false 6436536 3 <p>What if Mary Shelley had not invented Frankenstein’s monster but had met him when she was a girl of eight, sitting by her mother’s grave, and he came to her unbidden? What if their secret bond left her forever changed, obsessed with the strange being whom she had discovered at a time of need? What if he were still alive in the twenty-first century?<br><br>This bold, genre-defying book brings us the “monster” in his own words. He recalls how he was “made” and how Victor Frankenstein abandoned him. He ponders the tragic tale of the Shelleys and the intertwining of his life with that of Mary (whose fictionalized letters salt the narrative, along with those of her nineteenth-century intimates) in this riveting mix of fact and poetic license. He takes notes on all aspects of human striving—from the music of John Cage to robotics to the Northern explorers whose lonely quest mirrors his own—as he tries to understand the strange race that made yet shuns him, and to find his own freedom of mind.<br><br>In the course of the monster’s musings, we also see Mary Shelley’s life from her childhood through her elopement with Percy Bysshe Shelley, her writing of <i>Frankenstein,</i> the births and deaths of her children, Shelley’s famous drowning, her widowhood, her subsequent travels and life’s work, and finally her death from a brain tumor at age fifty-four. The monster’s fierce bond with Mary and the tale of how he ended up in her fiction is a haunted, intense love story, a story of two beings who can never forget each other.<br><br><i>A Monster’s Notes</i> is Sheck’s most thrilling work to date, a luminous meditation on creativity and technology, on alienation and otherness, on ugliness and beauty, and on our need to be understood.</p> 6626116 23 6 2009 A Monster's Notes total:30|5:3|4:4|3:6|2:8|1:9| 30 74 190 22 0 0 false false Fri Nov 13 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Thu Nov 12 04:46:47 -0800 2009 Fri Nov 13 04:06:16 -0800 2009
It is a book about the Frankenstein "monster" meeting Mary Shelley when she was a young girl, and he still exists in modern times, and the book is 400 plus pages of his notes with a mixture of ex...more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Sep 13 12:54:55 -0700 2009 Mon Sep 14 15:49:36 -0700 2009 more...]]> 0 1 false false Thu Aug 13 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Aug 16 19:44:38 -0700 2009 Sun Aug 16 19:52:46 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Thu Jul 30 11:26:34 -0700 2009 Thu Jul 30 11:26:34 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Thu Aug 13 14:07:14 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 13 14:13:43 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Wed Jul 29 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Jun 06 10:07:41 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 29 15:22:00 -0700 2009
It's a brilliant and rewarding book for those with patience an...more...]]> 2 0 false false Sun Aug 02 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Jul 27 09:23:29 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 03 10:30:24 -0700 2009 more...]]> 1 0 false false Tue Jul 21 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Jul 20 21:03:45 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 21 06:23:15 -0700 2009 more...]]> 0 0 false false Fri Sep 11 12:08:34 -0700 2009 Fri Sep 11 12:08:50 -0700 2009 New Yorker.

Maybe this book will help me get Frankenstein, which I currently most emphatically do not.more...]]> 2 0 false false Sun Aug 23 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 24 08:22:19 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 24 08:24:22 -0700 2009 1 more...]]> 2 0 false false Thu Oct 29 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Oct 29 06:48:55 -0700 2009 Thu Oct 29 06:50:38 -0700 2009 1 0 false false Tue Jun 30 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Jun 30 13:13:17 -0700 2009 Tue Jun 30 13:13:17 -0700 2009 2 0 false false Mon Oct 26 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Oct 22 18:49:38 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 26 19:37:37 -0700 2009 2 0 false false Mon Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Sep 03 16:55:33 -0700 2009 Thu Sep 03 16:56:19 -0700 2009 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...]]> 2 0 false false Fri Sep 11 08:36:43 -0700 2009 Fri Sep 11 08:36:58 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Tue Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Sep 14 07:53:20 -0700 2009 Mon Sep 21 09:40:13 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Sun Oct 18 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Jul 06 08:57:58 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 19 14:04:36 -0700 2009 more...]]> 1 0 false false Thu Jun 18 06:59:32 -0700 2009 Sat Aug 22 23:57:28 -0700 2009 1 0 false false Sat Sep 12 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Sep 03 16:27:31 -0700 2009 Sat Sep 12 23:30:50 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Mon Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 01 15:29:04 -0700 2009 Tue Nov 03 12:14:14 -0800 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=6436536