Writing reviews for CBR is not easy. I can’t just relax and read something. I read books with the upcoming review in mind, analysing their building blocks, paying attention to details, overthinking them. As a result, I sometimes finish them and -unless I straight out loved a book- have no idea how I felt about them. Did the story touch me? Did it make me think? Would I recommend it to others? When that happens, I like to go on Goodreads and read other people’s […]
Damn it, Pandora!
Melanie is a ten-year old girl that leads a strange life. She lives in a cell, only allowed outside it strapped on a wheelchair when she is to attend class. What the world outside looks like, she can only imagine. Maybe like in the mythology books her favourite teacher, Ms Justineau, reads for them. It’s the only life Melanie knows, until something happens that turns her world upside down and liberates her from the confines of her wheelchair and her cell. But her newfound freedom […]
A lot of wasted potential
Katya is a dealer in Authenticities and Captures, remnants of a world long gone. She finds old things and sells them to her rich clients. She is constantly connected to the grid, which provides her with information when she asks it to, gives her warnings when she needs them and so on. One day, Katya is forced to stop her bike on her way into the city, in order to let some deer cross the road undisturbed. Suddenly, one of the deer is shot and […]
Easy money
The narrator in Gillian Flynn’s story ”The grownup” gives hand-jobs for a living. After developing carpal tunnel syndrome, she’s forced to switch to fortune telling. There, she meets Susan Burke, a rich, nervous woman, who comes to her with what seems to be an easy job: get rid of the bad vibes in the house she and her husband with their two children live in. Our narrator thinks that she has it made. She only has to pretend to perform some rituals, take a year […]
Glorious depravity
Richard is a Californian, kind of poor kid that goes off to college on the East Coast. He is also kind of lost: he’s already changed his major twice, and now he chooses to study only Greek (and a little French) knowing fully well that it won’t lead to any job opportunities later on. There is an air of mystery surrounding the Greek professor and his select few students. Richard is in awe of them. Their world, partly because they come from rich families, is […]