W Perry Hall

Great book if not for Ak-RON

Revisado: 11-18-21

This great book has at least half its case studies set in Akron, Ohio.

One would think then that someone would tell this monotone narrator that the name of the city is pronounced ak-Ruhn, not ak-RON, as in Ron Burgundy. If the droning narrator says akRON once, he says it AT LEAST 100 times--to the point of infuriation in this listener. 🤬

Awful. Who picks these narrators and who is in charge of production and editing? A crew of Clowns, apparently.

I pity the author for having a publisher who gives not one S.

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Condescending and Carcinogenic

Revisado: 09-19-21

I do not so much mind an Englishman's fascination with the caste system in an antebellum town on the Mississippi River, a town where my mother, grandparents and great-grandparents are buried. But, the author doesn't really reveal much more than you can get from the much better written and intriguing Midnight in the Garden and Evil.

Here, the author would expect the readers to believe that the men in Natchez are largely effeminate nancies and the women are vapid buzzsaws who pushed the men to lie with other men.

Worse, the narrator's detestation of the characters and content oozes from every mock conversation recounted.

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WOKE Audible : shameless agitprop

Revisado: 11-26-20

I enjoyed the trip that READY PLAYER ONE took me on. The author transforms the sequel into a stinking number 2 of WOKEness.

I hate propagandist uber left bull. We’ve suffered propaganda from the other side of the cultural divide from a clownish president who I have been working to defeat since day one.

I dont need pinko crap pushed on me now, in an adventure novel full of virtue signaling and instructing all readers, including very young ones, that being a male or a female is ABSOLUTELY meaningless, that all people should have sex with whomever : Who cares what sex a partner is, our protagonist proclaims, it makes no difference; in his virtual world, he has been a woman having sex with a man, he has been a man having sex with a man, and a woman having sex with a woman, and man having sex with a woman who identifies as a man, and male copulating with a male who identifies as a female, and all combinations of genderfluidity ad infinitum, all the time! Who needs a sexual organ anyway!?! What is it but a limitation on the possibilities in my mind and in cyber space?

Why does an entertaining author have to shovel manure on his readers? It’s just way too much. You can tell right away when a writer is pushing an agenda on his readers. Shamelessly so.

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Real fine lady, who's that lady?

Revisado: 10-21-20

A work of wonder displaying the naivete' and mistakes of youth and some Americans' missteps in life choices that were driven by gullible and romantic notions of and in Europe. The novel still feels fresh and timely.

I was driven from this novel, after beginning it a few years back, by both its bulk and by my dislike of Washington Square (see, if you will, my caustic review of both the book and the author). I am pleased to have returned to The Portrait of a Lady, so that, finally, I can appreciate the depth of character and psychological acuity of Henry James' writing.

As much as I disliked Washington Square (and was unimpressed by his novella The Beast in the Jungle), I prized this esteemed classic of fiction.

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1 4 3, goes the married narrator to Quebecois hunk

Revisado: 10-21-20

“A war-time romance, without the war, without the sex....,” as the author refers to her relationship with the bookish hunk Quebecois, whilst taking care of her neurotic drug-addicted brother, upon her husband taking their young son out of town to get away from her negativity.

I expected this would be more like the first three (Autumn, Winter and Spring) of Ali Smith’s brilliant seasonal quartet.

I’ll say this: it kept me reading for 224 pages of an inner monologue). Maybe WEATHER gave me, a middle age male wasp, an inside view of the emotional romantic adventures of cougars.

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As Don Winslow said, Jaws for Parents.

Revisado: 10-21-20

Set in and around Boston, Mass., this terrifying novel centers on an "ancient" chain of parents gaslit into doing whatever is necessary to protect their children.

The novel follows the latest link in the chain, a 30-something divorced mom with remissive breast cancer, as she fights to save her 13-year-old daughter who has been kidnapped by the prior link, a couple whose son is being held captive until our protagonist comes through with her own kidnapping.

Many times it is discomforting to read because it hits so close to home. I am quite sure that if my kids were still adolescents, I would have looked at this as more of a real life horror story.

Imaginative novel well with the realm of reality. Not a moment of slack in the story. Taut midnight burner. A solid 4.5.

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Epiphanies in the Commonplace

Revisado: 10-21-20

I did not expect too much from this novel, being no big fan of Stegner's most-recognized novels, Angle of Repose (thee and thou and thy and thine began to crawl my spine) and the uninspiring The Spectator Bird. I was caught off guard then, by how deeply I was stirred by Stegner's semi-autobiographical novel of a close, long-term friendship between two married couples, set in Wisconsin and New England.


Stegner composed a brilliant life contrast: the optimism and enthusiasm of two young, married couples starting out in Madison, Wisconsin, when hope sprung eternal, versus these same marrieds, thirty years on, after life, though gracing them in different ways, has ineluctably dealt each major disappointments and forced them into cathartic concessions.


What struck me most though, was how much Crossing to Safety--Stegner's final novel--more than any other novel I've read, seemed a perfect parting gift to the world: as his last piece of art, an elegiac exercise in the epiphanies emanating from the unexceptional, a sort of tuning fork to resound in us revelations found in ordinary lives and that we can yet discover in each of our own.


This novel not only profoundly moved me, it chimes on in my mind as a carillon of self-contemplation on marriage, friendship and family. One could hardly expect more of a novel.


That is ever the difference between the wise and the unwise: the latter wonders at what is unusual; the wise man wonders at the usual.—Emerson

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Fresh Cerebral Provocations

Revisado: 10-21-20

An essay collection that's Fresh, Brilliant, Cerebrally Stimulating and Boundary-Expanding (for this Gen-X male, to be sure).

The New Yorker must be proud to have Jia Tolento as its millennial cultural critic.

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Sings

Revisado: 10-21-20

A wonder at provoking thoughts on today’s societal ills in America and the odyssey of first-generation American citizens born to Asian immigrants (and, particularly those, like the author, of Pakistani immigrant parents).

I love books like this: part memoir, part fiction, all brilliantly conceived and written in prose that often floats like a melody. Poetic.

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“hoax” said over 600 X on Fox n 1st 6 mos. of 2020

Revisado: 09-05-20

State-supported media.
A Propaganda machine for Donny Trump.

The best book ever at Concisely gathering and exposing the blatant manipulation and the soldier mentality of the flock. A Connect the dots exposure of how a conservative news channel, formerly with journalistic principles, shed its Integrity, conservative philosophy, and actual news team in favor of nothing but cheerleaders and pleaders for Trump.

A scary stat: The word “hoax” was used more than 600 times on Fox News in the first 6 months alone of 2020.

How pathetic. How illustrative of the depths to which this channel has sunk.

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