I read the sixteen plays in this outstanding collection (roughly half of the extant Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides) on-and-off over three years anI read the sixteen plays in this outstanding collection (roughly half of the extant Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides) on-and-off over three years and reviewed them all individually on Goodreads (in a few cases I read a different translation). I wanted to list the volume as a whole just to say the introductions are excellent--to all of the plays, to each playwright individually, and to each play individually. And the translations seem very good to my untutored eye. And the plays themselves are really fascinating, exciting, and at times other worldly to read....more
One of my least favorite Greek plays, the characters felt completely flat and utterly without agency, just mindlessly and implausibly programmed by thOne of my least favorite Greek plays, the characters felt completely flat and utterly without agency, just mindlessly and implausibly programmed by the gods (or one goddess, Aphrodite) who has Phaedra fall in implausible and overwrought love with her stepson Hippolytus while his love for Artemis over Aphrodite feels arbitrary and rigid. Not to mention long stretches of exposition and a contrived ending (OK, not the only Greek play with one of those).
I absolutely loved this play. It has a real ancient and alien feeling to it, more so than other Greek plays I've read, given that it is about the relaI absolutely loved this play. It has a real ancient and alien feeling to it, more so than other Greek plays I've read, given that it is about the relationship between the Gods and something even more ancient, the Titans. It feels almost primordial. I also loved the way it told and entire story simply from the vantage point of one chained prisoner reflecting back. I also liked the way it wrestled with themes of authority, progress, science--and defiance. The brutal and bleak ending adds to its allure--even if the introduction cautions that this is simply because we are missing the continuation of the trilogy in which there would have been a more conventional resolution.
There is something remarkably empathetic about a Greek playwright seeing things from the Persian perspective shortly after a massive and possibly exisThere is something remarkably empathetic about a Greek playwright seeing things from the Persian perspective shortly after a massive and possibly existential war with the Persians. Of course, the same was also true of the Iliad--although that was probably composed much after what was likely a less existential war.
That said, this felt more like a series of monologues than actual dialog, plot, developments, tragedy, or anything else. More of a historical artifact than something like the later great works of Greek drama. At least that was my untutored reaction.
A graphic novel. The illustrations are really well done. The story is about a 1960s alternative mother who accidentally has a child, gives her up to hA graphic novel. The illustrations are really well done. The story is about a 1960s alternative mother who accidentally has a child, gives her up to her parents, and joins a cult--and then the daughter's growing up, becoming successful and searching for her mother. It also has various interludes that are weird, supernatural, military history, and even horror. I felt like I never got particularly emotionally engaged or liked it that much--but also found a lot of it puzzling. After I finished I read a few excellent reviews on Goodreads that explained a lot of what I had missed and made me appreciate it more in retrospect. But still did not bring me to love it....more
I read Alcestis because I was intrigued by the big role this play had in The Silent Patient (a perfectly decent but not great domestic thriller). It iI read Alcestis because I was intrigued by the big role this play had in The Silent Patient (a perfectly decent but not great domestic thriller). It is the story of a king who looks around for someone to sacrifice themselves to save his life, his parents and others reject him, but eventually his wife Alcestis agrees and faces her fate stoically. It has interesting discussions of parental relationships (the King's selfish father who refused to sacrifice himself) along with marriage and fidelity. Plus what frankly seems like a very bizarre plot line where Heracles comes into the picture and rescues Alcestis from the underworld bringing her back to an incredulous king. Probably deserves its place as one of the more minor plays because it is not really a tragedy (where the hero's flaw leads to their downfall) or a larger-scale drama, but interesting nonetheless.
The title tells the story of Ursula Todd lives. She dies in childbirth in 1910. Repeat and dies drowning. Repeat and dies falling off a roof. Repeat aThe title tells the story of Ursula Todd lives. She dies in childbirth in 1910. Repeat and dies drowning. Repeat and dies falling off a roof. Repeat and dies in the 1918 global influenza multiple times until her sense of deja vu leads her to take the steps to avoid it. Many other lives--in one she is raped and ends up marrying a domestic abuser and being killed by him. In another she marries a German who becomes a Nazi and is trapped in Germany when war breaks out. In many she lives through--or dies from--the Blitz. All of this done without anything resembling science fiction of explanation of the mechanism, if anything it is more Buddhist reincarnation or possibly even mental illness than anything else (in fact, the title could be read as Life Afterlife).
The extraordinary strengths of the books are really strong character development, making it interesting to read variations on the same story, and an emphasis on the role of contingency in life. Plus a strong portrayal of the English, and especially upper-middle class women, in the first half of the twentieth century as the country went through two wars.
The weakness is at times it gets a bit dull to read variations on the same story. Plus while some lives some vivid, many seem a bit stereotypical. Plus it began with her about to murder Hitler in 1930 to prevent everything that followed, something that comes up later, but is never developed--and feels out of place in a story that is not about alternative histories but about alternative lives for one person within a constant history. There are great works of alternative history, like The Plot Against America or The Man in the High Castle and this gestures more towards them than probably makes sense in the format.
I spent more space above on the negatives than the incredibly unique and exciting positives that more than outweigh them--so read the book if you haven't!...more
Another hilarious, insightful, and--less commonly for Simon Rich--moving and even sentimental set of short stories. They follow his almost trademarkedAnother hilarious, insightful, and--less commonly for Simon Rich--moving and even sentimental set of short stories. They follow his almost trademarked formula of with many stories from the perspective of super villains, the tooth fairy, God, Goliath and other canonical perspectives but all with a distinctively human set of preoccupations and concerns. The them of this book was millennials who were just starting to cope with children and starting to feel middle aged. Other stories create some other mechanism for distance, like a post apocalyptic family talking about the before times or a purported legal contract between a daughter and her family governing her visit home for Thanksgiving. All of this gives an almost anthropological perspective on humans, seeing their foibles from a distance.
I expect I will be re-reading many of these, just like I have Rich's previous collections, because of their combination of humor, originality, but also because they say something deeper. Plus they're mostly pretty short, as is the entire collection....more
The best stories in this were amazing, telling entire lives with economy, complex relationships, often damaged in a certain way but also working not dThe best stories in this were amazing, telling entire lives with economy, complex relationships, often damaged in a certain way but also working not despite but because of the damage. But there was also a certain monotony to them, almost a Canadian claustrophobia of the settings and types of situations. I felt like I sometimes do with story collections that I would have been happy to have something much shorter, like three stories, so it did not eventually feel grueling going through all of them. (Of course I could just sample individual stories but I have a hard time doing that.)
If I had three would include:
"Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage" (the title story): I loved the depiction of literally an old maid, the cruel practical joke played on her by some town girls, the surprising twist, all of it psychologically authentic and shifting back and forth from different perspectives with a certain amount of sympathy for all.
"Comfort": A retired school teacher and militant atheist dies by suicide when facing a painful illness, his wife goes through the funeral process while remembering back to his clashes with the religious Christians in the town and its affect on his teaching job.
"The Bear Comes Over the Mountain": At first you think it is about a loving marriage where the woman is committed to an institution due to her failing memory (dementia?), but then you learn more about the loving husband's serial infidelities with students and her touching reconnection with a man in the institution and you get a different perspective on their marriage, their lives, and what could be portrayed as illness but is really a new phase in her life.
If I had a fourth would include "Nettles". And one story I really did not get into was "Queenie"....more
My teenage daughter and I listened to the first half of this together and read the second half in parallel. It was an enjoyable listen and a fast readMy teenage daughter and I listened to the first half of this together and read the second half in parallel. It was an enjoyable listen and a fast read. I liked the interplay of psychology and Greek tragedy--particularly the Euripides play Alcetis (which I haven't read but will). It was also suspenseful. But a bit too much of it felt like a who/why/how dunnit that had some of the middle plodding that genre had. And then it had one big twist but not lots of them so felt like you're paging through for that one moment. Don't regret reading it, just not as spectacular as one might have guessed from the sales....more
The cover of this book jumped out at me in an airport bookstore. I was exhausted, incapable of concentrating much so I judged a book by its cover and The cover of this book jumped out at me in an airport bookstore. I was exhausted, incapable of concentrating much so I judged a book by its cover and pulled this one off the shelf. I found the idea of an illustrated middle grade novel that was a fractured fairy tale that restored some agency to the match girl from the Hans Christian Anderson story appealing so I bought it. It was a short read, nicely written, beautifully illustrated and laid out. It did not follow the convention of telling an alternative and surprising back story to the unnamed match girl of the Anderson story but instead told the story of a different match girl in Victorian London who was upset about Anderson's exploitative telling and wanted to tell her own story attached to her own name.
The first half was excellent, depicting Dickens-style the difficulties of child labor and the terrible conditions of match factories and the disparities in Victorian London. Then it shifts into the dream or fantastical as she makes wishes as she lights her last three matches. The final part was fine, possibly worth reading but more interesting as history than literature as it depicted strikes against the match factory and the changes that followed.
Altogether, a somewhat imperfect combination of literature and history but a reasonably decent job of each....more
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio began her first book, The Undocumented Americans a work of nonfiction, "A memoir? I was twenty-one. I wasn't fucking BarbaKarla Cornejo Villavicencio began her first book, The Undocumented Americans a work of nonfiction, "A memoir? I was twenty-one. I wasn't fucking Barbara Streisand. I had been writing professionally since I was fifteen, but only about music--I wanted to be the guy in High Fidelity--and I didn't want my first book to be a rueful tale about being a sickly Victorian orphan with tuberculosis who didn't have a Social Security number, which is what the agents all wanted." My review of that book was that memoir aspects were well written and multidimensional while the journalism and political commentary was more flat and predictable.
Now Cornejo Villavicencio's second book is an autobiographical novel set largely at Harvard and New York City during her college years. It is even better written, has some of the aspects of the guy from "High Fidelity" in a typical-ish coming of age stories with new ideas, new authors, various types of professors, boys, and the like. But it also has the ways in which those are the same and different for a student that is undocumented and comes from a very different family from many of her peers. Altogether it did a great job capturing coming of age and college (and as an aside, just about every detail of its portrayal of Harvard seemed correct--with the minor exception of getting the name of my class wrong). I did not fully love the nonlinear jumping back and forth in time but I could be wrong in my judgment of that.
The ratio of multidimensional to single dimensional went up a lot from Cornejo Villavicencio's first book to her second, I can't wait to read her third....more
This book is largo, largo, largo. But it builds momentum and emotional energy in ways that are almost imperceptible and then you realize everything haThis book is largo, largo, largo. But it builds momentum and emotional energy in ways that are almost imperceptible and then you realize everything has changed for the characters, the way they think about themselves and each other, and you are not entirely sure how such a big change took place because at every stage there were no abrupt or inexplicable changes.
Set in an unspecified Latin American country it begins with a soprano's concert in the Vice President's residence being stormed by terrorists who take everyone hostage. In the weeks that follow personalities emerge and change for almost two dozen characters, all handled incredibly deftly by Ann Patchett. The barrier between the captors and captives change and evolve, rules shift, and a happy bubble forms around all of it. You'll have to read for the rest....more
My first Ferrante novel (or novella?), about a woman who is abandoned by her husband and has an increasingly hard time coping with everything in the fMy first Ferrante novel (or novella?), about a woman who is abandoned by her husband and has an increasingly hard time coping with everything in the fallout. Written in a very intense style, it somehow seemed narrow and claustrophobic....more
I read this to my nine year old who is very into military history. It is basically the length of a short story that takes place on D-Day as a French gI read this to my nine year old who is very into military history. It is basically the length of a short story that takes place on D-Day as a French girl in the resistance rescues her mother who is also in the resistance. It is thin and implausible. And it did not seem to especially capture my son's imagination either....more
A slightly surreal graphic novel about a man who is isolated for an extended period repairing a wall on a giant tower whose history, purpose and organA slightly surreal graphic novel about a man who is isolated for an extended period repairing a wall on a giant tower whose history, purpose and organization he does not fully understand. After failing to get spare parts or a visit from the inspector he embarks on a journey where he finds an entire system and set of processes revolving around it in strange ways. Mostly beautiful black and white etchings with some powerfully interspersed color. Will read more in this series....more
Just like the first one: A free download, the first paragraph is addicting, a few hours later I'm done (this time on a plane flight). Light reading, vJust like the first one: A free download, the first paragraph is addicting, a few hours later I'm done (this time on a plane flight). Light reading, various twists and turns, engaging characters. But you leave feeling like you've eaten a bowl of too many sweets....more
I thought this was fine but well below the expectations I had from it being on my TBR forever. It felt a bit generic and clichéd version of Italy and I thought this was fine but well below the expectations I had from it being on my TBR forever. It felt a bit generic and clichéd version of Italy and what should be in a historical Italian novel. Perhaps that is unfair and I'll read it with fresh eyes again in the future....more
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