Without-Feathers.com

May 2008

Book Blog
4 entries

The Killing Jar

May 31, 2008

Details:
Author: Nicola Monaghan
Genre: Drama

Meh. I mean, I read it straight through, and it held my attention, but… meh. The plot twists were visible from miles away, the main character’d dialect seemed distractingly wobbly, and the whole thing seemed very first-novelish (which it is).

Moby-Dick

May 27, 2008

Details:
Author: Herman Melville
Genre: Adventure, Drama

OH MY GOD I FINISHED IT. AND MY HEAD HAS NOT YET EXPLODED. (Although my mother would like me to point out that she finished before I did. I call foul, because listening to it on CD while napping doesn’t seem kosher, but she cites eye problems as an excuse and I know what that’s like, so OKAY MOM, YOU WIN.) I think my husband summed up my views perfectly when he said, “Oh, Herman Melville—why?“ This book sucks—and I don’t want to put it that way, because Melville’s prose is beautiful (beautiful!) and the characters are incredibly well-drawn and most of the dialogue is spot-on hilarious and/or Shakespearean, but oh my god did this book need an editor. Did Melville just print it out on some basement press and distribute it himself without even bothering to have it edited? I can see why this flopped when it first came out. If I ever get the chance to go back in time, I am first going to play ding-dong-ditch on Samuel Taylor Coleridge while he writes The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and then I will drop in on Melville at his miserable clerking job and be all dude, sucks to be you, but you should have HIRED AN EDITOR.

Moby-Dick: Thar She Blows

May 17, 2008

Details:
Author: Herman Melville
Genre: Adventure, Drama

I keep picking this book up, getting a few chapters into it, and then putting it down again when it gets boring. I should probably have stuck to that instinct, but I somehow managed to rope myself and my entire family into reading it for our family book club. Now everybody hates me, and I can’t really blame them—this book is dull. The sad part is, Melville's a great prose stylist, very ahead of his time in many ways. But oy, the pacing. It hops merrily along for awhile, then hits a brick wall about 1/3 of the way through with a chapter on cetology (entitled, naturally, “Cetology”), in which we learn more than we ever wanted to—and, I’m fairly certain, more than will be necessary for the rest of the story—about the different kinds of whales. Then we go back to the story for awhile (yay!)… and then Melville decides to be cute and write some of the chapters like stage dramas. Bad stage dramas. I’m not yet halfway through the book, but I’m already tempted to stuff it under the couch and go rent the movie. And it’s not just me—I caught my mother looking for the Cliff Notes version in the bookstore the other day. You know it’s really awful when an English teacher can’t even get through it…

Miss Lonelyhearts

May 16, 2008

Details:
Author: Nathanael West
Genre: Drama

One of those dismal little novels that takes you on a tramp through the basest of human actions and emotions—which, of course, leaves you rather cold afterwards, and not inclined to like the book. Something about this book just bored me from the beginning—maybe Shrike’s monologues, or maybe something else—and I couldn’t really enjoy the thing. The writing style was decent, but the rest of it seemed like something bad-smelling that I’d scrape off my shoe after a walk down a dirty alley. I think that was the author’s intention, but it still felt like a waste of time.

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