Dec 7, 2023Into The SilenceImpressive, compelling and detailed story of a bunch of crazy Britishers, gallivanting through life, clinging to the glory of a bygone era, callously causing wanton death and performing feats of greatness. It is astonishing their arrogance, what they lived through, what they accomplished.
Dec 12, 2023Red SorgumThere is I think probably a thread of brilliance that winds its way though this novel - but I was rarely quite able to grasp it. I am a bit suspicious of the translation; the writing has a kind of wet, glistening consonance that is either amateurish or a deliberate artistic style that emboldens the titillatory corporeal aspects of the book that I enjoy the least. The flatulence, death and shit comprise a blackly humorous take on the occasionally horrifying events that I suppose may be considered provocative or at least honest, but that reads to me more as just unnecessarily edgy.
Dec 15, 2023A Gentleman In MoscowIt is a bit suspicious that this was published after Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel came out, but as much of a Anderson fanboy as I am, I think this may have done it better. Declining customs of an aristocratic hotel of the Old World, charm and poise pitted against the bureaucratic gray new age, a man out of place whose chief attribute is knowing how never to be out of place. Sweet, a bit twee, all in all quite solid, an excellent book to recommend to a grandmother or at least my grandmother.
Jan 13, 2024Shadow CountryThe 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 15, 2024If Beale Street Could TalkMost 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.
Feb 7, 2024The Books Of JacobA 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.
Aug 28, 2024BabelThere is a bit here of the young-adult, which of course is nothing to be ashamed of, but means that it is a bit simplistic, a bit stilted, and a bit preoccupied by its own project. Which like, it's a good project! Anticolonial linguistic magic in Victorian Oxford is fun! I like the project, I didn't love the book.