Erica Simmons

I loved this book. A gold-rush-era New Zealand epic, but with a voice that reminded me of George Eliot.

Tudors!!!

This book - a (somewhat trashy) history of the American mafia's dealings in Cuba in the 1950's - explores an interesting topic, with some fascinating anecdotes. For someone who knows very little about the history of 20th century Cuba, this book was an entertaining and illuminating description of the effects of American imperialism, a corrupt dictatorship, and “creative” business, and the ways that the culture of corruption and criminality gave Castro's revolutionaries momentum. This is not the most scholarly history book I've ever read, but it was fun.

Brilliant in small doses.

A classic, well written critique of the way we teach history in American public schools and its social and political consequences. For me the biggest revelation of this book was realizing that most Americans do not study history past high school. (I know, that's an incredibly naive, elitist thing to be surprised by, but I hadn't really thought it through before.) I've always known that grade school history textbooks were problematic, but of course students are taught more than just that, right? Unfortunately, for many students, the answer is no. And that is scary.

My summary thus far, in two sentences: Agamemnon and Achilles squabble over concubines; Achilles loses, sulks. Achaeans and Trojans begin battle, fueled by Gods; many great sons of great men described, then slaughtered.

Update: Spiraling cycles of revenge. Many men become heroes, then die gruesomely.

A fun book to read, especially during a time when I was flying a lot (cliched, I know). But this is definitely a case where I preferred the movie.

Chandler's first novel, this book is nowhere near as wonderful as The Long Goodbye. But it is a fun book with some wry moments and bitter lines.

So far, I'm not terribly impressed. Interesting information, but poorly edited. Many short blurbs with little provided context, criticism, or discussion of why they are included.

Did I mention I'm going to Indonesia, though?!?

Not Waugh's best. Certainly no Handful of Dust. Often racist. But still an insightful satire of colonialism, war journalism, and the intersection of the two.

I admit, at times I found this book a bit boring. But it's also an insightful book about the social history and significance of walking. After finishing this book, I kept thinking of it on my travels. It gave me a new framework to consider the social spaces I explored (as well as where I live), and that makes it a valuable book.

I feel bad. This is one of the first books I haven't finished in a while. I found it interesting, but not interesting enough to keep me for 800 pages. The gender politics of the book are... interesting. And a lot of it was x-rated enough that I felt awkward reading it in public, which was a bit stressful. Not that anyone else would know what I was reading, but I still felt somewhat indecent reading some of the more explicit material on the bus.

Question: how can this book have an average rating of 5.18? Isn't the scale from 1 to 5?

Eh. I kept almost giving up on this book, but it was fun and occasionally witty.

An interesting book in its bleakness, but I have to admit I found it a bit boring.

The artwork in this book is amazing. Tezuka's panels blow me away. It's worth reading for that. The writing is less awesome, and the dramatic tension did not hold me for the entire 830 pages. Also, it's pretty racist, and lots of bad things happen to women in a disturbingly non-chalant, that's-just-life-let's-move-on-now sort of way. Certainly a fascinating portrait of Japanese society in the early '70s.

Note: I didn't read this translation, I read “Within a Budding Grove.” Which, accuracy aside (I don't speak French so I don't know), is a much better title. Much less awkward and (perhaps) overly literal...

Evelyn Waugh remains one of my favorite authors. His stories are so funny, so bitter, and so sad.

Informative and usually entertaining, but nowhere near as good as Assassination Vacation or The Partly Cloudy Patriot.

So beautiful, so bizarre.

This book is both historically important and engaging. The beginning, especially, was well-written and so sad. The book depicts a society of pervasive corruption and greed which decimates the Rudkus family. It's hard not to be thoroughly cynical by the end, so that even the Socialist ray of hope of the last two chapters (the only hope Sinclair won't dash in the pages of the novel) seems very dim. My interest in the book flagged half-way through; the continuous failures, disappointments, and gruesome, meaningless deaths, although perhaps realistic, get a bit repetitive.

Some of the writing in these comics is terrible, schlocky, and instructive in the kind of racism and sexism that could fly in mainstream publications read by children throughout America in the 1960's. But some of the artwork is fantastic - well composed, abstracted, and wondrous.

As an historic, genre-defining novel, The Castle of Otranto gets one star. It is ridiculous, sometimes (unintentionally) hilarious, and usually tedious.

The novel is probably 90% dialogue, which not broken into separate paragraphs, but grouped in multi-page conversations in a single paragraph, with no quotation marks. This makes it hard to follow or stay engaged with. (It's amazing how much I take for granted the modern conventions of fictionalized dialogue!) Also, much of it is written in faux-archaisms. (This novel is an early example of 18th- and 19th-century Europeans' nostalgia for the middle ages.)

The opening scene of this novel is wonderful for its absurdity: on his way to his own wedding, the sickly son of a false prince is crushed by a giant helmet falling from the sky - one star for that image alone!

And one star for the final sentence: “...and it was not till after frequent discourses with Isabella, of his dear Matilda, that he was persuaded he could know no happiness but in the society of one with whom he could forever indulge the melancholy that had taken possession of his soul.”

Let's wallow together.

Best academic chapter title of 1989: “Apes in Eden, Apes in Space.”

In this novel, James' sentences are cruel, funny, and full of despair. I loved it.