Josh Krysak
*2.5 stars. Stephen King is one of my favorite authors. I have read nearly his entire catalog and have overwhelmingly enjoyed his work. Seminal novels in my reading life - It, The Stand, 11-22-63, Joyland, Duma Key, Salem's Lot, The Shining, Bag of Bones - and short stories and novella collections that are among my favorites, too - like Four Past Midnight and Nightmares and Dreamscapes - King hits the right notes for me much more often than not.
However, sometimes the shimmering writing and sneaky depth that make his work so much better than just popcorn fluff is missing. Then when you lose his most critical skill, simply telling a compelling story, you are really up against it.
Sometimes he falls into the pitfall of living down to his detractors and churning out works that just don't measure up. That was the case here as I was disappointed pretty much across the board with Billy Summers.
Hollow characters, a plot line that felt contrived and more forced as the book went on, a King staple of projecting completely unbelievable engagements for the time period in which he has set his book - Monopoly battles with neighbor kids who, despite just having met said single, adult, male neighbor, are truly engaged and excited about these weekly contests and mom is all for the new random guy spending any of his free time eating her food and playing games in the basement with her children, like immediately after meeting him - just one example, and King's tendency to project himself onto his protagonists with the secret novel writing cover story for our lead character, just scratch the surface.
I found there to be a significant shift in tone halfway through when our minor lead character enters and much of the plot afterward is stilted and overdone.
And, let's not even mention the one-note “bad guys,” the unending parade of forgettable ancillary characters or the fact that in the end, despite suffering early serious childhood trauma, what really makes Billy Summers someone worth rooting for? Where is the great description of character that allows readers to build their “hero” from the pieces provided with the depth and insight King is capable of?
I can tell you where it isn't - in Billy Summers.
A final note - as always, even though they also felt a little more forced than most of his efforts - I enjoyed the King Easter eggs, probably because I have come to expect them, but more likely because they took me to a different book and a different place; one I enjoyed visiting so much more.
Predictable and plodding - filled with many frustrating plot points and developments that annoyed me just enough to keep me in that state-of-mind throughout. It was page-turning, but I cared little and knew the big twist long before it is revealed. If you want to read something fantastic with a similar vibe, try Arcadia by Lauren Groff. It's a 5 star read.
I can do nothing but gush about this love letter to stories and books. I have read reviews picking apart the ambition and the cost of the ambition with supposed lost tension. I have read the reviews that there is too much ham-fisted foisting of the underlying message of the importance of stories, and libraries and reading, etc. I have read the detractors who have determined Cloud Cuckoo Land too sweeping and too self-involved and therefore, too dismissive of the narratives that should have greater impact, like the breadth of the historically significant battle rattling the days of Omeir and Anna. I disagree.
Doerr's characters are vivid and their realities shape the story and isn't that the whole point in the first place?
All of the stories and timelines worked for me and I wasn't frustrated to leave one over another and came to be invested in them all, in nearly equal parts - which is truly saying something.
In my mind, it is a greater work than his Pulitzer-winning novel, All the Light We Cannot See, because it treads previously untended ground and uses imagination to reveal all the greater good of humanity, or the greater good that could be, even through the sadness and tumult and struggle that plagues all life. I loved it.
*3.5 stars. Absurd and far-fetched but I kept turning pages quickly. The twist device employed by Feeney works but it also limits the impact of the established tension of the novel as well as the impact of the twist reveal and doubles and triples down with more reveals/twists on top of that.
*4.5 stars. Moving, funny, heartbreaking and ultimately sweetly melancholic, Talk to Me is yet another solid entry in Boyle's exceptional tradition of examining who people are and what is the very nature of our existence. His keen eye of humanity - all that is wonderful and all that is terrible - make his novels hum with truth and life. As always, I was highly entertained, even if a bit saddened and angry, when he forayed into the dark places one might expect given his subject matter.
When I began reading Gus Moreno's This Thing Between Us, I had moved toward it intentionally as the fall days darkened earlier, wanting to gravitate to books and stories that unsettle and then settle cozy in their unsettled-ness around you and won't let go.
I had moderate expectations, with no foreknowledge of the author, but a few glowing recommendations from some trusted book podcasters. I'm glad I got their message.
I had to slow my reading down to make the book last a few days and not spend a night devouring it whole.
This slim existential crisis in written form is woven with heart and life and even humor while brimming with fear, sadness, death and horror. What a feat and what an incredible testament to the power of grief. Moreno uses it to elevate horror to reveal the terrible questioning and cavernous emptiness that we all must endure for seasons of our lives, but wraps it in incredible storytelling, sitting on any ham fists, and letting his prose do the talking. I loved this book.
*I must include a spoiler alert because as I read it, and even as the deaths of humans were shared in bloody visceral details, I thought of my wife and her aversion to a certain kind of cruelty, albeit, a ghostly one that is short-lived in this case. So, trigger warnings for animal harm and death.
This wonderful novel is a surprise 5-star read for me. Uncategorizable and riveting, in a dreamlike way, Piranesi flows with an immersive sense of place, a magical sense of time and an incredible beauty. Clarke plumbs what it means to be alive and what constitutes a home.
So, it's a year in books and a year on Goodreads review, but you have to provide context, right?
With that in mind, it was a year that I had high hopes for, but one that began with dismay and sadness and, unfortunately to my continued dismay and sadness, never really recovered.
Political unrest, a global pandemic, and the sudden loss of my brother at the age of 33 in February all cast a pall over the year.
However, books were a stalwart source of escape and wonder, as they always are for me.
Much like Terence Mann's speech in Field of Dreams, a role played perfectly by James Earl Jones, about the constant of baseball through American history since its inception in the late 1800s, books and reading are a constant in my timeline and my story. They are a joy that is always available and, as one famous author so eloquently noted, our most portable kind of magic.
In 2021 I fell short of my goal of 84 books, but did manage to best last year's total by two, reaching 73. I read 22,574 pages and averaged a 3.7-star rating. There were certainly reading highs and lows, but it did seem that more highs came my way than anything truly unsatisfying or detestable.
So, without any more yammering from me, here are the 18 best books I read this year, (everything that earned 4.5 stars or above) along with some other notables and nuggets.
4.5-star reads:
Cold Moon Over Babylon by Michael McDowell - solid gothic horror by a southern gothic master
No One Goes Alone by Erik Larson - wonderfully ghostly and atmospheric
The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones - brutal, unique and terrifying
The People We Keep by Allison Larkin - a heartfelt coming-of-age and found family story
The Big Meat by Carlton Mellick III - absolutely bonkers and absolutely fun
The Lake Wobegon Virus by Garrison Keillor - sharp satire from one of our finest writers
Three Things About Elsie by Joanna Cannon - funny, moving and beautiful
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett - writing you could make a meal out of
The House We Grew Up In by Lisa Jewell - propulsive and compelling
5-star reads:
The House of Sleep by Jonathan Coe - unexpectedly page-turning and unique
Chasing the Boogeyman by Richard Chizmar - meta, true crime novelization? = perfection
A Crooked Tree by Una Mannion - affecting, meaningful and vivid
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir - thrilling adventure with heart and lots of fun science
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman - my all-time favorite band of geriatric detectives
Paperbacks from Hell by Grady Hendrix - what a collection and the book covers!
The Mayfly Glimmer Before Last Call by Poe Ballantine - best living writer in America, period
The Push by Ashley Audrain - too twisty and propulsive for its own good
Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy -beautiful, heartbreaking and pure
5-star Rereads in 2021:
Joyland by Stephen King (5th time - no judgement!)
11/22/63 by Stephen King (4th time - same as above, don't @ me)
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin (2nd read)
A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote (2nd read)
Biggest Disappointments:
Billy Summers by Stephen King
Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline
Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson
Repeat Authors (those who are on my “Yep, I'll read that without any additional information besides the fact that said author wrote something”) who don't appear in the lists above but still brought joy to my reading in 2021 with a new-to-me read:
Karen Russel with Sleep Donation
William Gay with Little Sister Death
Josh Malerman with Goblin
Michael Chabon with Mysteries of Pittsburgh (I know, it's been in my TBR basically forever)
T.C. Boyle with Without a Hero (He's right up there with Poe for a master craftsman)
Annie Proulx with Heart Songs and Other Stories
J.K. Rowling with The Christmas Pig
Thanks to my wife for reading along with me and being ready to talk books just about every day and thanks to our book club, The Finer Things, for adding an additional dash of bookishness to our year. Thank you all for your engagement on this platform. I appreciate the time each of you invests into providing insight into your reading lives so that other readers might be enriched.
May you have a safe and healthy 2022 and happy reading!
*3.5 stars. A lot going on here. Plenty to like with Kingfisher's deft touch for instilling a sense of the everyday in the bizarre and vivid imagination but also a bit scattered and a bit action heavy. Still enjoyable.
2.5 stars, I suppose for the writing and the format. Otherwise, I just couldn't connect with this one.
This book is an homage to the King classics. Long, developed, nuanced, scary. I enjoyed the setting and the story and can't wait to get to Wanderers soon.
*2.5 stars - for concepts and originality. But the best parts of Chainsaw were those concepts and that originality. The execution was flat and emotionless and if you didn't connect with Jade's stream-of-consciousnesses, then you were simply left to slog through. And I did, and I'm glad of it, if for nothing more than the Acknowledgments, where Jones hooked me and made me care more than he had in the 375 plus pages preceding. I wanted to love this book, but I couldn't. However, Jones remains a “try every time” author for me now - despite this miss. Mannequins and Indians were very good and even this, despite not landing, was too unique not to applaud the effort.
*4.5 stars. Hendrix is such a pleasure to read. His pop culture creativity, his darkly comic characters and his genre broadening neo-horror style have made him one of my favorites.
Where to start? There is so much to unpack with Davidson's debut. It is gorgeously written. It has exceptionally fleshed-out characters, including two likeable leads. The Redwoods tower. The setting otherwise is detailed and raw and perfect. The conflict is believable. The violence and illness is unsettling. And yet, I still can't give this more than 4 stars. I couldn't shake an overall malaise when I would return to it, which is not the feeling you need when working through a literary chunkster. I can't quite place why, but it just bogged down. And, the final act was an unwelcome but not unexpected conclusion.
*4.5 stars - I enjoyed The People We Keep. Coming-of-age is a personal favorite, as well as ark stories, and this novel had those aspects in spades. Larkin channels a little Daisy Jones and the Six vibe, with the music and the transient lifestyle of our protagonist, but April is her own character and is dominated by her essential goodness, despite being dealt a bad hand. I was intrigued by the triggering aspects and how readers would react, but I found that the sweetness and the authenticity of the characters and their engagements overcame any possible cries of intentional sensationalism and I was disappointed when the story ended because I just wanted to spend a little more time in Ithaca.
*3.5 stars. Entertaining throughout, if a bit unbalanced in the final chapters, Mexican Gothic is atmospheric and filled with gothic dread before delving into what felt like a rushed and more horror-driven conclusion. Moreno Garcia clearly has talent and her ability to build tension and menace is clear, but she lost the story a bit and in the end her characters lacked necessary depth to carry or overcome what became an increasingly strained plot line.
I loved every word. The tone, writing style, story, structure - it was unique and exciting and ultimately pitch perfect. It is rare for a book to grab me within the first few pages, but this one did. The beautiful, even literary, writing masquerading as a thriller/horror/faux true crime is every bit vintage Stephen King. The story itself and conclusion become almost secondary to the exploration of an author's heart, his motivations, his nostalgic tentpoles. Chizmar connected the dots that often remain publicly untethered. I was enthralled.
*Insightful, funny and often deeply moving, this book is a lot of fun and further establishes John Green, for me, as simply a good human and a wonderful writer. As an author, he is the anti Mitch Albom. His voice rings with clarity and truth. I give The Anthropocene Reviewed four and a half stars.
*2.5 stars. The cover is fantastic. The concept is ingenious. There is intrigue and mystery. There is magical realism. It has all the things - and yet, in the end I failed to connect with the characters and repetitious (this really got to me at times, see an example below) and muddled backstory didn't serve to move the narrative. The most exciting development in the novel, the mind-blowing discovery that should be the very crux of the mystery, is barely explored, and many of the characters and their interactions seemed of the cut and paste variety. The big finish feels silly and the plot holes detract from any sense of wonder that might be remaining. The second big fiction release recently (The Book of Cold Cases) that has let me down.
Was this edited, like, at all?
“...I scarcely had the first inklings of how far it had really gone. None of us really knew just how deep this obsession of his really went. We didn't know what he was truly capable of.”
This seems a bit repetitious in a repetitive sense. It truly reads like it might repeat what repeatedly what was just said. It is just repetitive repetition.
Propulsive, far-fetched and wildly entertaining, The Collective is a great “popcorn” read with just the right amount of thrills and twists and driving action to make the required suspension of disbelief possible to keep turning pages - quite quickly. A fast, fun read.