Imi

A lovely, quiet novel about chance meetings, compassion and noticing the small details in life and of the lives of others around you, whether that's the wildlife in the city or the human strangers on the streets. Jean, an American, who is now in London to study the urban fox population, while Attila from Ghana is an academic and expert in the PTSD and trauma. There is a definite connection to both of their areas of expertise, in that both study animals or people who have needed to adapt to new and ever changing environments. The novel is most certainly light on plot, and it is in the interactions between both protagonists and the many, varied secondary characters that the book finds its heart. We all yearn for some feeling of connection, with others, with the natural world, despite living in controlled, urban environments. Beautiful.

This book has really taught me a lot, despite the fact that many of the later chapters lost me somewhat; it felt like it became much more complicated and hard to follow after the earlier chapters, which were great, slowly paced and well explained. While Petzold does assume the reader is starting from scratch, I think it would be easier to follow later on if you had some background in computers/technology. As it was, I had to bombard my dad (an electronic engineer) with questions to even make it to the end of some chapters, but then I haven't attended regular maths/science classes since about age 14, so maybe it's not surprising that I'm missing some of the needed background information.

It is outdated, having been written in 1999, but I guess the history, which Petzold follows nearly chronologically, hasn't changed, and the early history is necessary to understand what has come since this book was written. Having said that, the last chapter (on the ‘graphical revolution') was strangely rushed and an updated edition would do it some good, I think.

Even if I couldn't grasp all of the technical detail, the majority of this book was extremely eye-opening and I have definitely come away from it with new found respect for these devices that we now use day-to-day. Even while using this laptop to complete a supposedly “simple” task such as writing this review, I am fascinated by how much work has gone on behind the scenes to allow me to do this. It's fairly awe-inspiring, the more you think about it.

Disappointed that this didn't wow me as much as I was hoping, especially as it seems to be so loved by many of my GR friends and should be exactly my kind of book... Not to say I didn't like it! I did, just why didn't I love it? I'm not so sure, really. Good writing, interesting structure, definitely good characterisation, but it just didn't grab me entirely. May be another case of reading a book at the wrong time? Who knows. As I can't think of much else to say and how to explain my lacklustre feelings over this book, here's one good quote:

These days people are all for talking. Getting things off their chest. Like it's easy. Men, in particular, get a lot of stick for not pulling their weight in that quarter. And as for Irish men. I've news for you, it's worse as you get older. It's like we tunnel ourselves deeper into our aloneness. Solving our problems on our own. Men, sitting alone at bars going over and over the same old territory in their heads. Sure, if you were sitting right beside me, son, you'd know none of this. I wouldn't know where to start. It's all grand up here in my head but to say it out loud to the world, to a living being? It's not like we were reared to it.

So I, stupidly, spent the first 3/4s of this wondering when Aaron Falk was going to appear, and how on Earth that was going work, when the setting is the harsh, isolated desert Outbacks. The local Sergeant polices an area the size of Victoria and was, in fact, himself absent for the very start of the investigation, replaced by a city cop, who happened to be... not Falk. Eventually, I looked it up, and realised this is a standalone book, not the third instalment of the Aaron Falk series.... Oh. Anyway, this had a fantastic and creepy opening chapter, incredible extreme setting*, good characters and I liked the ending, but it was overly long and slow in the middle. Still easy to read as Harper's prose is compelling as always. I still think [b:The Dry 27824826 The Dry (Aaron Falk, #1) Jane Harper https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1456113132l/27824826.SY75.jpg 47804789] is Harper's sharpest novel so far.* Honestly, though, why would anyone choose to live and work here?! I may need to ask my Aunt that question, as I seem to remember she worked somewhere like here, when she was travelling... Yes, she was one of those British backpackers. I can't say I see the appeal, personally.

Julie Yip-Williams had a remarkable life. This memoir is mostly about her colon cancer diagnosis, how she and her family dealt with it, and her preparations for her death, but she also writes about her experiences as a migrant to America, having fled Vietnam with her family at a very age, and of her blindness from cataracts, a disability that nearly cost her life as a newborn. Some of these stories are told multiple times; perhaps, an editor could have removed/combined these passages, but the repetitiveness doesn't take away how wonderfully Julie writes and how remarkable these stories are. The chapters, almost journal-like entries or essays, that were written over 5 years, also demonstrate several contradictions in Julie's thinking, plus her dramatic shifts in her mood and outlook, from the time of her initial diagnosis and then at different stages of the disease's progression; she changes her mind and how she views her circumstances, her expectations on herself and others, constantly, as she tries to come terms with what is happening. For example, as Julie writes herself, only soon after chapters where she herself had used the “cancer=war” metaphor:

I hate the rhetoric of war that pervades the cancer world, even though I once used it liberally. With fighting and war, there is a winner and a loser. Will you judge me then a loser when I die because I succumbed to my disease? Will you judge me a loser if I simply choose to stop treatment and to stop actively “fighting”? If you do, so be it.

I bumped this up my priority list after my brother (who apparently now reads nothing other than a lot of dystopian fiction...after never being interested in reading anything when we were kids!) recommended it to me. I loved the premise that is all too believable; bees have been all but wiped out by the end of the 21st century. Unfortunately, I think the novel as a whole wasn't as great as it could have been. The start is very slow, and the alternating chapters between 3 time periods means that when the story finally starts to kick in, you already know the end result. This would have been fine, if the characters, their emotions, and individual experiences were strong enough to carry the whole book. Sadly, I felt all the characters, other than perhaps Tao, remained distant and closed off to the reader. The short chapters also seemed to end any time I felt like I was finally becoming emotionally involved with the characters and by the time the book returned to their time period I felt disconnected and out of it again. Tao's perspective (in the “future”) was certainly my favourite of the three, but even her story did not seem deep enough to support the whole book. In sum, a pleasant enough read, but I'm slightly disappointed it lacked the emotional kick its premise promised.

I remember sitting down to watch the TV adaptation of this book last year, before I knew this book existed or anything about the real-life cover-up it describes, and laughing over how ridiculous this all was, how unreal. Then my parents started reminiscing on when the scandal all came out in the late 1970s, leaving me speechless that any of it was close to truth. I'm both ashamed of being so entertained (and if this was a fictional crime thriller I'd be bashing it for being too outlandish) and horrified at the incompetence, lies, blackmails, and hypocrisy at the heart of our establishment. Can't say I believe that much has changed either. The brief mentions of Jimmy Saville and Cyril Smith were sickening as well... Anyway, I really recommend either this or the BBC TV series (which was very closely adapted). Some may prefer a more academic approach in covering these topics, but I enjoyed this very readable, almost “novelised” structure, which seems to have been possible thanks to Preston's extensive research and access to first-hand accounts.

Difficult to rate, because I adored part 1, but there is a huge change of direction at the start part 2 and the rest of the book is something entirely different... I feel like I'm having déjà vu, because I definitely say that quite frequently in reviews of books I've rated 2 or 3 stars. Anyway, the first part was witty and wonderful, set in brilliantly captured 1970s suburbia, and I completely fell for Jamilla as a character (not the protagonist, but she should have been) . So I was frustrated that the book then drifts away from many of the characters wonderfully introduced in part 1. Karim (who is the protagonist) is a jerk and the book falls into rambling and almost fantasy in its plausibility. It's also fairly graphic at times. In short, there was a lot I liked, mostly in the first half, but I didn't love how it ended.

“It was ok”, as a 2 star rating. I think, perhaps, I read this too soon after [b:The Animators 30090925 The Animators Kayla Rae Whitaker https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1462394905l/30090925.SY75.jpg 50513878], another novel centred on female friendship. I really enjoyed the writing style here, but I think the narrative and, most importantly, the friendship between Laura and Tyler got lost somewhere along the way. It's vulgar and chaotic; I think it could have been a bit more subtle and ended in a less rushed and predictable manner. Both of them are obnoxious to the extreme, and the scenes where they were either drinking or extremely hungover begin to feel repetitive, and really there was no other way it was going to end.

This is less a biography of Wally Funk, one of the women who if not for sexism could have landed on the Moon in the 1960s, and more of a fun space-themed road-trip, where journalist Sue Nelson and Wally become best of friends, and travel the world interviewing spacey people. While still telling an important lesser known story of the space race, it is simply just a whole lot of fun, and written in such a lovely informal style. I raced through this! I hope you get into space one day, dear Wally.

3.5 stars. Frightening and sad, this was really well done; the third-person narrative, but from Alice's perspective, captures the progress of Alzheimer's disease well. There were a few moments I wanted there to be “more” to the story, however. For example, Alice's relationship with her husband John, even before her decline in health, was really interesting to me, especially his Spoilerdisinterest in anything but his career and his determination to move away to New York. I wish that had been explored further. Having said that, the chapter from John's perspective towards the end of the book was note perfect. I wonder how different this story would have been from someone's perspective if they were less privileged and successful career-wise than Alice. But then, that would have been a whole different book.

I've not enjoyed a sci-fi novel so much in years! What a fantastic start to a trilogy and I cannot wait to see how it develops from here... The story is a blend of hard sci-fi, mystery, and even historical fiction; the novel's beginning is set during China's Cultural Revolution and examines the oppression faced by scientists and intellectuals. What follows, sometime in the near-future, seems quite at odds with this opening, but I urge you to stay open-minded, even as the plot and ideas grow more and more surreal. This a definitely a slow burn, and there is a whole lot of plot and a whole lot science to get through, before you start seeing how it links together. I can't say how accurate any of the science is, or how plausible any of the events are (not very, I'm guessing?), but this really didn't bother me and I enjoyed the ride immensely. In the second half, in particular, the pages flew by and I really couldn't put it down. If I had one hope for the sequels, it would be that Liu can improve on the characterisation. This felt like a novel where the numerous characters were definitely secondary to the plot developments. Having said that, I loved this imaginative epic and I'm excited for whatever comes next!

"...the definition is an imperfect thing any way you look at it. A definition is an attempt to explain a word's meaning using these certain conventions, and you have to distinguish between the definition of a word and the meaning of a word. The meaning is something that resides in the word, and the definition is a description of that. But a definition is an artificial thing."

If you are in anyway interested in language, etymology, and the quirks of English, then read this book, as it's a whole lot of fun. Stamper is one of the hidden lexicographers that writes the dictionary. In this memoir, she covers, in some detail, how much work and decision making goes on behind the scenes, plus debunks many of the incorrect assumptions many people have about what the dictionary is actually for. Even when she covers fairly technical subject matter, her tone remains informal and lighthearted (with plenty of pun-based jokes), so it never gets overwhelming. Recommended.

Ouch, what a disappointment. I had heard so much buzz about this recent release and really wanted to find a fantasy book I could be completely absorbed in again (I've really struggled with the genre in recent years), so I think this might be a case of too high expectations again. I loved the magical premise and the idea of “binding”, and for that reason I think the first part (out of 3) was my favourite. At this stage in the story, the plot is fairly slow, but I found myself feeling nostalgic for the many books I read as a child about apprentices of some sort of magical craft, and I was really excited about what was to come, especially with the intriguing mystery of it all and hope for more magical things to come. Unfortunately, the book takes a dramatic turn at the end of the first section and the rest of the book is kind of unrecognisable. I couldn't help thinking that the fantasy element was now unnecessary. Honestly, without giving away any spoilers, I found myself thinking if this is the story Collins wanted to tell then she should have gone along with that. It was like reading a straight romance novel in disguise, and to be fair I really hate being tricked into reading a novel that entirely revolves around romance if I'm not expecting it! But worse, there are some umm...fairly dark turns that also seemed so at odds with the beginning and that took me unawares too. I think above you would need to really connect with two main characters in the latter two sections to get much out of this and I honestly just didn't. So maybe this is just another it's me/not the book situation? Either way, I'm glad so many have enjoyed it, but really can't say I loved it myself.

For the sake of my own survival, I was forced to take in the outside world exactly as it was, without expectation or distortion, in order to exist in it [...] For once, I fought for realism, a state of mind that seemed the exact antithesis of who I was, what I did, but that allowed me to handle a toothbrush, go to the bathroom, walk without stumbling. I hated this—having no fantasy to soften the blow...

I really wasn't sure about this for the first 100 pages or so and didn't like where I thought it was heading. But then it all changed. I won't give away what happens to dramatically change the story's direction, but from that point onwards this book develops into something a whole lot more interesting, unique and powerful. I picked this up hoping for a good depiction of female friendship and by the end I definitely got that. I also loved the focus on artists exploring their own and, as a consequence, other people's real lives through art. There is a lot going on here, and at times it's fairly chaotic, but I really loved how it all came together.

...Bill, who never bored me, because when I was near him I felt his weight. The man was heavy with life. So often it's lightness that we admire. Those people who appear weightless and unburdened, who hover instead of walk, attract us with their defiance of ordinary gravity. He had always been a stone, massive and hulking, charged from within by magnetic power. I was pulled toward him, more than ever before.

I'm angry to have turned the last page on this spectacular novel. I cannot express how much I loved it. I think it may, perhaps, be the book I was hoping for, earlier in the year, when I read [b:A Little Life|22822858|A Little Life|Hanya Yanagihara|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1446469353i/22822858.SY75.jpg|42375710]; they share the New York location and themes of friendship, art, love and grief. While I found myself more overwhelmed than enthralled with Life, I found something poignant, beautiful and true on every page of What I Loved. I cannot understand how it's possible for a book to be so perfect right from the start and how Hustvedt managed to maintain this perfection to the very end. It's much more than a book about art, although how art and its meanings was weaved in a out of the narrative certainly elevated the book. Above all, the book follows the beautiful friendship of art historian Leo and artist Bill, their partners and children. I felt a huge spectrum of emotions about every character and I was noting down quotes on pretty much every page. I'll have to stop there, because I'm speechless and can only gush. My book of the year so far? I think so.

Note to self - stop buying these self-help books on minimalism/decluttering; they do not help and only irritate you.

This reads like an extended blog post. For a book on “minimalism” it was very wordy and could have been summed up in a few pages. But seeing as Fumio's idea of minimalism was mostly scanning and making digital copies of everything (so not really saying “goodbye” to anything, just hoarding digitally instead of physically), that's not surprising.

Maybe I'm being unfair. I liked the section on how novelty fades from a purchase over time. There were a few other good tips. And good for Fumio for feeling better about himself and his life, but this was all so specific to his context and personal circumstances, I just don't see how this would be helpful to anyone else.

On the whole, I didn't agree with Fumio's concept of minimalism. From how he describes it, minimalism is only perfectly achievable by very rich white men (Jobs, Gates, Zuckerberg....). Yes, these men have the means, but why should I possibly look up to them as an example, and why should their way of life be in any way superior to anyone else's? Fumio didn't really explain his reasoning there and I began to think that his idea of minimalism as a means to clear the conscious of the fairly well-off. Yes, they have the means to own stuff, but they choose not to. How morally superior and admirable of them.

The fanboyism/hero-worship of Steve Jobs/Apple really nearly finished me off. Please someone explain to me how buying the latest Apple “innovation” is more minimalistic than buying a phone/computer/tablet/kettle/flying saucer from any other tech giant.

'And you've heard the old proverb about ambition, haven't you?' He shook his head. 'That it's like setting a ladder to the sky. A pointless waste of energy.'

Just read it.

Honestly, I don't want to simply write a review gushing about how great this is, when you should need no convincing to pick this up. Boyne can do no wrong. I have yet to rate a book of his less than 5 stars. It's hard to believe, as one character in this book actually says, that these books all come from the “same mind”. All entirely unique, but all impressively engaging and readable. Boyne goes all out here with a fantastic character study, some brilliant dark humour, and a critique of both personal ambition as well as the literary publishing industry as a whole. Such delicious, despicable fun. I loved it.

It was, all of it, a lie—and the worst kind of lie: a charade of normality at a time of war.

There was a lot to like here. Taking place towards the end of this century and beyond, a few southern states in America make the decision to leave the Union, triggering a second Civil War. There's some great world-building, in parts, and it does seem scarily plausible. Having said that, I am not American, so my background knowledge in American politics and history may be lacking compared to other readers, but, still, to me it seemed believable. I loved the use of excerpts from historical/factual documents and, to be perfectly honest, I think I would have preferred a whole book of these, rather than what we got, which was a focus on one person, Sarat's, wartime story. There was something off about the narrative and plot surrounding Sarat. I think part of it was pacing, which definitely crawls at points, another was the fact the reader knows the ending/history from the start, and finally it's a fairly one-sided look at the war, because this is the perspective from just one person. The historical excerpts help a little with this, by giving some larger context and hints into the political mechanics that led to this reality, but as I said before, I almost wanted more of that. I think at least one other perspective was needed, to really get deep into this alternate history/future. And Sarat is a difficult protagonist in many ways, sometimes falling into the usual norms of a dystopian hero, while at other times just feeling like a vehicle for the plot which is already known to the reader. It sounds like I'm making a lot of complaints here, when really I did enjoy it a lot, but certainly didn't love it entirely.

Among all of the staggeringly impressive, mindboggling things that data and statistics can tell me, how it feels to be human isn't one of them.

This is the book I've been searching for, the book I had been hoping for when I read [b:Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy|28186015|Weapons of Math Destruction How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy|Cathy O'Neil|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1456091964s/28186015.jpg|48207762] a couple of months ago. Both books cover similar concepts and even examples, but while I found Weapons overly negative and pessimistic, Fry wonderfully covers both the problems and the huge, huge benefits of using algorithms and statistics. Because, really, if algorithms were only negative, we wouldn't be using them, would we? Fry's arguments and conclusions (that we should be using the strengths of algorithms to supplement human decision making and get round human weaknesses, and vice versa) are balanced and well-evidenced.

On top of being highly informative, reading this book was just so much fun! Fry has a fantastic sense of humour and writes in a way that I believe makes the book accessible for anyone. Don't worry if you're not mathematically inclined, Fry makes sure to explain the concepts well and it's very easy to follow.

I can't fault this book. I loved every second of it and feel much more informed on this area now. I apologise in advance to all my friends, because I predict I am not going to shut up about this book and will be raving about it any chance I can get.

Well...that ending was a bit much. A bit over the top if you ask me. I think (?) I liked it up to that point, but perhaps need some time to mull it over...

I'm more disappointed with that ending the more I think about it. There was so much promise here, so much I loved; the brooding and lyrical prose, the atmospheric rural Yorkshire setting, the ominous tone, and the tight family unit living beyond the law. I loved the “timeless” feel to the story, as if it's a modern folktale, especially with the references to the old Kingdom of Elmet. 

The 3 main characters in this family were all well drawn, but sadly I think all of the secondary characters were lacking. Mr Price, above all, was terribly two dimensional, like a villain from a Bond movie. I needed to know more about the children's mother (and their grandmother, for that matter) and was really surprised that strand of the story was left unexplained by the novel's end. Vivien was...odd; I couldn't make sense of her character or her apathy. The rest, who had been so supporting of the family, turned against them so suddenly that it all felt too convenient for the dark ending we knew was inevitably coming...

A lot of promise that I wish had come together better at the end. 

2.5 stars? Fun and quick to read, but I'm struggling to find thrillers that really wow me anymore. This had a lot of pedestrian stuff about being a typical suburban American family, interspersed with a thriller plotline that was not only far-fetched and unrealistic but also predictable and unsurprising. At every reveal in the final quarter, I felt myself thinking “yes... obviously?!”, which does take the fun out of it somewhat. Maybe I've just read too many crime thrillers by now? I say that everytime I am disappointed by one but still continue to read them. They're still fun even if I finish wanting more.

I first read this short tale many, many years ago and it has been on my list to re-read ever since. It reads like a work of fiction, beautifully written fiction, but Xinran, a journalist, makes clear that her book is entirely based on a long conversation she had with the real life Shu Wen, a Chinese woman who spent 30 years living in the wilderness of Tibet, while searching for her long lost husband. This experience transforms Wen into someone you would believe was Tibetan herself. Her tale is a fantastic insight into the lives and spirituality of Tibetan people. Wen is completely unaware of the passing of history, when she eventually returns to China, and finds her native land completely unrecognisable. It's more of a travelogue, and an exploration of Tibetan culture and identity, than the ‘love story' as it is advertised. But, personally, I think that makes it all the better.

Oh yes, she went there with the ending! I was hoping she would and then, WHAM...there it is.

I loved every second of this. It really got under my skin. The kind of book I struggle to put down and then find my self thinking about even when I'm not reading it.

Now I think about it, there actually was very little proper plot. I'd say, above all, this is a book about anger, but it's very much a suppressed kind of anger. The kind of anger the “Woman Upstairs” feels, that is, the quiet, invisible and lonely woman, who gets by, does everything expected of her, but is never noticed. So yes, while she may never act on that anger, but inside she is burning. I mean, take this for a opening passage:

How angry am I? You don't want to know. Nobody wants to know about that. I'm a good girl, I'm a nice girl, I'm a straight-A, strait-laced, good daughter, good career girl, and I never stole anybody's boyfriend and I never ran out on a girlfriend, and I put up with my parents' shit and my brother's shit, and I'm not a girl anyhow, I'm over forty fucking years old, and I'm good at my job and I'm great with kids and I held my mother's hand when she died, after four years of holding her hand while she was dying, and I speak to my father every day on the telephone – every day, mind you, and what kind of weather do you have on your side of the river, because here it's pretty gray and a bit muggy too? It was supposed to stay “Great Artist” on my tombstone, but if I died right now it would say “such a good teacher/daughter/friend” instead, and what I really want to shout, and want in big letters on that grave, too, is FUCK YOU ALL. Don't all women feel the same? The only difference is how much we know we feel it, how in touch we are with our fury. We're all furies, except the ones who are too damned foolish, and my worry now is that we're brainwashing them from the cradle, and in the end even the ones who are smart will be too damned foolish.

real

3.5 stars. A novel that I believe would benefit from multiple re-reads and research into the historical events at its centre: that is, the dissolution of colonial Rhodesia and the birth of modern-day Zimbabwe. Realistically, though, I cannot see myself having the desire or energy to do that anytime soon. This is the kind of history you find yourself unable to linger on. Tshuma examines the turmoil of recreating a nation's entire personal identity through the lens a single married couple, Abednego and Agnes, following the disappearance of their teenage son. The couple are manipulated and coerced into reliving past traumas, mainly from the Gukurahundi massacres into the 1980s, by our strange and mysterious narrator, Zamani. I spent most of the novel very confused about who exactly he was and, most importantly, about his motives. While I appreciated his role as a framing device and as a mystery that gives the reader some relief from the horrifying and violent flashbacks, I also felt this led to a rather slow and cumbersome narrative. Answers about Zamani only really start to emerge very late on, in the book's relatively short final section. In addition, I also felt Zamani's narration kept the reader at a distance Abednego and Agnes' characters. They felt underdeveloped as characters by the end, which is ironic considering Zamani's desperate aim of immersing himself in the family and its history, in order to somehow supplant their own son. In sum, this debut has some really impressive ideas and deals with some very difficult historical themes, but perhaps felt overly long and clumsy to me in parts.