en-US Sat, 12 Apr 2025 06:53:45 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 228202 1141 Stephen King 0451169530 Madeleine 5 4.32 1978
author: Stephen King
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1978
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/04/12
shelves: our-libeary, the-face-is-familar, what-he-brought-to-the-bearriage, reread-and-reread-and-reread
review:

]]> 6646969 468 B.L. Ullman 0022337709 Madeleine 0 0.0 1981
author: B.L. Ullman
name: Madeleine
average rating: 0.0
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: text-is-not-a-verb, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, see-note, linguistics-al-dente, our-libeary
review:

]]> 3545551 1170 Robert Lee Brewer 1582975418 Madeleine 0 3.94
author: Robert Lee Brewer
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.94
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/28
shelves: to-read, get-it-write, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, i-can-has-future-tense, see-note, our-libeary
review:

]]> 531818
In this first collection of short pieces, including two novella-length works, since his western anthology Tonto Woman, Leonard demonstrates the superb characterization, dead-on dialogue, vivid atmosphere, and driving plotting that have made him a household name.

Sparks
Hanging out at the Buena Vista
Chickasaw Charlie Hoke
When the women come out to dance
Fire in the hole
Karen makes out
Hurrah to Capt. Early
The Tonto woman
Tenkiller]]> 228 Elmore Leonard 0060083972 Madeleine 0 3.77 2001
author: Elmore Leonard
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: to-read, our-libeary, i-can-has-future-tense, what-he-brought-to-the-bearriage
review:

]]> 50246
Alternate cover is available here.]]> 329 Daphne du Maurier Madeleine 0 3.85 1969
author: Daphne du Maurier
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1969
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/05
shelves: to-read, immagetchoo, peer-pressure
review:

]]> 2282 162 Truman Capote 067960085X Madeleine 3 3.87 1958
author: Truman Capote
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1958
rating: 3
read at: 2010/02/19
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, 2010, our-libeary, maybe-it-s-time-to-live
review:
The writing throughout this collection was breathtaking in its beauty, but it was only "A Diamond Guitar" that really delved into into four-star territory for me.
]]> 563798 Naked Lunch is the unnerving tale of a monumental descent into the hellish world of a narcotics addict as he travels from New York to Tangiers, then into Interzone, a nightmarish modern urban wasteland in which the forces of good and evil vie for control of the individual and all of humanity. By mixing the fantastic and the realistic with his own unmistakable vision and voice, Burroughs has created a unique masterpiece that is a classic of twentieth-century fiction.]]> 232 William S. Burroughs Madeleine 0 3.29 1959
author: William S. Burroughs
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.29
book published: 1959
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves: who-put-that-wall-there, what-he-brought-to-the-bearriage, our-libeary, quoth-the-walrus, maybe-it-s-time-to-live
review:
I first tried to hack through this madness as a high school senior and just couldn't get very far. Ten years later, having done far more drugs and armed with a much greater appreciation for a... well, novel approach to a novel, I'd like to try this again. Eventually.
]]> 837021
Best known for his poems and short fiction, Poe perfected the psychological thriller, invented the detective story, and rarely missed transporting the reader to his own supernal realm.

He has also been hailed posthumously as one of the finest literary critics of the nineteenth century. In Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales and Poems fans may indulge in all of Poe's most imaginative short-stories, including The Fall of the House of Usher, The Murders in Rue Morgue, The Tell-Tale Heart, Ligeia and Ms. In a Bottle,.

His complete early and miscellaneous poetic masterpieces are also here, including The Raven, Ulalume, Annabel Lee, Tamerlane, as well as select reviews and narratives.]]> 1092 Edgar Allan Poe 1566196035 Madeleine 0 4.49 1849
author: Edgar Allan Poe
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.49
book published: 1849
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: what-he-brought-to-the-bearriage, leave-the-rhyming-to-the-pros, you-stay-classy, our-libeary
review:

]]> 11081746 Prufrock and Other Observations are the following poems:

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Portrait of a Lady
Preludes
Rhapsody on a Windy Night
Morning at the Window
The Boston Evening Transcript
Aunt Helen
Cousin Nancy
Mr. Apollinax
Hysteria
Conversation Galante
La Figlia Che Piange]]> 27 T.S. Eliot Madeleine 0 4.54 1915
author: T.S. Eliot
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.54
book published: 1915
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves: books-with-buttons, leave-the-rhyming-to-the-pros, our-libeary, you-stay-classy, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book
review:

]]> 257238 Classic satire, one of the best by France’s greatest comedic playwright, pokes fun at the sham and hypocrisy of 17th-century French society. A wealthy tradesman, Monsieur Jourdain, yearns to become a gentleman in order to win the hand of a marchioness—disregarding the inconvenient fact that he is already married—but only succeeds in making a fool of himself.
]]> 94 ˛Ń´Ç±ôľ±Ă¨°ů±đ 0486415929 Madeleine 0 3.72 1670
author: ˛Ń´Ç±ôľ±Ă¨°ů±đ
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1670
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/28
shelves: to-read, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary, the-world-actually-is-a-stage
review:

]]> 337149 288 Brian Lowry Madeleine 0 3.91 1996
author: Brian Lowry
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/25
shelves: dance-with-that-fandom, reading-time-with-pickle, the-face-is-familar
review:

]]> 21182082 Billy Budd, Sailor, a classic confrontation between good and evil, is the story of an innocent young man unable to defend himself from wrongful accusations. Other selections include Bartleby, The Piazza, The Encantadas, The Bell-Tower, Benito Cereno, The Paradise of Bachelors and The Tartarus of Maids.
]]> 384 Herman Melville 1101052724 Madeleine 0 3.71 1924
author: Herman Melville
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1924
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: to-read, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary
review:

]]> 85635 Mansfield Park deals with money and marriage, and how strongly they affect each other. Shy, fragile Fanny Price is the consummate "poor relation." Sent to live with her wealthy uncle Thomas, she clashes with his spoiled, selfish daughters and falls in love with his son. Their lives are further complicated by the arrival of a pair of witty, sophisticated Londoners, whose flair for flirtation collides with the quiet, conservative country ways of Mansfield Park.

Written a decade after her previous novel, Mansfield Park retains Austen’s familiar compassion and humor but offers a far more complex exploration of moral choices and their emotional consequences.]]> 427 Jane Austen 1593081545 Madeleine 0 3.80 1814
author: Jane Austen
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1814
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/22
shelves: to-read, i-can-has-future-tense, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, our-libeary, maybe-it-s-time-to-live
review:

]]> 8320840 The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft collects the author's novel, four novellas, and fifty-three short stories. Written between the years 1917 and 1935, this collection features Lovecraft's trademark fantastical creatures and supernatural thrills, as well as many horrific and cautionary science-fiction themes, that have influenced some of today's writers and filmmakers, including Stephen King, Alan Moore, F. Paul Wilson, Guillermo del Toro, and Neil Gaiman. Included in this volume are The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, "The Call of Cthulhu," "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath," "At the Mountains of Madness," "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," "The Color Out of Space," "The Dunwich Horror," and many more hair-raising tales.]]> 1098 H.P. Lovecraft 1435122968 Madeleine 0 4.37
author: H.P. Lovecraft
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.37
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read, what-he-brought-to-the-bearriage, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary
review:

]]> 178123 I Lucifer established Glen Duncan as a writer “up there in the literary stratosphere with Martin Amis or T. C. Boyle� (Washington Post). Now with Death of an Ordinary Man, Duncan continues his penetrating and innovative exploration of the supernatural with a novel that is far and away his most powerful and accomplished yet.

Nathan Clark’s gravestone offers a short and hopeful summary: At rest. But Nathan is not at rest, and knows he won’t be until he finds out why he died. How has he come to hover over his own funeral, a spectral spectator to the grief of his family and friends? Privy now to their innermost thoughts and feelings� confessions that are raw, brutal, and unexpected� Nathan spends the day of his wake getting to know the living as he has never known them before: His father struggles with a legacy of family tragedy; his wife and best friend with the baggage of a doomed affair; his older
]]> 304 Glen Duncan 0802170048 Madeleine 4 3.36
author: Glen Duncan
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.36
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2005/01/01
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, our-libeary
review:
Good God, this book made me cry through its last few pages. It's a wonderfully touching tale written with poignant honesty and heartbreaking revelations, as well as some of the most beautiful prose I've ever encountered in modern British literature. Watching a dead man come to terms with his own death and postmortem heartbreaks made for a devastatingly fascinating read. Just know that once you finish it, you're going to need a hug. Very, very badly.
]]> 85302 here.

World-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyze a cryptic symbol seared into the chest of a murdered physicist. What he discovers is unimaginable: a deadly vendetta against the Catholic Church by a centuries-old underground organization--- the Illuminati. Desperate to save the Vatican from a powerful time bomb, Langdon joins forces in Rome with the beautiful and mysterious scientist Vittoria Vetra. Together they embark on a frantic hunt through sealed crypts, dangerous catacombs, deserted cathedrals, and the most secretive vault on the earth... the long-forgotten Illuminati lair.]]> 569 Dan Brown 0671027360 Madeleine 1 3.75 2000
author: Dan Brown
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2000
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2024/05/31
shelves:
review:

]]> 385621 64 Charles Baudelaire 0486284506 Madeleine 0 3.64
author: Charles Baudelaire
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.64
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/02
shelves: to-read, what-he-brought-to-the-bearriage, i-can-has-future-tense, leave-the-rhyming-to-the-pros, our-libeary
review:

]]> 15721426
Grief
Agafya
Misfortune
A Boring Story (From an Old Man's Notebook)
The Grasshopper
Ward No. 6
Ariadne
The House with an Attic
Ionych
The Darling
The Lady with the Lapdog

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov may be likened to his contemporaries, the "pointilliste" painters. Piece by piece, episode by episode, character by character, he constructs in prose a survey of the human condition. As David Magarshack writes in his introduction, on reading these stories 'one gets the impression of holding life itself, like a fluttering bird, in one's cupped hands'.]]> 281 Anton Chekhov Madeleine 0 4.19 1899
author: Anton Chekhov
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1899
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/03
shelves: to-read, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary
review:

]]> 7740118 two short novels 320 Henry James Madeleine 0 3.57
author: Henry James
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.57
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/01
shelves: to-read, i-can-has-future-tense, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, our-libeary
review:

]]> 776139 145 Ann M. Martin 0836813200 Madeleine 0 reading-time-with-pickle 3.33 1987
author: Ann M. Martin
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.33
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/30
shelves: reading-time-with-pickle
review:

]]> 77470
A vigorous, darkly comic, and at times magical portrait of the contemporary American family, The Shipping News shows why Annie Proulx is recognized as one of the most gifted and original writers in America today.
--back cover

Cover illustration by David Blackwood

]]> 337 Annie Proulx 0671510053 Madeleine 0 3.76 1993
author: Annie Proulx
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/16
shelves: to-read, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary, maybe-it-s-time-to-live
review:

]]> 919220 Spoon River Anthology remains an American classic.]]> 319 Edgar Lee Masters 0451525302 Madeleine 4 3.76 1915
author: Edgar Lee Masters
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1915
rating: 4
read at: 2003/01/01
date added: 2023/11/04
shelves: head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, you-stay-classy, our-libeary
review:
What the dead would say (about one another, their regrets, their secrets, the town their living selves called home) if they could speak. Haunting, moving, unsettling and ultimately fascinating.
]]> 1793172 215 Roger Lancelyn Green 0140301208 Madeleine 0 3.85 1958
author: Roger Lancelyn Green
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1958
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/29
shelves: to-read, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary, what-he-brought-to-the-bearriage
review:

]]> 8139475 ]]> 213 Virginia Woolf Madeleine 0 3.54 1915
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.54
book published: 1915
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/27
shelves: to-read, books-with-buttons, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary
review:

]]> 2378592 204 Juan Goytisolo 1564784843 Madeleine 0 3.87 1970
author: Juan Goytisolo
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1970
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/22
shelves: to-read, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary
review:

]]> 863338 The Mansion completes Faulkner’s great trilogy of the Snopes family in the mythical county of Yoknapatawpha, Mississippi, which also includes The Hamlet and The Town. Beginning with the murder of Jack Houston, and ending with the murder of Flem Snopes, it traces the downfall of this indomitable post-bellum family, who managed to seize control of the town of Jefferson within a generation.]]> 448 William Faulkner 0394702824 Madeleine 0 4.14
author: William Faulkner
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.14
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/04/29
shelves: to-read, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary
review:

]]> 8226853 The 16th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style has been superseded by the 17th edition.

The Chicago Manual of Style is the authoritative source that writers, editors, and publishers trust for guidance on style, grammar, and publishing process.

The sixteenth edition offers expanded information on producing electronic publications, including web-based content and e-books. The Chicago system for citing sources has been streamlined and adapted for a variety of online and digital sources. Figures and tables are updated throughout the book—including a return to the Manual’s popular hyphenation table and new, comprehensive listings of Unicode numbers for special characters.

With the wisdom of a hundred years of editorial practice and a wealth of industry expertise from both Chicago’s staff and an advisory board of publishing professionals, The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition, is an invaluable resource for anyone who works with words.]]> 1026 University of Chicago Press 0226104206 Madeleine 0 4.50 1906
author: University of Chicago Press
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.50
book published: 1906
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/02/05
shelves: get-it-write, see-note, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, to-read, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary
review:

]]> 1070943 Stephen Crane 0192833154 Madeleine 3 3.26 1895
author: Stephen Crane
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.26
book published: 1895
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2022/09/20
shelves: you-stay-classy, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, our-libeary
review:

]]> 317501 The four Pevensies help Caspian battle Miraz and ascend his rightful throne.

NARNIA... the land between the lamp-post and the castle of Cair Paravel, where animals talk, where magical things happen... and where the adventure begins.

Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy are returning to boarding school when they are summoned from the dreary train station (by Susan's own magic horn) to return to the land of Narnia—the land where they had ruled as kings and queens and where their help is desperately needed.]]> 216 C.S. Lewis 0020442408 Madeleine 3 3.94 1951
author: C.S. Lewis
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1951
rating: 3
read at: 2011/03/01
date added: 2022/07/29
shelves: head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, the-face-is-familar, 2011, our-libeary
review:
Again, I feel like having seen the movie version of this story kind of ruined things for me. But I do love how easy it is to get lost in these books -- it's making for some of the best at-work escapism I've ever encountered.
]]> 767928 The Norton Anthology of American Literature is the classic survey of American literature from its sixteenth-century origins to its flourishing present.
This volume, Volume D, covers American literature from 1914 to 1945.]]> 882 Nina Baym 0393979008 Madeleine 4 3.95 2007
author: Nina Baym
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/05/19
shelves: text-is-not-a-verb, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, you-stay-classy, leave-the-rhyming-to-the-pros, our-libeary, so-i-collect-norton-anthologies-now
review:

]]> 44382 279 Milan Kundera 0060927518 Madeleine 0 4.10 1993
author: Milan Kundera
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/28
shelves: to-read, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary, let-us-now-speak-of-great-men
review:

]]> 655707
The passage through the castle is dim, sensed by few and walked by only one. Flagg knows the way well. In four hundred years, he has walked it many times, in many guises, but now the passage serves its true purpose. Through the spyhole it conceals, the court magician observes King Roland--old, weak, yet still a king. Roland's time is nearly over, though, and young Prince Peter, tall and handsome, the measure of a king in all ways, stands to inherit the realm.

Yet a tiny mouse is enough to bring him down, a mouse that chances upon a grain of Dragon Sand behind Peter's shelves and dies crying tears of fire and belching gray smoke. A mouse that dies as King Roland does. Flagg saw it all and smiled, for now Prince Thomas, a young boy easily swayed to Flagg's own purposes, would rule the kingdom. But Thomas has a secret that has turned his days into nightmares and his nights into prayed-for oblivion. The last bastion of hope lies at the top of the Needle, the royal prison where Peter plans a daring escape...]]> 326 Stephen King 067081458X Madeleine 0 3.91 1984
author: Stephen King
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1984
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/03/18
shelves: our-libeary, what-he-brought-to-the-bearriage
review:
Couldn't resist a beeeyooootiful first-edition hardcover of a book I already own twice. Real review is under one of the paperback editions.
]]> 15841935 Turtle Diary. William, a clerk at a used-book store, lives in a rooming house after a divorce that has left him without home or family. Neaera is a successful writer of children’s books, who, in her own estimation, “looks like the sort of spinster who doesn’t keep cats and is not a vegetarian. Looks…like a man’s woman who hasn’t got a man.� Entirely unknown to each other, they are both drawn to the turtle tank at the London zoo with “minds full of turtle thoughts,� wondering how the turtles might be freed. And then comes the day when Neaera walks into William’s bookstore, and together they form an unlikely partnership to make what seemed a crazy dream become a reality.]]> 208 Russell Hoban 1590176464 Madeleine 0 4.07 1975
author: Russell Hoban
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1975
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/12/16
shelves: to-read, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary, peer-pressure
review:

]]> 6696926 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? has been called "a masterpiece ahead of its time, even today" and served as the basis for the film Blade Runner. Boom! Studios is honored to present Volume 2 of the deluxe hardcover edition taking the novel and transplanting it into the comic book medium. A ground-breaking maxi-series experiment, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is illustrated by acclaimed artist Tony Parker. Collects issues 5�8.]]> 144 Philip K. Dick 1608865096 Madeleine 0 4.10 2009
author: Philip K. Dick
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/12/03
shelves: to-read, graphic-content, immagetchoo
review:

]]> 24694 "Bartleby" (also known as "Bartleby the Scrivener") is an intriguing moral allegory set in the business world of mid-19th-century New York. A strange, enigmatic man employed as a clerk in a legal office, Bartleby forces his employer to come to grips with the most basic questions of human responsibility, and haunts the latter's conscience, even after Bartleby's dismissal.
"Benito Cereno," considered one of Melville's best short stories, deals with a bloody slave revolt on a Spanish vessel. A splendid parable of man's struggle against the forces of evil, the carefully developed and mysteriously guarded plot builds to a dramatic climax while revealing the horror and depravity of which man is capable.
Reprinted here from standard texts in a finely made, yet inexpensive new edition, these stories offer the general reader and students of Melville and American literature sterling examples of a literary giant at his story-telling best.
--back cover]]> 104 Herman Melville 0486264734 Madeleine 0 3.78
author: Herman Melville
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.78
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/08/11
shelves: to-read, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary, what-he-brought-to-the-bearriage
review:

]]> 1122366 A Dictionary of Things There Aren't Any Words for Yet--But There Ought to Be

The phenomenal best-selling author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy teams up with the brilliant creator of "Not the Nine O'Clock News"; the result is a dictionary unlike any before. It gives words--which happen to be actual names of towns or cities somewhere in the world--to objects and experiences that demand to be named, but never have been. Until now. 40 line drawings.]]> 156 Douglas Adams 0517585979 Madeleine 4
This goofy little book starts out with the only instances of me both being positively tickled by a phonetic guide and finding an alphabetical sequence of maps to be decidedly hilarious (my usual inability to accept skewed images of familiar land masses -- like an upside map projection, which just freaks me out -- was deftly avoided by the masterminds' execution). I wasn't really sure what the point was until I deigned to read the book jacket and discovered that the whole premise of the book is reimagining funny-sounding place names (the easy target of Gobbler's Knob is woefully absent but Wetwang picks up that slack) as simpler ways of naming those hard-to-summarize nouns, verbs and social gaffes that no one wants to acknowledge as common experiences or ever thought to wrap up in easy-to-express packaging for mass usage.

The breakdown of these definitions is equal parts polite renaming of slightly less polite realities (Moisie: the condition of one's face after performing cunnilingus), identifying those small annoyances that comprise a lousy day when you've encountered just the right frequency and combination of them (Salween: a faint taste of dishwashing liquid in a cup of tea; Fladderbister: the part of a raincoat that trails out of a car after you've closed the door on it), recognizing those awkward inevitabilities that come with maintaining the illusion of ours being a civilized society (Shifnal: an awkward shuffling walk caused by two or more people in a hurry accidentally getting into the same segment of a revolving door) and addressing those annoying habits that result in an individual's repulsion being universally agreed upon (Dinsdale: one who always plays "Chopsticks" on the piano), with some uncategorized silliness thrown in for variety.

A celebration of humanity's finer points, it's not (because where's the humor in THAT?). But it is an entertaining and quick little read that offers the unexpected bonus of a warm, tingly assurance that someone, somewhere, appreciates the need for words to describe all the things that one wonders if anyone else has ever experienced. Like that three-week-old unidentifiable lump in the fridge or the feeling one gets when cornered by the least agreeable person at a party, only to have a moment of ecstatic relief to realize that that person isn't you.]]> 3.84 1990
author: Douglas Adams
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1990
rating: 4
read at: 2012/02/19
date added: 2021/07/21
shelves: head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, let-us-now-speak-of-great-men, 2012, our-libeary, blogophilia
review:
I've been reading and loving Douglas Adams's works since I was in middle school; while it's possible to translate this as my sense of humor not evolving much in 15 years, I'd rather embrace the notion that I was saddled with a funny bone (among other things) that would have served me much better had I been born on the other side of the Atlantic. Either way, the real point is that diving into anything penned by one of my all-time favorite writers always feels a little bit like coming home or slipping into a pair of lovingly wrecked Chucks. Especially since I've had a hankering for something delightfully British and wryly executed ever since rewatching the 2005 "Hitchhiker's Guide" movie, which was really the only bright spot during my recent run-in with the modern plague.

This goofy little book starts out with the only instances of me both being positively tickled by a phonetic guide and finding an alphabetical sequence of maps to be decidedly hilarious (my usual inability to accept skewed images of familiar land masses -- like an upside map projection, which just freaks me out -- was deftly avoided by the masterminds' execution). I wasn't really sure what the point was until I deigned to read the book jacket and discovered that the whole premise of the book is reimagining funny-sounding place names (the easy target of Gobbler's Knob is woefully absent but Wetwang picks up that slack) as simpler ways of naming those hard-to-summarize nouns, verbs and social gaffes that no one wants to acknowledge as common experiences or ever thought to wrap up in easy-to-express packaging for mass usage.

The breakdown of these definitions is equal parts polite renaming of slightly less polite realities (Moisie: the condition of one's face after performing cunnilingus), identifying those small annoyances that comprise a lousy day when you've encountered just the right frequency and combination of them (Salween: a faint taste of dishwashing liquid in a cup of tea; Fladderbister: the part of a raincoat that trails out of a car after you've closed the door on it), recognizing those awkward inevitabilities that come with maintaining the illusion of ours being a civilized society (Shifnal: an awkward shuffling walk caused by two or more people in a hurry accidentally getting into the same segment of a revolving door) and addressing those annoying habits that result in an individual's repulsion being universally agreed upon (Dinsdale: one who always plays "Chopsticks" on the piano), with some uncategorized silliness thrown in for variety.

A celebration of humanity's finer points, it's not (because where's the humor in THAT?). But it is an entertaining and quick little read that offers the unexpected bonus of a warm, tingly assurance that someone, somewhere, appreciates the need for words to describe all the things that one wonders if anyone else has ever experienced. Like that three-week-old unidentifiable lump in the fridge or the feeling one gets when cornered by the least agreeable person at a party, only to have a moment of ecstatic relief to realize that that person isn't you.
]]> 142780 216 Truman Capote 0451140923 Madeleine 0 4.05
author: Truman Capote
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.05
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/05/01
shelves: to-read, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary
review:

]]> 1936 562 Louisa May Alcott 0439101360 Madeleine 4 4.14 1868
author: Louisa May Alcott
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1868
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2021/01/07
shelves: reading-time-with-pickle, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, the-face-is-familar, our-libeary, maybe-it-s-time-to-live, reread-and-reread-and-reread
review:

]]> 155
Set against this tragic affair is the story of Konstantin Levin, a melancholy landowner whom Tolstoy based largely on himself. While Anna looks for happiness through love, Levin embarks on his own search for spiritual fulfillment through marriage, family, and hard work. Surrounding these two central plot threads are dozens of characters whom Tolstoy seamlessly weaves together, creating a breathtaking tapestry of nineteenth-century Russian society.

From its famous opening sentence � "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”—to its stunningly tragic conclusion, this enduring tale of marriage and adultery plumbs the very depths of the human soul.]]> 803 Leo Tolstoy 1593080271 Madeleine 4 4.00 1878
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1878
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2020/11/29
shelves: head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, our-libeary, maybe-it-s-time-to-live
review:

]]> 271276 853 George Eliot 0141439548 Madeleine 5
-- It was funny. Not solely in a spirit-of-the-time sort of way but in a universally human one. The same communication breakdowns, conflicting motives, misdirected emotions, misguided actions and character flaws plague the denizens of George Eliot's far-reaching tome as they do a modern audience.

-- Seriously. It's funny.

-- Dodo. Fucking Dodo, man. How a character can go from being such an insipid little pill to one of the novel's most compelling forces... it's breathtaking. George Eliot juggles a massive cast comprising dozens of intricately crafted personalities to paint a sprawling, immersive collage of one provincial town. It is ultimately worth the pushing through the odious beginning: Consider it the necessary cost of admission. The ride gets really good once Dorothea finally starts gaining some dimension and direction. ]]> 4.19 1872
author: George Eliot
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1872
rating: 5
read at: 2012/04/01
date added: 2020/11/28
shelves: peer-pressure, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, our-libeary, 2012, maybe-it-s-time-to-live
review:
A few things about this book:

-- It was funny. Not solely in a spirit-of-the-time sort of way but in a universally human one. The same communication breakdowns, conflicting motives, misdirected emotions, misguided actions and character flaws plague the denizens of George Eliot's far-reaching tome as they do a modern audience.

-- Seriously. It's funny.

-- Dodo. Fucking Dodo, man. How a character can go from being such an insipid little pill to one of the novel's most compelling forces... it's breathtaking. George Eliot juggles a massive cast comprising dozens of intricately crafted personalities to paint a sprawling, immersive collage of one provincial town. It is ultimately worth the pushing through the odious beginning: Consider it the necessary cost of admission. The ride gets really good once Dorothea finally starts gaining some dimension and direction.
]]> 18240383
Includes the following stories:

“Where I Live�
“Harrison Bergeron�
“Who Am I This Time?�
“Welcome to the Monkey House�
“Long Walk to Forever�
“The Foster Portfolio�
“Miss Temptation�
“All the King’s Horses�
“Tom Edison’s Shaggy Dog�
“New Dictionary�
“Next Door�
“More Stately Mansions�
“The Hyannis Port Story�
â€Ćŕ.±Ę.â€�
“Report on the Barnhouse Effect�
“The Euphio Question�
“Go Back to Your Precious Wife and Son�
“Deer in the Works�
“The Lie�
“Unready to Wear�
“The Kid Nobody Could Handle�
“The Manned Missiles�
“E±čľ±ł¦˛ął¦â€�
“A»ĺ˛ąłľâ€�
“Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”]]> 384 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 0812993616 Madeleine 0 4.19 1968
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1968
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/11/07
shelves: to-read, i-can-has-future-tense, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, our-libeary
review:

]]> 2443477 The Wrong Box (1889) is one of Stevenson's strangest works. Written with his stepson Lloyd Osborne, it is a masterpiece of black comedy, turning on mistaken identity, the disappearance of a corpse, and several makeshift coffins.

V.S. Pritchett described it as "a farce that slips down the throat with the nicety of an oyster;" to E.F. Benson it was "perhaps the most superb extravaganza in the language."

The Finsbury family has long been involved in a Tontine—a scheme in which subscribers invest money in a fund which them falls to the last survivor. Now there are only two aged uncles between Morris and John Finsbury and their fortune. A railway accident appears to dispose of one; and then the farce begins...

In this eccentric and brilliantly plotted story the authors extended the boundaries of good taste. The Wrong Box perplexed some of its Victorian readers; a century on it is less shocking but the comedy is as deft as ever.]]> 178 Robert Louis Stevenson 0192824260 Madeleine 0 3.33 1889
author: Robert Louis Stevenson
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.33
book published: 1889
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/06/19
shelves: to-read, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary
review:

]]> 13632386 AND ITS NOT 20, IT'S 100 Plus Audio Books!!
(Complete Collection Of Lovecraft's Fiction, Juvenilia, Poems, Essays And Collaborations)

Whats Inside ..............?

The Complete Fiction
The Nameless City
The Festival
The Colour Out of Space
The Call of Cthulhu
The Dunwich Horror
The Whisperer in Darkness
The Dreams in the Witch House
The Haunter of the Dark
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
Discarded Draft of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth"
The Shadow Out of Time
At the Mountains of Madness
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
Azathoth
Beyond the Wall of Sleep
Celephaa?s
Cool Air
Dagon
Ex Oblivione
Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family
From Beyond
He
Herbert West-Reanimator
Hypnos
In the Vault
Memory
Nyarlathotep
Pickmana-s Model
The Book
The Cats of Ulthar
The Descendant
The Doom That Came to Sarnath
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
The Evil Clergyman
The Horror at Red Hook
The Hound
The Lurking Fear
The Moon-Bog
The Music of Erich Zann
The Other Gods
The Outsider
The Picture in the House
The Quest of Iranon
The Rats in the Walls
The Shunned House
The Silver Key
The Statement of Randolph Carter
The Strange High House in the Mist
The Street
The Temple
The Terrible Old Man
The Thing on the Doorstep
The Tomb
The Transition of Juan Romero
The Tree
The Unnamable
The White Ship
What the Moon Brings
Polaris
The Very Old Folk
Ibid
Old Bugs
Sweet Ermengarde, or, The Heart of a Country Girl
A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson
The History of the Necronomicon
The Complete Juvenilia
The Alchemist
The Beast in the Cave
The Little Glass Bottle
The Mysterious Ship
The Mystery of the Grave-Yard
The Secret Cave
The Complete Poetry
Part I. - Juvenilia (1887-1905)
Poemata Minora, Volume II
Part II. - Fantasy and Horror
Nemesis
Astrophobos
The Poe-eta-s Nightmare
Despair
Revelation
The House
The City
To Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Eighteenth Baron Dunsany
The Nightmare Lake
On Reading Lord Dunsanya-s Book of Wonder
The Cats
Festival
Hallowea-en in a Suburb aka a¬In a Suburba(R)
The Wood
The Outpost
The Ancient Track
The Messenger
Nathicana
Fungi from Yuggoth
In a Sequestera-d Providence Churchyard Where Once Poe Walka-d
To Clark Ashton Smith, Esq., upon His Phantastick Tales, Verses, Pictures, and Sculptures
Part III. - Occasional Verse
On Receiving a Picture of Swans
Fact and Fancy
Laeta; a Lament
Part IV. - Satire
Unda; or, The Bride of the Sea
Pacifist War Songa31917
Waste Paper
Dead Passiona-s Flame
Arcadia
Lifea-s Mystery
Part V. - Seasonal and Topographical
A Garden
Sunset
Providence
Christmas
Christmas Greetings
Part VI. - Politics and Society
An American to Mother England
Lines on Gen.]]> H.P. Lovecraft Madeleine 0 4.40 2011
author: H.P. Lovecraft
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/02/17
shelves: to-read, books-with-buttons, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary, what-he-brought-to-the-bearriage
review:

]]> 26028759 "The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way..."

It is the year 2081. Because of Amendments 211, 212, and 213 to the Constitution, every American is fully equal, meaning that no one is stupider, uglier, weaker, or slower than anyone else. The Handicapper General and a team of agents ensure that the laws of equality are enforced.

One April, fourteen-year-old Harrison Bergeron is taken away from his parents, George and Hazel, by the government and to a place unknown. But what happens in the aftermath will challenge the status quo and inspire his peers about the hidden potential within one's own individuality.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (1922�2007) was an American novelist, satirist, and most recently, graphic artist. He was born in Indianapolis, later the setting for many of his novels. His experiences as an advance scout in the Battle of the Bulge during WWII, and in particular his witnessing of the bombing of Dresden, Germany whilst a prisoner of war, would inform much of his work. The novelist is best known for works blending satire, black comedy and science fiction, such as 'Slaughterhouse-Five' (1969), 'Cat's Cradle' (1963), and 'Breakfast of Champions' (1973).]]> 9 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Madeleine 0 3.91 1961
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1961
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/01/09
shelves: reading-time-with-pickle, you-stay-classy
review:

]]> 5947099
Tender, knowing, and slyly comic, Memories of My Melancholy Whores is an exquisite addition to the master’s work.
--back cover]]> 115 Gabriel García Márquez 1400095948 Madeleine 0 3.59 2004
author: Gabriel García Márquez
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/03/28
shelves: to-read, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary
review:

]]> 47160 2930 Nina Baym 0393979695 Madeleine 5 4.08
author: Nina Baym
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.08
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2019/03/21
shelves: text-is-not-a-verb, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, you-stay-classy, leave-the-rhyming-to-the-pros, our-libeary, so-i-collect-norton-anthologies-now
review:

]]> 1949584 THE GREATEST FANTASY EPIC OF OUR TIME

The Fellowship was scattered. Some were bracing hopelessly for war against the ancient evil of Sauron. Some were contending with the treachery of the wizard Saruman. Only Frodo and Sam were left to take the accursed Ring of Power to be destroyed in Mordor–the dark Kingdom where Sauron was supreme. Their guide was Gollum, deceitful and lust-filled, slave to the corruption of the Ring.

Thus continues the magnificent, bestselling tale of adventure begun in The Fellowship of the Ring, which reaches its soul-stirring climax in The Return of the King.]]> 447 J.R.R. Tolkien 0345253442 Madeleine 0 4.48 1954
author: J.R.R. Tolkien
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.48
book published: 1954
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/01/07
shelves: what-he-brought-to-the-bearriage, to-read, i-can-has-future-tense, the-face-is-familar, our-libeary, maybe-it-s-time-to-live
review:

]]> 6424171 An alternate cover edition can be found here.

An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now humankind’s most thrilling fantasies have come true. Creatures extinct for eons roam Jurassic Park with their awesome presence and profound mystery, and all the world can visit them—for a price. Until something goes wrong. . . .--back cover]]> 416 Michael Crichton 0345370775 Madeleine 3 4.25 1990
author: Michael Crichton
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1990
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2018/12/07
shelves: head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, the-face-is-familar, reading-time-with-pickle, our-libeary
review:

]]> 2151424
In the third volume of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the good and evil forces join battle, and we see that the triumph of good is not absolute. The Third Age of Middle-earth ends, and the age of the dominion of Men begins.]]> 544 J.R.R. Tolkien Madeleine 0 4.56 1955
author: J.R.R. Tolkien
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.56
book published: 1955
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/12/05
shelves: to-read, what-he-brought-to-the-bearriage, i-can-has-future-tense, the-face-is-familar, our-libeary, maybe-it-s-time-to-live
review:

]]> 83346 228 Lewis Carroll 0688120490 Madeleine 3 4.05 1871
author: Lewis Carroll
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1871
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2018/12/01
shelves: reading-time-with-pickle, maybe-it-s-time-to-live
review:

]]> 97864 Readers can discover these and other aspects of her influential style in the eight stories collected here, among them a delightful, feminist put-down of the male intellect in "A Society" and a brilliant and sensitive portrayal of nature in "Kew Gardens." Also included are "An Unwritten Novel," "The String Quartet," "A Haunted House," "Blue & Green," "The Mark on the Wall," and the title story.
In recent years, Woolf's fiction, feminism, and high-minded sensibilities have earned her an ever-growing audience of readers. This splendid collection offers those readers not only the inestimable pleasures of the stories themselves, but an excellent entrée into the larger body of Woolf's work.]]> 155 Virginia Woolf 0486294536 Madeleine 0 3.64 1921
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1921
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/09/21
shelves: to-read, books-with-buttons, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary
review:

]]> 848454 512 Stephen King 039913039X Madeleine 0 3.91 1985
author: Stephen King
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/08/10
shelves: to-read, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary, what-he-brought-to-the-bearriage
review:

]]> 318456
Born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, at the precise moment of India's independence, the infant Saleem Sinai is celebrated in the press and welcomed by Prime Minister Nehru himself. But this coincidence of birth has consequences Saleem is not prepared for: telepathic powers that connect him with 1,000 other "midnight's children"--all born in the initial hour of India's independence--and an uncanny sense of smell that allows him to sniff out dangers others cannot perceive. Inextricably linked to his nation, Saleem's biography is a whirlwind of disasters and triumphs that mirror the course of modern India at its most impossible and glorious.

Ebullient, operatic, comic, and serious, this novel is a wild, astonishing evocation of the maturity of a vast and complicated land and its people--a brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy, Indian-style.
(back cover)]]> 552 Salman Rushdie Madeleine 0 4.10 1981
author: Salman Rushdie
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/03/07
shelves: to-read, i-can-has-future-tense, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, our-libeary
review:

]]> 18133 Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov's most famous and controversial novel, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Most of all, it is a meditation on love—love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.]]> 317 Vladimir Nabokov Madeleine 3 3.97 1955
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1955
rating: 3
read at: 2008/06/22
date added: 2017/03/06
shelves: head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, 2008-partial, our-libeary, maybe-it-s-time-to-live
review:

]]> 13152080 Beeton’s Christmas Annual in 1887, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes has been one of the most beloved fictional characters ever created. Now, in two paperback volumes, Bantam presents all fifty-six short stories and four novels featuring Conan Doyle’s classic hero--a truly complete collection of Sherlock Holmes’s adventures in crime!Volume II begins with The Hound of the Baskervilles, a haunting novel of murder on eerie Grimpen Moor, which has rightly earned its reputation as the finest murder mystery ever written. The Valley of Fear matches Holmes against his archenemy, the master of imaginative crime, Professor Moriarty. In addition, the loyal Dr. Watson has faithfully recorded Holmes’s feats of extraordinary detection in such famous cases as the thrilling The Adventure of the Red Circle and the twelve baffling adventures from The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle’s incomparable tales bring to life a Victorian England of horse-drawn cabs, fogs, and the famous lodgings at 221B Baker Street, where for more than forty years Sherlock Holmes earned his undisputed reputation as the greatest fictional detective of all time.

Volume 2. Introduction / by Loren D. Estleman --
The hound of the Baskervilles --
The valley of fear --
His last bow : The adventure of Wisteria Lodge : The singular experience of Mr. John Scott Eccles ; The tiger of San Pedro ; The adventure of the cardboard box ; The adventure of the red circle ; The adventure of the Bruce-Partington plans ; The adventure of the dying detective ; The disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax ; The adventure of the devil's foot ; His last bow --
The case-book of Sherlock Holmes : The adventure of the illustrious client ; The adventure of the blanched soldier ; The adventure of the Mazarin stone ; The adventure of the three gables ; The adventure of the Sussex vampire ; The adventure of the three Garridebs ; The problem of Thor Bridge ; The adventure of the creeping man ; The adventure of the lion's mane ; The adventure of the veiled lodger ; The adventure of Shoscombe old place ; The adventure of the retired colourman.]]> 786 Arthur Conan Doyle Madeleine 0 4.58 1986
author: Arthur Conan Doyle
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.58
book published: 1986
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/01/21
shelves: to-read, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary, what-he-brought-to-the-bearriage
review:

]]> 437148
He tells readers about what books and films influenced him as a young writer, his first idea for a story, and the true-life tale that inspired "Carrie". For the first time, here's an intimate autobiographical portrait of his home life, his family, and his traumatic accident. Citing examples of his work and those of his contemporaries, King gives an excellent masterclass on writing - how to use the tools of the trade from building characters to pace and plotting as well as practical advice on presentation. And he tells readers how he got to be a No. 1 bestseller for a quarter of a century with fascinating descriptions of his own process, the origins and development of, for example, "Carrie" and "Misery."]]> 288 Stephen King 0684853523 Madeleine 4 4.32 2000
author: Stephen King
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2008/09/04
date added: 2016/12/11
shelves: get-it-write, what-he-brought-to-the-bearriage, 2008-partial, let-us-now-speak-of-great-men, our-libeary
review:

]]> 644173 Derry: a small city in Maine, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own home town. Only in Derry the haunting is real...

It began for the Losers on a day in June of 1958, the day school let out for the summer. That was the day Henry Bowers carved the first letter of his name on Ben Hanscom's belly and chased him into the Barrens, the day Henry and his Neanderthal friends beat up on Stuttering Bill Denbrough and Eddie Kaspbrak, the day Stuttering Bill had to save Eddie from his worst asthma attack ever by riding his bike to beat the devil. It ended in August, with seven desperate children in search of a creature of unspeakable evil in the drains beneath Derry. In search of It. And somehow it ended.

Or so they thought. Then.

On a spring night in 1985 Mike Hanlon, once one of those children, makes six calls. Stan Uris, accountant. Richie "Records" Tozier, L.A. disc jockey. Ben Hanscom, renowned architect. Beverly Rogan, dress designer. Eddie Kaspbrak, owner of a successful New York limousine company. And Bill Denbrough, bestselling writer of horror novels, Bill Denbrough who now only stutters in his dreams.

These six men and one woman have forgotten their childhoods,have forgotten the time when they were Losers...but an unremembered promise draws them back, the present begins to rhyme dreadfully with the past, and when the Losers reunite, the wheels of fate lock together and roll them towards the ultimate terror.

In the biggest and most ambitious book of his career, Stephen King gives us not only his most towering epic of horror but a surprising re-illumination of the corridor where we pass from the bright mysteries of childhood to those of maturity.
--front flap]]> 1142 Stephen King 0670813028 Madeleine 0 4.26 1986
author: Stephen King
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1986
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/11/12
shelves: to-read, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary, the-face-is-familar, what-he-brought-to-the-bearriage
review:

]]> 4602032
Maybe having a vampire for a boyfriend isn't such a bright idea.]]> 292 Charlaine Harris 0441016995 Madeleine 2 the-face-is-familar
My gripe about this book lies almost solely in the writing, which is astoundingly mediocre. The narrative is choked with unnecessary adverbs, improperly used commas, amateur no-nos that'll make any serious writer cringe ("show, don't tell" is a basic rule anyone who's at least taken a high school creative writing course should know), and character descriptions so bland that there's no room for a reader to personalise the experience (I would've happily traded pages of overly detailed accounts of the floral dress someone wore to a funeral for an appropriate amount of character development). Also, there is almost no variation in the writing style itself, with turbo-short sentences and a repetition that almost seems deliberate, as if it's there just in case the reader forgot a key point about some characters' less important traits (or it's the tragic outcome of sloppy editing -- either way, I didn't much care for it).

But for all its cries of "I'm a trashy beach read," the story itself is rather intriguing (though its execution leaves lots to be desired). Sookie, while cliched and alarmingly naive, is likable enough, as are many of the down-home folks around her. And I do have to begrudgingly admit that I couldn't stop reading this book: I had to know what happened next, though, given the plot's astonishing predictability, I think that was more ego than anything.

"Dead Until Dark" has spots of originality and charm, and it's a nice little escape if you don't take it too seriously. Read it with the expectation of simply being entertained when you need a break from headier reads. I don't know how far I'll get into the rest of the books but this one seems like it'll fare decently as a standalone tale, lacklustre writing aside.



Edit: Yeah, so I got about 10 pages into the second book and could not justify spending another second with such lousy writing when there are so many good books I've yet to read. Whatever appeal this tale has was enough to hold my interest for exactly one book. Maybe it's time for ham-fisted authors to stop writing about vampires for a while.]]> 3.68 2001
author: Charlaine Harris
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2001
rating: 2
read at: 2010/08/11
date added: 2016/10/29
shelves: the-face-is-familar
review:
Can a vampire tale be light and fluffy? Oh, you bet.

My gripe about this book lies almost solely in the writing, which is astoundingly mediocre. The narrative is choked with unnecessary adverbs, improperly used commas, amateur no-nos that'll make any serious writer cringe ("show, don't tell" is a basic rule anyone who's at least taken a high school creative writing course should know), and character descriptions so bland that there's no room for a reader to personalise the experience (I would've happily traded pages of overly detailed accounts of the floral dress someone wore to a funeral for an appropriate amount of character development). Also, there is almost no variation in the writing style itself, with turbo-short sentences and a repetition that almost seems deliberate, as if it's there just in case the reader forgot a key point about some characters' less important traits (or it's the tragic outcome of sloppy editing -- either way, I didn't much care for it).

But for all its cries of "I'm a trashy beach read," the story itself is rather intriguing (though its execution leaves lots to be desired). Sookie, while cliched and alarmingly naive, is likable enough, as are many of the down-home folks around her. And I do have to begrudgingly admit that I couldn't stop reading this book: I had to know what happened next, though, given the plot's astonishing predictability, I think that was more ego than anything.

"Dead Until Dark" has spots of originality and charm, and it's a nice little escape if you don't take it too seriously. Read it with the expectation of simply being entertained when you need a break from headier reads. I don't know how far I'll get into the rest of the books but this one seems like it'll fare decently as a standalone tale, lacklustre writing aside.



Edit: Yeah, so I got about 10 pages into the second book and could not justify spending another second with such lousy writing when there are so many good books I've yet to read. Whatever appeal this tale has was enough to hold my interest for exactly one book. Maybe it's time for ham-fisted authors to stop writing about vampires for a while.
]]> 38686 416 Lewis Carroll 0393958043 Madeleine 4 4.05 1865
author: Lewis Carroll
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1865
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2016/10/13
shelves: the-face-is-familar, reading-time-with-pickle, maybe-it-s-time-to-live, books-with-buttons
review:

]]> 76616 277 Douglas Adams 0517577402 Madeleine 3 3.75 1992
author: Douglas Adams
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1992
rating: 3
read at: 1999/01/01
date added: 2016/09/12
shelves: head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, our-libeary
review:
As I recall, this book seemed a little more disjointed and almost rushed than its four predecessors, but was still wonderful. I think there could have been better ways to end such a revered "trilogy" other than its bummer of an ending, but who am I to judge the brilliant Douglas Adams?
]]> 526236 The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his death so much as a passing thought. But one day death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise he is brought face to face with his own mortality. How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth?
This short novel was the artistic culmination of a profound spiritual crisis in Tolstoy's life, a nine-year period following the publication of Anna Karenina during which he wrote not a word of fiction. A thoroughly absorbing and, at times, terrifying glimpse into the abyss of death, it is also a strong testament to the possibility of finding spiritual salvation.]]> 304 Leo Tolstoy 0451525086 Madeleine 0 4.03 1886
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1886
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/08/24
shelves: to-read, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary, maybe-it-s-time-to-live
review:

]]> 762530
The Shining stands as a cultural icon of modern horror, a searing study of a family torn apart, and a nightmarish glimpse into the dark recesses of human weakness and dementia.]]> 447 Stephen King 0385121679 Madeleine 0 4.31 1977
author: Stephen King
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1977
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/04/10
shelves: to-read, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary, the-face-is-familar, what-he-brought-to-the-bearriage, maybe-it-s-time-to-live
review:

]]> 2636730
IN THREE WEEKS in April of 1951, Jack Kerouac wrote his first full draft of On the Road —typed as a single-spaced paragraph on eight long sheets of tracing paper, which he later taped together to form a 120-foot scroll. A major literary event when it was published in Viking hardcover in 2007, this is the uncut version of an American classic—rougher, wilder, and more provocative than the official work that appeared, heavily edited, in 1957. This version, capturing a moment in creative history, represents the first full expression of Kerouac’s revolutionary aesthetic.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 408 Jack Kerouac 0143105469 Madeleine 0 4.02 1957
author: Jack Kerouac
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1957
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/01/12
shelves: to-read, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary, what-he-brought-to-the-bearriage, maybe-it-s-time-to-live
review:

]]> 392475 328 H.P. Lovecraft 0880015411 Madeleine 0 4.07 1935
author: H.P. Lovecraft
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1935
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/11/18
shelves: to-read, what-he-brought-to-the-bearriage, i-can-has-future-tense, peer-pressure, our-libeary
review:

]]> 1405526
It is now reissued in this handsome hardcover edition, featuring a new Foreword by Donald Margulies, who writes, "You are holding in your hands a great American play. Possibly the great American play." In addition, Tappan Wilder has written an eye-opening new Afterword, which includes Thornton Wilder's unpublished notes and other illuminating photographs and documentary material.]]> 103 Thornton Wilder 0060807792 Madeleine 4 have heard and read references to it so many times that I had a pretty solid idea of where the plot was going before I even digested the first page. The third act might not have been much of a surprise, but it sure let me appreciate the writing itself because I could pretty much tell how everything fit together.

The honesty and humanity of "Our Town" are its strongest assets: The characters and their stories are so universal that one doesn't need to have lived in turn-of-the-century small-town New England to relate to any of it. For someone who errs on the side of embracing the bigger picture instead of getting all caught up in the little things, spending some time with this play was a welcome reminder of all the beauty found in daily life's smallest moments, which is what gave this play so much heart. ]]> 3.82 1938
author: Thornton Wilder
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1938
rating: 4
read at: 2012/04/05
date added: 2015/11/09
shelves: the-world-actually-is-a-stage, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, our-libeary, 2012
review:
I've neither studied nor seen this play before picking up a copy at my favorite used-book store, but I have heard and read references to it so many times that I had a pretty solid idea of where the plot was going before I even digested the first page. The third act might not have been much of a surprise, but it sure let me appreciate the writing itself because I could pretty much tell how everything fit together.

The honesty and humanity of "Our Town" are its strongest assets: The characters and their stories are so universal that one doesn't need to have lived in turn-of-the-century small-town New England to relate to any of it. For someone who errs on the side of embracing the bigger picture instead of getting all caught up in the little things, spending some time with this play was a welcome reminder of all the beauty found in daily life's smallest moments, which is what gave this play so much heart.
]]> 67071 360 D.H. Lawrence 0553110187 Madeleine 0 3.34 1928
author: D.H. Lawrence
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.34
book published: 1928
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/09/04
shelves: to-read, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary, maybe-it-s-time-to-live
review:

]]> 16395913
In Leonard's first original e-book, U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (featured in Pronto and Riding the Rap) returns to the Eastern Kentucky coal-mining country of his youth. When Boyd Crowder, a mail-order-ordained minister who doesn't believe in paying his income taxes, decides to blow up the IRS building in Cincinnati, Givens is asked by the local marshal to intervene.

This sets up an inevitable confrontation between two men on opposite sides of the law who still have a lingering respect for each other. Throw into the mix Boyd's sister-in-law, Ava, who carries a torch for Raylan along with a deer rifle, and you've got a funny, adrenaline-charged novella only Leonard could have written.]]> 240 Elmore Leonard 5551096602 Madeleine 0 3.95 2001
author: Elmore Leonard
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/07/10
shelves: to-read, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary, the-face-is-familar, what-he-brought-to-the-bearriage
review:

]]> 191352 The Glass Bead Game is a fascinating tale of the complexity of modern life as well as a classic of modern literature.

Set in the twenty-third century, The Glass Bead Game is the story of Joseph Knecht, who has been raised in Castalia, the remote place his society has provided for the intellectual elite to grow and flourish. Since childhood, Knecht has been consumed with mastering the Glass Bead Game, which requires a synthesis of aesthetics and philosophy, which he achieves in adulthood, becoming a Magister Ludi (Master of the Game).]]> 520 Hermann Hesse 0553262378 Madeleine 0 4.16 1943
author: Hermann Hesse
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1943
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/06/28
shelves: to-read, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary, maybe-it-s-time-to-live
review:

]]> 1271159 Alternate cover edition for ISBNs 0451524934 / 9780451524935.

"1984 has come and gone, but George Orwell's prophetic, nightmarish vision in 1949 of the world we were becoming is timelier than ever. 1984 is still the great modern classic of "Negative Utopia" - a startlingly original and haunting novel that creates an imaginary world that is completely convincing, from the first sentence to the last four words. No one can deny this novel's power, its hold on the imaginations of whole generations, or the power of its admonitions - a power that seems to grow, not lessen, with the passage of time."]]> 268 George Orwell Madeleine 4 4.06 1949
author: George Orwell
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1949
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/06/21
shelves: you-stay-classy, the-face-is-familar, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, our-libeary, maybe-it-s-time-to-live
review:

]]> 317818 Life of Pi is a magical reading experience, an endless blue expanse of storytelling about adventure, survival, and ultimately, faith. The precocious son of a zookeeper, 16-year-old Pi Patel is raised in Pondicherry, India, where he tries on various faiths for size, attracting "religions the way a dog attracts fleas." Planning a move to Canada, his father packs up the family and their menagerie and they hitch a ride on an enormous freighter. After a harrowing shipwreck, Pi finds himself adrift in the Pacific Ocean, trapped on a 26-foot lifeboat with a wounded zebra, a spotted hyena, a seasick orangutan, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker ("His head was the size and color of the lifebuoy, with teeth"). It sounds like a colorful setup, but these wild beasts don't burst into song as if co-starring in an anthropomorphized Disney feature. After much gore and infighting, Pi and Richard Parker remain the boat's sole passengers, drifting for 227 days through shark-infested waters while fighting hunger, the elements, and an overactive imagination. In rich, hallucinatory passages, Pi recounts the harrowing journey as the days blur together, elegantly cataloging the endless passage of time and his struggles to survive: "It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I've made none the champion."

The protagonist Piscine "Pi" Molitor Patel, an Indian boy from Pondicherry, explores the issues of religion and spirituality from an early age and survives 227 days shipwrecked in the Pacific Ocean.]]> 319 Yann Martel 0151008116 Madeleine 0 3.95 2001
author: Yann Martel
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/06/06
shelves: to-read, peer-pressure, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary, maybe-it-s-time-to-live
review:

]]> 6978944 The Stand: Captain Trips series of comics (#1-5) into one Hardcover volume. It all begins here: the epic apocalyptic battle between good and evil. On a secret army base in the Californian desert, something has gone horribly, terribly wrong. Something will send Charlie Campion, his wife and daughter fleeing in the middle of the night. Unfortunately for the Campion family, and the rest of America, they are unaware that all three of them are carrying a deadly cargo: a virus that will spread from person to person like wildfire, triggering a massive wave of disease and death, prefacing humanity's last stand.]]> 160 Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa 078514272X Madeleine 4 how (and why) I was so excited to discover that one of my all-time favorite books was to be retooled as a graphic novel. It's been such a thrill to see "The Dark Tower" -- my other favorite King-wrought literary experience -- get the graphic-novel treatment (even though it's a completely different approach) that I just couldn't anticipate anything less than a thoroughly impressive illustrated translation of "The Stand."

You have to understand that "The Stand" is That Book for me. It's That Book I used to read when I didn't know what I wanted to read but knew I wanted to get lost in a good story with characters I knew well. It's That Book by which I measured all subsequently devoured novels for a long, long time after I first read it. It's That Book I've read so many times I can recite entire stretches of dialogue, recall dozens of word-for-word descriptions and have some of King's most gruesome scenes permanently burned into my brain.

So it's a good thing that the first book in the graphic-novel re-imagining of "The Stand" delivers. Oh, does it ever deliver. It holds true to so many of the book's descriptions, lines, characters and goings on; what it chooses to omit from the story seems to be done so for pacing and for the sake of keeping the story in motion. The art is just so perfect for the mood of the plot -- and, of course, it's stunning in its detail, talent and ability to match exactly how I saw so much of the story for so long.

But -- and this is the most important part, of course -- the depictions of the characters get extra props since the creative minds chose to deviate from the miniseries' depiction of the players: Frannie looks nothing like Molly Ringwald, Nick looks nothing like Rob Lowe and Gen. Starkey looks nothing like Ed Harris (though no one wonders if they should point out his mispronunciation of "Yeats,"but I guess that's what you lose when narration is largely replaced with art). I will say, however, that I am a little more than bummed that Stu looks nothing like Gary Sinise, which, I think, might actually be my biggest problem with this venture thus far.

Other than that, color me pleased. I can't see my resolve to wait before picking up the second installation lasting for too long at all.]]> 4.20 2009
author: Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2010/02/16
date added: 2015/05/04
shelves: graphic-content, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, the-face-is-familar, 2010, our-libeary
review:
I have to preface this a little in the hopes that it does some justice to just how (and why) I was so excited to discover that one of my all-time favorite books was to be retooled as a graphic novel. It's been such a thrill to see "The Dark Tower" -- my other favorite King-wrought literary experience -- get the graphic-novel treatment (even though it's a completely different approach) that I just couldn't anticipate anything less than a thoroughly impressive illustrated translation of "The Stand."

You have to understand that "The Stand" is That Book for me. It's That Book I used to read when I didn't know what I wanted to read but knew I wanted to get lost in a good story with characters I knew well. It's That Book by which I measured all subsequently devoured novels for a long, long time after I first read it. It's That Book I've read so many times I can recite entire stretches of dialogue, recall dozens of word-for-word descriptions and have some of King's most gruesome scenes permanently burned into my brain.

So it's a good thing that the first book in the graphic-novel re-imagining of "The Stand" delivers. Oh, does it ever deliver. It holds true to so many of the book's descriptions, lines, characters and goings on; what it chooses to omit from the story seems to be done so for pacing and for the sake of keeping the story in motion. The art is just so perfect for the mood of the plot -- and, of course, it's stunning in its detail, talent and ability to match exactly how I saw so much of the story for so long.

But -- and this is the most important part, of course -- the depictions of the characters get extra props since the creative minds chose to deviate from the miniseries' depiction of the players: Frannie looks nothing like Molly Ringwald, Nick looks nothing like Rob Lowe and Gen. Starkey looks nothing like Ed Harris (though no one wonders if they should point out his mispronunciation of "Yeats,"but I guess that's what you lose when narration is largely replaced with art). I will say, however, that I am a little more than bummed that Stu looks nothing like Gary Sinise, which, I think, might actually be my biggest problem with this venture thus far.

Other than that, color me pleased. I can't see my resolve to wait before picking up the second installation lasting for too long at all.
]]> 436982 Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Possessed and The Brothers Karamazov � Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821�1881) penned the darkly fascinating Notes from the Underground. Its nameless hero is a profoundly alienated individual in whose brooding self-analysis there is a search for the true and the good in a world of relative values and few absolutes. Moreover, the novel introduces themes � moral, religious, political and social � that dominated Dostoyevsky's later works. Notes from the Underground, then, aside from its own compelling qualities, offers readers an ideal introduction to the creative imagination, profundity and uncanny psychological penetration of one of the most influential novelists of the nineteenth century. Constance Garnett's authoritative translation is reprinted here, with a new introduction.]]> 96 Fyodor Dostoevsky Madeleine 0 4.09 1864
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1864
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/04/05
shelves: to-read, what-he-brought-to-the-bearriage, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary, maybe-it-s-time-to-live, quoth-the-walrus
review:

]]> 9468704
It was morning in America when Raymond Carver's Cathedral came out in 1983, but the characters in this dry collection of short stories from the forgotten corners of land of opportunity didn't receive much sunlight. Nothing much happens to the subjects of Carver's fiction, which is precisely why they are so harrowing: nothingness is a daunting presence to overcome. And rarely do they prevail, but the loneliness and quiet struggle the characters endure provide fertile ground for literary triumph, particularly in the hands of Carver, who was perhaps in his best form with this effort.]]> 228 Raymond Carver Madeleine 0 to-read, immagetchoo 4.28 1983
author: Raymond Carver
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1983
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/04/03
shelves: to-read, immagetchoo
review:

]]> 243709 384 Russell Banks 0060925744 Madeleine 0 3.82 1985
author: Russell Banks
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/02/16
shelves: to-read, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary
review:

]]> 995123
Here he links forces with the defiant young Eddie Dean and the beautiful, brilliant, and brave Odetta Holmes, in a savage struggle against underworld evil and otherworldly enemies.

Once again, Stephen King has masterfully interwoven dark, evocative fantasy and icy realism.]]> 399 Stephen King 0452262143 Madeleine 5
What dazzles me most is how quickly most of the action moves along: The first time I read this, the suspense was a killer and I literally could not put this book down because I HAD to see what everything was leading to. As a re-read, I found myself flipping ahead just to see when some of my favorite parts were coming up and was always surprised that they were only a few pages away. The suspense this time originated not from wanting to know what happened next but rather waiting to relive my favorite moments, and that's not something I always find upon revisiting a much-loved book. "Drawing" really does live up to the memories I had of it.

And everything with Jack Mort? Yeah, seeing such a deplorable character get what was coming to him was even more satisfying this time around. In a novel chock-full of "Oh, I LOVE this part!" moments (the melding of Detta and Odetta; the progression of Eddie and Susannah's romance; the shoot-out in the pharmacy; the shoot-out at Balazar's.... you get the picture), seeing how thoroughly Roland destroyed that man remains one of my all-time favorite fictional moments, both in TDT series and in literature in general.]]> 4.17 1987
author: Stephen King
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1987
rating: 5
read at: 2010/05/06
date added: 2015/02/06
shelves: what-he-brought-to-the-bearriage, 2010, my-kingdom-for-a-desert-island, our-libeary, reread-and-reread-and-reread
review:
While I'm rediscovering all sorts of things to love about TDT, this is still my favorite book in the series. Some of King's very best writing -- from the characterization to the advancement of an extraordinarily heady plot -- is on display in its full glory here. I'm in the middle of "Wolves" right now and just looking back to who Susannah and Eddie were when Roland drew them and who they've become is simply awe-inspiring.

What dazzles me most is how quickly most of the action moves along: The first time I read this, the suspense was a killer and I literally could not put this book down because I HAD to see what everything was leading to. As a re-read, I found myself flipping ahead just to see when some of my favorite parts were coming up and was always surprised that they were only a few pages away. The suspense this time originated not from wanting to know what happened next but rather waiting to relive my favorite moments, and that's not something I always find upon revisiting a much-loved book. "Drawing" really does live up to the memories I had of it.

And everything with Jack Mort? Yeah, seeing such a deplorable character get what was coming to him was even more satisfying this time around. In a novel chock-full of "Oh, I LOVE this part!" moments (the melding of Detta and Odetta; the progression of Eddie and Susannah's romance; the shoot-out in the pharmacy; the shoot-out at Balazar's.... you get the picture), seeing how thoroughly Roland destroyed that man remains one of my all-time favorite fictional moments, both in TDT series and in literature in general.
]]> 231813
Today, nearly forty years after his death, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck remains one of America's greatest writers and cultural figures. Over the next year, his many works published as black-spine Penguin Classics for the first time and will feature eye-catching, newly commissioned art. Penguin Classics is proud to present these seminal works to a new generation of readers and to the many who revisit them again and again.]]> 90 John Steinbeck 014017737X Madeleine 0 3.40 1947
author: John Steinbeck
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.40
book published: 1947
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/01/02
shelves: to-read, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary
review:

]]> 62684 96 Noam Chomsky 1559210761 Madeleine 0 3.72 1968
author: Noam Chomsky
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1968
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/01/02
shelves: to-read, let-us-now-speak-of-great-men, linguistics-al-dente, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary
review:

]]> 257971 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780553103540

Long ago, in a time forgotten, a preternatural event threw the seasons out of balance. In a land where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the north of Winterfell, sinister forces are massing beyond the kingdom’s protective Wall. To the south, the king’s powers are failing—his most trusted adviser dead under mysterious circumstances and his enemies emerging from the shadows of the throne. At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family as harsh and unyielding as the frozen land they were born to. Now Lord Eddard Stark is reluctantly summoned to serve as the king’s new Hand, an appointment that threatens to sunder not only his family but the kingdom itself.

Sweeping from a harsh land of cold to a summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, A Game of Thrones tells a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens. Here an enigmatic band of warriors bear swords of no human metal; a tribe of fierce wildlings carry men off into madness; a cruel young dragon prince barters his sister to win back his throne; a child is lost in the twilight between life and death; and a determined woman undertakes a treacherous journey to protect all she holds dear. Amid plots and counter-plots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, allies and enemies, the fate of the Starks hangs perilously in the balance, as each side endeavors to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.

Unparalleled in scope and execution, A Game of Thrones is one of those rare reading experiences that catch you up from the opening pages, won’t let you go until the end, and leave you yearning for more.]]> 726 George R.R. Martin Madeleine 4 4.48 1996
author: George R.R. Martin
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.48
book published: 1996
rating: 4
read at: 2011/07/06
date added: 2014/12/09
shelves: what-he-brought-to-the-bearriage, the-face-is-familar, peer-pressure, 2011, our-libeary
review:

]]> 7106736
When Elspeth Noblin dies of cancer, she leaves her London apartment to her twin nieces, Julia and Valentina. These two American girls never met their English aunt, only knew that their mother, too, was a twin, and Elspeth her sister. Julia and Valentina are semi-normal American teenagers -- with seemingly little interest in college, finding jobs, or anything outside their cozy home in the suburbs of Chicago, and with an abnormally intense attachment to one another.

The girls move to Elspeth's flat, which borders Highgate Cemetery in London. They come to know the building's other residents. There is Martin, a brilliant and charming crossword puzzle setter suffering from crippling Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; Marjike, Martin's devoted but trapped wife; and Robert, Elspeth's elusive lover, a scholar of the cemetery. As the girls become embroiled in the fraying lives of their aunt's neighbors, they also discover that much is still alive in Highgate, including -- perhaps -- their aunt, who can't seem to leave her old apartment and life behind.

Niffenegger weaves a captivating story in Her Fearful Symmetry about love and identity, about secrets and sisterhood, and about the tenacity of life -- even after death.]]> 406 Audrey Niffenegger 1439169012 Madeleine 2
And then, about three-quarters of the way through, my interest in the plot just took a nose dive. Perhaps my patience and attention were only imitating the story I insisted on finishing?

In just a few clumsy twists, I went from captivated reader to half-heartedly trudging through the last 100 pages or so. It's been a long time since a story careened into such disappointing terrain as this one did. And in such a predictable fashion, too. I've never had to helplessly watch someone I love make a series of life-screwingly bad decisions, but I imagine that feeling isn't too dissimilar from what I experienced while forcing down the end of this book.]]> 3.21 2009
author: Audrey Niffenegger
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.21
book published: 2009
rating: 2
read at: 2011/06/25
date added: 2014/11/05
shelves: head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, 2011, our-libeary
review:
This book, thanks mainly to its quirkily damaged supporting cast, had me hooked almost instantly. Like, to the point where I was looking for an excuse to slip out of work for just five minutes so I could read a little more because I had such a hard time putting the book down.

And then, about three-quarters of the way through, my interest in the plot just took a nose dive. Perhaps my patience and attention were only imitating the story I insisted on finishing?

In just a few clumsy twists, I went from captivated reader to half-heartedly trudging through the last 100 pages or so. It's been a long time since a story careened into such disappointing terrain as this one did. And in such a predictable fashion, too. I've never had to helplessly watch someone I love make a series of life-screwingly bad decisions, but I imagine that feeling isn't too dissimilar from what I experienced while forcing down the end of this book.
]]> 18949650
The Bone Clocks follows the twists and turns of Holly's life from a scarred adolescence in Gravesend to old age on Ireland's Atlantic coast as Europe's oil supply dries up - a life not so far out of the ordinary, yet punctuated by flashes of precognition, visits from people who emerge from thin air and brief lapses in the laws of reality. For Holly Sykes - daughter, sister, mother, guardian - is also an unwitting player in a murderous feud played out in the shadows and margins of our world, and may prove to be its decisive weapon.

Metaphysical thriller, meditation on mortality and chronicle of our self-devouring times, this kaleidoscopic novel crackles with the invention and wit that have made David Mitchell one of the most celebrated writers of his generation. Here is fiction at its spellbinding and memorable best.]]> 595 David Mitchell 0340921609 Madeleine 0 to-read, immagetchoo 3.96 2014
author: David Mitchell
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/10/05
shelves: to-read, immagetchoo
review:

]]> 2017501
Trout, modeled according to Vonnegut on the science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon (with whom Vonnegut had an occasional relationship) is a desperate, impoverished but visionary hack writer who functions for Eliot Rosewater as both conscience and horrid example. Rosewater, seeking to put his inheritance to some meaningful use (his father was an entrepreneur), tries to do good within the context of almost illimitable cynicism and corruption.

It is in this novel that Rosewater wanders into a science fiction conference--an actual annual event in Milford, Pennsylvania--and at the motel delivers his famous monologue evoked by science fiction writers and critics for almost half a century: "None of you can write for sour apples... but you're the only people trying to come to terms with the really terrific things which are happening today." Money does not drive Mr. Rosewater (or the corrupt lawyer who tries to shape the Rosewater fortune) so much as outrage at the human condition.

The novel was adapted for a 1979 Alan Menken musical. The novel is told mostly thru a collection of short stories dealing with Eliot's interactions with the citizens of Rosewater County, usually with the last sentence serving as a punch line. The antagonist's tale, Mushari's, is told in a similar short essay fashion. The stories reveal different hypocrisies of humankind in a darkly humorous fashion.]]> 190 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Madeleine 0 3.94 1965
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1965
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/06/27
shelves: to-read, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary
review:

]]> 6265974 The Time Machine, not its potential for misuse and terror. In The Island of Dr. Moreau a shipwrecked gentleman named Edward Prendick, stranded on a Pacific island lorded over by the notorious Dr. Moreau, confronts dark secrets, strange creatures, and a reason to run for his life.

While this riveting tale was intended to be a commentary on evolution, divine creation, and the tension between human nature and culture, modern readers familiar with genetic engineering will marvel at Wells’s prediction of the ethical issues raised by producing “smarter� human beings or bringing back extinct species. These levels of interpretation add a richness to Prendick’s adventures on Dr. Moreau’s island of lost souls without distracting from what is still a rip-roaring good read.]]> 124 H.G. Wells Madeleine 0 3.78 1896
author: H.G. Wells
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1896
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/06/27
shelves: to-read, books-with-buttons, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary, what-he-brought-to-the-bearriage, maybe-it-s-time-to-live
review:

]]> 727690
Stephen King's most gripping and unforgettable novel, Bag of Bones, is a story of grief and a lost love's enduring bonds, of a new love haunted by the secrets of the past, of an innocent child caught in a terrible crossfire.

Set in the Maine territory King has made mythic, Bag of Bones recounts the plight of 40-year-old bestselling novelist Mike Noonan, who is unable to stop grieving even four years after the sudden death of his wife, Jo, and who can no longer bear to face the blank screen of his word processor.

Now his nights are plagued by vivid nightmares of the house by the lake. Despite these dreams, or perhaps because of them, Mike finally returns to Sara Laughs, the Noonans' isolated summer home.

He finds his beloved Yankee town familiar on its surface, but much changed underneath -- held in the grip of a powerful millionaire, Max Devore, who twists the very fabric of the community to his purpose: to take his three-year-old granddaughter away from her widowed young mother. As Mike is drawn into their struggle, as he falls in love with both of them, he is also drawn into the mystery of Sara Laughs, now the site of ghostly visitations, ever-escalating nightmares, and the sudden recovery of his writing ability. What are the forces that have been unleashed here -- and what do they want of Mike Noonan?

As vivid and enthralling as King's most enduring works, Bag of Bones resonates with what Amy Tan calls 'the witty and obsessive voice of King's powerful imagination.' It's no secret that King is our most mesmerizing storyteller. In Bag of Bones -- described by Gloria Naylor as 'a love story about the dark places within us all' -- he proves to be one of our most moving.]]> 529 Stephen King 0684853507 Madeleine 0 3.84 1998
author: Stephen King
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/06/24
shelves: to-read, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary, what-he-brought-to-the-bearriage, the-face-is-familar
review:

]]> 49852
And yet �

As in all wars, life goes on. Sixth-year students learn to Apparate, and lose a few eyebrows in the process. The Weasley twins expand their business. Teenagers flirt and fight and fall in love. Classes are never straightforward, though Harry receives some extraordinary help from the mysterious Half-Blood Prince.

So it's the home front that takes center stage in the multilayered sixth installment of the story of Harry Potter. Here at Hogwarts, Harry will search for the full and complex story of the boy who became Lord Voldemort - and thereby find what may be his only vulnerability.]]> 652 J.K. Rowling 0439784549 Madeleine 3 4.64 2005
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.64
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2014/06/22
shelves: head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, our-libeary, hancocked
review:

]]> 724667
Only a few know the terrifying truth--an outcast Earth scientist, a rebellious alien inhabitant of a dying planet, a lunar-born human intuitionist who senses the imminent annihilation of the Sun.  They know the truth--but who will listen?  They have foreseen the cost of abundant energy--but who will believe?  These few beings, human and alien, hold the key to the Earth's survival.]]> 293 Isaac Asimov 0553288105 Madeleine 0 3.91 1972
author: Isaac Asimov
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1972
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/06/17
shelves: to-read, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, i-can-has-future-tense, our-libeary
review:

]]> 85266 This item does not meet our catalog guidelines and can no longer be rated or reviewed.
Please add this edition to your shelf instead:
The da Vinci Code]]> 454 Dan Brown Madeleine 1 3.81 2003
author: Dan Brown
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2003
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2014/06/05
shelves:
review:

]]> 17675380 Aaron’s Leap is a deeply moving portrait of love, sacrifice, and the transformative power of art in a time of brutal uncertainty.� �SIMON VAN BOOY, author of The Illusion of Separateness

Based on the real-life story of Bauhaus artist Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, Aaron’s Leap is framed by the lens of a twenty first-century Israeli film crew delving into the extraordinary life of a woman who taught art to children in the Nazi transport camp of Terezín and died in Auschwitz. Aided by the granddaughter of one of the artist’s pupils, the filmmakers begin to uncover buried secrets from a time when personal and artistic decisions became matters of life-and-death. Spanning a century of Central European history, the novel evokes the founding impulses, theories, and personalities of the European Modernist movement (with characters modeled after Oskar Kokoschka, Alma Mahler and Franz Werfel) and shows what it takes to grapple with a troubled history, “leap� into the unknown, and dare to be oneself.

Magdaléna Platzová was raised in Prague and has lived in Washington, DC and New York City, where she taught literature at NYU, and now lives in Lyon, France. She is the author of a children’s book, two collections of short stories, and three novels, including Aaron’s Leap, a Lidové Noviny Book of the Year Award finalist, hailed by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as a novel that “must be counted among the best written by contemporary Czech writers.� It is her first book to be published in English.
]]> 224 Magdaléna Platzová 1934137707 Madeleine 5 (This review was originally written for and posted at the 's site. The publisher very generously provided me with a copy of this novel.)


Magdaléna Platzová's Aaron's Leap is a powerful, sobering meditation on both the human condition and the nurturing of the artistic soul that closes the distance between far-flung eras, absent friends, and seemingly unrelated histories of people and places alike--all of which demonstrate a unifying power akin to a ripple effect in time.

The narrative bounds across decades to explore a modern-day Israeli film crew's efforts to produce a documentary about the early- to mid-1900s life and art of Berta Altmann. Berta gets her own voice and story throughout the book, revealing intimate details about her that no retrospective examination of the conflicted woman could ever hope to replicate--a limitation that Berta's friend and fellow artist, Krystýna Hládková, is keenly aware of, coaxing her toward filmed interviews in the hopes of adding crucial dimension to what she sees as a detachedly historical film. Krystýna's granddaughter Milena tags along as a translator and soon finds herself romantically though confusingly entangled with the crew's cameraman, the titular Aaron, and the two add their own interconnected threads to the book's tapestry of inevitable connections.

Aaron's Leap is not just one character's story but it is bound by one idea: the necessity of art. The crucial role art plays in society and the artists' need to create form the backbone of the novel, with the characters' stories serving the central thesis to varying degrees. Aaron throws himself into his work, almost talking himself out of his feelings for Milena by convincing himself that she would be a distraction from the career to which he's devoted himself; Berta practically tortures herself to produce art that satisfies her, railing against her own impulses to fit a mold that isn't true to her own avenue of expression; Krystýna, primarily appearing as an elderly woman whose final days are upon her, destroys some of the uglier vestiges of her past and throws most of her efforts into detailing the Berta she knew in the hopes of leaving behind images both of herself that her son can peacefully live with after she's gone and of the Berta she knew and loved that would otherwise die with her.

The conflict between artists' utterly devoted, almost childlike tunnel-visioned regard for the work driving them and the cold imperatives of adult responsibility emerges as a recurring theme, emphasizing the frustrations that arise from trying to strike a realistic balance between the two. Berta is the best encapsulation of this, from witnessing a professor's descent into seeming madness in order to live in unbridled servitude to his art to trying to find her own harmonious allocations of energy. She responds to an interrogation regarding the openly communist ideals she has cultivated by explaining "We don't want to destroy... We want everyone to have enough food and heat, so they don't have to choose between working for money and working for the soul" and crying out in her diary entries with existential crises like "Must one really work and scrape by only for oneself to be able to create something? Must one be self-centered?"

The seemingly self-serving nature of the artist is a frequent concern for Berta, who is routinely described as a warm, magnetic and wholly selfless woman. A therapist suggests that growing up without a mother and with a father who couldn't give her the attention she needs left the adult Berta craving love and unwilling to impose upon others, which ultimately reconciles her artistic confidence with the ostensibly incompatible self-doubt plaguing her personal life. Berta is so worried that she doesn't give enough of herself to others and saves her best parts for her art that it's not until two days before she and her husband are sent to the Terezín concentration camp that she finally realizes she has sabotaged herself, confessing that "the balance of almost forty-two years" is that she has "accomplished nothing as an artist." Neither Berta nor anyone else directly pose the question, but it is this slap of clarity that asks whether it is more selfish to live for one's art or to be so devoted to others in the finite present that it compromises one's intended legacy as a canonical powerhouse, inadvertently diminishing the enjoyment of others in the far more expansive future. When Krystýna correctly observes that Berta was only able to give herself to others through her talents in Terezín by offering art lessons to the children imprisoned with her--and, therefore, giving them some shred of normalcy during a hellish obliteration of the childlike innocence she understood so well--it is one of the book's most piercing, tragic revelations about an otherwise strong woman whose unearned sense of guilty obligation to others was her undoing.

Platzová expertly illustrates the connectivity of the past, present and future, as well as the influences such chains of events impose on the widening spiral of time. It is not only Berta's living past and current memory that unite strangers and places but also the shifting times that she witnessed that drive this point home with a poignancy. The artists comprising the company she kept as a young woman regard themselves as midwives ushering in a new era on the ashes of the old in an "attempt to remold human life and its industrially produced elements into an artistic work." There can be no new worlds created without nurturing a dissatisfaction with the old, and a willingness to sit by dispassionately in uncertain times of flux between the two is to suffer a living death.

Likewise, stagnation arises from sidestepping opportunity one too many times, as the chances to become the person that one's talent mandate they should be are not a limitless resource. While it took Berta nearly her entire life to keep her short-term needs from obscuring her long-term goals, there is a chance that Aaron will not make the same mistake and, in fact, take the leap that will lead him to the sublime fulfillment that life is waiting for him to embrace. ]]> 3.64 2006
author: Magdaléna Platzová
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2014/05/18
date added: 2014/05/30
shelves: 2014, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, our-libeary
review:
(This review was originally written for and posted at the 's site. The publisher very generously provided me with a copy of this novel.)


Magdaléna Platzová's Aaron's Leap is a powerful, sobering meditation on both the human condition and the nurturing of the artistic soul that closes the distance between far-flung eras, absent friends, and seemingly unrelated histories of people and places alike--all of which demonstrate a unifying power akin to a ripple effect in time.

The narrative bounds across decades to explore a modern-day Israeli film crew's efforts to produce a documentary about the early- to mid-1900s life and art of Berta Altmann. Berta gets her own voice and story throughout the book, revealing intimate details about her that no retrospective examination of the conflicted woman could ever hope to replicate--a limitation that Berta's friend and fellow artist, Krystýna Hládková, is keenly aware of, coaxing her toward filmed interviews in the hopes of adding crucial dimension to what she sees as a detachedly historical film. Krystýna's granddaughter Milena tags along as a translator and soon finds herself romantically though confusingly entangled with the crew's cameraman, the titular Aaron, and the two add their own interconnected threads to the book's tapestry of inevitable connections.

Aaron's Leap is not just one character's story but it is bound by one idea: the necessity of art. The crucial role art plays in society and the artists' need to create form the backbone of the novel, with the characters' stories serving the central thesis to varying degrees. Aaron throws himself into his work, almost talking himself out of his feelings for Milena by convincing himself that she would be a distraction from the career to which he's devoted himself; Berta practically tortures herself to produce art that satisfies her, railing against her own impulses to fit a mold that isn't true to her own avenue of expression; Krystýna, primarily appearing as an elderly woman whose final days are upon her, destroys some of the uglier vestiges of her past and throws most of her efforts into detailing the Berta she knew in the hopes of leaving behind images both of herself that her son can peacefully live with after she's gone and of the Berta she knew and loved that would otherwise die with her.

The conflict between artists' utterly devoted, almost childlike tunnel-visioned regard for the work driving them and the cold imperatives of adult responsibility emerges as a recurring theme, emphasizing the frustrations that arise from trying to strike a realistic balance between the two. Berta is the best encapsulation of this, from witnessing a professor's descent into seeming madness in order to live in unbridled servitude to his art to trying to find her own harmonious allocations of energy. She responds to an interrogation regarding the openly communist ideals she has cultivated by explaining "We don't want to destroy... We want everyone to have enough food and heat, so they don't have to choose between working for money and working for the soul" and crying out in her diary entries with existential crises like "Must one really work and scrape by only for oneself to be able to create something? Must one be self-centered?"

The seemingly self-serving nature of the artist is a frequent concern for Berta, who is routinely described as a warm, magnetic and wholly selfless woman. A therapist suggests that growing up without a mother and with a father who couldn't give her the attention she needs left the adult Berta craving love and unwilling to impose upon others, which ultimately reconciles her artistic confidence with the ostensibly incompatible self-doubt plaguing her personal life. Berta is so worried that she doesn't give enough of herself to others and saves her best parts for her art that it's not until two days before she and her husband are sent to the Terezín concentration camp that she finally realizes she has sabotaged herself, confessing that "the balance of almost forty-two years" is that she has "accomplished nothing as an artist." Neither Berta nor anyone else directly pose the question, but it is this slap of clarity that asks whether it is more selfish to live for one's art or to be so devoted to others in the finite present that it compromises one's intended legacy as a canonical powerhouse, inadvertently diminishing the enjoyment of others in the far more expansive future. When Krystýna correctly observes that Berta was only able to give herself to others through her talents in Terezín by offering art lessons to the children imprisoned with her--and, therefore, giving them some shred of normalcy during a hellish obliteration of the childlike innocence she understood so well--it is one of the book's most piercing, tragic revelations about an otherwise strong woman whose unearned sense of guilty obligation to others was her undoing.

Platzová expertly illustrates the connectivity of the past, present and future, as well as the influences such chains of events impose on the widening spiral of time. It is not only Berta's living past and current memory that unite strangers and places but also the shifting times that she witnessed that drive this point home with a poignancy. The artists comprising the company she kept as a young woman regard themselves as midwives ushering in a new era on the ashes of the old in an "attempt to remold human life and its industrially produced elements into an artistic work." There can be no new worlds created without nurturing a dissatisfaction with the old, and a willingness to sit by dispassionately in uncertain times of flux between the two is to suffer a living death.

Likewise, stagnation arises from sidestepping opportunity one too many times, as the chances to become the person that one's talent mandate they should be are not a limitless resource. While it took Berta nearly her entire life to keep her short-term needs from obscuring her long-term goals, there is a chance that Aaron will not make the same mistake and, in fact, take the leap that will lead him to the sublime fulfillment that life is waiting for him to embrace.
]]> 17404078 The Room, “the Citizen Kane of bad movies� (Entertainment Weekly).

In 2003, an independent film called The Room—written, produced, directed, and starring a very rich social misfit of indeterminate age and origin named Tommy Wiseau—made its disastrous debut in Los Angeles. Described by one reviewer as “like getting stabbed in the head,� the $6 million film earned a grand total of $1,800 at the box office and closed after two weeks. Now in its tenth anniversary year, The Room is an international phenomenon to rival The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Thousands of fans wait in line for hours to attend screenings complete with costumes, audience rituals, merchandising, and thousands of plastic spoons.

Readers need not have seen The Room to appreciate its costar Greg Sestero’s account of how Tommy Wiseau defied every law of artistry, business, and interpersonal relationships to achieve the dream only he could love. While it does unravel mysteries for fans, The Disaster Artist is more than just an hilarious story about cinematic hubris: It is ultimately a surprisingly inspiring tour de force that reads like a page-turning novel, an open-hearted portrait of a supremely enigmatic man who will capture your heart.]]> 270 Greg Sestero 1451661193 Madeleine 4 (This review was originally written for and posted at the 's site. Again, I preordered this bad boy well before I knew I'd be writing about it for anyone other than myself and GR.)


In the long-running tradition of so-bad-it's-good entertainment, 2003's The Room is a fairly recent but impressively groan-worthy addition. Its low-budget approach to visual effects, a script held together by non sequiturs and the wealth of glaring continuity errors make it either instantly derided or ironically charming, depending on the viewer's stomach for shoddy craftsmanship and clueless defiance of cinematic etiquette.

For the enviably/unfortunately uninitiated, The Room is yet another take on the love-triangle template, offering up one more tale of a fellow whose quietly mundane existence will be predictably turned upside down by the barely concealed affair between his fiancée and best friend, the latter played by Greg Sestero, who also served as the flick's line producer. What sets The Room apart is its enthusiastic departure from the conventions that make a movie watchable. The acting is uneven, as even the more talented cast members could only do so much with the ridiculous script and inept director. Dramatis personae inexplicably come and go with all the finesse of a drunken hippopotamus, and they cling to and then disregard their motives with similarly contrary abandon. The dialogue is wooden at best and hilariously incoherent at worst. Plot lines are introduced, run with and cast off without resolution. In short, this is the very stuff that cult followings are made to immortalize, and the audience participation that screenings both public and private invite help to reshape this train wreck into sublime chaos.

While this book heralds itself as being Sestero's life inside The Room, The Disaster Artist reads more as Sestero's attempt to make sense of both writer/producer/director/lead actor Tommy Wiseau, depicted as an independently wealthy manchild who houses more insecurities than does a comprehensive guide to mental maladies, and his self-funded, self-promoted and self-delusional labor of love. Sestero, with enough writing assistance from journalist Tom Bissell to warrant a co-authorship, explores the torturous trajectory of The Room from nascence to its opening night, as well as the strained but symbiotic friendship between Wiseau and Sestero. Sestero's own faltering forays into Hollywood are chronicled as a sort of apologetic explanation for why he stuck with a project he clearly expected to fizzle into obscurity and stuck by a man who gave him both a place to live and an opportunity for work in exchange for the mind-bogglingly creepy way that Wiseau leeched off Sestero--the more successful actor and infinitely more attractive and youthful of the two--as if Sestero's good looks and acting chops were things he could possess for himself via sheer proximity.

Much of the book is devoted to recounting Wiseau's especially memorable bouts of weirdness, jealousies and general inability to function as an adult: Goading Sestero into nearly abandoning him just to prove that he has the power to offend; producing a demo reel fashioned nearly blow-for-blow from a scene in one of Sestero's other movies; spectacularly failing to remember the very lines he wrote; subjecting the whole of The Room's creative team to his unnecessary and gratuitously filmed nudity; spending extravagantly on the film when he feels it's in the best interest of his vision but skimping on paychecks and other details he arbitrarily dismisses as minor.

To me, if not for a friend's firsthand assurance that Sestero is a genuinely likable guy who regards his accidental ascent to pseudo-fame with equal parts wry humor and gratitude, the book's tone--that of a young actor desperate to make it in L.A., whose naivete, curiosity and willingness to look beyond his vampiric guardian angel's downright hostile quirks all work together to cement an uneasy friendship that barely survives a disastrous attempt at living together--would be off-puttingly glib. Wiseau is painted as the perennial (though unintentional) sad clown who would be a tragic figure if not for his nigh unflappable hubris. But Sestero does, to his credit, try to soften his description of a man who has clearly suffered some obsessively guarded psychological setback that has seemingly forever grounded him in the defensive, combative mindset of a newly minted teenager. An example: All attempts to inject a hint of unscripted coherence in Wiseau's film are met with such disproportionate resistance and unfounded accusations that it's unsurprising the film went through several incarnations of its cast and crew; Sestero attempts to explain that, to the best of his understanding, Wiseau sees all attempts at changing his project for the better as mutinous trespasses, a threat to the tenuous authority he has purchased with his self-propelled picture. Even in the instances where Sestero seems inexplicably passive in his inability to assume control when Wiseau has lost all touch with reality, there is a strong undercurrent of desperately gleaned sympathy that keep his remembered interactions buoyantly surreal rather than needlessly cruel.

Still, the bulk of the book's humor is at Wiseau's expense, as it is impossible to read about his diva-sized antics, tantrums, paranoia and obstinate refusal to divulge personal details without cackling the nervous guffaws of tension-eroding disbelief because Wiseau's fiery outbursts are in no way proportional to their triggers. The Sunset Boulevard and Talented Mr. Ripley quotes that begin each chapter and, later, the copious nods to both films just may be the most perfect encapsulation of Wiseau within these pages. This is a man who is painted as sleepwalking through life, who literally cannot help how bizarre he is, who rewrites his own personal history as he sees beneficial.

The lingering effects of The Disaster Artist are an increased sense of respect for the hapless players at the mercy of Wiseau's deranged puppet master as well as a nagging suspicion that $6 million can't quite buy talent but it sure can stack the odds in one's favor if one is hellbent on crafting a blockbuster from incoherence and birthing a star from a woeful dearth of thespian proficiency, reality be damned.]]> 4.26 2013
author: Greg Sestero
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2013/10/19
date added: 2014/05/27
shelves: let-us-now-speak-of-great-men, the-face-is-familar, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, our-libeary, 2013, blogophilia, hancocked
review:
(This review was originally written for and posted at the 's site. Again, I preordered this bad boy well before I knew I'd be writing about it for anyone other than myself and GR.)


In the long-running tradition of so-bad-it's-good entertainment, 2003's The Room is a fairly recent but impressively groan-worthy addition. Its low-budget approach to visual effects, a script held together by non sequiturs and the wealth of glaring continuity errors make it either instantly derided or ironically charming, depending on the viewer's stomach for shoddy craftsmanship and clueless defiance of cinematic etiquette.

For the enviably/unfortunately uninitiated, The Room is yet another take on the love-triangle template, offering up one more tale of a fellow whose quietly mundane existence will be predictably turned upside down by the barely concealed affair between his fiancée and best friend, the latter played by Greg Sestero, who also served as the flick's line producer. What sets The Room apart is its enthusiastic departure from the conventions that make a movie watchable. The acting is uneven, as even the more talented cast members could only do so much with the ridiculous script and inept director. Dramatis personae inexplicably come and go with all the finesse of a drunken hippopotamus, and they cling to and then disregard their motives with similarly contrary abandon. The dialogue is wooden at best and hilariously incoherent at worst. Plot lines are introduced, run with and cast off without resolution. In short, this is the very stuff that cult followings are made to immortalize, and the audience participation that screenings both public and private invite help to reshape this train wreck into sublime chaos.

While this book heralds itself as being Sestero's life inside The Room, The Disaster Artist reads more as Sestero's attempt to make sense of both writer/producer/director/lead actor Tommy Wiseau, depicted as an independently wealthy manchild who houses more insecurities than does a comprehensive guide to mental maladies, and his self-funded, self-promoted and self-delusional labor of love. Sestero, with enough writing assistance from journalist Tom Bissell to warrant a co-authorship, explores the torturous trajectory of The Room from nascence to its opening night, as well as the strained but symbiotic friendship between Wiseau and Sestero. Sestero's own faltering forays into Hollywood are chronicled as a sort of apologetic explanation for why he stuck with a project he clearly expected to fizzle into obscurity and stuck by a man who gave him both a place to live and an opportunity for work in exchange for the mind-bogglingly creepy way that Wiseau leeched off Sestero--the more successful actor and infinitely more attractive and youthful of the two--as if Sestero's good looks and acting chops were things he could possess for himself via sheer proximity.

Much of the book is devoted to recounting Wiseau's especially memorable bouts of weirdness, jealousies and general inability to function as an adult: Goading Sestero into nearly abandoning him just to prove that he has the power to offend; producing a demo reel fashioned nearly blow-for-blow from a scene in one of Sestero's other movies; spectacularly failing to remember the very lines he wrote; subjecting the whole of The Room's creative team to his unnecessary and gratuitously filmed nudity; spending extravagantly on the film when he feels it's in the best interest of his vision but skimping on paychecks and other details he arbitrarily dismisses as minor.

To me, if not for a friend's firsthand assurance that Sestero is a genuinely likable guy who regards his accidental ascent to pseudo-fame with equal parts wry humor and gratitude, the book's tone--that of a young actor desperate to make it in L.A., whose naivete, curiosity and willingness to look beyond his vampiric guardian angel's downright hostile quirks all work together to cement an uneasy friendship that barely survives a disastrous attempt at living together--would be off-puttingly glib. Wiseau is painted as the perennial (though unintentional) sad clown who would be a tragic figure if not for his nigh unflappable hubris. But Sestero does, to his credit, try to soften his description of a man who has clearly suffered some obsessively guarded psychological setback that has seemingly forever grounded him in the defensive, combative mindset of a newly minted teenager. An example: All attempts to inject a hint of unscripted coherence in Wiseau's film are met with such disproportionate resistance and unfounded accusations that it's unsurprising the film went through several incarnations of its cast and crew; Sestero attempts to explain that, to the best of his understanding, Wiseau sees all attempts at changing his project for the better as mutinous trespasses, a threat to the tenuous authority he has purchased with his self-propelled picture. Even in the instances where Sestero seems inexplicably passive in his inability to assume control when Wiseau has lost all touch with reality, there is a strong undercurrent of desperately gleaned sympathy that keep his remembered interactions buoyantly surreal rather than needlessly cruel.

Still, the bulk of the book's humor is at Wiseau's expense, as it is impossible to read about his diva-sized antics, tantrums, paranoia and obstinate refusal to divulge personal details without cackling the nervous guffaws of tension-eroding disbelief because Wiseau's fiery outbursts are in no way proportional to their triggers. The Sunset Boulevard and Talented Mr. Ripley quotes that begin each chapter and, later, the copious nods to both films just may be the most perfect encapsulation of Wiseau within these pages. This is a man who is painted as sleepwalking through life, who literally cannot help how bizarre he is, who rewrites his own personal history as he sees beneficial.

The lingering effects of The Disaster Artist are an increased sense of respect for the hapless players at the mercy of Wiseau's deranged puppet master as well as a nagging suspicion that $6 million can't quite buy talent but it sure can stack the odds in one's favor if one is hellbent on crafting a blockbuster from incoherence and birthing a star from a woeful dearth of thespian proficiency, reality be damned.
]]> 5439 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations. In "A Temporary Matter," published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple faces the heartbreak of a stillborn birth while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession. Lahiri writes with deft cultural insight reminiscent of Anita Desai and a nuanced depth that recalls Mavis Gallant.]]> 198 Jhumpa Lahiri 0618101365 Madeleine 0 4.18 1999
author: Jhumpa Lahiri
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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]]> 13450105 The Sound of Waves is a timeless story of first love. It tells of Shinji, a young fisherman and Hatsue, the beautiful daughter of the wealthiest man in the village. Shinji is entranced at the sight of Hatsue in the twilight on the beach and they fall in love. When the villagers' gossip threatens to divide them, Shinji must risk his life to prove his worth.]]> 183 Yukio Mishima Madeleine 0 3.72 1954
author: Yukio Mishima
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1954
rating: 0
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]]> 321539
“Fierce, phantasmagorical � a huge, sprawling, exuberant novel.” � The New York Times

Moraes "Moor" Zogoiby, the last surviving scion of a dynasty of Cochinese spice merchants and crime lords, is also a compulsive storyteller and an exile. As he travels a route that takes him from India to Spain, he leaves behind a tale of mad passions and volcanic family hatreds, of titanic matriarchs and their mesmerized offspring, of premature deaths and curses that strike beyond the grave.]]> 448 Salman Rushdie 0679744665 Madeleine 0 to-read 3.91 1995
author: Salman Rushdie
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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shelves: to-read
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]]> 8584686
The Bigtree alligator-wrestling dynasty is in decline, and Swamplandia!, their island home and gator-wrestling theme park, formerly #1 in the region, is swiftly being encroached upon by a fearsome and sophisticated competitor called the World of Darkness. Ava’s mother, the park’s indomitable headliner, has just died; her sister, Ossie, has fallen in love with a spooky character known as the Dredgeman, who may or may not be an actual ghost; and her brilliant big brother, Kiwi, who dreams of becoming a scholar, has just defected to the World of Darkness in a last-ditch effort to keep their family business from going under. Ava’s father, affectionately known as Chief Bigtree, is AWOL; and that leaves Ava, a resourceful but terrified thirteen, to manage ninety-eight gators and the vast, inscrutable landscape of her own grief.

Against a backdrop of hauntingly fecund plant life animated by ancient lizards and lawless hungers, Karen Russell has written an utterly singular novel about a family’s struggle to stay afloat in a world that is inexorably sinking. An arrestingly beautiful and inventive work from a vibrant new voice in fiction.]]> 315 Karen Russell 0307263991 Madeleine 0 3.22 2011
author: Karen Russell
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.22
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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]]> 2129286 Classic 338 Jules Verne 0141321040 Madeleine 0 3.64 1864
author: Jules Verne
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1864
rating: 0
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]]> 1385057 368 William Shakespeare 0312108362 Madeleine 0 3.80 1593
author: William Shakespeare
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1593
rating: 0
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]]> 72978 Titus Andronicus is one of Shakespeare's earliest and bloodiest tragedies and was hugely successful in his lifetime. Subsequent generations have struggled with its bold confrontation of violence but in the 20th and 21st centuries the play has chimed with audiences again, perhaps because of its simultaneously shocking and playful approach to violent revenge and bodily mutilation. Jonathan Bate's original Arden edition was first published in 1995 and has had a significant influence on how the play has been performed and studied in the past 20 years. This revised edition includes a new 10,000 word introductory essay in which Bate reassess his views on the play's co-authorship with George Peele in the light of contemporary textual scholarship and updates his lively account of the play's performance history, on the international stage and screen. With detailed on-page commentary notes this will continue to be the edition of choice for students, scholars and theatre-makers.]]> 269 William Shakespeare 0671722921 Madeleine 0 3.67 1594
author: William Shakespeare
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1594
rating: 0
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]]> 51533 479 D.H. Lawrence 1593080131 Madeleine 0 3.45 1913
author: D.H. Lawrence
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.45
book published: 1913
rating: 0
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]]> 16081
This edition of Chopin's classic novel presents the 1969 Seyersted text along with five critical essays--newly commissioned of revised for a student audience--that read The Awakening from five contemporary critical perspectives.

Each critical essay is accompanied by a succinct introduction to the history, principles, and practice of the critical perspective, and a bibliography that promotes further exploration of that approach.

The text and essays are further complemented by an introduction providing biographical and historical contexts to Chopin and The Awakening, a survey of critical responses to the novel since its initial publication, and a glossary of critical and theoretical terms
--back cover]]> 343 Kate Chopin 0312062354 Madeleine 0 3.80 1899
author: Kate Chopin
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1899
rating: 0
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]]> 1257269 175 Eugene O'Neill 0300046014 Madeleine 0 4.11 1956
author: Eugene O'Neill
name: Madeleine
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1956
rating: 0
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]]> 10720 Happened , comes a slyly funny, vastly revelatory memoir that is at once a loving
evocation of a lost America and an exploration of the frontier where life turns
into literature.

Now and Then follows Joseph Heller from his fatherless childhood on the
boardwalks of Depression-era Coney Island, where he grew up amid the rumble of
the Cyclone and the tantalizing aroma of Mrs. Shatzkin's knishes. It offers a
dizzying bombardier's-eye view of the sky over wartime Italy, where Heller
encountered the characters and incidents he would later translate into Catch-22.
It depicts a writer coming to terms with both rejection and celebrity. Here, in
short, is a life filled with incident and insight, recollected with  subversive
humor, exquisite timing, and a fine appreciation for the absurd.]]> 272 Joseph Heller 0375700552 Madeleine 0 3.00 1998
author: Joseph Heller
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.00
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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]]> 4790281 Up at the Villa, W. Somerset Maugham portrays a wealthy young English woman who finds herself confronted rather brutally by the repercussions of whimsy.
On the day her older and prosperous friend asks her to marry him, Mary Leonard demurs and decides to postpone her reply a few days. But driving into the hills above Florence alone that evening, Mary offers a ride to a handsome stranger. And suddenly, her life is utterly, irrevocably altered.
For this stranger is a refugee of war, and he harbors more than one form of passion. Before morning, Mary will witness bloodshed, she will be forced to seek advice and assistance from an unsavory man, and she will have to face the truth about her own yearnings. Erotic, haunting, and maddeningly suspenseful, Up at the Villa is a masterful tale of temptation and the capricious nature of fate.]]> 209 W. Somerset Maugham Madeleine 0 3.85 1941
author: W. Somerset Maugham
name: Madeleine
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1941
rating: 0
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