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September 03
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Kevin
gave
 
to:
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (Paperback)
by Lynne Truss
bookshelves:
better-if-bored
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in August, 2008
Kevin said:
"Pardon me for portraying this piquant Brit Ms. Truss as perfectly puritanical in her pugnacious pursuit of punctuation peccadilloes. "Pure poppycock, you Pollyanna!" our persistent penman might posit. Parrying her pique, I propose that punc...more
Pardon me for portraying this piquant Brit Ms. Truss as perfectly puritanical in her pugnacious pursuit of punctuation peccadilloes. "Pure poppycock, you Pollyanna!" our persistent penman might posit. Parrying her pique, I propose that punctuation purity is petty, pretty pedantic, and even partly preposterous. Picture perfection, the playground of this Panglossian -- pretend it anything but painstaking! Puh-leeze.
So pipe down picky, and please don't let the door hit your posterior on the way out....less
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August 20
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Kevin
gave
to:
Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit (Paperback)
by Daniel Quinn
bookshelves:
thought-provoking
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in August, 2008
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Kevin
gave
to:
One L (Hardcover)
by Scott Turow
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in August, 2008
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August 11
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Kevin
gave
to:
The Alchemist (Plus)
by Paulo Coelho (Goodreads author!)
bookshelves:
avoid-like-aids
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in August, 2008
Kevin said:
"Whack
"
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August 07
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Kevin
marked as to-read:
The Collector (Paperback)
by John Fowles
bookshelves:
to-read
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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Kevin
marked as to-read:
Pnin (Everyman's Library)
by Vladimir Nabokov
bookshelves:
to-read
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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Kevin
gave
to:
The Magus (Paperback)
by John Fowles
bookshelves:
thought-provoking
|
my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in August, 2008
Kevin said:
"Having read (and greatly enjoyed) The French Lieutenant's Woman a few months ago, I hoped Fowles would duplicate the fascinating and entirely unconventional narrative techniques employed in his Victorian era send-up. The Magus leaves th...more
Having read (and greatly enjoyed) The French Lieutenant's Woman a few months ago, I hoped Fowles would duplicate the fascinating and entirely unconventional narrative techniques employed in his Victorian era send-up. The Magus leaves these wishes unrequited, presented as a first person narrative through the lens of Nicholas Urfe, a strapping young man hardened by the death of his parents, emerging as a misanthropic cynic with a string of unhealthy affairs. Urfe is generally unlikeable, marked by pomposity and living a inculcated existence permitting antisocial characteristics to flourish -- elements which actually strengthen the book, as the reader bears witness to the annihilation of Urfe's elaborate self-construction under mental duress induced by mysterious Greek Islander Maurice Conchis.
A quick search on Google yields revealing interviews where Fowles acknowledges his first novel is anything but perfection, evidenced in the book's revision even after a successful initial publication. The latter work demonstrates his appreciable maturation as a writer, FLW featuring piercing metaphors and plainly evocative descriptions, so this revelation is hardly shocking. Perhaps due to my healthy appetite for reading (and thus move on to something else), plus the physical discomfort resulting from resting a 600-page tome on my lap, I have a not insurmountable resentment towards longer texts and wonder whether Fowles could pare this down. You can tell the author is enchanted by the setting on the Greek Isles, as he tries desparately to invoke the same sense of beauty tinged with wonder for the reader, but from my outsider perspective Fowles is playing darts needing only the bullseye to win, but instead encircling the center with multitudinous attempts while never hitting the target (an apt comparison given the frustration this tendency elicits during the competitive bar game).
Yet bloated verbiage and imprecision are willing sacrifices to the God of the Ideal Novel (quite an ornery bastard I may add) in return for the spectacularly inventive phalanx of puzzles Urfe, and in turn the reader, is charged to resolve. Urfe's ironic detachment matches our incredulity as readers yet as Conchis' web grows more complex distinguishing reality and staged events is disturbingly challenging. Ultimately The Magus is a metaphysical exploration best directed by the author, establishing a love triangle uncloaking Urfe's true self while undercutting traditional notions of causality. Sufficiently captivating for five stars, The Magus is man on the quantum level, characters take the role of atoms experiencing seemingly random collisions while interactions are truly constructed by the omniscient mastermind Conchis, a director of improvisational theatre never revealing the purpose to his performers, much less define the genre as comedy or drama....less
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July 28
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Kevin
marked as to-read:
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (Paperback)
by Azar Nafisi
bookshelves:
to-read
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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Kevin
marked as to-read:
The Things They Carried (Paperback)
by Tim O'Brien
bookshelves:
to-read
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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Kevin
marked as to-read:
Love in the Time of Cholera (Paperback)
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
bookshelves:
to-read
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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