The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan

Title: The Lover's Dictionary
Author: David Levithan
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 
Original Publication Date: 2011
Pages: 211



Belated 
adjective 
1 : delayed beyond the usual time
2 : existing or appearing past the normal or proper time

Actually took me up until letter B to realize that I was bored reading it.

Drop/Dropped
transitive verb
1 : to let fall : cause to fall
2 a : give up 2, abandon

I am putting this into my DNF shelf. I cannot simply force myself to finish this! I think my upcoming finals schedule is taxing enough. Also I forcibly placed this so that 'did not finish' could be inserted, just like how the book felt, a lot of the entries were rather conventional, if not forced. No fluidity.

Continuance
noun
1 : continuation
2 : the extent of continuing : duration
3 : the quality of enduring : permanence

So I will be enduring this, because I know it takes a lot of trees to produce copies of this book. it will be a waste and shame to the trees to simply stop at letter B.

Tree
noun
1 a : a woody perennial plant having a single usually elongate main stem generally with few or no branches on its lower part
b : a shrub or herb of arborescent form

Wasted paper. Wasted trees. The format aimed to be novel and fresh and exciting. I'm telling you now it was nothing like that but large chunks of wasted spaces. In contrast to Nicole Krauss' History of Love and Jonathan Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close which masterfully employed this minimalist aspect in type-setting, I see nothing but fragmented struggling minimal entries in paper.

Hodgepodge
noun
: a heterogeneous mixture : jumble

The dictionary entry styles barely made any sense. Interjected themes, issues and ideas where they would randomly fit through the words. At the risk of being redundant, there was no fluidity.

Honesty
noun
1 obsolete : chastity
2 a : fairness and straightforwardness of conduct
b : adherence to the facts : sincerity

I confess I only read this because I failed to find a copy of Raymond Carvers' book What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.
I also confess, I never got past B. Sorry trees.

The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison

Title: The Worm Ouroboros
Author: Eric Rücker Eddison
Publisher: Jonathan Cape
Original Publication Date: 1922
Pages: 446

To say that The Worm Ouroboros has bolstered my love for the classics, is to strain credulity, for I have devoted much time going through the 49 pages more than I would have wanted to.

A plain reason why 'classics,' or in a more encompassing sense, early works in literature experience a fallout, at its more merciful dispositions, has something to do with the language it has been couch with. The philosophies that give life to the plot, the mythologies in the origin of the story, the psychologies of the characters, be they stupidly consistent or brilliantly logical, are all contained in the language. Failure must not exists in the basic and most vital component of a book, lest it be fatal. Language, one might say, would be the shell of the book by which it is most peremptorily judged, just as how The Worm Ouroboros came out to be. (Perhaps this too contribute to the proliferation of YA novels, they are as simple and easy as they could possibly be - although this statement is in danger of suffering from generalization)

I look forward, knowing that a moment will come when i should once again pick this book up, not only giving justice to the words Tolkien have immortally left with it, but to knowing, at last, the merits it contain. Till then, unrated it will be left.

The Weird of the White Wolf by Michael Moorcock

I was giddy picking this book up. I was looking for a good series in the field of epic fantasy after reading full blown novels and saw that the Elric series is revered in the genre. I finished the two books and did not stop until well within the third of the series. However, the seemingly unprecedented fears of reading Moorcock and the Elric saga emerging within the second book (which for me) seemed to have been nothing but unfounded was embossed within the third books as if fundamentally attached to the series, at best, and at worst, with Moorcock's writing. I place a caveat as need be. I did not read the succeeding books in the series, nevertheless, I will carry on, with intrepid audacity, rendering a review that would seem conclusive for the entirety of the Elric saga. Who knows, the edit button is never far from reach if i may chance to pickup the other books in the series, which i doubt with great veracity.

Elric was off at a good start, if I can remember, Elric is the first antihero scheme i have read under the genre. In hindsight, it proved disheartening. The series lacked the grandiosity that is fantasy (for me, defines books under the fantasy genre). The world building, which is vital to a fantasy series categorically failed. Conceivably due to the fact that the series' books are almost always composed of three novellas rather than being a single composite work. Withal, Moorcock did not seem to have deliberately expounded on his world building aside from laying the essential necessities of the Elric series. The character/story arc, although credited as idiomatic as it were, just went too wide losing sight of the main arc. They were entertaining yes but in the end it leaves you candidly empty. This arc failure is because of Moorcock's concept of the Eternal Champion (please google it) of which i will not go into pains elaborating but to me simply is (sad to say) another marketing strategy to get you to read his other works. I do no want to read another book to understand a character. If a renvoi is in the making so that i can enjoy your books, then that's consequentially disappointing. But this did not lead me to stop, no, I read the next book and that's where the proverbial straw was lying.

DIMINUTIVE ASPOILER CAUTION!

A. Moorcock was simply repetitive in his stories. There were a handful of plot repetitions of some of which i ought to mention.

1. There will always be a sleeping girl!

Which of course Elric will help.

2. After helping a high-born short of being a perfect lady, our man Elric will always leave her.

3. Elric will never lose because he can summon a god, or when that god is defeated, a stronger god, or a stronger one or so on.....

This repetitive sequences simply sucked the life of the story barely leaving Elric with any character or persona at all.

B. Numerous PLOT HOLES (easily discoverable)

C. Story conclusions are what would rather seem convenient to the arc rather than well thought out inferences. (Elric can just summon a God to end whatever the hell is pestering him - but then again this may be a selling point of the series).

Considered however as revolutionary and radical with the presentations of fantasies in the tone of an antihero theme (one of the earliest of its kind), Moorcock is still something that an avid fan of the genre should not miss.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Redeeming. The innumerable opinions and notes on this work do not give justice to the masterpiece that it is. Now this is distinctively Murukami, epic, superb, astounding, is what I would have said, but alas, as clichés are, the book is boring.

The surreality the readers love about this book (and of Murakami) is a trap. The story carries an atmosphere where anything can happen, which antithetically results in nothing happening. That is only the tip of the iceberg though (a cliché of which I'd say, Murakami did nothing to avoid employing). What bugs (cliché) me however is that Murakami knowingly wrote a 600-paged novel tackling an epic story only to leave out things unexplained, unsubstantiated and unanswered.

Surreal. Defined by Merriam-Webster as:

1. marked by the intense irrational reality of a dream; also: unbelievable, fantastic

Under the definition Murakami hits the spot (cliché). The book was irrational and dream like. In some instances (cliché) the prose is simply too verbose it was practically begging for brevity to make some sense, but not even the kind that would give you a minuscule fragmented understanding of the story. Not to mention it was repetitious (perhaps the fault lies in the translation of the material? perhaps this too is a compliment).

Someone on this site said that the book is a flawed masterpiece. I interject, out of sheer audacity more than the cheated feeling of reading a 600-paged novel absolutely arriving nowhere, that technically a masterpiece is something done with extraordinary skill and a flaw is an imperfection or weakness. This is what is now either a masterpiece or a flawed work of art. Either way, I give up on Murakami.

To his credit I enjoyed a subplot (on the WWII) better than anything contained in the book. But alas, even that was lost and forgotten.