Reviews and Comments

First off – I wouldn’t have guessed that the Author isn’t female. The main character is written realistically, palpable and very rounded.

I wanted to read the book for some good near future sci-fi and an adventure. I got so much more out of it. Borderless essentially shows you the story of an immigrated citizen with a complicated past, that has to question her way of loving and protecting her new home – be it her own little sanctuary or the United States of America. You follow Diana through her journey and meet every side-character through her eyes. The writing is beautiful and it brings the different relationships to live.

Knowing that you were being manipulated didn’t stop it from working.

Besides Dag, I got a good sense of the people in her life and I’m looking forward to meeting him in Bandwith.

[…] sketches capturing the multiyear fire […] his enthusiasm was aedent, fueled by the guilt.

Eliot Peper seems to write very descriptively but less with adjectives and more through actions, which I liked a lot. The appearances of people seem secondary unless something is described in context of an action or a feeling it evokes. It’s an interesting story that feels like you’re slowly unearthing various layers of the story, the people and the ploys. While it is Sci-Fi everything feels realistic and I enjoyed seeing a catheter using agent who’s human and doesn’t go rogue with kung-fu skills.

Just like that Diana’s plan evaporated. She wanted to come back with a firm rebuttal, explain how she’d thought through every contingency. But the fact was, she hadn’t.

I joined her in a journey, starting out with eager nervousness, through all the turmoils of present and past and in the end was moved by few unremarkable words in a melancholic world, full of shit and beauty. Because life isn’t a fairy tale, but it writes the best stories. And the stories of this characters are rooted in real human emotions in all their complexity. Please get yourself some tissues for the epilogue.

[I got access to this graphic novel through NetGalley]

Have you ever seen a sad ghost? Because I have and it breaks my heart that someone forgot him. I read this graphic novel in one go, I was so captivated. Brenna uses beautiful colors and still the panels can show you the depressing boredom, the sad day to day life, making it palpable without words. A skill of show don’t tell that many movie directors don’t have. The main character seems to be multi-dimensional, although there isn’t much description and is unpretentious, but still a fighter. There’s a lot of subtext and room for wonderful interpretations as well as some puns. A simple, heart-warming and tear-inducing story that seems a wonderful fantasy.

Quotes

She died this past spring, and then Dad sort of did, too. He’s still 100% opaque, but slightly less visible.

Kevin will probably get new shoes, right? ‘Cause he has a mom.

Grown-ups are skilled at making terrible things seem great.

5 books and I'm exhausted - the inconsistency, the cookie cutter characters (at least 2 characters in different books calling their nanny/housemaid "mommy/mom" because they didn't know that they weren't acually their mom until five years old, always having the "slutty", confident, beautiful without trying best friend, someone who has done culinary school etc) as well as the pretty random plot "twists" ("hmmm... nothing is happening, I probably should have the character do something - let's get her to quit"), paired with a unreflected main character just - it's boring and reads like fan fiction and a self-insert story by the author (I can just imagine her putting together decorations, moodboards and outfits on pinterest, instead of thinking about the characters. Which most of them are writers of some kind or an other. And if they aren't their husband is (Last night at chateau marmont)

The stories are neither really character nor plot driven - it feels like the plot is there to link certain moods and gorgeous fashion opportunities.
1) Devil wears Prada - picked the ebook up because I really liked the movie, was funny but not as entertaining as the movie. I mean Miranda Priestleys speech about the blue sweater? Don't remember it being in the book.
2) Revenge wears Prada - more whiny, paranoid, unreflected 13 year old in the grown up body of Andy Sacks
3) Everyone worth knowing: Bette is just an awful name, sry. Also she has no character, but the author makes a point to write/describe her parents, uncle, coworkers etc and sometimes making small remarks what Bette thinks about this and that. But those remarks stay pretty bland too.
There are teases about some real character stories, but they're left out all together. Self insertion books are about imagining you're there, not empathizing with the characters, right?
4) Chasing Harry Winston: reading about Adriana was funny, Emmy feels like a mousy girl, she describes herself as being over her ex, but is obviously stalking him (like turning up in their old apartement until he changes the locks - creepy and not ok) and Leigh -oh well Leigh just seems to be a gimmicky character who's as bland as she describes her fiance. And I love bookish girls in the regular. No plot developement really and in the end the characters have not evolved although some things happened and they're at the same place they started...
5) Last night at chateau marmont: frustraiting, boring and if there wasn't the husband I could really dislike the wife, because she has some really cool descriptions in the begining, but acts very differently than I would imagine someone like that. Oh well. And there's a dog - like in "everyone worth knowing" (there's a parrot in Chasing Harry Winston - essentially a dog like Ari by Jaiden Animations ;-))

This books are for you if - you're too poor to be a real fashionista but would love to be one - and your motivation gets expressed in Pinterests^^ Then I really think you would enjoy this as a vacation/relaxation chick lit. If you're more in the book for a storys sake than self-insertion - don't bother.

I picked up this book after enjoying a newer novel by Anthony O'Neill: The Dark Side, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Somehow I "get" his characters, they feel real and flawed in realistic ways. So I looked up what else he wrote and stumbled upon The Lamplighter. Since it's set a) in Edinburgh and b) in the Victorian age I had to read it.

The writing is different that in the Dark Side, because it seems adapted to the time in which the novel is set. There are many! words I haven't encountered yet, because I'm not a native english speaker and also O'Neil seems to have used quite a lot of "old timey" and Scottland specific language. But using my eReaders dictionary that was no problem and I actually enjoyed learning new stuff (although I suspect I won't be remembering much of it). The novel feels like a bunch of loose threads getting woven together and then totally change direction. There's a sense of mystery and wonder to the way he tells the story. And I was often on the verge of being pulled in, into pre-enlightenment superstitions for the sake of the book, as well as doubting if that really was, where the story was going and expecting a scientific twist.
The characters although not described in much detail, feel realistic and three-dimensional. Looking back there was a good mix between the thoughts of the characters and their actions, that made them palpable.
There are quite a few philosophic discussions in the book, dealing with the difference between medieval and enlightenment times, woven in between the crime story that takes one to many different places. Having been to Edinburgh certainly helped with my imagination, knowing which streets the characters, and especially Evelyn wandered.

There is no romance (which I was happy about), there's only one female character and three main male characters and one female sidecharacter, but it works, especially in that time. I didn't find it especially horrific or horrific at all, being honest, so I would not categorise it as a thriller. It's a very special crime story somehow, in my opinion.

There are soooo many good quotes, but most of them hint at some things that happen or are in the twists themselves, so I just selected a few that I hope won't spoil anything.

It was a terrible and exquisite thing, to have a heart that was not a muscle but a wound.

Such men, riven with self-doubt, were of course vulnerable to fantastic theories and fabulous missions, and equally at risk of driving deeper into self-destruction.

Blood is like French perfume to the Edinburgh hussy, Carus.

Have you ever stopped to consider how much time even the most unimaginative man each day spends, neither willingly nor unwillingly, in the world of his imagination?

It could well be the case that the last thing a man sees is not that which his eyes settle upon, but that which his imagination furnishes for him. It could be argued quite reasonably, in any case, that this imagination is what really constitutes a man’s soul.

We consciously impose limits on our own thoughts and settle into an expedient system of simplifications and archetypes. We willingly stamp archetypes even upon ourselves, to fall into the world we have constructed out of easy recognitions and the disinclination for complexity. The unconscious, however, remains unsated and frequently rebellious.

“And of the orphanage? What do you think of when I mention it now?”
She considered. “I think of a parcel tightly bound.”
“A parcel? Not a cage?"
“Cages,” Evelyn said, “have air.”