Emily Bristor Bristor itibaren Balıkalan Köyü, 27840 Balıkalan Köyü/Nurdağı/Gaziantep, Turkey itibaren Balıkalan Köyü, 27840 Balıkalan Köyü/Nurdağı/Gaziantep, Turkey

I'm sort of unimpressed. It's not that it's bad, but this is my very first Chabon, and I expected more...is it all uphill from here?

I loved this book. It was a fast and interesting read. James Frey keeps you hooked... It provided a way of thinking about religion in modern day.

This was light, easy reading. It was enjoyable and humorous, too. Foster shows examples of the common interpretations of certain symbols. These explanations take up the bulk of the text. I'm sure they were meant to be examples of how the interpretative process works, but it felt like a list you would print on a bookmark and refer to while reading. For example, "rain," ok, that must mean a cleansing or transformation. He did explain one idea that I hope to keep in mind. "One mention... is an occurrence, two may be a coincidence, but three constitutes a definite trend." When you see a pattern, think about what additional meaning could be represented. Foster pays lip service to the idea that a symbol can mean something different to the reader than the writer and that finding your own individual meaning is valuable, but he doesn't spend much time on that part of the process. One thing he mentioned was the concept of intertextuality. That all stories are connected because when we write we cannot help but reflect the stories we have already been exposed to, although it is often unintentional. I liked his explanation. This book would be useful to someone who hasn't been exposed to these concepts before. For me, personally, it had some things that I'm glad to be reminded of, that I hope will be useful to me, and the rest was just interesting on a hypothetical level.