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August 14
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Brian
gave
to:
Invisible Cities (Paperback)
by Italo Calvino
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in August, 2008
Brian said:
"I just re-read this book after 5 or so years. What I had remembered about it was a cool book about Marco Polo describing Kublai Khan's empire to him by describing a long list of cities. After my first, brisk reading (it is a very short book) I didn...more
I just re-read this book after 5 or so years. What I had remembered about it was a cool book about Marco Polo describing Kublai Khan's empire to him by describing a long list of cities. After my first, brisk reading (it is a very short book) I didn't carry with me much else besides it being a cool "exercise."
Upon re-reading, I was blown away. This book has it All. Everything.
Every description of a city contains a great idea about memory, signs, interpretation, place, time, consciousness, reality, existence, death, life or any combination of these ideas. The book is very simply broken up in brief descriptions of cities, all with their own heading, and flipping through at random and reading any passage you can find some really great imaginative thought.
I think it's totally brilliant. Basically every aspect of this book blew me away. From the concept to the actual writing (good translation I guess! some passages are just amazing).
Interspersed at the beginning and end of each chapter is a dialogue between Polo and Khan which are also great, if you're the type that digs talking about existence/reality and so forth. But with such great imagination and writing, the book really goes beyond the ideas even, and just becomes an awesome bunch of writing. The themes really build on each other and (and I think this is something I've noticed in every book that I've loved) just ends in such a great way.
This book just really captured my imagination. After every description I felt I could either immediately dig in to the next one or just sit back for a minute and let my mind wander. The book, not being hindered by standard story developments, I feel lets the reader bring a lot to it. So even just looking at it as a tool to provoke imagination it's still great....less
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Brian
gave
to:
The Possibility of an Island (Vintage International)
by Michel Houellebecq
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in May, 2008, has a copy to sell/swap
Brian said:
"Probably easily the best thing about this book is Houllebecq's really tight, cutting writing, or the translation of his writing. I'm not sure I've ever read such concise, clear, cutting writing ever, much less in a translation.
So I was really im...more
Probably easily the best thing about this book is Houllebecq's really tight, cutting writing, or the translation of his writing. I'm not sure I've ever read such concise, clear, cutting writing ever, much less in a translation.
So I was really impressed for the first 60 pages or so. Houllebecq may or may not have a great, full world vision/vision of humanity, but he definitely doesn't in this book. Being a misanthrope, it seems like it would be easy. But he's not really a misanthrope, he doesn't hate everyone, and he certainly loves himself very, very much. He's just negative.
The book's about a dude who is detached a bit, and who also writes parts of the story from the future as a clone of his original self. Sci-fi. The story idea is cool.
That most observations in the book (very cutting, good stuff) have to do with sexuality, specifically male-female, more specifically older male/younger female, and alternately the reactions of the penis to various stimuli, tells a lot what's going on in the characters mind.
Wrapping this up, I didn't feel like there was enough cohesion of theme or vision or whatever holds great books together, this being the type of book that seems to try to achieve that, but there are lots of cool ideas and smart outlooks on things. But, to me, there is nothing really to talk about once the book is done, because none of them caught my imagination enough.
I recommend it to my friends who are in the mood for a fresh voice....less
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Brian
gave
to:
Nausea (New Directions Paperbook)
by Jean-Paul Sartre
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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Brian
gave
to:
Galapagos (Paperback)
by Kurt Vonnegut
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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July 26
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Brian
read and liked
Chris's
review of The Hiram Key: Pharaohs, Freemasons, and the Discovery of the Secret Scrolls of Jesus:
"the authors are both masons and amateur historians who have done quite a bit of research. However, the more amazing the claim, the more proof is required. This book should have had at least 20 pages of bibliography of primary and secondary source mat...more
the authors are both masons and amateur historians who have done quite a bit of research. However, the more amazing the claim, the more proof is required. This book should have had at least 20 pages of bibliography of primary and secondary source material, along with an 'Additional reading" section if it wants to be taken seriously. There was no bibliography of any kind, and what references the authors make as the basis for their claims were done using footnotes throughout the text, without so much as even a page number or even year of publication. This type of casual scholarship will not get their claims looked at by the historian community, which is a shame as the authors have put years of work into their very interesting claims linking modern freemasonry with the Scottish knights templar and early stonemasons, linking back to the templars of the crusades, who, the authors think, uncovered scrolls in Jerusalem which contradict the Roman Catholic view of the life of Jesus, and which, the authors claim, link back the rituals used by modern masons all the way back to an ancient king-making ritual used in ancient Egypt. Stunning stuff, but without it being presented in the correct form, the authors have considerably les chance of getting their views taken seriously....less
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New comment on Chris's review of
The Hiram Key: Pharaohs, Freemasons, and the Discovery of the Secret Scrolls of Jesus
(see all 2 comments)
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May 13
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Brian
gave
to:
The Promises of Glass (Paperback)
by Michael Palmer
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in February, 2008
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Brian
gave
to:
Black Swan Green: A Novel (Paperback)
by David Mitchell
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in December, 2007
Brian said:
"I read this book a month ago but it hasn't yet fallen into that oblivion in my mind so I'll write about it.
Before this one, I read David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas which is totally, totally awesome! I mean, like, really awesome. And from that book,...more
I read this book a month ago but it hasn't yet fallen into that oblivion in my mind so I'll write about it.
Before this one, I read David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas which is totally, totally awesome! I mean, like, really awesome. And from that book, I already had David Mitchell pegged as one of The Good Guys In My Book. One of those Guys who can write really, really well and has an enourmous and empathetic world vision. Other Good Guys In My Book include Thomas Pynchon and William T. Vollmann, as points of reference, you know "The Voices of America"... Salinger, Dostoevsky might be other Good Guys, but less so. I also look at lots of pictures of authors, and have heard friends talk about lots of authors, and imagine them to be Good Guys, too, but I've never read them, so the list is actually pretty short. Actually, fuck those last two, JD and Fyodor: you're either in or you're out. But David Mitchell = Good Guy In My Book.
...
Black Swan Green is a coming-of-age story, featuring the author at age 13 (or whatever age), under a different name, with presumably a few made-up traits and some fake events thrown in here and there, laid out in chronological order (sure, a cheap literary device [often employed to create "a story"] Mitchell blatantly ripped off from many other authors but somehow Mitchell makes good use of it.) It's all told in first person and the chap is pretty precocious, as bloody-well expected. I'll admit he was more precocious than I was at that age, but then I wasn't particularly precocious, so who knows. What's really precocious about him is his writing! He writes exactly like a really smart adult! As if a brilliant writer possessed this young boys limbs and fingers and wrote these words through this little guy!
The story is a coming-of-age story, not unlike other coming-of-age stories.
David Mitchell is one of the GGIMB, but it is largely due to Cloud Atlas. I was both really relieved that he would write a nice, less outrageously mind-blowing book like this, that shows lots of different strengths and emotions and lets him write about sweet, small things, but also a little, a very little, disappointed that it lacked the scope of Cloud Atlas. By the time I'd finished reading it, I fully realized that that wasn't the point of the book thought, and I really liked it.
Now I'm thinking this book isn't as fresh in my mind as I thought....less
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Brian
gave
to:
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Paperback)
by Philip K. Dick
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in May, 2008
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Brian
gave
to:
Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (Paperback)
by Vladimir Nabokov
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in February, 2008
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