Review: Bird Box

Bird Box by Josh Malerman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This review is also found on Goodreads! :)

--
What's scarier than desolation you cannot see, and destructive madness you cannot fight nor unsee?

This book is bone-chilling and terrifying. Usually, if weekdays are swamped, I finish a book during weekends when there's peace, my favorite chair to settle into, and no internet connection. With this book, that didn't happen. I had to take several weekends, because it got too frightening to the point that I kept imagining creatures staring at me through my windows while I read, willing me to look at them.

This book isn't for the faint-hearted. It's violently graphic, and unbearably maddening. I cannot imagine living life the way Malorie did. Having the freedom of looking at the world and going deranged because of it. Having your freedom to see snatched away from you by unnatural creatures absolutely unaware of the damage they do to the world. The absolute hopelessness of their circumstances was perfectly delivered because this book offers no answers about these lethal creatures--how they came nor what they are, and how to defeat them.

Review: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts 1 & 2

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts 1 & 2 by J.K. Rowling
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This review is also found on my Goodreads profile here! :)
--
Actual Rating: 3.8 stars
--

First of all, I am very aware of the fact that I bought this book four months ago and have read it only now. YES. I am fully conscious of that fact. In my defense, I have so many books on queue; books that have been on my shelf waiting patiently for a long time. It seemed very unfair for my other books to delay them just because a Harry Potter book came out. (No, I'm not weird.)

1. Because the book is in a screenplay format, it became hard for me to appreciate it. It became hard for me to take it seriously. No! I do not mean this in a way to offend or demean the laborious and precise art of screenplay writing! I only meant that I was so used to reading narratives in novels, especially when it comes to Harry Potter. Even the fanfiction I read are narrative in form. So TCC (The Cursed Child) definitely strayed away from that tradition. I was so unused to reading a new story of Harry's life in a format so unfamiliar and...well, trimmed.

Review: A Man Called Ove

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This review is also found on my Goodreads profile here! :)

I had just spent the majority of my weekend reading the most delightful--and at the same time, heartbreaking--story of a lovable curmudgeon. I consider this book one of my best reads this year. It wasn't at the same level as reading Dark Matter, but Ove's story will stay with me for a lifetime.

I didn't find this book "hysterically funny" as Kirkus considered. I'm not sure if it's because I find it extremely difficult to relate to humorous writing, and so I don't usually gravitate towards funny [or humor-genre] books. Though I still did find myself smiling and chuckling at the funniest moments of the book. More than the humor, the book broke my heart in a hundred different ways. It was a love story between Ove and his wife. It shows how even a physically strong man crumbles in grief. It was a story of unlikely friendship between angry Ove and his jovial neighbors. It was a story of fierce loyalty to a man's principles.

Collective Review: Pottermore Presents eBooks

Short Stories from Hogwarts of Heroism, Hardship and Dangerous Hobbies by J.K. Rowling
Short Stories from Hogwarts of Power, Politics and Pesky Poltergeists by J.K. Rowling
Hogwarts: An Incomplete and Unreliable Guide by J.K. Rowling
My rating: Average: 4.3 of 5 stars

This review is also found on my Goodreads profile here! :)

Only now have I finished the three Pottermore eBooks. Yikes! Turns out I'm not really good at reading multiple books interchangeably. However, that didn't stop me from enjoying Rowling's collection of short stories! :)

Ever since the series ended, JK Rowling hasn't been shy on releasing new information about the Wizarding World through interviews and tweets. What I don't understand is how people or "fans" are getting tired of it. I know I never will! A lot of people doesn't seem to understand that when JK Rowling wrote Harry Potter, she created a new universe. And this new universe will never cease existing. Instead this universe will only grow or solidify as time goes. Harry Potter's story may be complete and have come full-circle, but the world he was written in is incredibly vast and complex. And what Rowling is doing is brushing up the world she painted. The foreground is complete, but she's still working on the background--building an elaborate puzzle to give us the bigger picture. I will never get tired of learning new information about the Wizarding World. I thoroughly enjoyed these eBooks, but out of the three, I've enjoyed two the most.

Review: Dark Matter

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

--
This review is also found on my Goodreads profile here! :)
--

WOW. Here I am, staring at my phone's screen wondering what to write because nothing I say will justify the sheer intensity of what I went through with this doggone book. So far, this is my best read for 2016. I have been blown away by the magnitude of the bar for science fiction this book has set.

How to even begin to describe this? The closest I get to it is a "science-fiction-slash-thriller." This book got me questioning my existence; questioning my CHOICES in life. I'm not really sure if the few sentences that follow can be tagged as spoilers, but just to be on the safe side, I'm going to tag them anyway. I can't exactly explain to you the book for fear of getting swallowed by the plethora of confusing quantum physics terms, explanations, and theories, but I will try to put it as simple as my limited knowledge on it can offer. [spoiler] To explain it the way the book explained it, imagine the famous Schrodinger's cat experiment. The observer will only the know result of the experiment once the box is opened--and it can only be one of the two possible outcomes: alive or dead. The quantum law states that until the box is opened, the cat is in superposition. Until the moment the observer opens the box and influences the outcome of the experiment, the cat is in superposition, or to put it simply--it is both alive and dead. But that's a cat. What if there is a box that puts a human being in a superposed quantum state with a drug that changes the way the human being's brain perceives reality; a drug that forces us to loose our quantum coherence and collapses our wave function? It opens a gateway to multiple universes (or multiverse). What if it allows access to a multiverse where everything that can happen happened? [/spoiler][ To explain it the way the book explained it, imagine the famous Schrodinger's cat experiment. The observer will only the know result of the experiment once the box is opened--and it can only be one of the two possible outcomes: alive or dead. The quantum law states that until the box is opened, the cat is in superposition. Until the moment the observer opens the box and influences the outcome of the experiment, the cat is in superposition, or to put it simply--it is both alive and dead. But that's a cat. What if there is a box that puts a human being in a superposed quantum state with a drug that changes the way the human being's brain perceives reality; a drug that forces us to loose our quantum coherence and collapses our wave function? It opens a gateway to multiple universes (or multiverse). What if it allows access to a multiverse where everything that can happen happened. (hide spoiler)]