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kevin_shepherd's reviews
563 reviews
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
5.0
"There are just some kind of men who - who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results."
Poverty, ignorance, a flawed judicial system, and the complicit role of organized religion in perpetuating systemic racism. I was taken back by the raw honesty and unapologetic frankness with which Harper Lee writes. There is an abundance of "N-Words" - at least 48! - but they're always in dialogue and integral to the landscape of the era. There is also humor, intrigue, and measured amounts of human decency and hope.
Poverty, ignorance, a flawed judicial system, and the complicit role of organized religion in perpetuating systemic racism. I was taken back by the raw honesty and unapologetic frankness with which Harper Lee writes. There is an abundance of "N-Words" - at least 48! - but they're always in dialogue and integral to the landscape of the era. There is also humor, intrigue, and measured amounts of human decency and hope.
Ulysses by James Joyce
5.0
"I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries, arguing over what I meant!" ~James Joyce
"He kissed the plump mellow yellow smellow melons of her rump, on each plump melonous hemisphere, in their mellow yellow furrow, with obscure prolonged provocative melon-smellonous osculation."
It's as if you assembled 7 or 8 distinct personalities, each intellectual and resourceful, and had them write pages of a story, and then interwove those pages into a complex but coherent narative. There's not a page that I didn't read at least twice, and each reading brought new insights. There is a stream of consciousness here that ebbs and flows. About the time I feel like I have a little firm footing, Joyce pulls the rug out from under me. He writes about landscapes and love and lust and farts and menstration with matter-of-fact fluidity and unflinching honesty. There are things here that everybody thinks about and nobody talks about. I'm sure I'll ruminate and pontificate on this one for days to come.
And god is it gloriously Irish! There should be a law that every edition be printed in kelly green ink and be bookmarked with a shamrock. 🍀
"He kissed the plump mellow yellow smellow melons of her rump, on each plump melonous hemisphere, in their mellow yellow furrow, with obscure prolonged provocative melon-smellonous osculation."
It's as if you assembled 7 or 8 distinct personalities, each intellectual and resourceful, and had them write pages of a story, and then interwove those pages into a complex but coherent narative. There's not a page that I didn't read at least twice, and each reading brought new insights. There is a stream of consciousness here that ebbs and flows. About the time I feel like I have a little firm footing, Joyce pulls the rug out from under me. He writes about landscapes and love and lust and farts and menstration with matter-of-fact fluidity and unflinching honesty. There are things here that everybody thinks about and nobody talks about. I'm sure I'll ruminate and pontificate on this one for days to come.
And god is it gloriously Irish! There should be a law that every edition be printed in kelly green ink and be bookmarked with a shamrock. 🍀
The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson
4.0
"No matter how much I wanted all those things that I needed money to buy, there was some devilish current pushing me off in another direction - toward anarchy and poverty and craziness. That maddening delusion that a man can lead a decent life without hiring himself out as a Judas Goat."
Allegedly autobiographical, The Rum Diary is an accounting of newspaper journalist Paul Kemp's alcohol induced misadventures in Puerto Rico, circa 1959(ish). Aptly titled with a plethora of boozy contrivances and catastrophes, it is surprisingly coherent and readable. I kept thinking that this is what William S. Burroughs could have been if his drug of choice had been rum instead of hallucinogenic narcotics. Thompson, when in control of his faculties, was one hell of a writer.
A word of caution: if your trigger is implied sexual assault, consider taking a pass on this one. Thompson's narrative gets a little rapey at one point. It was not well defined, but it was enough to give me a nasty knot in my stomach by sheer insinuation.
Allegedly autobiographical, The Rum Diary is an accounting of newspaper journalist Paul Kemp's alcohol induced misadventures in Puerto Rico, circa 1959(ish). Aptly titled with a plethora of boozy contrivances and catastrophes, it is surprisingly coherent and readable. I kept thinking that this is what William S. Burroughs could have been if his drug of choice had been rum instead of hallucinogenic narcotics. Thompson, when in control of his faculties, was one hell of a writer.
A word of caution: if your trigger is implied sexual assault, consider taking a pass on this one. Thompson's narrative gets a little rapey at one point. It was not well defined, but it was enough to give me a nasty knot in my stomach by sheer insinuation.
The Man of Bronze by Kenneth Robeson
5.0
As a kid in the 1970s I would devour every Doc Savage paperback I could lay my hands on. This is the one that started it all.
Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut
5.0
Vonnegut's 1987 indictment of the fickle subjectivism surrounding the art and artists of the post-war era. Vonnegut candles the egg, if you will, of expressionism and throws a little light on the lunacy that often surrounds 'modern art.'
This novel, like every Vonnegut novel I've ever read, is tragic - but it has that patented KV infusion of humor and that familiar air of decency and humanity that makes it oh so enjoyable to read.
This novel, like every Vonnegut novel I've ever read, is tragic - but it has that patented KV infusion of humor and that familiar air of decency and humanity that makes it oh so enjoyable to read.
Charles Dickens: A Portrait in Letters by Charles Dickens
3.0
Charles Dickens was apparently the sort who liked to wield a full measure of control over his public image. Before he died in 1870, Dickens requested that every letter he had ever written to associates, friends, and family members be burned. Very few of his correspondents complied. Would you?! To date there are over 14,000 of his letters known to exist, with new ones still turning up from time to time. This collection represents a sampling of more than 30 of those letters, spanning a wide variety of situations and topics.
While a few of these are insightful treasures, others feel uncomfortably voyeuristic, bordering on an invasion of privacy. This may be entertaining but it is not exactly great literature. I came away feeling as though I had just read a bio published in the National Inquirer or the Daily Mirror.
While a few of these are insightful treasures, others feel uncomfortably voyeuristic, bordering on an invasion of privacy. This may be entertaining but it is not exactly great literature. I came away feeling as though I had just read a bio published in the National Inquirer or the Daily Mirror.
Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews
3.0
Though I read this many, many years ago, I remember being underwhelmed. The story itself was good enough, but there were unintentional incidents and oddities that kept taking me out of the story. For instance, if a police officer shows up at a residence to tell a woman that her husband was killed in an automobile accident, he doesn't get overly descriptive about the grisly details. He just doesn't ~ and when he does, you have to step out of the story to ask yourself "why?"
Why V.C.? Why?
Why V.C.? Why?
Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume
5.0
Read to me (us) in 1975-76 over the course of 7th grade english class by one Miss Estelle Gossage who, by my recollection, was 101 years old, unmarried, and had taught not only my mother but also my grandmother. We welcomed the respite from her boot camp like regiment of conjugation, and I remember very little except it was the only time I ever saw Miss Gossage laugh.
The Underground Girls of Kabul: The Hidden Lives of Afghan Girls Disguised as Boys by Jenny Nordberg
5.0
"Bacha posh: a hidden Afghan custom of resistance. Meaning 'dressed up like a boy' in Dari, bacha posh are girls raised and presented to the world as boys."
Having at least one son is mandatory for a respectable Afghan wife. Failing to produce a male child is shameful. A woman who has only daughters or, even worse, no children at all, is a disgrace to her entire family. It matters not that it is, in fact, the father's contribution that actually determines the sex of the child. In a country where the literacy rate hovers around 10%, myths and lies are passed down unchallenged, generation after generation after generation. A good wife can determine the sex of her child simply by making up her mind about it. In a world where women are often confined to the home, unable to step outdoors unless accompanied by a male family member, baby girls are no cause for celebration.
"The baby blinks a little, and her tiny mouth gasps a few times. She is perfect, down to her tiny, grasping fingers. Yet to many in Afghanistan, she is 'naqis-ul-aql,' or "stupid by birth," as a woman equals a creature lacking wisdom due to her weak brain. If she survives, she may often go hungry, because feeding a girl is secondary to feeding a son in the family, who will be given the best most plentiful food. If, in her family, there is a chance of the children going to school, her brothers will have priority. Her husband will be chosen for her, often before she reaches puberty. As an adult, very few of life's decisions will be her own." (pg. 43)
There is a tendency here in the West to lay the blame on Islam for the woes of Afghan women, but that is an ethnocentric point of view. Islam itself is no more anti-progressive than Judaism or Christianity. All organized religions are susceptible to tyranny when they are hijacked by social and political institutions as a means to control others.
It should come as no surprise that, in a society where women are second-tier citizens, some little girls are raised and presented as little boys. Whether it's an act of resistance, a means to preserve and protect the honor of a family, or a work-around for a daughter's freedom of movement and education, it is an acceptable but secret solution to an unacceptable but inevitable situation. 'Bacha posh' is a way to function in a dysfunctional society.
Batshit crazy? Yes. But is it any more crazy than gay U.S. Marines who are forced to present as heterosexual in order to serve their country? What about South Africans who bleached their skin in order to present as 'white' under Apartheid? Or, and I'm paraphrasing Jenny Nordberg here, what about Jews who presented as Protestants in order to survive the holocaust? Deceptional presentation is a coping mechanism in any society where one group, one ethnicity, one gender is unjustly favored over another.
Jenny Nordberg is one hell of an investigative journalist. She quite literally risked her life to ferret out the truth about the practice of bacha posh and its consequences. This was 351 pages of enlightenment, empathy and cross-cultural understanding that I will carry with me for a long, long time.
Having at least one son is mandatory for a respectable Afghan wife. Failing to produce a male child is shameful. A woman who has only daughters or, even worse, no children at all, is a disgrace to her entire family. It matters not that it is, in fact, the father's contribution that actually determines the sex of the child. In a country where the literacy rate hovers around 10%, myths and lies are passed down unchallenged, generation after generation after generation. A good wife can determine the sex of her child simply by making up her mind about it. In a world where women are often confined to the home, unable to step outdoors unless accompanied by a male family member, baby girls are no cause for celebration.
"The baby blinks a little, and her tiny mouth gasps a few times. She is perfect, down to her tiny, grasping fingers. Yet to many in Afghanistan, she is 'naqis-ul-aql,' or "stupid by birth," as a woman equals a creature lacking wisdom due to her weak brain. If she survives, she may often go hungry, because feeding a girl is secondary to feeding a son in the family, who will be given the best most plentiful food. If, in her family, there is a chance of the children going to school, her brothers will have priority. Her husband will be chosen for her, often before she reaches puberty. As an adult, very few of life's decisions will be her own." (pg. 43)
There is a tendency here in the West to lay the blame on Islam for the woes of Afghan women, but that is an ethnocentric point of view. Islam itself is no more anti-progressive than Judaism or Christianity. All organized religions are susceptible to tyranny when they are hijacked by social and political institutions as a means to control others.
It should come as no surprise that, in a society where women are second-tier citizens, some little girls are raised and presented as little boys. Whether it's an act of resistance, a means to preserve and protect the honor of a family, or a work-around for a daughter's freedom of movement and education, it is an acceptable but secret solution to an unacceptable but inevitable situation. 'Bacha posh' is a way to function in a dysfunctional society.
Batshit crazy? Yes. But is it any more crazy than gay U.S. Marines who are forced to present as heterosexual in order to serve their country? What about South Africans who bleached their skin in order to present as 'white' under Apartheid? Or, and I'm paraphrasing Jenny Nordberg here, what about Jews who presented as Protestants in order to survive the holocaust? Deceptional presentation is a coping mechanism in any society where one group, one ethnicity, one gender is unjustly favored over another.
Jenny Nordberg is one hell of an investigative journalist. She quite literally risked her life to ferret out the truth about the practice of bacha posh and its consequences. This was 351 pages of enlightenment, empathy and cross-cultural understanding that I will carry with me for a long, long time.
Woman: An Intimate Geography by Natalie Angier
5.0
This book needs illustrations! You can't scrutinize and analyze and critique the geography of the vagina (chapter 4) without providing visual aids to those of us who don't possess one or haven't sighted one in... well... a long time. You might as well be talking about the album cover of Sgt. Pepper - yes I vaguely remember the layout, no I don't recall exactly where Ringo was standing.
That said, Angier doesn't just explain female physiology, she celebrates it. Loudly. Intelligently. Frankly. This is no college textbook, but maybe it should be. Women 101, freshman syllabus, M-W-F, 9am - noon.
And it's not just physiology, it's also biology, psychology, anthropology, sociology, chemistry, and primatology. (I laughed rather loudly at the labeling of the rhesus monkey's capacity for social compromise as "rhesus peaces"). Science geek nirvana.
Speaking as a man, I was humbled and sometimes horrified. For all the splendor and beauty of the female body, there is a lot there that can go wrong. Even when it goes right it's still messy and complicated. A nice place to visit, but I would not want to live there.
That said, Angier doesn't just explain female physiology, she celebrates it. Loudly. Intelligently. Frankly. This is no college textbook, but maybe it should be. Women 101, freshman syllabus, M-W-F, 9am - noon.
And it's not just physiology, it's also biology, psychology, anthropology, sociology, chemistry, and primatology. (I laughed rather loudly at the labeling of the rhesus monkey's capacity for social compromise as "rhesus peaces"). Science geek nirvana.
Speaking as a man, I was humbled and sometimes horrified. For all the splendor and beauty of the female body, there is a lot there that can go wrong. Even when it goes right it's still messy and complicated. A nice place to visit, but I would not want to live there.