Category: Books

How to climb K2 and Everest – Silvia Azdreeva’s journey

~ Veselin ~ 1 Comment

I read “To Conquer Yourself” by Silvia Azdreeva yesterday. A woman who likes hiking goes to the Himalayas and climbs Ama Dablam, with no prior high-altitude experience. It’s 288 pages of captivating insanity and by far the best book I had a chance to read in 2024. Makes “Into thin air” sound sane or rookie, with its mild insanity levels, and lack of ambition or real achievement.

You can’t turn a page without thinking that this couldn’t possibly be happening, that it’s made up, that she’s going to give up, or even die. But the evidence is clear – it did happen, and a series of difficult adventures were endured by a woman made of steel, blood, tears, vomit, and a gigantic bowl of emotions. Reading it made me cry several times and then enthusiastically promote it to friends and family, although it looks like mountaineering is not exactly a hot topic out there.

The book is not yet available in English but it should be because it’s powerful and unusual. 5/5.

Skyward

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A world, surrounded by flying broken machinery. Humans, hiding underground, and under constant attack by alien spaceships. The future is grim but for the youngsters, it all looks like a game and plays like a game. And they, Spensa in particular, will try to game the system. The brand new book 4, published over the last couple of days, might be the conclusion where they’ll defeat at least some of the evil.

The Bulgarian edition is on a very hard cover. Like hardwood cover. I’m not very sure what material they’re made of but it is wood-like, very thick. It’s rough and painful to hold. Perhaps gypsum plasterboard? It is pretty if you don’t look from the side. Paperback was also available but I paid respect to the weird choice by the publisher and bought the strange one. I should remind myself to ask them about the material at the next book fair.

It’s one of the better series by Brandon Sanderson, I recommend it, although I’ve not started “Defiant” yet and don’t know the end. I hope it’s not a tragedy.

Blood Sword

~ Veselin ~ 1 Comment

When I was a child in the 80s and early 90s, computers were rare. Computer games were a scent from another world you could see and enjoy briefly, if a kid whose parents had an 8-bit computer, would invite you home and let you play when their parents were not watching. I used books to fill my curious brain with data. I liked them very much and I wanted to be a writer when I grew up.

It was 1991-2 when some clever folks started translating non-linear books with choices. There are two doors in front of you. The left one is small, with an iron frame, and the right one is large and barely hanging. Which one would you open? If you choose the iron door, go to 185, and the broken door is at 195. Reading these felt challenging and great. The best from that time was the series Blood Sword.

I couldn’t buy it at that time because they were expensive. A friend let me read his. And decades later, I saw someone sell the first 3 books on Facebook, in pretty bad shape. The seller was apologetic. “You know they’re kind of cut, and have handwriting inside and so on. Are you sure?”. Not a problem, it’s actually better that way. Which modern-day book gets to that shape from being read a hundred times? Can we find a Hobbit read more than 2-3 times? Or a Game of Thrones?

These are the first 3 books from the series, and book 4 is on its way to me. I’ll figure out the missing book 5 sooner or later.

Reading Challenge

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I completed my 2023 reading challenge of 39 books – it is the first more ambitious reading challenge I set for myself in years.

https://www.goodreads.com/user_challenges/41622441

The books that chose me this year were almost entirely light reads – Fantasy, Sci-fi, and a variety of Crime/Thriller.

The highlights of the year for me are:

  1. Jonathan Moore – Noir/Thriller author who captivated me with a gothic atmosphere and romantic characters (4 books read, all of them in Bulgarian).
  2. Two Years Before the Mast – a biography from 1840, written with such a strange and infectious optimism that springs out of the pages almost 200 years later.
  3. 10% Happier by Dan Harris – quite a personal journey into the world of spirituality and meditation with a personal message: “You can scratch your nose as well”.
  4. The Three-body Problem by Liu Cixin – is a good reminder that Sci-Fi exists and is still fantastic, well at least until you reach the 1000-page third part.