When the Guardian of the West Passage died in her bed, the women of Grey …
Fantastic Planet does the Book of Kells
No rating
This book is so visual and imaginative, and thrives when walking you through the surreal, psychedelic, illuminated manuscript of a world. But while it was always interesting, I found it hard to stay engaged with the story at times, particularly in the middle. The ending compelled me, and I wish I'd had more of that connection to the plot and characters through the rest of the book.
This work is an autobiography told in the third person, and includes coverage of his …
stick with Rats, Lice, and History
No rating
Zinsser writes his autobiography in the third person, playing both the somewhat disdainful biographer of "R.S." and R.S. himself. The conceit is characteristically weird, unnecessary, and extremely well done and funny, but I think it also is a distancing device for a man who doesn't really want to share anything personal about himself. Which makes for a frustrating autobiography!
In the rare moments when he does talk concretely about his life, the book is extremely fun (his account of his abortive attempt at a private medical practice, for example, is laugh-out-loud funny). But he spends most of the book and in long discursive discussions of the issues of his day, which unfortunately tend to end up either boring (unless you are very interested in his views on the state of medical pedagogy in 1940), or euphemistically "of their time." While the book is not surprisingly racist, sexist, or eugenicist for …
Zinsser writes his autobiography in the third person, playing both the somewhat disdainful biographer of "R.S." and R.S. himself. The conceit is characteristically weird, unnecessary, and extremely well done and funny, but I think it also is a distancing device for a man who doesn't really want to share anything personal about himself. Which makes for a frustrating autobiography!
In the rare moments when he does talk concretely about his life, the book is extremely fun (his account of his abortive attempt at a private medical practice, for example, is laugh-out-loud funny). But he spends most of the book and in long discursive discussions of the issues of his day, which unfortunately tend to end up either boring (unless you are very interested in his views on the state of medical pedagogy in 1940), or euphemistically "of their time." While the book is not surprisingly racist, sexist, or eugenicist for the era, and I do think Zinsser has some amount of critical thinking on these fronts, it is still ultimately racist, sexist, and eugenicist.
So, instead of the boring bits and the yikes bits, let us remember the part where he pretends to have rabies, bites a classmate, and is only stopped when someone dumps a tank of sea urchins on him. Or skip this one and just read Rats, Lice, and History.
It seems like the main idea in this book is leaving cake batter at room temperature for a couple days to ferment before baking it, I am extremely interested
Growing up, English ivy was an acutely troublesome invasive species -- in the region generally and in my family's yard specifically. My neighbors had, foolishly, planted it, and it would grow up trees and deprive them of their nutrients, and send vines into crevices of buildings, damaging them. At a formative age, I learned about this: how ivy sends these little creeping tendrils into all the small holes it finds. And I would sit in the back yard, imagining the ivy crawling up my body, planting little roots in my pores and feeding on me until I was a desiccated husk.
The point being, I had a hard time with the fact that ivy showing up was a good thing in this story, because to me the appearance of an inexplicable ivy leaf could not be a more ominous sign. So if you have my extremely specific aversion to the …
Growing up, English ivy was an acutely troublesome invasive species -- in the region generally and in my family's yard specifically. My neighbors had, foolishly, planted it, and it would grow up trees and deprive them of their nutrients, and send vines into crevices of buildings, damaging them. At a formative age, I learned about this: how ivy sends these little creeping tendrils into all the small holes it finds. And I would sit in the back yard, imagining the ivy crawling up my body, planting little roots in my pores and feeding on me until I was a desiccated husk.
The point being, I had a hard time with the fact that ivy showing up was a good thing in this story, because to me the appearance of an inexplicable ivy leaf could not be a more ominous sign. So if you have my extremely specific aversion to the plant, be aware I guess?
The classic chronicle of the impact disease and plagues have had on history and society …
I am over 160 pages into this book which is ostensibly a biography of typhus, and so far it has covered at length:
the nature of art,
whether or not he should write this book,
the origins and fundamentally parasitic nature of life,
the role of epidemic disease in various periods of history, each section of which he concludes that there's no reason to think typhus was present at that time.
It's the perfect book; it's like he wrote this book just for me.
Welcome to the Grand Abeona Hotel: home of the finest food, the sweetest service, and …
sweet
No rating
I liked a lot about this book, even though I felt like it lacked some polish, particularly in wrapping the plot up. It is told through slice-of-life-ish vignettes about various characters and how they ended up working at the hotel, with the story revealed incidentally in the background the character's stories. I found this book endearing but ultimately... it's not really a hotel is it? isn't it a cruise ship? this bothered me a lot.
The Woods All Black is equal parts historical horror, trans romance, and blood-soaked revenge, all …
This ended up not really being my thing; the supernatural stuff didn't work for me and it was offering a kind of catharsis that I'm not looking for. But I liked the historical fiction stuff a lot and I'm glad I read it nonetheless
