Rob
Book 3 of Wool.
Fine for what it is, but I was a bit disappointed in it as a volume. From what I'd heard from others, volume 2 was supposedly a bit slow but volume 3 was back on the express train. But this one was still mostly transitory, and just as it gets interesting, it's over. Taken as part of the larger story, it's pretty solid, but it can't stand on its own the way volume 1 could.
Not bad. The second entry in Hugh Howey's self-published Wool series. I've heard it described as the weakest of the original five novellas, and I agree that it isn't as good as the first, but I thought it was solid.
Proper Gauge moves the story along, as the Silo's mayor travels deep down into the Silo to meet with someone, and explores the strata of the Silo as she goes. The story is fine; it's a lot of space, though – a hair under 80 pages – for what it is.
I'm told this volume sets up the remainder, and I can see how that might be. Certainly worth continuing, but not as arresting as volume 1.
Fascinating and definitely worth reading.
I would not like to review this book without talking a bit about the context in which it comes to exist, coming as it does at the forefront of a possible shift in what we consider to be the business of publishing, both for that reason alone and because it's important to understand how it's structured. If you are only interested in a review of the content contained in it, you will probably want to skip to the last paragraphs.
Within the last few years, self-publishing your work as a writer has become possible without the expense of a vanity press; in the much more recent past, the possibility has begun to emerge that it might shed its stigma as well. Wool is among the first titles entirely self-published in ebook form to achieve widespread recognition as a product of quality. Its author, Hugh Howey, has been fairly transparent about the process, which has provided an interesting opportunity to view what can be an opaque process. Howey commented earlier that his book has been on multiple ebook stores in the past, but it is currently exclusive to Amazon and the Kindle. He's not averse to tinkering and has said it may end up elsewhere again as he experiments to see what works out best for an author. He's also recently signed an agreement with a traditional publisher – Simon and Schuster, I think – and while I don't love the idea that a book can only gain legitimacy if a publisher deems it worthy, it's good for Howey and I'm glad for him.
First, let me dismiss a misgiving you may have: Wool does not suffer in the editing department as a function of its DIY roots. Howey has been clear from the outset that he considers good editing critical in a venture like this, and has not skimped. He says, and I agree, that poor writing, grammar, and spelling errors are a real threat to self-published ebooks.
Lastly, a note about the structure. This first volume, according to its standalone ebook listing, weighs in at about 56 pages and is titled “Holston.” It's a stretch to even call it a novella; it's closer to a short story, albeit one with several chapters. I'm reading in the omnibus format that collects all five of the Wool ebooks; that one comes out to about 550 pages. Technically, the series is called the Silo series, and there have been a few ebooks published after; these five together seem to be demarcated as “Wool.” I debated whether to review the omnibus as one volume or five and eventually decided to go with five. Although the first volume is shorter than most, the full length of Wool averages to about 110 pages per volume, a reasonable length for a novella, and since the first one is so short, some or all of the others are presumably above that average. I also wouldn't like to imagine that length is a necessary component of status as a “book”; some very well-regarded classics are quite short – Hemingway, Kafka, and so on. I also might decide to stop reading partway through if I don't feel the quality is consistent. I would certainly regard the Great Book of Amber as a collection of ten discrete books.
On to the content. I liked this quite a bit. It concerns Holston, a sheriff and a member of a future society living inside a silo. No one is permitted outside, which is an uninhabitable wasteland for unknown reasons stretching back generations, visible on monitors by way of cameras outside. Life inside the silo is carefully rationed, down to who is permitted to have children. Once in a while, someone will commit the gravest possible offense: they will express a desire to go outside. The punishment is swift: they get their wish.
This was a really effective story and I suggest it for anyone.
Thank god this is over. The first forty-five percent is impenetrable and the remainder is not worth penetrating. I could barely make myself slog through it, and at under 200 pages that's quite a feat. I have no idea why this is considered a classic.
The prose is as tortured as they come. Reading it is like listening to Robin Williams – every time you latch on to one thought, Pynchon careens off in another direction – but less entertaining. It bears some resemblance to the also-bizarre but less-terrible Orion, You Came And You Took All My Marbles by Kira Henehan, which was a strange read but one I enjoyed well enough. That was her debut, and if you enjoyed this one I think you may also enjoy the Henehan. I would not be surprised to see Henehan cite Pynchon as an influence.
I hesitate to even describe the plot, thin as it is. It concerns Oedipa Maas, named co-executor of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, and in the process of executing that duty she begins to discover and investigate a possible long-running conspiracy. Kind of. It hardly merits the name. Along the way Oedipa and the other characters will say and do a great many things that don't make any goddamned sense.
Recommended if you hate yourself. It's even worse than all the people writing unbelievably pretentious reviews about it trying to be cutesy.
A book that tries too hard.
I'm not talking about it being a Cancer Book, although it is that, and an author's choice to write a Cancer Book always invites the question of whether it's a cheap attempt at award-whoring. I'm not prepared to cast that particular aspersion at The Fault In Our Stars, although it's always in the back of my mind with a work like this. Unfortunately, it falls down in other ways.
Fault is the story of Hazel, a cancer patient. Hazel was not expected to be alive at this juncture, but thanks to an entirely fictional miracle drug known as Phalanxifor, she's still alive. She's not cured, she still has cancer, she just isn't dead. Further details might just spoil the plot, so I'll omit them.
The title is taken from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, excerpted below:
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow worldLike a Colossus, and we petty menWalk under his huge legs and peep aboutTo find ourselves dishonourable graves.Men at some time are masters of their fates:The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,But in ourselves, that we are underlings.Brutus and Caesar: what should be in that ‘Caesar'?Why should that name be sounded more than yours?Write them together, yours is as fair a name;Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with ‘em,Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caesar.
(Thanks for the reference, MIT.)
Initially I didn't make the connection, because the amount of actual Shakespearean language I've retained at any one time is vanishingly small, and I interpreted the title completely differently. I liked the book more when I just had the title and my misinterpretation to base my opinion on.
I had great hopes for the book, but almost immediately it disappointed me. With apologies to Ed Byrne: Ever had a friend tell a story culminating in his witty, conversation-ending one-liner? It's bullshit, right? There's no way he came up with that on the spot. Green's characters are like that. His protagonist is a 16-year old girl, but she's the wittiest 16-year old this side of Rory Gilmore. She's like your hypothetical friend. It's bullshit. It sounds false to my ear and takes me completely of the read.
Green's concepts about video gaming are of the same bent that gave us 1995's Hackers: a failed attempt by an outsider to talk as though he understands the subject matter. It's as phony as Hazel's snappy patter.
Green plays fast-and-loose with his central concept as well. As he freely acknowledges in his afterword, he solicited medical consultation, and then ignored it when it suited him.
It's not all bad. When Green isn't overindulging himself, some of the prose is natural and wonderful. I still don't think getting to those bits is worth reading the rest of it. Two stars for the bits of good prose and for not sugarcoating mortality. It certainly did not deserve to be Time's #1 fiction book of 2012. I thought Lev Grossman had better taste than that.
Nota bene: This is nominally a “young adult” book. I cannot for the life of me see why, unless we are subscribing to the apparently-common but nonsensical definition of “young adult” literature as being literature about young adults, a worthless category that does not merit recogniition. To be “young adult” is not a license to be a bit shit.
In a word, horrifying.
This was a rare nonfiction read for me, brought to my attention as an Amazon.com editor's pick. It pains me to tick the “nonfiction” box on my Goodreads shelf, and so acknowledge that this really happened to someone – in fact, to a lot of someones. And it continues to happen to more of them, and most of them don't get out.
The basics: This is a memoir by Jenna Miscavige Hill, about her upbringing in the Church of Scientology and her escape from it. You may recognize the name Miscavige; it is also the surname of David Miscavige, the current head of Scientology. Hill is his niece. I imagine that by now anyone reading this book is aware of Scientology, but just in case: Scientology is nominally a religion, founded by science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. It's drawn widespread criticism for its treatment of members and their associates, widespread derision for some of its claims, and has developed a reputation for litigious suppression of its critics. It also claims many prominent adherents, most famously Tom Cruise. I suspect that the Scientology experience for people like Cruise differs dramatically from the experience for the average member.
There are several important facts to keep in mind when reading this book. First, as Miscavige's niece, Hill is sheltered from the worst of what less connected members might have to endure. Second, as Miscavige's niece, she is inescapably a person of interest to the church, and an average member is likely subject to far less scrutiny and micromanagement. Third, Hill was a member of the “Sea Org,” an organization inside the church, life within which is apparently rather different from so-called “public membership.”
As for recommendation for or against reading it, I can't make one, as it will be dependent on your interest in the subject matter. For what it is I enjoyed it, if one can be said to enjoy something like this, and I think as first authorships go it's well-written, or else well-edited. For me it was a fascinating look inside the workings of a highly secretive organization with a reputation for comic book levels of villainy.
Tremendous.
This was a reread, sort of. It was assigned reading in high school courtesy of a teacher I appreciated a good deal at the time and have come to appreciate more as I've grown older. (The same teacher also introduced me to Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle.) I didn't appreciate Canticle at the time, though, and I didn't really understand it at all. I decided to give it a reread again when it was featured in the Something Awful Book Club, and I'm glad I did. It has been considered a classic for years, published in the early '60s and honored with a Hugo award, and is one of that rare breed of at least nominally science fiction novels that Serious People deign to deem “literature.”
It's hard to know what to write about Canticle to convey useful information without impinging on the reader's experience. I don't want to talk too much about themes, because in this case I think it's important for new readers to draw them out themselves. It concerns three ages, all of them well after what the characters know as the “Flame Deluge”: nuclear apocalypse. Knowledge itself is widely reviled in most corners of the world, blamed for the destruction of the world, and anarchy is widespread. Those bringing order are more concerned with force and power. In a few corners, however, knowledge – or more commonly, data, understood poorly or not at all – is kept alive by monks who study it diligently and seek to keep it safe.
Canticle is a marvel. Eloquently and passionately written, thought-provoking and disquieting, to me at least it offered more questions than answers. I'm glad to have this one on my shelf.
Much like all the other Vorkosigan books, which is to say fun sci-fi pulp. Bujold is, as always, great at throwing out an insane amount of chaos upfront and managing to wrap it all up by the end. Didn't care for the beginning so much; it felt sloppily done as-is, and I'd have preferred to see the events leading up to it rather than beginning in medias res. It matters little for the remainder of the book, which was satisfying.
Minor annoyance: a lot of authors seem to feel obliged to implement faux-Japan at some point in their careers and this is Bujold's turn. Fortunately it's limited to modes of address (-san, -sama, -sensei) and doesn't attempt to mimic Japanese culture and so the annoyance remains minor, although one wonders why the author bothers as it has no bearing whatsoever on anything else including the planet's culture.
I'm going to be including a bit of discussion about The Magicians, the predecessor to this book, during this review. I am assuming that anyone reading the sequel has read the first volume, such that that discussion will not constitute spoilers for anyone.
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Not sure I know what I think of this one. It's the followup to the widely acclaimed (but polarizing) The Magicians, which to me was an exercise in genre subversion. I thought the first book did a lot of interesting things, but I also found it depressing.
Before I go on, I should add that I probably don't have the appropriate literary grounding and my opinions should likely be disregarded. I am reliably informed that The Magician King is designed to directly parallel The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C.S. Lewis' third Narnia book, which I haven't read as I didn't like the first one as a kid. So it's quite possible that I'm missing important allusions that would make it more akin to the first book.
The Magician King takes place some time after the end of The Magicians, with Quentin and his friends ruling over Fillory. It's split into two different perspectives: Quentin's, in the present, and Julia's, in a retelling of how she learned to do magic without attending Brakebills. Both have their high points; Julia's was the more interesting to me for much of the book.
Magicians seemed determined to hammer home the idea that life isn't a fairy tale and things aren't always fair and don't always work out well. Some of that tone is left in King, but a number of the sharp edges have been sanded off.
Immediately after reading it, I felt I “enjoyed” The Magician King more than its predecessor – I found The Magicians quite depressing – but that The Magicians was the book that did more interesting things. After sleeping on it, I'm not sure that's fair, as King still does plenty of heavy lifting; it's probably impossible for it to make as strong an impression as the first book, since its assault on the genre is already known.
The Book of Lost Things looks like a lot of things it isn't, but it is about those things.
I know that's a strange statement. The Book of Lost Things reads a lot like a children's book, and it reads a lot like a fairy tale, but it isn't really either. It concerns itself with the story of David, a young boy whose mother passes away before the story has begun. Struggling to come to terms with the loss and life as it continues on without her, he finds himself in a fairytale world – not a Disney fairytale world, but a darker, Grimm-esque one.
Without wanting to spoil anything for a new reader, the Book of Lost Things borrows liberally from traditional fairy tales, and assembles a new story using them as ingredients. Readable purely on a narrative level, there is a more complex layer underneath, one that – at least in the Kindle edition that I read – is explored in a lengthy afterword, including an interview with the author, as well as a rundown of the stories and themes from which Connolly borrows, written mostly by Connolly himself.
A smart book, smarter than I think it might get credit for. The afterword is worth reading in full.
Let's get this out of the way upfront: this book isn't going to be to everyone's taste, and that's okay. Prodigal Summer is three intertwining stories in one, with three primary characters. Chapters are told from each of their perspectives, more or less alternately; they all take place in the same area and sometimes affect each other, but interactions between stories are strictly on the fringes.
This is not a book with a complex narrative. It concerns rural Zebulon County, which according to Wikipedia doesn't actually exist – that's okay, it's a stand-in for rural farming counties all over – and families who live in it, and their relationships with nature and with each other. The three perspectives belong to Deanna, a wildlife-loving park steward; Lusa, a city girl who married into a farming family before the narrative opens; and Garnett, a cantankerous old man in an ongoing row with his neighbor. My favorite was Lusa, my least favorite Deanna; I'm sorry to say my interest in Deanna never did grow much. The others I enjoyed steadily.
It's so difficult to know where to begin describing Prodigal Summer. It's about families, writ small, and ecology, writ large. The stories are simple, but affecting. The prose is thoroughly Kingsolver, richly written; one earlier reviewer described it as “a book to feel,” and I think that's a perfect description. The cover art is perfectly suited: this is a novel about abundant, exuberant life.
I wanted to like this one more than I did. I had never heard of the author until a friend recommended him; I then found his name popping up a lot as I read this collection. Saunders is a current literary darling, specializing in short stories, and has been generally very well-received.
Tenth of December is a collection of ten short stories. Length varies dramatically, from a couple of pages to much longer. Saunders has been praised for his style; initially I took it to be a conceit of one of his characters, but it's pretty consistent across the board. I liked it more when I thought it was character specific. As the pages went on it began to grow stale.
Saunders' wit is supposedly his trademark. The three people who eventually recommended him to me all found him funny; I rarely did. I compare him to David Sedaris. Many people think David Sedaris is hilarious; I have a hard time getting past the dysfunction, so instead of making me laugh, Sedaris bums me out. I think something similar might be at work here. I frequently found Saunders depressing, and there wasn't an adequate payoff to make the experience feel worth it. Not that I didn't like any of them; a few were very good. By and large, though, I didn't enjoy most of my time with Saunders.
Favorite stories from this collection: Escape From Spiderhead, Tenth of December
Least favorites: Puppy, The Semplica Girl Diaries
The follow-up to The Half-Made World, set in the same reality but not about the same characters, though a few do return in bit parts.
Enjoyed it a lot at the beginning, less so for a stretch in the middle, and quite a lot again after that. The best things about it are the world and the characters, both of which feel alive. Most obviously, the principal conceit of the book is that it purports to be the memoir of Harry Ransom, inventor, visionary, and salesman and sometimes-genius, and is therefore presented in first-person. Moreover, it is written in segments, mailed to fictional newsman Elmer Merrial Carson, who does not entirely credit Ransom's writings. Both Ransom and Carson feel like real people with real personalities, though Carson appears only occasionally. Gilman's world is also alive, at least in the enclaves where the plot brings us. Jasper City feels most real of all.
I loved HMW, but I felt it petered out toward the end, in need of editing and direction. RRC's aimless period is in the middle and is thankfully brief; the end, if anything, wraps up awfully fast.
Worth reading if you enjoyed the world of HMW.
This is the second trade paperback for Atomic Robo, a wonderful comic about a robot designed and built by Nikola Tesla. I'm not much of a comics reader and even less of a comics buyer, but this series won me over with one of its Free Comic Book Day releases and I'm slowly working my way through the TPBs. This one is entirely stories set in World War II, with Robo working for the Allies, and is consequently a bit darker and less whimsical.
I enjoyed it, but the stories didnt seem to be as well-constructed, not that they were anything complicated in the first TPB. But it feels a bit slapdash – for example, you're introduced to characters as if you're supposed to already know who they are, and while you can put two and two together easily, it doesn't feel elegantly done at all. They're fun characters, though, especially the Scottish commando. Weirdly, Robo feels borderline incompetent in this installment, constantly getting himself into trouble.
There are some extra quickie stories in the back, but they're even more unplotted. A few moments of fun but those bits are otherwise forgettable.
Despite the problems, it's still Atomic Robo and I still enjoyed it quite a bit. Hopefully #3 will be a bit more cohesive.
Frequently amazing, powerfully written, and constrained from brilliance.
This is a fictional work with a (very small) amount of magic, and is not formally set on Earth, but it is essentially the Spanish reconquista recast. The cast is large, but it is centrally concerned with two strong – but not ruling – figures from the Asharite and Jaddite faiths and civilizations, their shifting loyalties, the rulers they serve, their friendships. Both of those religions, and a third, the Kindath, are pretty clearly representative of real-world religions.
I enjoyed the book very much and I loved most of the characters, but it suffers from some common writing complaints, mostly to do with the plot being too “pat.” The warriors are too good; some of the characters too noble; certain death too frequently averted; everything works out a little too perfectly most of the time. It feels like an airbrushed history.
As a top-flight, grade-A novel, it leaves a bit too much to be desired. As a B-rate one, it blows most of the competition out of the water.
Not bad; not as good as I'd hoped.
This was technically a reread; I read it for the first time in freshman English in high school, over a decade ago. Like many of you I was conscious only sporadically during that class, and I didn't remember it very well.
I decided to reread it after reading The Poisonwood Bible, also by Kingsolver, and it didn't do as much for me as that one did. It's... I don't want to say lower-stakes, but it lacks the gravitas lent by the Congo crisis, and it does not share the same cynicism. The opposite is true, in fact – The Bean Trees is a mostly optimistic book, bullish on shared humanity and community, not that it lacks conflict or trouble entirely. It concerns a girl from a backwater town who drives west to find her place with a little girl she is unceremoniously given along the way, and the people she meets when she does.
This one isn't a waste of time by any means, but it isn't the heavy, crushing experience of The Poisonwood Bible. Worth a look all the same.
Really enjoyed this, which I suppose isn't surprising since it was apparently very well-received upon release. I hadn't heard any of the good press, and hadn't heard of the book itself until a few days ago. I'm going to apologize in advance for sounding like I'm whoring for blurbs on the book jacket.
The prose is, for lack of a better word, dreamlike. Which I know is vague and generally unhelpful, but I'm not sure how else to describe it. For me it created distinct visualizations, which not all that many books do well. The story scratches my Alice-In-Wonderland itch, but is not the same kind of story, maybe since the protagonists know full well what is going on. Mostly the ones in the dark about the general setup, if not the details, are the extras, but the titular Circus is wondrous all the same. The story is concerned principally with the students of two magicians engaged in a contest, but the venue was front and center for me.
The main criticism I've seen is about the characterization of the protagonists. I can understand the complaint, but I can't say it bothered me. The Circus was the main attraction for me and I just didn't mind so much. What the two main characters lack in depth is more than made up for, to my mind, by the broad and colorful main cast.
Definitely recommended.
