This is an early Vonnegut novel which brought him a Hugo nomination and more attention from the community. It is full of ideas that Vonnegut would return to in later works. I liked it, because Vonnegut will always be enjoyable to me, but Sirens felt a little too jam-packed with ideas that are better explored in later work.
I’m a big fan of Gail Simone in general and of her Red Sonja comics run in particular, so of course I wanted to check this out.
Lots of what I love about Simone’s writing is in here. Strong characters from across the spectrum. Horror twined into adventure. Fun plot twists. Great stuff.
But, honestly, it took a while to get moving. The first half or so of the book is more disconnected than I was expecting. There’s a lot happening, but not all of the stakes are connecting for me. A couple times characters are saying “I know this is a mistake, but I…” I know people do that, but it felt a little more like a flag that we were doing this for strict plot reasons.
Eventually, the gears all mesh and the plot becomes propulsive with character-driven beats that make sense and have impact. By the end I was cheering for the good guys and hissing the villains enthusiastically.
Recommended. If it feels slow, stick with it.
This is the first Sherlock Holmes novella. I’d never read it and decided to fill that hole. It was not entirely what I expected.
I’ve read a bunch of the Holmes short stories and maybe The Hound of the Baskervilles, but by them the formula of a Holmes mystery had gelled into an efficient puzzle and Holmes delivery system. Scarlet is still feeling things out in ways that surprised me.
First, there is the introduction of Watson and Holmes, which was quite fun. I know a bunch of the details but it was fun to see how Conan Doyle established all these. And then we get sucked into a Holmes mystery and watch Holmes do Holmes things. It’s great. Easy to see how this character hooked people and why there’s a whole canon around him.
And then we take a turn to an entirely different setting to kind of show the reader the circumstances that Holmes has deduced. I was quite surprised. More than that, I can see why this style of mystery execution wasn’t for Holmes. Conan Doyle writes it well enough, but I spent the whole section – about half the novella – wanting to get back to Holmes.
It makes for an interesting artifact more than a thrilling read. Still worth a look, probably.
Recommended.
I came to this through the 99 Percent Invisible podcast. The podcast read it and discussed it with a variety of guests. I heard one episode and decided I should read the book before I listened to more of them. This was a good idea.
The Power Broker is the story of Robert Moses, the person behind basically all of the urban improvements in New York City and environs from the 30’s to the early 70’s. To tell that story, Robert Caro starts with a traditional biography. But to make that make sense he has to take lengthy side trips into the larger than life characters in New York City and New York State politics. And the ways that skilled politicians can manipulate the law to create and consolidate power. And how they gather the human and media capital to enact those laws. And how that process changes someone. And how the results of those actions can change the largest city in the world, not always for the best.
It sounds like a lot. It is a lot. The thing is, it is never dull. Whether Caro is explaining how Moses manipulates public authorities to generate self-perpetuating funding for his projects immune from conventional governmental authority or painting a picture of an out-to-pasture ex-Governor of New York wandering the New York Zoo at night, he has your attention. Caro’s ability to make the mundane dramatic is remarkable.
The Power Broker is also a lot in terms of sheer word count. It’s a tome, 1500 pages or so (I read an e-book). I won’t say it flew by, but it’s a trip worth taking.
I came away much richer for having read this. I learned things about New York’s specific history, a lot about bare-knuckle politics in general, and about the effects of those politics on people.
A must.
I kind of wandered into this rather than seeking it out. I grabbed a thriller to chew on while one of my holds came in, so I didn’t have expectations. I found it a pretty good thriller/procedural with some strange tonal shifts.
The lead investigator on the case is significantly defined by his abuse as a child in the foster care system and the first victim is similarly defined by abuse. I found the initial chapters that abuse and the investigator’s reactions to what he sees of it affecting in difficult ways. I was thinking that this was going to be more of an emotional exploration of the effect of abuse on people.
But as the book goes on, the depth of that exploration shallows out. The abuse is still there and a central driver of the plot, but Karin Slaughter lives less in the heads of the sufferers. And other colorful members of the investigation team appear who provide other viewpoints. As the book goes on it becomes more of a traditional whodunnit.
It’s a good whodunnit. The team is interesting. The mystery is twisty and engaging. And the abuse remains there, but it becomes more of a Law & Order: SVU level of intensity.
It’s also part of a series of books, so the investigators all have backstories and histories that I didn’t know about. I usually don’t jump into the middle of a series, but it wasn’t an impediment. I probably won’t jump back in to check on them though.
I enjoyed it.
Not only did I recently realize that Shirley Jackson was important, I’ve been on something of a tear through her work. Castle is broadly the story of a haunted house from the perspective of the haunters. Who are still alive. At the very least it tells a story of how that creepy house you grew up afraid of might have become that creepy house without anything supernatural happening at all.
But then again, there might have been some witchery. But no more than knocking wood, but everything is heightened here. It’s another book by Jackson that transports you into a world that’s slightly off, but not in any way that you can put a finger on. That transportation is just a delight, both in experience and seeing aspects of the trick as it happens.
You can interpret it from different angles as well. Characters seem to stand in for aspects of the mind and watching them interact can be like hearing your own inner monologue. And the spooky stuff is all still going on, as is some class struggle and…
So, a rich text.
In addition to all those structural and thematic acrobatics, there are so many individual sentences that made me catch my breath. Just amazing.
A must.
Man, I don’t know how I was unaware of Shirley Jackson until recently, but it does mean I get to be blown away by a great author for the first time later in life.
“The Lottery” has a reputation as a great short story, of which I was unaware, and it’s well earned. It’s evocative, powerful, and deep. In a couple pages it can completely rattle your worldview. Even if someone else has canted your worldview the same direction, it’s still an amazing story.
“The Lottery” comes at the end of a collection of other great short stories that have set a high bar for perfectly crafted stories. The whole time I was reading the collection having been clued in to “The Lottery”‘s reputation and thinking I’d be disappointed because everything up to it was so good. Nope. All great stuff.
Strongly Recommended.
I found a lot to like in Kristin Hannah’s The Four Winds, a historical fiction set in the Dust Bowl. It’s pretty much impossible to take that on without inviting comparisons to Steinbeck, of course.
Hannah’s book isn’t about the Dust Bowl, but about specific characters in the Dust Bowl. Her characters are interesting and believable, though I do find them a bit broadly drawn. I find them very easy to get to know and identify with, but not unforgettable.
The Dust Bowl takes them from Texas to California along paths that many at the time were forced down. I think Hannah balances making the era come alive for readers and making the events into a story that shapes her characters. I can see the outlines of the country’s plight, but she is committed to the view on the ground and the reactions of her characters.
I like the character-driven approach and was happy to see some closure in the story. These are hard times and for much of the book sympathetic characters are taking a lot of abuse from the world and their fellow people. These folks find a way to escape the worst of the times, but in a way that’s specific to them. I want there to be answers for everyone, but that’s not this book. And probably not the real world, either.
It’s an interesting, well-written historical fiction. The hard parts are pretty bleak.
Recommended.
Greg Melville has put together a survey of historical trends tied together by the theme of graveyards. It reminded me of Loewen’s Lies Across America which did a similar thing with historical markers.
Body runs well with the idea. Graveyards are full of people so the Melville is able to touch on issues of race and class in America. They’re also public lands, which lets him talk about how we treat such lands from their landscaping to who can use them. Military graveyards are a jumping off point for wars and how we talk about soldiers.
As with Lies, Melville is surveying, not doing a deep dive. Every topic he touches on has more comprehensive and insightful works on it, but he never pretends otherwise. The result is an interesting exploration of how history ties into everything. It’s a nice doorway into how everyday things can lead one into more of the world once you scratch the surface.
Recommended.
This is a rush of shock melodrama executed really well. The first chapter could stand as a short story that hits the electric rails of unwed parents, cruel children, child murder, and a horrifying revenge. I was solidly on my heels there and there was still a book to go. Kanae Minato has set herself a lot to follow in her own book and acquits herself well.
Overall it’s an enormously exciting and entertaining story of bad acts and consequences that never holds back. The characters are certainly created in service of the plot, but are fleshed out enough to hold everything together. The plot is a cascade of transgressive actions. The characters didn’t make me feel that this could happen to anyone, but they did make me believe it could happen to someone.
It does get a lot of its juice from upping the ante on transgressive actions. It’s set in a middle school and much of the plot is students doing horrible things to students, teachers doing horrible things to students, students doing horrible things to teachers, and so on. And the things are inventive and horrible. It was just cartoonish enough that I enjoyed it, but not everyone will.
Recommended.