Bookish Thoughts

I first read this book in elementary school, when I was nine or ten years old. It's always stuck with me. At the time it was very different from anything else I'd read. It's set in Zimbabwe, 200 years in the future, and the author does an excellent job of combining traditional cultural and language elements with sci-fi ideas. Most notably is the mile-high building which sways in the wind, an image that has stuck with me to this day. Revisiting this book, I'm impressed with my younger self for reading it. I've always been called a precocious reader, seeking out things for older audiences. But this is marketed as a children's book and it's longer and more intricate than some teen stuff I've read in the last few years. The book follows three children, pampered and privileged but also sheltered and naive. Their father is a famous general, responsible for breaking up most of the gangs in his city. Having seen that violence up close for most of his life, h...

This is only the second of Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad  series that I've read, but I really like it for the way it deviates from some classic detective series. By keeping the setting the same but jumping to a new detective in each novel, French is able to write psychological thrillers that don't come across as cheap. Each case is deeply personal to the detective working it, managing to unleash all manner of ghosts and questionable behaviors. They're once-in-a-lifetime cases, and the affect the detectives in different ways. They're also incredibly disturbing, in a way that sneaks up on you and leaves you wanting more. This particular book (the third in the series, and the other thing I like about this series is that you can read it in any order, which makes it a lot easier given my tendency to shop used book sales) focuses on Detective Francis Mackey and the girl who got away. The girl who was, in fact, murdered some twenty years previously. It takes a lot fo...

A little more than halfway through the Discworld  series, the Industrial Revolution is starting to take off. The Truth  introduces the movable type printing press, leading immediately to the invention of the newspaper (and, naturally, tabloids). It's fun to return to this novel in particular because it introduces a bunch of characters who continue to inhabit the background for the rest of the series. Reporters William and Sacharissa and their photographer, a vampire named Otto, will keep popping up any time there's something interesting going on. But this is where they first get the bug for chasing and reporting the news. The mystery at the heart of this story is actually the least interesting thing about it to me. Someone is trying to frame Lord Vetinari for murder in an attempt to replace him with a new patrician of their choosing. This is a well Pratchett returns to time and time again. But Vetinari is smarter, more resilient, and, strangely enough, more beloved than tha...

Well I'm officially in love with Isabel Allende. She writes beautiful, lyrical, romantic historic fiction with incredibly real characters. It brings the history alive, and her tendency to branch out and explore the lives of secondary characters allows for a lot of sympathy as well as multiple reactions to the events she writes about. Island Beneath the Sea follows Zarité (aka Tété), a woman born into slavery on Saint-Domngue. She lives through the Haitian Revolution before moving with her master to New Orleans, where she eventually achieves freedom for herself and her children. Tété is a wonderful character, strong and fierce and intelligent. She makes incredible sacrifices for the sake of her children, doing everything in her power to keep her family together. Her resilience is astounding, as is the naivete of her master, who is sure that the two of them have a bond that goes deeper than owner and property (mostly because he's the owner and has the luxury of delusion). ...

The Churn  is another novella in the expanse, released between novels to fill in backstory and make the universe a little richer. This one in particular is an origin story of sorts for Amos Burton, possibly the most enigmatic character in the series. Amos' background has only been hinted at, and I believe there's more of it in the TV show than the books. Or rather, the TV show is pulling from all of the books to make a more fleshed-out character, and that results in the audience gaining a bit more information through osmosis. That said, this story also glosses over the things I learned from the show. Amos' early childhood (son of a prostitute, used as a prostitute from a young age) is only hinted at. He has a highly questionable sexual relationship with an older woman that is by no means consensual, mostly due to Amos' youth and the momentum of that relationship. He's been so abused that it never even occurs to him to say no. But this story is about how he get...

I came to write this review and I'm suddenly realizing that I barely remember this book. Which is weird. It hasn't been that long since I read it. I expected it to stick with me longer than this. Oyeyemi's work generally does (I'm still haunted by certain sentences in Mr. Fox ). And I guess that ought to inform this review. There were a few stories in here that stuck with me, for good or ill. The first one, Books and Roses , was amazing and deserves a re-read to untangle all the different layers. Is Your Blood as Red as This? is also lodged in my memory, but more because it's weird than because I enjoyed it. And other stories have escaped my memory completely. I know that I enjoyed reading this book. And maybe it was just that I was too tired, or trying to fit it around caring for Gavin in a way that didn't work. The stories weren't really long enough to sink into completely, but they were too long for me to read any of them in a single sitting. Except ...

This is the sort of book I consider a homework book. It's not really something I would seek out on it's own. But it's a classic of the genre, so I felt like I ought to read it. If only so I could pick up on references in contemporary works and see where some of the time travel tropes got their start. The thing is, I saw the movie based on this book when I was a kid. Somehow it imprinted on me, because while I was reading the book, I could clearly visualize the scenes from the movie. And it's a good thing, because the book it short on the detail. It's also short on character development. In fact, at less then a hundred pages, it's just short. But it was still surprisingly difficult to get through. The problem is that this is a cool concept and not much else. The plot is barely there. The characters don't even have names. Add in old language that feels stilted now, and it was a chore. I should have just stuck with the movie.

This is my second time through The Book Thief , which was just as poetic and heartbreaking as it was the first time I read it. Leslie's little life is tragic. The fact that it's narrated by Death, who has taken an interest in the young girl, makes the whole thing seem grander or more important than it really is. But that just adds to the tragedy and poetry captured in these pages. I've ended up with quite a few WWII books on my shelf lately. It certainly wasn't by design. I just picked up what looked interesting at a couple of used book sales. It's been interesting and difficult to read about this historic rise of fascism given the current political climate, but it's been cathartic in some ways, too. This book in particular shows all the hidden ways Leslie and her foster parents find to resist the Nazis and brighten their lives in the midst of a war. I also appreciated reading this as a physical book this time around. The last time I read it on my kindle, an...

This book was a constant surprise in the best way. I picked up BJ Novak's One More Thing expecting a memoir. I don't entirely know how I got it into my head that this was what he'd written. It was probably just that I'd read so many other memoirs from NBC comedians recently that I figured this had to be another one.  It's not a memoir. It's a collection of short stories. And when I say short, I mean short. A handful of them are 20 pages long. Most are only a page or two. One has twelve words. Another only nine. The stories themselves are clever. They sneak right up to that line of being too clever, but they never quite crossed it. They were random and delightful and surprisingly profound. They were tied together ever so loosely, with characters making brief cameos in other stories. This was everything I want out of a short story collection. The stories were brief with hidden depths. Novak doesn't need many words to cut right to the heart of the matter...