"Come Tumbling Down" by Seanan McGuire

 This is the fifth book of the Wayward Children series (others can be found on this blog, the first, second, third, and fourth are all here). I was really pleased that this book is a return to previous characters that I love, while I was frustrated about its length primarily. I felt that this was the first book in the series that really suffered from being a novella and could have used up many more pages.

The book starts with Christopher in his room after the events of Beneath a Sugar Sky when lightning strikes the floor. And keeps striking. A door appears and Alexis, carrying Jack, emerges. Cora, Sumi, and Kade are all there by that point. Sumi wakes Jack up and it's revealed that Jack was forced to body swap with Jill so that Jill can become a vampire in Jack's body (which has never died). Jack is slowly falling apart being in Jill's body, so they all head to the Moors to attack the vampires before that can happen. Once there, Cora is called into the sea and disappears. The others head to the church of the Drowned God to ask for help. Kade falls on the way, but Cora then reappears with Kade, speaks for the Drowned God, and then recovers. They head to the castle, body swap Jack back into her body, and kill Jill. Then the others head back to the school.

Alright well, first of all I saw that this was another book about Jack and Jill and I sure was pleased that it wasn't another stand alone. Having Christopher, Cora, Sumi, and Kade all there helped a lot to lighten the mood of the Moors. And they were happy to be reunited with Jack which was cute.

Beyond that though, there wasn't a lot dedicated to this quest. Cora mysteriously returns with Kade, so there didn't seem to be a point in all that. We could have at least gotten something from Kade or Cora's point of view for that time. And Jack does worry about killing her sister, but there isn't anything to speak to her mental status after this. It seems like a done deal from the beginning. Everything in general from the Moors onward just felt rushed, like we could take our time and talk to these characters more. Since the book is primarily about this quest, I would want some details about it.

Anyways, still love this series, I hope that there's more books continuing this story specifically rather than one offs. I can't wait for the next one.

Struggling with "Ducks, Newburyport"

 I don't really have a real post this week, primarily because getting through Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann has been such a struggle for me. The book is long, but that doesn't usually intimidate me. What is more frustrating is that most of the book is written as a giant sentence stringing together stream of consciousness thoughts from our protagonist. 

It is a cool idea, and as a recent book dealing with the first Trump administration and the world, it is an interesting concept. But I am not getting into it. The stream of consciousness means that I have no idea what is happening as there's so much being thought at the same time, and I don't really know who the characters are or care about them. You'd probably think that we get a very intimate look at our protagonist, but I don't feel that way. I feel like she's behind this wall of thoughts where I only get a brief look at what she's thinking or feeling at any time. It's just impossible for me to parse and make sense of and make a connection through.

There's also places interspersed with traditional narration of a mother lion. These bits make more sense. Yet I am not sure how they connect, except that both point of view characters are mothers I suppose. It is just hard to figure out what has meaning here, there's so much being thrown at me that I'm skimming most of it and it just takes energy.

I'm really not sure if I'm going to finish this. It is a long book to get through if you don't enjoy it. I'm trying for now, but this is certainly the least I've enjoyed a book in a very long time.

“Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland” by Patrick Radden Keefe

This book has been on my to read list for a while, and I didn’t know until I picked it up that the author also had written Empire of Pain, a book my partner really enjoyed. So I was excited to pick it up. I think there are some issues with the framing of the story, but overall this was a really intriguing and impressive look at the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

The book opens with detectives heading to Boston College to investigate a murder. From there it jumps back twenty or so years and starts telling us about the night Jean McConville was abducted from her home of ten children. It jumps again and starts telling us the history of the Troubles. Some characters of note are the Price sisters, Dolores and Miriam; the McConville children of course; and a few other IRA members. The focus jumps around a little bit to update us on everyone as the Troubles progress, up to the car bombs in London and the jailing of Dolores and Miriam and all the hunger strikers, including Bobby Sands and nine others that died in jail. We then get to Gerry Adams going into politics and orchestrating the Good Friday Agreement that ended the violence.

In the aftermath, a former IRA member Mackers starts setting up oral histories of the IRA with members, under the agreement that it wouldn’t be released until the members died. However, investigations into the handful of folks disappeared by the IRA jumps the gun and soon oral histories are being requested to investigate the murder of Jean McConville. There’s a whole back and forth about whether to hand the tapes over and Boston College capitulates. Unfortunately though, not many folks talked about her death. It’s Keefe himself who takes it on himself to put together the pieces, and through a few fragments he manages to place Miriam Price at the location of the murder and likely the person who pulled the fatal trigger. The book ends with this narrative about the author and reflection on the writing process of this book and memories of the IRA.

It did take me a while to get into the book, I was primarily interested in the murder and the book departs from that narrative for the majority of the text. It felt a bit clickbait-y, the way it opens with the murder and intrigue and then departs to give a whole history of an entire movement first. Once the second half comes though with the discussion of the aftermath of the Good Friday Agreement and the debate around these tapes I was more absorbed. I feel like there was a framing that could be worked out that makes this more a history of the Troubles, but I do understand if Keefe is interested in publishing his theory of the murder that this framing would make sense to him. So hard to say which would be better for the work as a whole.

I was also extremely impressed with the depth of the work. Keefe explicitly talks about memory and tries to corroborate accounts when possible, and make use of direct quotes. He was able to talk to a lot of folks, like the McConville children, and the folks making the oral history. Many other also refused to talk to him, but the depth is so impressive. Multiple characters are detailed out, and I felt like I could keep them all straight, which is a feat in and of itself. It really speaks to the strengths of the writing that during the book I didn’t get confused or have to flip back to remind myself who someone was.

The book is excellent, so well written and such a thorough account of a relatively recent and heated topic in history. My only minor quip is the framing, but it does pay off by the end of the work. I should check out Empire of Pain next, I could read more of this writing style.

“In an Absent Dream” by Seanan McGuire

This is another installment of the Wayward Children series, and it’s another stand alone about one person’s trip through a mysterious door. (You can read about the first, second, and third books in the series at these links.) This time it’s Lundy, the counselor from Every Heart a Doorway who ages backwards. Her story is pretty tragic to be honest, but it has all of the charm of the rest of the series.

Lundy is a young girl who loves reading and finds a tree that has twisted itself into a door. She goes through and finds herself at the Goblin Market, which is run by strict rules concerning fair value and bartering amongst the inhabitants. Those that don’t fulfill their promises and don’t give fair value get slowly turned into birds. Giving fair value turns yourself back. Lundy meets Moon, a young child that’s already part bird, and the Archivist who becomes a surrogate mother and teacher. Lundy goes on an adventure, resulting in the death of one of her friends, and returns to her world devastated.

She goes back to the Goblin Market after experiencing some pretty bad misogyny from her teacher, and stays for a while. She has until her eighteenth birthday to decide which world she wants to stay in. She goes on more adventures, but wants to return to grab supplies and ends up being sent to a boarding school by her father who had also been to the Goblin Market and wants to keep Lundy in his world. She escapes, saves Moon from becoming a bird, and wants to stay in the Goblin Market, but also wants to say goodbye to her family. Her sister pulls her back in forcefully, enough that Lundy goes back and forth for a while, but eventually wants to put off her choice. She drinks a potion to make her stop aging, and ends up banished from the Goblin Market for messing with the rules. Eleanor then finds her and brings her to the school.

The story is pretty depressing to be honest. Lundy deals with heavy grief when her friend dies, and is kicked out of her home because she loved her sister. I kept expecting Moon to turn on her as well, their relationship goes through some rocky patches, but that ended up not happening, surprisingly enough. It is in fact the Archivist that is revealed to be the Market manifest who kicks her out, she is unhappy about it but has to do it anyways. So the rejection coming from a mother figure hurts even more.

The characters and the world building are the strong suit here. The questing and all that is entirely skipped over in a time jump, the book wants to focus on Lundy making the journey back and forth rather than the adventures she goes on. I did not hate that choice, although I could see McGuire being nervous about it. The book isn’t supposed to be exciting, it’s supposed to leave you in suspense and it does that really well.

Having said all that, I definitely don’t like these one off stories as much as Every Heart a Doorway or Beneath the Sugar Sky where the whole group of wayward kids is together. I hope that there’s more group adventures in store, apart from being more entertaining with a wide variety of characters, they also give more insight into the physics of all these worlds than the single journeys. The one offs though definitely have more material to feed them, you could write about every character’s journey that way. Group activities are harder to plan.

I’m excited to keep going with this series, I really like it so far. Hopefully there’s more intriguing worlds left to explore!

“The Vanishing Half” by Brit Bennett

Another book that I think ended up on my reading list because I heard about it years ago and was intrigued, but I can’t totally remember. It was a really good read, the characters sucked me in and pulled me along their journey. I couldn’t wait to find out what happened next.

The story spans several decades but it starts in the sixties with one of a pair of twins that ran away from Mallard returning. The one returning is Desiree, and she brings a dark child with her. Mallard is odd in that it’s all Black people living there, but they have tried to make themselves as light as possible. It tells how Desiree ran away with her twin Stella, but then Stella ran off on her own (pretending to be white). Desiree married a darker man, had a kid, and had to run off with the child once that relationship became abusive. So she raises her child, Jude, in Mallard. Jump forward to Jude now heading to UCLA for college. She meets and falls in love with Reese, a trans man who also ran away from home. To save up money for his top surgery Jude starts working fancy parties, and at one of the parties gets a glimpse of Stella.

Fast forward a little more, Stella’s daughter Kennedy that Jude met at the party is starring in a show with one of their drag queen friends. Jude starts getting close to Kennedy, trying to learn about Stella. One night Stella comes to the show but doesn’t believe Jude when she says she’s Desiree’s daughter. Fast forward and jump to New York, Kennedy is trying to make it as an actress. Jude and Reese show up there as they had to move to get Reese’s surgery. Jude gives Kennedy a picture of their mothers as kids and they strike up a more friendly relationship. Stella learns about Jude, and finally visits Mallard as her mother suffers from Alzheimer’s. Kennedy eventually comes home and Stella comes clean to her daughter. Final jump, Jude is in medical school and learns her grandmother has died. She and Reese head back to Mallard for the funeral.

The book is largely about the different people we are and could be, and what happens when we cut off our past to be those people. Stella pretends to be white and has a whole new family. Reese runs off to be a man. Kennedy keeps trying to leave, unsuccessfully. Jude even has to go to LA to be herself. The foils of Stella and Reese, while not always directly compared, are interesting because it shows that this cutting off isn’t always a bad thing. Reese’s parents were abusive and he never heads back, although he still understands the importance of family and wants to be one with Jude. I thought it was a really interesting look at identity and race, and the lengths we are willing to go there.

I also just really loved Reese and all of their queer friends in LA. I wish there was more of that in the second half of the book. But it was so cool to see someone go through gender affirming care in the seventies and see that found family that they all have. Plus trans male representation is still so rare, it feels like something to treasure whenever it pops up.

The characters and the plot were all so compelling in this book, I really loved going through it. It’s Bennett’s second novel, I’ll have to try and find her first as well.

“Beneath the Sugar Sky” by Seanan McGuire

This is the third book of the Wayward Children series I’ve been enjoying (with the first and second books also covered) and I liked it so much more than the second installment. This returns to the cast of the first book, with a new protagonist, but it revisits the location and characters I loved in the original installment that got me hooked.

The book’s main character is Cora who is from an underwater world where she was a mermaid. She loves swimming and is athletic, but it’s implied that she takes her own life in response to bullying about her weight and that’s how she gets to her world. She’s a new arrival at Eleanor West’s house, and her friend is her roommate Nadya who also came from a water world. They are hanging out in the pond when Rini plunges through the water looking for her mom, Sumi. Sumi died in the first book, so they go to get Christopher and Kade to sort this out. All of them first go to find Sumi’s body, then to the Land of the Dead to see Nancy (main character of the first book) to get her spirit, and then finally to Confection to get her Nonsense. Nadya elects to stay in the Land of the Dead in exchange for her spirit, but in the end they successfully return with Sumi after the Baker of Confection bakes her back together.

One of the highlights of the series is the diversity. Having the main character being called fat despite her athleticism, and especially go to a land of sugar and deal with all those feelings, is really cool to read about. You don’t often encounter that perspective in a fantasy novel. Plus the Baker is a girl with a hijab from Brooklyn, and that was interesting as she was originally called a god by some of the characters. She had to clarify that she isn’t particularly religious.

I have to wonder how the series will eventually deal with the potential relationships that spring up between the characters. Kade clearly still likes Nancy, even with her in the Land of the Dead and him stuck at Eleanor’s. Christopher and Cora also appear to be developing a relationship, or at least a crush, which is unfortunate as Christopher keeps proclaiming that he loves the Skeleton Girl. Seems like an unfortunate love triangle to be stuck in.

The logic of these worlds was also developed further here, but I’m still confused about it all. That doesn’t really detract though, half of the characters are confused as well so it does truly feel like a bonus if you’re able to reread and gleam a little more of the organization from the text. For now though, I get enough to get by and I’m pleased with that.

This series is so much fun, I’m really glad to keep going with it. I hope that the rest are similar to this one instead of departing from the setting that got me hooked in the first place.

“This is How You Lose the Time War” by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

So many different people recommended this book to me that I think it was a victim of its own success. The book is fine, certainly, but after all that hype I definitely expected… a little more.

The book is pretty straightforward, opposing factions of Garden and the Agency (nature versus technology) start up a correspondence. The two send each other letters back and forth through various creative mediums across time and space. Eventually they fall in love, Red (of the Agency) is told to poison Blue (of the Garden). Red warns Blue, but she is poisoned anyways. Red goes back in time and infiltrates Garden to get her an antidote, and the book ends with Blue getting Red out of jail.

There’s a lot to like here, the take on time travel is refreshing in its simplicity and lack of drawn out explanations. Nature vs tech is basically a trope so you really don’t need a ton of explanations to get the dynamic. There is no ethics of what they’re doing either, the entire focus is on the relationship between these women as they develop a fondness for each other separate of their factions.

But that’s also my biggest issue: I don’t feel like I get to know either of them very well. The only characters we meet are basically husks you can project whatever you’d like onto. They don’t have distinctive personalities, and you’d be forgiven for mixing them up.

After all that I just expected… more. A deeper connection. More of character development rather than a single relationship. It is good and it’s at least a quick read, but I do feel I just wanted to speed through it after a certain point.

“How to Hold a Grudge: From Resentment to Contentment – the Power of Grudges to Transform Your Life” by Sophie Hannah

This is another book where I am not sure how it ended up on my reading list. But it was very different from what I thought it’d be going in!

First of all, this book is fun! It’s a delightful read! Hannah is not shy about her own grudges as she goes through them, and she is very understanding about wherever you are in your journey with grudges. She talks about her decision to write the book and how she used to be a people pleaser and that informed her decisions here and obsession with grudges. Even if you aren’t 100% in, it’s amusing to read and such a fun ride.

It also is laid out very clearly. There’s chapters dedicated to how to evaluate your grudges, and how to even just think about grudges. It ends with how to be a good grudge holder and try to minimize yourself as a grudgee. You have to be responsible about having grudges and recognize that you are the subject of other grudges too.

What is really nice too is that Hannah isn’t a therapist, but there are two experts that weigh in occasionally about her thoughts. So you do get how an expert thinks about things. Of course these are all positive comments, but I found it reassuring that experts were indeed consulted in the process of this book.

I think my really only complaint is that this process seems so… involved. And this process is laid out, but you also have to navigate Hannah’s grudge stories and interjections to really lay out “ok this is what I have to do.” And the fact that all that is super daunting is really what stops me from going all in on this methodology right now. Don’t get me wrong, I will absolutely be using elements of this book that work for me and implementing advice for new grudges, but I don’t think I’ll be as organized about it as the author is. Which is fine, but I kinda wish the activation energy was smaller.

Hannah has turned this into a podcast! It looks like it ran from 2018-2024, I’m excited to check those episodes out as well to keep thinking about all of this.

“Technically You Started It” by Lana Wood Johnson

This book hit so perfectly for me. I think I truly was the ideal audience going in. At first I thought I was reading it because the whole thing is written as a text conversation. Which is so creative and unique, so I figured that was why I was interested. Then turns out that the main character is demisexual, and so is the author. And then I realized oh no, that’s probably how it first got on my radar.

The book’s premise is pretty simple, Martin Nathaniel Munroe II texts Haley to see which question she picked on an AP U.S. History exam. The rest of the book consists of the conversations between the two of them as they get to know each other. Only issues is that there’s two Martin Nathanial Munroe II’s and Haley doesn’t know which one it is. He clarifies “The good one” and she thinks she knows, but she gets it wrong, and he doesn’t realize until it’s too late.

Eventually, Martin wants to clear things up and date Haley, but they keep being prevented from meeting. First Haley gets into a fight with a friend, then Martin falls and bangs his shoulder up. At that point, their mutual friend Jack grabs his phone and reveals what’s been going on to Haley. She feels let down, but eventually it gets sorted out and they start dating as Martin confesses his love over text and intention to sort things out in person. The book ends with Martin telling Haley to quit looking at her phone so he can kiss her.

This all super worked on me. I loved that you gradually got to know the characters as they got to know each other. They tell each other about parent stuff, friend stuff, teenage stuff, and to facilitate this they pretend that the other person is a random internet friend. The author definitely gets how teenagers talk while making the format work, there’s probably a few too many friends for me to keep track of, but that honestly isn’t essential to the plot. Thankfully the multiple Martins thing is clarified on the inside jacket, so going in blind might be a different experience but I enjoyed picking up on Martin trying to befriend Haley while she texts him thinking she’s texting his cousin.

There’s also a really great way it deals with their orientations. As internet friends, they discuss how they feel about crushes and attraction and all that. Haley doesn’t feel the spark until after, if at all. Which is why she broke up with Jack. Martin reveals that he’s bisexual, and talks about how his attraction for men vs women is different for him. It’s nice in that it goes in depth not just for the demisexual Haley, but also for the much more common bisexuality of Martin.

Yes it’s fluff, yes it’s cute. No I don’t care, I loved reading this. It was an easy read and I tore through the last 100 or so pages because I just wanted to know that they’d end up ok. If anything, I wish it kept going longer so that I could see them in a relationship, but it makes more sense for the story to stop there with this format. But a great way to show the asexual spectrum and an interesting format!

“Katabasis” by R.F. Kuang

I absolutely adored the first book by Kuang that I read (Babel which you can read about on here as well) so I was pleased when I got this fancy copy of Katabasis for this past Christmas. It has plenty of the elements of Babel that I liked, including criticizing academia and elaborate worldbuilding, but it is more optimistic than Babel while being slightly hindered in its character development by the restricting setting.

The premise of this book is evident if you know your classics, katabasis means a trip to the Underworld. The idea is that Alice’s graduate advisor Professor Grimes has died and she needs him to graduate, so she plans to go into Hell and pull him back. Her research mate Peter ends up coming with her. The resulting trip is a mix of Orpheus, Dante’s Inferno, The Wasteland, and other sources that describe the afterlife. They don’t find him in the Fields of Asphodel, or Pride (a library), or Desire (a student center). Along the way Alice discovers that she’s immune to the effects of the Lethe river, Grimes gave her a tattoo that keeps her from forgetting anything so her memory is unaffected. Additionally they get into a fight when Alice peeks at Peter’s notes and thinks that he’s going to trade her soul for Grimes’. (He isn’t, he wants to trade his own.) Traveling to the next area they meet Elspeth, a former student who committed suicide and has since been traveling the Underworld learning about it. She tells them about the Kipkes, a couple plus their child who came down willingly to try and find a way back as well. They’re after anything living as you need blood to get magic to work in Hell.

Alice decided to try and trick Elspeth into telling them more, and gets them both thrown off of the boat. They travel farther through darker sins, until they fall into a trap the Kipkes laid. While stuck there they have time to talk about their past. Alice reveals that Grimes tried to assault her, and Peter that he has Crohn’s disease, a chronic condition that results in him missing class and meetings repeatedly. Peter then figures out a way to get Alice out, while he is stuck there and bled to death by the Kipkes. Alice travels on and makes it to the city of Dis where a shade who calls himself John Gradus is her guide. Dis is filled with scholars trying to write dissertations on why they should get reborn, but they never get feedback or any indication if they’re heading in the right direction. Alice eventually leaves, and gets caught in another Kipke trap with a cat. The cat dies, and Alice uses its blood to escape. She then decides to abandon Grimes and try to kill the Kipkes.

She lays a trap for them, and manages to eventually throw the patriarch into the Lethe. His wife and son walk in after him. In the aftermath, Gradus (who left her right before the fight) appears and reveals that he saved her by pushing the Kipke into the river. His boat appears and he goes onward to be reborn. Alice is then found by Elspeth and they make up. Elspeth decides to help Alice and then make her way through the courts to be reborn. To help Alice, she gives her a pomegranate tree. The key here is that nothing living can grow in hell, so this is a True Contradiction and therefore very powerful. Alice goes to take it to the ruler of hell to bargain for her life. Elspeth takes her there, where the ruler of hell (many versions of him exist, here he’s Lord Yama) grants her an audience with Grimes. Once there, Grimes is so slimy that Alice instead sets up Peter’s idea of how to get Grimes out of hell: an exchange of souls. But instead of exchanging Grimes into a living body, she exchanges his soul for Peter’s. Peter emerges, and they head back to the surface together.

Alright that ended up being quite long, but there’s a lot here that I want to talk about. First, I am so impressed by the scholarship that Kuang carried out, there’s a lot of discourse on Hell and the various adaptations as you go through. A particular point of contention is the layout, and there’s even images of the characters’ maps at the back of the book. There’s also math-y things that I didn’t quite understand, but the principle behind magic in this book is that you set up a paradox. Something like Zeno’s paradox, which says that movement is impossible as in order to get from A to B you have to get halfway there, and halfway again, and halfway again, meaning you can’t move. This sets up a spell rendering someone immobile. And you dissolve it by using calculus. So the premise is quite cool and just feasible enough that you don’t need the math, but a lot of what Peter does gets hand waved by Alice who’s a linguist and doesn’t understand it fully either. So it ends up working really well as a system in this world!

Next, on a more nitpicky level, I thought the fight between Alice and Peter was pretty dumb. It’s obvious from the beginning that Peter wasn’t going to do harm to Alice and the whole things felt contrived. What I did appreciate about their dynamic though is that they’re a great example of how academia can make you feel as though you’re in direct opposition to other students, when really that isn’t the case. These two are kind of forced into that as there’s barely any other characters in the book, which as another complaint did feel limiting at times. You kind of get to know Elspeth, basically no one else is as recurring. Gradus is supposed to be a mystery, and he also doesn’t even make an appearance until the end. It’s a little frustrating as the characters in Babel felt so interesting and fleshed out. Peter’s reveal that he has Crohn’s disease opens up a super interesting space to talk about disability in academia, but then he dies immediately afterwards and this isn’t discussed further.

Finally there’s the ending. I did quite appreciate that it ends on a happy note, Alice is free of her rotten advisor and gets to live with Peter happily. It makes quite the change from Babel where everyone dies. I am of course going to nitpick though. I wish we got more of them together, to talk about ongoing issues that exist. So much of the first half talks about Alice’s experiences in academia as a woman, it would be nice to hear that but about Peter and disabled researchers. Or even that they’re going back to a shitty department and university, getting rid of one advisor doesn’t solve it all. Alice is clearly no longer under the delusion that academia is the end all be all, but it doesn’t say what to do next. Contrast with Babel where there was a clear message to keep fighting. I’m not sure what they’ll do back from Hell other than live a little, which is nice and progress for them, but as a reader I feel a little unsatisfied.

Having said all that, I loved this book. I thought the world building was so cool and the magic system super interesting. I loved the characters that we do get to know, and I appreciate anything that tackles how stupid graduate school is. I’ll likely read anything that Kuang pops out next.

“The Blues Brothers: An epic friendship, the rise of improv, and the making of an American film classic” by Daniel de Vise

Alright here’s the long-awaited Blues Brothers post. Starting with the book that I’m so glad I dug out of the bottom shelf of a bookstore and thought looked like fun.

The book starts off as a biography of John Belushi and is primarily that for most of the work. It details his upbringing before swapping over to Dan Ackroyd and talking about him as well. They get to SNL together, and then finally we get to the movie about halfway through. The discussion of the movie itself is insanely detailed, talking about specific shots and how much they cost and who got injured. And then there’s the reception of the film, and then denouement of the book that largely ends with Belushi’s death (although there is also an epilogue talking about the legacy of the movie too).

Now I mentioned the details surrounding the movie above, but so much of the book is ridiculously detailed. De Vise has quotes from seemingly everyone that John and Dan grew up with, plus cast members that they worked with and other stars. It becomes clear when you get to the Acknowledgements section, but there must have been a ridiculous amount of interviews that went into this work. And scouring of newspapers and the like.

My only complaint is that I’m not a great connoisseur of cultural figures in the 1970s, there were some instances where a name would be dropped with great gravitas and I would have no idea who it was. Even with that said, there are so many mini biographies that I can hardly say de Vise overlooked anyone, it was just when given no information whatsoever I got a little lost.

When I was reading the book it had been quite a while since I’d seen the movie, so of course I wanted to rewatch it and see how I liked it (or if I could spot some Easter eggs mentioned in the book). I was a little worried that it hadn’t held up well or that I wouldn’t like it now.

Those worries were totally unfounded, turns out that the movie still rips! I love it even more now knowing that so few people were hurt in the car crash scenes and that they totaled something like 103 cars while filming. I thought it was brilliant and the book really only enhanced the viewing experience.

Luckily for me, this movie is staying on my list of favorites. And now I have a new book to go with it and give me unsufferable trivia to spout throughout watching it. So I really cannot recommend this combo enough.

“Diogenes: The Rebellious Life and Revolutionary Philosophy of the Original Cynic” by Inger N.I. Kuin

I have a soft spot for Diogenes and his life as a philosophical figure, but even though I have a degree in philosophy I hadn’t really learned much about him. I feel as though he has also had a bit of a resurgence recently, with a lot of people gravitating to his hatred of the rich and advice to keep life simple. So when I found this book at a beloved bookstore, I snatched it up.

The book covers quite a lot as its aims are both historical and philosophical. Diogenes didn’t write any books, he lived his philosophy out. So the book covers his life as a man, and the various myths surrounding him, as well as his philosophy. That covers about three quarters of the content, the rest is his legacy and how he influenced other philosophers and thinkers throughout history.

There is a lot in the book, and my only real complaint is that it sometimes feels like there are a lot of names and groups and places thrown around that I don’t recognize. Tragically there’s just a lot of history and politics of Diogenes’ life that I really don’t know that well. This does go away once you start getting more into Diogenes’ philosophy and thinkings and less strictly biography stuff. But this is an ambitious project so it’s no wonder that there’s a lot packed in here.

And I honestly really love the project of the book, I think the most interesting parts of the text are when Kuin is dissecting whether an anecdote about Diogenes is historically accurate or not. Kuin does this by corroborating multiple sources, looking at where writers got different stories, and if it is consistent with Diogenes’ teachings. The result is a very thorough look at Diogenes’ life and work, and a deeper understanding than if the book focused on either his life or his teachings.

This was a really interesting read, I’m so glad that I picked it up. It really is a shame that Diogenes isn’t taught more in philosophical courses and I appreciated getting a crash course on him here.

“I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons” by Peter S. Beagle

It’s another installment of “I picked this book up because it has a dragon on the cover.” And honestly, this method works scarily well, it nearly always gives me exactly what I want out of a fantasy series, which is primarily dragons. I didn’t realize the author wrote The Last Unicorn as well, not that I’ve read that book, but I remember the movie being scarring when I was growing up. I don’t remember it in great detail, but the vibe here is rather similar where it is both a whimsical fantasy story and there are real life consequences to actions that the characters grapple with.

The book opens with Robert, a dragon exterminator who loves dragons. He has a few a helpful pets, but he is hired to exterminate the castle of its dragons when Princess Cerise wants them gone to impress a Prince (she’d been batting them away until Prince Reginald arrives, who looks like the Platonic ideal of a Prince but doesn’t quite act like it). Robert is then accidentally hired to help Prince Reginald slay a dragon, to make him more Prince-ly in the eyes of his father so that he can marry the Princess. They get a little more than they bargain for, there’s a group of huge dragons terrorizing part of the kingdom and something like over half of the retinue dies as Cerise didn’t want to send them home.

From there, they realize that a wizard sent the dragons, and that it’s the wizard Dahl who was supposedly killed by Reginald’s father. Now that he’s back, they head to Reginald’s kingdom but get there too late, Reginald is captured and then his father is turned into a throne. On the way back Dahl tries to stop them since he recognizes Robert’s connection with the dragons and wants his power, but Robert works with the dragon sent after them to burn Dahl into ash. In the process, Robert and Cerise realize that they’re in love, and when they head back Robert tries to hide in his room but is eventually coaxed out to see Cerise. The book ends with them going to talk to Cerise’s parents and Reginald and Robert resolving to eventually free Reginald’s father.

Overall, the book is quite fun to read. I love the dragons, and the characters are a delightful mix of believable and comical. They all start out as stereotypes, and through the story become more and more humanized so you can’t help but care for them and their antics. I do wish Robert’s friends that help with his extermination got more screen time, but that’s alright.

My biggest complaint has to do with the writing style. There are points, especially towards the end where the action gets going, where aspects of the action will just be skipped over in the text and can make it hard to follow. This happens when the King is turned into a throne, there’s a part where Cerise and Robert must move in order for it to make sense, but that isn’t written anywhere. You have to pause to make sense of it all which really takes you out of it. I’m not sure if it is an error, but it happened multiple times so I suspect that it’s part of Beagle’s style. It’s quite hard to describe in advance of reading the situation, so it isn’t really a reason to not read the book, but I found it rather irritating.

The ending with Robert and Cerise getting together is also equal parts annoying and just simply expected. It’s visible from a mile away that they’re going to get together and that annoyed the shit out of me since it was just so trope-y. We could just let the dragon nerd be a dragon nerd and not marry the princess but I guess not. Again, not a reason to not read it, it was pulled off perfectly fine, but I was hoping that a fantasy story that messes with some tropes related to dragons and all might not have that ending.

I’m hoping that there’ll be a sequel eventually since one was teased with the ending, I do like the characters enough to keep going with them. And there’s some intriguing world building with Robert’s powers. So despite all of the complaints above, I would still recommend this book and will keep going with the series myself.

“Water Moon” by Samantha Sotto Yambao

I found this book when it was featured at a bookstore as an exciting new fantasy story. And I’ll be so honest here, this book is super not for me. I didn’t like the story, found the conflict to be contrived, and the plot didn’t make integrated sense. I do think part of this is that it should be advertised differently, it’s much more of a romance than fantasy, and maybe that would help. But I’m also very confused why this was so hyped up when it doesn’t technically hold together very well.

The story starts with Hana, she’s the daughter of a pawnshop owner who pawns people’s regrets. The customers come in, trade out their choices for tea, and go on their way. The day Hana takes over the shop, her father steals a choice and disappears. Meanwhile Kei walks in and offers to help her, and the two of them go on a journey through Hana’s world to try and find her father. They fall in love, learn about the darker aspects of Hana’s world and life, and then are eventually reunited in Kei’s world.

Where to start with this book. First of all, the main advertisement seems false to me. This has a lot more romance, not in terms of steaminess or anything, but in terms of coherence. The romance is a much bigger driving factor in the story than the world building. In fact the world building feels like there isn’t a real coherence to the world we explore, it’s more “we go here and then here and then here” and each place has it’s own logic and rules. There isn’t anything linking it together other than maybe the author wanting to create these disparate places. Versus Hana and Kei are constantly whining about how they shouldn’t be together and yet are anyways. I’m not a big romance person, but I got so sick of the same talking points again and again with them.

The conflicts between them were also very contrived. They have a couple fights, the first is when Kei learns that Hana pawns choices to get a piece of someone’s soul to instill in babies in Hana’s world. And this comes out of freaking nowhere, plus Kei is a physicist. As a scientist I would think he would be more bothered by the existence of souls and all that, before getting mad about Hana taking them. Potentially this is a cultural difference, but to go from 0-60 like that felt like we just needed a fight here.

I think that’s enough of me dunking on this book. If it was accurately advertised as a romance rather than a trip through a fantasy world, I probably wouldn’t have picked this up as I would have known that it would piss me off. There’s minimal references to the romance on the back of the book and that feels absurd to me.

“The Starless Sea” by Erin Morgenstern

This is yet another book where I have no idea how it ended up on my to read list but I am so glad that it did! I truly feel as though this book was able to capture something specific and essential to my current existence, and I really treasure those opportunities when they come along.

The book starts with a story about a pirate and a girl. Then it changes to an acolyte pledging herself to a place that seems like a library. Then it changes again. Zachary is a graduate student studying video games when he checks a book out of a library that appears to have a chapter about him as a child. He does some digging, and thinks he’ll get more information from a literary party in NYC so he heads down and meets Dorian. Dorian promises him more information in return for help stealing a book from a secret society he used to belong to. Around here the interspersed separate chapters change from the library book Zachary found to the book he stole for Dorian. Zachary gets the book but they’re found out and have to make a quick getaway. They start to go through a painted door down to the library-like place, but Dorian is stopped and only Zachary makes it. There Zachary finds the Keeper, an old man who keeps watch. He also meets Mirabel, the person painting the doors.

Mirabel and Zachary go to save Dorian and bring him back down. Once back, Zachary is still trying to find answers to his questions. Now the interspersed separate stories change to The Ballad of Simon and Eleanor, a book that Zachary finds. Zachary hunts down Dorian once he’s recovered and they start to go through the information together. It becomes clear that these stories are about all of them, there’s a chapter on Dorian as a kid, and Mirabel/the Keeper are Fate/Time trapped in a doomed romance. Simon and Eleanor are also Mirabel’s parents. Zachary and Dorian also are flirting with each other. They head back to the Keeper and find the leader of the secret society Zachary stole from, who threatens Dorian. A rift opens in the floor, Dorian and the leader fall through, leaving the Keeper and Zachary behind. The Keeper reveals that the leader was an acolyte once who saw that this place was going to be destroyed and wanted to stop it by removing every way to get to it. Mirabel and Zachary then descend even farther to try and find Dorian.

The interspersed chapters are now Zachary’s friend from school, Kat’s, diary as she tries to find Zachary. Dorian falls into a honey sea and is pulled out by Eleanor. He travels with her for a bit and then separates to find an inn. From there he heads into a demon-infested world to try and find Zachary. Meanwhile Zachary is separated from Mirabel, but he finds his way separately through the depths, locates Simon, and then finds the honey sea. He then turns around to find Dorian, but Dorian stabs him through the heart. Now dead, Zachary brings the key to the end of the story to the bees, and the honey sea starts to rise. Meanwhile, Dorian has found a heart left by Fate and uses that to revive Zachary as the Keeper and Mirabel locate a new Harbor to start some new stories.

I am honestly unsure that my summary makes much sense, I had to leave many things out. There’s also an Owl King and the bees are everywhere and cats. There’s more interspersed chapters revealing the mythology of the place, and probably hundreds of things I didn’t pick up on. If you want everything to be wrapped up in a neat bow, this is not the tale for you. There’s symbols and questions, and characters that are metaphors and some that are not. You have to work for it and be ok with a few loose threads. Myself, I was thrilled. I loved the detective work and how elaborate the world was in that you could read books from the universe!

Primarily though, this is a book about telling stories. Zachary is doing graduate research on how video games tell stories. The underground library place is a repository of stories that the acolytes write down, the Keeper keeps record of, and the secret society was originally supposed to protect. Once the characters get below everything, that sea of honey is described as a place where stories can manifest objects, depending on what story you tell yourself. It’s the power of humans to create narratives made physical. There’s discussions about “the story” of the book as though it is its own separate force, such as bringing Simon back into “the story” when he’s found by Zachary, and how Zachary brings the story everywhere he goes. At the end, he tells Mirabel a story to get the key to end it. And of course the last 50 pages when I was desperately hoping to delay the ending, it is all a wonderful musing on what it means for a story to end. I felt like the author really anticipated what I would be feeling there and I feel a little called out as a result.

This hit so many notes that are just important to me personally. All of the references to other media and Zachary feeling as though all his life is are these references, that got me (as a fan of postmodern writing and someone who only has like 3 jokes that I tell over and over, that sure got me). There’s the fact that Zachary is a graduate student trying to figure his life out when all he wants to do is read books, that’s me for sure. The video games as stories is something I’ve been trying to engage with more and having that as a subplot as something that Zachary and his friend from university are both into was really fun. I think I would have loved this book even if I wasn’t in graduate school, but having that extra touch really heightened the experience and probably made it so that this was the perfect moment for me to pick up this book. And it just made me love reading and stories and wish that I had in fact more time to spend on consuming them all. What a wonderful book.

“In the Dream House” by Carmen Maria Machado

This is another book that has been on my list for a while, and while the material is pretty sad and dark at times, I’m so glad that I picked it up. It’s about an abusive relationship between the author, and the partner she refers to as “the woman in the Dream House.”

The plot is fairly simple and beautifully universal in its specificity. The author meets a beautiful woman and they start dating. She ends up doing long distance with this woman as she’s in an open relationship, but then its just the two of them. And it becomes clear that something is wrong, her partner starts fights and insults her and throws things at her. And then will insist that she doesn’t remember anything bad. This continues until the abuser starts dating someone else and breaks up with the author, who is devastated. The author ends up reconnecting with the abuser’s initial partner, the one she was initially dating, and they end up married. I personally found a lot of comfort in the very last line of the acknowledgements that the author would do it all again, it led her to her wife.

This book is so thoughtful I almost need to read it again. Every chapter starts with “The Dream House as” and then a category or something for the chapter. The timeline jumps around but the story never ceases to make sense. The Dream House starts as a metaphor most clearly, then it solidifies into an actual house that the abuser lives in. And it sort of melds into both. There’s the metaphorical aspects and the real aspects. I was confused about the phrase “the woman in the Dream House” as I figured the author was described more as haunting the place with her cries, but it makes a sort of sense. She anonymized the abuser and connects her to the house where the author felt trapped, but the woman has more power in that space.

The story is accompanied by footnotes indicating different tropes from folklore. Which is a really cool touch, it makes the narrative feel more like a cautionary tale or as something happening to a fictional person. There is a brief discussion at the end about how Machado wanted her experiences to be unique, but when she started researching there are so many women telling the exact same story. Which is how I felt as well coming out of my breakup, its funny that we so desperately want to have unique experiences while also feeling as though as aren’t alone. But turning it into folklore is a way to highlight the individual, while noting how it combines with other tales.

Machado makes it clear, this isn’t supposed to be a definitive text on lesbian abuse. But it is really cool that she did all of that work and added it into the text. She writes about lesbians trying to get their experiences recognized, and how the way lesbians subvert gender roles has made that hard. And the importance of knowing that abuse can come from within the queer community, and that it almost certainly will. Because we are all people! We are all flawed! There is no way to guarantee that a community is going to be entirely wholesome. It’s definitely been something that I have thought about, but it is shockingly something that not many people are open about. You have to experience it, usually, to know that it happens.

So much was presented so thoughtfully and creatively in this book, I am so glad that I picked it up. It is masterful, and I think it will stick with me for a while.

“Down Among the Sticks and Bones” by Seanan McGuire

This is another book in the series that to Every Heart a Doorway is in, which I read and absolutely loved, so I was really excited to pick up another book in the series. This book is very different, it is more of a prequel to the other book, and it follows Jack and Jill and their experiences within the Moors.

It starts with Jacqueline and Jillian as kids and describes how their parents wanted them to be perfect kids, and set them against each other. When a stairway appears in their attic, they head down together and run into the castle of the Master. Jill stays with him to be a pretty princess, and Jack heads off with the local mad scientist to learn science. Jack gets close to people in the village, gets a girlfriend, while Jill dreams of becoming a vampire herself. They are forced to leave when Jill kills Jack’s girlfriend before becoming a vampire and the mad scientist sends them back to their world to escape an angry mob. It ends with them reappearing in their parents’ house.

This was a very different book from the first one. The narration style is similar of course, but it is more an in depth look at these specific two characters and what makes them tick, while I liked the color of all the different worlds in the first book. I do think the book does a lot to help make you understand the events of the previous book, but I didn’t enjoy the experience as much as the first one.

So it was a good read if you are like me and are invested in this universe already, but wouldn’t say that it added much beyond my understanding of these characters. I hope that the mad scientist’s tech with the doors comes back later, but I’m hoping for a more expansive look in the next novel I pick up in the series.

“Females” by Andrea Long Chu

This is a short book that I again, have no idea how it ended up on my reading list. But I am glad that I picked it up. It’s based on a play by Valerie Solanas, the author of SCUM Manifesto who later on shot Andy Warhol. This was actually good timing, my partner had just read SCUM Manifesto and could explain some of those references to me.

The idea behind this work is that being female is a state of mind, with nothing to do with gender or sex. Being female means repressing your wants in order to make room for someone else’s wants. And damn if that doesn’t resonate with me watching myself and other femmes make ourselves smaller so that someone else can take up space. Anyways, everyone is female and also everyone hates it. We all can’t stand that we do this to ourselves, but we do it anyways. And sometimes, we even seek it out.

Long Chu’s perspective as a trans women I think is really key here, she talks a lot about her process of transitioning and what she was thinking about and the art she was creating. I thought it was fascinating to hear about her experiences, and how she loops that into Solanas’ work. I’m not super familiar with the play or anything, but it is explained pretty sufficiently in the text. She also pulls in other works like the movie “Don Jon” featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and such. Everything just revolves around this idea of demonstrating that we are all, in fact, female even if we may identify as male.

I thought this was really thought-provoking and interesting to read. I’m not sure if I agree with all of it, sometimes it seems as though people like being female, but it is a really interesting look at gender dynamics. I love anything that separates gendered terms from gender/sex so it was up my alley. Anyways, it’s short and sweet so pick it up if you haven’t yet!

“Quichotte” by Salman Rushdie

This is another book that has been on my list for a while but I cannot remember how it got on there. I almost enjoy that more though, as a result I start off not super excited to read it and partway through realize “oh, this is why I was interested!” and get very invested in the story.

Quichotte is essentially an Indian-American Don Quixote, he has watched too much TV and wants to win the hand of Miss Salma, a celebrity TV actress and host. He invents himself a son named Sancho, who then talks to an Italian cricket and comes to life. They travel across America to win Miss Salma’s heart while Sancho realizes that the world isn’t a welcoming place for immigrants/non-White folks. They also start to have hallucinations, for example a town in New Jersey where people are turning into mastodons turns out to be a vision.

Meanwhile, chapters on Quichotte are interspersed with Sancho’s narration and the Author’s. The Author is similarly estranged from his sibling and son, and as time progresses the worlds of the characters and the author intertwine. First, Sancho senses the Author digging around in Quichotte’s brain, and then events of the book start to play out in the author’s world.

A theme of the book, beyond needing the absurd to make sense of anything, is that the world is going to end. And it starts to, Quichotte then convinces Miss Salma to head to a lab with him to go through a portal together. They burst into the Author’s world only to choke on the air that is too big for them to breathe.

I started off intrigued but a little meh on the book. For context, it was published in 2019 during the first Trump presidency. There are allusions to an orange, deranged president, nothing concrete, but it clearly is inspired by that time and those policies. It does make sense that to try and make sense of a tv president you need a tv addicted man. And that you would go a little crazy.

Once the author emerged as a character I was much more intrigued. There are passages that address what he hopes to do with this work, and notes that he makes for himself about the characters. The interplay of the characters coming into this world as his world intercedes on theirs I think culminates in a really accurate portrayal of what it’s like to live in the Trump era. You feel as though you’re the only sane one, and media consumption is driving you nuts. The only way to cope is to pretend as though it is all normal, like the folks being turned into mastodons. There’s something fundamental that this work captures really well, and I think I might have to reread it to fully put my finger on it, but it spoke to me so strongly.

Now of course I would like this book, at its heart it is a postmodern masterpiece where there are so many movie, tv, song, and pop culture references that it might overwhelm you. But I think that the culmination of it all creates something that is inherently very relatable. I am not an immigrant, but I think it also captures what it’s like to be an immigrant without getting too far into policy or the violence (even though there is some). But just the insane unreality of what we are living in is expertly captured and pinned under a microscope.

“Every Heart a Doorway” by Seanan McGuire

This is another book that has been on my list to read for ages. I saw it getting kicked around in lists of books with asexual main characters, and I knew a few friends that read it and really liked it. Honestly I surpassed all of my expectations, I loved the world of this book and I’m really excited to dive into the rest of the series. 

The book follows Nancy, a girl who has just returned from the Halls of the Dead to parents who thought she was kidnapped and don’t understand why their daughter is behaving so differently now. They send her to Eleanor, a woman who runs a home for troubled children like Nancy. Hidden from the parents though, is that this is a home/school for many similar children who went to other fantasy worlds, returned, and have a hard time adjusting. Nancy’s roommate is Sumi who went to a Nonsense world, and her friends include Jack and Jill, two twins that went to the Moors, a land ruled by a vampire. Jack becomes an apprentice to a mad scientist and Jill becomes the vampire lord’s pet. There’s also Kade who went to a fantasy realm and was kicked out when he realized he is actually a boy.

Things heat up when Sumi is discovered head, with her hands cut off. Then another girl is discovered dead with her eyes removed. Nancy, Kade, Jack, and Christopher (from a skeleton realm) stick together to try and survive, especially since the other kids suspect that the creepy kids from death realms and the mad scientist might be behind this. Eventually it’s revealed that Jill has been behind this, she’s trying to create a perfect girl from pieces of girls to make someone who is wanted by every realm so that she can return to the Moors. Jack stabs her sister and is then able to bring them both back to reanimate her. The book ends with Nancy discovering an old note from Sumi that tells her to write her own story, leading to her rediscovery of a door to the Halls of the Dead and returning.

Now the best part of the book is the way it turns some fantasy tropes on their heads. After the kids return home, what happens next? Of course they have a difficult time with their parents and peers. There is some order to the worlds, some are Nonsense and some are Logic, but I honestly never really understood that. But it is really amusing to hear about the different worlds. One character went to a spider realm, Sumi went to a candy realm or something, and just about every version thereof. And each child is molded to that realm meaning that the personalities are just as vibrant as the realms.

Also fun is the representation. Nancy is pretty openly asexual and talks about it a lot, including dropping that she isn’t aromantic. As Kade flirts with her it makes her anxious until she explains that she just finds people pretty, leading to his understanding (even though she never used the word with him). Kade similarly is openly trans from the time we meet him, and it leads to him being rejected by both his parents and the world he went to. I would love more information on his experiences, but it was heartbreaking to hear about how badly he wants to remember his experiences despite the pain from not being about to go back ever. And I love that the main love interest is trans, that’s so great for people to see.

The book is really short, I think it’s technically a novella. But for all of that it establishes a universe from the beginning and doesn’t waste time getting to the main mystery. I’m so excited to check out the rest of the books and hopefully expand this whimsical world.