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A Reader's reviews
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-10-12 09:44:23 for Under the Banner of Heaven A Story of Violent Faith.
(Language: English)
 
a fascinating, fair analysis of fundamentalism.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-10-12 08:54:46 for The Broom of the System.
(Language: English)
DFW, philosophy, linguistics, wordplay, ohio, deserts, relationships, family... what's there not to love? a great starter read to acquaint you with his peculiar spectacular storytelling capabilities.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-10-12 08:53:29 for The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil.
(Language: English)
not the best of saunders. go for civilwarland or pastoralia first.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-10-12 08:52:07 for The Human Fly and Other Stories.
(Language: English)
2nd TC Boyle item I've read, not so crazy about this one. "Clearly an early work" as they say.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-01-29 08:51:20 for A Confederacy of Dunces.
(Language: English)
i wish this book wouuld be eaten alive by a slow and hungry fire.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-01-14 08:42:39 for The Tragedy of Macbeth.
(Language: English)
A famously peculiar feature of Shakespeare's cast in the tragedy Macbeth is the existence of the "Weird Sisters," three rarely spoken but seemingly omnipresent witches. Manifestations of the goddess Hecate, associated with ghosts and the underworld, they are undoubtedly the source of some evil in the plot. Their dialogue involves solely Macbeth and, briefly, Banquo. "Thou shalt get king, though thou be none./ So all hail, Macbeth and Banquo! (1.3, 65-6). Upon initial scrutiny, the force of their predictions appears to empower the murderous Macbeth. Critics have often ascribed his "transformation from a reluctant, conscience-ridden conspirator into a cunning and brutal murderer (Paris)," to the witches' influence. "He had put off [the murder of Macduff's wife and children] until he had visited the Weird Sisters (Paris);" "[T]he witches of Macbeth inspire... the mysterious horror and spiritual terror (Schelling);" [T]he Weird Sisters represent, in most appalling sort, the wickedness of the purpose they suggest: so that Macbeth's fears as well as his hopes are stimulated, and his fears even more than his hopes, by the recollection of their greetings: the instant he reverts to them, his imagination springs into action (Hudson). Curiously, the witches go unpunished for their transgressions at the conclusion of the play. It may be surmised that Shakespeare's intent was not to deem the Weird Sisters wholly unaccountable for the evildoings that commence, but to propose a moral scheme that departs from the binary good-and-evil model. He acknowledges the existence of supernatural forces such as the witches, but rather than purporting their instigation of either order or disorder, he presents them as merely containers of the potential for such. It is ultimately the anomaly of the skewed individual that upsets overall social design.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-01-14 08:40:07 for Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
(Language: English)
all-time favorite. to the point that i would name my firstborn huckleberry.... now i just need to get my husband to agree to this!
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-01-14 08:36:34 for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Signet) (Signet).
(Language: English)
superb.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-01-14 08:35:46 for Catcher in the Rye.
(Language: English)
loved it when i was sixteen. a bit overstudied, kind of sours me to the whole holden caulfield thing. adolescent frustration at its finest.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-01-14 08:32:50 for Me Talk Pretty One Day.
(Language: English)
i'm giving this four stars; the first time that i read sedaris, i found him to be sharply insightful and identified fully with his lot in life: rich, well-educated, and intelligent (toot, toot > that was the sound of my hand on my own horn). in any case, upon picking up this book for a second time, i found it far less funny and slightly annoying. i therefore choose to side with my first reading, so as not to spoil the party. read it once if you like to laugh - read it twice if you like beating dead horses.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-01-14 08:30:18 for A Midsummer Night's Dream (The New Folger Library Shakespeare).
(Language: English)
hilarious!!!
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-01-14 08:22:42 for What Is the What.
(Language: English)
...as i was saying... can only be the result of a cozy and touching friendship between two men whose lives intersected to create a beautifully told story, simple in its delivery but far-reaching in its impact. So far as I can detect, the only current that runs simultaneously through each man's life is that of orphanhood, which really now that I consider it is only like 75% concurrent since Achak's parents turn out not to be dead after all. If you are looking for a sensationalist story that will make you cry and maybe motivate you to support Sudanese divestment funds and such, this is your book. But if like me you're interested in / moved by the friendships forged throughout life, then this is your STORY. As "Heartbreaking Work" is the only Eggers work that I had read to date, I expected this to be a smart-ass white boy's ironically detached foray into the crisis of Sudan. Justified? Probably not. But to my surprise (and if this book is any indication), Eggers' narrative voice has matured greatly since his days as a San Franciscan hipster memoirist. I think the most impressive aspect of the novel is Eggers' ability to convey the voice of Valentino Achek Deng, a Sudanese refugee trying to situate himself in U.S. culture (while, predictably, reckoning the past-present, African-American, rich-poor leitmotifs of his unique life). What struck me in reading this book, oddly and perhaps wrongly, was not the plight of child refugees. Indeed it was the depths that Eggers' prose reached. Not in aesthic terms; the writing is a bit terse and metaphors run slack. But the amazing mass of data from which the story is hewn can only have been the product of a close, long-lasting, and unlikely friendship be
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-01-14 08:13:10 for Disgrace.
(Language: English)
hyper-academic author channels self through portrayal of predatory, amoralistic, exhaustively pedantic middle aged professor. saturated with self-indulgence, ungraceful byronic reference, and stiff political innuendo, the only redeeming quality of this so-called masterpiece is the emotional byproduct created by coetzee's portrayal of the father-daughter relationship at the book's core. skip it.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-01-08 02:15:19 for Street Dogs.
(Language: English)
rarely am i moved to tears by looking at a photograph. but as soon as i opened this book, i began to weep! it's touching, heartbreaking, and hopeful: everything that a good book should be.
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