Reviews and Comments

Gersande La Flèche

gersande@millefeuilles.cloud

Joined 2 years, 10 months ago

Why can't I read all these books!? 🍋‍🟩

🍵 Lots of nonfiction, literary fiction, poetry, classical literature, speculative fiction, magical realism, etc.

📖 Beaucoup de non-fiction et de fiction, de poésie, des classiques, du spéculatif, du réalisme magique, etc.

💬 they/them ; iel/lo 💌 Find me on Mastodon: silvan.cloud/@gersande

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Umberto Eco: Foucault's pendulum (1989, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich) No rating

English:

An Enthralling Mystery, a breathtaking rollercoaster ride through a world of ideas and aberrations, …

The first chapter really does hit different if you've been to Saint-Martin-des-Champs and the musée des Arts et métiers.

A word I had never encountered before: sublunar (adjective, more commonly found as sublunarly): of, relating to, or characteristic of the terrestrial world.

Neat.

Georgina Pazcoguin: Swan Dive (Hardcover, 2021, Henry Holt and Co.) No rating

Pazcoguin's memoir covers the two+ decades of her career (which started when she was a child) at the New York City Ballet. The gothic humour was welcome and familiar around the tougher memories of relentless emotional, sexist, and racist abuse. During the more triumphant parts of the book (and there are some really great ones), your heart soars at Pazcoguin's words. Righteous!

Organized in a series of non-chronological vignettes (some very out of order), there is definitely a method to it, though it requires a bit of work to keep names and places and years straight. It pays off at the end: maybe you're even a little emotionally winded, but in the best of ways.

While the book offers a tantalizing and brutal window into the amazingly dysfunctional, abusive, and hurt/ing art form that is ballet, the book is careful (and wise) to anchor it to Pazcoguin's perspectives and memories. …

Truman Capote: In Cold Blood (Hardcover, 2013, Modern Library) No rating

On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the …

I've had to return my copy to the library (been a while now actually) and my little "true crime" wonderings has seriously abated (see earlier notes on this book, I think I talked about it). I have some thoughts about the first couple chapters that I don't think I talked about here, but I'll probably eventually get back to Capote. Fluid writing style.