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| 9025443680
| 9789025443689
| 9025443680
| 3.80
| 13,423
| 2006
| 2014
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it was amazing
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If you ever find yourself in a small village in Flanders, don't despair. Take a deep breath of wet grey air and go for a little walk. The centre marke
If you ever find yourself in a small village in Flanders, don't despair. Take a deep breath of wet grey air and go for a little walk. The centre marked by the closed-off church will have one light to offer: that of one of the local bars. The cold neon lights shine on the stained wooden furniture and faces puffed up by alcohol. The fat laughter that rises from behind the door is difficult to distinguish from the profanities that precede and follow it. You ignore the bar, you will encounter many more during your short walk. You will take one of the many small roads leading up to the fields and enjoy the silence there for a moment. Maybe you start wondering what the point of this walk is. It is the following: you climb over one of the fences, get down on your knees and plunge your hand in the earth. You grab a fistful of this dark earth and green wet grass and you hold on to it, you squeeze it as you feel the raw essence get under your fingernails. You open your hand and rub the stuff all over your face. You let the smell of earthen freshness overpower you. You'll try standing up but instead you will lay down on your back, look at the ghostly rainclouds and smile, until you smell the tinge of shit emanating from the sticky stuff on your face. You look in your hand and see that it bleeds as it pulsates under the black goo. You get up to wash your hands and quickly find the watering trough but it's as dry as your throat. I think that fistful of Flemish earth is an apt metaphor for the reading of this book. It's fresh and it's dirty. The book is often bleak and miserable but there's a spark of wit and some unexpected flashes of wisdom and tenderness. And most of all: it's REAL. It's as real and true as the wet, fertile earth that life is made of. It's a book that's unapologetic about its baseness and confident in its ultimate eminence. I tend to avoid Flemish literature. All my experiences with it were the same: depressing. All the Flemish books I've read have one thing in common: they managed to make me a little more unhappy. They all have this chilling breeze of muted despair blowing through them. Even though "De Helaasheid der Dingen" has this same tone of hopelesness, I feel pride for this book, precisely because of its flashes and sparks. It makes me want to push this book into a stranger's hands and say: "Here. Read this. This is of our people." The pride I feel is unwarranted however. I have to admit I myself felt like a stranger in this book. If I would have entered one of the bars at any given point in the story, I'd be greeted as an outsider and tested for drinking skills or folcloric wisecracks. I'd be asked for subtle testaments of my despair. I'd fail miserably and be violently thrown out of the bar. I'd readjust my glasses, go back to my happy home and would feel a strange longing to be part of this band of hard-to-like drunks. Flanders has many faces. The one the author shows in this book has got an abundance of scars and rotten teeth, but it's the prettiest face I've seen. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 30, 2017
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Nov 02, 2017
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Oct 30, 2017
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Paperback
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| 2512007448
| 9782512007449
| B071YPTWS5
| 3.67
| 24
| unknown
| Apr 28, 2017
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liked it
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I've recently discovered this fine collection of L'âme des peuples, a series of booklets covering stories about countries and cities all over the worl
I've recently discovered this fine collection of L'âme des peuples, a series of booklets covering stories about countries and cities all over the world. Originally published in French and all sporting wonderful cover art, they comprise a general, elaborate and wide-ranging introduction by the author and a bunch of interviews with people who live there. I had already gotten my hands on the French volumes on Iran and Israel when I also spotted a small English volume on my own city of Brussels. I say "my own" city, but by no means am I a zinneke or a Bruxellois. Hailing from Ghent and after a detour in Vienna I arrived in Brussels just a little under five years ago, looking for a post of profitable pecuniary emolument, easy access to culture and a growing circle of international friends . This search was reasonable succesful at first as I was initiated into the Eurobubble, full of young Eurocrats keen to meet "local Belgians", and was welcomed into the vibrant professional community of Flemish civil servants. After this relatively short time, I've recently bought a place to call my own just outside of the city centre. The shine of those first experiences has worn off, but the charm is still there. When I exit my appartment, close to Gare du Midi and the bustling Sunday market, I can take a left or a right. The right will take me to Anderlecht, one of the poorer quarters of the city. Oranges are lying near porches after having been used to sterilise heroin needles. Trash is left carelessly on the curb, old sofas, stained mattresses and bulky plastic toys. Families gather and have dinner parties on the street that last well into the evening. People don't stay inside here, they stand in front of doors, at their homes, cafés or the city hall. They stand, talk and give a sad look to the strangers passing by. When I take a left, I end up on a quaint little square with a fountain for children to play in, a couple of terraces and a community of homeless people who regularly get into fights. Continuing behind the square is a long boulevard that seems to come directly out of the Maghreb, the street lined with Tunisian bakers, Maroccan butchers and Algerian tea-houses. To my left, at Anneessens square, there's a white tent and policemen around it. A murder was committed. A bit further down that same street is the city centre, now a pedestrian area with Belgian bars and Irish pubs, fancy shops and dozens of kebab stands. Chances are there are some music or dance sensions going on in front of the Bourse building, with a cheering crowd and some drunk stragglers. When I take a left there I end up in St.-Gery, with more bars, and the Flemish quarter of Dansaert, with its sprawling art and fashion scene, micro-breweries and the best fish restaurants hidden amongst the worst tourist traps. I've just described a 25 minute walk. You walk around in one version of Brussels, only to take a left or a right and find yourself in a completely different one. This can be good news, as you can stumble upon a beautiful patch of green or a hidden coffeeshop when taking one of these turns. Other turns can prove less pleasant when you suddenly find yourself surrounded by menacing looks and closed shutters. As in every big city, the pitfalls of loneliness and frustration lurk behind corners and in stranger's eyes, but despite my dwindling circle of international friends, as many of them hastily vacate the area to start up families, follow their career paths or find their roots again, I find a city brimming with opportunities sitting behind my window. Never mind the terrorist threat, never mind Trump calling this a "hellhole". The food is excellent, property prices are affordable and people are funny here, their humour a combination of the British dry wit and the French love of funny faces, but with a little less cynicism and a little more absurdity. The Bruxellois love to speak up. The maze of political governing bodies and the people in it are the kind of joke only a Bruxellois could come up with in one of his moments of absurdity, so we have to. Yet, at times, while I can call this place my home by now, I still feel like a stranger and an observer when I go on my habitual walks. I thought this booklet could be a way of getting to know my capital a little better. The book mainly confirmed many things I already knew. For one, languages are a thing here. French and Dutch (Flemish) are the official languages, French being the dominant one while Flemish tries to hold its little fort. I often catch myself asking for the bill or doing other shopping transactions in French, given the awkwardness of getting a puzzled look when expressing myself in my native tongue. Many Flemish people, especially those outside of Brussels, vehemently oppose to this practice as I'm eroding our common identity whilst trying to enrich mine (and basically get served what I want). I must help to hold the fort! It doesn't help that Brussels isn't popular in the north of Belgium, considered a territory lost to the French language, immigrants and crime. English and Arabic are gaining ground, but with so many nationalities running around here it would be remiss of me not to mention Spanish, Romanian, Russian, Italian and a whole swathe of other languages you can hear on the metro. I guess this goes for many big cities, but how many have their street names in two languages? Another thing here is Europe, of which Brussels is called its heart. Eurocrats are earning money, hooking up with each other and living in their own little part of the city, the "European Quarter". Also, they're not paying any taxes. Some of them consider this city purgatory, others inevitably lose their heart to its enduring and mystic charm and stay here a lifetime. Another thing is inequality. You've got these rich Eurocrats and expats and bankers and antique dealers and artists on the one hand, and you've got the unemployed and the homeless and the less succesful artists on the other, with civil servants like me snuggly in between. While all of them keep to their own closed communities, Brussels is not divided geographically among them, giving room to plenty of encounters, friendly and otherwise. What new stuff has this book taught me? Some historical tidbits I guess, but not many, which is odd given the fact that one of the interviewees is a historian and that I didn't know much of the history to begin with. Upon being asked about the origins of the statue of the peeing boy, Manneken Pis, the historian goes no further than to state the self-derisive character of Brussels' inhabitants and leaves it at that. Also, for a book published in February 2017, it's already getting a bit out of date. It expresses its solemn hope and faith in the new mayor, Yvan Mayeur, who got involved in a scandal a couple of weeks ago and had to step down. It mentions a bar called "Flamingo" as an enduring landmark in the bar scene. It's a pity that it closed down before summer and got replaced with a gourmet burger joint. That's a problem. While this book conveys the Brussels identity reasonably well, as it set out to do, it relies more on contemporary anecdotes rather than historical analysis, making it useful for only a small window of time. The three interviewees come from similar, rather intellectual, backgrounds, which doesn't help in conveying the abundance of voices and perspectives that dwell here. In short, this book might as well have been a longread in a monthly magazine, but it does offer an entertaining introduction to the city for those not home in it. Just read it quickly, because it's got an expiry date. Brussels isn't going to be sitting on its hands. At least, that's what one hopes. We've got an iron atom the size of a cathedral and a peeing boy statue the size of a duck as monuments. Our air is instant cancer. Our pedestrian zone is a portion of a road intended for cars but blocked off by plants. Our latest mayor stole from the homeless. Our historical Bourse building will likely become a Beer Temple for tourists. Our cafés are world wonders. So no, Brussels is not an ordinary city. Is any, I wonder? ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 13, 2017
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Oct 13, 2017
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Oct 13, 2017
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Kindle Edition
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| 4.29
| 539,507
| 1969
| Mar 2015
|
really liked it
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I was sitting on a bench as I enjoyed the last bits of warm sunlight the dying summer was oozing out, scrutinizing a newspaper while calculatedly assu
I was sitting on a bench as I enjoyed the last bits of warm sunlight the dying summer was oozing out, scrutinizing a newspaper while calculatedly assuming a thoughtful gaze. This little girl ran up to me. She said "Mister, mister, I know why the caged bird sings!" I looked up from reading the financial news. "That's great kid. Now run along, can't you see I'm busy?" I turned back to reading on how poorly the economy was doing. There’s nothing like reading bad news to feed the intellect. "But mister, mister, the caged bird sings and I know why! I know why, la-di-da, la-di-doo, and so should you!" She skipped and danced excitedly. A bunch of people were standing around, bestowing benign smiles on the girl and throwing eager looks in my direction as an emphatic plea to hear her out. I heaved a sigh, put down the paper and said: "Alright little one, tell me all about that bird of yours." So she started talking. About her grandmother Momma, how strong she was, about her momma Mother Dear, such a beautiful lady, about handsome and kind Brother Bailey and big and absent Father Bailey, about her little life in a little corner of a little shop. The corner, despite its size, offers the perfect vantage point to see what goes on in that big world and in the little minds that inhabit it. She tells excitedly of her sweet childhood memories and shares her keen observations. She offers an insider's view on a part of the world, a part of society, I was completely unfamiliar with. I'd heard about cotton pickers, of course. I saw them depicted in popular culture. But what I saw through her tales were not mere depictions but real life people, worn out by the burdens of their tasks. I saw their fatigue through the small spasms of pain surrounding their lips and quavering shoulders, the absence of the glint in their eyes as they were telling their jokes. But even as I looked into this unknown world many of it felt familiar to me and I realised that this unknown world is my world, our world, only there's this wall. Who put that stupid thing there? The little girl showed me the window in that wall and her generous spirit has left it wide open as the breeze of her story wafted through it. I willed her to keep talking and she did, with passion and patience. Suddenly the girl stopped dancing. Looking down at the ground she said, with a voice as tiny as a cat's whisker: "A big man hurt me. Real bad." She looked up. The playful twinkle was gone. I was ready to stand up, hold her in my arms and tell her things would be fine. Her eyes, defiant, filled with pride and intelligence, told me she would have none of that. She started dancing again, slowly and more deliberately. More memories ensued. The tale matured into one dealing with one of society's biggest embarrassments, of black people not being allowed to work on tramcars, of dentists not wanting to treat little children with a specific ethnic background. But despite the enormity of all this humiliation, the little girl kept center stage, through her courage, wit and wisdom. Her pace quickened and I heard a melody of personal memories, powerful anecdotes and fiery statements of indignation. She sang “The house was smudged with unspoken thoughts.” A bit later she said: “The unsaid words pushed roughly against the thoughts that we had no craft to verbalize, and crowded the room to uneasiness.” Her apparent eloquence made the melodious statement all the more profound. The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind. My relief melted my fears and they liquidly stole down my face. And then, a momentous description of the wall of racism. The girl just told me about how a lady receptionist wouldn’t allow her to file a candidacy for a job she was coveting. The reasons were hidden yet obvious. The girl then sang: The miserable little encounter had nothing to do with me, the me of me, any more than it had to do with that silly clerk. The incident was a recurring dream, concocted years ago by stupid whites and it eternally came back to haunt us all. The secretary and I were like Hamlet and Laertes in the final scene, where, because of harm done by one ancestor to another, we were bound to duel to the death. Also because the play must end somewhere. I went further than forgiving the clerk, I accepted her as a fellow victim of the same puppeteer.. I was awestruck, but she was obviously waiting for me to say something. "What a wonderful tale! You’re giving that clerk an easy pass there, but I’m sure that once you’re a bit older you’ll reconsider this imagery, however beautiful it is. But how about that bird, little girl? You didn't mention it, let alone the reasons for its singing?" "I ain’t no little girl no more, mister!" And with that, she stomped off in a fit of pique and out of my sight. I wonder if I'll ever see her again. I sure hope so. I want to know about that bird. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 13, 2017
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Sep 26, 2017
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Sep 12, 2017
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Paperback
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| 1781255814
| 9781781255810
| 1781255814
| 3.23
| 1,622
| Nov 10, 2015
| Apr 14, 2016
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it was ok
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Whenever one communicates, no matter the means or subject, one reveals a bit of himself. I am acutely aware of this and often tend to keep my thoughts
Whenever one communicates, no matter the means or subject, one reveals a bit of himself. I am acutely aware of this and often tend to keep my thoughts, lightly dancing in the safety of my cranium, to myself. The reason of this could be that this is simply an innate characteristic, or a consequence of some buried childhood traumas. Whatever the case, the result is that I like to keep myself close to my chest, as it were. Maybe that is why people around me sigh in exasperation when, after asking about my holidays, all they get is a Very good, thank you, instead of the detailed accounts they were hoping to get. When politics is discussed, I tend to restrict myself to two or three on the one hand, on the other hand utterances while hoping the conversation will move on to more interesting pastures, where I will remain equally silent and vague, but perhaps with a wistful smile on my face. One notable exception of this deplorable lack of generosity in sharing my thoughts is of course my reviewing activities here on Goodreads. Quite often, like now, I include some information about myself, my youth, my frustrations and my sources of happiness, because of the conviction that these nuggets of information are of relevance to my reading experience, be it as context or as tangential similarities between my life and that which is described in the book. But even if I wouldn't be so explicit in sharing certain memories and experiences, I think one might glean a lot from my opinions on certain book passages and identify core sensitivities I carry around with me. If one would choose to make a study out of it, such a person could grow to know me quite well, maybe even more so than I would be comfortable with. Websites that are built around user reviews have as their first mission to inform people of experiences that customers had with products and services. But as a result of this rather economic activity a whole area of interaction far outside the regions of the reviewed topic comes into play and the customers, slowly but inevitably, become people. Or as the book's blurb offers about reviewing websites: But the real joy of those sites is not so much the advice they offer, but the people who offer it. Introduced by a tagline that seems specifically designed to woo us Goodreads-reviewers, Rick Moody made such a character study, thankfully not of me, but of the (I assume fictional) top reviewer on a website that focusses on hotels. The reviewer in question who calls himself Reginald Edward Morse travels around a lot so knows what he’s talking about when writing, with wit and verve, about his frustrations with thin walls and mouldy bathroom corners as well as the joys of having extramarital sex in a hotel bed. Inadvertently, as described above, the reviewer reveals more and more about himself and his personal life. When reviewing his nights spent on an Ikea parking lot, the reader can surmise things were not always going well for this man. Repeated references to the estrangement from his daughter add a tragic layer to a man whose reviews become increasingly three-dimensional, talking about hotels, himself and life all at once. I loved the premise of the book, and smirked when reading about the protagonist’s frustrations with the lack of subtlety and nuance that comes with 5-star-scaled ratings, as well as his retorts to his critical, and quite frankly rude, readers. The main problem I have with this book is that it’s only occasionally funny. Some observations on life in and around hotels are mildly amusing, but they can’t hold a novel together, at least not in the same way for example Three Men In A Boat did (though barely). The unexpectedly tragic elements (how unexpected can it really be if it’s mentioned in the blurb) are clearly meant to add weight to the whole thing, but they fall short of doing that due to a severe lack of depth. The hidden vein of this book and basically the protagonist's name, "remorse", doesn't fit a book that is essentially presented as a comedy. The gimmick of delivering this novel as a series of reviews, while enjoyable at first, got stale rather quickly, slowed down the pace considerably and made one care even less about the small amount of plot there is to be discerned. It’s like getting little scraps of paper that you need to put together, only to find out in the end that it’s mostly a blank page and it doesn’t matter very much where you actually put the pieces. No, I can’t quite recommend this book. The little gems it has to offer are not worth the digging, though it pains me to say it because I don't exactly regret reading it either. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 10, 2017
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Sep 12, 2017
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Sep 10, 2017
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Hardcover
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| 1911344072
| 9781911344070
| 1911344072
| 3.19
| 18,128
| Feb 07, 2017
| Apr 13, 2017
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really liked it
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This book is a mystery surrounded by mysteries. It’s also a work of art. Theories and interpretations float around it, anger hovers over it, condescen
This book is a mystery surrounded by mysteries. It’s also a work of art. Theories and interpretations float around it, anger hovers over it, condescension is thrown at it. It’s the price any piece of art pays for grabbing one’s attention without paying the regular price of offering an explanation about its true nature. It’s the only way I can explain the low average rating this peculiar book has gotten on this website. Maybe my reading of this book was greatly helped by the fact I knew nothing about it, except for what the cover told me. The cover art vaguely reminded me of an old horror movie, “Children of the Corn”, which isn’t saying much because I never actually saw the movie, but it does say it appealed to my side that wanted to be terrified by whatever goes on in and around that farm house and grain silo standing in an open yet strangely secluded field. The title “Universal Harvester” also tugged at me, the meaning of those words evident in their power over my book-buying decisions. What can I say: I was in the mood for being harvested, and which better means to do so than ominously universal ones? And then there is of course the back flap that comes with the usual self-promotion that only something as noble as a book could hope to get away with it. The short text introducing the story spoke to the already quite inflated (and hopefully benign) Nostalgia-tumor growing on my heart by mentioning VHS videotapes and some eerie mystery surrounding them. This book is genre-defying, but calling it a mystery is better than calling it a horror, despite what the marketing people will tell you. A horror jumps at you at some point. This one stays hidden in the dark behind the shrubbery just out of view at the end of your backyard. It moves behind your blinds just after you closed them. You can feel it’s there. You were scared of it as a kid, but over time, you have come to accept that it would never show its true face and you have buried it under daily chores and sports bulletins and sunny days and happy thoughts. As I said, it’s a work of art, and one that is beautifully crafted. The writer is also a musician and a poet. It shows. The prose flows like a poetic melody. I have taken many pictures of passages I greatly enjoyed, passages that made scenes leap from the page straight into a reader's emotional memories, but I don’t want to drop them here. They would mean nothing to you, though chosing small portions of a bigger whole and showing them to you would provide a somewhat fulfilling symmetry with what goes on in the book. At times, I as a reader felt like the combine harvester riding along over a beautiful patch of words ready for the reaping. I guzzled them up effortlessly and enjoyed their beauty. But I have to admit I left much of their meaning behind me. The atmosphere is formidably eerie. It's my favorite atmosphere, as it is one of the most difficult ones to evoke, but the most deeply lived when it's pulled off well. Another reviewer mentioned an association his brain made between this book and "The Ring", that one horror flick I did watch which scared something out of me that was supposed to remain put. The scariest part of that was the VHS footage of an old house and some lady in a mirror. The girl in the well was a joke compared to that stuff. Maybe that film elevated the VHS tape to horror stardom, a stardom that greatly benefits this book, but that's not the whole story. While this book is not a horror in itself, it does form the part of those genre pieces that gets at me most profoundly, and is reminiscent of "The Ring"'s VHS. It's the preface to a horror. It describes the place that harbors the horror before the audience's eye fell on it and monsters started stirring in their dens. The author has many "tricks" up his sleeve to bring this about, though I hesitate to call them that because the word "trick" implies that once exposed they degrade the whole they helped form, which has not been the case here. My favorite example of this author's methods is the way in which he chose to use the first-person narrator on very rare and specific occasions to great and chilling effect. The monster in the closet is suddenly right between your ears. As I’m writing this review, I found one reading experience that I could compare it to, even if only partially. Paul Auster’s book “The New York Trilogy” left me in a similar state of awe and puzzlement. There too I closed the book with a profound respect for the puzzle the author has crafted and an unsteady longing for its answer. The mystery Darnielle had to offer had me completely hooked from start til long after the finish. The blurb concludes with the following: Jeremy must come to terms with a truth that is as devastatingly sad as it is shocking. This might be the source for some confusion or frustration. I’ll tell you right away: I don’t know what this truth is, even after reading the book. Many interpretations are possible. Some readers claim a second read is necessary. Possibilities are dancing around in my head. Possibilities about abandonment, loneliness, disappearance, death, empty nests and broken eggs. These ideas, and this book, are prone to inspire spirited discussions that are bound to enrich the soul. And while I don’t know the truth, I feel it, somewhere hidden behind my ribcage and arteries and cells and molecules. It's a thread of instinct pervading my memories of the past and fears for the future. It’s sad and shocking and scary indeed, but don't ask me why. It's just a feeling that this book brings about magnificently. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 07, 2017
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Sep 10, 2017
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Sep 07, 2017
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Paperback
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| 1936964252
| 9781936964253
| 1936964252
| 4.32
| 199
| Nov 03, 2015
| Nov 02, 2015
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really liked it
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Two months ago, I wrote the following: "Adam Howe has a very sick mind. Here's to hoping they never find a cure. Full review soon!" It's only once in a b Two months ago, I wrote the following: "Adam Howe has a very sick mind. Here's to hoping they never find a cure. Full review soon!" It's only once in a blue moon that soon actually means soon, so I hope you can find a pinch of forgiveness in your hearts after this false but well-intended promise. I normally would have jumped into reviewing this post-haste, much in keeping with this novel's fast and murderous pace, but then stuff happened like work and girlfriend and family and holidays and THIS BOOK'S AUTHOR LEAVING A COMMENT ON MY PRE-REVIEW. I considered playing it cool and all that, but damn, he said he's LOOKING FORWARD to the full review. The cliché-ridden text I was going to write up wouldn't fly, not with him in the audience. He's a crazy cat. He conjures up psychos, deranged beasts and exploding limbs when he is pleased, and I'd hate to find out what he'll come up with if he isn't. He shook hands with STEPHEN KING, so he can even bring in reinforcements if need be. I considered not writing anything. You know, play dead. So I went on to other projects, such as reading other books and writing other reviews and then I read Stephen King's "On Writing" and loved it and then I was reminded of how Howe was shaking hands with the King and you know why he was shaking hands? I don't know either but I guess him winning the "On Writing" contest has got something to do with it!! Like, he took my recently found aspiring writer's Bible and noticed it wasn't a Bible but a game and then went ahead and won it. Wow! Then I somehow sensed the truth. There's no avoiding this. I have to write this review or I'll be dead next Tuesday, mauled by a hellhound named Gino or a carnivorous cow whose name doesn't matter because SHE EATS PEOPLE WHO ASK ABOUT IT. So at first I was going to do the thing that everybody half-awake during the nineties would do when presented with a story full of cool, fucked-up characters and great dialogue: compare the book to something Quentin Tarantino or the Coen brothers would make a movie out of. But Tarantino, every '90s nerd's ticket to the cool club, is such a review-cliché by now that I can only use him in an apologetic and roundabout way, i.e. dissing the practice as a means of participating in it. Oh, hold up, did I say story? More like three stories, and all three have a fantastic premise. Stephen King's "On Writing" states that a story should start from a situation, and boy, has Howe got some situations for you: An amateur porn movie is rudely interupted by what appears to be a skunk ape kidnapping the male star. A girl gets caught in a triangle that has as its points: meticulously deranged, sexually deranged, wildly deranged and a hellhound named Roscoe. (Geometriez, lool) An almost fingerless pianist decides to sleep with the wife of a jealous innkeeper who's got a short temper, a paranoid mind and a pet alligator. Yikes! And you know what they say about the devil, right? The greatest trick he's ever pulled is making people laugh. Funny bloke, that. So is Adam Howe. I'm not saying he's the devil though. Every story features an animal and some of them end up on top, which is Adam's ticket to heaven right there. I'm not saying whether the dog ate that hatchet or to what extent that strangely saved his life, that's for you to find out. Last word for the prose! It's fast! What I'dl like to highlight in particular is that Adam Howe writes the best fights. Fists fly, guns blaze, explosions and havoc and destruction!!! Bones crunch, guts splatter, skin gets shred in strips of agony. But then, there is also sweet poetry, such as this: "You play piano as good as me, the dames can't wait to find out if your magic fingers can tickle the ovaries like they tinkle the ivories." Beautiful. Definitely read the story notes. It's got this great bit about the "endorsement" written by the president of the Society for the Preservation of the Skunk Ape for the first story. I don't know if this actually happened for real because I can't find anything about this society on the Internet, other than references to this book, but even if it didn't happen it makes for a hilarious anecdote. So yeah, get this! I guess that's it for this review. I hope that despite the meagre 4-star rating it's... wait, did I hear mooing? ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 05, 2017
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Aug 10, 2017
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Aug 05, 2017
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Paperback
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| 1780749589
| 9781780749587
| 1780749589
| 3.72
| 763
| Sep 06, 2016
| Jan 09, 2016
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really liked it
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My grandfather once boasted to me that back in the day children could fill a whole afternoon of fun and frolicking using only two bricks. The day that
My grandfather once boasted to me that back in the day children could fill a whole afternoon of fun and frolicking using only two bricks. The day that I have grandchildren, I'll be vaunting I needed only eight to occupy myself during an entire Christmas holiday. The seven bricks provided by Tetris, and the grey brick necessary to play it (also known as a Game Boy) were enough to keep me entertained. I'll admit it wasn't a love story straight from the start. I didn't actually own a Game Boy as a kid, but my best friend did. Tetris was the game my friend's mother would play, while I was more of a Mario guy. Tetris meant having to wait precious hours until she was finally done until we could start up Super Mario World or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Tetris was the free game that came with the Game Boy and lacked characters, stories and end bosses. Tetris stood for boring repetition while Mario adventured around in Egypt, the Orient and under the sea. And yet, in the end, those bricks falling from the sky in a way that would amaze even René Magritte managed to capture my attention. The day my friend actually lent me his Game Boy for the holidays (no greater act of generosity has been known to man) I played Mario, but once I'd beaten that game it was Tetris Tetris Tetris all the days that followed. Part of the reason was that you couldn't beat the game, you could only beat your previous self. So it was that Tetris became my first self-inflicted quest for self-improvement. Another motivation was of course the melody of Tetris' siren's call: the Tetris theme (warning: after an hour this clip ends abruptly and will leave you wanting for more). When I saw this book by Dan Ackerman in the airport bookshop, I put my other reading activities on hold and dived right into this one. I'm a Tetris fanboy, but I didn't know the first bit about its background story. This book filled up that gap in the same fulfilling way the long Tetris bar does. It's written by someone who loves Tetris even more than I do, evident through the various poetic ways he manages to describe a Tetris gameplaying experience. But this non-fictional tale has more than prose and passion to offer: it's got a plot. This is a Tetris thriller, where the author uses the different perspectives of the various protagonists to great effect. The tale takes us from the early seventies to the early nineties, from a grey office in a cellar under a Soviet highrise bunker behind an Iron Curtain to a sandy beach in Hawaii. An inventor working in the bowels of the lumbering machine that was the Soviet State. Supervisors flocking around him like vultures. American, British and Japanese business sharks circling them. A shadow network of Go-players could be of help. Even Gorbatchev gets in the mix. But who will get the Tetris Treasure, and how? This book is where you find out. Aside from its great story-telling, the book comes with references to hardware from the seventies and eighties and is chock-full of information nuggets on Tetris, the origins of its theme, and the people who worked on it. It prompted me to go to the flagship Nintendo store in New York (as I was in the neighbourhood) and see the Game Boy that survived a bombing in the Gulf War with my own eyes. It's still playing Tetris. It turned my attention to Tetris Championships that are still being organised, and attract quite some attention: (Boom! Tetris for Jeff). It's mind-blowing what some people can do with this game and very exciting to see them compete. My only gripe is that, for a non-fictional account, the author's story was a bit one-sided to the benefit of Nintendo and the inventor, with all other parties involved coming off as bad guys and losers. Some of these real people became charicatures and I get the feeling Ackerman freewheels a bit when it comes to describing their moods and thoughts. But I do concede this choice helped making the plot more engaging. Every chapter ends with a kind of a cliffhanger, a sense of more to come. For a topic dealing mostly with boxes full of paperwork and contracts, this book manages to circumnavigate the boring very effectively. There are "bonus chapters" dealing specifcally with what is mentioned in the title, "The Tetris Effect", which refers to the psychological impact this game has. It introduced the idea of pharmatronics, a concept by which the cause of technology addiction can be laid squarily on technology itself. People constantly playing Tetris started seeing reality in a certain way through the frequent repetition of their simple actions in tetris, and started seeing shapes and holes everywhere they looked. The Tetris Effect describes this shaping of thoughts and imagination through repetitive, pattern-based activity. Because of its characteristics, both addictive and beneficial, many tests have been conducted with Tetris and scientific progress has been made, for instance in the field of psychological trauma. A book I greatly enjoyed reading. I even enjoyed placing it on my shelf, paying extra care to get a full line of books while doing so. ...more |
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Jul 08, 2017
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Aug 2017
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Jul 08, 2017
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| 0141191449
| 9780141191447
| 0141191449
| 3.82
| 315,285
| Oct 16, 1959
| Jan 01, 2009
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liked it
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Be Afraid! It's Horror Week… So the Goodreads homepage commands us. But does fear work that way? Someone tells you to be afraid, and then you are? Poss Be Afraid! It's Horror Week… So the Goodreads homepage commands us. But does fear work that way? Someone tells you to be afraid, and then you are? Possibly, but they’ll have to say it with a little more conviction than the Goodreads marketing people and they will most definitely need to provide a more gripping context because “horror week” sounds like a theme for a kindergarten party (those ominous dots notwithstanding). It seems to me that the people who came up with that phrase should have read something by one of the authors they're recommending for inspiration purposes. Alternatively they could have paid a visit to my ministry to catch some of the creepy vibes. [image] Ministry's Hallway, somewhere after 5pm Through my mystic connections to the Otherworld I had foreseen that a mindnumbing scare-craze would occur around this time, so I went ahead of that particular curb and already got my fix. And I went straight to the master to get it. Shirley Jackson is the original architect of the Haunted House. We’ve all got the same image of that house. I don’t need to describe it to you in detail. Yes, it’s up on a hill, yes, there’s a solid wooden door leading to a hall with a majestic set of carpeted stairs that take you to the upper hallway which is cramped and creaky, with plenty of doors on either side. The doors are poised. There’s a threatening nothing behind them, pushing up against the wood, whispering. The space behind you is breathing down your neck. It hates you. Better run downstairs and outside again, out on the lawn surrounded by dark woods. You find yourself under a starless sky with a heavy, white moon. You look back at the looming house, shrouded in the mist. Yes, there are dark, tall windows and yes, that’s a silhouette you just saw swiftly passing behind one of them. We’re all seeing it now, but Shirley Jackson saw it first in her dark and troubled mind. A house is just a house. A draught is just a draught. The furniture, the artwork, maybe it’s all a bit extravagant, old-fashioned, not entirely comfortable, but surely not murderous? That housekeeper is getting a bit senile but she’s just an old lady. And she can cook! Well, keep telling yourself that. But the house is ready for anyone. Its subtle asymmetries, its shadows, its clashing colours and its little noises will all conspire and converge inside your mind. Hairs will be erupting from your skin. Your ears will collect distant whispers around them to fill the oppressive silence. You will hide under your blanket and breathe in, breathe out, breathe your nightmares. You will sweat sadness and choke on your sobs. The house will crush you. The house always wins. At least, that’s what I thought. But then Shirley invited Eleanor to the mansion, a self-centered, self-pitying party-pooper protagonist. Instead of letting the house do its thing, Eleanor was either moping or goofing around, ruining everything for everyone. The house got degraded to being just a metaphor for whatever the hell was wrong with that girl. The supporting cast, a very companionable bunch, did what they could to make matters pleasantly scary but it wouldn’t be long until Eleanor would be getting into one of her tantrums again and we all had to listen to her about how her mother was dead and her sister was mean and how she was a closet lesbian. Honestly we were all relieved when she finally left. Unfortunately the book was over soon after that and the house simply sat there, quite flabbergasted itself with what had just transpired. ...more |
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Sep 29, 2017
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Oct 02, 2017
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Jun 06, 2017
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| 3.99
| 926,296
| Sep 26, 2006
| Oct 2009
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really liked it
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The road is a promise. A father and a son, survivors of an anonymous apocalypse, hold on to that promise. Cormac McCarthy follows them closely on thei The road is a promise. A father and a son, survivors of an anonymous apocalypse, hold on to that promise. Cormac McCarthy follows them closely on their march through barren wastelands, dead forests and decaying towns. The footsteps they leave in the ubiquitous dust are swept away by the cold ashen breath of the grey earth. Whatever gets left behind ceases to exist. The promise is brittle. Hold on to it too tightly, dream of it too violently, and both the promise and the road will turn to dust, leaving you in a desert with nowhere to go. The father and his son know this in their hearts. Yet they go on, together, carrying the fire ever southwards. Every step they take is a rebellion against a world turned cold and dry. On a planet that no longer indulges the luxury of life, the road of stubborn survival only knows one destination. Defiantly, a father and a son, scavengers of canned goods and memories, hold the fire against the indifferent skies and hold on to each other. Ssh. It'll be okay. ...more |
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1
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May 19, 2017
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May 29, 2017
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May 19, 2017
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| 0241967775
| 9780241967775
| 0241967775
| 3.42
| 5,533
| 2010
| Jun 26, 2014
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really liked it
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Jonathan Coe gets a lot of attention in the Waterstones branch in Brussels. Maybe it’s got something to do with the fact he wrote a book, Expo 58, set
Jonathan Coe gets a lot of attention in the Waterstones branch in Brussels. Maybe it’s got something to do with the fact he wrote a book, Expo 58, set in this beautiful city which was incidentally the book through which I got to know him. Or maybe it's because he stayed in Brussels while writing the second book I read by him, which is the one I’m reviewing here. Whatever the reasons, I’m glad the local Waterstones management decided to put the Coe books with their eye-catching cover-art on central display, because it seems that, for once, the corner of Goodreads in which I find myself would not have pointed me to him. This is surprising to say the least, especially because he seems to be a widely read and reasonably appreciated mainstream author outside of my Goodreads-bubble. Yet the few reviews I’ve read by my precious Goodreads friends on this man’s work have mostly been rather lukewarm. I think one of the reasons that could pop up, at least in the case of both Expo 58 and The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim (man, I love that title), is that the plot could be perceived as boring. That’s a bad thing to be for anything, even more so for a book. 98% percent of people who don’t like books claim that this is because the written word is boring (the other 2% take offence of statistics being pulled out of one’s ass, something that occurs in 87% of all books and 99% of this review). So is this one of those books that gives the others a bad name? As you might have surmised from the four stars shining redly above this here text, I would reply in the negative to that last question. This book falls under contemporary fiction. Reading contemporary fiction during a time in which it is indeed considered contemporary can lead to plots being perceived as mundane. Who wants to read about stuff that could theoretically happen to you any given day? Where’s the magic? Where’s the wonder? But consider this: Give it a few years and this will be a unique time-piece looking into our world of today, and in that respect I find that Coe has succesfully managed to capture the atmosphere in which we currently find ourselves. The protagonist, Maxwell Sims, is an everyday kind of bloke who’s got nothing remarkable going on for him. He works in sales, got divorced, has got a daughter he barely talks to, eats the food we eat, uses the technology we use, sees the landscapes we see. Maxwell has got the same dreams of heroism and greatness that most of us have, which are plenty, and he shows the same ambition most of us do, which is to say almost none. After having committed the biggest contemporary sin imaginable (“ giving up ”) one too many times, he finds himself alone and depressed. This book tells us of how he got into this state and of how he’s going to try to get out of it. There will be no magic to help him, nor any big armies to stand by his side. All he’s got at his disposal are his memories, his knack for observation and a voice-navigated hybrid car. Could love set him free? Probably, but rest assured that this isn’t just another romantic novel. What I mainly liked about this book was not necessarily the plot, or not even its highly likable protagonist, but the author’s voice and sense of timing. Even though it gets heart wrenching at times, I will mainly remember this book for its humor. I literally laughed out loud several times when reading about Maxwell’s miserable state and not once did I feel bad about it. Aside from that the author experiments by working with excerpts of diaries, essays and short-stories that Maxwell reads during this tale. This, used sparsely enough, provided a welcome change in rhythm and tone which I imagine should work for anyone who appreciates a sorbet in the middle of a five-course meal. What I did feel bad about is the way this highly likable protagonist was treated in the end. I’m referring to two things here. I’m not talking about a happy or unhappy ending, I won’t spoil that for you, but a certain revelation at the very end felt out-of-place, contrived and unnecessary. In that regard I found the timeline and background of Maxwell’s father far more convincing. But given that it was so unnecessary, it did not ruin the entire book for me because it's easy to consider the story while pretending it wasn't revealed. The second thing that annoyed me was the meta-experiment that the author employed at the very end, which was an ending after the ending. Normally I’m all for meta, and I think I can see what jolly ol' Coe was trying to do, but it didn’t work for me because I felt myself siding with Max instead of Jonathan. Jonathan came off as a bit of a jerk, really. And for that reason I’m punishing Jonathan. He’s not getting his fifth star, and he’ll also have to wait before making it to my favorite author’s list. I’m a sucker for his voice though, so I think he’ll get there yet. ...more |
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May 10, 2017
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May 16, 2017
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May 10, 2017
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| 0099520869
| 9780099520863
| 0099520869
| 3.74
| 167,735
| 2004
| Apr 2008
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really liked it
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I wake up. My room bathes in the light of the streetlamp. I’m too tired to look around. I close my eyes again but soon feel in my heart that the darkn I wake up. My room bathes in the light of the streetlamp. I’m too tired to look around. I close my eyes again but soon feel in my heart that the darkness I so desire has fled. It hides under my bed, in the corners of the city and of my mind. It refuses to manifest itself in its most majestic and generous form, that of the great blanket that covers the waking world, that of the wide gate that allows passage to the land of dreams. The splashes of darkness only serve to irritate me in their small portions. I open my eyes, flip the switch and welcome the light in its hostile splendour. I’m not thirsty. I’m not hungry. I’m tired but unwilling to try to sleep, unwilling to fight a battle that I’ve already lost. Milk. Milk never quenches my thirst, it never stills my hunger, but I always have some in my fridge. It soothes me on a level that is neither nutritional or hydrating. Milk is said to strengthen the bones, but I sense that it softens me. Milk will manage to soften the hard edges of this sleepless night. My feet are cold as I make my way to the fridge. The floor hasn’t been cleaned in a little while and I feel small grains of cluttered dust, sand and crumbles cling to the soles of my feet. I rub them off and feel a slight disgust with both myself and the floor. I tip-toe the rest of the way and I feel better. The fridge is empty. No milk. No water. No produce. The light, my nemesis of the night, luxuriates in this deserted white scenery as a victorious conqueror. I close the door in displeasure but in the speed of the movement I see a flash of darkness. I open the door again and notice a black book sitting on the middle shelf. Wondering how it got there and how I missed it before, I pick it up. "After Dark", by Haruki Murakami. Even though my feet still feel dirty, I slip back into bed and start reading. The mood is palpable from the first sentence onwards and I’m taken away into a scenery where sympathetic darkness prevails, allowing glimpses into its secrets. Mirrors, shadows, cats and dead television sets become gateways to another world. It’s a world of mysterious questions to which tuna sandwiches, a set of sharpened pencils, a trombone and a baseball cap are its incomprehensible but valid answers. Conversations glean additional significance from the darkness that surrounds them. Everyday objects become laden with meaning. I am close to understanding the night, as I feel it both within the pages and within me. I wake up. ...more |
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1
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Mar 18, 2017
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Mar 20, 2017
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Mar 18, 2017
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Paperback
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| 0425266796
| 9780425266793
| 0425266796
| 3.84
| 44,759
| Aug 04, 2015
| Aug 04, 2015
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it was ok
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With "Alice in Wonderland" Lewis Carroll has created a world that has taken root in many people's minds. Wonderland's mysterious inhabitants have entr
With "Alice in Wonderland" Lewis Carroll has created a world that has taken root in many people's minds. Wonderland's mysterious inhabitants have entrenched themselves into our dreams as soon as we heard or read about them. It should come as no surprise then that this realm has spawned millions of references, not to mention the abundance of stories that sprouted in other minds, with Disney twists and darker turns, but always with the Cheshire's grin somewhere lurking about. When I read Lewis Carroll's work for myself, I came away a bit disappointed. The story felt too disjointed, the characters not relatable enough, and beyond the first moments of awe through encountering such strange creatures and absurd landscapes lay a feeling of anticlimax. Maybe it's the vivid and highly appealing image that has been painted of Wonderland, or maybe it's the feeling that more could be discovered in the white rabbits's burrow, but despite my disillusionment something about the story keeps fascinating me. I think the true power of Wonderland is found in how it works differently in everybody's imagination. For some the set pieces that were created here have become molds for their own dreams, Wonderland being a river bed through which their own fantasies run their course. For me Wonderland used to be that place where imagination has gone the farthest, a horizon for my daydreams. Recently it also felt that it's where fancy has got the longest way ahead of it, as I dream of taking a left where Alice has taken a right. Christina Henry is one of the many authors to have decided that more could be done with Wonderland, and her take on the matter has been largely met with praise. When I started this book I was skeptical of an author who had to make use of a "mold" to get her story out there. On the other hand, there is no better mold than the one that's got "Made in Wonderland" etched on the bottom, so I decided to give it a try. And at first, I was highly entertained. The green grassy hills made way for an industrial city, the sparkling blue rivers have been replaced by green sludge and the merry cast of characters have become either bruised and battered victims or terrifying monsters. Alice herself is no longer the curious girl but a scared, scarred and confused woman who has to deal with the trauma of rape while being locked away in a mental institution. Dark clouds gather, fires erupt and another tumble down the rabbit hole ensues, only this time it's going to be bloody. But as with the original, my initial enthusiastic feelings did not endure. Four stars became three and as I wrote this review it even dropped to two. This is because at some point the narrative was showing some symptoms of the Young Adult Literature-disease. The first symptom: overexplanation, spoonfeeding of interpretations, making the implicit needlessly explicit. Juicy lines that are meant to grab the reader's interest are put in italics, just to make sure you can't miss their genius. Where Lewis Carroll left a lot of silhouettes in his shrouds of mystery, Christina Henry drags them out into the spotlight and explains them away. Nothing is left up to the imagination. As if it wasn't bad enough that the once magical characters suddenly had to have something as ridiculously mundane as motives, these motives also had to be clarified. In my book, that's akin to blasphemy in Wonderland. The second symptom: bitterness. I don't know if it's a YA-thing specifically or a recent trend in literature as a whole, but the few stories I have read in the genre carry with them a certain bitterness that goes well with the dark atmosphere in which the protagonists wallow, a darkness that was specifically designed to account for such a supposedly mature sentiment. Like any bitterness, it carries whiffs of pomposity and leads to a certain class of philosophies such as "an eye for an eye" that sound all the more pertinent and alluring due to all the emotional baggage the reader is asked to hold on to. As a side-symptom, the bitterness, as ever crowned with a false sense of moral highground and intellectual superiority, allowed the author to make a villain out of practically every character. While it was innovative to see the Walrus depicted as a ruthless ganglord in the beginning, it got old very quickly as all the other characters were made into something similar during the course of this story. This book felt more and more like black paint being splashed on a painting of a beautiful landscape. Darkness was spilled all over the place to such an extent that one wonders why the author didn't choose to do it on a blank canvas instead of spoiling such a pretty place. I guess for many it's the contrast that makes it work. It did for a long time for me too, but in the end there was little contrast left as darkness filled the entire frame. I hoped this story would have been about coping, about wonderment after disillusionment or about finding comfort in magic as cold reality chills your bones, but it became something else altogether. This is a bitter tale of vengeance. Magic, love and mystery are just some tiny sprinkles added on this ultimately cold and saltless dish, and the abundance of blood does little to hide the lack of tension. My final assessment thus becomes two stars, as a testament to the Cheshire's enduring grin, while the rest vanished into darkness. ...more |
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1
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Feb 20, 2017
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Mar 04, 2017
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Feb 20, 2017
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Paperback
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| 1846687357
| 9781846687358
| 1846687357
| 4.41
| 32,083
| 1982
| Jan 18, 2011
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it was amazing
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1 Some books wrap me up in dreams and fantasy, creating a protective bubble in which I can leisurely gaze at the world in comfort. The opposite happene 1 Some books wrap me up in dreams and fantasy, creating a protective bubble in which I can leisurely gaze at the world in comfort. The opposite happened when reading “The Book of Disquiet”, a book that lives up to its title like no other. I didn’t get wrapped up in anything. With every sentence I read I felt myself being unwrapped, as layers of self-deceit and unconsciousness were shed. 2 I held the book in my hands. I could decide to open and close it. I could decide to put it away. But despite all that it didn’t take long for me to realise that I was not the one in power, as the book firmly grasped me in turn. Not through my mind, like good books. Not through my heart, like great books. It grasped my soul and never let go. While I was reading this book, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it had beaten me to it, in that the book was reading me and that it did so more quickly and effectively than I could read its pages. This book is a mirror for my soul, a mirror in which my reflection always sees me first, a mirror where my reflection waves to me and I wave back. 3 I’m compelled to take over the book’s structure in this review, and that’s not only because of Junta’s shining example. There is no plot weaving together the pages. The book is made up of more than two hundred diary entries. But this is a special diary. The entries seldom talk of work, of interactions with other people, of the goings-on in the day. They deal with the author’s rich inner life, to which the outside reality offers only a background at best. Pessoa sat down at his desk and just wrote what he thought. Streams of thoughts are often fragmentary, and so is this book. Every number allows a new idea to carry you through poetic landscapes until the author reaches the shores of that idea and he starts over, sometimes with a new idea, sometimes with the same, sometimes leading to the same shore, sometimes further away or closer by. As a result, my notes of my reactions to the book are equally fragmentary, each note representing a new stream as I glide to the next number and I start over. 4 One of my favorite things to do is to stand in between two mirrors that stand directly opposite of each other. To see my reflection multiplied to infinity is the most humbling ego-boost I can think of. I say infinity but if you look far enough into that world of infinite reflections there is a dark hole at the end of it, there where the light ceases to reach and where my beholding eye ceases to behold. Consciousness is a mirror. Consciousness of consciousness leads to a similar infinity that seemingly leads to nothingness. 5 Infinity sharpens my mind and elates my heart as a concept, but it numbs my mind and shrinks my heart as a reality. Nothingness is just one version of infinity. Equating everything to zero is the easiest solution to find, but the most difficult one to accept. 6 I don’t know if this book has changed my life. It added a layer of consciousness to my consciousness and makes me more aware of inner processes. On the other hand, it couldn’t have done so if it didn’t confirm my consciousness, if it didn’t confirm what I already felt and knew without knowing. My soul was stripped of the comfort and warmth of the mundane, but already I feel myself slipping back into the world and out of myself. 7 A connection feels meaningful when it is direct, goes deep and is complete. 8 Dreams I’ve never bothered to write down, thoughts and follies that were interrupted: much of what I have said, written and thought is lost. Only the abstract memory of having said, written and thought lingers. Before I go to sleep, thoughts wash over me, turning around in my head, taking five paths at once and dancing in harmony. The mind is cleared and cleansed with these high-speed thought-cycles but then, a jolt of consciousness, the spell is broken and the thoughts are forever lost, hiding away in dreams. The heavy weight of consciousness doesn’t last as another torrent of thoughts sweeps down and I fall into a peaceful sleep. How I would like to commit those thoughts to paper, to catch the wild torrents and be at peace. 9 In my mind’s eye a castle is easily conjured up, the atmosphere is palpable, the potential for storytelling enormous. I pick up my pen. The jester is no longer a concept, but a living thing in need of adventures and adjectives. The scene becomes heavy and slow and I grind to a halt. 10 An unlikable side-effect of my consciousness is that I can’t help but feel special. That feeling doesn’t start at the cerebral level. Somewhere in the depths of my diaphragm there is this core, a source of that intuition. Sometimes that core is cold and the feeling fades, but this book made it burn brightly. I look at the reviews page and I see that it did so for others. My feeling special makes way for a special feeling. 11 Like Pessoa, I find a lot of philosophy in the exceedingly small. That which does not matter, matters precisely because of it. When I look at an ant hard at work, I find that its essence is its being. This goes for everything, but it is in the insignficant that this is made the most obvious to me. A blade of grass sticking out of the pavement. Small numbers written in pencil on a wall that now have lost all significance. A bug. An abandoned shack that has fallen in disuse. I was hiking in a wild, rough coastal region in France. On the sandy path there was a small patch of pebbles and I resolved to pick one up and throw it into the sea far below when I'd get close enough. During my walk I thought about what had brought the pebble to that patch, what had brought me there, and as ever, one thought led to the other. The pebble became heavy with my ponderings. I could not bring myself to throw it into the anonymity of the crashing waves when the time came. 12 [image] 13 Whenever I find wonder in the banal, nothingness becomes less likely. Banality is a virtue, importance is a sin. There is no wonder in importance, only design. The situation of the spider crawling on my book only a few moments after I had read the small chapter on "millimeters" held wonder, but the picture I took was designed, flipping back to the relevant page so that spider could walk on it. It felt important to share the moment so I turned wonder into an anecdote. 14 Sometimes reality feels like the dream that my inaction brought to fruition. Sometimes reality feels like the remnants in the sieve through which my dreams are poured. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 05, 2017
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Feb 20, 2017
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Feb 04, 2017
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Paperback
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| 4.17
| 4,337
| 1983
| 2013
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really liked it
|
I like to get drunk. This statement is true and non-fictional but it should not cause you, dear compassionate reader, to worry. My liking of alcohol’s I like to get drunk. This statement is true and non-fictional but it should not cause you, dear compassionate reader, to worry. My liking of alcohol’s immediate effects is nothing compared to my dislike of its mid- and longer term consequences. I’ve got the stomach of a baby so I can't take the habit far enough to even call it a habit, as every fibre of my body seems to protest vehemently against overzealous drinking. But I like my peripheral vision to get blurrier for the sake of a greater perceptibility of that which is right in front of me. I like the generous warmth that my numbed brainwaves seem to emit towards everything around me. I like to tap into that pond of easy truths, too often soiled by the bleak reality reflected in it. After three beers it feels like I’m jumping into that pond, diving to the bottom and marvelling at the colourful shells and fish. The world of sound is far away, my movements are slower and when I look from the sandy bottom up to the watery surface the only conclusion I can reach is that everything outside of the pond is, quite simply put, ridiculous. People’s faces look warped, their actions look stilted and their words are gibberish, but despite the light playing tricks on me I see everything around me for what it is: ludicrous. It’s a completely blissful experience, if not for the fact that my body will be forced to resurface. As my head breaks through the surface the light hurts my eyes, the noise hurts my ears and the beautiful shell I took with me is nothing but a piece of dead wood. Is it so weak to be inclined to dive back in again? Apart from getting drunk, I like reading about people who do. It allows me to find those shells again without the resurfacing to reality being all too painful. Bukowski’s “Post Office” was my first encounter with literature by or about those who liked to toil around in the pond and had to come to terms with what awaited them on the shores, and with Dovlatov I found a new favourite in this particular genre. Pushkin Hills tells the story of a recovering alcoholic and struggling writer, Boris Alikhanov, who finds himself a job as a tour guide in the eponymous preserved estate. The book is mainly carried by the protagonist’s wit that comes from having dived into the pond once or twice too often, the kind of acuity that seems to cling to an alcoholic like wet clothes to a body. This wit is often translated into astute observations on the colourful cast of characters, which is what impressed me the most in this book. It’s as if Dovlatov possesses a peculiar brand of efficiency that manages to retain all the warmth of that which he is describing without needing more than two adjectives to do it. It's this generosity coupled with modesty that made this book sound a lot less self-centered and vitriolic than Bukowski's famous novel, and more pleasant as a result. This is a book about impressions rather than plot, but as I saw Boris take another plunge in the pond I could not help but sympathise with his plight, gain an understanding of his philosophy and hope with liver and soul that he would be alright. A very special read. Zazdaróvye. To your health, Boris. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 20, 2017
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Jan 22, 2017
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Jan 20, 2017
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Paperback
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| unknown
| 4.23
| 1,179
| 2016
| 2016
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really liked it
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2016 was my second full year on Goodreads. The good news is that it was not so bad that it was also my last, the bad news is that I wished it would ha
2016 was my second full year on Goodreads. The good news is that it was not so bad that it was also my last, the bad news is that I wished it would have been a bit better. That is of course in no way me saying that you, as a community, have somehow displeased me. Quite on the contrary. 2016 was simply perfect in terms of the wonderful people I got to know here, through insightful, funny, personal, original, creative and moving reviews and heartwarming comments. Even after my bouts of absence, of which there were far too many last year, I was welcomed by you all in a most touching fashion and I wish to thank you for it. You, dear reviewer and review-reader, have been the true light of my reading year. So the reason why I wished it was a bit better is not you. The real reason is two-fold: It's not you, it's me. I'm lazy and I'm easily distracted. As opposed to my employer who seems to have missed these particularly undesirable character traits, I think many of you may have noticed that my reading and reviewing activity is highly variable. It's not a coincidence I'm writing this review for 2016 already well into 2017. Even though I reached my personal 2016 reading challenge of 30 books, a lot of these were quite short and I am left with the unshakable feeling I should have read much more. I was going to read Don Quixote in summer, but never started. I was going to read Pynchon's "Gravity Rainbow", but was lured by less challenging endeavors. I was going to read Asimov's entire "Foundation" series, and didn't even get to re-read the first volume. I was going to clear my "to-read-again-and-review"-shelf, and managed to remove only two (Hemingway's "Fiesta: The sun also rises" and Murakami's "Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World"). On a personal level, while this year was very joyous with regards to the enjoyment of having found true love and a further solidifying of my inner peace, there was one black page with the passing of my dear grandmother. Despite having almost reached the age of 91, I've always felt there was yet more life in her to at least last another ten years, but sadly it was not to be, as some incredibly frustrating circumstances forced her out of our realm. During these times I found little comfort in reading, due to a combination of a wrong choice of books and a general inclination to simply turn-off the brainwaves and watch television shows. So all of that put together has, more often than I would have liked, steered me away from Goodreads. But hey, I shouldn't be too hard on myself! It's not just me. It's the books. Nah, it's never the books. But this year I did have to take the unfortunate decision to not finish books that I started, three times no less. DNFs make me sad. It might be a very minor form of OCD, or something relating to a forgotten tiny childhood trauma, I don't know, but it's true. It's hard for me to talk about them, hence I never wrote a scathing review and instead removed them from my shelves. The first was "The Year of the Runaways" by Sunjeev Sahota. The author was going to be in town for a lecture and Q&A and I thought I'd read this debut before going there. Sadly I found the book to be intensely boring. There was literally nothing that compelled me to keep reading, not even my DNF-phobia. I never made it to his lecture, even though I had already paid the admittance fee. James Ellroy's "My Dark Places" was the second one. Here, too, I picked it up because the author was visiting Brussels. Here, too, I never got around to actually go to the event in which he would give a talk. I had wanted to read L.A. Confidential but because the shop didn't have it I settled on this autobiographical book. I didn't get further than three chapters or so. Ellroy's prose, at least the one employed in this book, annoyed me endlessly. It seemed that every sentence followed the same, almost childlike, structure: Sally went to the gym. She liked sports. She met Tom there. Tom was a trainer. He was tall and had dark hair. He liked his job. Sally wore white shoes. The book was of a surprising (given all the praise for the author) monotony I just couldn't get over. The third one was Thomas Pynchon 's "Vineland". That was my biggest disappointment, because I know that Pynchon is a great author, also based on many of your reviews. It's just that I simply haven't got the stamina yet. Even not counting the stuff that went over my head, there was so much going on in this book I simply couldn't keep track of the plot, of what the author was trying to tell me. I tried rereading it three times, from the start, and while the first chapters gradually became clearer to me I always lost it at the same point where some airplane gets hijacked by some mysterious figures who are looking for a guy dressed like a hippie, or something, I still don't know. I hope I'll find out at some point. As opposed to the other two DNFs, I'm holding on to this one for another try. The stuff really worth remembering. But enough of this blue disappointment talk. I'm still rating the year 4 stars, which is pretty damn good, and here's why: * I discovered a couple of new favorite authors, namely Ursula K. Le Guin ("The Dispossessed") and Kurt Vonnegut ("Slaughterhouse-Five"). * I managed to discover some books "ahead of the curve", recent publications that were right up my alley but (disappointingly) didn't get a lot of public attention, namely Guillermo Erades' "Back to Moscow" and John McNee's "Petroleum Precinct", both easily five-star reads. * I got a bit out of my comfort zone, both through reading more female authors (most notably Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar", Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" and Octovia Butler's Parable books) and through the reading of some ancient Chinese fiction (Cao Xueqin's "The Golden Days") * I really enjoyed thinking up the reviews I did get around to write down. The ones for "Cloud Atlas" and "Why I Write" (personal), "Ape and Essence" (love letter), "Three Men in a Boat" (comic pastiche) and "Ready Player One" (playful) were particularly joyful experiences. * Aside from the 3 DNFs mentioned before, all other 30 books, barring two, got at least three stars. A whopping ten books got five stars, of which 4 made it to my favorites-list (not counting the two re-reads that were already there). Not a bad average at all. My closing remark again goes out to you all. I interact with some of you more intensely than with others, though I do try and take care not to lose touch with any of you, because I must say I'm very pleased with the little corner I found for myself on Goodreads. It seems I have stumbled on the crème-de-la-crème of this readers' gathering, and I am very grateful to find myself in your midst. So here's to a wonderful 2017, with more happy reading and reviewing, and a bit less laziness from my side. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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not set
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Jan 17, 2017
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| 1590171969
| 9781590171967
| 1590171969
| 3.81
| 5,079
| 2000
| Apr 17, 2007
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it was ok
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No matter which way you look at it, The Slynx is a strange and furtive creature. Concocted by an obscure descendant of one of the Greats, this beast p
No matter which way you look at it, The Slynx is a strange and furtive creature. Concocted by an obscure descendant of one of the Greats, this beast possesses a significance we instinctively fear. We feel it lodged in our bones, we feel it slithering between the tiny hairs on our arms and on the back of our necks, we feel it gnawing at the base of our minds, we feel it cocooning in our hearts. Some brave readers set out on the expedition to find its lair. A few came back, wide-eyed with wonder and with many a tale to tell. As a valiant voyager, I too wanted to glimpse this shadow. Hiding beyond the barren Siberian plains in a forest thick with thorns and teeth, it shrieked its name. Slyyynx. Slyyyynx. Ignoring my misgivings I set out to follow the cry that would lead me to its den. My journey had a promising start. I found a guide, a quirky fellow by the name of Benedikt, who was as endearing as he was eccentric. His childlike candor was refreshing and as he pointed out the finer points of the dystopia he was living in I became enraptured by the sights and intrigued by this post-apocalyptic society. The mutants that inhabit it, some of them immortal firebreathing Oldeners from before the Blast, added colour to the grim painting of a fledgling economy based on dry weeds and rodents. Unfortunately, Benedikt lost the way at some point. He got drunk on rusht, started uttering experimental jibberish disguised as meaningful metaphors and ran in circles, widening, but never going anywhere. I completely lost sight of him, got word that he married rich and developed an all-consuming passion for books, but couldn't make heads or tails of it all. The last thing I heard was that he was close to a fire that basically destroyed almost everything and everyone around him. The reasons for the fire remain unclear, much like everything else. Others, maybe more well-read russophiles, can perhaps make sense of Benedikt's ramblings, which probably have a significant connection with Russian history. I, on the other hand, find myself confined to a wonderment whether or not I dreamt it all. And the Slynx? I never found it. Worse still, I can no longer hear its lonely shriek. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 21, 2017
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May 18, 2017
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Jan 17, 2017
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Paperback
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| 1771642483
| 9781771642484
| 1771642483
| 4.07
| 76,761
| May 25, 2015
| Sep 13, 2016
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it was amazing
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As humans, daft creatures that we are, we are predisposed to look at where the action is. Swift movements, loud noises and bright colours capture our
As humans, daft creatures that we are, we are predisposed to look at where the action is. Swift movements, loud noises and bright colours capture our attention. Maybe this stems from our primitive instinct for survival, allowing us to spot the dangers darting in our general direction. Or it could be the result of our desire to procreate that can't make us look past flaunted flesh and luscious lips. Whatever the reasons, at some point we have begun to think in terms of foreground and background. The former is where the action is, the latter a necessary formality because the void would be too depressing an environment. During short lapses of my otherwise well-founded modesty I like to think of myself as something other than an utter idiot. In doing so I tend to refer to my habits of reading, writing, cogitating and looking at backgrounds. It's one of the ways to make scrolling through tedious travel pictures slightly more interesting. If a movie's dialogue doesn't ignite my interest, I find enjoyment in looking at the B-actors located in the background of the scene, pretending to go about their daily business, assuming they will remain unseen unless for when they'll point themselves out to friends and family. My smartphone camera comes with a focus that easily jumps in between the different layers of the hubbub I point it towards, making the scenery rich with potential for anecdote and diminishing the borders between foreground and background to a triviality. As someone who appreciates all that I allowed myself to think I was more than just a casual observer. A dreamy bubble that is now duly burst. One of the many things that Peter Wohlleben's book has taught me is that a lot of phenomena escape my flittering attention as I skip and skedaddle through life. The trees are such a phenomenon. A majestic backdrop to many of my sweetest memories, yet never given the notice they were due. Our world is full of magical places. These can be found on the ocean's vigorous waves, on a tranquil mountain top or in a lover's embrace. One other such place is under the canopy of trees. In their mystic shade of earthy green some people reach enlightenment, others find fundamental scientific truths and many discover peace. Troubled heads are cleared as they rest on ancient trunks and laden hearts are lightened by the sound of rustling leaves. Why are we not in constant awe for these beings of wonder that should be worthy of worship? People now will often mock that notion, hacking and slashing their way to prosperity with no regard for the beings that have been here millions of years. Or to recall the way Treebeard put it very emphatically when talking about Orks: "They come with fire. They come with axes. Gnawing, biting, breaking hacking burning. Destroyers and usurpers, curse them!" Wohlleben's book The Hidden Life of Trees worked the same way for me as the focus changer does for my camera. This book inaugurated a new sensibility that feels purposeful and asks to be deeply understood. The way I looked at the world and the way I looked at my memories had been tainted by a particular and exclusive interest for human affairs. Wohlleben put the splendour of trees in a sharp and welcome focus, opening my eyes as they welled up with remorseful tears. My perspective changed, and now an everyday city scenery has become a concrete concentration camp for trees forced to live in isolation, cut off from their potential and cut down to serve cityscaping needs. One redeeming factor is of course the knowledge that trees don't feel. How sweetly we sleep in the comfort of that intuition. Unfortunately, Wohlleben puts some question marks next to that soothing notion. This author's narration couldn't have been more convincing and captivating and the fact that I automatically read it with David Attenborough's voice in mind can serve to stress that point. The trees become both actors and center stage in this epic tale of survival against all odds. Their struggle for an inner balance as they grow, mend their wounds, spread their roots and branches, drop their leaves, drink the water and capture the sunlight makes for a truly engaging read. The race between a fungus eating its way to the heartwood and a tree growing healthy bark and moist material to stop the enemy in its tracks is more thrilling than a car chase, despite the impression that the timescale on which trees live make such matters less pressing. Yet they are pressing, and a matter of life and death. A tree can spend hundreds of years on its death bed but still serve a purpose, procreate and provide energy for its siblings and offspring. And when reading about this struggle for survival and growth, I could not help but discern a will for life that stirred within these entities. It's not just the trees that are the protagonists of this book, but also the tiny creatures that live on and around them. I've mentioned the fungi with which they have a love-hate relationship. Trees are also in what one might call a complicated relationship with small rodents, birds and insects, who sometimes help them in the dissemination of their seeds but can also wound them fatally. When caterpillars attack, reinforcements are called in with aromatic signals to deal with them. Ants are running their own brand of livestock farms as they herd aphids for the sugarry residues they leave behind when they feed off the leaves. The book is chock-full of such anecdotes that show us how trees are in fact megacities teeming with life. The biggest reveal came quite early in this book: trees communicate. As an introvert I didn't find that piece of information especially salient, but it does show that more goes on in the deep forests than a mere survival of the fittest. Trees often work together as a community, protecting and supporting each other, sending each other signals and goods. They use a "wood wide web" of roots and fungal chords that allow the transportation of nutrients from one tree to the other. They produce scents that get picked up by their cousins urging them to put up protective barriers before the enemy arrives. At the start of this book I had some severe difficulties accepting that the author would bestow certain qualities on trees that they couldn't possibly have, such as the capacity to feel, know, remember and be happy. Even after reading the book I have to admit this sometimes feels like a stretch, but that's really not the message one should remember from this review. The fact of the matter is that we don't know how far the sentience of these beings reaches. The latest scientific observations at least hint at the possibility that this author, which some might consider little more than a romantic treehugger, could be on to something. Even if trees don't feel like how we do, the realisation that trees are the hands that have been feeding us for many years should at least be a lesson in humility and inspire us to stop gnawing at them. Trees don't only provide us with the oxygen we breathe but serve many other vital purposes enumerated in this book, ranging from biodiversity to inland water supply. It's not just a matter of cutting down old trees and planting new ones, either. Balance is key, and such a balance can only occur on a timescale we can hardly grasp. The trees that provided the pages for this book are the prophets of their kind, emissaries of a lifeform we've been neglecting. So don't feel guilty about getting a hard copy. Pick one up, go sit under a tree if you can still find one, read it and look up to a new world. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 29, 2017
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Jun 17, 2017
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Jan 10, 2017
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Hardcover
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| 0143036351
| 9780143036357
| 0143036351
| 4.01
| 12,786
| 1946
| Sep 06, 2005
|
it was amazing
|
Part 56 in the "Another autobiographical review that nobody asked for!"-series. Why I Review It was already very late in my boyhood, at thirty years old Part 56 in the "Another autobiographical review that nobody asked for!"-series. Why I Review It was already very late in my boyhood, at thirty years old, when I considered writing book reviews. Being the man of action that I am, which is to say a lazy bum, it was almost to my own surprise that this innocent consideration promptly turned itself into virulent spasms across the keyboard, with my first contributions on Goodreads as the very unfortunate result. Thankfully my friends list at the time only consisted of some imported Facebook contacts who had last been active 5 years prior to my sudden burst of literary enthusiasm and who had gotten too busy climbing up corporate ladders to even remember ever having registered to a website about books, let alone notice what I was doing. Maybe it was this anonymity that allowed me to stay here, because as my own ineptitude was gradually becoming clearer to me as I was reading through others' reviews, I still persisted in forcing myself upon this community and fiendishly sent out friend requests in hopes of learning but mainly in hopes of belonging in this hall of learned ladies and gentlemen. I didn't stop to ponder on these hopes, on my true intentions, my real motivations. I just went with that "big bang" moment that seemed to come out of nowhere and I took it from there. I never stopped to ask: Why? George Orwell and his essay on why he writes made me revisit those early days of reviewing and the months (years?) that have transpired since then. I found his considerations relevant to why I am doing what I do, and the structure he employed quite helpful for the organisation of my own scrambled thoughts. Also, it's a very good essay and I rated it five stars, in case you were here for just the review. If you find yourself even remotely interested in reading further through my recollections then I can wholeheartedly recommend George Orwell's original text. Employing Orwell's essay structure, I should start with an understanding of my true nature and with a return to my childhood. Many of you already know that I was a happy, skinny, bespectacled and introverted child with no brothers or sisters and with a wonderful dog. I will not elaborate on that childhood too much since I already did that in other reviews, but these traits do explain a tendency to keep busy with solitary activities. As a child or teenager these activities strangely enough barely entailed reading or writing, aside from comic books and what was required for school. I found reading to be very boring. It felt like watching a movie with subtitles, only without the movie, and much slower. And with the advent of video games I truly had everything my solitary heart desired. The few books I had at that time turned yellow, collected dust and eventually got sold for twenty francs. Fast forward to the internet, with its chat rooms and forums devoted to games and the dominance of the English language in those settings. At a certain point I spent more time on the Internet discussing game strategies rather than playing the games themselves, as I also started commenting on the personal stories and the societal comments people invariably shared on these things. It is now, also through remembering some emails and letters I sent, I realise that it was mainly the writing in itself that I enjoyed, especially in English. All I needed was something worthwhile to write about. Another fast forward to much later to when I finally started reading, also in English. Murakami's "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" proved to be the perfect present and as I read and finished that one I couldn't wait to start another book and then another and then another. Forget about slow. Forget about "where are the pictures?". Finally the movies I always wanted were playing in my mind as I sped through the pages. But after a couple of books a sad realisation gripped me as I asked myself: "What was the Murakami book about again? Something about a well and melanoma?". Clearly I had forgotten. I've always been someone who got through life more on the basis of an understanding in the moment rather than a remembering of the past. There are a lot of things to be said for traveling light and taking nothing with you on your travels, but I figured I preferred to try and collect some souvenirs at least. Hence the idea to write reviews. So that's the narrative. But Orwell also comes up with a list of motives, especially when it comes to writing in order to be read, which clearly apply to my case: Sheer egoism "The desire to seem clever." Check! The immediate feedback-system on Goodreads coupled with its exceedingly generous community makes this motive a potentially overpowering one. Aesthetic enthusiasm "The desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed." Check! Hope you got John McNee's books in your libraries! I think I stressed that enough by now. In the case of reviewing it can also be the opposite of aesthetic enthusiasm, for cases where you would like to dissuade people from ever getting near a certain book. Having seen some negative reviews, those can be pretty enthusiastic as well. Historical impulse "The desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for use of posterity." On the one hand I can't say Check! here because I'm dealing in opinions rather than facts, but on the other hand, as is the case with "classics", some general opinions turn into facts and it's nice to either try and debunk them or wholeheartedly defend their status. In essence to see for yourself what all the fuss is about and reach your own conclusions. Moreover the discussions on books and society that often ensue on this website are often very enriching to me and teach me in much the same way a history teacher would, so what the hell: Check! Political purpose "The desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter people's idea of the kind of society they should strive after." Dump Trump!, uhh, I mean Check! So there we have it. A "why" that has been answered, if not fully, at least partially. A reason for writing that Orwell shortly touched upon as well is "for a living". But I think only very few here get compensation in financial terms, not counting gifted books in return for reviews. Unless you guys know something that I don't. In any case, in the end the most important reason lies in the amalgam of all those reasons enumerated above, an amalgam that I can only describe as: I love being here. Just kidding, that's not a reason, that's circular reasoning. But I almost made you tear up, didn't I? It's true though. I do! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Oct 21, 2016
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Oct 21, 2016
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Paperback
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| 1857988825
| 9781857988826
| 1857988825
| 4.25
| 128,960
| 1974
| 2015
|
it was amazing
|
More than two months have passed since I've closed this book. While my traditional reviewing habit was one of immediately rushing to the closest lapto
More than two months have passed since I've closed this book. While my traditional reviewing habit was one of immediately rushing to the closest laptop after reading the last line and sharing my excitement or the lack thereof in some hopefully original way, I felt a need to really let Le Guin's words sink fully into my mind and make them my own. (Actually, I've mostly just been very lazy in the reviewing department lately, but "letting words sink in" just sounds a little better.) But when it comes to making words my own, as this dear author evoked so well in this book, longing for possession is mostly futile, and so it is with ideas, impressions and most of all, inspiration. At least in my case good ideas tend to go and come as they please and if I'm lucky they can be grasped when there's something close at hand to write them down, just as the motivation and energy to write has chosen to quickly pass through my hands. Currently, the energy is there, but apart from some sparse notes that I now have to re-interpret myself, I only have a few central take-aways that I would like to share. This review can thus be considered as a barrel of some of the reflections I managed to retain before they too evaporated into untranslatable little figments of thought. The first take-away is that this is one of my favorite books. It is engaging, it is exciting, it teaches and it entertains. Le Guin's prose is nothing short of wonderful. While the plot is not exactly extraordinary, it provides the perfect mobile in which to transport some important messages on life and civilization that this author has chosen to share. The second take-away is that this is the best dissection of our society that I've read. I've read great books on the nature of human individuals on the one hand, and abstract philosophical meanderings on time and infinity, but never felt warm to the idea of reading about one of the levels that are in-between, namely society and civilisation. The reason why I never did is that there often seems so much more stuff wrong with society than right, so that it's hard to know where to begin complaining, and even harder to know where to stop complaining and inspire change. The building is showing so many signs of decay it's hard to dispel the idea to just throw it down and start all over. Ursula Le Guin found a great starting spot in this book with which to make a nice filet out of our civilisation: the idea of possession. The need of people to "own" stands central in our way of life, and the illusion of ownership pervades much of our thinking and doing. I myself am not immune. To give just one example, I prefer to buy books rather than to go borrow them at libraries. To give another example: I just bought an apartment. Now it would be unfair to point the finger just at people here. Animals do it too, on a certain level. They want to own territory, but instead of throwing money around, they urinate all over the place or emit certain smells. For all the faults our society has, I'm glad we evolved away out of that particular habit, if only for the sake of still readable books. Do I own these books because I gave money for them and they will soon by surrounded by MY walls? I guess so. Until a fire or a flood consumes them, until the hand of time consumes me. Yet, even though the banality of ownership during our short lives is inescapable, our ways of living are so much focused on exactly that futility it's no surprise so many people feel unhappy and wronged when they see their mission to that end either obstructed or sabotaged by those around them, or recognise their endeavors as futile once the mission seems largely fulfilled. This is just a personal take-away of course, because if Ursuala Le Guin is doing one thing exceptionally well, it is the convincing way in which she gives each perspective on the matter a stage in this book. I can easily see the staunchest proponents op capitalism (and as someone who profits of that system's fruits it would be hypocritical and outright dishonest of me to claim that I dislike it myself) like this book as much as a dirty hippy or clean-shaven commie. Possession isn't just about capitalism and material goods. It's more pervasive than that. Just think about how people refer to each other. "My" son. "My" girlfriend. "My" mother. Or how Jason Mraz chose to sing of his undying love by proclaiming "I'm yours". It's innocent most of the time, but when there's problems in relationships of any kind, quite often it is a question of a certain dominance, where one is under the other, where one is partly of the other. We like to own but we don't like to be owned. Except for Jason Mraz, that is. While writing this review I was faced with another example of the futility of possession. I had made notes while reading this book that I intended to use to inspire this review. There are some interesting one-liners, some runaway thoughts, some links to real-life experiences. I would call them "my" notes. But what the two month span between writing them and reading them has shown is that even my thoughts are not entirely my own. Some lines I wrote down there are now perfectly incomprehensible to me. Others I can give an interpretation, but without the guarantee it will be the same as intended back in the day. How are these alien words still my notes? "The Dispossessed" touches on many more themes than the one I evoked here, and Le Guin shows her genius on basically every page with throwaway wisdoms that pack a punch: on prisons, on the education system, on laws, on the press, on the world of art, the army, the list goes on. She can seem cold and pessimistic sometimes: "Life is a fight, and the strongest wins. All civilization does is hide the blood and cover up the hate with pretty words." or when she states that suffering, unlike love, is real because the former ALWAYS hits the mark. Despite this recurring pessimism, I found this book to be widely uplifting by looking through that veil of coldness and finding there the beauty of life, of all the things that transcend possession. Her criticism has an inherent warmth and is not above criticism itself. It's a criticism that has channeled my own apathy towards many of society's ways into something that seems more helpful: an understanding and even a renewed love. Yes, you read that right. I love society. There's nothing I'd rather live right next to. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 14, 2016
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Oct 29, 2016
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Oct 13, 2016
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0241186633
| 9780241186633
| 0241186633
| 4.35
| 12,167
| Oct 04, 2016
| Sep 29, 2016
|
really liked it
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"With correct timing and in suitable country, with or without the help of the local population, a small specially trained force can achieve results ou
"With correct timing and in suitable country, with or without the help of the local population, a small specially trained force can achieve results out of all proportion to its numbers." - Major Roy Alexander Farran DSO The territory of military history books in bookshops is mostly undiscovered terrain for me. All these pages that glorify, rationalise and romanticise the biggest atrocities mankind has committed never managed to ignite my interest much. Both the intellectual and the romantic approach do nothing for me to detract from my conviction that at the root of war there is pure evil, plain and simple, no matter how much yarn you spin around it. People say it's important to read up on wars, on how and why they were conducted, in order to learn from the experience. But what is there to learn? Just play nice and don't go murdering each other. It's a lesson that hardly warrants a full library: an aphorism on a kitchen wall should be enough if the message resounding in your own heart doesn't suffice. I am fully aware I sound like a naive pacifist here, and people with military history or soldiers in the family might even disdain this opinion, this ingratitude in the face of their heroism and sacrifice, but let there be no mistake: I am fully aware I am indebted to all those who took up their arms in order to defend their loved ones and indirectly allowed me to be born, to live, and to live in the society I live in now, but another side of the story is that I'm here despite of all those bullets flying through the air. The irrationality of war happens on such a large scale that it's unfair to make blanket statements on all who, sometimes highly understandably, participate in it, but when I see heroes of the war being praised my thoughts usually go to those who were on the other end of that heroism, in some unmarked grave, their bravery unsung because they were on the "evil" or losing side. I find that narratives on World War II are particularly blunt in that regard because we all agree that the Nazis were the bad guys in that piece of history, and between 1939 and 1945, a dead German was a good German. Despite my many misgivings on war I am not above being entertained by war-inspired movies and video games. One of these video games was Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines, a tactical game where with a small team of specialised soldiers the player had to infiltrate enemy bases and destroy key equipment and buildings. There's something intensely satisfying about the idea of a small unit slipping through nets of patrolling enemies and reaching the target undetected. While I knew this was somehow based on real life war practices I assumed it was heavily spiced up for entertainment value. Now I know better. Who dares wins - SAS motto Thanks to some romantic notions I had around the small commando units and despite my general misgivings on the topic of war I decided to pick up this book which describes the history of the British Special Air Service (SAS) and some of the memorable missions they conducted. The SAS was the first of its kind and has since its conception inspired many future military leaders as well as movie directors. This is the first time the official SAS Archives dealing with World War II could be consulted and with Ben Macintyre an experienced writer with a gift for flowing prose was put in charge of looking into these files and extracting an engaging narrative from them. An exploit in which he succeeded remarkably well, through the well-measured use of a flurry of anecdotes but mainly because the story of SAS is such a gripping one in itself. Macintyre zooms in on some of the most characteristic members of the regiment that consisted entirely of colourful people with a knack for thinking outside of the box, bending rules and breaking their bones. Colour doesn't come thanks to only qualities. Most of these men had quirks and troubles, sometimes of a most explosive kind, and also these are described in the book, ensuring that while you read these frankly fantastic stories you never forget you're reading about real people in real situations. The narrative starts with the founding of the SAS, goes over the "gentlemanly" operations conducted in the North African deserts against Rommel's troops, moves to missions in Italy and France and ends with the ever more atrocious encounters in Germany during the final stage of the war. The first part of the book largely coincided with my views on the regiment that were based on the game, namely that they were mainly a tactical organisation intent on intelligence gathering and destroying important equipment, fuel depots and transport lines with as little death and injury possible. But soon it's clear that this is war, not a fairy tale, and inadvertently the dead bodies start piling up. Even these "romantic soldiers" dealt in blood and death, and many of the smiling faces you see in this book's photographs have faced gruesome ends. But as the opening quote has shown, the SAS inflicted more damage to the Germans than they had to endure and the death toll on the German side is quite staggering. For the first bunker of Germans that was shot up and cleared out there was a high emphasis on how cruel and vicious it had seemed, but not much later it becomes business as usual, and the chapters are simply rounded off with a quick enumeration of the mission statistics that illustrate the high success rate, which is to say: hundreds of dead nazis. This is clearly a book about those who won the war and little thought is spared for those who lost. The anecdotes range from funny stories about bagpipes on the battlefield to traumatizing experiences of murdered children and the liberation of a concentration camp. It offers a good balance between the personal perspective of some of the soldiers on the one hand and the broader context in which they operated on the other, so that the end result is an easy-to-follow narrative that, while maybe too romantic in some instances, will keep you on the edge of your seat and teach you more about how David Stirling, the founder of SAS, changed the war paradigm of two opposing fronts looking each other in the eye. Armies needed to watch their backs from then on. While this book is based on historical archives and deals in facts, it doesn't read like a dry history book because it's just so damn entertaining. I don't know how this book compares to the (auto)biographies of the soldiers who were part of this daring regiment, but I can definitely recommend it as a first read on what it's like to fight behind enemy lines. Exciting, frightening, adventurous, romantic, tragic, sometimes morally dubious and, most of all, disturbingly real. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Jan 10, 2017
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Jan 15, 2017
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Oct 05, 2016
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my rating |
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| 3.80
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it was amazing
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Nov 02, 2017
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Oct 30, 2017
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| 3.67
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liked it
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Oct 13, 2017
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Oct 13, 2017
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| 4.29
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really liked it
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Sep 26, 2017
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Sep 12, 2017
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| 3.23
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it was ok
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Sep 12, 2017
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Sep 10, 2017
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| 3.19
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really liked it
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Sep 10, 2017
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Sep 07, 2017
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| 4.32
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really liked it
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Aug 10, 2017
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Aug 05, 2017
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| 3.72
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really liked it
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Aug 2017
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Jul 08, 2017
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| 3.82
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liked it
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Oct 02, 2017
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Jun 06, 2017
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| 3.99
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really liked it
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May 29, 2017
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May 19, 2017
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| 3.42
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really liked it
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May 16, 2017
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May 10, 2017
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| 3.74
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really liked it
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Mar 20, 2017
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Mar 18, 2017
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| 3.84
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it was ok
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Mar 04, 2017
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Feb 20, 2017
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| 4.41
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it was amazing
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Feb 20, 2017
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Feb 04, 2017
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| 4.17
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really liked it
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Jan 22, 2017
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Jan 20, 2017
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| 4.23
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really liked it
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not set
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Jan 17, 2017
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| 3.81
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it was ok
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May 18, 2017
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Jan 17, 2017
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| 4.07
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it was amazing
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Jun 17, 2017
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Jan 10, 2017
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| 4.01
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it was amazing
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Oct 21, 2016
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Oct 21, 2016
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| 4.25
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it was amazing
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Oct 29, 2016
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Oct 13, 2016
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| 4.35
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really liked it
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Jan 15, 2017
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Oct 05, 2016
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