Blue sky, green trees.
I gave it a go but I couldn't get into it. Lots of parts where she explains an idea or feeling by way of what other writers have said, which felt a bit like reading a term paper. Lots of trying to philosophize, which I ended up skimming until finally I was just skimming the whole thing, and what's the point of sticking with a book if you're just skimming?
I found all but a few of the people in this book completely horrible. That makes it a weird ride, to hate people who you are spending many hours learning about, but also to still be interested in the story.
Also, I felt like the author was quite the apologist for Sam. He never says it explicitly, but the vibe is very "Sam is an asshole and treats people like shit but it's okay because he's smart!" This made me lose faith in the author and in his perspective on the story.
Glad I read the book, but even more glad that it's over.
Quite interesting. When it got to the testimonies of the defendants I started skimming because I figured it was all lies, and by the time we were in the closing statements I was heavily skimming because it got very repetitive. I skimmed basically everything after that until it came to the epilogue, which, along with the afterward, returned to new and interesting points.
Final thought: I was surprised and titillated at how much the author threw the cops under the bus, it must have been quite controversial at the time.
This book can be divided into four parts: the lead-up to the disaster, the disaster, the immediate afterwards, and the long-term afterwards. The first part, the lead-up, is quite repetitive, with facts and elements repeated a minimum of three times (per my personal counting). Don't let this stop you! The rest of the book is fantastic, by turns horrifying and sad and uplifting, and at every point fascinating.
Interesting and well-written science book. I did find it to be overly long, some of the diseases discussed could have been cut in order to keep it lean and zesty.
I also have to say that in the chapter about typhoid, I thought it was irresponsible of the author to declare that Mary Mallon (aka Typhoid Mary) had a mental illness when there is no indication that she was ever diagnosed with one - a fact that the author freely admits immediately after asserting the mental illness claim. Just because someone has a disagreeable personality, and sometimes doesn't conform to social norms, doesn't mean they have a mental illness. The willingness of the author to label people as mentally ill, having never met them and coming from an entirely different cultural period, is deeply troubling.
I have very conflicted feelings about this book.
It is a wonderful book, beautifully written. It shows a modern male adult friendship and how positive and supportive it can be, which is something that I haven't come across hardly at all, and certainly not in today's cultural climate. It talks about regular men intentionally creating beauty, and putting hope out into the world, and I loved every bit of it. Until the end. That ending! The hopelessness of it crushed me; it felt like a betrayal. To leave it like that, no redemption, no closure, just a vast uneasiness that we probably know exactly what will happen between the end of this summer and the start of the next. Hopeless and helpless is how the author left us, and I do not understand why.So then how to see this book, as the beauty or as the betrayal? I finished reading it two days ago and have been trying to sort out my feelings since.
Things I love about this series, which became clear to me while reading this book:
1. Cozy mystery: none of that torture-porn bullshit that passes for mystery books these days
2. Solvable mystery: the clues are there, but so are the red herrings, so watch out!
3. Food porn: the food and drinks are described in such lush detail that it makes me swoon
4. Fantasy village: this place is like catnip to people like me
There are really three plot lines in this novel, continuing on from the previous two novels, and I think that the two minor ones are almost as compelling as the main plot. As they say in the Strange Planet comic, “The being is fictional, my anger is real.”
Grim.
The lives of small-time farmers that were venerated in the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder contain a bitter truth: there is no way to make a living on the prairie without government aid (rarely forthcoming) or tens of thousands of dollars already in your bank account. And the dark secret of the “Little House” series is that the Ingalls family did not make it. Charles and Caroline repeatedly took chances with their money, their labor, and the safety of their children, and none of those chances paid off; they never did make it as farmers on the prairie. Once Laura marries and has started a life of her own there is hope that circumstances will ease, but she has quite the daddy complex and marries a man just like Charles: one determined to be a farmer in a part of the country that is too arid to sustain crops, and one who is a spendthrift to boot. Life is grim and stays that way, and eventually a daughter named Rose grows up to cause a whole host of problems.
For readers who grew up on the “Little House” books (as I did) this book is scandalous and fascinating and touching and grim. The author is thorough and precise in the details, and gives much-needed context to a life that we all thought we knew. A must-read.
Merged review:
Grim.
The lives of small-time farmers that were venerated in the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder contain a bitter truth: there is no way to make a living on the prairie without government aid (rarely forthcoming) or tens of thousands of dollars already in your bank account. And the dark secret of the “Little House” series is that the Ingalls family did not make it. Charles and Caroline repeatedly took chances with their money, their labor, and the safety of their children, and none of those chances paid off; they never did make it as farmers on the prairie. Once Laura marries and has started a life of her own there is hope that circumstances will ease, but she has quite the daddy complex and marries a man just like Charles: one determined to be a farmer in a part of the country that is too arid to sustain crops, and one who is a spendthrift to boot. Life is grim and stays that way, and eventually a daughter named Rose grows up to cause a whole host of problems.
For readers who grew up on the “Little House” books (as I did) this book is scandalous and fascinating and touching and grim. The author is thorough and precise in the details, and gives much-needed context to a life that we all thought we knew. A must-read.
This is a quiet book, and I started it when I was in need of a quiet book. By the middle of the book I was no longer in the mood for a quiet book, I was looking for a bit of action, but I didn't want to give up on this book simply because my mood had changed. I kept with it, and it remained a quiet book throughout.
The whole thing with the failed relationship with Jacob was a red herring. The author seemed to indicate there would be something, SOMETHING, that made the relationship fail, because clearly it was in the past, but when the big moment arrives it's simply that he doesn't seem that into her. Bit of a letdown.
Contains spoilers
I felt like a genius when I guessed right regarding the big twist: the dead woman wasn't the daughter, but the mistress, and that the daughter was absconding with the necklace and daddy's personal secretary to start a new life in the UK. It was just like in one of Lee Childs's Jack Reacher books, only here she gets raped to death instead of starting a new life.It was pretty surprising about the concentration camp stuff, but still more surprising that Gunther's assistant just vanishes and he never finds her. Or at least, not in this book - is it possible that she resurfaces in a later installment? Hmm.
This is the second biography I've read where I didn't really know anything about the person who was the subject of the book; it's nice to go in as a blank slate instead of as a fan, and see what happens.
And what happened was that I had a good time learning about Donne, but the thing that made him famous and worthy of a biography - his writing - didn't interest me much at all. For the first half of the book I dutifully read each of the passages of poetry, but they didn't mean a thing to me, and from then on I skipped them. I think it's great that his writing continues to set people alight, and I'm also fine with not being one of them.
What did set me alight was author Rundell's own writing. Absolute powerhouse stuff, witty and evocative and honest and insightful. As I said, I didn't know a thing about Donne or why he mattered, but I was in good hands with Rundell guiding me along. Definitely a good read.
Contains spoilers
I really liked this book a lot, the writing was really tight and evocative. Also, I learned new things about the DDR, which is always exciting. There's nothing like a good fiction book to make historical things come alive for me, and to stay in my mind for later contemplation and reference and understanding. There are two reasons why this isn't a 5 star book for me: first, the jumping around in time confused me a bit; second, the ending didn't make sense, and this point probably needs some elaboration. Basically, Uli wants to go over the Wall and explains pretty clearly to Elizabeth why this is so; Elizabeth debates him several times, but is unable to refute his problems except with "You have to fight if you feel you've been treated unjustly". For the whole 2.5 days (I think? Again, the timeline is hard to follow) he is dead set on leaving, and then in the end Joachim shows some interest in a book Uli is reading and now Uli isn't going to go over the wall - what the hell is that about? It never addresses the fundamental problem: Uli is unable to get work with his engineering degree and must work in a factory all because there is a black mark (unwarranted) next to his name, and he's not a Party member. This problem is 100% not addressed, he seemingly out of nowhere decides to just stay, apparently to toil away at a job he hates with no prospects of life ever getting better. The book was written by an East German in 1963, and while the ending makes sense in that context it is pretty clumsily done. The author should have shown the reader how this change of heart happened, to help the reader understand something so drastic, but perhaps it was left open because the intended audience was East German and they wouldn't have needed any further elaboration. In any case, it's hard to understand from this distance and culture.
