Nithou

Cet essai extrêmement dense et intéressant s'intéresse à l'impact d'Internet et des réseaux sociaux sur les relations humaines. Faisant le pont entre l'école anglophone prônant un fort transhumanisme et l'école francophone extrêmement conservatrice, l'auteur arrive à proposer un pont entre les deux et à dégager tant les bienfaits que les effets néfastes de l'Internet dans l'évolution des relations humaines. L'essai couvre énormément de pays disparates, s'intéressant à la façon dont se nouent les relations humaines à l'ère du digital, les évolutions apportées par Internet, et bat en brèche énormément d'essais conservateurs tendant à montrer qu'Internet désociabiliserait les êtres humains. L'auteur démontre ici qu'au contraire, Internet tend à changer la donne et à renforcer des liens existants avec des personnes proches, moins qu'à délaisser des personnes proches au profit d'inconnus. Il s'intéresse aussi au paradigme de la culture asiatique qui va à l'opposée des utilisations occidentales, où les utilisateurs peuvent montrer un visage totalement différent de ce qui est dicté par les codes sociaux. Un ouvrage remplis d'apprentissages pour tout sociologue.

J'ai eu un petit peu de mal à rentrer dans ce roman, mais une fois que la machine était lancée je n'ai plus pu le lâcher, filant à travers les pages ce chat qui décidait de prendre les trams, rigolant devant les mésaventures et les déboires de son maître. Le livre est assez court, mais bourré d'humour, et vous trimballera à travers les rues bruxelloises dans une chasse féline endiablée...

Critique complète sur Livrophage

Before Tomorrowland est un préquel au film de Disney sorti ce mercredi au cinéma. L'histoire se passe en 1939, à l'aube de la seconde guerre mondiale, et de la plus grande révélation que les Plus Ultra, une société secrète, s'apprêtent à faire au monde. Une mère et son fils, en déplacement à New York, se préparent à assister à un immense congrès de science-fiction alors qu'un être mi-homme mi-machine ne s'arrêtera à rien pour empêcher les évènements qui devraient s'y dérouler....

Critique complète sur Livrophage

Jack est ce qu'on appelle à Kaboul une bacha posh, une fille déguisée en garçons car la famille n'en compte pas, pour éviter la honte. Elle se débrouille dans les rues de Kaboul en aidant son père, apprenant la recette des oeufs en étoiles, jusqu'au jour où des hommes débarquent dans sa famille pour la trouver. Son père l'aidera à fuir et elle atterira à Bruxelles, réfugiée parmi d'autres dans une société qui ne veut pas d'elle, pendant plus de 20 ans, servant de mère porteuse à un couple homosexuel, pour finalement retourner dans un Afghanistan défiguré par la guerre et les extrémistes...

Critique complète sur Livrophage

The One Thing is a wonderful story about a blind girl suddenly able to see. But she can see only one person : Ben. A ten year old kid who just rushed into her life.

The book is wonderful, packed with a lot of jokes and very good ones, the story unfolds itself slowly while we truly get attached to the main characters, leaving a deep footprint into the heart. It's a lot comparable to The Fault in Our Stars, and quite as good. This book made me laugh, made me cry, I really liked it. And it was really a giant ray of sunshine to read.



Critique complète sur Livrophage

Le monde de Charlie est un roman épistolaire racontant l'histoire de Charlie (si si, vraiment), un adolescent un peu à part, souvent dans la lune, et se tenant en retrait du monde. Charlie est un peu fragile, extrêmement timide voir déconnecté et débute sa seconde un peu secoué par le suicide de son ami Michael. Incapapble d'exprimer exactement ce qui lui arrive, il se livre à travers des lettres et raconte sa rencontre avec Patrick et sa demi-soeur Sam qui l'aideront à s'ouvrir et à découvrir le monde.

Critique complète sur Livrophage

August, né avec une déformation faciale profonde, doit faire ses premiers pas au collège et en apprendre, parfois difficilement, les règles.



Critique complète sur Livrophage

Anna a une vie bancale, une famille dysfonctionnelle, une mère étouffante, autoritaire qu'elle tente de fuir. Depuis la mort de son petit frère, alors que sa mère l'accuse, elle s'est réfugiée loin de cette famille qui la rends folle, loin de son second frère qu'elle n'a pas vu grandir. Mais Anna rencontre quelqu'un, et soudainement la vie s'agite, la vie se déchaine et enfin elle s'ouvre... Mais Anna est morte.

Je publie la critique demain sur Livrophage \o/

Complete french review here !

One hell of a book, really well written (even if it is quite long, the way it's divided between the different people and years is well done and helps getting through it quite quickly), the characters are really lovable, and the story is powerful. A well deserved Pulitzer Price !

Trois fois dès l'aube c'est le récit de trois rencontres, trois rencontres imprévues se déroulant dans ces moments où se meurt la nuit.

Dix-sept ans, un âge où tout s'agite, où tout bouillonne, où l'on apprivoise son corps, que les réflexions se forment, que les pulsions émergent, ...

Critique complète sur Livrophage

First thanks to NetGalley & Jeremy Scott for giving me a chance to review this book!

I was really surprised by The Ables, which is really a good point. I was expecting yet another superhero tale, but this changed for the better. First and foremost, the main character, and his friends, are all disabled people. While it exists in some comics (like Daredevil), it's always nice to see characters different from the average-middle-class-white-guy-perfectly-normal. This, for a start, was really nice.

The story takes some time to build up, but for a better, explaining how exactly in the world the superheroes are able to stay hidden while living their lives, and how exactly those are arranged. The whole structure is quite strong, staying logical with itself during the whole book which is really good.

My main concern is concerning the age of the main characters, which are supposedly 12 years old. In my mind, regarding the maturity, reaction and things like that, it felts more like 15-16 years old, but that's quite a detail.

Overall, the story is really good, even if you can guess most of its plots, it's still great and enjoyable, a really good time :)

A short story about Jamal, coming from Kazakhstan and studying in the United States and Matt, an american guy. Found it quite moving, I had hard times for Jamal when reading the aspects of homosexuality in his country, but the whole story is quite touching and sweet. Overall, I loved it, and would advise if you want to bright a bit your day and just put a goofy smile on your face :)

Une rencontre impromptue qui vient déranger une vie que l'on croyait pourtant simple et qui remet beaucoup de choses en question. Bien écrit et accrocheur, dévoré d'une traite.

Une brève histoire dont le personnage principal est un parc au centre de Tokyo. Touchant, rafraîchissant, un peu comme une promenade au parc d'ailleurs.

Thanks to NetGalley for giving me the chance to review this book!

Are You Fully Charged? is quite an interesting books on 3 key areas you can work on to improve your level of energy in life. Each one of those area is full of surprise and learning, everything backed by scientific & proven studies.

I was really surprised by some learning of this book, most of them makes really sense, some are new learning I didn't know. Most of them learned me how to better act today to improve my general life. I've started to apply several principles contained in the book and already feel much better, I'm in fact really surprised by the influence of those advices.

Lots of personal development books aimed to complex techniques, this one is simple, straightforward and full of learnings. So if you're searching for a way to improve your life and overall level of energy, give it a try ;)

Really short, not so realistic on many points, but wanted to give a try to the series. I'll see further.

The protagonist is nice, cute in his shyness. Peter the other guy is a bit rough, not really caring about him and it's quite clear in the way he acts...

I'm always astonished by how much female writers can be into gay erotica novellas.

Thanks to NetGalley and Joshua Winning for giving me the chance to review this book :)

I really loved the first volume of the Sentinels, and I adored this one. The whole climax of the book is filled with some dark and tormented fantasy, a really dark version of most of the great young adults fantasy tales. The whole plot is wonderful, tremendous, and really well handled, I couldn't let go off the book, staying awake as late as I could just to finish it.

The whole world, as in the previous tome, is astonishing, quite rich and full of new discoveries. I started to really love all the characters (especially Nicholas, Merlyn and the dear cat), who grow deeper and deeper in this part of the story. The whole plot is breathtaking, I cringed at some parts of the story, got tears in my eyes at others.

Really one of the greatest YA fantasy trilogy I had the chance to read for a while, I'm looking forward to the third one and I could bet those books will go far!

Thanks to Joshua Winning for giving me a chance to review this wonderful book!

Woaw that was one hell of a book, I couldn't let it go, it's was really wonderful, it reminded me a bit of some of Neil Gaiman's books (The Graveyard Tales for example) but also Philip Pullman His Dark Material.

The world is quite classical, a group of Sentinel preventing the demons from entering the world, a secular order vowed to protect this world from the evil. But the whole construction is really good, the action and pace is tremendous, and the characters extremely lovable.

The intrigue is well constructed, and the story around Nicholas (the main character) is strong, powerful, with such a great fantastic vibe. I'm sooooo looking forward to reading the second volume of this, it was a long time since I didn't read something that good!

Thanks to Netgalley for giving me the chance to review this book

Unfortunately I didn't get much into Melancholy. While the storyline seems a bit interesting, I was more than bored with the behavior of Josephine the main character who I found to be a bit whiny all the time. Having a woman as primary character is nice, but here she constantly whines all the time, complaints and basically well... sleeps all day.

I know it's only the part one, but still we wait during the whole book for something to happen, which doesn't happen until late. So, not really convinced, but who knows how this might go on later ?

Thanks to NetGalley for giving me a chance to review this astonishing book.

When Digital Becomes Human takes a very deep and interesting approach on how the technology world evolves and influence every aspect of the companies. It aims to develop the advantages of this evolution toward the customers and the customer relationship building.

The book is really interesting, and quite condensed in its approach of the subject. It displays quite an amount of examples of companies evolving toward a better customer experience or customer relationship with the help of the digital world, proposing new ideas, and new way to deal with this amount of changes. It also has the great advantage of showing the dark side of the digital evolution and what it means in terms of people management but also customer expectations.

It displays also the essential role of the leader and of his entire staff to develop a true digital experience and customer oriented experience in a clever and really inspiring way. For everyone who wants his business to survive, and for everyone working in a company, it's quite an interesting and mind-blowing book to read!

Thanks to Netgalley for giving me a chance to review this essay !

Not Gay is a deep and well documented study on white straight male sexuality and general behavior. It shows the tendencies of a certain part of the white straight male population to have homosexual behavior under certain conditions. It takes a bold stance concerning the fluidity of the sexuality and its evolution especially nowadays (while having a look on how the roles and gender evolved through the last century).

This essay is really interesting, quite deep and demands to be focused on its reading (especially due to the multiple use of queer terms and gender-theory related terms), but teaches a lot on things related to the straight white male sexuality through the hazing rituals, the marine and military initations, drunk sex, craiglist ads of straight dude looking for other straight dudes... It shows also how gender and sexuality evolved, with the apparition of the heteroflexible sexuality (neither gay, bi or totally straight), and explains how those straight homosexual relations can be interpreted but also what they imply.

The whole book was really interesting, challenging my mind at every part. It made me discover some things I really didn't know (like the fact that until 1930, both heterosexuality and homosexuality were considered as perversion as they didn't aim for conception) and surprised me on a lot of subjects (male rituals, “on the down low” sex, ...). For everyone interested in gender and human sexuality, this is quite an essay to read !

Thanks to Netgalley to allow me to review this interesting book ;)

How to Act Like a Grown-Up is kind of a manual for every age on, imho, how to act and behave correctly in a society, or the way growned up people should be (most of them are by the way but not all of them, that's why I think this book is aimed to everyone).

The book is divided in several chapters offering some good advices on different parts of your life. But I was personally a bit bothered by the paternalist and condescending tone used throughout the whole book. Perhaps I've expected too much for the book by reading its summary, but I was also expecting much more humor in it than it contains. Every chapters is still too serious in my opinion, and that can in fact damage the good advices given by the book.

So, if you can get over the general tone, this book delivers quite a lot of good advices, that everyone should put on work in his everyday life.

Thanks to NetGalley for giving me the chance to review this book, which was a really good surprise....

The book speaks about the discovery of an old jar which may hold the Gospel of Judas. Strange events take place around it, lots of murders, but also scientific discoveries and big discussions about christianity.

I couldn't stop myself to see some relation with the Da Vinci Code, both speaking about ground-breaking discovers that could shake the Church as we know it (even if in both case, I don't think it'd have such impact), both followed by a chain of murders. But to me the similarity stops there, as Judas the Apostle takes a way more documented path and has a rhythm way more slow.

In fact, the entire process of opening the jar takes almost half of the book. While being really precise, accurate and quite enlightening about some of the archeologic process used toward old items, it feels quite long and the story takes a lot of time to really get interesting. However, passed the first half of the book, things start to be really interesting, and the story adopts a fast pace, making it impossible to let the book go.

The central character, Cloe, is a woman, but also a great professor in ancient languages and civilisations, and plays her role really well, not as a “fantom” character. In fact, it feels good to have a strong female character in such a book, especially speaking about religious things. For once also, the Church isn't seen as bad, but as willing to discover the truth about Jesus, even if it takes time and efforts.

I enjoyed reading the book, but I'd just point out the things that bothered me : the pace. Even if we learn a lot, it really feel longs and having to wait for half of the book to get to the jar opening feels really excruciating. the vilain in my mind the nemesis is this book has too many classical vilain traits. While it makes it easy to hates him, it feels also a bit empty on the character side, as he feels like a Doctor Evil all along the book.

But still, a good moment, and a book I'd totally advise if you enjoyed the Da Vinci Code, or if you're interested in some christian-related reading.

First, thanks to NetGalley for giving me the chance to review this book, as it allowed myself to overcome most of the aversion I had against the new vampire books ;)

I've been reluctant to read lately books including vampires since Twilight came out, too much of a destruction of the vampiric myth for me, but this one succeeded at surprising me. It's aimed to teenagers, so it's not really some great literature, but the protagonists and the storylines are really nice. Kevin, the newbie vampire, is really interesting on his psychological side, trying to fight between his vampiric and human teenager sides, both trying to fight his new urges, but also trying to understand where it comes from. His reluctancy to kill a human being reminded me of Louis from Anne Rice's Vampires Chronicles (which is quite a good point if you ask, waaaay better than the Twilight sh... oops.).

The book gives also its version of the vampiric origins, which is nice and something quite rare, but also the obedience feeling between a master and his drones/servants.

Also, the fact that Kevin is gay is quite nice, and surprising (ok, I did gain interest in the book because of that, pleading guilty sir), and well used in the book regarding his growing feelings, and the way he handles them (as every normal teenager does... except with fangs.). It's something we've got rarely to see in YA literature, so it's always nice to see. The steamy scenes were nice, but soft, not trying to make one of those stupid erotic books where the story barely exists.

The story was really nice, going quite fast and gaining interest and speed at every page, I just felt a little bit sad at the end as I wanted to get more glimpse of the future, what happens next etc ? But that's quite a good point for a book isn't it ? So overall, I stand by my 4 stars reviews, thanks a lot for this great moment, hope to read more anytime soon ;)