Sean
Beautiful and worth reading (it was written by Tolstoy, after all!) even though there was no decision to love at the end, only a resignation. Their marriage could have become a thing of beauty if they had only chosen to find a new way to love each other. This flaw was a disappointment. But I still recommend it highly to anybody who wants to peer into the human soul and see what's there.
This is a worthy continuation of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. Maintaining the profound truth and tough clarity which is Donaldson's chief characteristic as an author and philosopher, this book can break you heart with grief but hold it together with hope and the clarion call to service and integrity.
The most dismal and dull book that I could not put down. Ford has created a nice set of characters about whom I care nothing, whose lives are pointless, and whose spirits are empty. But boy oh boy, when those dull, empty people have conversations, Ford puts the reader right there and sometimes makes your skin crawl. After one such conversation, the one with Herb, dismal and dull though it was, I uttered a “Wow!” loud enough to draw attention to myself in the diner. It alone was worth the price of admission. Ford is magnificent at what he does, and though what he does is drag you along to watch a perfectly uninteresting person live out his perfectly uninteresting life, he made me want to keep reading and left me amazed at what a well-crafted paragraph can do.
Beautiful illustrations, and a beautifully produced physical book (the edition I read is hardcover with textured paper) made this a delight to read. The colors and art were genuinely entrancing. As for the words, I suspect the adaptation and simplification of the original long poem leaves much to be desired. What is left worked well enough as an accompaniment (almost captions) to the great art, but felt philosophically trite.
I am so glad I read March. Having been born right in the middle of the time period it covers, and not too far away, I knew nothing of what was going on, and I never really learned the details as well as I should. These events were not anything I would have learned about in history class, as they were much too recent, but I always felt I should just know about it, so I never bothered doing any real reading. I was raised around people who talked and believed just like the more vile white people presented in the clear drawings of these books, and I also knew white people who had marched and protested and prayed and written letters and dreamed of a non-segregated future. So March was a bit like going back to my childhood, including some of the uglier aspects.
“The coloreds were better off when we took care of them. They liked being slaves.” “It's just not natural sitting next to a nigra. If God had meant for us to be near them, he wouldn't have put them all in Africa to begin with.” “You know what they want to do? They want our women!” I heard parents of friends say things like that. I would go home and ask my mother to clarify. She never forbade me from associating with the kids, but she made sure I knew that their parents were full of something unwholesome.
Lewis and his two associates have produced a great reminder for those who maybe have forgotten, and an excellent history lesson for younger folk who never did know just how terrible things were. I know that white people can sometimes get tired of “Black Lives Matter” and “uppiter blacks,” but March makes it impossible to ignore the reality that things are the way they are now because of how things were sixty years ago, and how they were 100 or 300 years ago. The past is still with us, and the only way to get beyond it is to know the truth and strive to make things better.
Ardit's books are very good for their intended purpose. They are easy to read for someone at the stated level (in this case, A2), while still presenting grammatical and lexical challenges. Granted, they are not the most interesting of books, but they aren't actually boring, and are interesting enough to bother reading. I like his books in general and this one in particular.
In Pasaje de ida, Ardit did a good job of making me feel that I had a little taste of all the South American countries that Jorge/George spent time in, and I certainly was pulling for him to make what I considered the right decision.
I continue to love this story. I remain riveted by the events and fascinated by the characters and entranced by the colors. I love Saga.
I noticed something. When the cute little creatures of comet Phang pray for deliverance at the end, we, the hip, modern, not-naive readers automatically know that their naïve foolish prayer will not be answered and THEY WILL ALL DIE A HORRIBLE TERRIBLE DEATH BWAH HA HA HA HA! That's what they get for being so stupid as to believe in a "god." Good riddance. But I have noticed something that this book just confirmed. In books that are obviously trying to impress us with their materialistic cred, the "god" always fails to come through; the person praying always is disappointed. I would expect maybe a 50/50 chance just based on randomness. In the real world, sometimes people get what they pray for, sometimes they don't. In a large enough sampling of fictional worlds, where it can go however the authors want, I would expect something in the vicinity of a half chance. The (almost) invariability of the theistic hope being dashed proves to me that the authors of such books, taken as a group, are secret theists, pretending to be atheists, propounding a god who is quite real and very powerful, who hates being prayed to, and takes revenge on anybody foolish enough to do so. Either these authors are secretly trying to convince us readers of their dark theology as I suggest, or they are trying to shove their atheism down the reader's throat. Either way, I don't think it very fair or honest of them. But other than that, I love Saga.
I certainly liked this translation better than [b:The Complete Works of Lao Tzu: Tao Teh Ching & Hua Hu Ching 147310 The Complete Works of Lao Tzu Tao Teh Ching & Hua Hu Ching Hua-Ching Ni https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348090343s/147310.jpg 142168]. Unfortunately, like Ni with his translation, Walker does not give much of an introduction making clear his translation choices, so it is not possible to take what I read here and compare it to what I have read in other texts translated by other people. And like Ni, he does not deal with the history of the Hua Hu Ching. I think the possibility of fraud in the origin of a text is important. I know that the Hua Hu Ching would not be invalidated as a taoist text even if it were not what it claims to be (the writing of Lao Tzu); even if it had been written in Pacoima last week, within the logic of Taoism it would still be valid if it were a valuable source of insight. But when presenting a largely unknown text to the English-speaking world, I think a little explication and forthrightness is in order. The translation is pleasant to read and easy to follow.
The Complete Works of Lao Tzu: Tao Teh Ching & Hua Hu Ching
I did not like it for several reasons. I have read many translations of the Tao Teh Ching, so I have a lot to compare the first half of this volume to. I know nothing of the original language, so I can make no assessment of the accuracy, but I can compare it to other translations. Based on that, I can say that I found this one to be clunky and unappealing. It was difficult and unpleasant to read. I have never read any translation of the Hua Hu Ching before, but I read this one concurrently with [b:Hua Hu Ching: The Unknown Teachings of Lao Tzu 147311 Hua Hu Ching The Unknown Teachings of Lao Tzu Lao Tzu https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347731768s/147311.jpg 142169] so that is my only point of reference. I was unhappy with Ni for not providing some introduction giving us something about his translation philosophy and how he chose to deal with certain words. (He did provide a brief mention of his approach to male vs female references, and I am glad for that.) The trouble is that while I was reading, there were all these odd phrases that I reasonably guess are not direct translations from the Chinese, but philosophically chosen English equivalents. But since he never tells us what the Chinese original of these phrases is, I can not compare his translation of this text to other translations of other texts I am familiar with. I don't know if the Hua Hu Ching is talking about the same thing as other texts. Heck, I can't even always tell when the word “tao” is the original behind a particular English phrase or word, so I can't even compare it to the Tao Teh Ching as I know it from other translations. Also, I wish he had at least mentioned the confusing history of the text and the likely possibility that it was a fraud to begin with. Somehow, it felt like I was being conned. “Trust me, I know what I'm talking about!” I am sure that as a taoist reading this text just as taoist teaching is great–it does not matter if it is ancient or modern, Chinese or Mayan. If it is a reliable text for teaching taoist philosophy, then great! But for someone like me who wants to read it as an ancient text, with some connection to the Tao Teh Ching which I really like, then this volume is pretty much worthless. And why is this text so very different than [b:Hua Hu Ching: The Unknown Teachings of Lao Tzu 147311 Hua Hu Ching The Unknown Teachings of Lao Tzu Lao Tzu https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347731768s/147311.jpg 142169]? This is long, wordy, dialog prose; the other is concise verse. Rather suspicious.For a cynical take on the Hua Hu Ching itself, read this short article: http://taoism.net/tao/hua-hu-ching/
Wow! My mind was blown and my thoughts engaged numerous times. I almost regret having read through it straight way: perhaps it would have been better had I stopped and started, giving myself time to digest what I had read. But no; I could not stop, I had to keep going. The stories are as compelling as they are thought-provoking.
The title story “The story of your life,” which was made into the movie “Arrival,” is relentless with its question, “What would you do differently, or would you do anything differently, if you knew the future and the results of your decisions?” “The Tower of Babel” twisted my world a little, while “Division by Zero” made me feel exactly the feeling I usually try to avoid when questioning and doubting the biggest and most important faith of my life. “Hell is the Absence of God” makes me glad, so very very glad, that my theology is not that of a child, thinking that the world really should work the way the one in this story does. What hell that would be! And at the end of it all, “Liking What You See: A Documentary” instigated a little bit of a smack-down fight in my inner conversation.
It made me think, sometimes uncomfortably, and the structures and the writing are at times quite beautiful. So all in all, I rate this a highly successful book.
Tedious at first, perhaps, but still a bit fun toward the end. But even with the tediousness at first, this book was perfectly aimed for my reading level. I could read the whole thing with no help at all, but if I wanted to understand everything exactly, I needed to look up a few words and some grammar. I was glad to see in action the vocabulary related to computers and social media and hacking. It was helpful to see the English and Spanish words intermingle when talking about something that is rather dominated by English. I learned some Spanish, and that's a good thing.
I really enjoyed this book, and at the age for which it is intended I would have loved it. I plan to recommend it to a lot of people, especially to boys who read but get bored easily. The short sections and paragraphs, with the fast and exciting action, makes it a thrilling read. “Thank you” to whoever it was who recommended this to me.
It is difficult to review a book of fragments. The few poems which can be read as entire poems are indeed beautiful, and the translation is sometimes quite lovely, but so many consist of just one word per line. If you read this, you will be examining a collection of historical relics, not a book of poems. However, the introduction is very good and worth the read. If you are really interested in Sappho, read it with joy. If you just want to read some great Greek poems and get a feel for them, almost anything else would be better.
Four stars as a compromise. The subject is interesting and important, but the style, while popular, was dull. I made some notes of the more interesting passages to comment on, but I lost those notes so I will let this go with just the stars. If you are even a little interested in the subject (and it is very interesting indeed) then read the book.
[Whine: On getting about halfway through this novel, I realized that I would need to devote much more time and attention to writing my review than I normally do. The book deserves the extra thought and attention. I began making notes of points I wanted to think about and write about. I knew that without notes I would never remember everything I loved the story and the writing. Of course, I lost my notes. And now, after several days of searching, I am no longer able to write the review I wanted since the important points are slipping away. And now I just don't have the time to focus on writing a review, so I guess i will just give up. So WHINE!!!]
The story is so simple, but the structure is so complex, and the writing has layers upon layers. Every character and event is connected to every other, and serves as part of a continual running self-commentary.
