O poveste captivanta despre ce inseamna escaladarea celui mai inalt munte din lume in ziua de astazi. O marturie cu privire la mortile ce au loc pe Everest, managementul pe care absolut toti oamenii din zona muntelui trebuie sa il foloseasca pentru a supravietui, dar si birocratia cu care alpinistii se confrunta. Mi-a placut enorm de mult si m-am indragostit de acest scriitor, care m-a transpus pe munte si m-a facut sa simt delirul altitudinii din propriul fotoliu.

The second World War was just the background of this book and it was just in time for me because I’ve previously read another war book and I was tired of this subject. But this book had the perfect amount of war in it not to get bored or to get annoyed. The main character is, as the title says, the lady who ran the Ritz Hotel. Blanche was a young girl who wanted to be an actress when she came in Paris and she also had a boyfriend who was also a prince. She chose the french Claude instead. She chose a safe life near Claude. She chose to change her name because she was ashamed of her origins. The love between Claude and Blanche was intense. Something was always missing in their love story but somehow they always managed to be together at the end of the day. Claude had some mistresses and Blanche did accept this fact after a while. Being french doesn’t give you the permission to have a wife and a mistress at same in my opinion but here’s something that is missing from the writing, again. They fell in love rather in such a mediocre way. Their love was still somehow surviving because of the duties they had at the Hotel. Despite being a little woman in a time when women didn’t count, Blanche saved or uplifted Claude when it was about the Hotel. They both wanted more. Always. Blanche wanted a free life as in America, but Paris is Europe and it was war. Claude wanted freedom but he was married to a nice woman who chose him. The Ritz Hotel was host for writers like Hemingway and Fitzgerald but during the war, the Hotel was the host for so many german soldiers and rulers of the German Army. As both Claude and Blanche wanted more from life, they began to fight against Hitler in ways unknown for each other. Blanche makes a mistake and she is imprisoned. She was tortured and lived a miserable life for a short period of time: she was raped, beaten, famished. This is the part I liked the most. There could have been at least 10 more pages describing her feelings. After she was

O carte unica din toate punctele de vedere. Este o bucatica rupta din perioada comunismului, documentata si subiectiva, atat de subiectiva pe cat era poporul de nefericit in acea perioada, dar atat de bine documentata pe cat era de fericit. De la poze, la toate micile trairi pe care pe romanii au trait-o in acea perioada, cartea reflecta starile oamenilor in simplitatea si saracia lor: de la avorturi facute pe ascuns, la vacante sau stat la coada pentru mancare, nu exista alta carte mai frumoasa vizual sau mai personala decat aceasta de fata. O recomand oricui, mai ales tinerilor care vor sa cunoasca subiectiv istoria recenta a Romaniei.

Stella and Desiree want to disappear at the of 16. Living in a Black community, where school is not so important, gives them the courage to choose the exit way from a life spent in compromise. Desiree chooses a life with a Black man who will eventually turn out to be an abuser, while Stella decides to leave the Black world aside and enter the White one, where she can fit in as she -as well as Desiree- is a Black woman with the aspect of a White one. Years after the split, Desiree comes back in her hometown with her daughter, choosing a simple life spent with her mother and an old lover. When Jude moves to the L.A. to study, she meets Reese, a beautiful boy every girl dreams about. Desiree’s daughter will soon learn about Reese’s transformation, as he used to be a girl, and the inside thoughts of his will show what being a trans man meant in the ‘90s and how hard and dangerous it was. Few time will pass and Jude will recognize Stella, her mother’s lost twin sister, at a fancy party. Jude will also meet Stella’s daughter and they will start a complicated family relationship. Stella and Desiree will reunite after a lifetime spent separated but life will forever be changed for every character in the book. The action was so interesting and the writing style was powerful and great. I loved the beginning of the book, it was alert, revealing a world hidden for a European reader, the kind of story everybody is interested in but can’t find it very easily. Every inside thought of every character was amazingly written, I loved how every character needed to solve something: Desiree wanted a peaceful life, Stella wanted to be a new person, Jude wanted a purpose in life, Reese wanted to be accepted as a man, June’s cousin wanted glory, Early wanted Desiree and the twins’ mother wanted the whole family together, all of this on the background of racism, identity problems and a bit of loss of memory.

Ireland 1985. It’s almost Christmas and Furlong, the head of a family of 5 girls and a simple wife, is a coal seller. He provides coal for everybody in the city, a hard work he does every day, even most of the Sundays. Life is simple for the family: father goes to work and barely sees the rest of them, mother is working for the house or kids and the girls are growing. Everything changes after Furlong goes to the Monastery of the village, a place known for shelterring young girls who are alone in the world(sometimes pregnant or already having a child), and discovers a girl closed in a dungeon. The event causes him to remember his childhood, his single mother who used to work for a wealthy woman. Furlong never knew who his father was and that has always been a constant thought in his life, but more than that, he never really knew who or what his mother was. Seeing that young mother in that horrible place only made him question the purpose of what church people should be and how they should act, and what they actually do and how they treat people. After leaving the girl at the Monastery, a force sent him back to it days after and found the girl at the same place, but this time, Furlong knew he had to change what nobody changed for his mother. The action was not complex because of the only 100 pages the book is made of. I believe it could easily have been a 300 pages long book and still be interesting. The subject of the disadvantaged girls from Ireland back in those times was interesting and captivating. I didn’t have enough time to process the story. The search of Furlong’s identity and how he’s searching for it in the young mother’s rescue was nice to follow. I enjoyed the comparison of the life of the family: easy, unbothered, simple, to the life of a girl who works for the Monastery: living in a dungeon, dirty, closed doors, unable to get in touch with your own baby. The subject was unique and it should have been so much longer.

*For everyone thinking it will be at least as good as the first book, it won’t. Sorry��* Millie is now taking care of another house and baby while she’s attending college. Until she’s fired. She needs to find a new job in order to pay for her apartment and for her school. She gets a call from one very wealthy man and Millie now works for Doug Garrick, in a big penthouse. Millie starts her job and while cleaning and cooking for the family, she’s told not to disturb Winnie, Doug’s wife, because of her illness. Millie has been working for a month and hasn’t seen the lady of the family, only glimpses of her from behind the closed door. When she finally sees Winnie, she’s all covered in dark spots on her face, caused from beating. Millie feels that it’s her job to save Winnie so they make a plan and Winnie escapes for one night, but Doug takes her back home. The twisting point comes when Doug is killed by Millie, but in fact she doesn’t recognize the person she killed, it’s another man. I enjoyed so much the first book and I was looking forward for this one but it simply wasn’t as good as the Housemaid. The action was a little repetitive, the characters were not as strongly built as in the first book, Millie was not as interesting as I remember her from the first book. It has been the averege thriller book.

Four women and five teenagers are seeking the light of the reflector. The five teenaged girls are studying at the drama Academy and all of them want to be the main character in musicals. Only four of them have mothers to look after them but all moms fight for their child to be the best. The fifth and newest girl which’s mom is not present causes e for the rest of the group when she enters their world. The whole group of girls and moms, plus the Director of the school are dealing with a series of premonitions for a girl from the group, Ruby, who used to be a bully. Now she’s the one who’s beeing bullied, all the threatens are addressed to her. The action follows how Ruby is threatened, while the mothers keep their appearances. They are working in advantage of their own child. Every child got secrets and their moms do their best to keep these secret safe, while keeping their own secrets, too. It has been a very alert thriller, sometimes the action was too fast without any (needed) details and sometimes with too many unneeded details. The whole idea of wealthy (or almost wealthy), arrogant characters was a little too much. I like the twisting pointS(!), they were great and sometimes a surprise but the road to them was not for my taste.

Three old sisters living in an old mansion at the countryside near London. Two estraged mother and daughter. The past tense brings Meredith to Milderhurst when children are forced to leave London during the Second World War, so the girl find refugee at Juniper’s house. Meredith has now the chance to live a luxurious life, near her new best friend and Jumiper’s other two sisters. The present tense presents Edie Burchill, a newly single woman who finds out the truth about her mother’s past. Edie and Meredith were never close to oneanother and Milderhurst and the story that place brought up is the bond that will unite them both. As Edie is an editor and Juniper’s father has written a famous book at that place, the main character of the book starts her journey of discovering the truth behind Juniper’s father’s book, what happened to Juniper and her sisters and what Milderhurst keeps secret. The description of Milderhurst was amazing. I loved the castle and the force it had. The mistery behind the three sisters was so well created I was eager to find their secrets. I would have loved more of the love story the book offered. Edie’s relationship with her mom was annoying and I didn’t like none of them, I just wanted to find more about the castle, the old story and the sisters’ stories. There were so many details that created a mystical atmosphere but some of them were just too much for myself. I look forward for the next books from this author, as I hope the others would be far better than this one.

Even though Nimsdai Purja was born in Nepal, he never saw the mountains from his country. Coming from a modest family from third world country, Nimsdai has failed multiple times before becoming a gurka soldier. Not letting his dream die, Purja finally became a super soldier in Great Britain, being able to fight for the Queen and being so proud about it. He was always left aside because of his skin colour, so that’s why Nimsdai had to train harder and much longer than the others. After 28 years of life, Nims has fallen in love with mountains and climbing them. He had something special in him: he didn’t need so much time to acclimatise to the air(or not so much air) when being at a very high altitude. Leaving the safe side of the special forces from Britains’ army (the great money of the salary + the money after retiring), Nims became a full time climber. He’s dream of climbing all of the 14th mountains over 8000m has begun. The book describes what climbing a mountain over 8000m means: money, politics, proper equipment, people you can trust in, fate, luck. From having no money to pay for one expedition, to getting those money, from recieving all the approvals to climb a mountain, to finding the right team and to trust the mountains, Purja has defeated everything and broke the world record for climbing all of the mountains higher than 8000m in 6 moths and 6 days. The lessons he gives in this book are to always push yourself, work hard for what you want, always try to help the others, love your family, worship mountains and be a little crazy.

A recently divorced 30 years old woman learns how to survive without the person she taught she will always have by her side. She met John before she was 20 and thought they will forever be together. The book follows Maggie’s journey of letting go the past and trying to reach a state of calmness in life without a person by her side. She fights memories, sadness, tears, old friends, her job, basically all that was old in her life when she had Jon by her side but needs to adapt to a life without Jon. She meets new friends. She becomes a moderate active person. She meets another man and learns that she can’t really get 100% involved in the relationship. She changes her flat. She spends Holiday season without a partner. She spends her birthday without Jon. It has been a journey of finding what life after marriage means. The whole idea was nice and it has been a chill read but I was expecting some feelings and I didn’t get none. I couldn’t get involved in Maggie’s life because I found her plain. It was interesting seeing her becoming an independent and ferm person, I could see her change from the beginning of the book and the end of the book but I could not connect to her and to her sadness.

The subject of witches and witchery has always fascinated me. It is a unique part of this world and little things are certainly known about it. This book has brought up the Salem witches history and revealed what witches did and what they meant. The first story was settled in 1619 and told Altha’s story, a 21 year old strange woman who lived in the forest and was known for her healing abilities that came from her mother. She’s now to be judged for the murder of a working man, her estranged best friend’s husband. This story gave me the vibe of Alias Grace, Atwood’s work and at the end of the book, I understood why. It was my favorite. The second story from 1942, during the Second World War, told Violet’s story, a 16 years old girl who knew so little of this world because of her father, who kept her in “a cage”, not lettling her know about her mother’s past. She’s fooled by her cousin, who gets her pregnant. Now her father wants to get rid of her and Violet finally get to know her roots from her mom. The third story is settle in 2019. Kate has been abused by her husband for 6 years and when she finds out that she’s pregnant, she has to disappear. She’s haunted by the past, when her father died in a car accident and Kate thinks its her faul. At the old house of Violet, Kate’s aunt, the future mom discovers her roots, while trying to stay low and in the same time creating a safe place for the arrival of her baby. Bounded by the past, the three women are uniquely connected to the nature: to the trees, the animals, the plants, the insects but most of all to the crows. Weywards knew how to use the power of plants in order to heal and sometimes to kill. The power of change all three women had in a different way was nice to follow. This book has been a great read!

Louis moves to the other side of the country with his wife and their two children, so this family will need to adapt to what life will bring to them. After Jud will explain to the Creeds what they own, a pet sematry, and the place’s story, Eileen, the daughter of the family will start to question the problem of death. The first death at Louis’ job as a doctor will start the action. The person who died will show up in Louis’ dream and will lead him further than the pet sematary. Eileen’s cat will die and Jud will show Louise how to resurrect the cat by burying it to the grounds of the pet sematry, an action that will bring the animal back to life in a different way than before, more likely it would be more dead than alive. When a member of the family dies, Louis is thorn in his decision of bringing back that person and how much will that action cost and what it involves. I know everybody loves this story and says it’s King’s best work and the scariest of them all, but was it really? Because I’m not satisfied with what I’ve just read. I want more. The last 30 pages were the horror action I’ve been waiting for almost 500 pages and it bothers me as it was not even as scarier as I wanted it to be. The whole action the author created, the whole atmosphere was nice and the idea of resurrection was a good plot but can you just make it to the main idea quicker? I kept reading so many unwanted details, so the book could have been only 300 pages.

Declan needs to get married and have a child in order to inherit his legacy from his grandfather. He’s forced to marry someone he doesn’t love and when the chosen one leaves him right before the engagement party, Iris, Declan’s assistant, offers as volunteer to marry him and to have his child in order for Declan to fulfill his dream. Although there were years of a platonical relationship between them, Iris had always have something special in Declan’s cold eyes. Both characters need to adapt to a fake marriage but of course end up falling in love for each other. The road to a beautiful relationship and marriage between them was not easy and it was filled with many tasks. What I loved about this book was the idea of marrying someone you don’t know. It was a new subject for me and I enjoy discovering new main themes in a romance, something I haven’t already read before. Iris was nice as a character and the fact that she was not the average girl every book has was interesting. Declan was also nice in a way I’ve already met before- the grumpy bad guy, the so well dressed boss, the tall good looking muscled man- but I enjoyed him and loved his transformation. The love story between the main characters was so nicely described and the fact that Declan and Iris got to really know each other before the sex parts came made the adventure amazing and teasing in the same time��. I loved the African part❤️ It has been a cozy, nice, loving, easy read book.

Back to Basgiath School. As Xaden leaves after graduation, Violet needs to find a way to survive 5 days a week before she can finally see him, due to the bond their dragons have. 850+ pages can be split into two parts: the Basgiath part, where the slow pace action is a repetion from the first book but without the main characters as main characters��, and the Xaden’s house part, where half of the Basgith school comes as the truth about the world Violet and Xaden and everybody else lives in is finally out. Everybody needs to fast forward train for what it is to come. As we’ve already been used to, war comes in the end of the book and the last pages change the whole storyline of the series. The action is not what I was hoping for. It was nothing like the first book, which I really loved and I was eager to find what’s going on while turning pages and pages. The first part was a repetion of the action in the first book, but now the main characters were the spectators of the new first year students. It was so so boring, nothing new, nothing that would make you want to turn those pages in order to find what’s next. The miscommunication between Violet and Xaden was horrible and I really hated it. The fact that she had to be mad at him but still did the same actions as a person that doesn’t hate him was so dizzy. There are so many new unwanted elements - because of the way they are introduced in the story is so forced, just to add something new and to try to change the storyline. I can say that when the second part kicked in, it all became a little more alert and the action was 30% as interesting as in the first book but I was already so tired of the boring action and already so very disappointed from the first part of the book I didn’t feel attracted to the book. Btw, the fact that Violet ALWAYS needs to be the one who survives and ALWAYS the others have to save and protect her is so annoying.

The last book of the thrilogy puts an end to a story I loved: a town that has changed so many lives in so many different ways. The main characters of the story come back in town for a reunion, a tragical event everybody feels it’s their duty to participate at. After 2 years, Maya and Benji come back in Bjornstad, reconnecting with old friends and getting to befriend new people. Life has changed for everybody in Bjornastad: teenagers became adults, adults became older, and older ones either still survive or die. Everybody dies in this city, no matter how old you are. Everybody did something wrong in this city but deep down they are good people, everybody’s a good person in this city but they did something bad. Action was slow in this final book, it was not as alert as in the previous books and that got me mad. Too many new characters, too many details. Death and the pain it comes with was not as developed as I wanted and as Backman could do and did in the previous books. I love the whole story and I love that I saw an ending to it but I wanted more feelings from the final book.

The story of Maali Almeida, a dead man searching for the reason of his death in a sort of purgatory, didn’t make it to my heart. The whole idea was interesting, a story told from the place people go when they die and what happens there is nice and catchy, but the storytelling was quite boring and repetitive, without feelings. In a world governed by war, Sri Lanka provides a lot killings: from kids, to old people, to animals. Maali used to capture this on his camera and many more things which were bad for politics and politicians. While living, he used to get sorts of jobs in advantage of a political person but in disadvantage for another one. The images captured that should have been filled with lots of feeling didn’t transmit what they should have transmited. Dealing with an unfulfilled life, Maali struggles with his job, his parents, his lovers and his addictions, while being in the dead world brings him only the mission of making peace with what the real world brought him and the urge to find out who killed him and how. This book was filled with lots of political perspectives which aren’t my cup of tea. It was so very chaotic and in the begining I didn’t understand a thing of what was happening in the book so I had to read the back of the book, something I never do. The whole action was dizzy and I would have liked it to be more concrete and to have a linear way of telling the story.

Presenting what would happen if the weather will change drastically, this book presents a world dominated by fire, where no house, no car and (most of the times) no money matters, only surviving. There are 4 perspectives in this book: The first one is Didrik’s perspective: the head of a family of 5, fighting for their survival while travelling the country. They need to give up a child during their journey, they need to provide for an infant and Didrik needs to deal with his teenager daughter’s mood, while having mixed feelings about choosing his wife instead of his mistress. He’s a runner, he runs the country in order to survive. The second perspective is Didrik’s mistress’ perspective. She lives in a luxuriant flat, not worring about food or about clothes or the heat. When Didrik shows up to her door with his infant she finds herself torn between what she hoped from Didrik and what she got. She’s some kind of an influencer and she struggles with painkillers addiction, an addiction she can barely satisfy now that the world is on fire and there’s anarchy. The third perspective is a young and rich boy’s perspective. His father is the owner of the flat where Didrik’s mistress lives and he used to be a professional tennis player so he’s famous and rich, so his kids are a little famous and rich. The boy struggles with his father acceptance and with a lot of complexes created by the father. In his way of telling thr story we see what happens around the sea, because the boy and his father are travelling the world by some sort of a yacht. The climate change is real by the sea too. The last persepective is Didrik’s teenager girl’s perspective. She fights for the infants and for the old ones, she’s mad, she falls in love, she wants to save the world and needs revenge. She’s full of emotions and while her father is mad at her because of her behaviour, she’s not really what she shows. I sometimes loved the book and I sometimes hated the book. I was always waiting for

What would you do if you were given a limited time to spend in the past or the future with your loved ones? Remember, you can’t change the present with your actions, you can just spend that little amount of time with those persons. There is a strange coffee shop, a little and apparently insignificant place where you can sit in place that would go back in time or in the future for as long as the coffe is still hot. If the coffe gets cold, you will be the new ghost that will sit forever in that chair, only to leave the spot free when you go to the bathroom. 2 persons used the chair for a journey to the past and one person wanted to see the future. One girl wanted to remeet her lover in a special day, one woman wanted to remeet her dead sister and one future mom wanted to see her daughter. It seemed to me a little too simple, the story was an easy read but not touching. The idea of going back in time or going to the future but without the ability to change anything was strange, what’s the use of it?! I won’t read the other 3 books as this one was enough.

Sorry Tartt, I’m very disappointed in you. This book right here was a waste of time and money. With a beautiful background that reminded me of To kill a mockingbird, the Little friend tells the story of a 12 years old girl, Harriet, in search of the reason her brother died. The premise was nice, interesting: two sisters, a stylish grandma and a mental ill mum, raised in a united community, governed by religion, and a brother/son who died in a mysterious way years ago. There could have been an interesting book. The whole action was about nothing: although Harriet tries to find the person and the way her brother died, she choses a person everybody else told her that killed her brother and starts to chase him. The new bad guy is surrounded by him family and Harriet and her best friend follow them. There comes a journey filled with snakes(yuk) and drugs. To sum the whole book: action just to call action but nothing croncrete and no ending. Spoiler alert: you won’t find out who killed Robert. 855 pages of nothing, absolutely nothing. Thank you very much, I’d like my money and my time back!

Aflat in cautarea sensului vietii, protagonistul cartii se regaseste pe un peron, asteptand. Nimeni nu stie ce asteapta, nici macar el. Impreuna cu Eleonora, autorul cartii descrie viata si tot ceea ce presupune ea. Locul sigur pe care protagonistul, dar si perechea sa, l-au gasit, sub infatisarea unui peron fara de tren, reflecta casa din care ne-am dori sa plecam, sigura, dar totodata plina de mici obstacole. Pe langa casa noastra exista alte obstacole, iar pentru a trai in aceasta lume trebuie sa le infruntam. Naratorul descrie atat lupta sa pentru supravietuire, cat si cea a Eleonorei. Absurditatea evenimentelor din viata unui om, care alcatuiesc viata unui om, dar si solitudinea, au adus plus valoarea acestei carti. Cartea de fata nu m-a impresionat, am gasit prea multe comparatii ce nu au fost pe placul meu. Desi ideea de peron si lipsa trenului(scopului clar) mi-a placut mult, ma asteptam la altceva, la mai multa dezvoltare pe baza comparatiilor cu peronul, cu trenul, nu cu serpi, caini, imblanzitori. Desi am inteles comparatiile, nu mi-au placut. Poate nu a fost timpul potrivit, dar mi s-a parut o carte destul de trista, n-am regasit fericire emanata de ea.

If you like Game of Thrones, Hunger Games, Harry Potter, even Lord of the Rings, there’s a chance you will like this book, too. In a world dominated by dragons and the power they give to their riders, a girl must complete all tasks her school provides in order to live. She must be trained for 3 years in order to survive the outside battling world. Violet’s connection the her dragons! is powerful and beautiful and unique. While trainig for surviving, Violet falls in love to the most dangerous boy and fights to catch his attention. She will be forever bounded to Xaden because their dragons are bounded for life. There are so many elements this book brings. It’s such an abundance of creativity I could never think of. I love the school, the dragon life and what it brings, and I especially like�� the hot�� scenes (I knew what I’m in for when I picked this book). Although Violet was sometimes annoying because she was the weakest one of them all and she alwaaays got what’s best and was always protected, I could easily go past it. I can’t wait for the next one. Also for the movies/series this book will bring to the TV.

Set in Amsterdam, in 1686, Petronella, an 18 years old still girl, marries a wealthy businessman, Johannes Brandt. Nella enters a dark house, where she feels not so welcomed by Johannes’ sister, Marin, and the two helpers in the house, Cornelia and a black man named Otto. Every day feels strange and Nella can’t find her place in the new house she now lives in, and the house owners don’t make the situation easier for her. Things change when Nella recieves a gift from her husband: a miniature house representing the actual house she lives in, a very expensive gift Nella is not so sure she must do with. The main character of the book finds a mysterious miniaturist, who will later provide Nella tiny object for her miniature house. The action starts to complicate when Nella understands that the strange unknown miniaturist knows every detail of her actual house and more than that, the miniaturist can forsee the future of the persons who live in the house. I must appreciate the author’s power to evoke the 17th century of Amsterdam, when being gay was forbbiden and having a black man as a helper in the house was a strange thing. The fact that the book shows what women must do, meaning only house duties, but most of them wanted to be actual the ones who work with their bodies and minds and they could have been better than men at this, was nice to discover. The book shows what traveling the seas to find goods that can be sold back home means, and the mechanism of selling those goods implicates. I enjoyed Johnnes story even though it was a sad one, it was another good way of showing the reader what being different in 1686 meant and I also liked Marin’s love story and how the author chose to show the point of view of an unmarried woman in those times. Nella’s transformation was nice to follow, from a shy girl, to a business woman. The whole world Burton reveals for the reader was indeed an adventure.

Torn between two options she has to make, Page’s adventure of telling her best friend, Fritz, that she has been secretly in love with him for a long time, shows how powerful teenage love can be. Paige needs to decide whether she will spend her Christmas break at Fritz’s winter cottage with him or in New York, with her mother, fulfilling her dream of traveling the world. The book concentrates on teenage love and what it means and how important for a teenager it is. At the same time, the book shows what teenagers dream of: being free and traveling the world. It wasn’t something impressive and there is nothing new this book has brought up but I liked how missunderstood Paige was and how it was shown. I didn’t like Fritz because of his insecurities projected into having many girlfriends and I found him nothing but rather the simple stereotype annoying boy. Neither Page was better. There wasn’t time and action enough to fall in love with the characters but a chill and easy read.

This unique dystopian book tells the story of a life without animal meat, when semi human beings are raised and killed to fulfill the need for meat of the population. Marcos’ wife has left him after they lost their baby. He needs to take care of his father, who’s suffering from dementia and is being hospitalized in a very expensive care center. His father used to be the headmaster of a slaughterhouse (ironic, isn’t it? to be the one that gets the highest pay from killing animals and now not being able to live in the moment) and now Marcos is one of the most important employee of his father’s late slaughterhouse, now owned by another man. As Marcos’ job is to supervise the quality and the process of meat, he recieves a gift from one of his colleagues - a woman human being designed for her meat. The so disturbing elements were not so disturbing for me�� I’ve read Bruckner’s Bitter Moon when in highschool and that was shocking and disgusting at the same time. This one here was just a beautiful metaphor (told in a universe we don’t enjoy thinking of) to what us people are: killers. We kill animals and feel nothing about it. We can kill human beings and get to the point when don’t feel anything about it, too. We raise children in labs, we like to feel powerful, we love to use a person for what we need and then to throw that person away, we need to fulfill our needs with any cost, some of us are fanatics, some of us don’t give a damn about this world, children are disconnected to this world, we can’t scream our pain out of our bodies, the old ones are lost in the days when there was harmony and peace in this world and they don’t want to live nowadays, having and conceving a healthy child now is a miracle. As a reader, you find parts of yourself both in the humans designed for their meat and in the eaters, too. This book shows exactly the truth about this world, it’s nothing new, because deep down, it’s the reality we are living in: we love to kill only because we can

After her recent famous divorce, Georgia is back in her hometown where she grew up with her great grandmother. Scarlett Stanton used to be one of the greatest authors America had and her last work was left unfinished. This last piece Scarlett worked on is said to be the greatest book of the late author but it needs an ending. Georgia has to decide the right person she will chose to do this job. Noah Harrison desperately wants to finish his favorite author’s last work. He’s been a writer for quite a time and looks up to Scarlett Stanton. Noah needs to impress Georgia in order for her to fulfill his need of materials for a suitable ending. While working on this book, Noah and Georgia fall in love for each other but first, they need to learn how to let go of the past and how to open their souls to each other. Dealing with a mother that most of her life has been missing, Georgia also has to make amends with that part of her life. The past tense story was definitely my favorite one. The story Scarlett wrote reveals what the WW2 meant for women who worked in the army field. Scarlett met the love of her life while the sky was filled with fighter aircrafts and earth was a moving ground from all the bombs dropping near you. Their love story was unique, intense, rushed and when they welcomed their child, everything was completed. Meanwhile, Scarlett’s sister lost the love of her life, showing what losing someone during war meant and also what duty in the benefit of the family meant. War separates Georgia’s great grandparents, and the ending Noah needs to create will reveal whether the two lovers will find each other once again or not. That, and something extra. My favorite tense was obviously the past tense. I loved all the characters, how they were created and how strong were built. Scarlett was such a joy to follow and her husband had also flaws, a thing characters usually don’t have and that is a big plus. Their love story was everything us all want. Back in the pre

The alter ego of the main character of the book, an old man, relives the most important parts of his life throughout the eyes of his best friend, his younger self. The old Asle sees two young adults in a park, playing like kids and enjoying the roots of life. The old Asle saves his best friend, the younger Asle, when he sees him almost dead because of alcohol and takes him to the hospital. Battling his demons with alcohol and his love life, the main character of the book paints his troubles in a unique way in order to let go of what’s inside his soul. The only good thing Asle knows is to paint. He lost his wives and his children but still remembers the pain he felt back. The action was not something special and there was not much of it. Rather the main idea the author focused on was repeated for so many times it almost got boring but I still felt the writing style was done in a unique way and pushed myself into continuing reading it. Of course, the special writing style consists on not having any dots, not having many paragraphs and not having a concrete dialogue, or at least punctuation for it. This book has been so dizzy at times by putting the mind of an alcoholic person into words so well. I would have liked more action, there are 3 or 4 episodes when there is concrete action. I would have liked more characters, besides Asle’s mind and his person, younger or older, there was no time to feel anything for any other character. There were also no feelings, the one thing I’m searching in a book.

An old lonely wealthy man hates Christmas. Scrooge hates people and during Christmas time, everything becomes worse for him. Everything changes when three spirits come to him and they show him what people really feel and think about Scrooge, what and how they really feel about this life. The few pages this book is made of reveal a new life for the grumpy Scrooge: that Christmas brings (or needs to bring) happiness into everybody’s lives. Scrooge’s evolution was too abrupt to actually feel believable. 10 pages before he was all black and now he’s got wings to fly with the angels. Not for me. The three spirits didn’t impress me at all, I belive the idea was nice, but the actual work was not something that could give feelings of any kind. Everybody was poor and had real problems while Scrooge’s only qaulity was the fact that he was rich but not happy, not fulfilled in life, without friends and grumpy all the time. The exchange this book shows us we must do in life: the sad wealthy ones need to give their money to the poor happy ones in order to be happy, and the joyful ones need money in order to survive. Ah, the perks of people all seasons.

Richard Flynn tells the story of the time he spent with Joseph Wider while being a student. After a beautiful girl moves in with Richard, a girl who studies psychology at University and used to have Wider as a teacher, Laura proposes Richard to become Wider’s helper with his books. When Wider dies, everybody needs to solve the crime problem in which nobody knows who did actually kill the professor and why. After Richard’s point of view is told, the next two ones come from a journalist and a fellow policeman. After many years and the death of Richard Flynn, the two other men try to find the truth about Wieder’s death and start talking to the persons who were taught to be implicated in the case. The first point of view, Richard Flynn’s one, was by far the best one. I could feel the tension when he told his side of the story. I could feel the mystery. It was great and I believe that the storyline was perfect but the author chose not to go only with that point of view but offer two more instead. That made me dizzy and I somehow lost a bit of interest. The story went too long for what it actually gave. I was hoping for more mystery, like the promise I had in the first part of the story. The other two sides of the story were not my cup of tea and I find the ending a little too plain. There could have been something more, the potential mystery was there.

This story is about mountains and how powerful nature is. The poetical descriptions of life at the mountains create a dream, in which humans, animals or the elements of the nature surround a family of four. The head of the family, the father, dies, struck by a lightning. The father was born and raised at the mountains, while his wife was a city girl, who moved at the mountains because of love. After this, the mother of the family is left to raise her two children alone. The family who survives seem to be unfulfilled, mother dies unhappy, son dies in an accident of hunt, and the girl reaches womanhood without a family, alone but finds a piece of happiness in a frugal relationship with a citizen, after she lost the one who seemed the love of her life. Some chapters are narrated by people, while the special element of the book are the chapters narrated by elements of the nature, such as clouds, witches, a dog, a fawn and the most lyrical chapter was the mountain’s story of its birth. The novel situates death, birth, first love, power, war, survival, life with an illness, alongside all the elements of the nature, including animals, who surround the family and change their destiny. The most powerful lesson of the book is forgiveness, a lesson that needs to be learned by people in order to live a peaceful life.