Reviews and Comments

A nice premise - strangers in lockdown in the same apartment building, gathering on the roof and exchanging stories. Each character written by a different (unknown until the end) author. I'm a huge Margaret Atwood fan so I was really looking forward to this one. But the stories were too disjointed and mostly uninteresting. I only started enjoying it in the last two chapters, where there is a little development in the plot and a twist.

Not quite as good as the first four in the series. It is as if Dusse had run out of ideas and invented something a little too far fetched this time.

Ein weiterer toller Band einer fantastischer Serie.

Not quite as good as The Handmaid's Tale, which it strongly reminded me of, but still a cleverly crafted page-turner.

Enjoyed learning about the Camino via this easy and enjoyable read. It has definitely helped me to make up my mind not to do the Camino myself. At least not the one the authors did.

After a strong start in the first few chapters I was struggling to get through the rest. The writing was plain and disjointed, the plot and characters thin, and it often read more like journalism, some climate change manifesto or a physics lecture, rather than fiction.

This was so well written. I love Doerr's beautiful descriptive style and the way he interweaves the stories of the characters intricately together.

Minus half a star because it didn't make me shed as many tears as such a powerful story should have. I can't really tell why. Maybe it was just my mood and I may need to reread it sometime and update my rating o 5 stars. Its definitely worth a read and a reread in any case.

I love Murakami's writing style - his descriptions, symbolism, the philosophical dialogs, the way he handles serious themes (existence, innocence, love, death) and his jazz and literary references. There was only one character in the book that annoyed me somewhat. I want to blame it on Murakami's lack of first-hand experience with the sort of problems the character had, but maybe its my own. All his other characters were perfect in their imperfections and totally relatable. The story itself was hauntingly beautiful.

I didn't start with high expectations for this book but was pleasantly surprised. It was very insightful and clearly written - a mix of interesting conversations, humane stories and individual journeys, as well as some social science, psychology and neuroscience theory and research. I really enjoyed reading it. Now I need to give McRaney's podcast a second chance.

Overall an easy and worthwhile read - concisely writtenand engaging. My only criticism would be that the explanations of international politics may be sometimes overly simplistic due to the focus on geography.

Nice premise and reasonably entertaining at the start. Clever word play throughout but generally a little too absurd and lacking a proper plot. I got bored somewhere in the middle - not really my cup of tea.

Utopian futures are not usually my thing (dystopia any day), but this was thoughtfully crafted and heart-warmimg so I enjoyed it. The only thing that bothered me a little was the gender pronoun usage. The main character is referred to as "they" throughout, which of course is fine but a little distracting for me.

An easy and enjoyable read despite some illogical parts. I like the idea of exploring such human concepts as love and loneliness through an artificially intelligent robot.