Book Reviews - Aaron S. (shuffdog)

1 to 20 of 32 - Page: 1 2

Stark and Timeless, Hopeless and Compelling.
Review Date: 7/20/2006

If you haven't read this, you are to be forever pitied.
Review Date: 8/20/2006

Bartleby is a VERY enjoyable work. Benito might have been, but it was so long ago.
Review Date: 8/20/2006

First person account of a neurotic little adolescent 11-year-old boy, obsessed with the lies people tell and being able to detect them, to the point where he nearly destroys his family.

It's a page turner - the narration carries you right along, the characters are enjoyable (especially that badass substitute teacher Mr. Roche!). The atmosphere drips thick with anxiety, awkwardness and suspicion - this poor kid has a normal enough home, but is having trouble making the transition to adulthood, in that he craves the parental affections of his parents, while they are treating him as an adult before he is ready, with all the distance, formality, and relational complexity that it entails - and of course no one recognizes that this is the dynamic. The kid almost goes crazy, unable to handle being lied to in millions of small insignificant ways.

It's not just about the kid either. The other characters are very well fleshed out, and the story isn't just some case study, the story is like the story of every one of us, our small day to day existence, and all the insignificant things that are the engine of our lives and that define who we are. I loved every chapter, every page.
Review Date: 2/17/2009

Holden Caulfield; a young adult from an affluent New York / New England family, utterly lost, unwittingly saved. Holden narrates with a take-your-shoes-off, grab-a-beer attitude. He's left his prep school (he hates it), and encounters a great cast of characters in bars and hotels across Pennsylvania and New York on his way home. His sister Phoebe, younger than him - perhaps in her purity, a foil for his bitter angst - is his catcher, in the rye of his life.

Masterpiece. The story wasn't any kind of crazy epic, like Les Miserables. It was strong though; simple yet layered, short temporally yet long on insight, straightforward in its telling yet tortured in its implications. I would say that this is the first time I have read a story with a powerful negative space. It was a delight to all five senses.
Review Date: 4/6/2009

Certainly covered a variety of topics, gave a lot of the background to understanding Chinese literature -- at a layman's level (good to look into before reading "Red Mansions" or "Monkey" or "Outlaws of the Marsh"); could certainly be provided as supplementary to a textbook
Review Date: 12/15/2008

Absolutely radically fantastic insights. Reading this gives you some glimpse why they called him one of the 'Rugged individualists'.
Review Date: 4/2/2007

This is one of the few contemporary novels i was ever able to Stomach, and it went further than that into being Pretty Sweet. Better than the movie. If you've seen the movie, or even if you haven't, heck, read this book.
Review Date: 8/20/2006

Ben Reich (that's him on the cover) is the CEO of one of the largest transnationals, in an age of enlightenment, wherein crime has been virtually abolished through the proliferation of people who can read your mind and prevent crimes long before they happen. Except he has murderous intent - and he plans to pull off the first real murder in centuries, by beating the system at its own game.

It's pretty good. I'm not convinced that he alone could have gotten away with murder, but I was delighted at how completely psychopathic he was. The book fell prey to one of the worst follies of sci-fi: using cutesy future-lingo that really grates on the ears and (for me) adds nothing to realism. The mechanics of reading minds seemed very thought-through - though I could be wrong. It's worth reading the whole way through to Demolition.
Review Date: 3/16/2009

I thought it was brief, but ultimately shallow and unthoughtful. In these papers, his thought process and conclusions make good launching points for discussion; good food for thought at least.
Review Date: 5/12/2007

This is the easiest five stars I have ever handed out. This collection of short stories didn't have even ONE that was mediocre. It was all solid gold. I want more.
Review Date: 6/28/2009

It may be that I have a short attention span for sociological theory, but 500 pages is certainly overkill for understanding what is actually a very interesting theory of generations. I believe I was persuaded to the plausibility of the dynamic within about 30 pages. What was lacking was an exploration of why this would be true of specifically America over the proposed timespan, whether this speaks to any American 'constant' that throughout that timespan supports these cycles (as opposed to creating other types of cycles), whether any such cycles can be found in other cultures, and what are the causes in those cultures?

For 500 pages it was nothing but charts, more charts, discussion about diagonal lines running across time, parents and children, anecdote after uncited anecdote, and it was all very unorganized and forbiddingly verbose. But it might be that I have a short attention span.
Review Date: 4/16/2009

Excellent insight into the culture and minds of the founding geniuses of the age of Rationalism.
Review Date: 7/20/2006

One of those classics that you'll be sorry if you haven't read it : )
Review Date: 8/20/2006

An absolutely stellar portrayal of simple and stark humanity, set deep in depression-era upstate New York -- characters seem to be shared among Wm. Kennedy's earlier stories as well, and makes this reader want to read more Wm. Kennedy : )
Review Date: 12/15/2008

I can vouch only that this is a great work of literature, and that it is very painful, though not from any deficiency of writing. The pain stems from the headache in having to follow Jude blindly trudging from birth to death in ignorance. Although.. (wistfully) .. I suppose that's all of us.
Review Date: 4/6/2009

An excellent bit of satire sort of mixed up in nonsensical delightful fun
Review Date: 8/20/2006

How to put it delicately.. Worst book I've read in years. Piggybacks on the Alice and Wonderland stories, and while the direction the writer took may have been interesting, it's killed by painful, uninspired writing, and plot devices which make no effort to be original or distinct from the Lewis Carrol book.
Review Date: 12/15/2008

A good first introduction to the world of synaesthesia and the study of the senses. This book is written as sort of an unfolding didactic story of one scientist's pursuit of understanding of synaesthesia. Very interesting. Seems to be the pop-science genre.
Review Date: 7/20/2006

a pretty sweet book. all i can say is, i loved it.
Review Date: 2/1/2007

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