So euh...what's going on with the book club? Is it still a thing?
I don’t think so unless someone wants to step up
Books: Last Book You Read and Rate It
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I don’t think so unless someone wants to step up
Spring in Fialta
A malign star kept him
I'll offer up The Little Prince if the regulars have got copies.
Spring in Fialta
A malign star kept him
Good to hear. Although to make the idea worth it, I do suggest that we all participate into reviewing the work, even if not every regular reviews pieces on a regular basis. From my recollection, Kihei and I are the only ones who actually offered our full views on The Sheltering Sky but I think it'd be proper and insightful to have contributors such as like-minded literary geeks such as Stingo and GB pitch in, if only for the chosen book.
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Surrounded By Ahos
Las Vegas Desert Ducks Official Team Poster
This was probably the most brutally depressing book I’ve ever read. It’s mostly diary entries and letters from soldiers who served at the Somme, and while I always thought of trench warfare as absolutely awful, i never r ally appreciated how absolutely barbaric and horrific it was. It took me the better part of a year to finish it, just because I couldn’t bring myself to pick it back up at times.
Thucydides
Registered User
- Dec 24, 2009
- 8,164
- 851
I thought I reviewed The Sheltering Sky, but going back over my posts I guess not. I’ll read the little prince and write a review.
I’m good to start it whenever.
I’m good to start it whenever.
Oscar Acosta
Registered User
- Mar 19, 2011
- 7,695
- 369
Again, I don't think I missed the point, like at all.
If you're saying his point is to lower the bar - well going into it I never had my social status bar that high. I stopped giving a shit what people care about me 10 years ago, it comes with age, this isn't some ground breaking philosophy Manson is laying down. Obviously caring about your family, your friends, and your life are the important issues not the "little things in life".
Like I said before I think it can be a great book for someone who is 16. Most of it is common sense, a lot of bravado in his personal stories and about how people shouldn't care as much about what others think but in layman's terms and snappy cursing to be edgy.
It's nothing groundbreaking, it's the transition into adulthood. With the word f***.
I don’t think you’re really seeing the point much at all, but I’ll stop here as it’s clear we have a very different opinion on what he’s saying.
Spring in Fialta
A malign star kept him
I know this is going to sound really random but I've got a question: Is anyone here familiar with Canadian novelist Joan Barfoot? She's a friend of my girlfriend's mother and has offered to give me notes on stuff I'm working on. I've never read her and was wondering if someone could tell me what kind of sensibilities she has as an author? I'm pretty nervous.
Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami has a unique approach to fantasy. While he has written one very beautiful "straight" novel, Norwegian Wood, his reputation is largely based on his fertile imagination, his pragmatic approach to surrealism and his ability to make the fantastic seem almost ordinary. First and foremost he is a marvelous story teller, and Kafka on the Shore is one of his finest stories. The novel has three main strands initially that eventually boil down to two and then one. The first of these deals with Kafka Tamura, a 15-year-old boy who abandons a troubled family situation and ventures out into the world alone. The second element focuses on Nakata, an old man who doesn't think very clearly but who has the ability to talk to cats. He is befriended along the way by a kind-hearted truck driver named Hoshino who takes a liking to Nakata and helps him on his quest to find something though Nakata doesn't yet know exactly what that something is. The third strand deals with an incident in the past where twelve school children out on a school field trip lost consciousness for no reason at all, one of them not regaining consciousness for several days. This strand eventually blends into Nakata's story, and then the two remaining elements, Nakata's story and Kafka's story, eventually blend into a single narrative. The novel is intricate, and yet simple to follow. There are a host of ideas at play, the primary conceit being that Kafka on the Shore entails a wholly original playing out of the Oedipal myth as Kafka is told by his cruel father that he will one day kill his father and sleep with not just his mother but his sister, too. Murakami also pursues some very playful ideas along the way, including a delightfully unique approach to the concept of necessity--what necessity requires has to exist--which enables Murakami to introduce Colonel Sanders as a character who out of the blue provides Nakata and Hoshino with the information that they lack. That's a really clever use of the imagination in my book--outrageous and yet, in context, it makes perfectly good sense. On top of the thematic richness, all the priniciple characters are finely drawn and immensely likeable. Upon completion of the novel, I felt two things: one, I had just been on a wonderful journey that I was almost sad to see end; and, two, I wished I had the ability to talk to cats.
Spring in Fialta
A malign star kept him
Alright! Only got a couple of stories left with Borges then I'll go with The Little Prince.
Spring in Fialta
A malign star kept him
The Book of Sand by Jorge Luis Borges (1975) - Thirteen stories which don't seem to be connected by a singular theme. It was the first time I've read Borges. The first two stories are spectacular, and the following eleven all range anywhere between underwhelming, okay and excellent. Too often stories seemed to have loose ends, or plot points which add nothing to the actual story. I can see why his stories are often compared to labyrinths, although I'm not sure I find it particularly rewarding. There's some excellent writing in there though, and the prose felt a lot more minimalist than what I expected. Most of the stories also do an excellent job at creating an interesting mood and atmosphere that I haven't really gotten anywhere else, but a few of them just felt obscure for the sake of it, IMO. Borges does have some insightful things to say about how our mind interacts with the world around us though, that's for sure. Some sentences that first appear as obvious truths but that are actually quite insightful when you ponder the words for a minute or two.
Favorite stories: The Other, Ulrikke, Avelino Arredondo, The Book of Sand.
The Education of Malika by Paul Bowles (?) - Love it. Antithetical to The Sheltering Sky in style, but a very enjoyable read. Following around Malika, a young, beautiful and illiterate Morrocan woman whose looks - and a lucky encounter - allow her to step into high occidental society. This one is interesting because instead of having whites thrust into a foreign culture, Bowles flips the script and has The Other delve into our culture. Simple declarative sentences make this an easy read, and helps create a sort of ephemeral mood which complements the themes of the story well - being away from everything you know, confused with the world around you - and Bowles creates an ambiguous protagonist who you're not sure how to feel about, which I found interesting, as this is an aspect of story-telling that isn't often present but which I find highly rewarding - why have to associate or even like a main character? - and it's impressive to see how agile Bowles was in different types of prose.
Favorite stories: The Other, Ulrikke, Avelino Arredondo, The Book of Sand.
The Education of Malika by Paul Bowles (?) - Love it. Antithetical to The Sheltering Sky in style, but a very enjoyable read. Following around Malika, a young, beautiful and illiterate Morrocan woman whose looks - and a lucky encounter - allow her to step into high occidental society. This one is interesting because instead of having whites thrust into a foreign culture, Bowles flips the script and has The Other delve into our culture. Simple declarative sentences make this an easy read, and helps create a sort of ephemeral mood which complements the themes of the story well - being away from everything you know, confused with the world around you - and Bowles creates an ambiguous protagonist who you're not sure how to feel about, which I found interesting, as this is an aspect of story-telling that isn't often present but which I find highly rewarding - why have to associate or even like a main character? - and it's impressive to see how agile Bowles was in different types of prose.
Thucydides
Registered User
- Dec 24, 2009
- 8,164
- 851
The Prize is a dense, encompassing book, but mostly never boring & never a chore to read .
I sat on this one for awhile due to its size, and figured it would about nothing but oil and opec, but amidst the talk about oil & opec it interweaves through human drama where we meet eccentrics - kids showing up when oil was discovered claiming for money to have X-ray eyes , T. Boone Pickens, the crazy billionaire “j Paul Getty”, which was one of the more memorable parts of the book :
“As a young man , Getty was already launched a life of wild romance & sexual adventure , with a special predilection for teenage girls. He married five times . But marriage vows were, for him, not even an inconvience; to engage in some of his more clandestine affairs, he simply operated under a favoured and not all that discreet alias , “Mr. Paul”. He liked to travel to Europe because it was less noticed that he was in “transit flagrante” with two or three women at a time. Yet the only true love of his life may have been a French woman, the wife of a Russian consul general in Asia Minor , with whom he had a passionate affair in Constantinople in 1913. He bade what he hoped was temporary farewell on the dock at Istanbul , but then lost contact with her forever in the turmoil of war and revolution that followed. Even sixty years later, whereas he would discuss his five marriages almost technically, as if they were lawsuits, a mere mention of this lady, Madame Marguerite Tallasou, was enough to bring tears to his eyes.”
There is lots of talk about Venezuela , and world war 2 which I found especially enlightening . In all the world war 2 books I’d previously read the Pacific Theatre was only touched on, but here Yergin goes into depth about the role oil played with Japan and the US. Japan started the war based on fuel , and their biggest make was not taking out the oil fields near Pearl Harbour. When the timeline didn’t work in Japan’s favour, their defeat was certain, , which forced them into desperate measures - kamikaze pilots, etc. All dictated by oil.
But it is the part where the need for oil meets the newly rearranged Middle East that The Prize starts making complete sense. Yergin covers all the main points - The Suez Sanal Crisis, The Iran - Iraq war, the Yom Kippur war, and Gulf war 1 which was kicked off by Saddam Husseins invasion of tiny, but oil rich Kuwait.
The Prize ends in 1991, with a short update at the end of the book.
In the end, the cliche that, “it’s all about oil” is true . The Prize does a great job in explaining exactly how it happened , and succeeds in showing the direct link between past & present, and that the struggles for its discovery , it’s acquisiton and distribution have created the world we live in today.
10/10
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Ceremony
How I choose to feel is how I am
- Jun 8, 2012
- 114,215
- 17,222
I've read Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine twice in my life. The last time I did I posted about it on here in a somewhat fleeting manner, feeling more legitimately than usual that there was nothing insightful I could add to the words contained within. When trying to analyse truly great literature there's always a temptation on my part to simply say: "They get it. Read this, not me, you'll know why it's good." There's a sizable file on my computer which is just a list of quotes from that book. Some of them funny, some of them life-affirming, all of them completely accurate and true to life but in a way which differs from just stating facts about the world. Things you know, but don't realise you do until someone points them out.
The person who put me on to Celine in the first place, ironically at times in my life when reading that novel may well have kept me alive, assured me that the follow-up Death on Credit was equally worth reading. It's the same guy, it's in the same style, hey, why not, thought I. It's taken however long since I last posted... over a month and a half as it turns out, to finish it and I can safely say that Death on Credit is an assortment of words. There's lots of words. There's a video from the Zero Punctuation series of video game reviews where a game's poor use of text logs in place of exposition is deomonstrated by the cartoon character looking at or opening various small objects only for the screen to fill up with WORDS in huge capitals and that's the sense I got any time I tried to plough through this.
Words are fine. Words arranged as engagingly as Journey to the End of the Night I can read endlessly, and in a frank conversational style crossed with stream of consciousness it's easy to read while forgetting you're holding a book open in front of you. This isn't the case with Death on Credit. An older Ferdinand recalls his youth and growing up. Of his mother and father's struggles in running an antiques shop somewhere in a horrible Parisian suburb. Of his attempts to find jobs and being chased out of them for an assortment of ludicrous reasons. Of being sent off to school in England only for that to end in farce too, before returning home to be shipped off to live with a friend of his uncle, who's a conman with an assortment of vices and other inevitable issues that constantly crop up.
The things Ferdinand describes are certainly varied and ludicrous enough to be entertaining. The problem is the lengths he goes to in describing them. I feel as if there's too much focus on someone describing things he's done and seen with very little else to go along with it. There's not much insight into his thoughts or feelings at any point. You could explain this away by saying he's young and not really capable of realising how things make him feel, but the sheer volume of his recollections suggests he should think of something.
Despite taking so long to read it I can very vividly remember pretty much every major event of his life described in the book. There's about six of them between five hundred pages of smaller than usual print. I fear I'm not being descriptive but there's an irony in me having so little to say about a book which uses so many words to ultimately do very little. Events and people that could and should be interesting aren't given any opportunity to do so because of the lengths they're described in, subsequently been given no time to exist in their own right. Near enough everyone seems to be reduced to a small amount of basic personality traits which Ferdindand repeats over and over and which always end up being their downfall in one way or another.
I think this is what really creates the sense that nothing interesting happens despite the detail we're given. Everything is over-written to the point where nothing is actually written at all. There's no chance to sympathise with or feel anything towards any of the characters because Ferdinand is too busy telling us what he sees and nothing else. And I can only really speak for the male characters in this sense. Any women are reduced to various elements of sexual objectification and not much else. I spent the book trying to feel something towards the people involved, waiting for a moment where insight or empathy might come in to play but there was nothing.
It saddens me to think that someone could start a literary career with Journey to the End of the Night and not really be capable of following it up. His forays into anti-Semitism will have had more of an impact on his legacy than anything else he wrote but I appreciate that Celine was was exasperated by people who expected nothing but an identical follow-up to his first novel, that he tried to do something new and persist with it because it was the way he thought writing should be. Based on this evidence however, there's very little reason for me to say he was successful.
The person who put me on to Celine in the first place, ironically at times in my life when reading that novel may well have kept me alive, assured me that the follow-up Death on Credit was equally worth reading. It's the same guy, it's in the same style, hey, why not, thought I. It's taken however long since I last posted... over a month and a half as it turns out, to finish it and I can safely say that Death on Credit is an assortment of words. There's lots of words. There's a video from the Zero Punctuation series of video game reviews where a game's poor use of text logs in place of exposition is deomonstrated by the cartoon character looking at or opening various small objects only for the screen to fill up with WORDS in huge capitals and that's the sense I got any time I tried to plough through this.
Words are fine. Words arranged as engagingly as Journey to the End of the Night I can read endlessly, and in a frank conversational style crossed with stream of consciousness it's easy to read while forgetting you're holding a book open in front of you. This isn't the case with Death on Credit. An older Ferdinand recalls his youth and growing up. Of his mother and father's struggles in running an antiques shop somewhere in a horrible Parisian suburb. Of his attempts to find jobs and being chased out of them for an assortment of ludicrous reasons. Of being sent off to school in England only for that to end in farce too, before returning home to be shipped off to live with a friend of his uncle, who's a conman with an assortment of vices and other inevitable issues that constantly crop up.
The things Ferdinand describes are certainly varied and ludicrous enough to be entertaining. The problem is the lengths he goes to in describing them. I feel as if there's too much focus on someone describing things he's done and seen with very little else to go along with it. There's not much insight into his thoughts or feelings at any point. You could explain this away by saying he's young and not really capable of realising how things make him feel, but the sheer volume of his recollections suggests he should think of something.
Despite taking so long to read it I can very vividly remember pretty much every major event of his life described in the book. There's about six of them between five hundred pages of smaller than usual print. I fear I'm not being descriptive but there's an irony in me having so little to say about a book which uses so many words to ultimately do very little. Events and people that could and should be interesting aren't given any opportunity to do so because of the lengths they're described in, subsequently been given no time to exist in their own right. Near enough everyone seems to be reduced to a small amount of basic personality traits which Ferdindand repeats over and over and which always end up being their downfall in one way or another.
I think this is what really creates the sense that nothing interesting happens despite the detail we're given. Everything is over-written to the point where nothing is actually written at all. There's no chance to sympathise with or feel anything towards any of the characters because Ferdinand is too busy telling us what he sees and nothing else. And I can only really speak for the male characters in this sense. Any women are reduced to various elements of sexual objectification and not much else. I spent the book trying to feel something towards the people involved, waiting for a moment where insight or empathy might come in to play but there was nothing.
It saddens me to think that someone could start a literary career with Journey to the End of the Night and not really be capable of following it up. His forays into anti-Semitism will have had more of an impact on his legacy than anything else he wrote but I appreciate that Celine was was exasperated by people who expected nothing but an identical follow-up to his first novel, that he tried to do something new and persist with it because it was the way he thought writing should be. Based on this evidence however, there's very little reason for me to say he was successful.
Spring in Fialta
A malign star kept him
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1943) - Ever since I've started reflecting on what art can do and does to me, I've often found that no feat seems as difficult to pull off as creating a work that can resonate with children and adults alike while treading the fine line between kitsch, preachiness and organic sentimentality along with a rewarding sense of wonder. Few works achieve that, I've found. Calvin and Hobbes is another one which pulls it off. The Little Prince is another one. I adore it, and I've adored it since I was a child and first started getting into reading. In fact, I'm fairly certain it's the first classic I've ever read, or at any rate, a book that covers serious and humanistic themes. Outside of The Little Prince, my literary diet at that age was completed with Goosebumps volumes and a french series named J'aime lire (along with Little Spirou comics).
It's effect has never been lost on me, and I, at the very least, feel lumps in my throat reading it, if not outright tears. Through a measured tone, Saint-Exupery can convey through a page-long parable what many writers will take an entirely novel to obscurely explain, without any of the charm, wonder and appeal to a child-like exuberance of life. The book is at once bitter and hopeful - one of the most common yet bizarre and touching sentiments people appear to feel, IMO - and its elegance, in such few pages, feels unmatched by most. Or if so, mostly in a showoffy (think of the Updikes of the world) and callous sort of way which feels disdainful. I can see why someone wouldn't be open to its didactic essence, or its think its being a bit uppity towards the reality of adult life, but I wouldn't agree. More than anything, I think Exupery understands that it's okay to be an adult, he only appears to not respect what it can entail in terms of losses, losses that do not feel excusable to him, and I tend to agree. And beautifully, Saint-Exupery brings a celestial quality to The Little Prince's various adventures which brings a sense of wonder of the reader which in turn, allows him to seriously consider the author's passionate pleas. To me, that sense of wonder directly justifies an obligation to at least consider the words of such an honest work. To not do so would feel like a moral failure. Even if I might disagree with the author's conclusion. Which I mostly don't.
Also, by the way, has anyone else ever read Malone Dies by Samuel Beckett? Talk about the ultimate contrast to The Little Prince, which was part of the reason I went with it, but euh...I've definitely never read anything like it.
It's effect has never been lost on me, and I, at the very least, feel lumps in my throat reading it, if not outright tears. Through a measured tone, Saint-Exupery can convey through a page-long parable what many writers will take an entirely novel to obscurely explain, without any of the charm, wonder and appeal to a child-like exuberance of life. The book is at once bitter and hopeful - one of the most common yet bizarre and touching sentiments people appear to feel, IMO - and its elegance, in such few pages, feels unmatched by most. Or if so, mostly in a showoffy (think of the Updikes of the world) and callous sort of way which feels disdainful. I can see why someone wouldn't be open to its didactic essence, or its think its being a bit uppity towards the reality of adult life, but I wouldn't agree. More than anything, I think Exupery understands that it's okay to be an adult, he only appears to not respect what it can entail in terms of losses, losses that do not feel excusable to him, and I tend to agree. And beautifully, Saint-Exupery brings a celestial quality to The Little Prince's various adventures which brings a sense of wonder of the reader which in turn, allows him to seriously consider the author's passionate pleas. To me, that sense of wonder directly justifies an obligation to at least consider the words of such an honest work. To not do so would feel like a moral failure. Even if I might disagree with the author's conclusion. Which I mostly don't.
Also, by the way, has anyone else ever read Malone Dies by Samuel Beckett? Talk about the ultimate contrast to The Little Prince, which was part of the reason I went with it, but euh...I've definitely never read anything like it.
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Spring in Fialta
A malign star kept him
Malone Dies by Samuel Beckett (1951) - My first foray into Beckett's body of work. The story itself - at least on the surface - is rather simple: An elderly man, named Malone, lays immobile and dying in either a hospital or an asylum, most likely the latter. He is aware of his impending death - in fact, it's his first statement - and his prose indicates that his mind is deteriorating as rapidly as his limbs. The entire novel centers itself around his thoughts, observations and his attempt at writing a story, and the reader can never be sure whether the story is the story of his life or metafictional because Beckett willfully blurrs the line while philosophizing about the distinctions, to the confusion, wonder and interest of the reader.
It is difficult to fully grasp what each passage is a reflection of, or what Beckett was trying to convey, if anything at all or if he's just trying to trick his reader (and himself) while stretching the limits of the act of writing and artistic creation. Following a quick glance on the Internet, it seems like not one analysis is entirely the same and a lot get lost in their own incoherence. Personally, I have my doubts as to such an understanding is possible - beyond a superficial level - or even important. I wouldn't be surprised if Beckett intentionally misguides his reader, and besides, considering the state of the main character, it would make sense for non-sensical claims or statements to be made, even if tue work is sensical, at its heart.
With that said, the world depicted in the book is at once frightening, delirious and oddly beautiful. Beckett goes on fantastic tangents, accentuated by their brief, lyrical beauty. The stylistic prose is unlike anything I've ever read. The NYT review I read of the book described it as " like a wounded bird, in short-stabbing flights, never getting far into the air before he falls back, but wonderfully moving in these tiny arcs. " I think this is a perfect way to describe it and it makes for a deeply rewarding read, even with the constsnt stop-and-go as this is not a smooth read. The book's literary devices are not conventional either. Beckett, rather harshly, waves away ideas of plot and character development/depth. The only conventional aspect to the book is its resolution, with Malone's apparent death, but even the road to that conclusion is experimental. Malone frantically attempts to finish the story of his main creation, Macmann - who's life seems to merge into Malone's - and who appears to live an entire life (birth, love, pain, death) in the span of few pages, before being taken on a picnic trip with fellow freaks by Lemuel, a terrifying nurse who often mistreats Macmann. Then, in less than 10 pages, Beckett destroys his creations and the act of writing itself, before leaving his characters and his book to erode through this gorgeous and haunting passage:
" Lemuel is in charge, he raises his hatchet on which the blood will never dry, but not to hit anyone, he will not hit anyone, he will not hit anyone anymore, either with it or with it or with it or with or
Or with it or with his hammer or with his stick or with his fist or in thought in dream I mean never he will never
Or with his pencil or with his stick or
Or light light I mean
Never there he will never
Never anything
There
Any more "
Talk about letting your reader know creation is coming to an end. Of course the blood will never dry. Of course Lemuel will never hit anyone. The story is ending. It's dying, just like Malone.
By the way, I'm fairly certain Lemuel is supposed to represent Samuel Beckett.
It is difficult to fully grasp what each passage is a reflection of, or what Beckett was trying to convey, if anything at all or if he's just trying to trick his reader (and himself) while stretching the limits of the act of writing and artistic creation. Following a quick glance on the Internet, it seems like not one analysis is entirely the same and a lot get lost in their own incoherence. Personally, I have my doubts as to such an understanding is possible - beyond a superficial level - or even important. I wouldn't be surprised if Beckett intentionally misguides his reader, and besides, considering the state of the main character, it would make sense for non-sensical claims or statements to be made, even if tue work is sensical, at its heart.
With that said, the world depicted in the book is at once frightening, delirious and oddly beautiful. Beckett goes on fantastic tangents, accentuated by their brief, lyrical beauty. The stylistic prose is unlike anything I've ever read. The NYT review I read of the book described it as " like a wounded bird, in short-stabbing flights, never getting far into the air before he falls back, but wonderfully moving in these tiny arcs. " I think this is a perfect way to describe it and it makes for a deeply rewarding read, even with the constsnt stop-and-go as this is not a smooth read. The book's literary devices are not conventional either. Beckett, rather harshly, waves away ideas of plot and character development/depth. The only conventional aspect to the book is its resolution, with Malone's apparent death, but even the road to that conclusion is experimental. Malone frantically attempts to finish the story of his main creation, Macmann - who's life seems to merge into Malone's - and who appears to live an entire life (birth, love, pain, death) in the span of few pages, before being taken on a picnic trip with fellow freaks by Lemuel, a terrifying nurse who often mistreats Macmann. Then, in less than 10 pages, Beckett destroys his creations and the act of writing itself, before leaving his characters and his book to erode through this gorgeous and haunting passage:
" Lemuel is in charge, he raises his hatchet on which the blood will never dry, but not to hit anyone, he will not hit anyone, he will not hit anyone anymore, either with it or with it or with it or with or
Or with it or with his hammer or with his stick or with his fist or in thought in dream I mean never he will never
Or with his pencil or with his stick or
Or light light I mean
Never there he will never
Never anything
There
Any more "
Talk about letting your reader know creation is coming to an end. Of course the blood will never dry. Of course Lemuel will never hit anyone. The story is ending. It's dying, just like Malone.
By the way, I'm fairly certain Lemuel is supposed to represent Samuel Beckett.
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Oscar Acosta
Registered User
- Mar 19, 2011
- 7,695
- 369
The Devil in the White City - Erik Larson
Not going to lie, I was really stoked to read this book. Like with the same enthusiasm I had seeing Honey I Shrunk the Kids at age 7. Always heard about the murder castle hotel of HH Holmes, but it was always sparse, and I looked forward to reading this. I searched Costco every time I went in, never found it, tried to take it out of the library because I couldn't just wait to own it. Eventually just read a free eBook version of it on a library hold certain I'm going to buy it anyway.
Uhh.
It's an entertaining book, to a degree. Don't be fooled though, it's more about the building of the Chicago World's Fair. Luckily I've always been interested in architecture so I found this sort of history interesting. It could have used a lot of photos spliced between chapters so you could get the idea of the really in depth details of how it was built, and the behind the scenes into it.
Then you get a chapter of "And then HH Holmes was ready to get started" and you're thinking ok here we go. And the chapter will be like he met a few people, and entertained them which his blue eyes and charm. Now back to the saga of how many tickets the fair sold each month from opening to close. And what kind of floral arrangement they used for the island.
When it winds up you're like "Ok." Then Holmes went to Philadelphia, Cincinnati, then to Toronto, got arrested and found out for murder. Some people might think he was Jack the Ripper but he wasn't. Investigators went into his hotel and confirmed. He was hung.
It basically goes that fast.
But you get entire chapters dedicated to the dimensions of buildings, and the worries of architects nobody cared about then, let alone now 125 years later.
I enjoyed the book for the fact I like architecture and history. But anyone going in hoping for the advertised real life thriller of HH Holmes, is going to be seriously disappointed. I found a 12 minute YouTube Biography of him that I found far more informative than this book was.
But if I'm ever on Jeopardy, at least my knowledge of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair's ticket sales is going to be thumbs up! Let's hope the Scorcese/DiCaprio movie is more HH Holmes and less "here's how we will hang 11,000 pounds of steel beams on that ferris wheel goddammit!!"
6.5/10
The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint Exupery
The narrator of The Little Prince is a pilot who crashes into the Sahara Desert, badly damaging his plane in the process. While he tries to think of someway out of his terrible predicament, he meets the Little Prince, who has left his own tiny asteroid to explore other worlds. Unfortunately when he get to Earth he lands in the Sahara, too, and finds no people to meet until he runs into the pilot. The pilot listens as the Prince recounts his adventures so far, which mainly consist of the Little Prince landing on one asteroid after another and finding strange adults whose various behaviours seem utterly foreign to him. Part of what motivates his journey is the fact that he fell in love with a rose back home, the only one of her kind on his asteroid, but she lied to him, making him both disillusioned and curious about what's out there. So in a roundabout way her seeming deception is the reason he takes off on his adventures. In the desert, he meets a fox who teaches him many lessons about life. He also meets a snake who assures him that he, the snake, can help him get home with a single bite. The prince, who has learned much about love and responsibility along the way, eventually decides to take the serpent up on his offer. On the Prince's one year anniversary of coming to Earth, the narrator walks with him on his final journey. Later, plane fixed, the narrator also plans to return to home. The vast reaches of space remind him of his little friend and he thinks he can hear his laughter. He muses about the rose and wonders whether the prince ever returned to Earth.
Though I had read a couple of other works by the author and liked and respected them, it came as a surprise to me to discover that I had never read this book, neither in my own childhood nor in the childhood of my two daughters. That realization made me feel remiss in my parental duties, actually. Though I found the early stages of The Little Prince a little on the twee side, I quickly warmed to his gentle tale. It is a beautiful book full of precise, delicate writing, the work of an astonishingly fertile imagination. It is also one of the saddest stories that I have ever read. The short novel is filled with regret, loss, isolation, and loneliness. Both the pilot and the Prince are cut off from others, one by circumstance, one by design. Suspicion of the adult world and the sometimes unfathomable decisions that adults make is central to the Little Prince's perception of reality. In the end he chooses home over further exploration in hopes that his rose will still be there. And what can be said about a lonely pilot in distress who conjures up such a solitary character as the Little Prince to keep him company, To my way of seeing it, this is a book about the longing for companionship and the high probability that if you find that companionship, you will eventually be disappointed, that or it will never truly happen in the first place. No wonder that de Saint Exupery felt more at home in an airplane high above the earth than on the ground. A sad, lonely, lovely work.
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Thucydides
Registered User
- Dec 24, 2009
- 8,164
- 851
The Little Prince was good, but sad. It left me with a a lot of nostalgia for my childhood long after finishing it.
I’ll leave a better review tomorrow , just wanted to chime in. Great pick. It was my first time reading it, too. Really liked the artwork, almost as much as the story.
I’ll leave a better review tomorrow , just wanted to chime in. Great pick. It was my first time reading it, too. Really liked the artwork, almost as much as the story.
Spring in Fialta
A malign star kept him
Yeah, Saint-Exupery's singular drawings are almost as captivating as the words themselves. It's something I don't think about often, but I think well-done drawings can add a lot to a work of prose.
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