I found this a pleasant read, entertaining enough, but I think I might have liked it better when I was twenty-five. A lot of story-telling that skips I found this a pleasant read, entertaining enough, but I think I might have liked it better when I was twenty-five. A lot of story-telling that skips around adds unnecessary confusion, and Adams' overused trick of beginning many new scenes with pronouns to keep us in the dark about who it is gets annoying.
I noticed Adams has a thing for personifying things that are not only void of intention, but almost not concrete concepts - the wind, light, and so forth. In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I found sentences about what the wind was busy doing when it 'should have' been tousling the protagonist's hair, or whatever, clever and funny; here, it made me think Adams was really just a writer with a relatively small bag of tricks that he used over and over. Another one - several points in the book where he pretty clearly started with his iconic metaphor of 'flying in exactly the way that bricks don't' and inserted a new noun and unlikely action.
I don't mean to sound like I'm hatin' on the book. It was fun. But I had high expectations, given that this launched a second series of books for him, and this is on that '1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die' list.
This has some interesting ideas, but opening with some strawman anti-scientist telling a smug scientist all the right setups for the brilliant gBleah.
This has some interesting ideas, but opening with some strawman anti-scientist telling a smug scientist all the right setups for the brilliant guy to tear him down, is a way to turn me right off. Then, the rest of the book presents character after character that we see for thirty or forty pages each, and shows that the first guy was oh so brilliant.
Meanwhile, Asimov couldn't foresee a time when physical books had any alternative, or when information could be kept primarily in computers. I mean, not even the internet - he couldn't foresee that huge stores of knowledge wouldn't already be kept in one searchable place in the next 50,000 years.
And the slang? Hoo, boy. Space, man! It's bad!...more
Ha ha! I am kidding, of course. He's the guy you always want to get away from at parties - the guy whoI bet D.H. Lawrence was a lot of fun at parties.
Ha ha! I am kidding, of course. He's the guy you always want to get away from at parties - the guy who pins you in and talks to you about all this stuff that he is sure is blowing your mind, because nobody sees the reality of everything the way he does.
This time out, D.H. has a lot to teach us about love, and better love, and what lies beyond love, and there's a guy named Mary Sue Birkin who's a lot like D.H. and is the way we all should be.
And we have a narrative style where for pages and pages characters will internally monologue, and where we know characters are being ironic, or ironical, or sarcastic, or sardonic, because we are told that they said something ironically, or sarcastically, or sardonically. Upwards of 60 times we are told that, in fact.
I have a lot of snark that I need to organize, but I'm tired and I need to go to bed now. He used 'vaguely' 20 times, including this:
Halliday giggled, and lolled his head back, vaguely.
I don't have even the vaguest idea how one lolls one's head vaguely.
I'll make this better tomorrow when I'm pert as a pixie (Chapter 30)....more
Have you ever wondered what a place would be like where you were outside of time and space, neither dead nor alive? Where you could observe the mechanHave you ever wondered what a place would be like where you were outside of time and space, neither dead nor alive? Where you could observe the mechanisms of the universe and see the death of our planet and sun? Where you could commune with souls of the dead in the black, silent sea of sleep?
Well, it would be full of adverbs. An infinitude of adverbs.
Do you like adverbs? William Hope Hodgson did. Do you like to start sentences with a sudden adverb and a comma? William Hope Hodgson liked that, too.
I wrote a small app to chew up the Gutenberg version of this book and count the adverbs (just the -ly adverbs), and count how often he dangled them*. Here are some of William's favorites - the first number is the total count of how often he used them in this 27 chapter book, the second number is my rough count of how often he dangled them:
He used many more adverbs than these, of course. He used only 78 times, which should be in first place, but only doesn't slow down the writing much, and doesn't draw attention to itself the way other -ly adverbs do. So I didn't count it. One of my favorites was multitudinously, although he only used it once (not to introduce a sentence, since I know you were wondering).
His total counts for modifying verbs, instead of choosing a different verb that may not have required modification:
***drum roll***
1,277! In a book of 27 chapters! That's 47 per chapter!
And he dangled 524 of them! An impressive 19 per chapter!
If I ever get swept away from this plane before I slough off my mortal coil, and am tranported to a dark place outside time and space, where I can observe the mechanisms of the universe, neither alive nor dead, and can commune with the souls of the dead in the silent sea of sleep, and I see William Hope Hodgson wading in the black, undampening waters there, I'm going to presently, carefully, slowly, gradually-- or perhaps quickly and suddenly-- but really, literally, soundly, thoroughly-- beat him with adverbs. Multitudinously.
*The 'dangling' count was the count of adverbs immediately followed by a comma, colon, semicolon, or question mark. That may have over-counted, but I let him slide on being followed by hyphens, which he did at times. So that helps him a bit. Trust me when I tell you he began many sentences, Adverbly, ... ...more
Fantastic reading by Andy Minter (available for free at librivox.org). I liked the book pretty well, too - Bennett is a master creator of character inFantastic reading by Andy Minter (available for free at librivox.org). I liked the book pretty well, too - Bennett is a master creator of character in the medium of dry humor. It's on the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list, though, and I don't understand at all why it's on there, except Peter Boxall has probably read it, and considers himself special....more
I feel like Kundera didn't finish the book. It feels like he just got to someplace where one minor plot got resolved and stopped.
Still, I always like I feel like Kundera didn't finish the book. It feels like he just got to someplace where one minor plot got resolved and stopped.
Still, I always like his disarming writing style. Normally I dislike 'meta-writing' where the author mentions him or herself, but with Kundera, it works. He acknowledges the impossibility of completely immersing the reader in his world, and it comes across as refreshing, or as I characterized it above, disarming. Somehow it doesn't come across as self-satisfied philosophizing from the guy you always want to get away from at a party. It'll keep me thinking for a while, so three stars....more
This book is on Peter Boxall's "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die," and for the life of me I don't know w**spoiler alert** Spoiler: he makes it.
This book is on Peter Boxall's "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die," and for the life of me I don't know why. It's a light, almost madcap, shallow adventure story/armchair travelogue for 19th-century Europeans who wanted to read about India and the U.S.
I can see wanting Verne on the list; he's the father of science fiction. This book ISN'T SCIENCE FICTION. Besides, "Journey to the Center of the Earth" is also on the list.
It's not amazingly good; it's probably a better movie than a book. Didn't the movie have a balloon?
It didn't stretch the boundaries of what a novel was.
Why am I even going on like this? Why do I care? Does anybody take that list seriously? I don't, and yet I can't let it go.
Well, if you feel like you have time to read 1000 of 1001 Books, but not the 1001st, let me save you some time on the last book: HE MAKES IT BECAUSE OF THE INTERNATIONAL DATE LINE, and for the last three weeks of his trip he didn't realize it, because NOBODY EVER MENTIONED WHAT DAY IT WAS....more
About halfway through the book, I thought I was reading a 260-page middle finger from Italo Calvino to his readers. Toward the end, I realized that waAbout halfway through the book, I thought I was reading a 260-page middle finger from Italo Calvino to his readers. Toward the end, I realized that wasn't fair - it wasn't a giant middle finger, because Calvino probably really believed what he did was edgy and clever.
In 1955, maybe this would have been edgy. In 1979, which is when he wrote it, it's hard to believe people were fooled into thinking this was anything but a bunch of smug sputum. In 2008, it's just a waste of time.
I learned one thing from this book. I was supposed to read this in college and never did, and finished out of a sense of obligation to Kevin McManus, my English teacher way back when. So what I learned is: if I could force myself to finish this, I can read anything....more
Synopsis: Utterson: I can't figure out why Jekyll puts up with this Hyde fellow. Dr. Lanyon: I saw Hyde turn into Jekyll. Dr. Jekyll: Yep. I'm Mr. Hyde. VSynopsis: Utterson: I can't figure out why Jekyll puts up with this Hyde fellow. Dr. Lanyon: I saw Hyde turn into Jekyll. Dr. Jekyll: Yep. I'm Mr. Hyde. Vladimir Nabokov: What an excellent story....more
If I ever get my hands on a time machine, I'm going back to destroy this book before Melville's widow decides to make it public knowledge. I hate thisIf I ever get my hands on a time machine, I'm going back to destroy this book before Melville's widow decides to make it public knowledge. I hate this book. Why two stars? Because the last 30 pages were good.
But look. This book hurts Melville's legacy. Moby Dick is wonderful, but most people never read it because they read Billy Budd under duress. Because this book exists, and is short, every American high school assigns it. Everyone learns to hate Melville because this book sucks wet rope. I learned to hate Melville when I was assigned this book in high school, and I never even finished it. If this book didn't exist, high school students would be assigned Bartleby the Scrivener, or passages from Moby Dick, or, like Faulkner, or Dostoevsky, you'd simply hear about this author but come to believe he's only for college students. And you know what? That'd be fine. Better than what we've got today.
Man, you know, if I get my hands on a time machine, I might instead go back to Melville and say, "remember, Herm, it's show, not tell. And the point of writing is not to be intentionally inscrutable - this isn't a word puzzle. I don't want you hanging out with Nathaniel Hawthorne anymore. He's a bad influence." But then I'd probably destroy this book anyway - it may well be hopeless. After he died, of course. No need to be confrontational; that'd just be rude....more
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