Rating: Summary: one of the best Review: I would put this book in the same category with the Grapes of Wrath and Moby Dick. Maybe we could debate that, but in the sense that all three touch on the essential is clear to me. The book may be a struggle to many because it is woven differently than the weave we expect in western literature. Forget time, order - past, present, future. Silko takes us into the essence of a world strung together by moments. What happens to us as readers is what happens to Tayo. We begin to see the pattern, the web, in a new and saner way. The stories lead us along threads of the web, never quite clear, as is true in all our lives. Read it? Read it again, just to trace the thread of the color blue, or "bellies". The book is a masterful piece.
Rating: Summary: Struggled through each page Review: This book is awful. I had to read it for an American Literature class and I could barely make it through it. Maybe white people are devils but she could have expressed these thoughts more creatively. This book sucks-try again Leslie.
Rating: Summary: Take your time to understand it - it's worth it! Review: I recently finished reading Leslie Silko's "Ceremony". It is slow paced, but written quite beautifully. If you take the time to understand what you're reading, you'll be able to figure out what Silko is doing as she takes you back to the past throughout the book. I found it a good book with a good message and reminder of the horror of the past treatment of Native Americans, and the destruction people are still participating in.
Rating: Summary: You either love the book or hate it. Review: It took forever for me to read this book. I thought the way Silko choose to write it, intertwined with myths and chants, was beautiful, but made it difficult to understand. I found that the story line was pretty slow and didn't seem to go much of anywhere. I would definetly recommend this book to anyone who wants to see an interesting writting style, but if you want to get into a plot with strong charactors, then you should definetly choose something else.
Rating: Summary: One of the most important books I've ever read Review: I had to read this, like many other reviewers, for school. It's not a difficult book if you have some imagination and a willingness to let the stories happen at their own pace, but I suppose if you are a Hemingway afficionado you should not even bother. I would not say this is a "deep" book, an awful lot of people need this qualifier since it's about war trauma and racial strife (among more transcendant things like renewal and archetypes), and I suspect a lot of caucasian readers with any amount of "white guilt" would rather think this book is "deep" rather than a depiction of Native Americans getting screwed at all levels. In any case, I enjoyed the prose because it read like an incantation and the several stories braided together made me think and question just who each character represented and why (never mind that I read this for Composition & Rhetoric). I've read this several times in the past 8 years, and get new details every time. Just because some people don't "get it" doesn't mean it's a bad book, it just means they don't "get it".
Rating: Summary: The best of times, the worst of times... Review: Ratings for this book were 5 stars and 1 star when I first visited here :)None in between ! Ceremony was required reading for many too young to grasp the 140+ word sentences in the first few pages. For old men over fifty, we can cope with that technique, unhappily. The native American situation in America and a pow camp for contrast was most vivid. One reviewer stated that that Ceremony avoided bitterness and racial animosity; I couldn't disagree more. Of course it was there and justly deserved ! Another reviewer stated that we can't rely on Silko for accurate data on Reservations. I have been to one in central Wisconsin, Silko is right. One is a majority when it is the truth. Silko needs more years, and perhaps a writing class or two.
Rating: Summary: Worth It! Review: Like some other readers, I encountered this book in a class. Unlike them, I really liked it. Those "random" or "irrelevent" descriptions are neither random nor irrelevent. I know a lot of people thought this book was confusing. I didn't, not really. After the first few pages I figured out what Silko was doing -- the sliding back and forth in Tayo's memories -- which really makes sense, given the situation.I found her opinion on whites to be a little annoying, but probably realistic. And as other people have pointed out, Silko was not blaming the whole caucasian race. Instead, she was pointing out the the evil the anglo-americans have wreaked on other races is coming back to haunt them. I loved the Pueblo mythology in the form of poems. If you did not understand this book, I'm sorry, but please don't go around telling other people that the book sucked. This book may not be for everyone, but that doesn't mean it isn't for anyone. Thoughtful, careful readers willing to invest some brainpower can get a lot out of Ceremony.
Rating: Summary: Simply the finest novel yet written about native America. Review: Silko's use of non-linear spacio-temporality, Pueblo mythology and cosmology, universal themes of communal and self-identity, and her emphasis on geography and place make this novel the best yet written by and about the indigenous people of North America. Although difficult at first to read because of the intense suffering of the protagonist, Tayo, the story itself becomes a ceremony of healing. When Tayo at last recognizes the interconnectedness of all things, he acknowledges the necessity of evil as well as good in this world. Contrary to some misinformed readers' reviews, Silko does NOT blame whites for the presence of evil; rather, Silko presents evil as an integral component in any holistic view of reality.
Rating: Summary: This is a beautiful book about life, one for everyone. Review: If you haven't read it, you should, and if you did read it and didn't like it, you didn't understand it. We see ourselves as masters of our destiny, but we are a part of the greater whole, a part of the cycle and our world. This book is about what we have become and what it is doing to us, how we are killing ourselves to save ourselves. A must read for everyone! Read it slowly and figure it out, it will be well worth the effort!
Rating: Summary: Easy to put down Review: When I started to read the first page I fell asleep. Its so boring and really goes on and on about nothing. Really no different then alot of stuff already out there.
|