Jeremy Lukens
Andre Dubus III's novel is a powerful story of shame, redemption, and how traumatic events affect our lives. Danny wasn't too smart or mentally balanced, and one day he murdered his wife in a jealous rage. Years after being paroled, as he's dying of cancer, he decides to seek out his estranged daughter to seek forgiveness and try to set things right the best he can.
The novel tells the story from the perspectives of Daniel, his daughter Susan, and his mother-in-law Lois. Each has a reason to hate Daniel and has had his or her life scarred by the violent act. Like THE HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG, Dubus does a great job of creating an emotionally charged story and making you empathize with some people who have all done some pretty bad things. I think I liked SAND AND FOG better, but this is great storytelling.
If you're into small towns, moral quandaries, and Irish slang, this is your jam!
This novella packs a lot of emotional and character complexity into its short story. It's a story of identity, of family, and of the ongoing struggle to do what's right or look the other way for the sake of convenience. It takes place over a couple of days and contains only a handful of scenes, but paints a rich picture of a small Irish town where everybody knows everybody and no one wants to upset those in power, even if they know something is wrong. The protagonist is easy to overlook and would usually be a supporting character, one who does nothing of importance, and that is what makes him the perfect protagonist for the story.
Keegan mostly writes short fiction, and that's apparent here, as her prose is able to convey enormous depth of emotion, character, and world-building in just a few sentences. You can read this in a couple hours, but don't rush through it. Take time to savor Keegan's literary mastery.
Shirley Jackson's classic novel is one of the best-known haunted house stories, probably second only to THE AMITYVILLE HORROR. But despite that, it's a story much less about ghosts and more about the flawed characters reacting to the stress of staying at a house that may or may not be haunted.
Unlike the Netflix series, there's a lot of ambiguity here. We largely see things through the perspective of Eleanor and as the book goes on, it becomes clear that her perspective can't be trusted.
HILL HOUSE is about loneliness and identity. It's about wanting loved ones and somewhere that feels like home, even if that home might be deadly.
There are some scary moments, but the frights are few and far between. What the book does have is compelling characters, beautiful prose, an air of mystery, and an overwhelming feeling of dread. It's the archetype for countless haunted stories that have come since and it's worth a read for its influence and expert storytelling alone. Just don't expect jump scares from Bent-Neck Lady...
If you're into mythology, character-driven horror, and basketball, this is your jam!
Jones's novel blends a supernatural revenge horror story with commentary on cultural identity, traditions, and racism. The four main characters are all members of Blackfeet tribe who deviate from what is expected of them culturally, to disastrous consequences. It all started with a hunting trip. Like most tribes, the Blackfeet are hunters, and like most hunters, they have norms about how to hunt honorably. When those norms are violated, the characters seem to be cursed and their lives slowly start to unravel.
It's a very interesting novel with great characters and commentary that bites without feeling preachy. And the villain in this story is unique, something that could only come from a tale written about this particular culture.
All of that was great. The problem is that the horror aspects don't work. It's not scary, has little tension until the end, and the antagonist, though interesting, is more goofy than intimidating.
Still worth a read if you want to experience a horror story from a Native American point of view.
If you're into coming-of-age stories, sci-fi, and arts and crafts, this is your jam!
Kathy is “carer” telling the story of her childhood. She was raised at a special school where everything's a bit different, and the students are prepared for the specific future that's laid out for them. It isn't exactly a mystery; students are told what will happen to them, and we readers figure it out early in the story. But even so, there's a lot hidden in the shadows.
Ishiguro is a master storyteller with prose and character development that makes me envious. It's a simple story about innocence, whether the ends justify the means, and what it means to live a fulfilling life, but despite its simplicity, the writing draws you in.
One of the best novels I've read in recent years.
If you're into spiritual growth, philosophical musings, and rambling sentences, this is your jam!
If I was only rating Willard's message about the importance of the spiritual disciplines, this would be 5 stars. If I was only rating the prose, it would be 2 stars. So that evens out to 3.
Willard makes a great case for the importance of spiritual disciplines to any Christian's life, but he spends way too much time making it. It's more than 150 pages before he even gets to examples of disciplines that we can practice. The rest is trying to convince me and, since I bought the book, I was already convinced and didn't need that.
There are some great nuggets here, but also a lot of superfluous commentary, and it takes him a lot of time to make a point. He is anything but concise. Anyone who has read Dallas Willard knows to expect that, though.
If you want to know about the spiritual disciplines, why they're important, and what life is like with and without them, this is a great resource. If you want to just cut to the chase to get to how you can start practicing the disciplines, there are likely better books for that.
If you're into satire, quirky characters, and government bureaucracy, this is your jam!
Yossarian is a neurotic bombardier who doesn't want to fly any more missions because he's scared of dying. He makes frequent visits to the hospital, where he fakes a liver issue so he can lie in bed all day. Then he decides to try to convince his superiors that he's crazy (and he might really be), because anyone who is crazy isn't allowed to fly. All they have to do is request to be grounded due to their mental health. But the catch is that anyone who does submit such a request is deemed to be sane because only a sane person would care about their safety. Heller's book is full of those types of catches, paradoxes, and circular reasoning.
This is the funniest novel I've ever read. Every page has laugh-out-loud moments and witticisms. Satire is very difficult to do well and Heller masters it here.
The story is told in a nonlinear fashion, with scenes connected by free association and the pieces slowly coming together to form a narrative. But even so, it's more a collection of crazy occurrences than a strong plot and no character really has any arc. Instead, the many characters exist for comic relief, to further the story, and to make satirical points. Every character is crazy in one way or another, which is why there's another catch to trying to get out of missions: Crazy people must be able to go on missions, because no one else will.
With stronger character arcs, this might be a perfect novel, but even without it, it's a timeless classic and one of the great American novels.
If you're into poetic prose, colonialism, and gossip, this is your jam!
Not much happens. It's mostly people talking about how amazing Kurtz is and people talking about people talking about how amazing Kurtz is. But we're never really shown him being amazing. That's part of the point, I think, but everything seems hollow.
Conrad's prose is elegant and evocative, but there's not much plot or even character development to latch onto. Ultimately, I don't get it. Surely I'm missing something but I think the story is bland and mediocre.
If you're in ministry, into leadership learning, and innovation, this is your jam!
This is a niche topic that won't appeal to most people. But if you're the type of person it was written for, which is someone working in vocational ministry or someone who wants to learn more about leadership and innovation, it's a great book.
Liam lays out clear ways to innovate for the mission using seven different perspectives. It's written for your average ministry worker, not the type of person who devours leadership books. That means there's not a ton of jargon and the writing isn't too dense or theoretical. Liam tells enough for you to get the point and provides further reading for anyone who wants a deeper dive. The end of each chapter also highlights the main points and gives reflection questions and action steps.
Great read if you're looking for this type of book.
If you're into lesbian Victorian romances, con artists, and pornography, this is your jam!
Sue is a petty thief who is enlisted to help a conman steal the inheritance of a wealthy girl, but as time goes on, it becomes clear that there's a lot more to the grift.
The story is told from the perspectives of two different protagonists, with each showing a totally different view of what's going on. There are a few surprising plot twists, most notably the shocker at the end of part one.
Sarah Waters is a gifted wordsmith, with flowing prose and characters who are empathetic despite being awful people. The problem is the plot. Even back in the 1800s, it seems like there are way too many ways where this plot would fail. And in the end, Waters doesn't know how to resolve it, so she brings a surprise conclusion out of nowhere and resolves precisely nothing.
The book spends 500 pages building up a plot, backs itself into a corner, and then concludes it in the most contrived way possible. To say the last act was a letdown is an understatement.
If you're into dense sci-fi, exposition, and lots of description of women's bodies, this is your jam!
I don't get it. I read this because I've seen it hyped as a sci-fi masterpiece. I even saw a few publications list it as one of the best novels of the century. But I don't think it's good.
There are four loosely connected stories and they all move at a snail's pace, all bogged down by excessive descriptions that somehow don't help you understand what's being described and excessive exposition that somehow doesn't help you understand the world. The novel seems purposely difficult, but not in a fun way like “House of Leaves.”
Also, the characters are all horrible, like the worst people imaginable. I hate all of them and care what happens to none of them.
I will say that the story is unique and Harrison certainly did a lot of world-building in his head, but he didn't do a good job of putting that world on paper.
Before the story starts, there is a forward written by someone who says he didn't like the book the first time he read it, but after reading it subsequent times, it grew on him. That's who they asked to write the forward. I think that tells you a lot about the book.
If you're into mysteries, creepy stalkers, and photography, this is your jam!
This is a deeply unsettling book that is absolutely terrifying. It's not scary like a story about a monster or vampire or something. It's scary because it can, and does, happen.
The protagonist tells the story of what happened in his childhood, pieced together from his memories, conversations with his mom, research, and some speculation. His kindergarten class sent out balloons with letters attached, asking whoever finds the balloon to write back. When the protagonist gets a response, it's just a weird polaroid photo. Then the photos keep coming. Eventually, it becomes clear that the person who found the balloon is obsessed with him.
So it's a story about a stalker, a mother's atttempt to protect her son, and her son's continuous sabotaging of those efforts because he didn't understand the danger. But it's also about fear and shame and about memory, how the things we remember are combinations of things we actually recall, things we remember being told, and things our minds invent to fill in the gaps.
As the story goes on, those gaps are filled in, understandings are changed, and each time that happens, the situation gets scarier and scarier. This novel is brilliantly written and very effective. If I had children, after reading this I don't think I would ever let them leave the house.
This is Stephen King at his best, but it's still Stephen King and it has everything you expect from him.
That means it's entirely too long and poorly paced. The prose and dialogue aren't that great, either. There are way too many characters. There are sections told from the point of view of 20-something different characters and it's hard to keep track of who's who. And it would also be more powerful if we just saw things from the perspective of a few people.
But it also has some good mystery (or it would if the book wasn't famous) and some frightening scenes. King does a great job of building suspense and making the antagonists truly scary, especially Barlow. In the end, Barlow was a bit too easy to overpower, but Bram Stoker had the same problem with Dracula.
Overall, a good scary story that makes for a great Halloween read.
This is the second Julian Barnes novel I've read (“England, England”), and they're both outstanding. His prose is so good, with great descriptions when needed and leaving us to use our imaginations the rest of the time. It's funny without losing its serious tone. And the characters are all interesting, though they're not always very likable.
It's a story about unreliable memories, self-delusions, and regreat. And it's about growing up and growing old and the toll those things take on us. The unreliable narrator takes his through his spotty memories as he tries to figure out what happened between him, a former lover, and a close friend. Once he pieces it all together, if he ever does, the result is jarring.
I'll definitely try more of Barnes's books.
The day before I started reading this, a video went viral showing a sinkhole open up in a hotel pool in Israel. One person was sucked inside and died while others barely escaped. If you looked at the tweets about the video, most of them celebrated that a Jewish person had been killed or were disappointed that only one person died. It was a good reminder that, though it's not as obvious right now, hating Jewish people and wanting them dead never really went out of style.
And that's why Elie Wiesel's memoir is so important. The book chronicles his experience as a teenager during the Holocaust, where he and all the Jews in Transylvania were sent to ghettos, then shipped in cattle cars to concentration camps. Most of the book details he and his father's attempts to stay alive, trying to avoid “selection” that would send them to the crematorium.
The book details unimaginable horrors, but perhaps the scariest thing of all is that as time goes by, Wiesel gets desensitized to it. After seeing so much horror and misery, he becomes numb, as does the reader of his story.
It's easy to become numb to the brokenness, hatred, and evil in our world. When the concentration camps were liberated, people started using the slogan “never again” as a rallying cry and an admonition to the rest of the world. But such a promise means remembering and recognizing the horrors of the Holocaust. “Night” is one important document to help with that task.
The book is dated, both by the fact that it was written in 1994, well before social media or even widespread internet, and by the revelation that the author didn't always live by the principles that he wrote. But there's still good stuff here.
All Christians are called to share the Good News, but are usually not told how. In the book, he lays out how. It can be summed up in one formula:
HP (high potency) + CP (close proximity) + CC (clear communication = MI (maximum impact)
People are “not interested in committing their lives to Christ unless they observe attractive and consistent patterns of living in the Christians they know.” That's why it's important to work on your own walk with God and living a life of authenticity, compassion, and sacrifice.
Close proximity is important because most people don't want to have deep, personal conversations with people they don't know. But they will with good friends.
And clear communication is vital because if someone is going to accept the Gospel, you have to be able to explain it as well as demonstrate it.
Hybels gives good examples for each of these things. Again, some of his examples are dated, but you can apply the principles to today.
“Ghachar Ghochar” is minimalist storytelling in every sense. It's short, at only 118 pages. It shows only a small part of a family's life together, focusing on two scenes with a few flashbacks to establish characters. But most of all, it tells only part of the story while you have to fill the rest in.
The story is told from the perspective of an unnamed unreliable narrator. He's either hiding information or is ignorant of most of what's going on. So to find meaning in the story, you must read between the lines. Though you could read the story in or or two sittings, it's better to take your time. As you read, take time to think about the part of the story that's being hinted at but not explicitly stated. What's really going on?
It's also thematically rich despite its brevity, dealing with classism, materialism, and traditional conservative family dynamics challenged by more modern sensibilities, most of all by young feminist women.
And possibly also about how society turns a blind eye to murder? Or was there a murder? That's one of the debates about the novel. Because so much of the story is implied rather than stated, you'll have to decide for yourself.
First off, this is a book for Soundgarden fans. Not just the casual fans that like their singles, but people that know and love all the music. For anyone else, the book doesn't have much to offer. But since Soundgarden is one of my favorite bands, I enjoyed it.
Greg Prato shares a chronological history of Soundgarden from when they first started jamming together to Chris Cornell's suicide. Prato spends too much time on inconsequential things – I don't care what songs they played during the fifth stop of their 1993 tour – but there are a lot of great details.
I wish the book explored the creative process more, but aside from some quotes about composition and lyrics for individual songs, all of that is left for the last chapter, which is the best chapter. Soundgarden is one of the most innovative and influential bands in rock history, so I wanted more details on the creation of those songs.
We do get some tidbits, such as: The odd time signatures for which the band was known? It wasn't on purpose. Apparently, when Chris and Kim wrote riffs, they had no idea what times they were in. The dropped-D tuning that they popularized? They got that from talking to the Melvins (but the book doesn't talk about how they developed their other strange tunings).
“Dark Black and Blue” is a book about a great underground alternative band that made it big, much to their dismay. The book makes it clear that while the band loved creating songs and playing them live, they hated being rock stars. It was that tension that led to their breakup in 1997.
But it's also a book about death and depression. The band's rise to fame was regularly marred by the death of a close friend, including Andrew Wood, Shannon Hoon, Jeff Buckley, and Kurt Cobain. And each loss seemed to weigh them down more and more. For Ben, it manifested in his angry tantrums. For Chris, who admitted he would be a recluse with no friends if he wasn't in a band, it manifested in emotional isolation.
So it's a book about one of rock's best bands, but also a tragedy about unresolved grief. Worth a read if you're a fan of the band, but there aren't a lot of scandalous details if you just want some wild stories of rock stars being crazy.
It's hard to rate this book. Hurston created great characters that we feel for and an engaging story. And most of the writing is beautiful. But the dialogue is difficult to read and pulls me out of the story.
Take the opening sentences:
“Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches.”
The short novel is full of beautiful, poetic prose like that. But then the characters speak. At the time this was written, it was common for phonetic spelling to be used to show different accents. Hurston dials this up to eleven to the point that I often had to read the dialogue aloud to even know what it said. It's frustrating and breaks the spell of the story. Here's one example:
“It must be uh recess in heben if St. Peter is lettin' his angels out lak dis. You got three men already layin' at de point uh death ‘bout yuh, and heah's uhnother fool dat's willin' tuh make time on yo' gang.”
But overall, it's a powerful and well-written story about complicated love and perseverance of a marginalized black woman in my area of central Florida in the beginning of the 20th century.
Flannery O'Connor is a better short fiction writer than novelist. Of her two novels, “The Violent Bear It Away” is better.
“Wise Blood” is an interesting Southern Gothic novel about Hazel, a young World War II veteran who, probably because of his experiences in the war, has become a militant atheist. Everyone he meets he assumes is a Christian and feels a need to convert to a life without Jesus. He even becomes a preacher of sorts for what he calls the “Church Without Christ.” His own belief system is muddled and tenets he believes at one point he questions at another.
Along the way, he meets a number of interesting characters, such as a supposedly blind street preacher and his daughter, a prostitute who always leaves him feeling worse after their time together, and a manic zookeeper.
Hazel becomes obsessed with Jesus more so than most Christians and that leads him to an unexpected character arc.
The novel's main problem is that because all of the characters are so grotesque and exaggerated, it's hard to sympathize with any of them. The other problem is that there is minimal plot and characters develop rather slowly with a lot of repetition.
It's an interesting and thought-provoking story, but a highly flawed one.
Charles Frazier is a master at crafting beautiful prose and bringing to life flawed but sympathetic characters. With “Nightwoods,” he does it again. Here Frazier is at his most stripped down, a bit less poetic and grandiose with more attention paid to the page-turning plot.
It's a story that pits modernity against the desire to retreat into the Appalachians and live in solitude on a lake with no electricity. It's a story of redemption for a young girl who was ostracized due to a tragedy for which she took the blame. And it's a story about taking small steps of growth – don't try to get a close personal connection right away; for starters just try to keep the kids from setting things on fire.
A faster read than Frazier's other novels, you'll spend more time worrying about Luce's safety than marveling at the beautiful descriptions of the mountains. Okay, you'll actually be doing both.
Is there any place for morality if the human race is about to go extinct? Is there room for hope or should anyone who is ill, depressed, or a “burden” to society just take part in the mass suicides? Is it possible to use political power to make things more comfortable for a doomed society without becoming a tyrant?
PD James' excellent novel explores all of those questions in a dark sci-fi novel with heavy Biblical parallels about a world in which all men have become infertile. But then one miracle pregnancy has the chance to save the world from its impending doom.
The book, though short, starts a bit slow, with the first few chapters being ultra heavy in expositional world building. After that things get good. The last half of the novel is filled with suspense and the whole thing has a ton of political, religious, and moral arguments that are touched on without pedantry.
But mostly it's a story of redemption, about a man guilty of an (accidental) unspeakable act of violence who risks his life to save a miracle child that could save all of humanity. A powerful novel with a better story than the totally different but also good film adaptation.
In 2002, Oakland GM Billy Beane decided he needed to try a new approach to keep the team competitive with clubs whose payrolls dwarfed them. Working with statistician Bill James, be came up with the Moneyball approach. He drafted players based not on scouts' assessment of their athleticism, but on their OBP. A walk is as good as a hit, so he just needed guys who can draw walks. He signed similarly undervalued free agents to replace the studs he couldn't afford. And then, despite their payroll disadvantage, the A's made the playoffs.
That success led to the popularity of sabermetrics and a new way of thinking about baseball as something easy to quantity. Look at the data and it will tell you what you should do. Look at the data and it will tell you who is better.
The problem is, while “Moneyball is a great movie, the book, movie, and overall philosophy is a lie. Oakland won not because Scott Hatteberg drew walks, but because the team had the best pitching staff in baseball, led by Zito, Hudson, and Mulder. That pitching helped them win despite having a bad offense.
This book painstakingly looks at all of the assumptions that sabermetics makes, such as a walk is as good as a hit, you shouldn't risk being thrown out attempting a steal, you shouldn't bunt, etc. and points out their many flaws. Even the attempt to take two players and use metrics to determine who is better or who is more valuable for his team is impossible. Sabermetics always fail for the same reason: There are simply too many variables for the data to be significant.
The first half of the book gives great detail about those variables and why they confound the attempts to quantify baseball. The second half of the book is a love letter to the unpredictable nature of baseball.
The book makes a convincing argument, but the second half is a drag. I got the point a few pages in and didn't need the rest. Still, it's a quick read and good for anyone interested in the subject.
Dan Simmons's novel is an interesting blend of historical exploration, supernatural horror, and Inuit mythology.
It's flawed: overly long and written from so many different perspectives with so many different characters that it's hard to keep track of whose story is being followed. Plus Simmons makes an odd stylistic choice to have most deaths reported after the fact in exposition rather than shown in scene.
But even so, it's a fascinating page-turner. The crews of the Erebus and Terror ships are in constant danger from mutiny and a supernatural beast that stalks and kills them. But the biggest danger, and the book's scariest antagonist, is the setting itself: sub-zero temperatures that cause frostbite in minutes, storms and fog that reduce visibility to near zero, barren land with no animal or plant life, ice that constantly shifts to create pressure ridges, seracs, and crevasses, total darkness in the winter and no dark in the summer, and the various diseases that come from poor nutrition.
The men of the arctic expedition have the arrogance to think they can tame nature and turn the most brutal environment on Earth into a commercial passage and it is that hubris that leads to their slow, violent, painful deaths.