Dull Country for All Men
356710
While I do agree that the writing is strong I found this book to be borderline fluff. Characters are introduced and eliminated for no apparent reason or explanation (I am still not even sure who the main character is). There is no real plot here nor is there a climax. Everything is just very random. Key parts of the action are completely skipped and then spoken about by the characters later on... similar to a low budget movie that does not want to spend the money on the expensive scenes.

If there is a lot of deeper meaning and symbolism it was lost on me. I feel like you need to truly engross a reader to get that point across. Here I was just thinking "who cares?" the whole time.
4344521
what a boring movie.  However there are many couples in the here and now coupling to create more disasters for the light hearted to wrestle with when their off spring reach the adult side of puberty. Mind control in the most dull and boring sense.
613848
King Arthur is a watered down fairy tale that dissapoints greatly, because of what it could have been. This non-myth take on the character has Arthur as a Roman Soldier played dully by Clive Owen, who usually seems more alive, who leads a group of men enslaved to Rome until after thir final mission. It is a waste to talk about the characters, as they are not developed and serve no purpose other than to fight. Keira Knightley does well in her small role, but not enough to save this film. The action scenes, outside of a great fight scene on ice that is about to break, is watered down and boring. The characters are boring and it is obvious by the tacked on ending and flow of the film, that they cut out the gritty scenes in favor of a PG-13 action epic- which onlyn Lord Of The Rings can accomplish. The director's cut won't be perfect, but it may make this film pass for good or at least almost good, instead of entertaining crap.
4153565
The combination of tribalism, machismo and modern weapons technology will stop the advance of civilization dead in its tracks.  The Sierra Madre mountains, stretching from the US border into southern Mexico, possess all three elements in abundance, which makes them a place any sensible person will go out of their way to avoid.  Richard Grant decides to lean into them instead, and the result is a lurid chronicle of bad roads, hard towns and evil men.

Originally inhabited by Indians eking out a subsistence living, the Sierra Madres were settled by Spanish ranchers, miners, loggers and Jesuit missionaries beginning in the 1600s.  During the Mexican revolution, Pancho Villa and others used the mountains as a base and hiding place.  The ejidos, communal agricultural lands granted after the revolution, became overgrazed and poorly farmed, and today the "crops that pay" are marijuana and poppies used to manufacture heroin.  The economy of the region is dominated by the drug trade and the cultural tone is set by the narcotrafficantes, impulsive, violent men with a slash and burn attitude toward their lives and everyone else's.

Grant, a British journalist living in Arizona, brings his own cultural biases to his travels, those of a skeptical, rational Northern European who believes in a contractual society governed by the rule of law.  Nothing he encounters conforms to those biases.  He rails against the Mexican idea of machismo, which creates a never-ending cycle of drunkenness, violence, revenge and the abuse of women. (For instance, if you rape a woman but then marry her, it isn't a crime.)  The rule of law gets subverted by threats and bribes from the drug traffickers.  When the government sends the Army in to destroy drug crops, it wrecks the local economy and forces all the working age men to emigrate illegally to the US to make a living.

Hard and hopeless as he makes it sound, Grant also finds grace notes in his travels:  a generous hospitality, an openness to the warm and sweaty aspects of living, a willingness to bring the mystical into everyday life, giving it a magical tinge at times.  Grant finds Mexico compelling but baffling.  He leans on The Labyrinth of Solitude, Octavio Paz' masterful examination of the Mexican character, to help explain it: Indian myths, Catholic and Moorish influences from Spain, and the political ideas of the Enlightenment swirled together to create a culture that combines fatalism in the face of brute authority, a superstitious belief in practical magic and a stoic, inward personality that finds its truest emotional expression in drunken violence.

Modern Mexico is at a crossroads.  It could become a democratic model for developing Latin American countries, or it could become the Afghanistan of the Americas, a corrupt, ineffectual government overwhelmed by a narcotics economy, a culture that combines a rigid behavioral code with impulsive violence.  Grant's book is a good guide into what these issues look and feel like to the people living through them, day by hard day.
407501
In The Lost Continent Bill Bryson writes with an attempt at humor about small-town America. I tried to enjoy this book but just couldn't. Bryson starts by criticizing his home-town and then goes on to denigrate average Americans throughout the country. Of course, it's meant to be funny and scathing, but it falls well short of humor. It merely appears to be a snide, arrogant rant that falls far short of entertainment.

Bryson has observable writing skills with literary depth, but sorry, this seems to be a pompous castigation of everyday Americans. Puzzling, it's almost as if he's trying to alienate most of the readers?? Don't waste money on this drivel!
4269032
Others have described the basic action of this book so I need not linger overlong on what happens in it.  We do wonder how and where Courtois draws the line about exposing the banal cruelties of his home life to his readers, especially since it seems as though some of them are still alive, and he doesn't have a good word to say about any of them, especially his brother Bruce, perhaps the most boring gay man who ever lived.  I think it would be fair exchange if Bruce went to visit Ralph and Wayne in their home in Kansas City, and went back and wrote a catty memoir about how they're so dull and chubby, and don't care about him.  I came away thinking that perhaps Courtois was just too close to the subject to be objective about any of the people in the story and that maybe aunt Louise, Bruce, and or the other relatives aren't as bad as he paints them.  He had to get away--that's plain.  Portland, Maine is a beautiful town with many fine restaurants, but Louise seems unable to recommend any of them to foodie Wayne, so they keep going to depressing dives despite Wayne's off-stated preference for the finer things in life.

The bed and breakfast he checks into would be all right, except there's no covered parking, and snow and ice annihilate the windshield of his rented car, so that for the remainder of the story, he's breaking ice scrapers and swearing at the miserable January weather.  Given that the action of the book takes place in 1998, we wonder at what has happened to the characters since then.  Are Ralph and Wayne still together?  What about Bruce and his (shadowy) boyfriend and his many rental properties?  Has Portland become even more gentrified, and what about Kansas City's gay nightlife?

Courtois' other writing has shown us he is capable of some hot sex writing, but except for one brief episode teasing his testicles with the icy detachable spray of the excellent B & B showerhead, we don't get any of that in here.  It's too bleak.  However, like most of us boys, having to deal with the death of a mother, even if she's not lovable, is quite a trauma, and reading the insightful REPORT FROM WINTER brings it all back home for me.  Looking forward to more by this talented author.
4073713
Well for all you people out there that enjoy books about nature and young boys trying to find themself in a world unknown to them, try My Side of the Mountain.  For all you people that enjoy books about nature and young boys trying to find themself in a world unknown to them, but in a mediocre fashion, try When the Legends Die.  The story is pretty much a reverse of My Side of the Mountain, only instead of living in the wilderness, the protagonist, Tom "shallow character" Black Bull, is living in a world of "rodeo'in".  The plotline is weak at best, and often involves conflicts that make the soap opera "Passions" look like Charles Dickens.  Also many of the characters are just bland rip offs of the last person to harrass Tom.  I would pass on this book if you are looking for a nature story.  If you want that stick with the classics.  If your forced into reading this How Boredland "classic" then best of luck to you.  Try not to fall asleep too quickly, you still have to pass english.
3658974
Very boring book. I should have stopped reading it, but there was hope that it would turn into something it did not. Being a Marine Veteran of over 26 years, and having been in Desert Storm, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, I could not help but want to fall asleep at this Soldiers account of what he was doing day to day. There were no real accounts of firefights or anything in that nature minus a quick "Visceral" experience the author would wine about having to have seen.
3983832
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court takes place in the late 19th century (in the begging of the book) to the mid-7th century (in the end and the middle of the book)A man by the name of Hank Morgan, travels back in time to the legendary era of King Arthur and His round table. Morgan keeps  a diary of the events and happenings of what goes on during his crazy  adventure at King Arthur's kingdom. Using 19th century technological  advancments, Morgan fools everyone into believing that he is a great  magician. After he gains the respect of the kink and the people, he becomes  known as "The Boss". He goes on several adventures which result  in a comical, exiting atmosphere for the book to take place in. I didn't  particularly like this book for a couple of reasons. First off, none of the  jokes are funny. This might be because it was writtern in the 19th century.  The author (Mark Twain) was probably cracking jokes from the time it was  written. Some times the jokes dept on repeating themselves. Morgan kept on  using slang from the 19th century; of coarse none of the medieval  characters were understood him. The book also got really boring, really  fast. There was really no action in it. It seemed like the author was  trying to make it funny, but couldn't. The characters were unrealistic;  they would not be in the same mood for 5 minutes. In conclution I don't  recommend this book if you don't like getting board (like me).
4156541
Bolano's posthumously published novel was probably abandoned for good reasons in 1989, because it's a thin and sketchy work of fiction. Udo Berger is a German vacationing on the beaches of Costa Brava with his girlfriend. The early scenes do bristle with the kind of intrigue that Bolano would later develop, but nothing much emerges. Berger is a German war games champion-so we are forced to consume pages of monotonous game play in the form of endless lists of moves and strategies. This method foreshadows the way in which Bolano would present his list of murders and rapes in 2666 in a stenographic form, without passion or feeling. Yes, we do see the emergence of certain central themes: e.g. offstage violence, displaced characters, and the impression of past violence. Nevertheless, this novel never gets off the ground-it will only be read by the devoted.
2164877
Ok book about privileged young man who wants to be a cowboy.  When he gets tired of surviving on his own making meager wages as a ranch hand in a pretty part of Montana, his wealthy father buys him a large ranch in eastern Montana, on the Great Plains.  He really doesn't have the background, the grit, to succeed at this.  The Great Plains and the life of a rancher who is responsible for the ranch, not just a ranch hand who is really a college-educated guy from suburban Chicago, is too much for him.  His writing style is wearying in the constant present tense he writes in, a very flat tone and not lyrical or poetic. He moves back to the pretty and less harsh part of Montana so he can be a part time 'cowboy' and full time writer.  His story is not compelling so I am not going to read any more of his writings.  Too bad real cowboys don't have wealthy fathers!
1402968
Well written, but unless you are into daily routines of ex spy's and their families, it is all pretty boring.  And much of this is written from the Chinese spy point of view, so if you think its about Milo - well partially true.  If you liked The Tourist you might have interest in it.  If you haven't read The Tourist or hated it, you won't like this book.
1950161
Accordion Crimes follows the stories of Americas many immigrants from 1890 to 1996. The novel is split into eight sections and reads like eight short stories where the only connection is a green accordion and the suffering and hardship that the immigrants each suffer; Germans, Italians and Mexicans etc.
The stories traverse America, Texas, Iowa, Florida and Louisiana to name but a few. The green accordion that connects the lives of the novels characters is crafted by a poor Sicilian in the last decade of the 19th century. Through the novel the accordion is stolen, lost or bought by the novels protagonists.
The novels premise is striking, applaudable and its ambition is as vast as the country in which novel is set, America. The novel attempts to show a hundred years of American history through its poorest people, through foreign eyes if you will.
The novel begins in Italy where a Sicilian decides to emigrate to La Merica in the hope to start a business of making and selling accordions. As an example of his craftsmanship he creates a green accordion. The accordion is an instrument one associates with the working class. Felida one of the novels characters goes further by stating that, The instrument of unsuccessful men, of poor immigrants and failures. The green colour of the instrument is significant as it relates to the nativity of its many owners and to the vast verdant landscape envisioned by immigrants who travel to America. The accordion is a complicated and elaborate instrument that belies its lowly ranking in music world.
Like the accordion of the novels title the novel is beautifully crafted and one can only admire the authors in depth research. However, I found the novel dull, bloated and as dry as the paper it is printed on. The author details the making and workings of instruments and cars and sport equipment to the nth degree. After reading the book you will be able to build and create your own accordion and combustion engine due to the complete and minute detail written by the author on these subjects. I understand the author wanted to demonstrate the ingenuity and skills that many immigrants brought with them to their new homeland but it makes for a dry and tedious read.
I found myself having no connection, no sympathy and no empathy with any of the novels characters. This is not helped by the ludicrous circumstances they sometimes find themselves in but also the farcical deaths that befall many of the characters. One individual, the grandson of a German immigrant, dies when he loses his balance and falls into a hot spring in Yellowstone National Park. However, he manages to drag himself out of the spring with his flesh falling off his bones only for him to fall into another hot spring like a character from a Mack Sennett film.
Many of Ms Proulxs references and analogies are pretentious, obscure and at times obtuse: leaving the door ajar like Richard Widmark. I could make no sense of this simile. Only film aficionados would be aware of the actor Richard Widmark and even some of those would be hard pressed to name any of his films.
One feels guilty at having to negatively criticize Annie Proulxs novel as it is a worthy and ambitious piece of work about a countrys immigrants and their place in that country. To that end it is still relevant in the world today as we move toward the middle of the second decade of the 21st century immigration still high on the agenda of not just governments but the voters.

Originally posted at
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3658388
This is not your traditional Regency.  It's much slower paced and deals with country people in comfortable circumstances.  It gave me a better idea of life in those times than a more traditional book in the genre.  It's well written in terms of technique.

I liked the characters, except for the two villains.  I'd like to read a follow on book about the young woman who wants to be a doctor and her husband.  That would be interesting.

This book is maybe worth reading as a lazy afternoon book, but in general not much interesting happens.  I'd give it two and a half stars if that were available, because it's just kind of dull.
1593209
This is a really dull and slow movie. Its real in the fact that its duller than any real 10 year high school reunion. They have a great cast burdened with the task of acting normal and being put into normal everyday situations. There are plenty of stories here, friendships, budding romance, breaking up of a romance to rekindle an old frlame, terrible marriages and remorseful people that regret being jerks to minorities. There is subtle humor with little charm or spark of anything that would make this movie memorable for anything other than how real is dull. Please skip this movie. It will be on Lifetime soon enough for you to fall asleep to and talk about how real it is.
4180755
This is rather a dull story about Australian and British journalists living in Jakarta in Soekarno's time. In reading it, one learns little about the reality of the time in Indonesia, only the life of expatriate voyeurs. And their life is shown with a superficial interest in relationships such as one might read in rather dull romantic fiction.
2216608
This is a self agrandizing account of a man with a boring life who assumes that everyone else will care.  They really do not.