andrewspink's reviews
538 reviews

There is a lot to like about this book. For a start, there is a lot of humour in it, despite the somewhat dark underlying themes, or perhaps precisely because of them. Rob van Essen also uses language very deliberately. Time and again, the characters say something and then deliberate if another word would have been better. Especially as a second language reader that adds an extra dimension. 
The plot is odd, as befits a science fiction novel. Odd is good, and mostly it works very well. It starts with a young boy growing up in a strictly religious (reformed) family, and I must admit that my heart sank as I thought it was going to be yet another Dutch novel whose claim to literary fame was a miserable youth. But the author has made a much more well-rounded story than that, and that was all ok.
The only aspect that I was less enthusiastic about is where, almost at the end,

all the characters who are living in the French monastery are left sort of hanging in mid-air.

I don't have such a problem that for certain things we are given strong hints about what is going on (Ick's motivation, for instance) but it is left open as to if that is really the case. Also, in real life, we are sometimes left guessing.
I was very lucky to get a signed copy of this book as part of the NS publieksprijs campaign. I will definitely be voting for it.

If the plot of this book was not based on reality, then you would never believe it. It is such a heart-rending tragic story that you would expect that reading the book would be a miserable experience. However, the characters are so great and Paul Harding does such a good job of explaining to us why normal, sometimes even good, people did appalling things, that it becomes bearable. 
The book is well written, and has an interesting use of vocabulary. I had to look up all sorts of words; dory (I'd forgotten it was a fish),  entablature (never heard of it, it is the architecture above an architrave), lye solution (I guess I once knew that it was potassium hydroxide) and skep (a beehive, according to the dictionary only in American English, like the agricultural machine tedder). Although it has some long sentences, they are beautifully formed and it was not hard to read. An odd feature is that it swaps to the present tense every so often for no apparent reason.
In the end, the book's greatest achievement is that it makes crystal clear how skin colour and 'race' are really completely irrelevant when trying to understand how people are inherently in themselves. The meaning of 'social construct' becomes understandable. It is only in a racist society with a racist history that these things matter.
 

I read some rather negative reviews, which put me off this book. They said that Peter Wohlleben over-simplified the science (that it was too dumbed-down) and that it was too anthropomorphic. However, fortunately, a friend recently leant me a copy and I was pleased to discover that it is a book well worth reading.
It is well written, with short, easily digestible chapters, and I would say that it is about the right level for a popular science book. There is an extensive reference section for those who want more. It is true that there was not a great deal new in the book for me. The majority of what he writes I had heard about as a botany student forty years ago. Having said that, the book was peppered with interesting gems of knowledge that I did not know. For instance, that apparently dead tree stumps can survive hundreds of years, supported by their neighbours. I did know that natural forests store more carbon than plantations, but he gave a very nice clear explanation as to why that is. 
There were some things that I was less positive about. He repeats the myth that ivy strangles or at least damages trees when it grows up them. As students, we were taught that people think this because ivy grows up weakened trees and they then cause and effect. I would be interested to see evidence to the contrary, but in this book he just says that he has observed that trees with lots of ivy are not doing so well, which is no proof at all as to which is cause and which is effect. He also lumps all the different moss species together in a couple of places, despite their diverse ecologies, which is a shame.
He writes that saplings remain small underneath the parent trees due to low light levels. That is not entirely correct. It is actually due to the ration of red/far-red light, which switches off or on specific mechanisms in the small trees, preventing them growing.
There is one aspect of the book which is quite controversial, and that is the extensive use of analogies to animal (including human) activities and emotions. I was prepared to be annoyed by that, but actually it works really well; it makes you think about and understand the various mechanisms that he discusses very effectively. I would draw that line at using the word 'pain' though. That is not just a response to a stimulus and a learning mechanism, but has a specific meaning in terms of feelings and emotions. I think it is presumptuous to imagine that trees feel emotions the same way that people do. They must have their own way of 'feeling', which is doubtless beyond our capacity to empathise with, seeing it must be so different. 

The main protagonist is a very irritating person. She seems to have no mind of her own, and,  even worse, the author seemed to think that that was a good thing. The other characters are a bit unlikeable as well. 
The plot was not so brilliant and in parts downright unbelievable.  Someone finds a  body whilst walking a dog and then no one else does for quite some time, despite the flies and the smell.
There was one redeeming element and that was the nature descriptions,  which were  nicely done. I enjoyed those bits.
But on the whole, not an enjoyable book, I was happy to get to the end. 

This is a book which I would have loved as a student. But that was forty years ago and, for better or worse, it does not speak so much to me now. It is perhaps naive in parts; that agriculture has turned the corner towards more environmentally friendly practices is a statement that just doesn't stand up to much scrutiny. It is nice to see signs of hope, but that should not be mistaken for a whole sector being reformed. 
 It is also definitely over-American in its style and message. The emphasis on personal emotions and grieving for the environment is not really my style.
I know that there is a newer editing, perhaps that is a little more realistic?
On the other hand, hope is important and perhaps if I was twenty again I would appreciate it more.

Another amazing book from Cobi van Baars. The characters are so believable and the reader can't help but feel for them. The characters carry the plot along rather than the other way around. Often that doesn't work, but here it really does. The plot is not really unexpected and yet you want to keep reading to find out what happens next.
The book is easy to read and yet I had to look up several words (draalden, terdege, amechtig).
In the end, you are also left with a feeling of anger for what the nuns did to people like that in that time. This book might be fiction, but we know that in regions where the Catholic Church had political power, that sort of thing happened with a startling frequency. 

I picked this book up as I felt like a lightweight detective, seeing I was wanting to read something whilst a bit under the weather from the flu. It turned out that this book was much heavier than I had anticipated, but nevertheless extremely readable, and I certainly didn't regret it.
The characters were just brilliant, so complex and changing and engrossing. Especially the central character, Faith, is very interesting, and she is complicated by starting out as a child and ending up as an adult. So the book is a coming-of-age story, a detective and a psychological thriller, all in one.  It is also a  frame story, because we are told very early on 'whodunnit', and the plot is more about how it happened, and examines the question of how inevitable it was (or not).
As a further bonus, there were some nice nature descriptions. " The well... had very clean-looking weed like streaming hair growing in it.". That must be 'my' Ranunculus! Of course, "weed" is a pity.
I hadn't read any Ruth Rendell for years. Now I am wondering if they are all that good, or was this an exception.

I was not sure how much this was meant to be a parody and how much serious. There were so many stereotyped elements, and certainly some funny bits, but I think that was not always the intention.  And that is not a good sign for humour.
The problem was maybe that I read it in translation, and it was, let's say, not of the highest quality.  A lot of the text was quite clunky and there were mistakes. Quotes of song (and other) texts were translated literally into Dutch (I guess the translator was too young to recognise Sting, let alone JB Priestley). 
I wouldn't mind trying something else by Kate Atkinson, but then please in the original English.

A very intense, gripping book with both a strong story line and complex, believable, interesting characters. At over 600 pages long, it is a big read. Halfway through, I had to stop to read another book, and I was quite glad to take a break. Nevertheless, it was so immersive that the length was not really a problem. 
I liked the way that the book shifted perspectives, that was very well done. What I didn't like was the lack of punctuation in Imelda's chapters. Although that did give an interesting sort of breathless feel to the narrative, it also meant that my reading was needlessly interrupted as I stopped to work out what was going on. 
There was a lot of violence in the book, sexual, psychological and physical. Although some of it was a necessary part of the plot, that did mean that some sections were not so nice to read. Although I understand why the author did that, I would have been happier if it had been a little less realistic and a little more toned-down.
The humour was great, with dry comments like, "[the teenagers] had sometimes experienced this with adults  - surprise that information that they had made available to be viewed by anybody at any time had, in fact, been viewed by somebody".
All in all, I'm not surprised that it won lots of prizes and it is a novel well worth reading. 

I was glad when I got to the appendices when only about 60% through the book, as then I could stop. That's not a good sign. The book is very long and jumps off into all sorts of random directions.  
On the other hand, it is an interesting topic and he does provide a lot of interesting details. 
I do think that he exaggerates the role of his two central characters,  as well as being overly US-centric.
The dichotomy between the two schools of thought works better in some parts of the book than others. For instance, I didn't find it convincing when applied to solar power as that technology is implemented both in an industrial centralised way and on individual households. 
As a small point, the figures about photosynthetic efficiency are wildly out. He states 0.00025% whereas it is actually about 2%. 
He writes about how governments for water services provide 'very inefficient services providing very bad service'. This was clearly written before the debacle of privatised water services in the UK.
Another thing that came after the book was published has been the substantial shift to sustainable energy in Europe. That has clearly gone faster and further than he imagined. That has happened not only because of altruism for future generations (it doesn't seem to have occurred to Mann that people care for their children and grandchildren) but due to government policy shaping economics. 
Like most writers who mention the relatively short time methane stays in the atmosphere,  he neglects to say that it degrades to carbon dioxide,  so its effects continue.
I enjoyed the chapter about Wilberforce and Huxley, that had some new insights for me.
In summary,  an interesting book, but it would have been better if better edited.