Book Review: Bright Star

Bright Star by John Keats

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I'm starting to think that Keats was more in love with the literary stimulation induced by unobtainable love than he was ever in love with Fanny, but the letters have value where they provide intriguing insight into this psychology. If only there were more.



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Book Review: The Player by Michael Tolkin

The Player by Michael Tolkin

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I read this book for my adaptation class, so my vision of it is clouded by the fact that I watched the film when I was only 50 pages into it. I hated the film. And then as I was reading the rest, I loved the film and I was unimpressed with the book. So... I just don't know how I feel about either anymore. The film was unappealing, but had an overarching philosophical intention, while the book was more approachable, but the author seems to have lost a clear sense of purpose after the major turning point in the plot (no spoilers here). So... yeah. It was okay. They need each other, and make one another look bad at the same time. It's like a train-wreck, co-dependent relationship. That in itself makes for an interesting experience worth being part of. Hooray for adaptation. :)



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P.S. - I actually read the original hardcover, but there aren't any pictures available online. Google says it may have a copyright. Why would anyone want their art to disappear from public consciousness? What other images are lost to us? Hmm... Read More......

Book Review: Concrete by Thomas Bernhard

Concrete by Thomas Bernhard

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is a book that every over-analytical, self-indulgent procrastinator must read. The sprawling notions of the narrator reveal many paradoxical truths about human nature. And hey, you can knock it out in an afternoon. So why not?



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Book Review: Metro Stop Paris

Metro Stop Paris by Gregor Dallas

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Walking through my local library recently, I happened upon a book that rang out with familiarity, immediately transporting me back to my one summer in Paris three years ago in which I stood outside the Shakespeare and Co. bookstore near Notre Dame and listed to a memorable little Englishman read his work to attentive bibliophiles, and passersby.

That author, Gregor Dallas, opens his book with an appeal for his meandering approach to French history, writing, "The more history I wrote, the more I realized that history is travelling: if you don't see the places where the major events of the past occurred, you get lost in the abstractions, system-building and theories that have so distorted our view of the past over the last few decades...some historians write history as if the event they describe could have occurred anywhere on the globe."

Unfortunately, while the process of writing the book may have invoked a travelers romanticism for its author, Dallas does not likewise fully immerse and gratify his readers’ senses--his descriptions of physical place are superficial at best, and the use of the Paris metro stops is never illustrative and well justified. Often, Dallas begins with a brief description of space couched in an argument for its philosophical importance—lost in beautiful abstractions about creativity and life and death—and then he too quickly deviates into historical accounts, no longer orienting readers around street corners let alone near the metro stop names that serve as each chapter title.

Still, consider this a mere packaging problem. It does not hurt the book once one lays aside the expectation for a sensorial ride through underground Paris. What shines in the book is the way it lays together many Parisian stories (depicting everyone from Oscar Wilde to Catherine de Medici and Sartre to Debussy), allowing them to play a part in a larger epic narrative. Where Dallas misses opportunities to unite a sense of place, he more than compensates with his insight into character. One begins to imagine time layered on top of itself, and its major players read like the Gods of Greek mythology.

So, while the book is not a complete success (and perhaps ends too abruptly), it does manage to make lives jump from the page, and serves as a meeting place for those who have been there and can remember the sights and smells enough to indulge in their own memories, and feel like part of a story greater than their own.




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Book Review: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I'm a fan of 'the gimmick' and Aimee Bender's book applies a pretty fascinating one: its protagonist, Rose, is able to taste people's deepest feelings in the food they prepare. Maybe you're skeptical though. The threat, I know, is that the whole novel will have to kowtow to this central plot device--putting undue weight on Bender's ability to write a decent, unpredictable ending. Well lay your fears aside.
From page five, when I was running the book to my copy machine to save a particularly well written scene, I knew this was going to be something more. Bender, somehow, manages to make Rose's 'special skill' into something less interesting than the humanity it helps her to recognize: her father, hiding blind in his nostalgic idealism; her mother, inexpertly trying to see a place in a family that makes her feel like an invisible student among prophets, a brother who wanders in and out of rooms like a ghost, taxed by the weight of knowing too much without the means to express it, and George, the friend who brings the light, but also takes it with him when he goes. And scattered along the way are numerous tinier allegories, stories, and clues that help you to imbibe this world, taste it as Rose does, and discover it, and her, and yourself along the way. Allow this book to spread over your palate, and it may just reveal to you, I hope, your own special gifts, that you, also, too often dismiss as a curse, because they require you to grow and make something of them.

"Food is all those substances which, submitted to the action of the stomach, can be assimilated or changed into life by digestion, and can thus repair the losses which the human body suffers through the act of living."
-The Physiology of Taste, Brillat-Savarin
(epigraph to The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake)

Rose on Doritos:
"What is good about a Dorito, I said, in full voice, is that I'm not supposed to pay attention to it. As soon as I do, it tastes like every other ordinary chip. But if I stop paying attention, it becomes the most delicious thing in the world...
...a Dorito asks nothing of you, which is its great gift. It only asks that you are not there."
(pp. 127-8)



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Book Review: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


My friend Amy and I have been speculating on which district we'd like to be from, and while I won't spoil it for anyone, I will say that I came away feeling like one of the hairdressers from district one-- a little bit idealistic and naive. The final book turns on you in a way that makes the message hit home, but the love story not so much. It wasn't what I was expecting, but I feel like I learned something in a gut-wrenching way.



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