Reviews about historical, literary, classic, and other fiction. Miscellaneous book things.
Strange tale of the anti-Nazi bestseller, the Stasi spies and the missing Gestapo files
As the film of Alone in Berlin opens, German historians say facts were kept out of Hans Fallada’s original novel
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Fascinating! It's still an amazing book.
The book starts off so wonderfully, drawing you in and making you want to see more of the Kim family. Unfortunately, the lovely writing and intriguing storyline didn't last very long, and started to wane after about 200 pages. The writing style changed so much that it became a pain to read, and all the skipping ahead and lack of character development really became tiring. I really hoped it would improve and tried to keep going, but it just wasn't worth it, so I quit. Very disappointing after such a strong start.
It seemed to be off to a good start, but it declined so quickly and so much. All the telling and not showing was extremely tedious, and the characters felt so flat and interchangeable. Not to mention the switching between past and present -- this style of historical fiction needs to go away! -- especially with the modern bits being so dull and not fitting in style at all.
W. Somerset Maugham, Books and You
"Digital books stagnate in closed, dull systems, while printed books are shareable, lovely and enduring. What comes next?"
Quite a mess of a book. It jumped all over the place without any coherent structure. The content seemed to involve anything even slightly related to sex, gender, or sexuality, with sex and gender often confused for one another. Very light on science and facts (though it claimed to be), mostly random interviews and anecdotes that only sometimes connected to one another.
"A few Columbia students want warnings on Ovid. What's next? Here's what Literature Fascism would look like."
"New research suggests whether information is presented electronically or on paper affects the way we process it."