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0439227143
| 3.91
| 439,760
| 1903
| Jan 01, 2001
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it was amazing
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A poignant and triumphant tale of a great creature in the wild. He feels the bitterness and savagery of men and his pack, there has been a dividing li
A poignant and triumphant tale of a great creature in the wild. He feels the bitterness and savagery of men and his pack, there has been a dividing line in his relations with humans by no fault but their own due to their constant usage of this canine Buck in work, in pulling in the snow, they have not shown any kindness, but there is hope he will soon be blessed with some. One man shows a kindness that helps Buck, who has had a life of toil and enduring of hardships, its a warming to the heart to see man and animal bonded in humility and kindness. Humans can be cruel and unkind to each other, and many guilty of worser crimes to animals in the wild and those under their control as a pet, they are more vulnerable and have no voice. Jack London here has given them a voice in this story and White Fang. He has successfully placed us in their point of view, in the shoes of the main protagonist Buck. An inspiring story that will continue to last through time. Jack London is another author that I recently hold high up there in the sphere of great writers, he writes with great insight into the world, the behaviours, the human condition and here the animal dilemma. I read this story way too late in my life, I only wished that I learned of these great stories of his when i was in my youth. This story has revived for me the importance of justice and kindness to the animal kingdom and the freedom to an animal of the wild. Joe Lansdale an author, I have praised many times due to his similar storytelling of great human stories and wonderful character creations, recommends this author and has said in an interview that Jack London had inspired him in his youth as a writer and I can now see why. If all this is not enough reason to read this or to remind one of its greatness, then read what the author E. L. Doctorow said in his preface of this story... "Man and dog are here together put back into prehistory, one of the moments of metaphorical abutment in which the book abounds. The law of the club and the law of the fang are one and the same, which is to say that in this primeval life of nature man and dog are morally indistinguishable-the call of the wild calls us all. We are dealing in this instance with not a literal dog but a mythopoetic thesis. It is perhaps his fatherless life of bitter self-reliance in late-nineteenth-century America that he transmutes here-though this is not the way it does us any good to read it. It seems more relevantly his mordant parable of the thinness of civilisation, the brutality ready to spring up through our institutions, the failure of the human race to evolve truly from its primeval beginnings. It derives from Jack London's Marxism the idea of the material control of our natures, and from his Darwinism the convictions that life triumphant belongs to the most fit. This is not a sweet idea for a book, it is rather the kind of concept to justify tyrannies and the need of repressive social institutions to keep people from tearing themselves to bits. But London's Nietzchean superdog has our admiration, if the truth be told. For as grim as its implications are, the tale never forgets its sources as a magazine frontier romance. It leaves us with satisfaction as its outcome, a story well and truly told. It is Jack London's hack genius that makes us cheer for his Buck and want to lope with him in happy, savage honor back to the wild, running and howling with the pack." Now for some great paragraphs from this story.
It has brought about three adaptations to film [image] [image] [image] http://more2read.com/review/the-call-of-the-wild-by-jack-london/ ...more |
Notes are private!
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Nov 02, 2012
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Nov 09, 2012
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Nov 02, 2012
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Mass Market Paperback
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0374530637
| 9780374530631
| 0374530637
| 3.83
| 34,466
| May 15, 1952
| Mar 06, 2007
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it was amazing
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A story of dark and strange staggering beauty. Joy and pain, suffering and redemption. It's has dark cynical humour with characters of outrageous qualit A story of dark and strange staggering beauty. Joy and pain, suffering and redemption. It's has dark cynical humour with characters of outrageous quality. There is plenty of work behind the structure of the story. She has included many issues around her during her time and locality, they are of beauty, child neglect and abuse, racism and police brutality. Watch out for these things as you read this along as you might not pick up what she trying to convey. His large hat and clothing seem to give everyone an idea that he is a preacher and his body seems to imbue that he's a preacher and a believer. But he's wants others to see that he's an admirable nihilist. This war he has with himself accepting and refuting continues throughout. This is no picket fence Walt Disney happy ending story. A very Flannery O'Connor like mood of story dark and strange but very human, they all seem to be on a road the characters to somewhere in this story. She is trying in a way to say, due to her beliefs and new testament understanding, that every believer is really in a sort of suffering prison in this world expectant of a happier life after death. The suffering and obstacles that the characters face all seem to be part of that road to understandings of a bigger picture. The main character Hazel Motes is bent on proving there is no need for a redeemer and Christ, with his mission of starting a church 'the church without Christ' and fails in getting followers. This failure in his journey seems to turn him back to the very whole Redemption topic he has been trying to disprove and turn away from and seems to come back full circle. Will he take it on? How will his journey end? Flannery tackles big things in her life here and has it all symbolically imbued in the text. She written a story that even a person with not even a grain of belief in God will still look back and enjoy and many ponder over her mastery and brilliance in the literary field. Most of her characters are in suffering or a generally unpleasant people. her symbolism and characters Ochange and shift meaning throughout this novel and her other works. There is a catalog of suffering and struggle in her writing. Flannery describes her female characters with ugliness and describes the body in a fragmented way, disconnecting the hands and feet when describing a body in the story, possibly she is trying to use a certain style inspired by the southern society regard of women and beauty and anther important factor her own decline in health with lupus causing disfigurement and mutation. To recap a short novel but outstanding in structure, characters and story. Filled with joy and suffering, escape and discovery, brutally human with dark humor. There is some light and I think it comes with the readers experience and interpretation.
Review also @ http://more2read.com/review/wise-blood-by-flannery-oconnor/ "I wouldn't have you believe nothing you can't feel in your own hearts." Onnie Jay Holy ...more |
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Apr 28, 2012
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Apr 30, 2012
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Mar 09, 2012
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Paperback
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B004YD699A
| 3.90
| 25,331
| 2002
| 2011
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it was amazing
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This novella is a work of great magical story telling. A story that will lay for some time in your thoughts, of novella length but holds depth and mea
This novella is a work of great magical story telling. A story that will lay for some time in your thoughts, of novella length but holds depth and meaning more than many nine hundred page novels out there now. I can't stress enough on how you must read this. If I ever one day i write a novella I aspire and dream to write with this quality and craftsmanship. The main protagonist is a man of good virtue he is on the straight and narrow, due to many things he has witnessed and taking account of. One day in his past he met and learned from a man in the wilderness, he was in distress and pain, a vagrant alcoholic who spilled out his crimes in his last breath in. This rather rude awakening in his young age left a mark and he kept away from intoxicants and lust. He became a hard worker on the railroad of a bygone era. Time passed and he wed a girl of fine character, who he met at a church meeting. They had a child a girl. He regularly went off to work in various towns, on one days return he found a horrible site the woods and town was overcome by fire and his loved ones no where to be found. He looked for them all over town all the places they had visited previously but no sign. This terror of his missing family eventually had an effect on his psyche and he had many sleepless nights due to having very bad nightmares of his wife and child. The years passed by and he tried to pick up his life again working other towns but eventually he finds himself back again home. There has become word of a wolf-girl, a kind of half wolf and human creature in the wilderness. Our main character fears the darkness and crossing paths with this myth. It's only a matter of time in that which he find out if it be folly or fact. This has some really poignant and happy moments. You feel the desperate times and the atmosphere, the fear, the love and the loss. Be prepared to possibly shed a tear in this heart felt work of literal art as the author carries you into the footsteps of one memorable characters life, through his dreams and nightmares. Denis Johnson is a author that I am liking more and more and comes highly recommended by many authors including Joyce Carol Oates and Alan Heathcock who recommended this to me. Actually these three authors Denis Johnson, Joyce Carol Oates and Alan Heathcock carry original potent voices, they write stories that penetrate and touch the heart and remain in your psyche, they may stay in your dreams for an eternity! This novella is a work of magical realism that has a hypnotic potent voice, sprawling and engrossing, violence and beauty. Its words will remain for a time like ancient carvings in a tree. [image] I had to read this twice and have highlighted these excerpts below. (There was even more than this!) "Meanwhile Robert Grainier had passed his thirty fifth birthday. He missed Gladys and Kate, his Li'l Girl and Li'l Li'l Girl, but he'd lived thirty two years a bachelor before finding a wife, and easily slipped back into a steadying loneliness out here among the countless spruce." [image] ...more |
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Jun 11, 2012
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Jul 05, 2012
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Feb 05, 2012
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1441753753
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| 1441753753
| 4.23
| 21,082
| 1965
| Oct 01, 2010
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it was amazing
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Well I tell you one thing she can write. This woman was of exceptional cleverness and writes of characters of her era and ones that live around us now
Well I tell you one thing she can write. This woman was of exceptional cleverness and writes of characters of her era and ones that live around us now. She rights of the human condition and the darkness of the heart. These story have humour thrown in she tries to give us a view of how we behave and how insanely stupid and careless we can be. How love blinds and evil destroys, how good can only prosper. She writes of parenthood, guilt, obsession, control freaks, the sick, the despondent, vengeance, redemption, love, compassion and love. She has been said to be a catholic writer and mentions God, Jesus and themes of redemption. She does not throw it down your throat but adds light on how people behave. There are a few stories here that that have characters who behave in a fascist manner and used words, N words, that readers might find offensive. The only reason, her being a catholic, in writing with these words and characters can only be to shock and show the reader how one can look like from the outside. She was capable of so much more, died at a young age of 39 due to Lupus. A gifted writer on the horror and joys of our behaviour as people. Think of some of Stephen Kings stories but realistically told. I listened to this on audiobook via audible.com and was really a wonderful listen, it had quite a few voices with southern accents that added to making it enjoyable and easy listening. I am also going to read these again in another book where she includes these storirs and others. A completed works on ebook The Complete Stories . Once I have read that edition I will give a breakdown of each story. [image] [image] There is a documentary and the review at my webpage here. ...more |
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Jan 29, 2012
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Feb 03, 2012
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Jan 29, 2012
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Audiobook
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1555975771
| 9781555975777
| 1555975771
| 3.90
| 1,634
| Mar 01, 2011
| Mar 01, 2011
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it was amazing
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Check out my interview with Alan Heathcock @ http://more2read.com/review/interview-with-alan-heathcock-may-2012/ If you have liked the Authors, William Check out my interview with Alan Heathcock @ http://more2read.com/review/interview-with-alan-heathcock-may-2012/ If you have liked the Authors, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Steinbeck, Cormac McCarthy and William Gay you will like this. These snippets of stories feel like ballads of loss, love, redemption and reconciliation, they ooze originality and great craftsmanship. He takes you to dream like sense of feelings at times in these stories of magical realism. Literature with dark themes, wonderful characters, eras, setting and sense of feelings. Splendid prose visceral and poignant. All the stories are unique in different ways it's hard to choose my most liked. The Daughter the longest story here is tragic and poignant tale on loss and sanity. The Staying Freight a story that will stay with the reader for as long as you know regret and loved ones. Smoke an even more powerful than the stories mention previous, because it stirs emotions of what could have been, of mistake we may have made and how well do we know our kin. Each story carries a thought provoking sense of feeling and meaning. He rustles up emotions in this darkness and ask yourself bigger questions on the trappings of life and consequences of actions on those we love and leave behind. Stories written during dark times, wars and financial decline. A writer who's touched the shocking brutal reality of man on this earth. These are a few of the stories that I have reviewed. Smoke A story of regret. One man doesn't now another from Adam. A argument ends in deadly consequences. He's wronged a man a still wants to do good by them but it must be too late? The story touches on kin and how well do we know our loved ones. The son in this story finds he knows Roy Rogers more than the face of his father. It reminds you of time and things that should really count, how it passes fleeting and many other bigger issues. "Ain't a woman in the world more beautiful than your mother. I was thinking about how much I loved her, and how that ain't changed, and that got me thinking about my heart and how when it rains your skin and hair gets wet and cold, but your heart don't know if it's raining, or hot, or windy. It just keeps on beating." Staying Freight A working man out in the field with his Combine take care of his family. One day out in the fields his life turns upside down a tragic accidental death sends him into a state of distraught and unacceptable consequences. Just like in the movie Forest Gump, where Forest running across the land, he takes off into the wildness to escape these horrors of reality put before him. Possibly he needs to find himself again and realise and accept what has taken place. He's virtually suicidal at times. What will become of him? Shall he return to the darkness left behind with light and hope? Well this is really a powerful moving story I had to read this a couple of times as there a things that possibly I missed the first time round. Loss, reconciliation and finding the light again. The Daughter A really well done story. The longest of the collection about daughters and things that happen to the mind and the actions they do due to their psychological decline. One daughter the main character from this story Miriam is struggling to come to terms with her mothers death caused by a horrible accident. It's has caused her to fear stepping foot into her mothers home where she lives. The sight of her mothers truck with the blood stain on the grill hurts her eyes and heart. She does also have a daughter in this story who's there to help her and care for her. Miriam lives in a closed knitted community and they all know of her mothers death and her decline in health. The local pastor and church goers wish her back to health happy again, hopefully singing songs of praise in church. Miriam is in grief and that has taken her to a level of closure and instilled fears. To escape all the darkness she has made a maze in the corn field. That area of peace also becomes disturbed by intruders unwelcome, out to scare and tease. She spent joyful moments out there with her daughter in the corn, out of the house. A local boy goes missing and the police arrive to enquire and the search starts. As she is just about to find courage and some clarity more problems arise. This story is possibly about loss, love, kin and the mind. Poignant and brutal at times another memorable story from the author. Lazarus A man divorced wishes to have his wife and family back again back in his home. The truth is he can't really things have changed time has taken its course they have lost their son in a war. He in this story visits his ex-wife equipped with a box of sealed letters from their son. He feels it's times to open the unread and unopened to read from a slice of their sons heart. An action that has been to painful in the past. Once the act is completed they for once are a bit more at ease and understand that things have happened and time moved, on he must let go. He's a pastor now and has new life and responsibilities. "So much of life they'd shared, so many laughs so many touches. But there were things people should never share, but he and Martha had those things between them, too." Review also @ http://more2read.com/review/volt-by-alan-heathcock/ ...more |
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Apr 2012
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Apr 30, 2012
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Dec 27, 2011
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Paperback
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1585673692
| 9781585673698
| 1585673692
| 4.17
| 62,076
| May 21, 1968
| Dec 30, 2002
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it was amazing
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The story opens with a grand paragraph of affairs.. "PEOPLE DO not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off into tThe story opens with a grand paragraph of affairs.. "PEOPLE DO not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off into the wintertime to avenge her father's blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day. I was just fourteen years of age when a coward going by name of Tom Chaney shot my father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robbed him of his life and his horse and $150 in cash money plus two California good pieces that he carried in his trouser band." True Grit a story that will stand the test of time not due to wonderful prose or sentences but due to the characters and the actual storytelling. This story is successful due to its creation of one big-hearted spunky young woman who is bent on reaping vengeance upon the guilt individual who had taken her cherished father from this earth. She hires a man she hopes has some true grit in aiding her bringing the murderer to justice. Eventually she finds herself part of a trio that's going to have its communication problems, flaws and a series of sabotages that try to stop her in her tracks. This girl won't give up it, giving up has no place in her psyche. She's a memorable, witty, gusty girl, who is one step ahead of other that try to outsmart her, those that don't give her credit due to her physical appearance and her age. If you ever have a to leave behind a young girl, a legacy, she would be the one that many fathers would be proud to leave behind on this earth to face its darkest hours. She the young soul 'Mattie' is a strong potent voice thee driving force of the narrative of this story. A girl's best friend is her horse in this story a beauty back beauty of a steed, these two gallant and great hearts face adversity with plenty of spunk. Memorable characters in the literary field and a splendid character on the big screen with the excellent adaptation on film. A true classic work of pure storytelling in an uncomplicated form with staggering violence and beauty. She is one to add to the hall of fame of heroines of mine from literature. "The Irishman said,"And is that the man?" He held a candle in his face. The body was wrapped in a white shroud. I said, "That is my father." I stood there looking at him. What a waste! Tom Chaney would pay for this! I would not rest easy until that Louisiana cur was roasting and screaming in hell!" "I hated these ponies for the part they played in my fathers death but now I realized the notion was fanciful, that it was wrong to charge blame to these pretty breasts who knew neither good nor evil but only innocence. I say that of these ponies. I have known some horses and a good many more pigs who I believe harbored evil intent in their hearts. I will go further and say all cats are wicked, though often useful. Who has not seen Satan in their sky faces?" Review also @ http://more2read.com/review/true-grit-by-charles-portis/ along with the adaptation movie trailer. ...more |
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Mar 09, 2012
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Jul 30, 2012
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Dec 13, 2011
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Paperback
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1451627289
| 9781451627282
| 1451627289
| 4.34
| 560,861
| Nov 08, 2011
| Nov 08, 2011
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it was amazing
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Listen to an excerpt from Stephen King's 11/22/63 audiobook, narrated by Craig Wasson. A grandmaster of storytelling, the Dickens of modern times is ba Listen to an excerpt from Stephen King's 11/22/63 audiobook, narrated by Craig Wasson. A grandmaster of storytelling, the Dickens of modern times is back with another top read. He's back with no Here's Johnny! but certainly here's Lee Oswald! a brutal husband and a father. The stage is set the focal time 22nd November 1963, enter the main protagonist Jake Epping soon to be known as George Amberson down the Alice in Wonderland Rabbit Hole, the mission to rewrite history. What Jake undertakes has deeper impact on himself than he could wish. You get the feel from this novel that the 1960's was a lovely era, it had a feel of innocence in the air, boys with flattop crew cuts, girls with ponytails and shin length poodle skirts. Jitterbugging and lindyhopping. There is fully flavored Root beer and Catcher in The Rye was banned from school libraries. Jack travels to 1958 and starts his new life with taking up the position of an English teacher in a school that he finds he really loves teaching at and meets people that are to change his future. For a man who has in the past hardly shed a tear he is to learn many new emotions and he can't quite understand how to deal with those responsible for them. In the course of preventing the Kennedy assassination he finds himself with a few obstacles. He also tries to undo another history of a friend from his present, one of the murderous kind. Feel immersed and enjoy a heart warming story of humanness. The beauty and skill of Stephen King's writing is he brings to the table ordinary individuals and pitches them against adversity, some are triumphant others not. The age old battle of good versus evil he does so well, the master conjurer of nightmares, the writer of redemption and darkness of the heart. He writes the character driven story well and don't think he's lost his swagger as he has plenty of steam in his tank and proves it year by year. This is not a king novel in the way as The Shining was a horror novel but is a King novel in that he writes so well with the darkness of heart as a key player. He keeps turning out good stories. Its a hard market the short story category but King always seems to revive the art of Short story telling. Full Dark No Stars by King done so well in 2010 and this year I am sure 11.22.63 as a novel is to lead as the best of 2011. "If you ever wanted to change the world, this is your chance. Save Kennedy, save his brother. Save Martin Luther King. Stop the race riots. Stop Vietnam, maybe' he leaned forward. 'Get rid of one wretched waif, buddy and you could save millions of lives." Review also @ https://more2read.com/review/112263-by-stephen-king/ ...more |
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Nov 03, 2011
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Nov 08, 2011
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Sep 24, 2011
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Hardcover
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1587156520
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| 1587156520
| 4.07
| 13,946
| 1907
| Feb 04, 2003
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it was amazing
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Re-read this now sept 2022 ten years since reviewed with similar thoughts but more. First published in the authors story collection The listener and O Re-read this now sept 2022 ten years since reviewed with similar thoughts but more. First published in the authors story collection The listener and Other Stories in 1907, appeared in story anthology Famous Modern Ghost Stories in 1921. Reprinted in various of the authors collections, appeared in pulp magazine Tales of the Uncanny in 1934. Boris Karloff edited and had written an introduction to an anthology named Tales of Terror 1943. This available in recent collections The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, Roarings from Further Out and in Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories newest reprint of authors stories by The British Library and Penguin books. A certain willows, a Dunabe lake, a Black Forest, in the month of June, a land and a realm of beauty and awe but thou who trespass a sojourn with disquieting malevolent malefic transmutation ineludible in a “beyond region” succumbing the mind and soul of man. Various complexities and emotions visceraly brought alive amongst the wilderness, feelings of wonder and awe will turn, shifting souls to ones of disquietude and terror running through the two interlopers about to witness “multitudinous little patterings.” and “torrent of humming” perplexity and survival will arise and a “new order of experience, and in the true sense of the word unearthly.” Alegron Blackwood in 19 had crafted a masterful work, the uncanny with man against something else in the cosmos another entity, jutaxpostioning the reader in the remote with a closeness to the distant, a transcendence with minds and souls at battle and deciphering these new perplpexities along with the atomsphere all brought alive with the great prose style, words delving into the psychological realm sewn in with the magnificence of a poet. I refer to a scholarly work written by Michael Cisco Weird Fiction a genre Study, containing a case study on this work along with other great short works, with great analysis from one educated on the weird he mentions this: “Here my thesis is spelled out very plainly: the danger in weird fiction is a threat to identity. Blackwood posits a new order of experience, the unhuman and unearthly, the infinity of experience which is everywhere, hence the lability of the man in the boat, the otter, and the willows. In these circumstances, it is insignificance that protects us; what is significant, symbolic, is part of this uncanny world, and the insignificance of our ordinariness is safe, because it has no hidden dimension. The symbolic world acts through the willows by using them as symbols, so instead of materializing in the willows, the willows are being diaphanized and turned into something immaterial, symbols. For Blackwood, the divine realm is a domain of independent, autonomous, uncreated symbols, rather than, for example, Platonically perfect ideas. What the narrator discovers, through direct experience, then, is a transcendence where meaning precedes being.” These analysis and case studies also serve as something to ponder further on great works and allow the art to ruminate more amongst subjective views, wether you agree on the analysis or not, third eyes are always welcome on deciphering art. Excerpts “The change came suddenly, as when a series of bioscope pictures snaps down on the streets of a town and shifts without warning into the scenery of lake and forest. We entered the land of desolation on wings, and in less than half an hour there was neither boat nor fishing-hut nor red roof, nor any single sign of human habitation and civilization within sight. The sense of remoteness from the world of humankind, the utter isolation, the fascination of this singular world of willows, winds, and waters, instantly laid its spell upon us both, so that we allowed laughingly to one another that we ought by rights to have held some special kind of passport to admit us, and that we had, somewhat audaciously, come without asking leave into a separate little kingdom of wonder and magic—a kingdom that was reserved for the use of others who had a right to it, with everywhere unwritten warnings to trespassers for those who had the imagination to discover them.” “The eeriness of this lonely island, set among a million willows, swept by a hurricane, and surrounded by hurrying deep waters, touched us both, I fancy. Untrodden by man, almost unknown to man, it lay there beneath the moon, remote from human influence, on the frontier of another world, an alien world, a world tenanted by willows only and the souls of willows. And we, in our rashness, had dared to invade it, even to make use of it! Something more than the power of its mystery stirred in me as I lay on the sand, feet to fire, and peered up through the leaves at the stars. For the last time I rose to get firewood.” “..we were interlopers, trespassers; we were not welcomed. The sense of unfamiliarity grew upon me as I stood there watching. We touched the frontier of a region where our presence was resented. For a night’s lodging we might perhaps be tolerated; but for a prolonged and inquisitive stay—No! by all the gods of the trees and wilderness, no! We were the first human influences upon this island, and we were not wanted. The willows were against us.” “”Death, according to one’s belief, means either annihilation or release from the limitations of the senses, but it involves no change of character. You don’t suddenly alter just because the body’s gone. But this means a radical alteration, a complete change, a horrible loss of oneself by substitution—far worse than death, and not even annihilation. We happen to have camped in a spot where their region touches ours, where the veil between has worn thin”—horrors!” “The psychology of places, for some imaginations at least, is very vivid; for the wanderer, especially, camps have their “note” either of welcome or rejection.” “All my life,” he said, “I have been strangely, vividly conscious of another region—not far removed from our own world in one sense, yet wholly different in kind—where great things go on unceasingly, where immense and terrible personalities hurry by, intent on vast purposes compared to which earthly affairs, the rise and fall of nations, the destinies of empires, the fate of armies and continents, are all as dust in the balance; vast purposes, I mean, that deal directly with the soul, and not indirectly with more expressions of the soul—“ “When common objects in this way be come charged with the suggestion of horror, they stimulate the imagination far more than things of unusual appearance; and these bushes, crowding huddled about us, assumed for me in the darkness a bizarre grotesquerie of appearance that lent to them somehow the aspect of purposeful and living creatures. Their very ordinariness, I felt, masked what was malignant and hostile to us.” This was part of a set of terrifying and creepy tales on my webpage this recently: https://www.more2read.com/review/a-fe... ...more |
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Paperback
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3.86
| 185,202
| Oct 07, 1929
| Oct 1990
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it was amazing
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The Compson family, Benji a man of innocence has kin of ignorance and self-centeredness, they will have terrible awakenings in this story this family The Compson family, Benji a man of innocence has kin of ignorance and self-centeredness, they will have terrible awakenings in this story this family tragedy of an American household, the fall of the Compsons during the era of the 1910-1930's. This novel was published in a turbulent time when America was going through some changes in October 1929 the month and year of the Great Stock Market Crash. William Faulkner uses an unconventional way to tell this tale of his that has some truth in that there was a Compson family back in the day. He manipulates viewpoints and has a way to leave the reader pondering over the different narratives meaning and on the unresolved dilemmas and occurrences. This can for a first-read provide an experience of being a hard read, but once you understand who the narratives are and get round the language used I have discovered now how this is for me, after a second and third read, a work of a genius. Four parts/chapters, four different narratives back and forth during different years all involving the Compsons demise. The first narrative is from the viewpoint and consciousness of the disadvantaged Benj or Benjamin his birth name that he mother insists him to be called by. The second narrative is from the life of Quentin brother of Benj, Caddy and Jason. He's the fortunate one to be Harvard taught but unfortunate in other ways of which I will divulge into when I dissect these chapters soon. The third narrative is from the viewpoint of Jason brother of Caddy, Benj and Quentin. He is now a self made man in a time where the doors of commerce and investment have opened to foreigners and he's lucky enough to be in ownership of a motor vehicle. The last and fourth narrative comes from some important characters to the Compson family and I would say their saving grace and backbone, the home helps Luster and Dilsey. His ending of his novel with these characters and the importance they had in keeping some sanity in the Compson home in some ways disproves the fact that he was a racist. The title name to this novel can be traced back to a scene from Macbeth “Out, out, brief candle! Faulkner Discussed this novel in Japan 1955 mentioning its significant beginnings.. "And then the idea struck me to see how much more I could have got out of the idea of the blind self-centeredness of innocence typified by children, if one of those children had been truly innocent, that is, an idiot. So the idiot was born, and then I became interested in the relationship of the idiot to the world that he was in but would never be able to cope with and just where could he get the tenderness, the help, to shield him in his innocence. I mean 'innocence' in the sense that God had stricken him blind at birth, that is, mindless at birth." Part 1 April seventh 1928 Benji and Caddy where the closest kin and Luster the help second. Benji felt comfort and loved her company and innocence. Caddy is very important to Benji but as she looses her innocence and leaves the nest he feels very isolated and emotionally at unease when thinking of her. He is disadvantaged in understanding of matters logically but on the sight and smell side of understandings he is more superior probably than any other Compson. Benji in someway is reminiscent of the character in Mice of men by Steinbeck. Faulkner has successfully made a heartfelt connection starting this epic story with Benji and hooked us on course with the fate of Benji and those around him. Luster is another important part of Benji's life and safety. Benji is 33 years old but functions like that of a child of 4, Luster is a black male, a home help half his age and half his size but manages to take care of him in all ways and manners. He spoon feeds him and calms him, at times guilty of teasing him about the absence of Caddy. Benji innocence and his wiser character is that he does not treat or regard Luster in anyway different due to race unlike the whole Compson family throughout the novel who use words that are best left unrepeated. He is no angel Benji and can be self-centered but all he did I am sure was not by a conscious choice, he was born this way unlike the rest of the kin who chose their paths and behaviors. These two characters Benjamin and Luster are memorable and will be forever remembered from the pages of literature. "'Dilsey,' Caddy said, 'Benjy's got a present for you.' She stooped down and put the bottle in my hand. 'Hold it up to Dilsey now.' Caddy held my hand, and Dilsey took the bottle. 'Well, I declare,' Dilsey said. 'If my baby ain't give Dilsey a bottle of perfume. Just look here, Roskus.' Caddy smelled like trees. 'We don't like perfume ourselves,' Caddy said. She smelled like trees." Part 2 June second 1910 This narrative was more flowing in that there was not as much dialogue as the first and easier to read. It had very dark parts and one part in a way presented some dark humor for me. This was Quentin's time to take us into the Compson threshold and his turbulent goings on. Here he feels jealousy and at a disadvantage even though he was the one to be lucky enough to be educated at Harvard at the expense of his mother selling of Benji's plot of land. He feels envy over his sister’s marriage and experiences of love and sex. He feels emptiness even when he tries to do a good deed he finds himself in trouble. For instance, he tries to help a girl he meets in a bakers shop that he thinks is lost find her way home. This young girl can't speak his language and so he has trouble in finding her house. In end his find himself accused my the girls father and the law of snatching her and it all felt quite a funny situation to me, but to him it just added to his downward spiral. When you hear if his dissatisfaction you can't help not remembering Gatsby from the Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald in a way this novel has maybe some strange likeness maybe to that story also, in that they are both dissatisfied and self-centered households. "Because women so delicate so mysterious Father said. Delicate equilibrium of periodical filth between two moons balanced. Moons he said full and yellow as harvest moons her hips thighs. Outside outside of them always but. Yellow. Feet soles with walking like. Then know that some man that all those mysterious and imperious concealed. With all that inside of them shapes an outward suavity waiting for a touch to. Liquid putrefaction like drowned things floating like pale rubber flabbily filled getting the odor of honeysuckle all mixed up." Part 3 April sixth 1928 This narrative is that of Jason the brother of Benji, Caddy and Quentin. He's a self made man but can't help being dissatisfied at his not being liked by his father he talks of his brothers Quentin being his fathers favorite and the only one sent to Harvard and then amounting to nothing. He also can't stand the responsibility that he now has over the Compson family as his father passed away and he has sole financial responsibility of them. He can't stand his nieces idleness and disregard for education and responsibility and in away hates and is envious of her freedom and love life. He talks of his enragement over her companionship with a man with a red tie, this man works in the circus. This niece Quentin is the daughter of the once innocent Caddy who lost it all to an unnamed father. Jason talks of his displeasure of the foreign investors on American soil and of his business climb and possibly downfall. This was all relevant to what was really happening during to the year of publication of this novel when there was a great economic crash. Part 4 April eighth 1928 This narrative comes from that not of kin but the home help two very important backbones of this collapsing entity the Compsons. Faulkner choosing to have these important black people end his grand story who where not that regarded as important by many in the America of that time was very significant. You see again the important role Luster has with Benji and taking care of him and feeding him. Luster also refers to the incident in the opening chapter where he was looking for his quarter to go to a show and this was the day after that where he was questioned about his laziness and waking up late due to being out late to the show. Luster and Benji takes us through their outing on their horse Queenie into town that proves to be an adventure that they would probably not repeat. Jason also has some viewpoint in here on the pursuit of something missing. "Dilsey opened the door of the cabin and emerged, needled laterally into her flesh, precipitating not so much a moisture as a substance partaking of the quality of thin, not quite congealed oil. She wore a stiff velvet cape with a border of mangy and anonymous fur about a dress of purple silk, and she stood in the door for a while with her myriad and sunken face lifted to the weather, and one gaunt hand flac-soled as the belly of a fish." I can now say that this novel has proved to be a great journey and demanded my deep thought and attention and that it started from being a slightly confusing read during my first read to a memorable great read in my second and third read and audiobook re-covering of its great heartfelt and meaningful story. A family tragedy, a plight of human endeavor, a passage of time of downfall and a dark stain in history orchestrated in wonderful prose by a grand storyteller who makes you wonder at the beauty and power of innocence and kindness and the importance of family stability. A scholarly work on this novel Man, Time and Eternity by Cleanth Brooks Gives a good understanding and explanation of this story, I have included some important observations in excerpts below. "The states of consciousness of the three brothers provide three quite different modes of interpretation. Consider them, for a moment, under the rubric of poetry. Benjy's section is filled with a kind of primitive poetry, a poetry of the senses, rendered with great immediacy, in which the world—for Benjy a kind of confused, blooming buzz—registers with great sensory impact but with minimal intelligibility. Quentin's section is filled with poetry too, though his is essentially decadent: sensitive but neurotic and hopeless, as it rings sadly through a series of dying falls. Entering Jason's section, we have no poetry at all, since Jason, the "sane" man, has consciously purged himself of every trace of this perilous and impractical stuff. With the last section we again encounter poetry, but of a more usual kind, especially in those passages which Dilsey's reaction to the Easter service; and here it is neither primitive nor decadent, but whole, complex, and mature. We can look at the four sections in quite another way, noticing what different conceptions of love they imply. Benjy represents love in its most simple and childlike form. His love for Caddy intense and unreflective . . . . Quentin's love for Caddy is conscious, formal, even abstract....He is not really in love with his sister's body, only in love with a notion of virginity that associates with her....In contrast with this incestuously Platonic lover, Jason has no love Caddy at all, and no love for anyone else...The relationship he desires is a commercial one: you know where you stand; there is no romantic nonsense about it. Jason, if he could, would reduce all relationships to commercial transactions. Another way in which to contrast the first three sections is to observe the different notions of time held by the Compson brothers. Benji…is locked almost completely into a timeless present. He has not much more sense of time than an animal has, and therefore he posses not much more freedom than an animal does…Quentin’s obsession with the past is in fact a repudiation of the future. T amounts to the sense of having no future…Jason, by insisting on seeing time only with regard to something to be done, is incapable of any real living…Jason is so committed to preparation for the future that he is almost enslaved as are his brothers. …To Dilsey neither the past nor the future nor the present is oppressive, because to her they are all aspects of eternity, and her ultimate commitment is to eternity. The downfall of the house of Compson is the kind of degeneration, which can occur, and has occurred, anywhere at any time. The real significance of the Southern setting in The Sound and the Fury resides, as so often elsewhere in Faulkner, in the fact that the breakdown of a family can be exhibited more poignantly and significantly in a society which is old-fashioned and in which the family is still at the center. The dissolution of the family as an institution has probably gone further in the suburban areas of the small towns of California and Connecticut than it has in the small towns of Mississippi. For that very reason, what happens to the Compsons might make less noise and cause less comment, and even bring less pain to the individuals concerned, if the Compsons lived in a more progressive and liberal environment. Because the Compsons have been committed to old-fashioned ideals—close family loyalty, home care for defective children, and the virginity of unmarried daughters-the breakup of the family registers with greater impact. The decay of the Compsons can be viewed, however, not merely with reference to the Southern past but to the contemporary American scene. it is tempting to read it as a parable of the disintegration of modern man. Individuals no longer sustained by familial and cultural unity are alienated and lost in private worlds. One thinks here not merely of Caddy, homeless, the sexual adventuress adrift in the world, or of Quentin, out of touch with reality and moving inevitably to his death, but also and even primarily of Jason whom the break up of the family means an active rejection of claims and responsibilities and, with it, a sense of liberation..." Check out these videos/audio speech of William Faulkner at the University of Virginia William Faulkner Nobel Prize speech William Faulkner 1952 Ford Foundation Omnibus William Faulkner – a short bio Faulkner on The Sound and the Fury There is also a movie adapted from this novel.. [image] First read, small review==Faulkner's writing i found very disorientating. I really wanted it to work but i think the language used added to the hardness for the story to flow easily for me. http://more2read.com/review/the-sound-and-the-fury-by-william-faulkner/ ...more |
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0575074639
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Timeless novel Matheson is such a great writer most of his novels written in the 50s it can outdo many of today's stories. He writes with many themes
Timeless novel Matheson is such a great writer most of his novels written in the 50s it can outdo many of today's stories. He writes with many themes the undead, ghosts, haunted houses , and human endeavours, I only wish he wrote more novels this story is of the highest calibre! This is a story of survival for one man in this emotional and psychological journey as life slips away from beneath his feet Inch by Inch literally. We follow his realisation and self-discovery with this fate put before him. "He looked at her full body again, feeling breath catch him uncontrollably. It wasn't just physical desire it was so much more. It was the dread of tomorrows without her. It was the horror of his plight, which no words could capture. For it was not a sudden incident removing him from her life. It wasn't a sudden illness taking him, leaving the memory of him intact, cutting him from her love with merciful swiftness. It wasn't even a lingering sickness. At least then he'd be himself and, although she could watch him with pity and terror, at least she would be watching the man she knew. This was worse, far worse." Great stuff! ...more |
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Nov 24, 2010
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0312856644
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| 3.78
| 8,589
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it was amazing
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A Timeless novel, Matheson is such a great writer he writes with many themes undead, ghosts, haunted houses , shrinking man and human endeavors, I onl
A Timeless novel, Matheson is such a great writer he writes with many themes undead, ghosts, haunted houses , shrinking man and human endeavors, I only wish he had written more novels, this story is of the highest caliber! This is a story of survival for one man and his emotional and psychological journey as life slips away from beneath his feet Inch by Inch literally. We follow his realization and self-discovery with this fate put before him. "He looked at her full body again, feeling breath catch him uncontrollably. It wasn't just physical desire it was so much more. It was the dread of tomorrows without her. It was the horror of his plight, which no words could capture. For it was not a sudden incident removing him from her life. It wasn't a sudden illness taking him, leaving the memory of him intact, cutting him from her love with merciful swiftness. It wasn't even a lingering sickness. At least then he'd be himself and, although she could watch him with pity and terror, at least she would be watching the man she knew. This was worse, far worse." [image] [image] [image] [image] ...more |
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006209436X
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| 4.20
| 240,852
| May 1971
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it was amazing
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(Has had a lot of likes today 4 sept 2022 maybe that fall and time of year, great to see that thanks. I had written this 11 years ago on precipice of
(Has had a lot of likes today 4 sept 2022 maybe that fall and time of year, great to see that thanks. I had written this 11 years ago on precipice of starting my website More2read dot com and have no review there of this will reread sometime by end October 2022. I doubt I could add much more to review, some things don’t change will have to see.) This is a really chilling and frightening story. There is nothing more powerful and engrossing than a story about a persons battle with their state of mind and Demons. In this frightening story you have a mother and her 12 year old daughters bond shaken, faced with a state of mayhem immersed in a struggle for survival and triumph over adversity, you just feel for them immensely and love for their solitude to prevail. The Jesuit priest also had a love for his deceased mother and guilt of not putting matters right with his mother. He's in a struggle to overcome his downfalls and darkness of past days on a path of resolution. The writing paints some much more better images in your mind, than those distant but quite fresh images i have of the movie, of those notorious scenes of a possessed young girl rotating her head and shout profanities and vomiting. This was a real page-turner of a story, well written gripping edge of seat, chilling human struggle. "Head propped against a pillow while eyes bulging wide in their hollow sockets shone with mad cunning and burning intelligence, with interest and with spite as they fixed upon his, as they watched him intently, seething in a face shaped into a skeletal, hideous mask of mind-bending malevolence." Some trivia about the book and movie.. Author William Peter Blatty once won $10,000 on the Groucho Marx show "You Bet Your Life". When Groucho asked what he planned to do with the money, he said he planned to take some time off to "work on a novel." This was the result. Cameo (William Peter Blatty): producer of the film that Chris is acting in; he's seen talking to Burke. William Peter Blatty based his novel on a supposedly genuine exorcism from 1949, which was partially performed in both Cottage City, Maryland, and Bel-Nor, Missouri. Several area newspapers reported on a speech a minister gave to an amateur parapsychology society, in which he claimed to have exorcised a demon from a 13-year-old boy named Robbie, and that the ordeal lasted a little more than six weeks. Robbie was born June 1, 1935, resided at 3807 40th Avenue in Cottage City, MD, and was a member of St. James Parish. He entered the seventh grade at Bladensburg Junior High in the fall of 1947, and was removed in the middle of his eighth grade year on January 15, 1949. He had experiences that ended on April 19, 1949. He re-enrolled in the eighth grade at Bladensburg Junior High for the 1949-50 school year, then spent from the fall of 1950 until June 1954 at Gonzaga High School in Washington, DC. There are tales about ominous events surrounding the year-long shoot, including the deaths of nine people associated with the production and stories about a mysterious fire that destroyed the set one weekend. Actors Jack MacGowran and Vasiliki Maliaros died before the film was released. ...more |
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3.93
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it was amazing
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A Well written story centered on how an idealist american couple may not be so ideal away from the faces of many. They cannot seem to make their life w A Well written story centered on how an idealist american couple may not be so ideal away from the faces of many. They cannot seem to make their life work and enjoy their daily trappings until it is too late. Makes you wander at making the most of the good things in life that you have before you lose it rather than trying to rewrite your life completely from scratch. (Re-read coming in November 2012 really love this story for some strange reason) [image] [image] [image] ...more |
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| 4.27
| 1,534,697
| Jan 28, 1977
| Sep 2001
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it was amazing
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"The place Tony had warned him against. It was here. It was her. Whatever Redrum was, it was here." The Shining brings the reader to the supernatural a "The place Tony had warned him against. It was here. It was her. Whatever Redrum was, it was here." The Shining brings the reader to the supernatural and the psychotic, it displays Stephen Kings skill and masterful in the conjuring of a tale with everyday people, everyday demons and monsters within, pitted against adversity and the supernatural. He chose a hotel as a setting for this tale, an eery insidious place that summons the unsavoury of people and once allowed room and the person enraged turns them into its own rag doll of destruction. The dwelling, the Overlook Hotel knows Jacks weakness and knows what darkness to unearth and manipulate, this evil within Jack that seems do have had its days born in a violent cycle set down by his kin. His father beat on his mother he was there and witnessed the worst of it and this new residency seems to want to bring out this inborn strain of destruction via lose of control through his worst enemy and origin of downfall, his Achilles heel, alcohol. You will not help but notice the strange goings on in this hotel the dead seem to walk and things have a life of its own, this hotel had a history of macabre and unsavoury, there was the famous too that took residence there in the past, the likes of Nelson Rockefeller in 1950, Henry Ford and Fam in 1927, Jean Harlow in 1930, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard in 1956, Mafia bigwigs, Wilson, Harding, Roosevelt, Nixon, and Vito the Chopper. In 1961 four writers, two of them Pulitzer Prize Winners, had leased the Overlook and reopened it as a writers school. And the there is room 217. By the time the snow settles Wendy, Danny's mother, tries to get her son to summon Tony, a friend of Danny's that there but not, and ask exactly what fates lay in wait but with no success. Wendy hesitantly decides then on to stick by her man and see this new job through. She had lost that one chance before the snow cut them off from departure and the unsavoury have there way. The star of the tale the one we only get to learn so much about his Danny Torrance a five year old with the ability to see see things that are there but not, hear what the normal ear cannot, read thoughts, dream in daytime, in realtime but a real seeing the future a foresight of things to come things that will leave him waiting in fear and terror anticipating its true insidious coming to form and its deadly end. He was a child that loved his parents unconditionally, despite his fathers problems, and the fear of divorce was more frightening for him than the foresight. He is the light of this tale, the goodness, the hero. There is another light in the form of the man Mr Hallorann he understands Danny's Shinning and the darkness that lays within the hotel. Danny will always be Danny and he only understands so much of this shinning at the age of five but the Overlook Hotel now there is a real problem a real building of a problem for any man to handle and especially one that the PR smiled father of Danny just did not need to walk into. The pages fly with ease, the right words for the moment, the emotion and the description, in a simple prose the writing has you fully immersed viscerally in the momentum of the gathering darkness and the fates of one family through, isolation, terror and redrum. "He looked at Jack for comment, and Jack flashed the PR smile again, large and insultingly toothy." When you think of that PR smile you think of Jack Nicholson and that fitting screen role character of Jack and probably something that Jim Carrey could also fill in a parody version of the Shinning with that equally great PR smile of his. "Snow spattered against the windows like thrown sand. His mouth was dry, his eyes like hot marbles, his heart trip hammering in his chest. Outside there was a hollow booming noise, like a dreadful door being thrown wide. Footfalls. Across the room was a mirror, and deep down in its silver bubble a single word appeared in green fire and that word was: REDRUM." "Well, thats how it is in this hotel. I don't know why, but it seems that all the bad things that ever happened here, there's little pieces of those things still layin around like fingernail clip-pins or the boogers that somebody nasty just wiped under a chair. i don't know why it should be here, there's bad goings-on just about every hotel in the world, i guess, and I've worked in a lot of them and had no trouble. Only here. But Danny, i don't think those things can hurt anybody.'He emphasised each word in the sentence with a mild shake of the boy's shoulders.'So if you should see something, in a hallway or a room or outside by those hedges…just look the other way and when you look back, it'll be gone. Are you digging me?" "…the Overlook really didn't want them out of here. Not at all. The Overlook was having one hell of a good time. There was a little boy to terrorise, a man and his woman to set one against the other, and if it played its cards right they could end up flitting through the Overlook's halls like insubstantial shades in a Shirley Jackson novel, whatever walked in Hill House walked alone, but you wouldn't be alone in the Overlook, oh no, there would be plenty of company here." ...more |
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Check out the new trailer for the forthcoming release of the Movie in 2013 @ http://more2read.com/review/the-great-gatsby-by-f-scott-fitzge [image] Check out the new trailer for the forthcoming release of the Movie in 2013 @ http://more2read.com/review/the-great-gatsby-by-f-scott-fitzgerald/ Gatsby, Jay a millionaire who just throws his money around a tycoon of sorts bites off more than he can chew. Fitzgerald is trying to show us maybe how shallow these rich characters are how they play against each other and how their friendships are paper thin badgered by suspicions, envy and jealousy. Gatsby leads a lavish and hedonistic lifestyle. The protagonist strikes some similarities to what i have heard of Fitzgerald's lifestyle. The author writes with a nice writing prose. Adapted to screen four times and another movie on the way with Di'caprio, what's the attraction with this story? Do we envy their lives, do we maybe look at them and say well I would do things different do it better and have a different partner, spend that money in other ways? Well thats the beauty of stories sometimes we get some food for thought. Last few sentences of the novel.. "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning---- So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." Some trivia about the author His wife, Zelda Fitzgerald, died eight years after he did, in a fire at the mental hospital where she was institutionalized. Died of a heart attack in Hollywood while writing "The Last Tycoon", a novel that was published unfinished. First novel was 'This Side of Paradise', written shortly after attending Princeton The Gatsby Style, named for his 1925 novel "The Great Gatsby", was honored on one of fifteen 32¢ US commemorative postage stamps in the Celebrate the Century series, issued 28 May 1998, celebrating the 1920s. He tried writing movie scripts but was frustrated by the image-based medium, which he had difficulty comprehending as it was so different from the language-based forms of the novel and short-story that he excelled in. Was a mentor and close friend of the young Ernest Hemingway, who grew more distant with him as Hemingway's fame grew and Fitzgerald's declined and he became increasingly more dependent on alcohol. Hemingway disapproved of Fitzgerald's lowering his great talent to write high-priced stories for slick commercial magazines like The Saturday Evening Post and his sojourns to Hollywood to make money writing screenplays. Unlike his great contemporaries Fitzgerald, William Faulkner and John Steinbeck, Hemingway never wrote for the movies, but he had no objection to selling his novels and short stories to the studios. Coined the term the Jazz Age in reference to the Roaring Twenties. Is portrayed by Malcolm Gets in "Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle" He was nominated in the 2007 inaugural New Jersey Hall of Fame for his services to literature. Is buried at St. Mary's Catholic Cemetery in Rockville, Maryland The Author [image] Fitzgerald and the family. [image] Some info i found about the many movies. The Great Gatsby has been filmed six times and is being filmed for a seventh: 1. The Great Gatsby, in 1926 by Herbert Brenon – a silent movie of a stage adaptation, starring Warner Baxter, Lois Wilson, and William Powell. It is a famous example of a lost film. Reviews suggest that it may have been the most faithful adaptation of the novel, but a trailer of the film at National Archives is all that is known to exist. 2. The Great Gatsby, in 1949 by Elliott Nugent – starring Alan Ladd, Betty Field, and Shelley Winters; for copyright reasons, this film is not readily available. 3. The Great Gatsby, in 1974, by Jack Clayton – the most famous screen version, starring Sam Waterston as narrator Nick Carraway, with Mia Farrow as Daisy Buchanan and Robert Redford as Gatsby, with a script by Francis Ford Coppola. 4. The Great Gatsby, in 2000 by Robert Markowitz – a made-for-TV movie starring Toby Stephens, Paul Rudd and Mira Sorvino. 5. G, in 2002 by Christopher Scott Cherot - a modernized, loosely based adaptation starring Richard T. Jones, Blair Underwood, and Chenoa Maxwell. 6. The Great Gatsby, in 2007 by Lee Kang-hoon – a Korean adaptation starring Kang Kyeong-joon, Park Ye-jin and MC Mong. 7. The Great Gatsby, to be directed by Baz Luhrmann and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, Tobey Maguire, Isla Fisher, Elizabeth Debicki, and Joel Edgerton. Luhrmann purchased the rights in 2008.Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire were the first to be cast, as Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway respectively. In November 2010, Luhrmann selected Mulligan to portray Daisy Buchanan.In April 2011, Isla Fisher was offered the role of Myrtle Wilson. In May, the Australian newcomer Elizabeth Debicki landed the role of Jordan Baker, while Joel Edgerton was cast as Tom Buchanan, a role which Luhrmann initially intended for Ben Affleck. Pre-production began in Sydney, Australia in March 2011 and the film is scheduled to film in 3D from August for 17 weeks, followed by an additional thirty weeks of post-production, with a view to a 2012 release. The more known movie so far, [image] [image] [image] Lets hope DiCaprio does a good job playing Jay Gatsby. http://more2read.com/?review=the-great-gatsby-by-f-scott-fitzgerald ...more |
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| Jun 01, 1982
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it was amazing
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[image] An awesome fan based movie trailer @ my webpage along with the review>>>http://more2read.com/review/the-gunslinger-the-dark-tower-1-by-stephen- [image] An awesome fan based movie trailer @ my webpage along with the review>>>http://more2read.com/review/the-gunslinger-the-dark-tower-1-by-stephen-king/ The Gunslinger "The Interloper, The Lord of Flies, The Man in Black cometh!" Stephen King our modern day Charles Dickens takes you on beginning of an epic journey with Roland 'The Gunslinger' in this poignant tale. The story takes us through the past and future and the coming of age of a man and a boy in search of The Tower. 'The more you eat the more you toot!' or should I say the more you re-read it the more you will appreciate it, that's what I felt second time round reading the novel and also third time via audiobook. I felt I picked up more clues to the whole Dark Tower experience. One person from the past and one from the future pitted together against the man in black in searcheth of The Tower. A Hawk pays no coinage to love or morals is The Gunslinger a Hawk? Is The Man in Black a priest? Verily as The Gunslinger walketh in the shadow of The Man in Black he feareth no Man! [image] Movie and Mini-series news.. Akiva Goldsman is going to be writing the screenplay for the mini-series of The Dark Tower and the movie also. He is also going to produce the movie, that looks good as he is a consulting producer for Fringe TV series, which is really good. Akiva has written screenplays for many good books I am legend, Da vinci code, I robot, a beautiful mind, angels and demons, a time to kill, the client and batman and robin. This looks promising. Director is going to be Ron Howard who has directed many good movies he directed the two Dan Brown adaptations and A beautiful mind. Stephen King is also going to co-produce. At the moment they have Javer Bardem from No country for old men to play Roland. [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 15, 2011
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Apr 27, 2011
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May 20, 2010
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Mass Market Paperback
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034547063X
| 9780345470638
| 034547063X
| 4.03
| 64,596
| 2001
| Sep 30, 2003
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really liked it
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Jack used to be a coppice-man and he is now settling into a new home in Wisconsin. He has been having strange dreams, no Speedy or flipping over for m
Jack used to be a coppice-man and he is now settling into a new home in Wisconsin. He has been having strange dreams, no Speedy or flipping over for many years now he is trying to deal with the present. Jack is eventually forced out of retirement as a Coppiceman on trail of the Fisherman, flipping over again but to where? What does Speedy and black crow feathers have to do with the case? This is an engrossing page-turner written in a more faster momentum than The Talisman I am loving the adult Jack! Plot is good, characters great this sequel is a dark tale. The Fisherman is baiting on Jack Sawyer, who alone has seen the territories, the territories and all they contain are involved somehow in theses wretched crimes, and he has been thrust into a drama of enoous consequence he cannot possibly grasp right now . The Tower , The Beam! Jack meets, the mother of the murdered boy, Judy. She is in a mental institute straight away he finds himself attracted to her beauty and persona, then she speaks of Faraway land where they have Jackrabbits the sizes of kangaroos the same place Jack has flipped to recently and now she entrusts him on a search for her son she says he is there in the Faraway Alive! Great stuff highly recommend to read after The Talisman and before The Dark Tower series will he catch The Fisherman? Save the boy and survive in The Territories? What fate lies for all? [image] [image] [image] review also here ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 31, 2010
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Jun 19, 2010
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May 20, 2010
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Paperback
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0747545251
| 9780747545255
| 0747545251
| 4.12
| 69,849
| Apr 10, 1959
| Jan 31, 1999
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it was amazing
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[image]
A gripping story! If you've seen the movie this is better, you get that missing insight of being in Norman's mind. The story is a page-turne [image] A gripping story! If you've seen the movie this is better, you get that missing insight of being in Norman's mind. The story is a page-turner. Bloch is a good writer and has plotted the story well no sentence is wasted or boring. After reading Darkly Dreaming Dexter I thought I would try and get into rambling mind of a different kind of killer. Bates is obsessed with his mother wants to be like her And wants her to be part of him. Some facts The novel "Psycho", written by Robert Bloch, was actually part of a series of pulp novels marketed in conjunction with the popular spooky radio show "Inner Sanctum". Alfred Hitchcock bought the rights to the novel anonymously from Robert Bloch for only US$9,000. He then bought up as many copies of the novel as he could to keep the ending a secret. Spoiler! Only read below if you know the story. (view spoiler)[In the end alot of detail is left out in the movie that touches on the state of mind of Bates. He was a transvestite schizophrenic, who in a blind range of jealousy killed his mother and her lover so that he could have his mother to himself. In the end out of guilt he tried to revive his mother from dead having conversation with her skeleton and pretending she was alive until in his split personality she literally became part of him. He would become semi drunk and have and split where she became the driver and killed until he gained control again, then he would assume he just passed out asleep when she was in control. He was reading into satanism and metaphysics which is probably where he got the idea that he could bring back his mother from the dead and decided to unearth her body from her grave [image] [image] [image] (hide spoiler)] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] Review Also here. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 23, 2010
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Aug 24, 2010
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May 20, 2010
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Paperback
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0385495226
| 9780385495226
| 0385495226
| 4.15
| 115,563
| Dec 1994
| Jun 15, 1999
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it was amazing
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A non-fiction story that shows the horrifying and stark reality of the unforgiving deadly insidious power of a certain virus, the Ebola virus. A story A non-fiction story that shows the horrifying and stark reality of the unforgiving deadly insidious power of a certain virus, the Ebola virus. A story that proves that truth can be more scary than some tales from fiction. Engrossing and a deadly read, terror and concern will run through your veins the next time you have flu symptoms that feel different from the norm. The author has done well in using facts in a spine chilling and captivating thriller with well crafted storytelling and writing. A must read. Excerpts to come soon. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 03, 2013
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Jan 23, 2013
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May 20, 2010
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Paperback
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3.88
| 1,169,831
| Oct 1915
| Mar 01, 1972
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it was amazing
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[image]
It was as a thought provoking encounter reading the metamorphosis of a man into some kind of dung beetle.Waking up to find out you have bec [image] It was as a thought provoking encounter reading the metamorphosis of a man into some kind of dung beetle.Waking up to find out you have become a bug and all that comes with being one can be a frightening encounter, the inapability of communicating with you're loved ones a sad fate. This is an engaging read reminiscent of The Incredible Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson. [image] [image] Theres to be a screen adaptation check out the video on my page Metamorphosis Teaser by Jeffrey Laub or Metamorphosis Promo by Jeffrey Laub ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 20, 2010
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Nov 21, 2010
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May 17, 2010
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Paperback
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my rating |
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3.91
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it was amazing
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Nov 09, 2012
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Nov 02, 2012
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3.83
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it was amazing
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Apr 30, 2012
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Mar 09, 2012
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3.90
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it was amazing
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Jul 05, 2012
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Feb 05, 2012
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4.23
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it was amazing
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Feb 03, 2012
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Jan 29, 2012
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3.90
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it was amazing
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Apr 30, 2012
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Dec 27, 2011
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4.17
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it was amazing
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Jul 30, 2012
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Dec 13, 2011
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4.34
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it was amazing
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Nov 08, 2011
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Sep 24, 2011
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4.07
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it was amazing
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Sep 21, 2022
Sep 18, 2022
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Feb 26, 2011
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3.86
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it was amazing
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Oct 12, 2012
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Jan 29, 2011
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3.78
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it was amazing
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not set
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Nov 24, 2010
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3.78
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it was amazing
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Nov 24, 2010
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Nov 21, 2010
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4.20
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it was amazing
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Feb 16, 2011
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Aug 25, 2010
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3.93
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it was amazing
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not set
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Aug 22, 2010
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4.27
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it was amazing
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Sep 23, 2013
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May 20, 2010
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3.93
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it was amazing
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May 29, 2011
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May 20, 2010
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3.92
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it was amazing
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Apr 27, 2011
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May 20, 2010
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4.03
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really liked it
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Jun 19, 2010
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May 20, 2010
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4.12
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it was amazing
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Aug 24, 2010
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May 20, 2010
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4.15
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it was amazing
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Jan 23, 2013
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May 20, 2010
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3.88
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it was amazing
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Nov 21, 2010
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May 17, 2010
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