Colin Gooding

I'm a sucker for reading something before watching a movie or television adaptation, so when I heard good things about this year's Pachinko series on Apple TV+ I decided I had to read this.

This is a multi-generational drama set in a culture and period that I did not have a lot of familiarity with. I actually somehow had no idea that Japan had annexed Korea for the better part of the first half of the 20th century, so seeing a representation of racism and oppression in that setting was something new to me and drove me to a bit of further reading on the history.

Between the writing and the narration of the audiobook I listened to, the whole book had a stoic matter-of-fact quality to it that worked a lot of the time in a somber “life trudges forward” sort of way, but at other times made the story feel a bit long and drawn out. Time passes effortlessly and characters age drastically from one moment to the next, which in some cases made them feel like someone I knew intimately and in some cases I felt as if I never had a chance to understand them. It was a bit frustrating at times though it did also add a lifelike quality to the whole thing.

I'm really interested to see what the show is like now, because it does not feel like a straightforward thing to adapt and I'm curious to see what angle they come at it, and I think I'm glad I read this first to be able to analyze the show in that way. We'll see!

This book is exactly what you would expect it to be for a book of it's kind, and I'm afraid that this kind of book just isn't really for me.

There are things that it does that are interesting in theory, but I didn't actually enjoy that much in practice. For instance, every single character in this book is a shitty person. Not most characters, every. single. character. Maybe it looks like one character is on a redemption arc? No, they just re-enforced earlier held beliefs now. Maybe this other character will stick to their convictions about not being selfish like the other people of their caste? No, they will be just as terrible when pressed. Again, it was kind of interesting to have the book not fall into established heroic tropes, but at the same time I just kind of found it to be not fun and I didn't really care for any of the characters.

I didn't hate the book. The writing itself is pretty good and often feels cinematic, particularly in a chaotic scene in the middle that feels like a camera sweeping along to follow a new character every few minutes. Early on I struggled to keep the characters straight, especially when I started via audiobook, but when I switched to reading the ebook I was able to slow down a bit and sort things out better.

I could see this series going to interesting places as it continues, but I don't think I will be reading more to find out.

This is a well organized exploration of its topic, but even as someone who has only read a little bit about the history of racism and oppression in America, this book was still full of stories I have already heard (the schoolteacher's experiment of segregating her class by eye colour, Albert Einstein's allyship with the black community, etc).

Still though, this is obviously an important issue and the main thesis of the book is interesting: Racism is a byproduct of the caste system, not the other way around. The upper caste stays ahead of others by discrediting them, and discrediting people individually is difficult, so the easiest thing to do is to discredit an entire group based on a visible difference.

There are certainly a lot of interesting ideas in this book, however it's of a style that I very much do not connect with. Oftentimes it just feels like textbook excerpts on culture and politics, and I felt myself losing focus and struggling to follow the actual plot or main characters.

Just not for me unfortunately!

Did not finish.

I've taken the audiobook out of the library twice now and am only about half way through the book. I just don't think it's for me, I found the still of storytelling just to not be engaging, as it feels like it's 90% characters explaining things about the world to eachother rather than through things happening.

I might try to pick it up again someday as I really want to like Stephenson, but I have to let it go for now.

I've been hoping for Emily St John Mandel to impress me again after I really loved Station Eleven, but both this book and The Glass Hotel have been just totally fine.

Ultimately I just wasn't totally gripped by the story. I'll keep things vague, but I'm a sucker for this type of story and I like a lot of what's done with the setting and time period, however there are also a bunch of clumsy and trite elements to it. There's also a self-insert character for the author here that felt really awkward.

There are still a lot of neat ideas here and I just enjoy the way Mandel writes, so I'm glad to have read it.

If you're wondering why I'm reading Harry Potter fan fiction, please read my review of the previous book in this series.

I was pretty mixed on that first book, but found some things about it that I really enjoyed that I was hoping to carry into this one. It does sort of start out that way, but then a large portion of this story is devoted to this convoluted war games competition between Harry, Hermione, and Draco that basically wasn't enjoyable at all for me. And as I lost interest in the events if the book, it was harder to put up with how annoying most of the characters are.

I'm unsure whether I'll continue with this series or not. I'm still a strangely a bit compelled by it and it's a pretty easy and quick read (I actually listened to this via an audiobook/podcast that was made by fans and was mostly well done). I'll see what I think after a bit of time away from it.

This one started off very promising to me, and kind of fizzled out a bit further into it. I really like the structure of this book, it's a series of short stories told as vignettes from different characters, but all within the same world and timeline. (It's also a pandemic story, although a fantastical one, but that might be off-putting to some).

There are a few stories near the beginning that were incredibly engrossing. I'll try to keep it vague and it will sound silly, but one is about a euthanasia theme park and another is about a talking pig. These are complete stories, well told, and are actually quite heartwrenching.

I think I may try rereading this at some point, I listened to the audiobook and it's possible I just wasn't in the mindset to pay property attention to the latter parts of the book, but they just didn't hold my attention as much and by the end I was a bit unsatisfied. Still worth reading for the high points though.

This is an extremely well written and poignant story about a tough subject. This is a great book club pick, there will be a lot to discuss both technically and societally. This was the first Wagamese novel I've ever read, and definitely will not be the last.

** Minor spoilers for the structure of the story to follow **

I always find it fascinating when the conclusion of a book can recontextualize the entire story, especially when it's not a big mystery solved and the story already worked as it was. The middle section of this book, while certainly still a well told tale, felt slight and seemed like an odd story for Wagamese to tell, but by the time the book was over the realization of why it was told that way was very impactful.

From a technical perspective, the prose is really free-flowing and easy to read, and I love how it's divided into very short chapters, often 2-3 minutes long only. I was able to tear through this book and it always kept me wanting to just read over more chapter before putting it down.

I really love Parks & Rec and The Good Place, so I was curious to check out this book by the creator of those shows, Michael Schur. I've seen him in a few interviews too and he's always seemed like a genuinely nice and thoughtful person, on top of being funny.

And his voice certainly comes through in this book, especially since I listened to the audiobook which is narrated by him. In the intro he explains that this is a sort-of Philosophy 101 book based off his research when making The Good Place, and that's definitely accurate. He never gets into anything too deep, but he keeps things light and fun so that it is entertaining throughout.

He has a few personal anecdotes here and there, but I think I was hoping for a few more insights into his career and some of the shows he's worked on. That's probably more my fault for having expectations of this book that it never promised.

I'm not a diehard XKCD reader or anything, but it's a clever and fun comic strip so I was hoping for the same here. And that's kind of what this is, but it didn't really work for me for some reason. There are some fun bits, but a lot of it is just a bit too drawn out or one note for me.

I might have done myself a disservice listening to this via audiobook though, I believe the printed version includes a lot of comics and other illustrations.

I read my first Murakami novel, Norwegian Wood, probably 15 years ago and I absolutely loved it. I think it just captured a sort of uncertain adolescent perspective that really resonated with me as a young college kid at the time. I've since read more from him trying to chase that feeling again, but so far nothing has come even close.

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle was one that I've heard mentioned a lot as being a favorite of many people, so I was excited to check it out. Sadly, this is yet another of his that just doesn't work for me.

There is still some great stuff here. There's some quality to Murakami's writing, and Jay Rubin's translation work, that is very pleasing to me. It's a bit dreamlike, a bit of a steam of conscience, and it just flows in a way that I feel along for the ride. There are a few sections of this book where a character tells stories of his time in the second World War that are gripping and harrowing. There are some scenes of genuine emotion and confusion from the narrator that I found to be very effective.

But generally I just found myself lost and disinterested. Much of the narrative seems to be just on the border of reality, it plays out as if in a dream. The way Murakami writes about sex is awkward and off-putting. Characters behave in difficult to understand ways and it's hard to put any stake into their actions. I'm just not sure what to takeaway from this book.

I think I'll take a bit of a break from Murakami for a bit. Maybe I'll try to read Norwegian Wood again to see if it is actually as good as my memory of it.

I cannot think of another book I've read with such a passive protagonist and relatively unremarkable narrative that I've enjoyed as much as this.

And I think that mostly comes down to the prose. I really love books in which the writing style matches the themes of the story and sets a tone through which to experience it.

William Stoner is almost just an observer to most of the events throughout his life and the sort of vague, disconnected narration emphasises this. Conversations are often described rather than transcribed. Stoner's actions and decisions are, besides a few key moments, just things he is resigned to by circumstance. Certain characters act antagonisticly towards him while he, and the reader, barely see any evidence of why they would behave that way.

Though that leads to why this wasn't quite a home run for me. It feels “true to life” to not completely understand the actions of some of the other characters, and the same can be said for events that cause a disruption in Stoner's life and are then quickly moved on from, but that isn't the most satisfying story to read (though that could certainly be the intent of the author).

This was a great book club pick though because I can see from our Goodreads reviews that opinions of it are all over the place, haha.

Yes, this is Harry Potter fan-fiction. I was convinced to check this out after reading Brahm's excellent review on the full 2100+ page collection, but I didn't want to commit to that yet so this review is just for the first of six books this has been broken down into.

And I'm not sure what to think so far. Going into this, I thought this would be like an alt-history of Harry Potter's first year at Hogwarts if he was raised by kind, smart parents instead of the Dursleys, but there are a lot of changes to the story that seemingly have nothing to do with that. I don't think that's a bad thing, there are a lot of interesting takes on characters here, but it took me a bit to adjust my expectations.

A lot of the book, especially the early chapters, feel like just term papers with a thin wrapping of the Harry Potter setting and characters. Harry is barely a person, he's just a mouthpiece to spout off the major tenants of the scientific process. It smooths out a bit as the end of the book neared, but at no point does Harry, or any of the other kids for that matter, feel like eleven year old students.

But I kind of started to get into a groove once I accepted the book on its own terms. The fact that this is fan-fiction helped me to think of it as sort of experimental story telling within an established playground, and it seems like the author is leaning into a lot of the over-the-top characterization to get certain ideas across.

I'm enjoying a lot of the different takes on other characters as well (Quirrel, Draco, and Dumbledore to name a few) and the story, in so much as it exists so far, is setting up some interesting possibilities, so I am certainly going to read on, but I think I need a little break from it first.

I really enjoyed this, especially listening to the audiobook expertly narrated by Stephen Fry himself, but at the end of the day it's a relatively straightforward (and a tad too twee for my tastes) telling of a lot of well known myths. There isn't any analysis or unpacking of these stories until the short afterward in which Fry explicitly states that he just wanted to let the stories speak for themselves.

And this is all well and good, they are great stories and if you haven't heard them before you should definitely listen to this! I knew most of them quite well, I think about once every year or so since I was a kid I dive back into Greek myths, but there were a handful of them that I was less familiar with.

I see Fry also has sequels to this book about Heroes, Troy, and an upcoming one about the Odyssey, all of which I am looking forward to listening to at some point!

Lately I've been trying to read more short stories as I enjoy the experimental creativity and focus of a lot of them. Hyperion is like a bunch of short stories woven into a larger plot and I was completely into it (I guess I should read Canterbury Tales at some point too). I read this along with friends in a Slack group where we discussed each chapter individually as we finished them, and that was a great way to digest it.

Most of the stories here are extremely well realized, an intriguing idea with more and more information revealed at the right pace and playing upon your expectations based on the information you know outside of that story. A lot of neat storytelling tricks that worked really well for me.

My only really complaint is that while this book still works on it's own, it's clearly a big setup for the next book in the series, so the end was a bit anticlimactic even if it was still enjoyable.

I really like the way Towles writes. He's able to introduce a new character and within a page he or she is already fully formed in my mind. He does some neat tricks in this book to properly place you in time while constantly shifting character perspectives by having slight overlap in described events from one person to another.

I think I prefer the last book of his that I read, A Gentleman in Moscow, but this one is great as well. It meanders a bit here and there, and is perhaps a bit overlong, but that also just adds to the Odysseyian wandering feel of the whole thing and takes the story in places I did not expect.

Just like the more recent Ted Chiang short story collection I read recently, Exhalation, this is a mix of beautifully told stories with scientific/philosophical leanings (Tower of Babylon, Story of Your Life, Hell is the Absence of God) and some other stories that feel like term papers with a bit of a narrative wrapping (Understand, Division by Zero, Seventy-Two Letters).

I think it's totally worth reading for the former stories, and the latter aren't bad either, just can become tedious or hard to follow at times.

There are some interesting concepts here and the subject matter is important, but this book just didn't really work for me. I'm not sure if listening to this as an audiobook affected my enjoyment, but I found the writing to be mostly unengaging (except for some of the supernatural stuff) and the characters felt underdeveloped.

I was also made uncomfortable by the depictions of sexual violence, which obviously is the intent and that's fine, but what bothered me more is that since that is an ever-present aspect of the book, whenever there is a non-violent sexual description, I was immediately put off and since they are all homosexual encounters it made me feel a sort of weird guilt as well for feeling that way.

The demonic presence that threads throughout the story is pretty effectively unnerving though, and the sort-of fourth wall breaking interstitials are something I really like in theory, but didn't quite fit into the story as much as I would have liked.

This seems like it's close to something that could have been great and I can understand the high reviews for it, but as it is I wouldn't personally recommend it.

This book was totally fine. I'm a sucker for this kind of premise, but the plotting feels like the very first ideas for story beats that you would obviously come up with given such a premise. It's not bad, it's just not very exciting and a bit too cute/precious.

It was still engaging enough though, the writing mostly flows well and is easy to read, and the audiobook is well narrated by the actress Carey Mulligan. It was a good breezy read between other books, even if it feels a bit like a flash-in-the-pan beach-book-club pick (nothing wrong with that though I guess, I really liked The Help too).

** Mild Spoilers Below **

The decision to jump into a consciousness without any related memories and having to make sense of your new reality on the fly is fun... the first couple times. It feels like a huge portion of the book is just the main character trying to reasonably pass as her new self and it just isn't that interesting a lot of the time and is just a predictable way to hit us with a shocking revelation. However I did like how it was used in the conversation with Molly.

Anecdotally, this seems to be a lot of people's favorite of the first three books, if not of the entire series. Rereading them now it's definitely my least favorite of the three so far (though still great).

It feels like there's only a little bit of information dolled out throughout the first three quarters of the book, so then when the climax happens there are pages and pages of exposition just for it to make sense. It's wild!

It's still fun though and some great characters are introduced. Dot's response when I asked for her review: “Good job for making this book”.

I enjoyed this quite a bit, but oftentimes I find myself struggling to place everything together and follow along, though there are certainly moments where specific things fall into place. I'm not sure if that's all by design, or if listening to it as an audiobook caused me to miss things, or if I just don't think good.

It's been awhile since I've read Foundation by Isaac Asimov, but the scale and subject of this story very much reminded me of it. I didn't really connect strongly to any characters, but there are so many fascination ideas and really cool showy moments that had me captivated.

I'm not too much of a series reader, so I'm not going to get to the sequels right away, but I'll definitely queue them up to see where things go from here.

Marked as Did Not Finish

I picked three short stories by HP Lovecraft to read in book club this week, so I took those ebook out from the library thinking I would start with at least those stories and read maybe more.

I made it through The Shadow Over Innsmouth and The Call of Cthulhu, and I started The Dunwich Horror, but early into that one I gave up.

I feel similar about reading this as I do with something like Tolkien. I respect the influence of the work and I think the broad stories/worlds and some specific moments are great, but I just can't get into the writing.

This is all aside from Lovecraft himself being a garbage person that certainly comes through in at least the casual racism throughout these stories, though I actually found it interesting to think about whether certain tropes that are prevalent throughout horror (fear of the other/the unknown being the big one) is inherently racist, or if just combining that with this writer makes it feel worse (though there often is clear racist terminology used in the writing, though not always directed at the monsters).

Anyways, glad I tried this out even if it's not for me.

I ended up not connecting with this book as much as I expected to. I'm not sure if I just wasn't in the mood for it, but I found the multi-generational slice-of-life storytelling to be a bit of a drag and I was never too endeared with any of the characters. I found myself searching for themes to connect disparate parts of the story together and often came up empty.

However, Eugenides is a gifted wordsmith (and Kristoffer Tabori does great work bringing the words to life in the audiobook) and so I still enjoyed much of my time reading this.

I'm still re-reading through these books with my daughter, Dot, almost every night.

This book is still great, but just isn't quite as “magical” as the first book for me (pardon the pun). Gilderoy Lockhart though is a great comic relief character and Dot loved him too.

I asked Dot if she thought this book or the first one was better. She said she looked them both the same amount. Her review of The Chamber of Secrets: “It's good and I liked it.”