Review A Book

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Originally Posted by rhei_27

I just finished reading "Memoirs of a Geisha". Eversince, I am fascinated of Geishas and japanese culture. I really like this book. I cried in the part when Sakamoto Chiyo,Nitta Sayuri's name before being a Geisha, found out that her parents died and her sister eloped. Actually,it's a shallow reason to cried at but I just can't help but to cry on that part.

Why don't you try to read this book? Perhaps you'll like it.

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have you ever read The Teahouse of the August Moon? It is very charming and funny. About the American govt sending in troops to a small village to teach them to be like the Americans and have a democratic govt.etc.But all the materials for a schoolhouse are used to build a Japanese teahouse and all is supervised by a darling little geisha called Lotus Blossom. When the military brass show up they are enraged to see the guy they appt'd in a bath robe having tea. It really shows the life of the geisha and is loaded with beautiful imagery and humour. :D

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Originally Posted by rhei_27

I just finished reading "Memoirs of a Geisha". Eversince, I am fascinated of Geishas and japanese culture. I really like this book. I cried in the part when Sakamoto Chiyo,Nitta Sayuri's name before being a Geisha, found out that her parents died and her sister eloped. Actually,it's a shallow reason to cried at but I just can't help but to cry on that part.

Why don't you try to read this book? Perhaps you'll like it.

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Hi Rhei,

I read Memoirs of a Geisha last summer and enjoyed it very much. I agree with you that geisha culture is very interesting and the book does an excellent job of introducing it without overwhelming the reader. The story was really touching at times as well. What I liked most about it is that Nitta was not shown as this impossible angelic herion. She had her shortcomings and she was honest about those and she tried her best to do the right things.

I haven't seen the movie yet. A friend of mine has been insisting that we should but I am not so sure (she has actually seen it already but wants to see it for a second time!). I am worried that it will be another disappointing books-to-movies experiences.

Welcome to the Forum! :)

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Originally Posted by Sami

No, I haven’t seen the movie. I am surprised that the film left out the parts about Jonathan’s grandfather – that’s a HUGE part of the book to cut out. Didn’t you feel that this did a lot of damage to the theme of history/heritage in the story? Surely the events that occur in the present are only one side to what the book is about?

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Actually the weird thing it is that, although it really is a story about Jonathan looking for Trachimbrod and for his past, I think the movie put more emphasis on Alex's grandfather's experience. I don't want to give anything away, but like I said earlier, there were some changes to the movie that I think affected the story a lot. The flashbacks that they shown were all from the perspective of Alex's grandfather and none (or maybe just one or two) about Jonathan's ancestors.

But I think it's still worth watching. The movie is sort of an "indie" film and is only an hour and a half long. I'm sure they could have squeezed in stories of Trachimbrod if they wanted.

I was a huge Stephen King fan as a kid, and his novels are largely responsible for making me the bookreader I am today. Although my taste has since moved on, I still appreciate him for what he is - a pretty good meat-and-potatoes sort of writer who doesn't even take himself as seriously as some of his fans seem to. Over the years, I've come to read just about everything he's published. It's something of a guilty pleasure, though I certainly consider him head and shoulders over complete hacks like Dan Brown. I like Stephen King in the same way I like AC/DC: it's good clean gory fun.

His latest novel, "Cell", however is very far from good. It's basically a cover of Richard Matheson's "I Am Legend" with some of George Romero's "Dawn Of The Dead" thrown in for good measure. (And just so no one misses that, the book is dedicated to Matheson and Romero ferchrissakes!) Anything of his own invention in the story is recycled from the far superior "The Stand" (and the even worse "Tommyknockers"). For some reason he tries to make it a technothriller, and only comes off as what he is: a 50-something guy whose entire knowledge of computers is gleaned from a segment on viruses he saw on CNN three years ago. Talky, slow-moving, illogical and thoroughly unengaging. King will never be a great writer, but he used to at least be better than this...

beer,
I couldn't help but think as I read your post that over time you have gleaned such incredible knowledge and a feeling for this gender that , well perhaps you should now take a crack at writing one. I am quite certain it will be a nonstop page thriller.
I read what a fellow editor once said about writing"if you want to be good, really good at writing in a particular gendre, read, read, read, the very best of it, and chances are if you can write, you will be."
A man who is dead now began in the sixties collecting a book here, and a book there about space which was becoming his great passion after work eacg at his white collar job. He did that for about twenty years and read every syllable and could converse with anyone in the space program with the greatest of ease.
When he died his wife offered the collection to some branch of the space program and they were so impressed they built a building to house it.
Go Beer go, go Beer go!

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Originally Posted by rhei_27

Nope. I haven't seen the movie. I'll try to watch it this weekend if I'm not that busy. Have you seen it?

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Yes I have. I thought it was pretty good. Of course a lot shorter than the movie with less details, but that's to be expected in a movie adaptation, I guess.

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Originally Posted by rachel

beer,
I couldn't help but think as I read your post that over time you have gleaned such incredible knowledge and a feeling for this gender that , well perhaps you should now take a crack at writing one. I am quite certain it will be a nonstop page thriller.

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Hehe, thanks! I'll try sometime. I have a feeling it wouldn't work though - I'm usually too bored with plots to write a successful thriller.

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Originally Posted by rachel

I read what a fellow editor once said about writing"if you want to be good, really good at writing in a particular gendre, read, read, read, the very best of it, and chances are if you can write, you will be."

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I've heard that too. You'd think it was obvious, but apparently it isn't. I've talked to more than one writer who have told the story of how young people always come up to them and the following conversation takes place:
Fan: Being a writer seems sooo cool! Can I be a writer too?
Writer: I don't know, probably.
Fan: So what do I do?
Writer: Well, for starters, what do you like to read?
Fan: I dunno, I don't really read much...
:confused:
It seems almost all of my... idols, for lack of a better word, in both literature, film and music are themselves unabashed fans of other people. Heck, half of Bob Dylan's autobiography consists of him gushing over other musicians. No one can create in a vacuum, we all need influences. (Of course, King's problem in "Cell" is that he shows too much influence and not enough creation...)

Beer,
you just get over that bored thing, you have a brilliant mind and I am putting aside some shekels as I write this-just to buy your first book. Like you told me once, what else is there to do in all that cold and dark. You can do it and you know it.

well, i just finished reading "Oroonoko" by Aphra Behn! quite a good book only if my professor wouldnt spoil it for me! great reading.......gives u an insight into lot of stuff that happened in certain colonies. i guess i find it better when i give it a postcolonial reading. i kinda like postcolonial literature.

The last book I read was Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon. It was the first Morrison book I've read, and absolutely love it!! Cried at the end, then re-read the beginning.

The last book I read was the play by Ibsen, A Doll's House, and I have to say I really liked it. It's a good examination of how deceiving appearances can be, and the way women were looked at as inferiors. I was really impressed, because I thought it was going to be fairly dull, but I was pleasantly surprised, especially at the end. Definitely worth reading. Now I just want to see it performed.

Schindler's list. - Thomas Keneally. I liked it. I saw the movie years ago and was impressed that I liked it better than the book, which for me is not usually the case. For beingin fiction based on a real life it was very well written.

I just finished reading Persuasion. I loved it, it was outstanding. does anyone know if Austen's other books are as good as that?

I am about to begin reading Emma, guess we'll see just how comparable it is!!

Yesterday I read Two of us Brendan Halpin. ah its also called Donorboy (thats why I couldnt find it on amazon)
I loved it and it isnt anything like the sort of thing I would usually even consider reading ( not being fond of weepies) but it was good Sad but it wasnt that sad. t was about a 14 year old whose 2 mothers were killed in a car accident and how shes sent to her biologcal father who shes never met and how they cope. I knwow though if it was made into a film Id have cried my eyes out as well as laughed.

I just finished reading The Immoralist by Andre Gide. It is probably the best book I've read so far this year surpassing Brave New World. It is an introspective tale about a man named Michel who contracts Tuberculosis shortly after getting married and the way he changes, after the illness abates, into a hedonistic person eventually calling his friends to a house in northern Africa to relate his narrative and "drag him away from there."