newwavepollyhttp://booklikes.com/photo/crop/50/50/upload/avatar/e/c/azure_ec4d34f4682d38f11eed59d30b901af1.pngnewwavepollyhttp://newwavepolly.booklikes.com2024-03-28T13:46:40+00:00http://newwavepolly.booklikes.com/rssreview2013-09-27T00:00:00+01:002013-09-27T00:00:00+01:00http://newwavepolly.booklikes.com/post/428698/postnewwavepollyhttp://newwavepolly.booklikes.com My feelings on white men co-opting the stories of minorities for their own financial (or artistic in this case, the book received much praise) obviously affected my reading experience and was hard to look past and enjoy the book. I'm aware the narrative is first person, but anytime geishas or the Japanese were referred to as "we", I became hyper aware that a guy from Tennessee wrote this. When talking about WWII and it's effect on the Japanese geisha districts (and Japan in general), atrocities committed by America were so largely glossed over. America was barely mentioned as the enemy. Hiroshima was mentioned in a sentence. Yet post-American invasion, the American soldiers were described as "nice" (they're not) and not at all people who "killed and raped" the Japanese (they were). When the protagonist Sayuri attends a party with American soldiers, she's shocked by how personable and way more fun than Japanese men they were, and how they all got along so wonderfully despite their language barrier. That just reeks of bullshit to me. Of romanticized bullshit by a white, male American with no real gauge of how vile America is regarding foreign policy or all the irredeemable shit they pulled on Japan during WWII.
Besides my political aversion to pretty much everything this book is, it's an ok read. A decent story. It's not actually incredibly well written. The abundant similes sprinkled generously throughout as an attempt at depth and eloquence were actually kind of dumb and heavy handed. The plot itself was scattered and met a really slapdash end. The actual exploration of geisha life was superficial at best, and character development was... not great (Sayuri was basically a Mary Sue, and even when her flaws and mistakes were pointed out to her, they were written off as more revealing of the negative character traits of those pointing them out to her). It's an ok light read, but quite clearly Arthur Golden showing off everything he knows about Japan and a conversation he had with a former geisha one time.
I've done a bit of trashing of Arthur Golden in this... am I not abiding by GR's new review policies?? Who knows?
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review2013-09-24T00:00:00+01:002013-09-24T00:00:00+01:00http://newwavepolly.booklikes.com/post/428703/postnewwavepollyhttp://newwavepolly.booklikes.comreview2013-09-19T00:00:00+01:002013-09-19T00:00:00+01:00http://newwavepolly.booklikes.com/post/428705/postnewwavepollyhttp://newwavepolly.booklikes.com
With all the praise I could give right now, I was genuinely considering giving The Blind Assassin three stars up until the last ~100 pages. There are about half a dozen (maybe hyperbole, maybe accurate) being told here and I felt that the central story wasn't the one I was most interested it. I felt that I just... didn't get it. I still feel that way. But by the end, I had invested so much, wondered so much, and pulled as much of this book apart as I could that I can't deny The Blind Assassin is 100% effective. And I don't think I could really ever give an Atwood novel less than 4 stars just based on how much I feel for them. It's wont be one of my favourites like I've come to expect from Atwood. The story and characters just didn't have that emotional pull. It was like a story I've heard a million times told in a more beautiful and elegant manner.
Also that cover art is just gorgeous I want it blown up and framed.
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review2013-09-06T00:00:00+01:002013-09-06T00:00:00+01:00http://newwavepolly.booklikes.com/post/428708/postnewwavepollyhttp://newwavepolly.booklikes.comreview2013-08-30T00:00:00+01:002013-08-30T00:00:00+01:00http://newwavepolly.booklikes.com/post/428702/postnewwavepollyhttp://newwavepolly.booklikes.comreview2013-08-28T00:00:00+01:002013-08-28T00:00:00+01:00http://newwavepolly.booklikes.com/post/428701/postnewwavepollyhttp://newwavepolly.booklikes.comreview2013-08-22T00:00:00+01:002013-08-22T00:00:00+01:00http://newwavepolly.booklikes.com/post/428724/postnewwavepollyhttp://newwavepolly.booklikes.comreview2013-08-17T00:00:00+01:002013-08-17T00:00:00+01:00http://newwavepolly.booklikes.com/post/428725/postnewwavepollyhttp://newwavepolly.booklikes.comreview2013-08-14T00:00:00+01:002013-08-14T00:00:00+01:00http://newwavepolly.booklikes.com/post/428722/postnewwavepollyhttp://newwavepolly.booklikes.comreview2013-08-11T00:00:00+01:002013-08-11T00:00:00+01:00http://newwavepolly.booklikes.com/post/428700/postnewwavepollyhttp://newwavepolly.booklikes.com I won't pretend this is miles above fantasy/supernatural YA romance lit. The kinda bad writing is pretty on par with it, the characterization leaves something to be desired, and the plotline is just as over-the-top border on ridiculous as any YA lit. But if you can put those things aside, you've got a nice little fun read about sex and vampires and murder mysteries. That same argument can be applied to most YA lit, of course, but the lack of YA-ness of Dead Until Dark is why I actually enjoyed it. After a succession of books about the one girl who's not like the rest, the slutty cheerleader foils, the sexy-bad-boy-cardboard-cut-of-a-human inexplicably in love with the empty vessel girl, the parents who just don't understand, reading a book where the length of other girls skirts and how much clothes the main character wears in comparison is not an issue was really refreshing. I guess what I'm getting at is I still like the over the top, trashy, campy, messy supernatural romances, it's just the insecure teenager-ness of it all that's turned me from the genre and led me to kind of enjoy this book.
Critically speaking, this book isn't much. It's a bit of a mess. Sookie is pretty empty-vessely. She cries a lot, has a power that sets her apart from everyone else, and things *just happen* to her. Bill's not really the *sexy bad boy* (I think that's Eric???), he's a decent guy, trying to adapt, trying to figure out why Sookie doesn't like him creeping around her house because girls like a century ago would have loved that. He's a bit like Edward Cullen without all the death threats and if Edward Cullen was absent for like half the book. The slew of supporting characters remind me a bit of a modern Jane Austen novel, with them all being a bit like caricatures of human beings (an overprotective boss, and older many times married best friend/co-worker, a promiscuous kinda underachieving brother, a flamboyant makeup wearing gay cook). Naturally, the leads fall in love in about 15 minutes. Drama ensues. Nobody really deals with that drama the way normal human beings do. Everybody has a super power.
But I liked it. I feel the same way I think most people feel about True Blood at this point. It's a bit terrible but I'm ok with that. I'm probably going to read the next few books in the series. My search for a light, fun series to read may not have been in vain after all.
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review2013-08-11T00:00:00+01:002013-08-11T00:00:00+01:00http://newwavepolly.booklikes.com/post/428726/postnewwavepollyhttp://newwavepolly.booklikes.comreview2013-08-10T00:00:00+01:002013-08-10T00:00:00+01:00http://newwavepolly.booklikes.com/post/428699/postnewwavepollyhttp://newwavepolly.booklikes.comreview2013-08-03T00:00:00+01:002013-08-03T00:00:00+01:00http://newwavepolly.booklikes.com/post/428727/postnewwavepollyhttp://newwavepolly.booklikes.com The sheer volume of stupid fuckery in Beautiful Creatures made it impossible to contain myself, prompting me to use a wordpad document to make comments (/complete rants) while reading. I intended on c+p that as a review, but I was so burned out by the time I got halfway through that I couldn't even bring myself to open wordpad anymore. There were only so many times I could type "HOLY SHIT STOP" when Ethan repeatedly called all girls who weren't Lena stupid sluttly cheerleaders or some ambiguously racist language and mannerisms were applied to Amma. Instead, I'll just summarize.
This book is trash. Absolute trash. So vilely misogynistic. As a book told from the PoV of a male character, it could not be more obvious that it was written by women carrying a lot of bitterness and insecurity from their high school days. Ethan was a complete teen girl outcast masturbatory fantasy. A teen boy who thought all the blonde cheerleaders were vapid sluts in miniskirts and all the boys who liked them were superficial horndogs. A teen boy who preferred the girl in converse (TRUST THE CONVERSE THING WAS BROUGHT UP A LOT) who carried around books (TRUST AGAIN IT WAS REPEATEDLY POINTED OUT THAT THE CHEERLEADERS NEVER HELD BOOKS). He's not even a Gary-Stu or self-insert, just a complete childish fantasy who needs to point out how terrible every other girl in the world is to justify how ~~~absolutely amazing and perfect Lena is. Lena, of course, being a completely personality-less cardboard cutout of a girl who walks into school with black hair, jeans and copy of To Kill A Mockingbird - a wonderful contrast to all the clone like blonde cheerleader sluts - that naturally our hero immediately falls madly in love with despite her complete lack of substance or personality.
Ethan reduces every single girl in his high school to their appearance, creating a binary consisting of two distinct categories: cool girls not like everyone else with black hair and converse (read: Lena and only Lena) & bleach blonde cheerleader sluts with handbags and miniskirts. And the life lesson here is not to judge people by their appearance. Seriously. Like an entire paragraph about how that is a bad thing to do. Followed by another paragraph about Lena's converse, Ethan's Transformer shirt, and the cheerleaders miniskirts.
I think my search for a nice, fluffy, entertaining light read is in vain.
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review2013-07-24T00:00:00+01:002013-07-24T00:00:00+01:00http://newwavepolly.booklikes.com/post/428728/postnewwavepollyhttp://newwavepolly.booklikes.comreview2013-07-22T00:00:00+01:002013-07-22T00:00:00+01:00http://newwavepolly.booklikes.com/post/428729/postnewwavepollyhttp://newwavepolly.booklikes.com