Rob
Intense and brutal and hits way too close to home for comfort, which is, in part, the point. The near-future dystopia feels VERY near these days, and while technically this is speculative fiction, it's barely speculative and barely fiction. There's a little something extra to it beginning in 2024, the current year, but it was written in 1993 and obviously RL 2024 isn't where book 2024 is. But fast-forward 20 or 30 years, and maybe?
This is a tough read, and I don't know if I can say I "enjoyed" it, but it's certainly well-executed, believable, and upsetting. I've read a bunch of reviews trying to see not only what others thought but also whether I had missed key takeaways -- I don't think I did -- and I am struck by the things a lot of the negative reviews are complaining about. Some of then don't like "Earthseed," which is protagonist Lauren's invented religion based around change. I saw one person complaining that it was unbelievable because the police -- and the book starts in LA, so it would be the LAPD! -- are depicted as unhelpful and corrupt. A couple people didn't like the prose; people are entitled to their opinions, but I thought it was perfectly fine.
An early takeaway for me was preparing for impending disaster instead of pretending it won't happen, but Butler wrote this to envision the near-future based on the continuation of contemporary trends. So I think a better takeaway more accurate to her perspective is to effect change now to avoid this bleak future. I wish I were more optimistic about that.
I liked the broad outlines of this one, but I have a number of gripes. Most immediately, it's overwritten, in that "trying too hard" way some authors have of trying to be too clever in their prose. It takes me out of the story, but either it got better as it went on, or I stopped caring as much about it. Probably more importantly, it was too predictable by half, and I anticipated basically every major story beat.
I think the book is at its best in its first act or two, when everything is pleasantly unsettling and before more details are revealed. Although I could still predict where we were going, the horror — like all horror — is much more effective when exactly what's happening isn't spelled out for you.
Not good, although I got through it quickly, and I've read worse; I'm vacillating on one star versus two. I'm pretty disappointed in it on basically all levels. It feels like the author wanted to convey a very specific destination and gracelessly composed a simplistic path to get there. The basic premise — the main character exploring alternate versions of her life — is okay, but the specifics are uninspired and poorly thought out.
Nora, the main character, is good at everything. Not always in the same life, but in whatever life she's in, whatever she decided to do, she's world-class. It's not enough for her to be a good swimmer, she has to medal at the Olympics. It's not enough that she has a career in academic philosophy, she has to be a lecturer at Cambridge. It's not enough for her to be in a band, she has to be selling out arenas.
The central conceit doesn't really work as executed. The author makes an attempt at explaining why it's the way it is, but it's very flimsy and doesn't stand up.
All this is rendered in mediocre prose, and I guess the author wants to show off his bona fides; there's a Sylvia Plath quote before it gets started, because of course there is, and philosophers are not just named, but quoted directly.
The editor was asleep at the wheel, too. I'm pretty sure I found a place where the dialogue, in a back-and-forth where speakers aren't explicitly identified, doesn't actually make sense and the speaking order can't be right.
It has a nice moment here and there, but this ain't it, chief. I'm donating this one to the library.
EDIT: Screw it, I'm downgrading to one star. I just made myself mad remembering how the author made a whole big deal in Nora's penultimate life about how the really important thing is love, and then never revisited that concept in the wrapping-up whirlwind tour of Nora finally making good in her root life. This thing is a mess.
I'm biased, this is a friend's book, but I'd have rated it highly regardless. Does a good job of communicating the world in medias res — I discovered tonight that I have been incorrectly writing “media” for years — and I quite like the world and would love to read more books in it. Although the conclusion may preclude ones with the same groups and characters. Be warned there are some pretty graphic sex scenes, definitely not one for younger readers.
Addison is really great. This is a direct follow-up to the last book, Witness For The Dead, with the same protagonist. I liked this more than that one, but not as much as The Goblin Emperor. I think part of why I liked it more than Witness is that I had a better idea of what I was getting into, whereas I thought Witness would be closer than it was to Goblin Emperor. The story doesn't have a lot of twists and turns, though, it's pretty straightforward.
Novella, VERY short at only 112 pages. Good stuff, up to the standards of the mainline trilogy. I'd definitely read the mainline books first; there's a lot of culture that, while explained briefly, you'd be better off understanding from them. It's also a prequel to those books, so you'll see a handful of the same characters earlier in their lives.
This is a re-read for me, inspired by the attempts to ban it in parts of the country, but this is my first time revisiting it since junior high. I'm well-educated on the Holocaust, but even on a re-read, parts of it are shocking. As a book, it's very personal and a bit unfocused, partly because of Spiegelman's approach; it's as much or more about his relationship with his rambling father as it is about the Holocaust, and largely assumes that you already know at least the broad historical outlines. 100% worth a read – I think highly enough of it to read it again – but not exactly where you'd want to start as your first history. Except, I guess, that for many it may be more accessible, due to the brief length and the graphic novel format.
Obviously I don't remember my first read in all that much detail; I was surprised that Vladek's story doesn't get to Auschwitz until the end, so there isn't much about it. I think the sequel dealt with it. It would have to, given where the first book ends, I just don't remember. I'll probably re-read that soon as well.
I want to like this more than I do. It's not bad, but it's just not very focused. Parts are funny, and it gets points for honest introspection, but the model of loosely connected serious essays and listicles and humorous essays is never really terrible coherent, and this is no exception. A lot, though not all, of the humor is the kind you'll see coming from a mile away. It's perfectly fine, but not a standout.
This is by far the most approachable book on formal ethics I've ever seen. While Schur's writing occasionally gets a little too cute, he does a really good job — I assume, not being a philosophy expert — laying out the major schools of thought and their key players and their strengths and weaknesses. Specifically, he covers virtue ethics, consequential ism, and deontology, and highlights a few related schools of thought like existentialism and contractualism and objectivism. (He doesn't like objectivism very much, which makes me think we'd get along okay.)
What I would have liked is a bit of advice on how to choose what to apply to what situations, but I guess a groundbreaking unified ethical theory might be asking a bit much.
The epitome of “okay.” It's not that this is worse than the first book; it's perfectly competent. In fact, I assumed we were going to get Bujold Hogwarts, and I'm pleased that she chose to skip that particular trope.
I thought the first book was thin but maybe setting up some really good stories. But the second has no more luster than the first. It's adequate, but life's too short to read adequate books.
Solid if not especially innovative. I love Bujold's Vorkosigan books dearly, and was kind of hoping for the same kind of madcap adventure, but it was not to be. This book is largely setup, though, so maybe there will be more of that once the series gets rolling. Quick read as it's only novella length.
Doesn't really hit any of the marks it's aiming for. Hyper-defensive about criticism, but doesn't really “defend” the genre; it's more of a history. Contains anecdotes the author should be embarrassed by, but instead brags about. Does touch a bit on the Mexican ska scene toward the end, which is neat, but even then it's pretty light. Might have been nice to explore other countries a little too.
Still thinking this over, not quite sure what I think of it. This rating and review might change.
Stylistically and thematically, pretty recognizable as Vonnegut despite being pretty early in his career. I don't quite know what else to say about it except that it's pretty bleak. I wasn't as into this as some of his later work.
This was educational and enjoyable, though it took me a while to get through. It's very readable, but the sheer quantity of information makes it dense.
I learned a lot here. One thing I learned is that I don't want to be a recording engineer. But I also learned a lot not only about miking techniques, which the bulk of the book is concerned with, but also about instruments in general, including ones that I play and thought I knew well.
The first section is about general microphone theory, miking techniques, models, etc. The second section has specific advice for miking a wide variety of instruments, including one or two I've never heard of, and I've been playing music for over thirty years. The third section is interviews with very famous recording engineers — like, if you know much about the field, you'll know a lot of these names. I barely know it at all and even I know some of them.
I didn't expect to be into the interviews, but I was. There's an array of perspectives, from people who like to use a ton of mics and record everything and process the hell out of the sound to people who really just want to set up a few mics and call it a day.
One MAJOR takeaway for me: I listen to quite a bit of punk, the scene for which has a thing for authenticity and tends to distrust post-processing. But really, there's no such thing as a “true” studio sound. Absolutely every record's sound reflects deliberate choices in how it was recorded; you have to make those choices one way or another, and your choice will change the sound from the way it would sound if you'd made a different choice.
While I rated this highly, I can only recommend it if you're interested in the nitty-gritty of the topic. It's quite good, but a general-interest book it is not.
I was assigned many of the classics in high school, but never this one, and had never read it until now. I've been reading 600 to 900 page books lately, and at 150 pages or so, this went shockingly fast.
Mixed feelings on it. I liked it more in the last few pages than I did the rest of the time I spent reading it. The prose actively impeded my understanding at more than one point, either through the age of the language or Fitzgerald's personal style.
I decided to read it after all this time because of the praise for the writing in Defector's “Defector Reads A Book” feature. Mostly I felt the opposite in terms of the moment-to-moment prose, which I didn't think was anything to write home about.
But what Fitzgerald describes, he really captures. The sad hollowness underlying Gatsby's celebrated parties and, really, everything he does. The idealized past, always just out of reach.
The last page is by far the best in the entire book. No wonder it's the only one routinely quoted.
I picked this up because I like Justin Fenton's work and wanted to support him, and because I wanted a bit more understanding of the Gun Trace Task Force scandal, which was legendary in Baltimore. One of the worst police corruption scandals to come to light that I'm aware of.
I already knew the rough outlines of the scandal, but this book gave me a more nuanced understanding — the dirty cops are dirty, sure, but there's a broader picture to be had. Senior leadership doesn't have to be dirty themselves for this to happen. The right incentives, lax supervision, etc. can create an environment for this kind of misconduct.
I was a bit surprised that the book ended when it did, around 81% on my Kindle. The rest is endnotes, acknowledgments, and so on. The book was in the weeds of the investigation and then ended almost abruptly. I thought there would be a bit more detail on the aftermath, and on the death of Sean Suiter, but I guess there are too many unknowns there.
I have pretty mixed feelings about this one. It's built on an incredible idea, but the novella format isn't long enough to do it justice, and the execution is merely okay.
The setup is very strong. All of the Narnia and Alice in Wonderland type stories, those are all true and happened to different people in different worlds. (The nature of the worlds varies and can be extremely dark and not necessarily what you might think of as desirable, but they are all appealing to the personalities of the people who stumble into them.) But most people don't get to stay in their Wonderland, and they end up back in the “normal” world, wanting nothing more than to get back.
So what happens to you if you're a former Wonderlander and now you're back in this lame world, unable to return to the much better place in which you sojourned? Well, it's pretty hard to cope, and their families can't understand and think they've gone mad, so they get sent to, ostensibly, a school to help them get past their delusions. But actually all the students are former Wonderlanders, and the people who run it know they aren't delusional. A little over a third in, the story takes another, darker turn.
Neat premise, right? I absolutely love the kind of stories that make up the building blocks of this one – I loved Neverwhere, for example – and this was recommended to me on that basis. But it's not one of those stories, it's a meta-story about those stories. Unfortunately, there isn't all that much meat there past the premise.
The protagonist, Nancy, is a returnee from a world that just... doesn't offer much of interest to most people, I don't think. It's a bit difficult to relate to her in that way – why would she want to go back there so badly? But you can accept that she does and move on. Nancy's friends tend to be the other misfits, all of whom are a little too cool for school and a little too quick with the repartee. The ones who aren't Nancy's friends are pretty one-dimensional, because there's not enough time for any real character development. I think I can remember one of their names.
After the first third, the “main” plot begins, but it's over before it starts and there's never all that much mystery. You'll figure out a bunch of what's going on pretty quickly, and what you don't the characters will, and then you're at the climax, which goes awfully quickly and with minimal drama, and then you're at the end. The ending is rather too pat as well, and while I don't want to spoil anything, it's not well-supported by the text.
I debated between two and three stars, and for now I've settled on two, although I might change my mind and edit it back up later. If three stars is “I liked it” and two stars is “I didn't like it,” well, for once neither feels quite right. I liked the idea and I wish I liked the end result a bit more. But it's not bad, just... it's a pity it doesn't build more out of the building blocks it has. It's entertaining enough, but the wasted potential is a shame.