Shawn Towner
Takes a little while to really good going, as Mieville starts out by introducing you to the world he is creating; a world of steam and clockwork-powered machinery, and biological hybrids. After introducing the world and the initial problem (how to restore flight to a wingless birdman), the story staggers to a crawl, as Mieville details the research and experimentation of the protagonist. I've often seen Mieville compared to Neal Stephenson, but this research-laden stretch of the novel really highlights the difference between the authors. Mieville is a really good author, but his attachment to formal prose and detailed descriptions makes the exposition and information-gathering sections of his work much less enjoyable than the similar portions of Stephenson's work. I've never been bored reading Stephenson write about the calculus, philosophy, or MMORPGs, but I found myself losing interest in reading about crisis theory in this novel.Fortunately, Mieville does move away from the research and theory, as a pupating caterpillar launches the plot into motion again, weaving together all the expository threads established early in the novel. After the slowness of the research, Mieville does a fantastic job of keeping things interesting and exciting. While his descriptions and prose might make the slower sections of the novel more difficult to read, they greatly contribute to a vivid, cinematic writing during the action-oriented portions of the book. I didn't enjoy this one as much as I did [b:Embassytown 9265453 Embassytown China Miéville http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320470326s/9265453.jpg 14146240] or the magnificent [b:Kraken 6931246 Kraken China Miéville http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320551670s/6931246.jpg 8814204], but it's still a very good book.
The previous book, Babylon's Ashes, was a big step down in quality. It focused too much on ancillary characters away from the Rocinante's crew. But Persepolis Rising is a return to form for the series. The focus is again back on the core characters and the politics of space conflict, without nearly as much focus on the establishment of new trade organizations. The problem I have with this novel is the timeline of things. This takes place years after the events of the earlier novels, but there's rarely attention paid to the effects of years of heroic space adventures on bodies that must be pushing forty, at least. In a series that devotes so much attention to how the human body isn't built to live in space and the physical difficulties and dangers of trying to make a life in the vacuum of space, I would have like to see more focus on the Old Man Holden aspect of things.
I first tried reading this book over the summer, but abandoned it maybe a quarter of the way through. When it started popping up on best-of list and the short-list for ToBX, I decided to give it another shot. It was certainly a better read the second time around, but the opening of the book is so good that the rest of the book struggles to keep up.
During the first 10-15% or so I was worried that this would end up being super schmaltzy, like an Alaskan version of that Jennifer Garner movie where a plant child becomes a member of the family and teaches them about love, togetherness, the American way, etc. Fortunately, this book veers into more mature territory. The second part was a little slow, but in the third and final part, things really pick up and get going again.
An interesting premise for a book–the novelization of the schlock sci-fi classic “The Crawling Hand”–but The Four Fingers of Death fails to deliver. For one thing, it's too long. 700 pages of bleak landscapes and characters being afflicted with space madness and whatnot. I'm not sure if the long-winded prose is supposed to be a joke or not. The character writing the novelization (the book is a actually a novel within a novel) comes across a someone who doesn't have much talent, so I'm not sure if the bland quality of his novelization is an intentional act by Rick Moody, or if it's just the way Rick Moody writes. The novel could have been greatly improved if Moody had adopted another aspect of classic genre cinema: the serial. I could definitely see this novel working as a collection of connected short stories or a series of novellas. As a giant novel, however, it leaves much to be desired.
I'm not a huge fan of memoirs, and I honestly wasn't expecting this to be as memoiry as it is. I was expecting a reported nonfiction account of life inside North Korea–which much of the book is–but the book too often veers off into being about a Korean-American woman who's upset that she can't openly talk to her ‘lover' in Brooklyn because of the restrictions/spying in North Korea. And the end gets into a little too much of the teacher-as-savior “l love my students so much!” teacher narrative nonsense that, even though I'm a teacher, always upsets me for some reason. When the book is focused on life for North Koreans, especially those who aren't fortunate enough to attend a school for the elite youth of the nation, it is a terrifying look into a real-world dystopia. The descriptions of the students and their willingness to lie and apparently spy on each other gives some insight into how the regime works to maintain its power and illusion of divinity.
An interesting and insightful book not just in the sense of Packer's analysis of the role of women in Shakespeare's plays, but it's also a great overview of Shakespeare's works in general. Packer uses a mix of historical/biographical research, her experiences as a performer of the plays, and the text of the plays themselves to really dive into Shakespeare's life and works. I felt that she focused a little too much on minor plays, but that's probably because I teach Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet and Othello every year, so I wanted to see more about them and less about Troilus and Cressida.
Good, but not as good as John Dies at the End. I didn't enjoy the sections of the book that moved away from David's narration. His voice, and its interaction with John's ridiculousness and Molly's omnipotence, is what I feel really drives the book, so deviating from that voice is moving away from what makes the book great.
This book is probably more conventional than John Dies at the End, which I suppose really isn't saying all that much, since John Dies at the End is such a wonderfully odd book. It's certainly more cinematic. I haven't yet seen the John Dies at the End film, but this book,–with it's monster trucks, ramping, and time-stopping–reads like great action-horror-comedy flick. Even the chapter titles could directly transfer to being inter-titles for a film.
First in a series, so it's difficult to judge, but it's certainly an intriguing start to a story. Beautiful color artwork and a bizarre variety of characters, both real and imagined.
No real plot, no real characters, no real conflict. If I were teaching a creative writing course, this book would be a great text to use to show kids how not to write.
A phenomenally lucid and inspiring introduction to the words and significance of Shakespeare that is relevant to both neophytes and veterans of the Bard's works. If this book were nothing but the introductory and interlude chapters about Shakespeare, it would still be worth it. The only reason I didn't rate it five stars is that it doesn't include any passages from Othello.
Sunnyside, Glen David Gold's second novel, starts off with the type of magic that one might expect to find in his first novel, Carter Beats the Devil. That is a roundabout and inelegant (did I really just use ‘one' instead of ‘you'?) way of saying that at the start of the novel, Charlie Chaplin is seen in over 800 places at the same time. Despite its supernatural start, Sunnyside is, lamentably, not a novel about Charlie Chaplin and his awesome powers of duplication/teleportation. While the novel is about Chaplin, he doesn't have magic powers, other than his power to entertain. Sunnyside focuses largely on Chaplin's attempts to move from silly two-reelers to something better and more profound. When Gold is focusing on the magic of the silent cinema, Sunnyside is at its best. However, in what could be an homage to silent epics, Sunnyside is a triptych, with two additional plots dealing with World War I. One of the these two plots works well, as it loosely ties into the Chaplin plot, but the third storyline feels tacked on, until the very end, where the last two pages fit in nicely with the themes of the other two plots.
As mentioned earlier, the best parts of Sunnyside are those that focus on Charlie Chaplin. Although I will admit that the Chaplin plot made me feel pretty ignorant. I thought I knew a thing or two about silent film short comedies, but it turns out I recognized more of the Mary Pickford references than I did the Chaplin references. Now I have to go back and watch whatever Chaplin shorts I can find on Netflix to better my understanding of Chaplin's transition between simple comic shorts and the more profound longer work. Best I can tell from the novel, Chaplin is frustrated by the emotional response people have to Mary Pickford films and wants them to have the same type of response to the Little Tramp character. Chaplin struggles to find his happy place (Sunnyside is basically a metaphor for the happy place the main characters are trying to find) which mirrors the struggle one of the other main characters faces on the Western Front of WWI.
The secondary and tertiary plots of Sunnyside take place in World War I. The better of the two focuses on Lee Duncan, a wannabe actor who gets what he thinks is going to be his big break in the States, only to be framed for a crime and forced to enlist in the service. As he works as a mechanic in the Air Service, he struggles to deal with the betrayal of his mother (which also mirrors Chaplin's problems with his mother) and what appears to be the end of his film career. Eventually the combination of a flamethrower, two puppies (one heroic, one deceitful), and a film of a lame-trick performing great dane, motivate Duncan to follow his dream in Hollywood.
The second plot works well because Duncan's problems relate to Chaplin's. Although one is a struggling actor and the other is arguably the world's biggest movie star, they both have a love for the cinema and want to devote their lives to it. The third plot, excepting the final few moments, has little to do with the cinema, which makes it a tad extraneous. The third plot details the exploits of Hugo Black, a Private assigned to Archangel, Russia. Unlike, Chaplin or Duncan, Black doesn't seem to be seeking anything specific. He wanders from minor adventure to minor adventure, driving trains, dancing with exiled princesses, and shooting people in the head with a crossbow. Head-shooting crossbow antics notwithstanding, Pvt. Hugo Black lends nothing to the novel. At the very end of his plot arc, his commanding generals sees a roomful of Russian peasants overcome with emotion while watching a Mary Pickford film, which is a wonderful way to tie the plot back into the main Chaplin plot.
The superflous third nipple of a plot aside, Sunnyside is a wonderful novel. It captures the obsessive genius of Chaplin and the popularity of the Little Tramp and Mary Pickford, taking the reader back to a time when movie stars were charismatic and awesome, not dumbass frat boys and coked-up skank. A time when men were men, women were submissive objects of affection and/or prostitutes, and dogs could throw hand grenades. A simpler time.
Too much about Russian history and geography and not nearly enough about tigers munching on peoples. The parts of the book about the tiger are amazing, but there's just too much back story about the history of illegal logging in Siberia and the tangentially related topics.
A phenomenal first third of the book, but the quality eventually wanes around the midpoint of the book, as the author moves away from focusing on the improvement of a murderer into an investigation of alternative treatments for criminals. Towards the end of the third part of the book, there's a return to a more character-rehabilitation-driven focus, but by that point I had largely lost interest in the book.
First of all, Bradbury is a much better writer than I remember him being. His action writing lacks clarity at times, but the major passages in the novel (Beatty explaining the history of the Fireman and needling Montag with literary allusions, Montag yelling at his wife and her friends, Granger explaining the phoenix and the importance of remembering) are all amazingly well-written. Second, I think F451 is more relevant now than it has ever been before. The world of the novel is strikingly similar to today: constant war, obsession with television (including mindless game shows), a willful cultural and historical illiteracy, even the part where the man on the TV says Mildred's name is similar to the recent Old Spice promotion where Old Spice Man would say Hello, {insert Twitter Name} instead of Hello, Ladies. It's scary how accurate Bradbury is in his vision of the near future, excepting of course for the lack of giant robot spider-dogs in today's society.
Maybe it's the reviews I've read and the Stieg Larsson is an unprofessional writer and his novels are inexplicably popular pulp trash narrative that much of the Internets has seem to have adopted, or maybe it's the fact that I recently read Moby Dick, but I did notice more digressions of a political and historical nature in Hornet's Nest, as compared to the other books in the Millenium trilogy. These digressions do slow things down at times in the first third or so of the book, but the majority of the novel succeeds in making investigative magazine journalism seem like an exciting form of superhero crime-fighting. Much of this is due to the larger cast of characters and increased roles for ancillary characters from the previous novels. Larsson is able to bounce the telling of his story between multiple focal points, making a 600-page novel fly by like a pulp novella. The last quarter of the book, which deals with Salander's court case, is phenomenal. It was impossible to put down, and not just in a cliched book jacket blurb way. I should have been cooking a frozen pizza and fixing my injured pool robot, but I couldn't stop reading. Stieg Larsson might not be able of crafting Nabokovian prose, but he writes a helluva good novel.
I was worried about this book at first. Although I enjoyed the beginning of the novel, I feared it wouldn't be much more than a light comedy of manners. I was wrong. deWitt brings in clairvoyants, assorted hangers-on, a mysterious plan, and the adventures of a cat named Small Frank to craft a deeply beautiful novel that's centered on an incredibly engaging character.
Normally I can't put down a Neal Stephenson book when I start to read it. With this one, I just couldn't get into it. Probably my first book of his that I haven't enjoyed reading.
This book isn't about dinosaurs. Well, it is about dinosaurs, but that's not what this book is really about. This is a book about science. Not the simplified list of steps for the scientific method that you learn in middle school, but real-world professional science. Science that involves not just academic learning, but luck and personal connections and dedication. Science where knowledge isn't static, where researchers build upon and challenge the work of scientists who came before them. And there's also a bunch of stuff about dinosaurs and evolution and massive extinctions.
The reason I didn't give this book 5 stars (it would get 4.5 if Goodreads would ever adopt the vastly superior half-star system) is that it sometimes tries to hard to be literary. For a book with so much scientific information, it's an easy, enjoyable read (or listen, as I read this on audiobook). Brusatte demonstrates great skill in distilling millions of years of geological development and biological evolution into something that someone like me can understand. Where his prose falters is when he goes too hard for figurative language. An example of this is when he's describing some sort of proto-crocodile thing and he describes it as being like a greyhound. That's good. I know what a greyhound is and that it doesn't look much like a modern crocodile, so I am able to get an image of the creature in my mind. But instead of moving on, the author doubles down, describing proto-croc as looking like an emaciated supermodel. There are times when less figurative language can be a good thing.
This book is what I imagine 50 Shades of Gray to be like: dull, empty characters mixed with descriptions of vibrators and stiffened nipples. I read the book because of its supposed parallels to Nabokov's Lolita, but where Humbert Humbert is an enticingly poetic criminal, Celeste,Tampa's narrator/protagonist, is a one-note pervert. The problem I had with the book is not that Celeste is an unlikable narrator, but that she is an uninteresting narrator.
Okay. So there's this guy who looks like Jesus who uses sex to con women out of money. But then gets attacked by a dolphin, but it turns out the dolphin is actually trying to have sex with him. This causes him to become sexually attracted to dolphins, to the point where he can longer be aroused by or perform sexually with human women. So naturally he gets a job at an aquarium and plans to kidnap a dolphin and live a long romantic life with her. But he gets caught trying to have sex with a dolphin (not the dolphin he wanted to kidnap), and seeks out an experimental biotech solution to his condition. And that's just the B story! There's also sex dolls, technocrats, biological spyware, and a man named Liver who never wears a shirt. The way all these bizarre parts actually come together is a thing a beauty. This will be on my best of 2017 list for sure.