My Reading List — A Periodical Roundup of Recent Reads & Reviews
AKA #shar1zbookclub on Twitter
I read a lot. If the book is really good — I read a book in a week, longer books can take 2–3 weeks, but I can get to nearly 50 books a year sometimes. (Short books I can read in a sitting…like Number the Stars, Lois Lowry).
My spouse has been my book curator for years, and cross-references reviews from basically every medium and then surprises me every couple of weeks with a truly great lineup of next reads.
I’d like to have a place where I can go back and remember my takes on books, so I’m going to start reviewing them as often as I can remember. I’d love to discuss books — so feel free to comment and add your thoughts, it would be great to share the experience with others.
This week’s roundup — my reviews from Good Reads (will add new reviews in the coming posts).
The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (A Must Read)
It could be that I liked this book a lot because I could really relate to Sofia as a Sephardic Jewish woman.
I loved this book — the characters are so well developed, each complex and highly intelligent. Reminds me of Breaking Bad in that sense. This is a character work, and it’s exceptional.
The story is so vivid, it’s easy to forget it’s science fiction, as it weaves in a lot of religious and social symbols that are as true in this futuristic tale, as they are today in our world. Which is a sort of social commentary on how some things remain universal forever.
This is one of the more dismal and heart-wrenching books I have read.
Similar to Chronicle of a Death Foretold, you start the book knowing it is going to have a terrible ending, and still somehow it takes you down this scenic route that is so engrossing it enables you to forget what’s coming — so that the ending crushes you like a sack of bricks.
I couldn’t put this down. I will be reading the sequels.
(EDIT: Since writing this review on Good Reads, I actually have read the sequel — and an additional unrelated book — and they are equally beautifully written, heart-wrenching and enduring. Russell has this incredible gift of weaving the very realistic with the surreal into a tapestry that makes it so conceivable, you are more consumed wtih the plot details, than the unlikelihood of the futuristic scenarios. I loved all three of her books — the sequel Children of God, and another book on an entirely different topic, WWII in Italy called: A Thread of Grace {I’ll review this one separately}. She’s a truly gifted author.)
Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel
⭐⭐⭐ (Just OK)
ALERT SPOILERS.
Disclaimer: I’m going to review this book in the context of another post-apocalyptic book, Canticle for Leibowitz, and the review has spoilers of both books — so stop here, if you don’t like spoilers.
While the book itself was engrossing and well-written, and although there wasn’t any real apparent plot, the character development was very good, and draws you in quickly. It’s a quick, enjoyable read.
That said, I had a lot of difficulty suspending my disbelief with this book. While I can accept a catastrophic pandemic that wipes out 99% of mankind in record time, and a breakdown of critical infrastructure. Up until there it kind of makes sense, but unlike Canticle for Leibowitz, where there was a complete loss of knowledge — where all of the books in the world were purposely destroyed — there was no such occurrence in this book.
Which begs the question — why would people so quickly revert to living like savages?
Even if there was no Wikipedia tomorrow, wouldn’t you go to your local library or college and find all of the books you could on basic electricity? There were aqueducts in the 1500s — wouldn’t you figure out basic farming? Heck — there’s still Target, Walmart, Home Depot & Michael’s two weeks after the breakdown — wouldn’t you forage all of the seeds, lumber, wire etc.? Why would people live in gas stations and Wendy’s and not have their pick of the most comfortable house and create a sort of kibbutz in normal living quarters?
There were a lot of things that seemed pretty nonsensical, with 99% of the world population dead, it doesn’t seem to make sense that Kirsten’s brother wouldn’t be able to find antiseptic/alcohol/iodine/antibiotics one year after the collapse and would die from a nail in the foot. (EDIT: Especially 90% of the world population has been wiped out — the stocks and stores left over should be sufficient for the survivors.)
In Canticle for Leibowitz there was a nuclear war, so most supplies were damaged or destroyed, purposeful destruction of books and knowledge, where people were put to death for preserving knowledge.
In this book there was no such thing, so a complete resignation to live in the airport you’re forced to disembark at for 20 years — seems uninspired and unrealistic.
I enjoyed reading the book, I liked the weaving in of the comic book throughout, and its allusion to the different elements in the book, but I couldn’t buy into this post-apocalyptic world. The horror was not conveyed sufficiently, nor the urgency for such behavior, so it was difficult to reconcile.
(UPDATE: Irony, this was written before undergoing a global pandemic and after re-reading two years into COVID, I still completely agree with everything I wrote a couple years ago).
Kindred, Octavia E. Butler
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (A Must Read)
The irony is that I read the Time Traveler’s Wife before Kindred, despite Kindred being written first.
Now that I’ve read both, and while I understand that it’s a genre, I can’t help but feel that the Time Traveler’s Wife is basically a less impressive rip off of this book.
When it comes to science fiction, and with this being one of the more chilling variations of science fiction, you really need to be able to suspend your disbelief. I found the portrayals so realistic and plausible, aside from one strange anomaly at the end (where I couldn’t reconcile the deviation in the time that elapsed, and there was no further explanation). I literally found myself in terror half the book.
Louis CK (EDIT: whose names is now somewhat controversial) has a joke he makes where he essentially laughs at the fact that basically anyone that isn’t a white man can’t really travel back in time much farther than a few decades without it being completely destructive — and this book really drives that home. It really makes you think how truly lucky we are to have been born in more modern history.
It really was a painful and horrific portrayal of slavery, the magnanimity of spirit, humanity, and resilience that was part & parcel to helping each other get through such a dark time was truly inspiring.
A must read.
Hope you enjoyed these. I have also just review Alfred Lansing’s Endurance in this Twitter thread.
Till the next one!
