So... I mostly finished it. This book attempts to be a novel but after the first chapter, I was thinking... "this is gonna be hard to sustain" and indSo... I mostly finished it. This book attempts to be a novel but after the first chapter, I was thinking... "this is gonna be hard to sustain" and indeed, it was. It's choppy and uneven and not very memorable. Not even worth thinking about anymore......more
What a strange book. It took me f.o.r.e.v.e.r to get through it because it was so darn hard to read. Written stiffly, as though it were poorly writtenWhat a strange book. It took me f.o.r.e.v.e.r to get through it because it was so darn hard to read. Written stiffly, as though it were poorly written in 1850. But, no... it was written in 1969 and even though the action of the book takes place in about 1853, there will be funny comments from the author like "in his mind, he thought like a Nazi". Nazi's weren't invented in 1853. OR: "she would have been an earth-mother type if that thing were not so frowned upon in the little city".
Um... the problem I have with this type of writing is that it is cheating, no? Earth Mothers were created (in my opinion) in about 1967 and Nazi's in the 1920s? But this book appears on nearly every must-read list of English-Language books and is heralded as a masterpiece quite often.
What is possibly ground-breaking (in 1969) *AND!* I do not believe this is a spoiler alert...I believe this to be VERY common knowledge is the duel-endings, which frankly were handles much better in the movie version from 25 years ago than in the book version (in my memory). I ordered the film from Netflix.
I have bee on a French Literature kick lately with The Count of Monte Cristo, The Tree Musketeers and Madame Bouvary, and I thought that this was just part of that time period...but it took it a bit for it to dawn on me that it was written in 1969.
It's not that it is too deep for me: the characters are SO uninteresting and the plot drags so badly and there were only a few passages that really grabbed me. I know it is considered to be a classic.....but not in my opinion....more
I thought this book could have been SO much better. I wanted more about the Elephant. The protagonist, and idealistic young man runs away to join the I thought this book could have been SO much better. I wanted more about the Elephant. The protagonist, and idealistic young man runs away to join the circus. (this part in the film will be played by Christov Waltz!!! YAY!!!) I do think this will be a better movie than an book, because no man is that sentimental, soft and evry-so-caring and can look deeply into the souls of all these circus misfits. I bet this is one time the film will be better than the book!...more
Wow... what a book. It's a heartbreaking memoir of a beautiful marriage that ends too soon. I recently saw the stage play and while it was not as riveWow... what a book. It's a heartbreaking memoir of a beautiful marriage that ends too soon. I recently saw the stage play and while it was not as riveting as the book, it was still quite good and very faithful. Jon Didion is just an amazing writer. Yes, it is desperately sad. But it is so beautifully written that the sadness gets held at bay because of the stellar writing. If you like memoir, this is THE memoir to read. A beautiful sad, but ultimatley uplifting experience. ...more
First of all... DO NOT SEE THE LAME MOVIE OF THE SAME TITLE!!!
Charles Baxter's masterpiece, "The Feast of Love" is a powerful piece of writing. The sFirst of all... DO NOT SEE THE LAME MOVIE OF THE SAME TITLE!!!
Charles Baxter's masterpiece, "The Feast of Love" is a powerful piece of writing. The story is told through the eyes of several people whose lives become entwined with each other's. Everybody I have recommended this book to has loved it, and it got an ASTONINGSLY high marks (a 5 out of 5) by my book group. The book is very entertaining and deftly written and totally gets the reader into the minds of several interesting characters. It is one of those books that I could have read forever, and I bemoan the fact that it is only about 300 pages, whereas I easily could have read 1,000 pages of this wonderful, heart-breaking story. I do not wish to give away any part of the story, but let's just say that some of the most well-written intriguing characters live in this book, and I continually think of them as if I was part of their family.
All I can say is drop everything you are doing and let yourself read this amazing work of fiction....more
On a scale of 1-5, this book deserves a 7. Poetic, hilarious, deep, magical, honest and thought provoking, I cannot imagine a better book at this momeOn a scale of 1-5, this book deserves a 7. Poetic, hilarious, deep, magical, honest and thought provoking, I cannot imagine a better book at this moment. This is my first Tom Robbins novel, and I so enjoyed his mixture of theory, humor and insight. Kudra and Alobar are my favorite literary couple of all time. To say much more about this completely absorbing, complex but understandable tale would be doing a disservice to the would-be reader. This is a story where the less preconceived notions one has about it, the better. It is a rapturous fable of flowers, scent, humanity, our fear of dying, lust and beauty. The essence of this book cannot be captured in a paragraph. It must be EXPERIENCED and savored. If you are into subtly, wit and the delight of "wordsmithing"by a master, read this amazing novel......more
This is the title that the King County library system has chosen as their official selection for the popular "If All Of Seattle Read the Same Book" prThis is the title that the King County library system has chosen as their official selection for the popular "If All Of Seattle Read the Same Book" program. I think that two of the main reasons they selected this book are that Washington is celebrating its 150th year of being a state, and Molly Gloss lives in nearby Portland. This is a scattered and laborious tale of man-hating Charlotte who is raising 5 boys in the Pacific Northwest at the turn of the (last) century. Charlotte is a pulp writer of romances who admires Jules Verne and despises the genre of books she writes. She does it for the money.
Charlotte is a "visionary" who envisions things like electric-powered washing machines and devices to fly in. Luckily, Ms. Gloss has a hundred-year perspective in which to make Charlotte seem smart and ahead of her time. Charlotte is one of the most mean-spirited heroines I have ever had the misfortune to meet. She enjoys freaking out the detested men she meets by wearing men's garb and chewing cigar butts, but making sure her lovely chestnut hair is always attractively arranged.
The most interesting part of the book is when Charlotte becomes lost and has a Sasquatch encounter. I'll give Ms. Gloss credit for that. However, when nearly struck by lightening she manages to save her precious diary, but neglects to remember her boots. Then, she spends 6 weeks lost in the muddy wilderness barefoot. And before that, she spends several nights in a tent with a bunch o'men, and woops! is (of course) molested.
The whole time she is lost she desperately desires to be back with her boys, but the author never goes into what they might have been thinking or feeling for all those long weeks. Plus, in a journal entry 3 years after her disappearance, she writes that she wishes she had more time to write, and that her family takes up way too much of her precious time.
She certainly didn't seem to learn much.
Also, the book is peppered with exhausting pages of irrelevant writings about people the reader has no relationship with, stories from magazines and a bunch of other drivel that I didn't care about.
The end result is a fragmented, confusing and incomplete story that takes too long to get off the ground, and then when it finally does, it's way too brief. I really disliked Charlotte, and I just couldn't get past that.
I suppose that some see Charlotte as the first feminist, but she is so grating that I had no sympathy for her. The only saving grace in the book is that what is happening in "real time" is written in regular font and has artwork by it that is supposed to resemble a frayed edge of paper, so the frustrated reader can skip past all the meaningless essays and get into the story. Then you can go back and read all the filler and find out that it's really not all that interesting. ...more
This was my first Audible.com book and I loved it! It's a light, breezy story of the German occupation of a small island off the coast of England who This was my first Audible.com book and I loved it! It's a light, breezy story of the German occupation of a small island off the coast of England who was cut off from the outside for 4 years. It's funny, sad, enlightening and tells a unique perspective of the aftermath of WWII. Highly, highly recommended, especially the audible version as it is so well produced and read by 4 actors. Loved, loved, love it!...more
It has been a while since I read this book, but it is funny, observant and witty beyond belief. What this girl had to go through to get to adulthood iIt has been a while since I read this book, but it is funny, observant and witty beyond belief. What this girl had to go through to get to adulthood is simply amazing. One of my favorite memoirs ever. If you haven't read it and want to read about a family who puts the "fun" in dysfunctional, by all means read it. Excellent!...more
I picked this memoir up to nominate to my book group, but I couldn't stop reading it..so if they want to read it, they will have to do so on their ownI picked this memoir up to nominate to my book group, but I couldn't stop reading it..so if they want to read it, they will have to do so on their own. While Howard Dully isn't a great writer, his story is remarkable. Typically I'd rather read a well-writtn book about nothing (Stone Diaries comes to mind here) than a great story that has unremarkable writing. The second is true for My Lobotomy, the shocking tale of a hateful stepmother who was so set on getting her 12-year-old step son thrown out of the family she set up an icepick lobotomy with an unlicensed doctor who kept amazing note because he thought he was making such a remarkable contribution to humanity by scrambling people's frontal lobes. That this doctor was allowed to operate on anyone is just criminal. The boy was high spirited, not crazy or mean or a sociopath. Because the lobotomy didn't turn Howard into a vegetable (which I believe she was aiming for) he is kicked out of the house at the age of TWELVE to basically drift out of halfway houses, mental institutions and jail.
That this man was able to have any semblance of a life at all is beyond incredible. I could not put this book down. It is very succinctly written, honest and nothing is sugarcoated. I felt disenfranchised as a twelve year old, but this story reminds me how lucky I am that I wasn't abused by some crazy doctor and that my parents were moderately loving (or at least, doing the best they knew how to do).If you are interested in abnormal psychology, memoir or just a plain old fashion triumph over circumstance story, then read this book. It is quite good. It only gets 4 stars because of the slightly less than average writing skill of the author. But, my God...the guy had a lobotomy and he wrote a book! Recommended. ...more
The Women by TC Boyle has an extremely interesting premise: tell the story of the love lives of Frank Lloyd Wright through an uninterested third partyThe Women by TC Boyle has an extremely interesting premise: tell the story of the love lives of Frank Lloyd Wright through an uninterested third party. The narrator brings nothing to the story and is beyond superfluous. The narrator also makes use of a lot of footnotes that do nothing except break up the overall storytelling. Relying heavily on footnotes is a very lazy way of writing. The reader has to stop in the middle of sentences and look up the tiny print footnotes and it completely takes one out of the moment. Not to mention that on several pages there were multiple footnotes annotated by strange symbols and I found myself getting lost on the page. Too much work if you just want to enjoy the story. Also, the narrator (who has little to do with the actual story) must introduce each section by giving some asides to the reader which add nothing to the overall book. Many, many pages are wasted in this manner.
My other complaint about the story is that every "woman" had a redundant story. They each have their little quirks: one left her children to be with the Master, one was a crazy morphine junky and the other was a refugee from her home country. However, this is the only thing that separates each woman... they all have the same issue with F L Wright: he is pompous, controlling, demanding, unreasonable but must be the greatest lover in the history of men in order to get these (mostly) smart women to endure anything for him. And that their stories are told backwards...that is to say that they start with the most recent wife and go backwards through time to the first pair of wives (and the first one isn't really given any time at all). But the women all have the same problems: broken promises, in debt because of Wright's madness allows him to owe thousands of dollars to the grocer or the laborers and then wonder why they can't just give him whatever he wants because he has graced the peons with the presence of genius. All this book confirmed for me that Frank Lloyd Wright is an unreasonable, unstable user. So what if he is an artist? He doesn't know how to treat people.
Ultimately this is a modern historical novel and I didn't learn anything that I couldn't have looked up on Google about these women. A big miss for me from TC Boyle that was lazily executed and redundant....more
Jacksonville, Mississippi, circa 1963. The black people have some problems: They get shot on their front lawns, beaten half to death for accidentally Jacksonville, Mississippi, circa 1963. The black people have some problems: They get shot on their front lawns, beaten half to death for accidentally using the white man's bathroom and are being lynched for speaking up about civil rights. A white 23-year-old girl has a problem: she doesn't have a boyfriend. Or a job, so she decides to write an expose of Southern life.
Yes, I am over-simplifying the plot here, but that's the basic crux of it. White girl is writing the black maid's stories about what it is like to be good enough to raise whitewomen's children and make their Thanksgiving turkeys, but diseased enough to not be able to use their bathrooms.
The Help is a runaway smash hit. But it's not very well written. The author Kathryn Stockett, is (so stunningly obviously) a white lady trying to write in authentic black voices...Occasionally it seems like she gets it right but most of the time, I'd say not.
And the other issue is that the white women in the book all speak the Queen's English. I mean, sheesh. I have Southern friends who's every other word is "y'all" I think I counted 2 "y'alls" spoken by white women in the whole book.
If an author is going to attempt to capture an era of slang, dialect and vernacular, it should be consistent. And this is just one quibble I have with the book. My other issues with The Help is that it's trite, predictable and I have read this story, better told more than once. This isn't literature... it's pop fiction, and not very well written pop fiction at that. It's unbelievable that this book is being compared to To Kill A Mockingbird or Gone With the Wind.
No less than 5 very well-respected friends recommended this book to me. I kept reading because I kept thinking that it had to get better. It actually got a bit worse toward the end. At least the end isn't wrapped up in a pretty, sugar coated bow, which I was actually bracing myself for.
Apparently this book was rejected by 50 publishers before G.P. Putnam's Sons for Penguin picked it up and it became a smash. And with this new climate in publishing where e-books are taking over the way illegal downloads changed the music industry forever, this book will not be made into an affordable paper version until January 2011. If you must read it, at least wait until then. You won't be missing anything....more
This book is a masterpiece. I both listened to Jeremy Irons read it to me and I read it (I ended up being approximately 50 pages behind in the print cThis book is a masterpiece. I both listened to Jeremy Irons read it to me and I read it (I ended up being approximately 50 pages behind in the print copy) because I could tell that just listening to it wasn't going to be enough. What a brilliant book! It was much, much funnier than I thought it would be...and I was born in 1960, so I always had the image of Lolita as a young seductress. So if you are like me and you think you know everything about this story, you are wrong... If you love to read great fiction written by a master, then stop whatever you are doing and go get a copy of Lolita. It was just wonderful... It will definitely be in my top 10 books of all time....more
I picked this book up upon recommendation from a friend on Thursday and just finished it tonight (3 days later). It's compellingly readable with interI picked this book up upon recommendation from a friend on Thursday and just finished it tonight (3 days later). It's compellingly readable with interesting characters and it is not one of those books that wraps up in a tidy bow at the end (a common complaint for me). While I did enjoy it, I felt that it could have been a fantastic book, and it was really going in the right direction until the last 20 or so pages. With a different ending and another run through the editor's eagle eye, this could have been a 5 star book. If you like gothic romance with a modern day twist, then you will like it, if you can get past the very cynical narrator. He is quite inflexible in his thinking...especially after he kicks his morphine addiction and goes through his own version of Dante's Inferno. I think this book would appeal to people who like Diana Gabeldon. There are lots of interesting little side love stories that are very entertaining, but ultimately don't teach us much or take the reader anywhere. But it is a very respectable first novel...well researched and totally engaging. I would read his next book....more
When I first started reading this, I only let myself read it in bite sized chunks. It's really beautifully written. Yeah, it's dark...but original. I When I first started reading this, I only let myself read it in bite sized chunks. It's really beautifully written. Yeah, it's dark...but original. I know a lot of people have read and enjoyed it. One thing that bugs me about Mc Carthy is that he creates these wonderful characters and then puts them through hell...and if they even live in the end, they are scarred for life, bloody and typically missing some limbs. I'll keep reading him, though. I only have a couple more and then I'm done. I hear he is writing a book about *gasp!* a WOMAN!!!! From his previous books, I wasn't positive they existed. The second time through I read it in about 2 hours without a break. McCarthy really has a way with the English language. ...more
I learned nothing from this frivolous stupid story about people I didn't care about and I hate it when the end of a book is sugar-coated, dipped in chI learned nothing from this frivolous stupid story about people I didn't care about and I hate it when the end of a book is sugar-coated, dipped in chocolate, blasted with high-furctose corn syrup and dusted in sparkly confectioners' sugar all before wrapping it up in a fancy, neat little bow. YUCK!!! I can't believe this book is being marketed to adults. If it wasn't about grave robbers and drunken binges, it could be marketed as YA fiction...but even my 18 year old niece would have found this book repulsive. No interesting characters, a plot that tried to be fanciful and magical realism fell so flat that I can't wait to get it out of my mind and out of my house. Unfortunately, I am hosting the book club meeting for this book...Luckily, it wasn't my pick. It also is NOT a good discussion book, because there isn't any hidden meanings or metaphor. All and all, one of the worst books I have read. Elizabeth Gilbert should be embarrassed to have her rapturous words about what a wonder of a book it is on the cover. Shame... Anything to get your name in print, eh?...more
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