Boring Depth of Nothingness
596864
There are many books out in the world that have been awarded for excellence. The Old Man and the Sea sadly was sung to the high heavens as Hemmingway's best work ever. I don't believe I would want to read his other books if that is the case. With a writing style so boring, The Old Man and the Sea isn't deserving of the Pulitzer Prize or even positive praise.
 The plot of the story aggresses slowly with predictable outcomes. For instance the "action" in the book happens so rarely and slowly. The day spent on the skiff is prolonged so much that it seems like weeks. Since it takes so long for the events to take place, the reader loses interest. In addition to the slow action the event, if noticeable, are foreshadowed well before. Because the main events take so long to happen, they are hard to notice due to the reader's boredom. If the reader has managed to stay conscious, they are able to predict the outcome of each predicament, making the story even duller. The Old Man and the Sea does not deserve an award of any kind. The events are slow and the outcomes predictable. That makes for dull reading and an uninterested reader.
 I refuse to recommend this book unless it is changed to satisfy most readers. Because the book needs to be changed, it won't be interesting until it is. .... The whole story, especially the ending, needs to be changed to make me read this book again. However, a small group of people might enjoy this book if it were recommended to them. People with extremely creative imaginations could actually find this book amusing. The only other person to enjoy it is a critic who was blackmailed a large sum on money to put in a good word. .... The Old Man and the Sea doe not deserve the award and especially any praise. I'd rather be stuck looking at teen magazines the read that book ever again.
 The Old Man and the Sea, as I've been saying so much, dose not deserve any praise at all. Its lack of action and content is unbearable. I do not recommend Hemmingway's "best book ever" at all and I'm sure many people support my decision. The Old Man and the Sea can be translated into, Boring Depth of Nothingness.
3853248
Boring, laborious.  None of the characters, none of them, is the least bit engaging or sympathetic.  It about a former Master of the Universe who's lost his Yoko Ono, as told by his directionless, slacker kid.  I was hoping on more of a rumination/study on what it means to either delay or cheat death in this (and near-future) modern age.  But there was none of that, or very little.
1251664
SPOILER ALERT! Hereafter, a bland journey of meaningless chaos and supernatural silliness that will take you absolutely nowhere (and will take its good old time getting there too). All of your unanswered questions about life beyond death shall fade like fragile fragments of forgotten daydreams into the boring blackness of a bottomless oblivion as the screenwriter reveals (eventually) that there are no answers to be found here, no mysteries to be solved, no truths to boldly emerge from the cracked crevices of curiosity to conquer the countless crumbs of contrived content that keep spewing forth like random samplings of a plot-in-progress stuck in the sleepy sap of slow motion until all of the honest of heart witnessing such a dull display of lingering emptiness begin to hope and pray that in the real hereafter, for saints and sinners alike (and everyone in between these two spectral extremes of inner dimensionality), the Creator has perhaps seen fit to let it all beat to the pulse of a slightly less morbid tempo, one where the idea of Death potentially being a transitional modification of living instead of being the final curtain call doesn't come across as a dead-on-arrival script stripped of any substantive qualities (as in introducing any philosophically challenging propositions or explanations or presenting any culturally controversial suggestions or theories) leaving only the anorexic skeleton of an underdeveloped idea that was suffocated by constant exposure to chronic neglect until it morphed into an incomplete torn-package of a production unfulfilling in just about every aspect. It is as though it was an unfinished sketch of experimental improvisation one might expect to find posing as a film school project but never rising above the level of being a platform for mediocrity, a pointless portrayal of a serious subject that no amount of talent in front of or behind the camera could resuscitate.

For the record, the reason I warned that this review contains spoilers is because unlike the traditional spoiler that tells how something ends (such as revealing that "the butler did it"), my comments deal with a slightly different scenario, one where I am revealing in my own way that I was unable to detect any type of what I would refer to as an ending, at least not any ending that conclusively and satisfactorily summarized or punctuated relevant themes and events that preceded it. But if you have not seen the movie yet, I think it is far better that you personally discover your own unique interpretation of this cinematic experience as opposed to gaining access to my views in advance.

Besides, since no personality on the planet is an exact duplicate of another one (unless there is a new iPad or Kindle app for cloning that I haven't heard about yet), I doubt that any two people can ever possess exactly the same thoughts and feelings about any movie they have just viewed. I am certainly not arrogant enough to believe that everyone should see things through my channels of perception. We each must march to the beat of the drummer within.
65167
Pretentious doesn't even begin to describe this archetype of talentless writing. I'll let this turgid, sophomoric, shamelessly autobiographical, monstrosity of a high-school essay speak for itself:

"They felt they had to do this because if they didn't, the entire philosophic underpinning of science would collapse. Poincare didn't offer any resolutions of this quandary. He didn't go far enough into the metaphysical implications of what he was saying to arrive at the solution. What he neglected to say was that the selection of facts before you 'observe' them is 'whatever you like' *only in a dualistic, subject-object metaphysical system!* When Quality enters the picture as a third metaphysical entity the preselection of facts is no longer arbitrary. The preselection of facts is not based on subjective, capricious 'whatever you like' but on *Quality* which is reality itself. Thus the quandary vanishes."

But the quandary of why millions of people have read this book appears. If you want to read _hundreds and hundreds_ of pages like this, interspersed with a pointless non-plot of clumsy declarative prose, by all means, read this book.

Here's another one:

"The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be 'out there' and the person that appears to be 'in here' are not two separate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality together."

Thanks for spelling it out for us, Bob. Definitely can't leave anything remotely subtle for the reader to arrive at for himself. This is gagworthy faux-intellectual pseudo-philosophy clad in a threadbare dhoti that takes itself far, far too seriously, and I'm embarrassed by the reputation it has garnered as an outsider masterpiece of American literature. This is not literature. I read the entire thing because it's this great cultural touchstone, but I'll be damned if I can find the reason why. I feel like I've been punked.

Learn from my mistake. If you're looking for beautiful, moving, accessible philosophy, read Calvin and Hobbes.
378474
Whenever an Asian American writer comes into the sci-fi genre, I am always very excited to see what they can bring to the table as Asians writers in genre are few and far between; so I was quite keen on reading Axie Oh's debut novel despite the PR material calling in "Pacific Rim" (dreadful movie) combined with K-drama. Well, I personally would say it is more Power Rangers/Transformers/Avatar: The Last Airbender combined with K-drama, but that is really splitting hairs.

In short, I came into this novel prepared to like it but the short comings sadly outweigh the great potential Oh has as an author. There is very little world building here. Old Seoul is never really described in any kind of detail and Neo Seoul...well, it has a dome and a grid and it is sleek and military. The settings never once come alive in any way and often in the novel (set very far in the future) both cities just feel like present day. We're just expected to imbue these skeleton descriptions with futurism. I really wish Oh had spent more time describing the worlds rather than being stuck in her protagonist's head all the time.

And that's another nit to pick. 1st person, present in never my favorite and this novel is told exclusively that way which really limits it as far as narrative goes. 1st, past would have been a far better choice and omniscient third probably the best. But unfortunately the author saddles herself with this particular point of view.

This is billed as a dystopian novel, but due in part to the lack of sufficient world building noted above, it never feels that way. We should feel and see the oppression of Old Seoul. We should feel and see the arrogance of Neo Seoul. And we should feel one way or the other about both communities. But because Oh never lets old Seoul live and breath, we never get to know anyone there and never do we get to feel their oppression. Likewise, in Neo Seoul, everyone comes off as rather inefficient bordering on bumbling idiots. Sadly, there is no soul in either new or old Seoul and that really lets the novel down.

Characters are also a problem. The really are shells and there is no real depth of emotion. Part of this is that the characters never really talk to each other. Most interactions are "banter" that becomes tiresome very quickly. So they never really rise above stock characters: brooding young man, chaebol, evil chaebol's father, the evil general (Tsuko? See where I get Last Airbender?). You want to know more about them, but because they never really talk to each other and because you are constantly stuck in the protagonist's head, you never get to.

Unfortunately, the blending in of K-drama doesn't really extend past the stock characters. There are plenty of "Aissshhhh!" and "Ya!" thrown in but the marriage of K-drama doesn't really stand out any other way (well, there is a K-pop singer character who kinda hovers around).

The novel could have used a good editor as well. "One is flung across a chair, which I pull on as I move across the room to open the window." Well, I know I always like pull on a chair. Or "He leans against the wall, slipping it on." Not quite sure how you "slip on" a wall. These are just a few examples of the grammatical errors that pull you straight out of the story and which could have been easily fixed by a good editor.

I think Oh has talent and I hope she develops as a writer, but sadly this one never lives up to the potential of its premise (as thin as that is). At times it reads more like fan fiction than sci-fi. It will likely find an audience in Young Adult, particularly those into the K-pop scene, but I think even a number of YA readers would find this a little bit lacking.
2687820
If you're looking for a pseudo-profound spiritual text flush with florid flotsam, then this word-salad work could be right up your alley.

The author of this text, steeped in Dowman-ized Dzogchen drivel and Kabbalah krappola, seeks to combine the two Dharmas into a mystical whole, and the resulting mishmash is, in a word, a Disaster.

This text, teeming with vacuous abstractions and head-shaking sentences, epitomizes pretentious prose. If Bon Jovi were to sing about it, the words would go: You gave mysticism a bad name.

Heres an example of the texts writing:

Contemplation mitigates its disruptions by returning them to the open continuum in which they arise. Immersing the maze of fixations within the continuous stream of pure possibility can liberate claustrophobic habits on contact. This releases billowing fields of poetic resonance that saturate the four corners of space, introducing the potential for a particularly vivid style of contemplation that works with the self-ornamenting openness of infinity. Pure poetic sensations shimmer beyond grasp, and cannot be reduced to either personal or impersonal terms. Within their shimmering an invitation into the essential nature of all phenomena opens through the sparkle of their ethereal fluttering.

Contradictions abound in the text. For example, the author writes, There is no such thing as space itself. Then elsewhere he writes, The wisdom of space is that its absolute nature is always inherent in its relative display. If there is no such thing as space, how can it have wisdom and an absolute nature?

The authors Kabbalistic descriptions are so far from reality, it boggles the mind. For example, regarding the sephirah Binah, he writes, The expanse of Binah, which is the basic space of all phenomena, is replete with the luminous crystalline dew of shefa. Binah, which correlates with the limiting and binding planet Saturn, has nothing whatsoever to do with the basic space of all phenomena, which is the Dzogchen definition of the Dharmadhatu, the Dharmakaya (timeless Awareness) as the spaceless, unborn, illimitable Context in which phenomena arise and pass away.

The author writes, There is nothing in mind but responsiveness. Au contraire, I say, for there is also mucho hokum to be found in the authors mind. So much so that, as I see it, one star is one too many for this text.
559028
I have never allowed myself torture such as trying to play this utterly boring nonsense! It sucks to the core! It has no emotion, only boredom in a dimension I have never experienced. Do yourself a favor as to not hurt your mind with this priceless masterpiece of self-torture!
2876198
This is what it must feel like to live in a constant state of delusion where nothing matters. Truth, history, fact, and any semblance of objectivity are lost in this "book"
4780900
Narrow minded, cynical, pompous, and therefore meaningless.  This is nothing more than a lecture attempting to sum up the complexity of life in a few sentences.  As a result, the characters in this book, as well as the world in which they live, are paper thin, one dimensional.
1894592
On the long haul from San Diego to Hawai'i, a seaman will read anything that falls to hand, just to break the monotony. This could be a cake recipe, a telephone bill, or the instructions on how to work the toilet---  ANYTHING will do for reading material, when one is facing 22 days of open,  blue-water ocean and nothing else to do but stare at waves.
Anything will  do, that is, except John Grisham's "The Chamber." It does not  distract from the monotony of a weeks-long passage: it greatly compounds  the tedium. It is a chore to read: there is no pleasure in it. Indeed, at  times it greatly aggravated, if not even induced, seasickness.
The reader  is not induced by the author to care about the characters in the book; no  one cares if the old man gets gassed (indeed, the reader can hardly wait,  just so the book will finally end); the reader does not care about the  disgusting alcoholic aunt; and the reader certainly is not inspired to care  about the spoild, personality-less main character (I mean, like, he's a  -LAWYER- after all!). These people were written like cartoon characters: so  trite and predictable that they could have been written by any one of ten  thousand high school students who write the same dreck (dreck: "trash;  exceedingly inferior merchandise") as a homework assignment.
When I  finished reading the book (ah, sweet mercy! Another ten pages would have  killed me!), I vowed that no one else who came abord the vessel after me  would be subjected to the same abuse.
I took a nice fat felt pen and  wrote the book's own obituary on the inside cover. "We consign this  literary pile of steaming dingo poop to the deep watery abyss; to forever  sleep in the yawning canyons of black, fathomless, liquid purgatory forever  out of the reach of mankind; to remain there for ever and for ever, with  the sure and present hope of -NO- ressurection. We also humbly apologice to  Poseidon for polluting Your realm with this insulting offal."
I then  tossed the book overboard, 1180 nautical miles from the nearest land. I  imagined ever sea denizen within a hundred miles felt the shock of impact,  smelt the strong, foul odor, and hasty fled in terror. No doubt those  creatures not fast enough, succumbed to the toxin and died, floating  belly-up.
Do yourself a big favor: if you see John Grisham's "The  Chamber" washed ashore on the beach one summer day, approach no  closer! Rather, call the Environmental Protection Agency and have them come  out and clean it up. Same warning goes if you see this book in a book  store.
1805148
As empty as its title would suggest, likely quite intentional, Enter the Void is indeed a void.  There is nothing here and my comments may come with some extra sharpness due to my tremendous feeling of disappointment.  You see&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Irreversible/dp/B00009W0U4/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Irreversible</a>, director Gaspar Noe's second film, is one of my favorite movies ever made for all the reasons I've expressed before.  Sometimes a filmmaker is most generative during his breakthrough and can never equal that success, and other times a filmmaker might bounce back with something lesser but work enough that they can care to learn from their mistakes.  Noe's problems are that he doesn't work enough on feature films and also that his fans will welcome Enter the Void just for possessing Noe's dingy style and moments of legitimately shocking realistic shots.  So really, what is there to improve when Noe's goal is to make a polarizing film to begin with?  Aesthetically Noe is strong here but I expected that given his short films and music videos since Irreversible also possess that trademark style and appeal.  However, unlike Irreversible, and even his first film&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/I-Stand-Alone/dp/B00005K9O8/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">I Stand Alone</a>, Enter the Void lacks a truly coherent story, or even characters worth caring about.  It's not that there isn't a story somewhere within the shock scenes hooking in the audience Noe has developed, it's just that the story was not compelling enough to draw me in.  That may change for some viewers but I'm betting most will find Enter the Void tedious and gratuitous.

The film stars Nathanial Brown, from a first person point of view for the better part of the film, as an American named Oscar, a young man whose parents were killed in a brutal car crash with Oscar and his sister Linda in the backseat, watching and surviving.  Oscar lives in Tokyo and will soon be reunited with his sister.  Oscar deals drugs in Tokyo and Linda, after she settles in a little, quickly becomes involved in stripping.  The story is a solid vehicle for Noe's style but without revealing spoilers I will say that there is certainly room for a more robust interpretation of the story then I would be willing to provide.  So far the film has been extremely polarizing so I'm sure a more enthusiastic viewer can provide solid insights regarding Noe's greater intentions.

There is still potential for Noe to create better work but given the amount of time it took to find the concept and actually begin working on Enter the Void, I find this doubtful.  I've had the patience to sit through films that claim to be meditations or cinematic experiences etc., but of those kinds of films I've enjoyed they hooked me in with strong overtones.  Because Enter the Void didn't hook me in, its rampant use of sex and nudity seemed out of place and completely unnecessary.  Visually though Enter the Void is still stunning and provides us with a very different perspective on the Japanese capital.  It's an aesthetic achievement and I can always appreciate it when an artist maintains his own distinct style over time, especially when that artist is talented, innovative, and unconventional.  Of all the praise and hate this film is receiving I'm offering a neutral recommendation.
4838510
I was desperate for something to read that didn't require thought or commitment. The author has obviously made an effort to touch all the bases that can make a book readable, but this one just reads like a early writing class exercise that was pulled out of the wastebasket and submitted to an uncritical pulp magazine who paid for it by the word. It is something one can settle for only when desperate for something, anything, in print to pass the time , like on a long plane trip, or when marooned on a desert island when there is nothing else available to break the monotony. There is little mystery or real suspense in the story, except when is the damn thing going to end. All of the characters are superficial stock figures, even the dog, and too few lawyers get killed. But it may be worth the $ 0.00 kindle purchase price. While I wouldn't go so far as to advise the author to never leave his day job and just keep up with all his writing class lessons, my final impression is that this book might even persuade you to become a writer since the bar is apparently set so low.
1927207
Incoherent. Meaningless. Vacuous. Mind-numbing. Pointless. A crucifixion to sit through. It redefines the meaning of senseless. Academy Award stuff? ARRGH! Better, much better, to have sat in a closet and spent the time more usefully contemplating the vagaries of the Chinese language. A lot of people should go to jail for their involvement in this travesty. Abysmal is inadequate. Talk softly, kill a lot of people for no reason, and whatever happened to the money? The reason it is on DVD right now is that folks would throw up the theaters -- better at home. More sanitary. In the history of films, this ranks below Ed Wood's worst effort. The foregoing to the contrary notwithstanding, however, it stank to the high heavens. MISS IT!
3152996
A Void is a fifty-thousand-word lipogram (writing which unfailingly omits a particular orthographic symbol) posing as a work of fiction.  I'm sorry, but I simply cannot put in a good word for this book.  Just trying to slog through it was causing such an aching pain in my skull that I almost quit.  How I wish I had!  Arriving at its conclusion didn't accomplish anything significant for my mind or spirit.

It is just plain silly to churn out paragraph upon paragraph of a story bound by such an artificial and arbitrary linguistic constraint.  Why would anybody do such a thing?  To show off an ability with a dubious "skill" that confounds clarity of thinking and prohibits lucid points?  Obviously by dropping this childish limitation you could actually say what you want, and in a lyrical or charming way to boot.  This is not to imply that all constraint is a sign of immaturity.  Rhyming and rhythm may constrain an author a bit, but a truly high-quality group of such stanzas contains a captivating kind of music.  It is a constraint, all right, but it adds.  This kind, though, just subtracts, corrupts, and distorts.

As it stands, this book's grammar sounds unnatural and awkward; its vocabulary shifts without warning from archaic and formal to "hip" and slangy; its plot (a minor thing, almost a postscript) absurdly twists and turns to satisfy our all-important typographical constraint.  That's all okay, I'll grant, if this activity is just a hobby and its author aims only for gratification of his own abnormal soul.  But inflicting this inanity of wordplay on a broad population is wholly unsatisfactory.  Only a totally masochistic bookworm would gladly put up with it, gaily consuming a full publication with only this frivolous trick as its basis.  Normal book-loving folks among us should not do so much as to pick up this monstrous parody of writing.

A word of caution to budding authors who may find this sort of pursuit alluring: know that this craft is not art.  It is a gimmick and a stunt.  Go and construct your ridiculous opus, if you must, but do not try to pass it off as worthy of anybody's admiration or conscious thought.  Jot it down on a napkin or a bathroom roll; rid your mind of its sick fascination; and finally throw it in a trash can or flush it down a drain.  If only our good wordsmith who brought us A Void had thought to do this, or stuck to a fitting occupation such as making daily crosswords or word-finds for tabloids.
3055285
Be forwarned: This book goes NOWHERE. And it goes nowhere in 250 pages, slowly. It felt like 500 pages. I wanted to find something to like here, I really did. I enjoy literary fiction that bears out deeper meaning. I've read some good things about Guterson. After this, I will never read another Guterson. Ever.

True story: I never skip paragraphs or pages. This book had me skipping page upon page because I kept closing one eye and then the other and then falling soundly asleep. I stuck with it, though. (Here's why: This book has started popping up on many AP reading lists. High school students, students of any age--this book is nothing but a sedative.) I skimmed loooonnnggg paragraphs for any taste of important (IMPORTANT) character development. Towards the end, the narrator goes to visit his best friend's mother and father and you think, "Here it comes: The big reveal on why he escaped to the wild." But no. No, the author spins out a conversation between the narrator and the father that in no way makes the investment of the reader's time in the story of John William Barry worthwhile.

I have been accused of liking esoteric, windy novels. I hated, HATED this book. This should tell you something. Also, I have never written a review on Amazon because I feel personal preference is important in choosing books of any kind. Who am I to say you should or should not read a book. This should also tell you something.

If you are looking for a novel of intertwining lives and contrasting views on life and how to live it, read Divisadero, Transit of Venus or, God, something else besides this unbearable waste of time.
719445
Froth on a latte, no depth, NO character development, spiritual powers like telepathy and astral projection come at will, effortlessly, like buying spiritual cell phones. NO bite at all, kind of a romp across the Landscape of the Unseen. Pointless, even as adventure writing. Much cliche: anti-heroine insulted and grudged in her lifetime as Cleopatra...really?
Needs to go deeper into character development, root the plotline, fill in psycho-gaps and clean up spacing. Overall, like petting a puppy on the belly, needs some substance.
Decent for first effort. Hard to anchor political/spiritual/psychological thriller without developing depth of characters intensively. Skimmed last 20 pages checking one sentence on each to get ending. This is not THE PEACEFUL WARRIOR.
Keep writing, all will develop!
997243
I really felt the author was digging deep in order to find relevant life experiences of which to write about. The loss of his wife and his childhood flowed naturally in the last two books. In this one, I felt he was just trying so hard to find interesting life events to connect with music and it was flat and boring. I do not recommend.