorne's portrayal of agency work is mostly spot on, at least from my experience. Some chapters are hilarious, other jokes just didn't work for me. I think comedy is hard to do in a book, David Thorne has managed to write one that I'd recommend. Maybe I was just in a silly enough mood when I read it the second time.

While I enjoyed "Ender's Game" and found the story captivating with its focus on the psychological aspects of war, it is hard to talk about it without acknowledging that it has a pretty problematic protrayal of women. Not only aren't a lot of non-male characters, those who are present are lacking in agency. It's a good book, but writen by someone with outdated views and that shows quite clearly.

It is the book that showed me I could like science fiction, so that's a big plus. I now discovered ones I enjoy a lot more. Those from Ursula K. Le Guin for example.