

Loading... Special Topics in Calamity Physicsby Marisha Pessl
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Top Five Books of 2013 (531) » 15 more Books Read in 2015 (940) Unread books (330) Academia in Fiction (33) Southern Fiction (118) Books Read in 2008 (145) Biggest Disappointments (101) Scolaire (8) Summer Reading (16) to get (54) Books Read in 2022 (1,244) Best School Stories (184) Contemporary Fiction (37) No current Talk conversations about this book. I liked Blue, the main character, because she was extraordinary. I don't aim to read about people like ourselves, living ordinary, everyday lives- I read to have adventures. For right now, when I am the same age as Blue, it was lovely to see her senior year unfold, to read about something so fantastically implausible. It was not a perfect book. I found Pessl's style hard to adjust to, so I spent the first few chapters feeling like I should put down this book and go read a classic. But eventually Blue's obsessive citing grew on me. Her narration was entirely in character, as she tried to categorize and organize the experiences she had, just like her father organized his life into college semesters. I also felt pity for most of the characters at the end. There was not a single character that was not pathetic at some point in the book. But this also reflects life, and was valuable for that. I liked this book; it has earned a place on my shelf. Ambitious, cartwheeling, careening -- this novel is like a bullet train that has no stops. The author uses a lot of devices - including citation that can be real but mmost of the time refers to fictional sources. The rate of the use of this device is breathtaking. I couldn't believe that Pessl was able to keep it up. Alothough the sheer number of citations can't help but slow the plot they do add quite a bit once I was able to surrender myself to the fact they were just going to keep appearing. Sometimes its just an small chuckle, usually when a citation to some kid of nature related book is used to underline the appearance of behaviour of a character - sometimes they are used to underline or make something clearer. (not that you could actually look up the citation - but the name of the book cited is sometimes revealing enough. Anyway, this book just rolls. It is like one of those small rocks that starts an avalanche. There is no way to know it isn't more than the story of a girl in highschool but it morphs and morphs until the plot has taken so many sharp turns its hard to believe where you end up. Anyway, I liked it-ish. It wasn't an easy read for me. It was really dense. But - even though it took me three weeks to get through - and sometimes I was swearing at it. I think it is really masterfully done. I'd love to read it with other people, but I do think I will go through it again one day - I think there would be a lot to get out of it on a subsequent read. I honestly don't have a full picture of what I think of this book. I know it took my forever to read, I know I lugged through it at times (those fucking see insert book here page whatever drove me INSANE. They were incredibly annoying and caused me to skip over a lot) and I still have no real clear view what I think happened in the end. I think....the idea was nothing new, but it was interesting, the characters had potential and I WANTED to like it. I think it was longer (and more pretentious, esp like I said those fucking inserts) than it needed to be. There was a lot of story where nothing was happening, information you just didn't need. The end felt rushed after almost 400 pages of slow going. I don't know, I didn't actually hate it, but I guess I'm still making up my mind. A complex narrative that requires patience and commitment to fully grasp the plot and its many deviances. Pessl has a gift with words and, this book being her debut, I'm impressed with her talent.
Her exhilarating synthesis of the classic and the modern, frivolity and fate — “Pnin” meets “The O.C.” — is a poetic act of will. Never mind jealous detractors: virtuosity is its own reward. And this skylarking book will leave readers salivating for more. Has as a student's study guide
A darkly funny coming-of-age novel and a richly plotted suspense tale told through the distinctive voice of its heroine, Blue van Meer. After a childhood moving from one academic outpost to another with her father (a man prone to aphorisms and meteoric affairs), Blue is clever, deadpan, and possessed of a vast lexicon of literary, political, philosophical, and scientific knowledge--and is quite the cinéaste to boot. In her final year of high school at the élite (and unusual) St. Gallway School in Stockton, North Carolina, Blue falls in with a charismatic group of friends and their captivating teacher, Hannah Schneider. But when the drowning of one of Hannah's friends and the shocking death of Hannah herself lead to a confluence of mysteries, Blue is left to make sense of it all with only her gimlet-eyed instincts and cultural references to guide--or misguide--her.--From publisher description. No library descriptions found.
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![]() GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6 — Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:![]()
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Having read Pessl's [b:Night Film|18770398|Night Film|Marisha Pessl|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1397425352s/18770398.jpg|15182838] before I read this, I did notice a pattern of open-endedness to her work. Many things left unanswered by the author so that the reader's own mind fills in the blanks. But where Night Film offered up identifiable characters that I felt connected to, thus, making me want to fill in the blanks, I was just left not caring enough about Blue or anyone else in Special Topics to bother thinking that hard about it. (