Jan 9, 2025Wolf Hall
By Hilary MantelRating books is of course a fool's game, when it is impossible to compare works of art to eachother let alone to a numerical scale, and perhaps in this case I am a bit unfair to Wolf Hall. It is, technically speaking, a quite good book, it's characters deep and compelling, its drama riveting, and it undoubtedly takes much technical skill to do this with what might otherwise be a tired court drama from Olden Times. But: I was expecting Greatness, for reasons outside of the book's control, and found instead basically competent entertainment. Do authors have to say something interesting and unique to be considered great? Maybe not? Does this have something interesting to say? Maybe a bit? Anyways, I was compelled but not overwhelmed, and so this was underwhelming.
Dec 23, 2024Acceptance
By Jeff VanderMeerA solid ending(?) to the Southern Reach trilogy, still less impressive and overwhelming than the first, but a good novel on its own and enough to make you think that it was probably, in the end, worth writing more books.
Dec 23, 2024Airplane Mode
By Shahnaz HabibI thought this basically an interesting collection of anecdotes with great quotations from other works, but a weak overarching theme. I went into the book thinking that tourism has an inherent tension between problematic exploitation and earnest exploration and sharing of aspects of the human condition, and that is about how I felt after finishing it. Maybe I wanted something prescriptive, maybe I wanted some lesson to be learned from that, but I think mainly I wanted some stronger thesis to be argued for and analyzed. Instead the anecdotes, quotes, and bits of life story are weakly tied together and presented all in a bit of a directionless jumble.
Dec 22, 2024Paradise Lost
By John MiltonThere is a certain kind of machining, where two complementary pieces of metal can be cut and shaped so perfectly, with nanometers of precision, so that despite having wild and wavy manifolds of contact when placed together the seam between the two pieces is perfect and undetectable. Extremely satisfying content to watch. And that is what John Milton's writing is like, I think. Precise, correct, fit together so smoothly as to not make comprehensible how it is accomplished or where the bits came from. He is a masterful writer.
Dec 19, 2024Circe
By Madeline MilerFor a bit there at the beginning I thought this might just be a worthy follow up to The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Aeneid. It is of course a logical follow up, with nearly flawless prose and a nice reinterpretation of what on the surface level represents you know, the correct modern thought about gender dynamics etc, telling the side of the that wasn't told and now society at large has some of the tools (feminism) to understand that side of the story. But as time went on, I think it ended up dropping the ball a bit - well-written but just not that meaningful or resonant.
Dec 15, 2024Authority
By Jeff VanderMeerThe second book in the Southern Reach series is I assume considered in general a bit lesser, and I more-or-less agree with that. Annihilation was a powerful story of change and identity, and with powerful imagery and crazy worldbuilding. Authority I think was ultimately a bit more ambitious than that - VanderMeer tried to maintain a sense of deep, hidden meaning while hampering himself with an environment meant to be 2-dimensional at first glance, tropes of blank-faced men in suits doing secretive things. To a certain extent he succeeded, with some more subtle flourishes, but the intentional subversion of tropes I think ultimately weighed down the story a bit too much and in the end you get a novel that is a bit of a pulp and a bit of something else and not fully, breathlessly one or the other.
Dec 14, 2024But Beautiful
By Geoff DyerA sweet love song to the genre of jazz, treading an interesting line between historical and fictional, painting beautiful little portraits of the lives of the greats.
Dec 3, 2024The Catalyst
By Thomas R. CechFascinating! This book blew my expectations out of the water with a beautiful combination of interesting anecdotes, histories, and explanations of basic science that is significantly more relevant to modern life than I was aware. Charming and well written, it takes its vast subject matter and presents its list of facts as a compelling story told over time.
Oct 31, 2024The Golden Notebook
By Doris LessingI found this book to be rich, emotionally honest, and a timely discussion of handling politics and interpersonal interactions when it feels like things are out of control, inaccessible. I think there is a through-line here, a bit sketchy, from George Elliot to Dorris Lessig to Sallye Rooney, although I would not be surprised if I was the first to try and claim that. Maybe that through-line is just Women of the British Isles. But I think there is something in here about looking at the world and presenting a story that is at once intensely personal and revealing about societal structure, politics told from the first person perspective.
Oct 21, 2024The Waves
By Virginia WoolfA perfect novel, making the second perfect novel I have read, after Ulysses. I could maybe write more, but what is the point of writing, when it already has been done, perfectly?