What do we do when things go wrong?
Years ago, when I first spotted this book in a stationery shop, I decided to buy it without even flipping through its pages. On the cover, three men were being carried by the river's current toward an unknown destination. The title revealed little more than the image itself: Three Men in a Boat. Where they were going and why remained hidden between the pages.
For some reason, I never got around to reading it. The book sat forgotten on a shelf for years, quietly waiting for me. Then one day I picked it up and finally began. Soon, I discovered why these three men had embarked on such a sudden and peculiar boating trip. Tired of their daily routines and convinced that they were suffering from all sorts of illnesses, they believe an adventure will do them good. Instead, the following two weeks prove far more challenging than expected. They can never quite agree on what should be done or how it should be done. They blame one another, make a mess of simple tasks, and seem incapable of catching a break. Jerome narrates all of this with an exaggerated sense of humor and remarkable wit.
In the end, the three companions more or less accomplish what they set out to do. By the time they return to dry land, they are rather proud of themselves. But perhaps this book was written not only to amuse, but also to make us reflect. As we accompany these three friends like an invisible fourth passenger, we spend much of the journey wanting to step in and sort things out for them.
And yet, when things go wrong in our own lives, what exactly do we do?
Contains slight spoilers!
Okay first things first — I am completely obsessed with this series. Diana, Samkiel, Imogen… honestly, I love every single character in this series, the good ones and the bad ones.
But HOW did you make me fall for Kaden like this?? I literally went from "meh, not a fan" to "wait, Diana and Kaden could totally be endgame??" ,and this is coming from someone whose favorite book husband is Samkiel!! Why would you do this to me??
And what you did to Reggie?? I was an absolute mess, ugly crying the whole time! We needed him, he was our dad figure why did you take him away from us, Amber, WHY??
Okay but real talk, the pacing was perfect, and this book had me glued to the pages the entire time. I honestly don't know how you do it, queen, but you just get it. Keep doing what you're doing — even if you destroy my emotions every single time, I still love you for it.
Also the 5th book needs to come out NOW because I genuinely cannot wait anymore!!
A Critical Review of Humankind
Rutger Bregman’s book Humankind is one of the books that questions negative ideas about human nature and makes readers think. For many years, many people believed that humans are naturally selfish, bad, and only care about themselves. However, Bregman does not agree with this idea. According to him, human nature is not as dark as people think. Instead, people are more willing to help each other, understand others’ feelings, and do good things. In the book, the author supports these ideas with many examples from wars, psychology experiments, history, and biology. One of the best parts of the book is that it gives hope about humanity. Still, when I finished the book, I did not only feel admiration. On one side, I was happy to read it because it made me think differently. On the other side, some of the author’s ideas felt too optimistic to me. Because of this, the book was both interesting and questionable for me.
One of the strongest parts of the book is that it makes people question ideas about human nature that many accept without thinking. Today, we often see violence, murder, wars, and fights on television, social media, and in the news. After some time, people start to believe that the world is full of bad people. At this point, Bregman asks an important question: If humans were really bad by nature, how could societies survive for so many years? A big part of human history was shaped by helping each other, working together, and surviving together. From this side, the writer’s ideas are important and meaningful.
His ideas against the belief that humans are naturally wild are especially interesting. Today, when someone behaves badly, people sometimes say, “Did you grow up in a cave?” However, Bregman says that hunter-gatherer societies were not as violent as many
In Amis’s famous novel, London Fields, the witty language is used and highlighted in the book repatedly. With the use of wit and pan (word play) Amis creates one of the most intelligent written novel ‘London Fields’. These uses of high elevated language and word plays also gives us the hints of postmodern fiction. As the novel is considered one of the best novel representing postmodernism, one can appreciate it due to the style that the novel is written, by means of wit and language. To give examples from the book;
-It was fixed. It was written. The murderer was not the murderer. But the murderee had always been a murderee.
The quote from Samson Young foreshadows that the real murderer is not the one we think, it will change. However the murderee ‘Nicola’ will always be the victim, not be affected by the inconstant murderer.
- I know what his poetry will be about. What poetry is always about. The cruelty of the poet’s mistress.
In this quote we can also sense the metaphor that is made to Nicola. Here Samson , as a writer, claims that the poets are writing poetry due to the relationship between their mistresses. It is known that Young also writes a novel about Nicola, creating the same plot with the poets he criticizes.
-I close my eyes, trying to see a way- how do writers dare do what they do ? – and there is just chaos. It seems to me that writing brings trouble with it, moral trouble, unexamined trouble. Even to the best.
-When God got mad he was a jealous God. He had other planets, thanks, and in better parts of the universe. He promised plague, famine mile-high tides, sound-speed winds and terror, ubiquitous and incessant terror, with blood flowing bridle deep. He threatened to make her old and keep her that way forever… Cross that firebreak and then cross that
Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt looks at spirituality in a humanist way. He thinks it is a source of wisdom and beauty that helps people in life. His style is special because he does not try to change the reader or strongly criticize beliefs. Instead, he invites people to discover empathy and understand feelings naturally.
There are conversations between a Jewish family and a Muslim shopkeeper in the story. The book talks about religion, morals, differences, and similarities between people.
I do not think it is a superficial book. I think it should be read again from time to time. I can recommend it.
I had not read such a different book for a long time, so I had mixed feelings while reading it.
"But, alas, I had done what I had determined not to do; I had slipped unthinkingly into praise of my own sex." (page: 121)
A Room of One's Own is best understood when we first reflect on what feminism actually represents. Is it merely a demand for equality? Or a rebellion against centuries of imposed roles and limitations placed upon women? Even today, when we read about the historical denial of women’s most basic rights and freedoms, we are still surprised, perhaps because contemporary society presents such a different image of gender roles.
Let us imagine a world in which women were confined solely to domestic responsibilities: raising children, sewing, and managing the household, often forced into marriage and denied access to education. A world in which they had no private space, not even half an hour truly their own. In Woolf’s argument, the absence of such material and intellectual space explains why fewer women emerged as successful writers. Without a room of one’s own, she suggests, a woman is also deprived of an inner world that belongs to her alone. Nothing is truly hers; everything is defined through ownership by men. Even the impulse to resist such conditions is gradually suppressed.
Woolf’s writing carries a clear sense of intellectual rebellion. She questions why women could not live as freely as men, and imagines the creative potential that might have emerged under equal conditions. She also attempts to explain male claims of superiority through psychological and social patterns: insecurity masked as dominance, and the need to define oneself as superior to at least half of society in order to compensate for internal doubt. Meanwhile, women, historically excluded even from libraries and formal education, were denied the very conditions necessary to
