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Showing posts from December, 2011

2011 In Review

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Personally, 2011 was an good year. I had all sorts of new experiences. Most of them were fun and those that weren't I at least found interesting and educational. Top of my 2011 list had to be my trip to Ireland, with Jayne and our friends the Lizottes. It wasn't a relaxing trip but we saw a lot.  Since I'm picking superlatives, I would have to pick getting off the paved roads and exploring the Burren as my favorite activity.  It felt like being on a different planet.  The fact that the rock were formed from the limestone sediment of the ocean floor 350 million years ago just made it that much cooler. I also learned a couple of new words: "grikes" and "clints". The "grikes" are the cracks between the rocks while the "clints" are the sections of rock. I don't know what it says about me that on a green island, with all it's wonderful coastline and it's population of music loving, stout drinkers, I'd pic

Never Let Me Go

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Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro My rating: 4 of 5 stars This novel reminds me of the kind of art where a change in perspective reveals a darker more cynical work hidden in plain sight: think a friendly looking sculpture that casts a sinister shadow or a painting that when flipped is the evil opposite of the other orientation. It's more subtle here but there's a real miasma that drifts through this novel's pages. The stink, in this case, isn't coming from the characters or even the rather disturbing secret at the heart of the plot but rather from the lingering realization that this story isn't that far fetched and that there's a good chance everyone would just let it happen. This is the sort of book that makes me dislike people. Haunting. View all my reviews