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August 07
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Isaac
gave
to:
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana (Paperback)
by Umberto Eco, Geoffrey Brock, trans.
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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Isaac said:
"
A wonderful, intimate book, wherein Eco takes the themes he developed in Foucault's Pendulum and makes them intensely personal, telling italy's story and his own through his protagonist.. an important read for chasers-after-damsels, historians, n...more
A wonderful, intimate book, wherein Eco takes the themes he developed in Foucault's Pendulum and makes them intensely personal, telling italy's story and his own through his protagonist.. an important read for chasers-after-damsels, historians, nostalgics, bookworms and other fugitives from life as it is. Profusely illustrated with excellent primary-source material, including perhaps the most moving Flash Gordon collage ever attempted; a novel, a history, and a treatise on the nature of love and memory all rolled into one.
...less
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June 15
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Isaac
gave
to:
A Massive Swelling: Celebrity Reexamined as a Grotesque Crippling Disease and Other Cultural Revelations (Paperback)
by Cintra Wilson
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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Isaac
gave
to:
Comfort Woman (Paperback)
by Nora Okja Keller
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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Isaac said:
"
A difficult, fever-dream book that probably had to be written more than it has to be read. Worrying in the way it weaves together trauma, madness and Korean-ness as if they were the same things -- and the redemption that makes the pain in the bo...more
A difficult, fever-dream book that probably had to be written more than it has to be read. Worrying in the way it weaves together trauma, madness and Korean-ness as if they were the same things -- and the redemption that makes the pain in the book worthwhile is partial, and not easy to understand. The narrative becomes harder to take as a whole as more and more parts are revealed, and the reader begins to wonder who here is really sympathetic, if anyone at all, and whether these people are not visionary but just broken.
...less
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May 29
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Isaac
gave
to:
The Sparrow (Paperback)
by Mary Doria Russell
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in May, 2008
Isaac said:
"Remarkable for a first novel - well-structured, well-written, well-plotted, character-driven and unafraid to tackle big issues. The only problem is it knows how clever it is, and this can become galling from time to time... still, definitely worth a...more
Remarkable for a first novel - well-structured, well-written, well-plotted, character-driven and unafraid to tackle big issues. The only problem is it knows how clever it is, and this can become galling from time to time... still, definitely worth a look, particularly if one enjoys chewing the problems of faith....less
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May 27
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Isaac
gave
to:
She's Come Undone (Mass Market Paperback)
by Wally Lamb
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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Isaac said:
"
Psychologically sound but occasionally cartoonish, and about as subtle as a bag of hammers. I can't decide if the author has an ear for period dialog or if he just decided to throw in as many era-specific cliches as he could and called it a day.....more
Psychologically sound but occasionally cartoonish, and about as subtle as a bag of hammers. I can't decide if the author has an ear for period dialog or if he just decided to throw in as many era-specific cliches as he could and called it a day...
Incidentally, why don't they write books like this for boys?
...less
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May 19
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Isaac
gave
to:
Lost Names: Scenes from a Korean Boyhood (Paperback)
by Richard E. Kim
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in May, 2008
Isaac said:
"
Autobiographical tales of Korea under Japanese occupation - not brilliantly written or terribly surprising, but useful as history. Becomes a lot more interesting if you reflect that all of it, the suffering and depression and eventual joy at the...more
Autobiographical tales of Korea under Japanese occupation - not brilliantly written or terribly surprising, but useful as history. Becomes a lot more interesting if you reflect that all of it, the suffering and depression and eventual joy at the liberation of the Korean homeland, takes place in what would ten years later become the DPRK. Becomes still more interesting if you reflect on the author's class, his well-connected father, and his surname....less
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May 17
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Isaac
gave
to:
American Woman: A Novel (Paperback)
by Susan Choi
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in May, 2008
Isaac said:
"
Nice, it turns out, if difficult. The first three quarters of this book are so shot through with dread and impending disaster that the reader often wonders whether it's worth it, particularly in a narrative which, although skillful and exactin...more
Nice, it turns out, if difficult. The first three quarters of this book are so shot through with dread and impending disaster that the reader often wonders whether it's worth it, particularly in a narrative which, although skillful and exacting, is entirely devoid of humor. But I think it's worth it, or nearly worth it....less
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May 14
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Isaac
gave
to:
Kori: The Beacon Anthology of Korean American Fiction (Paperback)
by Heinz Insu Fenkl
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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Isaac said:
"The average quality of the writing in here is very good, and the subject matter is (inevitably) compelling - war, class, mental illness, the immigrant experience, etc, leavened occasionally by moments of joy. My major beef is that the editors, who h...more
The average quality of the writing in here is very good, and the subject matter is (inevitably) compelling - war, class, mental illness, the immigrant experience, etc, leavened occasionally by moments of joy. My major beef is that the editors, who have both seen fit to include their own pieces in this book and who are largely outshined, write the kind of intros that waste little time on biographical details before starting in on you with what the stories mean and why it's hugely significant and what the author meant by this or that subtext and why while the story may appear to be this way it's really that way, all delivered with the kind of colon-blocking academic gurk that made me stay the hell out of grad school. The way that they've arranged the stories in here, and the criteria they've used to select them, are both genuinely bogus; it is, I think, an accident of fate (or perhaps a vanishingly small pool to choose from) that allowed them to pick out as many winners as they did. After the big names ("Comfort Women", "Native Speaker", etc) I was particularly taken with an excerpt from a tale of california lesbian jollity called Dancer Dawkins and the California Kid - it's very out of print, now, so if you want a taste, this is where you'll get it.
As an aside: the number of good authors in here whose work has vanished completley from the in-print listings in the intervening time is kind of scary. One wonders how much excellent fiction just vanishes....less
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May 13
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Isaac
gave
to:
Batman: The Killing Joke (Paperback)
by Alan Moore, Brian Bolland
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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Isaac said:
"
One of those things that plays better as history than as art. Y'know, like Elvis.
(I like Grant Morrison's Joker better - tho' he probably never would have done it without this...)
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Isaac
gave
to:
Promethea (Book 1)
by Alan Moore
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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Isaac said:
"
The best of Alan Moore's recent work, mostly because he eschews most of his usual look-at-me-I'm-a-genius pastiche and climbs (to the extent possible for him) out of the semiotics of comics and pulp fiction long enough to tell us what he really c...more
The best of Alan Moore's recent work, mostly because he eschews most of his usual look-at-me-I'm-a-genius pastiche and climbs (to the extent possible for him) out of the semiotics of comics and pulp fiction long enough to tell us what he really cares about, and why.
...less
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