Eva

A young injured Austrian soldier is looking for peace in the countryside village Mondsee. The year is 1944 and Germany is on its last legs during WWII. Veit is plagued with PTSD and depression, and hopes he won't have to return to his troupe in Russia. During his stay he encounters a range of characters that give him a new perspective on life and war. From the narrow-minded nagging NS landlady, to a troupe of young girls trained into lockstep at a nearby summer camp, to the freespirited gardener with his love for South America who has hard time keeping his regime-critique to himself. Next to Veit lives a young German wife with her newborn, who escaped her parents and hometown, to equally seek solace in the Austrian countryside. Slowly a rhythm emerges, of simple tasks and walks by the sea, of learning to breathe again and a wish to finally start a life. If there's still the time.

I very much enjoyed this book and its beautiful passages about love and live, and the small moments one learns to cherish. While being told in first-person, it is also interlaced with letters from 3 people tangential to the cast in Mondsee. In total giving insights into the inner life and mentality of people living through the last years of WWII.

Back at this series after all. Still fun.

These books are perfect adventure stories, and Marina is the wild queen, the tightrope walker, who lives and loves and crashes and burns and reinvents herself countless times in her rags and riches. Fighting through the sorrow and starvation of the Russian Revolution, losing friends and family, finding sparks and solace in lovers, and surviving through her poetry and the comradeship of the characters surrounding the House of Arts in Saint Petersburg. The book is rich in details, of history, politics and poetry, and never slow in plot. It makes you freeze in the Russian winter, ride on top of propaganda trains, and rejoice and dance at poor arthouse costume balls. Same as its predecessor it kept me up at night. After making us wait for almost the whole book for the arrival of Marina's charming fox, I'd say they got a perfect ending. Burning so hot, each one becoming what they're meant to be.I regret [b:The Revolution of Marina M. 34523120 The Revolution of Marina M. (The Revolution of Marina M. #1) Janet Fitch https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1498737687l/34523120.SY75.jpg 55657358] and [b:Chimes of a Lost Cathedral 42779085 Chimes of a Lost Cathedral (The Revolution of Marina M. #2) Janet Fitch https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1559593901l/42779085.SY75.jpg 66538295] aren't published as one giant edition, because once you finish this one, you want to return to the prologue of the first one, to complete the cycle, to search for any hints of the past in her new life.

Un livre qui vous ramene a votre enfance et votre adolescence et a toute l'intensite des sentiments, ici d'une fille hyperactive introvertie. La cruaute et l'innonce de jeunesse, la meilleure amities de votre enfance qui ete brisee, le bullying des enfants timides et des enfants avec des differences, les solitaires et le desir d'echapper a toutes les interactions sociales, la colere qui deborde parfois sans raison.

Je pouvais m'identifier a certaines experiences et j'etais capable de ressentir visceralement les autres. Un bon livre, et j'ai apprecie les histoires sur les cantons de Quebec.

Full of metaphors and anthropological observations, Hot Milk is a hypnotic rite of passage for 25 year old Sofia, who spends a summer in the south of Spain, to help her mother deal with her mysterious leg condition. It's a tale of seduction and emancipation, of the illusions one chooses to believe, the memories one chooses to ignore, the realities one chooses to escape.

I am quite sure this book is made to be consumed as audiobook, and I have immensely enjoyed the pleasure of having Romola Garai whisper sultry prose into my ears. Especially her slow accented intonations when speaking for Ingrid almost gave me chills. One of those four stars is definitely for the audio experience.

The story of an unimposing German teacher and the community of German settlers around him that live along the Volga river in the south of Russia. In the foreground it's Bach's (River!) story, his love for the pure Klara, their tragedy, and his attempt to withdraw from society to keep his daughter safe. In the background it's the story of what happened to the Germans settlers - whose ancestors had been recruited as immigrants to Russia in the 18th century - during the tumultuous years between the first and second world war. They become the pawns in a tug of war between Germany and Russia. Folded into the politics is a narrative of fairy tales, in Bach's writing and in Jachina's too. I didn't love this as much as [b:Zuleikha 46805466 Zuleikha Guzel Yakhina https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1563391528l/46805466.SY75.jpg 45340370], even though the writing is amazing. Bach just was a harder character to root for, as he never felt heroic nor especially likeable.

Oh snowman, guardian of the children of Crake and the children of Oryx, thank you for taking me on this journey.

I found the ending rather abrupt, but really enjoyed everything else about this apocalyptic novel. We explore the before and the after, of a plague that cleared earth of most its inhabitants. What's left is an engineered tribe of new humans, and our narrator Snowman, who is haunted by the voices of his past, who might have played a crucial part in the downfall of humanity.

Campbell Scott has a great voice for audio narrations.

Gritty. The characters were more interesting than the mystery.

Discovering myself and all my co-workers in here!

There are antiquated assumptions to chuckle over (like: integrating the “secretary pool” into decision making for a female perspective) but it's originally published in 1991 and their data sets are giant stereotypical US companies, so one can see past that.

It's also good at reminding everyone that most humans are too complex for type casting.

Partially entertaining romance set in the NYC media world, but it never fully succeeded in making me like the characters nor root for them as a couple.

A young woman enduring war-time hardship and defying the conventions of her time, this made for a great binge-read. The first half is set in WII in Malaya, and our heroine Jean Paget becomes the unappointed leader of a group of English women and children, who are marched across the island by Japanese prison guards. She uses her knowledge of the local language and an empathetic approach to foreign customs to negotiate for the group's survival. Returning to the site years later, she develops a good sense for how to help the Malay women and subsequently improve their communities. A skill she employs again in the second half of the book, as she explores the dusty and hot Australian outback. I liked her entrepreneurial spirit and success, which made up for the rather too comfortable love story.

Feminism as written by a rather conservative man in 1950. Some blunders, but mostly laudable. There's also some racism, that mostly - but not always - gets attributed to the characters. Still, this was a great read.

The perspectives of 3 women inside Gilead. One broken down to become an instrument of the evil regime. One innocent who came of age only knowing the totalitarian misogynist ways. And one looking in from the outside, with unexpected ties to characters within. Their fates collide to push a domino stone that ultimately helps bring down the theocracy.

It wasn't as captivating as the original book, but it was a very engaging read, in a who-dunnit way. Speeding up towards reveals and an action finale.

I am also quite intrigued by the fact that Atwood defined the future for some of the TV adaptation characters.

Essential reading these days.

It's so easy to read this account of our futures to come from the safe perspective of the upper Northern hemisphere. We are not the ones that are-already/will-be hit first, it's the countries in the warmer and poorer regions who are the least to blame. Life's unfair.

I blame David Wallace-Wells smooth podcast voice and narration style to occasionally slipping in and out of listening with full attention. Probably a book I'll purchase to peruse again.

The Islamic revolution in Iran through the eyes of a female Literature professor. When oppressive totalitarian regimes take away your freedom, your right to move in public, your right to feel the sun and wind on your skin, they usually also come to take away your art. Movie theatres close, foreign music is forbidden, and books like The Great Gatsby are put on trial for propagating questionable morals. Reading Lolita in Tehran shows us the cruel fate of women in the Islamic Republic of Iran, where one generation of women could walk and marry freely, while the next generation receives prison sentences for wearing nail-polish. Nafisi and the girls in her private class compare themselves to the heroins and victims in famous novels. Literature becomes a way for them to make sense of and to rebel against the Muslim customs and regime.

A fascinating and eye-opening read. Yet I found it a bit too long and unstructured for my taste. Sometimes I got lost in time. And some segments had a clearer connection between the discussed novel and the societal dynamics in Iran (Lolita), while others felt more random.

Fun. Storm clouds are very cool in an anti-gravity world.

Sometime towards the end of the novel, when our protagonists are in a smuggling ship crossing the Mediterranean, the narration tells us that it's the middle class who attempts this life-threatening escape from war-torn nations, because they are the once who once learned to expect better from life.

This book does a good job at making you empathise with refugees by following the heartbreaking fate of two Syrians who - despite their beauty and success and a lifestyle mirroring Western ideals - get uprooted and mixed up in the Syrian revolution and subsequent war.

I fault the book sleeve synopsis for making me expect that our two protagonists - Amal and Hammoudi - would meet sooner, and for longer. I read anticipating more of them, and subsequently was slightly disappointed. Even though they got their bittersweet connection.

Despite being told with a detached tone, this was very memorable and powerful.

Not as exhilarating as reading the first one, but still a great entertaining read. Of the you-get-what-you-expect kind. While women are now part of the space crew - and there are still squabbles to be had about who gets assigned to cooking or laundry duties - feminism takes a slight backseat to racism issues this time around. Sometimes stuff is too on the nose, but hey, at least Elma was also allowed to be part of the problem occasionally. As last time, I immensely enjoyed the dynamic between her and Parker. Forced into close quarters these two get to butt heads while also continuously increasing their respect for the other's competence. Win win. And there's even a chapter dedicated to zero-g diarrhea!

An epic family saga about the Georgian Jaschi family, who's many generations are seemingly haunted by an old family-owned chocolate recipe. At the same time the novel is a portrait of Georgia's tumultuous, war-ridden and rebellious 20th century, which begs to question if not Georgia's gruesome fate and continuous struggles against Russian oppression is the reason for the family curse.

All in all the story covers 6 generations, and follows along with 8 family members (from Stasia and Christine, to Kostja and Kitty, to Elene, then Daria and Niza, and finally Brilka). The 1300 pages stretch a bit, but Haratischwili doesn't get sidetracked like Tolstoy, and has created an engaging patchwork of characters, or loves and tragedies, of politics, betrayals and dreams.

As in all multi-generational family stories, it seems a lot easier to love those that you meet early on. But nevertheless, the ending with Niza and Brilka did get me slightly emotional. So yes, i really enjoyed this.

Loved this, but accidentally deleted my review.

This was a fascinating read. It's scifi, by a woman, and originally written in (Quebecois) French, so it's ticking a lot of my reading interest boxes. It has a dreamy not-from-this-era vibe (originally published in 1981), I kept hearing cheesy scifi synth sounds while reading it, and felt similarities with the mysticism of Dune. It's all the inner monologues, the philosophizing, the interest in emotions and abstract myths. The novel has feminism, cyborgs, complicated incestuous relationships, and is tackling subjects like gender transformations, genetic manipulation, and how to secure the future of humanity without falling into the traps of societal engineering or continuous propagation of violence.

I might try to find the sequel in French.

Il me fallut jusqu'a la derniere page de cette trilogie pour comprendre que les noms Claus et Lucas etaient des anagrammes!

Le troisieme mensonge est le dernier episode de la saga des jumeaux, et c'est une histoire de mensonges que nous racontons afin de survivre et de nous proteger ou proteger les autres. Nous entendons un point de vue different sur la vieu des jumeaux et cela contraste intelligemment avec nos souvenir de ce qui a precede.

Les phrases court and l'ecriture directe de Kristof continuent d'etre parfait pour mes exercises de lecture en francais. Dommage que j'ai fini toute la trilogie maintenant.

The wonderfully written and engaging life story of Cyril Avery, a gay Irishman, who's path we follow from birth to old age in 7 year jumps. He's surrounded by a cast of tragic yet often darkly funny characters, that keep reappearing in his life. His adoptive parents Maude and Charles Avery are especially memorable and his best friend Julian is charming in his rascal ways. And this is as much the book of Catherine, Cyril's birth mother, who receives the bookends of the story, and looms over it as the true heroine.

Despite there being a lot of sadness in the plot, Boyne's writing and especially his dialogues are cheeky and humorous, and you can laugh and cry along with Cyril and his adventures. The core fates of the book make it also a denunciation of the Irish church and the culture it helped create, that caused hardships and enabled bigotries for way too long.

A 4.5 stars read.

Fantastic. I already ordered a copy, so I could own this book. It's a primer about system thinking, which goes from the basics of understanding systems, to typical system traps, the ways of intervening in a system, to useful guidelines for living in a world of systems. It's all interspersed with real world examples (even though written nearly 3 decades ago, the talk of climate changes, oil resources, policy making etc, are all still spot on) and not too dense, which makes for a lucid and easy read.

The global economy is a big system, your thermostat is a simpler system. They can both be modeled with a toolkit of stocks, flows, feedback loops and delays. Putting mental models of systems onto paper is an incredibly important step when one wants to fix a problem or improve a situation (no matter if its your bank account, your general level of happiness, or world hunger). Instead of just being reactive to events, or applying bandages to wounds, one needs to observe and understand the many dependencies inside a system that are causally l linked. So this book is incredible for giving you an analytical frame of mind for how to look at the world.

Always incredibly topical are the negative traps that systems can get caught in: tragedy of the commons (we erode a common resource until it's unavailable to anyone), drift to low performance (setting the performance standard by past negative performances, instead of keeping it absolute), escalation (arms race of one-upping each other), success to the successful (the rich get richer), shifting the burden to the intervenor (reducing the symptoms, instead of solving the underlying problem) ...

Meadows lists a useful series of leverage points on how you can change systems (from simply tweaking parameters to altering flows to radically rebuilding the mind-set the system is based on). But she is also very humble and candid in her writing about how system thinking is no magic key, but rather a guideline. It's an analytical way of seeing the world, which removes a layer and shows us the gears beneath it.

What an inspiring book, it makes me want to throw money at the Gates Foundation and all the other organizations that Melinda mentions in the book. Alongside anecdotes about her own background, career and the Gates family life (Bill drove his daughter to school, which gave lots of other mothers leverage to pressure their men to do the same) the book looks at the many ways girls and women around the world are still exploited and abused. From family planning, to health access, lack of education, genital mutilation, child brides and the cost of unpaid labor, Gates tells of her travels and explains the lessons that learned while working at her foundation. A main lesson is that when you try to fix injustices and inequalities, it's important to always find the root cause, instead of focusing on the symptoms. And a root cause (e.g. ingrained traditions) can't be fixed with money, it takes empathy and time, to truly change the minds of people. The book is full of inspiring stories of female empowerment heroes and initiatives. All showing, how when we empower and lift up women, everyone profits.

Some of the origanization mentioned:
BRAC - http://www.brac.net/
CARE - http://www.care.org/our-work
Girls Not Brides - http://www.girlsnotbrides.org/
Kakenya's Dream - http://www.kakenyasdream.org/
Malala Fund - http://www.malala.org/
PRADAN - http://www.pradan.net/
Saksham - http://www.community.org.in/story
Tostan - http://www.tostan.org/

An alternate history where in 1952 a meteoroid triggers climate change early and energizes the race to leave the planet. Math wizz, physicist and WASP pilot Elma York has her eyes set on becoming an astronaut. But it's still the 50ies and tradition and sexism stand in her way.

Well, this was an entertaining and addictive easy read, I even want to read the next one!