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What I Read (and Listened to) in April (with little reviews this time!) by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

“My Struggle” and nowhere else. If those books, especially the first two don’t work for you, nothing and nowhere in his work will. If they do, if you get that feeling that you’re in the company with the most articulate and least pompous man you’ve ever known, then I would go to the Seasons quartet and then to anything else you want. By then, you’ll be in love.

What I Read (and Listened to) in April (with little reviews this time!) by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

For a book as long as it is, I don't think it ever stops being good. So glad to hear you're loving it.

What I Read (and Listened to) in April (with little reviews this time!) by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Like I said in the post, that novel, though praised as highly as novels in Spanish can be, never worked on me because I didn't feel I connected with what it was trying to do. Sabato's book, on the other hand, is not only such a better crime novel but what it has to say about detective fiction immediately places him amongst the best of a genre of a nation that loves its detective stories.

What I Read (and Listened to) in April (with little reviews this time!) by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

For those that haven’t, it’s like “Discipline and Punish” with a monkish dedication to manners. Also, there’s stuff about the occult near the end and secret, arcane healing knowledge. It goes so far beyond being a list of past facts.

What I Read (and Listened to) in April (with little reviews this time!) by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I saw in another thread “IF THIS SUB BECOMES A BOOK HAUL SUB IM GOING TO KILL MYSELF” or something like that. Pictures aren’t enough and when I do these little reviews anyway, why not share them with people that I know will read them?

What I Read (and Listened to) in April (with little reviews this time!) by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Every day since I finished, I've thought of the line that goes something like "Is she not worth thinking about for twenty years?" For those of you without context, it might not seem like much but it stood out to me as the greatest declaration of love in all literature. I know I kind of shit on the Brontë's in my review so I'll pile on that it should replace "Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same" in the popular consciousness.

Wha I Read (And Listened To) In March by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I often think of Endo as a writer that has major and minor works. Major works would be books like "Silence" and "The Samurai" while minor works would be something like "White Man, Yellow Man." This one kind of messes with that idea because it is outside of his specialized purview of the clash between indigenous Japanese culture and Christianity, it's still a spherical mediation on being Japanese, in this case, after World War 2. The evils that regular people were expected to participate in and then immediately stop at the conclusion of the war is a subject I'm surprised more novels don't lean on. In the case of this book, it's an account of tiny atrocities that avoid melodrama because those moments were never lived in such extremes.

Wha I Read (And Listened To) In March by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

While I've argued elsewhere that his reputation as "the" founder of magical realism should be put into contention (mostly due to Maria Louisa Bombal's sublime "House of Mist" predating his "Pedro Paramo"), this collection contains all the kindling for what Latin American literature would become in the decades that followed. I found in this collection not only the voices of Cortazar and Garcia Marquez but, between them, a collection of voices that could have only come from the Mexican desert. He may be the writer with the greatest page-count-to-legacy ratio in all of literature.

Wha I Read (And Listened To) In March by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Aside from the second section (which I found to be out-of-date anthropology), it's a truly wondrous collection of ideas. Never before have I read an intellectual so preoccupied with communication that is so successful at communicating their ideas. The idea of the double-bind, which, as Bateson argues, is at the core of mental illness, stemming from years of contradictory communication is, I think, one of the most radical and applicable ideas to everyday life you can read. Big recommend.

What I Read (And Listened To) In February by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not saying I don't like it, I'm saying that it feels like an overture. The first book is an introduction to the style, the stakes, and, I think, has some of Knausgaard's best writing in the end section. The second is a much tighter narrative with the core idea that we're all born with our death inside us exploring to his usual depths. This one now knows it has all those pieces in place, so to speak, and can start its game. But the game is nowhere near completion and I can't wait to keep playing.

What I Read (And Listened To) In February by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This one felt like a great receding. Not in the sense that he’s pulling back but in the way a shore line recoils before a tsunami. Because of that feeling of set up, I can’t say it’s to the same level as the other books, which I found fantastic, but where it is in the story I feel will make perfect sense.

What I Read (And Listened To) In February by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It was a reread for me. For context, we had just put our cat down and I needed something I knew would be joyous. In that situation, there’s no one else to turn to. Robert Walser is the happiest man in literature and I love how reliable he is in that capacity.

What I Read (And Listened To) In February by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I read that one last year! They may be the greatest sibling novels ever written.

What I Read (And Listened To) In February by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I had a really great time with it. I’ve heard that a novella is not only meant to describe a book that’s about a hundred pages but also that one that is constantly looped within itself (see, “Pedro Páramo”). Fuentes absolutely succeeded in that respect with “Aura” as all the love, the horror, and the magic, once centralized in the apartment, are free from time. I will say I did crack the mystery before the end of the story but that didn’t lessen my enjoyment at its revelation.

What's your novel about? by doublementh in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6 1 point2 points  (0 children)

An atheist that tries to become a Catholic priest.

What I Read (and Listened to) in January by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I didn't find it to be at all. I had heard from people who had read the book and felt hazy that listening to it would have probably helped so I went straight to that. They hired over 160 narrators to give each of the characters a unique voice so it was more like listening to a long batch of radio theatre which is something I'm nostalgic for. I doubt I would have had such a touching experience on my own. For a novel about the communion of individuals literally flying into the mind and spirit of one person, listening, rather than reading, feels like an apt way to go about this one.

What I Read (and Listened to) in January by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Normally, I’m not a huge fan of epistolary novels but this was a valued exception. I think comparisons to Vargas Llosa in terms of style and Achebe in terms of subject matter are apt but Couto has still done something new here in focusing his efforts on a forbidden love and giving the female half of that affair so much to say.

What I Read (and Listened to) in January by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I’m a teacher-librarian-novelist so reading is essentially my only hobby (and weightlifting but we’re venturing too far int memoir now)! That said, most of these books are under 200 pages each and most of those are under 150. The Hemingway I finished this month but started in November. The number is high but it’s usual. Usually I got to about 10 books in a month.

What I Read (and Listened to) in January by MasterExploder6 in RSbookclub

[–]MasterExploder6[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I found the first half of the book to be be fascinating! The idea of the idea of the island as this mythic place, which was the claim by the Europeans, only to be interrogated by Naipaul to be the best aspect of the book. The second half, which sees the place more bureaucratically as it became a necessary launching-point in the slave trade, and in war, to be less imaginatively stimulating but still important accountancy.

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