false 4 49 49 true 5885941 read 0 true 56716 currently-reading 0 true 56715 to-read http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/64732727 Kary's review of Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America
by Thomas L. Friedman

yay ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/26642524 to: No Country for Old Men (Paperback) by Cormac McCarthy
As compared to Blood Meridian, this book is pared down and sparse. McCarthy handles some of the same themes, but this book is so stripped down as to be bland. I would recommend the film over the book. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/26642188 to: Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West (Paperback) by Cormac McCarthy
Okay, so I think this might be the best book I've ever read. It has been placed on a list of the best American literature, and I completely agree. Usually I'm critical of a lot of the books I read, but I can't complain about anything with this book. Some people might think it's too violent, but I think it's perfectly violent. One should read this, just to encounter the dark/grotesque figure of the judge, i.e. Judge Holden. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/25608708 to: A Confederacy of Dunces (Hardcover) by John Kennedy Toole
Rambling and fantastic. Original and humorous. The title character and all supporting ones keep the novel moving, despite it's randomness. I recommend. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/25608349 to: Sock (Paperback) by Penn Jillette
Okay, another weird book from Mellinger, one which I'm not quite finished with yet. One of the blurbs on the cover mentions the orginal new voice of the narrator, a sock-monkey named Dickie. Anybody familiar with Penn Jillette will note that there's nothing original about the narrative voice- it's a direct feed from Penn himself. It even features his fascination with monkeys (Monkey Tuesday!)- and it seems unedited. There's a song quotation at the end of nearly every paragraph, and often the lyrics are misquoted. I suppose that could be intentional, but it just seems unfiltered. Again, it's direct Penn. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/25607965 to: The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, #3) by Philip Pullman
Whoah! Now this book has tons of philosophizing, megatons of action, and a pinch of weird animals with trunks and diamond-shaped-spines who roll around on seedpods. At a certain point I stopped being able to follow Pullmans ruminations on "Dust." So it's "angels," but then the angels are trying to save/rescue it/themselves? I don't know, and I don't think Pullman was completely clear either. It seemed obvious that he was making it up as he went along, rather than having had it all planned out. He kept introducing things one way, then going back and changing it, adding a paragraph or even just a sentence to cover his tracks. Nonetheless I enjoyed it. Especially when he dropped the veil of metaphor and just started speaking plainly about the Christian church and dogma. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/25607802 to: The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials, #2) by Philip Pullman
Very different from the first book, but highly interesting. Pullman reveals quite a bit more about the world(s) he's creating, and really makes me wonder how they could turn this second book into a workable movie. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/21091174 to: Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography (Hardcover) by David Michaelis
Long book but fascinating. The author does a good job of drawing connections between Schulz' life and his work. The comic strips included are perfect, and do a nice job of answering the Schulz family critiques of the book. The man's personal feelings and attitudes were there in black in white for all to see, hidden in plain sight! The book made me even a little phobic and depressive while reading it.. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/21091121 to: Bel Canto (Paperback) by Ann Patchett
Just finished Bel Canto- amazingly Mellinger's girlfriend (incredible that he actually has a girlfriend) knew of the book and recognized it when I talked about it. It definitely piqued my interest in opera- of course I'll start with German stuff and move to Italian (start with something I'll understand easier). Do you have any recommendations? I don't think I have the speaker equipment to deal with the complexities and subtleties of classical/opera, but I played some on Mellinger's computer when I helped him set up his surround sound, and it was quite impressive.

However, I do have some problems with zee book. As uncouth as it may have been, I dogeared one page b/c it had an exemplary error. During a chess game, a finger was described as remaining on the horse's head while the rook was being moved. Obviously an editing error, but I assume also an error on the author's part. There were a few other pickier word things that I noticed b/c I'm a teacher, but I'll chalk those all up to the editors.

On the authors part, yet, there are a few larger issues. It's inconceiveable that such a well-trained and successful opera star would have such difficulty understanding Spanish. The main language of Opera, I know, is Italian, not Spanish, but I can understand bits of the sporadic Spanish spoken by my colleagues at lunch thanks to the one semester of college Italian I had. You'd think someone who lives in Italy, as Roxane Coss is described as doing, would be able to understand even more Spanish than I can, especially when surrounded by it for weeks. Her character in general was incomprehensible to me- I'm going to chalk that up to my being male and not being able to identify with her. She just seemed like a flat surface in the book to mirror the brilliance of opera, or the descriptions thereof.

It also bothered me for a long time that nothing was made of the sexual side of one woman being among so many men (and two girls). When finally a bone (no pun intended) was tossed in that direction, it was the young boy who wanted more to make love to the music than Roxane. It also seems incomprehensible that so many teenage males and other men separated from their loved ones wouldn't feel more tension towards the one woman in the group, especially as desirable as she was described. It seemed all so romanticized, especially when the two sexual relationships eventually did develop. At the risk of sounding sexist, it seemed like an entirely too feminine take on a terrorist-hostage situation.

She was, I suppose, trying to hold some fidelity to the actual event that inspired the book- where only one hostage was killed along with all the terrorists in the final raid. Seems like the real-life guerillas were not so blood-lusty. The author's depiction of the end raid wasn't bad. She did a good job of weaving the threads of the relationships between hostages and captors, built things up to a nice climax with Roxane's pupil and Gen's relationship with Carmen, then dropped the hammer. Of course I could critique it for not being hard or fast enough of a strike- but it fits with the softness of the rest of the book. What here was unbelievable was the epilogue featuring a marriage between Gen and Roxane. After she had invested so much to set up Gen with Carmen and Roxane with Mr. Hosokawa, the ultimate pairing made no sense, at least in literature. In a cinematic frame of mind it seems like a hollywood happy-end tacked on to brighten up an otherwise "took dark" ending. Haha, don't get the sense that I didn't enjoy it, b/c I actually did. I'm just in a critical frame of mind. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/13973543 to: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Paperback) by Jared Diamond
Having read Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel," I had some high hopes for this book, and at first it delivered. He described the book as two sheep being swallowed by a boa consitrictor. I'd say it was rather more like three, and about half way through the second one, I lost a lot of interest.
He starts off talking about environmental damage and consequences thereof in Montana, then moves to historical cases of societal collapse that feature such environmental damage. This really interests me b/c I can't help but feel the American empire will crumble eventually, and I'm interested in learning how our failure to embrace environmental causes could contribute. In the early sections of the book, the parallels are ubiquitous and astounding.
By the time Diamond gets around to discussing the collapse of the Greenland Norse colony, however, he's spending far less time slyly pointing out parallels between historical collapse and present conditions, and much more time describing Norse preference for cows. Grand. Not really.
The book drags on through other modern societies, which I'm stuck reading now. It's a great thesis for a book, but I'm really not pleased with the execution. Perhaps he can save it with a dynamite finish. Perhaps that just what I get for reading so much non-fiction ]]>