Dữ liệu người dùng, đánh giá và đề xuất cho sách
Sách được viết bởi Bởi: Bích Phương
Walden was a hopelessly selfish journey into navel-gazing, 19th century style from a sort of 1845 version of Jack Kerouac, minus the wanderlust and panache. As such, the book elicits a mixture of allure and contempt for his chosen lifestyle and attitudes. And...honestly that kind of means he hit the mark intentionally or unintentionally. Therein lies the balance and the lie of self-actualization. Even at our most independent, our most free-wheeling, isn't there someone to whom we owe a debt for our very being? I think so. Where does independence begin then? Thoreau doesn't care, he is too busy watching ants and talking about how badly the local farmers are ruining the land. But quotes like "The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation" give one pause and reason the think maybe he had something there, even coming from an erstwhile hobo mooch. For me, though, the strongest section of the book were in the descriptions of Walden Pond. As a biologist, I found this part fascinating and really a forerunner of much of what we see in terms of naturalist literature even today. The philosophy was somewhat weak, but the touting of the powers of observation was strong. Civil Disobedience on the other hand is a great little essay. Very inspirational and much more directed and focused than Walden. I thoroughly enjoyed it and think everyone should read it at some point in their life.
Sách được viết bởi Bởi:
I liked this book a lot but wouldn't say I loved it for a couple of reasons. I didn't like Chapter Thirty-Five where the author wraps up a part of the story from the viewpoint of a crow. Truly, unbelievable for a dramatic story like this one.
This is something of a pot boiler, a political suspense novel that starts out as an investigative procedural. I started this book several times before finally reading it through. I just reread it this week. It's a fair political thriller but rather formulaic in some respects.
I picked this book up by chance at the library. With a stack full of other books in my arms I doubted I would get around to reading it anytime soon. Shortly after that I decided to give it a whirl and ten minuets later I couldn't put it down. The first few chapters were a little rough in that some of the titles and things take time to become adjusted to however, the heroine of the story is so fascinating it makes it worth the effort(minimal effort really). The world of Hawspar is rich and well planned, the characters are all well formed and interesting. Holly Lisle really makes you interested in finding out more about all the characters, makes you care about them and their fate. I would recommend this book to people who like to spice up their reading with a little bit of fantasy and adventure as well as to hard-core fantasy and sci-fi fans. It's a really good read and defiantly worth your time. What I loved most about the book is the cultures of the people in the world and how interesting they were! The Tonk religion in general was fascinating and the hand marking was a neat addition to their culture. Holly Lisle did not skimp on the details, she worked really hard in developing the world in which our hero and heroine live.
Sách được viết bởi Bởi: Nhóm bút Lovedia
Read this in High School, too. This is why I can't give dates--I've been a ravenous fool all my life!
Sách được viết bởi Bởi: Kiều Giang
I read and LOVED the novel Still Alice - what a marvel of research and writing, despite the disturbing topic of early-onset Alzheimer's. The book is written in Alice's voice and the reader experiences what she is going through and feeling at the gut level. The author is a neuroscientist and really knows her stuff! The author, Lisa Genova, self-published this book with encouragement from the Alzheimer's Foundation (I think that was the organization). Then Simon and Schuster picked it up (3 publishing houses wanted it) and the rest is history...it debuted at #5 on the NY Times bestseller list.... and I think much of its "publicity" has been word-of-mouth. Genova is working on a new novel, Left Neglected, "the story of a woman whose car accident results in a brain injury that creates a known condition called 'Left Side Neglect'. In that condition, the brain doesn't see or process anything on a person's left side". She talks about it in the back of Still Alice (which I have already loaned out). It will be a long time before I stop thinking about Alice and her struggles, her identity, and her family. This book was amazing.
Perhaps I was expecting too much? Skloot brought attention to a fascinating, overlooked, and shameful chapter of medical science. There was much to admire in this book, but I thought a good 1/3 should have been excised by the editor's scalpel. No doubt the family of Henrietta Lacks was treated badly, and were justifiably angry, but their constant back and forth with the author began to veer into histrionics, and I ultimately became so frustrated that my sympathy began to flag.
i tried. Both ends of the line are exposed; the lower end terminating in an eye-splice or loop coming up from the bottom against the side of the tub, and hanging over its edge completely disengaged from everything. This arrangement of the lower end is necessary on two accounts. First: In order to facilitate the fastening to it of an additional line from a neighboring boat, in case the stricken whale should sound so deep as to threaten to carry off the entire line originally attached to the harpoon. In these instances, the whale of course is shifted like a mug of ale, as it were, from the one boat to the other; though the first boat always hovers at hand to assist its consort. Second: This arrangement is indispensible for common safety's sake; for were the lower end of the line in any way attached to the boat, and were the whale then to run the line out to the end almost in a single, smoking minute as he sometimes does, he would not stop there, for the doomed boat would infallibly be dragged down after him into the profundity of the sea; and in that case no town-crier would ever find her again. Before lowering the boat for the chase, the upper end of the line is taken aft from the tub, and passing round the loggerhead there, is again carried forward the entire length of the boat, resting crosswise upon the loom or handle of every man's oar, so that it jogs against his wrist in rowing; and also passing between the men, as they alternately sit at the opposing gunwales, to the leaded chocks or grooves in the extreme pointed prow of the boat, where a wooden pin or skewer the size of a common quill, prevents it from slipping out. From the chocks it hangs in a slight festoon over the bows, and is then passed inside the boat again; and some ten or twenty fathoms (called box-line) being coiled upon the box in the bows, it continues its way to the gunwale still a little further aft, and is then attached to the short-warp - the rope which is immediately connected with the harpoon; but previous to that connexion, the short-warp goes through sundry mystifications too tedious to detail. i tried. but any book with that passage, and thousands of passages just like it, can never get five stars from me. and probably not even four. not because i think it is shitty writing, but because when i was growing up, i was told that girls just wanna have fun, and that was not giving me any fun at all. everyone said, "nooo, karen, you were eighteen when you read this the first time, and you just didn't give it your all - you are bound to love it now, with your years of accumulated knowledge and experience." and that sounded valid to me, and it's like when i turned thirty, and i decided to try all the foods i had thought were "from the devil" and see if i liked them now that i was old. i thought that revisiting this book might have the same results and discoveries. but this book remains like olives to me, and not like rice pudding, which, have you tried it? is quite good. but no. turns out that when i was eighteen, i was already fully-formed. and it's not that i don't understand it - i get the biblical allusions, i understand the bitter humor of fast fish loose fish, i am aware of the foreshadowing and symbolism - i went to school, i learned my theory and my close-reading, but there are passages, like the one above, that i could not see the glory in. all i could see was the dull. and the bitch of it is that it started out fine - good, even. i was really getting into the description of the docks and the nantuckters, and it was giving me good new-england-y feelings. and then came that first chapter about whale-anatomy, and i was laughing, remembering encountering it during my first reading and being really angry that this chapter was jaggedly cutting in on the action. and, honestly, it was really good at the end, too. but the whole middle of this book is pretty much a wash. a sea of boredom with occasionally interesting icebergs. at the beginning, he claims that no one has ever written the definitive book about whales and whaling, so - kudos on that, because this is pretty damn definitive. it's just no fun. maybe i would like it better if it had been about sharks?? i like sharks. i know you wouldn't know it to look at me, but i don't have a problem with challenging books. i prefer a well-told story, sure, and i am mostly just a pleasure-reader, not one that needs to be all snooty-pants about everything i read, but i've done the proust thing, and while he can be wordy at times (hahaahah) his words will, eventually, move me, i understand them, and i appreciate being submerged into his character's thought-soup. viginia woolf - dense writing, but it is gorgeous writing that shines a light into the corners of human experience and is astonishing, breathtaking. thomas hardy has pages and pages of descriptive nature-writing, but manages to make it matter. i just wasn't feeling that here. the chapter on the way we perceive white animals, the whale through various artistic representations, rigging, four different chapters on whale anatomy; it's just too much description, not enough story; it seemed all digressive interlude. and you would think that a book so full of semen and dick and men holding hands while squeezing sperm and grinning at each other would have been enough, but i remain unconverted, and sad of it. maybe if i had read this one, it would have been different: oh, no, i have opened the GIS-door: i am only including this one because i totally have that shark stuffie: maybe i am just a frivolous person, unable to appreciate the descriptive bludgeoning of one man's quest to detail every inch of the giant whale. or maybe all y'all are wrong and deluded. heh. dick.
for professional review
Sách được viết bởi Bởi: Hà Thanh Uyên
Antes de leerme la mítica Carmilla de Le Fanu (posiblemente la mejor historia vampírica pre-Drácula) me he querido releer el también muy celebre "El vampiro" de John Polidori. Es de sobra conocido que Polidori no era realmente escritor profesional, y que este relato parte realmente de un fragmento comenzado (y no terminado) por Lord Byron. Hasta tal punto que durante mucho tiempo se le atribuyó al propio Byron su autoria (el Fragmento original de Byron se puede leer bajo el título "Fragmento de una novela" y, aunque escaso y a medias, es muy superior en cuanto a calidad al de Polidori. Y sin embargo es muy recordado por un par de cosas: -Por ser la primera gran obra popular sobre Vampiros (esa fama tiene, aunque es bastante debatible) en habla inglesa. -Por presentar la figura del vampiro como un tipo elegante y aristocrático, y tremendamente ambiguo. Y a pesar de todo ello no me veo capaz de valorarlo demasiado bien. El relato es exageradamente corto para todo lo que narra, apenas hay descripciones o diálogos. Los personajes no están bien dibujados y sus reacciones a veces parecen totalmente fuera de lugar. La narración es inconexa y salta de un sitio a otro de forma bastante desigual. Lo mejor de todo el relato es la caracterización que del vampiro se hace en las dos primeras páginas, y la parte final, con el protagonista cayendo en la desesperación más absoluta. Por lo demás, es un relato recomendable por lo que supone, pero me temo que no está a la altura de su inmensa fama.
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.