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  & 37 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: liked

Authors: James Joyce Seamus Deane

Tags: poetry irish literature novel

2007-04-08

  & 25 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: disliked

Author: Nick Hornby

Tags: british novel popular

Description: I couldn't read past the first hundred pages. This books seems like it was too much forI couldn't read past the first hundred pages. This books seems like it was too much for Hornby to take on. That is, his trying to write alternating seperate chapters from four different points of view might have worked if it didn't seem like Hornby imagining himself as each character. The characters had different life circumstances, but they all thought -- and more annoyingly talked -- exactly the same, using the same idioms, turns of phrase and jokey wording. I also was disheartened because it seems like Hornby doesn't really understand what suicidal depression is like. His characters are depressed, but not convincingly suicidal. My experience has been that sucidical individuals are bordering on humorless or their humor is horrifyingly dark, or confused and self-depricating -- not witty and light as Hornby depicts. When the characters genuinely started interacting, I shut the book. ...

2005-10-01

  & 52 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: I recommend

Author: Hermann Hesse

Tags: philosophy college novel german own

2005-09-30

  & 37 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: I recommend

Author: Mark Haddon

Tags: british novel popular mental.illness

Description: My brother has Asperger's Autism. He wouldn't read this book to tell me if it wasMy brother has Asperger's Autism. He wouldn't read this book to tell me if it was in any way true to his experiences, however I went online and on Asperger's chat boards it appears that families of AA people find that it rings very true to them, while Asperger's patients themselves say that it does not. I think this may be because it is an attempt to novelize the experiences of people who fundamentally do not think in a ficticious or emotive way. I thought it was well written and a bold project for the author to undertake. I would simply reccomend that the reader not take it as an authoratative description of autism, but rather read it more with the intent to appreciate the book as a work of art....

2005-09-30

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: favorite

Author: unknown

Tags: british humor novel

Description: My best friend's brother said this was his favorite novel, so I read it. It is, by turns,My best friend's brother said this was his favorite novel, so I read it. It is, by turns, funny, outragous, and irreverant. Sometimes reading about things from the point of view of satirist and the immoralist the most historically enlightening way to discover a time period (in this case the late 1700s)....

2005-09-30