Mike Parka
I really enjoyed this one. Some Discworld books move at such a fast pace that it's difficult to follow what is going on sometimes. This one was more focused and really entertaining. It got some audible chuckles from me - which is a difficult thing to accomplish! Just a pick-me-up that I needed in this long, dreary January.
Not the most uplifting read to start the year, but fitting for Blue Monday! It's a collection of articles and essays, so better to be read in chunks instead of one sitting. Overall, I agreed with many of the points that the author made, but his style is not for everyone. He can come across a bit too full of himself sometimes. Not sure if that's the best way to convince people, but perhaps that wasn't the point. If you are angry and frustrated by the current state of the world, this will provide some answers about what happened.
Before reading this book I was unaware that Britain had any rainforests. Turns out there are some quite close to where I live! Unfortunately, very few of them remain and the ones that do are under threat from overgrazing. The author provides some workable solutions and some much needed hope that restoration is possible. A very enjoyable read that I would happily recommend to anyone who cares about nature.
Farmers are often portrayed as the villains in the media I consume. Whether through harmful, intensive farming practices damaging the environment or limiting access to the few open spaces that we have around us. I get a very one sided view of the situation.
With the ongoing controversy around the inheritance tax, I was finding it difficult to sympathise with the farming community. I decided to educate myself and try to see a different perspective on farming. This book proved a wonderful choice.
This is a very honest and personal story of a family farm in the Lake District. It raised some difficult questions and suggested some potential solutions. But most importantly it made me care more about farmers and their struggles. Things in life are rarely black and white and I understand now that my view was overly simplistic. I'll try to remember this story and have more empathy in the future.
It may seem obvious that we need nature to be healthy. But, unfortunately, modern life makes us more and more disconnected from it. Some good reminders in this book show just how essential nature is to our well-being.
Something I have not considered before is that significant groups of people never learn to appreciate the environment or don't get any opportunities to experience it. So why would they care about the destruction of something they don't know? We should strive to make nature as accessible and inclusive as possible. People need to experience it to care about it.
Another interesting topic was replacing ‘real' nature with artificial experiences. Can listening to nature sounds, watching videos of nature or even using 3D headsets replace the real thing? The answer is that it all helps, but not as much as actually being there and experiencing it. This isn't surprising. Sadly, it may be all we have in the future.
I'll be honest, Mistborn era 2 didn't really work for me. The previous book was the highlight, mainly because of the connections to the broader Cosmere. There are even more of those here, which was my favourite aspect of the book. However, I didn't care about the rest of it. The humour didn't land, and I found some characters really annoying. It's also very action-heavy, and when most characters wear plot armour, it never felt like there was any real danger. Another problem is the length. I feel like this book could easily be shorter. So yeah, a bit of a disappointment, but I didn't hate it. It's just a bit weak compared to the other entries in the Cosmere series.
I've read a few young adult books with female protagonists, so I thought I knew what I was getting into here. However, at every step the story just kept surprising me. Then I realised what this story really was - an anti-YA. The main character is not perfect and makes many mistakes, and is really getting punished for them. The book keeps playing with your expectations and doing the opposite. All the usual YA tropes are here, but the outcomes are totally not what usually happens. It's very entertaining. Beautifully written and delightfully weird.
Took me a very long time to finish this book. It's very dark and difficult to read as there are so many different characters and plot lines to follow. It does get easier in the second half once you understand what's going on a bit more. It's worth sticking with it because the world building is amazing, and the characters are complicated and interesting.
‘Look at how many books have already been written about the Holocaust. What's the point? People haven't changed... Maybe they need a newer, bigger Holocaust.'
This has been on my to-read list for ages. Recently it showed up in the news again after being (stupidly) banned in schools in Tennessee, US. It was also praised in Philip Pullmans ‘Deamon Voices' which I read a couple of weeks ago. This motivated me to finally give it a read.
It was... uncomfortable, as any story about the Holocaust should be. Most stories about the war that I was familiar with focused mainly on the heroes. Brave resistance fighters and martyrs who sacrificed themselves to help others. But people are more complicated than that and this story shows that very well. The drawings might be black and white, but the characters are anything but.
When your life and your family are under threat, you will usually do anything to protect them. Whatever the cost, you need to look out for your own. It's understandable but it doesn't show people in the best light. The portrayal of Poles is brutally honest here. Some of us tried to help, some didn't. It's not a good look and it's much different to the heroic stories we get told when we are young. All characters here are represented as animals but all of them are very human. Painfully so sometimes. There are no heroes here. Just people.
With everything going on in Ukraine at the moment, it's worth remembering what happened the last time we saw a war in our corner of the world. History likes to repeat itself, but we don't have to make the same mistakes. Seeing the support and welcome the Ukrainian refugees have received so far gives me hope. Perhaps we've learned something from the past after all.
A bit of a challenge
This book doesn't hold your hand. It expects you to hit the ground running and follow many different characters through a complicated story. The first third of the book is especially tough but if you take it slow and get to the later parts it all starts to make sense. Difficult to get into but rewarding in the end.
As a fan of ‘His Dark Materials', I wasn't quite sure I needed a prequel. What story was there to tell? But I was pleasantly surprised. For the most part at least.
‘La Belle Sauvage' is split into two parts. The first half of the book sets up the characters and the story. And the second half is where the interesting stuff actually happens. Personally, I thought the first part was a bit slow. It wasn't bad, I liked the setting and the characters. But it wasn't very exciting to read.
The second part however was really great. It was magical and exciting. There was a chapter that really reminded me of The Witcher for some reason and I loved that! If only the entire book was like this it would be an easy 5/5 for me.
Overall I enjoyed it more than ‘The Amber Spyglass', but probably not as much as ‘Northern Lights' or ‘The Subtle Knife'. But I am now convinced that there are more stories to tell in that world and I can't wait till the next book in the series.
After reading Mary Beard's S.P.Q.R., which was focused more on dispelling some of the myths surrounding Rome's history and shedding light upon the lives of ordinary people, I wanted to learn a bit more about the big, legendary characters and the huge events that shaped the ancient world. This book delivered big time.
Initially, I wasn't sure if the format will work for me. Each chapter is focusing on the life of one historical character and they picked a few most important ones from Rome's history. It actually works surprisingly well. You get plenty of background information, so it's not just simple biographies and the big events are explained really well.
So if you want to learn more about the Roman Empire with the focus on the most well known characters and events - this is your book. Very enjoyable read.
What a spectacular book. One of the best reads I had in a long time.
I never knew what to expect, the story kept changing and reinventing itself, melting together many different genres. The setting was wonderful and mysterious. I can't wait to see where the story will go next.
Another thing I really enjoyed is how all the characters have their own motivations, separate from the main protagonist. It feels like all of them have their own stories and things they want to accomplish.
Really amazing book.
Overall I quite liked this book. I didn't mind the short story format at all and it was interesting to see Wallander at different stages of his career.
The actual cases covered in this book were... okay. I wouldn't say they were particularly memorable. The investigations felt a bit slow and the big breakthroughs were mostly lucky accidents. Is it more realistic this way? Perhaps. But it doesn't make an exciting read I'm afraid.
It's the characters that are interesting and if you enjoyed the previous books, you will know exactly what to expect here as well.
It was good, but not as good as I was hoping it would be. Lift has the potential to be a really great character, but she needs some work. I can't say I understand her or her motivations and she can get a bit annoying sometimes. But there is plenty of room for growth and I'm sure Sanderson will fix it in the main series.
I used this book alongside a couple of online courses and it was helpful. There was too much focus on PC hardware for my liking and some commands mentioned in this book didn't work for me at all (and I tried on a few different distros).
But overall not a bad experience. I liked the chapter reviews and there was plenty of practice questions. The ebook version on the disc came in handy as well and was a nice bonus.
A huge nostalgia trip. I used to read the Wither books when I was in high school and I absolutely loved them. After many years I decided to give the English version a try. And I didn't like it at all.
So I left the rest of the series and didn't continue. Recently I found the fan translation in English and since the book isn't very long I decided to give it another go. What a difference! Everything I remembered was there and I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It's incredible how big of a difference the translation makes. The fan translation is definitely closer to the original material and I was surprised to find no glaring mistakes or editing errors. It was great and I plan on reading the rest of the series again. I will try switching between the official and fan translations and see how it goes.
Now if only they released a hard-cover collectors edition of the entire saga... oh one can dream!
A really disappointing conclusion to the otherwise brilliant series. What I really enjoyed in the first two books was the magical feeling I had when I was reading them. The setting was interesting and the plot was not your usual fantasy too. I knew that there was a “bigger picture” and that the author had a message he wanted to convey in his books. On a personal level I actually agree with his opinions, but that doesn't change the fact this book is just not that good. The magical feeling is gone here, character motivations are unclear, meaningless battles, lots of boring filler, grand metaphors falling apart, also one of the new worlds is extremely cringe-worthy... overall a huge disappointment and an unsatisfying ending to the trilogy.
Absolutely incredible. For me it's in the language Patrick Rothfuss is using. Everything seems so magical, even the simplest things. The story is engaging enough, but it's the characters that really stand out. The way the characters are introduced and described in this book - it's just amazing. After few sentences you already feel attached to them and feel like you've known them for years. Brilliant work and I just can't wait for the next part in the series. But first a short novel with Auri, can it get any better? Don't think so.
Kurt Wallander stories were never optimistic in any way, but this one is especially dark. The crimes in this book are not as horrifying as they were in some of the previous books, but the state of mind/health of our favourite detective is the real horror of this novel. As much as I like this series I'll be the first to admin that sometimes the investigations drag on for ages without anything remotely interesting happening. It's not like this book is boring, because it's not, it just suffers from some pacing issues in my opinion. It's too slow in few parts and some parts could have been omitted all together. The pace picks up in the last 100 pages and it's a shame the rest of the book is not as good as the ending. Nevertheless, if you are a fan of Wallander you just have to read this one. Kurts internal struggle with his doubts and his health is the strongest point of this book and will make you want to pick up the next chapter in the series.
Surprisingly good. I expected this to be a cheap fantasy novel only for the hardcore fans of the game, but it turned out to be a pretty good story. Obviously the setting might be a bit confusing for those who are unfamiliar with GW universe, but you don't really need to know the lore to understand this story. It's entirely self contained and everything you need to know is explained. It also comes with a handy map so you can follow the travels of the main protagonists. I can strongly recommend this book for those who like fantasy books and if you are a GW fan already you are really going to enjoy this one.