One of the best books I read in a while. Some genuinely gross & horrifying scenes during the Plague in France in contrast with a beautiful & heartfelt “father”/“daughter” relationship between a knight called Thomas and a girl called Delphine.

Loved the idea of combining the historical aspects with religious ones, the fight between Heaven & Hell having direct influence on life on earth. Very unique book & lots of really touching & emotional moments. Delphine is probably one of my favorite characters in years.

As with the previous book in the Millenium trilogy, I lost motivation somewhere in the middle and once again took a break while reading it. The story just seemed a bit too unfocused in the middle of the book.

However it had a strong start & fantastic ending - it made me want to continue with the last book immediately after finishing this one. Overall I enjoyed it, the last third of the book really won me over.

Wanted a change of pace so I read a thriller / crime novel for the first time in quite a while. The book started pretty action-packed but then slowed down in the first third and lost me for a couple of weeks which means that it took me a while to finish.

After giving it another shot it managed to hook me and the conclusion to the plot lines was satisfying but felt a little bit rushed. But the main two characters are really likable even if they’re a bti cliché. Also everyone seems to sleep with everyone in this book, lol.

I’m now already reading the next one in the main trilogy and I’m liking it even more than this one - it’s definitely a page turner.

By far the longest book I’ve ever read (over 1800 pages on my Kindle version). I really liked it but compared to the previous 4 books I had some issues with. Overall the ending seems a bit unsatisfying because it seemed a bit rushed & most plot points have been left open (which is understandable considering this is the 5th out of 10 planned books). I would have preferred if some of those storylines would have had at least some sort of an ending.

But this is complaining on a very high level - I still love this series and am looking forward to the next 5 books.

Also, the next book in the Stormlight Archive is coming out 2031 earliest - so I’ll have to wait a bit, haha.

It took me quite a while to finish this book even though it’s only around 300 pages long. I started it once early last year but actually gave up on it because the story just didn’t click with me.
Gave it another shot this year but I still struggled with it in the beginning. I tried listening to the audiobook for a bit (narrated by Carey Mulligan, loved her narration) which helped to at least get far enough into the story to keep going & finish it.

The book tells the story of Nora Seed who, after a suicide attempt, ends up in “The Midnight Library”, a place between life and death. There she meets Mrs. Elm, a librarian that cared for her during her childhood. She gets to experience all the lives she could have lived if she took different decisions throughout her life by picking a book from the shelves of this library. We see how her decisions shaped the lives of the people around her in all those parralell lives & how experiencing all those lives shaped her attitude towards life in general.

Overall it was nice, not blown away by it but I did enjoy the ending & the writing style was also enjoyable. Definitely a bit predictable at times though, but all in all I enjoyed it.

This book is written from the perspective of a security bot (in a science fiction setting) which managed to become independent. The book follows its thoughts now that it has to deal with social awkwardness, its pessimistic worldview and the human clients on whose mission it has to protect them.

Murderbot has such a fun personality, constantly complaining about not being able to spend its time watching entertainment shows and trying avoiding any interaction with humans.

Really cute concept & it’s overall a lighthearted & very short book so it was easy to finish. I’ll probably give the other books in the series a shot! Would definitely recommend it!

After reading “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius I wanted to read another book on Stoicism. I found this one by John Sellars to be super interesting.

It gives an overview and a basic introduction to the history & the main ideas in Stoicism, clears up some misconceptions that people might have about this philosophy and then describes how the most important stoics came up with their ideas and how we can apply them in our daily lives.

I’d definitely recommend this book to anyone trying to learn more about Stoicism, I actually wish that I had read it before starting with “Meditations”.

My first book by Ernest Hemingway. Overall I thought it was okay, definitely a fairly slow read - not necessarily boring but the roughly 80-90 pages felt longer than they actually were.

The story is about an old man and his struggle while trying to catch & bring back home a big Marlin fish. It talks about his endurance, his stoicism and eventually the futility of his effort. I liked the parts that show his relationship with the boy that takes care of him.

Hemingway’s writing style was actually pretty unremarkable for me reading it in 2022, but apparently it was pretty new and different back in the 1950s.

All in all, not blown away but I also don’t regret reading it either.

I read this novella pretty spontaneously because I had just really been in a “chess mood” for the last couple of days.

Overall it was surprising how much of a page turner it actually was and it was a nice to read a Austrian book for a change.

Then again - from an emotional point of view this book hardly touched me so I’m giving it 3.5 stars I think. Worth a read but nothing exceptional in my opinion.

This book describes the experiences of a neurosurgeon during his time in medical school to residency and then in the second part how he dealt with his lung cancer diagnosis all the way up until his eventual death.

Loved the writing, obviously an incredibly heavy topic but the descriptions of his time as resident in the hospital and his motivations & reasons to become a doctor in the first place were very insightful. It is also remarkable how realistic and brave he stayed during his illness and the book also shows how the diagnosis changed the lives of not only him but also his wife.

I would absolutely recommend this book, I loved it.

The first part of the book describes the experiences of the author during his imprisonment in several concentration camps and talks about dealing with the situation there and finding a reason to accept & continue enduring his suffering there. Obviously some very disturbing & tragic description of events there.

The second part was about his general philosophy called Logotherapy. This was definitely more dry, but I liked that for every statement or idea he usually gave several examples of actual cases that prove and explain that idea in a more practical sense.

Overall I found it super interesting & it definitely changes one’s outlook on life’s meaning to a certain extent. Great book!