Ender7520
Multnomah County Library
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Added Apr 21, 2016
Super Sad True Love StorySuper Sad True Love Story, Unknown
by Shteyngart, GaryUnknown - 2010Unknown, 2010
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Added Feb 07, 2015
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Of all the novels about a dystopian future, this has got to be my favorite. What most novels in this genre lack is credibility - there must be some future cataclysmic event that drastically alters society (e.g. Hunger Games, Divergent, both of which I enjoyed, by the way). Shteyngart, on the other hand, extrapolates on trends in modern society and takes it just a bit further, leading to a global economy ruled by the Chinese Yuan, such a casual attitude toward sex and what is considered vulgar, it's become commonplace, obsessions with curbing free radicals to extend life, protracted foreign wars we can't afford, a widening gap between haves and have-nots, and, of course, our attachment to our mobile devices and social media - it's all in there and handled wonderfully. The way it is structured - two concurrent diaries - is a wonderful literary device and the voices of the two main characters are so credible and well-differentiated, it's almost hard to believe the dialogue was all written by one person. One of the main characters, Lenny Abrahamov, brings a little of that Woody Allen-intellectual-New York-Jew-in-existential-crisis flavor, and even with all his foibles and blind spots, you've got to root for the guy because he is so earnest and his love of books in a post-literate society makes him even a little heroic in his nerdy, underdog way. Eunice Park, in contrast, is all things brash and young and while her attention is dominated by apparently shallow pursuits (shopping on line, texting her BFF), she turns out to be a very complex character who is far more insightful than her erstwhile lover. What makes the love story super sad, to me, is not that the romance is doomed from the outset. What makes it super sad, is the way in which, for the most part, the characters in the story passively accept all that's gone wrong in their society, things that presumably could be fixed, and the fact that the seeds of that future society are in our own today. Super sad social commentary aside, this novel is also really, really funny in a way that only good satire can be. And the way the audiobook was directed and acted is nothing short of brilliant. If Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" was a shocking commentary in its time, this really is its equal for our own times (and not for the easily shocked).Of all the novels about a dystopian future, this has got to be my favorite. What most novels in this genre lack is credibility - there must be some future cataclysmic event that drastically alters society (e.g. Hunger Games, Divergent, both of…
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Added Feb 01, 2015
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After listening to about half the discs and giving up, I read the back of the box and was shocked to discover that Andrew Gross is a best-selling author. My take was that this was a first attempt at a novel by someone who'd just taken a creative writing course at their community college and thought they could come up with a new twist on the wrongly-accused-fugitive-with-a-complex-relationship-with-someone-inside-the-police-force. This is no Fugitive; this is no Thelma & Louise. This is a contrived plot with a melodramatic delivery, featuring one-dimensional characters and "shocks" that the author telegraphs a mile in advance. What is particularly agonizing is how the protagonist rehashes the plot so far again and again and again, either in internal monologues or in dialogues with other characters. And the dialogue - yikes! The heavy reliance on cliches is unpardonable. The story doesn't seem to progress for more than five minutes without some "heart" reference (i.e. "My heart leapt up into my throat." "My heart was pounding like a jackhammer." - I'm paraphrasing here, not quoting, but you get the idea). The one saving grace is that Christian Hoff narrates the audiobook so earnestly and so choked with soap opera emotion, it plays fairly well as comedy. In fact, if they'd gotten William Shatner to read instead, they might have had comic gold. What they don't have is the "total white-knuckle, stay-up-all-night thrill ride" that Harlan Cohen promises on the cover.After listening to about half the discs and giving up, I read the back of the box and was shocked to discover that Andrew Gross is a best-selling author. My take was that this was a first attempt at a novel by someone who'd just taken a creative…
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Added Apr 21, 2014
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This has to be ranked among Sir Terry Pratchett's books. To be fair, I am rating this book after only reading a little over half of the novel, but this is really boring stuff to be coming from the mind of Terry Pratchett. So far, the entire book has been dedicated to world-building with very little plot to speak of. As the main character, Joshua, becomes bored with the spectacle of tens of thousands of earths passing by as he "steps" from one to the next, so, too, is this reader. I seem to recall the "world-building" that went into Discworld pretty much consisted of: "The world really is flat, and it's carried through space on the back of a giant turtle. Now let's dive in and have fun!" No faulting the book for its premise - I think the premise is fascinating, just as the premise for the first Star Trek movie was. I just hope there is some payoff soon before I get to the final chapter!This has to be ranked among Sir Terry Pratchett's books. To be fair, I am rating this book after only reading a little over half of the novel, but this is really boring stuff to be coming from the mind of Terry Pratchett. So far, the entire book has…
Added Jan 14, 2014
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A wonderful culmination to this coming of age series disguised as novels about witchcraft. As anyone familiar with Terry Pratchett's series about Tiffany Aching will realize, witchcraft has far less to do with magic than it has to do with taking responsibility for the people in one's community, which includes such mundane things as clipping people's toenails and scrubbing floors as well as far more weighty matters such as helping people cope with the death of a loved one, protecting abused children and midwifery. There is, of course, a supernatural element in the Cunning Man, the embodiment of prejudice and blind hatred against witches, and of course Tiffany must stand her ground. The story beautifully rounds out her relationship with Roland and with the Nac Mac Feegle, and firmly establishes her as the witch of the chalk. A wonderful read for any adolescent struggling to find their place in society or any parent of an adolescent that could use a few words of wisdom (both metaphorical and overt) to help their child through this transition, not unlike the hare running into the fire (read the book)!A wonderful culmination to this coming of age series disguised as novels about witchcraft. As anyone familiar with Terry Pratchett's series about Tiffany Aching will realize, witchcraft has far less to do with magic than it has to do with taking…
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