David Yoon

Despite a shaky start — a thoughtful story that's a tad too clinical for my liking — this collection blew me away. Ken Liu talks in the preface about prizing the logic of metaphors and you can see how carefully he prizes that in his stories. Nearly every one works on multiple levels without feeling heavy handed. Some stories he manages to write historical fiction that's somehow science fiction at the same time, others are straight ahead sci-fi thrillers that could easily warrant an entire book.

I tore through the collection and found myself surprised at the risks Liu was willing to take, yet still somehow managed to pull it all off. Magical realism, cultural commentary, steampunk, old-school sci-fi, historical fiction, cyber noir it's all here and all wonderfully done.

A novel split in half telling the story of a marriage. The first half follows the husband Lotto's rise from a failed actor to an acclaimed playwright. What should have been an eye rolling story of a white guy from affluent parents who graduates from a posh college to pursue a career in acting was sustained by Groff's writing and the close third person narration that would often interject with brief asides. The second half picks up the thread of the story and colours the past from the wife's perspective. Truly the Furies half of the novel, the plot picks up and veers awfully close to over the top.

I having a bit of two-fer reading Brené Brown's Daring Greatly and her friend Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic. I'm enjoying them both immensely as we near the end of the year and thoughts turn to introspection.

Big Magic is all over the place, and despite being filled with Pinterest worthy quotes it's delivered with an earnestness I couldn't begrudge. Screw wringing your hands over originality, chase authenticity. Eschew following your passion for giving yourself over to curiosity. Be a disciplined half-ass. Fine, it can get a little out there with the personification of ideas, looking for human hosts to manifest themselves into the world and taking a creative road trip with fear riding shotgun (no messing with the radio though!) but I'm ok with that. For me, these are like cookbooks. I'm happy if there's only a recipe or two that I really love and don't begrudge the rest of the book if some of the dishes fall flat.

So many will read this only to discover how far back their eyes can roll into their heads, but she, along with Brené Brown, Cheryl Strayed and Anne Lamott hit my sweet spot. In the end, as a painfully self-conscious introvert who has to work on putting himself out there constantly I appreciate the reminder that it doesn't matter how it's received, that the importance lies in trying anyways.

It starts off so well, as far as psychotics go. Frederick Clegg sees himself as a connoisseur but is awkward and isolated even amongst his peers at his “Bug Meetings”. He's a collector of beautiful butterflies. But then he finds himself obsessed with the 20-something Miranda and having recently won the lotto finds himself with the means to take his obsession further. What happens next, he claims, is not his fault.

It is a supremely tense first act told from his perspective. It's a perfectly taut cat and mouse game between him and Miranda where anything could happen. Fowles does an amazing job at putting us in the mind of Frederick and we can see how he so easily justifies his actions and sees himself as an innocent. Truly anything can happen.

For me it fell apart when we switched to Miranda's narration. It felt vapid and empty rambling on about art and her naive obsession with the older G.P which felt as delusional as Frederick's obsession with her. Perhaps Fowles is drawing parallels here but her narration felt like a misstep. Still an enjoying read.

I stayed away from this book after absolutely loving Marra's A Constellation of Vital Phenomenon. How could any book live up to the lofty expectations set by what I consider one of my top 5 reads. Tsar shows it's not a fluke. Marra is a master and once again I found sentences that stopped me cold. It feels almost manipulative how he's able to illicit larger emotions with the tiniest of gestures. It is a 10 cm square of canvas, a tinfoil wrapped spaceship of the imagination, a cassette tape. And damn funny amidst the bleakness of Russia and heartbreaking without getting mired in the maudlin.

Marra juggles multiple characters inhabiting a collection of interconnected short stories that span 75 years and makes it look easy. The shifts in tone were uneven but maybe it's more the good ones were so good - Alexei's chapter will blow your hair back and the Grozny Tourists bureau hooked me hard.

This book starts out strong and promises to be a truly terrifying story. That first chapter is sleep-with-the-lights-on, throw the book in the freezer, chilling. But then Long keeps broadening the scope so we're introduced to a Dan Brown DaVinci Code re-examination of history and secret cabals, Michael Crichton eco-terror with elements of sci-fi, and romance thrown in for good measure. What could have been a tight horror novel about the discovery of a savage race living far beneath the earth instead becomes a convoluted mess that is all the stories that still manages the occasional bright spots.

A collection of graphic short stories that show what the medium can do. Each is a unique, somewhat melancholic examination of living in the 21st century. I love how Tomine uses illustrations to tell a story as well. In “Translated, from the Japanese” we never see the characters in the story - just glimpses of what they see. And in Killing and Dying a secondary, heartbreaking story is told without words that culminates quietly with a blank panel that's seems a minor hiccup but encompasses worlds.

It's a story too smart for it's own good, or at least too smart for me. An existential novel about predestination, bureaucratic work, being a small cog in a big machine. Phillips manages to be at turns funny while capturing the suffocating, claustrophobic, soul-deadening existence of (office) life. Maybe knowing the trick of it, the story deepens in meaning on subsequent readings but here I simply felt it was a clever short story lengthened to be a somewhat plodding novel.

It's the Dan Brown of conspiracy novels. Everything from TacMars, fluoride, chemtrails, bigfoot, and somewhat worryingly, 9/11. But what is most interesting is the idea of Phantom Time, the idea that over the course of history, people in positions of power have modified the calendar to suit their own agendas. Scholars believe that Pope Sylvester II skipped a hundred years just so he could be the Pope of 1000 A.D. What if that happens all the time and we're just not aware of it? What if WW2 extended beyond the borders of Europe and into the United States? And what if we just wanted to forget?

Boil your water and try to befriend someone with a metal plate in their head.

Book one of the Dublin Murder Squad and I can see why it elicits such devotion from fans. French certainly delivers a gritty crime novel that kicks off when 12 year old Katy Devlin is found dead at an archeological dig, displayed on an ancient sacrificial altar. But it's intertwined with the investigating detective's history there. 20 years ago Adam Ryan was discovered nearly catatonic backed up against a tree his nails digging into the bark, his shoes filled with blood and absolutely no memory of what transpired those few hours before that led to the disappearance of his two closest childhood friends. It's been a closely guarded secret and now as Detective Rob Ryan he can't help but wonder if the two cases spanning decades might not be related or at least shake some memory of his past loose.

Police procedures, red herrings, mythic woods, partner tension, physiological toll - it's all there and written far better than any genre fiction needs to be. French ratchets up the tension and you're never certain where the story is going to take you next.

It's barely a book, a slim horror novella where we get a reality show out on the ocean in a cynical attempt to discover mermaids. Armed with begrudging researchers, a hardened crew, shallow TV talent, not to mention a couple aces up their sleeves it's not without a bit of shaudenfraude when the expedition goes horrible south.

And much like Cabin in the Woods - when the mermen finally appear, it's bloody, but over all too quickly.

What can you say about this best selling poetry phenomenon? Maybe best that I don't try. I've worked at getting better at reviewing books but talking about poetry objectively is much harder and I lack the language for it still. This collection isn't for me, the older, married, hetero guy. While I don't feel an accusatory finger pointed at me, it's more an indifferent turning away. Nonetheless it's reassuringly straightforward in its language, almost blunt. Its use of lower case and clipped short sentences accompanied with simple line drawings are perfect for our internet age and ripe for the inevitable popularity backlash.

It's a coming of age novel that suffers under the expectation of Parker's first book, Once a Runner.
No one writes running better and Parker's prose somehow convinced my couch bound ass that running was something I might like, that it's the most natural thing in the world. It's weighted with that expectation I came to the book that is essentially the prequel to Once a Runner. What I got instead was a melange of other stories.

We get sun soaked nostalgia; recollections of growing up in South Florida, a highschool basketball drama and, inexplicably, a murder mystery with all the nuance of Scooby Doo as written by Carl Hiaasen. Each on its own are pretty good. Parker does a great job of making even basketball interesting. But together it seems like he's trying to tell too many stories, shoves much of the running I came for to the back, and resolves everything with the pat ending you'd expect.

The book opens with a lone writer, hunched over an ancient keyboard in a grim, concrete room typing out dreams and obsessing over Beijing taxi driver Wang Jun. They are soulmates, their lives intertwined across generations and Barker explores each of these incarnations in depth. They are grim stories with dark endings and it doesn't look like Wang's present incarnation is going to fare much better.

Lots of exotic oriental set pieces that read like intertwined short stories as the mystery of who the obsessed writer is slowly revealed.

The book opens with Crazy Craig Hollington, the leader of Aryan Steel, calling out a hit on a man, his wife and their child - all from his Supermax cell at Pelican Bay State Prison. The language is all prison patois and rumbles along with a syncopated menace. This is going to be fun.

The dead man walking is Nate McClusky, out after a five year prison term but marked for death when he kills Craig's brother in prison. He doesn't get to his wife in time but manages to grab his 11 year old daughter Polly. They're on the run but they're not laying low and instead are hitting Aryan Steel hard in an attempt to get their hit lifted.

The whole book feels like the non-mutant version of Logan. Hugh Jackman as Nate McClusky, Dafne Keen as Polly, the girl with the gunfighter eyes and the stuffed teddy bear she expertly pantomimes. And it works so well.

Crooked cops, drug mules, prison hits, the story is lean and ripped, moves fast and hits hard. How this doesn't get made into a movie I don't even know.

It's no fair to the book. This is an encapsulation of a Stanford year. A course taught, and no doubt loved, by countless students. A distillation of years, shaped by the experiences of hundreds of eager pupils. Designing one's life takes some thoughtful consideration and concerted effort and I just whipped through the book in a week.

And so being told your excuses are bullshit just don't seem to have the weight of revelation. I get swapping but with and: “I want to write a novel but I'm swamped at work” becomes “I want to write a novel and I'm swamped at work.” I mean, we've invited options instead of the hard wall of the but - but the idea of reframing problems isn't exactly revelatory. And as far as “There is not try, only do” we all know Yoda said it first.

All of these seem simple and obvious in the telling but the book can be more than this simplified review. Reframing your stories, finding empathy for others and yourself and eliminating the roadblocks that prevent you from realizing your own lofty ambitions are noble endeavours worth the time. This is something to be picked up and considered like a zen koan not consumed like fast food and tossed aside. I think it could reward the effort but I'm out here looking for that silver bullet and eager to get back to reading some literary fiction.

Romance is the literary version of country music. It's the outlier that prompts folks to say things like “I love all kinds of music ...except country.” I've been meaning to try something from the genre and when I received a signed copy I thought I'd give it a shot.

I thought romance would have been heavier on the salacious but this was pure soap opera complete with the unresolved ending and a “next time on...” preview of the upcoming book. It's Dallas swapping bourbon for oil. A bit of upstairs downstairs, destined lovers who naturally hate each, the debauchery that wealth brings with the honest, hard-working inner beauty of those that work for them. And because it's set in the South, there's even a magical negro. Yeah, all the tropes. And much like a soap opera Ward juggles a ton of different storylines. Maybe this isn't the best representation of the genre.

I like Brené. Her work on shame is incredibly powerful. But now, post viral TED Talk, she's doing high priced executive sessions at Pixar, and getting invited on Oprah. With Rising Strong we get Brené not only thinking of her research on resilience but also buttressing her brand. I kept thinking, stop trying to make “rumble” happen. Same goes for chandeliering and the acronym BRAVING. It felt like the utmost of restraint that kept her from slapping on a ™ after half of these.

I get it. We do have to wrestle (or rumble) with our feelings and pay attention to how we're framing our own story. How that narrative is often fuelled by our own biases, self-doubt, and need for comforting patterns that can do away with the discomfort of ambiguity. But that's all easier said than done. When we're face down in the dirt it's not always clear how we negotiate our way to something better. And the book did not help. The examples given were so far removed from anything I was familiar with as to be completely abstract. I never felt I was given better tools to find my way to “rising strong”.

Maybe it's enough to just point out the dysfunctional ways we tend to react when we're down on our hands and knees. To advocate for more curiosity about our emotional state and working on the self talk to something better. But that would have been a much shorter book.

It's America's whisky and Reid Mitenbuler traces the history of bourbon back to the first president. Turns out the spirit is closely tied to the country that gave birth to it. Backwoods individualism to corporate shenanigans, outright criminal activities to being an essential staple of war. For a spirit that cultivates it's craft heritage it's become a mass produced product created by only a handful of distillers. It enjoys a rip-roaring, mythic history that makes for an entertaining read.

At one point Jane, as an Asian au pair in a relationship with her white, married employer set up an unfortunate comparison in my mind. Edward Rochester should not invoke Woody Allen. And the madwoman upstairs? She's an overzealous, vegan, feminist academic. The whole thing threatens to be a little too New York. And don't call it a retelling of Jane Eyre. It's got tons of little Eyre Easter Eggs that provide a gleeful spark of recognition. Currer Bell! Lowood! But in the end the story and characters are their own.

I loved the bits of Korean sprinkled throughout. At my weekday lunch I'd prod my folks about their understanding of nunchi, tap-tap-hae and hon-yeol which prompted some wonderful, meandering conversations. Came for the Jane Eyre, stayed for the Korean.

Inspired by a 1940 profile by Joseph Mitchell in the New Yorker, Saint Mazie was a real life Queen of the Bowery. Working the ticket counter at a tiny theatre in New York from 8am to midnight, Mazie would then walk the streets alone and hand out money and soap to the homeless she encountered. She'd drag others to flophouses and called more ambulances than any other private citizen in New York at that time. It was someone author Jami Attenberg felt deserved her own story.

The book's fictional documentarian pieces together excerpts from Mazie's diary and intersperses it with recollections from the son of Mazie's lover, the great-grandaughter of the Venice's manager and snippets from Mazie's unpublished autobiography. It allows Mazie's brash, booze soaked, cigarette smoking rasp to come through as her story winds through Prohibition, the Wall Street bombing and the Great Depression. It's a story of New York in the early part of the 1900's.

When the book opens we're introduced to ten-year old Ana Juric playing in the streets of Zagreb. But when civil war breaks out the realities of her life change. But we're still seeing it through the eyes of a young girl. Fairytales and football shattered in a gut-punch of a moment. Stories continue to have an influence on Ana and we see her struggle to define hers. Quietly compelling and beautifully done.

So having read two Korean translations I'm entirely capable of passing judgement on a nation's literary output. Apparently Korea is obsessed with guilt in a country where men are assholes.

Yeong-hye is described by her husband in the opening lines as “completely unremarkable in every way” then goes on to eschew meat of all kind. Naturally this leads to her cutting her wrists when her father tries to force meat into her mouth. She later sleeps with her sister's husband after he paints flowers over them both. He tries to leap off the balcony to his death when they are discovered while she decides that she is a tree.

Koreans are crazy.

UPDATE
OK so here's a less glib review of The Vegetarian as it continues to enjoy continued critical acclaim. Perhaps it's more evidence of the quality of the read that it leaves it open to such diverse interpretation - that it's afforded the level of seriousness of many of the review I've seen.

I felt her refusal to eat meat was actually a feminist reaction to the patriarchal Korean culture that still seems mired in the sexist idea that a women's place is in the kitchen. Korea food is centered around “banchan” or multiple side plates that accompany the main course. It's heavy on effort and value judgements are made on the quality and quantity of these dishes. She is railing against the constraints food has placed on her and the expectations that come with it.

Then on to the sexualization of women in section two. Believe it or not, Korea outstrips both Japan and the US for porn consumption. As a culture it still uses sex to sell (think pre Mad Men era advertising in the US for cars, cigarettes etc) There is an obsession with appearance: Korean men wear more makeup then men in any other country. Epicanthic fold surgery is the most common surgery performed by university girls in Korea and nearly 50% of highschool aged girls have had cosmetic surgery done and many will go on to sculpt noses and narrow chins to create a uniform “ideal” face. So maybe I'm just Psych 101'ing the whole thing but the painting is about the objectification of women that has been internalized culturally.

I'm a little lost on the third part. I'm not as clear on the mental health state of the nation. It could be the intense pressure to succeed. The stress of university exams, getting into a chaebol which control 50% of the Korean economy, the martyr worker complex and a fixation on keeping up with appearances. But maybe I'm reaching.

Listen, the translation is kind of flat, the writing perfunctory, and the innumerable pages focusing on Luo Ji's waifu who literally gets fridged was so confusingly unnecessary.

But I like how Cixin Liu thinks. In a world where Trisolaran sophons can monitor all earthly communication, the United Nations Planetary Defence Council elects four Wallfacers who are given free rein and unlimited budget to carry out massive plans whose true intention must belie their surface appearance. It's a small wedge that humans seek to leverage as Trisolaran's thoughts are open to each other making deception an unknown concept. But the perfect, shut the front door, Wallfacer Luo Ji plan, is to cast a galactic spell on a distant planet and how it gets explained is exactly why I love Cixin Liu.

This blew the doors off my own cultural understanding of Vietnam. Raised in North America through the 80's and 90's Vietnam is invoked as more an idea than a country. Vietnam is the backdrop to American reckoning, set to the music of Creedence Clearwater Revival. The people of Vietnam are mere props in the ongoing narrative the West tells itself. Americans are the heroes or anti-heroes in the story, the main protagonists while the Vietnamese are relegated to the margins. The complete appropriation of the idea of Vietnam by the Hollywood machine is just jaw-dropping. Vietnam invokes Marlon Brando whispering “the horror”, R. Lee Ermey dressing down recruits and Tom Berenger with his arms raised as he's gunned down. Vietnam has been repeatedly sold to me as a white American story whether it's Rambo rescuing POWs or Trump dodging the draft. And Viet Thanh Nguyen gets me thinking about all that while skewering a thinly veiled representation of Apocalypse Now as the director in the book may or may not have tried to have our protagonist killed. Just wild.

This is a book by a Vietnamese writer writing to the Vietnamese people. From its harrowing first pages as we see the fall of Saigon from a perspective I'm only just realizing I've never considered, to the torture nearing the end that is the most visceral, mind altering passage I've read that doesn't need to rely on gore. (Also the most extreme writers workshop I've ever seen rendered on the page.) The Vietnamese here are refugees, not immigrants. Former soldiers, counter-revolutionaries and patriots finding themselves suddenly living tiny, mediocre lives tending liquor stores and working in restaurants. Like our protagonist in the opening lines of the book they are of two minds. Not always an easy read but perspective changing ...and a tip of the hat to the badly abused squid.