OllieQ
Truly a long goodbye, this book. Plot-wise, I mean.
As a first Chandler, I have to say I much prefer Hammett's stories. However, writing-wise it's easy to see why people list Chandler a little more often than Hammett. While Hammett wasn't too bad, Chandler's prose sticks out. His writing pops and punches.
The Long Goodbye wasn't as noir as the two Hammett's I've read, Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man, offering a story that offers an almost-glimpse into the daily goings-on of a private eye, with the myriad cases that comes across his desk, but the motley crew of cases seemingly tied up in a neat circle in the end.
Also, something that bothered me throughout is Marlowe's seemingly high personal ideals. It's very black-and-white of this chap, with no grays in between. He refuses payments from clients at almost every turn, because he was ‘helping a friend' or some such nonsense, and I wondered more than once how he could have possibly survived with that sort of blasé attitude towards payment for services rendered.
* edit: I wanted to note here that Chandler mentions Malaya in the text. “I thought it was more a tropical drink, hot weather stuff. Malaya or some place like that.”
** I take note of all works that I read that mentions either Malaysia or Malaya.
Of course, like most of the people not from Poland I've been introduced to this via the popular and (most importantly) well-reviewed Witcher video game. I'm taking the tack of my book-adapted movie watching habits - I will only play the game once I've read the book, so here I am.
It's not a bad book at all. It's cleverly written, with famous fairy tales redressed and reworked into a fantasy setting complete with all sorts of exotic monsters, with the interesting twist that the hero, Geralt, is himself considered a borderline monster himself, since he's not quite human and imbued with supernatural abilities.
I've not read fantasy in a while, as I'm very leery of cookie-cutter fantasy, but thankfully this didn't make me break out in hives.
I read this in my Kindle, and the format of the novel, which is essentially a series of inter-related short stories bookended by a couple of what is known as a framing story (starts off in the middle of something, then cuts to stories which fill in the back story for the characters, then ends with the continuation of the story that started at the beginning of the book). This format was a little disorienting, and I'd think that if someone picked up a physical book it would have been formatted with typeface and whatnot that wouldn't have been so jarring a transition for the reader.
Not bad, and I'll be looking forward to reading the next book in the Witcher series, something that's been sitting on my shelf for a while, The Blood of Elves.
I've loved Classical Mythology since I was 12. I loved the stories of these childish and petulant gods, their petty schemes and squabble. And the adventures of their various heroic offsprings, triumphant or tragic they may be. I swallowed them whole (like Cronos with his children).
I didn't know what I was expecting when I purchased this thing. Did I want to hear the stories read to me? Did I want the Trojan War brought to life? This course isn't that, but an examination of the theories and studies of classical myth at a level that I had never imagined. The students of the arts are probably facepalming themselves right now. Seriously, the sort of parallels that can be garnered from the reading of the stories have been nothing but astonishing to me. I certainly learned a great deal, the behind-the-scenes working of the stories, and how they can be interpreted.
I was surprised to learn about the heavy influence Ovid had on Shakespeare. Learned about how, despite the strong females gods prominent in classical mythology, ancient Greeks still valued boys higher than girls, men more valuable than women. The wholesale adoption of the Greek gods by the Romans, except for a major, wholly Roman god Janus.
This bears a second listening, as now I'm beginning to understand how some of the book reviewers actually critique works of literature, the method, if you will, of deconstructing a piece of work and apply layers of current reality that fits into the picture.
Excellent! It's a Batman story with a love angle. It's a spy novel with a dastardly villain, plenty of intrigue, clever escapades and a generally fabulous action adventure.
A group of Englishmen led by a notoriously daring but hitherto unknown figure known as the Scarlet Pimpernel is rescuing French aristocrats and their families bound for the guillotine during the French Revolution. The said aristocrats are smuggled out of France under the authorities' collective noses and the French government, feeling a little undermined, is sending spies to England to uncover the identity of this meddlesome person.
Great romp.
Btw, I loved the word ‘citoyenne'. I love the way it rolls off the tongue.
Fascinating history of espionage. Fell out of my chair on the revelation on Julia Childs. Learned about Graham Greene, W. Somerset Maugham, Lawrence of Arabia, Ian Fleming, Mata Hari (name really was based on Malay! Shocked! I always thought it was coincidence. Turns out that it may not actually be ‘sun', but ‘Eye of the Dawn', which I thought sounded better) and Chevalier d'Éon.
Very interesting indeed.
Ok lar, ok lar. It's a 5-star book lar. Technically it is a 4.8 star book, but since you can't do decimals for ratings, let's just round it up.
When I'm embarking on classics, I'm only really afraid of the stuffiness generally brought on by overweening prose that go nowhere, and the risk of the plot plodding along at a snail's pace (you know, just like this sentence). To illustrate, more Austen's Pride and Prejudice to Wharton's The Age of Innocence.
As with most other classics I read, I had no idea what Middlemarch was about beforehand. The book more or less centers around Dorothea Brooke and her almost-childish insistence to marry a man more than twice her own age, almost out of spite, with an ideal to help a supposedly eminent scholar achieve academic greatness. She finds that the reality is a little different from that ideal, and how that affects her marriage and her state of mind. Also, that couple of sentences, as an attempt to summarize Middlemarch, is almost like saying LOTR is a story of a couple of chaps looking to dispose of an unwanted piece of jewellery.
The beauty of the book, for me, comprises of two points: the characters and the omniscient voice exploring the character's emotions.
The story involves more than just Dorothea (I have to say I didn't really like Dorothea right out of the bat), but an entire cast of characters in Middlemarch lovingly drawn and characterized to perfection. All the characters are skilfully interwoven into an intricate story.
Also, Eliot has a way of expressing the deep human emotions that motivates and compels the characters to act the way they do. Her observations on marriage is particularly incisive. The torment Dorothea feels under the yoke of her marriage with Casaubon (by now it was clear the marriage was a mistake for both), and also the interplay between Rosamond and Tertius Lydgate when the latter ran into financial troubles in particular quite memorable (and a little sad).
It's basically Jane Eyre without the almost unbelievable serendipity, with the tension and satisfying climatic release of any Austens you care to name (albeit without the sense of fun and humour) with the constant character self-examination of a... a Russian author, just pick one... Dostoevsky.
Middlemarch is not the wreck that my mashup would seem to imply. It's actually quite wonderful.
Wonderful, side-splittingly funny. There are so many quotes here that I need to relook at the book and highlight them, and likely miss most of it.
I'm not intellectually equipped to articulate the social commentary that is Candide, and any remarks I make about the critic that despises everything (one of the funniest parts of the book - the one who ‘finds pleasure in not finding pleasure') as well as Candide, who delightfully ‘finds everything so surprising', as remarked by Cacambo, will miss the point. Any attempts I may make about how our circumstances is not really the best end result of some pie-in-the-sky universal causality, will fall flat and sound pretentious and meaningless.
So I will only say what I cannot refute, which is that this work made me laugh out loud so many times I have to give it 4 stars. The missing star is probably because it wasn't as long as Don Quixote. Which may actually warrant it 6 stars, I don't know.
An evil traveling carnival stops in a small town, and proceeds to terrorize two local boys, who learns about balloons and calliope and a chap with tatts called The Illustrated Man (cool name, I have to say), a witch who's susceptible to cigarette smoke and a supposed dead guy who is powered by high-voltage electricity while strapped onto an electric chair.
And the merry-go-round. A special ride that can shave or add years to your life with every revolution, depending on which way it turns. Apparently people get tricked or tempted to ride in it, and emotions of all sorts powers the evil that is the carnival.
The point is, this book flew past me a little. Bradbury evokes incredible imagery in this book, painting the small town, and the characters and the carnival in great detail. However all that got in the way of the storytelling for me. I didn't figure out why the carnival was so very very bad, how it affected the folks in the town, what happened to some of the people who got in contract with the carnival, why it was so important for Mr Dark to get his hands on the two boys. I'm sure it was mentioned, but it just flew past for me.
The Illustrated Man is famously the title of another of Bradbury's books, and now I'm wondering if that's the same guy.
An astounding, eye-opening book. Against the backdrop of 1960/1970s Afghanistan all the way to the early 21st century, the story charts the lives of two strong Afghan women and their will for survival in a society where social norms are stacked heavily against women. The book is nuanced and paints a very sympathetic view of the traditional middle eastern and Islamic way of life. Struck in particular about how the Taliban's iron enforcement of Islamic laws upon their takeover of the country affected its citizens, especially women.
I think this is an important book for everyone to read, if only to see a culture drastically different from our own and as a contrast to our own lives. I can think of many people in positions of power in my own nation, sheltered and ever ready to brandish a self-righteous cultural pronouncement or two, who would probably be well served to take a minute or two to think about how it affects people of different racial persuasions, as it does within Afghanistan itself (because the Afghan community is also made up of different racial populations, and they too tell a story about how these racial distinctions are indeed, not distinctions at all). The society painted here is complex, and makes it simpler to discern the difference between religious duty and religious fundamentalism.
Culture is borne out of tradition, which is borne out of necessities of the way of lives of a community, at a particular time and place. In this modern world, I think it bears thinking deeply about some traditions, how and why they grew out from, and whether it's still something that should be applied wholesale in the context of today.
How would you feel if half of your nation's population is to immediately stop working? That there's a clear gender demarcation where there are hospitals just for men or for women, and these facilities are provisioned unfairly? I frequently found myself outraged at some of the things Mariam and Laila went through, and what was done to them. This book is less about politics and national turmoil and war, but more about society and women.
As I've noted elsewhere, a work that forces me to feel strongly (and I don't mean poor prose or ridiculous plots/stories) is automatically a memorable one, and I surely felt a lot reading this. Recommended, on many levels.
Not a fountain of ideas, not a generator of plots. Rather catalogue of techniques that can be used to tell a story. It's obviously not exhaustive, as you simply cannot possible list down every possible trick every single author has used, but it's a way to inform the would be author on the possibilities.
It wasn't what I was looking for, if there's such a thing. I'm specifically for how to plot and how to generate ideas. This course covers this, but not in the depth I was hoping for. I did like the discussion on Freytag's pyramid, which is a structure for dramatic plays what can be adopted for fiction writing.
It was a good course, overall, but if you're looking handle plots, this isn't it.
Willis is undoubtedly a brilliant author, and has a way with words. However the story too way to long to get to the point, and as much as I'm interested in science the research of fads really wasn't fantastically interesting. I liked how everything unfolded in the end, but overall, the story, while competently written, just wasn't very interesting to me.
I was surprised at how much I liked this one. I just finished Tina Fey's Bossypants, and while that was entertaining and funny, I felt it was a little on the light side. I've always preferred Tina somehow, probably because she I heard of her first (and I didn't watch SNL then, unlike now). Patently unfair, but what can you do? Sometimes the first you've heard of something attaches itself to your psyche so strongly it becomes difficult to dislodge (e.g. the first book/movie/song you ever loved).
Listening to this, Poehler polevaults herself to first place (ok not really, but co-first place with Fey). She comes across as warm and tender, genuine, reflective and of course, funny. I loved the parts when she talks about her marriage/divorce, relationships, her two boys (I loved this the best - as a parent I know what she means here) and the virtue of hardwork and constantly trying. It resonated with me, that she's just another person, albeit an extremely lucky one. But somehow you feel she deserved it in the end, because this wasn't unearned. I loved the life lessons her parents impart. It's largely a more personal, more emotional book compared to Bossypants.
I wanted to also point out about the parts where she complains about the process of writing this book. This whiny section would probably put some people off, but having aspirations to write myself, I find this chapter amusing, inspiring and motivating. I appreciated her sharing the difficulties in embarking on this, and the fact that I'm reading the finished product means I should really get cracking. I really liked this part.
Structurally not too different from Bossypants. Origin story, life growing up, life before becoming famous, traveling around in improv groups, stories while performing, being in SNL, life after SNL in their respective TV shows, their personal lives, juggling work and children, shoutout to important/influential figures in their lives, general life lessons, plenty of jokes and laughs, etc. But I think Yes Please benefits from coming after.
If it wasn't obvious before, I listened to both Fey's and this book as audiobooks. Make no mistake, this is a performance piece, meant to be heard than read. Of course, I'd imagine reading this isn't too bad either, but Poehler roped in people like Kathleen Turner, Patrick Stewart, Seth Meyers to read her book. She even had her parents chime in. The last chapter was a recording of a live reading somewhere, and the delivery and the subsequent reaction from the crowd was wonderful to hear.
Therefore, as a book, and an audiobook, Yes Please is a better read (or listen. I'm having a disagreement with a friend on the difference. Although in this and several other instances, listen is probably more correct, since the audiobook offers a little more than the book in terms of banter between guest readers and audience response).
I dislike celebrity, as in celebrity news, who is with whom, the spates, the dramas - all these don't interest me. Much less a memoir! I picked up Fey and Poehler's books partly because I really like them and admire them as comedians and hope the books would be funny. I had read David Sedaris's Naked (excellent!) and Jon Stewart's Naked Pictures of Famous People (damn, is there a trend here?), so it's not my first book from celebrity comedians. I also had the hope that Fey's and Poehler's would offer close up views of their world of showbiz, especially those of SNL. There's unfortunately no dirt, but it was certainly fun and funny.
Poirot is not Holmes, but he's still very entertaining. A full cast dramatization of 8 of his cases, and it's absolutely sumptuous. Wait, I used the word ‘sumptuous'. That's a silly word, and shouldn't have a place in reviews, along with words like ‘titillating' and ‘awesome possum'.
Anyway, it was a superbly entertaining.
Of all the warrior classes I've encountered in my reading while young, ninja is cooler than samurais, samnites, amazonians, barbarians, knights, monks, kungfu hermits, Bruce Lee, muay thai fighters, and sumo wrestlers. Maybe it's the cool outfit, or the exotic weapons. I've always liked ninjas. As I grew older, somehow this carried over to literature, and while it isn't a genre I actively seek, books with ninjas always catch my eye.
I saw this book in Soekarno-Hatta and picked it up, enticed by the back cover blurb. It's written by a Japanese-American couple, and it's filled with ninja lore and history. I loved how the main character, Jet, comes into her own as she learns of her innate ninja skills, and the reader learns along with her. The history and the mythology were fascinating and very interesting indeed. I was surprised to also learn about the Navajo as well, and the authors were clever to draw the parallels between the plight of the ninjas and The Long Walk.
The action sequences were described in the context of the skills of the ninja, and for a ninja nerd, this was amazing. Just don't ask me the names of the skills after the fact, though.
Ok, now for the not so good bits. First, and it must be obvious to anyone who sees this book in the stores, the title of the book was incredibly bad. It's like a cross between an episode title of an 80's cartoon or a poorly executed fart joke. I didn't care for the titular character's name too. Rika Kuroi is much better (and happens to be her real name too), and even Jet Kuroi was great. Jet Black sounds like a bad pun (which it is, especially since Kuroi actually means ‘black'). If it weren't for my previously undiscovered need for ninja fiction I'd have walked right past.
Then there was the overall tone of the story. The circumstances surrounding Jet's awakening was extremely bleak, and the events that followed more or less maintained that somber mood throughout. A new reader would have almost been lulled into a sense of adventure and fun from that wacky title of the book, and the contrast was stark.
And there was the 10-year old Hiro, trained since young but able to kick fully grown thugs despite an apparently quiet upbringing in the mountains. Every time he appeared in action I was reminded of the seminal, highly influential and iconic martial arts flick, The 3 Ninjas. But the tone! It was all wrong, this doesn't read like a family movie at all!
Finally, the story. Now I think there ought to be a rule where if an amateur book reviewer complains about how the story isn't ‘believable' in a work of fiction, this person should clubbed by strangers in public with foam katanas. Having said that, the story, was, uhm, incredible. The leader of a team of thugs is a ninja teenager, who jeopardizes the entire mission of retrieving a treasure nobody knows exists because his heart goes aflutter after meeting a pretty girl. His employer, already wealthy, spends money to find unverified treasure, which surely is the last thing a greedy tycoon would do since it's the surest way to lose money. He also owns an unleashed panther as a pet, which makes you wonder how the heck he became and stayed rich when we get to him in the book (you know, because he's as dumb as a rock). My suspension-of-disbelief compass needle was spinning as fast as a shuriken in mid-flight.
Overall, I have to say I sorta enjoyed the book (hard to believe, I know). There was enough ninja mythology, legend and history here to scratch an itch, which frankly I hadn't known was there. This book feels more ‘authentic' than Lustbader's Ninja, but I'm not sure it's a runaway victor here.
If only there was a thriller steeped with ninja mythology and great martial arts action, marinated with a believable fictitious story that isn't YA. Hmm...
This book was performed by Tina herself, and it's like an extended storytelling session. Her origin story was a little on the thin side, or not fantastically memorable, and her SNL parts weren't as long and juicy as I would have liked. I do enjoy her feelings about family, breastfeeding, raising a child whilst juggling her dream job doing 30 Rock. There were laugh out loud moments, but this being a performance not having the ability to highlight the funny bits makes it a little difficult for me to recount here.
This is a shorter book than I had expected, but fun.
At last, one of the few books that has stayed the longest in my TBR list has now been completed, and it is delightful! There's something mysterious, glamourous and oddly exciting about the mystical Orient Express, tinged with a whiff of legend. I've been enamoured with the Orient Express since my youth. An impossible escape and adventure, so far and so very different from the confines of KL.
So as one of the most famous Christie novels, I'm actually quite puzzled as to why it took me so long to get around to this. But I finally did, and it was very satisfying indeed. It's different from a Arthur Conan Doyle story - one could almost imagine Holmes scoffing at Poirot's multiple interviews with the same characters during the course of the day. But the puzzle was solved and solved well, so I'm happy.
The original proprietors of the Orient Express as it was known in the late 1800s is not more, and is now replaced by another firm who has taken over the legendary name. Everything is modern now, the coaches upgraded and stuff, and the journey has changed somewhat, but it's still our era's Orient Express. I fancy taking a trip with that sometime in hopefully not too distant a future.
Very nice business fable. 5 principle rules of stratospheric success, and they are pretty optimistic view of the world. One thing I like about this (with Rand's The Fountainhead firmly in my head) is it doesn't simply assume that you're giving your time/energy/expertise away without wanting something in return, but emphasizes that when you give, you have to be ready to receive as well, when it comes.
It's one way to view the world, and it's an ideal I like. Several parts worth remembering, including “You get what you expect.”
Worth reading.
It wasn't horrible, but half of the book was lost because I listened to it, instead of reading it. There are pictures in the book that the text refers to, so of course you miss half the experience. Having said that, this was a surreal reading experience. I'm apparently not enough of a child to understand this at first go, and let's just say it doesn't end like all other children's books I know. I will have to give this another go, but this time on the dead-tree version.
I was listening to this on Audible, and it started off really strangely. I couldn't get a grip on the story and frankly I gave it up and moved on to something else. So I finished Chris Moore's A Dirty Job and I had nothing downloaded except this, so I thought what the heck, let's put it on and grind it through till I get to a place where I can download the next read. However this time I was able to stay with the story, and more, I managed to enjoy it. I suppose the early preamble and setup took way too long and got too gnarly, but once that was out of the way Stross was able to get in on the action.
The story's about an IT guy in a magically-inclined highly classified secret service called the Laundry, got mixed up in some shenanigans that got the upper brass to notice him, and drafted him into an otherworldly adventure. Equal parts IT nerdism, Cthulhu mythology, spell casting, James Bond-ish spy thriller, Stross throws in everything but the kitchen sink here, replete with geek references and some pretty funny moments.
There are parts which are genuinely clever. Of note is how Stross describes a basilisk's ability to fry people at a glance (called Gorgonism), and how this ability manifesting in humans has been researched by top secret military scientists until they could weoponize it as a software uploadable to a webcam. Outrageous, but fiendishly clever.
I also loved some of the characters here, especially the protagonist's version of M, a straight-faced no-nonsense intelligence director, hinted to be a skilled magician, and the interchanges between him and the protagonist is pretty funny. “Get out of here before I mock you.” “And as you young people would say, ‘Don't have a cow.'” There's also the office politics. Oh yes. Lovely bits there too.
I was semi-glad this wasn't a wasted purchased. The book turned out to be funny, which is always a book's saving grace where I'm concerned, and I guess if you can wade through the front parts you may like it. If you're into IT, sf, fantasy, and spy thriller, that is.