REVIEW: Bob - Wendy Mass and Rebecca Stead

• Year first released:  2018
• ISBN of the edition I read:  1250166624
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Feiwel & Friends
• My rating (out of 5):  4

First and foremost, I have to say: I find this book's name to be deeply unfortunate. Just try to search online for Bob and see what comes up. On Amazon, the book is the 15th result. On Barnes & Noble, it's the 19th result...on page 2 (so 39th overall, basically). And on Google...forget it. I didn't have the patience to scroll enough to figure it out.

So, despite the fact that it's only a few months old, Bob isn't the most findable book out there. It's worth finding, though. (Luckily for you, I've made it easy by giving you not only the authors' names, but also that B&N link at the top. You're welcome.)

Bob is a rather adorable book about some sort of little critter named Bob who's been hiding in Gran's closet for the past five years waiting for Livy to return. Luckily for him, the book begins with Livy's return. (Gran is Livy's grandmother who lives in Australia - whereas Livy lives in Massachusetts - hence why it's taken now-11-year-old Livy so long to return.)

Unluckily for Bob, though, it turns out that Livy completely forgot about Bob in the time since her last visit.

So begins Livy and Bob's quest to figure out what precisely Bob even is (is he a zombie? a chicken? - of course he's not either, but the two ideas are woven into the book in fun ways), where he comes from, and why Livy forgot everything about him over the course of the past five years.

At only about 200 pages - and with smaller-than-normal paper size and larger-than-normal font - Bob is a quick read. (I read it in less than a day.) This quickness is mostly to its credit, but it also hides Bob's biggest flaw:

There isn't a whole lot of note that happens in the book. It certainly doesn't feel slow, but once the adventure really kicks off, I suddenly felt as though I'd just finished reading a rather lengthy prelude. And since the adventure kicks off about three-quarters of the way into the book, that's a lot of prelude. Again, it wasn't in any way a bore to read - it was cute in the meantime, and passed by quickly enough - but I still had to ask: shouldn't the heart of this adventure have started a bit sooner?

Instead we have a nice, simple, but somewhat featureless story for about 150 pages, then a fun, energetic adventure for about 50. It's not overly jarring, but it feels unbalanced.

Having dual authors as it does - and added to the fact that I've not read any other books by either author - I can't identify which author is responsible for what parts of the book. It's told in alternating voices - the odd chapters are from Livy's perspective, the even from Bob's - so perhaps one author wrote all of Livy, and the other all of Bob(?) I couldn't tell you. Either way, though, regardless of who wrote what in the book, the entire package comes off with a sweet, consistent tone that was warming to read. Even if the first 150 pages felt a bit flat compared to the final 50, they were still pleasing to spend time in.

I don't know that I see Bob becoming a classic, nor "standard" reading for children. (And it is very much a children's book - there isn't necessarily a lot for adults to be captivated by here.) Regardless, it was still a pleasant, endearing read that I was glad to have experienced.

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: The Housekeeper and the Professor - Yoko Ogawa

• Year first released:  2003 (Japanese), 2009 (English)
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9780312427801
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Picador
• My rating (out of 5):  5

I'm sure you've heard it said before - or perhaps even said it yourself - that "either you're good at English, or you're good at math." I've never felt this way - I've always enjoyed both quite a bit. In fact, in those rare occasions when I come across a combination of the two - say, a novel which uses mathematics as an important motif - chances are quite decent that I'm going to be spellbound by the book.

This was certainly the case with PopCo by Scarlett Thomas, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, and Momo by Michael Ende.

This is also exactly what happened with The Housekeeper and the Professor. With it, Ogawa creates what is easily one of the most charming novels I've come across (in a very long time, if not ever), using a simple story peppered with complicated (but well-explained) mathematics, to show us the relationship between the two nameless main characters: an elderly, retired professor of mathematics who suffers from a unique form of dementia, and his newest housekeeper.

The professor's dementia plays a key role in how the plot and the characters develop. After a traumatic car accident over thirty years ago, he can no longer create new memories. Instead, every eighty minutes his short-term memory "resets," so to speak. (You might be reminded of the movie 50 First Dates. Yes, Housekeeper employs a similar trope, but in a significantly more mature, wonderful manner.)

To the professor, everything is mathematical. Upon first meeting his new housekeeper, one of the first questions he asks is her shoe size. Later it's her birthday. Another time it's her height at birth. And all of these, he twists into formulas, explains to her why the numbers are each elegant in their own way, and how everything in life connects more than we realize.

It's a word that Ogawa uses often all throughout the book - "elegant" - which is a perfect description of mathematics, and a perfect description of the book. There's a thread of beauty which courses all throughout the book, whether it's in the professor's mathematical explanations, his metaphors, even the way the narrator (the housekeeper) weaves in and out of chronology to tell her story.

Housekeeper pulses with a profound sense of wonder, but perhaps the most miraculous element of all is that this wonder never dips into the surreal or the otherworldly. Ogawa shows the beauty in coincidence, in numbers, in baseball games and birthday parties and post-it notes. Much like I said in my review of Good Morning, Midnight almost a year ago, Housekeeper doesn't trouble itself with focusing on the negative side of reality. Though of course the book has its tension and conflicts, it is more about the wonder, the beauty, the positivity - without ever overstepping its bounds, sugar-coating its hardships, or dipping its toes into the too-good-to-be-true. It is, instead, a real, earthy novel which knows what it wants to tell us, and tells us in the most graceful way possible.

Throughout the book, we realize that the professor is exactly right: everything in life is mathematical - we just aren't as consistently, acutely aware of it as is the professor. And, if everything is mathematical, then by extension, everything is full of beauty and wonder as well.

Elegant, indeed.

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.)

REVIEW: The City & The City - China Miéville

• Year first released:  2009
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9780345497512
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Ballantine Books
• My rating (out of 5):  3

The City & The City is one of those books that tries very hard to defy classification. I borrowed it from the library, where it was labelled as a fantasy. I can't agree with this genre, though. I've also seen it referred to as a sci-fi in several places - definitely also a fallacy. I suppose that, primarily, we could call it a mystery - the plot, at least, is a crime drama - but the setting of the book is unlike anything else you've come across in a mystery - enough so, that somehow calling the book a mystery feels misleading. Rather, the setting would fall squarely into the realm of magic realism...except that there's nothing actually magical or supernatural about it.

Confusing, I know.

Now then. Since the main conceit of the book revolves around this setting, I'll attempt to describe it for you:

There's really no easy way to explain it - and Miéville takes almost the entirety of the book to slowly work through the intricacies of this setup - but The City & The City takes place in two cities: the average, everyday, European city of Besźel; and the higher-class, cleaner (and also European) city of Ul Qoma.

The catch to all of this, you ask?

Besźel and Ul Qoma occupy the same space geographically. They have most of the same streets, parks, even buildings. A person walking on the sidewalk might be in one city, or he might be in the other. There is no separating wall, no change in climate, no distance between them.

The only separation between the two cities are psychological and legal. The citizens of each city are taught to completely ignore all of the facets of the other city - the other citizens, the other buildings, the other trees. They must, by law, "unsee" (or "unhear," "unsmell," etc.) every single aspect of the other city. And "breaching" this ignorance is a crime that comes with severe penalties.

Travelling into the other city is an intricate, time-consuming affair. A passport must be secured and an intense orientation process completed. The irony is that, in order to "travel" to the other city, one must drive all the way to and through a border checkpoint and, for all intents and purposes, make a u-turn. Now that you've "entered" the other city, though - even though you're literally still driving on the same street you were before the border crossing - all of your "unseeing" must be done in reverse: you must ignore all of the people and buildings and landmarks you're used to, and instead focus only on these elements of the other city.

A small example: partway through the book, the main character, Tyador (who is a police officer in Besźel), must cross into Ul Qoma. There, he begins working with an Ul Qoman detective. At dinner one night, the two discover that they live just down the street from each other. Having "unseen" each other all their lives, though, they were never aware of the other's existence - nor even the existence of the other person's house.

Weird.

Of course there's nothing even remotely similar to this in our world to which we might compare the cities. As a reader, the concept takes some getting used to. It is certainly one that requires you to activate your suspension of disbelief. And if for no reason other than exploring this fascinating idea - seeing all the explanations for it, all the little details and ways in which it plays out - it's worth suspending it.

This is the world of The City & The City. After all that description, I'm sure I don't need to tell you how deeply imaginative the entire thing is; it is, without a doubt, the best part of the book.

This statement, though, is actually good and bad. Miéville clearly went to incredible lengths to create such a phenomenal world, only to populate it with average characters and a mildly above average murder mystery. It almost feels as though the twin-city setting of City is too good to have been spent on all of the other elements that go into the book.

To be fair, the parts of the murder mystery which directly tie into the twin cities are certainly unique and interesting. The way the investigation has to proceed, the limits of the detective's authority, the legal loopholes that are exploited by various characters - these items are fascinating, and show just how much thought and care Miéville put into the book. They're just not quite enough to make up for the other elements of the book as a whole.

I hope I'm not making the book sound like a complete loss. The twin-city concept alone made it worth reading. If Miéville were to write another book that takes place in Besźel/Ul Qoma, I would absolutely check it out. I just hope that, in such a case, the plot would be more up to speed with the phenomenal setting.

REVIEW: Confessions - Kanae Minato

• Year first released:  2014
• ISBN of the edition I read:  0316200921
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Little, Brown and Company
• My rating (out of 5):  4

10 or 11 years ago, I read The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. It was a fantastic mystery (regarding a stolen gemstone) told from the perspectives of 11 different people involved in the affair. The first - and longest - part of the book sets up the entire scenario and introduces us to all the key characters. From there, we're given more and more details, ideas, and points of view from each of the other characters, until the final part, which ties everything together and brings us the ultimate solution.

Minato's much more recent Confessions has a similar setup:

Part 1 introduces us to the underlying crime (this time, the tragic, heartless murder of a 4-year-old girl) which propels the story as a whole. Each of the subsequent parts then show us a different character's perspective on the matter, before arriving at its downright chilling ending.

Unlike The Moonstone, though, the flow to Minato's story is constantly pulling us forward. We're actually presented most of the details - and even the culprit - by the end of Part 1 - the first 50 pages of the book. Then, rather than revisit the same depressing scene over and over again with each new character's perspective, we're shown the aftermath that each character faces in response to the initial murder.

It's a deliberate, clever approach that works on several levels. Once you realize that you already know the answer to the crime only a fifth of the way into the book, you will inevitably wonder, Where could the story go from here? Isn't it already finished? Indeed, it is not - not by a long shot.

The layers that each new character adds to the story unfold in a highly intricate fashion, leaving us to wonder what is really at the heart behind everything. The facts we thought we knew become distorted. We discover that the motives aren't what we had originally been told. And, importantly, we may not have seen the last of the crimes... [no spoilers, though]

We might say that Confessions is a mystery in reverse. Rather than the book merely being about trying to solve the murder at the beginning, we already know who the murderer is and how the deed was performed. What matters here is the spiral, the after effects, all of which eventually point to the book's highly effective, disturbing, shocking final page. (Pleasingly, the final twist of the book is on the very last page - you do yourself a disservice if you stop reading the book at any point before then.)

Full of deep characters, a plot that twists with almost every page, and an intriguing look at justice - what it really is and looks like, how it is achieved, who is responsible for enacting it, etc. - Confessions is one of the best mysteries I've come across. I'll definitely be diving into Minato's next book, Penance, in due time.

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: Another Episode S/O - Yukito Ayatsuji

• Year first released:  2016
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9780316312318
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Yen Press
• My rating (out of 5):  3

You might remember from my October review of Another that I was quite smitten with it. (I gave it a 4.5 - pretty dang great, really.) One thing I said about it was, "Every step of the way, the story continually evolves - whether subtly or overtly - and is jam-packed with at least a dozen hefty twists, each of which alters the trajectory of the plot in unpredictable ways."

You can imagine, then, that I had rather high hopes for this side-story novella, Another: Episode S. Ultimately, these might have set me up for a bit of disappointment. 

Episode S wasn't bad. It wasn't anything particularly special, though - at least not compared to its counterpart. Here we have a ghost story about the ghost of a man trying to figure out how he died, why, and where his body is. (He is under the impression that he can't move on from this world until he finds his corpse so that he can get a proper burial.) It's kind of straightforward stuff, really, nothing groundbreaking (up until the end, at least).

I discovered an interesting concept after finishing the book, though:

There were several things about the plot development that bothered me. Frankly, I thought they were rather lazy on Ayatsuji's part, even a bit of a stretch. It felt as though Ayatsuji was taking the easy way out, relying too much on coincidence to move the story along. Curiously, though, once I hit the twist ending - which was quite sizable and highly intriguing, by the way - I realized that many of the things which bothered me along the way were actually intentional, and weren't as lazy or stretchy as I had thought. 

This said, on the one hand, I'd like to say that this revelation washes away the bad taste of that perceived laziness. It was certainly a worthwhile ending which I didn't see coming, and which made sense of the apparent conveniences along the way. Then again, I spent 200 pages with those things. And even though they were justified in the end, so to speak, that's still 200 pages of a bad taste. It's not necessarily so easy to gloss over that, even with a great finale. 

Some people say the end justifies the means. I think Episode S is proof that this isn't always true.

If I look at Episode S as a side story to add a little more weight to the world of Another, it's interesting enough. Considering how much I loved the first novel, I was glad to have the chance to spend more time in the universe. Episode S is absolutely not a starting point for the universe, though, and it won't win over anyone who wasn't impressed with the first book - it's just a nice little filler to flesh out the world a bit more.

(A couple minor, non-review notes, by the way:

One of the reasons Episode S is not a starting point for the world of Another is because it gives away several of the twists from the first book. If you're interested in the world, PLEASE read Another first.

Also, you might have noticed the title of the book also mentions Episode O, which I didn't comment on in this review. Episode O is a very short manga included in the back pages of the book, about which there's not much to say. It doesn't have much of a plot on its own - it's really just meant to highlight a tiny little bit of backstory from the original novel, and would be completely meaningless if you haven't read the original.)

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: 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.

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: Doubt (vols. 1 and 2) - Yoshiki Tonogai

• Year first released:  2013
• ISBNs of the editions I read:  9780316245302 and 9780316245319
• Publisher of the editions I read: Yen Press
• My rating (out of 5):  4

Doubt begins normally enough: a group of high-schoolers who play an online game together - Rabbit Doubt - decide to meet up in-person for the first time. They have a good evening together shopping and eating and singing karaoke, and then suddenly wake up in a creepy, abandoned warehouse with bar code tattoos, the corpse of one of them hanging from the rafters, and the idea that they have to kill one other to flush out the murderer. 

I guess I should say: Doubt begins normally enough...if you're a Saw movie or an Agatha Christie novel.

I loved the premise. It's not really a spoiler to say that, of course, each of the kids has his (or her) own secrets he's hiding which sure makes him seem to be the guilty one. These secrets and red herrings roll out over the course of the books - as the corpses quickly stack up - until the person behind the game is finally revealed. 

There's a very Agatha-Christie-like conceit to the entire set up (think especially of And Then There Were None) which Tonogai pulls off brilliantly, and without making it feel as though he's simply rehashing the ground she started nearly 80 years ago.

The art, too (which Tonogai himself does) is fantastic. He moves deftly between scenes of warmth and humanity, and scenes of shocking violence (and/or the aftereffects of it). Doubt certainly isn't for the faint of heart, though it never comes close to crossing into grind territory - this is definitely a thriller, through and through, with nothing gratuitous or supernatural in play. There is plenty of violence and gore throughout, but it is always meaningful to the story as a whole.

The premise (of high-schoolers being trapped together in an abandoned building to play a twisted, murdery game) worked so well in Doubt that Tonogai repeated it almost exactly for his two other series, Judge and Secret. To his credit, he was careful to fill each series with a different host of secrets and clues, and even a different approach to who the game-maker is behind each. If you like any one of the three series, there's simply no way you won't like the other two. 

That said, though you're certain to like all three series, there's no getting around the fact that they all feel highly correlated, for better or worse. The twists and secrets are unique to each series, but the overall type of twists and secrets remains largely unchanged between the three (except, importantly, for who the ultimate villain is behind each - having read one won't give you any sort of clues or logical patterns that you can use to guess who the villain is in either of the other two).

Also, in reading just any one of them all of the characters look and feel distinct. When you begin in on another of the series, though, you'll quickly realize that these are basically the same personalities and quirks, just re-skinned and renamed for the next story. It's not so bad if you allow a gap between reading each of the three series, but a haze settles over them if you read them too closely together. 

It's an interesting idea, though: this recycling of personalities feels like a misstep on Tonogai's part - and yet, if I'm only reviewing one of the series for you (which, technically, I am), it's not as though it affects this one series on its own. This isn't a problem you will notice by only reading Doubt (or only Judge, or only Secret). I suppose, then, it's more of a warning for you if you decide to keep up with Tonogai beyond just this one series, rather than something I can fairly hold against just this one series.

These small inconsistencies (actually, ironically, I suppose I should say these small consistencies) don't keep Doubt from being what it attempts to be, though: a fun, solid, intricate thriller full of twists and personality, with interesting plotting and a clever ending. It has everything you could want from a manga thriller - and, I would venture, would be a good starting-off point if you're into thrillers but haven't yet approached the wonderful world of reading manga.

(Note: If these books sound familiar, I’ve actually already mentioned them once before - along with Judge and Secret - in my list of books to read if you’ve played certain games. Specifically, I mentioned that these books are great to read if you've played any of the three games in the Nonary Games series: 999, Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward, and/or The Zero Time Dilemma.)

REVIEW: Another - Yukito Ayatsuji

• Year first published:  2009 (Japanese), 2014 (English)
• ISBN of the edition I read:  0316339105
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Yen On
• My rating (out of 5):  4.5

Somehow, despite having already seen the anime of Another AND having read the manga version, I had completely forgotten the major twist at the end of the story. Granted, it's been a couple years, but even still...how could I have forgotten something that big?

Whatever the reason for this, it worked out perfectly. Reading this novel version of the story (which actually came before the anime and manga) I was just as surprised by the twist ending as I was when I first experienced the story in those other formats. I mean that literally - even the very sentence before the big reveal, I still couldn't remember/piece together/guess the ultimate twist. And considering how crazy of a finale it is, this was definitely ideal.

Much like I said of The Tokyo Zodiac Murders in my review of it last week, "the journey matters here, too." In fact, as shocking as the ending was to Another, I would argue that it wasn't even the best part of the book. Brilliant and great, yes - but not the best. 

For one thing, Another is exceptionally paced. Barely a page goes by without some sort of clue, image, or bit of dialogue that set my mind reeling, trying to figure out how it all fits in. Of course it's quite standard for a mystery/thriller/horror to often leave you questioning what is happening - those moments are often half the fun of the book. You read a new tidbit and try to fit it into your theory of what's really going on. In this vein, no book has made me ask nearly as many questions as Another. Every step of the way, the story continually evolves - whether subtly or overtly - and is jam-packed with at least a dozen hefty twists, each of which alters the trajectory of the plot in unpredictable ways. 

Perhaps the most fantastic element of Another, though, is how brazenly original the entire experience is. It starts out as a fairly typical, rural-Japanese-high-school, maybe-ghost/curse story, but very quickly - though subtly - begins to steer away from this. Rather, to be clear, I should specify that it steers away from the common tropes of this. (It still takes place in a rural Japanese high school, etc.) One can almost imagine that Ayatsuji began by saying, "How can I start with this common horror setup, but then completely turn it on its head?" At least, whether or not this was his thinking, it's precisely what he did. Importantly, he accomplished this while still giving us a smooth story that felt fully realized - never jarring, never far-fetched, always ten steps ahead of the reader.

If you want a highly unique, engaging psychological horror - and especially an Asian horror, which, as I discussed previously, tends to handle the psyche of horror better than American literature - Another is easily one of the best out there. I can't imagine I'd actually forget the ending yet again, but I'm sure I'll still be reading it again anyway.

(And, for what it's worth, the manga and the anime versions are absolutely first-rate as well - I'd happily give a 4.5 to all three formats of the story.)

REVIEW: The Strange Library - Haruki Murakami

• Year first released:  2005 (Japanese), 2014 (English)
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9780385354301
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• My rating (out of 5):  4

Why this book took nine years to hit our shores, I'll never know. Maybe we just weren't ready for it. In fact, even though I've loved Japanese literature for quite some time now, I think I may not have been ready for The Strange Library until recently.

To be sure, The Strange Library is an aptly named book. It is mighty strange, indeed. A young boy goes to the library - his normal, everyday library - to return a couple books when he quickly gets tricked into becoming a prisoner in the library's deep, labyrinthine basement. Oh, and one of his jailers is perpetually dressed like a sheep but fries up some amazing donuts. So. There's that, I guess.

Going into it, you might miss the fact (as I did at first) that this is actually a children's book (Murakami's only children's book, as far as I know). Once that realization hit me, the book suddenly took on a whole new hue. Before that moment, I was beginning to dread having spent $18 on this 96-page book which is half pictures. (Highly nonsensical pictures, mind you.) Once I was able to absorb the book as a whole, though (which only took about half an hour, cover to cover), I realized that I was in the presence of greatness.

There's certainly something deeply metaphorical going on throughout the book. And I'll be the first to admit that at least half of it is completely lost on me. Sometimes this is a hindrance to understanding and appreciating the story. Sometimes, though, just being in the presence of - what we assume is - an elaborate metaphor is reason enough to enjoy the journey. The Strange Library fits snuggly into this second category.

Why the sheep outfit? Why the donuts? What's with the tax records of the Ottoman Empire? I have no idea. But it all comes together in a magical, whimsical package.

Again, considering that this is a children's book, surely the metaphor - whatever it is - will be missed by most. If we can take it as a Tim Burton-esque, creepy-with-a-touch-of-adorable story, though, then The Strange Library is a tightly-bound, quirky, wonderful nightmare that I am certain I will come back to repeatedly - and, in fact, will probably share with my five-year-old son this Halloween season.

REVIEW: The Tokyo Zodiac Murders - Soji Shimada

• Year first released:  1981 
• ISBN of the edition I read:  1782271384
• Publisher of the edition I read: Pushkin Vertigo
• My rating (out of 5):  4

On page 231 (out of 316) of this serial-killer murder mystery, Shimada breaks the fourth wall and interrupts his own book. He says, in part:

All of the information required to solve the mystery is now in your hands, and, in fact, the crucial hint has been provided already. ... Let me throw down the gauntlet: I challenge you to solve the mystery before the final chapters!

What a fantastic, fun invitation. And it’s okay by me.

At this point, I set the book aside for a week. Once I proceed on to the next page, there’s no going back. You can’t unread things.

One week later, when I came back to Zodiac again, I was precisely zero percent closer to having figured out even the first thing about the solution to the murders.

This is one thing I love about Zodiac. The final solution to the crime was, quite simply, cosmic. Unlike The Devotion of Suspect X, though, (another Asian mystery which I read and reviewed a few weeks ago here), Zodiac is not merely a novel about its finale. Yes, the final act is the best part, but the journey matters here, too.

For one, it matters in the way I’ve already described: the author actually directly challenges us to figure out the case before the characters. Even beyond this element, though, we are still left with excellent pacing (at least once you finish the first part of the book, which is a bit of an overly-long exposition about the crime, more than it is actual plot), an ingenious crime, and a secondary character who is enjoyable and attention-grabbing throughout (even if he does make fun of Sherlock Homes, which is only barely forgivable).

All of this perhaps sounds as though I am building up to a stellar rating. And I wish I could say that I am. There is a sizable flaw, though, which I can’t really ignore:

Zodiac is the perfect example of the translation leaving us to wonder who is to blame for the stiff style of writing. Is it Shimada’s form which is rigid, or Ross and Shika Mackenzie’s translation? As I don’t speak Japanese, I can’t say. (And, as I explained in my blog The Art of Translation, pt. 3, I try very hard not to blame the author directly for this.)

Nevertheless, we have a rather colorless set of words and sentences to tell us a very colorful story, which can be somewhat distracting. 

This rigidity is worth forgiving, though, so that we can experience a truly unique mystery - and incredible payout - that serves as one of the highest examples of the genre.

REVIEW: Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

• Year first released:  1818
• ISBN of the edition I read: 
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Signet Classic
• My rating (out of 5):  5

Frankenstein's nameless monster, pleading with us, 

wondering how we've come to misunderstand the original story so badly.

Now that I’ve read both The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Frankenstein in close proximity to another, I realize that each suffers from the opposite problem of the other. As I explained in my review of Jekyll and Hyde,

[W]hat most people consider to be the heart of the story is actually left a complete mystery from the reader until over two-thirds of the way into the book. Nowadays, you go into the book knowing precisely what Dr. Jekyll is up to, when his actions are intended to be shrouded in a deep, eerie mystery - and, in fact, are meant to be the ultimate twist of the book.

In other words, most people nowadays already know the biggest secret/climax of the book before they even pick it up.

Frankenstein suffers from the obverse of this: what you think is the climax actually happens only a quarter of the way into the book.

Most modern adaptions of Frankenstein present us with the long-bearing struggle of Dr. Frankenstein as he tries, fails, tries again to create a monster – all the while growing insane, digging up graves, and being hounded by suspicious villagers/police officers – until, finally, just in time for the perfect thunder storm, he is able to accomplish the feat with a suspiciously timed lightning bolt striking his lab. “It’s alive! It’s ALIVE!”

And then he says, “Oops,” and the monster kills him. Or something like that.

…yeah, except none of that happens in the original. Like…none of that. No, really: none.

The edition I read of the book was 223 pages long. In it, Dr. Frankenstein succeeds at creating the monster on page 55. And neither before nor after this feat are we given scenes of police dodging, corpse desecrating, villagers mobbing, or storms lightninging. (Yes, I know that's not a word, but you get the point.)

Oh, and there's no hunchbacked assistant named Igor. Nor just a hunchback. Nor just an assistant. Nor just an Igor. But that's neither here nor there.

Weird how things evolve like this.

In fact, as you might suspect from everything I’ve explained so far, the actual creation of the monster is a far cry from the real heart of the book. Rather, the weight of the plot rests on what happens to the monster – and to its creator Dr. Frankenstein – after the monster is made (and immediately escapes). And it’s in this tale where the book truly shines, whilst simultaneously frightening us.

The fact that Dr. Frankenstein is able to create life out of non-life is certainly interesting, but not necessarily frightening on its own. What becomes of his new breed of life, though...

Well.

It’s one thing for a book to show us the inner workings – and, by extension, the inner depravity – of man. This is, for example, what Jekyll and Hyde excelled at so fantastically. In Frankenstein, though, Shelley creates for us a monster made in the image of man, but which is not a man – and, in so doing, creates for us a powerful exploration of many of the other ways in which depravity can take shape, while also serving as a perfect parallel to man himself, in his glory and gluttony. 

The monster's arc is a clear highlight of the book. Yes, the monster is certainly criminal, but his rise and fall - his misunderstandings about how the world works, the complete lack of compassion and empathy he is shown at every turn - make us wonder who is really at fault here. In fact, as Frankenstein himself wonders aloud time and again, we are forced to ask how deep the fault actually lies on him. What line has he crossed? Are the blood of the monster’s victims actually on Frankenstein’s hands? Is it ever okay to play god like this?

Taking the novel to be a look at both blind ambition and moral ambiguity, it would be harder to find a more fitting tale – which is, no doubt, what continues to make it such a powerful, lasting book 199 years after it was first published.