#Books

Guten Morgen, Fedinauten!
Eine der spannendsten Eigenschaften des #Fediverse ist, dass es so unglaublich viel zu entdecken gibt.
Wie ihr sicher schon gesehen habt, fotografiere ich nicht nur, sondern lese auch (endlich wieder) für mein Leben gern.
Ein paar meiner Eindrücke habt ihr ja auch hier schon gesehen.
Jetzt habe ich mir bei #bookwyrm einen Account gebastelt, um die Bücher, die ich lese, zu rezensieren und mir neue Anregungen zu holen. Ich probiere es einfach mal aus!
Wer mag, darf mir gerne folgen:
@InAnguloCumLibro@bookwyrm.de
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#books #bookstodon #leseempfehlung

Du hast mir von der Stadt erzählt. #Buchbeginn . So fängt er an, der aktuelle Roman Die Stadt und ihre ungewisse Mauer von Haruki Murakami. Und wie es seine Angewohnheit ist, schreibt er unaufgeregt, ruhig, geradezu entspannt von zwei Parallelwelten. Als Jugendlicher ist der Protagonist unsterblich in ein Mädchen verliebt, das er sein ganzes Leben lang nicht vergessen wird. Aber eines Tages ist das Mädchen fort, und er sieht es nie wieder, außer in jener seltsamen Stadt und ihrer ungewissen Mauer, wo er als Traumleser wieder auf sein Mädchen trifft. Aber sie erkennt ihn nicht... Der Protagonist wird Bibliotheksleiter in einer kleinen, realen Stadt irgendwo in den Bergen Japans, trifft auf seinen toten, doch sehr lebendigen Vorgänger im Amt und auf einen autistischen Jungen, der mühsam, aber zielstrebig Kontakt zum Protagonisten aufnimmt. Und eines Tages ist der Bibliotheksleiter wieder in der Stadt und ihrer ungewissen Mauer, gemeinsam mit dem autistischen Jungen. Ich lese Murakami ausgesprochen gern, gerade weil er seine etwas verdrehten Geschichten so unaufgeregt erzählt, als beschreibe er die kleinen Alltäglichkeiten. Und was mir auffällt: In all den Geschichten, die ich von ihm gelesen habe, wird irgendwo immer Bezug auf Jazz und Jazz-Musiker genommen. Ob das wohl damit zu tun hat, dass Murakami mal für ein paar Jahre eine Jazz-Bar führte? Jedenfalls ist das Buch ein Genuss, genau das richtige, wenn es draußen kalt, nass und ungemütlich ist. Eine klare Leseempfehlung von mir. Auf #Seite100 lese ich Die Wärme, die Geräusche und deine Anwesenheit hatten den Raum wieder in die mir vertraute Bibliothek verwandelt. . #buchbubble #bookstodon #buch #lesenswert #books #murakami #buchempfehlung

9.5 star Yet another great book by Natalie H. This one is a series of essays about goddesses Natalie has not gone in-depth about before. Except for her fav, Athene, who she goes further in-depth on.

But all is well told. As usual, she simultaneously rehabilitates them. AND shines a light on their damning qualities. She doesnt treat the transmogrifications and other odd punishments as "quirky things gods do sometimes". But as the cruel and unusual acts they are, that sometimes are beyond the wrong done.

However, the essays also acknowledge the cruel wrongs done to them. The effects that would have on a person. She also does an excellent job of bringing these stories not only in to context of where they came from, but somehow also into our modern context too. And again, she also excels at reading her own work for the audiobook.

CW: talk of rape, kidnapping, depression, violence, abusive relationships #Bookstodon #Books #GreekMythology #Mythology #NonFiction #NatalieHaynes

Overall: A Great little prequel to the excellent novel Telepath. It adds depth to the character and setting for readers of the novels. Those who have not read the novels may find it a bit slow to start, but if that doesn't bother you then this novella is a great bit of world-building.

On 1st Reading: If you are looking for an SF story that you can sink into like the warm embrace of a welcoming comfy chair, look no further than the Hive Mind series.

There are seriously tense moments. There are disturbing questions about society and identity that got right under my skin and creeped me out.

Yet this introductory story is told in a warm, friendly and innocent manner that just sucks you right into the world, I feel like I know these people and I really can't wait to meet up with them again in the next book.

I guess Ms Edwards is just an excellent and subversive writer.

I've read all her novels and I can see her becoming more ambitious with each release. I already wait for each new story with baited breath. I fully expect that a few books down the road I'll be shelving her with my all time greats such as Isaac Asimov and Anne McCaffrey. Not an honour I give out lightly.

On 2nd Reading: On rereading I noticed many more details, seriously good world building, pacing and simply darn good storytelling. While the main character goes through a lot, stepping back and looking at the implications of what is happening makes me realise that a lot more is happening then she realises. Great stuff, enough material for at least another book used just as background to make the world feel real. Talent!

On 3rd Reading: I see in my 1st review of this book that I said "a few books down the road I'll be shelving her with my all time greats such as Isaac Asimov and Anne McCaffrey" . After her recent books, that is now the case. In fact those two authors are a good description of Ms Edwards' writing: She has the forward thinking, social issue addressing, mystery-loving style of Asimov, but with the much, much better storytelling and character development of McCaffrey. I'd add to that mix the fact that in her latest books Ms Edwards has shown that in writing action scenes she is way better than either Asimov or McCaffrey, and this is amplified by the fact that there is always an issue at stake (Asimov style) and every character is one you care deeply about (McCaffrey style).

So, yes, Janet Edwards is my favourite living author.

On 4th Reading: This particular little story doesn't seem all that epic at first glance - it starts out as the tale of a 17 year old living in a vast underground city, but as you read it, not only do you come to care about young Amber, you get to see how this society works and you are made to ask some very serious questions about free will, the role of government and how much freedom we should give up for safety. At the same time there is an entirely different and much more serious story going in the background on that Amber is oblivious to, but that readers may deduce (reading it 4 times may have something to do with it ;-) ).

This is not the most action packed of Ms Edwards works - it's not meant to be - but all that character building and world building gives it a special place in my heart.

#book #books

I was on a train to Edinburgh for a short break and rapidly running out of pages of Zoe Schiffer's book Extremely Hardcore. Not wanting to carry two large hardbacks with me, I'd left my copy of Character Limit by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac back home; now I was going to need something else to feed my appetite for Twitter meltdown reading material over the next few days. There was a book I'd remembered reading a particular review of citing its lack of any sort of insight but at least it was about the Twitter buyout. And it was long enough ago that I figured there was a good chance by now I'd be able to pick up a cheap paperback of it to fill the void. That book was Ben Mezrich's Breaking Twitter and, now having finished it, I wanted to write a cautionary warning to anyone else tempted to buy it.

Before tackling the main issue of the author being generally sympathetic to Musk, there is another major stumbling block with this book. Despite the numerous Amazon reviews praising it as well-written, it didn't take long for the alarm bells to start ringing about the style of writing. Already in the second paragraph of the prologue, Esther Crawford is introduced with the sentence, "Esther had her laptop open in the front of her, the screen casting a cone of light across her porcelain skin." This is maybe an improvement on her later being described as, "a beautiful implement, like a high-quality torque wrench or an elegantly tuned slide rule," but immediately I could tell I might struggle reading this after all. And sure enough the book is full of this overwrought, tortured prose - often each chapter starts with some laboured, unnecessary description of a character or scene (and is usually completely imagined by the author rather than being based on the actual truth) but at least sometimes, over the course of the chapter, he thankfully runs out of steam with this writing style. He also at times tries to suggest a half metaphor without actually giving it any meaning - there's a chapter where he goes on and on about squares within squares within squares but without any sort of significance or meaning. Or another chapter where he's seemingly so amazed by Musk's mother being a model that it jams his caps lock key and causes him to list out celebrity names in all caps for a couple of pages for no reason.

Maybe Mezrich's opinion of Musk at least slightly falters over the course of book (at one point he counters the suggestion that Musk is afraid of the FCC by saying that he definitely seems scared of something by the way he surrounds himself with bodyguards and his general paranoia about (and treatment of) Twitter employees) but his general admiration and repeated references to his "genius" are a bit difficult to stomach. When Musk went off on a monologue about buying Twitter to improve society and further civilisation and even talking about aliens at his first all-hands meeting, Zoe Schiffer reported engineers responding with, "what the hell is going on? I thought this guy was meant to be a genius?" Mezrich's take on the same meeting seems to be that Musk genuinely bought Twitter with intent to further civilisation and the belief that he could. Early in the book he states that Musk "knows how to tweet" yet one of his biggest meltdowns comes when he fails to grasp why his banal Super Bowl tweet ("GO EAGLES") garners less attention than the US president's which includes not only a photo but also a playful message about being deferential to his wife. We're also unfortunately subjected to a load of Musk's tweets from a World Cup match which fail to offer much more interest than the incredible insight of "GO EAGLES".

Perhaps the most egregious example of fawning comes when describing a video call where he says Musk, if he wanted to, could the see the code of the video-streaming software for the webcam flowing down the screen as if he were a character in The Matrix (no, seriously). And in the chapter about the stalker following Grimes, he forgets to mention that there was no evidence of @ElonJet@mastodon.social being used by this person and Mezrich seems to think that all the action taken (banning Jack Sweeney, journalists critical of Musk/Tesla, links to Mastodon etc) was done out of genuine fear for his son's safety rather than it rather obviously being an excuse to silence people and accounts he didn't like. Hilariously, at the end of the book, there is a tweet from 20 Dec 2022 saying Musk will "just run the software & servers teams" after the appointment of Linda Yaccarino as CEO. This paperback was published in June 2024 but it was probably already apparent even when the hardback was published in November 2023 that the new CEO was just for show and that Musk was still fully focused on using Twitter as his own plaything rather than running the "software & servers teams."

The only saving grace of this book is that it's hilariously bad enough to at least be entertaining ironically. If you are looking to spend money on a book about the Twitter takeover that is actually well-written and insightful then I'd highly recommend reading Extremely Hardcore instead.

#BenMezrich #BreakingTwitter #books #bookReviews

#Bakemonogatari #Manga #MangaDE #Books

Dieser Manga war sehr aufregend. Vor allem für mich in der echten Welt, im Zug. Wenn 10% der Seiten nackte Frauen sind ist es schon nicht zu leicht das frühs im Zug zu lesen. Aber kommt das so unerwartet? Verdammt ja! Das heißt aber nicht der Manga sei schlecht. Es geht noch immer um Shinobu, und in Teilen Hanekawa. Es ist jedoch einmal mehr sehr überladen und hart nach zu kommen. Außer in den oben erwähnten Szenen. Mehrmals lesen also angeraten. Die Action wird aber noch ein wenig weiter gehen, bevor die wirklich ruhigen Phasen kommen. Mag ich das? Werden wir noch sehen. Ich bin auf jeden Fall jetzt schon wieder hyped auf 21.

#Konosuba #Manga #MangaDe #Books

Ach Lalatina - ich wünschte ich könnte Interesse an dir finden. Du bist gefühlt die einzige die keine gute Story in ihrer Welt bekommen hat. Du bist das reiche Adelsgirl und nun, das sexobjekt für alle. Und genau deswegen ist Band 13… langweilig. Wir haben hier Einblick zu deiner Geschichte, nur leider finde ich diese nicht anziehend. Der Band wird aber vom Ende gerettet. Meinem liebsten Charakter in der Serie!

#Manga #Books #Book #Suzume

In die Story gehend, dass ich den Kinofilm geschaut habe und diesen leider nur "ok" fand gehe ich hier leider mit etwas zu viel negativen hinein. Darum fange ich einmal damit an. Ich mag Souta hier überhaupt nicht. Er hat auf der einen Seite zu wenig Panel-Time und auf der anderen Seite ist er hier zu oft "lost", nicht der starke Wächter. Suzume selbst finde ich hier etwas besser als im Film. Sie kommt gefasster und weniger Hilfesuchend rüber. Der Zeichenstil ist… gewöhnungsbedürtig aber man wächst hinein und dann ist er angenehm. Leider finde ich ihn aber für "einen Makoto Shinkai" nicht passend, ist dieser doch bekannt für schöne Bilder, gute Landschaften und eine Bildsprache die zum Träumen an regt ist der Manga eher kindisch, locker und zu simpel gezeichnet.

Ich glaube leider auch, wenn man den Film nicht kennt geht vieles verloren was versucht wird zu erzählen, aber wer weiß, da irre ich mich eventuell auch. Ich find es ehrlich gesagt sehr schade aber eventuell ist es auch schlicht kein Manga für mich. :)

Im dritten und letzten Teil gibt Tchaikovsky nochmal Gas. Im Gegensatz zum zweiten Teil lässt der Spannungsbogen zwischendurch nicht sonderlich nach. Alle bekannten Charaktere sind voll in die Geschichte involviert, Bündnisse werden geschmiedet, die Handlung wird insgesamt etwas actionreicher. Alles läuft auf das Finale hinaus, und eben dieses hat der Autor hinbekommen. Mal wieder eine gute Space Opera.

#sciencefiction #sf #buch #books #tchaikovsky