alisarae's Reviews (1.65k)

Totes adorbs! If you like colonial America / Jane Austen settings with courtship and balls, scoundrels and gentlemen, ladies and love interests, read this book. The romance is so pure.

Audiobook narrator is nice!

O livro começou num jeito bom e com muito potencial pra desenvolver os conceitos... Mas virou 180 e no último capìtulo o autor confessa que ele não sabe pra onde ir. Embora que eu gostasse muito do humor satírico e dos atitudes caricaturais dos países, fiquei um pouco decepcionada com o final.

Super interesting how much people were willing to overlook in the day-to-day to keep telling themselves that everything was okay. I would love to read the daily diaries of the official diarist of the People's Temple.

Also interesting to think about that line of crime prevention. The Concerned Relatives official organization sounded numerous alarm bells to federal authorities and people of influence, but as authorities never found anything illegal they did nothing. I agree that law enforcement's hands were pretty tied in this situation, but how often do we hear the alarm bells raised in our subconscious or even vocalized by someone in our community and think that it's nothing to take concern over? I can think of a specific situation of child abuse at a former job where after the fact multiple staff said, "You know, I thought something was wrong but I didn't want to falsely accuse the person." I don't know enough about legal ethics to be able to say more about this, but I would encourage people to trust their guts more and protect their loved ones even in the face of "You're overreacting."

Such a cute story! Set in rural northeastern Brazil, a young man goes to fulfill the dying wishes of his mother: go find his father and grandmother, and light candles at the feet of 3 saint statues. The man, Samuel, discovers that he can hear people's prayers to St Antonio (the patron saint of weddings), and things get more chaotic from there.

This story is heavily influenced by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (the author studied under him) and besides the magical realism and straightforward plodding sentence structure, you can recognize plotlines from other Garcia Marquez stories. I confess that I have read very little of GGM and haven't loved what I've read, but The Head of the Saint takes a departure from the inherent sadness and melancholy weaved into GGM's stories and ends on such a sweet note.

This would be a nice book to pick up if you are looking for a contemporary Brazilian story that isn't too literary (most national stories that get published here are very stuffy).

This is a strong, mature book. That final sentence is power.

Audiobook narration = 100

Gosto muito de ler quadrinhos com senário do Brasil. Alem de ter bastante gíria e palavrão, tanto que o autor deu definições, ver a vida real das pessoas aquí é legal.

Essa hisória é uma fatia da vida... o leitor se aproxima para as vidas interligados das personagens, e quando a história acaba, o leitor se afasta. Ou seja, a história não tem um fim bem definido nem moral porque é só um dia curto nas vidas das personagens. Ela até me deixou meia decepcionada porque eu esperava que as personagens mudassem e eles não mudarem nem um pouco.

A arte é incrível e a história é interesante. Vale a pena buscar e ler.

Nova Ren Suma is my favorite. The poetry of how she captures the spirit of teenage girls is phenomenal.

Pleasant graphic design. The author complained a lot about hipsters, which is a classic hipster trait in my book.

Almost 200 pages in and I think this book is just not for me. Nothing wrong with it, but 650 pages are a lot of pages when you aren't thaaat interested.

I'm sorry, I gave this book an honest try and it just isn't for me. I don't think Ansari is funny-- in the book, stand-up, or in the show-- and I am tired of hearing about how my generation does everything wrong all the time. Not my fault that people have such high expectations for everything that everything is going to hell in a handbasket.