Bookreview

Catch-22 has been on my shelf for maybe one or two years, and on my reading list for years beyond that. I’ve been told again and again how much I would enjoy it. For whatever reason, be it timing, expectations, or something else, I was left feeling ambivalent. I really enjoyed the first hundred pages, finding it terribly funny. I can see the comparisons to Vonnegut, easily. The circumstances, the names, the insane bureaucracy, it all feels like great satire. However, I really struggled to hold focus through the middle third or maybe from about page 120 or so until the last 20 or 30 pages. I felt like I was seeing the same thing over, and over, and over, again. One could say this is intentional, especially given the recurrent deja vu passages. And surely some of it IS intentional, and some of it works very well! What I started to find grating is that I was reading the same joke over and over again. ...

Obligatory “I don’t really read comics much” prelude, then: this might be my favorite comic? Aside from The Dark Knight Returns (Frank Miller; I have a panel of this comic blown up and framed in my living room, Batman snapping a shotgun in half, declaring: “THIS is the weapon of the ENEMY. We do not NEED it. We will not USE it.”), this is the one that I’ve read the most. ...

What a weird book! I spent the first 50 pages wondering, “Am I going to hate this?” My hackles were raised by the Lispector quote; I tried to read Apple in the Dark some months ago and found it absolutely grueling and couldn’t finish. But I found this quite readable! Mechanically, the writing is serviceable but not amazing. Some of the dialogue is clunky, and sounds sort of rigid. Then again, I think our characters are pretty strange people, and for some of them, I think they would speak like this to appear more sophisticated than they actually are. So, I’m willing to go with some of the very strange dialogue. Someone in our book club pointed out that the italic usage is odd, and I didn’t notice this so much until the ending 40 pages or so (which I read after the book club). There are definitely some strange empresses. All that said, I never bumped on the writing like I sometimes do, it all flowed rather nicely. I found it very readable and often enjoyed reading it, even if I was not at all enjoying the characters’ decisions or actions. ...

I picked this up on-sight, recognizing Besson’s name. I adored “Lie With Me,” I mean I was simply gripped the whole time, could not put it down. That book was translated by Molly Ringwald, of Molly Ringwald fame, and it was her first published translated work. Frank Wynne translated this book, who seems to have translated quite a few works, including (after this, from what I can tell), other works from Besson. ...

See my critique on TBinDC. Notes John Rawls throughout – see Zotero for Theory of Justice notes. p24 Seeking alignment — >Contra Berlin’s argument that pluralism of values means inevitable conflict among them, analysis of real political choices would begin with the project of seeking alignment between the protection of negative and of positive liberties. Only after a project of pursuing alignment had been exhausted would one turn to debating a trade-off between these two categories of liberties. ...

Notes Author: Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely Last read: 2025-07-11 Rating: 3 Form: Fiction Genre: Comics / Games / Media Times read: 1 Copies owned: 1 Fun score: 2.33

It would not be quite true to say that I have loved the Arthurian tales since I was a child. But, in a way, I have loved their progeny. A young boy from nowhere, swept up on an adventure that may never end, full of love, magic, and wonder. It’s the tale of various Narnian stories, of Taran from the criminally underrated Disney Renaissance film The Black Cauldron (not to mention the books on which that is based), of Luke Skywalker, of Harry Potter. It is the Wizard of Oz, the Lord of the Ring, and the Dark Tower. We all want to believe that there is more out there, somewhere. That magic is real, and that love need not hurt. ...

I tried and tried. I got 5 pages in and started begging for paragraphs. I got 20 pages in and decided maybe it wasn’t the right time, so I put it down and read a 700 page fantasy book. I read 20 more pages and could barely force myself to focus on it. I put it down at 50 intending to DNF it. I see every review mention that it picks up at page 60, so I go back. At page 70 I start skimming again, totally unable to keep my focus. I find it painfully boring. I skimmed the rest. This style does not work for me at all. ...

Yet another Ernaux work that I simply could not put down once it was before my eyes. What is it like to write in this way, so utterly vulnerable? I wonder if anything in this style, from someone else, rings hollow by comparison. Just absolutely frustrating to read something so good. Of course, it is also frustrating that a book like this can and must be written. The contexts leading to its creation are socio-religious dominance that criminalized abortion in France. Written in ‘99, Ernaux frequently interrupts her tale with parentheticals, reflecting on her recollection of events some 30 years later. It all seems so far away and also like yesterday: ...

Ernaux always makes me think about people I love. Usually, in a romantic way. But in this book, as with The Years, I thought about my mom. Growing up, I was fortunate to know several of my great-grandparents. My mom’s grandma, Bernice. My dad’s grandpa and grandma, Roscoe and Lois, as well as his other grandma, Modena. Bernice lived to be 82, Lois 92, Roscoe 92, and Modena 97. When I was born, there were pictures in the paper with some of us and however many generations were living at the time, because it was rare enough then to be newsworthy in a small town. ...