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Davey J

Davey J

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David Robert Jones (a.k.a Davey ) was born and raised in Philadephia, Pennsylvania. He briefly attended a school of theology and the University of Hawaii before completing his undergraduate degree in Research in Developmental Psychology at the University of Michigan. He received a degree in writing and publication from the Long Ridge Writers ... more »
  • Fresno, CA, USA
  • member since July 31, 2009

Reviews

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Displaying 41-50 of 121 reviews
  • The Broom of the System
    • Rated 4 stars

    The Broom of the System transpires in a city that occupants don't realize outlines the head of a famous celebrity until one or two of them fly up above the city. In the same way, Wallace weaves an elaborate prose full of colorful characters, placing them into a plot that seems to have no direction until nearly the entire puzzle is complete.

    Traces of Wallace's soon-to-come Infinite Jest can be found in The Broom of the System. Wallace classically alters between screenwriting verbal exchanges and narrative. He imbues seemingly mundane or impossible characters and situations with an ironic hilarity unmatched among his contemporaries.

    Davey J wrote this review Wednesday, July 11, 2012. ( reply | permalink )
  • Bonsai Basics: A Step-By-Step Guide To Growing, Training & General Care
    • Rated 5 stars

    Bonsai Basics provides a wide range of instructions for beginning, nurturing, tending, and growing a bonsai. It may inevitably provide to wide a berth of information for most growers, but insightful information all the same. Even for those enthusiasts already experienced with growing bonsai for a few years, the book provides some helpful techniques and advice. Ultimately, it pushes the reader toward more advanced topics and techniques which will likely surpass most readers' appreciation.

    Davey J wrote this review Thursday, June 21, 2012. ( reply | permalink )
  • La vita nuova (The New Life)
    • Rated 4 stars

    A beautiful memoir of the infatuation, pining, and mourning over Beatrice--the later heroine of the Divine Comedy who would assign Virgil as a guide to a lost wayfarer. Dante's meticulous attention to the composition of several sonnets sends soft modicum of his later masterpiece.

    Davey J wrote this review Wednesday, June 13, 2012. ( reply | permalink )
  • The colors of hope : becoming people of mercy, justice, and love
    • Rated 3 stars

    Dahlstrom has this incredibly disarming authenticity, like he could submerse you in a sea of despair and raise you up to dry off in the radiant and blinding sunlight of idealism before you realized that his words had reached your consciousness. Instead, though, he constantly deflates the romanticism of a perfect Christian world and provides seemingly mundane, but substantially realistic and sustainable, guiding principles.

    I can imagine that somebody struggling or learning would easily grant a five-star rating. I'm not renovating walls in my life, though, only patching up loose bricks. When I come to that day where I need it more desperately, I'll inevitably promote my rating.

    Unfortunately most of pop culture won't get past more widely known and superficial and short-lived fads that come in the forms of books. But those few that manage to stumble across Dahlstrom will certainly cherish his writing for a far longer time.

    Davey J wrote this review Tuesday, June 12, 2012. ( reply | permalink )
  • A Gate at the Stairs
    • Rated 2 stars

    It's like a mishmash of awesome writing and profound characters without a story and tied together with exemplars of how not to write. It's an unfortunate crescendo towards nothing really. It fails to grasp the reader and move an audience from or to anything. Still, there are all of theses patches of shining descriptions of Mid-West living. It just doesn't add up to the same exemplary writing that Moore has shown in other places.

    Davey J wrote this review Saturday, June 9, 2012. ( reply | permalink )
  • McSweeney's Issue 40 (Mcsweeney's Quarterly Concern)
    • Rated 5 stars

    Approaching my first read of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, I had certain assumptions, namely these: that McSweeney's incorporated into a single magazine a number of humorous and whimsical narratives depicting a predominantly West Coast U.S. lifestyle and epitomized the acme of contemporary writing. All except the last of these assumptions I have seriously revised after my encounter.

    It isn't so much a magazine. They should warn you of that. It's way more like a Matryoshka doll--the Russian nesting doll--that keeps opening up and you find books, full propositions. It moves you. It challenges your perspective of the human condition. It moves you across the U.S. and overseas to "Third World" countries. The writing excels but in a way that's much more than just the "Wow! That's such a creative and amusing story that titillated me senseless" way that you shrug off and move on throughout your life. It nags at you even afterward when you lay it down and think of moving on.

    Hmm, maybe that's why they don't warn you and, instead, pass it out under the auspices of a harmless smattering of whimsical narrative.

    Davey J wrote this review Friday, June 1, 2012. ( reply | permalink )
  • Latina
    • Rated 5 stars

    Los Angeles to Miami, Mexico City to Cuba, New York to New Mexico; ungrateful children, children despising their culture, children seeking to salvage vestiges of their passed-on relatives, lesbian roommates, mercenaries, and artists all team up to paint an immaculately profound and vivid portrait of the experiences of Latinas in the Western Hemisphere.

    Latina presents perhaps the most cohesive set of narratives, fictional stories, semi-ficitional tales, science fiction, biographical, autobiographical, and journalistic-type essays ever to constitute a single volume. The writing and the voices reach to deep levels and move the reader at any and all levels. It is definitely recommended that the reader have a familiarity with Spanish, Spanish expressions, or easy access to somebody with either and the patience to constantly answer one's inquiries about those used throughout the text.

    All at once a vivid portrait of Latina life throughout the U.S., it leaves the reader spell-bound and craving further insight.

    Davey J wrote this review Saturday, May 26, 2012. ( reply | permalink )
  • Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
    • Rated 5 stars

    Even if Hard Boiled Wonderland (HBW) smacks of themes and images from Murakami's other novels, it lacks nothing of the musical cadence inherent in the stream of words and vivid descriptions he uses to narrate the tale. HBW flows until it sweeps the reader into the authenticity of its characters and the suspense of the stories culmination. Two worlds--one concrete and the other a dreamy metaphysical--parallel each other throughout and provoke constant appraisals and hypotheses. HBW certainly ranks among Murakami's greatest writing accomplishments.

    Davey J wrote this review Tuesday, May 22, 2012. ( reply | permalink )
  • The Year of Magical Thinking
    • Rated 5 stars

    When Kirkegaard said that a poet's grief comes out like the sound of a beautiful song, he meant to describe books like Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. Didion poignantly and intimately details her attempt to cope with his loss. Her clairvoyance is mesmerizing. Her ability to describe and justify grief is profoundly engaging.

    This book serves as something like a precursor to her book Blue Nights and then Where I Was From. I suppose that reading those three in that particular order won't matter so much--nor will it provoke any accusations of redundancy.

    Davey J wrote this review Sunday, May 13, 2012. ( reply | permalink )
  • The Bible, Disability, and the Church: A New Vision of the People of God
    • Rated 4 stars

    Young thoroughly contends against any and every hint of denigration of individuals with disabilities that readers of the Bible might extract. The Bible, Disability, and the Church follows up an earlier theological treatise aimed to persuade clergy. This work, he contends, seeks to convey that same premise to laypersons. Young does an amazing job of comparing disparate perceptions of key passages, contrasting "able-bodied" and "disabled" persons' readings.

    If Young's Pentecostal beliefs or over-reaching claims (like when he places Job and Zaccheus in the "disabled" category or disabled or when he tries to relate the phenomenon of "many tongues" to varying levels of physical and cognitive ability) seem at times to miss the mark, fall short, or generally frivolous, the entirety of his argument remains intact.

    His suggestions for how the church can embrace and support persons with disabilities fall kind of short as they are offered in a very general, abstract, and "I've-never-actually-seen-or-done-this-myself" kind of way. Still, the book provides a concise and sound argument.

    Davey J wrote this review Saturday, May 12, 2012. ( reply | permalink )
Displaying 41-50 of 121 reviews