false 81 220 155 true 5785340 read 15 true 993225 currently-reading 50 true 993224 to-read http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/73646773 to: Varieties of Disturbance: Stories (Paperback) by Lydia Davis
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/64946791 to: Big World (Paperback) by Mary Miller
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/47039814 to: Fiskadoro (Paperback) by Denis Johnson
I no eat! I no sleep!" Darkness and sweat. "I no brain! Rapto!" Fiskadaro danced in a perimeter of orange light that flashed off the thunderheads of smoke above the fires. He could hardly see the band of Israelite musicians playing their steel drums outside the jerking illumination of the dance-ground, but their banging and clanging rhythm took up all the room available in his head for sound. The sweat-shiny figures around him, crossed out continually by the shadows of smoke and the silhouettes of other dancers against the light of driftwood bonfires and the blazing kettles of radioactive fuel-oil, cried, Rapto!" and so did Fiskadaro. "Rapto! Rapto!"

That's the first paragraph of chapter 4, page 97, and then I couldn't read anymore. It was too much work. And I felt guilty for skimming the last 20 pages before I got even that far. Perhaps it's just way too dense for where I am right now. Or cluttered. Or basically unreadable. Though, there were bursts of beautiful imagery, occasionally. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/76727217 Sombrero Fallout (Paperback) by Richard Brautigan
bookshelves: to-read
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/39518625 to: The Easter Parade (Paperback) by Richard Yates
Part 1: Chapter 1 of Easter Parade states from the get go that -- "Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life, and looking back it always seemed that the trouble began with their parents' divorce."

Talk about foreshadowing...

Yates impressed me on a few levels with his novel following two sisters in their lives of opposing ideologies--one, Sarah: a dark beauty marrying young and settling into a traditional role of motherhood, and the other, Emily: a willowy working writer in Manhattan thriving through a gauntlet of love affairs from college into her late forties. Though, the story is about Emily's life more than anything else.

Starting with a young soldier's seduction and subsequent deflowering in a park, which would set the tone of romantic variety, Emily's colorful array of lovers would ultimately include: a sexually stunted academic philosopher, a bisexual Swedish Adonis, a moderately-published/has-been alcoholic poet, and a love-lorn ad agency lawyer, among others.

To some, Emily's life would seem bleak or empty, but this seemed necessary for the resurrection aspect of Easter acting as a recurring theme. Thankfully, Emily never really stayed down for that long without bouncing back in one way or another. A grand side-effect of realism for creating an intelligent female character of free spirit, this seemed to be one of Yates' mercies--never leaving Emily alone too long for her to suffer in her fundamental mode of loneliness.

I admire Yates ability to flesh out a female character so accurately, yet it's also reasonable to consider the way Emily has more quirks, stereotypically, of a man than a woman. She is not flowery or emotionally driven, she is impulsive and passionate and doesn't deliberate over her actions based on how she will be judged as being indifferent, domesticated or otherwise.

She also seems to represent an amalgamation of impenetrable women--challenges to the author at some time or another in his life, strong-willed, non-nonsense, independent and ambitious...but that's purely subjective.

Some might even see Emily's characteristics as self-destructive, emotionally unavailable, frivolous with her desire, etc. But compared to the lives of most, and especially parallel to the foils of her complacent sister in an abusive marriage--and a mother jaded by the superficiality of social networking facades, Emily never compromised herself by imposed norms on women still lingering from the dark ages.

Yates' writing style is uncluttered for a breeze of easy reading with no traces of extraneous embellishment, making his cool prose timelessly fresh. Set in a beautifully illustrated framework of well-postured characters within a realistic spectrum of survival and weaknesses-- Easter Parade is clearly a masterpiece. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/39518625 Sabra's review of The Easter Parade
by Richard Yates

I wrote a 300 word sequel for Easter Parade here: http://these-three-things.blogspot.com/2... ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/76396581 Revolutionary Road (Paperback) by Richard Yates
bookshelves: to-read
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/59159349 to: Black Hole (Hardcover) by Charles Burns
I absorbed this book in a little over an hour. I was glad the skin shedding girl and the throat mouth boy made up after the girl with the tail on LSD tried to seduce one of three still pure potheads. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/75343367 Boredom (New York Review Books Classics) by Alberto Moravia
bookshelves: to-read
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/75343183 Three Trapped Tigers (Latin American Literature Series) by Guillermo Cabrera Infante
bookshelves: to-read
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