Martine has
675 books
(48 selected)
—
compare books
|
stats
| # | 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 |
date
|
date purchased | owned | purchase location | condition | format | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1841491659
| 9781841491653
| 4.29
| 45,610
| Oct 27, 2009
| Oct 27, 2010
|
Wow. Was this ever a pleasant surprise. I got into Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series about eight years ago. Despite protestations from friends that...more Wow. Was this ever a pleasant surprise. I got into Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series about eight years ago. Despite protestations from friends that I should steer clear of it because it went completely off the rails after about five books and probably wouldn't ever be finished, I gave it a shot, and like so many other readers I got hooked. This was unfortunate, because as I discovered halfway through the series, my friends were right. The Wheel of Time did go off the rails, and badly, with Robert Jordan losing himself in so many insignificant subplots and failing so utterly to bring the story closer to its conclusion that it seemed doubtful that it would ever be finished. Nevertheless I soldiered on, reading each new instalment despite my mounting frustration with them, because hey, I was hooked. So much so that I actually joined a Wheel of Time newsgroup at one point, where I spent many hours discussing theories about characters' double identities and where the series might be headed. That newsgroup probably did more for my love of fantasy literature than The Lord of Rings (my introduction to the genre, which I still love to death) ever did. I miss it quite a bit -- it was fabulous. And then Robert Jordan did something incredible. Something his fans had joked about for years but had never considered a serious possibility. He passed away before he could finish the series, rendering the massive investment his fans had made in it (we are talking about eleven books of about nine hundred pages each) virtually useless, because after all that theorising, after all those looooooooong hours spent discussing the minutiae of the books, no one would ever find out how the story ended. Enter Brandon Sanderson, a lesser-known fantasy author of whom I had never heard before, although with hindsight I probably should have. He was hired by Jordan's wife to finish the series, using her husband's extensive notes, unfinished passages and instructions for support. Like many others, I was sceptical about the enterprise, and not sure I wanted to read the result. But then the prologue to Sanderson's sequel was posted on line, about a month before the book's release date, and to my infinite surprise it was good. And about a week later the first chapter of the sequel was leaked on line, and to my mounting surprise that was good, too -- more focussed than anything Jordan himself had written in a while, except perhaps New Spring, the much-maligned prequel to the series. In just two short chapters, Sanderson had got rid of several characters and plotlines which had irked myself and other fans for ages. It actually looked like he was getting the plot to move forwards, which was such a pleasant surprise that I suddenly found myself really, really looking forward to seeing what else he had done to Jordan's universe. So I bought the book the day it was released, ready to lose myself in Randland once more. So what has Sanderson done to Randland? In a word, he has revived the series. The Gathering Storm is by far the best instalment in the Wheel of Time saga of the last ten years. An action-packed romp which actually takes the story forwards several weeks (gasp), it's a return to the form of the earliest books, before Jordan started introducing every single Aes Sedai in existence, expecting us to care about their minor squabbles. In marked contrast to Jordan's later books, The Gathering Storm actually focuses on the main characters (you know, the original heroes of the series, who got us interested in it in the first place), allowing them to achieve goals which had eluded them for quite some time. It eliminates unnecessary side plots like the Prophet and the Shaido, often swiftly so. It is largely free of padding (although a very critical reader might ask what exactly Mat's storyline is meant to accomplish, other than getting him on his way to the Tower of Ghenjei and showing that the Dark One is touching the world). And best of all, it is faithful to the style of the early Jordan, which is to say without endless descriptions of clothes and characters taking baths, yanking their braids, tapping their feet, etc. Nynaeve actually overcomes her urge to yank her braid every time she gets mad at the beginning of the book, which I'm sure is a development welcomed by any reader of the series. In other words, Sanderson has managed to channel Jordan without all the latter's infuriating obsessions, following Jordan's style without copying its bad aspects. I wouldn't say the transition is seamless (Sanderson's style, featuring many short sentences, is punchier than Jordan's), but it certainly isn't jarring, either. While there is the odd moment where you'll find yourself thinking, 'Hmmm, that didn't sound entirely Jordanesque,' these moments are more than made up for by Sanderson's ability to focus on essentials, in my opinion. It's refreshing, reading Randland stories without all the padding. So what actually happens in The Gathering Storm? (WARNING: MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD) Well, the Prophet finally dies (about time). Tuon (one of my favourite characters, though less so here than before) finally becomes Empress of Seanchan. The Seanchan finally attack the White Tower, which Egwene has been prophesying for ages. Egwene herself finally becomes Amyrlin Seat, in quite an impressive manner. Rand, who seemed to be going increasingly mad in the last few books, finally finds himself again, in a way which holds promise for the future. Perrin finally accepts his wolf self, while Mat and his cronies finally set out for the Tower of Ghenjei, a subplot anyone with a brain has seen coming for the last seven books or so. For her part, Aviendha is finally accepted as a Wise One, in a manner befitting those strange Aiel customs. Gawyn, who was fighting on the wrong side, finally sees the light (ha!) and joins the rebel Aes Sedai. Siuan Sanche and Gareth Bryne finally become an item, though rather chastely so. Two more Forsaken are taken care of (presumably). And in two of the more brilliant plot twists, a mysterious character from the beginning of the series is revealed to be Black Ajah (a jaw-dropping chapter, very well written and conceived), while Elaida is deposed in a way which had me chuckling out loud. I'm not sure who came up with the idea for Elaida's demise, Jordan or Sanderson, but whoever it was, he has a rich sense of poetic justice. It's just too, too good. Of course, many storylines still remain unresolved, and Sanderson now believes he will need two books to tie them up, not one, as previously planned. I have faith in him, though. I know that these two books of his will really be two books, not seven (as with Jordan). And I have no doubt that they will be good books. Books in which we will finally see Moiraine make a reappearance. Books in which all the prophecies and viewings which have been bandied around for the last twelve books will finally be fulfilled (or not, as the case may be). In which Perrin, Lan, Logain, Mazrim Taim, Slayer, Elayne, Galad, Thom, Birgitte, Olver, the Sea Folk and the Kin will probably get to see more action than they did in The Gathering Storm, and in which the stage is well and truly set for Tarmon Gai’don, the final battle. And I also know that thanks to Sanderson, I am excited about this series again. I will probably spend more time than I care for at Wheel of Time websites over the next few months, looking up old prophecies and comparing theories about where the story is heading. And when it's all over, two books from now, I will in all likelihood look back on the Wheel of Time series with fondness, rather than the bitterness Jordan was increasingly inspiring in me. Thanks for that, Brandon. After all the time I have invested in this series, I need to love it again, rather than despair of it. It now looks like I may, which is great.(less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Nov 2009
|
Jan 07, 2010
| Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| 0451451155
| 9780451451156
| 4.13
| 15,558
| Aug 1990
| Oct 01, 1991
|
There was no way I was not going to love this book. Experience has shown that I love Guy Gavriel Kay and the characters he comes up with. They are, wi...more
There was no way I was not going to love this book. Experience has shown that I love Guy Gavriel Kay and the characters he comes up with. They are, without exception, passionate people, and I love reading about passionate people, especially when they have a Cause. And boy, do the characters in this book have a cause. Can you say, epic cause? Tigana is the name of one of the countries of the Palm, a peninsula loosely based on Renaissance Italy. Divided and distrustful of one another, and unlikely ever to unite, the countries of the Palm are an easy prey for overseas invaders. When the story proper starts, two sorcerer-kings from abroad, Brandin of Ygrath and Alberico of Barbadior, have carved out the Palm between them, each ruling about half of the peninsula, each greedy for the other half. One of the sorcerers, Brandin, has destroyed the country of Tigana and cursed it so comprehensively that none but its older inhabitants remember its existence. The very name 'Tigana' cannot be written, spoken or heard, except by those Tiganans who were alive when the outrage that provoked Brandin's wrath occurred: the death of his son Stevan at the hands of Prince Valentin of Tigana, a noble man determined to protect his country from the mighty invader. Twenty years later, Valentin's son Alessan, along with a ragtag crew of similarly minded nobles, commoners and wizards, sets out to overthrow Brandin (preferably in a way which will not yield his land to his arch rival Alberico) and restore once-beautiful Tigana to its former glory. And that, in a nutshell, is what Tigana is all about. Except, of course, that it is not all Tigana is about. A big and ambitious book, Tigana is about the things that make people tick, the things that keep them going when all their efforts seem futile. It's about loyalty, justice and politics, about how to be a good and inspiring leader in troubled times, and about how to orchestrate changes if you need them. It's about shared memories and how they bind people together, forging a shared identity. It's about nationalism and how to get people to unite behind a common ideal when being divided isn't working for them. It's about shame and despair and what they will drive us to. It's about all these things and more, and Kay effortlessly weaves them into a coherent story, which somehow manages to be both epic and startlingly intimate. It's a literary tour de force, and then some. Needless to say, though, it's not just about ideas. Central to the book are two very human tales of two very extraordinary humans, Alessan and Dianora. The former is a charismatic leader who tries to look beyond the needs of his own country and work for the greater good of all the people of the Palm, only to be cursed by his proud mother for not focussing enough on poor Tigana and revenge. The latter is a beautiful girl whose family has been wrecked by Brandin and who sets out to kill him, only to fall deeply and devastatingly in love with him and actually save his life when someone else has a go at assassinating him, to her own amazement and mortification. The relationship between Dianora and Brandin has to be one of the most haunting ones I've come across in any type of fiction. There is real internal drama here, and genuine, heart-felt emotionality, and Kay expertly takes you through it all, from Dianora's early anger to her anguished acceptance of her own feelings for Brandin, revealing layer after layer of involvement until the heart-wrenching finale. It's riveting stuff, told by someone who really, really understands the conflicts of the human heart, and it just about broke my own heart. The other characters are less thoroughly fleshed out than Alessan and Dianora, but they do make for an interesting mosaic of personalities and storylines. Due to the constant switches in perspective, some parts of the story have a somewhat jarring quality, but the fast pace and sheer balls of the story more than make up for this. Some plot turns are predictable and a little cheap, but Kay always puts in sufficient pathos to make them interesting. Other plot turns, like the unexpected twist which ends Brandin's storyline, are surprising and quite brilliantly handled. I actually found myself nodding with admiration at the conclusion to the book, something I hardly ever do. And as usual, I just loved Kay's characters, who are so driven that one can't help rooting for them. I don’t think I cared for Tigana's heroes quite as much as I did for The Lions of al-Rassan's, but I cared, and in Dianora's case my heart broke a little at the denouement of her story. I never expected her to live happily ever after (it was obvious that her storyline was headed for tragedy), but to see such promise wasted like that was, well, tragic. Genuinely tragic, as opposed to the overwrought sentimentality that passes for tragedy in many other fantasy novels. Tragedy aside, the real genius of Tigana is, in my opinion, Kay's refusal to make his characters either completely good or completely bad. There are many shades of grey here. The hero of the story, Alessan, is a great guy who justifiably attracts many followers, but he is not without flaws. Nor is the main villain of the piece, Brandin, without redeeming qualities. One of the most surprising things about Tigana is how sorry you feel, towards the end, for Brandin, the powerful sorcerer who may have wrecked a country and an entire generation of people, but did so out of bottomless grief and love. He's a complex villain, is Brandin, and his inevitable demise at the end is not as satisfying as you might expect it to be because you have actually come to care for him a little. It takes a brave author to attempt a conflicted ending like this, but it makes for a rich and rewarding reading experience. If only more fantasy writers were prepared to write stories like this... So why, after all that praise, am I withholding one star? Mostly because I feel the book could have done with better editing. There are sloppily written passages where the punctuation is a little off and where Kay randomly switches tenses, two things to which I'm quite allergic. Furthermore, Kay has a habit of breaking off the action mid-sentence only to continue it in the next paragraph for greater dramatic effect, which tends to annoy me. Finally, and most seriously, I feel Kay is frequently guilty of telling rather showing in Tigana, a flaw any good editor could and should have pointed out to him. However, these are minor quibbles. By and large, I loved the book, and I'd recommend it to any lover of good fantasy fiction. I quite look forward to continuing my acquaintance with Kay. I think I'll tackle A Song for Arbonne next... (less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Dec 2009
|
Jan 05, 2010
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0679745653
| 9780679745655
| 3.88
| 63,225
| 1958
| Sep 28, 1993
|
Is it wrong that I kept seeing Audrey Hepburn in my mind's eye while reading Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote's best-known novella? I guess it's...more
Is it wrong that I kept seeing Audrey Hepburn in my mind's eye while reading Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote's best-known novella? I guess it's understandable, given how iconic Hepburn's portrayal of Holly Golightly is. In fact, I think Hepburn's Holly may well be my all-time favourite movie heroine. She's a slut, a snob and a gold-digger, and her life is so shallow and vapid that it should be reprehensible to me, but at the same time she is so delightfully charming and eccentric that it is impossible not to fall under her spell and end up madly in love with her. As played by Hepburn, Holly is the ultimate It Girl, witty and beautiful and so stylish it hurts, but vulnerable and conflicted enough for us not to envy her. Capote's Holly is slightly different from Hepburn's. She is tougher and more potty-mouthed than her movie counterpart, with a touch of racism that I don't remember from the film. She also seems a bit more hell-bent on self-destruction, and less inclined to be saved by the well-meaning narrator. For these and other reasons, she should be mildly off-putting, but for some reason she's not. I guess it's because she is immensely alive -- less girlishly and innocently so than in the film, but just as alluring. And she doesn't need Hepburn's charm to come off the page. Capote did a great job imagining Holly and fleshing her out, giving her one good line after the other and endearing quirks galore. It probably isn't fair to him that I (along with millions of other readers, no doubt) kept picturing Audrey Hepburn while reading his descriptions of Holly, to the point where I was shocked to discover Capote imagined her as a blonde (surely not?), but thankfully, my love for the film didn't prevent me from recognising the quality of the writing, which is beyond dispute. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Capote was a master storyteller with a finely developed ear for dialogue and a massive flair for making the unglamorous glamorous. He used both gifts to great effect in Breakfast at Tiffany's, creating a story which, while less romantic and emotionally gratifying than the film adaptation, nevertheless succeeds in making the reader yearn for Holly the same way the narrator does. The prose is effortlessly elegant, even when it refers to ugly things, which it does rather more regularly than George Axelrod and Blake Edwards seem to have cared to replicate in the film. Timeless and evocative, it is a story about friendship valued and lost, about belonging and refusing to belong, and like the film, it stays with you as the perfect blend of cynicism and sentiment, with an added sense of loss. I can't think why I waited so long to read it... The other three stories in the collection, 'House of Flowers', 'A Diamond Guitar' and 'A Christmas Memory', are almost as strong as Breakfast at Tiffany's. Like the better-known novella which opens the book, 'A Diamond Guitar' and 'A Christmas Memory' are elegies on broken friendships, on bonds shared and then lost, and like Tiffany’s, they are poignant and evocative, with moments of startling intimacy and many a well-turned phrase and eye-opening observation. 'House of Flowers' (about the romance between the most beautiful prostitute in Port-au-Prince and the peasant who makes an honest woman of her) is less poignant, but just as memorable for its matter-of-fact weirdness and quirkiness (spider bread, anyone?). All three short stories prove that Capote was a master of the genre, equally at home in first-person narratives and third-person ones, with male heroes and female ones, with child protagonists and more mature ones. The four stories contained in Breakfast at Tiffany's all have vastly different points of view, styles and subjects, but in their own ways, they are all interesting and memorable, making it all the more regrettable that Capote only published so few of them. He was obviously quite the short-story teller. Do seek this collection out if you haven't already -- you won't regret it. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Dec 2009
|
Jan 03, 2010
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0307394654
| 9780307394651
| 3.10
| 804
| Jan 01, 2008
| Apr 22, 2008
|
Every once in a while when I return from a holiday, I fantasise about becoming a travel writer-cum-photographer. At the risk of sounding like an insuf...more
Every once in a while when I return from a holiday, I fantasise about becoming a travel writer-cum-photographer. At the risk of sounding like an insufferable show-off here, I think I've earned my dues in the travel world. I've visited 36 countries in five continents, including a few stints as a tour guide in China. I speak my languages, have a fairly strong stomach, can deal with grotty hotels as long as they're not too noisy, and am both a decent writer and a decent photographer, a combination which I think might be of some interest to publishers of guidebooks and travel magazines. Needless to say, I occasionally dream of becoming a Lonely Planet writer, so you can imagine how eagerly I snapped up Thomas Kohnstamm's Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?, a tell-all tale of the author's first tour of duty as a Lonely Planet researcher in Brazil. It seemed the ideal book for me -- a book about a guy who had the job I want, although I fully expected him to tell me it wasn't a dream job at all. What I didn't realise when I bought the book was that Kohnstamm was the guy who seriously embarrassed Lonely Planet last year when he admitted in an interview to plagiarising whole sections of his LP guidebooks and writing about places he had never even visited, forcing Lonely Planet to embark on a major revision of the books and chapters he had written in an effort to control the damage done by his widely publicised interview. Clearly, Lonely Planet takes its credibility seriously. However, I suspect that Kohnstamm's modus operandi is rather more common among guidebook researchers than LP wishes to acknowledge, judging from the number of times I've visited hotels recommended by LP only to find that they had been closed for years... Anyhow, being a travel junkie and aspiring Lonely Planet writer myself, I had high expectations for Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?. Unfortunately, it turned out that the author and I were a bad match. Kohnstamm, you see, is the kind of traveller I loathe -- the kind of backpacker who only seems to travel to get drunk, stoned and laid (usually in that order), who only goes to Cambodia to find one-dollar bags of weed, visits Northern Thailand and Northern Laos to smoke opium with the hill tribes, spends most of his time in India comparing the relative effects of ganja and bhang lassis, and, when told that I'm from Holland, will say with glazed-over eyes, 'Holland, eh? I've been to Amsterdam. I love Amsterdam,' only to answer my 'Really? Whereabouts in Amsterdam have you been?' with a shrug and a non-committal 'Can't remember. I was stoned all the time.' I've met too many guys like that, and at the risk of sounding like a goody two-shoes, they annoy me. I'm not sure whether that's because I'm secretly envious of their freewheeling ways or rather because I'm genuinely repulsed by their attempts to be cool and 'out there', but either way, I find them annoying. I guess I'm old-fashioned that way. Sadly, Thomas Kohnstamm is the very stereotype of the dreaded sex-and-drugs-and-rock-'n'-roll tourist, something I didn't realise when I bought his book because the blurb conveniently failed to mention it (although in retrospect, the subtitle, 'A Swashbuckling Tale of High Adventure, Questionable Ethics and Professional Hedonism', should have been a bit of a give-away). Do Travel Writers Go to Hell? reads like a modern update of a Jack Kerouac or Hunter S. Thompson novel. Its first chapters contain so many references to sex, masturbation and binge-induced vomiting that I actually found it quite off-putting. The rest of the book is marginally better, but still, I don't think I'm wide of the mark when I say that one third of the narrative is about the drugs and alcohol the author ingests in Brazil, another third is about the women he beds (all gorgeous, obviously), and the remaining third is roughly divided between his attempts to sell ecstasy to fund the remainder of his trip (...) and his repeated vows to change his lifestyle and focus on the job at hand, only to be dragged to yet another booze-fuelled party half a page later. I'm sure this description sounds fabulous to people who like their travelogues Kerouac-style, but to my judgemental self, it got very tedious after a while. After just a few chapters of Kohnstamm's immature behaviour, I found myself wanting to read more about Brazil and its attractions, and less about the fuckheads with whom the author hung out during his trip (although I do admit that he drew those fuckheads very well). Kohnstamm's repeated assurances that he was basically doing an undoable job because Lonely Planet's deadlines are ridiculous and the pay is not nearly generous enough to cover all the expenses quickly began to grate on me, especially in the light of the long nights he apparently spent drinking and the long mornings he supposedly spent sleeping off his hangovers. I found myself increasingly annoyed with his constant excuses for not doing his job properly and with the weird decisions he kept making, such as staying in a flat for two weeks to have sex with a pretty prostitute when he was supposed to be researching hotels. So I guess you could say Kohnstamm wasn't the right author for me, nor I his intended audience. He's too much of a Hunter S. Thompson wannabe for me, and I'm not enough of a sleaze-loving frat boy to appreciate that kind of thing. I guess we were both to blame for the mismatch. It's a pity Kohnstamm is such a shallow, self-congratulatory arsehole, because I suspect he's a decent writer underneath all the bluff and bravura. He has an engaging writing style, a decent sense of humour and a good ear for dialogue. Furthermore, he obviously has a brain on him, albeit an alcohol-addled one, and judging from some of the more outrageous descriptions in the book, he also has a lively imagination. When he is not bragging, whining, breaking half a dozen laws or generally being obnoxious, he actually makes some astute observations about travelling, guidebooks and being a guidebook contributor. He has insightful ideas on Lonely Planet users like myself (sheep who like to think of themselves as intrepid travellers but all end up doing exactly the same things), the way Lonely Planet has changed (and in some cases ruined) tourism in certain places, and the way Lonely Planet has sold out over the last fifteen years, a fact to which anyone who owns an LP guidebook from before the year 2000 can attest. He also provides some good insight into the compromised nature of travel writing, which tallies with my own experiences as a tour guide in China. Sadly, though, these observations are lost amidst increasingly repetitive tales of drunken debaucheries and sexual exploits. I'm sure the latter will appeal to many readers (judging from the staggering number of five-star reviews the book has received on Amazon USA, there is definitely a market for this sort of thing), but again, I would have preferred a less sleazy write-up of Kohnstamm's experiences in Brazil, one which told me more about travelling in Brazil and the job of being a travel writer and less about Thomas Kohnstamm's propensity to get himself into trouble. Call me holier than thou, call me a jealous wannabe travel writer, but really, this book could have been better, both as a travelogue and as a travel industry exposé. 2.5 stars, rounded down to two because I'm in an ungenerous mood. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Oct 2009
|
Oct 04, 2009
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0140180753
| 9780140180756
| 3.84
| 41,528
| 1933
| 1991
|
How is one to feel about a protagonist who frequently displays signs of elitism, sexism, bigotry and homophobia, finds himself worryingly attracted to...more
How is one to feel about a protagonist who frequently displays signs of elitism, sexism, bigotry and homophobia, finds himself worryingly attracted to young girls, has no goal in life except to make himself useful to damsels in distress, and drinks away his career and marriage, ending up a mere shadow of his former self? Is one supposed to regard him as a tragic hero? Is one to sympathise with him? And if one does sympathise with him, is that because of the way he was written, or rather because we are aware that he is a thinly veiled version of the author himself, a giant of early-twentieth American literature? Those were some of the questions I pondered after reading Tender Is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald's last finished novel, and possibly his most autobiographical one. Set in France and Italy in the 1920s, it tells the story of two wealthy American expats, Dick and Nicole Diver (largely based on the author and his wife Zelda), who seem to others the most glamorous couple ever, 'as fine-looking a couple as could be found in Paris', but are finding their private lives increasingly less glamorous. We first see the couple through the eyes of Rosemary Hoyt, a young and naive American actress holidaying in Europe. Rosemary falls madly in love with suave Dick, but also admires angelic Nicole. After about 130 pages during which Rosemary hangs out with the Divers and nearly embarks on an affair with Dick, the narrative stops and goes back in time to tell the story of Dick and Nicole's marriage, which is considerably more complicated than Rosemary realises. Nicole, it turns out, has a history of mental illness, and Dick is both her husband and the doctor treating her -- a recipe for disaster, obviously. Being a tale of needy people, broken relationships, loss of purpose and wasted potential, Tender Is the Night is quite a depressing read, and one's appreciation of it largely depends on one's tolerance for that kind of thing. If you like your books bleak and tragic, chances are you'll appreciate Tender Is the Night. If not, you might want to steer clear of it. I generally love a good tragedy, but I confess I wasn't overly impressed with Tender Is the Night. For a book which has garnered so many rave reviews, I found it remarkably flawed. Fitzgerald himself seems to have somewhat agreed with me. Despite referring to Tender Is the Night as his masterpiece and being shocked by its lack of critical and commercial success, he began reconstructing it a few years before his death, placing the flashback chapters at the beginning and making all the textual alterations required by this change. However, he died before he could finish the project, or perhaps he abandoned the project as not worth completing (no one seems to know for sure). A friend of his, Malcolm Cowley, then completed the revision, and for years this was the standard edition of the book. However, the Cowley version has fallen into scholarly disfavour (or so Penguin informs me), and several publishers, Penguin included, now use the first edition, the one that Fitzgerald thought needed revision. Apparently, there are no fewer than seventeen versions of the novel extant, which says much about how satisfied Fitzgerald was with his own work. My guess? Not very much. I read a version based on the first edition of the book, and to be honest, I can see why Fitzgerald felt it needed some work. Tender Is the Night felt very disjointed to me. To a certain extent, this was because of the aforementioned non-linear structure, which felt a bit jarring to me. However, as far as I'm concerned, that is not the book's only problem, nor even its biggest one. What most annoyed me was the way in which the perspective keeps shifting. Fitzgerald uses an omniscient narrator in Tender Is the Night, but not consistently so; the story is always written from a certain character's perspective. Sometimes the perspective is Rosemary's, sometimes it's Dick or Nicole's; even the minor characters have stretches of the story told from their perspectives, often on the same page as a main character's perspective. To me, these shifts in point of view often felt haphazard, not to mention a little jarring. I didn't think they were particularly effective, either, as they hardly build on each other and don't provide any information that couldn't be gleaned from a 'regular' omniscient narrator. I may be in a minority here, but I think the book would have benefited from a more consistent approach to perspective. The story itself is a bit haphazard, as well. It occasionally drags, it has little plot, and there are quite a few scenes and storylines which don't really go anywhere. Among several other seemingly unlikely scenes, the book contains a murder, a shooting and a duel, none of which is fully integrated into the story, and none of which is given proper significance. Scenes are introduced and then left so randomly that you have to wonder why Fitzgerald bothered to include them at all. At the risk of being unkind and judgemental, I guess that's what being an alcoholic will do for an author: it gives you wild ideas, but prevents you from carrying them out properly. Which brings me to the characterisation. I'll probably get a lot of flak for this, but I felt that Fitzgerald's vaunted characterisation was a bit 'off' in this novel. Many of the minor characters are sketchily drawn, whereas the main characters are described well (sometimes brilliantly so), but never properly explained. While Fitzgerald does a good (and occasionally excellent) job of sharing his protagonists' feelings, he hardly ever bothers to explain their motivations. This particularly bothered me in the parts written from Dick Diver's point of view, as Dick is supposed to be a psychiatrist. By rights, he should be analysing people actions and motivations all the time, and asking lots of questions. However, Dick hardly ever asks questions. He does not even ask himself questions. He never wonders why he is so drawn to young girls, or what it is in him that causes him to need to be their saviour. He just observes other people in a way of which any intelligent person (trained psychologist or not) would be capable, and then describes their behaviour in a few felicitous phrases. For this and other reasons, I didn't buy Dick Diver as a psychiatrist. Fitzgerald may have read up on psychology (and undoubtedly learned a lot from the doctors who treated his own wife), but I never found his alter ego convincing as a psychiatrist, let alone a brilliant psychiatrist. To me, Dick has 'writer' written all over him. It's a pity I kept finding such flaws, because Tender Is the Night obviously had the potential to be amazing. It has all the right ingredients: interesting (albeit snobbish and bored) characters, powerful themes, evocative (albeit frequently vague) writing, you name it. And the story certainly doesn't lack in pathos. It is quite harrowing to watch Dick Diver, a supposedly brilliant and popular man who never lives up to his potential and is increasingly torn asunder by money, alcoholism and his failed marriage to a mentally ill woman, go to pieces, becoming, in his own words, 'the Black Death' ('I don't seem to bring people happiness any more'). The fact that this was Fitzgerald writing about himself, about his own frustrations and shattered dreams, adds considerable poignancy to the reading experience. Even so, Tender Is the Night ended up leaving me fairly cold, as I simply didn't care for Dick enough to be genuinely moved by his descent into failure. While others may find Dick a swell guy, I myself found his complacency and lack of purpose grating, his alcoholism exasperating, and his brilliance skin-deep. I seem to be alone in this opinion, but I stand by it. In summary, then, I enjoyed and admired aspects of Tender Is the Night, but I don't think they add up to a great whole. While I appreciate Fitzgerald's brutal honesty and the masterful way in which he evokes mutual dependence, isolation and frustration, I can't shake off the feeling that the book could have been much better than it ended up being. And this pains me, as I hate wasted potential as much as Fitzgerald himself seems to have done. As it is, Tender Is the Night is in my opinion not just a book about wasted potential, but an example of wasted potential. It is fitting, I suppose, but no less disappointing for that. 3.5 stars, rounded down to three because I really didn't like it as much as many of the books I have given four stars lately. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Jun 2009
|
Sep 29, 2009
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 1853811262
| 9781853811265
| 3.86
| 24,928
| 1988
| Jan 10, 1996
|
Oh, the little games girls play on each other. They scheme, they gossip and they either ostracise or bully those whom they feel don't belong to their...more
Oh, the little games girls play on each other. They scheme, they gossip and they either ostracise or bully those whom they feel don't belong to their little circle, inflicting untold damage with their whisperings and indirectness. That, in a nutshell, is the subject of Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye, as memorable an account of childhood angst and cruelty as any I've read. Cat's Eye is the story of Elaine Risley, a middle-aged artist who returns to the city where she grew up, Toronto, for a retrospective exhibition of her paintings. As she makes her way through the places of her youth, she is visited by memories she has suppressed for years, forcing her to deal with demons from her past. In her case, those demons are her childhood friends Cordelia, Grace and Carol, three fiendishly bourgeois girls who used to undermine her self-esteem by reminding her time and again that she was 'different' and trying to make her conform to their ideals. Elaine, you see, didn't have a conventional early childhood. Far from living in the same house for most of her life, like the other girls, she was always on the road, moving from one place to another with her entomologist father, un-prim-housewife-like mother and decidedly boyish brother. So when she finally did settle down in one place and started attending school, she had no idea how to behave among little girls. Cordelia, Grace and Carol were willing to teach her, but at great cost to herself. They bullied her literally to near-death, and Elaine submitted, because these were her only friends and she was afraid to lose them... Elaine's story really resonated with me, because like Atwood's heroine, I was bullied as a child -- not physically, the way boys tend to bully each other, but in the more subtle ways used by prepubescent girls. For some reason I'm still at a loss to explain, my classmate M (who was neither very bright nor very pretty, but did have a certain cool air about her) got all the girls in our form under her sway, ruling them like a demanding tyrant rules his subjects. If you were in favour with M, you got to pick her up from home and walk to school with her, hang out with her during intervals, and play with her after school. If you were out of favour with M, no girl in the form would dare talk to you, no one would pick you on her team during PE lessons, and no one would invite you to her birthday party, and there would be a lot of malicious gossiping about you -- usually in your presence, so that you would know people were talking about you without being able to hear what they were saying or defend yourself. Being left out was hell, so all the girls in our form did their best to stay on M's good side, pandering to her whims and trying to live up to her expectations of them. This wasn't easy, because M was notoriously unpredictable in her tastes and expectations. Sometimes a girl would be ostracised for not following M's style closely enough; at other times that same girl would be ostracised for being a terrible copycat. Since no one ever knew exactly what would please M, and since she bestowed and revoked her favours so arbitrarily, her followers could never be sure of acceptance, which made us all terribly insecure. Some of us, like myself, eventually outgrew those insecurities and started to live life according to our own rules rather than M's; others never really put the experience behind them and grew into women who feel they are never good enough and are always looking for approval. As far as I can tell, some of my former classmates are still suffering from the bullying they experienced at primary school, and paying for it in ways they probably don't even realise. They are like Atwood's Elaine, who is marked by her childhood experiences without understanding the full impact they have had on her personality -- until she returns to Toronto, that is, and starts analysing her life in the context of her childhood... Atwood does a magnificent job evoking the horrors of childhood bullying. The cruel games Cordelia and the other girls play on Elaine are brought to life in vivid and compelling detail, as are Elaine's nagging insecurities, her growing inferiority complex and her need for acceptance, despite the fact that she recognises that the girls whose acceptance she craves are kind of, well, silly (something I myself never realised until I was twelve). Atwood has much to say about the relationship between bullies and their victims, and about how victims often end up becoming bullies themselves -- a truth brought home in dramatic fashion when the mature Elaine says, 'I'm not afraid of seeing Cordelia. I'm afraid of being Cordelia. Because in some way we changed places, and I've forgotten when.' Atwood shows with ferocious accuracy how children are pressured into conforming to other people's expectations, and just how soul-crushing this pressure can be. However, what she does best of all is show how introverted, artistically inclined loners like Elaine (rendered even lonelier by their childhood experiences) can channel unhappy childhood experiences into creative outlets, expressing their anger and frustration in art. Much of Cat's Eye is about the creation of an artist, about a conflicted person's wish to express herself in ways which have nothing to do with human interaction. Elaine makes a convincing artist. The whole first-person narrative feels as though it was written by a painter; it is full of beautiful, evocative descriptions of images, shapes, colours, textures and impressions, all of which add considerably to the richness of the writing. It's a psychological landscape painted by someone with a great eye for telling detail, and the result is occasionally riveting. The book does have its shortcomings. My main complaint, echoed by many other reviewers, is that the first half, which mostly focuses on Elaine's childhood memories, is considerably stronger than the second half, which mainly deals with Elaine's later life. This is probably because the first half is more autobiographical. Like Elaine's father, Margaret Atwood's own father was an entomologist whose family was on the road for much of the author's childhood. Like Elaine, Atwood did not attend school full time until her early teens. I've never read an Atwood biography (are there any good ones around?), but I suspect the childhood part of Cat's Eye owes much of its strength to the fact that Atwood actually experienced it herself, to some extent. The book also somewhat suffers from the fact that there is no real closure, no satisfying later-life confrontation between Elaine and her main bully, Cordelia. Atwood was to rectify that situation in her next novel, The Robber Bride, which deals with many of the same issues as Cat's Eye (women being haunted by a shadow from the past) but does work its way towards a confrontation. Reading Cat's Eye, I kept expecting a climactic meeting with Cordelia, but none was forthcoming -- which is realistic, I think (life doesn't always provide closure), but not terribly dramatic. In fact, there is hardly any plot or resolution at all. The book just keeps meandering down memory lane and then stops. Granted, it's a beautiful and compelling trip down memory lane, but the final destination was a bit of a letdown for me. In my opinion, Elaine's story lacks a sense of catharsis, of empowerment, which is a pity. Minor quibbles aside, Cat's Eye is an excellent book. The psychology is acute, and the writing crisp and impressive and delightfully intense. It certainly won't appeal to everyone (those who like plot-driven stories would probably be better off giving this one a miss, as there really isn't much of a plot in it), but lovers of good flashback-based psychological drama should gobble it up. 4.5 stars, rounded down to four because of the relatively weak ending. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Sep 2009
|
Sep 22, 2009
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 1857987225
| 9781857987225
| 3.77
| 2,908
| 1991
| 2001
|
About 100 pages into Beauty I wasn't sure whether I was really going to like the book, as it kept moving from subject to subject without staying long...more
About 100 pages into Beauty I wasn't sure whether I was really going to like the book, as it kept moving from subject to subject without staying long enough with each one to make it work. About 200 pages in, I was convinced the author had far too many ideas for her own good, and no idea of how to weave them together into a cohesive story. Despite my misgivings, though, I stuck with the book, and I'm glad I did, because the second half more than made up for the flaws of the first. I ended up enjoying the hell out of Beauty, so much so that I considered giving it five stars. Not bad for a book which initially struck me as trying too hard and failing. So what is Beauty about? It's hard to summarise the story as it is so terribly convoluted, but in a nutshell, it's about a fourteenth-century princess (half human, half fairy) named Beauty who escapes a terrible, fairy-tale-like fate and magically ends up in the twenty-first century, which is a distinctly unpleasant place bereft of all beauty. From this dystopian future she makes her way back to a very recognisable twentieth century which clearly carries the germs of the wave of destruction which is about to follow, and from there the story weaves in and out of different ages and worlds (reality, Faerie, even Hell) where Beauty gets to deal with love, rape and rejection, among many other things. She also discovers that she carries something important within her, something essential to the survival of Things Which Matter. And so the reader is taken on a rollercoaster ride through time and space, which is further enlivened by the many well-known fairy-tale characters Beauty meets on her way. I don't want to give away too much here, but Beauty somehow ends up giving birth to Cinderella and also counts Sleeping Beauty and the Frog Prince among her descendants. These well-known characters are among the most inspired elements of the book, mainly because they are so different from the way they are portrayed elsewhere. Take Cinderella, for instance. In Tepper's vision, she is not the sweet and innocent girl of Perrault's tale, but rather an outrageous slut who must have her prince because she can't wait to shag his brains out. For her part, Sleeping Beauty, while insanely beautiful, is also insanely stupid, and as for the seven dwarfs who guard her while she is asleep, well, let's just say they are not as innocent as Disney made them out to be. I had a ball with Tepper's take on these classic characters, frequently laughing out loud at the way she perverted old tales and wove them into her own story. There is some very clever pastiche going on here, and to me, it just about made the book. What lets Beauty down somewhat is the didacticism of its tone. Tepper is a fine writer, but she is not very subtle; she makes her points very heavy-handedly, sometimes cringe-inducingly so. In Beauty, she tackles the loss of nature, beauty and magic in an increasingly less romantic world. As a fellow romantic with a yearning for the sublime, I found myself in sympathy with Tepper's message, but I do wish she hadn't forced it down my throat the way she did. I also somewhat objected to the overt feminism of the book, which mainly manifested itself in some truly despicable male characters. Apart from the heavy-handed environmentalism and feminism, though, Beauty is a fine book with some good, honest writing and some truly inspired ideas, mostly in the second half. If you can get over the disjointedness of the first half and the author's tendency to introduce cool ideas without really working them out, you'll find an imaginative and frequently entertaining (albeit depressing) fantasy story with some familiar, refreshingly un-Disney-like characters. It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it's better than most fantasy books out there, and I have no trouble recommending it to those who like their fairy tales dark and bleak. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Jul 2009
|
Sep 13, 2009
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0099740915
| 9780099740919
| 3.97
| 251,170
| 1985
| Jul 05, 2007
|
The scariest thing about Atwood's dystopian fantasy, first published in 1985, is how prophetic it seems. There were references in the book which sent...more
The scariest thing about Atwood's dystopian fantasy, first published in 1985, is how prophetic it seems. There were references in the book which sent a chill of recognition down my spine. A right-wing government which blames Islamic fundamentalists for terrorist attacks and begins to suspend certain human rights, claiming it is doing so to protect the people from heathen bastards? I daresay it will sound familiar to any left-wing American who has ever looked with a wary eye at the country's increasingly influential religious right. Nuclear disasters which affect health and fertility? I know some Ukrainian women who could tell a few nasty stories about that. And of course the suppression of women which is the main subject of The Handmaid's Tale is only too real in places like Iran and Afghanistan, where many women are probably worse off than Atwood's protagonist, Offred. So, yes, the novel rang true to me. I've read reviews by people who said their appreciation of the book was significantly undermined by the unlikeliness of the premise, but it didn't seem that far-fetched to me. I don't think a society like the one Atwood describes in The Handmaid's Tale would necessarily exist for a long time, but then regimes don't have to last long to cause untold damage. Just look at the havoc Nazi Germany wreaked in just over a decade, or Mao's Red Guards in Cultural Revolution-era China... I found The Handmaid's Tale a compelling book, and not just for its powerful vision of a dystopian future. Sure, it has a cold, impersonal tone, but that is appropriate, given the subject matter. What stayed with me most, other than the disturbing descriptions of chants and punishments, was Offred's boredom, the sense of loss that pervades the book. Bereft of her job and the right to read books or own anything, Offred has no distractions from her own thoughts, which she refers to as 'attacks of the past'. She frequently dwells on people and things she has lost -- people and things she used to take for granted, and now will never see again. Furthermore, she endlessly analyses her own thoughts, feelings and actions, simply because she has nothing else to do. Atwood does a great job describing Offred's crushing boredom and her desire for distraction, for something to give her life a little meaning. At the same time, she shows how indoctrination and forced inertia can wear an otherwise intelligent and engaged person down. Atwood's Offred is no heroine, no rebel. She sometimes has rebellious thoughts, but she never actively goes out there and makes things happen. Instead, she waits for others to give her cues, showing little initiative of her own. As a modern heroine, then, she is flawed; she is too passive really to appeal. However, as an illustration of how fear and oppression can beat an intelligent woman down and paralyse her into near-submission, she is near perfect. Those readers who complain about her passivity and lack of active engagement obviously missed the point. As far as I'm concerned, The Handmaid's Tale has only one real flaw, which is its ending. It felt rushed to me. I didn't necessarily crave more closure; I just felt the story deserved a less abrupt ending. As for the epilogue with its almost flippant tone, I didn't really care for that either, but I can see why Atwood felt the need to include it; it definitely answered a few questions, and offered a message of hope, as well. I can see how some readers might appreciate a message of hope after such a depressing read. Personally, though, I think the book would have been even more memorable if Atwood had remained true to the style and tone of the rest of the book. It would have made a chilling read just a tad more compelling. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Apr 2009
|
Apr 16, 2009
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0143113372
| 9780143113379
| 2.97
| 777
| 1997
| Sep 25, 2007
|
Elizabeth Gilbert's Pilgrims (first published in 1997) has come in for a fair bit of criticism on Goodreads -- mainly, I think, because it is so diffe...more
Elizabeth Gilbert's Pilgrims (first published in 1997) has come in for a fair bit of criticism on Goodreads -- mainly, I think, because it is so different from her humongous bestseller Eat, Pray, Love. I get the impression many readers go into this collection of short stories expecting it to be a re-tread of themes discussed in Eat, Pray, Love, only to be fiercely disappointed and unforgiving when they find out it isn't. It's a pity many readers can't judge the book on its own merits, for Pilgrims is an accomplished collection of short stories. In my opinion, it showcases Elizabeth Gilbert's gifts as a writer better than does Eat, Pray, Love, but I guess it doesn't contain enough soul-searching and navel-gazing for the average fan of that book. The twelve stories contained in Pilgrims are refreshingly diverse and unsentimental. They are set all over the USA, and feature a wide range of characters: directionless fifteen-year-old boys, brilliant and less brilliant magicians, brassy cowgirls, shy artists, incestuous bar owners, punch-happy protective older brothers, overambitious porters, pretentious students who like to pretend they're British aristocrats, and so on. The situations in which Gilbert puts these characters are equally diverse, but they do have a few things in common. For one thing, many stories revolve around characters learning important things about themselves, frequently finding things they did not even know they were looking for. For another thing, they all share a certain sympathy and compassion. No matter how silly or downright stupid some of Gilbert's characters are, the author never stoops to judge them, treating them instead with a tolerance that borders on respect. I like that, just like I like the fact that Gilbert never feels compelled to tell her characters' whole histories. The twelve stories in Pilgrims are not miniature novels; instead they are slices of life that start in medias res and end there. They capture a moment in time rather than a story, and as far as I'm concerned, they capture it well -- no need for more background or closure. The best thing about Pilgrims is Elizabeth Gilbert's fabulous ear for dialogue. Readers familiar with Eat, Pray, Love will know that Gilbert excels at writing lively and witty dialogue. In Pilgrims she does an even better job of it, sketching complete (and again, very diverse) characters by means of short, frequently absurd exchanges. Many of her dialogues are quirky as hell, but they suit the characters and situations so well that they always feel genuine and right. As a beginning novelist, I quite envy Gilbert for the ease with which she gives all her characters a voice of their own, but I digress... As I was saying, Pilgrims may not appeal to the millions of navel-gazing self-seekers who ate up Eat, Pray, Love , but those who like original and unsentimental slices of life with good characterisation and vivid dialogue should appreciate it a lot. I know I did! (less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Jan 2009
|
Feb 03, 2009
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 1416509631
| 9781416509639
| 3.78
| 10,916
| 1990
| Nov 23, 2004
|
Tehanu is the fourth entry in the Earthsea Cycle. It was written years after the original trilogy, and it shows: It is markedly different from the oth...more
Tehanu is the fourth entry in the Earthsea Cycle. It was written years after the original trilogy, and it shows: It is markedly different from the other books, both in style and in substance. Sadly, it is also inferior to the earlier books. Le Guin had picked up a strident feminism in between The Farthest Shore and Tehanu, and it shows in Tehanu in the worst way possible. Literally every female character in the book is worthy (even dirty, crazy Aunty Moss), whereas all the men in the book are weak and ineffective at best and downright obnoxious at worst. There are so many scathing remarks about men in the book that it made me groan at times. (And I'm not even male. I can only imagine how a male reader must feel about this book.) It's a pity Le Guin had to ruin her book like this, for the story itself, about the former High Priestess of Atuan who adopts a special girl and finds she is very special indeed, is interesting. It successfully weaves together loose threads from the previous books and sets up a new series, which, alas, I haven't read yet. I look forward to reading more about Tehanu in The Other Wind, which I hear is much better than Tehanu. But still. What a sub-par book. Three stars because I like the characters and the story, two stars for the writing.(less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Oct 2005
|
Sep 13, 2008
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 141650964X
| 9781416509646
| 4.07
| 33,112
| 1972
| Nov 23, 2004
|
In the third book of the Earthsea Cycle, Earthsea suffers a potentially disastrous epidemic. People all over the world are having their joy sucked out...more
In the third book of the Earthsea Cycle, Earthsea suffers a potentially disastrous epidemic. People all over the world are having their joy sucked out of them, getting into a semi-vegetative state and dying. After some thorough research, Ged, now Archmage of Earthsea, finds that they are being lured into the kingdom of the dead, from which they cannot return to life. And so Ged and Arren, a young prince and descendant of Earthsea's most legendary hero, set out to find a way into the kingdom of the dead and challenge the person responsible for the 'epidemic'. But who is he, where can he be found, and how can they stop something as fundamental as death taking over life? After a long quest, they meet their villain, and a spectacular finale ensues. The problem with The Farthest Shore is that it takes Ged and Arren a very long time to get to the kingdom of the dead. Of course, this is understandable; I wouldn't know how to get there either, short of jumping in front of a train (an approach which wouldn't have helped Ged much, if they had had trains in Earthsea). And yes, I'm aware that in this kind of story, it's usually about the journey rather than the destination, but somehow the journey doesn't really work for me here. Sure, it's nice to see more of Earthsea and get better acquainted with its inhabitants, and it's interesting to watch Ged (the teacher) and Arren (his pupil) interact, but it doesn't really propel the story forwards. As a result, the book has a meandering feel that is not entirely made up for by the excellent final chapters. So I'm giving the book three and a half stars, generously rounded up to four because I do like the mood of the story and the ending. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Oct 2005
|
Sep 13, 2008
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 1416509623
| 9781416509622
| 4.04
| 33,494
| Jan 01, 1970
| Nov 16, 2004
|
The second book of the Earthsea Cycle starts off in a slightly baffling way -- not with Ged, the central character of the series, but rather with Arha...more
The second book of the Earthsea Cycle starts off in a slightly baffling way -- not with Ged, the central character of the series, but rather with Arha, a young girl who has been chosen to become the next High Priestess of the Tombs of Atuan and spends her life performing rituals in which no one really seems to believe any more. We follow Arha around her daily tasks, and just when we're wondering where the hell Ged is, he makes an appearance, and a fascinating sparring match between the wizard and the young priestess ensues, in which Ged has to try and survive and the young girl learns the truth about those she serves and those who serve her. It's an interesting meditation on power, devotion, trust and loyalty, with the best setting of any fantasy book I've ever read*: A dark-as-night underground labyrinth which gives the book a superbly atmospheric and claustrophobic feel, not to mention a nice and ominous sense of impending doom. The best book in the series, worth a full five stars. * with the possible exception of Neil Gaiman’s London Below, which is superb if you know London and are familiar with its underground system.(less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Oct 2005
|
Sep 13, 2008
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0140304770
| 9780140304770
| 3.96
| 68,538
| 1968
| Jan 26, 1971
|
The first book of the Earthsea Cycle starts off much as you'd expect. A young boy, Sparrowhawk, discovers that he has special powers, is sent to a wiz...more
The first book of the Earthsea Cycle starts off much as you'd expect. A young boy, Sparrowhawk, discovers that he has special powers, is sent to a wizards' school where he is hailed as the next big thing, and gets a bit too proud for his own good. So far, so clichéd. What is original is that in his eagerness to show off, Sparrowhawk (now called Ged) unleashes an evil shadow that kills people and haunts him. Can he hide from this shadow, or does he have go on the offensive? He tries both, unsuccessfully at first. And so a long journey ensues in which Ged sees far-flung corners of the world, learns the true nature of things and eventually overcomes his fear of that which he has unleashed, which gets an interesting philosophical twist at the end. With its distant and detached but nevertheless pleasant tone, A Wizard of Earthsea adroitly sets the tone for the rest of the Earthsea series, which has a more old-fashioned and mythological feel to it than most other fantasy series. It's not a perfect book; the story feels a bit disjointed at times, and it would have been nice if Le Guin had gone into a bit more detail on occasion, rather than staying on the surface. Still, it's an interesting and exciting story, featuring some nifty Taoist ideas on balance (here called 'the equilibrium') and a lot of Le Guin's trademark name magic. A well-deserved four stars -- closer to four and a half stars, actually.(less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Oct 2005
|
Sep 13, 2008
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0140348034
| 9780140348033
| 4.17
| 2,149
| Oct 28, 1993
| Oct 28, 1993
|
The Earthsea Quartet contains the first four of Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea novels (I believe there are five now, plus a collection of short stories). Ea...more
The Earthsea Quartet contains the first four of Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea novels (I believe there are five now, plus a collection of short stories). Earthsea is a large archipelago of islands, some of which are inhabited by dragons, but most of which are inhabited by humans. It's a fairly well-realised world which never gets bogged down in unnecessary details, unlike many other fantasy series. LeGuin sticks to basics, both in terms of world-building and in terms of style. Her writing is sparse and detached, which suits the philosophical themes she addresses. It is also nearly sexless, which gives the stories collected in this book a lovely archaic and Tolkienesque ring. Apart from its detached tone, what most sets The Earthsea Quartet apart from other fantasy series is its concept of magic, which involves knowing the true names of things -- the names things were given back when they were first created, many of which are now forgotten. In LeGuin's universe, the way to power is to know lots of true names, be they of people, dragons or inanimate objects. So people who can divine true names, like the intrepid hero of the Earthsea Quartet, Ged, are potentially very powerful indeed. Not that Ged cares about power. All he cares about is keeping Earthsea a safe place to be, which basically means preventing other wizards from using too much magic. You see, the central conceit of the Earthsea novels is not that it's cool to know magic and use it as often as possible, as in, say, the Harry Potter books. In Earthsea, the wise wizard uses his powers sparingly, so as not to upset the world's equilibrium. The general idea seems to be that the more magic you use, the more you'll end up disturbing the natural equilibrium, with potentially disastrous consequences. Thus, while great feats of magic are occasionally performed in the books (usually to vanquish those who willingly upset the equilibrium), they are few and far between, and not nearly as prominent as they are in other fantasy series. Ultimately, LeGuin says, the wizard's challenge is not to become powerful, but rather to understand the nature of things and act upon this knowledge in a manner which will help keep the world a safe place to be. LeGuin has an interesting take on evil. In the first three books of the series (A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore), she doesn't really go in for great villains, but leaves her evil forces largely unspecified. Her evil is a nameless and faceless force whose ancient power can be felt but not readily understood. I like that; it adds a touch of mystery and otherworldly dread to the books which appeals to me. The fourth book, Tehanu, which was written much later than the preceding three books and is markedly different in both style and substance, does put a human face on evil, and moreover has a setting which will be more familiar to earthly readers than the settings of the earlier books. I'm sure some readers will appreciate this attempt at greater humanity and recognisability, but to me it constitutes a loss of the mythical quality and otherworldliness that make the first three books so special. It doesn't help, either, that the fourth book has a strong feminist slant, in the negative sense of that word. Apparently, Tehanu is considered a bit of a feminist classic in some quarters, but personally, I think it suffers badly from its men-deprecating stance. I much prefer the ideology-free earlier books, which I'd rate at four stars, five stars and three and a half stars, respectively. If you can only read one book in the series, pick The Tombs of Atuan, which pits the hero, Ged, against a young priestess who doesn't really understand the powers she is serving. It's an excellent story, set largely in an underground labyrinth, which adds a tangible touch of claustrophobia to the proceedings. A life-and-death power struggle in a dark place from which there is no escape -- what's not to like? More in-depth reviews of the individual books can be found here: A Wizard of Earthsea The Tombs of Atuan The Farthest Shore Tehanu (less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Oct 2005
|
Sep 12, 2008
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0140620974
| 9780140620979
| unknown
| 3.68
| 1,297
| 1888
| unknown
|
'Hypocrisy, duplicity are my only chance. I'm sorry for it, but there's no baseness I wouldn't commit for Jeffrey Aspern's sake.' So says the unnamed...more 'Hypocrisy, duplicity are my only chance. I'm sorry for it, but there's no baseness I wouldn't commit for Jeffrey Aspern's sake.' So says the unnamed narrator of Henry James' The Aspern Papers, a literary scholar who is writing a book about the fictional poet Jeffrey Aspern (loosely based on either Keats or Browning, depending on whose theories you choose to believe). At the beginning of the novella, the narrator discovers that Juliana Bordereau, to whom the poet addressed some of his most beautiful love poems, is still alive, a very old lady who lives with a niece in a dilapidated house in Venice. Not unreasonably, he suspects Miss Bordereau of having mementoes (possibly even love letters from the poet), and since a colleague of his has already established that she won't part with them the regular way, he inveigles his way into her house as a lodger. And then he waits -- waits for an opportunity to get his hands on the papers, or to get hold of them some other way. In many respects, The Aspern Papers is an ideal book for people who dislike James, or think they do. A product of his middle period, it doesn't feature the late-period characteristics with which so many people associate him: the stupendous subtlety, the ponderous tone and the endless sentences whose meaning is obscure even after rereading them. The Aspern Papers is neither ponderous nor obscure. It's a perfectly straightforward and easy-to-read story about hope and obsession and where they will lead us. As is often the case with James, it's also about people using each other, but exactly who is using whom here is unclear. Indeed, a case could be made for all three leads using each other, which adds a bitter dimension to the tale. And it's a pretty bitter story to begin with -- dark and cynical with a bit of well-handled tragedy thrown in for good measure. Reading The Aspern Papers is an interesting experience. It's quite fascinating to follow the narrator's progress, seeing him plot, attempt to justify his actions, pity himself and check himself whenever he's aware that he is about to do something which may ruin his chances. He's a calculating monster, but in a way you want him to succeed, both because you feel he deserves something for his efforts and because he has to put up with two very difficult women to get at the papers. For Juliana and her niece are difficult. The former poet's mistress has turned into a cynical, sarcastic and avaricious old lady, and as for her niece, Miss Tina, well, she's a bit of a simpleton, albeit an interesting one (the narrator nastily describes her as 'a piece of middle-aged female helplessness'). So how should the narrator go about dealing with them? How should he manipulate them into giving him what he wants? Jeffrey Aspern never offered any advice on that, so the narrator is left to find out for himself. But of course the women have an agenda of their own, and it doesn't necessarily match his. As a story about academic obsession, The Aspern Papers is a bit too detached to leave a lasting impression. However, as a story about cold ambition and ruthlessness -- about the corrupting influence of want and need -- it's very successful. It's an intense and suspenseful novella with a few short bursts of melodrama, some near-gothic moments and an impressive, well-written ending. If it's a tad light-weight by James' later standards, I daresay there will be readers who will consider that a good thing. I know I do. In my weaker moments. :-)(less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Dec 1998
|
Aug 06, 2008
| |||||||||||||||
| 0749309423
| 9780749309428
| 3.97
| 225,387
| Jan 01, 1988
| 1991
|
Call me a freak, but I have a bit of a crush on Hannibal Lecter. He may be the scariest fuck out there (certainly scarier than the supposed monster of...more
Call me a freak, but I have a bit of a crush on Hannibal Lecter. He may be the scariest fuck out there (certainly scarier than the supposed monster of the book, Buffalo Bill), but he just oozes style and knowledge. In fact, he has so much style and knowledge that he doesn't come off as a ridiculous prick when he says things like, 'A census taker tried to quantify me once. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a big Amarone'* or 'Can you smell his sweat? That peculiar goatish odour is trans-3-methyl-2 hexenoic acid. Remember it, it's the smell of schizophrenia.' Quite the contrary -- he sounds cool saying these things. Sophisticated, even. In this and many other ways, Dr Lecter is so utterly fascinating that you'll still find yourself rooting for him after he has committed several heinous (but brilliant!) murders, hoping he'll stay out of the hands of the police and live out his life in freedom. Now that's quality writing for you. As you can probably tell from the above, I like The Silence of the Lambs, which is to say the book on which the movie was based. Except for the fact that Harris makes Clarice rather stupid** and that the dialogue in the book is a bit too clever and masculine for its own good***, it's a solid and exciting will-they-find-him-in-time-to-save-the-girl story -- a page-turner if ever there was one. The characters aren't terribly easy to identify with, but that's all right, because for one thing, they're cool (had I mentioned that yet?), and for another, they all have a clearly defined quest. They don't necessarily have the same quest, but hey, that only serves to increase the tension. In some regards the book is better than the film. Remember those stupid anagrams from the movie? They're not in the book (except for the bilirubin one, which I actually quite like). The book makes its connections in a much more logical, less what-the-fuck?-ish way. It also has a more realistic romance, though not necessarily a better one. On the down side, I think Thomas Harris must have kicked himself for not having come up with the closing line of the film ('I'm having an old friend for dinner') himself. In my opinion, it's the best closing line in cinematic history, unmatched by the ending of the book. Still, it's a satisfying read. Very satisfying. As satisfying as the movie, and that's saying a fair bit. ...................... * Yes, that's what he says in the book. Not 'a nice Chianti'. I've been reliably informed by those in the know (I myself do not actually drink wine) that Amarone and Chianti are not in fact the same thing. 'Chianti' does sound better than 'Amarone' in this line, doesn't it? ** In the book, Dr Lecter tells Clarice in one of their first interviews that Billy has kidnapped large-chested Catherine Martin because 'he wants a vest with tits on it'. He then goes on to say in their next meeting that 'Billy is making a girl suit out of real girls'. And despite these incredibly obvious clues (which cannot be rude jokes on Lecter's part as he's far too sophisticated to make such rude jokes) it takes Clarice, who is supposed to be really intelligent, the entire rest of the book to figure out what it is that Billy wants from his victims. They wisely changed that in the movie, where Clarice doesn't have her entire quest spelled out for her right at the beginning. *** I've never met any women who speak to each other the way Clarice and Ardelia do. Then again, I've never met any brilliant FBI trainees, so what do I know? Perhaps they do speak to each other like that at Quantico. I guess I'll never find out. (Anyone out there have FBI-trained friends? Anyone? Bueller?) (less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Feb 1992
|
Jul 31, 2008
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0140180672
| 9780140180671
| 3.79
| 1,158,078
| 1925
| 1990
|
Like many people, I first read The Great Gatsby when I was too young to understand it. I appreciated the beauty of Fitzgerald's prose and his gift for...more
Like many people, I first read The Great Gatsby when I was too young to understand it. I appreciated the beauty of Fitzgerald's prose and his gift for describing scenes, but disliked quite a few of his characters and couldn't fathom why they inspired in each other the degree of devotion and obsession that they seemed to do. I also found the narrator a bit dull and the ending a huge let-down. In short, I was convinced Fitzgerald was a good writer (I actually went on to check out some of his short stories immediately afterwards), but couldn't see what all the Gatsby fuss was about. I think I can see it now, having reread the book a couple of times since then. Yes, it's a novel about the American Dream -- a rags-to-riches story about a poor man who re-invents himself as a mysterious millionaire in hopes of winning the heart of the beautiful rich girl he has fancied ever since they were young. But it's also about the shallowness of that dream, and about the corruption inherent in it -- about the lengths to which people will go for success and acceptance, not necessarily in an admirable way. It's about the gap between dreams and reality, between reality and perception, and about how modern, status-obsessed America is increasingly on the perception side of the gap. It's an indictment of materialism, of the thin veneer of wealth which hides the moral decay underneath. And last but not least, it's a story about what makes us who we are. About how we are shaped by our pasts and backgrounds, and how, no matter how far we run and how hard we try to re-invent ourselves, we are what we are, what we always were. It's a depressing message for the would-be self-improvers among us, but a true one, I think. Of course, the book also works on a shallower level. The Gatsby-Daisy romance is fascinating, even if both of its protagonists ultimately turn out to be rather vapid and deluded. And Gatsby's dream is nothing if not powerful. If it ends up failing, that's because it was based on wrong assumptions -- assumptions arising from ignorance and greed as well as hope. There's a lot of greed and ignorance in the book, and it makes for memorable (albeit heavily flawed) characters. (I actually believe Jordan Baker is the most interesting character in the book. I'd have loved to see a bit more of her, although I guess it's precisely her elusiveness which makes her so fascinating.) For his part, old-fashioned Nick proves to be an excellent narrator, whose 'provincial squeamishness' adds just the right kind of perspective to all the modern goings-on described in the book. Nick may be unspectacular and unreliable, but to my mind, he's one of the best narrators in the history of modern fiction. Now that I've learnt to appreciate the novel, his disappointment and disillusionment will stay with me for ever, as will his sad resignation. (If, in fact, that is what it is. One never knows with this endlessly subtle novel.)(less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Jul 1993
|
Jul 22, 2008
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0812575717
| 9780812575712
| 4.24
| 59,121
| 1999
| Dec 15, 2000
|
When I first heard Orson Scott Card had written a parallel story to Ender's Game, dealing with virtually the same events as the original book but told...more
When I first heard Orson Scott Card had written a parallel story to Ender's Game, dealing with virtually the same events as the original book but told from another character's perspective, I thought it was a cheap way to cash in on the success of his first bestseller. Like many people, though, I had to eat my words after reading Ender's Shadow. For not only is it as gripping a read as Ender's Game, but in some regards it is actually a better book. Ender's Shadow centres on one of Ender's lieutenants, Bean, an even younger and more intelligent child prodigy than Ender himself. After some thrilling adventures on the streets of Rotterdam, Bean is sent to Battle School, where he keeps hearing about this genius called Ender. Bean gets obsessed with Ender, or rather with proving to himself and others that he is a better strategist than Ender. But when he finally meets Ender, he realises that there is a reason why Ender is revered the way he is, and learns to accept his place in the universe. Nope, he doesn't get to command Earth's army, but he plays a major part in the background -- in many ways a more interesting part than the one Ender plays in the foreground. Ender's Shadow does have a few problems. As a Dutchwoman, I dearly wish Card had gone over the Dutch names and references in the Rotterdam segment with a Dutch person, as many of them are riddled with mistakes (Sinterklaas lights? WTF?). Furthermore, there were a few times (especially halfway through the book) when I found Bean's superiority complex a bit grating. Apart from these minor flaws, though, Ender's Shadow is a solid novel by an author who had clearly matured immensely since writing Ender's Game. The prose in Ender's Shadow is much richer, the psychology has more depth, the back story is more fully realised, and thanks to Bean's amazing tactical and analytical insights, he is able to offer an interesting perspective on events known from the first book. Bean himself, too, is a much better drawn protagonist than Ender -- not always entirely likeable, but always fascinating. His story may lack some of the surprise and impact of Ender's, but in its own way it's thoroughly engaging and thought-provoking. It easily holds up as a stand-alone book, and as a companion piece to Ender's Game, filling in gaps and providing new perspectives on known events, it is simply superb. I never thought I'd say this about a young-adult-meets-sci-fi novel, but there you are. Good stuff.(less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Jun 2002
|
Jul 17, 2008
| Mass Market Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0812550706
| 9780812550702
| 4.28
| 405,307
| Jan 1985
| Jul 15, 1994
|
Every now and then you come across a book whose prose is thoroughly unimpressive but whose premise and sheer bravado manage to suck you in nonetheless...more
Every now and then you come across a book whose prose is thoroughly unimpressive but whose premise and sheer bravado manage to suck you in nonetheless, to the point where you end up enjoying it an awful lot. Ender's Game falls into that category for me. The first few chapters feature some of the choppiest prose I've come across in a published book -- sentences so short and dull that I seriously wondered how the book had ever got published. However, the writing gradually gets better, and as for the story itself, well, it's simply compelling. It kept me up for the better part of two nights and had me doing some serious thinking afterwards. Not bad for a young-adult-cum-science-fiction novel. Ender's Game centres on Andrew 'Ender' Wiggin, a precocious six-year-old who is selected for the inter-planetary Battle School, where children are trained to become commanders for the International Fleet (a space agency which is supposed to keep alien threats at bay). Ender's teachers suspect he is a strategic genius, so in order to nurture his talent and see what he is capable of, they subject him to an increasingly gruelling training programme in which he has to lead much older kids into mock battles. It soon becomes apparent why: the teachers believe that Ender may be the only person capable of beating the Buggers, a technologically advanced race from outer space who may or may not have evil designs on planet Earth. So they push young Ender to his very limits, only to realise much later that they may have pushed him too far. Is Ender up to the challenge? And what exactly does this challenge entail, and what does it mean in terms of right and wrong? These are just some of the questions raised in Ender's Game, a page-turner if ever I read one. While overall characterisation is shoddy (Ender himself remains a two-dimensional character, and the other characters never make it past 1.4-dimensional), there can be no doubt that Ender is a great protagonist. It's simply riveting to watch him overcome his own fears, outwit his enemies, win the respect and support of those who matter and prove himself worthy of the big task ahead of him. Reading about his game tactics is like watching a strategy book come to life, and I for one really enjoyed that experience (I guess I should be reading Machiavelli and Sun Tzu next). But Ender's Game is more than an exciting tale about a child prodigy overcoming tremendous odds to find the meaning of his life. It also deals with fairly fundamental ethical issues. Once the final battle is over, you are left with a lot of questions -- about the legitimacy of manipulation and using children as a means to an end, and about the ethics of war and colonisation. You are given an insight into how lonely life can be at the top, and how hard it can be to live with yourself after you've done something terrible (even if you were tricked into doing it). You are left feeling not just for Ender, who pays a heavy price for the games others play on him, but for his victims, who may not quite deserve the treatment they get. So what if the writing is sketchy and the characters are cardboard cut-outs? It's still a gripping read which makes some worthy points. A deserved classic, in my opinion.(less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Jun 2002
|
Jul 16, 2008
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0679744398
| 9780679744399
| 3.91
| 37,490
| 1992
| Jun 29, 1993
|
I seldom abandon books after reading just a couple of pages, but in this case I had no choice. Two pages into the book I was so annoyed by McCarthy's...more
I seldom abandon books after reading just a couple of pages, but in this case I had no choice. Two pages into the book I was so annoyed by McCarthy's random use of apostrophes and near-total lack of commas that I felt I had better stop reading to prevent an aneurysm. I'm sure McCarthy is a great storyteller, but unless someone convinces me he has found a competent proof-reader who is not afraid to add some four thousand commas to each of his books, I'll never read another line he's written. I can only tolerate so many crimes against grammar and punctuation. (less)
| Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| not set
|
Jun 25, 2008
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0385508530
| 9780385508537
| 3.46
| 140
| Oct 01, 2006
| Oct 17, 2006
|
Women who get foot facelifts to be able to wear their $500 Jimmy Choo shoes. Men who lie to several doctors in order to make sure they get Botox shots...more
Women who get foot facelifts to be able to wear their $500 Jimmy Choo shoes. Men who lie to several doctors in order to make sure they get Botox shots every eight weeks. Young women modelling themselves on porn stars. People willingly having themselves injected with corpse flesh and collagen derived from the stem cells of an infant’s foreskin to get Angelina Jolie-like lips. Makeover subjects who all end up looking the same, conforming to the same dull beauty ideal. Bel Air wives who spend all day looking after their own bodies. Women who pose topless at websites in order to earn money for breast implants. Dentists who insist that they, too, are entitled to perform plastic surgery so as to be able to cash in on the beauty fad. Quacks selling bootleg ‘Botox’ that ends up ruining several people’s lives. These are just a few of the people described in Beauty Junkies, a look at America’s $15 billion cosmetic surgery industry by New York Times journalist Alex Kuczynski, herself a former beauty junkie who needed a pretty harsh wake-up call to realise that maybe, maybe, she and several million Americans were taking their obsession with looking good a bit too far. Kuczynski quotes some staggering figures to prove that America is well and truly obsessed with cosmetic surgery. She cites famous and less famous surgeons, talks to extreme beauty junkies as well as ‘regular’ people undergoing surgery, describes mind-boggling new beautification techniques and demonstrates quite ably that in today’s America, looks are everything, to the point where girls do not want to be good – just look good. Needless to say, much of the book focuses on extremes, but even so, one gets the feeling that these extremes might one day become normal – that they’re harbingers of what is to come for America as well as the rest of the world. It’s a scary thought. What I enjoyed most about the book was the chapter in which Kuczynski traces the historical origins of plastic surgery, in an age when it had nothing to do with getting bigger boobs, but everything with being made somewhat socially acceptable. Kuczynski describes sixteenth-century nose jobs which were awfully uncomfortable to the patients and frequently resulted in noses falling off in cold weather, disastrous late-nineteenth-century attempts to fill facial lines, and early-twentieth-century techniques to restore the faces of WWI soldiers who had had their jaws blown off in combat. It’s fascinating stuff and I wish she had devoted a bit more attention to it. Instead, however, she very quickly takes us to the present day, describing all manner of obsessions, excesses and nasty experiences (including a few of her own) to convince us that things have got a little out of hand. Well, we knew that, didn’t we? My main problem with Beauty Junkies is that it is incoherent and unfocused. Kuczynski has some interesting, well-researched stories to tell, and she undeniably has an easy-to-read writing style, but the way the stories are linked together is not particularly smooth. It is clear the book started out as a collection of newspaper articles rather than as a scholarly endeavour, making it rather less successful as an in-depth analysis of a cultural phenomenon. Furthermore, it seems Kuczynski cannot make up her mind as to whether the book is to be about herself or not. She brings up her own experiences far too many times for Beauty Junkies to be an objective read, but too few times to make it a proper memoir. Instead it’s a rather curious mix of research, gossip and ego-babble – definitely interesting, but not as revealing and effective as it could and should have been. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Apr 2007
|
Mar 23, 2008
| Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| 0385333846
| 9780385333849
| 3.97
| 471,242
| 1969
| Jan 12, 1999
|
I have to admit to being somewhat baffled by the acclaim Slaughterhouse-5 has received over the years. Sure, the story is interesting. It has a fascin...more
I have to admit to being somewhat baffled by the acclaim Slaughterhouse-5 has received over the years. Sure, the story is interesting. It has a fascinating and mostly successful blend of tragedy and comic relief. And yes, I guess the fractured structure and time-travelling element must have been quite novel and original back in the day. But that doesn't excuse the book's flaws, of which there are a great many in my (seemingly unconventional) opinion. Take, for instance, Vonnegut's endless repetition of the phrase 'So it goes.' Wikipedia informs me it crops up 106 times in the book. It felt like three hundred times to me. About forty pages into the book, I was so fed up with the words 'So it goes' that I felt like hurling the book across the room, something I have not done since trying to read up on French semiotics back in the 1990s. I got used to coming across the words every two pages or so eventually, but I never grew to like them. God, no. I found some other nits to pick, too. Some of them were small and trivial and frankly rather ridiculous, such as -- wait for it -- the hyphen in the book's title. Seriously, what is that hyphen doing there? There's no need for a hyphen there. Couldn't someone have removed it, like, 437 editions ago? And while I'm at it, couldn't some discerning editor have done something about the monotonous quality of Vonnegut's prose -- about the interminable repetition of short subject-verb-object sentences? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all authors should use Henry James- or Claire Messud-length sentences. Heaven forbid. I'm actually rather fond of minimalism, both in visual art and in writing. But Vonnegut's prose is so sparse and simplistic it's monotonous rather than minimalist, to the point where I frequently found myself wishing for a run-on sentence every now and then, or for an actual in-depth description of something. I hardly ever got either. As a result, there were times when I felt like I was reading a bare-bones outline of a story rather than the story itself. Granted, it was an interesting outline, larded with pleasing ideas and observations, but still, I think the story could have been told in a more effective way. A less annoying way, too. As for the plot, I liked it. I liked the little vignettes Vonnegut came up with and the colourful characters he created (the British officers being my particular favourites). I liked the fact that you're never quite sure whether Billy is suffering from dementia, brain damage or some kind of delayed post-traumatic stress disorder, or whether there is some actual time-travelling going on. I even liked the jarring switches in perspective, although I think they could have been handled in a slightly more subtle manner. And I liked the book's anti-war message, weak and defeatist though it seemed to be. In short, I liked the book, but it took some doing. I hope I'll be less annoyed by the two other Vonnegut books I have sitting on my shelves, Breakfast of Champions and Cat's Cradle. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Mar 2008
|
Mar 11, 2008
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0143039709
| 9780143039709
| 3.98
| 3,464
| 1913
| May 30, 2006
|
Think Edith Wharton only wrote novels about nice people who fall victim to society's uncongenial mores? Then The Custom of the Country may come as a b...more
Think Edith Wharton only wrote novels about nice people who fall victim to society's uncongenial mores? Then The Custom of the Country may come as a bit of a surprise to you. Far from a dignified, morally superior character, the book's heroine, the beautiful but vulgar Undine Spragg, is a selfish monster who takes society (or rather, several different societies) head on, suffers a bit for her lack of subtlety but comes out filthy rich. Unless you're a gold-digger yourself, you'll find Undine hard to identify with, but that doesn't really matter, because for one thing, the story is far too interesting to care about a trifle like an unlikeable heroine, and for another, there are other characters to sympathise with. Such as Undine's poor, long-suffering husbands, to whom Wharton devotes a few beautiful, desperate chapters. Undine Spragg is a marvellous creation whose sense of entitlement and ruthlessness defy belief. She is as hypocritical as the 'friends' with whom she surrounds herself, disapproving of them for doing the same things she herself does without seeming to be aware of the irony. As a reader, you keep waiting for Undine to learn a lesson, but other than a dim awareness that others seem to find her rather dull once they have got over her physical beauty, she never learns a thing, let alone the harsh lesson she so deserves. She just goes on and on pressing for the things she wants, and for some reason she gets them. Most of them, anyway. As always, Wharton's prose is beautiful, her satire thick and marvellous. With great authority she lashes out at the different circles in which Undine moves, all of which Wharton knew from experience: Midwestern wannabes, representatives of venerable Old New York (dignified but ineffective), the Gilded Age nouveaux riches (vulgar, very vulgar, but not entirely without redeeming qualities) and the French aristocracy (dignified but hypocritical). What with Undine being so successful, The Custom of the Country lacks some of the tragic quality that makes The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence so memorable, but other than that, it's a fine exploration of upward mobility and aspirations, written by an author whose prose never fails to delight. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Feb 2000
|
Mar 10, 2008
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0452276136
| 9780452276130
| 3.65
| 110
| 1995
| May 01, 1996
|
A while ago I mentioned here that I like stories about obsessive love. I'm not sure what it says about me that I do, but anyhow, this is one such stor...more
A while ago I mentioned here that I like stories about obsessive love. I'm not sure what it says about me that I do, but anyhow, this is one such story. It's obsessive, it's haunting and it's compelling, and gets four stars just for that. Once upon a time I'd have given it five, but no, it's not quite that good. Five Minutes in Heaven is about Jude, a tomboyish girl growing up in 1950s Tennessee. Very early on in life, Jude meets her soulmate in the form of her childhood friend Molly. The two girls have an intense friendship which might grow into something more, except that Molly first decides that having this kind of relationship is Wrong and then dies, leaving Jude devastated and alone. The story then fast-forwards ten years, following Jude through her twenties and thirties in New York and Paris. She's still trying to find the kind of union she had with Molly (first with a man, then with a woman), but unfortunately, every time she finds a soulmate, her beloved dies. Usually in a pretty gruesome fashion. As you can tell from the above, Five Minutes in Heaven is not a very cheerful book. Nor is it very mainstream, what with all the main characters being either gay or bisexual and some of them being fairly morbid. It is, however, a beautiful exploration of 'graveyard love', of living in the past and yearning for what could have been, and of the confusing territory between friendship and love. Alther has a great eye for the telling detail. Her evocation of a troubled teenage friendship in 1950s Tennessee is beautiful, and her observations on the differences between Southerners and Northerners, Americans, Brits and French people are spot on, albeit cliched. The book itself has elements of all these cultures. It's a bit unsubtle at times (Alther is prone to telling rather than showing), but eminently readable, and as I said, quite intense and compelling. Definitely recommended for those who like their love stories a little on the obsessive side. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Jan 1998
|
Mar 07, 2008
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0099532611
| 9780099532613
| 3.71
| 27,103
| Jan 01, 1965
| Jun 06, 1996
|
I'm not sure how much I care for Thomas Pynchon's brand of postmodernism. On the one hand, The Crying of Lot 49 contains interesting ideas, culminatin...more
I'm not sure how much I care for Thomas Pynchon's brand of postmodernism. On the one hand, The Crying of Lot 49 contains interesting ideas, culminating in a weird trip down Paranoia Lane. On the other hand, the writing is so detached and plain weird that it is hard to emotionally invest in the characters. As a novel of ideas, then, The Crying of Lot 49 has some merit; as a reading experience it's rather less rewarding. It feels like a 200-page story crammed into 127 pages, and that's not a compliment. For what it's worth, the story is as follows. Oedipa Maas, a married lady living in 1960s California, is unexpectedly made executrix of her dead ex-boyfriend's estate. While carrying out her duties, she comes across strange goings-on which may or may not point to the existence of a secret postal service. The clues keep piling up. Are they mere coincidences or is there a sinister conspiracy afoot? And if even something as basic as post delivery is subject to a conspiracy, what else may be going on in society? Keen to find answers, Oedipa digs into the clues, only to get sucked into what is best described as a wild and obsessive brainstorm. As I said, there are some interesting ideas going on here. Pynchon has a definite knack for mixing fact and fiction, to the point where you find yourself Googling things to see what is truth and what is fiction. He also quite successfully makes you buy into the conspiracy theory. Sadly, though, he's rather self-indulgent, blending good stuff with lengthy passages of dense, impenetrable prose that don't really seem to go anywhere. These passages do serve a purpose in that they make the reader as confused as Oedipa herself (a confusion further strengthened by the maddening open ending), but for all their paranoia-inducing quality, I wish Pynchon had taken more time to flesh out his story, to turn it into an actual novel with flesh-and-blood characters and emotions rather than an exercise in cleverness. In short, I wish the book had more pages. I didn't think I'd ever say that about a Pynchon novel, but here it's true: less is not always more. Alas. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Jan 2005
|
Mar 02, 2008
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0141439637
| 9780141439631
| 3.73
| 29,293
| 1881
| Sep 30, 2003
|
The Portrait of a Lady has to be my favourite of the fifteen or so Henry James books I've read. The crowning achievement of James' middle period, when...more
The Portrait of a Lady has to be my favourite of the fifteen or so Henry James books I've read. The crowning achievement of James' middle period, when he had honed his powers of observation to perfection but had not yet slipped into the long-winded obscurity that makes his later novels so hard to read, it is in my opinion one of the most perfect novels of the nineteenth century. Very little actually happens in it, but what little does happen is described so exquisitely that you hardly notice it's a whole lot of nothing spread out over 600+ pages. That's masterful story-telling for you. The Portrait of a Lady centres on Isabel Archer, a young, lively and intelligent American who is taken to Europe by her eccentric expatriate aunt. In Europe, she is courted by eligible bachelors who appreciate her independent-mindedness and wish to see where it will lead her, but for all their attentions, she ends up marrying a cold-hearted bastard who treats her like an ornament and all but breaks her spirit. The rest of the book revolves around the question whether Isabel will stay with her husband out of a sense of duty or live up to her old ideals of independence. As I said, there's not an awful lot of story here (the above paragraph is a near-complete summary of the plot), but James makes the most of it. With his powerful observations and descriptions and superb characterisation, he paints a vivid portrait of nineteenth-century womanhood and the institution of marriage, of love, loyalty and longing, of purity versus artificiality, of betrayal, of the differences between Americans and Europeans (a recurring theme in his oeuvre) and of major themes in life: duty, honour, commitment, freedom. Isabel Archer is a likeable heroine whose dreams are quite recognisable to the modern reader, so while James keeps his distance from her, analysing her as a case study rather than as a flesh-and-blood human being, the reader feels for her; it's quite torturous watching her go and make the mistakes which will ruin her life. Both Isabel's struggles and the other characters' are described in elegant but sharp and incisive prose. The result is a big book that is subtle yet dramatic, understated yet powerful, and that ranks among the best things James ever wrote. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Jan 1995
|
Mar 01, 2008
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 1400031702
| 9781400031702
| 4.03
| 54,240
| 1992
| Apr 13, 2004
|
The first paragraph of The Secret History roughly sums up the mood of the book. In it, the narrator, Richard Papen, says that he thinks his fatal flaw...more
The first paragraph of The Secret History roughly sums up the mood of the book. In it, the narrator, Richard Papen, says that he thinks his fatal flaw is 'a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs'. If you can relate to these words, chances are you'll love The Secret History. If not, you'll probably wonder what the fuss is all about. Personally, I can totally relate to these words, so I love the book. I've read it over half a dozen times, and while I do think it has its problems, I never fail to find it utterly gripping. The Secret History is both an intellectual novel of ideas and a murder mystery without the whodunnit element. The reader learns right on the first page that Richard and his friends have killed one among their midst. The rest of the book goes on to explain how they came to their gruesome deed and what happened to them afterwards. Against all odds, it makes for compelling reading, despite the fact that you know right from the start who the killers are. Such is the power of Tartt's writing that you find yourself turning page after page, waiting for answers, justifications and possibly a sign of remorse. Once these have been dealt with, the book loses a bit of its power, but until that time, it's near perfect. Donna Tartt's great gift as a writer is her magnificent talent for description. Her evocation of life at a small private university in New England with its oddball mix of ivory-tower intellectuals and ditzy cokeheads is rich in detail, both shocking and funny. If it's not entirely realistic, she makes it so. Likewise, her skill at characterisation is superb. While Richard is not entirely convincing as a male narrator (a fact I find more noticeable every time I re-read the book), he and his friends make up a fascinating cast of characters: six aloof, self-absorbed and arrogant intellectuals who are obsessed with ancient Greece and don't particularly care for modern life. They're snobs and they have major issues, but somehow that only makes them more alluring. Together, they form the ultimate inner circle, the kind of tight-knit group you know should always stay together. Which makes it almost understandable that they should be willing to kill anyone who might jeopardise that group dynamic, incomprehensible though this may seem to the average reader. I can think of many reasons why The Secret History strikes such a chord with me. For one thing, I have a thing for timeless and ethereal stories, and this is one of those. Somehow the book has a dreamlike, almost hypnotic quality, despite it being very firmly set in the rather unromantic 1980s. I love that. For another thing, I have always been drawn to the unabashedly intellectual, and this book has that in spades. It makes geekdom alluring, and I just love Tartt for that. I wish I were as geeky as Henry! Ultimately, what I think I respond to most in The Secret History is the friendship aspect. The Secret History is very much a book about friendship. It's about the very human yearning to belong and be accepted by people we admire. It's about the sacrifices we make to keep friendships intact, the insecurity we feel when we think we might not be completely accepted by our friends after all, and the paranoia we experience when it seems our friends may have betrayed us. About the feeling of invincibility we get from having great friends, and the melancholy and loneliness that follow the disintegration of a once-great friendship. The book basically reads like an elegy on a great friendship, and one doesn't necessarily have to share Richard's intellectual attitude towards life, his morality or even his morbid longing for the picturesque to be able to relate to that. It's enough to have yearned for close friendship and been insecure in friendship. And let's face it, who hasn't? I do not think The Secret History is a perfect book. As I said, I find Richard somewhat unconvincing as a male character; there is too much about him that screams 'female author' to me. Furthermore, the ending is decidedly weak, although to be fair, I have no idea how else Tartt could have finished her book. The story does seem to be inexorably heading in that particular direction. Insofar as the ending reflects the disintegration that is going on in the characters' lives, it could probably be said to be appropriate. Still, I wish Tartt could have come up with something on a par with the rest of the book. If she had, this would have been a six-star book. I don't know many of those. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Jan 1993
|
Feb 24, 2008
| Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| 1844082938
| 9781844082933
| 3.93
| 33,198
| Jan 01, 1905
| Jan 01, 2006
|
I love books about people who perish for staying true to their principles, regardless of what these principles are. I also love books which make me wo...more
I love books about people who perish for staying true to their principles, regardless of what these principles are. I also love books which make me wonder what I would have done in the hero/heroine's situation -- whether I would have given in to temptation or let my better self prevail. So I love Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, which delivers on both counts, and then some. The House of Mirth chronicles the rise and fall of Lily Bart, a stunningly beautiful late-nineteenth-century socialite whose fortune sadly doesn't match her looks. Raised to believe beauty and fun are all that matters in life, Lily has trouble reconciling herself to her reduced circumstances. She realises she has to marry a rich man to keep up her current lifestyle, and doesn't lack for wealthy admirers, but each time she comes close to making a good match, she sabotages her prospects. Partly this is because she is unconsciously in love with a man who sadly has no great fortune to put at her disposal; and partly it's because despite her increasingly urgent need of money, she is too snobbish and refined to bring herself to marry a man who offends her aesthetic and social sensibilities. So far, so Jane Austen, but Wharton wouldn't be Wharton if she didn't add some venom to the story, and some tragedy, too. Rather a lot of tragedy, actually. The House of Mirth can be read on several levels. First of all, it's a parlour drama in the grand style of Jane Austen and Henry James (but more modern than either). Secondly, it's a love story -- a very tragic one indeed. Mostly, though, it's a critique of a society that creates women like Lily -- a society in which well-bred women are not taught to be independent, but rather to be just charming and beautiful enough to ensnare a wealthy man whose fortune they can then squander without any moral compunction. It's a critique of a hypocritical society in which married women (and men) can do as they please, but unmarried girls like Lily Bart have to be very careful indeed. Lily's Gilded-Age New York is a society in transition -- a society in which old manners and morals are increasingly being replaced by money and conspicuous consumption. On the outset, Lily seems to be part of a fast, shallow and profligate modern crowd, but as the story unfolds, the reader discovers she is not quite so corrupted as she seems. She still has some Old New York values left in her: naïveté, loyalty, chastity, discretion, and most of all, dignity. Needless to say, modern society being what it is, these old-fashioned values prove to be her undoing. Even when she is dealt a card with which she could turn a distinctly disadvantageous situation to her favour, Lily refuses to use it, choosing instead to suffer in silence and penury. Whether this is because using her trump card would place her on a par with the morally bankrupt people who make up her set or because she is too weak and exhausted to put up a fight is anyone's guess, but it makes for interesting speculation. And for introspection, for one inevitably ends up wondering how one would have behaved in Lily's position. Provided one would ever have found oneself in such a position in the first place, for unless I'm very much mistaken, most sensible women would have married Selden a few chapters into the book and dispensed with the rest of Lily's adventures. But that wouldn't have left Wharton with much of a story, would it? Wharton's first novel suffers from a minor overdose of melodrama and may be a bit too heavy on descriptions of parties and social events for those of us who don't particularly care about such things, but in all other regards it's a triumph. As a depiction of an era and of changing upper-class society, it's as powerful as anything Wharton ever wrote, although the social satire isn't as scathing as it is in The Custom of the Country. As a portrayal of a tragic heroine, it is quite simply superb. For all her blindness and ineffectiveness, Lily is an excellent protagonist -- witty, socially astute, an asset to any assembly. If she has a spectacular talent for making bad decisions, it only serves to make her more likeable. For that is the amazing thing about The House of Mirth -- the reader never quite loses his sympathy for Lily, despite her obvious flaws. Wharton may satirise the society that has produced Lily, but she never goes so far as to satirise Lily herself, which makes her fate all the more tragic. The House of Mirth may not be Wharton’s best novel (I think I prefer both The Age of Innocence and The Custom of the Country), but like all her work, it's eminently readable -- beautifully written and full of acute social and psychological insights (particularly into Lily's position). If it's only for people who like flawed heroines and tragic endings, so be it. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Sep 2000
|
Feb 16, 2008
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0312243022
| 9780312243029
| 3.85
| 62,824
| Nov 11, 1998
| Jan 15, 2000
|
Several years ago I had the fortune of watching the film adaptation of The Hours, which quite blew me away. I'm not sure why it then took me so long t...more
Several years ago I had the fortune of watching the film adaptation of The Hours, which quite blew me away. I'm not sure why it then took me so long to read the book on which the film was based, but I'm glad I did, as it's just beautiful. The Hours is both a tribute to and an update of Virginia Woolf's 1920s classic Mrs Dalloway, in which Pulitzer-winning author Michael Cunningham tries to answer the question of how Woolf's characters would interact in a present-day setting. Short on action but long on memories, associations and momentous decisions, it's a character study of three women who are looking for some meaning in their lives. First of all, there's Woolf herself, recovering from a bout of mental illness and busy outlining the novel that will eventually become Mrs Dalloway. Secondly, there's Laura Brown, a 1940s American housewife who wishes to lose herself in the experience of reading Mrs Dalloway. And thirdly, there's Clarissa Vaughan, a modern fifty-something New Yorker who is nicknamed Mrs Dalloway and who experiences a day not unlike the one Woolf describes in Mrs Dalloway. Although the three women seem very different on the outset, they do in fact have a fair bit in common. For one thing, they're all perfectionists who obsess about little details and continually fall short of their own standards and expectations. For another, they all, for various reasons, feel trapped and want OUT. And finally, they're all prone to obsessing about the past -- to wondering why they made the decisions they made, and whether their lives would have been very different if they had made different choices at the time. Cunningham first lets his women dwell on those questions for a while, then has them either accept their current lives or find a way out. Their internal drama and eventual decisions make for a brilliant meditation on past and present, on choices and on resignation to those choices. Among other things, the book tells you what it's like to realise that you may have had your moment and let it slip through your fingers, never to regain it. It shows you what it's like to be a dreadful perfectionist, doomed always to let yourself down. It shows you love, life, death. Especially the latter. More than any other other novel I've read, The Hours is steeped in death. That probably sounds depressing, but it's really quite beautiful, if you're morbid enough to see the beauty in that sort of thing. Especially since it is in its own way quite life-affirming. I could say a lot about the fabulous way in which Cunningham links his three stories -- about the many recurring themes, associations and echoes which make this such a hauntingly beautiful book. I could also say a lot about the respectful (and in my opinion successful) way in which he elaborates on the themes and questions raised in Mrs Dalloway (a book you needn't have read in order to appreciate The Hours, although it will definitely improve your understanding and enjoyment of the latter if you have). However, the main achievement of the book, as far as I'm concerned, is the marvellous way in which Cunningham paints emotions, more specifically emotions associated with depression, angst, melancholy and regret. I think you need to have been depressed or bipolar yourself really to understand the violent mood swings through which Cunningham puts his protagonists -- rapid transitions from despair to epiphany, from frustration to gratitude and exultation, from spiritual numbness to lyrical rapture, from ferocious neuroticism to a calm resignation to things. Having been there myself, I could relate only too well. I'm sure the same is true for many people -- men as well as women. I'm taking one star off because Cunningham's shifts in perspective can be a tad jarring and because the dialogue is occasionally monotonous (all Cunningham's characters sound like the author himself, which is not a big deal as he's very articulate, but is still a bit of a flaw). Apart from that, though, The Hours is a great book which I highly recommend to anyone -- not just to neurotic women. :-)(less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Mar 2008
|
Feb 16, 2008
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0394758285
| 9780394758282
| 4.07
| 38,727
| 1939
| Jul 12, 1988
|
Every now and then I go through a period where I'll put Serious Literature aside for a while and focus on crime thrillers instead. A few years ago I w...more
Every now and then I go through a period where I'll put Serious Literature aside for a while and focus on crime thrillers instead. A few years ago I went through a brief but intense Ellroy phase; now it seems I'm moving on to Chandler. I just read his most famous novel, The Big Sleep, and if that is anything to go by, I'll enjoy seeking out the rest of the Marlowe series, as well. As everyone who has seen the film will be aware, The Big Sleep is about a private detective, Philip Marlowe, who gets hired to solve a blackmail case and soon finds himself entangled in a web of intrigue, racketeering, pornography and Very Twisted Women. Over the course of his investigation, several people die or go missing. Naturally, the reader wants to find out (with Marlowe) what has happened to these people, but in a strange way, that is not really what The Big Sleep is all about. What it is all about is style -- tons of it. Not content with providing brilliant descriptions of Southern California's seedy underbelly or the behaviour of rich people who think they are above the law, Chandler treats his readers to some of the crispest dialogue ever committed to paper. His Marlowe is a street-smart and cynical but morally scrupulous detective who always remains cool and collected and always has a few wisecracks at the ready to defuse tricky situations, usually in a language all his own. The crooks, too, love their tough-guy slang -- a slang so unique that I frequently found myself wondering how I would translate it, should the opportunity ever arise (I'm a literary translator). I came to the conclusion that Chandler's dialogue largely defies translation. If that isn't a compliment to the uniqueness of his style, I don't know what is. And don't get me started on his women. Of course, the noir genre is known for its fabulous femmes fatales, but I think Chandler came up with the grandmothers of them all in the Sternwood sisters, Carmen and Vivian. Sure, they're infuriating, and no one but a misogynist could have come up with them, but wow, what allure. I want more female characters like them, even if their authors and fellow characters hate them. Which brings me to the book's flaws. Apart from the aforementioned misogyny, which is vague but unmistakable, The Big Sleep is quite openly homophobic, occasionally cringe-inducingly so. It also has a slightly abrupt and unsatisfactory ending. But still, what style. What descriptive power. What fabulous dialogue. Wow. I'm just waiting for the right opportunity to use Vivian's 'Hold me tight, you beast' now. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Jun 23, 2008
|
Feb 16, 2008
| Paperback
|
Loading...
