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ricko
Member
The Master and Margarita
This is a brilliant and complex work of art by Mikhail Bulgakov written in 1930s Russia and unpublished until 1966, 26 years after the author's death. This version was translated by Mirra Ginsburg. The novel combines fantasy, a satirical look at the Stalin run government, and a story within a story. This is a complicated story with many possible meanings and latent content critical of the Soviet system that gave him total denunciation as his reward. I would love to sit in with a group of litterateurs dissecting this novel with all its hidden meanings and innuendoes. It's a story of the Devil and his cohorts visiting Stalin's Russia critiquing the Soviet system with a satirical view of Russia's currency, atheism, and Moscow's Association of Writers (MASSOLIT).
Book Reviews And Comments By Rick O
This is a brilliant and complex work of art by Mikhail Bulgakov written in 1930s Russia and unpublished until 1966, 26 years after the author's death. This version was translated by Mirra Ginsburg. The novel combines fantasy, a satirical look at the Stalin run government, and a story within a story. This is a complicated story with many possible meanings and latent content critical of the Soviet system that gave him total denunciation as his reward. I would love to sit in with a group of litterateurs dissecting this novel with all its hidden meanings and innuendoes. It's a story of the Devil and his cohorts visiting Stalin's Russia critiquing the Soviet system with a satirical view of Russia's currency, atheism, and Moscow's Association of Writers (MASSOLIT).
Book Reviews And Comments By Rick O
ricko
Member
The Epiphanist
The debut novel of William Rosencrans may have spawned a new genre of writing. It's a combination of fantasy and China Mieville's weird fiction sans the neologistical vocabulary. Mr. Rosencrans does use diction that makes you run to the lexicon now and then, but these are real words such as: bulbuls, satyriasis, colporteur, and suzerainty. We might have a new category of literary composition! There are some ambiguities in the novel, but they make the story more intriguing. As the story developed, I had to speculate on some of the context, which makes the reader interpret the author's intention on a personal level. I like that style a lot, again a trait of China Mieville's writings. Does the protagonist Vladimir have actual visions or are they hallucinations - you the reader must decide. How does a biomime system make a building or a car grow? Where is Haven Island? What year is it? These are all unanswered questions that makes this book arcane and transcendental to the reader. This is a exceptional effort for this promising new author.
Book Reviews And Comments By Rick O
The debut novel of William Rosencrans may have spawned a new genre of writing. It's a combination of fantasy and China Mieville's weird fiction sans the neologistical vocabulary. Mr. Rosencrans does use diction that makes you run to the lexicon now and then, but these are real words such as: bulbuls, satyriasis, colporteur, and suzerainty. We might have a new category of literary composition! There are some ambiguities in the novel, but they make the story more intriguing. As the story developed, I had to speculate on some of the context, which makes the reader interpret the author's intention on a personal level. I like that style a lot, again a trait of China Mieville's writings. Does the protagonist Vladimir have actual visions or are they hallucinations - you the reader must decide. How does a biomime system make a building or a car grow? Where is Haven Island? What year is it? These are all unanswered questions that makes this book arcane and transcendental to the reader. This is a exceptional effort for this promising new author.
Book Reviews And Comments By Rick O
beer good
Well-Known Member
Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Dreams In A Time Of War
See other thread.
Martin Gelin, Den amerikanska högern (The American Right)
Swedish leftist journalist spends a year in the US living among tea partiers, Rush Limbaugh listeners and Arizona border patrollers, interviews both grassroots protesters and top politicians, trying to give a fair image of what exactly is happening and why. Often interesting, often scary, but a bit too myopic - focuses so much on details and specific political agendas that it feels like the conclusions it draws (that basically, the Republicans will keep moving to the right indefinitely and the US will have no choice but to follow them) don't seem as well supported as they should be.
See other thread.Martin Gelin, Den amerikanska högern (The American Right)
Swedish leftist journalist spends a year in the US living among tea partiers, Rush Limbaugh listeners and Arizona border patrollers, interviews both grassroots protesters and top politicians, trying to give a fair image of what exactly is happening and why. Often interesting, often scary, but a bit too myopic - focuses so much on details and specific political agendas that it feels like the conclusions it draws (that basically, the Republicans will keep moving to the right indefinitely and the US will have no choice but to follow them) don't seem as well supported as they should be.
MaryJo Dawson
Member
I am about to begin The Greater Journey by David McCullough, and that will be fascinating for sure, a true story of Americans in our countries earlier days who went to Paris to learn and brought that knowledge back.... but in the meantime I found an old
Rex Stout fiction called The Mountain Cat Murders, Not a Nero Wolfe, written in 1939, and it is a fun read! his style is definitely there, if you have read enough Nero Wolfe mysteries you might guess who the author is.
Rex Stout fiction called The Mountain Cat Murders, Not a Nero Wolfe, written in 1939, and it is a fun read! his style is definitely there, if you have read enough Nero Wolfe mysteries you might guess who the author is.
ricko
Member
The Thirteenth Tale
The launching of Diane Setterfield's writing career couldn't have gone better. This novel published in 2006 is reminiscent of the old English gothic novels such as Charlotte Bronte's 'Jane Eyre' . I would also think that Agatha Christie's Miss Marple would have been proud of the novel's heroine Margaret Lea. Not that our heroine was tracking a cold blooded murderer, but she does use her deduction abilities to solve a mystery festering for sixty years. This is such a delightful and well received novel that I am shocked that the author hasn't written her second book yet. Diane Setterfield can't be out there teaching French again...can she?
Book Reviews And Comments By Rick O
The launching of Diane Setterfield's writing career couldn't have gone better. This novel published in 2006 is reminiscent of the old English gothic novels such as Charlotte Bronte's 'Jane Eyre' . I would also think that Agatha Christie's Miss Marple would have been proud of the novel's heroine Margaret Lea. Not that our heroine was tracking a cold blooded murderer, but she does use her deduction abilities to solve a mystery festering for sixty years. This is such a delightful and well received novel that I am shocked that the author hasn't written her second book yet. Diane Setterfield can't be out there teaching French again...can she?
Book Reviews And Comments By Rick O
MaryJo Dawson
Member
ricko...
that sounds like my cup of tea for a mystery! thanks for the referral.
that sounds like my cup of tea for a mystery! thanks for the referral.
PrincessFiona60
Member
Is it easy reading for someone who is NOT a physicist?
Peder
Well-Known Member
Would that it were so; I would have understood much more of it.
It is the sort of book that begins easy and gets more dense as one reads further and encounters the technical terminology. Pretty soon one is into the realm of leptons, hadrons, fermions, bosons, quarks, colours, muons, gluons, kaons, gauge symmetry, Feynman diagrams, Yang-Mills, renormalization and so on, and on, not to mention the utterly indispensable SU(3) X SU(2) X U(1), without which any description of the Standard Model would be incomplete for some -- all of which are not part of my normal vocabulary.
However, I did read the book to the end, reading the English I could find and not absorbing the large parts of sentences and paragraphs which were opaque to me.
I would say it is excellent history and difficult science.
It is comprehensive in mentioning the truly large number of researchers who have contributed to the current understanding of particle physics -- many of whose names and contributions I had not previously come across -- and it does its best to explain their contributions. For that it was valuable to me. It also includes a layman's description of the Higgs field and the significance of the Higgs Boson, which one can try to understand and fit into one's understanding of reality (or of physics).
It is the kind of book that I suggest a person hold in their hand, and leaf through, in order to decide whether it offers enough that is understandable to make the effort worthwhile. For a person interested in the history of science, or how science is done, I think it is very worthwhile. However, one will not learn physics from it, I don't think. I hope that helps.
And, PS, if one is interested in the general topic, the author does also have other Oxford books.
PrincessFiona60
Member
Thank you very much, Peder. I'm sure I would be fine with the English part, the physics part would be tough. I may start out small on this, starting with a "Wiki-" definition and work my way up from there.
Peder
Well-Known Member
Thank you too for your reply. Yes, I think that will be my basic strategy for a while also. Higgs has been more than enough for a while.
But, there is the promise of more to come, someday. These two quotes, from the Preface and Epilogue respectively capture the larger significance of the Higgs discovery:
and
Maybe in our lifetimes. Or our children's?
Have a good day,
Peder
beer good
Well-Known Member
Tove Jansson, The True Deciever. Holy smokes, this is a great little novel. Will try to write a completer review than that, right now I'm torn between an itching unease that won't shake and admiration for a writer at the height of her powers. People who think Jansson only wrote cute childrens' books (which itself implies that they haven't even read the Moomin novels) would do well to pick this up and have their minds radically changed.
PrincessFiona60
Member
Thank you too for your reply. Yes, I think that will be my basic strategy for a while also. Higgs has been more than enough for a while.
But, there is the promise of more to come, someday. These two quotes, from the Preface and Epilogue respectively capture the larger significance of the Higgs discovery:
and
Maybe in our lifetimes. Or our children's?
Have a good day,
Peder
My interest is significantly piqued, I may end up reading Higgs, anyway. Even if I don't understand all, may be I can at least gain a better understanding.
Again, Thanks! And you have a good day, too!
P.Fiona