Tyler Kieft
Disappearances is simultaneously more impressive and less impressive than I would have expected, for being Howard Frank Mosher's first book. I've read Mosher before, but not since high school, and at the time he was my favorite “Vermont” writer. (Vermont is where I grew up).
It is well-written, I'd say, if you look at each chapter/vignette separately. But once you stack all these vignettes together, they get very tiring. The book sometimes felt like a collection of unrelated stories, entertaining but tedious to read, each adding very little to overall plot or characterization. However, zooming out one more level, the overall arc of the story was magnificent. The last 10 pages alone, which tied together the rest of the story, bumped my rating from a 3 or 3.5 stars to a solid four stars. I just wish there had been slightly fewer tall tales, and slightly more of the meaningful ending material, spread out over a greater length of the story.
The unforgettable thing about this book are all of the wacky characters. They're entertaining, all of them have hilarious, wildly exaggerated misadventures, but they were rarely funny in a way that made me laugh out loud, and sometimes I felt like the unbelievability of the stories kept me from connecting with the characters on a deeper level.
One of the most masterfully presented characters in this story is the villain, Carcajou. Although he appears in only a few scenes, he is a consistent presence throughout the story, the constant worry on the minds of (narrator) Wild Bill and his father. He is literally “unkillable”, returning to terrorize Wild Bill after many wounds that should have been mortal. It took me until the very end of the story to realize that Carcajou was a metaphor. Another reviewer suggested that Carcajou is “conscience”, but I think that he represents the background level of fear/terror/vulnerability that all humans, on some level, share. This fear materializes as one becomes an adult, marking the end of the childhood feeling of immortality. Wild Bill talks a lot about the ‘wonder and terror' of the world; Carcajou, with his scary, animal features is the personification of both. This is all experienced over a three day trip that marks Wild Bill's coming of age and full knowledge of the secrets of his family.
The title, at first mysterious, ends up being the central mystery of the story. Many characters mysteriously disappear, including all of the Bonhomme family, going back to Wild Bill's great great great-grandfather René. Someone smarter than me probably has a better interpretation, but I read this as a very literal reference to both familial pride and the inescapability of family bonds. There was something very haunting and beautiful about the way all the Bonhomme disappearances were described.
Worth mentioning again: I loved the end of this book, for what it made me realize about the whole book. The father-son relationship depicted in these pages is movingly written, the importance of it crystallizing only at the very end. “I could only stand at the window and stare out at Uncle Henry and Rat and the hay with the indefinable oppression of the heart that I would wake with and live with and go to sleep with for the next year”.
This is an extraordinary, haunting story of the ultimately doomed life of Robert Peace, strung together from the recollections of his family, friends, lovers, classmates, and teachers. Born into tough circumstances, he grows up a driven, capable student, athlete and friend, almost solely due to the sheer force of will of his mother. He sets off to Yale with so much hope, yet finally cannot (or will not?) escape the world he came from, maintaining a fluidity with street life that proves to be his demise.
This was a tough book to read, as it exposes in a single life story how difficult it is to overcome entrenched poverty (and, to a lesser extent, racism). Even when so much went right for Rob, it still all went wrong at the end. I'm no expert on it, but the New York Times' review of the book is enlightening: It will force liberals to reconsider their aversion to talking about culture, habits, values and family breakdown as contributors to poverty. Poverty may be “structural,” as liberals like to say, but the structures worked for Peace, and still there was a brokenness to his spirit, “crippling emotional trauma” from the absence of his imprisoned father, and a rage of generations — a rage that cannot be explained by the physics of one life alone. Hobbs is particularly convincing on the idea that no level of achievement or external intervention can compensate for the lack of family.
Of course, Rob himself is not without blame. His choices are mysterious, confounding, more and more frustrating as he gets older and fails to learn from previous mistakes, and it is the interaction of these choices with the realities of his circumstances that make the book so fascinating. Chief among these bad choices are his recurring stints selling drugs as an easy, familiar way to make money. Hobbs spends a lot of time talking about how Rob wanted to be “The Man” - supporting everyone around him emotionally and financially, while at the same time failing to look after himself or accept advice of any form. He also harps on Rob's consistent undercurrent of anger, repressed and undirected, that slips out from time to time.
However, I don't believe this fully explains his failure to “succeed” after college. The expectations of a young person attending an elite university are so high - built up by those one knew in high school, and by the universities themselves - that there is bound to be disappointment on the other end. Very few people have career success right out of college, and the contrast between that and the feeling of being on top of the world as a successful high school senior is crushing (even more so I imagine in Rob's situation). I wonder if Rob was more scared to actually try something (and probably fail at it at least once) than not try at all, and so he spent his time traveling, working low-wage jobs, and dealing drugs.
Unfortunately (in so many ways), we never get to hear from Rob. Hobbs talks a lot about how private, how compartmentalized his life was, and although it seems like he's done the best job possible trying to illuminate all parts of it, I spent most of the book wondering what Rob would have said about his own decisions and path in life.
It's weird and uncomfortable to be a well-off white person reading a book written by a well-off white person about growing up black in the ghetto, a topic which neither of us has any firsthand experience with. There are some pretty hateful reviews on Goodreads ranting about this. I cannot know how much I don't know, but I thought the book was pretty fair, and its creation absolutely felt motivated by the right things. Is he a flawed narrator? Yes. Does he admit as much in the book? Yes. Hobbs actually puts himself into the book for a fair portion, writing first-person about how he saw Rob (before he did all the research for the book). I am a little ashamed to admit it, but it actually helped me relate to the entire work better, realize how little I know and how much was under the surface that if I had met Rob I would have never picked up on, due to no shared cultural context. I want to read more stuff like this, especially from the black perspective (as many reviewers have suggested). It's hard to understand the cycle of poverty without hearing individual stories like this.
Docked a star for some pretty crummy writing at parts. The section on Rob's childhood was incredible, a modern fable, but I felt like the author got sloppy after that. The book should have been cut down and there were some lazy word choices. At the end, it felt like a string of third-person interviews, rather than an intermixed narrative.
I hope Rob Peace and his story remain with me for a long time. There is much to learn from this man's life and the way he lived.
The last two sentences from the NYT are haunting: We are the wondrous country that made him a Yale man. We are the wanting country where even that wasn't enough to spare him.
Just finished watching the series for the second time and after reading this book I want to go watch it again! Pretty decent collection of essays, especially the last four about dualism, location, dreaming, and “Gothic daemon BOB”. There's so much to discuss about this show, look forward to digging deeper the next time I see it
What a load of crap. The first few sections were entertaining, the last two were downright boring and painful to read. By the end I was quasi-skimming, desperate to be finished. Went from a four-star book to a three-star and then almost to a two-star by the end. Even the beginning, while it was interesting, felt like an overly elaborate setup with little payoff.
The writing is bad and the characters are bad (one character is basically a mouthpiece for the author, can do no wrong and his sole role in the story is to show how smart the author is). The book is racist and sexist. And the philosophy espoused was just not that interesting or compelling.
One quote did stop me in my tracks: “Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
Awesome content, but knocking it down a star because of the writing style. At some points the author made very detailed statements that assumed prior context that this reader, at least, did not have. Also, he had a tendency to anthropomorphize our genes, talking about their “wants” and “desires” which I found counter-productive to understanding how they operate.
“The places we have known do not belong solely to the world of space in which we situate them for our greater convenience. They were only a thin slice among contiguous impressions which formed our life at that time; the memory of a certain image is but regret for a certain moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fleeting, alas, as the years.”
This is probably one of those books you should read at least twice; once to get the overall arc, and then again to appreciate every last detail. Incredible writing. I was surprised at how much Proust's words made me recall my own secret memories of childhood, a world that, looking back at it, seemed extra-real, saturated with meaning and color.
I struggled a bit to get through it, especially near the end, but I'm very glad I read it.
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Second reading: read most of this in a week. Very helpful to read it more quickly, to see the parallels between Swann In Love, and “Place Names: the Name” - the narrators budding attachment to (obsession with) Gilberte
Focused on different things this time around - the anguish of love, the desire to possess someone (which can never be realized) and the madness it can inspire
Really want to finish the whole series
We as humans have a short attention span, and an even shorter memory for the past. We tend to view our current state as inevitable, and have trouble remembering that things weren't always the way they are now. In fact, as recently as 200 years ago, people lived markedly different lives supported by different social structures, to say nothing of 1000, 2000, or 10000 years ago. Harari shows us the long arc of the species, from its emergence as hunter gatherers in Africa, winning out over other Homo- species, through the development of shared consciousness “The Cognitive Revolution”, the beginnings of sedentary lifestyle via agriculture, and the past 500 years of scientific, economic and technological progress. He refuses to use conventional tropes to describe Homo Sapiens and its societies, forcing the reader to look at humans' place in the world with fresh eyes. What has our species accomplished in the past 70,000 years? Is the world better off? Are we better off? These are the questions Harari strives to answer. The book is not without its flaws; much of it is uncited and it's sometimes difficult to tell fact from opinion. But I can think of few books I've read in the last five years that have changed my view of the world as much as this one.
This was quite a long slog. Parts were very interesting, other parts were more outdated. I was hoping to get more out of this book than I actually did.
That being said, this is an incredible book given the time at which it was written. Parts are perfectly applicable to our modern world, even after more than 700 years. I had no idea that some of these scholarly disciplines were so advanced in the 1300's.
Great book, I doubt I'll ever look at the world the same way again after reading it. I learned so much about the different regions of the world, poverty, prosperity, economics, politics, and history, and more importantly, a framework for thinking about and evaluating governments and nations.
There are flaws, though. The book is too long, and fairly dry. The authors stick single-mindedly to their hypothesis, rather than giving credence to other factors (is history ever determined by a single facet of life?)
Still, definitely worth reading and I have no doubt that my worldview is very much better informed for it.
Wow. Honestly, I'm not that familiar with the genre, but I loved this book. Tore through it in under a week. Epic storyline, beautifully drawn, moments that made me literally gasp or laugh out loud, it was great start to finish. Maybe I should start reading more comics / graphic novels? They are such a full experience for the senses.
Tough book to review. It's ambitiously scoped, it opened my mind, and presented a lot of interesting ideas. But most of the writing was uninspiring, dare I say boring, the book is poorly paced (everything falls into place in the last 20 pages) and I found the use of the first-person past tense throughout to give a disconnectedness to the narration. Parts of this book were riveting, yes, and there are a couple of chapters where the writing is beautiful, but it mostly drags along slowly.
This is a beautiful book. I've always loved Kundera's writing style - direct, yet beautiful, musical, playful. He's able to get at the deepest core of humanity and philosophy with a light, casual language.
I wanted to give this book five stars. When I was about a quarter of the way in, I thought it was headed there. But I think the middle was a little bit soft - it's the part of the book I remember least. I never really connected with the part of the book that focused on Franz and Sabina, as opposed to the part of the book about Tomas and Tereza. I really fell in love with the character of Tereza - meek, desperate to be loved, constantly blaming herself for everything in her life. She was the most real character in the book to me - the other three feeling slightly more like abstract ideas, concepts meant to drive home a philosophical point.
Kundera is a masterful writer. The structure of the book is innovative and non-linear. The ultimate fate of the characters is divulged somewhere in the middle of the novel, yet I still found myself almost in tears near the end of the story - one of the most powerful, haunting scenes I've ever read.
I'll remember a few things about this book - the constant discussion and interplay of polar opposites (heaviness/lightness, strength/weakness, light/dark, freedom/slavery, body/soul, kitsch/shit, God/atheism), the lengthy, eye-opening section on how different our perceptions can be about the same concepts, and the constant drive to understand the meaning and purpose of love and passion.
I wish I had a book group to discuss this with! Or that I took notes and wrote down questions while reading it. There's a lot of philosophy going on here - a lot to think about. I suspect I'll give this another read someday; I almost want to read parts of it again right now, but there's a bookstore across the street calling my name.
I read “The Joke” by Kundera a few years ago, and now I want to reread it. Another reason for only giving this novel 4 stars is that I remember liking “The Joke” better - it felt more tightly constructed, dug at my emotions more than this did. Or maybe it was just more accessible on the first read.
For how gripping and fast-paced “Devil in the White City” was, this book was a struggle to get through. Such an interesting time in history - the rise of Hitler, Nazism, and the Third Reich - seen through an incredibly boring lens. I applaud Erik Larson for his ambition in writing this book - it is obviously exhaustingly researched, and the perspective is unique - but at the end it kind of fell flat for me.
The main reason for the book's failure is that he tried to base it too much on his protagonists - the American ambassador in Germany in the early 1930's, and his daughter. He did this, presumably, because he had a ton of source material from them - they both kept a journal, and in addition he had the ambassador's personal and government communication. We learn almost nothing about the ambassador's wife or son, since they did not keep detailed records of their time in Germany.
Both the ambassador and his daughter are weak characters. He's just not that interesting - a “quiet scholar” type, ridiculed within the foreign service establishment, and she is quite naive, interested in mostly keeping up romantic liasons in the city. Indeed, much of the book is devoted to detailing these romantic exploits, which gets tedious to read after a while. Yes - she was involved with prominent political and government figures, but these sections of the book read like a childish diary. Also, the combination of writing about both at the same time doesn't make too much sense - at times it felt like I was reading two different novels. (But this is a tactic Larson likes to use, as you would know if you read “Devil in the White City”).
The tedium of reading this book was also due to the overabundance of minor characters mentioned as part of the story. Couldn't Larson have edited some of these people out? Surely it doesn't make sense to mention - every - single - person - the family came in contact with.
There were parts of the book that were very interesting, and it was definitely a perspective on Nazi Germany that I had never encountered, but ultimately the book was crushed by its own weight.
Hovering between two and three stars, and ended up going with two because I can't really endorse this book, and I can't fail to rate it by going middle of the road. I actually enjoyed parts of this book, especially the first couple hundred pages, but the last half of the book dragged on terribly. So much of the Gail Wynand and Ellsworth Toohey portions were far too drawn out, and could have been greatly condensed without sacrificing the point.
If I had read this book in college, maybe I would have really liked it. Which says how dangerous it might be to give this book to college students. Ayn Rand is a child, espousing an infantile philosophy that is incredibly detached from the world we live in. She is at her best when she is praising the “selfish creator.” I thoroughly enjoyed the ‘Roark' sections of the novel, the instigation to be confident in yourself and desires, and invent. But she totally misses the mark with the “selfless altruists”. The enemies she creates are totally unbelievable as characters, preaching a radical philosophy that no truly altruistic human could embrace. And so her philosophy falls apart.
There is no place in Ayn Rand's world for humanity as a diverse range of people who find happiness in diverse ways. She does not allow that some may not have a life's work, may have to make sacrifices to support others, may be doing one of many jobs that makes the world go around but does not involve any creative output whatsoever. She looks at the world in such a basic, childish way.
And if you were hoping that the bad philosophy could be excused by good writing, you would be sorely disappointed. This is less a novel than a barely masked allegorical philosophical treatise. It is very forward. None of the characters seems remotely real - rather they are one-dimensional stand-ins for abstract philosophical concepts.
I'm glad I read it, as it prompted me to really think about my beliefs, the world, and the way I live my life. But although it has good nuggets here and there, and parts of it I enjoyed reading, as a whole it was a bad novel about bad philosophy.
I picked this book up thinking it would be a somewhat ambitious read; possibly I would get lost in the “epistolary” format and a lot of the historical context would be lost on me. In fact, it was the opposite; the book is a rich, loving character study with (I think) universal appeal. One of the points the book makes is that a man is the product of his environment; he is always in struggle with it to determine how much his environment will define him and, vice versa, how much he will define his environment. The formal writing style and historical details in the book deepen our understanding of the environment so that we can better appreciate the place of this man in history.
The book is tightly constructed, with a well-defined schema. I don't wish to give too much away, but I loved how we only hear from Augustus in a single long letter at the very end of the novel. Throughout the rest of the book, he is defined by the words of others. We hear from his friends, his enemies, his lovers, and his children, and they often paint contradictory pictures. But when we finally hear from Augustus himself, in his own words, we feel that we know him deeply, that all these depictions have already come together to paint a remarkably accurate portrait of the man. I think this is one of the book's greatest triumphs.
There was an interesting meta-theme running through this book about how difficult it is to capture someone's life in words. This is, after all, a work of fiction, and much of it is imagined based on what little surviving historical evidence we have. And how can you really know a man through these documents? Augustus meditates on this in the final pages of the book.
To be honest, I do wish I had known a little bit more about Roman history and the life of Caesar Augustus according to scholars, as I think it would have enhanced my enjoyment, but I never felt like I was hindered by it.
This was an engrossing read, chock full of information about the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth and its historical context. I learned a ton from this book; I actually wish it had been longer and gone into more detail, which is a credit to Aslan's engaging writing style. There were definitely topics in the book that I wanted to know more about; I suppose I'll have to keep reading books about early church history to satiate that
Almost gave this five stars, but for one major shortcoming: the lack of inline discussion of alternative theories or points of view. Aslan wrote a compelling, literary narrative, about Jesus' life, which was quite easy to read. But for a topic which is based so much on speculation, assumption, and interpretation, I would have preferred to see more discussion about competing theories in the narrative, rather than in the footnotes. My issue was not that he didn't cite sources - he does, both historical and biblical - but that he presented the story as “this is the way it was” when there are major points that historians and scholars disagree on.
I was surprised that there were major differences between this book and Bart Ehrman's “How Jesus became God”. Ehrman's book was much more theology and far less historical information - I feel like I learned much more from Aslan. I was surprised that Ehrman never mentioned the major differences of opinion in the early church, between Paul, preaching to the Jewish Diaspora, and Peter, James, and John, leading Jesus' disciples in Jerusalem. Paul's doctrine of Christianity eventually won out after Jerusalem was wiped out by Titus in 70 C.E., but, as far as I remember, Ehrman does not discuss this at all. Ehrman's thesis is that it took ~3 centuries before the majority of Christians thought of Jesus as a pre-existent god, but Paul was preaching that Jesus was God starting just two decades after his death, in the middle of the 1st century. Maybe Ehrman just wanted to devote more space to all the competing theories? Or just pad his book? It was difficult to reconcile these two books. I guess this just underscores how much this entire field is based on limited evidence.
I also really appreciate how Aslan didn't attempt to explain away the resurrection as Ehrman did with his lame “visions of the recently departed” theory. He left it at “a lot of people believed very strongly that Jesus rose from the dead, and that's very interesting”.
These are the topics in the book that were most interesting to me: - The depiction of Galilee and Jerusalem around the turn of the millennium (the historical context which Jesus was born into) - Aslan's theory about the early life of Jesus - that he would have been engaged in rebuilding Sepphoris, a nearby city - Alternate interpretations for many commonly cited gospel verses based on the historical Jesus, including the Beatitudes and the parable of the Good Samaritan - A discussion of what Jesus meant by the terms “Kingdom of God” and “Son of Man”, (i.e. Who did Jesus think that he was?) - The battle between Paul and James/Peter/John for what would be preached about Christ after his death
Great book, although a bit long-winded. I love the way that Hardy writes, descriptive without ever losing my interest. I finally now realize why “Tess” is referred to so often in my favorite book, “A Prayer for Owen Meany”. Also was surprised at how many biblical and theological references there were in the book - and how many that I understood given that I've read 75% of the Bible over the past year
I loved “A Little History of the World” (by a different author) but this book didn't measure up. I think that Philosophy doesn't necessarily lend itself well to being presented in a “history” format: forty important philosophers and their views, one per chapter. This book would have been more interesting and better structured if it had been organized around ideas, rather than people. Trying to cover so much, so piecemeal, in such a small volume, led to me feeling like the book glossed over the truly important ideas and never went deep enough to get me actually pondering. That being said, I did learn a lot and come away wanting to dive in a little bit deeper, so it wasn't a total waste. One other random thing I didn't like about the book is the author's subtle bias against religion - when a huge portion of the book was devoted to thinking about religion and Christianity, it was off-putting not to have the material presented in an unbiased way.
Contains spoilers
Argh, this book.
I'll start with the good parts. I actually enjoyed reading this book - it was by no means a chore to get through. The writing is great, the pacing is good, the action is interesting, and I definitely wanted to find out “what happened next”. And however shameful I feel for saying this, I actually identified somewhat with the main character, Quentin. I'd like to think I'm not as much of an asshole as he is, but I definitely understood his mid-20's millenial malaise. Growing up, we were told that life was like a Disney movie, but all we were given was the real world. Quentin spends the whole book wondering if he's somehow missed it - the secret key to having a happy life, like he was promised in the fantasy books he's read as a child. He doesn't realize how great his life already is, choosing to focus on the bad parts, choosing to be miserable instead of happy. Actually, I don't think I'm anything like Quentin, but I definitely understand where he's coming from.
The problem with this book is that it's such a poor, satiric, hack of a ripoff of the fantasy novels that most of us read and loved as kids - Narnia and Harry Potter. Grossman comes off as an outsider, making fun of things that other people truly enjoy, thinking he's cool in the process. Maybe he finds these types of literature too saccharine, or maybe he just has a cold, cold heart.
Either way, the premise and plot of this novel are barely held together by the writing. The structure is bad - the first half of the book is purely setup for the second half. The first two hundred pages, I kept waiting for any sort of large-scale conflict to unfold, but it didn't. This is the Harry Potter part of the book - Quentin and his friends go to magic school. Lots of stuff happens to them, they learn some magic, but in no way does this experience feel like it's part of any larger plot line. Many scenes felt forced and contrived. Quentin and his friends skip a year of school. Why? It's never really explained. Characters meet up in the unlikeliest of places.
Then, there's the Narnia part of the book. It could very well be a separate story, just with the same characters. The book takes an even darker turn at this point - almost like a bad horror movie. The children go to Fillory (a.k.a. Narnia), expecting some grand quest which will lead them to be kings and queens (a la Narnia), but instead end up in the midst of a civil war (the origins of which are never properly explained). Cue ridiculous battle scenes and lots of blood and guts.
The end patches some of the details up, others not really. While in recovery, Quentin decides to take up his magical studies again, becomes a much better wizard then he ever was, then promptly gives it all up for a non-magical desk job in Manhattan. But as soon as his friends come back and invite him back to Fillory, he's in. WTF?
I got a single message out of the whole novel - one of pessimism and disillusionment with the real, “adult” world. That nothing is what it seems, there's nothing purely good in the world, and it's not even worth trying to be happy. What a dark way to look at the world. It's not as if I read books only for uplifting stories, but this one had far too much adolescent ennui behind it for me to really enjoy.
This is a hard book to write about. As I was reading it, I felt genuine empathy for the people whose stories were told in its pages, the people who were left behind as industries changed and wealth was concentrated in the hands of the few, as institutions which were once the pillars of American society were hollowed out and our politics became little more than shouting at each other. But I also felt guilt creeping in - knowing that I would read these stories, then return to the liberal, well-educated, well-paid bubble of Silicon Valley, without taking any action other than “informing my world view”.
If you've read the newspapers or magazines in the past six years, trying to figure out what the hell happened since the 50's that brought us to where we are now - there's nothing new here. The difference is in the delivery - Packer shows us these changes, rather than distilling them down into a New York Times editorial. We see the effect the loss of industrialization has on a black family in Youngstown, Ohio, read story after story of the families in Tampa that were utterly devastated when the real estate market crashed, watch a political operative grow more and more disillusioned during his career in national politics. These stories are interwoven with short biographical sketches to present a rich, nuanced picture of all the contrasting forces in society that combined to bring us here.
This is a story about a few of the people that lived in America over the past four decades. It is about the radicalization and hollowness of our politics. It is about the dismantling of financial regulations. It is about huge national corporations sucking money out of small communities. It is about the lack of well-paying jobs for the middle class as wages have stagnated and the country has stopped making “things”. It is about bubbles - real estate, stocks, bonds - and how they affect those caught on the wrong side of them. It is about the growing influence of money on politics. It is about the loss of reasonable discourse in society, and the growth of fringe segments, helped by the Internet. It is a book about the transformation of our economy - the loss of industry and farming, and the growth of technology. It is about energy - the good days when it was cheap, and the struggles now that it's not. It is about the enormous, widening gulf between elites and everyone else.
At 27, I don't really feel like I've lived long enough to put “right now” in perspective. Are things really broken, or do they just seem that way? In 20 years, what will we think of the state of our society as it was in 2014?
This was a really fascinating, entertaining (again, tinges of guilt), and thought-provoking read. I hope it will inform how I think about money, the economy, and politics in the future.