Feb 13, 2024The Wind Knows My Name
By Isabelle AllendeI think Isabelle Allende is a Very Good writer, deep and heartfelt, and the book a topical and compelling story of immigration and the toll it takes, especially at the US border. I don't think she is a Great writer, and I struggle to articulate why. I think it is the language - fluid, fluent it compels further reading, but it is almost voiceless, and for that it is less interesting. Perhaps a bit insulting of a comparison, but it reminds me of Steven King; the words come with ease, but don't stick. Her plot and emotional depth is better though, so that's nice.
Feb 7, 2024Teaching To Transgress
By bell hooksAs a not-teacher who has lived most of his life outside the humanities academy, this book is perhaps not super relevant - but it's good. I enjoyed reading about and thinking about what goes into education and Freeing the Mind, creating environments for thought and discourse conducive to greater understanding and appreciation of lived experiences. On one hand, it is fascinating insight into another profession, like traveling to a country with unfamiliar customs; on the other, teaching is not the only place where it is desirable to create a diverse, interesting environment for examination and proliferation of ideas! bell hooks seems pretty cool!
Feb 7, 2024The Books Of Jacob
By Olga TokarczukA favorite trope of mine is the sprawling geneological novel, painting a picture of a culture and its transformation over time through the story of a particular family throughout several generations - it is a trope I don't have many examples of, possibly just One Hundred Years of Solitude and Pachinko, but I think it is a wonderful style of art. The Books of Jacob is not that. But it does come close? Maybe it is a sprawling genealogical novel on its side, painting the picture of dozens of characters in a pseudo-familial structure at the intersection of many cultural forces over a very short amount of time. It is an intriguing story of a cult, a culture, a people, a place and time of which I know little, way too many names and everyone has multiple of them.
Jan 22, 2024Master And Commander
By Patrick O'BrianA bit of an odd coincidence, I did not realize when reading His Majesty's Dragon that it was basically just Master and Commander with dragons. And to be frank, I think the dragons did improve it a bit. I mean, I enjoyed this, it was enjoyable, it was maybe a bit long and not quite as compelling as one might hope the swashbuckling tale of naval adventure would be. I will most likely come back and continue the series at a future date. And, credit where credit is due, O'Brian is the first writer I've encountered with the temerity to use the word floccinaucinihilipilification, so he's really not that bad.
Jan 19, 2024Waiting For Godot
By Samuel BeckettI've been seeing references to Borges' story Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote around a bit, for whatever reason (it is the one about Pierre Menard, through diligent scholarship, rewriting and recreating Don Quixote, line for line). And classic Borges it is a wonderfully compelling idea, what does it take to rewrite and recreate the conditions to write precisely the same story? I don't think I have it in me to recreate Don Quixote but I think, given the time and motivation, I could recreate Waiting for Godot line for line, word for word.
Jan 18, 2024The Pale King
By David Foster WallaceMostly I find discussions of what is and is not a novel to be a bit bland and unimportant, but for the purposes of a review I think it is probably important to stress that The Pale King is not what I would call a novel. It is a posthumously compiled Wallacian stream-of-conscious not of a person but of a place and idea, the place being an IRS processing center and the idea being how waves of humanity crash against pure, unadulterated tedium. Stream-of-consciousness is not quite accurate though, implying a type of fluidity that is a bit counter to DFW's whole thing. Woolf writes a stream of ideas flowing into eachother and mixing together in whorls, DFW plays with a bunch of legos and sharp corners. A Koch snowflake is made by recursively altering the line-segments comprising a triangle so that each has a triangle coming out of it, and each of the lines in that triangle has a triangle coming out of it, and so on. The Pale King likewise has a plot within each plot that kind of makes it look like it follows the curve of a story but is not in itself a story.
Jan 15, 2024If Beale Street Could Talk
By James BaldwinMost books I read which strive to be about the Black experience living in America are ultimately about trauma, for obvious reasons. If Beale Street Could Talk also has its fair share of trauma and no happy ending - but the focus is instead powerful love, the love of a young couple and the love of the main character's family. It is a beautiful and moving piece.
Jan 13, 2024Shadow Country
By Peter MatthiessenThe term shadow cousins refers to family members that are excommunicated, not spoken of and ignored. At least in the parlance of the book; I suppose in real life as well, although I have not heard of it elsewhere. The context is one in which family is otherwise the bindings and basis of one's entire society - clans of the Hardings or Houses or Daniels, bound together and facing the difficulties of life on the frontier. There is a bit of a moral imprecation here: shadow cousins, bad eggs thrown out of the nest, lacking society, must confront a bleaker reality and in all likelihood become that which they are labeled as. On the other hand, there is for lack of a better phrase deep badness here as well, a reason why shadow cousins are labeled as such. Edgar Bloody Watson, the central character and central shadow cousin whose life the book examines is not vindicated by his traumatic and troubled upbringing or the bad luck he encounters - he is a tough man who makes tough decisions, and at times takes the unflinchingly evil path.
Jan 11, 2024His Majestys Dragon
By Naomi NovikOne of my favorite book's growing up was My Father's Dragon, which I remember little about now - but did bias me pretty strongly against His Majesty's Dragon. I am an adult now! This looked like the lowest form of pablum. But really it's just pretty good pablum! An easy, comforting read, with sailboats and war and dragons, with problems presenting themselves and melting away, it is a book rightfully confident in its identity and a fun experience. It took me about 18 hours to get through, while The Guermante's Way has been sitting by my bedside for the last 5 months.
Jan 2, 2024Butterflies
By Hermann HesseA cute and lovely collection of prose on butterflies. The poetry - I've read some of Hesse's poetry before, and I can't really tell if he is a bad poet or it doesn't come across in translation? For a writer I love so much I am a bit inclined to believe the latter, but I mostly find his poetry lacking. But the prose is cute and lovely - if you are a fan of Hesse's work, it is definitely worth a quick peruse. And I learned that apparently Schmetterling is not the only German word for butterfly, which is heartening.