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audaciaray's reviews
1618 reviews
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
5.0
This book is a gorgeous, evocative, well-written punch in the stomach. It's touted as "India's Invisible Man" - and with good reason.
An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain by Diane Ackerman
2.0
This book is a prose poem ode to the brain. Thesis: the human brain is pretty awesome. And that's pretty much it. The writing is beautiful in fragments, with lovely turns of phrase and construction of imagery that will impress any writer attempting to elucidate minute beautiful details of the natural world. But these moments don't hold together in a bigger way.
I remember being a kid coming into consciousness of thought and getting all philosophical about things - like, whoa, I'm using my *brain* to think about my *brain*!!!!111 Deep! This book is pretty much like that. Well, more eloquent for sure. I was hoping for more science stuff and less of the author's ruminations about getting distracted while writing the book. I don't feel like I learned anything new, and I definitely don't know that much about the brain and science.
I remember being a kid coming into consciousness of thought and getting all philosophical about things - like, whoa, I'm using my *brain* to think about my *brain*!!!!111 Deep! This book is pretty much like that. Well, more eloquent for sure. I was hoping for more science stuff and less of the author's ruminations about getting distracted while writing the book. I don't feel like I learned anything new, and I definitely don't know that much about the brain and science.
Byron in Love: A Short Daring Life by Edna O'Brien
4.0
Oh, Lord Byron. Sigh.
I was seriously obsessed with Byron, John Keats, Percy Shelley, and Mary Shelley when I was in high school. Why yes, I've seen Gothic about a million times. Also, on my first solo trip to Europe, I visited some of their haunts in Switzerland & Italy, saw Keats' death mask, locks of their hair... I'm a nerd, I know.
There are a number of biographical tomes on Byron, and this is one of the most easily digestible ones. And that's not just because it is normal-book-sized instead of phone-book-sized. As the title suggests, the book focuses on Byron's love life - which was, uh, active to say the least. He was quite fickle with his affections, but though he bounced from one lover to the next (both men and women, though in his poems references to male lovers are concealed with female names), each love was passionate bordering on (and often crossing the border) insane.
Byron was a massively selfish, spoiled, and self-obsessed man. He was all kinds of abusive to the women who fell for him and got more deeply entangled with him than his usual 2 week to 2 month affairs (his wife; the mother of his daughter Allegra). I was reading this book as the Tucker Max movie was debuting and getting all kinds of well-deserved flak from feminists, and it made me look at Byron thru Tucker Max tinted lenses. Byron was an entitled dickhead, a destructive force in many ways, not unlike Tucker Max (um, except that Byron was a MUCH better writer).
That said, I can't help but love and swoon over Byron. Maybe its a fucked up nostalgia for my teen years. Maybe it's my romanticization of the Romantics and the nineteenth century in general. But even though he was a total dick, Byron - with his anorexia, his mental health problems, his club foot and chestnut hair, and his predilection for pets like bears and wolves - occupies this fantasy space for me that I won't give up even though it's irrational.
I was seriously obsessed with Byron, John Keats, Percy Shelley, and Mary Shelley when I was in high school. Why yes, I've seen Gothic about a million times. Also, on my first solo trip to Europe, I visited some of their haunts in Switzerland & Italy, saw Keats' death mask, locks of their hair... I'm a nerd, I know.
There are a number of biographical tomes on Byron, and this is one of the most easily digestible ones. And that's not just because it is normal-book-sized instead of phone-book-sized. As the title suggests, the book focuses on Byron's love life - which was, uh, active to say the least. He was quite fickle with his affections, but though he bounced from one lover to the next (both men and women, though in his poems references to male lovers are concealed with female names), each love was passionate bordering on (and often crossing the border) insane.
Byron was a massively selfish, spoiled, and self-obsessed man. He was all kinds of abusive to the women who fell for him and got more deeply entangled with him than his usual 2 week to 2 month affairs (his wife; the mother of his daughter Allegra). I was reading this book as the Tucker Max movie was debuting and getting all kinds of well-deserved flak from feminists, and it made me look at Byron thru Tucker Max tinted lenses. Byron was an entitled dickhead, a destructive force in many ways, not unlike Tucker Max (um, except that Byron was a MUCH better writer).
That said, I can't help but love and swoon over Byron. Maybe its a fucked up nostalgia for my teen years. Maybe it's my romanticization of the Romantics and the nineteenth century in general. But even though he was a total dick, Byron - with his anorexia, his mental health problems, his club foot and chestnut hair, and his predilection for pets like bears and wolves - occupies this fantasy space for me that I won't give up even though it's irrational.
Slumberland by Paul Beatty
3.0
Beatty's White Boy Shuffle hit me like a ton of bricks when I read it a few years ago, so I'll pick up anything else he writes. Slumberland, set in Berlin around the fall of the Berlin Wall, is fast paced, dark, and funny. Beatty is a master of writing characters - the characters really shine and are just the best part of the book. I'm a sucker for weird, funny, self-deprecating characters, so I totally ate it up. However, though I really enjoyed the read I don't know how much this book will stick with me.