Jules

”Let no one mistake us for the fruit of violence — but that violence, having passed through the fruit, failed to spoil it.”

So much of this is impossibly good that anything less than the maximum rating feels cheap. It is not perfect - many times a sentence sits like a golden egg, pleased with itself at the cost of flow — but if I were Vuong's editor I'd be afraid to cut, too. And many long passages are crafted to perfection. Every other line is a gut punch, but the novel's kaleidoscopic structure is what makes it feel enormous. It resists easy synthesis but feels complete. Ocean Vuong has that (little) dog in him.

dnf, too simplistic even for what it is

“Twilight” is a bad book in the way that Michael Bay movies are bad movies. The pop-culture ire for the thing has nearly eclipsed the thing itself and, if we're honest, some of that is deserved. That said, it's hard to seperate the disdain for Twilight from our culture's greater disdain for young women and the things they love. I remember being 12 and full of internalized misogyny, picking up this book expecting to scoff at it the way I did Disney Channel and Justin Bieber, only to find out that I did in fact enjoy it, for reasons I could not fully articulate even as I put myself above it. Mind you, I was a lesbian, I hated half the characters and I could see the socially conservative undertones (okay, overtones) - and I still couldn't stop reading it. Make of that what you will, I guess.

higher highs and lower lows than in “guards, guards!” but I'd say better on the whole. there's some very 90s takes on race relations which is, y'know, appropriate for a book from ‘93, but they're not too outdated and in some cases they are insightful. I think most of my misgivings are on me and my poisoned brain, not on the text, really. like, jesus, it's not like he set out to write an iffy trans narrative with Angua or like he meant to imply anything about black people through parallels between the Dog Guild and real-life reactionary movements.

at any rate the book excels with other areas that aren't easy to get right, then or now. his writing of troll intelligence is a great example - its a truly alien thing he's showing, fully another race and not just another flavor of humanoid like so many fantasy beings are. it could be read as a play on the way inner-city conditions cramp many kinds of potential, but it can also be appreciated as simply a cool take on an alternate kind of cognition.

but where this book truly shines is when it talks about class and power, specifically power as an outside thing and how that violence ties to autocratic rule. that's sort of the point of the book lol but i mean, it has that point and makes it well. people often quote the Sam Vines “boots” theory, right, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. also I loved how Carrot has developed from “guards, guards!” and I love how it's clear that, while he's certainly a kind of Superman, he's internalized and learned from regular old beat down Vimes (who is of course not as beat down as he seems, and who stands in for the reader, the person who thinks they'd be the same).

shoutout to this book for sticking in my memory like 12 years later. every time i take a dense multiple-choice test, i remember how the kids in this book got through their entry test not by knowing everything but by being canny enough to identify patterns in the test itself. that's stuck with me and got me through a lot of things for which I wasn't especially prepared.

Does Lori Gottleib have any ugly patients? Are any of them losers, loners, or just plain weird? Are any of her patients not white? Are any of them poor? Because I truly enjoyed this book, but throughout I couldn't help but feel that I'm the target audience, and maybe it's limited beyond that context. Such is the danger of therapy, however well intentioned, if it does not engage with the cases where the patient's environment has more to do with their behavior than their internal landscape. Gottleib, being a therapist for affluent white people in L.A., has little to say about the most burning questions in modern therapy (beyond a requisite hand-wave at digital wellbeing, which amounts to a typical Gen X “phones bad”). Let's just say that when it comes to the depth of her social analysis, I can tell Gottleib wrote for The Atlantic.

But I'm being too harsh. Try as I might to put myself above it, the book taught me a lot I didn't know and prompted me to reflect on my own emotional life in a way I usually avoid (or at least water down). I found myself feeling plucked raw after certain passages, when the stories told hit a bit close to home. It made me wish I'd had a better experience in therapy and consider whether I'd gone at it with the right approach - I saw a lot of myself in John and Rita and even Gottleib herself, though the reflections weren't necessarily pleasant. And I have to respect the book for its educational merit, as Gottleib is careful to scatter the contents of Psychology 101 throughout the book. Some of her “stories” are clearly meant to illustrate certain general principles, which is a little corny, but I get it. It's not like the whole book is hand-holding. Like I said, a lot of it cuts deep - it feels honest and real in the way a good therapist would be.

this is not a review, it's mostly about myself & my changing approach to this book. suck it, algorithm, private journals are for wimps

i read this and did the New Criticism shtick they tesch for AP lit as my elective book in my last year of high school. i walked in totally ignorant of latin america, having no context or guidance beyond a list of rhetorical devices to identify and the Wikipedia page on magical realism. well i thought the book was brilliant and did the project with gusto, unpacking symbols like i was working in a warehouse, i mean, you know how it is. for a long time i considered “one hundred years of solitude” my favorite book.

do i still think that? I don't know. what i remember remains impressive and beautiful, but I've probably cherry picked without knowing. there's got to be so much i missed fumbling around in the dark without a crumb of context, acting like I didn't need it. even a single undergrad class on contemp latin american lit made it clear to me how little i knew about latin america and that i still don't know shit, couldn't even scratch the surface.

but I'm loath to reread for the dumbest reason ever: i don't wanna spoil a good memory. i'm afraid that coming back now with my big eddicated brain would taint how i remember it, as a puzzle unfolding, a map to be read, a city of glass never seen in its entirety - memories of a simpler time, i guess, when the mystery of Close Reading felt like holy ritual and not an act of colonization. but then i owe it to myself to return, not as a puzzler or map-reader or a symbol-hunter but as a friend, to let it wash over me, to bask, to swirl up the mental stew of images and phrases from this book, which bubble up unbidden every now and then. there must be a reason they stuck around, i think. maybe some day I'll find it out.

nicely written and really god damn funny. i never tire of ways to call out corrupt religious institutions while articulating in warm personal detail the humanity of their members, even the reactionaries and fanatics. and if you manage to do it in a way that makes me laugh out loud, all the better! it does drag here and there (esp towards the end), not everything lands, and i could do with a bit less talk about Being A Writer. but i like the cut of her jib nonetheless!

started really strong, then slipped into melodrama and wrapped up a bit too quickly. still, it kept me reading, in a good way. despite its flaws it's a very kind-hearted book, well-researched and meditated. if it's a little on the nose sometimes, at least it's on the nose of something human and real - eleanor feels so painfully real, and i understand her.

really, my main complaint is that a certain... revelation... toward the end should have been explored a bit more. the second half was definitely rushed. still, it's not a deal breaker because by the time it goes a bit off, honeyman has already done the most important part. she gave us eleanor, in all her glory - she made her human and not an insipid caricature of somebody traumatized or abused or neurodivergent. and if there's a clumsy potted plant or too-appropriate cat along the way, then so be it.

Essential reading. A grind, for the most part, but not by any fault of the author. Predictably, the story of eviction is brutal, bleak, unrelenting. Here it's laid out in sharp detail, backed by strong research and presented without sensationalization or sanctimony. The writing is clear and effective, with a few minor exceptions (“the sky was the color of a flat beer”? really?). It works. And it works on you: I had to take multiple breaks just to breathe and get away from the constant parade of systems designed to fail. Hostile bureaucracy, tight-fisted “welfare” programs, the impossible and unending calculus of staying afloat, and simple shit luck, just when you find a rhythm they cut your hours and you're back out. Desmond puts the blame where it belongs, but the policy arguments don't come out much until the end: the stories say it all.

neoliberalism, tabloid writing, and an insufferable attitude made this all but unreadable to me, even though I agree with a lot of her policies, she's just so fucking smug, even downright patronizing. if you want a balanced argument on anything radical, look elsewhere - this is just promotional material

A good read overall, strong (if flowery) writing and good character psychology. Unfortunately the twist was incredibly predictable and there's quite a bit of internalized “not like the other girls” misogyny. I struggled putting this into words, but the shorthand is that it feels somehow like Tana French got cheated on and blamed the woman (whom she envied for being more “feminine”) more than the man (whom she loved but saw as damaged and weak). I don't think thats a spoiler per se, but it captures the way in which this book ultimately frustrated me.

while i work out a way to criticize this tripe without being problematic, just know that this is one of my “yellow flag” books. it's not actually a red flag like, say, a jordan peterson book, but if you love rupi kaur then chances are, i won't hate you or object to you on moral grounds, but we won't get along

This was my first Burroughs and reading it felt like fishing in a landfill. You're guaranteed to find something repulsive, profound, evocative, funny, rotting, weird, dull or all of the above, maybe all in the same statement. “Ugly American” doesn't cut it - maybe better to call him the “Repulsive American”. “Ugly” suggests a body that is ostracized or shunned for aesthetic reasons - we find ugliness in a junky or a disabled person (like the hunchback) or a queer (like the old queen Bobo). The author's ugliness runs deeper, a repulsiveness at the core - every possible -ism and pedeophilia to boot. Those assigned ugliness are not allowed to have an internal life, not even here - but the repulsive, that we explore, that we come to understand. Yes, “every country has its Shits”, and through the sheer violence of his imagination I'm thinking Burroughs was one of ours.

Despite it all - or because of it - I can't write it off. I wouldn't say that I “connect” to anything here, as most of it by design offends me to my core. But in all the bizarro self-absorption, the blind hedonism and the endless “routines”, there are moments where Burroughs found something real, in all this junk - a real pain, exquisite and sharp, captured here -
- “In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality. It is as final as the mountains: a fact. There it is. When you realize it, you cannot complain.”
- “He walked on, looking at every face he passed, looking into doorways and up at the windows of cheap hotels. An iron bedstead painted light pink, a shirt out to dry... scraps of life. Lee snapped at them hungrily, like a predatory fish cut off from his prey by a glass wall. He could not stop ramming his nose against the glass in the nightmare search of his dream. And at the end he was standing in a dusty room in the late afternoon sun, with an old shoe in his hand.”

Anyway I went crazy trying to analyze this book and then remembered I'm not in college and nobody's paying me, so at this point I shrug and toss my notes aside. Three stars because I said so.

Exhausting. Dull at first, then utterly vital from about 40% to the end. Baru's brilliance is at times overblown and the early part of the book feels like watching a board game unfold. Then it turns - around Radaszic's letter, iykyk - and, oh, oh. You know where it's going and you have to watch it go there, heart in throat, hoping against hope until you sink. The style is epic poetry but the spirit is historical materialism. Basically this book is like getting the shit beaten out of you. Respect, but not sure I recommend. The next book has mixed reviews and I am tired, so may or may not continue.

A little light in the end but the wind-up was beautiful. At times it knocked the wind out of me. The writing is thoughtful and loaded with character - e.g., Peter's narrative is noun-forward, older and resigned to experience, while Ivan has rambling “I” statements, working through his relation to the world. There's a spark here. My copy is full of highlights. Page-to-page, Rooney is damn good at stirring something up. Yet for a book capable of such enchanting lines and subtle through-narratives, it just didn't quite punch as hard as I hoped it would. I wish that, in the end, Rooney had committed to showing us real chaos - pain, dysfunction, disruption - instead of orderly conflict plodding along. Peter never feels like a real addict and Ivan never feels like a real outsider. They have moments, but they never break through. The proverbial gun hangs over the mantle but is only ever used to fire pellets into a bush, revealing itself to be a prop gun all along, and we all shrug and walk away.

i read this book in like 2012 and it still fucking haunts me. screw you, palahniuk

this book is the kind of good where, to list its flaws, you first to articulate its merits, because it is so exceptional in many ways. you see, schwab is very, very good at balancing her world. she knows how to calibrate the ship and steer it, how to tell us about the journey. this is partly because she knows her limits: when she should move forward, what things are too large for her to tell. the plot isn't super amazing, it's actually pretty predictable, but it's a perfect fit for the world and the characters: it's action-y, quick and compelling enough to keep you reading in a world that would clearly lend itself to slow lingering. she has a kind of restraint that doesn't feel stingy or underdeveloped, and that's hard to find. the plot wasn't perfect but it worked very well, much better than it might have.

the writing is the kind of good that reminds me of very good fanfiction. this is not an insult: it is a descriptor for the kind of writing that is clearly in love with the world and the characters and even maybe itself, leaning into the poetry of its description. sometimes she slides into telling more than showing just to keep the pace up, but it strikes me as a clever balance rather than ineptitude: she shows enough to make the world tangible, but not so much that all but the most starry-eyed readers drift off.

the world is an absolute strength, balancing dark and light in a way that channels a lot of what makes GoT great without even remotely trying to rip it off. it's remarkable to me how, in far fewer pages than GRRM, schwab gets a critical thing: the philosophical underpinnings of the magic system are a beautiful complement to its technical structure. things make sense and yet there's enough mystery for it to be truly fantasy, an exploration of the felt and not an expansion of the seen. any grimdark tendencies are well-tempered: sure, there's killing and stuff, but it's clearly not the point.

one thing, though: the characters. i cared about them, sure, enough to keep reading, but at the end of the day they were kind of... stiff. Kell is dull and broody, like most leads, I guess, but even the cooler characters, like Lila, often act in ways that don't always feel completely organic. often their actions will feel like someone thought out how her character would react but didn't feel it, or didn't place it quite right. and the development is often presented as an explanation for their actions, like, oh, she did this because she felt this way now, rather than their actions feeling like an organic event. the dialogue is a little unnatural, too - nowhere near as bad as certain genre contemporaries (looking at you, brndon snderson), but it does tend to feel a bit more like an in-character d&d exchange among serious roleplayers rather than a conversation. probably this is because it's so careful and considered, like the rest of the book - trouble is, people aren't careful or considered most of the time and certainly not when they speak. it doesn't go crazy out of tone or anything, but let's just say Lila's got stunning poetic sense for a cutthroat. that's not to say she has to be an unwashed idiot, but it gets tiresome to read about people who are always so articulate, at least to me.

overall, I think that stiffness is my main complaint. Schwab gets so much of what makes GoT et. al. fantastic, but she doesn't seem to intuit that human quality. she's smart and she loves her world but at times, it feels a little like a really interesting homebrew tabletop campaign. Schwab's characters sometimes look to me like intricate wooden cutouts: exquisite and carefully wrought, with articulated joints and a range of motion - like shadow puppets that some craftsman put together with a great deal of love. and you can become very fond of them, you might know how they might act in a situation and how they wouldn't - but they're still made of wood. they don't seem to live and breathe, not quite.

Going to America is not a rebirth. Mexico is not barren, and neither are the people fleeing it. Migration in this book is a boat-ride to the underworld. I like these books that are short and more poem than novel, and I liked this one especially, even when it got a bit too on-the-nose. There was plenty of subtle and sharp to make up for it.

yeah it's a bit “edgy” but aside from thanking richard dawkins in the credits (ugh), it's a pretty good read

“We are inside, the two of us, in shelter, at rest, at the center of all things.”

My thoughts on this book are complicated but my feelings are not: I loved it. The language is beautiful, the worldbuilding is stellar, the mysticism is intriguing, and the characters feel more real in a few hundred pages than many do over the course of whole sagas. Estraven and Genly's relationship is one of the most effective alien-friendships I've read, and their lug across the ice is deeply moving. (It also has some of the most thought-provoking lines in a book full of them.)

No book is truly timeless, but “The Left Hand of Darkness” comes closer than many, I think, by embracing the limitations of its characters. LeGuin herself regretted the use of he/him pronouns for these androgynous aliens, and yet at the same time it makes perfect sense given our unreliable (misogynistic) narrator, who for most of the book can't allow himself to see the femininity in these intelligent, capable beings. And if the fact that Genly Ai can still be a misogynist in this enlightened future should chafe, LeGuin does say in the introduction that her goal is not to predict the future but to describe the present. Ai's clumsy narration - and even the universalist-humanitarian order he represents - is as much as subject of critique as the Cold War analogues satirized in Karhide and Orgota. Nothing is exempt from skepticism and yet the book never feels dragged down in it. It's even quite funny (Estraven is a catty bitch from Karhide who lives for intrigue, what can I say?).

Anyway there is much, much more to this book that I am still mulling over but the five star rating is crystal-clear.

It's rare for a book to take such a strong stance against cynicsim without being dishonest or foolish. While I do feel some parts of this are hollow or under-examined, or have simply aged poorly (would hooks quote Marianne Williams today?), the bigger picture here is vital. A lot of my initial resistance to this book has less to do with the text and more to do with the imaginitive limits of the moral universe in which I spend most of my time. hooks pushes us to think beyond the dominating logics of capitalism and patriarchy without denying their power. Her way of framing patriarchy as emotional terrorism is compelling and fresh to me. And while I do not share all of her spiritual commitments I find them well-articulated here and even a little inspiring. A lot of modern readers don't want to swallow some of these truths, especially in what she says about hedonism and self-indulgence (which are distinct from the goods of ecstasy and pleasure and which really do stand in the way of love). hooks' consistent call to utopian thinking feels naive because we are trained to reject the prospect of real change out of hand, and I feel that is a mistake. It is worth taking hooks' alternative vision seriously.

I went in knowing the bare minimum, just the tidbit on the back of the book. I didn't read any reviews or anything so I truly had no idea what Melanie was or what the story was about, and I think that's the best way to experience this story. Carey often drags up the image of Pandora's box throughout the narrative, and that's a bit how this felt. On the whole the prose is very good, though there are some odd details and turns of phrase along the way. But this story is really about the characters, which it absolutely nails. While maybe the people Carey tells us about are suspiciously eloquent, their beats basically land and I can imagine them as real people. He especially excels at writing Melanie, keeping her a child even though she is a genius and all that, and the way Justineau relates to her. (I actually thought Justineau's first perspective chapter wasn't great, but it picks up quickly.)

Pace dragged a bit in the middle, when it felt like I was reading someone play “The Last of Us” (though this book was likely written before TLOU came out, so I'm not knocking its originality). But things were overall pretty tight and well worth the weaker patches. Ultimately “The Girl With All the Gifts” is defined by a respect for the intangible, philosophical and in fact the radical. I adored the fact it did not shy from its inevitable conclusion, and Carey never compromised the humanity of his protagonist, ever, even if she wasn't really human. It's a timely message, too. The damaged children of the post-apocalypse are still its best hope for going forward, no matter what adults may feel about them. We can't save the world by trying to make it something it's not - we can only adapt to what it has become.

As a detective novel, middling. The atmosphere is great but the pacing is off and the plot rambles around the block and up and down a few hills before settling down somewhere out of left field. Still, it's got chutzpah, if I may borrow the term. Chabon writes like a control freak - you must know the exact inflection with which this minor character pronounces a name. - but with such imagination and wit that it is impossible not to enjoy. The big picture is rich and the little picture is jam-packed with weird little quips that make you laugh and say, “where the hell did that come from?” A character was “as sober as a carp in a bathtub.” A place “had all the allure of a dehumidifier”. In the slower first half, I had to make myself pick up the book, but I was always glad I did. The ending also hit like a ton of bricks, in light of recent events. (“That's the kind of shit we have to look forward to now. Burning cars and homicidal dancing.”)

If you put aside the whole “detective story” angle and look at the book as something else - a black-humored look at the tangle of fathers and sons, displacement and diaspora - it's really very good, probably even great. And in a monkey-brain aside, I imagined Landsman as Harry du Bois from Disco Elysium, but I'm pretty sure the writers of Disco Elysium were imagining Landsman when they wrote Harry du Bois, so I stand by it.

A minor work with evidence of genius. Parts of this are really stellar and the first two-thirds of Frank's journey is on par with her best - a nightmarish Mobius strip of world-rending violence on the road and at home. Unfortunately the ending fails to integrate the sum of its parts and is actually quite cheesy. The drop in quality is so substantial that I almost wonder if she got tired or sick and simply wanted it to be done - if age and mourning took their toll eventually. I can understand wanting to provide comfort, healing and resolution. I just wish that her picture of peace was as sophisticated and moving as all the suffering before it.