Tag: Book Reviews

All Book Reviews In One Place

“Astrophysics for People in a Hurry” By Neil deGrasse Tyson Review

Posted in Book reviewTagged , , Leave a comment

What is the nature of space and time? How do we fit within the universe? How does the universe fit within us? But today, few of us have time to contemplate the cosmos. So Tyson brings the universe down to Earth succinctly and clearly, with sparkling wit, in tasty chapters consumable anytime and anywhere in your busy day.

I need to admit that this book has been laying on my shelves for 5 years before I actually got to read it. And now I finally have read it.

As the title of this book might suggest, this book is about astrophysics explained in nice, easy, simple and quick way. Which I loved a lot. 

The basic of astrophysics was very easily explained in this book, but at the same time it was explained in a very interesting and enjoyable way. And before I knew it I read this book in one sitting. Which really shows how well this book was done.

As you might know Neil deGrasse Tyson has a lot of books he have written, but this one was my first book by him. And after reading this book I need to say that I will be ordering the rest of his books of amazon after finishing this review.

You wont waist any time on this book because it so knowledgeable and you will learn a lot from this book even thou it has barely over 200 pages. 

And wishing those few pages he explains the entirety of space and time.

As you might know astrophysics is a very complex and huge topic which may take years to fully get the hang of it, and this book gives you a starting point in astrophysics.

Even thou this book is written in a easy and simple way it still is complicated stuff as you might expect from astrophysics.

The writing style in this book was very good. The writing style is what makes this book so interesting and enjoyable because its like Neil deGrasse Tyson knows what words to use to get your attention and get you interested in astrophysics. 

I Give This Book 5 / 5

“Unrequited Infatuations: A Memoir” By Stevie Van Zandt Review

Posted in Book reviewTagged , , Leave a comment

What story begins in a bedroom in suburban New Jersey in the early ’60s, unfolds on some of the country’s largest stages, and then ranges across the globe, demonstrating over and over again how Rock and Roll has the power to change the world for the better? This story. 

Ive been waiting to read this book ever since it was released back in late 2021 and finally I have read it.

Before we start this review I need to admit that I am a huge fan of Steven Van Zandt ever since I watched The Sopranos and Lilyhammer.

I had a lot of expectations for this book, which it quite didn’t live up to. And it made me sad.

But I need to admit that I didn’t know a lot about him before reading this book, and this book provides to you with his upbringing and his early days as a musician along side Bruce Springsteen. 

This book also contains some little fun facts about his life, like how he met Bruce Springsteen and how it was working on the Sopranos as well as on the Lilyhammer. Which I loved a lot.

But I personally would want to get more background and his experiences about how it was filming the sopranos and working with all of those good actors which were on the show.

This book also contains a lot of images from his life, like him with his family, behind the set of the sopranos, his parents etc.

But I need to admit that he comes of as really full of himself and bitter during a lot of moments in this book. 

At times he also come across as jealous of Bruce Springsteen’s super fame, and there were times he claimed that Bruce Springsteen getting famous was solely his doing. I need to say that I don’t know how true or false that is but still it felt like he was very very jealous and angry about Bruce Springsteen’s super fame.

There were times during this book where he claimed that the only reason Bruce Springsteen’s concert had sold out tickets to almost every concert was because of how great he was. Well I wouldn’t quite agree with that even thou I’m a big fan of his.

The writing style in this book was okay for the most part. But it was clear that he is a far better musician and actor than a writer. 

I Give This Book 3 / 5

“Orlando” By Virginia Woolf Review

Posted in Book reviewTagged , , Leave a comment

‘The longest and most charming love letter in literature’, playfully constructs the figure of Orlando as the fictional embodiment of Woolf’s close friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West. Spanning three centuries, the novel opens as Orlando, a young nobleman in Elizabeth’s England, awaits a visit from the Queen and traces his experience with first love as England under James I lies locked in the embrace of the Great Frost. At the midpoint of the novel, Orlando, now an ambassador in Constantinople, awakes to find that he is now a woman, and the novel indulges in farce and irony to consider the roles of women in the 18th and 19th centuries. As the novel ends in 1928, a year consonant with full suffrage for women. Orlando, now a wife and mother, stands poised at the brink of a future that holds new hope and promise for women.

Here we go again talking about a classic which didn’t work for me. Even thou 99% of the classic books I read don’t work me, I sometimes stumble across amazing books as “The Great Gatsby”. But this book is very far from that in my opinion.

Even thou I didn’t have a lot of exceptions for this book, I still managed some how to get disappointed in this book. I hear a lot of both good and bad about this book. And after having reading this one I can honestly say that it is truly bad in my opinion. 

The copy I got of this book has 298 pages, and all of these pages were descriptions of things that were happening and doing so the author of this book forgot about the plot. 

The plot in this book is almost none existing, I write this book 2 days after finishing this book and I can fully say that I don’t know what this book was about because the amount of descriptions in this book over rule the plot in this book.

However the writing style in this book was very very good which truly made me happy because it was the only good thing about this book in my opinion.

When it comes to the characters in this book, I can tell you that they are very flat, boring and you wont remember them after finishing this book. Even during reading this book I couldn’t name even one character that was in this book.

A lot of people on the internet call this book “the longest and most charming love-letter in literature”, but if I received a love letter like this, I would beat the shit of the person who wrote that letter to me. Because it was so awful and it didn’t make any sense to me.

This book was my first book written by Virginia Wolf, and if the rest of her work are like this one, I wont continue my adventure with her work. 

I Give This Book 1 / 5

“Nemesis” By Jo Nesbø Review

Posted in Book reviewTagged , , Leave a comment

After a drunken evening with former girlfriend Anna Bethsen, Police Detective Harry Hole wakes up at home with a headache, no cell phone, and no memory of the past twelve hours. The same day, Anna is found shot dead in her bedroom, making Hole a prime suspect in the investigation led by his hated adversary, Tom Waaler. Meanwhile, the bank robberies continue with unparalleled savagery, sending rogue detective Hole from the streets of Oslo to steaming Brazil in a race to close two cases and clear his name. But Waaler isn’t finished with his longtime nemesis quite yet.

This book is the 4th book in the “Harry Hole” series. Even thou you don’t need to read this series in a chronological order, I still choice to do it just to keep things simple for myself.

I need to say that this book was much better than the 3th book in this series. But so far I kept struggling through this and the previous 2 books in this series hoping that it would get better.

The plot here was intriguing when Harry Hole is framed as a murder. But still the majority of the plot is flat, uninteresting and boring at times. Which really disappointed me further.

This book has two bad guys in its plot, which are a bank robber and a murder framing Harry Hole for murders which actually were done by the murder himself. Which means that there were a lot o things happening in this book, which made it somehow hard to following the events in this book and keep track of everything.

This book first started as saying more or less that the bank robber and the murderer were two different people, but then it quickly got to the point were the bad guy here framed Harry Hole for being both the bank robber and the murderer which I really made it hard for me to wrap my head over how the bad guy could have done that shit.

The characters in this book were on the premise of being good characters, which really hurt me in a way, because you could see that Jo Nesbø was trying to make them good but somehow missed the mark by few inches.

The writing style was good, which means that it was much better than in the previous book. And it somehow made me hope that with this book you see the light of this series becoming better than the 2nd and 3rd book in this series.

I Give This Book 2 / 5

“The Redbreast” By Jo Nesbø Review

Posted in Book reviewTagged , , Leave a comment

The Redbreast is a chilling tale of murder and betrayal that ranges from the battlefields of World War Two to the streets of modern-day Oslo. Follow Hole as he races to stop a killer and disarm a ticking time-bomb from his nation’s shadowy past. Vogue magazine says that “nobody can delve into the dark, twisted mind of a murderer better than a Scandinavian thriller writer”…and nobody does it better than Jo Nesbø! James Patterson fans should also take note.

This book is the third book in the “Harry Hole” series. And I got to say that this really disappointed me further than the second book in this series. 

Even thou the second book in this series in my opinion was bad, some how this book this book is even worse than the second book in this series.

This book has two plot lines with sort of creates a mystery for Harry Hole to solve. The first plot line is the modern day Oslo, Norway. And the second plot line was Oslo, Norway during WW2 time period. For me personally those two plot lines made it confusing and when the plot lines were switching made me lose interest in this book.

The character even Harry Hole were flat, boring and uninteresting. Which really pissed me off, because in the first book in this series, I completely loved Harry Hole, and seeing his character getting watered down like this in this book, really hurt my heart.

This book contains a lot of characters, which really makes it hard to keep track of every character because all of the characters we get in this book seem like the same character without anything which makes them unique or something which will set them apart from the rest of the characters.

The writing style here was not the greatest I’ve seen in this series, its not quite bad but it isn’t neither good. 

The twist at the end of this book was almost none existing, because the closer you got to the end, the more you could sense how this book would end. Which really pissed me off and made me what to scream at Jo Nesbø for why he done that.

During reading this book I had a lot of moments where I wanted to quite reading this book and just put it in the DNF category, but since this is the 3th book in the series I kept going until the end. To see if this book got better, but it never did.

I Give This Book 1 / 5

“Cockroaches” By Jo Nesbø Review

Posted in Book reviewTagged , , Leave a comment

When the Norwegian ambassador to Thailand is found dead in a Bangkok brothel, Inspector Harry Hole is dispatched from Oslo to help hush up the case. But once he arrives Harry discovers that this case is about much more than one random murder. There is something else, something more pervasive, scrabbling around behind the scenes. Or, put another way, for every cockroach you see in your hotel room, there are hundreds behind the walls. Surrounded by round-the-clock traffic noise, Harry wanders the streets of Bangkok lined with go-go bars, temples, opium dens, and tourist traps, trying to piece together the story of the ambassador’s death even though no one asked him to, and no one wants him to—not even Harry himself.

This book is the second book in the “Harry Hole” series written by Jo Nesbø. I loved the first book in this series, but this book wasn’t nearly as good as the first book in this series.

This book takes place in Thailand after a Norwegian ambassador is found dead in a brothel in Thailand. The Norwegian ambassador which was found was best buddies with a high positioned politician in Norway, so of course there was a lot of pressure put on Harry Hole.

The beginning of this book was very good, because we didn’t know what was happening, but as this book kept going it began going more and more down the hill for me personally.

However the plot itself was solid as well as the writing. But the twist at the could have been bigger and better in my opinion. Because I felt like there was something missing in the twist at the end.

I personally found the plot to be very unrealistic and confusing which really disappointed me a lot after the first book in this series was so great in my opinion.

The characters (expect of harry hole) were very flat and boring in a way. And I found myself not caring about them at all, and I was less interested in Harry Hole less interesting than in the first book. Which really made me take away some points from the final review of this book.

This book had also a lot of subplots which really made me uninterested because I picked up this book to follow harry hole on his journey of solving a murder instead of getting mini lectures about money-exchange, international business, politics in the police rankings, political power struggle and finance. If I wanted to get to know about these subplots I would pick up a nonfiction books about these topics and not learn about them from a mystery book.

I Give This Book 2 / 5

“Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life” By Arnold Schwarzenegger Review

Posted in Book reviewTagged , , , Leave a comment

The world’s greatest bodybuilder. The world’s highest-paid movie star. The leader of the world’s sixth-largest economy. That these are the same person sounds like the setup to a joke, but this is no joke. This is Arnold Schwarzenegger. And this did not happen by accident. The seven rules to follow to realize your true purpose in life—distilled by Arnold Schwarzenegger from his own journey of ceaseless reinvention and extraordinary achievement, and available for absolutely anyone.

This book has to be the best book I read last year. It was incredible and so fucking good.

This book is a mix between a self-help book and a biography book coming from no other than Arnold Schwarzenegger, the greatest actor and  the greatest governor of all time.

If you don’t know a lot about Arnold Schwarzenegger but you want to change that, just read this book. Because this book involves a lot of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s life which will teach you a few things.

This book is about Arnold’s path to success and how you can succeed like he did in whatever you want in life. And reading this book really motivates you to actually work harder and to succeed.

This book in a way gives you confidence and empowers you which really shows how good of a writer and person Arnold Schwarzenegger really is.

The writing style in this book. It really proves how good of a writer Arnold Schwarzenegger really is. He is just amazing with words.

It was very hard to put down this book which really made me love this book even more. I was glued to this book from the first sentence and I read this book in less than 1,5 days.

I Give This Book 5 / 5

“Mengele” By Max Czornyj Review

Posted in Book reviewTagged , , Leave a comment

Wydarzenia w tej książce są oparte na faktach. Prawda bywa bardziej przerażająca od najwymyślniejszej fikcji. Josef Mengele był nie tylko zbrodniarzem, ale również opętanym szaleństwem pseudonaukowcem, który więźniów obozów koncentracyjnych wykorzystywał jako żywy materiał do swych chorych badań.

Before we start this review it is important to say that this book is only available in Polish at the time of writing this year.

This book is very easy to read and understand. And at the same time having fun with it. Before getting into this book I thought that it would be very heavy to read and boring. But the truth about this book is that it is the opposite of it.

This book has some trigger warnings about it. Because it talks a little bit about the experiments Josef Mengele had done on twins, pregnant woman and sick people in the concentration camp. Which means that its not for everyone.

However reading about these experiments done by Josef Mengele truly sets the mod about how big piece of a shit Josef Mengele really was. However the way the author told us about these experiments done done Josef Mengele almost seemed like it was some kind of horror book rather than real life events.

But it is important tot remember that this book isn’t a 100% nonfiction book, the cover of the book itself says that it is “based on true events”. And we all know how far the term “based on true events” can go from the reality.

I personally liked this book so much that a part of me wishes that it would be longer than these 350 pages that it had. I read it in 2 sittings, because it short, the chapters are also short and the way it was written makes it even faster to read because all of these words just get consumed by your brain.

The writing style is very good, because it is simple and easy to read. And it was just like the author knew exactly what words to use to grab your attention and not let it go until the very end.

I Give This Book 4 / 5

“The Chestnut Man” By Søren Sveistrup Review

Posted in Book reviewTagged , , Leave a comment

If you find one, he’s already found you. A psychopath is terrorizing Copenhagen. His calling card is a “chestnut man”—a handmade doll made of matchsticks and two chestnuts—which he leaves at each bloody crime scene. Examining the dolls, forensics makes a shocking discovery—a fingerprint belonging to a young girl, a government minister’s daughter who had been kidnapped and murdered a year ago.

I hate to say that but the Netflix series was much better than this book.

After I finished this book I was left with almost none opinions about this book. The reason behind this is because I was very neutral about this book and I just didn’t bother to make any strong opinions about it.

The plot is good, but the way it was written and presented to us made it feel like a disappointing in a way. Which really killed the hype I had for this book.

This book has a very good premise and a creepy vibe when we get to learn more about the serial killer who was terroizring the city of Copenhagen. However I was more and more disappointed in this book as I read it more of it.

The characters here are flat and they really felt like the same person over and over again but just in different clothes. However the characters had some good moments here and there which really made me give this book some points here and there.

The writing style here was very good, it really surprised me how good it is. The writing style made me want to read more books from this author. 

The beginning of this book was really good and promising. But the further this book went the more disappointed I got in this book. Which really sucked because I wanted to gives this book a higher rating because this book was the book I was most hyped about reading last year.

The huge twist at the end was really disappointing because I was expecting this huge mind-twisting revel of who the serial killer is. But unfortunately it didn’t happen. Which really made me think what the point of this book was.

I Give This Book 3 / 5

“Cell” By Stephen King Review

Posted in Book reviewTagged , , , Leave a comment

Graphic artist Clay Riddell was in the heart of Boston on that brilliant autumn afternoon when hell was unleashed before his eyes. Without warning, carnage and chaos reigned. Ordinary people fell victim to the basest, most animalistic destruction. And the apocalypse began with the ring of a cell phone.

To be honest I didn’t have any expectations for this book, because I didn’t know a lot about it before going into it.

The plot in this book is for sure a unique one. The plot in this book is cellphones turning human into a terminators / zombie of sorts. It had good premise but the way the plot was turning into, wasn’t just quite for me.

This book starts with a huge bang. And for that I gave this book some extra points for.

However its important to say that this book is far away from being my favourite Stephen king book. But as a die hard fan of his, I needed to read this one.

I had some thoughts about DNF-ing this book after reading around 60% of it because I wasn’t quite liking this book and I was becoming very bored. But I’ve struggled through it and I was able to finish it. But my initial opinions and thoughts about this book didn’t change after finishing this book.

The character in this book were very weird because they were good characters but at the same time they weren’t. Which really made me unsure what to say about them in this review which is the reason why I didn’t write this review before 3 weeks after finishing this book.

The characters here, had some good moments here and there but for the most part they were pretty flat and boring. And I found myself not caring about them at all. 

The writing style here was good, which made me give this book some extra point. However the writing style wasn’t on the same level with Stephen king’s other work. Which really made me disappointed in this book.

I Give This Book 2 / 5