Eduardo Santiago

Demasiados niveles para mí. Tremenda obra, dificilísima, compleja, oscura pero poéticamente hermosa. Entre el dialecto mejicano y el vocabulario sofisticado de Herrera me tomó tiempísimo cojerle el golpe; perseveré y me valió la pena.

Sé que hay alegoría de mitos Maya. No los entendí, y probablemente nunca los entienda. No importa. Yo igual le encontré mucho valor: novela opresiva acerca de pérdida de identidad, sobre abusos y castismo y la importancia del tiempo. El valor y la necesidad de tener guias.

Aunque tiene elementos de Hero’s Journey a lo Campbell, no creo que eso sea tema principal: Makina ya es héroe por su cuenta, no tiene fortuna que buscar. Su encomienda es pretexto cuya razón confieso que no me hace sentido. Sus experiencias en su viaje conforman al modelo pero es el lector quien crece. Intento volver a leerlo.

Challenging but oh so worth it. I felt some irritation from the start, because there's a whole lotta It Does Not Work That Way: amateur radio, weather, island hopping, small-community economics. It annoys me when writers get fundamental, easily-verified facts wrong, and I almost DNF’ed each time a new logistical implausibility arose.

Then things took a wild turn and I realized it’s intentional. The story is not a dream, nor meant to be interpreted as one (IMO), but the tone is often dreamlike and there are fantastical, surreal elements that I found myself going with. I wish I’d known this ahead of time, so here you go. May my warning prepare you and encourage you because this is a worthwhile book with a beautiful soul.

The story centers around ambiguous loss. Klagmann explores it from several angles, and all I can say is they’re creative and compelling. Grief, acceptance, kindness, resilience, grit, and tons of compassion. Climate Change is a major character and that’s not the nonsequitur you think it is. This is a book I would love to group read.

Short and sweet, lightly informative but with story as well. A nice break from heavier stuff.

About the best I can say is that it won’t get tagged wish-I’d-DNF’ed. Although by about page 50 I was considering it. Like Firekeeper’s Daughter, this one too was way over the top and high drama; and hyperprecocious protagonist; and wildly improbable twists; and did I mention the DRAMA? This protagonist is sixteen, and even as first-person narrator she comes off as unlikable: dishonest, irresponsible, borderline delinquent... and that’s just the first fifty pages. Boulley focuses on story, not characters, and she packs a lot: her goal clearly seems to be educating the world about anthropological crimes and MMIW, but this was too heavyhanded to accomplish much of either.

Compelling. Powerful. Disturbing. Even though it’s clear from the beginning that this was historical fiction only in the loosest sense, it’s also clear that the bones of the story are solid and that Lawhon did a lot of research to flesh it out. Her characters are simplistic but not flat, if that makes any sense? The villains are villainous, the simple folk simple, the noble ones noble, and our hero, protagonist and first-person narrator, is too-perfect smart sharp no-nonsense competent warmhearted sensitive astute amazing ninja superwoman. Also, the drama is waaaaaaaay over the top. And somehow I found myself completely absorbed, recognizing these nits and not caring. See “compelling” above.

One reason I loved the book so much is that Lawhon pulls no punches. The details may be invented, but the circumstances are real. Life was inconceivably difficult for women in the eighteenth century(*), in ways that are different from the way life is difficult today. Lawhon shows much of their everyday life in often-cringeworthy detail. She shows the fortitude and grit needed to survive and thrive. And reminds us that there are people today, an entire political party, who would like us to return to those days.

VOTE.

* and nineteenth and twentieth and twenty-first. Possibly earlier centuries too.

Sometimes you discover a new writer, love their work, seek out another of their books, and re-learn that crucial life lesson from Princess Bride: “Get used to disappointment.”

This is not that kind of story. I’m delighted to report that Kingfisher does not disappoint.

This book charmed and impressed me. Kingfisher is hella smart, emotionally as well as intellectually, and treats her reader as equally so. She also has a strong moral compass while also recognizing the realities of a messy world. And she’s funny. Not slapstick, just lovely dry wry lines once in a while, unexpected tingles in the middle of an otherwise serious situation.

The characters are complex, the story is as well. There’s magic and fantasy and drama and stuff I don’t usually care for... but it’s all original, clever, and I really love the way she writes it in: completely unexplained, no contrived rationalizations, just simple elements of that world which the characters take in stride. That kind of narration feels more genuine than attempts to create some set of rules. There’s adult sexual tension that also feels genuine: complicated and inconvenient but powerful. Subtle and thoughtful explorations of lookism. Pain and regret and soulsearching and lots of heart.

And a cutoff ending that had me purchasing and starting the next book in the series.

Ugh... what a beautifully written awful book. <i>Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf</i> meets <i>The Great Gatsby</i> with a good dose of <i>Othello</i>, but entirely unique. Three characters, with not the slightest tinge of likability for any of them. Each one is shallow, soulless, growing more horrid the more we get to know them. Each pair relationship is sick and twisted; the group dynamic is, well, read it yourself.

Did I urge you to “read it” after that blast? I did. I recommend it despite everything because I found it fascinating. And, again, beautifully written. Are there really people like that? There must be. What would it be like to be one? Are they even aware that life does not need to be that way? One of the characters is almost self-aware, completely spot-on about patriarchy and capitalism and cultural expectations, but is still completely unhinged and neurotic and irresponsible and worthless but even so they are. All. So. Fascinating. Agbaje-Williams is a remarkable writer; the way she voices each character is impressive. I considered DNFing several times—usually I prefer books where I can like or admire or respect at least one person—but I’m glad I finished. The person I respect is Agbaje-Williams, who must be very wise indeed to be able to invent and share these appalling people.

Graceful, evocative, and tender. Also annoyingly clumsy at times.

The story is lovely, as is the storytelling: alternating short chapters following two wildly disconnected characters, one perspective first-person, the other third-person, each of them intriguing complex people who grow ever more fascinating over the course of the book; both as we learn about their past, and as they navigate their present. Exquisitely paced.

Marred by too much dependence on serendipity. Fortuitous encounters, perfect timing, too many of these to count. So many, that I started just expecting them: okay, now’s a good time for a deus ex machina. That kills tension... but I kept reading, enjoying myself nonetheless. The story is original, the setting rich and new to me.

Such a promising idea. I love this recent trend, and want to see more of it, but am not sure where I stand on this one. It’s tagged as Adult, but its writing felt more like Young Readers: simple declarative sentences, dialog suitable for comic bubbles. A curious blend of characters, most of them flat and uninteresting. Most of them.

The story cycles between three first-person narrators whose stories periodically intertwine. Gilgamesh, no surprise, is the dullest. Inanna, surprisingly (because, like, title character??), comes a close second: she shows little initiative, mostly letting herself be carried by events. It’s the third narrator, Ninshubar, who made me keep reading: original and intriguing, perhaps because Wilson wasn’t constrained by the original Epic? Her chapters, and those from other narrators in which she was present, made the book worthwhile.

Want to give three and a half stars, can’t justify four so am rounding down. Please don’t interpret that as a “don’t bother!” With the right frame of mind and expectations, I would’ve enjoyed this much more and believe that you might too.

Two friends warned me: “this is fluff.” They then spoke glowingly of it, recommended it, and they were right on all counts. This is fun, rewarding fluff. I was surprised while reading it at how much I enjoyed it, and remain surprised in retrospect. I guess YA isn’t bad once in a while?

The magical elements are original and nicely done. The personal drama is over the top — the entire book is over the top — but engaging even so. The first-person narrator is so conflicted, so hurt, and so damn sweet that I couldn’t help being absorbed into her story. Vasquez Gilliland conveys both emotion and setting effectively; I felt and saw and sensed.

Definitely YA. The main character is nominally 29 but the content is clearly intended for someone sixteen -- and in good ways. Copious unobtrusive PSAs on communication, consent, boundaries, safe sex, expressing needs; basically, gently modeling responsible adult relationships and social responsibility without hitting you over the head. (All right, a little bopping. Love taps.) Annoyingly lookist, but there’s a lot of that going around. And the ending... well, it goes from over-the-top to full-gonzo oh-come-ON but even so, and I don’t understand how, it worked. As in, any other writer and I would’ve thrown the book down in contempt, but not this book not this time. Vasquez Gilliland’s kindness won me over all the way.

Took me completely by surprise: informative, entertaining, thoughtful, and compassionate. I’d say there’s good material here for nearly everyone who lives in the lower 48, although it seems particularly apt for those of us in deer-overrun areas.

Howsare looks at human-deer overlap from every angle I could imagine and more: biological, ecological, historical, cultural, economical, social. She considers broad ecosystem scales and micro ones and does so with curiosity and respect. She (correctly) dismisses the myth of “natural balance”; refrains from judging anyone (this reader can judge for himself: people who chase deer with ATVs and dogs to harass them into dropping antlers, for purposes of collecting their shed, are vile putrid monsters); and, over and over, presents complex issues with nuance and sensitivity.

There’s a lot to know. Much of it is uncomfortable even to people who’ve never seen a deer, because the built landscape that humans rely on causes harm, to deer and other species and even to ourselves, and Howsare does not sugar coat. She offers no recipes for absolution or improvement, she just wants us to be mindfully aware. It’s up to each of us to do better, however we can.

PS do not feed the deer.

It must be so hard to write a memoir: you need an interesting life story; sensitivity to those you’re writing about; and you need to connect to your reader. This reader, old and crotchety, found none of those in this book. I had hoped for more magpie; instead it was more (much more) about mental illness and generational trauma, but, see above. I was never able to relate to the narrator; instead I found myself wondering about his ability to connect with others. I could not understand the relationships.

Biggest and happiest takeaway: a newfound admiration and respect for David Gilmour, the author’s adopted father. Yes, that David Gilmour. I had never known anything about him as a person, only loved his music, and now, wow, what a beautiful patient giving human being he is (independently confirmed). For this reason alone I am glad to have finished: it lightens my heart to learn of kind decent people like that, particularly when they’re famous artists.

Uncomfortable for its trauma, multi-multi-generational and recognizable and so brutal. Uncomfortable also because there’s this problem I have with some memoirs: the people being written about aren’t there to defend themselves nor even present their versions of stories. Figueroa acknowledges trauma and systemic racism and patterns of abuse and toxic masculinity on one hand, while on the other demonstrating (IMO) little compassion toward the people in her life who are products of those. She comes off as a lost soul, desperately grasping for meaning and relevance; this does not always end well.

Unrated. I didn’t especially enjoy reading this, and am not likely to recommend it to friends, but I wish Figueroa success with this book. My sincere hope is that she found the writing cathartic and healing, and can use it to break the chain of abuse.

DNF, p.113. Religious fanatics; prophets; complex intrigue and plotting, deception and ruses. State-sanctioned mass executions. Abusive casteism. That’s just not what I need in July 2024. Maybe, if humankind survives the election, I’ll try again next year. Beautiful writing tho, descriptive and flowing. Occasional stunning moments of insight about humans and the systems we build.

Astonishing, powerful, gripping, and increasingly more so on all counts as the book went on. The pacing, for one, is phenomenal: started off intriguing, then kept developing, gradually, mercilessly. I felt more absorbed with each chapter. It's not so much the what—we know there’s going to be bad shit, or, more precisely, we know there was a lot of bad shit and some of it is going to get shown to us—no, it's the how: how do good people live with those memories? How do they live, day after day, with monsters?

The first-person narrator is a gem. Honorable, hardworking, capable, and deeply moral. I kept thinking of him as an embodiment of Stoic ideals, wondering if Forna has read Epictetus and Seneca. (Did I say "him"? Yes: Forna writes a completely believable male protagonist, with access to his rawest feelings and motivations. How can she do that?) (Okay, maybe a touch more sensitive than most males, but not impossibly so.) The rest of the characters are... well, they’re props. Lovable or despicable despite their lack of depth; this isn’t their story.

TW for cruelty, violence, heartbreak and suffering galore. Highly, highly recommended regardless.

Do you ever wonder, when looking at combat photos, about the person behind the lens? Addario provides a riveting, sobering account of her journey from ambitious young cub to seasoned and scarred veteran. Deeply personal, sensitive, and moving.

Combat is bad enough, but that life entails much more hardship. Disrespect, abuse, humiliations. Having to be civil to subhuman vermin such as Talibanis or Israeli soldiers. Seeing her work censored or filtered by cowardly editors. Relationships are nearly impossible to nourish; she frankly recounts her discoveries and setbacks and, finally, great fortune. And the brutal impact of seeing endless suffering. Despite all this, her huge heart comes through in her writing. I’m really sorry I missed her talk at SFILF. And I will never again look at war reporting the same way.

Wow wow wow. “Mirrored Heavens is the culmination of a dream,” Roanhorse writes in her end Acknowledgments. An amazing and exquisite and satisfying one, and I’m so ashamed to have doubted that she would finish the series. This is a worthy finale to a powerful epic.

Also brutal. So much intrigue, plotting, treachery, betrayal, cruelty and death. And kindness and love and complexity. Roanhorse kept me on my toes, played with my sympathies and my heart. What I most admire about her is that when she writes about gods she makes them truly, utterly incomprehensible. <i>That is how gods should be to us!</i> By understanding that, she creates a world that is fascinating and, more importantly, fair. Not in the justice sense; I mean in the sense of not cheating. Nobody is all good or all evil or simple. Evil things happen, as do good things, and some people try their best to swing things one way or the other, and ... well, the story is a good one, rich and fulfilling all the way to the last page.

Warning: like with Fevered Star, Roanhorse makes no allowances for readers who might not remember every detail of the first two books. So, reread them or prepare for a rocky ride.

Intense; a helluva ride. At times impenetrable, then shifting eerily to what felt like vignettes from my own lived experience and sometimes even innermost thoughts. Mostly somewhere in between. Early on I started thinking of it—with apologies to Milan Kundera—as The Unbearable Heaviness of Being and it stuck, felt more and more appropriate as I kept reading, and I mention it not to discourage you but to prepare you: Shapland’s neuroses are weighty. I needed frequent breaks to digest or sometimes just breathe. (Maybe she’d find mine equally weighty. Let’s not find out.)

Five long essays, each with a central theme and many tangents. Toxins, pollution, environmental racism, health (Los Alamos figures prominently in this first chapter, a curious serendipity given my having read 109 East Palace immediately beforehand). Fear, racism, moving through the world as a woman. Consumerism. Self-awareness and mindfulness. And, most interesting to me, the cultural obsession with having babies. Yes, she goes there, explores it from all sorts of directions, bluntly and with some perspectives that were new to me—possibly because I’m male, although I think it might be that I am less tolerant of fools than she is.

Shapland impressed me at this year’s Santa Fe Literary Festival; her stage conversation showed great vulnerability and wisdom. Her writing reinforces my impression of her as a remarkable person, insightful and gifted. Even despite the incomprehensible parts (mostly cultural references I’m too old for) and despite her annoying fretting about the opinions of others (she’s young, I think and hope she’ll grow out of it), this is a phenomenal book that I’m going to be recommending loudly to my friends. Even those with (wonderful! amazing! and I mean it!) children.

Exquisite. This is the human side of the Manhattan Project: the personalities of those who made it happen, the relationships, sacrifices, conflicts, logistics, and connections. Conant is by no means objective: she shows great warmth toward the heroes—McKibbin, Oppenheimer (J. Robert), Groves—and contempt for the villains—Teller, Oppenheimer (Kitty), and, later, McCarthy and Strauss. She seems to believe that women are people (!), so she frequently includes stories of professionals and wives and WACs and others. All of this adds up to a lovely and sensitive work.

If you want to read only one book on this part of history, and you care more about human elements than technical/scientific aspects, this is probably the book you want. And for those of us on the Hill, who already know most of the basics, this should be required reading.

A bit of a stretch, then increasingly so, well into preposterous and beyond. The main characters are Mary Sues, the villains cartoonish, the situations more and more hokey. Which makes the tension nonexistent because—not a spoiler—the reader knows that the heroes will miraculously escape this predicament and the next. It would probably work better as a movie than it did as a book, and I bet that was the hope. (If they do make it a movie, they should get Sydney Greenstreet to play the small role that’s perfect for him. I would totally watch that.)

Anyhow, fun for a change of pace. Noble heroes, imaginative albeit contrived story elements. I’ll probably stick to Preston’s nonfiction in future: that’s much more my thing.

Even in a post-2016 world, where we see new disgusting lows almost daily, the horrors documented in this book are appalling. Monstrous in scale, in cruelty, in shamelessness and just pure evil. Also some good, in the form of one helluva decent FBI agent, Tom White: his story—before, during, and after the Osage assignment—is one of nobility and honor. Not quite enough to balance out the monsters, but enough to leave me feeling some gratitude.

Grann shows tremendous respect toward the Osage. His research is exhaustive, and he is careful to remain within the boundaries of fact (with clearly identified moments of conjecture). This rigor sometimes makes for repetition or dryness, but it’s absolutely the right and responsible thing to do: the book is more trustworthy that way, its impact more powerful.

By page 30 I was strongly motivated to DNF; kept going because of the reviews. I regret continuing.

Narrated first-person by an affectless middle-aged man, completely dissociated from the events he relates, passively moving from one situation to the next but with no agency or engagement. You know those people who love to tell you their dreams? “And then this happened and then this and then I got in a car except it became a plane and then ...”? Like that, for two hundred pages. I’m not the kind of person who loves listening to dreams, so I found it increasingly tedious and even more so once I figured out what was going on. (The “twist” at the end is no such thing, it was telegraphed early and became increasingly obvious.)

Binyam is fiercely smart: there are snippets of insight, cultural criticism, awareness of self-awareness that delighted me ... but briefly, and too rarely. This was too long, drawn out and rambling. I will optimistically seek out her shorter publications.

Disappointing after She Who Became the Sun. Much more intrigue and plotting and betrayal (yawn), many more plot twists, and almost zero tension: a few chapters in, you realize that no matter how dire the predicament, Zhu will face it with a gleeful "my fate is to win, so I will win." One or two dei ex machinae later, plus some knob tweaking on the Infinite Improbability Drive, and the crisis is solved. On to the next one.

Much more snappy repartee. Cute, fun, but awkward. More expository dialog. Too many wild coincidences to keep track of. Much more slaughter and cruelty, and a few (too few) tossed-in handwringing moments about the horrors of war, then back to more war. "It's for a noble cause." Two stars overall, but good ending pushed it up to three.

Heavyhanded, at times. Clumsy exposition through dialog, at times. Preposterous ... at times. Also gripping, beautifully written, well paced, compassionate, pragmatic, morally flexible, and unputdownable.

A smorgasbord of characters, all of them with strong drives: for power, revenge, justice, kindness; sometimes in odd proportions. I realize that makes it sound like a boring palace war intrigue blah blah soap opera, and there's quite a bit of that, but there's SO much more: the more interesting characters are profound. Worth journeying with: they keep the reader on their toes. They grow in unexpected ways.

Important material, poorly presented. Wish I could say otherwise. It is not controversial in 2024 to demand greater respect for Indigenous voices in environmental sciences, and Hernandez has valuable points to make about how to do so, but her bellicose tone and the publisher’s sloppy editing made for an unpleasant reading experience. Best part is a list of six principles on pages 87-91. Some seem measurable, others are uncomfortably handwavey. I want to be an ally, but am hoping for other entries in the field.