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naiapard's review against another edition
3.0
My edition`s cover is ugly.
Maybe it is a test, to see the meaning I would extract out of it. After all, this is a book about perception. Well. A book about myths, but after reading it I found out that ”the myth is speech justified in excess.” (p.154).
It reminded me a bit of the [b:The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language|12870068|The Etymologicon A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language|Mark Forsyth|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1356841195l/12870068._SY75_.jpg|18022434]. At least in the chapter`s shortness.
The voice of the author was the playful version of one that wrote in the middle of the XX century. Meaning that it was a bit too full of itself (maybe that was due to the lack of “reply” version to an essay. I think he might have acquired quite a different tonality if he would have written this book over twitter.)
Because that is a book that was not intended to be a book. Is a gathering of articles/essays that he had written at some point in his life. Or, at least, that`s how they appear to be. Look at the CONTENTS:
The World of Wrestling –I quite liked this part, not that I am a vicariously consumer of wrestling, but for the perspective of the good and evil play that is similar to what an Everyman play used to accomplish in the Middle Ev.
The Roman in Film—here it is the French on American movies
The Writer on Holiday—he is a writer, he had to take on the trope of the writer
……
Novels and Children
Toys—it appears the word "Homunculus”
…..
And so on.
The author has some spunk, I would admit. But this would not be my first choice of read if the subject of myth was of an acutely importance to me.
One of the reasons for why I even read it, was one of my posts on my Blog
\\Instagram\\
Maybe it is a test, to see the meaning I would extract out of it. After all, this is a book about perception. Well. A book about myths, but after reading it I found out that ”the myth is speech justified in excess.” (p.154).
It reminded me a bit of the [b:The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language|12870068|The Etymologicon A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language|Mark Forsyth|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1356841195l/12870068._SY75_.jpg|18022434]. At least in the chapter`s shortness.
The voice of the author was the playful version of one that wrote in the middle of the XX century. Meaning that it was a bit too full of itself (maybe that was due to the lack of “reply” version to an essay. I think he might have acquired quite a different tonality if he would have written this book over twitter.)
Because that is a book that was not intended to be a book. Is a gathering of articles/essays that he had written at some point in his life. Or, at least, that`s how they appear to be. Look at the CONTENTS:
The World of Wrestling –I quite liked this part, not that I am a vicariously consumer of wrestling, but for the perspective of the good and evil play that is similar to what an Everyman play used to accomplish in the Middle Ev.
The Roman in Film—here it is the French on American movies
The Writer on Holiday—he is a writer, he had to take on the trope of the writer
……
Novels and Children
Toys—it appears the word "Homunculus”
…..
And so on.
The author has some spunk, I would admit. But this would not be my first choice of read if the subject of myth was of an acutely importance to me.
One of the reasons for why I even read it, was one of my posts on my Blog
\\Instagram\\
nmuffet's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
Hard to tell if Barthes is intentionally dense and abstracting some argument to the point where he isn't saying anything at all or if I am dumb.
ckemp10's review against another edition
ok yes i only read the essays i was interested in but i’m counting it. lots of good stuff about milk
brannigan's review against another edition
3.0
This is a great, thought-provoking set of essays that suffers from age, despite the lasting relevance of its core arguments. My main gripe was that Barthes' method of choosing bits of contemporary pop culture to illustrate his arguments is of course destined to become dated, and so a few of the chapters when over my head. I'm just not familiar with Chaplin or the Dominici Trial, and I don't know who or what the Abbé Pierre is. However, the central arguments were easy to grasp despite this, and I can't really hold m own ignorance against Barthes.
Secondly, all shock value is lost because the structuralist ideas presented by Barthes have since become very commonplace in academia and the humanities. Again, I can't really blame Barthes for this - if anything it shows how influential he was that now, the conditioning effects of children's toys are well-known and debated, for example, or that the underlying ideology of the 'woman-as-mother' symbol is widely acknowledged and contested.
So even though these complaints are not really the fault of Barthes, I can only rate this book as 'OK' because it failed to deliver the cognitive revolution it promised, and lacked shock value. Also, it would have been better had the longer essay on mythology been truncated slightly and moved to the beginning of the book.
Secondly, all shock value is lost because the structuralist ideas presented by Barthes have since become very commonplace in academia and the humanities. Again, I can't really blame Barthes for this - if anything it shows how influential he was that now, the conditioning effects of children's toys are well-known and debated, for example, or that the underlying ideology of the 'woman-as-mother' symbol is widely acknowledged and contested.
So even though these complaints are not really the fault of Barthes, I can only rate this book as 'OK' because it failed to deliver the cognitive revolution it promised, and lacked shock value. Also, it would have been better had the longer essay on mythology been truncated slightly and moved to the beginning of the book.