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A review by thewallflower00
Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
2.0
This is book is awesome. In the first 13 pages, Gepetto gets into a fist fight, Pinocchio gets Gepetto sent to prison, then he kills Jiminy Cricket with a hammer. This is great!
As you can tell this book is far removed from the Disney version. Everybody's a jerk. Must be an Italian thing. I'm not sure who this book was audienced to -- little boys maybe? -- but the language still holds up. The culture does not. It's super easy to read, but the plot is not terribly coherent, and there's no unifying force. It seems like 65% of the book is just Pinocchio being bad, then, when he realizes he's about to get burnt or hanged or shot, he suddenly cries, "oh no, I'll never be bad again", and he is saved. Then he goes and does it again. Reminds me of the American prison system. Must be required reading for lawyers.
The storytelling is terribly unpolished and jagged. There's no unifying story, just Pinocchio running around getting into trouble. After about halfway, it starts getting obnoxious, because he has no real goal. He has nothing he wants.
I'm really on the fence about the value of this book in terms of today. Would I recommend it for anyone? Would they get anything out of it? Maybe, since the chapters are short and the characters dynamic, they'd get more out of it than I did.
As you can tell this book is far removed from the Disney version. Everybody's a jerk. Must be an Italian thing. I'm not sure who this book was audienced to -- little boys maybe? -- but the language still holds up. The culture does not. It's super easy to read, but the plot is not terribly coherent, and there's no unifying force. It seems like 65% of the book is just Pinocchio being bad, then, when he realizes he's about to get burnt or hanged or shot, he suddenly cries, "oh no, I'll never be bad again", and he is saved. Then he goes and does it again. Reminds me of the American prison system. Must be required reading for lawyers.
The storytelling is terribly unpolished and jagged. There's no unifying story, just Pinocchio running around getting into trouble. After about halfway, it starts getting obnoxious, because he has no real goal. He has nothing he wants.
I'm really on the fence about the value of this book in terms of today. Would I recommend it for anyone? Would they get anything out of it? Maybe, since the chapters are short and the characters dynamic, they'd get more out of it than I did.