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airdog

fossilfranv@good.franv.site

Joined 2 years, 5 months ago

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Yellowface (Hardcover, 2023, HarperCollins Publishers Limited) 3 stars

What's the harm in a pseudonym? New York Times bestselling sensation Juniper Song is not …

Formula book (written following outline of similar works)

2 stars

Predictable from chapter 2. Well written but boringly following the formula. Read at the beach when it's hot and you feel lazy.

Wellness 4 stars

The New York Times best-selling author of The Nix is back with a poignant and …

Suprisingly superb book!

4 stars

Very long (640 pages) novel and I have to admit that I rarely got bored. All the more surprising to me as the subject matter and the characters do not represent cherished values for me. The main character comes from Kansas (which, sorry to say, for me is more associated with red neck mentality and values), he is married and has a son. The novel is essentially the story of that marriage, another subject that normally would bore me to death. But the writing is vivid, not telling a linear story and goes on to reflect on the nature of art in the 21th Century with considerations on the impacts of social media algorithms on people interactions. But you have to no let yourself be impressed by the wall of text that is each page, very few paragraph breaks give you the chance to take a breath.

Ice Princess (2011) 2 stars

The Ice Princess is a crime novel by Swedish author Camilla Läckberg. As her debut …

Don't waste your time

2 stars

One of the worst book I've ever read. If you want to know a lot of totally meaningless details about each character, then take a look. Absolutely no depth to the characters, they seem taken out of some children book. The novel is long, on top of that. Believe me, read something else.

Tell No One (Paperback, 2002, Orion Publishing Co) 4 stars

Eight years ago David Beck was knocked unconscious and left for dead, and his wife …

Very good thriller

4 stars

Nothing very special about the intrigue itself. It's located, mostly , downtown New York, just an ordinary doctor caught in a strange situation.

But the plot is very good, keeps you on your toes the whole while, no gaping hole that I could find, follows a logical line that carries the story to a satisfying ending.

Adrift in Istanbul 2 stars

In a city perched between East and West, and with the Cold War growing colder …

Good way to explore Istanbul just after WWII

2 stars

One of the cities that have been on my "to see" agenda for a long time but never had to opportunity to concretize.

The novel is reminds one of Philip Kerr but if that was Wake's model he missed the mark by quite a bit. Where Kerr's work reveals a deep knowledge of Berlin and long research on the history of that period, Wake's work remains shallow at best, both in it's description of a city that has the reputation of being one of this planet's jewels and in his depiction of historical circumstances back then.

Easy to read but not very rewarding.

« Isabelle allongée sur la nuit enrubannait mes pieds, déroulait la bandelette du trouble. Les …

Beautiful book

3 stars

Written in the fifties, a book about a lesbian relationship in pension school.

Apparently un-publishable back then as it would have caused a scandal. Not very sure why as her writing is highly poetic (you can read a quote in the book's description here) .

At the time this author was pushed to Gallimard by Simone de Beauvoir, not published in it's original form but in a very edulcorated formulation...

The Covenant of Water (EBook, 2023, Grove Press) 3 stars

A stunning and magisterial new epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala and …

Beautiful prose but gets a bit long

3 stars

It's a long book (715 pages) that tells of the saga of many characters in India from the beginning of the century to the 60's. English (as opposed to most latin languages) is difficult to turn into something beautiful but Verghese somehow achieves this in his writing. The problem is that he takes on too many characters and it's not long before you get a little lost and as a result it becomes difficult to root for one character in particular. He also uses a lot of native language sentences and words which certainly doesn't help. But a nice book nevertheless.
Apparently another book of his is much better: Cutting from Stone and I'm planning to have t look.

reviewed Love Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

Love Theoretically (2023, Little, Brown Book Group Limited) 3 stars

The many lives of theoretical physicist Elsie Hannaway have finally caught up with her. By …

Literary eye candy

2 stars

Content warning spoiler alert

La carte postale (Paperback, 2021, GRASSET) 3 stars

La carte postale est arrivée dans notre boîte aux lettres au milieu des traditionnelles cartes …

Another story of a Jewish family during WW II

3 stars

Well written, it kept me interested through it's 576 pages. But I have to say that there are many such stories (as well as movies made from them) which makes it a difficult subject to write about without giving the reader an impression of deja vu.

Anne Berest keeps the tone personal, telling the story from the point of view of different members of her family which manages to make the story more engaging.

What Lies in the Woods (2023, Flatiron Books) 4 stars

They were eleven when they sent a killer to prison. They were heroes . . …

Very engaging thriller

4 stars

First novel by that author for me and I was nicely surprised.

At the beginning, reading about three young girls doing some magic in the forest I was thinking, oh no, not another "she said and he said and they said, like..." work as is often the case.

But not at all, Marshall managed to deploy a narrative that kept me hooked, with numerous twists (somewhat predictable but still very well handled ) making me turn pages without realizing it. Had a quick look at her other works and all of them seem to have as subject matter women or young women so not sure how they read but will probably have a look.