The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids by Hunter Clarke-Fields, MSAE

Book #370 of 2021:

Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids by Hunter Clarke-Fields, MSAE

Like many self-help books, this 2019 title feels as though it probably could have been stripped of repetitive examples and published at magazine-article length, if not for the fact that that obviously wouldn’t make as much money. I also don’t agree with all of author Hunter Clarke-Fields, MSAE’s hot takes either, despite appreciating her core insight that parents should learn to recognize and resist our natural stress responses when difficult situations with our children arise. The reminder that physical and verbal violence are unproductive and harmful is good for readers too, I guess, although the writer seems way more tempted to go that disciplinary route than I ever have been myself.

Mindfulness overall still strikes me as a bit of a scam, yet in general I’d say this is a solid parenting guide that doesn’t overemphasize that practice out of any reasonable proportion. I’ll round my rating up to three-out-of-five stars due to sheer inoffensiveness, but given how common-sense most of this advice appears, I don’t know that I’d necessarily recommend the text to anyone.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Within These Wicked Walls by Lauren Blackwood

Book #369 of 2021:

Within These Wicked Walls by Lauren Blackwood

The publisher is pitching this novel as an “Ethiopian-inspired… fantasy retelling of Jane Eyre,” which doesn’t quite seem to hit the mark, as the two books really only share a wealthy man named Mr. Rochester whose manor holds dark secrets (and a few isolated scenes like a home burning or a horse falling down, I guess). In this case, the house is haunted by a literal demon rather than a hidden wife, and the heroine is a young exorcist hired to cleanse it.

I’m not the world’s biggest fan of the original Charlotte Brontë story, and in many ways, I appreciate this version better. The manifestations are suitably creepy, the action is pulse-pounding, and the protagonist reads as less of a pushover, in my personal opinion. There’s a nicely complicated relationship with her emotionally-distant mentor / father figure as well, which adds good pathos to the plot.

Unfortunately, a greater portion of attention is given to the title’s romance, which is somehow simultaneously toxic and bland. Andromeda is so poor that she’d literally be back on the streets if she lost this job, while her beau is the rich employer who lies about the scale of the possession problem and inappropriately begins hitting on her at the earliest opportunity. It’s not exactly love at first sight, but it’s pretty close, with no particular demonstration of why these two folks would be drawn to each other or apparent chemistry in their interactions. I don’t mind messiness in fiction or demand characters be perfect, but this is more boring than objectionable overall.

If that element were removed or handled differently this could easily have been a four-star read for me, and I do think debut author Lauren Blackwood shows a lot of talented potential elsewhere in the text. But I just don’t care enough about the two lovers to accept how often the narrative drags to a halt for their strained declarations of emotion at one another.

[Content warning for domestic abuse, racism, post-traumatic stress disorder, and gore.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: The Reversal by Michael Connelly

Book #368 of 2021:

The Reversal by Michael Connelly (Mickey Haller #3)

I enjoy both Mickey Haller and his half-brother Harry Bosch as protagonists, and a team-up is always fun for combining their respective lawyer and detective perspectives. This particular exercise feels as though it needs some further twist to really elevate the material, however, and it just never gets there for me. Instead it offers a pretty straightforward legal matter — the retrying of an accused child murderer, after his original conviction from decades ago has been overturned — that’s notable mainly for the bizarre decision to have defense attorney Haller appointed as independent prosecutor. I guess it’s interesting for him to experience a trial from the opposite side for the first time, but there’s no clear payoff for the odd premise. The alternating chapters from him and Bosch also tend to be repetitive early on, with many instances of one character informing the other about something we’ve already seen firsthand for ourselves.

Still, author Michael Connelly has a base level of workmanlike competency that comes through as usual, and the court case is readable even if not exactly a page-turner. I’m not disappointed by this novel like I was with Harry’s last story Nine Dragons; I’ve simply not been especially impressed either.

[Content warning for gun violence, drug abuse, incest, and pedophilia.]

★★★☆☆

TV Review: Hawkeye, season 1

TV #89 of 2021:

Hawkeye, season 1

The latest Marvel show on Disney+ is a flawed but fun action-comedy, taking full advantage of the Christmas setting for a festive buddy romp as Clint Barton reluctantly accepts an eager new junior partner. He’s trying to shut down a mob investigation into the Ronin, his blood-soaked alter ego from Avengers: Endgame, when he crosses paths with young archer Kate Bishop, who’s idolized him since childhood and is now in trouble with those gangsters herself. Their very different energies alternately clash and mesh nicely together, and the two exhibit hilarious verbal sparring as well a few delightful combat scenes with the help of Hawkeye’s trick arrows.

This series teases certain dramatic questions that don’t get particularly satisfying payoff, but it’s overall a good time with some surprising connections across the MCU. It’s way more of a sequel to the Black Widow movie and ode to her character than I would have predicted, for instance, and the whole venture carries the small-stakes vibe of the old ‘Defenders’ shows on Netflix, where a neighborhood or family could be threatened without placing the entire world in peril. A late crossover appearance even helps cement that yes, those stories are still canonical to the franchise, and I’m looking forward to seeing other figures pop up again, now that the contractual limits have lapsed and the floodgates are open.

The disability representation is great too, finally depicting Clint’s hearing loss from the comics in the form of a new hearing aid and use of sign language, and introducing a villain (slash antihero?) Maya Lopez who is deaf and wears a prosthetic foot and now has a spinoff of her own in development. Ultimately this is not as mindbendingly imaginative as most of the recent streaming Marvel titles have been, but its holiday spirit is certainly a big step up from the often-dreary The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

[Content warning for gun violence.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: The Separation by K. A. Applegate

Book #367 of 2021:

The Separation by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #32)

I realize suspension of disbelief is an odd criterion for a series about middle-schoolers changing into animals to fight aliens, but I find this book with the two Rachels particularly hard to swallow. I actually dig the initial premise: the protagonist is injured while in starfish morph — literally ripped in half, which that species can survive — and somehow both parts demorph back into her human form. There’s potential to the idea of a sudden exact duplicate on the scene, with both girls having a reasonable claim to their life and the affection of their friends, but this tale goes a different route of dividing elements of Rachel’s nature between the pair. Thus one version is insecure and ditzy, yet able to construct long-term plans, while the other is overly aggressive and incapable of thinking beyond the present at all. They are swiftly dubbed Nice Rachel and Mean Rachel respectively (by the chapter headers as well as the characters), which feels a bit harsh, but okay.

It’s a riff on the old Star Trek episode “The Enemy Within” where a transporter malfunction creates split-personality Kirks, and I believe I get what author K. A. Applegate is going for here, similarly dramatizing the conflict inside the heroine by externalizing it in this fashion, but the result struggles to locate the emotional truth of either side. They’re both so over-the-top, and not remotely like the figure we’re more familiar with. “Nice” Rachel in particular rings false to me, given her extreme cowardice, childish giggling, and focus on how cute all the boys are — is the proposition really that there’s an airhead quality like that within our regular Rachel? Only the feelings for Marco which are normally repressed into subtext seem legitimate, in my opinion. The “Mean” doppelganger is absurd too, with her megalomania verging on psychopathy, but I think she could have worked with a better-written counterbalance opposing her.

As is, each twin is pretty goofy, and neither makes for an engaging narrator over the rest of the novel. Then the plot is basically resolved via deus ex machina at the end, although I appreciate the two halves learning to accept that they need one another before that point. And the story outside of their drama is a bit of a wash, with the mission to destroy the Yeerks’ new Anti-Morphing Ray not coming to anything, merely functioning to set up the following volume and provide a backdrop to the main event here. As usual for the Animorphs, there are enough interesting details and moments of alternating comedy and pathos to keep me turning the pages, but this adventure just never provides a reason to take its ridiculous concept seriously. I’m surprised that it’s not one of the ghostwritten entries, to be honest.

[Content warning for body horror and gore.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: The Excalibur Curse by Kiersten White

Book #366 of 2021:

The Excalibur Curse by Kiersten White (Camelot Rising #3)

The beginning of this YA fantasy trilogy held a frisson of excitement in the way it reinterpreted the familiar Arthurian mythos that its sequels have unfortunately never matched. This final volume furthermore takes a few odd detours, like keeping its protagonist a prisoner for the opening third of the text and then sending her through a poorly-motivated existential crisis over whether she has a right to her own body or not. The plot is wrapped up satisfactorily — although the love quadrangle among Guinevere, Arthur, Lancelot, and Mordred isn’t really — and I’d say it’s generally worth reading if you’ve enjoyed the first two novels. But too many characters that we’ve previously seen in meaningful relationships stay apart for too long, which robs the conclusion of its full impact and represents diminishing returns for the series as a whole.

This volume: ★★★☆☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

Volumes ranked: 1 > 2 > 3

Book Review: Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang

Book #365 of 2021:

Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang

A fairly poignant account of a brief but formative period in author Qian Julie Wang’s life, spanning from 1994 when she left China for America with her family at age seven through when they moved again to Canada five years later. This sort of childhood memoir is tricky; although the writer ably captures the feeling of the experience, the details that an adult would know are sometimes absent, and those that we do get can often read as tenuous. For instance, it seems clear that the Wangs immigrated legally and then overstayed their visas, but the text doesn’t identify when that change in status would have occurred or distinguish between their documented and undocumented existence. The young girl was taught from the start to avoid cops, not go to licensed doctors, and lie to teachers about where she lived, yet I can’t tell how much of that was misguided overprotection as opposed to early good advice.

Similarly, there are sections in here when the parents act in ways that their daughter doesn’t understand — only some of which she appears to grasp better now as a grown-up herself reflecting on the events — and I’m genuinely unsure as to the intended takeaway. The general impression of poverty is certainly affecting, as is the depiction of witnessing loved ones who were well-off professors back home being forced to endure racist treatment while scrambling for the most menial of jobs in New York. But on a micro level, I think I want more clarity and mature perspective from a work that deliberately sets this narrow a scope.

[Content warning for racial slurs, sexual assault, domestic abuse, and fatphobia.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

Book #364 of 2021:

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers (Monk and Robot #1)

As with most titles from author Becky Chambers, this novella reads like a warm hug of hopepunk goodness. Although I wouldn’t say it’s quite on the level of her Wayfarers series, it shares with that space opera of the Galactic Commons an approach to science-fiction rooted in empathetic respect and curiosity toward different cultures. Thus in this tale, a nonbinary monk on a far-future colony planet encounters a robot, centuries after such inventions have become self-aware and retreated peacefully into the woods, amid humanity’s apologies and commitment to abandoning that technological path that has inadvertently given rise to slavery. It’s the first subsequent meeting between their peoples, but there is no conflict or tension in the interaction, just a mutual fascination with how the other one views the world and a gradual bonding over tea.

Some critics might complain that such a story is missing stakes or a plot, but our viewpoint human is trying to make their way to a remote hermitage, which presents logistical challenges even before they cross paths with the machine. And over the course of the ensuing conversation, they reveal a deep depression that has prompted the excursion, a growing sense of emptiness that is making it difficult for this protagonist to see a reason to get up each day and go about their regular tasks. (The idea of suicide isn’t mentioned explicitly, but it’s lurking there in the subtext.) That’s as serious an obstacle as any, and a new friendship and perspective on life isn’t enough to defeat the feeling, only maybe push it back a spell. Still, I think most readers will find the same measure of comfort in the exchange that the characters do, and join me in wondering what the sequel will bring.

★★★★☆

Book Review: Sparkling Cyanide by Agatha Christie

Book #363 of 2021:

Sparkling Cyanide by Agatha Christie (Colonel Race #4)

This 1945 novel, also published under the name Remembered Death, is the fourth and final appearance of Colonel Race, after a previous book where he stands alone like this and two that he shares with his friend Hercule Poirot. As a character he’s never made much of an impression on me, and so his stories tend to succeed or fail more by the current plot around him. In this case, I’d say the effect is mixed — a slow start of everyone’s reflections about a woman who died of poisoning last year in an apparent suicide at the dinner table, which picks up in excitement when her widower who suspects foul play is killed himself in the same fashion, but then trickles back away due to some silliness at the end.

(Spoilers: it turns out all the guests at the second party got up to dance, and took the wrong chair upon return due to someone’s bag being inadvertently moved down a spot. So the victim wasn’t the intended target that time, which ultimately leads to the identification of the culprit. But the deductive insight that’s supposed to dazzle us there just doesn’t ring true for me at all. I feel like most people in that circumstance would notice their seating position had changed, especially if it preceded a shocking death!)

As with the rest of his series, this book is fine overall. Author Agatha Christie has certainly written worse mysteries for us, and I do appreciate whenever she tries to tweak her usual formulas into slightly different configurations, even if not every experiment results in a winner. But I can understand why we don’t ever hear from this particular protagonist again.

[Content warning for racism and sexism.]

This volume: ★★★☆☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

Volumes ranked: Death on the Nile > The Man in the Brown Suit > Sparkling Cyanide > Cards on the Table

Book Review: Matrix by Lauren Groff

Book #362 of 2021:

Matrix by Lauren Groff

This title is an interesting exploration of a woman fiercely marshaling what power she can as a nun in 12th-century England, at a cost of forgoing any real hope at emotional intimacy with anyone around her. It’s a fictionalized treatment of the life of the anonymous poet Marie de France, and specifically the theory that identifies her as Mary of Shaftesbury, illegitimate half-sister to King Henry II. Because I am not otherwise familiar with either of these figures, I can’t speak to how accurately they have been represented here or how author Lauren Groff has interpreted the available records, although I imagine she’s exercised a degree of artistic license.

Overall, I’m sort of lukewarm on this text. The characters are far less off-putting than those in the writer’s earlier novel Fates and Furies, yet I likewise haven’t found them to be as immediately engaging as the protagonists in her collection of short fiction, Florida. I do appreciate the window into how things like menopause or same-sex attraction might have been conceptualized by the medieval mind — there’s a lot of queer love here, presented in surprisingly nonjudgmental fashion — but I just don’t feel as though the heroine ever comes alive for me.

Part of the problem is that the narrative generally skims through time, offering surface-level summaries of events and only occasionally pausing for a longer anecdote or two before jumping forward a few more years. The ensuing tale ultimately spans over half a century in this way, but in the process it’s difficult to legibly track the abbess’s motivations or understanding of herself. For a plot that largely reduces to ‘a person grows older,’ it would be nice to get further insight into that particular soul. But in exploring the theoretical details to this historical mystery, I fear Groff has merely substituted one cipher for another.

[Content warning for gore, childbirth complications, and mention of rape.]

★★★☆☆