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will___to___flower's reviews
81 reviews
Against Nature by Joris-Karl Huysmans
5.0
This is one of the most interesting a breathtakingly beautiful books ever scribed with a pen. To be honest, it’s not a novel, it’s a series of reflections by a character that exists within its own universe entirely; with his own thoughts that only exist within his world, and a taste in the arts that can only exist within this novel. What excites me most about this book is the lucid and magnificent imagery he sets forth when ascribing his own literary criticism to the likes of Balzac, Flaubert, Baudelaire, etc... Des Esseintes has no time for the contents of a book anymore, only the psychology; the mind of the poet or scholar he reads. What he wants is to reach into the depths of the writers thoughts and extract the essence of the character that wrote the work that lay before him. And that is what makes this book so difficult to uncover, so indescribably intelligent and full of life, and yet so effortlessly able to evoke lifelessness. We are not reading a book about the story of a character, but a book about the musings of a character; only then is there a story or a semblance of forward. This book is a labyrinth where the exit leads to the entrance, there is no budge, no pull or conflict; only art and conscience.
This book does not make you love reading; it makes you resent it, but that is all the more better for the spiteful reader.
This book does not make you love reading; it makes you resent it, but that is all the more better for the spiteful reader.
Rudin by Ivan Turgenev
5.0
Wanted to write a long review, but I feel as if this book is short enough to warrant a gleaming recommendation.
This book is about inaction. In all of us we see Rudin; our under-confidence, over-compensating selves, dreaded to roam from place to place and never finding his home. But Rudin is a greatly flawed man, who tries his best to please all around him and defeats his passion when faced in opposition; doomed to roam the lands of a country he was never familiar with, and this what creates what became of Rudin at the end of the book.
What is most striking was the beautiful extended passages of natural description. I couldn’t help but love how richly detailed and florid in emotion that Turgenev writes everything from description to dialog. It’s remarkable how understated this book is in general. His contemporaries would have wrote 600 page epics that would ultimately pale in comparison to this succinct and masterly crafted work. This is an unsung masterpiece of the Russian 19th century, and we can all learn something about ourselves from the titular ‘superfluous man’ in this book.
Rudin is in all of us, and that is what makes us so beautiful.
This book is about inaction. In all of us we see Rudin; our under-confidence, over-compensating selves, dreaded to roam from place to place and never finding his home. But Rudin is a greatly flawed man, who tries his best to please all around him and defeats his passion when faced in opposition; doomed to roam the lands of a country he was never familiar with, and this what creates what became of Rudin at the end of the book.
What is most striking was the beautiful extended passages of natural description. I couldn’t help but love how richly detailed and florid in emotion that Turgenev writes everything from description to dialog. It’s remarkable how understated this book is in general. His contemporaries would have wrote 600 page epics that would ultimately pale in comparison to this succinct and masterly crafted work. This is an unsung masterpiece of the Russian 19th century, and we can all learn something about ourselves from the titular ‘superfluous man’ in this book.
Rudin is in all of us, and that is what makes us so beautiful.
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
5.0
Will read his complete poems one day. But this small collection is quite packed with great American twang that sits really well with me.
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
5.0
“They listened. The many-voiced song of the river echoed softly. Siddhartha looked into the river and saw many pictures in the flowing water. He saw his father, lonely, mourning for his son; he saw himself, lonely, also with the bonds of longing for his faraway son; he saw his son, also lonely, the boy eagerly advancing along the burning path of life's desires; each one concentrating on his goal, each one obsessed by his goal, each one suffering. The river's voice was sorrowful. It sang with yearning and sadness, flowing towards its goal.”
Hermann Hesse was ahead of our time. In his thought and in his writing, there is so much peace within me reading this. As if Siddhartha has taught me personally the values of life that many of his teachers have never thought. All things return, eternally.
To live we must suffer, to learn we must suffer.
Hermann Hesse was ahead of our time. In his thought and in his writing, there is so much peace within me reading this. As if Siddhartha has taught me personally the values of life that many of his teachers have never thought. All things return, eternally.
To live we must suffer, to learn we must suffer.
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
5.0
“But here begins a new account, the account of a man’s gradual renewal, the account of his gradual regeneration, his gradual transition from one world to another, his acquaintance with a new, hitherto completely unknown reality. It might make the subject of a new story—but our present story is ended.”
The Immoralist by André Gide
3.0
I have no clue what to make of this book. It’s a well-plotted book but has no action, no consequence and is so subtle in its intricacies that I was scratching my head at the point of it all.