The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo

Book #34 of 2020:

White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo

A valuable theoretical workbook from a white author with a career in racial sensitivity training, aimed primarily at white readers who wish to understand why we get defensive over the subject of race and how productive conversations can be once we let go of those feelings. (Robin DiAngelo justifies her provocative title and thesis as producing the discomfort that is necessary to dislodge preconceived notions, but I do worry that that approach alienates the very people who need this lesson the most.)

The book is occasionally repetitive and could stand to include a few more real-life examples from DiAngelo’s seminars, but it’s worthwhile as a primer or refresher on racial justice. The writer identifies and challenges societal assumptions of whiteness as neutral or default, and she includes the always-helpful reminder that modern racism is not an issue of someone’s intentions or morality; all white people have relative privilege that perpetuates an unjust hierarchy of race, whether you are a good person who professes a belief in equality or not (and regardless of other ways you are disadvantaged by class, sex, etc.).

Reactions may vary, but I personally found this to be somewhat less effective of a work overall than Ijeoma Oluo’s So You Want to Talk About Race, while somewhat more so than Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist. Still, I’d recommend the title for anyone with an open mind to reflecting on their own racist missteps, and/or interested in examining the roadblocks they’ve faced in previous discussions of race.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Where the World Ends by Geraldine McCaughrean

Book #33 of 2020:

Where the World Ends by Geraldine McCaughrean

In the summer of 1727, a small group of men and boys from an island off the coast of Scotland were dropped off at a remote rocky outcropping for their community’s annual excursion to spend a few weeks hunting the local birds for their meat, eggs, oil, and feathers. Only that year, calamity at home meant that the return ship never came back for them, and their trip ended up stretching out to nine long months before they were finally rescued. Unfortunately, not much else is known about that ordeal; if the survivors shared any specific experiences at the time, the record has not reached us today.

On the bare bones of this historical footnote, author Geraldine McCaughrean has crafted a plausible tale of how it might have transpired from the boys’ point of view. I was initially worried that the premise was just an excuse for a Lord of the Flies retelling, but although there’s a slight degree of that sort of social anarchy, this narrative is mostly a person-versus-nature story full of ingenuity, heart, and pluck. I was surprised by how quickly I came to care and worry about these characters, and I was swept away by the writer’s sense of setting, both for the physicality of the sea stack and for the cultural perspective of the castaways. I don’t know how much of the latter is research-based and how much is invention, but it feels wholly immersive to read.

[Content / spoiler warning: early on, one of the islanders is revealed to be a girl in disguise. Or at least, that’s how the text treats it, even though the child has apparently been brought up as a boy all ‘her’ life. This figure is subsequently referred to via feminine pronouns and at several points seems in danger of sexual violence. It’s overall not the most enlightened treatment of gender, and my only real hesitation about recommending this book to all.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Crier’s War by Nina Varela

Book #32 of 2020:

Crier’s War by Nina Varela (Crier’s War #1)

Nina Varela’s authorial debut has enough going for it that I will happily read the sequel, but this first book has a few issues holding it back from achieving its full potential. The good: a Battlestar Galactica sort of premise in which humanoid robots have overthrown and enslaved their creators, and a believable enemies-to-lovers arc between two young women from those respective groups. The bad: hazy worldbuilding, a slow plot which doesn’t ultimately build to much, and a few would-be twists that are hindered as a result. I also think the power differential in the central relationship of a cyborg princess and her human handmaiden isn’t explored nearly as critically as I would like.

This is a novel that I was expecting to love, but found myself disengaging from as it went along (and surprised when it ended with so little resolution and no real sign of the titular war). There are individual elements and passages I really enjoy, but as a whole it’s a bit rough.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Straight Razor Cure by Daniel Polansky

Book #31 of 2020:

The Straight Razor Cure by Daniel Polansky (Low Town #1)

The misogyny in this urban fantasy debut is so pervasive that it sometimes occludes the racism, ableism, and homophobia that also populate the work. (I lost track of how many times someone’s purported gayness is used as an insult — including slurs — but I know it’s much higher than zero, the number of actual gay characters in this book.) It’s the sort of ‘grimdark’ fiction that mistakes immorality for maturity, and assumes that such ugliness alone is enough to make a story interesting.

If a reader can somehow set all that aside, what remains is a boilerplate noir mystery in an unremarkable setting that telegraphs its only twist from a mile away. The only character I came close to caring about dies before the end, and I was more relieved than anything else.

[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: Better Call Saul, season 2

TV #2 of 2020:

Better Call Saul, season 2

My original review from 2016:

“The unexpected Breaking Bad spinoff continues to be a fascinating character study, and this season really embraces the aspect of a Shakespearean tragedy that comes from its audience knowing, at least in broad strokes, how the story ends. I’m not sure why so few prequels manage to pull that off, but Better Call Saul is the rare exception.
My only minor complaint about this season is a structural one, which is that Mike and Jimmy’s stories so very rarely intersect, even while both of them are well-told and compelling on their own. Mike in particular is caught up in more of a prologue to Breaking Bad as a whole – which is fantastic – whereas Jimmy is dealing with interesting figures like Kim and Chuck who for some reason or another will be out of the picture by the time Walter White enters the scene. And it looks like that Breaking Bad connection to Mike’s story will get even stronger next season, so hopefully Jimmy will tie into that more directly than he did this time around.”

But this time through I think I appreciate even more how often the writers have Mike and Jimmy’s dilemmas parallel one another, even when their stories don’t directly connect. Watching season one and two so closely together also emphasizes how much better served Kim Wexler is in this sophomore outing. Partly that’s down to the narrative positioning her as a more overt love interest for Jimmy, but she’s also fleshed out as a protagonist in her own right with the subplots surrounding her legal career. Like Jimmy and Mike, she’s shown putting in the work towards her goals through montages of terrific writing and cinematography — which makes her triumphs sweeter and the setbacks feel personally devastating.

This show will always be quieter than Breaking Bad, but on a pure character level it makes me gasp, laugh, and sometimes even cry like nothing else on television.

★★★★★

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Book Review: Throwback by Peter Lerangis

Book #30 of 2020:

Throwback by Peter Lerangis (Throwback #1)

I love the character interactions and the depiction of historical New York City in this middle-grade time-travel adventure, but it’s maybe a bit overstuffed with plot. (The hero is nominally trying to save his grandmother from dying on September 11th, but he spends most of the narrative stuck in 1917.) There are also a few talking animals, which are technically explained yet feel far wackier than anything else in the story. And I’m not convinced that the ending is wholly earned, nor that some darker material involving the actual 9/11 attacks and repeated discussion of suicide represents the best choice for a book in this age range. Overall, though, it’s a fun quick read.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Book #29 of 2020:

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

I’m trying not to compare this 2006 novel to 2017’s The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, which also features a famous recluse inviting someone from out of the blue to come write her official biography. But even setting aside that much superior later book, this is a frustrating execution of the concept. Both narrators — the interviewer in the framing device and the subject in her own words — exhibit some frankly baffling gaps of character logic, and there are plot twists that only earn that distinction due to the unnecessarily convoluted way these women present their respective stories. The title mystery is a complete bust, too. I like the occasional reflection on what it means to be a bibliophile, but overall this read has been more frustrating than anything else.

[Content warning for domestic abuse, self-harm, arson, graphic violence, incest, and suicide.]

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

Book #28 of 2020:

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

Justifiably a classic of Latin American literature, this multi-generational novel provides a sprawling look at the central family in a fictional Colombian town as it undergoes periods of settlement, growth, war, encroaching modernity, and ultimately collapse. The storytelling is recursive and elliptical, and many of the characters share similar names, making it sometimes difficult to track exactly who is doing what and when. I suspect that readers may be more rewarded by lingering over a copy of the written text, rather than listening to the audiobook as I have.

Nevertheless, it’s a fascinating composite of small-scale mythic drama, with individual scenes that are striking even when not veering into the magical realism that the book helped pioneer. It’s not really my favorite sort of narrative — and there are a few dated elements I’ll highlight below — but I can understand why it’s so beloved by so many.

[Content warning for rape, incest, pedophilia, racism, antisemitism, homophobia, and (at least in the Gregory Rabassa translation) repeated use of an anti-Romani slur.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Infinity Son by Adam Silvera

Book #27 of 2020:

Infinity Son by Adam Silvera (Infinity Cycle #1)

I feel similarly about this YA superhero novel as I do Marissa Meyer’s Renegades trilogy: it’s neat for the genre exploration and representation — which in this case includes a gay Latino protagonist written by a gay Latino author — but somewhat underwhelming as an actual story. This one also seems more like a messy first draft, with major worldbuilding concepts both under-explained and introduced only just before they become important to the plot, rather than threading organically throughout the text. Plus I think it would have been a stronger work if it stuck to its initial structure of alternating chapters following the reluctant hero and his supportive but resentful brother, rather than adding in two other viewpoint characters with less to do later on.

This is only the start of a planned series, but I’m not invested enough to pick up the eventual sequels.

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: Fool’s Assassin by Robin Hobb

Book #26 of 2020:

Fool’s Assassin by Robin Hobb (The Fitz and the Fool #1)

When I first read this novel in 2015, I gave it the following lukewarm review:

“Ideally, any sequel should justify its own existence. Why are we returning for another chapter of this story? What new developments require plucking these characters and their world out of the happily-ever-after stasis that we last left them in? Of course, some stories are planned as multi-part constructions from the start, and others are open-ended enough that a sequel can still seem to flow organically. But when there’s real weight to a resolution, the very first task of a follow-up should be to explain why that tidy conclusion must now be unraveled.
This is a lesson that Robin Hobb knew, once upon a time. Her Tawny Man trilogy, written and set years after the conclusion of her initial Farseer books, goes to great lengths to highlight the unfinished business suggested by the earlier tales (on both the political level of her setting and the personal level of her main character). The Tawny Man feels like a necessary continuation of the Farseer trilogy, and its closing words — “I am content” –represent a far more satisfactory conclusion.
Any sequel to The Tawny Man, any further exploration of the fate of the Six Duchies or the life of FitzChivalry Farseer, must therefore begin by explaining why it is called for in the first place. But although there are hints throughout Robin Hobb’s newest book that she has a fresh plot in mind for her erstwhile former assassin, these glimpses are murky at best — and seen only sporadically throughout a sedately plodding plot. This novel spans over a decade of time for its characters, and yet it still manages to feel like nothing more than a prologue.
Perhaps what comes next will help give this story some weight, but for now this new Fitz and the Fool trilogy feels entirely inconsequential. As comfortable as it is for longtime Hobb readers to check back in with Fitz and his world, Fool’s Assassin does not provide a valid reason for spoiling his content.”

And I still think those critiques are valid, because this is indeed a very long and very slow read that doesn’t do much to justify its own existence. Yet I feel somewhat more charitable towards the project on this reread, thanks largely to Hobb’s impeccable grasp of character and setting. It’s on the weaker side of what the author can offer in terms of a plot, but nevertheless far more immersive a reading experience than what many of her fellow fantasists achieve, especially for returning fans of the series. As such, I’m bumping my rating up a notch and actually planning to continue on to the sequels this time.

★★★☆☆

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