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alexiacambaling's reviews
442 reviews
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
adventurous
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
This is the first SFF book I read since I burnt out on the genre and as far as getting back into the genre goes, it's not a bad choice. I actually decided to read this because I watched the first episode of the Apple TV series and after getting into it, it's best to treat the show and the book as separate.
In reading Foundation, I can see how influential it has been to the genre. It introduced the space empire and the complicated political struggles we now see in a lot of science fiction. However, it's also a work that's very much more concerned with ideas rather than characters. It also has the pitfalls of classic sci-fi regarding its treatment of women. The dry writing style is okay, if you're into that. It's easy to read, just a bit dry.
Overall, Foundation is an interesting book as far as classic science fiction goes. It's not your traditional novel, but a collection of five short stories. If you want to see where so much of sci-fi media gets its influences from, read Foundation.
In reading Foundation, I can see how influential it has been to the genre. It introduced the space empire and the complicated political struggles we now see in a lot of science fiction. However, it's also a work that's very much more concerned with ideas rather than characters. It also has the pitfalls of classic sci-fi regarding its treatment of women. The dry writing style is okay, if you're into that. It's easy to read, just a bit dry.
Overall, Foundation is an interesting book as far as classic science fiction goes. It's not your traditional novel, but a collection of five short stories. If you want to see where so much of sci-fi media gets its influences from, read Foundation.
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
hopeful
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
A charming story about a town dominated by women, mostly single or widowed. Not a lot happening but you do feel closer to the inhabitants of this town as the book goes on. It also has an episodic structure so it's like vignettes of the things that are happening. I liked it, but not as much as the author's North and South. Still, a good character study of independent women in Victorian Britain.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
adventurous
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
I feel like this is another one of those books where you think you know the story because it's so popular and ubiquitous in pop culture, until you actually read the story. F. Scott Fitzgerald's prose is beautiful. Elegant and lovely, but never overwrought. His style is easy to read and the length of the book makes it a good starter when it comes to classics. The themes of the story are also easy to understand and digest, a tale about dreams, of making it, of nostalgia for a past that would never come back, maybe even a past that never was. It's a good story, not too deep thematically (the themes are fairly easy to understand and they're ever-present even on a surface level) but never shallow.
Overall, I'm glad I finally read this book and I take it as a good introduction to the rest of Fitzgerald's work.
Overall, I'm glad I finally read this book and I take it as a good introduction to the rest of Fitzgerald's work.
Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion
funny
informative
reflective
fast-paced
3.0
A pretty good book of essays about California in the 1960s. Some of the essays are great, some, especially towards on the end are more on the okay side. Joan Didion is a very good writer, there's a compelling, almost entrancing element to her writing and storytelling that makes you want to read more.
Moby-Dick: Or, the Whale by Herman Melville
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Wide-ranging, philosophical, and epic. Moby-Dick is not at all what I expected. Yes, it's a drag at times, but it has something for everybody. There's a lot you can get from it. Here, a sea voyage becomes a vehicle to explore history, society, the Bible, and man's quest to tame nature.
salt slow by Julia Armfield
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
I picked up this book because I wanted to read some horror books for October and while this is a book of short stories which could be categorized as horror, I did not find it scary. This is not necessarily a bad thing. The short stories in this book are excellent, surreal, and weird. All of them are about women and it's kind of feminist, but I wouldn't call it an explicitly feminist collection. It's about feral women. It's a great collection and I recommend it but it's also a bit hard for me to describe. I can say though that it's the first short story collection that got me so hooked, I just went through it in a few hours.
If you like stories about teenage girls turning into monsters, lovers turning to stone, dead girlfriends returning, and rock bands with feral fanbases, I highly recommend this collection.
If you like stories about teenage girls turning into monsters, lovers turning to stone, dead girlfriends returning, and rock bands with feral fanbases, I highly recommend this collection.
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
In Notes from Underground, we follow an unnamed former bureaucrat as he writes about his narrative. The novella is divided into two parts. The first, a series of monologues about his philosophies, and the second about his misadventures in life. The narrator kind of comes across as a deranged madman in parts and I honestly don't know if that was intentional, but his ramblings do make sense and he presents a pretty coherent view of his own philosophy. Although, I do think that Dostoevsky himself does not necessarily subscribe to this philosophy or has reached a different conclusion.
I actually tried reading two translations of this book. The first one is the public domain translation by Constance Garnett and the second is a paperback Alma Classics edition translated by Kyril Zinovieff and Jenny Hughes. I liked the latter translation better as Garnett's sounds too Victorian and if what I've read about Dostoevsky's original prose is true, I was probably better off reading the Alma Classics edition. It's a good translation, readable and comes with explanatory notes for the references.
Notes from Underground is very existentialist. In it, the narrator makes fun of those less conscious of their own existence, those who weren't as aware as he was. He calls them ignorant, lesser somehow than he was. In several occasions, he talks about how he's okay with being ugly, as long as his face could be considered intelligent. His perceived intellectual and moral superiority allows him to feel above his peers despite being of lower rank and status than them. It allows him to look down on others, feel as if somehow he is above them.
Despite this, the narrator is also very self-loathing. He is very much aware of his own faults and hates that he is aware of his own faults. He also revels in his own awareness of his faults. These faults often contribute to his troubles and he is much aware of it and loathes himself for it. While he holds everyone and the world around him in contempt, he is even more contemptuous of himself.
In this way, we could say that Dostoevsky makes fun of both those less conscious and overly conscious of their existence. The less conscious are ignorant, but able to find pleasure in living, they are content with themselves. On the other hand, those who are overly conscious are very self-aware and yet prone to loathing themselves because of it. They acknowledge the absurdity in societal norms, yet they have to abide by it and end up wallowing in resentment. The nihilists like to bask in the sort of self-satisfaction that comes with believing that life is inherently absurd, and yet hate that their own circumstances are often caused by them.
The narrator even causes problems for himself in Part Two. Over and over again, he commits errors which he knows to be errors in order to prove his own freedom. As he said in Part One, the "Crystal Palace" or utopia would never materialize because it is meaningless to experience pleasure without pain or suffering. Man is not as rational as he likes to think he is. Unconscious factors lead to a person doing things which are against his own interests. This the narrator does over and over again throughout Part Two. He does things which are very irrational out of spite, to revel in his own freedom, his own awareness. In that way, he brings much misery to himself.
Through it all, I found the narrator to be a pitiful, if comic character. He is selfish, narcissistic, cowardly, self-loathing, but also quite intelligent. It's a shame he was such a spiteful character, but the novel wouldn't have been the same if he wasn't. He's such an extreme character and yet one could find the modern equivalent on 4Chan or Twitter perhaps. In that sense, he could read as quite modern.
Overall, I really enjoyed Notes from Underground and it made me think a lot about what Dostoevsky was trying to say. For a book I originally dreaded reading because I thought it would be difficult and inaccessible, it was surprisingly fun. Highly recommended.
challenging
dark
funny
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Notes from Underground is one of Fyodor Dostoevsky's most famous works. It's a novella, a little bit more than a hundred pages and frequently recommended as a good introduction to his bibliography as it contains a bit of his philosophy. Personally, I think that the shorter White Nights might be better as an introduction as it's more accessible, although it doesn't really expose you much to Dostoevsky's philosophy. I first tried reading Notes from Underground a couple of years ago but gave up, finding it a bit difficult to understand at the time. Now, I've had a much easier time understanding the book and what it's about.
In Notes from Underground, we follow an unnamed former bureaucrat as he writes about his narrative. The novella is divided into two parts. The first, a series of monologues about his philosophies, and the second about his misadventures in life. The narrator kind of comes across as a deranged madman in parts and I honestly don't know if that was intentional, but his ramblings do make sense and he presents a pretty coherent view of his own philosophy. Although, I do think that Dostoevsky himself does not necessarily subscribe to this philosophy or has reached a different conclusion.
I actually tried reading two translations of this book. The first one is the public domain translation by Constance Garnett and the second is a paperback Alma Classics edition translated by Kyril Zinovieff and Jenny Hughes. I liked the latter translation better as Garnett's sounds too Victorian and if what I've read about Dostoevsky's original prose is true, I was probably better off reading the Alma Classics edition. It's a good translation, readable and comes with explanatory notes for the references.
Notes from Underground is very existentialist. In it, the narrator makes fun of those less conscious of their own existence, those who weren't as aware as he was. He calls them ignorant, lesser somehow than he was. In several occasions, he talks about how he's okay with being ugly, as long as his face could be considered intelligent. His perceived intellectual and moral superiority allows him to feel above his peers despite being of lower rank and status than them. It allows him to look down on others, feel as if somehow he is above them.
Despite this, the narrator is also very self-loathing. He is very much aware of his own faults and hates that he is aware of his own faults. He also revels in his own awareness of his faults. These faults often contribute to his troubles and he is much aware of it and loathes himself for it. While he holds everyone and the world around him in contempt, he is even more contemptuous of himself.
In this way, we could say that Dostoevsky makes fun of both those less conscious and overly conscious of their existence. The less conscious are ignorant, but able to find pleasure in living, they are content with themselves. On the other hand, those who are overly conscious are very self-aware and yet prone to loathing themselves because of it. They acknowledge the absurdity in societal norms, yet they have to abide by it and end up wallowing in resentment. The nihilists like to bask in the sort of self-satisfaction that comes with believing that life is inherently absurd, and yet hate that their own circumstances are often caused by them.
The narrator even causes problems for himself in Part Two. Over and over again, he commits errors which he knows to be errors in order to prove his own freedom. As he said in Part One, the "Crystal Palace" or utopia would never materialize because it is meaningless to experience pleasure without pain or suffering. Man is not as rational as he likes to think he is. Unconscious factors lead to a person doing things which are against his own interests. This the narrator does over and over again throughout Part Two. He does things which are very irrational out of spite, to revel in his own freedom, his own awareness. In that way, he brings much misery to himself.
Through it all, I found the narrator to be a pitiful, if comic character. He is selfish, narcissistic, cowardly, self-loathing, but also quite intelligent. It's a shame he was such a spiteful character, but the novel wouldn't have been the same if he wasn't. He's such an extreme character and yet one could find the modern equivalent on 4Chan or Twitter perhaps. In that sense, he could read as quite modern.
Overall, I really enjoyed Notes from Underground and it made me think a lot about what Dostoevsky was trying to say. For a book I originally dreaded reading because I thought it would be difficult and inaccessible, it was surprisingly fun. Highly recommended.
Dracula by Bram Stoker
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
I liked what I read of this book, although there are parts of it which made me uncomfortable, such as the very Victorian repressed sexuality and racism. As a horror novel, I didn't find myself scared although it works as a thriller. The use of different media such as journals, letters, newspaper articles, and telegraphs worked very well and lent to the tense atmosphere of the book. Never been into vampire media much, but the book Dracula worked well enough for me.
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
4.0