Tag: Familiarity

Andrzej Sapkowski – The Last Wish | Review

Title: The Last Wish

Author: Andrzej Sapkowski

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 284

Rating 3.5/5

 

 

It took me a while to get into this book, but I did start to love it by the time that I got to the end. I think part of it was the writing style and part of it was the fact that I had no previous familiarity with it because I’ve never played the games before. But if anything, I think that was a good thing.

But while I struggled with this book to begin with, I eventually managed to get into it when I switched it out as a “bedtime book” and started reading 25 pages per night. In fact, I’d argue that’s pretty much the best way to read this one, and you’re going to find it easier going if you read one story at a time.

What I do like about these stories is the way that they touch upon morality, including the witcher’s own unusual set of morals. In fact, by the end of this book I could finally see what the hype was about, but I also thought it took me too long to feel at home in the world. In part, that could be because many of the creatures inside the book were obscure creatures that I hadn’t come across elsewhere.

All in all then, I am glad that I read this book, but it wasn’t as easy to read as I was expecting. Now that I’ve read it, I’m not in any particular hurry to get to the next book in the series, but I probably will get to it at some point.

 

 

Click here to buy The Last Wish.


Karl Pilkington – The Moaning of Life | Review

Title: The Moaning of Life

Author: Karl Pilkington

Type: Non-Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 346

Rating: 4*/5

 

Karl Pilkington - The Moaning of Life

Karl Pilkington – The Moaning of Life

 

Technically, I’m giving this one a 3.5, because I think a 3/5 is too harsh on it. You basically know what you’re getting into, here – if you haven’t heard of Karl Pilkington then it probably isn’t the best place to start. But if you’ve seen (or heard) some of his work before then you’ll know pretty much what to expect.

Karl Pilkington is a cynic, a simple man who seems so daft at times that he attains a sublime sort of wisdom all of his own. But it’s the very strangeness and simultaneous familiarity that makes him so endearing. When he’s being grumpy about something, you usually find yourself nodding along with it. I think it’s because while he can be a miserable sod, he gets miserable at the same things that would make you miserable, too. He talks a lot of sense.

This book is basically a tie-in with one of Pilkington’s television series, although I haven’t actually seen it. That means that I can’t tell you how much crossover there is, but I imagine that it’s pretty much the same. It’s split into sections, and each of the sections follows a different theme, like the TV show. It also comes with a bunch of stills that show Karl in action as he tries to find a little meaning.

My main problem with it, and the reason why I didn’t give it a straight four, is that it’s kind of long. I got bored about halfway through, and while it wasn’t exactly a struggle to finish it, I was already thinking ahead about what I wanted to read next. I think it might be better to dip in and out of it, rather than reading each section back to back – that way, it’s more like occasionally watching one of the shows, rather than bingeing on the series over the course of a night. It’s better that way – it’ll go down much easier. So yeah!

 

Karl Pilkington

Karl Pilkington

 

Click here to buy The Moaning of Life.