alice
this is like a close to 4 stars book, mostly due to its pretty imagery of the nature and those really grasp me! but considerably looking at the messages these poems were to convey, are mostly about love and a search for meaning, which might not be a fit for my taste and the questions raised upon to question faith, as humans did, is an ample reflection on how the technological, scientific progress help shape those beliefs, and to address them would be a great topic to set foot in. however my reasons are that they are sort of just a bit explicit and the wordings are not that powerful to me, which is a bit of a downside as towards the end i think i'm just sort of reading affirmation of the lovelies in the world—which is great, but it sort of becomes a bit of a repetition and cliche, as it could very fit into that category of hopeless romantic. don't get me wrong, i love romantics, but perhaps some more sadness is needed in here to layer up the effects of the poem. here's a bit of the quotes i love.
“i have refused to live
locked in the orderly house of
reasons and proofs.
the world i live in and believe in
is wider than that. and anyway,
what's wrong with Maybe?”
“there is nothing more pathetic than caution
when headlong might save a life,
even, possibly, your own.”
the major takeaway would be the last chapter filling fully of quotes about photography and ways of seeing. i think some of the arguments overlap themselves, just retelling the same main ideas with regard to different photographers and “schools” of photography. this might not be a good introduction into aesthetic criticism, but informative enough.
first dive-in of emily dickinson's work; gives off quite much the 19th century vibes, but comparing to those of William Blake, Wordsworth's works, then these are much easier to be understood when you're just stepping into poetry. her language shares the very sentimenality and sensitivity, a lot of imagery is used, references to the myths, the Bible, etc. which requires a bit of digging. and i could dogear quite a couple poems from this selection, which spells correct financial spending decision, a good investment to keep the day abright!
here's to key the title piece:
My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun -
In Corners - till a Day
The Owner passed - identified -
And carried Me away -
And now We roam in Sovreign Woods -
And now We hunt the Doe -
And every time I speak for Him
The Mountains straight reply -
And do I smile, such cordial light
Opon the Valley glow -
It is as a Vesuvian face
Had let it's pleasure through -
And when at Night - Our good Day done -
I guard My Master's Head -
'Tis better than the Eider Duck's
Deep Pillow - to have shared -
To foe of His - I'm deadly foe -
None stir the second time -
On whom I lay a Yellow Eye -
Or an emphatic Thumb -
Though I than He - may longer live
He longer must - than I -
For I have but the power to kill,
Without - the power to die -
and so it is simple but beautiful
as though the artist might be a bad guy, yet, the work, separated, is a magnificent piece, which throughout tells the theme of a crow, intersecting the ancient greek myths and genesis from bible. the language shows how talent Ted Hughes is, the reptitions and the connectedness of which he conjured up the first few poems and that of the last, merely doubles up the effect of the themes. it is a collection of poems mostly dealing with a sense of despair, a conflicting view about life and death, and the boldness to be against the dominant view of christianity at the time. it also touches on humanity, and tells bleakly of their simplicity and simple-mindedness, alongside their cruelty, for which all the crow surpasses humans. the very gravity of which the human condition is in modern centuries.
literally it's welcome to discovery channel for the first half, then afterwards it's deliberately fitting in “reflective” and perhaps “philosophical” context in the old man's monologue to himself, yet, in fact mostly they are just imageries of the sun and the moon, the tortoises, fish, etc. i had high hopes for its simplicity in tackling the topic of life and death, and the fighting spirit, but no it just doesn't live up to the supposed height of thinking and reflection it should equip, and it stays on the surface only.
the writing is supreme, effortlessly an easy flow, even though at times it might be a bit too flowery, but i doubt that there's anything outgrowing fatigue towards the language. it also managed to explore on several social issues, i.e. the vietnamese history, US social problems, a.k.a. arms, overdose, violence, etc. and most importantly, the handling of grief and losses. for a coming-of-age book it doesn't cheaply treat the topics of abuse and violence in household or romantic relationships, or the intersectionality as both a queer member and a racial minority merely as a tool for recognition and exposure, there's way more layers to build upon than that. most importantly, it is a sort of intricate love between the mother and son, which does not necessarily victimise the son or the mother, yet putting them both on different sides of the same balance, untilted.
I am not a frequent poetry reader, but from my experience and some little glimpses into contemporary poetry, this is the top-notch ones of them all. Yet, I only find the pleasure in enjoying some of them, not fully, and so the lack of more details and creativity upon themes is the downgrading bits. For sure I do love the way he uses the words, but whenever the enter button is pressed, I lose my trail to the words. (This is a fine 3! Though a bit placid for me.)
have to say judging on the title, i did have very high hopes for this book.
but then it turns out to be something beautifully written, fruitful plot, and a lot of contradicting themes and how it all ends up reaching nowhere. it was also too languid, for which a lot of things could surely be shortened, and i doubt it was such a masterpiece as Maurice did, as the latter didn't get itself all mixed up in religions and stuffs and the stereotypes of genders. understandably it was hard to adjust the setting, but i think the character development is just not good enough.
the ending was...really...dramatic, if not more unreasonable
i think it somehow achieves to blur the line between the sane and the insane in a violent and bloody way, somehow it is alike Jeans Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea, but in a more modern context with modern issues to catch on in south korea. although it might seems disturbing to some, i think it conveys something more than just blatant feminism, and somehbow the latter part also seems to arrive at that destination, of which is some sort of you'll have to go through hell in order to reach heaven redemption. the bonds between the sisters actually do highlights the last climax, alongside with a paralleling vision on life, and how they actually cross at a point, but diverging still because of their difference. the good thing is that it's not totally hopeless. and there's still a beam of light to clutch on.
kudos to a bit of nihilistic approach at the end, and in a very extreme way it achieves the purpose of telling how it's still an issue to be repressed by men in modern society, alongside with how artistic pursuit can literally because art for art's sake, sexualising women, commodifying them too, a total destruction of pre-existing morals, contrasting to the good old traditional society of south korean, and as standing up to the confucian ideologies. i think this speaks a lot in all due honesty.
Wow, the power this book has oan me!
Tae sais fae the least, it's so brutally honest wi every single anti-social thought ye might huv when ye ur forced tae be born intae this world.
Alright, switch back to normal English. The point I'm trying to make here is, firstly it's the portrayal of Scottish people and the societal conditions during the 1990s, secondly it's about the brooding nihilism and that bit of renegade fight against the system, thirdly it's about life, the philosophy underneath it, maybe you just ought to conform a bit, since it's inevitable, as one of the many sad truths this book has taught us, all fitting very well with my personal philosophy of life. A shame it is.
The writing style is alright, since I don't know why but I've read Dead Men's Trousers first, got a bit used to the dialects.
The most life insights you could ever get from would be mundane life, but isn't a life with mere drug use also a life of mundaneness? It's just the sensual feeling of not getting in touch with reality for a wee bit only.
A very good anti-drug campaign, was it though? I don't think so.
Choose life.
This is a very depressing note on how capitalism also enslaves us into mere consumers to fill our day with shallow meansings, alongside with how modernity has failed us, as famously inspiring the works of The 1975.
Is this a tough read? For me not, mostly because i think about these things in the same dimension as the writer did, and he surely carried it with a great deal lot of depth than me, which is precise and thought-provoking enough to say that this is the new bible.
The mere problem would be that it acts as more of a criticism work instead of providing some feasible actions to remedy the grave reality of modern world, which only intensifies as time moves on to the 21st century. Despite this, i just think that it is justified for how good it is.
I think i would very much like to give this a five-star rating but then, to be a bit more objective, the answer would be no. So there it is 4-star.
When you mix life philosophy and mid-life crisis and old problems with drugs, the chemistry is so endearing that it either becomes a masterpiece or just some hollow Big Beat sort of literature, i.e. On the Road, which does not hold enough truth in it to make it a guide of life. But this, with its very subtle usage of FUCKs and SHITEs and scottish dialects that need some brainpower to digest, it certainly pulls off as a masterpiece in concluding the fates of the fellow characters that have been mingling with one another for more than half their lives. Here it is about social structure and that agency to say fuck no to the system, and that even-though-im-a-fucking-scumbag-but-i-still-gonna-choose-life-and-not-let-the-rich-get-to-me-and-the-authorities-too ideology. Very convincing indeed. The only possible fallacy probably is the dirty bit of the plot, which seems a bit too grim, but thinking it as something that is usual in that sphere, it is nothing unrealistic.
Here's to the shady bits of life, cheers!
It was more of a standalone piece when solely looking into the lines of this book. It was purely about colonialism, racism, and perhaps even about feminism in the early days, being shaded as madness. But the whole thing is flat, and the language is just so, making the narrative seemingly so bland and lack of colour in the sense which not much sentiment could be aroused, as so did the independency of women simmered down under the light of the societal background. This makes the book completely unpalpable to me.
Read this because of the world literature course I'm taking.
To be honest, comparatively, if we are talking about works like this, Things Fall Apart is much better than Wide Sargasso Sea, as its take on history and those African customs are much more detailed and understandable.
The main character is so dislikeable, yet, in some way, the book is captivating on behalf on his take to oppose the coercion into transforming the faith of the indigenous people into one of theirs. The violence of the non-civilized versus the so-called civilized actually bears no difference at all.
It's a good book.
Nevertheless a good book has its limits. First coming with its suddenness in introducing a mental illness, or maybe it's simply that detachment to modern society or upper class social events, which the latter is much relatable.
Okay, don't blame the victim here. Esther is all right to think that way. Or should she not? Shutting every possible outlet to something better? Have we not learnt that constraint choice is better than keeping your options open? Well, anyway. Never mind. Great talent lost. In battle of freedom and marriage. (As one opting for the first, well I wouldn't die yet)
I don't think Esther did have any sorts of recovery towards the end. But if you say that exchange a life for one is worth it then, well, I suppose this book serves its purpose.
At the first few chapters, my rating for this book would be 1 star.
In the midst of it, i would give a 2.
And till the end it's a 3.
The theme was alright. The problem again lies in the manner of story-telling and how the writing was like–well, i wouldn't want to say it's bad but it is indeed. Alongside those cliche quotes, which at times made me cringe, and oh yes, the weird fast-forwarding relationship going on for 6 months into marriage and children directly? how convenient that is!
Oh sure, maybe the bit about domestic abuse is the best about this book, but then the main problem to be solved or the moral of the story is easily known, and that might even downgrade the raise the awareness of some issues bit.
And i wonder why is this worth a 4.xx average rating while other literary fictions only have a 3.xx? Oh. how universal the side people take here!
To be very frank. Haven't been quite invested in this one.
Classic Ali Smith style, with a long chapter of Ulysses-like long stream of consciousness flow, but what comes down to is a bit of pointless, still the words amounted to some special feelings, and mostly those meaningful ones, yet not enough for me, and just some clever word games, but this time it fails a little. Consider it a very early work, it's fair.
The thing is not about the idea of the book, it is the fact that it's solely based on a very unnecessary new term to categorise something called irrational thinking and biased judgement. So as we want to make ourselves look smart, we go by inventing this new term called noise and it's everywhere. This is the issue. It is mainly aimed for being a NYT bestseller without a lot of substantial research and reasoning that could support the sole 400 pages of this book. And by saying, you might think I've got a lot of noise in my review cause I've only managed to read a chapter or two and then skimming through a bit and reading other reviews to find out that...well, there is simply not much of a solution to solve the noise problem that roots from the very term bias. Maybe we could just group them altogether don't you think so? Ah. Yes, Daniel Kahneman, I think you might just contribute the very idea. Thought Thinking fast and also was very liberating. But this one is more or less a book to be skipped. Cause the sole synopsis can sum up most of the content. Noise.
The main problem with this book wasn't that it's just some boring conversations with life stories which shouting feminism and a lot of the other isms from the very core. It is not a bad book, but too much of it was filled with excessively long-winded irrelevant details and sudden outbursts of emotions from the narrator herself which makes you grasp your head and wonder why. Another thing is that it's so full and it's so empty at the same time. As it's of typical Cusk, she me mentioned too much of marriage, divorce and feminism that you can only beam at some perturbations of side characters with younger and a more romantic perspective to life. To this, 3 stars. Although I love Cusk's prose, it's just not enough for a 4.
