David SafierReviews

Maldito karma
David Safier
Publicado: 2007 | 229 páginas
Novela Humor

Una desternillante novela sobre el secreto de la felicidad que ya ha hecho reír a un millón de lectores en Alemania. La presentadora de televisión Kim Lange está en el mejor momento de su carrera cuando sufre un accidente y muere aplastada por el lavabo de una estación espacial rusa. En el más allá, Kim se entera de que ha acumulado mal karma a lo largo de su vida: ha engañado a su marido, ha descuidado a su hija y ha amargado a cuantos la rodean. Pronto descubre cuál es su castigo: está en un agujero, tiene dos antenas y seis patas… ¡es una hormiga! Kim no tiene ganas de ir arrastrando migas de pastel. Además, no puede permitir que su marido se consuele con otra. Sólo le queda una salida: acumular buen karma para ascender por la escalera de la reencarnación y volver a ser humana. Pero el camino para dejar de ser un insecto y convertirse en un ser bípedo es duro y está plagado de contratiempos.

Reason read: TIOLI #1, time. On my TBR since 2022.
This book is YA, obtained through AudioSync Summer program. It is a story set in WWII and involves Jewish resistance. The setting is Warsaw, Poland. Strong female character written by male author. The story is inspired by some true events that did happen to the author's family.

28 Days follows Mira, a seventeen-year-old Jewish girl who has to smuggle food for her family to survive. She soon meets a man who is involved in the resistance movement within the camp against the Nazis. Meeting him is a catalyst for her analyzing how she interacts with the world and the people around her and she starts questioning what type of person she wants to be.

It is an incredibly heavy story and is a difficult read because of the content. The violence committed by the Nazis and Polish people (and even some Jews) against the Jewish people was depicted quite graphically, so the book comes with a trigger warning for racism, antisemitism, and violence.

I did feel that the pacing of the book was a little odd. Parts of it were incredibly fast while others were very slow. While I understand putting in part of Mira's life before the 28 Days of resistance was needed for character development, it felt like the part the book wanted to focus on only happened in the last third of the book.

This isn't the type of book you can say you enjoyed reading, but it was a good and necessary read.

9788432228582

On her well-deserved retirement from public life, Angela hopes to enjoy a quiet life with husband Achim and bodyguard Mike in their old house in a pleasantly obscure village in the Uckermark. But of course it doesn’t work out like that: there’s a suspicious death and suddenly a new career as central character of a series of cosy mysteries seems to be opening up. But is she going to be Sherlockine or Miss Merkel …?

Of course, this is the sort of idea that always sounds funnier in the jacket-copy than it can ever live up to, but David Safier is an experienced comic novelist and does what he can with it. There are some nice running jokes about the way both Angela and Achim still think like scientists and like people who grew up in the DDR, there’s an irritating small dog called Putin, and there’s Angela’s determination to feed poor Mike up with impossible quantities of homemade cake, but it’s a bit of a stretch to make those things fill out a whole book (let alone a series). The murder mystery — involving a Freiherr found dead in his locked wine cellar wearing a suit of armour — is fairly feeble, but should be just about enough to satisfy fans of village cosies..½

SYNC: Narrator Amanda Dolan plunges listeners into the disturbing first-person narrative of 17-year-old Mira, who is attempting to survive in the Warsaw Ghetto and keep her mother and sister alive. Immediately, Dolan reveals the terrible mix of fear and desperation that sends Mira sneaking into the Polish markets to buy and smuggle food back into the despairing ghetto. In an emotive performance Dolan vivifies a world that narrows in possibilities even as Mira’s courage, strategic capabilities, and hope widen. Though listeners know the fate of those who lived in the Warsaw Ghetto, Dolan reveals the brutalities, as well the beauty and love, Mira discovers during 28 days of resisting the Nazis. A powerful listen.

I forgot to update this on here but- I liked this one better than the other one I read by him. In this one the story seems more consistent, and the humor, more... constant? And I like Shakespeare, so I dig it.

Me he reído bastante.

Es gracioso, pero "Jesús me quiere" me ha gustado más.

Höchst amüsant

Novela corta y entretenida, sin mayores pretensiones, sobre una presentadora de televisión que muere en circunstancias bastante curiosas y se encuentra con que toda su vida ha sido una mala persona y debe recuperar karma. La lectura es fácil y hay algún punto divertido, además de otros muchos que me han hecho sonreír. Divertida y fácil.

Carino :)

Un libro muy bueno, un snack de sobremesa diría yo, de esos libros light que no te van a cambiar la vida, pero si te van a hacer descubrir el placer de leer. si tienes un domingo por la tarde libre y quieres leer algo entretenido pero no difícil de digerir y fácil de dejar en cualquier momento, te recomiendo este libro. Pero ojo, que sea light no significa que no sea adictivo. Divertido, entretenido y reflexivo gira alrededor de una gran pregunta, Que es el verdadero amor?.

Non diventerà certo la più grante opera letteraria di tutti i tempi, ma per chi vuole una lettura scorrevole, non troppo impegnativa e ricca di comicità questo libro è sicuramente un'ottima scelta!
La famiglia dei Wunschmann ricorda sicuramente un po' le nostre, con i soliti difetti, momenti difficili e momenti di felicità. Ma quel che fin da subito attira la simpatia del lettore è sicuramente l'ironia presente in ogni personaggio, che si dimostra in modi diversi. E' interessante anche il modo con cui la storia viene vista e narrata dai diversi protagonisti: una moglie frustrata, un marito buttato a capofitto nel lavoro e due figli nel pieno dell'adolescenza che si ritroveranno a dover ricostruire i legami famigliari sfaldati con il tempo.
Tradimenti nascosti, amori non corrisposti... magari fino a qui non vi sembrerà poi così diverso da altri libri in commercio. Ma ciò che non sapete è che i Wunschmann dovranno affrontare tutto questo... trasformati in mostri! E per la precisione in vampiro, in mostro di Frankenstein, mummia e lupo mannaro. Un pizzico di fantasia all'interno del noioso mondo reale che lo rende ancora più curioso e coinvolgente!

Das erste Miese Karma Buch hat mich begeistert, und ich meine mich zu erinnern dass das von mir 5 Sterne erhalten hat.

Das zweite war zwar noch nett zu lesen, aber man wusste ja diesmal woraus es hinaus läuft.

Die Liebesgeschichte ist so...nun ja. Irgendwie nichts neues. Und spätestens wenn man mehrere Bücher des Autors bereits gelesen hat, ist es wirklich sehr vorhersehbar.

Es ist wie alle Bücher von David Safier etwas kitschig und voller unverholen en Moralappelle, aber etwas anderes braucht man auch nicht zu erwarten.

Es hat Spaß gemacht zu lesen, und die Moral der Geschichte ist natürlich auch eine schöne: Man sollte sich selbst akzeptieren und jeder hat eine andere Vorstellung von Glück, das man auch akzeptieren sollte.

Wieso keine höhere Wertung? Ein paar Punkte haben mich dennoch gestört.
Das liegt nicht daran, dass die Hauptdarstellerinnen Kühe sind, das ist mir nicht zu verrückt. Jedoch sollte man sich doch wenigstens mit der Physiologie von Kühen auseinander setzen. Die da wären: Kühe geben keine Milch, wenn sie nicht gekalbt haben.
Das zweite, das mich gestört hat ist, dass dauernd irgendwelche dummen Kuhlieder gesungen wurden. Fand diese ziemlich unlustig und konnte damit nichts anfangen.

Pluspunkt: Wenn sich jemand nach dem Lesen dieses Buches dumm vorkommt, Tiere zu essen, ist das gut so.

Livre humoristique, que je recommande à tous. Ce livre nous fait réaliser que le karma is a bitch, toujours de façon très drôle.½

Review first posted on BookLikes: http://brokentune.booklikes.com/post/911432/plotzlich-shakespeare

I'm still catching up on reviews. This is going to be short(ish):

David Safier has a knack for making me laugh out loud at juvenile jokes and slapstick humor. However, I probably would have given up on this book if I hadn't read the first two in this series - which deal with very similar characters in very similar situations, except that no-one is transported back in time and space and has to share a body with William Shakespeare.

I wouldn't say that I have reached the point where a story about a thirty-something Bridget-Jones-type in between relationships is not longer a fluffy fun read. It is. However, this installment involved historical characters and that is where it gets tricky to suspend prior knowledge of the characters: especially when they are so well known as Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth, and Francis Drake.

It was just a bit too much...

Review first published on BookLikes: http://brokentune.booklikes.com/post/895121/jesus-liebt-mich-apocalypse-next-tue...

Sometimes, just sometimes, I need a book that offers pure escapism - without pretending to be anything other than a diversion. Not very deep or challenging or novel - just plain cozy and preferably funny.

David Safier's books are just that - simple fun. So, even though I have little patience for romance novels or religious fiction it was hard not to like the story of thirty-five year old Marie who is jilting her fiance at the altar only to fall for the carpenter repairing her dad's roof.

No, the plot is not what is seems.

If I had to summarise the book I would say it is Good Omens but featuring Bridget Jones and told with the social criticism of Dogma.
This is why I liked it so much.

N.B. I read the German edition of the book. It was published in English as Apocalypse Next Tuesday, but as with Safier's first book Bad Karma I am not sure that the humor would work well in translation.

Delightful book. Had me laugh out loud all the way through. Published in English as Bad Karma but I'm not sure how the translation would cope with some of the humour that comes from the use of contemporary jargon and the allusions to German TV and cult adverts.

Really easy to read and at least partially funny book. Something to read when you don't want to strain your brain :-)

Excellent, inventif, génial, drôle, intelligent, émouvant...
Ai-je besoin d'en dire plus?
A lire sans attendre!

EXCELLENT!

Unglaublich albern, berührend und völlig verrückt. Ein tolles Buch für Zwischendurch, dass man schon nach den ersten Buchstaben kaum noch aus der Hand legen kann.

So, I expected the plot to be much worse, so there's a plus there. But the humor was just so hammered in that it wasn't funny anymore, and the female protagonist.... no words.