Honestly not sure what I thought of the book… I'm unsure how I got this on my to-read list. I think I was looking for funny books from the last few years. I didn't laugh once reading this book though. It was a sweet story, set in the 80s, but I'm not sure where the arc was. The story is told from the perspective of Lizzie, an 18 year old young woman who moves out of home to work as an assistant to a dentist. The dentist himself is fairly sexist and xenophobic. The mother (of the protagonist...| remy sharp's b:log
Funny, unwavering and dark. Rhiannon, Sweetpea, is according to BuzzFeed, a serial killer - and probably a psychopath. For the first half of the book I just read it as she's a bit crazy and has decided to act on her impulses. Except as I carried on reading, I realised that what she was doing was listing the things that piss her off all the time and just landed at the inevitable conclusion that the only way to get rid of these things is to get rid of these things. Not unlike a lot of us except...| remy sharp's b:log
An easy read, good for the holiday. I chomped this down in a matter of days (though it helped being by the pool to spend more time reading). I've read a number of Matt Haig's books and find I prefer his older material over the newer books, and this book fitted nicely into that category. Without examining the story too carefully (because I think the balance of humour and darkness, in retrospect, is a little off balance and the wheels sort of come off!) - it was a fun read. Definitely reading t...| remy sharp's b:log
A book of letters…kinda made me want to write letters… I picked this up based on "funny books" though I'm really not sure how I landed on this book. I know, sort of, Spike Milligan's work, but only from TV. I didn't know he was an author, particularly from funny war stories so I missing considerable context. Arguably I'm not sure why I read this book. The back cover quotes appeared almost immediately at the start of the book and it was pretty clear that this read like a bottom-of-the-barr...| remy sharp's b:log
300 pages but wow it felt 4 times longer...| remysharp.com
Maybe you've read this book, and you feel a sense of despair.| remysharp.com
Wanted to like it more, the gimmicks frustrated me. I've read every DI Fawley book and I've always enjoyed them. I'm starting to think of these books as a bit of guilty pleasure. However, I'm limited to reading on the Kindle which means the medium which I read is rather specific. Hunter will (as in: has also done in the past books) sandwich in content from different sources to give the story a bit more reach out into the world. I remember the earlier books would have tweets (and I think reddi...| remy sharp's b:log
Facinating for when it was written, but felt like it was sort of missing a story. I'm definitely reading these older classics so that I acquaint myself with what I've assumed all my peers read when they were younger, so this eventually made its way into my reading list. It's an incredible story given when it was written, late 1800s, and I can imagine it blowing minds at the time when it was read. The technicality of the book is interesting too, how there's a story inside of the story whereby ...| remy sharp's b:log
Wreaks of "cosy crime" - and that's good. There's a reason that Richard Osman's series has been a runaway success for many people (or at least I can believe it) - the story is well written, the characters are extremely well drawn and the pages are a pleasure to digest. I keep thinking I'm further along in the series than I actually am because the characters have quickly become a staple of crime fiction in my head. Although I did find I was a little suprised at the some of the more grusome pas...| remy sharp's b:log
Could not put the damn book down! Very easy book to read, and annoyingly difficult to stop reading late at night. The story is told from Evelyn's perspective, a brilliant scientist working in the field of human cloning. There's a lot that goes on in the book, both from the story moving forward and driven by plot twists but also from Evelyn's own inner monologue. The clone aspect of the story presents a, I think, believable take on the sci-fi concept (specifically the purpose clones would serv...| remy sharp's b:log
Cats…sentient cats. A fun, good length book that doesn't take itself too seriously (which, sentient cats is probably the first clue). On reflection (and since the blurb already gives this away), the "hyperintelligent talking spy cats" are a core mechanic of the story, I do now wonder why they hadn't turned out to be the super villains? I'm pretty sure the first thing smart cats would do is ship humans off to a petting zoo as soon as they had the kind of skills the cats in this book does… ...| remy sharp's b:log
Brief, sadly, on all aspects. I knew this was a short read, and having come out of Frank Herbert's Dune at almost 900 pages, a nice little chomp down on a Backman book was exactly what I wanted. Except, frustratingly, I ended up feeling a little cheapened by this book. I've loved Backman's other books (that I've read) and it's the dry humour whilst seeing there's caring a love under every grumpy character that makes their books so appealing to me. This short story definitely tries to include ...| remy sharp's b:log
Incredible world building, but I definitely felt the story lost me multiple times. I've watched Dune 1 and 2 before having read this book, so I had a distinct advantage that Denis Villeneuve's version was already in my head and gave me an (effective) leg up on the visualisation of the world that Herbert was building. Genunienly I found the world building and detail amazing, and even moreso the idea that this book was written in 1965 and that so many people had already fell in love with the bo...| remy sharp's b:log
Really interesting ideas sandwiched in a bit of a weird trip. I'm sure there's an English studies thesis for this book, but I'm utterly unqualified. This book was, kind of all over the shop. I'm very familiar with Blade Runner (both director's cut and OG) and I'd known ahead of time that the book it was based on was not the same. There's actually a fairly coherent string of plot that's similar to the ideas of the movie: identity and self awareness. The middle section of the book is actually p...| remy sharp's b:log
A romance story, some clever writing, slightly predictable, not entirely my bag. I think, because I only started reading in the last decade, that I've not read a "proper" romance novel before. I can't say that I'm won over by the genre through, but that's my failing and not the book's. The story does a decent job of not following usual tropes and traps of stereotype literature, and somehow this is the third fiction book this year I've read that's based in the publishing world (unrelated tidbit).| remy sharp's b:log
Favourite book of my year: wonderful. I loved the characters. I've loved the story telling. I loved the passion around work. I loved the love between the characters. Crossing multiple decades but the crux takes place during the height of 1990s PC gaming. i.e. shortly after Doom - and our characters are games makers. Though the weaving part is their company that makes games, I wouldn't call this a "gamer's book". I'm certainly not a gamer by their measure, but the story put into their game des...| remy sharp's b:log
Lovely old time detective story. I do love an old book. Written in 1958, post war in Japan, mostly a story about...sort of...trains. I knew Japan was big on trains (similarly to the UK, it's our mode of transport), but reading about how they would plan their journey often sleeping overnight, upright, on the train to get from one place to another. The crime is linked to trains and journeys and planning. It's a nice, short enough, straightforward detective story that cross from one generation o...| remy sharp's b:log
The heart break of time travel. I enjoyed this book. The time travel core mechanic is…okay. It's not perfect/bullet proof, but it works to create the impossible problem. The main character is, a little all over the place. It's not enough to be distracting, but often I found myself thinking "this guy isn't helping himself" as he'd continuously make the same mistakes. Maybe this could have been edited out. Without giving too much away, the main character gets stuck out of time for several dec...| remy sharp's b:log
A little predictable.| remysharp.com
For me: a must read.| remysharp.com
Brilliantly written, almost car-crash like reading.| remysharp.com
A heartwarming story where not everything needs to be okay.| remysharp.com