Jump to content

All Activity

This stream auto-updates

  1. Past hour
  2. No I think Hux has made the point well, the extracts although short don't sound very promising.
  3. Today
  4. I’d just like to point out that just because Hux doesn’t like it doesn’t mean that you won’t. Nor does it mean that it’s a bad book, it simply means that Hux doesn’t like it
  5. 'Perhaps we need to lay a complaint against the Trucking Shifty company. Their habit of dumping loads at people's doors is a little inconvenient. I suspect it may have had something to do with my parishioners getting dicky tummies.' 'You think?' One had to wonder how the man had graduated from theological college. 'Why don't you take it up with them? They may listen to a 'learned' scholar,' I said sarcastically. 'Well ...' he actually blushed, 'that's very kind of you to say, but ...
  6. KEV67

    Women in Love

    I am puzzled about when the story was set. I thought it would be after the First World War, but it has not been mentioned. One of the characters, Gudrun, thinks about moving to Russia to pursue her art. Another character, Gerald Crich, had been a soldier, but there is no mention of him fighting in WW1. Not yer anyway. In the chapter I just finished, it discussed how Gerald modernised the mines with new machinery, including electrical machinery. That sounds 20th Century. Perhaps the story was set in an alternative 1920s in which the war had not taken place. Perhaps it was set in the Edwardian era. That may be a possibility, because no motor cars have been mentioned. Often they are in Edwardian books, so maybe the story is set in late Victorian times.
  7. Yesterday
  8. Thank you for reading this book so the rest of us don't have to! Hope your next read is better.
  9. Light Years (1975) James Salter Nope! There are certain books that just rub you up the wrong way. And my god, this book really rubbed me up the wrong way. I think the three reasons it irritated me so much was due to the stylised writing (loathed it), the incessant and banal dialogue (I'd say the book is 80% dialogue) and the story itself (utterly dripping with middle-class tedium). It reminded me of an article I read years ago about literary genres and tropes, one of which was the stream-of-consciousness novel about the bored couple getting a divorce. Well, get ready for some immensely dull middle-class people and their kids. (An additional gripe would be how horrifically American this book is but we'll ignore that since we've got so much else to work with). So the writing style is basically lots of short sentences occasionally interspersed with sudden endings that contain verbs and adjectives. Such as: 'The autumn came. Light danced over the crisp leaves. Marjorie was holding a cup, casually, alone, pale. The house was alone. It stood in shadows. Outside there was a name being called, silently, briskly, hard. Clouds gathered.' I'm not sure how you would describe this style (or if it even has a name) but I found it painful to read. The stop/start nature of it, the jarring means of staggering along with such limitation and simplicity was awful. It's almost as if the book was written for children with simplistic prose and obvious platitudes (things glitter a lot, the light shines a lot, leaves crunch under feet). It's just very dull, obvious, and uninteresting but (like stream-of-consciousness writing) has the distracting effect of appearing clever and fluid when it's actually quite bland and prosaic. Then we come to the dialogue (of which there is a LOT). The book is more play than novel but again the conversations are tedious. "These are beautiful," Eve said. "I think these are better." "Sixty dollars a dozen. What will you use them for?" "You always need wineglasses." "Aren't you afraid they'll break?" "The only thing I'm afraid of are the words ordinary life,'" Nedra said. "Too bad about Arnaud," Neil said. "It's horrible." "Eve says he... may never talk right again," he said to the water glass. He gad a thin mouth, the words leaked out. "They don't know." "Would you like some tea?" Eve asked. "Let me make it," Nedra said, rising quickly to her feet. She disappeared into the kitchen. "Rotten weather, isn't it?" Neil murmured after a pause. "Yes." "It's a lot colder than... last winter," he said. "I guess it is." "Something to do with... the earth's orbit... I don't know. We're supposed to be entering a new ice age." "Not another one," she said. It's essentially that kind of thing for 300 pages. Meandering, dull, middle-class conversations that reiterate the banal state of their lives. And while that might be the point of these conversations, an author really ought to be able to convey the tedium of life without forcing me to experience it for myself. And while we're on the subject of life being boring and pointless, why do so many authors who want to explore this particular theme (won't somebody please think of the poor middle-class people) always seem to imply that there is an alternative? There isn't. That's life. You haven't discovered anything we didn't already know. I truly loathe this kind of middle-class navel-gazing. That it came wrapped in such infantile writing, such a mundane dialogue-heavy narrative, only increased my anger. That all being said, however, there are some who will probably love this book. It takes no time to read and that might be enough to convince you it was good (rather than simplistic and empty). 3/10
  10. confront my good self with his findings. 'It says in a book, God exists, Mr Decadent, and so..God exists..do look around you good man, and see the wealth and abundance of His signs..the bees,, the sun, the trees. ' 'Is death part of God's plan.. famine..war..or pestilence..and when are you helping me shift a ton of cat litter frm the entrance?', I enquired, secretly laughing 😃 as my severe countenance hid it expertly.
  11. to volunteer at Johnny and Rosie's Cat Cafe. He was sure he could round up a few more ne'er-do-wells who needed gainful employment. However, that would have to wait. He was heading back to the vicarage to track down his hefty volume of 'Perspicacious Theological Apologist Debates the Existence of God vs Atheism' by Ino Imright. Heaving it into his backpack, he trudged back to the cafe to ...
  1. Load more activity
×
×
  • Create New...