|
2 out of 2 found this helpful: The Da Vinci Buzz: Open for Interpretation
Review: The Da Vinci Code
 
I really don't understand the buzz surrounding "The Da Vinci Code."
A longtime fan of the occult knowledge and the wish to find out why this book has become a best-seller, I chose the "The Da Vinci Code" over "Memoirs of a Geisha" to bring with me to the lake.
I mean, why the hell some people burnt this book, for Pete's sake!
Most of the "revelations" Dan Brown told us are known to many already. For example, that the Roman Catholic Church is modified to be accepted by the pagans is a known fact. Just like the concept of a "dying god." Historians and Egyptologists have tackled this phenomenon among the many cultures.
And then there are the sources the author used to base his story on are all branded "pseudo-historical" in which a careful reader could discern.
So the Mary Magdalene and Jesus' progeny-Merongivian-Priory of Sion connection is an imaginative premise.
Refusing to listen to my friends' advice, I took this one from the shelf and began to ponder its popularity.
True. I give credit to "Da Vinci" for its "the world is such a small place" twists and turns and its main theme: the Roman Catholic Church, and other delectables.
What could be the most shocking theme to entice readers but to talk about the root and the bloody history of Christianity.
Also, its affinity to women empowerment is hard to resist. Mr. Brown is a feminist.
Set in France, UK and Scotland, what we have here are the main characters erudite Harvard professor Robert Langdon and smart yet naive French cryptologist Sophie Neveu. Save for Langdon's erudition and Neveu's "amazing" family tree we also encounter the albino monk and murderer Silas, the historian knight Teabing, the hard French police captain Bezu Fache, among the many characters that make the novel such a suspense.
While I devoured the pages I couldn't help chuckling Mr. Brown's interesting, sometimes outrageous, suggestions of the artworks and historical anecdotes he mentioned.
Just like beauty, art is open for interpretation.
Like this novel is.
2006-07-16 08:47 | comment
3 out of 3 found this helpful: A must but not really
Review: Tagebücher 1988 - 1994.
There comes a time a fan must recognise the limits.
When the "Journals" of Kurt Cobain came out in 2002, I told myself I didn't want to be the first one lining up to get it. Actually, I didn't want to read it. It is like a respect for dead people.
Reading it feels like voyeurism.
In the first place, he didn't make it public but his wife Courtney Love who did. That means he never intended the public to read his thoughts, though, there were some occasions, he toyed with the idea of other people figuring him out via his words and thoughts. It was probably one of those "what-ifs", you know like literary figures, whose diaries and journals were discovered posthumously. Surely, Kurt wanted to be immortal unconsciously.
The tortured artist???? Consider this one passage from his diary:
"I've been told that an artist is in need of constant tragedy to fully express their work, but I am not an artist and when I say I in a song, that doesn't necessarily mean that person is me and it doesn't mean im just a storyteller...Art is seriously being fucked with. Fuck, the word fuck has many connotations as does the word art..."
But this is Kurt Cobain and his thoughts, political, social or musical as it may be. Though the publication of his diaries and journals is somewhat an invasion of privacy. You are somehow lead to the tunnel of what we call the continuity, the aim to know more your idol, the icon that is Kurt Cobain.
2006-02-14 01:37 | 1 comment
6 out of 6 found this helpful: This is where the buck stops
Review: Shanghai Baby
Like everyone, I was fooled, not floored.
Like everyone I bought the hype, the publicity. And oh, how much did I regret shelling out 15 euros to get it.
Like everyone I wanted to believe she is the voice of my generation, the Asian women generation. But hell, no, she is not and she will never be.
Her promise came empty-handed like the story itself. She wanted us to believe that she, through her protagonist Coco, represents the modern China. But if you read each word, each sentence she used, it is evident that she just wanted to take you in for a ride, her obsession with herself, her blatant name-dropping (the quotes overkill she plastered in the beginning of every chapter) of literary icons and pop culture celebrities, her fascination with labels and designer goods.
In the end her debut came out superficial, detached, sloppy.
“Shanghai” was her ego. And it felt flat.
Wei Hui should thank her enemies by catapulting “Shanghai Baby” to the “watchlist.” The buzz, more so the banning and the burning hysteria, doesn’t deserve it.
2006-01-18 15:10 | 2 comments
3 out of 4 found this helpful: The Asian Soul of Amy Tan
Review: The Joy Luck Club
After I called up my husband to tell him that Amy Tan’s “Joy Luck Club” made me cry, he suggested, “Then stop reading it.”
I declined. After all, it was a hard decision.
As soon as I informed a friend that I decided to read it she issued me a warning.
“Don't get me wrong, this book is one of the best but the author tends to repeat her themes in every book she has written.”
Perhaps, but this book is a work of art, a brilliant masterpiece everyone should read.
Amy Tan’s “Joy Luck Club” is a story of four immigrant Chinese women who went to America during the 1950s to escape the hostilities in China during the Japanese invasion and before the start of the Chinese Revolution. This is in contrast with their first-generation Chinese-American daughters who grew up in USA and acquired the American way of life. These mothers lamented that their daughters have lost their Chinese culture/thinking/superstitious beliefs in them. These include divorce and materialism, and the perils of interracial relationships.
The story is simple, but full of emotions. I just discovered that Amy Tan wrote so much colours and smells and movements that I couldn't help imagining some scenes in my mind. I had seen the movie yes but the scenes I saw in my mind's eye, they were completely different, as if they were taken out from the book and became a reality to me. Opening up new possibilities here and there. I felt someone old and wise enough was telling me a fairy-tale story. Things that I have missed because I've never been close to my grandparents. Until all of them died. No grandparent told me that there was a magical and sinister ghost who would snatch me if I wouldn't sleep immediately.
There's a passage in the book where the mother complained to her daughter that she never talked to her but instead the daughter paid a huge sums of money to a shrink. (Shrink, ironic, this term. perhaps it's the truth, the shrinks shrink your spririts more than lifting them up.)
"Why can you talk about this with a pysche-atrik and not with a mother?"
"Psychiatrist."
"Psyche-atriks," she corrected herself.
"A mother is best. A mother knows what is inside you," she said above the singing voices. "A psyche-atriks will only make you hulidudu (confused), make you see heimongmong (dark fog)."
Oh, so true...
2006-01-14 13:40 | 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 melancolia's reviews
feed: rss 2.0
|