Bookish Thoughts

For years I claimed to hate horror. I can see now how absurd that statement is. When I was growing up, my favorite television show was Buffy the Vampire Slayer . And while it's a bit trite to say that Sandman  changed my life, it certainly awakened any number of nascent interests in me, from mythology to non-linear story-structures. Two of the most formative works from my teenage years, and both are classic examples of horror. But for a long time I didn't know this. In my world, both of these series were classified as fantasy. Horror was Scream  and it's various sequels and spin-offs. Saw  and Halloween  and Final Destination . All those movies were characters died in ever more gruesome fashions. It's a subset of horror that's been popular for a while now. So popular that I thought it was the whole of the genre. It wasn't until I heard someone describe Sandman  as horror that I began to open my eyes and understand how much I actually loved this genre. I like...

In the fourth InCryptid book, Alex and Shelby head to Austrailia to deal with a werewolf outbreak. In this world, werewolves are victims of a rabies-like virus. There's no cure, no treatment, and the only way to prevent a full-on outbreak is to kill anyone who's been infected before they have a chance to bite anyone else. Of course, this is complicated by the fact that you can't tell whether someone's been infected until they turn into a wolf. And further complicated by the fact that the virus isn't restricted to humans. Any mammal can contract and spread lycanthropy. The story here was exciting and well-paced. The mystery was intriguing, and expertly constructed. And the stakes felt believably high. It was just hampered by the fact that I don't really like Alex all that much. He's kind of boring and wishy-washy, and not nearly as much fun as his sister. Lucky for me, the next book turns the spotlight back on Verity. And then it's on to the final Pri...

Saying that this isn't my favorite Sarah MacLean book is a bit like saying that The Truth  isn't my favorite Discworld  book: it's still pretty damn good. MacLean's books are so consistently good that the variation within them is both heightened and almost meaningless. This is the story of Lily and Alec. Lily is Alec's ward, though Alec doesn't actually discover this until she finds herself in the center of a scandal and he swoops in to repair her reputation as much as he can. This dynamic isn't my favorite thing in the world, but MacLean pulls it off pretty well. Mostly by not having is be a long-established thing. Alec was a bit frustrating as a hero. He's got this tragic backstory that leads to commitment issues. But it drags out so long that when he finally spilled his guts I barely killed. Just get over it and admit you love this girl, I wanted to scream. But other than that, he's a very honorable (possibly too honorable), intelligent, kind ...

I haven't actually listened to much (any?) of Jim Gaffigan's stand up. I mostly know him from his stint on My Boys , which I really liked when it was airing and re-watched several times when we first got Netflix. His mostly this cultural presence whose existence I've absorbed through osmosis. I always recognize him, and I see him more than I expect to, but I never really seek him out. And so his memoir, sitting on the shelf at the library used book sale, was just a spur of the moment grab. I recognized his face, and I enjoy his humor more often than not, and it looked like a quick read, so I figured I'd give it a shot. I basically got exactly what I was expecting. Gaffigan is a father of five, and his book (co-written with his wife) is basically about that. He complains about being a dad. Finds humor in the weird things kids do. Complains about being tired all the time. Finds the humor in his exhaustion. It wasn't anything I was terribly unfamiliar with (though ...

I haven't embraced mysteries with quite the fervor that I did romance earlier this year. I've been dabbling with the genre for years, but I'm picky. I need something that will entertain me and keep me engaged. I need the ending to be neither obvious nor out of nowhere. I want to be on pace with the detective. If I figure things out too quickly I get mad at the book. If I can't figure anything out, I get frustrated and the book isn't any fun. It's a delicate balance. But recently, I've found a few authors I really like (Tana French, Gillian Flynn), and that's helped me start to embrace more mysteries and thrillers. I'm coming to appreciate the craft of the genre and how these stories are constructed. Between that and the recent movie version of Murder on the Orient Express , I finally had the push I needed to try out one of the classics. I ended up liking this book a lot more than I expected to. Sure, Poirot is pompous and Christie withholds infor...

Liane Moriarty is great when I want a quick-plotted, entertaining read. She creates incredibly detailed, flawed characters who balance the line of "people I never want to meet" and "people I can unfortunately relate to somehow". She places them in difficult situations and watches everything unravel. And then she tries to tie everything up in the happiest ending possible. Sometimes this works, other times it comes across as trite or manipulative. This book focuses on three couples who attend a BBQ where Something Bad happens. The first half of the book is devoted to teasing out what that Something Bad is while everyone copes (or fails to cope) with the aftermath. The book alternates between the day of the BBQ (starting early in the morning, well before anything has happened), and the fallout a few months later. Moriarty does this to tease out her big reveal for as long as possible. The problem is that she goes on a bit too long. The first half of the book really ...

I bought this book on impulse at the library book sale because I recognized the author, who recently released a short story collection with an interesting name ( Six Months, Three Days, Five Others ) that I've been wanting to read. I knew basically nothing going into it except that it was pretty short. I'm not usually one to take a chance like that (my to-read list is long enough that I often obsessively research a book before actually buying it), but it worked out well this time. The book follows two people: a witch named Patricia and a technophile named Laurence. They meet in a horribly rigid private school in eighth grade. They strike up a tenuous friendship because they're both outcast and desperate for companionship. But when an assassin determined to kill them both starts messing with their lives, they end up separated. Years later they reconnect, only to discover that they're now on opposite sides of a war for the future of the planet. All the Birds in the Sk...

I've been meaning to read Quiet  for years. My mom read it when it first came out, and she really enjoyed it. And then it kept showing up on the best non-fiction lists. Year after year it remained one of the must-reads. So when I finally got my hands on it, I dove in. The book is about introversion, and it ended up being both more science-based and more balanced than I was expecting. Rather than a straight "rah rah introverts" treatise, it argues that we need all kinds of people and that introverts shouldn't be overlooked simply because they're quieter or more cautious. Sometimes those are exactly the qualities you need. The book charts the rise of extroversion in the United States and how it became the default expectation everywhere, from classrooms to businesses. Everyone is expected to work well with others and make their voice heard and be agreeable and personable and gregarious. But some situations call for people to put their egos aside, or to sit and th...

The second volume of March  closed on John Lewis' speech at the March of Washington, and then included the original text of the speech, which was edited moments before he gave it. In that speech he points out that the Civil Rights Act, while a step forward, did not do enough. Specifically, it did not guarantee African-Americans the right to vote, thus allowing individual states to continue to deny them full citizenship. The third volume focuses on the fight to get the Voting Rights Act passed, ultimately ending back where the first book started, with the inauguration of President Obama. Once again, this book doesn't shy away from the hatred and violence that John Lewis and his cohorts faced in trying to secure their rights. The endless protests trying to get people registered, inevitably followed by beatings and arrests. And more than a few deaths. This book maybe be John Lewis' memoir, and it's certainly skewed towards his perspective, but it functions more as a hi...

Going Postal  may not be Terry Pratchett at the top of his game, but it's pretty close. This book introduces Moist (who is entertaining in the beginning but, much like Rincewind, quickly wears out his welcome) and focuses on an ever more modern Ankh-Morpork. The clacks have been around for several books now, allowing messages to pass quickly both within the city and between the city and the outlying regions. Communication with Sto Lat is near instantaneous and it's even possible to keep up to date with far-flung Genua. But it's all starting to fail. The system was privatized, maintenance was dropped in the name of profit, and now the clacks is down more often than not, while the fat cats who own it grow ever fatter. So Vetinari enlists Moist von Lipwig, notorious conman, to resurrect the failing postal service. What follows is a rollicking adventure, touching on everything from public service to redemption to freedom. The references to Tump Tower feel even more on the n...

Sometimes you come across a book that just isn't for you. You can appreciate that it was well constructed. The characters were well-developed and believable. The symbolism was woven through. And yet, you just don't connect with it. That was this book for me. Where the Crawdads Sing  was basically fine. I might even recommend it in the future. It follows a girl who survives on her own in the North Carolina marshes after being abandoned by her mother, her siblings, and finally her father. She's knowledgeable and self-reliant, trading mussels and fish to get other supplies she needs. But she's also isolated, ditching the truant officer who shows up to take her to school and hiding from nearly everybody who comes across her. Eventually a man in the nearby town is murdered, and everyone decides that she's done it. And while that murder mystery is the center of the book, it also feels secondary to this girl's loneliness and trauma. I think maybe I'm not fami...

Mary Robinette Kowal has a deep compassion for her characters that puts me in mind of Lois McMaster Bujold. It's not that nothing bad ever happens, and there are certainly forces outside of anyone's control making life harder. But she does a great job of humanizing every single character, of making you feel empathy for them and understand their choices. Of pulling happy endings out of a series of compromises and disappointments. Things don't turn out exactly the way you want them to, but they turn out well nonetheless. This is especially apparent in the character of Stetson Parker, who Elma has clashed with since the very beginning. His character arc is possibly the most satisfying one in the entire duology as Kowal deepens and softens him, expands on his back story while also finding ways for him to grow. He's not perfect - no one in these books is - but I ended up really liking him by the end. It's amazing, considering how much I hated him in the previous book. ...

The second volume of John Lewis' graphic memoir spends most of it's focus on the Freedom Riders. During this time, John Lewis rises through the ranks of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), eventually becoming chairman. He also becomes a bigger presence in the Civil Rights movement in general, and the book ends with the March on Washington, with Martin Luther King Jr's famous "I Have a Dream" speech and John Lewis' own speech at the same event. This book really drives home how much work and organization went into the Civil Rights movement. And how much hate and resistance they faced. Learning about these things in school or online, it's easy to distance yourself a bit and focus on the results rather than the process. We always hear about Rosa Parks and her famous refusal to give up her seat. We don't hear about everything else that went into to both creating that moment and leveraging it. By telling his story with pictures, Lewis a...