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barium_squirrel 's review for:
The Glass Bead Game
by Hermann Hesse
This book was unbelievably boring: and I usually like classic literature. It is the fictional biography of a man in a future society where the predominant religion is "The Glass Bead Game"; which seems to be a form of board game based around finding connections between classic literature, music, and art. Christians exist in this world too, and the book spends a lot of time comparing The Glass Bead Game, Christianity, and "meditation" (Hinduism?). I would say the primary theme of the book is pedagogy; since the book spent pages and pages talking about how great teachers are, how teacher-student relationships should work, how teachers can help reluctant pupils, etc.
There are also three short stories at the end, which are fictional even within the context of the book, about the main character living in different time periods. I found this fact extremely annoying. I didn't care about the main character at all, and I was not interested in reading the author's fanfic of his own book. I did read them, for the sake of completeness, and they are all also about pedagogy and the effect religion has on people.
I found this book insufferably dull. None of the characters have any humanizing moments that reveal their personalities. The world building is extremely one-dimensional and lacking in scope (there is only one female character in the book, a bad mother who makes her son weak with her indulgence, despite the fact that this book was written in a time when many women were going to college and making great strides in the arts and sciences). The main character has no flaws; and whenever it seems like he has a flaw, the narration goes to great pains to explain how its totally not a flaw and he is so good and wise nobody can understand him. The ending is abrupt, and unsatisfying. I found it irritating that the narrator skipped over major portions of the main character's life because supposedly "documentation is missing"; but relates verbatim conversations, and even what he thought as he was dying. How? There is no documentation of that!
I couldn't help comparing this book to Anna Karenina; which is also very moralistic, and also contains long essays crammed into the story, but has genuine characters with personalities and motives, not just puppets to sing the praises of the main character. I think I like Tolstoy better after reading this.
There are also three short stories at the end, which are fictional even within the context of the book, about the main character living in different time periods. I found this fact extremely annoying. I didn't care about the main character at all, and I was not interested in reading the author's fanfic of his own book. I did read them, for the sake of completeness, and they are all also about pedagogy and the effect religion has on people.
I found this book insufferably dull. None of the characters have any humanizing moments that reveal their personalities. The world building is extremely one-dimensional and lacking in scope (there is only one female character in the book, a bad mother who makes her son weak with her indulgence, despite the fact that this book was written in a time when many women were going to college and making great strides in the arts and sciences). The main character has no flaws; and whenever it seems like he has a flaw, the narration goes to great pains to explain how its totally not a flaw and he is so good and wise nobody can understand him. The ending is abrupt, and unsatisfying. I found it irritating that the narrator skipped over major portions of the main character's life because supposedly "documentation is missing"; but relates verbatim conversations, and even what he thought as he was dying. How? There is no documentation of that!
I couldn't help comparing this book to Anna Karenina; which is also very moralistic, and also contains long essays crammed into the story, but has genuine characters with personalities and motives, not just puppets to sing the praises of the main character. I think I like Tolstoy better after reading this.