Zachary Casler từ Vettamangalam West, Tamil Nadu, India

zcasler1047

05/09/2024

Dữ liệu người dùng, đánh giá và đề xuất cho sách

Zachary Casler Sách lại (10)

2018-04-17 08:31

Canh Bạc Hôn Nhân Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi: Sarah MacLean

Though at times charming, this book mostly left me wondering what sort of a world the author imagines England to be. Her characterizations are far more disjointed than the plot, which has its flaws but at worst they’re jarring, not heinous. However, the characterizations don’t work not merely because there are only two or three bearable people in the entire novel (and this isn't a farcical satire), but mainly because they’re a convoluted mess of contexts. Major Pettigrew’s manners and standards hearken from a more gentlemanly era, yet it’s as though he’s a one-man time warp surrounded by modern incarnations of rudeness and overt materialism – his son is breathtakingly selfish and shallow, his relatives are vulgar and grasping, and the local squire has class snobbery but no sense of heritage. (And are we supposed to feel sorry for the Major because of his frightful son, or wonder at his bad parenting??) Worse, and still more disjointed, many of the other characters seem to come from outposts of civilization in the 1930’s where people think that Mecca is a restaurant and Hindu and Muslim are the same things. Yet the story is obviously contemporary, so why would the author create a collection of characters in 2010 who overtly shun children raised by single mothers and won’t talk to the village shop owner because she’s “in trade” and has dark skin??? The whole thing is preposterous, and I suspect it comes from some people's obnoxious desire to paint the rest of the world as narrow-minded and petty in order to position themselves as morally superior. It’s a shame, because in defter hands the story could have been uniformly sweet and delightful. The idea of family heritage and honor being embodied in an heirloom is especially interesting and poignant...as is the fraught road to late-in-life love. Too bad the themes are ruined by the addled execution. (A highlight is when a curry dish is considered far too spicy and exotic to serve at some golf club dinner – the author is so hell-bent on portraying everyone as provincial that she somehow forgot the English have been eating curry for over a century?? Good grief.)

2018-04-17 11:31

Lost... in the Crater of Fear Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi: Tracey Turner

I saw Jonathan Safran Foer speak at a reading a couple of years ago, and he mentioned that there are a lot of books that you read and like, or even that you love, but there are only very few books that you read and you feel as if they were written especially for you. I felt like this book was written especially for me. One of the central characters is a nerdy 13-year old girl interested in politics and journalism; her best friend starts out as a tape cutter at the public radio station and ends up an animator of magical realist films and Super 8mm home movie hobbyist; almost all of the adults in the book are neurotic UofC alumni; and the city of Chicago is so beautifully written it's a major character in and of itself. How many nostalgia points does that hit for me? Yep, that's right. It also has some of the funniest, most vivid writing I'd read in years, and is really elegantly structured (surprising for a novel about 13-year olds in 1980--not the most elegant time period or age group). The characterizations are so strong--my friends and I sometimes find ourselves talking about Muley Scott Wills and Michelle Wasserstrom like they were people who went to high school with us. The world of this novel exists, fully realized, intricate, and suspended in time. At one point in the book Muley begins to animate over film footage he's taken of his neighborhood, with the goal of creating a film that "would illustrate all of the invisible borders that existed between" he and his friends, family, and neighbors. That might actually be a good way of describing the goals of most of my favorite books, and I think it's something this novel succeeds in doing, spectacularly.

Người đọc Zachary Casler từ Vettamangalam West, Tamil Nadu, India

Người dùng coi những cuốn sách này là thú vị nhất trong năm 2017-2018, ban biên tập của cổng thông tin "Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn" khuyến cáo rằng tất cả các độc giả sẽ làm quen với văn học này.