Review: Wolf Hall

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A hero rises through honesty, integrity and sangfroid. It's refreshing to read a story about someone who doesn't harbour a deep and tortured darkness inside. A true Stoic. Also, there were a hell of a lot of Thomases knocking around back then.

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Review: The Anubis Gates

The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's utterly ridiculous, so it's best gulped down quickly. (Don't, for example, make a book club around it.) Satisfying twists, and more insane characters that I had bargained for. For a time travel book, Powers' London is slapdash and minimally researched, I'm sure, but the narrative doesn't slow down long enough for that to matter. The mechanics of magic and time travel may have raised a couple of inconsistencies in the plot, but if I were to go back and figure them out then I'd surely wreck the book for myself entirely. Best read with an open mind.

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Review: Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It's Doing to Us

Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It's Doing to Us by Will Storr
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Funny, smart, and eye-opening. Will Storr is a textbook New Journalist - he's front and center in his books, gallavanting around the world to talk to strange and fascinating people and immerse himself in strange and fascinating subcultures. What's most compelling about his writing is watching his opinion change and evolve as he explores, as he is scrupulously openminded in his conclusions. Finishing Selfie left me with as many questions as I began with, but undoubtedly better informed.

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Review: Artemis

Artemis by Andy Weir
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I loved The Martian. The protagonist solved incredibly complicated problems with a lot of calculations and a dash of dad joke humor. The stakes were so high - a dude stranded alone on Mars with a busted spacesuit - that the character clung to puns and math in the face of existential terror.
Unfortunately, it seems that I inferred that emotional depth. The narrator of Artemis also clings to puns and math to solve a complex problem in space, and while the cast has expanded the characters haven't gained any further depth.
Suspense in Artemis doesn't come from character or atmosphere, but from numbers - the oxygen is running out, the batteries are losing charge, the level of x is approaching y. Success is measured by how often people high-five each other, and romance is measured by teenagers rolling their eyes at each other. The whole thing reads like it's written to be PG-13.
Finally: Andy Weir is a white, middle aged computer programmer-turned-novelist from Mountain View, California. I can't help but question his choice to make his narrator a teenage Muslim girl. The plot certainly isn't affected by it, and it feels artificial. Could he be angling for wider readership? Could he be writing with the Hollywood adaptation in mind? (There's also a slightly pervy computer geek character that drools over the girl - could that be Weir in his own story? Creepy.) I'd like to think there's less cynical reasons for it, but none come to mind.

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Review: Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Should a novel be timeless? Does it bother you to see your plot revolve around, say, Apple, or LucasFilm, or Starbucks? Because it kind of bothers me. And while the book is thematically based around bridging the gap between the new and the old, a brand name on a page still breaks the fourth wall for me.
Set in Silicon Valley, MP24HBS is at the very least sipping the high tech Kool-Aid. Google is central to the plot, and I struggled to care about their internal staffing hierarchies and the computing power of their algorithms or whatever. It's a breezy read, and skips between high-gloss locations on a fairly thin plot. The fact that there seems to be a major plot hole really didn't bother me that much, because the stakes were low to begin with.

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Review: Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is another book on my "I'll Probably Like It When I Get Around To It" list. And so I did! My understanding of the symbolism, and even the events, of this book are vague at best. (I try not to read anything about a book before writing a review, so I'm sure everything I write has been said.) It's compelling enough, and short enough, that I think I'll read it again sometime and put it together a little better. But here are my first thoughts:

Heart of Darkness is dreamlike, in its narrative, its cryptic urgency, and its otherworldly landscape. Conrad's prose is clean and direct, which gives the story strength and endless forward momentum through the mire, while only barely hinting at what deeper secrets lurk behind the veil. Everything and everyone struggles for power beneath the surface - the company men, the natives, the jungle, the river - except Kurtz, the enigma of the jungle who seems both all-powerful and powerless, at peace and at war. For how little he actually appears in the book, his shadow is cast on every page.

One of the most powerful parts of the story for me was the inevitable awakening from the dream-state, as the narrator is thrown back into trivial, repulsive life. I loved this:
"I found myself back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams. [...] I tottered about the streets, grinning bitterly at perfectly respectable persons."
The inanity of civilization is at once miserable and charming. It is as "perfectly respectable persons" that we have to live, but who hasn't grinned bitterly at them once in a while? Finding these feelings put into words, and thereby understanding them better, must be one of the greatest rewards of reading.

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Review: Brave New World

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Somehow I got through high school without reading Brave New World. Thank God.

Of course it makes perfect sense as a go-to for English teachers everywhere, since it spews potential essay questions out of its eyeballs, and the characters are simple manifestations of their defining traits (Conformist, Non-conformist, Strong, Weak, Brave, New, Worldly, &c.).

I can also understand that for its time it was a more challenging and innovative idea, but sci-fi has come such a long way, and can be so subtle and emotionally engaging (I'm looking at you, China Mieville), that Brave New World just left me cold. That said, I always told myself I'd read it one day, and it was pleasantly short. Next!

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