s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all]
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Books:
classics
(35)
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B000JMKWWA
| 4.07
| 66,786
| 1883
| May 17, 2012
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OH HE SLAYETH
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Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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not set
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Aug 11, 2025
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Kindle Edition
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1539605787
| 9781539605782
| 1539605787
| 4.07
| 87,542
| Nov 1846
| Oct 19, 2016
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it was amazing
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[image]
An absolute banger of a story where Poe cranks dials blazing on the Unreliable Narrator motif all the way to 11. Walls close in around us a [image] An absolute banger of a story where Poe cranks dials blazing on the Unreliable Narrator motif all the way to 11. Walls close in around us and Montressor, metaphorically and quite literally for the latter, as we begin to realize our narrator is not all he claims to be. Hard pressed I'd say this is easily in my top 3 all-time favorite short stories. In Cask we have the reversal of fortunes between the aptly named Fortunato and our narrator, Montressor. I love this story, it starts off playing on Fortunato’s ego and proceeds through a lot of humorous moments of Montressor toying with him giving clues along the way like foreshadowing of the deeds to come. I mean, he literally shows him the tool with which he will wall Fortunato up with claiming to be a Mason and he says his family crest is a heel crushing a snake that is biting the heel. When Fortunato asks his family motto he replies ‘Nemo me impune lacessit’ (no one attacks me with impunity) to which Fortunato responds ‘good!’ This is such pure gold that cartoon pirates are probably searching for it right now. But the crest is so symbolic of them as a sort of intertwined double, together in injury. While one could say Montressor is the foot stomping out the serpent that bit him, I suggest it is the opposite: the foot as the unwitting beast totally unaware it had stepped upon the serpent until too late when the poisoned fangs have already sunk in. This seems supported in the text as Fortunato seems to only casually know who Montressor is, leading you to question the ‘thousand injuries’ he has supposedly inflicted and if they were an act of malice as Montressor seems to claim or simply collateral damage. The mirroring is mocked as the pair both howl at one another, Montressor repeating his final words ‘for the love of God’ back to him. And we have catacombs in Cask very much serving the Gothic trope where mysterious passageways and hidden chambers build unease around the idea of enclosed spaces as the claustrophobia of death comes circling in around you. I most love how—in this and many of his other stories—Poe is always addressing you, the reader. In lines such as ‘You, who so well know the nature of my soul,’ he makes us complicit but also implies that we, too, are capable of dark deeds. The monster is already in us, and he is poking it with his stick. And this story is calling for you to read it from somewhere deep down in the the chambers of your mortal heart... ‘I had walled the monster up within the tomb!’ ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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not set
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Aug 05, 2025
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Paperback
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0152023984
| 9780152023980
| 0152023984
| 4.33
| 2,442,884
| Apr 06, 1943
| May 15, 2000
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it was amazing
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‘The world is full of magic things patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper,’ Irish poet W.B. Yeats once wrote, though his words may have been
‘The world is full of magic things patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper,’ Irish poet W.B. Yeats once wrote, though his words may have been best said by a wise and lonesome fox who spills the secret that ‘it is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.’ Even a desert can be beautiful if ‘it hides a well somewhere’ and even silence and loneliness can open up wonderment as ‘through the silence something throbs, and gleams.’To read the beloved classic The Little Prince by French author and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is to experience a refreshment of the heart and soul not unlike the shared joy between the novellas principal characters when they slake their thirst with the cool water from the aforementioned desert well. It is a reminder to see the world through your heart and not just your eyes, to embrace ephemerality to understand the intense beauty that can be found in impermanence, to measure life by what matters to you in order to create meaning, and, most importantly, to hold on to the childlike sense of astonishment and innocence even as the road to adulthood threatens to erode it. There is a deceptive simplicity conjoining a vastness of layered themes and lessons and while The Little Prince is a quick read, it is one with power to last a lifetime as I suspect all of us who have encountered the book have our own Little Prince cozily nestled in our hearts. [image] The elegant accessibility makes this an incredible children’s classic yet the lessons are just as ripe for adult reading. I’d go so far as to say it is arguably more valuable for adults who hope to find Yeat’s magic in the everyday because, as we learn, ‘only the children know what they are looking for,’ and Saint-Exupéry’s whimsical adventure lights the lamp of our inner childhood and reminds us to cultivate and keep the flame alive. And so this tale of two adventurers lost a long way from home in the Sahara desert transcends its themes of loneliness, overcoming adversity, and searching for meaning to become, like the titular Prince himself, a literary companion to show us the magic of life revealed only to those who look with their heart. But, dear reader, is the spirit of childhood still alive within you? ‘Well, I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies.’ As I began The Little Prince I wondered if the child self who first read it many years ago would still recognize me. Would they even like me? Would they bristle that, despite having loved this story, I grew up anyways? Or would they understand that the childhood caverns of wonderment and aspirations that towered like mountains have dissolved into the drabness of dry logic, labor, math, and money of the adult world. ‘it is such a mysterious place, the land of tears’ Saint-Exupéry writes and what better name for the landscape of adulthood and overgrowth of responsibilities and sorrows. Like the narrator says ‘Perhaps I am a little like the grown-ups. I have had to grow old.’ The test is, as adult readers, if we open our hearts to gaze at the world will we still see the child inside us? Truthfully the narrator’s opening monologue disparaging his time with adults rang true in my heart and I too bemoan the loss of imagination that is shed along with the loss of innocence: ‘In the course of this life I have had a great many encounters with a great many people who have been concerned with matters of consequence. I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn't much improved my opinion of them.’ I suppose the ending becomes a sort of litmus test, do we interpret it as the cold, somber logic of adulthood as a euphemism masking a loss or, in the spirit of childhood glee, do we accept the magical answer? If we don’t, do we wonder why readily accepted the Little Prince tending to his star and anthropomorphic flower yet draw the line at possible death? [image] As far as the cold logic of adulthood goes, I’ve long been fascinated by Saint-Exupéry’s life and the real-world inspirations behind this novel. Even ordinary reality can blossom into a bloom of imagination if we look with our hearts, and Saint-Exupéry certainly understood his own assignment. The narrator’s ordeal in the Sahara is not unlike Saint-Exupéry’s experience in 1935 when he and co-pilot André Prévot crashed in the Sahara while attempting to break the speed record for a Paris-to-Saigon flight during an air race. The pair survived extreme thirst and hallucinations, events he would detail in his 1939 book Wind, Sand and Stars. [image] Saint-Exupéry next to his downed plane in the Sahara Some of the biggest lessons in the novel also come from those close to Saint-Exupéry, such as the theory that the novella’s oft quoted line about seeing with the heart came from his close friend, Silvia Hamilton Reinhardt, who was also the model for the fox. The Prince’s words about his body being merely a shell was inspired by the dying word’s of Saint-Exupéry’s brother François who reassured Antoine saying “Don't worry. I'm all right. I can't help it. It's my body." His own wife, Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry also comes alive in the novel through his imagination as the inspiration for the Prince’s rose, who essentially sets the novel in motion when the Prince is so irked by her that he sets off exploring. Yet the biggest parallel between life and novel is one the author could not have predicted as, like the Prince vanishing without a trace, Saint-Exupéry disappeared during a reconnaissance flight in 1944. The wreckage of his plane was not located for 56 years but his body has never been found and there is still no answers to how the crash occurred. ‘The thing that is important is the thing that is not seen.’ In the spirit of meaning being something beyond the scope of mere vision, The Little Prince is teeming with sharp symbolism. My adult mind was able to decode these in ways I hadn’t as a youth, yet in the vast imagination of childhood nothing was missed when accepting them at their whimsical face value. The Baobab trees which plague the Prince and become his daily chore in order for them to not grow too large and choke off his planet are often interpreted by critics as a metaphor for fascism growing across Europe and suddenly becoming too big a problem before anyone realized. The trees, however, can certainly be read in a more general level of vices or obsessions that can grow into problems if left unchecked, such as the drunkard’s alcoholism (one of my favorite parts of the story is the drunkard saying he is drinking to forget that he is a drinker) or the business man’s obsession with counting stars. Though most endearing is the symbolism of the well, something that is valued less for it’s life-saving water and more because of the bonding moment between the narrator and the Prince, laughing together as they quench their thirst. ‘It is much more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself rightly, then you are indeed a man of true wisdom.’ Loneliness permeates the novel, which arrives in rather soft, melancholy tones in contrast to the bright imaginative qualities of the story. Each planet the Prince visits is inhabited by a single being who are engaged in more “grown up” tasks, some so caught up they are unaware of their own loneliness. While my favorite of them is the lamplighter, there is a lot to read into from each of these characters such as the critique of unbridled capitalism we see in the businessman where his striving for wealth appears as comically illogical, or the geographer who disregards the ephemeral and pains the Prince by thereby disregarding his rose. With each we see the dilemmas of adulthood that ‘no one is ever satisfied where he is.’ [image] The rose is a central figure to the novel, at first a nuisance but then an image of the beloved for the Prince who realizes that ‘I was too young to know how to love her,’ in the early stages of the novel but comes to realize her value. The tragedy in life is how often it is we don’t realize the value of what we had until we are far away down the road of life. ‘One runs the risk of weeping a little, if one lets himself be tamed.’ At the story’s outset, the Prince is in search of truth. Much like many of us are. Yet as his adventure progresses he realizes that truth is not as important as what is ‘essential,’ and, as he learns from the fox ‘what is essential is invisible to the eye.’ The lies told by the rose bother him, yet eventually he comes to understand that the lies—or lack of truth—aren’t what truly matters but that the time he spent with her has made her matter to him. ‘It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.’ This is the real heart of the novel and it approaches existential musing as the Prince’s travels and learning to live outside his comfort zone and experience new things teaches him that we create meaning by discovering what matters to us. The Prince is justified in caring for the Rose and spending time on her because she matters and therefore is meaningful. ‘But you mustn’t forget it. You become responsible forever for what you’ve tamed. You’re responsible for your rose.’ The Prince learns this is how relationships are formed, which the Fox refers to as being ‘tamed,’ and it threads lives together through mutual care. Throughout reading the book one could argue our familiarity with the Prince has mutually tamed one another, which only adds further emotional weight to the ending as absence of those we love bring sorrow. But that bond changes us, changes how we engage with the world, and allows us to witness existence through our hearts and not just our eyes. We see life through imagination and possibility. ‘A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.’ Through our eyes we just see stars twinkling in the sky. But to the narrator, tamed by the Prince, through his heart he hears the stars laughing. And we, too, can share in this joy if we choose to see with our hearts. [image] ‘The proof that the little prince existed is that he was charming, that he laughed, and that he was looking for a sheep. If anybody wants a sheep, that is a proof that he exists.’ We, too, can see the magic in the mundane and find meaning in what matters to us if we open our hearts to the lessons of The Little Prince. We may have grown up, or are still in the process of doing so, but by keeping the Prince in our heart we keep the joy of childish wonder alive. And if on a clear night we gaze up at the stars we too may hear the pleasant laugh of the Prince shining down upon us. If there is such a thing as a perfect book, this is certainly one of them. 5/5 [image] ‘I wonder,” he said, “whether the stars are set alight in heaven so that one day each one of us may find his own again…’ ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 18, 2025
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Jun 18, 2025
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Jun 18, 2025
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Hardcover
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B0DTQPCN3J
| 4.22
| 256,541
| Oct 24, 1929
| Dec 27, 1989
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really liked it
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‘A woman,’ wrote Virginia Woolf, ‘must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.’ This line from Woolf’s 1929 A Room of One’s Own h
‘A woman,’ wrote Virginia Woolf, ‘must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.’ This line from Woolf’s 1929 A Room of One’s Own has become a canonical statement in the history of feminist thought in a text much celebrated and debated, heralded as an important precursor to second-wave feminist theory and critiqued for it’s adherence to patriarchally controlled materialism and white-centric assumptions. Woolf boldly restructured the landscape of English literature of her time and A Room of One’s Own is one of her many groundbreaking works that, while still a product of its time that may lack the nuance and inclusivity of more modern standards of feminist theory, was a landmark work in progressively pushing thought towards that direction. A rhetorical masterpiece that delivers essay through a fictional framework told by “Mary”—a composite character of allusions that emphasizes the suffering and subjugation of women under patriarchal society such as the ballad Mary Hamilton—Woolf addresses the gatekeeping of women’s work and the lineage of neglect and dismissal of women’s interiority. She observes the refusal to allow women free expression, stating that if a woman’s ideas ‘let its line down into the stream,’ men will find a way to block the idea and ensure the woman loses her line of thought. In this way patriarchal forces have refused an established women’s literary tradition that instead forces women to see themselves in fiction only through the interpretations of men and Woolf argues for financial and material freedoms in order to obtain intellectual freedom. Rife with insights and often quoted lines such as ‘I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman,’ Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own transcends itself as a historical document and continues to offer relevant insights, dazzle in its rhetorical brilliance, and inspire through its sharp critiques, dynamic metaphors, humor, and thought. ‘Have you any notion how many books are written about women in the course of one year? Have you any notion how many are written by men? Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in the universe?’ Composed from two lectures delivered by Woolf in October 1928 to Cambridge student societies, A Room of One’s Own remains a crucial chapter of Woolf’s overall oeuvre on literature and women’s agency or social mobility. ‘Women and fiction remain, so far as I am concerned, unsolved problems’ she writes and the short book has a power far beyond its page count in her attempts at wrestling with such problems. Sure there are many critiques which we can get into in a moment and many arguments over the ‘variety of versions of Woolf’s feminism,’ as Naomi Black writes in Virginia Woolf as Feminist, but, as Black arguees ‘in the end, categories have to be jettisoned for the project of mapping the feminism of a given writer or activist,’ and we can both grapple with Woolf’s piece as a progressive yet imperfect text of historical value along the long and winding road of feminist theory while also regarding the variety of thought from great minds who expanded upon, critiqued, and thereby elevated feminist theory to new heights with Woolf’s works as an important tool along the way. 'All this pitting of sex against sex, of quality against quality; all this claiming of superiority and imputing of inferiority, belong to the private-school stage of human existence where there are 'sides,' and it is necessary for one side to beat another side, and of the utmost importance to walk up to a platform and receive from the hands of the Headmaster himself a highly ornamental pot.' What stood out best to me is the way Woolf stood boldly for the importance of creating a space for women when, as her own book states, such attempts were rather forcefully dismissed and mocked by the domineering of men in society. Her diaries reveal an anxiety prior to publication that she would be ‘attacked for a feminist and hinted at for a sapphist,’ yet even if her work was imperfect, it was necessary to start opening a space for discussion to occur in order to allow others to work on perfecting. In this way we can see the room as a rather dynamic metaphor, both a literal statement of a woman being able to wrest the physical space of a room from the confines of men in order to create but also as a metaphorical space for women to be able to engage in free expression. ‘The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.’ The oppression of women and the silencing of their voices is a major element of this work. As Woolf observes, women were limited to seeing themselves through the writings of men, thus subjugating them to the prison of men’s imaginations, unable to be able to speak for themselves. And yet women were critical components of men’s fiction, ‘one might go even further and say that women have burn like beacons in all the works of all the poets from the beginning of time,’ Woolf writes, listing larger than life figures such as Antigone, Lady Macbeth, the Duchess of Malfi, Emma Bovary, Anna Karenina, and others as ‘the names flock to mind’ in this history of women written by men. She says how if women only existed in men’s fiction, we would assume them of ‘the utmost importance…as great as a man’ yet these are fictional women and in reality ‘she was locked up,,’ denied a voice, agency, and a space to put her words in history. ‘A very queer, composite being thus emerges. Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant. She pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history. She dominates the lives of kings and conquerors in fiction; in fact she was the slave of any boy whose parents forced a ring upon her finger. Some of the most inspired words, some of the most profound thoughts in literature fall from her lips; in real life she could hardly read, could scarcely spell, and was the property of her husband.’ Woolf points to the gatekeeping of women from education, property, public forum and more. ‘Lock up your libraries if you like,’ she famously wrote, ‘but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.’ We can see how Woolf assets that the patriarchal myth of men’s superiority requires the disillusionment and subjugation of women. In her statements on the criticism of Rebecca West, Woolf contends it was ‘merely the cry of wounded vanity; it was a protest against some infringement of his power to believe in himself.’ Which is delightfully cutting in a way only Woolf could bite with her pen and points to how reducing women to objects and property became a way for men to feel better about themselves. ‘Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size,’ she writes. It is a fear of losing dominance that exacerbates these behaviors. Fearing a threat to power, they refuse to admit to women’s place in history and even reject their ability to interiority. I quite enjoy Woolf’s ability to mock the men who try to deny or redirect from these behaviors, never afraid to call others out. Granted, Woolf had a financial and social status that gave her the privilege of being able to make these statements that was not afforded to many women, yet the critiques are sharp and necessary too. ‘Why does Samuel Butler say, 'Wise men never say what they think of women'? Wise men never say anything else apparently,’ she quips, pointing to how the attitudes of men playing the whole “I’m a nice guy, respect women” was just a facade to placate while refusing to attend to dismantling the social constructs and gatekeeping harming women. ‘Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others.’ Which brings us to ‘the room.’ Woolf sees it that women must have material conditions in order to write, in order to create, in order to be able to put their interior life into the world. Having a taste of these conditions, Woolf understands firsthand how they have granted her access to the literary community that has been denied others. This argument for financial independence is echoed in the works of French author and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, such as her statements made in another landmark work of second-wave feminism published 20 years later, The Second Sex: ‘As long as a perfect economic equality [between women and men] is not achieved in society and as long as the mores authorize a woman to take advantage as a wife or mistress of the privileges possessed by some men, the dream of a passive success will always persist and so will limit women's own accomplishments.’ In her essay on Woolf’s Room, professor Julie Robin Solomon argues that Woolf’s preoccupation with the ‘possession’ of the room and material goods finds her beholden to ‘ideological pressures’ of capitalists aspirations that upholds inequality due to the nature of capitalist ideology which is dogmatic to feminist needs in part due to the patriarchal choke-hold on governmental control and economics and thus ‘neutralize her feminist opposition to patriarchal social institutions.’ Similarly, Alice Walker—the first Black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in fiction—finds that the arguments on materialism neglect women denied any access to money or property. She writes about Phillis Wheatley, the first Black author to publish a book of poetry, in her critiques: ‘What then are we to make of Phillis Wheatley, a slave, who owned not even herself? This sickly, frail, Black girl who required a servant of her own at times—her health was so precarious—and who, had she been white, would have been easily considered the intellectual superior of all the women and most of the men in the society of her day.’ These are all fair points and de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex has been similarly criticized on the same grounds. Which I find to be optimistic that writers and thinkers use these works as springboards to reach for new progressive heights and inclusive theories. Woolf’s statements, while perhaps couched in capitalist aspirations as Solomon asserts, can be similarly regarded as an argument that the present state of capitalism is an ineffective and hostile system for women’s liberation or humane society in general. As de Beauvoir argues in a 1975 interview: ‘It’s vital, no matter how hard it is, to be financially independent, even if it costs them a lot and it will, since it will still be their job to keep house. But it’s a necessary condition for being independent on the inside: mentally, psychologically, independent. Otherwise, women are offered no alternative way of thinking, they’re forced to think like their husbands, to cater to his whims, do his bidding, etc.’ One could, and hopefully should, take this as a reminder that women’s liberation, Black liberation, or equity of any kind is all incompatible with the demands of inequality that upholds the ideology of capitalism and social justice and economic justice are inextricably linked. The economic conditions are part and parcel of patriarchy and racism. As writer and activist Angela Davis once said in an interview, ‘as long as we inhabit a capitalist democracy, a future of racial equality, gender equality, economic equality will elude us.’ So what to make of the room. In Modernism and the Architecture of Private Life, Victoria Rosner asserts Woolf dresses herself in the man’s study to usurp its authority for women, that ‘the secret instability in masculinity’s fortress’ defines an insecurity in masculinity where Woolf wants to ‘trouble’ gender in the Judith Butler sense of gender politics. Woolf is ‘exposing’ the ‘naturalness’ of a man in his private work space as myth and upsetting the patriarchy by ‘occupying the masculine study.’ It relates to the ideas of androgyny that Woolf presents in order to detach symbols from the false and socially-couched binaries of gender. Toril Moi argues in her book Sexual/Textual Politics that this was ‘‘a recognition of the falsifying metaphysical nature’ of gender identities and would serve as a precursor for deconstructive theories from writers like Hélène Cixous or Julia Kristeva. ‘[Woolf] understood that the goal of feminist struggle must be precisely to deconstruct the death-dealing binary oppositions of masculinity and femininity.’ This has sparked plenty of debate as well, from Nancy Topping Bazin criticizing Woolf’s ambiguity in defining androgyny (though Bazin’s statements that masculinity and femininity should not be fused is an erasure of gender fluidity and non-binary persons such as myself) and Marilyn Farwell arguing that ‘the universal is most often identified with whatever is male, this definition can be and has been another means for demanding that a woman write like a man,’ and the ambiguity of androgyny in Woolf’s Room is subverting gender in order to bypass this demand while also a calculated maneuver to shrug off men who would dismiss her argument by blatantly denying any feminist ideas could hold weight in a patriarchal world. Alternatively, feminist literary critic Elaine Showalter argues Woolf ‘was advocating a strategic retreat, and not a victory; a denial of feeling, and not a mastery of it,’ while failing to interrogate capitalist functions of possession. Woolf, however, has argued elsewhere against the room as retreat, criticizing James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man for its ‘sense of being in a bright yet narrow room, confined and shut in, rather than enlarged and set free.’ For Woolf, a room should not be an isolation from ‘life itself,’ as the narrowness of rooms is a barrier against being able to ‘find the right relationship between yourself that you know and the world outside.’ Critiques of the contradictory nature of the text are warranted, yet the room seems to function as a dynamic metaphor that can have a sense in all the various interpretations and simultaneously distance itself from them. What matters is the act of creating a tradition/space of women’s literature and acknowledging that it does not exist in a vacuum, something termed “Virginia’s Web” in literary criticism: ‘fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible; Shakespeare’s plays, for instance, seem to hang there complete by themselves. But when the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun in mid-air by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in.’ While this is a metaphor for how ‘intellectual freedom’ mind be dependant ‘upon material things,’ I think it also functions as a reminder that nothing exists completely independent and we must interrogate all avenues of social forces in order to better understand them, ourselves, our art, and our world. ‘For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.’ Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own is a magnificent landmark of literary criticism, social critiques, feminist thought and writing in general that has lasted for a century in print. It strikes at the heart of patriarchy and the myth of men’s superiority and has been frequently discussed and debated since the day it came to print. ‘Why, if it was an illusion,’ Woolf writes, ‘not praise the catastrophe, whatever it was, that destroyed illusion and put truth in it's place?’ This work was an earthquake to the establishment and continues to inspire readers and is just another reason why I’ve long loved Virginia Woolf despite her flaws and even have her tattooed on my arm. A quick book that will last in the mind long after you finish it, and never trust a male presenting person who dismisses it or calls it tiresome or trite as they are exactly who she is aiming this at. 4.5/5 ‘By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream.’ ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 10, 2025
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Apr 13, 2025
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Apr 10, 2025
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Paperback
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006322108X
| 9780063221086
| 006322108X
| 4.26
| 340,787
| Jun 07, 1926
| Dec 28, 2021
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really liked it
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Dead bodies, betrayal, blackmail, and the biggest reveal to rock the crime novel world of the 1920s, Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is
Dead bodies, betrayal, blackmail, and the biggest reveal to rock the crime novel world of the 1920s, Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is as stone cold a classic as the titular character’s corpse is stone cold dead. In the study, go figure. This was also Christie’s fourth novel to feature the great eccentric detective: the one, the only Hercule Poiroit and his mustache of justice as he works his ‘little grey cells’ to figure out just whodunnit. If you are to only read one Christie, this is a fine choice and offers a twist that had fans either fanning themselves in shock or hissing with rage like a pissed off cat for not “playing fair.” Whatever your reaction, this is a fun little mystery that weaponizes the readers empathy against them as the clues fall in and out of focus and you’re working your own little grey cells while crossing people off your handy-dandy Clue spreadsheet. ‘This is Agatha Christie’s masterpiece,’ writes Louise Penny in the introduction, ‘if she never wrote another word, she’d still have gone down as the Queen.’ High praise coming from a writer who is easily one of the biggest names in modern crime fiction but I can’t say she’s wrong. A riproaring thrill of a mystery as chock full of suspense as it is red herrings and mischievous misdirection, I had a blast with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and I hope you will too. ‘The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it.’ Okay, fine, NO I did not guess the killer (I was thinking the maid). Sure, I had a modicum of suspicions at one point but I thought “surely not.” Surely, I was wrong, but that’s why I’m writing a book review and not donning a dapper-ass stache and solving murders while being a portly and petty little genius like my man Poirot. He got it right, and the crime novel world was never the same.Often considered one of the greatest works of crime fiction, the public reception of Christie’s Roger Ackroyd wasn’t quite as filled with adoration at the time of publication, being ‘both lauded and hated,’ Louise Penny tells us, ‘with some critics decrying the fact that she’d broken a cardinal rule and committed a literary sin.’ Rest assured, I won’t spoil the ending or reveal her technique here, but it was a rather daring and groundbreaking gambit for 1926. It also leaves the reader eager for a reread, perhaps the moment you finish it because the final pages recontextualizes everything you thought you knew. ‘What might initially seem like an innocuous moment becomes thrilling once we know the twist,’ Penny says, which, in a time before we could get sucked into sitcom reruns or play our favorite film on repeat, having a book that encouraged a reread that would offer quite a fresh experience from the same pages was quite a gift of entertainment and buyers bargain. ‘Everything is simple, if you arrange the facts methodically…’ It’s also a ploy that mystery authors would try to reinvent over and over again and in the aftermath of the surprise I couldn’t help but think on Benjamin Stevenson’s books making playful use of Ronald Knox’s 10 Commandments of Detective Fiction to subvert them. Critics of Roger Ackroyd cried foul that Christie broke two of the rules of “fair play” and in 1945 Edmund Wilson published an essay against crime fiction at large titling it Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? and stating ‘[Christie’s] writing is of a mawkishness and banality which seem to me literally impossible to read.’ Did we read the same book, Wilson, because I found this a breeze to read and sailed through it in two sittings (we did, he’s just a grumpyass goose). I suppose an enjoyment of the novel may hinge on ideas of “fairness,” but as far as rules go, and Knox’s in particular, crime author P.D. James gives nary a shit. In her book Talking About Detective Fiction James writes ‘rules and restrictions do not produce original, or good, literature, and the rules were not strictly adhered to.’ Honestly, rules or not, just give me a good book. Christie said sure, here you go while tromping merrily over the rules. Good for her. ‘Fortunately words, ingeniously used, will serve to mask the ugliness of naked facts.’ Christie gives us a wonderful cast of characters to decide who might be down for some murder, though perhaps my favorite is Caroline Sheppard, the sister of Doctor Sheppard of whom he marvels for her ability to know all the gossip ahead of everyone else without ever leaving home. I do love a good gossip. Christie throws misdirection everywhere at us until you might start to think everyone from the maid to Charles Kent’s goose quill heroin snorter is the killer. It makes for a fun puzzle and has some rather clever use of 1920s technology that all wraps up in the shocking end. And perhaps there are more bodies to come… ‘Every new development that arises is like a shake you give to a kaleidoscope - the thing changes entirely in aspect.’ Get down with some good old fashion murder mystery-ing with The Death of Roger Ackroyd where you not only get to decide who you think the killer is but also if you think the ending is fairplay or some “mawkishness” as Edmund Wilson did. It is a fun ride that does have some rather unfortunate rampant misogyny (looking at you, Dr. Sheppard) and aspects that haven’t aged the best in 100 years, but its also a marvel that 100 years later this novel is still talked about and beloved. A delightful story of death, deception, and the detective who pieced it all together. 4/5 ...more |
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To enter the novels of Narnia is not unlike taking the first few steps through the titular wardrobe itself. As a good fantasy ought, it pulls you from
To enter the novels of Narnia is not unlike taking the first few steps through the titular wardrobe itself. As a good fantasy ought, it pulls you from the world around you into a new realm of possibility, or magic and mystery, of epic quests filled with fierce battles and friendships that withstand even the darkest of hours to keep hope burning bright. Over the years I’ve returned to C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe having read it myself as a child and then again to my own children when they reached an age to follow along. Each time I find the journey to be just as magical, yet increasingly more joyful as I can bring a new young reader into the world for their first time and experience the magic with them. I can remember many days of reenacting scenes from Narnia with my oldest in our apartment living room when she was 6 and we even went for Halloween as Lucy and Mr. Tumnus. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is a delightful story to kick off a rather delightful series that isn’t without issues but never fails to bring a smile to my face. How can you not love beavers dispensing whiskey to kids to get them to sleep or a Santa passing out weapons, and for a story of good and evil the series does a fairly nuanced look with morally grey elements. A tale of good and evil, warfare, betrayal and redemption, bravery and hope, and a tale that has lasted for generations. [image] First published in 1950, Lewis wrote The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe for his granddaughter, Lucy Barfield, and dedicated the novel to her. Her namesake becomes one of the great fantasy characters, a young, kind, and brave girl who is ‘a good leader’ at a time when most fantasy leads were still boys. For the uninitiated, this first story takes the four Pevensie siblings—Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy in descending age order—out from under the bombs of the London Blitz into a magical world where The White Witch rules with a ruthless and violent grip on the talking animals and spirits who live there. A world where it is ‘always winter and never christmas,’ but the arrival of these ‘Daughters of Eve’ and ‘Sons of Adam’ may be the spark to light the fire of revolt and liberate Narnia. If they don’t get caught by the witch first… The first in the series, it isn’t necessarily Lewis’ strongest writing and at times it may feel a bit dry for children (at least in the modern day) whereas the style feels more fluid in later books. Still, it is magical, fun and full of unforgettable characters like Aslan, a Father Christmas who hands out weapons, and my personal favorite, Mr. Tumnus, who was Lewis’ initial idea for the tale all the way back when he was 16 with ‘a picture in my mind — of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood.’ The infamous lamppost, the symbol of light that connects the two worlds, also preceded the novel with Lewis walking home from Malvern pub one snowy night with fellow ‘Inklings’ J.R.R. Tolkien and George Sayer, commenting that the imagery of the lampposts aglow in the snow would be perfect in a novel. It is also rumored to have been in response to Tolkien’s insistence that a lamppost was not suitable for a fantasy novel. While this may be just a rumor, Tolkien did write something similar about electric lights in his essay On Fairy Stories : ‘The electric street-lamp may indeed be ignored, simply because it is so insignificant and transient. Fairy-stories, at any rate, have many more permanent and fundamental things to talk about. Lightning, for example. The escapist is not so subservient to the whims of evanescent fashion as these opponents. He does not make things (which it may be quite rational to regard as bad) his masters or his gods by worshipping them as inevitable, even “inexorable.” And his opponents, so easily contemptuous, have no guarantee that he will stop there: he might rouse men to pull down the street-lamps.’ Given the competitive nature between the two (and the Inklings at large) I’ll choose to believe Lewis put this in just for the dig. It’s more fun that way. ‘The whole story, paradoxically enough, strengthens our relish for real life. This excursion into the preposterous sends us back with renewed pleasure to the actual.’ —Lewis, On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature Fantasy is often thought of as escapism, yet Lewis takes the children from his tale from one war into another. They escape the bombings to a quiet home in the country but quickly find themselves running from the White Witch in Narnia and doing battle with great beasts. There is a sense of Lewis demonstrating that war is inescapable and hardships follow us wherever we go, but there is also an impression that we cannot try to avoid evil and must confront it. In Narnia the children are able to be the heroes, to stand up to evil in a way they could not against the Nazi bombs falling upon their city, and it is empowering. ‘Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist,’ G.K. Chesterton once wrote, ‘Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.’ And in Narnia, children learn that evil can be conquered, wrongs can be righted, and redemption can be had. ‘All shall be done, but it may be harder than you think.’ I’ve always loved the character Edmund, such a shit in the first book but later one of the best characters (Eustace follows a similar trajectory later on). He initially sells out his siblings to the White Witch for a taste of Turkish Delight—a food that was made with sugar which would have been hard to come by under WWII rationing and also would remind him of good times. I enjoy how it is in keeping with Fairy Tale tropes that eating food within the fairy tale is always a bad idea and we see the Turkish Delights become a symbol of temptation. But, with the love of family that is willing to take him back, Edmund is able to find his redemption. ‘We have nothing if not belief.’ There is a very moral message underpinning much of this novel and many are quick to point to it as a Christian parable. One can read it this way, of course, or enjoy the surface fantasy, and I think both are held fairly well in his text. In An Experiment in Criticism, Lewis writes: ‘We sit down before [a] picture in order to have something done to us, not that we may do things with it. The first demand any work of any art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way.’ Lewis argues for approaching a book by allowing it to consume us and wash over us, not to approach it with the intent to pick it apart on the first go and I think this is also the best approach to a first read of Narnia. But one cannot escape the Christian stories going on either. Aslan as a symbol for Jesus and the resurrection for instance. But in his article Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s to Be Said, which appeared in the New York Times in 1956, Lewis states that the story is itself just some images that made a fun story and were never written with the total intend to be a “Christian fairy tale”: ‘Some people seem to think that I began by asking myself how I could say something about Christianity to children; then fixed on the fairy tale as an instrument; then collected information about child-psychology and decided what age-group I’d write for; then drew up a list of basic Christian truths and hammered out “allegories” to embody them. This is all pure moonshine. I couldn’t write in that way at all. Everything began with images; a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a magnificent lion. At first there wasn’t even anything Christian about them; that element pushed itself in of its own accord.’ Of course, later on Lewis would write in a letter to a friend a much more Christian focused idea of creating Aslan: ‘[Aslan] is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question, ‘What might Christ become like if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?’”’ The idea of Aslan as a Christian symbol for God is quite clear in later novels too. Lewis does have a religiousness but even if religious stories aren’t your thing this story is still just as fun. I also greatly appreciate the effort towards a moral greatness where characters can be flawed but still not bad. It’s quite refreshing. ‘People who have not been in Narnia sometimes think that a thing cannot be good and terrible at the same time.’ Okay, sure there is an element where Lewis gets criticism for some not great moments around women. Lucy is assured her bravery isn’t questioned when told to stay out of battles but that battles get ugly when women are involved. Which, okay??? What? Sure, battles are pretty ugly when men are involved too. And there’s some pretty old timey “my damn wife” style of humor around the beaver couple which didn’t age great, so be advised. Yet on the whole it’s pretty fun still. I have long loved The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and I am thrilled to find that I enjoy it again and again with repeat readings. While not the strongest in the series, it makes for a good start and plenty of good fun. Especially when you share it with others. 4/5 ...more |
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1419776754
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really liked it
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Welcome to Hell! [image] Take a tour through eternal torment with Virgil as your guide in this gorgeously ghoulish graphic adaptation of Dante’s Inf Welcome to Hell! [image] Take a tour through eternal torment with Virgil as your guide in this gorgeously ghoulish graphic adaptation of Dante’s Inferno from French artist duo and former Disney animators Paul and Gaëtan Brizzi. This artist team that previously worked for Disney on projects such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Fantasia 2000, TailSpin, and—most importantly—the coming-of-age classic so very beloved by little kid me, A Goofy Movie, are here to dive into the pits of the damned with some of the most eye-popping artwork you’ll see all year. All adaptations will inevitably take some liberties with the original work but for a visual journey with Virgil I daresay you can’t do better than this and it is a treat for both Dante fans and newcomers alike. Brace yourself, steel fast your courage and faith and if the stairs are tricky you can get Antaeus to lower you down but, by foot or by claw, let us descend… [image] I may never shut up about how the people that brought us A Goofy Movie have just delivered such a hauntingly stupendous visual tour of hell. No shade to Sandro Botticelli who provided the OG illuminated manuscript artwork of Inferno but this is so devilishly delightful in its pencil art rendering. Just take a look at this: [image] First, this lighthouse is exceptionally phallic and I applaud them. Having spent my college years hanging out on a balcony looking directly at the extraordinarily phallic Ypsilanti, Mi watertower I have to say that I find the Holland, Mi lighthouse that I live near now to be rather disappointing. Sure, there is a snowglobe of the lighthouse in the film Coraline but if you are a lighthouse named Big Red and are in no way phallic, whats the point. Here's a handy guide: [image] But anyways, I love how lonesome yet haunting the artwork in this is, with a visual feeling of a panicked scream suppressed. It also occasionally reminds me of the artwork of Giovanni Battista Piranesi. This is certainly a feast for the eyes and each landscape hits hard: [image] Speaking of hitting hard, the hardships and horrors of Inferno come across so well in this visual format and this would make a great companion piece for anyone reading the original tale (teacher gift idea hint hint). And you know what else hits hard? Virgil and the angels: [image] Because sometimes you gotta deliver an ass kicking to the beasts [image] This is such a visual extravaganza that brings you through the city of Dis—‘the great city of pain’—down into the trenches of Malebolge which ‘were a hell within Hell,’ and further still as all sorts of mythical beasts and kings and demons and damnation greet our travellers on the way to find Beatrice. There are far less call-outs to the specific individuals than the novel though a few such as Epicurous or the guy who came up with the Tower of Babel get a spotlight from our often rather jocular Virgil as Dante tries to not lose faith amidst all the sights of torment and toil. [image] Fans of the original novel or those curious to check out the classic tale with fresh life breathed into it, the Brizzis’ graphic novel adaptation is a true treat. While it does make the story a bit light, it is such a visual masterpiece you'll hardly care. I love this art so much and this was a fun and wild ride. 4.5/5 [image] ...more |
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1849946949
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| 1849946949
| 4.09
| 16,449
| 1862
| Nov 11, 2021
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really liked it
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We’ve all heard the tales of the siren’s song leading men to their watery graves in pursuit of the mysterious attractive women, but what strange beast
We’ve all heard the tales of the siren’s song leading men to their watery graves in pursuit of the mysterious attractive women, but what strange beast would lure a woman in such a fashion. For Christina Rossetti it would be *checks notes* little goblins selling fruit. So begins her epic poem, Goblin Market, from 1862 in which Rossetti weaves a tapestry of poetry to dissect the Victorian culture around women as a sort of fairy tale that could enchant both children and adults about two sisters who either answer or avoid the goblins call . The poem hones in on the idea of the “fallen” woman with a metaphorical context of sexual temptation leading to one of the two sisters besieged by death for her transgressions while also subverting the general attitudes of the time with her approach to salvation and sacrifice. A rather bold poem for its time with a unique flair of moralizing, Goblin Market is often considered the most famous of works from poet Christina Rossetti and still stands as a fascinating and poetically pleasing read to this day. But beware if some frumpy little men start to sing… ‘Morning and evening Maids heard the goblins cry: 'Come buy our orchard fruits, Come buy, come buy’ Having recently read Toward Eternity by Anton Hur in which Rossetti’s work and this poem are integral to the story, I had to finally give it a read. I was pleased to find this rather lovely edition featuring illustrations by Georgie McAusland which really added to the reading like some sort of awesome illuminated manuscript. Check it out: [image] While Rossetti has initial success with her novella, she had difficulty with her works of poetry in larger publications. ‘Poetry is with me, not a mechanism, but an impulse and a reality,’ she wrote in a letter in 1854, ‘I know my aims in writing to be pure, and directed to that which is true and right.’ Still Goblin Market was initially rejected by critic John Ruskin, being deemed ‘so full of quaintnesses and offenses’ and advised she ‘should exercise herself in the severest commonplace of metre until she can write as the public like.’ Needless to say he did not pass it along for publication, though when it came out in 1862 it became an instant success. She considered it a children’s poem, though dark as it is, but also found childhood to be a very intense period of experience and that the poem matched such an era of life. Like fairy tales for children, Goblin Market does have a great deal of moral messaging and shows self-sacrifice as a virtue to highlight the bond between sisters which, for its time, was rather unique to exclude men beyond periphery threats to the well-being of women. ‘For there is no friend like a sister In calm or stormy weather; To cheer one on the tedious way, To fetch one if one goes astray, To lift one if one totters down, To strengthen whilst one stands.’ Rossetti’s defense of the idea of the “fallen woman” as shown in the poem was part of her life outside literature as well. In 1859, Rossetti began volunteering at St. Mary Magdalene Penitentiary in Highgate, a church penitentiary with the aims of rehabilitation for women that have been sent away for alcoholism, sex work, or for being unhoused. Many of her works from this period focus on the idea of the “fallen woman,” though Goblin Market is the most notable. In this story of sisters Lizzie and Laura, the goblins serve as a symbol of sexual temptation from which Laura suffers for giving in to eating the forbidden fruit despite Lizzie’s warnings. ‘Their offers should not charm us, / Their evil gifts would harm us,’ she tells her, and speaks of a woman in the past who met her end from eating such fruits. Rossetti had strong christian beliefs with religious devotion being central to many of her works, which offers a plausible interpretation of the goblin fruit as a parallel to the forbidden fruit from the Garden of Eden. Lizzie as the savior through self-sacrifice offers an interpretation as a Christ figure, with a woman as Christ being rather unique for the time. 'Lizzie, Lizzie, have you tasted For my sake the fruit forbidden? Must your light like mine be hidden, Your young life like mine be wasted, Undone in mine undoing, And ruined in my ruin' It was her depiction of women in society that really made this work stand out for its time, particularly exposing the double standards against men and women and offering salvation for Laura. While the women wither away once they eat the forbidden fruit, it should be noted that the men (the goblins) are not judged nor face any consequences for actions. Lizzie’s act, however, is able to restore Laura, offering a hope that rehabilitation is possible and that the strength of women to uplift each other can overpower the patriarchal oppressions society imposes on them. [image] A long poem, yet still a fairly quick and engaging read, Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market remains a classic work. It has been interesting to see it alluded to or thematically relevant in several works I’ve read, most notably Seanan McGuire’s In an Absent Dream—the fourth in her Wayward Children series—in which a goblin market heavily based on Rossetti’s becomes the fantastical setting with extreme consequences from those who falter from their moral codes. I especially loved the illustrations in this edition and have quite enjoyed the experience. 4.5/5 ...more |
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144947960X
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| 4.34
| 17,162
| Oct 24, 2017
| Oct 24, 2017
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really liked it
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[image]
Having recently absolutely ADORED L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables I was quite excited to finally check out this graphic novel adapta [image] Having recently absolutely ADORED L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables I was quite excited to finally check out this graphic novel adaptation of the classic work. Adapted by Mariah Marsden with lush and boldly colored illustration by Brenna Thummler, this is an excellent graphic novel that rekindled all my love for the story of Anne and the goings on of Avonlea. For those interested in thoughts on the narrative itself, I’ve written about it extensively here and I’d like to take a moment just to reflect on this adaptation. It does a fantastic job of using bright visuals to convey the story and manages to stay relatively faithful to Montgomery’s vision. All your favorite moments are here and the characters feel just as alive in this illustrated version as they did in the story. Plus there is some gorgeous artwork to look at, particularly the landscapes: [image] Brenna Thummler excels at color selection and texture to the artwork and I really enjoy the style. Save one thing. I’m sorry but WHY DOES ANNE LOOK LIKE A ROBOT WITH GLOWING GREEN EYES!? [image] This story takes one of the most pure and charming and lovable characters in all of literary history and makes her look sort of terrifying and plausibly evil. [image] Why you lumbering like the Iron Giant, Anne? Also why are your eyes always glowing in tiny green robot eye circles? [image] I kept being afraid this was going to turn into a sci fi thriller like so: [image] ANNE! DEACTIVATE! What would Marilla say about that!? Okay but jokes (and those eyes) aside this is really lovely and I do quite like the art. Except for this frame too, which there is nothing wrong with I just read What Moves the Dead and now rabbits staring at you is pretty menacing. [image] Fans of the novel or those who would like to experience the story for the first time are sure to love this graphic novel. It gets the tenderness and warmth that is the heart to the tale across quite effectively and makes for a lovely little read. Just watch out for those eyes…. 4.5/5 [image] ...more |
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it was amazing
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I often think of the best short stories as being perfectly fine tuned machines. Like in old cartoons where the watchmaker opens the back of some golde
I often think of the best short stories as being perfectly fine tuned machines. Like in old cartoons where the watchmaker opens the back of some golden timepiece that counts the heartbeats of life with impeccable precision to reveal the intricate innards of gears that must be adjusted to nearly impossible standards, the best classic stories make every word count, every word ricochet off each other towards an amalgamated effect of themes and ideas that make the small collections of words resonate far beyond the sum of their parts. And, like a cartoon watch, accurately assess the heartbeats of life. Katherine Mansfield’s The Garden Party is such a story. Based on her own extravagant childhood home in Wellington, New Zealand, The Garden Party juxtaposes the frivolities and festivities of wealthy society with the harsh realism of death and destitution as symbolized in the poorer families living just outside the Sheridan’s garden gates. With a bold examination of class consciousness and a sharp critique of upper class snobbishness where their extravagant gates secure them from needing to feel empathy as much as securing their property, The Garden Party is an extraordinary piece that brilliantly balances the darkness and light of life into its tiny package of prose. Having recently finished Ali Smith’s Spring in which Katherine Mansfield figures prominently, with Smith having also provided an introduction to her collected stories, I was eager to give Mansfield a read. I’d long been fascinated by her tumultuous friendship and rivalry with Virginia Woolf and while Woolf may have said Mansfield ‘stinks like a civet cat that had taken to street walking,’ she also admitted ‘I was jealous of her writing. The only writing I have ever been jealous of.’ As we plunge into the warm, idyllic days of summer, what better story to try than one which begins ‘And after all the weather was ideal.’ This is a powerhouse of a short story that lulls you into its depiction of warm, slow joy amidst the happy anticipation of a garden party before it abruptly bashes you into a wall of death and the cold insensitivity of the wealthy for the lower classes. The story places us alongside Laura as she navigates the day, from her empathy and idolization of the working class aiding in the set-up of the party to her confronting her own family about the crassness of holding a party so near a grieving family and later visiting the house containing the dead man to offer sweets and condolences. The latter section reminded me a bit of Louisa May Alcott's classic novel Little Women with the sisters sharing their Christmas meal with the impoverished family down the road, which is likely an inspiration for Mansfield as the other Sheridan siblings, Jose, Meg and Laurie, share names with Alcott’s characters. ‘If you're going to stop a band playing every time some one has an accident, you'll lead a very strenuous life.’ There is a sharp juxtaposition between classes present here, though Mansfield does well to remind us that distinctions are merely constructs enforced in order to oppress and depress those who do not hold power in order to retain control of it. While the happenings around the party are a celebration of beauty and life, we see how death is always creeping in and the two cannot be truly separated. Mr. Scott dies just outside the gate when thrown from a horse, but even the gate cannot keep the inevitably of death away, such as how, when singing a song to focus on how beautiful her voice is, Jose sings about death with lines like ‘this life is weary, hope comes to die’ which serve almost as foreshadowing. But best is the description of the wealthy cottages with the poorer homes, existing practically right on top of one another yet depicted as such opposites: ‘True, they were far too near. They were the greatest possible eyesore, and they had no right to be in that neighbourhood at all. They were little mean dwellings painted a chocolate brown. In the garden patches there was nothing but cabbage stalks, sick hens and tomato cans. The very smoke coming out of their chimneys was poverty-stricken. Little rags and shreds of smoke, so unlike the great silvery plumes that uncurled from the Sheridans' chimneys. Washerwomen lived in the lane and sweeps and a cobbler, and a man whose house-front was studded all over with minute bird-cages. Children swarmed. When the Sheridans were little they were forbidden to set foot there because of the revolting language and of what they might catch. But since they were grown up, Laura and Laurie on their prowls sometimes walked through. It was disgusting and sordid. They came out with a shudder. But still one must go everywhere; one must see everything. So through they went.’ The descriptions have you looking down your nose at them, so couched in the perspective of the Sheridan’s and their contemporaries. The juxtaposition is in everything, from the lushness and light of the garden party to the poorer homes always described in terms of darkness. While the Sheridan house is a world with trees ‘lifting their leaves and fruits to the sun in a kind of silent splendour,’ amidst ideal weather ‘without a cloud,’ the people at the Scott household are ‘a dark knot of people’ curling into a ‘gloomy passage’ or crowding a ‘wretched little low kitchen, lighted by a smoky lamp.’ Laura’s journey from the glow of the garden to the darkness of the Scott household seems like a journey into the underworld to see death firsthand and bestows an epic sense not unlike the Greek myths into the narrative. ‘People like that don't expect sacrifices from us,’ Mrs. Sheridan scoffs at Laura’s insistence their festivities are vulgar in light of Mr. Scott’s death, ‘and it's not very sympathetic to spoil everybody's enjoyment as you're doing now.’ Which is really the crux of this story–the working class must sacrifice everything to uphold the world of the rich but the rich will not lift a finger for them. To them the lives of those outside their circle ‘seemed blurred, unreal, like a picture in the newspaper.’ Worse, they validate their inhospitality and insensitivity by assuming the worst, such as Jose insisting the Scott family are drunks and blaming drinking on the accident despite any evidence. For the Sheridan’s even the rose bushes ‘bowed down as though they had been visited by archangels’ which touches on the idea that wealth was a sign of god’s grace and divinely deserved while the poor suffer out of sin. But this cruelty only pushes Laura towards empathy and embarrassment and her hat, a symbol of frivolity is suddenly garish in the space of death. ‘Forgive my hat’ she says, meaning forgive my family, forgive my class, meaning Laura has had her eyes opened. ‘What did garden-parties and baskets and lace frocks matter to him? He was far from all those things.’ A quick story, but one full of power and crackling with social critiques and class consciousness. Written in 1922 as Mansfield was slowly succumbing to tuberculosis, The Garden Party continues to impress and is a marvelous little story. 5/5 ...more |
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Jun 24, 2024
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0785252991
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| 0785252991
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| Aug 31, 2021
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it was amazing
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‘Dear old world,’ says Anne Shirley, ‘you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.’ Books like this, the long beloved Anne of Green Gables b
‘Dear old world,’ says Anne Shirley, ‘you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.’ Books like this, the long beloved Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery, make me feel this sentiment deep in my bones. Despite it all, how can I not love a world and a humanity that brought this into existence. This book is perfectly splendid and I only wish I had read it as a child. Yet, traveling across Canada recently with this book, I was pleased to discover it could still build a bonfire in my adult heart to warm me with joy, still bring a frequent smile to my face and outbursts of gleeful laughter. ‘Anne with an ‘e’’ is an early ADHD icon who’s poetic ‘thoughts rove all over creation’ whom—as the rest of Avonlea soon discovers—is impossible not to love and I saw so much of my younger self in her. A coming-of-age tale wrapped in a sweet innocence that champions being yourself and embracing mistakes as an opportunity to learn and grow, what really brought this novel to heart for me were the ways in which Anne’s offbeat personality cracks the stale and rigid expectations of a community and allows everyone to grow along with her. Community and shared growth are central to this story and this is as much a story about Avonlea as it is the Anne who makes it her home. Still touching hearts young and old since it was first published in 1908, Anne of Green Gables is an endearing and enduring classic. ‘ I shall give life here my best, and I believe it will give its best to me in return.’ There is a lot to love about Anne of Green Gables, but also a lot of messages to take to heart. An aspect I am particularly fond of in literature aimed at children is how the most successful ones can distill important themes in accessible ways that can enter our hearts to bathe us in pure shining light that always feels so pleasantly positive and empowering. There's multitudes to learn from Anne. For instance: —Always embrace and learn from mistakes: ‘Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing.’ —Find the good and fun in everything: ‘Life is worth living as long as there's a laugh in it.’ —A positive attitude makes a big difference: ‘It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.’ —Pay attention to the small joys and details in life: ‘All things great are wound up with all things little.’ —Give people a chance: ‘Miss Barry was a kindred spirit after all…you wouldn't think so to look at her, but she is.’ —Always prepare for setbacks: ‘There is always another bend in the road.’ —Start over fresh and don’t let setbacks get you down: ‘Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it.’ There are many more, such as the importance of friendship, admitting faults and embracing imagination not just for oneself but to help it flourish in others. Going through these got me thinking how delightfully quotable and altogether memorable this novel is and it is no surprise this novel has continuously been endeared as an enduring classic. Even those who haven’t read the novel are likely familiar with certain scenes or lines, like the often quoted ‘I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers,’ which happens to arrive at the start of the same chapter in which the famous scene occurs where Anne accidentally gets Diana drunk on currant wine thinking she is serving raspberry cordial. The novel plays out in rather episodic moments such as this (which lends itself to the many tv series adaptations both animated and live action) with fairly contained action-consequence-resolution formats that build on each other to follow the course of Anne’s childhood into young adulthood. And it is a joy to watch Anne grow up. [image] Diana and Anne drink currant wine in the 2017 Netflix adaptation Anne With an E What makes this book truly great are the characters. Anne, of course, but Marilla and Matthew are just as charming and engaging. I love Marilla who is struggling but earnest about trying to understand Anne and comes to really love her. As Matthew tells her, raising Anne won't be difficult 'if you only get her to love you,' and watching the relationship grow between her and Anne is so heartwarming. While sometimes she just wants Anne to shut up and stop being weird she can't help but privately enjoy how offbeat she is. I suspect this is a novel where those who read it in youth will identify with Anne but those who read it as adults (and especially as parents) will have a real appreciation for Marilla much like how everyone talks about which daughter from Little Women they are until they reread it as an adult and realize how much Marmee speaks to them. That was the case for me at least. But also wow did Anne speak to my heart and remind me of my pre-teen self. 'There's such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I'm such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn't be half so interesting.' The fictional town of Avonlea is nestled upon Prince Edward Island in Canada, which was also the birthplace and childhood home of author Lucy Maud Montgomery. While not an orphan as Anne was, Maud lost her mother at the age of two and when her father remarried she was sent to live with her grandparents. So one can see a twinkle of inspiration for the young Anne who (for those who don’t know the story), due to a misunderstanding, is sent to be adopted by aging siblings Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert. ‘She’s been a blessing to us,’ they learn, ‘and there never was a luckier mistake.’ Maud was fond of reading as a child and, like Anne, loved poetry. ‘Don't you just love poetry that gives you a crinkly feeling up and down your back,’ Anne states, and in Anne we find quite the poet as well with long rambling chatter that moves ‘from safe concrete to dubious paths of abstraction.’ In an essay Montgomery discusses how novels were banned in her grandparents house but she had access to all the poetry she liked, and in her own writing there is certainly an impressive and delightful sense of the poetic. Montgomery pops off with excellent consonance quite frequently with phrases like ‘the waif of the world,’ but her vibrant imagery is certainly pure poetry. A favorite moment occurs right from the start with the images of Avonlea in bloom with an enraptured Anne finally rendered speechless. It is a critical image because it is in Avonlea that Anne is also able to bloom into the amazing person she becomes. [image] Prince Edward Island ‘What good would she be to us?’ Matthew asks Marilla when she questions keeping Anne, reminding her ‘we might be some good to her.’ This idea permeates the text and we see how community is so important. ‘True friends are always together in spirit,’ Anne teaches us and there are few more lovely friendships in fiction than Anne and her ‘bosom friend’ Diana. To watch Anne grow up is also to watch Diana grow up and to watch them love and support each other (I quite agree with the more recent adaptations, such as the modern-setting graphic novel Anne that portray them as a sapphic romance, besides *nose in air*I don’t think Gilbert is good enough for my Anne). Anne also comes to think of others as ‘kindred spirits’—such as Aunt Josephine who essentially becomes her benefactor after taking a liking to Anne while she apologizes for jumping onto her in bed by accident—and that we can find kindred spirits everywhere if we are willing to get to know people. ‘Evidently she did not like talking about her experiences in a world that had not wanted her.’ Friends are also important to Anne as she never had them before, unless you count Katie Maurice (her reflection) or Violetta (her echo). Her attachment to them is rather telling because not only was it a sign of her strong imagination but also because they were simply an extension of herself–Anne only had herself and coming to Avonlea. But we also see how Anne struggles at concepts like religion, which Marilla realizes is not due to irreverence but rather how can Anne comprehend divine love if she’d never experienced love from another before (though her distaste for God for having given her red hair—a constant struggle that leads to a very humorous scene about dying her hair and also is a point of contention where Gilbert calling her “carrot” cuts far too deep—is quite amusing). Anne had to learn community in general. Over the novel we see she thrives at this due to her imagination, something she says is easy ‘if you’d only cultivate it.’ Anne perfects how to bring out the imagination in others, something that—following in the footsteps of her mentor, Miss Stacy—makes her career as a schoolteacher a perfect fit to utilize such abilities. Sure, sometimes imagination can backfire like when she becomes afraid of the haunted woods, but it is also a path through that fear. ‘Ever since I came to Green Gables I’ve been making mistakes, and each mistake has helped to cure me of some great shortcoming.’ Though one of the greatest lessons in this book, I think, is the rather optimistic approach to embracing mistakes and learning from them. Each moment of growth comes from something initially thought of as an error (getting Diana drunk, almost drowning in the river) and finding it to be a teachable moment for the self. Though this extends beyond Anne too, as some of the friction Anne comes up against in the community becomes an opportunity for growth for them as well, or even with the Cuthberts who quickly learn that adopting a child is more about the child being an asset to the farm but a person to help grow and cultivate love, and be loved in return. ‘We ought always to try to influence others for good.’ This is such a lovely novel, one that encourages imagination, friendship, love, and appreciation of the world around us. For Anne, simply being out in nature and basking in the light of life is enough to ‘feel a prayer’ and in our encounters with Anne we too can feel it within ourselves. Though this is also a story of hard work, finding joy in simply learning and not having to always be the best, and also the importance of persistence. Anne of Green Gables is a marvelous story for readers both young and old, and I greatly enjoyed my time in Avonlea. 5/5 [image] I also really love this edition of the book. ...more |
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1947808966
| 9781947808966
| 1947808966
| 4.11
| 8,195
| May 01, 2014
| Sep 28, 2021
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liked it
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I’ve been having a bit of a Les Mis moment lately, which are some lovely tunes to have stuck in one’s head and a big epic story to really chew on. I s
I’ve been having a bit of a Les Mis moment lately, which are some lovely tunes to have stuck in one’s head and a big epic story to really chew on. I stumbled across this Manga Classics: Les Miserables and it was quite the lovely way to revisit the novel. Decently long enough to do the rather epic tale justice and with some rather eye catching artwork, at the end of the day it’s a worthwhile adaptation. [image] This manga adaptation by Crystal S. Chan and illustrated by SunNeko Lee does well with the narrative and remains rather faithful to Hugo’s novel. At least far more than any of the films and cover many of the smaller details usually left out or condensed in other adaptations. It does focus the story pretty tightly on Marius and Cosette but that’s to be expected I guess. I quite enjoyed reading this and felt it captured the vibes of the original and it’s fine, nothing special and occasionally feels a bit bland but also nothing worth truly criticizing. One would likely be able to discuss the novel with those who had read the full Hugo classic having just read this though, which is pretty cool. And the black and white art is quite nice. [image] I like how it sort of reminds me of Miyazaki films where it’s a pretty recognizable Japanese art style in a European setting. The character design is well done and Enjorlas is as dreamy as he should be before he and his friends all become empty chairs and empty tables, though Javert does sort of look like Vicious from Cowboy Bebop. [image] If you are a fan of the story, this is a nice little read. Nothing special, nothing awful, but a decent adaptation of the story into something you can read in the span of an hour or so with some pleasant visuals. 3.5/5 [image] ...more |
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0375701877
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| 4.05
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| Sep 12, 2013
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it was amazing
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‘Set thine house in order, for thou shalt die and not live.’ I found myself stranded in Chicago over the weekend due to a blizzard and sub zero tempera ‘Set thine house in order, for thou shalt die and not live.’ I found myself stranded in Chicago over the weekend due to a blizzard and sub zero temperatures and kept busy doing what I love best: visiting art museums and bookstores. While browsing the basement of After-Words, I discovered a copy of Baldwin’s first published novel, Go Tell It On the Mountain stickered with Chicago’s One City, One Book initiative and figured no better time than to finally read this beloved classic by an author I’ve recently come to love. It was a perfect choice and companion as I read it traveling over the hills and everywhere for my harrowing journey home on various trains and buses that kept breaking down. To read the works of James Baldwin is to encounter prose that lingers like a prayer on your lips, prose that you’d suspect could be picked up on a seismograph for the way it shakes you deeply within, prose that could feasibly crack open the world. And to read Go Tell It On the Mountain is to bask in the bitter beauty of an undeniable classic of religious trauma, queer desires, and grappling with family legacy. Published in 1953 and introducing the literary world to a writer who would go down in history as an essential author, Go Tell It On the Mountain is a semi-autobiographical work that truly comes out swinging. Baldwin confronts issues of racism, sexuality, sin and the hypocrisy of religion being harnessed to uphold oppressive patriarchy and other abuses while flooding his pages with gorgeous passages on desire and struggles for selfhood. Brilliantly condensing decades of lives struggling to survive society and themselves all within the span of a narrative set over 24 hours, Mountain also condenses a vast American experience into the corridors of Harlem and the blocks around the aptly named Temple of the Fire Baptized. Here we experience 14 year old John’s internal tribulations to either accept the endless struggle up the mountain of holiness—‘ It’s a hard way. It’s uphill all the way’—or a rejection of the church altogether. Yet the scope of the novel rests beyond the boundaries of John and, through flashbacks and visions, the novel becomes one about the legacy of John’s family and the struggles of Black Americans everywhere in the 20th century. ‘There are people in the world for whom "coming along" is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive.’ Taking its title from the popular spiritual tune, Baldwin immerses us in a family and community for whom the church encompasses the whole of their daily existence. In many ways this felt like a good companion read to Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit in its depiction of an insular community that uses religious devotion and fervor to justify incredible amounts of abuse and castigate not only queer desires but any sexuality outside of marriage. At the heart of the story is John who is expected to walk in the footsteps of his father—or so he thinks Gabriel is his father—and become a preacher. Gabriel is the personification of Christianity in the novel with Baldwin representing his criticisms of the organized religion through his portrayal of Gabriel as hypocritical, misogynistic and abusive. He is also very imaged-based, with his coming to God informed by the opportunities of social positioning as is his first marriage to Deborah—once she is considered the holiest of the community—a calculated move to be seen as holy himself. Baldwin represents religiosity as a false front, one that uses piety to mask abuse. ‘salvation was finished, damnation was real’ Baldwin demonstrates how religion is used for purposes of control within the community, or for Gabriel over his family. The fear of sin is pervasive, such as the novel opening with John feeling he will ‘be bound in hell a thousand years’ for his act of masturbation, and used to control behavior. Especially of women or young people, as we see in the early pages when Elisha and Ellie May are publicly shamed for ‘walking disorderly’ as evidence they ‘were in danger of straying from the truth.’ Gabriel sees it as his duty to uphold moral standings in his congregation, though not in himself, and John worries it may already be too late to be saved so he feels the need for salvation all the more intensely. However, he recognizes Gabriel as a gatekeeper to salvation and that he cannot ‘bow before the throne of grace without first kneeling to his father,’ which is something he feels he cannot do having recognized Gabriel as a cruel abuser who beats his children and “fondles” his own daughter. ‘ The menfolk, they die, and it's over for them, but we women, we have to keep on living and try to forget what they done to us.’ Baldwin also represents how Christianity upholds patriarchy through the rather misogynistic double standards against women. Sexuality is a taboo and while sex outside marriage is considered unthinkable, Gabriel had a child out of wedlock, Royal, who he discards feeling he is unholy and not worth his life, and thinks of the mother, Esther, as a ‘harlot’ for having accepted sex outside marriage and entered into ‘a forbidden darkness.’ Similarly, Deborah was shamed after having been the victim of sexual assault by a group of men—like the story of Medusa, the victim is the one who bears the punishment—and was only acceptable to society if she devote her entire being to holiness ‘like a terrible example of humility, or like a holy fool.’ She comes to hate all men and sees ‘they live only to gratify on the bodies of women their brutal and humiliating needs.’ The men hide behind claims of religious superiority, chastizing women for the things they do themselves, and thus religion only becomes another pillar reinforcing patriarchal abuse. For John there is the issue of ‘a sudden yearning tenderness for Elisha... desire, sharp and awful,’ a desire he has been taught is filthy and thus internalizes it to believe himself filthy and unworthy of salvation. ‘Dust was in his nostrils, sharp and terrible, and the feet of saints, shaking the floor beneath him, raised small clouds of dust that filmed his mouth. He heard their cries, so far, so high above him—he could never rise that far. He was like a rock, a dead man's body, a dying bird, fallen from an awful height; something that had no power of itself, any more, to turn.’ Baldwin probes at the long history of homophobia in religious communities, an issue that continues to this day and studies have shown a greater risk for internalized homophobia, rejection from family, mental health risks and suicide for LGBTQ+ youth in religious households. This theme of struggling to accept a gay sexuality as natural was explored in depth in Baldwin’s later novel, Giovanni's Room, where David’s internalized shame leads to self-destructive tendencies and outwards abuse to others. ‘The rebirth of the soul is perpetual; only rebirth every hour could stay the hand of Satan.’ Still further we see how religion is used to justify greater atrocities, such as John’s vision of the biblical story of Ham was used to justify slavery. The novel also explores how the legacy of slavery still casts a vile shadow over the country and racism runs rampant. There is the unjust treatment of Richard arrested for theft despite being innocent and simply a Black man at the wrong place and the wrong time (not unlike the Dylan song) which leads to his tragic end. There is even internalized racism, with Deborah seeing Gabriel’s dark skin as a sin which nudges the long, racist legacy of associating Blackness with evil. This is all tied in with Gabriel being born from a former slave, showing how the cruelties and abuses of slavery continue to manifest themselves for generations to come. ‘You in the Word or you ain’t - ain’t no halfway with God.’ These experiences are the ones John considers in opposition to his need for salvation. His rejection of the church becomes, ultimately, a rejection of society at large and all the racism, homophobia, misogyny and abuse. Yet it is hard to imagine beyond the bubble of the church, which thinks of itself as a safe haven from all the sinners and “undesirables” they pass on their way. He feels trapped and helpless, and his frustrations with the futility of cleaning the rug—a never ending task—is symbolic of the path up the “mountain” to holiness. This is also symbolized in his climb to the cliff in Central Park: ‘He did not know why, but there arose in him an exultation and a sense of power, and he ran up the hill like an engine, or a madman, willing to throw himself headlong into the city that glowed before him. But when he reached the summit he paused; he stood on the crest of the hill, hands clasped beneath his chin, looking down. Then he, John, felt like a giant who might crumble this city with his anger.’ He comes to see life as an endless struggle beleaguered by sin, yet runs down the “mountain” anyways. ‘If it’s wrong, I can always climb back up,’ he thinks. Yet still he must go to the threshing-floor to be judged, and hopes he can be found righteous. ‘It was his hatred and his intelligence that he cherished, the one feeding the other.’ This is a powerful novel, one that devastates in theme, exhausts you in its moral burdens, yet utterly enchants you in pitch perfect prose. Go Tell It On the Mountain is a marvelous microcosm of society at large in the day-long drama of a mass and generational struggles of a family that put Baldwin on the map. He would fulfill this early promise time and time again. Personally I felt rather outside the novel, not having much experience with being immersed in a religious community, but I know many who’s stories of their own upbringing rang in harmony with the book. This is a harrowing tale that takes dead aim at society, hypocrisy and abuse and delivers heavy blows. 4.5/5 ‘Men spoke of how the heart broke up, but never spoke of how the soul hung speechless in the pause, the void, the terror between the living and the dead; how, all garments rent and cast aside, the naked soul passed over the very mouth of Hell. Once there, there was no turning back; once there, the soul remembered, though the heart sometimes forgot. For the world called to the heart, which stammered to reply; life, and love, and revelry, and, most falsely, hope, called the forgetful, the human heart. Only the soul, obsessed with the journey it had made, and had still to make, pursued its mysterious and dreadful end; and carried heavy with weeping and bitterness, the heart along. ...more |
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Jan 16, 2024
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0358093155
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| 0358093155
| 4.28
| 7,870
| Sep 28, 2018
| Sep 03, 2019
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really liked it
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Why are all the animals in this image smiling and singing, you ask? [image] Well it’s because they are about to have a… ANIMAL REVOLUTION. [image] Why are all the animals in this image smiling and singing, you ask? [image] Well it’s because they are about to have a… ANIMAL REVOLUTION. [image] The humans have been chased out and the animals are left to form their own perfect government…but there’s a reason for the saying “absolute power corrupts absolutely” and George Orwell’s 1945 classic is a searing look at how great and noble ideas can be hijacked by those hungry for power. Brazilian artist Odyr has adapted Orwell’s Animal Farm into this gorgeous graphic novel that upholds the integrity of the original story while delivering eye-catching visuals. It is a great story (I’ve reviewed it here for those looking for an analysis of Orwell’s work), though many previous adaptations have, not unlike the pigs in this tale, hijacked the message for their own purposes and propaganda. Orwell’s widow was eventually swayed to give film rights after being promised she could meet her favorite movie star, Clark Gable. The project, however, was secretly headed up by the CIA and they altered Orwell’s message to be a sweeping anti-socialist film. Later in 1999, a Hallmark adaptation completely took the teeth out of the story, having the farmer be even outcast from other farmers for being a bad animal owner and ending with a hip new farmer putting everything back to how it was. But here we see Odyr stick closely to the story, moving at a quick and exciting pace that really lets the visual medium shine. [image] I really love the art. The thick brushstrokes and acrylic artwork has a lovely classic vibe to it, but the lettering and the tattoo-style font for the chapter numbers makes it feel modern and edgy. Which enhances the message that this is an old tale that is still pertinent to the modern day, a parable about abuse of power and propaganda that I’m glad to see continues to fascinate minds nearly a century after it was written. [image] I’m always wary of reading adaptations of a book I just completed because the differences stand out in high contrast, but this really upheld the story and was a satisfying read. Some pages are a bit text heavy while other seem a bit too sparse (one of those illustrated full texts like they do with the Percy Jackson or Harry Potter series would be an ideal middle ground) but its just a delightful read that lets you see some of the best moments in the book. [image] Would recommend, and get a load of this asshole [image] ...more |
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0451531310
| 9780451531315
| 0451531310
| 3.46
| 136,965
| 1911
| Jun 02, 2009
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really liked it
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‘The passion of rebellion had broken out of him again.’ Once the holidays are over and the grey soaks into everything, winter can be a ferocious and ch ‘The passion of rebellion had broken out of him again.’ Once the holidays are over and the grey soaks into everything, winter can be a ferocious and chilly beast. Edith Wharton transforms this bleak atmosphere into her own icy novella, the trepidatious tragedy Ethan Frome, in which we find a man trapped by his own circumstances in a melancholic Massachusetts countryside under ‘pale skies’ from which ‘sheets of snow perpetually renewed.’ It is a tale of morals and duty conflicted by desire. A landscape of loneliness. A story where one is shook by the silence of internal screaming further muffled out by the falling snow. Yet, for all the heavy themes and dread, Wharton’s prose proves rather sprightly and gives the story a welcomed lightness that makes it a quick and engaging read. Sharply addressing the social suffocation from traditional gender roles and the temptations of desire, Ethan Frome is a chilling little book where a man’s dreams to escape his circumstances must run up against the beleaguering external forces of life and duty. It's a disaster we see coming, yet you won't want to look away. ‘He lived in a depth of moral isolation too remote for casual access.’ A big thank you to emma and her review for recommending this one to me. Ethan Frome novel serves as a sort of character study of the titular character, Ethan Frome, one that is slowly sussed out by a narrator who has taken an interest in the slow, sullen man. It is an engaging framing that invites a sense of mystery as we wonder how the hard-working Ethan came to be such a ‘ruin of a man.’ They hear whispers and half-stories but ‘I had the sense that the deeper meaning of the story was in the gaps,’ and it isn’t until being forced by a snowstorm to spend the night on Ethan’s farm that they learn his history and how falling in love with his ailing wife’s cousin led to tragedy. ‘I began to see what life there—or rather its negation—must have been in Ethan Frome’s young manhood.’ There is a sense of Ethan as the literary “everyman,” being a stand-in for a humanity in his quest to break out of the harsh hand life dealt him, to assert a sense of free will against determinism. Ethan ‘with something bleak and unapproachable in his face’ is practically a mirror of the harsh world he lives in. ‘He seemed a part of the mute melancholy landscape, an incarnation of it's frozen woe,’ Wharton writes, ‘with all that was warm and sentient in him fast bound below the surface.’ Ethan’s father died young, his mother grew ill from loneliness and before she died had a young girl (Zeena) serve as her nurse, to whom Ethan would marry out of a sense of duty to keep the farm and family legacy going. But with Zeena—a city girl who resents their farm&now ill, bitter and aloof like his mother, Ethan’s desires turn to 21 year old Mattie, his wife’s cousin brought on as a live-in nurse. In Mattie and her vivaciousness, Ethan sees an escape from the cold farm and cold marriage, but Zeena may have taken notice and drops subtle hints of his burning desires for infidelity. The color red is highly symbolic in the novel. A bright fiery color against a pale, grey landscape to symbolize life and passion. We see it in Mattie’s scarf, which signals to Ethan she is different from the rest, or in her red ribbons, and these flashes of red mark their growing intimacy. Though Zeena’s prized dish is also red, and Mattie’s accidental destruction of it is a nod to her presence shattering the long untouched and faded marriage between Zeena and Ethan. And Ethan’s attempts to glue it together don’t pass Zeena’s inspection, a rather clear metaphor of his attempts at subverting their marriage in secret being less discrete than he thought. ‘They stood together in the gloom of the spruces, an empty world glimmering about them wide and gray under the stars.’ Wharton explores how Ethan is pulled in two directions, one in his desires for Mattie but also towards his duty to his wife, the farm, and social expectations. Leaving an ill wife is not going to look good, and not just because they are in a religious community but because it's a pretty shit thing to do. Wharton does attempt to soften the reader to this moral conundrum by making Zeena rather harsh, though it should be remembered that mentions like ‘she had taken everything else from him’ is from a narrator, presumably male, that is empathetic to Ethan. And it is fairly ironic that Ethan tells Mattie ‘I want to do for you and care for you. I want to be there when you're sick and when you're lonesome,’ when this is exactly what he will be denying his wife (though the sense of duty feels less begrudging when given to someone one chooses for themselves instead of by social needs). Still, Zeena serves as a personification of all the external forces that have worked against Ethan his whole life. ‘All the long misery of his baffled past, of his youth of failure, hardship and vain effort, rose up in his soul in bitterness and seemed to take shape before him in the woman who at every turn had barred his way.’ We see a sense of determinism winning out, that ambition leads to folly, that one is confined by their circumstances and all attempts to escape lead to further disaster, though we also can detect a message that this need not be the only way. That society has set us up for this failure and society is itself a creation of ours. This is most prominent in the way we see traditional gender roles as stifling here. Women are set up to fail and have no choice but the drudgery of household chores and servitude to a man. Mattie has no education beyond the ability to be a servant and women at the time were still not encouraged to seek higher education. And so, like her cousin before her, she had to serve a family and hope to be married into a reasonably liveable situation. Women were made to rely on a man, essentially. But also the traditional views of marriage, one made for “smart matchmaking” of being able to keep a farm and have a support instead of for love, also was often a path to resentment and loneliness. And divorce was still a huge social taboo. There is also some slight social class criticism, with Ethan bound to his low-income feeling resentment towards Denis Eady, a rich young man who positively invited a horse-whipping.’ Wharton shows how our lack of access to freedom and free will was largely at the mercy of a society that we can and should criticize to push public opinion towards progress. Ethan Frome is a chilly little novel, but one that captures an incredible sense of icy atmosphere and dread in order to better juxtapose the burning desires of Ethan at the heart of this tale. Much different than Wharton’s usual, more comedic novels, this is still a sharp story gorgeously written that delivers quite the punch. A great little winter read. 3.5/5 ‘They seemed to come suddenly upon happiness as if they had surprised a butterfly in the winter woods.’ ...more |
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Jan 11, 2024
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Jan 11, 2024
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Mass Market Paperback
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0147514010
| 9780147514011
| 0147514010
| 4.17
| 2,436,128
| Sep 30, 1868
| Nov 17, 2023
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it was amazing
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Some books read like a lifelong friendship, each page a warm or comforting embrace as you laugh and weep along with the characters. Little Women by L.
Some books read like a lifelong friendship, each page a warm or comforting embrace as you laugh and weep along with the characters. Little Women by L.M. Alcott is an enduring and endearing classic that will nestle its way so deep into your heart that you’ll wonder if the sound of turning pages has become your new heartbeat in your chest. To read the novel is a magical experience, and we are all like Laurie peering in through the March’s window and relishing in the warmth within. I have long loved the film adaptations and make it a holiday tradition to ensure I at least watch it every December (it has Christmas in it, it counts), so it was fascinating to finally read the actual novel and return to character I feel I’ve always known yet still find it fresh and even more lovely than ever before. Semi-autobiographical, Alcott traces the lives of the four March sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, and their struggles to make their own way in a society that offers little use for women beyond the household. An emotional epic and moving family saga full of strong characters, sharp criticisms on society and gender roles, and a beautiful plea to dispense with the worship of wealth and find true purpose and value in simplicity, nature and generosity. ‘I've got the key to my castle in the air, but whether I can unlock the door remains to be seen.’ Little Women will leave your heart full and your pen dry from underlining the seemingly endless lovely passages. I’d like to thank Adira and her wonderful review for convincing me to finally actually read this and not just watch the movie again (I did last night though, because who doesn’t want to relive the joy of yelling “Bob Odenkirk?!” in a theater and later sobbing) because, just when I thought I couldn’t love this story more, now I’m fully engulfed by it. Surely enough has been written about this book already, but i like to ramble about things I love so here’s a more I guess (I’ll try to keep it shorter than usual [having finished writing it now, I failed]). But how can you not be with such incredible characters? Jo is of course the favorite, but I think part of loving this book is wanting to be Jo and realizing you are Amy, but each character touches your heart in their own way. Mr. Laurence and Beth’s connection with the piano and lost daughters makes me teary just writing this. Alcott based the story on her real family and one can read a genuine love for the characters pouring from every page. ‘Wealth is certainly a most desirable thing, but poverty has its sunny side, and one of the sweet uses of adversity is the genuine satisfaction which comes from hearty work of head or hand, and to the inspiration of necessity, we owe half the wise, beautiful, and useful blessings of the world.’ Alcott was a transcendentalist and many of her beliefs shine through in the novel. Much of this came from her father and one will be pleased to learn that the real Mr. March—Amos Bronson Alcott—was as radical in his time as his fictional counterpart. An abolitionist who also advocated for women’s rights, Amos became a major transcendentalist figure along with his friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Alcott’s mother was equally radical for her time too, and many of their teachings arrive here through Mrs. March to her children. There is, of course, the belief in nature as the ideal, such as when the March girls, having little jewelry, adorn themselves in flowers instead. Even Laurie states ‘I don’t like fuss and feathers,’ another instance of a return to simplicity over flashy status symbols. There is also the belief in generosity, which is seen throughout with the March family always involved in helping others, and the belief that hard work is important, but not for profit reasons but because it leads to spiritual and emotional happiness and freedom. ‘Then let me advise you to take up your little burdens again; for though they seem heavy sometimes, they are good for us, and lighten as we learn to carry them. Work is wholesome, and there is plenty for every one; it keeps us from ennui and mischief; is good for health and spirits, and gives us a sense of power and independence better than money or fashion.’ Towards the start of the novel, the mother advises the children to be like Christian from John Bunyan’s allegorical novel The Pilgrim's Progress and we can see how Little Women follows a similar fashion of Pilgrim’s being knowledge gained through the travel of a life lived, and each daughter is shown to face certain trials and must learn to bear their burdens, like Jo’s anger, Amy’s desire to be liked, Meg’s desire for vanity, Beth’s passivity. But the largest burdens here are those of love and labor. ‘Women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts. And they’ve got ambition, and they’ve got talent, as well as just beauty. I’m so sick of people saying that love is all a woman is fit for.’ The relationship to work is threaded through the entire novel. We have Jo and Amy who wish to be great and break from the traditional mold for women in society. Jo wants to be a writer, though she only publishes scandalous stories under a false name, and Amy desires to be a painter. And neither will settle for anything less than greatness ‘because talent isn't genius, Amy states, ‘and no amount of energy can make it so. I want to be great, or nothing.’ Meg and Beth, on the other hand, show different routes a woman can take. The novel questions if women can find happiness outside marriage and caring for a household, and these struggles bash against social expectations along the way. ‘ I'll try and be what he loves to call me, 'a little woman,' and not be rough and wild; but do my duty here instead of wanting to be somewhere else.’ ‘ I can't get over my disappointment in not being a boy,’ Jo quips, and a major part of Little Women is a critique of gender roles and how they stifle people in society. Laurie is an excellent foil to Jo, in many ways, but is also a way that Alcott addresses and subverts gender expectations. Jo and Laurie both use shortened versions of their name that seem to cross gender expectations (even though Laurie didn’t like being called Dora) and in many ways Jo tends to represent more masculine behavior while Laurie often a more feminine role. While Meg dresses in finery and tries to fill the traditional role of a woman, Jo prefers to romp in nature in simple or dirty garments and behave, by her own admission, like a boy. Recently there has been a lot of discussion on the author’s gender and sexuality, with even the New York Times writing an opinion piece wondering if Alcott or Jo was a trans man. I know that frustrates some people but personally I find it interesting to think about, even if a bit anachronistic, but it seems to be a genuine question people investigate about authors who subvert gender expectations (think how often it was avoided to discuss Virginia Woolf’s sexuality in the past and now we have letters and look at scenes in Mrs Dalloway and think “oh yea, that makes total sense”). Honestly, I say Jo is whatever you want Jo to be. Trans, lesbian, ace, or just a girl pushing back on gender norms. I think the key detail is that Jo was breaking out of the mold, so let that empower you as you best see fit. Personally I thought the marriage to Friedrich felt tacked on anyways (I enjoy the way the Gerwig adaptation addresses this) but, side note, I do see how Alcott weaves in the transcendentalist notion of the “universal family” and belief in learning about and supporting other cultures here. Friedrich is German, Meg marries the English John, and Laurie is said to be half-Italian, which all comes as a rebuttal to the anti-immigration sentiments of the times. ‘I like good strong words that mean something,’ Jo says and that appeals to my love of language as well. This book deals with love in many ways, but feels like a romance between book and reader as you enjoy every page. Little Women was ahead of its time and still stands proudly today as an endearing work that dares challenge social convention. But most importantly, it feels like a friend. Finishing is hard as now I’ll miss the days with the March sisters, and I find books that take you from childhood to adulthood often hit the hardest because you feel as if you’ve grown up together. An emotional read, also a genius one, Little Women is a favorite now forever. 5/5 ‘ Watch and pray, dear, never get tired of trying, and never think it is impossible to conquer your fault.’ ...more |
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Dec 04, 2023
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Hardcover
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0345806565
| 9780345806567
| 0345806565
| 4.34
| 245,264
| Jan 01, 1956
| Jan 01, 2013
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it was amazing
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‘[N]ot many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour - and in the oddest places! - for the lack of it
‘[N]ot many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour - and in the oddest places! - for the lack of it.’ Sometimes a novel comes along that completely overpowers you. It sends your heart soaring to great heights on wings of perfect prose and then plummeting towards destruction on the rocks below. It crushes you and then rebuilds you from the wreckage then sends you out into the world, electrified by the experience, to contemplate the themes that are now humming through your entire body and mind. Giovanni’s Room is such a book. It’s perhaps too good. My emotions are just bleeding in a corner wanting to ask Baldwin “what the fuck is wrong with you, this was amazing.” For really thought, this second novel by James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room adroitly addresses love, guilt, and our inner battles with ourselves over the two through a story and impeccable writing style that will have the reader exhausted from feeling all the feelings and thankful for it. It comes alive in the streets and bars of Paris as David, an American expatriate living in Paris (not unlike Baldwin himself at the time), struggles to accept himself and his feelings for Giovanni, nestling us into the titular room where they hide away from the world much like David is trying to hide his sexual identity. We experience how people who feel cornered often react in destructive ways. A powerhouse of a short novel that takes a sharp aim at the constricting social expectations of gender and sexuality while also exploring shame, expatriatism and the elusiveness of freedom, Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room feels perfect in all its design and execution. ‘He made me think of home—perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.’ Feeling distraught by the US and its prevalent racism, James Baldwin left for Paris in 1948 where he hoped to be able to see himself outside of the context of American prejudice. ‘Paris is, according to its legend,’ Baldwin wrote in his 1954 essay A Question of Identity , ‘the city where everyone loses his head, and his morals, lives through at least one histoire d’amour, ceases, quite, to arrive anywhere on time, and thumbs his nose at the Puritans—the city, in brief, where all become drunken on the fine old air of freedom.’ It was in Paris he wrote his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain in 1953 and then, later, Giovanni’s Room in 1956, the latter featuring an American expatriate in Paris that allowed him to discuss many of his thoughts about the two countries juxtaposed by travel. While Baldwin would argue it was far from autobiographical, Room was in part inspired by a real man Baldwin had met which he discusses in a 1980 interview: ‘We all met in a bar, there was a blond French guy sitting at a table, he bought us drinks. And, two or three days later, I saw his face in the headlines of a Paris paper. He had been arrested and was later guillotined . . . I saw him in the headlines, which reminded me that I was already working on him without knowing it.’ What he would work on became a perfect little novel, though his US publisher, Knopf, was not interested in it because they wanted him to write of the Black experience. Baldwin had done so quite successfully in his previous book but with Room felt he could not address this as well as themes on homosexuality together. ‘The sexual-moral light was a hard thing to deal with. I could not handle both propositions in the same book,’ he admitted, ‘there was no room for it.’ In another interview, Baldwin says Knopf told him publishing a queer novel would alienate his audience and ‘will ruin your career,’ stating they would not even publish it ‘as a favour to you.’ So ‘I told them, ‘Fuck you’,’ he says, and Giovanni’s Room was instead published under Dial Press. We are all lucky for it, as this is a gorgeous book and it is a shame to think it almost never happened. Especially with how strikingly gorgeous the writing is, navigating the emotional currents with such poetic finesse that we, the reader, find ourselves totally at it’s mercy, gleeful and grateful to be caught in the tumultuous undertow as Baldwin sweeps us out to the sea of destruction with these characters. His dialog is pitch perfect and his atmosphere is so encompassing and vibrant we are there with David shivering in shame through the streets or awash in boozy, conflicted confidence in the bars. Baldwin handles words with the best of them. ‘I stared at absurd Paris, which was as cluttered now, under the scalding sun, as the landscape of my heart.’ The novel almost feels like something from Ernest Hemingway at the outset, and perhaps this is what makes the subversion of the traditional concepts of masculinity play out even more effectively. David is living in Paris spending time with Hella, a girl he ‘thought she would be fun to have fun with,’ and drinks his time away with friends while she is gone to Spain to consider his marriage proposal—something that seems more going through the motions of expectations than a heartfelt desire for marriage. The idea of an expatriate in Paris has been a frequently romanticized theme in US literature, and through the characters we get a taste of the idea ‘you don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.’ This is true of Giovanni as well, who has left Italy after a personal tragedy and also uses travel as a means of escaping who one was to discover who they will become under a new geographical context. However, we see how ‘nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom,’ and the characters find themselves feeling dislocated and unmoored more than anything, perhaps running to their own destruction in search of having anything to grasp. ‘ Perhaps everybody has a garden of Eden, I don't know; but they have scarcely seen their garden before they see the flaming sword. Then, perhaps, life only offers the choice of remembering the garden or forgetting it.’ ‘The Americans have no sense of doom, none whatever,’ Baldwin reflects. ‘They do not recognize doom when they see it,’ and right from the start we are keenly aware everything is careening towards imminent doom . The story is framed on the final day of Giovanni’s life before he faces the guillotine (the guillotine was last used in 1977 and then France outlawed capital punishment in 1981) and mostly told reflecting on the story of the time David and Giovanni spent together until Hella returns and everyone must face-up for their actions. There is a tone of dread permeating every facet of the novel, even worming its way into the nooks and crannies of desire so that we feel nearly suffocated by its imminence. ‘The beast which Giovanni had awakened in me would never go to sleep again; but one day I would not be with Giovanni any more. And would I then, like all the others, find myself turning and following all kinds of boys down God knows what dark avenues, into what dark places? With this fearful intimation there opened in me hatred for Giovanni which was as powerful as my love and which was nourished by the same roots.’ This suffocation seems to impart the social forces that impose the shame and dread, largely because David struggles with a sense of identity that is outside the socially enforced expectations of gender and sexuality. In his childhood he hears arguments between between his widower father and Aunt Ellen, with his Aunt chastizing his drunkenness and womanizing as setting a bad example while his father expresses his desires for David to be a ‘true man’ and ‘when I say a man, Ellen, I don’t mean a Sunday school teacher.’ The expectations of what is masculinity haunt him, causing his early gay experiences to be a mark of shame and self-hatred in him. ‘I couldn't be free until I was attached—no, committed—to someone.’ There are some very misogynistic moments in the novel—be advised—though Baldwin seems fairly aware of them as such and the comments by both David and Giovanni seems a reflection of the social conditioning they are struggling within. Not that this excuses their comments or behaviors. Though we also see how the gender expectations are even more oppressive for women, such as Hella’s discussion on how it is a ‘humiliating necessity’ that women are disregarded unless she is attached to a man, ‘to be at the mercy of some gross, unshaven strange before you can begin to be yourself.’ This doubles into the theme on how when chasing a sense of freedom, you often find yourself more constrained or oppressed. ‘I was guilty and irritated and full of love and pain. I wanted to kick him and I wanted to take him in my arms’ The expectations of heteronormativity cause David great internal suffering and he can never fully give himself to Giovanni. We see this play out in David’s symbolic impressions of Giovanni’s room, seeing it as both a haven for love but, due to his shame and disgust with himself, begins to despise the room. His desires come chased with loathing and diffidence which is a destructive force that wounds not only the one who swallows it down but all those around them as well. As if they are bystanders to the blast. It becomes a betrayal, not only to the self, but to love in general. ‘You want to leave Giovanni because he makes you stink. You want to despise Giovanni because he is not afraid of the stink of love. You want to kill him in the name of all your lying moralities. And you--you are immoral. You are, by far, the most immoral man I have met in all my life. Look, look what you have done to me. Do you think you could have done this if I did not love you? Is this what you should do to love?’ If one is caught up trying to play the role of who society thinks they should be, they can never be who they truly are and the dissonance between the hidden self and the public self brings only trauma. This becomes more intensely felt as one slips away from youth where playacting is more easily digestible. ‘Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford and you are not that young anymore,’ David is warned. Warnings from older men appear all throughout the novel, with a particularly chilling moment in the bar when a man appears like a haggard and horrid seer from myths to broadcast David’s doom. Self-deception becomes a major theme of the novel in this way. ‘People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception,’ Baldwin writes and we witness how David’s acknowledgement of his own self-deception but unwillingness to fully depart from it becomes his own undoing. Similarly, the frustrations of others that become seemingly hopeless and unbearable destroys them in turn. ‘People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare.’ But it is also why we all must fight for a more welcoming and empathetic society that allows space for such things. The thing about social expectations is we are all complicit in them by perpetuating them instead of dismantling them and Giovanni’s Room is a call to confront this in life. We’ve come a long way, but there is still a lot to be done. ‘If you cannot love me, I will die. Before you came I wanted to die, I have told you many times. It is cruel to have made me want to live only to make my death more bloody.’ I could rant forever about the power and beauty of Giovanni’s Room and Baldwin as an author in general. This is an emotional ride that will shake you to the core while dazzling you with pure poetic intensity. This is a novel full of incredible social and interpersonal criticisms that bruise you but make you better for it and I cannot wait to read literally everything Baldwin wrote. Giovanni’s Room is not only a queer masterpiece but an all around amazing and essential novel. 5/5 ‘No matter how it seems now, I must confess: I loved him. I do not think that I will ever love anyone like that again.’ ...more |
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Aug 31, 2023
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Aug 31, 2023
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Aug 31, 2023
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Paperback
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1645178226
| 9781645178224
| 1645178226
| 3.75
| 63
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| Jul 18, 2023
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it was amazing
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So this absolutely slaps. I mean, how could Frankenstein in a faithful graphic novel adaptation not, especially when its a pop-up book? Check this out
So this absolutely slaps. I mean, how could Frankenstein in a faithful graphic novel adaptation not, especially when its a pop-up book? Check this out: [image] Mary Shelley’s classic comes to life in this lovely book. I really enjoy Anthony William’s artwork here, which has sort of a throwback comic approach that really works for this tale. It’s almost a bit flat but in a way that brings out the old timey gothic vibe and I enjoyed it. But lets be honest, we are here for the pop-up features and they are so cool. Like I said, check this out: [image] I like that each page also has a flap that folds open to sometimes contain multiple pages underneath and the whole book is full of additional little pop-up features or sliding panels or other flaps to open up. It’s just really fun and makes a fantastic conversation piece. But ALSO the story is done quite well. Probably not as in-depth as it would have been had this been a traditional graphic novel with much more space but for what it is it is quite well done. This makes a great gift for younger readers who want to check out Frankenstein for the first time but might not make it through the full book (Frankenstein seems to have had a revival lately?) or a great collectors piece for fans of Mary Shelley or just pop-up books in general. [image] ...more |
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Aug 03, 2023
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0358359929
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| 0358359929
| 4.23
| 7,892
| Nov 04, 2020
| Sep 14, 2021
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really liked it
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I often think that art is the closest thing we have to magic. Just words or images on a page can transport us to imaginative worlds, instill strong em
I often think that art is the closest thing we have to magic. Just words or images on a page can transport us to imaginative worlds, instill strong emotions that overcome us and make us laugh, cry, love and dream. While I tend to find graphic adaptations of “classic” novels to be rather hit or miss, Fido Nesti’s 1984 is a real success that brings Orwell’s beloved and eerie novel to life and truly immerses us in the frightening dystopia. This is an artistic journey that stays faithful to the story and delivers uneasy imagery that adds to the story instead of seems just an excuse to have a graphic novel as I sometimes feel these adaptations tend to go. This would be great for hesitant readers who still want to experience Orwell’s work but fans of the original novel (I won’t get into the plot much but I have reviewed it at length here) will find this a rewarding visual plunge into the darkness of the tale. [image] Fido Nesti has a really engaging style that is rather cartoonish in a way that doesn’t soften the blow but rather makes it almost more distressing through the grotesque caricatures. Much of the story is done in grey-scale that captures the grimness of the society with light uses of reds and yellows. It gives a very “cold war” vibe while also feeling futuristic and very very dystopian. I particularly liked the use of frames, having many small frames with tight angles on Winston to help express the small, fleeting and dangerous spaces the idea of individuality can occupy. Juxtapose this with the large panels of crowds, particularly the Two Minute Hate or other moments that show the masses as threatening. [image] This is a very eerie and unsettling rendition and for that I quite enjoyed it. There are long passages from the novel threated through the book, which was a bit jarring but does show much visual and visceral the actual text is without the need of images (though, then it almost seems to ask what is the point of a visual adaptation?) which is cool I guess. Though I had just read the book so it felt unnecessary to me. Still, Nesti manages to dazzle and really bring this story to life in a lovely hardbound edition that is quite large and lovely to hold. Worth the trip, but be careful because Big Brother is watching… [image] ...more |
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Jul 19, 2023
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Hardcover
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0141036141
| 9780141036144
| B006QNC5VC
| 4.20
| 5,386,377
| Jun 08, 1949
| Jul 03, 2008
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really liked it
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‘If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.’ ‘History stopped in 1936,’ George Orwell once said to fellow a ‘If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.’ ‘History stopped in 1936,’ George Orwell once said to fellow author Arthur Koestler. During his time in the Spanish Civil War, Orwell observed the pervasiveness of propaganda as a pillar upholding authoritarianism, from censored newspapers to lies perpetuated for political convenience and began to fear that ‘the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world.’ This fear presented itself across the whole of his works during his short life, culminating in his famous 1984 where he warns ‘who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.’ Published in 1949 and written as Orwell was dying from tuberculosis, he didn’t live long to see how 1984 and his dire warnings against authoritarianism would have a lasting effect even to this day, often being used by all sides of the political spectrum as a cultural touchstone. And while this is mostly owing to the broad criticisms showing how any ideology can become oppressive when hungry for power, it also exemplifies his own dread that words will be twisted and quoted as cudgels to fit a desired purpose as truth is washed away. A harrowing story of dystopia, surveillance, manipulation and resistance being crushed underfoot, 1984 still chills today with its themes on collective vs individual identity under totalitarianism and controlling all aspects of reality to eliminate all those who step outside the boundaries of orthodoxy. ‘We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.’ When we read sci-fi, words like “prophetic” and “warning” often get applied. 1984 continues to remain relevant due to its warnings against irresponsible use of rhetoric, which almost makes the references to it amusing or ironic. Such as the Apple computer commercial in 1984 that uses the novel for the sake of marketing (and what is “marketing” but a euphemism for propaganda) a product that would lead to all sorts of concerns over government surveillance for which people would quote 1984 in addressing them. I think the term prophetic often frames a book in a way that causes us to consider how close it came true, which seems beside the point because when we look at the ways it didn’t, that often becomes an excuse for delegitimization or ignoring the warning. Born Eric Arthur Blair in Bengal in 1903 and passing in 1950, Orwell’s short life left a lasting legacy from his works like Animal Farm being classroom staples in the US and terms like “Orwellian” being blithely applied to anything that brushes against government use of technology and surveillance. Hardly a political cycle goes by in the US without 1984 coming up. In the US alone in the past decade we saw it returning to the paperback bestseller list under the Trump administration when the term “alternative facts” was being tossed around, and a few years later it was being referenced by the GOP to claim the government was denying an election victory and inventing the January 6th terrorist attack to arrest people. Though with a president making statements like “What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening,” naturally one is reminded of Orwell writing ‘the party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command,’ and we are reminded of the power of literature and how we often turn to great works for guidance during uncertain times, though often, as Orwell warned, using it as propaganda shorn of context. Orwell did live long enough to see the novel used improperly, having to put out a statement almost immediately for those who wished to use the novel as an example against the British Labor Party. ‘My recent novel is NOT an on Socialism or on the British Labor Party (of which I am a supporter),’ he wrote, and an introduction to the book states: ‘every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.’ Which becomes a pretty important distinction, as Orwell believed in better form of governing yet also was suspicious of anyone who would seek out power in order to change it as he writes in the novel ‘we know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.’ I feel 1984 is best read with an openness to nuance and in good faith, which is often glossed over for the sake of political identifying which is, ironically or not, the exact thing he was warning against. Which is to say, call out problems even if it’s your own “side” and don’t create further divide by abusing rhetoric for the sake of scoring quick political points. I think there is a tendency when trying to score quick political points that things need to have some sort of unassailable pure aim to them. 1984 is critical of any regime that seeks to keep power, but narrowing it to a pointed attack against an opponent without seeing how it might apply to your own political "team" (US politics is so much cheering for your "home team" than actually hashing out politics, especially lately, though I also find the whole "both sides" angle to often be used less for establishing nuance than trying to delegitamize any efforts for progress too, but hell who am I to say I'm just as bad as anyone) is more convenient. But even Orwell himself isn’t a “pure” figure, having been an informant for the British government delivering a list of names of people suspected of communism (the list includes John Steinbeck and many have observed that there is a strong presence of gay people on the list which makes many of Orwell’s rather homophobic comments seem all the more menacing). He also, as A. E. Dyson observed in his book on Orwell, that he ‘had a very English dislike of intellectuals, supposing that anyone willing to wear such a label would be diminished or depraved.’ Which is all neither here nor there, but goes to show how one can create a narrative out of anything, and that is what 1984 taps into. So let’s move on to the novel and head on down to Room 101. As I said earlier, 1984 can be read as a culmination of a lot of his themes and ideas across his short career. Warning of totalitarianism arrives everywhere with Orwell, such as Burmese Days when he describes the town as ‘a stifling, stultifying world…which every word and every thought is censored,’ not unlike 1984 because ‘free speech is unthinkable.’ And one can read in Keep the Aspidistra Flying, with Comstock (a name derived from Common and Stock similarly to how the terms in 1984 are often truncated phrases) bemoaning ‘I’m dead, You’re dead. We’re all dead people in a dead world,’ as a precursor to the pivotal moment when Winston and Jane declare ‘we’re dead’ right before being exposed as having been set up. For Orwell, speech and language is very key. Language itself is fallible and can be morphed to meet many purposes—it’s the medium of poets for a reason—and in 1984 Orwell examines how this can be used to negate truth and establish entirely fictional histories that become generally accepted as a means to upholding power. ‘War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.’ Winston’s job is to rewrite history to fit the purpose of the party. Within his department we find all sorts of nefarious linguistic play designed to control the masses because it is thought that ‘if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.’ We can argue that we see this notion reflected in our modern day, where books exposing history that can be seen as a blemish on the US are banned or dismissed as unpatriotic or trying to rewrite history (the irony in the latter is thick) and many have spoken on the suppression of queer books as an effort to erase the language people need to assess their own identities. What Orwell is looking at is the way language and propaganda is used to control. I enjoy the way he makes creative use of language to compile entire terminologies used by Ingsoc (the party in control that is pretty blatantly a nod to Soviet Russia) to create a propagated history that fits whatever they need, even erasing the history of entire wars to portray other countries as allies and erase the recent memory of them as enemies. ‘Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.’ To step outside the orthodoxy of the Party’s version of history is to become an enemy of the Party and society and find yourself “vaporized” and erased from history. ‘Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think,’ Orwell writes, ‘Orthodoxy is unconsciousness,’ and when the truth we know conflicts with the truth of the Party, it must be edited. ‘Lies,’ writes Rebecca Solnit in her book Orwell's Roses, ‘the assault on language -- were the necessary foundation for all the other assaults.’ Afterall, ‘the first victim of war is truth, goes the old saying, and a perpetual war against truth undergirds all authoritarianisms.’ “Doublespeak” comes into play here, where one can hold conflicting opinions in their mind and just accept them, and the Party finds that fear is a great tool for ensuring willing erasure of truth. ‘Truth is not a statistic,’ Winston argues, claiming that just because the masses agree doesn’t make it true, though over the novel we see how the power to rewrite “truth” can potentially eviscerate anyone who says otherwise until it becomes the only known “truth.” Returning to Rebecca Solnit, she observes: ‘To be forced to live with the lies of the powerful is to be forced to live with your own lack of power over the narrative, which in the end can mean lack of power over anything at all. Authoritarians see truth and fact and history as a rival system they must defeat.’ It is in this way the Party keeps people subservient. ‘A hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance,’ and Winston, upon reading Goldstein’s book (the book serves as an insert into the narrative that provides a LOT of exposition about the world and its structures as well as being a sort of Marxist-esque handbook, though it only offers the how things came to be and never the why, much to Winston’s interest), Winston realizes that the proles (the working class) are the possible solution. However he realized the proles can only revolt if they become conscious of their conditions and only can become conscious of their conditions if they revolt (not a far cry from Orwell’s own statement ‘we cannot win the war without introducing Socialism, nor establish Socialism without winning the war.’), and worries this may never happen. There is also the issue that a revolution will only put a new Party in power that will inevitably oppress again, just in different ways. ‘The masses never revolt of their own accord, and they never revolt merely because they are oppressed. Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed.’ So without giving anything away because this book is full of surprises (though one may guess if they have read We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, which Orwell “borrows” heavily from—as does Huxley’s Brave New World—and still remains my favorite of the three), across this novel we see a spirit of resistance rise and the forces of power come to meet it with a heavy boot and the power of erasure. While much of the novel focuses on the individual versus the collective, the biggest act of betrayal comes at the end in choosing to protect oneself, the individual, and asking for the harm of others in order to enter the “protection” of the collective Party by erasing any part of oneself outside their orthodoxy. Where once was the belief ‘to die hating them, that was freedom,’ we see ‘in the face of pain there are no heroes’ and fear keeps people in line. Reminding the people of the frailty of being an individual drives them towards compliance. Yet, in another way, we see the collective existing because of the desire of individuals to protect themselves at the expense of everyone else: nobody will revolt out of fear for themselves and in doing so allows the oppression of all to continue. I think this is what Ursula K. Le Guin is getting at when her books look at the need to integrate both the individual and collective by refusing easy binaries and hierarchies. She also, especially in The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia argues that history can never become stagnant and that, like Orwell argues, an revolution will try to uphold power and oppress leading to the necessity of another revolution. While Le Guin sees this as the natural course of history (the double meaning of revolution as a revolt and a constant turning cycling through) Orwell sees this as a constant erosion of truth due to the weaponization of language as propaganda that will inevitably erase reality in place of a false, collective reality where truth is sent to the grave. ‘We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.’ One might find 1984 to be a rather bleak book, but it is also intended as a warning. There are many minor warnings building up to the larger, main point—such as the paperweight symbolizing a past now inaccessible where art could be beautiful for the sake of beauty, as well as symbolizing the frailty of the individual—and that we must take care to use language responsibly lest we hold the door for open propaganda. We can even do this on an individual level, such as not perpetuating misinformation (funny political memes are easy to share but dilute the severity of problems when we poke fun at, say, the looks or mannerisms of a politician instead of focusing on their policies) and not giving in to easy attacks instead of respecting the nuances. And so that's my rough rant on 1984, a book that lives on for both its relevance and its political convenience and maybe we should all remember that truth is more important than winning an argument or scoring political edgy points. I fail at it too, we all do, but Orwell reminds us to do better. ⅘ 'A nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting - three hundred million people all with the same face.' ...more |
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Jul 03, 2023
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