The craziest Hollywood Tom Cruise-esque story and development of the ambitious, wildly successful, and unhinged intellectual wide foci---this was the The craziest Hollywood Tom Cruise-esque story and development of the ambitious, wildly successful, and unhinged intellectual wide foci---this was the crux of this book and reporting, and his puppet master pulling of the strings, biding his times, spiraling down more into the Wonderland rabbithole of conspiracy, obsession, entering into the pseudo-black market of corporate independence, like the hidden power of Anonymous. I can't believe Steve Bannon isn't a fictional creation of James Joyce, Tom Wolfe, Herman Melville, or Bret Easton Ellis. Truth and reality truly is stranger than fiction, and this all came to a drugged-out head in his meeting Trump via the Mercer Family. Really, just read it to wonder at this unreal, illustrious character that is Steve Bannon. We got the news all the time that Donald Trump in and out of the presidency was a Dreamland for psychotherapists acting as armchair advisors to the public eye for scandal. But no, Steve Bannon is so much more interesting and worth studying psychologically, intellectually. The campaign itself was tame, but the whirlwind was their meeting and working together, their mutual madnesses egging each other on deeper and deeper---they are the Perfect Storm, the Storm of the Century, so to speak. It's like a Dan Brown novel. And that brilliant characterization, insight, and serendipitous star-crossed lovers scheme is why this is rated so highly. More of this kind of psychological probing, reporters, please.
One of the best audiobooks of fiction I've chosen. the characterization is also some of the best I've come across recently. the 20-30% of it petered oOne of the best audiobooks of fiction I've chosen. the characterization is also some of the best I've come across recently. the 20-30% of it petered off into something unnatural though, abandoning what made the rest of it so great in favor of some tension and antagonistic challenge, which I didn't think furthered the development of character much besides the insight on loneliness and being unappreciated having sometimes profound and dramatic effects, and its social value as critique. The final part of the book was redeemed with the depth of conversation with her mother concerning relationships and our own complicated rejection of them in favor of our selfish, high-minded visions for our lives in static idealisation. Overall, if one is looking for fantastic characterization and a social critique of our social lives, this is a great contribution and recommended....more
4.5. Each short story is difficult to rate individually. They all have incredible lessons, real-feel situational life Development, enviable relational4.5. Each short story is difficult to rate individually. They all have incredible lessons, real-feel situational life Development, enviable relational intimacy (even for the fleeting ones, as life is and often provides), teach us to value life, thoughtful quotes, and inspire in their own way, even in their depictions of sadness, loneliness, alienation. They all develop organically. This is something, and these are stories, relations, lessons to reread for continual growth. I hope I will learn something new each time I look back upon it---and can apply its lessons to my relationships and sense of perspective. Murakami is like the Aesop's Fables and Brothers Grimm Fairytales---there's an essence, an encapsulation of learning and of life in these stories, ultimately to teach us about life. Murakami's stories are hopeful within the sadness and insularity, inspirational in their dynamism, ponderous on their quotes and conversations between these characters, and what the characters' life developments show us. These stories are heavy *and* light, sombre *and* ultimately feel-good and hopeful.
Murakami is the master of conceptualizing and characterizing serendipity in meeting people, in our life situations, in our own character growth, in taking a situation to it's extreme, but in such a naturally-occuring, organic manner. He's also the master of the encounter the absurd in the mundane and in the transitional relations we make, in our thoughts, in how life develops and events occur. He's the.madtrrnof relationship dynamics and group dynamics in the simplest of things, of, in what one story calls, an intuition for finding the right people at the right time. I've never read an author that can take all these things and themes and elements, and put it all together so well. There's a lot of wisdom to chew on here, to meditate upon, to realize works as observations about ourselves, each other, or world, mundane things, our social habits, basic human connection. Murakami is a magician, a Creator. Everything he writes about life, situations, causality, relationships is so organically dynamic. It feels as if nothing here is forced or willed---it just occurs. He teaches us to value the little things in each other, to consider what death and sooty and suffering can teach us, the value of life itself.
This author, I imagine, would be best exposure in and digested in nature, when when you got your own weird situations going on you can't make sense of. These stories are like our dreams, encoding the vagaries of life into some sort of consolidation, defragmenting our problems, trying to tell us a message....more
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