Jeff
The central theme of this book needs to be shouted from the rooftops: If murders in south central LA were all investigated with the vigor that murders elsewhere in LA are, there would be fewer black men murdering black men. Leovy doesn't discount other reasons for so-called “black-on-black” crime, but she's focused on the above reason.
It's too bad that this book is relatively disjointed in making its case–it reads like a bunch of newspaper articles put together, which isn't bad on the face of it, but I would have rather had more coherent analysis of the central theme.
Still, it's worth reading: The real people involved investigating and being the victims of homicides in south central LA is heartrendingly fascinating.
Read this after seeing the movie–they sure are two different animals, both good in their own way, with different weaknesses.
This book had a haunting quality that I hadn't anticipated–there is a bit of heavy-handedness regarding animal rights stuff, which I'm sure was intentionally done, but aside from that it's got a lot going on, getting us to ask questions about identity, sexuality, our connections to others. The minimalist elements in it were appealing to me, and it has a strong, if a little abrupt, ending.
One of the best things about this book is I decided to read it instead of continuing to plod through Delany's Through the Valley of the Next of Spiders, so my love of Solaris might be influenced by my relief at not having to work so hard to attempt to enjoy a different book.
Having said that–what a wonderful book. Not without its flaws, but a fascinating take on what it means to be real, how we exist in relation to others, and how love can sometimes really fuck us up–all within a sci-fi wrapper that has such interesting facets as an entire planet that is basically some kind of brain, and a centuries-long attempt to communicate with an alien consciousness.
This is a page turner, but with a few more flaws (e.g. thing I didn't enjoy as much!) than the other two books of hers that I've read. She manages to create modern Detroit as a background character in a wonderful way, even sort of mocking herself in a character who is new to the area, pseudo-exploiting it. The central characters are two women–a mother and her daughter–who have multi-layered personalities, but the other characters feel so one-note that they end up distracting from the main themes, given the multiple-perspective structure of the book. When we get away from Layla or Gabi's perspectives, my interest waned.
That said, it's a solid thriller with a few mystical-horror elements which worked well. I hope we get to see these characters again...?
This one is tough to rate with stars–if you have any interest at all in Camus, it's probably a 5-star book, just because of the insight it gives into the guy. As a book about the friendship of two amazing minds, it's two-stars. As a book with amazing insights into the French resistance during WWII, it's 5-stars. As a book about the history of science, it's 3-stars.
Overall, though, the first two-thirds of the book, mostly taking place before and during WWII, is great. After that it is more thin, with some still interesting anecdotes. I would have liked a book more about the friendship of the two men.
Loving this book so far–I think that Faber has pulled off something pretty amazing–this is a book that has devout Christian characters throughout, but is also a book that both atheists and fairly devout religious people can dig into and enjoy. No hard-and-fast answers (at least so far–I have 100 pages to go), lots of humans-being-human, and some almost magical-realism-sci-fi going on.
My first Atwood read was actually The Year of the Flood, and honestly it didn't grab me the way I thought it would based on reviews. I picked this book up because I'm trying to read some “classics” that I missed, and it blew me away. Such concise, terse language which nonetheless blooms into something amazing. It's not a happy read–way too close to home in that “our society is a thin veneer” sort of way, but that's the strength of the book as well, of course: With a few years, things could change significantly for the worse for all of us, and for women in particular. (When I was growing up, the idea that women wouldn't have easy, cheap access to abortion by now seemed silly, for instance.) This is definitely a book I will read again and again.
SPOILER BELOW
One odd thing that hit me as I finished the book up last night is the shift in tone at the very end, as it is revealed that the Mayday folks are there to save our protagonist–the whole book seems to be building to her suicide, almost from the first page, and then BAM! she's part of the resistance. It seems so unlikely, in a way–but also, it speaks to the fact that many of us don't see the resistance going on all around us, aren't familiar with the ways in which people resist every damn day. I suppose the ending is ambiguous on purpose...
What if Kurt Vonnegut wrote a western about a pair of hitman brothers in the wild west?
This book is fun and disturbing so far.
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What a great read. Excellent characterization, wonderfully diverse themes (death, life, morality) that are never wielded with too heavy a hammer. Also one of the few books I've read in a long while that made me laugh out loud.
It may be fairly ridiculous to give this book “only” four stars, but, despite the great stirring of ideas that I have had while reading it, some of the structure of the book left me wanting. The ideas are myriad, the imagery is fascinating, and I'm sure all of that will continue to impress itself on me for...well, forever. That said, I really think this book could have used an editor, especially the last half or so. Blasphemy, by somebody who just doesn't really “get it”? Maybe.
I'm sure I'll read this again someday, just like I did over 20 years ago, and get a different set of ideas about it–which is, of course, part of what makes it a great book.
Hadn't read this one since I was a kid, and I was surprised at how well it held up. It's really quite an action/adventure story, and the pacing is mostly first rate. The anthropomorphizing is fascinating, in part because Adams is able to keep the animalistic nature of the rabbits even though they are going around talking, theorizing and the like. It's definitely a product of its time regarding gender, but it still takes on an amazing number of (human) social problems for a book that is ostensibly about a bunch of rabbits. In particular, the fascist police state warren seems particularly poignant at the moment, as our police state continues to grow.
”???Well, I???d rather say no more about the end of that meeting. Strawberry tried all he could to help me. He spoke very well about the decency and comradeship natural to animals. ???Animals don???t behave like men,??? he said. ???If they have to fight, they fight; and if they have to kill, they kill. But they don???t sit down and set their wits to work to devise ways of spoiling other creatures??? lives and hurting them. They have dignity and animality.???
This book is not as it seems, while also being exactly as it seems. I love the language, the characters, the way emotion is conveyed. Still, it goes down an odd path–it's not a bad path, just one that doesn't quite fit the tone of the rest of the book, for me. The pluses far outweigh the minuses, however, and I look forward to reading more from Waters.
There are some fascinating ideas in this book, and it's commendable for Hopkinson to take on some serious ideas that aren't often looked at through these lenses in fiction, but I had to push myself to finish the book–it's good, but it's a tough read from an emotional point of view, and I need writing that engages me more when there are so many damaging things happening to the characters. I suspect I'll read this book again some day and enjoy it more, but right now it felt like more work than I wanted it to be.
I think I'm going to have to read this one again to get the most out of it, just like its predecessor, Blindsight. Definitely worth a read if you're interested in philosophy of mind or neurobiology (and you enjoy your science sometimes turned into fiction).
Two comments, from the first read:
1. Like some other books I love, I wish the author would actually tease out fewer concepts in more depth. This thing has vampires and zombies, god-as-a-virus, mind-control from light-years away, various kinds of hacked brains/consciousness(es), and more–any of which could have been the kernel of a great book.
2. I hope Watts has read Daniel Dennett's “Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting”, because it contains myriad answers to some of the questions he raises regarding free will (especially those in the back matter).
This is a great book. Understated and insightful, this is the sort of book one reads slowly on purpose, not wanting it to end. I'm fascinated by how MariNaomi manages to test out various artistic styles, yet still keep a minimalist vibe going. I don't know how it works, but it works really well.
The feelings invoked here are myriad and worth exploring–why are we alive, why do we fall in love, what's the fucking point, anyway–all conveyed through snapshot-ed moments from actual life.
(PS: It's also a lovely book-as-object: Uncivilized Books has put together a hefty volume with a stark but lovely cover. This book feels good in your hands. )
I don't think I was ready to read this book the first time I read (part of) it, way back when I was 17 or so, for an english class. There is too much that would have been foreign to me (the past is another country and all that), and the themes of solidarity among poor folks, of the strength and weaknesses of family (which I will always say as “fambly” now, in my head, thanks to this book) were just as foreign to me as earning a dollar a day to feed one's family is.
I do wish I had read it fifteen or so years ago, though, when I was working in a straight-up retail environment, for fairly large companies–the book makes clear how, much of the time, “I'm just doing my job” is another way to say “the system is fucked up, I recognize that, but I'm trying to survive, just like you are”. “The owners” rig the game from the start, and that rigging includes a divide-and-conquer strategy that does much of the work of keeping people in line. A small example from retail: Most companies don't allow one to disclose how much one earns. This is ostensibly to keep things “private”, but really it is to ensure that folks don't band together, realizing that the game is rigged by looking at how much some folks make vs. what other folks make.
The central theme that will stay with me from the book, though, is how well Steinbeck communicates that people want to work–they want an honest day's pay for that work, but they would rather work than not work. This is something that folks who have never been poor often don't quite understand: Human beings like to feel like we are contributing to something, like we are building something bigger than ourselves. We like to work with other people–we are social animals. Creating, working, playing–these are all inextricably intertwined, and if they're not all engaged in a person, slow death happens. The Grapes of Wrath conveys this wonderfully.
Less clear is the theme that the workers will “rise up” someday, in anger, and take what they deserve–this theme runs deeply in the book, but also doesn't paint a picture that gives room in reality for this happening. By the end of the book, the little hope that exists seems to be eclipsed by the foundations of power that have already been laid by “the owners”.
ps: The book is not perfect, of course, and is a product of its time. Race and gender aren't dealt with much at all, and there are some glaring problems with how the family treats black folks and native americans (who are both almost nonexistent in the book, which also seems unlikely). That said, as a snapshot of one family that can be generalized in various ways, it's also a universalizable story.
The third in the trilogy manages to expand on the ideas and characters without trying to tie everything together with a nice little bow, which would be inappropriate for a series that thrives on curiosity and ambiguity. While I couldn't recommend this series to everybody, it's a well-done journey into so-called “weird” territory.
This book is an odd duck–on the one hand it's about world-changing events, but on the other hand it has nice little moments where the protagonist goes for a jog. I like the mixing of scope. Not only does it make the protagonist more interesting, it centers the horror/weirdness in a personal way. A page turner where, frankly, not a whole lot happens until the end–and yet still a page-turner.
My only complaint is that, while the first book was clearly a set up for a trilogy, it at least had a solid ending. This one has a very Empire Strikes Back ending, which isn't a bad thing in itself, but I love it more when authors can give us a contained story and still make us want to read “the next one”.
I was craving some horror/thriller reading, and had seen Flynn's book Gone Girl just about everywhere, but this one felt more intriguing. I haven't read a page-turner like this in a while. Creepy as hell, interesting (and very flawed) protagonist. Something about the storytelling that I can't put my finger on just worked for me–I read it in a day, basically, which I haven't done with any book in a long time. It's definitely a book that should come with a bunch of trigger warnings–but if you like your thrillers sick and twisted, pick it up.
This book is a wonderful treat–on the surface it's a fairly lighthearted tale, but it also has insights into some of the quite complex goings-on in our minds as we grow up. The conveys all of this beautifully, with “simple” drawings that telegraph all of the complexities involved. It also has one of the best ending lines of any book I've ever read, which I won't spoil for anybody reading this review.
I also love this book as an object–it's got heft, a strong binding and a smooth, cool cover, perfect for summer reading.