Kazuo Ishiguro: The Remains of the Day

Kazuo Ishiguro: The Remains of the Day      - 258 oldal

szerintem: ★★★☆☆

It is the summer of 1956, and the ageing butler of Darlington Hall takes a rare holiday. But it is a journey that will also take him deep into his past. The Remains of the Day is a remarkable story: a man's exploration of his own life, and his heart-breaking attempt to make sense of it.

"And it's one of the privileges of being born English that no matter who you are, no matter if you're rich or poor, you're born free and you're born so that you can express your opinion freely, and vote in your member of parliament or vote him out. That's what dignity's really about"

"to meet the challenges of each new age means discarding old, sometimes well-loved methods"

"After all, what we can ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished?"

"in bantering lies the key to human warmth"

Stephen King: End of watch

Stephen King : End of watch      - 368 oldal

szerintem: ★★★★☆

IN ​ROOM 217 OF THE LAKES REGION TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY CLINIC, SOMETHING HAS AWAKENED. SOMETHING EVIL.

Brady Hartsfield, perpetrator of the Mercedes Massacre, where eight people were killed and many more were badly injured, has been in the Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic for five years, in a vegetative state. According to his doctors, anything approaching a complete recovery is unlikely. But behind the drool and stare, Brady is awake, and in possession of deadly new powers that allow him to wreak unimaginable havoc without ever leaving his hospital room.

Retired police detective Bill Hodges, the unlikely hero of Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers, now runs an investigation agency with his partner, Holly Gibney, who delivered the blow to Hartsfield's head that put him on the brain injury ward. Brady also remembers that. When Bill and Holly are called to a murder-suicide with ties to the Mercedes Massacre, they find themselves pulled into their most dangerous case yet, one that will put not only their lives at risk, but those of Hodges’s friend Jerome Robinson and his teenage sister, Barbara. Because Brady Hartsfield is back, and planning revenge not just on Bill Hodges and his friends, but on an entire city.

In End of Watch, Stephen King brings the Hodges trilogy to a sublimely terrifying conclusion, combining the detective fiction of Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers with the supernatural suspense that has been his trademark. The result is an unnerving look at human vulnerability and up-all-night entertainment.

"The seeds sown in childhood put down deep roots."

"The reasons never matter because suicide goes against every human instinct, and that makes it insane"

"How some people carelessly squander what others would sell their souls to have: a healthy, pain-free body. And why? Because they're too blind, too emocionally scarred, or too self-involved to see past the earth's dark curve to the next sunrise. Which always comes, if one continues to draw breath."

Stephen King: Finders Keepers

 

Stephen King: Finders keepers       - 434 oldal

szerintem:  ★★★☆☆

A ​sequel to Mr. Mercedes and second part of a proposed trilogy.

“Wake up, genius.” So begins King’s instantly riveting story about a vengeful reader. The genius is John Rothstein, a Salinger-like icon who created a famous character, Jimmy Gold, but who hasn’t published a book for decades. Morris Bellamy is livid, not just because Rothstein has stopped providing books, but because the nonconformist Jimmy Gold has sold out for a career in advertising. Morris kills Rothstein and empties his safe of cash, yes, but the real treasure is a trove of notebooks containing at least one more Gold novel.

Morris hides the money and the notebooks, and then he is locked away for another crime. Decades later, a boy named Pete Sauberg finds the treasure, and now it is Pete and his family that Bill Hodges, Holly Gibney, and Jerome Robinson must rescue from the ever-more deranged and vengeful Morris when he’s released from prison after thirty-five years.

Not since Misery has King played with the notion of a reader whose obsession with a writer gets dangerous. Finders Keepers is spectacular, heart-pounding suspense, but it is also King writing about how literature shapes a life—for good, for bad, forever.

"if you didn't had hopes and ambitions when you were a teenager, you'd be pretty much fucked later on"

"We need to talk is Momspeak for Houston, we have a problem."

Max Pemberton: Trust me, I'm a (junior) doctor

Max Pemberton: Trust me, I'm a (junior) doctor    - 294 oldal

szerintem: ★★★☆☆

The bestselling real life story of a hapless junior doctor, based on his columns written anonymously for the Telegraph.

IF YOU'RE GOING to be ill, it's best to avoid the first Wednesday in August. This is the day when junior doctors graduate to their first placements and begin to face having to put into practice what they have spent the last six years learning.

Starting on the evening before he begins work as a doctor, this book charts Max Pemberton's touching and funny journey through his first year in the NHS. Progressing from youthful idealism to frank bewilderment, Max realises how little his job is about 'saving people' and how much of his time is taken up by signing forms and trying to figure out all the important things no one has explained yet -- for example, the crucial question of how to tell whether someone is dead or not.

Along the way, Max and his fellow fledgling doctors grapple with the complicated questions of life, love, mental health and how on earth to make time to do your laundry.

All Creatures Great and Small meets Bridget Jones's Diary, this is a humorous and accessible peek into a world which you'd normally need a medical degree to witness.

If you enjoy Trust Me, I'm a (Junior) Doctor, don't miss the follow-up titles Where Does It Hurt? and The Doctor Will See You Now.

"In theory it's supposed to be a team effort, with the registrar, the SHO and the junior doctor who have been on call the previous night supporting each other. In reality the consultant asks a question, looking at the registrar, who then turns and looks at the SHO, who then turns and looks at the junior doctor, who then looks at their shoes." 

"Sometimes, the real pathos is in seeing people live their day-to-day lives, rather than the dramatic things like seeing people die." 

"Too late to save her from the cancer and too late to say goodbye. The two saddest words in the English language: Too Late."

"There is a fantastic amount of hypocrisy around drugs. While it's perfectly acceptable for the middle classes, come the weekend, to snort and smoke whatever they like, prostitution, gun crime, murder, extortion, burglary or armed robbery are considered unacceptable. But this is what you're supporting when you take illegal drugs."

Stephen King: If it bleeds

 Stephen King: If it bleeds    -  366 oldal 

szerintem: ★★☆☆☆

News people have a saying: 'If it bleeds, it leads'. And a bomb at Albert Macready Middle School is guaranteed to lead any bulletin.

Holly Gibney of the Finders Keepers detective agency is working on the case of a missing dog - and on her own need to be more assertive - when she sees the footage on TV. But when she tunes in again, to the late-night report, she realizes there is something not quite right about the correspondent who was first on the scene. So begins 'If It Bleeds' , a stand-alone sequel to The Outsider featuring the incomparable Holly on her first solo case.

Dancing alongside are three more long stories - 'Mr Harrigan's Phone', 'The Life of Chuck' and 'Rat' .

The novella is a form King has returned to over and over again in the course of his amazing career, and many have been made into iconic films, If It Bleeds is a uniquely satisfying collection of longer short fiction by an incomparably gifted writer.

" 'Youth is a wonderful thing,' said Mr Harrigan. 'What a shame it's wasted on children.' "

"In the twenty-first century, I think our phones are how we are wadded to the world. If so, it's probably a bad marriage." 

" 'I want to believe in God, Unc, and I sort of do, but I don't understand why it has to be this way. Why god would let it be this way. It's a mystery? You're the hotshot philosophy guy and that's the best you can do?' " 

"He supposed Franzen had had a point about the time before writing a novel actually began. It was a good time, because everything you saw and heard was possible grist for the mill. Everything was malleable. The mind could build a city, remodel it, then raze it, all while you were taking a shower or shaving or having a piss. Once you began, however, that changed. Every sentence you wrote, every word you wrote, limited your options a little more." 

"If it was a lie it was a white one, just a device to short-circuit an argument before it could be born. Husbands and wifes did it all the time. It was the way marriages survived."

Stephen King: Elevation

 Stephen King: Elevation     -  132 oldal.

szerintem: ★★☆☆☆

Although Scott Carey doesn’t look any different, he’s been steadily losing weight. There are a couple of other odd things, too. He weighs the same in his clothes and out of them, no matter how heavy they are. Scott doesn’t want to be poked and prodded. He mostly just wants someone else to know, and he trusts Doctor Bob Ellis.

In the small town of Castle Rock, the setting of many of King’s most iconic stories, Scott is engaged in a low grade—but escalating—battle with the lesbians next door whose dog regularly drops his business on Scott’s lawn. One of the women is friendly; the other, cold as ice. Both are trying to launch a new restaurant, but the people of Castle Rock want no part of a gay married couple, and the place is in trouble. When Scott finally understands the prejudices they face–including his own—he tries to help. Unlikely alliances, the annual foot race, and the mystery of Scott’s affliction bring out the best in people who have indulged the worst in themselves and others.

 

"Why feel bad about what you couldn't change? Why not embrace it?" 

Stephen King : 11.22.63

Stephen King : 11.22.63

szerintem: ★★★★★

Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students—a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk.

Not much later, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane—and insanely possible—mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake’s life—a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.

"Making the world a better place is important but so is being able to get to the john under your own power."

"There's really nothng in the world that can match the glamour of a late-stage alcoholic; I can't think why Jim Beam, Seagram's, and Mike's Hard Lemonade don't use them in their magazine ads. Drink Beam and see a better class of bugs."

"life's simplest answers are often the easiest to overlook"

"Home is watching the moon rise over the open, sleeping land and having someone you can call to the window, so you can look together. Home is where you dance with others, and dancing is life."

"We never know which lives we influence, or when, or why. Not until the future eats the present, anyway. We know when it's too late."

"I know life is hard, I think everyone knows that in their hearts, but why does it have to be cruel, as well? Why does it have to bite?" 

"Is there any phrase more ominous than you need to see exactly what you've done? 

Ken Follett: La caída de los gigantes

Ken Follett: La caída de los gigantes   -   1017 oldal

értékelés, szerintem: ★★★★★

"Esta es la historia de mis abuelos y de los vuestros, de nuestros padres y de nuestras propias vidas. De alguna forma es la historia de todos nosotros."Ken Follett

La historia empieza en 1911, el día de la coronación del rey Jorge V en la abadía de Westminster. El destino de los Williams, una familia minera de Gales, está unido por el amor y la enemistad al de los Fitzherbert, aristócratas y propietarios de minas de carbón. Lady Maud Fitzherbert se enamorará de Walter von Ulrich, un joven espía en la embajada alemana de Londres. Sus vidas se entrelazarán con la de un asesor progresista del presidente de Estados Unidos, Woodrow Wilson, y la de dos hermanos rusos a los que la guerra y la revolución les ha arrebatado su sueño de buscar fortuna en América.
Tras el éxito de Los pilares de la Tierra y Un mundo sin fin, Ken Follett presenta esta gran novela épica que narra la historia de cinco familias durante los años turbulentos de la Primera Guerra Mundial, la Revolución Rusa y la lucha de hombres y mujeres por sus derechos."

" - Así es como los países crean paz y prosperidad; o guerra, desolación y hambruna - dijo su padre. Si quieres cambiar el mundo, las relaciones internacionales es el campo en el que puedes hacer más bien ... o mal."

"Maud sabía que la mayoría de los hombres les encantaba que una mujer, sobre todo si era joven y atractiva, les pidiera que le explicaran algo."

"No hay ninguna ley que afirme que la opinión pública tenga que ser coherente."

" un líder debe tratar la opinión pública del mismo modo en que un marinero se aprovecha del viento, utilizandolo para impulsar la nave en una dirección u otra, pero nunca intentando ir directamente contra él."

"El hombre era el único animal que acababa con la vida de los de su propia especie por milliones y que convertía el paisaje en un terreno yermo, plagado de cráteres provocados por bombas y alambradas de espino."

"Dios perdonaba sus pecados, así que ¿quién era su padre para juzgarla?"

"- Cuando depende de la decisión de una pequeña cantidad de personas de escasa educación...

- Eso es la democracia.

Gus sonrió.

- Una forma espantosa de gobernar un país, pero los demás sistemas son peores."

"Era fácil pronunciar palabras valientes en la oscuridad. La luz del día podía contrar una historia muy diferente."

" Durante años, en la escuela, todos habían soportado el bombardeo de la propaganda que informaba de todas las victorias militares pero de ninguna de las derrotas. Les enseñaban la democracía de Londres, pero no les hablaban de la tiranía de El Cairo. Cuando aprendían algo sobre la justícia británica, no oían ningúna mención a la flagelación en Australia, el hambre en Irlanda o las matanzas en la India. Aprendían que los católicos quemaban a los protestantes en la hoguera, y se horrorizaban cuando los protestantes hacían lo mismo con los católicos en cuanto se les presentaba la ocasión."

Stephen King: Doctor Sleep

Stephen King : Doctor Sleep    - 485 oldal

értékelés, szerintem: ★★★★★

Stephen ​King returns to the characters and territory of one of his most popular novels ever, The Shining, in this instantly riveting novel about the now middle-aged Dan Torrance (the boy protagonist of The Shining) and the very special twelve-year-old girl he must save from a tribe of murderous paranormals.

On highways across America, a tribe of people called The True Knot travel in search of sustenance. They look harmless—mostly old, lots of polyester, and married to their RVs. But as Dan Torrance knows, and tween Abra Stone learns, The True Knot are quasi-immortal, living off the “steam” that children with the “shining” produce when they are slowly tortured to death.

Haunted by the inhabitants of the Overlook Hotel where he spent one horrific childhood year, Dan has been drifting for decades, desperate to shed his father’s legacy of despair, alcoholism, and violence. Finally, he settles in a New Hampshire town, an AA community that sustains him, and a job at a nursing home where his remnant “shining” power provides the crucial final comfort to the dying. Aided by a prescient cat, he becomes “Doctor Sleep.”

Then Dan meets the evanescent Abra Stone, and it is her spectacular gift, the brightest shining ever seen, that reignites Dan’s own demons and summons him to a battle for Abra’s soul and survival. This is an epic war between good and evil, a gory, glorious story that will thrill the millions of hyper-devoted readers of The Shining and wildly satisfy anyone new to the territory of this icon in the King canon.

"He had always thought the story of Bluebeard was the scariest of all time, the scariest there ever could be, but this one was worse. Because it was true."

"No, honey. Maybe you can put the things from the Overlook away in lockboxes, but not memories. Never those. They're the real ghosts."


"The only one who can put on the breaks is you. (...) You don't have to live this way if you don't want to. You can, of course ... but you don't have to."


"There came a time when you realized that moving on was pointless. That you took yourself with you wherever you went."


"Because if suicide was the only option, you could at least choose your weapon."


"The mind was a blackboard. Booze was the eraser."


"the good thing about being old is that you don't have to worry about dying young"


"Life was a wheel, its only job was to turn, and it always came back to where it had started."

Stephen King: The Shining

Stephen King: The Shining     - 497 oldal                     

szerintem:  ★★★★★

The Overlook Hotel is more than just a home-away-from-home for the Torrance family. For Jack, Wendy, and their young son, Danny, it is a place where past horrors come to life. And where those gifted with the shining do battle with the darkest evils. Stephen King's classic thriller is one of the most powerfully imagined novels of our time.

"For aren't memories the true ghosts of our lives? Do they not drive all of us to words and acts we regret from time to time?"


"The truth is that monsters are real, and ghosts are real, too. They live inside us, and sometimes they win."


"He would write it for the reason he felt that all great literature, fiction and nonfiction, was written: truth comes out, in the end it always comes out."


"That's your job in this world, to keep your love alive and see that you get on, no matter what. Pull your act together and just go on."


" Children have to grow into their imaginations like a pair of oversized shoes."


"skizoid behavior is a pretty common thing in children. It's accepted, because all we adults have this unspoken agreement that children are lunatics. They have invisible friends. They may go and sit in the closet when they're depressed, withdrawing from the world. They attach talismanic importance to a special blanket, or a taddy bear, or a stuffed tiger. They suck their thumbs. When an adult sees things that aren't there, we consider him ready for the rubber room. When a child says he's seen a troll in his bedroom or a vampire outside the window, we simply smile indulgently. We have a one-sentence explanation that explains the whole range of such phenomena in children-'


'He'll grow out of it,'

J. K. Rowling : The Harry Potter series

J. K. Rowling : The Harry Potter series            - 3407 oldal

értékelés, szerintem: ★★★★★

"Is is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."

"it matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be"

"we are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided"

"Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open."

"Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young "

"Indiference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike."

" people find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right"

"Age is foolish and forgetful when it underestimates youth."

"It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more."

Dan Brown: Deception Point

Dan Brown: Deception Point  - 583 oldal

értékelés, szerintem: ★★☆☆☆

When a new NASA satellite spots evidence of an astonishingly rare object buried deep in the Arctic ice, the floundering space agency proclaims a much-needed victory...a victory that has profound implications for U.S. space policy and the impending presidential election. With the Oval Office in the balance, the President dispatches White House Intelligence analyst Rachel Sexton to the Milne Ice Shelf to verify the authenticity of the find. Accompanied by a team of experts, including the charismatic academic Michael Tolland, Rachel uncovers the unthinkable: evidence of scientific trickery -- a bold deception that threatens to plunge the world into controversy. 

But before Rachel can contact the President, she and Michael are attacked by a deadly team of assassins controlled by a mysterious power broker who will stop at nothing to hide the truth. Fleeing for their lives in an environment as desolate as it is lethal, their only hope for survival is to find out who is behind this masterful ploy. The truth, they will learn, is the most shocking deception of all. 

In his most thrilling novel to date, bestselling author Dan Brown transports readers from the ultrasecret National Reconnaissance Office to the towering ice shelves of the Arctic Circle, and back again to the hallways of power inside the West Wing. Heralded for masterfully intermingling science, history, and politics in his critically acclaimed thriller Angels & Demons,Brown has crafted another novel in which nothing is as it seems -- and behind every corner is a stunning surprise. Deception Point is pulse-pounding fiction at its best.

"In my mind, the men and women of NASA are history's modern pioneers. They attempt te impossible, accept failure, and then go back to the drawing board while te rest of us stand back and criticize." 

"all challenges can be overcome by speaking the truth, no matter how it comes out."

"When multiple explanations exist, the simplest is usually correct."

"You did not become the most powerful man in the world without a killer instinct."

"Peace on this planet will not be forged by military strength. It will be forged by those who come together despite their cogernments' differences."

"sooner or later we've all got to let go of our past"

"There's just no substitute for the truth."

Stephen King: Outsider

Stephen King: Outsider    - 576 oldal

értékelés, szerintem: ★★★☆☆

An unspeakable crime. A confounding investigation. At a time when the King brand has never been stronger, he has delivered one of his most unsettling and compulsively readable stories.

An eleven-year-old boy’s violated corpse is found in a town park. Eyewitnesses and fingerprints point unmistakably to one of Flint City’s most popular citizens. He is Terry Maitland, Little League coach, English teacher, husband, and father of two girls. Detective Ralph Anderson, whose son Maitland once coached, orders a quick and very public arrest. Maitland has an alibi, but Anderson and the district attorney soon add DNA evidence to go with the fingerprints and witnesses. Their case seems ironclad.

As the investigation expands and horrifying answers begin to emerge, King’s propulsive story kicks into high gear, generating strong tension and almost unbearable suspense. Terry Maitland seems like a nice guy, but is he wearing another face? When the answer comes, it will shock you as only Stephen King can

"Reality is thin ice, but most people skate on it their whole lives and never fall through until the very end."

"I believe there’s another dozen thoughts lined up behind each one I’m aware of."

"People are blind to explanations that lie outside their perception of reality."

"Dreams are the way we touch the unseen world"

"If you can’t let go of the past, the mistakes you’ve made will eat you alive."

Ken Follett: A Column of Fire

A Kingsbridge trilógia harmadik része,   

Ken Follett: A Column of Fire  - 885 oldal.

értékelés, szerintem:  ★★★★☆


Kevesebb Kingsbridge, több történelem, de tetszett.

"Christmas 1558, and young Ned Willard returns home to Kingsbridge to find his world has changed. The ancient stones of Kingsbridge Cathedral look down on a city torn by religious hatred. Europe is in turmoil as high principles clash bloodily with friendship, loya lty and love, and Ned soon finds himself on the opposite side from the girl he longs to marry, Margery Fitzgerald. Then Elizabeth Tudor becomes queen and all of Europe turns against England. The shrewd, determined young monarch sets up the country's first secret service to give her early warning of assassination plots, rebellions and invasion plans. Elizabeth knows that alluring, headstrong Mary Queen of Scots lies in wait in Paris. Part of a brutally ambitious French family, Mary has been proclaimed the rightful ruler of England, with her own supporters scheming to get rid of the new queen. Over a turbulent half-century, the love between Ned and Margery seems doomed, as extremism sparks violence from Edinburgh to Geneva. With Elizabeth clinging precariously to her throne and her principles, protected by a small, dedicated group of resourceful spies and courageous secret agents, it becomes clear that the real enemies - then as now - are not the rival religions. The true battle pitches those who believe in tolerance and compromise against the tyrants who would impose their ideas on everyone else - no matter the cost."

"royal children enjoyed every good thing in life, except freedom"

"Might there come a time, when people of different faiths did not kill one another?"

"The simple idea that people should be allowed to worship as they wished caused more suffering than the ten plagues of Egypt."

"Most men treated their wives like children, the only difference being that women could work harder. Perhaps there were men somewhere who did not regard wives as property, but she had never met one." 

"In a crisis, frightened people would obey anyone who sounded as if they knew what they were doing."

"His mother urged him to keep his doubts to himself, but he could not: he was seventeen, and for him right was right and wrong was wrong."

"English people were illogical about foreigners, Ned found: they hated Turks, and they believed Jews were evil, but they regarded Africans as harmlessly exotic."

"Roger's welfare was more important than Ned's: that was what it meant to be a parent."

"there are no saints in politics, but imperfect people can make the world a better place"

"The curch was Catholic, and Ned was Protestant, but he had long believed that God cared little about such distinctions."

"A child will always be what he is, she thought, and not what you want him to be."

Ken Follett: World without end

Ken Follett: World without end       -  1256 oldal

értékelés, szerintem: ★★★★☆

World Without End takes place in the same town of Kingsbridge, two centuries after the townspeople finished building the exquisite Gothic cathedral that was at the heart of The Pillars of the Earth. The cathedral and the priory are again at the center of a web of love and hate, greed and pride, ambition and revenge, but this sequel stands on its own. This time the men and women of an extraordinary cast of characters find themselves at a crossroad of new ideas--about medicine, commerce, architecture, and justice. In a world where proponents of the old ways fiercely battle those with progressive minds, the intrigue and tension quickly reach a boiling point against the devastating backdrop of the greatest natural disaster ever to strike the human race--the Black Death.

"there's always a reason for a secret"


" 'Loreeen would be better off if she'd never married.'
   He spoke over his shoulder. 'What else would she do?'
   That was the problem, Caris thought resentfully as she entered her house. What else was a woman to do?"


" 'How could the church be wrong?'
  'Well, the Muslims have different beliefs.'
  'They're heathens!'
  'They call us infidels - it's the same thing. And Bounaventura Caroli says there are more Muslims than Christians in the world. So somebody's church is wrong.' "


"A woman's life was a house of closed doors: she could not be an apprentice, she could not study at the university, she could not be a priest or a physician, nor shoot a bow nor fight with a sword, and she could not marry without submitting herself to the tyranny of her husband."


" We're all good when it suits us, he used to say: that doesn't count. It's when you want so badly to do something wrong - when you're about to make a fortune from a dishonest deal, or kiss the lovely lips of your neighbour's wife, or tell a lie to get yourself out of terrible trouble - that's when you need the rules."

Heather Morris: The tattooist of Auschwitz

Reptéren vettem, jobb nem akadt, kár volt érte. Stílusa semmi... :-( 

Heather Morris: The tattooist of Auschwitz - 288 oldal

értékelés, szerintem: ★☆☆☆☆

The incredible story of the Auschwitz-Birkenau tattooist and the woman he loved.

Lale Sokolov is well-dressed, a charmer, a ladies’ man. He is also a Jew. On the first transport from Slovakia to Auschwitz in 1942, Lale immediately stands out to his fellow prisoners. In the camp, he is looked up to, looked out for, and put to work in the privileged position of Tätowierer– the tattooist – to mark his fellow prisoners, forever. One of them is a young woman, Gita, who steals his heart at first glance.

His life given new purpose, Lale does his best through the struggle and suffering to use his position for good.

This story, full of beauty and hope, is based on years of interviews author Heather Morris conducted with real-life Holocaust survivor and Auschwitz-Birkenau tattooist Ludwig (Lale) Sokolov. It is heart-wrenching, illuminating, and unforgettable.

"If you wake up in the morning, it is a good day."

Christopher Berry-Dee: Talking with Psychopaths and Savages -A journey into the evil mind

Christopher Berry-Dee: Talking with Psychopaths and Savages -A journey into the evil mind - 292 oldal


értékelés, szerintem: ★☆☆☆☆

Ennél carabb könyvet régen olvastam... Kb, sosem hagyok abba könyvet, akkor is végigolvasom ha nem tetszik, de itt erősen fontolgattam, ez szenvedés volt.

"Criminologist Christopher Berry-Dee takes readers deep inside the dark minds of some of the most pitiless and dangerous people alive. Having spent years interviewing imprisoned criminals, including notorious serial killers, he discovered that the lack of remorse they showed was in many ways more terrifying than the crimes they had committed. Yet in the course of these conversations, the author also had the chance to interview his subjects' psychiatrists and, in doing so, uncovered a terrible truth: a monster can be hidden behind a friendly face. Some of these experts, he found, proved to have more in common with their patients than he would ever have expected. This book examines horrific crimes committed by some of the most remorseless and merciless people ever to have lived. If it reveals a mindset wholly alien to most people, it also, shockingly, demonstrates that some of the people who treat these psychopaths have their own demons. Talking with Psychopaths will inevitably shift the reader's view of psychopaths, and in doing so, reveals that horror can be much closer to us than we think. Subjects include JR Robinson, Kenneth Allen McDuff, Arthur Shawcross, Kenneth Bianchi, Michael Bruce Ross, Melanie McGuire, and more. "

"It makes for a shocking, indeed terrifying, indictment of the failure of the NHS and shows that Dr Shipman's aggressive narcissism and homicidal psychopathology could run amok, undetected in our midst. He was in contact with dozens of doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses and medical practice stuff, so if these professionals could not spot a homicidal psychopath working among them, what chances have you and I got? God help us all!"

"...the question is, are these killer types born evil, or are they born with healthy minds that 'become evil' over time?"

Mikael Lindnord: Arthur

Mikael Lindnord: Arthur - The dog who crossed the jungle to find a home     - 274. oldal


értékelés, szerintem: ★☆☆☆☆

The heart-warming true story of an incredible rescue dog. 

When you are racing 435 miles through the jungles and mountains of South America, the last thing you need is a stray dog tagging along. But that's exactly what happened to Mikael Lindnord, captain of a Swedish adventure racing team, when he threw a scruffy mongrel a meatball one afternoon.

When they left the next day, the dog followed. Try as they might, they couldn't lose him - and soon Mikael realised that he didn't want to. Crossing rivers, battling illness and injury, and struggling through some of the toughest terrain on the planet, the team and the dog walked together towards the finish line, where Mikael decided he would save Arthur and bring him back to his family in Sweden, whatever it took.

Egyszer olvasható, semmi különös idéznivaló.

Colleen McCullough: The Thorn Birds

Colleen McCullough: The Thorn Birds   (Tövismadarak)     692 oldal               
  

értékelés, szerintem:   ★★★★★
  

Biztosan sokan emlékeztek a Tövismadarak sorozatra, Ralph atyára és Meggie-re. Nos, a kezembe akadt az eredeti történet, most ezt olvastam.

Powered by the dreams and struggles of three generations, The Thorn Birds is the epic saga of a family rooted in the Australian sheep country. At the story's heart is the love of Meggie Cleary, who can never possess the man she desperately adores, and Ralph de Bricassart, who rises from parish priest to the inner circles of the Vatican...but whose passion for Meggie will follow him all the days of his life.

"But when we press the thorn to our breast, we know, we understand. And still we do it."

"That  the best… is bought only at the cost of great pain."

"There are no ambitions noble enough to justify breaking someone’s heart."

"Ralph, we are priests, but we are something else before that; something we were before we became priests, and which we cannot escape in spite of our exclusiveness. We are men, with the weaknesses and failings of men."

"They, too, are men, my Ralph, those who hear confessions of the great. Never forget it as long as you live. Only in their priesthood do they act as vessels containing God. In all else they are men. And the forgiveness they mete out comes from God, but the ears which listen and judge belong to men."

"We are what we are, that’s all. Like the old Celtic legend of the bird with the thorn in its breast, singing its heart out and dying. Because it has to, it’s driven to. We can know what we do wrong even before we do it, but self-knowledge can’t affect or change the outcome, can it? Everyone singing his own little song, convinced it’s the most wonderful song the world has ever heard. Don’t you see? We create our own thorns, and never stop to count the cost. All we can do is suffer the pain, and tell ourselves it was well worth it."

"-’Proust dull? Not unless one doesn’t care for gossip, surely. That’s what he is, you know. A terrible old gossip. ’ "

"Lesson number one. There’s no aspect of love which won’t bear the light."

"I suppose daughters are never as patient with their mothers as sons are."

"Belief doesn’t rest on proof or existence… it rests on faith… without faith there is nothing."

"And gradually his memory slipped a little, as memories do, even those with so much love attached to them; as if there is an unconscious healing process within the mind which mends up in spite of our desperate determination never to forget."

"Truly God was good, to make man so blind."

"How frightening, that one person could mean so much, so many things."