If Borat interviewed Yahweh it would look like this. Crumb illustrates the word god as faithfully as he can, and well god comes off as kind of an ass. On the flip-side I have never been able to make it through Genesis in one go before. Crumb really humanizes the text. When every line is accompanied by an image of the people involved I was more able to see them as imperfect humans struggling to do what they think is right (or doing what they know not to be right). My moral compass would have pointed me a different direction most of the time but nonetheless you can see the worldview that made them do what they did.
Although honestly I think quite a few of the stories were coverups for bad behavior. It's hard not to see some of these stories as "I know it looks bad but god told me to do it". If human nature has not changed much in the millennia, and I don't think it has, call me less than credulous on a few of the reports of how things happened. I am fine with interpreting the miracles slightly metaphorically. No doubt there was a great flood of some sort that destroyed the land as far as the eye could see, but somehow I don't think that whole thing with Lot's daughters was their idea and Lot didn't remember a think about it. If anything I think he used the "last night on earth" speech on them. In other words I came away from this book thinking there were a lot of really messed up people back then who today would be put in prison not hailed as men of god. I continue to be baffled that anyone would try to build a moral structure on these shaky foundations, much less 3 billion people, and this book did nothing to clear that up for me. ]]>
I read the web site long before the book came out, but bought the book anyway. The thing I love about it is that you can dip into it on any page and find something poignant that you can relate to it -- even if you can't relate to it. Things like "If I had known I was going to meet the woman you would leave me for when we stopped by your office, I would have put on makeup." You could do worse than read 500 examples of what we did or didn't do for love...
]]>
by Khaled Hosseini
This book was enjoyable but I constantly felt I should like it more than I did. That isn't to say that I wouldn't recommend the book, because I absolutely would, but somehow I felt it was just a tiny bit short of what it should/could have been. ]]>
bookshelves: to-read
]]>
I finished this book the same day I started it (OK technically it was after midnight). Sex, violence, betrayal, drugs, alcohol, death, miscarriages, this book has all the standard telenovela ingredients -- only in a north eastern US non-religious Jew kind of way.
I completely enjoyed it on the fun romp level, but if you pulled out 3/4 of the crazy shenanigans, which would be a shame but bear with me here, this book would still be worth reading for its portrayal of how people deal with grief. Whether it is the grief over the end of a relationship, or your father, we all do stupid things as we try to invent a new world without that which we have lost. Along the way sometimes we quit our jobs, feel sorry for ourselves, get in fights, and sleep with the wrong people. If we're lucky on the other side of all that we've got some epiphanies to carry us forward into a changed life -- if not well at least it makes for some great "remember when" stories. ]]>
by Graham Rawle
I couldn't agree more. I didn't expect people to pick the book when I suggested it. I thought people would think the concept was interesting and then pick more standard fare. It should make for an interesting discussion though. ]]>
]]>
Geordie Korper
read and liked
Emily's
review of The Birth of Venus: A Novel:
"This book has too many words, Im just not into it. It's like superfluous polysyllabic wanking and stuff. "
"This book has too many words, Im just not into it. It's like superfluous polysyllabic wanking and stuff. "
Geordie Korper
read and liked
David's
review of The Birth of Venus: A Novel:
"With an overpowering deluge of verbs and a merciless amount of description, only surpassed by Tolkien taking 60 pages to walk around a mountain, I found myself continually drifting off. The novel has a meticulous feel to it, with robotic research cov...more "
"With an overpowering deluge of verbs and a merciless amount of description, only surpassed by Tolkien taking 60 pages to walk around a mountain, I found myself continually drifting off. The novel has a meticulous feel to it, with robotic research cov...more "
]]>