|
3 out of 3 found this helpful: Black Cat, Damp Courtyard, Mirrors, and Writing
Review: Smoke and Mirrors
 
The first half of the book was truly a pleasant surprise. Creative, original, good writing, and interesting stories. I loved how Gaiman mixed realistic modern life with magic and fantasy. His prose had good rhythm, they ran smoothly like a beautiful river.
My favorites are the one about the black cat (”The Price”). “He looked like a small panther, and he moved like a patch of night.” and the one about Hollywood “The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories”. Or rather, i liked the courtyard in “The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories.” The main character's friendship with the old black man. Their talks of past stars in that quiet courtyard. I always imagined there were leaves on the ground, and the wind of the Fall blow through the desolate scene. All that used to be glorious are no longer, except the three gold fish running around and around in circles...
"I walked out to my chalet through the rain, my overnight bag in my hand, clutching the set of keys that would, the desk clerk told me, get me through the various doors and gates. The air smelled of wet dust and, curiously enough, cough mixture. It was dusk, almost dark.
"Water splashed everywhere. It ran in rills and rivulets across the courtyard. It ran into a small fishpond that jutted out from the side of wall in the courtyard.
…
"The rain had stopped. The sunshine was warm and bright., proper Hollywood light. I walked up to the main building, walking on a carpet of crushed eucalyptus leaves - the cough medicine smell from the night before."
The other ones that I would recommend are “The Wedding Present”, which is hiding in his introduction; “Chivalry,” “Troll Bridge,” “Murder Mysteries,” and “Snow, Glass, Apples.”
These are cleverly written. Rich in originality, beautiful imagery, and tender imagination.
The rest fell back into the category of fantasy that i don’t care for, werewolf, vampire, and unnamed creatures took over something, someone, or someplace. The Stephen King stuff that would sure make you fear and sick to your stomach.
I also like what he wrote in his introduction, about writing.
"Writing is flying in dreams.
When you remember. When you can. When it works。
It’s that easy.
–Author’s notebook, February 1992
"Mirrors are wonderful things. ...... full review
2005-12-17 23:59 | comment
5 out of 5 found this helpful: The Obsession With A Blue Notebook
Review: Oracle Night
My childhood obsession never included dolls or jewels or anything with glitz. Whenever I was in a store, I always made a beeline towards the paper supply counter. I was obsessed with notebooks. Especially those good-looking ones with hard covers, which open to solid white sheets of papers. Well, actually, those notebooks didn’t exist in stores from my childhood. Notebooks belonged to my childhood were made from recycled papers. The paper was yellowish and coarse. Occasionally an old block letter would sneak in, superiorly laughing at the zigzag fibers, the only other remnants of an old newspaper from its previous reincarnation. Before you start thinking I might have grown up in a hippie colony where environmental crazed hippies made notebooks from recycled paper. I should clarify. I grow up in the 70’s China. Recycle was not trendy, but a necessity. The higher quality notebooks had red or blue plastic covers, on which printed famous quotes from Chairman Mao, in gold color.
With that obsession in mind, you might understand now why I was attracted to Paul Auster’s new novel, Oracle Night. I’ve heard Terry Gross interviewing him on NPR and knew the book started with a magical blue notebook. Later I saw it in the bookstore and on amazon. I thought it had the most beautifully designed book jacket’a blue cloth-bound notebook. I was delighted on Saturday when I found an audio book version of it in the library, and Paul Auster himself read it.
I’m on tape 3 right now. There are six tapes total. It surprised me how much I enjoyed it so far. Auster is a writer with superior techniques. In Oracle Night, there are basically three sets of stories going on. Auster’s story is about a writer Sydney, who has just recovered from a serious illness and has just started writing again, in Sydney’s new story, the main character is an editor, who is editing another story. They are like Russian dolls, being placed one inside of another. Unlike Russian dolls, however, one isn’t smaller than its predecessors. They are somehow all inter- related in some mysterious way. He has the ability to keep me engaged in this complicated web of stories and not confusing the three sets of characters in anyway.
I remember my earlier experience with him, and remember his stories being strange but readable. I also remember my not liking it at the end because they were alway...... full review
2005-12-07 14:56 | comment
4 out of 4 found this helpful: A Lovely Book
Review: The lovely bones
Even though someone has complained the book being sentimental, I enjoyed it tremendously. “Devil is in the details.” I kept on thinking of this line as I listened to the story unfold in front of me as I drove back and forth between home and work. She describes every casual object and gesture in the most loving details. From the door knob of a child’s room, to the orange cones on a street marking the forbidden zone; from a child’s vivid consciousness flowing from keystone charm to her mom’s “dinner is ready, your brother draw a bear” calling, to the killer’s cold calculating meditation before approaching a new victim; she noticed them all and she recorded them beautifully.
The characters are all in flesh and bones, they were individuals bathed in their own personality and pet peeves. In addition, this book has the most reasonable mother character in a child-losing tragedy. Maybe because the author is also a woman, unlike John Irving (A Widow for One Year) and Robert Hellenga (The Fall of A Sparrow), she knows intuitively how a mother would go through a different kind of pain than the father.
Two moments that stood up in my momery:
1. When Lindsey was escaping from Mr. Harvey’s house: “So young, so gloriously young and agile, she stood up!” The word “Glorious” filled my heart with delight. It was also the moment as I drove past the cloudy City and entered the sunlight broken through clouds. I was so dreading something bad would happen, but instead it was Sunny, Glorious! Oh, so beautiful!
2. When Ruth willed Susie to enter her body and to be back on earth again, “I knew I was given a gift and it wouldn’t last forever, so I had to make every minute count. What should I do? I know I don’t want to ask Ray to chase after Mr. Harvey.” This sentence alone amazed me. Later in the interview, Alice Sebold said she didn’t want to make this book about revenge and retribution. I applaud her for that. It took guts to do. Because it would have been such an easy way out. What followed was just incredible and beautiful and so full of life and love. Sentimental? Maybe. But I love it.
The character that I liked the most was actually Ruth, the weird painter poet, who eventually “graduated from a real closet to a closet-sized studio” in New York City. She walked around the City documenting her sight of past murder victims. It soun...... full review
2005-12-07 14:47 | 3 comments
2 out of 2 found this helpful: Chemistry, Anybody?
Review: The Emperor of Scent
In my searching for a few Perfume guides in the bookstore, I came across this new book–The Emperor of Scent, A Story of Perfume, Obsession, and the Last Mystery of the Senses, by Chandler Burr. It is a biographical narration of a British Scientist Luca Turin, who recently (1995) formulated a theory on how our noses work, how we human smell. Apparently it is molecular vibration of each scent molecule that our brain recognizes.
Chemistry was my worst subject when I was in school. It frustrated me because for every nicely written theory or theorem, there are at least ten exception cases associated with it. Unlike in Physics and Math, where one only needs to understand the theory and apply them and everything will be peachy, in Chemistry, it is all about memorization of those exception cases, the ones that actually follow the so-called theories are rarities and no teacher has ever tested them in exams.
But this book’s author, Chandler Burr, made biophysics (a combination of molecular biology, Chemistry and Quantum Physics) sounds so much fun. Those crazy hateful molecules made up of single, double, or triple bound among various atoms suddenly turned into lively and funny actors, each with its own distinct personality, hurriedly went on its merry way to find a friend that they can bind with and sing their little note in the chord of a perfume.
Look at this paragraph for example, where the author was trying to explain “electron tunneling” (Don’t worry, I myself had no idea what this term meant before I read on! So read on.).
~~~~~~~~Quote Begin~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Electrons are extremely inquisitive creatures, and they want to go everywhere. So they zip along inside conductors until they come to a gap, and then they crowd the edge of this atomic cliff and impatiently try to find a way to jump across to the other side. And you can just insert a bridge into that tiny gap “a single molecule will do, just jam it in there” and the electrons will enthusiastically rush through that molecule (It’s called “tunneling” because they actually burrow through the thing like frenetic moles) and across to the other side.
~~~~~~~~Quote End~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
See? Electrons are curious creatures and they are adventures, how marvelous! Can you imagine having a teacher like this in your high school class? I would be hooked on science, no doubt!
...... full review
2005-12-07 14:35 | comment
4 out of 4 found this helpful: First Half: Excellent
Review: Middlesex
1.
I spent the entire day reading Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex (apparently the Pulitzers Price for Fiction winner of the year).
It is a birthday gift from Gui. I’m on page 322 (out of 520 pages). It is a family saga that started in 1920 and ended in 2000(I’m guessing since i’m not there yet but it did mention GW Bush’s election). It started in a small Greek village above the city of Bursa of Asian Minor, went to Detroit in 1920’s, and to present day Berlin.
I was intrigued by those historical events that mostly I remained ignorant till now. I was pained at the description of the burning of the great city Smyran by the Turks in 1920, and amused by the Ford Company policy in the 1920’s Detroit. They sent FBI style inspectors to their worker’s home to ensure “our workers spent their $5/day pay properly”, by which they meant whether there were houseflied in your house, whether your garbage can has a lid, and they were thorough. Their final “verdict” that would be read aloud in the worker’s kichen would include such details as the style of your tooth brush and the frequency of your bath. The description of Ford Language School’s (most of the workers were new immigrants who spoke little to none English) Graduation ceremony resembled Chinese revolution Opera during Culture Revolution, full of propaganda slogans.
The narrator’s grandparents were in their early 20’s, fleeing from the incoming Turk army. They went through the Burning of Smyran (now Izmur in today’s Turkey), long ocean voyage Titanic style (minus the sinking, it was Leonardo and Kate story with a twist), Detriot the newly blooming city in 1920’s aiming to overtak New York, its racial tension building up over the years, bootlegging of liquors from Canada during prohibition, burning of Detriot during the socalled racial “riot” in 1967 which ended with National Guards shooting their way into town hiding inside their armored tanks, Tian’an Men Square style, etc. etc. etc.
The author waved his family story with the history of Detriot and Asian Minor with such a skillful and humorous pen. It was an enjoyable read. Here is one of many quotes that i loved, the narrator’s grandma had a silk farm back in their mountainous Greek village above the city of Bursa:
~~~~~~~~Quote Begin~~~~~~~~~~~~
"According to an ancient Chinese legend, one day in the year 2640 B.C....... full review
2005-12-07 14:24 | comment
|
| |
Vote with your mouse:If you find any review helpful, please click the "Yes indeed" button. Besides encouraging review authors, your votes and other people's together decide what reviews show up on Douban's home page, and how reviews are ordered in each book, movie and music album's page.
All "yes" and "no" votes are anonymous.
subscribe to JJ's reviews
feed: rss 2.0
|