Tag: good book. read it, dude

Review: In The Dream House

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I am not sure I could tell you how much I adored this book.

In The Dream House, by Carmen Maria Machado, in an agonizingly beautiful memoir about domestic violence , acknowledging the complexity and the difficulty of addressing domestic violence in same sex relationships out of fear of promoting stigmas against the LGBTQIA+ community. It’s heart wrenching, each chapter reflecting a different trope explored within the fantastical setting of the Dream House.

Machado’s abusive partner is only referred to as ‘The Woman in the Dream House ‘ and the book is written in second person, addressing the audience as Machado, bringing you into her seat of power and disempowerment, while walking through various memories and scenes that inform Machado’s growth and development into an adult and in her relationships. It was a deeply vulnerable and presumably honest exploration of Machado as you, the reader. It’s clear she’s a short story buff and she doesn’t shy from fictionalizing herself.

It is excellent, viscerally written and Machado’s style continually grounds the reader into her experience.

Review: If We Were Villains

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I had heard people talking about this book here and there since it was first published in 2017. The buzz around it is deserved and I believe I heard it’s being adapted to a series.

M.L. Rio creates a fantastic dark academia murder mystery with compelling characters while beating you over the head with Shakespeare quotes and all the atmosphere of a behind the scenes play. There is a distinct ambience that reminds me of working on plays when I was young and stupid and did such things.

Bright is the word that comes to mind. There’s a refreshing easiness about the writing style, pacing, and course of the story. Everything feels as though it comes together the way that it should. That’s what you’re shooting for in a good murder mystery, no sense of doubt in the reader that things could have had a different outcome.

Early on while reading it I had texted my sister trying to plug in my assumptions before I finished reading the book, so I could adequately call it. That’s another goal of writing a good murder, I think. You want the audience to engage as much as they can.

The pacing is fast, tight, and flows in a way that mirrors the play structure and sets the reader clearly as a distinct audience much in that way good Shakespeare should. I cannot fathom the research that went into this because each scene is so well crafted and mirrors the Shakespeare well.

Review: Ninth House

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I’ve read Leigh Bardugo before, specifically I read Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom a few years ago. From a promotion for Hell Bent, the second Alex Stern book which came out in January of this year, I got a chance to snag a copy of the first, Ninth House.

I feel like I’ve been kind of blessed this year in that I keep finding books that I actually like, and early on! Ninth House scratched an itch for Dark Academia, Noir, Murder Mysteries, and necromancy, ghosts, and the paranormal— anyone who knows me knows that I’d have taken any one of those individually. Ninth House delivered all.

The switching between two main timelines, illustrating Alex Stern’s, our antiheroine’s, guilt and culpability in the plot was well paced and a neat unfolding. Nothing ever felt forced or sandwiched in, though there was a distinct a and b storyline. The interwoven noir elements as she investigates a murder and the potential involvement of the magic user’s secret society houses felt like a separate style almost, the storytelling split between the mystery and the emotional involvement of Alex’s own revelations, but gently switching so that readers had natural breaks in what could be a heavy story.

It is Bardugo’s first ‘adult’ novel though I always struggle to understand what that means —it means sex. All of the excellence of her writing style, but now we can talk about hard ons. Publishing is a silly place. I’m excited now to read Hell Bent.

Review: Wishful Drinking

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Technically, this is the first book that I had finished reading this year. I have been going through a difficult time and I had this idea sprout in my head—sometime when I was reading all of those John Waters books, that I need Role Models….so naturally I went first to John Waters and then to Princess Leia.

Not because of Princess Leia, of course. While I was once a pedantic Star Wars nerd, I mentally separate the actors from the franchise. Carrie Fisher isn’t Princess Leia, she’s a punch up writer. This is much, much cooler to me. She’s someone you send a script to when you know it’s close but it ain’t gonna make it—or did, past tense, now that she’s passed on. It’s in Wishful Drinking that she shares the story about George Lucas’s intuitive costume decisions and wanting her obituary to read: drowned in moonlight, strangled by her own bra.

My reasoning is that Carrie Fisher survived divorce and bipolar disorder and drug additions, and did so with a well known flare for humor, charm, and ‘fuck it’. I could use that sort of role model. I think anybody could.

The book is a quick 164 pages with a lot of photographs and anecdotes—this is where I noticed the trend in the memoirs I was reading. Folks stack in as many pictures as they can. Carl Reiner, whose I Just Remembered I also read early this year had a glut of photographs. It’s something both cool, reaching into history, and that I want to make fun of it. How many memoirs were you people going to write, you couldn’t cram it into one, you had to fluff it so you could get in a few sequels?

I say that lovingly.

Carl Reiner is another good role model for me. The man seemed aggressively optimistic.

But I think that’s what memoirs are best for, rooting through and finding the humanity in people and grabbing onto those traits you admire—and getting a strangle hold on them.

Review: The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

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I am a known sucker for deals with the devil. Anyone who’s read one of my manuscripts can guess at that. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by VE Schwab was a recommended read that dropped in my lap, generated by an algorithm that I don’t usually pay attention to, but I decided to read it completely blind with all the spirit of why not, and it may be my first contender for favorite book of the year.

It originally came out in 2020 and I feel already late to the party of people who already know that this book is amazing, this book has a purposeful and distinctly timeless quality.

I found the pacing, character development, and flow of the story to be beautifully drawn out and balanced, shifting between scenes from the past and scenes from the present in 2014. The flow of story is important because it is reminiscent of the story’s crux, known as the darkness or Luc with whom Addie has made a deal for her soul. In her plea for time and freedom she has inadvertently rendered herself unable to leave a mark on the world around her, walking for eternity. Addie comments that Luc had initially been short, in her imagination, for Lucien but now apparently Lucifer. There is an elegant, flowing, consuming quality to the prose that mirrors its antagonistic presence well.

Ultimately, though, the most compelling nature of the book is that Addie herself is indomitable. At no point does she surrender, as Luc keeps seeking, and even in the end she is scheming her way to independence and survival. The love story that intertwines is practical in many ways while still romantic.

At 444 pages, it was a methodical, visually descriptive read and I would absolutely encourage you to seek it out.

Review: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell

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Making an effort to post a review every Friday!

I’ve referenced Susanna Clark’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell in the last two reviews I wrote and upon realizing that I thought maybe I should say something about this book I’ve unwittingly referenced back to multiple times. I had pegged Piranesi earlier this year as a contender for my favorite book of the year (since I’ve read it recently, of course; I certainly don’t do anything chronologically). Susanna Clark writes like a historian. Anyone who has read the introduction at the beginning of The Ladies of Grace Adieu, the collection of stories, could tell you that the references and style in her short story work is reminiscent of a researcher who has happened upon these stories and is sharing them with you purely from the perspective of historical interest. You clearly already know this history, having lived it yourself, but here is a scholarly assessment to embellish upon your public school education.

It is educational without being pretentious and it never breaks character. You are always within her world once you have consented to read it. Piranesi, I felt, accomplished this in a much shorter format—which I would argue is more difficult.

I read an absolutely dogshit review of Piranesi where the reviewer complained that Susanna Clark had phoned it in after producing the masterpiece that is Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, that the story became too character and too plot driven, and that there wasn’t nearly the same psychotic attention to minuscule detail that didn’t advance anything—you can see where I’ve put things into my own words. I cannot understand a criticism less than one that is upset that book has a tightly knit plot. That’s what we all want, for a plot to fold in on itself like a musical score; criticizing Piranesi for doing what Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell does in less words is…you don’t understand fiction. You’re welcome not to like a book, but by god, what a reason.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is, of course, a difficult act to follow. Nearly a thousand pages, it stands around 782 depending on the print, and it is a complete history written in the sensibility of its characters—academic and practical scholars of English magic during the Napoleonic wars. I would argue that it is meant to be written in a way that not even Mr. Norrell could criticize it. It is a thoroughly and joyously British Book. It celebrates English character, ideals, and it’s nearly like reading Edith Hamilton’s Mythology in its textual reverence for its own story.

It is a very good feeling to read something and to feel that it couldn’t have been done any other way. That what the author intended—which as a reader you’re only guessing at—feels accomplished. The show’s effectively over. I read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell as though it was truly a historical text, I paused to look up references, I enjoyed the archaic spellings of words that are period-accurate woven throughout; I really studied this book in several ways and it feels complete to me. I didn’t read it, rushing through, with the speed or mentality of a memoir or fantasy book as I usually would; instead I treated it like an academic study and I just—I have no notes. There’s nothing I could argue could be done differently or would have had a different character or appeal if done differently. The book is what it is and it is whole. Changing any aspect would both cheapen it and make it a completely different book.

That comment I made before on wanting a plot to fold in on itself like a musical score; it’s okay if you read a book and you can see the trajectory of the plot and where it is headed. I read another dogshit review recently of a different novel complaining that the reviewer skipped ahead a few chapters and figure out the ending. Well, of course you did. You read ahead of yourself. Books should have refrains and reprisals. The whole spine of a novel should be its effective foreshadowing without being terribly obvious—but yes, you’re supposed to be guessing at the ending. It’s called being engaged.

I think there is this bizarre push these days, and I’m going to blame things like cheap fx popcorn sellers, to have a twist ending. You want to be surprised by a book. But a lot of the joy, especially in a story that involves prophecy, is that you as the audience know what is happening and are watching it unfold. It is not an author’s job to psych you out. It is an author’s job to raise you to their level, it’s a communication not a deception—and what a more elbow nudging way to do that than to pretend that your fantasy is a reality that has already taken place and that everyone surely knows the punchline to.

The book is too short.

Review: The Once and Future Witches

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Making an effort to post a review every Friday!

The Once and Future Witches by Alix E Harrow

I had to look it up afterwards, this book came out in 2021 and was up for several awards, winning the British Fantasy Award. I feel it had an enormous amount going on in it. It was a complicated book that either could have been split into several shorter stories, or a book that could have been fleshed out into a thousand or so page tome. I get the impression that the author would be happy to do either as it seems these characters are very loved.

It is not to say I didn’t enjoy this book but I sometimes wondered what this book wanted to be. It’s dense, it’s a heavy book to contend with but at no point is there not a lot of forward motion. It propels the reader on, character driven, though there were things I admittedly would have liked to stop and examine or characters I would have liked to have spent more time with rather than switching as much as we did between the sisters. I think it’s a mark of how well written and crafted the book is that is really shouldn’t be read quickly. It’s something that ought to be sat with.

The plot follows three sisters in a maiden-mother-crone dynamic who have fallen out due to various revealed traumas but are drawn back together by a series of magical events tantamount to magical terrorism –events are blamed on witches in an effort to undermine the suffragist and women’s rights movements during which the story takes place. The setting is a fusion of rewritten history with magical context, very in the vein of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell but without Susanna Clark’s historian sensibility; instead lessons are infused throughout the story rather than explained or footnoted in. It’s presented as though you’re already meant to know it, which I do like this style of being thrown into the kiddie pool. I absolutely loved the prose, I loved the way which the author sticks fingers into nooks and crannies to pull out grubs of information, but I found myself at times distracted by the switching between characters. This, honestly, shows an effective writer. I wanted to stay with a character I was reading about, not move to whatever sister provided the next plot point right away, but it also made it feel like it was written with a television-season sensibility. You could see the commercial breaks. I am no less guilty of that in my own writing, but it is something that’s had me stop and consider if I want to continue doing that in my own manuscripts.

Review: All the Murmuring Bones

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All the Murmuring Bones by AG Slatter

Making an effort to post a review every Friday!

I cannot tell you the last time I enjoyed a main character for their brutality. The protagonist of All The Murmuring Bones has such a refreshing, pragmatic, bordering amoral sensibility. Perhaps that’s the best word: sensible. There is little sentimentality in this story, which, so often authors attempt to convey coldness in a character but fail to then make the character likeable. Miren is likeable.

Initially her characterization is a bit flat, she complains, I worried that I had started in on another book in the vein of Young Adult novels that I’m suggested where plucky-whoever does dramatic-what-have-you and earns their place in an adventure.

This isn’t an adventure—well. Maybe, technically, it is. In form. In spirit, it is reminiscent for me of Susanna Clarke rather than stock adventure formats.  There’s a great gothic sensibility to All the Murmuring Bones, lifting its fantasy from mariner tales and Irish folklore, and its dry delivery straight out of Shirley Jackson.

It is the first fantasy novel I’ve really connected to in months and I enjoyed the world building, the storytelling and mirroring of themes that lends just enough dramatic irony that you have to flinch guessing at what will happen next. I adored having a female protagonist who doesn’t wilt or linger on relationships or sentiment. The no nonsense, surrounded by nonsense and violence, nature of the narrative is addictive.

Re-review: Stephen Fry’s Mythos

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I’ve reread it.

I’ve come to two conclusions.

One, the trouble I had with Mythos the first time is precisely the same reason I loved Heroes as I did. It is no fault of Stephen Fry’s whatsoever. I did, indeed, fail him.

In Mythos, I knew many of the stories presented already. I am, horrifically, a nerd. I don’t say this as though it has just dawned on me. I say it with the sigh of looking down at myself and humming, ‘ah, yes.’

I read the Aeneid aloud, voluntarily, to my infant babies, in Latin, with the hopes that they would one day be better equipped for pronunciation as development of phonemes quickly scissors off as you age.

I am, horrifically, that guy. 

And that meant that Mythos had little to offer me, the asshole of Latin class, in terms of novelty. What it did offer, what I was most able to appreciate, was Stephen Fry’s voice. He has a unique voice, both out loud and in writing, and it is something highly envied. The tongue-in-cheek presentation of Greek and Roman myths in modern parlance is delightful. 

The many references to Edith Hamilton —hey, I know her. I read that book as a child, too. And so in slowing myself down and coming to Mythos with less tired eyes, I was able instead to see a sort of kindred spirit in it. This is how I tell Greek and Roman myths when I summarize them to other people, this same ‘ah, yes, Zeus’ wink wink say no more.

It’s nearly impossible not to talk about Greek or Roman mythology where I don’t sound like an asshole. It’s one of those few areas in life where I spring up, ready to fight, because of all of those horrid Latin trophies I got once upon a time.

I think it’s why I like Norse mythology and Egyptian mythology and indigenous myths and legends. I don’t know them well, nor should I. They don’t belong to me.

And Heroes, Heroes achieved exactly what I had wanted for in Mythos– it told me a few things I didn’t know.

I read Mythos very quickly, partly because I’ve already read it once and partly because I knew the tales. 

I needed to give it a closer examination, because it deserves it, because it is very good.

It’s charming, dry, ribbing. It is a book that does exactly what I like in mythology collections–it tells the myths. It’s a wonderful introduction, an eloquent refresher.

I would be doing a disservice if I hadn’t given it the try it deserved.

But this gets at a point of mental health maintenance that I think needs to be addressed. It is possible to read too much, too quickly, and to dislike something seemingly made for you. It’s possible to come to a book (or anything, truly) at the wrong time, the wrong place, then spend your days blasting Madam Bovary only to find that in old age that you see it with kinder eyes.

Except let’s not go that far for Madam Bovary. I still have my hang ups.

Conversely, you may reread something you loved at one age and find yourself saying ‘dear god what pretentious, poorly crafted bullshit’.

Many times you will do this to yourself.

And it’s okay.

It’s perfectly decent of you to give something another try. It’s perfectly decent of you to change your mind, your opinion, yourself.

And please, slow down.

Review: Antigone Rising

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Antigone Rising by Helen Morales

Making an effort to post a review every Friday!

This book was suggested to me by my sister based on a reading she’d had from it in a Classics course in her undergrad. I had been trying to think of a book that I had read that could finish out my mythology month that didn’t feel….overdone. There are plenty of amazing adaptations and re-envisionings of what we call classical literature—which frankly births from an extremely exclusive swath of location and time period and speaks to our fixation.

Classic should apply to more than one coastline.

This is one of the central arguments of Antigone Rising: The Subversive Power of Ancient Myths. We’re in a bit of a bind with the Greeks and Romans. We both look back to them for credibility in the duration of our cultural touchstones and we—idealistically, we realize that they were remarkably flawed.

Most of our modern interpretations of classical myths are heavily romanticized—which, frankly, the root word of romance is Roman. Our understanding is heavily through a pro-Roman, pro-Greek lens.

Brought to you by the battle of Thermopylae! May we present: centuries of narrowly defined social expectations.

I would guarantee that a given white cismale that I went to college with and sat in a theater watching 300 with could tell you wonderful things about the men of Sparta which glorify their warrior lifestyle. I know many people who gleefully took courses in Roman warfare. If I asked a single one of those men the role of the Gynaeconomi —I’d bet even money that they don’t know. And because it doesn’t effect them, they likely aren’t going to go too deep into investigating it.

That’s the pro-Roman bias.

Even in briefly looking up some supporting material before I wrote this review, there’s very little about the murky underbelly of Greek and Roman culture—yeah, believe me, whatever you think; it can get worse—that isn’t heavily blockaded behind paywalls.

But if you would care to dive deeper, I found Antigone Rising to be a highly accessible, well thought introduction to feminist topics laden within mythology. And given our propensity to look back to the Greeks and Romans as cultural touchstones inexorable from our society, it is certainly a stone worth overturning.

Consider, just briefly, the controversy surrounding Ovid’s Metamorphoses. I’m going to pick on this one because it’s personal. I like Ovid. That alone is controversial. I remember from my Latin days how Ovid was something the boys snickered about because of the depictions of rape and bestiality and all manner of frenzy which the sixteenth century-to-present ‘westerners’ went on to cherry pick for their personal use. But as the argument is made in Antigone Rising, Metamorphoses was a deeply political book. Removing it from the political atmosphere of Augustus we fail to see how these allusions to Apollo raping virgins were criticisms of the empire—not religious text. Ovid purposefully chose gods and mythical figures which the empire had aligned themselves with in symbolism to debase and villainize as a critique of the end of republicanism.

This is a huge issue in interpretation of ancient text, particularly when you dip your toe into looking at who has been allowed to do the interpreting for the past few centuries. If we look at Ovid with absolutely no context, we can interpret a glorification of rape, of sexism, of many things which don’t align with political or historical evidence.

Back quickly to the gynaeconomi—that term refers specifically to the magistrates assigned to police women’s behavior, dress, and public lives in Athens. Morales discusses the gunaikonomoi still being a topic of Oppian Law which was disputed as unnecessary by Cicero—and I use this as example of how we today cherry pick our roman heroes.

My latin teacher was obsessed with Cicero. Keekarooo. Her beloved.

“And let us not set a prefect over women, in the fashion of the elected office among the Greeks,” her false feminist agenda might have read. But Cicero’s quote ends, “but let there be a censor, to teach husbands to control their wives.”

The same cherry picking is brought up and lingered on in an essay about weight loss and Hippocrates. Particularly in diet culture, Hippocrates quotes surface which are often contradictory, sometimes to the point of being meaningless, and neglect to say that Hippocrates’ wisdoms about not being fat are sandwiched in between advice about rubbing goat shit on your head.

It’s a good introductory book. I’d read more of it.