April 2012
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The Playmaker - Thomas Keneally
The Playmaker by Thomas Keneally My rating: 3 of 5 stars Well. Not exactly the kind of thing that I’m interested in. I will admit that it was a joy watching the play come together in the midst of the wild outback situation filled with criminal lags and wild natives. As well as watch Ralph figure out his situation and his feelings during the course of putting together of the performance....
March 2012
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Schindler's List - Thomas Keneally
Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally My rating: 4 of 5 stars This one bridges the gap between reality and fiction in a way matched by few. The circumstances of extraordinary cruelty are only equaled by the unimaginable courage it took to defy it. It’s fortunate that the account is written in such a straightforward and clear manner, for the depth of emotion in some of the scenes...
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Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen My rating: 5 of 5 stars I’m so very glad that I realized that I had been in neither the right mood nor the right mind to appreciate this lovely gem when I first read it. Otherwise my previous one star rating would have continued its miserable existence, without much insight to its reasons. I have never grinned so much while reading something, nor...
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“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are...”
– Gary Provost (via qmsd)
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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson My rating: 4 of 5 stars The book is always better than the movie. In this case, movies. Now, I watched both the Swedish film and the American remake, and they were both excellent renditions. But they both cannot compare to the original novel. Both movies covered the riveting plot in the bare bones sense, while the novel wonderfully fleshed out...
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For those who think I rant about the patriarchy... →
thelittlekneesofbees:
From: Julia Maddera, Georgetown University ‘13.
To the first man, who I met by the Eiffel Tower my second week in Paris, when I didn’t know better. Who took me out four times, who waved little red flags that I tried to ignore. Like asking me outright if I was a virgin on the first date, like calling me five different pet names when I’d asked him not to throughout the...
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“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It...”
– Neil Gaiman (via ageofreason)
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As Meat Loves Salt - Maria McCann
As Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCann My rating: 3 of 5 stars 3.5/5 Well, I have to give it some credit, for the excruciatingly accurate portrayal of the time period, as well as the last fifty pages that sped past like a fevered nightmare. And also the unconventional ending. But damn. Jacob just doesn’t know when to stop. His violence is so inherent it’s almost lost between the lines...
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The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann My rating: 5 of 5 stars Ladies and gentlemen, we have a contestant for the spot of my absolute favorite novel. The judgement is only being withheld due to the fact that I currently don’t have a review for Of Human Bondage, so no accurate comparison can be made as of yet. However. It must be said that if the previous book gave me hope for the human...
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Arthur and George - Julian Barnes
Arthur and George by Julian Barnes My rating: 4 of 5 stars 4.5/5 This was a very good, singular book. Now, I’ve seen many reviews that were disappointed with the ending. I believe that it was a decent one, given the circumstances and the persisting mystery of it all. The author’s note helped clear things up, so one would be advised to read that if the conclusion was unsatisfying....
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A Dance With Dragons - George R.R. Martin
A Dance With Dragons by George R.R. Martin My rating: 4 of 5 stars Ok. You know what? Just. Fine. Cliffhangers of amazing here. Cliffhangers. Of. Ridiculous. Amazing. And it was going so well for some of my favorite characters. And then stab in the back ridiculous reversal of fortunes. Oh, and who knows what half the characters that were featured in the fourth book are up to, cause guess what?...
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The Glass Menagerie - Tennessee Williams
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams My rating: 3 of 5 stars 3.5/5 A sad, sad trinket of a family bound by dead hopes that are constantly panic-revived into desperation. The mother has dreams for her children that are constantly thrust into them with the forceful insistence of a buzzing gnat; whining reminders of the future and futile efforts of inspiring action through persisting noise....
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Bartleby, the Scrivener - Herman Melville
Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville My rating: 4 of 5 stars I can understand why the Occupy movement took to this book so well. The titular character after a while does nothing but occupy his chosen workplace, in a sort of calm refusal to acquiesce to anyone’s demands that would be the envy of any peaceful protester. There is a certain elegance to Bartleby’s constant...
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Memories of My Melancholy Whores - Gabriel García...
Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel García Márquez My rating: 3 of 5 stars Okaaay, 3.5 stars out of five, all because I love Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s prose and the last pages made me happy. For this story you really need to get used to the massive gap between the ages of the respective romantic parties, otherwise you’ll hate every word of it. Ignoring that, it is the tale...
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The Yellow Arrow - Victor Pelevin
The Yellow Arrow by Victor Pelevin My rating: 4 of 5 stars What a deceptively concise story. Who knew that it would aim to encompass the concept of life and the ‘yellow arrow’ that it is for so many people. The locomotive of I, to use one of the stories terms, brings to mind Plato’s cave, inherent restrictions on life that are rarely observed and yet remain in plain sight. To...
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M. Butterfly - David Henry Hwang
M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang My rating: 5 of 5 stars Now here’s a play with depth. Here you have your racial stereotypes, your political stereotypes, your gender stereotypes, all coupled in a massive sexual stereotyping for the ages. A misunderstanding so great and maintained for so long requires a massive amount of explanation, an intro to which the playwright has thankfully...
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The Letter - W. Somerset Maugham
The Letter by W. Somerset Maugham My rating: 4 of 5 stars
**spoiler alert** Not as good as The Constant Wife, but the intrigue kept my interest till the very end, and the characters were fantastically rendered as always. However, I wasn’t particularly fond of the fact that Leslie, portrayed as brilliantly in self control at the beginning, had by the end collapsed into a quivering,...
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The exile's words: So I woke up this morning in a... →
itscandidlycara:
Wait, let me back up.
Hi, my name is Cara and I’m a 21 year old woman. Every 28 days, give or take, I have a period. And it fucking sucks. Today, was one of those where I take from the 28 day cycle. I wasn’t due for another period for at least a week, but considering that…
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The Constant Wife - W. Somerset Maugham
The Constant Wife by W. Somerset Maugham My rating: 5 of 5 stars Ahhh me. There really is nothing like a good dose of intelligence and sheer wit. Especially concerning a well crafted revenge served cold. Simply delicious. Constance is the model of all that I admire in a woman; manipulating her vulnerable position in society to its fullest free state, not to mention keeping every inch of her...
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Dr. Faustus - Christopher Marlowe
Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe My rating: 2 of 5 stars Eh. Reading this makes me want to reread Hamlet. As well as read Goeth’s Faust. I feel I’ll get more out of them than I did with this play. At least, in terms of appreciating plays and Faust’s story. Most of it was pretty weird. And not much meaning behind it besides falling prey to temptation and the devil. Maybe...
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“How much of my brain is wilfully my own? How much is not a rubber stamp of what...”
– Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (via thievess)
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Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other...
Goblin Market, the Prince’s Progress, and Other Poems by Christina Rossetti My rating: 2 of 5 stars This book was quite misleading. I went expecting poems along the lines of the goblin market, malicious faeries and whimsical settings galore. Instead I get mostly depressing tidbits on death and lack of love, all of it rife with seasonal imagery. Oh, also a wave of religion inspired...
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A Feast for Crows - George R.R. Martin
A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin My rating: 4 of 5 stars Holy crap George KICK YOU IN THE FACE. AGHGHGHGHGH. That little blurb at the end was great, by the way. Summed up exactly the frustration I was feeling. I practically SPRINTED through the book, and got next to no feedback on many of my favorite characters. It is very, VERY, frustrating, when all you know about them is through...
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Artist suspends real clouds in the middle of the... →
good:
This is not a fluffy mass of cotton strung up in a room. It’s an actual, man-made cloud.
That’s not photoshop; that’s an actual cloud hovering inside an actual room. Artist Berndnaut Smilde merges art and science to create small man-made clouds that exist — albeit for just a moment — indoors.
(via singularitarian)
(via poptech)
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Daring Fireball: After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia... →
bderw:
Apt commentary—
They took the credit for your second symphony./ Rewritten by machine and new technology,/ and now I understand the problems you can see.
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Waterland - Graham Swift
Waterland by Graham Swift My rating: 4 of 5 stars Yes, there’s eels. Yes, there’s incest. But more importantly, there’s a subtle flow of history, back and forth across the pages from the French Revolution to the nuclear days of WWII. Lessons learned from the trials and tribulations of the Crick family can easily be applied to the great events of world history, and history...
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Pavilion of Women - Pearl S. Buck
Pavilion of Women by Pearl S. Buck My rating: 5 of 5 stars I absolutely adore Pearl S. Buck’s writing. That being said, I shall have to go through her entire bibliography in order to satisfy myself. Her prose is a warm bath, complete with the small insights and revelations that often come to one during luxurious respite. ‘Pavilion of Women’ presents a woman with unparalleled...
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The Road - Cormac McCarthy
The Road by Cormac McCarthy My rating: 4 of 5 stars Apocalyptic western with slow prose dry as ashes and succulent as nature’s breath. Every day the man and the boy face death and the constant collapsing of hope, knowing no future nor reason for why they still exist. All the world is grey in the unknown, save for chance meetings with cannibals and flashes of the past that offer the...
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A Storm of Swords - George R.R. Martin
A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin My rating: 4 of 5 stars Ok, so this still wasn’t up to par with the first installment. I however was pleased by the fact that things are finally coming together. The second book introduced a lot without explaining much of the mystery of the first book, and it’s the third book that finally gives enough of its secrets to keep me happy. I...
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Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides My rating: 3 of 5 stars
**spoiler alert**
You know those books that seem to be getting somewhere but in the end really don’t? This was one of them. The subject material was fascinating and all, the historical progression of a single family that culminated in a genetically mutated hermaphrodite, but to be frank, I was looking forward to Cal’s life...
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A Clash of Kings - George R.R. Martin
A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin My rating: 4 of 5 stars The reverberations of the web aren’t as inspiring, and the pace has become a bit muddled by the introduction of vast numbers of characters, of which quite a few die shortly afterward, but so far still good. View all my reviews
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A Game of Thrones - George R.R. Martin
A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is fantasy. A sprawling conglomerate of fantastical characters both large and small, all strung together in a vast web where one event begets thousands of others with the rapidity of vibrating strings, everything encompassed by a world where magic creeps at the edges and the supernatural whispers throughout the land. The pace...
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The Complete Maus - Art Spiegelman
The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman My rating: 4 of 5 stars And so it goes. The story delivered here is just as morally complex and emotionally raw as the Holocaust itself. The author’s father tells his story of survival in the face of such horrors, and also serves as a living example of the horrors that didn’t die with the end of the war. The author himself is left to pick up the...
