After visiting the International Spy Museum in D.C., I was super interested in learning more about real-life spies, and my friend recommended Ben MaciAfter visiting the International Spy Museum in D.C., I was super interested in learning more about real-life spies, and my friend recommended Ben Macintyre's Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies. Which relates how British double agents ensured the success of D-Day by fooling the Germans into believing that the Normandy invasion would actually be occurring in several other locations.
This. Story. Is. Fucking. Unreal.
Two things become very clear after listening to this book. One, the British were very good at being spies but it is still a miracle that this worked given the various individuals involved. Two, the Germans were so bad at being spies. So bad. So very, very, very bad. My fucking God. At one point this point is proven by the fact that the British come up with a particularly ingenious method of screwing with pigeon spies (excuse me, Pigeon spies) and the Germans just...don't notice because they assume it is literally impossible to do what the British actually did.
Here's another thing. Eventually every single German spy in Britain was a double agent.
Let me repeat that. EVERY. SINGLE. GERMAN. SPY. IN. BRITAIN. WAS. A. DOUBLE. AGENT.
The Germans were so bad at being spies they were paying people to lie to them.
Ben Macintyre's greatest strength is his extensive research and sourcing that allows him to find the humanity in all of these people, giving us scenes where someone notices the color of someone's eyes or two spies unintentionally recreate a scene from A Star Is Born. He never loses sight of who these people are, and many of them are colorful, memorable characters like Serbian playboy Dusko Popov (one of the inspirations for James Bond), who is clearly one of the most competent and entertaining spies in the whole operation; Peruvian playgirl Elvira de la Fuente Chaudoir, who sadly does not actually get a lot of screentime but is always a delight because her being a Lesbian so confounded her employers; Spaniard Juan Pujol, who created an entire fake network of spies; and Frenchwoman Lily Sergeyev, whose entire story revolves around the fact that she loves her fucking dog so fucking much that she becomes a huge liability that could have brought the whole operation down. And that's only three of, like..a lot of spies in this book.
Ben Macintyre's greatest weakness is his understandable inability to knead the intricate complexities of this story involving so many different characters who don't even interact most of the time into something resembling a coherent narrative. Life doesn't conform to narrative expectations, of course, so even though I wanted to see way more of Elvira, it's not Macintyre's fault that she was really good at sending letters but that was basically all she did so we just check in with her occasionally. Which is how this book essentially operates. We check in with various spies throughout, sometimes meandering over here to some other subplot, sometimes checking back on this other minor spy (Macintyre does helpfully continue to remind the reader of real names and codenames and sometimes even epithets), sometimes providing a holistic look at the operation and bringing Churchill in. It's a...lot, and he doesn't seem to have a structure on a macro or a micro level to provide a tree to hang all these wonderful anecdotal ornaments on.
The book is slow going at first because it takes quite a while to recruit all these spies, but once the Double-Cross System truly kicks into gear, it is so much fun to watch all these machinations, and Macintyre absolutely delights in how hilariously hoodwinked the German Abwehr was, rarely missing an opportunity to rub their noses in it. John Lee conveys that delight well in his reading, and he's also excellent at reading quoted material in differently accented voices. Plus he can convey the difference between "lesbian" and "Lesbian," which is fantastic. Double Cross is extremely dense, packed with information, and while it can be hard to follow, it's a thorough tribute to the men and women (and pigeons) who put their lives at risk for the sake of this war, a true testament to the power of clever collaborative spycraft....more
The unwieldy title of Lauren Graham's Talking As Fast As I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls, and Everything in Between is both a false promiseThe unwieldy title of Lauren Graham's Talking As Fast As I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls, and Everything in Between is both a false promise and a harbinger. Coming off Anna Kendrick's Scrappy Little Nobody, I couldn't help but compare Graham's memoir to it unfavorably in pretty much every way. I've enjoyed listening to celebrity memoirs written by the author, but this is the first time where it felt like there was this horrible disconnect between the writer and the actor, as Graham's narration of her own book sounds so unnatural and forced. Occasionally some bits land, but it's as if she feels the need to ~*perform*~ every single sentence rather than simply express herself. Although there are some nice audio-only bits that include phone conversations with other people and Lauren Graham singing, I wonder if this is one that would play better in print, especially because there are a lot of references to pictures (and unlike other memoirs, they are in places where without the picture, you don't get the full effect, rather than it being a supplemental bonus).
As for the content, this is definitely one of those memoirs/collection of personal essays that's like, "Here's some stuff in no particular order for whatever reason." I appreciated some running gags that gave the book a sense of cohesion, but it jumps around from diets and fashion to one incredibly sanctimonious essay about looking up from your phones. A lot of what's in here feels like something I could have learned from a Wikipedia entry, but I did enjoy The Inside Scoop on certain experiences. Without a doubt, the sections on Gilmore Girls (original series and revival) are the huge draws here, and her love for the character of Lorelai and her fellow actors really comes through (there is a lot of sweet praise for many people in this book and pretty much zero shit-talking about anyone except maybe an anonymous journalist). Like, honestly, she...could have just published those online somewhere because the rest of the book is pretty superfluous. And superficial. Sometimes she expresses feelings and makes herself relatable, but there aren't many moments of intense vulnerability, and I don't think I understand her any more as a person, nor do I feel closer to her like I do with most other memoirs where you can tell the author has Something to Say. It's entirely possibly I am being too hard on this book because I'm coming off one of the best I've listened to, but overall this book was just...fine....more
I have been a fan of Anna Kendrick since her breakout role in—no, not Twilight, shut up—Up in the Air and I have been a fan of celebrity memoirs sinceI have been a fan of Anna Kendrick since her breakout role in—no, not Twilight, shut up—Up in the Air and I have been a fan of celebrity memoirs since...I started reading them, they are generally entertaining listens. But Scrappy Little Nobody is one of the best I've listened to, not only because Anna Kendrick gives an absolutely charming performance of her own work, voicing all the outbursts and asides so that it feels like she's right there telling you her story but also because unlike so many celebrity memoirs, her story actually has a goddamn structure. Combining the honesty and anxiety of Felicia Day's You're Never Weird on the Internet and the thematic focus of Mara Wilson's Where Am I Now?, this book is enjoyable and coherent. Kendrick begins with her childhood as a regular schmo just trying to make it in the acting biz by auditioning for shows, and then we follow her as she moves to L.A. and begins to date, and then she starts to become more of a star and gives us a down-to-earth look at fashion and awards shows...and then she stumbles at the end, where it becomes looser and less focused and stories don't seem to be relevant, but 80% of a damn good memoir is still pretty great. Of course the "plot description" as I've given it sounds boring and blah as hell; it's not like she's lived a particularly exciting life. She only occasionally name-drops anecdotes with famous names, but what makes this book work is all in the title: from start to finish, Anna Kendrick convinces us that she's still Anna from the Block. And it doesn't seem to be an act, rather it's something she struggles with all the time, especially given her upbringing. If you enjoy Anna Kendrick the actress and think you would also like Anna Kendrick the person, you'll definitely enjoying taking this journey along with her....more
Roxane Gay is fat. Roxane Gay was gangraped when she was twelve. These two facts of her life are inextricably linked, as she describes in Hunger: A MeRoxane Gay is fat. Roxane Gay was gangraped when she was twelve. These two facts of her life are inextricably linked, as she describes in Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body.
Gay lays her soul bare for the world in this memoir, which is all the stronger for its dual focus, as opposed to so many memoirs that try to capture all facets of a person's life in one book. It's so much more powerful to view a life through one or two lenses, to frame narratives thematically (as Mara Wilson does throughout Where Am I Now?, for instance). And so the first half of the book takes a traditional memoir track in a way, following Gay chronologically from her life before her sexual assault, when she was thin, and her life after her sexual assault (which is not described in graphic detail), when she began eating in order to make herself feel unattractive and safe. Repeatedly, she makes reference to her body, as if it is a separate part of herself, and like the repetition in Between the World and Me, it makes you incredibly aware of the body as a separate part of yourself: not you, but the flesh and muscle and bone that hold you. Gay describes her body as a cage, and you can feel that oppressive nature in the way she describes her relationship with her own body as well as the reactions of the world to her body. It's a sobering look at the way we—myself included—view fat people, and it made me acutely aware of my own privilege in being a socially acceptable size.
About halfway through, the book becomes unmoored, without a defined structure, and I could not always follow the transitions from one idea to the next, whether it was reality TV or queerness or doctors. At first I thought this a flaw, as I prefer more structured narrative and found the first half powerful in that respect. But then I thought of the second half as more of a tone poem about her life experience as a woman of size, always with that childhood trauma looming over everything. The book comprises eighty some-odd short chapters, and each one has a poetic flow and an emotional punch at the end. Gay does repeat some phrases and ideas over and over, and rather than feeling like lazy writing, they feel like a way to impress upon the reader—or listener, in my case—the repeated thoughts that have been in her head for decades.
Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body is not easy to read, and it's even less easy to listen to, hearing Roxane Gay narrate her own tale of trauma in a fairly standard affect without injecting emotion into the words, allowing the words themselves their power. It's a vulnerable confessional, and an eye-opening look into one woman's experience. Gay ends by thanking us for listening to her story. No, Roxane Gay, thank you for sharing it....more
Roxane Gay is a bad feminist! But Bad Feminist is a good feminist text, a fun, more casual complement to the academic focus of bell hooks.
Gay's cheekyRoxane Gay is a bad feminist! But Bad Feminist is a good feminist text, a fun, more casual complement to the academic focus of bell hooks.
Gay's cheeky declaration simply means that while she identifies as a feminist, she does things (loves the color pink) and enjoys media (misogynist rap) that a more radical feminism would frown upon. And that's okay!! She feels a little bad about these things, but, hey, it's what she likes. The point isn't to check off a bunch of boxes but to make your own choices and reflect on them.
And to that end, Gay reflects on a whole lot of pop culture, from Sweet Valley High to The Hunger Games, and while I obviously most appreciated the essays on works I was familiar with, she generally provided enough context to make her points even if you hadn't read or seen the source material, although beware of spoilers (she totally spoils Gone Girl, which would have upset me if I hadn't read or seen it yet, and Tyler Perry's Temptation, which isn't much of a spoiler because apparently all Tyler Perry movies end with a disgraced woman who now has HIV). Beyond that, her genuine enthusiasm always comes through, as does her frustration, even moreso with Bahni Turpin's reading. Coming from Turpin, a fellow black woman, Gay's words seem to truly carry the full breadth of emotion behind them. While pop culture is culture (an idea thoroughly supported by this book), Gay also speaks on other aspects of culture like politics and, of course, feminist discourse. This book is also intersectional as hell, as Gay has two sections called "Gender & Sexuality" and "Gender & Race," in which she explores culture and media through a queer lens and black lens.
Overall, I really enjoyed this collection of essays, largely because Gay's writing style is so personal and inviting, so whether she's relating her own experience of seeing a midnight showing of The Hunger Games or pointing out flaws in Lean In, she's incredibly engaging, and you hear her. Sometimes she's funny, and sometimes she's recounting sexual assault, but at all times, she has something to say. And it's worth listening to....more
Have you ever thought, "What if Antigone, but with modern-day Pakistani-British Muslims?" Modern-day Pakistani-British Muslim Kamila Shamsie has!
Home Have you ever thought, "What if Antigone, but with modern-day Pakistani-British Muslims?" Modern-day Pakistani-British Muslim Kamila Shamsie has!
Home Fire cleverly transforms the characters of Sophocles' play into topically relatable analogues and then digs a little deeper into them than the timeline of the play allows, so the astute reader can identify core characteristics that will hurtle these people into the Greek tragedy they don't know they're living. Sisters Isma (Ismene) and Aneeka (Antigone) begin the story apart, but they are connected by Eamonn (Haemon), son of British Home Secretary Karamat (Creon), and it all comes down to the fate of Parvaiz (Polynices), who in this version rather than having a twin brother is Aneeka's twin, which is a neat way to connect them more strongly. Shamsie focuses on one character at a time, often leaving a character right when you wish she'd keep going but then quickly sucking you in with the next character's story. This fracturing of narratives does give a sense of leaving them all a bit incomplete, but these incomplete narratives do mostly come together to tell one overarching story.
I loved the intertwining relationships in the story, especially in how Shamsie handles Eamonn. I've played Haemon in Antigone, and he comes off as a minor character, but Shamsie made me truly understand how key he is to this story. His romance with Aneeka drives the bulk of the narrative, and it complicates everything, including the relationship between the two sisters. And besides the different relationships everyone has with each other, each character in the book has a different relationship with Islam, from the devout Aneeka, who asks her new boyfriend to give her time to do her prayers, to the secular Karamat, who was VERY Muslim when it helped get him elected but not very Muslim when it was less politically beneficial to be so. I was fascinated (and saddened) by Shamsie's depiction of British Islamophobia, which is just as bad as the American version (Isma is amused that she was worried about getting interrogated when she flew to America, but in fact, it's the British who detain her), and her insights into the historical legacy of being Pakistani-British, given that Pakistan was essentially a country arbitrarily created by the British when they drew a line on a map. Things keep moving in this book, plotwise, but it was every discussion of this culture and this way of life that always grabbed my attention and made me think.
Still, I don't know how I feel about many of Shamsie's choices. Why begin the novel with Isma, a move that implies to the reader that she is the main character, when in fact she plays the smallest role? Why, when taking from a play three male characters and two female characters, do you give the female characters so little development and depth by comparison? Why write a novel based on Antigone and not actually dive deep into the character based on Antigone? Why is everything we know and feel about Aneeka almost entirely dictated by other characters and the rest of the world, to the extent that Aneeka's section has a subsection that—while I did really dig it—was not from her POV like all the others characters'? Why end the book like that? Why call this book Home Fire?
Despite my quibbles, I'm truly impressed with Shamsie's skill in adapting this story using this unusual structure. Even though the book is under 300 pages (a mere 8 hours read by Tania Rodriguez, who deftly handles both the British accent and occasional Urdu), the ambition behind it gives it an impact of a much longer book. It ends with a powerful image, rather abruptly, and I'm not entirely clear on the final message, as Shamsie was tossing a lot of ideas out by the end but didn't necessarily resolve things. But it's definitely an interesting, thought-provoking read about one woman standing up to an unjust government. It couldn't be more timely....more
I had heard from several people that A Man Called Ove was a sweet, heartwarming book about a grumpy old man. I had not heard that this sweet, heartwarI had heard from several people that A Man Called Ove was a sweet, heartwarming book about a grumpy old man. I had not heard that this sweet, heartwarming book was about a grumpy old man TRYING TO KILL HIMSELF AFTER HIS WIFE DIES. So, you know, trigger warning.
Ove (pronounced OO-vuh) is the dictionary definition of the word "curmudgeon," and if there's one thing he hates, it's motor vehicles driving in a residential area where the sign specifically prohibits motor vehicles driving in a residential area. If there's two things he hates, it's that and French cars. But if there's one thing he loves, it's his dear wife Sonia, and without her, he feels he doesn't have much reason to live. But before he can get his very well-planned suicide over with, a new family moves in next door and upends everything.
Fredrik Backman writes with a wonderfully dry wit that incorporates Ove's sensibility, such that a book about a man who's reached the end of his rope never feels sad and tragic because for Ove, it's simply...the right thing to do. It's not a matter of self-pity but simply the way of the world, and he's okay with that. The light touch of morbid humor in the way Backman describes Ove's suicide attempts never feels disrespectful, and you can't help but laugh at Ove's consternation at their being thwarted.
The story flits back and forth between past (chapters titled "A Man Who Was Ove...") and present ("A Man Called Ove..."), and as usual with audiobooks, I sometimes got lost in time transitions, but I'll blame my lack of attention and not the author. The flashbacks show a very different young man than the old man we're introduced to, yet one we can see could have become so through various circumstances. I like how Backman takes what could have been a very stereotypical character and gives him a lot of depth, and goddammit if he's not the most endearing curdmudgeon I've encountered in quite a while. Because, you see, of course this irritated old man who is suspicious of foreigners and calls gay men "bent" has a good heart, and it is a delight to watch him connect to his new neighbors and other folks in his neighborhood, who may not, perhaps, accept him as fully and honestly as his wife, but give him a lot more credit than he'd expect to be given. It's an interesting dynamic, and narrator George Newbern contrasts Ove's very gruff voice with everyone else's much softer voices.
In the end, Backman offers some affecting musings on life and death through this man called Ove, a man I'm glad I spent some time with....more
After taking on Lovecraftian horror with Meddling Kids, Edgar Cantero brings his wildly irreverent voice to noir, creating San Francisco investigaAfter taking on Lovecraftian horror with Meddling Kids, Edgar Cantero brings his wildly irreverent voice to noir, creating San Francisco investigators A.Z. Kimrean, the name used by Adrian and Zooey Kimrean...a brother and sister who share an androgynous body. Cantero does unfortunately take the stereotypical route in characterizing them, as the male Kimrean is left-brained and analytical while the female Kimrean is right-brained and emotional (also a nymphomaniac, of course). The preposterous idea of chimeric twins never exactly becomes less difficult to grasp, and the switches between them can be hard to follow, but overall I did like both characters and the conflict between them, which always threatens to undermine the investigation.
And that investigation is into the murder of the son of a cartel boss, which everyone believes is the start of a cartel war (thanks to a signature calling card) but the police (including an undercover cop) really hope is not. Enter Kimrean, fresh out of a psychiatric hospital, making Holmesian deductions and engaging in Clouseau-esque banter. During the investigation, they meet Ursula, the cartel boss's eleven-year-old daughter, and the relationship between the three of them is the heart of the novel. Adrian treats her like a kid, but Zooey treats her like a friend.
As in Meddling Kids, Cantero uses screenplay format and inventive metaphors and verbs like "Hammer-timed" to keep things fresh, and it feels a bit more home in a genre known for its pulpiness. He remains very genre-savvy and self-aware, frequently commenting on tropes he's leaning into or deliberately avoiding, and he breaks the fourth wall with no regards for the existence of a wall in the first place.
This Body's Not Big Enough for the Both of Us is a fun noir romp for sure, though it didn't have the unexpected depth and emotion of Meddling Kids and the mystery resolution, while satisfying in its own way, doesn't pack as much punch. Regardless, I enjoy Cantero's style and look forward to what genre he skewers next....more
In Rolling in the Deep, Mira Grant told the story of the doomed vessel Atargatis, which went into the deep seas to find mermaids. Unfortunately foIn Rolling in the Deep, Mira Grant told the story of the doomed vessel Atargatis, which went into the deep seas to find mermaids. Unfortunately for them, they did. There were no survivors.
Now the Melusine goes back to discover the truth, not only for themselves—for revenge, for science, for validation—but for the whole world, who believe that the video footage of the grisly mayhem was fabricated, simply special effects.
Into the Drowning Deep reminded me of Michael Crichton in the best way. This book is like Jurassic Park except the park is a boat, the dinosaurs are mermaids, there's queer representation and deaf representation and Muldoon is an Australian couple including a Japanese woman, and also other differences. Maybe it's more like The Lost World since they're going back to the thing. But that doesn't matter.
What does matter is that Grant expertly builds a very diverse crew with many specialties, giving them all reasons to be on the boat, and then once she gets them all out over the Mariana Trench, she builds the tension, teasing the impending mayhem to come with ominous failures of security measures and creepy POV scenes from the mermaids themselves. All the while she's getting us invested in the characters so that when they inevitable die, it hurts. And oh, it hurts. Well, except for the ones who aren't great people. But even then, the death scenes are effective in the staging of terror.
Grant already displayed her talent for mermaid horror in the original novella, but this book traffics more in science fiction, diving deep (pun only partially intended) into what these creatures actually are and how they work. Because there are so many scientists onboard, they all have that scientific curiosity even in the face of death, and the revelations about the creatures' anatomy and culture pack as much punch as the deaths.
Into the Drowning Deep grows into a hell of a page-turner where I honestly did not know who would end up surviving. It's creepy and terrifying, with characters you care about, and it's my favorite Mira Grant book in years....more
My therapist gave me this book to supplement the discussions we were having, and that's how I know I have a good therapist.
bell hooks published The WiMy therapist gave me this book to supplement the discussions we were having, and that's how I know I have a good therapist.
bell hooks published The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love in 2005, but it's still relevant now as so much of what she says here is part of Twitter/Tumblr discourse. While many of the basic ideas she presents are familiar, I appreciated reading about them in a more academic context with citations of other works on feminism and sex and gender. The central theme of the work is that patriarchy hurts men by socializing them as dominators with relation to women, and hooks does explore this idea from intersectional angles like sexuality, race, and class, at one point noting the role of capitalism in promoting this patriarchal system. (It is, however, implicitly cissexist for most of it and explicitly cissexist in one chapter.) While, as I've said, I've heard a lot of this before, the way hooks presents it all, incorporating not only other texts but also her own personal experience (and ways she has contributed), made me think about things in different ways. Although it may be kind of strange for a woman be writing a whole book about How Men Are (the other way around would not fly), I did find myself nodding along internally much of the time, either because it confirmed something I had been feeling or because it provided a possible explanation for something I had been feeling. When something rang untrue, I thought about whether it was actually untrue or whether I didn't want it to be true.
Despite the back cover copy and despite the circumstances of my receiving the book, I don't necessarily think this book is written for men. The opening and closing are absolutely framed to address women, and hooks asks women to allow men the space to change and unlearn what patriarchy has done to them. She does also encourage men to make these spaces themselves, as she found these spaces and these writings and these media portrayals lacking then, and I find them lacking now. hooks argues against a feminism that renounces men or seeks to simply turn the dominator culture upside-down, instead promoting a collaborative approach powered by love, empathy, and compassion. So the book does speak to men and women in that way, by laying out the situation for men, then calling on them to work toward dismantling the patriarchy and calling on women to support their healing process so that they can do that. And I know that in the current climate, that may not be a popular notion, and it's possible bell hooks now feels just as much "Men, go over there and get your own shit together" as many other women. But while I agree that men definitely need to do the work, I do think her basic point in acknowledging that this work will be painful and saying that it's good for women to accept that change is possible is worth hearing.
The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love does not provide all the answers. It does not give a road map. But at its very core, it is an extremely hopeful work that posits that it is possible for men to throw off the shackles of patriarchal masculinity and become whole, loving humans....more
Although I will always be irritated at Roger Ebert for spoiling Cloverfield in the first paragraph of his review, I respect him as a film critic, and Although I will always be irritated at Roger Ebert for spoiling Cloverfield in the first paragraph of his review, I respect him as a film critic, and when he agrees with me, his reviews perfectly explicate why, and when he disagrees, his reviews...sound wildly off the mark, but I still enjoyed reading them because of his distinct personal style. And this style permeates Life Itself, his memoir, which is a cozy step inside the life of Roger Ebert. I did not know a lot about Ebert's personal life, and I suppose I was never really interested, but Ebert sure is interested in telling us about it, and it's terribly endearing. He spends the early chapters talking about his family and childhood, and he relates stories of those simpler times when the movie theater showed serials. He moves on to college and his early journalism career, dedicating entire chapters to people who were important to him but not of any note to me. I'm so used to listening to memoirs of actors and comedians whose stories tend to involve other famous people, which make them inherently interesting to me, so it was a change to listen to a more traditional memoir. Chronology starts to break down eventually, but I expectedly became much more engaged when Ebert began talking about his film criticism career—which he just kind of fell into, oddly enough, it was not like he had a particular love of film from a young age—and thus telling stories of his encounters with notable directors like Russ Meyer and Martin Scorsese. Finally, Ebert recounts his experience with cancer and losing the lower half of his jaw, and it's here the memoir becomes especially fascinating, as it's now a story of disability (and impending death), and he maintains that same endearingly chipper spirit here, never wallowing in despair. As an audiobook read by Edward Herrmann, this section is a bit strange because we're hearing Herrmann-as-Ebert read about the fact that Ebert cannot speak (and of course Herrman captures Ebert's voice wonderfully). Ebert died only two years after this memoir was published, and I'm glad he got to tell his own story....more
Lock In was not a book that demanded a sequel, but so few books are allowed to be standalones anymore, and honestly the world of Lock In is intereLock In was not a book that demanded a sequel, but so few books are allowed to be standalones anymore, and honestly the world of Lock In is interesting enough that I'm glad John Scalzi was able to return to it with Head On, where he envisions a new sport designed for threeps that's like football plus Quidditch but with more decapitations. When one of the players dies on the field, Agent Chris Shane—who once again is not assigned a gender by the text and so I read as default male—investigates.
As in Lock In, Shane's celebrity status and parentage do come into play—Shane's dad is in talks to invest in the sports league—but Shane as a character is not called on to grow or change. Which is fine, as the banter between Shane and his partner Vann is entertaining enough, and the real star is once again the worldbuilding. I loved how much Scalzi had thought about this sport and the effects it would have on society and vice-versa with regards to regulations, and he continues to tackle issues of disability and discrimination.
The mystery takes Shane on adventures in several states and many threeps, and, as per usual, I was hooked; the book read really fast. I especially enjoyed the prominence of Shane's roommates, including Tony, who's constantly employed to do ridiculous hacker things...for a price. As the clues kept dropping (along with bodies) and it became clear that someone did not want the truth revealed, I was fully engaged.
And then about three-quarters of the way through, once Scalzi begins resolving the mystery and tying everything together, I...somehow became far less engaged. This book should not have taken me two weeks to finish, but after burning through most of it, I hit a point where it felt like it was all far, far too complicated, with conspiracies within conspiracies, red herrings, people accused of one crime who were actually guilty of another crime, so many names I couldn't keep track of. It was like the last half hour of Smokin' Aces except instead of an extended flashback, it was in real time with lots of interviews and interrogations and more dead bodies. Intellectually, I can appreciate the complexity of the plot, and I like all the different factors in play. But emotionally, I did not feel the WHOA WOW WHOA HOLY SHIT I like when a mystery has all these twists upon twists.
Despite my issues with the resolution, I did enjoy most of the book, and I'm happy to return to this world again, since I'm sure Scalzi will find more new and interesting things to do with the premise. It's always a fun time to dive into his words....more
"A plane full of beauty queens crashes on an island." This irresistible premise was given to Libba Bray, and by God, she ran with it!
Beauty Queens doe"A plane full of beauty queens crashes on an island." This irresistible premise was given to Libba Bray, and by God, she ran with it!
Beauty Queens does exactly what it says on the tin, as a plane crashes on the way to the Miss Teen Dream beauty pageant, killing most of the contestants. But the survivors must work together to stay alive until they are rescued and...go on to compete in the pageant, this is somehow still an important consideration for many of them. Although the book gained new notoriety when an "all-female adaptation of Lord of the Flies" was announced, it does not devolve into murder and mayhem. Instead, it focuses mainly on how these girls become friends (or even more).
And who are these girls? Libba Bray juggles a lot of characters, and it takes a little time for all of them to become distinct, though I appreciated how inclusive she was. It would have been easy to have a dozen cis straight white able-bodied girls and maybe one or two token girls with marginalized identities who have a superficial presence, but Bray does the work to both show different kinds of women and how these identities function with the beauty pageant circuit. I especially loved that Shanti, the Indian girl, and Nicole, the black girl, feel an inherent rivalry at first because they understand that they're competing for the same "woman of color" slot, as unfair as they both know that is. I loved even more the running gag of Shanti's carefully prepared statement about how she learned how to make papadum as her mother and grandmother taught her, which is exactly the sort of "cultural reference" a woman of color in a beauty pageant is essentially required to make. At times, the characterizations seemed to be too focused on their marginalized identities, and the characters' issues with said identities—however true—sounded inauthentically or inelegantly expressed, but other times, they felt true and spot-on. And they were all more than their marginalizations, and I didn't feel that the narrative significantly deprioritized them below other characters. Even though the narrative appears to denote Adina, a contestant who hates beauty pageants, as the "lead," the book soon establishes itself as an ensemble piece, giving everyone a POV and a separate adventure. Including Taylor, the uber-queen, and Tiara, the comic relief dim bulb (who, like everyone, is more complex than her stereotype).
It's the characters that drive the story, as the plotting is kind of all over the place. Even though there is an obvious survival aspect and also plenty of mysterious rumblings about what else is going on on the island (spoilers, they're not alone), there isn't a whole lot of actual tension for the most part, as any time plot threatens to get going, character steps in and acts like nothing else matters but this relationship or this self-reflection. Exacerbating the problem is the overall satirical tone of the novel, which keeps anything from being taken too seriously...until Bray drops that tone entirely to dig into her characters in a meaningful way. It works better than it should, largely because she does hit on some affecting insights, but the tonal shifts can be jarring. Especially in audio, which is clearly the One True Way to experience this book, because OH MY GOD. Not only does Libba Bray do distinct voices for all the characters, her satirical narrative voice is delightful, and the various interludes like commercials and interviews are fully produced with music and audio effects like making recordings sound like recordings. It's just the best.
Beauty Queens is a hell of a lot of fun, with like a dozen coming-of-age stories all at once. Crashing on an island to discover what's important and who you really are is a time-honored literary tradition, and if Hollywood really wants to make a movie about it happening to a bunch of teenage girls, they should look no further....more
While reaction to the new casino city of Canto Bight in Star Wars: The Last Jedi was mixed, a brand-new location in the Star Wars universe can generatWhile reaction to the new casino city of Canto Bight in Star Wars: The Last Jedi was mixed, a brand-new location in the Star Wars universe can generate plenty of story fodder, as the anthology Canto Bight handily proves. These four novellas follow several different characters who several different venues, and they make me want a whole movie or miniseries set in Canto Bight.
Saladin Ahmed kicks off the proceedings with the very silly "Rules of the Game," starring a hapless salesbeing who gets taken for a ride as soon as he steps planetside but really ends up in over his head when an assassin sets his sights on him. While this story is a fun introduction to the world, it's pretty repetitive for most of its run and tries to stretch one joke and a running gag or two too far. But it ends up in a sweet, if predictable place.
Mira Grant continues with "The Wine in Dreams," easily the best novella here, with some beautiful writing and a clever premise surrounding a friggin' sommelier of all things. This sommelier comes to Canto Bight to purchase a particularly legendary wine, but the deal does not go as planned. What I found most impressive here was Grant's ability to build a character out of a hotel clerk who seems at first to be a minor casualty of the machinations of the cryptic sisters—stay with me here—Parallella and Rhomby Grammus. The plot twists and turns, and by the end, I wanted more of these characters.
Rae Carson provides a strong follow-up with "Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing," in which a masseur must go to great lengths for his adopted human daughter. I loved the alien race Carson creates here, a species that can give really good massages and also excrete pheromones. The father-daughter relationship is super sweet, and the plot is like an action-adventure, with twists and turns as well.
John Jackson Miller closes it out with "The Ride," which isn't as comical as "The Rules of the Game" but isn't as dramatically engaging as the previous two. A professional gambler encounters three preternaturally lucky brothers, and eventually he needs to pay his debts or he will die. You know, that old gambit. This is the weakest of the four because the stakes aren't well established at first, and even when they are, I never felt them. So much of the focus is on invented games, which made it hard to engage with, and while I enjoyed the interplay with the brothers, as with "The Rules of the Game," the humor became repetitive. It does build to an effective climax, however.
Overall, I really enjoyed this trip to Canto Bight, and I especially loved that characters and locations from one novella would pop up or be referenced in another, which made Canto Bight seem like a lived-in place. Though it's probably not somewhere you'd want to live....more
In Borderline, Millie Roper learned about the existence of the Arcadia Project, which manages the relationship between the human world and the feyIn Borderline, Millie Roper learned about the existence of the Arcadia Project, which manages the relationship between the human world and the fey realm, both of which need each other to flourish. In Phantom Pains, she discovered the dark secret behind the magic of the fey realm, which drives the Seelie and Unseelie Courts to war. And now in Impostor Syndrome, Millie must somehow stop this war and save the fey realm, the human realm, and her partner. So, you know, no pressure.
As it had been a year since I read the last book, it took me a few chapters to find my footing again, but Mishell Baker has Millie helpfully recap things occasionally. I also got tripped up every time Baker began delving more and more into how magic worked in her universe, as if she'd been waiting so long to go into these details. Sometimes these nuances became relevant to the plot, but other times it was like answers to questions I'd never asked. The books have gotten more and more fey-focused since the first book, so I did miss the real-world antics related to the film industry, although Baker does call on Millie's film background for a wonderfully creative chapter. Like the previous books, this one really moves and reads smoothly and quickly, with stakes established early on and then heightened over the course of the narrative, and Baker constantly makes things harder for Our Heroes, throwing more and more obstacles in their way. But she also gives time to Millie's relationships with several characters like Caryl (will they or won't they or should they), Claybriar (it's complicated), and Alondra (don't put two Borderlines in the same room together sheesh), not to mention various fey. Overall, it's a fun ride with a soft conclusion for the series that leaves plenty of room to explore what comes next....more
I have not yet read/listened to Mindy Kaling's first memoir, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, but I boldly skipped right to the sequel and I wI have not yet read/listened to Mindy Kaling's first memoir, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, but I boldly skipped right to the sequel and I was not lost! Though I was, apparently, unexpected, as Mindy Kaling assumes the reader/listener is female and any man must only be grudgingly experiencing her words. Why Not Me? is a very enjoyable series of essays and/or anecdotes about topics ranging from the genesis of The Mindy Project to body positivity, with small cameos by mentor Greg Daniels and best friend B.J. Novak. I haven't watched The Mindy Project, but her descriptions did intrigue me more about it, as it sounds somewhat similar to Crazy Ex-Girlfriend in the way that it plays with rom-com tropes using an unstable female protagonist. The book is overall pretty light, as Mindy is trying to keep it real and fun, but she does occasionally get serious and vulnerable, which are always the best moments of a memoir like this for me. And it's of course more fun to hear it read by her, although the section where she presents fanfic of her life presented via e-mails does suffer in audio format. Overall, it's a nice read; chuckle/smile-inducing if not hilarious, mildly insightful if not wildly inspirational....more
I had heard of Jim Gaffigan but was unfamiliar with his work. I love comedy and food, though, so I figured I would enjoy a comedian's book about food.I had heard of Jim Gaffigan but was unfamiliar with his work. I love comedy and food, though, so I figured I would enjoy a comedian's book about food. I was right!
I came into Food: A Love Story thinking it would be memoir-ish, but while Jim Gaffigan does share personal stories regarding his relationship with certain foods, it's more of a humor book that gives him the opportunity to riff on everything from kale to McDonald's with his signature brand of observational comedy: "This food is hyperbolically good! This food is hyperbolically bad!" For the most part, it's much funnier than I just made it sound, as it includes lines that made me laugh out loud like "Guacamole is made with the avocado, which is so delicious I think it should be reclassified as a cheese." He spends time on all kinds of cuisines and eateries, and I soon learned that I should not actually trust his information to be factual (his description of why Kobe beef is so good is UNTRUE), although I was disappointed that he didn't do some actual research occasionally because sometimes the truth is funny too! But I did enjoy his constant hypothetical scenarios of how people must have come up with some of these foods, made all the more enjoyable by hearing his voices for the characters.
Food: A Love Story is very funny! I mean, I don't know what else to say here. Jim Gaffigan makes jokes about food, if that sounds fun to you, then here is a book....more
Ngaio Marsh is supposedly up there with Agatha Christie in terms of mystery novels, so I thought I'd give her a try with this second Roderick Alleyn nNgaio Marsh is supposedly up there with Agatha Christie in terms of mystery novels, so I thought I'd give her a try with this second Roderick Alleyn novel that's set in the world of theater. It's got a fun premise: the murder occurs onstage, as someone switched out the blanks in a gun for real bullets. Chief Detective Inspector Alleyn is in the audience and on the case, interviewing the cast and crew to determine who and how and why. There's definitely blackmail involved, as we learn in the first chapter, but is the most obvious suspect really the murderer? What about the next most obvious suspect? What about...you get the picture, there are some red herrings about. James Saxon is suitably British, but honestly I was not gripped by the narrative, which could be Marsh's fault or my own, who knows. There is some investigating in the middle, and some clues point to various folks, and then Alleyn catches the culprit pretty sneakily before explaining how he figured it out. It's a classic formula, I suppose, and I enjoyed the setting, but I think I'll stick to Christie....more
I don't really know what to call Between the World and Me. A very long personal essay? A treatise? A "piece of nonfiction"?
Whatever it is, it's damn gI don't really know what to call Between the World and Me. A very long personal essay? A treatise? A "piece of nonfiction"?
Whatever it is, it's damn good, and it's essential reading.
Told as a letter to his son, Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates's exploration of what it means to be black in America—or rather, to have a black body. Coates says "body"/"bodies" so many times I started to get annoyed at the repetition until I realized that this was not bad writing, this was the fucking point. To read these words—or listen to them as read by the author, an even more powerful experience, I'd think—is to retrain your worldview. Through the constant repetition, Coates forces you to view "black people" and "white people" as "people in black bodies" and "people who believe they are white." Race is a social construct, after all. While he doesn't dig too much into that concept itself, his use of terminology does make an effective point. And throughout, as Coates describes his own learning of black history, he shows what has been done to black bodies historically and how they come under fire today.
It's a calm tirade, eye-opening in the way it peels back race relations and provides a firsthand, thoughtful perspective that's further humanized in the context of a father-son relationship. It does have a loose kind of narrative that climaxes with the shooting of a black body by a cop who believed he was white, which would be a spoiler if it weren't such a common occurrence that it would have to come up in a piece like this. As a fan of structure, I would have preferred a more defined shape to the piece with a clear punch, but I think it's effective enough without it. It's rare to encounter writing that can actually change how you see the world, and I urge you to encounter this....more
The Dispossessed contrasts two societies, Urras and Anarres, a planet and its moon. Urras generally resembles our own culture, and Ursula K. Le Guin hThe Dispossessed contrasts two societies, Urras and Anarres, a planet and its moon. Urras generally resembles our own culture, and Ursula K. Le Guin holds a mirror up to it with Anarres, an anarchist utopia where the very concept of "possession" is foreign. As in The Left Hand of Darkness, she starts with a thought experiment: "What would a society be like if we truly gave up these ideas?"
To explore these two worlds, we follow Shevek, an Anarresti physicist who travels to Urras to study and exchange ideas. The early chapters also flash back to his early life on Anarres, and...I did not realize that the rest of the book also continued to flash back to his life on Anarres, which would explain why I felt the narrative was disjointed and confusing at times. But I use the term "narrative" loosely, as this book has even less of a plot than The Left Hand of Darkness, where I could at least glean stakes and motivations. Here it was hard for me to invest in the story because it wasn't clear what, exactly, Shevek wanted to do and why. It was interesting to see him explore a society so different from his own, to see it from his perspective, but it's pages and pages of, like, reading books and having philosophical conversations and also lots of copulation. There are occasional hints of change, of potential consequences to people on Urras embracing Anarresti ideals (and also some examination of how Anarres may not be as different from Urras as they think), but there's so very little action.
The Dispossessed is more a novel of ideas, and it does, of course, have some beautiful, powerful insights scattered about, but for me, it wasn't effective at making me really think about the concepts it was exploring, honestly because they were over my head. I am all for smart, thoughtful science fiction, but this one was just too smart and thoughtful for me, I suppose....more
Loading...
