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| 0307763056
| 9780307763051
| B007UH4D3G
| 4.13
| 1,052,225
| Nov 07, 1990
| May 14, 2012
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really liked it
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I mean, is it any surprise that this ended up getting shelved as "the movie is better"? Much like Jaws, even though the book is the source material, i
I mean, is it any surprise that this ended up getting shelved as "the movie is better"? Much like Jaws, even though the book is the source material, it's competing against one of the best blockbusters ever made. There's no way Michael Crichton could have made his book include a John Williams soundtrack, so it was an unfair contest right from the beginning. (Seriously. Take three minutes out of your day to feel something) Pretty much every adaptation choice the movie made was the correct one - specifically the characterization of the kids. Book Lex is six years old and one of the most singularly obnoxious characters ever committed to paper - pre-disaster, she's obsessed with baseball and approaches every adult she meets by asking if they want to "play a little pickle"; post-dino disaster, she seems unaware of how much danger they're in, constantly talking and whining and demanding she get a turn with the night vision goggles as she and her brother are being actively hunted by raptors. Also, obviously it was the correct choice to make Movie Lex the computer person, and have Tim just be obsessed with dinosaurs. Book Tim gets to be good at computers and dinosaur knowledge, and you can make the argument that he's actually the protagonist of the book. (I'm happy to report that Dr. Ellie Satler barely changed for the movie - the book version of her is still kicking ass and saving dinosaurs from poisonous plants, all while running around in sensible shorts that even the eleven year old boy can appreciate. Ellie's the best.) Still, this is a solid adventure story, and it moves along at a fast clip except for when Crichton feels the need to include full diagrams of whatever a character is seeing on a computer screen in the story, which never fails to bring the pace to a grinding halt. Also, there's a weird...almost anti-science vibe to the story? Malcom's infamous rant from the movie about how Hammond "took what others did before you and took the next step" is straight from the book, and it's no less irritating and wrong here. Looking at what people before you have done and taking the next step is how science works. He seems to be suggesting that if you want to be an astronomer, for example, you should start by designing and building your own telescope because otherwise it's cheating. and it's incredibly frustrating to read Crichton's rants about how science used to be noble but now it's all about money, and he seems to be suggesting that humankind has advanced far enough and we should just stop? Particularly annoying is that when a character is making the argument about how scientists used to be good and noble and only care about discovery, like two sentences later they bring up Watson and Crick as examples of this. This was the point when my head exploded, because it's now common knowledge that Watson and Crick's famous discovery of DNA structure was straight-up stolen from Rosalind Franklin's research. I get that this wasn't widely known back when Crichton wrote the book, but it just proves that his entire thesis is wrong and science has, in fact, always had its fair share of capitalists and fame seeker, and arguing against progress because it scares you is not a good position to take. The dinosaurs are pretty fucking cool, though. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Feb 2025
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Mar 08, 2025
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Kindle Edition
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| 0767900383
| 9780767900386
| 0767900383
| 3.77
| 329,896
| 1996
| Sep 02, 1997
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liked it
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“Over a decade ago, I bought Bramasole, a gone-to-ruin house in the Tuscan countryside, and began to spend part of each year there. Slowly, the abando
“Over a decade ago, I bought Bramasole, a gone-to-ruin house in the Tuscan countryside, and began to spend part of each year there. Slowly, the abandoned olive trees have responded to pruning, plowing, and organic fertilizer. Slowly, the house has awakened from its long slumber and seems itself again, festooned with trailing geraniums and filled with the furniture we have brought in piece by piece from antique markets. …We love the land, especially during the olive harvest every fall, which culminates in a trip to the mill to press our year’s supply of pungent green oil. This September, we bought another grove just below us and acquired 250 more of these magical presences, the olive trees. At the corner of the grove, embedded in a stone wall, Ed spotted a slender marble column. We pulled it out of the wall and saw letters engraved. I scrubbed and found incised a memorial to a young soldier who fell in World War I. We are now accustomed to such finds; the land has a long memory here, constantly giving us something from the past and constantly renewing for the future.” I mean, was there any way this one wasn’t going on my “the movie is better”? shelf? And that’s not just because Under the Tuscan Sun, the movie, is one of my top-tier comfort watches. (For those that haven’t seen it, Diane Lane impulsively buys an Italian villa after a devastating divorce and renovates it while getting her groove back. There’s gorgeous Italian scenery and food, Sandra Oh plays the best friend, and the movie’s only flaw is that it somehow doesn’t end with Diane Lane realizing she’s a lesbian and marrying the eccentric rich English lady). The screenwriters looked at this book and understood that the story needed something more, so they added the divorce element – because of course there needs to be a why to the story, and the purchase and renovation of the Italian villa has to have a deeper meaning for the main character. Under the Tuscan Sun, the book, is about a rich lady who buys an Italian villa and renovates it because, essentially, she can. At its best, this book is a lovely story about the slow but rewarding process of creating a home in a new place, with all the beautiful descriptions of food and scenery that you would expect from a memoir set in the hills of Tuscany. At its worst, reading this is like being trapped in a conversation with the worst person at the cocktail party who won’t stop complaining about how her million-dollar kitchen renovation has been just a nightmare. Look, if I had the money to buy a vacation home in Italy, I’d do it. I’m not begrudging Frances Mayes for using her money in this way, and to her credit, she manages to stay on the safe side of absolutely insufferable most of the time (the tone when discussing the renovations is usually along the lines of “what were we thinking”, and like I said, I’d absolutely buy a crumbling Italian villa if I had the funds, so I can’t fault the author for doing exactly what I’d do if I was in her shoes). Still, as I was reading this, I couldn’t stop occasionally having the intrusive thought of, no one is making you do this. The purchase and renovation of the Bramasole villa is a vanity project, full stop, and was not in any way necessary, so any time Mayes starts getting a little too self-pitying about how much work it is, I lost some sympathy for her. Yeah, no shit it’s a lot of work! You bought a dilapidated house in another country and can only work on it during the summers! Of course it’s going to be expensive and hard, but again, you didn’t have to do this! You chose this, Frances! (Book Frances isn’t even reeling from a recent divorce. Yes, she’s divorced, but when the memoir starts she already has a new husband and they’re very happy. Congrats to the team, I guess. Also there’s no eccentric English lady, just a bunch of smugly intellectual expats) Another thing that irked me about this memoir: for all the time that Mayes spends telling us about how much money this project is costing her, we never see the apparently exorbitant expenses affecting her lifestyle in any way. Sure, the purchase and renovation was expensive, but there never seems to be a danger of the money running out, which made it harder to take Mayes seriously when she complains about how much they’re spending. It’s entirely possible that Mayes and her husband were forced to live on instant ramen to save money, and got into vicious fights about how much the renovation was costing them, and these parts were cut from the book by an editor who worried that it would ruin the atmosphere of the memoir. But I personally think the book would have benefited from being a little more honest about the whole process, because I got a strong sense that Mayes was looking back on the renovation process with heavily rose-tinted glasses. But what saves this memoir, and what ultimately makes me willing to recommend this, is that the writing is genuinely lovely. Aside from the beautiful descriptions of food and scenery, Mayes is showing off her background as a food writer, and includes lots of classic Italian recipes that are written so you can actually make them at home. And I really can’t say enough good things about the quality of the prose: “Bees burrow in the pears. Where they’ve fallen, thrushes feast. Who knows how the wants of our ancestors act out in us? The mellow scents somehow remind me of my mean Grandmother Davis. My father privately called her The Snake. She was blind, with Greek-statue eyes, but I always believed she could see. Her charming husband had lost all of the land she inherited from her parents, who owned a big corner of South Georgia. On Sunday rides, she’d always want Mother to drive her by the property she’d lost. She couldn’t see when we got there but she could smell peanut and cotton crops in the humid air. ‘All this,’ she’d mutter, ‘all this.’ I’d look up from my book. The brown earth on either side of the car spread flat to the horizon. From there, who could believe the world is round? I first thought of her when we had the terraces plowed and the upturned earth was ready for planting. Fertile earth, rich as chocolate cake. Big Mama, I thought, biscuit-face, old snake, just look at this dirt, all this.” ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Dec 2023
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Dec 19, 2023
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Paperback
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| B0FSL3CGDH
| 3.94
| 178,216
| Jan 01, 1974
| May 31, 2005
|
liked it
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Okay, so obviously this is going on the "the movie is better shelf" - like, that's just a given. Jaws, the movie, is a prime example of the art of ada
Okay, so obviously this is going on the "the movie is better shelf" - like, that's just a given. Jaws, the movie, is a prime example of the art of adaptation, and shows how changing the medium can make a story better - this story just works better as a summer blockbuster, but I understand how the original version was such a smash hit. Yes, there's a Mafia subplot in the book (and it ultimately doesn't make a lot of sense), and yes, in the book Matt Hooper is a completely different character who also has a brief affair with Brody's wife (it also ultimately doesn't make a lot of sense). Throwing these elements out for the movie version was a brilliant choice, and I can't imagine anyone arguing successfully for their inclusion (not even Benchley himself, who in the introduction admits that streamlining the story to be just a man vs. nature adventure was the correct move). But I still enjoyed this book for what it is, which is a fun, thrilling page-turner in all the best ways. Yes, the book version of Matt Hooper is boring and his motivations make very little sense, and yes, Brody sucks so much in the book, and then there's the Mafia and infidelity subplots. But there are some truly great moments in this that you can't get from the movie, most notably when Benchley actually writes from the POV of the shark. And his descriptions of the attacks are visceral and vivid and scary, like the infamous night-swim attack that opens both the book and the movie: "Now the fish turned again, homing on the stream of blood flushing from the woman's femoral artery, a beacon as clear and true as a lighthouse on a cloudless night. This time the fish attacked from below. It hurtled up under the woman, jaws agape. The great conical head struck her like a locomotive, knocking her up out of the water. The jaws snapped shut around her torso, crushing bones and flesh and organs into a jelly. The fish, with the woman's body in its mouth, smashed down on the water with a thunderous splash, spewing foam and blood and phosphorescence in a gaudy shower." As an added bonus, the edition I got from the library had bonus material at the end which included a looooong list of potential titles for the book (they eventually landed on "Jaws" purely because it was short) and a list of notes that Peter Benchley sent to the screenwriters during the film production. They are all delightful, but my favorite is probably: "P. 78 - what suddenly changes Brody from a man terrified of water to a man eager to join Quint? I remember discussing this change-of-heart at great length. It seems to have been resolved by ignoring it." Oh, and also: "P. 5 - the bloody billboard is still there, I see." ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Aug 2023
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Sep 12, 2023
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||||
| B008RQ6MAQ
| 4.05
| 58,430
| 1782
| 2007
|
it was ok
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I knew going into this novel that it was written as a collection of letters exchanged between the principal characters. I also knew that this was a tr
I knew going into this novel that it was written as a collection of letters exchanged between the principal characters. I also knew that this was a trope that I, historically, have not had the best time with - see Dracula and Where'd You Go, Bernadette. I knew there was a risk of this feeling like a bit of a slog. I was not prepared for 400 pages of, yes, just letters. And I know that's the point of the book, that we're hearing all of this secondhand gossip - and if nothing else, Laclos's novel is a great exercise in the art of the unreliable narrator - but reading this really solidified why I can never get on board with novels that are written exclusively as a series of letters or diary entries: the letter format of Dangerous Liasons means that we as the reader are two steps removed from the action of the story, listening to Laclos recount what his characters are recounting. One of the most popular pieces of writing advice is to avoid the passive voice; Dangerous Liasons is an entire novel of passive voice. And Laclos even unwittingly reveals the flaw in his format when Merteuil is recounting her tricks of the trade and says, "Never write anything down." Then why am I reading an entire book where she writes down all the evil shit she does?! The letters of Valmont and Merteuil are the only truly interesting ones in the bunch, as well. I was well and truly sick of Madame de Tourvel by her third letter, and her unvarying schtick of "oh Valmont, please stop asking me to sleep with you no really I musn't" never elevates her beyond anything more than a plot device in the story. Cecile, at least, is a little more dynamic, but honestly I only ever wanted to hear from Valmont and Merteuil, those glorious toxic fremenies. I have no qualms about telling anyone considering this book to skip it and just watch the John Malkovich/Glenn Close movie adaption, or even Cruel Intentions, and you nerds can fight me about it if you want. ...more |
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2
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not set
not set
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Mar 2021
not set
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Apr 08, 2021
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||||
| 0307275558
| 9780307275554
| 0307275558
| 3.81
| 931,317
| Apr 15, 2003
| May 30, 2006
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it was ok
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It's been a long time since I've had a chance to add a new book to my "the movie is better" shelf, so at the very least, I owe The Devil Wears Prada c
It's been a long time since I've had a chance to add a new book to my "the movie is better" shelf, so at the very least, I owe The Devil Wears Prada credit for that. (seriously, I could talk to the screenwriter of the movie for literally hours about the process of adapting the book and how she arrived at some of the brilliant choices she made) I can't get over how night and day the two versions are. To show just one example: the character of Christian, in the book, functions purely as a temptation for Andy, teasing the reader with the threat that she'll cheat on her boyfriend (who, in the book, is so tooth-achingly perfect that I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and find out that he's been having an affair the whole time or something). And she (view spoiler)[never even sleeps with Christian in the book, so his character is ultimately pointless and should have been cut from the novel entirely (hide spoiler)]. But in the movie he actually has a function outside of just being the guy Andy might cheat on her boyfriend with - the book still has the challenge where Andy has to get a copy of an unpublished Harry Potter book for Miranda, but she just finds some rando at a publishing company to get it for her. Having Christian be the connection that gets her the book in the movie version was, frankly, a stroke of brilliance and I bet Lauren Weisberger is really mad that she didn't think of that. The sad truth about The Devil Wears Prada is that it could have functioned perfectly well as an in-depth magazine article. Because ultimately, this novel is attempting to shine a light on the toxic work culture at Vogue, and specifically to show the world that Anna Wintour is straight-up abusive to her underlings. But when the book came out, all of that got lost as people just scrambled to read all the dirt about what it was like working inside the hallowed halls of one of the most influential fashion magazines running today. There were probably (and probably still are) plenty of garbage people who considered "Andy" ungrateful, and thought that she should be forced to pay her dues by working a shitty job for a shitty boss. What people lost sight of - including Weisberger herself, because she's mostly concerned about how her job affected her and isn't interested in seeing the bigger picture - is that no one should ever have to go through what Andy goes through in this book. The sad thing is that I don't think Anna Wintour ever faced any significant backlash for how she's portrayed in this book. If anything, The Devil Wears Prada actually benefited Wintour, because it made her a household name. (We would not have The September Issue without The Devil Wears Prada) Which, when you think about it, is really fucked up: that Wintour became more famous thanks to a book that portrayed her, in no uncertain terms, as a horrible human being, and there were never any real consequences for all of that ugliness coming to light. There is almost certainly some girl at Vogue working today who performs all of Andy's former duties, but that person is probably an unpaid intern now. And how did this all shake out for "Andy", aka Lauren Weisberger, who wanted to write for the New Yorker and scoffed at the idea of Vogue having "literary articles" (a skepticism that goes unchallenged in the book, because the screenwriters had to scrape five book characters together in order to create the movie's version of Nigel)? At the end of the book, Andy publishes a magazine article about a recent college grad who gets hired at a super demanding job, and almost loses herself in the process. Weisberger tries to lampshade this by having Andy's family joke about how closely this skews to her real life, but it seems to be a pretty accurate estimation of Weisberger's post-Prada career. A quick look at her author page shows that she managed to wring two sequels out of her star-making novel, and most of her other books seem to follow the same formula of a simple, good-hearted girl who gets swept up in a world of glitz and glamour that she's fully unprepared for. For better or for worse, Weisberger has built her career off of that one terrible year she spent at Vogue. Anna Wintour made Weisberger's writing career, and Weisberger gave Wintour widespread fame. They deserve each other. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 26, 2020
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Dec 2020
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Nov 26, 2020
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 0671723227
| 9780671723224
| 0671723227
| 4.25
| 21,480
| Jan 1985
| Sep 01, 1990
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really liked it
|
“For Assistant U.S. Attorney McDonald and the Strike Force prosecutors Henry Hill was a bonanza. He was not a mob boss or even a noncommissioned offic
“For Assistant U.S. Attorney McDonald and the Strike Force prosecutors Henry Hill was a bonanza. He was not a mob boss or even a noncommissioned officer in the mob, but he was an earner, the kind of sidewalk mechanic who knew something about everything. He could have written the handbook on street-level mob operations. Ever since the first day he walked into the Euclid Avenue Taxicab Company back in 1954, Henry had been fascinated by the world he had longed to join, and there was little he hadn’t learned and even less that he had forgotten.” Part of me wishes that I had read this book, which directly inspired Goodfellas, without having seen or even having any knowledge of the movie. There’s so much about Goodfellas that seems outrageous and over-the-top and made up, so it was almost weird to learn that Henry Hill was a real person, and that everything he describes in his memoir actually happened. Having seen the movie created this weird mental disconnect where even though I knew I was reading a memoir, it still felt kind of like a novel. (It also doesn’t help that the narration in Goodfellas is practically lifted word-for-word from the text of Hill’s memoir, to the point where I hope he got a screenwriter’s credit for the movie) So I would actually be more likely to recommend this to someone who’s never seen Goodfellas, who can appreciate the sheer outlandishness of this memoir. Henry Hill, in collaboration with Nicholas Pileggi, wrote this book after he’d been placed in witness protection after ratting out the other members of his New York mafia family – so at that point, he’d already burned all his bridges and had nobody left to protect and nothing much left to lose. This means that he shares everything in this memoir, detailing the murders, the robberies, the drugs, the affairs, the betrayals…it’s all here, and it’s all just on the safe side of completely unbelievable. I call it a memoir, but the book is really Pileggi’s – he writes it as a straightforward nonfiction book, but thanks to extensive phone interviews he conducted while researching the book, there are long sections told in Hill’s own words as he details his rise and fall in the mob. Together, they make the perfect blend of writers: Pileggi’s background is crime journalism, so he knows how to interview his subject, do research, and present the facts in a way that’s informative and engaging. And Hill’s voice is clear and distinct (like I said, a lot of Henry Hill’s narration in the movie is just lifted straight from the book), and best of all, he’s able to articulate the appeal of the mob world while also acknowledging the ugly aspects of it. This isn’t The Godfather, which reinvented mafia thugs as sophisticated outlaws too smart to work within the confines of society. Wiseguy is Henry Hill showing us all the ugliness that comes with the glamour, because he knows that we came to see both. “It wasn’t that Henry was a boss. And it had nothing to do with his lofty rank within a crime family or the easy viciousness with which hoods from Henry’s world are identified. Henry, in fact, was neither of high rank nor particularly vicious; he wasn’t even tough as far as the cops could determine. What distinguished Henry from most of the other wiseguys who were under surveillance was the fact that he seemed to have total access to all levels of the mob world.” (Also, the reason I initially decided to read this book was because of this great fun fact that I came across: so while Nicholas Pileggi was doing research for Wiseguy, he was married to Nora Ephron. Ephron would sometimes call Henry Hill late at night and chat with him (because of course Hill was bored as hell in witness protection), and she eventually wrote My Blue Heaven, which was a comedy starring Steve Martin as a former mob boss who’d been placed in the witness protection program. I love this so much, because Martin Scorsese read Wiseguy and decided to make a movie about his rise in the mob world, while Nora Ephron spoke with Henry Hill and made a goofy comedy about a mob boss after the mob.) ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Sep 2019
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Nov 11, 2019
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 031610969X
| 9780316109697
| 031610969X
| 3.71
| 160,675
| Sep 01, 2005
| Sep 28, 2005
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did not like it
|
In the immortal words of Michael Bluth: "I don't know what I expected." I knew what I was getting into with this, I really did. It is a well-documented In the immortal words of Michael Bluth: "I don't know what I expected." I knew what I was getting into with this, I really did. It is a well-documented fact that Julie Powell is a delusional asshole (if you need a good laugh, look at the reviews for Cleaving, her second book - they all essentially boil down to "Wow, so turns out Julie Powell is horrible"), and even if I hadn't been aware of this, there's the fact that whenever I watch the movie adaptation of Julie and Julia, I skip the Julie parts because even Amy Adams, who is literal human sunshine, cannot make that woman appealing in any sense of the word. Actually, the whole reason I decided to get this book from the library is because the movie was on TV the other day, and I got morbidly curious about Julie Powell's side of the story. I had already read Julia Child's My Life in France, which was the inspiration for the Julia parts of the movie, so I decided that it only made sense to complete the experience and read Powell's book. Powell wastes no time letting her readers know exactly what kind of monster she is. On page eight (Eight! We're not even into the double-digit pages yet!) we get to see Powell's version of an Oprah "Ah-ha moment." I mentioned this in one of my status updates already, but I feel it's important that I fully explain this scene. Basically, Powell is waiting in the subway one day and witnesses: "...a plug of a woman, her head of salt-and-pepper hair shorn into the sort of crew cut they give the mentally disabled, who had plopped down on the concrete directly behind me. ...The loon started smacking her forehead with the heel of her palm. 'Fuck!' she yelled. 'Fuck! FUCK!' ...The loon placed both palms down on the concrete in front of her and - CRACK! - smacked her forehead hard on the ground. ...It was only once I was in the car, squeezed in shoulder to shoulder, the lot of us hanging by one hand from the overhead bar like slaughtered cows on the trundling train, that it came to me - as if some omnipotent God of City Dwellers were whispering the truth in my ear - that the only two reasons I hadn't joined right in with the loon with the gray crew cut, beating my head and screaming 'Fuck!' in primal syncopation, were (1) I'd be embarrassed and (2) I didn't want to get my cute vintage suit any dirtier than it already was. Performance anxiety and a dry-cleaning bill; those were the only things keeping me from stark raving lunacy." So in addition to being an asshole, Julie Powell also might be a sociopath, because who does that? How much of a selfish, raging narcissist do you have to become in order to watch what is clearly a mentally ill person having a disturbing episode, and your first response is, "Ugh, same"?! And then you record the scene in your memoir and frame it as some kind of profound breakthrough moment for you? Gee, I'm so glad that person had a mental breakdown and seriously injured themselves so you could have an epiphany, Julie Powell. (you may be wondering: how does this experience lead to Powell deciding to cook her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking? I read the damn book and I couldn't even tell you.) So anyway, Powell starts working her way through Julia Child's cookbook, keeping a blog about her progress. (This means we get a delightfully dated scene where Powell's husband suggests she start a blog, and Julie's like, what the hell is a blog? 2002 was a simpler time.) As many reviewers have pointed out, the blog-to-memoir transition was done pretty clumsily, with scenes happening out of sequence and a nonsensical structure - Powell will start a chapter about some recipe she was working on, and then break for a lengthy flashback that has almost no relation to the beginning of the chapter. It's very difficult to follow the progress she's making through the cookbook, and all the flashbacks and timeline-skipping meant that I never had any clear idea of where I was in the project, unless Powell directly referenced the date. Along with the messy structure, another big issue with the book is that Powell is...not a great writer. She's clearly trying to be self-depreciating, and make us think that she's rolling her eyes right along with us whenever we read a scene of her throwing a tantrum about mayonnaise - but the problem is that I wasn't shaking my head and smiling in bemusement, like Powell wants me to. I was just thinking, "you are horrible, and telling me that you know you're being horrible doesn't help." Powell doesn't have the writing skill to redeem herself in the narrative, and on top of that, her prose is often practically unreadable. Try this excerpt on for size, and see if it makes any goddamn sense to you on the first reading: "My mother is a clean freak, my father a dirty bird, semi-reformed. Between them, they have managed to raise one child who by all accounts could not care less about basic cleanliness, but whose environs and person are always somehow above reproach, and another child who sees as irrevocable humiliation any imputation of less than impeccable housekeeping or hygiene, and yet, regardless of near-constant near-hysteria on the subject, is almost always an utter mess." Well, now I guess we know what it would sound like if Charlotte Bronte wrote all her books drunk. It made me long for the effortless, evocative writing Julia Child presented in My Life in France - her description of the proper technique for scrambling eggs is practically poetry. And that is what really sets Julie Powell apart from Julia Child: Child loved to cook, and Powell does not. Her project, and every recipe she describes, are never presented as anything other than a chore she has to get through. There is no joy in Powell's book, no love for the dishes she prepares. And frankly, a lot of Powell's book is pretty gross. Her kitchen is always a disaster scene, with dirty surfaces and piles of unwashed dishes. Which, fine - you're working a full-time job and cooking gourmet meals every night, obviously you're going to slack off on cleaning again. But then Powell discovers that there are maggots living under her dish rack, and I was fucking done. With Julie and Julia, Julie Powell has managed to do the unthinkable: she wrote a cooking memoir that didn't make me feel hungry, not once in three hundred pages. I'm pretty sure that's a capital offense in some countries. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 31, 2016
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Apr 2016
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Mar 31, 2016
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1590512057
| 9781590512050
| 1590512057
| 3.37
| 1,082
| Sep 01, 1999
| Jun 13, 2006
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did not like it
|
I knew what I was getting into with this one, I really did. Like most people who have reviewed this book, I decided to seek this out because I had just I knew what I was getting into with this one, I really did. Like most people who have reviewed this book, I decided to seek this out because I had just watched the movie version and wanted to know how the two compared. Going into this book, I knew that the movie had taken several huge steps away from Kohler's original story, and based on that knowledge I was pretty sure I wouldn't love the book as much as I loved the movie. And I was positive that the book version of Miss G couldn't come close to Eva Green's charismatic, psychotic portrayal. But "Psychotic Schoolgirls Who Maybe Murdered Somebody" is one of my favorite literary genres, so in I plunged. And wow. I knew the book and the movie were different; I just wasn't prepared for how different. Cracks, the movie, takes place in England in the 1930's, with a diving team that consists of only six girls. Fiamma, the wealthy and beautiful new student, is from Spain and has a tragic, scandalous past. Cracks, the book, takes place in South Africa and alternates between two time periods: flashbacks to when the girls were attending school in the 1960's, and twenty-ish years later when they've returned to the school for a sort of reunion. The swimming team has twelve members (which means twice as many characters to keep track of, and consequently none of them get fleshed out properly), and Fiamma is Italian, and her character is much harder to pin down and define. It's interesting, because although the movie drastically changed the big aspects of the story - setting, time period, character outlines - it kept a surprising amount of small details that appear in Kohler's book. Comparing the two stories is an interesting study in the art of adaptation, and I could easily write an entire review about just that, but I digress. Kohler's book, as I said, takes place primarily in a girls' boarding school in South Africa in the 1960's (those looking for discussions about the political situation in South Africa will be disappointed; the social and racial issues are only hinted at and never addressed directly). The core group of characters are the twelve members of the school swimming team, who get a new member in Fiamma Coronna. Fiamma is an Italian aristocrat, and everyone is immediately fascinated by her - especially Miss G, the swimming teacher, whose fascination with Fiamma turns to obsession as the other girls become increasingly jealous. Sometime during that year, Fiamma disappeared in the countryside around the school, and the book unravels the mystery of what happened to her and why, interspersed with scenes of the girls returning to the school as middle-aged women. I dunno, maybe I would have been more engrossed by the story if I hadn't known what happened to Fiamma already, thanks to the movie (but those who have seen the movie will still be surprised - the circumstances of Fiamma's death differ greatly in the book). Because I wasn't busy trying to figure out how Fiamma disappeared, I was able to focus on other aspects of the story. And some of the narrative choices Kohler made are...interesting. The book is narrated by an omnipresent "we" - which, I think, was a good choice. Instead of focusing on a single main character, Kohler makes the girls into one single group entity, which both reinforces the terrifying groupthink of the girls and emphasizes how they are all collectively responsible for what happened to Fiamma. There is no "I" or "she" to pin the tragedy on; everyone is guilty. That was good; less good is the fact that one of the girls is named Sheila Kohler. Who grows up to be a writer. I have no idea what to make of this. On the one hand, it's an incredibly brave move to put yourself in a story like this, and to tie yourself so directly to the horrors committed in this book. On the other hand, it's weird, because "Sheila Kohler" is not the narrator of the book (the narrator is the mysterious "we"), so we're seeing her actions, as we see all the girls actions, from a removed distance. Is this Kohler's way of keeping herself at a safe distance from the events she recounts? And most importantly, is Kohler doing the Tim O'Brien thing where she makes herself a character in a fictional story to make it more real for the reader, or does this book mean that Sheila Kohler once (view spoiler)[participated in the rape and murder of a classmate when she was fourteen? (hide spoiler)]? I'm going with the first explanation, because that's the only way I'll be able to to sleep at night. Other terrible narrative choices: some chapters are prefaced with a few lines of awful, awful poetry, like this one: "For Fiamma she could skim across the water,/As fast as could be,/For she was a prince's daughter,/And Miss G loved her most passionately." that are so awful I'm pretty sure Kohler wrote them that way intentionally, to mimic the awful poems we all wrote when we were fourteen. Which, fine, but it doesn't make them any more painful to read. And the decision to show scenes of the women as adults returning to the school serves no fucking purpose. The movie adaptation wisely chose to get rid of this aspect, and it was a wise choice: by keeping the story focused on the girls as teenagers, we never have to see them growing up and dealing with what they did (although the movie still includes a scene where the girls start to understand what a terrible thing they've done - another reason the movie is superior). But even Kohler's book refuses to make this happen - what is the point of showing us these girls as adult women if they're not going to deal with what they did when they were teenagers? There's no reflection, no remorse, no discussion of what happened to Fiamma, and I don't understand the point of showing the women returning to the school. This is the main reason I prefer the movie version: although it doesn't absolve the girls of their involvement in what happened to Fiamma, the movie places the majority of the blame where it should be: Miss G. Teenage girls and their psychotic cult-like cliques can be forgiven over time; Miss G was an adult who knew exactly what she was doing when she decided to ruin a teenage girl's life. And Movie Miss G is much more nuanced, revealing insecurities and mental instability beneath her carefully-crafted facade (the movie does a very clever thing where Miss G's hair, makeup, and clothing gradually become more messy and unpolished over the course of the movie as she unravels). Book Miss G is merely a cliche of a predatory older bull dyke who seduces young girls, like the worst nightmare of fundamentalists everywhere. Ugh. Book Miss G never answers for her part in Fiamma's disappearance, whereas Movie Miss G...you know what, just go watch the movie. That's what I want people to take from this review: go watch Cracks. Get your psychotic schoolgirl fix, and give Kohler's book a pass. "'No inhibitions here! I will have no inhibitions here!' she said sternly. 'Repressions of libidinal urges only leads to aggression. Give me your secrets, girls, give me the dark depths of your hearts, and I will give you the light. Search your hearts, for the universe lies therein,' and we searched and searched. 'It is always more grubby than you think,' she added, and we nodded our heads, knowing she was right. She said there were certain subjects we should get out of the way, so that we could go about our business. She knew what we were thinking." ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jul 2014
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Jul 29, 2014
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0345476875
| 9780345476876
| 0345476875
| 4.02
| 644,702
| Apr 12, 1976
| Aug 31, 2004
|
it was ok
|
Damn you straight to hell, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, for what you made me do. You made me read a goddamn vampire book. Not only that, y
Damn you straight to hell, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, for what you made me do. You made me read a goddamn vampire book. Not only that, you made me read a vampire book with a cover made entirely of shiny ostentatious material that shouted to everyone in the library as I checked this out, "Look everyone! Madeline is reading a book about vampires! SHINY SHINY SHINY LOOK AT ME! I CONTAIN SEXY BROODING VAMPIRES AND I AM SO EFFING SHINY." (I cannot stress how shiny-gold this cover is. Like, the ancient Egyptians would look at this cover and say, "That's a bit much." It was awful.) Okay, so the book itself isn't bad, really - hence my rating of two stars, which Goodreads classifies as "it was ok." That's what the book is: just okay. Maybe I would have been more thrilled by the story if I hadn't seen the movie - even though there's stuff in the book that didn't make it into the movie, none of it is particularly thrilling. At least the movie made the wise decision to keep the blatant, in-your-face-but-unacknowledged homoeroticism (seriously, this book is, and I mean this in the most literal way possible, the gayest thing I've ever read) but changed the fact that a) Claudia is only five years old in the book and b) she and Louis do everything except actually have sex with each other. They're always kissing and caressing each other and Louis is calling her his lover and his paramour and it is so fucking creepy. But, lest we forget, vampire books are supposed to be creepy. In these post-Twilight days, it's easy to forget that there was once a time where vampires fucked and killed and were a general amoral all-around good time, and if one of them chose to be all broody and sad about being a vampire he was the weird one that no one else wanted to hang out with. God, I miss those days - to the point where I considered giving this an extra star, just because I was so grateful to read a story about vampires who do actual vampire stuff and it's sexy and scary instead of boring and schmoopy. Also good was how in-depth Rice goes into the psychology of vampires, and I loved her explanation for why they haven't overrun the planet: most vampires are miserable, and end up killing themselves. Explains Armand, who I will continue to picture as Antonio Banderas and you can't stop me: "How many vampires do you think have the stamina for immortality? They have the most dismal notions of immortality to begin with. For in becoming immortal they want all the forms of their life to be fixed as they are and incorruptible...When, in fact, all things change except the vampire himself; everything except the vampire is subject to constant corruption and distortion. Soon, with an inflexible mind, and often even with the most flexible mind, this immortality becomes a penitential sentence in a madhouse of figures and forms that are hopelessly unintelligible and without value. One evening a vampire rises and realizes what he has feared perhaps for decades, that he simply wants no more of life at any cost." That part was pretty cool. But as for the rest, I'll just watch the movie, thanks. Or not, because if we're going to be honest I don't even like the movie that much. It's probably time to admit to myself that I have no interest in reading about/watching any vampires not created by Joss Whedon. Sorry, Ms. Rice, but if my vampires must be broody, I at least want them to be funny and charming too. (or Alexander Skarsgard, because god damn) ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Feb 2012
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Feb 23, 2012
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0753453800
| 9780753453803
| 0753453800
| 3.85
| 536,428
| Jan 28, 1882
| Sep 15, 2001
|
it was ok
|
"Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars of Treasure Island, from the begin
"Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars of Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17- and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof." Regardless of what you think of Treasure Island as a story (and we'll get there, not to worry), its importance in establishing modern adventure tropes can't be denied. So many of the things we think of when we imagine pirates - peg legs, parrots on shoulders, fifteen men on a dead man's chest, the Black Spot - were invented by Stevenson in this book. Basically every single portrayal of pirates created after this story is based in some way on what Stevenson wrote, so if nothing else I appreciate this book for providing us with everything from Captain Hook to Jack Sparrow. ("Captain Jack Sparrow.") So it's just too bad that I didn't enjoy this book as much as I wanted to. Sure, it's exciting for a while, what with the murderous pirates attacking the inn and Jim Hawkins setting out on a crazy treasure-hunting adventure, but around the time they get to the island the plot grinds practically to a halt. It takes chapters and chapters for them to get anywhere or do anything, and I was immensely appreciative of how movie versions of this story make sure to move the action along quickly once they land on the island. Also, Book Jim is kind of an idiot - he stows away with Silver & Co. when they row to the island (even though Jim knows that Silver is evil) just for the hell of it, and he abandons his friends again once they're on the island and have a stronghold set up, because the best thing to do when you're on a strange island full of pirates who want to kill you is go exploring without telling anyone. Also you'll notice in the passage I quoted above, Jim's father is alive at the beginning of the story. He dies pretty quickly, but I prefer how in the movie versions Jim's dad is long gone, having abandoned his son or died a long time ago. It just makes more narrative sense: in order for him to latch on to Long John Silver so quickly, Jim needs to be saddled with enough daddy issues to embarrass a stripper. So in conclusion, I'm glad I read this book, if only to appreciate its cultural significance, but the movie versions I've seen are infinitely more enjoyable. (In case anyone is curious, I have seen two different film versions of Treasure Island. First is Muppet Treasure Island, which makes Stevenson's original seem plodding and boring and horribly miscast - Captain Smollett is and always will be Kermit, and there has never been a better Long John Silver than Tim Curry. Also, Disney's experimental steampunk take on the story, Treasure Planet is highly underrated, in my opinion.) ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 26, 2011
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Jan 2012
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Dec 26, 2011
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 078684907X
| 9780786849079
| 078684907X
| 4.05
| 78,206
| Sep 01, 2004
| May 01, 2006
|
really liked it
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*Reviewer's Note: obviously, there isn't a movie version of this book (yet, anyway - they're supposedly working on one, which will probably be terribl
*Reviewer's Note: obviously, there isn't a movie version of this book (yet, anyway - they're supposedly working on one, which will probably be terrible but I'll save that rant for later) so once again I have to put a book on my The Movie Is Better shelf because I can't be bothered to create a shelf titled The Stage Adaptation Is Better. Just keep in mind that if that shelf existed, this book would be there* First, Some Background: (for review of actual book, please skip ahead to paragraph four) So this past spring, I spent four days in New York with three of my friends. As we are all giant theater dorks, our sole objective was to see as many shows as we could for as cheaply as possible (a feat we accomplished quite spectacularly, thank you verra much). One of my friends, the the giantest theater dork of us all, had heard fantastic things about this off-Broadway show called Peter and the Starcatcher, and convinced us that we had to venture away from Times Square in order to see it. The short version of the story is, after a subway adventure and being afraid we wouldn't get to see the show because we bought stand-by tickets because the show was technically sold out, we got in. And oh my sweet baby Jesus, it was the best thing I have ever seen on stage, ever. EVER. It was funny and touching and exciting and sad and fucking hilarious. Almost all the props, scenery, and special effects were created by the actors, which made the whole show look like something being performed in someone's attic by a bunch of neighborhood kids (which, really, is the only way a Peter Pan story can be performed) who just happened to be extremely talented. (see the show's website here for an idea of what it looked like) The cast was amazing, the script was perfect, and it was alternately funny and heartbreaking. My point is, the show is the sole reason I read this book, and I knew going into it that the book had no chance of being as good as the play, so I wasn't even that disappointed when I turned out to be right. JM Barrie's Peter Pan, while amazing, left a lot of unanswered questions. How did Peter get to the island? Who taught him to fly? Where did the pirates come from? How did Peter and Tinkerbell meet? Why, if fairy dust allows people to fly, is Peter the only one who can fly without it? Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson took these questions and used them to write a Peter Pan origin story, and it's much, much cooler than it sounds. Peter starts out as an orphan, along with several of his friends from the orphanage, being put on a ship and sent across the ocean to work as servants for an evil king. Also on the ship is Molly, a girl who knows more than she's telling about a mysterious trunk being kept belowdecks with mysteriously magical properties. In pursuit of the ship, and the magic, is the pirate Black Stache. Did I mention that the ship Peter is placed on is called the Never Land? Oh yes, I see what you did there. It all makes for a fast-paced, fun pirate adventure with lots of action and humor (not as funny as the play, I have to admit). As I read, I kept thinking that this is the book The Dagger Quick wished it could be. The characters are all great, especially Molly, who despite fulfilling the usual Girl Character in an Adventure Story jobs like being held hostage and getting rescued, is still perfectly capable and intelligent, and gets to do her fair share of the rescuing. Also she speaks Porpoise, which was never not funny. My only gripe about the book, really, is that the authors seem oddly intent on making connections between the book and the animated Disney version of Peter Pan, instead of Barrie's original. Characters from the movie are described in the book as looking just like their animated counterparts: Peter has bright red hair, Black Stache (who becomes Hook) has curly black hair and a long mustache, and Smee is described wearing the same outfit he wears in the movie. The last straw was Tinkerbell, who in this version was originally a bird (it makes sense, I promise) that had a green body and a bright yellow head. However, this annoying aspect might not have actually been the authors fault: given that the publishing information at the beginning of the book loudly proclaims that this is a DISNEY EDITIONS book, I imagine the publishers prodded the authors to include some stuff that would tie the book into the animated movie. This was a fun book, although vastly different from the (superior) stage version. I could go into all the differences, but frankly this review is long enough and I'm not sure anyone actually cares that much. The point is, the book is a fun adventure story that is actually a really well-done prequel to Peter Pan, but if you get a chance to see the play, you absolutely should. Okay, one more thing about the play: here are two lines that I remember and wanted to share. First, from Captain Stache to Smee: "Oh Smee. How flat and unprofitable the world must look from the deck of your HMS Cynic." And here's what Molly said to Peter when they said goodbye, in a scene that made the whole damn theater cry like babies: "It's supposed to hurt. That's how you know it meant something." ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Sep 2011
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Sep 01, 2011
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0061139378
| 9780061139376
| 0061139378
| 4.13
| 775,528
| Jul 02, 2002
| Aug 29, 2006
|
really liked it
|
A fun, quick read. I like to think of this book as Gaiman's response to the Narnia books - you kids want to escape your boring normal lives? Well, you
A fun, quick read. I like to think of this book as Gaiman's response to the Narnia books - you kids want to escape your boring normal lives? Well, you're in for a surprise, because fantasy worlds are scary as fuck. Sleep well! The movie version, with Dakota Fanning voicing Coraline, is not technically "better" than the book (as one of my shelf titles would have you believe). Instead, the movie actually enhances Gaiman's already-great story, with appropriately-haunting music, gorgeous animation, and some nice extra stuff added in, like Coraline's friend Wybie and the holy-shit-get-it-away doll that the Other Mother uses to spy on kids. Worth seeing, and worth reading. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jul 2011
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Jul 30, 2011
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0060809248
| 9780060809249
| 0060809248
| 3.96
| 274,055
| 1910
| Dec 30, 1987
|
it was ok
|
**spoiler alert** Before we start off, let me clarify something: because I can't be bothered to create a "the Broadway stage adaptation is better" she
**spoiler alert** Before we start off, let me clarify something: because I can't be bothered to create a "the Broadway stage adaptation is better" shelf, my "the movie is better" shelf will have to suffice here. The Phantom of the Opera, the show, is a giant, absurd, bombastic display of every bad misconception of theater, and is the main reason Andrew Lloyd Weber is able to fall asleep on a bed made of money every night. It's not my favorite show, is what I'm saying - in fact, I don't even really like the show, come to think of it (which begs the question of why I read this book in the first place, but whatever). So, with all that in mind, Madeline Reviews Inc now presents: Why The Phantom of the Opera the Book Is, Somehow, Worse Than The Stage Show And Every Movie Version Released So Far -Everyone in the book is a moron. Like, even more than they are in the show. I got about halfway through the book when I realized, "Wait a minute, was I supposed to be surprised by the revelation that the Phantom and Christine's tutor are the same guy? Haven't we known that from, like, page twenty?" Even if I hadn't seen any other versions, I feel sure I would have figured it out - come on, the story is about people trying to learn the identity of a mysterious, invisible guy and the title of the book is The Phantom of the Opera. Were Gaston Leroux's readers really that stupid? -Annoying characters from the show are even more annoying here. Christine is still a useless twit, and in this version comes upgraded with zero observation skills and a seriously misguided sense of priorities. When she admits to Raoul (after like two months of bullshit) that the Phantom scares the hell out of her and she wants to escape him, Raoul makes the very sensible point that maybe she should stop wearing the ring the Phantom gave her. Christine's response: "That would be deceitful." GAAAAAAHHHHH. Raoul is even worse. In the show, he's simply a well-meaning schmuck who fails spectacularly at saving Christine every opportunity he gets. In the book, he's a selfish dick. This is a paraphrased account of an interaction between him and Christine: Raoul: "Christine, I know there's something super weird going on with this guy you're running off to see, and I want you to tell me what's up because I love you and want to protect you." Christine: "It's too dangerous, I can't tell you." Raoul: "OMG YOU'RE IN LOVE WITH HIM AREN'T YOU? WELL FINE, I DON'T CARE. I HOPE YOU DIE, YOU LYING WHORE." -We never get to see anything from Christine's perspective. This is important, because in the book she spends at least two months as the Phantom's prisoner, and all we get is her description, later, of what it was like. Instead of seeing the Phantom through Christine's eyes, where he might have been a more compelling character, we just get to watch Raoul follow her around like a creeper and then listen to Christine give lengthy expositional speeches after events happen. -The Phantom isn't actually that cool. He's always bursting into tears and begging Christine to love him, and the rest of the time he's so incredibly misguided about his relationship with Christine that it's almost funny. He comes off sounding like one of those perverts on cop shows who insists that he and the ten-year-old locked in his basement actually have a very special and loving relationship, while the cops are just looking at him like, that's nice, man, but your ass is still going to jail. -There are way more characters than we need, and a lot of them are different (read: worse) than they are in the show. Madame Giry, last seen as a cool, commanding ballet mistress, is merely a crazy old woman who works for the Phantom because he deceived her with the most idiotic lie ever. The book also features The Persian, a guy who literally hangs around the Opera and shows up whenever it's thematically necessary. He might as well have been named Deus Ex Machina. -Leroux's pacing sucks. Any drama is instantly ruined by his digressions or abrupt scene-changing, and all momentum is lost. When the Phantom kidnaps Christine after her final performance, the story is going along well, everyone's freaking out and trying to find her, and then Leroux pops up. "Hey!" he says, "You guys remember how on page 20 I told you that the new managers have to pay the Phantom 20,000 francs once a month? I bet you guys are wondering how that's going, huh? Let's check in with them quick." And before you can say, no, Gaston, I actually wasn't wondering that at all, he makes you slog through two goddamn chapters about the new managers trying to figure out how the Phantom collects their money. Similarly, once Raoul and the Persian have gone after the Phantom and are almost at his lair (a journey that takes way, way too long) they get locked in his torture chamber (which involves torture so stupid I won't even describe it) and the plot comes to a damn standstill as Raoul and the Persian spends hours trapped there. It made me actually long for the show, where everything skips along at a fast clip and the worst digressions are five-minute love songs. -The ending is stupid. Christine gets the Phantom to release her and Raoul (after a lengthy imprisonment that, again, we only get to hear about rather than see), not by having a sexy quick makeout session with him, but by crying with him. That's it. The Phantom kisses her (on the forehead), bursts into tears, and Christine cries with him. This somehow convinces the Phantom that she loves Raoul and that he should let them go, and that's how the Phantom is defeated. I am in no way joking. In the interest of fairness, the book has two good things going for it: One, Leroux's portrayal of the opera house as a sprawling, complex maze that's a contained city is pretty incredible, and he's at his best when he's describing all the intricacies and hidden secrets of the opera house. And two, at least in the book, we are never subjected to a performance of Don Juan Triumphant. Thank you, Jesus. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 2011
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Jun 2011
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Jun 18, 2011
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Mass Market Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0679722637
| 9780679722632
| 0679722637
| 3.90
| 37,975
| Dec 1934
| Jul 17, 1989
|
liked it
|
Honestly? I think the awesomeness of Nick and Nora Charles got built up a little too much for me before I read this, because I was expecting 200 pages
Honestly? I think the awesomeness of Nick and Nora Charles got built up a little too much for me before I read this, because I was expecting 200 pages of nonstop witty banter between the two, and was mildly disappointed. Sure, Nick is funny in a dry sarcastic way, and Nora is the sassy drunken aunt you never knew you always wanted, but their banter and witticisms only caused the occasional chuckle. But lucky for me, the book has a lot more going for it than just the banter. It's a fun, classic 30's mystery full of crazy dames and shooting and goons and coppers, and the characters drink so much it made my liver hurt just reading about it. Like The Maltese Falcon, it got to a point where I had to just accept that I had no idea what any of the characters were talking about and try to go with the flow until someone explained everything at the end. They mystery itself (it includes a string of murders and a suspiciously-absent man) was engrossing, although I guessed the big twist a few pages before it happened. Having looked up the movie version of The Thin Man on IMDB, I've added it to my Netflix queue and intend to make a comparison as soon as possible - if the IMDB quotes are any indication, the movie version looks much funnier than the book. Stand by for further information as soon as I watch it. PS: I just noticed one of the options at the bottom of the review box, next to the spoiler button - "Does this book follow a few characters or many?" Who the fuck cares, Goodreads? If I think it's that important, I'll mention it in the actual review. Jesus. UPDATE, AFTER WATCHING THE FILM VERSION: I'm now putting this on my "The Movie Is Better" shelf, because as I predicted, the movie is much funnier. William Powell and Myrna Loy are darling as Nick and Nora, Mimi is appropriately crazy (although in the movie there's never any doubt about whether she killed Julia, because we actually see her find the body), Gilbert is adorable, and Nora has an absolutely fabulous collection of outfits. Watch the movie, and read the book only if you're really curious about the little changes they made in the screenplay. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jan 2011
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Jan 06, 2011
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0385751079
| 9780385751070
| 0385751079
| 4.16
| 955,004
| 2006
| Sep 12, 2006
|
did not like it
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As Michael Kors once sighed to a clueless designer on Project Runway: Where do I start? Let's open with some descriptive words that sum up this book, As Michael Kors once sighed to a clueless designer on Project Runway: Where do I start? Let's open with some descriptive words that sum up this book, and I will then go on to explain them in further detail: Patronizing. Insipid. Smarmy. Just plain bad. Patronizing: I believe that to write good children's literature, you have to think that children are intelligent, capable human beings who are worth writing for - like Stephen King, who probably thinks kids are smarter than adults. The author of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, on the other hand, clearly thinks that children are idiots. The main character, Bruno, is supposed to be nine years old, but compared to him Danny Torrance of The Shining (who was six) looks like a Mensa member. There's childlike naivety, and then there's Bruno, who is so stunningly unobservant and unperceptive that I actually started to wonder if he was supposed to be mentally deficient somehow. And he's not the only child who receives Boyne's withering scorn and condescension. Take this scene between Bruno and his sister Gretel, when they've just moved to their house at "Out-With" (as Bruno insists on calling it, despite being corrected many times and seeing the name written down) and are wondering how long they're going to stay there. Bruno's father, a commandant in charge of the camp, has told the kids that they'll be there "for the foreseeable future" and Bruno doesn't know what that means. "'It means weeks from now,' Gretel said with an intelligent nod of her head. 'Perhaps as long as three.'" Gretel is twelve years old, by the way. TWELVE. See what I meant about Boyne thinking kids are morons? Insipid And Smarmy: this book was not meant for kids to read. It's meant for adults who know about the Holocaust already, so they can read it and sigh over the precious innocent widdle children's adorable misunderstanding of the horrible events surrounding them and how they still remain innocent and uuuuuuggggggghhhhh. There's a scene towards the end, where Bruno puts on a pair of the "striped pajamas" so he can visit his friend on the other side of the fence. Bruno has had lice, so his head is shaved. When he puts on the pajamas, the Jewish boy observes him and the narration commits the following Hallmark-worthy atrocity: "If it wasn't for the fact that Bruno was nowhere near as skinny as the boys on his side of the fence, and not quite so pale either, it would have been difficult to tell them apart. It was almost (Shmuel thought) as if they were all exactly the same really." YES JOHN BOYNE I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE. Just Plain Bad: This book is, technically, historic fiction, but I'm not putting it on my history shelf, because there is nothing historical in this book. Bruno is supposed to have grown up in Nazi Germany, the son of a high ranking SS officer, but based on his knowledge of everything, he's spent his entire nine years sitting inside with his eyes shut humming loudly while covering his ears. Okay, I get that he wouldn't know about the concentration camps - hardly anyone did at that point. But there are other things: Bruno consistently (and adorably!) mispronounces the Fuhrer as "the Fury" (I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE JOHN BOYNE), and doesn't recognize the following key words and phrases: Jews, Fatherland, Heil Hitler. What. The fuck. Okay, so maybe this kid's too young to be in Hitler Youth (his sister isn't though, but for some reason she's not in it either), but come on - he thinks "Heil Hitler" is just a polite way to end a conversation. A nine-year-old boy growing up in a military household in Nazi Germany doesn't know what Heil Hitler means. All of this comes back to my original thesis: John Boyne thinks that children are idiots. Look, Boyne: just because you don't understand anything (history, children, good writing) doesn't mean the rest of us are quite so useless. Go cash your checks for that awful movie adaptation they did of this book and never try to make a statement about anything ever again, please. Read for: Social Justice in Young Adult Literature ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Feb 2010
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Feb 13, 2010
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0670069019
| 9780670069019
| 0670069019
| 4.18
| 3,421,193
| Aug 2005
| Sep 23, 2008
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liked it
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After having leaped onto the bandwagon with the rest of everyone, I feel a certain amount of pretentious indie pride saying that I wasn't as awed by t
After having leaped onto the bandwagon with the rest of everyone, I feel a certain amount of pretentious indie pride saying that I wasn't as awed by this book as everyone else apparently was. Which is not to say that the book wasn't enjoyable and exciting; it just didn't knock my socks off whilst simultaneously blowing my mind and rocking my world. (that sounds like either some great song lyrics or a very complicated sexual maneuver. Let's go with the first option.) So, the good stuff: the main story - a disgraced journalist is hired by a rich old man to write a book about said man's crazy rich family, while secretly working to discover truth behind the disappearance and supposed murder of the man's granddaughter. Also in play is Lisbeth Salander, a freelance investigator who also happens to be one of the best hackers in Sweden. She also happens to be made of awesome, but I'll get to that later. The journalist is investigating a supposed murder (a body was never found, so no one even knows what happened to the girl), so violence is expected. I just wasn't quite prepared for just how intensely graphic the violence is. There's a lot of stuff dealing with assault, rape, and murder of various women. There is also a lot of sex in the book, and the stuff that gets described in the most detail is definitely not consensual and will probably make you very uncomfortable. You've been warned. The investigation itself is pretty fascinating, implausible as it is that some random guy investigating a disappearance that took place 40 years ago was able to find out completely new leads that weren't found by the police or the girl's grandfather (who's been obsessing about the case since forever), but I digress. The family itself is equal parts interesting, creepy, and frustrating. It's not until the journalist (Blomkvist) teams up with Lisbeth that things get really interesting, and they made such a fun team I wanted them to get their own detective show. The book deals mainly with crimes against women and those who commit them. Larsson obviously feels very passionately about this subject, as well as what should be done with the men who assault women. Without giving anything away, rest assured that every bad guy rapist/murderer/whatever gets a large helping of tasty justice. And now for the bad stuff: -There's a lot of nattering on about business and computers and journalism and more business stuff that either bored me or went over my head completely. -Larsson cannot seem to decide whether he wants to refer to people by their last name or their first name, so he switches back and forth and it is confusing. -A family tree is provided at the beginning of the book, since the family the journalist is investigating (the Vangers) is pretty big, but I never had much trouble keeping everyone straight. A map of the island the family compound is located on would have been much more helpful, since I never really figured out the geography of the place. -Pointless details. I don't need to know what the characters ate for every single meal, I don't need to know exactly what model of computer/motorcycle/car a character uses, and I definitely don't need to know what each character is wearing at every moment of the day. Larsson is especially guilty of this when Lisbeth is concerned - I guess he decided we wouldn't understand what a unique counterculture tough chick she is unless we know that she's always wearing leather jackets, boots, torn jeans, and black t-shirts with angry slogans. (yes, Larsson actually tells us what each of Lisbeth's t-shirts says.) Listen, Stieg: Lisbeth is awesome. She is wonderfully defined simply through her own actions and thoughts - we don't even need the other characters constantly reminding us how antisocial and tough and uncommunicative and badass she is. Believe me, we can see that. Show don't tell etc. To sum up, I'm going to give the last word to the book itself, and quote a sentence that's actually a character talking about a book featured towards the end of the story - but it could easily describe Larsson's book: "It was uneven stylistically, and in places the writing was actually rather poor - there had been no time for any fine polishing - but the book was animated by a fury that no reader could help but notice." That, in a nutshell, was how I felt about The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. UPDATE: I just watched the film version of this book (the original Swedish one, thank you verra much), and am adding this to my "the movie is better" shelf. Not that the book isn't good; it's just that the movie streamlines the story and gets rid of everything I complained about earlier in this review. In the movie, all the minor characters and business-drama babble has been eliminated, Erika and Mikael's weird three-way relationship is thankfully unmentioned, Mikael never boffs Cecilia Vanger, and Noomi Rapace is so fucking cool as Lisbeth I can't even handle it. I'm also pretty sure they took some stuff from The Girl Who Played With Fire and put it in the movie, because there's some stuff about Lisbeth's past that I don't remember from the book. UPDATE UPDATE: Having now seen the American remake, and re-watched the Swedish version, I have come to a following decision. While the American version is, in a technical sense, a better movie (Fincher is a much better director - for just one example, the scene where Henrik Vanger explains the circumstances of Harriet's disappearance is a masterful example of show-don't-tell), I dislike the changes they made to the ending, and I simply cannot accept Rooney Mara as Lisbeth. Although I'm proud of Fincher & Co. for making her look and act as weird as the character should, something about her portrayal still wasn't right. If you're interested, this article explains pretty much every complaint I have about American Lisbeth. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jan 2009
|
Dec 26, 2009
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| B0DLT7ZXPJ
| 4.58
| 1,027,765
| Oct 20, 1955
| 2003
|
really liked it
|
Even if you love the movie, you should probably read the book anyway. There are a few extra characters tossed in that are actually pretty cool and imp
Even if you love the movie, you should probably read the book anyway. There are a few extra characters tossed in that are actually pretty cool and important (unlike Tom fucking Bombadil), and it's worth it just to say in a superior way that you've read the books. But let's face it - Peter Jackson's version of these books are freaking genius. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jan 2007
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Sep 04, 2009
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Mass Market Paperback
| ||||||||||||||||
| 0618346260
| 9780618346264
| 0618346260
| 4.50
| 1,110,449
| Nov 11, 1954
| Jan 01, 1993
|
really liked it
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A pretty cool story, but I still prefer the movie version, no matter how much time I spend yelling at Eowyn to get her daddy-issue mitts off Arwen's m
A pretty cool story, but I still prefer the movie version, no matter how much time I spend yelling at Eowyn to get her daddy-issue mitts off Arwen's man.
...more
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Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jan 2007
|
Sep 04, 2009
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 000720230X
| 9780007202300
| 000720230X
| 3.98
| 480,076
| Oct 15, 1951
| Jun 20, 2005
|
really liked it
|
I'm sorry. I tried really, really hard to prefer the book over the movie, but dammit I just can't. Maybe it's because Book Caspian doesn't really have
I'm sorry. I tried really, really hard to prefer the book over the movie, but dammit I just can't. Maybe it's because Book Caspian doesn't really have much of a personality and is just some kid who's along for the ride during nearly the entire story. Maybe it's because Aslan is even more of a know-it-all jackass in this one. Maybe it's the lack of pretty boys having swordfights. (don't bother making dirty jokes, I've already thought of them all) Maybe it was the fact that, once again, the book was so short the filmmakers took it upon themselves to add to the story (full subplots, too, not just little things) and that I actually liked the extra stuff. Maybe it's just because I should have read the Narnia books when I was a kid and could appreciate them better. Or maybe I just should have read them before I saw the movies. Then again, it could be just that I have a terrible crush on Ben Barnes. Yeah, it's probably that. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jul 2009
|
Jul 22, 2009
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| B000QQKTGI
| 4.24
| 3,116,858
| Oct 16, 1950
| 2005
|
really liked it
|
Rather than spend this review explaining what I thought of the book, I will instead devote my time to justifying placing this on my "the movie is bett
Rather than spend this review explaining what I thought of the book, I will instead devote my time to justifying placing this on my "the movie is better" shelf. Reasons the Movie Version Is Better: 1. Watching it will take about the same amount of time it takes to read the book, because good lord does everything get wrapped up quick. 2. We actually get to see some real fight scenes, and even though there's no blood and it's all very PG, at least it's not just "There was a battle going on but then Aslan showed up and it was over yay!" 3. The dialogue is considerably less dated and irritating. The kids in the book speak like plummy old British men watching a cricket match in 1800: "'We've fallen on our feet and no mistake,' said Peter. 'This is going to be perfectly splendid. That old chap will let us do anything we like.'" Meanwhile, the movie has lines like this: "When Adam's Flesh and Adam's bone sits at Cair Paravel in throne, the evil time will be over and done." "You know that doesn't really rhyme." 4. Aslan becomes much less of a dick when he's voiced by Liam Neeson. 5. Since the book is so short (see Reason 1) there's plenty of time for the film to do justice to everything in C.S. Lewis's material, and even add some things. For instance, did you know the Pevensie kids actually have a mother? With a face? Shocking, I know. 6. William Mosely is a pretty, pretty boy. Peter the Magnificent, indeed. DON'T YOU JUDGE ME. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0608440/ ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jul 2009
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Jul 22, 2009
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Paperback
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my rating |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| 4.13
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really liked it
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Feb 2025
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Mar 08, 2025
|
|||||
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| 3.77
|
liked it
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Dec 2023
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Dec 19, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 3.94
|
liked it
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Aug 2023
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Sep 12, 2023
|
|||||
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| 4.05
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it was ok
|
Mar 2021
not set
|
Apr 08, 2021
|
|||||
|
| 3.81
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it was ok
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Dec 2020
|
Nov 26, 2020
|
|||||
|
| 4.25
|
really liked it
|
Sep 2019
|
Nov 11, 2019
|
|||||
|
| 3.71
|
did not like it
|
Apr 2016
|
Mar 31, 2016
|
|||||
|
| 3.37
|
did not like it
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Jul 2014
|
Jul 29, 2014
|
|||||
|
| 4.02
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it was ok
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Feb 2012
|
Feb 23, 2012
|
|||||
|
| 3.85
|
it was ok
|
Jan 2012
|
Dec 26, 2011
|
|||||
|
| 4.05
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really liked it
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Sep 2011
|
Sep 01, 2011
|
|||||
|
| 4.13
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really liked it
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Jul 2011
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Jul 30, 2011
|
|||||
|
| 3.96
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it was ok
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Jun 2011
|
Jun 18, 2011
|
|||||
|
| 3.90
|
liked it
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Jan 2011
|
Jan 06, 2011
|
|||||
|
| 4.16
|
did not like it
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Feb 2010
|
Feb 13, 2010
|
|||||
|
| 4.18
|
liked it
|
Jan 2009
|
Dec 26, 2009
|
|||||
|
| 4.58
|
really liked it
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Jan 2007
|
Sep 04, 2009
|
|||||
|
| 4.50
|
really liked it
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Jan 2007
|
Sep 04, 2009
|
|||||
|
| 3.98
|
really liked it
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Jul 2009
|
Jul 22, 2009
|
|||||
|
| 4.24
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really liked it
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Jul 2009
|
Jul 22, 2009
|
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