boxcar's reviews
230 reviews

Mr Palomar by Italo Calvino

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mysterious reflective fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

fun meditation on life and death. Related to Mr. Palomar's anxieties a little too much, I think. 
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

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challenging mysterious reflective slow-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

3.75

very interesting stuff, beautifully written. I must say that the central poem was the best part, by far. commentary was good, but exceedingly long. very dry at parts, yet written well even at the driest. 
The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino, Archibald Colquhoun

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adventurous emotional inspiring lighthearted reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? N/A
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Calvino is just fantastic. 
The Chinese Myths: A Guide to the Gods and Legends by Tao Tao Liu

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informative medium-paced

4.0

The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

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mysterious reflective fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? N/A
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The Brothers Karamazov (Bicentennial Edition): A Novel in Four Parts With Epilogue by Fyodor Dostoevsky

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challenging mysterious reflective tense 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? Yes

4.75

Dostoevsky's masterpiece. An unrivaled epic of characterization, deep and nuanced. Three Russian brothers and their father make for 800 pages of literature in its most captivating form. Worth every word said in reverence of it.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

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challenging dark reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

Wonderful prose, beautifully written. I'm not knowledgeable enough on Irish politics, history, and the Catholic church to really claim to have gotten all this book had to offer. 
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

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Did not finish book.
neoliberal, hillary clinton would adore this book. good for first part, about evolution and how humans evolved/lived/learned/loved, went too quickly into modernity, and with modernity it ceased aiming to tell the story of humanity, and became a treatise on how we fucked up. I don't disagree with his points, we certainly fucked up, and still do, but I don't really want to read about it, especially in the framework of the history of humanity, a timeframe of epic proportions, of which the first hundred thousand+ years of it is given less space than the past 200. I'd choose a book on the industrial revolution and its consequences, on the transatlantic slave trade, opium wars, women's suffrage, capitalism, communism--these are worth reading about and interesting/valuable, but I'm peeved by the skewing towards modernity in a book purporting to be a history of humankind, not a history of civilization, especially industrialized civilization. 
If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino

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challenging mysterious reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

wow
American Gods by Neil Gaiman

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adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25