Take a photo of a barcode or cover
octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)
This is one of those books that's been on my bookshelves for years. I've read it before, and every so often I dip back into bits of it - admittedly, often to look at the huge range of startlingly beautiful illustrations, many of which are astronomy glamour shots. But I've just reread the entire thing again, so it's time to add it here.
Sagan was an excellent science communicator. His explanations of what we know about the different planets, and how we know it, are clear and interesting (if, at this point, a little behind the times). In some ways, though, those explanations feel like a lengthy introduction to the real meat of the book: space exploration, and how (if) we do it. Sagan's clearly for it, but he doesn't shy away from the validity of the arguments against. As he says, with so many problems on Earth, and a limited budget, hard choices need to be made and sometimes space exploration will (and should) be the loser. Yet he also argues for aspiration and scale, for individuals and nations working together, each contributing a little of the whole needed, focusing primarily on robotic missions for a long while. Putting humans into space is a long term goal, of course, but it's far more expensive, and often less effective, at getting scientific results when compared to the purely mechanical. That said, human colonisation of space is fundamentally a necessity in order to preserve the species (howsoever it may evolve), and his imaginings of what could be done, in the generations to come, make me hope he's right.
It's just a beautifully put together book.
Sagan was an excellent science communicator. His explanations of what we know about the different planets, and how we know it, are clear and interesting (if, at this point, a little behind the times). In some ways, though, those explanations feel like a lengthy introduction to the real meat of the book: space exploration, and how (if) we do it. Sagan's clearly for it, but he doesn't shy away from the validity of the arguments against. As he says, with so many problems on Earth, and a limited budget, hard choices need to be made and sometimes space exploration will (and should) be the loser. Yet he also argues for aspiration and scale, for individuals and nations working together, each contributing a little of the whole needed, focusing primarily on robotic missions for a long while. Putting humans into space is a long term goal, of course, but it's far more expensive, and often less effective, at getting scientific results when compared to the purely mechanical. That said, human colonisation of space is fundamentally a necessity in order to preserve the species (howsoever it may evolve), and his imaginings of what could be done, in the generations to come, make me hope he's right.
It's just a beautifully put together book.
Entertaining enough novel that I read to fulfil the cosy mystery task for Book Riot's Read Harder 2019 challenge, but not one of Christie's better ones, I think. Not that I've read more than a handful of hers, but books like Roger Ackroyd and And Then There Were None were just incredibly clever, and this seems a little dull by comparison. I don't know if it's just Miss Marple - who really only has a supporting type of role here - but she doesn't seem very compelling compared to Poirot, for instance.
Although I will say this: the most likeable part of this book was the cast of supporting characters (including Marple) and the total bemusement with which their vicar perceives them. He seems like chum in a shark tank, poor man, but the suppressed sort of very dry humour that Christie has leaking through the story - I'm sure she's laughing at or with most of her characters - is amusing. Compared to those characters, however, I didn't care a thing about the murder. Of course Miss Marple wrapped it all up nicely but I wasn't on fire to know or anything like that... though I did pick the identity of Mrs. Lestrange before the end, so even if I didn't care who did it I wasn't entirely blindsided.
Although I will say this: the most likeable part of this book was the cast of supporting characters (including Marple) and the total bemusement with which their vicar perceives them. He seems like chum in a shark tank, poor man, but the suppressed sort of very dry humour that Christie has leaking through the story - I'm sure she's laughing at or with most of her characters - is amusing. Compared to those characters, however, I didn't care a thing about the murder. Of course Miss Marple wrapped it all up nicely but I wasn't on fire to know or anything like that... though I did pick the identity of Mrs. Lestrange before the end, so even if I didn't care who did it I wasn't entirely blindsided.
Fascinating story with a wonderful ending. Those last few paragraphs are the finest of the whole book, I think. The whole thing's just so weird and sad and strange... I had a vague idea of the plot before I started, and was prepared to feel pity for the parents and none for the girls, but it all got muddled around. To be honest, I kind of ended up feeling that this fictional family has earned their Darwin Awards, which is unkind, but really: think of the gene pool. It's probably better there's going to be no further Lisbon generations...
Mostly, to me, this beautifully written story feels like the genesis of a haunted house narrative. Characters who I felt most sorry for? The young couple, nameless, barely on page, who bought the Lisbon house after all those deaths. Don't tell me they weren't sorry, down the track, that they bought at rock bottom price a home that was cheapened by history. They should have known that never ends well.
If there's one flaw that I think this story has it's that, in place, it wavers in focus. There's a couple of places where the author goes on for pages and pages about minor or supporting characters. Honestly, it didn't seem like it was Lux who was in love with Trip Fontaine - it seemed like it was the narrator who was obsessed with him instead. I was not interested in the slightest. The Lisbon family was fascinating. Everyone else was not.
Mostly, to me, this beautifully written story feels like the genesis of a haunted house narrative. Characters who I felt most sorry for? The young couple, nameless, barely on page, who bought the Lisbon house after all those deaths. Don't tell me they weren't sorry, down the track, that they bought at rock bottom price a home that was cheapened by history. They should have known that never ends well.
If there's one flaw that I think this story has it's that, in place, it wavers in focus. There's a couple of places where the author goes on for pages and pages about minor or supporting characters. Honestly, it didn't seem like it was Lux who was in love with Trip Fontaine - it seemed like it was the narrator who was obsessed with him instead. I was not interested in the slightest. The Lisbon family was fascinating. Everyone else was not.
Starting on the Book Riot 2019 Read Harder challenge with this - I'm using it to tick off the epistolary novel/collection of letters task. And it's a fun book! Dear old Uncle Screwtape scribbling away in hell, trying to lecture his nephew into corrupting competence, and ultimately failing because said nephew, amongst other things, is just not too bright. The whole thing's very tongue-in-cheek, an argument for Christianity that Lewis cloaks in mirrors and opposites. And it's all very clever, but I can't help but think while reading that for all his observations about humans existing in time, the most interesting and effective parts of the book are those where he uses very simple examples. For instance the elderly lady, determined to give everyone trouble by being subversively gluttonous regarding her dietary choices - weak tea and toast that has to be just so and that no-one can ever get right, no matter how much of their attention she focuses on her "simple" needs. It's a really cutting piece of satire, easily recognisable and blazingly effective as illustration, and I only wish Lewis (and Screwtape) had spent less letter time wallowing in the abstract and more on writing stuff like this.
When a new and terrible epidemic called Medusa starts turning people to stone, a small group of (supposedly) random people are put into cryogenic pods, in the hope that they'll survive long enough for a cure to be found. Something goes wrong, which of course it does, and they wake to a world overrun by mutant thorn bushes and dinosaur-like monsters, evolution gone haywire. The cryogenic facility is deserted, they're isolated in a random location and being picked off by mutants, and the disease is still progressing... at least in some of them.
This is a fun read, and I'm looking forward to the next instalment. I'm more interested in the mystery and the world-building than the characters though, sad to say. Granted this is only the first volume, but they seem fairly paint-by-numbers at this point, and, annoyingly, most of them don't seem to have names. Maybe it's just me, but if I were trying to navigate my way through a post-apocalyptic landscape with a small band of compatriots, I'd take the time to ask their bloody names instead of bellowing "Hey you!" or "Little boy!" across the landscape at any given opportunity. Main character Kasumi is one of the exceptions, and I get the feeling she's not quite the shrinking violet she thinks she is...
This is a fun read, and I'm looking forward to the next instalment. I'm more interested in the mystery and the world-building than the characters though, sad to say. Granted this is only the first volume, but they seem fairly paint-by-numbers at this point, and, annoyingly, most of them don't seem to have names. Maybe it's just me, but if I were trying to navigate my way through a post-apocalyptic landscape with a small band of compatriots, I'd take the time to ask their bloody names instead of bellowing "Hey you!" or "Little boy!" across the landscape at any given opportunity. Main character Kasumi is one of the exceptions, and I get the feeling she's not quite the shrinking violet she thinks she is...
Cilla McQueen is one of my favourite New Zealand poets. One of her early collections, Antigravity, just really caught my imagination and I've been a fan ever since. So I was happy to get my hands on this, which is I think her latest book? It came out a couple of years ago, so there might be a new one now... but anyway. I have it and I've read it and that's the main thing.
It's an ambitious idea, writing a memoir in verse. There's such a potential for disconnection, but because McQueen opts - very sensibly, I think - to title her poems with the year of the events referred to in that poem, and to skip years instead of trying to pad out the book, that disconnection is minimised. It really felt like a cohesive narrative of her early life. Of that life, I must admit, I knew very little, but the picture given by In a Slant Light is so clear and quietly compelling that my previous ignorance didn't actually matter. And anyway, that ignorance is itself qualified somewhat. The setting for many of these poems is Dunedin, in the South Island of NZ, a place where I lived myself for many years (albeit at a different time from McQueen). It's wonderful to be able to read poems about places that are so familiar to me; I could really see the images contained here in my mind. A lovely collection.
It's an ambitious idea, writing a memoir in verse. There's such a potential for disconnection, but because McQueen opts - very sensibly, I think - to title her poems with the year of the events referred to in that poem, and to skip years instead of trying to pad out the book, that disconnection is minimised. It really felt like a cohesive narrative of her early life. Of that life, I must admit, I knew very little, but the picture given by In a Slant Light is so clear and quietly compelling that my previous ignorance didn't actually matter. And anyway, that ignorance is itself qualified somewhat. The setting for many of these poems is Dunedin, in the South Island of NZ, a place where I lived myself for many years (albeit at a different time from McQueen). It's wonderful to be able to read poems about places that are so familiar to me; I could really see the images contained here in my mind. A lovely collection.
I'm not reading this for the first time - far from it - but it's the first reread since I joined Goodreads, and I can't decide whether to give it four or five stars. I'm tending towards four, but I wonder if that's because there's parts of this story that make me plain unhappy, as opposed to believing it's ill-written or anything like that. It's not like there aren't sad books out there that earn their five stars, after all... but I hate seeing animals mistreated, and there are passages here where you just want to cringe in shame on behalf of the human species for what this dog is put through.
The Call of the Wild has been criticised, I know, for being excessively anthropomorphic in its presentation of Buck. The difficulty in realistically depicting animals can't be underestimated - there's always going to be part of them that we just don't know. That we can't know. And truthfully, London has filled in the gaps here with a very human brush, possibly too human. Yet the conclusion, when it comes, is unwavering, and really there can be no other end. With all his "civilisation" beaten out of him, Buck returns to the wild, joining a wolf pack, and while there is a sense of agency, of choice and delight in that choice... this triumphant sort of ending is, we know, only a brief one. Buck finishes the book in full strength, but there's only weakening and a bad death ahead of him, and I've yet to decide if it's a happy ending or not. Happy for now, I suppose, after a life that didn't have much happiness in it. Poor dog.
The Call of the Wild has been criticised, I know, for being excessively anthropomorphic in its presentation of Buck. The difficulty in realistically depicting animals can't be underestimated - there's always going to be part of them that we just don't know. That we can't know. And truthfully, London has filled in the gaps here with a very human brush, possibly too human. Yet the conclusion, when it comes, is unwavering, and really there can be no other end. With all his "civilisation" beaten out of him, Buck returns to the wild, joining a wolf pack, and while there is a sense of agency, of choice and delight in that choice... this triumphant sort of ending is, we know, only a brief one. Buck finishes the book in full strength, but there's only weakening and a bad death ahead of him, and I've yet to decide if it's a happy ending or not. Happy for now, I suppose, after a life that didn't have much happiness in it. Poor dog.
3.5 stars, rounding up to 4. This wanders off the subject on a fairly frequent basis, but the subject itself is fascinating - people so obsessed with orchids that they'll steal and smuggle in search of ownership. Now I'm a botanist myself, so I like plants more than the average person, but this... there's enjoyment and then there's monomania, and ecologies being stripped of their organisms for sale is hard to stomach.
The thief of the title is a genuinely interesting character, but as the book goes on it becomes increasingly clear that he's less one individual obsessive than he is a representative of an entire subculture... and part of me thinks "Well, good for them following their passion", but there's another part that thinks passion has been confused with greed, perhaps, or selfishness. The tension caused by trying to preserve collectible species in increasingly reduced environments is very soon apparent, and the debate as to whether or not that's better achieved by collection and cloning is particularly relevant. I wish there'd been a greater focus on it, instead of Orlean's wandering off into the history of real estate scams in Florida, for instance, but despite the wanderings this is still a compelling book.
The thief of the title is a genuinely interesting character, but as the book goes on it becomes increasingly clear that he's less one individual obsessive than he is a representative of an entire subculture... and part of me thinks "Well, good for them following their passion", but there's another part that thinks passion has been confused with greed, perhaps, or selfishness. The tension caused by trying to preserve collectible species in increasingly reduced environments is very soon apparent, and the debate as to whether or not that's better achieved by collection and cloning is particularly relevant. I wish there'd been a greater focus on it, instead of Orlean's wandering off into the history of real estate scams in Florida, for instance, but despite the wanderings this is still a compelling book.
I've been a fan of Maathai's conservation work for years, so I was delighted to come across this little picture book. It gives a very clear overview of her life and the development of the Green Belt Movement, using simple language suitable for children. Getting kids into conservation early, making them aware of the difference an individual can make, is I think critical for the environmental movement, and this is just the kind of book to inspire them to get out and start planting trees themselves.
The second volume in Edwards' three-part autobiography, Time of Turmoil covers the author's life from the 1940s through to the 1960s. Despite the efforts of the Maori Battalion during WW2, Maori were still seen very much as second-class citizens in New Zealand, and Edwards, capable of passing for white, did so for much of this volume. She had very much a double life going on - Maori to her family and those who knew her very well, and Pakeha to the rest of the world. It was a tactic for survival, she says so herself, but an ultimately damaging one, because how could it not be? She's caught between two worlds, a state of affairs not helped by two unhappy marriages - the first to a Maori, the second to a Pakeha - and it's both affecting and confronting to read. The slow realisation that this double life, this false identification, isn't something she wants to continue, and her efforts to learn again the value of what was (literally) beaten out of her as a child... she comes across, during this book, as just so genuinely brave in grappling with her history and in finding a path forward. It's impossible not to admire her for it.