Charlie
Well, I had high hopes for this book when it was given to me. After all, Orhan Pamuk, the author, won a Pulitzer and has been all over the news lately. He must be a good writer, right?
Turns out he is a good writer but this book was not for me. I tried really hard to like it and to care and to want to know what happened to everyone and why it happened (which was what he was interested in), but couldn't. Mostly this is because snow is a very slow moving book.
It takes place in a small city on the Eastern border of Turkey during a snow storm when all the roads in and out of the city are closed. The protagonist is a poet who has been living in self-exile in Germany and he's come back as a reporter to cover a story about suicides by young women in the city. He quickly falls in love (too quickly considering the pace of the rest of the book) and has runs ins with the secret service, Kurds and Ilsamists.
I was hoping for something much more lyrical. Something more poignant. Instead I got a lot of characters all running around in the midst of a mini-revolution trying to stay alive in the most asine of ways.
There were moments of excellent story telling, but most of these were stories within the story. By the time I finished this (a month and a half after I started!) I was trudging through because, I figured, I made it this far, I might as well finish now.
So far it's not a bad book but it's not a great one either. It's an “eco-thriller” so I dig it because I am very interested in the environment. But because it's Neal Stephenson, it's more about the character than the environment and since the charcter's voice isn't terribly readable, this book isn't as good as his others. Still, I want to read it all the way through and am not bored.
This was a great book. It took me a few days to really get into it because the voice is different than most novels, but once I got into it's rhythym, I loved it. It was like spoken word on the page. Or a Jazz tune played by Thelonious Monk in his heyday. This book flowed and the main character reverberated in my head.
WBS is the story of a black boy who grew up in California and ends up being the voice of his people (I'm not giving anything away here. He says that on the first page of the book). We follow him from third grade through his early 20s from the beaches of LA to inner-city ghettos and finally, college. It's a dark fairy tale that requires a healthy suspension of disbelief, and one I was willing to give. Read this.
Great characters, though they're a lot of them which is hard to keep track of for me. The writing is wonderful. I feel like the connections to get me and discovered made this book, but could have been done without one storyline being included. That just felt extraneous.
This is the case of three stars is too low four stars is too high. I like this book though I didn't think it was fun to read. It was a book that everybody had to read in my high school but in the year before I started. I can understand why it was designed and I'm glad it was but I feel the telling of the story has matured over the years thanks to other authors. That said it was an important book in the culture and should continue to be read because it introduced Western world to The narrative of the negative effects of colonialism
Admittedly, I am a bit of a [a:Douglas Coupland 1886 Douglas Coupland https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1264509011p2/1886.jpg] fanboy. I've got every book he's written and though they're not all great, I love it every time a new one comes out. this book, however, is different. It's obviously a labor of love and an effort to tell the story of someone Coupland saw as a hero. Reading it as an American was an illuminating experience for me. Terry Fox was an amazing, inspirational human being who is regarded as a national hero in Canada. Yet somehow, Americans know nothing of him, which is a shame.If you're curious, and you should be, this book is a great way to learn about Terry and about the love Canadians feel for him to this day, 30+ years after his amazing feat. Coupland combines his writing skill, his deep admiration for Terry and his excellent eye for design into a lovely coffee table book that is also an engaging read.
This is so much more than a literary version of The Office. It is funny and touching and all about the life and relationships we have in our office lives, but it goes way beyond that. Even better, the voice is a very unique one and in fact , I would argue, is not just one. The trick though is that transition form one to the other is seamless. This was a great read.
One of my favorites in this series. Best character development so far and it explores an aspect of the universe that is most intriguing.
Allie Brosh is amazing. Her art is so simple and evocative. And her storytelling is really clear and very effective. No one, no, ONE, is able to explain what their depression feels like so effectively, with so much emotion, and so humorously. Read this.
Absolutely engrossing, fun and haunting all that same time. A great take on what the afterlife may be. If only Zorastrism wasn't used because it has a funny name. Otherwise, brilliant.
I really enjoyed the structure of this book. 7 travelers on a package, ditched together by circumstance. Each tells their tale a la The Canterbury Tales. Each story is told differently and really well crafted. On to of yours, the world building is intriguing.
