Old Goriot by Honoré de Balzac.

It wasn't quite the novel I was expecting but I'm glad that I read it because the translation was really well done. It's rare that I find translated text which reads like it was written for English, but the language here is nicely measured. I was hoping for the story to be darker, by the blurb and the promise that Balzac makes in the introduction which makes it appear like a tragedy. I see, in a way, how it might have been considered as such when it was published, but I wasn't moved by it. I found that the story passed from thing to thing too briskly and that I lacked sympathy for the characters, Goriot in particular, who appears as though he should be the forlorn one.

I also got a strange sense that the novel had wrapped up, eighty pages before the finish. Balzac had different ideas and carried on. My curiosity about Balzac has been piqued, but I don't think I'll be in a rush to read another novel of his too soon in the future. I'm feeling like a change from French classics anyway. I have overindulged.

A Dance with Dragons

The last ~400 pages of the book were excellent. The first 500 weren't as satisfying, but they were by no means bad. I just think Martin made a big mistake by splitting up A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons the way he did. It was frustrating because you wanted resolution for all of the cliffhanger's in AFFC and there were none to be had. It's 959 pages long, and I started out with the dread that I wouldn't find out anything that I wanted to know so badly from AFFC, which was awful. And the addition of even more subplots on top of those introduced in AFFC was absolutely maddening.

I'd probably give it an 8.5/10. It's got a really low rating on Amazon, but it's just because fuckwad fanboys got their panties in a knot over a six year wait so omg 1-star reviewlololololz. AFFC and ADWD are not as good as ASOS was, of course, but still, as a whole, when you compare the series to any current popular fantasy series, ASOIAF is far, far superior, even in its worst books.

I'm doing my indulgence summer re-reads at the moment, so of course the books that I've most recently read are going to get glowing reviews.

Especially this one.



Not my favorite cover image, but way better than most. >__>

Sort of like Bradbury's October Country/From the Dust Returned collections, this novel is a delicious feast of creepiness from bottom to top. I just love the way he writes about the creeping horror of the carnival, especially the way he's continually describing Dark and his Illustrations. It's got all that light/dark duality I so enjoy. Recommended for people who generally don't like classics but would like to seem a little bit erudite--Bradbury's creepy stories may be the only remotely "literary" stuff I read, .

I just finished to read Thornton Wilder "The Eighth Day" and I can't say it was bad, but for me it was... too sugary... as for reality, anyway that's not for re-reading, I guess just average.

Meh, it could have been a lot creeper. Granted, I really liked the passage where he was going off about Death being your constant companion, so, really, you're never alone...

It was decent, but it doesn't hold a torch to some of his other ones, like The Stand or The Shining or, to give one of his newer books a fairer shake, From a Buick 8. Man, I loved that book. Haunted Buick that takes you to an alternate dimension ololol.

Stefan Zweig's Marie Antoinette. History becomes more interesting when reading not just a dry, compressed facts, but such a biography as this one. Although I don't know whether it was the translator's fault but such an overdose of archaic words made it a bit hard to read. That's why I read it so long. But I'm glad I did it anyway.

Donald Laming - Understanding Human Motivation

18,6 / 20

A roughly 300 sites manuscript, the title speaking for itself.
Structured into 16 chapters, reaching many different aspects like "determinism and free will", "boredom", "social conventions" or "money" the author builds something here, that makes a reading less like a typical discourse, but more a somewhat convinced theory about basically everything that could be seen as important in regard to human behaviour.

Crammed with references and examples from more or sometimes less recent history, the reader is facing here the quite interesting observations of the author, as he follows through the different matters of daily life in society. Each chapter seems to be well in place and in specific matters touching the next one, contributing to a bigger picture step by step.

Also quite appealing to me, was the space left for personal interpretations as for example not every chart gets analyzed throughout the next 10 or so pages, only leaving a impression at first glance, culminating in providing some completely unexplained and unanswered "questions for discussion" at the end of each chapter.

In the end, there is no clear answer given to the question of "what makes people tick?"and as the author states himself: , hence this book follows this idea.

In my humble opinion, a very enjoyable read and well spent time.

Let Me In by John Lindqvist. I didn't even know it was a movie until I saw it on the cover of the book. There were definitely some WTF moments in it, but nothing too shocking. Except. One part that happened around the end pissed me off. I won't give it away, but it involved a character I really liked. I'd give it a 7/10. The characters who were likable were and those who weren't, weren't.

Last book I read was The Magician by Lev Grossman and I rate it a 9/10. I really liked the concept of how you have to be a genius to use magic and magic is kinda like science. Its like Harry Potter and Narnia put together but for adults. so good i had to read it twice

Mass Effect Evolution. 8.5/10

This was waaaay better than Redemption was. Makes me want to actually buy Invasion as separate issues.

George Orwell's 1984 9/10

Well, what can i say? I'm pretty sure this is one of the best books i have ever read. The themes and political ideas that are in the book, although i knew them before hand a bit, were presented and explored in such a fascinating way, and even when i knew most of the things, it still surprised me. For example, during the whole of part two i seriously was getting a lot of hope for the things and were convinced there was no way that something like Ingsoc could ever be eternal ("if the objective was not to remain alive, but to remain human, what could it matter?" and "Freedom is being able to say that two plus two makes four")... Until i got to part three ("What happens to you here is forever" and of course "Do it to Julia") then i could see how it might be eternal, and the creepy thing for me was, well, O'Brien and how i couldn't completely demolish some of his arguments .

Even if you don't find the aspects of Totaliarism very interesting (and i think the novel explores it in a really masterful way) you should still read it since i think it still has a lot of very human things in the novel .

Ironically, i think Part Three was the most strong and interesting part for me .

Oh well...

when I was reading this I wonder if Julia is agent of the system. I really love this book.

I've heard some doubts/theories about that but i'm pretty sure she wasn't. Mainly because the novel and it's themes work better if Julia is being true (i've even also heard some theories that julia actually took more to betray Winston than viceversa in room 101) and also considering some of the things she did/said in front of Winston and all of the time they spent together kind of rule her out as an agent of the Though Police to me. I guess what i mean is; If she was an agent, Why take so long and such bothers just for Winston?

double

both of them betrayed themselves. system was constructed perfect to this. I know after reading she wasn't agent - but maybe? it's my paranoid nature. they spent together so many time. she was very paranoid about their meetings. and this nice old man who rented them this room - he was encouraged them to this crimes (love, independence), julia has access to real coffee and exclusive things. it was encouraging her to be freethinker. so - if becoming paranoid - why alternative end could not be like this - julia just pretented love to Winston beacuse it was her job? if that old man spent so many time being nice? why not julia?

True, but the old man didn't do things like saying "i love you" to winston or get naked and make yaoi fanfic material with him, or refusing to leave his side in front of a member of the inner party even when that could bring her trouble (i mean when they talk about the brotherhood with O'Brien, when she shouted "No!" at the request of she and Winston accepting probably being separated forever) she was paranoid about the meetings for the same reason Winston was paranoid of her before receiving her letter, the though police might discover them at any minute (Until around the last half or quarter of part two and during pretty much all of part one, Winston just was in a "I don't give a fuck" mental state, and he already said "Thoughcrime IS death" he knows they're gonna kill him anyway, so what does it matter to him? He only hides due to a natural evolutionary instinct of not provoking his own death) I don't really understand what you mean about the old man encouraging them to their crimes, as far as they knew he was a prole, so they though he just didn't care as long as they paid the rent. There's also the thing that when they caught them they punched Julia in the stomach, that doesn't sound like something an agent would do (or need to do) to a coworker, and julia had scars when winston saw her post-ministry of love.

I think if she was part of system being by coworkers in presence of Winston could be part of her job. and scars could be fake.
the old man was encouraging them passively - by showing them cute old antique things and talking to Winston about old times. I think he wasn't prole. He was agent.
I know she was victim like Winston, but system could work this way.

There's no doubt that the old man was an agent ("It was the alert, cold face of a man of about five-and-thirty. It occurred to Winston that for the first time in his life he was looking, with knowledge, at a member of the Thought Police.") he was surely fishing thoughcriminals like winston setting up a shop about things from the past and being a sort of historian, i suppose it's his modus operandi. Scars could indeed be fake or just unimportant (she might have got them in her job at the novel section) But at that point in the novel i think Orwell leaves pretty clear that the party does not care about Winston in the sligthless, they even gave him a desk-only useless job as a sort-of Inner-party member (he also said he could even have met with julia again and no one would have cared), if she was an agent (and i assume that also implies she didn't care for him in the slightless at any moment in the novel) then why have that last talk with him? her job was done if she was an agent (and this is a bit off-topic, but i always wondered if after the end of the novel they ever met again, but considerings the things at the end, it seems unlikely) And yeah, they screwed over loyal party members too (like Syme or Parsons) And just out of curiosity nevada, i think you read the whole book, i just felt a bit curious, i kinda wanted to ask; Do you feel that the party would or could someday fall, or it effectively will last forever?

(Don't you think that the name "Though Police" sounds great for a band, don't know why, but it sounds to me )

by now I really don't have idea. it can collapse or last forever. but if it will last longer - to make all reforms with language it can turn people into thinkless robots. and then - it could collapse, or last longer and longer. it's very pessimistic.

I think that although i might be a bit naive i honestly think that there are quite a number of tiny particles of hope in the novel, aside from the most clear ones ("If there is hope, it lies in the proles" "The proles are human beings, we are the dead") there also little things like the Love song outlasting the hate song, the fact that the party doesn't completely control the proles ("the proles and animals are free" true that they keep the bread and circuses on them, but at least it's not doublethink and ingsoc ideology) You know, i've never really fixated on the oppresing qualities of Newspeak, i suppose that indeed it can diminish human though, it's just that i never though much of newspeak. And speaking of, what i think you could call the one of the greatests speck of hope is The Newspeak article (a little article at the end "The principles of Newspeak", just after "he loved big brother" i haven't read it yet so all i know of it comes second-hand) to quote a troper "The biggest hope spot, though, comes from an index that Orwell insisted be added to all versions of the novel - the one containing the article explaining Newspeak. This confused a lot of people...until they realized...hey, it's written in the past tense..." that reminds me of a part in the novel, you see, at around the final of the article there is something like "There were also large quantities of merely utilitarian literature—indispensable technical manuals, and the like -- that had to be treated in the same way. It was chiefly in order to allow time for the preliminary work of translation that the final adoption of Newspeak had been fixed for so late a date as 2050." (also, the article is in oldspeak and has a sort of scholarly feeling to it, almost as if were studying an ancient civilization) you see, early in the novel Winston talks with Syme: This might be accurate or not, but i like to think that the article either exists in a future without the party or in a prole neighborhood, aside from the thing that there is a question that O'brien didn't notice (or pretended for his convenience and thanked his luck that Winston didn't notice the mistake) that he didn't really answer and winston didn't call him on it.

sorry for having written so long, and sorry if this is a crazy rant that doesn't make any sense at all.

"Dead inside - do not enter" A Lost Zombie book.
It's very special in that it only contains little snippets of the stories, in the form of letters, (even part of a letter), messages written on posters and post it notes etc. The background is explained in a timeline on the front page describing the super flu and how people started turning to zombies.

This isnt for anyone, some might feel cheated with the content

I really liked it tho, small pieces of the zombie event

The Good Soldier Švejk, funny adventures, comic characters, comic remarks, humor. Truth is not something to think about much. Funny checkpoint book.

Ryū Murakami
共生虫
Kyōsei chū, Parasites, French translation by Sylvain Cardonnel
protagonist hikimori. I honestly do not like the book very much. Just read the most part do not want to finish reading. Very cruel book.

If you don't mind me asking, why do you find it so cruel?

I am a new mwmber here. I've just finished "God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy. This book landed her the Booker as the first Indian. It was a small and rather simple story with not so simple consequences. Her awesome storitelling sees through our society and customs. Got a punchy ending. I feel bitter for the "two-egg twins". A must read. And I am not enough qualified to rate this book.