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A Reader's reviews
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-12-23 03:52:18 for The Awakening (Barnes & Noble Classics Edition).
(Language: English)
   
There are certain expectations one has for certain books. If it's something which has been well praised, you expect to read it and appreciate where that praise came from. If it is one around which has sparked certain controversy, you expect to get a good smack of that in your reading. And with these things in mind, I feel my reading of The Awakening was a bit tarnished.It is, obviously, a classic, and one with a reputation for raciness. At this point, I'm convinced "racy" in 1800s literary terms implies "has a less-than-subservient female character", given the trends in what I've read. But then, there is a part of me that feels that, given the context of this book's classic nature, that could be what "classic" means as well. It is not to say Chopin is not a capable writer (if often a bit too formal and rigid in her prose), but it is to say that, from a modern view, it's a bit hard to imagine how such a simple story could have created such a wave. It's really not shocking for our times, the idea of a woman, or anyone for that matter, desiring a change of pace, a break from tedium, and it's hardly shocking that a new acquaintance could represent that inevitable shaking-up. As that goes, the story was incredibly predictable to the end, again from a modern view. At my first glimpse of Robert's actions around Edna, it was clear the road they'd lead down. From the first we see of Leonce, it was clear Edna's boredom with him through my own boredom with him. Outside of the introduction of Alcee later in the book (which, in and of itself, plays out much as expected), things progress as carefully scripted as anyone would expect them to. Without the context of the time, the novella's plotline is no more than a trifle... a simple longing for what we cannot have which extends far too long in desire and far too brief in culmination. It's perhaps easy to see this for its worth in the realm of feminist literature, but as a novel, even with the power of the ending (which even so felt a bit melodramatic) it falls short due to sheer predictability. My edition included a good number of short stories as well, and here, I feel, is where Chopin shined more. Some of her classics obviously appear... "The Story of an Hour" has such a bitter humor and irony to it that it remains absolutely brilliant no matter how often you read it, and "The Storm," in far fewer pages, and with almost no character set up (unless you've read "At the 'Cadian Ball"), hones in on the true passion that The Awakening seems to hint at. Lesser known pieces take advantage of the short form: "A Pair of Silk Stockings" is mundane on the surface, but its brevity allows us to revel in our own subtle indulgences along with the main character. It is able to capture far more of the idea of a woman living for herself than Edna seems to. "Desiree's Baby" is also able to add a more powerful punch with its brevity. The setup comes quick, and the twist comes quicker (even if Desiree herself ends far too similarly to Edna). Overall, these were the more enjoyable, as if the size of The Awakening was what truly gave Chopin the slip. By that token, we can easily compare to "Athenaise," the longest of the shorts. There is a lot to like in the story, but in the end, it simply doesn't make sense how a feminist writer could write a story that seems to finish espousing everything that feminism strives to free itself from. It gives a feeling that Chopin, under the pressure of long form, either plots a beginning and an end and then extends them superficially, or wraps things up hastily. It's a shame, really... there's a lot worth exposing yourself to in her work, but it simply doesn't measure up with her reputation. 
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-12-16 01:26:32 for Return of the Native.
(Language: English)
I came into this one worried. Hardy's "Tess of the D'urbervilles" is on my "never could finish" list. It bored me to tears, and has been forgotten. but with the finishing of Return of the Native, I am now drawn to find out if I share that old sentiment, because I found this brilliant. Sure, the language is gorgeous when it is done being dense... often the language can be as dense as the heath itself, which goes miles toward explicating the setting. I also hugely appreciated what felt like "upper-class pop culture of the late 1800s"... Hardy made references freely with a humorous barb to them, like a rendition of VH1's "I love the 1880s". I can't help but feel I lost a certain spark of humor in not understanding every reference, but I appreciated the touch, as it made the book more accessible to me than many other similar ones. Of course, the best humor here is in the original bits. The non-vital characters provide incredible, effective comic relief, especially in the form of the Cantle family... Grandfer is simply a charming old man, and Christian, in his superstitious and cowardly form, is among the best characters here... he's the original debbie downer, and far more humorous for it. But certainly, there is some pure humor here... the scene early on at Wildeve's with all the heathfolk is one of the most amusing i've come across in this era. But the true beauty of Egdon is the heath itself... the oppressive, depressive force that the characters are inextricably tied to... and that is the true beauty of the book as well. It doesn't hurt that Eustacia Vye is so dangerously bewitching as to be able to ensnare across realities (she and Lady Brett Ashley... what does this say about my tastes, honestly?), but the power is in how tragic she is. It's in the sense of being trapped that we all feel at times, and the sense of futility of life in the heath. The idea that in all joy there must eventually come sorrow. The longing for what can never be, the weakness where we cannot allow ourselves to move forward when it's easier to flail. Certainly there is romance and humor and even some action (largely due to the conniving and clever natures of almost every character here), but it all comes back to the somber heath. Those who long for it have it overwhelm them... those who wish to escape are trapped... and the heath itself goes unchanged. I'm hesitant to favorite a book I've read but once, or give a full 5 stars to one that does at times get dry and drawn out, but for the most part, a patient reader willing to put the time in will get more out of it than they'd expect... it's an incredibly rewarding experience with some unforgettable characters and potential for absolutely sparkling discussion if you can find someone else who has given it the time.
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-12-12 02:52:35 for Macbeth, The Tragedy of (Signet Classic Shakespeare).
(Language: English)
If revenge is a dish best served cold, Shakespeare is a dish best served reheated. This is to say, I have never not enjoyed Shakespeare upon a repeated exposure, even if I disliked the play originally, and have always enjoyed it more the second time even when I liked it well the first. Whether it is a matter of seeing a film or play after reading the text, or reading the text after experiencing it visually, or even simply going over it in a class or repeated viewing, the more you are exposed, the clearer Shakespeare's brilliance is. That said, Macbeth took multiple reheatings... I read it thrice through, and discussed it throughout, before I truly appreciated it fully. It is lucky it is so short a play (my edition is fully 2/3 commentary and history pieces), or I would never have allowed it the time to become worthwhile. Part of this is in the sheer denseness of minor characters, the keeping track of whom is difficult and frustrating until you get a feel for who is truly important and who is not. Part of it is the drawn-out nature of some scenes, coupled with the speed of other events, especially the rapidfire nature in which things happen toward the end. Some of the language feels denser here than elsewhere in Shakespeare's catalog. All wrapped in a brutal package. it's tempting not to open it. Still, part of the joy of Macbeth is embracing the brutality, and watching the Lord and Lady unravel. You never root for Macbeth, but his violence and greed are human, if the most debased of our urges. He is never without doubts, always paranoid, often regretful even as he drowns in his deeds. And as you'd expect, there is some brilliant language... whether wonderful wit buried in the dark text or some stunning poetry throughout soliloquies (his "Out, Out" passage toward the end remains one of the most powerful in literature for me). There's always something to love in Shakespeare, and this was worth finally digging until it all made sense. Of course, if all Shakespeare is brilliant in some place, Macbeth fails in requiring more time to delve into it. It rewards your patience, but when other of his plays offer so much and far more readily, it makes even a highly worthwhile play weaker as compares to the entire oeuvre.
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-12-12 02:28:57 for Ethan Frome.
(Language: English)
First off, I'm loving the popular tags. "adultery, agriculture, alienation." I guess that sums it up. Though really, adultery is so loaded a word, and agriculture? Nothing grows in Starkfield. Alienation is really the hammer-home theme of the three. Anyway, where the book works so well is in the foibles of human nature. It's a brief vignette, and really, were it anything but, we would lose so much of its power to triteness, to repetition, to lack of movement. Keeping it short, and focusing on when things come to a head, keeps our attention, and keeps things tense and exciting. Unlike Agriculture. It also makes us question adultery. For many on the moral high-ground, the theme is likely enough to turn them away from the story, but Wharton sets up a very sympathetic character with a partner that is very easy to see as oppressive, cold, demanding... the reader resents her for Ethan, and is ready to back up Ethan's potential infidelity even when he is still bound by faithfulness. It takes the act out of its damning context and frames it as a true human dilemma, and that makes it harder to cast the stones. It comes down to alienation. The constraints of a small and shrinking town. The harsh climate and infertile soil of Starkfield. The wife who becomes a burden and a chain. And eventually, the sole ray of light in a life that has been buffeted away from every chance of a more promising future. We feel alone with Ethan, and we nearly pat him on the back for anything he can do to further his own happiness. That it is so easy to do so should do less to make us question our morals and more to wonder where human nature truly lies. If that's pathos you can handle, the timeless nature of this slim volume will be easy to understand
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-12-06 03:25:26 for Drown.
(Language: English)
There are some things all people know are wrong. One of them, to me, is hitting people over the head with an empty glass bottle, which is why Drown lost me pretty early on. In about half of this short story collection, we see about that level of brutishness. Children acting like grown thugs. Thugs that we're supposed to feel for. It's that sort of book where you're supposed to feel for characters like that, because they grew up rough. They were poor. There weren't the right opportunities because of their race. I just couldn't do it. From the continually foul-mouthed pair of Yunior and his brother Rafa administering the aforementioned beating, to Aurora, the story of a violent, drug-and-abuse-riddled relationship, to the arbitrarily homophobic title story, in which Yunior has the oh so relate-able problem of trying not to be recognized by people he deals drugs to while on the bus with his mother, all I see are people making horrible choices in unsympathetic ways. For me to accept this as "life on the streets" is to accept a stereotype, and it's a stereotype that these stories seem imbued with, whether Yunior is insisting that he truly loves Aurora and wants a normal life with her before he beats her bloody, or whether he's more laid back as in "How to Date a Browngirl...," which while amusing is ostensibly fluff and pretty dramatically full of ludicrous stereotyping. Where Diaz shines in this collection is when we see Yunior not as a young thug, but as human. In "Fiesta, 1980," all the family dysfunction is there, but there is both a poignancy to be found in the by turns humorous and pitiable piece. In "Edison, New Jersey," we see Yunior still living a rough life, but aspiring to more, and at least having glimpses of a matured, settled future. "Negocios," the closing piece, is a deftly written account of Yunior's father's adventures in America between leaving his family and finally coming back for them. We see much of the same things we later see in Yunior's life... the questionable ethics and choices, the rough living... the underbelly that allows us to really get a feel for the "culture clash" that Diaz surely wants to underline in his stories. "Negocios" is easily the best piece in the collection, and that is in large part due to it finally doing literately what many of the other stories were too steeped in thuggishness to pull off. There are some great moments here, to be sure, but they seem to come too late. By the time "Ysrael" and "Aurora" finish, Yunior is almost impossible for me to like or root for. His dialect, with its weak grammar and frequent Spanish slang, does less to set character and more to hammer home a stereotype, as if a Hispanic youth can be nothing but ignorant, violent, vulgar, and mixed up in the wrong company. Every story from there on out has to overcome the stereotype, and while some certainly still have a lot to offer, it is still too hard most of the time to get past it. There are some things all people know are wrong, and to me, giving Yunior an easy pass on these things is implying that all young, poor, or Hispanic people are simply like that. That's not a blanket I feel comfortable unfolding.
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-12-06 02:43:52 for Travels in the Scriptorium.
(Language: English)
If I am to be honest, the most powerful part of this slim volume is its cover art, a spectral, haunting tableau which, along with long hearing good things about the author, was admittedly instrumental in my picking the book up. I don't regret being suckered in by that hook. I simply wish the story itself had been stronger. To be sure, the scenario set up in the story is fascinating... the old man, trapped in a room, with no memory of how he got there or where he is. Outside characters and events come through in hushed tones, and add much to the suspense, keeping you on your toes and guessing. You're continually hoping to find out more... to see what you can see. In many ways, it's like the "room escape" games that populate the internet. You want him to click the desk and have the desk state "you cannot open the desk". You want to check the window. The door. On and on. Knowing these items exist and are not fully explored makes the suspense build up in your chest. The upsetting part, though, is that it never really gets there. The old man is too weak, distracted, or fearful to truly explore to the extent he could, or should. Extended sequences of him reading a manuscript put that anxiety of this man in his solitary, unsettling, constantly monitored room on pause, which frustrated me more than excited me. The worst part, though, for me, was guessing the ending a good halfway through the book. It made getting there and being right feel like finishing a chore. Not that the ending truly tells you what is going on. It remains shrouded to the last. But anyone who can get to the end and not grasp what is supposedly going on might wish to leave books of this nature alone. What this book DOES do right is the excellent framing of scene, and building a knot tight in your stomach waiting for what's next in a story where not much truly happens. And the cover. That still rocks. It's just a shame that, for me at least, it devolved so thoroughly as time went on, until the suspense and intrigue that made it so appealing disappeared, and took the appeal with it.
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-12-06 02:28:36 for Silence.
(Language: English)
Silence was my choice for airplane reading the last time I was on an airplane. As such, it was a horrible choice. It's an incredible downer, and arguably vacation reading should be lighter, fluffier, and an escape. This did no such thing. In some ways, finishing it was the escape. I mean not to indicate the book was bad, however. On the contrary, it was quite intriguing on many levels. The sheer brutality of the book, and the examination of faith, makes it worth reading today by those who have strong belief and those who are without, as well. As someone who is caught between those opposing sides, I found it easy to both sympathize with the persecution of those with faith, as well as marvel at the futility of that faith. Simply framed, it is a story of mission work. Two priests sail to Japan at a time when Christianity is a sin punishable by death. Priests are taken in and tortured, believers are slaughtered, often in mock crucifixion by the coasts. When the main priest is taken in, his captors taunt him repeatedly, stating that if he would simply renounce his faith, they would not make his followers suffer. That is what made the book such a spiritual struggle for me... throughout, there was the voice yelling at the priest... "they're the ones hurting your followers, not you... say it!" On the other hand, his stubborn refusal becomes a mixed blessing... with each instance where he stands up for God, there is the triumph of not being beaten down by tyrants, with the frustration of allowing more pain to come to his people. It's a lose-lose situation here. That pathos, still, is what made this worth reading, and makes it far more than a book of faith, or one of spirituality, but one that questions faith as well as the people who seek to extinguish it. As such, the people most apt to flock to a book with religious overtones will likely be the most disappointed, while the people most averse to the institution of religion may come away frustrated, but in the way good, thoughtful literature should make you come away. It's by no means perfect, but it was certainly worth the read.
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-07-01 12:01:59 for Fiber.
(Language: English)
It takes a true master to take something so brief as 50 pages and leave an impression. Part of what truly intrigued me about Fiber was how slender it was... when I opened it, and saw the text size, the pictures, the margins, I was dumbfounded. What could anyone feel was worth saying in such small space? The book is sectioned into four parts, and one easily presumes it is to represent four parts of the narrator's life. And through the first three, you get glimpses into his time as a petty thief, his time as artist and writer, and his time as an activist, all while living in his current life, a logger on the run. You dive into quirks and pathos. You get the peaceful feeling of solitary woods. The crisp air seems to fill you. And you ponder the man's philosophies. You feel drawn to his eccentricities. You turn to part four amazed at what you've gotten out of this book, and hoping to tie up loose ends to this cryptic narrator. But it was all a dream! The most tired deus ex machina in literature, where none was needed! Part four starts by stating that all the truly interesting parts of the narrator's dialog are a lie. The things that made you want to dive deeper were but mirages, and you're sputtering up sand. He's just a logger in the woods, and hoo boy is he pissed that no one is protecting his woods. Part four reads like the tired political pamphlet it is. It calls out names and actions. It shames and reviles. It begs and pleads. And it turns what could have been a tiny hidden gem into a pretty meaningless vehicle. I believe in ecology and conservation, but I also believe that politics should build a story, and not halt it. I would be more interested with a legit closing, and a brief (very brief) afterword about how I can find out more about the woods in question. The first chunk of book created a great sense of place... I was already interested. When that narrative becomes nothing more than a hook to hammer home an agenda, positive or not, I feel duped. And when the book is as brief as this was, that can be enough to smash its relevance and interest into bits.
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-07-01 11:43:02 for Eeeee Eee Eeee.
(Language: English)
To start with, I must say that this book has the best name. Ever. EEEEE EEE EEEE. Love it. Live it. But the magic of Multi-E is that it is one of the most lyrical odes to ennui ever. It is the rhythm of depression, of inertia, of boredom. The refrains of killing rampages, underground tunnels, climbing a tree... they sound over and over again in chant. They sound the way our own thoughts sound. The unspeakable things that pop into our heads at the wrong times. The drone of meaningless ideas. The inside jokes that insinuate into our subconscious. That is how EEEEE EEE EEEE reads. Only we can shake it out. For the characters here, life has taken the final swing. All they have to rely on is their dead-end job, their Denny's excursion, their long-lost love... If you scratched the rest away, it could be a love story. Boy meets girl. They separate. Girl drifts from boy. Boy avoids cleaning dog poo and dreams of killing rampages and hates popular authors. But all the time that girl hammers in his head. The inanity. The mundane. The things we all find irresistible. Love, to what degree such a thing exists. And as the boy's mind obsesses, everything else falls away into that cadence. Of course, this is also a book about bears and dolphins and occasionally hamsters which follow you into malls and hit you in the head and lead you underground and talk and say they are lonely and you don't even blink as if it is the most normal thing in the world. The book makes no sense whatsoever. And I think it is that which makes it so relate-able. What, we must eventually ask, really DOES make sense? And does sense really matter when you're caught in life and mind's illogical pulsating rhythm?
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-07-01 11:29:30 for A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man.
(Language: English)
Another Three-and-a-halfer. I actually started and ended liking this quite a bit. The words rambled on beautifully and unintelligibly in parts, catching me in their cadence often without fully understanding them. Keeping track of character and place limbered up my brain, although if I set it down too long I lost everything in the process. It made me both eager for and fearful of future jaunts into Joyce. I also saw shades of myself in Dedalus. Some good, some less. The intellect sure, but also the disconnect from his peers. The respect for aesthetic, but also the struggle of sin and piety. The trappings and tribulations of anyone growing up torn between the popular wisdom and their own beliefs and experience. At their best and worst, being able to relate made me drink the story in. But I truly felt that the middle section left the book gutted of a true enjoyment. The sloppy excitement in our "artist" was snuffed out by fear and conformity. The self discovery in the later pages was held back by doctrine. That well documented Irish guilt turned the book to stone, like Medusa. The priestly invocations of our inherent doom as sinners were as ham-fisted as one would expect. The realities of Stephen's new-found chastity and piety were simply not worthy of note. The sheer tedium of the life may well have been intended by the author, to skewer such paths, but it didn't make it any less difficult to work through. Which is a shame, because the rest was all quite nice.
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-06-30 01:45:16 for The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril: A Novel.
(Language: English)
Historical fiction is an odd duck, and this piece is even more so. A pulp about pulps, The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril is an odd read to get into because you're reading about real people. The main characters are the authors of The Shadow and Doc Savage. HP Lovecraft gets the plot rolling. L. Ron Hubbard is a key player. Seriously, that's what really knocked me. It was so hard to wrap my head around him being a character. But once the book gets going, and you settle into the, well, pulpyness of it, it grows on you. The pace is just right for the style. Being somewhat familiar with NYC, and pretty good with Prov, I can imagine many of the cityscapes. The plotlines weave together skillfully with just the right dash of unbelievability. It comes with a promise of thrills and delivers, logic be damned. Which ends up being one of the best and most frustrating parts of the book. Pulp is all about making the outrageous believable, and this both succeeds and doesn't.
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-06-30 01:07:06 for Don Quixote.
(Language: English)
OOh, we get halfstars now? Awesome! Don Quixote was the book that undid my reading streak last year. I had been plugging along. I'd even smashed Boccaccio in the course of a month, with time left to read a couple other italian pieces. I may do this again this august. We shall see. But either way, somehow this monster killed me. It was not a lack of intererst. Au contraire, Don Quixote is largely as charming as it is often claimed to be. His adventures are amusing even at their most predictable. But I feel as though this time, the size got the better of me. Once I finished the superior first book (Cervantes wrote two, in multiple volumes, which are bound as the whole story these days), I let the second stew. And stew it did. It stewed long enough for the bones to become tender. When I finally revisited it, I just couldn't regain my momentum. The constant rants on knight-errantry became a chore. the continual jabs at the "other" Don Quixote sequel became a rather unfunny recurring SNL sketch. The adventures with the "queen" were pointlessly mean-spirited. It lacked so much of what made the first bit so wonderful. Which isn't to say there were not good bits, but it made my muddling through it all the more difficult. That all said, if you have the special talent to handle literature this old, and the wordiness it entails, you'll probably glean much enjoyment from the good Don. Just don't let it slow down your momentum
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-11-26 08:30:54 for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
(Language: English)
It's a rare book that can sit on the bestseller shelf and still call to me... for most tomes, the bestseller label is a big enough turn off to make me never consider it. That being said, I have no clue what made me go for this one. Maybe it was the upside-down dog. Maybe it was the lengthy title. But what I really don't get, having read it, is how it was ever a best-seller. That's not to say it's a bad book. It wasn't. I'll be honest, I don't know exactly how I feel about it, but it was not bad. It was done well, in fact. It just didn't have many elements that people like in best-sellers. Being done well, for example, is usually taboo. To start, it's a bit of a challenging read for the DaVinci Code crowd. We have to follow the train of thought of an autistic child, which isn't always as rational as he'd like to believe. Action will go on hold for stretches of time. There are diagrams and math problems. There's bold letters and repetitious breaking-down of everything. Even while some of these elements would make it easier for the normal book buyer to relate to, it's still a style that requires a brain to wrap around. Also, I found the characters wholly unlikable. Bestseller markets like likable characters. While I was offended and pained and trying to justify the fact that every character sucked at the end of, say, Tom Wolfe's "I Am Charlotte Simmons," Haddon's book is far smaller, so I feel the unlikable characters simply added a unique flavour. Honest, though, outside of minor, flat characters (who are actually the most likable), none of the main adult characters are good people, and Christopher, autistic or not, is a self-centered brat. I know, I'm supposed to have compassion for how unlike other kids he is, but I really don't. He's a huge brat and hyper-intelligent with book smarts but completely naive about real world smarts, which makes his self-important fact-rattling really, really annoying. It's how his character is supposed to be, though, so I can't fault the author. It does lead to another question, though... this is the sort of book where you need to know something about a problem effecting other humans. Is the bestseller public ready to be educated about autism? Who convinced them that disabilities were the new gauche thing to read about? At the end of the day, it was worth the read. It was a memorable book, and not bad, if not entirely my cup of tea. Still, I'm left wondering how it became so popular. Perhaps James Patterson has a hidden, literary pen name?
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-11-02 08:45:23 for Things I Like About America: Personal Narratives by Poe Ballantine.
(Language: English)
I have little to say about Poe Ballantine except that he's brilliant. He's got the heart of a beat, but avoids their unreadable pretension. He can turn a phrase that is aching or hilarious, but it will always come out beautiful. The title of this book is misleading. True, most of it takes place in America, as Poe bounces from one one-horse-town to the next, but even in the vignette the book is named for, there is but a superficial list at best. It's more about the crushing nature of what America has become, the sameness of Everycity, USA, and yet as beat down as his lifestyle keeps him, there's still something grand about his nomadic life... of course, that could be in part due to knowing that could never be me... I could never be so diligent, so dedicated, so free. Still, for anyone realistic, I can't recommend this author enough.
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-10-24 04:46:01 for The External Combustion Engine.
(Language: English)
In many ways, "The External Combustion Engine" was like "Bird and Forest," which I read earlier in the year. A tasteful package containing pretension within. And yes, there was plenty of it in this collection of short pieces. Why I give this two stars, however, and furthermore, plan to keep it to re-read, is what sets it apart. Sure, there's a lot of very difficult work in here... difficult to be difficult, to put on intellectual airs... but there is much beauty, much to provoke thought, to chuckle at. Some pieces are dreamlike, others seem to outwardly mock the sort of pretension Ives can't see in his own writing... in this case, the words strive so hard to become the most tenuous of confusing metaphors that you can tell the text is in jest. While the best writing is found in the brief passages in part I, part III, a collection of what could be psalms and proverbs called "Gong Drops," sums up the entire experience in brief snippets. It gives you a feel for just what sort of pretension to expect when Ives goes for it: ***Nature carves and enamels its canines to resemble "ladybugs" so exactly that we come to have "ladybugs" by forgetting, or never knowing, nature's unquenchable blood thirst--the thirstier, the more unassuming. "Look mommy, a ladybug!"*** But there are also flashes of intrigue among the brief, context-less words: ***How admirably the ebb and flow of crowds would serve as an abacus to the day, if only the day possessed hands.*** And it is those flashes, those glimpses of beauty, both in image and words, that make this book worth keeping. It will forever be imperfect (the lengthy, tangential rant that is section 2 may never see the light of day again), but there is enough beauty in the simpler works to make me hold out hope, that I may understand more the more I review.
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-10-16 10:26:58 for The Sun Also Rises.
(Language: English)
This is easily one of my favorite novels due to its aching beauty and simplicity. The book reads like a weekend is, without unnecessary flourish but chock-full of all the non-excitement. Lest that sound like a dig, it's not meant to be... Hemingway doesn't force his characters to postulate on fishing, to describe the exhileration or the fight of the fish. He has them fish and nap and drink wine. And that's a good enough excursion for me. The story is so much more real for it. The real vitals to the novel, though, are in the sheer sadness of the characters. How broken they all are in their own way. It's an honest love story... no boy-meets-girl, no desire and success, just the pain of wanting what will never be. The awkward pauses in life. It's deceptively difficult to describe exactly what's so perfect about this novel, especially in a culture that yearns for cloying romance, fast paced action, and a happy ending. Perhaps that itself, that it eschews these modern conventions and presents us something honest and simple, is part of that perfection.
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-10-08 10:07:27 for Catcher in the Rye.
(Language: English)
In lieu of an actual review for this classic, I'll simply post from another message board where I discussed my current re-read of it, specifically the fact that so many people despise it for one reason or another: Having finally given Catcher the time it deserved (I never finished it first time round) I can now honestly say that not appreciating it means you missed the point. I can see how it could be unlikeable. Holden is an annoying narrator. He vascilates from one opinion to the opposite in the span of a page, he rambles on often, he's got a low tolerance threshhold, and there are times he's just an ass. But, er, that's the point. If you don't like Holden, Salinger did his job. On the same token, I find it hard to hate Holden, because I see bits of me in him. Less now than when I look back on when I was his age, but I think most teens should be able to relate to Holden, especially male teens. If you can't, you're either incredibly well adjusted, and if that's the case, you lucked out, or you're the sort of person that drives someone to become Holden, jaded by everything before graduating High School, convinced everyone is phony... not that Holden himself isn't phony at times, but every teen is. The book isn't about events. The events are commonplace. They're supposed to be. It's about the character, and what he says, and to extrapolate, what it means. You could say it's cautionary, that Salinger is laughing at the spoiled rich brat he's writing Holden as, and that we the reader should take it as warning not to become him. We could see it as dystopian, that Salinger was commenting on the shallowness of American culture through the eyes of a child, one well-off enough to both see its most glaring pettiness as well as partake in it's seedier aspects. You could even see it as a bit of a commentary about what really matters... about how even the most cynical teen out there still has something they love (in Holden's case, family). You could even take that a step further, and see it psychologically... what damage a loss like that of Allie could cause in a young mind, etc. There's a lot to look into in The Catcher in the Rye... even the admittedly weak explaination of the title could spark discussion as to what it says about or means in terms of his character. These are just the impressions I get from it... hardly researched, but then, the best book discussions shouldn't come from research but from your heart. I just think that with many classics, people start looking for something huge... a big, rollicking plot, some amazing humour or poetic language, and sometimes the brilliance of a book is so much more subtle. Not that Holden can't turn a phrase, and certainly not to say that there are times when Holden's sheer contradictory nature jumps the line into humorous, and not even to say there aren't some big and poignant moments in the mundanity (word?) of the plot... simply that in a book like this, even those moneymaker bits are understated.
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-10-08 10:06:13 for Fidelity: Stories.
(Language: English)
10 stories about, in many ways, the exact opposite of the title. Damaged people trying not to break their fidelity to themselves and ending up hurting those they should be faithful to. The fickle nature of love, the selfish nature of humanity. Often devestating and fragile, but rarely perfect. A solid three.
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-10-08 10:04:04 for The Encyclopedia of Monsters.
(Language: English)
I used to take this book out of the library rather often when I was younger, so there's a lot of nostalgia in this book, but at the time I was too young to really delve into the longer entries. When I got older, upon re-finding the title, I just had to get a copy off eBay. For the most part, this volume is a bit of a cryptozoology primer. It discusses some of the more common and intriguing cases, and touches on bits of folklore as well. The information keeps an open mind without being overly fanciful, and hoaxes are discussed alongside "legitimate" evidence. I've always been somewhat intrigued by this sort of stuff, so it left me quite content. However, it's not perfect. It could have used a good editing... there were misspellings such as "poeple" scattered throughout like a treasure hunt. Also, some of the articles felt far too short, while one or two seemed to drag. I also felt that, while making logistical sense, the chapter on Lake monsters shouldn't have been side by side with the Sea monster one... many of the creatures in each chapter had very similar origins, and having two chapters of this in a row got a bit tiresome for me. Finally, while there were occasional drawings and photos throughout, I think more would have been beneficial. All told, I'd give this a 3.5 if I could, but that old sense of nostalgia keeps it on the high end, hence the 4-stars.
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-10-08 10:02:24 for The Penguin of Death.
(Language: English)
This is an amusing little illustrated poem. There's not much else to say about it, save for noting that it's really more of a gift book than a real "read".
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-10-08 09:58:59 for Mr. Thundermug: A Novel.
(Language: English)
On the cover of this interesting little novella, there are three statements: ~Mr. Thundermug is a baboon ~Mr. Thundermug has a luxuriant mane of silvery hair ~Mr. Thundermug has an unsettling mastery of speech Your enjoyment of this story is largely going to be based upon your enjoyment of those three comments, because really, that's what the novella's about. A talking baboon. It's a charming little case history of a baboon who appears and, suddenly, learns to speak like a human. Like any good fantasy or fable, there's a hidden moral somewhere in here regarding what it means to be human, but for the most part it's simply an enjoyable little what-if, and its simplicity is one of its charms. Of course, the question becomes, is the book worth purchasing? For most people, given it's severe brevity (just over 100 pages, with some pictures) it simply won't be worth it at full price, even in paperback. However, cheap or used, it's an intriguing little addition to a shelf.
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-10-08 09:57:36 for Cosmicomics.
(Language: English)
I first learned of Calvino in early 2002, in an Italian Literature in Translation course. This was the first work of his that I had read, but I'd never finished it... we were assigned select stories at first, and I read a few others at various times, but never had I gone through all of them, certainly not in order or en masse. The main thing about Cosmicomics is the premise... each story begins with a bit of scientific conjecture, and then the narrator, an ineffably old guy named Qfwfq, starts telling the story of his life at that time, and how correct the supposition is. This leads to a lot of intriguing story concepts: a story about the creation of the universe supposes that all manner of "people" were all condensed into one point before the universe exploded and they were all pushed to, well, the ends of the universe. As a general rule, the more evolved life was at the time of the story, the easier it is to be held with the story. The first story especially is beautiful and dreamlike to me, and I've read it the most of all of them since first discovering the stories. Some of the other stories, where matter is less evolved, can get confusing, as Calvino's narrator has to explain the unique constraints of the situation (the difficulty of creating a sign when nothing existed to be represented in one, or the unique intimacy one enjoys when stuck in the same point as another). These can also be some of the most intriguing stories, though... Calvino creates characters who are subatomic, perhaps little more than synapses in some cases, and the unimaginable primordial world, even when it's little more than blank space, can be just as magical in it's shapeless nothingness, moreso with such descriptive names as "Granny Bb'b" and "Mrs. Ph(i)Nk". All said, there are times where the scientific abstracts imposed on the stories get out of hand, but by and large this is an incredibly creative set of fantasy stories about science, sure, but also about love, the inevitability and fear of change, vanity and wisdom... as if Calvino attempts to state that some emotions are universal, even when no one was there to witness. It's unique in its scope and well worth reading if you're looking for something different and a bit more challenging.
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-10-08 09:55:52 for Margherita Dolce Vita.
(Language: English)
Whether it be because I read this after so many titles that didn't strike me, or because it's just that good, herein lies my first of (hopefully many) five star review. I absolutely loved this book. It made me smile. The language, as Italian literature tends to be, was beautiful, yet often childish given the eccentric young narrator. The book had a foot firmly in magic, which made some passages a bit harder to wrap around, yet there were worrisome amounts of realism. I won't lie, it scared me... it created a real tension, and one that isn't far-fetched from what the real world could become... what is becoming the classic battle between the simple life and the bustle and whir of pointless modernity. It's simply effective, charming, well-crafted literature. I couldn't ask for more.
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-10-08 09:54:19 for The Decameron Library Edition.
(Language: English)
The Decameron is known for being one of Italy's most important literary works, as well as one of the most racy of its time. Having taken Italian throughout my schooling, I'd heard much about it, and so it finally came time to read it. This damn thing took me about a month to complete... it's huge... but in the long run it was worth it. Seven women and three men escape Florence for a bit during the time of the plague, and they live a life of leisure for a while and tell stories. It's easy to see the appeal... 100 short stories, most of which were entertaining, on a variety of topics, bound up in a more peripheral story, clearly an inspiration to the Canterbury Tales, which followed later in the century. It's a literary feat, for sure. As for the racy, even at their worst, Boccaccio speaks euphemistically, and usually says nothing more than that lovers "enjoy their love fully", but there was a lot of damn full love enjoyment, and I can completely see how this was considered racy in its time. It created a bizarre see-saw of feminism... between the sexual talk and some themes of women outsmarting men, there are definitely glimmers of early feminism here, but at the same time the author and indeed the women characters themselves insist upon their natural inferiority to men in many ways, making the whole book a bit of an odd balance which eventually seems to pull out as "femineutral". However, that's not the only way the text is extremely dated. The stories themselves don't suffer so much, except for some rather wordy and repetitious passages, as so much old writing tends to contain (One of the last stories contained a paragraph at least four pages long). What does get old real fast, however, is Boccaccio-as-Narrator. One can only hear that these people praised everything they enjoyed at length so many times. The sheer predictability of the non-story time tended to get frustrating quickly. The songs... writing lyrics to fake songs in your book is like telling me "here, you don't need to read this part." I say "Thank you" and don't. And that's not even addressing the obligatory "cover my ass" introduction, explaining the whys and wherefores of the book's story and existence, and answering all possible arguments against the text. Every text of this era seems to have one, and Boccaccio, having written such a massive text, allows himself three. One to start, one to end, and one placed somewhere in the middle. These are really the worst parts of literature of this era, and to me, Boccaccio goes far enough over the top to make the rest of the book's merits dampen. All in all, though, it's a classic for a reason. If you have the time and patience for a trek like this, you'll probably find a reward in a number of the stories.
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-10-08 09:52:27 for Harry Potter and the deathly hallows (ill., engl.ed).
(Language: English)
It's really unfair to rate Harry Potter... the biggest publishing phenomenon of our times, with the final book of a series... a chapter that could never stand alone. A children's book read by an adult. A brilliant story told by a mediocre writer. So I'll leave it starless. I finished it in under 17 hours, though (start to finish, with interruptions between), so make of that what you will. It's no less hard to review such a book, especially given spoiler sensitivity so early in the game, so I'll just make some comments: ~I appreciated the pacing of this volume more than the others I've read. Without the normal, boring school and Quiddich passages, the sense of urgency and anticipation is much more apparent. ~While Rowling is definitely a consummate plotter, there were nevertheless some more important plot-points toward the end that I'd pretty much expected after the last book. It made my powers of deduction seem pretty impressive. There were also bits that seemed choppy, as if they were jumping about too quick. All in all, though, Rowling's prose is much more satisfying out of the constraints of the school, and while her serious dialogue still needs work, as does her description of emotion, she seems much more at home. It makes it interesting to see if she takes on a new book any time after Harry. ~One of the things I like most about Potter books are some of the little details. Probably the most striking bit in this book was the brief description of Luna's bedroom. The full implication is left unsaid, but I feel it says a lot anyway. ~One of the things I like least in Potter books is the ending. Not because it's over, but because Rowling is succinct without being lucid. I say that there were choppy parts in this book... chapter 35 was easily the biggest culprit... the chapter where all the loose ends were tied. Many of the resolutions earlier in the book were quite satisfying, but without fail the end ones feel rushed. However, this time around, this wrap-up was spared. Indeed, the treacly rubbish that makes up the epilogue here might be the most offensive and uninspired (as well as predictable) patch of literature I've read ever.
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