Matthew Groves
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.
I liked the Golden Compass trilogy a lot when I was younger and still have a hilarious, highly-rated review of the audiobook on iTunes. Pullman is of course still wildly anti-institutional, really hates the idea of theocracies, and has likely intended the whole series as an insult to the Catholic Church / Church of England. But after taking a religious history class on the Reformation era in grad school I re-read the trilogy and was very glad to see that Pullman has certainly done his homework and read extensively. He quotes LOTS of Milton, has given a lot of thought to the deeper claims of Genesis about human anthropology, and has a fascinating alternative history imagining John Calvin's papacy. We disagree a lot, but his level of thoughtfulness is a welcome distinction from some of the other garden-variety atheists popular today - cough cough Dawkins.
Some new levels of grayness really help complexify the world as well, like a character who's a righteous priest, and Lyra's new philosophies. She's been swept up in a reductionist cynicism about the world (what might be called an ultra-materialism), and she's miserably unhappy. What a brave new development, for a few reasons. First, it takes a big swing at some of the New Atheist crowd who would otherwise be very much in Pullman's camp. Pullman is such a brilliant storyteller that he sees the universe as being alive with meaning and imagination and story; he rejects boring literalism. So I really like his metaphysics even though it doesn't come from a Christian perspective.
Second, it's always tricky for writers to do a sequel series to a YA-style protagonist and figure out how to make them still a compelling character. (Harry Potter is a good example of perhaps stumbling in this in the Cursed Child, while Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead do a great job). This captures a bit of the quarter-life crisis / mid-youth crisis more appropriate for a college-age person trying to figure out their adult perspectives about the world, and sometimes that period includes some deep unhappiness. You don't always expect to see that in this genre, and I really appreciated it.
Along the way he takes a few swings at tangential topics like moral relativism and lots of postmodernism (more power to him), as well as some Trump-ey ideas like alternative facts, and even gets in the refugee crisis. And the book's universe is still very fun and creative, exploring a part of the world I don't know very much about (Turkey and the upper Middle East). Along with the Belle Sauvage, I've really enjoyed what he's done with the Golden Compass world, and that's more than I can say for a lot of the expanded content in most YA worlds. Good for him.
Loved this book! Rare to find something so focused on death that feels uplifting and charming instead of morose. Will certainly make you feel for the curmudgeons in your life
Just as fun as all the others; the scientific interaction with “the unknown” continues to be an excellent blend of plot and substance, the lady's crush was just a little weird.
Powerful meditation on how death comes for us all, and how the world's customs and “propriety” don't prepare us for the ultimate things.
“Why fear death? Be scared of living” - Laura Marling
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
A good thriller; twisty but not manipulative, I liked quite a few of the author's phrases and metaphors throughout, and a pretty good take on small town America (a little dramatic, but hey, it's a drama).
SPOILERS:
I thought the central reveals about her relationship with her mother and the younger sisters was handled really well; everything we know about this mom leads us to believe she's capable of things like this, but we don't see it coming. A good gradual reveal as the protagonist figures it out.
I came to be a big fan of The Goblin Emperor as I went. It has a good amount of political intrigue; not quite as complicated as GoT, but certainly enough to chew on and feel thoughtful (unlike Sanderson, for example). And being thrown into the machinations of the court puts you in the seat of the young protagonist himself, as you both try to keep up with the names and roles. It's deliberately open-minded without being preachy about it, and (didn't see this one coming) contains an unexpectedly thoughtful portrayal of an egalitarian political terrorist. There's a great exploration of insider-outsider dynamics as well, considering the emperor is of mixed heritage. Also, and perhaps most importantly, it's truly warm-hearted. There are schemers and no shortage of opponents, but the Goblin Emperor does a great job of portraying that, when you get down to it, most people aren't evil. Nobody's perfect, but there is kindness in the world, and a lot of people do try and help others when given the chance. Fantasy so often tries to overcome the trappings of being “just YA lit” by throwing in buckets of blood, sex, and cruelty (GoT is certainly guilty, no matter its other strengths). I love that this book overcomes that by instead having a pretty thoughtful political landscape filled by mostly decent people trying to do what's best for their houses and lands.
Cons: I know it's the point for us to empathize with the emperor at being overwhelmed by all the names, but they're just so weird. Having so many strange titles and invented names is a fantasy trope that the book did NOT avoid. But maybe I'm just close-minded and mentally lazy about new languages
As someone who's not really a “theater person,” I learned a lot and really appreciated this book. I didn't realize until I got started how much an actor's perspective could really open up some Biblical narratives. If you're portraying Jesus/Judas/etc for an audience, you have to embody the character as well as you can, and it leads you to ask all kinds of fascinating questions about your character's motives, priorities, and inner turmoil. It makes for great Bible study, and it fits in well with the Jesuits' “Ignatian Contemplation” of imagining yourself within a Bible story to better understand it.
A fairly quick read, but thoughtful and warm. Recommended if you like, theater, the New Testament, or James Martin.
The Expanse continues to strike a really good middle ground on lots of issues. The books are long enough that plenty happens, but are mostly dialogue so they aren't as big as the page count implies. If you've ever read a long book and thought “there wasn't enough plot for this many pages,” the Expanse is NOT like that.
The tone is serious enough that there are real stakes to the point that it feels like main characters are in authentic danger, but not just arbitrarily killing off everyone.
It's more fun than most “serious” books, but a lot more thoughtful and intrigue-ful than most “fun” books.
I'm only 3 books in, but it's a long series and it's impressive that they still have lots of new ideas and don't feel redundant.
The science is very well-considered and they clearly talked to some physics people to be sure they understood how travel and logistics work in zero gravity. And if we find alien life, it's almost certainly not going to be humans with a small twist (blue skin, etc), but will likely be something so strange we can't even tell what it is. This continues to include the strangeness of the alien life, and how our response to it is likely to be an uneasy combination of confused and conflicting scientific, political, and military wrangling.
I also really appreciated the presence and posture of the religious people. The Expanse does a great job in general of not treating any group as a monolith, so the religious crowd is a mixture of pious and sleazy, established traditions and start ups. But no one is a caricature, and the main pastor's grasp of a central Christian belief - no one is beyond redemption - is handled extremely well in service of a plot line. That's rare enough in fiction generally, but especially in sci-fi/fantasy, and I salute them. (Maybe see Speaker for the Dead or The Sparrow for other examples)
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.
If there's a fiction book more full of gospel love and truth than Hannah Coulter is, I haven't read it.
But this book has also done something very few others have done: made me truly ponder if my way of life is the right one.
When most people imagine an old man in rural America griping about how times have changed, it's common to assume he's perhaps acting out of a misplaced nostalgia, and that he's wrong to want to emulate the past. But Wendell Berry has struck firmly on something that I think he's 100% right about: for most of human history people have lived in much tighter social networks than we do now, and the jury is out on if the modern way of life is a clear winner.
Of course, lots of good things have come from the modern social model! People can move to find education and work that's a better fit with their interests, specialized research has flourished (especially medically), and traveling to meet people different from ourselves is a good thing.
However, people today lack a sense of deep local ties to specific places and people, and I have to believe that's centrally related to the widespread sense of loneliness and isolation in society, especially among young people. (Social media surely contributes as well). Some people find small towns stifling, and they can be, but regular interaction with people who have known you and your family for decades surely helps people feel less invisible and like more of a true member of a community.
I'm an example myself, having parents who moved a bit away from home for school and jobs, and now I've moved even farther from home for the same reasons. But this book makes me think about how the Fear Of Missing Out that can drive a lot of our personal interactions also plays out on a larger level. FOMO makes us always wonder if there are “better” things to be doing, people to be meeting, and places to be living. And when you're looking over your shoulder at other opportunities, you aren't as present and committed to the relationship – to a person or to a community – right in front of you, and you can more easily let yourself bail on them. And if you start treating some relationships as “bail-able,” it's easy to let yourself treat more and more things that way. In some ways that's the point of marriage: to agree together not to look out for shiny new options, but to get to the unglamorous work of building the relationship that's right in front of you. As Berry says about residents of the town in the book: They were not striving to “get someplace” because “they think they are someplace” already.
All monks take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, but some take a fourth one that's less well-known: stability. It means that you never leave the grounds of the monastery you've entered. Chastity is often seen as the most “outdated” in today's world, but to most people similar to myself - young, college-educated, and living near a city - I think stability may well be the hardest to entertain. Thomas Merton said that taking the vow of stability makes the monk “renounce the vain hope of wandering off to find a ‘perfect monastery.'” If you're always looking for perfection, you aren't content with the imperfections around you. When you're looking around for the Next Big Thing that you could have, you aren't investing in what you do have right in front of you.
Hannah Coulter demonstrates a special kind of love that is only possible when you are known deeply; not just your quirks as a person, but your whole world and context. I don't have the answers here: I'm not planning to move back to my home area and become a farmer. But I know that I long for feeling deeply known and loved, and Wendell Berry has captured that more than anything else I've ever read. I do know that I believe the solution going forward lies in long-term, deep investment in relationships with people and places, and the kind of trust and mutual reliance that only builds up over time. Perhaps we all ought to take a type of vow of stability.
SPOILERS
One of the things I think sets this world above most YA is how Bardugo introduces a few moral shades of gray. I appreciated the humanization of the Darkling through his past, but also by showing how a few of his loyal supporters thought he was making the hard but right decision. Feels like most YA just leaves it at “don't do bad things,” but I liked how the darkling's argument was “war is a cycle of suffering and it must be stopped. No matter how much suffering I cause in this moment, it will be worth it to make stability and end the war.” I don't 100% agree with that claim, but at least he's making some kind of argument that you can entertain. (Reminds me of Kuvira, my favorite Avatar villain).
I liked the twist that doing “the big magical thing” was actually her losing her powers and diffusing them to the “regular” people. I appreciated the running commentary about the special/ordinary divide, and how Alina's sainthood played into that. (And the sainthood elements pulled from Eastern Orthodox Christianity remains one of the neatest twists I've seen in place-based fantasy)
I will say I thought the resurrection of Mal disappointed me. Not just because he survived, but because it made no sense at all in the rules of the world. I don't need an encyclopedia of the world's magic system, but authors have to know that if they introduce an entirely new magical trick during a pivotal moment, it's going to feel like a deus ex machina.
On the whole, glad I read the trilogy, I'd put it above Hunger Games but below Golden Compass and perhaps Mistborn.
With just a few examples of the sequel slump, I overall thought Siege and Storm tried a few new things that worked. If you liked Shadow and Bone, you'll like this and can stop reading.
SPOILERS for both books 1 and 2 below:
Cons:
Especially towards the beginning, I felt a bit of a bait-and-switch repetitiveness, almost a “Mario, your princess is in another castle!” A few examples: she runs away with Mal but the Darkling catches her; she barely escapes the Darkling during a battle in a wasteland and leaves him for dead; and there's a magical creature she needs to amp up her powers. It feels a little bit repetitive, but more importantly it cheapens the impact of the end of the last book. Kind of like the problem with Marvel movies: it's the “magical item/villain to end them all!” ... until the next movie comes along. We also go to the trouble of setting up a whole other country, but only spend a chapter or two there before going straight back to where we started. The whole first section just left me feeling like, “Wait, haven't we just been here and done this?” It's a real shame the beginning is so flat, because...
Pros:
There's a lot to like in this book once it opens up a bit. I really appreciated the introduction of the prince as a third strong character in the politics, providing some balance to the Darkling. It evens the power struggle and makes Alina's decisions more complex and interesting. We also see a lot more consequences of those decisions this time around. I did appreciate the way the last book handled her mercy towards the stag as a “more than one way to possess a life,” but I also would have really respected the ending if she just left it unfixed: you should have made the hard decision to kill the stag, and now you blew it and the world is ruined. Sometimes we have to make harsh choices for the best. Not a very YA approach, but I like when books subvert expectations. Book 2, on the other hand, did subvert those expectations. Things are going well and you have a feeling like they can mayyyyybe just pull it off, but instead it's a disaster. For the whole series, I've been looking at the monarchy through a modern lens and thinking how unstable it is to have a feeble old creep and his idiot showboy son running the country, and apparently Leigh Bardugo agrees... having a clueless party boy run your foreign policy would have real consequences in the real world, and it sure does in book 2. Similar to the original Star Wars trilogy's middle film Empire Strikes Back, I respect the author for including a large helping of reality and ending on a note of defeat.
On the whole, this series feels like it could end up in the upper end of the genre for me, alongside Mistborn or the Golden Compass. We'll see!
Truly a book that every person should read, making us ponder the evils of the world and how we should - or even can - respond to them. I'm still not certain exactly how I would answer the book's main question for myself.
Pros: still fun, fast, and funny. Does a really good job at showing how governments (especially big ones) aren't just a group of people who all agree with each other. I feel like a big problem in sci-fi/fantasy world is that oftentimes an organization or government has only one viewpoint on something, i.e. “Country X wants to go to war with Country Y.” But in the real world, any large group of people will have differing camps on any important issue, and this book shows that well. There's also several good uses of revealed information
Cons: has a little bit of the “your princess is in another castle” vibe, with a similar corporate villain as last time
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 knew Ursula K LeGuin was seen as one of the top scifi/fantasy minds of the 20th century, but hadn't really read anything by her as an adult, so I was excited to give this a chance and was not disappointed. This genre always does best when it provides a mirror/comparison to our own world, and this certainly does that. It gets a lot of attention for its novelty around gender, and rightly so, especially for when it was published, but I appreciated it most for thinking about difference in general. How do we communicate/collaborate with others who are very different from us? How do we build trust and friendships? At its heart, the book feels almost like a platonic love story of two people who are very different from each other. There's an emotional heart of beauty and intimacy to the story, and it's one that everybody should give a chance.
It's quite a fun premise: a Soviet dissident writes a book about the Devil visiting early USSR Moscow for a quick field trip / check-in, and he's delighted to find that A) none of them believe in him because they're an officially atheistic state, and B) some of them are doing plenty of wickedness without him! The whole thing is a blast. It's not a short book, but I sprinted through it.
Even though I've come to appreciate some literature written in the 1800s/early 1900s (Dostoevsky, CS Lewis, etc), usually I'm appreciating the author's ideas, or character development. But Master and Margarita is different; it's actually funny. I don't think I've ever come across a book this old that's this funny (which is especially impressive in translation).
There's also a subplot with the devil's firsthand accounts of Pontius Pilate's troubles around Christ's crucifixion day, which I found to be fascinating and good religious food for thought, as well as an unexpectedly sweet romance, plus a hilarious posse of demons-in-waiting. Rumor is that is also served as the inspiration for the Rolling Stones song “Sympathy for the Devil.”
The Master and Margarita is very different, but I loved it, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who's even a little bit interested in it.
For a long time, I thought this book had a strange pattern: one chapter would be excellent and thought-provoking, and then the next one would be a drag. It was only about a third of the way through the book that I realized the chapters were pretty steady, but that I only had the mental focus to engage with them for one chapter at a time.
I like a lot of things Merton has written, including this, and I've been grateful for the chance to visit his Trappist monastery in Kentucky. But I will say that New Seeds is pretty thick in places; I think I would have appreciated it a lot more if I had a solid 1-hour per day prayer routine already in place, since he's writing from a monastic setting about how to be a contemplative.
Writing about deep spiritual experiences is almost by definition hard to describe in writing to others, so there's a wide range of poetic language and practical advice. I thought all of his language about the masks we wear and the false selves we show to the world was very astute, and his emphasis on living a life “hidden” with Christ (Colossians 3).
Not a breezy read, but a very thought-provoking one. A good companion to “A Hidden Life” by Terrance Malick, and “That All Shall Be Saved” by David Bentley Hart.
Other strong points: the shallowness of materialism; the importance of treating God like a person in a relationship and not the subject of a study; the purpose of a vow of poverty; emphasis that contemplation and faith make us more human, not less; the last chapter contains one of the best, brief tellings of the Christian view of salvation history and a God who embraces vulnerability and weakness.
“The Saint knows that the world and everything made by God is good, while those who are not saints either think that created things are unholy, or else they don't bother about the question one way or another because they are only interested in themselves”
“Do not think that you can show your love for Christ by hating those who seem to be His enemies on earth. Suppose they really do hate Him; nevertheless He loves them, and you cannot be united with Him until you love them too”
“Do not be too quick to assume that your enemy is an enemy of God just because he is your enemy. Perhaps he is your enemy precisely because he can find nothing in you that gives glory to God.”
“If you have money, consider that perhaps the only reason God allowed it to fall into your hands was in order that you might find joy and perfection by giving it away.”
Although he betrays in a few places that this was written by a British man in the 1940s (the language is a bit stuffy, a he makes a few side comments that lean on gender stereotypes), overall this is as good as any modern definition of the Christian faith, a sort of Nicene Creed for today's world.
Coming to Lewis a bit later than most of the people in my theological circles, I think as strictly speaking “apologetics,” I'd still be more likely to hand someone Screwtape Letters if they didn't know anything about Christianity since it takes a more creative route. But the straightforward logic in Mere Christianity is great stuff for conveying the intellectual tradition of the faith in accessible language for laypeople. His approach to all people having a conscience, science as a source of knowledge, and the shortcomings of society's definition of “progress” are very sound. I was also a bit surprised by his heavy emphasis on sanctification, the process of leaning into virtues that reinforce each other and make us more holy over time. Lewis has become an evangelical saint, and evangelical traditions don't always lean into sanctification language, so I really appreciated its presence here. Reminds me of the Hebrew word timshel, which appears in Steinbeck's East of Eden and a Mumford and Sons song: “And you have your choices / and these are what make man great / his ladder to the stars.”
I particularly appreciated his ecumenical spirit, which is both always generous and particularly suited for today's world, when denominational affiliation means less than it used to. He also uses lots of practical metaphors, and he comes across as authentically humble.
A good read for someone with major doubts (either within the church or outside it), or someone who just wants to have a better understanding of the intellectual foundations of the Christian faith.
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.