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3.73 AVERAGE
3.73 AVERAGE
Just a few thoughts and observations:
-The authors seem to be extremely fascinated with Freud. They also take great liberty in throwing around interpretations in relation to the numerous "case studies" they bring up.
-Too many "case studies" without any real facts or actual investigation. Just incidents with lots of speculation by the authors.
-The book feels like an antithesis to all reason after having read Bad Science by Ben Goldacre quite recently. Anecdotes do not equal generalizable explanations.
-I have a hard time coping when it’s implied that doctors don’t care for their patients / don’t want them to get well.
-The authors seem to be extremely fascinated with Freud. They also take great liberty in throwing around interpretations in relation to the numerous "case studies" they bring up.
-Too many "case studies" without any real facts or actual investigation. Just incidents with lots of speculation by the authors.
-The book feels like an antithesis to all reason after having read Bad Science by Ben Goldacre quite recently. Anecdotes do not equal generalizable explanations.
-I have a hard time coping when it’s implied that doctors don’t care for their patients / don’t want them to get well.
Meh, this novel had potential but the flow was way off. I'm not a fan of the author's writing style. The plot was very jumpy. The excessive use of accented language was annoying as well. I wish the reader got a chance to know more about the five women, but unfortunately there were too many characters for the author to manage.
I would've enjoyed this book more if I didn't read it during school/for school
Excellent. Quiet, but gripping. And so sad. Ending was perfection. Movie should be interesting, I am prepared to be disappointed, but I will continue to hope.
In "The Myth of Sisyphus" Camus is trying to understand the life with the absurd. The book is interesting and for me it was a key to a better understanding of Camus's other books and philosophy.
I was gripping the pages right up to the last. An interesting thriller with complicated characters and expert twists.
ideas for living the perfect introverted life. i've learnt a couple of new ideas!
I didn't enjoy The Liar's Club at all for the first eighty-ish pages. But then I read on Goodreads that with Karr, it's important to read every paragraph twice. So I did exactly that, and everything clicked. As it turns out, Karr's style is both economical and meandering, a combination which is not always easy to comprehend. She has so much to say about her batshit insane childhood that, for the sake of pithiness, she refuses to write anything twice. Unlike other memoirists like Marcel Proust, who will harp on the same trivial memory without scruples for pages on end, Karr says her piece and moves on. With In Search of Lost Time, it's possible to skip through dozens of pages without missing any important themes, but with The Liar's Club, a single skipped sentence could obscure an entire chapter. For better or worse, there's no danger of excessive sentimentality here.
Mary was a very perceptive child, and the richness of detailдуоgoing all the way back to when she was only seven years oldдуоreflects this ability of hers. In particular, she was always on the lookout for danger, of which there was no shortage. Her mother, who suffered from a bad case of alcoholism and a worse case of "Nervousness" (an archaic word for depression), was especially dangerous. But she was brilliant also, a combination that proved to be quite captivating. Especially when she was drunk, she was prone to fitful musings about life and deathдуоhow it's all just a fucking charade. Karr also reminisces about her mother's sophisticated hobbies, like reading Anna Karenina and listening to opera, which she did obsessively and with a fervent bent. Karr's father was similarly brilliant. At the eponymous Liar's Club, where he and his work buddies would sit around and share stories while drinking beer and smoking cigarettes, he was always the best storyteller. He could captivate a room like no one else. Except, as it turns out, his own daughter. It is almost easy to see how a young girl like Karr, with a troubled upbringing in a backwater town, somehow found her way to the top of the bestsellers list a few dozen years later.
Writing about her childhood, Karr depicts the domestic fights so vividly that it's almost as if they come to life on the page. Knowing that it's all true, that it all happened in an east Texas oil town in the 1960s, makes The Liar's Club worth a read regardless of the literary quality. But the adroitness of the language makes it worth a reread. Somehow, more than fifty years after the fact, I can hear the shouting voices of Karr's parents, the shattering of dishes, and the slamming of doors, just as she heard them all those years ago. It gives me goosebumps, to be surrounded by such pandemonium while reading in my silent bedroom.
But the quiet moments are just as transportive. Mary's family, in spite of their many shortcomings, always know how to be candid with their emotions. Amid their many hardships, none of them suppress their tears. Her father cries after ruining Mary's birthday dinner, her mother cries when she burns Mary's toys in a fit of Nervousness, her sister cries when her grandmother dies, and Mary cries whenever anybody other than her grandmother diesдуоeven someone she doesn't know. In a recent interview with the NYTBR, Francis Ford Coppola made a comment which I think is very applicable to The Liar's Club. He said, "Poverty often teaches us to express love in the most profound ways." Yes, it does.
Mary was a very perceptive child, and the richness of detailдуоgoing all the way back to when she was only seven years oldдуоreflects this ability of hers. In particular, she was always on the lookout for danger, of which there was no shortage. Her mother, who suffered from a bad case of alcoholism and a worse case of "Nervousness" (an archaic word for depression), was especially dangerous. But she was brilliant also, a combination that proved to be quite captivating. Especially when she was drunk, she was prone to fitful musings about life and deathдуоhow it's all just a fucking charade. Karr also reminisces about her mother's sophisticated hobbies, like reading Anna Karenina and listening to opera, which she did obsessively and with a fervent bent. Karr's father was similarly brilliant. At the eponymous Liar's Club, where he and his work buddies would sit around and share stories while drinking beer and smoking cigarettes, he was always the best storyteller. He could captivate a room like no one else. Except, as it turns out, his own daughter. It is almost easy to see how a young girl like Karr, with a troubled upbringing in a backwater town, somehow found her way to the top of the bestsellers list a few dozen years later.
Writing about her childhood, Karr depicts the domestic fights so vividly that it's almost as if they come to life on the page. Knowing that it's all true, that it all happened in an east Texas oil town in the 1960s, makes The Liar's Club worth a read regardless of the literary quality. But the adroitness of the language makes it worth a reread. Somehow, more than fifty years after the fact, I can hear the shouting voices of Karr's parents, the shattering of dishes, and the slamming of doors, just as she heard them all those years ago. It gives me goosebumps, to be surrounded by such pandemonium while reading in my silent bedroom.
But the quiet moments are just as transportive. Mary's family, in spite of their many shortcomings, always know how to be candid with their emotions. Amid their many hardships, none of them suppress their tears. Her father cries after ruining Mary's birthday dinner, her mother cries when she burns Mary's toys in a fit of Nervousness, her sister cries when her grandmother dies, and Mary cries whenever anybody other than her grandmother diesдуоeven someone she doesn't know. In a recent interview with the NYTBR, Francis Ford Coppola made a comment which I think is very applicable to The Liar's Club. He said, "Poverty often teaches us to express love in the most profound ways." Yes, it does.