Alexander Meves
This review assumes you have read the book.
Today is Jan 8 and this is the third five star review of my year. I feel like I don't want to do it purely because I enjoy feeling like a selective rater; my praise must be earned.
But I know I have to gladly give it here. Because I will be haunted by this book for the rest of my life. It is the most frightening book I have ever read. I feel mortified to share a species with the man. To those who say the author was “trying to show both sides, why she stayed, but did a bad job” - you're an idiot. The entire point is he's dismissive from the get go. It's supposed to be imbalanced because she stays in the marriage like I imagine many other women do: with increased patience, because men will be men, because she cannot make money, because she has a kid, because he can be kind, because it could be worse, because it would be hard.
He is egotistical and lazy and uncaring. But he is not evil. To make him evil would be a cop out, it would other him. His flaws are banal in the way that they are for all men. He is (half literally) a stand-in for any other man – a John Doe.
And that is the fear. My fear is that I might commit a single one of these infractions towards my partner, or anyone. In fact, I found myself reading with absolute horror an exact scenario I have lived out. I thought “When I did this was I also being like him? Could I be like this person in other ways?” Of course it's not predetermined, but all the agency and control in the world will never prevent me from the paranoia of seeing this character as a reflection of me.
Not all 3 stars are created equal
This review assumes you have read the book
This book, for me, is an example of why numerical values are not always appropriate for ranking a book. I believe if the last 30 pages were removed, I would rank this book at 4 stars. There is a finality to the words "Molly, I love you forever" that invalidates all that comes after. The writing is mediocre. It could've been better edited, especially in the parts after Molly's suicide. Quotes are misplaced and poorly timed. It's clear Butler is more used to novels driven by plot, as his attempts to approach any poetic language is often awkward. It is really odd that his best worded observations are about Molly and how she feels rather than his own. I've seen some describe this as Butler's autobiography, but it's not really about his life. The book is more about her in many ways rather than himself, but really it is about her as she is seen through his eyes . It is frankly shocking he fails to reflect on this book (much less his life) as he discovers things about her that leave him crumbled. Perhaps his view of his own is not as clear as he thought.If the book was fiction, I would have given this book 5 stars. It perfectly balances the realism of a flawed and unreliable narrator: a dumber, albeit non-parodied Humbert Humbert (no child attraction included in this comparison of course). I would've considered this book a masterpiece in its ability to withhold and make the reader decide the impact of the narrator's actions left unsaid. But the book is real. It is about real people. Molly Brodak did kill herself. She really did that. And her husband is truly the author. So the narrator's flaws are of a real person's flaws. The feeling we get that he is not telling the whole story, is because it is not being told. So I am left questioning if the author's flaws and his inability to reflect on them (and the impact they had on Molly) is a "minus-star" quality. His mistakes, when mentioned, are objective and factual. They happened. But the facts are never paired with an emphatic thought of how they might have affected the namesake of the book who has killed herself. When you cheat on someone that has the self-esteem of dirt, what do you think that does to them? Meanwhile, Molly's mistakes are psychoanalyzed. Her manipulative behavior is a result of her abandoning father. Her deep hatred of herself a result of her uncaring mother. Observations like this are plentiful, but the truth of the matter is Molly is not here to defend herself. A book by her husband should not make her feel like she needs to be defended. I don't want to diminish Butler's feelings about Molly's discovered behavior. Yes, she cheated on him also systematically and consistently. She manipulated his feelings and also emotionally abused him. That's not too far to say. But refusing to acknowledge the relationship as a potentially hazardous one where anger and depression and trauma and substance abuses feed off of each other is irresponsible. And the worst memoir, is a dishonest one.
Review assumes you have read the book.
Howrey has a writing style constantly approaching subtly, but the words almost never engage with it. Faraway phrases have an imitation of wisdom, but their meaning is plain. The repetition of phrases (“What's bred in the bone”, “All this wastage”) with clear meaning in the context of the novel counters the wispy style and weighs it down needlessly. This is definitely a trend in modern literary fiction. It is an attempt at integrating poetic qualities in clearer narrative form. But there is a reason poetry is difficult and the unpracticed often come off as trite.
Nevertheless, the plot is compelling. Carlisle switching between victim and evildoer within the main conflict is frustrating as a reader, but ultimately realistic. Family drama is complicated. Everyone can be in the wrong at different amounts, and familial relations can still be plagued by sins more commonly recognized in other connections - pride, greed, lust for example. Although, for someone who is profoundly affected by her ‘banishment' it seems unlikely Carlisle wouldn't put in the effort to contact her father. To give his wanted ‘explanation' before his death. I suppose there are two of the novel's themes in this regard. The first being the influence of others on ourselves. Carlisle is a mix of her father and James. The second is failure. Sometimes we choose to fail, to not resolve a twenty -year fight. And we often refuse to accept our choice of failure, denying reality.
A decent novel. All the ends are tied just not in the way you might want them to be. Unsatisfactory for us and Carlisle, but not necessarily unhappy.
This review assumes you have read the book. Otherwise, my recommendation is do not read it.
This book is actual garbage. The writing is absolutely atrocious. LaRocca is an immature author who does not possess the ability to create a character of any substance. Every character lies on one side of a choice while another character is on the opposite side of that choice. There is no nuance at all. “Hey I want to do this” “I don't want to do this” “Okay grr” “Grr” That is the exact scenario LaRocca is limited to in his dialogue interaction. The lack of any driving force behind characters is in part due to the inability of LaRocca to write female characters. Every female character is subject to the stereotypes of hysteria and fickleness. So of course when they manically change their minds for no reason it makes them feel like a marionette for the author puppeteer to dance towards some strange end. His entire effort is spent on working towards some shock purely for the value of shock. There is no compelling story here, no interesting motivation the characters have, only a train chugging for 5 minutes to get to a poorly described destination of grotesquery.
And the destination of the title story is so vague as to be a frustrating nothingness. I literally cannot imagine what this woman is going to do with an apple peeler and a defecated tapeworm. Not because I don't have a capably gross mind, but because nothing makes sense. Is she going to peel the worm? Peel her skin somehow in a helical shape, only to see she's unable to reinsert the tapeworm? Is she going to bake an apple pie in her bathroom? I thought an apropos ending using Chekhov's apple peeler may be Agnes piercing her eyes because she does not deserve them (the repeated motif). But it's an extremely gratuitous stretch to reach that ending.
Ironically, the second ‘misfortune' is such a common and boring trope it is essentially the same level of nothingness. She is a ghost and someone walked through her and now she's trapped in this earthly purgatory. This is the least creative ending anyone could have done with ghosts. Sixth Sense, The Haunting of Bly Manor (The Turn of the Screw), SCOOBY DOO showcase this sort of ending. It is not allegorical, like The House that Jack Built. It's not an insight into a character's mind, like The Shining. It's just a childish trope.
There are many portions that make it impossible to suspend a sense of disbelief. No one posts their life story trying to sell an apple peeler on a LGBTQ forum. A tapeworm can live hooked in the intestinal wall for years. And a baby cannot kick after one month of fetal development. Seriously, some basic cursory research (google searches really) would have gone a long way.
Jesus Christ. That's all I could say after I finished this book. The entire time it was amazing to me how Tara Westover wrote about the different worlds she lived in throughout her life and the bridges she used to crossover. The connections she makes between her delusional and rejecting father and the fatherly professors are heartbreaking. The comparison between her proud ignorance in her childhood and her expanding intelligence in adulthood is inspiring. And the effect the mountain from her past has as it casts it's looming shadow over her and her life surroundings is harrowing. Each one of these hits you like a steel pipe in the gut when you quickly remember that Tara Westover made these connections in her own life; it's not just an amazing story but one lived by an amazing woman. The emotional struggle within Tara caused by her manipulative, delusional, and violent family hurts intensely. Yet, each family member comes to her aid at some point in her life to show that there are no true villains, but an evil mindset of fear and pain causes those same family members to reject or harm her. You want to yell at 17-year-old Tara at some points to do the opposite of what she is doing and escape the pit of negativity she throws herself in at times. But it's even more difficult to imagine how Westover felt at herself writing those words on the page.
At times, Tara Westover's life feels like it could not have possibly happened in a modern American household. At others, it feels she could be anyone of us living with our own fears and apprehensions.
Truly a powerful account, and the best autobiographical work I've ever read.
Zelazny's writing is front and center in Nine Princes in Amber. There is a frankness and abrupt sentence structure that is partially refreshing and wholly dull. However, the potential refreshment is shattered as the writing style is supplemented with constant summations of events that could be exciting or emotional. The protagonist having his eyes burnt out and spending three years in prison takes twenty pages, three of which detail his sleeping patterns. Nothing is described with more than a single adjective, and it is more than not a color or size. The recruitment of literally hundreds of thousands of “red and tall guys” and “short and furry guys” is not talked about at all, yet both military groups fight loyally to the death. It might be interesting to here how this happened! Are there more races? How did Corwin find these races to recruit them? What did he say? There are so many questions that are completely ignored if they don't seem to progress the main plot in Zelazny's mind. At times, it seems like bad fantasy and bad writing.
Points must be given to the creative plot, which is both unique and intriguing especially towards the end. But this is mostly due to an amnesia gimmick in the beginning, an obstacle the hinders the reader far more than the protagonist. During this forgetful phase, the main character is somehow able to quickly get information without arising any suspicion, unbelievably conducting conversations like a frustratingly vague super sleuth. This lasts in every conversation until 67% in the book.
The book could be a singular diamond in the rough, but it's a 1/2 carat diamond in a mountain of rough– rough writing, pacing, dialogue, and a lack of any character development.
I would skip this book, although I can't say if it's worth plowing through for the sequels.
Miller-Idriss walks a tightrope in her illuminating book on the commercialization and fashion of far-right German culture. On one hand, she repeatedly implies that the tangible results of this commercialization have the power to create or shape far-right ideologues. On the other hand, the evidence Miller-Idriss presents paints the word shape to be a misnomer - as it doesn't seem that clothing or other commercialization has the power to mold something from a tabula rasa. Instead, the argument created from the empirical evidence presented seems one that clearly demonstrates fashion strengthening far-right views of nationalism and xenophobia, but not without the previous existence of those views. Perhaps this disconnect between initial thesis and evidence is exacerbated by the structure of the argument. The structure is such that the chapters sometimes seem an effort to describe the clothing physically rather than use it as evidence in a larger argument, so the argument occasionally gets lost.
Although I've been mostly negative, that's only because the negative aspects require more words to point out. The good aspects of the book are much easier to show, and there are many more. The book has tremendous value as an illustration of a purposefully insider culture, as a deep-dive into far-right semiotics, and as a dissertation ripe for extrapolation into other fields, regions, and studies. The methodology is concise and holistic (although the casual reader unfamiliar with social sciences may find the empirical discussions difficult). The chapters on coded messages (2), connections to Norse mythology (3), and issues with banning far-right symbols (5) are especially interesting from the perspective of someone unfamiliar with contemporary German culture. Overall, a good book with a single misstep.
The concept in Ready Player One is an 80's nerd styled contest masterminded by an 80's obsessed nerd billionaire programmer. There is one comment towards the end of the book about how this contest was an effort to have everyone on the planet share Halliday's (the millionaire) obsessions. No comments are made about the clear indications of an anti-social slightly narcissist belief that anyone with different obsessions is inferior. This speaks to a larger picture about absent self-reflection and emotional discussion – not that every story needs to be touchy feely, but it is nice occasionally to have something more than surface level “he did that, she did this”. Some parts of the book are intriguing and intelligent, but a large part is cringe-inducing wish fulfillment by a different 80's obsessed man, Ernest Cline himself. He is quoted as saying “as a teenager [during the 80's] I was obsessed with video games, John Hughes movies, and Dungeons and Dragons”. This wish fulfillment instrumental in the motivation of writing the novel is apparent in the plot as well. It leaks into the main character being the best at every contest component, and the book isn't large enough for these acts of superior heroism to not be tiring. That could be found in Kvothe, the protagonist of [b:The Name of the Wind 186074 The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1) Patrick Rothfuss https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1515589515l/186074.SX50.jpg 2502879]. This is, in my opinion, the most significant flaw of the book, but not the only one. The romance between the main protagonist and the only significant female character (besides Aech) is awkward, patriarchal, and unbelievable. The minor characters are lifeless and uninteresting. The plot sometimes seems an excuse to wear every piece of 80's media not as an influence but as decorum. There are certainly good things about the book. The technology descriptions are interesting, even if they do cause a global decline of human conditions. The description of the OASIS as a whole is compelling and the representation of a dystopian mega-corporation an the manifestation as evil (while far from unique) fits the setting well. Overall, the book is a guilty pleasure at best if you grew up in the 80s or are a heavy video game enthusiast, just be prepared to groan when the aforementioned problems are at their worst.
If I had to write about something, I would like least to write about tornadoes because I believe the research for that would be terrifying. But second up on that list would certainly be race in America. Not that I've read many on the subject, but Kendi does something I've never seen in a book about race in America. He writes not as if his readers are already grad students studying African American studies, nor does he write as if the reader is an active lawn cross arsonist. He writes as though the reader tries to be a good person in life but may not totally grasp the scale or complexities of racist policies. This tone is immediately refreshing. Additionally he takes the time to fully define terms we may even overuse, like “racist”. It's an extremely important maneuver because Kendi discusses policy solutions requiring racial equity rather than racial equality, in turn requiring definitions based on equality to be re-defined for equity. While the equity preference is not unique among racial scholars, or even liberal-arts students, the argument posited in the books is the best and only one adequately explaining why equality of opportunity is not enough and why, under Kendi's definitions, those are racist.
To be frank, the book did not flip my stance on what is right for black people and other minorities in America. Going to the same university as where professor Kendi teaches already introduced me to similar ideas. But those ideas are held up by mountains of source and support in quotes, statistics, studies, and even anecdotes. And although there are small gaps in that argument, Dr. Kendi does the best job I can imagine given the topic he grapples with.
The Overstory's theme of nature and its ubiquity in a seemingly omnipotent way is present in every possible way. In structure, the novel has not one main protagonist but many characters developing and branching out with leafing connections. In timeline, the story of generations is told, not the story of a single day or month or year or decade – a timeline significant even to that of the oldest chestnut. In tone, with the trials and tribulations although heart-wrenching at points, coldly relayed as if from the perspective of a stoic oak. In title, as an understory is the layer of vegetation on the forest floor. And of course, in content, in prose with diction that somehow ethereally wraps around your brain and simultaneously leaves you with a clear image. The novel poses interesting questions crossing borders between morality and objectivity, between environment and Earth, and between life and sentience, not unlike [b:The Monkey Wrench Gang 99208 The Monkey Wrench Gang (Monkey Wrench Gang, #1) Edward Abbey https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1349067863l/99208.SY75.jpg 2803318]. In The Overstory, Powers has achieved, not humanizing trees (a task previously accomplished by Dr. Seuss) but making the reader empathize with “tree-ified” people.
There are positive things about The Gemini. Occasionally, Atkins has a phrase that is profound and makes you think for minute. The book is progressive with its depiction of homosexuality in the early 60s. The novel's display of of relationships in general is real as well. It doesn't shy from the complex and numerous emotions people feel towards each other when they've developed a rapport. People get upset at one another and then move on. They discover things about themselves in the midst of the relationship which evolves the relationship as well. However, the book is amazingly boring. I should've given it up halfway through honestly. There wasn't a single time where I was compelled by the events in the novel. The first half feels like an introduction to the actual romance, but both halves are equally dull. The writing style is undeveloped and is mixed between a fever-dream stream of consciousness, an emotionally sensitive omnipotent narrator, and Dickinson prose. The book often reminded me of [b:The Catcher in the Rye 5107 The Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1398034300l/5107.SY75.jpg 3036731] if it was very terrible. Please don't read, waste of time.
Just complete trash to be honest. The book is so full of hypocrisy that it's often difficult to focus on the main point the author is trying to make. Somehow “not giving a f*ck” is actually code for facing adversity, so it seems like the entire tagline of the book is a ploy to repeat the same self-help mantra in a better marketing format. The author says this is not like other self-help efforts, but uses the same tactics (and in fact the same writing style) as a Tony Robbins or Brendan Bruchard. It's casual and friendly, but attempts to have an objective enough tone to come across authoritatively, as if he actually knew what he was talking about. He attempts to write this book for people to improve their lives and turn it around, but admits that it took the death of a close friend for him to do the same. The advice given in the book is not always contradictory. But when it is straight forward, it's simply an intuitive axiom attached to a meaningless historical event. It's tiring for these self-help books to use example stories of defeat and triumph like Dave Mustaine getting kicked out Metallica only to create Megadeath. But, like every single one of his self-help conspirators, Manson forgets the reason these stories are touching is because they are rare. Because what was done is difficult and the average person cannot imagine it. It was exhausting to get through honestly even though it's a two hour read.
Also, constantly said “research shows”, “studies show”, “data suggests” with no citations or notes section. No footnotes or anything about that. 0 stars should be given for that alone.