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| # | cover | title | author | isbn | isbn13 | asin | num pages | avg rating | num ratings | date pub | date pub (ed.) | rating | my rating | review | notes | recommender | comments | votes | read count | date started | date read |
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| 0618640150
| 9780618640157
| 4.41
| 208,713
| Jul 21, 1954
| Oct 12, 2005
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not a review and there probably won't be one any time soon. i also won't be climbing Mount Everest in the near future. but here are some cool illustra...more
not a review and there probably won't be one any time soon. i also won't be climbing Mount Everest in the near future. but here are some cool illustrations that i found and want to share.           World of the Ring by Jian Guo(less) | Notes are private!
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| 0870541609
| 9780870541605
| 4.30
| 955
| 1990
| 1990
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"Ahead lies only the irreversible long decline. For the first time we know there is nothing beyond ourselves." when do you know that the book you've ju...more "Ahead lies only the irreversible long decline. For the first time we know there is nothing beyond ourselves." when do you know that the book you've just read is one of your favorite books? that an author you've been reading is one of your favorite authors? probably a variety of factors come into play. for me, the love affair often begins when i realize that the author or book has a few specific attributes: genuine compassion and empathy for human beings combined with a dark and despairing view of the human condition itself; an imagination so fertile and original that it verges on nuts. James Tiptree Jr. and the stories contained in this collection have such traits. it's a beautiful thing when that kind of connection between reader and story happens. and when, on top of that, the author's personal story is both fascinating and moving... LOVE. if you know nothing about the author, look her up under her pen name or her real name, Alice Sheldon. a truly fascinating and complex individual. Tiptree has been pegged as a feminist author, from the good ole days of the 70s, and is sometimes described as a so-called Angry Feminist. well, the shoe sorta fits: she is definitely angry! her stories about gender imbalance are filled with brutal men, disempowered women, and a barely simmering undercurrent of rage at the injustice of it all. i have absolutely no problem with this and i don't think being considered a "feminist" is remotely insulting. however, the idea that Tiptree writes primarily about the issues of women is not just limiting (similar to likewise limiting descriptions of Angela Carter or Margaret Atwood)... it is incorrect. Tiptree writes about gender, about change, about society, about life, about death - the whole kit & kaboodle. she is not a single-issue writer and her stories are overflowing with marvelous idea after marvelous idea - of which the relationship between the genders is just one of many concerns. she writes with passion, fierce conviction, and is possessed of a remarkable generosity of spirit towards her doomed characters and despairing situations. "despair"... that should probably be addressed. the stories in this collection are bleak and deeply tragic. don't look for happy endings when reading Tiptree! one of the more positive endings has its effervescent narrator joyfully accepting his slow death and consumption by his beloved life-partner; another has a pair of characters excitedly exit the dull, restrictive confines of earth, forever. all of the stories contained within this collection are gems. some are beautifully polished and glitter with their brilliance. others are more rough-hewn, less pretty to the eye - but valuable nonetheless. each one is deeply intelligent; each one is a distillation and expansion of a particular thesis or set of ideas; each story is overflowing with wit, smarts, sadness, and life; each story stands completely on its own. here are some of my favorites: (special thanks to BunWat for helping my wee little brain fully understand the ramifications of several of these stories.) The Screwfly Solution: something insidious is turning men against women... Tiptree takes her basic idea and spins it in directions that are full of tension and slowly ratcheting unease... the mid-stream change in narrators is an ingenious decision. The Girl Who Was Plugged In: a sad pop culture addict becomes a glorious celebrity & beautiful face of sinister corporate interests... a buzzing, dizzying use of slangy language and a dense narrative full of extreme emotional highs and lows. The Women Men Don't See: are women a separate species? apparently only time and opportunity will tell... perhaps Tiptree's most famous tale, this story about the secret nature of women is warm, wise, deviously sardonic, and has one of the most nihilistically hopeful endings i've ever read. Houston, Houston, Do You Read?: three astronauts are flung far into the future, to discover that the world has changed, possibly for the better - but for them, definitely for the worse... i loved the depiction of this futuristic society, in many ways a personal dream come true (minus, ahem, a few key aspects)... i smiled and laughed so much while reading this one. oh, the tragic fate of assholes! With Delicate Mad Hands: a physically unattractive woman takes control of a ship to search for destiny and fulfill her most secret dreams... it should be mentioned that the highly sympathetic woman in question is a murderous psychopath... this novella is equal parts nuts 'n bolts thriller, xenographic study of a bizarre planet full of unusual (and unusually loveable) alien species, and psychological portrait of a disturbed and downtrodden woman... a rapturously annhilating mystery in space. A Momentary Taste of Being: a suspenseful, well-detailed and richly characterized novella about a scout ship's search for a colony site for an overpopulated earth... featuring disturbing mind control, creepy incestuous undertones, a hyper-sexualized alien 'invasion', a terrifying transcendence... my favorite story in the collection. We Who Stole the Dream: tonight the aliens revolt! against disgusting, oppressive humans, of course. HUMANS OUT OF THE GALAXY NOW! Love Is the Plan the Plan is Death: a hopeful tale of a charmingly high-spirited, forward-thinking young lad learning about life, death, and love... slowly coming to understand that the increasing length of the cold seasons equals increasing danger... fighting against tradition and culture to protect his and his loved ones' future... it should also be noted that the endearing hero in question is a gigantic, savagely violent alien-spider-monster. Slow Music: two of the final inhabitants of earth struggle to decide if they want to stay themselves and continue the human race, or transcend into the great beyond... a great twist ending... a mournful saga in miniature. "A Mournful Saga in Miniature"... that phrase could also be used to describe each and every one of these glorious stories. i was enchanted by the despairing, empathetic tragedy and lightly percolating wit of the visions contained within this book. in many ways i am reminded of an equally dark and wonderful classic scifi writer - the ineffable Cordwainer Smith. two beautiful writers and two amazing human beings. i love you, Alice Sheldon! and your stories, so full of dark yet wistful tragedy. "The lutroid's nictitating membranes filmed his eyes. After a moment he said formally, 'You carry despair as your gift'."(less) | Notes are private!
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Mar 10, 2012
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| 0140439447
| 9780140439441
| 3.90
| 75,625
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| Dec 28, 2004
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Status Report: Chapters 1 - 8 i had forgotten how much i love Dickens. the man is a master at the immersive experience. it is really easy for me to get...more Status Report: Chapters 1 - 8 i had forgotten how much i love Dickens. the man is a master at the immersive experience. it is really easy for me to get sucked into the world he is so carefully constructing, to revel in all the extensive details, the lavish description, the almost overripe imagination at work. his strength at creating a wide range of entirely lived-in settings (both brief snapshots of places in passing and crucial places like David's home and school) is equalled by his even more famous skill at sketching the characters - often, but not always, caricatures - that live and breathe in his world. this is the kind of deep-dish experience that i love to have when traveling, on a plane or a bus or in some plaza, a second world to live in while taking a break in exploring the immediate world around me. i can't help but also remember how many people dislike Dickens. i'm remembering an ex who told me he was her least favorite author, and how her resentment at being forced to read him in high school almost put her off reading for pleasure in general. it is hard to reconcile such a strong distaste for Dickens with my own easy enjoyment of his novels. my automatic reaction is that the reader who isn't enchanted by him either dislikes the style of writing or is simply the sort of idiot who should stick to reading facebook. well i don't date idiots, so i assume her reaction is based around the writing style. maybe that is the basic rationale for most folks who don't care for him. or maybe it is based on something else. there is something that i've found to be off-putting about David Copperfield, at least so far. namely, the incredibly passive and naive behavior of David himself (and his mother, of course). it's more than just my automatic distaste for reading about victims, although that is certainly a part of it. what it feels like at times is that Dickens is stacking the deck a bit, making miserable situations even more potentially miserable, by having his protagonist (and that wretched mother, of course) be almost developmentally disabled in his inability to understand even basic things about the world around him. it sorta drives me up the wall. well, that complaint aside, this has still been an awesome time. first and foremost, even more than the world-building and juicy characters, i love the dry and sardonic humor that is constantly working double-time. not only does it create some distance between reader and book in regards to the various horrors visited upon young David... it is fookin' hilarious! favorite parts so far: - that brilliant opening chapter "I Am Born" - the Peggotty boat-house and the warmth of that wonderful family. i would like to live there! - Steerforth. ugh! what a charming monster. - the sadly minor note tragedy of Mr. Mell ☂ Status Report: Chapters 9 - 26 i think i was expecting a bit more evil from the Murdstones. the way they treat David is certainly unkind verging on cruel - but i suppose i thought it would be a lot more brutal. this is not a complaint! if anything, i appreciate that Dickens makes David's predicament a much more realistic one. the Murdstones are cold, cold people. and they certainly drive David's tedious mother to an early grave (i shed no tears on that one). but i was surprised that their primary action is to simply send David away to a boring job, one that no child his age should have (and here i am viewing the narrative through my 21st century lense). a callous decision yet not a vicious one. David is merely an irritation that they want to dispense with, rather than harm. interesting. that brief segment was certainly enlivened by the depiction of the marvelously goofy Mr. Micawber & Family. and by a fascinating look into life in a debtor's prison. i assume this is the classic Poor House? but then... good grief, poor David Copperfield goes through hell to escape this life of tedium. many emotions on my part, all centered on the idea of such casual cruelty towards a runaway. brought back some unsettling memories of my brief time as a homeless youth counselor. and then - at last! - some decency. even better, eccentric rather than mawkish decency. Aunt Betsey & Mr. Dick are two more wonderful Dickens creations. especially that tough old broad Aunt Betsey - each and every one of her appearances are a delight. when David finally gets to the safety of his Aunt's house, i felt a lot of tension drain out of me. it is like his story is now truly about to begin, now that the Gothic horrors slash neglected childhood bits are out of the way. - an introduction of the best character yet: Uriah Heep! this is the role that Crispin Glover was born to play. what a wondrously creepy and perfectly realized little villain. all that supplicating, all that writhing! brilliant stuff. - interesting: David is rarely called by his actual name. two more nicknames are added to the list: Trotwood and Daisy. David is rather a tabula rasa of a character. - the relationship between Mr. Wickfield and Agnes is not heartwarming. it is downright creepy. and now the tension is ratcheted up again, but in a way that doesn't make me sorta squirm with discomfort (tales of child neglect ≠ a good time for me). three sets of increasingly dire circumstances... (1) Lil' Em'ly and the despicable villain Steerforth (2) Agnes and the despicable villain Uriah Heep (3) Aunt Betsey and a mysterious, blackmailing unknown despicable villain will David be able to intercede in any of these troubling situations? i am doubtful, but also hopeful. go, David, go! ☁ Status Report: Chapters 27 - end exhilarating, wonderful, awesome, etc, etc. all the good words. i laughed (a lot), i cried (just a little, and in a manly sort of way), i wouldn't change or subtract a single word. perfect! ☼ Final Report okay this will be less of a Final Report and more of a collection of final thoughts as i think back on the novel and consult with the various threads in Serials Serially - the group that started me reading this novel. first, the division in the novel. the first third or so, all about young David and his fairly awful travails: vivid and powerful. the remainder of the novel, all about David in his young adult years and following the growth of all those narrative seeds planted in that fertile first third; an excess of details veering on repetitious, and so that the book becomes less of a frightful gothic tale and more of a slow-burning assortment of mysteries (and many, many instances of pure comedy): less vivid and perhaps less powerful. looking back, i have to say that i am in the minority and preferred the last two-thirds. not only was the tension of potential situations involving child abuse and neglect now gone (a personal bugaboo of mine that will quickly render almost any literary or cinematic experience into something hugely uncomfortable and unappealing)... but it somehow all felt more real to me. the first third was visceral but almost cartoonish while the rest of the novel felt as if i was actually living in the novel. such was the extent of the detail and the effect of following these characters as they move throughout many different situations and changes in their lives. "cartoonish". or better yet, "Dickensian". what does that really mean? a peculiarly stylized version of caricature? i understand the rep that Dickens has with his characters. they are stylized, obviously. but very few of them remained caricatures to me. ultimately, most ended up feeling very real and i was impressed at Dickens' ability to provide multiple dimensions to his characters - although he does it in a rather subtle way. his heroes do not get strong criticism and his villains do not get endearing moments of humanity. and yet it is there. David Copperfield is kind and good, but he is also a passive, foolishly naive fellow whose kindness and naivete often does nothing but make situations worse - especially in nearly every instance involving his relationship with Steerforth. Agnes is also kind and good, but her passivity makes her function as a sort of enabler to her father. Steerforth is a callous and feckless villain, but has moments of genuine warmth and kindness. Rosa Dartle is a heartless shrew - but look at that poor bitch's entire life with Steerforth & mom - i'd become a heartless shrew in that situation as well. Uriah Heep is an unctuous, slimy kiss-ass and back-stabber... but look where he comes from, his context, the kind of person his father was and the ideals he was raised up to worship. and of course Micawber, who would be pure pathos but whom Dickens treats with an extraordinary amount of affection. Dickens is not necessarily an 'even-handed' author, but he is one who is clearly aware of context. there are some comments in this review's thread about women in Dickens - comments that i initially agreed with. but in retrospect, i actually don't agree. looking back on this novel, the women are often just as full of life as the men. perhaps folks are mainly thinking of the rather anemic Agnes. but now - when i think of dim Dora and vicious Rosa and ferocious Aunt Betsey and tragic Emily and loveable Peggotty and maudlin Mrs Gummidge and pathetic Martha and the eccentric 'two little birds' (Dora's aunts) and pretentious Julia Miles and dignified-under-pressure Mrs Strong and hilariously faithful-to-a-fault Mrs Micawber - i think of characters who leap right off of the page and stay to live in my mind. so, no, i am not critical of how women are portrayed in Dickens. except, maybe, Dora. she is surely one of the most bizarrely stupid characters ever created in classic literature. when she first baby-talks David's nickname "Doady", i practically wanted to barf. she's so stupid that many times i found myself thinking She's Not Stupid - She's Mentally Disabled! good grief! and so i felt bad about my contempt and i started having mixed feelings about David even being with her. it seemed somehow wrong. there is also something so sexless about her character - it was impossible for me to imagine her capable of any sort of genuine intimacy. but i have to give it to Dickens - he doesn't present her as an ideal (unlike David), he satirizes her mercilessly in scene after scene, and in the end, invests both her marriage and her death with such genuine, palpable emotion that i became genuinely, palpably moved. her marriage scene (practically every paragraph beginning with "Of") was one of the most dreamily written passages i've ever read. and her death - not explicitly described, but paralleled with Jip's death - wow. amazing scene. the combined death scenes of brave Ham and horrible Steerforth was almost equally moving. that last line describing Steerforth at his final rest: superb. okay i think i'm spent. this is one of those novels that i can probably talk on and on about, so i should just make myself stop. i'll close by saying that the novel is, in a word, brilliant. i loved the language, the humor, the whimsy, the drama; the characters were wondrously alive; the narrative both surprisingly subtle and excitingly larger-than-life. so many scenes were indelible - too many to recount. David Copperfield is one of my favorite novels. ☀ David Copperfield: An Alternative Perspective(less) | Notes are private!
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Feb 12, 2012
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| 0688030653
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| 4.47
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(view spoiler)[message 24: by mark 27 minutes ago i can't narrow it down, that's an unfair demand! nor am i lurker. but hey, i'm awake at 3:18 am so...more (view spoiler)[message 24: by mark 27 minutes ago i can't narrow it down, that's an unfair demand! nor am i lurker. but hey, i'm awake at 3:18 am so that's reason enough: Absolute Beginners The Raj Quartet Little, Big Thin Red Line Catcher in the Rye (sorry, haters) message 25: by karen, future RA queen (new) 12 minutes ago at least two of those are out of print in this country, so tell me why i should be jealous/ go on, what's so great about thoooose books? message 26: by mark (new) 3 minutes ago OUT OF PRINT, WTF?! that is very upsetting. which two? i ramble on and on and on about Absolute Beginners, Little Big, Thin Red Line, and Catcher in my reviews for those novels... so i'm feeling rather shy all of a sudden about rambling on and on and on again about them. but The Raj Quartet! no review... so now i can really ramble on, yeah! but first let me pour myself a glass of 3:42am wine. perhaps it will get me back to sleep (unlikely). message 27: by mark (new) 55 minutes ago okay wine sounded terrible all of a sudden, so some microwave hot chocolate instead (very classy). here goes... oops, now the microwave is beeping message 28: by mark (new) 6 minutes ago (hide spoiler)] WHY YOU SHOULD READ THE RAJ QUARTET 1. do you like to read extensively detailed, dense, dramatic historical fiction that does not stint on characterization or slow-burning narrative action? do you like to read about colonial india, specifically colonial india during the troubled handover from the british raj back to indian control, and then of course the horrible partitioning? i do. but why exactly? well, let's see... 2. do you like to read about class systems and their impact - on a systemic level and on an intimate, personal level as well? i sure do. class is the basis of so many, er, classic english novels, but there is just something so drastic and of course so racially-based as the class system of colonial india. the class system becomes so palpable, so real, so almost on the verge of breaking down because of its inherent, disgusting unfairness when race is brought into the mix. class in literature that depicts colonial india is also powerful to me on a personal level. i'm not sure i can explain this in words that are inoffensive. i'm a person who loves classic english (and early american) literature. i eat it all up. and yet there is always a side of me - and i acknowledge that this may be due to my mixed-race status - that shouts at the back of my mind when reading those novels: ohyouthinkitssohardyouspoiledupperclasstwit/ youneedlesslyresentfullowerclassknob you'restillwhitewhitewhite andsohavesomanymoreautomaticadvantagesmorethanyou'lleverrealize, justshutthefuckupwithyourwhiningalready! i don't get that voice when i'm reading about colonial india. class analysis within this subject is stark: you are brown or you are white, that determines your class, and in the end it doesn't matter what your level of education is, how much money you have, whatever... there will always be an automatic divide based on where you were born and what color your skin happens to be. that starkness makes it so much more relevant to me. and on top of that, the author also explores intragroup class distinctions within the races depicted. 3. do you like to read about tragic romance? this one has one of the best examples of its kind. the lovers are so warmly, honestly depicted. what happens to them is so disturbing... and it reverberates to inform the rest of this epic and nearly all the major characters within it. 4. do you like your historical novels to relate history on a personal scale? do you like to see how great events impact folks who are not movers & shakers but simply caught up in a grand design not of their making? 5. do you like old-fashioned villains but yet long for completely realistic, three-dimensional characters who have understandable motivations as they continue to do the horrible things they do? can the two be combined? Raj Quartet has a couple outstanding examples. 6. do you want to read the perspective of older folks, flitting in and out of potential senility, considered useless by the younger generation, dreamy and strange and not-quite-getting-it? this novel has my favorite example of the kind. she is not idealized. she is not a fountain of wisdom. she is heartbreaking. 7. do you like poetry in prose form? for such an elephantine undertaking, one full of extensive historical detail and given wide-screen scope, The Raj Quartet is written by an author who knows how to turn a phrase. a looooooong phrase. Paul Scott is an amazing writer. he knows how to construct sentences that make you pause and wonder at how language can convey the most ambiguous of feelings, the beauty in a tiny detail, the strangeness of a foreign setting, the way a place can actually look and feel and smell and taste. 8. do you like strong women? good, so do i. this book is full of them. sometimes they are heroes, in one case a villain (such a black & white word, but it fits), but mainly they are just people who are trying to do the best they can. they are not "strong" in a wish-fulfillment sense of the word. they are strong in a way that is real, that is brave because of their personal and historical context, that is worthy of respect because of their need to define themselves according to their own personal context. 9. do you like intricate narratives? say no more, this is royalty as far as intricacy is concerned. as a reader, you better pay attention. characters come and go, but they are not dropped. actions impact actions and those actions, that impact, unspools in all directions, ever-widening but sometimes submerged, sometimes leading to a dead end, but always connected in a way that is so complex and so subtle, so small and so large. 10. do you want an excellent BBC adaptation of your favorite english novel, preferably in miniseries format? hey, you got that too. watch this AFTER you read the series though, well at least that's the way i did it and it was awesome. so awesome that i put off breaking up with a pretentious asshole simply because we hadn't finished the miniseries yet and he owned the, um, vhs tapes. he was trying to "educate" me. i waited to break up with him until after the last episode. well, i guess i was the asshole in that case. (view spoiler)[gosh, i wrote so much. this feels like a review. time to cut and paste! (hide spoiler)](less) | Notes are private!
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| 3.76
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| Jan 30, 2001
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journal entry today i am 15 years old. everything is all bullshit, as usual. i can't believe how fucked everything is around me. like i'm surrounded by...more journal entry today i am 15 years old. everything is all bullshit, as usual. i can't believe how fucked everything is around me. like i'm surrounded by zombies. i can't talk to any of my so-called friends, i can't talk to jamie, i can't talk to my parents. who would bother listening anyway. i cannot wait to leave orange county! this place makes me fucking sick. everyone is a hypocrite. everything is so goddamn bright and shiny and sunny and meaningless. FUCK, life is so full of crap. there is one good thing in my life though. just read this book Catcher in the Rye. blown away! i don't know how a book written decades ago could say exactly what i would say. it is like the author was reading my thoughts and put it all down in this book. things i didn't even realize i felt were right there on the page! I LOVED IT. i think this is my favorite novel of all time. which is not saying a whole lot because there is a ton of pretentious bullshit out there and i bet mrs. durham will force us to read it all. man i hate that bitch. journal entry today i am 20 years old. life is great as usual. just enjoyed my wednesday morning wake-and-bake session with j-p, the sun is shining, the san diego weather is beautiful, and tonight i'm off to rob & gregg's to destroy them at bullshit. love that game! gregg says that joelle will be there (yes!) but she'll probably bring that prick pete with her. one of these days i'm going to lose it and kick his ass. "i'm in a band"...fuck you, pete! i will never spin your records. all i have on the agenda today is to go to the gym and then off to keracik's american lit class. it is not a bad class, although it is nowhere close to gender studies with halberstam. or davidoff's survey of modern postmodernism last semester. now that was a class! it blew my mind. so many things to think about. the reading in american lit has been okay. but we've been assigned to read Catcher in the Rye and it is terrible. can't believe i ever liked this book. caulfield is a whiny little bitch. the book has no depth. there is literally nothing going on with the narrative, style, theme, characterization, it is just one rote cliché after another. he thinks he is such a rebel-without-a-cause but in reality he is just another tired representation of rootless, stereotypical masculinity and gender essentialism. completely inane and without meaning. i think my essay will use some acker-style postmodernist techniques to show how simplistic this trite "classic" truly is. i'm going to deconstruct the shit out of this novel, baby! journal entry today i am 25 years old. another gray, drizzly san francisco morning. i wish christopher would wake up, i really need to talk to him after all that shit last night. notes on my pillow, really?? time to grow up dude, i will never "complete you". well actually i'm glad he's still asleep, my throat is too sore to get into it right now with him. plus Food Not Bombs is happening this morning and i have to get the kitchen ready. john is probably hard at work already, typical over-achieving behavior. i bet the wisconsin kids are still crashing on our living room floor. it's time for them to leave! they've seen The Vindictives at every single Epicenter or Gilman show now and it is time for them to hit the road. or learn to take a shower. this apartment is not the world's crashpad! i woke up early this morning and thumbed through A Catcher in the Rye. i remember hating this book in college for some reason. probably wasn't po-mo enough for me. or "challenging". feh. what a pretentious idiot i was. this is a beautiful book. it changed my life as a kid, i'm not sure how i would have survived orange county without it. just re-reading parts of it brought back all that old angst about all the fucked-up shit in the world that kids have to deal with. i'm not sure there is another book as insightful or as meaningful. or funny! that part with the clipping-of-the-toenails is hilarious. ackley is such a douche. this book is the foundation of every zine that i have ever loved. a perfect novel. it is so...."human", i guess. journal entry today i am 30 years old. man my head hurts...so hungover! my birthday party last night was awesome. even got to spend some time on the turntables (thanks kraddy for actually relinquishing a tiny bit of control for once). i must have made out with a half-dozen people. sadly, no real action. i think last night's party will be the last big party i will ever throw. things have got to change. no more partying like the world is about to end, i still have my entire life ahead of me! tomorrow i am going to go into AIG and hand in my notice. i am not an entertainment insurance underwriter, that is not me. fuck them. if erika can get me that job working with homeless kids at Hospitality House, than i am set. although moving from the biggest room in the flat to the water heater closet will be no fun. i'm 30 years old now for chrissakes! still, i've got to do something meaningful with my life. it cannot all be about booze, drugs, hooking up, and paying everyone's rent when they're broke. things have got to change. i cracked open A Catcher in the Rye yesterday before the party and read some of my favorite parts. what an inspiration! seriously, that is a classic novel. it is packed with meaning. i'm twice caulfield's age but i still somehow connect with him in a very direct way. my life is going to change and the attitude expressed in that book is at the heart of that change. i love you, holden caulfied. it's not too late for me to learn from you, to find some meaning in life. journal entry today i am 35 years old. another intense, sad, but deeply fulfilling week has passed. every day something meaningful happens, something so emotional and real. sometimes i find myself just losing it in a fetal position because of the things i've seen. working with people who are drug addicted or who have been abused or who are dying is HEAVY. but it is also beautiful. it's hard to believe i am dealing with all of that and supporting my folks too. thank God i have good friends to talk to about these things. anyway. so now marcy wants to have a kid. i just don't know how i feel about that. this is such a fucked up world, do we really want to bring new life into it? i dunno. it seems....selfish, somehow. she should just quit her job with the d.a.'s office and get back to her roots in the public defender's office instead. does she think that having a child with me will bring more meaning into her life? my life has meaning enough already. and i really am not sure i can handle that responsibility on top of everything else. i skimmed A Catcher in the Rye yesterday, after an awkward talk with marcy about having a baby. it was not an inspiring read. caulfield is so full of misplaced angst! i'm not sure i even understand him anymore. why is he so pissed off? he's seen nothing of the world and what the world can actually do to people. i want to like him, i want to re-capture that feeling of affection i had for him, but now his contempt and his anger just seem so meaningless, so naive. he really does not have it so bad. there is so much worse out there. i don't know how i would handle a kid like that. i hate to say it, but i constantly rolled my eyes when reading it. oh the emotional self-absorption of youth! just you wait, caulfield. it sure gets a hell of a lot more complicated once you grow up. journal entry today i am 40 years old. when did i become a boss? it is like i woke up one day, mysteriously transformed into an old man. am i really a "leader"? what does that even mean? sometimes i feel like i am just faking it all and someone is going to figure it out and blow the whistle on me. last week i made a huge play on the Council, i had all my ducks in a row, and all the votes came in just as i had planned. everyone has their own agenda and the way to get things done is simply to recognize and engage with that disappointing fact. some folks got up and started clapping and then the whole room joined in, even council members who voted against my motion - feh, phonies. the experience was sort of amazing but it also made me feel very odd, almost disconnected from myself. is this who i am now, a public policy figure, a community advocate, a mayoral appointee? ugh, i can't stand the mayor. i don't feel like me. there is accomplishment there, and some satisfaction... but i am missing something, something visceral, something real. sweet Jesus, is this what a mid-life crisis feels like? it is a weird feeling, like i know everything that i need to know about the world, about the people around me, how everything connects, but yet i still feel like i know so little about life. oh, such angst, mark. surely you've outgrown this? i've started re-reading A Catcher in the Rye. it's so strange, during different parts, i felt like crying. a wonderful and moving novel. i feel like i really understand holden, like he is my guide, my son, my brother, my friend... myself. i think of him and i know that change in the world and changing myself can still happen. it just has to happen. that's life after all, right? 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i'm a big fan of unusual foods. organ meats are great. also, both black & white pudding. in oaxaca they had these crispy, spicy fried grasshoppers...more
i'm a big fan of unusual foods. organ meats are great. also, both black & white pudding. in oaxaca they had these crispy, spicy fried grasshoppers that they cooked & served on sidewalks in paper cones. in restaurants, they'd serve it on the side, chopped up. i guess you are supposed to sprinkle it over your food. it had an interesting but not very strong flavor. i think it was mainly about the texture. however, after i pulled a feeler from between my teeth, i sorta became disgusted and stopped eating them.(less)
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there are probably as many reviews of Cat's Cradle as there are stars in the sky, so no doubt there's little i can add that's of any value. who cares?...more
there are probably as many reviews of Cat's Cradle as there are stars in the sky, so no doubt there's little i can add that's of any value. who cares? i love hearing myself talk, so let's go for it! ..... well, this is harder than i thought. it's as easy as describing why i love my favorite pillow or threadbare t-shirt, or why i like rainy days as much as sunny days. okay, here goes. the inventiveness of Cat's Cradle and its bleak, absurd humor was incredibly eye-opening to me in high school and it practically provided a template for how i looked at things. in college, it was a joy to return to, particularly after the tedious nonsense foisted upon me in various classes (well, in time, i grew to love all the tedious nonsense foisted upon me, but that was years later, and besides the point). after college, it defined the outlook of almost everyone i knew around me, and i remember bothering folks to read it so that they could understand some of my references, or so that they could read their own worldview, in book form. when i said things like "impaled... on a giant hook" or "i want to read your index", folks had no clue about what i was talking about. i guess that's why i eventually stopped saying those phrases. and back to the book. Cat's Cradle: it has warmth and anger and wisdom and an almost naive kind of brashness at times. i love that combo. favorite character: cynical young Philip Castle: do-gooder, sarcastic asshole, painter, owner of a hotel that scorns snobs and is therefore pretty empty. i love you, Philip Castle! my second fictional crush slash look, i see myself! type character. Holden Caulfield came first and Donnie Darko eventually replaced you... but you were the dreamiest.(less) | Notes are private!
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i am actually assuming that i will be Left Behind, so my concern is more for others. i hate seeing families and friends split apart! when it does occ...more i am actually assuming that i will be Left Behind, so my concern is more for others. i hate seeing families and friends split apart! when it does occur, i would like to be someplace where there will be lots and lots of folks being Raptured....that way, right afterwards, i'll be able to pick up all the wallets and purses that are also Left Behind. you don't need money in heaven, right? and so with all the honest folk gone, i also feel confident that post-Rapture will be ripe for money-making opportunities. no more guilt! i can indulge in all the hustles, scams, and grifts i've ever wanted, to my heart's content - but without feeling any sadness over cheating any of the Good People. yahoo, bring on those post-Rapture greenbacks! I'M GONNA BE RICH, BITCH! (less) | Notes are private!
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Tales within tales, tales out of space, tales that spring from stars that fall from sky to take human shape; the writer writes like the dreamer dreams...more
Tales within tales, tales out of space, tales that spring from stars that fall from sky to take human shape; the writer writes like the dreamer dreams dreams - some dreams yearning and romantic, others dark and tragic, each dream holding a little bit of the next dream in its heart: the story as Oriental Ouroboros: the Arabian Nights as template, as both starting point and point of resolution; themes and metaphors and symbols slowly surfacing, to disappear and then reappear again, transformed, reborn - a byzantine pattern of eastern arabesques and western curlicues, swirling together and then apart; the writer weaves a tapestry of stories woven within stories; tales that leap from earth in the form of beasts and birds, tales out of time, many tales within one great, enchanted tale.(less)
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| Jun 08, 2010
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when i read horror, i'm usually looking for: (1) cheap thrills or (2) surreal and metaphysical weirdness or, best of all, (3) an epic full of dread a...more when i read horror, i'm usually looking for: (1) cheap thrills or (2) surreal and metaphysical weirdness or, best of all, (3) an epic full of dread and melancholy . there is plenty of the first sort and so much of it is trash. but fun can be had with trashy things and i'm no snob. the second type can be a little more hard to find, but there's a lot to be had as well, if you look in the right places, especially the past. but the third kind, that's the hardest, i've only found a few. Declare, It, The Terror. and The Passage. in a lot of horror, i'm not exactly eager to slowly lose myself in the world depicted - the experience is often more like a rollercoaster or a fun nightmare. but that last category, those mournful sagas - they are my special favorites. i may not want to live in a novel's world, but if it is a world that is so carefully crafted and then grown, one filled with tragedy and sadness and coming together and coming undone... i find it very easy to get lost in those worlds. it is a great feeling. so on to The Passage. it is an excellent novel, complete with multi-leveled characters, spiritual mysteries, exciting action set pieces, and the trappings of several genres (vampire, post-apocalypse, and in the first third, an on-the-run-from-the-government-style thriller). the writing is solid, well-crafted, and certainly in no rush. particularly outstanding is the depth of characterization present in even minor or elusive characters such as the scientist Lear or the child molestor Grey. the first third of the novel is pretty much perfect, tightly-paced yet generous with motivation and context, and featuring three of the most warmly written and sympathetic characters i've come across in a while: Agent Wolgast & Sister Lacey & Anthony Carter: fallen agent, unearthly nun, misunderstood criminal. the empathy created by the author for these three and the depth of their background stories... i just really was not expecting that and it was wonderful to experience. unlike many other readers, i felt the remaining two-thirds were very strong, moving easily between a wide range of physical and emotional landscapes, from complex world-building to pointed irony to moments of eerie beauty to straight-up horror (particularly in the Haven sequence). although it could be said that characterization was a bit less rich in the last two-thirds, the range of emotions depicted was often on a wider and more dynamic scale - the reader is able to watch characters actually grow and change. i appreciated Cronin's vampires. they certainly run against the current grain! although the threat of their bizarre, bestial presence looms over the entire novel, they remain enjoyably enigmatic and largely in the background. i assume the amount of attention paid to the vampire Babcock and his traumatic past (also very well done) will be paralleled in the sequels by depictions of the remaining vampires. The Passage has been compared to The Stand; personally i think The Passage is superior. my only real issue is the very ending, which could come across as cheaply ironic and unnecessarily brutal if it wasn't clear that this is only book 1 of 3. i assume that this disturbing cliffhanger of an ending will eventually be resolved with the same sensitivity and grace brought to the rest of the novel's various episodic sequences.(less) | Notes are private!
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the hero of this novel, Mr. Norrell, is in many ways a stranger in a strange land, uncomfortable with base emotions and disappointed with the shabbine...more
the hero of this novel, Mr. Norrell, is in many ways a stranger in a strange land, uncomfortable with base emotions and disappointed with the shabbiness and inadequacies of others... yet always yearning for true companionship. a dignified, erudite, and refined gentleman: quietly soulful and elegantly restrained; commanding in his encyclopedic knowledge of the magical arts. the other character, a fey and unreliable sort apparently named "Jonathan Strange", offers fleeting friendship that is quickly frittered away in tawdry misadventure, misplaced romance, and other assorted bits of ill-conceived and juvenile tomfoolery, often abroad, often with a host of questionable characters. even worse, Strange's nascent addictive personality rears its dark dark head, causing all sorts of trouble with various dire characters that were once thought lost in history. fortunately, Mr. Norrell is a stalwart and brave ally, and his careful guidance soon sets things in their natural order - no thanks to the whimsical and unreliable Strange. *** an awesome book, one of my favorites. the comparisons with Austen & Dickens have been made repeatedly; i agree. it almost seems silly to review this - it is like some kind of immense edifice, some giant piece of art, or something, that folks should just experience rather than read about. the pacing moves from snail-like and digressive to hallucinatory and lightning fast. the characters are wonderfully complicated. the magic is fascinating. the whole thing is smart and funny and melancholy and charming and just brilliant. plus the footnotes: fantastic! this is a huge novel but i wasn't bored for a second. i hope this never becomes a movie.(less) | Notes are private!
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milo you're not the boss of me, you can't tell me what to do! i am going to continue fighting, masturbating, and eventually becoming a statistic!
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ah! and there you are, my perfect little novel! it has been some time since last we've embraced. come, let us reacquaint ourselves. but what is that y...more ah! and there you are, my perfect little novel! it has been some time since last we've embraced. come, let us reacquaint ourselves. but what is that you say, and so modestly? what is so perfect about you? my sweet darling, don't be so shy! you are indeed a wondrous creation. here, let me count the ways... 1. your mystery is timeless. three schoolgirls and one schoolmistress disappear on Valentine's Day afternoon, in 1900, in australia, at the mysterious Hanging Rock. where did they go? did Nature take them, as revenge for all the injustices done against her? or perhaps she simply saw four enchanted individuals who belonged to her and not to the worldly world that they seemed to float above? upon their disappearance, a sad and tragic series of events unfolds and broadens, and so the mystery becomes larger... a pattern of sorts is created; many questions rise to the surface of a once-placid community. how do our actions impact others? how does a tragedy reverberate and affect all those connected, how does it resonate in others and bring forth emotions and thoughts and actions that they never knew could exist? the mystery at the heart of this novel is like a stone tossed in a lake: the mystery drops into the water, past the surface, not to be seen again... but the water ripples outward, concentric circles opening wider and wider, that reach so much further beyond that initial impact, that initial drop into the unknown. 2. your prose is lovely. not a single word is out of place. so artful yet never overly mannered, so charming yet never coy or affected, so dry yet never cold-blooded. you manage to be both dreamy and precise. your points are made with nuance and subtlety. you do not hammer away relentlessly but are instead content to murmur your sharp but rather ambiguous comments, all the better for your audience to contemplate them at leisure. you say more in your trim 213 pages than many novels that clock in at over twice your length. 3. your narrative... a jewel box, so compact, and full of intriguing things. and even better, it is a magic box: its interior is larger than its exterior! in just a few pages, here and there, it outlines the lives and futures of a half-dozen characters, in a way that is clear and meaningful and real and often surprisingly ironic. truth be told, your story is an often cruel one, with little or no hope for several of its characters - and yet you note these twists and turns with the lightest of touches. this light touch does not reduce the stories to anecdote, but instead allows these lives, these deaths, these tragically missed opportunities and these happy endings to evoke a fable's simplicity. 4. your characters are only briefly (but efficiently) characterized, and yet they are indelible. here is the boy who is courageous and idealistic and who lives above the world, and who rescued the wrong girl - or at least the wrong girl for him. here is the girl who loved the world around her so much that she could not leave it, and so was rescued, and who then found that the love of her life - that brave rescuer - was not for her. here is the loyal friend, rooted in the physical, rough and shy, an ideal companion for a wistful idealist, a secret and almost unrecognized hero, one who is rewarded beyond his wildest imaginings. here is the tragic sister, a rebel, an artist, an orphan, alone in the world, roughly handled emotionally and physically, yet loved and cared for - but (alas) unknowingly, a wilting flower destined for a flowerbed. and there is our awful villain, Mrs. Appleyard the Headmistress, dour and dreadful, a rather grand contretemps of her own making, a monster come undone. 5. you leave me with that intriguing, unnerving feeling of Wanting To Know More. it is a wonderful thing, and there is so much to consider. most of all: why did those girls and their schoolmarm disappear? you throw out a bold red herring in your varied descriptions of nature being trampled underfoot by clumsy, unknowing humans. perhaps it is Nature's Revenge, you seem to suggest. upon a closer reading, you offer a far more ambiguous yet provocative interpretation, one based upon the nature of those who disappeared: they were not of this world, in spirit or in deed. with this reading, their disappearance becomes less of a tragedy and more of an epiphany... the girls and their mistress have moved beyond us all and our petty concerns; their lives were spent reaching beyond this mortal coil, and so... perhaps they have escaped it, and entered a new realm, a higher plane. but, in the end, i do not believe the mystery itself is the point of your story. i think that the tale of Picnic at Hanging Rock is less about what has happened and more about what does it all mean... is there a greater implication, a pattern even, to all of our little actions and to all of our little lives, one that exists beyond us, one that connects us to each other and to a world beyond? here, in your own lovely words, is where i found the true purpose behind your strange, thoughtful tale: "Peering down between the boulders Irma could see the glint of water and tiny figures coming and going through drifts of rosy smoke, or mist. 'Whatever can those people be doing down there like a lot of ants?' Marion looked out over her shoulder. 'A surprising number of human beings are without purpose. Although it's probable, of course, that they are performing some necessary function unknown to themselves.' Irma was in no mood for one of Marion's lectures. The ants and their business were dismissed without further comment. Although Irma was aware, for a little while, of a rather curious sound coming up from the plain. Like the beating of far-off drums."oh, the glorious mystery of it all! but, one may ask, what does it all truly mean? what is the exact point, how does this all add up, what specific message are we supposed to glean? well, my apologies... i am not one to kiss and tell!(less) | Notes are private!
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A true masterpiece and one of my favorite novels. Although it has all the realistic, gritty detailing that any novel recounting World War 2 Guadalcana...more
A true masterpiece and one of my favorite novels. Although it has all the realistic, gritty detailing that any novel recounting World War 2 Guadalcanal should have, it is so much more. The reader will indeed learn which gun is which and which rank is which. They will understand what needs to happen to take a hill. They will know what a crowded ship full of men will smell like. They will come to understand the practical intricacies of making war. But, as anyone who viewed the recent version of the film will know, the story is not one based on narrative but one based on a specific philosophy: we are all, as humans, forever destined to never truly understand one another, we are forever destined to never truly achieve the kind of empathetic meeting of heart & mind & soul that we may yearn for - a yearning we may not understand or even recognize. War is, if it is anything, an insane metaphor for that lack of understanding, that true lack of connection, and to be a part of that metaphor is to be, in a way, as insane. This is a novel of many voices, each individualized and each specifically unique and amusingly detailed. And yet there is a similarity to the themes that emerge from the thoughts of each of the characters, whether they are trying to understand their brothers, their girls back home, their commanders, their enemy, their next target, or the war itself: the feeling of distance. It is a melancholy and confusing feeling. Each one blunders through his life in his own way, barely grasping what is happening around him, barely grasping what is happening inside himself as well. The novel is epic in its depiction of war, but it is intimate in its depiction of the levels of mystery within each of us and between us as well. It is surprisingly funny at times. James Jones has a mordant voice and he knows the ridiculousness of men, how amusing our little concerns and irritations and idiosyncrasies can be when depicted at times gently but more often pointedly. He also knows that throwing dozens upon dozens of characters in the narrative will confuse and annoy the lazy reader – but how else to illustrate the confusion of wartime? The coming and going of bodies, of places, of times that all blur together. Jones himself was a WW2 veteran, and so the details are impressively laid out – but what is even more impressive is the poetic, sorrowful mourning that is suffused throughout the novel, one that builds and builds and builds. It is hard to imagine the number of his fellows he saw slain, and how it impacted him. But beyond that, to see the melancholy within the man, not just the soldier, not just the circumstance? He is the rare author I would love to have known, and yet the idea of his experience and his sadness is so intimidating, it makes me feel like less of a grown man when thinking of the person who could write all of this down. What have I done in my life in comparison? It is interesting to compare the film with the novel. The theme of the distance between humans is there, as is the idea of many narrative voices recounting many different things but all ending in despair over our lack of ability to truly understand ourselves, the world, each other. But Malick widens the melancholy even further by including his usual theme of man’s distance from nature as well. It works beautifully. Two character differences stand out: Pvt Witt and Cpl Fife. In the film, Pvt Witt is played by James Caviezel as a beatific savior of men, spiritually connected to nature and prone to daring displays of bravery. In the novel, Witt is a spiteful hick, also prone to daring displays of bravery, but also an unrepentant racist towards all non-whites, and is filled to the brim with petty contempt towards all forms of authority. I like both portraits, but the novel’s Witt seems so much more human, so much more real. You don’t have to be a saint or even particularly likeable to be brave, to save lives, to accomplish daring deeds, to be loveable. He is a hero, ignorant redneck and all, precisely because he is not particularly heroic in thought – only in deed. He comes through, again and again. In the film, Cpl Fife is reduced to a couple cameos by Adrien Brody, standing distraught by a soldier’s corpse or looking terrified during a river crossing. In the novel, he is so much more: a dissection of the falseness of the concept of “cowardice” during war. He is full of fear, he calls himself a coward, each path he chooses is one that has self-protection at its core; and yet his depiction is entirely sympathetic and rational: what sane man isn’t a coward when it comes to the insanity of war? Who wants it, who wants to be in it? It is not something to run to, it is something to run from. Fife is the secret hero of The Thin Red Line, the rational man not understanding the irrational world around him, and rejecting any attempt to bend him to that irrational world’s rules. I can see how that character would not translate successfully to audiences yearning for heroes, and so Fife in his entirety barely makes it to the screen. The book’s great success may not just be in its depiction of the distance between humans, but in the illustration of war as the ultimate insanity. As we all know, World War 2 was the Good War, the one in which we all should be proud, the one with truly golden heroes and truly evil villains, the one we all are glad was fought and would have fought in if we could. We had the right reasons after all; at least that is my own perspective. But a good war is still war, and war entails the deaths of the young, the destruction of lives and of love, of cities and of countryside, of innocence, of tradition, of everything. So why do we love it so?(less) | Notes are private!
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:: Stand on Zanzibar is one of my favorite novels ::  a) Stand on Zanzibar is about overpopulation. if the entire world's population were to stand on Z...more :: Stand on Zanzibar is one of my favorite novels :: a) Stand on Zanzibar is about overpopulation. if the entire world's population were to stand on Zanzibar, it would sink. b) Stand on Zanzibar is about information. how is it processed? what does it really mean? c) Stand on Zanzibar is about the evils and cupidity of corporatization. it is about how a corporation may be able to do a good thing, despite itself. d) Stand on Zanzibar is about the evils and stupidity of the State. it provides many examples.  SCANALYZE: "brown-nose" is a casually derogatory term for blacks. CAST INCLUDES: Norman House is a muslim african-american and a ruthlessly ambitious rising star in General Technics. in the early part of the novel, he acts quickly and sprays an amok terrorist's hand with liquid helium, causing it to freeze and then break off. later in the novel, he is given de facto control of the african country of Beninia, which is being taken over by his company. :: this book made me angry at times :: LOCATIONS INCLUDE: Beninia has somehow remained a neutral refuge throughout its history. it has resisted slavers, colonial forces, mass waves of immigrants, and many other external influences. its people are malnourished, poorly housed, and only marginally educated. there has not been a murder in Benina in over 15 years. its residents do not have a phrase to explicitly describe "losing your temper". instead they use a phrase that means "went temporarily insane". once, several years ago, in a different village, a boy saw a man "lose his temper" while arguing with his wife. everyone laughed at the man's outlandish behavior. so silly and so strange! :: i lose my temper. it is one of my flaws. i say terrible things sometimes ::  PROFILE OF NOVEL: Stand on Zanzibar was written by John Brunner in 1968. it is a New Wave science fiction novel about a future dystopia. it won the Hugo Award in 1969. it won my heart and mind in 1990. i just reread it. PROFILE OF AUTHOR: John Brunner has written over 50 books. this novel was inspired by the cut-up technique of John Dos Passos' U.S.A. Trilogy. i was occasionally reminded of William S. Burroughs and Kathy Acker. and Robert Silverberg. and William Gibson. and the way my own mind processes information. PROFILE OF NOVEL: according to my best friend wikipedia, "Stand on Zanzibar was innovative within the science fiction genre for mixing narrative with entire chapters dedicated to providing background information and worldbuilding, to create a sprawling narrative that presents a complex and multi-faceted view of the story's future world. Such information-rich chapters were often constructed from many short paragraphs, sentences, or fragments thereof — pulled from sources such as slogans, snatches of conversation, advertising text, songs, extracts from newspapers and books, and other cultural detritus. The result is reminiscent of the concept of information overload."  SCANALYZE: "eptification" is a process in which the government can turn an ordinary man into a trained assassin. CAST INCLUDES: Donald Hogan is a white american and a synthesist - a rather dilettante-ish position paid for by the government, in which the practitioner studies patterns in the mass flow of information. in the early part of the novel, his unwitting presence in a non-white ghetto inadvertedly causes a riot in which hundreds are hurt and a helicopter pilot is beaten to death. later in the novel, he is turned into a spy and sent to the angry country of Yatakang. :: at times this book made me irritated and frustrated :: LOCATIONS INCLUDE: Yatakang is a military dictatorship along the lines of modern-day Pakistan. it was once a part of the Philippines, which is now called Isola. Yatakang hates the U.S. and is on the verge of U.S.-sponsored revolution. Yatakang is home to a brilliant and humane geneticist. this brilliant geneticist may be able to create super-children. :: i am half-Filipino. i do not want children, super or otherwise ::  1) due to overpopulation, nearly the entire world has severe restrictions around giving birth. people are obsessed with genetic make-up. if you have flaws in your genetic make-up, you are not allowed to have children. 2) overpopulation + ennui + a lifetime of frustration can equal many things, including the potential for murder & rape & incest. did you know that? :: this book made me laugh a lot. a great sense of humor. malevolent, merciless, mordant wit. my favorite! :: [Stand on Zanzibar can be an off-putting experience. many people do not like it. some find it challenging; some find it boring; some find it frustrating. it does not take it easy on the reader. it throws a lot of things the reader's way. the reader is given a mass amount of information to digest. can the reader find patterns in this information? does the reader even care?] CAST INCLUDES: Shalmaneser is an all-knowing computer created by General Technics. is Shalmaneser growing consciousness?  SCANALYZE: "shiggies" are a common type of lady. to be specific, they are attractive, upscale, vaguely whorish young women with no permanent residence. they move or are passed on from guy to guy to guy. guys share shiggies. most young women appear to be shiggies. unless they are daughters, wives, or business leaders. CAST UPDATE: Norman and Donald are roommates. one is full of cold anger and the other is full of passive idleness. they toke up together. they share shiggies. Norman likes the scandinavian babes and Donald likes the black hotties. the two go to a jail and then to a party together. the two have great and terrible things in store for them. later, they actually become friends. sorta. #what is "friendship" anyway? #does anyone really know anyone? CAST INCLUDES: Begi is a Beninian folk figure. he is a trickster of sorts. he exists to punish the greedy, the pretentious, and other assorted pricks and assholes. ((i have too many favorite scenes in this novel to count. my favorite may be the riot. or it may be a party that turns out to be a colossal fail. another favorite may be the scene in which a trained assassin takes down a mucker.)) SCANALYZE: "muckers" run amok. overpopulation and other factors drive them insane. that insanity endows them with the strength of many and causes them to seek the immediate death of everyone around them. they are a sign of the times. :: sometimes, in crowds, i feel like running amok. but i don't. whew! ::  [i have a Goodreads friend who didn't care for this book. he said the plot didn't start for over a 100 pages and all the random snippets of information became wearisome. sometimes i read his reviews and i wonder my God, does he even like reading? still, his opinion is a valuable one to me.] CAST INCLUDES: GT Buckfast. Eric Ellerman. Chad Mulligan. Poppy Shelton. Guinevere Steel. Sheena & Frank Potter. Arthur Golightly. Stal Lucas. Sasha & Philip Peterson. Victor & Mary Whatmough. Elihu Masters. Gerry Lindt. Dr Sugaiguntung. President Zadkiel Obomi. Jogajong. Olive Almerio. Grace Rowley. Pierre & Jeannine Clodard. Jeff Young. Henry Butcher. Bennie Noakes. all of these characters have POV chapters. ~ by the time the novel ends, ten are dead ~ #do you want to live forever? (the constant racist language against asians really bothered me. is this because i am half asian? the novel itself is not racist. quite the opposite.) CAST INCLUDES: Bronwen Ghose does not have a POV chapter. if i have one critique, it is that Bronwen in particular deserved one. a moving character, and a very appealing, very attractive one as well. PROFILE OF AUTHOR: John Brunner also wrote a book called The Sheep Look Up. i love that title.  * Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere go everywhere... just for you! watch them from the comfort of your living room, on your television! they look just like you! * >SCANALYZER: SCANALYZE!<  Stand on Zanzibar should be read carefully, over time. there is too much going on, so you should go slow. i think if you read it too fast It May Become Like A Long Night With Too Much Coke And Too Many People And You Are Almost About To Lose It But You Don't Have Anywhere To Go So You Just Do Another Line And All Of A Sudden It Is Too Much But All You Can Do Is Smile Smile Smile And It Begins To Hurt And Your Brain Begins To Hurt And You Feel Like Freaking Out And Crying. Stand on Zanzibar should be read quickly like a big rush of information just let it sweep all over you because you know that's what life is anyway just a big rush of random and not-random information so just take it all in like a good little sheep and maybe the information will eventually have some meaning or maybe not. Stand on Zanzibar has a happy ending. that is, if you consider an ending where (view spoiler)[one protagonist is basically insane after being brainwashed by the government and the other protagonist learns that the only way to stop humans from being ferociously aggressive animals is to tamper with them genetically (hide spoiler)] to be a happy ending. STAND ON ZANZIBAR IS ONE OF THE BEST SCIENCE FICTION NOVELS EVER WRITTEN. ⇨ i bow before its genius ⇦(less) | Notes are private!
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another forgotten and brilliant classic. the challenging writing style will put casual readers off, but for me it was great experiencing this bizarre,...more
another forgotten and brilliant classic. the challenging writing style will put casual readers off, but for me it was great experiencing this bizarre, sinister dreamscape of a post-ww2 germany. or really any kind of blighted post-war city, trying to rebuild. at times it reads like a perverse counterpoint to mrs. dalloway, complete with its own scarier version of septimus smith. overall a sordid but gorgeous novel. the majestic heroine will do anything it takes to survive; eat up!(less)
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sometimes, when dreaming, i am aware of a complex and mysterious history to the at times strange but often mundane narrative of the dream itsef. i'll...more
sometimes, when dreaming, i am aware of a complex and mysterious history to the at times strange but often mundane narrative of the dream itsef. i'll be running away from something, against some dark background, a house or castle or a school, who knows... although the drama of running is clear, there's often a feeling that so many things have already happened before i started running, things of which i'm only dimly aware, a whole story has happened or is happening in which i'm only getting bits & pieces or what feels like the end. i guess it's what makes some dreams so hard to explain - simple or inexplicable events occurring that have an emotional depth and meaning that is near impossible to describe in passionless terms. other times, passing by my work's drop-in center, i'll exchange words with a visitor, a person usually dealing with life changes or the possibility of life ending (that's the nature of my workplace). they'll say some simple pleasantry or even give a brief phrase to show how they're doing... and there's a whole world in what they say, an entire journey expressed, near-tangible emotions conveyed. but of the details of that history, the why and how of it, and the place they seek or the place they fear to go... inexpressible. that's what reading Little, Big was like for me. so many little moments in a family's life, in the lives of people connected to the family, in the city in which the family dwells. and all these moments live in a world with a background and a future that is vast, mystical, dreamlike, one that cannot be expressed with any kind of logical or linear description. sometimes the moments are so personal and delicate... other times they are whimsical and brimming with magic, or strange and full of some kind of barely understandable threat... sad moments, and tragic ones, and moments filled with delight... and in the end, they become grand and they sweep the characters and the reader towards what almost feels like an understanding of the purpose and destination of it all. almost! the novel is about an enchanted family, their loves & lives & history. it is also about the end of an age, the beginning of another, witches & changelings & fairies & enchantments, loneliness & forgetfulness & sorrow, love, the past and the future, and new york city. there are no real villains, there are no traditional heroes. the writing has a dense but fragile beauty. there are layers upon layers. there are mythical beings that come alive and realistic characters that become as myths. i sighed in amazement, many times, at the wonder of it all; it is like a dream made half-real. it is a unique book.(less) | Notes are private!
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Absolute Beginners is remarkable - a dream of a novel. It is fast-paced, sweet-tempered, open-hearted, a golden book in many ways – a paean to youth,...more
Absolute Beginners is remarkable - a dream of a novel. It is fast-paced, sweet-tempered, open-hearted, a golden book in many ways – a paean to youth, to a future brimming with possibility, to a present that is lived vibrantly and joyfully. It is also about selling out, junkies, prostitution, and race wars. How can this be? I suppose it is all about point of view, and the protagonist’s perspective is the embodiment of Live Now and Love It. This is one of those rare novels that make the reader feel even more alive by reading it. The enthusiasm of its narrator was equaled by my enthusiasm of the world that MacInnes plunges us into headfirst. It depicts, it mocks, it leaps forward, it grabs your hand and carries you along. I was young once, gosh, just a decade or so ago. I lived a life full of punks, hippies, goths, ravers, djs, fags, dykes, trans girls & guys, straight guys who made out with other guys and straight girls who were angry and ardent feminists, vegetarians and vegans, girls who stripped for cash in dives and guys who waved their hard-ons for free in print, fighters and peacemakers, guys who carved symbols on their bodies and girls who dressed like vampire princesses; we lived in junked-out flats filled with too many people, we shared clothes and went on road trips and had neverending parties and made protests against the government and danced all night and consumed amazing amounts of booze and drugs and sex and live music. I read Absolute Beginners during that period, and one of the best things about this novel was that it felt completely real and true to me, despite the difference in social scenes that were separated by decades, by an ocean. It showed the true diversity available to people in their late teens, in their 20s; it illustrated – and so nonchalantly – values that were not just held dear, but were unspoken, values that defied the middle class and that were simply assumed to be shared by everyone we knew. To read oneself and one’s peers in a novel written in 1958 is something special, something wonderfully moving to contemplate, even many years later. What lifts Absolute Beginners above the idea that life for the young and unencumbered can be a great time, a fun carnival, is its complete awareness that this is also rather an illusion, and a crushingly temporary one at that. So many wonderful things can happen, so much excitement – and yet the world around this world still exists to be fought against. For me and my friends, that world to rail against did not just include asshole yuppies who came to our neighborhoods from time to time, it included police brutality, the WTO, the wars abroad. In Absolute Beginners, that world above includes race warfare. "Race" is clearly interwoven throughout the narrative, and yet it is one of so many things that the narrator is aware of, just one facet of the world that the narrator comments on... the reader could almost lose sight of it. But race and racism are there the entire time and slowly but surely become the whole point; by the end, the reader and the protagonist see how fragile a life full of living can be when the world is singling out his peers for destruction, and those peers are turning to him for alliance. The protagonist chooses, and chooses well. But it marks an ending of sorts, an ending of an attitude and a lifestyle, and the beginning of an understanding that no matter what he and his peers have built, he lives in the world still, as does everyone, and that world is one of both wonder and horror.(less) | Notes are private!
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