Blue sky, green trees.

I liked the plot a lot, and many of her points about group-think (especially on the left) really resonated with me. However the writing style was really hard for me to get into. The main character is very neurotic, and the author does a great job of showing us this through lots of paragraphs of her inner chatter; kudos for showing and not telling, but it doesn't make for good reading. For example, there will be 2 full pages of her spiraling thoughts between when someone says "hello" and her replying "hello". This might - might - have worked if those neurotic, scattered, spiraling thoughts were interesting, but they were not.

The second essay was a bit weak, but the other two were really strong so it evened out to a good book. O'Hagan's viewpoint and writing style are really compelling, and shone especially brightly in the essay titled The Satoshi Affair.

One and a half stars because it is not necessarily bad, just repetitive. There's no way I can make it through a whole year of this so I'm closing the book in April. I almost never say this but: the movie is better.

Good spy thriller, although a bit too much exposition for my taste. It's not very believable when there's only one person in a book with any brains and they have to tell not only their peers but their superiors which is their ass and which is their elbow.

I was 100% loving this book, until a certain point. It should be said that it's less nature book and more travel book, in that the swallows and their routes help determine the author's route but that's about it; there isn't a book's worth of swallow in there, they are more like highlights.

Now for the spoiler:

This book was fantastic until the Gibraltar chapter. At that point the author has some sort of freakout for what really seems like no reason at all. He arrives in Europe and it's too quiet so he throws all his possessions into the sea? The hotel staff are less than fawning when he shows up "thin and brown and dirty" so he throws all his possession into the sea? There's too much military presence and so he throws his possessions into the sea? It's just too absurd for words. What it really sounds like is that he had a wonderful time being a white traveller in Africa, with all the novelty and attention this brought him, and now that he's back in Europe he's just another white dude and nobody is paying him a bit of attention and so he has a hissy fit and does the most destructive non-harm thing he can: he throws all his possessions into the sea.

Also note that "all his possessions" includes his notebooks in which he was documenting the trip. So this means that everything in the book that happened before his tantrum, and probably much of what happened afterwards too, is just his memories. Now I know that most popular non-fiction is actually a framework of fact that is then filled in with paraphrased conversations, half-remembered/ half-invented scenes, and outright fabrications for fun and interest; unless it is scholarly research, non-fiction is actually light on "just facts". That being said, it was really disappointing to find out that the author was making up basically everything.

I was enraged, outraged, furious the whole time I was reading this book. My throat was closed and my chest was tight, I felt like I was suffocating from helplessness and frustration with every turn of the page. And yet the book is fantastic, an absolute five star book. It feels weird to say that I loved a book that impacted me so negatively, but there we are - the power of books.

Nothing happens in this book. It is 80% descriptions of Earth's landscape as seen from near space, which seems to really rev the motors of a lot of readers but didn't do anything for me at all.

This is a hard book to review because I loved it so much at the beginning, by the halfway point I was annoyed, and for the rest of the book I became increasingly furious.

It started out as a great story about how two grad student writers-to-be bonded instantly and deeply, forming a friendship that anyone would envy, but then it turned into a brutal read about how Lucy completely manipulates and exploits Ann's friendship over the course of decades. The depth of Lucy's neediness and selfishness is shocking. The entire relationship revolves around Lucy needing Ann to tell her multiple times a day that yes, Lucy is talented; yes, Lucy will find love; yes, Lucy will have sex again; yes, Lucy is Ann's very favorite person in the whole world, that she loves Lucy best of all. One of the most horrifying examples of this last instance was when the two of them were out to dinner with a new friend of Ann's and Lucy literally climbs onto Ann's lap at the table, snuggles into her and demands that Ann declare Lucy her absolute favorite friend - in front of the other friend! - and then refuses to get off her lap for the rest of the evening. And Ann goes along with it! I can't think of a more rude way to treat the other friend at the table.

There's also the time when they are getting ready for a family holiday party and Lucy tells Ann that her skirt makes her look like a slut, then after Ann changes Lucy puts on the skirt herself and wears it to the party; her only response is to laugh in Ann's face and tell her "Gotcha!", meaning that she just wanted it for herself and lied to get what she wanted. Also Lucy almost ended the friendship when Ann started dating a poet, even though Ann had asked permission first (!!!), because Lucy must be the favored poet in Ann's life. The entire second half of the book is filled with incidents like these.

Throughout this entire book it is made abundantly clear that Lucy has hundreds of friends, that people are drawn to her, enchanted by her. I don't doubt this for a second; but still, how? There must have been some sort of charisma to Lucy that one felt in person that just doesn't come across on the page, something that made up for her appalling behavior. I certainly hope so.

Deadly boring. The most interesting thing was how in the first chapter the author goes on and on (and on) about how hugely fat, how morbidly obese, Mercy Goodwill is; you don't see much talk like that these days. I made it to 100 pages (3rd chapter) for the sake of my book club, but that's as far as I could force myself to read. Looking at the wiki entry for the book, it seems like I didn't miss a thing.

Es gefällt mir sehr, dass die Perspektive der Erzählung (3. Person) folgt nicht nur Grant sondern auch andere Charaktere. Gutes Buch, klassische "cozy mystery", unbedingt empfehlenswert .

I got through the intro and the first part of chapter 1, and that was all the doom and gloom that I could take.

I mean it's a good book, very disturbing and sad. But I just couldn't get into it. I found myself scrolling on the internet instead of reading, and that's my sign that I need to move on to a different book.

Good book, I liked reading it. The jump cuts between the past and present were a bit jarring, but I understand that they were necessary so that we could see the complexities of Kinga's relationship with her folks. After awhile I did find myself skimming through the parts set in the past, I wanted to get back into the story of the present!

*********SPOILER*********

The ending wrapped up a little too easily and neatly. I mean, the whole book her parents are horrified that she's dating a Turkish guy, then her father goes on a racist rant at the boyfriend - in front of everyone - and then less than 24 hours later both parents are giving the relationship their blessing? Not believable. I get that she wanted to give us a happy ending, but we deserve a believable one.

Das Buch hat sich als etwas anderes herausgestellt, als ich erwartet hatte.

Außerdem:

Ich fand es nervig, diese aggressiv selbstbewusste und selbstzufriedene Erzählerin in meinem Kopf zu haben; ich mochte sie nicht, dann mochte ich sie doch, und dann wieder nicht, und noch mal so weiter.

On the negative side it was slow moving and some of the plot points were painfully predictable. On the positive side it had moments where the pace really picked up, and there were enough of them to keep me going through to the end (though I skimmed).

Boring.

All white people are bad. There, I saved you 542 pages, now you can go read an actually good book.

It seems like recently the trend in writing has been to over-explain and overshare, telling us every little thing that happens as well as 12 random thoughts the characters have while the little thing happens. This book was so different, so refreshingly different. A cigarette is tucked behind someone's ear when a scene opens, a few paragraphs later the person blows smoke out of their nose, and on the next page it's mentioned that the person lights a second cigarette. Do you see? The author never mentioned the lighting of the first cigarette. That is good writing, that is show don't tell, that is an author trusting us as readers.

Slow burn. I was growing frustrated by the slow pacing, and maybe I would have given up but it's the only book that Nick has read twice so I stuck with it and, god, I'm glad that I did. Goddamn.

Ich kann nur sagen, dass das Buch hilfreich bei meinen Deutsch-Übungen war. Interessant war es leider nicht, und ich habe es nicht erledigt.

I liked it ok for practicing my German but I didn't really find it engaging. At some point I put it in my work bag for the commute and then forgot about it for 4 months, which isn't a good sign. I think it would connect well for lots of other nature-lovers out there, but it just didn't for me.

Fantastic read, although you have to be ready for it. See, it's not just about a whaling adventure, the book is about all sorts of things that happen around the adventure. It has chapters describing different types of whales, and different parts of whales, and chapters that have nothing to do with whales or hunting them but instead philosophize about this or that. The book is an adventure story, a history lesson, a natural history guide, with a healthy dose of exploration of the human mind and spirit. Be open to it all, and you'll have a great time with this book.

Note: Each chapter is only a handful of pages long, so everything is pretty short and snappy for such a long book.

I made it to page 150 of 197 and I just couldn't muster the energy or interest to continue. I low-level want to know what happens but not enough to keep reading. The plot of this book should have been compelling - family betrayals, yay! - but for me it falls flat.

Hell of a good book. The sleeping around and divorce aspects were surprising because I had always been taught that up until the boomer generation it was deeply shameful to be divorced or to sleep around, and that there were serious social consequences for it. This book is another indication, among many, that this is simply not the case. Interesting, entertaining. Highly recommend.

I think this is a fantastic, fascinating book. I also think it is essential reading for anyone interested in Germany or the Cold War, and any topics even remotely related to either of them. Certified good read, highly recommend.