The story encapsulates many of the political and cultural tensions of modern Turkey and successfully combines humor, social commentary, mysticism, and a deep sympathy with its characters. …
Sounded perfect for me.
But I didn’t finish. Though well written, it was too slow.
This is book 3 in the series. It’s even funnier than the first two. Laugh out loud.
Hank is not very smart. Yet he skewers both economics and politics most effectively in this book.
Many love Hank. Yet the author is still self-published. You have to buy Steven Campbell books online. About 95% of his sales are eBook. Audio is better, in my opinion, as his reader is superb.
An increasingly crippled Hank struggles to keep the various factions of Belvaille in check after the collapse of the Colmarian Confederation.
Hank, as Supreme Kommilaire and Secretary of City, has several hundred police to try and maintain order among the millions of inhabitants on the space station while simultaneously preparing for Belvaille’s first ever election. He thinks it is an impossible task.
Every year the city, and even the galaxy, falls further into chaos as he himself succumbs to the debilitating effects of his mutation. With economic turmoil everywhere, a dirty election in the works, and the galaxy’s foremost assassin hunting him, Hank has to decide if he can save Belvaille. Or if it’s even worth saving.
Beginning in 1558, the story follows the romance between Ned Willard and Margery Fitzgerald over half a century. It commences at a time when Europe turns against Elizabethan England and the queen finds herself beset by plots to dethrone her.
He does write very convincing love stories. I’l give him that.
This was the weakest of the three books, I thought.
Still worth reading, but the endless intrigues between Catholics and Protestants lost me at some point.
The plot, covering 50 years, the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, was too ambitious. I preferred the more personal earlier novels.
Depending on whom you ask, Franzen is either the premier living American writer or the last literary dinosaur: a pompous white male Luddite who gazes disdainfully down at us tweeting, Facebooking fools from his comfortable perch of astronomical sales and critical adulation. …
Purity is one big and ambitious book. I was prepared not to like it. Prepared not to finish it.
I assumed every character would be educated and talented. Yet find ways to make themselves miserable.
And I was right.
But the plot got me hooked. It’s complex, interesting and entertaining. If you are up for a challenge, I do recommend Purity.
Purity by Jonathan Franzen
The multigenerational epic jumps back and forth across decades. Moves from Germany, to Bolivia, to several different locations in the USA.
I did care about some of the lead characters.
Purity (Pip) Tyler was quite convincing, I thought.
German Andreas Wolf runs a WikiLeaks-like site called the Sunlight Project. Daniel Craig will play him in the planned Showtime adaptation. Purity would make good TV, I think.
Journalist Leila Helou did not do much for me much as a character. But her story was fascinating.
Charles Blenheim, Leila’s husband, a literary has-been, is not a lead character. But I did find him very entertaining.
Tom Aberant is the most important character, I’d say. An idealist who somehow got himself roped into an insane marriage. He’s the character I identify with most.
It’s only got a 3.6 / 5.0 rating on GoodReads. Critics like it better than do regular folks.
Of his 4 other books, the only other I’ve read is The Corrections. Purity is better IMHO.
he wrote right to left on the page in mirror script
he was hundreds of years ahead of his time in some scientific disciplines
Mike Sissons, the young artist, was a fan. He was first to tell me those facts.
I loved Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography. For me Leonardo was not as riveting as the Jobs book. But I still recommend it. Leonardo’s life story is very interesting and entertaining.
I was surprised to learn Leonardo finished very few projects over his long career. He died carrying Mona Lisa and other paintings around with him as he simply could never decided they were finished.
He was more interested in studying the tongue of the woodpecker than in working on his paintings.
At times he hated the paint brush. Studying nature to satisfy his own curiosity was more compelling, especially near the end of his life.
His last words:
The soup is getting cold.
I bought the audio version but Kindle would be better. The book comes with 144 illustrations.
Blake Morrison review:
Flamboyant, illegitimate and self taught, he was unreliable and an unashamed self-publicist. He was also one of the most gifted and inventive men in history
Hank is a thug. He knows he’s a thug. He has no problem with that realization. In his view the galaxy has given him a gift: a mutation that allows him to withstand great deals of physical trauma. …
It won the Man Booker Prize. All kinds of critics love it.
The audio version slightly better. But one hundred and sixty-six individual narrators (led by Nick Offerman & David Sedaris) still couldn’t make it either interesting or understandable.
I really tried, but listening to this book is impossible. I want to appreciate the voices, the story, but I can’t get past the format. Like wading through footnotes. Is it possible to ignore the format when you READ it? About to throw in the towel and get a refund.
The style was original but tedious. The various voices, very truncated at times and others long …
I was comparing Dostoyevsky’s far superior and adventurous novella Bobok where the decaying corpses quarrel and grumble and a sharp and memorable view of Russian society emerges. This book is not memorable save for its unrelenting tedium.
George Saunders has long been accepted as one of the masters of the American short story.
In this, his first novel, the Lincoln trapped in the bardo is Willie, the cherished 11-year-old son of the great civil war president.
As his parents host a lavish state reception, their boy is upstairs in the throes of typhoid fever. Saunders quotes contemporary observers on the magnificence of the feast, trailing the terrible family tragedy that is unfolding. Sure enough, Willie dies and is taken to Oak Hill cemetery, where he is interred in a marble crypt. On at least two occasions – and this is the germ of historical fact from which Saunders has spun his extraordinary story – the president visits the crypt at night, where he sits over the body and mourns.
The cemetery is populated by a teeming horde of spirits – dead people who, for reasons that become an important part of the narrative …
An increasingly crippled Hank struggles to keep the various factions of Belvaille in check after the collapse of the Colmarian Confederation.
Rick McCharles 