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kilroyPrint date: 1968 (20s: 1, 50s: 1, 60s: 3, 70s: 7, 80s: 7, 90s: 5, 00s: 12)
This was, bar none, the hardest book to finish this year. The final story in the book was a 110-page long incredibly boring satire about God's non-existence that contained probably 75% unrelated ramble about literature, communism, and anything else the author felt should be discussed in a stuffed-up and overprecise manner. If this story had been ten pages long, I could have forgiven it; being ten times that length, I feel I've been somewhat abused. I need to figure out if the author is still alive so I can send her a copy of the complete works of James Morrow.
The rest of the book is basically a set of satires and fables in the style of Ambrose Bierce. Each is based on a heavy-handed morality cloaked in pretty language. Most are short, several are clever, and a few did in fact make me think. My takeaways would probably be the opening fairy tale, the cold-war metaphor tale if I could hack the ending off, the story about a businessman who decides to cut off his own limbs for greater efficiency, the modernist take on the story of Theseus and the Minotaur, and one of the conversations between The Sage Master and his disciples. All told this would be something like 30 pages.
The best stories are the ones where the author is invisible and the story is actually a story; the worst stories are the ones which use the characters as obvious mouthpieces for the author's polemic. She can be incredibly smug, and her writing often feels as though she's coming from a lofty platform of intellectual and moral superiority. Which I hate. Even if the author is aiming that disdain at people other than the readers, I can't help but feel that I might be next on the list.
All told this was a very different book than anything I normally read, and I can't honestly say that the experiment was a success. It makes me want to go back and read my Huxley and Orwell again; their books were just as bitter and political--if not more so--but at least they were frank about their savagery as opposed to trying to dress it up as a song-and-dance routine.
Verdict: Return to owner. (21/63 keepers)
Page count: 224 (12397 total)
Completed: 36 (18 female authors, 18 male authors)
Rejected: 27 (15 male authors, 12 female authors)
Next book due: Fri. 12/10
This was, bar none, the hardest book to finish this year. The final story in the book was a 110-page long incredibly boring satire about God's non-existence that contained probably 75% unrelated ramble about literature, communism, and anything else the author felt should be discussed in a stuffed-up and overprecise manner. If this story had been ten pages long, I could have forgiven it; being ten times that length, I feel I've been somewhat abused. I need to figure out if the author is still alive so I can send her a copy of the complete works of James Morrow.
The rest of the book is basically a set of satires and fables in the style of Ambrose Bierce. Each is based on a heavy-handed morality cloaked in pretty language. Most are short, several are clever, and a few did in fact make me think. My takeaways would probably be the opening fairy tale, the cold-war metaphor tale if I could hack the ending off, the story about a businessman who decides to cut off his own limbs for greater efficiency, the modernist take on the story of Theseus and the Minotaur, and one of the conversations between The Sage Master and his disciples. All told this would be something like 30 pages.
The best stories are the ones where the author is invisible and the story is actually a story; the worst stories are the ones which use the characters as obvious mouthpieces for the author's polemic. She can be incredibly smug, and her writing often feels as though she's coming from a lofty platform of intellectual and moral superiority. Which I hate. Even if the author is aiming that disdain at people other than the readers, I can't help but feel that I might be next on the list.
All told this was a very different book than anything I normally read, and I can't honestly say that the experiment was a success. It makes me want to go back and read my Huxley and Orwell again; their books were just as bitter and political--if not more so--but at least they were frank about their savagery as opposed to trying to dress it up as a song-and-dance routine.
Verdict: Return to owner. (21/63 keepers)
Page count: 224 (12397 total)
Completed: 36 (18 female authors, 18 male authors)
Rejected: 27 (15 male authors, 12 female authors)
Next book due: Fri. 12/10