The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: The Black Ice by Michael Connelly

Book #82 of 2019:

The Black Ice by Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch #2)

I’m of two minds about this second Bosch novel. On the one hand, the detective and his associates feel more like the versions that I know from the TV adaptation of the series, which presumably means that they’ve settled more into their long-term characterization. And I can’t complain about the storyline itself, which is a solid enough police procedural. Yet on the other hand, a lot of the plot beats feel copied straight out of the first book, from a man Harry knows turning up dead to the final one-on-one standoff after a chase through a tunnel. It’s still enjoyable, but perhaps just a touch formulaic.

★★★☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: A Guide for the Perplexed by Dara Horn

Book #81 of 2019:

A Guide for the Perplexed by Dara Horn

This is a weird book, and although I enjoy some of the individual strands, I ultimately don’t feel like they add up to a satisfactory whole. The main plot is a loose retelling of Joseph’s slavery from Genesis, split between a tech genius who’s kidnapped in Egypt and her sister back home in America. But there are also scenes with Solomon Schechter, the 19th-century historical figure who uncovered documents in the Cairo Geniza, and with Maimonides, the medieval philosopher whose personal writings were among those papers.

There are certain echoes across these timelines, and in the hands of author Dara Horn, the novel generally rings with a clear Jewish authenticity. But the storylines never actually intersect in any meaningful way, and Schecter’s in particular seems barely more than an extraneous framing device.

I can’t help but compare this work to Rachel Kadish’s exemplary The Weight of Ink, which depicts geniza research in such a way that the modern scholars and their subjects feel both profoundly connected and sharply drawn as characters. Horn has enough potential that I’ll happily read more from her, but this specific exercise doesn’t quite work for me.

★★★☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: A People’s Future of the United States edited by Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams

Book #80 of 2019:

A People’s Future of the United States edited by Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams

I expected to really love this anthology, based on its foreword and stated goal of bringing a Howard Zinn recentering of marginalized perspectives to the world of tomorrow. The authors and characters include women, LGBTQ people, racial minorities, and others who don’t always see themselves represented in science-fiction. There’s a definite boldness in a group like this declaring that the MAGA era will not be the final word on America, and that there will still be a future with all of us in it, for better or worse.

In practice, however, too many of the stories herein seem like either generic dystopias divorced from actual history or exercises in worldbuilding without compelling plots attached (or both). Luckily there’s a string of stronger entries near the middle of the book, from a time traveler coming back to tell Donald Trump his ideas don’t last in Ashok K. Banker’s “By His Bootstraps” to an interesting look at life under Universal Basic Income in Hugh Howey’s “No Algorithms in the World.” And while not particularly futuristic, I especially enjoy how the final tale, Alice Sola Kim’s “Now Wait for This Week,” pairs its Groundhog Day plot with a timely message to#BelieveWomen.

Overall, though, the collection struggles to live up to its potential of original speculative fiction distilling the essence of 2019. I’d still recommend it for the occasional gems and its sheer existence as a book with such a diverse set of writers, but I’m somewhat underwhelmed from what I imagined this exercise could produce.

★★★☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

TV Review: Friday Night Lights, season 4

TV #11 of 2019:

Friday Night Lights, season 4

On a macro level, my biggest criticism of FNL thus far is that every season seems radically different from the one before it — and never in a way that feels especially organic or planned-out as part of a larger design. This year the program shifts suddenly to the poorer and blacker side of its fictional Texas town, and although the writing explores the new supporting cast with great nuance and interrogates some of the founding assumptions of the show quite nicely by presenting its original team as the new face of entitlement, it’s all a bit too radical a break from the past.

The easy comparison here is The Wire, given a shared seasonal rebooting of focus, interest in what drives children into urban crime, and excellent use of rising star Michael B. Jordan. Yet for all its facets, that earlier drama manages an overall cohesion that just keeps escaping Friday Night Lights. Season 4 of this high school football series is yet another outstanding individual string of episodes — probably the strongest since the first — that requires not looking too closely at the circumstances that have brought the narrative here or the goals that have previously been driving its characters.

★★★★☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson

Book #79 of 2019:

Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson (Truly Devious #1)

This novel has a great hook of an unsolved kidnapping from the 1930s and a modern teenage crime buff going off to the boarding school where it happened. Unfortunately, it all rather falls apart for me by the end. Author Maureen Johnson is essentially juggling three plots here: the cold case itself, the fallout of a certain present-day event at the book’s halfway mark, and the heroine’s social life on campus. I find these to be of decreasing interest, yet Johnson clearly feels opposite as the story progresses.

Although this verges on spoilers, I think I should also mention that there’s no resolution to either of the central mysteries, and an attempt at a shocking cliffhanger is basically just another development about the love interest who has never captured my attention. Presumably the sequel(s) will provide some closure, but this first book in the Truly Devious series is way more open-ended than I expect for a whodunnit.

[Content warning for anxiety, panic attacks, and off-page murder.]

★★★☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son by Michael Chabon

Book #78 of 2019:

Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son by Michael Chabon

This 2009 book from Michael Chabon is an excellent memoir, focused less on the novelist’s specific life history and more on his general musings about parenting and gender roles, as filtered through his own experiences. He’s a bit preoccupied with the notion that modern kids have too much structure — they can’t ride their bikes anywhere, their Lego sets are all for existing media properties, etc. — but he mostly seems to realize that this situation is just different than his own upbringing, not worse. Although I’m closer in age to his children, Chabon and I share several major touchstones from Judaism to Doctor Who, and overall I appreciate reading his insights as I stand now on the cusp of fatherhood myself.

★★★★☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: I’ll Mature When I’m Dead: Dave Barry’s Amazing Tales of Adulthood by Dave Barry

Book #76 of 2019:

I’ll Mature When I’m Dead: Dave Barry’s Amazing Tales of Adulthood by Dave Barry

Is Dave Barry’s new(er) material objectively less funny than what I read of his while growing up? Have my own tastes changed? Is our current cultural moment just vastly different than when this book was written in 2010? I suspect each of these explanations may play a role in why I found this essay collection to be only sporadically amusing at best. I also expected far more takes on parenting based on the publisher’s description of the title, whereas the actual topics covered are a fairly widespread and random assortment.

The observational humor isn’t half-bad, although the jokes about men and women rest on some pretty tired Mars/Venus-type cliches. There are definitely some good punchlines here and there, but the work as a whole comes nowhere near the laugh-out-loud reactions I’ve gotten from Barry’s work in the past.

★★☆☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: Doctor Who: Human Nature by Paul Cornell

Book #77 of 2019:

Doctor Who: Human Nature by Paul Cornell (Virgin New Adventures #38)

This Doctor Who novel was first published in 1995, back during the wilderness years when the television show had been canceled and the franchise was only continuing through such works on paper. These days it’s more famous for having been adapted into a pair of David Tennant episodes for the revived series in 2007, and like most modern fans, I’m discovering the original book after having already watched the story play out on screen. From that vantage point there are few surprises in the plot beats, but it’s still an enjoyable tale of the sci-fi hero losing his memories and falling in love.

There’s a lot that I like in both renditions of this adventure, and some things I prefer in one over the other. I feel that the villains are better-drawn and more threatening on TV (despite producing less gore and a lower body count), and that Tennant’s Tenth Doctor makes for a more convincing romantic figure. On the other hand, the Seventh incarnation of this character is a better fit for the manipulation at the heart of the narrative, which makes the eventual distinction between his human and Time Lord selves considerably more striking. I also appreciate that paperback companion Bernice Summerfield can disguise herself as the amnesiac Doctor’s niece, whereas the episodes somewhat problematically force her replacement Martha Jones to take up work as a maid.

Still, I wouldn’t say that either version of events is the superior, definitive take, even though it sort of strains credulity to accept both as having happened in the Doctor’s personal chronology. But hey — it wouldn’t be Doctor Who if there was some simple way of determining what’s canonical.

★★★★☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: Star Wars: Queen’s Shadow by E. K. Johnston

Book #75 of 2019:

Star Wars: Queen’s Shadow by E.K. Johnston

Despite my hopes, this YA novel doesn’t really live up to its potential as the first canonical Star Wars story to focus on Padmé Amidala and her handmaidens. Taking place roughly halfway between the prequel movies The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, the book follows its heroine’s transition from queen to senator, but it doesn’t have much of a plot, and its few conflicts tend to be resolved either off the page or not at all. I’m rounding my rating up for some interesting worldbuilding that fleshes out elements of Naboo’s culture, but I’d recommend this read only for huge fans of the character or Star Wars completionists.

★★★☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: A Crown of Wishes by Roshani Chokshi

Book #74 of 2019:

A Crown of Wishes by Roshani Chokshi (The Star-Touched Queen #2)

This is now the third book that I’ve read from author Roshani Chokshi, and I’ve had similar feelings about all of them: appreciation for the #ownvoices Hindu mythology that informs her fantasy worldbuilding, but frustration with certain plotting decisions and a slight lack of connection to the characters. This spinoff sequel to The Star-Touched Queen, for instance, telegraphs its enemies-to-lovers romantic arc so strongly that I can never feel properly swept away, despite really admiring the beautifully lush prose on a technical level. Chokshi is definitely a talented writer, but her work just keeps not fully clicking for me.

★★★☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter