Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card is one of my favorite books, having now gone through these pages three times. ⁠It’s very American in the way that it’s about competition, and the alien invasion ⁠is a both an excuse and a metaphor to put winning above anything else. It’s also this type of glorification of […]

Even if you already know the storyline of the Iliad and what’s about to happen, ‘A Song of Achilles’ still makes for a gripping read. The story starts slow but it’s an amazingly detailed world you enter. The tension drops in the middle, but the pace picks up near the end, and I couldn’t put […]

This is the fifth novel by Ann Patchett that I have read. I revere Patchett, and I always wondered if she could write about any mundane topic and still make it worthwhile, not realizing she actually takes on that challenge with ‘Tom Lake’. On the upside, her writing is still of the highest level, and […]

My dad would read Robert Ludlum’s books and as a kid, I thought these books where impossibly complicated literature. But rather, this book is like a good meal in a restaurant, or some action movie you turn on and lay back for. There’s some slow warm-up and then the story unfolds with a lot of […]

‘Past Caring’ is only the second book from Robert Goddard I’ve read, but it shares many key ingredients with ‘In Pale Battalions‘. Again it is about generations in England around World War I, a heritage house again takes a role, but most of all, it is about time. ‘In Pale Battalions’ lets us explore morality […]

Yesterday I finally got to reading Iron & Silk, about Mark Salzman teaching English in Changsha (长沙) in the early 80s. And even though Salzman seems like a great guy, he does not make for a great writer, and to me, his book feels more like a bundle of anecdotes rather than literature. This isn’t […]

This book is a memoir of an English teacher in China, so a parallel to Peter Hessler is easily made. Mark Salzman’s book could have been the more interesting one, because he lived in China in the early 80s. Both Iron & Silk and River Town consist of loose stories, but Hessler binds them together […]

Like H is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald’s work is poetic and full of wonder about the world around us. I’m not a huge bird fan or anything, but this book is about more than birds and nature. It’s a way of looking at the world, of finding magic. And like H is for Hawk, Vesper […]

There’s a timelessness to ancient texts such as the Odyssey and Greek mythology, with the themes and lessons in them still being stimulating even today. Icarus who flies too close to the sun, Odysseus who has to resist temptations, the gift of fire from Prometheus. And Madeline Miller gives a modern spin to this bundle of […]

My dad has all of Robert Goddard’s books and this was my first time reading one. I picked Pale Battalions because it’s highly rated online; because its name sounds like a Fischer Z song; and because when I asked my dad to suggest a Goddard title, he suggested the same one. Plus we’ve been to the […]

It’s the story of Margaret Sun, who was born in Shanghai in 1935 and lived through the madness of the cultural revolution, mainly in Xinjiang — China’s new frontier. And while ordinary people in extraordinary times will have fantastic stories, this isn’t a fantastic book. And I appreciate the positive and stoic attitude held by […]

I’ve just finished learning ‘Mastering Chinese, Listening & Speaking 6’ (会通汉语 – 听说6). It’s an OK language-learning book, on the upside there aren’t as many idioms as the Developing Chinese series (发展汉语). The first chapters are extremely difficult, the last few are just pure propaganda: An American lady who lives in Beijing complimenting how well […]

It’s alright. The beginning is slow and boring, the language so exaggerated that often it’s just cringy. the story doesn’t go anywhere (and when it does, you could see it coming from chapters before), and I almost gave up reading this. But either the author got into a rhythm, or I did, or the story […]

It is a book by Frederick Forsyth, but it is no ‘The Day of the Jackal’. Some parts are lecturing, some parts feel more like a summary rather than fiction, and other parts are so testostorone drenched that it feels like I’m reading a script of a Jason Stratham or Sylvester Stalone movie. That said, […]

This book isn’t easy for readers for who English is a second language (especially the middle part, or the religious ramblings), but 63 years after being published, it still feels like an important and relevant book. Science-fiction nowadays is usually about some rebellious A.I., but here it’s about nuclear warfare and humanity’s inevitable quest for […]

Before moving to Shanghai in 2018, I went through a dozen books about China to prepare myself. Several of those books belonged to the genre of ‘Westerners in China who write a book about their friends’, such as ‘Street of Eternal Happiness’ (Rob Schmitz), ‘Wish Lanterns’ (Alec Ash), and ‘Young China’ (Zak Dychtwald). It’s an […]

Usually, when you read a genre-setting novel, it’s really cliché — such as Dune for sci-fi — because the books that followed all borrowed inspiration from its pages. And The Lord of the Rings does feel similar to other books (or games) I’ve spent time with, such as The Wheel of Time, or even World […]

A story from China in the chaotic 20th century that starts brutal, yet becomes more fragile and delicate, chapter by chapter. And when the tale is through, you’ll love Duohe, Erhai, and Xiaohuan, and you’ll love mantou and noodles, or something simple as an egg, touching the fabric of your shirt. Little Aunt Crane (It’s […]

This book starts off extremely similar to Thea Beckman’s novel ‘Hasse Simonsdochter’, as a young girl escapes from her parents and chooses to decide for herself what to do with her life. This book for young adults is decent, alright — but suffers a fatal flaw in that it doesn’t really feel like a full […]

It’s easy to dislike this book (but hard to hate, I guess). Because Warcross by Marie Lu is full of youth-adult fiction clichés, and everything feels just a bit too exaggerated. Plus the pacing of this book feels wrong, first too slow and then too fast. But it’s also easy to like, for Warcross is […]

Firstly, I love the HSK system because it’s clever and introduces compound words/characters really well. In HSK1 you may learn 谢谢Xièxiè (Thank you), in HSK3 觉得Juédé (Think), in HSK4 感谢Gǎnxiè (Thank) and 感觉(Gǎnjué). You can forgive HSK for becoming increasingly written language (especially HSK5 & HSK6). And although I cannot really compare HSK1 to 高级口语, […]

Ready Player Two is a bit like ‘meh’ movie sequels that take the same cast of a popular movie and basically copy the story: old wine, new bags. But I absolutely loved Ready Player One, and so I also loved being back in The Oasis with Wade and the gang, this amazing mix of nostalgia […]

It’s several years after reading this book that I’m writing this review. I’m wondering now why I read books, whether the key is enjoyment, relaxing down and winding down the day. Or whether books should teach me something new, let me live a life I do not have. Or perhaps they should teach me something […]

I loved ‘A God in Ruins’, so here comes a list of superlatives. Yet some people will surely feel this is a boring book, 468 slow-paced pages, which you need to read at an even slower pace to understand, to feel. Who likes such books anyway? It has over 50,000 ratings on GoodReads in 2021, […]

This book is insane. It tells about the races held at Shanghai in the 19th and 20th century, even going into details of which specific movies played in which cinema and at which time, and what specific people wore at days of the races. Yet it is not all fluff; the overload of details’ purpose […]

I love books like this. Written with love for stories, and build on stories upon stories. And it makes you reflect on your own life too. While I was reading this, I thought: Wow, Hessler lived in China in such an amazing time, from 1995 to 2006 (when this book was published). There were no […]

The book is a bit full of typical American self-help advice, and some of its exaggerated ‘pump-yourself-up’ self believes don’t land — but despite this, I still rate it five out of five. I read it about 6 years ago and I bought it again in China to read it again now. Key points for […]

The murder and perpetrators are clear, and so this would look like an anticlimactic read. And yet it’s extremely tense and incredibly fast — so fast that it feels more like a short story. This is also helped by the format: experimental storylines are usually reserved for short stories, and this is almost a ‘whodunit’ […]

I picked up this book because it ranks so high on young adult fiction lists, and because so many now-adults from English-speaking countries look back on this book so romantically. I am not from an English-speaking country, and the books that shaped my youth are different. But I really wanted to read this one, even […]

This is why I don’t read non-fiction anymore. Big words like “talent” and “ambition” and “culture” are thrown around — but those words are such strong bullshit indicators because they’re neither an actual goal nor an actual strategy. Yes, there is some concrete advice in here, but in two hundred-plus pages it doesn’t get beyond […]

“A person did what a person could, whether it was setting up gravestones or trying to convince twenty-first-century men and women that there were monsters in the world, and their greatest advantage was the unwillingness of rational people to believe.” Did you ever feel an author wrote a whole book just to one sentence? Libra […]

Short, concise, funny — and on-point as long as you remind yourself this was written 23 years ago; yet the foundation still stands. Honesty is more important than kindness. A quarrel that has not been solved is not really over. Dutch like direct communication and a student can contradict his or her teacher. And to a […]

I was reading ‘Journey Under the Midnight Sun’ and in praise, Keigo Higashino was compared to Agatha Christie. Then that same week, Christie was referred to in a news article about the Orient Express, and then that same week I found this book in a second-hand bookstore. Three strikes of coincidence, enough for me to […]

I’ve read some Pulizer prize winners, books from Fitzgerald, Capote, Neruda, DeLillo, Burnett, Bradbury, and Calvino and Patchett. 800 pages of Moby Dick. And then there’s this, and yet it’s such a relief reading this after all of that. Skulls and mummies in dungeons and forests. It’s the bratwurst in your hands after eating veal […]

A smoke-filled neo-noir thriller that takes place in Japan during the advent of computers and Japan’s economic boom. What’s hugely impressive is the many storylines that slowly merge and unravel. It’s the passing time too, across more than two decades and several places, yet going back and forth all the time. The atmosphere is so […]

“Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with that there is” It’s such a simple story — a man trying to catch fish — written without much fanfare. Few adverbs and I doubt there is a single metaphor in this book. But how we […]

I started reading this with my full attention but it just wavered — to the point, I was skimming over the last pages because I lost interest and wanted to get to the end. Ali Smith’s writing style is loose and goes all over the place. Weaving and fusing and referencing texts and books and […]

There’s so much in this book. First, it feels so incredibly real because it’s reworked on existing history. I want to look up the events on Wikipedia, even though many never happened. Roth weaves his own coming of age into the story, and the characters feel so incredibly real. Each character unique — brought alive […]

The relationship between the author and reader is a bit of that of a parent and a child, a teacher and student, a falconer and a falcon. Make it too easy, plain, pedantic — and the reader switches off. Make it too difficult or abstract, and the same happens. It’s on the middle ground that […]

At the surface, this book tells about what the lives of poor factory workers are like — millions of them — but at a deeper level, Factory Girls explains so much of China’s migrant culture, which is present in so many Chinese people. From high to no education, young Chinese people leave their hometown to […]

It took me in between hundred to two-hundred pages to get into this book, and even after that, the pace of ‘Life after life’ comes and goes. Some pages are so full of Ursula stepping over carefully described objects or through carefully decorated rooms. The high-level English is an obstacle for me, and Atkinson’s writing […]

‘Who: The A Method for Hiring’ by by Geoff Smart and Randy Street is a fantastic book on hiring with practical advice that saves you time, and prevents you from hiring the wrong people. Who summary Here’s a summary of the tips for my own reference (and perhaps, yours): The goal is to hire ‘A-players’, […]

I was a bit afraid to start a non-fiction book again, and after the great introduction this book is also slow to pick up the pace. I was asking myself “Why do I read non-fiction books again?” They’re usually blog posts stretched to 250 pages. But No Rules Rules picks up the pace quickly and […]

The book started unexpectedly well, blending programming, art, and history. Paul Graham’s writing style is really pleasant: in an almost childish way he looks at things from the most basic way, and then extrapolates that to either a bigger picture or the future (usually both). Each page is full of dialectic paragraphs, which is a […]

Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is Alice in Wonderland in space. I initially felt the form was getting in the way of function, with a lot of storylines on their own, but halfway through the book they did get together and so got my interest in it. A lot happens and it becomes […]

I expect an inspiring story about lifting yourself from ignorance and the poverty that brings, through education in all its form. But I did not expect the richness in which Tara Westover wrote it. She’s great at noticing things felt, rather than seen — and wraps them in flowing poetic sentences. She’s vulnerable, damaged, yet […]

J. Maarten Troost disguises as a travel writer, but underneath that thin veneer of well-composed sentence structures and impressively large vocabulary hides a pessimist, racist, and otherwise deplorable person. It doesn’t take long before Troost remarks about smog, noise, phlegm, and pee — observations that are repeated every chapter. And then the SARS and eating-dog […]

If I ever have children, I hope they’ll read Albertalli’s books. There’s the story of the not-so-openly gay Simon, the overweight Molly, and her lesbian parents, and her sister who’s dating a pan-sexual girl. And these books show everyone’s struggles and thoughts and considerations. “The Upside of Unrequited”, like “Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda“, […]

“Here, the curve of the earth did not hide it, it revealed it.” Rendezvous with Rama describes the weird world of inside Rama, and it’s a real trip through the eyes and minds of its explorers. In this sense it reminds me of the video game Myst; a world that comes without explanation, without purpose […]

Ann Patchett writes impossibly smooth sentences with precisely found words. And together they describe a story so full of detail— it’s almost as if it must have happened, as if Patchett must have been there herself. How else could she possibly write this? The house is a character as much as the people are. And […]

One of the fantastic things about reading is that it lets you live many stories. And here’s the story of Simon, which can be lived, felt, seen from the inside. It’s almost as living — first-hand — through the considerations and problems carried by gay teenagers — many of which I was unaware of. For […]

Jack Reacher books are great fun (although this one isn’t one of the best in the series). Yet I do feel a bit empty afterward each time. Its up a notch from watching TV, but still I feel I’m wasting time with something that’s too close to pure entertainment. Is this the male version of […]

(This is a review of HSK Standard Coursebooks, HSK1 to HSK4上, both the workbooks and textbooks. I’m now making my way through the HSK4下 ones.) The structure is extremely clever, and full of composite words that are useful for later when combined (the Mandarin language is full of composite words). The difficulty doesn’t really increase […]

I can separate the work of an artist and her/his art, so I don’t let Orson Scott Card’s homophobic comments bother me too much. Yet reading this book for a second time reveals the conversation uncle that he is; writing passages about chastity, marriage, passing on genes. And all his female characters are overly emotional: […]

‘The Gardener and the Carpenter’ should have been a long blogpost. I’m reminded why I dislike most non-fiction so much: every essay is being dragged out to 250 pages because then it can be sold as a full book. I’d be happy to buy these books for the same price if they’re shorter — but […]

Detective and mystery thrillers are often captivating to read, but the stories themselves are never memorable: who did what to who and how did it end? A few months later I’ve forgotten it all — and in this respect ‘Into the Woods’ by Tana French is no different — yet beside the story itself, there’s […]

Here’s a hugely impressive book, and I feel smarter and more understanding after reading it. Diamond writes a beautiful message: all societies are inventive, but the environments and starting materials, conditions are not the same. And most of it is based on the narrative of Yali’s question, an elegant and honest search that shows the […]

Don’t worry, no spoilers. H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald “Hunting makes you animal, but the death of an animal makes you human.” Helen Macdonald has written poetry before and it shows. She writes not just about things seen, but also things felt — intuitive thoughts and feelings we all have. Yet she is […]

I expected a business book but this is so much more. And it’s surprising, right away from the first page. Phil Knight writes well, and it’s obvious a lot of time has been put into the story of Blue Ribbon and Nike. There are the narratives of financing the company, the legal cases, and the […]

Here’s one of those classic books which I start reading slowly, letting in all its beautiful prose. But as the book fails to accelerate, my reading of it does, anxious to get this act on, eager to get it done. And so, as with other classics, the second half doesn’t get the patience the first […]

‘Stateless in Shanghai’ is a very detailed description of a mundane life in extraordinary times. And I’m glad Liliane Willens doesn’t try to add any grandness to the story, as the situation doesn’t need it. Willens describes her growing up in Shanghai’s International Settlement in the 1930s & 40s, as a child in a wealthy […]

As a teenager, I loved both The Hobbit and The Fountainhead. But while I never confused Tolkien’s Middle Earth with reality, I did so with Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. Perhaps it’s because I’d never held Bilbo’s cowardliness and dislike of travel in such high esteem anyway, but more likely it’s because The Fountainhead — a […]

This book is based on the genius idea that you can assemble your own MBA, low-price and high quality, and it offers practical tips to pick courses and what to do with it, for instance, how to explain to a future employer the difference between your self-assembled MBA and a traditional MBA. This core is […]

The book merges clever plot lines around dozens of characters, but even though the characters are full of details, their stories rarely run deep. The main example is Pilgrim himself, who Hayes has tried to make one-half testosterone-filled-super-spy, on the other hand a deeply sensitive person, a cocktail that never feels believable. It’s still a […]

What makes a good book? If you derive pleasure out of reading it — or if you look back on it afterwards with pleasure? Bel Canto does the latter, but not the former, so I’m very mixed on this one. The words and sentences are as beautiful as I’ve ever read, and Patchett continues to find […]

This is a review about The Three-Body Problem, The Dark Forest, and Death’s End — as it’s one story and reviewing an individual book in this series makes little sense. Science-fiction is best when it confronts big issues, when it sees us from the far-flung high-tech future, and from that distance looks at the things […]

You’d think the world has enough books from terminal cancer patients, who, in the face of death, try to give us all an urgent message that money and careers don’t matter — but only love does. And how would anyone disagree with those sentiments, taking place in hospitals and bad-news conversations. The message is always […]

Through ‘Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China’, Leta Hong Fincher shares an important message and she deserves credit for this, but I have several problems with the book itself. Firstly — and I say this while I understand that gathering quantitative research data about China is difficult — this book takes cherry-picking […]

“All knowledge is a recognition of the mutual relationships between sense experience and/or things and events.” This is a dense book, packed with insights. Some of them so wise that they make you look at life in a different way. But others feel just plainly wrong or overly simplistic (“You are IT”) — or are […]

This story on understanding comes in the unexpected shape a science-fiction novel — although anyone who has read Orson Scott Card’s books before would not be so surprised. It’s very different from its prequel, Ender’s Game: Speaker for the Dead is about understanding others, be it different individuals, families or even alien races — and […]

Here’s a book I really want to love, as it’s lighthearted tale about how art connects time and space and its people. Even the form is highly original, telling about two motherless figures, six hundred years apart — one a troubled teenager, the other an Italian fresco painter. These perspectives draw you in. The book is marketed […]

A dish spinner keeps spinning disks on top of sticks afloat and needs to alternate spinning each dish before one of them slows down and falls, making the performance fail. An author’s role is similar in that he or she must keep characters alive before they fall from memory, so that the reader is not […]

‘How to build a car’ is a fascinating read that starts with a hard-to-educate boy hobbying in the shed with his dad, who picks up a study in aerodynamics. Much of Newey’s approach lays in these formative years, en route to becoming one of the most dominant car designers of Formula One. It’s interesting to […]

Despite 300-something pages, the book feels compact and leaves me wanting for more. Any of these chapters could be a fantastic standalone book, and any of them raises a lot of important questions — although not necessarily ‘Lessons’ as the title suggests. Nobody has these lessons, and while Harari sometimes over-simplifies or dramatises, he acts as […]

“Hunting makes you animal, but the death of an animal makes you human.” Helen Macdonald has written poetry before and it shows. She writes not just about things seen, but also things felt — intuitive thoughts and feelings we all have. MacDonald puts them down into words. She writes about taming a hard-to-handle goshawk as […]

Libbrecht starts as a jovial old man, not too serious with modern life and its many quicks, but gradually pulls the book into other territories. Some gathered paragraphs: “I carry within me the whole past of the earth. I’m the product of everything that has preceded me, and in fact of the entire cosmos. However, […]

“If you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in which you—you so remote from the night of the first ages—could comprehend. And why not? The mind […]

Maybe Salter just lucked into being a great writer — but more likely it’s the inevitable result of someone who graduated from a military academy, flew fighter planes in the Korean War, dined with celebrities in Europe, and one who had the desire to write it all down. Salter was probably an even better conversationalist, […]

While this little paperback doesn’t really warrant the title ‘masterclass’, it’s an entertaining and inspiring collection of anecdotes. I doubt any of the examples are directly applicable in most cases, but the bigger message is, and it’s a great way to live by. Trott’s teachings are a powerful anti-sound against the increased jargon, complexity and […]

What a journey Liu Cixin takes us on. Ball Lightning is science fiction without the spaceships or time travel, but at a more abstract, magical and even philosophical level. The character of the book are vastly different from each other, unconventional in their own ways. Chen, the narrator of the book, is obsessed and unravels […]

Folding Beijing is a simple story, yet it carries incredible depth by combing Chinese conventions within a futuristic scenario alongside a powerful message. Quarrels are made in an apartment flat, baijiu is served in a state of surveillance, chow mein alternates with autonomous cars, and a girl has to choose between romance and money. It’s […]

Each virtue carries a vice, and in case of ‘Anna and the King’ it’s the extreme amount of detail. Margaret Landon describes Bangkok of the late 19th century through the eyes of an unlikely English teacher. The widow Anna Leonowens arrives in Bangkok with her son, and observes it with both admiration and disgust, as […]

It’s a controversial book due to Peterson’s public appearances, but the book itself is rather tame in its content (although often dramatic in its tone). It has obvious parts (listen to others, don’t blame other people, toughen up, be honest, take risks, do meaningful things, enjoy life)— it has great and inspirational parts — entertaining […]

There is nothing geeky about this book. Sure, it describes China in very broad strokes — which may suit total newcomers (Did you know China is the most populous nation on earth?). Christensen’s book comes across as a selection of Wikipedia pages, bundled in a bright softcover with stock photography. And it doesn’t get better […]

’Ender in Exile’ is a bridge between ’Ender’s Game’ and ‘Speaker of the Dead’, and it tidies up loose ends from other novels, most notably those from the Shadow Series. Orson Scott Card’s view on life shows (“Dear reader: marry and have kids!”), and the pacing feels somewhat off with the middle of the book […]

Reading Thinking, Fast and Slow is a humbling experience, as Daniel Kahneman shows we’re not the pinnacles of reasons who we think we are. Kahneman describes how our intuition is prone to many cognitive errors and thus often wrong. He does so through talking about the two systems of our brain; one being fast, intuitive, […]

In ‘Hoe lang nog zwijgen’ Fidan Ekiz talks about the topic of immigrants from Muslim-majority countries (such Turkey), and the issues that come together with their civil integration into the Dutch society. Ekiz is critical towards both natives and immigrants — and pleads to find ‘the radical middle’. It’s a good message, but Fidan still […]

Patchett’s writing is impeccable (and enviable). Her work of fiction, Commonwealth, took such a grip on me that it’s no surprise her non-fiction is of the same quality. She’s notices depth in the mundane, whether writing about grandmother, marriage, school, or her dog — and adds her warmth along the way. When she projects herself […]

My formative teenage years coincided mostly in the 2000s, and feverishly playing World of Warcraft, Fable and Diablo — so even though I didn’t get most of the references to the Eighties, I totally understood and felt what they stand for. Ready Player One is a fantastic mixture of nostalgia and sci-fi, aptly labelled by […]

It’s entertaining and at times insightful, but this is hobbyist-psychology at best. What gives it away is Manson’s generalisation of all Russians; how they’re blunt and not trying to be nice, and how that proves they’re more trustworthy then American citizens — or the plethora of random anecdotes followed by “That’s basically how our brains work” […]

Dychtwald’s writes well and his sentences have a neat flowing rhythm to them, although he jumps from topic to topic — back and forth — and does so even within the twelve loosely-bundled chapters of the book. ‘Young China’ feels like a loosely weaved net of anecdotes, which are rich in detail and probably representative for […]

Countries need collective stories to shape their identity. ‘De stilte en de storm’ tells about the history of the Dutch Remembrance Day (4th of May) and Liberation Day (5th of May). We take for granted how the fourth of May remembers war victims of all kinds, and that the fifth of May celebrates the freedom […]

It’s nice to inherit certain things from someone, but it’s not nice to inherit everything. Often, those left behind are left in a mess, with thousands of things to sort, pass on, sell or dump. It begs everyone to take responsibility for his or her own death. If you don’t have the time or will […]

Rob Schmitz writes about the residents of Changle Road and personifies modern day Shanghai (and to an extend, China) through these different generations and backgrounds. The focus on a single street is clever, and the stories are compelling. Street of Eternal Happiness is also both a good history lesson as well as a context-provider of […]

This book combines the stories of six Chinese, born across China in between 1985 to 1990, and follows them in their lives until 2015. At times, Ash’s writing is incredibly sharp, but his style alternates as if the blend of six into one isn’t a seamless one. The book tells through inner personas, and provides context […]

Wild Swans tells the story of three generations in China, starting when the country was still an empire, then being occupied by Russians and Japanese, and the battle between the communists and the Kuomintang, and ultimately the communist era and the chaos caused by Mao. The pace slows down massively as the book progresses, to […]

This book is a true gem, and I’m surprised it’s not more known. Written in clear language, it compares the dominant thinking structures of Westerners (e.g. US & Europe) with that of East Asians (e.g. China & Japan). It goes back to Aristoteles and Confucius, but also using ecology, economy and culture to rationalise it, […]

Orwell comes across as frustrated and angry, and rightly so. He outlines how clear writing can be achieved: “Let the meaning choose the word, not the other way around”, and “Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one’s meaning as clear as one can.” Orwell also makes clear […]

The reader experiences this story through the eyes of furry-four-legged Enzo, who has his dog-perspective on everything. It’s easy to feel joyed or saddened by the book, often both at the same time. The book isn’t ‘high’ or ‘deep’ on literature or meaning, but don’t let that stop you. It’s a fun and light book […]

Dune is a colossal book, not just by its influence on science fiction as a genre, but also its rich detail and underlying themes of survival, evolution, ecology, religion, politics, and power. For this it deserves credit, but as a story itself it failed to grip me. A minor obstacle was its pacing, often slow […]

I was hesitant whether to rate it or not, since it’s such a tough read, 19th century English, which is not my mother-tongue to begin with. But that’s not a flaw of the book, but only a hallmark of the time in which it’s written. But Moby Dick is a gruelling, complex, metaphorical and symbolical […]

A highly personal (and therefore subjective) telling of Chinese history, spanning 1898 to 1934, and also a rare first-hand experience from inside the Forbidden City. Johnston is an intellectual tutor who grows into a surrogate father to Puyi, and talks in rich detail about China’s transition from a monarchy in chaos, to that of a […]

It’s the 1922 version of today’s Rich Kids on Instagram. It’s a short book, but each sentence is so dense that it carries much weight. It’s a joy to read the sharp pen of Fitzgerald, and mystifying to witness the many symbols of the book, such as the eyes of T.J. Eckleburg, the parties, the […]

“The road was clear and beautiful in front of me. I felt within me that urge, the sensation of speed, the feeling of tearing up the fine cool morning air as I got up to speed. I was out of sight of the pits and was making for the village of Gueux. As I changed […]

It is a simple story. There are no spaceships, no explosions, no frantic action, no grandeur. Just people in a broken up families. Patchett’s own life patterns are visible; she’s from a divorced family, and she’s divorced herself (albeit without children). In Commonwealth, she writes a fictional story that is simple in structure that tells […]

I bought this book because ‘Hey Whipple, Squeeze This’ is my bible and got me into advertising. I didn’t expect such a private and personal book, nor Luke Sullivan to be able to write such a thing. But this book is totally separate of the other, and creates a thirty-room-world of its own. The stories […]

Interesting theses which I want to believe, but the book is merely a collection of anecdotal evidence, and sadly never makes the choice between being a personal recollection, or giving a wide objective view on the world, nor does it ever give a complete answer to its outset. To introduce this book as a ‘personal […]

Although written slightly dry, it’s a gripping read. Not as apocalyptic as 1984 or Brave New World, but definitely in that category, as perhaps this near reality scenario is equally frightening. What’s compelling is the total descent into a world without privacy that happens with reason, albeit the wrong kind of reason, and the fact […]

Exponential storytelling. Slow to start, but after three-quarters of the book, it becomes utterly gripping. There’s a great level of detail and the amount of work put into an assassination is made clear, and works around the central theme of how a professional is less likely to make mistakes rather than a murder committed in […]

If you want a joyful or entertaining book to read, look elsewhere. Lolita is slow to read and the story itself, dare I say it; boring. Yet Lolita consists of prose perfection on a grim subject, and I learned afterwards that the book helped introduce the idea (and policing) of sex abuse of children in […]

I love Salter’s confidence in writing, his poetic style, his sense of rawness. But the story barely has a narrative, and the story it does tell is generic. Every paragraph filled with a metaphor, which becomes annoying and causes the pace of the book to be sluggish. This book is easy to admire, but for […]

History books normally follow a collection of facts, carefully plotted on a chronicle timeline, devoid of detail, but DeLillo’s Libra blends facts with fiction, and the storytelling to what it meant on both the individuals as well as American society is gripping to its finest details.

Sure, this book requires some getting used to and strike you as odd — but if books are meant to take us places, this one just took me the to the weirdest; inside the mind of the living nor dead. Moreover, is that this is a typical book to read again soon, for it’s full […]

The book shows how people first worshiped nature and animals, then religion, and it shows that our current phase, humanism, is only just that. Do people have a soul? Do we have a consciousness? Aren’t feelings just algorithms? What happens when the future will create better algorithms than our feelings? The book speaks in logical […]

It’s actually multiple interviews between Brawn and Parr, resulting in an excellent read, especially for motorsport enthousiasts. The Art of War is a recurring theme, which doesn’t work that well; the search for strategy for its own sake is a bit of a pity. Also, Parr tests his own thinkings as much as he tries […]

Some chapters are slow, others gripping. The suspense rises throughout the 1300 pages, into something so real that every time I want to check the news or Wikipedia for the fictional events happening in the book.

I like Bob’s wisdom, and I loved the beginning phase of the book. But it got repetitive quickly: if you’ve read a few articles you’ve read them all. What doesn’t help is that it’s all cynical and negative feedback.

This book just starts and never holds back. The quality of Capote’s writing is so impeccable, his attention to details in the characters. Capote could write about a sunny day and make it interesting. This book is a world, real — but not the happiest, but one I loved to go back. This book just […]

What sets Sagan (and Cosmos) apart from other science books is the sheer enthusiasm and context he provides. While the book is thick, and some chapters complicated, the storytelling power and ‘the bigger picture’ make this thing a pageturner.

Shadow Puppets is good for Ender’s Game series addicts, albeit it’s quite fast-foody; fast, cheap, okay but that great. Card’s personal views about marriage are very present in this book (outside his books, he’s openly homophobic), but this shouldn’t bother you. If you’d only want to read books that agree with your personal view, your […]

The book is strung together from short paragraphs, containing timeless principles to build wisdom upon. The 170 pages can be read quickly, unless you want to fully grasp the advice given, and visualise the battles and their implications in your mind. There’s no narrative, yet it’s if I’m taking a class and I’m in a […]

As a book it’s not perfect, but the lessons means this book is well worthy of a five star rating to me. The message of ‘wholesomeness’ makes sense of something I felt, but didn’t knew. Success is a merely the byproduct of wellbeing, and that one can’t chase success, but one can find wellbeing.

Great (largely successful) attempt of accessibly applying ancient Chinese philosophy to today. (Just want to put one small FU here to the authors for implying the world is made by humans (and we can therefor alter it) and that environmentalism is nonsense.)

Ender’s Game is one of my favourite books. It’s not that the literary form is of such advanced prose, but the story and the inner-mechanics of the protagonist are par to none. Ender’s Game is a book about rational thoughts and emotional struggles — told through children — which are present in us all.

It’s not the violence, of which there isn’t much, but it’s the sheer storyline that’s gut wrenching and so extremely brutal. 1984 is just as relevant today as it was when it came out.

The format of the book is really bad and the editing is poor and inconsistent (the intro is written like a school report). It’s a real pity they choose to make some coffee table book out of this, and not a regular paperback. It’s not really an autobiography, rather six separate articles Tesla wrote about […]

It’s an honest attempt, but the pace of this book is too much, and it often feels like it’s part of a series, not introducing the location or characters, at all. The writing is ridiculously flat and filled with superlatives (everything is extreme!). You can see the plot coming from miles ahead. Don’t recommend.

Animal Farm-eqsue, the book tells about the little savage society on a deserted island, now occupied by boys. Golding captures the human inability for peace strikingly well. If this is youth fiction, it’s at the far end of it, but it explores human nature so well, the desert island being a metaphor for an experiment […]