Damned by Chuck Palahniuk (Book Review)

Damned by Chuck Palahniuk (Book Review)

Damned by Chuck Palahniuk
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Description from Amazon Kindle:

“Are you there, Satan? It’s me, Madison,” declares the whip-tongued thirteen-year-old narrator of Damned, Chuck Palahniuk’s subversive new work of fiction. The daughter of a narcissistic film star and a billionaire, Madison is abandoned at her Swiss boarding school over Christmas, while her parents are off touting their new projects and adopting more orphans. She dies over the holiday of a mari­juana overdose—and the next thing she knows, she’s in Hell. Madison shares her cell with a motley crew of young sinners that is almost too good to be true: a cheerleader, a jock, a nerd, and a punk rocker, united by fate to form the six-feet-under version of everyone’s favorite detention movie. Madison and her pals trek across the Dandruff Desert and climb the treacherous Mountain of Toenail Clippings to confront Satan in his citadel. All the popcorn balls and wax lips that serve as the currency of Hell won’t buy them off.

This is the afterlife as only Chuck Palahniuk could imagine it: a twisted inferno where The English Patient plays on end­less repeat, roaming demons devour sinners limb by limb, and the damned interrupt your dinner from their sweltering call center to hard-sell you Hell. He makes eternal torment, well, simply divine.

***

I tried hard to like this book, I really did. I loved the Fight Club. I thought it was brilliant. And while this book proved a clever idea, I couldn’t bring myself to love (or even hate) Madison (the tale’s hero). And that is where the story fails for me.


It’s an interesting novel to read but I’d recommend borrowing it rather than purchasing.


Fortunately, I loved Fight Club enough to read more of Chuck’s work. He is good, but this story didn’t hit the mark for me.



Devlin


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Hamlet by William Shakespeare (Book Review)

Hamlet by William Shakespeare
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is my favorite of all of Shakespeare’s works. It is bold and derivative in its very nature. Power, fear, love, misunderstandings, hate, revenge, feigned madness and coldly, calculated opportunities are presented as an honest mirror of man’s dark heart, due to this, it is a ‘must read’ for all.


I believe two of my favorite quotes sums and defines this play well:


Hamlet to Rosencrantz: “What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god!” (spoken in jest)


Horatio to Prince Fortinbras: And let me speak to the yet unknowing world
How these things came about: so shall you hear
Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause,
And, in this upshot, purposes mistook
Fall’n on the inventors’ reads: all this can I
Truly deliver.



Devlin


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Le Portrait de Petite Cossette (anime series)

Le Portrait de Petite Cossette (anime series)

Le Portrait de Petite Cossette

Description from NetFlix: Eiri works part time in an antique shop. One afternoon, he uncovers a delicate mirror that holds a startling secret within: When Eiri peers into the looking glass, he’s enchanted by a vision of a young blonde girl — Cossette — her life playing out for only him to see. A haunted beauty, Cossette has been waiting 250 years for someone to finally set her free. Eiri soon becomes obsessed and determined to help the girl trapped in the crystal.

***

Such an interesting dark journey and told only with three episodes. If you enjoy surrealism, it’s worth the time.

Devlin

My Book Recommendations for May

The Absinthe & Ink book club have the following title offerings for this month’s (May) reading:


May’s Reading List (Our Comfort Books)


Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier


Redwall (The Redwall Adventures #1) by Brian Jacques


All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot


Darkspell (Deverry #2) by Katharine Kerr


The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho


The Persian Boy by Mary Renault


The Black Company by Glen Cook


The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle


Here be Dragons by Sharon Kay Penman


I, Lucifer by Glen Duncan


Smack by Melvin Burgess


Tokyo Doesn’t Love Us Anymore by Ray Loriga


The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón


The Elephant’s Journey by José Saramago


Till We Have Faces: A Novel of Cupid and Psyche by C.S. Lewis


Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë


Sh*t My Dad Says by Justin Halpern


Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy


Wings by Aprilynne Pike


The Iron King by Julia Kagawa


The HELP by Kathryn Stockett


The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book by Bill Watterson


Hamlet by William Shakespeare


The Diary of Adam and Eve by Mark Twain


Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand


Rikki Tikki Tavi by Rudyard Kipling



I hope everyone enjoys this months reads. :)

Devlin

Clannad (anime series)

Clannad (anime series)

Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo (Kindle Edition) is 99 cents for Today Only.

Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo (Kindle Edition) is 99 cents for Today Only.

Because of Winn-Dixie is $.99 cents at Amazon Kindle today only.

Description from GoodReads:

Kate DiCamillo’s first published novel, like Winn-Dixie himself, immediately proved to be a keeper — a New York Times bestseller, a Newbery Honor winner, the inspiration for a popular film, and most especially, a cherished classic that touches the hearts of readers of all ages. It’s now available in a paperback digest format certain to bring this tale’s magic to an even wider circle of fans.

The summer Opal and her father, the preacher, move to Naomi, Florida, Opal goes into the Winn-Dixie supermarket—and comes out with a dog. A big, ugly, suffering dog with a sterling sense of humor. A dog she dubs Winn-Dixie. Because of Winn-Dixie, the preacher tells Opal ten things about her absent mother, one for each year Opal has been alive. Winn-Dixie is better at making friends than anyone Opal has ever known, and together they meet the local librarian, Miss Franny Block, who once fought off a bear with a copy of WAR AND PEACE. They meet Gloria Dump, who is nearly blind but sees with her heart, and Otis, an ex-con who sets the animals in his pet shop loose after hours, then lulls them with his guitar.Opal spends all that sweet summer collecting stories about her new friends and thinking about her mother. But because of Winn-Dixie or perhaps because she has grown, Opal learns to let go, just a little, and that friendship—and forgiveness—can sneak up on you like a sudden summer storm.

This is a heartwarming tale for everyone.

Devlin

The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut (Kindle book) is on sale (today only) for $1.99

The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut (Kindle book) is on sale (today only) for $1.99

Description from GoodReads:
When Winston Niles Rumfoord flies his spaceship into a chrono-synclastic infundibulum he is converted into pure energy and only materializes when his waveforms intercept Earth or some other planet. As a result, he only gets home to Newport, Rhode Island, once every fifty-nine days and then only for an hour. But at least, as a consolation, he now knows everything that has ever happened and everything that ever will be. He knows, for instance, that his wife is going to Mars to mate with Malachi Constant, the richest man in the world. He also knows that on Titan — one of Saturn’s moons — is an alien from the planet Tralfamadore, who has been waiting 200,000 years for a spare part for his grounded spacecraft…

I haven’t read this novel yet, but, it’s Vonnegut. How bad could it be…? ;)


Devlin

Through a Window by Jane Goodall Is on Sale, $1.99 at Amazon Kindle

Through a Window by Jane Goodall Is on Sale, $1.99 at Amazon Kindle

Through a Window by Jane Goodall is on sale for today Only, $1.99 at Amazon Kindle


Description from GoodReads:


THROUGH A WINDOW is the dramatic saga of thirty years in the life of a community, of birth and death, sex and love, power and war. It reads like a novel, but it is one of the most important scientific works ever published. The community is Gombe, on the shores of Lake Tangganyika, where the principal residents are chimpanzees and one extraordinary woman who is their student, protector, and historian. In her classic In the Shadow of Man, Jane Goodall wrote of her first ten years at Gombe. In Through a Window she brings the story up to the present, painting a much more complete and vivid portrait of our closest relative. We see the community split in two and a brutal war break out. We watch young Figan’s relentless rise to power and old Mike’s crushing defeat. We learn how one mother rears her children to succeed and another dooms them to failure. We witness horrifying murders, touching moments of affection, joyous births, and wrenching deaths. In short, we see every emotion known to humans stripped to its essence. In the mirror of chimpanzee life, we see ourselves reflected. Perhaps the best book ever written about animal behavior, Through a Window is also essential reading for anyone seeking a better grasp of human behavior.


It’s worth reading.


Devlin

A Night to Remember [Kindle Edition] by Walter Lord ($1.99 for one day only)

A Night to Remember [Kindle Edition] by Walter Lord ($1.99 for one day only)

A Night to Remember [Kindle Edition] by Walter Lord.  For one day only this book is $1.99 

Amazon.com Review:

James Cameron’s 1997 Titanic movie is a smash hit, but Walter Lord’s 1955 classic remains in some ways unsurpassed. Lord interviewed scores of Titanic passengers, fashioning a gripping you-are-there account of the ship’s sinking that you can read in half the time it takes to see the film. The book boasts many perfect movie moments not found in Cameron’s film. When the ship hits the berg, passengers see “tiny splinters of ice in the air, fine as dust, that give off myriads of bright colors whenever caught in the glow of the deck lights.” Survivors saw dawn reflected off other icebergs in a rainbow of shades, depending on their angle toward the sun: pink, mauve, white, deep blue—a landscape so eerie, a little boy tells his mom, “Oh, Muddie, look at the beautiful North Pole with no Santa Claus on it.”

A Titanic funnel falls, almost hitting a lifeboat—and consequently washing it 30 yards away from the wreck, saving all lives aboard. One man calmly rides the vertical boat down as it sinks, steps into the sea, and doesn’t even get his head wet while waiting to be successfully rescued. On one side of the boat, almost no males are permitted in the lifeboats; on the other, even a male Pekingese dog gets a seat. Lord includes a crucial, tragically ironic drama Cameron couldn’t fit into the film: the failure of the nearby ship Californian to save all those aboard the sinking vessel because distress lights were misread as random flickering and the telegraph was an early wind-up model that no one wound.

Lord’s account is also smarter about the horrifying class structure of the disaster, which Cameron reduces to hollow Hollywood formula. No children died in the First and Second Class decks; 53 out of 76 children in steerage died. According to the press, which regarded the lower-class passengers as a small loss to society, “The night was a magnificent confirmation of women and children first, yet somehow the loss rate was higher for Third Class children than First Class men.” As the ship sank, writes Lord, “the poop deck, normally Third Class space … was suddenly becoming attractive to all kinds of people.” Lord’s logic is as cold as the Atlantic, and his bitter wit is quite dry.

This book looks very interesting.

Devlin