swaggle's reviews
59 reviews

Might this be Krasznahorkai's bleakest novel? We know from the outset what future lies ahead of our "hero" Korin, as he tells us bluntly himself he has nothing to live for aside from figuring out the puzzle of this mysterious manuscript of four homeward bound brothers-in-arms. Korin as a result reconciles with the fictional amorphous past of great men that no longer appear in the world and finds himself estranged and alienated not just in a foreign society but a foreign era. Unlike Krasznahorkai's other novels, where there exists a notion that there will be a savior to rescue our downtrodden cast of characters from their destitution, this novel seems uniquely bleak as there was never hope of a savior, Korin routinely worked on his manuscript until it was done. 

imagine a post modern twist on The Man Without Qualities but instead of being written about fin de siècle Vienna it is written about a post-apocalyptic Hungarian border town, and all the characters are mentally unwell or demented versions of themselves. I'm not intending to reduce this book by making this comparison, they are really only vaguely similar and will probably remind you more of Krazsnahorkai's other books than anything else. It's quite funny at times in a sardonic kind of way. 

I like how the theme of obsession is portrayed in this book. It's an interesting question, what amount of the main character's fetishes and actions were derived from his obsession with Hasler. Various other characters seem to have sexual-related compulsions that prevent them from living typical lives, but the lives these characters do live are explored here without disparaging, criticizing or pitying them. Overall I found it to be interesting and would recommend to people familar and fans of Delany's other works.

The main character, Ifemelu, learns to survive in America as a Nigerian immigrant. Ifemelu has a strong personality which sometimes gets in her way, but it makes her a good character in my opinion. I wouldn't be surprised if this book were taught in high schools. I feel like I'd appreciate the blog aspect of Ifemelu's character if I was more into that around the time it was popular. 

If you care about a story being believable you will not like this book, as every step the book takes makes it feel more fantastical and romantic until the epilogue. A failed terrorist plot thriller which transforms from Lord Of The Flies into a love story. A lot of the characters are only mentioned briefly and hardly feel relevant to the story, and we get marginally more depth and background for the main characters, primarily Gen, Roxanne Coss, Mr. Hosokawa and a few peaks at the Generals of the terrorist cell who have the place occupied.

 The plot is a fun sort of thought experiment and makes for an enjoyable enough read. The characters all get sucked into this fantasy world they've created and this builds a very creeping and hardly noticeable tension before the ending smacks you in the face with it. 

Patchett doesn't spend a lot of time on the ending which some might argue makes it feel rushed. The ending makes sense to me, and the groundwork was layed out several pages before the twist or surprise. The epilogue is kind of funny because it gives the perspectives of the main characters as well as some background characters, and tells you the main characters have an easier time transitioning back to a "normal" life whereas the background characters end up never wanting to be in the country again because of their memory of the events. It's a pretty interesting part of the book if you think about it from a psychological standpoint of the characters. 

The book didn't blow my mind or change my life as far as I'm aware, but it was fun and absurd and I'd recommend it. Pretty easy to read as well, you never have to strain to understand what's going on.

I thought this book was quite funny which I haven't seen anyone mention. The characters all have a natural sense of humor to them, which made it fun to read. Beagle was clearly having a laugh when he wrote the characters talking past each other and making fun of his poor wizard by having seemingly every character say "you couldn't turn cream into butter". I think the sense of humor and the fun Beagle had writing this is where the book really shines. There are also plenty of references the characters make to the story that they're in and how their fate relates to how the story must progress or is progressing, which is kind of funny in a breaking-the-fourth-wall kind of way.

The plot centers around the themes of mortality and legacy. One of the main characters of the book, Schmendrick the Magician, introduces himself by saying that you would never had heard of him, despite the fact that he's an immortal wizard. Schmendrick eventually evolves as a wizard, finding himself and realizing "Whatever can die is beautiful--more beautiful than a unicorn, who lives forever, and who is the most beautiful creature in the world." And what becomes of the unicorn is that "she is a story with no ending, happy or sad. She can never belong to anything mortal enough to want her." 

This book does have a certain je ne sais quoi, but the descriptive language, poetry that evokes lore, the atmosphere and world building I think all comes together to make this book a classic, and something I could imagine reading to my imaginary future child during bed time.

Greg Iles novel Natchez Burning is the first in a trilogy, but also follows the stories of protagonists of earlier books which I will admit I haven't read before this book. However I think Iles does a good job of catching us up to speed with these characters and what motivates them, as complicated as their motivations sometimes are. 

I think there are several things which make Iles' characters in this book compelling: he finds a good balance between showing a character's flaws or lapses of judgment with obvious sympathy for their cause (at least in the case of the protagonists). The antagonists' causes are less sympathetic for obvious reasons, but they are still complicated nonetheless, and I think this is owing to Iles' own personal grief and relationship with mortality, which is a major theme running through this book. Another thing which makes the characters compelling is that he is inspired by real people, the obvious example being Stanley Nelson, an investigator of civil rights cold-cases and Klan murders in Louisiana reporting for the Concordia Sentinel, this investigative journalism making Nelson a contender for a Pulitzer in 2011. The obvious connection being Henry Sexton (even the name sounds somewhat similar). 

The book features only a few black characters although the historical background and setting emphasizes their stories, black characters are mostly in the background rather than the foreground of this novel. Greg Iles suggests it is because he "had nothing to teach black readers" about racism. I still found these characters compelling and equally complicated, but you can decide for yourself if these characters are believable or compelling, or about where they fall in the cast. 

A good overview of the basic principles of Utilitarian ethics, worth a read if you want a textbook defense of Utilitarianism. It may not answer all your questions but some of the general ideas are there. Would recommend coupling this with a visit to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy which explains in more detail objections and weaknesses in J.S. Mill's argumentation. 

In this book Professor of Political Science Peter H. Merkl critically examines the Stormtroopers (SA) of Weimar Germany from multiple facets including class-based analysis, psychology, sociological factors, history and political influences and even religion. He repeatedly refers to the 581 autobiographical statements of early Nazis collected by Theodor Abel, the principle and primary source for this work. This source allows us to understand the motivations "straight from the horse's mouth" if we can believe these Nazis had no reason to lie. Merkl at one point brings this up, stating that many of the testimonies are so blunt about certain things that it almost seems ridiculous to believe they might omit something in their testimony, I think the example he used was regarding their antisemitism being a motivating factor for joining the SA (which according to the data extrapolated from the Abel group, these numbers were surprisingly not high on the priority list for these young Nazi street fighters, usually instead they claimed it was the allure of camaraderie, cult surrounding Hitler or the "utopian" visions of Nazi ideology which drew them in.)

This book highlighted a number of key things about the SA for me:

Members of the SA were on multiple occasions former members of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD)

Many of the people interviewed in the Abel group were part of Youth groups as children (more than 80%) ranging from extreme left like Communist Youth (KJVD) or Rote Jungfront to nationalist right wing voelkisch groups like Jungstalhelm or Kyffhaeuserjungend, which were youth associations of prominent veterans leagues, and many Organized Catholic youth groups. "Whole generations of Weimar youth had been politically mobilized without developing a democratic political consciousness" (p. 70)

The SA was a diverse group of individuals ranging from blue collar rural-to-urban sons of farmers and agriculturalists, to socially respectable sons of merchants, former veterans of WWI and poorly educated troubled youth who grew up without the presence of fathers in the home looking for any way to legitimize their violent urges or tendencies. 

It seems like for a lot of these young men, they often decided to join and continued being part of the SA despite whatever negative consequences would occur as a result. (getting in fights, losing contact with former friends/family, sometimes even their jobs, although Merkl seems to raise an eyebrow at this last point.) 

Merkl concludes their is really not one easy "monocausal" explanation for the motivations of a Stormtrooper, rather a complex mixture of "causes" is often at play and what is emphasized in one may not be for another. Those who lived in the French-occupied Rhineland cited that as a motivation, others cited red scare and opposition to international bolshevism, young people who had nationalistic/voelkisch parents or teachers, or a hyper-patriotic German youth who felt veterans of WWI were treated poorly. Some people saw the party as a potential career and chance at social mobility in a time where the Great Depression severely affected the country, "a good one-third of them...were unemployed, bankrupt, or otherwise suffered severe damage by the Depression." (p. 191) Merkl ends on the note that "reconstructing the world of meaning as the stormtroopers saw it goes a long way towards explaining their decision to march and fight and proselytize, as long as we remember that it was still their free decision to join and work for the movement." (p. 308)