Can't really decide on this one. Amazing and captivating at first, dragged on and on for hundreds of pages, wrapped up in suspense with an oddly disappointing conclusion. ( )

I didn't quite enjoy reading this book, but I was intrigued by the lifestyle of the protagonist and his relationships.

I think these notes are from a Kindelereview: The crazed life of a young terrorist victim, a young boy, who grows into a deeply troubled man with an outrageous (to me) life. Final chapters expound a philosophy of life. Very creatively written, with strong exposition of internal life.
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Well written and interesting, although the story does move slowly at points. This is a book that can generate discussion on many levels. I enjoyed reading it. ( )

...and I think of what Hobie said: beauty alters the grain of reality.

The goldfinch gets free from its chains and has robbed my notes, so this is my short review and quotes:

Everyone would like a friend as Hobie…

Quotes:

What was the line from Yeats, about the bemused Chinese sages? All things fall apart and are built again. Ancient glittering eyes. This was wisdom. People had been raging and weeping and destroying things for centuries and wailing about their puny individual lives, when - what was the point? All this useless sorrow? Considers the lilies of the field. Why did anyone ever worry about anything? Weren’t we, as sentient beings, put upon the earth to be happy, in the brief time allotted to us?

Even through a copy Proust was able to re-dream that image, re-shape reality with it, put something all his own from it into the world. Because - the line of beauty is the line of beauty.

...a really great painting is fluid enough to work its way into the mind and heart through all kinds of different angles, in ways that are unique and very particular.

And just as music is the space between notes, just as the stars are beautiful because of the space between them, just as the sun strikes raindrops at a certain angle and throw a prism of color across the sky - so the space where I exist, and want to keep existing, and to be quite frank hope I die in, is exactly this middle distance: where despair struck pure otherness and created something sublime.

The true is that I’ve lost my notes from my tablet (blessed times when books were just on paper).

But one man loved
The pilgrim soul in you
And loved the sorrows
Of you changing face
(W.B. Yeats)
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Donna Tartt's novel the Goldfinch is a fascinating yet very disturbing read of a young boys' descent down a very slippery road. The descent begins when his mother is killed by an act of terrorism. Theo is securely traumatized by the events and starts to make several bad decisions. Being that he only 13 I could still get behind him and cheer him on; hoping that with age, he'll realize the error of his ways. But as he gets older, it's harder to accept the bad decisions he makes and it seems like it is only a matter of time before he hits rock bottom. The ending comes as a surprise, but it's not a happy ending, as is only fitting with the overall tone of the novel. ( )