The unbearable pedantry and dull imagery
921573
After a few recommendations and overheard remarks from people saying how wonderful this book was, how true, etc, although the recommendations did not inspire, they could not be ignored. I flipped through the book at a local bookstore and read a little bit and cringed, put the book away and bought something else. Then, as I left I noticed a pretty girl sitting in front of the store, indian style on the sidewalk, near the end of a book and I asked her what she was reading. Immortality, she said, by Milan Kundera. It was very good, worthy of a reread. So, in the spirit of the times I decided that might be interpreted by some as a sign, I might as well read Kundera.

Kundera begins the novel rather tediously, setting the tone for the next three hundred pages. He rather dryly and pedantically  lays a mythological foundation to the novel, to which he constantly refers and elaborates. The "myth of eternal return", he begins discussing:

"The myth of eternal return states that a life which disappears once and for all, which does not return, is like a shadow, without weight, dead in advance, and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime, its horror, sublimity, and beauty mean nothing. We need take no more note of it than of a war between two African kingdoms in the fourteenth century, a war that altered nothing in the destiny of the world, even if a hundred thousand blacks perished in excrutiating torment."

Then, he begins to invent, or derive notions of Lightness and Being from this myth, defining rather vaguely the duality of Lightness and weight, and their metaphysical interplay in the life of man. But this is not intended (I don't think) to be a sophmore's philosophy text on the meaning of love and the nature of life, a story then begins.

There are two main, unremarkable love stories in this novel, that of Tomas and Tereza and Franz and Sabina, Sabina being the mutual link, having an affair with both Tomas and Franz at different points in the novel. The narration of the novel is done in the first person, but by no character in the book. The story is told by a rather pedantic man, full of ideas, eager to talk about them, filtering the lives of the characters through these cobweb concepts, centering around his universals of Lightness and Heaviness, and Body and Soul and 'the duality of Sex and Love.'

There is little imagery in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Kundera is simply incapable of describing his characters. There is nearly no physical description at all and what little there is done clumsily, without depth. "She arrived the next evening, a handbag dangling from her shoulder, looking more elegant than before" is nearly the only physical description we have of Tereza. She's elegant. A novel is a universe, and the universe Kundera has created is full of "elegant", "tall" people, some that "wear glasses" and one has a "childish face." The book is done in black and white, with heavy contrast, little gray, lacking nearly any trace of color. We could be forgiven for thinking that Kundera was blind.

What's left is a heap of ideas about "reality" and what the idea of Love is to these generic characters. The novel cannot even be said to be a case study of particularly extraordinarily love affairs, or singular characters. The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a shallow story of a quartet of characters and how they stand in relation to the vaporous thoughts of a dull pedant.
2055941
I had once had a similar book of the interiors of various known artistic people that I enjoyed very much and was looking forward to this.  It is UGLY in execution with unbearably prententious grainy pseudo-Polaroid photos,  with ZERO wit and intelligence in the choice of materials and an insult to every one of the 'artistic' people it was created to 'celebrate'.  Indeed, it seems to celebrate the brain-dead aesthetics of anyone who could LIVE in such depressing formless surroundings.
948346
Very difficult to read dry and uninteresting
2257535
The premise of this book sounded interesting and there weren't enough one star reviews for me to be wary of giving it a try, but of course now I realize my error.

This sounds like an eighth grader wrote it. More adjectives don't improve that probem, either, but that's where the author seems to think good writing is hidden. Describing the sky in five different words isn't artistic, it's distracting. And boring. And footsteps cannot be dejected. The person can be, but not their footsteps. Every sentence is rife with unnecessary descriptors and so any real content (if there is any - everything was very melodramatic) is drowned.

I made it through the second chapter and gave up. This author could really benefit from a good editor. Don't bother with this one.
1677789
The writing is so pedantic and painful to read. People don't act like that, or talk like that. Over simplified relationships. Not reality. Over amplified conversations that just scream overly explained and fast. The breakups and beginnings. I never start a book I don't finish but this one was so painful and pedomorphic.
764150
I was so irritated by the condescending and self-important writing in this book, not to mention its dreadful lack of structure (it is a series of lazy, over-written yet underdeveloped essays) and its endless cliches that I spared myself the trouble of finishing it. It is an exercise in turning a book supposedly about a magical city into a shrine to the author's ego and narcissism. Thoroughly unpleasant reading experience.
248153
I had reasonably high hopes for this, but found it hokey and amazingly poorly written. It is riddled with errors -- "peddling" where the authors meant "pedalling," "palacial" for palatial, etc, etc -- which makes for difficult reading. There are few pages in the book that are not interrupted by poor writing, trite cartoons, "sound bite"-style scattershot "writing," or, bizarrely, the authors stumping for surprisingly religious/conservative whatnot. (Non-USAians will find this a dull read; the rest of the world scarcely exists.)

Appeals to authority include a curious number of religious leaders -- ironically, well-heeled US evangelicals/bigoted social conservatives. These are certainly not people living lives of voluntary simplicity and the quotations ring hollow.

With better writing and better editing, this might have made for a decent magazine essay. As is, it's a time-waster -- it reads like a textbook for a religious middle school's civics class. Adults hoping for thoughtfully researched and well-written sociology will file this in their recycling box pretty quickly -- I don't even want to burden the local thrift store (where it sat for some time; if an anti-consumer book is a tough sell at 50c in a thrift store, one starts to wonder what the other customers were already aware of) with getting it back again.
2462321
Anyone studying the demise of pedagogy in the modern era could conceivably scrape some benefit from the barnacled hull of this immensely ugly and poorly coordinated excuse for a textbook; unfortunately, most of its users will be unwitting students, whose native enthusiasm for the subtle music and expressive rigor of the English language will be sorely beleaguered by this leaden-spirited assault on the natural fluidity of thought and word.

Note well that this is a book that may have "users" but not "readers," since it is ultimately unreadable: while it is credited to two authors (who acknowledge many more), it utterly lacks a distinctive and coordinating authorial voice--an absence that is mirrored by its layout, which is a riot of ocular insult that seems to have been conceived in total ignorance of the fundamentals of intelligible layout and typography.

In personal expression, such a lack of coherent authority is a simple token of weakness; but in a textbook designed to instruct, the absence is as fatal as setting off on a sea voyage in an ill-provisioned canoe with no navigational equipment.

Sadly (and predictably), the authors' lack of attention to the basic exposition of their subject is complemented by a superstructure of irrelevant sociological preachment and innuendo that adds a note of Stalinist coercion to the proceedings: at every turn, what should be straightforward and responsible grammatical exercises are warped into an endless cycle of variations on the theme of Political Correctness.  This tendency receives continual support from an equally inexhaustible reservoir of false and viscid references to popular culture that can only sicken the healthy soul with their patronizing fakeness.

In short, this is an Orwellian nightmare that no caring teacher should inflict on his students, and no thinking school board should approve: Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate.
3260454
Pros and cons of digital selfpublishing: everything and anything is made available to the public, and this is even more true in the case of the hoard of authors bandwagoning the renewed interest on the figure of Richard III, who must be turning in his newly built grave in Leicester at the thought that his name is so poorly spent.

In this unscrutinised market, it's up to the readers to try and make their own choices on where to spend their hard earned money and speaking as one with some experience in Ricardian fiction, this is a poor one. Worse than being a collection of slanderous ravings on the last Plantagenet king's supposed incestous affair with his niece, which he undertakes with his dying wife's blessing (Anne utterly encourages Elizabeth to phisically comfort her husband now she is no longer able to) and his niece's enthusiasm, this book is dull and boring. Following the first book in this "saga" the reader will find the same never ending trains of thoughts before a leaf moves in the plot or a word is uttered, same poor basic language, same heart thrills of the female chararacter at every breath, etc.

This is not the only female author apparently enjoying depicting Richard III as an incestous sex symbol and making one think of the old Shakesperean monster and the Bard's powerful lines with affection, but strip away the famous names so badly sticked to this series of sighs and broodings and all you are left with is a poorly written Mills and Boon. If you like the kind, go for it.
2507786
This book is a derivative piece of crap.  It references the "real" Pat the Bunny in its title, shows an illustration of it, and uses the same color pallet.  It evokes, with its mid-century refrigerator, the same time period as Goodnight Moon.  It could very well achieve its purpose;  children might go to sleep after hearing it, because it's mind-numbingly dull.

i gave it two stars because of the quality of the needlework, the fact that it can't be destroyed, and because it was nice to see Columbus the cat again.

P.S.  In the illustration of the real Pat the Bunny, Dorothy Kunhardt's name is misspelled.  C'mon guys!  Show some respect!
4523216
I wish to echo all the other scathing reviews of this burnable book. After suffering through many aimless pages describing two drunk teenage boys going from one empty house to another, I threw in the towel. What an insufferable intellectual show-off! It's true that no editing could save this thing, but it could have made it less painful for many dedicated lovers of fiction.
2988449
A complete con of a book!  No plot, no themes, no plan, and nothing offered in their absence. Even potentially interesting historical events and locations have the vitality sucked out of them by this mundane prose experiment. All I can admire is the author's vain audacity in passing off a prosaic hodgepodge of lifeless research notes as serious literature.  Don't be swindled by the positive reviews. The book is both hollow and deadly dull.
328168
The book is not only simplistic without being charming, but it is flawed in a variety of ways that can be downright dangerous. I refuse to waste any more time pointing out specifics. I wasted enough time reading the book. It was so painfully boring I could not take more than 3-4 pages at a time, but struggled to see how far stupidity can go. Let me say just this: it is for the lazy-minded, mediocre, self-centered many who dream of being God (the character actually says that!!!) and manipulating others to serve them.

Let me ask all the "enchanted" readers one question: if this is such a spiritual tale, why do we need the actual treasure at the end??? If it is about self-discovery, why do we need "precious stones, gold masks adorned with red and white feathers, and stone statues embedded with jewels, the spoils of a conquest that the country had long forgotten"????? Don't labor to answer. I'll do you a favor and give the answer away: because it is for those who, although they want the solid gold, they like to think that they are enlightened beings of a superior kind. What can be more dangerous?

Everybody else: Keep your kids away from this book!
620245
The content aside, this is quite possibly the worst book I have ever read, as far as writing style and organization is concerned. Almost each paragraph is guaranteed to include numerous sentences containing descriptive information and details that are completely irrelevant to the thesis the writer is describing in that chapter. There is a slew of abstract references to places and characters and events that are never unpaked, glossed over in rapid succession, and without any connection to the thrust of the topic. It is a perfect practice in careless and disjointed writing and a torture to read.
3564983
Absent the hyperbolic praise that the book attributes to itself and the New York Times has puzzling seconded, I would have found this book a disappointment. Since I made the mistake of reading it after being assured of its brilliance, I found it maddeningly facile, judgmental, humorless, lifeless, and dull.

Characters sound the same regardless of age, gender, and purported motivation and don't have any meaningful reason to exist on the page except to suffer under their author's glare. There's a haughty condescension that seems to drip from every page. While there's a multi-character narrative in that the story is told from the perspective of differently-named but not terribly distinguishable characters, there's no real story to be driven -- multiple perspectives on an actress wearing a silly costume or kicking a cell phone hardly reach the threshold of "delv[ing] into humanity's most profound mysteries." I'd suggest that if this book is addressing life mysteries for you, you should consider consulting a therapist or science teacher.
1390923
It's not surprising that there are literal-minded, dichotomous thinkers who like this stuff. It is more disheartening that people with doctoral and medical degrees and board certification in psychiatry fell for it.  For example, the top psychiatrists at the Rush-Pres. St Luke's Dissociative Disorders Unit in Chicago (before it was sued out of existence) perpetrated SRA on people who should themselves have known better.
If you like easy answers (devil causes all evil, childhood abuse causes all emotional discomfort) this is the book for you.  The miracle here is how Michelle, Dr Pazder, and the incompetent ghost writer managed to make lurid tales of abuse so deadly dull.
3631169
A book filled with dull, boring and unimaginative portraits of pretty women and rehashed Photoshop techniques that have been commonplace for nearly a decade. Also, the thin content is presented in a typographic format that is nearly unreadable.

You'll get a much better insight into "The Art of Photographing Women" by reading the latest edition of Maxim magazine.