Irini Loukakis từ Dosante, Burgos, Spain

irini

04/29/2024

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

Irini Loukakis Sách lại (11)

2019-02-23 22:30

Emily Feather Và Chiếc Gương Bí Ẩn Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi: Holly Webb

Edit: Re-read in May 2014, but leaving original review standing because it still expresses my feelings perfectly. Edit x2, January 2016: Having read some negative reviews, I'm thinking I might need to reread again and re-write this - not because I have doubts, but because I'm a little pissed off at the way people react to a traumatized teen by calling her whiny. I've had friends say it, I've seen reviews complaining about it, and it infuriates me. Come at me, bros; I'll fight you for Ruby Daly's honor. Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow I don't know what to do with this book and all of these feelings ow ow ow Obviously it's been too long since I last re-read Brightly Woven because I remembered that Alexandra Bracken was a good writer but I seem to have forgotten HOW good until this book punched me in the gut. God. How do I talk about this? I don't even know. I finished it at about 8:30 last night and the ending basically rendered me nonfunctional for an hour. I vacuumed my room because I couldn't get my brain to cooperate on anything else. Let me count the ways in which this book was stupendous: 1. An absolutely chilling dystopia. Plague diseases are basically my biggest fear, so that aspect had me freaked out from the very beginning, but what was even scarier were the camps. I've seen some reviews mentioning that they didn't think the U.S. government really would have locked kids with freaky powers up in internment camps, and to them I say: obviously you aren't familiar with the shit our government pulls on a regular basis. That is exactly what would happen, and that's what makes it scary. Honestly, this dystopia struck me as markedly closer to classics of dystopian literature - 1984, Brave New World, The Handmaid's Tale - than pretty much anything else I've read in this current faddish YA craze. Yes, even more so than The Hunger Games (though I'm sure fans will disagree with me). I've been trying to figure out why, and I think what it is is that the world of The Darkest Minds is incredibly harsh in a way a lot of YA authors seem to shy away from. LOTS of people die (again, something I've seen other reviewers complain about but stridently disagree with them about) and in incredibly brutal ways. There are multiple factions and every single one of them is dangerous and vicious. This world is horrifying and that is what makes it work. 2. Genuinely scary characters. This gets its own category because I CANNOT BELIEVE HOW TERRIFYING THESE KIDS WERE??? Friggin' Martin, holy shit. And the villain - not to spoil anything but AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH. Again, totally believable - bunch of kids who have been ripped from or thrown out of their homes and treated as less than animals for years and have these potentially horrifying powers - of course they're going to lash out at everything and anything. Of course they turn around and treat anyone who isn't them as worthless. These poor broken terrifying children were just... chilling. 3. Relationships. GIRL FRIENDSHIPS AND SWEET SUPPORTIVE ROMANCE AND RUBY AND CHUBS BEING BUDDIES AND PEOPLE CALLING EACH OTHER ON THEIR SHIT AND WOW THE BLACK BETTY GANG IS EXCELLENT. I love them all, and I love the way they interact. They are a bastion of humanity in a world gone mad. And I honestly think one of my favorite moments was Chubs getting mad at Ruby for not fulfilling a promise, because real friends can and should bring that up and it made their relationship feel so real. I also loved how Ruby and Liam didn't just exist in this romantic bubble - they both had unique friendships and histories and they did things apart from each other and they were INDEPENDENT PEOPLE. (dear almost every other YA writer ever, are you taking notes?) 4. Liam. can we have more love interests like this? Who are flawed, sweet, caring; who fall head over heels as much or more than the girls do, who make mistakes that have consequences and react to them realistically, WHO AREN'T CREEPY AS HELL, who do this: "Liam's only response was to move back a few paces. Giving me space." He's not perfect. He's not some hormone-triggering sex god. He's not dark and mysterious - he's just a well-meaning guy who is good for Ruby in every way and I enjoyed their relationship so much. 5. The ending. Obviously I can't say much but ow ow ow ow ow ow. I assume this book will have a sequel and I will wait for it as patiently as possible. (view spoiler) A couple of quotes/aspects that stuck out to me under this spoiler cut; pages from the ARC: (view spoiler) (not actually spoilery, really, but hidden anyway just to be sure.) I wish I could talk about the villain, because he was honestly one of the best aspects of the book - so subtle and scary, and even though I mistrusted him from before he appeared, there were times when I wondered if he was genuine. Anyhow, hopefully this scatterbrained and emotional review will convince you that you need to read this book, because you probably do. It's extraordinary.

2020-08-03 18:18

Thiên Long Bát Bộ 9-10 Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi:

Reamde represents the first time that I have been disappointed with a Neal Stephenson book. Before I get into it, I’ll start by saying that Stephenson is my favourite author. Snow Crash became one of my favourite books as soon as I read it, and remains a novel that I feel like reading once every couple years. His essay “In the Beginning...was the Command Line” (which has now been published as a book), influenced my own personal computing habits, and encouraged me to learn Linux. Even though current technology has made the essay obsolete, the ideas contained within it still inform my views on computers. The common thread that runs through my love of Stephenson’s work is his presentation of new ideas. He likes to spit out long infodumps on nerdy details that connect tangentially to the plot (Sumerian history and mythology in Snow Crash, the mathematics of encryption in Cryptonomicon) and every time he does, I eat it up. I basically feel like I’m learning something, and as deluded as I may be for thinking that I can get an education by reading fiction, it’s very satisfying for me. At first, Reamde gave me what I wanted: it takes the familiar MMORPG concept and adds some neat ideas. There’s also some geeky humour about the placement of apostrophes in the nomenclature of the game’s fantasy setting. The problems start about a quarter of the way in, when the book turns into an action thriller. Aside from a couple of scenes where some characters meet up and communicate in the online game world, the cool ideas that got me hooked at the beginning are mostly abandoned. The plot revolves around a terrorist plot, and the secret and not-so-secret agents who try to stop the terrorists. In other words, it’s like a really long season of 24 (not my favourite show in the world). When the action ramped up, I assumed that it was just a small scene that would bridge into the second part of the novel. Instead, the action pretty much continues for the rest of the way. It’s like the climax starts a quarter of the way in, and encompasses three-quarters of the book. I don’t mind action, and Stephenson writes it well, but it really feels like a slog when the book is a thousand pages long. Each chapter takes place in one day and are titled as such (e.g. Day 1, Day 15). The “Day 4” chapter lasts for 200+ pages on its own (about 20-25% of the total length). It took me almost a week to get through it and I eventually started thinking to myself, “These characters are still in pretty much the same situation that I was reading about three days ago!” Let me contrast this with the way Stephenson treated action in his earlier work. This sentence ends a chapter in Snow Crash: After that—after Hiro gets onto his motorcycle, and the New South Africans get into their all-terrain pickups, and The Enforcers get into their slick black Enforcer mobiles, and they all go screaming out onto the highway—after that it’s just a chase scene. To me, this is a very clever way to jump forward in time. The narrator is breaking the fourth wall and telling the audience, “We all know what a chase scene is, so let’s not dwell on it.” Now, imagine replacing this line with 200+ pages of actually describing all the things that happen in the chase scene and you have Reamde. To sum up, I still did enjoy Stephenson’s writing style and humour, but it went on way too long. Too much action and plot, not enough ideas. I’ve pretty much read all of his books more than once, but I don’t see myself coming back to Reamde anytime soon.

Người đọc Irini Loukakis từ Dosante, Burgos, Spain

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.