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Mar 20, 2011

brian rated it:

i almost like your book. almost. it's a fun synthesis of a bunch of death related topics, there're some great historical and personal anecdotes, tons of interesting hypothetical situations and philosophical either/ors... but i object to your britishness, y'know? that whole mannered and clever and cautious thing...? this is death, man! the end! finito! skull and crossbones! grim reaper! "nothing more terrible, nothing more true!"

sure, there are gems throughout, but ultimate More...

16 comments like (16 people liked it)

Jan 25, 2009

David rated it:

MASSIVE FURBALL ALERT!!!!

In this massive eructation of self-indulgent, rambling, repetitive prose, Julian Barnes contemplates his mortality. At considerable, punishing, length. Where does it get him? To paraphrase another writer: And the end of all his exploring is to arrive where he began. Despite the purgatorial length of this hideous hairball of a book, he never really arrives at any conclusion. The reader isn't even offered the courtesy of a chapter break. The book just meande More...

4 comments like (17 people liked it)

Apr 07, 2010

Bells rated it:

On and on he goes! Where he stops, no one knows!

With a great title like that and a cover showing me a grave, I expected sooooo much more. What a bummer.

What I got were the rambling thoughts of the author on his eventual demise, the demise of his parents, what (drop in big name -preferably French- philosopher/artist here) thought, and what his friends C., G., H. and T. think about death. (I hate that initial shit. Make up a name if they want to be anonymous.)

N More...

30 comments like (5 people liked it)

Oct 14, 2008

Christy rated it:

I haven't read any of Mr. Barnes's fiction, but this work of prose (an "elegant memoir") has been a joy to read. Barnes muses on death by integrating ideas of mortality, memory, family history, questions about religion and the after-life, literature and philosophy (mostly French philosophers). "Nothing to be Frightened of" is not nearly as earthy as Thomas Lynch's "The Undertaking." Lynch is fully aware that mortality rate of humans is always 100% and he seems unfri More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 21, 2008

Bruce rated it:

Does arriving at “a certain age” predispose one to thoughts of dying? Is it because I have retired that I think about death every day? I doubt it, since I have thought about it every day for as long as I can remember, for decades. Does having been a physician keep the idea of death in my mind, even after I am no longer in practice? I don’t know whether it is true of other physicians or not, nor do I know whether non-physicians have the same experience – I suspect the phenomenon is vocation n More...

2 comments like (5 people liked it)

Oct 19, 2008

Maha rated it:

Another gem from Julian Barnes, perhaps best characterized as a memoir in essay form.

By which I mean, it doesn't have a narrative arc or set out to take us through Barnes' life or any particular chronological section of it. In fact, it leaves lots out--his marriage and his professional life are noticeably absent.

Instead, it begins the way a magazine essay on mortality might, with some musings about how we cope with death in a post-religious society (keep in mind, this i More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Feb 06, 2009

Terence rated it:

It takes 185 pages (in my edition) but Julian Barnes finally manages to define what “life” means to him: “a span of consciousness during which certain things happen, some predictable, others not; where certain patterns repeat themselves, where the operations of chance and what we may as well call for the moment free will interact; where children on the whole grow up to bury their parents, and become parents in their turn; where, if we are lucky, we find someone to love, and with them a way to li More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 13, 2011

Edward rated it:

The "nothing" of the title refers to death, something that most people are very frightened of, primarily because it is something that our rational and ego-centered selves have no control over. Barnes speculates on what death means, drawing heavily on French authors such as Flaubert, Montaigne, Jules Renard, and others. It usually takes more humility and wisdom that most of us have to admit that in the billions of years of our universe's existence, our deaths, and lives, amount to very More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 31, 2011

Teresa rated it:

4 and 1/2 stars

I was drawn to this book because of Barnes' writing and because of the topic. And if it sounds odd to say one enjoyed a book about the fear of death/complete-annihilation, so be it. Barnes is entertaining, erudite, and even chuckle-out-loud funny in this book. He also writes of memories of his childhood, how they differ from those of his brother, how narrative/story both shapes and changes what we remember or what we think we remember, and contemplates the idea of m More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 31, 2008

Stephen rated it:

So ends the reading year of the "friend" named "Steve." If the last day of the year fell as it should on the winter solstice, that darkest of all days, then this would be a fitting end: Julian Barnes humorous, learned, and poignant meditation on death. Despite the title, Julian Barnes is convinced that death is something to be frightened of and that all the little games we play, or are at least instructed to play, to take the sting out of death are not very successful, at l More...

5 comments like

Dec 01, 2008

Eric rated it:

Barnes's subject is death ("mortality often gatecrashes my consciousness") and his goal is to carry himself (and his readers) to a point whereby the thought of one's last end is ... well, nothing to be frightened of. Half memoir and half meandering treatise, this book by one of contemporary Britain's most elegant and respected writers should strike a chord with everyone. It's a philosophical, playful, and even humorous treatment of ideas, fears, and rehearsals every human being obsesse More...

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Aug 29, 2011

Monthly Book Group rated it:

The majority opinion was that of admiration – some grudging, some less so – for the cleverness of the book, mingled with substantial reservations about it. More specifically, there was admiration for the precision and concision of his language, in tandem with a chatty style. We liked the wealth of anecdotes and the breadth of ideas (from the latest scientific thinking about the nature of the brain, to quirky facts such as that your nails do not actually continue to grow after death). We liked th More...

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Apr 30, 2011

Joselito rated it:

In one of our bathrooms we keep a drum of water which is usually half-filled and always uncovered. Occasionally, for reasons I do not know, a rat would fall into it. There'd be no way for it to climb back out. And as no one in our household is plucky enough to handle a live rat, we'll just let it stay there until it tires and finally drowns. The big black ones succumb faster than the smaller ones. The record holder of sorts was a really tough, brown, less-than-medium-sized rat athlete who kept o More...

2 comments like (8 people liked it)

Mar 13, 2011

Trevor rated it:

I generally don’t read other people’s reviews of books before I write my own – I worry that I will end up so affected by their review that I will never know if what I have to say after reading them will really be my reaction to the book or to their review – worse, of course, is to then go on to write a review that says much the same as they have said while thinking of them as my own thoughts. But for some reason I read what one of the best reviewers on this site had to say about the book: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/437... More...

10 comments like (9 people liked it)

Sep 12, 2010

carissa rated it:

as a Christian, i feel like i've given death a lot of thought for someone this far from the average life expectancy. Nothing to Be Frightened Of is written from the perspective of someone who has also thought a lot about death as his time inevitably winds down, but whom answers elude. a lifelong agnostic, he's denied even the comfort of being sure of annihilation. Barnes is very private, proper, hestitant, and otherwise thoroughly English throughout this memoir/collection of essays. some might f More...

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May 04, 2010

Judith rated it:

I kept dog-earing the pages of this book because the author says so many thing so well that I wanted to go back and read them again. This book is not for the faint of heart and is definitely not a page-turner. And you don't want to pick it up in the middle of the night hoping to be lulled back to sleep. His descriptions of the universal human terror of staring into the abyss of death is enough to keep you wide awake, if not terrorized. Why, then, would anyone give this book 5 stars? Beca More...

4 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 29, 2010

Al rated it:

Julian Barnes is getting older... We are more conscious of coming to 'the end'... How do we deal with this reality?

Barnes approach is to present a kind of memoir, an examination of his family, himself, his philosophical brother's comments, on this subject — but he does it in a witty, amused and basically lighthearted fashion. He examines what other writers have written about it, and compared that with their actual ends. He examines particularly the French writer Jules Renard, and wh More...

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Jun 10, 2009

Nathan rated it:

I couldn’t put this memoir down. I didn’t mean to read it all but I couldn’t help it. I could discern no structure at all, but just followed Barnes for two hundred pages of reflections on death and God through the lens of his family. The whole memoir has the sort of wistfulness of the opening line quoted in the title of this post: ‘I don’t believe in God but I miss him.’

Despite the constant humour, it is a frightening book to read. I have never thought through so fully the consequenc More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 11, 2009

Thermalsatsuma rated it:

There is one thing in life that we can be certain of - we are all going to die, sooner or later, and there is nothing that we can do about it.

In this book the author Julian Barnes muses on his own mortality, his fears about death and the process of dying, the unreliability of memory and the temptation to try and apply a narrative to your life. He considers the lives of his parents and their respective declines into infirmity and death, as well as the life of his grandfather about whom More...

3 comments like

Dec 05, 2011

Texbritreader rated it:

Moments in this highly personal work about death, from author Julian Barnes, struck me very close to home but I found much that was alien to my own sensibility. He begins with his own oppressive and persistent fear of death, cataloging its history and examining its evolution within his family. His relationships with his aloof parents and philosopher brother take center stage from the start and provide a touchstone throughout the text as Barnes attempts to deconstruct his feelings and beliefs a More...

2 comments like

Aug 22, 2010

Barry rated it:

"[T:]he death rate for the human race is not a jot lower than one hundred percent," notes author Julian Barnes. That may be the only certain (and perhaps even comforting) truth. Everything else is just a "beautiful lie," compelling and often irresistible but still a lie. Does free will exist? Arguably, no! These are just a few discussion points in the highly entertaining, provocative, and often amusing conversation on death and dying in which Barnes would have us engage.
More...

0 comments like

Feb 04, 2010

Julia rated it:

Where to even start? Barnes is British, one of those to whom my daughter introduced me. This is different from THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD IN 10 AND 1/2 CHAPTERS or FLAUBERT'S PARROT. This book deals with Barnes experiences of death--the deaths of his parents, of his favorite writers, and of course of his own. He still has his usual wit; I literally laughed for 5 minutes straight when he wrote his response (on. p. 111) to the Venerable Bede, a medieval writer who compared our lives to a bird flying More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jul 02, 2009

Sean rated it:

Julian is a worrier. He can't stop obsessing about death. Those of us who obsess about other equally uncontrollable things have a hard time enitrely sympathizing with his eschatological fetish, but see plenty of parallels in his ruminations on memory and aging. His wry observations and overall erudition make this worth reading and contemplating about. Particularly if you are, as he is, a Francophile in the extreme, to the point that he lapses into impressive imitations of Flaubert throughout. An More...

0 comments like

Oct 21, 2009

Kim rated it:

I've not ever read a book like this.

About 50 pages in I started wondering when chapter 1 was going to end, come to find out that it wasn't. I hadn't realized how habitually I read books chapter by chapter until there were no chapters by which to bide my time. Metaphor much? This is me in my life right now I think. You close the chapter on grade school, high school, college, all of which you knew when you started roughly how long they would last. Now you're reading this new chapter, More...

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Jan 19, 2012

Conrad rated it:

Having read his Booker prize-winning novella "The Sense Of An Ending" first, I can see that many of his musings in this book were foundational to the plot in that one. He explores the subjective nature of memory (his own and those around him - friends and family) and contemplates the meaning (or meaninglessness) of existence. He sticks his toe in the dark waters of psychology and the new evolutionary thinking of the likes of Richard Dawkins to see if he can find an answer there and fi More...

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Jan 15, 2010

Ed rated it:

this witty memoir/rumination on death and dying is best when punching holes in bromides like those of Kubler-Ross.It seemed driven by his the fact that Barnes' fears of death were not diminishing with age and not much eased by what secular wisdom has to say about it. I thought of it historically as a book by someone who could no longer turn to Christian comforts or fears about death but hadn't yet bought into the comforts offered by secularists. I wondered what someone reading this book in, say, More...

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Sep 19, 2011

Shruti rated it:

The only reason this book hasn't gotten 5 stars is because there is no great "narrative conclusion" to Barnes' memoir. The book is quaint, lovable and quite surprisingly keeps your interests going until the end. One would assume it'd be a depressing, morbid read; but it hardly "frightened" me or changed my own reaction to/conception of death. What is was instead, was a pleasurable read that was light, yet poignant. There are some brilliant quotes in there, and I loved the met More...

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Nov 18, 2011

Robert rated it:

A short, nicely written book of the author's ruminations on dying, specifically the fear (or lack thereof) of doing so. Barnes, an agnostic, spends little time on death itself, assuming it to be a nothingness, a non-existence. But he does ponder at length the act of dying, sometimes repetitively, and usually entertainingly with the exception of a section near the end where he seemed to lose focus (or lose me, in any case). And while he waxes philosophically about dying, he never addresses wha More...

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Aug 22, 2010

James rated it:

This book is many things; it is a memoir, an extended essay on death, a series of reflections on philosophical issues, a few mini-biographies of some writers (predominantly French) and his thoughts on writing. I found myself giggling almost constantly up until the half way point when it slowly became more and more of a slog - that's not to say that it's not very sad at times as it is a book on death after all. But overall I enjoyed it, it introduced me to things I hadn't heard of before, it's ju More...

0 comments like

Jan 15, 2009

Ryan rated it:

Given that I regularly ponder death myself, I picked up this book. It's both insightful and humorous at times. I will admit I had some difficulty getting through, however. Most points of reference were to historical European figures, something I'm just not knowledgeable enough about. The language was also difficult to sift through at times, as the British vernacular differs quite significantly in some areas from standard American stuff that I'm used to. This is no knock on the author, I'm j More...

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