Mini-reviews #4

This is my attempt to wrap up all the reviews from this year, which I have not yet written. With these done, I will still have a few Classics Club books to write about (very conflicting ones for me - The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which is the second best book I read this year, and The Turn of the Screw, to which I gave 1 star...)

 

 

Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde

I wanted to love this book and I didn't. When reading Thursday Next books, I sometimes had this feeling that Fforde has too many ideas and that he is trying to cram them into a too small of a space, but in case of Thursday Next books, there is always this thread, this link that keeps me on the story and does not let it linger away - the literary references. In Shades of Grey, there was just too much of everything and at times too little of explanations and motives. I still appreciate this book as another witty story from one of my favourite authors, but it does not compare to Thursday books for me.

3/5

 

 

 

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt

Whoa, what a surprise there! I never planned to read this book, but as I saw it for a ridiculous price (2 dollars or something) in Kindle store and vaguely remembered this book being loved by fellow bloggers, I bought it, and read it, and - liked it a great deal. The Sisters Brothers is full of this kind of dark humour that some of us particularly enjoy (me included) and the character of Eli Sisters was just... so good.

4/5 

 

Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West by Blaine Harden

This is a piece of non fiction that is extremely hard to read and write about. North Korean concentration camps are considered prisons with no way out, but this one man managed to escape and tell the world what goes on in the camps. I feel I must warn that people with very sensitive nervous system should be extremely careful before picking this book up, although on the other hand I feel like every Citizen of the World is obligated to know and acknowledge what goes on in totalitarian countries.

5/5

Roverandom by J.R.R. Tolkien

I'm one of 'em Tolkien fans, so not even going to pretend not to be biased here, but I also truly think this is a very good piece of children's literature. It's full of charming creatures (some of them a bit scary, but only a little!), a little bit ridiculous wizard, travelling to the Moon (be still my beating heart) - in conclusion, Roverandom kept a silly smile on my face the whole time I was holding it in my hands. The book contains a few drawings by Tolkien himself, a super nice treat for fans.

5/5

 

UFO in Her Eyes by Xiaolu Guo

This was another spontaneous read, I snatched this book during TBD 25-hour sale for some ridiculous price and was drawn by the fact that this is a translation from Chinese. UFO in Her Eyes is a weird book presented in strange formats - mostly interviews, but also e-mails, drawings (maps), notes and reports. Despite of what may seem as a bit of a gimmicky presentation, the subject matter is serious - a very primite village in China, which suddenly gets an opportunity to use some funds to carry out innovations, and how that affects the life of "regular" people. Also an interesting thing about this book is that since all the formats of narrative are so subjective, I found myself constantly asking if I can trust everything that is being said.

4/5

 

Parasite by Mira Grant

Parasite is an intriguing horror-dystopian story about what happens when people's habits on hygiene go overboard and someone gets an idea to develop a parasite (tapeworm, in this case) that would cure humans from all diseases. Of course, not all the things go as the scientists have planned... Even though Parasite has highly interesting premise, it fell more into the "meh" category for me. It had its strengths (I have read many books with worse character presentations for example), but I completely failed to form any kind of emotional attachment to any of the characters.

3/5

 





The Secret History by Donna Tartt

This book has gotten a lot of buzz since The Goldfinch was published this year and I bought it out of pure curiousity. Almost all the characters in this book are extremely dislikeable, but that didn't stop me from immensely enjoying the book itself - it was just gripping. I would not want to befriend those folks, but it was very interesting to observe their psychological troubles and downfalls. I expected to get a very captivating, well and intelligently written whydunnit, and that is exactly what I got, hence

5/5