http://www.goodreads.com/review/list_rss/135890 en-US Fri, 11 Apr 2008 11:25:21 -0700 60 http://www.goodreads.com/ 200 41 http://www.goodreads.com/images/layout/gr_logo.gif 19946274 Fri, 11 Apr 2008 11:25:21 -0700
author: Chuck Palahniuk
name: Syd
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1999
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 04/11/08
shelves:
review:

]]> 19946237 Fri, 11 Apr 2008 11:24:54 -0700
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Syd
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 04/11/08
shelves:
review:

]]> 16421988 Thu, 06 Mar 2008 14:30:41 -0800
author: Ken Follett
name: Syd
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 03/08
date added: 03/06/08
shelves:
review:
I loved Pillars of the Earth and this one gave me what I was looking for (more Pillars) but the story lines were repeated in a new generation, which works but it as little transparent. I enjoyed it but not as much as Pillars of the Earth.
]]> 16419789 Tue, 26 Feb 2008 10:12:33 -0800
author: Eckhart Tolle
name: Syd
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 02/26/08
shelves:
review:

]]> 14820469 Tue, 12 Feb 2008 11:57:46 -0800
Hanna’s Daughters , by Marianne Fredriksson, is a Literary Fiction about three generations of Swedish women, starting with Hanna in 1871. I picked up this book from Target early in January. I had just finished Pillar’s of the Earth, which I’d gobbled up entirely and was left wanting more. I decide this book with its historical epic link might fit the bill and satiate me until I could get home and do some research on my next book choice. I don’t usually browse books and buy them randomly. This however was a spontaneous choice and a good one at that...[read more]]]>
author: Marianne Fredriksson
name: Syd
average rating: 3.59
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at: 01/08
date added: 02/12/08
shelves: finished
review:


Hanna’s Daughters , by Marianne Fredriksson, is a Literary Fiction about three generations of Swedish women, starting with Hanna in 1871. I picked up this book from Target early in January. I had just finished Pillar’s of the Earth, which I’d gobbled up entirely and was left wanting more. I decide this book with its historical epic link might fit the bill and satiate me until I could get home and do some research on my next book choice. I don’t usually browse books and buy them randomly. This however was a spontaneous choice and a good one at that...[read more]
]]> 14820585 Thu, 07 Feb 2008 09:17:13 -0800
author: Joyce Carol Oates
name: Syd
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 02/07/08
shelves:
review:

]]> 14820553 Thu, 07 Feb 2008 09:16:57 -0800
author: Milan Kundera
name: Syd
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 02/07/08
shelves:
review:

]]> 14820309 Thu, 07 Feb 2008 09:15:05 -0800
author: Ken Follett
name: Syd
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1989
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 02/07/08
shelves:
review:

]]> 9558669 Mon, 26 Nov 2007 10:42:56 -0800
author: Chuck Palahniuk
name: Syd
average rating: 3.40
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 11/26/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 9558659 Mon, 26 Nov 2007 10:42:37 -0800
author: Tom Robbins
name: Syd
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1977
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 11/26/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 9356528 Tue, 20 Nov 2007 10:39:29 -0800
author: Gabriel García Márquez
name: Syd
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1981
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 11/20/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 9354433 Tue, 20 Nov 2007 09:59:23 -0800
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Syd
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 11/20/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 9354422 Tue, 20 Nov 2007 09:59:07 -0800
author: Sherman Alexie
name: Syd
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 11/20/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 9354417 Tue, 20 Nov 2007 09:58:45 -0800
author: Robert A. Heinlein
name: Syd
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1961
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 11/20/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 2059954 Tue, 20 Nov 2007 09:57:29 -0800
author: Thrity Umrigar
name: Syd
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 11/20/07
shelves: cultural
review:

]]> 4483827 Mon, 13 Aug 2007 11:34:10 -0700
author: Edward Abbey
name: Syd
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 08/13/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 4483750 Mon, 13 Aug 2007 11:32:44 -0700
author: Diane Ackerman
name: Syd
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1995
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 08/13/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 4483703 Mon, 13 Aug 2007 11:32:01 -0700
author: Robert Jordan
name: Syd
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 08/13/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 4483678 Mon, 13 Aug 2007 11:31:35 -0700
author: Robert Jordan
name: Syd
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 08/13/07
shelves: fantasy
review:

]]> 2058964 Sun, 17 Jun 2007 14:09:19 -0700
Just like Nemo and Marlin in Finding Nemo.

I finished J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories last night. I find that I enjoy reading Salinger. Unlike my experience with Virginia Woolf, who writes beautiful and pointedly, but with such verbosity and content that it is hard to get through it all. I should be done with Mrs. Dalloway sometime around the turn of the next decade.

This was my first sampling of Salinger’s work but I think I’d like to read some of his other stuff as well, perhaps Catcher in the Rye. “Teddy,” the last story in this collection of short stories was a compelling story about a boy-genius who was so very enlightened that he had a memory of his previous life. Though his parents where not Hindus or Buddhists, he believed in reincarnation.

Salinger introduces the boy with this charming description:

“Teddy turned around at the waist, without changing the vigilant position of his feet on the Gladstone, and gave his father a look of inquiry, whole and pure. His eyes which were pale brown in color, and not at all large, were slightly crossed–the left eye more than the right. They were not crossed enough to be disfiguring or even to be necessarily noticeable at first glance. They were crossed just enough to be mentioned, and only in context with the fact that one might have thought long and seriously before wishing them straighter, or deeper, or browner, or wider set. His face, just as it was, carried the impact, however oblique and slow-traveling, of real beauty.”

Later in the story, it is revealed that he has the ability to predict when a person could possibly die, and in fact reveals that he himself may die that day or later on Feb. 14, 1958.

He is completely resigned to the idea of death, as he did not see it as an end to his being but only as a transformation. I think this is an interesting concept. It is true that death is a natural part of the cycle. Everyone dies, “My gosh, everyone’s done it thousands and thousands of times.” Teddy explains.

Seems morbid but it actually makes me feel a bit lighter. Like this idea frees you from the fight. It allows a person to enjoy each moment because it could be the last one you have in this lifetime.

Teddy was explaining this to a man, about his own potential death and how it wouldn’t be all that tragic because he’d “just be doing what he was suppose to do after all.” The man replied, “It may not be tragic from your point of view, but it would certainly be a sad event for your mother and dad.”

Teddy answered, “But that is only because they have names and emotions for everything that happens.”

I don’t have a complete conclusion to this whole idea. It all seems so simple and complex at the same time, it did however get me thinking about life and the names we attach to things.

I highly recommend the shorts stories. They are all wonderful and weird in their own way. ]]>
author: J.D. Salinger
name: Syd
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 07/03
date added: 06/17/07
shelves: essays, fiction, finished
review:
Everyone has his or her own personal journey to follow. As a friend or relative, you can be there for them, offer advice and caution them when you see danger, but in the end, each person has to make a choice about how to live their lives. Only something inside of you will make a difference in you.

Just like Nemo and Marlin in Finding Nemo.

I finished J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories last night. I find that I enjoy reading Salinger. Unlike my experience with Virginia Woolf, who writes beautiful and pointedly, but with such verbosity and content that it is hard to get through it all. I should be done with Mrs. Dalloway sometime around the turn of the next decade.

This was my first sampling of Salinger’s work but I think I’d like to read some of his other stuff as well, perhaps Catcher in the Rye. “Teddy,” the last story in this collection of short stories was a compelling story about a boy-genius who was so very enlightened that he had a memory of his previous life. Though his parents where not Hindus or Buddhists, he believed in reincarnation.

Salinger introduces the boy with this charming description:

“Teddy turned around at the waist, without changing the vigilant position of his feet on the Gladstone, and gave his father a look of inquiry, whole and pure. His eyes which were pale brown in color, and not at all large, were slightly crossed–the left eye more than the right. They were not crossed enough to be disfiguring or even to be necessarily noticeable at first glance. They were crossed just enough to be mentioned, and only in context with the fact that one might have thought long and seriously before wishing them straighter, or deeper, or browner, or wider set. His face, just as it was, carried the impact, however oblique and slow-traveling, of real beauty.”

Later in the story, it is revealed that he has the ability to predict when a person could possibly die, and in fact reveals that he himself may die that day or later on Feb. 14, 1958.

He is completely resigned to the idea of death, as he did not see it as an end to his being but only as a transformation. I think this is an interesting concept. It is true that death is a natural part of the cycle. Everyone dies, “My gosh, everyone’s done it thousands and thousands of times.” Teddy explains.

Seems morbid but it actually makes me feel a bit lighter. Like this idea frees you from the fight. It allows a person to enjoy each moment because it could be the last one you have in this lifetime.

Teddy was explaining this to a man, about his own potential death and how it wouldn’t be all that tragic because he’d “just be doing what he was suppose to do after all.” The man replied, “It may not be tragic from your point of view, but it would certainly be a sad event for your mother and dad.”

Teddy answered, “But that is only because they have names and emotions for everything that happens.”

I don’t have a complete conclusion to this whole idea. It all seems so simple and complex at the same time, it did however get me thinking about life and the names we attach to things.

I highly recommend the shorts stories. They are all wonderful and weird in their own way.
]]> 2057032 Sun, 17 Jun 2007 14:03:40 -0700
The first excerpt is Portia, housekeeper at the Kelly house and a sort of mother substitute for the children of the house, speaking to Mick Kelly, a girl in her early teens:

This afternoon you going to roam all over the place without never being satisfied. You going to traipse all around like you have to find something lost. You going to work yourself up with excitement. Your heart going to beat heard enough to kill you because you don’t love and don’t have peace.”

The second exerpt is at the end of the story, it is Biff Brannon, owner of the New York Cafe in the small Southern town of the novel’s setting, reflecting on his life:

Then suddenly he felt a quickening in him. His heart turned and he leaned his back against the counter for support. For in a swift radiance of illumination he saw a glimpse of human struggle and of valor. Of the endless fluid passage of humanity through endless time. And of those who labor and of those who—one word—love. His soul expanded. But for a moment only. For in him he felt a warning, a shaft of terror. Between the two worlds he was suspended. He saw that he was looking at his own face in the counter glass before him. Sweat glistened on his temples and his face was contorted. One eye was opened wider than the other. The left eye delved narrowly into the past while the right gazed wide and afrightened into a future of blackness, error, and ruin. And he was suspended between radiance and darkness. Between bitter irony and faith. Sharply he turned away.”

I suppose these two passages speak to me because I feel like they reflect my own life. And they are similar because they describe a person who can not commit to either love or labor and instead hover between the two, watching and searching for something they can’t define. ]]>
author: Carson McCullers
name: Syd
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1967
rating: 5
read at: 05/04
date added: 06/17/07
shelves: classic, cultural, drama, favorite, fiction, finished, important
review:
Favorite excerpts from The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers.

The first excerpt is Portia, housekeeper at the Kelly house and a sort of mother substitute for the children of the house, speaking to Mick Kelly, a girl in her early teens:

This afternoon you going to roam all over the place without never being satisfied. You going to traipse all around like you have to find something lost. You going to work yourself up with excitement. Your heart going to beat heard enough to kill you because you don’t love and don’t have peace.”

The second exerpt is at the end of the story, it is Biff Brannon, owner of the New York Cafe in the small Southern town of the novel’s setting, reflecting on his life:

Then suddenly he felt a quickening in him. His heart turned and he leaned his back against the counter for support. For in a swift radiance of illumination he saw a glimpse of human struggle and of valor. Of the endless fluid passage of humanity through endless time. And of those who labor and of those who—one word—love. His soul expanded. But for a moment only. For in him he felt a warning, a shaft of terror. Between the two worlds he was suspended. He saw that he was looking at his own face in the counter glass before him. Sweat glistened on his temples and his face was contorted. One eye was opened wider than the other. The left eye delved narrowly into the past while the right gazed wide and afrightened into a future of blackness, error, and ruin. And he was suspended between radiance and darkness. Between bitter irony and faith. Sharply he turned away.”

I suppose these two passages speak to me because I feel like they reflect my own life. And they are similar because they describe a person who can not commit to either love or labor and instead hover between the two, watching and searching for something they can’t define.
]]> 2058836 Sun, 17 Jun 2007 14:01:00 -0700
author: Tom Wolfe
name: Syd
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2000
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 06/17/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 2058729 Sun, 17 Jun 2007 13:52:08 -0700
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Syd
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 06/17/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 2058706 Sun, 17 Jun 2007 13:51:00 -0700
author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
name: Syd
average rating: 3.29
book published: 1850
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 06/17/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 2058695 Sun, 17 Jun 2007 13:50:12 -0700
author: Jack London
name: Syd
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1903
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 06/17/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 2058681 Sun, 17 Jun 2007 13:49:34 -0700
author: Anonymous
name: Syd
average rating: 3.58
book published: 1957
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 06/17/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 2058595 Sun, 17 Jun 2007 13:44:44 -0700
author: V.C. Andrews
name: Syd
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1979
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 06/17/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 2058594 Sun, 17 Jun 2007 13:44:42 -0700
author: V.C. Andrews
name: Syd
average rating: 3.36
book published: 1990
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 06/17/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 2058592 Sun, 17 Jun 2007 13:44:41 -0700
author: V.C. Andrews
name: Syd
average rating: 3.50
book published: 1980
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 06/17/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 2058526 Sun, 17 Jun 2007 13:40:24 -0700
author: Frank McCourt
name: Syd
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 06/17/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 2058516 Sun, 17 Jun 2007 13:39:24 -0700
author: Maya Angelou
name: Syd
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1983
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 06/17/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 2058488 Sun, 17 Jun 2007 13:37:47 -0700
author: Emily Brontë
name: Syd
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1847
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 06/17/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 2058482 Sun, 17 Jun 2007 13:37:26 -0700
author: Herman Melville
name: Syd
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1851
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 06/17/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 2058476 Sun, 17 Jun 2007 13:37:06 -0700
author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
name: Syd
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 06/17/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 2058470 Sun, 17 Jun 2007 13:36:05 -0700
author: Alice Walker
name: Syd
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1982
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 06/17/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 2058468 Sun, 17 Jun 2007 13:36:01 -0700
author: Annie Proulx
name: Syd
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 06/17/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 2058467 Sun, 17 Jun 2007 13:35:55 -0700
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Syd
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1992
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 06/17/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 2058462 Sun, 17 Jun 2007 13:35:51 -0700
author: Joyce Carol Oates
name: Syd
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1967
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 06/17/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 2058347 Sun, 17 Jun 2007 13:26:39 -0700
author: Elie Wiesel
name: Syd
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1958
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 06/17/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 2056341 Sun, 17 Jun 2007 13:14:19 -0700
Sexuality, my own in particular, is not an easy subject for me to discuss. No doubt, I am not alone in my shyness when it comes to talking about how I feel about sex. There is a lingering fear that surrounds the word “sexuality” and even more so around the world “promiscuity.”

Naomi Wolf has taken and anecdotal approach to evaluating the secret history of female desire with her book, Promiscuities. Through conversation with her friends and by tell her own coming of age story Wolf reveals the winding history of female sexuality through time. The bulk of anecdotal experience is centered in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, circa 1969. However, she does cover many historical references to female sexuality and the prevailing social standards regarding women and sex.

I found, even though I grew up more than 20 years later, that some of her experiences were still true to my own. Feminism. AIDS. Media. All these things have impacted they way we look at sex. And in effect, for most (at least for myself), has left huge gaps of confusion when it comes to morality and spirituality. How far is too far? Is it wrong to be sexual advanced? Will something bad happen to me (illness for example) if I enjoy it too much? Will I be punished, shunned, unloved and unwanted if I am a sexual female? Am I weak and co-dependent if I want a man?

‘Emma Goldman: Feminist or Slut?’ one might ask, just as she was mortally afraid that people would; and just as one might ask the question of the discarded but adoring Wollstonecraft, and note the attacks directed at Gloria Steinem for acknowledging passionate feelings for a man. A curious hostility is directed by women against ‘feminist who love too much.’ It is a projection of own failure to integrate the urgency and even neediness of female sexual passion into the strength of female character that creates in us this reflex of animosity. Goldman was in this way no different from so many women; a feminist with genuine ideals waging an internal war with the ‘promiscuity’ of her sexual and emotional feelings for a man. Or, one might also say, keeping in mind what we’ve seen of the fierceness of female desire: a woman with a living mind and living body. Can we make room for so much vitality in ourselves, in the world, in other women? –page 230

There is sharp contrast between the two extremes. The stereotypical slut just doesn’t really do justice to the complexity of female desire. Neither does the virgin. There is a balance there between the two where pride replaces shame–and respect replaces degradation.
]]>
author: Naomi Wolf
name: Syd
average rating: 3.58
book published: 1998
rating: 3
read at: 08/05
date added: 06/17/07
shelves: cultural, finished, important, non-fiction
review:


Sexuality, my own in particular, is not an easy subject for me to discuss. No doubt, I am not alone in my shyness when it comes to talking about how I feel about sex. There is a lingering fear that surrounds the word “sexuality” and even more so around the world “promiscuity.”

Naomi Wolf has taken and anecdotal approach to evaluating the secret history of female desire with her book, Promiscuities. Through conversation with her friends and by tell her own coming of age story Wolf reveals the winding history of female sexuality through time. The bulk of anecdotal experience is centered in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, circa 1969. However, she does cover many historical references to female sexuality and the prevailing social standards regarding women and sex.

I found, even though I grew up more than 20 years later, that some of her experiences were still true to my own. Feminism. AIDS. Media. All these things have impacted they way we look at sex. And in effect, for most (at least for myself), has left huge gaps of confusion when it comes to morality and spirituality. How far is too far? Is it wrong to be sexual advanced? Will something bad happen to me (illness for example) if I enjoy it too much? Will I be punished, shunned, unloved and unwanted if I am a sexual female? Am I weak and co-dependent if I want a man?

‘Emma Goldman: Feminist or Slut?’ one might ask, just as she was mortally afraid that people would; and just as one might ask the question of the discarded but adoring Wollstonecraft, and note the attacks directed at Gloria Steinem for acknowledging passionate feelings for a man. A curious hostility is directed by women against ‘feminist who love too much.’ It is a projection of own failure to integrate the urgency and even neediness of female sexual passion into the strength of female character that creates in us this reflex of animosity. Goldman was in this way no different from so many women; a feminist with genuine ideals waging an internal war with the ‘promiscuity’ of her sexual and emotional feelings for a man. Or, one might also say, keeping in mind what we’ve seen of the fierceness of female desire: a woman with a living mind and living body. Can we make room for so much vitality in ourselves, in the world, in other women? –page 230

There is sharp contrast between the two extremes. The stereotypical slut just doesn’t really do justice to the complexity of female desire. Neither does the virgin. There is a balance there between the two where pride replaces shame–and respect replaces degradation.

]]> 2056283 Sun, 17 Jun 2007 13:11:48 -0700
Or best friends for life on speed and punk rock. This sums up Pretty Little Dirty by Amanda Boyden. Taglines of a novel that falls short in the way of genius, but is at least entertaining.

Boyden’s main character, Lisa, is self-loathing, short tempered and short-sighted. She worships her best friend—which I can understand being prone to best friend worship myself—but fails to recognize the love she receives back. It is an error in perception that she also inflicts upon her mentally ill mother. She lacks empathy. And in return I lack empathy for her.

I picked up the book because I liked the title and it looked edgy. It did fulfill that expectation. Boyden provides a raw description of two girls taking the hard road from suburbia to underground.

There are a few places where the story falls short for me. She spends a lot of time describing the early years of their “charmed” existence and abruptly drops us in the decent. Also, Boyden uses interesting flashbacks of concerts as a thread through the story but the transitions are rough and it didn’t gel until the end.

However, there were moments of crystalline clarity where Boyden’s writing style came through:

Heroin makes you sick the first try. Cigarette smoking too if you’re lucky. But if you’re not lucky and you develop a taste, if you’re one who senses that cocaine gets better with time, or you’re one who jumps out of a plane and becomes an adrenaline junky, or you’re one who loves the feel of grease melting over your tongue in the form of pecan pie or thick clam chowder or a fat porterhouse or just plain ol’ Doritos by the bagful, and you want to repeat the same comfort and recognizable surprise of that first go, the first indulgence, and yet with each succeeding bite the small hope of true satisfaction slide farther away, then you under Celeste, at least a little.

After her first fuck, she went looking for a better boy. She always went looking after that. – p. 29

New Year’s Day, a freezing-cold day the color of young guilt, I tried to reconcile my growing obsession, this base sexual fascination with guys, with what I knew would too soon the act of committing myself to years and years of study. If I were going to be using my brain in the future, I reason with myself pretty pathetically, it’d be fine to focus on using my body for the time being.

My conscience buzzed like a dying bee in a jar. Eventually I’d learn how to leave it on the windowsill. – p. 270

The hash you smoked half an hour ago purses its lips on your sphincter and kisses. It decided to deep-throat you. Know that you and the dark Turkish pitch are a combustible duo, and that tonight’s show will either be very good in outcome or, diametrically opposite, that you will remain unsullied. – p. 278

These moments and nuggets of good writing made it an interesting book to read, though the lack of continuity ranks it low on my list of favorites. If you are looking for a titillating account of how these girls got bad, then you can get your fix with this book—but it only takes you as far as a good buzz.
]]>
author: Amanda Boyden
name: Syd
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 04/06
date added: 06/17/07
shelves: fiction, finished
review:


Or best friends for life on speed and punk rock. This sums up Pretty Little Dirty by Amanda Boyden. Taglines of a novel that falls short in the way of genius, but is at least entertaining.

Boyden’s main character, Lisa, is self-loathing, short tempered and short-sighted. She worships her best friend—which I can understand being prone to best friend worship myself—but fails to recognize the love she receives back. It is an error in perception that she also inflicts upon her mentally ill mother. She lacks empathy. And in return I lack empathy for her.

I picked up the book because I liked the title and it looked edgy. It did fulfill that expectation. Boyden provides a raw description of two girls taking the hard road from suburbia to underground.

There are a few places where the story falls short for me. She spends a lot of time describing the early years of their “charmed” existence and abruptly drops us in the decent. Also, Boyden uses interesting flashbacks of concerts as a thread through the story but the transitions are rough and it didn’t gel until the end.

However, there were moments of crystalline clarity where Boyden’s writing style came through:

Heroin makes you sick the first try. Cigarette smoking too if you’re lucky. But if you’re not lucky and you develop a taste, if you’re one who senses that cocaine gets better with time, or you’re one who jumps out of a plane and becomes an adrenaline junky, or you’re one who loves the feel of grease melting over your tongue in the form of pecan pie or thick clam chowder or a fat porterhouse or just plain ol’ Doritos by the bagful, and you want to repeat the same comfort and recognizable surprise of that first go, the first indulgence, and yet with each succeeding bite the small hope of true satisfaction slide farther away, then you under Celeste, at least a little.

After her first fuck, she went looking for a better boy. She always went looking after that. – p. 29

New Year’s Day, a freezing-cold day the color of young guilt, I tried to reconcile my growing obsession, this base sexual fascination with guys, with what I knew would too soon the act of committing myself to years and years of study. If I were going to be using my brain in the future, I reason with myself pretty pathetically, it’d be fine to focus on using my body for the time being.

My conscience buzzed like a dying bee in a jar. Eventually I’d learn how to leave it on the windowsill. – p. 270

The hash you smoked half an hour ago purses its lips on your sphincter and kisses. It decided to deep-throat you. Know that you and the dark Turkish pitch are a combustible duo, and that tonight’s show will either be very good in outcome or, diametrically opposite, that you will remain unsullied. – p. 278

These moments and nuggets of good writing made it an interesting book to read, though the lack of continuity ranks it low on my list of favorites. If you are looking for a titillating account of how these girls got bad, then you can get your fix with this book—but it only takes you as far as a good buzz.

]]> 2056356 Sun, 17 Jun 2007 13:09:33 -0700
Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice, and we welcome ‘nerves’ or any other shibboleth that will cloak our personal desire.

I wasn’t happy with the story in the beginning. And to be honest, the characters in this book drove me crazy with their stifling ways. It was frustrating to watch the scenes unfold with such comic tragedy made-up completely in their own heads. Then again, I believe that was the moral Forster was trying to convey.

I am happy it ended well with at least a bit of relief for the heroine. Kisses rather than old misses.

And there is more here I’d like to say about spinsters and feminism. It seems Lucy was using an early form of feminism to shield herself from love. But Old Emerson says to her near the end:

It isn’t possible to love and to part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.

By his impassioned speech he convinces her to marry.
He gave her a sense of deities reconciled, a feeling that, in gaining the man she loved, she would gain something for the whole world.

And is it that simple that by love you can heal the indirectness of life? Perhaps. Perhaps the poets are correct. I won’t cloak it with my own muddled thoughts.

]]>
author: E.M. Forster
name: Syd
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1908
rating: 3
read at: 08/05
date added: 06/17/07
shelves: classic, drama, fiction, finished
review:
I’ve just completed E.M. Forster’s A Room With A View.

Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice, and we welcome ‘nerves’ or any other shibboleth that will cloak our personal desire.

I wasn’t happy with the story in the beginning. And to be honest, the characters in this book drove me crazy with their stifling ways. It was frustrating to watch the scenes unfold with such comic tragedy made-up completely in their own heads. Then again, I believe that was the moral Forster was trying to convey.

I am happy it ended well with at least a bit of relief for the heroine. Kisses rather than old misses.

And there is more here I’d like to say about spinsters and feminism. It seems Lucy was using an early form of feminism to shield herself from love. But Old Emerson says to her near the end:

It isn’t possible to love and to part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.

By his impassioned speech he convinces her to marry.
He gave her a sense of deities reconciled, a feeling that, in gaining the man she loved, she would gain something for the whole world.

And is it that simple that by love you can heal the indirectness of life? Perhaps. Perhaps the poets are correct. I won’t cloak it with my own muddled thoughts.


]]> 2055767 Sun, 17 Jun 2007 13:06:34 -0700 He persisted to love her from afar. He anguished over her and fell ill with the biting sting of unrequited love, which seemed to some to resemble cholera, an epidemic sweeping the Caribbean latitude. He was sickly to begin with, an old man even in his youth.

The woman married another man, a doctor; they lived together in unhappy happiness for fifty years. It was a successful marriage. Estranged, hard, and effected by the pendulum of emotions that people feel for each other over fifty years of learning to love and live together. However, after her husband’s death the woman still wondered if it was real love or just the illusion of love.

Upon her husband’s death, after waiting fifty years for her to become a widow the sickly romantic man approached her again. With the smell of flowers from her husband’s casket still permeating the house, the man offered his eternal love, again. Eventually, through a series of well-written letters about love and they heart’s method of mending itself, the man wins the woman’s favor and they begin the romance they never started. The story ends with the two elderly people traveling by riverboat, apparently forever.
This book was hard for me to dive into. Marquez writes with so much detail that while the story does move forward it seems to trudge along. I will admit this could be due to my own impatience since my brain has been trained mostly by the T.V.

Also, I found the main characters to be somewhat despicable.
The man who lived for nothing but love seemed very weak. He also had a habit of seeking to fill the void in his heart with broken woman. Towards the end of the story, he ruins a young girl by interfering with her and then casting her aside once he began his rekindled love affair with the woman.

How am I expected to feel happiness for this spindly little man? Yet, I know how he feels in his loneliness and desire for true love.

And the woman, though married for fifty years, endures the infidelity of her husband. She seems to live is a haze just above reality. She never seems to know if the emotions she feels are reality of illusion. Yet, she is stubborn in her resolve to rebuke love time and again.

How can I feel joy for her? Yet, I’ve been her before. I see that in myself.

Overall, it was a good book. I am fond of Marquez and I’m so glad that my friend introduced me to him. This book was thick, descriptive, and full of nooks and crannies. Noteworthy quotes:

"He was a different person: the lover who never showed his face, the man most avid for love as well as most niggardly with it, the man who gave nothing and wanted everything, the man who did not allow anyone to leave a trace of her passing in his heart, the hunter lying in ambush–this man went out on the street in the midst of ecstatic signed letters, gallant gifts, imprudent vigils at the pigeonkeeper’s house, even on two occasions when her husband was not on a trip or at the market. It was the only time, since his youngest days, when he felt himself run through by the lance of love."–pg. 216

“We men are the miserable slaves of prejudice,” he had once said to her. “But when a woman decides to sleep with a man, there is no wall she will not scale, no fortress she will not destroy, no moral considerations she will not ignore at its very root: there is no God worth worrying about.”–pg. 329

]]>
author: Gabriel García Márquez
name: Syd
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1988
rating: 5
read at: 10/03
date added: 06/17/07
shelves: classic, cultural, drama, favorite, fiction, finished
review:
An unrequited love story. It is the story of a woman pursued from the first buds of puberty to the sour smell of old age by one man. For fifty-three years, seven months and eleven days and nights he does nothing but obsess over the woman. She accepted his love as a young girl but only from a distance and only through letters. When she finally meets him face to face, she realized that the love she felt for him was an illusion and broke off their engagement.
He persisted to love her from afar. He anguished over her and fell ill with the biting sting of unrequited love, which seemed to some to resemble cholera, an epidemic sweeping the Caribbean latitude. He was sickly to begin with, an old man even in his youth.

The woman married another man, a doctor; they lived together in unhappy happiness for fifty years. It was a successful marriage. Estranged, hard, and effected by the pendulum of emotions that people feel for each other over fifty years of learning to love and live together. However, after her husband’s death the woman still wondered if it was real love or just the illusion of love.

Upon her husband’s death, after waiting fifty years for her to become a widow the sickly romantic man approached her again. With the smell of flowers from her husband’s casket still permeating the house, the man offered his eternal love, again. Eventually, through a series of well-written letters about love and they heart’s method of mending itself, the man wins the woman’s favor and they begin the romance they never started. The story ends with the two elderly people traveling by riverboat, apparently forever.
This book was hard for me to dive into. Marquez writes with so much detail that while the story does move forward it seems to trudge along. I will admit this could be due to my own impatience since my brain has been trained mostly by the T.V.

Also, I found the main characters to be somewhat despicable.
The man who lived for nothing but love seemed very weak. He also had a habit of seeking to fill the void in his heart with broken woman. Towards the end of the story, he ruins a young girl by interfering with her and then casting her aside once he began his rekindled love affair with the woman.

How am I expected to feel happiness for this spindly little man? Yet, I know how he feels in his loneliness and desire for true love.

And the woman, though married for fifty years, endures the infidelity of her husband. She seems to live is a haze just above reality. She never seems to know if the emotions she feels are reality of illusion. Yet, she is stubborn in her resolve to rebuke love time and again.

How can I feel joy for her? Yet, I’ve been her before. I see that in myself.

Overall, it was a good book. I am fond of Marquez and I’m so glad that my friend introduced me to him. This book was thick, descriptive, and full of nooks and crannies. Noteworthy quotes:

"He was a different person: the lover who never showed his face, the man most avid for love as well as most niggardly with it, the man who gave nothing and wanted everything, the man who did not allow anyone to leave a trace of her passing in his heart, the hunter lying in ambush–this man went out on the street in the midst of ecstatic signed letters, gallant gifts, imprudent vigils at the pigeonkeeper’s house, even on two occasions when her husband was not on a trip or at the market. It was the only time, since his youngest days, when he felt himself run through by the lance of love."–pg. 216

“We men are the miserable slaves of prejudice,” he had once said to her. “But when a woman decides to sleep with a man, there is no wall she will not scale, no fortress she will not destroy, no moral considerations she will not ignore at its very root: there is no God worth worrying about.”–pg. 329


]]> 2057826 Sun, 17 Jun 2007 13:02:39 -0700
The writing was overly descriptive. I don’t usually enjoy writing that uses more words than necessary. I enjoy a story that is more meat than fluff. However, in The Hours, the descriptiveness worked for me. Many of the passages work like meditation on my soul.

The plot was complicated and twisted. In several chapters you get a fictional view of the life and times of Virginia Woolf. Cunningham crafts a narrative look at the woman’s discontent and illness. In several other chapters we watch Clarissa prepare a party for a dying friend. The story is a modern rendition of Mrs. Dalloway, the celebrated novel written by Woolf. Lastly, we get a glimpse into the life of Mrs. Brown; a housewife in the 50’s married to a war hero, and mother to a young boy. Her life seems to be dull and mismatched to her personality. It is clear how Clarissa and Virginia Woolf are connected but Mrs. Brown is an anomaly that doesn’t seem to make sense until almost the last pages. I don’t want to spoil the revelation, so I’ll leave the question unanswered, but I promise it does make sense in the end.

The final page of the novel is where Cunningham captured my favor. In the following passage Clarissa explains the reason why life, as hard as it is, is something the still strive for:

“We throw our parties; we abandon our families to live alone in Canada; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, or most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep?it’s as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we’re very fortunate, by time itself. There’s just this for consolation: an hour hear of there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we’ve ever imagined, though everyone but children (an perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more.

Heaven only knows why we love it so.

Here, then, is the party, still laid; here are the flowers, still fresh; everything ready for the guests, who have turned out to be only four. Forgive us, Richard. It is, in fact, a party, after all. It is a party for the not-yet-dead; for the relatively undamaged; for those who for mysterious reasons have the fortune to be alive.”

– Michael Cunningham, The Hours, pg. 225-226

For me, despite the flowery language and the complicated plot, this final passage effects me and speaks to something inside of me. It is as if I wrote that passage myself. I can think of countless moments that I felt and acknowledged as fleeting. A moment under the lights?dancing , a final goodbye kiss and a moment at the top of a hill that seemed to short to be memorable but was, exceedingly. These moments I knew would be short, but made all the hardship that followed worth it for the chance to meet another moment]]>
author: Michael Cunningham
name: Syd
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 02/03
date added: 06/17/07
shelves: drama, favorite, fiction, finished
review:
Michael Cunningham’s The Hours is an emotional journey into the hearts of three women. Three women who loved life but were unsettled by the finality of each hour and the limited time we are given to truly enjoy it’s gifts. When I received the book as a gift over the holidays, I’d never heard of it or the movie based on the novel. As I saw trailers for the movie and read praise for the book, I expected it to be a good novel. I did not expect it to touch me in such a profound way. I’ve talked to a couple of people who have said they had a hard time getting into the novel. That it was hard to keep track of the characters. And in the beginning it is not apparent how they are connected at all. This is true, the story has some trouble keeping my attention, but when I got to the end I knew it was worth it. It spoke to my heart.

The writing was overly descriptive. I don’t usually enjoy writing that uses more words than necessary. I enjoy a story that is more meat than fluff. However, in The Hours, the descriptiveness worked for me. Many of the passages work like meditation on my soul.

The plot was complicated and twisted. In several chapters you get a fictional view of the life and times of Virginia Woolf. Cunningham crafts a narrative look at the woman’s discontent and illness. In several other chapters we watch Clarissa prepare a party for a dying friend. The story is a modern rendition of Mrs. Dalloway, the celebrated novel written by Woolf. Lastly, we get a glimpse into the life of Mrs. Brown; a housewife in the 50’s married to a war hero, and mother to a young boy. Her life seems to be dull and mismatched to her personality. It is clear how Clarissa and Virginia Woolf are connected but Mrs. Brown is an anomaly that doesn’t seem to make sense until almost the last pages. I don’t want to spoil the revelation, so I’ll leave the question unanswered, but I promise it does make sense in the end.

The final page of the novel is where Cunningham captured my favor. In the following passage Clarissa explains the reason why life, as hard as it is, is something the still strive for:

“We throw our parties; we abandon our families to live alone in Canada; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, or most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep?it’s as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we’re very fortunate, by time itself. There’s just this for consolation: an hour hear of there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we’ve ever imagined, though everyone but children (an perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more.

Heaven only knows why we love it so.

Here, then, is the party, still laid; here are the flowers, still fresh; everything ready for the guests, who have turned out to be only four. Forgive us, Richard. It is, in fact, a party, after all. It is a party for the not-yet-dead; for the relatively undamaged; for those who for mysterious reasons have the fortune to be alive.”

– Michael Cunningham, The Hours, pg. 225-226

For me, despite the flowery language and the complicated plot, this final passage effects me and speaks to something inside of me. It is as if I wrote that passage myself. I can think of countless moments that I felt and acknowledged as fleeting. A moment under the lights?dancing , a final goodbye kiss and a moment at the top of a hill that seemed to short to be memorable but was, exceedingly. These moments I knew would be short, but made all the hardship that followed worth it for the chance to meet another moment
]]> 2057781 Sun, 17 Jun 2007 12:55:43 -0700
author: Anne Rampling
name: Syd
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 06/17/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 2057780 Sun, 17 Jun 2007 12:55:40 -0700