(Already Traditional) Mini-Reviews, Part 2

Looking at these two bunches of mini-reviews, you can probably tell that I have not been much into serious lit this spring and summer :D But come on, sometimes mind-blowing Sci-Fi is just a better choice than those daunting 19-century chunksters :) 

Title: The Name of the Wind 

Author: Patrick Rothfuss

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

I should listen to Riv more. She read it last year and wrote that the book is not as good as Goodreads and other reviews would you believe. It’s not that I don’t trust her opinion (I’m yet to discover a book on which our opinions differ significantly), but I still felt I have to read a book which gets so much hype. And well… I can see why people love it so much, but as for Riv, it also fell flat for me. I loved the magic system and the part at the university, but then the love story began and it was just so adolescent and ridiculous… And don’t even get me started on the pointless 200-page hang out in the forests with the draccus or whatever this thing is called. I also expected the book to have an ENDING, but apparently it cannot be read as a standalone novel. If the author thinks that would make me read the rest of the series… Um, no. Good writing and gripping plotline would do that, not failing to round-up a story even a little bit before the end of the first volume.

Title: The Night Circus 

Author: Erin Morgenstern

Rating: ★★★★☆

This novel should be made into a movie immediately! It screams for big screen special effects. Although the writing does an amazing job creating all this effects in your own head. Very atmospheric! Plotline… well, it exists, but it’s not the main point of the book. I feel that the characters and their relationships could have been written better, but as I’ve said, the book is amazing as it is!

Title: The Passage 

Author: Justin Cronin

Rating: ★★★★☆

The book reminds me a lot of The Girl with all the Gifts, although it should be vice versa, as The Passage was written before The Girl. That makes it two zombie apocalypse books that I’ve read and liked during this year, so I guess never say never? I don’t know what I expected from The Passage, but it was gripping and beautifully written and I spent more than one night not being able to put it down instead of getting some healthy sleep.

Title: L'amour dure trois ans (Love Lasts Three Years) 

Author: Frederic Beigbeder

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

I’ve never read the guy before and most probably will never read him again. There is no literary merit in the book, the characters are just papier-mashe masks without any depth and the ideas are questionable in the least. It reads fast and there are some catchy phrases and aphorisms in it, but the novel gives you a feeling it was written to provide facebook status updates to people who like to put quotes there.

Title: The Universe Versus Alex Woods 

Author: Gavin Extence

Rating: ★★★★★

I loved this book!! It’s so poignantly sincere and kind… But not in a way SPECIFICALLY designed to jerk tears out of you. Everything is described very matter-of-factly and that’s why it’s so relatable and realistic. Alex is the best, really. The way he thinks is precious and I guess our world would be a much better place if everybody followed the same logic.

Title: Lexicon 

Author: Max Barry

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

I think my biggest problem with this book was that I had unrealistically high expectations. I’ve always been intrigued by NLP techniques and I thought this novel would be about it. Instead, it’s much more fantastic and hard to believe. Also, I did not understand what was happening until I reached the middle of the book. In some cases it can be intriguing, but here it was rather irritating. Also, the ending was just… Meh. I don’t get it, really.

Title: Ancillary Justice
Author: Ann Leckie

Rating: ★★★☆☆

This novel is like a riddle: at first you don’t understand what is happening and get lost in a lot of new words and alien references, but then without any explicit explanation it all kinda starts making sense, and you feel the world taking shape around you, gradually and imperceptibly. It is a beautifully written book, and the idea is awesome, but somehow this time I do not appreciate not understanding what’s happening for such a long time. Have I mentioned my attention span tend to be really short lately? So I don’t have enough patience for this kind of story

So what so do you think about these books? Do you agree or disagree with my opinions? I'd like to hear both :-P

I'm preparing some longer reviews next, as my reading is getting back to normal pretty fast. Stay tuned and have a nice weekend!

(Already Traditional) Mini-Reviews, Part 1

As promised, here's the first batch of long-due mini-reviews :)

Title: The Return of Sherlock Holmes
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle
Rating: ★★★☆☆

Is it me or has Sir Arthur lost some of his flair for awesomeness after the first three short story collections? I guess he’s not to blame, as *spoiler alert* he honestly tried to kill Sherlock and not write about him anymore, and had only caved to extreme public pressure to resurrect him. Anyway, I don’t even remember any of the stories that stand out in this particular book… And some are repetitive of the ones in the earlier collections. Still, Sherlock is adorable, and anything about him is a great comfort read.

Title: Zoo City
Author: Lauren Beukes
Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

This was January choice for Coursera Fantasy and Sci-Fi Book Club, and it was the first book we read together that I didn’t like. Maybe Southern African English and excessive use of slang words are to blame, but I never understood what was really happening in the book and WHY it was happening. You see, when you commit a crime there, they give you an animal mascot(?) that you can’t be separated from. “Animalled” people are considered lower class and live in some kind of slums. They are despised and also feared, as animals sometimes give them supernatural powers. Now I could have told you more, but as I’ve said, I’m clueless as to what the plot is and why this imaginary world functions like it does.

Title: The Handmaid’s Tale
Author: Margaret Atwood
Rating: ★★★★★ 

Oh, this book! If you think of it, the society structure is rather ridiculous and it’s hard to imagine how people can end up living like this, but the writing is so brilliant that the story totally makes sense and you don’t want to see any plot holes. Not much HAPPENS in the book per se, because things are not supposed to happen to a handmaid, but the descriptions and musings of the protagonist are so engrossing that you literally can’t put the book down. And the ending… Oh, I just love the ending!

Title: Changing Places
Author: David Lodge
Rating: ★★★★★

This is a very funny novel that just GETS academia life! Two professors, one from US and one from UK are on an international exchange program and have to spend half a year in each other’s shoes. Hilarity ensues as they battle cultural differences and discover their new selves. Ah, there’s nothing like a funny book about professors :)

Title: Station Eleven
Author: Emily St. John Mandel
Rating: ★★★★☆ 

An award winning hit, and yet I don’t wait a couple of years before reading it? Weird! But everybody in my feed was praising this novel, and besides the premise is awesome! There has been an epidemic, and 10 years after it the few people that are left alive are reduced to scavenging, hunting and primitive lifestyle in general. However, for some “survival is insufficient”, so a theater on wheels is travelling across Canada, performing what do you think? Shakespeare! Who apparently never goes out of fashion. The writing is beautiful, magical even, but the plot, although converging satisfactory in the end, is not without lapses. Like what about that menacing and pointless Prophet? I just don’t buy it.

Title: The Rosie Project
Author: Graeme Simsion
Rating: ★★★★★

Ah, what a sweet book! Apart from being hilarious, it’s also very optimistic and good-humored. It just makes you feel good, especially if you are partial to weird scientists and happen to know a lot of them, even though such grave cases of social awkwardness are unlikely to exist in real life.

Title: The Lives of Tao
Author: Wesley Chu
Rating: ★★★★☆

This is a very enjoyable and fun read. A tad bit too much pathos in the end to my taste, but the dialogues! They are awesome. Also, I can’t help wishing for an all-knowing and wise alien sitting in my head and pushing me to greatness. Maybe then I’d actually run in the mornings!!

Title: Москва - Петушки (Moscow to the End of the Line)
Author: Venedict Erofeev
Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

I just wish it was possible to format the part of my brain that remembers this book. It’s really postmodernist and unusual… for the first 5 pages. Then it gets repetitive, boring and straight mad.











So that's it! A really mixed bag of books, some being awesome 5-star ones and some ending up on my hate list... Part 2, covering my reading adventures from the end of April to current time is coming soon :)

Hello again :)

Hello dear internet people if you are still here somewhere :) It feels like it’s time to start blogging again and it seems like I might have enough time and energy for it in the coming period of my life. I haven’t been here for half a year and A LOT has happened in this time, most of the changes being very welcome.

• I’ve finally started renting a room in the city instead of staying in the dorms. So yay washing machine, I hope I’ll never have to wash my clothes with my hands again. My neighbours are kinda crazy, but whatever, there is a park nearby and the city center is close. I’ve also bought a sofa and a table and feel very grown up now!
• I’ve fallen in love and it felt like getting back to life after a long period of being emotionally impotent. It didn’t work out and there were some bad feelings but I’m grateful anyway. I feel like my palate is cleaned now before the real stuff :)
• I’ve moved to the sunny Barcelona for a 3-month internship and I love it SO MUCH here!! The sea is a 5 min walk away from my new office, and the people here are so awesome and relaxed! Besides, my Spanish is getting better now that I’m actually using it. There's a pic of the awesome Costa Brava below to give you a glimpse of the awesome area I'm living in now <3

Of course I was reading during this time, but there was so much stuff happening in real life that more often than not I felt like I couldn’t concentrate on the things I read about and ended up not caring about stories which would otherwise have greatly intrigued me. But some great books have come my way since I last had enthusiasm to share my thoughts here, so it would be unfair not to share the experience with you dear readers. That’s why I already have a collections of mini-reviews prepared for posting in the nearest future, and I hope the local second-hand bookstore (Hibernian, if anyone is curious) will provide me with more awesome reading material soon :)

One Day by David Nicholls

Title: One Day
Author: David Nicholls
First published: 2009
Add it: Goodreads, Book Depository
Rating: ★★★★☆

I don't usually read romance novels, and I was a bit sceptical about this one, especially as I knew how it all will end from the movie (which is great, BTW). But surprisingly enough I really enjoyed the novel. And even cried a bit, because I tend to get all tearful in all the intended places... I'm very easy to manipulate that way. Maybe that's why I don't read romance often. Anyways...

The plot spans nearly twenty years of the very complicated will-they-won't-they relationship of a "librarian type" girl and a "golden boy". Somehow they can't let go of each other while building their so very different lives separately and with all the wrong people.

The characters are a bit cliche, but their dialogues are great and funny. You can feel how well they work together and you just want to punch them in the face and tell them to stop being stupid and be together already. They are cute, really, although irritating too. That's why they feel so real. It is also palpable how they grow up through the novel, from irresponsible 20-years-olds to 40-something with the household problems and children.

In my book:
Want romance? Here's the quintessential romantic book, and a pretty good one at that.

My Precioussss...

Hi sweeties! It has just arrived, and I want to share with you the best birthday present ever! I bought it myself, because if you don't treat yourself to awesome things, who would? :)

This is the 60th anniversary edition of The Lord of the Rings in hardcover with illustrations by Alan Lee!! It weighs 2.5 kilos and is breathtakingly beautiful!

And here's how happy I am about it!

Happy birthday to me from me, hehe :)

Never Let Anyone Recommend You A Book...

...even if you like the person very much. I've always followed the rule, and recently I've been reminded, WHY exactly. The guy that recommended me Wizard's First Rule is smart and funny and educated and generally great and I have zero idea how is he able to read and re-read (for sanity's sake!) this series and find it interesting and elaborate and philosophical. Should I be worried? :D

Title: Wizard's First Rule
Author: Terry Goodkind
First published: 1994
Add it: Goodreads, Book Depository
Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Let's go through why it was bed with the help of bullets, OK?

• It's long. Soooo long. When I saw that the book is over 800 pages, I braced myself. I reasoned that I've raced through much bigger books in several days, and this one is fantasy so it should be fine. It was not fine. It was slow from the beginning. What made things worse, I could see through everything which was going to happen, so there was no reason for me to be anxious about reading further. 

• Usually I'm OK with some cliches. The (ignorant but very smart and super-tough and good-looking) chosen one - fine. A weird wizard - fine. A girl with a secret with which the main hero falls in love but can never be together because of reasons - fine. Nothing is new under the sun anyway. But OMG, can there be at least SOMETHING original? The bad guys were so cartoon it was impossible to take them seriously. And of course they can't delegate tasks and need to kill everybody themselves. While riding a dragon. And with no reason whatsoever. 

• There's so much unnecessary sickening detail! I'm OK with it if it's really necessary. I read and enjoy Martin, after all. But I saw no reason for introducing anybody like Mord-Sith to the story for example. Especially because what follows is 50 pages of torture description. It's as if the author enjoys it and wants to shock public, is all. No benefit for the plot...

• And here we come to the plot. It's a mess. There is magic in the book, and it works interestingly. It is all explained and you expect that you know the rules. But then you suddenly discover that everybody can be saved by something that JUST HAVEN'T BEEN MENTIONED BEFORE and it changes everything. It doesn't happen once, it happens always. It's cheating and it's not fair. I will not even mention the good timing of everybody, who appear exactly in the right moment to save somebody in grave need

• It's repetitive. The dialogues are good and funny and clever, but every dialogue eventually comes to discussing the Machiavellian notion of the end justifying the means and reminding everybody around that they can't hesitate to kill, even the closest friends, if they may pose a danger to their objective of killing the Bad Guy. Seriously, I can get how tragic it is just from a couple of repetitions.

As I've mentioned, I liked the dialogues, and political games were very believable, but this was not enough to redeem the time I spent facepalming the plot and the characters.

2014 End of Year Book Survey

I've been pondering which format I want to adopt for my review of 2014 reading, and found this wonderful survey HERE. I thought it's a great idea to participate, even though I may skip some questions :)

Number Of Books You Read:

81. Not too shabby, but there were quite a few comics, so it's not as much as it seems. But considering all the stuff that happened this year, I'm still proud of myself! :)

Number of Re-Reads:

6. That's actually a lot for me, as I don't re-read often. But sometimes you just need some comfort reads!

Genre You Read The Most From:

Oh, that's difficult! I don't keep track of genres, but I think Sci-Fi and Fantasy are leading :)

Best Book You Read In 2014?

Not counting re-reads and sequels, here's the leader board:

Weir, Andy: The Martian

Carey, M.R.: The Girl with All the Gifts

Cline, Ernest: Ready Player One

Collins, Suzanne: The Hunger Games

Goldman, William: The Princess Bride

Book You Were Excited About & Thought You Were Going To Love More But Didn’t?

Here are the two biggest disappointments of this year:

Gabaldon, Diana: Outlander

Gaiman, Neil: American Gods

Most surprising (in a good way or bad way) book you read in 2014?

I think it was The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey. Because I don't usually read "zombie" books, but this one was amazing!

I've also discovered two great comics: Sandman and Y: The Last Man. I loved both and now I don't look down to comics any more!

Book You “Pushed” The Most People To Read (And They Did) In 2014?

Easy! The Martian by Andy Weir! Two of my colleagues have already read and loved it and several more are still reading! :) It spreads like plague!

Best series you started in 2014? Best Sequel of 2014? Best Series Ender of 2014?

I've read the first of Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive series, The Way of Kings, and I'm hooked up enough to continue reading!

Favorite cover of a book you read in 2014?

The most beautiful was the cover to The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch:

Most beautifully written book read in 2014?

The Luzhin Defense by Vladimir Nabokov and Amsterdam by Ian McEvan. They are not called classics for nothing!

Book you can’t believe you waited UNTIL 2014 to finally read?

The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins! I guess the hype frightened me...

Shortest & Longest Book You Read In 2013?

The longest is, of course, The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson, and the shortest is Historia Brittonum by Nennius

Book That Shocked You The Most

I read books 4 and 5 of A Song of Ice and Fire this year, so guess who shocked me most ;) 'cause he always does.

Favorite Non-Romantic Relationship Of The Year

Locke and Jean in The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch!! They are SO AWESOME.

Best Worldbuilding/Most Vivid Setting You Read This Year?

Definitely The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson! I have no idea how can one imagine a world like this

Book That Put A Smile On Your Face/Was The Most FUN To Read?

Again, The Martian by Andy Weir! The guy is awesome!

Book That Made You Cry Or Nearly Cry in 2014?

Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan. Ah, the ending!

Book That Made You The Most Mad (doesn’t necessarily mean you didn’t like it)?

I can't decide between Outlander by Diana Gabaldon and Seduction by M.J. Rose. Both incredibly stupid!

So here's how my 2014 looked like reading-wise :) I'm grateful for all the good discoveries of the year and all the time I spent engrossed in a great story. Hope 2015 will be even better! :)

Catching Up On 2014 Reviews

Hi everybody and congratulations on the New Year! :) I hope your holiday season was as fun as mine and you had a good rest and quality family time!

Today I've come back from my trip to Sofia to see a very good friend and fellow fantasy geek. It was awesome! We cooked, made cocktails, discussed everything in the world and binge-watched the director's cut of LOTR. What can be better? :)

Yes, there's Balrog on the screen :)

Now I finally have some time to wrap up year 2014, and I'll start with mini-reviews of the rest of the books I managed to read in the end of the year. Then I'll probably try to catch up on over-500 posts in my RSS feed... Oh well, maybe not :)

Title: Amsterdam
Author: Ian McEwan
First published: 1998
Add it: Goodreads, Book Depository
Rating: ★★★★☆

I started to read Amsterdam on my way to Amsterdam, but didn't finish it until a week after the trip. And it's OK, because it's not about the city at all :) I have always been curious about Ian McEwan, and I can say I've enjoyed his writing a lot. He is a great psychologist, and his descriptions of thoughts and feelings of the two main characters felt so real it was hard to believe it's only fiction. But as if to mock a reader who by this point already trusts McEwan as a great expert in human nature, there is such an unbelievable twist in the end of the novel that it left me embarrassed.  

In my book:
Great writing and character study.

Title: The Way of Kings
Author: Brandon Sanderson
First published: 2010
Add it: Goodreads, Book Depository
Rating: ★★★★☆

For the first 100-200 pages of this huge novel, which is part of even huger series, I had no idea what was happening and wanted to stop reading. I survived, though, and it appeared it was worth the time and struggle, as by the end of the book I was quite unable to put it down. The greatest thing about the book is the world-building. There's a totally different biology, physics and social structure, and it's all very fitting and works well together... but not before you really get into it. And this doesn't happen very soon. Strictly speaking, it wouldn't hurt if the book was shorter, but as I've said, in the end I came to appreciate it anyway :)

In my book:
Worth the time, but make sure you have a lot of it at hand before starting this mammoth :))

Title: High Fidelity
Author: Nick Hornby
First published: 1995
Add it: Goodreads, Book Depository
Rating: ★★★★☆

The intro, where the main character recaps his past heartbreaks is awesome! I've even read it twice. Then, however, some music records nerdiness starts (as the narrator is a fan and owns a record shop), which I can't appreciate due to my utter lack of knowledge or interest on the subject. Overall, the writing is great, and at times the novel is very funny, but when you think of it, the main character is really very sad and unlikable, and the ending is kinda... meh.

In my book:
Fun and entertaining, but makes you think nevertheless. Just skip the music parts :)

Title: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
Author: Alan Bradley
First published: 2009
Add it: Goodreads, Book Depository
Rating: ★★★☆☆

I think I might have loved this book if I read it at the age of 12 or so (I loved children's detective novels!), but for a grown-up there's not enough of mystery or character depth or humor. It's a sweet little novel, and the main heroine is pretty bad-ass, but it's not very gripping overall.

In my book:
Pick up for a total brain relax or as a present to your kid.

The Martian by Andy Weir (Review)

Title: The Martian
Author: Andy Weir
First published: 2012
Add it: Goodreads, Book Depository
Rating: ★★★★★

I read The Martian in two days, finishing at 5a.m. This fact alone illustrates how great the book is, considering how I love to sleep :) The next day I enthusiastically recommended it to one of my colleagues, and the next morning he was spotted drinking too much coffee and blaming me for disturbing his sleep. Since then the news about the book spread around our office like fire, and I get emails from grateful colleagues all the time, telling me how they appreciate my recommendation. Well, we are a research lab and a bunch of geeks, so what do you want :D The book was meant to be read by the likes of us!

The Martian is about Mark Watney, an astronaut left on Mars after the evacuation of the whole expedition. Now his only chance is to survive for 4 years until the next expedition. Meanwhile, he deals with the lack of food, technical emergencies and loneliness, all with the help of his innate resourcefulness and great sense of humor.

What I loved most about this novel is the technical details Mark goes into while planning his escape and solving his everyday problems. You ever wonder how to make water from burning fuel in pure oxygen and not get exploded? Or how to measure the size of the hurricane and where it goes? Or how to fix the rover's receiver? It's all explained! Another thing is the writing. It's awesome and funny and keeps you turning pages through the wee hours of the morning. The novel makes you feel good and fills you with optimism and faith in mankind. This is a bit bombastic but it's true.

In my book:
This is the ultimate geeky book! But it's not only for the geeks, I can't imagine anybody who would not enjoy it. Read it! :)

My Autumn of Silent Escapist Reading

Hi everybody! :) As you've probably noticed, I haven't been in the mood to post for the whole autumn. I've also sucked at commenting and participating in events, and I'm truly sorry for this. I'm not sure what's happening to my reading habits, but my attention span is still very short, and now I shun from classics and big books and often pick books on a whim. I don't like it, as I usually enjoy being organized (and it's a pity I'm not finishing any of my challenges, the year has started so well!), but I can't do anything about it. Also, I'm reading much less now and am much more likely to play a game or watch a movie/series instead. Well, I hope it's just a short period...

Nevertheless, I HAVE been reading and I have missed blogging in the short moments of activeness. So it feels good to finally write a post :)

For starters, I've decided to make a small recap of what I read this autumn in the format of mini-reviews. These are really good books, and most of them are, I guess, unknown to many readers, so let me tell you more about them! :)

Title: Y: The Last Man
Author: Brian K. Vaughan
First published: 2003-2008
Add it: Goodreads, Book Depository
Rating: ★★★★★

This 10-volume comics was October's book of choice for Coursera Fantasy and Sci Fi book club, and I loved it so much! It tells about a sudden epidemic of unknown origin which results in wiping out all the male population on Earth. All except Yorick and his monkey Ampersand. See? How can one NOT love a story with a plot like this? :) Add some great humor, kick-ass characters, amazing plot, beautiful pictures and an oh-so-great finale - and you get Y: The Last Man.

In my book: An awesome, awesome story. Read it.

Title: Spectrum
Author: Sergei Lukyanenko
First published: 2002
Add it: Goodreads
Rating: ★★★★★

This is my favorite Lukyanenko book, and I've read them all! :) It is also a standalone novel rather than a part of the series, which I also appreciate. Unfortunately, it is not translated into English yet, although it is very popular in some European countries. US publishers are just soooo bad at seeing further than the ends of their noses. As nearly every Lukyanenko book, Spectrum features a very likable hero stumble over some mystery of the universe and forced to make difficult decisions. The book is very clever and philosophical and yet packed with action and suspense and great world-building. I'm very glad I've re-read it!

In my book: This novel is like an old friend which, when you meet after a long time apart, never fails to keep you up all night while discussing philosophical problems and drinking wine :)

Title: Hard to Be a God
Author: Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky
First published: 1964
Add it: Goodreads, Book Depository
Rating: ★★★★☆

Another great Russian Sci-Fi novel, Hard to Be a God is also an old favourite. It tells about a historian from Earth doing research on a "medieval" planet. He poses as a noble and has to observe and cautiously encourage progress without getting too involved and unnaturally changing the course of history. But pretending to be someone else for so long is not easy, and with obtaining more relations it's hard to stay impassive during a shocking twist in the planet's historical course. Re-reading the novel as an adult dimmed my initial impression of it a bit, as the moral became much more obvious. But it's a great book nevertheless!

In my book: Still very relevant and makes you think a lot. And the main character is great.

Title: Night Watch
Author: Sergei Lukyanenko
First published: 1998
Add it: Goodreads, Book Depository
Rating: ★★★★☆

As I've already mentioned, Lukyanenko is great, and luckily this book is translated into English, so it is an introduction to his writing for many readers. Which is a pity, because in my opinion it is not his best book, and the continuation of the series gets worse. I've read three out of (already) six books and don't intend to continue. The first one is still good though, if only a bit simplistic. The idea is that there are magicians between us, and they have two guilds: the Light and the Dark (I know, so obvious!) and they have some kind of a pact which ensures that they don't destroy each other. So it's "battles for souls" mixed with political plots to get round the pact.

In my book: Rather fun if you don't get sick of this whole Light/Dark opposition stuff.

Title: The Last Wish
Author: Andrzej Sapkowski
First published: 1992
Add it: Goodreads, Book Depository
Rating: ★★★★☆

You can already tell this autumn was full of Eastern European fantasy/sci-fi, right? :D Well, here's a super-popular polish fantasy saga, which inspired a computer game, dozens of spin-offs, fanfics, etc. I even have two friends who participated in role-playing games based on The Witcher world. The book is a collection of short stories telling about separate adventures of a Witcher - a guy specifically trained to kill different evil supernatural beings. I loved how Sapkowski took different Slavic fairy tale tropes and turned them into an entertaining and sometimes funny heroic saga.

In my book: An iconic novel, Slavic fantasy at its best. Recommended!

Title: The Master and Margarita
Author: Mikhail Bulgakov
First published: 1967
Add it: Goodreads, Book Depository
Rating: ★★★★★

This is a classic of Russian lit, which is unlike any other book. For most of high school students in Russia this is the only book they like from the school program, even though I bet none of them understand much of it. To tell you the truth I can't say I understood everything even after this re-reading, and I hope I can say that I'm now a more experienced reader then I was in the 11th grade :) Anyway, the novel is a satire about early Soviet era, and is set in Moscow in the 1930s. But it also has a plot line which tells about Pontius Pilate and the two intertwine through Master - a writer with a difficult fate, who wrote a story about ancient Jerusalem. The architecture of the novel, the beautiful language, the characters, the scaring hilarity of the dialogues, the macabre mood of it all - Bulgakov IS the real Master, and I can't possibly over-recommend this book :)

In my book: Just read it, OK? Nothing more that I can say :)

That's it! I have a couple of stand-alone reviews coming (hopefully soon) and I'm thinking about doing some year overview. We'll see if I have time and enthusiasm for that :)