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A review by spaceisavacuum
Nights of Plague by Orhan Pamuk
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
1.75
Library books challenge me under the crunch of time so I’m hasty to read as many as I possibly can before they come due, and for most part, succeeding, and libraries are wonderful little sanctuaries that have informative non-fiction, an eclectic range of fiction from historical past to present day. Such things I wouldn’t normally read, for lack of need, but since the opportunities present themselves, I can and will. I started this back on the eighth, let it go for more interesting things, returned to it again today for one last push to the conclusion… decided, Pamuk was wrapping it up already and probably nothing groundbreaking in the last 80 pages, & frankly I’m not compelled to read somethings and others I am, but this would be something some girls who study history or are reading about the middle East might enjoy and appreciate more than I did; well, anyone could, objectively, read it, but since it was written from the point of view of a biographer who has a vagina, Orhan sure has some phallic organ, but the foreword was also a work of fiction, it’s something of speculation in that Orhan Pamuk invented a country to tell it. Mostly associated with Türkcę during a period of quarantine, I have a hard time understanding the caste system: I don’t know what a Sheikh or a Pasha is and I can’t tell the difference nor tell them apart, ala when Russian literature extemporizes a royal character with different surnames, it gets to be a headache for this uninformed Westerner.
“When you read as many of these books as he had, your mind would do what the sheikh’s was doing now, and begin of its own accord to find clues and words embedded in every corner of the universe.”
Let it be said that I was bored with The Way of the Rose too. Sure, I like the movie but the book was long-winded, detailed and how to say boring? I was never thrilled by Sherlock Holmes mysteries at all, and the kind of guessing game isn’t how I like reading, so when I’m reading a murder mystery I don’t clue it out and I really just read for the plot and the prose and for the ideas represented, and to me Sherlock Holmes mysteries are, maybe childish, or empty in something integral that I like. Orhan Pamuk attempts to include this theme in Nights of Plague by playing on the Sheikh’s interest in mystery novels, while the plague is rampant and the government is frantically pursuing to control the disease from spreading, someone’s poisoning the flour with rat’s bane (arsenic); & it isn’t interesting, I like the detail that she (he isz a sze) writes with, but then authors will draw it out too long and not include any of the epistolary articles they were mentioning, for example the foreword says Princess Pakize was writing letters and the narrative brings up her letters time and time again but there are no examples of these letters, and they aren’t included, I don’t like being teased for epistolary. Eh, not much more to be said.
“When you read as many of these books as he had, your mind would do what the sheikh’s was doing now, and begin of its own accord to find clues and words embedded in every corner of the universe.”
Let it be said that I was bored with The Way of the Rose too. Sure, I like the movie but the book was long-winded, detailed and how to say boring? I was never thrilled by Sherlock Holmes mysteries at all, and the kind of guessing game isn’t how I like reading, so when I’m reading a murder mystery I don’t clue it out and I really just read for the plot and the prose and for the ideas represented, and to me Sherlock Holmes mysteries are, maybe childish, or empty in something integral that I like. Orhan Pamuk attempts to include this theme in Nights of Plague by playing on the Sheikh’s interest in mystery novels, while the plague is rampant and the government is frantically pursuing to control the disease from spreading, someone’s poisoning the flour with rat’s bane (arsenic); & it isn’t interesting, I like the detail that she (he isz a sze) writes with, but then authors will draw it out too long and not include any of the epistolary articles they were mentioning, for example the foreword says Princess Pakize was writing letters and the narrative brings up her letters time and time again but there are no examples of these letters, and they aren’t included, I don’t like being teased for epistolary. Eh, not much more to be said.