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versmonesprit's reviews
217 reviews
İskender'i Ben Öldürmedim by Küçük İskender
fast-paced
2.0
İskender, çok daha soyut, çok daha protest bu şiirlerinde adeta bir Beat şair — dili kullanış şekli Burroughs’u andırıyor, sanki Ginsberg’le birlikte kafa kafaya verilmiş de yazılmış gibi. Ancak ne yazık ki Türkçe bu tarz bükülmelere ve çağrışımlara pek elverişli bir dil değil; üstelik Beat kuşağının anadili olan İngilizce gibi yapısal olarak ritmik de değil. Bu nedenle her ne kadar İskender’in amacı anlaşılsa da, ortaya çıkan şiirler şairin repertuarının en yıldızlıları değil.
Bir de ne yazık ki dize bölünmeleri ritmi sekteye uğratacak bir şekilde yapılmış, bu nedenle pek içine girilemiyor monolitik halde kitabın.
Bir de ne yazık ki dize bölünmeleri ritmi sekteye uğratacak bir şekilde yapılmış, bu nedenle pek içine girilemiyor monolitik halde kitabın.
Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
0.25
Story collections are tricky, because the order is perhaps the most crucial part. The first two stories of Cursed Bunny are so whacky, so camp that they set the tone with such an expectation; unfortunately, they’re the only two that have this funny and kitschy quality. The rest in comparison pale very quickly, and wither into the banality of the ordinary. Everything truly special about this book is revealed and done away with almost instantly, which to me is utterly inexplicable.
The collection is also all over the place as well, jumping between stories set in our reality and what are made to sound like folktales, as well as dull and uninspired conceptions of a futuristic setting. There are much better told stories for free on the internet, and that pains me.
It took me TEN WHOLE DAYS to push myself through this bland oatmeal of a book.
The collection is also all over the place as well, jumping between stories set in our reality and what are made to sound like folktales, as well as dull and uninspired conceptions of a futuristic setting. There are much better told stories for free on the internet, and that pains me.
It took me TEN WHOLE DAYS to push myself through this bland oatmeal of a book.
Ölen Sevgilimin Şiir Defteri by Küçük İskender
emotional
inspiring
sad
fast-paced
5.0
Uzun yıllar önce okul kütüphanesinden aldığım, hangisi olduğunu bir türlü anımsayamadığım bir kitabıyla tanışmıştım küçük İskender’le. Çok sevmiştim. Can’ın bu basımlarıyla bir daha tanımak istedim onu.
Her satırı bir hançer darbesi gibi, boğazı düğümleten, gözleri yaşla buğulandıran duygusal şiirlerden daha protest, hatta doğrudan alaycı şiirlere kadar bir varyasyona sahip bu kitap da. Kalple kavranan soyutluğu öyle güçlü, öyle yerinde ki ruhun en derinliklerindeki bir ihtiyaca hitap ediyor adeta, ‘ruhun ifade edilemez krallıkları’nı dile döküyor. Yıldızımın asla barışamadığı yaz mevsimini bile sevilesi kılıyor.
Çok özlüyoruz, güzel İskender.
Her satırı bir hançer darbesi gibi, boğazı düğümleten, gözleri yaşla buğulandıran duygusal şiirlerden daha protest, hatta doğrudan alaycı şiirlere kadar bir varyasyona sahip bu kitap da. Kalple kavranan soyutluğu öyle güçlü, öyle yerinde ki ruhun en derinliklerindeki bir ihtiyaca hitap ediyor adeta, ‘ruhun ifade edilemez krallıkları’nı dile döküyor. Yıldızımın asla barışamadığı yaz mevsimini bile sevilesi kılıyor.
Çok özlüyoruz, güzel İskender.
Rag: Stories by Maryse Meijer
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
1.0
Rag had been on my TBR for a long time, and expecting to love it, I thought when better than after a disappointing story collection, as a palate cleanser. To my dismay, I found nothing close to that in this book.
Instead, Rag was a disappointment of its own, the majority of the stories so boring and so badly executed that I kept checking how many pages were left when I was on the very first page of the story. I disliked the majority of these stories so much, they almost gave me a headache.
Out of the 14 stories, I only loved 1: the titular Rag, for its unique approach and strong feminist undertone. And while I ended up liking Evidence as well, it was not a great story — I’d even say it only scraped the ‘good story’ bar. Others like Viral and The Rainbow Baby were alright, but their execution did not manage to move me or truly capture my attention to begin with, as I felt that grating boredom creep at times.
While some like The Shut-In and Her Blood fell apart, others like Pool and The Lover only got better at the end. I still found myself bored throughout, which is a big issue seeing as Her Blood is the first story in the collection. It completely failed to set a tone for the book other than that of boredom and the compulsive page number checking.
The remaining 6 stories were unfortunately terrible beyond salvation.
Instead, Rag was a disappointment of its own, the majority of the stories so boring and so badly executed that I kept checking how many pages were left when I was on the very first page of the story. I disliked the majority of these stories so much, they almost gave me a headache.
Out of the 14 stories, I only loved 1: the titular Rag, for its unique approach and strong feminist undertone. And while I ended up liking Evidence as well, it was not a great story — I’d even say it only scraped the ‘good story’ bar. Others like Viral and The Rainbow Baby were alright, but their execution did not manage to move me or truly capture my attention to begin with, as I felt that grating boredom creep at times.
While some like The Shut-In and Her Blood fell apart, others like Pool and The Lover only got better at the end. I still found myself bored throughout, which is a big issue seeing as Her Blood is the first story in the collection. It completely failed to set a tone for the book other than that of boredom and the compulsive page number checking.
The remaining 6 stories were unfortunately terrible beyond salvation.
The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enríquez
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
2.0
Each of these stories felt like AHS to me, and I don’t mean that as a compliment.
You know how the AHS teasers are mesmerising and terrifying and so promising, and then the actual filmed product is a massive step down from the teasers, and not only that but they always end sloppily hastily? That’s exactly what The Dangers of Smoking in Bed is. The hype, the praiseful reviews are the cinematically masterful teasers, they lure you in on a false promise, so already the existing, actual material is a disappointment. But you could potentially get over that, if only the stories still landed within themselves, still succeeded in being themselves even though they’re not what the reviews make them out to be. Unfortunately they don’t land, because they suffer from the same sloppy endings that never live up to the tension built over the length of the story, concluding them so abruptly it feels like someone else completed them. You’re left feeling profoundly deceived, betrayed, disappointed, and honestly, robbed.
Enriquez is scared of going the full length for some reason, somehow incapable of realising 10-something pages are not enough to tell and conclude a horror story effectively. The haste she seems to have been in is inexplicable to me, especially because in this pointless haste she glosses over what could have easily been horrifying had the narration bothered to dwell on them, from malicious entities whose true forms we’re told but never shown are terrifying to extreme self-mutilation. Only people completely unfamiliar with gore would imagine there’s enough substance in these stories to be horrifying or even mysterious enough to create unease.
It is, as such, impossible to understand how come anyone has called this collection ‘Gothic’. The prose offers none of the bit flowery style associated with the genre: it’s written like any other generic contemporary fiction — all plot, and no unique style or approach either. There aren’t any romantic qualities to the characters, their voices completely indistinguishable from one another. The stories are heavily inspired by existing horror tales, only worse-executed. They aren’t even atmospheric! Almost none of the stories are tied to their settings: you could change the place names, carry these stories to anywhere else in the world, and they’d work exactly the same — which is another layer of disappointment, because the reviews insistently promise a sociopolitical reading of Argentina. (You can’t even call these folk horror, because the only authentically South American element is the worship of San La Muerte, but even then there is very little substance to support a folk horror narrative.)
On this note, I was also fooled by the reviews promising a feminist stance. None of these stories have a feminist tone at all, and only one mentions the evils men do to women and teenage girls . . . and by mention I mean literally in just one sentence.
It really was a shame. I also bought Things We Lost in the Fire, for which I have started the return process because I don’t think Enriquez has anything of merit to offer, and the barely-there entertainment factor certainly isn’t enough to justify the price for me.
You know how the AHS teasers are mesmerising and terrifying and so promising, and then the actual filmed product is a massive step down from the teasers, and not only that but they always end sloppily hastily? That’s exactly what The Dangers of Smoking in Bed is. The hype, the praiseful reviews are the cinematically masterful teasers, they lure you in on a false promise, so already the existing, actual material is a disappointment. But you could potentially get over that, if only the stories still landed within themselves, still succeeded in being themselves even though they’re not what the reviews make them out to be. Unfortunately they don’t land, because they suffer from the same sloppy endings that never live up to the tension built over the length of the story, concluding them so abruptly it feels like someone else completed them. You’re left feeling profoundly deceived, betrayed, disappointed, and honestly, robbed.
Enriquez is scared of going the full length for some reason, somehow incapable of realising 10-something pages are not enough to tell and conclude a horror story effectively. The haste she seems to have been in is inexplicable to me, especially because in this pointless haste she glosses over what could have easily been horrifying had the narration bothered to dwell on them, from malicious entities whose true forms we’re told but never shown are terrifying to extreme self-mutilation. Only people completely unfamiliar with gore would imagine there’s enough substance in these stories to be horrifying or even mysterious enough to create unease.
It is, as such, impossible to understand how come anyone has called this collection ‘Gothic’. The prose offers none of the bit flowery style associated with the genre: it’s written like any other generic contemporary fiction — all plot, and no unique style or approach either. There aren’t any romantic qualities to the characters, their voices completely indistinguishable from one another. The stories are heavily inspired by existing horror tales, only worse-executed. They aren’t even atmospheric! Almost none of the stories are tied to their settings: you could change the place names, carry these stories to anywhere else in the world, and they’d work exactly the same — which is another layer of disappointment, because the reviews insistently promise a sociopolitical reading of Argentina. (You can’t even call these folk horror, because the only authentically South American element is the worship of San La Muerte, but even then there is very little substance to support a folk horror narrative.)
On this note, I was also fooled by the reviews promising a feminist stance. None of these stories have a feminist tone at all, and only one mentions the evils men do to women and teenage girls . . . and by mention I mean literally in just one sentence.
It really was a shame. I also bought Things We Lost in the Fire, for which I have started the return process because I don’t think Enriquez has anything of merit to offer, and the barely-there entertainment factor certainly isn’t enough to justify the price for me.
Big Sur by Jack Kerouac
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
Reading Kerouac is a challenge, in that you feel both at home and thoroughly annoyed. After a break from his writing, jumping into Big Sur felt like a hug from a friend: Kerouac’s style is so unique, you can’t help miss his prose voice, and returning to it feels so familiar, it’s akin to peace.
And Big Sur did start great, with more of his ruminations on nature. But then the issue began: his and his friends’ extremely dislikable characters seeped in, making it impossible not to be annoyed to the point that strong annoyance was reflected back onto the book. I couldn’t stand the constant foul mood, and it didn’t help that Kerouac made it seem like something terrible would happen at the end, and absolutely nothing did. It also didn’t help that the poem at the end was, like his entire Mexico City Blues, honestly terrible.
His voice was lucid throughout the entire book, but that also meant missing out on the feverish and rhythmic tone found in his other books. I was truly disappointed, but hey, maybe this all reflects excellently just how tired Kerouac was at that point.
And Big Sur did start great, with more of his ruminations on nature. But then the issue began: his and his friends’ extremely dislikable characters seeped in, making it impossible not to be annoyed to the point that strong annoyance was reflected back onto the book. I couldn’t stand the constant foul mood, and it didn’t help that Kerouac made it seem like something terrible would happen at the end, and absolutely nothing did. It also didn’t help that the poem at the end was, like his entire Mexico City Blues, honestly terrible.
His voice was lucid throughout the entire book, but that also meant missing out on the feverish and rhythmic tone found in his other books. I was truly disappointed, but hey, maybe this all reflects excellently just how tired Kerouac was at that point.
The Survivor by Primo Levi
emotional
fast-paced
5.0
Boundlessly lyrical and powerful, the 38 poems included in this selection confront both man’s monstrosity and strength in unity. Levi’s pen is everything you immediately think about when you hear the phrase ‘good poetry’: beautiful in its art and effortlessly epic in its tone. Courageously raw, they’ll make you choke in tears. Levi’s writing should be mandatory reading in schools worldwide.
(Also the print quality of these mini Penguin Moderns can be hit and miss, so I wanted to remark this one has a flawless printing.)
(Also the print quality of these mini Penguin Moderns can be hit and miss, so I wanted to remark this one has a flawless printing.)
The Dialogue of Two Snails by Federico García Lorca
dark
emotional
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
5.0
This small book might possibly be the best selection from the Penguin Modern series, with its diversity of form and tone, and value too as apparently this is the first time some of these pieces appear in English! The selection includes a good amount of Lorca’s moving poems, metaphysical prose, and comedic plays, as well as his drawings.
Lorca writes beautifully, his love for nature evident in the brilliant ways he captures it in his poetry. His turns of phrase are unique, and while sometimes the meaning can be a bit elusive, the emotions always pack a punch. You can’t help but reread certain sentences multiple times to revel in their beauty.
I really should learn Spanish so I can read Lorca in his own voice, without translation taking anything away.
As a bonus, the quality of these minis can be hit and miss … this one is excellent in its printing too!
Lorca writes beautifully, his love for nature evident in the brilliant ways he captures it in his poetry. His turns of phrase are unique, and while sometimes the meaning can be a bit elusive, the emotions always pack a punch. You can’t help but reread certain sentences multiple times to revel in their beauty.
I really should learn Spanish so I can read Lorca in his own voice, without translation taking anything away.
As a bonus, the quality of these minis can be hit and miss … this one is excellent in its printing too!
Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
0.25
After McGlue, which I 100% feel will go down in literary history as a classic, I had extremely high hopes, so I decided not to wait any longer to continue my chronological reading of Moshfegh’s bibliography. How I wish I had foregone that idea and not bought Eileen! It pains me that I spent time and money on a book that’s hard to believe is written by the same person who wrote a masterpiece like McGlue.
Eileen should have been a short story, because that’s also the length you’re left with when you take away all the repetition and the crap that worsened this book. It’s so hard to believe in the feeble interior logic of the book that, if I didn’t know who the author was, I would have guessed it was written by a child on Wattpad. It drags on far too long for a story that has so little substance, and worse yet, no character at all. The first person voice for Eileen is so unoriginal, it’s painful. The allegedly horrific final act is anything but. I end up reading a lot of crappy books unfortunately, so I can’t say I haven’t felt so much apathy for a book in recent times. What I can say is that I read this book with the condescending straight face of an adult listening to the dull crap a toddler tells them.
If you think any of this is harsh, I’d say it’s *merited*. Unsure if I wanted to rate this 1 or 0.25, I went through other reviews to acquire some perspective, or more so, any crutch to hold onto to prove myself wrong, to convince myself this was an alright book. In this effort, I came across a Goodreads review quoting a September 2016 Guardian interview with the author, and what I read horrified me, because I learned all this was *intended*. Apparently, Moshfegh thought she couldn’t find success with good works like McGlue, and deliberately chose to write a commercial fiction to get a big publisher’s attention so as to launch her career as a writer. Well done, I guess? She got what she wanted, sacrificing quality and reputation as a literary writer. I’d say self-respect too, but I doubt anyone who willingly writes commercial fiction when they can write literature has that.
Eileen should have been a short story, because that’s also the length you’re left with when you take away all the repetition and the crap that worsened this book. It’s so hard to believe in the feeble interior logic of the book that, if I didn’t know who the author was, I would have guessed it was written by a child on Wattpad. It drags on far too long for a story that has so little substance, and worse yet, no character at all. The first person voice for Eileen is so unoriginal, it’s painful. The allegedly horrific final act is anything but. I end up reading a lot of crappy books unfortunately, so I can’t say I haven’t felt so much apathy for a book in recent times. What I can say is that I read this book with the condescending straight face of an adult listening to the dull crap a toddler tells them.
If you think any of this is harsh, I’d say it’s *merited*. Unsure if I wanted to rate this 1 or 0.25, I went through other reviews to acquire some perspective, or more so, any crutch to hold onto to prove myself wrong, to convince myself this was an alright book. In this effort, I came across a Goodreads review quoting a September 2016 Guardian interview with the author, and what I read horrified me, because I learned all this was *intended*. Apparently, Moshfegh thought she couldn’t find success with good works like McGlue, and deliberately chose to write a commercial fiction to get a big publisher’s attention so as to launch her career as a writer. Well done, I guess? She got what she wanted, sacrificing quality and reputation as a literary writer. I’d say self-respect too, but I doubt anyone who willingly writes commercial fiction when they can write literature has that.
Death the Barber by William Carlos Williams
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
0.25
We all know those so-called contemporary art pieces which are nothing more than thoughtless and artless productions just to sell an object without having to call it that, and how people so desperately want to believe that it too is art that they gaslight themselves into thinking there’s certainly some deeper meaning, some deeper message, some deeper art attached beyond the flat, unskilled, mainstream, and unoriginal façade.
I unfortunately feel like William Carlos Williams’ so-called poetry is exactly that too. I had to look him up on Wikipedia to even have an idea of what people see in these jottings. Apparently, people want to believe it’s a stance against both form and language — it’s free verse (in the 20th century, shocker 🙄) and “American” in its language. Listen, I love American literature. Even more than English literature! That should be enough to establish I don’t think the American use of the English language is artless. (Look at Herman Melville, Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac!) I have read prose (see the parentheses before) that is filled to the brim with poetry, that does not even proclaim itself prose poetry! People write prose that is infinitely more poetic than whatever Williams was doing here.
These are direct quotes from Wikipedia: “he sought to renew language through the fresh, raw idiom that grew out of America's cultural and social heterogeneity, at the same time freeing it from what he saw as the worn-out language of British and European culture,” “to show the American (opposed to European) rhythm that he claimed was present in everyday American language.” I’m sharing these to stress just how laughable all these claims are. First of all, yes, English is a fascinating language that is so symbiotic with its sound that when first learning it, if you’re ever unsure during a grammar test, more often than not the correct answer will be whatever sounds the best! By this I mean I’m not arguing every day English is devoid of rhythm; however it is sadly devoid of poetry. The so-called worn out European use of language is just having a vocabulary beyond what you’d find in a grocery list. It’s erudition, it’s eloquence. Rejecting a skilful use of language in poetry gives rise only to jottings that read like an amateur writer’s first draft of a mass-market book.
There are 39 “poems” included in this selection. Of them, I liked only 2, and they’re still far from being memorable or truly impactful. I also kept a single quote from another “poem,” not for its poetry (there is none) but for its statement that the static nature of a painted object frees it from the necessity to move, in hopes I can use it in a future essay pondering art. Williams failed to paint any real image, which became a capital offence when he also failed to evoke any feelings whatsoever. Having read Bashō’s haikus earlier this year, I can’t help but be dumbfounded by how a writer can be incapable of painting any striking image in a whole page (sometimes more!) when Bashō does it in 3 extremely short lines!
If this review is dragging, it’s because I am truly frustrated by the artlessness of these soulless jottings. Kudos to Williams for being yet another writer who proves not everything can be poetry! (Yikes for proving not everything can even be a passable prose either though.)
I unfortunately feel like William Carlos Williams’ so-called poetry is exactly that too. I had to look him up on Wikipedia to even have an idea of what people see in these jottings. Apparently, people want to believe it’s a stance against both form and language — it’s free verse (in the 20th century, shocker 🙄) and “American” in its language. Listen, I love American literature. Even more than English literature! That should be enough to establish I don’t think the American use of the English language is artless. (Look at Herman Melville, Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac!) I have read prose (see the parentheses before) that is filled to the brim with poetry, that does not even proclaim itself prose poetry! People write prose that is infinitely more poetic than whatever Williams was doing here.
These are direct quotes from Wikipedia: “he sought to renew language through the fresh, raw idiom that grew out of America's cultural and social heterogeneity, at the same time freeing it from what he saw as the worn-out language of British and European culture,” “to show the American (opposed to European) rhythm that he claimed was present in everyday American language.” I’m sharing these to stress just how laughable all these claims are. First of all, yes, English is a fascinating language that is so symbiotic with its sound that when first learning it, if you’re ever unsure during a grammar test, more often than not the correct answer will be whatever sounds the best! By this I mean I’m not arguing every day English is devoid of rhythm; however it is sadly devoid of poetry. The so-called worn out European use of language is just having a vocabulary beyond what you’d find in a grocery list. It’s erudition, it’s eloquence. Rejecting a skilful use of language in poetry gives rise only to jottings that read like an amateur writer’s first draft of a mass-market book.
There are 39 “poems” included in this selection. Of them, I liked only 2, and they’re still far from being memorable or truly impactful. I also kept a single quote from another “poem,” not for its poetry (there is none) but for its statement that the static nature of a painted object frees it from the necessity to move, in hopes I can use it in a future essay pondering art. Williams failed to paint any real image, which became a capital offence when he also failed to evoke any feelings whatsoever. Having read Bashō’s haikus earlier this year, I can’t help but be dumbfounded by how a writer can be incapable of painting any striking image in a whole page (sometimes more!) when Bashō does it in 3 extremely short lines!
If this review is dragging, it’s because I am truly frustrated by the artlessness of these soulless jottings. Kudos to Williams for being yet another writer who proves not everything can be poetry! (Yikes for proving not everything can even be a passable prose either though.)