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forgereads17's review
challenging
dark
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
2.5
debnanceatreaderbuzz's review
3.0
Is there any other way to write a review of this book? Do you enjoy reading question after question after question? Is part of you fascinated to read a book written entirely in questions? Are you already tiring of this technique?
bibliocyclist's review
4.0
"Do you recall precisely how Santa Claus came apart for you? Is belief in Santa Claus, or disbelief, a kind of primer for belief, or disbelief, in God? Is a red-checked tablecloth an agreeable unironic symbol to you or one that invites your cynicism? Do you carry a big gob of keys or have you managed to pare down? Do you regard living with routines as liberating or shackling? Will you wear rain gear or do you prefer just getting wet? Could you wear a red clown’s nose all day without explaining it? How old is the oldest human body you have seen naked? Are you more troubled by a lie or by a theft, or are they the same thing metaphysically? If you could have a famous writer, dead or alive, write an obituary for you and really puff you up to have been something you weren’t, perhaps, or otherwise take liberties with your memory, what writer would you choose? Are you good at jacks? Does it matter to you if the jacks are fancy with the little balls on the ends or are just straight plain spikes? Are you made nervous by getting on buses whose routes you do not know? Will you get on a bus in a foreign country where you do not speak the language? In intercourse, do you prefer thrashing or more subtle motion? Are we redeemed by regret? Is it correct to suggest the eater of bland food is unsophisticated compared with the eater of spicy food? Do you listen to weather broadcasts or do you just like to see, in uncoached anticipation, weather happen? Will you be saddened that your life has been minor if in fact it has been minor? Is there anything you might do today that would distinguish you from being just a vessel of consumption and pollution with a proper presence in the herd? Do you realize that people move on steadily, even arguably bravely, unto the end, stunned and more stunned, and numbed and more numbed, by what has happened to them and not happened to them? Had you the opportunity, would you become a worm farmer? If your mind were in the gutter, would you pick it up or leave it there? Do you think there is a constant percentage of people who are clinically insane, or is this a figure that changes over time according to immediate local conditions and according to larger historical forces? Is it surprising to you that more people do not lose it, or are you surprised at how many people have already lost it?"
"What frontier of science about which you are ignorant would you most like to be informed? How often do you ask yourself, "What am I forgetting?" How often when you ask yourself what you are forgetting does it prove you are forgetting something? How often, when you ask yourself what you are forgetting, and it proves you are forgetting something, does asking the question prompt you to remember what you are forgetting? Would you like to have a small pistol in a good wooden box lined with red velvet? And maybe one big pearl beside the pistol, secure in a dimple of velvet? Would you need any more than a pistol and a pearl on red velvet to hold you content all night until you could go the following morning to a breakfast joint and eat large quantities of simple food and celebrate being just barely alive? Does integrity lie in failure? Do you appreciate the color changes of leaves in the fall or is that spectacle a tad too popularly sentimental for you? If there were a service whereby everything in your apartment or house could be made to disappear (called House Fire without Fire), without any mess or hassle or delay, and you would receive, in compensation, partial value of the material that disappeared, what partial value would be necessary for you to contract with this services? Does the word thumb impress you as somehow having a power or meaning beyond what it denotatively should have--I guess I mean, does it spook you a little, or sound totemic or talismanic, or maybe pornographic? Do you favor the toad over the frog? Do you have a favorite dinosaur, and do you trust that the popular images of dinosaurs bear any resemblance to what they really looked like, and do you have any idea how dinosaur scientists think they know, from bones alone, what the damned things looked like? If you could wear a loud-color pair of pants today, what color would it be? When was the last time you saw a peacock, and when was the last time you were completely not nervous? Do women sleeping in men's pajamas strike you as affected, practical, or sexually attractive? Do you have long-term friends whom you assume are friends for life who suddenly abandon you, as it were, or at any rate declare one way or another that it won't be "friends for life" after all? Do you struggle against this attrition or do you accept it as part of the wholesale attrition of aging? Does the wholesale attrition of aging become in effect your not caring about much, or conceivably anything, the way you once might have, and do you see yourself finally caring about nothing at all or do you see yourself taking a stand for a few things, as though you might be heading for your own private senile Alamo? At what age would you say your character was set--that is, when do you think you were you? Do you wish to be in a thunderstorm or not to be in a thunderstorm? Are you comfortable in drawstring pants? Will you wear a garment with a small tear in it? Have you ever been accused of, or accused anyone else of, cruisin' for a bruisin'? Is the person who is congruent with his daily self and who has no remote self not regarded as shallow?"
"Do you ever burn loose threads back into place rather than snip them? Is all of life clueless, or is most of it clueless with momentary bursts of clueness, or is it a spectrum of cluelessness to clueness on which people reside at various points, and are the points at which people reside on the spectrum of cluelessness fixed or variable? If you elect to continue speaking to those not speaking to you, should the motivation be to pique them or to repair relations? Is there death before life? Wouldn’t you feel pretty smart if you were the one who worked out the equation for gravity? Have you ever known anyone proficient on a unicycle who struck you as a normal person—whose character, apart from the unicycling, did not strike you as deficient somehow or otherwise suspicious? Are you experienced in any types of eclipse—of the sun, of the moon, of your hopes, of a fool? Does it ever occur to you that the good things in life have all been done already and all that is left is crappy new things or theatrical reenactments of the good old things? Does turmeric lift the spirits or just dye everything? Have you come over time to think that you know more now than you did when young, know less now than when young, know now there is so much more to know than you knew there was to know when young that it is moot whether you think you knew more then than now or less, or do you now know that you never knew anything at all and never will and only the bluster of youth persuaded you that you did or would? Do you keep a neat living place or a messy place? Is it better to work in a messy place and get a lot of work done or a neat place and get nothing done? If a voice instructed you that the tub of salve levitating over the table before you was invisible cream and invited you to put some on and join the party, would you put the cream on? In mustard, do you fancy the fancy or the ballpark? Do you regard yourself as a person who has money, a person who is going to have money, or a person who has no money and, barring an accident, is not going to have any money? If it had to be the case that a raccoon, a possum, or an otter was going to take up residence under your bed, which one would you prefer it to be? Do you do yard sales? Are you happy with your teeth? Do you in general trust or mistrust earnestness? Would you have a life with sugar cane and a mule and land, or a life with an apartment and some cans of soup and a phone? Can you handle honey without getting it on your fingers? Do you prefer being colder than you wish to be or hotter than you wish to be? Can you say for sure that you have loved? What are the chances that you could have been an astronaut? What’s it like when you first wake up? Do you die in your dreams?"
"This halcyon sky makes me long for that troubled one."
"What frontier of science about which you are ignorant would you most like to be informed? How often do you ask yourself, "What am I forgetting?" How often when you ask yourself what you are forgetting does it prove you are forgetting something? How often, when you ask yourself what you are forgetting, and it proves you are forgetting something, does asking the question prompt you to remember what you are forgetting? Would you like to have a small pistol in a good wooden box lined with red velvet? And maybe one big pearl beside the pistol, secure in a dimple of velvet? Would you need any more than a pistol and a pearl on red velvet to hold you content all night until you could go the following morning to a breakfast joint and eat large quantities of simple food and celebrate being just barely alive? Does integrity lie in failure? Do you appreciate the color changes of leaves in the fall or is that spectacle a tad too popularly sentimental for you? If there were a service whereby everything in your apartment or house could be made to disappear (called House Fire without Fire), without any mess or hassle or delay, and you would receive, in compensation, partial value of the material that disappeared, what partial value would be necessary for you to contract with this services? Does the word thumb impress you as somehow having a power or meaning beyond what it denotatively should have--I guess I mean, does it spook you a little, or sound totemic or talismanic, or maybe pornographic? Do you favor the toad over the frog? Do you have a favorite dinosaur, and do you trust that the popular images of dinosaurs bear any resemblance to what they really looked like, and do you have any idea how dinosaur scientists think they know, from bones alone, what the damned things looked like? If you could wear a loud-color pair of pants today, what color would it be? When was the last time you saw a peacock, and when was the last time you were completely not nervous? Do women sleeping in men's pajamas strike you as affected, practical, or sexually attractive? Do you have long-term friends whom you assume are friends for life who suddenly abandon you, as it were, or at any rate declare one way or another that it won't be "friends for life" after all? Do you struggle against this attrition or do you accept it as part of the wholesale attrition of aging? Does the wholesale attrition of aging become in effect your not caring about much, or conceivably anything, the way you once might have, and do you see yourself finally caring about nothing at all or do you see yourself taking a stand for a few things, as though you might be heading for your own private senile Alamo? At what age would you say your character was set--that is, when do you think you were you? Do you wish to be in a thunderstorm or not to be in a thunderstorm? Are you comfortable in drawstring pants? Will you wear a garment with a small tear in it? Have you ever been accused of, or accused anyone else of, cruisin' for a bruisin'? Is the person who is congruent with his daily self and who has no remote self not regarded as shallow?"
"Do you ever burn loose threads back into place rather than snip them? Is all of life clueless, or is most of it clueless with momentary bursts of clueness, or is it a spectrum of cluelessness to clueness on which people reside at various points, and are the points at which people reside on the spectrum of cluelessness fixed or variable? If you elect to continue speaking to those not speaking to you, should the motivation be to pique them or to repair relations? Is there death before life? Wouldn’t you feel pretty smart if you were the one who worked out the equation for gravity? Have you ever known anyone proficient on a unicycle who struck you as a normal person—whose character, apart from the unicycling, did not strike you as deficient somehow or otherwise suspicious? Are you experienced in any types of eclipse—of the sun, of the moon, of your hopes, of a fool? Does it ever occur to you that the good things in life have all been done already and all that is left is crappy new things or theatrical reenactments of the good old things? Does turmeric lift the spirits or just dye everything? Have you come over time to think that you know more now than you did when young, know less now than when young, know now there is so much more to know than you knew there was to know when young that it is moot whether you think you knew more then than now or less, or do you now know that you never knew anything at all and never will and only the bluster of youth persuaded you that you did or would? Do you keep a neat living place or a messy place? Is it better to work in a messy place and get a lot of work done or a neat place and get nothing done? If a voice instructed you that the tub of salve levitating over the table before you was invisible cream and invited you to put some on and join the party, would you put the cream on? In mustard, do you fancy the fancy or the ballpark? Do you regard yourself as a person who has money, a person who is going to have money, or a person who has no money and, barring an accident, is not going to have any money? If it had to be the case that a raccoon, a possum, or an otter was going to take up residence under your bed, which one would you prefer it to be? Do you do yard sales? Are you happy with your teeth? Do you in general trust or mistrust earnestness? Would you have a life with sugar cane and a mule and land, or a life with an apartment and some cans of soup and a phone? Can you handle honey without getting it on your fingers? Do you prefer being colder than you wish to be or hotter than you wish to be? Can you say for sure that you have loved? What are the chances that you could have been an astronaut? What’s it like when you first wake up? Do you die in your dreams?"
"This halcyon sky makes me long for that troubled one."
daneekasghost's review
3.0
The book was interesting, and a relatively quick read, but I'm not sure I got out of it everything that the author wanted me to.
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