The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: Lord Edgware Dies by Agatha Christie

Book #288 of 2020:

Lord Edgware Dies by Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot #9)

Also published under the title Thirteen at Dinner, this is another solid mystery from author Agatha Christie, satisfying but not especially revelatory in its ultimate solution. The early chapters drag a bit until Poirot and Hastings reach the fairly obvious conclusion that the stage actress they’ve seen do a convincing imitation of their newly-widowed client may have been involved in framing her, but luckily that’s only one more clue and not the key to the whole affair. Then the ending is a classic Christie case of parlor-room denouement, somewhat bloodlessly laying out the final answer to the preceding logic puzzle.

Reading this book almost a century after the fact is interesting; at one point our narrator provides a helpful note about contemporary fashion under the correct reasoning that styles may have changed before we hear his account. Elsewhere in the text, however, the detective chides his friend for using several expressions he claims are outdated — yet one, describing something unfair or improper as “not cricket,” is still in circulation today! It’s a nice reminder that neither the characters nor their writer are perfect, which makes it easier to see the smug genius as a fallible human and not the crime-solving automaton he can sometimes appear.

[Content warning for racial slurs and implied domestic abuse.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis

Book #287 of 2020:

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia #5)

This was always my favorite Narnia volume growing up, and it turns out I actually like it even better as an adult. The nautical adventure is episodic but fun, and the way the children travel from our world this time remains one of the coolest such methods in all of fantasy. We also get the best character arc in the series here in the form of the Pevensies’ terrifically-named cousin Eustace Scrubb, who believably grows from a bit of a stick-in-the-mud into a stalwart companion over the course of the book.

(Honestly, I think my biggest difference in opinion with my younger self about this title is that I now see the narrator and other characters as overly harsh with the kid in the beginning. He’s very particular and opinionated, but in a manner that generally suggests a sheltered upbringing and potential neurodivergence — especially given his sensory issues and difficulty with social cues — and not cruelty. Author C. S. Lewis bluntly calls him “too stupid to make anything up himself” in one line, and then immediately shows him drafting a limerick and understanding the concept of assonance in the next. That gets me on his side much earlier than seems intended by the text, although I do still appreciate how he improves as a person as the story goes on. But I feel protective of the early Eustace today as I never did as a child.)

That quasi-protagonist aside, the narrative offers a nice string of memorably imaginative encounters off the coast of the familiar Narnian landmass, and while I wouldn’t quite call it a feat of worldbuilding, it successfully and provocatively implies a wide range of further tales happening just outside our vision. It’s easy to get swept along on a journey like that, and even the writer’s usual Christian allegories aren’t nearly as distracting as they can sometimes be.

There’s genuine pathos too, mostly concerning bold Reepicheep the mouse and his mystical quest for Aslan’s country beyond the sea. This too is strengthened by Lewis keeping that land as an oblique mystery, rather than depicting the realm directly, and if the miniature warrior’s characterization feels slightly retconned from his introduction in Prince Caspian, it nevertheless succeeds in service to the new plot.

Finally, it’s just sort of neat how we don’t have the same four heroes on this visit, and despite how the subtext for someone outgrowing Narnia is incredibly loaded, it speaks well to a creator who’s able to change up his formula and explore new variations instead of simply cranking out copies of exactly what’s worked before. Not all of these experiments throughout the Chronicles match The Voyage of the Dawn Treader for quality, but this one’s only made possible by an artist willing to lose sight of the shore.

[Content warning for slavery.]

★★★★★

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Book Review: I Want To Be Where the Normal People Are by Rachel Bloom

Book #286 of 2020:

I Want To Be Where the Normal People Are by Rachel Bloom

A short but funny memoir / comedy essay collection from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend creator and star Rachel Bloom. It’s not as entertaining as that show, and contains fewer behind-the-scenes stories than I would have hoped, but the author is refreshingly upfront about her flaws and mental health issues and how they have shaped her life and career thus far. Overall I’d say the book stands with comparable titles like Tina Fey’s Bossypants or Colin Jost’s A Very Punchable Face, so if you loved those and are a fan of this writer’s other work, you’ll probably enjoy the millennial cringe humor on display here as well.

[Content warning for graphic discussions of sex, coprophagia, and antisemitism including slurs.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Each of Us a Desert by Mark Oshiro

Book #285 of 2020:

Each of Us a Desert by Mark Oshiro

Although the narrative loses a little focus and momentum in its back half, for the most part this is a strikingly original post-apocalyptic fantasy, rich in #ownvoices Latinx cultural details and queer representation and distinctive in structure as one long chapterless text addressed in second-person to the heroine’s sun-god. She’s a sort of sin-eater for her desert community, literally banishing people’s demons by hearing their confessions — which she then recounts Scheherazade-like as nested tales within her ongoing prayer — and the story ends up being about her interior journey to define herself beyond that role more than the nominal plot that sends her away from home in the first place. It’s a slow-paced but arresting piece of magical realism, and while it doesn’t all entirely work for me, I really admire the ambition and the craft that author Mark Oshiro has brought to such a clearly personal project.

[Content warning for gore.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Left-Handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix

Book #284 of 2020:

The Left-Handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix

This urban fantasy reads like a quirkier Neverwhere, and its worldbuilding isn’t really distinctive enough to merit all the heavy infodumps in the first half of the novel. I know from works like Sabriel that author Garth Nix can introduce a setting more naturalistically through an unfolding story, but here he regularly drags the plot to a halt in order for characters to orate the necessary exposition at us / each other. It’s otherwise a solid magical romp around British folklore, and I appreciate the heroine’s genderfluid love interest, yet it’s far from the instant classic that this writer has produced in the past.

★★★☆☆

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TV Review: Fargo, season 4

TV #52 of 2020:

Fargo, season 4

The latest year of this midwestern crime drama is circling an interesting idea of rival families exchanging child hostages a la Game of Thrones, but there’s not much of a plot to latch onto here beyond random violence. The most intriguing element, a 1950s black mafia, isn’t really developed in a distinctive fashion, and there are too many peripheral characters who never quite manage to justify their presence in the narrative.

The past couple seasons of Fargo have tended to fall back on style over substance, and buoyed by generally fine performances, the worst-case-scenario is often an entertaining but hollow piece of storytelling. I’m seldom bored by this show, but it’s now been a while since it managed to deliver anything particularly memorable either.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Soulswift by Megan Bannen

Book #283 of 2020:

Soulswift by Megan Bannen

Too many little things bug me about this standalone fantasy novel for me to rate it highly, but I think it will find a receptive audience among the YA star-crossed-lovers crowd. The arc of two sworn enemies gradually growing more tender towards one another is well-wrought, and the worldbuilding has some interesting wrinkles, particularly in the cultural implications of the warring religious camps. I also appreciate that neither of these sects ends up having the whole truth in their dogma, even if it seems weird that all the characters who can literally commune with the divine have remained oblivious to that fact until now.

On the other hand: naming the heroine and hero whose love is apparently fated the holy vessel and the holy sword is incredibly tacky, and no amount of sweet words later can make me forget that he loudly calls her ugly the first time they meet. I’ve rolled my eyes at a few of the tropey developments like a pretend marriage and being forced to share a single bed too, although again perhaps I’m just not the right sort of reader for this. And without getting into spoilers, it feels like the eventual ending is both sudden and unearned.

That’s a lot of negativity for a story which by and large I don’t mind, and I’d happily check out something else by author Megan Bannen on the various strengths of this one. But as a coherent and cohesive total product, Soulswift doesn’t quite succeed for me.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Dawnshard by Brandon Sanderson

Book #282 of 2020:

Dawnshard by Brandon Sanderson (The Stormlight Archive #3.5)

This novella was released shortly before the fourth proper Stormlight volume, initially as a Kickstarter exclusive, and I have to admit that I didn’t have great hopes for it despite generally enjoying author Brandon Sanderson’s works. I know plenty of folks will skip over this one, after all, so it seemed unlikely to contain anything crucial — particularly as its two viewpoint characters, Rysn and Lopen, are fairly peripheral players in the main series.

And I haven’t yet read Rhythm of War, so I can’t comment directly on how the events in this story impact that book or beyond, but I suppose I should have known better than to doubt Sanderson at this point. It turns out Dawnshard is a pretty momentous account for both the world of Roshar and the wider cosmere setting, in a way that will be exciting to die-hard fans without alienating a more casual audience. (And I’m honestly somewhere between those camps myself — I do like The Stormlight Archive, but I find the long novels overly dense at times and I occasionally need to look details up online when a name from the past resurfaces. Yet I’ve genuinely grinned at a few of the reveals here.)

This is a fun high-seas adventure in its own right too, making good use of its distinctive protagonists, one of whom is paralyzed from the waist down and the other of whom had formerly lost an arm (which has since been magically regrown in a previous title). In his introduction, the writer specifically thanks the experts who gave early draft feedback on issues of accessibility and paraplegia, and the treatment of these topics rings with authenticity as well as registering as a clear rarity in the fantasy genre. There’s also a very minor gesture at trans representation, in the person of a king who’s used the power of stormlight to transition, although the description is so subtle that it could easily go unnoticed and I have to cynically wonder if that was an intentional choice to not anger conservative readers.

On balance, though, this is another strong entry that is worth checking out, and I’m glad that one of my Patreon donors submitted it as their nomination for what I should read and review this month.

[Disclosure: I’m Facebook friends with this author.]

[I read and reviewed this title at a Patreon donor’s request. Want to nominate your own books for me to read and review (or otherwise support my writing)? Sign up for a small monthly donation today at https://patreon.com/lesserjoke !]

★★★★☆

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TV Review: The Office, season 7

TV #51 of 2020:

The Office, season 7

Theoretically I suppose a modern audience could approach this year of The Office not knowing it was Steve Carell’s last, but since it was crafted by the writers and understood by contemporary viewers as such, I think that remains the key lens with which to consider it. Plotwise Michael’s exit plays out somewhat abruptly, but the season beforehand lays the groundwork both by giving a degree of closure to his most important relationships and by periodically centering other characters as though to test out the new cast dynamic.

The former goal works better than the latter, unfortunately, and although we don’t get to see much of a Carell-free Office yet, the warning signs are all there. This sitcom has grown steadily zanier and more polished / less realistic over time, and even discounting the distracting slew of high-profile guest stars that close out this run, the writing is rapidly losing sight of who these people are and what they mean to one another. Everyone’s flattened and flanderized in a way that keeps the jokes zipping along but rarely makes space for the genuine human connections that were such a draw in the early years. In place of the poignant yearning between Jim and Pam, we’ve here got Andy and Erin: two goofy folks we’re never given any particular cause to root for, save that they had been together once, broke up, and now apparently regret it.

For the most part, these issues don’t stem from the main actor leaving his role, but they’re certainly revealed in the wake of that decision, and the creative team displays no sign of figuring out how to get the program back on track without him. The result isn’t awful — this is generally still a funny series of half-hour entertainment — and I wouldn’t even suggest that anyone should stop watching the show either before or after reaching this point. But there’s not really any good artistic reason for why things kept going for so long past the Michael Scott era, and absent the presumed network demands to that effect, it sure seems like we could have gotten a stronger and more resonant ending had everything wrapped up when he did.

[Content warning for racism, transphobia, and workplace shooting.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom is Wrong – and What You Really Need to Know by Emily Oster

Book #281 of 2020:

Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom is Wrong – and What You Really Need to Know by Emily Oster

I went into this 2013 read with high expectations based on author Emily Oster’s later parenting text Cribsheet, but unfortunately, I haven’t found this one nearly so helpful (although as the partner of a pregnant person I am admittedly not the exact target audience). In my review of that semi-sequel, I praised how the writer “guides her readers on Bayesian priors, opportunity cost, risk comparison, and other economic tools for critical thinking so that we can evaluate further inflection points ourselves” — and there’s too little of that here. Instead, the two titles mostly share a meta-study approach to their respective topics, wherein Oster reviews the scientific literature and presents her own best understanding of particular risks. In this work, for instance, she somewhat-controversially signs off on moderate alcohol and caffeine consumption while expecting (one glass of wine per day; three cups of coffee) and explains how difficult it is to accurately control for outside factors when comparing home and hospital births.

This is still a handy guide for sorting through conflicting recommendations, but it provides too much information about the author’s specific experience and not enough of a comprehensive look at pregnancy in all its contentious aspects. While I think a reasonable case could be made that Cribsheet is the only book you need for the early years of raising a child, this absolutely cannot serve a similar function in its own domain.

★★★☆☆

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