Blue Review
Burning
Sometimes I burn down greenhouses.
Blue Review rating: 5 of 5 stars
Directed by Lee Chang-dong
Screenplay by Oh Jung-mi and Lee Chang-dong
Based on the story Barn Burning by Haruki Murakami
Starring Yoo Ah-in, Jeon Jong-seo and Steven Yeun
Mark Kermode Review BBC Radio 5 Live
Blue Review: History of Wolves
History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund
Blue Review rating: 3 of 5 stars
“Two loons, of course. I should know that. I should know.”
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History of Wolves – Blue Review at goodreads
Blue Review: Infinite Jest
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Blue Review rating: 5 of 5 stars
“…almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it. Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenchcoated out of an alley with some sort of Psst that you usually can’t even hear because you’re in such a rush to or from something important you’ve tried to engineer.”
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Infinite Jest – Blue Review at goodreads
Blue Review: Wailing Ghosts
Wailing Ghosts by Pu Songling
Blue rating: 4 of 5 stars
“…Which all goes to show that although foxes may be capable of getting hold of objects from a very long way away, they do not hold on to them for ever.” Pu Songling – The Golden Goblet, Wailing Ghosts.
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Blue Review: Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower
Blue rating: 4 of 5 stars
Nine short stories. They’re fab – but there’s that short story thing going on (that usually happens in film school short films) where the stories just, sort of, end and you don’t get to know what happens later (except the Viking tale; dig that ending). Bummer. Closure. We all need closure.
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Blue Review: A Little Life
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
Blue rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book… brought me down.
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Blue Review: Self’s Murder
Self’s Murder by Bernhard Schlink
Blue rating: 3 of 5 stars
“It’s a shame one can’t chose one’s last case. A high point, a finale, one that rounds off with a flourish everything one has achieved. Instead, the last case is as accidental as all the others. That’s how it goes: you do this, you do that, and before you know it, that was your life.”
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Blue Review: It Had to Be You
It Had to Be You by David Nobbs
Blue rating: 3 of 5 stars
A story about grief – and about your relatives being a bunch of self-centred bastards. Didn’t seem mortifyingly dark or melancholy enough for Reggie Perrin’s David Nobbs. Acely humanist though.
And now I’m suddenly thinking about Reggie Perrin – which I used to watch when I was a kid (in the seventies).
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Blue Review: Fragile Things: Short Fictions & Wonders
Fragile Things: Short Fictions & Wonders by Neil Gaiman
Blue Review rating: 4 of 5 stars
This man’s imagination is bonkers. And scary.
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Blue Review: A Spool of Blue Thread
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
Blue Review rating: 4 of 5 stars
A story that made me feel so sad; about the transience of life; about how I ought to tell the people I love how much I do love and cherish them – before it’s too late.
A Spool of Blue Thread – Blue Review at goodreads
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Blue Review: Classic Science Fiction Stories
Classic Science Fiction Stories by Tig Thomas
Blue Review rating: 5 of 5 stars
I read all these stories when I was a kid. I’d forgotten that I’d read them. Reminded me of my dad. He loved Science Fiction, too. Probably where I got it from. Fab.
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Blue Review: The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Blue Review rating: 5 of 5 stars
“Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Brilliant.
The Picture of Dorian Gray – Blue Review at goodreads
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Blue Review: How to Be Both
Blue Review rating: 4 of 5 stars
What a lovely book; warm and funny – but made me feel so lonely and sorrowful.
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How to Be Both – Blue Review at goodreads
Blue Review: To Rise Again at a Decent Hour
To Rise Again at a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris
Blue Review rating: 5 of 5 stars
Very, very funny – theologically and especially atheistically so. And sort of reminded me of Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 – my favourite book before coming across Catcher in the Rye. Still “I can only suggest the effect it had on me, that is, that the feeling that my life … and the world’s every carefree, winsome hour, were perfectly without meaning.”
To Rise Again at a Decent Hour – Blue Review at goodreads
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Blue Review: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
Blue Review rating: 4 of 5 stars
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves – Blue Review at goodreads
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Blue Review: J
J by Howard Jacobson
Blue Review rating: 4 of 5 stars
A bleak dystopian retro-future effloresces a sinister argument to restore humankind’s requisite ‘equilibrium of hate’ in order to avoid/precipitate WHAT HAPPENED, IF IT HAPPENED happening again – with absolutely magnificent literary wit.
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Blue Review: Dark Fey: The Reviled
Dark Fey: The Reviled by Cynthia Morgan
Blue Review rating: 4 of 5 stars
I don’t recall having ever read a Mystical Fantasy story before and, for sure, I’ve never read a Mystical Faerie Fantasy – so I had only a vague idea of what I’d find there and no idea, really, of how I’d react to it.
What I discovered was a tender love story – through and around which raged a fearsome and wholly relentless battle between, literally, Light and Dark.
Ayla, a faerie of the Light, is a gifted empath whose compassion is so deep-seated and enduring that she can’t help but take on others’ pain and angst – especially that of those close to her heart.
Gairynzvl, is a faerie of the Dark; he’s one of The Reviled, The Fallen Fey – and, from the deep shadows, he begins to watch Ayla; he watches and waits – risking his all.
(more…)
Blue Review: The Outsider
Blue Review rating: 5 of 5 stars
I often wonder why I do things, as well. Must be the sun.
The Outsider – Blue Review at goodreads
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Blue Review: The Lives of Others
The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee
Blue Review rating: 4 of 5 stars
An arduous read of unrelenting inhuman cruelty – with neither salvation nor redemption at the end.
The Lives of Others – Blue Review at goodreads
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Blue Review: The Narrow Road to the Deep North
The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
Blue Review rating: 4 of 5 stars
Man’s inhumanity to man. Inexorable loneliness. Then you die. (In sh*t).
The Narrow Road to the Deep North – Blue Review at goodreads
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Morana Blue 