February 2012
49 posts
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The Bleeding of the Stone - Ibrahim Kuni
The Bleeding of the Stone by Ibrahim Kuni My rating: 3 of 5 stars A decent read. Very good metaphor for animal extinction caused by man’s reckless slaughter. Some good descriptive passages, but otherwise nothing of special note here. View all my reviews
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Black Swan Green - David Mitchell
Black Swan Green by David Mitchell My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is a children’s book written for the adult mind. All of the horrors and torments of the regular youth, the fighting parents, the schoolyard bullies, the secrets, the shame, are written in such a way that memories of your own childhood will be conjured up, emotions fresh as if it were yesterday. Throughout the story, the main...
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“There is no such thing as a child who hates to read; there are only children who...”
– Frank Serafini (via booksandnerds)
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An Artist of the Floating World - Kazuo Ishiguro
An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro My rating: 4 of 5 stars
*Spoilers*
I finished this book on a very blue note. The narrator has a great amount of emotion built up that he refuses to acknowledge, and keeps a ‘stiff upper lip’; acting almost normal despite the fact the world he once knew and loved has been completely eradicated by the war and those adapting to the...
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Between Two Seas - Carmine Abate
Between Two Seas by Carmine Abate My rating: 3 of 5 stars 3.5/5 Basic premise of obsession, family, and culture, a good vibrant tale of Italian food and love of life. Speedy read, the ending was expected but not made boring by the predictability. I liked the details, it was very easy to maintain a colorful mental pictures while reading. No great insights into the human condition here,...
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The Slynx - Tatyana Tolstaya
The Slynx by Tatyana Tolstaya My rating: 5 of 5 stars
*Spoiler Alert*
This book. This book describes the addiction to literature I have in excruciating detail. It makes me appreciate the wealth of knowledge I have in comparison to the main character, for what is reading if you don’t understand it? Also, post apocalyptic at its best. No drowning in scientific garble describing the...
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Like Water for Chocolate - Laura Esquivel
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel My rating: 3 of 5 stars The book is decent. The recipes would be worth coming back to for trying out. Otherwise, the fantastical premise is nothing inspiring. There’s your romance, your death, your regret for past actions, your overwhelming hate for a familial tyrant, etc etc. It was a quick read, but doesn’t leave the reader much to...
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Deep River - Shusaku Endo
Deep River by Shusaku Endo My rating: 4 of 5 stars There is death. Yet, there is also life. There are long emotionally dead passages. Yet, there are also moments so charged with feeling they consume all in their path, carrying along for a bit and leaving behind ones willing to do anything to catch up. You have the search for reincarnated love ones, the search for emotional fulfillment, the...
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84, Charing Cross Road - Helene Hanff
84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff My rating: 5 of 5 stars Quick, witty, and charming, with the slightest tones of nostalgia and heartbreak. Definitely rereadable with short time periods in between the readings. If the movie is just as good, that would be lovely. View all my reviews
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A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
Finished - 4/3/11
Rating - 3/5
This book was depressing, almost overly so. What was the point of completely disintegrating every main character and forcing them into various types of hells, both living and dead? The worst part was while there wasn’t obvious potential for happiness, there was a definite trend of small improvements throughout the story, at least till the point that the...
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Time To Actually Make Use Of This Tumblr
That’s right. Original posts. In the form of Goodreads reviews, because that is what I do, other than write school essays that have no place here. To the people actually paying attention, I’ll be posting one review daily from the stockpile I already have. Once I get through those, the reviews will come as fast as I can get through books. So, weekly? We’ll see.
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Watchshortformblog:
Got a chance to see the Oscar-nominated animated shorts tonight, and there were some impressive clips nominated, including a cute Pixar short. But all pale in comparison to “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore,” above, which on a purely animation level is on a whole ‘nother level. But what’s even more fascinating is that the clip is also available as an iPad app in...
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First Aid Kit - Wolf
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My tumblr needs more of this kind of thing.
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Obama for America: “I’m going to make a special... →
barackobama:
“I’m going to make a special plea to the press—not just the folks who are here, but also your editors—give this some attention. This is the kind of stuff, what these young people are doing, that’s going to make a bigger difference in the life of our country over the long term than just about…
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“I think we ought to only read the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the...”
– Franz Kafka , 1904 (via floralnymph)
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Reblog if you believe in Sherlock Holmes.
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Why did the chicken cross the road?
Plato: For the greater good.
Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability.
Machiavelli: So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken's dominion maintained.
Hippocrates: Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.
Jacques Derrida: Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned, because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!
Thomas de Torquemada: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.
Timothy Leary: Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.
Douglas Adams: Forty-two.
Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.
Oliver North: National Security was at stake.
B.F. Skinner: Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will.
Carl Jung: The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.
Jean-Paul Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.
Ludwig Wittgenstein: The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the objects "chicken" and "road", and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.
Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.
Aristotle: To actualize its potential.
Buddha: If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.
Howard Cosell: It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian biped with the temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurence.
Salvador Dali: The Fish.
Darwin: It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.
Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.
Epicurus: For fun.
Ralph Waldo Emerson: It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.
Johann von Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it.
Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain.
Werner Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.
David Hume: Out of custom and habit.
Jack Nicholson: 'Cause it [censored] wanted to. That's the [censored] reason.
Pyrrho the Skeptic: What road?
Ronald Reagan: I forget.
John Sununu: The Air Force was only too happy to provide the transportation, so quite understandably the chicken availed himself of the opportunity.
The Sphinx: You tell me.
Mr. T.: If you saw me coming you'd cross the road too!
Henry David Thoreau: To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out of life.
Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.
Molly Yard: It was a hen!
Zeno of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side.
Chaucer: So priketh hem nature in hir corages.
Wordsworth: To wander lonely as a cloud.
The Godfather: I didn't want its mother to see it like that.
Keats: Philosophy will clip a chicken's wings.
Blake: To see heaven in a wild fowl.
Othello: Jealousy.
Dr. Johnson: Sir, had you known the Chicken for as long as I have, you would not so readily enquire, but feel rather the Need to resist such a public Display of your own lamentable and incorrigible Ignorance.
Mrs. Thatcher: This chicken's not for turning.
Supreme Soviet: There has never been a chicken in this photograph.
Oscar Wilde: Why, indeed? One's social engagements whilst in town ought never expose one to such barbarous inconvenience - although, perhaps, if one must cross a road, one may do far worse than to cross it as the chicken in question.
Kafka: Hardly the most urgent enquiry to make of a low-grade insurance clerk who woke up that morning as a hen.
Swift: It is, of course, inevitable that such a loathsome, filth-ridden and degraded creature as Man should assume to question the actions of one in all respects his superior.
Macbeth: To have turned back were as tedious as to go o'er.
Whitehead: Clearly, having fallen victim to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.
Freud: An die andere Seite zu kommen. (Much laughter.)
Hamlet: That is not the question.
Donne: It crosseth for thee.
Pope: It was mimicking my Lord Hervey.
Constable: To get a better view.
Yeats: She was following the Faeries that sang to her to come away with them from the dull, bucolic comfort of the farmyard to the waters and the wild.
Shelley: 'Tis a metaphor for the pursuits of man: though 'twas deemed an extraordinary occurrence at the time, still it brought little to bear on the great scheme of time and history, and was ultimately fruitless and forgotten.
Tolkien: Chickens are respectable folk, and well thought of. They never go on any adventures or do anything unexpected. One fine spring day, as the chicken wandered contentedly around the farmyard, clucking and pecking and enjoying herself immensely, there appeared a Wizard and thirteen Dwarves who were in need of a chicken to share in their adventure. Reluctantly she joined their party, and with them crossed the road into the great Unknown, muttering about how rude the Dwarves were to take her away on such short notice, without even giving her time to brush her feathers or fetch her hat.
January 2012
45 posts
2 tags
“The difference between my darkness and your darkness is that I can look at my...”
– C. JoyBell C. (via starsofwords)