REVIEW: What I Leave Behind - Alison McGhee

• Year first released:  2018
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9781481476560
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books
• My rating (out of 5):  5

After last year's phenomenal Turtles All the Way Down (which I reviewed for you here), What I Leave Behind is the book I've been most excited about getting into. Though I've not yet reviewed any of McGhee's other books for you, two of her previous novels - All Rivers Flow to the Sea and Shadow Baby - are both incredible, five-star books that sit in a special place on my shelf. I'd even go so far as to say that Shadow Baby is one of the most well-written books I've ever read. Alison McGhee - more than other writers writing in her genre - has a downright magical way with words that somehow make them rise above their static, everyday meanings. Perhaps the best word to describe her writing is transcendent.

All of that said, What I Leave Behind certainly had big shoes to fill. The question is: did it succeed?

It did and it didn't.

Rather, it did, but in a unique way, and much differently than McGhee has done before.

The first thing to note about the writing in What I Leave Behind is that it follows a very particular pattern: all of the text only appears on the right-hand pages, and each of those pages has exactly 100 words. (And, considering that there are exactly 100 pages with writing, the math comes out to only 10,000 words - technically a short story wrapped up in novel form. But that's neither here nor there.)

I knew this fact going in to the book; it's been touted a bit in the marketing, pre-release interviews, etc. The idea appealed to me; I was interested to see how it would actually play out once I had the book in front of me.

For the first dozen or so pages, I was a bit put off by this style. It was a bit hard to separate this knowledge from the way the actual words and sentences came together. Why does Will [the protagonist] say "you know" so much? Why are there so many sentence fragments all throughout? For those first handful of pages, in all honesty, it felt like a gimmick, like McGhee was just forcefully throwing in these extra little tidbits to make sure she hit her 100-word mark for the page.

Somewhere along the way, though (thankfully not too far in to the book), something about this entire setup fell into place. There was a tempo to the book. All of those "you know's" sprinkled throughout gave Will a personality, a rhythm to his thoughts and speech. (Importantly, the book is written in the first-person point of view.) Those sentence fragments, half-thoughts, catchphrases, and repeated descriptions all came together to create a flow to Will's story.

After a couple things in Will's life suddenly spiraled out of control, he became a walker. He walks everywhere - to school, to work at the dollar store, to his friend Playa's house, around the neighborhood, to the Chinese goods market. By this walking, he develops a pattern to his life (a very common, human response to tragedy, if you've read any books on psychology). And, as we realize throughout the book, this pattern is his cadence, the normality which keeps his life grounded and together. In this way, Will is certainly one of the stronger, more realistic (and yet still optimistic) characters I've come across in young adult fiction.

It turns out the rhythm to McGhee's writing in What I Leave Behind mirrors the rhythm Will is attempting to bring into his life - a phenomenal marriage of content and form. It is exceedingly rare we find a book that pulls off this feat so well. Even without the strong characters and optimistic overtone, this marriage alone would make the book well worth reading.

Despite my hesitation in the first handful of pages, McGhee has once again proven that she is still a master wordsmith. This time around, she chose a different approach - a different way of tying all of the words and pieces together - than she's done previously, but with no less lyrical, transcendent results. I'll be just as excited to read her next work of art.

REVIEW: Foundation - Isaac Asimov

• Year first released:  1951
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9780380009145 (Mine is a particularly old edition. You can get the more current, "common" edition here.)
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Avon
• My rating (out of 5):  4

I know I'm late to the ball game on this one. Now sixty-seven years old, Foundation has been one of the most highly-regarded novels in all of science fiction. Better late than never, I suppose.

It's a bit of a stretch to call Foundation a novel, though. It is actually a series of five novellas, placed in chronological order, each of which takes place at least thirty years after the previous. Character names and points in the universe's history are referenced as the novellas progress, but they don't, per se, tell one cohesive plot. They are, rather, fragments from the history of the decline of the Galactic Empire, snapshots of events which ultimately add up to the empire's fall.

Though I have nothing against this sort of arrangement, there is a bit of a problem built in to it by default: each of the five stories is quite compelling, but needlessly brief. Overall, Foundation almost reads like an encyclopedia with only five entries. Sure, each novellas has a plot, characters, twists, etc., but all of these things are merely used to illustrate the encyclopedia-like entries, each of which effectively says, "Here are the events and key players around this moment in time, which play a part in the inevitable decline of the Galactic Empire." (A decline, by the way, which is not fully realized by the end of the book - not really a spoiler, so don't be concerned.)

That said, now that I've finished reading the book, I'm left feeling as though I haven't even scratched the surface of Foundation's universe. The characters stay only long enough to amplify their place in the historical timeline. There is virtually no backstory to any of the places, technologies, cultures, or ideals that come together to create the Galactic Empire, and precious little of these elements to indicate the empire's unavoidable decline. Foundation gives us these fragments, and very little else. In this way, we might even say that it reads like a scripture.

All of that sounds like a complaint, I'm sure, but I'm not certain if it actually is.

It's true that the fragmentary nature of the book as a whole left me feeling incomplete. The reason I felt this way, though, is because I knew there must be so much more to the story. And though I wish on the one hand that Asimov gave us this "more;" on the other hand, it says something profound about the writing and the universe-building that I can have such a longing for all of the missing pieces.*

This approach actually gives the story much more credibility than a book which seems as though it was built from the ground up. Foundation feels as though it was, instead, simply pulled out of a much larger, greater story that was already out there, waiting to be told, like Asimov is simply the one who happened to notice it and write it down for us. Certainly this is a powerful way to craft a story, one which is quite rare in literature.

Overall, the complaint is its own antidote, I think. Do I wish there was more backstory and development? Partially, yes. I was especially fond of the first of the five novellas - The Psychohistorians - and would love to read an entire novel based solely on that epoch of the Empire's history. And the wit of Salvor Hardin (the main character of the third novella, The Mayors) was so enjoyable that I'd like to read more of his antics.

Then again, Michael Angelo once said, "Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.” Sometimes the longing is better than the completion. Sometimes knowing that there's more to be known is more profound than knowing everything. Foundation is a great example of this ideal.




(*Of course Foundation is only the first in a series. And though some parts of this nebulous "more" are bound to appear in other volumes, I believe that the point still stands - particularly if the other entries are told in the same fragmentary, encyclopedic fashion.)

On Madeleine L'Engle's Time Quartet

I can't recall when I first read A Wrinkle in Time anymore - I'm pretty sure I was in middle school at the time. I had to read it for a class assignment, I believe. And if I recall, I didn't necessarily love it, but I enjoyed how smart it made me feel. I mean, after reading it, I became someone who knew what a tesseract was. So. There.

(Mind you, a tesseract is actually a real thing, but it's nothing like what it is in Wrinkle. But of course I didn't know that at the time. Oh well.)

I read it again some years ago (I think about 10 years ago), and liked it quite a bit more than the first time around. That's when I decided - finally - to give the rest of the series a go.

Now, with the Wrinkle in Time movie (finally!) upon us, I have to say: yes, I'm excited for the movie. Based on what I've seen and read about it so far, it seems like the creators might be on to something special with it. But the rest of the books (after Wrinkle) were...well, underwhelming, to put it kindly.

This happens often with sequels/series, of course. (Especially, for some reason, movie sequels. It's not quite as bad with book sequels, but still too often.) Sometimes it's hard to say exactly what goes wrong with subsequent titles. They just don't have quite the same magic as the first entry, I suppose.

It's sadly, painfully clear what went wrong with Wrinkle's sequels, though. So let's explore that.

A Wrinkle in Time was an incredibly visionary book that took place throughout several corners of space and time. And, importantly, as the plot goes on, its scope increases exponentially - in fact, compared to other books, the rate of increase is much faster and larger than average. What begins as a search for a missing father quickly snowballs into an enormous spiritual war spanning space and time. Books just don't explode like this very often; it's to L'Engle's credit that she handled it so deftly.

Then we get to the second book, A Wind in the Door.

Well then. Let's begin with a synopsis of the plot from Wikipedia (accessed 1.29.18):

Main character Meg Murry is worried about her brother Charles Wallace, a 6-year-old genius bullied at school by the other children. The new principal of the elementary school is the former high school principal, Mr. Jenkins, who often disciplined Meg, and who Meg is sure has a grudge against her whole family. Meg tries to enlist Jenkins's help in protecting her brother, but is unsuccessful. Later, Meg discovers that Charles Wallace has a progressive disease that is leaving him short of breath. Their mother, a microbiologist, suspects it may be a disorder of his mitochondria and his mitochondria's farandolae, (fictional) micro-organelles inside mitochondria.

One afternoon, Charles Wallace tells Meg of a "drive of dragons" in their back yard, where he and Meg thereupon discover a pile of unusual feathers. Later, Meg has a frightening encounter with a monstrous facsimile of Mr. Jenkins. That night, Meg, Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin O'Keefe discover that Charles Wallace's "drive of dragons" is an extraterrestrial "cherubim" named Proginoskes (nicknamed 'Progo' by Meg), under the tutelage of the immense humanoid Blajeny, who recruits the three children to counteract the Echthroi.

Meg's first task, on the next day, is to distinguish the real Mr. Jenkins from two Echthroi doubles, by identification of the (potential) goodness in him despite her personal grudge. The protagonists then learn that Echthroi are destroying Charles Wallace's farandolae, and travel inside one of his mitochondria, to persuade a larval farandola, named Sporos, to accept its role as a mature fara, against the urgings of an Echthros. 

...because all of that makes perfect sense, and sounds like one cohesive book, doesn't it?

False. The book is a jumbled mess which begins with a down-to-earth-bullying situation and ends in a veritable Magic School Bus episode in which they shrink and travel through Charles' blood. Oh, and there are dragons and angels and some sort of immature amoeba along the way...or something.

All of the space and time mysteries from Wrinkle have disappeared. The deeply unsettling social commentary from the cookie-cutter-esque planet, the majesty and wisdom of the Mrs W's, the intricate workings of the tesseract - all gone the way of the dinosaurs. Now we have...well, that.^^^

The third book in the series - A Swiftly-Tilting Planet - plays out in a nominally more interesting way...at least until you stop and think about the synopsis, which is, basically:

Nuclear war is imminent. Luckily Charles Wallace (now 16 years old) is given a magical...you know, incantation/recital/abra-kadabra thingy which he chants outside one night until a unicorn comes to take him back in time, where he telepathically links up with various people in the past in order to change the present and prevent the war. (Which is, of course, clearly the most effective way to head off a nuclear war. Props to him.)

No really. That about sums it up. I wish I was kidding.

I mean, Swiftly was cohesive, at least.

Oh, and the fourth book - Many Waters - you ask? That's the one in which two of the minor characters from the other books finally get their turn at an adventure, by going back in time to the age of Noah (of the ark-builder variety) to...well, who knows why they're there, actually. Help herd the animals, I guess. Oh, and they help fight off the evil shape-shifting demons - here called Nephilim - who like to disguise themselves as animals, and occasionally try to seduce teenage boys.

(At this point, I'd insert an emoji for a a dry, sarcastic sniff, if only there was one.)

Really, though: what on earth went wrong? How could L'Engle have started with something so brilliant and moving and bigger than space with Wrinkle, then turn it into a Magic School Bus episode, then a time-travelling unicorn, and finally a replay of Noah's Ark with pedophilic demons?

It's a mystery, to be sure.

If you're scratching your head and thinking WTF? - well, friend, so am I.

Hopefully they won't bother making the sequels into movies. My wish that that they'll nail Wrinkle, then quit while they're ahead.

REVIEW: The Chocolate War - Robert Cormier

• Year first released:  1974
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9780375829871
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Random House Children's Books
• My rating (out of 5):  4

In his introduction to The Chocolate War, Cormier explains that he was surprised when his agent called the book a "young adult" book. Apparently he hadn't meant for it to be a young adult book - just an "adult," general fiction book.

On the one hand, Chocolate falls pretty squarely into the label of young adult: the setting is a high school, all of the major characters are teenagers, etc. Their situations and struggles are reflective of - and highly realistically portray - high school life. Also, the actions and motivations of the characters are likely to be relatable and empathy-inducing for teenagers.

On the other hand, though I think I would have generally liked Chocolate if I had read it while in high school, I am certain I got much more out of it now, at age 32.

Chocolate has been labeled a "coming-of-age" story - a label that people are tempted to throw on pretty much any young adult novel that doesn't involve vampires or death matches - but this label is certainly false for Chocolate. It is not a book about growing up, finding your place in life outside of high-school for the first time, or anything of the sort. Yes, a couple of the characters experience growing pains once or twice, and the question of forging your own identity pops up here and there throughout (though mostly only for the main character, Jerry). However, to relegate Chocolate to this breed of story is to do it a disservice, and to miss the point of the novel.

Rather, Chocolate is a psychological game that resembles an intricate, dramatic thriller more than the writings of John Green or Rainbow Rowell. More than once, I've seen the book compared to S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders. Through a casual glance, I suppose I can see the connection. Having read both, though, Chocolate is a much more complex, psychological novel which avoids the brutish machismo of Outsiders in favor of a finely-crafted web of manipulation which grows to be downright Machiavellian.

The main antagonist of the book, Archie, goes far beyond a playground bully, landing himself squarely in the presence of Shakespeare's Iago (from Othello). Like Iago, Archie comes across as highly charismatic and honest (except to those who know his real motives). His charm allows him to weave himself into the lives and situations of nearly everyone around him, all of whom ultimately fall prey to his machinations. And, also like Iago is in Othello, Archie is undoubtedly the most fascinating character in Chocolate, and the gravity into which everything else in the story is drawn. He is a puppetmaster, pulling the strings of all the other characters.

Archie's strings are both what made me enjoy the book more than anything else, as well as what makes me think that I got more out of it now than I would have as a young adult. Though the story isn't hard to follow (I wouldn't call the plot simple, just well-explained), I think that it is easier to understand and admire the different situations and ideas now that I'm not so close to the world portrayed in the book. I imagine I would have thought the book was merely "cool" and "clever" at the time; now I am able to catch on to more of the psychological subtleties involved.

To put it more directly, without the charismatic, sinister, awe-inspiring genius of Archie, Chocolate would have been a completely different - and probably a completely worthless - book. I don't compare him to Iago hyperbolically.

Cormier certainly excelled at bringing his characters and their world to life in Chocolate. Each piece of this manipulative puzzle worked excellently. Nothing in the book left me confused, wondering why it happened or what the character's motivations were. This is all largely to Cormier's credit; most young adult authors seem incapable of weaving together such solidarity and meaning.

I have one complaint about the book, though, and it's too big to ignore.

Cormier's writing was mostly solid: his descriptions, characterizations, use of setting and metaphor and word choice were all highly effective. There is a consistent tone throughout Chocolate that most writers should be jealous of.

Cormier's use of point of view, though, could serve as an example for new writers of exactly what not to do in their own writings.

My personal preference is that a book - even one written from the third-person perspective, such as Chocolate - only follow the point of view of one character throughout the book's entirety. I say this, though, freely acknowledging how subjective it is. There's nothing, per se, inherently wrong with switching between characters. Many authors do it, and there's not necessarily any very concrete reason this should be disallowed.

Indeed, for the first 13 chapters of Chocolate (just under half the book), the POV changes at chapter breaks. The shift is always easy enough to follow. But then inexplicably, beginning with chapter 14, the POV begins switching much more erratically throughout, even multiple times mid-chapter. Though I still didn't have any trouble understanding where the story was or whose mind we were following, this constant shift was distracting and, I fear, a bit lazy on Cormier's part. Was there no other way to relate these occurrences through the eyes of the character whose mind we were following on the previous page? - I'm sure there was, if Cormier had thought through it a bit more. Granted, obviously these shifts were intentional - but intentional or not, they rubbed me the wrong way.

Worse, along these lines, there's also one - but thankfully only one - instance in which Cormier switches POV mid-paragraph for one little sentence. This, clearly, was not intentional, but rather a mistake on Cormier's part (which somehow also passed untouched through his editor's desk).

(I'm referring to a scene in the final quarter or so of the book. I no longer recall the page number, but it's in a dialogue between Jerry and one of his friends, The Goober. The scene follows Jerry's perspective, but then for one little, insignificant sentence, suddenly we're in The Goober's head, before immediately switching back to Jerry's in the very next sentence. Oops.)

As much as I enjoyed Chocolate - particularly the machinations of Archie, which were sheer, twisted delights - this large mishandling of point of view will keep me wary of reading Cormier's other books. No doubt someone who is less picky about this sort of thing won't be as bothered as I was, though. And, even still, it was worth trudging through the erratic POV for this fantastic story, in order to read what is, deservedly, a pillar of young adult fiction.

REVIEW: No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy

• Year first released:  2005
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9780375706677
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Knopf Doubleday
• My rating (out of 5):  3.5

I don't often read multiple books in a row by the same author (unless they're a series, but even then, I usually take breaks in between entries). But, for some reason, after setting down Child of God, I just wasn't ready to step away from Cormac McCarthy yet.

I actually haven't gotten around to the 2007 movie No Country for Old Men yet. Now that I've read the book, I'm quite interested in seeing it, though. It's certainly a story which I'd love to see come to life. There's a raw realness to the entire ordeal that truly begs to be on display visually, not just on the page.

In fact, I have to admit that I am highly surprised by what I'm about to say, especially since this is Cormac McCarthy we're talking about here (and you know how much I enjoy McCarthy), but...I'm inclined to think No Country would actually be a better movie than it was a book.

...no, really: I can't believe I feel that way about a McCarthy book.

Though the writing in No Country is still head and shoulders above just about any other author writing today, I found it to be his weakest book stylistically. (In fact, though every other aspect of the book is better than All The Pretty Horses, I'd even say Horses was written better than No Country.)

More than once, I had a bit of trouble envisioning a scene, understanding the action, sometimes even figuring out who was speaking. (Admittedly, this last gripe is due in part to the fact that McCarthy doesn't use quotation marks for his dialogue, but it's never been as problematic for me before as it was this time around.) Several times I had to re-read small sections in order to get a better grasp on what was going on.

As well - and very importantly - McCarthy spent significantly less time/words describing the setting of No Country than any of his other books I've read. Gone are the simple, powerful sentence fragments and metaphors that give us the evocative, earthy connections to the worlds McCarthy creates in each of his novels. Though these sorts of images aren't, per se, necessary for a book to work, they've always been a particular highlight in McCarthy's writing - enough so that their absence was starkly noticed here.

There is much to praise in No Country as well, though, and I don't want to tip the scales too far in the wrong direction. The characters of No Country were all incredibly vivid and realistic. The main antagonist of the story, Chigurh, was especially powerful and intricate. Though I can't in good conscience root for him, all the same, I appreciated his ideals and his perspective at least as much as the main protagonist - likely more. A few times in the book we're treated to Chigurh's ideas about the situation - or even just about life generally - and these were, without a doubt, the most fascinating, haunting bits of the book.

Though the plot wasn't terribly complex, it was an appropriate fit for the mood, the time, the characters. If the story itself had gotten too much more entangled, it would have risked alienating the lifelike people who populate No Country. Better that McCarthy left the story simple to contrast with the complexity of the moods, persons, and ideals involved.

I suppose that, to be perfectly fair, No Country might deserve a 4 more than a 3.5. It's hard not to stack it up against other McCarthy books, though - in which case, I feel just barely disappointed enough to deduct half a point.* I'm still quite pleased to have read it, though, and much more interested in seeing the movie than I was before reading the book.




*For more of an explanation on this thought process, feel free to check out my post from a few months back Having High Expectations of Creators.

REVIEW: Child of God - Cormac McCarthy

• Year first released:  1973
• ISBN of the edition I read:  0679728740
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Vintage International
• My rating (out of 5):  4

I'm actually a little hesitant to give Child of God a four-star rating. As to be expected from McCarthy, it's incredibly vivid and highly realistic, with characters that veritably seem to have a life of their own. Never once did I feel like McCarthy was overstepping his bounds as the author, nor stretching the reality of the book's mood or setting. As far as the writing is concerned, Child of God is a solid four at the very least - likely more.

My hesitation over the rating, though, is that Child of God plays right at the edge of the line of being too disturbing (at least for my tastes). The main character, Lester Ballard, is a deeply depraved man, and McCarthy doesn't spare many details of the protagonist's escapades. (Thankfully, he spares a precious few, which is possibly the main reason I was even able to finish the book.)

This is not a quest for redemption. This is not a journey of the protagonist coming to the light, learning from his mistakes, or grappling with his morality. Ballard is vile through and through, and McCarthy never apologizes for this nor tries to get us to believe otherwise.

Sometimes it can be off-putting to have a character that is so intrinsically immoral. Where's the complexity, the ambiguity, the checkered past, the thought process that gets us to actually sort of kind of make us just barely begin to slightly understand at least a little tiny bit why this guy is so evil? Though normally these things make for a fantastic, rich villain, in this rare exception, it is most certainly to McCarthy's credit that he does not try to get us to empathize with Ballard. Understanding Ballard isn't the point; we are only observers. Child of God is a portrait of mankind at its worst. And though we could argue that in reality, there always seems to be a reason for a man to sink so low, this book is simply not about the reasons, the psychology, the saccharine. It is about the depravity.

That said, we come to my main complaint of Child of God. (That is, my main complaint regarding the writing, not just my personal tastes.) Though this picture of depravity is fully realized and highly effective, I was left wondering what, precisely, was the point of the tale. Considering that there is no resolution to speak of, I couldn't help but question what exactly McCarthy was trying to convey. Evil, yes, but why? What inspired McCarthy to commit these particular ideas to the page?

Luckily, these questions didn't trouble me until I finished the book. It was not a consuming curiosity that I grappled with throughout each of the 200 pages - more of an idle question once I turned the final page. Considering that the book was so explicit and unsettling, though, it's a fair question to ask: Why did McCarthy spend 200 pages disturbing me, only to end the story without any sort of resolution, redemption, or message?

If this isn't the sort of thing to trouble you, though, friend, then Child of God is one of the better-written books you're going to read. The style, characterizations, and imagery are all first class without a doubt - it is only the disturbing content which gives me pause.

REVIEW: The Halo Grower - Ryushiro Hindemith

• Year first released:  2016
• ISBN of the edition I read:  0989488926 (sorry for the Amazon link this time - this book isn't available via Barnes & Noble)
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Corinthian Editions
• My rating (out of 5):  2.5

As you've noticed, sometimes I have a hard time figuring out exactly what I want to say about a book. Whether it's because I have mixed feelings about the book, or else because I struggle to find the right words/examples to explain how I feel about it (whether good or bad), sometimes it can be difficult to express.

This is not one of those times.

The Halo Grower is not a bad book, per se. There were plenty of elements to it that were generally interesting and worthwhile.

What Hindemith did wrong, though, he did very wrong. And, considering that it's the main conceit of the book, there's really no way around discussing it at length.

Before explaining, it's worth pointing out: The Halo Grower isn't an especially well-known book. (In fact, I suspect it's self-published, though I haven't verified this yet.) I discovered it in a list on goodreads.com, which listed it as one of the "most difficult" novels in English. Naturally, I was curious. Before picking it up, I didn't know what about the book made it so difficult. After beginning it, the answer came quickly...

Ryushiro Hindemith has a much better vocabulary than you and I do. (That, or he just has a mighty thesaurus, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.)

This fact alone isn't a problem. It's a good thing, in fact. Considering that a person's vocabulary is the number one measure for determining their IQ, Hindemith is clearly in the realm of genius.

Rather, the problem is that Hindemith wants to make sure that we absolutely know he has a better vocabulary than us, to the point where he's clearly just showing off.

Every single page is packed with words you've never seen before. Many of them are, in fact, real words. Others weren't exactly extant before Halo, but still make sense in the way that he used them (adding prefixes or suffixes to change the type of word they are, etc.).

Here, for example, is a very limited list of words from The Halo Grower which I'd wager you haven't come across in your readings:

• blepharospasmic
• Buddhamaniacal
• cathexes
• centuplication
• chirospasmic
• clerestories
• ectomorphic
• eigengrau
• epeirogenic
• etiolated
• Husafellian
• ignivomitus
• karmavention
• lachrymations
• lagophthalmos
• lethologica
• narthex
• neurapraxia
• nevi
• nystagmus
• plantarflexion
• pulchrified
• pyrocumulus
• sanctoliloquy
• sanctomaniacalism
• sanctomegalithic
• shadowgraphical
• stelliferous
• stygiophobia
• synapectomy
• telamonic
• telamons
• triboluminescence
• tritanopia
• vitruvian

Again, this is only a tiny sampling of Hindemith's crazy word choice. In fact, I pulled all of these from just the final 15 pages of the book. (This is merely because I didn't think to start making such a list until I was nearly done reading the book.)

Clearly the vocabulary through Halo is what classifies it as one of the "most difficult" novels in English. Really - how many of these words have you seen before, friends?

That said, I didn't have any trouble following the book. No, I had never seen any of these words before either, but most of them are pretty clearly guessable in context. I only stopped to look up the definitions of one, maybe two words while reading. (Neither of which are actually on this list I shared - they appeared earlier in the book.)

What troubled me more than the use of these rare, complex words, is that Hindemith clearly went out of his way to use them - well out of his way.

If "lachrymations" truly was the best word to use in the context of the sentence, I wouldn't mind in the least.

I'll spare you the trouble of looking it up, though: "lachyrmations" is another word for "tears." Yeah, tears. Like, those drops of water that come out of your eyes when you cry.

Never once in the entire book does Hindemith say that his character "cried" or "shed tears." Nope. The character shed "lachrymations." (He shed them rather often, in fact.)

Oh, come now. This is just plain silly, isn't it?

And it's precisely this silliness that shows us the truth: Hindemith is trying to be difficult. He's purposefully going out of his way to show off his vocabulary.

Yes, I like to learn things as I read. I suspect you do, too. I'm not particularly interested in having an author brag to me about his vocabulary for 250 pages, though. It's a little unbecoming.

Friends, here's a pro tip for you: when you're writing your best seller, let your main character cry. Don't make them lachrymate.

So then. How was the book beyond this asinine word choice, you ask?

Meh. It was fine. The overall setting was quite intriguing. Ironically, though, the plot didn't really go anywhere. (This is ironic because the book is, more or less, a Buddhist cosmological epic about creation and reincarnation - which means that the plot goes everywhere, so to speak - and yet, it doesn't really amount to much. Rem - the main character - basically just comes up against one hurdle or another [actually, mostly one hurdle over and over again] during his creation process, and...well, that's about it.)

I enjoyed picking apart The Halo Grower, accepting the challenge of discovering and understanding this insane vocabulary. It was a fun literary exercise, if nothing else. As well, the setting was vivid and vibrant and of personal interest to me; it's a theme that isn't touched on often, and was worth exploring for that reason.

Aside from these things, though, I really don't know that I can recommend it to anyone. If you want to accept the challenge of Hindemith's word choice - or if you're interested in a peculiar, modern look at Eastern cosmology - then sure, give it a shot, I guess. Otherwise, it's hard to say who else this book might be for.

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: Thornhill - Pam Smy

• Year first released:  2017
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9781626726543
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Roaring Book Press
• My rating (out of 5):  4.5

If I could draw (and I sincerely wish I could), I would create books like Thornhill. It is lovely, imaginative, succinct and with a fantastic dose of eeriness.

It’s a rather simple story, told half in prose and half in drawing:

The prose half of the book is the diary of a girl in an orphanage in the early 80’s, who is bullied by another tenant. The orphanage is struggling to keep its doors open, and one by one, all the other children and workers move on from the home.

The art half of the book – which is basically told only through drawing – is modern day, and shows us another girl, new to the neighborhood, who has more than a healthy amount of curiosity about the creepy, abandoned building not far from her house.

This delivery – of telling two intertwining stories, one with only words and the other with only art – is a fantastic approach. If this book were handled any other way – only prose or only art, or even all prose with occasional illustrations of both stories – surely something vital to the effect would have been lost. This combination does a truly remarkable job of creating precisely the right ominous atmosphere for this ultimately sad, dark story about loss and hope and bullying and figuring out where we belong.

And make no mistake, Thornhill is quite dark: according to the publisher, the age range is 10-14 years old. This sounds about right (actually, I would just say 10+, rather than capping it on the upper end at all), but it's perhaps not for a kid who is particularly susceptible to frights. (Though if you’re a parent, you know your kids well enough to know the right amount of thrills for them. My son, for example, loves creepy books and movies. I may pass this book on to him even earlier than 10.) 

Either way, at 32, I enjoyed it immensely. It’d be a fantastic book to read alone late at night, or curled up on the couch with a cuddle-buddy or squeamish friend. If you want a simple, easy, but still truly haunting book to read with your friends or loved ones on Halloween, Thornhill would be an exceptional candidate.

(Don't let the 544-page count put you off: since half is art, and the prose half doesn't actually boast too many words per page, it's not an especially long read - totally doable in a couple hours on Halloween night.)

REVIEW: Alan Wake - Rick Burroughs

• Year first released:  2010
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9780765328434
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Tom Doherty Associates
• My rating (out of 5):  1.5

As much as I love horror video games, I haven't (yet) gotten around to the 2010 game Alan Wake. It's on my list to play - in fact, I've owned it for awhile now - I just haven't touched it yet. Weird, since it's gotten almost universally positive reviews.

This novelization of the game came out the same year. And, as I explained in my post Guilty Pleasures, I'm rather a sucker for video game novelizations.

That said, giving a review about a novelization has an interesting dilemma: if there is anything amiss with the plot, you can't actually blame the author - at least not quite as much as if the author had invented the story himself.

And, though I still haven't played the game to compare it to the book, I have to say: there is definitely something amiss with the plot. I'll give Burroughs the benefit of the doubt and not pin it on him, but it certainly impacts my feelings about the book, and so needs to be discussed.

First, to give you an idea of the premise:

Popular horror author Alan Wake and his wife, Alice, head to the tiny island town of Bright Falls, Washington for a three-week vacation. Almost as soon as they get there, things go mighty wrong and Alice ends up missing. Alan then spends the rest of the book hunting her down, grappling with some sort of clunky, manifest-darkness/evil/possessed/monster/something-or-others with downright annoying speech patterns. (Yes, they talk, unfortunately.)

This is a fine setup (except for the monster talk). The mystery effectively leaves you scratching your head until near the end of the book - a necessary trait for suspense. And the main twist near the end was fairly clever, though not quite as fleshed out as it needed to be, especially considering how complex everything is.

...actually, I think I said that too nicely.

To be more clear:

At some point, it's almost as though the writer (whether Burroughs or the game's writer, I can't say) seems to hit a wall and say, "That's enough explaining; you kind of just have to accept it from here on out."

Um...why?

This is flat laziness. If you, the creator, can't even explain the complexity, then most likely the pieces don't actually fit together that well. (Indeed, they don't in this book.)

Further, though I won't go into spoiler territory here, there's a big splash right at the very end which it seems we're expected to accept as "It simply has to be this way." Yet I could think of no plot reason that it really had to be this way. Could there really not have been a different ending? - I'm sure there could have been, if the writer had taken a bit more time to sort it out before throwing it at us.

This is all too bad, because the secret behind everything could have made for a much better story - in fact, I'm tempted to say it deserved a better story. 

Aside from these gripes about the plot, there are a couple other points that should be said:

The setting felt rather unfocused. Bright Falls was certainly a great place for this sort of situation to occur. Yet Burroughs really didn't quite give us enough of a feel for the island town to really put together the imagery and scenery for ourselves. Perhaps he assumed we would have already played the game (and, therefore, already have a mental image of the island)? - it's hard to say. Either way, the location and atmosphere of the book felt like a missed opportunity. 

Also, the movement from one scene into the next was often downright jarring. We'll have Alan falling asleep in a bed somewhere, then, in the very next paragraph, he's crashing his car into a tree. 

...wait - what? When did he get behind the wheel? Is this a dream? (Oh, and yes - lots of sections of the book are dreams, which made the overall picture quite confusing about which pieces we really needed to know/pay attention to for the sake of the actual mystery at hand. A huge rookie mistake, if ever there was one.)

It often felt like pieces of the narrative were simply missing - and not for any particular, plot-driven reason; the creator just didn't feel like including them, I guess.

Ultimately, Alan Wake delivers an intriguing mystery - albeit with a bad ending - but wrapped up in a disarrayed, difficult-to-follow package. I'll still play the game eventually, in hopes that the presentation is more sensible there. The book was just plain messy, though.

REVIEW: I'm Thinking of Ending Things - Iain Reid

• Year first released:  2016
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9781501126949
• Publisher of the edition I read: Gallery/Scout Press
• My rating (out of 5):  3.5

There's at least one great thing I can say about I'm Thinking of Ending Things: though I explained in my last post that I don't generally find books to be scary, this book has come the closest of any book so far. The first half of the book is, at most, eerie and peculiar (and with a highly uncomfortable scene at right about the halfway point), but once things really pick up, the tension becomes downright miasmatic. I veritably flew through the last 60 pages or so, trying to figure out what the heck was going on - and, importantly - why it was going on. 

So the book has that, at least. 

It also has rather interesting dialogue - odd, but in an appropriate way. The two main characters are quirky and believable, and though presumably you or I would never find ourselves in one of these conversations, it made sense that these two talked like this. I found their ideas to be of particular interest, even the ones that I don't especially agree with.

What I'm not so wild about, though, is the ending/the big twist. 

I should say: this is the second time I've read the book, and the first was only about six months ago. Normally, if I reread a book at all, there's a much larger gap of time in between readings. The last page of Ending Things, though, included what was, basically, a suggestion that the book be read a second time. (It's worth pointing out that Reid accomplishes this without breaking the fourth wall - the suggestion cleverly fits into a bit of dialogue right at the end.) 

My impression of the book didn't change drastically between the two readings. I'd hoped to get a little more out of the ending the second time - maybe pick up on something important that I missed the first time, understand it better. But I have to admit, the ending still doesn't sit quite right with me.

No spoilers, of course, but I will say that the twist at the end is a twist I've come across before in other stories. Yes, I was still surprised going into it - I hadn't imagined Ending Things going in that direction - but once I got there, I realized I'd hoped for something more unique. I found a few more interesting little tidbits and foreshadowing in my second reading, but not really enough to completely justify the ending.

Does this ending really work? Does it actually explain all the weird details along the way? - after two readings, I still can't answer these questions definitively. It's hard to say whether this is my fault or Reid's fault.

I acknowledge that there could potentially be something about the big twist that I simply don't understand. But then again, I've read the book twice - paid close attention, mulled over it quite a bit, even read other people's theories online - and something still doesn't add up right for me. At this point, it's a safe assumption that it never will.

Which is too bad. I enjoyed Reid's writing style. I hope that, in future books, he'll be a bit more effective about tying everything up. It certainly wasn't a bad book, though, and it's basically worth it if for no reason other than that it's the most tense book I've read.

REVIEW: Stories of Your Life and Other Stories - Ted Chieng

• Year first released:  2016
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9781101972120
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• My rating (out of 5):  technically, 3.5625 (you'll see why in a moment...)

You might remember from my blog on types of short story collections that Stories of Your Life is the example I gave for a collection of unrelated short stories.

It's actually rather difficult to give a fair rating to a collection of unrelated short stories. The stories are all so different. In this case, they're all sci-fi-ish, but that's really the only connection between them. No frame story, no recurring characters or themes, etc. How do you rate that overall? It wasn't so hard with The Stories of Ibis, because, even though that was a series of short stories as well, there was a gravity to that book which tied everything together. No such gravity exists in Stories of Your Life (which isn't a bad thing, of course: this is simply a different type of short story collection, one which doesn't call for such a gravity).

In fact, it's been a few weeks now since I've read Stories of Your Life, and I've tried more than once to sit down and attempt to write a review for you. I just couldn’t figure out the right way to do it, though. 

Now I decided I'll just start by saying that. 

The only things I can really say about the collection as a whole is that Ted Chieng is incredibly imaginative. His stories are highly unique and generally well-written. And, of the two stories that had unique settings (rather than, say, everyday modern cities), I quite enjoyed those settings.

That said, here's just a quick rating and glimpse of each individual story:

• Tower of Babylon - 3.5. Very cool premise, and the setting was positively outstanding. The ending was just a bit too vague to really drive the point home, unfortunately. (I had to read the last page about three times before I fully grasped the point/what was going on.)
• Understand - 2. Definitely the least interesting and inventive of the collection. It's basically Chieng's version of the 2011 Bradley Cooper movie Limitless (which isn't really a good thing - although, to be fair, Understand first appeared 20 years before Limitless).
• Division by Zero - 3. The way the pieces of the plot weaved in and out of each other was an interesting approach (and, personally, I love when authors use complicated mathematics in stories), but ultimately it felt a bit too unfocused to really be great.
• Story of Your Life - 4. This is the short story that the 2016 Amy Adams movie The Arrival is based on. Loved the ideas, and the word play was great. It didn't really prompt much of an emotional investment in the characters, though, which made it feel just a little bit more hollow than I would have liked.
• Seventy-Two Letters - 4. Steampunk meets Kaballah? - yes, please. I loved the premise and the setting. Overall a great idea, but it felt unnecessarily long.
• The Evolution of Human Science - 3. Actually a short essay (a very short essay) rather than a story. Though it was expounded decently, it didn’t cover any ground that was altogether that new.
• Hell is the Absence of God - 4.5. Definitely my favorite of the collection. It had a terrific theme and resolve, and touched a couple personal chords in me. (I'd consider explaining what those are, but they'd involve spoilers.)
• Liking What You See - 4.5. The most unique story of the collection in its tone, structure, and theme. The entire story reads like a documentary of a controversial - but clever - new technology, with various people and companies from all sides debating it. I appreciated how realistic the entire thing was - I could absolutely see this being a real documentary.

How can I give you an overall review of this? If I come up with the average score of everything, it comes out to 3.5625 – so there's that, I guess. But of course a review is much, much more than just a number. 

I could say something like, "Read all the stories that I rated X or higher," but that doesn't feel right either. On the one hand, I'd say that you'd be missing the least if you skipped Understand, but I also don't think it's reasonable to say, "If you only read one story out of this collection, it should be Absence!"  Partly, I'm suspicious that Absence is my favorite from the book precisely because I felt a personal connection to it, for my own reasons and experiences. And very likely you won't feel that connection. Also, I certainly wouldn't say that Absence is the most representative of the collection as a whole. Therefore, even though it's my favorite, it's not necessarily the one that I'd feel the most comfortable driving you towards, at the cost of the others. (If you're wondering, I'd say that Story of Your Life is, appropriately, probably the most representative of the book overall.)

At any rate, I enjoyed my time with Stories of Your Life, and could, in fact, see myself coming back to it down the road - even if I only pick out certain stories next time around. There are lots of great ideas in here that are worth spending time with. I'll certainly be happy to check out more of Chieng's work in the future.

REVIEW: Lovecraft Country - Matt Ruff

• Year first released:  2016
• ASIN of the edition I read: B00UG61LNS (read on Kindle), paperback
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Harper
• My rating (out of 5):  2.5 

I wonder if I missed something while reading Lovecraft Country. Reading it, I perceived it as an okay drama about a black family in Jim Crow-era racism, with plenty of helpings of the occult.

After I read it, though, I discovered that it was a Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Horror, and that it’s considered a “dark fantasy horror.”

After discovering these things, I couldn’t help but think, Wait…this was supposed to be a horror?

Sure, the book was fine. It didn’t complete my life to have read it, but it wasn’t a waste of time. And yes, there were a small handful of eerie, supernatural elements to it. Dark fantasy is fine, I guess. But…horror? I didn’t think Lovecraft Country was even trying to scare me.

The title, too, is a bit of a misnomer. There are a few connections in the book to H.P. Lovecraft, and those were fun. There were only a few of them, though, and – with one particular exception – they were more like Easter Eggs than actual plot points. At the very least, certainly they weren’t strong enough of a tie to the works of H.P. to really name the book after him.

While we’re at it, there’s one more thing that’s worth saying about the book: the book is called a novel. And it almost is. There’s a description on the back to tell you what you’re getting into. What the outside of the book forgets to tell you, though, is that, more than a novel, per se, Lovecraft Country is more of a series of connected, chronological short stories featuring the same cast of characters. Further, it doesn’t mention that the description from the back of the book only describes the first (and best) story within.

Perhaps all of this is neither here nor there when it comes to deciding how good of a book it is, of course, but it’s still an interesting point: yes, the book itself – the plot, the characters, the writing – are fine, but everything about the book seems like a series of errors in judgement. Wrong genre label, misleading title, inaccurately described format...It’s all so fallacious, in fact, that I can’t help but wonder if it was actually intentional. A peculiar marketing strategy? – maybe. Either way, it's all rather misleading.

On to the book itself, though:

Lovecraft Country is a mysterious set of stories, drawing you in to its well-imagined characters: their personalities, their struggles, their secrets. The cast of characters, in fact, was probably the best part about the book as a whole. Also, Lovecraft Country showed a different view of racial issues and tensions than most fiction I happen to read, which was, for me personally, a good change of pace. And I appreciated how each of the individual story pieces tied together in a cohesive way (in the final story, The Mark of Cain). The final story wasn't nearly as climactic as it should have been - at least, compared to the climaxes of a couple of the other stories - but at least it brought everything together in an agreeable way.

None of these elements ultimately make this an unmissable book, though. Lovecraft Country fit neatly into a hole in my reading schedule, and it was a fine filler. I almost imagine it like a mid-album song: it was never meant for radio play; it’s not getting a music video. It’s just a passable song to make the album a little longer.

If you’re in between books, looking for some padding, or wanting to read a horror that isn’t a horror (hey, I know some people who like those, weird though it may sound), then sure, Lovecraft Country is fine. Don’t stick it too high on your To-Read list, though. 

REVIEW: Everyone's a Aliebn When You're a Aliebn Too - Jomny Sun

• Year first released:  2017
• ISBN of the edition I read:  0062569023
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Harper Perennial
• My rating (out of 5): 5. 500. 10,005. Infinity. All the numbers. Everything.

Just looking at my rating of this book, you can already guess where this is going. So I’m just going to say it outright:

HOLY GOODNESS THIS BOOK IS INCREDIBLE.

Like, miraculously incredible. Like, in the uppermost echelon of incredible. Like...wow.

Also: it’s heart-bleedingly adorable. Yeah, that’s a real thing. At least it is now, because that’s what this book is.

Okay, okay. Time to put a little substance on these enormous claims (but only a little, because I will very quickly run out of positive adjective for telling you how wonderful this book is).

At its heart, Everyone's a Aliebn When You're a Aliebn Too is a graphic novel about an alien who is making friends with earth creatures (a dog, a snail, a tree, etc.), each of whom provides the alien with highly insightful observations about life, purpose, and the things that we focus on. The alien, in turn, also has his share of insights that are simply marvelous. I’d be happy to give you some examples, except that I don’t want to ruin the wonder and the surprise that is every single page of this book.

And really, this can’t be overstated: the insights in Aliebn are not only wonderful, but so beautifully simple that you can’t help but wonder why they haven’t occurred to you before – or why, in fact, they don’t already guide your life.

To add to this, it’s also hilarious beautiful poignant tear-jerking lovely sad unassuming melodic smile-jerking amazing keen succinct worthwhile worththetime worththemoney worththeworld sincere twitterpating cute astonishing striking remarkable moving meaningful excellent brilliant outstanding exceptional humble intelligent quirky honest astounding awe-inspiring…

(Hey, look at that! I actually didn’t run out of positive adjectives too quickly after all!)

Please, friends: read this book. Sincerely. I only want what's best for you. And this is it.

REVIEW: One of Us Is Lying - Karen M. McManus

• Year first released: 2017
• ISBN of the edition I read: 9781524714680
• Publisher of the edition I read: Random House Children’s Books
• My rating (out of 5): 3

Five high-schoolers are sent to after-school detention. The teacher steps out of the room just long enough for one of the five kids to drop dead. This is going to be a hard semester for the other four, all of whom are suspects in his murder.

One of Us Is Lying has plenty of twists to keep you hooked. Nearly every section includes – or ends with – some sort of new tidbit, factoid, or event, begging you to dive deeper into the mystery of who really killed Simon. It’s certainly an effective approach, and many of the twists were quite unexpected.

In a vacuum, this would be good. When butted up against the point of view(s) in which Lying was written, though, it proved to be a bit more of a challenge than I’d have preferred.

The narrative alternates between the other four kids who were in the room when Simon died: nerdy, overachiever Bronwyn; popular baseball player Cooper; pretty trophy-girl Addy; and troubled delinquent Nate. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more cliché cast of high-schoolers. This isn’t necessarily troublesome or distracting (except in the case of Addy, who is downright annoying for at least half of the book), but McManus certainly won’t win any awards for her characters.

What is distracting, though, is the shifting first-person point of view. We spend a few pages in Bronwyn’s head, getting her take on the situation, adjusting to her personality, etc., before switching over to Cooper. After a few pages with him, realigning ourselves with his viewpoint, we then move into… etc.

In principle, I’m not against this sort of approach in writing. Certainly each of the four characters’ viewpoints added to the intrigue and complexity of the mystery.

And though the book announces whose mind we’re in each time, the shift was often abrupt enough that it took me a good page to readjust to the new character’s mindset. Several times I had to re-read a few paragraphs when I remembered that I was actually in someone else’s mind now.

Wait a second: Why would Nate say this?

- oh, right. He wouldn’t. Now the “I” is Addy.

When you have to work to keep track of this frequent, abruptly-changing viewpoint, then mix it in with the constant twists of the plot, it can be a little overwhelming.

I fear I’m making the book sound bad; I certainly don’t feel that way. The plot was legitimately interesting. I enjoyed the amount of/the level of twists (when I was able to keep them straight, anyway). It took me quite awhile to catch on to the secret behind everything. (I got there a little before McManus directly says it, but not too much before.) And the slow-growing relationship between two of the four characters (I might as well not say which two) was warm to read, and a nice change-up from many of the more screwed up relationships that books so often include.

If you’re going to read Lying – which is recommendable, at least if you’re into twisty YA books – make sure you’re ready to pay close attention. I only wish the book demanded attention for the sake of noticing fine details, as opposed to for the sake of keeping straight who is who. 

HALF-REVIEW: This Book Will Save Your Life - A.M. Homes

I’m calling this a “Half-Review,” because, as I mentioned in my last post, This Book Will Save Your Life (2006) has been officially exiled to my Abandoned Books pile. That said, I don’t think it’s completely fair to give you a “full review” of the book. And yet, if I read enough to know I don’t want to finish it, I must still have some strong feelings about it, right? So let’s explore those…

My first problem with This Book actually begins on the very front cover, with its title.

THIS BOOK WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE

Um...thanks(?)

That’s quite the promise. In fact, it seems as though Homes forgot that there is no such thing as a book that could possibly, truly be for everyone. We’re all much too different to assume that EVERY PERSON EVER could possibly enjoy this ONE special book or could possibly get something meaningful out of it.

Atop that, the title commits a cardinal sin of writing/naming:

The book is written from the third-person point of view. Normal stuff, really. So WHY ON EARTH is the title 1) in second-person, and 2) breaking the fourth wall? What?! This is crazy, and completely out of step with everything else about the book.

A pro tip for you writers out there: A title should always represent the book, not try to make a statement about the book. Always always always.

Ugh. Anyway. Let’s move past the title.

Much like I explained in my post about the book Nod, This Book Will Save Your Life suffers heavily from the Premise v. Story conundrum.

Premise: A man, Richard, has some sort of heart attack-ish episode. After leaving the hospital, he decides to turn his life around.

All that is totally fine. (Rather over-done, but oh well.)

Moving past the premise, though, why did Homes choose this series of events and this cast of characters to move the story along?

I bring this up because This Book is, frankly, incredibly ludicrous. It is a ridiculous farce of completely unrealistic characters having deeply implausible conversations, all revolving around a series of absurd scenarios that are too improbable to appreciate.

Here’s just a partial list of the characters from the 104 pages I read:

• The 911 operator who is extremely blasé and doesn’t bother getting around to the point – you know, the fact that our protagonist is having a heart attack and calling 911 in the first place – for an entire page’s worth of dialogue.
• The “counselor” whom the 911 operator then transfers Richard to so that he can talk about his life and his feelings while he waits for the paramedics to arrive. Did I mention this is while he is having a heart attack?
• The doctor’s receptionist who is more interested in validating Richard’s parking than treating him as a patient. (And, when he calls the receptionist again 80 pages later, the first thing she asks is if he got his parking validated last time.)
• The woman who hits Richard with her car (while he is on foot), and is flabbergasted that anyone could possibly think that this is her fault, and can’t be bothered with the time it takes just to make sure he’s okay.
• The woman crying in the grocery store because people don’t like the salads that she makes. No, really. She’s in there.
• The guy who answers the phone when Richard calls to order a pizza, and almost immediately launches in to a list of EVERY SINGLE topping the pizza place offers without even being asked. Really: who doesn’t know what choices there are for pizza toppings?
• The second 911 operator (starting on page 61) who is incredibly insulting to Richard, calls him “Dick,” and accuses Richard of making a prank call.
• The movie star who owns a helicopter but not a television, and somehow magically knows the right way to help a horse get out of a hole. (Oh, by the way, did I mention that Richard has a sinkhole growing in his yard, and one morning he looks out the window to see a horse just hanging out in it, and so the next many pages are devoted to people – including this yes-helicopter/no-TV movie star – trying to get the horse out? Why the heck is there a horse in a sinkhole in Richard’s yard?)

And no, these aren’t all of the ludicrous characters I came across in my 104 pages; this is just a sampling.

Who on earth are these people? And why does every single one of them lack the power of normal, meaningful conversation? And why is there a horse in a sinkhole in Richard’s yard?

Can people act like this? – sure. But every interaction Richard has is like this. What this leads us to is a troubling fact about This Book: None of the characters in it are people – they’re vehicles. They’re simply a bizarre, shallow cast of figures that Homes created in order to convey her message.

This Book isn’t a cohesive, meaningful story. It is a string of absurd, empty, improbable situations and characters who are blatantly nothing more than thin veils attempting to vainly cover Homes’ true motive for writing this book, which she herself tells us point-blank in the book’s fourth-wall-breaking title: Homes wants to “save our lives,” apparently.

Thanks, Homes, but I’ll pass on your salvation. 

REVIEW: The Martian - Andy Weir

• Year first released: 2011
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9781101903582
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Crown/Archetype
• My rating (out of 5): 2.5

The chronology of my experience with The Martian went something like this:

1. By the end of the first page, my impression was “Andy Weir likes his f-bombs.”
2. Around page 10, I was thinking, “I kind of wish Weir would dial back the non-stop jokes.”
3. 20 pages in, I was already telling my wife all the horrible things about Weir’s writing style.
4. …then somewhere around page 100 or so (which was not long at all later), I…got something in my eye…ahem…
5. …then, coincidentally, I kept getting things in my eye here and there throughout the rest of the book, and for some reason my heart was beating a little extra fast…
6. …and, finally, once I finished the book, in between sniffles (I mean: things in my eyes), I thought “Oh, thank goodness! 
7. …but Andy Weir sure likes his f-bombs.”

So then.

Ultimately, The Martian is a very exciting, suspenseful story – about our hero, Mark, trying to survive alone on Mars for a year and a half until rescue can finally come – mixed with a really off-putting style of writing. Oh, and lots of f-bombs* (have I mentioned those yet?) and exclamation marks.

Yes, on the whole, Mark’s incessant humor was a good counterbalance to the reality of the story. Without it, the book would have been a hopeless slog of grimness. On a more page-to-page level, though, the individual jokes definitely overstayed their welcome. 

Of course this begs the question: was Mark’s character just really consistent, or can we expect this style of humor in all of Weir’s novels? (Since this is his first, we can’t know the answer to this yet.) If this humor was designed specifically for Mark's character, I can accept that. It wasn't ideal, but we certainly don't have to like every aspect of a persona for it to be a well-crafted character. But if this style of humor is actually more Weir than Mark, I’m, frankly, going to shy away from Weir’s forthcoming books.

And speaking of characters: the protagonist is the only especially strong one (his humor aside). The others all seem to blend together a bit; I found the population of Mission Control especially hard to keep apart.

That said, there are a few things that Weir does right, and I don't want to ignore those. For example:

• The book is highly thrilling and very well paced. I was rooting for Mark all along, desperately wanting this to end well for him. 
• It's clear that Andy Weir is a literal genius, which is fun to be around (even if only vicariously, via a book). The situations he creates - and the solutions to them - are sheer pleasure for the intellect. This might have been my favorite aspect of the book, in fact.
• Some of the jokes are legitimately quite funny. Probably no more than half, but they're there. 
• And, importantly, it's incredibly rare that sci-fi is handled this realistically, which makes me appreciate The Martian that much more. (Not that sci-fi needs to be realistic, of course, but it's certainly a nice change-up to have on occasion.)

That said, it wasn't all bad. It was a fast read (because of its well-played tension) and kept me glued to the page all throughout. I'm glad I read it. If I'm going to check out any of Weir's future books, though, it'll definitely be from the library, or else in a nice comfy chair at the bookstore (before putting any money on the line). 

*By the way, apparently there's a "classroom version" of the book which features "classroom-appropriate language." I can't vouch for it (since I read the regular version), but that might at least take away the sting of Weir's over-the-top use of profanity.

REVIEW: Good Morning, Midnight - Lily Brooks-Dalton

• Year first released:  2016
• ISBN of the version I read:  9780812988192
• Publisher of the version I read:  Random House Publishing Group
• My rating (out of 5): 4

You’ve heard your pessimistic friends say, “I’m not being pessimistic – I’m being realistic.”

That’s cute and all, but if you think about it, here’s what they’re actually saying: “Maybe I’m being negative, but reality is negative.”

…which is still just pessimism, isn’t it?

I wonder: isn’t there a beautiful side to reality, too?

Good Morning, Midnight is not, per se, the most “realistic” book you’ll ever have read. This is not only because of its mildly surreal elements, but also because, considering that it’s a post-apocalyptic book, it is remarkably beautiful, and shies away from everything about itself that you would assume would be dreary or hopeless.

There’s an important distinction to be made here, though: though Midnight may not explore as much of the negative and the ugly of the world as we might expect or envision for such a tale, it deftly focuses on the beautiful side of reality. And isn’t this a form of “realistic?”

Midnight features dual-narratives alternating between an elderly astronomer trapped in an arctic observatory and a team of astronauts en route back to earth from a mission to Jupiter, when life as we know abruptly comes to an end. As usual, though, the actual details of the plot aren’t what’s at stake here. Rather, what we have is an elegant, moving narrative exploring many of the themes that make us human – and, as Brooks-Dalton seems to propose – will still continue to make us human when we’re faced with the veritable end of humanity.

The fantastic cast of characters is relatable, distinguishable, and fluidly covers most of the attitudes you’d expect in an end-of-life scenario. (Except for The Panicker. Yes, in our world there would doubtlessly be panickers, but Brooks-Dalton wisely excludes them from her story. Sometimes there’s no need to point out the obvious.) The two settings give us a rich, imaginative viewpoint for watching these intertwining stories of the final humans unfold brilliantly.

It wouldn't be completely fair of me to gloss over the few missteps in Midnight: the pacing was just a hair slower than I’d have preferred – but it’s a rather short book, and so certainly I never felt that I was wasting time – and I would say the ending could have used just one or two more sentences to really drive home the impact of the final moment. In fact, the overall plot is one in which not much of note really comes to pass. Then again, this is a book about the storytelling more than the story.

What we are left with, then, is a book which positively excels in its form, light years beyond the vast majority of books you see on the shelf at the store. The questions the book answers – and even the questions that it asks but doesn’t answer – make this book well worth your time, giving you glimpses of the beautiful side of the real side of humanity.