elisas8

somewhere around 2.5 stars or slightly above. so the thing is - i am really not into books about aliens and their spacecraft (this book), zombies (i think it was the mist and i haven't read it but i think also cell), vampires ('salem's lot), or werewolves (not a focus, but in the talisman). the fact that i liked this book as much as i did in spite of its alien content says quite a bit about how good stephen king is at his craft. how very, very good. he is truly a master storyteller and writes characters more fully than just about anyone out there. i've long used this book (this was a reread for me; i first (and last) read it probably 20 years ago) as an example of how when the characters in a stephen king novel are faced with something unbelievable, stephen king goes about convincing them as he convinces the reader. i was less convinced during this reading than i was when i first read it, but that didn't detract for me (since i'm not into alien stories anyway, i guess) and was more interested in all the peripheral stuff he does. i loved how what he had to say here about nuclear power/war ended up being something so integral to the story. i also loved his subtle references to at least 3 of his other novels (it, the talisman (multiple times), the dead zone, and a totally overt reference to the jack nicholson movie the shining (it made me laugh out loud that he referenced the movie not the book). i loved his character development, as always. i just get sucked into his writing, which eventually gets me into the story, even when it's about aliens. i wanted to not really like this book, because of the alien thing, but just couldn't help myself from liking it, because of stephen king. and in the end, of course, because it's stephen king, while it's "about aliens," it's also really about people and relationships. and he just does that so well.

oh, james baldwin. this book is wonderfully, beautifully written. the more i read him, the more i like him. this was his first published novel and it is superb. i write that even knowing that i missed a lot of it because i don't have the religious (specifically christian) knowledge that is the foundation of this book. (i didn't even know that the title is that of a famous hymn until i was mostly through the book.) but reading this you can feel the honesty that baldwin is writing with, and that's kind of a rare thing. he also constructs some of his sentences with a clear biblical structure, and it (amazingly, to me) doesn't sound out of place or awkward. it flows well, even though it's often not how we're used to seeing sentences constructed. i was really surprised by the ending, by john's experience on the threshing floor. i didn't expect him to be called to god at all, and i admit that the last 20 pages or so describing this experience were sadly over my head. i'm interested in baldwin's intention in having john be saved, considering the 'holy' gabriel and his attitude (and evil) throughout. the only thing is, i didn't feel like things with florence were entirely wrapped up. she started something with gabriel, standing up for the kids and elizabeth, but we didn't see that play out. unless she was always standing up for them and nothing ever changed. but we sort of were led to believe that she did that because she knew she would be dying soon. her time at the church was overtaken by john's, and i think we lost a little there, while gaining what we did with his experience.one of the many lovely passages:"At length, she lay beside him like a burden laid down at evening which must be picked up once more in the morning."

2.5 stars. this is my first vonnegut, and maybe it's unfortunate that i started with the last of his novels to be written. i don't know. this was definitely some of the things i was expecting it to be (quirky, unusual, irreverent - at times - ) and not some of the things i was expecting it to be (hilarious, mind-blowing, fantastic) and also some unexpected things (part autobiography, extremely honest). partly my fault because my expectations were too high? maybe. i don't know if he usually writes so much of himself into his books, but the way he wrote this one implies that it's pretty typical. i'm not sure how much i'd like that to be a consistent thing, but for at least this read, it was okay, and sometimes added a lot to the "story." parts of this book had echoes of tom robbins, which for me is a very positive thing. but i never felt like he did as good a job (bring on the thunder) as tom robbins would have with most of it. for me, he touched too lightly on too many things. a book this short can't very well be about nearly everything, but he seemed to try to make it be. i do like what he touches on about free will, though.my favorite part of the entire book is from the prologue:"That there are such devices are firearms, as easy to operate as cigarette lighters and as cheap as toasters, capable at anybody's whim of killing Father or [jazz pianist] Fats or Abraham Lincoln or John Lennon or Martin Luther King, Jr., or a woman pushing a baby carriage, should be proof enough for anybody that, to quote the old science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, 'being alive is a crock of shit.'"had this been written by tom robbins, father, fats, abraham lincoln, john lennon, mlk, and the woman pushing a baby carriage would have figured to some extent in the story and it would have been brilliant. vonnegut made his father and abraham lincoln (and john lennon if you count that he mentioned the beatles, which i don't, really) part of the story but that's it. to me that's a big oversight. well, worse than an oversight. but it's not fair to compare to other authors (and i know that most people would never put robbins above vonnegut) and i do think that's affected my opinion on this. i will be interested to read more by him and see if his other stuff is actually funny like his reputation boasts, and just to see more of his style, which i'll try not to compare with anyone else.

2.5 stars. it was a long 300 pages of foundation building to get to what i thought was the most interesting stuff. i liked the authors' explanation in the introduction the admittedly gives them a bit of leeway in their position, about how of course any time you're talking about something that happened 2000 years ago you're going to have to make some assumptions. (see below as it's worth quoting.) like starbird's book the woman and the alabaster jar, i find most of the main claims to be completely plausible - that jesus was actually "just" a man, that he was born the way we're all born, that he was sexually active, that he married mary magdalen, that they had at least 1 child, that there is therefore a bloodline that exists today that could be traced back to jesus. to me, a nonchristian, none of this seems hard to believe, or even that it should matter to the church - except for the fact that there would be a coverup or a number of lies to explain. the other ideas (or main idea) postulated seems to have less to back it up, and more religious reason to dismiss it, and therefore is a little harder to believe, even for someone who is not steeped in christian theology or a christian upbringing. still, the possibility that jesus did not die on the cross (which, with their step by step explanation, even using the gospels -!-, of how this could happen isn't nearly as far fetched as it first sounds) and was squirreled away to safety with or without mary magdalen and lazarus and martha (?) and maybe a couple of others who went to france or was replaced by someone else (probably simon of cyrene or simon something) on the cross and therefore wasn't crucified at all is intriguing and not outside the realm of possibilities, although is something even i dismissed out of hand when hearing this statement without any of the historical basis for it. the former of these possibilities was better supported in the book, but it seems that the authors likely believe in the latter (especially based on later published works). along the way they also cite any number of other historians and their postulations and (usually) agreement with the assessment the authors make. still, knowing these aren't the only 3 people in the world to see the historical record this way lends them credibility, in my mind.anyway, the beginning of this was interesting, then it got a bit tedious as it went through the detailed info of secret society information and generational info (a little, i thought, like the begat info in the bible) but once it got to the gospels and religious historical information i thought it was quite interesting. both in the information and in how you have to go about doing research and making assumptions and some leaps when the historical record is so incomplete.what the authors say about it:"We had propounded a hypothesis, and hypotheses must necessarily rest on speculation. The sheer scarcity of reliable information on biblical matters obliges any researcher of the subject to speculate, if he is not to remain mute. Granted, one must not speculate wildly; one must confine one's speculation to the framework of known historical information. Within this framework, though, one has no choice but to speculate - to interpret the meager and often opaque evidence that exists. All biblical scholarship entails speculation, as does theology. The Gospels are sketchy, ambiguous, and often contradictory documents. People have argued, have even waged wars throughout the course of the last two thousand years about what particular passages might mean. In the coalescence of Christian tradition there is one principle that has continually obtained: In the past, when certain historic individuals were confronted with any of the varied biblical ambiguities, they speculated about it's meaning. Their conclusions, when accepted, were enshrined as dogma and came to be regarded over the centuries - quite erroneously - as established fact. Such conclusions, however, are not fact at all. On the contrary they are speculation and interpretation congealed into a tradition, and it is this tradition that is constantly mistaken for fact."

not being (currently or past) a christian, i'm lacking in some of the foundational knowledge that makes some of this information make sense, but also to matter to me one way or the other. which is to say that i've got no stake in it being either true or false, but some of it didn't make a lot of sense to me because i wasn't sure what she was talking about. that said, the postulations (that jesus was married to mary magdalen, that mary magdalen wasn't a prostituted woman at all but actually of a respectable family that was worthy of marrying jesus, that his mother mary was neither a virgin nor celibate during her marriage, that there are other children of mary and joseph, that there was a daughter born to mary and jesus) seem utterly believable to me. i was not under the impression that jewish history ever saw jesus as the potential messiah or even of the bloodline of king david, but i can believe this, too. the thing is, though, is that the author used a lot of art in her discussion (which makes sense,) but it seemed to be a bit like i remember english class in high school - where you find meaning in the smallest things that could have been what was intended, or maybe not. she wrote "i conclude," "i am convinced," "i believe" a lot without doing a sufficient job of convincing us. but in her defense, what she's saying is that the meaning and the true history has been erased from record, so to find evidence of it requires some leaps. i'm just not sure, without knowing what some of the meanings of things were, that she did a good enough job to convert someone who has been taught forever about the opposite of this history.

2.5 stars. i really enjoyed the historical stuff, the alternate views of religion and why religions developed the way that they did (as far as traditions and belief systems), and the story was okay. again, like in angels & demons the who-dun-it part was over the top and there was just no need to go there. it's the rest of the book that keeps you reading anyway. i do wish this had more about da vinci, who is such an interesting historical figure, like angels & demons had more about rome or the vatican.

2.5 stars. for some reason, i expected to really dislike this book. so that could certainly have shaped my reading of it, but i found it pretty enjoyable. definitely over the top ridiculous at points, but it wasn't nearly as poorly written as i thought it would be, and mostly the story was pretty interesting. he's not a stellar writer or anything, but it was fine, and following the trail through the vatican and the archives and history was fun. and actually, the story - focusing on the history and the clues/symbology and the information and the ambigrams - was really intriguing and well done. the "who-dun-it" part not so much, because it was so far fetched. i found a few mistakes on my own (saying "islamic" when he meant "arabic" and saying that ionic and doric columns aren't both greek), which makes me think there were many more, but that's mostly ok, although they really shouldn't be so obvious. what's less ok is how he tried to continue to increase the tension and climax of the story way beyond plausibility, and way beyond what was necessary. i would have been ok even with the camerlengo and langdon in the helicopter, finding a place to explode the antimatter or parachuting to safety together, but pretty much everything that happened once the camerlengo turned to langdon and told him he was on his own and jumped without him was completely over the top for me. it was already testing the reader's suspension of belief, but that was too far for me. i do really like discussions about religion and science and except for the way it ended, i feel like this at first seemed very pro-science, but really had high points for both. definitely had more fun with this one than i expected to.

4 stars or just under. apart from saying i was floored (why?) by the ending, i'm not sure i can say much about this other than - so poignant. beautiful little snippets of truth and such honesty written in a way like i've never seen before, which makes it worthwhile all by itself. it went too fast, this is one you want to read slowly.

this wasn't a book that i could get into. it's well written and actually parts of it should be quite interesting, but somehow it wasn't. i think a lot of it is that she talks about how she had to develop a distance and detachment from things in order to feel she was a part of her new life, her new self, after immigrating, and so she writes with this detachment about herself. that makes it hard for the reader to get too involved or to care too much. she has some interesting ideas toward the end especially - i really liked what she said about identity in america vs poland - but overall just found it too hard to invest in.

this book tries to tackle a bit too much, but so much of it is so elegant that it's mostly easy to forgive. parts of it are a little too choppy, which i understand represents what's happening to these characters and their family, but i think it was a little overboard in places.one thing that really, really rang untrue to me is the way yvonne responded - even with 25-30 years of knowledge - to abby's rape and subsequent ruined life by her own lover. if i understood it right, abby is her daughter, so this lack of feeling around this is simply impossible.i'm not sure why it should bother me, but why is this not called *the* blue shoe? there must be something to that that i'm missing...it made me laugh that there's this part in the book where a character is talking about his favorite book, revolutionary road by richard yates (also one of my favorite books) and he says: "'It's about loneliness,' Noah said. 'All these people in families, trying to connect and love each other, but they can't get it to work. It's about sad lies. You need to read it. Everybody should. It's the best book in the world.'" (i left that last bit in because i agree with most of it; if it's not the best, it's up there.) but i laughed at the rest because of course this is an exact description of what blue shoe is about as well, and like the insecure main character in the book who is actually doing an okay job, she went and pointed to a book that does a better job than hers at what she's trying to say.so i guess that while i liked this book and thought much of it was really well done, if you want to read a book about this topic, she'd tell you to read revolutionary road instead.that said, here's a nice line of hers that really stuck out for me:"It was not facing what life dealt that made you crazy, but rather trying to set life straight where it was unstraightenable."

this started out really poorly but quickly picked up. the story was alright but quite choppy. it read more like a collection of related short stories, and would have been better in that format, which maybe is why he later wrote that short story collection ford county. not one of his better ones, but also not terrible, and always nice to have a fast read. and i do like that he writes about race a lot.

i'm not sure where to start with this book...(he covers a lot in nearly 1100 pages).i think the first thing i want to say is that for years and years i've been telling people that stephen king is more than just some popular horror writer, that he's much more than that - firstly an amazing writer, possibly the best character developer out there, and secondly, i've been saying that he's not even that much a horror writer, that he's been boxed in. that his books aren't all that scary, that he does psychological thriller more than horror, and because they're so good everyone should read them. he's as good a writer as i remember, i reiterate everything i ever said about his writing and his character development. but, ooops. this book is really scary. really. fucking. scary.this story goes back and forth between 1958 and 1985, when the characters are around 11 or 12, and then again when they're around 38 or 39. it was not lost on me that entirely randomly, the first time i read this book i was around 12 and now i'm pretty close to 38, reading it for the second time. so much of the story is about the imagination and resiliency of children, and how adults find it too hard to integrate some things into their view of reality. trying to remember how i read this around 25 years ago, i feel like my younger and older self really mirror so much of what he wrote. for me personally, this was really poignant. i don't remember being that scared by this book when i first read it. certainly he chilled me, but i didn't have to stop reading at a certain point (in the story or the evening) in order to be able to sleep at night (like i did this time). i don't remember reading this book and jumping at noises or having to put it down and take breaks to keep myself from getting overly agitated (like i did this time).and what i found moderately scary last time was mostly not what i found actually really scary this time. (and what i found scary this time i'm sure went almost completely unnoticed the first time around.) and this is part of stephen king's brilliance (yep, that's right, i said it, brilliance) - this book is full of scary things that make up horror books and i'm sure that those are the things that gave me pause the first time around. but it's also full of things that adults *can* integrate into their view of reality, that are really, really scary (like domestic violence, like gay bashing, like bullies terrorizing kids, like child abuse). and he writes those things equally well. and so looking at it that way, there was *plenty* to be scared about while reading this book.this book is really, really well written, as is typical for stephen king. he has done an amazing job capturing childhood and what it's like to be in the world at that age. and has brought that well into adulthood (amazing character development, as usual) for these characters. i'm always impressed with his writing and i love his style, and he uses it to full benefit in this book. my only beef at all with it comes at the end and is probably why this book doesn't get more stars from me. first of all - and this isn't really a beef, it was just surprising - one of the things i like best about stephen king is that many of his books don't have this happy, let's wrap it all up nicely kind of ending. i was surprised when this one did. i thought it would have been very very easy for, even if bill killed It at the end, ben to have missed squashing an egg or two, and the evil could have lived on. i'm fine with a happy ending, i just didn't expect it from him in this story, since It had been there since the beginning of time. my real beef, though, is in the group sex scene the friends used as a method of bonding when they were young. seemed like there could have been a different way for them to bond at that point. even i could think of something, so i'm certain stephen king could have. and really, there wasn't even a reason for them to need to rebond together at that point, so it's like he threw that in just to enable the scene, which was so out of place anyway. and then - and this is not as big a deal for me - if they all forget what happened and derry and each other so quickly, how exactly are ben and bev supposed to be together? what shared past will they build their relationship on? what will they say when people asked how they met, since they won't remember? also, and again this isn't a big deal, but we're supposed to believe that this thing has been around since the inception of the entire world and this is the only time in its history that it has eggs, about to become offspring? how in the world is it possible for this creature to get knocked up? but if it's somehow possible, how is this the first time that it's happened?but things i like, besides the great writing and amazing characterizations: the magic (literal magic and the power it has) of childhood and believing in things bigger than yourself. the idea and the rationale of eddie's mom giving him "medicine" that she knew he didn't need. the strength of friendship and what that can give a person. the very real portrayal of everything other than pennywise, which admittedly felt awfully real while reading. the list goes on and on. if you don't need to sleep for a few nights, take up this book! if you scare easily, though, be warned!one of the many passages that struck me when reading as just lovely, and something most people wouldn't associate with stephen king:"...in the heart of winter when the light outside seemed yellow-sleepy, like a cat curled up on a sofa..."and a passage that made me sing inside because it showed me that stephen king understands even more than i thought he did about oppression (his books are full of characters who are homophobic, racist, sexist, etc which can make a reader a little uncomfortable - is this the character or the author talking??) and that puts those questions to rest for anyone who reads closely:"Eventually they came, as she had known they would, and to her horror she saw that one of them was a nigger. Not that she had anything against niggers; she thought they had every right to ride where they wanted to on the buses down south, and eat at white lunch-counters, and should not be made to sit in nigger heaven at the movies unless they bothered white(women)people, but she also believed firmly in what she called the Bird Theory: Blackbirds flew with other blackbirds, not with the robins."

definitely the way adoptions should be, for all involved. i hope that my family is able to move more and more toward being an exemplary illustration of this in action.i do wish that it was written with a little less emphasis on religion or religiousness, but that's my own bias.

an easy, quirky read with some chuckles. like many books, it's about loneliness. the main character has many issues (mostly related to ocd) that keep himself isolated in himself. while it starts out a little hard for the reader to like him, over the course of a very short book he grows on you. even more impressive is that in these few pages he grows as a person, which many novelists don't manage to do in many more pages. wasn't thrilled with the neat, wrapped-with-a-bow ending in the last couple of pages that seemed to kind of come out of nowhere, though.

this book is gorgeous. i absolutely loved the first third for both the writing and the story, then the story sort of fell off a bit for me. it picked up with the last third. but the writing. the writing never fell off at all. from beginning to end it is just superb. and as to the story - i was hoping she'd explore something she didn't, but she went a different way that was perfectly interesting and worth traveling, but it wasn't where i was hoping she'd go. not her fault. but it doesn't matter because the writing is just so good.

sweet, sad little story. made me realize that the thanksgiving visitor was also autobiographical in nature. having the same characters in both makes it easier to be affected by this little short one.