Lydia NetzerBesprekingen

The writing is exquisite and the plot unique. My only issue was there was too much description, too many paragraphs included about the sex lives and acts of the main characters. I am not saying that there shouldn't have been any - it was crucial to the story and character definitions - I just would have liked to have read less of that and had more to read about the 2nd tier characters

I am always looking for the "something different"; browsing the shelves of my local library, I keep finding "copy-cat" books - the couple with the child murdered or kidnapped, the fantasy trying to emulate Hunger Games or (worse) Twilight and vampires, the terror-threat novels with their stereotypes.

Bless Lydia Netzer for writing her poignant book with new worlds to explore, to feel, to be a part of, and ti find similar places or events in my own life.

I take it back: [a:Lydia Netzer|4886414|Lydia Netzer|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1384708162p2/4886414.jpg] apparently has more than one book in her. This is not a book about a quirky astronomy-obsessed person and their equally quirky love interest! Who knew (full disclosure: I will read that book as many times as Lydia Netzer cares to write it.)

Nonetheless, the concept really allows Netzer's true talent of inventing infinite ultra-quirky characters to shine. You see, there's this baby, and its parents, and then all of its kickstarter backers, each of whom has their own reason for getting involved. The parents, Jenna and Billy, are each well-written and their relationship feels realistic, with the conflict being compelling rather than over-the-top.

I thought that the take on crowdsourcing was a little cliche, and perhaps a little on the nose given the GoFundMes for fertility that now exist in real life, but it has been two years since it was written, so there is that. Nonetheless, it's a fun exploration of how the more grassroots part of the internet affects us.

I loved [b:Shine Shine Shine|13167199|Shine Shine Shine|Lydia Netzer|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1325702786s/13167199.jpg|16422717], so I jumped on this when I found it in our local little library. In conclusion, I think Lydia Netzer basically can only write one book. Also, I'm pretty sure I will happily read that book as many different ways as she would like to write it. The book is this: quirky and star-obsessed scientist(s) -- in Shine Shine Shine an astronomer; here a pair of astrophysicists -- face obstacles in their love for each other, but are just too quirky to really integrate with the rest of society. The conclusion is a light, but deep-hearted, geeky romantic comedy formula that seems to be just my speed.

I was worried the premise of the mothers setting up their children to be soul-mates would turn out to be twee, but the twists it took from the back cover saved it, in addition to the other plot elements. I liked that Irene and George were full characters with personalities and goals beyond their romance and the quirkiness.

This isn't a perfect novel -- George and Irene's respective initial significant others are pretty one-dimensional and seem to exist for comic relief alone. A bizarre narwhal-filled interlude is cute but unharmonious with the rest of the novel. It's clear it was Netzer's pet scene (and she says as much in the afterword) and she couldn't quite pull it out even when it was clear it wasn't working.

Lydia Netzer may only write one book, but, in my foray into literary fiction I've learned that 90% of literary fiction is the same retread "modern novel" over and over and it's very dull. So I'll take her repetitive, but geeky, quirky and fresh novel as many different ways as she wants to write it.

This was an unexpected delight. The love story of a man, Maxon, who uses pseudocode to define his verbal and emotional responses to the world and his wife, Sunny, born with complete alopecia in Burma. The real heart of the novel is the tension between Sunny's desire to fit in with the world as it is, and hide her baldness, as a metaphor for the things that make us different from others, coming to terms with wanting to be the hero of a world of one's own making, with those who are different from us being the outsiders.

The writing is gorgeous. The story beneath the story, of Maxon going to help colonize the moon is interesting and numerous backstories flesh out both characters as full, flawed people, not just subject to the plot.

Sunny, Maxon y su hijo de cuatro años, Bubber, forman la familia perfecta en un aparentemente perfecto barrio residencial. Cuando Maxon, un científico brillante, se embarca en una misión espacial para colonizar la luna, Sunny se ve desbordada por sus problemas: su madre está muy enferma en el hospital, Bubber es autista y recibe, a pesar de los remordimientos de Sunny, una medicación muy agresiva, y está a punto de dar a luz a susegundo hijo. Además es calva, nació sin un solo pelo en el cuerpo. Cuando pierde su peluca en un accidente de coche y expone su verdadero aspecto ante los vecinos, por primera vez se pregunta: ¿y si fuera capaz de mostrarme tal como soy? Esta aparentemente estrafalaria mezcla de ingredientes se convierte en una historia universal sobre la familia, el amor y el valor de ser uno mismo, narrada con una ternura extraordinaria.

I was good with this quirky story up until the last few pages. Maybe it was how the author alluded to future, but I got a little confused on if everything was really happening or if it was just a hallucination. A more clearly defined ending would have made this a pick for me.

This book is about a bald woman, who has been dearly loved her whole life.
This book is about being an unusual child, and about being a parent of an unusual child.
This book is about living in normal house in a normal suburb with normal neighbors, who are not normal.
This book is about love.
This book is about numbers, and formulas, and robots.
This book is about stretching out blissfully naked in the sun on a large, comfortable rock.
This book is about loss, and about heartbreak, and about resilience. This book is about a rocket ship to the moon.

humoan comedy/love story. autistic savant/astronaut engineer falls in love with bald girl/childhood friend.

Reads like a first novel, in the best possible way (though it’s actually a sophomore outing). This story is so full of ideas, histories and emotions that I can’t believe it didn’t germinate and grow inside the author’s brain for an entire lifetime before bursting forth in full bloom. I can’t wait to go back and read other works, or for something new to come.

Although it was a little disjointed I thoroughly enjoyed the relationship between George and Irene - and the raunchiness. I loved how George's visions were so strange at first and in the end made perfect sense, although I'm sure most readers knew where that was going.

Just a quote:

"Sleep is a shallow death we practice every night. City after city, as the earth turns and rolls around the sun, we lie down and close our eyes. We try out this thing, death, for an eight-hour stretch. New York, Toledo, Dallas, Los Angeles: we all go down. Our sleeping minds blur the boundaries between our bodies and our idea of the world into what would otherwise be madness. In sleep we have no senses but imagined senses, no grasp on fate except a lunatic's idea of control. Being crazy is like being asleep, and being asleep is like dying. It's just like dying, because the body needs to do it. It has no choice."

I couldn't get through it, as I found it too depressing. Moving on...

The main plot of this novel is about Irene and George. Both of them have a love of astronomy and science and eventually come to meet up in their hometown of Toledo, Ohio working for the Toledo Institute of Astronomy. Irene and George without realizing it were both raised to be each other's soul-mates.

I thought this was an interesting plot to follow since it is an interesting premise to look at to see if you can raise children to fall in love with one another when they are grown up. I think that if the novel had focused on this aspect more I would have loved it. Instead there were way too many side plots going on with other characters.

This is the first novel I have ever read by Lydia Netzer and I have to say except for a few key parts of this novel I ended up not really liking this book. To me it was between a 2.5 and 3 star read and I ended up giving it three stars.

I really think that for the novel to work it would have made more sense to have it start off with George's mother Sally, and Irene's mother, Bernice. Having the story about these two women told in fits and starts and in dream sequences was a bit much to wade through as I was reading. If the novel had worked from these two characters to the present day I think that the novel could have ultimately been a great read for me. Additionally, a side plot with Irene's ex-boyfriend made no sense at all to me to include. And there is another plot that I don't want to discuss too much since it would be giving too much away. However, at the final reveal of that plot at the end of the novel I just ended up rolling my eyes.

I know that Ms. Netzer is hugely popular because of her first novel, Shine Shine Shine. However, except for me enjoying certain words and phrases that she employed in this novel, I definitely would not recommend this novel to anyone else to read unless they were a fan of her previous work.

Please note that I received this novel for free via the Amazon Vine Program. This novel will be released on July 1, 2014.

Fantastic. I rarely read books slowly, but this one I did, over several months. Compelling and beautiful, and actually made me cry.

This was a free ARC copy-no review expected.

New author for me, now very interested to read her previous novel [b:Shine Shine Shine|13167199|Shine Shine Shine|Lydia Netzer|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1325702786s/13167199.jpg|16422717] as it seems well reviewed. This was a very quirky read. We follow two astronomers as they meet and possibly fall in love. It seems there was a plan hatched long ago to put all of this in motion. Like all plans, things went awry. We find out how this plan came to be and how it broke apart.

Aside from the love story we read about super colliders, ancient gods, online gaming, the world of academia, and fortune telling. In order to enjoy the novel you have to just go with the flow....some times the novel went beyond quirky to annoying, but only for a short time, and not enough to take away from the positives the author brings to the story. The ending felt rushed, but I found it satisfying nonetheless.

The main characters in the novel are interesting if not always fully drawn, the secondary characters are more caricatures - clever caricatures though! Once again; ([b:The Rosie Project|16181775|The Rosie Project (Don Tillman #1)|Graeme Simsion|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1371651741s/16181775.jpg|22084678]) I felt myself thinking about The Big Bang Theory as I read this book - never a bad thing! A fun, easy, light read.

This unusual novel, Shine, Shine, Shine, features a Nobel-winning scientist, his wife who is torn between her exquisite eccentricity and her desire for normalcy, their brilliant, autistic son, and a baby on the way. The husband Maxon is clearly but cheerfully on the spectrum himself, and is the key to colonizing the moon. Somewhere around 29 years old, he is an artist when it comes to robots, making them able to cry, laugh and dream - and make more robots.

"There are three things robots cannot do: . . . Show preference without reason (LOVE) . . . Doubt rational decisions (REGRET) . . . Trust data from a previously unreliable source (FORGIVE)".

Maxon has preference without reason for childhood friend Sunny, and she reciprocates. There are some concise mathematical analyses of human behavior in the book (created by the author's coder husband and a mathematician friend), as Sunny and her brave mother Emma educate neglected Maxon on how to interface with the world. Maxon is tall, geeky and (to Sunny at least), sexy, and her congenital baldness (reminiscent of movie robots) is part of his overwhelming attraction to her.

Maxon is heading to the moon, with his robots who will build other robots and the foundation for an Earth colony. But something goes awry, and his genius will be needed if he and the crew are even to survive. Meanwhile, Sunny's mother is dying and Sunny is pregnant. Circumstances drive Sunny to rethink the life of normalcy she has created in the hope their son (and impending baby) won't experience the difficulties growing up that she and Maxon did.

In an afterword interview, the author explains, "{A}s a weirdo who is married to a weirdo and parenting two weirdos, I am saddened by our modern need to make sure everyone fits in, and functions smoothly, and checks all the necessary boxes. Some amazing and brilliant people do not, and never will, fit in."

The novel celebrates the beauty and challenges of not fitting in, and reflects on the desire to be normal, and the bravery needed to be just who you are. I loved it. Not quite 5 stars - the structure was a little jumpy for me in places - but close.½

How I adore Sunny and Maxon. They are unusual people trying to make their honest way in a world that puts them at outs with ‘normal’ people. Sunny’s observations are devastating and Maxon’s are robotic and mathematical. They harbor an unconditional love for each other that supercedes all lies, decisions, secrets, and events. I have no doubt that they will make it.

The backstory comes out gradually and not sporadically, with the deep and dark secrets only revealed grudgingly, almost glancingly. Telling it any other way would have given it more importance than it needed, the secrets would have overshadowed what Sunny and Maxon are making of their lives.

How could Rache know anything, when Sunny had been lying to her from the start? But she put that thought in the box, and she closed the box. And the screaming, and the tearing at herself, and the crawling under her bed to wait for death, was packed into the box, and the box was shut, and taped shut, and she would not open the box, or think about the box. p. 187

Every page is lyrical, every page presents things in a new or additional light. Mistakes have been made, lives changed by dramatic decisions, but everything is going to be okay.

I found this book amazingly hopeful in a very crazy world.½

The beginning of the book sounds like things are just too picture perfect and superficial. I stayed with the book, because of the very clever way things are said. I got a lot of chuckles. As the book progresses, the truth unfolds as the main character slowly lets herself see the truth. The story seems very unrealistic, yet the there is reality in the human struggles involved. Love is revealed as a powerful force toward wholeness.

I can't think of another book that I've read which is like this one. I'm sorry that I can't find words to describe it. I listened to the audiobook format which added to that unrealistic flavor, I suppose. I enjoyed the science fiction part of the story, though I would not say that this was a sci-fi book.

wow. I think the theme is about fate. Great characters.Sick version of parenting.½

What a strange and beautiful book. Loved it.

A complete surprise, and one of the best books I've read. Loved it.

I read this because of the robot concept. To me, this book was a lot of different pieces that didn't fit that well together. And then once in a while the author would insert something that she thought was "quotable" but it didn't really go with the rest. Also it seemed almost offensive to autistic kids : the idea that, with enough love and patience, something with autism can cast away medicine; they just need good enough parents.

Tried to read. I skimmed through bits to get to the end. Did not quite get it. may try again later

Listened to audible version. Joshilyn Jackson is an amazing narrator. (And also a great author herself!)