Some questions to follow the interesting discussion already started with Jorge's post and the comments from Kristen and Rocio - and even Nayra's! if we want to extract conclusions from her statement...
Did you got annoyed by the book or did you enjoy it?
Did you feel the characters were not interesting, boring, not redeeming, or did you like them? Even if you did not like them, did any of them arose any feelings in you that make it attractive to keep reading?
What about the end? Do you think it is a happy end or a tragic end?
If Walter had written a memoir, what might he have said about his victories and his suffering?
What character do you think is the least free? And the most free?
How is Lalitha different from the other characters? How does her motivation for working with the Cerulean Mountain Trust compare to Walter's?
Too many questions! and still, there is much more we want to hear from you.
THE last one: As Rocio said, do you think you will read another Franzen?
Reading and Sharing around the Globe
Showing posts with label Freedom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Freedom. Show all posts
Jun 14, 2011
May 25, 2011
Freedom. Final discussion, by Jorge
I have to say that I voted for this book, the description provided and the commercial success seemed to me that I could be an interesting book to read. I was mistaken.
Continuing with the masterpiece debate I like in every book, I think Freedom is not a masterpiece at all. The one who wrote “a masterpiece of American fiction… Like all great novels, FREEDOM does not just tell an engrossing story. It illuminates, through the steady radiance of its author’s profound moral intelligence, the world we thought we knew” was either drunk or was earning a lot of money just telling that (maybe both). I find this book a very good one for Oprah’s followers: middle class bored people with marital problems that only want to project their lives into others’ problems. I don’t see neither a deep description of today’s American society nor an intense, well written story. Some of the characters are really unnecessary and overall I find this book an accumulation of disgraces, without sense, only chronological in Patty’s life.
Patty is annoying, Walter boring, Katz funny but all are a stereotype. If I have to choose a character I’d rather choose the cerulean warbler: is the best character, is the only one that is really suffering on the main characters’ decisions and the only one that does not have the freedom to decide its own fate.
The book is increasingly tragic (sometimes too tragic, why has Lalitha died? Was it necessary?) but the end of it is really disappointing: it is a happy ending, in which the couple reconciles and everything is allright again (come on! What was the writer thinking about?? I think only commercial success). I think this is the kind of ending that mass, main street, readers want, but betrays the way the book is written, the dramatic evolution of facts that builds the story line of the book.
I have found this book long, boring, "too many pages" as some of you said for Vargas Llosa’s. It tries to be a complex description of a couple difficult life in current society, but in my opinion only gets that done in part, it ends being an addition of characters, clichés and stereotypes that could be summarized in half of the pages (and could be done with a more profound description of the couple and less waffle around it). I think that this book is good for soap opera (culebron) followers, not for anyone with a little bit of interest in literature.
That said I would like to ask for a shorter book next time; good or bad, shorter will be better for all!
Lo bueno, si breve, dos veces bueno. :)
Continuing with the masterpiece debate I like in every book, I think Freedom is not a masterpiece at all. The one who wrote “a masterpiece of American fiction… Like all great novels, FREEDOM does not just tell an engrossing story. It illuminates, through the steady radiance of its author’s profound moral intelligence, the world we thought we knew” was either drunk or was earning a lot of money just telling that (maybe both). I find this book a very good one for Oprah’s followers: middle class bored people with marital problems that only want to project their lives into others’ problems. I don’t see neither a deep description of today’s American society nor an intense, well written story. Some of the characters are really unnecessary and overall I find this book an accumulation of disgraces, without sense, only chronological in Patty’s life.
Patty is annoying, Walter boring, Katz funny but all are a stereotype. If I have to choose a character I’d rather choose the cerulean warbler: is the best character, is the only one that is really suffering on the main characters’ decisions and the only one that does not have the freedom to decide its own fate.
The book is increasingly tragic (sometimes too tragic, why has Lalitha died? Was it necessary?) but the end of it is really disappointing: it is a happy ending, in which the couple reconciles and everything is allright again (come on! What was the writer thinking about?? I think only commercial success). I think this is the kind of ending that mass, main street, readers want, but betrays the way the book is written, the dramatic evolution of facts that builds the story line of the book.
I have found this book long, boring, "too many pages" as some of you said for Vargas Llosa’s. It tries to be a complex description of a couple difficult life in current society, but in my opinion only gets that done in part, it ends being an addition of characters, clichés and stereotypes that could be summarized in half of the pages (and could be done with a more profound description of the couple and less waffle around it). I think that this book is good for soap opera (culebron) followers, not for anyone with a little bit of interest in literature.
That said I would like to ask for a shorter book next time; good or bad, shorter will be better for all!
Lo bueno, si breve, dos veces bueno. :)
Mar 15, 2011
And the Winner is...
… Freedom! by Jonathan Franzen
Where are you gonna get this one? Wherever, time to go for it!
Suggested reading schedule, coming up soon.
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