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Orphan X (Orphan X, #1)
Orphan X (Orphan X, #1)
Gregg Hurwitz | 2016 | Thriller
10
9.0 (4 Ratings)
Book Rating
Evan Smoak is a former secret operative who now uses his training to help those in danger. But his latest client may be more than he can handle when someone tries to kill her at their first meeting. Can Evan keep her safe?

While the book seems to start slowly, it soon becomes apparent that everything is important to the story being told here. It quickly turns into a book you can’t put down with twists and action that leave you anxious for the next in the series. Evan can be a bit of a superhero, but the seeds are planted to fully flesh him out as this new series progresses, and I can’t wait to see that happen.

Read my full review at <a href="http://carstairsconsiders.blogspot.com/2016/05/book-review-orphan-x-by-gregg-hurwitz.html">Carstairs Considers</a>.
  
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Sjon recommended Fish Can Sing in Books (curated)

 
Fish Can Sing
Fish Can Sing
Halldor Laxness | 2001 | Fiction & Poetry, Humor & Comedy
(0 Ratings)
Book Favorite

"Set in Reykjavík at the turn of the 20th century this novel has a Chaplin-esque quality in its celebration of how the good values of society are to be found among those clinging to its lowest rung. Álfgrímur is an orphan living with an old couple who have opened their small farm to the misfits and the meek. A nearby graveyard becomes the boy’s playground, and it is there he is discovered to have “the pure tone” while singing at funerals of the lost and lonesome. From their gravesides he goes into the world to become a singer. It is my favorite book by Laxness, not least because it is his attempt to understand why someone like himself, born in a town of 10,000 people, found the right melody to transform the stories of a small world into world literature."

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Awix (3310 KP) rated The Queen's Gambit in TV

Jan 20, 2021  
The Queen&#039;s Gambit
The Queen's Gambit
2020 | Drama
Lavish drama based on Walter Tevis' novel about a female chess prodigy. What sounds like fairly unpromising material - a young orphan discovers an immense talent for chess and rises to take on the world champion in Moscow, confronting her personal demons along the way - is elevated to something really special by the simple method of having a fantastic script, direction, acting and production values.

Looks fantastic, and Anya Taylor-Joy deserves all the accolades coming her way, but the show's real achievement for me is that it manages to capture the excitement and fascination of chess without becoming bogged down in details like the difference between the Orangutan and the Grob openings. The chess sequences are genuinely thrilling: you almost get a sense of what it feels like to have that kind of effortless talent in something. Brilliant TV aimed at people with brains.