Reviews that make you go “ouch” and more: some random links
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Reviews that make you go ‘ouch’: At Bookslut, Peter Hoeg’s ‘The Quiet Girl’ comes under fire for trying to do too much, as reviewer Rosette Royale explains: ‘It’s that lack of comprehending half of what’s written that just about drains all the thrill out of The Quiet Girl.... That poor Kaspar, that troubled KlaraMaria: if their stories, their joined plights, could have been pulled out of the riot of so much highbrow intellectualism, then this novel would sing. Instead, you want nothing more than to clear your head when it’s all over.’
Royale also lists some items essential to reading this novel, including: a street map of Copenhagen, a Ouija board and a bottle of ibuprofen (extra strength).
Big deal: In a moment of unparalleled eloquence, CNN reacted to Oprah’s new book choice last week with the following: Gee, it’s a big one. Ken Follett’s ‘Pillars of the Earth,’ like its new sequel ‘World Without End,’ may seem in better company alongside telephone directories than novels. But even though the book’s length--978 pages--may scare off some readers, all they have to do is begin reading and they’ll soon realize, as has been said in an earlier posting on this blog, that the novel is a soap opera set in the Middle Ages. There’s plenty of anachronistic action, language and sex--in other words, it’s a quick read, even at that size. Oprah’s book club members have faced more challenging works than this: Remember ‘A Summer of Faulkner’?
Poetry in the sky: It’s nice to see that in some places around the world writing on public walls isn’t only advertising and graffiti. Sheffield Hallam University decided that the best solution to decorating a plain building on campus was to ask Andrew Motion, British poet laureate, to compose something. The result--a new poem called ‘What If?’--was inscribed on its nine-story facade and unveiled earlier this month as part of the ‘Text and the City’ initiative, a program organized by the Off the Shelf literary festival. In part, the poem declares to passersby:
Pause now, and let the sight of this sheer cliff
Become a priming-place which lifts you off ...
For an image of Motion’s poem on the building, click here.
Nick Owchar