Ger Doornink từ Knokke-Heist, Belgium

_er_oornink

05/19/2024

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

Ger Doornink Sách lại (11)

2019-09-29 08:30

Ngôi Nhà Số 11 Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi: Sophie Hannah

Fun, "brain candy" reads.

2019-09-29 09:30

Con Nít Con Nôi (Song Ngữ) - Phiên Bản Có Bao Lì Xì Đựng Sách Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi: Hoa Cúc

A thriller writer who needs no introduction whatsoever, whose scalpel clean prose has given an entire generation reason to read, Dean Koontz delivers us the third book in his popular Odd Thomas series. Although at times his tomes have given us numerous grounds to skip them altogether , or perhaps throw them across the room , one cannot help but feel admiration for such a prolific, industrial and unbelievably swift composer whose work ethic makes most writers looked positively blocked. For those not familiar with our protagonist, Odd Thomas is basically the boy from The Sixth Sense all grown up. Readers of supernatural fiction might find this foundation unbearably insipid, knowing it's certainly been tapped in the genre numerous times throughout history. But Dean charged the original novel in the series with an almost magical sentimentality; the sequel, Forever Odd, was somewhat blighted in comparison , and fell very short capturing the charisma of the original. Whereas the best books are written from the heart, Dean seemed to use his head with the sequel: a strategy that more often than not ensures failure. With this in mind - I hesitantly approached Brother Odd, hoping that Dean had received critical feedback regarding the second book - and attended to what was said. In this volume, Odd Thomas has retreated into the snowy Sierra mountains and joined a phalanx of monks as a 'guest' resident of St Bartholomew's abbey. He also shares his space with nuns (of which some are privy to his secret), psychically and mentally challenged children , a dog named Boo and the ghost of Elvis Presley. But his peace in isolation doesn't last long as one of the monks goes missing and then is subsequently murdered in a hellish manner as an affront to his beliefs. It's not long before the shadowy Bodach's make their return, sniffing and salivating along the corridors of St. Bartholomew's as harbingers for future carnage to follow. Unless, of course, Odd can outwit this destiny with all the talents at his disposal. The cast in Brother Odd is eccentric and hilarious, with Dean using his continued tradition of humor to the full extent. However, one of the main players, the Russian born Rodian Romanovich, could have been handled more deftly; his character is clumsy and oppressive, his lines out of sync with the real. The salvation to Dean's errors comes in the form of his philosophical questings on the nature of reality. Those of us who have taken the journeys One Door Away From Heaven and From the Corner of his Eye will know his blend of science and the supernatural is often enlightening. Weather it be 'spooky effects at a distance' or 'the strange order that underlies all chaos' , the optimistic and life-affirming messages are there for people to decode. And for pessimists like yours-truly, this can often be beneficial and gratifying. Dean Koontz is a writer guarantor, an author whom (like a four-star restaurant that rarely disappoints), promises a story that will sufficiently entertain even when he is batting at the bottom of his game. Rarely, when such huge input is put out into the masses can we criticize. I must admit, the green eyed jealously bug has surfaced within me regarding him: This guy is an enigma; the amount of words spewed out reflects someone who is born to the pastime. Brilliant, sometimes terrible, but nevertheless a treasure - the religion of reading and its disciples are ultimately lucky to have him.

2019-09-29 10:30

Cocktail Thương Nhớ Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi: Nhà Số 5

A Tale of Two Cities Despite the title, the novel “Prague” is set exclusively in Budapest, the capital of Hungary. A Confession and a Generalisation First, a confession: I am hopelessly, romantically nostalgic about Hungary, a nation I have never visited. There is a girl involved, well a woman, and the years were 1978 and 1979. But you don’t want to know about that. Besides, we would need a few glasses of Bull’s Blood to taste the flavour of those times. Second: a gross generalization: obviously influenced by the context of my first confession, I have never met a Hungarian I didn’t like or respect. Some More Gross Generalisations Part of the appeal of the nation and the people for me derives from the fact that they were part of two major social and political groupings during the twentieth century. Pre-Second World War, they were the eastern half of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. From 1947 to 1989, they were part of the Eastern Bloc. Perched between Austria and Germany (on the West) , Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia (to the North), and Romania and Ukraine (to the East), Hungary isn’t quite German or Prussian, and it isn’t quite Slavic. Its language derives from a distinct group called Finno-Ugric or Finno-Ugaric. The language with which it has most in common is Finnish. Despite being pivotal to two Empires, the Hungarians are a distinct cultural island in a sea of variety. Perhaps because of their differences, the history of this proud people is paradoxically marked by invasion and conquest by external forces. Yet, wherever its émigrés have ended up, many of them have become extremely sophisticated and successful business people. The Irony of Place “Prague” is set exclusively in Budapest, the capital of Hungary. This reflects an underlying irony that, at the time the novel is set, many of the characters believed they should really have been in Prague, because that is where all of the action was. Yet Arthur Phillips chooses to set his fiction in the “lesser” of the two cities. I still don’t know whether this choice of title is insightful or sophisticated or just plain immature. There are several of these authorial choices that gnaw away at your satisfaction as a reader. And all of them could have been easily remedied. Only it's too late to do anything about it now. A bad joke can follow you around for the rest of your life. So there is a sense in which the author only has himself to blame for some of the criticism he has received in other reviews. I want to be a little more generous though. The Significance of Time Arthur Phillips was born in 1969. “Prague” is set in 1990 and 1991, when he was in his early 20’s. It is the immediate aftermath of the Fall of Communism, when the country was starting to experience the shock waves and challenges and opportunities that rapprochement and integration with the West represented. An Abundance of Characters The truly Hungarian characters in the novel are in the minority. The real focus is the disparate group of North American expatriates who have been lured to Budapest by the thaw. Some seek business opportunities, some just want to be there to experience the aftermath of a cultural event as significant as the fall of the Berlin Wall, some are literally in transit on their way to Prague. All of them are in their 20’s, “young, anything is possible - friends, romance, adventure”. Drumming Up Business Arthur Phillips prefaces his novel with a quote from Thomas Mann: “The age of arms and epopees is past…We are in for a practical era, you will see: money, brains, business, trade, prosperity…Perpetual peace is on the cards at last. Quite a refreshing idea – nothing whatever against it.” These words provide an important clue about the design of the novel. It is not just about a Generation X, a “Lost Generation” finding itself in Europe. It is partly about business and how it is done and who it is done between. Budapest is a new frontier town, and people, Americans, have come here to trade, to buy, to sell, to profit, only perhaps to put down roots, to build, to remain part of the future. We quickly realise that all of the main characters will one day leave Budapest, that for them it will be one long indulgence, a carefully maintained hangover, a broken heart, a battle scar, a chemistry experiment, an education, a stepping stone, a CV entry, the source of some future nostalgia. They will return to where they came from, clearly changed, possibly improved, only partly European, still essentially American. Of course, they will leave behind them the city and people of Budapest , who will still have bridges to re-build, a nation to shape, business to be done and relationships and families to form. The Expatriate Ensemble For much of the novel, the cast is an ensemble. Arthur Phillips wrote it in the third person, so initially we don’t identify with any particular character. He uses a nice plot device of a game called “Sincerity” to introduce us to: • Charles Gabor, an American of Hungarian origin, an up and coming venture capitalist here to buy State-owned businesses that are being privatised; • Mark Payton, a gay Canadian who has just finished a thesis on the history of nostalgia; • Emily Oliver, a junior Nebraskan embassy employee who describes her job as “neat”; • Scott Price, from Los Angeles, someone who will only return to college “when they institute a master’s degree in living for the moment”, but in the meantime survives on “a diet of self-help books, brief and impassioned love affairs with Eastern philosophies, and a cyclical practice of wading in and out of various regimes of psychotherapy, accredited and otherwise”. Ironically, Scott is the only one who finds true happiness in Budapest: he marries and settles down with a nice Hungarian girl. However, it is Scott’s brother, John, who ends up being the keystone of the story. He is a journalist with an English-language daily newspaper. He has an eye for detail and a sensitivity greater than the others, and we see most of the events unfold and unravel through his eyes. He allows himself to be infatuated with Emily, but to no great effect. Instead, he finds himself in some sort of jump on again, off again relationship with shaven-headed Nicky, an ambitious and hard-working photographer and artist with the newspaper, who is one of the most interesting characters in the novel. A Stylistic Diversion The above introductions take place over 125 pages. There is little action, we just get to see the ensemble in their new environment. Phillips draws his characters out patiently, and we readers have to be patient with him. His descriptions are detailed and lyrical, sometimes too lyrical. While your judgment is still suspended, some of the prose can come across as a little bit purple and in need of editing or self-censorship. It was particularly disconcerting to find this type of sentence on page 118: “The young American man with the stubbly shaved head, ill-fitting khakis, and worn blue blazer who answered the door found the alarming sight of John Price’s bright red-smeared palm held up in mute explanation of why he could not shake hands quite yet.” I even spent some time wondering how I would have edited or improved this sentence, only to conclude that only a complete excision with a blue pencil would do. Still, put on notice and alert to similar breaches, I discovered that this was the worst sentence in the book, and nothing that was yet to come offended me so greatly. Imre Horvath We meet two main Hungarians, the first of whom is Imre Horvath, an urbane sexogenarian publisher who is returning from exile in Austria to reclaim ownership of his family’s publishing house. Phillips makes a strange stylistic choice in how he introduces him. Even before Horvath has appeared in the contemporary action, Phillips uses a 62 page section of the novel to detail the history of the Horvath Kiado, the publishing house that was established in the nineteenth century and managed by the Horvath family uninterrupted until the arrival of communism. We meet Imre’s predecessors before we meet him. It is this chapter that I felt reads like a Wikipedia article. It is devoid of dramatic tension. It has no context until later, when it is finished and we move on. If you were already sceptical, this chapter would defeat you. I persisted, to my benefit. In the following chapter, we see how Charles Gabor treats Imre with little respect in their business dealings. In the earlier chapter, we learn that Imre deserves respect, if only because of the history of generosity, community-mindedness, decency and sophistication that he personifies. I read most of the dialogue between Charles and Imre, just wanting to slap Charles for his impudence and lack of respect. But this is the point of the novel: no matter what you think of Imre personally, he personifies an old Europe. Phillips’ ensemble of New World Americans are like Henry James’ characters climbing all over the face of the Old World and its cultural and business traditions. They’re like 20-something management consultants coming in with their new-fangled management theories thinking they can change everything for the better. The old and tested must be bad, the new and untested must be good or, at least, better. There is a juxtaposition going on here. However, it is so much a part of the recipe of the novel’s success that I would have preferred the content of the chapter to be revealed to us through dialogue or description interspersed within the action. As it is, there is too much of a sense that the Hungarian Goulash has been cooked unevenly, and parts of it are underdone. We are left to enjoy the idea of the meal, rather than the execution. Nadja The other Hungarian is a faded female jazz singer, possibly of a similar vintage to Imre, who sings and plays piano at the Blue Jazz club, somewhere you can drink, talk and listen to music beneath posters of Mingus, Monk and Parker, a previous generation of jazz expatriates. John is captivated by Nadja and her stories, although we are never certain whether they are totally fabricated. She recounts tales of Weimar Berlin, ironically a time before the Second World War that was equally attractive to expatriates, if a little more ominous than 90’s Budapest (although that might just mean that we couldn’t see the omens for Hungary in the 90’s). As if that experience wasn't enough, Nadja describes other adventures - being fought over by two Gestapo officers, "her escape from Budapest, her bohemian life in the United States, her affair with a world-renowned concert pianist, her outrageous dealings with lesser European royalty", her return to Budapest. Emily thinks she’s a liar, John wants to believe her, because ultimately she, like him, is a story teller, a little bit of a magician. In the same way that Imre is urbane, sophisticated, accomplished, Nadja is vital, interesting, a spicy ingredient, the paprika in the Goulash. She is a source of life and even sustenance, even if her tales might not be true. At the end, when John visits her apartment, he is shocked to see so little evidence of her past. There are no paintings on the walls, no objet d’art on exquisite cabinets, only perfume bottles in the bathroom. The minimalism of her surroundings strengthen the impression that her stories might have had no substance. However, John (and I) might just prefer to believe that she had few material possessions, because of the itinerant life she had always led. Her life was in her head, she was like a snail carrying her home on her back, she had nothing but her stories and her memories and perhaps her nostalgia for a life lived to the full. Success is Nothing Without a Succession Plan The real action, such as it is, concerns the business deal between Charles and Imre. Charles puts together a joint venture with Imre to acquire the publishing house back from the State, the beginning of the restoration of his family heritage. In the absence of any family that Imre can locate, Charles is his new family, his succession plan, his guarantee of perpetuating the role of his enterprise as the conscience and memory of Hungary. Needless to say, for Charles, this is just a commercial deal. Imre is looking for continuity, Charles is looking for an exit strategy as soon as he has signed the papers. John writes favourably about Charles in his newspaper, and Charles gets what he wants. Ironically, just as the first wave of venture capitalists is leaving, a new wave of investors arrives. Charles’ saviour is Hubert Melchior, a media entrepreneur, the owner of Multinational Median Corporation, not quite Rupert Murdoch, but a colorful, vulgar Australian nevertheless. Just as this deal appears to be coming to fruition, John decides that he has had enough of Budapest and catches a train to Prague. The middle and end of the novel are a lot more plot-driven than I have suggested. However, I am reluctant to reveal any spoilers. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi Throughout the novel, we see individuals, relationships, families, businesses and nations in transition. In an ever-changing world, they seek continuity and stability. In the Old World, tradition plays a greater role, for good and bad. It gives its population a degree of confidence, but limits its possibilities. In the New World, there appear to be no limits on the entrepreneurial personality. Everybody seems to have confidence, but it is born out of individual egotism, not collective maturity or conscience. You get the sense that Arthur Phillips genuinely knows the world he describes in the novel, as diverse as it seems. Of Experience, Wisdom and Memories Over the course of the novel, some of Phillips' characters do nasty things to each other, and he has been criticized for being too cold in his treatment of them. However, I think that his characters are genuine, three-dimensional people with good and bad qualities. The expatriates are at their most youthfully ambitious, and therefore at their most naively ruthless. They haven’t learned how to slow down and achieve their goals at a steady, methodical, more considerate pace. The Hungarians, Imre and Nadja, have a whole lifetime of experience and wisdom and memories. The expatriates, apart from their childhood, are at the beginning of their own journeys and are just starting to take their first cocky, over-confident Gen X steps. Apart from John, they reveal no respect for the wisdom and memories of the Hungarians. Even John has to take into account the judgement and scepticism of his friends. Yet, you also get the sense that this might be just one errant step in their own lives, that they will have up and down experiences of their own, even if they do not involve life-threatening moments or involuntary exile from your country, your family and your heritage. Varieties of Nostalgia You also get the impression that the expatriates will look back on their years in Budapest with a great sense of nostalgia, something similar to the nostalgia of Imre and Nadja. But you also wonder whether, in the future, they will recall Budapest with a sense of guilt and wasted opportunity. To this extent, “Prague” isn't shaped or weighed down by youthful idealism. Ultimately, it is a fair-minded analysis of worlds and generations in apparent conflict. For me, it is a wise and mature work by a precocious author. The style of "Prague" is flawed in parts, all the more so, because the flaws stand out against a background of high quality. There were several occasions when I almost put it aside, the sentence I quoted above, the Horvath Kiado chapter. Yet I’m glad that I kept going, and grateful that Phillips rewarded my persistence. I would trust him to take me on his future journeys, whether into the past or the future. Just as Arthur Phillips can create a perceptive nostalgia for the past, I suspect he can conjure a magical "nostalgia for an age yet to come".

2019-09-29 11:30

Bộ Sách Rèn Luyện Trí Thông Minh - Trò Chơi Tư Duy Nâng Cao (5 - 6 Tuổi) Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi: Nhiều Tác Giả

Imagine that you’re a working class Cockney mother with a husband who detonates bombs and a young son who is four years and three months old. You stave off your anxieties about the uncertainty of your life through mindless sex encounters. Eventually, you meet a neighbor – a journalist named Jasper – and, while your husband and son are at a soccer game, you invite him to your flat. At the exact same time you are in the throes of sexual abandon, there’s a massive terrorist bomb attack at the London soccer stadium, vaporizing over one thousand people – your husband and son among them. How do you go on? How do you live with the remorse? Chris Cleave explores that question in an epistolary structure; the nameless woman writes a letter to Osama bin Laden in the aftermath of the attack. The epistolary form is used with caution as a framing device (Nicole Krauss’s The Great House and Moshid Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist come to mind), because it is not easy to pull off. The reader is a fly-on-the-wall and can choose to connect with the narrator – or not. And if truth be known, Mr. Cleave is not entirely successful in his narrative control as the conceit of writing to Osama begins to wear thin. What he is successful with is developing a fragile persona – an obsessive woman who is gradually unraveling as a result of post-traumatic stress disorder and who is quickly spiraling downward. The anonymity of the character makes her everywoman, trying to survive in a post-terrorist world. The woman writes, “Before you bombed my boy Osama I always through an explosion was such a quick thing but now I know better. The flash is over very fast but the fire catches hold inside you and the noise never stops…I live in an inferno where you could shiver with cold Osama. This life is a deafening roar but listen. You could hear a pin drop.” The bombing and PSTD, though, is only the beginning. London is quickly transformed into a virtual occupied territory as the woman fights her own inward battles. She is drawn into a psychological maelstrom with Jasper and his fiancée, Petra, an upper-class fashion journalist who happens to resemble her closely. Indeed, Petra and the narrator may very well represent two parts of London, which is described as “a smiling liar his front teeth are very nice but you can smell his back teeth rotten and stinking.” Each cannot exist without the other. And so they enter a danse-a-deux of symbiosis and betrayal. Eventually, the novel veers toward a stunning denouement and an over-the-top ending. It’s extraordinary ambitious for a first-time novelist (this book was written before Chris Cleave’s more well-known Little Bee) and sometimes the prose comes across as rather self-congratulatory or forced. Mr. Cleave’s intention, it seems, is to portray a decadent Western society that struggles to break free of its class distinctions – without success, setting itself up as something to tear down. Yet at the core of the novel, there is an emotional void. The characters are not quite satirical, yet not quite real. And as a result of the epistolary form, we, as readers, are held at arm’s length, not quite embracing them. This often disturbing, sometimes macabre novel has its own intriguing history. The morning after its initial launch party, in July 0f 2005, three suicide bombers detonated their devices in the London Underground. The book tour was shelves and the novel was temporarily withdrawn from sale by many UK retailers. Sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction. And in Chris Cleave’s world, fiction is very strange indeed. (2.5)

2019-09-29 12:30

Các Cuộc Đời Ngoại Hạng - Những Bài Học Thành Công (Nguyễn Hiến Lê - Bộ Sách Sống Sao Cho Đúng) Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi:

** spoiler alert ** The second book in the series of airhead. this book I thought lets down the series a bit because I enjoyed the forst one much more than this. Em watts is all time busy, doing photo shoots and fashion walks makes life so hard but she does earn the money, but when she finds Nikki's brother telling her that their Mother has gone missing they set out on a mission to find her but when they do there is a lot more to it than just bringing her home. a whole lot more. still I recommend you should read this

2019-09-29 13:30

Truyện Cổ Tích Việt Nam - Sự Tích Mùa Xuân Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi:

A must read for all New Yorkers and U.S. History students.

2019-09-29 14:30

Angry Birds Comics - Chiến Dịch Trộm Trứng Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi:

This one was just OK for me. I liked the overall premise of a future USA following the exhaustion of fossil fuels as natural resources and the subsequent collapse of the global economy. The way the country is put back together some 150 years later is very interesting and well conceived. I just could not get into the characters. Maybe it is because the style is much more of a memoir than a standard fiction book. Whatever the reason I wasn't able to get a feel for anyone in the story. Overall a decent book, good story, I just didn't care for the style or the characters.

2019-09-29 15:30

Cẩm Nang Chăm Sóc Bé Những Năm Đầu Đời: Các Bước Chuẩn Bị Cho Bé Sơ Sinh Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi:

I love this book so much! It made me dislike Moby Dick a little less, which is saying something because that book...I can't even talk about it. Anyways! this book is wonderful!

2019-09-29 16:30

12 Đại Tướng Soái Trung Hoa - Tái bản 06/12/2012 Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi: Huyền Cơ (Biên soạn)

I read this when it first came out which was before Armstrong became more of a public celebrity figure. It's great if you're interested in learning about professional racing and Armstrong's story is really compelling. He sometimes comes off as the cocky Texan, but that's part of why he wins and part of the attitude that helped him beat cancer.

2019-09-29 17:30

Chinh Phục Nhân Tâm Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi: Tako TêRu

Ronia is one bad-ass little robber girl who speaks her mind, makes her own way, and competes with boys! Has political undertones about collectivism.

2020-04-28 16:06

Chuyến Tàu Sinh Tử Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi: Next Entertainment World

我建议只是跳过看书，然后看即将上映的电影。 实际上，电影不能比实际的书更糟。 作为一个受到欺骗并非常认真对待忠诚的人...借来的东西激怒了我。 这本书是关于一个正在与最好朋友的未婚夫作弊的女孩。 现在，我知道她最好的朋友是一个完整的女巫，但是作为一个女孩，我们所有人都有一个这样的朋友，这并没有赋予我们去拿走不属于我们的东西的权利。 这本书几乎没有re悔的事实，这让我很恼火。 我知道事情不是黑白的……但是这本书对我来说就像是一部小丑浪漫小说。

Người đọc Ger Doornink từ Knokke-Heist, Belgium

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.