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Sara Cox (1845 KP) rated Insomnia in Books

Feb 23, 2020  
Insomnia
Insomnia
Marina Benjamin | 2018 | Biography, Mind, Body & Spiritual
5
5.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
This is not what I expected. I checked this book out thinking it was going to be more science based. Instead it was more anecdotal. It was interesting hearing about different aspects of insomnia and what happens to a person. I found this goes a lot of topic at times. Nevertheless it is one of the the most beautifully metamorphically written book I’ve ever read. Listen to it, at times I felt like I was surrounded by colour.
  
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ClareR (5589 KP) rated Insomnia in Books

Jan 15, 2024  
Insomnia
Insomnia
Sarah Pinborough | 2022 | Contemporary, Fiction & Poetry, Mystery, Thriller
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Insomnia wasn’t at all what I expected - and that’s a good thing!
Emma is terrified that she will end up like her mother on her 40th birthday: which is only 12 days away. At the same age, her mother became paranoid and tried to kill Emma’s sister. She ends up in a psychiatric hospital for the rest of her life - but not before predicting that Emma will end up the same way.

Emma isn’t sleeping. Is the insomnia an understandable result of the worry and trauma caused by her mother, or is she really going to end up with the same mental illness?

Ooh, this was a twisty-turny one! When Emma starts ‘losing’ parts of her day, even I thought she was heading down the same path as her mother. Trying to keep her disturbed past and her successful present completely separate seems an impossible task, and really piles the tension on.

This was a very tense read, and I was completely hooked - this is one of those books that you won’t want to put down.
  
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Leah Lopez (7 KP) rated Mayhem in Books

Nov 6, 2019  
Mayhem
Mayhem
8
8.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
Battling with insomnia, and his addictions to Laudanum and the Opium dens of London, Dr Bond, (a) Police Surgeon, is assigned to help identify (the) mutilated female corpses'-inspired by true events-The Thames Torso Murders-found in the gaslit Victorian era of London.

Jack the Ripper is the accused but Dr Bond believes the eerie deaths are the works of somebody, or something else and sets out to find whoever, or whatever, it is.

Based on true events, Sarah Pinborough has added a supernatural ending.
  
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Sarah (7798 KP) rated Insomnia in Books

Jun 17, 2020  
Insomnia
Insomnia
Stephen King | 2011 | Horror, Science Fiction/Fantasy
7
8.7 (25 Ratings)
Book Rating
Reading this would be a great cure to insomnia...
This book has been on my shelf for quite some time. Mainly because it's a beast of a read - a huge 650 page hardback book - and I've not had the inclination to read. As my pile of unread books is dwindling drastically, I finally decided to give it a go and overall I was pleasantly surprised.

My biggest surprise when reading the first few chapters was the realisation that this book isn't what the Christopher Nolan film Insomnia was based on. I cant even tell you why I thought this in the first place 😕 Once I got over this, I really got into the book or at least the first few hundred pages. As always with King, the book is very well written with a likeable protagonist and well developed secondary characters. The problem is that the story is maybe a little convoluted and isn't helped by the sheer length of it all. 200 pages in I was wondering how this could be dragged out for 650 pages and whilst it never gets as tedious as you'd imagine, this is definitely longer than it needed to be. Whilst the plot is typical King, it gets a little confusing and 'out there' even for him and I think he could've simplified this a little. Because of this I could only read up to 100 pages at a time as it made me feel rather sleepy - a perfect cure for insomnia I'm sure.

By the end of the book I did come to at least enjoy this story more than I thought I would, and even shed a tear or two. This definitely isn't a book for casual readers though and not one of King's best. But if you're looking for a door stop sized challenge, you could do much worse than this!
  
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Ross (3282 KP) Jun 17, 2020

I'm sure your shelf breathed a sigh of relief!

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Matthew Krueger (10051 KP) rated Diary of a Madman (1963) in Movies

Mar 31, 2020 (Updated Mar 31, 2020)  
Diary of a Madman (1963)
Diary of a Madman (1963)
1963 | Classics, Horror
8
7.0 (4 Ratings)
Movie Rating
The Evil Within: Evil Spirit Inside
Diary of a Madman - is a good psychological thriller that started Vincent Price.

The Plot: When Judge Simon Cordier (Vincent Price) goes to see Louis Girot (Harvey Stephens), a prisoner he sentenced to death, the criminal insists he is not guilty and that he is inhabited by an evil spirit. Cordier dismisses Girot's claims, but he becomes unnerved when Girot lights himself on fire to supposedly end the demonic possession. After the visit, Cordier, beset by insomnia, begins to have odd visions and starts to wonder if Girot might have been telling the truth after all.

Its psychologically twisted, horrorfying, terrorfying and overall a good movie.
  
Hour of the Wolf (Vargtimmen) (1968)
Hour of the Wolf (Vargtimmen) (1968)
1968 | International, Classics, Drama
(0 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"This is a visceral tale of an artist (Max von Sydow) whose mind begins to unravel as he’s plagued by insomnia and macabre visions of demons. His pregnant wife (Liv Ullman) is so concerned by this that she begins to stay awake with him night after night as he tries to process his grief. This is clearly a very personal work for Bergman, who admirably attempts to grasp and explore an existential issue for all artists. The pursuit of knowledge or truth or clarity or enlightenment—whether by means of artistic expression, religious belief, or science—has the capacity to rend an individual’s personality to shreds. As the saying goes, there’s a fine line between genius and madness."

Source
  
Renegades
Renegades
Marissa Meyer | 2017 | Fiction & Poetry
9
8.3 (19 Ratings)
Book Rating
The characters, the plot, everything really (0 more)
I have to wait MONTHS for the next one to come out ? (0 more)
This is the best book I've read all year! It completely kept my attention the whole time i was reading it. I was very disappointed when it ended and I found out I had to wait months for the sequel to come out. It'll definitely be well worth the wait though.
Nova Artino/Mclain aka Nightmare/Insomnia was a very likeable character. I loved her. She's definitely not one of the bad guys even though she was raised by "villians" and went undercover as a Renagade.
I really liked Adrian as well. He was also very likeable. Many of the main supporting characters were likable, I just wished we could have learned more about them and seen them more.
Overall, I greatly enjoyed this book. I cannot wait until Arch Enemies will be released so I can see where it takes Nova and Adrian and their gang.
  
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Billie Wichkan (118 KP) rated Sleep in Books

May 22, 2019  
Sleep
Sleep
C.L. Taylor | 2019 | Thriller
10
8.7 (3 Ratings)
Book Rating
Anna suffers from crushing insomnia following an accident that she feels responsible for. Unable to forgive herself she moves to Rum to try and escape.

At first it would appear that the location and the job are just what the Dr ordered until the new intake of guests arrive and with them more disaster for Anna. The story is made even more interesting with what is going on at home. At first you cannot see any link, but as the story builds to its thrilling climax you realize the connection and there is even an unexpected twist at the end.

Once again C.L. Taylor has delivered a perfect thriller. I raced through this book as once I started I just couldn't stop. I kept thinking I had it all figured out.... BIG MISTAKE!!!! The ending is just WOW!
The setting is just wonderful for this story and just takes it to that next level.
Creepy, chilling, exciting and intriguing. A true reminder to never take things on face value!


Many thanks to Net Galley and Avon Books for the chance to read, review!
  
Tenet (2020)
Tenet (2020)
2020 | Action
Massive letdown from Christopher Nolan
Christopher Nolan has a bit of a name for himself, and a bit of a following.

While I haven't seen all of his films, I have (mostly) quite enjoyed the ones I have seen - The Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, The Prestige, Insomnia, Dunkirk and Interstellar - so it's always an event when he releases a new movie.

This particular one had the mis(?)fortune to be released in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, when large gatherings put health at risk and when cinemas were struggling after being closed for months on end.


I never saw it on the big screen as a result.

Having now seen it (on Amazon Prime), I'm quite glad that I didn't pay (and put my health at risk) to see it in the cinema - honestly, I found it mostly dull, incomprehensible (in that I couldn't make out half the dialogue) and interminable in length, despite the occasional 'money-on-the-screen' sequence

If you want to see a good 'backwards' story, watch the Backwards episode of Red Dwarf (season 3, episode 1) instead.
  
The Astonishing Color of After
The Astonishing Color of After
Emily X.R. Pan | 2018 | Young Adult (YA)
9
8.3 (3 Ratings)
Book Rating
Evocative descriptions (1 more)
Good characters
Just WOW. The Astonishing Color of After is about a teenage girl, an artist, dealing with her mother's depression and ensuing suicide. Part of what makes the book so fascinating is Leigh's constant description of colors. She uses color as shorthand for emotions - her grandmother might have a vermilion expression on her face, or she might be feeling very orange while staring at her mother's coffin at the funeral. Between colors-as-feelings and her insomnia-induced hallucinations (or magic - the book is deliberately, I think, noncommittal on whether some things only happen in her head or not) the entire book feels a little surrealistic. But grief and mourning DO feel surrealistic. The book is amazingly evocative and emotional and I absolutely adore it. This, along with City of Brass and Children of Blood and Bone, are definitely on my Best of 2018 list.

As an added bonus, the author is the American child of Taiwanese immigrants herself. So all the ghost traditions and folklore from Leigh's journey to Taiwan are from her ancestry as well.

This book was gorgeous. It may need a trigger warning for depression and suicide. If you can handle those themes, read it.

You can find all my reviews at http://goddessinthestacks.wordpress.com