LA Historia Interminable (Literatura Alfaguara, 85)

Rating:
Summary: um.. That was weird
Review: I liked the movie so I read the book. The book is strange and philosophical and much less concrete than the movie. For now I'm going to chalk it up to being some German thing.

The story follows Bastian, an awkward bookworm of about 11. He visits a book store and finds a book called, "The Neverending Story" He knows that he must have the book and so he steals it and locks himself into the attic of his school to hide from the law and read. The story he is reading is printed in red and green, just like the book we are reading. Gradually Bastian notices that characters in the story react to things he does and realizes that the fate of the fictional (or not so fictional) world he is reading about hangs on his actions. This is the first half of the book. It plays with breaking the fourth wall.

In the second half of the world the fourth wall is broken. Bastian is in the world of ideas. He can trade memories for wishes that come true as he wishes them. So this explores identity. The world of Fantastica is like a medieval painting. Gargoyles etc come from here and there. Anywhere you look archetypes are playing out morals and ideas. But when you step back and look at the whole picture you see that there are only these small thoughts and scenes. Anyone of them is more planned out than is the picture as a whole. This didn't work for me in book form. By the end of the book I didn't care what happened to any of the characters.

I think that the approach here is very much a love it, hate it one. I don't even know that you would know if the book is for you from reading the first few chapters. For me monotony set in about a third of the way through. It is very tenuous and has philosophical aspirations. If you saw the movie and liked it, that is no guarantee of liking the book. My recommendation is to read this only if someone who knows you has pointed you toward it.

This book is good for learning Spanish at a Spanish 3 or higher level. Ende is doing interesting things with the way he narrates, but it is actually easy to follow these narrative twists. There are many fake words - ie fantasy names. But these are easily separated from the text.

Rating:
Summary: un libro que te hara respirar afuera de estos limites
Review: Lei este libro hace ya algunos años pero aun no he podido olvidar a todos los mundos que el libro me transporto y por eso se lo recomiendo a todos los que que quieran viajar sin ni siquiera cerrar los ojos o moverse de casa.

Rating:
Summary: un libro magico
Review: Muchos libros me han transportado a otro mundo, y me han hecho soñar, pero claramente este es el unico libro que me dio la sensacion de leer algo especial, de leer un libro realmente magico.