loveitallabove

Silas Marner by George Eliot My rating: 3 of 5 stars The language and psychology of this classic were extraordinary, felt like Joyce at its best; but at the same time it was pure treacle. Still, I am proud to say I've "read" George Eliot: maybe someday Middlemarch. View all my reviews

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston My rating: 5 of 5 stars Performed by Michele-Denise Woods, this classic work flows so smoothly read aloud, like it was meant to be. Strangely the last disk broke, so I had to read the last portion from the novel itself: a perfect mixture of how to take in this book like true nourishment. There is so much truth to Hurston's observations about men and women, primal like old testament source material and wielding metaphors new and timeless. Kind of amazing to think how many ships this books set to sail, as short and simple as it is. View all my reviews

Buddha, Vol. 8: Jetavana by Osamu Tezuka My rating: 5 of 5 stars ...and I'm done! Buddha, too. The lesson (no spoiler, really...): it's about us, y'all; the divine is in each and everyone of us. So proud to have done this Tezuka Saga. View all my reviews

Buddha, Vol. 7: Prince Ajatasattu by Osamu Tezuka My rating: 5 of 5 stars The trials of middle age and bureaucracy. View all my reviews

Ayako by Osamu Tezuka My rating: 5 of 5 stars I was reading one of the Buddha books when waiting at the DMV and a Japanese man younger than me, got really excited saying "TezuKAH, he is the greatest. Very great. You must read more." He described Ayako as one of the artist's best, a classic that deals frankly with great problems for Japan after the war. His enthusiasm and intensity was so sincere and well received by me. I went right out to Kinokuniya and bought it. After page 200 or so I could not keep myself form reading the rest of the book in one sitting. When Tezuka does his adult works, there are illustrations that are so exquisite. His pacing is extraordinary, and his storycraft completes with great literature. Concurrent with this I am listening to Gogol's Dead Souls . There are parallels in the change from agrarian to modernist society, the pitfalls and tragi-comic themes. View all my reviews

Buddha, Vol. 6: Ananda by Osamu Tezuka My rating: 5 of 5 stars Each book more more Buddha: in this one he's magic! Two more to go!! View all my reviews

Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware My rating: 3 of 5 stars Ware's whole approach is pretty intense: extraordinarily ordinary, told with an unforgettable storytelling strategy. While this feels like a classic, I have a hard time adoring this as I might like. View all my reviews

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami My rating: 4 of 5 stars I just love reading Murakami, even if this wasn't my favorite so far. This book begins in the first person, for two characters; from which I never quite recovered. I enjoy better how he creates characters slowly, and at a near distance. On the other hand, the author puts it best when he writes,"I love Maugham. I’ve read The Razor’s Edge three times. Maybe it’s not a spectacular novel, but it’s very readable. Better that than the other way around." View all my reviews

But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past by Chuck Klosterman My rating: 4 of 5 stars Maybe the most ambitious Klosterman book yet? But not sure if I liked it. I read it in pretty much one sitting, on the plane to Iceland. Early on I thought it sucked. A high point, a conversation about dreams with Richard Linklater Buddha-like: "...I sense he's sweeping the floor of a very large room as we chat - his sentences are periodically punctuated by the dulcet swoosh of a broom. 'Dreams used to have a much larger role in the popular culture..." View all my reviews

The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism by Ross King My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is a terrific representation of the story of the Salon of mid-to-late 19th c. Paris, starring Messonier, Manet, Baudelaire, Nadar, Napolean III, Pissaro, et al. King interweaves remarkable overarching observations about culture, society and aesthetics with fascinating factoids about the artists and other cultural innovations. It's a strong audiobook presentation, a smooth listen. To be honest, I did not know that one of Manet's great, technical innovations was the white ground for oil paintings, rather than the darker grounds used since the Renaissance. I also did not quite realize the central role Pissaro played as an organizer of collective exhibitions and more than Monet. Saxophone invented in 1840?! View all my reviews

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers My rating: 3 of 5 stars Another great audiobook that I had a tough time getting through as a real book. Dion Graham hit it out of the park...and good on Eggers to have a gifted African American actor be him, I guess. The work is very self indulgent and self aware of that. Early parts of the novel cut a little too close to home being so near to my own mother at her terminal stages of the cancer, then it was sweet to hear him tooling around the Bay Area. For Eggers's writing, I am more a fan of other later works, and I am glad my commute facilitated getting through his strong, lengthy, freshman opus. View all my reviews

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse My rating: 4 of 5 stars I just "read" this for the second time, now as an audiobook. It was so satisfying to explore life's rich pageant; and to see one's life made up of changeable moments: chapters, moving from void to void. And in the end one of your oldest and dearest friends can lean forward to kiss you on the head, and you are Nirvana when you least expect it. View all my reviews

Buddha, Vol. 1: Kapilavastu by Osamu Tezuka My rating: 5 of 5 stars Enjoying my forays into Manga, especially with a master of the medium ;), and digging in alongside my son. Though this one, on completion, I kicked out to my dear, old friend in Wisconsin. My boy's still on the Dragon Ball Z, One Piece and lighter fare. Hoping maybe to get through the following volumes. In this one, From my ignorance, i am still not even sure whose gonna be Buddha ;) View all my reviews

East of Eden by John Steinbeck My rating: 5 of 5 stars Like a second degree in literature, I have been doing a great number of classic works on audiobooks as part of my commute. East of Eden was just about as epically intimate as intended. It felt so satisfying to touch a classic work like this in auditory format, listening is different than reading. In fact, it can be trusted better, right? View all my reviews

Introducing Derrida by Jeff Collins My rating: 3 of 5 stars This précis was a good read, and helped my thinking around Derrida who I have read a decent amount of, but outside of any academic context that might have framed his thinking more broadly for my benefit. This work did not really do that but I enjoyed a few of the anecdotes it draws out, like Derrida's interpretation of the story of Pharmakon and the development of park outside Paris with Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi. View all my reviews

Hunting Badger by Tony Hillerman My rating: 0 of 5 stars Fun to read/hear really good detective fiction on the ride. Makes me think of my mom <3 View all my reviews

Out of Africa by Karen Blixen My rating: 3 of 5 stars This is a beautifully crafted story, but it's hard to read at the same time as The Song of Dewey Beard. Dinesen writes so evocatively about her colonial role in Africa as a benevolent force, but it's tough to stomach concurrent with stories from the perspective of a 90 year old Lakota. I do want to see the movie again now, and Julie Harris reading was clear and evocative. View all my reviews

The Virgin and the Gypsy by D.H. Lawrence My rating: 0 of 5 stars This was an odd little tale peopled with rural characters grappling with their relationship to water management. Yup. With descriptions of gypsies straight out of The Wolfman and a generous use of the term "Jewess," again and again. Two thirds of the way in I still had a feeling that this was a silly work. But as has been the case for me in earlier readings of Lawrence's fiction, by this novellas completion, all of a sudden, I realized it was a worthwhile. View all my reviews

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf My rating: 4 of 5 stars Annette Bening read this to me, and it was such good company. Poor Septimus, whose post-traumatic stresses ring out for so many homeless: if only they had his creature comforts. And Sally Seton wow! Rambling middle-age, seeds of so much madness to come in late-colonialism. I enjoyed this much more than "To the Lighthouse." Terrific prose passages. View all my reviews

The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy My rating: 4 of 5 stars If there’s one thing my TV brain needs, it’s audiobooks and a long commute to finally get me through “War and Peace,” to even think about approaching the Russians even. I read “Fathers and Sons” when I was younger, but I am not sure if Turgenev counts? So this is my first flirtation. It’s an odd, short book. The reader Jonathan Oliver was a somewhat shrill, whiny Brit in his performance: http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.a... I am not sure if that was on purpose or not. Is this book meant to portray a classic, moralizing tale of a cuckold? Or is it a foreshadowing of the psychological novel and a direct line to “Lolita”? If you took Tolstoy’s afterward/apologia, considered him crazy and placed it in the front of this novella, it is as much a precursor as Nabakov’s own “The Enchanter.” I will have to look all this up a bit more, for now: a little knowledge is a dangerous thing ;) ...

From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia by Pankaj Mishra My rating: 4 of 5 stars This was a terrific book that has had a strong impact on my worldview - in big ways and small. I'd never heard of the three showcased writer/thinkers: Tagore, Liang and al-Afghani. I want to know more about James Sanu. Did you know the first "concentration camps," were part of the Boer War? And did you know that it was in Libya where Italy where "an aeroplane dropped a bomb for the first time in history...."? And having read Kropotkin and studied the anarchists, how did I not know about Alexander Herzen?!...lots to be learned. View all my reviews

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov My rating: 5 of 5 stars When I first read this book, it felt more surreal; and maybe I was more Quilti-ed out myself, dissolute or unfocused and it all felt like a lustrous cloud of language: unforgettable, I thought. Now, to hear it again, and to hear Jeremy irons read it, the dramatic peaks were more clear, the voices, the characters, the tensions. Now I gotta see the Kubrick flick again....and maybe even the Jeremy Irons one. View all my reviews

The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson My rating: 5 of 5 stars This book may never leave my mind, somewhere, forever. As with so much right now, I listened to it. I did not actually read it, but the three-actor performance was extraordinary. I still felt like I got a sound grasp of its literary landscape. Honestly, I am not sure if I would have had the patience to make it through in its written form, given my own shortcomings. Still, in the audiobook format I was nearly overwhelmed at times by the author’s gift for alliteration and graphic, compelling metaphors, almost as a language of its own, some Nabakovian dialect of American English. The comparison to other authors feels necessary. There are fluent Faulknerian temporal fumblings and shifting narrators. It would all be more Orwellian if not feeling more “true;” and the accuracy of language is as well starched as the best of Orwell’s essays. Burgess' Clockwork Orange formerly felt untouc...