In Gh Gh itibaren Goliya, Gujarat 385550, Hindistan
i really enjoyed this book and getting to know a little more about laura bush. interesting to hear not so good stuff about the clinton's too! i highly recommend this book, great read!
This is not a fair score, I'll admit it right up front. This book affirms my reasoning for reading the first few pages of a book before buying it. This I bought because I've been trying to read more classics, but my experience has shown me that classics shouldn't be exempted from the first few page practice. Here's the second paragraph of the book: "Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passen-core rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wilderfight his penisolate war: nor had topsawyers rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens county's gogios while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to taugtaug thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathondjoe. Rot a peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface." I've read a few books with a confusing intro. It's a common practice in sci-fi, where you throw the reader in head first with mysterious nouns and let them work it out as they go. This is not the case, because after a few pages I realized Mr. Joyce wasn't going to start making anymore sense than he already was. Here's a quote from page 311, when I skipped ahead to see if it was all like this: "It was long after once there was a lealand in the luffing ore it was less after lives thor a toyler in the tawn at all ohr it was note before he drew out the moddle of Kersse by jerkin his dressing but and or it was not before athwartships he buttonhaled the Norweeger's capstan." I considered this might be a phonetic thing, similar to what Twain used, but no matter how I tried with the first few pages I could not parse it into anything comprehensible. Even Canterbury Tales has the decency to make sense when read aloud. If I can not comprehend a book on a sentence level, a paragraph level, or a chapter level I'm just going to give up. Here's the first sentence of the intro, which I went back to look at after throwing the book in the trash, feeling bad, and retrieving it: "There is no agreement as to what Finnegans Wake is about, whether or not it is "about" anything, or even whether it is, in any sense of the word, "readable". Oh good. That's very encouraging. Here's the thing, I don't read as a challenge. I read for ideas, or to be entertained. I like to read books with ideas I might struggle with, it's fun to think about it. I do not like fighting to choke down the words themselves. Joyce makes up words, uses dialect, and god knows what else in the first few chapters, it's like he's trying to be obtuse to make a game out of it. That might be fun in a short story, but this is 600-some pages. If someone can suggest a good method for consuming this damn thing, the Rosetta Stone for why I should care, I'm open to ideas, but otherwise, it's getting put away