theanitaalvarez's Reviews (1.77k)

My first reaction after reading this book was that I really can’t imagine how damaged this man’s liver is. Surely the amount of drugs he did didn’t help his health. And probably could kill (or at least, get very sick) an adult elephant.

It’s a very interesting book, however. I’ve never been particularly interested in economics and how Wall Street works (I’m still not sure about it, but I have a better idea now), but I was really into this book (and the film, which I watched when I was halfway through). Despite being a nasty human being, Jordan Belfort is a fascinating character and a compelling narrator. Maybe because I have a thing for cynical and unreliable narrators (and Belfort certainly qualifies for both), so I was immediately hooked by his charisma. It was really hard for me to even begin to picture how much money he wasted. He spent more in a party than a lot of developing countries’ yearly budget.

But the thing here is that it works. The book is meant to represent Belfort’s account of living in the height of Wall Street craze. It’s so exuberant and crazy that it’s hard to believe. I mean… I know people who own yachts and stuff like that, but they don’t keep a staff there just for when they want to sail (they navigate their boats themselves). And Belfort’s matter-of-fact tone and how ironic he can be at points, completely sell this. It’s actually very fun to read, even if at point the money waste was outraging (there’s still people starving in Africa, you know). It gives you a glimpse of a world which most of us can’t even imagine, and shows how deeply messed up it really is.

Having said that, it is true that Belfort lead a very amusing life, and he seems to be a decent writer (or his ghost writer is so). He began a company that moved quite a lot of money back then, threw insane parties, and met all kinds of interesting people. That was, actually, one of the things I enjoyed mostly about this book. The people he describes are almost literary characters. Belfort seems to be a keen observer, because he describes them using very distinctly and unique physical features, which help you to picture them more vividly.

And there was something in the memoir that was almost missing from the film: Belfort’s human side. Whenever he wrote about his children, I got the feeling he truly cared about them, and loved the kids a lot. Especially when he’s discussing his son’s health problems, which were lots when he was born. The same happened when he talked about his wife, but to a lesser extent. At some points he seemed to despise her, and at others, to love her deeply. Anyways, the relation didn’t sound truly healthy to me, but I’m not here to judge anyone’s life. Just how he wrote it.

Overall, interesting and fun to read. If you liked the film, give it a chance, because it gives you better context and a different perspective from Scorsese’s (which is brilliant, by the way).

Patti Smith is one of those women I can’t help but admire. She has managed to stay relevant in the rock scene (at 68!), in an age when being female in the public line is more dangerous than ever. When every wrinkle in their faces, every mark in their bodies is heavily scrutinized, she dares to age. Besides her music, she’s also a mother of two. She sings, composes and plays different instruments. She’s even touring in Europe as I write this. She is fucking awesome.

Of course, seeing her name in the spine of a book in my favorite bookstore, meant that I had to buy it. (I’m a recovering compulsive book-buyer.)

I loved it. I have lots of feelings about it. Finishing it was even a little painful, but a good kind of pain. It’s hard to explain, but it’s the feeling I get when I finish something that’s particularly beautiful. Maybe it’s because I’ll never write anything as magnificent and beautiful as this book (or like any of the books that cause me this pain).

I have a thing for bohemians. Maybe it’s because I want to be one, but I’m a good girl forever and ever. But the times aren’t friendly for dear old-style bohemia. So, I love reading and watching their stories. I love that they were so involved with their art and wanted to live completely by it. Their lives were based in art, they lived for it. I can’t help but love people who have a passion this strong.

In this memoir, Patti talks about her old friend, Robert Mapplethorne. He was a photographer (there are several of the pictures he took of Smith for her albums, and some of them made it into the book) and, as Smith narrates him, seemed to have a deeply artistic soul. She tells all these anecdotes that show how he shaped his aesthetic identity. Like when he found things in the street to use in his art, or the way he acted together. It’s beautiful all along. My favorite thing of this book is how Smith’s love for him shows throughout the book. They were together for a while, before he came out as gay (or bisexual, maybe), but their friendship endured after that. They were friends until his death. They both stood by each other in everything they did. A friendship like that doesn’t come to everyone, really. Reading about it is powerful and made me want to go and hug my friends after finishing it.

I’ve seen this book in several lists of books you have to read in your twenties. I happen to agree with it. It’s a wonderful book and it a must-read for everyone. This is more than just a biography of Mapplethorpe, this is a portrait of youth in their times. It shows young people trying to find themselves, trying to make sense of the world they were in. And trying to make art in the process. It’s just amazing to read, so everyone should get it as soon as possible.

Seriously, READ IT.

This book is awesome. I’m not really sure what I can say about it, but that seems like a good start. It’s awesome and everyone should read this. (I know I say it about a lot of books, but I can’t help having such good books recommended to me). Well, maybe not everyone. This is not the kind of book everyone likes, because it’s dark and full of terrors.

The book talks about two elderly sisters, Blanche and Jane. The latter used to be a stage child-star, while the second became an actress when she grew up, being quite successful then (and more than her sister ever was). Jane, of course, lost her childhood charm and couldn’t act. Nevertheless, Blanche managed to get her sister a role in the movies she was casted in.

When the novel begins (there’s a flashback scene at first, but I mean the story proper), Blanche is on a wheelchair. She was in an accident provoked by her sister, as they came home from a party. Since then, she stopped acting, and Jane began taking her of her younger sister. Blanche uses her situation to manipulate her sister all day long.

That is, until Jane decides she’s making a comeback. She begins hurting Blanche, physically and psychologically torturing her. She fires the maid, the only person who sees Blanche in a regular basis and helps her around when Jane isn’t there. Of course, Blanche is utterly helpless and tries to get help, without any success. Some of the most anguishing moments in the novel are when she is close to make some contact with the world and Jane arrives, ruining everything.

Tension is very hard to write, yet Farrell manages to write it flawlessly. It’s wonderfully portrayed and it’s the best thing about this book. I couldn’t stop reading because I physically needed to find out what was happening afterwards. I suffered, but I enjoyed it. The psychological aspect of the sisters’ relationship is treated with realism and lots of details, which helps to picture it very clearly. Jane is one of the creepiest characters I’ve ever read. She ranks closely to Mrs. Danvers and Gollum. She’s quite gone throughout the novel, and as the pages go on, she becomes even crazier. It’s a lot to say, considering how crazy she is at first.

The ending is one of the best parts, because it leaves you hanging. I’m still not sure what happened there, but the final pages were adrenaline-filled for me. I just needed to finish the book and see whether Blanche was going to survive her crazy older sister. It’s fun, because it takes a fresh view on sisters’ relations. Kind of like Frozen but angstier and creepier.

If you like psychological tension and crazy characters, you don’t need to look any further. This is the book for you.

P.S.: There’s a film version, starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford (actually, it’s much more well-known than the book). They hated each other’s guts, and that helped them bring up the tension that is in the book. You should watch it, because it’s really cool, and it stays really faithful to the book in question.

I got this book when my local bookshop closed (a sad day for my poor wallet. The bookshop has since been replaced with yet another, so my wallet hasn’t recovered). I bought it despite my bad experience reading Henry James in my Short Story class, suffering through two of his short stories that were way too complicated for my poor brain. However, I had read and loved Portrait of a Lady, Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw, so I decided to give good ol’ Henry a second shot. My conclusion? I like his work when I’m not reading it for a class.

Little known fact (okay, not really little known, but a cool fact nonetheless): Henry’s brother, William James, is considered one of the fathers of modern psychology. Apparently, the dinners at their household were very interesting.

Why do I bring this up? Because Henry James excels in describing psychological states. He has a profound insight to his characters and I find it really amazing to read. All of his characters are round, well-developed and interesting, in their own different ways. And, obviously, they are incredibly realistic. You can almost feel as if you knew them personally.

In this particular book, the main characters are a father and his daughter, the Slopes. She, Catherine, wants to marry Morris Townsend, but her father doesn’t approve of the match. Then begins the center of the novel, the mute fight between the two of them, who are constantly fighting for years about the issue. It’s very interesting, because Dr. Slope, the father, doesn’t think too highly of his daughter. He actually mentions that she is ugly and stupid several times.

Catherine is stubborn and insists in not-breaking her engagement to Townsend. Her father threatens to withhold her inheritance if she marries against her wished, but she holds on. He actually thinks that it will make Townsend leave her (Dr. Slope thinks he only wants Catherine’s money), but is greatly surprised when he doesn’t. This earns the young man some respect from him, but the doctor doesn’t want to change his word, so he maintains it, though he tries to convince Catherine to do otherwise, with methods than go from mocking to travelling to Europe.

I really liked Catherine. She’s decided and brave, and dares to confront her father’s bullshit, something that nobody seems to do. She didn’t even care about the cost that all that would have on her own life. Maybe it’s not a good way to be, but it’s amazing for a literary character. James is a really good psychological writer, and his characters tend to be outside any norm, which I find particularly interesting.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It’s dense, as all of James’ work, so it’s not an easy read, but it’s no the Ulysses and once you get a grip of the story it’s easy to fall for it and keep reading. If you are used to classics, this is a good shot in any case.

I met David Sedaris through Ira Glass’ This American Life (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, do yourself a favour and look it up on iTunes Store or wherever you find your podcasts. It’s a journalism show and it’s totally worth your time). He’s funny and sincere in his contributions to the podcast, so when I saw his name on Rory Gilmore’s Reading Challenge, I was excited to get to him soon. Though life and uni have stopped me from reading it sooner.

He’s the same way in his writing: funny, acute and intelligent. In this book (a series of essays), he mostly talks about his own life: about the speech therapy he went to as a child (because of a lisp); his relationship with his father and the rest of the family, and so on. All of them feel very honest and sincere, showing his good humour. Not everyone is able to laugh at themselves in this way, and I find it admirable. I think my favorite essay out of the bunch was “Twelve Moments in the Life of the Artist” in which he talks about his beginnings as an artist, and realizing he wasn’t going to be Picasso. Maybe because I recognized that feeling, of knowing that I might never become Jane Austen or any of the authors I love and admire. I could relate to him, despite the many differences in our lives. Art is sort of universal in this way, don’t you think?

One of the things I liked most about this book, as I said before is how humorous can Sedaris be. It’s a very hard thing to laugh at one’s own issues and life in general. I enjoyed his ironic outlook on his life and how he is able to see the funny things in life, and the little crazy things people do and they don’t notice. And all of this, he is able to show it in a really dry and direct way.

It’s also good that the essays are relatively short (I read this in my Kindle, so I have no idea what this book looks like, but here it says that it is 272 pages, which is a pretty short book). You can read one of them in a sitting and then move on to something else. Though the book deals with pretty dense and grim situations and topics (family relations, being an expat, coming out, living with a partner), Sedaris keeps the tone light-hearted and funny, which doesn’t make it feel overwhelming. It could perfectly be very serious, but that may be the easy way to approach those topics. Sedaris does it quite differently, in his own and fantastic way. It’s a little like having a good friend talking to you directly, over some drinks. A fun and ironic friend, who jokes around the whole world.

I’d totally recommend this book. It’s short, nice, and easy to read. All of this make for the perfect book for reading during the holidays, when I did.

Memoirs are very hard to review. How can you criticize the characters and plot of someone else’s life. It’s not like they invented the whole thing, everything actually happened. So I’ll try to keep it close to reality and remember that this is not a novel.

Jane Hawking was married to the genius scientific Stephen Hawking for about thirty years. They met in the sixties and married shortly after he was diagnosed with ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, for those of you who were living in another planet in 2014, during the ice bucket challenge craze). She chronicles their married years, his disease, his academic life and physical deterioration, and she manages to show him as a normal human being, not as the awesome and brave scientific that has faced a lot of adversity and still goes on.

Don’t get me wrong: I deeply admire Hawking for all he has done. He is, indeed, a brave human being. But he’s not a poor saint. And Jane shows it very clearly here. And a lot of the things he has overcome are invisible: what we see is just the tip of the iceberg. Jane does show them: how hard it is to move a wheelchair, how much does it cost to travel in these conditions and so on. I’ve never even thought about it, it’s just one of those things you take for granted.

I respect Jane a lot, especially after reading this. She could’ve sounded bitter and she could’ve shown Hawking in a worse light, like a despot or a selfish person (there are some points in which he does come out as self-involved, but it’s kind of understandable, given his life). Jane shows the good and bad honestly, both of Steven and herself. She doesn’t hide her infidelity or any of that side. That’s something worth repeating. It shows her humanity (she has lots of reasons to be bitter about her relationship). So, points for her for that.

This is a book that I totally recommend to anyone. Hawking is one of the greatest minds in science, and it’s very interesting to read about him in such a light. I think that sometimes, in the cases of people who have gone over such problems, we tend to see them as heroes rather than people. In this book, Hawking is incredibly human, which is great to read. Maybe because I can’t stand “heroes”, they bore me way too much. I prefer reading about real people (o realistic, at least). I enjoyed this book a lot. It’s well written and it kept me going, so I finished it in a few days (mind you, I usually read very fast). It never gets really hard to read or anything, so there are some points there.

P.S.: Watch the film. There are a few problems with it (it shows their lives to be a lot more idyllic than how they really were), but Eddie Redmayne’s acting is wonderful. And Felicity Jones is also amazing, so it’s totally worth watching it.

This one is a hard one. And one I should probably read again, because I think I got like half of it. Also, this is (ironically), one of the driest books I’ve ever read (see what I did there? Because it is about a whale and set in the sea. Okay, I’m a bad comedian).

I think most people know more or less what Moby-Dick is about a Captain (Ahab) who is obsessed with a white whale (aka. Moby-Dick). He goes after it, trying to catch him (I think it was a he), so his pride can be satisfied. But that’s hubris and in classic literature, it means you’re doomed. So he dies in the end, never catching the whale. There you have the abridged version.

Oh, and the narrator is called Ishmael. Call him that.

One of the most interesting things about this book is Melville’s description of the life in the seas. When he was young, he worked in a whale-ship for some time, so he clearly knows what he’s talking about. He also adds extra information (lots of it) on whales and how products were made from them. While I will never approve of whale hunting and how they were treated, it used to be part of the lives of a lot of people.

As I wasn’t expecting the long descriptions of whales and the whole old industry of whaling, at some points I got a little bored. I felt they stalled the plot a lot, and I wanted to get to the exciting parts. Someone should’ve told old Melville to “cut to the chase”. Seriously, he had an amazing way of not addressing the main points for hundreds of pages. The parts that were not about whales, I loved. The characters are so interesting and their life was actually very enjoyable to read. The scientific descriptions of the reproduction of sperm whales, not so much, to be honest.

I did like how he wrote the way in which the characters speak. He portrays these seamen (let’s not forget he lived among them) very realistically and that helped a lot in this book. Maybe it’s because I live in a completely different context and time, but it’s clear that all the detail and work he puts on the setting of the novel helps to put the reader in that world. And it was probably the same in his time, because I’m quite sure most Melville readers were not whalers or anything around that world, pretty much like most modern Melville readers, as myself. So, he was able to show and communicate a completely different world from what people were used to. And that’s a huge thing.

However, I must recommend this with some reserve: it’s not for everyone. There’s a lot of scientific descriptions of whales, and it’s very dense. Sometimes, it feels as if the plot drags forever. So, if you want something action-packed, give Moby-Dick a miss. If you don’t mind dense and tiresome writing, this might be very regarding.