jeremychiasson's reviews
1140 reviews

Question: Who among us hasn't had to deal with a chubby pony with gas issues?

Another question: Does anyone draw funnier facial expressions than Kate Beaton?

Last Question: Why haven't you bought this book, yet?

This is a kids book parents will enjoy more than their kids, a la "Love You Forever" and "On the Night You Were Born". It's lovely and all, but it doesn't resonate with me much personally, since I don't have kids.

More of the same visual genius that you get from Journey, which you really ought to read first.

All the confused and agitated reviews about this picture book are really amusing to me: Is it a philosophical paradox? Is it a commentary on friendship and love? Is it just a meaningless riddle created by Satan to taunt us? WHAT DOES THE SKUNK WANT FROM US? TELL ME, DAMN YOU!

While adults on Goodreads may hate the story's ambiguity, I don't think "The Skunk" will cause any kids to lose sleep. In all likelihood, they will simply be entertained and amused by this enigmatically silly skunk story.

Mac Barnett is quickly becoming one of my favourite children's authors.

Bookless and broke on a seven-hour bus ride, I downloaded a free version of "A Study in Scarlet" on my cellphone, and finished it on the way home. Being unfamiliar with the very first Sherlock Holmes story ever written felt like a serious gap in my reading career, and the lengthy commute seemed like the perfect time frame with which to fill this gap. "A Study in Scarlet" is a relatively short novel, and while it was in many ways exactly what I was expecting from Doyle, the structure of the story was quite a bit different from the shorter Sherlock stories I had previously read.

For instance, half of this book is classic Sherlock, but the second half is a dark Western revenge tale about evil Mormon polygamists. It took me a few pages to realize that I was not reading an unrelated story altogether. it turned out to be a very lengthy explanation of what led to the murders in London. I wasn't a huge fan of this aspect of the story, but it kept me relatively engaged. I admit it was kind of interesting to get some historical background on Mormonism.

This wasn't my favourite Doyle story, but it provided lots of fascinating character tidbits that the shorter stories would never allow for. Is it awful that I didn't know Sherlock started out working as a chemist?

Overall, I give this book three Mormon wives out of five.

I'm not sure if Mark Edmundson actually makes compelling arguments in his books, or if I just naturally agree with him and delight in having someone build up an academic case around my existing beliefs.

Either way, Edmundson rails against how our society has taken the great ideals and virtues of our time, and has reduced them to a safe commercial simulacrum (instead of doing heroic deeds, we watch movies and are vicariously heroic). He writes about exemplars of ideals, like Jesus, Achilles, Plato, and Blake, people who live for the soul, and contrasts them with today's disenchanted people, who all live for the Self. In the place of living lives charged with meaning, Edmundson argues, we live by the mediocre middle class values of living as long, as pleasurably, and as (financially) prosperously as we can. And that is why life feels so empty. In this, Edmundson tries to make a case for living a life dedicated to an ideal.

Interestingly, he accuses Shakespeare and his heir, Sigmund Freud, of slaying and reducing all ideals and noble virtues, down to a matter of folly and delusions. They are visionaries of negative capability and reductionism. Edmundson very deliberately set out to write a polemic, if you haven't noticed. You will also notice, if you read a few of Edmundson's books, that he can't seem to write anything without at least disagreeing with Harold Bloom a hundred times.

If nothing else, you will be entertained by Edmundson quixotic tilts at today's society. But if you are anything like me, you will be inspired to cast off what Blake calls your "mind-forg'd manacles" and try to live more beautifully.

At times, it felt as though Drenth was reading my mind, such was its accuracy. That part was 5-star worthy, but I deducted one star, because I felt he got way too bogged down in describing the thought of different philosophers.