a great review of a great book

It is not my habit to read anything related to a book without reading the book first. It is partially out of spoiler alertness, partially out of the consideration that reading a book with a mind that is preempted by someone else's viewpoint might influence or even skew my understanding and interpretation of it. Sometimes, my uneasiness from reading something that leaks the content of a book or a film is so great that I would even drop the motivation to read the book or watch the movie in the first place. But this one is an exception.

I indeed hesitated a while before reading this review. But the fact that the novel itself is not on my current reading list attenuated my uneasiness to a large extent. Speculating that it is not always that bad to accept someone else's interpretation and insights on a book, just for their ideas' own right, without referring to the book, I clicked on the "read" button. After all, you can not read every book, no matter how good they are.      

To my total surprise and raptures, this review is so well written that I finished reading it in one sitting (OK, it is quite concise). Despite its brevity, this review is quite comprehensive in terms of its content: plot introduction, character analysis, emotion investment on the reviewer's side, news related to the book, etc.,basically everything a book review requires. Above all is the reviewer's personal emotion investment into the novel, making the essay less icily impersonal that features a journal article review, but more humanity imbued.

To my further astonishment is my learning that the reviewer is just a teenager who is seven years younger than me. Being able to write such an essay at such an age, the reviewer must be endowed with talent, equipped with diligence, and promised with prosperity.

2013-08-10

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