Sign up
Search
Advanced search settings

Search only in certain items:

Search results
All (5000)
Content
People
Apps
Books
Orbs
Movies
Music
Podcasts
Shows
Tabletop Games
Tech
TV
Video Games
YouTube Channels
Videos
40x40

Cumberland (1142 KP) rated Beau, Lee, The Bomb, & Me in Books

Jan 6, 2019  
Beau, Lee, The Bomb, & Me
Beau, Lee, The Bomb, & Me
Mary Mckinley | 2014 | Young Adult (YA)
3
3.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Not Okay
I'm normally a fan of road trip novels, and the crazy adventures they feature. I picked up this book expected to really enjoy a cynical take on life as a teenager. Instead this book pissed me off. I would never ever want any teenager who suffers from depression or bullying to read this book. The attitude in this book is that bullying happens, and no one cares so don't bother asking for help. By the end of the book the attitude is a little better, but never enough to make up for the awful things that adults allow to happen in the beginning. I will say there was a few shining moments mostly involving a dog, but even that only pulls my overall rating to a 3.
  
40x40

Colin Newman recommended XX by The xx in Music (curated)

 
XX by The xx
XX by The xx
2009 | Alternative
8.0 (4 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"My son Ben went to Elliot School, which is quite famous for producing musicians. The first one that I knew was Kieran Hebden, who makes music as Four Tet. There was a culture at one point that was encouraging people. Ben was in the same class as the xx’s Romy [Madley-Croft] and he knew Jamie [Smith] quite well, and I knew his parents. We even went to their holiday house in Norfolk. The xx were the shy ones, they were like a little gang. Jamie was the most outgoing one, and he was pretty shy. I knew quite a lot about how that record happened, that they tried first with a producer and then did it in a house studio. We were living just down the road from where that was going on."

Source
  
40x40

Hazel (1853 KP) rated The Wolf Road in Books

Dec 14, 2018  
TW
The Wolf Road
Beth Lewis | 2016
6
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
3.5 Stars

<i>I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.</i>

“Any lie can turn into the truth if you believe it long enough.” <i>The Wolf Road</i> is the debut literary thriller by British author Beth Lewis. The post-apocalyptic world is not a very safe place to be, especially for a seven year old during a fierce and dangerous storm. Lost in the woods, a young girl comes across a man who, after naming her Elka, gives her a place to stay for the next ten years of her life. During this time he teaches her how to trap animals, use hunting knives and move silently between the trees – all the vital things needed to survive in the wild. For a long time Elka views this man as a father figure, but on discovering that her beloved Daddy is a serial killer, she realizes she has been living a life of lies.

Desperate to get away from the horrifying realization, Elka runs off deep into the forest with only a hunting knife and the clothes on her back. With nowhere to go, she decides to try and find her birth parents, but although she can easily survive in the wild, she is completely unprepared for the human world. With a childlike innocence, Elka finds herself in trouble on numerous occasions, only feeling at ease once she is back in the woods living the life of wolves. However she soon realizes that she will never be safe no matter how far she travels – not until that murderer is dead himself.

Once you get used to Elka’s colourful dialect, the gripping narrative pulls us into a world with danger around every corner. Elka’s revelation at the beginning of the book seems like a small issue compared with all the trouble she finds herself in later on. The reader will sympathize with Elka as she discovers the evils of man, and admire her strength as well as the development of a conscience after meeting and making her first ever friend. But whilst Elka learns how to walk amongst humans, there is a foreboding sense of doom as evilness keeps her within its sights.

<i>The Wolf Road</i> is a great post-apocalyptic story with a strong protagonist. At times it takes on a similar theme to a western novel, with guns, gold mining, and violence; but it is essentially a thriller built up of lies that are gradually unpicked. There is no psychological element to the book, thus nothing to try and work out for yourself. You simply need to read and discover what happens. As a result this book is the kind you will either love or hate. Some people may find it disturbing or gruesome, whereas others may find it exciting and enjoy reading about the unique main character.

Personally I think <i>The Wolf Road</i> is a great, original piece of work, and it only loses stars because I found a few parts a bit too grisly. Beth Lewis writes well and it cannot have been easy to keep the dialect up for the entire novel. This is an author who definitely has promise for the future.
  
    World of SUVs: Online

    World of SUVs: Online

    Games

    (0 Ratings) Rate It

    App

    Hello Friend! Ready for an adventure? Cool! Sit behind the wheel of your SUV and get ready for fun...

40x40

Purrsistently (46 KP) rated Hospital Sketches in Books

Jun 21, 2018  
HS
Hospital Sketches
Louisa May Alcott | 2005
6
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
It was a good thing to have read but it strongly underscored a painfully ignorant romanticized view of war that Americans are so fond of. She did not see children shot on the road in cold blood, she did not see officers give their men permission to rape any woman who disrespected them. She did not see the pow camps, did not see grandmothers and babies dead of exposure in the snow. She did not see the factory worker women (largely woc) kidnapped, raped over many days, and then abandoned hundreds of miles from home with nothing. There were no “white saviors” here or anywhere. War is not Romantic. Even the “Just Cause” lies on a bed of sending boys with little (if any) stake in the disagreement to maim and kill and torture other boys like themselves because old men can’t be bothered to work out their disputes at a table and instead delight in laying waste to their Nation’s youth.