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geert_leest's reviews
6 reviews
Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
She doesn't miss.
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
What a ride. In my top 5 of books ever.
This is why you slog through all the 3-star books. Like hearing Bob Dylan for the first time.
This is why you slog through all the 3-star books. Like hearing Bob Dylan for the first time.
Once a Runner by John L. Parker Jr.
Ah, if the NPC-girlfriend hadn't made such a clumsy gesture, so unlike her yet so precisely feminine and uncontrollable, they would have been back together! On the most basic level, the scene doesn't even work logistically either. In the time it takes her to unstrangle herself from their embrace and run to the nearby porch, he already vanished in the rain? The real world just doesn't happen like that, sorry.
The writer sums his own work up perfectly, halfway through the book. After the protagonist reads many novels about running while holed up in a cabin in the woods, the omiscient narrator remarks:
adventurous
inspiring
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
Starts slow, but had me racing through the last half and crying at the end.
A gripping plot (at least the second half) about the monomaniacal life of a college mid-distance runner. It's easy to understand why this is a cult classic among competitive runners, because it beautifully describes the elite athlete's mindset of trying to be the best version of yourself, the pain of a gruelling workout, the nervousness before a race, the comraderie in the locker room, etc.
However, the prose is kind of childish and the characters are not well developed. Crucial moments like a break-up or a one-night stand are entirely skipped over, making the book feel like paging through a photo album. "Hey look, in this picture we were together! And in the next picture we had broken up and I was musing that we're better off this way!"
We never find out why the main character is so mono-maniacal and competitive (except we get a flash-back chapter about when the protagonist almost drowned when he was a kid that explains... what exactly?). Why didn't his relationship last? Why, for God's fucking sake, didn't he follow his then ex-girlfriend into her house (after he ran 17 miles through the rain in the middle of the night to see her? Really??).
The secondary characters are like NPCs in a video game, advancing the plot but not adding any emotional depth. There are some pretty sexist passages in there (this was published in the 1970s after all), that reveal the author's lack of talent more than anything. Here is the crucial passage when the protagonist decides to not enter his ex-girlfriend's house:
A gripping plot (at least the second half) about the monomaniacal life of a college mid-distance runner. It's easy to understand why this is a cult classic among competitive runners, because it beautifully describes the elite athlete's mindset of trying to be the best version of yourself, the pain of a gruelling workout, the nervousness before a race, the comraderie in the locker room, etc.
However, the prose is kind of childish and the characters are not well developed. Crucial moments like a break-up or a one-night stand are entirely skipped over, making the book feel like paging through a photo album. "Hey look, in this picture we were together! And in the next picture we had broken up and I was musing that we're better off this way!"
We never find out why the main character is so mono-maniacal and competitive (except we get a flash-back chapter about when the protagonist almost drowned when he was a kid that explains... what exactly?). Why didn't his relationship last? Why, for God's fucking sake, didn't he follow his then ex-girlfriend into her house (after he ran 17 miles through the rain in the middle of the night to see her? Really??).
The secondary characters are like NPCs in a video game, advancing the plot but not adding any emotional depth. There are some pretty sexist passages in there (this was published in the 1970s after all), that reveal the author's lack of talent more than anything. Here is the crucial passage when the protagonist decides to not enter his ex-girlfriend's house:
Then she did something that was not quite her and that did not work very well. It was a mistake and she knew it right away but it was such a precisely feminine gesture that it was perhaps dictated by some ancient genetic pattern she was helpless to control. With a pained little toss of the head she wrenched free and ran toward the porch; it was one of those shabby you’d-better-come-after-me-now gestures and she knew by the time she got to the porch that it was a bad show all the way around.
She turned to call, to try to take it back, perhaps.
But the runner had disappeared in the darkening rain.
Ah, if the NPC-girlfriend hadn't made such a clumsy gesture, so unlike her yet so precisely feminine and uncontrollable, they would have been back together! On the most basic level, the scene doesn't even work logistically either. In the time it takes her to unstrangle herself from their embrace and run to the nearby porch, he already vanished in the rain? The real world just doesn't happen like that, sorry.
The writer sums his own work up perfectly, halfway through the book. After the protagonist reads many novels about running while holed up in a cabin in the woods, the omiscient narrator remarks:
Soon Cassidy felt he had read everything ever written about running. [...] The novels, while generally flawed technically in one way or another (sometimes tragically so), occasionally clumsily captured certain elements of his own striving; he found them comforting.
Onder professoren by Willem Frederik Hermans
challenging
funny
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5