[
{
"review": "I still cherish Jane Eyre as one of the first novels I ever read for pleasure, and maybe my first foray into Brit lit, although I doubt I'd be bothered to pick it up nowadays. It's not the kind of place I go treasure hunting anymore. But reading the last few chapters today reminded me how affecting its story is.\r\n\r\nHere's my history with it. I watched the Fukunaga film in 2015, then read a few powerful pages toward the end of the book. So around 2016/2017 I dove in, like I hadn't a novel in years, and made some headway. About 2018 I reached at least three quarters -- Jane had already met St. John. I stopped. Today I read the last few chapters, clocking the read at about seven years.\r\n\r\nFrom that vantage, I'll say its sweep is strong enough, its wits keen enough, to cut through its own reedy prose. The passion pays off.",
"created_at": "2022-08-29 01:07:38 UTC",
"updated_at": "2024-02-17 22:26:36 UTC",
"book": "Jane Eyre"
},
{
"review": "The first quarter was entertaining. The next two quarters felt aimless yet remained mostly amusing. I rode those out without trying to understand much. That's how I experience much media. Near the beginning of the final quarter I sensed some underlying order and quickly perked up. This sterner attention made the volcanic final quarter desperate. Despite the frustration I suppose I'm glad I tried to comprehend things near the end, as desperation beats nonchalance in life. I never expected everything would come together, but it seemed Kaufman began wrapping his chaos in some partial packaging. It seemed we zoomed out from the narrative sea to reveal macro tides. But alas, in that final quarter, one tide followed another in destructive interference. Kaufman shook the whole unit several times near the end, canceling any identifiable order. Lives and films bled together, and I don't mean in a mosaic of characters -- I mean in the several lives and films of one character. This is like if Philip Seymour Hoffman played every Caden in Synecdoche, and the film was far longer, protracting storylines that may not top the film's authenticity hierarchy yet are indistinguishable in authenticity.\r\n\r\nAntkind was consistently funny. Its style of humor offered a buoy in the chaos, not just emotionally but rationally. It was the only consistent thing to which sanity could cling. It's also hard to feel affection toward something random, so I think the comedic voice will endure in my affection as the book's sole trusty character.\r\n\r\nThe comedic voice was profoundly sarcastic, aimed especially at Kaufman as an intellectual. I suppose this book is primarily intended for self-diagnosed intellectuals who don't take taking themselves too seriously too seriously. It was easy for me to relate to Kaufman thusly, which isn't surprising given his films' role in my formative years. Ego and humiliation fill them all.\r\n\r\nWhat's missing from Antkind, relative to his past pursuits, is a genuine emotional core. He has written some gorgeous and empathetic moments before. The strongest thing I felt in Antkind was desperation, the most common laughter. Otherwise it was pretty desolate, desperate thing after desperate thing happening, punctuated often by comedy, washed in absurdity to the point of triviality. A senseless ache for humanity in a narrator incapable of connecting with any other humans.\r\n\r\nIt is a wonder Kaufman rescued the protagonist from insufferably pretentious to indomitably heroic and also insufferably pretentious. It's the intellectually elitist version of the Michael Scott transformation (\"we need to start making him more likable\") -- heroic via depthless spirit and good intentions. Kaufman (the character) admits B.'s role is the unbreakable butt of the universe's jokes. Sometimes it's heartbreaking. As such an actor B. experiences real depression, horror, pain. I do hope he lives to see himself backward, rising from every manhole in New York City, joining Calcium.\r\n\r\nIt's hard for me to read novels, so I rarely do. I've read more classics than contemporary. So it's hard to compare Antkind. I reckon it's original and inspired, and I know it's entertaining. I also know it's unhinged, flapping recklessly in some windy synapses. I suppose it contributes to literature, with a voice trumpeting through the storm. Is it worth its weight? I can't recommend it. It doesn't pay off, unless I'm tragically overlooking something. But I will keep it dearly on my shelf.\r\n\r\nUpdates 5/9/23:\r\n\r\nA few days later I find it hard to move on. I look back at the mess like Lot's wife. I look back like Eurydice to make sure the book follows me into the daylight of post-Antkind life, worried I didn't capture enough of it. I rarely read big novels, so it gnaws me a little. I want better closure, cleaner analysis, peace. I want to justify all of the time I spent with it by carrying it with me, learning something profound or at least gaining a new lens. Antkind is over and I don't know what I gained, yet I don't want to leave.\r\n\r\nI'm seeing numerous reviews emphasizing B.'s unlikability. That never bothered me, though as a type I'm fundamentally in concert with Kaufman, so B. can't really offend me. Hence my generous Michael Scott comparison, one of the most beloved TV characters of my lifetime. I have a big heart for B. He is tortured, quite literally. One reviewer called him Job-like. And he means well. His monologues are often hilarious and deeply relatable. Sometimes he even plays the straight man -- remember how good those moments were in The Office? In a twisted reality B. and Michael periodically transform into the sanest of them all.\r\n\r\nFrom The Guardian:\r\n \"Where Kaufman's films are playfully mind-bending, they usually have real heart. But although Antkind is skippingly clever -- saturated with comic allusions, puns, linguistic inventiveness and wildly unfettered imagination -- it is sorely lacking characters you actually care about or any emotional narrative to cling to.\"\r\n This is what I was suggesting earlier, though more recently I was arguing I care about B.'s narrative... Maybe absence grows me fonder. I feel sympathy for B., even love in rosy retrospect, but nothing is emotionally coherent like the films. I daresay it isn't emotional at all, like the real laws of nature agnostic to human tragedy. That's compelling, although if I begin a long movie like Gone with the Wind, I expect some emotional rapture. Antkind frustrates any assumption of coherence. One chills oneself to brutal chaos.\r\n\r\nAntkind may make more sense than I suppose, but I suppose it doesn't make great sense. I suppose Kaufman was content to connect concepts in a compelling manner, not necessarily a coherent manner. At least he connected some of the vastly disparate concepts. Sometimes that's enough -- tying up loose ends in an ugly knot. Those moments of connection get me through stuff like Inland Empire and Antkind, even if they don't ultimately add up. Kaufman delivers enough sense to excite a rational reader, not to satisfy.\r\n I'm not seeing any reviews claim to understand the book, so I'm increasingly confident that pursuing such understanding is vanity and vexation of spirit.\r\n\r\nThesis: Antkind never completes its circuit, but it provides meaty contemplation in an invigorating and original style. It showcases brilliance without executing brilliantly. It's mostly entertaining, ultimately unsatisfying, holistically admirable.\r\n\r\nUpdates 5/20/23:\r\n\r\nRereading, some things make sense. Calcium finds B. Barassini directs B's rememorying from early in the book. There are more connections than I fathomed, forgetting details in a slow reading. I may be done rereading now, so I've given up on full understanding. The Calcium revelation (stunning) suggests there's more coherence than I expected, but I still doubt it's satisfying. No online explanations jumped out at me -- I'm sure some exist, but if most reviewers claim incoherence, at least I know I'm sane.\r\n\r\nUpdates 3/16/25:\r\n\r\nIf you're thinking \"I can't stand Kaufman's pathetic, self-indulgent male leads, who mirror Kaufman himself, meaning I can't stand most of Kaufman's movies, especially the earlier ones, although I'm Thinking of Ending Things was easily the most restrained, and given the medium change, maybe Kaufman in book form in 2020 is a new, mature Kaufman,\" don't read this book. His protagonist is the most pathetic, the most self-indulgent, the most Kaufman male lead of all. This is the most centripetal work; it's also the most centrifugal. It's the most extra altogether, being a big book as opposed to a single-sitting movie, and being unbounded by pragmatic film studios. It contains the most Kaufman and the most non-Kaufman. The protagonist is the most insufferable and, perhaps, miraculously, the most sympathetic. It's just a matter of time. You keep a reader for so many pages -- so many hours -- and you can do more than a 2-hour movie.\r\nIt's by far his funniest writing; also his most pedantic, his most neurotic, his most ambitious, his most frustrating.",
"created_at": "2023-02-28 02:57:52 UTC",
"updated_at": "2025-03-16 23:52:06 UTC",
"book": "Antkind"
},
{
"review": "I have a feeling I would have preferred Gilbert's translation. Ward, in his American initiative, becomes almost unartistic. But I overindulge fancy language.\r\n\r\nI think Meursault is neither wicked nor decent, even in a world assigning such attributes worth. The prosecution is baffling, but, despite Meursault's rhetorical privilege as narrator, so is his crime. I often sympathize with his indifference, but not his ineffectiveness when he does desire something. For example, I don't fault him his moral apathy surrounding the trial, but why is he so incompetent toward an outcome he acutely prefers, walking free? Even when his perception is spot-on, and he feels earthly desire, he fails to actualize. He trips on his environment while transcending it.\r\n\r\nI'd like to read more commentary, but I didn't notice much novelty in The Stranger, from my millennial seat. Apathy is familiar. Camus admitted Americans did brief blunt syntax first. I did enjoy the story though. I like a distillation. Start with the Hollywood cut and then remove everything that gives away the point. Then remove everything that amplifies or prolongs an emotion that's already stated. State emotions, themes, and events briefly, with reservation. Yet I said I overindulge fancy language... Dylan Thomas balances both paradigms in the first third of his Collected Poems. His language is sacred without becoming dramatic; between banter and Bronte. Camus via Ward is a little dead, besides occasional exquisite digression.\r\n\r\nWhat's more absurd: murder by sunstroke or death penalty by not crying at your mother's funeral? Camus commentary is all about the Absurd, and both events feel improbable, but which is the crux, and is it really absurd? So much for \"the nakedness of man faced with the absurd\" if Meursault is the absurd one, with plenty of opportunity to save himself. Besides his godless meaningless universe, which isn't very absurd at all, Meursault's life isn't that bad, if he could just avoid approaching an adversary with his senses disoriented and a gun in his hand. This isn't Meursault vs. Universe, it's Meursault vs. whatever social and sensory abnormalities he's enduring. That doesn't seem quite so existentialist. Again, the prosecution is borderline absurd, but so is the crime, so I question the existentialist theme beyond the obvious (hardly existentialist anymore) atheism/nihilism.\r\n\r\nI wonder Camus's purpose. I called it a distillation because it didn't beat any dead horses, but it did beat a lot of horses. This isn't a work of philosophy, with all that narrative detail. It's a philosophically apathetic novella. For that, I liked some of the descriptions, and I liked meditating on Meursault's mindset. Obvious it is, but challenging, therefore worth prolonged confrontation.",
"created_at": "2023-02-28 03:00:37 UTC",
"updated_at": "2023-06-24 13:54:34 UTC",
"book": "The Stranger"
},
{
"review": "Walden to me is the memoir of a noble spirit and not much more. I typically don't prioritize biographies, and this felt similar: one person's experience, elegant, invigorated, yet one person's experience. Granted I skimmed it -- maybe there's treasure in the continuity -- I couldn't sustain interest through the slight poverty of the two things that help me through heavy reads: practical insight and emotional intensity. The book is a gem, the author a beacon. At this time in my life, it's an uphill battle I can't complete. Another time it could have been a catalyst.",
"created_at": "2023-02-28 03:44:34 UTC",
"updated_at": "2024-01-20 20:41:58 UTC",
"book": "Walden or, Life in the Woods"
},
{
"review": "When I started, I thought \"philosophy is for unhappy people, so now is probably not the time for this.\" Then I thought \"that's silly, books like this have been on my list for years, and one can always improve one's life.\" Later I thought \"I rarely think things are boring, and this is a little boring.\" Finally I thought \"I like everything going on here, but now is probably not the time. I'm not searching.\"",
"created_at": "2023-02-28 03:57:17 UTC",
"updated_at": "2024-02-28 01:40:33 UTC",
"book": "Buddhism without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening"
},
{
"review": "I didn't try very hard to interpret these stories. I left the ambiguity poignantly suspended, as I assume Murakami intended. If any allegory lurked, I missed it. The collection reminded me of the movie Magnolia: vignettes swirling an arbitrary center, raw, sung with utmost empathy, and an emphasis on frogs. Both suppose humanity is most authentically painted in unfinished portraits. I'm amazed Murakami produces long novels considering his penchant for snipping storylines. Maybe the novels are just protractions of this process: many suggestions of a story, all snipped at 70%. I get it -- I think it's easier to generate tension than satisfaction. As such, I didn't revere his writing as others seem to; typically I like to get more out of a book than poignant suggestions, unless the style is precisely my taste. There's nothing I disliked about After the Quake, I just demand a little more. I believe with slightly different taste this impatience wouldn't matter, and I'd eat it up; or if Murakami pounced on the tension, rather than watching it slip away, I'd eat it up. With furrowed brow he watches his own stories slip through his fingers like sand. It feels like there's so much to grasp, yet he knows what matters most is what's most ungraspable.\r\n\r\nI think I would have a very hard time with his novels, which is not his fault; but I wouldn't object to more stories. I'm the opposite of Junpei's market.\r\n\r\nStandout line: \"I am, indeed, pure Frog, but at the same time I am a thing that stands for a world of un-Frog.\"",
"created_at": "2023-03-13 23:08:46 UTC",
"updated_at": "2024-02-03 23:58:18 UTC",
"book": "After the Quake"
},
{
"review": "This is the perfect format to connect me to a place through literature. It balances history, poetry, science, visual art, and more, in digestible fragments. I wish all places, all things had books like this. It suits my learning style. A Black Hills edition would have enriched my time in South Dakota. An Eau Claire edition should have been required reading. The Driftless area already feels more tangible.",
"created_at": "2023-05-24 00:15:24 UTC",
"updated_at": "2023-06-06 03:30:47 UTC",
"book": "The Driftless Reader"
},
{
"review": "Only Boomers and musicologists can know more than half of these songs. I skimmed the numerous whose titles and artists I'd never heard.\r\n\r\nDespite the title, this is nowhere near a work of philosophy. It's brief reflections on dozens of songs, usually in two parts: an abstract meditation on the lyrics and a historical musing. I surprisingly favored the latter, with its tangible nuggets, over the airy former. Dylan is a qualified and commanding historian. The abstractions were still impressive in their word association and imagery. All of this proves Dylan is a real writer, of more than just moody songs. My perception of him really grounded after Scorsese's Rolling Thunder. I thought he'd lost his mind over the decades, withering, blubbering, stiff. That's just his stage persona. In the documentary, in the podcast, in this book, Dylan is sharp of eye and tongue.\r\n\r\nThis book is neither the \"master class\" nor \"momentous artistic achievement\" of the cover flap. As a musician in 2023 I didn't learn much, and as a Dylan fan I can say the artistry shrinks beside any slice of his songwriting. It's nice to hear him musing lightly though, and people who grew up with these songs may appreciate the reflections. At 80, is he still the voice of his generation?\r\n\r\nFavorite passage:\r\n\"A big part of songwriting, like all writing, is editing--distilling thought down to essentials. Novice writers often hide behind filigree. In many cases the artistry is in what is unsaid. As the old saying goes, an iceberg moves gracefully because most of it is beneath the surface...\" and his ensuing portrayal of Townes Van Zandt.",
"created_at": "2023-07-05 16:07:11 UTC",
"updated_at": "2023-07-09 15:29:17 UTC",
"book": "The Philosophy of Modern Song"
},
{
"review": "I read Part 1, a third of the book. I wish I could finish, I like it fine, but I don't have time for novels that aren't electrifying me.\r\n\r\nIn early high school I idolized Dylan and the Beats; later in high school the hedonism sickened me; through college I lost interest in the apparent immaturity; now I can finally dig the Beats from a balanced mind. The recent impetus was Dylan talking in some documentary about \"the ones who never yawn\"; besides Bound for Glory I think On the Road was his first literary influence.\r\n\r\nI expected inspired babbling, more coherent than Tarantula and Finnegan's Wake, more stream-of-consciousness jazz than it really has. Maybe I conflated with Fear and Loathing? On the Road is highly relatable, almost normal. It's hardly even hedonistic. There's that first night, in the upstate rain; it floored me; I didn't expect any anxiety in the whole book, and here it hits hard in ten pages. Kerouac is sensitive like Salinger. He's observing and participating in the culture, but he's not forging its cutting edge. Those folks are fearless, typically too young to understand the consequences. Sal is older and more worn. I don't know what age Sal is, but it felt familiar, like if I befriended a firecracker 20-year-old now.\r\n\r\nIndeed I'm reading this too late. Early in high school it may have changed my direction; now it seems an artifact of unsustainable youth. All youth ages, and the heights of this book must come down, must seek balance.",
"created_at": "2023-07-19 04:20:22 UTC",
"updated_at": "2023-08-27 17:11:14 UTC",
"book": "On the Road"
},
{
"review": "Hamlet was as savory in language and drama as any Shakespeare I've read, though I expected moral lesson. I heard it's a tragedy of weakness; I don't know what weakness, other than squandering an opportunity through moralizing, to his ultimate demise. But in vengeance he was misled from the start. That's never a fruitful motive, not that I would have been cold to my murdered father's ghost. Others saw the ghost, meaning a) this is also not an example of weakness (madness), and b) could he really have denied its injunction? This is really his revered father resurrected, and Hamlet actually stays strong to his cause. I see Hamlet as misguided, broken, not weak. His House razed, a veritable angel urging him, he hardly fails.\n\nQuick of tongue and plot, this play raced from antiquity to the modern ear. Some stronger moral would have been the last star in my rating.",
"created_at": "2023-07-19 04:23:10 UTC",
"updated_at": "2023-09-25 01:03:39 UTC",
"book": "Hamlet"
},
{
"review": "Written 5/13/22\r\n\r\nI've read a good deal of the novel. It's actually kind of stunning Coppola made the movie as subtle as it is. I've heard of unsubtle adaptations, but how often is the adaptation subtler than the source? The Shining?\r\n\r\nThe novel is almost pulp. The Godfather is the greatest man who ever lived. Sonny is the manliest man who ever lived. The romance is always absolute ecstasy. The sphincter always opens at the moment of death. It's all graphically descriptive. It's quite entertaining, but nothing like experiencing the film. The novel stays cranked to 11, but the film stays relatively subdued. Brando mumbles softly; one mournful trumpet sings in the distance.\r\n\r\nI'm not sure I can call it low-brow though. I haven't read enough of that kind of thing. It's nothing like \"classic literature\", but it seems well-crafted and intelligent. I don't think it's despicable, it's just not very subtle. It's one of the more entertaining novels I've read.\r\n\r\nIt's just interesting that the filmmakers read between the lines and saw the potential for a far more subdued yet massively popular film. I think Puzo helped write the film, and its sequel, which is even drier, if I remember right. I guess this is what I've asked of superhero films lately. I like the foundation of superhero stories, but the execution is never subtle, at least not in film. The filmmakers made The Godfather subtle and mature. The vision to do such a thing is interesting. I guess I try to do the same in playing pop songs on the piano. I want to extract the sensational elements of pop and age them to something more complex. I aim to put pop in oak barrels -- the flavors are there but they're mellowed and surrounded by new mellow variations.\r\n\r\nThe Godfather, The Shining, stripped versions of pop songs, lots of modern art,... artists often try to interpret lower-brow culture, it's just surprising to see it from novel to film, since film is intrinsically more sensational. Things usually get less subtle in that direction.",
"created_at": "2023-08-27 17:57:19 UTC",
"updated_at": "2023-08-31 21:09:55 UTC",
"book": "The Godfather (The Godfather, #1)"
},
{
"review": "I read 40 pages of Borders' abridged Don Quixote. In that scant space I learned it's fundamentally comedic, comically verbose, and too long for me to casually endure. With speedier comprehension or more time on my hands I think I could enjoy it; or if it were dedicated to presenting or embodying Spanish history it could serve me well; but with too many books to read I'm going to assume it's more fossil of Spanish history than symbol, and move on.",
"created_at": "2023-10-01 15:35:27 UTC",
"updated_at": "2023-10-01 16:05:12 UTC",
"book": "Don Quixote"
},
{
"review": "Godlike, resourceful Odysseus looks darkly on him; the green fear seizes him; the pitiless bronze smashes clean through; he falls thunderously, biting the Earth; the floor smokes with blood.\r\n\r\nI like the idiosyncratic language of this book, equally graphic and holy, always repetitive. The translation is a little awkward, but that's the price of syntactic loyalty to a distant tongue:\r\n\r\n\"such was the size of the broad raft made for himself by Odysseus\"\r\n\"the knees of Odysseus gave way for fear, and the heart inside him\"\r\n\r\nThat's not smooth English syntax, and I might have preferred a more poetic translation, but I really don't mind the clunky fidelity. I don't know Ancient Greek, but I hope Lattimore gave me a fair taste as he intended. Either way I'm glad I abandoned Fitzgerald's colloquialisms.\r\n\r\nI read most of the book, skimming a few sections. Certainly Odysseus recounting his trials and confronting the suitors were the most exciting. These sections were genuinely dramatic in a largely dry epic.",
"created_at": "2023-10-15 00:39:58 UTC",
"updated_at": "2023-11-26 19:30:15 UTC",
"book": "The Odyssey of Homer"
},
{
"review": "In skimming I found: 1) the style is more effective than I expected -- clean, honest, even modest, compared to my Godfather-sized expectations; 2) the HBO adaptation was so multidimensionally faithful that the book isn't useful to me until I have way more time to kill. I doubt that'll ever happen beyond skimming. I've allotted one devout seat to fantasy. Tolkien sits there.",
"created_at": "2023-11-01 20:38:31 UTC",
"updated_at": "2024-01-14 14:26:29 UTC",
"book": "A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1)"
},
{
"review": "I've only skimmed, but it's a piercing style I wouldn't have expected to like, like the rare minor classical piece that gets me. This is the right kind of dark art.",
"created_at": "2023-12-20 01:27:43 UTC",
"updated_at": "2023-12-20 01:33:37 UTC",
"book": "Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow"
},
{
"review": "White intellectual romanticizing the exotic -- Michener reminded me of snippets I've seen of Gregory David Roberts and Paul Gauguin. All wore the garb of admirable art. Five years ago I would have admired Michener's subtlety or his worldliness. It's an impressive amount of traveling: I couldn't believe his encyclopedic knowledge in Iberia, then I found out he wrote many books about as many locales. For his time and place he's an enviable intellect. Nevertheless his \"great men\" worldview feels dated. And I doubt every Spaniard enjoyed him as much as he enjoyed them; I doubt even he enjoyed them as much as he recorded; I doubt his experiences were as ravishing as he insisted. Throughout the book his vast love of life is laced with fetish. Still I can't fault a life prolific in traveling and writing. He had a knack for both.\r\n\r\nBy the way I merely skimmed this heavy book, mostly attendant to my own future travels.",
"created_at": "2024-01-24 02:47:05 UTC",
"updated_at": "2024-01-24 04:02:37 UTC",
"book": "Iberia"
},
{
"review": "A few days ago I watched Breathless, thinking it probably felt cool in 1960, and now feels lame. If someone wrote Death of a Salesman today, I'd probably call it juvenile, and tiresome. On both occasions I'll trust the scholars that the work was impactful, but both lean on dated nonconformity. Even Jane Eyre feels comparatively fresh, since we have to search that archaic language for meaning. This mid-century stuff is too old to feel new and too new to feel novel.\r\n\r\nI thought I'd like Death of a Salesman, among Pre-Kaufmans; but Synecdoche if anything made Death feel even dustier. It's hard to imagine anyone performing this without the cheese Kaufman imbued it. Maybe he never really liked it, and satirizing it was self-satire, his brand. In any event, I'd be impressed to see any actors pull off this play.\r\n\r\nI don't hate it; of course I admire what it represents. But gee does it deliver that in a weary package.\r\n\r\nI'm tired of \"great works\" that don't offer great experiences today.",
"created_at": "2024-02-18 21:49:51 UTC",
"updated_at": "2024-02-18 22:42:09 UTC",
"book": "Death of a Salesman"
},
{
"review": "After a few short stories each from Murakami, Hemingway, Kafka, and Joyce (masters, right?), I can't say I understand the form very well. Is art just subtraction? You extensively depict a scene and then subtract half the details and all the meaning before publishing? That's artistic; the artist gave nothing away; it's so authentically vacant. Then why did they write it? And why did I read it?\r\n\r\nI haven't disliked any of the four. It's easier to pass my basic test when you're operating in what's not said, in the unseen. Often my contempt goes to the overstated; the understated slides through. It then dodges my love.\r\n\r\nShort stories are still an effective vehicle for my gaining traction in prose. I wish I connected better with them.\r\n\r\nI read the first five Dubliners; they eluded my expectations for the author I've always coveted and never read. Besides the absence of clear purpose, they're pretty conventional, certainly in prose style. Sometimes he commits all-too-common errors of style like superfluous adjectives. I expected to wade through advanced idiosyncrasies, not the banes of high school English. Nothing too bad though. Above all the stories failed to strike me, or I failed to step forward for the striking. Allegedly, if I'm not struck by now, Dubliners will never strike me, so I'm going to set my coveted author aside until I'm ready to try Portrait. And I'm going to stay skeptical of that one poll that seemed so ubiquitous that put Ulysses above all modern literature. At this point I'm more motivated by my 9th grade English teacher who loved Portrait than by the most studied poll.\r\n\r\nI hear Dubliners are classics of the medium, almost textbook. What a medium! founded on airy morsels. That's like a food pyramid with oyster crackers on the bottom. The top must just be herbal odors. I'll take the old Irish potato diet instead.\r\n\r\nStructure of each story: the scene is set in detail; the focus turns hard, away from the details just established; the end is curious. That's all there's time for in four-page stories. I think I can handle artistic ambiguity, but usually it's a thicker experience. I love the idea of exploring the plainfolk of Dublin. Maybe they're too plain, or maybe I need something interesting to happen to them.",
"created_at": "2024-02-25 03:09:31 UTC",
"updated_at": "2024-08-25 00:18:18 UTC",
"book": "Dubliners"
},
{
"review": "Vladimir and Estragon are bound friends. Vladimir unwittingly oppresses Estragon with religion. Estragon strives to live tangibly, day by day. The unfit pair quiver between salvation and suicide, paralyzed by these equal and mutually exclusive solutions.\r\n\r\nAfter the thrill of Antkind I endeavored to reconsider its influences. It isn't going so well. It's not that these modernist, existentialist, and/or nihilist works are dull or dense. It's that modernist, existentialist, or nihilist flair isn't enough. These works orbit on the novelty of that theme; if the novelty goes, they careen. I admire Godot's spot in history, but it doesn't feel all that profound anymore.",
"created_at": "2024-03-10 17:55:37 UTC",
"updated_at": "2024-03-10 18:28:48 UTC",
"book": "Waiting for Godot"
},
{
"review": "I just read the first story, noticing it delivered the same kind of value as After the Quake: obscure value. Not nothing, yet not tangible. I can't call it useless, and I can't use it. If that's Murakami, then I'll respectfully stop here. Given my trouble focusing through stories, I need really chewy style, plot, or ideas. I'm asking for ice cream and Murakami is producing clouds. For wispy writing I need shorter formats, like poetry. I can't justify longer formats without clearer value, as I can't justify TV series compared to movies.",
"created_at": "2024-03-13 00:57:48 UTC",
"updated_at": "2024-03-13 00:57:55 UTC",
"book": "The Elephant Vanishes"
},
{
"review": "Like Feynman on physics, Lewis on God grounds his incredible scholarship in common sense, sober life, making him the ideal professor. That's not to say they don't dabble in the pedantic; Lewis is truly a philosopher at turns, wielding a wheeling logic a la Descartes, dismaying the skeptical along with the practical. But he usually acknowledges his adventures as such, before returning to his humble homestead of \"mere\" Christianity. I admire those simultaneously possessed of elite education and elite reason. That said, Lewis is a Christian apologist as much as anything in this collection, and I by no means buy his core arguments. Some I think are very reasonable, even when not ultimately accurate; others are silly; the latter are at least pardonable by the man's honest struggle to push humanity forward. The worst are the oppressive ones, where Lewis strays too far in righteous judgment. At the end of the day here's someone trying to convert others to his religion. However \"mere\" his Christianity, he inherits its condescension and prejudice. Thus I must say \"as far as Christians go\"... he appears to be my type of thinker. I mean nothing of the validity or invalidity of the religion, but of the style and values of C.S. Lewis. In Christianity's intellectual constraints, Lewis is an intellectual both familiar and model.",
"created_at": "2024-03-17 20:44:56 UTC",
"updated_at": "2024-03-17 20:44:56 UTC",
"book": "The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics"
},
{
"review": "I read large sections of the first three books this weekend. They feel just like the movies, which is a testament to the loyalty of the adaptations as well as the universality of the books. Adapting Rowling for global cinematic consumption must have been a technical challenge but not an artistic challenge -- Rowling is immediately and enormously appealing. Harry Potter could succeed in any medium by its classic storytelling. Rowling commands plot, style, character, and world in rare combination.",
"created_at": "2024-03-24 17:25:54 UTC",
"updated_at": "2024-03-24 17:41:10 UTC",
"book": "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter, #3)"
},
{
"review": "Like most great works I've explored lately, The Metamorphosis was not great; was at best interesting in a historical way, or mildly entertaining. I'm tired of this experience, hearing how historic works have kept their edge and finding them eroded. I'm sure The Metamorphosis cut keenly in its day; apparently that memory persists.",
"created_at": "2024-03-30 18:31:22 UTC",
"updated_at": "2024-03-30 19:33:32 UTC",
"book": "The Metamorphosis"
},
{
"review": "I'm glad he was Poet Laureate, as that's exactly the kind of poems these appear to be: exceedingly accessible and exceedingly British.",
"created_at": "2024-03-31 19:47:24 UTC",
"updated_at": "2024-03-31 19:58:26 UTC",
"book": "The Best of Betjeman"
},
{
"review": "The structure is perfect for me: short poems, quadrilingual (Chinese words in Chinese alphabet, Chinese words in our alphabet, literal translation, and poetic translation [the final two may sound redundant but they're great]), with interesting historical and aesthetic commentary, and thoughtful organization. The only problem is I have no prior experience to qualify the author, so I'm just trusting him. I've never known much about Chinese language, Chinese poetry, or even China; hopefully now I no longer know nothing.\r\n\r\nI picked up this book at an old library book sale, when my threshold for buying books was problematically low. I thought little of the book for almost a decade and nearly ditched it last year. Now it's on my top shelf. I hope the author isn't delusional or something, because this is now a key book for me.\r\n\r\nIt took a few poems (and their commentary) to see beyond the bland simplicity. It helped to have all of those translations, especially the one that reveals the rhyme. I think I would love these poems if I could simultaneously hear their rhyme and comprehend their meaning. Unfortunately those two things happen in different languages for me. But even knowing the rhyme and meter are there convinces me these are all the more precious in the original tongue. I feel that way about lots of English poetry: I cherish the rhythm, rhyme, and puns, all of which must leave readers of translations underwhelmed. Music is integral to poetry, especially for someone like me. That's why translated poetry is tough. Seeing the original, as in this book, helps.",
"created_at": "2024-04-25 00:47:35 UTC",
"updated_at": "2024-04-25 01:16:58 UTC",
"book": "The Heart of Chinese Poetry: Fifty-Seven of the Best Traditional Chinese Poems in a Dual-Language Edition"
},
{
"review": "Summary (spoilers):\r\nAn oracle tells the king and queen their infant son Oedipus will grow up to kill his father and marry his mother, so they abandon him in the wilderness. He is found and raised in another city, not knowing he's adopted, yet he encounters the same prophecy. Thinking it refers to his adoptive parents (who he doesn't know are adoptive), he leaves town and kills his father on the road in a random scuffle, thus unknowingly fulfilling the first part. Kingless, Thebes is seized by a sphinx, from whom wandering Oedipus frees his birthplace. They make him king, and he marries the widow queen; at this point no one in the world knows Oedipus is the lost prince. He breeds with his mother. Thebes falls to ruin; the gods are disgusted by the incest and patricide. Oedipus consults an oracle, who blames him and reiterates the prophecy. Oedipus learns his father was killed just how he killed the man on the road, and realizes the first part of the prophecy was fulfilled. He fears the second part and strives to learn his parentage, while his wife/mother rejects all prophets, consciously or unconsciously fearing this one's truth. He hears from the man who found the prince in the wilderness and connects it to his adoption, thus acknowledging the entire prophecy. He stabs his eyes and selflessly suggests exile. He learns he isn't the first to acknowledge the rest of the prophecy: his wife/mother/queen is found dead by her own hand, foreseeing the revelation. Thus ends \"Oedipus Rex\". I haven't read \"Oedipus at Colonus\", but evidently Oedipus dies in exile. Thus begins the setup to \"Antigone\". Oedipus' two sons and two daughters grow up. One son revolts against Thebes and the sons kill each other. This makes Creon, Oedipus' brother-in-law/uncle, king. Creon orders the revolting son left unburied, an ultimate punishment in ancient Greece. Oedipus' daughters debate burying him, an ultimate crime in Creon's Thebes. Antigone wants to brave human law by burying her brother according to divine law, and possibly because her late parents can never give her another brother. Ismene is less brave and tries to stop Antigone. Antigone does it. She's caught and many classic arguments ensue. Creon's son Haemon entreats him her pardon based on 1) popular opinion 2) his own morals 3) his love for Antigone. Creon refuses, ordering Antigone imprisoned for life and the body dug up. The same prophet as in \"Oedipus\" warns Creon of family doom, so Creon reverses his orders, but too late. Antigone is already hung in her cell, Haemon self-stabbed at her feet, and Creon's wife dead in mourning her son. Creon begs for death.\r\n\r\nAs you may surmise, \"Oedipus\" is more narratively interesting while \"Antigone\" is more thematically interesting. Each is well-woven and dramatic to the superlative; while the values are antique, the drama is timeless. These plays won't transform or infuriate the modern audience like they may have the ancient, but they can still be exciting to read, or curious as a slice of ancient zeitgeist.\r\n\r\nTime itself hardly blunts a good story; good stories die by ceaseless mimicry. Despite the foundational seats of Sophocles and Homer in western art, I can't say I've seen enough knockoffs to kill the thrill, or even spoil the endings. I progressed with genuine anticipation.",
"created_at": "2024-05-25 16:52:40 UTC",
"updated_at": "2024-05-25 19:58:24 UTC",
"book": "Oedipus the King and Antigone (Crofts Classics)"
},
{
"review": "AFTER PART 1 ACT 1 SCENE 1:\r\n\r\nDisclaimer: I don't know German and I haven't read or seen Faust in any format.\r\n\r\nKaufmann is as loyal in technique as any translator -- of any work -- I've identified. When Goethe breaks his pentameter, this way or that, Kaufmann follows, this way or that. He rhymes the right lines. It's astounding. I know English is Germanic, but Kaufmann leaps through many hoops when the languages lose phase.\r\n\r\nGerman:\r\n\r\nDer Herr: Kennst du den Faust?\r\n\r\n Mephistopheles: Den Doktor?\r\n\r\n Der Herr: Meinen Knecht!\r\n\r\n Mephistopheles: Furwahr!\r\n\r\nEnglish:\r\n\r\nThe Lord: Do you know Faust?\r\n\r\n Mephistopheles: The doctor?\r\n\r\n The Lord: Aye, my servant.\r\n\r\n Mephistopheles: Lo!\r\n\r\nThis is iambic hexameter in both languages (as far as I can interpret the German), and Kaufmann shuffles syllables between speakers to make sure of it. This can't be easy, yet he sustains it through many pages.\r\n\r\nBut it's not just metric loyalty that's impressive; considering that constraint, Kaufmann's poetry is a technical achievement. Rigid to the German, it reads like English poetry. Again, I know English is Germanic, but this can't be easy. Kaufmann finds rhymes and style to make it all work.\r\n\r\nHowever, a critical caveat lurks: it's hard to follow. Kaufmann takes his technical constraints seriously, as I would, at clarity's expense. I almost need SparkNotes. A year ago I might have blamed my own reading comprehension, but I've endured some tough classics lately, and I don't think Faust should be my hardest. Maybe Kaufmann is too deep in his heritage of German philosophers.\r\n\r\nThis makes Faust slow going, for an already slow reader, but I'm not sure I would ask for anything different. Indeed, when I read modern \"readable\" translations, I ask for technical loyalty or traditional style. Now I have those, and I won't complain about the readability. A translator can hardly achieve it all. But I will acknowledge the readability.\r\n\r\nMaybe it will improve. If not, I'll see if I can digest enough of the story to continue, and I'll appreciate the formal achievement. I used to say I was more interested in Shakespeare's language than his drama. Kaufmann's Faust is so far an exhibition of the former interest, but I'll see if I can indulge the latter as well, as I proceed.\r\n\r\nAFTER THE ENTIRE BOOK:\r\n\r\nI was ready to love this book. The premise is great, the legacy is rich, the translator is classic, and the bilingual presentation is ideal. I could not seem to enjoy it. I hesitate to ever call something boring, but Faust must have fallen in some interference trough of boring and challenging.\r\n\r\nGoethe and Kaufmann are both tough here. Goethe floats through abstractions which Kaufmann makes no effort to ground. I'd love to see it on the stage; it needs some corporeality.\r\n\r\nClassical rhyme always pleases me. It did not really please me here. The meter was too inconsistent, the narrative too slow. I surely enjoyed the play more for the rhyme, but did not enjoy the rhyme as I should. It's a long play, with long tired scenes, to sustain any rhythmic pleasure. Maybe the German is better.\r\n\r\nThe themes are lost on me. I don't want to invest any more energy. Just getting through the play was tedious. I don't dislike any bit of it, but it was tough. Maybe I'm used to knowing more about a classic book before reading it. Often I've seen the movie already. I had no idea how Faust went, and I've been lower on energy these days altogether, so processing the language, narrative, and themes all at once proved excessive, with slight pleasure to goad me.",
"created_at": "2024-06-19 00:04:09 UTC",
"updated_at": "2025-06-19 07:59:50 UTC",
"book": "Faust"
},
{
"review": "I love Dickinson's persona. I don't love her poetry. Her imperfect rhyme and inscrutable messaging baffle satisfaction; as soon as a poem gains some metric or thematic thrust, it skews and stutters. I'm surprised she resonates as a hit poet. I imagine part of that is her persona, part a want of American poets. Some of her more popular poems offer easier images (hope as a bird, death's horses), but even those images are merely digestif to something mysterious. And most poems I noticed, of the thousands, lacked digestif.\r\n\r\nWhich came first: ballad meter sounding cheesy, or Emily Dickinson employing it in 1,700 poems? I'm not a big fan. Contrast Burns, who manages to sound as folksy as ballad meter with totally unconventional forms, like the Burns stanza. I think there's something natural (or nurtural) about ballad meter, yet I can't imagine spending an entire career in it. I'd love to see Dickinson experiment with meter beyond knowingly bad approximations of common meter.\r\n\r\nShe is a master, and she is arresting. She's also closed to me. I'm sure I'll come back to her with closer analysis sometime.",
"created_at": "2024-06-19 00:36:41 UTC",
"updated_at": "2024-06-28 21:48:14 UTC",
"book": "The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson"
},
{
"review": "I'd love to see Faustus, like Goethe's Faust, on the stage. The material is exciting but the reading is slow. It needs some sensory backdrop. Well, indeed, it was written for stage, not for text. Come to think of it, most plays I've read lately needed something: Faustus, Faust, Godot, Death of a Salesman. Maybe they all demand their intended medium: the theater. Sophocles fared best among these with his direct dialogue, pure drama. Faustus and Faust have a lot of fluff. Even getting past poetic style (my Sophocles translation was much more modern than Faustus and my Faust translation), these last lay heavy with the decorations of archaic humor and cryptic allegory. They were abstract (Faust and Mephistophilis fly through some surreal and silly situations that don't seem to advance the story at all) where Sophocles was direct (when Oedipus learned he'd been having sex with his mom, he stabbed his eyes out). As for Godot and Death of a Salesman, I don't think the stage would save them, but it would help. I can't imagine anyone acting them well, but it would be interesting to see the visual/aural interpretation.\r\n\r\nFaustus is the type of material I like: traditional story of human vs. divine, delivered very artistically. I'll have to figure out why Marlowe and Goethe didn't hit me. Maybe it's time to step out of the frying pan into the fire: Dante.",
"created_at": "2024-08-03 20:06:32 UTC",
"updated_at": "2024-08-04 14:25:41 UTC",
"book": "Doctor Faustus (Signet Classics)"
},
{
"review": "First I will attempt to summarize the alien plot. Having not read 2001, I must fill in some blanks in Kubrick's impressionism and 2010's hindsight.\r\n\r\n<spoiler>Intelligence arose outside the Solar System, by evolution not unlike humanity's, yet far earlier. It exceeded humanity, past sentient AI to beings of pure energy. They were lonely. They considered intelligence intrinsically worthy of proliferation. So they sought intelligence throughout the universe. They even assisted, though not so much that the intelligence had no chance to prove and refine itself. They provided clues at critical moments. (Is this how God works? Intrinsically enjoying life and just barely assisting its proliferation at key moments?) Around 3 million years ago, I think, they dropped a few monoliths in our Solar System, seeing some potential for intelligent life here. The monoliths are flexible tools. One, according to the first movie, was discovered by pre-humans and spurred them to use tools. By what mechanism? Simply by the pre-human's mind grasping for the first time perfect geometry? Or by some stronger will communicated through the monolith? Anyway those pre-humans learned to kill each other with tools, which precipitates all human technology up to the year 2001. When I was younger, I supposed the point of the monoliths was sinister: to inspire humanity to destroy itself by advanced weapons. First it was lesson on beating each other with bones; then after we discovered the lunar monolith we were inspired to build HAL, who would surpass and probably subdue humanity. After 2010 though, the monolith builders aren't so malevolent. They spur us, but not toward intentional destruction. Yet they leave us to destruction if we aren't intelligent enough to save ourselves. Anyway, once we find the lunar monolith, if I remember and interpret the movie right, it shouts that it's been found. It points to Jupiter, where orbits another monolith, a really useful one. The purpose of the first was to spur technology; the second to point to Jupiter when we're just smart enough to get to the moon; the third to capture one of us. We sent people to explore the Jupiter monolith. HAL went crazy in the face of apparently conflicting programs, but that seems an unrelated subplot now. One of us made it to the Jupiter monolith, which was a gateway. It flung him to other regions and made him into one of them (pure energy). I'm curious how the 2001 book handles this transformation. Why did it make him into one of them? As a bridge with humanity? I'm not sure why they needed him. In his own words, he seemed merely a dog on a leash, not super useful, if anything annoying. But now humanity wants to go back to Jupiter to investigate HAL, the monolith, and his disappearance. Somehow humanity proves its worth to the aliens. Bowman helps. The aliens plant von Neumann monoliths on Jupiter, to suck up its atmosphere, condense it, and thereby explode Jupiter. This creates a second sun, enabling life on some of Jupiter's moons. This is a gift to humanity: a new sun with new organic planets to colonize. Europa is protected though; Europa already showed life, and by 20,001 (18,000 years later) Europa is almost as civilized as Earth in 2001. By that time humanity has thoroughly colonized Jupiter's other moons and is awaiting the Europans, who are protected -- until their evolution roughly equals humanity's -- by a monolith on Europa and its \"sphere of power.\"</spoiler>\r\n\r\nClarke is smart, imaginative, and sometimes poetic. He's eloquent in non-sentient celestial drama. He's atrocious in sentient dialogue. Any attempt at conveying human conversation, or even internal monologue, or even the desires of aliens, is totally clumsy. This all reeks of Tolkien, whom I love and carefully qualify. Tolkien's prose is gorgeous in natural phenomena and the deepest longings of life. His everyday dialogue sucks. Obviously he's also incredibly imaginative. I describe Clarke very similarly, although I respect Tolkien much higher as a writer. Linguistics nerds are hardly nerds, after all. Clarke is a hard nerd, having all the struggles I'd expect if I said \"sci-fi Tolkien.\" I wonder if I'm not the first to call him that. I'm just talking about prose style though. Clarke isn't attempting Tolkien's world-building; his agenda is just different. But stylistically he's similarly grand and formal and out-of-touch.\r\n\r\nI haven't been prolific in sci-fi consumption, but the writers seem to struggle balancing science and art. Kubrick in the 60s seems to have done this as well as anyone, which is amazing considering how quickly sci-fi dates itself. Most other attempts seem very cheesy. That's what I thought of Clarke's short stories, a few of which I read a few years ago -- interesting ideas, educated execution, zero artistry. I love Interstellar, which is inspiring and exciting, and achingly cheesy.\r\n\r\n2010 is interesting and generally exciting. It reunites me with some precious science. There's a bit of good drama. It kindles the imagination. And the artistry is regularly horrible. Not just the artificial dialogue (did HAL write this book?) but the narrative. I wouldn't call Clarke a great writer. I'd call him a scientist with some inspired imagination and some basic training in creative writing. His creative writing is so dated though, and not actually very creative -- like TV commercials from the 1950s which execute basic marketing concepts but fail to resonate. He's more scientifically educated than almost any creative writer, so he can get away with mediocre writing. Who writes sci-fi that blends education and artistry? I haven't seen it. Christopher Nolan is fun but not artistic; I liked the Dune movies but I'd have to read the books, and I doubt I'd love them. I doubt the genre is necessarily handicapped -- just artistically stunted in practice. Space could be so inspiring. No one I've witnessed has captured it through artistic writing.\r\n\r\n2010 was revelatory as a reading activity for me though. I read 3/4 of it in one weekend -- totally unheard of. Maybe I read some novel so efficiently before college, but I wouldn't recall that, and it wouldn't be 300 pages. It would predate my self-diagnosis as a slow reader of novels, so I wouldn't know. Certainly since late college I've consistently struggled getting through novels. I breezed 3/4 of 2010 in a weekend. How? I cite three factors. 1. I didn't care much about the book. I'd read a few Clarke stories; my opinion of Kubrick's 2001 (wrongfully?) dimmed over the years; science has been sore far from the foreground of my life since college. Because I care less about the book, I don't force myself to reread pages so obsessively. 2. I've gotten better at reading in the past year or so. 3. it's an easier book. Usually I'm occupied with books really pushing the envelope in microstyle, or books dense with ideas. 2010 was somewhat dense with ideas, but had basic narrative thrust; and its microstyle wasn't worth savoring for more than a second in all but few passages. 2010 swept me onward, which is sort of a compliment and sort of an indication it was just basic. I was a bit exhilarated by the novelty of the novel novel experience, so I drove on beyond my wont. Thus 2010 coincided with, and capitalized on, a saddle point in my readership.\r\n\r\nClarke's humor is a little humorless, like when I asked AI to write a standup routine in 2023. Okay, those are clearly jokes, but they aren't actually funny. It's just another indication of Clarke's being out of touch with the subtleties of human expression.",
"created_at": "2024-08-04 17:27:32 UTC",
"updated_at": "2024-08-11 20:36:18 UTC",
"book": "2010: Odyssey Two (Space Odyssey #2)"
},
{
"review": "What would I think if I hadn't seen the show? Part of me thinks the book would be incredible, woven for optimal excitement and intrigue. Then I remember how slow novels move for me; I remember how much I skimmed; most of all I remember how the show went for me. A show should have most of the excitement and intrigue of the book, yet so much of it felt arbitrary. I wonder how much it says about me that deaths in the show made the stakes feel lower, not higher. The book has the privileges of longer exposition, higher investment, and whatever strange pleasure makes reading an enduring pastime. The show has the privilege of sensory assault. Maybe the enhanced context in the book and the intimate feel of reading would have heightened everything, had I not skimmed and not seen the show. Or maybe the books are for the same people who loved the show and I elude both sets.\r\n\r\nThat's not to say I didn't like the book. It's pretty spectacular, even though (because?) I know how it ends (insofar as book and show align). The sum of the parts is massive. Whether the whole exceeds it is something I'll probably never know, because now I've watched the show and skimmed the books. That the books were exciting with a spoiled plot is impressive. They're also well-written. Sounds obvious, considering their success, but I think I'm pretty picky. I don't think writers impress me easily, hence many lukewarm Goodreads reviews. Martin is not only a world builder like Tolkien, his prose beats Tolkien's in all but the most classical sense (I think?) and his characters are more complex. Who's the greater writer? Martin languishes too long in subplotting and hedonism. Tolkien is juvenile. Martin feels real. Tolkien feels true. Whom do I prefer? Tolkien is far the deeper personal connection; he was my first real fantasy dive, accompanying crucial personal developments. I have loved Tolkien's characters; I don't think I can say the same for Martin, though give me the next two books and see what I say about Jon. (Besides Jon, Eddard is still my guy, but his brief stay can hardly influence my lasting love for the series. I like the Starks a lot, but they're almost peripheral. I like House Targaryen -- not necessarily any Targaryens, but the House is cool, especially since House of the Dragon came out)\r\n\r\nSo I love Gandalf & Aragorn et al, love LotR book and film, and harbor only potential love for what Martin refuses to realize. If Martin's dying priority was to make me love him over Tolkien, he'd have to release more material, most likely diverge more from the series than I gather he plans, and most likely focus on the arcs I care about, concluding them better according to my taste than he carves them now. Not bloody likely.\r\n\r\nMartin's world probably has more potential though. ASOIAF surpasses LOTR in volume, realism, and probably detail? But Martin isn't interested in spinning his world like Tolkien his. Otherwise Eddard would enjoy Aragorn's end instead of a swift snip. (I'm not ashamed of this grudge). My preference for Tolkien as God confirms I have a heart. I don't want to live in Martin's world, though it's a thrill. In his pursuit of reality he made something worse. Horror was never a genre I needed much of; I guess it makes sense I turn from Martin at the last. He highlights the horrible and suppresses the wholesome parts of reality. Tolkien dabbles in despair but ultimately rewards the good. Who meets an unjust end in Middle Earth? Frodo is injured beyond justice but he gains the Grey Havens for it. Boromir and Theoden are worthy men dying in worthy ways. Perhaps someone like Eowyn is short-changed, but she's so short-changed she's a sideline character. Tolkien couldn't do bad to his good characters, or wouldn't, because why make a miserable story? Martin made a mostly miserable story.\r\n\r\nAt least, my second time through the plot, and with the extra context of the book, secondary characters feel less secondary. That makes the misery a little less senseless -- inserts a little hope.\r\n\r\nI skipped so much of these books. I can't authoritatively review them. But I do think they're an achievement in plot weaving, world building, and straight up awesome writing.\r\n\r\nI thought the show's ensemble cast weighed too heavy. The book's is even broader. So I guess I'm thankful for some simplifications in the show. Ramsay didn't need a new character for a bride; Sansa sufficed. Lady Stoneheart would have stolen Jon's thunder. Tyrion meeting Dany earlier sated some of my desperation for storylines to converge, until everyone could meet in Westeros. These aren't good changes for Martin purists -- and I can't say whether they would have made the books better -- but I can see how they're sensible for the show as a standalone.\r\n\r\nThe interesting case, though, is Aegon. He's omitted on TV, unless I'm an idiot. He's the most exciting prospect about The Winds of Winter for me, yet I doubt he'll live up to that. Do fans know yet how he plays into TWOW? I doubt he overshadows Daenerys, or else he'd be in the show, I think. I think the showrunners were well versed in Martin's intentions. Maybe they were feeling feminist (for a moment) and chose Dany over Aegon. Maybe Aegon is supposed to die immediately in TWOW, and maybe Martin will pivot before release. Maybe that's why TWOW is taking so long: Martin is inventing a new conclusion so people who have seen the show want to read the book. Maybe Aegon is relevant. I hope so. What a stunning curveball. If he's legitimate, his claim to the throne is excellent.",
"created_at": "2024-08-11 20:08:12 UTC",
"updated_at": "2024-09-14 23:10:48 UTC",
"book": "A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, #5)"
},
{
"review": "I skimmed A Clash of Kings in a day. It's startlingly like the show, which omits only some optional background along with the internal monologues. Those items do elevate the book; I like the history, and the monologues are as tasteful as they are helpful. No one can blame GoT for missing these while swearing fealty to the book in all other respects. And to reverse the credit, Martin commends himself well to the screen. I blame neither version for its execution.\r\n\r\nWhat troubles me is the narrative itself. Hope visits not the world of Westeros, not since Eddard had a glimmer in his eye, not until Jon rises many hundreds of pages hence (assuming alignment with the show). The first installment was classic, up to its devastation -- it wove a balanced web of hopes and fears. After said devastation, the world feels empty, the plot devolves, dilutes, disintegrates. Hope leaves the theater, fear being the only fuel, and not a good one, when death starts to look better than life. This corresponds to roughly seasons 2, 3, 4, 5 of the show.\r\n\r\nAfter intensely skimming A Clash of Kings for a day, I didn't feel good. I'm convinced it wasn't the physical stagnation of the day -- I ran in the morning. It was two things. First, skimming ASOIAF isn't a really artistic experience. It's exciting, maybe draining, not inspiring. It's entertainment, stupendously wrought, not beautifully wrought. Second, the world is brutal. I don't know why we all want to visit as long and often as possible. It's a horrible world to inhabit, at least in those middle seasons. For those reasons, the low artistry of the high fantasy, and the brutality, I felt spiritually ill as I went to bed.\r\n\r\nThey say \"American Tolkien.\" He's physically American, but isn't he spiritually European? I'd rather call him \"R-Rated Tolkien.\" Tolkien is PG, and it's not just a difference of swear words -- it's fundamental. Tolkien is fundamentally more wholesome, pure, childlike, gentle. Even without Martin's graphic imagery, Martin is for mature audiences only. He will not teach you anything worth learning. You should probably stay away until you're a hardened adult. There's no making sense of his miserable reality.",
"created_at": "2024-08-25 11:52:16 UTC",
"updated_at": "2024-08-25 12:40:05 UTC",
"book": "A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, #2)"
},
{
"review": "Everything I said about #2 applies, and it reminds me of something I said about The Godfather:\r\n\r\n\"The novel is almost pulp. The romance is always absolute ecstasy. The sphincter always opens at the moment of death. It's all graphically descriptive. I'm not sure I can call it low-brow though. I haven't read enough of that kind of thing. It's nothing like \"classic literature\", but it seems well-crafted and intelligent. I don't think it's despicable, it's just not very subtle. It's one of the more entertaining novels I've read.\"",
"created_at": "2024-08-25 18:20:33 UTC",
"updated_at": "2024-08-25 20:30:30 UTC",
"book": "A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, #3)"
},
{
"review": "Main differences I've detected relative to the show so far: 1) Lady Stoneheart 2) Reek's identity 3) Asha/Yara's name. After the first, that's a steep drop off in importance, reinforcing book and show as two orchestrations of the same Song.",
"created_at": "2024-08-25 21:55:51 UTC",
"updated_at": "2024-08-26 13:53:04 UTC",
"book": "A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire, #4)"
},
{
"review": "I picked up this book pretty thoughtlessly; it turned into a book very well suited for me, and one of my most thorough long reads ever.\r\n\r\nHow did it suit me? 1) the subject was right on time: I've been missing physics, extra interested in space lately, and lamenting the astronomical void in my education (my focus was more quantum); 2) it was intellectually challenging without being a technical slog, mostly in natural language but with opportunities to explore the mathematics when desired; 3) Thorne, an uber-expert on the subject, manages to embellish his research with history, whimsy, even a bit of art, three things I like to see in science. Indeed, once I asked a professor, sort of sardonically, whether I could make a career out of \"conceptual physics\" -- not theoretical physics, but physics in natural language, bolstered by but not dependent on computation, almost philosophy but grounded in physical proof. This book was a great example of the ways I want to think about physics and math: historical, artistic, philosophical, certainly technical to a degree but not overwhelmingly technical like almost all physics in practice. I actually love solving physics and math problems rigorously, but only the pretty ones, and not as my exclusive mode of interfacing with the ideas. I love solving problems and I love the ideas; too often the former consumes the latter. Thorne knows how to sideline his technical mastery for the beauty of the ideas. I wish my professors would have done more of that.\r\n\r\nI could have used a little more math though, if he could manage to frame his advanced concepts in terms of relatively simple equations. For example, I found myself trying to derive the escape velocity based on the mass and Newton's gravity. Thorne didn't ask me to, but he led right up to it. I would have enjoyed more of such manageable problems. Typically he either ignored the math or he implied it was far beyond me. But I bet one could wring some doable problems out of this tome, tensors and wave functions begone. Even if you gave me a couple of the equations and just let me fit them together and work it out algebraically, even with minor calculus/diffeq... but I get that he can't write this book for identically my education level.\r\n\r\nIt is nuts how rigorously serious scientists have examined outrageous situations, like vacuum fluctuations destroying a wormhole just (almost infinitesimally) before it can become a time machine. Can you seriously work that out mathematically? Why try? Even Wheeler's rage for defining the deaths of all stars seems pretty useless until we're technologically prepared to visit dying stars. But the physicists were all over it, as though it would materially change their lives. So much of this book won't materially change our lives for decades, centuries, or eons. Quantum gravity is an exception... I can't deny its allure. It's essential and central, and maybe, even though humans only exist in low-gravity situations, we could harness it to revolutionary effect.\r\n\r\nNot that I blame Thorne for trying out wormholes and time machines. I don't think he has any civic duty to stick to more applicable topics. I like his attitude that \"Sagan-like\" ideas are okay to explore. I'm just surprised he can get so rigorous with them, and act like he's making progress. It appears like a house of cards -- delicate foundation stacked on delicate foundation, the entire thing and all time invested so easily collapsed.\r\n\r\nI'm giving 4 stars because Thorne does an excellent job of balancing business with pleasure, writing eloquently to an audience like me while remaining utterly authoritative. He isn't Feyman Professor at Caltech for nothing. I'm saving a star because of some boring diversions and some missed opportunities. The concepts aren't perfectly prioritized. But it's a window into possibly one of the most sophisticated minds in the world, so I can't expect him to know precisely how far to lean down for me.",
"created_at": "2024-09-30 14:09:31 UTC",
"updated_at": "2024-11-07 19:35:47 UTC",
"book": "Black Holes & Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy"
},
{
"review": "It's a fine premise for a work of pop history: two interesting guys, orbiting one interesting event, one of them casting extraordinary light on it, the other extraordinary shadow, and the modern public somehow not knowing much about any of this. Larson's job was easy that way.\r\n\r\nWhat's harder is arranging the facts with the right narrative timing, and conveying it all in language both invigorated and accessible. He does these well. The story generally progresses with anticipation. Occasionally he bogs me down with things I have no capacity to remember (the names of obscure characters) or the tedium of running a world's fair. By and large he serves his auspicious material well, wielding a keen sense for the majestic and the macabre.\r\n\r\nI wanted more summary at the end. I like summaries of things I already know. For instance, I like reading how Tom Brady won more Super Bowls than anyone else, even though I already know it. It's the sense of awe you get when the salient points are drilled in successively. I wanted a lengthy exposition at the end, analyzing the fair's impact, Burnham's character, Holmes' motives, all of that. Larson touched on those, but too briefly. I don't feel like I truly understand what I read, I just read it. I guess that's fair, in a gripping depiction of history, but I don't walk away with as much understanding as I prefer. I want Larson to guide me to new understanding before putting away his pen. He says the book examines the ambitions of men. I think the action outlines the ambitions of men, but doesn't examine them. You have to help me out there, spoon-feed me a little, tell me why all this is important. Readers are too lazy to analyze the book after putting it down, unless they're in a book club or English class.\r\n\r\nI just really want clear takeaways when I read or watch or listen to something. Larson could have done a bit more there. But he delivered a good story nonetheless.",
"created_at": "2025-01-30 00:58:04 UTC",
"updated_at": "2025-02-09 17:35:11 UTC",
"book": "The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America"
},
{
"review": "The best part of this book is the synesthesia of the narrator, who is not human, yet employs this sense-blending talent in relatable mortal ways.\r\n\r\nRosa whispers, her voice like needle and thread.\r\nDeath escapes into the breakfast-colored sun.\r\nMoonlight like a long strand of hair in the curtain.\r\nAnd of course the narrator seeing times as colors.\r\n\r\nHis storytelling is triumphant, but his prose really sets this book apart.\r\n\r\nThe characters are mostly strong. Their inner and outer dialogue feels true. My only concern is Liesel coming off like the author's (and many a man's) dream daughter. She's too mature. She has the conventional good daughter traits -- sweet, ethical -- yet boasts an unlikely balance of tough and gentle, sensitive and daring, ultimately showing up too wise. This didn't bother me for most of the book; she's a worthy protagonist; but when she starts writing for the first time at the end, her voice is too complex, too conscious, which caused me to reflect on her maturity throughout the book. It feels unrealistic. It feels man-made, in the most precise sense.\r\n\r\nNew York Times calls the book \"hugely ambitious\" and \"life changing\". If Zusak wasn't so fond of line breaks, the book would be much smaller, and I wonder if NYT wouldn't say such things. It's a good story, exquisitely written, but I don't see it hugely ambitious. I'd need more thematic coherence, more narrative complexity. It was sort of just coming-of-age. Death-as-narrator was interesting, but ultimately not too enlightening. The prose style was too effortless to be really challenging. I don't see the book as hugely ambitious. It's shorter than it looks. The plot is straightforward. The themes are naturalistic.\r\n\r\nWhy'd he obliterate us at the end? The ending was not just grievous but unsatisfying for me. Suggesting Liesel married some random guy is uncomfortable, like the end of La La Land. It's fair, for her to do so, but uncomfortable for us without better staging. So she lived a normal life? Ostensibly? That's not satisfying. She deserves spectacular redemption, not the meager rewards of normalcy. Also, again, why obliterate us? Was there no happiness in store for the sufferers of Himmel Street? No fate for Liesel's innocent heart but to mirror the \"mountain range of rubble\" around her? Why? She must have endured years of emptiness after that -- after years of bruising beforehand. I guess it was a not-nothing way to end a novel. You may as well make it grand. I don't think he quite pulled it off though. Liesel's despair just felt senseless, not profound. It didn't turn me to action in my own life. It just came off as terrible and chaotic. Her cradling Rudy -- the critical moment in the author's eyes -- felt so insane as to be detached. I just detached.\r\n\r\nApparently there's a movie. What would I be thinking, were I adapting it?\r\n1. do we do the Death voiceover?\r\nThe narration is essential to the book. It's not just about the narrator's unique perspective, it's about style. The dialogue can come across in film, of course, but how do you deliver that style of narration without a voiceover? Bake it in the visuals? That would be interesting. For example, when Death describes a white sky, you make the sky extra white. When Death describes a voice like a needle and thread... you show a needle and thread? You abstract everything, mix all the senses. That's one way. The other way is a voiceover. How do you voice Death? On paper, the coldness comes across. But you don't just want the coldest actor, because Death actually has more conscience than many of the characters. Death has a warmth. And Death is cold. Also, should we assume Death is male? I certainly did. Maybe Death isn't. In any case it sounds cheesy to do a Death voiceover throughout -- and it would have to be throughout, with any hope of making this movie stand out. It doesn't stand out enough purely on its story. I wouldn't be interested in this book or movie purely for its story. The narration is the best part. Maybe that's why I hadn't heard of this movie -- they failed to make it stand out.\r\n2. how much German do we speak?\r\nI wouldn't mind a full-German movie with subtitles. There's no way that's what they did. I'd definitely want at least some German, and the kids better have real accents.",
"created_at": "2025-02-10 04:49:45 UTC",
"updated_at": "2025-02-23 17:21:23 UTC",
"book": "The Book Thief"
},
{
"review": "Weeks ago I made my decision to give this four stars. I was deep in the trenches of the middle years. Calvin kept getting grossed out by his mom's meals; Spaceman Spiff kept trying to blast his teacher; Hobbes kept pouncing; these things lose a little novelty when scanned back-to-back-to-back-to-back in a massive compendium. I started learning which ones I could skip (ironically, that meant much of Watterson's proudest work, the later Sundays) and which ones I couldn't (never skip a snowman strip). That I was identifying trends in skippability at all pointed to a four-not-five star review. Besides, I'd gone many years without thinking about Calvin and Hobbes, despite my teenage admiration; it never really bubbled back up in my mind. Did I really want to be identified with this childish character in this childish medium as one of my few five-star reviews? Weeks ago I made my decision to give this four stars. Then came time to click the button...\r\n\r\nI can't with any self-respect give this four stars. I know it's better than that. This is a five-star edition of a five-star comic strip. But it is a comic strip, and Goodreads doesn't allow half-stars, so I'm trapped between respecting myself too much to give it five, and respecting myself too much to give it four.\r\n\r\nOh well, they're just digital stars... here's what I actually mean. This is a desert-island kind of book, a Voyager Golden Record kind of book, an heirloom kind of book. It sits proudly beside my Feynman Lectures box, that being perhaps the single greatest physical distillation of perhaps the single greatest field of study. The Complete Calvin and Hobbes sits proudly beside it. It's a near-perfect collection of a near-perfect effort in an art form. And if you believe that, then whatever the art form, you can't give it four stars.\r\n\r\nThis particular art form is hamstrung by definition, such that it's almost oxymoronic to refer to it as an art form. It's designed for fast, easy stimulation. Although maybe those constraints bring about the true artistry: saying anything meaningful in those constraints. Maybe not all art flourishes in freedom, maybe the art can be necessarily contained in the flexing of the constraints. Maybe some art is actually too free to say anything meaningful! Part of Watterson's artistry shines in his ability to say something meaningful in the constraints. But you also get the sense he could have said something meaningful in another medium, had comics not seized him from an early age. One wonders how his painting and other pursuits are going since he wrote the preface to this book. Is he even alive? He's alive if a person like me still owns a book like this.\r\n\r\nWhen I read the preface back in high school, I imagined him as a slightly older, actualized version of myself. But there are several falsities there. One that I can't avoid realizing now is he was never slightly older than me. He started the strip well out of college, and that was around 1985; he RETIRED around the time I was born; and wrote the preface somewhere around the 10th anniversary of his retirement. Then I read it some years after that! As I read the preface in high school, Watterson was not a 20-something leading me into my 20s by kindred example, as I imagined; he was legit middle-aged, and his childhood was historically nothing like mine. I guess I figured anything that happened around 1995 was frozen in time forever, including yours truly. Another reality I realize now is Watterson was never more than just a person. He didn't grasp the infinite any more than I did, and do, in every moment. He didn't understand the pre-Big-Bang, or even how to be happy, any more than I. But I guess that's what childhood is for: misunderstanding things in a useful, developmental kind of way. I framed Watterson as an ideal, and it helped me understand myself, helped me rudder my future.\r\n\r\nBack to the stars... giving this four stars would be like giving Nadal four stars as a tennis career simply because I've never really played on clay. Dude, that's a five-star tennis career. You just undervalue clay.\r\n\r\nFAQ:\r\n\r\nWhat is it?\r\nIt's a box set of every instance of this comic strip that was printed in newspapers in the 80s and 90s. It involves a six-year-old and his stuffed tiger who comes alive in his imagination, presumably in some Midwest suburb.\r\n\r\nHow can a six-year-old, a stuffed tiger, and a Midwest suburb be very interesting?\r\nThe kid is extremely sophisticated half the time, and extremely unsophisticated the other half. He's a Michael Scott character: often detestable, often the least mature one in the room, yet sometimes the most mature; ultimately lovable. His tiger is like Jim Halpert: the \"straight man\", sarcastic, grounded, yet funny in his own right. So if you like that dynamic in The Office, maybe you like it here. The strip is interesting because Calvin is interesting, and what Watterson says through Calvin is interesting. Calvin has the energy of a six-year-old but the intellect of something greater.\r\n\r\nDid you say you detest a six-year-old for being unsophisticated?\r\nYes, but only because he's so sophisticated the rest of the time. And I said he's ultimately lovable. He's altogether impressive and inspired. But yes, his ego waxes and wanes to the outermost poles, which is frustrating.\r\n\r\nWhy do you like it?\r\nFirst, a note on my history. I did not grow up with Calvin and Hobbes, contrary to Watterson with Peanuts; I discovered it in high school. It's hard to say how formative it was, but I think it was somewhat formative, and anyway symbolic of that very formative period. Maybe it just accompanied my growth well at the time, and thereafter symbolized it, rather than causing it; either way it feels important. Second, there are the actual qualities of the strip. It can be pretty funny. When it's not, it's usually amusing. When it's not just striving for a quick joke, it's usually striving for a profound message. When it does that, it's usually not preachy, but honest and authentic. It's intellectually engaging, yet doesn't depend on intellectual toil, as it usually resolves in easy humor. So you get what you put into it: if you focus hard on the message, you'll get the message; if you're tired, you'll get easy amusement. It opens the door to deep thought without demanding it; it's not too pretentious to stoop to easy jokes. Sometimes its humor is physical, sometimes linguistic, sometimes quite layered. Sometimes the value isn't the humor as much as the inspiration -- Calvin generally serves as a model of energized living. Calvin is screaming YOLO in every panel. So the humor, the artistry, and the YOLO coursing through it all make the strip easy and challenging, simple and rich, depending on your mood.\r\n\r\nDo you recommend it?\r\nNot generally... There's no one I'd caution away from it, but I think it's best served young, and then re-served throughout life; but getting your first helping after your brain is fully developed may not be very rewarding. If you're intellectual enough, it probably won't feel very novel or challenging, and if you aren't, the depths of the strip may not interest you. It feels best suited for developing minds.",
"created_at": "2025-03-12 22:17:04 UTC",
"updated_at": "2025-09-28 17:20:48 UTC",
"book": "The Complete Calvin and Hobbes"
},
{
"review": "I started this immediately after The Book Thief. I quickly found back-to-back Holocaust books to be not quite advisable, and it didn't hook me like The Book Thief anyway, so I pressed pause after about a third of it. Maybe I'll resume sometime.",
"created_at": "2025-03-22 21:19:36 UTC",
"updated_at": "2025-04-13 21:47:55 UTC",
"book": "The Tattooist of Auschwitz (The Tattooist of Auschwitz, #1)"
},
{
"review": "Julie and Julia was three things for me, in descending order: funny, inspiring, and culinary.\r\n\r\nFunny: the best thing about the book is Julie's voice, which is sharp -- sharp in humor, intellect, criticism, and language. I don't think she's a real comedian, wielding the polished craft of comedy, I think she's just naturally witty.\r\n\r\nInspiring: this book drove me to add reminders to my calendar. Doesn't matter what the reminders are; they'd be different for different people; the point is this non-self-help book i.e. this enjoyable entertaining book managed to spur me to tangible action, something a book about adding reminders to calendars might not even manage. I'm less likely to heed a self-help book because I'm more likely to resent the author; but I didn't resent Julie at all; her plight was my plight, and her solution was mine. Her Project sounded like a phenomenal idea, despite its misery and transience and meaninglessness. It doesn't say \"be happy\" or \"find your calling.\" It plainly says \"do something.\" But what should I do? \"Do anything. Also, actually do it.\"\r\nEric was inspiring as well. What a clinic in sound husbanding. He's endlessly accommodating, and while it can be frustrating, it's just not a big deal to him. This is his life, simple as that; you can either work with it or you can die, and he works with it.\r\nJulie and Eric and their whole circle of characters actually exhibit a fascinating carelessness. Nobody takes themselves too seriously. It sounds liberating. Maybe a little reckless. I don't think I'd be fulfilled in that flight of folly. I think life has to be a little more serious for me. But I envy the relaxation -- even when no one is relaxed, even when everyone is freaking out, no one is really worried. Julie shoots straight, like a New Yorker, which is interesting, because she's a Texan. Austin, though. But still?\r\n\r\nCulinary: simply put, I liked all the food stuffs. The French words, the obscure ingredients, obscure utensils, arcane processes... obscure to me at least... the gastronomic descriptions. The juxtaposition of sophisticated food / unsophisticated context.\r\n\r\nJulie is a great writer. Sometimes she tries too hard in her jokes or poetics, but she totally has an organic sense for these things. When she meandered into the profound, the philosophical, she usually cut it short. I think she didn't quite know where to go with those thoughts, and possibly thought it stylish to snip prematurely. I think that's a little lazy, though I often do it myself, and it's actually kind of fun for the writer and the reader. I often like things left unsaid. Julie left much unsaid, like the actual value of her Project. Occasionally she hinted at some overarching meaning. Occasionally she reflected on her life. Never for long. Never to comprehensive satisfaction.\r\nHer breadth as a writer reveals itself in the epistolary passages, the dispatches from Julia and Paul Child's lives. These are dramatized history, wildly unlike the rest of the book, and expertly written. Apparently I could read historical fiction from Julia Powell, not just spazzy memoir.\r\n\r\nThe book is not as profound as it really should be, but it inspired me nonetheless. Above all it's entertaining.\r\n\r\nEdit: moments after posting this I find out Julie, so alive in the book, is dead, and her top reviews on Goodreads are negative. This all injured me. What, really, was the Project worth, if she dies young and her top reviews are negative? What, in turn, are my projects worth?\r\nDeath is a possibility for any of us at any time, as are enemies. The point is Julie did her Project well, really experienced it.\r\nOh, and now I find out she has an affair and people absolutely hate her next book about it. Well, I don't know what to make of this. At least her first book entertained and inspired me.",
"created_at": "2025-03-29 20:22:37 UTC",
"updated_at": "2025-04-11 01:09:26 UTC",
"book": "Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen"
},
{
"review": "My history with Vineland: heard of it a few weeks ago thru the forthcoming movie; instantly determined it was obvious I had to read it before the movie's release; placed a hold at the library; had an experience that exposed the hidden virtue of watching a movie before reading the book; nevertheless fully assumed I'd finish the book, and my hold was in anyway; read 30 pages and wondered how I ever assumed I'd finish the book.\r\n\r\nI saw Inherent Vice -- didn't read the book -- and it was valid though underwhelming. Somehow I retained none of that lesson in Pynchon, entering Vineland naively optimistic. It immediately struck me as a close twin to Inherent Vice. Downtrodden pothead protagonist, cocky lawman rival, groovy California, whimsical narration trying and sort of succeeding at hipster profundity. If I hadn't seen Inherent Vice, if I'd only heard Pynchon's big legacy, I'd be intrigued. I'd assume it all worked up into something big by the end. But Inherent Vice never got anywhere, and so finishing Vineland honestly sounds kind of awful.\r\n\r\nThere are strokes of brilliance, usually brief, quips whose nonchalance almost masks their insight. Perhaps in another context I'd enjoy his writing; I just don't have a lot of patience for where he seems to employ it. Remember, I only read 30 pages. But if the other 350 are anything like the first 30, or anything like Inherent Vice, which is to say anything like the first 30, it's a long 350.\r\n\r\nI'm not sure how these things earn the \"postmodern\" title. Okay, I should stop before anyone attacks me for continuing to comment on something I've hardly read.",
"created_at": "2025-04-13 20:59:12 UTC",
"updated_at": "2025-04-13 21:43:53 UTC",
"book": "Vineland"
},
{
"review": "All of the flashback circus content was exciting. I just have no idea what the author was thinking with the present-day stuff. It just felt tragic, but in a tedious way. Elderly Jacob bore little resemblance to younger Jacob, and wasn't nearly as likable. I just don't see the point in the frustrated flash-forwards. But the older stuff was good. The only exception was the ending, which felt rushed.",
"created_at": "2025-04-30 19:01:29 UTC",
"updated_at": "2025-05-08 03:32:23 UTC",
"book": "Water for Elephants"
},
{
"review": "Persepolis reminded me of The Book Thief, which I read recently: young girl, progressive parents, oppressive state, air raids, melancholic ending. But Satrapi doesn't idealize herself like Zusak does his narrator, and maybe that's one backward reason I preferred The Book Thief: the girl was written by a man. Liesel from The Book Thief was too wise, too strong, even in the throes of adolescent angst, and I enjoyed that. Marji from Persepolis bore the confused/confusing tone of childhood. I felt similarly when I watched Where the Wild Things Are -- the emotional ride was weird and choppy, but maybe that's just childhood? Persepolis bounces down a scree of emotional ambiguities, finally arriving at the bottom bruised and disoriented. Perhaps it's more honest for that, but not gratifying.\r\n\r\nIt was driven by events, not emotions, so its arc felt rushed and rigid. What's the use of a coming of age story that doesn't endear you to the protagonist? What's the use of history bogged down by memoir? Persepolis rode the trough between the two waves, enjoying neither.\r\n\r\nI saw a critic's blurb praising the humor of the book. I actually remember marking halfway through how unhumorous it was. Its whimsical medium makes its lack of humor all the more noticeable.\r\n\r\nPerhaps most disappointing of all, I still don't understand even the basics of the history covered here. At any given moment, I couldn't tell against whom Marji was rebelling, and it wasn't because of her confused ideology, it was because I couldn't keep the stakeholders straight. The book was clearly intended for those ignorant to the conflict, but would have taken hard study of each panel before I could grasp it.\r\n\r\nI can't say I learned nothing, I just wish either the history or the memoir would have stuck the landing. Appropriate to the subject matter, the overarching tone was conflicted, but in a more confusing than profound sense.",
"created_at": "2025-05-16 22:47:55 UTC",
"updated_at": "2025-05-18 22:43:13 UTC",
"book": "Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood (Persepolis, #1)"
},
{
"review": "A book by a Harvard neuroscientist about a Harvard psychologist sounds stuffy if not narcissistic, yet Genova infuses a natural warmth you wouldn't expect. She's authoritative, presumably, and sharp enough to deliver a consistent and coherent narrative. I find lots of writers can't juggle their material the whole way through; they lose grip halfway, forget what they needed to say, take a wrong turn, or otherwise disappoint. Genova executes her novel with the measured reliability of science. Perhaps it hamstrings this novel's ultimate impact, but it was refreshing to see such dependability. I'm tired of artsy writers who can't execute their own ideas. Antkind is Still Alice's antithesis. Kaufman flails, but Genova's tone and purpose never waver.\r\n\r\nAlong with the measured delivery came a bit of disappointment by the end. The novel didn't really get anywhere for me. It followed the inevitable spiral of Alzheimer's, so it had direction, but it never landed in any satisfying core. We never see the ending. How long does Alice live? There's something hip about an abbreviated ending, in denying readers the obvious resolution. At the same time, it's a little disappointing.\r\n\r\nGenova skillfully balances Alice's unreliable perspective with the omniscient one. We get a window into Alice's mind without losing our own minds (like in Kaufman or Lynch). It can't be easy to time the flowing back and forth, but the book needed it, and got it.\r\n\r\nI like how the disease, while uprooting so much of Alice's reality via her memories, actually grounds her in some important ways: in her senses, in her relationships... You could argue her manic Harvard life before Alzheimer's was the airy, uprooted one, and her life with Alzheimer's -- floating in the ocean, feeling her daughter's acting, giggling at the geese -- though unanchored by memory is indeed the grounded one. Alzheimer's makes her simple, not wholly in a bad way. It repairs her relationships, and ironically recalls to her memory (her instinctive memory) what shifted out of focus for so many ambitious years.\r\n\r\nAlice understands the butterfly to live a beautiful life, however short. To the butterfly, it's no shorter than our lives to us. Both lifespans are minuscule in cosmic time, and shorter than most of us would like, yet richly filled. I have a feeling a thousand-year life would feel as short as a single-day life; in both cases we'd experience both a dramatic arc and the tragedy of mortality. It does feel tragic. Yet tragedy doesn't have to be the overarching feeling. Alzheimer's shortens the cognitive lifespan, which may come off like a tremendous pity to everyone involved, but it's negligibly shorter in the grand scheme, like the difference between a butterfly and a human and a Tolkien elf. What matters is not the brevity but the fullness of living. We can choose to see Alice not as one robbed of time but as a butterfly, brief and beautiful. Ultimately, a life is a mere blip on the infinite radar. Einstein told us time isn't as immutable as expected, and the butterfly analogy tells us time isn't as precious as expected either.\r\n\r\nOn page 253, Alice says \"I will forget today, but that doesn't mean that today didn't matter.\" We need to stop espousing memory and meaning. We cling too frantically to our mental faculties.\r\n\r\nI think it's interesting to consider how noble or ignoble John was. He suffered a lot for Alice, and loved her through it, though his patience and empathy fell short of others' in the novel, and short of what Alice needed from him. He chose to continue investing in his work, knowing it stole Alice's last \"competent\" moments from him, because he couldn't bear to witness them, and because his work is that important. I can see that, in a way. If he brings the world years closer to a cure for cancer, he's affecting billions of lives, while only sacrificing a percent of the final percent of a single life. But it's his wife's, and didn't he promise to stick with her in sickness and in health? He didn't imagine it would come to this -- he married her mind, not her brainless body. Ultimately, I think he should spend that final time with her, at the expense of his work which may well be very important. He's egotistic to believe the critical path to a cure for cancer runs right through him as an individual. He's in the center of it all, but he could document what he knows and delegate to the rest of the field. It doesn't have to be him. He's probably addicted though, so it's hard to imagine giving it up for the sake of changing your wife's diapers. But I'd advise him to delegate work the best he can, and do his husbandly duty.",
"created_at": "2025-06-18 17:02:37 UTC",
"updated_at": "2025-07-02 19:19:41 UTC",
"book": "Still Alice"
},
{
"review": "I read much of this my first year of college. I remember liking it, and I found annotations further into this book than into most required reads of my life. Yet reflecting now, I think I was disproportionately pleased by how well my developing comprehension grasped it. It may have been the first time I understood a pre-1900 text well enough to feel the passions of the plot; prior to that, old books felt purely academic; with Frankenstein, I absorbed the old language in stride and passed on to the content, its themes, and its thrills. In the margins, I wrote things like \"wow, showdownnn\" when creator and creation met, as though I didn't know drama kindled the human soul before the 20th century.\r\n\r\nAlas! wretched am I now. This book was painful. It is not a ghost story, nor a work of horror, as far as I understand those connotations. Those would require events which frighten the senses. Frankenstein is merely frightening in a sermonizing kind of way. Victor entreats us to avoid his fate; perhaps Shelley intends to scare us with this tale of backward ambition. But that would only take a few pages to convey. Instead, we find 190 pages of tedious exposition, layers of inconsequential narration, and so much melodramatic misery. It is rarely very stimulating, even less often in the ways that define ghost stories and horror. Most of the stimulation lies in the analysis of the human psyche, and in the frequently impressive prose. But even that prose was drowned in that miserable melodrama I mentioned.\r\n\r\nNor is it a useful allegory. Again, all the allegory in this book could be conveyed in a few pages. Instead Shelley chokes us with painstaking pang-stoking. I certainly didn't learn to scorn ambition.\r\n\r\nNo, it wasn't ambition or knowledge that precipitated misery, or even playing god. It was xenophobia. That's the lesson, if there is one. Not that I blame random characters for shunning the fearsome creature -- I blame Victor, who should have known better, if not by protective instinct then by hearing the creature's story.\r\n\r\nEven IF God abandoned and hated us after Eden, at least God gave us Eve, which is more than you can say of Victor, who had every opportunity to deliver any advantage to his creation. Nay, his creation didn't need an advantage, it needed any respite from every disadvantage. Also, God left room for us to wonder whether or not God abandoned us; but Victor entirely and expressly hates his creature, and rejects its every request for any meager seed of happiness. On page 78 (of my edition), the creature suggests it was god's absence that made himself evil. Curious to consider how that extends to our side of the allegory.\r\n\r\nBesides the obvious Eden allegory, you might relate this story to the simple act of childbirth. You don't have a child for their sake, yet suddenly they have a sake. Victor was so obsessed with creating life he never considered that it would then be conscious and he might have a responsibility to sustain it.\r\n\r\nThere's also the Prometheus allegory, obvious via the novel's subtitle. I don't know the myth well, but giving us fire forever is far nobler than creating and subsequently despising a single being, who may well deserve existence, and who Victor incessantly and furiously attempts to squash. He doesn't deserve the Prometheus moniker. Then there's Oppenheimer, our \"American Prometheus.\" But I don't think he would have treated the creature so poorly, had it been, for the purpose of this aimless analogy, swapped with the bomb. It is interesting though that the creature discovered fire from beggars, in the book, not from a titan.\r\n\r\nFrankenstein reminded me of Sophocles: super dramatic, wretched, antiquated, some moments of good drama that shock you, and otherwise some reflection on the human condition. But Shelley had the advantage of 2000 years of learning after Sophocles, yet produced a less efficient work of the same flavor. Okay, I shouldn't over-assimilate Shelley and Sophocles, but the sensations on reading were similar, and the comparison underlines Frankenstein's inefficiency.\r\n\r\nIt's dreadful to imagine this book being the center of my scholarship, as seemingly for Dr. Weldon. It's just so much indulgence, so much inaction, so much groaning, so much groveling. There's hardly any live plot, it's all recounting events at extreme length, sometimes four layers deep in epistolary narration. I wonder if the supposedly more famous later version is better, and if so, why did Weldon grant us this one? Does the layered narration serve some purpose I overlooked? Why include Walton at all?\r\n\r\nWhat's the point of a book that so completely indulges misery? Shelley must be reacting to a truly stale and heartless culture. She writes with an excess of dark-romantic emotion, such as this par-for-the-course mood Victor gets himself in:\r\n\"I felt myself extremely agitated; my limbs trembled, and a mist came over my eyes, which obliged me to lean on a chair for support.\"\r\nPity not; this happens about every other page. It's just the tone of the book -- senseless misery. Everything is too extreme: suffering around Justine, suffering on seeing creature, passion and brilliance for science, mental and physical state toward end of creation process, perfection of Elizabeth and Clerval,...\r\n\r\nIt's senseless, self-fulfilling, cyclic hatred and vengeance between creator and creation. The blame for each evil falls on the other actor, which then lands it back on the other, and so on. Ultimately I sympathize more with the creature. Victor becomes the villain, who in turn turns the creature into the other villain. The creature never had a chance.",
"created_at": "2025-07-13 13:56:12 UTC",
"updated_at": "2025-07-16 00:31:10 UTC",
"book": "Frankenstein: The 1818 Text"
},
{
"review": "I'm only halfway done (p 336) but it's long enough and varied enough I wanted to write some things lest I forget them by the end.\r\n\r\nFirst: is it deranged? I don't think so. It's ridiculous to attempt, but then again, if you can somehow manage to find not only someone willing to publish this, your dream book, but someone willing to give it the Pulitzer... you should do it. How you found such a thing I can't begin to understand. While no particular moment of it is deranged, it's a holistically incoherent book. Hofstadter might be amused to think he actually *lost* coherence when taken holistically, unlike his Aunt Hillary.\r\n\r\nThe preface was actually, if I remember right, the most unhinged portion, which doesn't reflect well on Hofstadter's 20 years between original publication and the preface. The preface made me nervous for the next 800 pages, but his thinking through each chapter is actually pretty clear. Mensa-level clear, in fact, but meandering. For instance, one section of a chapter offers a professional-grade exposition on number theory, while the next section of the same chapter offers a professional-grade exposition on music theory, non-sequitur in all but the most abstract ways. Each section is brilliant, but the chapter is muddy. Again, this is a study on his own holism/reductionism dichotomy.\r\n\r\nEach chapter starts with a playful and provocative dialogue -- I think it'd be fun for someone to skip all of the expository chapters and simply read the dialogues. That someone would have to be intellectually inclined, but not so inclined to hard dry logic as to endure everything between the dialogues. I don't mind the hard dry logic, but I feel like the dialogues alone could be publishable and pleasant, plus that playful provocation I mentioned. If you like puns and brain teasers, Hofstadter is your master, but you have to draw from his work selectively -- the rest can be brutally and stochastically cerebral.\r\n\r\nAfter the preface, I didn't trust him, whether the subject was math, music, quantum, zen, art, or otherwise. Yet I quickly learned to trust him, as he stated musical truths I could personally vouch, as accurate an image of particle physics as I've heard from a non-physicist, and plenty of concepts I encountered in collegiate Discrete Math. I'd only hesitate on the zen front. His interpretation is thoughtful and intelligent, but is it wise? He himself admits to not knowing what zen is, and no one can have the right-shaped mind for all things. He stretches his expertise broadly enough, I'm not sure it covers zen. It's more of a piece of paper held over the head of zen to combat the rains of uncertainty, where for other subjects it's a whole umbrella. And when I say expertise, I don't mean zen is a matter of knowledge and IQ, but of the right shape of thought, and I'd be impressed if he could shape his well enough.\r\n\r\nAm I enjoying the book that looks so tedious? I am, nor would I say it looks tedious to me. In fact, this guy is writing at his pleasure, at his leisure, that's the whole point. He's talking around what is intended to be a distinctly satisfying idea, and he's doing it as footloose as he wishes. This is not supposed to be a textbook to beat your head against; it's a long, syncopated dance around that which cannot be named, like electricity orbiting a black hole, or thousands of religions all pointing at the same truth. The vignettes should be attractive, sometimes even fun. It still takes a long time to read, and can be tiring certain times of day, and should not be attempted by anyone allergic to math, but it is not a slog. If it feels that way, you should skip ahead and cherrypick what interests you until, before you know it, you've read every word.\r\n\r\nSometimes his connection of disparate concepts is amazing, almost miraculous, curiously coincidental. For instance, a pun will appear *right* where he needed it, or music will reflect math in the least intuitive way. I think there's some serendipity to language, and I think he's dealing with some concepts that transcend fields of study, so this shouldn't be too surprising, but it's a little awe-inspiring when it happens, and you have to applaud him for conducting such a symphony of concepts, however silly the outcome (often it's just a passing joke). Sometimes it's not silly at all, it's profound.\r\n\r\nIt reminds me of Kaufman's Antkind. Obviously there's huge ant allegory in both works. But also, they're both long, convoluted bucket list books by someone who was shockingly granted final cut privilege (bucket list for the author, that is). They're winding and indulgent, but united by a thread of brilliance.",
"created_at": "2025-07-19 19:27:04 UTC",
"updated_at": "2025-09-14 22:51:58 UTC",
"book": "G\u00f6del, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid"
},
{
"review": "This was an unprecedented literary escapade for me. Having never listened to an audiobook, and perpetually struggling to sit still with a book for more than an hour, I marathoned 11 hours straight, half the audiobook, on a road trip. By the end it was uncannily dreamy. Then on the return trip I listened to another 4 or so, then -- have I ever actually read a novel from a library? -- checked out and finished a paper copy. The unprecedented conditions don't end there: you could say I've never read a serious modern novel at all, never indulged a bleak consumerist critique.\r\n\r\nI still wouldn't say it's my genre, but I liked The Corrections. Franzen was exquisite often enough in his prose to compensate for the beauty-desert of his story, and his story was compelling enough to watch through splayed fingers like a car crash. But it wasn't sad and shocking and momentary like a car crash; it was more like witnessing a car slowly flipping down a long mountainside, examining one by one its abused passengers, what pains they're enduring in the flipping, and how their selfish choices led to this careening. It's hard to feel sad once you realize every member is despicable and contributed to this collective misery. Then it's not sad, it's just desolate.\r\n\r\nI used to hate when people applied the word \"depressing\" too quickly. Things considered depressing I often didn't consider depressing. Things like death, and my old favorite movie Synecdoche, New York, struck me as hopeful in their inevitability, in how they relieved us of our responsibilities and pointed at what truly mattered. Works like Synecdoche made me feel heard. But I'm going to call The Corrections depressing for how 11 hours of continuous listening affected my mood. There's a great emptiness to it. When it's full, it's full of frustration. Starting the audiobook before dawn, before all my cognitive balances settled into place for the day, I even found myself bothered by anxious thoughts typically rare in my life, evidence of the penetrating anxiety of the book I was absorbing.\r\n\r\nWhile my emotional machinery has shifted over the years, I also think The Corrections is a different type of depressing from what people see in Synecdoche. It's more hateful, where Synecdoche is futile.\r\n\r\nI'm commenting mostly, in proportion, on the first 98% of the text. The ending I'll get to later.\r\n\r\nIt resembled Synecdoche in other ways. Sometimes everyone's talking and no one's listening, so multiple independently coherent conversations become interleaved incoherence. How hopeless it feels when various talking heads, disembodied, detached from hearts and from the ability to feel the world, keep interrupting each other.\r\n\r\nAnother link to Synecdoche is Death of a Salesman: Alfred has big Willy Loman energy.\r\n\r\nI wonder if some of the prose actually hit harder in audio form than paper. You have no idea where the winding sentence will end until the narrator savors the last inspired syllables. You miss the satisfying whiplash at the end of these phrases when your eyes can hurry ahead. For instance, the cadence of novel-reading is \"alreadydrenchedinstickyknowledge,\" but the audiobook says:\r\n\r\n\"already\r\n\r\nDRENCHED\r\n\r\n.\r\n.\r\n.\r\n\r\nin\r\n\r\nsticky\r\n\r\nknowledge\"\r\n\r\nThat's why I like poetry -- the language is easier to savor, you don't feel the need to push so efficiently through. But to be fair, most of the novel is more scannable than that passage.\r\n\r\nCan we reexamine this novel as farce, instead of tragedy, like Chip reexamines his script? It's funny how such a change in expectation can legitimately illuminate what previously looked so dim. There may be more humor in this book than I credited.\r\n\r\nSome of the run-on sentences are too indulgent in their wordy meandering. Franzen likes drawing out a thought until it's exhausted, not exhausted as in processed to satisfaction, but as in I was only prepared to dedicate a single thought to this sentence and he's taking me on a whole journey. It can be pretty tedious.\r\n\r\nIt gives the vibes of big intellectual dude-book (the bigger and brainier I make my book, the more productive and authoritative I'll feel as a man), but unlike its comrades it makes an honest effort at real female characters and emotional subtlety.\r\n\r\nFranzen captures psychological depths in the only linguistic way possible: very abstractly. It's a deep intellect, not just a broad and eidetic. Unfortunately it leads him to this moral desert. Tolkien had similar qualities of intellect, though he was led by a slight immaturity toward hopeful fantasy. Franzen fights through nihilism and just maybe finds something at the end.\r\n\r\nWhile his characters are intelligent, he makes them sound more profound than they really are. It's he who's profound. They don't know why they think and act like they do, but he knows. For example, Denise refuses to hang the ornament on the advent calendar, and Franzen offers a hand-wavy yet cutting reason which Denise probably couldn't voice herself. As the omniscient third person, he writes internal dialogue with deep psychological intelligence that the first person would never grasp. I wonder if he grasps such nuance in his own mind.\r\n\r\nSpeaking of third person, various passages totally reminded me of the prelude to another old favorite movie, Magnolia, in their matter-of-fact reciting of incredible circumstances. So much of The Corrections is mushy internal matter that when the events go external, Franzen dictates coldly, amplifying the loneliness of experiencing such misfortune in an unforgiving world. Not even Franzen is there for sympathy. The most obvious example is when Alfred falls past the cruise ship window, like the suicidal boy in Magnolia, but there are other moments.\r\n\r\nThe ending; an upturn. And how do we justify an upturn at the final moment of a hellbent stampede out of Ghost Riders in the Sky? We find out the rider plummeting fastest was the driver all along. He's nearly vanished. Sure, I figured a lot of suffering precipitated from Alfred as dust from Pigpen. But did I expect his demise would be such a vindication? I would have thought that intergenerational trauma lingered fiercely. Instead, the deeper he descends, the deeper the siblings harmonize, until at the point of his vanishing Enid leaps out of Hades a new woman, 75 and strutting and heroic. All along I thought misery and dysfunction were the way of Franzen's world. Alas it was all Alfred. But of course it came before Alfred, it wasn't really his; he just failed to shield Enid and the kids from it, as he was hopeless to shield any personal relation of his from his central bitterness. With our without his physical \"affliction\", Alfred was a shell of humanity; his damning affliction was his family's salvation.\r\n\r\nI can't say I entirely grasped The Corrections, first because it was my first experience with the unmethodical medium of audiobook (on paper, I pathologically reread sentences, but I just let the audiobook wash over me), second because I'm unschooled or unintelligent in this genre. Don't put it past me to miss a crucial allegory or even some easy analysis of what this book says and means. What I can point to is the experience of reading it and how it acclimates me with similar books. The experience was largely unhappy but ultimately -- I think -- positive, and the acclimation is inarguably helpful. It lowers the barrier to other big late-20th-early-21st-century novels. I think I need some more experience in that realm, so I have no regrets. I didn't love or extensively enjoy the novel -- a little too bleak, tedious, and similar to the parts of my life I despise the most -- but it was ultimately stimulating and satisfying.",
"created_at": "2025-07-29 13:27:24 UTC",
"updated_at": "2025-08-18 22:28:07 UTC",
"book": "The Corrections"
},
{
"review": "Yesterday I completed The Corrections, that desolate saga of aging. Today I read \"Victory Lap\" (from Tenth of December), the most heart-burstingly youth-centered thing I've witnessed in a while. The contrast is epic, the whiplash devastating, denouement euphoric. I'd like to think the difference lies not just in the differing subjects of youth and aging, so I can believe aging into and beyond my 30s doesn't place me squarely in the realm of The Corrections, with the realm of \"Victory Lap\" fully bygone. I'd like to think bearing children like those in \"Victory Lap\" isn't my only escape from Franzen's nightmare. I'd like to think the tonal discrepancy isn't fully described by the divergent subjects; that Saunders paints a more hopeful picture in general, employing children as his brightest paints but painting brightly nonetheless. I'd like to think one can choose Saunders' worldview, and one can not be deluded.\r\n\r\nNot spending much time around kids these days, I nevertheless felt like Saunders nailed the spazzy energy. Which nailing contributed to the story's devastation.\r\n\r\nI also read a few of the shorter stories in Tenth of December, and they didn't hit nearly like \"Victory Lap\", and I have some other things I have to read, so I may skip the rest for now.",
"created_at": "2025-08-20 00:00:03 UTC",
"updated_at": "2025-08-20 00:10:45 UTC",
"book": "Tenth of December"
},
{
"review": "I'm not sure if Goodreads lists the edition I have; it's Cicero's Orations translated by Yonge, but contains the Catilinarians, Philippics, and numerous others.\r\n\r\nI've had this book many years, understanding Cicero to be a legendary thinker and stylist. Now that I'm diving into Roman history, particularly that of Cicero's time, and considering Cicero speaks at length about the events of his time, this seemed like the perfect pursuit for the moment. But I underestimated his capacity for speaking \"at length\", and misunderstood this tome of orations as representing him as a thinker. These are just political speeches, these aren't philosophical works. Some of them could even be called self-aggrandizing propaganda, others smear campaigns. Not to say they're totally vacant of deep thought, noble principles, or commendable style: Cicero is a powerhouse in his rhetorical skill, and he does seem to be a genuine servant of the republic. But all of that is sandwiched in long bouts of propaganda. In that way he embodies the Roman intellectual, as I understand it: skilled in political and practical matters, disinterested in lofty philosophy. Maybe the republic was too tumultuous for metaphysics; didn't Rome start hellenizing more and more during the Pax Romana? Coincidence? A period of peace WOULD turn a sophisticated civilization toward platonic ideals and such, would spring Virgil and replicas of Greek sculpture, etc etc. But my grasp of the history is pretty sketchy; suffice it to say that Cicero lived through a political rollercoaster, not just as a rider but as one of the main operators, and his orations reflect the frantic politicking that situation breeds, not the pure philosophizing I naively expected in any legendary thinker of the ancient world.\r\n\r\nNor did I perceive this much-ballyhooed elegant Latin style. Now, he's certainly articulate, and there's this huge caveat that I don't read Latin, so I'm subject to the translator on this one. But through this translation, the orations are an anti-lesson in the style extolled by modern English education. In fact, if this translation is any indication, Cicero should have some stylistic vices named in his honor, such as verbosity (cicerosity?) and the runniest of run-on sentences (I don't know, maybe just call them ciceronian). This is some of the most tedious language I've ever read. Like I said earlier, these orations seemed so timely for me, I should have devoured them; but alas, the great stylist put me off with his very style, as even the most pertinent of the orations (the Philippics, considering my fascination with Antony) was drawn-out beyond my endurance. Even when he tried to say something directly (Antony is wicked) as opposed to his usual circling of the argument, it took some syntactic study to get his meaning.\r\n\r\nThus I read each \"argument\" that prefaced an oration, and I read much of Cicero's own vocalizing, but I skipped more of it. For having sprung from, and symbolizing, a period of history so dense with intrigue, this is about the least densely-intriguing way you could have spoken about it. I'm genuinely interested in the drama of Catiline, Caesar, Antony, and others, yet couldn't endure Cicero's orating about the same, even though he was right at the heart of the action, with a sharp mind. It's the perfect setup, and the most diluted execution.\r\n\r\nIt's crazy that these things actually happened. What an exciting place to be, Rome as the republic draws its last breaths. Cato's suicide, then Caesar's murder, then Cicero's murder -- the power is oscillating so violently and so bluntly; the ideals crystallize in radical men (or at least that's how history portrays it); Cicero's orations, for all their verbosity and propaganda, are vigorous reflections of a vigorous time. But they're more valuable to the historian than the general intellectual.",
"created_at": "2025-10-25 16:19:58 UTC",
"updated_at": "2025-10-26 14:46:00 UTC",
"book": "Cicero's Orations"
},
{
"review": "Wheelock's Latin wasn't designed for my present purpose: wading just deep enough into Latin to sense its relation to other languages, to gain an upper hand on future words of suspect etymology I encounter, to bump into some incidentals of Roman culture, to translate some common phrases we directly borrow from Latin, and lastly, not leastly, to simply enjoy a few of the curiosities that always reward the learning of a language. Wheelock had sterner goals in mind, such as actual mastery manifest in reading the original Vergil. Sounds great to me, but I don't have that kind of time. So Wheelock isn't the right shape for me, but oh well, I own it, and it surely contributes to all aforementioned intent, so I took advantage.\n\nTo demonstrate how the book's goals are oblique to my own, I need only name a chapter, such as CAPVT XXIV: \"Ablative Absolute; Passive Periphrastic; Dative of Agent.\" Clearly Wheelock is interested in a level of technicality beyond me. I mean it's interesting, but I'm not interested. Not now at least. I believe that such an extensive study of grammar is critical to mastering a language, and I bet I've learned as much of English as this book offers of Latin, nor am I a master of English; in other words, I've tackled stuff like this already, in my native tongue, so it's not out of my depth; but I tackled it organically, without a textbook, which is more fun than cramming declension memorization. So the hefty grammar of this book isn't uncalled for, isn't uninteresting, isn't inappropriate for early learners; but it is inappropriate for early learners who aren't really trying to learn the language, who just want anecdotes and etymologies and puns and quirks and a wee bit of rigor.\n\nWheelock certainly offers all of those things. Toward the end of my foray, I found myself breezing by the grammar at the beginning of each chapter and focusing more on the historical contexts and other miscellany at the end. I suppose this book is consummate, then -- everything an early Latin learner might need.\n\nI'm glad I tried it. Any study of Latin was going to contain numerous pleasures for me, Latin being so fundamental to our world and cropping up in every unexpected place. My study of Wheelock was anything but rigorous, but I feel I genuinely learned some things, and added that new dimension to my worldview that one of the citations said comes with any new language. Actually, my dive into Latin was pretty pathetic, more of a sticking of the head underwater and looking blurrily about than a dive -- enjoying the sight of a couple of fish but mostly seeing total obscurity below, before coming up for air. Thus it's silly to suggest my worldview went from 2D to 3D. BUT if Latin is a particular pond, of which I'd only seen glimmers on the 2D surface, I definitely looked inside and saw a 3D world like my own, and recognized some familiar flora/fauna, and that alone is a pleasure and an insight.\n\nThe declensions caught me off guard. I don't remember ever learning conjugations and declensions in English... I'm guessing I picked them up intuitively, nor is English inflected quite like this... in Spanish, I conjugated constantly, but even then I never heard the term \"declension.\" I never thought of nouns and adjectives as having a parallel to verb conjugation. I guess they do, in Spanish and English, but not like in Latin. This technicality intimidated me early on, suggesting Latin was hard. But you're really just transferring the burden from syntax to inflection, so you can take a breather with syntax while you saddle up for declension. At the end of the day, I don't think it's too bad, and certainly no worse than English, but it's more than I'm up for right now. At least, unlike with English, the pronunciation is consistent, and it's not pulling genes arbitrarily from multiple branches of its family tree. Latin has many rules, yet it takes them seriously, like a good Roman, which makes it more predictable than anarchic English.\n\nSome random things I learned:\n- Adverbs aren't just ADjectives for VERBS. \"Verb\" comes from the Latin for \"word\", so adverbs needn't describe English verbs specifically, they can even describe adjectives. Which is incandescently interesting. See?\n- Sanskrit is closer to English than Hebrew or Arabic is, even though those two are geographically and culturally closer. Somehow this Indo-European-speaking group found its way to India and to Europe, skipping over the Middle East. I mean I'm sure they walked there, but they didn't stick. It's just hard to imagine ancient India can be more Western, in any way, than the people who wrote the Old Testament, perhaps the West's most critical text -- and than Jesus himself, the Aramaic speaker.\n- Nouns have a parallel of verb conjugation, though you don't really notice it in some languages.\n- \"Veni, vidi, vici\" hits different when you realize v's are actually w's.\n- Most English vocabulary is Latin-derived, even though the language is known as Germanic and its mechanics are Germanic. I knew tons of English vocabulary was Latin-derived, but I thought it was mostly in things like French borrows (\"rendezvous\") and technical jargon (\"cumulonimbus\"). That's not true though, those are just examples where the Latin/Romance source stayed pretty intact. The vocab infiltrated much deeper than that, I think via quasi-French conquerors of Britain?\n- Pulling this one vaguely from memory, but if I remember right, \"immortal\" is just that typical consonant drift from \"inmortal\", which uses that common prefix as in \"invalid\"\n- On that note, it's interesting that there are typical patterns for how consonants drift over centuries, at least in Romance languages",
"created_at": "2025-11-10 21:26:56 UTC",
"updated_at": "2025-11-20 23:18:30 UTC",
"book": "Wheelock's Latin"
},
{
"review": "I liked The Aeneid as I liked The Odyssey, and why wouldn't I, equivalent as they are. I knew Virgil was deliberately recalling Homer, to elevate his nation or something like that, but the similarities run deeper. Virgil directly picks up Homer's story, mimics his style, even his trademark similes, and his bloodlust. He echoes refrains like Homer did, albeit less so, perhaps because Virgil's society is more literary than Homer's oral one, so you don't need to train the ear on these refrains. Otherwise, he includes passages of extended flashback, of tedious ritual, of exciting battle, and of mythical meddling, all like The Odyssey.\r\n\r\nBut I say I liked it as I liked The Odyssey also in that each was slow: grander in scope than in pleasure. To say I enjoyed reading either would be sketchy. Yet I like both. They're interesting and exciting, also sluggish and archaic. I chose somewhat old-fashioned translations because I like old-fashioned language, especially if the material is old-fashioned while the scholarship is modern. So I don't think the translation was the problem. I think it's just the genre. Well, I'll add that reading a translation at all is a blow to the original intent, especially for Homer who is oratorical, but even for Virgil who is supposedly quintessentially Latin. I wish I could hear and understand them in their original medium. These are the types of stories I like, and the poetry of it all is soul-expanding.\r\n\r\nThe plot of The Aeneid is curious. I mean the greater arc makes sense... heroic origin story for Romans to cherish like the Greeks could theirs... but lots of the events and pacing feel arbitrary. The ending is abrupt and unsatisfying. Virgil is hijacking Homer's story, putting it to patriotic purpose, and failing to properly color in the surroundings. Yet there's a lot of great writing in here, so you can't really blame him. I don't think epic poetry is the easiest genre to execute. He submits a great story, greatly told, it just doesn't suit modern standards of pacing or arc.\r\n\r\nI'm not sure why one reads The Aeneid. Homer is much more useful for cultural reference; one doesn't read Latin so one misses a good deal of the poetic style; its motives seem remote; it whiffs the virtues of modern storytelling. Yet it feels large, and you have to imagine it expanding the scaffolding of your mind, higher and wider. You figure it's a vitamin for cognition, yeast for the imagination. And, to put it simply, you enjoy the mighty. You read Virgil because you both relish the mighty.\r\n\r\nAeneas is a worthy hero, if a bit generic. Brilliant fighter, of course -- strong yet compassionate leader -- respectful to the gods. Achilles is strong, Odysseus is cunning, Aeneas is... pious? He's less memorable, partly for that reason, partly because The Aeneid vanishes in our cultural reference beside the likes of Homer and Shakespeare. I'd watch this movie though. By Jove I'd watch a three part Iliad - Odyssey - Aeneid sequence.\r\n\r\nOutline, if I remember right: Saturn/Cronos begat the Italians/Latins and, separately, via Dardanus, the Trojans. Aeneas is paternally related to Hector, but his mother is Venus. Troy endures The Iliad, of course, while Italy eventually gets a king called Latinus, whence Latium/Lazio. Aeneas survives The Iliad, destined to sire an empire in the west (\"Hesperia\"). His company sails through Carthage; he and Queen Dido fall in love, but staying is not his fate, hence a bloody future of his race vs hers. He makes it to Italy, Juno/Hera incites war, but he triumphs, vowing nevertheless (with Jove's blessing) never to stamp out Latin culture. His son founds Alba Longa, and down a few generations Mars intervenes, begetting Romulus and Remus. Romulus of course founds Rome, and supposedly the Caesars come therefrom (Aeneas' son Ascanius is otherwise known as Iulus, hence Julius).\r\n\r\nThe narrative was awful slow at times. I didn't think I could finish, despite the back of the book claiming all but the most insensitive reader is propelled to the end. But once the battles began and the foaming brains started spewing, I admit it was easier to pay attention. That's why I figure I'd like The Iliad the best, the one of the three that I haven't fully read -- as far as I understand, it's just pure war. I mean I'm sure there are plenty of dynastic descriptions, plenty of rites, but all revolving around battle.",
"created_at": "2025-11-15 03:14:37 UTC",
"updated_at": "2026-01-22 23:38:19 UTC",
"book": "The Aeneid"
},
{
"review": "This book was convenient, but didn't move me toward a sense of understanding something deeper, as I'd hoped. It's called The Shortest History, so you can't expect consummate investigation, but it could have refined its priorities a little. It felt like a list of every famous person and event in the history of Italy -- perhaps what you expect in the shortest history of a place, although its self-imposed obligation to such a list felt ironically verbose, at the expense of deeper understanding. Sometimes the narrative even jumped briefly back in time, as though the author realized he forgot to mention someone who has a Wikipedia page and felt a pang of completionist guilt at the omission. Given the same number of pages, I would rather hear more about what EXPLAINS and UNITES the history of Italy than hear every notable Italian-sounding proper noun I'll never remember. As such, the \"shortest history\" could have been shorter, or, at the same length, could have been more interesting.\r\n\r\nI get why everyone talks about the \"great men\" of history: it's easier to understand history when it's personified, and in most of the cultures we learn about around here, it's men in leadership positions. I am getting tired of it though -- not just the fixation on the male leader, but the fixation on individuals at all, as opposed to broader trends. Renaissance Florence wasn't an illumination because Leonardo lived there; he's just a personification of the illumination; it's Renaissance Florence itself that bred Leonardo. Fascism didn't take over because Mussolini took over, Mussolini took over because the time and place were ripe for him; in fact, they MADE him. These \"great men\" spur history on, but they don't make it. The wheel of history is always rolling; perhaps they kick it and it speeds up a little, or yaws one degree in a new direction, but that wheel is steadfast. It rolls without them. The history of Italy is not Caesar-Leonardo-Mussolini, they're just some of the most famous and memorable blips, since we as humans like thinking in terms of humans, especially in terms of superhuman personalities.\r\n\r\nThe author makes an effort to comment on the influential women throughout history, but typically at the end of a chapter, too easily suggesting it's an afterthought, which is bitterly contrapuntal.\r\n\r\nHe's a solid writer, not a great one. There were lots of clunky passages, of the kind I would write, only I don't get paid for this. It can't be easy, cramming so many facts while sustaining a flow. It gets clunky and overloaded. But again, I feel like he could have omitted some facts and actually ended up with a richer vision of Italian history, through more focus on the threads comprising the garment instead of the many flashy features of the garment.\r\n\r\nOne of the most thought-provoking things I learned was hardly about Italy at all. It was that the Normans descended from the Vikings (supposedly?), which shot me down a rabbit hole of Norman/Norseman/Northman.\r\n\r\nAnother interesting thing: Northern Italians were prejudiced against the Southern, like Union states might be against Confederate; in fact, Southern Italy was an entirely separate kingdom for quite a while, so the divide is probably not just ethnic but sociological -- the Kingdom of Naples was probably genuinely different from the kingdoms of the North, and so it wasn't pure racism or anything like that that caused that tension. As a side note, most of the Italian immigrants to the US were Southern Italians, and that's also where the mafia originated.\r\n\r\nI'll stop before I offend any Italians with my juvenile grasp of their history. (I guess that juvenile grasp doesn't reflect well on this book)",
"created_at": "2025-12-03 17:36:43 UTC",
"updated_at": "2025-12-12 04:02:50 UTC",
"book": "The Shortest History of Italy: 3,000 Years from the Romans to the Renaissance to a Modern Republic\u2015A Retelling for Our Times (The Shortest History Series)"
},
{
"review": "I read the Bohemia and Red-Head stories, and most of the Study in Scarlet. They effected in me an improbable admiration for both the writer of the book and of the Cumberbatch adaptation, the latter of which I watched recently. I found both parties contributed clever content absent in the other's, suggesting the adaptation is a rare adaptation that honors yet augments its source, and that not in a discordant spirit. Take the Study in Scarlet for example: the novel is, of course, distinguished in introducing characters that have so far proved immortal, entertaining as they are; and in fabricating a plot worthy of said characters; and, simply, in its talent for prose; but the TV episode, on the other hand, expertly translates all of this to a new medium, in a new time period, and with new plot elements that simultaneously feel harmonious and elevated relative to the source. I'm impressed with Doyle, and impressed with his adaptors. The series borrows generously from the stories, yet leaves its own stamp as an enrichment thereto. It's all very pleasant.\r\n\r\nAnd pleasant is about where it ends. I don't plan on reading the rest, until I'm so sore with greater ambitions that I stoop to guilty pleasures. And this won't nearly be the first I reach for. But I'll keep it around just in case.",
"created_at": "2026-01-24 18:50:26 UTC",
"updated_at": "2026-01-24 19:08:43 UTC",
"book": "The Book of Sherlock Holmes"
},
{
"review": "I was first interested in Wuthering Heights about 11 years ago, when I heard about this fraught love triangle. It sounded powerful, and I was lately liking Jane Eyre (by this author's sister), so I acquired Wuthering Heights and kept it all these years. But I didn't read it, as my esteem for its genre gently waned, and other fancies cut in line. But with the forthcoming film, featuring two stars at the summit of the mainstream, it felt necessary to try the book. Alas! that love triangle occupies such a short space of the plot.\r\n\r\nWretchedness of wretchednesses! All is wretchedness! This book stands tall next to Frankenstein, not for a height of quality but of misery. These are two of the least likable books I've ever read, in which scarcely a single character is heroic, and all hope of redemption vanishes by the halfway point.\r\n\r\nIndeed, before I'd finished a third of Wuthering Heights, the 11-years-anticipated love triangle was extinguished, the most likable character dead, the most interesting character damned beyond any further interest, each child traumatized that had erstwhile embodied a new hope, and generally, the entire story doomed to helpless suffering. That's the doom I foresaw at the 1/3 mark, based on a mountain of evidence; and looking back, I was right. The final 200 pages are senseless writhing wrought by the first 100, and there's no way around it, other than to cast the book back into the fiery chasm from whence it came.\r\n\r\nFrankenstein involves a man made wretched by his own making, and his creation wretched for all that. Both figures abandon all hope of redemption very early in the story; and you know that even if their moral character comes around, they won't escape the suffering in store. Wuthering Heights is just like that, but the entire Earnshaw/Linton clan is Victor Frankenstein, and Heathcliff is the Creature. They oppress him until all his future monstrosity is inevitable, and they in turn are haunted by the oppressed and by their own oppressive spirits. And he IS monstrous, though I entered this experience ready to sympathize with him, and though I acknowledge his pain. He travels far beyond excuse; even if I could find excuse for him, it would still only be an excuse for his very authentic monstrousness.\r\n\r\nThat makes this book keenly involved in the theme of generational trauma. The original Earnshaw oppresses Hindley, who then oppresses Catherine and Heathcliff; Heathcliff then makes life hell for everyone ever after, including the next generation of Linton, Hareton, and Catherine II. But to call it generational trauma is almost too forgiving, too full-hearted. Catherine II doesn't come off as traumatized, just miserable. It's really generational misery. Generational hatred. Everyone hates everyone and everyone is miserable. Does that sound like a book you want to read?\r\n\r\nAnd the one I said was the most likable, Catherine I, is a whole Scarlett O'Hara, selfish and frivolous. This book actually reminds me of Gone With the Wind, both renowned as classics, both miserable, not least because their poster girl is intent on making everyone miserable. Yet Catherine I was the most likable at that point of the book, and generally I elevate her above the fold, although by the end I'd say Catherine II usurped her, and above all else: Ellen. Ellen was the rock against which the noisy yet unsubstantial waves of everyone else crashed. Everyone threw drama and pettiness and even black wickedness in her direction, and she bore it all like a champ -- the servant, poor in material, is the only one rich in spirit. The only! Ellen is the hero of this book. She has some nasty flaws, but they're almost imperceptible against the backdrop of this cast of clowns. She's a saint, going well beyond her charge for a family well beyond decency, and like a true saint, she's too pious and old-fashioned -- but that's just the universe of the book... Jane Eyre was just like that, and I'm guessing the authors were too. Ellen starkly transcends the rest because she's the only one grounded in a true heart and a stubborn conscience. When she errs, she repents, and when she laments, she hopes. No one else in the book can say that. Catherine II might be my favorite character, but she is selfish and spiteful and succumbs to the torment all around her. Somehow Ellen endures all. She's like Samwise: not only does she save the world at the last, no one would have even made it out of the Shire without her! Not to mention every peril along the way. She isn't carrying the standard, she's carrying the standard-bearer! She isn't Hercules, she's Atlas.\r\n\r\nI can't IMAGINE what this movie will be like. When I first saw the poster with Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi... before reading the book... I figured this would be somewhere between Jane Eyre and Jane Austen -- being Bronte, too dark for Austen, but being Margot Robbie, too sparkly for Jane Eyre. Though I haven't seen the movie, I know I'm right on several accounts: Margot Robbie can't play a Jane Eyre type; Wuthering Heights is darker than Pride and Prejudice (comic understatement); and Wuthering Heights contains characters more sparkly than any in Jane Eyre. But the rest was wholly unanticipated. The two characters I can only assume Robbie and Elordi portray are despicable, not in any kind of anti-hero or even villainous way, just in a black, miserable kind of way. And one of them isn't even in the story very long. Who would want to play those parts, and who would want to watch them? These actors have much to live for, and they've been wasting away on this poison. Why make this movie?\r\n\r\nMaybe Fennell has some twists in store. I've only seen Saltburn from her, but Promising Young Woman also looked twisted. Maybe she has some reimagining of Wuthering Heights queued up. I don't know why you'd even pick Wuthering Heights though, if it requires such reimagining to escape its doldrums. There are plenty of more auspicious options out there...\r\n\r\nThe progression from Saltburn makes sense though, in some very literal ways. Heathcliff is conniving for estate, picking off his predecessors with coerced inheritance, having entered the family originally as a foreign wretch, and exiting triumphant as a murderous one. As I say this, I could almost count Saltburn as loosely based on Wuthering Heights. It's also that cuckoo archetype.\r\n\r\nJane Eyre, for all its long buildup, dainty prose, and general creepiness, I far prefer to Wuthering Heights. There are protagonists. There's hope and conscience in them. There's love in the romance. None of this exists in Emily's hellscape. Of course, Heathcliff is very Rochester-like, like Mr Darcy and so many other brooding heroes. But Heathcliff has nothing heroic in him. The others are tormented and misunderstood; Heathcliff is just ghastly. In the other two books, I'm telling the women \"no no no, just give him a try, if you're earnest with him, he'll be earnest, and this'll be a worthy romance\"; in this book, I'm telling everyone who crosses him \"please kill him. Do it for me.\" It's actually really disappointing that no one murders Heathcliff.\r\n\r\nWhen Ellen first insulted him, I assumed her simple-minded, and he oppressed; but no, oppressed or not, he's a bona fide devil. It's a wonder he gets a relatively happy ending.\r\n\r\nI wonder if anyone who has read this book sympathizes with Heathcliff, or thinks he's an interesting character. Corollary: I wonder if anyone in the world actually likes this book? I've basically never heard of it other than that moment 11 years ago and seeing its poster recently; I'm sure at one point I validated its classic status on Wikipedia, but that's it. So now I'm fascinated, once I write this, to probe its legacy. Is it considered a classic? Why? It's hard to imagine. Unless I missed some essential allegory?? I'm ready to risk looking like a fool, because I detected nothing wonderful or distinguished about this book.\r\n\r\nThe funny thing is, I kind of liked it though?? This is about the fastest I've ever read a novel. The first third was very fast and engaging for me. But that's about the time I realized all was lost, so the final two thirds were tougher. It's a fairly short read, but I'm a slow reader, so it's a compliment to the book that I breezed through it. Got it over with, you might say. I kind of hated it.\r\n\r\nI wonder who plays Ellen. Someone wholesome yet homely, I hope. As far as Robbie and Elordi, the characters I assume they play were so far from my expectation that I happily didn't picture the actors as I read, at all. That's how shocked I was by the repellant characters. This movie should be interesting. I plan to see it, not because I liked the book, because of how much I disliked it; the film as a project is so confusing to me, and therefore compelling.\r\n\r\nI'll say I still like the prose style of this genre though. I like how the emotion physically manifests; you can always read it so extremely in someone's countenance. I like the physiognomy. I like how it pretends like feeling is so physical. I like how shame and nerves are lethal. If someone slanders your family, you're liable to faint and probably die. It's all kind of silly, but quaint, and just foreign enough.",
"created_at": "2026-01-26 17:01:47 UTC",
"updated_at": "2026-02-02 14:59:43 UTC",
"book": "Wuthering Heights"
}
]
And The Sword in the Stone (written after my data dump):
I daresay all this juvenile meandering was vindicated in the final ten pages. It hit me hard: finally coming around to the great legend, the sudden injection of dignity at the end.
Thankfully I'm familiar with Tolkien, who taught me young adult storytelling can metamorphose into things grand, deep, and dark, in the blink of an eye; and those later elements in turn illuminate the rising action that had looked so wan. For example, having seen and read The Return of the King, I enjoy The Fellowship of the Ring -- and recognize its depth -- so much more. Thus I was far more patient with The Sword in the Stone than I think I would have been otherwise. I think I might have put it down for good.
That's how frivolous it felt. It quickly assumes and then refuses to shirk a tone of silliness and levity that undermines the reason I picked it up in the first place. I can only hope the next volumes better balance the levity with gravity, silliness with seriousness, bright with might.
Not that I'm scorning silliness altogether. T.H. White is funny, and most likely his more serious poetics stand taller when foiled against the lighthearted stuff, like the hobbits in Mordor. And some of the light stuff still punches above its weight. For instance, the protagonist is playfully turned into an ant at one point, and a goose at another; both opportunities unleash White's knowledge of the natural world as well as his ability to say something passionate and profound. It was genuinely interesting to consider how ants think, and that bit about the Wart feeling "uncreated" as a goose in a marsh was halting.
I'm sure I'm not the first to mention this, but the Wart stumbling on the Sword feels a lot like Bilbo stumbling on the Ring. Both unsuspecting, both the humblest figures, yet both by destiny deserving. I hope the next volumes expand in one's mind the way the quests of the Ring do. And I really hope they don't end at Bilbo's journey (The Hobbit) but extend into the wider world and higher ideas of the Lord of the Rings.
The Sword in the Stone was pleasant, but not nearly interesting enough to stand on its own for someone like me. It has to really effectively usher in some hefty successor volumes, or else it's kids' fodder. Like season one of Game of Thrones, if it were ten minutes/pages shorter, I might have abandoned it forever; but alas, Daenerys reveals her dragons, and the Wart reveals his lineage; let's hope this pays off as much as Game of Thrones did in the end, and let's leave out the massive midsection of misery!
