Jessica
Eu sou ainda uma aprendiz de português, e este é um conto muito bom para qualquer pessoa em minha posição. Diz a história de um porco pessimista, quem descobre o destino que espera os que se distanciam do mundo e decide que não quer viver assim. É como uma fábula, lidando com sonhos e escolhas, e me lembrou um pouco de A Christmas Carol nesse sentido.
Se você tambem é um aprendiz de português, eu posso recomendar Readlang para ajudar lê-lo; eu o usei e me ajudava com o vocabulário (que não é muito difícil, mas há palavras que eu não conhecia).
There's a certain dreamlike quality about this book that makes it best read in one setting. Thankfully it's also fairly short (as I was starting, my Kindle estimated it'd take me two hours to reach the end), so it's doable. I read the first third of this book a bit at a time, and I found it hard to get into. The characters of Alice and Hatcher seemed rather closed-off and hard to get to know, and there was a lot of graphic, disturbing sexual violence. Like, we are talking creepy serial killer levels of perversion. I didn't get the impression that the author was including all of this because she thought it was titillating or edgy (quite the opposite, really – she dwelt more on the aftermath than the acts, and conveyed the horror well) but more to emphasise that this is well and truly a Crapsack World as well as to provide context for Alice's own experiences. Nonetheless, I was very guarded reading this book for a long time.
Once I decided I had a couple of hours free and would use them to read this book through to the end, my enjoyment of it increased immensely. Over the course of the novel, Alice and Hatcher – who had begun as prisoners in an old-timey insane asylum, having forgotten most of their lives from before – are filled in about the events missing from their memories and given a sense of purpose. Alice transforms from a confused, helpless young woman to a dedicated force of nature. Hatcher doesn't really change that much, but as Alice warms to him – and learns about his tragic past – so too does the reader. The novel follows them as they defeat a string of foes, conveniently led from one lair to the next by a series of irresistible clues, before finally encountering the Jabberwocky – the terrible villain whose reawakening led to their flight from the insane asylum in the first place. One subplot, that concerning Hatcher's daughter, is conveniently left unresolved to as to leave material for a sequel.
This book will not be to everyone's tastes. If you do not want to read a book where nearly every scene concerns rape, the fear of rape, or the aftermath of rape, you definitely should not read this book. On the other hand, if you enjoy seriously dark works of fiction, which examine the worst and cruellest sides of the human spirit, but nonetheless take the side of good people against evil... you may well like this. I would have given it three and a half stars, but since I can't I'm rounding up.
Clearly, I did not really like this book.It's sort of disappointing. I'd previously read three of [a:V.E. Schwab 7168230 V.E. Schwab https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1511218938p2/7168230.jpg]'s books (Vicious and the first two parts of her Shades of Magic trilogy), and thought they were uniformly great. As for this one... not so much. To be clear: I started reading this book in late 2016. I found it so boring, and dreaded reading it so much, that I didn't open my Kindle again for over a year. Once I did, I didn't remember anything about the story and had to start again. I still didn't find it interesting. In the end I only pushed through because I wanted to move on to other books. I didn't hate it, though. It even picked up in the second half. I just didn't like it very much.So, what do we have in this book? We have our protagonists: Kate Harker, a teenage delinquent who deep down inside only wants the love of her dad. We have August Flynn, a member of a supernatural “species” called the Sunai. (I did like the concept and execution of the Sunai.) We have our setting, a city divided in two, one half run by Kate's ruthless dad, the other by August's not-so-ruthless family. Then there's a bunch of monsters, who up till now have apparently been under control... but they're getting restless.So, here lies the problem: none of this really grabbed me. Perhaps I was spoilt by the depth and intrigue of the four Londons, but this city... it didn't seem well fleshed-out. The Sunai were good, but the other two monster species – the Malchai and the Corsai – made no real impression on me; I'm not even sure what the difference was between them. Kate didn't seem much more but an archetypal “rebel girl with daddy issues”, while August had what you could fairly describe as a subtle personality.As I say, the book wasn't all terrible. Despite the dullness of every school scene (one of them was literally just a geography class where the teacher gave a whole bunch of exposition about the city's surrounds... which I immediately forgot and never needed), there were some good moments of conflict in the second half of the novel. Kate's arc was satisfying. I don't know if I could be bothered ever reading the sequel, but it had its good points. I just wouldn't have read it in the first place, if I had the choice to do it again.
Compared to its predecessor, [b:A Darker Shade of Magic 22055262 A Darker Shade of Magic (Shades of Magic, #1) V.E. Schwab https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1400322851s/22055262.jpg 40098252], A Gathering of Shadows is paced much more slowly, and yet provides an infinitely deeper look into the world of Red London. The descriptions of place are so vivid it's easy to become immersed, and the sheer depth of Schwab's creation - languages, geography, history - are impressive without being distracting (you know, like some fantasy books that are more vehicles to show off worlds than narratives).I found this book more compelling than the first in the series; I think I felt closer to the characters. (Love ya, Captain Alucard.) However, while I felt A Darker Shade of Magic never lagged, I felt that this book sometimes did. The Essen Tasch (Element Games) in particular seemed to have a bit too much page time. Not way too much page time, just a bit.Overall, A Gathering of Shadows has enabled me to fall in love with this world and its characters. Bring on the finale!
This is a compelling story about a part of history that I knew very little about before I began reading. That said, parts of it were better than others. I was debating with myself whether to give it five stars, but I had just a few niggles - a few poorly-written passages, a subplot that seemed completely pointless, and a climax that wasn't particularly climactic. However, this was very worth reading for its account of Turkish diplomats in Nazi-occupied Europe, and the lengths they went to to save their citizens from harm. I'm not sure how much of it is embellished, but the story told here is fascinating and well worth reading.
See's books are always really enjoyable, and this is no exception. If you've read ‘Shanghai Girls', it's almost a requirement to read this. It's very different, being set in Maoist China instead of the US, but just as historically rich. See offers us a fair and critical view of this period of Chinese history, with an afterword somberly informing us that 45 million people died in the Great Leap Forward, at best estimate. It's also refreshing to read a novel that doesn't shy away from mentioning “feminine hygiene”.
The premise of this book - the idea behind the city-state of Easton - was pretty cool. I feel like this is the kind of book I'd have loved reading when I was about fourteen. It has a cool science-fantasy theme going, good-for-nothing government agents, and more. As an adult I appreciated the way it depicted the complete irrationality and melodrama of teenage love (I don't know if it was trying to or not, though). I have to say that some of the characters were better than others, and I was really disappointed with the trotting out of the “predatory lesbian” trope. Aside from that I think the teenage characters were very thoroughly teenage, to such an extent that I couldn't help but feel second-hand embarrassment for some of them (ahem, Rosalia).
I'm also not totally sure who the intended audience was. When I first opened it on my Kindle, the blurb had a section that went along the lines of “THIS IS AN ADULT BOOK WITH ADULT THEMES FOR ADULTS,” but thematically it was a pretty typical coming-of-age YA kind of a book, with very teenage characters who were not at all “mature beyond their years”. It just had lots of sex scenes in it. And really, what problem is there with teens reading that? The fanfiction they put out suggests they're pretty well acquainted with the idea. So, I would recommend the book to teens ahead of adults. The setting is really cool and deserves to be experienced, but I feel like the plot would appeal more to people younger than me.
This is the first book I've read in months that I've actually enjoyed reading and wanted to continue with. So, that's exciting. Unfortunately, I have to agree with some of the other reviewers' criticisms: many of the most important events in the book don't actually get scenes, but are referred to in passing after the novel skips forward in time. There is a lot of “telling”, rather than showing. Then sections of it seem like a sly wink at that “NYC academics who are also novelists” milieu, as if they were really the intended audience. (It's not as bad on this front as novels like [b:Americanah 15796700 Americanah Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1356654499s/15796700.jpg 21519538], but just in parts...) This combines to make a novel that is nice to read, but once you finish you realise it didn't really have much of a plot. I vastly preferred [b:The Lowland 17262100 The Lowland Jhumpa Lahiri https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1366930267s/17262100.jpg 23858897] and recommend it to everyone who is considering reading this!
I bought this for less than $2 when I urgently needed something to read on the train. Unfortunately I lumbered myself with a slow and melodramatic monster for three months. Actually it did get better in the latter two-thirds (enough for it to be bearable to read, at least) but I never really got to the point of liking it. The main character was totally incomprehensible and a lot of the other characters weren't really that likeable, or didn't have enough substance to get invested in. I'm glad this is over.
One concept that appears in this book is “knacking”, a form of magic in which an object makes sense to everyone as something else. An example given is that of an underused meeting room door next to a toilet in an office; if a worker should notice its existence they would remark to themselves how strange it was that they'd never noticed before, then go on to never notice it again. They might notice a sign on the door saying something like “out of order”, or something else — something the effect of which was to say “not here, go somewhere else”.
Well, I felt that this book had been “knacked” with the same effect. I struggled to concentrate on it; my thoughts were always going elsewhere. There were a huge number of characters and I struggled to remember who they all were. I struggled to follow what was happening. It just ended up very confusing which is sad because it seemed to have some interesting ideas.
This book surprised me. It is horribly cheesy and melodramatic. The entire romance between Fleur and Hugh was so overwrought and read like bad fanfiction, and left me embarrassed to read this book on the train in case someone looked at the screen and noticed how turgid the prose was. It is also the worst-edited book I have ever read; it was so bad that I had to do a little investigation into the publisher, which seemed to me little more than a vanity publisher (if only for agented) books. They do not edit. It's obvious. In this book, ellipses are never limited to a mere three dots and there are serious issues with quotation marks. The punctuation is atrocious.
And yet in spite of all of that, unbelievably, I found myself completely unable to put down the second half of this book. I don't know how it happened. Maybe the author cast a magic spell. Who knows. But instead of rating this one star like I'd initially intended to, I have to give it three because I can't remember the last time I was so enthralled by a book (although this might be because I've been reading less this year). It was so suspenseful! And the ending, while initially unexpected for me, was very befitting of the book. $1.50 not too badly spent...
This is a nice little book, aimed I guess at pre-teens or young teenagers, with a gay 13-year-old main character and a mediaevalesque fantasy setting.
It did strike me as a very naïve book. The feudal society depicted is somehow undergoing dramatic social changes, such that women can go to school and become warriors (even against the wishes of their fathers) now, and in many contexts such as those Gibben Nemesio experiences, commoners can be treated the same as the noble-born. Despite being a poor and initially illiterate peasant, he makes friends entirely with high-born people, including a prince! With a little bit of sociological knowledge it's hard to see how such social changes could be occurring without the very foundations of feudalism being shaken, even a little bit. It's like if a reformist decided that never mind capitalism, feudalism was fundamentally an okay system that just needed a few reforms to make it “fairer”. It's still a nice, feel-good kind of book, but it's not very realistic in that way.
Also, I felt a bit too old to read about a 13-year-old boy's first boyfriend. It didn't help that they were really melodramatic about it all, either.
I enjoyed this book more than the last one I rated two stars, but honestly... this is a fluffy novel with poorly-defined characterisation and some really cringeworthy dialogue (the unrealistic misinterpretations of what people had said, mostly). It's OK to read if you have nothing else, but otherwise I'd prioritise other books.
For me this novel treads a lot of the same ground as [b:China Dolls 18404427 China Dolls Lisa See https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1405290827s/18404427.jpg 26038319] (except that China Dolls was actually published later, even if I read it before), but is a lot more mature. It takes place in the same time period, also focuses on the Chinese community in California, and both novels discuss (to varying degrees) the Japanese invasion of China and Chinese involvement in the US entertainment industry. So, if you like one, you will probably appreciate the other.As I implied, I preferred this one. While the novel begins with Pearl (the narrator) and May (her sister) being young, immature and carefree in Shanghai, the narration “grows up” sharply as Pearl does. There is a lot less stupid “boy drama”. While I gave China Dolls four stars with some reservations, Shanghai Girls has fully earnt them.
If you like retellings of fairy tales, you will probably like this. I certainly enjoyed reading it, but by the time I was getting to the end I had some reservations.
The main problem I had with the book was that there was no real causality. It was dreamlike in that way. If something bad happened, you didn't have to worry, because ~~magic~~ would set things right again in some unforeseen way. The characters were paper-thin, too, so it was impossible to get invested in the narrative. The saving grace was that it was easy to get swept along by the words.
I love Shaun Micallef on TV so I was expecting great things from this book, but it didn't deliver. I'm not sure why; its humour was absurd and deadpan. I feel like it might be because the book wasn't actually very political, despite the topic, and relied a bit too often on “LOL, sex, funny!”
The appendices at the end were funnier than the main content of the book, though. They bring this up a star.
Apparently this is Vonnegut's first novel, and of those of his I've read so far it's by a long margin his best. It's the only one with characterisation deep enough to get invested in anyone's storyline. It has some really funny satire of corporate culture.
It includes a pertinent and important critique of capitalism, in the sense that increasing levels of mechanisation should liberate humanity from increasing amounts of unpleasant work (which is what the ruling class here claims has happened), but under capitalism this is impossible, because you need money to pay for life's necessities and the only way to get it is by working – pretty hard, when almost all the jobs are being done by machines! While under socialism you would have the ever-decreasing amount of work being shared between everyone capable, under capitalism you get a steadily-growing group of unemployed workers, who are therefore destitute. Vonnegut's protagonist, Paul Proteus, gets a little misdirected and blames the machines themselves instead of the economic system, but you can easily identify the real problem ;)
The novel is really weak on the inclusion of females; it seems that almost every woman is a housewife (presumably because there are not enough jobs for even just a fraction of the male population...) but not actually everyone because Paul's secretary is a woman. At any rate, it seemed bizarre that a novel so concerned with how men should spend their lives would just ignore women completely.
While that was unsatisfying, I really enjoyed this overall. As you can see, four stars.
The light-hearted, cheerful tone of this book belies the content, which is (in many parts) very dark. It deals with the serious issue of how our society treats animals; it also has a lot of comic relief that prevents this book becoming simply depressing. Overall, I thought it was brilliant, although if you don't care about animals then the entire point of the book will be lost on you.
I feel like something was lost in translation between me and this book. The blurb described it as a “satirical detective novel”, but I think it really helps if you know in advance that it totally subverts the genre by not giving you a satisfying ending. Then again, maybe the different literary tradition of Arabic means the detective genre has different conventions! I don't know.
Aside from that, though, this is a novella with a social conscience, more a critique of Yemeni society than really a detective novel. I enjoyed it.
This novel was okay. The futuristic setting seemed interesting, but the execution of the novel wasn't the best. The dialogue of the foreign characters was really cringeworthy, with Cylea continually having “und” attributed to her instead of “and” (like, when I'm speaking Spanish, I never say “and” instead of “y”, you know?) and Jack speaking in the most hackneyed, clichéd Strine that no one's ever spoken in over a hundred years, probably. The novel swapped between the minds of a few different characters, but not cleanly. And there was too much description and the action scenes dragged on for sooo long.
The worst conceit of this novel, though, is that so much of it revolved around this one mystery — why is there a sixty million dollar bounty on Cylea's head? — and we never got an answer to this. I gather that maybe the answer comes later in the trilogy, but basically it means that the conclusion doesn't really conclude much of anything, and is extremely unsatisfying. I can't say I'm compelled to sell out the next instalment.
I think I've actually read this novella before, because parts of it gave me some strong déjà vu. Evidently I forgot I'd read it, probably because I didn't think it was very good. It reminded me a bit of “Donnie Darko”, although I don't remember that very well so take that comparison with a grain of salt.
Mostly I didn't get what the point of this book was. It didn't tell an interesting story, but it didn't seem to have any other point. Let's hope I don't inadvertently start reading it a third time!
I wanted to like this, but it couldn't even hold my attention. I was constantly having to backtrack to the previous page after realising I had no idea what had just happened. I had nothing invested in the story and now that I've finished the book, I can barely remember how and why everything happened.
The book also does this annoying thing where it flits from the mind of one character to another within the same scene, instead of settling on one at a time.
Aside from that I didn't dislike the book, but it just couldn't make me care about it.
I can't remember the last time I read a book as fun as this one. The first two chapters or so are perfect, perfect reading for a commute to or from a boring office job. I will testify to this effect, seeing as that's the exact situation in which I read them, and they were perfect. They really speak to the typical boring desk job worker's experience of alienation. And in fact, the whole book is a great commuters' book. The chapters are short and non-meandering, ideal for zipping through on the train.
It's also a very cheerful book, and hilarious provided you have a well-developed appreciation for the absurd. Or if you liked “Very British Problems” before it became all spammy and really wanted a whole novel in the same vein of humour.
I can't say it's perfect – I noticed at least five typos that should've been caught before publishing – but they didn't impede my enjoyment of the book. First five-star rating I'm giving this year! :)