Reviews and Comments

avatar for chitinousform

chitinousform

chitinousform@books.theunseen.city

Joined 1 year, 9 months ago

Student computer scientist and art historian. Reading what I haven't yet.

Follow on Fediverse

This link opens in a pop-up window

started reading Lolita

No cover

Lolita (2011, Penguin Books, Limited)

 4 stars

Lolita is a 1955 novel written by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is notable …

The main character is almost comically creepy sometimes (other times he's just uncomfortably creepy). I really like Nabokov's writing style. So far at 20% in, Lolita is proof that protagonist =/= good person.

I'm listening to the audiobook as read by Jeremy Irons, who does an excellent job of sounding downright creepy.

reviewed 克拉拉与太阳 by Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro, 宋佥: 克拉拉与太阳 (Hardcover, Chinese language, 2021, 上海译文出版社) 4 stars

克拉拉是一个专为陪伴儿童而设计的太阳能人工智能机器人（AF），具有极高的观察、推理与共情能力。她坐在商店展示橱窗里，注视着街头路人以及前来浏览橱窗的孩子们的一举一动。她始终期待着很快就会有人挑中她，不过，当这种永久改变境遇的可能性出现时，克拉拉却被提醒不要过分相信人类的诺言。

在《克拉拉与太阳》这部作品中，石黑一雄通过一位令人难忘的叙述者的视角，观察千变万化的现代社会，探索了一个根本性的问题：究竟什么是爱？

Review of '克拉拉与太阳' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I don't know how to rate this one. The writing style didn't really land for me stylistically- a little too straightforward for my taste, I think. On the other hand, I can certainly see it as a stylistic choice to mimic the perspective of the robot main character... I guess it should have been leaned into a little harder in that case. The concepts behind the story are the strongest part of the book. There's an underlying tone of loneliness among others that I found accurate to my experiences as an autistic person and was probably my favorite component. I don't know. There's a lot here with potential, but the overall experience wasn't particularly good.