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February 27
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Ellie
gave
 
to:
Exile (Paperback)
by Denise Mina
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my rating:
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read in February, 2008
Ellie said:
"Totally sweet gritty Scottish mystery. Gangsters and casual self-destruction abound. The characters are hilarious, tragic and believable. The relationship between the protagonist and her brother and best friend made me miss my sisters and best friend...more
Totally sweet gritty Scottish mystery. Gangsters and casual self-destruction abound. The characters are hilarious, tragic and believable. The relationship between the protagonist and her brother and best friend made me miss my sisters and best friend badly. Also made me want to go back to Scotland and revel in the dirty overpasses, terrible food and unsinkable character of that country. A bit slow in parts, but so well-written, funny and real....less
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February 11
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Ellie
gave
to:
Gaudy Night (Lord Peter Wimsey Mystery)
by Dorothy L. Sayers
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my rating:
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read in June, 2007
Ellie said:
"<3 <3 <3 This was the first Dorothy L Sayers book I read; I've now read all of them. The first 50 pages are so were a bit of a trudge, in part because I'm unfamiliar with the structure of a British university and really can't tell a don from...more
<3 <3 <3 This was the first Dorothy L Sayers book I read; I've now read all of them. The first 50 pages are so were a bit of a trudge, in part because I'm unfamiliar with the structure of a British university and really can't tell a don from a bursar, or what have you. As soon as Lord Peter Wimsey enters the scene, however, it just gets more wonderful. The combination of Pride-and-Prejudice style thinking-woman's-cinderella-story (he's witty! and a feminist! and has the strength of two bears!) and gripping mystery about the knives of academia totally slayed me. The author is very tongue-in-cheek about the whole thing, but still lets you enjoy it, which are essential features of the highbrow-lowbrow genre....less
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Ellie
read and liked
Siria's
review of My Name Is Red (Vintage International):
"A triumph of hype over substance, I thought. I'm not sure whether this is because of Pamuk himself, or whether the astonishingly stiff and formal style of the narrative can be attributed to the translator, but I was very much underwhelmed by this. Th...more
A triumph of hype over substance, I thought. I'm not sure whether this is because of Pamuk himself, or whether the astonishingly stiff and formal style of the narrative can be attributed to the translator, but I was very much underwhelmed by this. The aspects of the novel which covered the differences between Western Christian and Islamic perceptions of art and aesthetics were certainly interesting; there were also some moments of true inventiveness and creativity, such as the chapters which were narrated from the point of view of a sketch of a dog, or the colour red. For the most part, though, I found the characters unengaging, flat and irritating, with Pamuk liking to show off, almost, through them. It's a very uneven mix of dialogue, plot, history and theology, and while not a bad novel, per se, I really don't think I'll ever be coming back to it....less
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Ellie
read and liked
Melody's
review of My Name Is Red:
"My rating is more like 2 1/2 stars - because I do want to encourage you to read it. It is a curious mix of murder mystery, religion, violence, sex and art. I felt like I was reading the King James Version of some religious document that covered all...more
My rating is more like 2 1/2 stars - because I do want to encourage you to read it. It is a curious mix of murder mystery, religion, violence, sex and art. I felt like I was reading the King James Version of some religious document that covered all these subjects. Very odd to have someone proclaim his praises to God or Allah in this case, and then recall how lovely it was to bugger the pretty boys.
The book is told through the eyes of several narrators - the miniaturists, their master, some of the subjects of the illustration, a matchmaker, the love interest of one of the Black, her father and the murderer (who is also one of the above). Thank heavens for the sections from Esther, Shekure and Satan et. al because the others are so tedious with their bantering about whether an artist should have a style and about blindness that I wanted to take an elaborately jeweled pin and jab it in my (well, maybe not mine - but somebody’s) eyes.
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Ellie
read and liked
Rishi's
review of My Name Is Red (Vintage International):
"Couldn't finish it, but made a valiant effort to get half-way through. Boring as heck, not a novel, but a treatise on miniaturism on 16th/17th century Turkey. Perhaps not finishing a book doesn't give you license to review it harshly, but while the...more
Couldn't finish it, but made a valiant effort to get half-way through. Boring as heck, not a novel, but a treatise on miniaturism on 16th/17th century Turkey. Perhaps not finishing a book doesn't give you license to review it harshly, but while the style of writing was interesting and creative, and was a valiant effort, it was just...boring. It seems like he write in a style to resemble the period he was writing about, but there was so little plot with so much exploration of characters, it felt totally unbalanced and skewed. The mystery which is supposed to be central to the novel, and remember, it is a novel so it's main purpose it to be interesting, with the comment on philosophy, culture, and psychology all combined in appropriate portions, but I was never actually interested in the mystery going on. Absolutely terrible, a novel is entertainment, and this one was just not. It has nothing to do with the topic, I think you could set a novel anywhere, shoot, the Sun Also Rises is about a bullfight for a large portion of the book, but it left me pondering. This book never left me pondering about anything, nor was the mystery any good. Maybe I should have finished it, maybe something cool would have happened in the end and redeemed it, but really, I did try to get through it....less
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Ellie
read and liked
Z's
review of My Name Is Red (Vintage International):
"This book took me about three weeks to a month to finish, which included a period of 10 days or so when I was out of town and didn't touch it. Though I was in the middle of the book at the time, I didn't miss it at all. That kind of says it all for m...more
This book took me about three weeks to a month to finish, which included a period of 10 days or so when I was out of town and didn't touch it. Though I was in the middle of the book at the time, I didn't miss it at all. That kind of says it all for me.
My Name is Red is based on a unique storyline, set in the late 1500s in Turkey. One of the Sultan's miniaturists has been murdered, and the art as it exists in the country is changing, unable to escape the influence of Venetian portraiture. That the book is well-researched is undeniable. I certainly learned something about the art and traditions of the time through it. However, unless you enjoy very, very slow reads, My Name is Red may not be worth spending a lot of your time over. About 500 pages long, it felt more like 1000 to me, because Pamuk allows the story to progress only at a halting pace, and by the end of it, I honestly didn't care who the murderer was or how the story was going to end. My main problem was with the characters -- they are incredibly flawed, to an extent that one feels virtually no compassion or sense of identity with any of them, and some amount of that is necessary if one is to feel truly involved or engaged in a story. It could also be the very setting -- both time and location -- that alienates them from the reader, but there's more to it than that -- I didn't like any of them.
One of the nice things about the book was the changing voice of the author in every chapter. Different protagonists tell their story in chapters like "I am Black" or "I am Shekure" and that definitely adds some interest to the tale. I could do with whatever of that I could find.
Although I am quite the fan of Pamuk's works -- I especially enjoyed Snow -- I have to say this book is the perfect example of hype being much more important in the success of a work than substance. Huge parts of it are simply boring -- no other word for it! It's a gainful read in that it isn't everyday fare and is certainly somewhat of a novelty in contemporary literature, with interesting historical information and a unique Eastern perspective, but it's just not the masterpiece it's been made out to be....less
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Ellie
gave
to:
My Name Is Red (Vintage International)
by Orhan Pamuk
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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Ellie said:
"Lame! I gave up about halfway through. The characters are two dimensional and uncompelling, the mystery is dumb, the sex scenes are so porny, stilted and uncreative as to make me wonder if the translation was outsourced to a phone sex operator ("...more
Lame! I gave up about halfway through. The characters are two dimensional and uncompelling, the mystery is dumb, the sex scenes are so porny, stilted and uncreative as to make me wonder if the translation was outsourced to a phone sex operator ("My large breasts..." come on!). The debates about art around which the narrative is structured are very interesting, until about the 7th or 8th time they are discussed. Bad book, bad book....less
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Ellie
gave
to:
The Wooden Shepherdess (New York Review Books Classics)
by Richard Hughes
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my rating:
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recommended for: ww2 history buffs, people who can tolerate ww2 history
Ellie said:
"I've been reading this guy for a couple months now... The Fox in the Attic was awesome, but the sequel tries to do too many things at once. At this point he's following about seven characters, including Hitler and a British statesman, and there are e...more
I've been reading this guy for a couple months now... The Fox in the Attic was awesome, but the sequel tries to do too many things at once. At this point he's following about seven characters, including Hitler and a British statesman, and there are endless historical background passages about Hitler's rise to power, and the quibbling of British politicians. Which would be cool if I was interested in that sort of thing at the moment, but as it is, every time I come to one of those sections I drop it on the floor and go to bed.
The characters are pretty wonderful, though, so I've stuck with it. He writes children well, which is no small accomplishment; he's focused on four children under 14 so far (in addition to all the adult characters and made them all individuals. ...less
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June 14
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Ellie
gave
to:
A Suitable Boy: A Novel (Perennial Classics)
by Vikram Seth
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my rating:
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recommended for: those interested in Indian literature and society, people with strong wrists and long plane flights
read in May, 2007
Ellie said:
"This book combines Jane Austen's sensitivity to the nuances of social interaction and compelling characters with a Tolstoyesque interest in every social, political, economic and religious detail pertaining to the greater world of the plot. Lata, the ...more
This book combines Jane Austen's sensitivity to the nuances of social interaction and compelling characters with a Tolstoyesque interest in every social, political, economic and religious detail pertaining to the greater world of the plot. Lata, the main character, is a college student in Brahmpur in the 1950s whose mother is determined to marry her off to some nice middle-class boy (hence the title), but the 1400+ novel (one of the longest ever published in English) often ignores her for chapters at a stretch as it follows the socialites, english professors, shoemakers, courtesans, mathematicians, politicians and ascetics who make up her social milieu.
Some of the political stuff towards the end dragged on, and though it was very interesting to learn about Indian politics after the death of Gandhi (which I knew nothing about), these passages recalled to me the tedious grouse-hunting episodes in Anna Karenina which have twice foiled my attempts to read that book through to the end. The rest of it was very good, though, or at least I felt compelled to read it all the time. It felt a bit like getting three seasons of a very engaging mini-series on dvd; in fact I'm really surprised that there seem to have been no attempts to movieize it, I'd watch it over Lost any day....less
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