Sean

Well, although I really do get tired of all the four-letter words (does anybody ever say that anymore?), and would enjoy the books more without so many of them, I do enjoy the Saga story quite a bit. This volume did not disappoint.

I will confess right away: I am afraid to write a complete and truthful review of Coates's Between the World and Me. I will begin easily enough. Coates has written an important and disturbing book, one which I am glad to have read and which I think (maybe) all Americans should read. It will and should be read for decades to come. Maybe it will become part of the conversation that leads to a solution to our national disease and horror.

There, that wasn't difficult. But now it becomes not so easy. As a moderately-well-educated, somewhat left-of-center, well-intentioned male person who thinks I am white, I understand that it is not legal for me to criticise Coates. I understand that I am expected to squee and bubble about how TNC is my favorite author of all time and I want to have his babies Oh My God! (Full disclosure: I come to Coates's book with built-in prejudices, not because of anything about him, but because of his gushing adoring fans. Gushing adoring fans generally give me hives. That is why I never got into Apple products. I already have a God; I don't really need Steve Jobs to fill that rôle.)

So let me just get it out in the open. The man's writing sometimes annoys me to no end. “Mr. Coates,” I want to say to him, “I hate to tell you, but I'm just not all that interested in your ‘black body,' beautiful and sacred though it may be.” I understand that he is making a point, and I think I understand his intended meaning, but after the tenth or twentieth repetition I was desperate for him to just drop it. Write “me” or “him” or “them” or “pickled purple armadillo snout” – anything but “black body” one more time.

The repetition was annoying, but more importantly, it obscures what might be a serious philosohical naïveté. Coates is a vocal and thorough-going materialist, repudiating “magic” and any such nonsense as a “soul.” The entirety of a person's identity, in his philosophy, is the physical. What unaware people would call the ‘mind' or ‘soul' is only chemicals and electricity. Fair enough. This is certainly the prevailing philosophy among moderately-or-more-educated, left-of-center Americans, and it may very possibly be true. But, if it be true, or to a person who believes it to be true, there is no “person” to “have” a body. The body is all there is to the “person.” So I wanted to beg Coates several times, “Please stop talking about yourself as if you have a body. Since your ‘black body' is all there is to you, to your son, to all those beautiful bodies at The Mecca, please use that construction one time and then just say ‘me' or ‘him' or ‘them.' You are not a ‘person with a black body,' by your philosophy. You are a black body; only that and nothing more. Be aware and consistent. And please be less repetitious.”

I am grateful that Coates allows me to be a “person” who thinks he is white. I am happy to be a person, not only a body, but i think he did not mean it as a kindness. It is obvious that I am the enemy and nothing more.

He emphasizes that people who think they are white are no group, no tribe, and have no meaningful identity or cultural claims other than as oppressor, but black bodies form a tribe, no matter how disparate. He at least implies that people who think they are white do not get credit for achievements by other people who they think to be white, but black bodies seem to get credit for the accomplishments of the global tribe of black bodies. I find it difficult to take this seriously.

It seems that he considers people who think they are white to be essentially different beings than black bodies, almost like separate species. Since I, a person who believes myself to be white, know myself to be human, I am left wondering what black bodies are if they are something essentially different. I turn aside from this line of thought as being utterly repulsive, but it seems to be the only path Coates wants to leave open to me.

Coates bears within his black body many generations of reasonable anger and fear. I understand that, and I read him with consideration for it, but I believe that only catastrophe can come as a result of speaking of people who think they are white and of black bodies as essentially different. Destruction of every body is the only outcome I can imagine.

[Deep sigh. Now what? I have so much to say, positive and negative. I think I will cut it short, but first this...]

I am gay. My entire life people have said about me, “You're really straight, but you've chosen to live a homosexual lifestyle.” (What does that even mean?) “You were molested by a man when you were young. You don't remember because you have repressed the memory.” I have been told “Since you can't reproduce more of your kind, you want to recruit our sons to be like you.”

All my life people and black bodies have chosen to pretend they know my thoughts, my motives. They have presumed to treat me as an interchangeable member of the class “Queers,” sub-class “Faggots.” They have chosen to do that, and I have chosen to call them on it.

I am thinking of the escalator incident, when the woman who thinks she is white rudely moves his son out of the way. That was surely inexcusable and she needed to be called on it. I think maybe it makes the world a better place when people get called on their rudeness. But Coates then puts thoughts into her head, ascribes motives to her, and he does so with a high degree of confidence. There is no “perhaps.” He thinks he knows. He calls her a racist and declares her motive to be racist, and he preëmtively denies her the chance of self-defense. Maybe she is a racist. Probably she is. Most people who think they are white and quite a few black bodies do harbor some anti-black racism–this is scientifically provable and a really sad thing. But neither Mr. Coates nor I know. And even if his guess about her racism is correct, he does not know her motive in that particular instance. He denies her full humanity and tosses her into a group, knowing nothing about her thoughts or motives. He treats her much the same way straight people treat queers. He treats her in much the same way people who think they are white treat black bodies.

And here is the problem I have with this incident. The one time I witnessed something similar it was a black body who picked up a young girl who thought she was white. The black body, a man, lifted her off the ground by a couple of inches and moved her two feet to the right so he could pass her by. I did not kick him out of the library for the day, but maybe I should have. Given his history, if he had been a person who thought of himself as white I might have done so. In fact, I probably would have.

So what to make of that? The rude woman who thinks she is white is reduced to a representative of an ongoing oppression of black bodies, but what about the rude black body? Unless we are to treat them as separate species, we must give each the honor of being respected as an individual, with unknown thoughts and desires and motives.

Mr. Coates's fear and anger are reasonable and justified. But if that is all there is, and if that fear and anger dehumanize people who think they are white and even other black bodies (the way Coates dehumanizes the cop who killed Prince and all the 9/11 first responders) then I think it is Doom for all of us. Coates gives us nothing but fear and anger, and he uses those emotions, legitimate though they are, to destroy the humanity of almost everybody.

I love Delilah Dirk, and I want Mr. Selim to make my tea every day.

Cliff continues to delight with his tales of Miss Dirk and Mr. Selim. They are by turns funny and exciting, with never a slack moment. The art is beautiful, legendarily beautiful, and every page has a panel I want framed, very large, on my wall.

King's Shilling continues the ongoing story nicely, but adds great depths to the characters. Dirk comes shockingly close to defeat, which was literarily necessary for someone of her immense abilities; Selim rises even more definitively to the occasion. And by the end of the book... I'm pretty sure I know what's in store for the two of them together. And that makes me happy.

I really liked this book. It is a very good way to explain things that many people do not understand. I have long enjoyed his funny things on the computer. The writer has done something very hard–using only small simple words to explain things is not easy at all–and we should shake his hand and say “Good job, sir!” His book is better than anything I could write were I to try the same thing. Right now I am discovering how hard it is to do what he did–I am using only simple words and it is very hard! So, “Good job, Sir!”

I liked it. I didn't love it, but I liked it. At one point (I do not remember where I was in the book), I found myself thinking, “Wait, this shouldn't be in the children's area; it should be cataloged for adults.” I went so far as to check another library system's catalog to see where they had it. And then I re-read the page I was on and could not figure out why it was so un-childish, but the impression remained.

The pictures are pretty.

The story ... isn't?

I am much less literate graphically than I am verbally, so as much as I love comic strips and some comics, I sometimes don't really understand who is who and what is happening. With this book, although I guess I understand the overall story, I didn't get any of the page-to-page details or transitions, and I think it wasn't only my fault.

I received an ARC via Netgalley.com.

Well, it's not my normal style but I certainly liked it enough that I am going on to Volume 2. I got this series recommended to me when I told someone that I have a hard time with any graphic medium, especially manga, since I am less literate with pictures than with the printed word. I have a hard time tracking who is who. My interlocutor suggested this series because the characters are easier to tell apart.
I enjoyed it.

I picked it up because of the cover and I am happy to say that the whole book is equally magnificent. I love cut paper artwork, and this is some of the best I have seen. The story deserves mention, also, since it should be of interest to anybody who used to be a boy called upon to go beyond himself.

I respect St. Basil personally and as a major figure in the Christian Tradition, but reading this book made me wish our Fathers spent as much time demonstrating a compassionate attitude toward their opponents as they did demolishing their arguments. Yes, I understand the role of dogma in the Christian Faith, I really do. But at this stage in my life, I look around and think that if we had laid foundations of “Compassion at any cost!” rather than “Correctness at any cost!” we could still have developed correct theology and also prevented much of the Us vs Them mentality that infects the Church today.

So – bravo to St. Basil and thank God for using Basil's intellect to guide the Church into the understanding of God that we have been given. I love the book for that reason. But it makes me a bit sad at times.

I enjoyed this trilogy quite a bit. Seeing the photographs and trying to reproduce Riggs's train of thought as he figured out how to work each one in to the story was an added fun puzzle which increased the enjoyment level considerably. As much as I disliked Jacob's whiny superiority, in the end I came to care about his well-being. Read these books if you like “this world” fantasy and can appreciate some serious teen struggle.

The illustrations by the Provensens are part of the foundation of my ideas of beauty. The dream-pale rose tree still represents to me the highest ideal of beauty, an ideal which still lurks in the back of my aesthetic sense and colors all my judgments about beauty and desirability. I am grateful to my mother for deliberately giving me books of great artistic worth. This was one of the sillier of them, but of lasting importance.

The words are nice, but largely irrelevant.

An amazing confluence of words and wordlessness, print and pictures, truth and fiction and meta-fiction. I love this book. – Perhaps a real review will follow later, but for now, I leave it at this.

Worst book I ever read. One of the few things I really regret. My life is worse for having read it. I had to quit half way through, and I wish I had quit on the first page.

I laughed absurdly hard in several spots, which is a little odd, I know, when I'm working at the reference desk. (By the way, the glow-in-the-dark crayon... well, turn off the light.) Fun and charming and very funny.

Interesting. I am not hugely fond of Rubín's style, but his pictures are clear and easy for me to read, which I appreciate. The mingling of ancient and modern feel was quite enjoyable

My new favorite book. I've learned something important about myself and other people from reading it and various reviews. When someone says “Maia, yuck! He's just too nice. I hate him.” That person – don't trust them one inch. Maia is the person I want to be. Addison does an amazing job of revealing the personal struggles of a real person who intends to be good and do the right thing. It is not an easy attempt, not dull and static, but a fluid and difficult grind.

I listened to the audiobook read by Kyle McCarley, and I will never know if I love the book more for the writing or for his perfect voice. I do not normally listen to books, but I am so glad I did this time.

I enjoyed this one even more energetically than the first. Here is how I know how much I liked it: there are several problems with the storytelling, where the author simply ignores the difficult questions of how, where, why, and some of the defects are a bit glaring. But I didn't care! I wanted to know what happens next and more important than that I wanted to continue in the complex and compelling atmosphere which pervades the whole story. He made me care about the characters, the plot, and the words. I consider it an achievement when the writing is more compelling than the mistakes are off-putting. I look forward to reading the next book.

I loved it. That's it for the review. Now for my answer to the question, “Should I read this if I don't listen to the podcast?” I say, Sure, go ahead. If you are the sort who would love Cecil's broadcasts, then you will love this book podcast-unheard. If not, then not. The book will not spoil the podcast, and frankly, listening to the first episode will confuse you just as much as the book will.

As for those who complain that the book has no plot, I finally figured out that they read a different book than I, Something other than Welcome to Night Vale, so I can not comment. I am sad that they read such a plotless book, whatever it was, and I think some Goodreads librarian should figure out exactly what that book is and then separate out the reviews for the two different books so as not to cause confusion. This book, Welcome to Night Vale, has lots of plot, lots of story, lots of purposeful consecutive action, but even more it has real humans in great human distress trying to deal with all the mess life throws at them. Read the book to find out how they handle things.

The series continues to amuse and amaze.

Normally I do not make an effort to read current best-sellers, but I am glad I did this time. Even though I did not like any of the characters at all, I wanted to know more about each one, especially Rachel. A mark of a good writer is the ability to make thoroughly unlikable characters likable.

This book was very hard to enjoy, but I enjoyed it anyway.

Handler writing as Snickett wrote some of my favorite books of all times (really, the Series of Unfortunate events just may have made me a slightly better person), but I was somewhat disappointed with a few other of his books I ventured into. I was not sure what to think, but I won a copy of Pirates and a request for a review, so I decided to work through it no matter what. I am glad I did.

We are pirates begins with deliberate attempts to confuse the reader and to create a surreal and bleak world, both physically and psychologically. Handler succeeds in disorienting us from the first chapter, and this disorientation continues to the end. He also succeeds in creating a cast of utterly unlikable characters–the world he presents here, if it were the real one, I think I might become an advocate of suicide.

The basic plot – disaffected and unattached people run away to become pirates – could be the foundation for a rollicking good time book, full of fun and adventure. I thought perhaps that was where the book was heading. Handler quickly pulled that rug out from under my feet, which at this point in history is a phrase that means he took me by surprise and suddenly removed support for my misguided idea. Well, I shan't tell what happens, but when our pirates raid their first ship, it was a tough read.

I'm glad I finished. For all the book's difficulties and Handler's refusal to make the fun book I was hoping for, at the end I believed that I had read about real people, who really changed because of their encounter with the same real life I meet every day. I did not enjoy it so much as respect it. Handler played with my emotions and he won.

I don't have anything to add to what others have said. A good middle volume of a trilogy, well worth reading.

Wow! My mind was blown and my thoughts engaged numerous times. I almost regret having read through it straight way: perhaps it would have been better had I stopped and started, giving myself time to digest what I had read. But no; I could not stop, I had to keep going. The stories are as compelling as they are thought-provoking.

The title story “The story of your life,” which was made into the movie “Arrival,” is relentless with its question, “What would you do differently, or would you do anything differently, if you knew the future and the results of your decisions?” “The Tower of Babel” twisted my world a little, while “Division by Zero” made me feel exactly the feeling I usually try to avoid when questioning and doubting the biggest and most important faith of my life. “Hell is the Absence of God” makes me glad, so very very glad, that my theology is not that of a child, thinking that the world really should work the way the one in this story does. What hell that would be! And at the end of it all, “Liking What You See: A Documentary” instigated a little bit of a smack-down fight in my inner conversation.

It made me think, sometimes uncomfortably, and the structures and the writing are at times quite beautiful. So all in all, I rate this a highly successful book.

I'm not the one to review this book, since I have never learned the art of appreciating books about characters I do not like in any way. I can tell it is well-written, and I could certainly recommend it on that count alone, but characters who are empty people make (to me) an empty book.

I rather liked this book.

The primary reason I am a Christian is because it is the only religious system (and ‘religious' for me covers a lot of ground)I know of whose mode of thought is based on paradox. Christianity answers all the big questions paradoxically. Philosophically, it is very sophisticated; psychologically, it is very adult. One reason I have a hard time reading most atheist writers and pontificators is that they don't deal with paradox at all. Many of them don't seem even to realize it is a thing to deal with. So a book that approaches the Faith from a standpoint of paradox is a real joy for me.

Skeel did not write the perfect book. He starts out of a line of thought and, though he always deals with what he begins, he sometimes doesn't go far enough with his thinking, and sometimes doesn't seem to notice even deeper levels of paradox and sophistication in the areas he deals with. But although I say this book is not perfect, I am happy to report that it is very good.

He begins by stating that he wants to talk about complexity and how Christianity is well-suited to explain the real complexity of the universe we live in. I appreciate this. I cringe when I hear Christians say, “Christianity is so simple, even a four year old can understand everything perfectly!” I believe that the person who first said that had a meaningful, necessary point to make and the statement was completely true, but now, after so many repetitions by so many people who seem to think it is the final word, it has become garbage. Christianity, since it deals with God, Life the Universe, and Everything, is infinitely complex, and it although – since it is so complex – it is well-suited to persons who can understand only a simple thing, it is large enough for the greatest human mind to grasp only a tiny part of. Its explanations and big picture describe the world as it is very well, and no good service is done by denying that complexity.

He addresses five areas of paradox:
1. Our ability to form ideas;
2. Beauty;
3. Suffering;
4. Justice;
5. Our hope for an afterlife.

When he talks about beauty and justice, he focuses on the paradoxes inherent in the fact that we humans even care about such things in the first place. Good work. As a law professor, he especially enjoys dealing with our attitudes toward justice and various paradoxes involved, things I would never have thought of.

I wish he had dealt with this paradox: If the materialists are right, then the world and all in it is essentially meaningless. If that is the case, O Materialist, then what is my reason for listening to you? The internal logic of their argument seems to say that they shouldn't bother making the argument in the first place, or I shouldn't waste my energy paying attention to them.

I recommend it for anyone who has a hint of how philosophically satisfying the Christian Faith really is, or for somebody who doesn't but would like to catch a glimpse. The book offers only a glimpse, but it is a good glimpse.