Posts Tagged ‘Books’
This is version two of the blog, which currently contains 136 published posts. To some extent, this blog represents the creative excesses of a design enthusiast who is somewhere in the process of applying to grad school, working at a law firm and resides in the Financial District of New York City.
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Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Sigh. I was so sure I would like this. Not to come off as some sort of ardent feminist, but I think Marquez grossly oversimplifies women (they’re either Madonnas or complete flat-out whores — some literally — who basically serve to service men), and it seems more like a parody of love than anything resembling an actual courtship (it’s possible this sentiment is more of a reflection of my lack of life experience — I’m just putting it out there). But I think the biggest thing is that bothered me that it seemed to show a lack of understanding about people (their desires, motives, etc.) and human nature so that the characters in it, especially the female ones, come off as difficult to relate to. They just didn’t seem very real — maybe it’s just me, I don’t know.
Basically, the book is summed up as: boy meets girl. Girl marries someone else. Boy waits for her husband to die and has a lot of sex. Over half a century later, boy and girl hook up.
I’ve always felt like I should like Gabriel Garcia Marquez more because he’s supposed to be so wonderful, but it was pretty painstaking to get through this novel. I have to admit I found the first few chapters engrossing, but as the story line played out and the characters developed…eh. And I disliked Chronicle of a Death Foretold even more (summed up: blindly following traditions is bad). I read Chronicle for school, however, so I always assumed that I disliked it mostly due to my associating that book with classwork. Guess not.
Baring some use of symbolism that maybe some English majors would appreciate more than I do (symbolism tends to not enhance the value of books by much for me because it serves neither to educate or entertain), I failed to find anything particularly notable in this book. Also, it provides some insights into the aging process I guess, but I think just I’m not in a position to fully appreciate it at this point in life. I get that Marquez can string together a pretty sentence, obviously, but I just didn’t enjoy this book. I’d give it three-and-a-half stars, but a personal rating of two-and-a-half.
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The eye of the storm. Life has ground (grinded? I don’t think that’s a word) to a brief and much needed halt as I wait to move northward. Graduation was hectic, as one would imagine, but honestly I’m surprised how quickly it ended. I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to a lot of people, but I did get some pretty solid goodbyes in and that was good. I actually think the last person I talked to (other than my roommates) was this random guy named Jimmy, and we talked about how one becomes a man (him, not me — otherwise it would require talking about awkward surgical procedures. <– bad joke). Not how I imagined my time at Emory to end, but somehow appropriate.
Anyway, the wedding was really nice and the whole thing took place at a really romantic beach-side resort in San Diego, CA. They are a pretty chill couple so the wedding took out a lot of the unnecessary pomp and circumstance that tends to make them really tedious; the whole ceremony took all of — 15 minutes? Yeah, shortest wedding ever, or so I’m told. Just walking up the aisle, short sand ceremony, him: I do, her: I do, kiss kiss, the end. It was fun to see all the family again though it was a bit unbalanced (her side: 42 people, his side: 7, haha). Overall, it was a really well-planned wedding, I think.
Well, I’m back at home now catching up on some reading. I’ve been trying to get through Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, but I’m finding that it’s just a little bit much with all the spirituality and stuff. I mean, the parts when she is on her bathroom floor writing and telling herself it is the voice of God pouring forth from her hand (and this happens multiple times) — yeah, color me skeptical. Sorry.
I’ve had better luck with a collection of short stories by David Sedaris – I guess they’re technically essays, which is useful to know if you’re ever looking for his stuff in a bookstore – which I switch to each time the Gilbert book starts to get on my nerves. I’m still determined to finish it, but it’s definitely testing my willpower.
Finally, los videojuegos. I beat Fable yesterday. I actually really liked it. My sister’s friend Marc says it’s too short, but I thought it was a good length if you do all the optional sidequests (which I am wont to do) and take the time to find everything and try out different options. Lessee, I’ve also played The Movies (gets very boring around after 5 hours or so), the Sims Castaway Stories (waste of time, non-fun, WAY TOO LINEAR, gets boring after the first hour and a half), and I’m about three-quarters of the way through Neverwinter Nights. Neverwinter Nights is very long. I don’t know how long I’ve been playing but I’ve been trying to get through this game since prior to finals. Looong. But quite good. I think more hardcore gam3rz would appreciate the length/depth more than I do.
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Thing I did during break:
I did a little bit of the things I said I would do – LSATs, sleep, getting together with people, etc. I didn’t make as much progress on the LSATs as I hoped. I still think I could do better on the logic games if I studied some more — it just takes me too long to chart out those problems right now. I want to get to the point where charting them out is second nature. I think I’m okay on the rest.
I’m surprised how many people I ended up seeing over break. It seems Marie, Sid and Nita (who I did not see) are all planning on law school as well. A bunch of people are doing i-banking or finance-related jobs: Hemal, Bo, etc. Lots of med-schoolers. Also, I finally, finally saw all the Yalies, who have been alluding all of us for the past few years. We had an awkward New Years’ party at Khang’s house — we ended up washing champagne glasses as it hit midnight because they were too dusty to toast with, haha. Also, for future reference, twist-off champagne bottles don’t “pop,” regardless of what the warning on the bottle may say.
We also managed to get in some ice skating, even if Jules, Kasey and Bo were two hours late. Yeah, thanks. Seven minutes my butt, Jules. Haha. Howie and Karen came, too. Ann and Aaron showed up together (but not “together”), but Aaron was unwilling to skate because he is a scaredy-cat. You may tell him I said that because I never got invited to that LAN party to play Diablo 2. I’m very upset. I also had a weird night out with the boys — I attempted to get into the wrong person’s car (v. awkward) and we went to a place that played explicit music videos from the late 80′s and early 90′s. Very weird, but I met Sid’s cousin. Cool.
What else…I ended up going to three movies over break. First, Enchanted with Marie, where I missed the first hour because I went to the wrong movie theater, proving, unequivocally, that I am indeed a genius. Second, Enchanted (again!) with Tina, Amy and Jeanne, wherein I finally got to see the full movie. Finally, I saw Charlie Wilson’s War with Daniel and Aaron. I would say both movies were slightly better than mediocre, but whatever.
Recently Read Stuff:
Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follet; I actually really liked this book. I’ve been in a historical fiction and mystery phase recently. (Obviously, this falls in the first category.) It was probably the lengthiest book that I’ve read continuously. Usually, I get bored at some points in more “epic” novels. It got a little overwrought with drama at some points, but I guess that’s to be expected from a former writer of horror/thrillers. Oh, it’s about building a cathedral.
The Dante Club, by Matthew Pearl; I have a feeling (however potentially unfounded) that things that are described to be facts in this book give way to much more entertaining fictions, but it’s about a group of Dante translators who discover that a murderer is going around killing off sinners in a Dantesque fashion. However, this is set at a time when Dante is relatively unknown and still only in Italian so the murder must be among their ranks. Drama ensues.
Freddy and Fredericka, by Mark Helprin; I enjoyed this, but I honestly can’t think of a single person I’d recommend it to. It’s about a royal couple who – for various reasons – get sent, penniless and with only one another, to make their own way in America. It’s a little more bizarre than I’d expected, but if you’re willing to suspend reality, you’ll probably find yourself rooting for the two main characters. One caveat, it’s a little condescending when it comes to making assumptions about the perceptions of the “common people” but whatever.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie; Good. Someone gets stabbed in the back. House full of people — whodunit?
The Clocks by Agatha Christie; Also good. A a stranger finds a dead body in house surrounded by clocks set to the wrong time. Hercule Poirot comes to the rescue.
Shopaholic & Baby by Sophie Kinsella; Actually pretty entertaining. I thought her previous Shopaholic book (the & Sister one) kind of … was not great. Anyway, this one was more like the previous ones, thank goodness. Basically, our Becky has a baby, but suspects that Luke is stepping out with her doctor. It’s good, clean fun.
Other Stuff:
I booked tickets to London! Whoo hoo!
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I’m trying to read Veronika Decide Morir (trans: Veronika Decides to Die) in Spanish right now. It’s quite difficult because I haven’t practiced my Spanish in almost three years. I’m a little less than a hundred pages into it, but it’s taken me almost 4 hours of reading and looking up words.
Anyway, in the book he tells a story about a king of a kingdom and the sorcerer who attempts to ruin him. The sorcerer poisons the water source in the kingdom to drive people to madness. The king, on the other hand, drinks from a private water source. Things go according to plan and the people go crazy. The king, trying to stop the madness, tries to take security measures, but everyone thinks he’s the crazy one. In the end, in order to rule, he ends up drinking from the poisoned water source himself. Once he is like everyone else, they believe he has regained his sanity. And, in this secluded kingdom, the crazy king and all the crazy people lived happily ever after.
I liked this story. It leads me to believe Paulo Coelho knows what it’s like to do group projects.
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I’m not a big fan of post-modernist works of literature. In my (perhaps haughty) opinion, messing around with typesetting and experimenting with grammar are simply devices for writers to use as crutches – crutches from being judged against real, better books. The whole point of being able to write well is to be able to convey your thoughts and descriptions within the structures of words and using the power of words to evoke the meaning you’re looking for. If you have to use “creative” means of avoiding actual writing in order to convey your meaning, then you aren’t really a writer, are you?
That said, I went to Barnes and Noble the other day to browse and was dismayed to see the following page in a “novel” on the New Fiction table –
It’s a page out of Mark Danielewski’s newest “novel,” Only Revolutions. Every page out of his new book looks like this. Actually, if you flip the book upside down and read it from the other side, it tells the other side of the story. Isn’t that cute? It’s like some sort of toy, except it’s supposed to be a book. I think I had journals when I was twelve that did something like that. On one side, it had a sun and if you flipped it upside down it was practically like having a SECOND JOURNAL! Because there was a moon and all the pages from that side had moons on them. So cool. So, so cool. I love moons. Moons are totally cool.
The most depressing part of all this is that this crap is just not enjoyable to read. It’s a pain in the ass to read/decipher experimental fiction. I’m only left to imagine that the thing that drives on the people who read this stuff is pure pretensions, the pleasure of declaring various jumbles of text as being “bold” and “daring.” I’m pleading now – please, please get over yourself and just try picking up a good book.
And yes, I realize how pretentious I sound. Yes, see that it’s ironic. Okay?
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So, after roughly seven hours of reading, I’m finished with the last Harry Potter book. Around 3:00 in the morning, I crept downstairs to finish the second half of the book (my roommate was sleeping so no reading in the room) in the study lounge. Lo and behold, there was another guy huddled in a corner reading the same chunk of text as well. Of course.
I’ve been keen on finishing it not because I was dying to know what happened – I mean, honestly, we waited for how many years? A couple days is nothing – but because I wanted to finish before some idiot accidentally mouthed off about what happens with me around. All in all, I’m pretty happy with how it ended. I’m surprised how thoroughly everything got answered – I almost wish a few more questions were left unanswered that people could debate endlessly about. My first instinct is to re-read all the books – my favorite thing about Harry Potter book is how you can go back after she reveals new information to see how the seeds were planted in the beginning novels, even if there was no way to know it at the time.
At any rate, that’s done. I need new reading material.
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I’ve been meaning to read Slaughterhouse-Five since the dawn of time. Seriously, I think I’ve had the book for about five years now. I’ve read Timequake, Welcome to the Monkey House, Bagombo Snuff Box, God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, Man without a Country, etc., etc. – loved all these books, but for some reason had never been able to get myself to read his most well-known work.
Until now, of course, and it was wonderful. Oddly enough, he cites a quote in two instances which happens to be one of my favorite quotes. I won’t recite it here – it seems cheesy when taken out of an appropriate context.
I think my delay in reading it might be because I knew I loved Vonnegut so much that I was worried I’d read it and be disappointed – with most of the writers I’ve loved the most, one day I pick up a book I thought I really loved and find that it’s not what I thought it was. I suppose maybe it’s cause I read a lot of stuff when I was young and gave more credit them than they deserved. But who knows.
At any rate, knowing that I wanted to concentrate on reading the new Harry Potter tome, I went ahead and tried to tie up some loose strings by finally finishing the book. I ended up having to start over since it was so long since I’d read the beginning, but it was well worth it. The whole time, I kept thinking about how it hit me when I found out Kurt Vonnegut was dead. It was on the Georgetown bus in Washington D.C. on our way to the business strategy case competition, day of. It was on the left column on the front page of the Post, and it made our little competition seem very insignificant.
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I’m so sad to say that A Dirty Job (by Christopher Moore) was kind of a disappointment. I mean, to be fair, it’s not a bad book and it’s still pretty funny. I’m glad I read it and it was worth the 13 bucks. However, I keep thinking back to when I read Lamb, by the same author, which was just so damn good, and the last really good book I read, Good Omens, was just amazing – so perhaps this book just never had a chance. Maybe.
Anyway, the premise of it was cute – a guy gets a job harvesting souls as a being working for the underworld. He also has a new baby girl to deal with. Very cute. She gets two puppies, except they’re not so much puppies as they are large black hellhounds. Less cute, but funny.
All in all, not a bad book. I’d give it a solid three-and-a-half stars.
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I’ve been reading a bit over the past week or two. Here’s my take on these books:
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman – [5/5] a wonderful, hilarious book. I started reading and couldn’t stop. Iris told me to read it a while back, but I didn’t get to it until now. It’s about good and evil, the end of the world and a bunch of other stuff. It’s one of those books that pretty much anyone can enjoy.
Ignorance by Milan Kundera – [3/5] I have to say, I was a bit disappointed. It’s about memories and the experiences of expats of the Czech Republic. I guess I expected more out of the author of the Unbearable Lightness of Being, which I’ve been told is quite good. It reminded me of reading Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground. Like Notes, it was clearly written by a capable author (and Kundera is – in my opinion – easier to read than Dostoevsky), but also felt like it skimmed the surface of the topic. Both are more novellas than novels (e.g. they’re short) that read like an abstract for a more in-depth work. Brian suggests I try The Joke, another one of his novels, so I might do that. I mean, again, it’s still a good book, I was just expecting more.
Hitched by Carol Higgins Clark – [2.5/5] Argh! I want so badly to like these books. Carol is the daughter of the more well-know (and better) Mary Higgings Clark, who I like. Great airplane and waiting room reads. The younger Clark tends to write with more levity, which is why I want so badly for her books to be a less serious version of the elder Clark’s books. Unfortunately, that is not the case – I’ve read three of her novels now, and each one is a bit unsatisfying. Her novels just don’t unravel as well. Oh well.
The Areas of My Expertise by John Hodgman – [3.5/5] a book of faux trivia, haha. I just happened to pick this one up and start reading it. At first I thought it was a book of random knowledge until it said something about Yale’s Whiffenpoofs being some sort of foreign defense unit (that just happens to be masquerading as the first all-men a capella group), wherein I figured something was up. Anyway, it can be comical, but you have to be in the mood for some pretty dry deadpanned humor.
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