Eduardo Santiago
Perspective is hard when we're immersed in chaos—that's why we go to therapy. What Saunders has done here is kind of like showing us our Selves, from an outside perspective, except he makes it feel recognizably personal, like he's writing from the inside. (I can't find the right words. If I could, I'd be a writer myself.)
Each story is unique and powerful. Different settings and voices, with common themes of consciousness, self-awareness, moral agency. Saunders does an exquisite job of depicting inner monologue, monkey mind, life on autopilot; and a painfully accurate job showing the rationalizations we make every day to protect ourselves from discomfort. The book does not feel Buddhist in any way, but I think its insight and kindness make it a book that only a Buddhist could write. Each story requires effort from the reader; some more, some less. They're worth it.
One of his masterpieces, and even better on rereading (although I can't remember my first reading). The tension in this one is painful: helplessness in the face of tyranny was especially excruciating right now, days before the 2022 midterm elections. Even his humor, sharp and insightful and at his best, has uncomfortable cautionary undertones.
Harsh but compelling. I found the characters unlikable, self-absorbed, inconsistent... and fascinating. Simultaneously shallow and complex; self-interest with unexpected moments of connection and empathy; each with their trauma and the roles they think they have to play. And, through it all, a meaningful story of culture and belonging and loss.
Millares Young's prose is beautiful, evocative of both mood and setting, drawing me in so I could almost see and hear the life in the village, feel the characters' conflicting emotions. She has an exquisite sense for the human heart. Favorite excerpt:
“Surround yourself with good people. [...] Being with someone with bad energy, it's like singing next to someone who's off key. Yeah, you keep singing. But you have to filter out what's coming from them just to hold your line. And that takes energy. Costs you. They're not trying to hurt you. They just don't know what else to do.”
An unusual book. Typically when a book begins with alternate-chapter perspectives it's because the subjects will converge. And they do, but really only briefly. Despite Berger's efforts to inject love-story elements, the connection between Zoharah and Michael never feels more than a glancing one. A powerful one for sure, which ended up changing both their lives, but not central to the story.
And that's totally fine, because the love that I picked up on was purely for the Work. For recognizing injustices big and small and struggling to correct them over the course of two long and rich lives. More than two, actually: not all characters get equal billing or book time, but wow, what a cast.
The book was both inspiring and discouraging, frequently on the same page. Berger deals frankly with the problems of real-world human beings, no matter how best-intentioned, working together without conflict. Two people, three, national organizations, our individual motivations make it so damn hard to cooperate! Yet we do—some more than others—and I feel humbled at seeing the strength and perseverance modeled here.
Editing could've been better: ambiguous antecedents galore, and a few disjointed sections. Even so, my heartfelt recommendation.
Kudos to McTier for her creativity in thinking of and developing this quirky theme. For her courage in bringing it to light, for her wit. For focusing on the accomplishments of women. And, of course, for adding to my astronomical education.
Unfortunately, I found it a slog. Almost abandoned it several times, kept going purely out of stubbornness. The narrator's voice (the Milky Way galaxy) was grating, often annoying. The gimmick—a self-aware galaxy—might've worked for me in different circumstances, but not like this: it was not only anthropomorphic, it was WEIRDly (Western Educated etc) so. It talks in terms of “wanting stars to be happy,” “friendships” with other galaxies, petty jealousies, snark, emotions and feelings that just irritated me. I can accept a conscious galaxy—nobody understands consciousness, not among humans or other earthly creatures, let alone anything grander than us—but can't accept one this (ahem) mundane. Yes, human writers: take risks, give us alien consciousnesses—but please make them alien. Weird in the not-all-caps way: surprising, unusual, just on the edge of comprehensible. Not snarky postadolescents. McTier herself unironically describes my feelings halfway through, writing about the stupidity of human myths and religions and their made-up stories of gods: “such are the contrivances of mortal creatures trying to imagine the inner machinations of immortal gods.” Exactly. I kept trying to push past my disconnect, but couldn't.
A powerful opening, and it just kept getting better. It was exquisite from the first page, and upon finishing I wanted to start right back on it to enjoy the writing without the suspense and to spend more time with the characters.
Smart, competent characters; a loathsome villain; believable relationships among them. Sex positivity. Thoughtful exploration of cultural norms (maybe a tad heavyhanded, but forgivably so). Constant addressing of the difficulty of communicating. Strong female roles. Frank no-BS treatment of grief, suicide, loneliness. Science positivity, with genuine-feeling depiction of the euphoria of learning. Basically, a lot of my hot buttons in one tidy package.
Masterful writing: King uses dialog effectively, with the shortcuts, collisions, topic shifts that make up realistic conversations. She gives us sensitive insights into the characters' head spaces. There's one narrative element I found brilliant: after the first (third-person omniscient) chapter, the story shifts to first-person. The smitten male narrator describes glances and unspoken subtexts that suggest his attraction is mutual, and the reader becomes increasingly uncomfortable about the narrator's reliability—we men do have an unsettling tendency to misinterpret attention from women. King eventually addresses this tension, but read for yourself to learn how.
Lovely, and entirely unlike anything I've read before. Part memoir, part bestiary. Prose, with poetic undertones and charming artwork. Scientific objectivity plus deeply personal reflections, thoroughly infused with wonder. Stir well; let simmer after reading.
Also, TBH, a bit of a stretch at times. Each short chapter is titled after an animal, or plant, or fruit, or a few wild cards (“Monsoon”). Nezhukumatathil riffs on each: she describes them with loving details, draws upon her own experiences with them, ... and then draws a parallel with other parts of her life. These parallels are typically insightful, but occasionally tenuous: I found myself loving the nature info, loving her personal stories, but going ohhhhh....kay..... at some of the connections. Funny thing, though, they ended up being memorable: I remember the touch-me-not and canyon wren and peacock and newt and cassowary, and remember her associations, and reflect back on the personal aspects, the racism and misogyny and insults she's suffered. Which makes the gimmick effective, doesn't it?
Painful but also graceful take on wage slavery, toxic masculinity, rape, mental health, colonialism, ecocide, and more. Beaton convincingly and poignantly shows the many stages she experienced through multiple soul grinders: starting off as an innocent young art graduate desperate to pay off student loans, doing what she thought was necessary (and probably was), but paying prices noone should have to. Important reading, but the kind of people who need to read this, won't.
Just a few pages before the end there's what I think is an exquisitely meta moment: Sadie recognized the look in Destiny's eyes. She knew what it was to be ravenous with ambition but to have your reach exceed your grasp. I'm 99% sure this is Zevin winking at the reader. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is tremendously ambitious, and not entirely successful, and Zevin is clearly self-aware enough to know this, while also knowing that her aspirations make the world a better place.
Imperfect, but so is life, and despite the gaming themes this is entirely a book about the oh-so-messy real world. A stunningly perceptive and mature one. I did not always like the characters, but I loved them. They're complex, troubled, inconsistently kind one moment and assholes the next. Their (lack of) communication skills had me gritting my teeth and sending exasperated late-night emails to a friend: why oh why are we humans like this? Zevin wants us to do better, but I think she also recognizes that we can't. Her insights on cognition and mind are poignant.
Please keep overreaching. That goes for Zevin and also all of us. I want to do better. I will fail, fail again, then—until the Game Over point—pick myself back up and learn and carry on.
Less drama than [b:The Sisters of Alameda Street 31213198 The Sisters of Alameda Street Lorena Hughes https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1482380437l/31213198.SY75.jpg 51867767] — hey, I saw that eyeroll! Pleasantly different, actually, so no more comparing.Lovely evocative writing. Fun pacing. Intriguing premise. Unfortunately, it didn't work for me: the characters just weren't believable, nor their actions, nor the disguise going undiscovered for more than a day. That kept me at a distance, unconnected. I could see the story developing, and see that Hughes had a destination in mind, but the characters were just shoehorned into acting the way they did. Seemingly important characters or plot points appearing, serving their purpose, and unsatisfyingly vanishing.
Chilling. I went into it tabula rasa and encourage you to do likewise: allocate a chunk of time, start at the beginning, take your time looking at each uncaptioned photo. Recognize one or two. Look at the maps; at the 1940 Green Book pages. Try to imagine the courage it would take to set out blindly, passing through sunset towns, with only a hope of an address—not a single phone number that I could find. The courage required to list your private home in that book. (Marvel perhaps at the number of Beauty Parlor listings. Do people on road trips have that much need for hair care? Or, I wonder, was that code for something else?) Look at the people in the photos. Imagine stories for them—maybe happy ones? That helped me.
Know that at the end you will find an afterword and a list of photo credits / descriptions. Do not rush there: simply know that it'll be there for you. Then, when you finish your first pass, flip back and get a better understanding of the photos, the hopeful ones and the horrible ones. It is totally worth a second pass.
Yes! This is more like it. Wells put some effort into this one: it's not just snark and magical hacking and Mensah Mary Sue. It's even new territory for Wells: a whodunnit, with an effective subplot that I think we'll be seeing more of. Murderbot does not simply hack its way out of every problem; in fact, it even gets humbled on multiple occasions (in proper ways that lead to self-reflection, not eat-dirt ways). There are new characters, and brief appearances from old ones... but, interestingly, none from Mensah except for one or two terse feed exchanges. I appreciate this: Mensah has a life and responsibilities, and Murderbot needs to find ways to fit itself into Preservation. This was fun and tense and filled with promise of more to come.Totally not suitable for Murderbot virgins—and wow does that come off as really weird-sounding. I mean, don't make this your first Murderbot book: you won't get it at all. Start with [b:the first one 32758901 All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1) Martha Wells https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1631585309l/32758901.SY75.jpg 53349516], then maybe the rest (it's OK to skip #4). But for those who love Murderbot and were disappointed with the last ones, I think you'll enjoy.
Superb! Vowel describes her work as “Métis-futurist”; I find it difficult to pigeonhole because each story is so different in style and form. One common thread is Indigenous strength and agency in the face of crushing, often brutal, settler colonialism; another common factor is grace. Oh, and intelligence: Vowel is hella smart, but she writes in a way that brings the reader to her.
Some of the stories demand effort from the reader. Primary difficulty: language. Vowel liberally sprinkles Cree throughout, usually without translating, and often in contexts where the reader can get only a vague idea of the tone. I found this especially challenging because words like ‘kimiywêyihtên' and ‘okanawêyihcikêwak' do not register in my old brain. Secondary difficulty: the scholarly footnotes. They do add value in a few places, but their use in the first story is waaaaay excessive: “[20] (Vincent 2013) This is an accurate depiction of where the moon would have been close to dawn in May in the northern hemisphere”?! Okay, she's done her research, but please let the reader trust you, and get absorbed in the story, without breaking their reading flow.
Gripes over. And, the first story is by far the worst in that sense; I recommend reading it without the footnotes. It's a worthwhile and lovely story – and the following ones are even better.
I'm confused. This very definitely reads as YA, but I‘m not seeing YA listed in the Goodreads genres. It feels like a huge disconnect: what am I missing?
Anyhow, sweet but unfulfilling. Perhaps that's the point? That there is no fulfillment to be found in life, no Ultimate Purpose? The two books in the series are a simplified amalgam of existentialist philosophy, Buddhism, introductory Ethics, with a lot of Frankl Lite. Monk and Robot debate the nature of consciousness and perception, mind/body dualism, our impact as living beings whose existence depends on the death of other living beings. All of it centers around [Sentient Beings'] Search for Meaning. Much handwringing, no resolution, just continuing to stumble along. Much like life.
The Robot mechanics still make no sense, nor does Robot consciousness despite a halfhearted attempt to address it. Nor does this particular Robot, charming though it may be: its childlike innocence feels more and more forced. I deliberately chose not to say “heavyhanded” in my review of the first one, but can't avoid doing so now. It's clunky. The cultural dynamics make no sense either, nor do interpersonal relationships. Real people just don't behave that way, in more ways than I could cover in a few paragraphs. Bonus points, though, for a subtly lovely description of kintsugi without using the word kintsugi; for the two grinworthy pages in which Dex tries to explain their (Dex's) parents' polycule to a robot; and for really warm friendship themes. And, hell, simply because it's Chambers. Not her best work, but again that's probably just me and where I'm coming from. Give these books to a Young Adult in your life - the themes here might just be new to them, and might shape them into better humans.
Reminiscent of [b:Friday Black 37570595 Friday Black Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1519263290l/37570595.SY75.jpg 59181816], and I realize it's unfair of me to say that because Her Body is the earlier work. What I mean is the gimmick: the stories all take place in a reality eversoslightly off-center from ours, recognizable yet alarming. It's an ingenious and effective device: Machado's matter-of-fact depiction of daily misogyny, and that world's casual acceptance thereof, shines a spotlight on the injustices that our world turns a blind eye to.The stories are hit or miss, but in reading my friends' reviews I was delighted to find differences of opinion in which was which. Delighted, because it means thoughtful conversations lie ahead from which I may learn.
Well, this one didn't work for me so much, but that's OK. I still adore Chambers. Maybe I just wasn't in the right head space, or maybe I'm not the target audience: this one felt aimed toward young teens, or at least someone who doesn't mind a slathering of Very Special Moral Lessons. If you've read Chambers you know her work is sweet; in this one she takes a giant leap into syrupy. Everyone—Monks, Robot, Villagers—is eye-rollingly nicey-nice and always striving to be nicey-nicer. This crotchety old man found it hard to relate.
It wasn't just the people and relationships: all of it required suspension of disbelief. The politics, economics, even physics (favorite yeah-right moment, referring to finding deadfall on an abandoned road: “Dex [...] shoved [...] swore [...] rolled the damn tree out of the way, and continued”). Dex manages to not only switch careers on a moment's notice, but also become world-class Best Listener in just two years. The robot construction and maintenance explanations border on nonsensical. The religion aspects are pretty clearly shoehorned in as a gimmick. In fact, writing this now, it feels more like the book was written by, not for, a young teen. It's handwaving wish-fulfillment porn. And that's okay, but Chambers can do better. Finally, the pronouns annoyed me. Dex is nonbinary, fine, but goes by “they,” and in third-person narration with two protagonists there are way, way too many doubletake moments: “they remained that way for a few minutes,” later followed by an indication that it was Dex-singular-they, followed by me having to reread the entire paragraph. Come on. You're a talented writer. Use xe. Make one up. Or, my favorite, use the Ann Leckie tactic where everyone is she and the reader never knows nor gives a damn about who has innie parts and who has outies.
I'm going to read the next book anyway though.
Like any anthology, a mixed bag: some great essays, some impenetrable ones. The great ones, though, are excellent: thought-provoking, educational, and enjoyable. Even the less-great ones taught me and may make me a more considerate person.
The most discouraging line of the book was in the introduction: “The political temper in the United States, as this collection goes to press, is one of anger, fear, and hate-mongering” — and this was 2011. Oh, for those innocent days! The essays didn't feel dated, though: in some cases, things have improved since then; in others, not so much, but the authors' optimism carries through and has left me feeling, not exactly hopeful, but at least strengthened.
Awful. Started off kind of bad: I found the author unpleasant but not intolerable. Right at the halfway mark, in the chapter titled Grace, that changed. For the worse: TL;DR author's former Harvard roommate (yes, author makes sure to write Harvard, not college) can't attend author's mother's funeral, for a valid reason; roommate explains “the funeral is the beginning of grief, and it makes more sense to show up when other people stop showing up”; author ends their friendship. Roommate continues making efforts to reach out. Significant efforts. Author relents... then writes, seriously, about grace as if SHE, the author, is the one manifesting grace by “forgiving” the roommate. (I just reread that section, to make sure I didn't misinterpret. I don't think I have.)
We all grieve differently. I don't wish to make light of the author's pain, but I will say that none of it resonated with me. It just baffled me. I found her entitled, self-absorbed, high-drama, and even mean-spirited at times.
UPDATE: worth rereading. So I did. What an exquisite voice. What a beautiful book. I can't say what it's about, any more than I can say what life is about, only that it's a meandering, disjointed path touching on loneliness, communication, relationships, aging, memory, listening. The first-person narration is almost ethereal: we learn almost nothing of her, she goes through life taking up very little space but missing out on little. The whole book is her observations on interactions with others, with a big ghostly gap where we'd usually have an active character. Somehow, by hiding the person, Nuñez highlights the ways in which we navigate our lives, how we learn (or don't), grow (ditto), come to peace with ourselves. Nuñez paints behaviors I recognize, in myself and in people I love and in people I avoid, and she has me thinking about who I want to be.
[Original review: Probably not the best book to read on a painful flight home from a memorial for someone who, four months ago, did not know he had cancer. I kept going anyway: maybe the Universe had a message for me? (No, of course I don't believe that stupid shit. But I do believe in learning from every opportunity that's handed to me. And learn I did. But I don't think I can write about this book right now.)]
OK, I need to be honest: this isn't really five stars, more like three point nine, but it is five stars right now, in this shitty post-Roe moment. This was exactly what I needed to read: a handful of characters, each broken in their own way but each also compassionate, kind, thoughtful, Present, aware of and listening to every other character, doing their absolute best together under tough scary conditions.
Chambers is just so fucking wonderful. Yeah, treacly at times, but I need that right now and so, probably, do you. She packs so much in this obviously-post-pandemic book: good communication, emotional intelligence, gender identity, body autonomy, bioparents vs nurture parents, cooperation in the face of uncertainty; she slams “differing opinions” when it comes to killing sentient beings, magat cultures, and closeting.
Warning: a bit tough to get into: the characters are all alien (to us) races, and it takes some time (maybe 50 pages) to get them mentally sorted out. It's totally worth it. And: you do not need to read any of the prior books. Same universe, one shared character. Readers familiar with that character's backstory will nod in recognition, but the backstory is not necessary to understand this book.
Somewhat inconsistent. Part memoir, part history of climbing. Some (most) sections were fascinating, a few I found dry. Often jumpy wrt times and places, requiring effort to reorient myself. And, surprisingly, not as much female perspective as I had expected. I started following Reych some years ago because of their thoughtful, empowering writing; this book was quite different from what I had expected but it still delivered solidly on the thoughtful and empowering fronts.
A remarkable woman, one who deserves to be better known. I hope someone writes a shorter, more readable biography of her one day but this one, sadly, was a slog. Its rambling, declarative storytelling form might work well as an audiobook but was painful in print. I'm glad to have learned about her personal and tribal history. I'm also glad the book is over.
Unrated because I don't have the right to drag down the GR rating.