18 Followers
21 Following
Tashan

Reading is Therapy

I choose to read books instead of watching TV.

Currently reading

The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind
Gustave Le Bon
Les Deux Tours (Le Seigneur des Anneaux, #2)
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Quran
Anonymous

Is Fahrenheit 451 the temperature at which Kindles melt?

Amazon, GrAmazon, is redefinining our experience of literature! Amazon has evaded having to pay tax and comply with labour laws in many countries, in many US states. Now it is getting around the various laws that protect free speech in order to define what people may or may not read purely for the sake of making Even More Money. America is a capitalist country, Amazon is only 'living the dream' and taking it to the extreme of that cliche, power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. The power of the monopoly.

 

For Goodreads, comments and shelves are to be self-censored under pain of summary deletion of anything that offends GR, because it is off-topic or criticises the author. Especially, or perhaps only, if the author is one of the Stgrb whose genius seems to be in their ability to generate negative publicity. Which is of course at the root of it. Since my reviews are generally snippets of my life, they are mostly off-topic, however they do not offend GR and so they still stand. So from this I gather that to offend GrAmazon in any way puts your work at risk of deletion. 'Offence' is always going to be "off-topic". What stunningly clever lawyer thought that one up, it covers everything!

 

The world of books already for many people defined by Amazon will also in the future be limited by them into the boundaries Amazon sets. At the moment they are deleting books with overtly sexual titles and others with sexual content they don't approve of. And should Amazon decide to make what they think is appropriate retroactive, well no-one actually owns a Kindle book, it is only rented, and I am sure in the terms of the rental there is a little tiny bit which says they can alter the words "if necessary" or perhaps replace the entire book by another (sanitized) edition.

 

Most people now, when they think of Eeyore, think of Disney's loveable soft-toy donkey and have no idea of the original irascible, cynical, loner of a character that A.A. Milne wrote. Sickly-sweet Disney is all about profits. It is so much better to have a happy ending, all-American accents and nothing to offend the parents so everything is rewritten to fit those parameters and so these stories pass into folk history with their literary origins forgotten. Imagine if the Little Mermaid had ended as in the original - the Mermaid has the choice between murdering the prince's new wife or committing suicide! So it was rewritten and it is the rewritten version that has become the standard.

 

How soon before books featuring paedophilia, rape and violence in a positive light are banned or reworked? Nabokov's Lolita won't be first on the firing line, Neither would the Q'uran with Muhammed marrying a 9 year old, and the Bible so full of threats, violence and murder. These books are too well-known to mess with, but self-published authors - they are on the frontline. Nenia is one of the first casualties

 

A couple of things to read, Nenia's blog and her 100-book giveaway.  And an old review of mine that is not at all on-topic but about the repression of books even today, Animal Farm.  

 

And then with Amazon's domination of the SPA market, the eBook market and the world's biggest bookclub, Goodreads you can forget any laws enshrining freedom of expression in books, because if it doesn't pass Amazon's ideas of what is right and fit to promote profits, it won't be published by them. Publish it any other way, and who will hear of it?  Did the books still burn if the people there who saw them on fire had no means to tell anyone else?  Did Goodreads censorship really happen if only 1,000 people knew and 19,999,000 don't?  

 

So censorship is not just deleting, it is making sure that no one knows there is any form of censorship in operation - firstly by threatening people so they self-censor and secondly by limiting drastically the number of people who know about it.

 

What we need is another book company to break Amazon's monopoly, but it won't happen, Amazon will just buy it. I have no solution to this problem. I forsee a sort of electronic version of Russian samizdat for those 'in the know', for the other 19,999,000 well they say you can't miss what you've never had. 

 

All hail capitalism without controls.

 

 

End of the Beginning - John  Goode We follow Brad as he gave himself 24h to decide what he is gonna do with his life now that he came out in front in every one in high school.

Through an inner dialogue we discover what he felt when he first guessed he was gay, what are his fears for his future, how he noticed Kyle in the hallway, all his background in fact.

Maybe With a Chance of Certainty - John  Goode “Why?” my mouth asked, my eyes still closed.
“Because maybe I like you?” he said, his breath warm against my skin.
“Maybe?” I asked, not even aware I was holding my breath.
Maybe, with a strong chance of certainty.” He said, kissing the nape of my neck.


This is my first try at a Ya M/M romance + coming of age + glbt teen issues.
I didn’t want to get on with some already high praised book because if it didn’t hold up to my expectations, I would have probably given up on the whole genre.
When I picked up this book, I braced myself for something poorly written, because gltb novels are quite a rarity on the market (1% of the total published content each year), so we have to take what is given to us and make the best of it. But fortunately, this book was really well written. It was even better than most (if not all) of the YA F/M I read this year.

First of all, look at the cover. So pretty. I love it, I feel the need to put it out there. SO PRETTY.

This book is about Kyle, trying to be invisible in the hallways of high school because he’s gay and let’s just be honest here, things can get pretty messed up if you’re out in HS. But then Brad, the most popular guy of the school (jock, rich, handsome and all you know…) asks him to help him study. See where we’re going here? *wink*

The development of the plot is pretty straight forward, there is no endless drama with twists one after another. I will let you discover that by yourself.

What makes this book so good? The writing. I kept highlighting excerpts of the book because of the real-no bullshit talking- fuck all of the fairy tales- tone to it. Whether you’re gay or not, you’ll relate to this book, you’ll relate to the main character and find him speaking the exact words you told yourself at some point.

One thing I have to add : Kyle doesn’t fall for a straight guy, he falls for a closeted guy and that is a lot different.

Really good book overall, 4 stars out of 5. Pretty excited to read the sequel in Brad POV.
The Princess Bride - William Goldman A bit disappointed.
I've heard such great things about this book, how it's the perfect combination of romance, adventure and humor, how it's an amazing read even when you're grown up. But i didn't like this book as much i thought I would.

Goldman appears in some people's eyes as a genius because of his little trick of narration : there is no Morgenstern, there is no longer version of this book. It's all him. Either i'm missing out something or i'm just blasé because i don't see genius in that. At best, it's imaginative but genius? No.

My biggest complain with this book (except the horrendous cover) is that it has all the clichés of a fairy tale (so we can make fun of them) but at the same time has some cliché of its own. So it can't be taken seriously as a fairy tale but it can't either be considered as a full on satire.

There is a bunch of characters in this book (all very original and colorful) and i won't elaborate on all but here are my thoughts on the main ones :
- Buttercup. She is beautiful and that's all (ALL) that matters. Even though she could have been a developed bad-ass character the author only gives glimpses of how amazing she is (horse riding, coming from a poor house, intelligent, witty)

"Enough about my beauty" Buttercup said. "Everybody always talks about how beauty I am. I've got a mind, Westley. Talk about that."
"Throughout eternity I shall do that very thing," he told her. "But now we haven't time."


- Westley. His "as you wish" gave me a heartbreak. There is something is these three words that made me feel like someone pushed me off a cliff. But then he must leave Buttercup and "dies" and even though i knew that he was coming back, i suddenly stopped caring about the book. "As you wish" is a sentence that needs a book on its own and the whole book seemed irrelevant afterwards, even worse the whole book felt as if it was disrespecting such beautiful words and that's why i could enjoy it anymore.

Overall, read it for the wit. Seriously, wit makes life worth it.

Waiting on the Sidelines

Waiting on the Sidelines - Ginger Scott I decided to read this book because i love chick lit with unusual female character. This book -about a tomboy- started out great. The scene in which Nolan confronted Reed about making fun of her name was really nice "BOOOOOM"!
But Nolan, after this becomes the stereotypical girl gushing over the rich handsome athlete and there is nothing that stands out about her anymore. Yes, she's still "poor" but no one really seems to care about that.

So then there is ups and down during 3 years but everything turns out great. Yeah, it was kind of a let down.

This book needs a bit of editing too.

Overall i'd rate this book 2 stars but i stand up for any book with unsual female lead so it's 3 out of 5 stars.
Going Long (Waiting on the Sidelines #2) - Ginger Scott Drama, drama, drama...

Tampa

Tampa - Alissa Nutting I read it for the shock value of it. I mean "pedophilia, what else?" right? But half way through it, Celest is so unapologetic and Jack so innocent that i wasn't shocked, everything just felt wrong.

I ended up reading the book with a distracted mind, trying to figure out what is the line between fiction and perversion. I won't talk about censure but is this book something we should really have interest in reading? Is this book shocking or just morally wrong?
I haven't all the answers yet.

I give this book 1 star out of 5 because of the main character who does really horrible things BESIDES being a pedophile and she actually escape the prison sentence..

I don't recommend this book to anyone.

Selected Poems - Richard S. Kennedy, E.E. Cummings Playful, romantic, sometimes deep and sometimes silly.
I am not a fan of poesy but "I carry your heart" is one of my favourite poems.

ハツカレ 1 (マーガレットコミックス (3704))

Hatsukare 1 - Miyoshi Tomori It's cute but it's on the creepy side of cute.
Note to the author : there is such thing as too much blushing.
This Is What Happy Looks Like - Jennifer E. Smith I really liked the first pages of this book, it put a huge smile on my face. But the rest of the book was barely interesting.

It was realistic (once you get over the fact that a 17 yo actor starts an online random conversation with the illegitimate daughter of a senator), nice and cute but mostly it was really flat.

There's nothing to talk about on this book.

青空エール 1 (マーガレットコミックス)

青空エール 1 - Kazune Kawahara I don't know why i previously gave this one 4 stars.
Some people have said it was better than koukou debut, well it's not.
This is almost an amateur work. The story line has a weird trajectory, the characters are way too effusive, the drawing isn't that good (except for yamada)

青空エール 6 (マーガレットコミックス)

Aozora Ēru: 6 - Kazune Kawahara Mizushima is the devil.

青空エール 5 (マーガレットコミックス)

青空エール 5 - Kazune Kawahara This volume mostly consists on a side-plot about one of the band member. Discreet introduction of Oono, the baseball team manager. I think that she'll have some importance soon.

青空エール 4 (マーガレットコミックス)

青空エール 4 - Kazune Kawahara Yamada is still the cutest, even after he rejects Tsubasa.

青空エール 3 (マーガレットコミックス)

青空エール 3 - Kazune Kawahara Still not much relevant happening. Kind of reminds me of Kimi ni Todoke.

青空エール 2 (マーガレットコミックス)

青空エール 2 (マーガレットコミックス) - 河原 和音 This manga consists mostly of Yamada saying "You can do it!" or "Do your best!" to Tsubasa.