Water for Elephants
Ok, so I started loving this more than basically anything else, but at about the halfway point my rating went down from 5/5 to 4/5 because:
1. Jacob is emo ALL THE TIME. It was the Great Depression, but it was also the time of the musical 42nd Street, which features songs like 'Young and Healthy.' Which he is. But he's always enraged or crying or being smacked around by someone, which causes him to get mad and cry some more.
2. Variations on a theme: IT IS SO DEPRESSING. Like, even ignoring EmoJacob, it reminds me of short stories I wrote in middle school after my English teacher told the class that happy endings were "unrealistic," so at the end of all my stories, everyone was dead.
But the first half is amazingly awesome. I also could've done with some more in-depth stuff about Marlena, but the book IS from Jacob's perspective, and I liked it even without a super-present female character, so it pretty much has to be good in that case. 'Cause I don't like me the books without the strong female character. Except the long opening of East of Eden before Cathy shows up, because that book's fricking poetry in prose.
1. Jacob is emo ALL THE TIME. It was the Great Depression, but it was also the time of the musical 42nd Street, which features songs like 'Young and Healthy.' Which he is. But he's always enraged or crying or being smacked around by someone, which causes him to get mad and cry some more.
2. Variations on a theme: IT IS SO DEPRESSING. Like, even ignoring EmoJacob, it reminds me of short stories I wrote in middle school after my English teacher told the class that happy endings were "unrealistic," so at the end of all my stories, everyone was dead.
But the first half is amazingly awesome. I also could've done with some more in-depth stuff about Marlena, but the book IS from Jacob's perspective, and I liked it even without a super-present female character, so it pretty much has to be good in that case. 'Cause I don't like me the books without the strong female character. Except the long opening of East of Eden before Cathy shows up, because that book's fricking poetry in prose.
I'm totally gonna enjoy that monkey book.
So you're saying that Robert Pattinson is pretty much typecast in the movie version, eh?
ReplyDeleteI'm reading (listening) to Gruen's The Ape House right now and am just over halfway through it.
@As the Crowe Flies and Reads Hah! Exactly.
ReplyDeleteOoh, are you going to review it? I probably won't get to it for a while, so I'd like to know what you think.
Oops, I just left a comment on your Old Testament post saying I didn't think I'd left a comment before, but clearly I was wrong!
ReplyDeleteMy review of Ape House is up on my blog if you're interested in taking a look at it. I think the story overall sucked me in, but there were lots of problems for me in the book...AND I get a little preachy in my review, so you can skip those parts at the end.
Is it depressing the whole time and by 1/2 way through you were tired of it? Or did it get depressing 1/2 way through? I'm still not sold on this book
ReplyDelete@Red Hmmm. I liked it until he kept on being sad. Like, at first he's sad and it's okay, but then it gets super-repetitive. I do still really like the author, though. I bought her other book and plan on reading it happily.
ReplyDelete