Review: Mrs. Bridge

Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This review is really more about the 1-2 punch combo of Mrs. and Mr. Bridge, both of which I read this year (although I'll admit, by the time I got around to the Mr. I’d already forgotten a lot of the Mrs. and needed a refresher).

The gist of these books is that they present a series of vignettes in the lives of an "average" Kansas City couple living during the time period between the two World Wars. The fancy literary term of the day here is pointillist fiction (a term I think borrowed from the artistic movement best exemplified by George Seurat of A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte fame) -- it's through these seemingly benign episodic encounters that you come to appreciate a fuller picture of what life was like for the nuclear American family in the day, or more specifically, the type of family that best exemplifies the American Dream without fully realizing all of its implications.

In other words, these books are unspoken tragedies, and they explain a lot about a particular distinctly American mindset that I'm sure continues to persist to this day.

The Bridges, by American standards (make of that what you will), are well-meaning parents. But there's so much they miss in their own interactions with their kids, with their communities, and with each other, and moreover so many moments where they "almost" get it right and then fail because they're stuck in their own ways of thinking, that it's frustrating beyond measure (again, putting up that disclaimer to avoid if you can't handle books where you feel the need to fix the characters' problems for them). These are probably the most direct examples of that infamous Socrates quote that I imagine probably sees overuse in high-school English papers: "The unexamined life is not worth living."

What honestly bugs me about the Bridges so much is, I can see it. I can totally see families in America living like this, fluttering day-to-day, moment to moment chasing after some mirage, some ultimately meaningless idea of an American Dream without realizing the cost that comes with it even as their kids and social circles ultimately abandon them. They're so stuck in adhering to these ideals that they end up ill-equipped to deal with real, meaningful social change as it happens around them (note: this is just in the decades leading up to the 60's). And then they almost wonder what happened decades later as they see more than half of their lives go by, and... what exactly to show for it?

If you only had to read one book, I’d recommend Mrs. Bridge first as it’s much more of a standalone book that gets the point across really well. Mr. Bridge is essentially a companion book written a decade later that fills in the gaps of the story from the husband’s point of view, with some additional moments informed in retrospect by the chaotic experiences of the 60's (i.e. expect to see more of the race relations perspective played up because Mr. Bridge is totally a racist asshole and btw it's Kansas). But without knowledge of the overarching plot from the wife, his story honestly still feels a little incomplete all the way to the ending.

Review: The Way of Kings

The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'll be honest, it took me a long time to really become sold on this book (which doesn't exactly help given that it's over a thousand pages).

Brandon Sanderson's greatest strength (world-building) is perhaps also in effect a contributor to one of his main weaknesses, in that he has to spend a lot of time setting up the moving pieces in his ever-expanding Cosmere universe before the worthwhile moments can actually happen. But until you're able to see what or where he's building things towards, it's easy to get lost in the details and then start wondering how much of what you're reading actually matters, which becomes a compounding issue the longer your book is-- and for the record, I still have no idea wtf was up with more than half the interludes in this book even after finishing it.

The characters are all right if not a bit difficult to follow, or at least in audiobook form, especially if you get made-up names confused easily (seriously, could he not come up with more distinct sounding names for Dalinar, Elhokar, Gavrilar, Adolin, and Renarin). Kaladin gets fleshed out the most through backstory in this book, even though his characterization ends up feeling a bit... vanilla (I've probably seen way too many stories with protagonists obsessed with protecting people, especially in anime/manga). Shallan is annoying at times but probably has the most interesting backstory exposition in her segments apart from the obvious moments in Dalinar's story. Sveth's story was the most captivating overall, but he also turned up the least so eh.

It wasn't really until the last third of this book when I really started getting invested in what was going on with the backstory enough to want to keep reading the rest of the series, which I've heard gets progressively better after this one. That said, I honestly did find some of the progression here boring at times, but I'm hoping that enough of the world has been set up at this point for me to actually want to pay attention as things go on in subsequent books, so I'm progressing with cautious enthusiasm here. But we'll see.

Review: Solutions and Other Problems

Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh
My rating: ---

I don't really feel comfortable rating books tied so personally to the author's experiences like this one, but if you enjoyed Hyperbole and a Half, I heavily recommend this one as a follow-up. The subject matter honestly feels heavier (considering the last one covered her depression... that's saying something), but it also feels relevant especially in today's world, in the midst of COVID when it sometimes feels like at least half of us are going mad.

The experience of reading this reminded me of the times we covered absurdist literature in high school. It's funny because back then it just seemed like the authors we read were just weird or high on drugs or the [lack of] meaning of life or something, but I don't think I ever really truly understood the impulses that led them to write those works in the first place. I just didn't have the life experiences back then to really get it.

Which leads me back to Allie here. She gets it.

And it takes her a while to... get to the point of getting it, framing it within a series of seemingly random stories that are often hilarious enough in their own light (I will never get tired of her funky drawings of pets lol). But once her setup starts to come together and she makes it clear where her ideas really are, it all makes sense... how much it doesn't make sense. What life really feels like mentally post-depression, when normally you would expect things to come together. But sometimes they just don't.

If you've tried following Allie's story at all over the past seven years since she basically disappeared off the face of the internet, this book explains a lot. Honestly, I feel like most people given her circumstances would've probably receded into permanent Bill Watterson-like obscurity for the sake of their own mental health, because I sure as hell would have. Life is difficult enough as it is.

But all that said, I'm glad she's back.

Review: The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Personal Highlights: "The Paper Menagerie", "The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary", "The Literomancer", "The Litigation Master and the Monkey King", "All the Flavors", "Mono No Aware"

But seriously, I had to put this book down between stories because of the heaviness of some of the subjects covered, especially given the real-life/historical sources cited (and then felt like a masochist when I forced myself to finish the rest of it because I also couldn't just stop).

Review: Axiom's End

Axiom's End by Lindsay Ellis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I love Lindsay Ellis's video essays.

Her new debut novel's all right. It's basically a first contact story framed within the context of the W. Bush presidency with an overt concern about government conspiracies, secrets and miscommunication, and attempts to establish a bond between a human and an alien despite their insurmountable differences (which somehow works). As Lindsay herself admitted in one of her videos (or podcast, can't remember which), you can probably see the influence of her experience in Transformers fanfiction (lol), but hey it got her on the NYT bestsellers list so props to her for that.

I feel like I had this genre spoiled for me already with The Three Body Problem trilogy recently, which set a pretty high bar for potential ideas to be explored in this realm with some backing from hard science. The science shown here is fairly elementary in comparison (i.e. basic time dilation from special relativity) and otherwise mostly serves as background noise to the main relational conflicts.

I honestly found it hard to accept that communication could be established so quickly even in a rudimentary form between humans and an alien species, especially due to what otherwise served as a convenient device for accelerating the plot. You kind of have to suspend your disbelief here just to accept the premise that a human could somehow function as an interpreter for an alien within days, even with technological aids. But if you're able to do so, the resulting story itself isn't bad. The ending definitely left me with something to ponder which is better than I can say for other works that I would call uninspired.

Side-note, but there were other elements introduced in this book that weren't really satisfactorily resolved or probably left hanging, likely for a potential sequel in the works. It doesn't leave you completely hanging (the main thread at least is resolved well enough), but given how much attention was given to these early on in the book it feels a little jarring to have most of that essentially be irrelevant or background noise to the main plot.

Review: The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"The cycle can be broken only by a policy as aggressive as that which created ghettos of concentrated poverty in the first place."

A worthwhile follow-up read to The New Jim Crow.

This book hit incredibly close to home... especially the parts regarding the history of segregationist housing policy in Milpitas of all places in the mid-twentieth century. I had to look up Sunnyhills on a map to realize that, oh geez, I've definitely driven by this area dozens of times if not more since I've lived in the Bay.

I would say that I'm shocked by the material here or something (honestly, some of the quotes from early twentieth century policymakers here really are "shocking" by today's standards... and when I read them paired with their photographs I just wanted to climb into the book and smack their dumbass faces), but given everything that's happened recently, I'm not really. Just pissed if anything-- or at least as much as one can be pissed by an otherwise dry-sounding subject as federal housing policy. 

It's honestly not as difficult to get through as it sounds, although there is enough detail that it can feel challenging to maintain focus at times if you aren't accustomed to reading history or nonfiction regarding political topics. But the details matter for a subject as impactful on people's livelihoods as this. And the legacy of segregation continues to hold power over us to the point of collective amnesia (though more like dementia) in part because of the mundanity of these details (in this respect I'm almost reminded of the decades long pointless lawsuits courtesy of dead people from Bleak House).

If you've been following reporting and stories about such topics as gerrymandering and redlining over the years, you should know that the subjects in this book go well beyond those and address local and federal government involvement in perpetuating the system of housing segregation in America, both explicitly (seriously, fuck the FHA) and implicitly, or that is to say in other creative ways. It is eye-opening to see the lengths to which people will go, sometimes in quite exquisite legal terms, just to not have to live next to black people.

And then I think of the logic my family would use in looking for a "good neighborhood" to live in and realize that I'm just as susceptible to the same kinds of thoughts. The FAQ at the back of the book brings up a good point in how any meaningful kind of policy-based reform in this area will definitely come with short-term costs that many of today's homeowners would probably balk at. But we the people are notoriously terrible at weighing the long vs short term costs and benefits of the policies we need to solve our own problems, if the crises happening today are any indication. 

I just wonder how long it will take for the rest of us to finally wake up and realize that what we have right now isn't sustainable.

How long, oh lord, how long.

Review: Death's End

Death's End by Liu Cixin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As a novel (with characters arcs and such, although I'm really speaking of the series as whole), this is mostly just okay or perhaps even mediocre to some extent. But as an exploration into the potential for space exploration and astrophysics research and all of its implications on a macro-scale, this book/series is amazing.

Most of the characters here mainly exist to help demonstrate difficult scientific concepts at the end of the day. You get a sense of the impact of all of these mind-blowing developments on how insignificant it makes them (and by proxy, us) feel in the bigger scheme of things... and I mean that to a much greater extent than what The Dark Forest left us with, cause I thought the ending of that was mind-blowing enough already.

The second half of this book is just next-level. I haven't read much sci-fi that broaches this scale, but the closest media I've consumed that gets to this is probably End of Evangelion (anime), Xenogears (JRPG), or Narutaru (manga), but those tended toward the more post-apocalyptic-universe side of things just for dramatic story-telling effect. The main difference with this series being, the story here backs its concepts up with enough actual science to make it almost believable that something like this could actually happen to us in the future. And that's just terrifying.

I'll admit it can feel a tad jarring sometimes to see lots of otherwise seemingly average characters suddenly spewing out complicated physics metaphors and PhD level analyses as almost knee-jerk reactions to the crazy things happening around them (like seriously, given recent events I expect your average human/government to be stupider than this), but for the greater good of pushing the limits of this genre, I'm willing to give this all a pass.

To be honest, it's probably debatable which book is better between this and Dark Forest, but overall, I heartily recommend this series as a whole to anyone looking to broaden their understanding of how science can impact us (and I'm going to avoid the obvious pun here lol). Too many book series out there start out with strong first entries only to end on a whimper, but this, this one goes out with a big bang. (literally) (I'm so sorry)

Review: Wizard and Glass

Wizard and Glass by Stephen King
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Dark Tower is a weird series.

I think Stephen King fans would tell you to read his other major works first (The Stand, It, The Shining, Pet Sematary, Salem's Lot, etc.) first before even starting this just because this series encompasses and almost takes for granted so many concepts introduced in his other books... but ironically, I feel like those books (or at least the ones I've read) stand alone better, or dare I say it are just straight up better experiences than the books in this series. And that's even keeping in mind (according to one of my friends, anyway) that King's short stories are actually better than his novels.

This is probably also one of the few series I've read where I don't necessarily enjoy the individual books as much (compared to other series I bother to continue reading, although I probably like this more than The Expanse) but I still feel compelled to keep reading for some reason. To be honest I probably like this entry the most of the ones I've read so far (Wizard and Glass #4 > Drawing of the Three #2 > The Wastelands #3 > The Gunslinger #1, but everyone else will have their own preferred order), but that's mainly for the scenes and imagery it inspires.

I think the "epic" scope of this series is only just starting to hit me now, four books in, because King finally took the time to establish Roland's backstory here. I kinda wish it had happened earlier because everything up until now just felt like meandering towards some aimless end goal; I still don't know what the Dark Tower "is", who the main villains really are and why they matter, I had to look up what a thinny was and other random terms that people kept tossing around because no one really takes the time to define them and so on.

And well, I just feel like it's hard to explain what this series is about or make it accessible to people, let alone the fact that The Gunslinger is so tonally different from all of the books that came after it that it almost doesn't even feel like part of the same series to me... for anyone else who got turned off by that book, anyway.

All of that said, when events take off and the crazy metaphysical stuff starts to happen, surreal visions and unexpectedly catchy chanting and people going crazy, to an extent that you don't normally see in conventional fantasy-- now that's where King really shines here. It's a pretty different feeling from his small town all-American works like It/Salem's Lot, but even those works hinted at the existence of this otherworldly layer underpinning everything (I'm looking at you, Turtle), so it's nice to finally see those aspects of his extended multiverse almost front and center for once.

And I feel like I'm just tossing around words at this point that won't really mean anything to anyone who hasn't read these books yet lol. I guess I just have to say, The Dark Tower is an experience, and I still recommend it even though I can't say I fully understand or love everything about it. Life (and books) can be complicated like that sometimes.

Review: Flowers for Algernon

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read the short story version of this a long-ass time ago (like middle school), but even though I was familiar with the overall contours of this story already, the novel version still packed a punch emotionally speaking. Elements of Charlie's story really got to me-- both on its own terms (I mean, who doesn't identify wanting to be acknowledged as a person?) and also in how it made me rethink the reality of the disabled people in my own life. The additional family backstory element from the novel also hit home harder because of this.

For most of the book, I had a tendency to think of early and mid-book Charlie as essentially two different characters, but seeing end-book Charlie really put everything into perspective-- considering how I've struggled with the idea of what it means to change as a person over time in the past. I've seen this theme explored in different forms of media, particularly with regards to memories (Memento and Gemini Rue come to mind), but while memories do play a big role in this book, I think seeing the evolution of Charlie's writing, and through it, his personality over time while keeping a lot of his memories more-or-less intact highlighted other factors that I hadn't thought as much about till now. It's a drastically sped up version of what the process is like for growing people in real life, but it gets the point across.

I'll be honest, some of the minor additions to the novel version did feel a little superfluous compared with the short story version (the whole romance subplot kinda meandered for bit), but overall I appreciated the chance to ruminate in Charlie's head for a longer while and really feel the emotions he described, coming to terms with past experiences that he was never fully capable of understanding until now. Especially in light of this Socrates quote from Plato's cave allegory, which never really hit home for me until it turned up near the end: "up he went and down he came without his eyes."

Like the other characters in this book, I'll probably never understand what the experience must really be like on a day-to-day basis for mentally disabled folks in real life-- but I really appreciate Keyes' attempts to make this struggle feel real and understandable in all of its complexities, including the foward-thinking aspects (i.e. what happens if we ever do discover a "cure"). We talk a lot about amazing scientific endeavors and medical advances happening in real life, but rarely is it that we visit the consequences or long-term effects of the these efforts on the people who had to make sacrifices along the way, the Charlie Gordons that we take for granted in our day-to-day.

tl;dr for emotional people: I didn't cry immediately when I finished this book but dammit I want to cry now. I almost wanted to stop this book 3/4 of the way through and pretend that the ending didn't happen.

Review: House of Leaves

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Can seem kind of intimidating-- I mean just google pictures of this book and you'll know what I mean-- but honestly not as difficult to make sense of as other well-known convoluted books (I'm looking at you, Infinite Jest). Though it still takes a bit of effort to read regardless.

The main storyline itself is pretty engrossing and made me wish I were watching a film adaptation of it right now; it's basically like reading the script to a good horror film, considering it literally is the description of a film. I wasn't into Johnny Truant's story as much in comparison, though, and honestly I got tired of the randomly inserted academic criticism... not sure if it's saying much that I almost couldn't tell it was supposed to be satire at first, or if my opinion of academic literature is just that bad haha.

I feel like if I had read this book a decade earlier (like literally when I added this on goodreads) I probably would've appreciated it a lot more. It's making me wonder how much my opinions might have changed of other notoriously difficult books from the past. At this point I think age is making me have less patience to put the work into trying to decipher stories that purposely try to be as laborious as possible (thinking particularly of one of the letters in this book).

Or rather, I think I can still appreciate it if I believe that the themes are worth it, but I'm not entirely sure if I feel that way here. If anything the criticism already in this book, satire or not, actually turned me off trying to actively think about the story in more meaningful ways... even though I can tell there are more interesting interpretations behind some of the events that happen here.

All of that said though, it's a cool experiment in trying to capture some of the more claustrophobic/film inspired moments in metatextual form, and I'd recommend this as a gateway book for people looking to explore more difficult/oddly structured forms of literature outside of the usual stream-of-consciousness fare (Pale Fire, Ulysses, Infinite Jest, Gravity's Rainbow, etc.)

Review: Tales from Earthsea

Tales from Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I still have to read the last book in the series, but I just wanted to say that between this and Tehanu, it's quite eye-opening to see a series change so much from it's original foundations, and not in a bad way. The original Earthsea trilogy were great children's fantasy books on their own merits, but the way the second half of the series changes gears (both in tone and its sudden thematic focus on women) is quite something else.

I imagine not all fans of the earlier books would appreciate these changes (given the way typically male-dominated fantasy fandoms are), but if you sit down and try to grasp at what Le Guin is trying to get at... even though she was effectively trying to play catch-up with second/third wave feminism, in some ways I feel like she was still ahead of her time in trying to grapple with these themes in her own work, like she was starting to foresee the kinds of challenges our society would face in light of gender norms that are still changing to this day. To be honest, the result can still feel a bit messy/awkward at times, but imo it's not really different from how it is in real life.

As far as the stories in this book go, the first and last (covering the founding of Roke and a side-story bridging Tehanu with the last book in the series) respectively are the best here, but overall it was nice to go back and revisit this setting even in a different light. Some parts are familiar, and some parts feel almost like revisionist history-- although more revisionist in the way that traditional history-telling can sometimes be biased towards male-dominated stories, ignoring or downplaying contributions from women and the roles that they played.

To be honest, I wasn't entirely sure how I felt after reading Tehanu even though I liked it overall; the the more introspective change in tone and pacing from the previous books was to the point where it almost felt jarring. But this book reaffirmed a lot of the qualities that I forgot I liked about the original trilogy to begin with, while at the same, it made me appreciate what Le Guin started in Tehanu a lot more. And now I'm more excited to finally get around to reading The Other Wind. Till next time.

Review: Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories

Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories by Flannery O'Connor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Flannery O'Connor has an obsession with Christian-themed violence (and okay that sounds terrible out of context lol). Technically speaking, it's weird, unless you buy into the messages she's going for and then it kinda works?

That aside, I think I actually wound up liking this collection overall more than A Good Man is Hard to Find, even though her last three stories in this one veer towards more conspicuously religious, introspective territory even by her own standards. Maybe it doesn't affect me as much cause I'm used to reading Christian themed works from my upbringing, but in any case, the uniquely Southern flavor of the themes explored here are as good as ever. My thoughts otherwise are more or less consistent with my previous review (see link above).

personal highlights: The title story, "The Lame Shall Enter First", "Revelation"