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24/24 booksRead 24 books by Dec 31, 2024. You're 3 books ahead of schedule. 🙌
Crime fiction does not get better than this. Hammett's atmospheric prose puts you smack in the middle of 1930 San Francisco. Enjoy with a plate of “chops, baked potato and sliced tomatoes.”
I listened and read this book together, and the narrator, Mark Meadows, was fantastic. As for the writing, the Victorian style is intricate and immersive in a world I certainly knew nothing about, but the story was overly complicated and its mystery, once solved, not vert satisfying for 834 pages.
If I am going to give a book two stars I have to say something. This book has some beautiful language but story line simply could not keep my interest.
The Buried Giant by [a:Kazuo Ishiguro 4280 Kazuo Ishiguro https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1424906625p2/4280.jpg] is like a warm comfortable bard's epic tale told around a warm fire. Like other epic tales of a quest the story is more about the journey and relating the deeds of legendary characters than about the characters themselves. Like ancient epic tales born out of an oral tradition, The Buried Giant's characters are fairly two dimensional, but I argue that this is keeping with the genre of this novel. As you read, imagine the narrator talking not only to you, but to a small gathering on snowy night. With the mood set and some explanation about the structure of the book, I'll note that The Buried Giant is a story of the long and complicated love between a couple who move through fear to acceptance of their fates by way of a great journey filled with knights, warriors, dragons, and a boatman. A note about my rating system: 5 Stars = Among the greatest books. Recommend to anyone.4 Stars = A great book that I would recommend to most, even if it is a genre they don't normally read3 Stars = I liked this book but would only recommend it to those who like the genre or the particular author. 2 Stars = I dont like this book, but for whatever reason I finished it. 1 Star = Rubbish and could not finish.
