Reviews and Comments

Florian

florianec@bookwyrm.social

Joined 1 year, 3 months ago

My mind races with all my longings.

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Aleida Assman: Der europäische Traum (Paperback, German language, C.H.Beck) 4 stars

Das Symbol der EU ist der Sternenkreis. Lange stand er im Rahmen der offiziellen Rhetorik …

Aleida Assmann talks in this book about 4 learnings from European history and provides in the second half of the book two examples for each learning. The learnings are securing peace, creation of democracies, the German culture of remembering and the rediscovery of human rights.

Ned Beauman: Venomous Lumpsucker (Paperback, 2023) 4 stars

The venomous lumpsucker is the most intelligent fish on the planet. Or maybe it was …

In the near future corporations need to buy extinction credits when they accidentally or on purpose drive a species to extinction. Intelligent species cost 13 times as much as non-intelligent ones. Resaint evaluates if a species is intelligent and hires by a mining company. Things go wrong and suddenly Resaint and the executive from the mining company are hunting through the Baltic to find the last remaining venomous lumpsuckers.

Ned Beauman crafted a story with some really creative elements and some twists on reality. At times the book is super depressing because certain elements could happen in the real world as well.

Kazuo Ishiguro: Unconsoled, The (Paperback, 1999, Faber and Faber) 4 stars

A surrealistic novel on a man who finds himself in a strange city, not knowing …

Weird and funny

5 stars

In The Unconsoled we follow the pianist Ryder who arrives in a town completely unprepared and without any knowledge of the itinerary and follow him as he is dragged through the story and as he tries to not disappoint the towns citizens which expect him to solve the towns grave problems. Whatever they may be. Not a single scene is played out fully, together with Ryder we are dragged to the next scene and we are left in the dark.

This sounds bad but The Unconsoled is wonderfully written and shines with a dry humor.