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What Members Thought
This is a serious book.
When you get past the vulgar language and the Spanish - getting into the rhythm of the book was not that easy even for me and I'm Dominican, so I understood the slang and knew the places - this is a wonderful book about life, not belonging and a lot other stuff. It made me laugh at times - a lot of things were so familiar - and at other times made me angry, but all in all it made me think which I think should be the goal of every decent writer.
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When you get past the vulgar language and the Spanish - getting into the rhythm of the book was not that easy even for me and I'm Dominican, so I understood the slang and knew the places - this is a wonderful book about life, not belonging and a lot other stuff. It made me laugh at times - a lot of things were so familiar - and at other times made me angry, but all in all it made me think which I think should be the goal of every decent writer.
...more
I so identify with Oscar's geekitude, loneliness and cluelessness of the workings of the world. The back story is gripping and leads up to a powerful climax. The scattering of whole sentences in spanish is rather annoying, but the story moves along pretty well without my having to understand them anyway. And the Ringer in me rejoices in every reference to Tolkien's work.
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Knew I was going to love this book right from the introduction, and did. The journey of Oscar the ghetto-nerd who "like everybody in this dammed story, underestimated the depth of the shit he was in", is all about (in a very roundabout fashion) how the fuku gets him in the end.
Even the footnotes are entertaining, though knowing nothing of Trujillo and the history of the Dominican Republic, I have no idea of the authenticity of the details. Only jarring note I found was the large number of refer ...more
Even the footnotes are entertaining, though knowing nothing of Trujillo and the history of the Dominican Republic, I have no idea of the authenticity of the details. Only jarring note I found was the large number of refer ...more
I didn't expect to like this book as much as I did. The slang-rich casual narrative and the Spanish slang seemed at first like they'd be too much of a trial to read and might be there to substitute for plot. But I was happily surprised to find a wonderful story, fascinating bits of Dominican history, and more science fiction references than I could keep up with. It's no wonder that my mother, a sci-fi buff, loved the book. Definitely one of my best reads of the year.
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I enjoyed this book despite the fact that the title is a little deceiving. The book is about Oscar and his brief life but there is a lot of dominican background and also a lot about his family's past. Also if your spanglish is not that good then you may have a little trouble @ some parts. All in all it was good though and I especially liked all the dorky references.
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This book wasn't at all what I expected from the description on the book. Though Oscar's life might have been brief, there was very little that was wonderous about it, and in fact not all that much of the story is focused on Oscar, but rather everyone one of his family members leading up to him that suffers from the curse of fuku.
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Jul 02, 2008
Misty
marked it as to-read
Jul 16, 2008
Natalya
marked it as to-read
Jan 01, 2009
Gaijinmama
marked it as to-read
Jul 14, 2009
Jennifer Eklund
marked it as to-read
Feb 25, 2010
Starcatcher
marked it as to-find
Aug 14, 2010
Mimi
marked it as to-read
Oct 01, 2010
Jayme Pendergraft
rated it
really liked it
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review of another edition
Shelves:
2010,
around-the-world-in-80-books
Jan 05, 2014
Rebekah
marked it as to-read
Dec 05, 2018
Lorna
marked it as to-read
