A definite wealth of information. I like that it combines the geological information with the magical and healing properties to give a complete overview. It has a pretty comprehensive range of crystals and the layout is quite pretty.

What an excellent introduction to Neil Gaiman. I think I’ve just found a new favourite author.

It’s hard to say exactly what I liked about this book. The short answer, I suppose, would be everything. It’s well paced, with a decent dollop of action, the characters are interesting and the setting was well done. Gaiman gives the reader a real feel for the places in this novel. Possibly my one quibble is that I know next to nothing about London and therefore I had the feeling that I was missing some of the jokes.

I completely missed guessing all of the twists. I like that. I wonder whether there will be a sequel.

It’s definitely given me a reason to look for more of Gaiman’s work.

I’m afraid that I was a bit disappointed in this book. I found it rather boring. At first, the philosophies on intimacy interested and engaged me but Lawrence certainly has a way of waffling on. I think it could have been a much shorter book.

I didn’t really find anything engaging about Mellors either. There didn’t seem to be much that was attractive in his character, so Constance’s clinginess to him seemed a little strange in that respect, even a bit sad.

I do feel that what Lawrence said about the industrial age and the half-dead people living in it still has some relevance today, however.

This wasn’t exactly a shining example of the genre.

I think it had a lot to do with emotional engagement. Reading the first would have helped, I suspect. But things like info dumps (“About a month ago…”) don’t help. There was also a lot of telling rather than showing, for example such and such got blown up, but we weren’t around to see it. The quotes at the beginning of each chapter felt like the author was trying to bludgeon me around the head with what he considered his witty one-liners.

By the end of it, I was getting into it more. Vlad’s friends seemed like interesting people and their relationships with each other made it much more engaging. Vlad, however, has a long way to go to convince me he’s the tough guy he’s supposed to be.

Overall, I didn’t dislike it but didn’t do a very good job of keeping my interest either.

What a delight this book was to read. I’m only sorry that it’s taken me this long to get around to it. I loved its long, leisurely meander into the war and was stunned by the way it depicted both the complete horrors of war and the joys of life. It was the little details that really made it.

SPOILERS

I found Carlo’s death to be very affecting but I also found that the story lost a lot of its momentum afterwards. For such an important event, the earthquake seemed dealt with very summarily, along with the doctor’s death. The author seemed to destroy very thoroughly what had taken him so long to build, so I found the gradual winding back to the happy ending a little difficult, though I enjoyed the sweetness of the conclusion.

Nevertheless, one of the best books I’ve read this year. Thank you again to Peggysmum for giving me the chance to read it.

This was a sweet book and I think that was ultimately my problem with it. On the cover it says “Three imperfect people, one perfect idea.” I disagree. I think Trevor was too perfect a character. It rather made the ending feel rather inevitable.

I found the writing style a little confusing at first. It was the snippets from the different books that threw me off. Until I got into the rhythm of it, I wasn’t quite sure who was narrating.

That said, I still really enjoyed it. The philosophy was fascinating. I also liked the way it focused on the relationships between the characters and how they miscommunicated. It added a healthy dose of realism to it all.

I really enjoyed this book, but I am hard pressed to say why exactly. I think it must have been the strength of Smilla. She’s cold and there’s a vast distance to the narrative she tells. There is no one close in her life and it’s like she doesn’t want to let the reader in close either. At the same time, she’s determined, resourceful and above all just. I think that’s what might have been her redeeming feature.

The second half of the book is quite different to the first. The suspense kicks into higher gear and there’s more action. I enjoyed the contrast, though I didn’t find the slower pace of the first half at all difficult to take. The large tracts of information on seemingly irrelevant things were a bit harder to deal with in the beginning, but the further on you go the more you begin to see how things fit in. The jumping around of time also makes things difficult, but the further it goes the less it happens.

Smilla’s relationship with the ice was also particularly fascinating. Perhaps that’s because Australia is such a dry place that the way she relates to snow is such a novel and foreign thing.

It’s going to be a book I think about for a while to come.

My boyfriend is an intern psychologist and did a course with the author. He thought I might find the book interesting and useful.

Truthfully, I found I had a lot of resistance to it. I felt that it wasn’t as different from other therapies as it claimed to be, and wondered whether what it asked was truly possible. I even thought about not writing an entry about this book at all, despite the fact that recording my thoughts on the books I’ve read is something important to me.

Some of it may have been my state of health while reading this. I’ve had a fever up to 39 Celsius at times and have been having difficulty breathing through my nose. This made the breathing exercises very difficult and my concentration wasn’t always there. But mostly I think it was my own resistance.

That resistance may have been the reason I found the writing style so irritating. I found it a bit preachy and it used way too many exclamation marks. Plus I also found it very repetitive. With a good editor it could have been much shorter.

But, to paraphrase the author, don’t take my word for it; see for yourself. I’m sure this book would be very useful for other people. It may even be useful for me, if I can get myself to commit to it.

At first I didn’t enjoy this book much. I felt none of the characters were particularly sympathetic and it kept jumping from one to the other too quickly. As the book went on though, I got into it more and found the fast pace enjoyable. It’s a very witty book. I particularly liked how the names worked on a number of levels.

I heard this book was going to be made into a movie and I think it will make the transition well. In keeping with its theme, the style is rather Hollywood—big events with lots of explosions, plenty of action. Yet at the same time it manages to ask some interesting questions about where society is heading.

I felt the epilogue was fitting, but perhaps a little unnecessary.

All in all, I quite enjoyed it.

Goodness, when I said it would take me a little while to get around to reading this I didn’t expect it would take this long! And it’s a shame in a way, too, because I found it to be such an interesting book. I barely put it down.

In some ways it really reminded me of The Bells of Nagasaki. Not surprising, given that both are about medical men surviving through war-driven atrocities. Both attempt to portray what happened around them in a more objective way, set down observations of those around them and see the lessons that can be taken from them. I think Frankl allows more of the emotion to creep through though and I liked it for that.

The writing in the second section seemed to vary a bit. At times, I agree it was unclear, but often (though not always) the example that followed brought clarity. I found the great optimism he had, the great desire to see potential utilised to its fullest degree, to be quite inspiring.

The third section for me seemed largely redundant. In fact, there are parts of it that quoted word for word the second section. I don’t feel like much would have been lost by cutting it.

It has certainly given me a lot to think about. In particular, I was interested to explore a possible link between Frankl’s quest for meaning and Joseph Campbell’s idea of ‘following your bliss’.

As I said, I read through this book quite quickly, so in some ways I feel like I haven’t done it justice. There’s a lot to think about in here and I’m looking forward to mulling it over.