more focus, miss mori
I'm a cinematic addict but I like books, too.
Fight Club: A Novel
Fight Club delivers like a punch; fast, powerful, smartly-aimed. The aftermath of Fight Club is the same; it leaves you disoriented but, at the same time, amped up and thrilled. The first rule of Fight Club is that you must read it.
The History of Charles XII; King of Sweden
I love, love, love, love, love Voltaire in my heart of hearts, but! I'm not a Swedish history major, so...
The Importance of Being Earnest: BBC Radio 3 Full-cast Production. Starring Geraldine McEwan & Simon Russell Beale (BBC Radio Collection)
Well, that was fun! I need to listen to more audiobooks in the future.No, it did not escape my notice that this book and Oscar Wilde are both genius, but we all knew that already, right?
Man, this writer's a genius!
The Blight of Muirwood (Legends of Muirwood: Book 2)
Jeff Wheeler himself writes that the second parts of trilogies (Empire Strikes Back and others) are often his favorites; I feel the same about Legends of Muirwood.Wheeler does a great job of mixing characters together and getting something beautiful out of them. In fact, the love story does as few love stories do - it actually works with the story and even enhances the plot.
However, as the novel progressed, I found that the dialogue became more stilted and the characters' voices became less distinct from one another. I was able to overlook those two problems because of the way Wheeler tells his story through words other than in character dialogue.
Whereas The Wretched of Muirwood was more of an adventure fantasy and had elements in it from children's fantasy novels (I'm thinking Land of Elyon), Blight had a darker, more Game of Thrones-y feel to it. Wretched was the great world-building and then Blight went into the even-better nuances of the world that was built.
Although I sometimes get annoyed by heavy-handed religious symbolism (i.e. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), the Medium (which is basically The Force) and the history of the mastons Wheeler describes were surprisingly easy for me to enjoy.
Overall, though Wretched could have been a great book on its own, Blight took a great book and explored and introduced big picture consequences wisely and beautifully.
The Wretched of Muirwood (Muirwood, #1)
Wow! That was a surprisingly great book. This reminds me of fantasy trilogies I read when I was younger (namely, Land of Elyon and Redwall) with a dash of Lord of the Rings. The writing is clever and yet serious at the same time, without being overbearing or self-absorbed... with one caveat. The characters all talk as if they despise contractions and slang and love monologuing for one another. Other than that, the story makes up for the slight pompousness that is dialogue.Also, it's a quick read if you're a nocturnal bookworm like I am.
Anna Karenina
By "three stars," I don't mean that this book had three star writing. Some parts of it were enthralling and, given the status of this novel as the greatest love story ever, gems of literature, like Anna's suicide, but I found myself skimming through every part involving Sergei Ivanovitch or state politics, because, gosh, does Tolstoy love to repeat himself! After Anna's death, I was just done with this book. So "three stars" is more of "average of one star and five stars."
The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and its Dangerous Legacy
This book is dear to my research-driven question mark of a heart.It's also extremely useful for anyone who wants (or needs) to learn about American history 1970s and onwards.
Gone Girl
Please excuse my ignorance about the adult world when I ask, "Was this supposed to be a twisted anecdote about compromise being the single most important part of marriage?" Plot-wise, this book was an extremely quick, engaging (as in, addictive in the most despicable definition of the word) read with perfectly-timed and well-placed plot twists almost literally every chapter. Characters were spoiled rotten and obnoxiously self-righteous and irredeemably cruel and yet... so fascinating. Thematically, though... I'll say I'm going to have to re-read this. Maybe thirty years from now.
This book is basically a better-written, more insightful, better-paced, more fascinating, less name-dropping, very mature, more sophisticated Pretty Little Liars. I know there really isn't a comparison between the quality of the writing in Flynn vs. Shepard, but both writers make me take the same guilt trip after reading about similarly awful people and still being intrigued by them.
I also feel guilty about comparing Gone Girl to PLL in the same way that I feel guilty about roped in by their characters: I know it's a bad thing, but I do it anyway. And that's essentially what makes this book so frustrating and yet so amazing.
Watchmen
Watchmen is a gripping, extremely complex graphic novel. The term "comic book" does this no justice, not with the precise layering of the Black Freighter pirate story, Veidt business ventures, Gloria/Malcolm marital arguments, Hollis Mason autobiography, Jon Osterman backstory piece, and other threads expertly woven into Moore's tapestry. Every metaphor for human significance (i.e. Dr. Manhattan and Laurie Juspeczyk on Mars) rang beautifully modernist, only to be destroyed by a terrifying, cruel -- and yet, even if by bizarre and psychotic means, justifiable -- conclusion. And with the Karnak revelation in Ozymandias's Antarctic stronghold, Watchmen sealed its spot on my favorites list.
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
Plot? What plot?But actually, these stories were poetic/depressing/dark/scary/quintessentially Sherman Alexie.
They're also kind of the definition of post-modernism..! I'm so glad I learn stuff in English class.
Pirandello's Henry IV
Pirandello has a way of writing that feels as if the reader is intruding on his own personal turmoil (which, given the institutionalization of his wife and the extreme depression he suffered after his huge economic losses in the mining business, are numerous) -- sometimes the words ring so genuinely personal and true that Pirandello is Henry IV. Monologuing in the words of a half-crazy, half-lucid, and all tumultuously violent man stuck in the dichotomous realities of his mind and companions, Henry IV asks the essential questions for both existentialism and for anyone who has questioned the mind of the companions, leading up to one of the most intense tragic conclusions I've ever read.
Death of a Salesman
...and this, Arthur Miller, killer of American dreams and familial hopes and childhood aspirations, is why I will never get into marketing.
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
To say this book is a modern-day, Sinclair-esque muckraking piece would be an understatement: the feedback from this book created waves, if not tsunamis, in activism communities for food safety, health, epidemiology, environmentalism, animal rights, workers' rights, union solidarity... the list goes on and on. With the invigorated response from these communities also came a lot of backlash: the top agricultural and fast food corporations criticized the author widely and quite aggressively. A lot of people became interested in contemporary fast food industry muckraking as the American public became increasingly concerned with the changes in society created by the fast food industry, as did I, when I saw Robert Kenner's Food, Inc. (which is a great movie, by the way).
However, I stumbled upon this book quite by accident: I have Amazon Prime and I hadn't borrowed a Lending Library book for a while, and this was one of the eligible books.
I was afraid this would be one of the books that would continually rant about the obesity epidemic which, though it's a huge issue, doesn't interest me enough to warrant reading two hundred-odd pages on it. Luckily for me, though, it wasn't.
This book expanded into many other topics: obesity, food safety, public response to the fast food industry, the roots of the fast food industry, the international impact thereof, and many others that span all sorts of fields. And that was the problem for some readers: this book tried to criticize too much and didn't offer much of a balanced view on the very many issues.
For me, though, Schlosser laid out the issues clearly. Maybe it's a matter of agreeing with him or not -- but it wasn't as if Schlosser tried to hide the stance his piece takes on the fast food industry: it's right there in the title. And it was obvious he did his research.
I was thinking about the oft-rhetorical, written-like-a-Time-magazine-article tone Schlosser takes and, though I personally enjoyed it, whether that detracted from the factual nature of the topics he broached. Schlosser addresses this in the parting words in an updated afterword:
"After finishing [this] book, some readers never visit a fast food restaurant again. Others still enjoy their Big Macs. Either way, the decisions are a conscious choice, not just an instinctive response to mass marketing."
Ultimately, that's the purpose of this book: not to make people change their minds about lifestyle choices or boycott every McDonald's on every Main Street in every town in every country, not to lash back with ad hominem criticism towards people who agree or disagree with his views, but to present his research in an accessible (because what pseudo-journalism writing style isn't accessible?) and smooth manner to as wide of an audience as possible. For me, Schlosser does that and puts his book in the four-stars.
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Honestly, most parts of this book are either wildly over-analyzed or completely underrated. Some of the issues (such as Richard Wright's insistence that there is no relevant racial commentary) are blown way out of proportion, others (such as the character studies of Janie fleshed out thanks to Pheoby Watson and Sam/Lige earlier on) are, as far as I've seen, quietly slipped in and ignored (at least, they were ignored by a high school English class, which, to be fair, is probably not up to the highest standards). Despite the nonsense that was Tea Cake beating up Janie in chapters 16 and 17, Zora Neale Hurston's writing style is captivating and I will never look at trees the same way again (plus, anyone else love the flood scene?), and I guess this book grew on me enough to garner four stars.
I will re-read it, eventually. This one's probably going to be an opinion change.
