C
Yesteryear is nothing more than an effigy to the tradwife influencer. It’s a humiliation ritual where every bad thing that happens to its main character, Natalie, happens because she deserves it instead of coming from a natural evolution of the characters around her. At no point does it feel it understands the appeal of the tradwife movement and Christianity, or the thought process of those who find it appealing, and is incapable of making any meaningful critique of it as a result. The prose is clumsy and has the stink of late millennial humor to it (there is an honest to god “record scratch” line early on and it doesn’t get much better from there), and the narrative feels as if it's cobbled together from stereotypes and cliches of the characters and their ideologies instead of coming from a place of experience or even basic research. Worst of all, the author’s true beliefs constantly slip through Natalie’s voice as well as many of the supporting casts’, many of whom have no business sharing these beliefs. Actually no, the true worst part was the twist that invalidates the entire premise of the book. The fact that this got a movie deal before it was even published reeks of insincere virality.
Contains spoilers
I understand what Parable of the Talents is doing. I think it offers good criticism of American (more specifically, white Christian American) culture, politics, and religion. I also despise this book.
Octavia Butler’s follow up to Parable of the Sower is pretty much exactly what I expected, and feared it would be: more Parable of the Sower. It’s more unnervingly accurate predictions about modern USA, more abhorrent violence (particularly against women), more side characters that have zero personality to them, and more pseudo-intellectual drivel that is supposed to be taken as some newfound enlightenment. But by far my biggest gripe is how repetitive it all is. The edition that I read had an interview with Octavia Butler at the end, in which she said she had rewritten the first 150 pages of this book multiple times because she struggled to figure out where the story needed to go. Boy it sure as hell shows. It is abysmally slow, and retreads plot points over and over again. There had to be five or six conversations between Lauren and Bankole about leaving their settlement for a safer community to raise their unborn child in, and each time it ended with the same conclusion that they will stay. It got to a point where I just started skipping paragraphs and eventually entire pages until I found something new or interesting to read. To make matters worse, this is an overly verbose novel that is structured like a diary. Almost every entry starts by telling what major story event is to happen, and then prattles on for pages with setup for the event that we already know is going to happen. If I were to reduce this book to the sentences that actually move the plot forward or provide the thematic material to ponder, I could probably get this book down to about 50% of its length or less.
I’m no stranger to brutal depictions of violence and hatred in my books, but this book crossed my line. It’s not so much the descriptions themselves about the rape, murder, and torture that happens to everyone in this book, it’s the sheer prevalence of it all. Before the big invasion of Acorn and creation of the concentration camp, I was already numb to overexposure of all of it and stopped caring to read about how so-and-so was raped by a group of bandits and their children were sold into sex slavery like the last three characters that were introduced.
Talents’ most prominent critique is the one on the nature of religion, and how it is used by the people in power to justify the worst, most inhuman acts imaginable. This is primarily done through the lens of Christianity. But I don’t see why Lauren’s new religion of Earthseed wouldn’t be susceptible to the same forces when it becomes such a popular movement by the end of this book. I also don’t think it’s remotely profound to catch on so quickly via the internet to the point where universities and politicians are supporting and following it. This shit sounds like what an 18 year old would find deep, because it was written by one in-universe.
I genuinely did not want to continue this book past the first 70 pages, and I don’t feel like my efforts to finish were worth it. Every single one of the characters suck. Lauren is an insufferable know-it-all, her brother Marc is a manipulative coward who is willingly blind to the atrocities his church committed, her daughter Larkin is an unfortunate product of her upbringing, but is still kind of a moron well into adulthood, and everyone else is nothing more than fodder for the story to happen. This is a thoroughly unenjoyable book to the point that I don’t care about its broader meaning.
Science Fiction is at its best when it is used to challenge commonly accepted beliefs and societal norms, and I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen it done better than in The Left Hand of Darkness. This book is challenging and rewarding in both its lexicon (real and fictitious) and its examination of sex and gender, and how that shapes and is shaped by our environment and culture. In addition, it is also one of the most believable stories about first contact, with a fully realized and complex world that feels as alien in the beginning as it does familiar by the end. The way the story and world are presented through multiple points of view interspersed with mythic parables does a fantastic job of revealing the intricacies of life on the planet Winter, the differences between each nation’s perspective on life and that of the envoy’s union of planets, and how each character perceives the other and the events that they are caught up in. This book should be on everyone’s reading list, science fiction fan or not.
Contains spoilers
Imagine this: the year is 2025. The newly elected president, who promised job opportunities and an end to high crime, is stripping the remaining rights of workers away. Highly skilled workers can barely make ends meet, and do whatever work they can from home or via teleconferences. Food and water prices have skyrocketed, and the value of the dollar has declined in tandem. The US’ space program has been defunded and sold off to private corporations. California is on fire, and measles has broken out. But enough about real life, I’m talking about Octavia Butler’s 1993 book: Parable of the Sower.
It really is shocking, and one of the first things I noticed when reading this book, just how accurately it predicted the future 30 years after it was originally published. Butler’s world, once a warning, is essentially our reality now. This book is more of a must-read now than it was back then… is what I feel like I should be saying, but this is not the ray of light in dark times that I was hoping this story of finding community and greater purpose would turn out to be by its ending. I actually find this book more pessimistic about the human condition than reality, and it really comes down to how humanity outside of Lauren’s immediate community is portrayed.
In the spring of 1992, the Bosnian city of Sarajevo was laid siege by Serbian secessionist forces. This siege lasted for nearly four years, and is still the longest siege in modern history. Over 5000 civilians were killed during the siege, averaging 3.8 deaths a day. The city was shelled by artillery from the surrounding mountains daily, and any living creature was target practice for snipers. Food, water, and medicine were nowhere to be found, and moonshine and cigarettes became the currency to use for supplies from the black markets that arose. Despite these conditions (which I would argue are even worse than the conditions seen in Parable of the Sower, as Bosnian winters are cold on top of the resource scarcity), civilization carried on. University students still got their degrees, the newspaper still published out of its bombed out building; even public transit still ran in some capacity. While theft, rape, and murder no doubt happened in these conditions, this did not consume the people of Sarajevo like it does to the people of California in this book. I swear, every unnamed character in Sower is either a thief, rapist, or other violent criminal, or the victim of one. Society cannot, and does not function like this in the absence of stable government. And this depiction of the poor masses self destructing undermines many of the better parts of the book.
I really liked the first half of Sower. The walled neighborhood that Lauren lived in was a good metaphor for the middle class. They were “safe” in their community, but had it just as bad as anyone else. The residents were almost all highly skilled workers, and Lauren’s dad was a strong leader as the reverend for the local church, but none of that meant anything when they could barely make ends meet any more than the people outside the walls. Reverend Olamina offered some wise quotes about teaching instead of instilling fear as a call to action, and how freedom is dangerous, but too precious to sacrifice for safety. The philosophy of Earthseed that Lauren forms throughout the book starts out promising, attributing abstract concepts of the world (particularly change) to God and offering a physical heaven among the stars as a greater purpose than mere survival. I was really hoping that finding religion and creating community as a means of resistance against oppressors and a bleak future would be the kind of optimistic outcome that was being set up. But Lauren’s neighborhood isn’t destroyed by a higher power. It’s consumed in a selfish and short-sighted attack by those who envy their neighbor and want to destroy them so that they too must suffer. It’s destroyed by the poor, unnamed masses. It would’ve been a great metaphor for the type of people who believe life is a zero sum game, but this harmful mentality is not defeated by the end of the book.
In fact, the book doesn’t feel like it ends positively, or at all. The final chapter is the ragtag followers of Lauren settling down on some remote land, and it not only feels a little cultish, but the characters even acknowledge how their future is just as bleak as it was before they lost everything. I wouldn’t even consider them followers of Earthseed, as many of them said their own form of prayer for the dead they lost along the way instead of one unifying mantra. Questions raised about why continuing to live and spread life in such an abhorrent world don’t feel like they were fully answered by the end, and the sheer amount of violence depicted throughout the book feels pretty distasteful as a result (and I say that as a fan of James Ellroy). Maybe the sequel provides that conclusion I’m looking for, but there was also a third sequel that was to be written that unfortunately died with Octavia Butler, so I’m a bit hesitant to continue to look at this pessimistic world when I already live in one that’s bad enough.
The Mars Volta is one of my favorite bands of all time, and their debut album, De-Loused in the Comatorium, is still my favorite of their discography. I can't believe I didn't find this companion book earlier.
This companion book is an expansion on the story of the album, in which a man overdoses on rat poison and morphine, and has grand visions during his coma, before waking up and committing suicide. Much like the lyrics (which are interspersed through this book in sections that serve as intermissions between passages), the prose is incredibly cryptic and the narrative abstract. It simultaneously provided a lot of context behind many of the songs, and left me with even more questions. As a fan, this is everything I could've asked for. But as a reader, this does feel a bit amateur.
While the opening of this story is incredibly vivid and poetic in its description, the middle section of this story is wildly inconsistent. It often feels like a first draft, with poor grammar and spelling making an already hard to read story even harder. The POV of the narrator also shifts around frequently, but their voices blend together to be indecipherable. And I wouldn't say the comatose dream of Cerpin Taxt has no purpose to the narrative (this isn't an "it's all a dream" story), but it does stray far into unreality to a point where it feels like it's too far removed from the psyche of Cerpin.
Despite the heavy connection to its source material, I do think this story can stand on its own. It may lack the brilliant cacophany of sound that the instrumentals bring to compliment the cryptic lyrics of the album, but it makes up for it with a unique voice that may take a couple re-reads to fully appreciate its ability to paint a mental picture.
Stephen King really came out swinging on his first novel. Carrie is iconic horror. I’m not sure how many of the classic horror tropes originated here, but there are a ton, and none of them feel out of place or overdone.
I’d warn about spoilers, but I think everyone knows what happens in Carrie, much like the majority of King’s horror stories. Carrie is a teenager with psychic powers that goes on a killing spree on Prom night after being bullied by her peers constantly. My experience with Stephen King before this was trying to read The Stand and seeing both the miniseries for that and It, so I was kind of surprised that the story was actually that simple (I guess this was pre-cocaine co-author). But being so simple doesn’t mean there’s not much to appreciate. Every character and their personalities are immediately understood just by their name alone. Seriously, I don’t know what it is about King’s characer names, but I already have a perfect picture of who someone named Chris Hargensen or Billy Nolan are going to be like. Even minor characters who show up only once have that aura around their name. But characters aren’t all as one-note as that kind of description would imply. I was surprised to be sympathizing with characters like Sue Snell and Miss Desjarden after what they did in the opening, and even more surprised to feel that for Carrie’s mother by the end after all of the horrible things she did to her daughter. While there is some catharsis in seeing Carrie get revenge on the world who continued to shove her into the ground at every step of her life, it’s ultimately a deeply sad story about how poisonous a society built around maintaining an in-group and evangelical zealotry ends up being, and what happens when it finally breaks an individual.
As enjoyable as it is, there are certainly some issues I have with the novel. One of the more mild criticisms I have are the interjection of excerpts from fictional interviews and articles written about the incident that literally just spoil the plot throughout the first half of the book. The other more serious one is the exploitative description of the women and even some bizarrely racist descriptions that appear once or twice. I know Stephen King’s wife provided input while he was writing and that puberty and the sexualization of women play an important role in Carrie’s character, but it gets really fucking weird when reading about what every other women’s breasts look like. And what the hell was King thinking when describing a swollen lip as that of a black person’s (he even used a slur for that description)? Maybe he was already on the coke at this point.
Unlike some of his later work, King sticks the landing at the end of Carrie. I really did appreciate how the last 20 or so pages (at least in my print) were dedicated to what happened to the town and the survivors. Many imitators of stories like this often forget to have that sort of falling action which drives home the impact of the preceding events. And of course, the little sting at the end that it could happen again is great. It feels like something out of The X-Files, which is funny because that show no doubt took that trend from books like this.
Memory is a brief conversation about the end of the world. It does not describe much else beyond a land that has long been reclaimed by nature, and is carried solely on Lovecraft's prose. I suppose it draws on the existential horror that all of humanity is and will be a small blip on the cosmic radar, but it doesn't linger due to its incredibly short length.
Beyond the Wall of Sleep feels like a second attempt to capture an idea of dreams revealing a greater world to those who can perceive it; an idea that was toyed with in his previous story, Polaris. While I do find this story more compelling, it’s marred by a fairly underwhelming climax in which the entity gives some vague notion of the star Algol being a cosmic oppressor before creating a nova (which was based on a real nova that was recorded in the early 1900s), as well as the absurd casual racism in the description of the narrator’s patient. This is the first of his stories where Lovecraft’s infamous racism is so blatant in its presentation, and it makes it all the more difficult to separate the art from the artist.
I decided to skip ahead in my reading of Lovecraft’s work because I’ve been looking into a lot of media that base themselves on Lovecraftian horror, and The Shadow Over Innsmouth keeps coming up as a direct influence on them. While I did skip over the majority of his work to read this, I feel pretty confident in saying this is probably his best story and I understand why it’s so often used as an inspiration. It’s also where his abhorrent political and racial views are the most visible, which makes it so frustrating to talk about this story in a positive light.
The Shadow Over Innsmouth is a story of a man who hears about the relatively isolated town of Innsmouth on the New England coast while on an ancestral journey to Arkham. Curiosity gets the better of him and he decides to take a day trip, and ends up uncovering horrifying realizations about the residents, and even about himself in a bit of a departure from my previous experiences with his stories. All of the narrators in the stories I have read are typically just observers of strange phenomena or higher beings that may or may not even acknowledge humanity’s existence. Not so in Innsmouth. After a lengthy and somewhat hard to follow backstory of the town given by an old drunk, the narrator is besieged and hunted down by the resident monsters in an excellent chase sequence. And in a twist of events, the narrator discovers that his ancestry can be traced back to those very monsters as he slowly starts to look like one by the story’s end, making the ill-fated discovery of the town seem like a subliminal calling from the beginning. And that’s where the problematic views become too obvious to ignore.
H. P. Lovecraft was a notorious racist and especially despised race-mixing. The subplot in Innsmouth is all about a group of indigenous people in the pacific that bred with the fish people to create horrifying hybrid monsters, and it ties in to the history of the town itself, and the narrator’s lineage is a result of one of these relations. It is a blatant allegory to miscegenation, and how Lovecraft viewed it as a way of inferior traits to invade the white gene pool. And the isolated community that speaks in a throaty language, worships an old god, and has large dealings in a gold-like substance isn’t helping to dissuade any negative comparisons of the fish folk to Jewish people either.
It’s infuriating that these elements take such a spotlight in the story because this is the one where Lovecraft’s classic prose that is simultaneously vague and vivid works at its best. I almost forgot that I already knew the narrator was going to escape Innsmouth due to the past-tense nature of the story because I was so fixated on the moment. The horrors feel so much more real and threatening when they are taking an active interest instead of being a mere glimpse into the unknown. I guess I can take solace in the fact that Lovecraft is long dead, so I’m not really supporting him financially, and that his abhorrent beliefs are at least buried somewhat in allegory instead of being openly part of the story, so I can still recommend this as a classic influential work that can be enjoyed today without feeling the need to qualify that statement with as massive of an asterisk as I would with something like Gone With The Wind or Birth of a Nation.
I’m a sucker for historical fiction that centers around actual events. Books like The Black Dahlia, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and now Alias Grace are some of my favorites of the genre. I was not aware of the Kinnear-Montgomery murders until reading this book, and I do think they are not quite as sensational or fascinating as the other events depicted in the books I had mentioned, but it’s hard not to get enraptured by Margret Atwood’s version of Grace’s history and Dr. Simon Jordan’s attempt to remain impartial in his investigation for the truth.
One thing Alias Grace nails is the miserable life of the average woman in the nineteenth century. Once they’re barely teenagers, they have to work basically every waking minute of their life until they have enough money for a dowry for marriage, which basically amounts to two to three years of income before a man takes it, presumably wasting away on booze and disappearing for weeks at a time based on the majority of male characters in the book. The world is filthy. Drinking and washing water for the public asylum is taken from the same stagnant lake that the sewage runs into, cooking water is reused for washing at the run down inns along the road, and there’s dirt and grime everywhere. And it’s always the woman’s job to clean it up.
The broader politics of the US and Canada at the time also play a large role in shaping the cruelty of the world. Much of Grace’s life took place around the time of the Canadian rebellions, which directly impacted the public opinion of her trial due to the nature of those who were murdered. Dr. Simon also got caught up in the US civil war after an unceremonious exit from Canada (which I felt was a little too convenient of a way to take him out of the story’s end). The saddest and most timeless aspect is the way the media's sensationalized version of the murders were taken as evidence, and the assumption of guilt painting every little action as a reinforcement of that belief. Despite having a rigorous burden of proof on the prosecution these days, it still feels like the court of public opinion still operates the same as it ever did.
Where the book stumbles a bit for me is towards the end, when Dr. Simon begins to investigate outside of just interviewing Grace. Seeds of doubt are attempted to be placed in her story, but after 300 pages of hearing her version and not really seeing much beyond the opinion of others who we have spent zero time with in the story, it’s hard to really believe that there might be some sinister angle that she’s playing. There is also a mental health research angle that is toyed with throughout the book, but doesn’t really feel like it goes anywhere. Grace’s recount of her life is one that she gave willingly and openly, and the doctors’ primitive attempts to dig at buried memories that might reveal new information are all a waste of time and brushed aside.
The way the book was structured kept me hooked the entire time. I loved the way real documents about the case were used as an intro to each part, and how Grace’s story and Simon’s story are told from completely different perspectives. Dreams play an important part throughout the narrative, and each of them are disturbing and surreal to the point where it feels almost supernatural. I would hesitate to call this book long-winded, but I did start to feel its length towards the end after it felt like the plot has resolved (or hit an impossible roadblock might be a better phrasing). At least this depressing tale had a happy ending.
Ever had a dream where you died? What if it was the other way around? An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge is a pretty short story, but a very influential one. As a man hangs for treason, he imagines an escape and return back to his family. The slip from reality to dream is seamless, making it all the more jarring and eerie when reality snaps back. The way every little detail during the escape is heightened has a disturbing familiarity to me and the dreams I can remember. I'm not sure whether it's a beautiful or deeply unsettling thought that the mind will create the most fantastic delusions to protect itself from the thought of confronting death, and the story is wise enough to leave that question unanswered.
I’m a big fan of hard sci-fi and horror. Jurassic Park starts off feeling like it’s going to satisfy both of these things, but it quickly mutates into something more akin to a standard pop-thriller with the veneer of science fiction. A tale about playing God and watching as it all goes wrong is far from a novel concept for science fiction, has been told much better, and much of the actual hard science in the book is not at all correct. But Jurassic Park still manages to be a fun and pretty easy read despite these problems. Being a big fan of the 1993 movie, I also found it fun to finally compare it to the source material.
I’m sure most people these days have probably seen the movie before reading the book. I’m not going to be that snob who says the book is better than the movie, because the movie does a lot of things better than the book when it comes to giving every character something to do and how it handles the action. But I think I do prefer the way events play out in the book and the characterization of the major characters in the book, specifically John Hammond. Hammond in the book is a far more disgusting individual, thinking himself a super genius like a certain South African asshole tech owner. And much like Elon Musk, he takes credit for all of his employees’ achievements, cuts corners on just about everything (especially safety), and blames everyone else when shit inevitably hits the fan. It’s wild and honestly pretty disappointing that the movie sanitizes the hell out of Hammond and turns him into a loveable grandpa who just wanted to bring joy and cheer to kids around the world. Hammond’s cruelty and desire to play God all in the quest of making money and a legacy out of his name is a far closer to the harsh reality of a man like him.
The book in general is much more violent and “grounded” compared to the movie. Unfortunately, much of the hard science is just straight up wrong. I can give some leeway because the majority of it isn’t really central to the book’s theme about considering the consequences of scientific advances without respect for its power. But it is rather annoying when the book pretends to be more hard science than it really is, especially when so much exposition is given to the science behind the dinosaurs and cloning. And much of it could’ve been easily explained away with about the same amount of detail that was already given. The book explains that the dinosaurs had been genetically modified so that they can’t produce lysine and must consume it from specific modified food. You know who else can’t produce lysine? The entire fucking animal kingdom. Michael Crichton was a medical doctor and should’ve absolutely known this, and so would the genetic researchers in the book. Just make up a fake engineered enzyme like you did with the fake lizard in the prologue Michael!
The bigger problem that is harder to ignore is how much chaos theory is used to explain why the park was doomed to fail from the start. Realizing that factors were not taken into account when predicting a system’s behavior isn’t all there is, nor is it unique to chaos theory. But that’s about as far as Jurassic Park takes it. It’s only ever relevant when Ian Malcolm uses it as a catch-all to explain why things are going wrong all over the island and inevitably causes the whole operation to collapse in on itself. But the arrogance of man and tinkering with the mechanics of life without a full understanding of its consequences is a tale as old as civilization. Contextualizing it as “chaos theory” is a silly rebrand to make it sound more technical than it really is.
I can see why this book is so popular. It’s a pretty fast read considering its length, characters are easy to love or hate, the story structure easily creates tension by changing between each character’s perspective as events unfold, and its core message is impossible to miss with how much it’s bludgeoned into the reader’s head. It’s the Dan Brown of science fiction: a simple thriller with enough “facts” to seem plausible enough to take seriously.
Cold Mountain is two things, a very detailed tale of the American civil war outside of its battles, and over indulgent. This is one of those “it’s about the journey, not the destination” type books, probably the most out of any that I’ve read. And boy does it take its sweet time detailing every note of the journey. Nothing is left for imagination with such vivid imagery and care put into the accuracy of the location and era this book takes place in. It’s by far the most compelling part of the book. Even the language used is meant to be of the time.
Cold Mountain feels like two separate stories for the vast majority of its length. One about the odyssey of Inman, a Confederate deserter’s travel from the hospital back to his home; and the other about Ada, a young woman who has to learn to survive after her preacher father passes away and leaves her on her own in rural Appalachia. Brief flashbacks from before the war tie the two together early on in their journeys, but there are long stretches of time where they are deep in their own struggles. Inman’s story covers the general politics and attitude of the average Confederate as he moves from town to town, while Ada’s shows the daily toil of survival in the 19th century. I was surprised to be more invested in the latter, but it’s easy to see why in hindsight. For all of the tales Inman heard and experienced about the horrors and futility of war, and the normalized dehumanizing evil that slavery cast on the way of life in the south, he doesn’t seem phased by any of it. Ada on the other hand, actually grows as a person and learns not only to survive, but how to step out of her father’s shadow.
I did not love this book, but I felt like it was worth my time. It was educational in a way. I had to look up quite a few terms, and in doing so, went down Wikipedia rabbit holes. Even when the plot felt like it was dragging its feet, I was still wrapped up in the immediate happenings of complete strangers as they passed by Inman, or the never ending work needed just to get through the winter on Ada’s farm.
This is the first of Lovecraft’s stories I would consider to be part of the “Cthulhu mythos”, despite Dagon being an actual religious deity. I say this because it has so many of the thematic elements in the mythos. Unlike his previous short stories, this one feels more like a lore dump than an actual story, as the character followed isn’t doing much more than exploring an uncharted island and witnessing events without active participation. This is the classic Lovecraft story structure and while I’m not a huge fan of it, the prose makes it far more compelling than it ought to be. Lovecraft was obsessed with revealing a world not meant for the human eye through mere glimpses, which was enough to drive any witness to it insane. There’s a fine line he had to walk with giving just enough detail to paint a vivid picture, but not enough to where the reader can understand what’s happening any better than the character. Dagon is in that sweet spot. I really like the aquatic nature of the story as well. To this day, the ocean is still as mysterious and alien as it was over a hundred years ago, making any kind of monster surfacing from it just as terrifying now. What I feel is missing from this story is the more detailed spiral of the narrator after he returned to civilization. I am always more interested in how characters react and cope with the things they experience in a horror story, but Lovecraft is just not interested in expanding on that here. Though I guess if I saw a giant fish person on a creepy deserted island, I would also lose my mind and there wouldn’t be much more to it either.
If you know me, then you know this definitely wasn’t a book that I had thought to read myself. I don’t have a lot of award winning coming-of-age, teenage drama, or just general contemporary fiction on my shelves, because I am dumb, and a man. Which is probably why I was so easily engrossed in the tale of a small Michigan suburban family as told by the collective memories of dumb teenage boys.
The Michigan elements were so accurate and core to the setting that it wasn’t surprising at all to find out that the author was from the Detroit area. From the second page about the early summer season being marked by the cloud of fish flies that invade the town (they really do get everywhere and it’s as gross as you think it is), or the references to the Detroit race riots and declining automotive industry, or even just the mention of grocery store chains like Kroger, I felt a sort of nostalgia despite growing up over an hour away and nearly 30 years after the era this book is set in. These weren’t childhood experiences of mine (aside from the grocery stores), but it was enough for me to have an exact image in my mind while reading. Not that I needed that kind of familiarity to do so, however.
Jeffrey Eugenides has a powerful way with words. His prose is direct, and his descriptions meticulous, which leads to some sickening passages. And it works for the narrators. These aren’t hazy, half forgotten memories to these kids. They are vivid mental photos of a traumatic period and turning point in their lives. Of course, being memories of boys going through puberty and growing up in a “traditional” patriarchal environment, they weren’t really focusing on the right things that would’ve helped solve the mystery of “why did they do it?”
It’s no mystery who is dying in this story. From the opening, we are told it’s going to be every single Lisbon daughter. But the reasons why are more or less up to the reader to decide. There are plenty of theories offered and warning signs that were so obvious in hindsight that someone should’ve reacted to. And that’s the real depressing thing about this book. No one had the compassion or courage to try to do anything until it was far too late. The Lisbons shut themselves away from the world, the neighbors only did something if it affected their bottom line, and the boys just gawked and ogled. But it’s part of why the ending doesn’t feel as poignant to me as it seems it’s meant to be. They claim to have loved the Lisbon girls, but only twice took the initiative to make contact with them over the course of a year, and couldn’t remember more than their physical qualities and belongings. Their recollection and investigation into what happened is no more sincere than Ms. Perl’s piece of journalism.
There are a lot of different messages that one could get from this book. To me, it reads as a failure of society, and the moment we “come of age” is the moment we realize that the practices and lifestyle we revered as children is not sustainable. The Lisbon parents were the worst kind of helicopter parents, treating their children as objects to be preserved instead of people who need social interaction even before the first suicide. The rest of the town did the absolute bare minimum to address Cecelia’s suicide and even went so far as to basically shun the Lisbon family when they stopped taking care of themselves, then accepted the outside theories as to why five daughters in one family all killed themselves in their own community instead of having enough awareness of their own environment. The entire southeast Michigan region decayed both in its environment and its economy throughout the story as a result of actions taken well before the narrators were born. Not only did the Lisbon daughters die by the end of the story, but the town itself as well.
The Tomb is the first Lovecraft story that truly feels like one. The hallmarks of his style of horror are all here; an unreliable narrator who has been committed to an asylum, supernatural phenomena that is mostly left unexplained, New England, it’s all there. What I like most about this story is the unresolved nature of Jervas’ spooky adventure with the ghosts in a graveyard. It’s quite possible that it was all in his head, as the rest of the town just saw him with glazed eyes wandering around the graves, but certain physical traits of the world are acknowledged by the other characters which can’t be ignored. While it’s still missing the classic eldritch horror mythos Lovecraft is best known for, this is still a captivating short story.
Lovecraft’s second story is even less interesting than his first. The story of a cursed family living in a decrepit castle has little to do with the cosmic horror Lovecraft is known for. The sorcerer who cursed the main character’s lineage revealed that the curse itself was not real, but his own doing as if it were a Scooby Doo mystery, and the supernatural element is that he figured out how to live eternally in a dark depressing dungeon. How eternal life was achieved is completely glossed over and why he did it is assumed to be nothing more than to keep murdering some dude’s next of kin over and over and over again. It’s amusing, but not any more horrifying than any classic revenge tale. The Alchemist is a decent short story on its own, but this is not emblematic of H.P. Lovecraft’s appeal.
Dune, the Lord of the Rings of science fiction. You know how influential this book is even if you haven’t read it. It’s biblical, literally. Reading this book feels like reading The Bible. Every chapter starts with a quote from a religious teaching within the world of Dune, every character’s inner thoughts and intentions are displayed plainly in text, and the prose is far more fantastic than analytical. It’s a style that I’m usually not interested in when it comes to sci-fi or fiction in general, but I was completely on board with it here.
There is a lot to love about Dune, from its fascinating world to the themes of colonialism and religion that reflect our current society and even environmentalism that feels more relevant now than it did back in 1965. Technology has advanced so far that humans have colonized entire planets, yet society has reverted back to feudalism. Despite the hi-tech weaponry and gear available, battles still have to be fought largely in hand-to-hand combat. It’s a cynical thought that humanity, for all of our advances, cannot break free of the systems of control and violence. Much like the inhabitants of Arrakis, Dune’s worldbuilding does a lot with very little. Only three houses are ever mentioned by name, four if you want to count the emperor himself, but it feels like there are dozens if not more that are taking part in the exploitation of Arrakis’ resources. There is a rich history that is only ever mentioned in passing, but even the small glimpses seen inform the current state of society in the universe.
What sells me on this world is how much of it can be compared almost 1:1 to reality. Arrakis is stripped of its resources by the wealthy elites of society, rendering it an inhospitable wasteland in the same manner an oil company pollutes our world. Fremen prophecy and religion are not born of mysticism, but were planted by the Bene Gesserit in the same way a Christian missionary spreads its ideals and attempts to erase indigenous beliefs. Paul’s story is largely based on T. E. Lawrence and his role in the Arab revolt against the Ottomans.
There is an underlying cruelty to Paul’s rise to power that is the crux to understanding the message behind Dune that heroism and hero worship is a dangerous and destructive tool. Because the book follows the perspective of multiple people, often times within the same chapter, we see how Paul is viewed by his family and followers, and they fear him. Even what should be a happy reunion late in the book between him and his old mentor Gurney is undermined by the deaths of many of Gurney’s new friends, who he quickly abandons to follow Paul. While the Harkonnens cruel occupation of Arrakis is ended and the Atreides family is avenged, it doesn’t feel like a triumph when Paul ascends to the throne. The systems of exploitation are still present, and the promise of restoring Arrakis to a habitable planet is unfulfilled with no intention of making it so.
For such a long and dense book, Dune is pretty easy to follow. There is a bit of lore dumping in the beginning, but it’s not so egregious that it detracts from the immersion and it is all necessary information in order to follow what happens. It’s a timeless story that lambasts the common tropes of classic hero tales and shows the harsh toll that kind of legend takes on its subjects and its believers.
H.P. Lovecraft’s first short story isn’t really anything special. By today’s standards it’s quaint, with a twist that is so predictable it’s hardly one at all. Most of the length of this story is dedicated to very lengthy descriptions of what the protagonist hears and sees, both real and imagined. What’s notable about it is the analytical approach to the sights and sounds described, never outright stating the nature of the beast, only assuming based on observations. This is an essential part of Lovecraft’s approach to horror and what makes it so influential, and it’s cool to see that it was in his work from the start.
This book shows its age, but I still found it pretty compelling. The plot is pretty straightforward, following three desperate men looking for gold after hearing a foreboding tale of previous mining crews’ failures and back stabbings over their attempts to get rich. The real gold (heh) in this book is the sheer amount of time spent making this journey through post-WWI Mexico feel so real and fantastic at the same time while staying just under 250 pages. The characters of Dobbs, Curtain, and Howard were hard not to root for and against as their working relationship strengthened and broke down for riches that feel so certain to be found despite never actually being confirmed outside of word of mouth. Dobb’s murder of Curtain and his delirious state for the following days until his death at the hands of three poor bandits similar to his group was a fantastic ending to his character.
The book’s greatest strength is also its weakness, and I found it to be a hurdle to get over. The descriptions of locations, past events, and prophetic tales are ridiculously long. Every single character speaks in flowery paragraphs that don’t really feel fitting for downtrodden tramps or villagers who probably shouldn’t have as good of a grasp on the English language as they realistically should. It feels like it takes up about half of the book, and goes on for about 40 pages after an ending feels like it had already been reached. But this is where some of the best passages in the book are. One of my favorite examples is during a tense holdout against Christian rebels who are after the main characters’ guns, where the Catholic institution is slammed for using these poorer nations for their own gain with little regard for their people the same way the foreign corporations exploit the same nations for their resources. Moments like these wouldn’t be nearly as effective without the prior detail.
I’m a fan of role-playing games, both in tabletop and video game form. I figured this book would be a nice insight into the history behind some of my favorite games. Unfortunately this is just an unfocused, messy recount of popular RPGs of the 80s and 90s that is a mile wide, but an inch deep.
For a book whose subtitle is “The History of Computer Role-Playing Games”, there isn’t a whole lot of historical analysis going on. I’d say only about 20% of this book is interested in exploring the individuals, studios, publishers, and technology behind the games discussed (advertised), and even then it’s hardly any more informative than a Wikipedia article. But the way it goes about exploring the history is hard to follow, and I say that as someone who’s already familiar with the subject matter. The chapters are split up into different eras, from early games developed on university mainframes to popular commercial releases and the rise and fall of the big names of the 80s and 90s, but the lines between the eras are incredibly vague and cross over each other constantly. Perhaps if the other 80% of this book wasn’t a list of poorly summarized games with little to no connection to a broader trend or design philosophy, the lines would be more clear.
The author of the book, Matt Barton, is also incredibly opinionated and doesn’t even attempt to keep his bias in check, going so far to call people who disagree with his opinion on certain games apologists (relax dude, they’re not Nazi sympathizers, they’re gamers… hang on, I repeated myself). His style of writing oozes smug asshole energy and reeks of dated humor such as joking about how early developers fueled themselves with Mountain Dew while coming up with their games. And I don’t know why he even bothered to include images and footnotes when all of the images are screenshots that are occasionally relevant and the footnotes are listed at the end of each chapter and aren’t formatted in any academic fashion (surprising, considering this guy is supposed to be an English professor).
The most disappointing thing about this book (well, besides the fact that it’s mostly a big list) is that it’s almost entirely focused on American and Western games and their history. Sure, there’s a couple chapters dedicated to Japanese RPGs and a couple Eastern and Central European studios are mentioned in passing, but it’s always in the context of what was made available to the west and doesn’t even attempt to examine any developments between iterations or influence they may have had on the industry as a whole.
Once I realized the structure of this book, I started skimming the book until I ended up dropping it completely about halfway through. It’s simply not worth anyone’s time. If you’re already familiar with the basic history of computer RPGs, you’re not going to learn anything new and if you’re a complete outsider to the subject, I can’t imagine there’s anything that’s going to be of interest. If you want some truly insightful looks at the history of video games, there’s probably an 8 hour retrospective on Youtube somewhere that does a better job than this book.