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beer good
Well-Known Member
Tom Rachman - The Imperfectionists. The daily affairs of a dying newspaper, cpatured through the personal lives of those working on it, jumping from character to character, alternately hilarious and feeling like a kick in the chest, with flashbacks to 50 years of journalistic history that are about to be replaced by blogs and FOX News. Seriously one of the best books I've read this year. 
Blindsided
Member
The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
It was really good. Probably the best magic system I've ever seen in a fantasy book. It was really creative but seemed like it would actually work, so that was cool. I think it had some good messages, and was just really good in general.
5/5
It was really good. Probably the best magic system I've ever seen in a fantasy book. It was really creative but seemed like it would actually work, so that was cool. I think it had some good messages, and was just really good in general.
5/5
shadforth
Member
The Age Of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker 
Very good debut novel from Walker set in modern day California,and told from the viewpoint of an 11yr old girl describing how her family,friends and neighbourhood react when Earth slows down and the days gradually become longer and longer.
Very good debut novel from Walker set in modern day California,and told from the viewpoint of an 11yr old girl describing how her family,friends and neighbourhood react when Earth slows down and the days gradually become longer and longer.
beer good
Well-Known Member
Hadji Murat, Leo Tolstoy
Brilliant short(ish) novel about a Chechnyan rebel leader that hasn't lost any relevance despite being set in the 1850s, managing to balance a comparatively large cast with who all get to become characters in their own right while the plot still focuses on the title character and his attempt to be the master of his own fate, being highly critical of all sides (especially the czar, which I'm guessing is why it wasn't published in Tolstoy's lifetime). And man, Tolstoy's language and feel for details... Just read the prologue, and I dare you to not be immediately sucked in.
Brilliant short(ish) novel about a Chechnyan rebel leader that hasn't lost any relevance despite being set in the 1850s, managing to balance a comparatively large cast with who all get to become characters in their own right while the plot still focuses on the title character and his attempt to be the master of his own fate, being highly critical of all sides (especially the czar, which I'm guessing is why it wasn't published in Tolstoy's lifetime). And man, Tolstoy's language and feel for details... Just read the prologue, and I dare you to not be immediately sucked in.
pontalba
Well-Known Member
A Devil Is Waiting - Jack Higgins
"My dear Giles, I would have thought you would have realized by now that I can do anything" General Charles Ferguson
Of course he can, we all know that!
Redshirts by John Scalzi,
A poor ripoff of a Star Trek TOS episode, with a twist of Galaxy Quest without the wit of Tim Allen or the ever so delicious Alan Rickman.
PrincessFiona60
Member
Of course he can, we all know that!
Redshirts by John Scalzi,
A poor ripoff of a Star Trek TOS episode, with a twist of Galaxy Quest without the wit of Tim Allen or the ever so delicious Alan Rickman.
I give your review of Redshirts
pontalba
Well-Known Member
ricko
Member
The swan thieves
Elizabeth Kostova easily avoids the sophomore jinx with her second epistolary novel. While this volume isn't the fearsome novel that 'The Historian' was, it does have plenty of enigmas and intrigue. What do you expect without Vlad the Impaler. I enjoy reading novels that are based on old letters retrieved through out the drama at just the right time. This is a modern day story of a troubled painter who falls in love with a French painter from the late 1800's, who has long ago passed away. There isn't anything ordinary in this well conceived and original storytelling.
Book Reviews And Comments By Rick O
Elizabeth Kostova easily avoids the sophomore jinx with her second epistolary novel. While this volume isn't the fearsome novel that 'The Historian' was, it does have plenty of enigmas and intrigue. What do you expect without Vlad the Impaler. I enjoy reading novels that are based on old letters retrieved through out the drama at just the right time. This is a modern day story of a troubled painter who falls in love with a French painter from the late 1800's, who has long ago passed away. There isn't anything ordinary in this well conceived and original storytelling.
Book Reviews And Comments By Rick O
beer good
Well-Known Member
Juli Zeh, Dark Matter
Schrödinger's thriller; there both is and isn't a kidnapped child, there both is and isn't a murder, there both is and isn't a jealous drama tearing a marriage apart, there are two physicists arguing the nature of reality, there are two detectives trying to figure out not only what's happened but what happens. Zeh has her characters speaking in epigrams as usual, but she's good enough and her characters self-involved enough to make it work.
Jeet Thayil, Narcopolis
Everyone's already pulling the Bolaño and Burroughs comparisons for this Booker nominee set in a Bombay opium den over 30 years. So I'll just point out that it's a beautifully written but occasionally slightly overworked story, mirroring the changes in the big world outside on a microscopic scale, jumping from protagonist to protagonist without losing focus. Sneaky, dirty, warm.
Schrödinger's thriller; there both is and isn't a kidnapped child, there both is and isn't a murder, there both is and isn't a jealous drama tearing a marriage apart, there are two physicists arguing the nature of reality, there are two detectives trying to figure out not only what's happened but what happens. Zeh has her characters speaking in epigrams as usual, but she's good enough and her characters self-involved enough to make it work.
Jeet Thayil, Narcopolis
Everyone's already pulling the Bolaño and Burroughs comparisons for this Booker nominee set in a Bombay opium den over 30 years. So I'll just point out that it's a beautifully written but occasionally slightly overworked story, mirroring the changes in the big world outside on a microscopic scale, jumping from protagonist to protagonist without losing focus. Sneaky, dirty, warm.
beer good
Well-Known Member
Peter Adolphsen's Brummstein is a peculiar little novella; the story of a weird, vibrating stone that's chipped off an ancient rock at the bottom of a Swiss cave in 1908, and its travels from hand to hand throughout the 20th century in Germany. It should be a drily humorous tall tale in the classic Scandinavian tradition (lately represented by Paasilinna, Jonasson etc), but it's ultra-condensed to 64 pages, with passages in allegedly untranslated German (Adolphsen is Danish), with long asides on tectonic plate theory and starting the story billions of years ago, both reducing and emphasising the changes of the last 100 years as just a blink of an eye in the larger scheme of things. And suddenly, the people who pass by become both completely inconsequential and completely alive, caught up in a whirlstorm of ideologies flashing by, all promising a revolution of political, spiritual, racial or artistic thought while the stone keeps humming with the same frequency it's done for millions of years. Weird. But I love it.
PrincessFiona60
Member
Don't Breathe A Word, Jennifer McMahon A good read, just enough creepy to make you race to the end.
A good read, just enough creepy to make you race to the end.
Alix
Member
Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments series 1-4. Solid for the first two down to a 
for the next two. Plot line is starting to repeat. I guess you can only be in so much mortal jeopardy before it becomes old hat. I'm still going to read the 4th and the other series. Its a young adult series, but well written.
for the first two down to a for the next two. Plot line is starting to repeat. I guess you can only be in so much mortal jeopardy before it becomes old hat. I'm still going to read the 4th and the other series. Its a young adult series, but well written.
beer good
Well-Known Member
Athol Fugard, Tsotsi. As a late-50s novel about apartheid written by a white author, there are bits of this novel that don't come off as well as I'm sure his intentions were - there's an undertone of "See, poor black people have dreams and hopes and emotions too, even the ones who are brutal killers!" And the fact that Fugard was a playwright is very obvious, too, it reads largely like a novelisation of a play. That said, it is a powerful story, featuring a cast of characters oppressed by a system they have no way of even seeing beyond night time raids, bosses that talk over their heads, preachers who don't even know the names of the people they're supposed to save... And in the middle of this, a cold-blooded criminal whose very name means gangster, a man with no past, no name, no age, no conscience, who's never known anything but violence and survival, who suddenly shows mercy and tries to understand why, tries to put a word and a meaning on it.