I have read and enjoyed a couple of Ernest’s books. Something like 40 years ago l read For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea. Recently re-read The Old Man and the Sea.

This was a tough read for me, mostly bored by it until the trip to Spain. I would have enjoyed such an adventure in my youth. Some rather odd and annoying characters.

My next book is definitely going to be faster paced. ( )

I'm not a Hemingway fan but I did really like this book. I liked the spare writing, and I especially enjoyed what it was about -- the lost generation of the 20s. I suppose what really made it interesting for me was that the story takes place in Paris and in Spain, and I am a Francophile and live in Spain. For anyone who likes this book for similar reasons, I would recommend his Moveable Feast as a followup. That is a memoir of those same years and is fascinating.

And if the subject continues to interest you, I recommend the non-fiction Paris Without End: The True Story of Hemingway's First Wife by Gioia Diliberto. Then, to top it off, there's the fictional The Paris Wife by Paula McLain. But like reading a book before seeing the film version, if you're going to read about Hadley, read the non-fiction first. ( )

Rereading this book again after many years, I began to see Hemingway as a Seinfeld-ish writer in that his books on the surface are not really about anything. The story is slow and the action is limited. The characters are interesting but in an almost superficial way. While there are emotions expressed, most of the characters emotions seem to be fueled by alcohol (or lack thereof). For its time, I am sure this was a new way of telling a story but taken out of that context new readers would probably class the book as "boring." In addition, there is language and events (bull fighting and running of the bulls) that many would see as outdated and unnecessary events. In fact, there is a character who pushes the idea that bicycle racing is "the only sport in the world" which may indicate a change of attitude about those events even at the time the book was written. ( )

Hemingway is one of those divisive writers that you either love or you hate, and I happen to fall in the latter category. There is a point where literary realism and description can be taken so far as to reach the point of utter ennui, and nobody does this better than Hemingway. He has no intention of entertaining anybody, especially himself, and appears to write for no other reason but to record the most blandest and pointless conversations and events he can latch onto. Personally, as a reader, I'm far too lazy to make the inferences on my own that Hemingway wants me to, and what the critics love so much about him; I like to be shown everything I'm supposed to see and not have to play a guessing game. As far as I could tell, this novel has nothing more to do with a bunch of people drinking and watching bullfights, because I wasn't at all interested in figuring out the context of it all. ( )

Honestly, I found this book boring and the characters unreal and superficial. I read it in high school the first time and didn't like it then; I actually disliked it even more as an adult. The characters seemed like caricatures, the dialogue smarmy and unbelievable. I wonder that if I understood the time period better, I might have liked it better, but I was a history major, and I am a huge fan of historical fiction, and this story just did not ring true to me. There were, however, some brilliant lines in the book, which saved it from a failing grade in my view. ( )