melissa
I find this book a great one to read, just for people to imagine another possible world. And I don't think a world need to be full of women to be like Herland. but more a society that has rejected industrialization, and embraced the fact that life is not a competition. It's not a perfect book of course, but I like where it got me thinking.
I loved it. You can feel her diving into her psychosis, and it's so fascinating and suffocating, and accurate. The book is known as an anti-“resting treatment” story, but really it shows how condescending physicians are to women and how belittling they are of their pain. The resting treatment is only a detail of an age where women were driven crazy in asylums or lobotomized for not fitting in. If anyone has a recommendation of books of that subject, I'm all ears.
I loved the book. It is very thorough in many subjects, and even though I already agree on many points, I was able to look at many things in different ways. Also the fact that the book is written a century ago shows the curve we're following when comparing it to the present days. In summary basically all issues are just getting worse, wether it's country's arm race, industrialization or prison privatization and slave labor. For women issues, there are progresses since then, but it's good to read early feminist writings, cause it feels like we lost the plot.
A thing I loved about her feminist views, is that the whole equality thing is a sham, we seem to be wanting women to be more like men, while it should be the other way around in many stuff. Why do we all want to thrive in work, instead of focusing on the humanitarian side of our existence. Why are emotions supposed to be set aside and deemed inferior, by men and feminists alike. Also, a very important point, especially that the book is written during the suffragettes time, is the belief that women are going to purify politics. As we know (and as Goldman had seen), elections including women did not bring better leaders. Now the focus seems to be that women politicians will purify politics, which is another lie. Emma Goldman states that all big wins to the feminist movement and women issues happened with the force of protests and strikes, and never with the ballot. Of course she's not against women voting, but she states that it's an illusion of progress, instead of an actual win, and I kinda agree. Especially when women are still bound by the patriarchal shackles, and imposing these views on each other.
I always enjoy Nick hornby's books, but this one is not one of his best. Around two thirds, I felt the book was ready to be finished, but it still kept going on. Still enjoyable, the characters were real enough, it had the feeling of About a Boy, the protagonist kept digging himself in a deeper hole, but you keep chuckling, so still good. I feel this book would make a really good movie, the way his other books were adapted.
This one is my favourite Mary Oliver book so far. I always like to pick up a random Mary Oliver book when I feel idle, it gives me a peaceful feeling; but this one was more poignant than usual. There are so many poems that I wanted to share from it, but here's my favourite:
Of the Empire
We will be known as a culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.
This was my favourite book when I was 5, and no wonder I fell in love with the Harry Potter series a few years later. This book has sorcery and magic, a wizarding school and accepting your child however different they are. The illustrations are lovely, actually funny and so heartfelt. I was so happy I didn't lose the book, I read it with a smile on my face. Will be re-reading it more often.
I've joined a reading challenge where we revisit our favourite books from our childhood, so there will be a lot of similar books this month. I loved going through this one, many illustrations had been stuck in my mind, and it was nice to see them again. The stories are fine (there are two), I think I only looked through the book when I was a kid, so it was good to finally read it, and not just guess from the drawings what's happening.
That was really enjoyable. When it comes to detective work in books, and trying to guess the culprit as a reader, Agatha Christie's seems the best to me for now. You actually get all the information (not like with Holmes), the answer at the end actually makes sense, and not some weird deus ex machina, and no weird shoved in your throat romantic tension. I do enjoy detective stories where you have a few suspects and the more you read the more you switch your suspicions from one to the other. I understand now why everyone has been the singing the praises of Miss Marple.
A very important book to read, and a very important testimony for the History books. The more I read about the trans-atlantic Slave trade and the African American plight under Jim Crow, I just get more and more nauseous and disgusted. It is a bottomless pit of cruelty. And to people to just brush over the whole history of the black people kidnapped and sent as cargo to another continent, and wanting people to just “get over it”, these people haven't even glanced at 1% of the damage that was done. And to put it into context, these interviews were made in 1931, not even a century ago.
Kossola tells his story as an African man, in Africa first, that was captured, sold to a white man (with a bunch of others of course), shipped and smuggled into the US (as the slave trade had been abolished by then), worked as a slave, and of his “freedom” after the civil war, and living under Jim Crow. A very important aspect of his story, is the fact that he's an African man who has known Africa and its culture, and not a slave that was born in America. Another reason to be discriminated against, and the fact that his dream was to go back “home”, and not to be part of the country he was abducted into.
Basically, in a sentence, it just goes from really really bad to somehow even-worse-how-is-that-even-possible. Weirdly the book is not heavy, as Kossola does not dive into the horrifying details, as he very understandably did not like to talk about these issues in length.
I gave it a 4 instead of a 5, because it didn't feel like a whole book. I felt like a I needed a Historical study of the era, and not just some little footnotes under Kossola's statements, to round it all up. But definitely a must read.
I'd already watched the movie, and the book is as awesome as I expected. Had a problem with the illustrations of the edition I have (by Chris Riddell), they were meh, nothing in comparison to the beauty and creepiness of Dave McKean's illustrations. I kept a google image page of his Coraline illustrations open while reading the book, they compliment each other perfectly. All in all, I feel like I want to watch the movie again, and read other books by Gaiman (recommendations always welcome).
Beautifully heavy book. There was an air of doom around all the characters throughout the book, like everyone is living until that one mistake that would ruin them, and it didn't feel like the exception, but the rule of Black Americans during Jim Crow. Instead of the shackles of slavery, there was the shackles of family, of race, of the police, of white America, and of God. I felt like they were a people cursed, most probably because it was written in a way mimicking the language of the Bible. I don't know what to get from the ending though, it felt optimistic, but also delusional.
Will need to read up more on the book, and James Baldwin, it is after all semi-autobiographical. And I will definitely read his other books.
It's a good book and well written. I understand why it's so many people's favourite, however, it's not mine. I enjoyed it, it gave me a lot of thoughts to ponder, but it didn't really make me feel. I loved Teresa, she's my favourite character, just wanted to give her hug, but I could not identify with Tomas for a second, Sabina is cool, I guess Franz is okay, I like their story anyway. I enjoyed the narrator's musings, critiquing the work with references and parallelism, the analysis of Oedipus and Beethoven's Es Muss Sein stand out, but I prefer to do my own analysis. Like the author wrote the story and explained to you what to understand from each sentence, and even though it feels like the book is pushing me to think, it felt more like the book is telling me what to think, which is problem when you don't really agree with the thoughts. And after you're done with the book, there's nothing else to muse about, because the author already told you every analysis you could have, which is why I'm having a hard time writing this review. Like what else is there to say, when the analysis is already part of the book.
All in all, I really liked the book, glad I finally read it, it's just a different style from the kind of books I usually fall in love with.
This is one of those books that I'll keep mentioning and telling people to read. I already know how annoying i am going to be talking about this book forever. There are so many things I loved about the book. First of all, it is scientific, with all the terms mentioned and the biology explained, you actually know that you're learning something, not just amassing a collection of cool stories to tell. Secondly, all the cases are told with so much humanity, and respect to the patient. It is their story, more than it is the doctor's (Oliver Sacks), which is obvious, but very much lacking in the medical world especially now. Along the way, we're trying to understand what the patients are feeling, and what their needs are, and how they're going to live with their condition, while learning about what caused that condition, and the history and the different theories about it. It is never a boring read, but actually quite emotional.
The human brain is so fascinating, and so complex, but also so fragile. However, with all the possible ways the nerves could start malfunctioning, there's always a way for them to reroute or compensate. Here's the sad part of the book, where even though it shows that every human will find their way to express themselves, or find the universe that will bring them peace, society is rarely patient enough with them to help. Or even when they do find it, it is disregarded, because it doesn't allow them to be a part of this society, because who cares about inner peace, when we need people in this society to do unwanted menial jobs. The case of the Twins (chap.23) actually made me cry. The fact that we just want people with mental illnesses to just be functional enough to be productive, however destructive that is to their personality. I know that's the case of everyone in this system, but there's a certain kind of cruelty to take the only thing that made a person, stuck in his own head, happy, so he'd be “productive” [I'm still angry about chapter 23].
The thing about this book is, that I can talk for hours about each of the 24 chapters, and there will always be more to talk about. So just read the book everyone, it is really important.
PS. Also something that I very much appreciated, is that Oliver Sacks in no way makes you feel that neurology is only a field for doctors. It shows that he wants you to know what's happening in your body, because we all have one. He wants us to understand our inner world. He wants us to know how we all function and how we can disfunction. He just explains all the jargon. I could write forever, but I will stop for now. Will definitely read his other books.
