leventmolla's reviews
1640 reviews

Ayşe Kulin bu son romanında daha önceki yapıtlarından farklı olarak bir distopya (negatif ütopya) anlatıyor. Bazı özellikleri açıkça günümüz toplumunun gidebileceği noktaları yansıtan bu geleceğin toplumu ölen tiranın en az kendisi kadar demir yumruklu oğlu tarafından yönetilmekte, herkes yalnızca kendi için önceden belirlenmiş eğitim ve iş olanaklarına bir dizi zor sınavdan sonra erişebilmekte, erkeklerin mutlak egemenliğinin sürdüğü toplumda kadınların bir yere gelmeleri son derece zor olmaktadır. Bilim kadını Yuna kendine tanınan özgürlük çerçevesinin içinde akademik çalışmalarını yapmakta, toplumun katı sınıflarına ve özellikle kadınlar üzerindeki baskılara karşı çıkmayı aklından bile geçirmemektedir.

Ben kitabı okuduğumda reaksiyonum "eeee?" oldu. Ayşe Kulin gibi iyi bir yazarın çok alışık olmadığı bir tarzda - aynı konuyu işleyen son derece başarılı bir sürü yapıt varken - yazmakta ısrar ettiğini anlayamadım. Kitap bir alegori değil, dolayısıyla simgesel olarak günümüz toplumuna falan işaret etmiyor, mesajını bayağı açık vermiş zaten, ama öyküsü yeterince özgün değil, stili Ayşe Kulin ortalamasının altında özelliklere sahip. Kısacası benim için bir hayal kırıklığı ve kaçırılmış bir fırsat...

Once in a while you encounter a book that is playing with the strings of your heart, full of warm, believable characters and is also telling a magnificent story. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini falls into that category.

It is a first-person narrative by Amir, the son of a wealthy man in Afghanistan in the 70s. His mother had died while giving birth to him, so he lives with his father and has befriended Hassan, the son of their servant. Amir is a Pashtun, namely one of the ruling ethnic groups in Afghanistan while Hassan and his father are Hazaras, one of the scorned ethnic groups. Although they do not have any issues with this, it is a discrimination which has been growing.

Hassan's mother has run away when he was a baby. The two boys have established a deep friendship, despite all prejudices in the society. Their prime hobby is to fight kites and to "run" kites. Hassan is very good in running kites, namely he can run and find a downed kite and can claim ownership.

The story continues over the next 30 years of Afghanistan as the country goes through an enormous transformation as the different ethnic factions and finally the Taliban take government. It is a moving story of friendship, prejudices, cowardice, trust and betrayal; whereas you see a country being dismantled in the background.

This author is certainly going to my favorites list and it looks like he already has two more critically-acclaimed books published after this debut.

This is a collection of essays on Philip K. Dick's infamous account of his "epiphany" he has gone through in 1974 and the events after that until his death in 1982.

Some of the essays are quite interesting, but some sound too much of conspiracy theory and some are outright copycat attempts of relating similar transcendental phenomena.

Only recommended for hardcore dickheads....

With J.R.R. Tolkien and Ursula K. LeGuin having written the ultimate books on fantasy, it is quite difficult to find new examples of this genre which bring a fresh breath and cover uncharted areas.

George R.R. Martin (in his "A Song of Ice and Fire" series) and the late Robert Jordan (in his "Wheel of Time" series) have produced superb fantasy series which use familiar fantasy elements but are still able to make it exciting and readable. Young Adult series could produce some interesting examples (Harry Potter, of course but also Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Artemis Fowl and countless others). There are also many mediocre examples and one always hopes to discover the good ones.

I've stumbled into Erika Johansen's "Tearling" series in the local library and got the first two books out. The first book, The Queen of the Tearling starts with a usual theme: Girl lives with foster parents in a remote location, has to take the throne while trying to stay alive until the coronation, first act is to violate the treaty with a hostile neighbour etc. However the storytelling is good, it is slightly above Young Adult level (some profanity) and you keep wondering how the story of Princess (then Queen) Kelsea Raleigh Glynn will unfold. The Tearling is an almost medieval realm, but the story keeps referring to the British and Americans who have crossed over to the New World, the science and technology that got lost over time, reference to gunpowder being discovered and of course the compulsory magic element. So, this history makes the story a post-scientific fantasy, but I think some of the past will be covered in the next books in the series.

I would suggest fantasy lovers to give this series a chance, since there seems to be some value in the narrative.

The second book of Erika Johansen's The Queen of the Tearling series goes more into the history of the Tear and the family history of Queen Kelsea. With the Red Queen getting ready to invade the Tear for Kelsea's refusal to honor an agreement to ship people to Mort, she is trying to understand the history of Tear during visions in which she is living the life of Lily, a woman before the passing into the Tear. She tries to understand the link between herself and the woman of her visions and whether this would help in any way to find a weakness of the Red Queen. The situation looks hopeless with the Mort army getting closer every day, but she has no choice but to try.

The second book gets more interesting, since it starts filling the background with the pre-Tear era history. We find out that William Tear was a Brit who was not happy with the autocratic U.S. government at the time and organised a People's movement into an insurgency. However, finding out they would have no chance to counter the forces of this high-tech dictatorship, they decide to go elsewhere, but where would this be in the overcrowded world of their time?

The last book in the series is supposed to be published in November 2016 and I'm looking forward to it.

A sort of detective story that takes place in 19th Century San Francisco. Annie is a young widow who is trying to survive in this woman-unfriendly era after the suicide of her husband. While running a boarding house with several tenants, she is also providing "personal and professional advice" in the guise of a medium named Sybil. She has received a letter from a creditor asking her to pay her husband's debt or give up the house she has in lieu of the debt.

When one of her regular clients dies by suicide she finds that he has left her some stocks but these have disappeared. Suspicious of this, she poses as a maid and starts working in the deceased man's household. While trying to keep anyone from discovering her real identity, she is also dragged into a series of mysterious events which ends in murder. She is now convinced that her client did not commit suicide and was actually murdered. As she gets closer to the truth she is putting herself more and more in danger.

Louisa Locke is a professor of history and has started writing these Victorian San Francisco books based on her studies that go especially into the area of women's lives and rights in the 19th century. One feels that the details are quite instructive but the book's crime elements are not novel or exciting. One learns a lot about that era and the difficulty of women's life, the story is not very satisfactory. From my perspective I would always prefer a good Agatha Christie novel.

This is the second book from Stephen King featuring the new character Bill Hodges. He was introduced in "Mr. Mercedes" as a retired police officer who is still puzzled about the only important case he hasn't been able to solve while he was on duty. A Mercedes car has been used to plunge into a crowd of job-seekers and the event had resulted in a death and several injuries. The raging ex-detective Bill Hodges was a remarkable character, with his strengths and weaknesses and King had been successful in his rare forays into the natural world - as compared to his usual occupation of walking through the supernatural.

He is bringing back Bill Hodges in a sort of "tangent" and somewhat unrelated story. Peter Straub is a young boy whose father is one of the job-seekers who was severely wounded in the Mercedes incident. The family is desperate, dependent on the single, low-paying job his mother has but Pete has his day when he discovers several envelopes with money inside and several leather-bound notebooks carefully hidden in the bushes. The money certainly helps but he does not know that the money and the notebooks were stolen from the house of murdered author Rothstein and the killer is in jail for life. When the killer comes out on parole and discovers that the money, but more importantly the notebooks storing all the undiscovered works of the deceased author, he will do all he can to discover who did this and make them pay.

I found the story less convincing than the first one in the series, but it is still an enjoyable read.

It looks like the third book in the series named "End of Watch" is going to bring in the supernatural touch that is the trademark of King, so we'll see how the mashup of two genres will work.

Kate Stanley is the director of the redesigned Globe Theatre in London. She is visited by her former Professor from Harvard and provided an obscure message about a secret that is about to be uncovered. As strange events and murders start occurring, Kate and her unlikely entourage start roaming the globe and trying to evade a deadly killer who not only leaves dead bodies in his wake but also burnt remains of original Shakespeare folios.

The book reads like a da Vinci Code for Shakespeare lovers and follows a similar formula. The author is a genuine Shakespeare expert and as such the book provides a lot of interesting details and a somewhat plausible story. It shows you once again that whoever Shakespeare might be and whether he has actually written the huge volume of works revered by literature and theatre lovers today, he is representing a series of works unlike any other in the English language.