Author: Paul Auster
ISBN: 9780312426293 DDC: 813.54 LibraryThing
The old man sits on the edge of the narrow bed, palms spread out on his knees, head down, staring at the floor.
Carl was kind enough to send me this book; one of the prizes from his Once Upon A Time reading challenge draws. And while it was the cool cover design that first attracted my attention it was the writing that meant I finished it in less than 3 hours.
To be totally honest I’m still a little ambivalent over the storyline itself. It is a day in the life of our nameless protagonist. Well, he is given a name, Mr. Blank, but we know that isn’t his real name. At first he appears to just be a confused old man, possibly suffering from Alzheimer’s or some similar illness, but as we read on we discover that there is more than that to Mr. Blank and his past.
As I said, I’m ambivalent over this novel. On the one hand I really enjoyed the writing and the descriptions. On the other it was almost predictable in its ending. Well, predictable is overly harsh, but you know what I mean.
Writing this I think I’m going to come down on the “I liked it” side. It isn’t going to join my favourites list. But I think it makes for an interesting read; besides it is quite short so it doesn’t feel like an unrewarded waste of time. At times it is a little cold. But what else can you expect in a book that details only one day in the life of an unknown individual?
2008[1] hasn’t been so great for me and the regular blogging, has it? at least so far. All that may change, for everything changes, so some one once said, somewhere. But who knows if yo[2] was telling the truth or not. Maybe nothing changes. Maybe everything stays the same but we just can’t cope with such monotony and so trick ourselves into believing that the world was different once upon a time. Maybe the past isn’t a different country at all.
*/whatever that was *
I had the weirdest of dreams last night; never fear I shan’t bore you with the fuzzy details that linger on in my memory. I’ll just tell you that it involved dead bodies, weird soldiers, life on the run, and other such exciting adventures.
Dreams can be quite strange you know.
Linknotes:
When will we start to drop the two thousand bit? ↩
Surreal and weird are terms that come to mind when I attempt to review this book. Or to be even more accurate, very weird and extremely surreal
The story revolves around a world famous pianist who travels to a city, in Europe somewhere but we’re never told where exactly, and then travels around meeting people and being late for other meetings with people. Ryder seems to be suffering from some sort of amnesia at first. We don’t really know anything about him, and he doesn’t really seem to know anything about himself either.
* Jim Carrey - Joel Barish
* Kate Winslet - Clementine Kruczynski
* Kirsten Dunst - Mary
* Tom Wilkinson - Dr. Howard Mierzwiak
* Elijah Wood - Patrick
So you fall in love with someone, things go badly and you break up. Whats the next step? Why deleting them from your memory of course. Isn’t that just a great idea for a film?
It took me a while to go see this film, prolly because of Jim Carrey’s name in the credits. I’ve really liked some of his films; Man in the Moon and whatever that reality TV show one was called, but more often than not I don’t particularly enjoy them
But this is a wonderful film, funny and sad at the same time it illustrates a relationship falling apart, and then through the erasing of Joel’s memories shows us how the relationship began. And shows the audience that these two people clearly love each other. Managing to combine the wackiness of the idea with the tenderness of a love story I really enjoyed this film.
Not everyone knows how I killed old Phillip Mathers, smashing his jaw with my spade; but first it is better to speak of my friendship with John Divney because it was he who first knocked old Mathers down by giving him a great blow in the neck with a special bicycle-pump which he manufactured himself out of a hollow iron bar.
Recently this book has been brought back to public attention by the creators of Lost who said that anyone who has read it may have a greater insight into their TV show. But that shouldn’t be the reason you pick up this book. Flann O’Brien is one of the pseudonyms of Brian O’Nolan. Well known in Ireland for his satirical columns in the Irish Times which he wrote for almost 30 years, beginning in the 1940’s. This is my first Flann O’Brien novel, and I think I’ll have to read some more.
Author: Haruki Murakami, trans from the Japanese: Philip Gabriel
ISBN: 0099494094
DDC: 895.635
See also: LibraryThing ; Mental mayhem ; Mindspill
“So you’re all set for money, then?” the boy named Crow asks in his characteristic sluggish voice. The kind of voice you have when you’ve just woken up and your mouth still fells heavy and dull. But he’s just pretending. He’s totally awake. As always.
There are two main narrators to this book, one a 15 year old runaway who has taken on the name Kafka, and the other an old man, Nakata, who never recovered from some strange childhood accident, but can talk with cats. I have to say that while both storylines were gripping and intriguing, I never knew what was going on. Or had an idea what would happen next. By the end of the novel I was as in the dark as at the beginning.
I still enjoyed it though.
It isn’t a fast paced book, the characters weren’t particularly gripping, but there is more than enough to keep you entertained and wanting to read on, even if you are scratching your head and wondering about fish falling from the sky, or if Kafka fulfilled his father’s dark prophecy. There is death, and sex, myths, and cats, libraries, and truckers. Of course there is also a lot of unanswered questions at the end, and many, many loose ends. But in a way that doesn’t matter, the open-ended nature of this book isn’t something that bothered me in the slightest.
I’m sure I missed half of what was going on here, what with references to Oedipus and Japanese legends, aliens and creating a magic flute from the souls of murdered cats… But what the hell, it was a wierd and enjoyable book, one that I may have to read again to try and understand a little more.
ISBN: 1902197011
Author: Grant Morrison
6 short stories plus an introduction by Stewart Home.
First line:
Blind in the city of light, Patricia walked carefull back through the Cimitiere Pere-Lachasie
Contents:
The Braile Encyclopaedia
The Room Where Love Lives
Red King Rising
Lovecraft in Heaven
Depravity
I’m A Policeman
I suppose weird would be a good one review of this collection, but I already knew that from the blurb. The blurb I didn’t actually read until after I bought the book. Weird, disturbing, but very readable would be a slightly longer review. Actually considering some of the descriptions and occurances, these stories are very readable.
Two of the 6 stories here are scripts, Red King Rising is a discussion/confrontation between a 13 year old Alice, and her creator, in the form of Lewis Carroll. The other Depravity features Aleister Crowley. Actually the majority of the prose here uses figures that you will be familar with. Lovecraft, for example[1] features as well as those I’ve already mentioned.
If you’ve liked other work by Morrison you may enjoy this. Personally I doubt I’d reread it, but it was interesting, in a wtf way.
