Read this in a swedish translation called 'Majsens barn' and I have to say it didn't even sound like King. It didn't have his 'voice' at all. I blame the translation + the fact that these seem to be rather early stories.
Jema reads
Read this in a swedish translation called 'Majsens barn' and I have to say it didn't even sound like King. It didn't have his 'voice' at all. I blame the translation + the fact that these seem to be rather early stories.
What a ride! There were just a few places in the middle this book felt a tad bit too long, other then that it was great value for my buck. I think that one thing I liked the most about it was that it did NOT try to tie up all the lose ends into a shiny x-mas package.
I was for a long time quite determined not to like or even read this hyped up serie of confessional literature written by a whiny norwegian. I take it all back! I loved it, I fell in love with the very first sentence and followed Knausgård like a devotee through teenage angst, unrequited love, dad-issues down to the mall buying crisps and sprite, the bursting out in tears over his dads death and even while scrubbing the grime off the most disgusting house in Norway.Can't wait to get started on part 2!
Is this only published in german and if so WHY???
I liked it! Even though not a lot happened, not a wide range of emotions, no action scenes, no cliff-hangers. It was just kinda like taking a walk by the water with a friend and letting the silence speak. People make tea and drink it. Someone cries sometimes but from a wound that is old and half-forgotten, perhaps someone falls in love but not in any grand swooning way. There is a history of mothers and loss but don't we all know that story? A girl paints a mural of ghost monkeys and a boy sleeps with a toaster rack under his arm. A brother and a sister speaks with one voice. The lake is sometimes foggy and sometimes so bright it hurts the eyes. We are in Tokyo but there are hardly any people here, just a few kids looking at a mural.Being lonely with someone else is not necessarily a bad thing. Reading The Lake was not what I expected but really nice anyway!
1
Finished this one in just one gray thursday and it was quite different then I had first expected. Had it not been picked as August read for the fantasy sci-fi group here at GR and I had read a few really great reviews I would just have skipped it cause I saw the film and I usually don't like reading the book after. But this one was hardly even related to that film. Robert Neville finds himself the sole survivor after a vampire plague. He struggles with trying to come to terms with the loss of his family, keeping his home vampire proof, trying to kill as many of the undead as he can during daytime to kill them. Only after a while does he start to think of just why he is immune and if there is a cure. And yes there is a dog here too but not for so very long or so very heartwarming.
I remember watching the Will Smith film and thinking that the phrase 'I am legend' was a bit boastful.
In this book the title makes a lot more sense and it ain't nothing to boast about...
I would have added a 5:th star if the story was fleshed out a little more.
Awesome in all it's gore. Recommended for anyone that loves Faulkner or Nick Cave
5 stories read on BBC4xI really liked 3 of them, was mystified by one and found one boring. All in all a nice listen on a rainy night with a fire going and a mug of tea.
I wanted to give it a 5 star but really this one is a hard one to grade. There were things in it I simply loved, the grandmother, the notebook Oscar keeps, the story of the typewriter, all the Blacks coming together and taking Oscar under their wings.And then at times it made me feel callous and like I was being played. Just for a moment. I wondered how come the missing father was so much more present then the mother, why she was just such a minor part, where is her family, her story?
Oh how we are shaped by our missing fathers...
I actually had a review here but GR ate it.So in short: some nice stories, some nice quotes but a bit repetitious and the technology makes the novel feel dated even though it is just a decade old.
I can't help thinking that Winterson is writing her story over and over, it's a good story but I like her more when she is actually autobiographical or pure whimsy.
Lovely deck and a solid book. 66 cards all described over 3-5 pages with comments from other readers too.
Almost blasphemy to give such a classic only 2 stars, but I just didn't care for it much. I did like some parts though. For me this was a book about futility and peoples lack of communication and it just made me depressed.
I've been living inside the pocket of this novel for a month now and just tonight came out for air. In-between I read others, visited other worlds and somehow they all connect back to this one in a weird neurological way. While reading 'The left hand of darkness' by LeGuin it was like I lived in all the worlds at once, it was winter on a distant planet, just like in the real world. Now spring is here and I am done. I dreamed last night of trains and subways and lost tickets and buying things I didn't need and missing all connections between the symbol and the reality, mixing them up.I think my dreams are more colourful thanks to Mr Murakami.
Oh about the book: First confusing, but just keep going back for sips and it will sweep you away, and leave you clean but cluttered like a beach :-D
Amazing, just so good and I can't believe it took me so long to get reading it since I read and loved the Earthsea books in the past. I think it is really a cover-issue but on Kindle you don't really mind the covers so much. I don't really write reviews here since I never know what language to write them in so generally my end of book updates are just some random impressions.
Here, I kinda wish the English language would have a 'hen' (swedish neutral gender term) but on the other hand the constant use of 'he' made it clear that the world view of Ai is that of a masculine person and how masculinity is the norm.
I can't help also wondering if it is done with a nod to sales. We all know that men tend to read books about males while females read books about both males and females... just an idea.
Fast read, perfect for those nights I couldn't sleep due to being sick and couldn't read anything 'heavier'. I would class this is a YA paranormal romance and it's a first for me in that genre. Very lightweight, very Romeo and Juliet pastiche (for people that never read Romeo and Juliet) very stereotypical in its own way (a hero that is obviously a zombie yet looks 'fresh' and don't smell och with no huge maggot problem, a heroine that weighs 100 pounds and is of course stunning and brave and with a heart as hard as a diamond and don't mind much that her new boyfriend just ate the brain of her old squeeze) I picked it up cause I thought that the film trailer looked funny and I might still see the film.
This is not a real review, just a few thoughts after finishing the novel. I struggled with the Clear Island chapter but once I just sat down with it to force-read it, I ended up loving that chapter the most. All through the book, the people and entities touching in the bustle of life, their meetings, the glimpses of them over a crowd was perhaps the least interesting thing. The tracing of paths.
I preferred the intense focus, the zooming in, the details like scraps of papers, the red of the inside of a watermelon, the breath at the nape of the neck...
The Murakami is strong in this one...
Currently reading
City of Saints and Madmen
Min kamp 3
The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories
