Reviews and Comments

This is the first novel by James that I have ever read, so I was not entirely sure what to expect. I enjoyed tremendously James's close attention to detail to the characters, their appearance, their surroundings, and the turmoil of their inner lives. James establishes early on the independence of the heroine, Isabel Archer. In this exchange, Isabel says:

"I always want to know the things one shouldn't do." "So as to do them?" asked her aunt. "So as to choose," said Isabel.

In rejecting her various suitors, Isabel is determined to live life in the way that she sees best and not peremptorily close off any possible routes. Do we need spoiler alerts for books published in 1881? Let's just say that things do not develop as Isabel intends, and James keeps the reader's interest by not closing off possible outcomes and carefully considering each character's actions and motivations.

Armin Shimerman has noted that it was his "personal agenda" in DS9 to make the Ferengi a more three-dimensional race than they were portrayed in TNG (trekmovie.com/2018/03/21/armin-shimerman-feels-responsible-for-failed-ferengi-introduction-on-star-trek-the-next-generation/). This book might be seen as part of that effort, as Shimerman gives depth to Quark's interior life in this novel. But there's a lot more going on here than just one character. The novel sets up a conflict between Bajor and Ferenginar in an interesting way, contrasting their spiritual and materialistic societies. And we see some of the lasting horrors of the Cardassian occupation on Bajoran lives. Good moments for all the DS9 characters here, who Shimerman clearly knows inside and out. Weighs in at 450 pages, but I was never bored. Great book by an author clearly invested in the subject.

This is probably the least compelling of the DS9 books that I've read. Still a good yarn with a secret mission to the Gamma Quadrant and a host of aliens who can more easily exist in the imaginations of novelists than on screen. There's some good material here with a planet in the Gamma Quadrant. Glad I read it, but not top-shelf Trek.

Calarco brings together both heartbreaking anecdotes and reliable data to underscore how the uncompensated labor of women has become the de facto safety net in this country. She briefly traces the history of how businessmen fought to prevent the United States from having robust social protections. But for me the most damning part of the book are the interviews with husbands, who almost carelessly take their wives' labor for granted, all the while feigning admiration. Men, if you have ever said "I don't know how she does it," Calarco's riposte ("you could ask") should give you pause.

Book does exactly what the subtitle implies: provides a serviceable overview of the institution of slavery in Texas prior to the Civil War.

One of my favorite short stories which I read in college was Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivner." But Bartleby's got nothing on Yeong-hye. Her decision to become a vegetarian sends her family into a tailspin, as Han explores how an effort to renounce violence and reject the world's demands provokes a more and more violent reaction from those around her. Aspects of the story are absurd, but are told in a straight, just-the-facts-ma'am style that heightens the sense of how stark (yet simple) Yeong-hye's actions are. She determines, for her own reasons, to live as she wants, and the novel illustrates how challenging it is to take such a stance.

Han narrates, from multiple viewpoints and time periods, a 1980 uprising that was brutally put down by South Korea's military government. At the beginning of the book I was struck by how ordinary people banded together to help each other -- in this case, working tirelessly in a makeshift morgue to help families identify their loved ones, all the while listening for the army's return. Han evocatively carries the story through time and shows the lasting effects of the government's brutality. And yet, the novel also demonstrates that people can be moved to come together and fight for each other, even in the face of brutal, senseless violence.

Not the book I thought it would be, but still an interesting and worthwhile read. Cohen explores several sets of friends whose bonds are close without passing over into romantic love. Her work illustrates how impoverished our language, legal structures, and social norms are when it comes to describing and honoring these types of bonds. The stories she tells demonstrate that deep friendship is possible and valuable, and just how hard people have worked to make it work. The payoff, in an enriched life that others may never fully understand, seems entirely worth it to all the people involved. The book may lead you to question some of the conventions which limit how we let others into our lives.

Miller's book is a good overview of the history of the gag rule, a story with complex parliamentary maneuvering that Miller tells with patience and good humor. He has mastered the intricacies that John Quincy Adams used to press the issue and those that Adams's opponents used to suppress the same. The book features many lengthy quotations to give a sense of the proceedings (and get a sense of Adams's acerbic wit), but the citation format will be frustrating to the serious researcher attempting to locate the materials.

Howard's history includes some good detail on individual cases and useful appendices, but interpretatively this book has been superseded by books such as Sean Kelley's American Slavers.

Late in the novel, one of the characters says that "Chosen family … sometimes grow closer in sympathy than any other" (page 227). I'm not sure if they would have said "chosen family" in the time period of the novel -- the phrase struck me as a modern one -- but there's no question that it is a major and poignant theme of the book, as the characters we meet struggle to survive during the period of the U.S. Civil War and its aftermath. Phillips draws some wonderful characters, presents some incredibly harrowing but realistic scenes, and the ways in which these people coalesce into their chosen family is meaningful and consequential.

A blistering jeremiad about Appalachia and what you, frankly, are getting wrong about the region. Although it refers to Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, the book is not a point-by-point refutation of Vance's work. Rather, the book asks, pointedly, why we allow so many of the stereotypes about the region to endure. As our national press will no doubt continue to take voyages into "Trump country," Catte's guide to the region will continue to serve as a useful corrective to the media's assumptions.

Here in DC, we have a series of "Business Improvement Districts (BID)," which I confess I never really understood. At their most visible, they employ teams to clean up trash within the district and try to keep things generally tidy. Schaller's book explores the history of these districts (a relatively recent phenomenon in DC, although not elsewhere). Her research uncovers how BIDs give the impression of public service, but often remove decision-making from the public sphere and put it in the hands of landlords (who may or may not be the actual businessmen operating in the neighborhood). There is also a fascinating chapter on how different people characterize their neighborhoods, comparing long-time residents to newer residents, and so on. The book is a useful primer on this topic, and surely the lessons from DC are applicable elsewhere.