from amazon:
Flaubert's Parrot is a massive lumber room of detail about the great man: in it we learn an enormous amount about his life, family, lovers, thought processes, health and obsessions. But the voice that tells us all this is gradually revealed to be itself in the grip of an obsession. The voice is that of Geoffrey Braithwaite, a retired doctor with a nagging need to rationalise his wife's suicide, and a more obscure compulsion to anatomise the processes of human identity.

RELEASE NOTES:

Posted to christina82.
Enjoy!

Got it in the mail yesterday. Look forward to reading it.

Thanks rahar109

Was given this book by my friend christina82. I'm looking forward to reading it, but for now it will go on my TBR pile.

What a strange book. I've find it difficult to understand why the author decided to write this book. I did like the second part of the book better than the first one. I would have liked to know what happened to the narrator after he found the answer to which parrot was the right one, but why it was important to him to begin with I'll never figur out. I guess the author wanted to highlight the difference between rel life and art and that the narrator decided that he thouht life was better lived inside art.

Hopefully, the next reader will understand the existence of this book better than I do.

This book arrived earlier this week; on the day of the big change over. So as well as getting a huge shock when I logged in, I was unable to journal any books. After keeping away for a few days in the hope that it would sort itself out, I am back and able to do book journal entries again.

Many thanks for sending this my way. I have been wanting to read this book for a while and chose the opening sentance "Six North Africans were playing boule beneath Flaubert's statue" from the virtual bookbox because I was hoping that this might be the one I was thinking off. I have a few books to read before I can get to this one though.

p.s. tahnks for the book marks as well.

According to Geoffery's wife "Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books Boks make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other peoples lives, never your own". I think this is very true and is the reason why reading stories will never go out of fashion.

I enjoyed the incite into the life of Gustave Flaubert that this book provides. I never knew anything about his life and found learning more about his background and the people who were are a pert of his life fascinating, and the extracts from his letters gave you a picture of his personality.

I found the structure of the book; part biography and part fiction a bit difficult to get on with at first, and sometimes found the meandering annoying. I confess to loosing interest about half way through as I felt the book was loosing focus, and reading it got put on hold while I read something else. However, travelling from Wales to Brussels provided me with ample time to read and I found that I enjoyed it more when able to focus on it without distractions.

I agree with many of Flauberts opinions on critics. Reading a bok is a very subjective experience; different people can see different things and so the same book can be loved or hated. Critics are only giving their personal opinion and I do sometimes find it amazing that people can make a career out of pulling apart other peoples work or giving lectures on what the story 'really means'.

Reading this has put me into the mood to reread the parrot story and Madame Bovary again; and I could not care less if the colour of her eyes is unclear.

When I leave Brussels I will be going to the Netherlands, and will release this book somewhere along my journey.

Left on the bookshelf at the place I stayed at when on holiday. Hopefully, it will not be long before it finds a new owner.

If you were lucky enough to find this book please journal it to say where you found it, and then what you thought of it.

When you have finished please release it. Keep its journey alive!