Jeff R's Profile
Jeff's Recent Updates
|
Jeff R
gave
 to:
|
My rating:
|
|
Now that's a miserable author/narrator - for sheer world-weary bitterness this is right up there with Céline.
And I didn't know it when I started the book but a nice hunk of it involved the assorted butcheries of mid-century psychiatric institutions...more |
|
|
"We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time."
—
T. S. Eliot
|
|
|
Jeff R
gave
 to:
The Prehistory of Sex: Four Million Years of Human Sexual Culture
by Timothy Taylor
read in January, 2012
|
My rating:
|
|
Consistently uninteresting. I don't know what the hell happened here. I had high hopes for this book.
I didn't like its font. Maybe that was part of the problem. |
|
"Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull."
—
H.L. Mencken
|
|
|
Jeff R
gave
 to:
|
My rating:
|
|
A substantial hunk of this book involved the whole HUAC/witch-hunt/Commie story, which I wasn't really expecting (I would categorize that as after the "invention" of Hollywood).
I would have liked more specifics about specific movies and directors, ...more |
|
"We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to amuse them."
—
Evelyn Waugh
|
|
|
Jeff R
gave
to:
|
My rating:
|
| I must be reading too much lightly-structured, experimental stuff lately - as I was a ways into the book I was a bit uncomfortable with how conventional it felt - plot humming along, suspicious people making ominous statements, amateur gumshoe scramb...more | |
|
Jeff R
added a status update: fulfilling the status role of books http://appliedabstractions.com/2011/11/1...
|
|
|
Jeff R
gave
to:
|
My rating:
|
|
A good balance between bitterness and humor, and more sex than I was expecting for a novel written in 1890 - those Norwegians were way ahead, I guess.
The ending is not very interesting or satisfying but this book, much like life, is about the jour...more |
|
“They change their climate, not their soul, who rush across the sea. ”
― Horace
― Horace
“there are certain advantages in being cursed by all and sundry ... especially, it dispenses you with having to be nice to anybody ... there's nothing more emollient, stultifying, emasculating than wanting to be liked ... "not nice!" ... that does it, you're free! ...”
― Louis-Ferdinand Céline, North
― Louis-Ferdinand Céline, North
“I like my human experience served up with a little silence and restraint. Silence makes experience go further and, when it does die, gives it that dignity common to a thing one had touched and not ravished”
― Djuna Barnes
― Djuna Barnes
“People who boast about their IQ are losers”
― Stephen Hawking
― Stephen Hawking
“On one issue, at least, men and women agree: they both distrust women.”
― H.L. Mencken
― H.L. Mencken
