27 reviews found
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Reading a book by Umberto Eco has become a yearly tradition since I joined Goodreads, and for 2010 I just managed to squeeze The Island of the Day Before under the wire. For the past two years, each Eco book has also made its respective year's list of the best ten books I read that year. If The Island does not join them in this honour, it is only because I have been lucky enough…
Do you want to live forever? Most people would say yes. I have to confess immortality tempts me as well. But as with most wishes, this one needs conditionals and caveats to make it truly comfortable. After all, you wouldn't want to be immortal but keep ageing, right? And being immortal alone would really suck, watching everyone else grow old and die as you remain the same. There are basically two ways to solve the…
So, yeah, I don't really understand this book.
It is not often that I admit a book has defeated me intellectually; upon the rare occasion that it happens, however, I will admit it. This review is, like any review, a meditation on the unique experience I had reading the book, but it is also ruminations about why I feel that Kafka on the Shore is a mountain whose summit I never reached.
I'm starting to…
I read a lot, and the people around me are used to seeing a new book in my hand every day or couple of days. Naturally, they ask me what I'm reading, usually in a way that implies I should divulge more than just the title and the author, which are plainly visible on the cover. How do I respond when I'm reading something so sublime and transcendental as Foucault's Pendulum? It defies ordinary…
Saramago's style is just totally unreadable. I generously gave the book two chapters, skipped ahead to the middle and end, and discovered that it's like this throughout the entire book: run-on sentences, dialogue offset only by commas and never separated by paragraphs, nary a quotation mark to be seen. Now, I don't mind when an author subverts a few grammatical rules to make a point or enhance his or her style. Totally disregarding them, on…
This is my first encounter with the work of Josef Skvorecky. As his Author's Note explains, this book ties together many of the characters and themes from his previous novels. If I had been more familiar with his work, I would have enjoyed this book more.
That being said, I still enjoyed it. Paul Wilson has done a fantastic job translating Ordinary Lives into English--if I didn't know it had been translated, I would have…
Honestly, I don't have much to add to my review from 12 years ago (!). This remains an excellent mystery wrapped in deep medievalist philosophy and thought. It once again took me a long time to read, but it was a nice distraction from what's going on right now.
It took me a long time to finish this book (perhaps the longest time it's ever taken me…
Showing 21 to 27 of 27 results