Category: Reviews
The Little Prince
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, trans. by Richard Howard, 5/5
This beautiful story offers a gentle, insightful commentary on life and love. Gilded with good humor and charm, I think that this is a rare case of a very popular book actually living up to its reputation.
Film After Film
Film After Film: Or, What Became of 21st Century Cinema? by J. Hoberman, 1/5
Oh, a book about movies written by a film critic! I thought. I watch films critically and write. And I read books. How perfect. So I grabbed it off the new-arrivals shelf at the library. It almost felt like my professional duty to read this book, since it is on a topic about which I often inflict my own thoughts on others and nothing encourages infliction-worthy thoughts more than continuing education.
After a couple chapters, my main impression was What does the word “indexicality” mean and why is the author using it on nearly every other page? Without internet at the time, my only recourse was to point this impression out loudly and often over the course of several pages, while receiving no sympathy from my nearby siblings. Once reunited with the internet, I discovered that “indexicality” means a sizeable Wikipedia page worth of very large words, but paradoxically, seems to mean less the more you read about it. Which, conveniently, is also one of the main problems with this book.
I only made it to page 60. It is one thing to wade through difficult text in order to understand complex concepts but quite a less pleasant thing to gradually start to suspect that the concepts are mostly bollocks and your time has been wasted. I believe that Hoberman’s ideal audience is not rewarded by the comprehension of any great ideas, but merely by the appealing frame their thick, hipster glasses make around the words on the page and the sweet sweet joy of recognizing in print the names of all those dreadful indie films they pretended to “get.”
Perhaps it seems that I am just bitter and Film After Film is too advanced for me to understand. That could be true. But if being smarter means using the phrase “neo-retro primitivism” without irony (23) and considering WALL-E to be “the twenty-first century’s quintessential motion picture to date” (40), then so be it.
~~
That was a natural ending for this review, but I just can’t send this book back to the library without quoting Hoberman’s [unintentionally] hilarious explanation of the deep meaning behind the zombie film genre. He claims that “Perhaps the problematic distinction between dead and undead allegorizes, among other things, the ambiguous relation between analog and digital image-making” (31). HAHA! That is… that is just… I have no words…
Tuck Everlasting
Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt, 5/5
This outstanding children’s novel was an object lesson for me in not judging a book by its cover. Not just the cover, actually, but by a whole web of preconceptions and unreasonably unpleasant connotations. For example, I’d only heard of the associated movie, so I immediately thought of the book as a lame spin-off, which idea the cheesy movie-poster-style book cover rather supported. Also, I thought the movie had something to do with Shakespeare (“Tuck” reminded me of “Puck,” ok?), which made me think of Shakespeare in Love which I disliked quite a bit, though I can’t remember exactly why. The book cover reminded me of The Notebook, which I haven’t actually seen, but hate violently for some reason. Soooo, the only thing going for this book at the start was Mom’s somewhat self-conscious recommendation (I have been known to shred without mercy, on occasion, so I’m glad she was brave enough to suggest I read this book at all).
All of that to explain just how amazing Tuck Everlasting had to be in order to overcome my considerable bias. It is unique, deep, touching, clever and well-written from the first sentence to the last. Despite its shortness, there is a mythic quality to the story and its archetypal characters. In fact, it was so good that I hold out little hope for the movie, which will probably be awful compared to the book. Definitely awful. Possibly even horrid.
What Casinos Don’t Want You to Know
What Casinos Don’t Want You to Know by John Gollehon, 2/5
This book is pretty much exactly what you’d expect from anything with a “CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION INSIDE!” banner on both covers.
The Abolition of Man
The Abolition of Man or Reflections on education with special reference to the teaching of English in the upper forms of schools by C.S. Lewis, 5/5
I mistakenly thought I’d already read everything by C.S. Lewis, so I was both surprised and delighted when Samuel came home for Thanksgiving break with a book by Lewis that I’d never even heard of before. Luckily, it is very short (a series of three college lectures) and I was able to finish reading it before the break ended.
The first chapter is somewhat snarky and rambling, but The Abolition of Man soon settles down to a fascinating analysis of the relationship between science and Tao, the innate, traditional values that give human existence its meaning and humanness. The shortness of the book meant that it was less in-depth (though also, more difficult) than I would have wished. In fact, the very conciseness of some of the points makes it easy to miss their importance and paradigm-changing nature. For example:
“…But you cannot go on ‘explaining away’ for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on ‘seeing through’ things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to ‘see through’ first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To ‘see through’ all things is the same as not to see (81).”
Wind, Sand and Stars
Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, trans. by Lewis Galantiére, 4/5
The stories in this book, based on Saint-Exupéry’s experiences as an airmail pilot and member of the French Air Force, are beautifully told – the product of a poetic soul. His bravery, adventures, eloquent love of the desert and romantic point of view remind me of a sort of French version of T.E. Lawrence. While the book is very enjoyable and quotable (occasionally even enlightening), Saint-Exupéry’s patronizing post-modernism results in a lack of intellectual/philosophical depth that makes itself increasingly felt as the book unfolds.
Marathon
Marathon: You Can Do It! by Jeff Galloway, 3/5
This guide, which applies Galloway’s signature run/walk method to marathon training, is clearly the product of much expertise and experience on the part of the author, addressing a wide variety of helpful topics. While it wasn’t entirely convincing (I still really hate the idea of interrupting my runs with walk breaks), the concepts made sense and if I ever become injured or dissatisfied with my training progress, Galloway’s method is likely one of the first I would consider adopting.
Unfortunately, some serious flaws as a book affect the quality and utility of Marathon: You Can Do It! The first half contains multiple appearances of several identical or nearly identical sentences and paragraphs, making the text bloated and frustrating to read. Also, there is a notable lack of helpful diagrams and photos to illustrate key concepts (though the few charts that appear are good). This is a book that deserves to be updated and proofread by an editor who has eyes.
Amphigorey
Amphigorey, Amphigorey Also, and Amphigorey Again by Edward Gorey (try saying that three times fast), 5/5
With a grim gaiety and chilling charm, every dark line in these three anthologies oozes originality and style. Gorey’s authenticity and consistency lend a strange sense of the inevitable to his oeuvre; at our first encounter, I thought, of course, this had to exist. Several of the stories are a little too disturbing for my taste, but I love the overall aesthetic and vocabulary. Any author who can make me run crying to a dictionary, two pages in a row (not to mention introducing me to what is perhaps the greatest sounds-like-a-swear-but-isn’t word of all time: subfuscous), is all right in my blog.
If on a winter’s night a traveler
If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino, trans. by William Weaver, 4/5
It is with great mental pain that I write this review before consulting Wikipedia and Amazon ratings to find out what the heck this book is about. It would be easy enough to make up some intellectual-sounding drivel (too easy, in fact – If on a winter’s night begs for multiple interpretations) but I’d rather skip the college book report B.S. and nail down what will actually stick with me after this reading experience.
One of the most memorable aspects of this book is its mind-twistingly self-referential tone; Chapter One opens with “You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel.” Of course, by the time I had read that, I was in the process of reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, not about to begin, which was just a taste of the surreal, logic-challenging, expectation-defying prose to come.
“The novel begins in a railway station, a locomotive huffs, steam from a piston covers the opening of the chapter, a cloud of smoke hides part of the first paragraph. In the odor of the station there is a passing whiff of station café odor. There is someone looking through the befogged glass, he opens the glass door of the bar, everything is misty, inside, too, as if seen by nearsighted eyes, or eyes irritated by coal dust. The pages of the book are clouded like the windows of an old train, the cloud of smoke rests on the sentences (10).”
Easy, you think, this is obviously a novel about novels. Yes, but no. It is also a novel about inspiration and the experience of reading. Or maybe, its incorporation of ten different, abortive sub-stories makes If on a winter’s night more of an un-novel about the relationships between reader and book, reader and writer, reader and reader, writer and book. Whether these are “correct” interpretations or not, this book resonated deeply with me, though perhaps more in the re-thinking of it than in the reading. In contrast to novels, which follow strict rules (whether acknowledged or not), life is a labyrinth of disjointed narratives, started without beginning and ending without resolution, a tantalizing journey at the end of which we will “arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.” At least, I hope that’s the case. It is more likely that the end will find me rubbing my eyes hazily and reaching for the Wikipedia article.
Books: A Memoir
Books: A Memoir by Larry McMurtry, 1/5
Disjointed. Random. And kinda boring (much like this review).
OmniRambles 