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June 18
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Graeme Hinde
took the never-ending book quiz.
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July 01
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Graeme Hinde
gave
 
to:
A Bend in the River (Paperback)
by V.S. Naipaul
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in July, 2008
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June 15
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Graeme Hinde
gave
to:
Libra (Contemporary American Fiction)
by Don DeLillo
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in June, 2008
Graeme said:
"For the first hundred pages or so I was afraid Libra would be an embarrassing attempt by an intellectual writer at a Tom Clancy-style spy thriller. I haven't liked the past couple DeLillo books I've read, and this one initially gave me the same feel...more
For the first hundred pages or so I was afraid Libra would be an embarrassing attempt by an intellectual writer at a Tom Clancy-style spy thriller. I haven't liked the past couple DeLillo books I've read, and this one initially gave me the same feeling I got from those -- that the author was experimenting with style in a self-indulgent and distracting way. He writes this one in choppy, disconnected sentences and fragments with heavy repetition, and at the same time uses the shop-worn trick of alternating between two narratives with each chapter.
But I'm glad I stuck with it, because the disconnected, choppy repetitiveness actually serves the theme very well, and he brings the two narratives together gradually and adroitly, pacing it marvelously and even generating a Clancy-style adrenaline rush.
More than that, DeLillo has a lot of fascinating things to say. For one, Lee Harvey Oswald is a rich and compelling subject, and the author does a great job plumbing the psyche of the Libra. For two, although DeLillo doesn't claim that this is an accurate narrative of the conspiracy to assassinate the president, he convincingly assembles the facts and emotions bubbling around the Cuba situation to show how they coalesced to produce one of our nation's defining moments; the book is valuable simply as a history lesson. Most importantly, his comments on the nature of conspiracy are compelling and perceptive. Conspiracy theorists tend to attribute conspirators with super powers, while people like me tend to reject conspiracy theories outright. The truth, as always, is in the middle; there are conspiracies, but they are as ham-fistedly executed as all human endeavors, and if they succeed, it's never as planned, and due as much to chance as anything else. When DeLillo actually has something to say, he's as good or better than any of his contemporaries....less
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June 04
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New comment on Graeme Hinde's review of
The Adolescent
(see all 3 comments)
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June 03
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Graeme Hinde
gave
to:
The Adolescent (Paperback)
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in May, 2008
Graeme said:
"It's possible that Dostoevsky overstuffed the sandwich on this one, but even so I love him for his infectious exuberance for sandwiches and I devoured the messy thing with relish.
The Adolescent is a little like The Sound and the Fury (which I r...more
It's possible that Dostoevsky overstuffed the sandwich on this one, but even so I love him for his infectious exuberance for sandwiches and I devoured the messy thing with relish.
The Adolescent is a little like The Sound and the Fury (which I read 20 pages of), in that both are presented through the eyes of a narrator who's a little off. Much of the fun of The Adolescent comes from diagnosing the narrator, whose symptoms change significantly over the course of the book. Much of the frustration of The Adolescent comes from trying to follow the plot, which is an impossible knot of society intrigues reported by a narrator who may be a lunatic or a simpleton and is certainly arrogant, hot-tempered, inconsistent, desperately lonely, and under-informed. This was the last book Dostoevsky'd write before Brothers Karamazov, and he struggles with mostly the same themes, though less gracefully due to the restrictiveness of the single narrator. He does however have an uncanny talent for writing maniacs; he can bring the reader frighteningly, viscerally deep into the irrational mind (Crime and Punishment is the best example), and I can only believe he was some kind of maniac in real life.
But the primary reason I'm loving Dostoevsky so much right now is the spiritualism in his work. There's a heart-breaking grapple between the necessity for the cold-eyed, modern society man to conclude that there there is no god, and the beauty of simple and unreflecting peasant religion. This is why he celebrates the innocence of children; they can believe in god perfectly, and growing up is in every case harmful. But it is possible for a wise man to heal from the damage caused by growing up and occupy both positions; cold-eyed atheism and rapturous love of god. It's an irrational position, obviously, the kind you can't look directly in the eye, but perhaps it's possible to believe in impossible things, because perhaps impossible things are true. I'm struggling with it, but I feel a strong resonance. Soon I'll be ready for another sandwich....less
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New comment on Amasa's review of
The Holy Bible Containing the Old and New Testaments in the King James Version Translated Out of the Original Tongues (Self-Pronouncing Red Letter Edition Gift and Award Bible Black Leatherflex #162M)
(see all 2 comments)
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May 21
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New comment on Graeme Hinde's review of
Sentimental Education (Penguin Classics)
(see all 2 comments)
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May 20
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Graeme Hinde
gave
to:
Jonathan Wild (Oxford World's Classics)
by Henry Fielding
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in May, 2008
Graeme said:
"There's not a stitch of character development here; in fact, apart from the Jonathan Wild himself who's name was appropriated from contemporary headlines, everyone's personality is quickly summed up by his surname (Fireblood, Heartfree, Straddle). B...more
There's not a stitch of character development here; in fact, apart from the Jonathan Wild himself who's name was appropriated from contemporary headlines, everyone's personality is quickly summed up by his surname (Fireblood, Heartfree, Straddle). But while the book lacks psychological appeal, it is a cuttingly funny satire of great men (particularly of Henry Walpole, about whom I knew nothing but now know a thing or two), and what the characters lack in inner complexity they make up for in scurrilous deeds. The flowery, old-timey English prose is fun to read, too, especially with content so prurient. Fun but superficial. ...less
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May 03
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Graeme Hinde
gave
to:
Everything Is Illuminated: A Novel (Paperback)
by Jonathan Safran Foer
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in April, 2008
Graeme said:
"This gets an extra star for a truly funny gag that carries the book for the first fifty or sixty pages. That's surprising and impressive mileage for a simple bit (the narrator, a non-native English speaker, relies heavily on a thesaurus, so that &qu...more
This gets an extra star for a truly funny gag that carries the book for the first fifty or sixty pages. That's surprising and impressive mileage for a simple bit (the narrator, a non-native English speaker, relies heavily on a thesaurus, so that "a hard journey" is "a rigid journey"), but after it wears off -- grinding agony.
Foer wants to be Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but his magic is insipid and his realism is lazily dishonest. He consistently goes for an easy lie over a more complex truth. For example, near the end the hero's grandfather is talking to a statue, and the statue tells a story about a couple living near a waterfall. At first the wife hates the constant noise. Over time she gets used to the sound, until finally she can't hear it at all. She dances and splashes in the falls, completely deaf to the roar. The metaphor is that parents eventually get over the death of a child, and that's essentially true, but it's made dishonest by Foer's lazy cuteness. When you're inside washing dishes maybe you don't hear the waterfall anymore, but if you go up and splash in it, it's deafening.
The cuteness crops up constantly ("first they had meetings every day, then every other day, then every other every other day"). At best I could imagine Peter Faulk reading it to me a la Princess Bride, but even that was an effort to keep up and eventually some piece of repulsiveness would shatter the illusion. All this cuteness, and all this dishonesty, could possibly be overcome, if only the story was good. But it's not. Foer builds up some suspense by withholding information and other cheap trickery, but there's nothing up his sleeve. By the time the big illumination finally comes, we've already pretty much guessed it. This book is all style, no substance, and other than the one great gag, the style isn't very good....less
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