Blue sky, green trees.
Based on the description and a conversation with a friend who had already read it, I was fully prepared to hate this book but heroically muddle through for the sake of Book Club. I was pleasantly surprised to find it entertaining and fun. If someone was looking for a book to read in general, this wouldn't be my first suggestion, but if they were looking for a Berlin book then this would be in my top 3 suggestions.
The stream of consciousness style is usually a deal-breaker for me, but I stuck it out with this book and I'm glad I did. I don't know of any other books that addresses the topic of what happens to former colonists when they are violently expelled and return to the motherland. It was quite interesting, didn't pull punches, and took only one easy out. In all a good read, would recommend.
Fantastic book, absolutely fascinating look at Berlin. It definitely opened my eyes a bit to how the squat situation developed here, and due to the context that the book provided it made me view the squats and squatters in Berlin slightly more favorably than before. I mean, I understand now how things developed the way they did, and that at the time it was actually even necessary in some ways. It also blew my mind to learn that there were different types of squats, it wasn't just uniform chaos, everyone sleeping on a dirty mattress on the floor and shooting up then going on the streets and stomping people. This book definitely helped fill in some of the pieces of Berlin's history that I was missing before, and it was all told in an engaging, personable way. Highly recommend.
There is a lot of filler info to round out the page count of this book. If you are interested in learning all the context of what was going on, including political, sociological, and familial histories that go back decades before the action, then you'll gobble up this book. Otherwise you'll need to skim heavily, which is what I did.
Fantastic read, absolutely knocked my socks off. The portion that is told from the point of view of Edith was really intense, it felt like I was holding my breath for the whole chapter. I love what the author did with the characters, the plot, the writing, every bit of it worked for me. Highly recommend.
Fantastic book. I thought the parts from Doc's perspective while he was having his stroke were really well done, very intense, although sometimes hard to follow (I think that was the point, though). I also thought Anna's response was very realistic, feeling trapped in the situation and cut off and overwhelmed. She's also a bit of an odd duck herself, what with often not understanding context or appropriate responses, but I liked it, she was interesting.
Based on the hype and a glowing recommendation from a dear friend, I had high hopes for this book. Instead it fell flat for me. It seems that I was supposed to be very moved by the author's personal struggles, but they weren't talked about in enough depth, or often enough, or with too little emotion. These struggles just weren't interesting and frankly didn't feel like they belonged in what was clearly a book about David Starr Jordan. Overall, the book was flat and a little dull.
Things really get bogged down in the middle third of the book, Miller is just repeating himself endlessly about getting the actors to "be real". The choice was either to fail to finish reading the book, or just skip pages until it got to the previews and opening night. I chose the later, for both closure and out of curiosity, and I'm glad I did.
Contains spoilers
It was a really good book, and I enjoyed the structure of the story with its two time periods and one extra time period nested inside one of them; it was a treat to read.
****SPOILERS******
I did feel a mix of sadness and frustration as the mom ended up living the exact life that she never wanted, just basically checking everything off the list one by one. And the frustration came in because it's not like she actively chose any of those things, she just failed to make a decision and let herself be carried along with things - which is in itself a decision process, but a piss-poor one to live your life by.
I liked it, it was a fun read. There was A LOT of boating terminology, which I don't understand; at first it wasn't so bad, but I found myself having to skim entire paragraphs that were simply describing how parts of the boat were working. For this I'm knocking off a star because it really did take up quite a lot of the book. Aside from that I found the plot and writing charming.
This book does a fantastic job of giving us an authentic 9 year old narrator, who talks and sees the world as a 9 year old. So often authors write "precocious" children, and not only are these characters insufferable, the author comes off as a bad writer because it reads as if they just took an adult character and shrunk it to child-size and called it a day. This author gets the voice 100% right, and it's a delight. The story itself I really loved, which sounds odd given the grim topic but you know what I mean. It grabbed me from the first pages and kept me hooked. Highly recommend, for everyone!
I gave it a go but I couldn't get into it. Lots of parts where she explains an idea or feeling by way of what other writers have said, which felt a bit like reading a term paper. Lots of trying to philosophize, which I ended up skimming until finally I was just skimming the whole thing, and what's the point of sticking with a book if you're just skimming?
I found all but a few of the people in this book completely horrible. That makes it a weird ride, to hate people who you are spending many hours learning about, but also to still be interested in the story.
Also, I felt like the author was quite the apologist for Sam. He never says it explicitly, but the vibe is very "Sam is an asshole and treats people like shit but it's okay because he's smart!" This made me lose faith in the author and in his perspective on the story.
Glad I read the book, but even more glad that it's over.
