The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

TV Review: Better Call Saul, season 5

TV #19 of 2020:

Better Call Saul, season 5

This is not my favorite run of the Breaking Bad prequel, but it remains a meticulous character study punctuated by electrifying moments of sheer audacity. (I’m not sure I breathed once during the last scene of episode nine, I was so edge.) Everyone this year feels increasingly boxed in by their particular circumstances, and when they do try to break free, they inevitably end up getting smacked down hard by reality. That’s certainly befitting the closing chapters of a prelude to a tragedy, and I’m on tenterhooks to see how everything resolves — especially those enigmatic flash-forwards to life after Albuquerque, and the ultimate fate of original characters like Kim and Nacho — whenever the final season arrives.

The protagonist’s long-delayed embrace of his callous Saul Goodman persona carries the predictable ups and downs, but I think I want just a little more of that traditional Slippin’ Jimmy scheming than is on display here, and less of whatever the writers are doing with Howard Hamlin. Overall this is a somewhat slower stage of the story, and while I trust that it’s setting up for proper fireworks ahead, the here and now feels a tad shortchanged in service of what’s to come. That’s not enough to sink the effort completely, but it’s a little unsatisfying compared to this series at its best.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire

Book #120 of 2020:

Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire (Wayward Children #5)

The fifth novella in this loose series about children longing to return to the fantasy worlds they once visited is most similar to the third, featuring a group of the kids again traveling to someone else’s magical realm to help resolve a crisis there. It’s a fine adventure, and I love the scenes where our protagonists prove willing to casually recognize and accept one another’s different preferences/mindsets/etc. even without understanding them. Yet on a macro level, it seems like the overall pathos of these books is weakened with every successful new return journey (and resurrection from the dead), lowering the stakes by making those rare events more commonplace and controllable. I’ve still enjoyed this volume, but it doesn’t feel as consequential as its predecessors or their larger narrative.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist by Judith Heumann with Kristen Joiner

Book #119 of 2020:

Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist by Judith Heumann with Kristen Joiner

At turns inspirational, eye-opening, and infuriating, activist Judith Heumann’s account of her lifelong fight to enshrine civil rights protections for people with disabilities deserves to be read widely. It’s easy to not think about matters of accessibility that don’t affect you personally, and to take for granted the accommodations that are more commonplace today, but Heumann and her co-author Kristen Joiner swiftly take us into her position and show us the barriers she’s faced at every moment on the way to that slim measure of progress. (Among others: being denied a teaching license, barred from boarding airplanes, and even unable to physically enter many buildings due solely to her use of a wheelchair.)

Writing at age 72, the polio-stricken child of Holocaust survivors shares her story both to preserve history — like how she helped lead the sit-in of a government building to demand passage of Section 504, an important piece of anti-discrimination legislation — and to emphasize how expanding equal access is in the interest of all society. Since anyone could acquire a disability, and since everyone will if we live long enough, it’s in our own self-interest as well as simple justice to demand that equality now. Luckily we have folks like Judy modeling the way to achieve it.

★★★★☆

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TV Review: Shameless, season 3

TV #18 of 2020:

Shameless, season 3

As always, I wish I could separate the parts of this series that I like from the ones I really don’t. There’s a compelling family drama here, but it’s generally couched amid so much tasteless shock humor and tedious subplotting that it’s hard for anything to ever land meaningfully. One episode this year, for instance, has Child Protective Services temporarily move the younger Gallagher children into foster homes, forcing oldest sibling Fiona to scramble to prove she can look after them all. At the same time, their neighbor Veronica is recruiting her mom to sleep with her partner as a low-cost infertility solution. Such disparate stories as those barely feel like they belong in the same broad narrative, let alone the same hour of television.

This season does help rehabilitate the character of Fiona’s boyfriend, turning him from a sociopathic jerk into a hapless failure and underscoring why their relationship is flawed in a way that I’m not sure the writers truly recognized before. I still don’t particularly like the guy, but at least now that seems like the result of an intentional creative choice rather than my negative reaction to shenanigans that are apparently instead designed to please. If the show at large could just tweak its formula more in that direction — say by spending less time with deadbeat dad Frank and everyone in his orbit away from the kids — I’d be a much happier viewer.

And hey, credit where credit is due: the last episode of this run ameliorates a lot of my above concerns, keeping most of the more outrageous elements in check and centering the various personal struggles to produce my favorite hour of Shameless yet. With any luck, that becomes the model for the program moving forwards and not just a fluke of a finale.

[Content warning for rape, transphobia, homophobia, conversion therapy, ableism, and slurs.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

Book #118 of 2020:

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

As with much of 1950s science-fiction, this novel is as full of big ideas and fun characters as it is of regrettable social attitudes and bizarre plot leaps. I like the core concept of a marooned astronaut learning to teleport and reinventing himself to go full Count of Monte Cristo for revenge, but his / the text’s treatment of women is pretty abominable. (The protagonist rapes one acquaintance who eventually forgives him for it, and makes another fall instantly in love by showing off his supposed dominance.)

The depiction of soulless mega-corporations and cybernetic enhancements would certainly prove influential in the genre, and the hero’s abstract transcendence near the end heralds similar experimentation in the later 2001: A Space Odyssey. This is a story that’s clearly been loved by creators whose own works I love, so with the strong caveat of the context of its time, I’d say it’s still worth checking out today.

[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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Book Review: The Never Tilting World by Rin Chupeco

Book #117 of 2020:

The Never Tilting World by Rin Chupeco (The Never Tilting World #1)

I don’t know if it’s intentional on author Rin Chupeco’s part, but there’s a definite Brandon Sanderson vibe to this fantasy novel of theirs. From the title concept of a planet stuck half in sunlight and half in dark (shared with his White Sand project, although developed very differently) to the Sandersonian system of orderly magic powers, the start of this duology evokes that pillar of the genre in all the best ways. It also includes a Mad Max-style drive across a dangerous desert landscape, a poignant romance between two young women of different social classes, and four distinctive viewpoint characters that Chupeco juggles with ease.

I have some qualms about the larger worldbuilding — like how radically the twin societies seem to have diverged and forgotten their joint past only seventeen years after the globe-stopping cataclysm — but the environmental allegory is apt and I like how the night and day narratives spend the whole book propelling towards one another only to finally collide at the very end. I’m looking forward to seeing how these stories change in the sequel now that they’re entwined more directly.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Sound of Stars by Alechia Dow

Book #116 of 2020:

The Sound of Stars by Alechia Dow

An incredibly frustrating read. From the coercive romance between an alien conqueror and the human prisoner he’s blackmailing, to their instant feelings for one another, to the pointless miscommunication drama that a simple conversation could have avoided, to the meandering plot, random unearned ending, and overall tendency for the writing to tell and not show… there’s just so much here that fails to launch.

Perhaps most exasperating is the heroine’s practice of name-dropping characters from other books — generally recent YA — without explanation. She wants a love like Jesper and Wylan. When she learns her companion has never heard of Star Wars, she offers to tell him the story of Ciena and Thane. Even for a reader like me who recognizes the majority of these references and enjoys the outside works in question, it’s an unwelcome and distracting quirk. (It also strains credulity that anyone teaching a completely foreign being about our planet’s culture would introduce derivative spinoffs like Lost Stars before the Skywalker Saga, The Light Between Worlds before Narnia, etc.)

In theory, this novel could be an uncomfortable but intriguing exploration of how art can transcend boundaries and demand risks from us. I do like the initial premise of a secret library providing escapism to an occupied population, and I appreciate the representation of multiple nonbinary people and a black protagonist identifying on the asexuality spectrum. But any potential here is entirely squashed in execution.

★☆☆☆☆

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Book Review: The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

Book #115 of 2020:

The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

Some of my earliest memories are of my mother reading to me from The Hobbit as a bedtime story, so it may not be a title I can review with any sort of critical objectivity. It both introduced me to the fantasy genre and got me hooked, and its rhythms have formed much of what I still look for in fiction. Along with its sequel trilogy The Lord of the Rings, it’s also a beloved and influential work across speculative literature, such that when we critique subsequent tales of wizards and elves as being overly broad or derivative, we usually mean that a writer is just imitating Tolkien.

The setting of Middle-Earth doesn’t seem generic, however. This children’s novel lacks the detailed history that the author builds into his later series for adults — and indeed, they fit together somewhat awkwardly as a unified saga — but the storybook atmosphere is endlessly enchanting and distinctive. Although the book follows a single character’s linear journey (literally there and back again, as per the original subtitle), it manages to convey an expansive realm of further excitement transpiring just outside our vision. A few minor issues like English month and weekday names do rub against that impression of integrity for this secondary world, yet they never bothered me as a child and don’t significantly impact my suspension of disbelief even now.

More damning, I’d say, is the overwhelming maleness of this narrative, with a few dozen named characters by the end — including thirteen dwarves in the main cast with varying degrees of characterization — and no women among them except for an early passing mention of the hero’s mother. That’s a sign of the era and perhaps not a major flaw, but I don’t know if I’d feel the same if I first encountered this book today or were a female reader myself. And I wonder with some sadness if my daughter will be able to see herself as fully in Bilbo’s shoes as I always have.

Nevertheless, as a succession of fun encounters adding up to one grand adventure, this volume takes me away every time. The protagonist’s steady transformation from fussy homebody to bold companion and defender of right is astonishing to watch unfold, and the overall effect of the charming dialogue and conversational storytelling is pure delight. I don’t have the proper distance to adequately evaluate this text, but its scenes are etched deep within me, and I’ve loved diving back into that once again.

★★★★★

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Book Review: The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline

Book #114 of 2020:

The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline

There’s great potential and a distinctive character voice in this YA First Nations dystopia, but the overall effort is only sporadically effective for me. One of the particular strengths of sci-fi / fantasy as a genre is its ability to allegorically heighten and externalize real-life conflicts, and so I am completely on-board for the fictional premise of a crumbling future Canada imprisoning and harvesting its indigenous population to find out why they’re the only ones still capable of dreaming. It’s horrific, but certainly a valid and thought-provoking extension of how these peoples have been treated throughout history. The best moments in the novel arise either directly from that notion or from author Cherie Dimaline’s #ownvoices exploration of how her protagonists feel cut off from their heritage by the untimely passing of elders.

Unfortunately, too much else is left underdeveloped or underexplained in this narrative, from plot to characterization to the memory-fueled magic that pops up near the end. It also feels odd for the story to so directly equate ethnic identity with physical genetic traits, although I will leave that for native readers to unpack more fully. This book is almost short enough to be a novella, but it’s definitely one that I think could have benefitted from further chapters to flesh out its concepts.

[Content warning for rape and torture.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Very, Very, Very Dreadful: The Influenza Pandemic of 1918 by Albert Marrin

Book #113 of 2020:

Very, Very, Very Dreadful: The Influenza Pandemic of 1918 by Albert Marrin

I’ve been reading up on last century’s ‘Spanish’ Flu pandemic, which seems the closest historical precedent for the ongoing COVID-19 crisis of today. And this title is a generally solid contribution to that body of knowledge, but it has a few issues that keep me from giving a full endorsement. For such a short book it often wanders quite afield of its topic, and author Albert Marrin makes a few tenuous claims that I’d love to see better supported. (I don’t reject outright the idea that widespread appreciation for influenza nurses helped lead to American women’s suffrage a few years later, for instance, but that’s the sort of claim that really requires evidence accompanying it.) There’s also an uneven tone that feels as though certain passages were constructed for younger audiences than others, with authorial asides to define commonplace concepts like autopsies alongside unexplained references to more obscure / adult topics like enemas.

My biggest issue is probably how Marrin, writing in 2018, derides the practice of mask-wearing during an outbreak as completely ineffectual. Not only does that strike me as insensitive to the people back then who were operating with the best information available, but it also flies in the face of what scientists are telling us now, suggesting that this writer and his fact-checkers may not have performed their full and diligent research throughout.

It’s not a complete waste, and I have picked up some details that I haven’t seen elsewhere before (to the extent they can be trusted, of course). I appreciate how the 81-year-old author includes his own parents’ experiences with the disease, which really help bring the era to life. But I wouldn’t suggest anyone check this out as their first or only coverage on the subject.

★★☆☆☆

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