Book Review: My Father, the Pornographer by Chris Offutt

Book 161 of 2018:

My Father, the Pornographer by Chris Offutt

Probably the worst thing about this memoir of a Baby Boomer childhood in rural Kentucky is its sensationalized title. Andrew J. Offutt didn’t work in the porn industry; he was a prolific author who happened to write erotic fiction (among many other genres). His children were not particularly exposed to his mature output, nor is that career his defining trait within these pages.

No, what’s most striking about the elder Offutt is not his ‘pornography,’ but rather his apparent nature as a volatile and spiteful narcissist: “controlling, pretentious, cruel, and overbearing,” in his son’s own words. Although beloved by fans for his work, Andy Offutt terrorized his family as a petty tyrant at home, and this book finds his oldest child grappling with all shades of his legacy and how it tinged their otherwise bucolic Appalachian life. It’s a fascinating nonfiction character portrait, but also a bit of a stressful read, even for someone with a much healthier home life.

[Trigger warning for sexual assault and some brief descriptions of torture fetishes in the father’s books, as well as the aforementioned emotional abuse.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin

Book 160 of 2018:

The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin (Hainish Cycle #2)

This Hugo-winning novella may feel somewhat familiar by today’s standards, but that’s simply because so many later works have copied from its playbook. From Avatar‘s plot of industrialist humans seeking to bulldoze an extraterrestrial forest, to the exploration of alien mindsets in stories like Speaker for the Dead and The Sparrow, there’s a lot in the sci-fi genre that can be traced back to this 1972 classic. I do wish that author Ursula K. Le Guin had devoted a little bit less time in the story to the perspective of its sexist, xenophobic villain, but overall it’s a strong and formative piece of speculative fiction.

[It’s also only loosely part of a series, since Le Guin’s “Hainish Cycle” effectively consists of standalone books in the same fictional universe. They’re intended to be read in any order, and this is the only one I’ve gotten to so far.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Black Stars by Dan Krokos

Book #159 of 2018:

The Black Stars by Dan Krokos (The Planet Thieves #2)

This is kind of an odd sequel. In place of the action-packed military sci-fi of the first book, the child cadets are now back at their academy, resulting in more of a classic boarding school adventure (with an eventual return to combat at the end). It’s a little like Ender’s Game crossed with Harry Potter, especially once the students start poking around outside of class hours to uncover a deadly conspiracy. There’s a fair degree of clunkiness along the way, but it’s still overall a fun time. If author Dan Krokos ever returns to this series — which still has plenty of dangling plot threads — I’ll definitely be reading on.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Binti: The Night Masquerade by Nnedi Okorafor

Book #158 of 2018:

Binti: The Night Masquerade by Nnedi Okorafor (Binti #3)

I’ve enjoyed the characters and Afrofuturism concepts of the Binti novellas, but this last book in Nnedi Okorafor’s sci-fi trilogy is the only one that’s really soared for me. Although just as short as the previous volumes, it lacks their abruptness, and manages to both tell a solid story of its own and wrap up the overall narrative arc of the series. Binti is a great character poised as an ambassador figure between warring worlds and cultures, and I’m glad she gets to go out in a story that showcases her so well.

This book: ★★★★☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

Books ranked: 3 > 1 > 2

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Movie Review: Young Frankenstein (1974)

Movie #17 of 2018:

Young Frankenstein (1974)

This movie holds up pretty well, but it’s not quite as funny as I remember it being (and there are two scenes that skirt way closer to dubious sexual consent than I would like in my fiction, especially when played for a laugh). It’s also clearer on an adult rewatch how much Mel Brooks was intending this film to be an homage to the techniques of old horror movies – which is neat, but again sometimes detracts from the comedy. I still enjoyed the movie and laughed throughout, but it wasn’t nearly the slam-dunk I remember from when I was a kid.

★★★☆☆

Book Review: The Dark Tower by Stephen King

Book #157 of 2018:

The Dark Tower by Stephen King (The Dark Tower #7)

In 1999, Stephen King was struck by a van and nearly killed, directly inspiring the author to resume and finish the Dark Tower series he had been working on intermittently since 1970. King would ultimately write these last three novels in one long creative burst, publishing their combined 2000 hardback pages over the course of a single year. Not all of this concluding arc succeeds for me as a reader — the middle volume, Song of Susannah, features a lot of setup without much of a compelling story of its own — but this finale itself is the true culmination of everything King has built up before.

As usual, it’s a weird blend of genres, a western dystopian sci-fi fantasy that further deepens the metafictional aspect of the last two books. King’s own motor accident plays a large role, as do more characters and concepts from his books outside the series like Hearts in Atlantis and Insomnia. Here at long last, the gunslinger Roland reaches the Tower that sits at the hub of all realities, and his creator / chronicler has taken that opportunity to bend and break all the normal rules of fiction. Long-standing characters are dispatched with surprising ease, Stephen King the character functions as a literal deus ex machina, and Stephen King the writer directly invites readers to walk away from the book before reaching its end.

That self-insertion into the author’s own work is divisive among fans, as is this novel’s ultimate resolution, which I won’t spoil here. But I’ve always enjoyed this series on more of an emotional wavelength than a plot one, and I personally find the closing volume to be a satisfyingly poignant experience. I love these characters and their journey across Mid-World, and I know I’ll miss them until it’s time for me to rejoin the gunslinger at the start, chasing the man in black across the desert once more.

This book: ★★★★☆

Overall series: ★★★★☆

Book ranking: 5 > 4 > 3 > 2 > 7 > 6 > 1

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TV Review: Lost in Space, season 1

TV #37 of 2018:

Lost in Space, season 1

This reboot grew on me as it went along, but it’s still not exactly great television. I think the problem for me as a viewer is that the show mirrors the look and feel of a serious, grounded sci-fi story, but the plot mechanics and character motivations are often straight out of a children’s cartoon. Parker Posey’s take on Dr. Smith as basically a female Gaius Baltar is pretty great, though.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish

Book #156 of 2018:

The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish

This richly-detailed historical fiction novel about the Jewish population of 17th-century London brings to mind Geraldine Brooks’s People of the Book, but in my opinion author Rachel Kadish does a much better job of making the lives of researchers in the modern age as compelling as the story unfolding in the past — especially near the end, when the two narrative threads begin to parallel one another in some interesting and unexpected ways.

THEN: a young woman serving as scribe to a blind rabbi struggles against the limitations society puts on her gender and her religion, desperate for the freedom to pursue her scholastic interests. NOW: a lonely history professor on the verge of a forced retirement and her assistant, a Jewish grad student stuck on his dead-end dissertation, uncover a cache of documents from the rabbi’s household and begin to piece together who could have written them. All three are fierce characters that I came to cherish, and the novel as a whole contains some beautiful meditations on love, history, gender roles, and Judaism. It’s currently my top new read of the year, and I’ll be thinking over its insights and most poetic passages for quite some time to come.

★★★★★

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Book Review: Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

Book #155 of 2018:

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

This YA love story is a sweet high school romance with realistic, well-drawn characters. I especially like that the two protagonists are not more of the rail-thin, white, conventionally attractive figures that often dominate our media landscape, and that each one has friends and a rich inner life apart from their relationship. They can still be frustrating in a believable teenage way, but I could generally sympathize and enjoyed following this tale of young love all the way to its bittersweet end.

[Trigger warning for school bullying and emotional abuse by a parent]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Vor Game by Lois McMaster Bujold

Book #154 of 2018:

The Vor Game by Lois McMaster Bujold (Vorkosigan Saga #4)

The Vorkosigan series is fun enough that I keep coming back to it, but I’ve yet to be really blown away by any single title. This one is yet another solid space opera romp, with our returning hero Miles Vorkosigan wildly improvising his way around a developing war situation and cleverly escaping from a succession of imprisonments. As with its later prequel Barrayar I’m a little surprised that this novel won the Hugo Award, but I admit I had a good time reading it.

★★★☆☆

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