Indoor nature test 01

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Signs of Spring

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Spring is upon us.

Valediction to winter

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Acorn tops

Valediction to winter

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Sometimes you come across parts of a text that just deserve to stand alone, devoid of any context, for your undivided amusement:

The cadre of book-depositers is not without its stylists. The comedian Jean Villepique, who played Tracy Morgan’s therapist on “30 Rock,” says she likes to slam insects between the pages of library books and then return the corpse-laden tomes. “I like to think that someone will get to Page 62 and think, “Eww!” and then, “Who?” Villepique said in an e-mail message. She preys only on small bugs that land on the page voluntarily — mostly gnats (“like a little dust poof”) and mosquitoes, whether unfed (“neat and dry”) or bloody (“page joiners”). But Villepique warns that if any cockroach in her Los Angeles apartment “dares to creep near my copy of ‘Collapse,’ by Jared Diamond, I will kill, knowing that my behavior and the roach’s existence are both causes of the collapse of our society.”

From today’s New York Times Book Review essay: You Never Know What You’ll Find in a Book

My Amazon.com review:

I would equate my experience reading 100 Years of Solitude to watching the movie Groundhog Day 5 times consecutively.

I mildly enjoyed the first 150 pages or so, though in my opinion it still is not spectacular writing, but merely competent. But still, if this book was only 200 pages, I would look on it favorably. Unfortunately…. it’s twice that long. The foundation of the book is incessant reincarnations of the same family members over and over and over again. Brevity and succinctness is obviously not Marquez’s strong suit. This, along with a very fable-like style makes the book strangely feel more antiquated than Beowulf (but not nearly as interesting).

I will admit that it is initially captivating, but unfortunately this is accomplished the same way soap operas and Lifetime movies do: ridiculous interpersonal dramas endlessly unfold in a cantilevered manner.

100 Years of Solitude painfully beats a dead horse in a manner which makes Atlas Shrugged seem like a pamphlet in comparison.

1896 Building

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