I wish there was a category between "read" and "currently reading" that left you the option to say "abandoned but might come back?"
I just can't find aI wish there was a category between "read" and "currently reading" that left you the option to say "abandoned but might come back?"
I just can't find anything to grab a hold of in this book & I have better books coming in at the library. I'm 130 pages in and the promised revolution isn't even close to happening & maybe I just wanted something that this book isn't going to offer me. And none of the characters are really tugging at me enough to keep reading. Oh well. There are a million other books to read!...more
I just couldn't. I'm sorry, Nicole. I think I'd rather go re-read your brilliant History of Love rather than slog my way through this one. The first cI just couldn't. I'm sorry, Nicole. I think I'd rather go re-read your brilliant History of Love rather than slog my way through this one. The first chapter was GREAT and then that character got dropped and I lost interest pretty quickly. ...more
First Review: I just can't go on. I don't care about any of the post apocalyptic characters enough (though, much like others who've written negative rFirst Review: I just can't go on. I don't care about any of the post apocalyptic characters enough (though, much like others who've written negative reviews, I do like Miranda). I've already read The Road. And I don't see much hope that the book will somehow gain a beating heart at some point.
Second Review: I listened to it this time and found the plot much more compelling than when I read it the first time but I still found the characters less than inspiring. The apocalypse felt fairly believable (although, why did it take so long for civilization to get back up and running?) but somehow this story is still missing something. It's like Mandel raises the right kinds of questions but doesn't really offer any real theories. The characters all felt shallow, like players being moved around to fill their parts in the story. There was a certain level of honesty and grief that this book never reached. Sure, it is great to say 'Because survival is insufficient' but the story didn't make that statement feel true or necessary. ...more
“Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you.� Troy jerked his head up and widened his eyes at me. “Where did you get “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you.� Troy jerked his head up and widened his eyes at me. “Where did you get that crap?� I said, “Jesus Christ.� And Troy said, “Oh.� It would have been a great moment in the history of Christianity, except that I did not love Troy.
I've started this book three times, each time quitting after concluding that I had very little in common with this ineligible bachelor barber. But by the time I reached this moment in the book (on page 287), I was glad to have spent some time in his company.
So I persevered past the first 30 pages--enduring Jayber's slow and patient retelling of his early years. While I never loved Jayber himself, or felt that I truly understood his outsider status, he endeared me to himself with his thoughtful loyalty to Mattie Chatham and to the world he remembers and longs to preserve. Perhaps he (and Wendell Berry) have allowed nostalgia to blur out the difficulties of the life of a subsistence farmer, but I tend to prefer this romantic version of the past anyhow. It's how I want it to have been.
If you're put off by the plot or the first few pages, persevere if you're interested in the old economy, before credit and factory a farming, a world in which farmwives went "to town with produce, bought their groceries, and [went] home with money" as opposed to today, when they go"to the store with only money and [go] home with only groceries." Persevere if you're interested in gentle spiritual insights, like his declaration that if love "did not happen to us, we could not imagine it."
I am choosing to forgive the aimlessness of the plot and the slow pace because I admire Wendell Berry's ability to not only share the ideas he loves, but get me to love them too. I will continue to read his books, approaching them with the patience I would have if I lived in the world Berry remembers and wants to remake....more
When you step out of still water, it seals itself behind you leaving no trace that you've ever been there. That's how I felt stepping away from this bWhen you step out of still water, it seals itself behind you leaving no trace that you've ever been there. That's how I felt stepping away from this book, like I'd been underwater in the world Leif Enger created, but once I left, the characters would keep on living and my presence would not have disturbed them. I don't think I'll remember this book for long--it didn't really take me anywhere--but I'm not sad I spent time with these characters.
Monte Becket is an author facing his sophomore slump. His first book came easily, but the success of that book makes it hard to measure up with any of his subsequent stories. Lucky for Monte, he gets swept away in a story not of his own invention and gets to bear witness to the journey for redemption of Glendon, a gentle outlaw who has become his neighbor. It's a western in the way that News of the World is a western--the setting doesn't dominate the story.
What fascinates in this story is the way that Glendon chases his guilt and is chased by it at the same time, how everywhere he turns is another reminder of the wrongs he's committed that are closing in on him. His conscience seems to be catching up with him. We never get to see the courage that might have inspired his original crimes, except through the possibly similar exploits of a young up-and-coming bandit named Hood Roberts. We only see Glendon after his life of crime has expired, leaving him with only guilt and the skill for disappearing. He's a man in search of grace, a quality that Leif Enger likes to give to all his best characters.
Last time, I tried to read this too soon on the heels of Peace Like a River, which I immediately decided was the best book I'd ever read. To ask this book to follow that was asking too much. This time, I was able to catch all the subtle ties that join these two books with nostalgia rather than disappointment. If Leif Enger has a fault, it is that his female characters feel a bit cliche and unattainable, the kinds of women a lonely cowboy might idealize the longer he's away from her. The women are all loyal, tough, and lovely, but none of them seem like my sister or my friends. They seem more like an afterthought or a prize to be won then like real people. I imagine they would each have secret lives of annoyance and loneliness that Enger never taps into.
All that to say, Leif Enger has a new book coming out this fall and I wanted to say that I'd read the others before I bought that one. It was a better book this second time around, and I'm glad to have spent time with it.
First Review: (1 star) I couldn't get into it despite my enthusiasm for Peace Like a River. I just didn't care at all about the characters.......more
Lame. I was really looking forward to this book, but I don't even remember why anymore. It was so predictable that I figured out the basic plot in aboLame. I was really looking forward to this book, but I don't even remember why anymore. It was so predictable that I figured out the basic plot in about 10 minutes of reading, started flipping through to the end of the book to confirm that my basic theories were correct (they were) and realized I just didn't care enough to dredge through the mediocre storytelling....more
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