The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

TV Review: Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, season 1

TV #7 of 2017:

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, season 1

A very smart, very funny adaptation of the beginning of this book series. (This first season covers the first four novels, out of a total of 13. The movie adaptation only spanned the first three.) Neil Patrick Harris and Patrick Warburton are both pitch-perfect in their roles, and the rest of the cast all get the job done. The writing is really great, though, especially at bringing forward certain plot elements that didn’t become evident until late in the book series. The plot in the books sort of feels like it was all being made up as the writer went along, so it’s a refreshing change to see stuff being subtly laid out so early on in the show. The diversity was also a pleasant surprise; it’s still a pretty white show in the main cast, but there was a lot of minority casting in the supporting roles that I really appreciated. This was a show that I wasn’t expecting great things from, but I ended up really liking it and am really looking forward to season 2.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: 1984 by George Orwell

Book #24 of 2017:

1984 by George Orwell

1984’s vision of a dystopian future has only grown more eerily prescient since I first read it back in high school, foretelling a rise in the surveillance state and government efforts to repress reality through propaganda. The storyline and the characters are honestly not so great, but Orwell’s worldbuilding is instantly believable and distinct, even after so many years and so many subsequent imitators. It would be facile to draw exact parallels between our modern society and that of 1984, but the book certainly has poignant echoes in our current political climate of truthiness and alternative facts

★★★★☆

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Book Review: A Cold Legacy by Megan Shepherd

Book #23 of 2017:

A Cold Legacy by Megan Shepherd (The Madman’s Daughter #3)

This final book in the Madman’s Daughter trilogy is a welcome return to form after a disappointing middle volume. Restricting the action to an isolated estate in the Scottish highlands helps bring back the tight focus of the first book, and the Frankenstein variety of mad science here is as delightful as the Dr. Moreau business was before. Juliet’s tired love triangle is also finally gone for good, which significantly elevates this novel above its predecessors.

This book: ★★★★☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

Book ranking: 3 > 1 > 2

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Book Review: Inkspell by Cornelia Funke

Book #22 of 2017:

Inkspell by Cornelia Funke (Inkworld #2)

I have mixed feelings on this one. Exploring the “Inkworld” that the characters in the previous story came from is a smart move on writer Cornelia Funke’s part, and I like that Meggie has grown as a character from the plucky kid in Inkheart to a rebellious teen here. The tone of the series has matured some too, following Harry Potter’s lead in featuring more darkness and death as its protagonist grows up. But the already-confusing magical system gets even more ridiculously contradictory in this book, and a lot of the character choices and story developments feel like they’ve been mandated by plot concerns rather than arising organically – and yet the plot itself lacks any sort of narrative through line. The resulting novel is a bit of a mess, but there’s enough potential left in the series for me to follow it through to the final book.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North

Book #21 of 2017:

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North

I’m a big fan of time loop stories, but even in the context of that particular genre, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August is remarkable. (I’d personally put it second only to Ken Grimwood’s novel Replay, which is one of my all-time favorite books.)

The premise of this one is that the main character keeps reliving his entire life, getting reborn as his own infant self with his memories intact every time he dies. But he’s not the only person living in such a loop, and while that’s a little mind-bending at first – for how can one person be reliving a period of time that starts in 1890 when Harry’s own birth occurs in 1919? – it’s gradually explained via a branching multiverse theory. So although the world essentially resets for Harry August each time he’s reborn, other “kalachakra” like him could have done things earlier in the timeline of his new reality to change history – including preventing his birth from happening in the first place.

As with any time loop story, there are equal parts joy and sorrow to be had with a character who knows how events are going to unfold by virtue of having already lived through them. But the novel really distinguishes itself from the genre with its inclusion of other kalachakra whose motivations are sometimes at cross-purposes to Harry’s own, and author Claire North’s depiction of this society of decadent immortals calls to mind Anne Rice at her best.

The back half of the novel in particular is a gripping chess match of a conflict between Harry and one of his fellow kalachakra who is bent on introducing future technology well before its time, and North writes a great spy thriller of the two figures struggling to outwit one another. All in all, it’s a rich concept that is exquisitely explored, and I would certainly not be opposed to reading a second chapter of Harry’s lives one day.

★★★★★

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Book Review: The Awakened Mage by Karen Miller

Book #20 of 2017:

The Awakened Mage by Karen Miller (Kingmaker, Kingbreaker #2)

A definite improvement over the first book, although at the cost of a few narrative threads and characters that are unceremoniously dropped in the transition. And I still don’t understand how Asher earns the love and devotion of so many other characters by scowling bitterly and shouting at them, but that’s less bothersome now that he’s surrounded by a more compelling plot. Both the court intrigue and the magic are much better handled here, and having clear villains with well-defined aims helps sharpen the story. This is still not my favorite series, and I probably won’t read any further in it, but I’m glad that this particular duology came to a satisfying conclusion after such a rocky start.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Victim by Saul Bellow

Book #19 of 2017:

The Victim by Saul Bellow

When an antisemitic acquaintance accuses Asa Leventhal of ruining his life, the New York City Jew brushes off the accusation to focus on a recent family tragedy. But the gentiles in his life are quick to take his accuser’s side, to the point where Leventhal begins to feel guilty and finds himself bending over backwards to help out a nemesis who continues to belittle him. It’s a powerful look at gaslighting and the pervasive effects of antisemitism, no less relevant today than in the post-World War II era when the novel was first published.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher

Book #18 of 2017:

The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher

The Princess Diarist is Carrie Fisher’s account of her time filming the first Star Wars movie, along with some reflections on what the franchise’s fame has meant for her over the years. It’s a deeply personal memoir, constantly foregrounding the fact that the actress was just 19 at the time of filming, with no way of knowing what she was getting into when she accepted the role of Princess Leia.

Nowhere is this naïveté more plain than in the section where Fisher discusses her on-set love affair with costar Harrison Ford, who as a married man in his mid-thirties was far more worldly than she. It’s this hitherto secret affair that made headlines when the book was published, and there’s a certain awkward voyeurism in being invited into the lives of famous people we thought we knew so well. (The book also includes a lengthy series of excerpts from the actual journals that teenage Carrie kept during filming, and they are utterly ordinary in their bad poetry and relationship angst.)

Fisher had no way of knowing when she wrote The Princess Diarist that she and her mother would both pass away before the end of the year, but it is impossible to approach the book now without that in mind. Although somewhat narrow in scope, the memoir offers a fitting contemplation of the author’s legacy and how she will always be remembered in connection to her most famous role.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan

The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan (The Wheel of Time #1)

For the most part this first book in Robert Jordan’s massive Wheel of Time saga feels like a paint-by-numbers retelling of the Star Wars / Lord of the Rings monomyth. There’s some occasional flashes of originality, but it’s mostly just the same familiar story of farmboys, dark lords, and black riders. This version of that story isn’t bad, but it’s not really good enough to justify reading another 13 books of it either.

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Book #16 of 2017:

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

As many others have noted, the title Anna Karenina is somewhat misleading, as the novel devotes more space to the story of Anna’s brother-in-law and author stand-in Konstantin Levin than it does to Anna herself. (“Brother-in-law” is a simplification, and suggests a closeness between Anna and Levin that does not exist in the text. More properly, he is the suitor and then husband of her brother’s wife’s sister.) The two characters have several common acquaintances, but their stories do not directly intersect much, and they only meet one another once very near the end of the book. Nevertheless, they share a deep unhappiness that persists even when, as with Levin’s marriage or Anna’s ongoing love affair, they manage to get what they think they want.

This novel is a product of its time, which brings both occasional sexist moments and endless digressions about 19th-century Russian politics or farming techniques. But the characters are interestingly flawed, and they change meaningfully throughout the story as Tolstoy considers how easy it is to fall in and out of love. Anna herself is an inspiring figure of an early liberated woman, and the tragedy at her core cannot detract from that legacy.

★★★☆☆

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