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| 014303961X
| 9780143039617
| 014303961X
| 3.50
| 132,598
| 1928
| Dec 2019
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did not like it
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I honestly think that if this book hadn't been banned for obscene content, no one would have ever read it. Yes, there are lots of sex scenes (omg scan
I honestly think that if this book hadn't been banned for obscene content, no one would have ever read it. Yes, there are lots of sex scenes (omg scandalous) but all the stuff in between is, for the most part, ungodly boring. The book gets points for having some very intellectual discussions of class and the differences between men and women, and Lawrence's characters talk about sex with more honesty than any other book I've ever read, but that's about all it has going for it. I was about fifty pages into the book when I realized that I really didn't like either of the title characters (Lady Chatterley and her Lovah), and it didn't get much better from there. Mellors started to grow on me towards the end, when he discovered sarcasm, but Lady Chatterley (aka Connie) was one of the most boring protagonists ever. She was almost completely personality-deficient, and Lawrence worked hard at the beginning to convince us that she was intelligent, a task at which he fails miserably. Example? At one point in the book, when Connie and Mellors have just finished having hot sex and are in bed together, he starts a rant about the class system. Connie's response? She observes that Mellors' chest hair and pubic hair are different colors. Fascinating. Basically, the book can be summed up like this: Blah blah SEX blah blah class blah SEX SEX blah blah class England's economy SEX SEX SEX SCANDAL arguement arguement SCANDAL Vacation time! blah blah blah SEX arguement SCANDAL blah blah the end. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jan 2009
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Oct 18, 2023
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Paperback
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| 0192833987
| 9780192833983
| 0192833987
| 4.16
| 351,474
| 1869
| Jun 25, 1998
|
liked it
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The sheer density of this book meant that a) it took me like five months to finish and b) I would dip in and out of it, alternating a few chapters of
The sheer density of this book meant that a) it took me like five months to finish and b) I would dip in and out of it, alternating a few chapters of this with lighter, fluffier fare to balance it out (there's a cozy mystery series that was a godsend during this time - I absolutely hate it but also I'm on like Book 14?). All this is to say that I read War and Peace in installments, often returning to the story after days away from it, and so I experienced the story in a constant state of mild amnesia. I'm not saying it's the best way to get through an epic with a huge cast of characters, some of whom are related and some of whom are dating and hell if I could remember which was which sometimes (Natasha and Nikolai are siblings because their names both start with N, you're welcome), but it certainly made this book a fun experience. Basically every time I started a new chapter it was like, "Oh, who's this fella? Andrei? Nice to meet you, Andrei! What are we getting up to today?" Repeat for 1,400 pages. I'm not recommending my method, to be clear. And I'm not saying that it was the correct way to enjoy this novel. Yet enjoy it I did! I certainly will not be revisiting it any time soon, but it was a fun ride while it lasted, and now I can be one of those people who can say they've read War and Peace, which seems to be the main reason anyone reads this book. Anyway, please enjoy the one passage I bothered to mark so I could quote it later: "Pierre told her of his adventures as he had never recounted them before, as he had never recalled them even to himself. He saw now, as it were, a new significance in all he had been through. Now that he was telling it all to Natasha he experienced that rare pleasure men know when women are listening to them - not clever women who when they listen either try to remember what they hear for the sake of enriching their minds and, when the opportunity offers, repeat it, or adapt it to some idea of their own, or who promptly contribute their own clever comments elaborated in their own little mental workshops; but the pleasure real women give who are gifted with the faculty of selecting and absorbing all that is best in what a man shows of himself." RIP Leo Tolstoy, 欧宝娱乐 would have given you a fucking aneurysm. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jul 2023
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Sep 12, 2023
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Paperback
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| 0486822184
| 9780486822181
| 0486822184
| 4.21
| 825,461
| Mar 31, 1862
| Apr 18, 2018
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it was amazing
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I had kind of a weird journey with this one. I never sat down with a physical paper-and-ink copy of the novel; instead I had it downloaded as a free e
I had kind of a weird journey with this one. I never sat down with a physical paper-and-ink copy of the novel; instead I had it downloaded as a free ebook on my phone. I would read a few pages while I was waiting for the bus, or if there was downtime at work, but otherwise I didn't focus too much of my energy on finishing the book. This is probably why it took me, I estimate, about five years to read Les Miserables. The other main reason, which will not surprise anyone who's attempted to crack open a Hugo epic, is that this fucker is loooooooooong. Like. It's so goddamn long. And more often than not, Hugo's lengthy digressions ("Hey, who wants to hear a chapters-long description of the Battle of Waterloo? Nobody? Too bad!") or insistence on giving a full backstory to just about every character who appears in the book are extremely frustrating more often than they're illuminating. Remember how Jean Valjean's story kicks off when he gets caught breaking into a bishop's house and the bishop gives him the silver candlesticks? In the musical version it's one scene. In the book, you have to get through the bishop's entire life story before he gets to give Valjean the candlesticks and complete his one (1) task in the whole novel. This book, in other words, is not for the faint of heart or short of patience. But here's the thing: Victor Hugo is the master of the long game. There is a reason he makes you learn everything about the bishop, so we can understand exactly why he gives Valjean the candlesticks. He makes us sit through multiple chapters about Waterloo because it's going to come back around to Marius, and we need that entire backstory. He makes us wait while he describes the history of the Parisian sewers, because when he sets a crucial scene there he wants to make sure we can see it, and understand the geography of the setting and its dangers. And yes, he goes on lengthy digressions where he discusses stuff like the fall of empires, but you can't even get that annoyed with him when his random digressions sound like this: "Darkness enwraps condemned civilizations. They sprung a leak, then they sank. We have nothing more to say; and it is with a sort of terror that we look on, at the bottom of that sea which is called the past, behind those colossal waves, at the shipwreck of those immense vessels, Babylon, Nineveh, Tarsus, Thebes, Rome, beneath the fearful gusts which emerge from all the mouths of the shadows. But shadows are there, and light is here. We are not acquainted with the maladies of these ancient civilizations, we do not know the infirmities of our own. Everywhere upon it we have the right of light, we contemplate its beauties, we lay bare its defects. Where it is ill, we probe; and the sickness once diagnosed, the study of the cause leads to the discovery of the remedy. Our civilization, the work of twenty centuries, is its law and its prodigy; it is worth the trouble of saving. It will be saved." It's a slog, but Les Miserables rewards the patient reader. Ultimately, this is a heart-wrenching epic that covers hundreds of characters and decades of time, and makes you wade through chapters and chapters of what seems like random information, but Hugo knits it all together and by the end you understand that every single digression and every minor character played a crucial role in the final product. It's beautiful and frustrating and exciting and boring and tragic and funny, and you won't regret giving it the time it deserves. "These felicities are the true ones. There is no joy outside of these joys. Love is the only ecstasy. All the rest weeps. To love, or to have loved - this suffices. Demand nothing more. There is no other pearl to be found in the shadowy folds of life. To love is a fulfillment." ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Dec 2021
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Feb 28, 2022
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0441627404
| 9780441627400
| 0441627404
| 4.07
| 115,533
| 1958
| Jun 15, 1987
|
really liked it
|
I'd like to say that the movie The Green Knight is what piqued my interest in TH White's retelling of Arthurian legends, but that's only partially tru
I'd like to say that the movie The Green Knight is what piqued my interest in TH White's retelling of Arthurian legends, but that's only partially true. The truth is that this book has been at the back of my mind as one of those "to read one of these days" books ever since I saw Magento reading The Once and Future King in X-2: X-Men United. Just in case anyone was getting any funny ideas about me being some kind of serious reviewer. White's story is about the life of King Arthur, from his lowly origins as an orphan boy called "the wart", to the glory days of the Round Table and the knights he surrounded himself with, to the fall of his kingdom. I had read two other retellings of the King Arthur legend before this - Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, which White references often; and Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon - and White's version of events puts both of those epics to shame. His version of King Arthur's story is equal parts tragic and funny (the first installment, which is about Arthur as a child being tutored by Merlin, is especially hilarious thanks to White's ear for zippy, clever dialogue and voice), and all of it is beautiful. TH White's story mainly grapples with the why behind King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table: the idea that Arthur, thanks to his early education with Merlin, set out to bring his world out of the dark ages and into a more enlightened age, and how even with the best intentions, plans don't always go the way you want them to. This is most clearly illustrated in White's portrayal of the doomed Lancelot/Guinevere romance - these characters fall from grace not because they're bad people, but because they're good. Ultimately, everything falls apart because the characters are good people trying to do the right thing, and TH White correctly understood that this is a much more tragic and interesting story than just Good vs Evil (although of course the book has plenty of that, too). "[Arthur] was a kind, conscientious, peace-loving fellow, who had been afflicted in his youth by a tutor of genius. Between the two of them they had worked out their theory that killing people, and being a tyrant over them, was wrong. To stop this sort of thing they had invented the idea of the Table - a vague idea like democracy, or sportsmanship, or morals - and now, in the effort to impose a world of peace, he found himself up to the elbows in blood. When he was feeling healthy he did not grieve much, because he knew the dilemma was inevitable - but in weak moments he was persecuted by shame and indecision. He was one of the first Nordic men who had invented civilization, or who had desired to do otherwise than Attila the Hun had done, and the battle against chaos sometimes did not seem to be worth fighting. He often thought that it might have been better for all his dead soldiers to be alive - even if they had lived under tyranny and madness - rather than be quite dead." ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jan 2022
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Jan 10, 2022
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Mass Market Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| B008RQ6MAQ
| 4.05
| 56,335
| 1782
| 2007
|
it was ok
|
I knew going into this novel that it was written as a collection of letters exchanged between the principal characters. I also knew that this was a tr
I knew going into this novel that it was written as a collection of letters exchanged between the principal characters. I also knew that this was a trope that I, historically, have not had the best time with - see Dracula and Where'd You Go, Bernadette. I knew there was a risk of this feeling like a bit of a slog. I was not prepared for 400 pages of, yes, just letters. And I know that's the point of the book, that we're hearing all of this secondhand gossip - and if nothing else, Laclos's novel is a great exercise in the art of the unreliable narrator - but reading this really solidified why I can never get on board with novels that are written exclusively as a series of letters or diary entries: the letter format of Dangerous Liasons means that we as the reader are two steps removed from the action of the story, listening to Laclos recount what his characters are recounting. One of the most popular pieces of writing advice is to avoid the passive voice; Dangerous Liasons is an entire novel of passive voice. And Laclos even unwittingly reveals the flaw in his format when Merteuil is recounting her tricks of the trade and says, "Never write anything down." Then why am I reading an entire book where she writes down all the evil shit she does?! The letters of Valmont and Merteuil are the only truly interesting ones in the bunch, as well. I was well and truly sick of Madame de Tourvel by her third letter, and her unvarying schtick of "oh Valmont, please stop asking me to sleep with you no really I musn't" never elevates her beyond anything more than a plot device in the story. Cecile, at least, is a little more dynamic, but honestly I only ever wanted to hear from Valmont and Merteuil, those glorious toxic fremenies. I have no qualms about telling anyone considering this book to skip it and just watch the John Malkovich/Glenn Close movie adaption, or even Cruel Intentions, and you nerds can fight me about it if you want. ...more |
Notes are private!
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2
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not set
not set
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Mar 2021
not set
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Apr 08, 2021
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||||
| 1844082938
| 9781844082933
| 1844082938
| 3.97
| 102,192
| Oct 14, 1905
| Jan 19, 2006
|
really liked it
|
The House of Mirth is the third Wharton novel I've finished so far, and while reading it, I was able to figure out why I love her books so much. Edith
The House of Mirth is the third Wharton novel I've finished so far, and while reading it, I was able to figure out why I love her books so much. Edith Wharton is witty, and her writing is beautiful, but more importantly, she is honest and realistic. She portrays rich, spoiled society exactly as it is - full of people who hide their own misery behind lavish homes and strict manners - and condemns it, but even as her characters realize how toxic this environment is, they are still driven by an insatiable need to belong to and be accepted by society. Basically what I'm saying is that Edith Wharton understood human nature better than almost any author I've ever read, and if she were alive today Mean Girls would totally be her favorite movie. The House of Mirth follows Lily Bart, a young woman who grew up wealthy but lost everything when she was a teenager, and has been clawing and fighting to keep her place in society ever since. Lily Bart is clever and charming, but after spending years living independently, she finds herself approaching spinsterhood with dwindling prospects. The book follows her increasingly-desperate attempts to secure her future while retaining her independence and her place in society. If you've read even one other Wharton novel, you know that these desires are not compatible for women in this world. As always, Wharton's depiction of the tiny battles that occur every day in polite society is fascinating - it's amazing to watch Lily navigate her life with careful planning and strategy, so simple conversations become as complicated and dangerous as naval battles. She has to be constantly on the alert, hyper-aware that she's always one mistake away from total failure and ruin. Only two things frustrated me about this book - one wasn't Wharton's fault, but the second one totally was. It's not Wharton's fault, I realize, that Lily Bart can't get a Hollywood happy ending and marry Lawrence Selden, who is so obviously perfect for her that it was all I could do not to scream at the pages "kiss her kiss her KISS HER" every time they had a scene together. The couple is headed for a typically Wharton-style ending, but at least that means we get lots of great scenes where the characters are just drowning in sexual tension, and it's like crack to me. Edith Wharton could write a straight-up sex scene, and it still wouldn't be as hot as two characters taking a walk together while resisting the urge to make out. Like I said, the ending is very, very Wharton, and unfortunately it's also very clearly telegraphed. (view spoiler)[As soon as the narration mentioned that Lily was taking medication to help her sleep, I thought, "well, now I know how she's going to die. (hide spoiler)] But somehow the fact that I could see the ending a mile away made the book even more tragic and dramatic. But seriously, Seldon - nut up and marry her, for Christ's sake. Lily Bart is the quintessential Wharton heroine. She is independent, headstrong, whip-smart, and charismatic. Another author would have allowed her heroine to strike out on her own, say to hell with these rich snobs and let Lily go off on adventures to Africa or something, but Wharton knows better. The world of the wealthy, spoiled New Yorker is the only one Lily has ever known, and like Newland Archer and Annabel St. George before her, she will sacrifice her own happiness in exchange for social acceptance and security. This is what drives Wharton's protagonists: a deep need to belong, and a fear of the unknown. They can never win, but it's fascinating to watch them try. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Apr 2015
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May 16, 2015
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0965341984
| 9780965341981
| 0965341984
| 4.14
| 301,740
| Apr 12, 1994
| 1997
|
it was ok
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I wanted to like this book more than I actually did. The storytelling is great, and even if I had issues with some of the characters (okay, all of the I wanted to like this book more than I actually did. The storytelling is great, and even if I had issues with some of the characters (okay, all of the female characters), they all managed to be consistently compelling. But I just couldn't get into this one. The story, while interesting, sort of meandered around and by the end, it seems to have forgotten where it was trying to go in the first place. Murakami starts plot points, presents us with new mysteries and characters, and then he gets distracted by something and forgets to resolve the stuff he told us would be important. I tried to start this review by summarizing the plot, but then I realized I couldn't. So that's probably not a good sign. And of course, it turns out that Murakami is not a male novelist, he is a . First there was the little spurts of misogyny that kept popping up, and then there was May Kashahara, who is sort of a like a Lolita/Manic Pixie Dreamgirl monster. She is inexplicably attracted to our hero, because obviously, and she says supremely irritating Manic Pixie Dreamgirl things like "People like me don't get along well with dictionaries" which, aside from being one of the most annoying sentences I've ever read, also makes no fucking sense. She makes Natalie Portman in Garden State look realistic and grounded. I'm glad I finally read this, because I've been meaning to read Murakami for years. But it's going to be a long time before I can be persuaded to pick up another one of his books again. Be sure to buy my album, Murakami Can't Write Women For Shit, on your way out. We have t-shirts too. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
|
Dec 31, 2014
|
Jan 2015
|
Dec 31, 2014
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 067001690X
| 9780670016907
| 067001690X
| 4.02
| 957,417
| Apr 14, 1939
| Apr 10, 2014
|
really liked it
|
Chirst. This was a tough one to read. I don't just mean it was depressing. It was, obviously - a book about a poor family being forced from their home Chirst. This was a tough one to read. I don't just mean it was depressing. It was, obviously - a book about a poor family being forced from their home during the Great Depression and having to beg for the chance to pick cotton at fifteen cents per hour can't be anything except depressing - but it wasn't the most depressing book I've ever read. That honor probably goes to The Hunchback of Notre Dame, although I guess Angela's Ashes is a close second. This was hard to read, not because it was a portrayal of a horrible period of history that actually happened. That contributed to the tragedy of the book, of course, coupled with the knowledge that there were not just a few Joad families during the Great Depression, but millions of them, so your percentage of possible happy endings is going to be pretty low. It wasn't even sad because Steinbeck was using the backdrop of the Great Depression to illustrate the greater problems in America - the disparity between rich and poor, the way low-level laborers have to fight tooth and nail to achieve the most basic human rights, the fact that the people who run the major banks and farms are horrible unfeeling shells of human beings, etc. The Grapes of Wrath is sad for all of these reasons, but here is what makes it sadder than anything: not the fact that Steinbeck is writing about a horrible period in history that's behind us now. It's because that horrible period went away, and then it came back. We aren't in the middle of a second Dust Bowl, but make no mistake: we are living in the second Great Depression. If you haven't read yet and have always been meaning to, there's no better time than now. Steinbeck's book was written in the late 1930's, but just about everything that happens here is happening right in your state - possibly in your neighborhood - as you read this. You read about the banks in the Great Depression sending men to bulldoze people's houses while the family stood outside, and find yourself thinking, "Well, at least now they just pile all your stuff on the curb after you get foreclosed on." You read about migrant families accepting offers to work all day at pitiful wages, because fifteen cents an hour is still better than zero cents an hour and the kids have to eat, and you think about the immigrants who pick your food in exchange for shitty wages. You read about the Joad family and the others being called "Okies" and forced out of their camps by the cops, and think about politicians who scream about "illegals" taking away the good American jobs and deporting kids' parents. Is this review getting too politcally-minded? Good. That's how Steinbeck would have wanted me to talk about his book, because let me assure you - The Grapes of Wrath is extremely fucking political. Another reviewer called it the anti-Atlas Shrugged, which is pretty damn apt. It's all about unions and the rights of the worker and how poor people need government assistance because sometimes life just sucks for no fucking reason. It's sad and it's searing, and beautifully written, and unrelentingly depressing. But it should be read. (the only reason this gets four stars instead of five is because of the ending. Look, I know that Steinbeck didn't have to give the Joads a happy ending, and I'm not saying he gave them a sad one either - he gave them a weird one instead. I was already pretty sick of hearing about Rose of Sharon and her magical pregnancy, so it was just the cherry on top of a shit subplot sundae that the ending (view spoiler)[had her breastfeeding an old man after her baby died. First: allow me to turn into a middle-schooler for a second and say ewwwwwwwwwww. Second: I kind of get what Steinbeck was trying to say with his ending, because it kind of tied into his idea that the only ones who help poor people are other poor people, and Rose of Sharon was literally feeding a dying man with her own body and oh my god personal sacrifice...but on the other hand, she was breastfeeding an adult man. And it was weird and gross and then the book was over. Nope. (hide spoiler)] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Dec 2014
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Dec 27, 2014
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 006093140X
| 9780060931407
| 006093140X
| 3.77
| 23,939
| 1962
| Feb 03, 1999
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it was ok
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"'In what way are you different? Are you saying there haven鈥檛 been artist-women before? There haven鈥檛 been women who were independent? There haven鈥檛 b
"'In what way are you different? Are you saying there haven鈥檛 been artist-women before? There haven鈥檛 been women who were independent? There haven鈥檛 been women who insisted on sexual freedom! I tell you, there are a great line of women stretching out behind you into the past, and you have to seek them out and find them in yourself and become conscious of them.' 'They didn鈥檛 look at themselves as I do. They didn鈥檛 feel as I do. How could they? I don鈥檛 want to be told when I wake up, terrified by a dream of total annihilation, because of the H-bomb exploding, that people felt that way about the cross-bow. It isn鈥檛 true. There is something new in the world. And I don鈥檛 want to hear, when I鈥檝e had encounter with some Mogul in the film industry, who wields the kind of power over men鈥檚 minds that no emperor ever did, and I come back feeling trampled on all over, that Lesbia felt like that after an encounter with her wine-merchant. And I don鈥檛 want to be told when I suddenly have a vision (though God knows it鈥檚 hard enough to come by) of a life that isn鈥檛 full of hatred and fear and envy and competition every minute of the night and the day that this is simply the old dream of the golden age brought up to date鈥 want to be able to separate in myself what is old and cyclic, the recurring history, the myth, from what is new, what I feel or think that might be new鈥�' I saw the look on her face, and said: 'You are saying that nothing I feel or think is new?'" Anna Wulf is a writer with one published work to her name. The book was fairly successful, enabling Anna to support herself and her young daughter with the profits from the royalties, as well as taking in boarders in her London house. Although she hasn't gotten anything else published, Anna keeps up her writing, keeping four different notebooks. In a black notebook, she writes about her time as a young woman in Africa when she first became involved with the Communist Party. A red notebook describes her later disillusionment with the movement in the 1950's. In a yellow notebook, she writes a novel that's basically a fictionalized version of an affair she once had. A blue notebook is for her personal diary. Additionally, several chapters are titled "Free Women" and are a third-person description of Anna's conversations with Molly, a friend from her Communist days. This was a slog, and not just because it's essentially just 635 pages of people sitting around and talking. The structure reminded me of Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin, so that was an automatic strike against this book, because The Blind Assassin does the whole blending-fact-and-fiction schtick a hell of a lot better than The Golden Notebook does. It seemed like the more interesting notebooks got fewer pages than they deserved, while the less interesting parts took up too much space - I could have read an entire book just about Anna's experiences in Africa, but the stuff about her later disillusionment with Communism was kind of like reading a blow-by-blow description of paint drying. But the biggest problem with this book was, I'll admit, mostly my fault. I went into this book knowing one thing: this is a Very Important Feminist Text, so I read it with that mindset. And you know what I found? Dudes. Lots and lots of dudes. Seriously, for a "feminist book" - or, hell, just a book written by a woman and featuring a female protagonist - there is a hell of a lot of page time wasted on male characters. I say "wasted" because no one in this story is even remotely interesting, except for maybe Anna's friends from her Africa days. But like I said, they get kind of shafted by the narrative and instead we have to read pages and pages about Anna having a series of dismal affairs - Anna seems incapable of having a relationship that's satisfying in any way, and a mean part of my brain starting thinking, hey Anna, you know how they say that if everyone you meet is an asshole, that means you're the asshole? Maybe there's a reason everyone you date is bad at sex and emotionally unavailable. Anyway, we hear A LOT about Anna's many, many, boring and terrible relationships, and the worst of them comes at the end of the book, when she starts having an affair with an American man named Saul Green. Saul Green is the living worst. Saul Green makes Fitzgerald Grant seem lovable. Saul Green is the opposite of Batman. But Anna loves Saul Green, for absolutely no fucking reason, and so we have to read chapter and chapters of Anna dating this terrible person and talking about how much she loves him, and I hated every moment I had to read about his character. The worst part? At the end, Anna buys the golden notebook featured in the title, and Saul, because he is The Worst, tells Anna that he wants the notebook for himself. Because he is The Worst. And Anna, unable to see that she's dating a spoiled two-year-old who somehow managed to pass for an adult man, just laughs, like, Oh Saul, you're so funny when you joke about denying my personal autonomy! But he's not joking, because guess what Saul does? He gets his hands on Anna's golden notebook and writes his own name on the inside cover. If my boyfriend wrote his name on a notebook that I specifically told him I was saving for something special, I would probably beat him with my own shoe. Anna's reaction? "It made me laugh, so that I nearly went upstairs and gave it to him." No. No no. No no no no noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. (I'm sorry, I completely lost my train of thought there. That's how much I hate Saul Green and every minute I wasted reading about him while Doris Lessing tried to convince me he was charming.) Come to think of it, I'm not %100 sure this book even passes the Bechdel test. The "Free Women" scenes were my favorite, and the ones that came the closest, because they were all about Anna and Molly talking, but guess what they talk about? Molly's ex-husband, and her son. And then I realized that the "Free Women" sections were primarily concerned with the male characters' storylines, and then I had to lie down for a while until I stopped wanting to set this book on fire. The one shining bright spot of this book: as you can tell from the excerpt at the top of this review, the writing is very good, and the characters are all solid. They're just boring and/or infuriating. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Dec 2014
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Dec 03, 2014
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 015611870X
| 9780156118705
| 015611870X
| 3.61
| 8,477
| 1941
| Oct 21, 1970
|
really liked it
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Maybe it's because this is technically unfinished (a forward from Leonard Woolf states that although the draft was completed, Virginia Woolf died befo
Maybe it's because this is technically unfinished (a forward from Leonard Woolf states that although the draft was completed, Virginia Woolf died before she was able to make final corrections and revisions, so it was sent to the printers as is), but this one didn't strike me quite in the way Woolf's other books have. But that's not to suggest that it isn't good - remember, this is Virginia Woolf, so when I say that it didn't strike me as much as her other ones, I only mean that this book felt like a minor blow to the head, rather than feeling like I was being remade from the inside out. That being said, this book is an almost perfect example of what makes Virginia Woolf such a unique writer. Like her more famous Mrs. Dalloway, the action takes place over a short span of time (two days) and is concerned primarily with the actions of one small family, although the narration takes us into other characters' heads occasionally. The main action of the story takes place during the annual village pageant, a history of England. We see the pageant in detail (Woolf even includes stage directions) and, as the title suggests, get to also witness the spectators during the act breaks. Reading this, I felt like there was something else hiding under the surface of the text - something I wasn't fully able to grasp or understand. There's an undercurrent of longing and sadness and frustration running through all the characters, and I felt like there was a whole other story happening just in the margins and the line breaks. I think I could read this book ten times and still not find everything Woolf wants me to find. Halfway through writing this review I decided to change my rating from three to four stars, because I started flipping through the book to find passages to quote and kept remembering what is so extraordinary about Virginia Woolf's writing: she had, I believe, an incredible capacity for empathy. Everyone in her stories gets treated, however briefly, like they're the most important character in the story. Every single character in her books, from the educated landowner to the flighty kitchen maid, has a deep inner life and complex thoughts and emotions, and she makes us see this complexity. No one is ordinary in Virginia Woolf's books. Plus, the writing is, as always, killer. It's not just the people - something as simple as a lily pond suddenly becomes full of deeper meaning and significance when Woolf is describing it: "There had always been lilies there, self-sown from wind-dropped seed, floating red and white on the green plates of their leaves. Water, for hundreds of years, had silted down into the hollow, and lay there four or five feet deep over a black cushion of mud. Under the thick plate of green water, glazed in their self-centered world, fish swam - gold, splashed with white, streaked with black or silver. Silently they manoeuvred in their water world, poised in the blue patch made by the sky, or shot silently to the edge where the grass, trembling, made a fringe of nodding shadow. On the water-pavement spiders printed their delicate feet. A grain fell and spiralled down; a petal fell, filled and sank. At that the fleet of boat-shaped bodies paused; poised; equipped; mailed; then with a waver of undulation off they flashed. It was in that deep centre, in that black heart, that the lady had drowned herself. Ten years since the pool had been dredged and a thigh bone recovered. Alas, it was a sheep鈥檚, not a lady鈥檚. And sheep have no ghosts, for sheep have no souls. But the servants insisted, they must have a ghost; the ghost must be a lady鈥檚; who had drowned herself for love. So none of them would walk by the lily pool at night, only now when the sun shone and the gentry still sat at table." ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jan 2014
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Jan 20, 2014
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Paperback
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| 014144116X
| 9780141441160
| 014144116X
| 3.68
| 83,487
| 1924
| Aug 30, 2005
|
really liked it
|
"The sky settles everything - not only climates and seasons but when the earth shall be beautiful. By herself she can do little - only feeble outburst
"The sky settles everything - not only climates and seasons but when the earth shall be beautiful. By herself she can do little - only feeble outbursts of flowers. But when the sky chooses, glory can rain into the Chandrapore bazaars or a benediction pass from horizon to horizon. The sky can do this because it is so strong and so enormous. Strength comes from the sun, infused in it daily; size from the prostrate earth. No mountains infringe on the curve. League after league the earth lies flat, heaves a little, is flat again. Only in the south, where a group of fists and fingers are thrust up through the soil, is the endless expanse interrupted. These fists and fingers are the Marabar Hills, containing the extraordinary caves." Taking place in the waning years of British rule in India (although Forster, writing the book in 1924, could not have know that India would become independent in less than twenty-five years), A Passage to India is, at the surface, the story of a misunderstanding and its long-ranging consequences. But that's only the barest plot description. The book is an exploration of the relationship between oppressor and oppressed, human imperfections and mistakes, and whether friendship can ever exist between the colonizer and the colonized. It's also a thoughtful and powerful critique of the British presence in India, which Forster shows us by shrinking the conflict to a handful of people. Our main characters are Dr. Aziz, a native Muslim; Mr. Fielding, a British teacher who has not yet become one of the "Anglo-Indians"; and Mrs. Moore and Miss Quested, fresh off the boat from England. Miss Quested is in India to marry Mrs. Moore's son, and both women express an interest in seeing "the real India." Mrs. Moore befriends Dr. Aziz when she meets him in a mosque, and this leads to a friendship between her, Aziz, Miss Quested, and Fielding. After the women express an interest in seeing the Marabar caves, Dr. Aziz offers to be their guide. (The trip doesn't occur until halfway through the book, but the caves are a constant presence in the story, always looming somewhat menacingly in the background) While Aziz is at the caves with the women, an incident occurs, and due to a misunderstanding, Aziz finds himself accused by Miss Quested. An unfortunate series of events makes him seem guiltier than he is, and he is arrested. Miss Quested's accusation, and the sides the characters take in the ensuing trial, bring long-standing resentments and issues bubbling to the surface, and no one gets out unscathed. This was the second Forster book I've read, and I enjoyed it more than A Room With A View. The latter didn't really grab me until about a hundred pages in, but this had me enthralled from the beginning. I loved Forster's beautiful descriptions of India, his look into people's minds, and the fact that a British author could write such a blistering portrayal of colonization. Better yet, he doesn't simply villify the English and idealize the Indians - everyone is flawed here, but no one is outwardly evil. Characters are all well-intentioned, but not always sympathetic. And once Aziz is arrested, Forster's description of the panic that grips the British is evocative and sadly familiar to 21st-century readers: "They had started speaking of 'women and children' - that phrase that exempts the male from sanity when it has been repeated a few times. Each felt that all he loved best in the world was at stake, demanded revenge, and was filled with a not-unpleasing glow, in which the chilly and half-known features of Miss Quested vanished, and were replaced by all that is sweetest and warmest in the private life." ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Sep 2013
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Sep 12, 2013
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 140003468X
| 9781400034680
| 140003468X
| 3.94
| 528,864
| Nov 1985
| Oct 05, 2003
|
it was ok
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LET ME EXPLAIN, GUYS. Okay. I like Marquez. I think his writing is beautiful, his settings are evocative and masterfully portrayed, and yes, his books LET ME EXPLAIN, GUYS. Okay. I like Marquez. I think his writing is beautiful, his settings are evocative and masterfully portrayed, and yes, his books are pretty romantic, and I always enjoy magical realism (this one could have used more of that last bit, though). The last twenty pages of the book even manged to suck me into the romance of the story, and I found myself finally really invested in this love story instead of being vaguely creeped out (we'll get there). Look, I even found a really nice passage to quote: "It was as if they had leapt over the arduous calvary of conjugal life and gone straight to the heart of love. They were together in silence like an old married couple wary of life, beyond the pitfalls of passion, beyond the brutal mockery of hope and the phantoms of disillusion: beyond love. For they had lived together long enough to know that love was always love, anytime and anyplace, but it was more solid the closer it came to death." See? That's fucking beautiful, and even if I didn't like the story itself, I still liked the writing. So call off the dogs, Marquez apologists, and let's get to the ranting portion of the review. Fair warning to all who proceed past this point: I am preparing to don my Feminist Rage hat and shout about rape culture. Those who plan to leave mean comments calling me an idiot or telling me that I misunderstood the book, remember that you were warned. BEWARE, FOR HERE BE DRAGONS AND ANGRY FEMINISTS. Here's something I learned about myself while reading this: I have absolutely no patience for books about obsession disguised as love. I hated it in Twilight, I hated it in Wuthering Heights, I hated it in The Phantom of the Opera, and I hated it here. It would be one thing, I decided, if Fermina Daza felt as passionately about Florentino Ariza as he felt about her. But she didn't love him. For her, their romance was a brief fling in her teens, and she stopped loving him when she returned from her trip. She continued not loving him, until he wears her down (after writing her letters constantly despite her explicitly telling him to fuck off out of her life) and she basically shrugs her shoulders and says, fine, might as well. The lesson men can take from this book is that if a woman says "no" (as Fermina frequently and clearly says to Florentino), she really means, "make me change my mind." NOPE. NOPE NOPE NOPE. THIS PHILOSOPHY IS NOT OKAY AND IT IS WHY RAPE CULTURE EXISTS. NO MEANS FUCKING NO, EVERYBODY. IF A WOMAN TELLS YOU TO LEAVE HER ALONE, YOU LEAVE HER THE FUCK ALONE. IT IS NOT ROMANTIC TO OBSESS ABOUT HER FOR FIFTY YEARS, IT IS CREEPY. And OF COURSE Florentino still fucks anything that moves while claiming to be in love with Fermina, because he is a man and that's just how it works. Which leads me to my next ranting point: this book romanticizes rape. (you can still get out, guys - it's only going to get worse from here) First there was the intensely unsettling way Florentino loses his virginity: while traveling on a ship, a woman drags him into her cabin and forces him to have sex with her. Then Florentino falls in love with her. Because of course he does. I was willing to chalk this scene up to the common misconception that men cannot be sexually assaulted because men are horny dogs who are always up for sex no matter what - fine, whatever, I'll let it go. But then later, a minor female character describes the time she got raped, and I'm going to let you guys read this while I do yoga breaths in the corner and count to ten slowly: "When she was still very young, a strong, able man whose face she never saw took her by surprise, threw her down on the jetty, ripped her clothes off, and made instantaneous and frenetic love to her. Lying there on the rocks, her body covered with cuts and bruises, she had wanted that man to stay forever so she could die of love in his arms." ... Once more with feeling: NOPE. AND THEN, as the creepy pedophilic cherry on top of this rape sundae, Florentino's last affair is with a child. When he is in his sixties. The best part is that he doesn't even use the classic pedophile's defense of "yes, she's young, but she ACTS like a grown woman!" No, Florentino sees that this child is going to be smoking hot when she grows up, and decides that he can't wait that long. Then this passage happens: "She was still a child in every sense of the word, with braces on her teeth and the scrapes of elementary school on her knees, but he saw right away the kind of woman she was soon going to be, and he cultivated her during a slow year of Saturdays at the circus, Sundays in the park with ice cream, childish late afternoons, and he won her confidence, he won her affection, he led her by the hand, with the gentle astuteness of a kind grandfather, toward his secret slaughterhouse." The hero of Love in the Time of Cholera, ladies and gentlemen. Let's give him a round of applause. If anyone wants to join me in the corner, I will be staying here for the rest of the week. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Aug 2013
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Aug 08, 2013
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0374529264
| 9780374529260
| 0374529264
| 4.22
| 33,235
| 1951
| May 18, 2005
|
it was amazing
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I was all set to write a review of this book, and then I read Kelly's brilliant essay (the word "review" seems too insufficient to describe what she d
I was all set to write a review of this book, and then I read Kelly's brilliant essay (the word "review" seems too insufficient to describe what she does) and realized that I wouldn't be able to express my thoughts with anything approaching that kind of eloquence and thoughtfulness. So instead, this is going to be a simple two-part review: first, go read Kelly's thoughts on Memoirs of Hadrian. Then read this excerpt and try to explain why you aren't hauling ass to the bookstore to buy a copy and read it immediately: "From the top of a terrace on the night following these celebrations I watched Rome ablaze. Those festive bonfires were surely as brilliant as the disastrous conflagration lighted by Nero; they were almost as terrifying, too. Rome the crucible, but also the furnace, the boiling metal, the hammer, and the anvil as well, visible proof of the changes and repetition of history, one place in the world where man will have most passionately lived. The great fire of Troy from which a fugitive had escaped, taking with him his aged father, his young son, and his household goods, had passed down to us that night in this flaming festival. I thought also, with something like awe, of conflagrations to come. These millions of lives past, present, and future, these structures newly arisen from ancient edifices and followed themselves by structures yet to be born, seemed to me to succeed each other in time like waves; by chance it was at my feet that night that this great surf swept to shore. ...The solid walls of the Palatine Palace, which I occupied so little, but which I had just rebuilt, seemed to sway like a ship at sea; the curtains drawn back to admit the night air were like those of a high cabin aft, and the cries of the crowd were the sound of wind in the sails. The massive reef in the distance, perceptible in the dark, that gigantic base of my tomb so newly begun on the banks of the Tiber, suggested to me no regret at the moment, no terror nor vain meditation upon the brevity of life." ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jun 2013
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Jun 10, 2013
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 4.14
| 334,574
| May 01, 1989
| 2005
|
really liked it
|
I was in a bookshop a few weeks ago, looking to add to my collection, when this book caught my eye. At first I was wary, having fucking hated Never Le
I was in a bookshop a few weeks ago, looking to add to my collection, when this book caught my eye. At first I was wary, having fucking hated Never Let Me Go, but then I read the plot description. The Remains of the Day is narrated by Stevens, an English butler taking a road trip across England while reflecting on his long career serving Lord Darlington of Darlington Hall through two world wars. That was all I needed. As has been previously discussed, I love Downton Abbey, so as soon as I read the plot synopsis and realized that this was going to be similar, I was on board. And Ishiguro did not disappoint me - the book could easily be retitled Mr. Carson Takes a Road Trip. To call this book's pace "leisurely" would be an understatement. But I didn't mind it, because unlike Never Let Me Go, which demanded urgency and excitement on its characters' part and never delivered, the slow pace of this book makes sense. Every day of his trip, Stevens writes a bit in his diary - sometimes he reports what he did and what he saw that day, but often he uses the time reflect on his career and muse about what it means to be a good servant. "And let me now posit this: 'dignity' has to do crucially with a butler's ability not to abandon the profession he inhabits. Lesser butlers will abandon their professional being for the private one at the least provocation. For such persons, being a butler is like playing some pantomime role; a small push, a slight stumble, and the facade will drop off to reveal the actor underneath. The great butlers are great by virtue of their ability to inhabit their professional role and inhabit it to the utmost; they will not be shaken out by external events, however surprising, alarming, or vexing. They wear their professionalism as a decent gentleman will wear his suit: he will not let ruffians or circumstances tear it off him in the public gaze; he will discard it when, and only when, he wills to do so, and this will invariably be when he is entirely alone. It is, as I say, a matter of 'dignity'." Stevens's reflections on his career are quietly fascinating because they reveal truths to the reader that the narrator remains unaware of. Stevens tells us about his relationship with his father, his strained rapport with the head housekeeper of Darlington Hall, and his employer Lord Darlington. Very quickly we realize some important things that have eluded Stevens: his father was emotionally unavailable and Stevens has never fully dealt with his death, Stevens is probably in love with the housekeeper, and Lord Darlington was not nearly as perfect as Stevens wants to believe he was. The willful ignorance and refusal to see things the way they really are was also present in Never Let Me Go, but it didn't irritate me here. I wasn't angry with Stevens for failing to see what I could see; mostly I was sad for him, and a little envious of the confident bubble he lived in. His journey is slow, uneventful, and there is no real resolution (God, it's exactly like Never Let Me Go there) but there was a sad beauty to it, and I loved every page. "For it is true, when I stood on that high ledge this morning and viewed the land before me, I distinctly felt that rare, yet unmistakable feeling - the feeling that one is in the presence of greatness. ...And yet what precisely is this 'greatness'? Just where, or in what, does it lie? I am quite aware it would take a far wiser head than mine to answer such a question, but if I were forced to hazard a guess, I would say that it is the very lack of obvious drama or spectacle that sets the beauty of our land apart. What is pertinent is the calmness of that beauty, its sense of restraint. It is as though the land knows of its own beauty, of its own greatness, and feels no need to shout it." (actually, that's a pretty damn good explanation of Ishiguro's writing style too, now that I think about it) ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Dec 2012
|
Dec 16, 2012
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Paperback
| |||||||||||||||||
| 0099910101
| 9780099910107
| 0099910101
| 3.82
| 339,185
| Sep 1929
| 2004
|
liked it
|
"British ambulance drivers were killed sometimes. Well, I knew I would not be killed. Not in this war. It did not have anything to do with me. It seem
"British ambulance drivers were killed sometimes. Well, I knew I would not be killed. Not in this war. It did not have anything to do with me. It seemed no more dangerous to me myself than war in the movies. I wished to God it was over though." Frederic Henry (who, for all intents and purposes is Ernest Hemingway) is a volunteer in the Italian Army in World War I. He's wounded in battle and has to spend time recuperating in a hospital after his leg is operated on, and while there he falls in love with British nurse Catherine Barkley. The novel follows them as they try to escape the war and start a life together. On the surface, this isn't really a book about war; it's a book about two people just trying to live a normal, happy life while the whole world goes to hell around them. I was lukewarm on this one. For Whom the Bell Tolls is much better, first because it's about something bigger than just two people trying to get married (Robert Jordan struggled with the concept of heroism and how war changes people; Frederick Henry just wants to get laid), and also because the characters in A Farewell to Arms are significantly less complex and interesting than the ones in For Whom the Bell Tolls. Also, Catherine Barkley is just an absolute nightmare of a character - she has no discernible personality and exists just to gratify and worship Henry, to the extent that she makes Bella Swan look like an independent strong woman overflowing with self-esteem. Think I'm exaggerating? Here, have some lines of actual dialogue that Catherine says to Henry: "I'll say just what you wish and I'll do what you wish and then you will never want any other girls, will you?" "I want what you want. There isn't any more. Just what you want." "I'm good. Aren't I good?" "You see? I'm good. I do what you want." Christ on a bike. That all happens in one single scene, by the way. Catherine isn't a person, she's a horrible Frankenstein's monster stitched together from desperation and male wish fulfillment. To Hemingway's credit, Henry really does love Catherine, so at least we can take comfort in the fact that her senseless devotion was reciprocated a little bit (not that Henry ever talks about his feelings with the same intensity that Catherine does, because that'd be gay). The reason this gets three stars instead of two is because Hemingway is still Hemingway, and amidst all the bad characterization and plodding pace he manages to create these little bits of gorgeous writing that make everything okay, at least for a little while: "Often a man wishes to be alone and a girl wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others. It has only happened to me like that once. I have been alone while I was with many girls and that is the way you can be most lonely. But we were never lonely and never afraid when we were together. I know that night is not the same as the day: that all things different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started. But with Catherine there was almost no difference in the night except that it was an even better time." ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Nov 2012
|
Nov 28, 2012
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 159308143X
| 9781593081430
| 159308143X
| 3.97
| 186,426
| Oct 25, 1920
| Aug 26, 2004
|
really liked it
|
It's time to get something off my chest, guys: I love Gossip Girl. But Madeline! you exclaim, probably choking on a biscuit and dropping your teacup be It's time to get something off my chest, guys: I love Gossip Girl. But Madeline! you exclaim, probably choking on a biscuit and dropping your teacup because you are one refined gentleman or lady, didn't you write a scathing review of the first Gossip Girl back in 2008 where you ranked it below goddamn Twilight on the scale of Books That Should Not Be Considered Books? Ah yes, my little blueberries, how right you are. Gossip Girl, the book, is pulpy badly-written trash that fails to even fulfill the most basic requirement of trash lit - being interesting - after three books (I say authoritatively, having read eight of them in high school). But Gossip Girl, the show, is the motherfucking tits. It's the best kind of soap opera trash, and I spent a month last year ripping through four seasons on Netflix before I finally abandoned it when it reached what I considered to be the apex of its trashy-crazy-fun potential (if you're curios, it was that episode where Blair strikes a sex bargain in exchange for a hotel and paperwork was involved, and no, I did not make up or exaggerate a single word of that). I love the show because it's so weird and foreign it might as well be science fiction - the show is an in-depth look at a strange world with its own weird customs, rules, and language (and very pretty clothes). Like most people, I am fascinated by the obscenely wealthy and the tiny insulated world they inhabit, and Gossip Girl is a great outlet for that curiosity. There's even a episode in the show where the kids perform Age of Innocence at their fancy private school, so even the show is aware of the connection I'm making. Age of Innocence is a better-written, better-plotted, probably better-acted version of Gossip Girl. It's about rich New Yorkers living their rich, socially restrictive lives and trying to convince themselves that they're happy in this absurdly structured society they've created for themselves, to the point where they'll deny their own happiness in order to maintain the status quo. And somehow, the fact that un-engaged couples aren't even allowed to kiss, much less have sex, made the romance elements that much more passionate. Our main character here is Newland Archer, a wealthy young man who lives a charmed life: he's rich, is engaged to a wonderful girl, and believes that he understands the rules of the world he inhabits: "In matters intellectual and artistic Newland Archer felt himself distinctly the superior of these chosen specimens of old New York gentility; he had probably read more, thought more, and even seen a good deal more of the world, than any other man of the number. Singly they betrayed their inferiority, but grouped together they represented 'New York,' and the habit of masculine solidarity made him accept their doctrine on all the issues called moral. He instinctively felt that in this respect it would be troublesome - and also rather bad form - to strike out for himself." Things change, however, when Countess Ellen Olenska comes to New York. The daughter of a prominent family, she's returned to the United States after escaping an abusive husband. Society shuns her, and her family is mostly concerned with getting her to go back to her husband, but there's an instant and very palpable attraction between her and Archer. Suddenly, he starts seeing his entire well-structured world in a whole new light, including his previously-perfect fiancee May: "She was frank, poor darling, because she had nothing to conceal, assured because she knew of nothing to be on her guard against...But when he had gone the brief round of her he returned discouraged by the thought that all this frankness and innocence were only an artificial product. Untrained human nature was not frank and innocent; it was full of the twists and defences of an instinctive guile. And he felt himself oppressed by this creation of factitious purity, so cunningly manufactured by a conspiracy of mothers and aunts and grandmothers and long-dead ancestresses, because it was supposed to be what he wanted, what he had a right to, in order than he might exercise his lordly pleasure in smashing it like an image made of snow." Newland, in fact, starts questioning the entire damn system, and having some very unapproved and modern thoughts, most of which are too sensible to make an appearance on Gossip Girl: "Newland reddened. 'Living together? Well, why not? Who had the right to make her life over if she hadn't? I'm sick of the hypocrisy that would bury alive a woman of her age if her husband prefers to live with harlots.' He stopped and turned away angrily to light his cigar. 'Women ought to be free - as free as we are,' he declared, making a discovery of which he was too irritated to measure the terrific consequences." Tragic, beautiful, dramatic, and scandalizing. I had so much more fun reading this than I expected to, and will definitely be looking up more Edith Wharton in the future. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go watch some more Gossip Girl. When I left off, Blair was dating a prince and Georgina had just lied about being pregnant with Dan Humphrey's baby. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Nov 2012
|
Nov 27, 2012
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0142437174
| 9780142437179
| 0142437174
| 3.83
| 1,306,230
| Feb 18, 1884
| Dec 31, 2002
|
really liked it
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I had to read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in middle school, and I fervently wish that they had made us read Huck Finn instead. I mean, I understand w
I had to read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in middle school, and I fervently wish that they had made us read Huck Finn instead. I mean, I understand why they didn't (giving middle schoolers an excuse to throw around racial slurs in a classroom setting is just asking for a lawsuit from somebody's parents), but Huck Finn is better. It's smarter, it's funnier, and Huck's adventures stay with you a lot longer than Tom's, because Huck's experiences were richer and more interesting, whereas The Adventures of Tom Sawyer could easily have been titled The Adventures of an Entitled Little Asshole. If Tom had to go through half of what happens to Huck in this story, he'd be balled up in the corner crying after five minutes. The action of Huck Finn is set in motion when Huck's father shows up and decides that he's going to be responsible for his son now (the story picks up right where Tom Sawyer left off, with Huck and Tom becoming rich, hence Finn Sr.'s sudden involvement in his kid's life). Huck's father essentially kidnaps him, taking him to a cabin in the middle of nowhere and getting drunk and beating his son. Huck escapes by faking his own death (and it's awesome) and begins traveling up the Mississippi river. He runs into Jim, a slave who belonged to the Widow Douglas's sister. Jim overheard his owner talking about selling him, so he decided to run away and try to go north. Huck, after some hesitation, goes with him. From this point, the structure of the book closely mirrors Don Quixote: a mismatched pair of companions travels the country, having unrelated adventures and comic intervals. On their travels, Huck and Jim encounter con men, criminals, slave traders, and (in the best mini-story in the book) a family involved in a Hatfields-and-McCoys-like feud with a neighboring clan. The story comes full circle when Tom Sawyer shows up and joins Jim and Huck for the last of their adventures, and the best part of this is that Tom Sawyer's overall ridiculousness becomes obvious once we see him through Huck's eyes. Huck is a great narrator, and I think one of the reasons I liked this book more than its counterpart was because it's narrated in first person, and so Huck's voice is able to come through clearly in every word. In addition to the great stories, there are also some really beautiful descriptions of the Mississippi river, as seen in this passage about the sun rising on the river: "The first thing to see, looking away over the water, was a kind of dull line - that was the woods on t'other side - you couldn't make nothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more paleness, spreading around; then the river softened up, away off, and warn't black any more, but grey; you could see little dark spots drifting along, ever so far away - trading scows, and such things; and long black streaks - rafts; sometimes you could hear a sweep screaking, or jumbled up voices; it was so still, and sounds come so far; and by and by you could see a streak on the water which you know by the look of the streak that there's a snag there in a swift current which breaks on it and makes that streak look that way; and you see the mist curl up off of the water, and the east reddens up, and the river, and you make out a log cabin on the edge of the woods, away on the bank on t'other side of the river, being a wood-yard, likely, and pulled by them cheats so you can throw a dog through it anywheres; then the nice breeze springs up, and comes fanning you from over there, so cool and fresh, and sweet to smell, on account of the woods and the flowers; but sometimes not that way, because they've left dead fish laying around, gars and such, and they do get pretty rank; and next you've got the full day, and everything smiling in the sun, and the song-birds just going it!" (also that was one single sentence. Damn, Mark Twain.) A fun, deceptively light series of stories that's funny and sad when you least expect it. Well done, The List - you picked a good one, for once. ...why are you still here? The review's over. Oh, I get it. You want me to talk about the racism, right? You want me to discuss how Huck views Jim as stolen property instead of a person and criticize the frequent use of the N-Word and say "problematic" a lot, right? Well, tough titties. I'm not getting involved in that, because it's stupid and pointless, and I'm just going to let Mark Twain's introduction to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn speak for itself, and the work as a whole: "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot." ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Nov 2012
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Nov 19, 2012
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Paperback
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| 2266127748
| 9782266127745
| 2266127748
| 3.73
| 61,280
| Mar 15, 1954
| Sep 16, 2002
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really liked it
|
"That summer, I was seventeen and perfectly happy. ...My father was forty, and had been a widower for fifteen years. He was young for his age, full of
"That summer, I was seventeen and perfectly happy. ...My father was forty, and had been a widower for fifteen years. He was young for his age, full of vitality and liveliness. When I left my convent school two years before and came to Paris to live with him, I soon realized that he was living with a woman. But I was slower in accepting the fact that his fancy changed every six months! But gradually his charm, my new easy life, and my own disposition, led me to fall in readily with his ways. He was a frivolous man, clever at business, always curious, quickly bored, and very attractive to women. It was easy for me to love him, for he was kind, generous, gay, and fond of me. I cannot imagine a better or more amusing companion." This lovely little novel, deceptively slim, made me want to read it while lying on a beach. It's full of rich French people being delightfully and almost stereotypically French at their villa in the Mediterranean, and all the romantic drama and emotional backstabbing that occurs there. The narrator, Cecile, is enjoying her hedonistic lifestyle when her playboy father announces, unexpectedly, that he is getting married. The woman in question is Anne, a family friend who is the opposite of the previous mistresses Cecile's father has had: she's elegant, poised, practical, intelligent, dignified, and forty-two. Cecile recognizes the threat that Anne poses to her carefree life, and decides to destroy the relationship: "She would gradually turn us into the husband and step-daughter of Anne Larsen, that is to say, she would turn us into two civilized, well-behaved and contented persons. For she would certainly be good to us. How easily - unstable and irresponsible as we were - we would yield to her influence, and be fitted into the attractive framework of her orderly plan of living. She was much too efficient. Already my father was separated from me. I was hurt by his embarrassed face, turning away from me at the table. Tears came to my eyes at the thought of the jokes we used to have together, our gay laughter as we drove home at dawn through the deserted streets of Paris. All that was over. In my turn I would be influenced, readjusted, remodeled by Anne. I would not even mind it, she would handle me with such intelligence, humor, and sweetness. I wouldn't be able to resist her. In six months I should no longer even want to." In another writer's hands, this story could have gone horribly wrong - Cecile has every opportunity to turn into a spoiled rich brat who can't stand the idea of being forced to behave like an adult with responsibilities, and the way she tries to destroy her father's happiness could be seen as the actions of a borderline-psychotic. The genius of Sagan's book is that she doesn't try to justify Cecile's actions. We see the horrible truth of what Cecile is doing, and so does Cecile. Every few chapters (sometimes every few pages) Cecile will have a moment of clarity, and realize that Anne is a good person and that her father is happy, and she regrets her meddling. But then she goes right back to her destructive plan, because she can't help herself. By letting us see Cecile wrestling with her own conscience, and ultimately being unable to resist her destructive urge, Sagan creates one of the best portrayals of a teenage girl I've ever read. "Although I did not share my father's intense aversion to ugliness - which often led us to associate with stupid people - I did feel vaguely uncomfortable in the presence of anyone completely devoid of physical charm. Their resignation to the fact that they were unattractive seemed to me somehow indecent. For what are we looking for if not to please? I do not know if the desire to attract others comes from a superabundance of vitality, possessiveness, or the hidden, unspoken need to be reassured." ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Sep 2012
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Sep 17, 2012
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Mass Market Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0099578514
| 9780099578512
| 0099578514
| 3.98
| 129,316
| Mar 12, 1981
| May 01, 1995
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really liked it
|
"Please believe that I am falling apart. I am not speaking metaphorically; nor is this the opening gambit of some melodramatic, riddling, grubby appea "Please believe that I am falling apart. I am not speaking metaphorically; nor is this the opening gambit of some melodramatic, riddling, grubby appeal for pity. I mean quite simply that I have begun to crack all over like an old jug - that my poor body, singular, unlovely, buffeted by too much history, subjected to drainage above and drainage below, mutilated by doors, brained by spittoons, has started coming apart at the seams. In short, I am literally disintegrating, slowly for the moment, although there are signs of acceleration. I ask you only to accept (as I have accepted) that I shall eventually crumble into (approximately) six hundred and thirty million particles of anonymous, and necessarily oblivious, dust. That is why I have resolved to confide in paper, before I forget. (We are a nation of forgetters.)" Saleem Sinai chronicles the history of his life, beginning with his grandparents' childhoods and continuing through their marriage, his parents' lives, and his own childhood and adolescence. Because Sinai was born at the stroke of midnight on the day India became independent in 1947, the story of his life is also the story of India's transformation into an independent nation. Events in Sinai's life constantly intersect with and affect India's political struggles, and everything is influenced by his family's varied and complex history. It's a blend of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Middlesex, and if nothing else you will walk away from this book amazed at Rushdie's skill as a writer. Aside from the downright masterful way he makes every single event and character in the story connect and matter, the way he writes is just mindblowingly good. In fact, there are only two things that prevent me from giving this the full five stars, and they are: 1. Saleem Sinai is such a dick. The events of his life directly coincide with (and occasionally affect) major historical events, and also he can read minds (more on that later). This is enough to convince him that he is the single greatest, most important human being ever to walk the earth, and nothing could be as impressive as he is. Think I'm exaggerating? Let him tell you himself: "It is possible, even probable, that I am only the first historian to write the story of my undeniably exceptional life-and-times. Those who follow in my footsteps will, however, inevitably come to this present work, this source-book, this Hadith or Purana or Grundrisse, for guidance and inspiration." Oh my god, get over yourself. Sinai's direct audience is his girlfriend Padma, who is listening to the story as Sinai writes it and appears periodically to give her opinions on what's happening. Sinai treats her like dirt - he makes fun of her name, shakes his head at how adorably stupid she is, and is generally such a condescending ass that I kept waiting for Padma to slap him in the face. The best part: whenever Padma listens to Sinai's story, she literally kneels at his feet while he sits and reads to her. No wonder the guy has a Messiah complex. It's okay to have a story with an unlikeable hero, but I honestly believe that Rushdie isn't aware of what a colossal douchebag his protagonist is. I think in Rushdie's mind, Sinai is a perfectly good person and is totally justified in his lofty opinion of himself. This is unfortunate. 2. Do you ever read a book and see the beginnings of another story within it, something that the author never explores as much as you'd like them to, or even a completely different direction you wish they'd taken? That was my experience with Midnight's Children. The title comes from the fact that Sinai wasn't the only kid born in India at midnight on independence day - there were actually several hundred children born within that minute, and they all have magical powers or mutations of some kind. The ones born at the top of the minute have the strongest powers, and the ones born in the last few seconds of the minute just have weird mutations. There are two kids born on the very first second of midnight: Sinai, and a boy named Shiva. Sinai can read minds, as I said, but he can also communicate telepathically with all the other Midnight's Children, and they can use him as a conduit to talk telepathically to each other. So Sinai and Shiva, as the leaders of the Midnight's Children, organize the group and hold telepathic conferences, trying to decide what to do with their vast array of powers. While Sinai wants to use the group's abilities to do good, Shiva is violent and cruel, and uses his powers for evil. They're constantly battling against each other, and meanwhile the other four hundred Midnight's Children all have their own ideas about how to use their powers. (one kid, a time-traveler, warns them that everything will end horribly) I know Salman Rushdie is a respected author who is taken very very seriously in the literary world, but I'm going to be honest: Midnight's Children would have made one hell of a comic book. Hundreds of child superheroes and wizards, led by two very different leaders who are constantly at odds with each other, and in an added twist (view spoiler)[were switched at birth (hide spoiler)]? A narrator who thinks of himself as the good guy but is actually just as selfish as his evil alter ego, Shiva? Tell me how that wouldn't be awesome. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 29, 2012
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not set
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Mar 29, 2012
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0141439661
| 9780141439662
| 0141439661
| 4.09
| 1,248,692
| Oct 30, 1811
| Apr 29, 2003
|
it was ok
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I hate romantic comedies. I hate them for a wide variety of reasons - I hate their formulaic plots, their repeated character tropes that never seem to I hate romantic comedies. I hate them for a wide variety of reasons - I hate their formulaic plots, their repeated character tropes that never seem to change (hmm, will this one have a sassy best friend who only exists to dispense advice?), I hate their consistent failing of the , and I hate the way they try to make me believe that a skinny and gorgeous woman is incapable of finding a man because she's clumsy or has a job or something. But mostly, I hate them because their plots revolve entirely around what boy likes what girl and vice versa, and nothing else ever happens. Sure, there can be subplots, and yes, brilliant romantic comedies do exist, but I want my movie protagonists to do more than worry about who they're going to marry. Reading Sense and Sensibility made me realize why I don't like Jane Austen's books, and probably never will: she was a brilliant author, and her novels are funny and well-written, but at the end of the day, her characters spend 90% of their time talking about boys. Nothing else happens: they go to a ball, where they worry about which boy isn't dancing with them; they have tea, where they talk about which girls have snagged which boys; and they write letters about which girls have done scandalous things with boys. It's just pages and pages of "I like you but you hate me!" "No, I really love you, you were just misinformed!" "My, what a silly misunderstanding!" "I agree! Let's get married!" and all its variations and it bores me to death. I love the humor, and I love the characters, I just want them to do something interesting. This is probably why Pride and Prejudice and Zombies resonated so well with me - finally, the Bennett sisters got to do something besides sit around and mope about the various boys who weren't talking to them for whatever reason! Sense and Sensibility is one long slog of "I love this boy! But oh no, he's engaged to someone else!" and "This boy acted like he loved me but he really didn't and now I am sad and will ignore the other boy who has clearly been meant to marry me all along!" It's for this reason that, when faced with the prospect of reading the last 70 pages of this book in order to finish it, I was filled with dread and realized that I do not give a single flying fuck who the Dashwood sisters end up marrying. The only thing that would make me want to finish the book is if the story ends with Elinor and Marianne deciding to go off to college or travel to China or fight zombies or do something besides get married. But I know they won't, because this is an Austen novel, and things only end one way here. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with romantic comedies - they're funny, lighthearted entertainment where everyone is beautiful and nothing hurts, and the people who get unhappy endings were mean people and deserved it anyway. I do not begrudge anyone for liking this kind of entertainment - it's just not my taste, and I won't waste any time feeling bad about this. Sorry, Ms. Austen. I gave it my all, but it's just not going to work out. But don't worry: it's not you, it's me. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Mar 2012
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Mar 13, 2012
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Paperback
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my rating |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| 3.50
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did not like it
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Jan 2009
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Oct 18, 2023
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|||||
|
| 4.16
|
liked it
|
Jul 2023
|
Sep 12, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 4.21
|
it was amazing
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Dec 2021
|
Feb 28, 2022
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|||||
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| 4.07
|
really liked it
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Jan 2022
|
Jan 10, 2022
|
|||||
|
| 4.05
|
it was ok
|
Mar 2021
not set
|
Apr 08, 2021
|
|||||
|
| 3.97
|
really liked it
|
Apr 2015
|
May 16, 2015
|
|||||
|
| 4.14
|
it was ok
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Jan 2015
|
Dec 31, 2014
|
|||||
|
| 4.02
|
really liked it
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Dec 2014
|
Dec 27, 2014
|
|||||
|
| 3.77
|
it was ok
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Dec 2014
|
Dec 03, 2014
|
|||||
|
| 3.61
|
really liked it
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Jan 2014
|
Jan 20, 2014
|
|||||
|
| 3.68
|
really liked it
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Sep 2013
|
Sep 12, 2013
|
|||||
|
| 3.94
|
it was ok
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Aug 2013
|
Aug 08, 2013
|
|||||
|
| 4.22
|
it was amazing
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Jun 2013
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Jun 10, 2013
|
|||||
|
| 4.14
|
really liked it
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Dec 2012
|
Dec 16, 2012
|
|||||
|
| 3.82
|
liked it
|
Nov 2012
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Nov 28, 2012
|
|||||
|
| 3.97
|
really liked it
|
Nov 2012
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Nov 27, 2012
|
|||||
|
| 3.83
|
really liked it
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Nov 2012
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Nov 19, 2012
|
|||||
|
| 3.73
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really liked it
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Sep 2012
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Sep 17, 2012
|
|||||
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| 3.98
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really liked it
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not set
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Mar 29, 2012
|
|||||
|
| 4.09
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it was ok
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Mar 2012
|
Mar 13, 2012
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