bookshelves: currently-reading
]]>
bookshelves: poetry
Like all Alexie's works, it is amazing and funny but also so powerful and poignant. This work, like First Indian on the Moon, bridges poetry and prose in places, and you can see the fiction writer in his poems and the poetry in his fiction. ]]>
bookshelves: graphicnovel
Bagge is a cartoonist I love from his work on Hate, and I liked this book a lot. I don't agree with all his premises, but he certainly makes libertarianism a lot more appealing than the nutbag Ron Paul does (BTW, he takes on Ron Paul in one of his pieces). He is critical of the left, critical of the right, and critical of himself, and that's I think ultimately why this collection works so well. He's funny, well-researched, and smart. Worth picking up. ]]>
|
Real Supergirl wrote: "This book is not doing anything to decrease my mistrust of Christianity. In fact, it may be making ...more " |
see all comments ]]>
bookshelves: poetry
I only recently discovered Jane Kenyon, but her poetry is somewhat haunting in its description of depression and everyday life.
At the same time, she will never be one of my very favorite poets because overall, her poems are hit or miss. But the title poem is really amazing, as are a couple others in this collection, and the ones that are "hits" are really, really good. ]]>
bookshelves: poetry
A new poet I recently discovered - her voice is clear and simple but beautiful and eloquent. ]]>
bookshelves: currently-reading, history, nonfiction
]]>
Somewhat disappointing, actually, after Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch, which were both innovative and thought-provoking pieces of important journalism about the class divide in this country. This book is a collection of short pieces, most of which felt more like rants than anything else, and rants which by and large are probably preaching to the converted. As they were for me. ]]>
bookshelves: fiction, jewish
It's a very interesting narrative structure, with 6 different narratives, 5 historical creating or re-telling the story of the Sarajevo Haggadah, and 1 present day fictional narrative of the conservator who is brought in to analyze and preserve it. It is unfortunate that this last narrative is by far the weakest of the bunch - she starts off an interesting character, but the narrative takes a couple ridiculous turns that are less than believable and more importantly, not very interesting. Personally I would have preferred the author focus on Hanna's relationship with her mother rather than trying to fabricate a espionage thread (the story of the haggadah already has plenty of adventure built into it!) and a romantic thread (blech).
Nevertheless, it is worth reading for the story of the Haggadah itself, which is a fascinating one, both real and imagined. ]]>