The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

TV Review: Westworld, season 1

TV #14 of 2018:

Westworld, season 1

Given its talented cast, big-budget scenery, and overall concept, Westworld is a series that’s really rich in potential, but this first season comes off as a bit muddled thanks to its J.J. Abrams mystery box storytelling. Too many secrets are kept from the audience for too long, and that makes it hard for me as a viewer to really be able to invest in a lot of what’s going on. I’ll keep watching because I’m interested in the overall premise, but it’s not a great sign that there’s nothing I’m particularly rooting for to happen with any of the characters.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: So You Want to Talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo

Book #76 of 2018:

So You Want to Talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo

This 2018 book presents an outstanding clear-eyed discussion of racism in contemporary America, aimed at providing readers with the tools to have more constructive dialogues of their own. It explores concepts like privilege, microaggressions, and structural injustice, addressing some of the common objections that can unfortunately derail a conversation about race before it achieves anything productive. By breaking down those points that readers have likely either heard or said before, author Ijeoma Oluo skillfully positions us to avoid such roadblocks in the future.

You won’t necessarily agree with everything Oluo has to say in this book, but you’ll come away with a far better understanding of many social justice issues that intersect with race in this country. Even for a reader with views largely similar to the author’s, it’s an immensely clarifying read.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Fireman by Joe Hill

Book #75 of 2018:

The Fireman by Joe Hill

This Joe Hill novel about a widespread plague of spontaneous combustion has a promising start, but it loses steam as it goes along, especially once it becomes clear that the author is largely just retelling his father’s post-apocalyptic classic The Stand. There are major plot points lifted directly from that Stephen King book, as well as three characters with the same names as their Stand analogues (pregnant Frannie, deaf Nick, and sex-crazed, diary-keeping traitor Harold). Unlike Hill’s earlier NOS4A2, which borrows lovingly from the King toolbox but remixes its elements into something deeper, the result here feels like a weak retread of a story we already know.

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Book #74 of 2018:

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

I was initially quite charmed by this novel and its titular heroine, whose difficulty with social cues and preference for a strict regular schedule would seem to place her somewhere on the autism spectrum. This diagnosis is never made explicit, however, and as the story goes on, it turns into an exploration of the main character’s childhood trauma and a personal journey for her to get better. As a reader who agrees with the diagnosis inherent in the title that there isn’t anything wrong with this character in the first place, it stings a little to see a narrative framed around making her fit in. (There’s also a really atrocious twist in the final pages that I spotted from a mile off and still groaned at once it finally happened.)

There’s enough in this novel to love that I can’t bring myself to give it lower than a three-star rating, but I really feel like the back half of the book squanders the setup for what could have been an all-time great read.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Book #73 of 2018:

We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This short, powerful essay is a good introduction to the weight of gender expectations and the ways that girls, boys, women, and men are all unfairly constrained by society’s conventions for them. It’s not a perfect read — the length doesn’t really allow for extended debate or fleshing out of ideas, and author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie regularly conflates gender with biological sex in a way that denies the lived experience of anyone transgender — but it’s a valuable primer for readers who have never thought much about these issues or don’t see the point of the feminist movement. This shouldn’t be the only thing you read on the subject, but it’s not a bad place to start.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Agents of Light and Darkness by Simon R. Green

Book #72 of 2018:

Agents of Light and Darkness by Simon R. Green (Nightside #2)

I’m rereading this urban fantasy series that I loved when I was younger, and while it isn’t quite living up to my memories, this second novel is a vast improvement over the first. The worldbuilding offers a steady stream of clever invention, and its Raymond-Chandler-meets-Welcome-to-Night-Vale vibe leads to plenty of weird pulpy action.

The tone can be pretty irreverent — in this book, detective John Taylor is tasked with tracking down the “Unholy Grail” that Judas drank from at the Last Supper, while angels from both Heaven and Hell tear apart the Nightside trying to find it first — but if you can get on board with that sort of premise, the ensuing adventure is a lot of fun. By the time this story ends we’ve even gotten some decent character growth, and the Nightside is starting to feel like a distinct setting and not just a generic pastiche. In other words, I’m remembering why I liked these books in the first place.

[Trigger warning for some bloody violence and discussion of rape by a family member and subsequent abortion. Readers wishing to avoid such matters should probably give the whole series a miss.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner

Book #71 of 2018:

These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner (Starbound #1)

This sci-fi love story ends a lot stronger than it begins, especially after a surprise development around the three-quarter mark. The two main characters are teens from different social classes — a young war hero and a spoiled heiress — and as the only two people to survive the destruction of their starship, it’s pretty clear that the narrative is going to bring them together romantically. But since a lot of their early interactions are made up of petty sniping at one another, it’s hard to root for the two survivors either as a couple or individually.

Luckily these characters grow to be more interesting, and so does the story around them as they explore the Solaris-like planet where their escape pod has crash-landed. I’m still disappointed by the beginning of this novel, and at how little worldbuilding is revealed about the larger society where the story is set, but I raced through the ending and I’m eager to see where the series goes from here.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda

Book #70 of 2018:

All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda

The most distinctive aspect of this suspense novel is its timeline, which is presented Memento-style from back to front. After a quick introduction to establish the narrator and why she’s returned to her hometown, we jump forward two weeks to find that her neighbor has been missing for about that long. The rest of the story is told one day at a time going backwards from there, along with occasional flashbacks to the protagonist’s time in high school, when her best friend similarly vanished.

It’s a neat idea, but it necessarily keeps a reader at arm’s length, unable to immerse in the main character’s experience, and that weakens the dramatic impact of certain developments. There are interesting twists, but the chronology can be frustrating and it never quite feels motivated by the otherwise fairly standard story being told.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Squire by Tamora Pierce

Book #69 of 2018:

Squire by Tamora Pierce (Protector of the Small #3)

I’ve noted before that this quartet of books within Tamora Pierce’s larger Tortall series seems to be the author’s take on the classic boarding school literary genre, like Harry Potter without any looming Voldemort-style threat. Indeed, the plot is the major shortcoming to these stories, which basically just track the heroine growing up, gaining combat skills, and overcoming sexist bullies.

Nevertheless, this third novel is the strongest one so far, and it benefits from having an older protagonist with more nuanced, mature relationships. (This goes beyond romance, but the love interest here is possibly the least problematic I’ve yet read from Pierce, so kudos are due in that regard.) Keladry goes from fourteen to eighteen in these chapters, and the end of her knightly training comes to an enjoyable — albeit expected — conclusion. This quartet so far has revolved entirely around her education, so it will be interesting to see what the final book in Kel’s saga has to offer next.

★★★☆☆

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Movie Review: Ready Player One (2018)

Movie #7 of 2018:

Ready Player One (2018)

As a disclaimer, I really like the novel this movie is based on, which I think gets a bad rap for some GamerGate-style gatekeeping associations that aren’t really present in the narrative itself. It’s also a story that seems really hard to adapt faithfully, and I think Steven Spielberg mostly succeeds in capturing the feel and ethos of the story if not all its particular plot details. The puzzles that our heroes have to solve are completely different, but they work well on-screen and really bring the digital OASIS universe to life much as I had imagined it while reading.

That being said, the love story somehow ends up being even flimsier in the movie, and I hate that Art3mis is often reduced from someone on Parzival’s level of competence and nerdity to a wide-eyed naif that he keeps having to educate about the easter egg they’re hunting. The plot near the end of the movie (basically from when Z gets kidnapped onwards) is also really muddled and makes me long for some of the scenes in the book that have been left behind in adaptation. In the end the spectacle largely lives up to the hype, but you’ll get a better story out of the original novel.

★★★☆☆

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