Sim itibaren Zapolskoye, Moskovskaya oblast', Rusya, 141330 itibaren Zapolskoye, Moskovskaya oblast', Rusya, 141330

Olan biteni ilginç bir şekilde ele alalım. Tarihsel olarak şüphesiz çok iyi, ama zevklerim için çok karmaşık. Bu yüzden kurguyu tercih ederim.

Çok fazla bükülme bu kitapla evlenirdim onu seviyorum

Fascinating description of the intertwined lives of two creative writers. Beautifully written.

Beatles lore is my fave. I read this book curled up in the backseat of a little car on a road trip down the East Coast while the boys sat in front and talked. It was magical, a chance to be more involved with one of the great influences of my life. I learned Beatles dirt from this book that I can surprise even very music-obsessed friends with. My favorite Beatles book.

This book is about Bily and Zluty, hatched from the same egg, but quite different from each other. Zluty is the adventurer and wanderer, while timid Bily tends to the house and garden. The appearance of the red wind threatens to change their happy little life. Bily and Zluty are quite lovable characters (looking much like a miniature Max from "Where the Wild Things Are). The pictures are also essential to the storyline, giving the reader a feeling that we knew something the characters didn't. I imagined a bigger story building about their different lifestyles that never really eventuated, maybe that is in the next book. I usually read a series only when it is complete, so that I don't have to wait an entire year to reach a resolution for the characters. This book felt like a big chapter rather than a stand alone book to me, just as their journey begins, the book is done. Then again maybe that's the idea because now I am waiting for the next two books to find out what happens. This was my first time to read an Isobelle Carmody book, and I will definitely be reading another, but this time I will choose one from a series she has already finished.

Like The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Yunior is a key character here, and the main character/voice in all but a story or two. I very much enjoyed these stories, and Diaz's writing style. It's visual and gritty, which fits well with the content. For example: "with the sun sliding out of the sky like spit off a wall." The focus of the stories as a group is on race, being from the DR in America/becoming American, poverty, and family struggles. The family issues revolve mostly around Yunior's dad, who is abusive to some extent and semi-disappears for five years when he goes to America before bringing his family after him. Yunior takes the difficult parts of his life in stride - they aren't really unusual. But he does notice their effects: "Tia looked a ton like Mami; the two of them were both short and light-skinned. Tia smiled a lot and that was what set them apart the most." A few of the stories seemed calculated to shock or surprise the reader more than anything else. The titular story, Drown, is one of these. But even that story has its moments that provoke thought: "I've tried to explain, all wise-like, that everything changes, but [Mami] thinks that sort of saying is only around so you can prove it wrong." Race is also a major theme, and several of the stories discuss what it's like to be brown in America. The story How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie stands out from the rest as it is written in the second person. Its an obvious attempt to put the reader in Yunior's skin, but what's most interesting in the story is how the "you" of the story treats girls (and expects to be treated by them) based on their race. It's the local stereotypes in action, and it's what "you" (and all of us) cling to in order to keep our lives a little predictable and understandable, and to help us understand the place we occupy in the world. This is brought home in the following statement - both sadly and poignantly: "Tell her that you love her hair, that you love her skin, her lips, because, in truth, you love them more than you love your own." Themes: race, America, Dominican Republic, Hispanic, immigration, poverty, sex, violence, fear, short stories