Oct 19, 2023The Gunslinger
By Stephen KingStephen King's voice is smooth, straightforward, easily digested. Technically, aesthetically, he is quite good at that voice - but I don't think when it comes down to it, that I care very much for it. It is maybe without flaws, but that makes it without character? Or perhaps it is simply unambitious to the point that it becomes uninteresting. The plot of The Gunslinger, on the other hand, is quite ambitious, aiming for the unusual, unpredictable, and potentially offputting. Snippets of Lore are dropped here and there, slowly filling in the backdrop of the strange Arthurian-Western post-apocalyptic dystopia. I think at periods in my life I would be enraptured by that, but at the moment I feel like it is little more than a random collage, a patchwork of tropes and times thrown together based on authorial whim - surely a story, a cohesive world can be woven of a random collage, but again, it becomes a bit uninteresting.
Oct 17, 2023The Wretched Of The Earth
By Frantz FanonBrilliant! Thought-provoking and insightful into the forces and structures of decolonialization, and a bit challenging. The prefaces by Sartre and particularly Homi K Bhabha (sesquipedalian though it is) do an excellent job of contextualizing the rest. It is a bit fascinating that Sartre's preface, embracing (reveling in? maybe an ungenerous read of Sartre but it does feel like there is a bit of that) the necessity of violent revolution, criticized by Arendt for encouraging violence that dehumanizes, was removed at the bequest of Fanon's widow from certain editions following Sartre's support of Israel in the Six Day War.
Oct 15, 2023Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow
By Gabrielle ZevinI mean rating things on a numeric scale from 1 to 5 is of course silly and non-objective. I think, in many way's, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is in fact a great book! Well-rounded characters in an engaging narrative focused on the notion of a life-long friendship, a relationship dynamic that is underemphasized and too-often overlooked in novels. I had to apportion my readings carefully, because it was obvious that this was the sort of book that would cause me to stay up too late to finish - and in the end I finished it in 3 sittings, separated by 2 weeks each. I am more likely to recommend this book than many other books that I have rated higher, and probably technically it is in fact better than many of those books!
Oct 6, 2023The Three Muskateers
By Alexandre DumasI can't really decide whether Dumas is great without being good, or instead good without being great - I suppose it depends on the point of view. He is unquestionably amazing, astonishing, a grandfather of Adventure as a genre. Sure I guess there was Don Quixote and the Knights of the Round Table and Odysseus and Enkidu and it really does go back aways. I'm not really sure what Dumas has that the others lacked, and I'm not super eager to downplay Cervantes and Homer. Perhaps it is just that Dumas is culturally the closest, writing in with the rhythm and language (in translation) of an empathetic modernity. But he definitely got something right, and is a joy to read - not for the depth of characters, or insight into the human condition or beauty of the language but just for the excitement of it all. It is fun to watch these lovable(?) rogues foil the dastardly plans of their enemies, and what more do you really need.
Sep 23, 2023My Name Is Red
By Orhan PamukYou walk into the room with your pencil in your hand
You see somebody naked and you say, "Who is that man?"
You try so hard but you don't understand
Just what you will say when you get home
Because something is happening here
but you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?
Sep 18, 2023How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
By Walter RodneyThe primary thrust of this book - using dialectical materialist/Marxist analysis to demonstrate the evils of Colonialism - seems kind of wild to me, from a historiographical standpoint. The only people who I can imagine these days denying the abstract notion of colonialism being bad are precisely those who would also deny out-of-hand any conclusions wrought from dialectical materialist analysis. Of course there is colonialism and colonialism, and while the explicit forays of the past are widely derided as probably-a-bad-idea, the colonialism (explicit or more socioeconomically implicit) of the present is less acknowledged - yet here, still, those Marxists I know are the first to call it out.
Sep 13, 2023Middlemarch
By George EliotFlorid prose and a large cast of well-rounded characters with an interplay of politics, politicking, ethics and romance that just doesn't quite hit the spot for me, in the end. I mean I enjoyed it, it is by any account quite good, but it ultimately didn't leave me with much. I think maybe a great book leaves me a bit discombobulated, a cartoon character with birds flying around my head or something, leaves me dwelling on the characters and plot or, in the best cases, leaves me dwelling on reality and my position within it. For a 700 page tome, for something making the wikipedia page on the history of the novel, I had higher hopes for this. For 700 pages really it should just be great, shouldn't it? Kind of reminds me of Tolstoy, an intricately constructed interconnected weave of characters giving weight to an emotional situation that slightly misses the mark when it comes to emotional resonance...meaning I suppose that if this does hit the mark for emotional resonance for you, I can imagine it being an incredibly fulfilling novel.