Sherry (sethurner)'s comments
Sherry (sethurner)'s comments from the Constant Reader group.
Note: Sherry (sethurner) is no longer a member of this group.
(showing 1-20 of 57)
The last couple years I taught high school freshmen, I used a site called Poetry 180 as a source for reading them a poem a day. Collins created the site with 180 poems he thought young people would appreciate, one for each academic school day. This was always the first one, and they loved it. The image of beating a poem to death through over analysis is wonderful.
Olive Kitteridge was quite a hit on another book board in which I participated. I started listening to it in audio format and was not engaged, but perhaps I will try again in print.
While I was interested in aspects of Japanese society, like the emphasis on personal appearances, overall Out was not my cup of tea. I told my husband as I was reading that every time I finished a reading session I felt like washing my hands. I'm not squeamish - it's just that I didn't enjoy this world, and these people, except perhaps the Japanese/Brazilian worker. I admit that the final scene was a real page-turner, but I had an uneasy feeling of being a voyeur to sexual violence. I also found the writing style, perhaps the fault of translation, to be wooden, and awkward.
Whew, there are some gorgeous photos here!
The Omnivore's Dilemma was fascinating to me too, a book that informed and entertained on every page.
Someone will need to help me with posting photos here. I made an album of a few Lima pictures on my profile page, but I'm lost as to how to add them to this board.BTW, I added my old AOL screen name for the folks who migrated to Goodreads now that the AOL book boards are closing, and to distinguish me from the other Sherry. Hope it helps.
I just got home from a week-long tour in Peru, and I am so tired that my head is spinning, but I am very excited to have seen parts of Lima. I have pictures I can share when I get my act together better. But now I want to go back to the library to check the book out once more and skim back to look for references. We toured most of the old colonial part of Lima, and a hotel I stayed at one night was in Miraflores, a newer and more affluent part of the city.
The old question about how much is "real" and how much invented. In my heart, I don't care. What matters to me is the story and the characters as they are presented. Llosa has said that the boy is based on himself, and Aunt Julia on his first wife, but they are fictionalized. I suspect many characters in novels have their origin in people the author knows or knew.
I never thought the novel was meant to be realistic, but rather something more filled with romance, excitement, crazy twists of fate, slightly larger than life characters. You have the naive young writer desperate to grow up, escape his parents and find love, the sexy divorcee, the wild dwarfish scriptwriter who dons costumes to get into character. How could this ever be a realistic novel? I'm torn about continuing to read criticisms because I want to keep the satisfied and happy (well, maybe bittersweet) feeling I had after I closed the last page.
"She could have left him when she was fifty, in the prime of her life. "LOL, Sherry, that line cracked me up, since I'm currently in the prime of my life...
Out of step as usual, I thought the soap operas were very funny, in a black humor sort of way, and I liked the way Vargas Llosa suggested that "real life" isn't always so different from the far-fetched plot lines of the soaps. I wasn't upset with his attitude toward women. This is about fifty years ago, and it is a Latin American country after all. I read the soap opera chapters fairly quickly, once I figured out the plot device of alternating chapters, but not so quickly I couldn't see the confusion, chaos, and overlapping of characters that betrayed the scriptwriter's gradual slipping into madness.
I always think of Gregor writing about very dry eastern Washington, where she grew up. Her current environment must be informing her work now.
My favorite place varies - it depends on where it is warmest, brightest, and quietest. These days it's on an old love seat on our three-season porch. The old furniture is comfy, the light excellent. The only issue is the racket. My dh is the household cook, and a darned good one. He loves to cook with public radio blasting. In the old days something like radio didn't bother me, but in my dotage any noise slows my reading to a crawl. I don't dare complain, obviously, since I might lose my chef! At those times I have an old wooden rocker in the bedroom that works fine.Other than that, I get tons of reading done on airplanes and in airports. I can shift into overdrive and really burn up those pages when we travel. I can read at t he beach, but these days I need a lounge chair or my back complains - more loudly than any radio.
This link could not have arrived at a better time for me, since I have been buying old books to scan for the illustrations to use in collage work. Many thanks!
I am about 2/3 through AJATSW, loving it. But I'm also packing for a week-long trip to Lima and Cusco. We leave on the first day of spring. So, I am enjoying the novel on a couple levels. Try to keep the posts to a minimum for a week, OK? LOL, that will not happen, I know.
Just jumping in late. I have been thinking about Fos and his damaged vision from the gas in the trenches. If I still had the book here I'd quote, but it seems to me that vision - or lack of it - is a major theme in Evidence of Things Unseen. Fos constantly tried to see things, falling stars by the shore, the bones in people's feet, but has difficulty because of his eyesight. Likewise he has difficulty "seeing" the damage his unbridled enthusiasm for science eventually causes. He's not alone of course in this.
Just start adding the books, and keep it simple. Maybe fiction and nonfiction. Do just a few a day. Look at other people's shelves and raid their titles if you've read them already. I have almost identical shelves on Goodreads and Shelfari because I lost my "life Lists" in computer misadventures here at my house. I think there is a way to print a list of books from your shelves as a paper back up. The longest journey starts with one step.
I enjoyed the book and everyone's comments. I kept thinking I'd put together more to say, but the book had to go back to the library and I moved on mentally. Still, I appreciate the effort so many people put into their analysis and interpretation of the novel.
<<Cigarette going in the ashtray, The red wine pulsing in its glass,
A warning light meaning
Everything was simmering>>
All I could think was "there will be blood!" I love the double meanings in many of these lines, like wanting to "chew things over."
Jane, I was looking at Opal's list too, her "bucket list" of things she wanted to do to expand her life. I think she experienced lots of things vicariously through Flash's books, but I'm willing to bet that she wouldn't have traded being a mother for all the trips, champagne or camel rides in the world. She might have said, "I counted." Pun intended.
