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3.5 stars.
It's been some time since I read Three Cups of Tea (April 2011), but apparently I wasn't particularly impressed. Two stars, with notes about Mortenson's lack of management skills and the (actual) writer's incredible hard-on for him. Krakauer goes in the opposite direction - I sense a little bitter anger on his part.
Mortenson having Mother Teresa as a role model makes a lot of sense - she was kind of a shitty person too. ("The world gains much from [the poor's] suffering.")
Krakauer did not tell us that he had invested a considerable amount of his own money into the coffers of Mortenson's charity until midway through Part II of this book, but I suppose that doesn't make the truths he has tracked down any less relevant. Even with Relin's effusive praise in Three Cups of Tea, it seemed obvious to me that Mortenson never had the ability or inclination to run the organization that he started; he wanted to be the idea man. Technically, he did fulfill what he set out to do - build a school. The fact that land ownership, communication with board members and foreign public officials and educational training and supplies came along for the ride was not something he was interested in and it shows by the empty buildings scattered across northern Pakistan. I'm glad for the kids he did manage to help, but his significant lies and mismanagement hurt the original agenda abominably.
It's been some time since I read Three Cups of Tea (April 2011), but apparently I wasn't particularly impressed. Two stars, with notes about Mortenson's lack of management skills and the (actual) writer's incredible hard-on for him. Krakauer goes in the opposite direction - I sense a little bitter anger on his part.
Mortenson having Mother Teresa as a role model makes a lot of sense - she was kind of a shitty person too. ("The world gains much from [the poor's] suffering.")
Krakauer did not tell us that he had invested a considerable amount of his own money into the coffers of Mortenson's charity until midway through Part II of this book, but I suppose that doesn't make the truths he has tracked down any less relevant. Even with Relin's effusive praise in Three Cups of Tea, it seemed obvious to me that Mortenson never had the ability or inclination to run the organization that he started; he wanted to be the idea man. Technically, he did fulfill what he set out to do - build a school. The fact that land ownership, communication with board members and foreign public officials and educational training and supplies came along for the ride was not something he was interested in and it shows by the empty buildings scattered across northern Pakistan. I'm glad for the kids he did manage to help, but his significant lies and mismanagement hurt the original agenda abominably.
This is definitely a rating for me, in that I loved it, rather than a rating for how well I think it fits the overall demographic of children's books it falls into. Lemony Snicket does understated creepy so well. There are surely kids who can appreciate that, yeah?
This is like something right out of Welcome to the Night Vale.
This is like something right out of Welcome to the Night Vale.
... without the dark, everything would be light, and you would never know if you needed a lightbulb.Wise words.
I adore Klassen's art. My reviews of his projects are just repetitious little ditties of love. There's just something about it that makes me so happy, like a bright little star inside my chest. Even when he is illustrating an anthropomorphic version of darkness (or maybe especially when he's doing that, who knows? Not this lady).
Searching for playwrights similar to Martin McDonagh led me to Tracy Letts - I can see how the algorithms would come to this conclusion. There's a definite sense of place to August, an American feeling that is similar in presence to McDonagh's Ireland.
Family sagas are absolutely engrossing if pulled together with deft hands and Letts does not disappoint. These people are absolutely dysfunctional; they're stubbornly holding onto the slippery threads of blood ties, teeming with well-honed hatred and frustration. It's boiling over in every interaction and it is fantastic. Also, there's a bit of incest, y'know. Like you do. (It's extra spicy, because family secrets).
While the Beverly, the Weston family patriarch, was missing for a good third of the play, for me the real suspense was whether or not Violet (the family matriarch) was going to keel over at any time from the extensive collection of pills she kept popping. ("Valium. Vicodin. Darvon, Darvocet. Percodan, Percocet. Xanax for fun. OxyContin in a pinch. Some Black Mollies once, just to make sure I was still paying attention. And of course Dilaudid. I shouldn't forget Dilaudid.")
This habit of hers led to my favorite interaction of the entire work:
Family sagas are absolutely engrossing if pulled together with deft hands and Letts does not disappoint. These people are absolutely dysfunctional; they're stubbornly holding onto the slippery threads of blood ties, teeming with well-honed hatred and frustration. It's boiling over in every interaction and it is fantastic. Also, there's a bit of incest, y'know. Like you do. (It's extra spicy, because family secrets).
While the Beverly, the Weston family patriarch, was missing for a good third of the play, for me the real suspense was whether or not Violet (the family matriarch) was going to keel over at any time from the extensive collection of pills she kept popping. ("Valium. Vicodin. Darvon, Darvocet. Percodan, Percocet. Xanax for fun. OxyContin in a pinch. Some Black Mollies once, just to make sure I was still paying attention. And of course Dilaudid. I shouldn't forget Dilaudid.")
This habit of hers led to my favorite interaction of the entire work:
BARBARA: [Violet] smuggled Darvocet into the psych ward ... in her vagina. There's your Greatest Generation for you. She made this speech to us while she was clenching a bottle of pills in her cooch, for God's sake.and fucking scene.
KAREN: God, I've never heard that story.
IVY: Did you just say "cooch"?
BARBARA: The phrase "Mom's pussy" seems a bit gauche.
IVY: You're a little more comfortable with "cooch", are you?
BARBARA: What word should I use to describe our mother's vagina?
"Mad Padraic", who was too mad even for the IRA to allow him to join, is particularly fond of his kitty, Wee Thomas. In a grossly described turn of events, Wee Thomas is brutally killed and Padriac is coming home to find out "what fecking happened".
Donny (scared): Oh, Padraic, don't be tying me hands behind me back, now. We know what you be doing to fellas their hands you tie behind their back ...Not a play I would suggest for the easily squeamish (the last scene opens with a "blood-soaked living room strewn with body parts"), but McDonagh is at his black comedy best with The Lieutenant of Inishmore.
Davey: What does he be doing to them, Donny? Tickling them?
Donny gives him a look.
Davey (crying): I was just trying to keep me hopes up.
The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade
Richard Peaslee, Peter Brook, Adrian Mitchell, Peter Weiss, Geoffrey Skelton
3.5 stars.
When meta meets history meets poetry meets absurdism, we get this. I'm still not entirely certain I fully understand the scope of it.
When meta meets history meets poetry meets absurdism, we get this. I'm still not entirely certain I fully understand the scope of it.
A back story that was shown instead of told would have made Liam's eventual capitulation more powerful. Regardless, the absolute alienness and the culture built into the story of the Rownt made up for quite a bit.