This started so well but then it got more and more boring with each chapter.
I was hooked on this as soon as I started reading. I found myself stormingThis started so well but then it got more and more boring with each chapter.
I was hooked on this as soon as I started reading. I found myself storming through it and totally invested in the story. Then somewhere, around half-way through, I found myself growing terribly bored. My reading rate slowed down. It started to feel like a chore, and it took me almost five months to finish it.
What happened?
The story seemed to stagnate, and the descriptions felt very similar and reused. Moreover, it didn’t seem to be going anywhere other than the obvious direction. Granted, it picked up towards the but by then I had lost interest and wanted the book to be over. It seems rather trite in a book review to complain about the length of a book, but I’m going to do it anyway: this felt too long. I have no problem with big books if they need to be big. This one felt padded out and like parts needed to be stripped back and the writing made tighter. It waffled on and I grew tired of it.
It was slow, so painfully slow
I’m disappointed because I feel like I should have loved this one and I thought I was going to. I wish I had something more positive to say, but I can’t find anything else I enjoyed about it. It had a good hook but that’s it. Consider me very unimpressed.
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I've not got a great deal to say about this one other than it bored me to tears. I just couldn't get into it at all despite restarting it sevDNF - 35%
I've not got a great deal to say about this one other than it bored me to tears. I just couldn't get into it at all despite restarting it several times. It just didn't speak to me on any level. The characters didn't interest me and the plot was tiresome.
Life is far too short for books you don't enjoy....more
I knew from the first page that this book would not work for me.
I slogged through about half of it and gave up. I lost the thread of the plot long befI knew from the first page that this book would not work for me.
I slogged through about half of it and gave up. I lost the thread of the plot long before due to my lack of interest in everything this book is. It all felt forced, like the themes and ideas were shoved into the narrative and that the plot had to adapt to fit them in. It was trying too hard to be funny rather than actually being funny. Life is far too short for books I don’t enjoy.
And I could never enjoy this. It felt like it was written by two guys who had just finished school and were ready to explode their ideas into some creative project that could be a piece of brilliance or a real chore depending on the reader tastes. And this just sent me right to sleep. I was glad to stop when I did.
I think my main problem is that I’ve seen how much better each writer can do. I’ve read Gaiman at his best. I’ve been inspired by his words and I have found part of myself in his stories. I’ve laughed out loud with Pratchett and I’ve tasted the sharpness of his wit. This felt like a shadow of what each writer can do; it holds a mere suggestion of the brilliance and creative spark each would wield at his fingertips. It was just juvenile.
Maybe I came into with the wrong mind-set. Maybe I expected too much or perhaps the humour is just wasted on me. Either way, this one just isn’t for me....more
I’ve read a lot of fucked things in literature, though it is extremely rare that I read something so messed up that it makes me hate the book.
It takesI’ve read a lot of fucked things in literature, though it is extremely rare that I read something so messed up that it makes me hate the book.
It takes a lot to put me off. I read Lolita without any complaints about the paedophilia because sometimes it is necessary to show despicable things in order to create art. I’ve read stage pieces by Sarah Kane which involve genital mutilation and all sorts of brutal sex acts, but, again, it was necessary for the piece. Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus centres on a very brutal rape, that much so that people fainted when it was performed (and that was in 2014 at Shakespeare’s Globe in London), though it was needed for the nature of the revenge plot.
However, sometimes the brutality can be a little too much. This book contains an explicit child rape scene and vivid animal cruelty. Granted, you could make the same argument to defend The Bluest Eye as I did for the texts I mentioned above though, for me, it was just too awful to read. The scenes held absolutely nothing back. I am not a person easily shocked or put off by such things, though it was too much even for me.
The Republic of Wine is the only other book to make me feel this unnerved (because of baby cannibalism.) It made me want to vomit as the writing here did.
The Bluest Eye was way too much for me. It was overly symbolic, melodramatically brutal and displayed no hope or optimism. I did not enjoy a single page....more
The Satanic Verses is vastly imaginative and creative; it is a force to be reckoned with in the literary world providing you can actually get through The Satanic Verses is vastly imaginative and creative; it is a force to be reckoned with in the literary world providing you can actually get through it. And there’s the rub because The Satanic Verses is quite possibly the single most confusing piece of fiction I have ever read.
I’m just not sure what happened. And after 500+ pages I feel like a book should leave me with a little more than an overbearing sense of bewilderment. Perhaps if I was more widely read I would have appreciated it more. That being said, I don’t think any reader should even attempt this book unless they have a strong grasp on Islamic theology and the Quran. Otherwise most of the allusions will be wasted on you like they were me.
It’s just so difficult to read without that knowledge base. It drew upon such a huge wealth of myths, religion and stories that it became so hard to follow. Multiple names are used to refer to the same characters and they frequently shifted in and out of the narrative making it hard to focus on the story and discern what the actual story was at any given point. So much of the novel went over my head that by around the half way point I’d lost the thread completely and was just reading a series of seemingly unconnected chapters.
What didn’t help is the fact that I’m also reading Joseph Anton, Rushdie’s biography. The personal relationship between him and his farther is detailed quite extensively throughout and much of Rushdie’s emotions regarding the matter are paralleled here in different forms. I became confused with events that had happened in Rushdie’s life and those that had happened in the fictional account here because they are so strikingly similar. This meant that a confusing novel became even more confusing.
I find the history of the novel, the events that led Rushdie to go into hiding as he feared for his own life, far more interesting than the actual work itself perhaps because I can actually comprehend the facts as they are not veiled in a web of incomprehensible allegory. One day I will come back to this book, not anytime soon; it will be a day when I am more familiar with the texts it discusses and engages with. At least then, I may be able to read it and form a solid opinion of it.
For now though, I’ve come to a simple conclusion: this book really isn’t for me, at least, not yet. ...more
I read a lot of weird shit in fiction, but I draw the line at people eating babies
I don’t care what the allegory is about, I don’t care how artful theI read a lot of weird shit in fiction, but I draw the line at people eating babies
I don’t care what the allegory is about, I don’t care how artful the imagery is and how poetic the language may be, if it involves vivid descriptions of people eating babies then consider me thoroughly disgusted.
The Republic of Wine is not a book for the faint hearted or for the squeamish; it is not a book for most readers. It uses some truly revolting themes to overtly capture its political message. It is direct and purposeful, but at what cost? In order to show the excesses of society, its corruptions and its unrelenting appetite, Mo Yan exaggerates to the point of utter ridiculousness. I simply cannot believe that the denizens of human society would be this cold and detached from their own suffering in any situation.
They raise their babies and sell them as meat, attempting to perfect their forms in order to yield the largest amount of currency. They pamper them, clean them and grow them for one purpose: to be a delicate treat for the table of the elites of society. Everything in the novel is treated as a commodity; animals are slaughtered in the streets when they no longer have “purpose” as a beast of burden. Humans (and their babies) are used in order to further the advance of communism and nation, absolutely nothing is free.
What Mo Yan offers is a dark reality, a twisted and pessimistic view of our own world that paints all its excesses in the most terrifying and brutal form imaginable. If I could, I’d erase this book from my mind completely....more
I take no shame in admitting that I cannot read this book. I was defeated after three paragraphs:
"What clashes here of wills gen wonts, oystrygods gagI take no shame in admitting that I cannot read this book. I was defeated after three paragraphs:
"What clashes here of wills gen wonts, oystrygods gaggin fishy-gods! Brékkek Kékkek Kékkek Kékkek! Kóax Kóax Kóax! Ualu Ualu Ualu! Quaouauh! Where the Baddelaries partisans are still out to mathmaster Malachus Micgranes and the Verdons cata-pelting the camibalistics out of the Whoyteboyce of Hoodie Head. Assiegates and boomeringstroms. Sod’s brood, be me fear! Sanglorians, save! Arms apeal with larms, appalling. Killykill-killy: a toll, a toll. What chance cuddleys, what cashels aired and ventilated! What bidimetoloves sinduced by what tegotetab-solvers!"
I can’t even begin to decipher that nor do I have the patience or will to do so. I see what Joyce is doing; he is fucking around with words and having a blast, but I don’t want any part of it. Is this modernism gone too far?...more
Sean Barrs
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