The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1 star)

I loved the Goldfinch. Loved it. I think it's one of my favorite books ever. I don't understand how the same person wrote this.

The secret history is spectacularly boring, with ridiculously unlikable characters who don't even seem like plausible humans.

Richard is inexplicably drawn to this cast of pretentious assholes who accidentally, or maybe on purpose, killed someone. And he seems determined to fit in with them for god knows what reason. He almost dies from hypothermia because he's an idiot and doesn't ask anyone for help, and then seems really really determined to get involved in another murder for no reason. He's not the one being blackmailed, and the blackmailer and blackmailee deserve whatever dumb hell they have built for themselves.

I should have stopped reading. 18% into the novel my note was "Where are we going? Rich kids do greek class is all I got". There's no payoff.

1 star.

Monkeys on the Road: One family's vanlife adventure south in search of a simpler life by Mary Hollendoner (5 stars)

Mary and John did what for many people is only ever a dream: opting out of careers in tech for #vanlife and a multi-year adventure from Yosemite to Patagonia with their 6-yr old daughter.

This is different from many of the other adventure memoirs I've read that tend to be feats of strength or endurance: riding bikes across a continent etc. Those accounts often have to convey tales of brutal monotony and courage in the face of weeks of grinding hardship in a way that somehow manages to be interesting. Here Mary gets to pick only the most fascinating parts of a huge multi-year multi-country adventure, and there are plenty: both heart-warming and heart-wrenching. No boring bits :)

Part of me wants to use this as an inspirational travel checklist, and it certainly is that. Assuming of course that you can handle the most off-the-beaten-track version of travel where there are no guides, very few plans, and generally a great willingness to follow what may or may not be a passable road over the well-traveled routes.

But what really stands out is not the sights. Mary reaches a point that I've occasionally got to in travelling where you don't really care about more cities, or rocks, or ruins, or gorges, or rivers, or whatever, and just want to hang out with cool people. And what I totally believe from this book and my own travelling experience is that to find interesting people you can just turn up and be super friendly with whoever you encounter. It's also true that the people with the least will give the most and find joy in the giving: time, food, shelter, love.

Other things I learned about traveling overland in South America: borders with a vehicle can be crazy stressful and complicated, it's essential to have good Spanish, and you'd better be a mechanic. Oh, and a global pandemic will constantly redefine what you thought your travel experience was going to be.

Loved it!

5 stars.

Shorefall by Robert Jackson Bennett (4.5 stars)

The sequel to foundryside! I was a little disappointed to be back in heist mode again, it felt like doing the same thing all over again, but OK. This one is definitely darker and I think the pacing is a bit more uneven. Everything becomes super-powerful beings and it seems unclear why those beings wouldn't just be able to crush everyone immediately.

I continued to enjoy the descriptions of Clef hacking his way through magical doors and locks. There really are a lot of programming and software themes in these "ancient" magic systems set in what otherwise feels like fairly medieval times. Clef opens doors by convincing the programs running those doors that they are allowed to open backwards, or are already open etc. This is a really really clever layperson's description of computer hacking.

The dark dark view of capitalism continues:

“There is no innovation that will ever spring from the minds of men that will not eventually be used for slaughter and control.

An emperor’s hunger for control will always outlast a moralist’s desire for equality and idealism.

“That humankind will always invent, but the powers of these inventions will always eventually accrue to the most powerful, and they will use them for conquest and slaughter?”

“Scriving is the root of all these problems. Polina quite literally calls it an evil magic. And after what I just went through…I find it hard to argue. I am forced to wonder—would it be better if…if we just didn’t have it?” Sancia thought about it. “If it wasn’t scriving,” she said finally, “it’d be something else. Land. Money. Iron. Or, hell, even beans, if Crasedes told me the truth. People are inventive. And anything they invent they can use to raise themselves up over everyone else.” “Then…could we ever win?” Gregor said. “Is this just a dance we do over and over? Will everything we build turn to nothing but ugliness?” 

“True,” she said. “I know the hearts of men. I know that so long as humankind possesses a power, they will always, always use it to rule the powerless. And there is no alteration, no scriving, no command that either I or the Maker could ever wield that would burn this impulse out of you. Better to destroy what power you have.” 

I'm eagerly awaiting the final book in the trilogy, but this one definitely felt like a "middle" book. I think the most impressive part of the writing here is that the reader is not at all convinced that the "bad guy" is actually wrong. It could be that these well-meaning citizens we're empathizing with are actually making the whole world worse. Are we the baddies?

Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett (5 stars)

Really excellent fantasy that had me hooked quickly. It's China Meiville level worldbuilding, but a bit less dark and with a heist flavor and an interesting magic system. The themes of the novel are about the winners and losers in capitalism and how power naturally concentrates and elevates a few at the cost of many. 

The magic system is based on a forgotten alphabet, and how those that understand how to use it can build libraries of tools that perform powerful functions. Everything from weapons to building re-inforcement. This "scriving" has a lot of similarities to programming, here they build functions:

They’d figured out that you could take a blank slate of iron, write out that extensive, complicated scriving command; but then, you could follow it with the sigil for “meaning,” and next write a completely new sigil, one you yourself just made up.

And it made me wonder if it wasn't supposed to be commentary on the powerful software houses of the modern era where power concentrates because they have the best libraries, and software "foundries".

The world building really is impressive, and the plot is unpredictable.

Some favorite quotes:

“Traditional,” she echoed. “What a curious word that is. So bland, and yet often so poisonous.”

Every innovation—technological, sociological, or otherwise—begins as a crusade, organizes itself into a practical business, and then, over time, degrades into common exploitation. This is simply the life cycle of how human ingenuity manifests in the material world.

Gregor stared at the lorica. He had seen such things before, and he knew what they were meant for: war, and murder.

“Remember—move thoughtfully, give freedom to others, and you’ll rarely do wrong, Sancia. I’ve learned that now. I wish I’d known it in life.”

Any given innovation that empowers the individual will inevitably come to empower the powerful much, much more.

5 stars!

 

 

 

 

Normal People: A Novel by Sally Rooney (3.5 stars)

Boy is this book getting attention at the moment, it seems to be really divisive. It's also been made into a TV series.

I think I'm going to spoilertown on this one, so come back once you've read it?

Straight out of the gate it annoyed me with the lack of quotation marks and dialog that felt...weird to read. Like you're watching a Gilmore girls episode on 1.5 speed.

I got an A1, he says. What did you get in German? An A1, she says. Are you bragging? You’re going to get six hundred, are you? She shrugs. You probably will, she says. Well, you’re smarter than me. Don’t feel bad. I’m smarter than everyone.

But OK, Cormac McCarthy did it I guess. Somehow it was less annoying. Anyway.

Connell goes around being a complete dick to Marianne. And my experience of teenage boys kept looking to find something wrong with Marianne, what was the big problem? Why was he so embarrassed at the thought of his friends knowing they were together? Was it the class thing because his mum was her house cleaner? Something about her appearance? She certainly wasn't stupid, she's top of the class for the entire novel. This is as close as we get to an explanation along these lines coming late in the book:

Marianne says nothing. It’s true they did bully her. Eric called her “flat-chested” once, in front of everyone, and Rob, laughing, scrambled to whisper something in Eric’s ear, some affirmation, or some further insult too vulgar to speak out loud.

Which is incredibly petty. But spoiler: there's nothing really wrong, Connell is just a dick to her in high school. This annoyed me at the time, but on reflection I think it's actually clever. Teenage boys really don't need much reason at all to act like this, who cares what the reason was? It was Connell's problem not Marianne's.

He didn’t say anything. Eventually she laughed, because she wasn’t totally without spirit, and it obviously was kind of funny, just how savagely he had humiliated her, and his inability to apologize or even admit he had done

And later we find out all of that sneaking around and the hurt caused over the debs was for nothing, everyone knew anyway. Good. Connell should feel bad.

He knew then that the secret for which he had sacrificed his own happiness and the happiness of another person had been trivial all along, and worthless. He and Marianne could have walked down the school corridors hand in hand, and with what consequence? Nothing really. No one cared.

But then Marianne goes to university and suddenly being super smart, sarcastic, and your own independent person means she's cool, not weird. This is a transition that I think lots of people can relate to. High school is for conforming, university is for standing out: weird is cool.

Frustratingly Marianne and Connell circle each other again. And Connell fucks it all up again

He told her that, when she asked him who his best friend was. You, he said. Then at the end of May he told her he was moving home for the summer.

...because he's too dumb to ask if he can stay at Marianne's house for a few months, when he has been practically living there anyway. Because of the class dynamic and he wants to be the big man I guess? But we don't really know. And Marianne doesn't offer because she expects to be hurt and expects Connell to leave her?

The reality was that he stayed in Marianne’s apartment most nights anyway. He could just tell her about the situation and ask if he could stay in her place until September. He knew she would say yes. He thought she would say yes, it was hard to imagine her not saying yes. But he found himself putting off the conversation, putting off Niall’s enquiries about it, planning to bring it up with her and then at the last minute failing

It sounds semi-plausible when I write it out like that but it drove me nuts when I was reading because it was so unbelievable. What follows is a series of sadder and sadder emotionally and physically violent relationships for Marianne that is pretty depressing to read. Each one breaking her a bit more.

So the plot is really frustrating, and the punctuation is annoying, but there is some serious 5 star writing in here. This. This one gives me the chills:

Marianne thinks cruelty does not only hurt the victim, but the perpetrator also, and maybe more deeply and more permanently. You learn nothing very profound about yourself simply by being bullied; but by bullying someone else you learn something you can never forget.

And people saying there wasn't enough character development must have been asleep for gems like this:

She’s missing some primal instinct, self-defense or self-preservation, which makes other human beings comprehensible. You lean in expecting resistance, and everything just falls away in front of you. Still, he would lie down and die for her at any minute, which is the only thing he knows about himself that makes him feel like a worthwhile person.

 I can see why it rated well with book critics.

3.5 stars.

A Children's Bible: A Novel by Lydia Millet (2 stars)

I'm on board for the premise here. The older generation has ruined the planet and are sitting around having petty squabbles and taking drugs while it burns. Checks out.

I'm also onboard for the dark humor. On paper this should be exactly the sort of weird novel I love, but I found it pretty underwhelming.

The humor is there but felt like it needed to be just a touch more absurd to really get me laughing. It's definitely not a "real" post-apocalyptic novel, but it also is a bit too real to be truly funny. It isn't as funny noir as something like Hard Luck Hank, but seems like it could have been.

“Do you blame us?” asked a mother. Pathetic-sounding. “We blame you for everything,” Jen said evenly. “Who else is there to blame?” 

“You gave up the world,” said David. “You let them turn it all to shit,” said Low. I almost forgot the taste of old banana, then. “I hate to disappoint you, but we don’t have that much power,” said a father. “Yeah. And that’s what they all said,” said Jen. “Listen. We know we let you down,” said a mother. “But what could we have done, really?” “Fight,” said Rafe. “Did you ever fight?” “Or did you just do exactly what you wanted?” said Jen. “Always?”

2 stars.

The Overstory by Richard Powers (4.5 stars)

I came to this one, a Pulitzer prize winner, from various recommendations: friends, podcasts, and a quote from President Obama who said "it changed how I thought about the Earth and our place in it". I can see why, it did the same thing to me.

In this book Powers has given to the climate movement the greatest gift an artist can give: inspiration for the cause. He's quite transparent about what he's doing:

“The best arguments in the world won’t change a person’s mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.”

“Yes! And what do all good stories do?” There are no takers. Neelay holds up his arms and extends his palms in the oddest gesture. In another moment, leaves will grow from his fingers. Birds will come and nest in them. “They kill you a little. They turn you into something you weren’t.”

The setting where I was reading this book contributed to its ability to have a significant effect on me. We were staying in the forest near La Push, WA on the Olympic Peninsula, and hiking in the temperate rainforests of Olympic National Park: home to the densest biomass on earth.

Completely surrounding the national park are huge swaths of clear cutting, usually deliberately hidden with thin green strips from the major freeways traveled by tourists, so as to avoid igniting any inconvenient anti-forestry sentiment. Clear cuts are a private destruction whose only evidence is a parade of logging trucks and massive lumber mills. Driving past the logging trucks made us sad an angry. Take a look at the satellite view and you'll see brown/grey patches of clear cuts everywhere that isn't national park.

The Northwest has more miles of logging road than public highway. More miles of logging road than streams. The country has enough to circle the Earth a dozen times. The cost of cutting them is tax-deductible, and the branches are growing faster than ever, as if spring has just sprung.

I also recently learned that Frank Herbert drew inspiration for Dune and the once verdant but now sand-covered planet of Arrakis from time spent with the Quileute Nation of La Push and learning of ecological destruction in the region.

The Overstory speaks the language of the pacific northwest: hemlock, sitka, doug, and western red. It's something I feel in my bones now having lived, run, hiked, and biked in these forests for years. Our dougs are throwing their mouse-tailed cones at our roof and dropping them in among the kinnikinnick that foams over our front yard as I write this.

...the drooping females with their mouse tails sticking out from the coil of scales, a look he finds dearer than his own life.

...secret congregations of salmonberry, elderberry, huckleberry, snowberry, devil’s club, ocean spray, and kinnikinnick. Great straight conifer monoliths fifteen stories high and a car-length thick hold a roof above all.

Before I moved to the temperate rainforests of cascadia ("THE FREE BIOREGION OF CASCADIA"), I lived for years in mountain view, home to the character Babul Mehta, and another area that features prominently in the book.

Outside, in the Valley of Heart’s Delight, the ghosts of almond, cherry, pear, walnut, plum, and apricot trees spread for miles in every direction, trees only recently sacrificed to silicon.

Descriptions of driving up sand hill road to skyline and seeing the massive redwoods at Big Basin brought back many memories of biking and camping in those woods. That's all a very long way to say that this book was definitely up my alley.

I was surprised to find it really tough going in the beginning though. And that's mostly due to the high number of different POVs (nine) that are used to tell the story. Keeping track of who they all were was a bit of a struggle, and even though I figured the stories would start converging at some point it was hard to care about so many different disconnected characters.

Powers is trying to do exactly as the text states: motivate us to action with a good story. And he's targeting the widest possible us: you're an immigrant who can't vote? someone without the physical ability to chain yourself to a tree or even really get to a forest? a struggling artist with no money? a young undergraduate scientist with no publications? No problem. You all have things you can do to protect the environment. You need to start by knowing we're pointed in the wrong direction and do something.

No: life is mobilized on a vastly larger scale, and the world is failing precisely because no novel can make the contest for the world seem as compelling as the struggles between a few lost people.

A seed that lands upside down in the ground will wheel—root and stem—in great U-turns until it rights itself. But a human child can know it’s pointed wrong and still consider the direction well worth a try.

If nothing else stays with me from this book it will be the knowledge of massive interconnectedness of forests through the astonishing work of Suzanne Simard whose biography shapes one of the major characters. Dying trees giving nutrients to their neighbors, warning of insect attacks through the mycelium network, and inter-species nutrient sharing are all things I'd never really considered before.

Some spoilers ahead.

The book has a certain fatalism and realism. The characters try a lot of things: building computer games that give people a way to explore and connect with the natural world, replanting old growth with weak monoculture forests, chaining themselves to trees, protests, living in a tree canopy to prevent mother trees being logged, blowing up logging equipment, considering public suicide as a protest. Everything fails. The giants die. The activists get pepper sprayed, tazed, and go to prison.

During the blowing-up-equipment section I thought Powers might end up documenting, and semi-advocating for, a guerrilla war against the destruction of trees. But he swerves away from both that and also a sad on-camera form of green matyrdom. If you're hoping to find a 3-step action plan for environmentalism, you'll be disappointed, this is fiction after all.

I found the resolution of the nine different stories somewhat unfulfilling for all the investment, they don't all exactly converge. But it was really brutally realistic.

“We accomplished nothing,” Adam says. “Not one thing.”

Ultimately I think Powers is telling us it's going to be messy, but we need to get involved. High school students will undoubtedly be studying this one for years.

It's a difficult read, I definitely wasn't enjoying it in the beginning. And I suspect that with less plot threads, more unification of threads and a more memorable ending it would have been 5 stars. But any book that permanently changes my view of the world needs at least:

4.5 stars.

The Hero of Ages: Book Three of Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson (4.5 stars)

Great book, it reached "don't want to put it down" levels at the end. I really appreciate that Sanderson tied things up in 3 reasonably-sized novels and wrote a real ending. Mad props, that's very difficult to do for these huge world-building efforts. 

Heading to downtown spoiler town.

Very impressive pacing: I think he held onto the specifics of hemalurgy and the importance of spikes for quite a long time, as well as several other key points. We've known about Inquisitors and spikes through the eyes from book one, but it isn't explained until 2/3 of the way through book three. 

Also, impressive that he drops some hints about the earring to give readers a chance to exist in a "NOOOO, don't put it back in your ear" state before it's spelled out explicitly and Vin twigs. 

There's a few obvious interesting side stories that could use their own treatment: Marsh, Human, maybe the Kandra first generation. 

This series is perfect for TV series adaptation, I hope someone makes it.

Some things that bothered me: 

• Elend gains spectacular powers that equalize his footing with Vin. I really wished he had to continue to operate as king from a position where his wife had significantly more magical power. I don't think it was at all necessary to re-balance into a state of patriachal power. Almost all of the significant characters apart from Vin are men, including all the kings :( 
• Sazed gets really mopey, which is probably realistic, but was pretty annoying to read. 
• Canned food in the storage bunkers doesn't seem to match the technology level of everything else. 
• No-one figured out how to turn steel pushes into electrical power, or at least industrial applications. It was just the nobility faffing around using it to fight each other by throwing coins around. The first house that figured out how to make an Allomancy-powered mill/forge/train/carriage/whatever could have dominated global trade. I'm told this happens in later Sanderson books.
• The ending was pretty good, but I didn't buy that all that was needed was some tidbits from Sazed's stored books to fully correct all the previous mistakes. I'd say it's more likely that the star measurements in those old books were wrong than right, and they certainly wouldn't have been good enough to put the earth back into the exact correct orbit. Even assuming infinite understanding afforded through the magic it seems like the most likely outcome would be to break the world in a new way. I think the best possible ending would be one where some stuff got a bit better but the world was still massively broken, and maybe broken in some new less-obvious ways. The actual ending felt a little too happy.

Things that were great:

• Spikes, and the significant role they play, but I feel like he shied away from the full gory reality of what was going on with the inquisitors and koloss. Earring was clever.
• Ruin is just cool. So are the Kandra.
• The atium secret was a good reveal, I didn't pick that one. Combined with the secret of the mist sickness was genius.

4.5 stars.

The Well of Ascension: Book Two of Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson (4.5 stars)

Great continued worldbuilding and character development. Some things I really liked about this book, spoiler-ish:

• Major characters die. Like, surprisingly major characters. It's kinda like how GRRM kills off Ned Stark and your whole perception of how this story was going to play out changes.
• A major climax is reached and the hero does the thing, and something totally unexpected and surprisingly bad happens.
• Killing the bad guy seems like a really bad and ominous move.
• There's a "who's the spy" mystery. I picked the right person, but I didn't pick the "how", that was quite cool.
• I love the uncertainty introduced by "written words can be changed".

Some favorite quotes:

A man can only lead when others accept him as their leader, and he has only as much authority as his subjects give to him.

“At first glance, the key and the lock it fits may seem very different,” Sazed said. “Different in shape, different in function, different in design. The man who looks at them without knowledge of their true nature might think them opposites, for one is meant to open, and the other to keep closed. Yet, upon closer examination, he might see that without one, the other becomes useless. The wise man then sees that both lock and key were created for the same purpose.”

Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson (4 stars)

Start of a great series. Great world building, interesting magic system, lots of intriguing mysteries about how the metals work and how all the strange creatures in the world interact. Sanderson nails the pacing: he holds back enough details to keep you interested and guessing until the end of the third book.

4 stars.

The Dry: A Novel by Jane Harper (3.5 stars)

I waited too long to write this review and so I've forgotten everything about it, which usually means it was above 3 stars but not above 4 because either way it would be more memorable :) I only have a couple of notes, so usually that means it was pretty good. The highlights I have were about how well it described what's it's like to be in a small town in a drought.

Soon they’d discover that the veggies didn’t grow as willingly as they had in the city window box. That every single green shoot had to be coaxed and prized from the reluctant soil, and the neighbors were too busy doing the same on an industrial scale to muster much cheer in their greetings. There was no daily bumper-to-bumper commute, but there was also nowhere much to drive to.

Arrivals looked around at the barrenness and the scale and the sheer bloody hardness of the land, and before long their faces all said exactly the same thing. I didn’t know it was like this. He turned away, remembering how the rawness of local life had seeped into the kids’ paintings at the school. Sad faces and brown landscapes. 

3.5 stars

Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe by Laurence Bergreen (4 stars)

Just a really astonishing journey, mostly because some people actually lived long enough to return and tell us about it. Magellan sets off to circumnavigate the globe in a handful of small ships with hardly any food, quite a bit of wine, and no idea of how to prevent scurvy.

Of the food that Magellan took on at Seville, nearly four-fifths consisted of just two items, wine and hardtack.

Wine was considered the most important; it was tax free, and an official was required to come aboard and make certain it had not soured or become contaminated.

And this journey was crazy super dangerous. Basically everyone was expected to die. Reading this account you just have to respect the courage it took to take off on such an adventure.

Going to sea was the most adventurous thing one could do, the Renaissance equivalent of becoming an astronaut

Magellan does some amazing stuff, not the least of which is surviving some spectacular mutiny attempts. But just the sailing and navigation feats through unknown waters with primitive instruments is impressive in its own right.

Magellan’s skill in negotiating the entire length of the strait is acknowledged as the single greatest feat in the history of maritime exploration.

But at some point his decision making goes haywire and he starts picking unnecessary fights with native peoples of various islands which gets him killed. Then the remainder of his crew basically turn into pirates, pillaging villages and any ships they come into contact with.

Just when it seemed that a measure of order had returned to the fleet, they attacked a large proa to obtain information about the whereabouts of the Moluccas. In a bitter struggle, they slaughtered seven of the eighteen men on board the little craft. Pigafetta mentioned the matter only in passing, without remorse. In the past, the needless deaths of the Chamorros and the Patagonian giants had caused sorrow and guilt, but by now he had become desensitized to the business of killing, which he reported with less emotion than he would a passing storm.

The thing that bothered me the most about this book was the uncritical descriptions of sex the Europeans had with the native peoples, which are largely presented as consensual orgies. I suspect the reality was much less consensual and extremely brutal for the women involved. Later in the journey when the crew kidnaps a woman "whose chief role was to serve in a harem" on the ship I found that description disgustingly uncritical for a modern author who should be capable of calling a rape a rape.

Despite those shortcomings and it being occasionally pretty slow, which may be unavoidable due to the tedium of this type of ocean travel, it's truly an astonishing story.

4 stars. 

 

The Monster Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade Book 2) by Seth Dickinson (1 star)

I don't think I've ever had a 5 star followed by a 1 star in the same series before. I loved The Traitor Baru Cormorant, it's one of my favorite books ever. But I made a huge mistake by not re-reading it before picking up this sequel. There is literally no accommodation to help the reader remember what happened in book one: no hints, no reminders, no recaps, nothing. For essentially the whole book I didn't know who anyone was, and I didn't really care either.

So, it probably would have been better with the whole story fresh in my brain, but I doubt that would have brought it higher than 2 stars. Apparently there's supposed to be 4 books and this one got cut in half because it was too long, so it's basically a bridge to nowhere.

I guess that's it for this series because I can't imagine trudging through another one like this.

1 star.

Deacon King Kong: A Novel by James McBride (2 stars)

The writing is great, but honestly it was a real drag to read. It's funny in places (the cheese!), has deep character development and gives you a great feel for the community, but it was a struggle every time I picked it up. And I've waited too long to write this review so most of it has faded from memory.

This was fresh, rich, heavenly, succulent, soft, creamy, kiss-my-ass, cows-gotta-die-for-this, delightfully salty, moo-ass, good old white folks cheese, cheese to die for, cheese to make you happy, cheese to beat the cheese boss, cheese for the big cheese, cheese to end the world, cheese so good it inspired a line every first Saturday of the month: mothers, daughters, fathers, grandparents, disabled in wheelchairs, kids, relatives from out of town, white folks from nearby Brooklyn Heights, and even South American workers from the garbage-processing plant on Concord Avenue, all patiently standing in a line that stretched from the interior of Hot Sausage’s boiler room to Building 17’s outer doorway, up the ramp to the sidewalk, curling around the side of the building and to the plaza near the flagpole.

 “Isn’t it something,” Hettie said softly, “what ol’ New York really is? We come here to be free and find life’s worse here than back home. The white folks here just color it different. They don’t mind you sitting next to ’em on the subway, or riding the bus in the front seat, but if you asks for the same pay, or wants to live next door, or get so beat down you don’t wanna stand up and sing about how great America is, they’ll bust down on you so hard pus’ll come out your ears.”

2 stars.

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Articles of The Federation (3.5 stars)

Well, I waited too long to review this one so I'm going to just give it a safe 3.5 stars, which TBH is probably underrating it. I remember quite liking it as part of my "bureaucracy porn" kick earlier in the year. It's very much "The West Wing" political drama set in the star trek universe.

3.5 stars.

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine: A Novel by Gail Honeyman (4.5 stars)

If you liked the curious incident of the dog in the night time, you'll probably like this one, although it studiously avoids any sort of mention of autism or Asperger syndrome, which I think is something that Mark Haddon regretted.

Eleanor is a great character and we see the world through her single POV. At the start it's extremely extremely lonely and we get to watch her deal with her past trauma and build relationships haphazardly but successfully. By the end of the novel I was so emotionally invested in her I was desperate for her to succeed and was constantly worried that it was going to end sadly and catastrophically. Thankfully it doesn't. But it also doesn't end unrealistically in some perfect world.

Eleanor's social awkwardness, direct way of speaking, and sometimes minutes-long pondering of questions before responding is beautifully written. It's also really funny in lots of places:

If I’m ever unsure as to the correct course of action, I’ll think, “What would a ferret do?” or, “How would a salamander respond to this situation?” Invariably, I find the right answer.

He was staring into the middle distance, and I noticed that he had lit a cigarette and smoked almost half of it while I had been pondering. “Yes, Raymond. I will go to the pub with you for one drink,” I said, nodding. “Magic,” he said.

How they loved to wear those badges on their blazers the next day! As if a silver in the egg-and-spoon race was some sort of compensation for not understanding how to use an apostrophe.

I had forgotten about the security devices clipped onto the clothes, however, and we had quite a struggle to remove them. I had to come behind the desk, in the end, and kneel backward beside her so she could detach them using the magnetic machine fixed to the counter. We ended up laughing about it, actually.

“O” as a snail-shell spiral if they wished to, after all, and using a mixture of upper- and lowercase letters is simply good sense—it ensures that the signature is difficult to forge.  

At other times it challenges the societal pressures on women from Eleanor's analytical, well-reasoned viewpoint and reflects on the nature of overwhelming loneliness:

Did men ever look in the mirror, I wondered, and find themselves wanting in deeply fundamental ways? When they opened a newspaper or watched a film, were they presented with nothing but exceptionally handsome young men, and did this make them feel intimidated, inferior, because they were not as young, not as handsome? Did they then read newspaper articles ridiculing those same handsome men if they gained weight or wore something unflattering? These were, of course, rhetorical questions.

 “If someone asks you how you are, you are meant to say FINE. You are not meant to say that you cried yourself to sleep last night because you hadn’t spoken to another person for two consecutive days. FINE is what you say”

The "twist" at the end of the book isn't a twist at all, it's completely obvious for most of the novel, but that didn't worry me.

It's a great book and I deliberated about whether it is 5 star or not. It didn't have that can't-put-down quality, but it definitely made me cry and I was incredibly emotionally invested. Some reviewers seem to think the character was incredibly implausible, but I've worked with some people with pretty similar personalities, minus the trauma and alcohol.

4.5 stars

The Goblin Emporer by Katherine Addison (4 stars)

I came to this novel because it was cited as a prime example of a new genre I realized I like: bureaucracy porn! Basically the literary equivalent of the west wing: people doing complex things with competence with no details spared.

It's that. Definitely that. The world building is very good, although it's fairly limited to politics and court intrigue. The main character Maia is deftly built, if a little too good and moral so that he tends toward being boring. There's a strong racist tension throughout the whole novel: the king's son that was never supposed to inherit the throne is a goblin, and goblins are black/grey, while the ruling class are elves who are white. Prejudice and othering are everywhere at court.

The names and linguistics are brutally complicated. There's a glossary and really complicated explanation at the start, but it's too hard to switch back and forth on the kindle, so I just picked up what I could with context. I'm still super confused about plural and singular and which one is formal/informal and what the significance is, oh well.

I found myself enjoying the fish-out-of-water fast learning Maia has to do to survive at court (quite literally, his life is on the line), despite the action sequences being few and far between. 

Things really heat up with the assassination attempts, but also cool off and are resolved far too quickly. The murder investigation necessarily happens off the page since the emperor has a whole kingdom to run. 

I think the book suffered significantly from the single POV. The witness for the dead would have been very interesting to run in parallel and would have provided significantly more action and a different perspective on the kingdom. Apparently something like this is coming out in a separate novel soon.

4 stars.

Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens (4.5 stars)

Really enjoyed this one, but it asks you to suspend a lot of disbelief, like a lot. Some minor spoilers. You need to think it's plausible that:

• A girl can raise herself on her own in a marsh in NC for decades with no family, no money, and purely living off the land.
• She never has a medical or dental emergency or gets into trouble (apart from getting lost once) in the marsh on her own for that entire time.
• She can teach herself to read, write and educate herself to a university level in biology with some secondhand textbooks and a few afternoon lessons from a friend her own age, while still having to survive on no income. 
• She teaches herself to paint at a professional level, despite having no spare money for painting materials.
• She's very attractive despite said lack of dental hygiene, terrible nutrition, and living alone in a marsh for over a decade.

I managed to be mostly OK with all of that, but from reading other reviews quite a few people weren't. There's also a lot of people angry about the geography of where Asheville is in relation to the marshland, and the inconsistent character accents. If I was from NC I'd probably be a lot more bothered by that, but I didn't care.

You know there's something bad coming, but you don't know how much badness. Honestly I thought it was going to be even more horrible than it was, and it was going to end more sadly. Perhaps I have a cynical view of the world but I think a girl living completely alone in low income marshland in NC for 10+ years in the 1940s would have had an even scarier time than is pictured through the events here. It's super bleak when her brother leaves:

“Kya, ya be careful, hear. If anybody comes, don’t go in the house. They can get ya there. Run deep in the marsh, hide in the bushes. Always cover yo’ tracks; I learned ya how. And ya can hide from Pa, too.”

But it's still a great read. It's very pro-environment and deeply embedded in the marshland with its detailed descriptions. The marsh is more of a character than many of the humans. The writing is poetic and beautiful in many places:

Kya laid her hand upon the breathing, wet earth, and the marsh became her mother.

His dad had told him many times that the definition of a real man is one who cries without shame, reads poetry with his heart, feels opera in his soul, and does what’s necessary to defend a woman.

“It ain’t just that.” She spoke almost in a whisper. “I wadn’t aware that words could hold so much. I didn’t know a sentence could be so full.”

And I totally bawled my eyes out about the help and care from Jumpin and Mabel who were themselves in an incredibly precarious position as poor black folks in the south. Racism features prominently in their storyline.

She kept on buying gas and supplies from him but never accepted a handout from them again. And each time she came to his wharf, she saw her book propped up in the tiny window for all to see. As a father would have shown it.

Major spoilers...

The ending was definitely a surprise, but not in a good way. The author obviously set up Jumpin or Mabel to have killed Chase because he was forever going to be a threat to Kya. The fact that Kya could meticulously plan this whole caper despite never having caught a bus, stayed in a motel, or worn any sort of disguise before just seemed ridiculous. A thousand things could have gone wrong especially with her being extremely socially awkward and unworldly about everything apart from the marsh.

4.5 stars.

The Awakening: Fate in Motion by Suzanne Boisvert (1 star)

I came to this one from a Goodreads recommendation, and I thought it met my criteria for 4.0+ and at least 1k reviews, but now that I look at it there's 6k ratings, but only 33 reviews :( It's mildly entertaining but low quality writing and feels like the kind of sci-fi someone who isn't a sci-fi fan would write.

For an avid sci-fi reader there's nothing interesting here. The aliens are all tired tropes: giant insects, tall grey forms with big dark eyes and no mouth, flying saucers. I'm not sure it would be possible to find a less-novel collection of alien life forms. The aliens all seem to speak English, sigh, with one exception where a captive translator appears but seems to be later discarded for convenience.

The novel is basically a Dan Brown treasure hunt for magical discs, but with much fewer and less interesting puzzles. The author tries to establish a powerful conspiracy with deep control of the government but it feels ridiculous: ZOMG HITLER was looking for these and would have won the war if he found them!!! 

Somehow these deep-state-ers are super powerful but fail to control/kill the measly three people who are the only ones that oppose them, despite knowing where they live, and having chips installed in their heads that let them be controlled. The bad guys will make contact in hospital, give them a ride across the country, or seduce them in a hotel room but then just wave goodbye: please continue to work on your quest to undo our evil plan we've been working on for thousands of years...byyeeee! Most incompetent deep-state bad guys ever. The people they are pursuing are constantly going back to their own houses and taking naps, it wouldn't be hard to find them.

EVERYTHING and EVERYONE is beautiful, the most beautiful of all the things ever, honest. There's a real struggle to actually use any descriptive words in the writing. And the chance of aliens matching the human standard of beauty is basically zero, this is just really unimaginative.

...the most beautiful sound that any living thing on this planet had ever heard.

...astonishingly beautiful landscapes

 He was the most beautiful being she had ever seen.

...and they walked with an almost heartbreaking level of grace. Lanie had never seen anything or anyone so beautiful.

Minor spoilers ahead.

There's one brief POV for a bad guy, but it contributes very little, and doesn't explain motivations on any deep level, or make the villains any less cardboard. The ridiculously named "Mandi", who is a praying mantis-on-steroids alien, is apparently working to free his people, but with no explanation of why they were captive in the first place. I don't expect answers for everything, but these feel much more like giant backstory world-building failures than interesting-to-be-revealed-in-future vignettes.

Apparently Sar's motivation is to find someone, but there's no explanation for why that requires invading/destroying/torturing an entire planet. If he really wanted that, it seems like it would have been quicker to talk to the three people who would know, probably at the point where he was installing chips in their heads. Or failing that, set up an intelligence operation, not launch an invasion force. The mission to Mars was apparently necessary for Sar to get past some shields, but it's never explained why or how.

All of this questing basically ends in switching on some deus-ex-machina machines that are unexplained. I mean cool, but couldn't the super-advanced aliens that made those machines just have them turn on automatically if a bunch of aliens spaceships show up? Apparently a ton of the populace wakes up with superpowers automatically at the right time, so turning on a handful of machines at the same time should have been easy.

1 star.