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The Constant Rabbit
The Constant Rabbit
Jasper Fforde | 2020 | Contemporary, Humor & Comedy
8
8.5 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
Great absurd book
Fforde's kay strength as an author is coming up with a premise and turning a surface-level idea into a wonderfully worked piece of fiction. My past reading of his have been more absurd crime-style investigatory books, where a character in an unusual world investigate a crime in that world. The world can unfold itself gradually over time and the story is fairly well structured.
In The Constant Rabbit, Fforde has taken the topic of racism and put it in a different setting. Due to an unexplained event, a number of animals were anthropomorphised, including a few rabbits, foxes, bears and elephants. True to their nature, that small population of rabbits has exploded and they now represent a large proportion of the population. Britain being what it is, there is a lot of ill-feeling toward these rabbits and this has made it's way into politics and societal changes. The government themselves are the UK Anti Rabbit Party, and there are a great number of restrictions on the rabbits' freedom of movement.
The book serves as a great analogy for historic racism and xenophobia that still remains in the UK and the western world as a whole.
The story itself only reveals itself gradually, it takes a long time to be set up and generally just unfolds. There is no real underlying plot from the off, it is the unfolding of a scenario.
To that end, I felt this book was a little more about the idea, and the effort put in to fleshing that out, and the story itself has suffered slightly. There are long sections of exposition throughout the book, and at times it does get a little boring.
Far from Fforde at his best, it is still a great funny book and a wonderful thought experiment and demonstration of the ludicrousness of xenophobia.
  
Show all 4 comments.
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Sarah (7800 KP) Aug 20, 2020

Sorry I have no idea how i managed to comment on this rather than your status @Kevin Phillipson 😔

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Kevin Phillipson (10072 KP) Aug 20, 2020

It's okay

People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm by A Tribe Called Quest
People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm by A Tribe Called Quest
1990 | Hip-hop, Rap
1.0 (1 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"This 1990 masterpiece is very much a travel album. It has all the hallmarks and some of the pitfalls of a life on the road: the single 'I Left my wallet in El Segundo' is a case in point. The advice lyric 'I don't eat no ham'n'eggs cuz they're high in cholesterol' in the classic cut 'Ham'n'eggs' is another highly unusual call and response rhyme - but again paints a true picture of the perils of a road life spent in diners. Over the course of the album we visit Lucien in Paris and traverse around the world of music with a zillion samples of classic sixties and seventies rock and soul albums. It's always optimistic and wide eyed - the best way to travel. I was talking to my friend Ben the other day about how this is my favorite Tribe album - (most people seem to prefer The Low End Theory?) - but I learned so much about music through this record - The songs are great and it's one of those albums that drags you into a different universe and world view and changes you for the better."

Source
  
The Color Purple
The Color Purple
Alice Walker | 2014 | Fiction & Poetry
8.5 (24 Ratings)
Book Favorite

"I admired the fierce honesty in the single-mindedly feminist world-view of this book. It breaks many of the ‘rules’ of fiction. Walker comes close to painting all the men in a simplistic shade of ‘bad,’ although she attempts to give the nameless husband of Celie some redemption in the end. But the reader senses that a greater truth is at stake; that this was a story that needed to be told. I liked how Celie becomes strong with the love of Shug. And how Sofia is amazingly resilient but is punished for sassing the mayor, and later has to go and work for the mayor’s wife. I applauded Celie’s sexual awakening. And, most of all, I liked the idea that God gets angry if we walk past a field with the colour purple and don’t notice it."

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alex (68 KP) rated Release in Books

Jul 16, 2017  
Release
Release
Patrick Ness | 2017 | Children
8
8.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
Great plot (2 more)
split narrative to give it some spice
LGBQTIA+ representation
Very simple concept (for the main narrative) BUT well executed (0 more)
Love, heartbreak and a meth addiction.
Contains spoilers, click to show
Similar to his earlier book 'The Rest of Us Just Live Here', Patrick Ness switches betweens a main narrative and a parallel narrative within the same world, with an unexpected cross between the two at the end. I brought this book and finished it the day after, an easy read but one full of very real characters battling with homophobia and the inevitability of growing up and change. With this book I only hope more diverse LGBTQIA+ representation occurs throughout literature.
  
P.S. I Love You (2007)
P.S. I Love You (2007)
2007 | Comedy, Drama, Romance
7
8.8 (10 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Casting (2 more)
Characters
Plot/story
Not your usual love story...
I'm not usually one for 'love story' movie's but I'm happy to give them a go....

Starring Hillary Swank & Gerrard Butler The story begins with a more realistic take on a couples quarrel regarding their personal life...

Continuing shortly after following the death of the husband from the time of the wake...

Perfectly orchestrated in more ways than one, widow Holly restrains herself from the outside world struggling to cope with her loss before being forced to live her life from love letters from the afterlife.

A beautiful and emotional story of tragedy and acceptance from begging to end.