On Üçüncü Kabile - Orta Asya’Nın Yahudi Türkleri-Arthur Koestler itibaren Alfa Yayınları içinde LIT biçim

Tammy Cook tammycook — This book was a total disappointment! The premise was fascinating -- a 30-year-old woman is "reunited" with her imaginary friend who left her at the age of 9. As someone who had imaginary friends (twins), I was hoping to delve deeper into that topic. Patterson doesn't even begin to try. In fact, there's nothing deep about any part of this book. The characters are superficial, the plot is predictable, and none of it made any sense. Two stars because of the idea and because Michael was a lovely specimen!

Sophie Colverson sophiecolvad76 — Cross is my favorite caracter

Antwan Moore _uthrnsin1 — What a huge disappointment. I am predisposed to enjoy this kind of book. I love to travel and to take the roads less traveled. I've been to many places in America and I throughly enjoy exploring everywhere I haven't yet been. Back in High School, I would read Michael Crichton's Travels, some parts many times over, just imagining what it would be like to be able to visit the places he wrote about. Since then, I've read quite a few recollections of random journeys...and I can safely say that Blue Highways is the worst of them. The author takes his trek around the forgotten parts of America after the failure of his marriage and the loss of his teaching job. He decides to drive all around the country in his van (named Ghost Dancer), just taking the back roads, which used to be labeled blue on maps. To find himself? To look for "America?" To get a better perspective on his lot in life? I don't know, and he never quite says. He starts the journey angry and bitter and those emotions never change. William Least Heat-Moon supposedly speaks with many of the people that inhabit these small towns, and yet he might as well have just spoken with one of them. Each and every person he finds to chat with "sounds" exactly the same. They all talk in a short, clipped way. No matter what the background or biography, they all have a folksy wisdom-y way of getting their stories across. The same lack of sentence structure, the same lack of pronouns, et.al gets old fast. Moon also seems less than honest and forthcoming about his intentions towards his subjects. For a while, he seems to keep the fact that he's going to be writing a book about the people he talks to a secret. He will say he's "just passing through," for example, keeping it mysterious. He will chat with someone for dialog-heavy pages, and then move on. But then... there's the middle of the novel, which has pictures of some of these folksy people. So obviously he told his subjects far more than he is telling us. For example: after chatting with some guys who are hang-gliding, they randomly invite him back for dinner and drinks to talk about hang-gliding. According to Moon's account, he barely says three sentences during all of this, and those words are all about the hang-gliding. The suspension of disbelief is constantly tested in this way. The reason this is a problem is there is no other reason for Moon to be out where he is, having the conversations he's having other than for the purpose of the book. For a contrast, take Bill Bryson's work. Bryson also travels and writes about his experiences. And yet, be it Australia, England, or backpacking on the AT, each experience he relates feels far more authentic --even when Bryson might be exaggerating for comic effect. The people he meets seem like individual people and the reason for his interactions come directly and logically out of his circumstances. It would also help if William Least Heat-Moon was a likable person; someone we could get behind and enjoy this journey with. Alas, he's a miserable bastard at his worst and just a depressive bore at his best. Every one of his encounters results in the opportunity for him to either chat with "someone" or be highly critical of what he is witnessing. There's no big insight, no humor, no drama.... just moments of "read my thoughts on or about these people" or variations of "this sucks...." The only exceptions are when he throws in a random Walt Whitman quote and he does this so often, you could make a decent drinking game out of it. My last complaint is about how often Moon wants his readers to know how horrible modern life, big cities, and big highways are. And of course, in contrast, how much better are those blue highways and the little towns. Having traveled quite a lot myself, I can, with full confidence claim that this is utter bullshit. There are good cities and bad. There are good highways and bad. I would love to never have to drive in I-93 around Boston again. The sprawl and endless mini-malls and tourist traps of Cherokee, North Carolina? Horrible. But what about The Blue Ridge Parkway? That's a national highway, and it is utterly beautiful. 469 Miles of Awesome. Or Highway 1 along the California Coast: one of the most memorable and beautiful things I have ever seen. Just because something is remote and forgotten doesn't mean that it's inherently better than what is popular. Sometimes something is popular for a good reason--because it is good. I would love to be able to drive around and explore for the amount of time Moon did. In fact, my grandparents took a year out of their retirement and did just that. They came back with wonderful stories and pictures. They went to the popular places and the places hidden away from progress. They talked of that experience for the rest of their lives and it always brought smiles to their faces. And ultimately, that is what Blue Highways lacks. There is no joy in the journey and so it is not worth taking.