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Sakura

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About Sakura

  • Birthday 05/13/1983

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  • Reading now?
    Seelenläufer
  • Gender
    Male
  • Location:
    Germany
  • Interests
    Sewing, cooking and baking, board games, RPGs, video- and computergames, boardgames

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    http://mitkaese.wordpress.com/

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  1. I'm confused, because the German translation for Killing Commendatore will be out by April, the English one apparently needs till September. But I've always read Murakami in English, so I'll stick with that.
  2. I can enjoy different things in a romance novel, but in general I prefer character driven romance with protagonists that have a certain depth to them, do not feel stereotypical and have a good chemistry together. I need to know why they love each other, not just that they do. It needs to feel believable. Banter is always very much appreciated, as is some humor, with a decent portion of sweet and adorable. I'm not a fan of a lot of angst or unnecessary drama and forced, endless miscommunication are a pet-peeve of mine. I prefer simple, everyday situations, at least in contemporary romance. I like a good supporting cast: parents, friends, coworkers, etc. I always feels weird when you have the happy couple in a lonely bubble somewhere. I'm not a fan of insta-love, though insta-attraction is fine with me. I like a slow burn more than a book that fills most of it's pages with enforced separations and absurd problems for the couple to solve, though I do enjoy a few chapters of couple-dom at the end. I do like some graphic sex, or even a lot, as long as it's not just gratuitous. But it needs to be either really hot or realistically awkward. Oh, and since we are talking LGBT, I get annoyed when everyone in the vicinity is homosexual. That's just not realistic. Also, flawless gaydar is boring too.
  3. I think Ann Granger and Elizabeth George have a similar style to P.D. James. I'm looking for crime novels with a virtual reality theme. Going Sci-Fi is fine too. I liked Lock in by Scalzi a lot and am looking for something like that.
  4. I hate it when authors use a protagonist, whose actions they never explain. I'm not very good at reading motivation from action, so those books leave me annoyed and baffled.
  5. Try The Thief who Series by Michael McClung, starting with The Thief who pulled on Trouble's Braids. Amra Thetys is a tough girl, knows her way in a fight and has a sarcastic mouth on her, that gets her in trouble more often than not. She's also clever and scheming and though she takes quite some beating over the novels, she never, ever gives up, even in the most dire circumstances. @Michelle: I like Lila too, but she's hardly the protagonist.
  6. I like David Hair, who writes (YA) fantasy and Willow Scarlett, who is probably entirely unknown to most of you, since he does homosexual romance books that emphasis respectful relationships, consent and gender fluidity. Oh, and sexy times.
  7. Abe 'Sarge' Griffin served in WWII 60 years ago. His squad was responsible for finding more unusual (meaning supernatural) threads. After destroying a polish madman's weird ritual and taking the arcane pieces with them, so he could not try again, they went home, but Abe was never the same again. He has not aged a day, is faster, stronger, tougher then any human ought to be. Being on the verge of killing himself from ennui and loneliness he is visited by the granddaughter of his old squad-mate Paddy. Paddy is old and demented, but Anne, the granddaughter, tells Abe that Paddy has not been himself for days, trying to flee the home crawling, trying to reach Abe any way he can. Abe agrees to come with her to visit Paddy and trying to reassure him, but as it turns out, things are far from fine. The past they left behind in Poland has caught up with Abe and the left-overs of his old squad, and they have to figure out a way to end it, this time for good. I enjoyed this book very much. It's a mixture of superhero action scenes (though Abe is not actually wearing a costume, he displays typical abilities and powers of a classic superhero) and lovecraftian horror, with some military bits thrown in. The Action is varied, engaging and fun. The scenes are described well, so I always had a good sense of what's going on even in more complex tussles. There are monsters, fanatics and people driven crazy. The author managed some pretty disturbing images and scenes, but it never felt like too much, if you know what I mean. It always fitted well within the story and did not seem to be purely for shock value. I liked the characters. Abe tells the story from his perspective, but there are also a bunch of other support characters. Abe, for all his old demons and problems is a pretty sympathetic character and I like his thought process, tough deviance, rough nature and protective instincts, but I also could understand his deep flaws. Anne is a pretty awesome character too, though, understanding and independent, weak only when the action is up. I simply gobbled the book up and am very happy to know there's still one more part out there, because I'm not quite done with this author yet.
  8. I guess sometimes it's just dumb luck. Getting publicity at just the right time so your name just sticks with the public and you can gather a fan base to support you. I know of at least one english author, that was apparently not very popular in english-speaking countries, because his new series was just translated and published in German, no english version at all.
  9. I have read everything there is by Jane Austen and The Bronte Sister. I'd read about everything by Rainbow Rowell. Other than those, I can't think of any authors I would read everything by, without reservation. Even my favorites Terry Pratchett and Steven Brust have written some books that just don't seem all that interesting to me.
  10. I thought Anthem is really bad. I liked Atlas Shrugged, though it's not an easy read, but Anthem did not work for me. It feels like a rip off of We, but in a misogynistic, lecturing, know-it-all kind of way.
  11. Some less well known classic dystopias would be Kallocain by Karen Boye, about a scientist who develops a truth drug in a communistic kind of state, and War with the Newts by Karel Capek, which describes how the world changes as men discovers an intelligent and highly capable species of amphibians, and starts to exploit them. There's also The Giver, which I did not see mentioned. It's a children's book, but it's still my favorite dystopia.
  12. There's the reason I don't get hard covers any more. e.x. I liked Fall of Giants from Follett, so I got Winter of the World right as it was released. As hardcover. And then I never read it, because it was just too massive to take anywhere. I read a lot on the train to work, and that book was just not handy for that. In the end I sold it after 4 years of not touching it, and will probably just get the eBooks one of those days.
  13. Personally, I kinda prefer shorter stories. I like short stories around 100 pages just fine, and I think an ideal length for a book is somewhere around 200-300. I don't mind reading thicker tomes, though like you, I always feel reluctant to actually start on them. Therefore, I only buy really thick books when I know I really, really want to read them. I don't mind long series, I actually prefer them. If they are awesome, more content for me. If the books don't keep me interested anymore, I have no qualms to just break off a series in the middle, cliffhangers or not. I like to be able to read something different often. I don't mind reading several books at once, but with the bigger books I usually want to get them finished. So it's some kind of itch, that gets annoying, when I read the same book for a few weeks.
  14. I'm a pretty die-hard Potter fan, and pretty much for that reason I did not like the script at all. The characters where just not well written. I felt most of the old characters where just off. Ron e.x. was reduced to a comic relieve, Hermione seemed way understated, Snape was quite simply not Snape, etc. Also, there where some holes in the plot where it meets the plot of the books. It just doesn't quite fit together, it seems shoehorned in. And as someone who reads a lot of HP Fanfiction, I just felt a lot of the relationships and plot points where just popular, not to say stereotypical, fan fiction storylines. The whole thing seemed to me as fan service written by someone who is not a big fan himself, and that put me off immensely.
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