The Frame » book-Great Britain http://frame.the-frame.com from the pen of Jandy Stone Sun, 07 Mar 2010 23:17:28 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows http://frame.the-frame.com/2007/09/14/harry-potter-and-the-deathly-hallows/ http://frame.the-frame.com/2007/09/14/harry-potter-and-the-deathly-hallows/#comments Sat, 15 Sep 2007 05:27:42 +0000 Jandy http://frame.the-frame.com/?p=288 A perfect finish to an excellent series. I pretty much loved everything about it. No, I won’t say anything more than that in case there’s anybody lurking about who hasn’t read it yet, because I’m not into spoiling HP. At all. The only thing that keeps it from being a Superior is the epilogue, which to me was just unnecessary and read like fanfic. Hopefully that won’t be considered a spoiler. ;) Oh, the other thing–apparently some subset of Christians are still railing on about the series; I absolutely don’t understand how they can after this one, which seems almost explicitly Christian to me.
Well Above Average

]]> http://frame.the-frame.com/2007/09/14/harry-potter-and-the-deathly-hallows/feed/ 0 Orlando http://frame.the-frame.com/2007/09/14/orlando-2/ http://frame.the-frame.com/2007/09/14/orlando-2/#comments Sat, 15 Sep 2007 05:23:55 +0000 Jandy http://frame.the-frame.com/?p=286 By now, you should know, I’m a Virginia Woolf fangirl. I love the way she expresses things, her sense of humor, the beauty of her prose. Orlando is something of a departure, a very tongue-in-cheek imitation of a biography. As I said in the review of the film above, it’s about a 16th century nobleman who lives for at least the next three centuries, and somewhere along the way becomes a woman; and both of these incredible things are taken perfectly in stride by the narrator. The book is hilarious and innovative in its imitation of various writing styles, mostly the biography in general, but also writing techniques common in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Many people consider it a postmodern novel, a pastiche of former styles, for that reason, and I’m inclined to agree with them. I tend to find Woolf amusing in all her books, but in Orlando she really is just having fun, and a lot of it.
Superior

]]> http://frame.the-frame.com/2007/09/14/orlando-2/feed/ 0 To the Lighthouse http://frame.the-frame.com/2007/08/21/to-the-lighthouse/ http://frame.the-frame.com/2007/08/21/to-the-lighthouse/#comments Tue, 21 Aug 2007 19:08:47 +0000 Jandy http://frame.the-frame.com/?p=305 To the Lighthouse wasn’t quite as accessible for me as Mrs. Dalloway, but it has plenty of Woolfian flashes of brilliance. The story concerns a family and various friends vacationing in the Hebrides; in the first half, the children want to go to visit the local lighthouse, but it seems weather will prevent them. In the middle section time passes (fifteen years or so in about ten pages), and in the last section, the trip to the lighthouse is finally undertaken. There’s metaphor and stuff. I really enjoyed how Woolf used the Lily Briscoe character, a painter, to represent herself, a writer–it’s subtle, yet also somehow clear. And the writing. Have I mentioned how much I like Woolf’s writing? I have? Oh well. It’s like you’re just reading along, and all of a sudden, WHAM. A passage comes out of nowhere and just smites you with its beauty and brilliance. It’s like poetry in prose form. It’s like being drowned in gorgeousness. It’s perfection.
Well Above Average

]]> http://frame.the-frame.com/2007/08/21/to-the-lighthouse/feed/ 0 Frankenstein http://frame.the-frame.com/2007/05/05/frankenstein/ http://frame.the-frame.com/2007/05/05/frankenstein/#comments Sat, 05 May 2007 19:07:34 +0000 Jandy http://frame.the-frame.com/?p=352 by Mary Shelley

et me tell you, if you are planning to watch the 1931 Boris Karloff film and use that as the basis of your book report instead of reading the book, you’re going to flunk. It’s almost completely different. The story details Dr. Frankenstein, a young man whose scientific interests lead him to try the unthinkable–the creation of human life. He is successful, but he flees his terrible creation. Several months later, the creature catches up to him and tells him all about how despite learning to read and becoming rather cultured, everyone he tries to befriend rejects him–leading the creature to hate mankind and wreak vengeance for having been created. It’s a lot darker than the film versions have been, and a lot more morally ambiguous. Who bears the blame for the murders the monster commits? Frankenstein for creating and abandoning him? Or the monster, who does seem to have a sense of morality? It’s more ethical dilemma than horror story. The writing is a bit over the top, in gothic novel style, but the underlying questions are still weighty.
Well Above Average

]]> http://frame.the-frame.com/2007/05/05/frankenstein/feed/ 0 Hallucinating Foucault http://frame.the-frame.com/2007/01/03/hallucinating-foucault/ http://frame.the-frame.com/2007/01/03/hallucinating-foucault/#comments Thu, 04 Jan 2007 00:18:34 +0000 Jandy http://frame.the-frame.com/?p=396 by Patricia Duncker

A Cambridge graduate student working on the novels of (fictional) French writer Paul Michel seeks out the author, who is now in a mental institution, first of all to question him about his literary relationship to (real) philosopher Michel Foucault, but eventually to try to get him out of the institution. I enjoyed the exploration of the relationship between author and reader (Foucault and Michel didn’t really know each other, but they were each other’s most valued reader–when Foucault died, Michel stopped writing entirely), but beyond that wasn’t terribly intrigued.
Average

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