Scan barcode
carlylottsofbookz's review against another edition
2.0
This was a really rough read for me.
Memoirs aren't really my thing, which includes this one.
Maybe it'd be your thing...
Memoirs aren't really my thing, which includes this one.
Maybe it'd be your thing...
lilasalphabetsoup's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
annakareniner's review against another edition
2.0
The 'Elsewhere' on the title's a totally fitting description for Aciman's musings. His nostalgia for the past and for an imagined life, an imagined self, tired me out multiple times, and I'm quite fond of the feeling of nostalgia. Sometimes he sounds a tad too pretentious and Eurocentric for my taste (despite the fact that he grew up in Alexandria, Egypt, like, come on man embrace your Egyptian-ness). At the latter half of the book I just itched to be done with it.
The above is not to say that I totally hated it. Sometimes I saw myself reflected in his writings, his ponderings on nostalgia and exile and other immigrant things. He described things I had never been able to articulate.
I wish to pick this up again someday—with a new lens that will hopefully make me appreciate the book more.
The above is not to say that I totally hated it. Sometimes I saw myself reflected in his writings, his ponderings on nostalgia and exile and other immigrant things. He described things I had never been able to articulate.
I wish to pick this up again someday—with a new lens that will hopefully make me appreciate the book more.
notlikethebeer's review against another edition
4.0
If I ever go back to Paris (which I hope I will), I won't return to the Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower is the biggest draw of Paris, and so everyone flocks there, understandably. However, from the top of the Eiffel Tower, you look out over the city and realise that the landscape is missing one essential thing: the pyramid-esque structure that makes you know you are in Paris. The question becomes- do you want to go up the Eiffel Tower, and be in Paris by knowing you are up there; or do you want to seek alternate views (the Sacre Coeur, for example), and be in Paris by being able to see the Eiffel Tower? This is what I was reminded of when Aciman presented, in the final chapter of the book, the choice of whether you want to be in Manhattan, or see Manhattan.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that Aciman brilliantly and eloquently communicated all manner of opinions, emotions and concepts that I know I've given a lot of attention to, and that I think many of us do. His knack is for making the personal universal, and he does this so well in Alibis- presents his own experiences, unique to him, in a way that I, for one, felt seen and heard. As a fan of CMBYN, Alibis is different, because it's not about the same love affairs- but that is not to say it is not about love affairs at all. Even Aciman's tenuous conflicted relationship with Alexandria is a love affair in it's own way. I think the main criticism of this book is that Aciman sometimes complicates his point: there are times when I think I fully understand what he means, then a page later it's become more complex and I'm unsure. It's not an easy read, in that the act of reading and understanding it is somewhat intense!
That being said, Alibis is excellent. It is very personal, and I don't want to take away Aciman's experiences of someone in exile, someone who has had to face identity in a way many of us have the privilege to ignore. That being said, there is so much universality here too. This is a collection of essays for anyone who feels they never quite fit in, for anyone who's identity feels fragmented and in flux, for anyone who wants to inhabit an Eiffel Tower with a view of the Eiffel Tower, or a Manhattan with a view of Manhattan: both, and neither, at exactly the same time.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that Aciman brilliantly and eloquently communicated all manner of opinions, emotions and concepts that I know I've given a lot of attention to, and that I think many of us do. His knack is for making the personal universal, and he does this so well in Alibis- presents his own experiences, unique to him, in a way that I, for one, felt seen and heard. As a fan of CMBYN, Alibis is different, because it's not about the same love affairs- but that is not to say it is not about love affairs at all. Even Aciman's tenuous conflicted relationship with Alexandria is a love affair in it's own way. I think the main criticism of this book is that Aciman sometimes complicates his point: there are times when I think I fully understand what he means, then a page later it's become more complex and I'm unsure. It's not an easy read, in that the act of reading and understanding it is somewhat intense!
That being said, Alibis is excellent. It is very personal, and I don't want to take away Aciman's experiences of someone in exile, someone who has had to face identity in a way many of us have the privilege to ignore. That being said, there is so much universality here too. This is a collection of essays for anyone who feels they never quite fit in, for anyone who's identity feels fragmented and in flux, for anyone who wants to inhabit an Eiffel Tower with a view of the Eiffel Tower, or a Manhattan with a view of Manhattan: both, and neither, at exactly the same time.
ellephuonglinhnguyen's review against another edition
3.0
As for a sheath, however, I'd spot mine in a second. It is place. I begin my inward journey by writing about place. Some do so by writing about love, war, suffering, cruelty, power, God, or country. I write about place, or the memory of place. I write about a city called Alexandria, which I'm supposed to have loved, and about other cities that remind me of a vanished world to which I allegedly wish to return. I write about exile, remembrance, and the passage of time. I write—so it would seem—to recapture, to preserve and return to the past, though I might just as easily be writing to forget and put that past behind me.
willa_reads_books's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
4.5
beautifully written
zjunjunia's review against another edition
4.0
My first time reading a collection of essays and I'm glad I picked this one as I know I love his writing. Short stories, essays - I have little experience of reading shorter writing forms. Even with things like Sherlock Holmes, I'd read one short story after another to make it feel like a continuation. But there is a beauty in these shorter, self-contained forms. They do not demand much in character development and can spend more time on minutia. Not only did I enjoy this form, but I also think this may be the writing form I would/could/should dive into first in my own personal writing journey. His first essay on Lavendar triggered an idea for an essay to write. I particularly enjoyed using an object, concept or idea to then time-travel and visit multiple moments and feelings versus having to go through life chronologically. As the essays progressed, I didn't feel the same appreciation as the earlier ones. They were shorter and felt repetitive. Should a collection of essays also have a symbiosis and logic when placed together? I think so.
Some quotes:
Lavender:
"Sometimes the history of provisional attachments means more to us that the attachments themselves"
"Sometimes it is blind ritual and not faith that we encounter the sacred, the way it is habit not character that makes us who we are"
"lives in the dark so as not to be blinded when darkness comes"
"I liked the idea of tea more than the flavors themselves, the way I liked the idea of tobacco more than of smoking, of people more than of friendship, of home more than my apartment on Craigie Street."
"unlock memory's sluice gate, one by one - without effort, caution, or ceremony"
Intimacy:
"Could parts of us just die to the past so that returning brings nothing back?"
"It dawned on me much later that evening that our truest, most private moments, like our truest, most private memories, are made of just such unreal, flimsy stuff. Fictions"
Emerson: "To believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men - that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense."
"What we reach for and what ultimately touches us is the radiance we projected on things, not the things themselves - the envelope, not the letter, the wrapping, not the gift."
La Princesse de Clèves, Madame de La Fayette: "I thought that if anything could rekindle your feelings for me, it was to let you see that mine too had changed, but to let you see this by feigning to conceal it from you, as if I lacked the courage to acknowledge it to you."
"Writing - as I did later that day - is intended to dig out the fault lines where truth and dissembling shift places. Or is it meant to bury them even deeper?"
My Monet Moment:
"art is about discover and design and a reasoning with chaos."
Temporizing:
"firms up the present by experiencing it from the futures as a moment in the past"
"What stands between him and life is not his fear of the present; it is the present."
A Literary Pilgrim Progresses to the Past:
"Some crudely mistake confession for introspection"
Roman Hours:
"Enforced errancy and mild discontentment are the best guide."
The Sea and Remembrance:
"Water cities are like conditional, transient homes; they are our romance with the sea, with time, with space, with ourselves."
Place des Vosges:
La Rochefoucauld: "If we had no faults, we would not take so much pleasure in noticing them in others."
In Tuscany:
"for people who love the present when it bears the shadow of the past, who love the world provided it's at a slight angle. Bookish people."
Some quotes:
Lavender:
"Sometimes the history of provisional attachments means more to us that the attachments themselves"
"Sometimes it is blind ritual and not faith that we encounter the sacred, the way it is habit not character that makes us who we are"
"lives in the dark so as not to be blinded when darkness comes"
"I liked the idea of tea more than the flavors themselves, the way I liked the idea of tobacco more than of smoking, of people more than of friendship, of home more than my apartment on Craigie Street."
"unlock memory's sluice gate, one by one - without effort, caution, or ceremony"
Intimacy:
"Could parts of us just die to the past so that returning brings nothing back?"
"It dawned on me much later that evening that our truest, most private moments, like our truest, most private memories, are made of just such unreal, flimsy stuff. Fictions"
Emerson: "To believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men - that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense."
"What we reach for and what ultimately touches us is the radiance we projected on things, not the things themselves - the envelope, not the letter, the wrapping, not the gift."
La Princesse de Clèves, Madame de La Fayette: "I thought that if anything could rekindle your feelings for me, it was to let you see that mine too had changed, but to let you see this by feigning to conceal it from you, as if I lacked the courage to acknowledge it to you."
"Writing - as I did later that day - is intended to dig out the fault lines where truth and dissembling shift places. Or is it meant to bury them even deeper?"
My Monet Moment:
"art is about discover and design and a reasoning with chaos."
Temporizing:
"firms up the present by experiencing it from the futures as a moment in the past"
"What stands between him and life is not his fear of the present; it is the present."
A Literary Pilgrim Progresses to the Past:
"Some crudely mistake confession for introspection"
Roman Hours:
"Enforced errancy and mild discontentment are the best guide."
The Sea and Remembrance:
"Water cities are like conditional, transient homes; they are our romance with the sea, with time, with space, with ourselves."
Place des Vosges:
La Rochefoucauld: "If we had no faults, we would not take so much pleasure in noticing them in others."
In Tuscany:
"for people who love the present when it bears the shadow of the past, who love the world provided it's at a slight angle. Bookish people."