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| 1593082215
| 9781593082215
| 1593082215
| 4.00
| 465,304
| May 17, 1900
| Sep 01, 2005
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liked it
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What is reader's block? Coined a day or two after Goodreads went online, it is sister to "writer's block," but afflicts would-be book readers who rath
What is reader's block? Coined a day or two after Goodreads went online, it is sister to "writer's block," but afflicts would-be book readers who rather than being unable to focus on putting words on a page, struggle to read one. I've caught a case of reader's block for the first time, having abandoned three novels recently and really just being polite to the most recent, the children's classic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. I finished this one, published in 1900, which is like saying you finished breakfast and expecting a reward (tacos for lunch maybe). I came to the book after decades of enjoyment of MGM's classic film from 1939, which up until I was 12, viewers had to wait anxiously until February to watch on CBS, or in a repertory theater if you had one in your town. In addition to adding musical numbers and some of the most extraordinary special effects introduced in a movie, The Wizard of Oz ends halfway through Baum's story but makes up for it by developing its characters, particularly Dorothy (Judy Garland) who wants nothing more than to flee home with her dog Toto, until she can't get back. Baum's book is written from the point of view of Dorothy, or from a child, and is not embellished with the irony of a Lewis Carroll or J.M. Barrie. Many of his ideas are wondrous-- Dorothy's friends in Oz, four witches (two good, two bad), winged monkeys, a humbug wizard, talking field mice, an Emerald City so bright you need special glasses to enter it--and enchanted the child within me. Baum writes as if he's telling a bedtime story to a child and skirts through plot. And there was a cyclone and Dorothy went into the sky and her house landed on a witch and these Munchkins appeared and ... Thirteen sequels followed this book and I'd have to say my interest could probably be satisfied reading the Wikipedia page to browse the other ideas Baum came up with (I like the vain secondary villain Princess Langwidere from Ozma of Oz who keeps a collection of thirty living, exchangeable heads in a cabinet). Come to think of it, the text reads a lot like a Wikipedia entry and shouldn't take much more time to comb through, a blessing for parents needing something imaginative to read to their kids before put down. My amazement for the film The Wizard of Oz is that long after all the actors, filmmakers and soundstages it was produced in are gone forever, this work of art lives on to amaze new generations. There's no duplicating it either. Nothing from the pops or hisses on the soundtrack to the film stock to the affectations the cast use when they speak could be reproduced today if someone had the resources to try it. Fairuza Balk did a magnificent job imitating Garland's dialect in a much overlooked sequel of sorts from Walt Disney Pictures in 1985, Return To Oz. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 02, 2020
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Apr 21, 2020
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Apr 02, 2020
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| 1101885939
| 9781101885932
| 1101885939
| 4.10
| 207,599
| Jan 10, 2017
| Jan 10, 2017
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it was ok
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My introduction to the fiction of American author Katherine Arden is her debut novel The Bear and the Nightingale, book one in a fantasy trilogy roote
My introduction to the fiction of American author Katherine Arden is her debut novel The Bear and the Nightingale, book one in a fantasy trilogy rooted in Russian folklore and history. Published in 2017, my experience with the book was what I'd imagine attending the first day of school with my child might be like: delightful at first, with memory of my first day of class, followed by an awareness as an adult of how small scaled and precious everything is. The lesson plan would grow tedious and finally, I'd be looking for an exit. I don't want to criticize anyone's kid but as fiction, this novel failed to thrill, interest or beguile me. Set in the northern village of Lesnaya Zemlya in an age of candlepower, the story begins as an account of the family of Pyotr Vladimirovich, a landowner responsible for men and livestock, as well as his growing household. His wife Marina, weakened by the brutal winter, announces that she's pregnant with their fifth child, a daughter. Their nurse Dunya, who regales the children with fairy tales before they curl up for sleep atop the kitchen oven, advises Marina to get rid of the pregnancy for her own health, but Marina has seen that the girl will be different, like her magical mother. Once the child, Vasilisa Petrovna, is born, Marina dies. As a six-year-old, Vasya grows closest to her nine-year-old brother Alyosha, who like his sister is up for any adventure. Given to wandering the forests even in the cusp of winter, Vasya gets lost and stumbles across a ragged, one-eyed man who expresses sinister intentions toward her before the man's brother, a dashing noble on horseback, appears and protects her. Vasya realizes that no one else can actually see the various spirits about the household or forest that populate Dunya's tales and are left offerings by the village in accordance with the old traditions to ward away evil. Stiffly, Vasya uncurled herself, opened her eyes--and found herself looking straight into the eyes of a strange little person. Vasya gave a moan of dismay and curled up again, pressing her fists into her eye sockets. But when she looked again, the eyes were still there, still large, brown, and tranquil, and attached to a broad face, a red nose, and a wagging white beard. The creature was quite small, no larger than Vasya herself, and he sat in a pile of hay, watching her with an expression of curious sympathy. Unlike the domovoi in his neat robe, this creature wore a collection of tattered oddments, and his feet were bare. So much Vasya saw before she squeezed her eyes shut again. But she could not sit buried in the hay forever; at last she screwed up her courage, opened her eyes once more, and said tremulously: "Are you a devil?" There was a small pause. "I don't know. Maybe. What is a devil?" The little creature had a voice like the whicker of a kindly horse. Vasya reflected. "A great black creature with a beard of flame and a forked tail that wishes to possess my soul and drag me off to be tortured in a pit of fire." She eyed the little man again. Whatever he was, he did not seem to fit this description. His beard was quite reassuringly white and solid and he was turning round and examining the seat of his trousers as though to confirm the absence of a tail. "No," he answered at length. "I do not think that I am a devil." "Are you really here?" Vasya asked. "Sometimes," answered the little man tranquilly. Pyotr Vladimirovich and his oldest sons Kolya and Sasha travel to Moscow to pay tribute to his brother-in-law, the Grand Prince Ivan Ivanovich, to find a husband for his daughter Olga and a wife for himself, to manage the children and household. The Grand Prince rids himself of a problem in Anna Ivanovna, the only daughter of his first marriage and much despised due to madness. Hoping a convent will provide her respite from the demons she sees, she's instead sent to the northern woods with Pyotr. Anna can see the spirits that Vasya does, but fears them and holds her stepdaughter responsible for conjuring them. Life the village takes a turn for the worse in Vasya's fourteenth year when the village priest dies and Moscow sends a replacement in Father Konstantin Nikonovich, a charismatic upstart whose icons have threatened the political status quo. The priest is struck by Vasya, who resembles more wood-sprite than young woman, but sets out to turn the village away from their old superstitions and to return to God in fear and repentance. Offerings to the spirits diminish and bad times visit the village. A lake spirit, the rusalka, attempts to lure the priest to a watery death, but Vasya spares the holy man. Vasya's stepmother attempts to rid the village of her "witchcraft" by convincing Pyotr to find the fourteen-year-old girl a husband. The wild Vasya realizes she'll likely have to marry one day, the only alternative for women who reject marriage or child-rearing being life in a convent. Able to speak to horses and learning how to ride them in secret, Vasya rejects her suitor Kyril Artamonovich, a huntsman whose horse Vasya can tell is afraid of him. Uninterested in being broken like a mare, Vasya embarrasses her suitor by proving herself far more capable on a horse. Meanwhile, evil spirits gain a foothold in the village. Vasya ran across the dvor. The yard glittered with virgin snow. The ragged man had left no footprints. The snow was thick and soft; Vasya's limbs felt heavy. Still she ran, shouting, but before she could come to the house, the man had leaped back into the dooryard, landing animal-lithe on all fours. He was laughing, "Oh," he said, "it has been so long. How sweet are the houses of men, and oh, how she screamed--" He caught sight of Vasya then, and the girl stumbled. She knew the scars, the single gray eye. It was the face on the icon, the face ... the face of the sleeper in the woods, years ago. How can that be? "Well, what is this?" the man said. He paused. She saw memory cross his face. "I remember a little girl with your eyes. But now you are a woman." His eye fastened on hers as though he meant to strip a secret from her soul. "You are the little witch who tempts my servant. But I did not see ..." He came nearer and nearer. Vasya tried to flee, but her feet would not obey. His breath reeked of hot blood, he blew it in waves over her face. She gathered the courage. "I am no one," she said. "Get out, leave us be." The most compelling qualities of The Bear and the Nightingale are Arden's descriptions of weather--subzero winters, particularly--and Russian folklore. Those enamored by Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them should love this and while I don't typically go in for fairy tales, mythology is one of the book's strengths. Beyond its encyclopedic qualities, it was not compelling fiction. My biggest complaint is how objectified Vasya is by the adults in the story. Rather than being set off on her own adventure, she's constantly appraised, primed and forced toward life as a child bride. At fourteen. It is a major hinge of the book and returned to incessantly. While the author isn't responsible for the social traditions in her book, she is responsible for dwelling on them. Vasya's stepmother wants the girl sold into marriage. Her nurse wants her sold into marriage. Her father wants her sold into marriage. The priest, who seems to have sexual inclinations towards Vasya, wants her sold into marriage. Her thirty-year-old suitor arrives and is up for a child bride sold into marriage. Imagine every character in Spirited Away trying to get Chihiro to take a husband rather than save her parents. Keep in mind, this is a fantasy adventure, not historical fiction. Not only is the obsession with child marriage a bit sick, worse, it's boring. Vasya is a spitfire whose wild talents make her a compelling heroine. I enjoyed watching her fight the power structure and though not a big fan of fairy tales, a maiden's battles with her stepmother worked in Cinderella and raised my interest level here. Unfortunately, Arden spends a little too much time focusing on matters only tangentially related to Vasya: politics in Moscow, her stepmother's madness, the priest's skullduggery. I'm not confident that Arden knew where to begin her story and disappointed that so little of it focuses on Vasya or her spirits. So while the prose is good, content-wise, the novel never came together for me. Length: 101,676 words ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 27, 2019
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Jan 31, 2019
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Dec 21, 2018
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Hardcover
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| 0316556343
| 9780316556347
| 0316556343
| 4.23
| 1,138,126
| Apr 10, 2018
| Apr 10, 2018
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really liked it
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My introduction to the fiction of Madeline Miller is Circe, her 2018 bestseller focusing on the witch of Aiaia, exiled daughter of the god of the sun
My introduction to the fiction of Madeline Miller is Circe, her 2018 bestseller focusing on the witch of Aiaia, exiled daughter of the god of the sun who as a minor character in Homer's The Odyssey, turned Odysseus' crew to pigs but upon the hero's challenge, became his lover and provider of safe harbor. Drawing on only rudimentary knowledge of Greek myth--with the Ray Harryhausen movies Jason and the Argonauts and Clash of the Titans as my guides--and without having read Homer, I came to this with an open mind and on that basis, was enthralled by much of the novel, which is imaginatively and beautifully written. Circe introduces herself as a nymph, an immortal maiden begat by Helios and a nymph named Perse. Hoping for a daughter whose beauty and wiles will warrant marriage to a son of Zeus, the vapid Perse is notified by her husband that at best, the child may marry a prince, her yellow eyes and strange, thin voice warranting her the name hawk. Growing up in her father's palace, Circe's integrity is victimized by her clever sister Pasiphaë and morbid brother Perses. Circe's seminal moment comes when her uncle Prometheus, imprisoned for his defiance of Zeus in sharing the secret of fire with mortals, is dragged to the palace by a Fury to submit for his punishment. Perse gives birth to a quick-witted son named Aeëtes who Circe grows close to. She confides to her brother that when Prometheus was brought the palace, she brought him a cup of water. Aeëtes reprimands his sister her foolishness, advising her to have a better reason for defying the gods. Pasiphaë is married to Minos, king of Crete, while Perses receives permission to live among the Persians, where he perfects the raising of the dead. Aeëtes announces to Circe that their father has given him a kingdom and he'll be leaving too. Left with nothing of her own and no one who sees her, Circe retreats to the beach she used to idle on with Aeëtes and there, spots a ship. Mankind was spreading across the world. Years had passed since my brother had first found that deserted land for our games. I stood behind a jut of cliff and watched as the man steered, skirting rocks and hauling at the nets. He looked nothing like the well-groomed nobles of Minos' court. His hair was long and black, draggled from wave-spray. His clothes were worn, and his neck scabbed. Scars showed on his arms where fish scales had cut him. He did not move with unearthly grace, but strongly, cleanly, like a well-built hull in the waves. I could hear my pulse, loud in my ears. I thought again of those stories of nymphs ravished and abused by mortals. But this man's face was soft with youth, and the hands that drew up his catch looked only swift, not cruel. Anyway, in the sky above me was my father, called the Watchman. If I was in danger, he would come. He was close to the shore by then, peering down into the water, tracking some fish I could not see. I took a breath and stepped forward onto the beach. "Hail, mortal." Circe falls in love with the sailor, Glaucos. Beaten by his father when he spends more time cavorting with the nymph than fishing, he laments that Circe does not have the power to fill his nets. She goes to her aunt Tethys for help. In exchange for a bounty from the gods, Circe has to promise not to lay with the boy but she grows despondent when she realizes that as a mortal, Glaucos will die. Cognizant that she does possess power, Circe uses flowers to produce a potion that will transform any being to its truest form. Glaucos is changed into a god, but forgets his debt to Circe and instead, favors a treacherous nymph named Scylla for his wife. Enraged, Circe uses her budding powers of witchcraft to transform Scylla into her truest form: a six-headed monster that slithers into the sea. Rather than horror, the palace reacts to the news of Scylla's transformation with glee. When no punishment is issued, Circe confides her acts to her father, who credits the Fates for Glaucos and Scylla, not his daughter. Aeëtes returns to let Helios know that the power his sister speaks of is true. Pharmaekia he calls it, using herbs to conjure spells. All of Helios' children possess this ability. Alarmed that Zeus might retaliate against him, Helios exiles Circe to a deserted isle where she can do no harm. Alone on Aiaia, Circe begins to draw on the herbs and animals of the island to develop her powers. She receives a visit from Hermes, messenger of the gods and trickster, taking him as a lover. Jason and Medea, seeking refuge from Circe's brother Aeëtes for their theft of the golden fleece, pay her a visit. Her sister Pasiphaë requests Circe come to Crete to help her deliver a monster from her womb and then work with the master craftsman Daedalus to build a prison for the thing, dubbed the Minotaur. Then, as prophesied by Hermes, a man named Odysseus comes ashore, negotiating the return of his impudent men, who Circe has transformed into pigs. There was no rest in him. He looked as though he could have parried a spear-thrust out of the shadows. Yet the weariness had begun to show through, like rocks when the tide recedes. By the law of guests I should not question him before he had fed and refreshed himself, but we were past such observances. "You said your journeys were difficult." "I sailed from Troy with twelve ships." His face in the yellow light was like an old shield, battered and lined. "We are all that is left." In spite of myself I was shocked. Eleven ships was more than five hundred men lost. "How did such disaster strike you?" He recited the story as if he were giving a recipe for meat. The storms that had blown then half across the world. The lands filled with cannibals and vengeful savages, with sybarites who drugged their wills. They had been ambushed by the cyclops Polyphemus, a savage one-eyed giant who was a son of Poseidon. He had eaten half a dozen men and sucked their bones. Odysseus had had to blind him to escape, and now Poseidon hunted them across the waves in vengeance. No wonder he limped, no wonder he was gray. This man had faced monsters. "And now Athena, who was ever my guide, has turned her back." I was not surprised to hear her name. The clever daughter of Zeus honored wiles and invention above all. He was just the sort of man she would cherish. "What offended her?" I was not sure he would answer, but he drew in a long breath. "War breeds many sins, and I was not last in committing them. When I asked her pardon, she always gave it. Then the sack of the city came. Temples were razed, blood spilled on altars." Like the gods she writes of who travel at the speed of thought and appear from shadows to bend mortal man to their will, Madeline Miller conjures magic with Circe, taking a seemingly unremarkable exile from Greek myth and making her compelling without dumbing down her source material. Circe has plenty of rooting interest: no goddess or warrior, she's treated contemptuously and cruelly by her family and made to suffer for the convenience of those more powerful than she. Nonetheless, Circe makes encounters some of the greatest gods and warriors of Greek myth and in standing tall before them, realizes her own power. She struck the room, tall and straight and sudden-white, a talon of lightning in the midnight sky. Her horse-hair helmet brushed the ceiling. Her mirror armor threw off sparks. The spear in her hand was long and thin, its keen edge limned in firelight. She was burning certainty, and before her all the shuffling and stained dross of the world must shrink away. Zeus' bright and favorite child, Athena. "What I desire will come to pass. There is no mitigation." That voice again, like shearing metal. I had stood in the presence of great gods before: my father and grandfather, Hermes, Apollo. Yet her gaze pierced me as theirs had not. Odysseus had said once she was like a blade honed to a hair's fineness, so delicate you would not even know you had been cut, while beat by beat your blood was emptying on the floor. She extended one immaculate hand. "Give me the child." All the warmth in the room had fled. Even the fire popping beside me seemed only a painting on the wall. "No." Her eyes ere braided silver and stone gray. "You would stand against me?" The air had thickened. I felt as though I gasped for breath. On her chest shone her famous aigis, leather armor fringed with golden threads. It was said to be made from the skin of a Titan that she had flayed and tanned herself. Her flashing eyes promised: just so I will wear you, if you do not submit and beg for mercy. My tongue withered, and I felt myself trembling. But if there was one thing I knew in all the world, it was that there was no mercy among gods. I twisted my skin between my fingers. The sharp pain steadied me. "I would," I said. "Though it hardly seems a fair battle, you against an unarmed nymph." The novel stops short of working completely for me because I felt it did drag in its final third as Odysseus' widow Penelope and son Telemachus arrive on the island seeking refuge. While their motives toward Circe and her son Telegonus are clouded in mystery, I thought they overstayed their welcome with a lot of talk about events that had already transpired. For the most part, Miller keeps the novel moving forward with vivid prose, fascinating story content and pathos. Circe whets my appetite to study the Greek myths and maybe even put out some cakes, milk, aromatic herbs and an oil lamp as an offering to Athena. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 04, 2018
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Aug 09, 2018
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May 18, 2018
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Hardcover
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| 0140340203
| 9780140340204
| 0140340203
| 4.18
| 405,029
| Sep 28, 1981
| Jan 09, 1989
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it was amazing
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My introduction to the fiction of Roald Dahl is The Witches and this is one of those books whose language and imagination are so exotic that I wanted
My introduction to the fiction of Roald Dahl is The Witches and this is one of those books whose language and imagination are so exotic that I wanted to scribble down every paragraph, until the story pulled me in and I surrendered to its spell. Published in 1983 with illustrations by Quentin Blake, I was presented a 30th anniversary edition for Christmas--by a dear friend on Goodreads--which includes Blake's etchings. Without the mischievous charcoal drawings to accompany it, Dahl's text alone would be one of the scariest books I've read, electrified with truths only children know about the treachery of adults and the irrational evils of the world. The story is spun by a seven-year-old British boy whose expertise with REAL WITCHES begins when he travels with his parents to visit his material grandmother in Norway for Christmas. Orphaned in a car accident north of Oslo, the boy is adopted by his grandmother, a big, loving, cigar smoking lady who takes her grandson's mind off tragedy with her stories. Eventually, Grandmamma arrives on the subject of witches. As huge snowflakes fall outside, she cautions the boy that witches are still around and children must be wary of them, as witches despise children, sniffing them out as if they reeked of dog droppings and doing despicable things to them like transforming them into animals. Content to sit at the feet of his grandmother with the missing thumb and listen to her yarns, the boy is instructed by a family attorney that he is to return to England for his education. Grandmamma goes with him, warning her grandson that they must remain vigilant, as there is a Secret Society of Witches in every country. English witches are on a first-name basis, swapping deadly recipes and plotting to kill children under the direction of The Grand High Witch of All The World, who presides over their secret meetings. By Easter, life has almost returned to normal. The boy busies himself constructing a tree house in a big conker tree in their garden. Alone. I worked away, nailing the first plank on the roof. Then suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of a woman standing immediately below me. She was looking up and me and smiling in the most peculiar way. When most people smile, their lips go out sideways. This woman's lips went upwards and downwards, showing all her front teeth and gums. The gums were like raw meat. It is always a shock to discover you are being watched when you think you are alone. And what was this strange woman doing in our garden anyway? I noticed that she was wearing a small black hat and she had black gloves on her hands and the gloves came up to her elbows. Gloves! She was wearing gloves! I froze all over. "I have a present for you," she said, still staring at me, still smiling, still showing her teeth and gums. I didn't answer. "Come down out of that tree, little boy," she said, "and I shall give you the most exciting present you've ever had." Her voice had a curious rasping quality. It made a sort of metallic sound, as though her throat was full of thumbtacks. The boy survives his encounter in the garden and averts tragedy when his grandmother falls ill with the flu. Unable to take him to the magical places in Norway she's reveled about when summer arrives, she books passage to the seaside town of Bournemouth, where they check in to the Hotel Magnificent. For company, his grandmother gives the boy two white mice, which he names William and Mary. Searching for somewhere he can train his mice far from the prying eyes of hotel management, the boy sneaks into an empty ballroom, reserved for the annual meeting of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Hiding behind a screen, the boy and his White Mouse Circus are unseen as the hotel manager escorts a great flock of ladies into the ballroom. Once they think they're alone, the ladies secure the door with a chain. The boy notices that all of the women wear gloves, just as his grandmother warned him witches do, and scratch at the bald scalps under their wigs, just as witches do. A stylish young lady addresses the meeting, removing her gloves to reveal claws for fingers and taking off her mask to reveal a cankered and worm-eaten face. The Grand High Witch herself goes into a fury with the others for their failure to eradicate England of its children. Advising the witches to quit their day jobs and open candy stores, the Grand High Witch introduces a concoction she calls Formula 86 Delayed-Mouse Maker. This will transform English children to imbibe it into mice, once they're far away from the scene of the crime. The High Witch tests the stuff out on a gluttonous boy named Bruno Jenkins, lured to his fate by the promise of chocolate. As the meeting breaks up, the boy's scent--concealed by virtue of his not bathing for days--finally gives him away and set upon by witches, he is transformed into a mouse too. Finding he quite enjoys being a mouse, the boy reunites with his grandmother, who sees an opportunity. All the rooms in the Hotel Magnificent had small private balconies. My grandmother carried me through into my own bedroom and out onto my balcony. We both peered down to the balcony immediately below "Now if that is her room," I said, "then I'll bet I could climb down there and somehow get in." "And get caught all over again," my grandmother said. "I won't allow it." "At this moment," I said, "all the witches are down on the Sunshine Terrace having tea with the Manager. The Grand High Witch probably won't be back until six o'clock, or just before. That's when she's going to dish out supplies of the foul formula to the ancient ones who are too old to climb trees after gruntles' eggs." "And what if you did manage to get into her room?" my grandmother said. "What then?" "Then I should try to find the place where she keeps her supply of Delayed-Action Mouse-Maker, and if I succeeded, then I would steal one bottle of it and bring it back here." "Could you carry it?" "I think so," I said. "It's a very small bottle." "I'm frightened of that stuff," my grandmother said. "What would you do with it if you did manage to get it?" "One bottle is enough for five hundred people," I said. "That would give each and every witch down there a double dose at least. We could turn them all into mice." My grandmother jumped about an inch in the air. We were out on my balcony and there was a drop of about a million feet below us and I very nearly bounced out of her hand over the railings when she jumped. Roald Dahl is the truth. I loved how fantasy is used here to strip away the deceit and corruption of the adult world, as opposed to using fantasy for escapism. In Dahl's world, there are no gifted children but normal ones, and magical instruments are in the hands of adults, who use them to victimize the meek. The book is terribly frightening, particularly the appearance of a witch under a boy’s treehouse, but Dahl softens his delivery with language that is witty and delightful, meant to beguile rather than unsettle the reader. All over the Dining Room women were screaming and strong men were turning white in the face and shouting, "It's crazy! This can't happen! Let's get the heck out of here quick!" Waiters were attacking the mice with chairs and wine bottles and anything else that came to hand. I saw a chef in a tall white hat rushing out from the kitchen brandishing a frying pan, and another one just behind him wielding a carving knife above his head, and everyone was yelling, "Mice! Mice! Mice! We must get rid of the mice!" Only the children in the room were really enjoying it. They all seemed to know instinctively that something good was going on right there in front of them and they were clapping and cheering and laughing like mad. In addition to his craft with language, Dahl is able to express his love for children even as particularly ghastly things happen to children in his stories. Bad stuff happen when you're a kid, but ingenuity and a good heart are the keys to a better world, while greed ultimately leads to a dead end. A film version of The Witches produced by Jim Henson was released in 1990, the year both Dahl and Henson would pass away, at the ages of 74 and 53, respectively. While the ending of the film was changed to reassure audiences, Dahl's vision is magical, exciting and affirms that change, while terrifying, is a natural part of the world. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 17, 2017
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Dec 23, 2017
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Dec 11, 2017
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Paperback
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| 155597788X
| 9781555977887
| 155597788X
| 3.84
| 94,464
| Oct 03, 2017
| Oct 03, 2017
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it was ok
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Her Body and Other Parties is the debut book by Carmen Maria Machado, whose movie reviews I was familiar with in the Los Angeles Times. Published in 2
Her Body and Other Parties is the debut book by Carmen Maria Machado, whose movie reviews I was familiar with in the Los Angeles Times. Published in 2017, I bit on this short story collection with the publisher's promise of fiction that "borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism." I found it to be rough in terms of quality control, a talented beginner trying way too hard. The first and second of eight pieces are terrific but everything that follows alternates wildly between undeveloped workshop draft and smart ass social media post. Obscurity overwhelms clarity. "The Husband Stitch" is the tale of a woman who wears a green ribbon around her neck that she never removes. At seventeen, she meets the man she'll marry, and manages to keep her ribbon and its secrets secure until their son goes off to college. The Writing (with a capital W, ugh) is style heavy--which should have been a red flag for me--but Machado did keep me unsettled throughout by grounding her story in the patterns of an old wives tale or urban legend. The piece has momentum and does lead the reader somewhere. For those like me who've never read Machado's fiction, this piece easily made me want to read more beguiling tales of women on the edge of reason. "Inventory" is one woman's diary of her sexual partners. The seventh entry in her little black book indicates that all may not be right with the world as an epidemic spreads from Northern California, impacting each of her subsequent entries. This is bar none the best piece. After the style choice of diary format gets familiar, there's an actual story here. Machado's writing is fraught with tension and put me on edge. I wanted to know more about the world that was developing and how her narrator would survive it. This piece had me sold that I had a great debut book on my hands. "Mothers" is about a woman whose bad romance (with a woman named Bad) culminates in her lover delivering a baby. It was not clear to me what the fuck was going on in this story. This is one of those pieces you discuss at book club, with everyone taking a turn describing what they think they read and together, you figure out what happened. Was there really a baby? Was the narrator really going crazy? What really happened in the house? Really? This sort of Writing is not for me and may not be for anyone who likes story and characters. Machado is also doing things in Capital Letters at this point. She seems to be trying too hard. "Especially Heinous (272 Views of Law & Order SVU)" are little joke synopses of fake episodes of the long-running detective show. Apparently, Machado is a big time SVU fan and might have been compelled to write what she knows, but this is one most obnoxious things I've ever read in a book. A blog post or series of Tweets this dopey wouldn't have bothered me because social media and snark go hand in hand. As a fiction reader, though, I hate jokes. After three pages, I gave up and skipped to the next story, hoping that Machado might regain some quality control over the book. Not every pitch is going to be a strike ... "Real Women Have Bodies" is about a college grad working at a Forever 21 type store in a mall. She's seduced by a girl who supplies the retailer with women's garments and in a twist that gets the book back on track, women around the world are becoming non-corporeal, losing their mass. This piece comes closest to having story and characters and I did find myself becoming affected by the romance. The dark fantasy conceit isn't given priority and Machado is still too vague to be completely satisfying, but this was a decent piece. "Eight Bites" is about a woman who has a gastric-bypass type medical procedure and is sort of visited by the entity she shed. This conceit cannot hold the story built on top of it and on that basis, I checked out of it. "The Resident" is about a woman who drives into the mountains to take part in a funded fellowship for writers and artists so she can finish her novel. The residency also happens to be on the same lake she attended Girls Scouts camp at. Of course, the woman will experience strange things. Of course, the reader will wonder if what she's experiencing is real or has some Meaning. Of course, I hated this. "Difficult At Parties" is about a woman who experiencing some bad trauma coming home and trying to adjust. Her relationship with a man is as unclear as what happened to her or what she's experiencing. Her Body and Other Parties may be best recommended for those who enjoy writing, with lots of meaningful themes intentionally woven into them. I can't think of anything worse to spend my time reading. Maybe an alt-right manifesto. Some have described the book as "feminist," but I don't know what that means in terms of fiction. An author either creates a compelling story and characters, or she doesn't. There isn't a single piece in this book I'd want to tell someone about and for that reason, I can't recommend it. Machado errs on the side of obscurity, and errs a lot. ...more |
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Dec 20, 2017
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Dec 28, 2017
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Oct 10, 2017
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Paperback
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| 1608868036
| 9781608868032
| 1608868036
| 4.05
| 18,228
| Apr 05, 2016
| Apr 05, 2016
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it was amazing
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**spoiler alert** My first experience reading a graphic novel has been Lumberjanes by Noelle Stevenson. My reviews of Vol. 1: Beware the Kitten Holy a
**spoiler alert** My first experience reading a graphic novel has been Lumberjanes by Noelle Stevenson. My reviews of Vol. 1: Beware the Kitten Holy and Vol. 2: Friendship to the Max can be found here and here. The four chapters comprising the second volume--in which the Greek gods Artemis and Apollo visit Miss Quinzella Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle Crumpet's Camp for Vol. 3: A Terrible Plan is a return to the character driven comedic fantasy I enjoyed in chapters one through four. Written by Noelle Stevenson & Shannon Watters, chapters nine through twelve peel back the ink on each of the main players, dug a little deeper into the whimsical mythology of the camp and introduced some variety by having eight different illustrators lend their styles to different segments of the book, which anyone who hasn't read Vol. 1 or Vol. 2 should be able to pick up and enjoy as a cohesive whole without reading the previous two volumes. [image] As the story opens, our Lumberjanes--Ripley, Molly, Mal, April and Jo--surround a campfire under the supervision of their cabin leader, Jen. The hardcore lady types take turns earning their If You Got It, Haunt It badges by telling scary stories. To my delight as a reader, each story is illustrated by a different artist and in addition to breaking up the style of the series, I found this to be a wonderful way to explore who each of these characters are. In "Wrong Number," Jen's responsible decision making proves anticlimactic with the scouts. In "Ghost Girl," the arts and sciences inclined Jo goes back in time to tell of a popular girl who vanishes before her family's eyes. In "Bad Candy," Ripley, an idiot savant, tells of a girl who eats some cursed candy and is ensnared by a monster before her pets rescue her; the illustrations of this segment are a window into Ripley's mind I never wanted. [image] In "Lonely Road," Mal subverts expectations with a true horror story of a young couple whose car stalls in a snowstorm and are terrorized by strange noises in the night. In "Tailypo," Molly tells of a hungry woodsman and his dog who come upon a ferocious animal who does not appreciate having its tail chopped off and made into a stew. In "Old Betty," April tells of abandoned house rumored to be haunted by the spirit of its vanished owner. April is very theatrical and I get the impression that she's read Henry James as well. The ghost story device propelled Mal to the top of my list of favorite characters. Her "based on an almost true story" displayed the most sophistication. We later find out she plays in a garage band back home and though the authors are subtle enough not to identify her as "lesbian" or "gay" her character clearly is. Her girlfriend Molly earns her badge with the story of the tailypo. Later in the book, we learn that the athletic Molly doesn't have many friends at home. In spite of her golden looks, she seems to have learned to go within herself a lot. Maybe I'm projecting here. [image] The rest of Lumberjanes, Vol. 3: A Terrible Plan involves a Free Day at the camp in which the scouts are allowed to do whatever they want. Mal and Molly go off together on a picnic date, while April, Jo and Ripley find themselves enormously bored without any monsters to fight. Mal and Molly cross paths with the mysterious Bear Woman and follow her into a magic outhouse, discovering this is a portal to a land of the lost populated by dinosaurs and carnivorous plants. They learn more about each other as they attempt to find a way home. Meanwhile, April, Jo and Ripley compete for Lumberjane badges in activities which brings out the best, and worst, in their natures. One of the pleasures of Lumberjanes is how strong and smart young girls are depicted without the authors patting themselves on the backs or promoting Girl Power. These attributes are just accepted. Without boys around to expose their weaknesses or make them second-guess themselves, the Lumberjanes are permitted to develop their own voices and skills, gain knowledge and experience, and strengthen the bonds of their friendship. The comedy in this book is less joke-based and very rooted in the characters. And I can't say enough about the artwork, with Carolyn Nowak illustrating the chapters, and Britney Williams, Aimee Fleck, Faith Erin Hicks, Rebecca Tobin, Felicia Choo and T. Zysk contributing a ghost story along with Nowak. [image] ...more |
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1
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Jun 29, 2016
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Jun 30, 2016
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Jun 07, 2016
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| 1608867374
| 9781608867370
| 1608867374
| 4.15
| 24,314
| Oct 13, 2015
| Oct 13, 2015
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really liked it
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My first experience reading a graphic novel has been Lumberjanes by Noelle Stevenson & Grace Ellis. My review of Vol. 1: Beware the Kitten Holy can be
My first experience reading a graphic novel has been Lumberjanes by Noelle Stevenson & Grace Ellis. My review of Vol. 1: Beware the Kitten Holy can be found here and while I remain enamored by the wit and whimsy on display in this series--in which five Lumberjane scouts learn naval gauging, anagram solving and monster hunting at summer camp--I don't like having to review four chapters at a time. I've said everything I need to say about this book without going into detail about what "junk" April, Jo, Molly, Mal and Ripley encounter in Vol 2: Friendship To the Max. Capture the Flag, friendship bracelets and Greek deities are involved. So is my favorite character, Jen, the put-upon scout leader of Roanoke cabin stuck supervising five girls who seem to attract river monsters, three-eyed foxes and hipster Yetis. If you're looking for a summer adventure for juveniles told with greater imagination and wholesome restraint than The Goonies--that much loved, obnoxious, mean-spirited '80s kids adventure movie produced by Steven Spielberg that had me rooting for the booby traps--I highly recommend giving this girl-centric series a sample, even if graphic novels aren't your thing. Onward to Vol. 3 ... ...more |
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Jun 27, 2016
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Jun 28, 2016
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Jun 07, 2016
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Paperback
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| 1608866874
| 9781608866878
| 1608866874
| 3.92
| 77,456
| Apr 07, 2015
| Apr 07, 2015
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it was amazing
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I've never read J.K. Rowling's fiction but I now have a clue what readers who live and breathe the wizarding world of Harry Potter are so attracted to
I've never read J.K. Rowling's fiction but I now have a clue what readers who live and breathe the wizarding world of Harry Potter are so attracted to. I found an abundance of wonder and wit in Lumberjanes, a graphic novel series that requires less of a time commitment than the trip to Hogwarts and didn't tip the scale into a children's book for me. I should clarify that the creators of this series are not riffing on Rowling. There are enough authors doing that. This is not another fantasy series about a school for gifted children or magic, but I think Hogwarts lovers will relate to the imagination at play here; it slapped a giddy smile on my face and kept my attention rapt. Published April 2015, Lumberjanes, Vol 1: Beware the Kitten Holy contains four chapters, plus a cover gallery with thirty pages of alternate character designs or illustrations not seen in the book. It was written by Noelle Stevenson & Grace Ellis and illustrated by Brooke Allen. The series creators are Shannon Watters, Grace Ellis & Noelle Stevenson. This was the first graphic novel I've read. Ever. Something in the description from Goodreads reviewers tickled my fancy in a way no other graphic novel, comic or work of fantasy fiction really has--long names and geography and handshakes I have to learn are enough to give me an ice cream headache and keep me away from most epic fantasy. [image] The story plunges the reader into the world of five Lumberjane scouts at Miss Quinzella Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle Crumpet's Camp for The Lumberjanes are surrounded by a pack of three-eyed foxes and when the creatures attack, Mal suggests something called a Little Red formation, which April and the others apparently go off script by administering an all-purpose butt stomp. The foxes stop their assault to wail "Beware the kitten holy," before disappearing. Mal responds with a recurring Lumberjanes curse, "What. The. Junk?!" Sneaking back to their cabin, the girls are caught out of bed by their cabin leader Jenny, a put-upon but respected Lumberjane responsible for the five girls and for laying down the law. "I should've taken that internship with the space program. It would've been less of a headache," she remarks as she escorts the girls to stand before Rosie, the camp director. [image] April explains they violated eight camp policies to track a bearwoman, or as April describes it, "a super weird old lady" who she and Jo spotted outside their cabin before it turned into a bear. Waking the other three girls ("because FRIENDSHIP TO THE MAX, obviously...") they went in search of the bearwoman before being surrounded by some foxes that didn't seem to like cats. Rosie promises the girls they'll see some stuff this summer they won't understand, and issues them all Up All Night badges for their moxie. In pursuit of their Naval Gauging badge, Everything Under the Sum badge and Robyn Hood badge, the Lumberjanes confront a river monster, a talking statute, hipster yetis and the scouts of Mr. Theodore Tarquin Reginald Lancelot Herman Crumpet's Camp for Boys. This novel is a demographics buster. While the Lumberjanes seem 12-15 years old, the appeal of the book is much broader than that. Much in the way that The Pee-Wee Herman Show conjured a world of puppets and cowboys by tapping into the kitsch of '50s television programming for kids, appealing to children on a superficial level while communicating to parents on the sly, Lumberjanes conjures supernatural mystery by mining the world of summer camps and scouting with that same love, plus monsters that the creators of Scooby Doo: Where Are You? never colored far enough outside the lines to produce. Everything the Lumberjanes experience reinforces their bonds of friendship and builds self-esteem. [image] As an added plus, this book is hilarious. I take my reading habits seriously and cannot stand joke-oriented books. But I busted up each time the girls fled pell-mell from some monster, usually moments before one of the characters uttered a curse based on a female cultural pioneer ("What the Joan Jett...") The character work done on Jenny, the aggrieved cabin leader, is hysterical. Stevenson & Ellis don't make Jenny a butt of the jokes but the character's vexations make me believe the writers tapped into experiences babysitting as teenagers. Each chapter begins with a sample taken from the Lumberjanes Field manual, which I noticed is rife with spelling and grammatical errors that would give the girls even more reason to roll their eyes at it: To obtain the Naval Gauging badge a Lumberjane must be able to tie rapidly six different knots. She will find herself well versed in rope work as it can be extremely important in her future adventure, she must know how to splice ropes, use a palm and needle, and fling a rope coil. A Lumberjane must be able to row, pole, scull, and steer a boat; also bring a boat properly alongside and make fast. She must know how to box the compass, read a chart, and show use of parallel rules and dividers. She must be able to state direction by the stars and sun, and be capable of swimming fifty yards with shoes and clothes on. [image] As other reviewers have commented, Stevenson & Ellis forward a progressive oriented vision without making an issue of it. There are no politics or current events in the book. There are no keywords like "same-sex relationship" in the book. Readers might even miss that Molly and Mal are a couple. It's just accepted and no one questions it. I liked how the girls demonstrated curiosity about the natural and unnatural world, running away when terrified but always using their Lumberjane badge skills to navigate the wilderness or solve puzzles. Each girl feels at times that they are not contributing to the group and that the others seem awfully close to each other, which of course is quickly proven untrue when the next weird monster or challenge arises and they are able to help. Summer officially begins on June 20 and Lumberjanes ended up being a terrific way to kick it off. As an adult, I hear about other adults who've forgotten what it was like to be a kid and perhaps in my determination to read Pulitzer Prize winning fiction or Russian classics, I've had to let go a lot of the content I gobbled up as a kid like The Pee-Wee Herman Show. This book helped me get back in touch with my imagination. I've ordered Vol. 2 and Vol. 3 in this series and imagine buying more as long as the creative dynamos behind this volume keep cranking them out. I'm happy to support them with my cash if they do. [image] ...more |
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Jun 06, 2016
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Jun 07, 2016
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May 09, 2016
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Paperback
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| 0618509283
| 3.81
| 63,308
| Oct 05, 2004
| Sep 01, 2004
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really liked it
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My preparedness for the regime change taking place in the United States--with elements of the Electoral College, the Kremlin and the FBI helping to in
My preparedness for the regime change taking place in the United States--with elements of the Electoral College, the Kremlin and the FBI helping to install a failed business promoter who the majority of American voters did not support in the election--ends with The Plot Against America by Philip Roth, an elaborately woven and eerily prognostic alternate history. Published in 2004, the Pulitzer Prize winner supposes that aviator, dinner party anti-Semite and Nazi Party favorite Charles A. Lindbergh wins the Republican Party nomination in 1940. On a platform of "America First" and keeping the U.S.A. out of war, Lindy defies pollsters and denies President Franklin D. Roosevelt a third term. His regime targets a religious minority, in this case, Jews. The audacious story is the first person account of Philip Roth, who in 1940 really was a seven-year-old postage stamp collector growing up in the Jewish enclave of Weequahic in Newark, New Jersey, where the novel is set. The alternate history Philip has a twelve year old brother named Sandy, a prodigious artist. Their father Herman is a thirty-nine year old insurance agent whose fifty-dollar per week salary pays the bills and little more. Their thirty-six-year-old mother Bess is a tiny woman who manages the household. She shares her husband's ardor for the United States, the Constitution, President Roosevelt, the New Deal and the Democratic Party. Philip recounts how Charles Lindbergh was once a hero in his neighborhood, following the aviator's historic flight from Long Island to Paris aboard the Spirit of St. Louis in 1927. Eleven years later, Germany's mounting terror campaign against Jews is underway across Europe and Lindbergh accepts a Service Cross of the German Eagle during a visit to Berlin. A stoic celebrity who reaps public sympathy following the mysterious kidnapping and murder of his son in 1932, Lindy strides into a deadlocked Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in 1940. Philip and Sandy are wakened by the exclamation of their mother, father and older cousin Alvin as they listen by radio. The anger that night was the real roaring forge, the furnace that takes you and twists you like steel. And it didn't subside--not while Lindbergh stood silently at the Philadelphia rostrum and heard himself being cheered once again as the nation's savoir, nor when he gave the speech accepting his party's nomination and with it the mandate to keep America out of the European war. We all waited in terror to hear him repeat to the convention his malicious vilification of the Jews, but that he didn't made no difference to the mood that carried every last family on the block out into the street at nearly five in the morning. Entire families known to me previously only fully dressed in daytime clothing were wearing pajamas and nightdresses under their bathrobes and milling around in their slippers at dawn as if driven from their homes by an earthquake. In the short term, the Roths' spirits are raised by their national heroes. President Roosevelt welcomes a celebrity opponent in Lindbergh with no political experience who is on record for supporting foreign dictators and disparaging Jews. Bombastic muckracker Walter Winchell minces no words in assailing Lindbergh in his weekly radio broadcast. They join luminaries such as New York mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, United Mine Workers president John L. Lewis and journalist Dorothy Thompson pronouncing Lindbergh as unfit for office. Philip's cousin Alvin, however, predicts that America is going fascist. He departs for Canada to join the fight against Hitler. Polls two weeks before the election show FDR comfortably ahead in both the popular vote and the Electoral College. Republican officials reportedly grouse at Lindbergh's insistence to steer his own campaign, piloting the Spirit of St. Louis from state to state and offering nil about his potential administration. His platform is simple: Your choice is Lindbergh or war. His campaign gets an assist from Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf of Newark's B'nai Moshe temple when he vouches for Lindbergh at a rally in Madison Square Garden. The rabbi's message to gentiles that a vote for Lindy is not a vote for antisemitism spurs a landslide victory for the challenger. President Lindbergh meets Adolf Hitler in Iceland to sign an "understanding" of non-aggression, as well as with emissaries of Emperor Hirohito in Hawaii. The deals ignite protests in a dozen U.S. cities, but most of the country rejoices at peace. In an attempt to show Philip and Sandy that America has not gone fascist, the Roths undertake a vacation to Washington D.C. Returning to their hotel, the Roths discover that their reservation has been canceled and they've been evicted. Bess is skittish to the point of tipping over into paranoia. Her husband is unable to keep his antipathy for the new president quiet, drawing remarks of "loudmouth Jew" from two tourists at the Lincoln Memorial. But my father could see nothing. "You think you'd hear that here if Roosevelt was president? People wouldn't dare, they wouldn't dream, in Roosevelt's day ...," my father said. "But now that our great ally is Adolf Hitler, now that the best friend of the president of the United States is Adolf Hitler--why, now they think they can get away with anything. It's disgraceful. It starts with the White House ..." Whom was he talking to other than me? My brother was trailing after Mr. Taylor, asking about the mural, and my mother was trying to prevent herself from saying or doing anything, struggling against the very emotions that had overpowered her earlier in the car--and back then without anything like this much justification. "Read that,"my father said, alluding to the tablet bearing the Gettysburg Address. "Just read it. 'All men are created equal.'" While the president praises Hitler as the world's safeguard against the spread of Communism and Germany pushes the Russians east, the Lindbergh administration hits close to home for the Roths by forming the Office of American Absorption and the Just Folks campaign, a "mentoring" program for select Jewish boys aged twelve to eighteen offering eight weeks with a sponsor family to learn farming. Bess' younger sister Evelyn, secretary and mistress to Rabbi Bengelsdorf, helps Sandy qualify for the program, which his father sees through as a fifth column intended to set Jewish boys against their elders and fracture the community. Alvin loses his left leg below the knee in battle and returns to Newark. Philip assists his cousin with his bandaged stump and tries to keep his brother Sandy's admiration for Lindbergh a secret from his cousin, who feels like a chump for going off to fight Hitler for the benefit of Philip's father. He learns to walk again using a prosthetic and takes a job at a grocer owned by another uncle, but when an FBI agent shows up asking questions about Alvin, his uncle buckles under pressure and fires his nephew, who disappears to work in a numbers-running racket. When Sandy is invited to the White House by his Aunt Evelyn, his mother and father refuse, devastating Philip's brother. Shepsie Tirschwell, a projectionist at the Newsreel Theater, sees what's going on in current events and tells Herman that he's moving his family to Montreal. Bess takes a seasonal job at a department store and opens a savings account in Canada in case they too need to leave in a hurry. Her husband refuses to be driven from his country, offering that it is the fascists who should get out. In May 1942, his employer complies with Homestead 42, an initiative by the OAA to thin ethnic minorities from the cities and resettle them in rural areas, purportedly to homogenize the nation. His decision to quit his job turns out to be prescient, while his refusal to leave for Canada is perilous. Bess is livid. "And just where do they get the gall to do this to people?" my mother asked. "I am dumbfounded, Herman. Our families are here. Our lifelong friends are here. The children's friends are here. We have lived in peace and harmony here all of our lives. We are only a block from the best elementary school in Newark. We are a block from the best high school in New Jersey. Our boys have been raised among Jews. They go to school with other Jewish children. There is no friction with the other children. There is no name-calling. There are no fights. They have never had to feel left out and lonely the way I did as a child. I cannot believe the company is doing this to you. The way you have worked for these people, the hours that you put in, the effort--and this," she said angrily, "is the reward." Like many of Philip Roth's books, The Plot Against America has a clunky title that indicates non-fiction or a symposium, anything but a compelling novel. And before this year, it might not have been. It seems as if half the book is a riff on Roth's boyhood in Newark--his family relations, his odd friendships, his search for his identity. The autobiographical detail grows self-indulgent and my eyes even started to glaze over paragraphs wandering away from President Lindbergh or his destructive impact on the Roths. The author favors marathon sentences and can spend two paragraphs describing nuns, which does not lend itself to a tense dystopian read. The marvel of the novel is how seamlessly it blends historical fact and devastating fantasy, as well as how accurately it predicts a regime change in the United States. Given his era and his military bent, Lindbergh is stoic where our current president is emotionally unstable, but Lindy is as great a celebrity, cruising through his first election campaign (against a heavily favored Democrat) by appealing to the country's best intentions as well as its base hatreds, against politicians, the media and an ethnic minority. The fear Lindbergh's statements and policies strike in Jews is analogous to that felt by immigrants in our country today and laid out for all its repulsive fascism by Roth. If there was a novel that utilizes fantasy elements to address the very real fear and hatred being stoked right now, and why none of us are going to like where "America First" leads, The Plot Against America is it. The autobiographical material that serves as a bedrock did grow long in the tooth, but at the same time, the overall effect grounds the novel in reality in a way that science fiction cannot when tackling authoritarian dystopia. Roth's approach is highly effective, personal and chilling the deeper he takes us into Lindbergh's presidency. He includes a handy postscript that offers a true chronology of the historical figures who play a role in this eerie alternate history. The novel offers a warning, which Mayor LaGuardia voices memorably: "There's a plot afoot all right, and I'll gladly name the forces propelling it--hysteria, ignorance, malice, stupidity, hatred, and fear. What a repugnant spectacle our country has become! Falsehood, cruelty, and madness everywhere, and brute force in the wings waiting to finish us off. Now we read in the Chicago Tribune that all these years clever Jewish bakers have been using the blood of the kidnapped Lindbergh child for making Passover matzohs in Poland--a story as nutty today as when it was first concocted by anti-Semitic maniacs five hundred years ago. How it must please the Führer to be poisoning our country with this sinister nonsense. Jewish interests. Jewish elements. Jewish usurers. Jewish retaliation. Jewish conspiracies. A Jewish war against the world. To have enslaved America with this hocus-pocus! To have captured the mind of the world's greatest nation without uttering a single word of truth! Oh, the pleasure we must be affording the most malevolent man on earth!" ...more |
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1
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Jan 30, 2017
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Feb 02, 2017
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Jun 17, 2014
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Hardcover
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| 0395071224
| 9780395071229
| 0395071224
| 4.29
| 4,122,654
| Sep 21, 1937
| Jan 01, 1938
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it was amazing
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The Hobbit, or There and Back Again may be, along with Charlotte's Web, one of the first stories I was conscious of. Published in 1937, I ate up the a
The Hobbit, or There and Back Again may be, along with Charlotte's Web, one of the first stories I was conscious of. Published in 1937, I ate up the animated television film produced by Rankin/Bass in 1977 when I was four years old. I wore out a record album children's book of the soundtrack and even took it to school for Show and Tell. My father read each of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy but we agreed that the excitement of The Hobbit was superior to the political machinations of the trilogy. Cracking open the literary source for the first time, I was often carried away to other worlds like a child while finding much to be critical of like an adult. Tolkien's tale begins with a map of Wilderland and one of the better opening sentences I've read in a novel: In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Akin to man in all respects save their diminutive four foot height and hairy feet, the hobbit lives in fine homes burrowed in hills or under the ground. They get up for food, drink and festivity among their hobbit neighbors and avoid adventure any way they can, residing in Hobbiton far from marauding goblins or ferocious wolves. Other than their stealth, hobbits possess nothing in the way of magic. They reminded me of Munchkins from Hawaii. Our title character Bilbo Baggins, bachelor, is enjoying life just fine when he's visited by the wandering wizard Gandalf, a family friend who Bilbo has not seen since he was a wee hobbit. Gandalf is intent to send Bilbo on an adventure, the type the hobbit's grandfather Old Took was said to have been partial to. Bilbo refuses this overture until tea-time the next day, when the first of thirteen dwarves pay him a social call: Dwalin, then Balin, the Kili, then Fili. Soon, the hobbit-hole is filled with beer drinking, cake gobbling, pipe smoking and singing, with Dori, Nori, Ori, Oin and Gloin. Then Bifur, Bofur, Bombur and the dwarves' leader Thorin Oakenshield, Gandalf joining in. Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick. He looked out of the window. The stars were just out in a dark sky above the trees. He thought of the jewels of the dwarves shining in deep caverns. Suddenly in the wood beyond The Water, a flame leapt up--probably somebody lighting a wood-fire--and he thought of plundering dragons setting on his quiet Hill and kindling it all to flames. He shuddered; and very quickly he was plain Mr. Baggins of Bag-End, Under-Hill, again. The dwarves are lighting out for Wilderland, over the goblin infested Misty Mountains and through the deadly forests of Mirkwood to Lonely Mountain, where their reward for surviving the trip will be a meeting with a dragon named Smaug who has plundered an Oakenshield family fortune within the mountain fortress, as well as terrorized the inhabitants of the River Running region. Seeking Gandalf's counsel for a burglar to join their party, the hobbit has been recommended, despite showing none of the backbone or knack for adventuring that will be required on the journey. Pushed out the door by Gandalf on a June morning, Bilbo is not seen by his neighbors for a year. Landscape familiar to Bilbo with good roads, comfortable inns and friendly men, elves or dwarves segues into the unfamiliar until the party must camp in the wild. They first encounter death in the clutches of three trolls, who capture Bilbo and the dwarves one at a time and debate too long on how to eat them. Relieved to finally be on the doorstep of Lonely Mountain, Bilbo is notified they've only reached the foothills of the Misty Mountains, where the party is put up in the elvish town of Rivendell by their warrior king Elrond, an ally of Gandalf's who despite a historical distrust of dwarves, interprets the map leading them to Lonely Mountain and the key to getting inside. Making the trek over the Misty Mountains, the expedition is beset by terrible thunderstorms and rock giants hurling boulders down the slopes. They seek shelter in a cave, but bad turns to worse when the refuge turns out to be the front porch of a goblin enclave. All but Gandalf are captured and taken to the Great Goblin, who is overcome with fury when he examines the goblin-killing swords that the dwarves are armed with. The wizard rescues them, but in the melee to escape in the dark tunnels, Bilbo becomes separated. The hobbit ends up in a subterranean lake, where he recovers a mysterious ring and comes to face to face with its owner in what is by far the best chapter in the book: Deep down here in the dark water lived old Gollum. I don't know where he came from, nor who or what he was. He was Gollum--as dark as darkness, except for two big round pale eyes. He had a boat, and he rowed about quite quietly on the lake; for lake it was, wide and deep and deadly cold. He paddled it with large feet dangling over the side, but never a ripple did he make. Not he. He was looking out of his pale lamp-like eyes for blind fish, which he grabbed with his long fingers as quick as thinking. He liked meat too. Goblin he thought good, when he could get it; but he took care they never found him out. He just throttled them from behind, if they ever came down alone anywhere near the edge of the water, while he was prowling about. They very seldom did, for they had a feeling that something unpleasant was lurking down here, down at the very roots of the mountain. Like many timeless children's stories, what struck me about The Hobbit is how thrilling much of it is. Tolkien's writing is crisp, exquisite and fanciful, but it also has a nightmare's edge. The author keeps his foot on the gas, graduating the readers from redneck trolls to angry goblins to one of literature's great villains in Gollum, who plays a central role in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and whose consuming greed ultimately permits Bilbo to escape. Unless you've been living in a mountain, the qualities of the ring Bilbo steals are known to you and in the employ of a burglar, leads to many tense and exciting scenes later in the book. Once the dwarves escape the Misty Mountains, the story's momentum slows. The least compelling chapters of the book cover the dwarves' recuperation with yet another familiar of Gandalf's named Boern, a bear-man. Their descent into Mirkwood is eerie and rather than have Gandalf appear to keep saving the party, Bilbo rises to the occasion, combating giant spiders and engineering an escape from the dungeon of the Elven King's hall. Bilbo's final burglary exam in Lonely Mountain and his face-off with Smaug is a high point, but Tolkien, in one of many goofs, robs the reader of a showdown between the two. From a cartography standpoint, Tolkien maps the journey out supremely well, but forgets to bring along some essentials. I had questions about his story development the longer I thought about it. Other than the fat dwarf Bombur, he dwarves operate as one indistinguishable blob. Their expedition sets out without considering how to dispose of Smaug or truck their treasure back home if they made it that far. There appears not one single female character in the entirely of Middle Earth, bizarrely, not even a wench serving ale at the inn. In the climactic battle, Bilbo disappears, literally. If written for today's market, it's hard to imagine Gollum appearing in only one chapter. The strength of The Hobbit apart from the epic world-building that Tolkien makes look so effortless to put to paper are his motifs: the open road and the life less ordinary. There's something very compelling about a character leaving the safety and comfort of home for an adventure and finding both an external reward as well as something unknown about themselves. As John Steinbeck discovered talking to Americans in Travels with Charley, I think all of us dream to get away, no matter where it is to, and Tolkien's ardor for maps and legends and strange beasts and death defying ordeals fashioned those dreams into a timeless adventure story. Special effects technology finally caught up with the popularity of Middle Earth and in 1996, New Zealand filmmaker Peter Jackson and his partner Fran Walsh pitched a live-action trilogy that would have began with The Hobbit and condensed the Lord of the Rings trilogy into two films. With an assist from the massive wizard mania generated by J.K. Rowling at the time, New Line Cinema ultimately agreed to finance a Lord of the Rings trilogy from Jackson, the massive global success of which in 2001, 2002 and 2003 led to him expanding the slim volume of The Hobbit into a bloated, coolly received trilogy that hit screens in 2012, 2013 and 2014. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Jun 19, 2017
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Jun 24, 2017
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May 15, 2014
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Hardcover
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