Book Review: The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray

Book #117 of 2019:

The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray

I think I was expecting this novel to be more like An American Marriage or the show Orange Is the New Black, focusing on the adjustment of new inmates and their family members and the overly-punitive nature of the justice system. Even after it becomes clear that the prison angle is going to be a fairly minor element of the text, I imagined that debut author Anissa Gray would deliver a Celeste Ng-style narrative of richly-drawn characters navigating a web of fraught relationships.

Instead it’s a more nebulous story, with plenty of angst but little focus or driving plot. I couldn’t tell you what any of the protagonists actually want to accomplish within these pages, nor could I distinguish easily among their alternating first-person perspectives. There are some lovely individual moments and a welcome illustration of lingering childhood trauma, but overall it doesn’t add up to much or come to any significant resolution.

[Content warning for domestic abuse and #ownvoices depiction of eating disorders]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Permafrost by Alastair Reynolds

Book #116 of 2019:

Permafrost by Alastair Reynolds

Although everything moves just a bit too slowly at the start and then too quickly by the end, the wicked time-travel plotting of this novella ultimately wins me over. It’s the first thing I’ve read from author Alastair Reynolds, so I can’t compare it to his usual style, but I do think this particular storyline would have benefitted from a longer novel-length treatment. It’s a neat thought experiment already, and better pacing and more room to flesh out these characters and ideas could have really brought it over the top.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Maybe in Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Book #115 of 2019:

Maybe in Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid 

This novel delivers a somewhat standard Sliding Doors premise, following in alternating chapters as two parallel timelines diverge after the heroine makes a seemingly inconsequential decision near the start. Both versions of the ensuing narrative have fun romantic comedy elements, and author Taylor Jenkins Reid raises some interesting questions about fate and people’s essential natures when characters in each branch describe things as feeling ‘meant to be.’ More could probably have been done with the overall concept — I’m thinking of the exemplary Community episode Remedial Chaos Theory — but the story has a lot of heart behind it that helps the structure avoid seeming like just a gimmick.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Enemy of the People: A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America by Jim Acosta

Book #114 of 2019:

The Enemy of the People: A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America by Jim Acosta

Although I am firmly on the side of CNN in the conflict between that news organization and a bullying president who abuses his position to discredit their coverage, I really can’t stand this book by correspondent Jim Acosta. I don’t know much about the author as a journalist, but he comes across as a self-important showboat within these pages, making himself the center of every story and offering more than a few misguided hot takes of post-hoc political quarterbacking. His account of covering Donald Trump over the past four years also provides little information that’s not already public — and likely known to anyone who recognizes the name Jim Acosta in the first place — so I really can’t figure out who the intended audience for this book is even supposed to be.

★★☆☆☆

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TV Review: Dead to Me, season 1

TV #25 of 2019:

Dead to Me, season 1

This show has such well-drawn characters and thoughtful-yet-funny explorations of grieving, unfortunately coupled with a completely ludicrous storyline. I generally don’t mind telenovela-style twists in my fiction, but the mood of the piece really has to be heightened in some way for that approach to work, and it’s a perpetual non-starter in an otherwise grounded world like this one. As a result, those over-the-top plot developments cut against the meditative strengths of the series, muddying the overall effect.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Life, The Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams

Book #113 of 2019:

Life, the Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy #3)

Although still not as instantly iconic (or memorable) as the first novel in the Hitchhiker’s series, this next volume has plenty of clever writing and some fun absurdisms about coincidence and fate that raise it above the more middling sequel that it follows. The plot is also probably at its tightest here, presenting a fairly self-contained story rather than the roving comic style that author Douglas Adams usually employs. That structure helps scaffolds the humor, and the whole work is short and breezy and generally hilarious, which is exactly what I want from a book like this.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal

Book #112 of 2019:

Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal (Glamourist Histories #1)

This Regency drawing-room pastiche has an interestingly low-key magical element, but the characters and plot leave a lot to be desired. The whole novel is full of wide-eyed speculation over who likes who — which is silly because both a) the signs of that are all fairly obvious and b) this particular social universe seemingly consists of just six marriageable people in the first place, some of whom are related. It’s fine for a debut book, but not nearly as engaging as author Mary Robinette Kowal’s later Nebula-winner The Calculating Stars. 

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Nightingale’s Lament by Simon R. Green

Book #111 of 2019:

Nightingale’s Lament by Simon R. Green (Nightside #3)

I’ve been enjoying this pulp paperback series far less on a reread than I did when it was my first introduction to the urban fantasy genre back in high school. The main plot has yet to really kick off beyond vague portentous rumblings, and although the detective protagonist’s casework offers a bit of an episodic structure to the individual novels, in practice these storylines have very little actual investigation or deduction and consist instead of a string of atmospheric setpieces that could just as easily have happened in any order and in any book. The confrontations over each latest clue — which tend to involve bluffing and quick wits as much as any magic — are fairly imaginative, but I need something more out of a narrative these days.

[Content warning in this volume for casual transphobia including slurs]

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: Fool’s Fate by Robin Hobb

Book #110 of 2019:

Fool’s Fate by Robin Hobb (The Tawny Man #3)

On balance, this final volume in Robin Hobb’s The Tawny Man trilogy probably has too much falling action after the major plot stakes are resolved. And it’s odd that the Piebald threat which loomed so heavily over the previous books is mostly discarded here. Yet Hobb has such a rich grasp on her characters and offers such true catharsis to their long-running arcs that it’s still an exciting thrill and an emotionally rewarding experience to read this novel to its final pages. For her central protagonist FitzChivalry Farseer this sixth story in his personal saga offers a well-deserved conclusion, and I remain deeply unconvinced by the author’s decision to roll back that ending with another Fitz trilogy a decade later.

This book: ★★★★☆

Overall series: ★★★★☆

Book ranking: 2 > 3 > 1

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Book Review: The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump by Andrew G. McCabe

Book #109 of 2019:

The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump by Andrew G. McCabe

The goal of this book is twofold: it joins a thriving genre of political tell-alls concerning the dysfunction and corruption of the Donald Trump White House, while also defending the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a bulwark of integrity undeserving of the president’s partisan attacks. These aims are broadly successful, although each has its issues that keep the work from really distinguishing itself.

The first prong of the text is notable mainly for the savage candor of former Acting FBI Director Andrew G. McCabe, who goes further in critiquing Trump’s character than even his ex-boss James Comey in the similar publication A Higher Loyalty. Nevertheless, McCabe covers little fresh ground in his inside account of the administration and its flaws, and I don’t find that I’ve learned much from the author’s side of the story beyond what was already in the news coverage of that time. I also feel like his glowing praise of the FBI glosses over many legitimate concerns surrounding that intelligence agency, even if he’s fairly accurate that the president’s specific criticisms are off-the-mark.

Ultimately I’d say this is a solid if non-essential read for understanding some of the politics and personalities of the era, but I wouldn’t put much stock in its objectivity.

★★★☆☆

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