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Fiction

Fiction is what makes that hour-long BART ride to work bearable. Fiction is like a glorious movie that plays inside your brain. Welcome to RateItAll's fiction review page.

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Review Icon jedi58 reviewed Sonnets (as a whole) in Complete Works of Shakespeare:
I've not read all of the sonnets, but the one I know best is the one which I think is perhaps the most famous of them. In English Lit. back at High School we covered "Shall I compare thee to a Summers Day" and as an exercise in understanding how Shakespeare style of sonnet worked we were tasked with writing our own - I wrote one that is almost diametrically opposite to this called "Shall I compare thee to a Winter's Night?"

What I like about this sonnet is the way it uses analogies to tell the tale in such a way that it can have multiple meanings and it is up to the reader to interpret as they will.

Shall I compare thee to a Winters Night?

Shall I compare thee to a Winters Night?
Thou art more ugly and extreme:
Calm winds doth shake the hat’ed leaves with blight,
And lease of winter is all to long a dream;
Always too cold the ear of hells refusal,
And never is her silver skin brighten’d;
Sometimes by chance you look worse than usual,
By chance of nature that has dimm’d:
But your eternal coldness shall not fade,
Nor loose the cold for all can feel,
Nor would life brag it knows thee walks in shade,
When in eternal eyes note can seal,
So long as men can smell and see,
So long as this, this gives death to me.

(see, pretty much everything is opposite lol)
0 comments
votes 2 Helpful / 0 Funny / 0 Agree / 0 Disagree

8 days ago

Review Icon magellan reviewed Boonville (Robert Mailer Anderson) in Literature (Contemporary):
"As for the hippies in the county who may be upset at the depiction of hippies, I say, 'Tough shit, hippie.' Anyone willing to identify themselves as a hippie here in the 21st century has their head up their ass and gets what they deserve."

I kind of knew I was going to like this book when I read the preceding quote in the author's forward. Boonville tells the story of a young guy who leaves his comfortable life in Miami to move to little Northern California town called Boonville. Boonville is a mix of hippy burn-outs, rednecks, and folks that are just trying to get out, and is just about the opposite end of the cultural universe from Miami. The book is made by Boonville's characters - some of whom are so wacky and over the top, if I didn't live in Northern California I wouldn't have believed them.

Anderson writes very, very well, and he writes with an edge. Boonville is worth a read.
0 comments
votes 7 Helpful / 1 Funny / 0 Agree / 0 Disagree

12 days ago

Review Icon Sharon_206 reviewed Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens) in Literature (Classic):
one of my favorite movies of the season
0 comments
votes 0 Helpful / 0 Funny / 0 Agree / 0 Disagree

15 days ago

Review Icon GenghisTheHun reviewed The Man Who Would Be King: and Other Stories (Rudyard Kipling) in Literature (Classic):
Here we have a great Kipling short story that was made into a John Huston movie with Sean Connery and Michael Caine playing the leads. I was lucky enough to find this story in the public domain and downloaded it for my IPod. GoRTFM! writes an excellent review of this great story and anything I might add would pale in comparison.

Briefly two rogues who have been discharged from the British Indian Army in the 19th Century go into the far reaches of Afghanistan to take over and make themselves rich and indeed become kings.
0 comments
votes 1 Helpful / 0 Funny / 0 Agree / 0 Disagree

16 days ago

Review Icon Darkpalace reviewed Fingersmith (Sarah Waters) in Literature (Contemporary):
I kind of hate to rate this down so much when it is getting rated well on here right now but it is just my opinion. I started reading it and I was really hoping for it to be a great read. It was not at all to me. It came across as being very fabricated and boring. I could not also believe all of the famous good reviews on the cover. I found that it was a tale of a thief one or more and that is what Fingersmith meant. It just seemed to go along very slowly without holding my interest unlike Moll Flanders where she is shown to be unable to help herself. The little girl was not built into an actual character to me. I can see how it could hold some people's interest. There is something there. Some of the material was taken as she put down from other books.

I admittedly skipped around in it trying to get the idea and there is still some morbid curiosity there. I couldn't understand how a little girl would not understand it was a play and think that Nancy was actually dead in Oliver Twist. If you want to read something playing off the Victorian age it is fine. I actually like reading about it. I also admit to not reading much fiction lately but when I do find something I like I enjoy it. It seemed to all be just laying there. I also did not like the way she the main character seemed to be taking advantage of her lady boss. I suppose there is that and I have felt a little the same I suppose toward female bosses. It just did not interest me. There was also the lesbian part which I didn't feel anything towards it.
0 comments
votes 0 Helpful / 0 Funny / 0 Agree / 0 Disagree

18 days ago

Review Icon jaywilton reviewed A Conspiracy of Paper: A Novel (David Liss) in Mysteries & Thrillers:
I couldn't put it down...(while the first world Jewish heavyweight champ was Daniel Mendoza in 1790's London-he weighed around 160 )Liss creates Benjamin Weaver to live -as I remember in 1730's London to coincide with the beginning's of the stock market(Jews were expelled from England in 1290 and weren't allowed to return til..I think 1650..)..book is full of Dickens like characters...and while we're on the subject of Jews and boxing(and not Jews and the stockmarket/Bernard Madoff...Jackie Mason:"Every Jew I know ALMOST killed somebody...)while the 'Golden Age of Jews and boxing was maybe in the twenties...unknown to most people,we're currently in a mini-version of it-with two Jews set to fight for world titles(Yuri Foreman against Daniel Santos on 11-14 and Dmitriy Salita against Amir Khan12-5...maybe the first world title fight between a Moslem and a Chew)...
0 comments
votes 3 Helpful / 0 Funny / 0 Agree / 0 Disagree

18 days ago

Review Icon Selo reviewed Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov) in Literature (Classic):
I just finished Nabokov's haunting, acidic, and tragically vivacious classic novel about an aging man's doomed fascination to a young American "nymphet" and I enjoyed the edgy tale very much. Within the vibrant, thrilling writing of this tale there is satire abound and hidden meanings so far ahead of their time that they remain thought-provoking well after the book was first published. Its prose is all at once gentle and acerbic, free and dark, painful and fascinating. The story moves along steadily with dangerously well-rounded characters always teetering on the edge of destroying themselves; there is no doubt clash among critics about whether this passionate narrator is helplessly corrupt or merely misguided. The stark, crippling humanity of this tale is where its true shock values lies, more than any blatant sexuality or violence that comes later on. This tale blooms with challenging topics that go right for the jugular of our morality, and its tender yet horrific plot was well worth the unsettling parts that lie on its surface. This book leaves a lingering fascination with it long after the last page and provoke further digging for the iridescent writing at every turn.
0 comments
votes 4 Helpful / 0 Funny / 4 Agree / 0 Disagree

18 days ago

Review Icon irishgit reviewed Seersucker Whipsaw (Ross Thomas) in Mysteries & Thrillers:
An early novel from a pretty good crime writer, and one of his best efforts. Many of Thomas' books have strong political overtones, which is hardly surprising, given his other career as a political strategist.

The narrative follows the first democratic election in an emergent West African state, sometime in the late 1960s. A pair of American political consultants have been sent in to help one of the candidates, one of whom narrates the story, and the other a wily Southern ward heeler called Clinton Shartrelle.

The narrative is sharp and witty, and the dialogue pungent and crisp. The story is fascinatingly multi-layered, and the characters eminently believable, particularly Shartrelle. Thomas is a damn good writer when he chooses to be, and he is at the top of his game here.
0 comments
votes 3 Helpful / 0 Funny / 0 Agree / 0 Disagree

19 days ago

Review Icon CanadaSucks reviewed Unbearable Lightness of Being (Milan Kundera) in Literature (Classic):

I've only read half of it but must review it because it really belongs on another list-

"Books that men keep on their shelves to impress ladies."

(But the half that I remember was cool. . .dude who sleeps with zillions of chicks in Czech. . .Czech. . .checkoslovakiathatplacenexttotheformerUSSR.
8 comments
votes 3 Helpful / 1 Funny / 1 Agree / 1 Disagree

20 days ago

Review Icon aes87 reviewed Midnight (Sister Souljah) in Literature (Contemporary):
It has been a few years since Ive read CWE. But i remembered the author, and decided to see if she had any new releases. So I requested it from the chicago public library. I read it in less than a week. Usually, I am not the type of reader to read a book so often. Reading this book was all I found myself doing in my free time. Forget the haters, there entitled to there view. This book was the bomb and I could really relate to Midnights character - aside from the fact Im not Muslim. How he sees America really is the truth, and this book spoke volumes. I am going to be re-reading CWE, since I honestly have forgotten the plot. I will say that I just finished this book today.... and although I would have like more of an ending, I absolutely loved this book. Midnight is different from the rest of america's youth, 14 or not. His character is more mature than many adults I know and have met. He has culture, beliefs and knows how to watch out for himself and view everyone as a potential enemy. This world is one corrupt universe, and he knows that at such a young age and does his all to protect of a family. I really liked his character, and what he was saying. Although Ive never lived in the Ghetto, and never owned a gun, I can really relate to his mentality. This book spoke a lot of truth. You cant let anyone get in your way, and you have to protect your family and self in this competitive and fucked up world. This book was THE BOMB!

-white girl in south chicago
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votes 0 Helpful / 0 Funny / 0 Agree / 0 Disagree

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