Eva
My first foray into the crime fiction genre, and i enjoyed it enough to finish it, but I don't think I'll stick around for more. Even though French is really good at writing characters - here I've definitely enjoyed the detective's perspective a lot more than the kids' - the who-dunnit mystery isn't really my thing. Also, I nearly stopped reading/listening when a sudden supernatural element entered the plot. But, as other reviewers noted, it's a side plot, that's not necessarily too relevant for the plot. So, all in all, it was a decent entertaining listen.
A little island on the Finnish coast. We accompany a slightly cranky grandmother and her 6 year old willful granddaughter through 22 vignettes. Solitude, so much nature, and the occasional adventure.
Whisks you away into a magical summer world and leaves you calm and contend.
Sophia can't letting go of her love for murderous Moppy, probably was my favorite.
Shirley Hazzard's writing style really floored me. It is playful, wry, elegant, concise and full of emotions. Each sentence seems to be carefully constructed, each sentence could be THE artful sentence in another book. And put together, they are not intellectual and highbrow as one might expect, but hold this strange magic and a timeless quality. It takes a bit to get into, and one has to slow down, but it's so rewarding, cherishing those lines.
My favourite thing might have been her unfinished sentences. Sentences where everyone already knows where the plot is going, so she just drops them mid sentence. She doesn't do it often enough to become repetitive, just so perfectly sporadic that every time I stumbled over one, I was delighted by the cleverness.
I'll say the writing tops the plot, even though I enjoyed my time with Caroline and Grace, their entertaining aunt Dora (who's self-pity could come straight from a Jane Austen novel), and the men around them.
The protagonist of this novella, an aging novelist with writers-block - a stand-in for Mann himself - travels to Venice and falls in love with a golden-haired god-like 14-year old boy. What starts as shy adoration spirals into an obsession. And even though he stays at a distance, it signifies as the character's loss of dignity and leads to his succumbing to the cholera epidemic plaguing Venice. Apparently Mann called this a “strange moral self-chastisement through a book”. Which makes so much sense when one reads up on Mann's own feelings towards younger boys. This is written in partially incredibly hard to follow German. I started with an audio-book but had to switch to the written word, as the half-page long sentences often demanded rereading. A dislike of the main character and the heavy symbolism made this drag a bit, despite it being a short novella. And despite that all, I am still glad I read it. But I definitely remember enjoying [b:Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family 80890 Buddenbrooks The Decline of a Family Thomas Mann https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1337128414s/80890.jpg 3458174] a bunch more.
This novella from the beginning of the 19th century contains the “most famous dash of German literature” and the less one knows about it while reading it, the better. Because it leaves one puzzling over what actually happened. Definitely an interesting tale to dissect, with its social conventions and quite shocking dirty family secrets (that strangely get glossed over, whatever was Kleist's intention here?)
Theoretical physics has reached an impasse. The Large Hadron Collider did manage to locate the Higgs boson, which everyone expected, but hasn't yet produced any novel and interesting data. All theory-of-everything attempts are so far out there that no experiments can currently be devised to verify them. Does high-level physics turn into philosophy, without the need to crunch any numbers?
Sabine Hossenfelder is here to call out the whole field of theoretical physics on their cognitive bias towards beautiful math, beautiful theories and group think. Her writing is sharp and funny and offers a fascinating glimpse into the a field that's so abstract and far from our everyday, that we just assume these smart people must know what they're doing.
There's a fair amount of serious physics explained in this. I admit, after a first attempt I gave up on trying to follow along with it (with an intention of going back should I ever be in need of a good explanation). But the book is still interesting and thought-provoking even for the non-initiated.
Focusing in on a few days in the spring of 1938, this retelling looks at a few crucial meetings and events that led to Nazi Germany's annexation of Austria. With elegant sentences and sarcastic tone it fills the blanks between the lines of history. It questions the degree of blame that might fall to the German Industry giants, who bankrolled Hitler's party. It portrays the psychology and nerves at play, when Hitler and Austrian Bundeskanzler Schuschnigg meet to discuss the ultimatum that leads to the Blitzkrieg. And it questions the authenticity of the media footage that shows a jubilant Austria welcoming the takeover.
Elegant and brilliant in parts, but not bold or substantial enough to stick for long. 3.5
Know Thyself. Oh how we like to be sorted. Especially in these days of buzzfeed quizzes.
This is mainly the history of the two women, a mother-daughter pair, that inspired by Jung's personality types created the famous Myers-Briggs tests. Their history is entwined and runs in parallel with the general history of personality testing in the US. Some of it is interesting, but not necessarily all of it.
While the author touches upon the allure of self-assessment, it could have been interesting to have a deeper look at the psychology of why we like to be typed. Also, the author points at the criticism the MBTI receives, for its inconsistencies and lack of scientific grounding, which could have been solidified with actual stats about the differences between MBTI and professional psychological typing.
Obviously I had to finish this book off with a test, and I am consistent enough to be always either INTJ or ISTJ :)
A cautionary tale of a people so tied down with complex politics and social conventions, that rumors become so oppressing that no truth can break them, should one even have the strength left to fend them off.
Frustrating at times, because of it's very meandering nature, but also very moving and brilliant at times, with its stream of consciousness and its lists and repetitions. It definitely could have been a bit tighter though.
I loved all the more cheerful side characters, with their names like wee sisters, third brother in law, maybe-boyfriend. And I am very happy the book didn't end where it almost ended. That would have been too depressing.
Cheekily funny (laugh out loud funny), endearing and painfully truthful. Autobiographically inspired, this coming-of-age story is set inside the complex of a clinic for physically and mentally impaired youth. Our young first-person narrator Josse is the clinic director's third son. He's prone to daydreaming and occasional rage attacks, especially when teased by his two elder brothers. Next to his dog, his father is his biggest hero, with his endless knowledge and good nature. Their loving relationship is one of the highlights amidst the hilarious descriptions of various clinic and family adventures. And one of the bittersweet lessons of growing up is to learn to see your heroes in a new light.
A fascinating lucid retelling of a complex childhood where one messy parent loves you too much, while the other first won't even claim you and then give and withdraw their affections seemingly randomly. Heartbreaking and alluring. The writing is so beautiful and the memories are so clear and full of details that one reads this like a fictional narrative.
4.5
Giordano definitely knows how to write and how to pull you into this story of love, friendship and ideals, in southern Italy. There is the secrecy and dizziness of young love, teenage experiments of lust and tragedies, and the constant search for meaning and one's truth, taking shape in religion and environmental fundamentalism. Yet the main characters were really hard to like. Bern, a stand-in for [b:The Baron in the Trees 9804 The Baron in the Trees Italo Calvino https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1344432724s/9804.jpg 865256], the supposed romantic hero and driver of most action, was so uncompromising in his convictions that it made him unattractive. And Teresa, the narrator and his counterpart, was too passive, seemingly only following other people's wishes.I rolled my eyes a bit at the boys' escapades with Violalibera, and the added unnecessary jealousies between the circle of friends. But I still enjoyed lots of it.
Fascinating portrait of what the modern day freight shipping industry is like. Ships and oceans are mostly out of sight for the everyday person, but 90% of all goods - as the title states - get transported that way. And while life on the sea has a romantic tinge to it, the realities are from it. We hear about cheap meals, lack of benefits, loneliness, pirate scares, kidnappings and shipwrecks.
There's such beauty in humanity's strive to understand the unknown and in how science manages to have us collaborate across nations and cultures. From the Voyager project to huge recent international physics experiments (CERN, LIGO, LISA..) this book is a great reminder of the elegance and joy of science. Discovery for the sake of it.
Radford got a bit sidetracked on some of his tangents which made the book feel slightly unbalanced. But I really love the basic concept, so I very much enjoyed this.
The multi-generational saga of the German family Salz whose destiny seems tied to their relationship to their shadows. From a mother's shadow portrait gallery, to a young girl's imaginary friend to a sibling's war tragedy and the trauma that sequentially ruins multiple family generations.
This was a decent winter-time yarn, even though it sometimes felt a bit aimless. It could have used more positive stories as well, because not many of the Salz family members were likeable. Surprisingly I enjoyed Aveline's chapter the most, even though it was written in the second person.
A dark fever dream of a book that explores an eerie devilish bird cult, as 4 members of a family (1 father and 3 adult children) separately get in contact with it. Dark blinking eyes, old myths and scary tales, children having nightmares of birds, the mystery of a painting covering another painting, an unpleasing yet hypnotic person making an appearance in each story...