| Book Musings..... | |||
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Saturday, January 11, 2003 ( 7:52 PM ) Jeanne In a Dark Wood by Amanda Craig(2000) This novel follows Benedick, a newly divorced man and out of work actor with two children, in a manic descent. The discovery of a book of fairy tales his mother illustrated shortly before committing suicide leads him to search for clues about who his mother was. The story is beautifully written and the narrative is interspersed with the fairy tales which seem to draw Benedick farther and farther away from real life and into the center of a mystery he can't control. As he meets and talks with friends and family who knew his mother he finds himself living through the fairy tales and attempting to use them as a divining rod not only for what went wrong for his mother, but what has gone wrong for him. This is a powerful story with a protagonist that for much of the novel is a totally unlikable character. Craig makes it work though by drawing you into the mystery of Benedick's mind and especially the mystery of who his mother was and wasn't. I highly recommend this book! # Friday, January 10, 2003 ( 7:00 AM ) Jeanne What Just Happened: A Chronicle from the Information Age by James Gleick This book was written by an ex-New York Times reporter who jumped on the Internet bandwagon early forming his own company Pipeline. The book is a series of essays on the information age beginning in 1992. It is interesting to read about the Internet and information technology as is was happening although to a certain degree it is the book's biggest weaknesses. I mean we know what happened; cellular phones did become ubiquitous, the internet did enable people to form virtual communities, and ebay has survived and thrived all this time. Nonetheless it is incredible to read the essays and realize just how quickly technology has moved along and probably will continue to do so. The most interesting essay, IMO, is on patents and Jeff Bezos' fight (Amazon guy) to control one-click technology and how "patently" absurd, and ultimately suffocating the run on patents for ideas is and how the patent office can hardly keep up with the boom in technology. Which reminds me that I need to finish Copyrights and Copywrongs! # Thursday, January 09, 2003 ( 6:20 AM ) Jeanne The Book of Illusions, Paul Auster I couldn't put this down! It is about a man whose children and wife die in a plane crash and how he finally realizes that his life didn't end with theirs. Auster is an absolute master at making you think you know where the story is going and then completely turning it around on you. There are so many twists and sub stories going on here; the life and death of a South American silent film star who the protagonist writes a book about, a murder mystery, a love story, entire film descriptions...Somehow Auster manages to make them all meld seamlessly and no matter how many twists he throws at you and how bizarre they are he makes them believable. Ultimately I think the story is about how we keep on keeping on even in the face of tragedy and how tragedy defines us for better and worse. I didn't really like the ending, but I won't ruin it for you. # |
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