Title: Ivanhoe
Author: Sir Walter Scott
About the Book: Historical, adventuring, classic, Robin Hood, knights!
My rating: 9/10.
To clear matters up: this book is doubly historical. One: it's written in 1819, which is long enough ago to be part of history rather than part of the now. Two: it takes place in the 12th century.
A lot of people back in the day seemed to really love Scott and considered him some sort of god of writing, at least from what I gather. He's been credited with making people think of the Medieval Age in that warm, fuzzy feeling sort of way which we have now. He pretty much invented historical novels as we know them. That's something, y'know? I'm not one to say "critics consider this cool, therefore I must praise it", but I factor their opinion in.
So Ivanhoe. It's got knights running all over the scenery, doing what knights do best. Namely, fighting. And there's politics involved, doing what politics does best: complicate matters in cool ways. And there's a few ladies who do more than just sit pretty, which is always a plus in my book when it comes to Medieval Age damsels.
There's a lot of interesting characters there. The protagonist, Ivanhoe, is a nice, righteous sort of man, the exact type which you think of when you think of a knight. It's the classic sort of protagonist, but it works, since you can actually feel him, his struggles and his quest. His love interest, Lady Rowena, is a noble lady of Saxon origin (12th century, remember? It was right after the Norman conquest, when people weren't the English we know today) who is to be married for political interests to a guy who's about as thrilled about the entire thing as she is. In my book, that adds to the realism of the book: there's no clear sides here, rather many people acting according to their own varied beliefs. Rowena doesn't love the guy, the guy doesn't want to become a Saxon figurehead and Rowena's adoptive sort-of dad (Cedric, Ivanhoe's real dad) is what would be a nationalist, if nationalism existed back then.
Robin Hood also makes an appearance. While I wasn't particularly thrilled by him - I feel his character isn't quite as well-developed as it could've been - I loved Friar Tuck. His double role as clergyman and Robin's helper translates as almost a show of double personality. (wiki now tells me that later Robin Hoods borrowed much from Ivanhoe. I suppose the more complex adaptations that didn't exist at the time cast him in shadow now)
On the high politics level, King Richard and Prince John are nicely antithetical to each other: Richard is indeed courageous and worthy of his "Lion-Hearted" nickname, but also careless about his kingly duties; while Prince John is weak and power-hungry. Indeed, what they have in common seems to be a single trait: they can't rule England worth a damn.
Minor characters are also delightful, whether we're talking about the fool Wamba, whose foolishness remains to be debated, or the Jewish Issac who fits every stereotype of Jews ever, only to have that image of his ethnic group thoroughly deconstructed by his daughter, Rebecca, who is as great a lady as Rowena in her own right - and a very strong character.
The plot is nicely twisting and turning, the question being mostly not about the destination, which might be guessed from the premises, but about the road taken in getting there. The characters live and breathe and interact with each other wonderfully.
9/10 because the style isn't what today's readers are accustomed with, so it might not be easy to understand what Scott's saying at times.
Find it here for free.
Wednesday, 9 November 2011
Monday, 7 November 2011
"The Lake" - Banana Yoshimoto
Title: The Lake
Author: Banana Yoshimoto
About the Book: Japan, Art, Strangeness, Delicacy, Mysterious Past
My rating: 8.5/10.
As with many other books, your mileage may vary on this one. Even more so if you start reading in the wrong key. It starts out with a somewhat romance-like setting, which can be quite deceptive.
I went into it not expecting anything, so I had the chance to be quite pleasantly surprised. The writing style is light and delicate and strange. It feels airy and relaxed. I like listening to Chihiro's thoughts - still a bit of a child at heart, essentially uncertain of herself, but wonderfully accepting of other people and very relaxed.
Nakajima, the man who she enters into a strange relationship with, is strange. I can't properly feel him throughout the book, which may be what the author was trying to do. He is closed off and just *there* as somebody who needs acceptance and not much else. He reminds me of a cactus, somehow. Low-maintenance, arid looks.
As secondary characters, Mino and Chii, siblings taken right out of the supernatural realm, are delightful. They have an air of magical realism about them - there's always the question whether they're for real or not, but they fit right in "The Lake"'s world without much fuss.
The ending, where the mystery that is hinted at from the very beginning, is unraveled, feels to me somewhat blunt and sketchy. It is dark, contrasting with the wonderful lightness of the rest of the book - this wouldn't be a problem. However, it's explained in Nakajima's words and his voice doesn't charm me as much as Chihiro's, feeling somewhat too dry and artificial. I like it, but I also don't. The story is interesting, but the style detracts from it.
Anyway, it's a book I'd definitely recommend. Now I want to find "Kitchen", the Banana Yoshimoto book I was looking for when I found this.
You can get it here.
Author: Banana Yoshimoto
About the Book: Japan, Art, Strangeness, Delicacy, Mysterious Past
My rating: 8.5/10.
As with many other books, your mileage may vary on this one. Even more so if you start reading in the wrong key. It starts out with a somewhat romance-like setting, which can be quite deceptive.
I went into it not expecting anything, so I had the chance to be quite pleasantly surprised. The writing style is light and delicate and strange. It feels airy and relaxed. I like listening to Chihiro's thoughts - still a bit of a child at heart, essentially uncertain of herself, but wonderfully accepting of other people and very relaxed.
Nakajima, the man who she enters into a strange relationship with, is strange. I can't properly feel him throughout the book, which may be what the author was trying to do. He is closed off and just *there* as somebody who needs acceptance and not much else. He reminds me of a cactus, somehow. Low-maintenance, arid looks.
As secondary characters, Mino and Chii, siblings taken right out of the supernatural realm, are delightful. They have an air of magical realism about them - there's always the question whether they're for real or not, but they fit right in "The Lake"'s world without much fuss.
The ending, where the mystery that is hinted at from the very beginning, is unraveled, feels to me somewhat blunt and sketchy. It is dark, contrasting with the wonderful lightness of the rest of the book - this wouldn't be a problem. However, it's explained in Nakajima's words and his voice doesn't charm me as much as Chihiro's, feeling somewhat too dry and artificial. I like it, but I also don't. The story is interesting, but the style detracts from it.
Anyway, it's a book I'd definitely recommend. Now I want to find "Kitchen", the Banana Yoshimoto book I was looking for when I found this.
You can get it here.
"Confessions of a Mask" - Yukio Mishima
Title: Confessions of a Mask
Author: Yukio Mishima
About the Book: Japan, Angst, Homosexuality, Perversions
My rating: 10/10.
I haven't read a Japanese book in awhile, but I picked this one up. I'm strangely glad I did. Mishima is a very strong author, uncompromising, thoughtful but without falling into the trap of over-thinking what he writes.
Kochan, the protagonist and narrator, is a strange, intellectual creature. He studies himself, turns himself on all sides, then shows the results to his audience, not asking for any reaction at all. He doesn't complain about his problems, nor is he proud about them. He seems to be alone, talking to himself from somewhere just outside of a society that he acts for in order to exist. Having the double misfortune of being both a homosexual and perverted - associating sex with violence and death - there's no chance of confessing to anyone but the silent reader.
This inner monologue, which is knife-sharp with honesty, explains how he came to be. As a child, he had strange reactions when seeing torn princes in fairy tales, Saint Sebastian pierced by arrows and other violent art. Then he switches his subject matter and remembers the women in his life - just two of them. The second of which he tried very much to be straight with, hoping that he would become so with the first kiss - and failing.
A very lonely book, very honest, suffering quietly and doing nothing to ask for help. It left me at the end with a feeling of emptiness, loneliness, of quiet resignation.
I loved it, even if I didn't expect to.
Odd.
You can find it here.
Author: Yukio Mishima
About the Book: Japan, Angst, Homosexuality, Perversions
My rating: 10/10.
I haven't read a Japanese book in awhile, but I picked this one up. I'm strangely glad I did. Mishima is a very strong author, uncompromising, thoughtful but without falling into the trap of over-thinking what he writes.
Kochan, the protagonist and narrator, is a strange, intellectual creature. He studies himself, turns himself on all sides, then shows the results to his audience, not asking for any reaction at all. He doesn't complain about his problems, nor is he proud about them. He seems to be alone, talking to himself from somewhere just outside of a society that he acts for in order to exist. Having the double misfortune of being both a homosexual and perverted - associating sex with violence and death - there's no chance of confessing to anyone but the silent reader.
This inner monologue, which is knife-sharp with honesty, explains how he came to be. As a child, he had strange reactions when seeing torn princes in fairy tales, Saint Sebastian pierced by arrows and other violent art. Then he switches his subject matter and remembers the women in his life - just two of them. The second of which he tried very much to be straight with, hoping that he would become so with the first kiss - and failing.
A very lonely book, very honest, suffering quietly and doing nothing to ask for help. It left me at the end with a feeling of emptiness, loneliness, of quiet resignation.
I loved it, even if I didn't expect to.
Odd.
You can find it here.
"The Beautiful Lie" - Dracoqueen22
Title: The Beautiful Lie
Author: Dracoqueen22
About the Book: Fiction, Fanfiction, Slash, Romance, Psychological (I don't know what else to call it)
Warning: Gay sex?...
My rating: 9,5/10.
Fandom: Bleach
This is a gem of a story and no doubt about it. The first chapter was published on the 24th of April '09 and the last on the 3rd of November '11, spanning controversies and stronger spirits in between, while the author danced most wonderful pirouettes above and beyond her readers' expectations.
It's slow-paced and leisurely as far as the actual actions of the characters are concerned, but inside their psyches many, many, many things happen. And that, among other things, makes it impossibly exciting.
"When Ichigo comes home from classes that afternoon, there is a dead man sitting at his dining room table," says the first sentence. The dead man is Aizen Sousuke, presumed dead after the shinigami war that Ichigo had won for the shinigami. Now he's very much alive and kicking, but powerless. And he wants Ichigo to take his place and try to conquer the world. Meanwhile, Ichigo, scarred and tired after the war, has wrapped himself up in a lie: that of living a normal, ordinary life.
The story follows Ichigo as he finds himself pushed more and more towards just that course of events, Aizen who tags along, and Urahara Kisuke, who become fugitives. It shifts from POV to POV with grace, giving insights of the three's psyches: Ichigo at the middle, Aizen on the one side, hating Urahara, Urahara on the other side, hating Aizen. At times, interludes about other characters are written by a different hand than Draco's: Lady Azar, a very good writer herself, gives insights into others' lives.
This is where the controversy springs: Urahara and Aizen are so entirely opposed to one another that it's hard not to take a side. The greatness of Draco's writing is that she manages to balance their good and bad traits so well that the two parties of story readers are pretty much evenly split.
From one point of view, Aizen is a ruthless tyrant, who caused a war that got many people killed and who tried to instate himself as the king of the world; he is unapologetic, cold, detached, still pursuing his goal even if he projects it on Ichigo. Urahara is a faithful person, who stuck by Ichigo, helped him in trouble, fought on the right side of the war and never had dreams of grandeur. During the war or after, he has been there for Ichigo.
From the other point of view, Aizen is a strong, determined character. On realizing that Soul Society was corrupt and rotten to the core, he challenged it through lies, deceit and betrayal, trying to take it over to make it better. If he does not apologize - and indeed he would do the same again - it is because he truly believes in his cause; if he used lies and deceit, that is because those are among his methods. In this version, Urahara is weak and unable to face the harder truths of reality. He is unable to get over his feud with Aizen (more visibly than Aizen is unable to get over the feud with him), he doesn't say or do the right things at the right time. He was part of the corrupt society that Aizen fought against, an unquestioning part that killed when it was told to and asked no questions, probably not willing to face the answers.
Both are true, both are false, and there's something to be said about the middle.
Draco plays reader expectations like Edvin Marton plays his Stradivarius violin: skilfully, gracefully, with talent and determination and awesomeness.
While I don't want to spoil the ending, I would like to say that I think it's marvelously crafted. I have strong opinions about the solution she proposes and I applaud it when I see it is well done, with delicacy and very satisfying psychological reasoning in getting there.
Another aspect I'd like to mention is that Draco is one of those writers whose erotica is excellent. Not only does it do what erotica is meant to do - titillate (I like that word) - but it also serves a purpose in the text. If Draco has an erotic moment in her writings, you can be assured that it means something. It is an expression of the characters, a communication between them, something that adds to the relationship. You don't feel it's there for the gratification of the reader: it's there because you cannot omit it without losing part of the story. Elegant, with a point, with feeling.
If there is one aspect that made me not give it a perfect mark, it is that towards the end the story seemed to lose some of its texture and become slightly more sketched. However, 'slightly less good' in the case of awesomeness is decidedly still very good.
You can find it here.
Author: Dracoqueen22
About the Book: Fiction, Fanfiction, Slash, Romance, Psychological (I don't know what else to call it)
Warning: Gay sex?...
My rating: 9,5/10.
Fandom: Bleach
This is a gem of a story and no doubt about it. The first chapter was published on the 24th of April '09 and the last on the 3rd of November '11, spanning controversies and stronger spirits in between, while the author danced most wonderful pirouettes above and beyond her readers' expectations.
It's slow-paced and leisurely as far as the actual actions of the characters are concerned, but inside their psyches many, many, many things happen. And that, among other things, makes it impossibly exciting.
"When Ichigo comes home from classes that afternoon, there is a dead man sitting at his dining room table," says the first sentence. The dead man is Aizen Sousuke, presumed dead after the shinigami war that Ichigo had won for the shinigami. Now he's very much alive and kicking, but powerless. And he wants Ichigo to take his place and try to conquer the world. Meanwhile, Ichigo, scarred and tired after the war, has wrapped himself up in a lie: that of living a normal, ordinary life.
The story follows Ichigo as he finds himself pushed more and more towards just that course of events, Aizen who tags along, and Urahara Kisuke, who become fugitives. It shifts from POV to POV with grace, giving insights of the three's psyches: Ichigo at the middle, Aizen on the one side, hating Urahara, Urahara on the other side, hating Aizen. At times, interludes about other characters are written by a different hand than Draco's: Lady Azar, a very good writer herself, gives insights into others' lives.
This is where the controversy springs: Urahara and Aizen are so entirely opposed to one another that it's hard not to take a side. The greatness of Draco's writing is that she manages to balance their good and bad traits so well that the two parties of story readers are pretty much evenly split.
From one point of view, Aizen is a ruthless tyrant, who caused a war that got many people killed and who tried to instate himself as the king of the world; he is unapologetic, cold, detached, still pursuing his goal even if he projects it on Ichigo. Urahara is a faithful person, who stuck by Ichigo, helped him in trouble, fought on the right side of the war and never had dreams of grandeur. During the war or after, he has been there for Ichigo.
From the other point of view, Aizen is a strong, determined character. On realizing that Soul Society was corrupt and rotten to the core, he challenged it through lies, deceit and betrayal, trying to take it over to make it better. If he does not apologize - and indeed he would do the same again - it is because he truly believes in his cause; if he used lies and deceit, that is because those are among his methods. In this version, Urahara is weak and unable to face the harder truths of reality. He is unable to get over his feud with Aizen (more visibly than Aizen is unable to get over the feud with him), he doesn't say or do the right things at the right time. He was part of the corrupt society that Aizen fought against, an unquestioning part that killed when it was told to and asked no questions, probably not willing to face the answers.
Both are true, both are false, and there's something to be said about the middle.
Draco plays reader expectations like Edvin Marton plays his Stradivarius violin: skilfully, gracefully, with talent and determination and awesomeness.
While I don't want to spoil the ending, I would like to say that I think it's marvelously crafted. I have strong opinions about the solution she proposes and I applaud it when I see it is well done, with delicacy and very satisfying psychological reasoning in getting there.
Another aspect I'd like to mention is that Draco is one of those writers whose erotica is excellent. Not only does it do what erotica is meant to do - titillate (I like that word) - but it also serves a purpose in the text. If Draco has an erotic moment in her writings, you can be assured that it means something. It is an expression of the characters, a communication between them, something that adds to the relationship. You don't feel it's there for the gratification of the reader: it's there because you cannot omit it without losing part of the story. Elegant, with a point, with feeling.
If there is one aspect that made me not give it a perfect mark, it is that towards the end the story seemed to lose some of its texture and become slightly more sketched. However, 'slightly less good' in the case of awesomeness is decidedly still very good.
You can find it here.
"813" - Maurice Leblanc
Title: 813
Author: Maurice Leblanc
About the Book: Fiction, Comedy, Adventure, Thievery, Disguise, Mystery!
My rating: 9/10.
Arsene Lupin! Gods, I love this guy. A charming, intelligent, moral thief who has adventures and whatnot. A master of disguise, of trickery, of drama, of jokes - and since we all have weaknesses, one of mine is tricksters. When I saw "813" in a second hand bookshop, I whisked it away in my backpack and ran home with it (after paying for it, of course).
"813" didn't disappoint. I'm afraid I can't discuss the plot, since any discussion whatsoever would lead to spoilers. There's twists and turns at every step and you never know exactly where you land. To give you a flavor of things, Arsene Lupin is accused of murder, which is the one things he never does. So with the police at his back, he rushes forward to find the real criminals and discover the answer behind the mystery of a young man and an important note saying simply '813'.
There's international politics involved and a bit of a French 'take that!' against Sherlock Holmes. For some strange reason, while his name in the original French (and in my translated Romanian) is Herlock Sholmes, in English they translated it as Holmlock Shears. Translators. Go figure.
So it's a thrilling, light-hearted adventure, cheery, fast-paced, engaging. The only reason why I didn't give it a 10/10 is because the style is somewhat sketched and jolted and despite my fangirl enthusiasm about Lupin, it kept nagging at me during my reading. But that's a small fault.
You can find it for free here.
Author: Maurice Leblanc
About the Book: Fiction, Comedy, Adventure, Thievery, Disguise, Mystery!
My rating: 9/10.
Arsene Lupin! Gods, I love this guy. A charming, intelligent, moral thief who has adventures and whatnot. A master of disguise, of trickery, of drama, of jokes - and since we all have weaknesses, one of mine is tricksters. When I saw "813" in a second hand bookshop, I whisked it away in my backpack and ran home with it (after paying for it, of course).
"813" didn't disappoint. I'm afraid I can't discuss the plot, since any discussion whatsoever would lead to spoilers. There's twists and turns at every step and you never know exactly where you land. To give you a flavor of things, Arsene Lupin is accused of murder, which is the one things he never does. So with the police at his back, he rushes forward to find the real criminals and discover the answer behind the mystery of a young man and an important note saying simply '813'.
There's international politics involved and a bit of a French 'take that!' against Sherlock Holmes. For some strange reason, while his name in the original French (and in my translated Romanian) is Herlock Sholmes, in English they translated it as Holmlock Shears. Translators. Go figure.
So it's a thrilling, light-hearted adventure, cheery, fast-paced, engaging. The only reason why I didn't give it a 10/10 is because the style is somewhat sketched and jolted and despite my fangirl enthusiasm about Lupin, it kept nagging at me during my reading. But that's a small fault.
You can find it for free here.
"White Teeth" - Zadie Smith
Title: White Teeth
Author: Zadie Smith
About the Book: Fiction, Comedy, Immigrants
My rating: 7/10.
I would enthuse wildly, but there's nothing to enthuse about. I would bash, but there's not much to bash. I'm pretty much 'meh' about this book. I expected more.
The first time I saw White Teeth it was in a huge ad on the side of my favorite bookstore. I looked at it, read whatever was written underneath and decided it was probably a serious book about racial issues, so I wasn't really interested. Incidentally, I was wrong about the first part. The book's a comedy through and through. But it's still about racial issues.
So eventually, when it was one of the options on my reading list for a Master's class and one of my colleagues recommended it with approximately the same enthusiasm I save for my own very dearest books, I decided I'd give it a try. The many favorable blurbs and awards were also in its favor.
First impression: the cover was impossibly colorful. Second impression: the way the book starts is light, humorous. Perhaps a bit too much, just like the colors of the cover. I like my books to have realism, to delve into the psychology of characters, to sparkle. I want to feel that things are real even when they're entirely unrealistic - which is what the first pages of the book entirely failed to do. Still, a deliberate lack of realism is a style in itself, so I tried to get over my disappointment.
The plot starts with Archie Jones, a 47 year-old man who intends to commit suicide by gassing himself. However, he is interrupted because he parked in such a way as to impede the delivery to a butcher's. Quote from the book: "'No one gasses himself on my property,' Mo snapped as he marched downstairs. 'We are not licensed.'" Archie realizes that he actually wants to leave, ends up at a New Year's party, where he meets the 19 year-old Clara, a beautiful black Jamaican whose teeth were knocked out in a motorcycle accident, and they marry in no time because she comes from a Jehova's Witnesses family and her upbringing gets her to somehow decide that she wants this man and she needs to marry him.
Mostly, the first part of the book feels like a rushed comedy. Imitated accents, characters sketched rather than portrayed, all sorts of unrealistic happenings, weird tics, but a humor that saves the day, I suppose. I can understand the appeal the book had to the critics: post-modernism, today's cultural movement, is intensely political. It just loves its minorities, colonials, race differences, culture clash and whatnot, sometimes to the point where the art trails behind the ideology. And if it's something this book has, it's minorities (religious, cultural, racial). There's Jamaicans and Jews, English and Bangladeshi, black, white, Islam, Jehova's Witnesses, scientists and just people off the street... It seems to have everything. For the first hundred pages, my question was just "Why?" The plot was contrived, the characters flat, everything essentially seemed to be there just to make the cultural clash humor go on.
Later, however, Smith starts to get into it. Her characters gain some weight, some greater motivation, some personality. Not a lot, mind you. Just enough so they can function as people and you can understand their motivation and their decisions. You can feel life seeping into these people, mostly when the second generation - Archie's daughter and his best friend's twin sons - come into play. The characters start bouncing off on each other in all sorts of ways, children get 'adopted' by other parents, while those parents tend to ignore their own offspring, there's a generation clash, much sexuality that is hard to handle (not that we ever get to actually feel it, but just observe its effects on the characters) and a ton of problems that spring everywhere, which are handled not in the best of ways.
Overall, however, the book doesn't do it for me. The characters are mostly observed from the outside, like in family photos, not really seen from the inside. The plot seems to exist on and off, to have no real point in existing. Even though in the last pages somebody gets shot, there's no real climax, no ending.
...meh. I'm too disappointed and neutral about it to come up with anything more interesting to say...
You can get it here.
Author: Zadie Smith
About the Book: Fiction, Comedy, Immigrants
My rating: 7/10.
I would enthuse wildly, but there's nothing to enthuse about. I would bash, but there's not much to bash. I'm pretty much 'meh' about this book. I expected more.
The first time I saw White Teeth it was in a huge ad on the side of my favorite bookstore. I looked at it, read whatever was written underneath and decided it was probably a serious book about racial issues, so I wasn't really interested. Incidentally, I was wrong about the first part. The book's a comedy through and through. But it's still about racial issues.
So eventually, when it was one of the options on my reading list for a Master's class and one of my colleagues recommended it with approximately the same enthusiasm I save for my own very dearest books, I decided I'd give it a try. The many favorable blurbs and awards were also in its favor.
First impression: the cover was impossibly colorful. Second impression: the way the book starts is light, humorous. Perhaps a bit too much, just like the colors of the cover. I like my books to have realism, to delve into the psychology of characters, to sparkle. I want to feel that things are real even when they're entirely unrealistic - which is what the first pages of the book entirely failed to do. Still, a deliberate lack of realism is a style in itself, so I tried to get over my disappointment.
The plot starts with Archie Jones, a 47 year-old man who intends to commit suicide by gassing himself. However, he is interrupted because he parked in such a way as to impede the delivery to a butcher's. Quote from the book: "'No one gasses himself on my property,' Mo snapped as he marched downstairs. 'We are not licensed.'" Archie realizes that he actually wants to leave, ends up at a New Year's party, where he meets the 19 year-old Clara, a beautiful black Jamaican whose teeth were knocked out in a motorcycle accident, and they marry in no time because she comes from a Jehova's Witnesses family and her upbringing gets her to somehow decide that she wants this man and she needs to marry him.
Mostly, the first part of the book feels like a rushed comedy. Imitated accents, characters sketched rather than portrayed, all sorts of unrealistic happenings, weird tics, but a humor that saves the day, I suppose. I can understand the appeal the book had to the critics: post-modernism, today's cultural movement, is intensely political. It just loves its minorities, colonials, race differences, culture clash and whatnot, sometimes to the point where the art trails behind the ideology. And if it's something this book has, it's minorities (religious, cultural, racial). There's Jamaicans and Jews, English and Bangladeshi, black, white, Islam, Jehova's Witnesses, scientists and just people off the street... It seems to have everything. For the first hundred pages, my question was just "Why?" The plot was contrived, the characters flat, everything essentially seemed to be there just to make the cultural clash humor go on.
Later, however, Smith starts to get into it. Her characters gain some weight, some greater motivation, some personality. Not a lot, mind you. Just enough so they can function as people and you can understand their motivation and their decisions. You can feel life seeping into these people, mostly when the second generation - Archie's daughter and his best friend's twin sons - come into play. The characters start bouncing off on each other in all sorts of ways, children get 'adopted' by other parents, while those parents tend to ignore their own offspring, there's a generation clash, much sexuality that is hard to handle (not that we ever get to actually feel it, but just observe its effects on the characters) and a ton of problems that spring everywhere, which are handled not in the best of ways.
Overall, however, the book doesn't do it for me. The characters are mostly observed from the outside, like in family photos, not really seen from the inside. The plot seems to exist on and off, to have no real point in existing. Even though in the last pages somebody gets shot, there's no real climax, no ending.
...meh. I'm too disappointed and neutral about it to come up with anything more interesting to say...
You can get it here.
Sunday, 6 November 2011
About
I've long been looking for a place where I could just throw in anything and everything concerning what I read and what I think about what I read.
I was initially going to call this 'Random Book Blog', but it occurred to me that not everything I want to talk about is a book - sometimes I run into short stories that are worth my attention, at other times into articles and essays.
Hence the 'lit' in there, used in its widest sense: anything written.
What to expect: fantasy novels, mainstream novels, classics, fanfiction, non-fiction of the academic-written kind (humanities), short stories from around the internet, other novels in general and then maybe other things that sound interesting at the time.
What to not expect, unless the unexpected happens: horror, detective stories, cheesy romances (although I occasionally read these for a laugh), self-help books, stuff on how to become a better person.
I'll try to tag everything accordingly for easy finding.
I take recommendations, but my to-be-read list is a mile long, so I might not get around to reading everything people recommend.
Sarshi is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com
I was initially going to call this 'Random Book Blog', but it occurred to me that not everything I want to talk about is a book - sometimes I run into short stories that are worth my attention, at other times into articles and essays.
Hence the 'lit' in there, used in its widest sense: anything written.
What to expect: fantasy novels, mainstream novels, classics, fanfiction, non-fiction of the academic-written kind (humanities), short stories from around the internet, other novels in general and then maybe other things that sound interesting at the time.
What to not expect, unless the unexpected happens: horror, detective stories, cheesy romances (although I occasionally read these for a laugh), self-help books, stuff on how to become a better person.
I'll try to tag everything accordingly for easy finding.
I take recommendations, but my to-be-read list is a mile long, so I might not get around to reading everything people recommend.
Sarshi is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com
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