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Amazon is trying their hand at a lending library for Prime members. I've wanted this for years!
A little cottage reading after some fishing on Echo Lake and 4-wheeling in the bush.
I picked up The Last Mile by David Baldacci at a drug store a while back, thinking it would be a good read at a cottage some summer, some light fluff I could take or leave.
It turns out I really enjoyed the book. It has fairly balanced character development, everyone is a feel good character, no giant plot holes, not a lot of friction when reading. Which might be my only criticism, it can feel a little too easy to read at times. Too formulaic.
I nice old read, interesting from as a dusty old American books perspective.
Wow, so long. But as a lifelong Jordan fan this book was so good and so informative. I knew the surface of all the stories, the championships, the relationships, but not the details behind them.
This is a brilliant dive into the head of someone suffering from acute anxiety. The monologue inside the main characters head takes center stage and you get to experience her spirals as her situation devolves. Having dealt with these mental health issues in my own family, I was struck with how relatable her experiences were.
I love it when my mom writes notes to my daughters when she gifts them a book.
This is my second read through and I am going to recommend despite having read this with a more critical eye than I had 10 years ago. Now at 45 and clearly aware of the theme of mortality that starts to creep in to life — If I was truly leaving something for me kids at 6, 3, and 18 months, I'd have written a series of children's books, not a self help manual they wouldn't possibly read before their mid to late teens.
As a former machinist and metrologist and someone who is obsessed with precision, this book was absolutely up my alley. From the intro, where I knew exactly what his father had brought home and rung together, to the history of precision, to measurement by quantum standard, I completely geeked out on The Perfectionists. I will likely return to this book couple more times in the future.
I first read The Last Lecture over 10 years ago and while I enjoyed it, I didn't really connect with the author. Now at 45 years old, reading it again, I am getting so much more out of it.
Great character development and smooth plot development, but almost too smooth. There wasn't enough tension to keep stuck reading this book without putting it down. That was a blessing and a curse. I could pick up and put the book down at will and never lose pace. All in all a very well written book and enjoyable read.
This was such a fun read. Given the scientific premise it could have been done so poorly but I wasn't left feeling like none of it was plausible. It is of course far fetched, but that is what science fiction is all about.
I am a sucker for an Amazon adventure with archeological significance.
Having received SoC as a Christmas gift I've been waiting eagerly to start reading it. Today I begin.
I nice, quick read. I've never read a screenplay before and I must say it's a bit like reading a comic book without the pictures. Not literature, but fun just the same.
This was a very dense read, longer than the 600 pages would let on. The word count is quite high with unbroken paragraphs spanning pages. But the beauty in which the text is written made this a difficult book to put down. Of Human Bondage is a work that reflects upon a different time in our society but is still so relevant to the struggles of today's youth as they come of age. This is a book I will come back to again.
Short but heartwarming.
It was ok. A little repetitive as though we couldn't understand the condition. The climax was a little odd and honestly rushed, and disjointed.
I just took delivery of Fantastic Beasts and The Crimes of Grindelwald.
"The pessimism of the subject attracted his youth; and he believed that the world he was about to enter was a place of pitiless woe and of darkness." — Of Human Bondage, 1915. The youth have always thought we ruined the world. It's not a millennial thing.
I'm only 36 pages in but I am already loving the process of reading Of Human Bondage. This leather bound copy from 1936 is a joy to hold and turn the pages of.
An impactful read filled with love and hate, pain and joy, pride and shame, hope and so much despair. I grew up white, straight, above the poverty line, in Canada. I am close to the same age as Darnell. My life and experiences cannot compare to what Darnell and so many like him have had to endure systematically, for generations on end.
A truly eye opening read.
"But we should not have to concede victory to death when all we really demand is a life free of psychological and material violence. When all we demand is love and love's loving consequences." — Darnell L. Moore
Homophobia is the strong hand that strangles the desires of those too vulnerable to undo gets firm grasp.
I really enjoyed the easy dialogue and the interactions between characters throughout The Lost Gate. Danny is a witty, smart Alek with a dry humor that is believable for a kid his age. His coming of age and the acceptance of the weight of his burden makes him an easy character to like and understand. Some of the other characters lack depth but overall Card does a good job of developing each character enough to play their part in Danny's story.
There isn't a story arc, so much as there is a long, pleasant, ambling series of ups a down, chapter after chapter. This was such a heart warming read that I am sure to come back to for years to come.
Ove would have expected a man such as myself to be able to replace the motor in my central vacuum and I did. No congratulations would be in order. What's right is right. Though he'd question the need for modern conveniences such as the central vacuum.
Greek gods, demons, vampires, werewolves, zombies, a video game that reprograms brains... Take every teen genre and throw it into one plot. Then there's the beat down, poor loser that gets made fun of, gets a job that pays 1k/wk, gets a girlfriend, discovers his god-like powers, gets a magic sword book that talks, and he saves the proverbial day, while running from the shadow of an evil force...
Oh please. Give the kid a wand and call him Harry.
My mother, at 69 is just starting to show some early signs of weakening mental faculties, particularly with remembering words. This was a very emotionally tough book for me to read, but I enjoyed it immensely.
A bit short, and not deeply researched but an entertaining read none the less.
I should be wrapping presents instead, but it's been a long week at work and I deserve a break.
The characters I liked. The humour, the relationships, the content, etc, were all well developed and I cared for these people. But the writing style was exhausting. Not always, but most of the time there was no flow. It hopped, skipped and jumped and it made for a mental exercise that I didn't enjoy. A book as plain as this with plain content, should flow like water if it's not going to draw you in otherwise.
I know I've read this book in the last 30 years. I had to have as there are parts that are so vividly familiar to me. But I can't say where oh where I had if I indeed did. I can't even tell you how it ends, just that I am certain I've read it before. Regardless, I am having a good time reading it again for the first time.
What a fantastic, completely tripped out, weird and wonderful read. Gruesome and beautiful. Dark and full of light. A completely new and refreshing idea, such a joy to read.
Friday nights be like...
Neil Gaiman has such a way of making the rediculous or improbably seem as natural as the everyday and doesn't try to over explain or excuse anything. He's done just that in The Graveyard Book and opened up a fantastic world with child like wonder.
I am cracking the spine on this beauty. It's 7:15 AM and the sky outside looks pretty much like the cover.
I thought since we are coming in to the Christmas season I'd read a seasonal book over the weekend. Grace by Richard Paul Evans is a touching story about the good in people, love and loss, and coming of age. I laughed and smiled all through the book, and then I cried hard.
After growing up in the late 70's and 80's, Stephen King was over-hyped in the media for a while. I wrote King off.
Then skimming through Reddit and came across a reader of all-things-not-King was completely head over heels for 11/22/63. I bought a copy and was hooked withing the first couple of pages and thoroughly enjoyed the entire journey all 800+ pages.
Funny how life turns on a dime.
Never have l read a more long winded sequence of pointless monologues as Ivanhoe. I don't care if it's the 13th century, 19th century or a Shonda Rhimes series — no one talks to each other in uninterrupted discourse that spans pages without reputiation by any characters present.
If Hawkins' A Brief History of Time is the number 1 book on Astrophysics that everyone starts and no one finishes, then Tyson's Astophysics for People in a Hurry should be the number 1 book that everyone starts and finishes with ease.
“To picture a pulsar, imagine the mass of the Sun packed into a ball the size of Manhattan. If that‘s hard to do, then maybe it‘s easier if you imagine stuffing about a billion elephants into a Chapstick casing.”
The Clockmaker's Daughter is a complex, beautifully woven tapestry of time, place, people and things, all inextricably bound together by love, loss, art and passion. Reading this work was such a joy, simply to watch all the streams ebb and flow, weave in and out, apart from one another and back again. Kate Morgan did a fantastic job of building each character, and their story, with with a rich, artful hand.