Sheauhan Yap từ Tahirabat/Çorum, Turkey

sheauhanyap

05/17/2024

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

Sheauhan Yap Sách lại (11)

2019-08-28 11:31

Mắt Trái Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi: Đản Đản

One would expect that a book that calls itself Modern Dying and the Ways We Grieve would discuss just such things. Perhaps it would be an anthropological study or, as the misleading library information on its credits page suggests, explore the “social aspects” of death. Instead, Death’s Door is an uneasy mixture of literary analysis and personal...I hesitate to say essay, because the thoughts, events, and remembrances in the memoir-like portions of the book are rarely complete. It is as if the author is driven to confess the dark thoughts that plagued her after her husband’s death and yet can’t bring herself to actually provide the reader with enough information to actually grasp what happened to him and how she felt about it. Or perhaps, having covered that information in another book, she didn’t feel the need to recap it here. Either way, the personal parts of each chapter are much more compelling than the readings Gilbert offers of the snatches of poems reprinted here. The usual suspects are trotted out again and again: Thomas Hardy, Sylvia Plath, D. H. Lawrence, William Carlos Williams. She has limited herself to poetry (and occasionally prose) that directly addresses the author’s loss. Why that means she’s limited to analyzing work that is generally 50 years old or more is less clear. She references Paul Monette and some of the other survivors of the AIDS plague without giving them as much weight as heterosexual survivors from earlier in the century. What this means, then, is that Gilbert’s definition of modern does not mirror mine. She mentions the effects of 9/11 on modern American only in the Preface and again in her final chapter, but the reference feels like an afterthought, perhaps suggested by an editor in an attempt to attach the book to the present. Taking the book as it stands, I would have preferred to read the source poems Gilbert discusses, rather than picking my way through her selected passages — a line here, a stanza there. I feel that I don’t know enough context from the poems or from the poets’ lives to know if the citations actually fit Gilbert’s theories. And because she won’t be honest about her own life, I don’t trust her to be honest in what she’s sharing. Although I have a reasonably large library devoted to death, dying, and grief — including several anthologies of poetry on the subject — I did not find Death’s Door: Modern Dying and the Ways We Grieve a useful addition of my collection. Perhaps, if you’re a death-obsessed English major who misses the days of being lectured to, this is the book for you. Otherwise, don’t be lured by its title.

2019-08-28 14:31

Truyện Ngắn Lãng Mạn Nhất Thế Kỷ 20 Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi:

Started re-reading recently for the first time in ages. Both here and in The Hobbit, I was struck by a few things I hadn't noticed when reading it before: * So much nature writing! As an impatient kid I'd skim it all just to get to the juicy plot bits, and hence completely forgot it existed, but now it's actually quite nice to savor. * So many songs and poems! I thought there were just a few, but in fact it breaks out into a song-and-dance musical number every couple of pages. I'm surprised they made LOTR into movies and not Broadway shows. * There is a whole poem here that's basically an extended edition of the nursery rhyme Hey Diddle Diddle. I know now that Tolkien wrote LOTR partly as an excuse to make up origins or uses for real Old English words (e.g., the name "Gandalf" appears in some historical saga but is never explained, so he created a character by that name here). I guess he had fun doing the same with nursery rhymes. * Tom Bombadil speaks in verse the whole time! I'd assumed that apart from the obvious song/poetry bits set in italics, the rest was regular prose dialogue. But if you try reading his prose out loud, you'll find it has the same rhythm as the verse. * I've recently started seeing people complain about fat-shaming everywhere, and I can't help but notice it here too: Bombur the dwarf is fat and slow, Butterbur the innkeeper is fat and not too bright, Fatty the hobbit is fat and lazy... It doesn't ever feel vicious, but it's just something I don't remember noticing before. * p.x: "Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer." Oooh, burn. * p.25: "...anything that Hobbits had no immediate use for, but were unwilling to throw away, they called a mathom. Their dwellings were apt to become rather crowded with mathoms..." Clearly there needs to be a LOTR edition of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. * p.104: "[Lobelia] snorted, and showed plainly that she thought [poorly of the Gamgees]. Frodo did not offer her any tea." p.105: "[Sam] had been saying farewell to the beer-barrel in the cellar." I love how this ultimate quest over good and evil begins with gentle snark about tea and beer. * p.123: "Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes." Sounds like my fellow statisticians. Maybe, instead of Data Scientists, we should be rebranding ourselves as Data Half-Elves.

Người đọc Sheauhan Yap từ Tahirabat/Çorum, Turkey

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.