Reviews and Comments

Novic highlights American Deaf culture in True Biz, primarily following three people: Charlie, a new student at River Valley School for the Deaf (RVSD); February, headmistress of the school; and Austen, a deaf student from a deaf family in the area.

Charlie’s suffered most of her life with a malfunctioning cochlear implant. She hasn’t been afforded an opportunity to learn sign language, and is fairly behind students her age when she transfers to RSVD. February wants the best for her school and students, but seems to be losing the battle against the school district administration. Her marriage seems to be in shambles. Austen’s sister is born hearing, causing a bit of an identity crisis for him.

To me, Charlie and her friends are the most interesting parts of the book, as the book treats her story as a sort of coming-of-age. She undergoes the most growth in the book, whereas other potentially sub-main characters feel, to me, that they’re placed as set pieces for Charlie to interact with.

For example, Charlie’s roommate, Kayla, exists solely to demonstrate the differences between American Sign Language and Black American Sign Language. Once her point is made that racism exists within the Deaf community, how that looks like, and why, she essentially disappears from the story.

I felt that Novic’s primary purpose is to show the challenges that Deaf culture faces by sprinkling in bits of history, instructional sign language, and questions posed to the reader throughout. I don’t feel that Novic’s critique is wrong, but I do feel that it comes away heavy handed. It doesn’t pull any punches for the readers’ sake.

As a story, it doesn’t work for me. I felt that the characters exist solely to channel the author’s views, not to help the reader come to a new, long-lasting epiphany. There isn’t a true resolution; that’s left as an exercise to the reader (literally, Novic ends the book in an afterword that the future for people similar to those in the book depends on the reader).

If you expect your stories to have a resolution, this book isn’t for you. However, if you don’t mind the story missing a resolution, and you’re interested in learning about other cultures through story, this could work for you.

Cal Newport wrote Digital Minimalism after he received many comments from readers of his previous book, Deep Work, sharing that they struggled with the role of new technologies in their lives. Newport’s goals for Digital Minimalism are to provide a case for minimising tech’s role in our daily lives, and to teach how to adopt his philosophy of digital minimalism.

The book is divided in two parts (twos feature predominantly throughout the book): part one focuses on how technology captures our attention, introduces digital minimalism, and proposes a 30-day “digital declutter,” a detox-but-not-quite-a-detox program. The intent of the 30-day digital declutter is to effect a rapid transformation in digital technological consumption. I’m not convinced that this is any more effective than a 30-day crash diet.

The second part of the book ostensibly demonstrates four themes of practices to help grow a digitally minimal lifestyle: spending time alone, engaging with people, focusing on “high-quality” leisure, and joining an “attention resistance.” The ideas in each section are good for living a rich and meaningful life. However, Newport’s desire to convince you that digital tools can be harmful seeps into these chapters, leaving the book disorganized. Newport may have been more effective laying out his argument for digital minimalism, then discussing practices for a healthy inner life, followed by ideas to develop healthier digital habits.

I felt that Newport hurt his own argument a few times. For instance, he mentions that folks start using a service in its infancy, but new features are often added to keep people’s attention within the service. But he never deals with that challenge later in the book. Another example, Newport mentions Arnold Bennett’s How to Live on 24 Hours a Day as inspiration for active leisure while pointing out that Bennett ignored that leisure time may be affected by domestic chores, and therefore writing a primer for men. However, Newport himself doesn’t account for or confront this possibility either, offering many suggestions that, frankly, are focused primarily on things folks could exchange for monetary value. Newport essentially denies that domestic chores have value.

Finally, I feel that Newport’s computer science background place him at a disadvantage for meeting these goals, and may prevent him from providing proven and helpful advice for changing personal habits. I think that Newport would have done better to write with a co-writer to help cover the psychological aspect and ensure that advice for changing habits is sound.

I don’t recommend this book for moving to a digital minimalistic lifestyle. I feel that the tactics may not be lasting or could be harmful. I feel that several of Newport’s ideas presented as ways to grow a digitally minimal lifestyle are good, in the sense that they’re ideas we should be striving for, but also focus on non-domestic or hyper-productive means of leisure. In a way it’s exchanging hyper-focus from electronics to particular types of leisure that I’m not convinced is healthful.

Olga Dies Dreaming occurs in recent contemporary America, specifically within the Puerto Rican diaspora living in Brooklyn, New York, through the view of Olga and her family.

Olga was essentially raised by her brother Prieto and her grandmother. Her father was largely absent due to drugs, and then death. Her mother absent to be a revolutionary.

Olga tries to navigate life as Puerto Rican descendant within a rich white person’s world. Her brother is trying to represent Brooklyn in US Congress. Both experience mixed success, and always with the remote judgment from their mother, who shares her thoughts on their progress through untraceable letters.

Gonzalez touches on family, belonging, love, and abuse. She’s never particularly heavy-handed, and I feel that she realistically portrays struggles that descendants of minority immigrants face within contemporary America.

This was a book club pick, and a fairly good choice, in my opinion. I enjoyed it much more than I expected. I recommend it.

Dark. Evocative. Warm. Unsettling. Those are the first words that come to mind after I finished this book.

I'm still not sure if Tress is redemptive love story, or the inside view of the main character descending into madness. Maybe it is both? While short, this book feels substantial, like there is more hiding in the shadows that I didn't understand, that I may never understand. But it is a warm horror, and one I imagine I'll return to again. I found myself equally repulsed and drawn to the woodsman. And, by the end, to Tess herself.

Larissa Brown does an exquisite job evoking dark tale with a modern twist, with a faint echo to Charlotte Perkins Gillman's The Yellow Wallpaper. It also reminds me of Neil Gaiman's take on fairy tales, that they were originally dark tales told by adults for adults, and only later transformed for children, with faint echoes of their original gruesome origins. This story is a return to the grand tradition of fairy tales for adults, and a story of return overall.

I look forward to returning to this story again.