sábado, 30 de diciembre de 2017

Books of 2017

1- Le piccole virtú - Natalia Ginzburg 3/5
It wasn't a bad book, but it was my first book in Italian and it's really hard to read something with so much new vocabulary and verb conjugations that you haven't learnt yet, so I felt as though I couldn't enjoy as much as if I had read it with a higher Italian level. I must add, that even though I was glad that they were short "chapters" -which in every book helps making it faster to read-, in quite a few of them I found that halfway through I had lost the interest and it had become a tad repetitive and I couldn't wait to just be done with them.

2- Bridget Jones: Mad about the boy - Helen Fielding 3/5
Well, that took forever to finish - at least compared to the other two books. And I know comparisons are odious, but I thought I wasn't going to finish this book until summer (and not necessarily because I have a lot of reading to do for uni). It's not a bad book, but there were some things that pissed me off so much. It could be because I read a couple of reviews before I read the book, but now that I've finished it I still think the same. How come she barely "grows up"? I get it that she stills thinks about sex and wants/needs someone to be by her side after the gap Mark has left. But jeez, is it really THAT important? I get it we have needs but I don't know, it felt like she hadn't grown up and like she only had the children because Mark wanted to. I know that sounds very mean because at times she shows that she cares for them but she has the mindset of a thirty year old - or even younger. I don't know, I just found myself getting really mad at her because neither her nor her friends seemed to have grown up. I know everyone has different priorities (and needs) but most of the time it felt like they were ignoring that over ten/fifteen years (if not more) had passed and they still had the same mindset. It doesn't help the bottle of wine I've had while I was finishing this book to bring out all these thoughts, though it is true I had most of them whilst sober.
Overall, it had some good moments that made me laugh out loud, so I'm giving it three stars instead of the two I was planning to give it throughout a big chunk of the story.
And again, a shitty review by me was born.

3- Seis personajes en busca de autor - Luigi Pirandello 3/5
Since I had to read this one for university, I don't think I enjoyed it as much as I could've. Though I also don't think I would've chosen to read this on my own. It wasn't bad, you can definitely understand the critics the author was making and his own mentality and "issues" that he had. I especially liked how the characters tell the actors that they're not doing a good job, since what they're acting is their view of the story they have told and shown them. They try to be true to the characters, but it's never going to be the same as what "the facts" and their reactions were.

4- El vizconde demediado - Italo Calvino 3/5
No review.

5- Todos deberíamos ser feministas - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 5/5
A very good and short book that everybody should read at some point. I would've loved for it to go deeper into some topics, but considering this comes from a Ted Talk (which I believe you are only given up until a certain amount of time) I feel as though is a very good start on feminism, and why people shouldn't be afraid of using it or saying "why not call it equality" or something like that. Will definitely be passing this book around people I know who say they don't believe in feminism or they don't want to call themselves feminists.

6- Billy and me - Giovanna Fletcher 4/5 (could be a 3)
No review.

7- La cantante calva - Eugène Ionesco 3/5
No review.

8- Always with love (Billy and me, #2) - Giovanna Fletcher 3/5 (could be a 4)
No review.

9- Un monstruo viene a verme - Patrick Ness 3/5
I devoured this book because 1) it was really easy to read, with such short chapters and "simple" style and 2) I was waiting for it to make me feel something, which it didn't. I don't know if it is because everyone I talked to told me that both the book and the movie adaptation were really good and that they would make me cry and it just didn't happen for me. I felt sorry for Conor for what we was going through but I knew exactly from the beginning what his "story" was and what he felt and everything, so it didn't surprise me when he said it to the monster. It mostly made me feel sad that the book wasn't making me feel sad, which was what I was looking for and why I chose to read this book next. I was so looking forward to reading it and I looked for the right time to read it and it disappointed me. Maybe I shouldn't have had such high expectations.

10- My life had stood a loaded gun - Emily Dickinson 4/5
I'm pretty sure this is the first book that I read of hers and I really, really enjoyed it. One of my friends is crazy about her poetry so I couldn't wait to read some of her poems. So glad I decided to buy this small compilation.

11- Stranger than fanfiction - Chris Colfer 4/5
It took me a while to really get into this book. I've loved every book Chris Colfer has written (so far), but this one I wasn't so sure about. As with many other books, the first few chapters were a bit hard to push through, but then I couldn't put it down as it made me laugh out loud and cry so much (I wasn't expecting to sob). I loved that he brought such diversity into this story since representation matters so much. I don't know what I was expecting, but this was definitely not it (in the best way). So pleased I picked this book.

12- El coronel no tiene quien le escriba - Gabriel García Márquez 3/5
No review.

13- Queens of geek - Jen Wilde 4/5
No review.

14- Gli innamorati - Carlo Goldoni 1/5
I think there was just one character in this play that I didn't fully hate. I didn't see the point of this story, the characters didn't really dare to make decisions and had no... personality/character. Every page was torture, which makes me really sad because Goldoni is apparently a very important writer but I can't stand what I've read so far of his.

15- La locandiera - Carlo Goldoni 2/5
No review.

16- Mind your head - Juno Dawson 4/5
No review (yet).

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