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The art in this is so stunningly beautiful, I could stare at it for hours. I don't even need a translation - but the story is amazing too! Da Xia has created something spectacular here.
M's rating: 5/5
3.5 stars.
This was a bit of an odd read for me - I definitely enjoyed it, but I had such a complex system of negative and positive points running through my head that the overall rating was more of an emotional decision than a mathematical one.
Matt, our main character, meets his current boyfriend, Brian, about a year before the story starts. Brian is really, really, ridiculously good-looking - but there's more to life than that. Which is great, because Brian is an enormous dickbag. Matt goes to Syria as an administrative consultant to Doctors Without Borders, where he is then kidnapped by terrorists in a case of mistaken identity (like you do). He is inadvertently rescued by a Navy SEAL team and after a rough start, bonds with them over superficial matters like personal integrity and honor. Matt agrees to a bananas plan to play bait set for him by a mysterious man named Randall and his status as a brother-in-arms is secured.
This was a bit of an odd read for me - I definitely enjoyed it, but I had such a complex system of negative and positive points running through my head that the overall rating was more of an emotional decision than a mathematical one.
Matt, our main character, meets his current boyfriend, Brian, about a year before the story starts. Brian is really, really, ridiculously good-looking - but there's more to life than that. Which is great, because Brian is an enormous dickbag. Matt goes to Syria as an administrative consultant to Doctors Without Borders, where he is then kidnapped by terrorists in a case of mistaken identity (like you do). He is inadvertently rescued by a Navy SEAL team and after a rough start, bonds with them over superficial matters like personal integrity and honor. Matt agrees to a bananas plan to play bait set for him by a mysterious man named Randall and his status as a brother-in-arms is secured.
+1 point for Brian's continuous gaslighting. It's not a great character trait to have in a significant other, but it gave him more depth than just being a giant dickbag (though he was, for serious).Overall, this book was less about the burgeoning romance between Matt and a member of the SEAL team than it was about the brotherhood that is created during constant life-or-death situations, the type of trust that military teams rely on to survive in combat situations. The monologuing is hokey, as is appropriate, but I am always a sucker for a good nakama storyline.
-1 point for the ridiculous paragraph-long descriptions of Matt, Brian, Matt's friends, the SEAL team platoon and anyone else who stood still long enough for it to happen. I don't need to know the exact height, weight and number of eyelashes these men had; it was like reading bad fanfiction.
+100 points for Petey, the horrifically offensive, yet weirdly endearing long-lost Weasley brother whose highlights include lines like: "Christ, Cornhole! You're harder to hold onto than a greased up Japanese prostitute!"
-a billion points for Matt not fucking knowing what a Navy SEAL is. This is a 29 year old man who, ostensibly, grew up in a middle-class American family. I refuse to believe that this is esoteric knowledge. I refuse. Especially when he assumes Randall is CIA and wonderingly thinks of him as a spook - why would you know what a spook is, but not an elite branch of the US military? I call shenanigans.
+3 points for the literal dick-waving contest on an amphibious assault ship.
-69 points for NO SEX?? Look, I did not pick up a book about toothsome military men for a constant fade-to-black, okay?
+10 points for "fluorescent orange crab-trap you call your bush."
-half the accumulated points for the constant casual misogyny that pervades both the military and the gay community. Realistic? Absolutely. Likable? Not one damn bit.
4.5 stars.
Survival and adventure and heartbreak and historical accuracy so harsh it's hard to breathe through. Anderson is well able to write the realities of life appropriate for a younger age, but never with a sugared lie. She so rarely disappoints and Ashes was well worth waiting for.
"Everyone was fighting for freedom, but few could agree on the meaning of the word."
Survival and adventure and heartbreak and historical accuracy so harsh it's hard to breathe through. Anderson is well able to write the realities of life appropriate for a younger age, but never with a sugared lie. She so rarely disappoints and Ashes was well worth waiting for.
"Everyone was fighting for freedom, but few could agree on the meaning of the word."
A decent 3.5 stars.
This satisfies requirements in two different reading challenges ('takes place in your hometown' & 'micropress book') and it was an enjoyable afternoon read to boot. It's rare that I find anything that takes place in the Saratoga County I am familiar with. Usually, I'm relegated with its historical importance in the American Revolution, i.e. the decisive Battle of Saratoga at Bemis Heights.
I have a very ambiguous opinion regarding the nature of ghosts; I believe that perhaps they may exist, but I have never once experienced it (them?). In several cases, I have been to the locations in Pitkin mentions (sometimes more than once) and have never experienced anything supernatural! Still, anything is possible.
Pitkin is very earnest in his attempt to portray the ghost stories as both history and a probable cause of mysterious happenings, wrapping it around local beliefs and rumors. It was fun, but unlikely to win awards for breathtaking prose.
This satisfies requirements in two different reading challenges ('takes place in your hometown' & 'micropress book') and it was an enjoyable afternoon read to boot. It's rare that I find anything that takes place in the Saratoga County I am familiar with. Usually, I'm relegated with its historical importance in the American Revolution, i.e. the decisive Battle of Saratoga at Bemis Heights.
I have a very ambiguous opinion regarding the nature of ghosts; I believe that perhaps they may exist, but I have never once experienced it (them?). In several cases, I have been to the locations in Pitkin mentions (sometimes more than once) and have never experienced anything supernatural! Still, anything is possible.
Pitkin is very earnest in his attempt to portray the ghost stories as both history and a probable cause of mysterious happenings, wrapping it around local beliefs and rumors. It was fun, but unlikely to win awards for breathtaking prose.
The very first sentence of the very first story is a winner ("Elaine takes the boys to Florida and drops them off like they're dry cleaning.") and the rest of the book continues to delight from there. That's the beauty of Homes's writing; the sentences are simple, barely descriptive, and yet evocative.
ADULTS ALONEBasically A.M. Homes writes about ordinary people doing the weird shit ordinary people do when they think no one's around (like a grown man sucking his thumb for comfort, by totally random example, Jim). Or you know, a whole lot of masturbation.
"They are alone together, trapped in their bed." If that isn't the saddest true story of many couples with children, I don't know what is. #smarmychildfree
When your life is looking disarmingly white and suburban, turn to crack. It's definitely the solution you're looking for!
LOOKING FOR JOHNNY
Boy gets kidnapped and then returned like a defective microwave.
CHUNKY IN HEAT
"Her thighs rub together even in her thoughts." Despite the subject matter, this was very ... whimsical.
JIM TRAIN
"[pisses on potted plant] It is his ritual, his salvation." Well, whatever works for you, dude. Anxiety manifests in all sorts of ways.
THE BULLET CATCHER
So this is what a mid-life crisis looks like from the inside.
YOURS TRULY
"I'm hiding in the linen closet writing love letters to myself." This is the most cerebral of the collection, the meat of the story taking place in thoughts and feelings of a single character rather than actions and reactions. Because I am a Philistine, it is also my least favorite.
ESTER IN THE NIGHT
I mean ... I don't blame her.
SLUMBER PARTY
"... older brother Robert was leaning over the grill, attending to the chicken pieces with the kind of precision and committment seen only in boys in their very late teens who are determined once and for all to do something right."
This has literally no bearing on the rest of the story, but it is my very favorite line.
THE I OF IT
"From the time I first noticed that it filled me with warmth as I twirled my fingers over its top, I felt I had a friend." You and every other person with a dick, dude.
3.5 stars, truly.
I do not believe I have enough background in poetry to adequately rate this collection, unfamiliar as I am in the history and of how it is created. I'm gonna do it anyway.
Research into this author has told me that he was one of the most important contemporary poets in the post-1989 Eastern European world, where much of his focus was on grief, memory and trauma. It's why I chose this collection to fulfill what I thought would be the most difficult challenge of 2017: "Read a collection of poetry in translation on a theme other than love."
The choppy breakdown of the lines is jarring, but once you get a rhythm going in your head they have their own flow. I suppose this is probably a concept habitual poetry readers just know, but for me it made for a difficult start. Borbély seems to reference other authors (Kafka, Walter Benjamin, etc.) as well as classical mythology quite often, which turned this more into an academic exercise rather than something that was strictly reading for pleasure. Still, I never turn down learning new things and now I am very Hip to history of the flâneur; that is, to stroll and observe as a modern urban spectator.
This is a ghostly, and occasionally ghastly, work that is interspersed with Letters I-XIII that speak searchingly of one penpal desperate to meet up with the his friend, to create a greater intimacy between them. It becomes obvious by Letter IX that she is entirely uninterested:
Some of my favorite pieces from this collection, in no particular order and for no reason that I can put into words:
"Fragment I"
Yes, I could express it simply by saying
that our conversation left in me
a vacant space. Since then, every
day contains this space.
"Schöneweide"
[iii]
He was
a mangy, lost soul. I pitied him. And I thought of my
relatives,
the ones whom I could never meet. Who'
hovered for a while above the German-Polish lowlands, as
dust and ashes. Perhaps that is why I wanted to look,
simply
to observe, for months on end, what the sky was like over
Berlin.
"Letter IV"
And after
I got your address, I was still unsure, was it the right one?
For there is nothing sadder than sending a letter
to an uncertain address. For that is no longer a letter,
but instead a sigh.
My favorite in its entirety is "Naturhistorisches Museum", one of the longer pieces in Berlin-Hamlet. It's an odd blend of skepticism of science, of faith and humanity.
"In the Natural History Museum, from ten until six,
the past is an open book. The domain of minerals and
stones
is seemingly without motion. In a series of
rooms, animals stuffed and preserved
in compliance with the inferred order
of creation. Desiccated bodies, dehydrated plumes,
down, hides. Glass eyes, lifelike.
Movement slowed down to infinity, fixed
but dead creations. Although their legs
are in the air, heads daintily averted.
If seen from the front, the half-profile is preferred.
Representatives of the great species, blind objects
in the darkness. But after closing time, life
doesn't stop. In the ancient oak casements of the vitrines,
tiny parasites continue their labour with
that indifferent monotonous background noise,
as the narrator of a nature film
speaks. Microscopic fungi,
various life-forms of simple constitution
battle for survival. Then the fine tension
of the dramatic tremulo penetrating the
mechanical voice: And the viruses in the air.
When, in the year sixteen hundred and seventy-nine,
after the last occurrence of the Black Death, a memorial
was erected to the devastation, new explanations
were sought. In addition to belief
in providence, there was faith in mathematics,
then statistics. When belief was thrust aside,
the mythology of freedom replaced the cult
of the death. The result was the rapturous
veneration of life, then of course
wars, revolutions. But the watchword
of bliss displaced all else. In time
evolution became the modern metaphor
of death. And all the while humanity
still knew nothing of bacteria.
In front of the display of the great carnivores a quiet
child next to his mother steps back and takes
her hand. And points to one of the creatures: it looks
like daddy. And truly, one could arrange the material
according to the sequence of likenesses.
Through the associative and metaphorical correlations
in a language that knows no history.
On the glass of vitrines the bacteria flourish, but then
comes the great cleansing, fine de capo. A meteor
striking the earth, or a straight of virus now
dormant in the Amazon. Supposedly the beginning of life
was an infection that arrived on a meteorite."
I do not believe I have enough background in poetry to adequately rate this collection, unfamiliar as I am in the history and of how it is created. I'm gonna do it anyway.
Research into this author has told me that he was one of the most important contemporary poets in the post-1989 Eastern European world, where much of his focus was on grief, memory and trauma. It's why I chose this collection to fulfill what I thought would be the most difficult challenge of 2017: "Read a collection of poetry in translation on a theme other than love."
The choppy breakdown of the lines is jarring, but once you get a rhythm going in your head they have their own flow. I suppose this is probably a concept habitual poetry readers just know, but for me it made for a difficult start. Borbély seems to reference other authors (Kafka, Walter Benjamin, etc.) as well as classical mythology quite often, which turned this more into an academic exercise rather than something that was strictly reading for pleasure. Still, I never turn down learning new things and now I am very Hip to history of the flâneur; that is, to stroll and observe as a modern urban spectator.
This is a ghostly, and occasionally ghastly, work that is interspersed with Letters I-XIII that speak searchingly of one penpal desperate to meet up with the his friend, to create a greater intimacy between them. It becomes obvious by Letter IX that she is entirely uninterested:
"She would never marry anyoneOuch, dude. Further terrible things happen to this letter writer, as seems to be a theme of this work; it is stuffed to the brim with ennui and harsh emotional Feelings with a capital F. Upon reading the translation notes, I find it unsurprising that the Letter cycle is based directly of Franz Kafka's missives to his on-again, off-again fiancee, Felice Bauer. The tone of emotional suffocation was there.
else, she said.
She would never throw away my letters. She would not
ask for her photographs back.
She was willing to correspond with me, but wouldn't mind
if she didn't have to any more."
Some of my favorite pieces from this collection, in no particular order and for no reason that I can put into words:
"Fragment I"
Yes, I could express it simply by saying
that our conversation left in me
a vacant space. Since then, every
day contains this space.
"Schöneweide"
[iii]
He was
a mangy, lost soul. I pitied him. And I thought of my
relatives,
the ones whom I could never meet. Who'
hovered for a while above the German-Polish lowlands, as
dust and ashes. Perhaps that is why I wanted to look,
simply
to observe, for months on end, what the sky was like over
Berlin.
"Letter IV"
And after
I got your address, I was still unsure, was it the right one?
For there is nothing sadder than sending a letter
to an uncertain address. For that is no longer a letter,
but instead a sigh.
My favorite in its entirety is "Naturhistorisches Museum", one of the longer pieces in Berlin-Hamlet. It's an odd blend of skepticism of science, of faith and humanity.
"In the Natural History Museum, from ten until six,
the past is an open book. The domain of minerals and
stones
is seemingly without motion. In a series of
rooms, animals stuffed and preserved
in compliance with the inferred order
of creation. Desiccated bodies, dehydrated plumes,
down, hides. Glass eyes, lifelike.
Movement slowed down to infinity, fixed
but dead creations. Although their legs
are in the air, heads daintily averted.
If seen from the front, the half-profile is preferred.
Representatives of the great species, blind objects
in the darkness. But after closing time, life
doesn't stop. In the ancient oak casements of the vitrines,
tiny parasites continue their labour with
that indifferent monotonous background noise,
as the narrator of a nature film
speaks. Microscopic fungi,
various life-forms of simple constitution
battle for survival. Then the fine tension
of the dramatic tremulo penetrating the
mechanical voice: And the viruses in the air.
When, in the year sixteen hundred and seventy-nine,
after the last occurrence of the Black Death, a memorial
was erected to the devastation, new explanations
were sought. In addition to belief
in providence, there was faith in mathematics,
then statistics. When belief was thrust aside,
the mythology of freedom replaced the cult
of the death. The result was the rapturous
veneration of life, then of course
wars, revolutions. But the watchword
of bliss displaced all else. In time
evolution became the modern metaphor
of death. And all the while humanity
still knew nothing of bacteria.
In front of the display of the great carnivores a quiet
child next to his mother steps back and takes
her hand. And points to one of the creatures: it looks
like daddy. And truly, one could arrange the material
according to the sequence of likenesses.
Through the associative and metaphorical correlations
in a language that knows no history.
On the glass of vitrines the bacteria flourish, but then
comes the great cleansing, fine de capo. A meteor
striking the earth, or a straight of virus now
dormant in the Amazon. Supposedly the beginning of life
was an infection that arrived on a meteorite."
The Princess, The King and The Anarchist
Helen Marx, Robert Pagani, Ruth Greenstein, Caroline Weber
The opening was great and it went downhill from there. Maria Eugenia spent most of her time worrying about her full bladder and Alfonso his pulsating erection.
And then, all of a sudden she has sex in a shed with a gardener? This woman who was so frightened of sex that the very idea of "congress" and "medium-sized carrots" made her tremble? Ridiculous.
And then, all of a sudden she has sex in a shed with a gardener? This woman who was so frightened of sex that the very idea of "congress" and "medium-sized carrots" made her tremble? Ridiculous.
Rounded up 3.75 stars, because she's Worth It.
"One of the guides brought up a big worm. It weighed a third of a pound and looked like a weird tube. I could only begin to imagine the size of the fish you could catch with it. Bruce made me lick it. He said it excreted a horrible-tasting substance that kept it protected from predators, and he was so right. But it seemed like a good idea at the time." (p. 187)
Mireya Mayor is a former NFL cheerleader turned NatGeo explorer - don't worry, if you didn't get it the first time, she repeats it many, many times throughout the course of this memoir. Mayor tries hard to justify both parts of her personality - the bug-loving little girl who grew up to be the Ph.D totin' explorer, but who is also still the cheerleader who loves being able to blow dry her hair. It makes me sad to think that she feels the need to defend it so constantly. It could certainly be the theme - there's threads of it woven into each chapter. The book itself even ends with a chapter of how she tries to juggle the life of a working mother - even if her work brings her away from her children much more so than most.
We begin with the requisite childhood stories of growing up with her mother, aunt and grandmother; all Cuban immigrants who fled during Castro's rise to power with only the clothes on their backs. Her first trip to Guyana as a naive college student saw her more concerned with carry-on weight than realistic packing, but it was there that she was bitten by the travel bug. Not to mention some other, grosser bug that made her hands swell up like basketballs. This trip led to others and then a position with National Geographic, getting paid to do the things she loved best, all over the world. Mayor's writing tone is very conversational and engaging; it makes me wonder if her scientific papers would be more palatable than other exceptionally dry ones that I have read in the past.
Mayor has a theory about gorilla social hierarchy that is somewhat unorthodox, based on past scientific observation: "... the prevailing thought has been that female gorillas are, without question, the weaker sex, forced to play by the rules. At least, that is what researchers had been reporting for decades, However, most of those researchers were male." Mayor posits that perhaps it is the females who actually have the power. Why would this not have merit? After all, how many researchers have defaulted to a male perspective without noticing, even the women? (I am referring here to the stereotypical male perspective, as I believe gender to be more of a spectrum.)
This reminds me of a story that Sandi Toksvig once told:
"One of the guides brought up a big worm. It weighed a third of a pound and looked like a weird tube. I could only begin to imagine the size of the fish you could catch with it. Bruce made me lick it. He said it excreted a horrible-tasting substance that kept it protected from predators, and he was so right. But it seemed like a good idea at the time." (p. 187)
Mireya Mayor is a former NFL cheerleader turned NatGeo explorer - don't worry, if you didn't get it the first time, she repeats it many, many times throughout the course of this memoir. Mayor tries hard to justify both parts of her personality - the bug-loving little girl who grew up to be the Ph.D totin' explorer, but who is also still the cheerleader who loves being able to blow dry her hair. It makes me sad to think that she feels the need to defend it so constantly. It could certainly be the theme - there's threads of it woven into each chapter. The book itself even ends with a chapter of how she tries to juggle the life of a working mother - even if her work brings her away from her children much more so than most.
We begin with the requisite childhood stories of growing up with her mother, aunt and grandmother; all Cuban immigrants who fled during Castro's rise to power with only the clothes on their backs. Her first trip to Guyana as a naive college student saw her more concerned with carry-on weight than realistic packing, but it was there that she was bitten by the travel bug. Not to mention some other, grosser bug that made her hands swell up like basketballs. This trip led to others and then a position with National Geographic, getting paid to do the things she loved best, all over the world. Mayor's writing tone is very conversational and engaging; it makes me wonder if her scientific papers would be more palatable than other exceptionally dry ones that I have read in the past.
Mayor has a theory about gorilla social hierarchy that is somewhat unorthodox, based on past scientific observation: "... the prevailing thought has been that female gorillas are, without question, the weaker sex, forced to play by the rules. At least, that is what researchers had been reporting for decades, However, most of those researchers were male." Mayor posits that perhaps it is the females who actually have the power. Why would this not have merit? After all, how many researchers have defaulted to a male perspective without noticing, even the women? (I am referring here to the stereotypical male perspective, as I believe gender to be more of a spectrum.)
This reminds me of a story that Sandi Toksvig once told:
Years ago, when I was studying anthropology at university, one of my female professors held up a photograph of an antler bone with 28 markings on it. "This," she said, "is alleged to be man's first attempt at a calendar." We all looked at the bone in admiration. "Tell me," she continued, "What man needs to know when 28 days have passed? I suspect that this is woman's first attempt at a calendar."Mayor's ruminations on this were my favorite portion of the memoir (even though the descriptions of constant jungle hiking and dirty camping were both impressive and disgusting in turn). After all, this idea came to her because she "[grew] up with three mothers." Why wouldn't other researchers be similarly biased/with a separate perspective? As much as a scientist attempts to be objective, they are only human and susceptible to human foibles.