Gertjan Slegt Slegt itibaren Sinek Köyü, 21600 Sinek Köyü/Çermik/Diyarbakır, Türkiye
Bu romana çok fazla yıldız verdim çünkü küçük sorunları olsa bile gerçekten saatlerce okumaya devam ettim. Neredeyse saatlerce okumaya devam ettim. İçinde bazı tekrarlanabilirlik olduğu konusunda hemfikir olacağım ama bunun ötesine bakabilirim. Karakterlerle benim için daha da iyi hale getiren bazı şekillerde bağlantı kurabilirim ve karakterler, kitaplarda olduğu gibi maço veya domuz başlı değildi. Diyorum ki shanna biraz fazla duygusal ama tüm dürüstlük birçok kadın öylesine ben def bırak gitsin. Aslında ilk olarak 5. romanı okudum ve ilk romanından bu yana tarzının geliştiğini söyleyebilirim ama hepsini okumayı planlıyorum.
Nic Bishop is fantastic! The photographs are amazing, as usual, and the information is really interesting. There is one photo in here that blew me away; a caterpillar that puffs itself up to scare predators. It looked EXACTLY like a python! In fact, when I first looked I thought to myself, "Why does he have a picture of a snake in here?" Then I read the page and understood. In his description at the end of the book, he tells how he came to take that picture; let's just say it was the product of an extreme amount of dedication! Bishop's books are some of the best nonfiction out there for kids today.
A very quiet, meditative book about a Mexican woman adrift in Berlin. Tatiana is alienated from her family and her friends, cut off from the rest of the city, uninterested in forming a relationship with anyone. She gets a part-time job doing transcription work for a historian, goes on a few lacklustre dates with a fairly nondescript meteorologist, becomes slightly obsessed with a mentally ill woman, avoids her neighbours, develops insomnia. The book meanders along like this for most of the 200 pages, as aimless as the passage of a cloud across the sky, before something quite dramatic happens almost out of nowhere. History plays a major role in the book, particularly the dark stories that lurk beneath the surface. There are plenty of those in Berlin, both from the Nazi and the Communist era, buildings in which people were imprisoned or tortured, now converted into schools, apartment buildings and water towers. Right at the beginning of the book, Tatiana sees what she believes is an aged Hitler dressed as a woman on an underground train. Then there’s the underground Gestapo bowling alley that Tatiana explores late at night and almost gets trapped inside when she runs away from her group to go and rub out the chalked scores from the board. There’s the upstairs part of her building, where nobody seems to live but from which strange noises appear. She goes up there, looking for ghosts perhaps, and finds a dark stain on the wall which reminds her of the scores she rubbed out: “wondering whether this dark imprint was somehow mocking me, reminding me of the inevitable, which was, of course, that nothing can be truly rubbed away or blotted out, and how the more your try to rub something away the darker it becomes.” This, it seems, is a major theme of the book. There’s not too much background about Tatiana’s life in Mexico so it’s never very clear what she’s trying to blot out, but she is definitely trying. I read in an interview that an earlier draft of this book had more of the Mexican backstory included, but was cut out from the final version. The effect is to leave much unanswered, which can be a good thing, but it also made it difficult to understand the character’s alienation. Overall: beautiful, dreamy writing, lots of solitary musing and a good sense of the city of Berlin and its history. But the character is essentially solitary and self-absorbed, which can be frustrating. If you’re prepared to let things meander along, enjoy the elegant writing, appreciate the sharp observations and muse on the possible truths hidden in the shapes of the clouds, this would be a good read. But if you want a plot that develops or characters that interact with each other in comprehensible ways, this is probably not the book for you.
I absolutely fell in love with this book. The author did such an amazing job with a different plot. When I first started reading this book, I thought “how corny is this going to be”? I mean love actually being removed from people, a criminal offence etc… However, the deeper I got the more enthralled I was with the story. The characters are realistic, loveable and easy to associate with. The relationship between the two main characters; Lena and Alex, is truly interesting. A successful portrait of first love and its emotions. From the sweaty palms to the stomach butterflies, the author managed to capture it all. By the end of the book, you can actually feel the emotion and I for one find the intensity a rarity with many of the novels of today. This first installment surpassed my expectations, from the vivid details to the characters and their interactions. There was action, romance, drama and weirdness all wrapped into one. I would highly recommend this book, as well as this series to anyone.
Tolstoy creates a bleak mood with his sometimes monotonous prose about the life (and death) of Ivan Ilych. What I like about it is that despite the sort of complaining nature of Ilych, by the end of the story I am moved. Just an ordinary man with an unfortunate life, who dies without anyone loving him, besides, perhaps, his boy servant.
Another post-colonial novel (British in Uganda), this one from the perspective of a doctor instead of a journalist, which is refreshing. A sucker punch of a book, the horrific stuff doesn't show up for a while, lulling you into a 'hey, this isn't as bloody as the other post-colonial novels I've read.' No, it is. (Poco lit/For Professor B; 300+ pages)
Purchased Nov. '04 at the Harvard University Bookstore. Not my fave Sedaris book. I thought "Me Talk Pretty One Day" was much better.