Audrea Webb từ Barra do Garças - MT, Brazil

_eauty

05/03/2024

Dữ liệu người dùng, đánh giá và đề xuất cho sách

Audrea Webb Sách lại (10)

2018-06-11 05:30

Ra Đời Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi: Aleksei Varlamov

the main difference between madeleine wickham's books & sophie kinsella's books is that when wickham writes under her real name, she forgets that ther novels should have at least one bearable character or un-hackneyed situation. in this one, two families are offered the use of a spanish villa owned by a mutual friend. chloe is the matriarch of family #1. she is partnered to (but not married to) a banker named phillip. phillip's bank recently merged with a much larger company, & phillip is anxiously waiting to learn whether or not his branch is being shut down, leaving him unemployed. chloe & phillip have two children: a 16-year-old son named sam (chloe's child with a long-ago ex-boyfriend, but adopted by phillip) & 9-year-old nat. the other family is comprised of two little girls named beatrice & octavia, & their parents, stay-at-home mother amanda & corporate decision-maker hugh. as it turns out, hugh had briefly dated chloe many years before, when they were both quite young. things had gone swimmingly until chloe confessed that she had a none-month-old son (baby sam). hugh couldn't begin to imagine taking on the responsibilities of stepfatherhood, so he cut & run, never giving chloe any kind of explanations for his behavior. in another coincidence, hugh works for the major corporate entity that bought the bank that employs phillip. hugh & amanda are also employing a nanny for the week, named jenna. she is the only remotely enjoyable character in the entire book, but even she is kind of fucked up. so hugh & chloe recognize each other right away. & they are still attracted to each other. this aspect of the plot is fairly unbelievable considering that they dated for like two months. that's not exactly star-crossed lovers territory. hugh & phillip don't realize that they are bound together by their employments because chloe won't let phillip talk about his work. she thinks he's being obsesseive about whether or not he's going to get fired & she wants to spend the vacation not worrying about it. why i don't like these characters: chloe: i think it's kind of fucked up & very insensitive that she won't let phillip talk about his concerns over getting fired. obviously if he loses his job, that is going to mean big upheaval for the entire family. the dude is understandably panicked. but chloe actually screams at him at one point when she catches him on the phone, checking in with a co-worker about whether or not there's any news about their branch closing down. she also is bafflingly attracted to hugh, despite the fact that she is enraged with him for abandoning her all those years ago after he found out about baby sam. never mind that she has a long-term partner & another child, & hugh has a wife & two little girls. chloe's attraction to hugh is the most traditional "romance" aspect of the book, & it rings completely hollow. phillip: he's okay. just kind of clueless about chloe's feelings for hugh (he never even knew they had dated or known each other previously) & obsessive about his job. amanda: she doesn't really let hugh involve himself in any kind of parenting, & then complains that she may as well be a single mother for all the help she gets from him. she is obsessed with re-decorating her house & bosses around her decorators in such a way that i don't think she realizes that decorators are not slaves. but she does get points for being a really involved & caring mother. sam: i hate this little asshole. all he does is think about whether or not he has a chance to bone someone on his spanish holiday. he even scopes out amanda's rack. he basically walks right up to jenna, the nanny, & is like, "so...wanna fuck?" & she she laughs at him, he gets sulky & treats her rudely. because he's entitled to sex, right? & any woman that won't give it up is just a bitch, right? didn't chloe raise this kid to have any respect for women at all? nat: no big problems with him, though it's obnoxious that his parents take him to a spanish villa & he spends the whole time watching TV & playing video games. beatrice & octavia: i feel that they are unrealistically well-behaved children, but other than that, no big issue. jenna: i thought she was funny...until she agreed to have sex with sam. she's young, but she's still an adult woman who probably shouldn't be bedding a teenage boy. she seems like a really good nanny though. great with kids when she's not having sex with them. anyway, chloe eventually concludes that gerard engineered the whole villa double-booking in order to bring her & hugh back together again. she thinks gerard would find it amusing to watch them struggle with their temptation to sleep together again. eventually they both end up in the little nearby town, where they rent a motel room & have sex. chloe kind of immediately regrets it because she still thinks hugh is a jerk, but hugh is all, "chloe, i'm in love with you! let's run away & be together! i could kick myself for giving up the chance to be sam's father!" etc etc. no word on why he regrets abandoning sam so much while he is in the midst of preparing to abandon his own two children. after they go back to the villa, hugh & phillip get drunk together & phillip admits that he works for the bank hugh's company bought & that he fears being fired. hugh realizes that if phillip loses his job, chloe will never leave him for hugh. so hugh tries to pull some strings to make sure phillip doesn't get fired. it doesn't work & phillip gets fired anyway. & he finds out that hugh works for the company that caused him to get fired. hugh stars to wonder if this was gerard's plot all along--to put the corporate downsizer in a villa with the downsized for a week & what the fur fly. while he's freaking out about it in the office, gerard calls & basically confirms his theory. hugh starts to ask if gerard also intended to throw hugh & chloe together again, but it turns out that their romance was so brief, gerard never even knew they were together. hugh quickly back-pedals. hugh goes out to the pool & is all, "phillip getting fired taught me that family is what matters. that's why i quit my job to be a stay-at-home dad." amanda panics, but phillip is all, "good for you! family is what matters!" chloe is like, "um...yeah. totally." jenna is all, "hey amanda, chloe boned your husband." everyone freezes & then jenna says, "just kidding." they all decide they hate gerard for putting them into this awkward confront-their-demons situation & they go home, never to see each other again. seriously. isn't that the worst conclusion ever? oh, & hugh didn't really quit his job. he thought about it but was too scared to do it, just like he was too scared to continue dating chloe after he realized she had a child. he's just letting amanda sweat it for a while for his own amusement. what a great guy. his wife & children sure are fortunate to have him around. this book sucked. don't make my mistakes. leave it on the shelf.

2018-06-11 06:30

Cổ Tích Việt Nam Cho Bé Mẫu Giáo - Sự Tích Chú Cuội Cung Trăng Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi:

The review is also available on my blog, Bows & Bullets Reviews I had thought that after reading this novel a second time, it would be easier to review but fuck was I wrong. Reading it again put me in even more awe of it because I noticed things the second time around that I missed the first. I find that reviewing it now is even more daunting because my words are insufficient to adequately describe the….um…see I’m already failing to come up with an adjective worthy of this novel. Amazing? Awesome? Astounding? Why do they all start with “a”? Regardless of my lack of vocabulary, this is a novel that will illicit more emotions than you thought possible while confusing you and making you wonder why they heck you keep reading. It’s a bit difficult to summarize this story because it encompasses so much. The most basic description I can give is that it follows two characters, a girl named Celia and a boy named Marco, for a very long period of time, almost thirty years in fact. Both have only been told that they are a participate in a game but their respective teachers refuse to give them any more description than that. How do you win the game? Who is my opponent? How do we compete? What is the purpose? They are never told. But both strive to succeed to attain the respect of their teachers. The only thing that becomes clear is that the venue for the competition is Le Cirque des Reves. This tale follows the pair throughout the duration of the challenge. The above description does not even begin to do justice to the sheer loveliness of this story. But, before I start fangirling, I’ll state what will annoy the daylights out of you, at least on your first read. The main source of the confusion is the way the story jumps around. Though the tale is “mainly” about Celia and Marco, it has many, many (many, many, many, many, many) more characters and it jumps around from different perspectives and even time periods. One moment you are reading about Celia being trained at a young age, then you jump ten years in the future to the perspective of a boy named Bailey who has nothing to do with anything beyond the fact that the circus arrives in his town and he falls in love with it. Then you jump to a clockmaker in Germany who is commissioned to make a special clock for the circus. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. For the first half of this novel, you can’t make any fucking sense out of it. I remember thinking during my first read how I wished it would just stay with Celia or Marco because I found the pair so interesting, but alas, my wish wasn’t granted. Though now, I’m glad that it wasn’t because I appreciated the many perspectives so much more during the second go. It jumps to completely unrelated sequences in the most haphazard fashion imaginable. Where the fuck is Erin taking this story?!?! How the hell are all the people’s perspectives going to line up in a way that makes sense? Why the fuck am I still reading this infuriating thing?!?!? If you stick through the first half, well you are in for a treat. In the second half, everything starts coming together. Celia and Marco meet and fall in love like we all knew they would and everything actually does wrap up rather nicely. All the random people start to become connected with the story in ways you weren’t expecting and it made me wonder how the author managed to write something so stunning that I was in speechless. The first comment I want to make is that the writing is gorgeous. Erin Morgenstern writes in this brilliant way that describes every setting perfectly, but not in that overly dull, I’m wasting your time writing five pages describing this utterly plain England countryside way that some authors insist on doing (::coughs:: JRR Tolkien ::coughs::). It just completely enchants you to the point that even though it’s irritating the fuck out of you, you keep reading, if only to see the elegant way the story is portrayed. You grow to love all the characters, even the ones that you have no idea how they relate to the story. This novel is that perfect fairy tale for adults that we’ve all been craving. It has that indefinable magical quality that hooks into you and leaves you seeing stars. It is the type of book that demands a second read, possibly immediately after the first because you see things through a different light. I’m hesitant to make this comparison because these two novels are nothing alike, but it demands a reread the same way Fight Club does because after everything is revealed in the end, you see so many things more clearly and completely differently than the first time. It’s utterly fantastic and I recommend it to every single individual on this planet with access to it and the ability to comprehend it. ****Thank you to Vintage Books/Anchor Books for providing me with a review copy in exchange for an honest review****

2018-06-11 13:30

Cẩm Nang Tuyển Sinh Đại Học - Cao Đẳng Năm 2017 (Báo Hoa Học Trò) Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi: Nhiều Tác Giả

Rarely have I disliked a book or author as much. Into the Heart would be better titled Out of the Ego. It's the tale of an incredibly arrogant white man who goes to the Amazon to study the Yanomami (spelled Yanomama in the edition I read). This Humbert-of-the-Jungle becomes fixated on a particular female child and proceeds to claim her as a "wife." The book that results is a sickening, infuriating combination of Lolita and the worst aspects of Three Cups of Tea. The book is a long, tedious recounting of the narrator's many trips up and down the Amazon and the many ways he asserts his ownership of the unfortunate child Yarima. "Author" Kenneth Good (who, despite his academic credentials required co-writer David Chanoff) paints himself at every turn as the hapless victim of other people's incompetence. Never is anything his fault or responsibility, even though his actions directly cause his wife/rape victim to be repeatedly abandoned, gang raped, left alone to fend for herself in the jungle, separated from her closest family and ultimately, transplanted to alien cultures. If you want insight into the Yanomami, I don't know that I'd trust this author to provide it. If you want insight into white privilege, patriarchy, and complete self-involvement, then this is the book for you. Postscript: After hearing more about this book and author at a book discussion group and learning a bit more from snippets of the documentary Secrets of the Tribe, I'm even more repulsed by the attitude of this author.

Người đọc Audrea Webb từ Barra do Garças - MT, Brazil

Người dùng coi những cuốn sách này là thú vị nhất trong năm 2017-2018, ban biên tập của cổng thông tin "Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn" khuyến cáo rằng tất cả các độc giả sẽ làm quen với văn học này.