I think this is the only Stasiuk's book I read, I remember few years ago I accidentally went to his author's night and, as it sometimes happens, felt an instant dislike for him as a person, everything he said felt irritatingly arrogant to me. Obviously after that I never felt the urge to read his …
Continue reading Nie ma ekspresów przy żołtych drogach – Andrzej Stasiuk
Probably like most book lovers I love reading books about books and books about reading. Writing a book about reading that will be interesting is not an easy thing, mainly because reading is such an individual and subjective act. Andy Miller managed to write an interesting book about reading, a book that gives his own …
Continue reading The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books Saved My Life – Andy Miller
Drunkenness was general, and there are continual references to citizens falling from their solars to the ground, falling down steps into the Thames, falling off ladders. London is not a civilised nor a graceful city, despite the testimony of the maps. It is tortuous, inexact and oppressive. It could never be laid out again with …
Continue reading London: The Biography – Peter Ackroyd – Quotes
For me it was always one of those intimidating books, I felt that by living in London I am somehow obliged to read it and know more about the city that is gradually becoming 'my city' in my mind, but on the other hand it is 800 pages long, there's no denying that. Because of …
Let me just start by saying that this is a book aimed at specific audience and I fit only partially in that focus group. It is a book for single unpaid carers of and old, disabled or ill person, for people who had to sacrifice their careers, their personal lives and their personality on the …
Continue reading The Selfish Pig’s Guide To Caring – Hugh Marriott
For now it's the last one of the three books I bought this year, so I think I'm doing pretty good with my book buying ban, three books bought and all read, so they didn't make my TBR grow. De Botton in this book takes a look at different aspects of travelling, he sets out …
If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest - in all its ardour and paradoxes - than our travels. They express, however inarticulately, an understanding of what life might be about, outside the constraints of work and the struggle for …
Continue reading The Art of Travel – Alain de Botton – Quotes
It is a short book, so I'll keep my review short too. The length of the book does not make it any less important. Hitchens writes a series of letters to an imaginary young contrarian, explaining what it means to him to be a free-thinking rebel. He is extremely full of himself, overly confident to …
Continue reading Letters to a Young Contrarian – Christopher Hitchens
I really wanted to read this book for two reasons: I liked Into the Wild a lot, actually my first post on this blog was about this book, it was a lot better than the movie, and I have huge respect for Krakauer as a writer and journalist. The second reason is a bit more complex …
There may be many, many reasons not to go, but attempting to climb Everest is an intrinsically irrational act – a triumph of desire over sensibility. Any person who would seriously consider it is almost by definition beyond the sway of reasonable argument. [...]these escapades had occurred years earlier, in some cases decades earlier, when …
bookskeptic.com 