Oh gosh I found this "poetry" dreadful! I don't follow the blog and was unfamiliar with Samantha Jayne's rhymes before getting a free copy of the book from Netgalley. This book really reads more like a children's book of rhymes but for the young adult. I didn't find it especially funny and there was nothing intelligent at all about it.
I don't consider myself a poetry snob by any means but this doesn't fit the bill for me. I could have done without it. Just potty jokes in the form of rhyme without a great hook.
This is the first book I've read on the subject of cheese despite the fact that I am an addict. Certainly I'm a newb in the cheese aficionado community but I actively search out new and interesting morsels to indulge my palate. I approached this book with the desire to open my mind to the vast variety of fromage being lovingly crafted across our planet and possibly obtain a bit of history in the process.
This book attempts to hit those aspects of the cheese world plus offer many other tidbits of knowledge but it doesn't do any if it particularly well or in a very useful manner. This book is part history, part reference, part opinion/personal experience with cheese, and part cookbook. Unfortunately it is poorly written and extremely poorly organized. It has the feel of a textbook without the structure to support it.
The most useful part of the book is the section which lists cheese by their country of origin. This is the section I picked up the book for. Some of the info was helpful but not much. I expected some sort of consistency in the material but it really was a mess. Very rarely did the book offer insight into taste, texture or appearance of the many varieties while it often droned on about the inconsequential history of a handful of the author's favorite cheeses. Heck, even that would have been fine if he made the attempt to perform this service for all those he listed, but some cheeses filled multiple pages with poems, references to classic literature, etc while others got one line that often said something like "not a very good cheese."
This felt very much like a book the author simply wrote for himself to read rather than for others. There was a bit of knowledge that I gained which will prove useful in my cheese-quest but not much.
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I'm a guy who loves a bit of poetry. When I mention this to people, I get the occassional jab about my lack of manliness (apparently back hair only grows where poetry doesn't) but I feel pretty confident that real men appreciate beauty in the written and spoken word. I remember when I was in Cleveland attending med school and a friend was catching a ride from me after class and noticed a copy of the book "Poems That Make Grown Men Cry" sitting on my front seat. This discovery led to being offered a tampon which I graciously declined since I have a stash in my car in case my wife should need one.
I don't mind being teased about my love for poetry. There are times when it strikes me right in the heart muscles and grabs me tight. I'm not too macho to admit that I my face peed a bit while reading Ben Jonson's 'On My First Sonne':
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.Seven years tho' wert lent to me, and I thee pay,Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.O, could I lose all father now! For whyWill man lament the state he should envy?To have so soon 'scap'd world's and flesh's rage,And if no other misery, yet age?Rest in soft peace, and, ask'd, say, "Here doth lieBen Jonson his best piece of poetry."For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such,As what he loves may never like too much.
If that doesn't get you, then there is something wrong with you.
Well, as much as I love poetry, I have to admit that there is a lot of it that I just don't get. A small bundle of it speaks to me while the rest bounces around my mind like random words thrown together on a page. But when a poem speaks to me, it often REALLY speaks to me. Such is one I found on YouTube of all places.
Many people automatically assume that I'm a natural extrovert because I get chatty with people quickly. On the contrary, I am quite introverted and get a bit of anxiety when I'm in crowds. I just hide it better than some. I actually enjoy doing things alone. I go to movies alone. I walk around the mall alone. I often sit up late alone. I do like people too but there are times when I just want to be by myself. So, Andrea Dorfman's poem 'How To Be Alone' really got me. Check it out:
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I think every boy (perhaps every girl, for all I know) has at some point fantasized about wielding a brutal sword and tearing something to shreds. I've begged my wife to let me buy a sword in the past and eventually gave up on my fantasy for the sake of staying married. However, this video may resurrect a source of marital contention.....
A friend told me that this is the best book he read last year and I can see that that sentiment is echoed by many other people (myself excluded). I have very little history with Neal Stephenson other than Snowcrash, which is one of the best sci-fi books I've read. I had heard that he tends to put a lot of research into creating his stories and that he is very thorough with details. I'll be honest that that alone should have warned me since I'm not big on minutia and much prefer character-driven books. I like my emotions to be tested and I enjoy loving some characters and hating others.
Seveneves is a massive book and equally grand in its scale. The time period it covers is possibly the largest of any book I've read and I found this idea to be quite exciting initially, expecting the get a glimpse of a fantastic world drastically different from the one left behind. Unfortunately, the parts I longed for were largely absent.
This is a book that I really wish would have been written by another author. I loved the basic idea and overall story but it was all of the filler that put me in a coma. The endless physics and description of parts of a space ship overtook the people who were there among them. I never really cared about any of the characters because it felt like everyone was devoid of feeling. I mean, how can you spend 500 pages describing the end of the world and not have your reader feel even a tiny bit of sadness, loss or heartbreak? I wanted this book to make me cry and then blow me away with a grand new world filled with wonder. It didn't do that and it's a bloody shame.
It may be impossible to read Yes Please without attempting to compare it to Bossypants by Tina Fey (which I didn't love and gave up on only a short time in), however, these books are so unrelated in style and purpose that an attempt would be foolish on my part. Let's just put it this way: I liked Yes Please but I didn't like Bossypants.
Now, with that out of the way, this was not even close to being a perfect book. It is essentially a series of very loosely related autobiographical essays with a mix of humor, advice, and general observation of what Poehler experienced on her way to the top of show business. Some of those essays are much better than others and some just plain old felt self-indulgent (which I suppose is allowed when you are writing a memoir of sorts). I actually listened to it in audiobook format which I think in this case was a good choice. It is narrated well and feels very natural. I'm fairly certain that it might be hard to catch some of the humor without hearing her say it in her voice.
The parts I liked, I liked a lot. Some of her discussions on parenting were hilarious and quite inspirational at times. On the other hand, other parts of her book felt a bit judgey... which is a bit ironic considering she points out several times how we need to stop judging each other.
All in all, this was a great book in the humor/memoir category. It actually made me laugh out loud a few times which is a rarity for me.
I want to say that I originally saw this book on some must-read list a while back which is what inspired me to add it to my shelf. Maybe not. The story of Pompeii is one that, while interesting, has been beaten to death in popular media over the years. I was skeptical that the story could be spun in a way that would make it feel fresh and new so I didn't exactly go into this with extremely high expectations.
Refreshingly, Robert Harris managed to overcome my doubts with a story that really had more to do with plumbing that with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. This was a smart move, although unlike me, some readers may find it disappointing that the story didn't completely focus on the tragedy of Pompeii. As one other reviewer brilliantly pointed out, this is the story of a "latter-day Super Mario." It focuses on the challenges of Marcus Attilius Primus who is a local water engineer as he struggles with the politics of finding out what has stopped the flow of water.
This is an extremely well-written book and if you are looking for great historical fiction, this is certainly a solid choice. There were times when I lost interest a bit, simply because the action can be slow at times but overall it was a great take on the history of Pompeii without repeating the story that we've all heard in our history classes.
Quarter Life Poetry: Poems for the Young, Broke and Hangry by Samantha Jayne
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