Alex
Jackknife: evil tree comes to life 2/5
The Indigo Room: a woman who works on soulcrushing office job has some excitement. Meh 2/5
The Blanks: very original and scary 5/5
Night and Day in Misery: average Missouri experience, trauma porn and ghost story 2/5
Letter Slot: a teenager makes not entirely morally justifiable deals 4/5
All in all only “The Blanks” is worth reading but it REALLY IS worth reading, reminded me of “By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain” for some reason.
Мне очень понравилось, славянское dark fantasy с туповатым чёрным юморком это прям моё. В принципе я не почувствовал какой-то неровности в рассказах, все хорошие, но про Снегурочку вообще уже какое-то аниме (в хорошем смысле).
Атмосфера классная и чтобы избежать ломки я незамедлительно начал вторую книгу.
I read all 179 episodes + 21 special episodes in five days and it was awesome.
The story is kinda stupid but fun - the main character meets very little resistance but for some reason it didn't bother me, it's basically what I dreamed about when I was bored as a teenager, I didn't dream about overcoming obstacles or growing up, I dreamed about unlimited power and having a cool nickname (like Monarch of Shadows). The art is great as well.
I also liked manhwa format which is very easy to read on the phone, much easier than manga or comic books.
10/10 would read again.
Psychedelic experience with elements of psychological horror. It is definitely a classic and hardly feels like a 50+ year old book. At times it was too psychedelic for me, and even though it is a short book, it took some effort to finish it.The finale is just chef's kiss - absolute cinema.
The audiobook narration is quite good, and I can recommend listening to it.
Oregon mentioned - instant 5 stars.
But really, it's a very good sci-fi detective from the golden age of space exploration. The story is happening in 2028-2029, so it's quite interesting to read how people imagine the extent of scientific progress in the future and compare it to reality.
It never read hard SF and some people say that that's it but it didn't feel like hard, there are some long discussions and explanations, very basic math but there is no need to understand it, most of the resulting stuff is quite obvious or explained.
The audiobook narrator is surprisingly good and even did some voices in the first half of the book. The book is also free with an audible subscription.
I would totally recommend it if you're not afraid of that bittersweet feeling of dreams which you know will never be fulfilled.
Incredibly interesting book about Rwandan genocide. It obviously has some nightmarish scenes but not as much as you could expect.
I learned a lot about genocide itself, involvement of France on the side of killers and reinforced a notion of the UN as an absolutely useless and at times harmful organization.
It was especially interesting how genocidaieres used the resources of humanitarian help in refugee camps to continue terrorizing tutsis long after officially genocide was over and the international community was absolutely helpless to do anything and actually actively denied that happening.
It is sad to read this now, 30+ years later and see what Rwanda does to Congo now and how there is still a nightmarishly bad situation in Congo with full support of Western countries because everyone needs cobalt and nobody wants to think about Africans who mine it.
As for audiobook narration it's mostly fine but the narrator (who is also the author) often very audibly suppressing yawns or burps, absolutely bizarre how that wasn't fixed.
Yeah, Dan Winslow is a great writer. The form is perfect – language, action, plot, everything is how it should be. The audiobook narration also fits – low, alpha-male whisper.
But I just can't stand blue brotherhood crap and Denny Malone has definitely gone too far being anti-hero with an emphasis on “hero” for me to be able to read this without cringe.
I was hoping to give it 4 stars until the last 10%, where the most unbelievable turn of events happens. I don't want to use spoilers, but it was an absolutely unnecessary stretch and more “blue brotherhood” crap.
I don't know, maybe cops really think like this, I'm just not eager to read about it.
I heard that this is an homage to “The Secret History.” In my opinion, this book far surpassed it in both the annoyingness of characters and how slow the story is. The book is just enormous, and it certainly feels “post-modern” in a sense that you can read for hours and nothing happens.
I liked the last 15% of the book, but it's not worth it. It lures you with the same comforting language as Night Film, but it's nothing like it.
I wholeheartedly do not recommend reading this book if you don't have enough stamina for postmodernism. I don't, and it took me months to finish it, and in the end I am just annoyed beyond belief.
I kinda liked it, it's easy to read and provides lots of food for thought. But it's very obviously a propaganda piece, not bad but partiality just flows from the pages. There are some omissions (like no mention of Sino-Vietnam war or support of Khmer Rouge) and references are mostly to party officials or other “non-scientific” articles and books. I tried to check the most dubious stuff online and most of it seems to be true.
Excellent book if you wish to know what kind of stuff China is currently into.
Another great book by Abercrombie.
It's a bit more lighthearted that The First Law (actually similar to the first book in that series) but there are definitely plenty of opportunities for even more fucked up stuff in future books - a setting of medieval Europe with magic and elves is very promising.
I really liked the characters, especially Vigga, who voiced by Steven Pacey really reminded me of Glokta from the first law and I'm all for more of this.
It was already pointed out in a lot of reviews that at times the story is similar to the DnD campaign, I didn't find it off-putting or anything, it is fun and I actually like sometimes to have fun by reading.
And lastly, the absolutely god-tier performance of Steven Pacey - if you have a chance please listen to the audiobook, it's one of the best ever produced.
There are interesting tidbits here and there, some mildly thought-provoking correlations but 95% is so insanely boring and absolutely useless - we already kinda guessed that there is an inequality in the world.
Add a pinch of utopism and neo-liberal propaganda (though I have to admit it probably felt differently in 2012) and you have Capital in the XXI century (nothing in common with Das Kapital).
Also, Piketty achieved impossible, he wrote a book in large part about the XX century and didn't mention Hitler or Nazis once.
Very skippable book IMO.
Heartbreaking book. At times I had to stop listening just to not cry right in the middle of the street.
I think everyone should at least try to read it and challenge their perception of the United States as a bastion of freedom and democracy. All people (including Americans) would benefit from a realistic view of world order.
I read a fiction involving magic that was easier to believe than Che's life.
The book is very long, it picks up speed slowly while Che grows up in Argentina and rides a motorcycle around South America. From the moment he meets Fidel it picks up really fast, it's hard to believe that a person's life can change so quickly.
The Cuban revolution and everything else until the very end when Che Guevara's luck runs out is an absolute blast.
I learned a lot of interesting things about the USA, Argentina, Cuba, Fidel, their revolution, about the Sino-Soviet split, and of course about Ernesto himself.
The author is also a very interesting dude - a war correspondent and investigative journalist. While he was doing the research for the book - he found Che's grave in Bolivia, the location of which was a mystery for 30 years.
The book's voice acting is great, the narrator pronounces all the South American names and titles with a South American accent, which I tried to reproduce and couldn't.
Absolutely would recommend.
Добротная, короткая книга-антиутопия. Определённо можно заметить следы 1984. Главный герой квадратный идеалист и это даже обыгрывается в романе как последствие идеологии.
Идея мне показалась интересной и сеттинг последовательно раскрывался на протяжении всей истории.
Ни разу в книге мне не было скучно и главный герой страдал как можно было бы ожидать от любого молодого не-циника в его положении, вне привязки к шахматам и я вполне ему сопереживал.
Всякие шахматные словечки немного создавали искусственность атмосфере, но она и есть “искусственная”.
Книга не идеальная, но хорошая и стоит прочтения.
It's not a masterpiece of thriller like “The Silence of The Lambs” but I enjoyed it thoroughly anyway. Plot twists (I must admit not all are great) are not getting old and move the story forward at a good pace. The main characters are both “anti-heroes” and both are decently interesting to follow. The action is quite intense and packed, especially because there are two plot lines for a while which cover just 24 hours.
The English translation is an absolute disgrace and I suggest you read it in another language (preferably French) if you can.
3.5/5
It's pretty good if you want to learn more about China. There are various stories, mostly from the Cultural Revolution, but there are some about relatively modern (2008) China as well. Those stories though are a little chaotic and jump around quite a lot. Language is also an issue - there are a lot of words and expressions which aren't commonly used in normal English.
Overall it was well worth my time.
Among suffering porn and personal anecdotes there are plenty of super-interesting scientific and historical facts and thoughts.
It's almost 20 years since the publication and if anything the addiction crisis has become much worse in Canada and the US while it's still almost non-existent in Switzerland which is mentioned in the book as a pioneer of safe injection. And at least in the US “the war on drugs” is still very much going on.
It seems like the book fell on the very unfriendly ground and I doubt that the US or Canada (with such neighbors, US again proved to be absolute clowns of the villains in this matter) will be able to do anything about this.
This is by far the longest book I've ever read or listened to, but I didn't feel bored for a second despite being less than excited about the Wild West setting.
The synopsis is simple: some cowboys out of the blue decide to go from Southern Texas to Montana with a huge cow herd to be the first cowboys there.
Despite the simple idea, it has everything - insane action, maddening love, the cruel and gorgeous nature of America, even some comedy and much more.
Interesting that I had read only one other Western - Blood Meridian and they both share a sense of magic in the world, encounters and events feel pre-destined and at the end there is an outright magic.
The audiobook narration takes time to get used to, but for my personal taste it's worth it for the voice of Gus McCrae. I liked it a lot and I think it's not too far from his depiction in the TV series.
If you have some 46 hours on your hands for an audiobook, I highly recommend it..
