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irina_sky's reviews
229 reviews
Before I Die by Jenny Downham
4.0
While reading this book, I have asked myself many times, what would I do, how would I behave if(Heaven forbid) I had that goddam terminal leukemia. Would I keep on sitting quiet, doing all the routine things i do every day and live my last days doing nothing remarkable at all?? Snoots! I think I'd go as crazy as Tessa did. That's the whole point. You know you are finished and will be gone in a few months, weeks..., fade away, disappear. In a blink of an eye you are gonna be history, so why not live to the fullest now?
Some would prefer to stay in a dull hospital bed, crying their eyes out into a silent pillow. They can't accept the reality and live their last days in grief and sorrow. I know I'm saying awful things now but I'm just looking at the matter from the point of view of the book.
Tessa did the other way round. She smelled the inevitability of her death from the very first dreadful diagnosis. She knew from the start she'd never finish school, go to college, get married and have kids, she'll be deprived of all that. When her friends go to college, she'll no longer be with them. She realized all that... And that was unbearable like hell.
Her "Before I die" list was somewhat a challenge to her deathly desease. She was only 16 and hasn't experienced much yet. So she promised herself to fall in love, have sex, take drugs, say yes to everything for one whole day, violate rules and more crazy stuff alike. And she did all that! Oh my! Everytime she messed into something new, I was like: "Oh, dear, no, not again, what are you doing? have you got any brains?" but then I realized those were her last chances to be happy..
I couldn't stand Tessa in the beging, she was really annoying and nagging but as I read on I liked her, it felt like she was a terrific friend of mine.
You finally come to realize together with Tessa that it's completely unfair to take a life off such a young and aspiring person!! You feel all those emotions, anger, frustration, antagonism, pity and sorrow.
The last 50 pages are complete tearjerkers acting upon your emotions.
I didn't expect this book to be an outstanding masterpiece of literature, and it wasn't.*** But its message I'll remember forever.*** Be content with what you have, never grumble about your hardships, there are people with more problems. Even when you think your life is finished (whatever it might be), try to approach everything with a smile and your life will brighten a bit. That's what I learnt from this book. And also do more crazy stuff and don't fret too much! We only live once, and that's true.
Some would prefer to stay in a dull hospital bed, crying their eyes out into a silent pillow. They can't accept the reality and live their last days in grief and sorrow. I know I'm saying awful things now but I'm just looking at the matter from the point of view of the book.
Tessa did the other way round. She smelled the inevitability of her death from the very first dreadful diagnosis. She knew from the start she'd never finish school, go to college, get married and have kids, she'll be deprived of all that. When her friends go to college, she'll no longer be with them. She realized all that... And that was unbearable like hell.
Her "Before I die" list was somewhat a challenge to her deathly desease. She was only 16 and hasn't experienced much yet. So she promised herself to fall in love, have sex, take drugs, say yes to everything for one whole day, violate rules and more crazy stuff alike. And she did all that! Oh my! Everytime she messed into something new, I was like: "Oh, dear, no, not again, what are you doing? have you got any brains?" but then I realized those were her last chances to be happy..
I couldn't stand Tessa in the beging, she was really annoying and nagging but as I read on I liked her, it felt like she was a terrific friend of mine.
You finally come to realize together with Tessa that it's completely unfair to take a life off such a young and aspiring person!! You feel all those emotions, anger, frustration, antagonism, pity and sorrow.
The last 50 pages are complete tearjerkers acting upon your emotions.
I didn't expect this book to be an outstanding masterpiece of literature, and it wasn't.*** But its message I'll remember forever.*** Be content with what you have, never grumble about your hardships, there are people with more problems. Even when you think your life is finished (whatever it might be), try to approach everything with a smile and your life will brighten a bit. That's what I learnt from this book. And also do more crazy stuff and don't fret too much! We only live once, and that's true.
Гобсек. Шагреневая кожа. Отец Горио: Романы by Honoré de Balzac
4.0
Интересный сюжет с мистическим обрамлением и гармонично вплетенной любовной линией.. В чем-то даже поучительная книга. Немного многословно, но прекрасный стройный бальзаковский литературный язык компенсирует все...
The Foundation Pit by Andrei Platonov
5.0
Set during the first Five-Year Plan (1928-32), it deals with the attempts of a group of labourers to dig the foundation pit of a vast building that is to house the local proletariat, before moving on to describe the expropriation and expulsion of a group of rich peasants from a nearby collective farm. Soviet writers at the time were expected to record and celebrate the achievements of industrialisation and collectivisation, and indeed, the drives to modernise agriculture were the subject of several of Platonov’s other works. Yet, having seen at first hand the effects of a policy that brought suffering and despair to untold numbers of Soviet peasants, and which threatened to stifle the spontaneity of the Revolution with deadening bureaucracy, Platonov wrote instead a cautionary fable that Mikhail Geller has called “the only adequate literary representation of those events whose significance for the history of the country and the people exceeds that of the October Revolution”.
The Foundation Pit opens with one of Platonov’s most memorable paragraphs:
On the thirtieth anniversary of the beginning of his private life, Voshchev was sacked from the small machine factory where he had until then got the means for his subsistence. His dismissal notice stated that he was being removed from production on account of a situation of ongoing personal weakness and thoughtfulness amid the general tempo of labour.
The thoughtful Voshchev, who has some claim to be the hero of the story, is a wanderer and seeker after truth (indeed, truth is a word frequently associated with him). His meditations lend the work an existential tone (“The dog’s bored. It’s like me – it only lives because it was born”), and establish the conflict between contemplation and action that runs through The Foundation Pit (“My body gets weak without truth. I can’t live just on labour”).
The Foundation Pit opens with one of Platonov’s most memorable paragraphs:
On the thirtieth anniversary of the beginning of his private life, Voshchev was sacked from the small machine factory where he had until then got the means for his subsistence. His dismissal notice stated that he was being removed from production on account of a situation of ongoing personal weakness and thoughtfulness amid the general tempo of labour.
The thoughtful Voshchev, who has some claim to be the hero of the story, is a wanderer and seeker after truth (indeed, truth is a word frequently associated with him). His meditations lend the work an existential tone (“The dog’s bored. It’s like me – it only lives because it was born”), and establish the conflict between contemplation and action that runs through The Foundation Pit (“My body gets weak without truth. I can’t live just on labour”).