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.
Pros: Beautiful. The inner thoughts of a wise, kind old preacher as he ponders the important things in life and appreciates the relationships and nature that he loved. I liked how she captured his honest doubt and anxieties about dying before his son grows up. The writing is clear and simple, almost stark, like Cormac McCarthy. Reminds me a bit of Will Campbell's memoir “Brother to a Dragonfly” since it's a thoughtful, measured reflection on life and religion. It also made me think of the more recent “Between the World and Me,” since it's written for the life benefit of a son from his father.
Cons: a little slow, and it's very hard to read quickly.
A bit more insightful than the average pop-psych books, which always seemed to me to be saying “here's 300 pages explaining something obvious.” He did pick a few excellent examples of his thesis; I thought the strongest chapters were on unintentional actions of bureaucracy, like hospital protocols, aluminum plant safety standards, and a subway fire in London. Some of it felt a little more hokey to me, but the practical afterword was very concrete and helpful
I'm usually more interested in fiction unless I'm researching a specific topic, but I found Lost at Sea to be hugely entertaining and thoughtful. Ronson is frequently hilarious (the opening chapter, an interview of Insane Clown Posse, had me cackling), and the book often feels like you're hearing someone tell a great story at a party.
On a more serious note, Ronson has two chapters about economic issues that everyone should read: “Who Killed Richard Cullen?,” about a man who committed suicide after his credit card debt spiraled out of control, and “Amber Waves of Green,” about economic inequality in America. They were published before the crash in 2008/09 and capture some of the absurdity of our economic system.
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.
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.
Pros: everything good about the first book returns. It still handles apocalyptic topics in serious ways like The Stand and perhaps even The Road; it still handles grief in a way that's not only “good for fantasy,” but simply “great for fiction.” Jemisin remains the most thoughtful, insightful writer on emotional trauma I've read since The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. I also appreciated the daughter's viewpoint, giving another shade of gray to the moral spectrum of the world.
Cons: the pacing felt slightly off to me; took me a while to get through the first third, then I read the second half at a sprint
You don't read Silence and decide what you think about the book; you read Silence and decide what you think about life.
What are my deepest convictions?
What would it take for me to publicly denounce them? If you say “nothing” could make me denounce them, have you realllllly thought that through?
What do I think about suffering, and about how God acts in the world, and about the purpose of Jesus coming to the world?
Along with Dostoevsky's “Brothers Karamazov” and Russell's “The Sparrow,” and of course the Biblical book of Job, Endo's “Silence” stands as an all-time great meditation on suffering.
The film by Scorsese is also excellent but, just like the novel, it's a lot to take in.
I usually give pros and cons for books, but that somehow feels inappropriate, or insufficient, for this. (Although I will say that, perhaps because Coates has a poetry background, much of the writing is smooth and pretty).
This doesn't feel like a book for me to critique, because 1) we come from very different social locations, and 2) it's so personal that critiquing the book on any serious level would simply be critiquing his life experience. Coates is writing a letter to his 15-year-old son about his upbringing and current life as a black man in America. This isn't merely a framing device, it really does read as an intimate diary, the kind of thing you write to your child in case you die, so they will have some guiding life advice from you.
Note: the purpose of this book isn't to “convince” you that America's systems often discriminate against black people. This book isn't an argument, it's a memento. If that's what you're looking for, perhaps try “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander or “Just Mercy” by Bryan Stevenson as starting points.
This book reminds me that stories are really the result of lots of different things going right. Nightingale does some things well, but more things not so well
Pros: I thought the “tale of two sisters” frame was solid, and the stay-at-home sister's encounters with the “nice” German officer were handled well. The ending had an emotional depth
Cons: the rest of the story felt pretty cliche to me, especially the constant emphasis on the younger sister's beauty. A lot of the dialogue felt really flat/wooden/clunky to me, as well as some of the prose.
It's also a little unfair, since I read this a few months after finishing All The Light We Cannot See, which occupies a very similar “WW2 tale with 2 split protagonists and some time shifts,” but was better at almost everything and was beautiful to boot. Read that, and then read Atonement, and then read Nightingale if you love the genre and can't get enough
Pros: In short, it's really, really good. There's a reason she's the first writer to ever win the Hugo 3 years in a row. It's one part Brandon Sanderson (“fantasy” in the sense that the world has a few twists from ours), one part Cold Mountain / The Road (in the sense that it's a journey in the face of an apocalypse), and one part Bell Jar (in the sense that it truly explores the emotional landscape of someone who's undergoing trauma). Without giving too much away, her use of time and plotlines is very... tidy. For having a pretty broad scope, she manages to keep things braided together and tucked into place well enough that you never feel lost in the world. If you haven't heard it, be sure to listen to her discuss worldbuilding on Ezra Klein's podcast. It's one of the best interviews you'll ever hear.
Cons: there's some pretty explicit sexual content that caught me by surprise and didn't feel strictly necessary for the plot. Also, the very end didn't strike me as much as I think it was intended to; I'll still read the next ones, but I'm a bit confused by the closing line and think I might have missed something.
Pros: Usually, the more you know about the underlying science, the less believable/engrossing a sci-fi book is. Three-Body Problem is that rare sci-fi book that is better if you know more of the science it engages with. As a physics guy, I loved that. It's also really clever in employing science concepts as plot devices; from the famous three-body problem you see early on, to the use of non-digital computing, to nano technology, everything feels authentic. Also, from my own experience in the sciences, I thought the way that Earth scientists dealt with anomalies was handled in exactly the right way. Also, the author's afterward is excellent.
Cons: pretty technical at times; I was a physics major and still had to Google a few things. Because it's translated, it's also a little clunky in places. Together, these can make a few chapters drag on a bit.
In all fairness, Pat lays out in both the introduction and the afterword that this book isn't for everyone and is unlike his others. I think the best way to put it for me is that this book's ratio of “pretty:plot” is too far for me. I like pretty books (both “All the Light We Cannot See” and “The Night Circus” are certainly pretty books), but I need a little more of a plotline. If that's not you, you'll probably really like this.
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
My favorite WW2 book since Atonement; does the “mixed-timeline historical fiction” genre very well; excellent sense of scientific wonder in the dawn of the radio era.
Hard to describe how many times I stopped reading to say, “That's a gorgeous paragraph.” I don't understand the few critiques I've heard that “nothing happens,” because I was racing to the end to discover the plot arc.
Pretty as a picture, highly recommended
McKenzie seems like a thoughtful, pastoral guy, and he makes the smart decision to say “here are a few different perspectives” on the controversial bits (mostly). Good introduction to the sacraments. Makes a good case that the “via media” of the Anglican tradition is the right balance between Catholicism and the Protestants.
Pros: describes space travel in a compelling, adventurous way; solid crafting of another world; the closing segment when CS Lewis provides his translation of human nature.
Cons: although I like CS Lewis a lot, I've always thought his dialogue was a little stuffy; never really “takes off;” I didn't quite grasp all the pieces he was trying to pull together from sci-fi, Christian mythology, and his own new ideas.
On the whole, there's a lot of books to read in this world, and I was unconvinced to finish the trilogy.
Solid content; a good addition to my new orthodoxy crowd of CS Lewis, NT Wright, David Bentley Hart, and maybe James Martin. Very much in the Aquinas tradition, good example of how the Anglican world can critique traditional RCC doctrine without irresponsibly tossing some ideas.
Just a bit dry in tone; maybe because it was from a lecture series and was then written down. A bit of a hard time reading through it all, even though it's short.
Shares effectively all the strengths and relative weaknesses of the first book; if you liked The Final Empire, you'll like The Well of Ascension.
Spoilers for this book and the full trilogy:
Pros:
I didn't really notice this on the first read through, but I respect how he handles major character deaths. He manages to avoid the two bad ends of the spectrum: the “plot armor” trope, where major characters are immune to threats no matter how fatal (a la late Game of Thrones), or the “look at how edgy I am by killing characters” (a la the third Hunger Games book). The death of Kelsier was completely unexpected last book, and Dickson and Clubs felt the same way. You don't see it coming, and it heightens the stakes because it feels like anyone can actually die (a la early Game of Thrones). You feel actually nervous when Marsh tries to kill Sazed, because other main characters weren't spared. For book 3, this is heightened all the way with Vin and Elend. What other series kills it's big hero and big bad villain a third of the way through the plot, then it's two protagonists at the climax? Props to Sanderson for pulling it off.
The premise - what happens after the good guys win - is still intriguing and lives up to its promise. Both of the twists felt clever without falling into deus ex machina territory. The first twist, how Vin's kandra was replaced by another one, was a good use of supplied information: the audience assumed the spy couldn't be him, but we had no real reason to believe that. In fact, there are hints throughout the dialogue that it's him: constantly warning her that she's underestimating the cleverness and skill of kandras, lines about the Contract being ironclad but also surprising, and a bit where Vin is surprised that he doesn't know a detail about her past. That last one was really subtle writing by Sanderson. Vin is currently investigating people by posing details about their past conversations to check their identity, and what does she do when OreSeur doesn't know she grew up on the streets? She assumes that it's because he was excluded from the group, and it causes her to take pity on him. That's really good plot writing.
The second twist, the big one with Ruin at the end, is a great one. It manages to up the ante without feeling like “Mario, your princess is in another castle.” Such a clever technique by Ruin, to flip the cause-effect chain of morals. By setting up the message to be “only the best of us will be able to resist keeping the power,” it's such a clever tweak. Lots of villains have to get protagonists to help them by provoking characters into doing bad things; Ruin gets Vin and Elend to help him by provoking them to do good things. I thought it was great storytelling without being gimmicky.
A few other tidbits I liked: In the world of Twilight and the Hunger Games, I think he deserves a bit of credit for making a non-traditional love triangle that felt authentic to who Vin was.
Knowing the ending of book 3, I really liked the foreshadowing over the prophecies of the Hero of Ages. It's become a bit of a trope to have some character say, “actually, that word isn't gendered in the original language, so it really should be translated as ‘he OR she'” (see Game of Thrones S7E2). I liked that this is twisted to refer to Sazed, the eunuch, who by all accounts has earned it.
Duralumin is a good addition. It tweaks the realm of possibility enough to be exciting to the audience, but always lives within the current rule structure so it doesn't feel gimmicky.
Cons:
I did feel like it was just a little slow in the first half. It's the same length as the first book, but not quite as much happens. I liked watching Elend grow into his role, but all the city politics sapped a little of the relentless motion of the first book's storyline.
His prose is still very much functional over fashionable. He's an outline writer, which is fine, and it's what makes his foreshadowing thoughtful and his plot arcs tidy. But I just think some of his prose is melodramatic and a bit cliche, like this sentence: “He could easily imagine the disaster that would befall the land should the mists persist all day.” Not that big of a critique, in the larger scope of the book, but something that bugged me a bit.
The first time I read these books, I sprinted through the entire trilogy in a week while I was sick in bed overseas. I liked them then, but I'm glad I come by for another round. I'm always more observant on a second read, but I feel like Sanderson's attention to detail and consistent foreshadowing gave me a lot to latch on to as a repeat reader. A few spoiler-free thoughts:
Pros: Final Empire is fun. It's a fun premise, it's fun to read, and it's fun to imagine. The pace is good, even relentless at times, but not overwhelming. The 500 pages feels full, but about the right length for the amount of plot he has crammed into here. The magic system feels consistent but also a little wild, like they haven't figured it all out yet, which is good. The protagonist is easy to cheer for without being a saint, and her identity crises are engaging. The tone is also that of one large heist, closer to Ocean's Eleven than Lord of the Rings, which is a great twist on the genre. On the whole, Mistborn is worth your time if you like fantasy at all. For my money, this is Sanderson's best work.
Cons: Maybe it's just because I finished reading Stephen King's excellent “On Writing” last week, but I noticed that I don't love Sanderson's prose. Sometimes it's a little melodramatic or hackneyed (especially bits of dialogue, but maybe that's intentional). But it's always, always in the past tense. I feel like this takes me out of some of the scenes, since it leads to boring and repetitive sentence structure. This is the worst for fight scenes; he has all this great worldbuilding, these interesting characters you care about, and all of the fights go like: “Kelsier jumped on the crowd. Then Kelsier pushed off of a soldier. Kelsier smiled, and then swung his knife at another soldier.” It's not that big of a thing, but it is frustrating since all of the other pieces are there.
I think this might be because Sanderson is an outline writer. The great advantages of this are consistent foreshadowing and a sense of finality at the end, like he's wrapped up all the loose ends he wants to. Anyone who likes George RR Marten or Pat Rothfuss will also appreciate that it keeps his publication rate MUCH higher than the industry average. But it does also make him seem like an encylopedist sometimes: “I have plot point A and plot point B that need to be connected, let me write the scene to tied them together.” His transitional scenes and lines are so FUNCTIONAL, they sometimes feel like means to an end instead of something interesting in their own right.
SPOILERS FOR WHOLE TRILOGY
On the sentence structure in fight scenes, don't get me wrong: that closing duel when Kelsier kills the Inquisitor is still awesome, top to bottom.
On foreshadowing: The development/teasing of the kandra was done well, as was Kelsier's actual plan, and Vin's relationship with Ruin. (Also, how did I not notice the Ruin / Reen name similarity? Both the voices in her head have similar names, kind of a fun observation.
Pros: I read somewhere that Sanderson said the entire premise of Mistborn is “what happens after the good guys win?” I think that still really holds up, looking forward. Beating the Big Bad Guy is usually the climax, but I like that it's only a third of the way in. You can see the humanization of the Lord Ruler coming, when the thieving group has to actually govern an empire. I don't think there's ever really any true pity developed for him, considering his brutal cruelty and subjugation of a people, but I like that the main characters are forced to see the world from his height and recognize what a challenging thing it is.
Also, I thought the twist about Rashek really being the Lord Ruler was a good one. It's hard to have the plucky protagonist defeat the Big Bad Guy without it feeling gimmicky and unrealistic. If they were really so big and bad, then one book's worth of training shouldn't let our nobody hero beat them. (For all its other flaws, I thought the Eragon series actually handled this well).
Cons: Eh, after reading Nora Jemisin's Fifth Season trilogy, every other fantasy story about a subjugated people group just doesn't ring quite as true to me. That's not especially a knock against Sanderson - he depicts the brutality and killings enough to get the message across - but it doesn't quite have the same bite.
Overall, this is a decent conclusion to the trilogy. There's a lot of good pieces here, but I felt like his plot development and internal logic fell apart a little bit down the stretch.
Spoilers
Pros:
I thought Yomen was a good addition to the landscape. He has a nice moral shade of gray, which adds to the unexpectedly charitable view of the Lord Ruler. He's also really smart, and tricks Vin and Elend a few times in compelling, thoughtful ways (so does Beldre to Spook, on a slightly smaller level).
I had some negative thoughts about the Ruin/Preservation dynamic here, but I did think it was a clever addition that Vin/Elend's drive to find the atium was orchestrated by Ruin in the first place.
I thought the overall treatment of religion was pretty good - Sanderson is a devout Mormon - in the sense that he fairly portrayed someone's time of deconstruction/doubt.
And as I mentioned in the last review, I thought the foreshadowing of Sazed being the Hero - both with the gender-neutral pronouns, but especially the rest of the prophecies like the “world on his arms” line - was a strong ending note. That line weaved together well, with all the Keepers' knowledge being used to let him properly fix the world.
Cons:
Over the course of the trilogy, his writing bothered me more and more. The common writing expression is “show, don't tell” the audience about a character. I felt like this book spends a LOT of time verbatim describing a character's internal thoughts, which is often much less interesting than watching their actions. Writing that way DOES mean that your character actions and motives have to be discernible without knowing their inner thoughts, which is a high burden to put on your plot and character development. Speaking of that...
It was a bit hard to read after experiencing the depth of plotlines and character development of Game of Thrones; feels much more cartoonish in its plot than it did when I read it 5 years ago. The plot developments in books 2-3 felt a little arbitrary in the grand scheme; I felt like 1 was a fun book and a great idea; I think 2 and 3 are still pretty fun, but the grand finale doesn't necessarily feel like it pulls the great idea together. A few questions: why is Ruin's body made of atium? Why did Vin exactly decided that trying to die would be the responsible decision? With all the Ruin/Preservation stuff in the last bit, what's the real difference in their power and consciousness, and why do they need bodies? The “power flowing” language felt pretty hokey after he did such a good job making an internally consistent and exciting magic system in Allomancy, etc. All that felt like a bad example of Sanderson engineering his plot to a conclusion he wanted (Sazed being the Hero, which I actually thought was a solid conclusion). It just all felt a bit gimmicky, not as tight of a puzzle as expected.
The best plot surprises/conclusions are when you look back and think “I really should have seen it coming.” Sanderson nails some of those: Sazed being the Hero, TenSoon being an imposter, Vin having the earring. But most of the second half of book 3 felt far too deus ex machina, instead of relying on the internal narrative.
I love Stephen King, but even if you don't, everyone who cares about books or writing should read this. He's very open about the entire process, with all its ups and downs. He's also pretty thoughtful about things outside of writing, since he was hit by a van and almost killed while he was in the middle of writing this book.
My favorite part was how the way he sounds when he describes finding his internal writing “muse” is quite similar to many of the desert monks of the early church. You can never guarantee anything will come, you can only build rhythms that help you be receptive when it DOES strike.
If you think you don't like Stephen King, go read Shawshank Redemption or Stand By Me (called The Body), which are two of the best stories you'll ever come across.
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.