Book #174 of 2017:
Grim Tuesday by Garth Nix (The Keys to the Kingdom #2)
This sequel felt like a formulaic retread of the first novel in the Keys to the Kingdom series, which was already a pretty generic fantasy adventure story. I’m still waiting for that Garth Nix magic that I love from his other books, but for some reason this series just isn’t clicking for me.
★★☆☆☆
Book #173 of 2017:
Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody
This book is the incredibly gripping memoir of a poor black woman who became an early leader in the Civil Rights Movement, published in 1968 when the author was not yet 30 years old. Those first decades of her life were packed with weighty events, however, and the author includes rich details that really bring the era to life. The first part of this book recounts Anne Moody’s childhood and her work as a maid – which reads like a true-life version of The Help, free from that fictional story’s unnecessary focus on white saviors – and the rest documents her time in college and her growing participation in the struggle for black equality.
This is a first-hand look at a turbulent moment in American history, and Moody’s descriptions of the violence and threats made against her during sit-ins and other protests form a powerful reminder of how hard those civil rights victories were to achieve. I’m both humbled and grateful for people like Anne Moody, and her personal narrative is so compelling I simply couldn’t put this book down.
★★★★★
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Book #172 of 2017:
Partners in Crime by Agatha Christie (Tommy and Tuppence #2)
Tommy and Tuppence might be my favorite Agatha Christie characters, a pair of lovebirds and amateur detectives who are generally more interested in exchanging witty banter with one another than in solving the cases in front of them. (Nick and Nora Charles from The Thin Man are probably the easiest comparison, although Tommy and Tuppence’s first appearance predates them by over a decade.)
In this short story collection, the couple is tasked with running a shady detective agency while their friends at Scotland Yard round up the former owner’s accomplices, and they proceed to approach the cases that come in by imitating the idiosyncratic methods and mannerisms of famous literary detectives like Sherlock Holmes and even Christie’s more famous creation Hercule Poirot. Some of the humor doesn’t land as well if you aren’t familiar with the particular characters being aped, but there are still plenty of droll moments and some quality Christie puzzlers. There’s not much of a plot tying all the stories together, but Tommy and Tuppence are hilarious enough that it’s still a fun read.
★★★☆☆
Book #171 of 2017:
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan #1)
If you can get past all the early-twentieth-century racism, this first Tarzan novel is a pretty fun adventure story. It’s complete pulp fiction with larger-than-life escapades and improbable developments, but sometimes that sort of romp is just what you need in a book. Unfortunately, the author’s prejudicial ideas of white nobility and black savagery make it really hard for a modern reader to just sit back and enjoy these capers for what they are.
★★★☆☆
Book #170 of 2017:
They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45 by Milton Sanford Mayer
This 1954 book draws on interviews with German citizens to explore the typical actions and attitudes of everyday members of the Nazi party, with particular focus on why they were drawn to the movement and how they viewed their own roles within it. This focus on the popular enabling of Hitler’s program is critical for any understanding of how atrocities like the Holocaust were carried out in a purportedly democratic society, and it’s a chilling, timely reminder of the need for vigilance against passivity as similar discriminatory movements gain steam in our own country today.
★★★★☆
TV #29 of 2017:
Game of Thrones, season 2
As mentioned before, we are watching this show for my wife’s first time and my first time since catching it live as it first aired. It’s fun to rediscover the beginnings of everyone’s stories, especially the ones that have changed the most over the years. On balance I think this season is probably even stronger then the first; both are pretty great, but there’s both less exposition now that the world has been fairly well-established and more playing with how plots and characters from the books are interpreted rather than just faithfully executing them (pun very much intended) on-screen.
The biggest book divergences this season are probably throwing Arya and Tywin together and rewriting / expanding Jeyne Westerling into Talisa, and I think the show generally gets stronger the more it leans into some of these unique interpretations of A Song of Ice and Fire. (On the other hand, I haven’t read the books since A Dance with Dragons came out in 2011, so my memory of them hinges largely on fan discussions surrounding the show.) Anyway, Gabby and I are both really enjoying this watch-through, and I’m really looking forward to the next couple seasons, which I think are probably my favorite.
★★★★★
Book #169 of 2017:
Johannes Cabal the Necromancer by Jonathan L. Howard (Johannes Cabal #1)
Johannes Cabal isn’t a very compelling Faustian figure. He’s trying to win back his soul from the devil (by tricking 100 other people out of theirs), but he’s not particularly clever, or funny, or decent, or righteous as he goes about it. He’s mostly just fussy, and this story of him and his demonic carnival really wasn’t my speed. I never felt like I had any good reason to be rooting either for or against Cabal’s success, and most everything that happened seemed pretty arbitrary.
★★☆☆☆
Book #168 of 2017:
The Fixer by Bernard Malamud
This 1966 Pulitzer-winning novel tells the story of a nonpracticing Jew in late Tsarist Russia who is arrested and falsely accused of murdering a Christian boy for ritualistic purposes. It’s a fictionalized version of the case of Menahem Mendel Beilis, and author Bernard Malamud nails the antisemitic fervor that propelled such cases through the courts on the flimsiest of evidence. In the novel, the prisoner’s situation becomes a kafkaesque nightmare of administrative doublespeak as his treatment steadily worsens over his continuing refusal to confess to a crime he didn’t commit, offering shades of both The Crucible and the biblical Book of Job as his protests of innocence are all but ignored in light of the lurid yet ever-shifting testimony against him. This is a book that still feels shockingly relevant half a century after publication and a full century past its setting, as antisemitism and abuses of the justice system continue to thrive. May we all be able to face such corruption with the resolve of Yakov Bok!
★★★★☆
Book #167 of 2017:
Not My Father’s Son by Alan Cumming
A soul-baring memoir from actor Alan Cumming on his abusive father, the resulting trauma, and how learning more about his family history caused him to reevaluate everything he thought he knew about himself. I already admired Cumming as an actor, but I now have a lot of respect for him as a person as well. A short but powerful read.
★★★★☆
Book #166 of 2017:
House Rules by Jodi Picoult
Taken on its own merits, House Rules is a decent story of a teenage boy with Asperger’s Syndrome on trial for murder. The solution to the mystery is painfully obvious just a third of the way into the book, but the characters are fairly well-developed and compelling. By shifting among various character perspectives, author Jodi Picoult does a particularly good job of illustrating both how the world looks to a person with Asperger’s and the alternating joys and frustrations of having a loved one with special needs.
It’s hard to look past the novel’s factual inaccuracies, though, which include both an unrealistic depiction of the autism spectrum – for all her evident research, Picoult seems to have missed that no one with autism manifests every single textbook behavior – and the dangerous disproved claim that childhood vaccines can be linked to an autism diagnosis. The author’s heart is clearly in the right place as she seeks to educate her readers about these issues, but I worry this afterschool special of a book does more harm than good.
★★☆☆☆
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