a blog about a lot of things

Purity The newest novel by Jonathan Franzen is the kind of novel which an author can only write when previous success has occurred. Without that track record of reliability or quality, the editors would have given the book much greater scrutiny. Purity suffers badly from a lack of editing. The main character is nominally the recent college graduate Purity, nicknamed Pip, though the Julian Assange-like figure of Andreas Wolf steals the spotlight as soon as he appears. The best of the entire novel is set in East Berlin and if more of the focus of the novel was spent on Wolf, it’s possible the novel would have been far more entertaining. The parts with Wolf are not without flaws, however, especially as the character’s repeated stating of his devotion to his mother and love for his past partner, are his motivations begins to seem less plausible as the book goes on. The other main character, Tom Aberrant, an editor at Denver Independent, gives us the most emotional parts ...

Picked from directors who are Latin American or Caribbean by birth or upbringing or film in those countries regularly (at least 3 films in the region). Exceptions will be made for quality film-makers of Latin American or Caribbean descent who film stories in the United States of America or Canada about Latin Americans or Caribbeans. Or perhaps for directors not of Latin American or Caribbean descent or residence but who film about the diaspora. Stories about the children of immigrants in North America counted in a separate section.  To qualify I'm making it that the director has to release an excellent film (in my opinion) during the 21st century and I need to be able to find at least 3 excellent reference films. Same criteria as the previous lists.  13. Jose Padilha -   Brazil Directing Timespan : 2002- Present Reference Films: Bus 174(2002); Tropa de Elite (2007); Secrets of the Tribe (2010) 12. Pablo Trapero -   Argentina Dir...

Midnight’s children Midnight’s Children immediately reminds the reader of two other novels upon reading, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass. These are two of the major novels of twentieth century literature and foundation works of the genre of magical realism. Midnight’s Children falls comfortably into the same category of importance as these novels. As well as magical realism Midnight’s Children also encompasses several other literary modes such historical fiction and is considered an allegorical novel and a postcolonial novel. Despite the complexity of categorizing, the book itself is not difficult to read. The language and style which Rusdie employs provide an energy which powers the entire story. The allegory is that of the events in India leading up to independence and what follows after. The narrator of the book is Saleem Sinai who was born at the moment India gained independence on August 15 th 1947. He and ot...