The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: Force of Nature by Jane Harper

Book #148 of 2018:

Force of Nature by Jane Harper (Aaron Falk #2)

This Australian crime thriller is not quite as good as its predecessor in the series, which offers more emotional resonance via its setting in the detective hero’s hometown. Here Falk is on a new case far from home, investigating the disappearance of a would-be whistleblower during a corporate wilderness retreat. Still, author Jane Harper’s atmospheric descriptions of the bleak outback are no less haunting, and the whodunnit is solid enough to carry them.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France by Caroline Moorehead

Book #147 of 2018:

Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France by Caroline Moorehead

Informative but dense, and lacking much of a narrative throughline. It’s also a little difficult to keep track of the sprawling cast of characters, especially when listening to the audiobook. Still, this is an interesting look at the resistance movement in Nazi-occupied France, as well as the xenophobia that was rising in that country even before the war and the ways in which the French government collaborated with the Germans.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Song of Susannah by Stephen King

Book #146 of 2018:

Song of Susannah by Stephen King (The Dark Tower #6)

The Dark Tower series really requires readers to get on its wavelength of mystical intuition and fated coincidence, which is usually not a problem for me when there’s enough weird science magic and post-apocalyptic western worldbuilding on display. This sixth book, then, is the rare stumble in which there are none of the usual fireworks to make the ka business (and increasingly experimental metafiction) go down easier. It’s still a fun setting with great characters, but the action here is nothing but one long build-up that keeps our team separated the whole way through. It’ll take the controversial final book in this series, with the help of the long-awaited Tower itself, to really offer a degree of closure to this epic sprawling quest.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Playing with Fire by Derek Landy

Book #145 of 2018:

Playing with Fire by Derek Landy (Skulduggery Pleasant #2)

Tighter and funnier than the first book, which was already a solid piece of children’s urban fantasy. Having introduced this world and its characters in the previous volume, author Derek Landy is here free to simply set them loose on their next adventure. It’s still not a terribly distinctive setting — and I’m already struggling to recall basic plot details — but I could see this series being a good introduction to the genre for younger readers.

★★★☆☆

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TV Review: Westworld, season 2

TV #34 of 2018:

Westworld, season 2

The first season of this show was at least moderately more enjoyable than frustrating, especially since the rich premise of a cyborg theme park gone haywire still had a sheen of novelty to it. It could at times be something of a mystery-for-the-sake-of-mystery J. J. Abrams puzzlebox, but the other strengths of the series mostly made up for that.

This second season represented a chance for the creative team to lean into those strengths and steer away from the confusing timelines and muddled character motivations, but unfortunately they’ve instead doubled down on the decision to present this story more as an intellectual exercise than a narrative worth investing in. Apparently Westworld is just always going to be a show where you can never be positive what order things happen in, and I’m not convinced I need to watch any further seasons of that.

★★☆☆☆

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TV Review: American Gods, season 1

TV #33 of 2018:

American Gods, season 1

It took me a little while to get on board with this adaptation and stop feeling disappointed by everything that’s different from the book, which at one point was my absolute favorite novel. But honestly, this season is a gorgeous and soulful examination of the same themes Neil Gaiman wrote about, mapped loosely onto his opening chapters. It’s got that raw and florid cinematography of Hannibal with (mostly) less gore, and the humor is surprisingly great. Shadow has more personality here, and I love love LOVE what the writers have done with Laura and Mad Sweeney, who are far more central to the series than any reader could have predicted. This is 100% not the idealized American Gods adaptation I’ve had in my head all these years – but so far, I’m willing to say that it’s better.

★★★★★

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Book Review: Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Max Tegmark

Book 144 of 2018:

Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Max Tegmark

MIT professor Max Tegmark has a habit of seeming either alarmist or pie-in-the-sky when discussing the future of artificial intelligence, but he’s much better at relaying the current state of the field and contextualizing important historical breakthroughs. The writing in this book can be a little clunky — with repetition, unexplained allusions, and some verb tense issues — but the content represents a solid overview of inquiry into the topics of consciousness, machine ethics, and emerging AI.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup

Book #143 of 2018:

Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup

This harrowing true story of a black man kidnapped and sold into slavery is fairly well-known thanks to the 2013 Oscar-winning film adaptation, but hearing it in the author’s own words is still incredibly powerful. As fiction, it would be a sensational adventure of inhumane knaves and a hero’s ultimate triumph. As a genuine slave narrative, it’s all of that and more: a firsthand view of the degradations of American slavery and a reminder of just how widespread the suffering was. Solomon Northup’s story has a relatively happy ending, but he is tortured and tormented along the way, and his memoir makes plain how that treatment was mirrored in all the slaves born into their condition who couldn’t share in his eventual liberation. It’s a chilling work that deserves to be read in full.

★★★★★

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Book Review: Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

Book #142 of 2018:

Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

The dry British humor in this book is genuinely laugh-out-loud funny, but the characters can be a tad frustrating and the story is pretty slow. There are individual moments that I adore even beyond author Thomas Hardy’s classic Tess of the D’Urbervilles, but ultimately I just want these people to stop falling in and out of love at the drop of a hat and to maybe care just a little bit less about their sheep.

★★★☆☆

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TV Review: Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, season 2

TV #32 of 2018:

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, season 2

This season has all of the same strengths of the first one, and I continue to be impressed with how the series is adapting some of the weaker aspects of the source novels. Clues and flat-out reveals about VFD are delivered so much earlier here than they are in the books, and that makes for a stronger, less frustrating experience overall. (The decision to thread both Madame Lulu and Jacques Snicket throughout the season, rather than limiting them to their sole book appearances, is also a great one that renders the series somewhat less episodic-feeling.) All in all this has been an excellent adaptation, and I’m excited to see these writers take on the concluding volumes next season.

★★★★☆

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