Mike > Recent Status Updates

From the scattered, disorganized structure of chapters, to the bland lack of detail, to the constant telling rather than showing, everything about this book screams of an amateur writer. Surely, there are better memoirs of serfdom I could've been assigned than this.

The fact that Sachs doesn't think colonialism is the primary reason the developing world is poor does a lot to explain why he doesn't mind sweat shops and doesn't blame the rich as much as he should. Yes, Europe and America's growth was fueled by productivity increases, but that's not mutually exclusive with transfers of wealth from Africa and Asia to the U.S. as everyone's productivity was increasing!

This is just such a thin vision of society to me. Plato never seems to question the idea that people only have one thing that they're good at - that seems like an oddly inhuman assumption to make.

Franny: 5/5 Salinger's ability to infuse the most ordinary situations with emotion and insight is, well, extraordinary. Such a simple story, yet such a layered, philosophical one at the same time.

It's hard not to read this without bringing in all my modern thoughts and opinions on markets and labor and whatnot. Ah well, I'm sure this was useful in its day.

It feels like forever since I've read a book that I really enjoyed like this. Salinger is an immensely talented character and dialogue writer. This is incredible.

Two observations:

1.) I just read a brazenly incomplete description of why poverty is unjust - how could you possibly oppose poverty without noting that there are billionaires in the world, that poor people die while rich people get any luxury they want?

2.) The justification of sweatshops as a means of economic development betrays Sachs' close-minded view of the possibilities, likely because he ignores the above.

There are so many good moments in this book, but the fact that they don't fit together isn't just making this book less than the sum of its parts, it actively makes the good parts less enjoyable.

I wonder how much of the plot I'm missing because I barely remember any of my high school French. I guess people knowing how to read French was just a thing you could expect of novel audiences in Victorian Britain.

Also, I can't tell whether or not I'm supposed to find it gross that William cares so much about how handsome his students are.

While I'm growing attached to William as a character, I'm finding this story utterly pointless. It almost seems like it had a false start, and I don't understand what the point is supposed to be.

This prose is excellent, but other than that, I'm not really feeling this so far. Jane Eyre was really interesting because it explored the role that women played in Victorian society - without that, the explorations of class feel very thin to me.

The punctuation - specifically, the use of dashes - is very odd to me, and I can't tell if that's Bronte's fault or if it's because of the editors of my edition of this book. Other than that, there's not much to say yet, the story's still warming up.

I feel like this would've made a good collection of short stories. The problem isn't that there are no good ideas here, it's that they're so incoherently executed.

This is the literary equivalent of a very smart person's drunken ramblings. They clearly have something interesting they could be saying, and occasionally, they do say something interesting, but it's all too incoherent to tell.

I'm realizing that this book is just not weird enough to work. It's odd enough to be alienating and off-putting, but not so odd that it can create a mood out of it and make the book memorable or unique. It occupies this weird mid-zone where it doesn't function as a normal narrative and it isn't a trip to read. It just sort of comes off like Murakami was trying to be artsy and failed.

I'm starting to think this book only works if you take it as a heavy-handed metaphor for the affect that rational contemplation has on the human psyche. It has interesting things to say about that, but the story completely falls flat without it.

Also, this book has a really strange relationship with female sexuality.

Y'know, Murakami is a very good writer - his description of a dream fever while dying of hunger is extremely evocative and gripping. I'm kind of floored that someone this talented would use that talent in service of such a nothing story.

There's really only so many ways to say that a book is totally pointless and uninteresting - I don't know what else to write here.

There are occasional very good moments that make this book not totally worthless. On the whole, though... seriously, why do people like this? So far, it's aimless and pointless to the core.

This is just... aimless. I guess the protagonist is a well-developed character, but without a good plot to bring out his interesting aspect, and without particularly strong prose to back the story up, there's just not much here worth mentioning.

This book keeps suggesting that it might do something interesting, but so far, it's just been mildly odd. Even if it does turn out to have more up its sleeve, I can only see this first 100 pages or so as pretty bad pacing leading up to it.

The dialogue is not very good, and I can't tell if it's the translation or if it's Murakami's fault. I'm leaning toward the translation, because I don't remember this problem from the last Murakami book I read, and also because it sort of reminds me of a bad anime fansub. It's distracting either way, though.

I appreciate that Rendi is becoming a more active protagonist. Still, I feel like this book doesn't live up to its full potential - I wish it were more direct in its themes about the effects of bad parenting, perhaps by making the flashbacks more central to his interactions with the people of the inn.

Don't Look Now by Daphne Maurier: 3/5 Well-written, payoff doesn't match buildup.

Fleur by Louise Erdrich: 3/5 Very atmospheric, but again, anti-climactic.

Up North by Mavis Gallant: 2/5 Some interesting moments, but mostly too brief and unexplained.

Letter from His Father by Nadine Gordimer: 5/5 Interesting, well-written, original.

The Pond by Patricia Highsmith: 2/5 Predictable and needlessly sad.

I hate to say it, but this is just kind of boring and underwhelming compared to Where the Mountain Meets the Moon. A lot of the strengths are there - Rendi is still a good protagonist, and the way Chinese culture is written about for English-speaking audiences still appeals to me. But it's just a much smaller, dare I say more boring book.

This is taking a while to get any direction. It seems like it could be compelling, but I'm kind of hoping for an adventure of some kind? I feel like this book is going to be pretty boring if it's just a bunch of people messing around at an inn for ~300 pages. Then again, an adventure could feel too much like the first one, so maybe if their messing around actually amounts to something, it could work.

I'm enjoying this so far. The story hasn't started so far, and I remember not being that into the mood of Where the Mountain Meets the Moon until the plot kicked off, so I'm not too concerned about the fact that I'm pretty apathetic so far - I think it just hasn't really started yet.

This is not a great climax. To frame Pia as the protagonist (as much as any character can be a protagonist in a book that cares this little about character growth) and then have a climax where she finishes her side quest and lies in a hospital while the other characters take out the real bad guys... it's just not good writing.

Okay, seriously, does this book even have a plot? I appreciate that Rash wrote a well-developed character and setting, but it seems to be in service of nothing in particular. And with consistently bad writing and a lot of experimentation that just doesn't amount to anything interesting, I'm left wondering what the point of this book is.

This writing is... not great. I mean, I respect that it's going for something interesting, but the similes are often strange and badly placed, making them very distracting, and the sections of purple prose are way over the top and hard to follow. I just don't see what this captures about Les, or why he would talk like this - it's an awkward fit for this book.