Kevin Tole’s books on Goodreads (873 books) (original) (raw)
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| | # | cover | title | author | isbn | isbn13 | asin | pages | rating | ratings | pub | (ed.) | rating | my rating | review | notes | | comments | votes | count | started | read | added
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| title Seeing Voices | author Sacks, Oliver | isbn 0375704078 | isbn13 9780375704079 | asin 0375704078 | num pages 222pp | avg rating 4.06 | num ratings 5,850 | date pub 1989 | date pub edition Nov 28, 2000 | Kevin's rating | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review None | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 0 | # times read 1 | date started Sep 30, 2024 | date read not set | date added Sep 30, 2024 | owned | format Paperback | actions view | | | |
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| title The Left Hand of Darkness | author Le Guin, Ursula K. | isbn | isbn13 | asin | num pages 304pp | avg rating 4.10 | num ratings 192,019 | date pub 1969 | date pub edition Jul 01, 2000 | Kevin's rating | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review None | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 0 | # times read 0 | date started not set | date read not set | date added Sep 25, 2024 | owned | format Paperback | actions view | | | |
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| title The Fate of the Earth | author Schell, Jonathan | isbn 0380613255 | isbn13 9780380613250 | asin 0380613255 | num pages 244pp | avg rating 3.94 | num ratings 278 | date pub 1982 | date pub edition Jan 01, 1982 | Kevin's rating | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review None | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 0 | # times read 1 | date started Sep 24, 2024 | date read not set | date added Sep 24, 2024 | owned | format Paperback | actions view | | | |
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| title The Breezes | author O'Neill, Joseph | isbn 057117258X | isbn13 9780571172580 | asin 057117258X | num pages 180pp | avg rating 3.54 | num ratings 57 | date pub Jan 01, 1995 | date pub edition 1995 | Kevin's rating really liked it | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review Born in 1964, half Irish half Turkish, this was O'Neill's second novel ,published in 1996. He appears to have lived a peripatetic life particularly in Born in 1964, half Irish half Turkish, this was O'Neill's second novel ,published in 1996. He appears to have lived a peripatetic life particularly in his younger years. In an interview in 2014 he said, "I’ve moved around so much and lived in so many different places that I don’t really belong to a particular place, and so I have little option but to seek out dramatic situations that I might have a chance of understanding." Since 1998 he has lived and written in New York.So what to make of The Breezes? It is an intensely Irish novel. But if it came down to it and I had to identify what made it an Irish novel I would be hard pushed to state precisely what that meant. It is not simply geographical location. Perhaps it is an acceptance of Fate with a lackadaisical charm of 'getting on with it' combined with a sense of the surreal and comedic in life.The Breezes as a family are pretty dysfunctional in a non-Irish sense, or maybe just pretty dysfunctional full stop. The mother died after being struck by lightning. The father has worked the poisoned chalice of a job as the controller of the regional railway and endpoint for all those service complaints from the railway using public. The daughter Rosie is an Irish beauty with a temper who is prepared to drift. Part of that drift is centred on her eternal bum and no-hoper of a live-in boyfriend, Steve. We view the happenings through the eyes of the son Johnny who has given up his accountancy studies to make furniture bordering on art rather than function. Johnny's girlfriend is Angela, a high flier in business management.Like Jude the Obscure, everything that could go wrong does go wrong. Pa is a disastrous football referee which he only took up to bond with young Johnny’s interest in football and his support for the local professional team, Rockport Utd, has come about for the same reason (the team are relegated at the end of the season in a game which they dominated). Johnny’s chair making is a disaster compounded from a lack of interest and ability, Pa’s best friend dies in an accident, Pa’s house is burgled just after he is made redundant on the spur after 25 years’ service, the writer of the report that saw him fired being Angela. Rosie has an air hostess job she hates but cannot make a decision and regularly flies off the handle, Steve commonly being the butt of her ill-temper and at the same time the object of her affection. The disastrous series of events is like Johnny’s love of cartoon Wile E. Coyote’s total failure to capture the Road Runner due to circumstances beyond the Coyote’s control. How can this make a novel which holds you to the end? In part it is O’Neill’s lush and expert handling of narrative; in part it is the comedic side that all these events bring to us. We all carry that ability to laugh at another’s misfortune/mis-happenstance. It is inherent in comedy. But it is more than that. The events as well as being comedic are also tragic and farcical, essential elements in comedy. The burglary also released Pa’s on-heat basset hound whose main activity when not in the mad grip of oestrus appears to be to shit anywhere and everywhere throughout Pa’s house. It is this stoical acceptance of bad luck and happenstance which continues throughout the novel which makes for the comedy and the hyper-reality of the book and which is a reflection of the tragedy of life. It might turn out alright…. but it invariably will not.There is almost a defenceless facetiousness in the attitudes of all these characters that might be summed up by the phrase ‘Shit happens’ just like the inevitability of Trusty the basset hound fouling the house. They accept the inevitability of these disasters until they are forced to the bottom and break down. Pa takes to his bed. Johnny appears to accept that his romance with Angela has reached the end of its tether, but in the end, acceptance is better than railing at the misfortunes of life. That ‘acceptance’ of Fate is very Irish. It is as if all O’Neill’s characters are exhibiting a state of mid-life crisis under the bag of woes dealt to them. Indecisiveness lurks within all of them. And that flows right to the very end of the novel where Johnny is travelling by train to see Angela to sort out their relationship.But anyway, you never know, things might turn out all right. You just never know.After a 12-year hiatus O’Neill followed up The Breezes with Netherland, a wonderful, brilliant novel which made his name. O’Neill is a decent writer (I say this merely on the basis of having read two novels and some journalism). These novels may seem gloomy, obsessed with the inevitable misfortune of Fate. And yet there is something quite life affirming about them. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 2 | # times read 1 | date started Sep 24, 2024 | date read Sep 30, 2024 | date added Sep 24, 2024 | owned | format Paperback | actions view (with text) | | | |
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| title Artists Making Landscapes in Post-war Britain | author Garlake, Margaret | isbn 1916347401 | isbn13 9781916347403 | asin 1916347401 | num pages 320pp | avg rating 0.00 | num ratings 0 | date pub unknown | date pub edition Sep 28, 2021 | Kevin's rating | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review None | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 0 | # times read 1 | date started Sep 24, 2024 | date read not set | date added Sep 24, 2024 | owned | format Hardcover | actions view | | | |
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| title Mr. Vertigo | author Auster, Paul | isbn 3499221527 | isbn13 9783499221521 | asin 3499221527 | num pages 318pp | avg rating 3.95 | num ratings 15,024 | date pub Apr 1994 | date pub edition Jun 02, 1997 | Kevin's rating it was ok | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review Published in 1994 (long after The New York Trilogy had established him as a major postmodernist writer) you have to ask yourself 'Why?'Pretty much str Published in 1994 (long after The New York Trilogy had established him as a major postmodernist writer) you have to ask yourself 'Why?'Pretty much straightforward page-turning narrative. airport departure lounge bookstore fodder. At a stretch you might be tempted to call it 'magical realism' in that there is a certain magic to it and that its realism is historic.Back on the sell pile.Someone should tell authors not to go on about their favourite sport or player. It rarely works. If you have to resort to it (i.e. Nick Hornby and bloody Arsenal in Fever Pitch) its a definitive sign of failure somewhere in the writing. Occasionally it works (This Sporting Life. Most of the time it does not. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 2 | # times read 1 | date started Sep 22, 2024 | date read Sep 24, 2024 | date added Sep 22, 2024 | owned | format Paperback | actions view (with text) | | | |
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| title A Theory of Justice | author Rawls, John | isbn 0674017722 | isbn13 9780674017726 | asin 0674017722 | num pages 824pp | avg rating 3.96 | num ratings 12,994 | date pub 1971 | date pub edition Mar 31, 2005 | Kevin's rating | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review None | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 0 | # times read 0 | date started not set | date read not set | date added Sep 20, 2024 | owned | format Paperback | actions view | | | |
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| title A General Theory of Exploitation and Class | author Roemer, John E. | isbn 0674344405 | isbn13 9780674344402 | asin 0674344405 | num pages 298pp | avg rating 3.40 | num ratings 5 | date pub Jun 02, 1982 | date pub edition Jun 02, 1982 | Kevin's rating | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review None | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 0 | # times read 0 | date started not set | date read not set | date added Sep 20, 2024 | owned | format Hardcover | actions view | | | |
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| title Recapitulation | author Stegner, Wallace | isbn | isbn13 | asin | num pages 288pp | avg rating 3.86 | num ratings 1,499 | date pub 1979 | date pub edition Nov 01, 1997 | Kevin's rating it was amazing | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review Wallace Stegner, though well respected by other writers, appears to be less well known, certainly on this side of the pond than he should be. He has w Wallace Stegner, though well respected by other writers, appears to be less well known, certainly on this side of the pond than he should be. He has written novels, short stories, non-fiction and memoir as well as founding the creative writing programme at Stanford University and producing the useful ‘On Teaching and Writing Fiction’. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1972 for his novel, 'Angle of Repose' which is the only other book of his I have read. AoR is a vast historical novel based on the letters of Mary Hallock Foote.'Recapitulation' is somewhat different. Bruce Mason returns to Salt Lake City to bury his last remaining relative in the family plot. The city is much changed from his memories before he left as a young adult. What unfolds are the memories and reminiscences that the places he visits bring back to him. It is a superbly crafted and stylistically elegant book which, in character reminds me of the pure elegance of John Williams ‘Stoner’. The memories are laid out like a series of camera contact sheets with the stories associated with each frame. Each memory makes Mason confront something from his past so that the trip begins to feel like catharsis. Bruce Mason is now a pretty hard and ruggedised diplomat, alone (possibly lonely), single and childless, diffident, self-assured (perhaps to the point of being stubborn) yet at the same time carrying all those latent doubts of the self-assured. We get this through accumulations and hints within Stegner’s prose. Mason was an extremely well-thought of member of the State Department and a Middle East ambassador.What unfolds is an epic examination of memory and reminiscence initiated by every sensation – not just a cerebral function. And because memory is both fugitive and mutable it tries to look at our memories as parts of what makes us human. Stegner wants us to think carefully about this and he sets his marks out early.”Are we what we do, or do we do what we are? Mason looks back to what drove him as a young man in the city and what led him to leave and finds that what he believed was merely trivia hides a wealth of deep content, that there is in fact no such thing as trivia where memory is concerned, that the important is composed of accumulations of trivial moments accreting to form the significant. And in reading this it is easy to become engrossed in one’s own stock of memories, to look at one’s own ‘significant’, the personal dream seed of memory that we each carry. Stegner asks us through the writing to move from the general to the personal and to comprehend our own actions through the actions of Bruce Mason. The discussions of the mechanisms of memory in themselves become the catalysts for a personal journey - and Stegner knows this and has designed the book to do precisely this. The realisation of this leads you to understand that we are dealing with a very canny and crafty writer. ”All his earliest years in Salt Lake had been an effort, much of the time as unconscious as growth itself and yet always there as if willed, to outgrow what he was and become what he was not. A stray. He yearned to belong. An outsider and an isolate, he aspired to friends and family and community solidarity he saw all around him in the Mormon city. A runt, he dreamed of athletic triumphs. Insignificant, he coveted the kind of notices he saw given to football heroes, sheikhs, slickers and campus politicians with glib tongues – all of whom, he felt in his heart, which was arrogant even when most envious, were inferior to him in brains and potential.”The young Mason is someone with ability but not with the ladder of social acceptability and class entrée to be able to climb and attain what he wants. He is describing an arriviste who aims to achieve all those trappings by observing and assimilating what he sees.The narrative is split between the contents and actions within Mason’s mind – his reminiscences and intellectualisations – and observations of the environment in which they were taking place. This is his life – this is the actualité of how he (and I would suggest ‘we’) proceed – of where we are and what is happening in the old brainpan as we proceed through the day-to-day of existence. This is modern writing old stylee – none of your postmodernism here, thank you. Stegner draws his ideas of peri-pubescent longing so well that you cannot but avoid self-assessment. Our own attempts at assessment of Stegner’s writing lead us to assessments of ourselves as persons. This is why Stegner is so good.Mason begins to see that through all the trivia of memory, there are deep shafts of illumination which are fundamentally and psychologically troubling and are the root causes of events and have contributed like building blocks to character. These events are what made him! Those deep important psyche-forming experiences which sear the memory so much so that we bury them deep and mutate them, so that only with effort can we get back to the whys. This is psychoanalysis in novel form. His mother’s submissiveness but unconditional love; his rapscallion bootlegging father’s contempt for him; the total lack of belonging to anything all put away in a box and now, on Mason’s return, touched on like a cavity in a tooth. These memories brought back to life when they had been carefully psychologically stored well away so they could not impinge. We approach nostalgia, that longing for a golden age of the past, with a degree of hypocrisy if we are truthful. Whilst we are aware of the fallacious nature of this vision, there is still part of us that wants to believe that somehow it was better and there was an element of truth in it.We are dealing with Stegner’s delineation of Mason’s memories. What is it that Stegner wants us to draw from this? That memories are both tangible and mutable? That however good or bad it seemed at the time, it was never that good or bad when looking back. So Mason’s life was not that bad. It wasn’t unmitigated bullying from an unloving father, and he was academically good enough to be offered a scholarship to Law School. He was, in fact, upwardly mobile and a bit of a ligger, but also prepared to work hard when needed to get what he wanted. Stegner isn’t beyond wading into a bit of class consciousness.”Accident, they say, favours the prepared mind. Opportunity knocks only for those who are ready at the door. If we believe the novels we read, upward mobility is always ambitious, hungry and aggressive, or at the very least, discontented. The George Willards are forever yearning away from the spiritual starvation of Winesburg towards some vague larger life.But that is not always the way it is. Some of us didn’t know enough to be discontented and ambitious. Some of us had such limited experience and limited aspirations that only accident, or the actions of others, or perhaps some inescapable psychosocial fate, could explode us out of our ruts. In a way, I suppose I had to hitchhike out of my childhood; but if I did, I did it without raising my thumb.”This is the step into adulthood – of taking it on without a supporting safety net; of having to do it all alone and singular; of battling to get ahead of the surface without connections or shoe-ins.His memories of his first true love, Nola, come forward in stark light. Stegner gives us hints of the uncertainty of first sex in the 1930s. Mason himself wonders whether he is the first at the trough. And they both lead each other on, though Nola seems to be more duplicitous, Mason choosing to ignore what is hinted at in his desire to love and be loved and to lose his virginity even if it means committing to a marriage. Then comes the conflict that will determine whether he becomes an average Joe, stays in Salt Lake marrying Nola, or takes up the Law School scholarship. This section is written so well describing the vagaries and uncertainties – of commitment to different causes all of which serve different ends and which have varying degrees of importance depending on where at any point you stand in an attempt to assess their varying claims. “When you live by daily postponements, you better have hope.” It is easier to be stubborn than to chance into the unknown and be overwhelmed. And Nola is not the intellectual that Mason sees and wants in himself. Nola wants conformity – marriage, children, family, locale. Mason sees the hints of beyond all that yet he knows that conformity is all encompassing and the easy way. What Mason experiences unfolds through a three chapter tour de force of writing by Stegner. Of first sex, the belief that his love was reciprocated, but the realisation this may not be the case when he returns from Law School to find she has taken up with one of his friends. This is what it feels like to be rejected, to be judged and found to be wanting, to realise that what you were experiencing was in fact hollow. You thought it was the real thing, refused to accept or understand all those little perturbations which were like the iceberg above the surface indicative of the massive bulk hidden below the surface. What Mason the Ambassador-to-be experiences is the trauma and grief of loss through his memories on this return trip to his past. These are the inked-out frames that cannot forever remain inked-out when their affects have been so profound. They must be apprised.There is a deep sense of wisdom in what Stegner has written here. And the way that he has written it is to make the reader approach and examine themselves through the writing. The novel becomes an exercise in self-examination; that we all carry our pasts with us and that the inked-out sections need to be confronted at some point because those experiences are deeply pertinent. To leave them inked-out is to be forever wounded by them.It is a marvellous novel, far deeper than you would even begin to believe in a novel with no story (allegedly)! "Without some external evidence, he had no way of sorting out truth from wistfulness and self-deception and grievance; ….. he told himself that it is easy enough to recover from a girl, who represents to some extent a choice. It is not so easy to recover from parents, who are fate." A great book on memory, far more psychological than you could at first imagine – the mutability of memory and the vanity of selection that is kept rosy and cherished rather than the inked-out and forgotten. It leaves you feeling that this may not be all novel and that this may have more than a little memoir in it. It is as if he is writing out himself from memory, making out the diminutive, wry youth with his dismal family background so that he can continue as he is, as he wants to be forward. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 1 | # times read 1 | date started Sep 20, 2024 | date read Sep 22, 2024 | date added Sep 20, 2024 | owned | format Paperback | actions view (with text) | | | |
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| title The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History | author Franzen, Jonathan | isbn 0374299196 | isbn13 9780374299194 | asin 0374299196 | num pages 195pp | avg rating 3.41 | num ratings 6,463 | date pub 2006 | date pub edition Sep 05, 2006 | Kevin's rating liked it | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review If autobiography is the least trustworthy then memoir must be the least trustworthy of the least trustworthy. Who can say if its correct or not or a v If autobiography is the least trustworthy then memoir must be the least trustworthy of the least trustworthy. Who can say if its correct or not or a valid summation of actualite? At least this is readable and well-written. Franzen returns to his family home to sell it after the death of his mother. Franzen's career seems to be full of hubris and nemesis episodes, one following the other without fail. A certain smugness about his own correctness of beliefs against the hoi polloi. The novels seem to smack of precisely that trait whilst the author stands somewhat aloof from his product. His life seems to sum up that quality - but then, I've been known to be wrong (har-de-feckin-har... ye see what I did there). Maybe he's a nice WASP that just wants to make a buck through his writing and get fucked every now and again.Some thoughts spring to mind when reading this. Like how an American President goes from being the ugly overbearing front-end of a government determined to steam roller the citizens to being, on the end of his (or hopefully soon, her) term of office a cuddly pussycat. Its like a transformation from that big ugly dangerous grizzly to a cuddly panda. Didn't work for Trump though. He is still and will ever be the National or even International bully.Its easy, and you have to be careful with this, to take the thoughts of Chairman Franzen as the thoughts and life of Ammurrika and Ammurrikans. Or are they? The age-old rebellion of the no-longer child against the parent and how well that sits at that moment and then the reassessment of the behaviours when looking back as an older aged adult.The gushiness of valentine cards in American society. Is it really that bad? The romantically pie-eyed and for-gods-sake-don't dare-judge towards everybody like saying 'Have a nice day' to everyone you interact with. As if you really care what kind of day they are having or will have after a casual meeting. Personally I'd like an anti-valentines day when you can send the cards full of non-tacky observations and statements of what you really think - a card that says 'I hope you're dead'.Makes you see that all this belief in a supreme being which seems to affect most Americans is deeply and aggressively confessional, designed to put precisely the Fear of God into individuals. It is not natural to be so openly confessional as these psychological guerillas of Franzen's youth want. Its almost prurient. Their position is.... weird.... as Kamala Harris might say.The American need for Heroes. The need to have them is about violence or the threat of violence both physical and mental. The superhero mode where retribution which cannot be escaped will fall on all the baddies. All the structures in Amerika seem so hierarchical and so judgemental whilst utterly denying that they are so, and through this the understanding that American social and political structures are all so hypocritical. The idea that the meek shall inherit the earth is so far from reality; the meek will get fuck all and you'd better believe it!So... its interesting.... until it descends into Twitcher mania. Thats when you can put the book down. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 4 | # times read 1 | date started Sep 15, 2024 | date read Sep 17, 2024 | date added Sep 15, 2024 | owned | format Hardcover | actions view (with text) | | | |
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| title Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union | author Zubok, Vladislav M. | isbn 0300257309 | isbn13 9780300257304 | asin 0300257309 | num pages 576pp | avg rating 4.26 | num ratings 1,370 | date pub unknown | date pub edition Nov 30, 2021 | Kevin's rating | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review None | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 0 | # times read 0 | date started not set | date read not set | date added Sep 13, 2024 | owned | format Hardcover | actions view | | | |
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| title Continental Philosophy since 1750: The Rise and Fall of the Self(A History of Western Philosophy, Vol. 7) | author Solomon, Robert C. | isbn 0192892029 | isbn13 9780192892027 | asin 0192892029 | num pages 228pp | avg rating 4.05 | num ratings 101 | date pub Feb 18, 1988 | date pub edition Feb 18, 1988 | Kevin's rating | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review None | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 0 | # times read 0 | date started not set | date read not set | date added Sep 06, 2024 | owned | format Paperback | actions view | | | |
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| title The Possessed (The Devils): Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky | author Dostoevsky, Fyodor | isbn | isbn13 9798847158572 | asin B0B9QWVTYF | num pages 261pp | avg rating 4.30 | num ratings 54,480 | date pub 1872 | date pub edition Aug 18, 2022 | Kevin's rating | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review None | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 0 | # times read 0 | date started not set | date read not set | date added Sep 04, 2024 | owned | format Paperback | actions view | | | |
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| title Virgin Soil | author Turgenev, Ivan | isbn 0940322455 | isbn13 9780940322455 | asin 0940322455 | num pages 355pp | avg rating 3.82 | num ratings 2,193 | date pub 1877 | date pub edition Aug 31, 2000 | Kevin's rating | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review None | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 0 | # times read 0 | date started not set | date read not set | date added Sep 04, 2024 | owned | format Paperback | actions view | | | |
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| title Adolphe | author Constant, Benjamin | isbn 0140441344 | isbn13 9780140441345 | asin 0140441344 | num pages 124pp | avg rating 3.58 | num ratings 3,127 | date pub 1816 | date pub edition Oct 30, 1980 | Kevin's rating | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review None | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 0 | # times read 0 | date started not set | date read not set | date added Sep 04, 2024 | owned | format Paperback | actions view | | | |
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| title The Wild Party | author March, Joseph Moncure | isbn 0375706437 | isbn13 9780375706431 | asin 0375706437 | num pages 112pp | avg rating 4.10 | num ratings 1,492 | date pub 1928 | date pub edition Mar 23, 1999 | Kevin's rating it was amazing | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review Found on the shelf. I bought it when it came out. Great black and white drawings which look like woodcuts. Finally read it. I'm no judge of poetry. It Found on the shelf. I bought it when it came out. Great black and white drawings which look like woodcuts. Finally read it. I'm no judge of poetry. Its a special piece - like an illustrated Alice through the Looking Glass. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 0 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read not set | date added Sep 02, 2024 | owned | format Paperback | actions view (with text) | | | |
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| title Revolutionary Europe: Politics, Community and Culture in Transnational Context, 1775-1922 | author Murray-Miller, Gavin * | isbn 1350019992 | isbn13 9781350019997 | asin 1350019992 | num pages 368pp | avg rating 3.00 | num ratings 2 | date pub unknown | date pub edition Feb 06, 2020 | Kevin's rating it was ok | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review Seemed a good choice from a cheap publisher at the time but......This is a mish-mash, at times great and at other times convincingly skimpy. The first Seemed a good choice from a cheap publisher at the time but......This is a mish-mash, at times great and at other times convincingly skimpy. The first problem is that GMM seems to be confused about what Revolution is. In fact in the opening foreword he makes it clear that the definition of Revolution appears non-specific changing through time, space and events. There lies a fundamental problem for our author. The second problem at least for me is the time frame. By starting at 1775, GMM cuts off the first two ‘grand style’ western revolutions in the English Civil War 1642-1651(part of the War of Three Kingdoms 1639-1663) and ‘the Glorious Revolution' 1688. The first saw the overthrow of monarchy by Parliament and concluded with regicide, and the second saw the throwing out of one monarch and the adoption of another. Both are extremely important in an assessment of Revolution. Furthermore by excluding the first he rules out bringing in what Hobbes has to say on social structures and government which is of exceptional importance. Instead of a solid foundation of Hobbes’ thoughts through ‘Leviathan’, GMM concentrates on the philosophers of the Enlightenment; Locke, Diderot, Rousseau. Now I am not saying that these are not important – you can’t go too far down this line without involving yourself on a discussion of the The Social Contract and Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (which GMM avoids) - but what I am saying is that a great chance has been missed by GMM to discuss the Philosophy of Revolution by looking at the Philosophy of Government. And that this fault is fundamental because it would necessarily lead one into a discussion of the importance of Law – common or communal, which takes you onto consent and then onto freedom and liberty (which GMM IS interested in discussing). In a book on Revolution this is a serious oversight. Mentioning common law with no discussion on what common law is and how it becomes constituted and accepted with consent – a big word for GMM – is a serious flaw.This is what irked me as I read GMMs theses (which are not really theses at all but good gleaning and researching of other writers and historical works). This subject cannot be neatly partitioned and canned as linear history because it brings in so many base level philosophical concepts that need and have to be discussed and included to make valid statements about Revolution. But it is not just the lack of discussion on philosophical concepts that is absent; it extends to social concepts. The discussion of slavery in its many forms is absent, though the point is made of the hypocrisy within the American Revolution (yes, America, not Europe I believe) calling for Liberty and Freedom of Men (meaning colonists) whilst being a State founded upon chattel slavery of Africans and the land grab-to-genocide of native inhabitants. The conflicts between Liberty and Slavery are dealt with adequately when discussing the French Revolutionary treatment of its Caribbean colonies. What is Equality? Is it a valid concept? Might the definition of Revolution come down to the exploitation of one class by another?These drawbacks within this book lead me to conclusions about why the book was written and published in the first place. The use of quotes from other writers and works of history rather than direct from the original sources backs this conclusion up. That is that this book was written primarily as a text book for something like ‘A’-Level students. It tends to become ‘broad brush’ history and politics in linear development. Similarly the penchant for ending every chapter with a ‘Conclusion’ paragraph as if the contents of the chapter were not enough to stand by themselves is facile, particularly when the paragraph is used to bring in further ideas which are not discussed within the chapter going so far as to, at times, feel that the paragraph is making some point not in the paragraph. Sometimes the points ARE clearer in the Conclusion, in which case they have been inadequately dealt with in the body of the chapter. And sometimes you are left with a ‘wtf!!!’ moment…. There are times when the book might have been better titled ‘Neo-Colonialism’ or ‘Anti-Imperialism’ and the dates and 'Europe' left out of the strap line. The further it proceeds, the more the book ends up falling between stools – neither academic research nor the vernacular-with-gravitas of say Tuchman or Schama.Revolution is not social sin. Revolutions happen for reasons. Therefore they should be definable. To say that they are all diverse through space, time and circumstances is to ignore that there are common elements between them and ignores real analysis of the whys and wherefores. GMM refuses to commit himself to any real definitions or conclusions and therefore has a tendency to lounge over ineffective squabbles with pseudo-dissidents and whilst titularly alleging to concentrate on Europe, is quite happy to throw in America, Latin America… hell…. Why not throw in China and India and Persia and post-colonial Africa while you're at it. The section on the Iberian peninsula is particularly sketchy other than promoting some idealistic nonsense on Anarchy. There seems to be a misunderstanding over the difference between revolt and revolution. But having said all this carping as to what it is not, it IS eminently readable and it DOES cover an awful lot of ground (if somewhat patchily and as long as you bear in mind the provisos above). As such it IS an elegant primer like a first referential text which will lead a dedicated person onto further study and seeking out the core texts. So it IS a decent ‘A’-Level text book.Follow UpPeter H. Marshall, ‘Demanding the Impossible’Frantz Fanon, 'The Wretched of the Earth'Benjamin Constant, 'The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns'Alexis de Tocqueville, 'Democracy in America'Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 'The Social Contract'Misha Glenny, 'The Balkans: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers 1804 - 1999'Leszek Kołakowski, ‘Main Currents Of Marxism: The Founders, The Golden Age, The Breakdown'Orlando Figes, 'A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891 - 1924'Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French RevolutionDostoyevsky The Possessed , Zola Germinal, And so many more ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 4 | votes 2 | # times read 1 | date started Sep 02, 2024 | date read Sep 15, 2024 | date added Sep 02, 2024 | owned | format Paperback | actions view (with text) | | | |
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| title The Books of Jacob | author Tokarczuk, Olga | isbn 0593087488 | isbn13 9780593087480 | asin 0593087488 | num pages 965pp | avg rating 4.02 | num ratings 8,664 | date pub Oct 23, 2014 | date pub edition Feb 01, 2022 | Kevin's rating | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review None | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 0 | # times read 0 | date started not set | date read not set | date added Sep 02, 2024 | owned | format Hardcover | actions view | | | |
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| title Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas | author Thompson, Hunter S. | isbn 0679785892 | isbn13 9780679785897 | asin B01BITNA5S | num pages 204pp | avg rating 4.07 | num ratings 356,963 | date pub Jul 07, 1971 | date pub edition Jun 1998 | Kevin's rating did not like it | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review None | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 1 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read not set | date added Sep 02, 2024 | owned | format Paperback | actions view | | | |
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| title The Complete Stories | author O'Connor, Flannery | isbn | isbn13 | asin | num pages 555pp | avg rating 4.39 | num ratings 39,751 | date pub Nov 08, 1971 | date pub edition 1971 | Kevin's rating liked it | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review Why can I not get in to this?Its well written and thematic. She is a highly respected American writer. I didn't finish it - hardly started it only man Why can I not get in to this?Its well written and thematic. She is a highly respected American writer. I didn't finish it - hardly started it only managing 10 pieces, with a lingering sense of 'Oh gawd, I've got Flannery O'Connor to look forward to'.Best to put it in the 'take to the charity store' pile and let someone else get enjoyment from it. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 0 | # times read 1 | date started Aug 28, 2024 | date read Sep 02, 2024 | date added Aug 28, 2024 | owned | format Paperback | actions view (with text) | | | |
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