jessicaxmaria's Reviews (1.04k)

I'm not sure Bukowski's my kind of writer. Not exactly enjoyable, though certainly funny occasionally. I really like the very last moment, but everything before I was decidedly indifferent about. Kind of boring.

"Hot Water Music" has been sitting on my shelf for years (just like this book)...not sure if I'm going to pick it up soon. Or, ever. Unconvinced.

Though I've read both The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, neither prepared me for this epic masterpiece. It's a rare experience for me to read something made up of wonderful prose and expert storytelling; there are many great authors who write great prose but their plots or stories are almost secondary to the way it's written (Didion, McCarthy), or great stories that focus more on the narrative structure or dramatic telling of a story than the rhythm of the words (Palahniuk, Ford Madox Ford). I read Didion for her sentences, and Palahniuk for whatever fucked up story he's going to tell me next. And I love these great authors, and I love they way they write, I honestly don't think any can hold a flame to this novel.

East of Eden tells the story of two families over a few decades, and though it is set in turn-of-the-century United States, the story is as old as time, as intrinsically human as possible, and positively mythic. It demonstrates the good and evil in everyone (some more good than evil and vice versa), the sad lot of history repeating itself (that Eden is in the title should be a clue), and the inner struggles that have plagued humans since the beginning of time.

While it would seem women take a backseat in the novel, since the main female character is nefariously evil, I still liked her character. She was smart, and I liked reading to see what she would do next.

This book has made its way into my favorites of all time. It's hard to rank my favorites, since I love them all, but with this book I know I'll read it again within the next couple of years. 600 pages has never been read so fast, let me tell you - I need to read it again to mark all my favorite parts and lines!

Highly recommend to everybody.

A quick and easy read, took me two days of 4 40-minute subway commutes to complete. As a fan of the film, it was interesting to get a more in-depth, inner thought view of Severine (ah, what a name!), but it still played a little strangely. I was also curious towards the end as the events transpire in a quite different way than the film. The description of Marcel exactly fits the movie, though, I laughed and loved it. Good read, but not amazing.

Took me a while to make up my mind about this; it's an auction catalog listing the belongings of two people in a failed relationship. It's their relationship's mementos, and it's weird. It's voyeuristic and also allows you to assume whatever you like about this (fictional) couple. These days, it's just as easy to do this with Facebook.

At the same time, perhaps it's a sort of psychological test to your own thoughts on relationships and on the manuevers of this one in particular. When I was recommended this book, it was because somebody had told him it was "hilarious." While I was reading it, I couldn't help but feel incredibly sad and depressed! Did one person read the deterioration of a relationship as funny, and me as sad because that's how we view romance or relationships or the world?

In the end, I give it five stars because it had a weird, personal reaction in me. And I can't stop thinking about it!

It took some time for me to get into this novel--a decided difference from when I read The Age of Innocence, which I do think is the best Wharton I've read. (I just remembered how much I hated reading Ethan Frome in high school...) However, Mirth's great protagonist Lily is so well-developed in her intellect about the society she plays in and the mistakes she knows she's making within that society. She's actually a very good person, but hardly any of the other characters recognize that in her. By the end of the book, I was sad for her trajectory, and quite angry at Selden--who, from the beginning, I thought would be a better man. He's just like the rest of them in my esteem. So often I cheered for Lily and her sometimes stubborn decisions, but in the end, it's just depressing. I enjoyed Wharton's writing, though.

This book has been on my shelves for years and I thought I'd read it some time ago. I have definitely read the titular story, but not the rest of them. I'm glad I decided to pick it up and re-read (though, I was prodded by my trip to Paris at the time, being that Hemingway lived there for a while). I'm especially glad to have read "The Short and Happy Life of Francis Macomber," which has some memorable shifts in point of view. I also remembered "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" very clearly when I thought I hadn't; I guess it stuck with me somewhere in my subconscious. I feel like all of my nightmares about gangrene infections began with that story, and I must have read it pretty young in my adolesence, probably in school. A terrific set of stories, and some of the greatest prose ever written. I do agree with that.

I picked this book up at Shakespeare & Company in Paris, thinking it would be an appropriate choice - since the shop itself is depicted on the cover, and it's Hemingway's own vignettes on living in Paris in the 1920s. I was definitely right, but I was also sad, because I wanted to be back in Paris while I read it.

I haven't read any of Hemingway's novels yet--I had a low opinion of him for a number of years, and I think a high school teacher really didn't teach his writing properly, because I was so turned off by his writing when we were required to read him. Now, I get it. I've re-read the short stories I was required to in high school, and I get it. Reading this was enlightening as to the type of person he was...and it's interesting to think of all these renown writers/artists just going to Paris to write during the 1920s. His portrait of F. Scott Fitzgerald is not particularly complimentary, and mainly it's due to his low opinion of Zelda.

I enjoyed every part of this book, and found it insightful. He keeps calling this his book about "the first part of Paris," and mentions the dissolution of his first marriage (which seemed loving and, yes, maybe a little bit magical - and probably exaggerated by Hemingway).

Overall, fascinating. Will most likely read again before any future trips to Paris.

What a strange novel! It began so incongruously, so slow and plodding. I didn't know where it would go. I had nothing to tie me to it. I didn't care about the characters - their tale was being told by a strange narrator, separately.

And then the characters met - and suddenly the narrator vanished, and the novel really began for me. Halfway through!

It became exciting and a mystery to solve! What were the motives? Who's lying to who? Who should he trust? Who should she follow? I really, really loved the last part of this book. The last 10% is riveting. Truly one of the weirdest experiences I had in reading. Is there a way to have the second half without the first? I'm not sure...

That was certainly a journey. Definitely a mixed bag. The Golden Notebook is quite a philosophical novel, and the fictional narrative structured around different notebooks is interesting. I had to keep reminding myself that the book was published in 1962...when things were decidedly different. At one point, I became so angry with the main character because she kept falling in love with married men. Awful men. And then I realized that she is getting older, and most men are married (and not divorced) in the '50s. I mean, I guess that explains it? The time setting really made most impact on the long and winding passages about Anna and the communist party in England. It's quite outdated and irrelevant. If I could have excised all of the CP parts and kept the rest, I think it would have made a better impact on me. I just fell into these lulls of not caring. And Anna Wulf isn't the best protagonist...I don't necessarily have to like a character, but she really made me angry a lot. The book's relevance today is, I suppose, in the way some things are universal, and other things--due to the era--can change for the better.