jean
The best part of this book is the title, stripped from [b:Julius Caesar 13006 Julius Caesar (Oxford School Shakespeare) William Shakespeare https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1354574927s/13006.jpg 2796883]. Otherwise pretty much everything else is abysmal. Practically no character depth, cheap references to great works/authors(simultaneously works for the characters and against them. They only quote works off their high school reading list, which would be natural, but talk like they're working on the senior English theses), unrealistic dialogue/characters/plotline, and painful ‘quirkiness' (buying but not smoking cigarettes, saying peoples' full name constantly, having sex as a stage 4 lung cancer patient on oxygen that gets tired from standing).I'm reading [b:Infinite Jest 6759 Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1446876799s/6759.jpg 3271542]and there's a line about this filmography being unengaging, pretentious, and bad. This is almost a good way to describe TFIOS–the only thing is this book isn't really quite pretentious. It's contrived and shallow, but not pretentious. That would imply it's on a high level in any sense of the word...which really makes me sound pretentious. Especially when I consider the ridiculous rating this book has and its disgusting(now that I've read it) popularity. It's worse than [b:The Martian 18007564 The Martian Andy Weir https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1413706054s/18007564.jpg 21825181].Anyway, don't read it even to see what the John Green hype is about.
Rapturous prose and a poignant, thought-provoking idea. A classic for a reason–anyone can relate to the questions, emotions, and themes presented through Dorian, Basil and Harry.
Valuable resource if you're looking to take this exam. Didn't read every word, but I've gone through the material in every chapter for both parts. I'll be using it to review as needed until I pass the 1002 but I'm calling it ‘read' now.
**i'm going to think over the book more and give it more a fair review. but yeah, the two stars' description of “it was ok” is how I feel about it overall.Just finished so I'm kind of a mess. Just as affecting and beautifully written as [b:South of the Border, West of the Sun 17799 South of the Border, West of the Sun Haruki Murakami https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1443685506s/17799.jpg 1739145], but somehow much less defined conceptually. I think it suffers a little in comparison to Murakami's other plain-love-story because of that. The only way I can think of this book, having just finished it, is as a moody, tangled labyrinth of life and death. The subject matter was mostly horrible for where I am right now, and the deaths hit me forcefully, yet I couldn't put it down.
Literally can't get through a paragraph/a few sentences without encountering a heavy biblical reference. That made this a heavy and close(in the personal sense) read, but it was certainly worth wading through its depths.
definitely a long while in the making...turns out i can tolerate these British classics much better if i just listen to them. i already knew 80% of the story, having seen the recent film adaptation approx. 100 times, but i have to say i liked it a lot better than Persuasion in book form. don't think i'll be willingly touching Austen for a while, though.
Doesn't seem like a rating would be appropriate for this piece. It's been meddled with, is unfinished, and is only one version of what Twain had been working on.I do wish he'd lived to finish this. The background story and setting do have some significance, but they don't offer much more value than their functioning as signals for the context of Satan's philosophy (Faust–not just Goethe's work, but the legend itself; Schiller's [b:Die Räuber 942336 Die Räuber Friedrich Schiller https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1179652399s/942336.jpg 6226708]; Hegel/Nietzsche).I also wish I had a more recent understanding of some of Twain's finished works so maybe I could imagine what The Mysterious Stranger could have been. Theodor and Satan are the two most prominent characters, but almost nothing(and yet everything) happens to/in Theodor. Everything about the plot is abrupt. The form and endless talk of “dreaming” (and Satan's alternate name: “Philip Traum” – shoutout to /lit/ for memeing [b:Zettels Traum 6761655 Zettels Traum Arno Schmidt https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1365691063s/6761655.jpg 6265305], which is the only reason I picked up on that) do make me think that Twain wanted to write The Mysterious Stranger as a dream, but I think dream-like works need to have intensely emotional content (e.g., David Lynch). The Mysterious Stranger feels much more like a sort of [b:Thus Spoke Zarathustra 51893 Thus Spoke Zarathustra Friedrich Nietzsche https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1480901846s/51893.jpg 196327]-type frame for a set of philosophical aphorisms. The weakness of the story/setting does work with the whole “[i]t is all a dream–a grotesque and foolish dream” idea, but that kind of feels like making excuses for ineffective/uninteresting writing. Would have been more interesting and cutting if written in the style of [b:La Chute 774027 La Chute Albert Camus https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1356291219s/774027.jpg 3324245] ( which of course, wasn't written until half a century later) or something more forcefully absurd and personal like Kafka's [b:A Country Doctor 221524 A Country Doctor Franz Kafka https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1366803130s/221524.jpg 907551], [b:Description of a Struggle 1873712 Description of a Struggle Franz Kafka https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1341595345s/1873712.jpg 46240676], or [b:Before the Law 9682386 Before the Law (The Metamorphosis, A Hunger Artist, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories) Franz Kafka https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1289573498s/9682386.jpg 19169658].Anyway, lines like “you are but a thought–a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!” – that's my jam (no, I do not know why). There's a lot of that here, so I liked it.