Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New …
Review of 'An American Marriage' on 'Storygraph'
4 stars
This is the story of a love triangle made more complex by the wrongful conviction of one of the main characters. What is extraordinary about this book is the three main characters. They are all fully realized and believable. None is perfect, but none of the three are imperfect enough to dislike for long. Though their actions may be questionable, the reader often understands why they have behaved this way. It’s a delicate balance, maintaining a tension that kept me reading long after I should have gone to bed.
Though I felt a bit let down by the quick and easy resolution of the Epilogue, this is an extraordinary book that explores what it means to be in find someone to love, to find your place in the world and to lose both through through a justice system that is still prejudiced and unfair.
Given Maria Popova’s work on her Brainpickings blog, this book shouldn’t have came as a surprise. But it did surprise me and overwhelm me.
There is so much going on in this book, but I’ll focus on the three that had the most impact on me personally: tracing the impact of the Transcendentalist movement on today’s world, updating my high school knowledge of that movement and giving full expression to the emotional lives of historical figures.
This book can be looked at as an examination of the Transcendentalist movement. This was probably my favorite part of high school English. I was obsessed with Thoreau, and wanted to follow in his footsteps. I wanted to leave the world to try to make sense it—to understand a world that seemed ridiculous and confusing. Over time, I chose to engage with the world. And Popova’s book covers those who chose to do the …
Given Maria Popova’s work on her Brainpickings blog, this book shouldn’t have came as a surprise. But it did surprise me and overwhelm me.
There is so much going on in this book, but I’ll focus on the three that had the most impact on me personally: tracing the impact of the Transcendentalist movement on today’s world, updating my high school knowledge of that movement and giving full expression to the emotional lives of historical figures.
This book can be looked at as an examination of the Transcendentalist movement. This was probably my favorite part of high school English. I was obsessed with Thoreau, and wanted to follow in his footsteps. I wanted to leave the world to try to make sense it—to understand a world that seemed ridiculous and confusing. Over time, I chose to engage with the world. And Popova’s book covers those who chose to do the same: engage with the world.
In doing so, she brings to the fore figures who didn’t figure into our high school curriculum. While Thoreau and Emerson are featured here, they are the background to the story of Margaret Fuller, Maria Mitchell and Harriet Hosmer. All of whom went out into the world a loved full lives.
But the fullness of life is not just going out into the world and making your mark, as Popova demonstrates with her portrayal of Emily Dickinson. Famously a recluse, Popova shows that Dickinson lives a full emotional life, explaining how someone seemingly separated from the world could write poems so full of life. It is not just Dickinson, though. Popova explores the emotional life of all the figures she covers here. She shows, again and again, that a life of ideas never exists in an ivory tower. It is always interwoven with the rich tapestry of our emotional lives—our friends and family, our hopes and disappointments, our intense loves and equally intense losses. Popova shows that we don’t just think about the world, we feel our way through it.
This is a rich and complex work. It is dense with interconnected people, ideas and loves. It took me some time to read it, but it was worth it. It is unlike any book I’ve ever read, but is one of the most rewarding books I’ve ever had the pleasure to read. Like all great books, it changed not just the way I look at the Transcendentalists, but the way I look at the world.
Once, Lovelace had eyes and ears everywhere. She was a ship's artificial intelligence system - …
Review of 'A Closed and Common Orbit' on 'Storygraph'
5 stars
I loved this book for the same reason I loved The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. The world building that is so well thought out that everything seems obvious, though it’s very different to our own world. It’s a world that is lived in by multiple alien species, all of which are very original but still entirely believable. But all of this—a finely wrought world and the aliens that inhabit it—is merely background to the characters that live in this world and the relationships between them.
This novel explores what it means to be a person through the lens of two AIs. Each is slowly shown to be a person in their own right. Chambers is so effective at this that she had me near tears toward the end of the novel.
I really can’t recommend the Wayfarers novels enough.
The concluding part of the highly-acclaimed science fiction trilogy that began with Nnedi Okorafor's Hugo- …
Review of 'The Night Masquerade' on 'Storygraph'
5 stars
I’ll let this review stand for all three Binti books, though I enjoyed this one the most.
The Binti books are superb speculative fiction. They take place in a fully imagined and believable world with characters that are at once familiar and strange.
There are two things that I particularly love about these books beyond their wild inventiveness.
The first is that the adventures here are about making peace, where so often it is about making war.
The second is the way these books examine what happens when you encounter and get to know someone from a culture that is different than your own. Okorafor manages to capture the way a different culture slowly becomes a part of you, changing you even while you remain the same person.
These books are amazing, and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them to anyone willing to travel and explore beyond the familiar.
