Story of Love In Solitude by Roger Lewinter (Book Review)

 

Story of Love In Solitude
By Roger Lewinter
Translated by Rachel Careau
Published by New Directions, 2016
Print Price: $10.95

This is a VERY small book, clocking in at 70 pages, with half of its winsome bulk taken up by the original French version tagged on to the English translation by Rachel Careau. There are three "short stories" contained within. The title story, "Story of Love in Solitude", is about a man living in a ramshackle apartment with a broken couch and an adjoining room whose wall has caved in seeing a black spider. He catches and releases it over and over. Then the second pulse pounding story, "Passion" is about what seems the same narrator in the same apartment battling with moths and maggots that seem intent on destroying his precious camellia plant, which is connected with his parent's wedding anniversary. In the third story, "Nameless".....well, I could not take it anymore at that point, I read about the first two pages of it, and gave up on this book, even though it might have taken only about half an hour to read. It was just that awful. 

Roger Lewinter is just the type of intellectual the French would hail as a genius. Simply because he is incomprehensible to most normal readers. "Zis mun moost be ze jenus, bcuz he makes no suns!". I could hardly make heads or tails of his sentence structure, with its CONSTANT interruptions, interjections, and run-ons. They reminded me of Ophelia's annoying talkative dad Polonius in Hamlet who you constantly wanted to scream SHUT UP at. 

When I got to the end of the first story in this book, the one about the black spider, I literally laughed out loud and said to myself "Are you serious? That's it?????!!!". I must admit, I was amused and thought it was funny. I thought I was on some kind of Candid Camera. When I started reading the second story I quickly realized that this wasn't a joke and that this is just how Lewinter writes. If he was an artist, he would be the guy that exhibits a garbage bag in an art gallery and title it "Garbage Revised". A blurb on the back of this book dares to compare him to PROUST!!! 

What an awful waste of 30 minutes of my life trying to slave through this. I had to get my gimp to tie me to my desk just to make it through. 

My Grade: F-

Podcast Episode 259: Classroom of the Elite Novel 1 by Syougo Kinugasa

You can listen here and/or find me at Sesho's Anime and Manga Reviews on Apple Podcasts!

Barnes and Noble Ebook Guilt

I've been feeling guilt over my ebook reading lately. Why? Because when I go in a Barnes and Noble brick and mortar store these days, I buy nothing. Ok, I occasionally buy magazines or a manga volume that I cannot get on Ipad. What I usually end up doing is seeing a book in Barnes and Noble that I want to buy, but instead of purchasing it, I write down the title or memorize it. Then, when I get home, I promptly visit Amazon.com  and buy it for my Amazon Kindle Touch. End of story.

Lately, I've been feeling guilty about that. I've been thinking about buying a Nook Simple Touch, which is pretty much the equivalent of the Kindle Touch I have right now. Same price, but "supposedly" the Nook pages turn faster, has better text display, and longer battery life.

 It also says the Nook has "no annoying ads" which I guess is a dig at the Kindle. Yes, I bought the Kindle Touch that comes with "Special Offers" but the ads are NOT annoying. If anything they are beneficial. There's like a tiny strip down at the bottom of the Kindle screen, much like the little strip you see when you play a "free" game from the Apps store from Apple. It only appears when you are on your library page and never appears while you are reading. If you want to see the offer, you touch it, and if you want it, you just get the offer sent to your email. The only other thing is that when your Kindle is in sleep mode a fullscreen ad comes up instead of pictures of authors. Actually, the original screensaver was just an ad for Amazon so who cares. I've actually saved money by USING the special offers, like getting an ebook for $1 or getting a $5 off an Amazon order offer. They also localize your offers as well, so you can get savings with merchants near where you live. Like right now I have offers like $29 for a month of unlimited Yoga classes at a place near me. So I actually think the special offers are GOOD.

I love the Kindle. I actually prefer reading ebooks on it now instead of reading an actual print book. But let's leave that whole thing for another blog entry.

So I've been wondering whether I should buy a Nook even though I really have no need for one. Why? Because I feel that the right thing to do is that if I see a book that I want to buy in Barnes and Noble, I should BUY it from Barnes and Noble instead of coming home and downloading it from Amazon. Especially since their ebook prices are the same as Amazon.

So I don't know. It's just something I'm thinking about. Feel free to give advice.