Dave
A superb treatise on finding yourself again after burnout from overwork.
The book gathers together a collection of characters who, in some way or other, have been the victims of overwork (and a teenager who worries about joining the workforce), and how they manage to change their lives to deal with the issues it has caused. They meet in Yeongju's new neighbourhood bookshop - beautifully described throughout the book and a place anyone would want to visit and start to heal again with the power of words and reading.
A great book to read - all about healing, the nature of work, how, why, and when we work and for what purpose. And how work is related to happiness and finding out what happiness actually is for each individual.
A genuinely funny book about golf with huge laugh-out-loud moments. There are side pilots of drug deals, gangsters, affairs, tourettes, and family relationships, but they don't detract from the golf. Some fantastic descriptions of the kind of madness that envelops people who are addicted to a sport, especially one that seems so incredibly random and difficult to be good at as golf.
I give it five “smoke my big fat **ing dobbers” out of five.
This isn't a book about anything. Nothing happens. There is no adventure and the author forgot to add the content of a story. However, there are endless descriptions of the earth from orbit. Page after page of run-on sentences, no paragraph breaks, and lists of things. Also lots of reflections on what it is to be human, what is humanity, and our role in the cosmos. Tedious stuff but an extra star for being relatively short.
A straight-up traditional biography of Andrew's life so far. There are a few chapters on his childhood and education, but most of the book details his various business failures and successes. There isn't much business or financial advice, but the book's central theme is the pursuit of more. More for the sake of it and having got more, what to do with it? And why did he get more? And is it morally wrong to have more? And how much more is enough?
It's a great read. Andrew comes across as a nice guy, even if he is a billionaire.
A fun workplace dramedy, written in a heartfelt manner from the point of view of the lead, Jolene. I enjoyed reading about the Persian culture too and the pressure to succeed and have a rich life. Cliff the MMC was a cool dude too and loved his nerdiness.
PS. Supershops sounded like a horrendous place to work. No idea if it's real but if you work there, move on.
Bizarrely, this is the second sex bot novel I've read this year. It's better than the other one, “The Hierarchies”. As is normal, there is no sex in these books.
Annie's developing sentience makes you feel sorry for her predicament - trapped with a controlling narcissist in an apartment with little to no stimulus. The novel feels claustrophobic because of it and the few times outside are euphoric moments when you get to feel alive, just like Annie.
Even with all the advances of technology, I hope we never have these things in our lives. Men are terrible enough anyway...Without actual consequences to their actions, men with sexbots would seriously set back society.
Good, could have been better but I enjoyed it.
This book is about a writer who borrows notes on a book idea from her dead friend, writes a bestseller based on that, and then spirals into madness when social media figures out that the work is ‘plagiarised'.
I'm not sure she did anything wrong.
It's another book about the evils of social media, more than anything. It's well written, and I sped through it.
This is an enjoyable read of Britain (specifically Birmingham) in the 1970s through teenagers' eyes. From first love, strikes, riots, racism, class, terrorism, affairs, and music we get to relive those terrible times. It's probably a five-star book, but the last chapter... jeez, it's like 50 pages of stream of consciousness, one single run-on sentence, and it is hard work.
A ramshackle collection of anecdotes from the author's life of meeting, hanging out with, and writing about rock stars for Kerrang! I wasn't expecting it to be a memoir, but it definitely is and is all the better for it. Ian Winwood reveals his battles with mental health, drinking, and drugs caused possibly by the trauma of his father's death and almost certainly by hanging out with rock stars. His life aptly demonstrates that everyone the music industry touches gets damaged. The stories are excellent - full of tales of excess and sadness, from old rockers Thin Lizzy, Motorhead, and Metallic through to Green Day, Blink 182, Lost Prophets (what a shame, they were an excellent band), and contemporary acts Creeper and Goat Girl - plus heaps of others.
This successor to the circle lost its way after a promising beginning. The never-ending society destroying apps became increasingly depressing, making the book hard to get through. I felt sorry for Delaney, who, despite her good intentions, was getting slowly boiled like the rest of society. Let's hope technology never gets this entangled in our lives, he wrote as he entered a review on one of the jungle's websites.
A dystopian novel set in the near future where a lunatic Musk type seeks to control women and their purchasing behaviour through a huge range of super-addictive sex toys. Yes, it sounds mental and mostly is.
It romps along in typical Palahniuk style, and there's a twist at the end as usual. Read it in a few days.
I liked it, although it could have been better as it got stuck a lot of the time in explaining the sex very scientifically and when it wasn't scientific in description, it dropped into mad mysticism.
What happens if the AI that runs the galaxy determines that your world would upend the permanent harmony enjoyed everywhere and Earth needs to be expunged?
It's an excellent idea, and I enjoyed the rebel army fighting-for-a-cause-against-impossible-odds angle the book mainly sets itself in. But as David Mitchell said, “Are we the baddies?”
It got a little lost with alternate realities in the middle but brought it all back again with an exciting roller coaster end.
Much better than other reviewers have given it.
Sure, nothing much happens but it was easy to read and I enjoyed the unusually dense writing style and been stuck in Anna's head.
That said, at the end, I still had no idea if any of it was real. Was she a lunatic? Was he a controlling freak? Or had it all been imagined?
Anyway, I now know a lot more about opera and singing, so that was cool.
Great premise for a story as everyone at the age of 22 is suddenly able to find out when they will die. Of course the world loses its mind. The participants in this novel are in the US so they act even more irrationally and seek to marginalise those with shorter strings (the measure of a persons life).
Could have been great but ultimately loses its way an£ doesn't explore the bigger story within. Why?
First, it is definitely not like the hunger games. Which doesn't make it bad, but it shouldn't be sold on that.
A wellness health retreat gone mad is the most apt description for it. It is difficult to like any of the characters in the novel, though. Possibly that is the point, everyone is flawed and struggles with mental health issues.
It could have been five stars, but the book just ends without any conclusion, kind of like the author got bored or wrote himself into a corner.
