Nollaig
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Posts posted by Nollaig
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Suffering a bit of a headache today, think its from dehydration in conjunction with the poor sleep I'm prone to.
I finally got to sleep at 3am last night (earliest for me in ages) and the bleedin' wind coming in through the window blew a sock monkey off my shelf at 4am and scared the crap out of me, so I was awake until after 5am trying to get back to sleep
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Read a bit more of The Sense Of An Ending and Deathly Hallows last night, hopefully will finish both by tomorrow.
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It's so changeable, and has been since yesterday! One minute, clear blue skies, five minutes later heavy rain and strong winds!
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I've just finished a fried egg, bacon and cheese sandwich for breakfast. I probably won't need to eat until dinner now.
Toasted crumpets with jam and golden syrup
I came into this thread to say 'Nothing, and I'm hungry' - and I'm really regretting that after seeing those two delicious posts. Om nom nom nom.
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I did very little reading the last couple of days, whoops. I've gotten The Humans by Matt Haig and Bird Box by Josh Malerman so I might start one of those alongside the others I have on the go.
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I've never read either of those, but I did read another one by her (the Unicorn tapestry one, can't remember the title) and I did enjoy it, so I might give Falling Angels a go since its the one people seem to like
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I've seen the name of that book around a lot, but most peoples' reactions seem to fall into the 'meh' region of the spectrum, so I've never bothered with it. Still won't
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Yeah I know the bit you're talking about at the end and that made me hesitate before giving it five stars, but honestly I found the whodunnit bit more convincing than most other thrillers I've read. I like how
the fact that you'd never really suspect Tom is actually down to the unreliability of the narrator, and if you knew the truth you'd probably guess it from the outset. I thought that was a clever way to hide him in plain sight, as it were.
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Haha that sounds like a fascinating read, and imagine thinking of suspenders before underwear!
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I am down to #86 on hold at the library for "Unbroken". The Library has 22 kindle copies though so I am getting fairly close.
I am even closer with "Gathering Blue" and am #15 at the library and they have 11 kindle copies. It could come available for me any day.
I am looking forward to both books. In the meantime I am getting close to finishing another Agatha Christie book.
This may be a stupid question, but I've never borrowed digital books from a library.... why is there a cap on the number of digital copies available at a library?
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Nooooo come back
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Thanks Gaia
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Wrong thread I think
But thanks -
Tis - "So it goes."
I can't express how much I loved the apparent apathy with which that phrase is repeated in the face of both good and bad things in that book. I got it as a sort of double-sided reminder to myself - things happen. Whether they're good or they're bad or expected or unexpected or brilliant or tragic, they're just things, and they are not definitive of our whole lives because any given moment is only a fraction of the whole. So, it basically reminds me never to get so lost in any one moment of my life, that I don't retain hope and humility, in the face of the bad and the good respectively.
Did you enjoy Slaughterhouse-5, Anna?
Edit: Only got a low-quality phone photo, but:
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Lots of people interested in a book I found underwhelming - not sure how that reflects peoples' view of my judgment but okay!
I hope you all enjoy it if you read it. It's certainly worth one read, and a LOT of people do love the story too.As for Kurt, he is, as described in Alex Woods, someone who seems to write a whole load of random absurdity which, upon closer reflection, actually has a very great deal of intelligent insight to it. I say this having only read Slaughterhouse-5, but I loved one aspect of that book so much I got it tattooed on me. I really must start reading his other stuff.
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Must've been one heck of a party!When I went in to make a sandwich my housemate didn't even say sorry. I mean really, who doesn't say sorry (even without meaning it!) for a 9-hour house party?! I'm going to stomp around the house next Saturday morning when I'm getting up at like 5am to go to the airport, it'll serve them right.
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The Ylvis brothers and Calle Hellevang-Larsen dancing to Mr. Saxobeat. Ain't even sorry.
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Housemates threw a party last night, which was very noisy as always. The party ended at 10:30am this morning.
Amazingly, one of my housemates only went to bed for an hour and is now up again tidying the place.
They left a tin of Quality Street open and mostly untouched on the counter, so I stole a handful as compensation for keeping me up half the night
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Awesome! Makes you wonder what else is just lying in peoples' attics!
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It just poured rain two minutes ago, so naturally there's a gorgeous clear blue sky out there now.
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Finished The Universe Versus Alex Woods, review in my thread. Liked it, but not what I expected and a bit disappointing.
Think I'm gonna read The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes next, as it's quite a short read, and then probably onto The First Fifteen Lives Of Harry August by Claire North.
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Read the book and you'll find out! And Muggle said 'one of the very few people' - so it can't be anything widely published by Rowling because tons of people have read those.
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The Universe Versus Alex Woods - Gavin Extence
Genre: FictionSynopsis: A rare meteorite struck Alex Woods when he was ten years old, leaving scars and marking him for an extraordinary future. The son of a fortune teller, bookish, and an easy target for bullies, Alex hasn't had the easiest childhood. But when he meets curmudgeonly widower Mr. Peterson, he finds an unlikely friend. Someone who teaches him that that you only get one shot at life. That you have to make it count. So when, aged seventeen, Alex is stopped at customs with 113 grams of marijuana, an urn full of ashes on the front seat, and an entire nation in uproar, he's fairly sure he's done the right thing ... The Universe Versus Alex Woods is a celebration of curious incidents, astronomy and astrology, the works of Kurt Vonnegut and the unexpected connections that form our world.
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Review: I opened this book (on my tablet) and made a conscious decision not to revisit the above synopsis, which I had read, but entirely forgotten due to reading other books in the interim. I therefore was not even aware of the meteorite bit, though I deduced it pretty quickly. (Initially I thought lightning, but changed to meteorite). So I really had absolutely no clue what to expect, and as such the first few chapters were immensely enjoyable - quirky, unlikely, exciting. I thought I was in for a real treat.
Since finishing it, I've skimmed several other reviews on Goodreads, among which are many 5-star reviews which all, almost without exception, refer to this book as 'heart-warming' or a 'coming-of-age tale'. That is not where the first few chapters suggested the novel was headed, but ultimately even the off-handed, very literal narrative of the seemingly mildly-autistic narrator was not enough to stop it turning into a fairly generic example of both those things. I found the clash between the amusing absurdity of the first few chapters and the relative plausibility of most of the rest of the novel quite disappointing - essentially I felt set up for one thing, only to receive something else entirely. Ultimately, the only things that make this novel quirky - the meteorite and subsequent epilepsy - are incidental and entirely irrelevant to the rest of the novel. The one thing that might have saved it and allowed the plot to hold its own - the presence of difficult subject matter in the second half - was a little too off-handed and ill-paced to have any real emotional impact on me, and as a result of all this, a conceptually-awesome novel falls flat.
All of that said, it was absolutely, laugh out loud hilarious in parts, and much of the writing was very intelligent, well-researched, and very entertaining, if not particularly insightful. Genuinely, parts of this book are undoubtedly among the greatest pieces of writing I'll read all year, and if for no other reason, I'm glad I read it for that. I feel if Extence had not tried so hard to emulate the feel of a Kurt Vonnegut book with such an un-Kurt-like plot, he may have had a winner with this novel. As it is, it felt like the style was his primary focus and the actual story suffered for that. Regardless, the obvious potential he has will definitely compel me to try whatever he writes next.
Rating: 3.5/5 -
It wasn't a series high point, for sure, but it did amuse me
That's a pretty fair way to look at it.
Chrissy's Reading In 2015
in Past Book Logs
Posted
Great review, I've had that book on my wishlist for a couple of years now, along with the other YA titles you mentioned in the review.
Also ooh ooh Neal Shusterman! Which one?
I loooooove his Unwind books.