May 2012
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April 2012
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“What does reading do, You can learn almost everything from reading, But I read...”
– José Saramago, The Cave (via doubledaybooks)
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“Physics says: go to sleep. Of course you’re tired. Every atom in you has been...”
– Albert Goldbarth, “The Sciences Sing a Lullabye” (via fleurishes, sangfroid)
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Memoirs of Dutiful Daughter - Simone de Beauvoir
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir My rating: 5 of 5 stars Well written discourses on growing up are amazing. The clarity with which the author described her years from infancy to childhood and beyond was astonishing; it was as if the babies in Mary Poppins had retained the eloquent speech which which they used to discourse with birds and other nonhuman entities. It made for...
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Moll Flanders - Daniel Defoe
Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe My rating: 2 of 5 stars 2.5/5 I liked the credit Defoe gave to the heroine, I really did. He was able to see into the plight of women during such a time when their only source of living was either to marry well, or find work through less than savory means. Moll’s time period as a thief was also greatly entertaining. But ultimately, the plot plodded for...
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Nine Suitcases - Béla Zsolt
Nine Suitcases by Béla Zsolt My rating: 4 of 5 stars The bravery of this man. It’s near impossible to comprehend how he was able to devote his life to the betterment of his beloved country and suffer such horrors as compensation. He didn’t even make it to the camps, you know. He didn’t need to in order to endure the worst of the atrocities that WWII had to offer to mankind....
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The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood My rating: 4 of 5 stars 4.5/5 Margaret Atwood has such a way with metaphors. Give her a calm pond filled with normal plant life, and she’ll make you see corpses floating in their own blood. An addictive sort of morbidity. Anyways. It seems like every time I turn around there’s another dystopia floating by in all its screwed up...
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“I believe in fiction and the power of stories because that way we speak in...”
– Jeanette Winterson (via amorette)
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The Red and the Black - Stendhal
The Red and the Black by Stendhal My rating: 4 of 5 stars I really like this Stendhal character. He may have written in the 1800’s, but his prose is far easier to grasp and enjoy than other authors of the period. His writing is bold, emotional, and unafraid to speak its mind truthfully on many of the matters society chooses to ignore in order to benefit itself. It reads like an...
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The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins My rating: 2 of 5 stars This is one of those books that I read so that I’d have the experience to back up my opinions on a series that has been hyped up to a ridiculous extent. I have to say, I didn’t have to work at all at being unimpressed. The idea wasn’t all that novel, the writing was mostly telling instead of showing, and wasn’t...
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Ulysses - James Joyce
Ulysses by James Joyce My rating: 3 of 5 stars 3.5/5 Phweeeeeeeee. Success. This has been the only book to date that I have viewed with trepidation. Blood and guts I can deal with. Dryness I will tolerate and breeze on through if need be. This though. This was intimidating. It was sophomore year? Yes, sophomore year of high school, when I heard tales of this vicious beast of a mindtwisting...
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“Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then...”
– Mark Twain (via wordpainting)
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Perfume: The Story of a Murderer - Patrick Süskind
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind My rating: 4 of 5 stars What a heady mix of disgust and pleasure, outrage and ecstasy, spartan existence and orgiastic frenzy. Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is as close to a deity as you can get; so removed from the human sphere of existence, and yet can easily shift the sphere in the most drastic ways. His reasoning behind committing these...
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“When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come...”
– W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage (via helplesslyamazed)
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The Long Goodbye - Raymond Chandler
The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler My rating: 5 of 5 stars People. They pass through your life, your mind, your heart, bundled in their own worlds with their wants and needs and feelings. And they’ll tangle you up and drag you with and leave you with a lump in your throat and a weight in your gut. That’s the best case scenario. Worst case scenario you end up broken, jailed, dead....
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Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco My rating: 4 of 5 stars I have never been so undecided as to what a rate a book. The oscillation from three to four stars and back again was dizzying, and made worse by the fact that I felt that a 3.5 would be a cop out concerning this particular novel. The writing was a mix of excellent logical processes and long trains of theological meanderings. I’d...
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Watchtheatlantic:
The Most Dangerous Gamer:In a multibillion-dollar industry addicted to laser guns and carnivorous aliens, can true art finally flourish?
Like many wealthy people, Jonathan Blow vividly remembers the moment he became rich. At the time, in late 2008, he was $40,000 in debt and living in a modest San Francisco apartment, having just spent more than three years meticulously refining...
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The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents...
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope by William Kamkwamba My rating: 5 of 5 stars
**spoiler alert**
Uplifting, inspiring, astounding. They all pale in comparison to the reality, and it is such a rare opportunity to be able to say that. There was so much standing in William’s way. He could have been satisfied with his small successes and not thought...
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Zoo City - Lauren Beukes
Zoo City by Lauren Beukes My rating: 3 of 5 stars
**spoiler alert**
3.5/5 Well. I won’t deny the fact that I didn’t expect to love it. It may be that the recent trend of reading classics has left me suspicious of anything modern. Unfair, I know. But my reasons for this particular rating are sound enough for me. The writing was pretty typical: caustic wit, descriptive passages,...
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heartworm
dictionaryofobscuresorrows:
n. a relationship or friendship that you can’t get out of your head, which you thought had faded long ago but is still somehow alive and unfinished, like an abandoned campsite whose smoldering embers still have the power to start a forest fire.
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The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov My rating: 4 of 5 stars This book was so much fun. Really, it’s been too long since I’ve been able to say that. And of course it would be Russian. That combination of comical absurdity and grave circumstances is unmatched by any other culture of literature. And what character fits the setting better than Satan himself? Devilishly good...
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The Bone People - Keri Hulme
The Bone People by Keri Hulme My rating: 4 of 5 stars
**spoiler alert**
4.5/5 A rare mix of characters and languages and emotions indeed. Gripping. Kerewin is one of my all time favorite characters; she’s everything I am and so much more. The talent and the energy and the drive. Simply beautiful. I can’t forgive Joe though. I can’t. I don’t see any justification...
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Island - Aldous Huxley
Island by Aldous Huxley My rating: 5 of 5 stars I’m on a roll. Or rather I’ve finally figured out how to find lots of books that I’ll love. So many five stars, and it’s only February. Anyways. This book is like a savory meal that is extremely good for you. Or any activity that is rewarding in all the right ways. Hardin’s ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ comes...
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“I learn a great deal by merely observing you, and letting you talk as long as...”
– T.S. Eliot (via jerzee55)
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The Kindly Ones - Jonathan Littell
The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell My rating: 4 of 5 stars
**spoiler alert**
Madness. Despicably disgustingly amazingly crafted madness. The ability of authors to write out these scenarios, diving into and drowning in the minds of the most horrific human beings imaginable, without completely losing their minds astounds me sometimes. Maximilian Aue is just a byproduct of this whole history,...
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If Not Now, When? - Primo Levi
If Not Now, When? by Primo Levi My rating: 4 of 5 stars This was in many ways a breath of fresh air in Holocaust literature; reflective of the horrors yet focusing more on WWII itself and all the other things that were happening to the Jews outside of the camps. It was nice learning about the partisans and the underground survivors, and how Italy drew all the Jews from everywhere in...
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