17 Nov 2020
I decided that I was on a bit of a roll and that I’d continue to catch up on these short reviews.
I find these useful because it forces me to think more critically about what I’m consuming. Often I find myself consuming without thinking, whether it’s a television show or a video game or a book. Putting thoughts down is a reflective act that I want to do more of.
Let’s get to the books.
I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid
The first four-fifths of this thriller/mystery are riveting. It ratchets up tension and unease like few other books I’ve read. I literally couldn’t put it down.
It just doesn’t stick the landing. The climax was unsatisfying, too tidy, and uses a device that I’ve seen employed better elsewhere. (The Netflix movie adaptation has the same problem, for what it’s worth.)
However. On the strength of the rest of the book, I’ll be reading Iain’s future work.
The Black Company by Glen Cook
The Black Company novels were, before Game of Thrones, the standard for “grimdark” fantasy. It reads more like a soldier’s story, a military novel. The protagonist is Croaker, a medic and the Company’s current Annalist (a historian, I found out) who is recording events for posterity.
The Black Company is a mercenary outfit with its own internal principles, but they don’t ask too many questions. They get pulled into the service of one of The Taken, a kind of Legion of Doom who are literally the lesser evil, struggling against a force called The Dominator and his Justice League called The Circle.
None of that political background matters much to Croaker, and the author doesn’t give you too much reason to care about it yourself. The reader is dropped in in medias res and expected to piece things together as they go.
I found myself empathizing with Croaker, even as awful things were happening around him and he’s dispassionately noting them. This book is violent, even by fantasy standards. There are (thankfully brief) descriptions of barbaric acts of violence against women and children.
There is very little good in this world. Once I came to know that this book is based in part on the author’s experience in Vietnam, it started to make a lot more sense. Recommended for fantasy readers with tough stomachs.
Awards for Good Boys by Shelby Lorman
This is a book that started as an Instagram account. Shelby Lorman, drawing from her own dating experience and the experience of her readers, started creating satirical awards for men who are doing just above the bare minimum and expecting inordinate praise for doing so.
Things like “Dumped You In Person!” and “only interrupts you to make it clear he’s still listening” are emblazoned onto ribbons and trophies. The book uses this concept as a platform to raise our standards for acceptable behavior, with jokes and funny illustrations.
I love Shelby’s account and her newsletter, but I didn’t love this book. I found myself agreeing with many of her critiques. We (society) do often celebrate men for doing the least, and the seemingly tiny inequities (like manspreading) are really important to some people.
Perhaps it was the time in which we currently live, but I didn’t find this book to be particularly memorable. Sign up for Shelby’s newsletter and follow @awardsforgoodboys on Instagram. She has a great voice, and a strong sense of the moment. Skip the book.
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy is one of those authors who it’s really fashionable to say you’ve read but don’t actually read. His novels are mostly difficult and deal with difficult subject matter.
Blood Meridian is not a pleasurable read, really. Similar to The Black Company, it’s dense with violence and uncomfortable scenery. A dark satire of the western novel, it follows an unnamed protagonist from birth to death, running away from his father at fourteen and taking up with a “militia” tasked with clearing out Indian presence in what is now South Texas and Northern Mexico.
The militia is loosely based on a real group of men who committed real atrocities against Mexicans and Native Americans alike. The book is compelling primarily for its true villain, a hairless albino oracle named Judge Holden. Holden is a polyglot among illiterate men, preaching to them about his higher purpose, which is never made fully clear. He’s brilliant and charismatic and seemingly unkillable.
Holden is a compelling character, but the rest of the book is…kind of boring. I love McCarthy’s use of language; his turns of phrase are unlike any other. I think that his frank depictions of terrible violence reinforce the theme of the pointlessness of that violence, but it did not make for a remarkable plot. I’m glad that I’ve read Blood Meridian but am happy to have finished it.
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
I read No Country just a day or so after finishing Blood Meridian, and the contrast is stark. I believe that No Country for Old Men is Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece. It’s both more kinetic and less oblique than Blood Meridian, while still managing to have a tremendous villain.
Anton Chigurh is as fascinating as Judge Holden, but the book he’s in is just better. Everything I liked about Blood Meridian is here, along with a great plot. Chigurh is devoted to a Calvinist belief in fate and chance, and is true to his word, even to the dead.
There’s a reason why the film adaptation was so faithful to the novel and also very successful. I can’t say enough good things about this book. Read it. Please.
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe
The Troubles have been covered extensively by both American and Irish press. This book tells the story of The Troubles through the eyes of Jean McConville, a mother of ten who was stolen from her house and never returned.
What really struck me about this book is how warfare changes people, how it ages them. The IRA members featured in the book begin to question what all of the violence and car bombings are actually doing to advance their cause, while the younger members of the crew still have fire in their bellies to kill for the cause.
Transitions of leadership in social movements are always difficult. I drew parallels between this scenario and the Civil Rights movement. Martin Luther King’s aversion to violence did not trickle down to his successors (or even his contemporary, Malcolm X). Men like Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture) did not shy away from direct physical confrontation, with mixed results.
The chapters about the hunger strikes of Bobby Sands and other political prisoners were intensely compelling. Recommended.
Thanks for reading these reviews! If you have thoughts or feedback or you want to recommend a book to me, reach out!
16 Nov 2020
When I finish a book, I put it in a stack on top of my bookcases, and refuse to properly shelve it until I can annotate it for my commonplace book and write a short review.
I’ve assembled quite a backlog since August, when I last wrote one of these.
A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
A few times a year, a book (usually a novel) grabs me by the collar and forces me to engage with it. A Memory Called Empire was this kind of novel.
Memory combines a murder mystery with a fish-out-of-water story set in the heart of a crumbling galactic empire. A massive power past its peak and struggling to maintain its frontier is a rich setting, whether it’s Teixcalaanli, Roman, British, or American.
Martine has crafted an intricate world, with naming conventions drawn from ancient Aztec, Sumerian, and other languages. Familiarizing myself with the names and places took some time. That uncomfortableness complements the themes of immigration, cultural assimilation, and seeking understanding through difference.
In 2020, I’ve discovered and fully embraced my love of mysteries. The pursuit of the unknown and understanding how a plan comes together are elements that I have found irresistable, and Memory delivers on both of those fronts. Highly recommended.
Hear The Wind Sing and Pinball 1973 by Haruki Murakami
These are Murakami’s first two novels, published together in a single double-sided volume. When you finish one of the books, you flip it over to read the other half. I liked this gimmick. The novels themselves are mostly unremarkable coming-of-age stories. Murakami himself was aware of this, and thus didn’t translate them to English for years after their publication in Japan.
Pinball is the better of the two stories, about the pursuit of nostalgia, trying to recapture the transcendence of a past achievement and what happens when you actually find it. Recommended for Murakami diehards but others can give it a pass.
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
This is the third time through Running for me. Every time, this book has had a powerful impact on me. Not quite powerful enough to get me to actually start running but that’s neither here nor there.
Murakami connects his running practice to his writing practice, and expounds upon the connection to the rest of his life and to his career. Of particular note is the concept of the void, a flow-like state that Murakami attains during a run, a place where thoughts fall away and the only thing that exists is the next step.
Later chapters detail the author running to the actual Marathon in Greece and a chapter on changes to his competitiveness as he ages. This grappling with the passage of time and the decline that comes with age provides a view into Murakami’s internal philosophy and an admirable example for anyone to follow.
I understand why this book might not land with some people. Those expecting a running book get a memoir, those who are looking for a book about writing get all this running junk.
For me, it’s an examination of the integration of physical practice and creative practice. I love it and will return to it over and over through the years.
Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon
Steal Like an Artist is a kick in the pants creatively. It’s brief, urgent, and vital. I return to it often for inspiration and a reminder of what being on fire feels like.
Austin exhorts us to find common threads between our different inspirations, to mix and match and try their styles on for ourselves. The section that struck me most was about switching between physical and analog. Write longhand, edit on a computer, that sort of thing.
If you’re in Wichita reading this, I have an unmarked copy that you are welcome to. First come, first served.
Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
I read this for the first time last year, but reread it with a company book club. On a second read, I didn’t like it at all. The military anecdotes didn’t land with me even when the business advice did.
If want your professional development mixed with Navy SEALs and stories about solving problems in the battlefield, this is fully in your wheelhouse. Otherwise, an easy pass.
Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield
A sequel to the irreplacable The War of Art. The first book is a polemic against The Resistance, an exploration of how it manifests and what it feels like to be a professional. Turning Pro is a more practical guide to the day-to-day fight against stagnation and creative death.
It examines the life of the amateur, how we sabotage ourselves in subtle ways, and closes with the mindset of the professional. A good companion with Steal Like an Artist, it is another signpost to the creative practice that will help us all, whether we’re writers or artists or professional IT people.
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
After hearing rave reviews from multiple people I trust, I dove in. This is hard sci-fi, featuring diversions about fluid dynamics, the velocities of bodies in three-dimensional space, and Chinese revolutionary politics.
I found myself skimming when it got above my level of scientific understanding. This didn’t meaningfully detract from the plot of the novel, though. Liu’s true triumph here is the depiction of different responses to the overwhelming external power trying to exert its influence on the human race. There is no clean divide, and even within the two major camps that form, there are rival factions.
The main character’s wife and child might as well not exist after the first hundred pages, and that’s a shame. This is the biggest complaint about the novel; the main character is a cipher with little personality of his own. I found myself not caring about his opinions in favor of the story he was an inextricable part of. This is a series; I’m unsure if I’ll keep with it.
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
I’m bookending this set of reviews with tremendous debut novels. Unlike A Memory Called Empire, The Silent Patient is a grounded in reality, to a chilling degree. A gripping horror mystery about a therapist’s obsession with understanding a mute widow who, when charged with her husband’s murder, was committed to an institution rather than incarcerated.
As the protagonist blurs the lines of good practice (and good taste) in pursuit of helping his patient, he reveals the depths of his own trauma. It plays the “therapists are all seeking their own cure” cliche to its hilt, and the conclusion is so satisfying.
Thanks for reading these reviews! If you have thoughts or feedback or you want to recommend a book to me, reach out!
11 Aug 2020
Which thumb do you primarily use on the space bar? I’m left-handed and thus I use my left thumb to space.
The last time I trimmed my fingernails, I cut the nail on the outside edge of my left thumb too short.
I’m a person who primarily communicates through typing and this is understandably causing me a bit of distress. As an experiment, I attempted to type with my right thumb in order to avoid the pain. In so doing, I entered an entirely separate world of pain.
Spacing with my right thumb sent me back to my first days typing, in Keyboarding with Mr. Schafer. My entire right hand froze up when saddled with this new responsibility while my left flew across its domain with aplomb, freed from the tedium of separating words.
We settle into patterns in our work, whether we’re aware of them or not.
The awareness that I had of every action of my right hand caused me to slow down and make more mistakes. It created an uncomfortable tension all the way up my arm. It separated my hands from my thoughts just far enough that everything started to fall apart.
I didn’t like it at all, and decided that I’d work through the pain for now, just to get this task done.
That there are times where it’s appropriate to lean into this tension, to let it wash over you. Things as trivial as which thumb you space with are low-stakes opportunities to make yourself uncomfortable (and with some effort, improve your typing speed too!)
My therapist tells me that self-care isn’t always about doing the easiest thing. If we don’t address the core concerns of existence, eating and bathing and dressing, our self-esteem plummets.
So, when an opportunity presents itself to step out of your comfort zone, to try something that’s hard or expose a weakness, take it. Especially if it’s trivial.
It’s good practice for when you really have to step up.