Reviews and Comments

My wife and I were talking about Palestine and Israel one night and in a bit of melodrama I said something like “the only difference between the Israelis supporting genocide and me is that America finished it genocide so thoroughly that I don’t even know who’s land I live on.” It was a throwaway line, meant to express what I often feel in situations like this. But still, I thought about it off and on for several days.

Because it’s true. I own a home, and the land it stands on. And academically I know that land was, at some point, annexed from another sovereign people against their will. And I have no idea what they called themselves. I could probably guess at it. I have this vague awareness of the Indian communities around me. But if I had to tell you who’s land I live on, I would have …

I read this book in print and knew right away I needed to read it again. So this time I listened to the audio book. (And my wife listened with me.)

In some sense the first time through I was so bowled over by Byatt’s technical perfection that I didn’t write much at all about what the book meant to me. It is such a beautiful story, and it really rewards a second reading. As a small example, the first time through, I was judgmental of <spoiler>Christabel’s behavior toward her cousin in Brittany</spoiler>. But reading it again, knowing more fully what she’s dealing with, I felt only empathy.

Maude too is a character that is wonderful the first time through, and only gets better the second. Seeing her story unfold when you’ve already been gifted her vulnerable insight into self makes every part of her story more deeply felt. And …

I read this novella on a whim after seeing it mentioned in a thread about Hugo drama. It’s a quick, straight forward, breezy read. I genuinely admire Ulibarri’s political optimism on display, and I found the character, plot, and style enjoyable. I have to say one thing rubbed me the wrong way. The book seems to want to take on sticky questions that swirl around “great people”, which is a subject I find important and worthy of deep probing. Thomas Jefferson was an eloquent and effective champion of the rights on man, and also a slaveholder apologist and rapist. Abraham Lincoln “freed the slaves” and was also deeply racist. Martin Luther King Jr. was a hugely effective champion of social justice, and a philanderer. This sort of thing runs deep. I’m not sure anything is untouched by it, and it is worth asking what it even means, ends aside, to …

I’m not sure why, but I remember this book having some kind of resurgence in my childhood. Perhaps it was just in my household. But I remember seeing it being read by both my parents and my uncle, and I remember lots of talk among them about it. I was way too young to read it myself, but more recently a friend recommended it. Updike is a nuanced and linguistically competent writer, and the plot is fast and engaging. As a character study it is engrossing.

It’s hard in this modern era to look past the sometimes grating white-centerism of the book. Maybe that was intentionally thematic, but I can’t help but think it runs deeper. In this book there are Americans, men and women, and then there are Negroes and Chinamen and so on. The obvious implication is that non-white Americans aren’t real Americans, or at least require …

I read an excerpt of Krug’s powerful and deeply introspective book somewhere and knew I had to read the whole thing. In Belonging, Krug digs deep into an identity of collective inherited guilt. The structure is touching and powerful, never flinching from the fundamentally unanswerable questions it asks. As a white American I’m only slowly coming to terms with my own culpability in the collective guilt of my heritage (which is arguably worse because we have so far not even tried to atone). I found in Krug’s introspection something I could identify with. This is heady stuff and Krug never let me down with platitudes. She is not atoning. She is not excusing. And she is not self-flagellating. She is only exposing the naked bulb of a heritage of intense cruelty, and refusing to look away.

This book was recommended effusively by an author I admire, Lulu Miller. So it went on my list. Broder is an exquisite writer, and I love a first-person narrative that goes deep, so it’s no surprise I loved this. It’s a book that will challenge you, or at least it challenged me. First, the protagonist, Lucy, is deeply unlikable from the start. She’s judgemental, self-absorbed, and dare I say it, kind of a bitch. But Broder handles her character deftly, and quickly you can’t help but root for her. It’s also a very sexually explicit book, which is not something I’m used to. I don’t think its sexual like a romance novel (although admittedly I’ve never read one). The sex talk is frank, crass, and almost constant, but it is never titillating. Broder uses sex as a mechanism to explore distance and closeness, self-love and desperation, and even suicidal ideation. …

I was engrossed by the first act of Stolen, seen through the eyes of a nine-year-old girl. I loved the indigenous voices, bits of language and culture, and ominous plot. Things take a tragic turn, and Elsa quickly grows up. We then get a more straightforward story, part thriller, part crime novel. And all through we see an honest, complex indigenous community largely discarded by the people in power, and tormented by colonizers. It’s a part of the world I was completely unaware of, and I enjoyed every page.

Somehow I got this far in life without ever reading Dracula. My daughter-in-law-to-be finally convinced me to pick it up—it is one of her favorites—and I blasted through most of it on a long car drive. It is unsurprisingly great, far creepier, more graphic, and more sexual than I expected given the 19th century publication date. I was also delighted to see how many of our modern Vampire tropes—I’m an unrepentant Buffy fan—are on full display here, from garlic and crosses to the whole “you can’t enter without an invitation” thing. The Vampires even turn to dust when staked (although with an explanation that doesn’t quite work in the Buffyverse). I saw echoes in Harry Potter here too, with the whole psychic-connection subplot. All this to say Dracula is so influential we live in a world more or less shaped by it. It was fun to go to the …

I went through a Shakespeare deep dive maybe ten years ago where I read almost every play—I consider myself a fan. So I was instantly interested in this book, which tackles the tricky subject of race and Shakespeare. On the one hand we have the sort of “Shakespeare is perfect and ‘wokeness’ is evil” nutjob crowd. And on the other hand we see serious calls to abandon Shakespeare entirely, which is the kind of response I don’t find very useful. Karim-Cooper, an accomplished Shakespeare scholar and woman of color, does the hard work, turning to the text, and the history of racial language, to engage directly with these divergent viewpoints. She tackles questions of authorial intent, inescapable racist imagery, complex casting challenges, and more.

I adore this kind of book. It’s a sort of renaissance work of affection and obsession. Lizzie Stark loves eggs in their manifold forms, and she decided to sit down and tell us why. I suppose you’re wondering if this is a book about eggs-as-biology, or -as-food, or, perhaps, -as-symbol. And the answer to all three is: yes. It’s fun, fast, surprisingly vulnerable, and genuinely interesting.

(I have to add that, frustratingly, the audiobook is marred by several production errors. Repeated lines, small skips, and mispronunciations. The book is wonderful none-the-less.)

This book is almost 100% constructed from excerpts from first person interviews with a wide cast of characters from the industry and era, all meticulously edited to produce a readable, engaging, well-rounded, sometimes contradictory story. It’s a brilliant structure and I can’t imagine how much work went into editing all this together so cleanly. The authors let their subject speak, interjecting only a sentence or two here and there for necessary context. And through this tight scrapbook of excerpts, we see a full story emerge as characters reinforce one another. And we sometimes see them disagree, on interpretation and even on fact. The authors let these disagreements stand without comment. I find this revealing in a way that writing about these people would not be. It is wonderful.

Early on in the book, music exec Renee Pappas makes a point that I found fascinating:

There came a time, right after …

I saw this book on an NPR list of best books of 2023. The title—a reference to my favorite play by Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra—caught my eye, and I wanted something fun and engaging to listen to on a long car drive. So I bought it on a whim.

This book was not for me.

The book itself is straight forward, even a little boring in structure. It’s a linear telling in six sections, essentially divided by decade. But this isn’t a complaint. Madonna’s story is so compelling that it doesn’t need to be dressed up in a clever telling. Pro-tip: the ebook has an appendix of photographs that is not included with the audiobook. It’s worth seeking them out.

I spotted this book on a promo table at a book store in San Francisco and I suppose I was taken in by the striking cover, and because you know, like, I’m a father of girls. I didn’t really know anything about it, but I added it to my list. I’ve just finished listening to the audiobook, well-read by the author.

Abbott is a little older than me, but not much, and so the story of her childhood was striking when compared to my own. The wider geopolitical beats around the story sound familiar, but the lived experience is entirely different. At times I felt so sorry for this little girl who seemed to so desperately need a little more love and attention. And in other places I found myself a little jealous of such an open relationship with such an open father, a man who knew how to express …

Over dinner, my kid told me they re-read this because their students are reading it in Literature class. Isabel said it was so much better than they remembered. I know we read this in High School, but I’m sure I “read” it in my usual way at the time, which is to say I skimmed the chapters, read the dialog, and hoped for the best. (I didn’t enjoy reading fiction until I was in my late twenties.)

Anyway, long story short I decided it was high time I actually read it for real. It was honestly so much better than I expected. I guess I was naively expecting a lot of puritanical moralizing at the expense of a woman. And in a sense I got that. But Hawthorne also gives us a strong woman, a spirited irrepressible little girl, and a sort of schizophrenic rebuke of the very moralizing he …