Ein Buch mit wenig Handlung — aber dafür eng gepackt und so gefüllt mit Gedanken, dass man kaum alle aufnehmen kann. Faszinierende innere Monologe, reiche Sprache und immer wieder ein Wiedererkennen eigener Gedankengänge. Momente von Fröhlichkeit und Schönheit, insgesamt aber irgendwie traurig.
A visionary "aliens attack the world" story from 1898. Great adventure story, clear language and interesting reflections on ethical questions. Wells has some thoughts about why we as humans would have any right to survive in the case of a superior species attacking our planet. There's no easy answer.
A story that oscillates between small, entertaining anecdotes and a grander story that is told throughout the book. It's the first book I've read by Stephen Fry and I enjoyed its wit, sexual explicitness and plentiful cultural references to Alan Turing and the likes. A very British read that I've really enjoyed.
A story about secrets that tear you apart, growing up and learning how to live even if you don't have much love left for life. All across the story: A painting that carries meaning across time.
At times, the story seemed directionless to me, but it slowly found direction throughout the book. Donna Tartt's atmospheric writing and situational poetry were very immersive. About some aspects of the story, I am still unsure; there are definitely some riddles left for me to think about.
I am unsure if I found the book too long or just right. The book felt like it told more than one story, and I’m still unsure if the end concluded every single of those stories for me. Maybe these stories will go on in my head for a while. An unusual, but good feeling.
This is clearly a good book. Still, it wasn't for me personally.
The premise of the book is the huge amount of early-earth-creationists. The actual numbers of people believing in a world younger than 10,000 years baffles me (about 45% in the US, less in Europe, more in Islamic countries). In my surrounding though, I haven't met a single person who wouldn't believe in a million year history of evolution.
Dawkins really wants to drive the point home that evolution is a fact, so the books tends to get very repetitive in places. For some facts he gives three and more examples, stretching over several pages, where a simple "this is how it is, and here is a 2 sentence example" would have sufficed.
From the explictit overstating of examples and repetition of already mentioned facts I would have thought this to be targeted at ... less educated people? At the same time, Dawkins uses quite educated language. His sentences have this intellectual ring to them. It's as if you are hearing his British voice in your head.
The actual facts and pieces of evidence he presents are very interesting. Still, I am sure the same could have been done in a third of the book's volume.
This is a book offering ammunition to people who are surrounded by history deniers. Sadly - well, fortunately - that's not the case for me. So it was a quite a drag to read. Hopefully his other books are different, as I intend to read some more.
128 pages of scribbled notes. Very compact and informal introduction to electronics. No unnecessary stories told. Instead, there is room for 100 simple circuits to try out. And that's what I still have to do in order to really "complete" this book.
Teilweise ein wenig albern, aber wenn man sich darauf einlassen kann, ist das Buch eine gute und praktische Einführung in die Thematik. Gut: Alles wird in praktischen Projekten erklärt. Manchmal nicht so gut: Einige Projekte sind einfach Selbstzweck, um eine gewisse Sache zu illustrieren. Das ist okay - aber Projekte, die wirklich einzusetzen sind, sind schon cooler (gibt es aber auch im Buch). Ich habe übrigens die erste Ausgabe gelesen. Die war "nur" 600 Seiten lang. Ging aber erstaunlich schnell, da man mit Programmiererfahrung ungefähr ein Drittel einfach überfliegen kann.
I need to catch up on my reading goals, so decided to pick up a John Green book. And it turned out to be a quick read, just as I'd hoped for. The characters and setting were pretty much what I anticipated, and yet the book was able to surprise me in places. Also, the whole two-author collaboration really worked with this story.
Hatte mit einem Roman gerechnet, tatsächlich ist das hier eine Sammlung von lose miteinander verbundenen Kurzgeschichten. Jede aus einer anderen Perspektive und unterschiedlich wirr geschrieben.
Sprachlich super. Irgendwie fehlte mir aber noch der rote Faden, irgendein Rahmen der die einzelnen Geschichten besser verbindet. Bei jeder Geschichte hatte ich den Wunsch, den Charakter noch länger verfolgen zu dürfen. Stattdessen war dann plötzlich Schluss.
Habe das Buch unter Schlafmangel auf einer langen Zugreise gelesen. Vielleicht lag es daran, dass ich mich nicht auf alles perfekt einlassen konnte, aber mitgerissen hat das Buch mich nicht.
4 Sterne aufwärts. Gut zu lesende Geschichte, authentische Charaktere, clever und unterhaltsam. Einzig das Ende fand ich nicht so raffiniert, wie es große Teile des Buches vorher waren.
Hatte beim Lesen schon Christian Ulmen vor Augen, das ist genau seine Art von Charakter. Bin auf dem Film gespannt.
"You call juggling a sport, and people laugh. You call juggling an art, and people laugh. You show them there's a Juggle magazine, and people laugh a lot. You punch them in the face, and they stop laughing."
A short pamphlet by Jason Garfield, advocate of juggling as a sport and opposer of juggling as a hippie activity. Quite entertaining if you don't take him literally.
I had high expectations for this book but was heavily let down. What wants to be a modern 1984 / Brave New World mashup is just a description of a world like ours, where social media continues to dominate everyone's live.
So there I was waiting for the big thing to happen, the "visionary story telling" that was promised by this book. And then: Nothing. A mere continuation of what all of us can imagine social media to be misused for.
Yes, scary if you think of it. But surprising, new, revolutionary? No way.
Maybe I am too used to this world we live in already and just didn't get the greatness of this book. But any comparison of this book with 1984 or Brave New World falls utterly short of the actual vision and storytelling that Orwell and Huxley showed in their works.
A short read and entertaining text about different aspects of physics. Still, these are lecture notes, so it might not be for everyone.