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Showing posts from November, 2015

Review: To the Lighthouse

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf My rating: 4 of 5 stars Wow. I just finished this...what was it? Was it more conceit than content? There were times when it was so raw and real and other moments where the words became disjointed and the metaphors overwrought. But, man!: "Night after night, summer and winter, the torment of storms, the arrow-like stillness of fine (had there been any one to listen) from the upper rooms of the empty house only gigantic chaos streaked with lightning could have been heard tumbling and tossing, as the winds and waves disported themselves like the amorphous bulks of leviathans whose brows are pierced by no light of reason, and mounted one on top of another, and lunged and plunged in the darkness or the daylight (for night and day, month and year ran shapelessly together) in idiot games, until it seemed as if the universe were battling and tumbling, in brute confusion and wanton lust aimlessly by itself. In spring t

Review: Beowulf

Beowulf by Unknown My rating: 4 of 5 stars Heaney does the Audiobook and it's pretty great: evokes Tolkien and Joyce together. View all my reviews

Review: Beowulf

Beowulf by Unknown My rating: 4 of 5 stars Heaney does the Audiobook and it's pretty great: evokes Tolkein and Joyce together. View all my reviews

Review: I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban

I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban by Malala Yousafzai My rating: 5 of 5 stars Got it from a list of Top Audiobooks, here: http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/B... slowly making my way through...this is such an essential story. Glad I got the chance to hear it. View all my reviews

Review: Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom

Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom by Rick Hanson My rating: 5 of 5 stars Wonderfully enriching. Science and wonder, together with mindfulness? Sign me up! ;) Really: lots of good tips and kind words... View all my reviews

Review: Kirby: King of Comics

Kirby: King of Comics by Mark Evanier My rating: 5 of 5 stars Coming to a close as bed time reading with my son. And I love that this is our first joint absorption of an art history text. I got it a couple of years ago, hoping for just that. It has been mutually edifying. View all my reviews

Review: Gulliver's Travels: A Signature Performance by David Hyde Pierce

Gulliver's Travels: A Signature Performance by David Hyde Pierce by Jonathan Swift My rating: 5 of 5 stars While the book and this reading take some time to warm up to, by the time you get passed the cartoon-like images that wend away in the popular mind around the concept of Gulliver's Travels, and surpass the potential Disney-esque sound and presentation of David Hyde Pierce's voice, the original tone of Swift as an early 18th c. satirist with a seeming encyclopedic understanding for world knowledge by which he can take the ironic tone he does rings out true and loud and so relevant to this age. The Classic nature of this work is inspiring, as true as a surviving Platonic discourse or astounding as Melville's how-the-heck-did-he-do-it-before-the-internet global grasp in his whale book. View all my reviews

Review: Light in August (12 Audiocassettes) Unabridged

Light in August (12 Audiocassettes) Unabridged by William Faulkner My rating: 5 of 5 stars This reading by Mark Hammer is extraordinary, breathing life into every character and navigating time lapses, twists, narrative turns and capturing subtle accents and regionalisms with finesse and caring. At once he is Mitchum's Max Cady and then he is Steiger's Gillespie. At moments you feel a small, half-drunk Faulkner himself etching the Shakespearean prose out in a hard, stubby pencil then banging away all night on a typewriter; and this reader persists. It's just terrific! View all my reviews

Review: Kafka on the Shore

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami My rating: 5 of 5 stars Five Star Fiction. Thank you, Mr. Murakami: I will never forget it. View all my reviews