Ninett

A short side-story from the Kingkiller Chronicles world, featuring Bast. I'm happy to see his character expanded a bit more, and showing a more cunning side of him rather than the servile character that he is in the mainline books. The story is quite short, and can be read in a single sitting, especially since there are some very nice illustrations in the book.

A very average Ken Follett book. Good, with some tense bits, and some loathe-worthy characters and heros to root for. The writing is quite formulaic if you read more than one book from Follett in a row, so I would advise waiting a few months between books. I enjoyed the 10th century setting, it's not often that fiction goes back that far.

Hobb's writing is definitely a slow burn. I got stuck near the middle, not sure if the story was progressing onwards or just stagnating, everything felt like a side quest. I put it down for a few days before picking it back up and plowing through the 'training arc'/setup sections.

Given this early floundering, I thought I wouldn't be rating the book higher than three stars, but the second half more than made up for it. I rarely read more than an hour of a book at a time, but this gripped me completely. The ending was unexpected and sort of beautiful in a way.

Though I never liked him much, I was devestated that Shrewd died after such a long suffering. I really thought he'd shake his tormentors and make a comeback. It was a great piece of writing to have Shrewd apologise for what he has made of Fitz. I am not a fan of the Molly storyline, once again I think it detracts from the story, but I reckon she'll be back - and pregnant - in the next book. We also didn't get any inkling on whether Nighteyes will be back after that ending, poor fella.

The writing has emotional depth and the characterisation is impeccable. Everyone is a real person, people with flaws, realistic motivations, goals, and agendas.

Immune was a big job for me to read, for two reasons.

Firstly, I take notes on all popsci nonfiction I read, noting down things I didn't know before, and I knew nothing about immunology, so I took many notes. This is a good thing, because I learned a lot from the book!

The second reason is a bad one, unfortunately: I hated the authorial tone in this. The vibe is that of a teacher who tries very hard to be down with the kids and makes liberal use of slang that's just a touch out of date. I really did not jive with this, it took away from the topic and made me mistrust the authority of the writer on the subject. It was certainly done to be more accessible, but it comes across as cheesy and condescending.

The illustrations were of a very high quality, and they added so much to the narrative, always presented at exactly the right time, spread evenly throughout. This brings the rating up to three stars.

I reserved this online at the library and was so surprised when I received it - it's TINY! I read it in 16 minutes, with time included for perusing the beautiful illustrations. It isn't bad at all, but given that the book costs as much as a novel on amazon, I feel that the cost-benefit scale doesn't favour a higher rating for it. I may just not be in the know about the lore around Susanna Clarke's fantasy universe, but I found this to be only a very small story, without much content.

The entirety of the story can be summed up as: girl goes to the woods and adopts a bear cub selflessly, knowing she faces death. With fantastical elements.

My expectation was too high for what I actually got out. The illustrations saved it.

The categorisation at the back of the book is business, and a lot of the advice is about how to be successful in the business sphere. I'm not in danger of becoming a businesswoman any time soon, since I still have years left on my degree, so I did skim those parts. The personal development chapters at the start of the book taught me a few new things about self-actualisation and productivity, so I did enjoy those parts. My sister said she wishes Steven Bartlett wasn't such an ass, and I think I echo this sentiment in general, but the ass-ness doesn't come across in this book :)

Nothing brings it down, really, I just didn't have an application for the advice in half the book. I think I'm the wrong audience.

PS I am aware I chose a business book and then found fault in it being a business book. Bite me.

An incredibly emotive collection of personal accounts from the Chernobyl disaster. There are testimonies from people of all walks of life: scientists, rural grandmothers, wives of first responders, communist loyalists, doctors, resettlers, politicians, and those who came in to do damage control (risking their lives in the process).

The story unfolds piece by piece, and each voice adds to the rich tapestry. The author does not shy away from including perspectives that are distasteful to us in the west and in the 21st century, and I think this is necessary and good. This tragedy was the result of human tensions - to brush tensions under the rug and write a single sided story would do it a disservice.

Quite rarely does a book affect me on such a deep level emotionally. I cried while reading some parts. But maybe not the parts you would imagine. Certainly, this is a sad story, but for me the sharp portrayal of what eastern european culture is like was the catalyst for the tears. It's very rare for me to think well of my homeland, but repeatedly throughout the book there were little snippets of scenes of life that gave me a sense of loss at having left. I will never move back, but this is the first sliver of homesickness I've felt in a long time.

The writing was utterly beautiful to me. Novic's prose glides smoothly. The events are portrayed with sensitivity, but without compromising the unflinching realism that this gruesome topic calls for. My only criticism is that the ending leaves so many threads unfinished that I had to check another copy to see if mine was truncated somehow on my kindle... I feel that at least the storylines with Brian and Marina should have been tied off properly.

At first I thought this would end up as a DNF, mainly because of a tight library deadline on it. The more I read, though, the more I realised that this is almost a kind of emotional education on others, as well as being (of course) about negotiation. It's often hard for me to understand and deal with the emotional lives of others if they're directed at me, and this book gives you some of the tools to be able to do that. I found myself having little revelations about human behaviour throughout, and the book has given me a lot to think about, both in terms of how I approach emotional conversations, and in terms of business and work. The stories did not get repetitive, and I'd venture to say that I'd even read a full hostage negotiation stories memoir by Chris Voss.

The reason it is dragged down a little is that for me it was a battle to get through this book for some reason. I was avoidant of it. Not really the book's fault, since the writing was engaging.

Not bad, just very slow. The finale is not what I expected, but I guess it is what the main characters deserved. I really thought that at least Asta Sollilja would end up with a brighter future, but her fate is bleak and broke my heart. Bjartur - nothing really could redeem this man who puts his silly pride before the lives of others. I disliked him from the start. Putting his selfish and rude demeanor down to an intense desire to be independent just did not cut it for me. Humans are made to be social and to survive together - no man is an island. I suppose the point of the novel is to prove this, and it does that well. It is very difficult to write a loathesome character and still elicit some shred of empathy for him by the reader, but when his house was taken away I felt a twang of pity.

The depth and the complexity of the writing kept me reading, the emotional lives of the characters often striking a chord within me that made me feel seen by the author, even as someone from a vastly different place and time than the characters. There is something universal about the human experience that was captured by Laxness in the lives of these miserable sheep farmers.

I love the whimsical storytelling style of Diana Wynne Jones. It's absolutely written for kids, but I think the best kinds of children's books are still good for adults, too. I loved the twist on the classic 'save the princess' tale in which the many princesses essentially rescued themselves. I imagine that if Abdullah hadn't gotten to the castle, then his princess would have found her own way out sooner or later. I also liked Sophie and Howl, both in disguise.

This is the kind of writing that allows an adult to relive the magic of childhood, and that's quite a rare quality!

The author is very playful with the information she withholds from both her characters and from her readers, which creates a fun dynamic between reader and character. I loved that the story was light and full of absurdity.

I found it especially silly that the book is essentially about a time-travelling cat causing chaos, yet it is named with a reference to Cyril instead, who doesn't drive any of the plot, making the title extremely apt. I hated Tossie, even her name is distasteful to me, and her mother was an even more detestable figure. I did manage to guess Tossie's ending about 2/3 of the way through after more than one mention of the Butler Did It trope.

Overall I found this to be clever, well written, and lighthearted. My only qualm was that maybe the pacing was a bit too slow for the content.

I love the character dynamic between Howl, Calcifer, and Sophie, and would have loved to see more books featuring these characters front and centre. They do make an appearance in this book, but the main characters are two young magicians tasked with looking after a multi-dimensional house while the wizard who owns it is away sick.

Even so, the storytelling was full of the hallmark whimsy and adventure of Diana Wynne Jones. The magic in the book is classical in every sense of the word, and her books feel like touching grass to a fantasy reader.

It's always hard to rate someone's life story, so the rating I've given pertains mostly to the writing itself. It was immediately obvious that the book is, like almost all celebrity memoirs, ghostwritten. There is nothing inherently offputting about the fact itself, but a lot of the time, the writing felt ungenuine, detached from the emotional depth that Cher experienced in some of the most pivotal moments of her early career.

Additionally, I felt there were parts with maybe a bit too much self congratulatory narration, and some of the classic 'not like other girls'-esque thoughts. Maybe the memoir genre is always like this, I don't read enough of them to know. Writing a whole book about oneself is probably always going to cast the writer in the role of the egotist. And Cher did achieve a lot.

The story itself is inspiring, and the magnitude of the achievement comes across despite the writing. In particular, I really love the image of Cher at the awards show, wearing the midriff revealing outfit with a fur coat, Sonny looking at her in rapt admiration. That speaks volumes of her nonconformist persona much better than a lot of the writing does.

I've read a lot of books recently that have not been up to par. This one lands squarely in that category. I don't even know where to begin. The premise drew me in instantly - so much could have been done with such a strong premise! Instead, what I read was a janky story about an idiot at the end of days. Allow me to elaborate, I spent a long time brewing this review.

The main character, Artyom, is a complete automaton. A slave to the plot in every way, he exists only to serve the storyline and never to drive it. He is entirely characterless and entirely pointless. Devoid of a single characteristic whatsoever, excrutiatingly boring, I cannot stress enough how poorly written he is, and this becomes a pattern with every other character.

It's hard to rank the awful things about this book, because at varying points they all bothered me equally in turn, but the lack of female characters in the book is bizarre enough to merit second place. Are you telling me that this man has schelpped through the entire metro system and failed to encounter a SINGLE woman other than a (1) prostitute that he then considers paying for? The only three lines of dialogue spoken by a woman in the entire 450 page sinkhole of a book are spoken by a comrade's wife chiding her child and then by one trying to hock her child. Absolute piss, Dmitry. Get a grip.

Sexism aside, we also have some abhorrent descriptions of some races in this book as well - hardly a surprise given the track record.

The structure is true to Russian style - enormous walls of text, even the rare dialogue threatens to turn into a chapter-long philosophical monologue and you are lucky when it doesn't. Some of the chapters are used as a thinly veiled opportunity for the author to proselytise to the reader.

Every single side character is a plot device contrived to deliver our passive idiot of a main character to his next destination safely, and then to die immediately after while the moron lives. Each one of these characters would have been a better candidate for the mission our hero is on than he is.

Now for the plot.

Hunter comes to Artyom's home station and asks him to risk his safety and life to get a message to a far flung station. Our main immediately agrees and sets off because he is an automaton. Then, in a long series of episodes that are not linked in any way save by coming one after the other chronologically, the main character goes through lots of trials and tribulations that do not lead to any personal development. By the time we reach the end of the book (a mere few weeks in book time), the trip that took him days in the outset now takes him an hour or so going back the way, and the dangers along that same path are conveniently gone.

The reason I gave it that half star is that the premise is great, and the ending was actually surprisingly good. The rant is over but I could throttle the author.