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by Dan Brown
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Content: 5/5 and 2/5
Poetic Mastery: 2/5
Literary Truth: 1/5
by William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
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Content: 5/5
Poetic Mastery: 5/5
Literary Truth: 4/5
Quince, Bottom, Snout, and Snug?
— Read the boobies in Act 1, Scene 2 | Act 3, Scene 1 | Act 5 —
I love Shakespeare’s morons!
by Sophocles * * *
Content: 4/5
Poetic Mastery: 3/5
Literary Truth: 3/5
It’s good to have read an unexceptional book. Previous reviews’ nearly perpetual enthusiasm was getting on my own nerves.
Oedipus the King (often titled Oedipus Rex) is the first of a trilogy of plays by Sophocles (c. 497–406 BC) centered around the man and household of the unfortunate Thebian king, Oedipus (ĕd’ə-pəs, ē’də-). In this work, the king’s journey toward realizing that he has already committed the foul deeds he is avoiding so vigorously — killing his father and wedding his mother — is prehaps the difinitive example of dramatic irony.
As for the style, craft, and fashioning of this telling, I recall to mind Manny the praying mantis from Disney’s A Bug’s Life.
Oedipus: O agony!
Where am I? Is this my voice
That is borne on the air?
What fate has come to me?
All the grandiose words that aren’t quite soliloquys since the words are supposed to be in actual conversations produce a rather unnatural (and sometimes silly) effect for me. I imagined fellow characters staring blankly after many of these speeches ended. The Bible is something of a perfect antithesis among ancient writings (except the Psalms). Its narratives use un-commented action with almost no interior dialogue. A pretty good book on emotive and other subtexts in these ancient Hebrew narratives is Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative by Adele Berlin. Perhaps the old Greek style will grow on me when it is less new.
Oedipus the King is a short read often alluded to in Western art. Perhaps that suffices to merit a recommendation. But read Black Like Me!
by Khaled Hosseini
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Content 3/5
Poetic Mastery 3/5
Literary Truth 3/5
A guest at our house recommended this book to me. She said that once she started reading it, she couldn’t put it down. So it was for me; my other book, The Histories of Herodotus, was cracked only once–for 5 minutes–until Hosseini’s first book was completed.
Besides being engaging, The Kite Runner is by virtue of some mysterious quality a “fast read.” I wonder what aspect of writing style makes a book a fast read: perhaps common words, consistant sentence structures, and/or spontenaity make the difference. Hmmm… in any case I never thought I was reading Hawthorne.
I’m glad that I read this book. Besides the typical enjoyment a good book provides, The Kite Runner, importantly, opened to me the first small window into real Afghani vida diaria. I would trade this boon for only a very high price! This literary truth about their society is a lot more meaningful than a scientific discussion of Afghani sociology; you’re there in a book, not observing.
The sense of personal/familial honor that permeates the Afghani (Arab as a whole?) social mentality is similar, it seems to me, to that of Western society’s earliest days, as told in The Histories, or even in common knowledge of classical Europe, what with all the duels. We’ve changed a lot in the West, in our sense of justice in society. Sometimes I wish I could duel 🙂 Herodotus’ social/political investigations from Greece to Caucasia to Africa to Persia report similar impulses from diverse culture to diverse culture. Perhaps Jesus’ “turn the other cheek” played a subtle force in the West’s abdigation of vengeance to society?
written by Georges Duplaix, illustrated by Gustaf Tenggren
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Content 4/5
Poetic Mastery 4/5
Literary Truth 4/5
The first page has the yawning man big brown bear waking up. “Once there was a big brown bear who lived with his wife inside a cave.” The cave is remarkably pretty and fresh, with green grass and a small blue sky at the end.
Then,
There is so much depth in this book. Notice how the author puts no words on the last page, and it’s not at a page turn, underlining the subtext of the obvious inevitability of the man bear’s actions.
Men are machines, no?
I am having such a hard time not stealing this book from our fledgling library. Perhaps my wife will get it for me for a birthday. [wink wink]
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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I would like to talk about this work sometime when I feel capable of it. For now, I’ll repeat what I said in a cathartic, fuzzy ecstasy when my wife finished the last words.
“Shit. That’s probably one of the best books I’ve read in my life.”
I don’t swear, really. I felt like I was vomiting something sweet like bread.
If you don’t read this book before you die, I will think you missed out on something integral to modern existence.
by William Shakespeare
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Content: 3/5
Poetic Mastery: 4/5
Literary Truth: 3/5
Julius Caesar (fun fact: Romans would pronounce it YOO-lee-us KI-sur) is the tale of the persuasion of Brutus to conspire against the emperor and the struggle over the rule of Rome after the leader’s death.
Brutus’ character, like most in the play, is created from Roman historical sketches. As in these early documents, Brutus is loved and respected by both friend and enemy. Marc Anthony (ANN-tuhn-ee) for his part, praises Brutus for wanting to kill Caesar for noble reasons.
This is strange enough. What’s stranger is that Brutus never really impressed me because he seemed to me to have made tactical blunders. First is the famous debate over whether he was wrong or right to spare Marc Anthony from the fate of Caesar. Brutus then ignored his comrades’ advise against allowing Marc Anthony to speak at Caesar’s funeral. Worst of all, Brutus didn’t even stick around for the speech, meaning that after Marc Anthony’s hilariously sarcastic speech won over the hilariously idiotic plebeians (ahh, the stupid excitable masses!), no one was there to prevent the landslide of public opinion from falling upon the conspirators. Lastly, Brutus may have made a mistake in pressing the battle toward his foes’ position, again against the advise of his comrades; Marc Anthony certainly thought it was a mistake. Brutus’ bullheaded mistakes show him as a noble but fallible man whose reaction against the prospect of servitude to another is certainly plausible!
by Edith Wharton
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I love this story so much that I feel like I can’t talk about it.
by Bill Watterson
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Content (5/5)
Poetic Mastery (4/5)
Literary Truth (4/5)
Well, it’s Calvin and Hobbes. I can’t think of a cartoon strip I like better — not even the Far Side. C&H has many levels without straying from its ultimate purpose: light fun.
The title of this collection comes from an series of adventures in which Calvin experiments with cloning himself. Calvin shruggs off Hobbes’ concerns about cloning and pushes the clone button on the machine (a cardboard box). The button goes ‘boink!’ and with so little trite fanfare, Calvin ushers in a new world.
by Henry W. Longfellow
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Content 4/5
Poetic mastery 4/5
Literary truth 5/5
My estimation of this book is hopelessly prejudiced by the fact that I am in it. For me, the work was nearly devotional, as I struggled to learn the lessons from Mr. Kavanagh that another could not.
This work’s narrative content follows the struggles, loves, and destinies of a smattering of individuals and couples in a small Massachussetts town called Fairmeadow. The text jumps back and forth between these characters’ narrative strains as their paths converge, cross, or depart in the unavoidable, even fatalistic, yet not wholely tiresome way that is inevitable in small town life.
Longfellow tells their stories didactically and bluntly, but gently; we love the characters and breathe with them even as their unique idiosynchrasies — their humanity — become evident. We really care about them. By creating a story whose destiny of action communicates his message, Longfellow is freed to treat his characters tenderly.
Being a great poet, Longfellow penned a few lines here and there which capture the message of the entire work. I wonder whether Longfellow could have made this work a poem and not lost much from the tale. (The opening paragraphs illustrate this well.)
Again in this work, Longfellow elaborately but swiftly recreates just those details which are the spearpoint of any given powerful postoral scene, so that his words — true poet he is — have an economy that adds much more currency to every moment of reading. Thus his text’s scenic descriptions are appropriate, fresh, meanigful, vivid illustrations of the natural world that are true to the level that the reader remembers as well as imagines what he reads.
On another personal note, the intellectual enjoyment and stimulation in the relationship between Kavanagh and Churchill pleasantly reminded me of the discussions we have in person and on this blog.
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