The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: Aru Shah and the End of Time by Roshani Chokshi

Book #47 of 2019:

Aru Shah and the End of Time by Roshani Chokshi (Pandava Quartet #1)

This is one of those books that I don’t really love myself, but am glad exists in the world for other people. I’m sure many young Hindu readers will see themselves in the heroine, and children in general will likely learn a lot about the mythological figures that author Roshani Chokshi has incorporated into her tale. (It’s the first release in Disney-Hyperion’s “Rick Riordan Presents” publishing line, which is explicitly aimed at delivering folklore-inspired #ownvoices stories from writers of underrepresented cultural backgrounds.)

Where the novel fails for me is in its macguffin-collecting plotline, along with some perpetual wisecracking about things like selfies and Oreos. I haven’t read any of Riordan’s Percy Jackson series, so I don’t know how that compares, but this volume also skews closer to middle-grade urban fantasy than the young-adult epic fantasy I generally prefer. I may check out some of the other RRP titles, and I’ll happily recommend this one to a certain sort of reader, but I don’t feel particularly drawn to continue on with its sequels.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Book #46 of 2019:

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

As in her later book Circe, author Madeline Miller has crafted an immersive retelling of Greek mythology, here bringing to life the tragic love story of Achilles and Patroclus. The latter figure has always struck me as a bit of an afterthought in The Iliad — the most famous surviving work to feature the man — but he makes for an engaging narrator in Miller’s hands. As he tenderly recounts his idyllic childhood and growing relationship with the famous hero, he adds true pathos to the fate that readers know lies waiting outside the walls of Troy.

It’s only this last part of the novel that falters a bit for me, where Miller’s narrative begins to overlap with Homer’s. The timeline suddenly accelerates, skipping past whole years, and there are several moments that feel wholly mandated by the traditional plot that the author has inherited rather than arising organically from the characters she’s drawn thus far. Still, as a prequel to the mythic Trojan War that deepens our understanding of several key players, the work is a definite success.

★★★★☆

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TV Review: Breaking Bad, season 4

TV #10 of 2019:

Breaking Bad, season 4

Another superb year of ratcheting tension, untenable situations, and wonderfully complex character arcs. I have some issues with where the story goes from here, mostly in how it sometimes frames Walter White as more of a hero than I think is merited, but this penultimate run of episodes is all about showcasing him as a petty tyrant willing to sacrifice anything to get his way. It’s also the season where Skyler has her most interesting plotline yet, grappling with the steadily revealing horror of her husband’s true nature, and where Hank really comes into his own as a compelling protagonist in his own right.

It’s a period of recovery from rock bottom for Hank and Jesse alike, and it’s interesting how each of those arcs plays out against Walt’s one-sided war on Gus Fring. The writers are juggling quite a lot in this era of Breaking Bad, but none of it feels extraneous and it all comes together beautifully by the end. The acting and the cinematography on this show are just as breathtaking as ever, with everything on top of its game as the series enters its final chapter.

★★★★★

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TV Review: Friday Night Lights, season 3

TV #9 of 2019:

Friday Night Lights, season 3

This season is a bit of a soft reboot for the show… which was arguably necessary after the trainwreck of melodrama the year before, but is still somewhat jarring for viewers. Several characters are in very different places — both plotwise and emotionally — than when we left them at the end of the abbreviated second season, and honestly way too many of them are still in high school. Although I understand the writers’ presumed desire to move ahead to a new football season without writing off too many characters via an off-screen graduation, it stretches my credulity to accept that figures like Tim Riggins who we saw ruling the school back in the initial run of episodes were really only sophomores at the time.

All of these problems are less with this season of television, of course, and more with how it fits into the larger Friday Night Lights tapestry. Taken in isolation, this is a fantastic return to the small-town struggles that began this show, in which family arguments, college admissions, and (of course) local sports games are far more stirring than any of the illicit romances or literal crimes of the year before. In my review for the first season I praised its “pure, character-driven drama with great writing and believable emotional stakes,” and that’s exactly what’s been delivered again here. I only hope that this time it sticks going forward.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Golden State by Ben H. Winters

Book #45 of 2019:

Golden State by Ben H. Winters

This dystopian police procedural has a premise that irresistibly recalls earlier sci-fi classics like Fahrenheit 451 or Minority Report: it’s set in a future version of California where lying has been outlawed, and special detectives with the ability to detect falsehood are tasked with preserving the official record of the Objectively So. This is obviously an authoritarian state with incredible potential for abuse, and author Ben H. Winters is great at both conveying the detailed worldbuilding and exploring the main character’s growing realization of corruption at the heart of his society.

I really enjoy the investigative beats of the majority of this novel, but unfortunately everything goes off the rails during the last quarter or so of the text. There’s a seemingly-unending conspiracy afoot, shocking crimes are revealed without clear motives, and some late-breaking developments call into question a lot of the earlier story but don’t really suggest anything satisfying in its place. In some ways it feels like Winters has created a cutting critique of our current ‘fake news’ era, but in trying to cram in so many twists at the end, the whole thing turns out far messier than it needs to be.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: East by Edith Pattou

Book #44 of 2019:

East by Edith Pattou (East #1)

I’m unfortunately underwhelmed by this retelling of the Scandinavian fairy tale East of the Sun and West of the Moon. There’s promise here in the idea of prophecy and birth directions, but the setting is not particularly distinctive and none of the characters have much of an inner life, making it hard to track what anyone wants and why throughout the novel. (I think there’s even supposed to be a romance, but since the heroine reads as a child that’s unclear and verging on problematic.) Five different viewpoints is also probably too many, given how little any of them have been developed. I hate to be so critical, but this really strikes me as an overlong first draft rather than a finished story.

★★☆☆☆

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TV Review: True Detective, season 3

TV #8 of 2019:

True Detective, season 3

There are quite a few elements in the latest season of this mystery anthology that feel remixed from its first year, but I think I actually prefer how they’re assembled this time around. Whereas there was really no compelling story reason for the original investigation to be presented as an increasingly cold case over multiple timelines — resulting in several frustrating moments where characters clearly know things that the audience doesn’t — the invention of a new hero with memory problems in his old age has led to a much more organic way for the writers to weave the different plot strands together.

And Mahershala Ali, as that retired cop who’s come unstuck in time, is simply incredible at crafting three distinct performances over the different eras of his character’s life. (My wife, catching part of an episode without realizing this aspect of the show, remarked that it was great casting to find an old man who looked so much like Ali.) The actor won his second Academy Award the night the finale aired, and his acting still manages to be a revelation here. Stephen Dorff, whose work I’m less familiar with, also acquits himself nicely at distinguishing the 1980, 1990, and 2015 versions of his own role.

This season is less action-packed than the series debut, but the storyline takes some surprising turns and the acting alone really is worth the price admission. I’m glad I decided to tune back in after that debacle of a sophomore outing, and I highly encourage other former viewers to do the same.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Book #43 of 2019:

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

I love this book just as much as I remember, and upon this reading I’m particularly struck by the quiet tone of the work. It’s all too easy for a writer of this sort of world-ending saga to lean on the action and the horror, but Mandel instead opts for a beautiful aching blend of sadness and hope as her characters seek meaning in their memories of a vanished past. It’s a very literary approach to the genre, and one that has lingered in my mind for years now.

Original review from 2015:

Following in the tradition of George R. Stewart’s Earth Abides and Stephen King’s The Stand, Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven spins a tale of our modern society collapsing and rebuilding itself in the wake of a calamitous plague that kills off much of the earth’s population. The novel follows a handful of people over the years both before and after the pandemic, gradually revealing how their lives intersect — sometimes in ways unbeknownst to the characters themselves.

Mandel paints a haunting picture of the fragility of our everyday lives, and she has clearly given a lot of thought to how the beginnings of a post-apocalyptic civilization might develop. Like Stewart, she draws very sharp distinctions between those who can recall the old ways and those to whom such things are but faint memories or even simply stories.

It is to Mandel’s credit as a storyteller herself that the sections of Station Eleven concerning a few more conventional lives well before the collapse are no less gripping than those about the Shakespearean troupe wandering across the new landscape. All in all this was an excellent novel, and I both look forward to a reread and hope for a sequel to further illuminate this setting.

★★★★★

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Book Review: Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House by Cliff Sims

Book #42 of 2019:

Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House by Cliff Sims

There’s a tendency for this new genre of tell-all books concerning Donald Trump’s presidency to come across as overly gossip-driven and vengeful, and just as the title suggests, that’s ultimately how this one from former aide Cliff Sims plays out as well. It’s at least less salacious than Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury and Omarosa Manigault Newman’s Unhinged, and although I can’t speak to the accuracy of any particular anecdotes, it does feel somewhat more objective, especially in its early pages. (The first few chapters, detailing the author’s time with the Trump campaign, offer perhaps the best insight into the 2016 election results that I’ve seen since Hillary Clinton’s What Happened.)

The book does get more and more petty as it goes along, and I have very little patience for how Sims regularly wrings his hands over the president and his staff not living up to the author’s Christian faith while he continues to abet them due to misplaced conservative loyalty. It’s also just straight-up hard to take seriously any political commentator who praises the “impeccable honor and integrity” of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, in addition to the many other areas where Sims and I do not see eye-to-eye. In the end there’s very little in this coverage of the dysfunctional Trump White House that I find hasn’t been already well-detailed elsewhere.

[Content warning for the author’s casual sexism in descriptions of women and downplaying of sexual assault allegations.]

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: This Will Only Hurt a Little by Busy Philipps

Book #41 of 2019:

This Will Only Hurt a Little by Busy Philipps

I mostly know actress Busy Philipps from her work on the long-running stage show / podcast the Thrilling Adventure Hour, and I’ll admit that I primarily picked up this book hoping — in vain, as it turns out — for stories of that production. I’m glad that I did, however, because Philipps has some important, soul-baring insights to share from her life and acting career within these pages. The author is blunt and uncompromising about her experiences with rape, abortion, mental health, childbirth, Hollywood fatphobia, and abusers like James Franco and Harvey Weinstein. Although I wouldn’t quite say it’s an essential memoir on any of these topics, it rings with an emotional honesty throughout.

★★★★☆

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