Tuesday, June 15, 2010

A short review as study break


I'm working on finishing up my last paper (for AWLW - go figure), but I need a bit of a study break or I may go crazy. And so my procrastination is your reading recommendation (sort of. I just wanted it to rhyme). 

I just finished Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden. Considering it’s a 500-page book, it’s a pretty quick read.

The story is interesting, but the writing didn’t thrill me. At times it was kind of aggravating and I found myself losing interest.  The book definitely shed some light on some parts of geisha-dom (is that a word?) that we don’t necessarily understand as westerners, but sometimes I just didn’t buy it.

The most interesting part of this book for me was probably the characters and their interactions. I didn’t always like them. In fact, I often found them insufferable, but the dynamics between them kept me interested. I wanted to see how things would play out. My one complaint with the characters is that sometimes I felt like there was something missing – like there was a disconnect between the last thing we saw with the character and whatever was being introduced next.

So yea, basically Memoirs of a Geisha = a good read, but nothing extremely special. I don’t think it’s genius or anything, but I enjoyed reading it and would probably recommend it if I thought it was the kind of book that someone was looking for.

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