I love Dickens' writing! The story of Martin and the incorrigible Chuzzlewits is full of humour and wit. It even includes a hilarious and sarcastic epI love Dickens' writing! The story of Martin and the incorrigible Chuzzlewits is full of humour and wit. It even includes a hilarious and sarcastic episode in the United States (modelled on Dicken's own impressions of his 1841 voyage there) which I particularly adored. It is a book about selfishness where David Copperfield was more about integrity and Oliver Twist was about depravity and greed. Each of the characters has a distinct and interesting personality and the plot moves along at a relatively quick clip. The audiobook was excellent!...more
[image] I read this a few years back and it was definitely my favorite DeLillo, easily better than Mao II, Libra, or White Noise (all of his other book[image] I read this a few years back and it was definitely my favorite DeLillo, easily better than Mao II, Libra, or White Noise (all of his other books being far inferior IMO than these four). It is a serious book for baseball fans about a treasure hunt for an infamous baseball hit during a raucous match between the Giants and the Dodgers in NYC back in 1951. It is a voyage back in time to a much different Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens. A myriad of interesting characters and a relatively breathtaking plot. One I need to read again....more
One of the great classics that everyone should attempt reading once. For Walking Dead fans, had there been no Dante, there could never have been a KirOne of the great classics that everyone should attempt reading once. For Walking Dead fans, had there been no Dante, there could never have been a Kirkman. There is incredible violence and suffering (it is Hell after all), but the relationship between Virgil and Dante is a beautiful one that evolves as their descend lower and lower. I read both the John Ciardi translation in verse (rhyming for the first and third lines in each stanza trying to keep to Dante's 11-syllable structure) and John M Sinclair's prose translation (which also includes the original on the left pages). Both are highly commendable and have great notes and footnotes.
"Midway in our life's journey, I went astray from the straight road, and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood."
Here Dante shows that the book is autobiographical ("I went astray") and at the same time universal ("our life's journey"). It also moves between dreaming and reality ("I went astray...and work") which characterizes his depictions of hell, purgatory, and paradise that follow. The forboding of the "dark wood" is a perfect introduction to the description of hell that awaits us. Even the fact that he strayed from the "straight road" seems to presage the curvy, circular path he will take through hell's many circles. This is one of my favorite openings and chills me a bit whenever I reread it.
If I were to see this book at a painting, the first one that comes to mind is Guernica by Picasso where the suffering is so painfully evident - albeit in black and white perhaps echoing the black text on the white page. The implicit condemnation of the perpetrators and the overall feeling of suffering in Inferno as in Guernica is overwhelming. I suppose I could also choose from one of Otto Dix's paintings or Bosch's but the very first that I thought of was Picasso.
It is also well-worth looking at Botticelli’s drawings of Inferno that he did for a book. All of Renaissance Italy was in awe of Dante and as they prepared a new edition of his book, Sandro was asked to illustrate it....more
It is hard to overstate how absolutely wonderful and powerful a writer of short stories that Hemingway was. This collection contains so many wonderfulIt is hard to overstate how absolutely wonderful and powerful a writer of short stories that Hemingway was. This collection contains so many wonderful sketches full of spit, vinegar, blood, and whiskey stains. Through them we experience attempted murder on a train, the Spanish Civil War in Madrid, the First and Second World Wars in Italy and France respectively, fishing, hunting, fucking, and drinking. The prose is always terse but incredibly saturated in description and meaning. Who else could describe sex thus:
“In the dark he went into the strange country and it was very strange indeed, hard to enter, suddenly perilously difficult, then blindingly, happily, safely, encompassed; free of all doubts, all perils and all dreads, held unholdingly, to hold, to hold increasingly, unholdingly still to hold, taking away all things before, and all to come, bringing the beginning of bright happiness in darkness, closer, closer, closer now closer and ever closer, to go on past all belief, longer, finer, further, finer higher and higher to drive towards happiness suddenly, scaldingly achieved.” (p. 615)
I am reading Meyers' masterful biography Hemingway: A Biography and it is fascinating to see how each of these stories encapsulates a piece of Hemingway's personal experience. His life was particularly exciting and turbulent: WWI ambulance driver (where he met John Dos Passos), Parisian journalist, Parisian bohemian writer, Spanish Civil War participant, bull-fighting aficionado, big game hunter, sport fisherman, and inveterate ladies' man, these stories all pull from his catalog of sensations and memories. It is important to note going in that in his writing technique, Hemingway felt that it was equally important to leave out some information so that the reader has to fill in the blanks. He thought of stories as icebergs with 90% of the content left unsaid. This leaves a considerable amount of ambiguity to many of the stories because no moral conclusion is drawn; his goal is to dive as deep into the experience itself so that the reader feels personally involved in the story.
If you have never read Hemingway, it is possible to start here before heading on San Fermin to Basque Country where The Sun Also Rises. But if you have read his novels, please don’t miss the opportunity to revel on his stupendous writing. He might be the US’ all-time greatest writer of short stories. They are nothing less than marvelous.
An absolute masterpiece follow-on to the first volume, Hitler: Downfall is an unflinching account of WWII in all its gore, brutality, and horror. It iAn absolute masterpiece follow-on to the first volume, Hitler: Downfall is an unflinching account of WWII in all its gore, brutality, and horror. It is also the biography of the 20th century’s most notorious dictator. Without fanning the flames of the current political shift towards the far right, I will just say that the last chapter about Hitler’s legacy should be required reading in high schools across America and Western Europe. Adopting a fact-based assessment of the why behind the abject darkness of the Holocaust and Operation Barbarossa might make people question some of the more ignorant and opportunist revisionist garbage that populists in 2020/2021 continue to spin. If we try to ignore or rewrite the past, we will be forever inevitably bound to repeat its errors....more
This is an exceptional followup to Giant Steps, Mathieson's first book and is an absolutely excellent history of the Hard Bop period. I loved learningThis is an exceptional followup to Giant Steps, Mathieson's first book and is an absolutely excellent history of the Hard Bop period. I loved learning about many musicians that I love and being introduced to lesser-known ones. My only regret is that Kenny tired out before writing his promised third volume, One Step Beyond....more
I probably watched this show about a million times and read the book as a kid at least as many and it was immensely pleasurable to share it with my kiI probably watched this show about a million times and read the book as a kid at least as many and it was immensely pleasurable to share it with my kids. A wonderful story about the real spirit of giving and love. It might be my very favorite xmas story of all. An absolute must....more
[UPDATED] I reread Dune for the first time in several decades and immensely enjoyed it. I also went back to watch the original cult feature film by Dav[UPDATED] I reread Dune for the first time in several decades and immensely enjoyed it. I also went back to watch the original cult feature film by David Lynch and had quite mixed feelings - while it was close to the overall aesthetic that Frank Herbert describes with the gorgeous desert sets and the terrifying worms, the parts of the story that were necessarily culled out was disturbing (that and the woeful special effects at the time trying (and IMHO failing) to visualize the personal shields that the characters wear in hand-to-hand combat).
For those who are just discovering Dune for the first time, it is essentially a messianic story on a desert planet (think of Jesus or perhaps Mohammed on Tatooine) in a universe dominated by a cartel (the Guild also known as CHOAM) with a monopoly on a drug (called mélange) derived from a rare material (spice) available only on the desert planet Arrakis (Dune). This drug is so powerful that it allows the Guild (and later Maud'dib) to leverage space-time singularities to defy the speed of light and travel anywhere in the universe. Overlaid on this foundation, the epic battle of the feudal houses of the noble Atreides and the evil Harkkonen houses rages, the betrayal of the former by the latter explicitly endorsed by the Emperor (himself an almost impuissant pawn of the Guild as well). All that to say that the fabric of the story is multilayered and as complex and complete a universe as you will find in George RR Martin or Dan Simmons.
There are several enhanced human species running around: the Mentats who have been cerebrally enhanced to be able to calculate like supercomputers (computers themselves having been banned!) and each then uses their predictive analytics for their assigned Dukes (or the Emperor) and the Bene Gesserit cult who are a sort of quasi-religious non-celibate nuns who have honed perception and language to the point of having developed nearly superpower-level strengths of persuasion which are almost universally feared and vilified as sorcery in the rest of the universe. Paul Atreides, heir to the throne, is born to Jessica, a Bene Gesserit, possessed some of these powers and when the family moves to Arrakis (part of the aforementioned Harkkonen plot) from their home planet Caladon, he appears to the native Freeman population as perhaps a fulfillment of their messianic prophecies and hopes.
In perhaps the most critical departure from the book, the Lynch movie does not really show Paul questioning the awesome power that he possesses and his assumption of the mantle as the Arrakis Messiah, the Maud'dib (something that the 2021 film by Denis Villeneuve does thankfully address). In the book, one aspect that I loved was how Paul struggled with this messianic destiny and did everything he could to subvert it. One of the unique gifts he received, presumably as the rare and unique offspring of a Bene Gesserit, was the ability to see possible outcomes (like a Mentat) and thus he could take decisions based on the most likely foreseen outcome. It made for great reading.
The other great thing about Dune is the aesthetic of this desert planet with impossibly huge worms under the surface who are mysteriously connected to spice and pose a danger to all creatures in the desert except for the Freeman. The still suit which recycles body water in the deep desert was brilliant as was the ever-present obsession with "water debt" of the Freemen. I really felt like I was walking unevenly (must not attract the worms!) through the sand with Jessica and Paul before their fateful encounter with the Freemen.
Dune is a well-deserved classic for all the reasons I mentioned above and probably much more that I missed. I have read it twice and gotten almost entirely different things out of it each time. I have since read all the canonical Frank Herbert books in the series and enjoyed it all immensely.
[UPDATE] I am looking forward to Denis Villeneuve's Dune in October 2021. The previews I have seen so far seem to be quite coherent with respect to the book. I was a fan of Lynch's Dune and am curious to see what Villeneuve does with this one. Feel free to comment below. [UPDATE] Villeneuve’s 2021 film covers half of the book and does a fantastic job as both an homage to Herbert’s book and Lynch’s film. The casting, costumes, CGI, and script are all top-notch. Dune lovers have every reason here for rejoicing. One key difference from the Lynch film is that we do not see the Guild Navigators, so we can hope that they show up in the second half! [UPDATE 2024] I loved the 2nd DV adaptation especially the use of color and black and white as well as character arcs. There were a few deviations from the original, but nothing as idiosyncratic as Lynch’s rain on Arakis In 1984. I can’t wait to see what he does with Dune Messiah.
I loved this short novel from the ever incredible Elena Ferrante. The twisted story of the protagonist who steals a doll on a beach is both captivatinI loved this short novel from the ever incredible Elena Ferrante. The twisted story of the protagonist who steals a doll on a beach is both captivating and heartbreaking. In typical Ferrante fashion, the narration wanders between the primary narrative of the protagonist's seaside vacation and her memories of her now-moved away daughters. It is a poignant portrait of motherhood and dealing with getting old. A must-read for fans of the Naples tetralogy - for me perhaps her strongest standalone novella....more
[UPDATED - SEE BELOW] I can't believe it's over! I mean really, after finishing Ferrante's riveting tetralogy, I feel a sense of loss. The fourth volum[UPDATED - SEE BELOW] I can't believe it's over! I mean really, after finishing Ferrante's riveting tetralogy, I feel a sense of loss. The fourth volume was fast-paced and full of reveals (no spoilers!). It was hard to read at several points, but always entertaining and thought provoking. If you have not read it yet, please do so this year. Definitely a journey to Naples that you do not want to miss.
One thing that struck me with this series is the similarities and differences with another classic story which crosses four decades in as many books: the Rabbit Tetralogy by John Updike. I have reviewed all four Rabbit books here in GR, but if you are not familiar with them, Updike follows Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom from the 50s to the 80s with one book per decade. The Ferrante series is similar even if the boundaries are not drawn as clearly between books as in Updike and covers roughly the same period as the Neapolitan series. Similarly, the character of Rabbit is deeply developed like that of Lena and Lila. Where Rabbit is quintessentially American in his own unique and depraved way, Lena and Lila are quintessentially Neapolitan. I think that rural Pennsylvania and metropolitan Naples are quite different geographically, but both serve as a evolving canvas backdrops upon which the central dramas play out. I just think that if you read the Updike books, you'd probably enjoy the Ferrante ones and vice versa in terms of a look a slice of life from the middle to the end of the 20th century seen on two different continents and from the perspective of the two sexes.
[SPOILER SECTION - STOP HERE OR BEWARE!] I really enjoyed the allegory of the doll which brought the story full circle from the beginning of the relationship between Lena and Lila and was a beautiful reminder of that first wonderful book. Further, the disappearance of Tina (for which I enjoyed the ambiguity, almost dreamlike, in not knowing definitively her fate) was also a beautiful allegory for the lost innocence (and sanity to a degree?) of Lila and the loss of intimacy between here and Lena.
In all four books, it was wonderful to feel Naples like a character in the book (much like Paris in L'Education Sentimental). There are moments when you feel like you are overhearing Lena and Lila in a café or crossing them in a park. The city evolves around them in colors, smells, and great differences in wealth and power.
There is a Proustian feel to Ferrante's writing, although as one of my friends pointed out, the male characters (Enzo, Piero, Nino, etc) here are not as three-dimensional as the female characters (whereas in La Recherche, Odille, Gilberte, and Albertine are all much more profound). But still there is a nice on-ne-sais-quoi in her phrasing, her descriptions, and her unique female sensibility that lends a limpidity and beauty to her prose that is just so pleasurable to read....more
I am barreling through Ferrante books and loving them. In book 3, Elena and Lila are now in their 20s and 30s and still living parallel and occasionalI am barreling through Ferrante books and loving them. In book 3, Elena and Lila are now in their 20s and 30s and still living parallel and occasionally intersecting lives with mariage, lovers, kids, and lots of self-questioning. There is not one particular aspect or scene that comes to mind, but the overall impression of a very Proustian inspired look at the varying fates of these two women and how much they are changed (and unchanged) by the society that is changing around them. The secondary and tertiary characters lack some depth because of the nearly obsessive focus on the two protagonists. I do appreciate the first person narration by Elena (the character) and how she is able to weave Lila's story around hers. I can't wait to read #4!...more
[image] I absolutely loved this book, I mean, how could you not love a book that reduces politics to Boodle vs Noodle and kills off a minor character v[image] I absolutely loved this book, I mean, how could you not love a book that reduces politics to Boodle vs Noodle and kills off a minor character via spontaneous combustion? Besides that, there is a scalding satire of the legal profession, several badly kept secrets bubbling into murderous tension, and a panoply of lovable and despicable minor characters, each with their own manner of speaking and acting. Dickens would have been a fabulous filmmaker as his camera’s eye is always peeking behind doors or over walls giving the reader a truly immersive experience, or so I felt. I loved the writing, the action, the everything in this marvelous book.
One of the better passages about politics is where Lord Boodle complains to Sir Leicester Dedlock that the new government "would lie between Lord Coodle and Sir Thomas Doodle—supposing it to be impossible for the Duke of Foodle to act with Goodle, which may be assumed to be the case in consequence of the breach arising out of that affair with Hoodle. Then, giving the Home Department and the Leadership of the House of Commons to Joodle, the Foreign Office to Moodle, what are you to do with Noodle? You can’t offer him the Presidency of the Council; that is reserved for Poodle. You can’t put him in the Woods and Forests; that is hardly good enough for Quoodle. What follows? That the country is shipwrecked, lost, and gone to pieces”. Brilliant!
The art with which Dickens weaves the stories together and again the incredible portraits and names of the myriad of characters just made this pure entertainment end-to-end. Here is a fantastic article I found about the book: https://literariness.org/2021/01/23/a......more
Absolutely stunning collection of short stories which teach and entertain in equal measure. Ken Liu has an incredible imagination and these stories arAbsolutely stunning collection of short stories which teach and entertain in equal measure. Ken Liu has an incredible imagination and these stories are all so different and yet all so amazing. I, like many others, come to Ken Liu after his superb translations of Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem and Death's End and I can see that he was the perfect choice because his love of language and culture echoes that of Cixin Liu in many, many ways. I also saw some commonality in some of their sci fi ideas. But, it is the realistic depiction of his characters and the innate poetry of the prose that helped me plunge into each story. I loved each one and found that each asked fundamental questions:
The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species - this one reminded me a lot of Italo Calvino. Questions asked: What is literature? How is it transmitted and interpreted? State Change - fantastic compact story with lovely vignettes about TS Elliott, Joan of Arc, etc. Questions asked: What is the soul? What is our capacity for change? Perfect Match - loved the reference to Vivaldi's Violin Concerto in C Minor, haunting dystopia where Google and Amazon Alexa rule the world. Questions asked: What is free choice? How much are we willing to compromise on privacy before our lives become completely passive? Good Hunting - love story with magic, steampunk, transformation. Questions asked: How big a cultural price are we willing to pay for technological progress? The Literomancer - gorgeous, painful, amazing. Love the idea of word magic, poetic. Questions asked: How does language, our choice of works, express identity? Simulacrum - spooky. Questions asked: Where do we draw the line in reality between the real and the simulated? Once love is objectified, is it still love?
The Regular - great murder mystery - idea of emotion suppressor is great, but open wifi is terrifying. Are emotions an impediment or a tool in a critical situation? Can we be redeemed? The Paper Menagerie - beautiful and magical story. What is memory? How do we see keep a sense of wonder as we grow older? Does magic exist? An Advanced Reader’s Picture Book of Comparative Cognition (previously unpublished) - similar to first story but on communication, chocolate analogy. What is thought? How do we learn? Can electric sheep dream? The Waves - solar sails, greek mythology, russian doll stort stacking, seafoam was a beautiful image. Would immortality be a paradise or a hell? Is death a release or an end? Where is the boundary between machine and consciousness? Mono no aware - lovely - go and poetry and web of others eyes, kitten's tongue. How do we love? How do we express love? All the Flavors - western, Idaho City fire 1865 - awesome story about Chinese Immigrants for the railroad that end up mining and classic Chinese myths. How do we set aside preconceived ideas and open up to other cultures? Must the meeting of two disparate cultures always end in tears and bloodshed, or can it be harmonious? A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel - sci fi dystopia racism formosan. Can one redeem oneself from the unforgivable? What are the limits to human adaptability? The Litigation Master and the Monkey King - great story from Qinglong dynasty. How do we liberate history from willful forgetfulness? What is a hero? The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary -devastating but amazing. See this article to see that the Chinese are making swift progress with quantum entanglement in our era already. As for the atrocities discussed (Nanjing Massacre and especially Unit 731 in Pingfang, China) and the debate around their historicity and the guilt of the perpetrators, this is all very, very real. Note that the US is not innocent here either: "MacArthur struck a deal with Japanese informants—he secretly granted immunity to the physicians of Unit 731, including their leader, in exchange for providing America, but not the other wartime allies, with their research on biological warfare and data from human experimentation." From Wikipedia article quoting Unit 731 Testimony by Hal Gold (2011) Questions asked: What are the relative values to subjective and objective perception? What boundaries define history and ownership of history? How do we deal with acts of extreme depravity without becoming deranged or depraved ourselves? Does every act of preservation necessary involve and act of destruction? How do we assign guilt when the victims are dead, their names and remains vaporized and the perpetrators neatly all dead? How do we validate history? What is truth? What is justice? Yeah, this one opens up a LOT of questions for the reader!
I hope that wasn't too hard to read. Some things I infer about Ken Liu from these stories that may or may not be true: 1/ he has lived in New England and Idaho 2/ he is an incredible linguist with fluency in at least English, Chinese and Japanese 3/ he is extremely well-read 4/ his major social concerns are around cultural preservation, the indelible value of memory, the persistence of love 5/ it would be absolutely fascinating to have a conversation with him over beers, whiskey or wine :-)
Read these stories and be transported to different times and different worlds. Question everything. Lastly remember Socrates: The unexamined life is not worth living.
Nota bene: I listened to this on Amazon Audible and found the dual narrators great - especially in pronouncing the Chinese names. But honestly, this is a book that I have purchased on paper because I want to see if the ideogram analysis he performs in The Literomancer and All the Flavors is illustrated with the Chinese characters he mentions. I have passed it to a friend already and she loves it and can't put it down! Highly recommended summer reading!!
I can hardly heap enough praise onto Cixin Liu's great trilogy and it's incredibly breathless ending, fittingly titled Death's End. The story is so tiI can hardly heap enough praise onto Cixin Liu's great trilogy and it's incredibly breathless ending, fittingly titled Death's End. The story is so tightly bound to the two previous books and so surprising and astounding and mind-bending that revealing any of the plot here would be a massive spoiler. Rarely have I read a book of such vast scope that was able to maintain a few primary characters and touch upon nearly every field of human knowledge and inquiry: from history to literature to philosophy, from nano-science and quantum physics to astrophysics and string theory, from earth sociology to cosmic sociology...and yet, although it gets very,very technical, the author takes pains to explain the concepts in layman's terms and wherever possible provide visual examples. Note that sometimes, the explanation will come a little after a new phenomenon and so one must be patient, but the patience pays off in a major way.
I think that this trilogy is perhaps even stronger and more internally consistent than even Asimov's classic Foundation Trilogy and I really could not put any of the books down as I was passionately drawn into the story and surprised time and time again by the originality of the ideas and science fiction aspects but also moved by the characters - especially in the second two volumes.
It is sad for me to say goodbye to Sophon and (no spoilers!) at the end because I wanted this marvelous tale to continue. Alas, like all things, Death's End had to end as did a certain character's second-guessing of decisions. One could find a lot of reasons to call the series quite cynical, but I found it to be quite positive at the very end - it left me the feeling that our best quality as humans is the capacity for love of others and I could not have dreamed of a better message. 10 stars :-)
Still months later, the ideas from this book are present in my mind. It is truly amazing.
For parents: definitely a high school or after book with, however, no sex and relatively little violence. I was far less happy with Ball Lightning by the same author, but so far enjoying The Redemption of Time by Liu’s friend and 3 Body fan, Baoshu!
Every bit as engrossing as The Three-Body Problem, if not more so, The Dark Forest is a masterpiece of scifi. The characters are deeper here than the Every bit as engrossing as The Three-Body Problem, if not more so, The Dark Forest is a masterpiece of scifi. The characters are deeper here than the first book and the technology and physics are a geek's wet dream. It is hard to say much about this book without giving put spoilers, but I really appreciated the space elevator, the Killer 5.2 virus, the underground cities, and the descriptions of the solar fleet. The droplet was a brilliant idea and still has my brain buzzing. Not to mention that theory from which the book derives its title. I loved the characters and the good news is that several of them will reappear in the last volume :)
If you like or love science fiction, run, don't walk to grab the first volume of the trilogy The Three-Body Problem. The two books are very different in narrative style and scope, but both are incredibly rewarding. On to Death's End!
[UPDATED FOR NETFLIX SERIES] A fascinating piece of sci-fi by Chinese writer Cixin Liu. A surprising mix of nanoscience, string theory, astrophysics. a[UPDATED FOR NETFLIX SERIES] A fascinating piece of sci-fi by Chinese writer Cixin Liu. A surprising mix of nanoscience, string theory, astrophysics. and religion with the Cultural Revolution as a background, the story takes its protagonist Xiao Wang (the nanoscientist) into an adventure that will impact all of humanity. I liked Ye, the astrophysicist, and found Du Shi, the policeman, funny and well-drawn. As for the action and plot, it is easy to read although I got a little lost in the pure science aspects once or twice (despite being an engineer and having dabbled in quantum mechanics years ago). I am excited about reading the next two books (which I suspect will be a little like the Foundation Trilogy by Asimov) and hope you'll also enjoy this one. Note that it won the Hugo Award in 2015, kind of a geek's Pulitzer if you will.
Having finished the entire series, I have to say that it does get better and better as it evolves. The narrative structure of this first book is quite different than the other two but all are extraordinary. I am reading the Cixin Liu-approved fan extension, The Redemption of Time by Baoshu now, and it is really good but you have to have finished the trilogy to follow it.
2024 update I just finished the Netflix adaptation of this first book. I watched the first episode via Rakuten of the Chinese version, but found the pace to be too repetitive and brooding for my western taste. The American/British version has been scorned by China due to the depiction of the brutality of the Cultural Revolution in the beginning (an illegitimate criticism being that the book itself was unsparing in its depiction of the violence and absurdity of this sorrowful period of Chinese 20th C history, if you are unfamiliar with it, please read up a bit perhaps stating with the beautiful Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie). However, their criticism of the nearly all-white casting seems legitimate to me. Where in the book, the protagonists are only connected by the events moving forward in the story and were primarily of Chinese origin, the showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss (creators of the A Game of Thrones adaptation which started out fantastic and ended abruptly and catastrophically) cast is very white and most of the protagonists start the stories as a group of university friends from Oxford. So, the adaptation already has a very western perspective which the book absolutely did not have. On the other hand, the way that the computer game that Sophon orchestrates is very well-done (even if Sophon looks more Thaï-American than Chinese once again). I suppose that Benioff and Weiss couldn't resist recasting John Bradley here, but I kept seeing Samwell Tarly rather than Jack Rooney and (view spoiler)[he doesn't even last very long (hide spoiler)]. The character Evans was rather weak in my opinion as was Auggie (despite being drop-dead gorgeous which is probably why they cast her in it).
If you look at it independently from the original book, it is good sci-fi with a palpant tension in the plot and a narrative that relentlessly pulls you forward towards the final crisis (which will have to wait for the next seasons to occur). The filming and special effects are what you'd expect from the old GoT crew. Let's hope they don't f*ck it up in the later seasons (because honestly seasons 7 and especially 8 were sad parodies of the rest of the show in my opinion). But, if you try to compare it too closely to the book, you will be disappointed I think.
Richard Russo has not lost his touch, and that's for true. The sequel to Nobody's Fool is every bit as funny, morbid, and touching as its predecessor.Richard Russo has not lost his touch, and that's for true. The sequel to Nobody's Fool is every bit as funny, morbid, and touching as its predecessor. Sully is a wonderfully lovable protagonist. The 10 year gap in literary time between the two books invites comparison to Updike's Rabbit tetrology, and indeed the descriptions of love, loss, remorse, and hope echo as strongly and vibrantly under Russo's pen as they do under Updike's. On the other hand, Sully's story is less bound to the decades it transpires in then Henry Angstrom's.
The narration is solid and draws the reader inescapably into sympathy with the hapless Rub, Zach, and especially Raymer. There are lots of throwbacks to the first book, but I felt they served to round out this second book rather than detracting from it. The addition of Rub the dog was a marvelous and fantastic comic device. The theme of redemption and forgiveness is strong here and lovingly written with marvelous dialogs and a beautifully compressed timeline - how Russo is able to stretch a barely 48h period into about 500 pages of compelling prose was impressive.
No spoilers here, but I would highly recommend reading both Sully novels as picker-uppers. These times are relatively dark and sometimes hopeless, but Russo is able to find the spark of humanity in all its pathos and beauty in the town of North Bath. Fuck Skyler Springs, Bath is looking up! Too bad we probably won't see anymore stories from this marvelous set of characters....more
I love the Faust myth by Goethe. It has engendered hundreds of imitations in literature (my favorite being Thomas Mann's Dr Faustus) and opera (BusoniI love the Faust myth by Goethe. It has engendered hundreds of imitations in literature (my favorite being Thomas Mann's Dr Faustus) and opera (Busoni's is the craziest, Gounod's probably the loudest) and movies (well, too many to even name). I have read various English translations and never been able to read the original German much to my regret. Nonetheless, it is an essential read....more
One of the greatest trilogies of all time and certainly the measuring stick to which all subsequent fantasy-style writing is compared, The Lord of theOne of the greatest trilogies of all time and certainly the measuring stick to which all subsequent fantasy-style writing is compared, The Lord of the Rings trilogy still stands at the top of the stack. Its realism, the characters and monsters, the storyline, the epic battles, and the quest motif are all drawn with incredible care by Tolkien in his chef-d'oeuvre. My favorite was The The Two Towers but all three are stunning. This edition, despite the awful cover art, contains all three books and the original appendices from The Return of the King. The one issue I have with this one is that the map of Middle Earth that should open The Two Towers is back in the appendices and relatively hard to find. It is also a rather large book and thus unwieldy for public transport commuting.
I wanted to use this review to address a few overall themes of LOTR: symbolism, ecology, sexuality.
Symbolism As for symbolism, as described in Tolkien, Tolkien's politics are not mapped onto the characters of Middle Earth in any obvious way. The symbols he uses go back before the Germanic invasions of Britain around 1000 because his goal is precisely to recreate the mythology that existed in England, Scotland and Wales before this period of instability and wanton destruction. His theory was that there were shards of that previous system of beliefs, fears, mythologies that survived in story form in the Arthurian tales, in Beowolf, in Gawain, and other Old English remnants. Most of the transmission was done orally, so when that generation disappeared after Norman invasions of the 11c (1066 - Battle of Hastings) for the most part, collective memory subsumed some of these images. Tolkien's idea was to extract these and try to revive the uber-myths that they derived from. He was a philologue, meaning that he studies in-depth the origins of the English language and chaired the Philology Department at Oxford for decades. Old English and its offspring Middle English owed their origins to various Nordic tongues (Old Norse, Old Icelandic) and eventually, the invading Norsemen brought their culture and religion and especially their languate ultimately fusing all of these into what became the Modern English that I am writing in now. In fact, Tolkien's translation of Beowolf is still a reference for scholars of Old English even today. All that to say that in reading the oldest extant myths in the "Old" languages, Tolkien got a sense that there was something important that was hidden just beneath the surface, and he spent nearly his entire life as a linguistic speleologue trying to find it - sort of a human Dorin mining Moria to find the original stories. The Elves represent the very first humanoids to arrive in England whereas the Dwarves represent the various invasions from Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland before 1000. Men are those who populated the Middle Ages and Hobbits are sort of the archetype of the middle-class, landed but non-aristocratic gentry in the villages of England.
Perhaps the one place where political events in Tolkien's own life affect the narrative is in the episode at the very end of The Scouring of the Shire. Here we see History catch up with the Idyllic and somewhat isolated Shire where violence (the sad, pathetic revenge of Saruman on Bilbo and Frodo for having thwarted his plans) rages across the land, nature is destroyed, and industrialization arises. This represents the Industrial Revolution but also the coming of age for Tolkien himself in WWI and, I would argue, the bombing of Oxford during the Battle of Britain during WWII that he experienced first-hand as well. It is interesting that this is included as a coda after the main action of the epic is already concluded, as if he had this one other thing to say before sending Gandalf, Frodo and Bilbo off to Grey Haven with the Elves, thus definitively ending the pre-Modern Middle Earth (and by extension Medieval and Revolutionary Europe) and entering into the Modern/Industrial Age.
Ecology I wrote quite a lot about Tolkien's sensibility to nature in my previous LOTR reviews (see below), but I wanted to reiterate that in these books, nature itself is a character in the saga. When Tolkien talks about flowers or herbs, his descriptions are lush in detail and even anthropomorphic as it comes to trees (Ents for example). Indeed, recalling what I said above about his pining for an England before the agricultural and industrial revolutions when the great primitive forests still covered England and all of Europe, he bemoans the loss of this environment time and time again. Most poignantly, I think, with Treebeard's sad resignation at the definitive disappearance of Entmaidens which spells certain death for his species. Sam is able to bear the destruction of Hobbiton to a degree, but when he sees the Party Tree under which Bilbo gave his Farewell Speech destroyed and lying dead on the ground, something breaks inside of him.
Nature in LOTR is a living, breathing thing and critical to the success of the mission: without the Ents, the Battle of Isengard would certainly have not been such a definitive defeat for Sarumon (another reason why he attacked not only Hobbits but trees as well in his Scouring of the Shire). The loss of communication between Man and Forest is one of the reasons for the breakdown in relationships between Rohan and Gondor as well as that between Elves and Men, thus the marriages of Faramir and Eowyn and Aragorn and Arwen are so important for reforging those bonds and replanting the forests that were impacted by the war. Once communication has been reestablished and the forests resume their role in connecting communities, peace can once again attempt to thrive.
Lastly, I would point out that this sense of the importance of ecology has completely disappeared from fantasy (and its modern derivation of dystopias) literature (at least as far as I have read). The stories of Harry Potter, Hunger Games, the Grishaverse, and so on have pushed trees and nature into a Hollywood backdrop for the most part. This is rather unfortunate because that means that the generations after LOTR did not really have a solid basis of awareness about man's intimate connection to nature making it easier to deny the grim reality of climate change and ecological destruction since it is seen as superficially unrelated to their daily lives. Fortunately, the tide seems to be turning as evidenced by the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction given to Richard Ford's excellent The Overstory.
Sexuality The last theme I wanted to touch on briefly was sexuality. For the most part, the world of Middle Earth is asexual. The relationships between the paired characters, say, Sam and Frodo and Legolas and Gimli, are those of deep, intimate but strictly non-sexual friendships. In the case of Sam and Frodo, I suppose that it could be argued that Sam sometimes has a man-crush on Frodo, but it is not truly reciprocated nor acted on other than their relationship involving more hugs and handholding than other friendships in the book.
As for the Elves, we have several gorgeous women Elves: Arwen and Galadriel, but both are asexual (at least until Arwen weds Aragorn) despite provoking deep reverence in Merry, it remains platonic and more of a one-sided infatuation. There is little mention of rape in LOTR even during the war, this book having originally being intended as a sequel to the child-focused The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, perhaps that plus the natural British tendency to whitewash unsightly behavior was at play.
For the most part, women play a secondary or tertiary role in LOTR. At one point, Galadriel could become a supremely powerful figure, but she renounces it in The Two Towers after looking into her Mirror and seeing the consequences. The notable exception to this is, of course, Eowyn who revendicates her status of independence from her 'cage' and who slays the King of the Nazgûl in revenge of the death of her father and both protecting Merry and saving the outcome of the battle for the good guys with her immortal: "For no man am I!" speech. That being said, she is obliged to give up her love for Aragorn and settle for Faramir, who fortunately has a good heart and seems to truly love her at first sight. What I am getting at is that Eowyn escapes her fate as a non-actor in history with her act in the battlefield, but does not escape her destiny becoming a wife to a man at the end. Perhaps in that sense, Galadriel does remain a heroic figure, if more passive than Eowyn, she retains her total independence and a modicum of power, being one of the last two Ring holders with Gandalf.
Gandalf's lack of sexuality is interesting. Perhaps folks were put off by the adage that one must never delve into the affairs of wizards because they are of short and violent humor. In any case, he is clearly not homosexual (unlike his distant cousin Dumbledore according to Rowling (https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion...)). He is more an archetype of the Catholic God the Father than the sex-hound Jove.
Suite et fin Well, I hope you appreciated these thoughts about LOTR and that it will encourage you to reread this classic and be more environmentally-aware going forward. Long live Middle Earth!
As always, the poems of Shel Silverstein are wonderful word play and the illustrations are a pure delight.
The first one is just simply beautiful:
"YeaAs always, the poems of Shel Silverstein are wonderful word play and the illustrations are a pure delight.
The first one is just simply beautiful:
"Years from Now" Although I cannot see your face As you flip through these poems awhile, Somewhere from some far-off place I hear you laughing - and I smile.
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