My Archives: January 2004
Monday, January 26, 2004
Being a Jude Law fan since Gattacca (sp?), you know that I HAD to watch Cold Mountain. Jude Law, Nicole Kidman... an English guy and an Australlian playing Americans that live in the South during the Civil War. If you don't call that odd, I don't know what is. It's sort of like my friend who has an Japanese first name, a German last name and she was born on the fourth of July.
Anyway, since I am the kind of person that read the book first before I watch the movie, I decided to read Cold Mountain. After all, it definitely recieved a lot of praise, a lot of awards, a lot of people saying that it was one of the best war novels of all time and it's a great love story.
Well... my opinion? I HATE HATE HATE HATE THIS BOOK! It's awful. I was about 20 pages into the book and I already hated it. I don't understand how Frazier got awards for writing this crap of a book. I don't understand how people can AWARD such a book as this.
Maybe it was the writing I don't like for I think Frazier's writing sounds way too contrieved and TRYING TOO HARD. And then this story isn't at all a LOVE story as people say it is. The whole "Love" thing didn't even come to play until the very last chapters. I think the movie played up the love story a little more than the book ever did. Grant it, Inman like the movie escapes the war just to go back to Ada but their eventual "love" is basically like 30 pages long out of 400+ pages. This book is more war and rambling than anything else. The war stories would be about 100 pages. Actual interesting stuff would be around another hundred pages. So 230 pages of useful things in this book while the other 170+ pages are shit.
The only reason why this book wasn't a total waste of my time were the interesting characters that Inman met on his way home to Ada. There was that old woman with the goats, Veasey, the girl named Sara, and the guy from the south who was to inherit this big plantation but was willing to give it all up for a slave he fell in love with. There's also the character of Ruby that befriended Ada. THOSE were the only damn story lines that were interesting and I wished Cold Mountain was about those characters rather than the two characters I was supposed to care about. Most of the book Fraizer just desrcibes every stupid detail. I guess he just wants to prove to us all that he knows the Civil War. I mean he would describe gun handles, dresses, things in the woods, like tree sap for example. If he wrote more pages to this novel I wouldn't be surprised if he maticulously described nail fugus from a patriots corpse. I swear. I couldn't stand it anymore. It was just awful. Maybe he's acurate in his ways but it's an awful book.
And I've read war books before. I never minded to read war books. There was the Diary of Anne Frank, Night, Red Badge of Courage, Snow Falling on Cedars etc... I can go on (yes, these stories portray all different perspectives of war). cold Mountain tries too hard to be authentic. And for anyone looking for a love story in this crap needs to put the book back on the rack and read Snow Falling on Cedars instead or some other good worthy story.
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Look, even an amazon.com reader agreed with me. He/she took the words right out of my mouthwhy is this book so boring? i don't need to know how wet and brown and chocolatey and soggy and damp and moist and dark and marshy the marsh was. i feel allowing room for the reader to infer a few details with their own imagination might have been nice. the national book award...really? i was afraid for inman to take his next step or wake from slumber in dread of being subjected to another 5 pages of how dirty and brown and chalky and dry the dirt beneath his black, heavy, worn, creased, leathery boots were. through frazier's superfluous descriptions i was waiting to read about how foul inman smelled, but no such luck. what did i learn from reading this book? quotation marks are our friends.
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And here's anotherThis book was so incredibly boring and long. It went on and on. I have no idea what fool would ever give this book an award! I think you deserve an award if you finish reading it. I can't believe they made a movie about this book. Honestly, this has got to be one of the all time worst books ever written.
Posted by Cindy @ 04:11 AM CST [Link] [No Comments]
Monday, January 12, 2004
I finally get to write here again because I actually have the time and the willingness to do it. But since this little site has turned into my little reviewing blog, I shall write here for the pupose of reviewing.
Now about Goodbye Tsugumi... I first have to say that I've always been a fan of Banana Yoshimoto ever since I read her other works like the famous Kitchen and my favorite Asleep which was a book full of her short stories. I've read all of her published books in English and the lastest one and the newest one to be published here is Goodby Tsugumi. From reading her books I already know what her usual writing style is. It's usually always about a young woman finding meaning in people and circumstances surrounding her. There's usually this happy, complete, feeling to Yoshimoto's writing especially in her descriptions. Her characters all seem to live in this perfect world even though their current situations are the total opposite of being perfect because most if not all of the characters she writes are very optimistic.
In Goodbye Tsugumi though, everything that makes Banana Yoshimoto so fun is missing. Though the story is supposed to be uplifting somewhat I just didn't feel it. In this book there is still the optimistic young woman here, there is still that descriptive happy feeling but I just didn't get it. After reading half way through the book I was left feeling bored and that never happened before when I read her previous work. To put it plainly, I just didn't like it at all.
Goodbye Tsugumi is about Maria and her friendship with her sickly, weak cousin who is beautiful, selfish, and very outspoken. For most of her life Maria, along with her unmarried mother has lived in a seaside inn that is owed by her mother's sister and husband. Their two daughters, the older one being Yuko who is somewhat plump and wears glasses is bright and happy while the younger daughter is Tsugumi who has been sick all her life but despite her being thing and pale and weak, Tsugumi is wretched, loud, spoiled and very pretty. Tsugumi is that hot tempered type of chracter which I enjoy watching or reading about whether that character is in a TV show, a movie, or in a book.
Maria it seems is the only person that Tsugumi feels that trully understands her because unlike Tsugumi's sister or her mother Maria knows how to take Tsugumi's sarcasm and knows how to play with it. After being close to Tsugumi, Maria moves away to Tokyo and when summer approaches, Tsugumi calls Maria to stay at the inn for her summer vacation.
This leads to Maria's summer adventures with Tsugumi, a summer that may be Tsugumi's last. And this adventure is what the book is about along with various perspectives of the meaning of life or something like that. Personally, I just didn't like it at all. I did not like Maria's outlook on life, Tsugumi's attitude and everything else about this book. I think Yoshimoto may have intended it to be sentimental. Something to think about but I really didn't enjoy it. Tsugumi may be a tough and feisty woman but nothing of the character seemed alive to me. It wasn't at all memorable.
I only wish when her next book is printed here it will be much better than this one. I trully loved Asleep a lot. Now to me, THAT was a memorable book with characters that come alive. Like I was watching a movie. Read that along with Kitchen rather than this boring one.
Posted by Cindy @ 11:54 PM CST [Link] [No Comments]