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Ameeka (131 KP) rated Gone in Books

Jul 16, 2017  
Gone
Gone
Michael Grant | 2008 | Children
8
7.7 (16 Ratings)
Book Rating
Concept of adults disappearing (3 more)
Well written with a great plot and interesting world building and action packed scenes
Likeable main characters
Secondary characters are realistic and well fleshed out
Highly enjoyable, hooks you at the very start
The storytelling is straightforward and Grant's imagination is so fertile. The writing in the book was good and I liked the fact that there were so many characters to read about. Each one was fully fleshed out. There is a lot of violence in this book, the author does not gloss over any gory details. There are also some downright evil characters with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, the line between good and evil was well defined. The characters were either good or evil. In fact, there were only one or two characters who struggled with their identity, whether or not they identified themselves as good or evil. Those characters really stood out and made for a quite interesting read. There are also many twists and turns in the plot that you won’t be able to put this book down. The characters are well developed, and are relatable. There is action, suspense, romance, and fantasy all rolled into one. Gone is a spectacular beginning to what I can only hope will be a thrilling series.
  
Synopsis: C.S. Lewis excelled at plumbing the depths of the human heart, both the good and the bad, the beautiful and the corrupt. From science fiction and fantasy to essays, letters, and works of apologetics, Lewis has offered a wealth of insight into how to live the Christian life.


 

In this book, Rigney explores the center of Lewis’s vision for the Christian life—the personal encounter between the human self and the living God. In prayer, in the church, in the imagination, in our natural loves, in our pleasures and our sorrows, God brings us into his presence so that we can become fully human: alive, free, and whole, transformed into the image of Jesus Christ.



My Thoughts: This is a book that takes a look into the life of C.S. Lewis; author of many books that readers have come to love. This is a wonderful book for those who enjoy reading C.S. Lewis' books as it gives an idea to the reader the thoughts and insights in his writings.



This is a good book for those who want to become acquainted with Mr. Lewis and will certainly want to go back and read his books again.

Iam certain that readers will enjoy this book.
  
NE
Never Enough Love
10
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
John Lazano tells us the tale of John Lazano and his search for enough love. It's the story that spans fifty-four years of his life from his beginnings from a traditional New York Italian Catholic family. He lived multiple lives with multiple wives traveled the world and had hundreds of affairs. He is a talented writer who definitely does not leave anything to the imagination. The fascinating life he lived in the Navy, his traveling on cruise ships and his uncanny ability to get himself tangled up with women of all kinds from his second wife a madam in San Diego to his traditional third wife who came from a traditional Italian home who followed behind him between New York, New Jersey, Minnesota and Florida. He was even unwitting married to a fellow Navy midshipman who was a bi-sexual who almost ruined his career in the Navy. John has a way to take you on the travels and you wander along the way when will love that he is receiving. It can not seem to Never Enough Love. I feel for this man who seems that even when he loses it all throughout the story that regardless of all his travels and pursuits he is still searching with no boundaries.
  
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Awix (3310 KP) rated Dunkirk (2017) in Movies

Feb 10, 2018 (Updated Feb 10, 2018)  
Dunkirk (2017)
Dunkirk (2017)
2017 | Action, History, War
Life's a Beach
I'm fully aware I'm swimming against the tide on this one, but I didn't really understand the rapturous reception Dunkirk got from most people. Yup, well-made; yup, well-acted; yup, a highly significant moment in history - but I found the actual story to be rather thin, and - apart from all the funny business with the chronology - it is wholly lacking in the usual imagination and ambition you'd expect from a Christopher Nolan film.

Apparently Nolan wrote the script over twenty years ago and said to his wife 'I must now become a hugely successful director of blockbusters, as this will give me the experience I need to make this film' - well, for me this does almost feel like retrograde step from the man responsible for Interstellar, Inception, and the Batman trilogy. Then again, those are all SF and fantasy movies, and he's never going to win the Oscar he deserves if he carries on doing that sort of thing.

I expect I would have been impressed by this film if it had been made by anyone else, or if I wasn't so familiar with Nolan's other work. As it is, this is the only Nolan movie in over a decade I can't see myself owning on DVD.
  
The Big Over Easy: An Investigation with the Nursery Crime Division
9
9.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Fford. If you don't know him you should, especially if you love Adams & Pratchett
I picked this up on the off-chance , when it was on special offer. This is how I like to try out writers that are new to me. Buy 'em cheap and then it doesn't matter if (as is so often the case) they end up in the secondhand-bookshop.

If only more of them had fulfilled their promise as this did!

I really wasn't entirely clear on what I was getting, (that happens to me sometimes - I thought 'The Mummy' was a horror film!) but I'm so very glad I got it.

What Adams did for Sci-Fi and Pratchett did for Fantasy, so now Fford s doing for the 'tec novel. This amazing imagination give us a story in which Humpty-Dumpty, noted intellectual, womaniser and law-bender,is found dead at the bottom of a wall. It looks like suicide, but is it? Enter Jack Spratt hard-working, family-man detective with the Nursery Crimes Division.

Few things, even those I love actually make me laugh out loud, but this managed it on several occasions. If you like off-the-wall, bizarre or just plain silly, buy this.Then buy the rest of his books.
  
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Ross (3284 KP) Feb 7, 2018

I much prefer the Nursery Crimes books to the Thursday Next series, for which he is better known.

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Mayhawke (97 KP) Feb 9, 2018

I agree. I waited years for the third one to come out before I gave up all hope.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
2018 | Action, Animation, Sci-Fi
It seems only appropriate to close out the year which saw the passing of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko with a film celebrating their most successful creation; the result is a movie which appears to be under-performing at the box office simply because it's animated (a regrettable prejudice which I sometimes suffer from myself). On one level this is yet another Spider-Man origin story, the novelty value comes from the fact that the Spider-Man in question is the Ultimate version (Miles Morales) and the plot involves a hole being blown in the universe and numerous other Spider-People from parallel worlds being sucked through. Some of these are very weird.

Rock-solid storytelling, huge visual imagination and some very good jokes come together to make a film which works really well on virtually every level; there's perhaps not enough of the Nicolas Cage Spider-Man but you can't have everything. Not sure where they're going to go with the sequel (the novelty value of this film makes it a tough act to follow) but it does at least suggest possibilities for a meta-franchise based just on Spider-Man. A worthy and touching tribute to Stan and Steve.
  
The Moor
The Moor
Sam Haysom | 2018 | Contemporary, Fiction & Poetry, Horror
4
6.5 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
The Moor is Sam Haysom’s debut novel and though it seems to have pretty high ratings, I found it to fall short of my expectations. The book encompasses the story of a handful of thirteen-year-old boys on a hiking trip through the moors. During this trip, things go wrong and… well, that’s where it tries to be two stories at once: a ghost story and a creature feature.

The ghost story side of this book is fantastic. It’s written in a way that captures the reader’s imagination and honestly, I could picture the details quite well. What I didn’t like was the creature feature side of the book. The monster that makes up this horror tale should be terrifying, but instead I found it to be one dimensional–in fact, every single time the creature shows up, it’s described the same way which really put me off.

I felt no emotions or connections to the boys in the book, and this greatly diminished the emotional/fright factor of the novel for me. I really wanted to taste the fear that these teenaged boys were going through.

I’d like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
  
Tongues of Serpents (Temeraire #6)
Tongues of Serpents (Temeraire #6)
Naomi Novik | 2010 | Science Fiction/Fantasy
5
8.0 (3 Ratings)
Book Rating
On paper this book ticks all the boxes for one that I should like: Alternate history, historical setting and dragons.

Unfortunately the reality for me fell well short fo what I felt could be acheived. This is the first book by Novik I have read and perhaps starting at number 6 means I am missing something, but this just failed to gel.

The concept of the dragons being a reality and influencing history was one that was easy to grasp but so very little was done with it. The dragons themselves are quite dull - far from the spectacular beast of legend they have little interesting to do and virtually no personality. There is also not a great deal of plot strung out very thinly involving a chase across Australia, but it takes so long to get going and the chase is repettitive and didn't capture my imagination.

There are some sparks of good ideas here - the smuggling, the political issues in Sydney (caused by the governer - a certain Captain Bligh) - but they end up undeveloped and drowned by the plodding narrative which doesn't seem to want to examine anything that doesn't involve the dragons.

The central idea may have promise in other books of the series, just not this one. Sorry Naomi
  
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