Arnifannar - aNobii

Books (115)

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- Heart of Darkness & The Secret Sharer (84)
- By Joseph Conrad
- Reading since May 20, 2013
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- The Great Gatsby (3414)
- By Francis Scott Fitzgerald
- Finished on May 8, 2013
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- Dracula (3)
- By Claire Bampton
- Finished on Mar 29, 2013
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- The Year of Dreaming Dangerously (13)
- By Slavoj Zizek
- Finished on May 13, 2013
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- The Amber Spyglass (686)
- (His Dark Materials, Book 3)
- By Philip Pullman
- Finished on May 1, 2013
  
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The Amber Spyglass

Convoluted, to say the least.

I want to clarify that I am not marking the book down because of its agnostic tone, which was actually one of the things I liked the most about it. Aside from that I generally liked the imagination behind it and found many of the central ideas to be intriguing. But then the story is just all-over-th ... (continue)

I want to clarify that I am not marking the book down because of its agnostic tone, which was actually one of the things I liked the most about it. Aside from that I generally liked the imagination behind it and found many of the central ideas to be intriguing. But then the story is just all-over-the-place. I had a hard time dragging myself through reading the last 150 pages, and the story seemed as if it would go on forever. Before that I had gradually lost interest mainly for three reasons: #1, it was impossible to understand where the story was going at any point, so no chance of building suspense or anticipation, and also some premises that had been set up earlier might just all of a sudden not apply anymore if they were inconvenient for the development of the plot; #2, repeatedly it was impossible to relate to any of the characters' motivations; #3, every obstacle in the story is like a joke with how easily and cheaply they are overcome.
So, all in all, this story is a mess, but nonetheless very imaginative and with a lot of good ideas.

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— May 2, 2013 | Add your feedback

- Wonderstruck (33)
- A Novel in Words and Pictures
- By Brian Selznick
- Finished on Jan 30, 2013
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- Life (133)
- Keith Richards
- Abandoned on Feb 24, 2013
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Life

1 person find this helpful
Stopped reading half-way into it, with a bad taste in my mouth.

Now, I know that the big rock stars of the sixties didn't always turn out to be the most likeable personalities in real life, but after attempting to read this ego-tripping white-washing of Keith Richards's he now strikes me as possibly the least likeable of the bunch.
While finding the book an enj ... (continue)

Now, I know that the big rock stars of the sixties didn't always turn out to be the most likeable personalities in real life, but after attempting to read this ego-tripping white-washing of Keith Richards's he now strikes me as possibly the least likeable of the bunch.
While finding the book an enjoyable reading at first, what now echoes in my mind are mostly passages like the one where K.R. claims that he may have written Jimi Hendrix's 'Hey Joe' and that a mutual girlfriend of theirs snatched the song from K.R.'s apartment and brought it to Hendrix. Richards claims that this is a story that he heard and that, hey, it may be true, even if he doesn't remember it, because there are so many things from those days that he doesn't remember. This he claims in a book which is exactly about those times and is so rich with details that it actually ends up becoming off-putting - in the sense that you start wondering just how much of the material is coming from K.R. himself as opposed to being filled in by the ghost writer(s - hardly a one man's job).
Where the book really lost me was where Keith covers the death of Brian Jones. The contempt that Richards still holds for Jones 40 years after his untimely death is one of those moments amidst the self-aggrandizement where the reader gets a glimpse of K.R.'s true self. Anyway, Brian Jones was apparently a pathetic scumbag, whose only real success in life was to have helped launch a band with the genius of Richards and Jagger. Keith Richards describes how he saved Anita Pallenberg from the evil Brian Jones, and after that moment in the book Jones dissolves from the narrative - only to be mentioned again when Richards learns of his death, with a passing mentioning that they had just kicked him out of the band two weeks earlier. Then after at first going through his doubts that the builder Frank Thorogood actually killed Brian Jones, Keith Richards goes on to say that maybe he did, after being provoked by obnoxious Brian Jones, but even in that case it was irrelevant anyway, as scumbag Brian didn't have any life left in him anyway.
I stopped reading the book on page 310, not even bothering to finish the chapter I was at, as K.R. had lost all credibility to me. This all-around nice guy image that he (and his over-wroked ghost writer) tries to give of himself - not buying it!

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— Feb 24, 2013 | Add your feedback
- The Haunted Hotel and Other Stories (23)
- (Mystery & Supernatural)
- By Wilkie Collins
- Finished on May 19, 2013
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- Tales from the Arabian Nights (18)
- (Wordsworth Collection)
- By C. Lang
- Reading since Oct 14, 2012
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- 2001 (352)
- A Space Odyssey
- By Arthur C. Clarke
- Finished on Aug 11, 2012
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- From Hell (261)
- By Alan Moore
- Finished on Jul 25, 2012
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- The Art Of Comic-Book Inking 2nd Edition (9)
- By Gary Martin, AA. VV.
- Started on Jun 30, 2012
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- Drawing (5)
- A Complete Guide
- By Giovanni Civardi
- Finished
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- Marvel Chronicle (9)
- By Tom DeFalco, Tom Brevoort, Matthew Manning
- Finished on Jul 14, 2012
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- The Subtle Knife (738)
- (His Dark Materials, Book 2)
- By Philip Pullman
- Finished on Jul 2, 2012
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