Matthew Groves

All the Pretty Horses is a privilege to read.

It has the sweeping tone of a grand Western like Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, with a focus on the grandeur of John Grady's journey across the landscape. McCarthy's metaphors and descriptions are beautiful, like reading poetry. Several scenes - mostly of riding through nature, and especially a romantic scene in a lake - are so pretty I read them several times. It's the most beautiful prose I've read since All The Light We Cannot See. It's both romantic (about a love story) and Romantic (anti-cynical), which is exactly like me; coming from his pitch-black post-apocalyptic novel The Road, this is an entirely different feel. It's also pretty funny at times, which I didn't really expect.

I've heard people compare his writing to As I Lay Dying. Although I happened to like that book in its own right, I think that Hemingway is a better comparison than Faulkner. McCarthy's sentences feel stark and clipped, even though sometimes they run on for a whole paragraph, and he doesn't use much punctuation. But they're never deliberately hard to follow, like some of the character chapters in Faulkner. This is just how McCarthy writes.

Cons: he uses a fair amount of technical language about horses and Spanish. Even though I know very little vocabulary for either, I didn't have a hard time following anything.

I loved this book, and whoever you might be, I think you would too.

I know that American Dirt, a story about a woman from Mexico who has to flee her home with her young son, has been controversial. And I have a whole host of thoughts about it, some of them contradictory. So here they are in no particular order:

On a literary level: I found the narrative to be absolutely riveting. It's gripping, and I sprinted through it in a way I haven't in months. I didn't think any of the characters were flat, I thought the villain was well developed, and it had a twisty story that didn't feel too manipulative/cliche. And on the author, the simple fact that a white lady wrote a story about migration isn't inherently bad, otherwise all of fiction would be limited to merely the author's own experiences (more on this below).


Cultural: all of the critiques of the publishing industry, and how a white lady ended up getting the biggest book of the year about migration, seemed pretty fair to me. I didn't feel like it was “trauma porn” like some people have said, but it does feel somehow off. This is heightened when the author shares anecdotes about how her husband was undocumented for a time, and she has a Puerto Rican grandma. It would have been fine for her to say, “these experiences made me realize how different my experience would have been with immigration if I wasn't white, so I wanted to explore that in fiction,” but the way she rolled out the tidbits instead came across like she was trying to claim personal credibility on the issue that she didn't quite have. This also comes across when most (but not all) of the Latina/x reviews I've seen have mentioned that she uses lots of stereotypes. I didn't see that in this, but also I don't know anything about what those stereotypes might be. I will say, a lot of critiques emphasized how she treated the US as a perfect haven for her; especially while America is in the middle of perhaps finally reckoning with its racist history, that feels resonant right now. However, I thought she struck a decent balance of recognizing that the US wasn't always kind to its immigrants, but also she knew it was better than taking her chances with the cartels.


On the whole, I resonated with critiques of the publishing process that led to this book being pushed so hard, but I didn't resonate with the critiques of the book itself as much. I've certainly thought more about how inhumanely we treat immigrants, and how the US has a responsibility to help a region that we've destabilized over and over. And that's a good thing. However, the world shouldn't need white authors to speak to white readers about the experiences of non-white migrants; a more equitable world would let those people have their own microphone. The US is ~60% white today; by the 2040s that number is expected to dip below half. I hope publishing houses will move to better represent the country. A few years ago I saw a reading challenge to aim for 50% of your books each year to be written by people besides white men; it was very eye-opening for me to see how narrow a perspective I was getting across multiple genres (especially if you like sci-fi and fantasy). I encourage all my fellow white readers to try something similar, or at least keep an eye on your proportions. If anyone has recommendations of Latinx literature, I'd be glad to hear it.

I read Dune for three main reasons:
1) It's seen as a pillar of sci-fi and one of the most influential
2) I like the director Denis Villeneuve (Arrival, Sicario, Blade Runner 2049) and am looking forward to his movie adaptation in December
3) I'd heard it had thoughtful things to say about ecology

I'm glad to say that each of these was fulfilled! I'm glad I read it, and it was thought-provoking. I think more than anything, Dune reminds me of watching the original Mission Impossible for the first time in high school and feeling like it was a little underwhelming and cliche. It was only later that I realized that Mission Impossible is the reason that those things became cliche; it's the origin. Dune is a bit similar. A dry, desert planet with a lonely boy who's the chosen one, fighting against an emperor? Dune did it before Star Wars. Beautiful landscapes of a desert that's as dangerous as the other people? Dune did it before Mad Max: Fury Road. Scheming house politics as members fight each other and try to get ahead and seize power? Dune did it before Game of Thrones. Dune didn't necessarily invent all of these ideas, and of course Dune has its own influences (Lawrence of Arabia comes to mind, and Islam in general). I wouldn't even say Dune is better at any of these things than the other works I mentioned. But lots of cultural works touching on any of these items owe Dune a great debt for putting these pieces together in a pretty compelling piece.

I'd also like to give great credit to Herbert for introducing thoughtful, deep engagement with both religion and ecology, not often found in sci-fi. There are plenty of interviews of him talking about environmental issues, and his language fits right in to today's world. He was an advocate for renewable energy back in the 1960s, and he spoke out about the ways that we extract resources from our environment, and how we can't keep that up indefinitely. The book dives into conversations about how people can and should interact with nature in a harsh environment. All of the considerations about the biology felt clever and thoughtful: how the Fremen adapted to preserve moisture, how their blood coagulates quickly, how tears/spitting are monumental occasions, the value of blood, etc. Similarly, the worms are pretty cool and make sense in the environment. It also takes the long view, a blessed thing in today's distracted culture. And although he mostly just pulled from Islamic ideas of a heroic, messianic “Mahdi” figure, Herbert was also really well-read and fairly thoughtful in his use of religious tropes. The world is set far in the future after humans have colonized space, so Earth's current religious systems have spread and morphed over time. He pulls from loads of current earth languages as well, so it doesn't feel too focused/targeted.


A few cons:

Dune is SUPER weird. Unlike most sci-fi, this future world is deliberately not very tech-heavy. It leaves room for a variety of human groups/cults/organizations that are enhanced/trained in ways that fill some of that missing space. Mentats are ration-worshipping human computers; the Bene Gesserit are witches/concubines who are kind of magical and have secretly been pulling the strings on a millennia-long breeding program; and a certain mineral called Spice gives people special reflexes. And that's not even the really weird parts, which I won't touch on for spoilers' sake. My friend Charlie called it “LSD sci-fi,” and that feels about right. Even the names are either basic Anglo names (Paul, Jessica, Duncan) or kind of out there (Thufir, Feyd-Rautha, Mohiam,

A few others: like lots of literature in the time period, women really get sidelined (ending scene?!?). There was plenty of raw material for him to work with (Jessica being Paul's main teacher and possibly teaching the Fremen after she wins her duel; Jessica v. her order; Chani's possible character arc after what happens to her father; the princess Irulan). I hope Villeneuve does a better job in the movie of developing the women, and I was glad to see Jessica's actress indicate she's optimistic. Herbert also goes waaaay overboard in coding fatness as evil. His descriptions of the Baron Harkonnen's weight are borderline comical. I understand the contrast with living on a harsh desert planet that sucks out your waterweight, but still.

I think this is tempered a bit by how much Paul buys into the Fremen way of life, and how they have a quite active role in their fate, but it still feels a bit white savior-ey.

On a more literary level, I was frustrated by his plotting a bit. The pacing was mostly okay (a little slow at the first third, then somewhat abrupt at the end), but throughout the book the audience doesn't have much information about what's going on. At best it makes you curious about what's happening (towards the beginning, when they're warned about going to Arrakis). But at worst it makes you lose all sense of the stakes of a situation (even with the glossary/appendices, I have no idea how the spice/worm/water overlap works). And the lack of a window into the proper politicking behind the scenes means that some major plot points feel a bit arbitrary (more late GoT than early GoT).

I'm glad I read it. I hope someone writes something about it in conversation with our climate crisis. And I think the movie's going to be great.

I loved, loved, loved The Night Circus. I loved it so much that I pre-ordered The Starless Sea, which I think was my first pre-order since Deathly Hallows. It had a lot going for it: her tremendous pedigree, an intriguing premise (someone finds a library book describing an obscure event in their childhood they never told anyone about), and a setting I loved (a massive, magical underground library). And it's true that her same pretty writing and imagery is still here, and that she has a great understanding of books and curiosity.

But overall, this was a frustrating experience. I thought about quitting a few times mid-read (which I haven't done since high school), and I really wish I had. It took forever to get through the 500 pages, which should have been my sign. I had no investment in the characters, even the “main” one. I think she was going for a mysterious approach for them, or even a “see yourself filling the role” protagonist. But instead I felt like I didn't know them at all, or have any real grasp of what they wanted. I hoped that without interesting characters, the plot would drive the action, but I was really disappointed to find out that wasn't true. There were lots of pretty interludes in the form of short stories / parables, but the main plot never really got moving. I think the “plot” was supposed to be poetic, but instead it all just felt arbitrary since I didn't have any real information or buy-in. And also, in a smaller annoyance, there are so many run-on sentences that it took me out of the writing a lot.

If you want to read beautiful, aesthetic, fantasy-tinged romantic literature, go read The Night Circus instead. If you want to read an enchanting story about stories, read Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield, or maybe Stephen King's Wizard and Glass or The Name of the Wind by Pat Rothfuss instead. I still believe in Erin Morgenstern, and I'll read her next book. But I don't recommend this one.

I didn't know anything about this book before getting the audiobook for a car trip, but I had a good time with it. I especially liked how it showed that for all of rock and roll's love of drugs, drinking, and sex, deeper relationships are the key to life. It had an unexpectedly wholesome heart and was quite tender in places. Highly recommended!

(Also, the audiobook is very high-quality, and the book's format lends itself well to it)

Hawking is a rockstar of the science world. He's probably one of the few modern physicists that most people can name, and not just because of his iconic wheelchair and popular books: Hawking has been at the very front of our growing knowledge about the universe over the last handful of decades. Something you may not know is that he's quite funny as well. See this interview from British comedian John Oliver:

JO: “You've stated that there could be an infinite number of parallel universes. Does that mean that there's a universe out there where I'm smarter than you?”
SH: “Yes, and also a universe where you're funny”

So I was very glad to receive this as a seminary graduation present, and it's a perfect fit for me: one of the great minds in modern science engaging with the big-picture questions that I entertain a lot. And aside from an early chapter about religion - pretty disappointing that he engages with straw men arguments - this is excellent stuff: incredible writing about the future of science and technology and how they'll affect the human species. He's also my level of an optimist: he still believes in growth and change, but doesn't undersell the challenges we face. This is best summed up in my favorite line: “
“Our future is a race between the growing power of our technology and the wisdom with which we use it. Let's make sure wisdom wins.”

A handful of other things I think he's really right about:

He believes in space exploration without falling into the rich scientists' trap of ignoring problems here on earth.

His thoughts on the importance of increasing science education as technology encompasses more of our lives is spot-on: “A world where only a tiny super-elite are capable of understanding advanced science and technology and its applications would be, to my mind, a dangerous and limited one... [that likely would have bad priorities]”

As our tech has become exponentially more powerful over the last few centuries, the stakes keep rising (the invention of the first few guns was high-stakes for a region, but the atomic bomb is high-stakes for whole countries). And with the coming advent of AI, we really need to be ready. As he puts it, “The advent of super-intelligent AI would either be the best or the worst thing ever to happen to humanity. We cannot know if we will be infinitely helped by AI, or ignored by it and sidelined, or conceivably destroyed by it.” It's the only threat comparable to climate change, and we need significantly more research done NOW on how to make sure its goals are aligned with ours.

His discussion of the weirdness of quantum mechanics in the essay called “Can we predict the future?” is one of the better short intros you'll find on the topic.

Cons:

His first chapter, called “Is There a God?” was really disappointing to me. Over and over again, I found myself asking, “Has he actually spoken to any educated Christians?” Look, religion is something that speaks to the deepest sense of what it means to be a human. Anyone is allowed to have opinions about it, regardless of their background or pedigree. I'm not asking for him (or anyone) to take full classes on Thomas Aquinas, which is a luxury not available to all. But he repeatedly leaned on tired cliches and betrayed that he was talking about the “old wizard in the sky” kind of God. I wanted some Christian in his life to take just a moment to say, “I don't believe in that God either.” I'm glad this was the only chapter like that, but wish it was later in the book so I could recommend it to others more easily.

Once Upon a River pulls together some of my favorite things about fiction, and I loved it.

Pros: An evocative premise. I feel like the best books start with a question, either implicit or explicit. Setterfield has a great one: what's the story of this drowned girl who came back to life?

I love good storytelling and stories about stories, and Setterfield is great at both. Her placement of a storytelling tavern at the center of the plot is brilliant, allowing her to stew in the questions and thought processes of the audience vicariously as The Swan's residents attempt to piece together their observations and conjectures. She absolutely nails the sense of place and nostalgia for small close-knit communities, and the bar setting reminds me of the best in that sub-sub-category of “bar-based small town camaraderie, like the bar scene in Stephen King's Wizard and Glass and the frame story in Name of the Wind.

Speaking of place, she's an expert at reinforcing ties to the local geography. Coming from rural America and having a strong connection to a certain patch of nature and its ecosystem, I love this emphasis for a book set in the 1800s. Rural America may be stuck in the past, but this example is one for the better, and I resonated strongly with her characters' rootedness in their place. She also continually references the river in a way that makes it feel like its own character in the story, akin to how Hogwarts feels like an active participant in the plot of Harry Potter. She uses current- and flood-based metaphors throughout, almost always without feeling tacky, which has the effect of binding together the whole story. For “river-based fiction,” I love it on par with Phillip Pullman's Book of Dust prequel to the Golden Compass and the underwater city scene in Ponyo.

Mechanically, Setterfield has written a mystery, but she's managed to reveal information to the audience in natural ways, so that we can follow clues without being spoon-fed the big reveal. Even mysteries I really like (like JK Rowling's Cormoran Strike series) can fall into the “villain gives monologue for no reason besides reader comprehension” trope, and I salute her for pulling off the plotwork to avoid that problem.

Her prose also has an enchanting richness to it, similar to Erin Morgenstern's Night Circus, that completely won me over. And I have a soft spot in my heart for books that absolutely nail the last few pages, or “dismount.” The Road, for instance, or Stand By Me. I thought she certainly stuck the landing.

Cons:

I will say, it was slow in the middle. The entire back of the book cover is the premise, so after the first hundred pages I was in the fascinating place of having no idea where the story would develop. And the last 150 or so kept me steadily churning through on curiosity and suspense. But for all the gushing praise I had above, it took me over a month to finish. I did have a busy month, and I think she wrapped all the strands together in the end, but the story loses momentum a bit in the middle. The premise, execution, and climax are all great, but I don't think it needed to be 450 pages long. We perhaps could have done with a few less chapters about each of the ensemble protagonists.

Great fun. With Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, you generally know what you're going to get: breezy, thoroughly enjoyable satire, ranging from fairly dumb humor to really perceptive skewering of society. If you haven't read one of them, just pick one that sounds interesting and go for it. Mort is about a schmuck of a teenage boy who nobody will take on as an apprentice, but he lucks into becoming the assistant Grim Reaper, who it turns out is ready to pursue some earthly hobbies after all his years on the job. Good old Mort accidentally rips a hole in the fabric of reality while harvesting souls one night, and hilarity ensues. All good stuff. I also really liked Small Gods if you're more interested in the idolatry side of the religious conversation instead of the existentialistic side. Enjoy.

Pros: Like Stephen King, Berendt has the great knack of describing people's interactions in small-ish town America that feel authentic. And like Jonathan Franzen, he has the eye for detail to describe certain biases, preferences, and physical items that let you know he really did spend the time in the environment and can give you a window in. It's pretty funny and enjoyable. Beautiful title, great cover photo.

Cons: This is more my fault than Berendt's, but I didn't know that it was nonfiction. With a title as wondrous as that, I somehow didn't expect a nonfiction legal case. Not what I expected, not really what I was in the mood for, and not exactly my kind of book. If you like nonfiction crime stories that profile an environment, I expect you'll like it more than I did

Sedaris is funny, poignant, and surprisingly thoughtful about death and aging. And: you know how we all have those quick thoughts sometimes that are harsh and judgey, and we don't say them? Sedaris has a way of conveying them in writing that feels relatable instead of terrible. Great collection of short stories.

For anyone who knew me then, it's no surprise at all that I was obsessed with Ender's Game in middle and early high school. If you count re-reads and count the Harry Potter books individually, I've probably read more pages of Ender's Game than anything else.

Middle school Matthew was smart enough to be near the top of his classes, but young and arrogant enough to think that intelligence is all that matters. So the story of Ender appealed to me, in which a young boy is trained to be a master strategist to defeat an alien race and save planet earth. I picked it up now for a few reasons: sentimentality and nostalgic escapism while it feels like the whole world is on fire, for one. But it and its sequel, Speaker for the Dead, were the only books to win back-to-back Hugo and Nebula awards until NK Jemisin's Fifth Season did a few years ago. I loved the fifth season books and had never read Speaker for the Dead, so I thought I'd go back for another dip.

In the eight years or so since I last opened the book, the world has changed a good amount, and I was afraid I wouldn't like Ender's Game now. But I was glad to find it was all still there. It's a blatant military hero/messiah complex, don't get me wrong, but still a great read. The tensions of “who's the real enemy” are good, and Ender's internal turmoil over knowing how much violence is necessary to prevent future aggression but not wanting to be a killer. The global politics is more intricate than I remembered, and I (perhaps naturally) enjoyed the snippets from the adults more this time around. And the clever application of military strategy works very well in the Battle Room scenes. Card's inclusion of representatives from all over the world feels a bit token-ish at times, but also has its beautiful moments like Ender and Alai's shared “salaam,” and it serves to reinforce the image of a momentarily unified planet earth. It's a real shame that Card has trended in a much more nativist direction from what I can tell, especially since this book's portrayal of Alai was pretty influential for me as a kid of seeing The Other in a positive way.

I also felt like I grasped the final bit much better than as a kid. The “twist” still feels terrific, and like the only real way forward, but all of the more philosophical stuff about his status as a Speaker for the Dead clicked better for me this time around. Especially in my work as a climate activist, I feel like the concept has a lot to say to our world. We'll see what I think after reading the sequel.

A tremendous book about the nature of suffering, bravery, responsibility, and humility.

Set in 1930s Mexico during a period of intense anti-Christian persecution by the government, the book follows a nameless priest who is the only remaining minister in his state after the others have been hunted down and shot. But he's not a heroic figure, or at least not really; he's called a “whiskey priest” because he's a drunk, it's unclear if his younger self was more focused on his congregation or rising up the clergy ranks to get promoted, and he fathered a child years ago. For all that, he's remained to try and minister to the Christians in the area when he could have easily fled the region or renounced the faith and joined the government, like others have. But there's his dilemma: is he doing more damage to the faith by staying and being such a mediocre role model of the priesthood, or is he doing his duty by at least providing the sacraments sometimes? With no support from the Church, and a zealously secular police lieutenant hunting him down to kill him, the whiskey priest's moral dilemma is compelling.

Perhaps more than any book I've read, The Power and the Glory shows how suffering can - if not quite be seen as a gift by God - then at least be something that we try to learn from. That's a message with very little traction in today's world, and mostly for good reason. But the whiskey priest demonstrates something about the necessity of humility, and that a true reckoning of our own sins ought to make us incapable of looking down on anyone. In his life during the good times, the trappings of power overwhelmed his better nature. But when he is brought low by being on the run for years and confronting his own failures, he's able to enter into a much deeper solidarity with all the people around him, not just the most pious ones.

There are a few particularly striking scenes of him interacting with a peasant who wants to turn him in for the reward money. The priest's interactions with the man have such moral weight they feel straight out of scripture.

There's also a scene featuring the priest in a jail cell with a whole swathe of petty criminals that feels shot through with the Christ figure. It's beautiful.

This book and Silence, by Shusaku Endo (about the Christian persecutions in 1600s Japan) strike me as required seminary texts and some of the best possible entryways into a Christian conversation about the nature of suffering and the Christ figure. Highly recommended.



While hearing a confession, “The man had an immense self-importance; he was unable to picture a world of which he was only a typical part – a world of violence, treachery, and lust in which his shame was altogether insignificant. How often the priest had heard the same confession - Man was so limited he hadn't even the ingenuity to invent a new vice: the animals knew as much. It was for this world that Christ had died; the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater glory lay around the death. It was too easy to die for what was good and beautiful, for home or children or a civilization - it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and corrupt.”

Pros: great atmosphere when the girl is in the marsh (makes sense because the author was a wildlife biologist), she's easy to cheer for, great final dismount

Cons: The dialogue is terribly flat (she does write in an accent, which is actually fine, I mean the sentences themselves). In the first half of the book this is a smaller problem because it's mostly her in the marsh by herself, but then the second half is all a courtroom drama, and the dialogue can't carry the full weight of the plot.

It's framed as a love triangle for a bit, but then that gets resolved quickly. The formula of one part “kid survives alone” like Hatchet, one part “who will she choose” like Twilight, one part legal drama is just too any pieces for the delivery to pull off. A much shorter version that only focused on one of them would have been more successful.



I do want to say that it's great to see Delia Owens breaking into fiction. When real scientists start writing for broader audiences, and especially in new genres, it elevates science in the public mind and what people think science can be good for. (Mary Doria Russell is the other prominent example in my mind)

I sympathize with the author: she's written a compelling world with characters people are fond of, and she's a writer: of course she'll keep writing. I cared enough about the characters to read this, and there were a few good twists, but overall I can't help feeling like there aren't enough new ideas to justify this size of book. Perhaps her level of success means her editors can't be as strict, but these books keep getting longer without getting better. Cutting a handful of YA cliches and about 200 pages would have improved this duology a lot. I still love the Six of Crows duo, so fingers crossed for the future...

I care enough about these characters to read about them and there are some good ideas here:

Humanizing Zoya's backstory
Nikolai's real and metaphorical demons
Nina's bitter grief and quest across cultures
People unexpectedly worshiping the Darkling

Perhaps most of all, I really like what Brandon Sanderson in Mistborn calls “What happens after the good guys win.” Oftentimes we gloss over that in an epilogue, so I like the politicking here and thought the intrigue in the capital was a good subplot.


But overall, I confess I was pretty bored. It felt like the plot got tripped up around the time they went into the sand world, and the momentum never quite recovered. After the frantically enjoyable pacing of Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom (which both transcend the top tier of YA for me, nearing the HP/His Dark Materials/Mistborn quality tier), I'm just a little bummed to see a much more ho-hum YA entry here.

Fun, fast, and surprisingly poignant. Love these novellas

If you read all 9, no reason to stop before this one! I assumed this would be a combination of fan service and fun ideas the authors never got to, and that's about correct. And it is fun to see some gaps in some characters' arcs, especially Amos and Fred Johnson. A few of them fell a little flat, but three were great and almost all of them had at least a good idea/premise. “Drive” had a great sense of dark humor, “Auberon” was an excellently twisty look at corruption and duty, and “Sins of Our Fathers” gave a very satisfactory dismount for the biggest loose thread in the whole series. Exploring different genres is fun, too. You've got dark comedy, war memoir, teen drama, street gangs and poverty, horror, crime/politics, post-apocalyptic, and immigrant stories. I'm sure it was fun for them to write, and it mostly makes for good reading.

The last one in particular, “The Sins of Our Fathers,” closed strongly on two points. One, it holds a wise discussion of the strange relationship between “doing the right thing for someone else,” and “finding out if my good thing helped them.” Of course we all want to see the fruits of the seeds we plant, but planting the seeds is always more important than seeing the harvest. When you do good things in this world, you don't always get to see how they pan out, and that shouldn't stop you from doing them. In the book, Naomi made huge sacrifices to give Filip a chance to escape his father, and she never found out if it worked or not. But that's less important than making the investment in the first place. As the author's postlude quotes from an earlier book, “You don't get to know [if your good deeds paid off]. They did or they didn't. You didn't put them out so that someone would send you a message about how important and influential you are. You tried to [do some good in the world]. Even if it didn't work, it was a good thing to try. And maybe it did. Maybe you saved someone, and if you did, that's more important than making sure you know about it.” I love this sentiment, and there's something deeply Christian and self-less about this worldview. It reminds me of the Biblical notion of “Cast your bread upon the waters;” giving of yourself to the world, even if the current takes it out of your sight before you see someone pick it up. You're trusting that somewhere around the bend, it will get picked up and nourish someone (Ecclesiastes 11).

Lastly, the book closes with a terrific riff on an earlier book's anecdote. A young girl is on a ship to found a small colony on a new world, and her school teachers have warned all the kids to be kind to each other, because they'll be living together for the rest of their lives. This logic applies to small towns today, where high school grudges can stretch well into the adult years. But, more importantly, it applies to the planet earth and the entire human species, because we're all connected. The distances between us are an illusion, and we're all stuck with each other on this little pale blue dot. So, I agree with Nami: “We're spending our whole lives together, so we need to be really gentle to each other.”

On the Enneagram overall:
For starters, I really do think the Enneagram is more useful than the various other personality tests. Whenever I take one of the tests (Myers Briggs, StrengthsFinder, etc.) they only feel superficially helpful. It's good to pause to consider the answers to their various questions, but it always feels like it's regurgitating information I just gave it: “Do I like reading? Yes I do. Look at that, it says I'm a reader!” But the Enneagram does get over that basic level by focusing instead on underlying desires and fear, rather than just personalities. The Enneagram doesn't repeat the things you just told it, it helps you puzzle out your motives, which is much more helpful. You could be an introvert, extravert, or whatever and be any of the 9 Enneagram types. It's the first typing system that felt insightful, like I actually learned something about how I engage with the world on a deeper level. It's been useful for both my own reflection and for relating to other people.

On this book:

This isn't a typical 3-star review. There's some good things here, and even some great things. Most of my 3-star reviews are mixed, in the sense that “I liked the plot, but the dialogue is meh.” This was different. A third of it was great, but the rest was really a slog. For me, the E has value because it is explanative. With a little bit of research, I felt like learning that I'm a Type 1 was really illuminating. Although I knew that coming in, this book's overview sections on the different types was a really good intro (“Nature or Nurture?” and “How do I find my type?” in Chapter 2, the type-by-type summaries in chapter 5.). But the real goal of this book is to give you the “next steps” past that initial discovery of your type. To that end, I found a few flashes of great things, but also a lot of impatience and disappointment.

I'd like to give full credit for leaning into the Enneagram from an explicitly Christian perspective. I thought he had a pretty good introduction to contemplative practices overall (“Why Contemplation?” and “The gifts of solitude, silence, and stillness” in chapter 7; intros to Centering prayer and the Examen in ch10). And the best part of the book included some really practical thoughts on how to think about your spiritual development based on some of the attributes of your type. His recommended “prayer postures” in particular stuck with me, and I thought he had an excellent Biblical passage discussing them, with Christ's temptation in the desert. (“Praying with our centers” in chapter 7 and especially the “From complexity to practical spirituality” in chapter 8). And he begins in chapter 9 to give a type-by-type discussion of spiritual practice. Or so I thought! After over 200 pages of prelude to what is presumably the purpose of the book judging by its subtitle, this crucial chapter is painfully short. At the end, I felt like I really only got a paragraph or two of spiritual advice in the whole book.

It felt like the final chapters (9 and 10) were the heart of where the book was going, and had good thoughts, but were less than 10% of the pages count (and well over half of them were for each of the other types, which I didn't read much of).

I think part of my problem might be my impatience with the material he spent the rest of the book on. For chapter after chapter, he would dive into the Triads and Affect types, etc. I felt like very little of those chapters resonated with me; I would read “1s are like this” and think “nope, I don't think I'm like that.” And since there's no argument to it, just explanation, I never felt persuaded by them. He treated them all as some revelation to humanity, but they mostly felt arbitrary to me. This was NOT helped by his sections on the history of the Enneagram. I happened to study Evagrius in a class in seminary, and it's definitely true that his eight evil thoughts (later revised as the 7 deadly sins) were prevalent throughout church history. But that's a far stretch from seeming to claim his heritage as vindication of the Enneagram as a source of ancient wisdom (and let alone Homer's “the Odyssey”). At its worst, this felt hokey and borderline pseudo-scientific, especially on some of the numerology.

I'll try to be openminded going forward and be aware of those traits within myself, but so far have not. I still like the Enneagram overall, and this book prompted some good conversations. It just didn't have nearly as much of “finding your unique path to spiritual growth” for me as I expected and hoped for. Maybe I'll see my triad attributes at some point and give the book an extra star.

[Insert joke about an Enneagram 1 critiquing an Enneagram book for being too touchy-feely and not having enough practical advice for what to do]

This book has a great premise, a perfect length, and is one of the best things I read this year. It manages to be funny, warmhearted, touching, and thoughtful all at once. A great quick read!

Everyone in America should read The Hate U Give before graduating high school. For someone like me who grew up in white America, this feels similar to Between the World and Me: it's not really my place to critique a book like this, since it's such an intimate look at growing up black in America that any critiques would just be a critique of the black experience. If you're white and are relatively new to conversations about race, or if you're not sure you agree with the Black Lives Matter movement, this is a great book to pick up and learn from. It's pretty breezy and you could knock it out in a weekend.

Note on the age-appropriateness of the subject matter if you weren't aware: there's a good amount of profanity throughout, as well as teenage sexuality, drug dealing, and violence. I would say that this shows police brutality and that we should be sure that kids don't have to engage with that, but then again, that's the whole point: America lets kids in certain neighborhoods deal with police brutality all the time, and it needs to change. Black Lives Matter.

Pros: A compelling (and in fantasy, unique to the best of my knowledge) central conflict between a mother and her daughter, which I didn't see coming (although it did feel inevitable in hindsight). I thought the daughter's viewpoint and sympathies were believable, which requires the audience to see a villain in a completely new light, so bravo on that. The twist about sentient earth felt clever instead of gimmicky, tying in well with the moon's orbital mechanics. It's also a part 3 of an excellent trilogy that doesn't feel like a let-down, which is always hard to pull off.

Cons: I'm a pretty attentive reader, but I felt like I was always a half-step behind on the worldbuilding. Why did they need the Rifting again? Alabaster said it was necessary, but they didn't seem to harness it when the time came. Why do their bodies turn to stone after accessing an obelisk, again? Unclear. The same felt true of Hoa's chapters, in the sense that I always felt I needed just a little more information to follow things clearly. I know mystery can serve to heighten curiosity, and this may just be a clash between preferences. On the whole, I thought her strongest writing was about questions of survival and emotional trauma, compared to the “high fantasy” elements.

Overall, congrats to her for being the first to win 3 consecutive Hugos.

This whole trilogy was a blast. Fun, quick, packed with style, and full of enough ideas to separate it from the bulk of the genre. There were a few twists without it feeling too arbitrary, and I appreciated how her attention to detail wound a lot of the plotlines together. There were also a handful of places where her prose rose to a level of beauty not often found, reminding me of Name of the Wind or Night Circus. I'm a fan.

I've been a casual fan of Trevor Noah for a while, and he's always seemed a little more thoughtful than some of the other late night hosts (his answer to an audience question about racial reparations is the best short answer I've seen on the topic, and he shows his depth on Israel-Palestine as well.) This book shows his abundant empathy for people in difficult situations, as well as being heartfelt and quite funny in places. I learned a lot about apartheid, and he spends a lot of time exploring the very human situations that result from racially biased systems and poverty. You'll laugh a lot, learn a lot, and have a newfound respect for him. Highly recommended.

I really liked “Greenleaf” and “You Can't be any Poorer than Dead,” and of course “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is a classic. But overall, Flannery wasn't quite what I expected. I don't have a problem with her prose; it's stark and blunt, almost like Hemingway or Cormac McCarthy. But most of them have no real ending; if I didn't know better, I'd almost assume that some of them were a typing error and cut off the last few pages.

I got a lot out of Faulkner because I took a class focusing on him; I probably would have had a similar experience of Flannery, but it's a little tough reading solo.

Update: got some help in seeing her vision from Bishop Barron (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAK1oybyJBc), and I'm all in.

Spoilers below:

The Expanse continues to shine in all that it does well: being smart and being fun at the same time, having real consequences without feeling too arbitrary or too “plot armor-ey,” having villains with some redeeming characteristics and reasonable views. I really liked the arc for Governor Singh; he made a lot of mistakes and did a lot of growing in a hurry, and kept learning right until the end. The ultimate morality level of the Laconians is excellently murky; their brutal foundation, and medical experiments show their true colors, but Duarte and Trejo (and even Singh) have some great arguments in their favor. The book shows their hypocrisy, but also how in the grand scheme they might be right. It takes a big combination of morals and stakes for me to respect them for killing a main character I liked and identified with, and think they maybe did the right thing. The constant juxtaposition of short-term and long-term ethics (killing Singh is worth it to avoid setting off centuries of hatred) works really well.

It's also the first book to have real tension within the crew, and that feels like it was well overdue. The timelapse was fine; the “Empire Strikes Back” ending with Holden captured works well. Sometimes, the “bad” guys have a lot more advanced weapons than you, some good arguments, and you can't really beat them. In most plots, the protagonists find some clever workaround. Here, the bad guys overcame some mistakes, killed a main character, captured the hero, and are looking like the powerhouse they are. I respect it.

I also really liked the display of both of the Martian views on the Laconians: Alex thinks they're all traitors and should die, while Bobby's dismayed sadness and “there but for the grace of God would have been me.” Both have merit and are very understandable. A really good job of showing how The Expanse refuses to have a monolithic view on most complex topics. Would have been really easy for it to be a one-note viewpoint.