Many Book Reviews
Dec. 14th, 2024 12:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearA reading retreat always results in multiple book reviews - but there are even more than usual this time around, because Dave and I listened to a short audiobook on the journey there and back and I also went for a long walk to finish the audiobook I was already partway through - as well as reading four whole books during the retreat!
Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki:
I have no idea how this book got on my radar - I was sure it had been highly recommended by a particular friend, but she subsequently claimed never to have heard of it...
Anyway, it's an odd book - tonally and thematically, it's all over the place and I'm not sure it wholly hangs together overall.
It's about trans teenage runaway Katrina, who travels to California and is collected up by a famous violin teacher, who has made a deal with a demon to provide seven creative souls to hell, in exchange for saving her own. This side of things has a lot of darkness involved, with Katrina's experience of life being largely bleak, violent and abusive.
It's also about a starship captain, who transports her family across the galaxy to save them from an interstellar war, ends up running a doughnut shop and starting a romance with the violin teacher. This side of things is cute and cozy, though it also involves some unfortunate misunderstandings and awful parenting behaviour.
So - bit of a weird one! It's very sad, then very weird, then very silly, then quite heartwarming - but I'm really not sure what it's trying to be...
I enjoyed it overall, but not one that's going to stay with me, I don't think.
Sourdough by Robin Sloan:
This book was not what I was expecting.
For about two thirds of its quite short length, it was mostly about making bread...
Then it was about experimental artisanal markets...
And then it took a very weird turn into possibly sentient baked goods...
Overall, it was entertaining enough, though it had an almost pathological absence of conflict and the romance aspect seemed a bit tacked-on.
The incredible weirdness at the end was very jarring after the incredible mundanity of the rest of it - but I liked the protagonist and felt invested in finding out what happened to her.
The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama:
I absolutely loved Becoming, so I went into this book with high expectations, which were largely met.
It didn't turn out to be quite what I was expecting, since it seemed to be pitching itself as a self-help book, or at least with a focus on life lessons that can be shared for the reader's benefit.
And it did provide that to a certain extent.
But there was a lot more autobiographical material, which I largely welcomed, since that was what I loved about Becoming. I don't know how much of it was repeated from the previous book, though, since it obviously covered mostly the same time period.
Still, I love Michelle Obama's voice, and how relatable her stories are.
It has some very interesting exploration of areas of privilege - she acknowledges that she's experienced a great deal of amazing stuff that most people wouldn't have access to, but also points out that it's this very privilege that has made her a target of terrible abuse, racism and misogyny.
An absorbing read - especially the section where she talks about how close she came to veto-ing Barack running for president.
The Warlow Experiment by Alix Nathan:
This has been on my shelf for a while and I kept not picking it up because I thought it was non-fiction. Then, I decided to focus on non-fiction on a recent reading retreat, took this along and discovered it's actually a novel!
The premise is based on a newspaper clipping from the late 1790s, so it's inspired by a true story, but it's largely fabricated from very little information.
Anyway, it's about a man who decides to conduct an experiment about human resilience by paying another man to live alone in his sub-basement for seven years, with no human contact.
The scientist then has an affair with the subject's wife - and things go quite badly wrong from there...
The idea was compelling and the different narrative voice were very distinct, but it got a bit dreary and quite repetitive by the midpoint. And then it ended up being pretty grim and very unpleasant, so I can't say it was a particular success for me overall.
Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage by Heather Havrilesky:
Setting aside that the premise of this book is wholly monogamous and heteronormative, it's intermittently a very funny, very insightful, very relatable presentation of a marriage.
There were lots of aspects I recognised in quite a painful way, particularly the flaws of the wife!
The first 80 pages and the last 80 pages were truly excellent and very entertaining - but the whole of the middle section focused almost entirely on aspects of motherhood (with the marriage not really featuring at all), which lost me a bit, since I don't have kids. I think I would have stayed engaged with it, if the focus had remained on how the kids affected the marriage, but that relationship very much took a back seat throughout that section.
Still generally amusing, though.
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett:
I was really looking forward to reading this book, since The Magician's Assistant (which I read back in January) has been my only five-star read so far this year and an online search suggested The Dutch House to be generally considered Patchett's best book.
And it was really good overall - I was engaged throughout, enough that I stayed up past midnight to finish it in one day.
I'm not sure, though, what's it's actually about and what its message is trying to be.
It follows the life story of the protagonist, Danny, who grows up without a mother and is then ejected from the titular Dutch House with his older sister, by his stepmother after his father dies.
Danny and Maeve (the sister) then periodically park on the street outside the house (over the course of several decades) to talk about how their inheritance was taken away.
The story also follows what they do in the rest of their lives, though the focus on the Dutch House remains strong throughout - so the book seems to be about them stagnating over their bitterness at losing out.
There is some change and development in the characters over the course of the book, but not a lot. And I'm not sure any of them could be said to have learned any major lessons by the end.
Still, a well-observed, immersive read, with Patchett's usual excellent prose.
Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki:
I have no idea how this book got on my radar - I was sure it had been highly recommended by a particular friend, but she subsequently claimed never to have heard of it...
Anyway, it's an odd book - tonally and thematically, it's all over the place and I'm not sure it wholly hangs together overall.
It's about trans teenage runaway Katrina, who travels to California and is collected up by a famous violin teacher, who has made a deal with a demon to provide seven creative souls to hell, in exchange for saving her own. This side of things has a lot of darkness involved, with Katrina's experience of life being largely bleak, violent and abusive.
It's also about a starship captain, who transports her family across the galaxy to save them from an interstellar war, ends up running a doughnut shop and starting a romance with the violin teacher. This side of things is cute and cozy, though it also involves some unfortunate misunderstandings and awful parenting behaviour.
So - bit of a weird one! It's very sad, then very weird, then very silly, then quite heartwarming - but I'm really not sure what it's trying to be...
I enjoyed it overall, but not one that's going to stay with me, I don't think.
Sourdough by Robin Sloan:
This book was not what I was expecting.
For about two thirds of its quite short length, it was mostly about making bread...
Then it was about experimental artisanal markets...
And then it took a very weird turn into possibly sentient baked goods...
Overall, it was entertaining enough, though it had an almost pathological absence of conflict and the romance aspect seemed a bit tacked-on.
The incredible weirdness at the end was very jarring after the incredible mundanity of the rest of it - but I liked the protagonist and felt invested in finding out what happened to her.
The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama:
I absolutely loved Becoming, so I went into this book with high expectations, which were largely met.
It didn't turn out to be quite what I was expecting, since it seemed to be pitching itself as a self-help book, or at least with a focus on life lessons that can be shared for the reader's benefit.
And it did provide that to a certain extent.
But there was a lot more autobiographical material, which I largely welcomed, since that was what I loved about Becoming. I don't know how much of it was repeated from the previous book, though, since it obviously covered mostly the same time period.
Still, I love Michelle Obama's voice, and how relatable her stories are.
It has some very interesting exploration of areas of privilege - she acknowledges that she's experienced a great deal of amazing stuff that most people wouldn't have access to, but also points out that it's this very privilege that has made her a target of terrible abuse, racism and misogyny.
An absorbing read - especially the section where she talks about how close she came to veto-ing Barack running for president.
The Warlow Experiment by Alix Nathan:
This has been on my shelf for a while and I kept not picking it up because I thought it was non-fiction. Then, I decided to focus on non-fiction on a recent reading retreat, took this along and discovered it's actually a novel!
The premise is based on a newspaper clipping from the late 1790s, so it's inspired by a true story, but it's largely fabricated from very little information.
Anyway, it's about a man who decides to conduct an experiment about human resilience by paying another man to live alone in his sub-basement for seven years, with no human contact.
The scientist then has an affair with the subject's wife - and things go quite badly wrong from there...
The idea was compelling and the different narrative voice were very distinct, but it got a bit dreary and quite repetitive by the midpoint. And then it ended up being pretty grim and very unpleasant, so I can't say it was a particular success for me overall.
Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage by Heather Havrilesky:
Setting aside that the premise of this book is wholly monogamous and heteronormative, it's intermittently a very funny, very insightful, very relatable presentation of a marriage.
There were lots of aspects I recognised in quite a painful way, particularly the flaws of the wife!
The first 80 pages and the last 80 pages were truly excellent and very entertaining - but the whole of the middle section focused almost entirely on aspects of motherhood (with the marriage not really featuring at all), which lost me a bit, since I don't have kids. I think I would have stayed engaged with it, if the focus had remained on how the kids affected the marriage, but that relationship very much took a back seat throughout that section.
Still generally amusing, though.
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett:
I was really looking forward to reading this book, since The Magician's Assistant (which I read back in January) has been my only five-star read so far this year and an online search suggested The Dutch House to be generally considered Patchett's best book.
And it was really good overall - I was engaged throughout, enough that I stayed up past midnight to finish it in one day.
I'm not sure, though, what's it's actually about and what its message is trying to be.
It follows the life story of the protagonist, Danny, who grows up without a mother and is then ejected from the titular Dutch House with his older sister, by his stepmother after his father dies.
Danny and Maeve (the sister) then periodically park on the street outside the house (over the course of several decades) to talk about how their inheritance was taken away.
The story also follows what they do in the rest of their lives, though the focus on the Dutch House remains strong throughout - so the book seems to be about them stagnating over their bitterness at losing out.
There is some change and development in the characters over the course of the book, but not a lot. And I'm not sure any of them could be said to have learned any major lessons by the end.
Still, a well-observed, immersive read, with Patchett's usual excellent prose.
