2. The Catcher in the Rye

Name : The Catcher in the Rye
Writer : J.D. Salinger
Publishing year :  1951
Language : English
Type : Classic / Novel
How come ? : Considered one of the best English novels of all times, and often shouldering the likes of "The Great Gatsby" and "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" .. I thought it would be a great start for my Classics section. Plus it has a cool cover art, and that's always something.
Estimated time : 6~7 hours.
Main themes : Alienation, Self-consciousness, Meaning of Life, Coming of age, Adulthood, Mental illness, Society.
Recommended for : Anyone familiar with issues in any of the themes mentioned above. Mostly for people who kind of hate the society they're born in, and generally for anyone who likes a well-written, witty, different story.

The book in a few words : The stream of consciousness of a 17 years-old boy with an eccentric personality.

The synopsis : At the age of 17 Holden Caulfield, a self-proclaimed madman, is coming to terms with his transition to adulthood, stuck between his misanthropic tendencies and his need of acceptance in a world full of adults' puzzles.

The Rating : Excellent 9/10

The Review : 

Well .. that's was different.
I didn't know what to expect from the novel when I started it. The primary indicators (the cover and the mysterious title) weren't too much of a cue, so all I knew was that it's a classic, so it must be good.
Well judging by the rating I gave it, it was more than just "good". I reached the level of excellency for me in many aspects that are so hard to enumerate and harder to verbalize, you just feel them as you read, that's how you know that something is precious.
The first thing I noticed about the novel is the pace of the narration. It didn't start slowly, it didn't decelerate. And since I read it in one take, it really felt like it's actually narrated by the protagonist, like, to me, like, face to face. The pace is so natural and quite speedy it drove all your attention to the story-telling aspect of the novel. Unlike many other novels that are written in the first-person perspective, this one really feels like it's narrated in real time by the narrator rather than him telling it in episodes or chronicles. It was almost like a stream of consciousness, where there is hardly any rigid transition between one idea and the other. With a light tone, the story is carried on by the narrator at an extraordinary ease. And for a story that is majorly built around the experience of the character, this feeling of reality and time really helps to understand, if not to connect with, the character in question in dimensions exceeded the usual psychological and behavioral analysis of it.
Once you'll get used to the pace/casual style of the narration, the next thing that will strike you is the repetitive use of some expressions/words by the author/narrator which gave him kind of a signature, a trait that none of the other characters you've previously known have. The extensive use of 2nd degree profanity (Damn, Hell, Bastard ..) is a unique aspect of the writing style. As of speaking in statistics, the novel is made of 53% of "Hell", 63% "That killed me", 74% "phony" and 88% "goddam" (naturally as of any statistics, they don't add up to 100% and I don't care). Frankly, it's THAT repetitive. And not negatively repetitive as you might have thought, actually quite the opposite. After the few first pages, you'll start thinking of the character as one of those people who use a certain linguistic mold recurrently, and after you'll get used to it, you'll start loving it. The character isn't a bad vulgar guy with no manners, he's an anguished person, and that's all about it.
Then comes one of the main reasons for my 9/10 : Sarcasm. It's one of those things that can't be affected and forced, and dang Salinger knows what he's doing. I wasn't expecting it at all from a book that is considered classic. I don't know why but I always thought of classics as those books that are serious and wise and soberly written, and little did I know that the Catcher in the Rye was a LOL book. I mean literally, I laughed out loud many times, and at some point (that I forgot now, which is good since I do plan to reread the book and I will pleasantly be surprised by it again. The perks of having a bad memory), I laughed for like .. 10 seconds continuously. That really says a lot since I seldom laugh wholeheartedly at written things, and this book kept getting me time and time again, before it lost its lighter tone to adopt a more serious, realistic, darker one.
The main character, also the main focus of the novel, is kind of a change for your-typical-narrator-hero. Instead of linearly telling the story as it unfolds and making internal thoughtful reflections upon it, Holden was a full sack of resentment, apathy, jokes, judgement and lost potential. First of all he hated lots of people, practically everyone, which made him more of an antihero than a hero. His moral code is rather base and he can't find a motive strong enough to become a better person, although he could, maybe he wanted, too. He kept expecting from people he resented to make him feel better, but all he did is to eventually hate them as he also expected. And although he disdained people for being phony and pretentious, he himself couldn't help judging everyone else. The thing is he is actually a smart guy (which is a rare thing for me to say to describe a fictional characters, really), but it came clear at many instances how different of a guy he was. He couldn't fit in a world where people have more air in their head than in their lungs, and he repeatedly felt sorry for people who didn't know better. That's the guy Holden was.
Being smart in a world of dummies suck, but what sucks even more is being self-conscious beyond the healthy limit, and beautifully so. So when your-typical-first-person-narrator goes on rave the snow falling in the beautifully dim light of the midnight, Holden tells you about the ball of snow he had packed from the snow stacking on his window and kept it until getting on a bus and told by the bus driver to through it away. This freakishly genius attention to weird details made me stop at some lines and just wonder how the author had the inspiration to write them. Some of them felt too vivid to be inspired by real life yet too realistic to be made up in someone's mind. Either ways, I think that the biggest chunk of this novel's beauty lies in the exotic attention to trivial-details-made-important, all from the hand-holding memory to the color of the kid siblings' hair (take hint : the color of the hat is red too).
His self-consciousness, translated by his constant observation of people's behavior around him and the continuous speculation on their motivations was one of the things I definitely related to while reading and made easy to sympathize with the character in his desperate quest to find a person that can listen to him and actually understands him with no further motive. And that's not an easy thing for a overly-(self-)conscious person to do. Take my word for it.

The novel hormonally travels through many of Caulfield's caprices and states of mind : Hatred of the world, self-hatred, wanting to freeze time and stop people from growing up, the need to be listened to, feeling stuck between pre-maturity and a longing to innocence, the void created by the departed ones, summer time with Jane beside a checker board. The complexity of the character is just fascinating.
He's just a colorful soup of warmth and sourness, of morbid beauty. It's that good.

I couldn't find any negative sides to point out about the novel, except maybe the vague ending that didn't lift the protagonist nor did it seem to do so. As open as it can be to interpretation and because I'm a lazy reader who loves things to be wrapped-up at the end of the book, I found that slightly underwhelming, but not nearly enough to foul the beauty of the novel. Come to think of it, I think it was quite THE end to this story that doesn't really need an ending as much as it needs an interpretation.
All in all, the Catcher in the Rye is about a guy who didn't want to yield to society rules that made everyone become shallow and phony, who kept looking for someone to understand him and to appreciate him beyond matter, to spiritually connect to him. All he got in exchange was a long list of jerky male acquaintances, a longer list of barely human female acquaintances, intellectuals who either have too little time listening to him or have ulterior motives to do so, and finally, a 10 years old sister to remind him of everything good in this world. No wonder he wanted to be the Catcher in the Rye.

Favorite character : 
Holden Caulfield. Of course.
Not only because the inconspicuously smart guy he is, but also because he's vulnerable, insecure, real. Wittiness aside, you can see the suffering this gift of mind brought to the hero, as with his "more developed" mind, he could see more through people's fake happiness and fake smiles and fake lives. You'd wonder how would it be like if Holden was just one of them, a rich bastard who didn't care about being emotionally relevant, but that's exactly the point. He isn't. He goddam isn't. Although mostly apathetic and judgmental, we get to see every once in a while some figures of hope throughout the novel rising to ditch him out of the black hole of sadness and sadism and self-loathing.
Although the "That depresses me" appeared a hundred times more frequently than the "I was damn happy", we can get a morale out of the story : in spite of everything, he lived to tell it. That's how great of a character Holden is.


Favorite passages : 
Most of my favorite (and hilarious) passages were stuck inside long contexts so you should read the novel to figure them out yourself :p

"I'm crazy. I swear to God I am." (x3415 times)

"I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot."

"What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though."

"- No reason. Boy, I can't stand that sonuvabitch. He's one sonuvabitch I really can't stand."

- He's crazy about you. He told me he thinks you're a goddam prince."

"I'm the goddarn Governor's son," I said. I was knocking myself out. Tap-dancing all over the  place. "He doesn't want me to be a tap dancer. He wants me to go to Oxford. But it's in  my goddam blood, tap-dancing."

"Sensitive. That killed me. That guy Morrow was about as sensitive as a goddam toilet seat."

"I tried to get them in a little intelligent conversation, but it was practically impossible... You could hardly tell which was the stupidest of the three of them."

"- How much is it, for God's sake?
- Eight dollars and eighty-five cents. Sixty-five cents. I spent some.
Then, all of a sudden, I started to cry. I couldn't help it. I did it so nobody could hear me, but I did it."

" It was the first time she ever told me to shut up. It sounded terrible. God, it sounded terrible. It sounded worse than swearing."

1. L'Empire des Anges - Bernard Werber

Name : L'Empire des Anges (The Empire of the Angels)
Writer : Bernard Werber
Publishing year :  2000
Language : French
Type : Recommended / Novel / Best-Seller
How come ? : A friend of mine (Ahmed), gave it to two friends of mine (Inas and Soukaina) in a time when I was deciding to start reading books. That instantly created in me a will to read this book especially after the two girls insisted about how AWESOME this book was and how I, heck, how everyone should read it because it's that good. After two months or so later the early friend offered me the prequel to read (Les Thanatonautes) and short after he offered me the sequel, this book. I can't miss the chance of reading a book with real pages, especially if it is that good of a book.
Estimated time : About 14 hours. I'm pretty slow in french (Pathetically 2mins/page, that's SLOW)
Main themes : Life beyond Death, Superstitions, Reincarnation, Existentialism, Existence, Alchemy, Freewill
Recommended for : People with liberal tendencies  people who love to ask the questions they can't answer, people who enjoy references, people who like multibranched stories, people who crave philosophical and existential debates because they're sick of banal conversations, and people who like original stories.

The book in a few words : You want a story to tell you the answers to ALL the questions you asked ?

The synopsis : Micheal Pinson is a curious guy. Probably not the bravest nor the boldest, but he's easily intrigued by the thrill of discovering the unknown. Along with his friend who's much more adventurous and openly defiant than him, he'll live a one-of-a-kind adventure.
An adventure that will start the moment he'll die.

The Rating : Excellent 9/10



The Review : 

In one word : Triumph.
I had a rough idea what the novel was about upon overhearing the two previously mentioned girls talking about it on more than one occasion : It's supposed to deal with the theory of reincarnation, some angels that do or do not believe in God, and something about freewill. So I had already had high expectations about this novel because of the constant praise it received and because the late theme (freewill) being one of my favorites. It's one of those rare instances when you have high expectation on something and it doesn't let you down, better yet, exceeds those expectations somehow.
Although the book is unfortunately not Perfect (for reasons stated below), I don't think I have ever read/will ever read something like it. It had scored many victories on many levels that it's hard to label it anything but ingenious and brilliant.
First of all, the language is a perfectly silent tool in the hands of mister Werber, and nothing more than a tool. That's one the points that won me over : A sober language without any devotion to the style itself (although you can easily notice the present intention by the writer to make the style easy and low-lying). The focus was however on terminology : as the novel switch from one field of the human experience to another, the vocabulary required for it rises to surface at almost a fluent motion, you can notice the transition but it feels almost spontaneous and natural. Those transitions and travels for one domain to another in one of the better elements of the book, as for a book to mix too many semantic fields and keeps its consistency and binding is a feat by itself, but far from its best. Next to this idea itself comes the things I appreciated most : The use of References. References galore all over the place. What's more clever is the two-folded use of this device through the novel : First in the insertion of fictive writing within the realm of the story (Edmond's Encyclopedia, the interviews with anonymous passengers at the beginning), it's just so amazing and so amusing to use quotes that had never been said, which is a clever way for the writer to introduce ideas while distance himself from them, by creating the ephemeral illusion that's it's actually someone else's idea ! Edmond's encyclopedia was by far my favorite part of the book as it kicked off. This "reference" of absolute and relative knowledges was not only one of the guiding lines of the whole plot, but also an insight to the writer's mind as of writing the previous/next passage. The encyclopedia is the reference for the writer (when he quotes experiments and/or scientific facts), written by the writer. It just can't get any more better.
Second, there were many references to the real world. Actually as I read through, I noticed that most of the base content of the novel is "borrowed" from as many Cultures and Lores as you can imagine. Almost every principle, every idea is a reference to a certain ideology. Heavily based on Buddhist and Kabbalic ideas of reincarnation, the writer offers an "alternative" to the dichotomy of Heaven/Hell in the alleged afterlife. It's not an original idea, as it is the case for many other ideas scattered around being inspired by established beliefs (especially "Nature-friendly" ones, like Buddhism and Hinduism), the book ultimately delivers an amalgam of folklores and mythologies. Admittedly, the base of the intellectual content of the story is the human historical culture and a layered interpretation of alchemy, but Werber does a fantastic job sewing the pieces he liked most together. Actually, that's the ingeniousness of his story-craft. He deserves all the credit for creating such vibrating, courageously different characters with actual flaws and a real rate of change over time. The characters grow as they live on, and at some point they become believable.
As said above, the variety in the themes of interest of the abounding number of half-leading half-supporting characters makes it hard for any reader not to relate to at least one of them. Riddled by love, haunted by loneliness, passionate about computers, puzzled by existence or taken by a burning curiosity to discover the unknown, you have a fair chance to find a character who's like you, and this character will bring passages and lines that you'll definitely enjoy. Werber is an everyone pleaser, and the creativity needed to create such pleasantly diversified characters and their stories should be highly raved as they were the transmitters of the whole momentum of the story. Good job, Werber.
(And let me just don't forget the fact that HE MENTIONED MY FAVORITE BOOK OF ALL TIMES IN HIS BOOK .. instantaneous virtual high five for inserting Flowers for Algernoon !).
The last triumphant element I want to point is the foreshadowing : I smiled many times as I reread the name of an old character mentioned briefly beforehand or noticed the return of an object/theme from the early pages, which provokes such nice reaction. The loops in the plot lines are a variation of this technique, as if stories tend to repeat themselves, unbeknownst to you. The many hints sprinkled all the long lead definitely to the ending (that was kind of expected, but perfectly done), but it doesn't spoil any of the joys of pushing the limits of the Terra Incognita with the passively curious Micheal, the unconditionally bold Raoul, and a plethora of their friends and foes, the rest of the cast, for a unique adventure through time and space and dimensions ..

Spoiler alert : The ending was awesome.

It would have been ideal if that was it, but as much as I yearned for it, the book wasn't perfect, not for me anyways. But to give it justice, it's hard to write a perfect story that tries to give "answers to everything you ever asked" without being inconsistent. I don't think there will ever be a universally perfect book so that's not what I based by rating on for sure, my standards are pretty humble and I'm easy to amaze as long as you hit all the right strings and you avoid touching the wrong ones. Sadly, I couldn't enjoy the symphony of the brilliant book without stumbling upon some off-tune chords. The book claims to endorse scientific rigor and approach, but at some times it just becomes absurd and inconsistent (Observing the photons -infinitely small- by the naked eyes by Angels who don't have any enhanced visual capacities, feeling speed and acceleration although not having any sense of time ..). This kind of little inconsistencies with the referential set by the author himself (the "rigorously scientific" approach) kind of disappointed me, especially that they can be easily avoided. Then there is some perspective issues that kind of bothered me too. Although the universe of the novel evolves and expands, the frame of reference of the protagonist doesn't heel accordingly. For many times, I felt like the author forgot that many of the auxiliary characters DO have their freewill (and their guarding angels as well), and when he doesn't notice that, it all seems awkward (Many auxiliary characters were used just to advance the story of the "clients" of Micheal, which is not only inconsistent, but uncool as well). In the same line of thoughts, I didn't get how many people did believe in guardian angels and prayed for them, while none of them practically prayed God ! Which is way more than acceptable in the geo-politico-tempo-social context of the novel. That's not how we keep our novel agnostic, bald Bernard.
There is also the fact that there are many rules that the angels have to follow, but there is practically NO consequence whatsoever to disobey them (both rules of "Heaven" were constantly broken by Micheal and Raoul : "granting all wishes" and "not descending to earth"), but nobody seems to be bothered at all, which made me wonder why he did introduce them at all. Another remark is that although there were too many ideas in the head of our amazing author (not being ironic here), he didn't have to push the ones that didn't fit in the encyclopedia into characters that appeared and vanished without leaving any mark on the story line, which is kind of a waste (and I always hate waste when it comes to tightly written stories like this one, you know better Werber). More isn't always better.
Finally which is why I settled on 9 and not 9.5, is the ridiculous fight scene. Oh my God. I frankly understand that the author wanted its masterpiece to be perfect (and therefore exhaustive) and that why it included elements from all Genres ranging from eroticism to esoterism and from psychological to romantic, but I didn't appreciate at all the combat/action element. I literally tried to forget the scene after I read it. It didn't make any sense in the context of the seriousness and the grandness of the story, and what's worse, left too many loose ends (The fighter Marilyn Monroe with a sword of Love and a shield of Humor -You can't be more ridiculous, honestly- against an army lost souls injected with an unjustifiable need to attack -revenge, okay. But why in the outer space a billion kilometer away from Earth ? Why Werber, why ..- roaming angels to make them I-don't-know-why-and-how fallen angels .. no thank you).
All in all, the combat scene was just a huge turn-off, just like in -spoiler alert- the prequel. Thank goodness this part was short, or else the review would have been more severe.

So to sum up, although many of the concepts on the story lack originality (everything from the Reincarnation cycle to the ascendance in the levels of existence to the meaning of numbers), the way it was presented along with the few original concepts made this novel a real intellectual treat. The diversity of the characters and their choices  in life is just another proof of mastery and artfulness of this bald man. Many of the passages were so intelligently written I wanted to rip them off the book and inject them in my mind so I can generate their likes. I wrote that long ranting paragraph not because I didn't enjoy this piece of awesomeness, but because I did. It's just so wise and knowledge-imbued that it creates in you a want to read and read about all cultures and all wisdoms and all ideas of the philosophers and the preachers and the scientists and the historians. To be able to put this much intellectual seeds into mere 440 pages is wondrous..
Unearthly wondrous.
What if Bernard Werber is actually a medium and this book is a clever way to hide the secrets and the many truths from the Heavens, dictated by a real angel ?
Ok, just kidding.
And definitely worth re-reading. Maybe a re-review will be written someday, too.

Favorite character : 
Edmond Wells. Because he's writing THE Encyclopedia, simply put.
He's not directly implied in the events.and when he does appear, he's always poised and know-what-to-do kind of guy, which creates a very good balance for the other characters who are all too-something.
And I believe he's the writer's projection in the story, after all, he's the one who guides, he's the one who knows, and he's the one who's preferred making the world(s) better rather than just know more for himself.

Favorite passages : 
"Un jour, on meurt."
Source : individu interrogé dans la rue au hasard d'un micro-trottoir

"A 22 heures 59, pour la première fois de ma vie, je pense que "C'est peut être quand même bien ma planète". "

"Je ne savais pas qu'au Paradis aussi on pouvait se passionner pour l'infomatique."

"Encyclopédie :
Réalité : " "La réalité: c'est ce qui continue d'exister lorsqu'on cesse d'y croire" énoncait l'écrivain Philip K. Dick. Il doit donc exister quelque part une réalité objective qui échappe aux savoirs et aux croyances des hommes. C'est cette réalité-là que je veux comprendre et approcher."
Edmond Wells, Encyclopédie du Savoir Relatif et Absolu, tome IV

Guidelines

This is probably one of the most useless blogs to ever be created. I already know that !

The title is pretty self-explanatory as it is, I have read a book and why you ought to care for that ? I don't know ! Maybe you have nothing to do with your life expect reading lame blogs and therefore you should probably be working on this issue of yours instead of having your sense of worth consumed by uninspiring writings. Or maybe you're a random visitor who by guidance of the Great Powers of the Unknown settled on this somber zone of the wide internet, and then probably you should leave because you know, there are better things to do. And maybe you're someone who've heard of my project (already calling it a project! I just can't get more pretentious, can I) and you want to see what books I've read so far and what I do think of them, as though you really care of that, which of course, you don't. So please feel free to use the content of this blog as a basis to judge me and a record to read through and throughout my soul and sense of self-glorification. Or not.

Seriously (haha ..), this blog is yet another try of mine to penetrate the blogosphere, for I think it's really important and almost necessary for us -people who attempt to become better people and make a difference in their lives and lives of people around them- to step one step ahead of the typical consumer, and try to cross over to the world of creators, hopefully. Blogs being the easiest vehicle of ideas nowadays (and NOT Facebook, God forbid), I choose to start from here. I won't probably be making any difference on a global or a local level, and it's not my goal in all honesty, I know this to be exceptionally unexceptional, but it would mean something for .. me. It's a personal challenge and I owe myself this test, I owe myself to be convinced that I'm not that person who'll spend whole days of his precious and noway reimbursed life doing nothing but dull facebook errands and limitless Youtube dives instead of doing something that might actually nourish my soul and help me grow as a human, even if it's not that strong of a fertilizer. I hope this blog is something I can do and stay honest to and maybe one day be proud of.

I created this blog in tandem with promising myself to (1) stop using Facebook (and maybe Youtube) except for weekends and (2) reading a book a week. Not so easy for someone who, not too long ago, couldn't find 20 books to start up his Goodreads profile, which is shameful. I want to reboot my reading engine and aim (too?) high in order to make sense to myself, and hopefully stop my atrocious self-loathing cycle once for all.

So here is what to expect : 

• No exceptional reviewing abilities : If you want to read professional, really meaningful and mature book reviews, look for some Times articles. If you want to read some meager, biased, hardly intellectual reviews, then you're most welcomed.
• Rusty sense of humor : I'm pretty much self-aware about that. If you glimpsed a half-assed joke then please proceed as if nothing really happened, don't make it stop you from carrying on the reading because maybe .. maybe there are more half-assed jokes awaiting.
  Just get over it.
• Lack of objectivity and external bias : I'd be a liar if I said I would judge a book from a distance, objectively. I'm a person who gets emotionally involved in things, and I love to have opinions about them. What the others think is none of my business. So if you have recommended* a book and I shamelessly bashed it, then I'm not the one to blame, maybe you're the one to blame, maybe you are the one to blame for anything wrong with your life. You have some work to do, human failure.
• Eventual spoilers : I think it's too soon to promise that my reviews would be spoilers-free. I promise I won't intentionally ruin the reading experience for you by revealing any main plot devise or seminal event of the plot, but I can't help pointing out the things that I most liked (or hated for the same matter) about the book. It's a review, not a synopsis (Wikipedia is already there for that, although some untalented Wiki-editors aren't sharp enough to know that the synopsis stops before the events start, scumbags), so it should include plot-based arguments. The review would be constituted of two rough parts : The introduction (the intrigue) and the actual review. If you can't trust my sense of judgement of what's okay to be unveiled and what's not, you can skip the actual review and read just the "rating", the "Recommended for", and the "Book in a few words" sections. Then you can read the book spoiler-freely and come back for the review. Or don't. Just don't come back if you can't trust my sense (which any sane-minded person would do, quite frankly).

I fixed a few rules so I won't get lost in my self-drawn road. In order to diversify but also challenge myself, I would make the "next to read" procedure less arbitrary and more focused and rewarding. I choose the following pattern : 

1. A novel : There are many novels to be read, too many actually. And although they're all different to some extent, they tend to become a "pastime", more like "read this so I can review it and shake off this week's burden", which is not what I want to do, and knowing myself, I believe I'll end up doing it anyways. So I  choose to limit the novels that I choose to read myself for one per every cycle.
2. A Classic/Cult Classic : To read is a thing, to read Classics is another. Those are books that established the state of international "Classic" in their respective domains that they need to be read for many reasons. Scientific, historical, religious, autobiographical, revolutionary .. I'll pick up one classic each week and see whether, with my highly impaired judgement, this classic deserve this status for me (pretentiousness overload, get over it too). Cult classics are also an option that is more exclusive, but more worth experiencing.
3. A Non-Fiction : for the same reasons listed in 1, I won't restrain myself to novels and fiction books, as tempting as this actually is. They say that we read to escape from our disfigured reality and to reach  out for a more perfect sense-making world, which is quite true. But let's not forget that it's not the only reason to read. We read to grow and mature as humans, so we need to relate to our reality more often. Historical or scientific, documentary or didactic, I intend to learn too from this experience and there is A LOT to learn.
4. A Recommended : *New this season ! For every cycle, I'll read a book that is recommended by someone else as a Must-Read. I'll read it and review it regardless of what the "recommander" thinks of it. So it is safe to say that most of my bad ratings will be coming from this section. But I still love you, my loyal reader.
   
   PS : I wrote historical twice, but rest assured I don't mean it ! I won't be reading ANY historical books for now, that's as bad as .. reading historical books. Enough said.

For a typical review, it would include the following elements :

• Name / Writer / Publishing Year / Language ..
• Type :  From the four aforementioned possibilities : Novel, Classic, Non-Fiction, Recommended.
• How come ? How did I found the book and why did I choose it (just to remember later on how and why I first met that specific book and feel nostalgic about it and maybe start crying ..).
• Estimated time : For the busier among you (sure ..), this will help you determine whether you can read this book in the time span you have.
  Very practical and completely free. Just like water .. Wait.
• Themes : This is pretty essential. Here I'll try to sum up the issues the book address. That should be enough to know whether you would like it or not, basically.
• Recommended for : My modest estimation of the people the writer had in mind while writing the book (Ughh). It can be anything from "Everyone who has time to read", to "Anyone who can read" to "Only me. GET OFF THIS BOOK YOU DON'T DESERVE IT YOU FILTHY RAT!". Quite clear I guess.
• The book in a few words : If you don't want to read the book, I'll be of the great help to you and I'll offer you the essence, the heart and the soul of the books in as little words as possible, you won't even need to read it ! How cool is that ?
  Again, very practical and unconventionally free .. like love ! Love ..
• The synopsis : Here is the spoiler-free part of the review. It'll be more like summing up the first few pages, but maybe some of the late pages, or even the middle ones (no one cares for the middle ones, we just forget them, which is sad). The point is, this will prepare you, spoiler-freely, to what you'll find in this book and probably why you should read it.
• Rating : I ain't stydin' math for nothin' ! Here is the numerical representation of my appreciation of the book. It can range from 0.5 to 10. Of course most of my ratings would be 6 upwards because life is too short to read below average books AND review them, so I'll spare you dear follower this inconvenience and be the sole reader of those terrible books. All of this so you don't suffer, and you still insist on making yourself suffering, you ungrateful masochist.
  I know myself to be generous in ratings, and I never hesitate giving a fulfilling book the perfect 10/10 score and I don't regret it. I don't like the idea of being stingy when it comes to reviewing. But since this blog is ALL about rating and reviewing, I'll be more thorough, especially in the vicinity of 10. Because naturally most of the books I'll be reading are going to be Great with capital G (I'm hoping here), so I must give justice to excellence and as a logical consequence, I won't be giving too many 9s that I would normally love to give. As a reference, here as some rough lines : 5 is "not a total waste of time", 6 is "nice try", 7 is "deserves reading", 8 is "great", 9 is "awesome", and 10 is "WHY AREN'T YOU READING IT RIGHT NOW YOU TASTELESS POTATO".
  So yeah, 10 are going to be rare.
• THE Review : Self-explanatory. Here I'll talk about the book, what I noticed on both positive and negative sides. The total rating will give you a clear idea about the weight of each. I might focus on the imperfections for the books I like most because they were near perfect, while bringing the good sides of the more 7-ish books as an apology and a "could be better if" comment. THE review will be biased and very subjective.
• Favorite passages/characters : Not because you care which ones were my favorites, but because I do.

I guess that's all.

I hope you enjoy !