ReadViewr

#simple #book #reviews (not quite 😉) #daily in 280 characters.
2021 Reviews = 6️⃣6️⃣. 2022 Reviews = HIATUS.

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#ConfessionsofaMask

Here, #Mishima recounts his adolescent experience in wartime #Japan. Explosive, beautiful, richly tapestried by the author’s metaphysical guilt and overwhelming, almost religious, sense of #shame.

A strange and magnificent mix of #honesty and #theatricality.

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#Mordew by #AlexPheby

🎩 Telling the story of a gutter-boy named Nathan Treeves the story is a new type of ‘-punk’. If #Dickens wrote #fantasy, it would look like this.

👤 The world is #mature, and the prose incredibly tight. After tearing through 500+ pages, I am 100% hooked.

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@0xIrrelevant Desmerelda… definitely a Desmerelda.

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#LessonsInStoicism

🏛️#JohnSellars here guides his readers through the central components of #Stoic doctrine with simplicity and style.

📖Retailing at £7.99, this is a book of only 96 pages. But don't let that deter you, the author’s clarity and concision is worth every penny.

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@LovinSunshine97 Do what your gut says. Don’t overthink everything, your first instinct is usually the correct one.

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#TheSailorWhoFellFromGraceWithTheSea

👹This novella by #Mishima cuts deep. A sailor turns his back on glory, falls for a widow, and is met with the violent #retribution of her son.

🌊A work akin to a camera obscura looking on a tableau that you know will end in #disaster.

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#DiariesofAdamandEve

This collection of short-stories by legendary author #MarkTwain charms in its irreverence.

Exploring the inner thoughts of #Adam and #Eve, the result is a tongue-in-cheek exploration of the sexes that is all heart.

'Wheresoever she was there was #Eden’.

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#HowlsMovingCastle

🎇An enigma wrapped in a #fairytale.

🏰A cursed girl is transformed into an old lady and must seek help from a young #wizard.

👵Much more than run-of-the-mill fantasy-fare. Funny, original, comforting and strange. Excellent for #teens, and #oldladies alike.

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#BritainAlone

🇬🇧 An excellent work of contemporary history by journalist #PhilipStephens covering the period from #Suez to #Brexit.

📔 Though not completely impartial in later chapters. On the whole, a lucid and objectively written overview of the history of modern #Britain.

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#thesongofachilles

#MadelineMiller set out to update #Homer's #Iliad. She accomplishes so much more.

A book about immortality, glory, desire. Above all, a work like 'Aristos Achaion': radiant and beautiful.

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#AsILayDying

A #modernist #masterpiece about the death of a mother, and a family’s attempt to get her home.

This tar-black #comedy relies on stream-of-consciousness accounts from multiple narrators, and the result is part-Bible, part-Odyssey, and all #Faulkner.

#Stunning.

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#TheStoicChallenge

From a living, breathing #Stoic comes a #guide on how to adapt the ethics of #Epictetus and #MarcusAurelius to the nuances of modern life.

For #Irvine, life is a series of tests. Setbacks are opportunities, and resilience is something worth building. #BeCalm.

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As a shy #writer in my own right, I’m reticent to self-advertise. But I have taken the step of entering a short-story contest on #Vocal.

The story is drawn from quite personal feelings and explores ‘#heaven as #hell’.

Any feedback is welcome. Thanks 🙏.

https://t.co/ILNVH83zHC

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#HowToBeFree

#Epictetus was the freest slave that ever lived, who just so happened to become a free man in his own right.

His writings pass to us as recorded by #Arrian, and his #advice: to concern yourself only with what you can control, is a #stoic lesson worth remembering.

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#ThePostmortal

From a simple ‘what if?’, #DrewMagary has put together a forensic novel about what would happen if #aging were #cured tomorrow.

This decades-spanning #dystopian novel shows that sometimes the cure might be worse than the medicine. An instant #analytical #classic.

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#1984

🙋‍♂️Following worker Winston Smith, #Orwell's quintessential dystopian novel is about #truth in an #age of #disinformation, freedom in the era of #totalitarianism.

👁 A wonder of #futurology that predicts many of the malevolent forces driving change in the world today.

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#BrightonRock🍭

On a beach in Brighton, #PinkieBrown commits a #murder.

Ruthless, monstrous, yet spiritually complex, anti-hero Pinkie is a #Catholic who embraces #damnation. Rose, a naïve and poor young girl plays his fool.

A #sizzling soup with all the right ingredients.

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#TheBladeItself🧙‍♂️

A #fantasy novel that knows its #genre.

Among a cast that includes Jezal (an #aristocrat), Bayaz (a #mage), and Logen (a #warrior), it is Inquisitor Glokta, crippled and withered, that steals the show.

Rich in lore, #arcane and #mysterious, part of a trilogy.

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#ParadiseLost

😈 #Milton’s #masterpiece covers the celestial fall of Satan, thrust down from heaven to rule in #Pandemonium.

☄ #Magnificent, #magisterial, an epic #poem that forewarns of #pride and the all too human desire to want more.

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#TheNarrowRoadtotheDeepNorth

🗾#Basho’s musings reveal a sensible, likeable man.

⏱This collection so successfully captures a sense of the #present, that it feels as if it might have been written minutes ago.

🗻As #calm as a waterfall, with a wit as #firm as a mountain.

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#TheOdyssey

📜A palimpsest of stories stitched together into a #classic #epic for the ages.

⛵Calypso, the cyclops Polyphemus, Circe— these are names that will live forever, with #Odysseus foremost among them.

🏺 About #family, #love and finding the way #home against the odds.