the Seasonal Cycle of Media

I'm not sure if this is just me - or if everyone is like this - but I've noticed something about myself: my media interests seem to be somewhat cyclical, based on the time of year.

To give a few examples...

• In May, I'm especially interested in spirituality books (such as Rob Bell's books, and of course the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson), as well as manga, anime, and/or video games that take place in modern day Japan.
• In late July and August, I lean towards American and European media - BBC tv shows, Cormac McCarthy books, etc. Asian media still makes an appearance here and there (such as a large concentration on Psycho-Pass last year) but it's not as predominant in the late summer like this.
• Unsurprisingly (and as I spent the entirety of the month discussing), October features a lot of horror stuff - whether books, movies, or video games. In addition to this, though, October also features a come back to an emphasis on Asian media. 
• November and December are really the only times of year I'll partake of fantasy - again, whether books, movies, or video games. I also enjoy more colorful things around this time - for example, it's the only time I'm likely to play Nintendo games (Mario, Zelda), as opposed to PlayStation games. Correspondingly, it's also the time of year I'm most likely to read children's books.

Anyway. Time to go into a more concrete example.

Recently I’ve been thinking about 47 Ronin. You remember that horrendous 2013 movie starting Keanu Reeves? - yeah, you're right; it was pretty terrible.

One fateful November day two years ago, I happened upon a used copy of the novelization of the movie. I hadn't yet seen the movie - and so didn't know how bad it was - but of course the premise interested me. You'll notice above that October brings me back to Asian media, and November is when my interest in fantasy kicks in. Considering that 47 Ronin is a Japanese fantasy, the timing was perfect.

So then. I decided to give the book a shot. And it was incredible.

Weird, I know. 

Again, this is a novelization - meaning it came after the movie. And the movie was unforgivable. Yet somehow Joan D. Vinge managed to take atrocious source material and turn it into a beautiful epic about honor and the things we cherish. 

This was two years ago I read it. And, like clockwork, last November I started itching to read it again. So I did. 

Sure, this second reading may have been a little too soon - I remembered the story quite well from the year before - but it's still a magical book. 

And here we are, November one year later, and - surprise! - I'm itching to read it yet again. Granted, this time around, I've decided to skip it. I don't want to overdo the magic; I'll wait another year or two until my memories of the book fade a bit more. But let's call it what it is: next time I read it, it will probably be in a November.

Is this just me? Or do you do anything like this, friends? Does your interest in media follow any sort of seasonal cycle like this? 

REVIEW: Turtles All the Way Down - John Green

• Year first released:  2017
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9780525555360
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Penguin Young Readers Group
• My rating (out of 5):  5+

It’s no surprise that I’m a big fan of John Green. That said, I’ll admit up front to perhaps a small bit of bias. If you can forgive me this minor bias, though, and trust me on how incredible Turtles All the Way Down really is - and how you really, really should read it - I hope you'll discover the same sheer magic in it that I did. 

Like all of Green's best books (Looking for Alaska, Paper Towns, and the Fault in Our Stars, in order of their release), it'd be easy enough to categorize Turtles as simply a young adult romance, maybe a coming-of-age story (a label I don't really care for because of its overabundant use and yet lack of any inherent meaning, but there you have it). But, like each of those others, Turtles presents us with so much more than "just" a romance, "just" a drama, "just" a young adult book...in fact, it's far beyond "just" anything. 

Turtles wastes no time in diving into the deep end of human struggle. And though its main character Aza is definitely a teenager with teenage emotions and concerns and struggles, we quickly realize that her story is something that touches just about all of us. Almost nothing about Aza is ordinary, per se, and yet she's completely credible as a character, through and through - I might even say that she is Green's strongest, most believable single character to date. Never have we been so deeply invested inside the in's and out's of one of Green's character's minds - the good, the bad, the quirky, the heartache. 

To say much about the plot would certainly give away the magic of reading the book for yourself - a magic which Green establishes within the first few pages. The most I'd dare say is that, after no small amount of pressure from her best friend, Daisy, Aza begins seeking clues about the disappearance of a fugitive billionaire, hoping to claim her stake in the $100,000 reward. Things very quickly complicate from there, and it's not long before we discover that this really isn't about the money or the manhunt at all - it's about how our stories shape us, how we shape our stories, and about the glorious, painful in between: 

Are we simply on the receiving end of our circumstances? Are our stories really our own? Do they shape us, or do we shape them? Are we more than the sum of our parts? Are we even as much as the sum of our parts?

These are not young adult questions - these are human questions, which Green deftly weaves into page after page of Turtles. I'm convinced that you simply cannot read the book without wrestling with these questions for yourself. That's what it left me with, at least, and I'm 32 - about twice as old as Green's target demographic (haha).

If you've read any of his other works, you've no doubt seen Green's nigh-supernatural ability to take a dozen pieces which feel like they're from a dozen different realities, and yet combine them into the most cohesive, relatable package one can imagine. The same is true here - more so, in fact, than he's accomplished previously. 

I'm still too close to Turtles to definitively say if it's better than Paper Towns (my standing favorite of Green's books), but it is absolutely a worthy successor to it, if nothing else. 

If you're waiting for a punch line from me - a disclaimer, a tiny gripe, a "it's-good-but-not-as-good-as...", etc. - there isn't one. Turtles is absolutely a masterpiece, and absolutely once again proves that John Green sits at the pinnacle of modern authors. 

REVIEW: The Buried Giant - Kazuo Ishiguro

• Year first released:   2015
• ISBN of the edition I read:  978-0307271037
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Knopf
• My rating (out of 5):  3.5

Considering that Ishiguro just won the 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature, it seemed to me that it was high time to read one of his books. And based on the fact that Pico Iyer (another author whom I respect) referred to The Buried Giant as "invincible," this seemed like a grand place to start.

It was and it wasn't, I guess. There was plenty in Buried to like, but "invincible" is certainly too strong of a word. 

Though it's most accurate to call Buried a fantasy, that label would likely give one the wrong impression. Yes, there are knights in it. Yes, there's a dragon that must be slain. There are several references to Merlin (and magic generally), and everything about it feels very medieval. If we can go a bit deeper than these elements, though, Buried is actually more like a drama which happens to include some fantasy tropes. 

The crux of the plot rests on an elderly couple, Axl and Beatrice, who decide that it's time to visit their son in a faraway village. And so they set out on a journey to find him, only to come across various adventures and misadventures along the way. But their adventure is superficial; the truer themes of the book are about familial bonds, the weight of memory, sacrifice, the things we hold on to. 

These are all important ideas, and they're handled exceedingly well in Buried. Even if some of the events and conversations feel a little more metaphorical than they need to be, there's really no mistaking the larger themes and ideas that Ishiguro wants us to garner from his book. In fact, I will happily claim that Ishiguro handles the use of themes more deftly than most authors today - a major plus, to be sure (and, I suspect, one of the reasons he won the Nobel Prize).

Throughout their adventure, there is a litany of smaller stories which Axl and Beatrice either experience first-hand or else hear of from other characters, which all somehow relate to the overarching narrative. It's in these smaller stories that many of the themes truly shine. It's also in these, though, where a few of the book's largest stumbles reside.

Each of these stories - the story of the mysterious boatman and the woman with the rabbits, the adventure at the abbey, and the confrontation with the dragon Querig, to name a few - are interesting enough, and add a particular weight to Buried. The connections between them, though, is a bit lackadaisical. Each of these subplots holds water on its own, but when thrown into the overall plot, just how separate they really are begins to shine through.

For example, I highly enjoyed the episode in the abbey (which comprised about one-fifth of the book). It was disturbing, well-paced, and full of surprises and concepts that made it a fantastic little story. Its connections to the plot as a whole, though, felt a bit too loose to really justify its inclusion. Yes, the abbey was a day in Axl and Beatrice's adventure, but...why was it in their adventure at all? As a reader, the fact that I wonder why this episode happened doesn't sit right with me. 

This is unfortunate, because, again, the whole episode was great - probably one of my favorite parts of the book. This doesn't necessarily mean it belonged in the book, though.

So it is that the parts of The Buried Giant are each impressive on their own, and certainly carry a strong gravitas to them. Unfortunately, the gravity of everything that isn't such a subplot doesn't quite hold them all together, though.