Valérie Bolduc từ Stockbridge, VT, USA

valeriebolc366

05/21/2024

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

Valérie Bolduc Sách lại (10)

2019-07-04 16:30

Con Đường Chuyển Hóa Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi: Thích Nhất Hạnh

read this in college and was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. For years, I've been meaning to go back and re-read it.

2019-07-04 17:30

Những Người Khốn Khổ (Hộp 3 Cuốn) - Tái Bản 2018 Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi: Victor Hugo

4 1/2 Stars. I an surprised how much I actually liked this Romeo & Juliet type of theme... Time to buy more of her books, that I dont have the time to read....

2019-07-04 18:30

Harvard Bốn Rưỡi Sáng Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi: Xiu-Ying Wei

I think this is the best Picoult book so far. I hated finishing the book. I love how the author turns a situation so that you have to look at it from all perspectives.

2019-07-04 19:30

Con Bim Trắng Tai Đen - Tái bản 2012 Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi: G. Troieponxki

Main characters: 5/5 Puck and Sean were well-developed characters that demonstrated a wide range of motivations and emotions that I could connect to. Puck was a little more hot-headed than Sean, which I liked. Even sometimes when I wanted to bang their heads against a wall, I still liked them as individuals. And better yet, they were realistic (even when the plot was fantastical). The romance between them was even better. It was a slow romance, and I really appreciate that. Sean and Puck didn't fall instantly in love, in fact it was more like instant dislike. The way they slowly became friends, and then more, was perfectly done. I think the best part is how the characters were interwoven into the plot. Have you ever read a book where you feel like the conflict could be the same if you interchanged any character in the story? That's not the case with Puck and Sean. Their conflicts are entirely unique to them and to the story. Secondary characters: 4/5 I was slightly torn on the secondary characters. I loved Puck's brother Finn: he was amusing and fun and added a lot to the story. I was a little concerned about Gabe because I felt he was very one-dimensional for most of the story (although much of this may have been because we only saw him through Puck's POV). Similarly, Mutt and Benjamin Malvern, while excellent villains, sometimes lacked realism because I didn't feel any redeeming or human qualities. They were pure evil, which doesn't create relatable conflict. But then on the other hand, Stiefvater created characters like the Maud sisters and George Holly, who were just a hoot to read. Just as Steifvater brought Puck and Sean to light in the context of Thisby, she did the same with the other islanders, and used them to create the world, and vice versa. The integration of plot, characters and the setting was phenomenal. Writing style: 4/5 I loved the writing style of The Scorpio Races. Somehow, Steifvater made me feel the vibe of the island and understand the setting better through her writing. Incredible. Steifvater has a way of describing Thisby that makes you feel like you're there with Puck and Sean and the waterhorses. Her style is atmospheric and evocative, and I loved every little bit of it. The pacing was maybe the only weak spot. As interesting as the plot and the characters were, sometimes the pacing moved too slow and I started to get a little bored. I thought the races would be longer (literally longer, like days or weeks) rather than a 5 minute race, so I was expecting the description of the race itself to take up a lot of the book. Instead it was a very tiny little section at the end, and most of the book was lead-up to the race. I wish there had been a little bit more action. Plot: 4.5/5 The plot of The Scorpio Races was fabulous. The combination of the legend combined with the realistic and complex society and the interpersonal conflict was fascinating. The way that Steifvater combined the fantasy aspect with the conflict that occurred between characters creates multiple layers of plot, which I loved. It definitely kept me interested. World-building= yes. Stiefvater came up with so many minute details about the world and the Races that made me feel like I was actually there. Bonus: I also love horses, horse racing and mythology, so the subject matter of The Scorpio Races was right down my alley. The only weak side (as I mentioned earlier) is that there was a lack of major plot elements. The book sometimes felt like one long exposition and the Races themselves made up such a minute aspect of what actually happens. I would have liked to see more details of the race itself: more action. Ending: 3/5 I was lukewarm about the ending. There was a lot to appreciate and feel excited about, but I also felt like it was wrapped up in a nice little bow and everything worked out perfectly. That didn't feel realistic, especially after all the lead-up conflict. But yes, okay, I did cry a little still. So.... mixed feelings on this ending. Best scene: Probably the race itself or the very end scene Reminded Me Of: Hidalgo Positives: Strong characters and development, slow romance, world-building, writing style Negatives: Pacing, pure-evil villains were unrealistic, the ending was a little too perfect Cover: Not my favorite. I don't particularly understand the red color scheme and I think the font and image are both pretty boring. Verdict: Fantastic world-building and characters make up for the slow pacing of this unique fairytale Rating: 8.2 / 10 (5 stars)

2019-07-04 20:30

Thực Tiễn Áp Dụng Pháp Luật Hình Sự - Những Vấn Đề Lý Luận Và Thực Tiễn Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi: Đinh Văn Quế

This book. I don’t know. There’s so much to love, but there’s also so much to hate, and, even worse, there’s so much to induce snickering at utterly inappropriate times. At least we know what the author was going for: in the acknowledgements, John M. Barry says that he started out to tell the tale of the 1918 global influenza pandemic – numerically, the deadliest outbreak of human infectious disease – with a focus on those studying and trying to control it. But then he realized the story of that pandemic was entwined with a philosophic transformation in science, so he widened his focus considerably. Fine. Great, even. Here, however, is what the author gives us: the Winchester Mystery House of books.* It is chock-full of topics at every scale, some, but by no means all, of which are: • The history of Western medical science and its transformation from being driven by un-probed, unifying theories (think, treatments based on bodily humors), to figuring out what’s going on using evidence and experimentation. • The early history of Johns Hopkins • The histories of many particular medical researchers, only a subset of whom participated in influenza research • Role of propaganda in WWI, with specific reference to influenza reporting • Where this swarm of influenza viruses came from, how they spread, why they were so deadly • Accounts of the 1918 pandemic, focused on a handful of cities in the eastern US His topics are all intriguing, and about 95% of what he includes is legitimately related to his project. I also respect the enormous difficulty of obtaining source material, what with WWI media censorship and the understandable lack of meticulous records from the outbreak’s height. But The Great Influenza just reads like Barry was larking about in research tangents and lost all sense of proportion about which, and how much of each, should end up in his book. When he finally gets to it, the actual description of the influenza outbreak comes off as oddly piecemeal. And why all the Paul Lewis? Why? Why?? Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think Barry should have scaled his efforts back to fit his original plan. This intellectual switch from knowing everything because belief/logic to using the scientific method arrived gradually in various fields, and was an especially long time coming for medicine. By 1918, there were finally a couple of generations of trained medical researchers, so the Great Influenza is a perfect early case study for what the new scientists and scientific process could achieve. And actually, I wish more authors integrated a quick primer on what science is and isn’t in pop-science books, like Barry's: “Ultimately a scientist has nothing to believe in but the process of inquiry.” (view spoiler) However, Barry never manages to create a whole greater than the sum of its parts. What we have here is a bunch of unruly parts with no whole. And, to borrow what may be the author’s most favoritist end-of-paragraph construction, it gets worse. It gets worse. For someone with an unusually Enlightened grasp of the philosophy of science, Barry sure makes some rookie mistakes. One of the biggies is how he frequently describes “science” (and other non-animate concepts) as doing stuff. Pretty soon, I started picturing “Science” as this furry, frowny, Alot-like creature lumbering around with a lab coat and a Petri dish. Plus, his prose is almost unreadably melodramatic, with a higher density of “greatest-,” “most powerful-,” “doomed-,” and “the fabric of society was ripping apart-” style superlatives than one of my 9th-grade essays. Yes, the greatest and most epic plague in the whole entire history of mankind ever of all time (or whatever this book’s freaking subtitle is) was awful. But readers don’t need constant verbal blunt-force trauma to get that. The ~50,000,000 dead kind of speak for themselves. As a quick demo of both the drama and personification failings, it didn’t take more than a quick page fan to locate this juicy little chapter opening: ”Nature chose to rage in 1918, and it chose the form of the influenza virus in which to do it. This means that nature first crept upon the world in familiar, almost comic, form. It came in masquerade. Then it pulled down its mask and showed its fleshless bone. “ Seriously? Snicker centrale. The only valuable contribution of those words is to give me a handy visual for Nature as it hangs with Science and Alot. Nature didn’t choose shit, as you yourself, Mr. Barry, attempted to explain pages ago with your discussion of influenza evolution. Now hyper-drama in a scientific discussion can be misleading (view spoiler), but constantly anthropomorphizing abstractions is not just a semantic mistake. It actually undermines scientific discussion. On the pettier side: for all his multitudinous research, some of his facts are wrong, and important topics are oversimplified or plumb missing. Like, on page 39 of my edition, Barry gets the publication date of The Origin of Species wrong by a decade. Where is One of Ours in his discussion of contemporary literary accounts of the influenza outbreak? Where’s the virulence theory in his discussion of why the 1918 viral swarm was so dangerous? To cap it all off, there’s an icky flavor to his treatment of gender and ethnicity. I cringed at “Negroes” and “natives” and his anachronistic use of “man” for all humans. The way he discussed female scientists was rather different in tone than his discussion of males. And Barry cites S. Weir Mitchell as an early physician who did “outstanding research,” which may be true, but is bound to raise the hackles of anyone who’s ever read The Yellow Wallpaper. Dr. Mitchell was hardly a paragon of evidence-based medicine. I was always trying to slip more science into my old narrative nonfiction book group, and I so wanted us to read this book. But, as it turns out, I can’t recommend The Great Influenza, and I’m glad we never chose it. I’m glad we never chose it. This book pairs well with One of Ours, because there WERE more contemporary fictional accounts of this pandemic, and with The Emperor of All Maladies, because it IS possible to weave historical, scientific, and anecdotal information into a compelling, coherent narrative of disease, and, what the hell, with A Journal of the Plague Year, because although composed of similar messy parts, Defoe made them a whole. In 1722. (And with The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World, if you prefer your disease books to be parts without a whole.) _____________________________ * (I can’t resist belaboring this metaphor, so it’s totally fine to skip this part. My feelings won’t be hurt a bit.) See, the Winchester Mystery House is this crazy place that shares many attributes with a functional, albeit grandiose, house. However, it’s filled mysterious rooms nobody used, staircases that lead nowhere, blank walls where you expect a door, and doors where you expect a blank wall, among other peculiarities. Sarah Winchester clearly had a passion for the process of creating the house, but the product’s convoluted architecture is best attributed to her reliance on spirit guidance. The Great Influenza is like that, but a book.

2019-07-04 21:30

Chúng Tôi Đã Sống Như Thế Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi: Nguyễn Ánh Tuyết

As soon as I heard about the passenger jets crashing into the Twin Towers and the aftermath I thought about this book. It takes place within the hour that a jet crashed into the Capitol Building. Clancey's heavy-handed libertarianism shines through. He's definitley read a lot of the early history of the U.S. A deep book for a techno-thriller.

2019-07-04 22:30

Chùa Đàn Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi: Nguyễn Tuân

I really enjoyed this book. I had only known of Neil Gaiman as the author of the Sandman graphic novels until I picked this up from a friend's kitchen table. I found American Gods to be a refreshing break from the formulaic fantasy genre(of which I am a fan). It is very original and creative and I really love the way that Gaiman layers his fantasies over our familiar existing reality. The question of what happens to (a) God if no one is around to worship sent me down an intriguing path. I haven't reached the end of it yet. So I am grateful for this book.

2019-07-04 23:30

Thẻ Thông Minh - Đồ Dùng Trong Phòng Ngủ Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi: The Candy

Even though I thought this was one of the most horribly written books I have ever read...it was a page turner and I read it in one night. Complete drivel but captivating drivel.

2019-07-05 00:30

Bé Khỏe Bé Ngoan - Mặc Quần Nào, Mặc Áo Nào! Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi: Mawn Soffer

A gift from a very dear friend (who has also been converted to Mayle-ism!), I laughed my way through this one, just like all the other Mayle works...as a dog-lover, this one was particularly delightful! :-)

2019-07-05 01:30

Chẩn Đoán Hệ Thống Đánh Lửa (Phần Mở Rộng) Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi:

Yuck. Didn't love the writing style - not quite like an Ayn Rand book/The Fountainhead (which was awesome and about architecture) and did not need to read about the psycho killer guy scheming to plot to torture and kill women. Dropping this. I can't believe this book is/was supposed to be so good. ick.

Người đọc Valérie Bolduc từ Stockbridge, VT, USA

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.