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This is one of those books that’s better in audio format, and the main reason for this was that Werner Herzog read it himself. My dog got longer walks and my home was cleaned more pedantically just to prolong my time with his stories about his life.

I started reading this one assuming it might be something like Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, but no. It was more like a critique of people’s willingness to rule others, hiding behind whatever ideology is handy for the situation at that moment, plus that strange thing where people want to be puppet masters but are actually in the same situation as everyone else — just one of millions.

And I think that in the end, the book landed in the same territory as Apocalypse Now, since in both stories the protagonists were forced to deal with reality from outside of it.

I just wanted to read another book by Anthony Bourdain, and it was perfect for the dark winter evenings we have here in the Baltics during January. It delivered exactly what I wanted—like one more, longer episode of those Anthony Bourdain TV shows we used to watch together with my dear wife on similarly dark winter nights not so long ago.

At first, I didn’t know that I liked science fiction.

Honestly, the last one I enjoyed was Orson Scott Card’s ‘Ender’s Game,’ which I read ages ago when my colleague from my previous job published its Latvian translation.

But somehow the style and story immersed me in the book, and I willingly freed up time to read it and find out what would happen next.

We’ll see when I’ll again have the willingness to read something like this. And it will probably be another Peter F. Hamilton book from this series.

This was the second Karl Ove Knausgård book I read.

At first, I was looking for something light, similar to his book ‘Autumn,’ where he reflected on the world around him.

But to my surprise, ‘Spring’ was much deeper. It wasn’t just a letter from a father to his newborn daughter — it was also a reflection on parenthood, family, and his role in his children’s and wife’s lives.

Unintentionally, this book entered my life at just the right time and situation.

Although most of the stories are fictional, this book was really very interesting. It is probably one of the best I’ve read recently.

I realized that there was no point in continuing with this book because every moment I spent on it was torture. It was a brilliantly failed work by the author. I really don't know why The New York Times included it in the '100 Best Books of the 21st Century'.