Posted on February 17, 2008 in Books
It’s been a good week for reading. I finished V for Vendetta after last TSS, finished Eugene Onegin by Wednesday and I listened to Shakespeare: The World As Stage by Bill Bryson yesterday (review below). Today, I started to read Life and Times of Michael K by J. M. Coetzee. I am about half way through the book now. It is not very long, but there are no chapters. It reminds me a bit of McCarthy’s The Road. I only learned recently Coetzee is South African, and I did not know anything about the book before I started reading it today. With a lot of books, I have no idea what the plot will be. I rather just dive in to the story than look at the synopsis on the cover. It makes the reading experience more interesting. I also find that plots that may sound boring end up being well told and engaging with its characters. A plot summary can seem interesting, but the writing can be slow as molasses.
Now a review of Shakespeare: The World As Stage by Bill Bryson.
I listened to the complete audiobook yesterday. It’s quite a short book about Shakespeare, but it covers many details and the lack there of of William Shakespeare’s life. Bill Bryson is an author I’ve liked for years, and he is consistently an informative and shrewd writer. This was my first time reading a book of Shakespeare’s life, but I’ve been aware of the debates of the doubts of his identity, sexuality, genius, etc. What Bryson sought out to do in the book is to avoid speculation that seems to run rampant among scholars and other biographies about Shakespeare. He evaluates and summarises the small amount of real information about Shakespeare we have at present. The book is a good as a brush up on the Elizabethan and early Jacobite eras. I learned quite a bit about the evolution of the human language, people, dress, and cities of the time. Bryson avoids making any big and blanket statements about the kind of man Shakespeare was, but he does shoot down theories about the idea that William Shakespeare was actually Bacon/ Marlowe/ Earl of Oxford/ your mother, etc. He also provides insights from historians and scholars either directly interviewing them or referencing their work. I think it is a really good introduction to Shakespeare that can provide grounding for further scholarly study about the man and the myth. A quick and recommended read.
Posted on October 24, 2007 in Books, Movies
By Augusten Burroughs. On my allconsuming.net account, I ask for recommendations of nonfiction books. This was the book that most people “thought I might enjoy”. It’s a very popular memoirs, and I can see why. Many people think the book is funny, and I found some moments amusing, but most of the time, it was just strange. I think Burroughs’s prose is simple, direct, and effective as it is. Burroughs childhood and the people around him were quite messed up, but the more I read, the less perturbed I became. He also seemed to grow into the weirdness and unsettling nature of his life as he seemed to just accept what it was. Objectively speaking, a lot of the details were disturbing and sad.
I probably wouldn’t have read this book had not so many people recommended it for me as I really don’t read many memoirs of this type. I have read a lot about travel, food, and of famous people, but not on “normal” people. Not that Augusten Burroughs childhood was in any way normal. It’s a bit refreshing, and I did relate to some aspects of this. Due to the lack of boundaries placed on the characters and their disregard of societal norms and values, some of the stuff described was seemed genuinely fun and liberating to me. Often weird, but still neat. There was a spontaneity that I could see the appeal of in the stories of the mini adventures.
The book was shorter than I thought it would be, and I didn’t feel dragged down by it as a result. I don’t love this book nor do I dislike it. I think it conveys how crazy people are, but then again, maybe we have that in our every day lives. You can tell I’m not easily surprised by a lot of things that I read. Like I said, I was able to relate to it in some way showing you how we all want to be let out of our cages sometime.
So I don’t read movie reviews, but I’m fairly abreast of what films are liked and well received. I don’t remember hearing anything about this movie which usually doesn’t mean well for the film. Two of my friends did not like. One of them said the movie dragged on way too long. I’m inclined to agree. It wasn’t that bad of a movie, but it felt a bit aimless. I don’t think it did a good job of making you feel attached to any of the characters. It was slow, and took a bunch of amusing things from the book, but it wasn’t quite enjoyable or even sad enough. It felt a bit disjointed. I think the script might have looked okay on paper, but was just difficult to be cohesive on screen. I thought the acting was pretty decent since there was Annette Benning, Alec Baldwin, Gwyneth Paltrow (she had such few lines that she did not irk me at all in this film), Joseph Fiennes, and Joseph Cross as Augusten. The soundtrack wasn’t bad either, and there were some nice moments attributed to the director and the actors. All in all, not the worse movie I have seen, but not a great adaptation either.
Posted on June 26, 2007 in Books
Houghton Miffllin publishes annual installments to this series and other ones on genre writing such as mystery, poetry, short stories, science and nature, and others (complete list). The travel writing series began in 2000, and I started reading them a couple years later. I’ve read every single book in this series, and there are always a few gems. Since I do not have the chance to buy and read periodicals and magazines, I find the anthology refreshing. I have read a fair amount of travel writing, and the series always brings out the reasons why I like the stories. There are adventures, food, history, trivia, and most of all, stories and articles about people and characters. In this 2006 edition, I read about a Ukrainian giant, opulent Dubai, Hawaiian water parks and resorts, quiet bourgeois Zurich, and Ian Frazier’s coming of age road trip across America.
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I also finished The Road by Cormac McCarthy yesterday. It’s one of those rare books that I don’t really know how to approach with a review or commentary unless I reread and study it in depth.
Posted on May 18, 2007 in Books, Food
The full title of this book is Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany by Bill Buford. Without previous experience in the food business, Buford enters first the food and restaurant business in New York City by working at Mario Batali’s Babbo, and secondly a less capitalist view of food in Italy in the second half as the apprentice butcher. The book is funny, light and interesting. There are a lot of distinct characters in this book. The first half of the book draws similarities to Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain as it shows you the harshness that is the restaurant business. For my love of food, I have never wanted to be a professional chef or cook. My dad is a cook, and it was not a profession he chose for himself at first. He’s been doing it for thirty years, and he is very ready for semi-retirement. Knowing this, I became invested in Buford and felt good when he felt accomplished.
The book takes a different and dare I say, more introspective turn in the second half with the apprenticeship in Italy. Maybe it’s because I love travel books as much as food books or travel in general forces different perspectives for the writer, but there are even more unique characters and stories from Tuscany. The second half reads more like a Bill Bryson travelogue. I did enjoy Buford’s style, and the ending hints at a sequel in France. While Batali and a number of personalities in the book are anti-French, I’m a francophile so I very much excited at the prospect of reading Buford again en France.
Posted on May 9, 2007 in Books
Something About Me Reading Challenge involves picking five books that relate or represent yourself. On August 1, you pick other books from the list of other participants and hence, a discussion begins of books chosen. This is my first reading challenge, and I think it’s a pretty interesting one to begin with. I joined the Harry Potter Read Along a few weeks ago too and that starts next month in preparation for HP7.
This is my list for “Something About Me”. This was difficult to say the least. These are books that I’ve read, but I wish I had more choices that were more overt about who I am. I just want to read more after making this list. I also avoided repeats from other participants’ lists.
Continue reading →
Posted on May 2, 2007 in Books, Food
Reading about food is merging two of my loves together. This is the second food book I’ve read this year so far which is a lot considering I’ve only read ten books this year. George Bernard Shaw is quoted as saying that, “There is no sincerer love than the love of food.” I bake, cook when I can, and am a very adventurous eater. My love for food is great indeed, and it interests me greatly in many respects. This book was long, but very readable. It was informative, but with a genial style that most people can enter into. As a journalist, Pollan can engage readers while some academics would bore with their style about corn sex. Corn features heavily in the first section of the book. It’s fascinating to read the industry of food, and the impact of it on the environment, and the meaning of such words such as “organic” and “sustainable”. Much as Fast Food Nation did when I read it five years ago, this book made me question my eating habits, not only in a basic moral or scientific ways, but on a philosophical level. I enjoyed reading the author going back to the source of food through corn, grass, or in the woods when hunting a wild boar or foraging fungi. I think there is a viable narrative in this book that you may not get from most nonfiction books because I found myself wondering if I could hunt, really try vegetarianism, or trust corn or the word “organic” the same way ever again. My philosophy and views of food are quite in accordance to Pollan’s so it’s a bit preaching to the choir, but I loved the information I got from it and the personal account of his experiences.
ETA: Dewey has interviewed about this book on her site over here.