This is mostly to keep track of books for my own interest. I hope to get back into reading novels and non-fiction which is of interest to other people at some point, but I've largely fallen out of the habit and mostly read to support other hobbies I have.
You can also find me at sanae@carfree.city.
I use the following rubric: 5 stars: one of my favourite books of all time 4 stars: loved this book, would recommend 3 stars: enjoyed this book, you might like it too 2 stars: did not like this book 1 star: did not like this book and would recommend that you not read it
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Searching for clues about her best friend’s mysterious suicide, Danielle ventures to the squatter, utopian town of Freedom, Iowa, and …
Content warning Spoiler thoughts on "the sympathizer"
When I say that the book seemed more optimistic than cynical, I think about the ending when the protagonist is tortured. 1984 is the comparison that comes to mind, but while 1984 ends with the protagonist utterly broken, this one ends on a pretty hopeful note - the protagonist remains a revolutionary, though he has lost faith in that one particular revolution, he remains an idealist though he knows he will perhaps do to others what was done to him. It's the sort of cynicism or optimism that looks at the world as it is, at human nature as it is, and says that nevertheless we must continue.
It is also fairly critical of I guess the entire concept of ideology as it butts up against the more complicated nature of humanity. Some people have criticized the entire section where he eviscerates Hollywood as gratuitous but I think it's pretty essential to the book's themes. The contrast between the straightforward stories that we tell - colonialism, American exceptionalism, capitalism and the American dream, Communism and independence - and how they butt up against the complexities of the world. And yet it is the real and concrete suffering we see in the book and in real life that makes it morally imperative to try and change things, to pick a side. The protagonist's greatest crime in the end is doing nothing.
I think my favourite scene in the book was when he tries to reveal his identity as a spy to Sonny who doesn't believe him, and then he completely botches murdering him. It sort of I guess foreshadows the end, where he cannot prove he has been a good communist all along, where his self-perception as a heroic figure doing only what is necessary for the cause falls apart. The protagonist has also told a lot of stories to himself and they, too, fall apart when confronted with reality.
I feel like I should reread the book with the new knowledge that I have and how it recontextualizes things.
The Sympathizer is the 2015 debut novel by Vietnamese American professor Viet Thanh Nguyen. It …
4 stars: loved this book, would recommend
I read this in like two days, first book in a while I've had trouble putting down. It had the constant tension I associate with a spy novel, but was a lot more introspective. I found it to be a pretty quick read for its length and for its literary-novel-ness, though the lack of quotation marks tripped me up a few times.
I saw some review describe it as "cynical" but I thought it was actually fairly optimistic, given the subject matter. I think it accurately describes the state of the world and am surprised that anything in there would be surprising in the year 2024, but there is a theme of a strange kind of hope in it. Every character is deeply flawed, but not absolved of the responsibility to do the right thing. The spy as protagonist, the "sympathizer", also lets …
4 stars: loved this book, would recommend
I read this in like two days, first book in a while I've had trouble putting down. It had the constant tension I associate with a spy novel, but was a lot more introspective. I found it to be a pretty quick read for its length and for its literary-novel-ness, though the lack of quotation marks tripped me up a few times.
I saw some review describe it as "cynical" but I thought it was actually fairly optimistic, given the subject matter. I think it accurately describes the state of the world and am surprised that anything in there would be surprising in the year 2024, but there is a theme of a strange kind of hope in it. Every character is deeply flawed, but not absolved of the responsibility to do the right thing. The spy as protagonist, the "sympathizer", also lets you look at and understand the motivations of all the different sides in this war, not just as ideologies but also as people, and even when the motivations are actually deeply unsympathetic, most of the characters do seem very human (my one criticism is that this is a lot more true of the men than of the women). I also saw a review describe it as "funny" and that is probably not the first adjective I'd use, like it's not wrong but it is not the type of book you read if you want something funny.
It touched on a lot of subjects that I now consider kind of cliché in immigrant stories, but which were done so well that I did not feel that at all. Like the whole "stuck between two worlds" thing felt a bit more fresh, maybe because it did not buy into the model minority myth at all or discuss it at all. I guess making the protagonist a communist helps there, no pressure to be a doctor or lawyer. Some other reviews on other websites said it dragged in the middle part, but that was my favourite part. It was also a rare example of a mixed race Asian protagonist, and while some things did not quite ring true to my experience (though my background is otherwise quite different), its tendency to lean on stereotypes there didn't bother me too much and overall I thought it was much better written than such things usually are.
I haven't read a lot of spy novels and usually think of like, James Bond. I like that the protagonist is not a particularly tough guy and that he struggles with every aspect of being a spy in the ways that I think a real person would. In particular I liked the theme of the careful managing and splitting of identities. An obvious theme in a spy novel but I think one that also rings true to anyone who finds themselves, as the cliche goes, between worlds in some ways.
It is pretty graphic, though it only felt gratuitous in a few places - one particular scene I kind of rolled my eyes at.
Content warnings: some fairly graphic sexual assault, torture, murder, implied child sexual abuse. Racism (aimed towards the protagonist), misogyny (largely from the protagonist). Uh. bestiality?
it's set in SF and contains at least one bicycle so I think I have to read it
Content warning vague spoilers
4 stars: loved this book, would recommend
Well maybe more like 3.5.
I wanted this to be a very specific book and it wasn't that book at all. I picked it up in a bookstore and understood the premise to be that the main character is dead and has forgotten who she was when she was alive but also is still very much around. And this is true.
But it is kind of a zombie story, from the perspective of a zombie, and I wanted it to be, I don't know, Kentucky Route zero.
Nothing really happens in this book, so if you are expecting things to happen you might be disappointed, but I was kind of actually expecting fewer things to happen. The short bursts of violence seem kind of incongruous and irrelevant. The whole crow thing also did not land for me. I don't think anything really needed to mean anything or to symbolize anything. The dismemberment worked, though, the sort of alienation both from the world and from the self. And the sense of wandering around an abandoned world.
I read it all in one sitting. I'm a little disappointed because it's only like 80% of the extremely specific story I hoped it was. I'm not sure if I'm exactly recommending it. But I am glad I read it.
3 stars: enjoyed this book, you might like it too
I got this as an ebook from the library not knowing a lot about it, including that it's a novella, which I didn't realize until the last page.
Otherwise it's more or less what I expected: a pretty solid fantasy story. There's a strong sense of an imaginary place and time which is not over-explained but just lets you live in it. It's about the lives of ordinary people and the decisions they make with glimpses of a much larger world.
I'm surprised this author hasn't yet published a full length novel - apparently it's in progress - and I'm looking forward to reading it.
Actually the author is female, she just has a disproportionate number of male characters and initializes her first name, so I assumed she was male - which is a common thing for marketing reasons when writing action-oriented fantasy that you don't want people to inexplicably stick in the YA section
I had a thought about this book which is that I'm not sure if Delilah Bard is meant to be vaguely transmasc leaning. There are queer characters in the book so it seems possible. But also the book got me thinking about how a lot of adventure-fantasy, when it has female characters, has characters who are remarkably uncomfortable with their femininity. There's a particular trope of fantasy heroine who specifically hates embroidery and dresses thus demonstrating she is one of the cool ones (has only male-coded interests). When I was younger it seemed only natural to me to feel weirdly uncomfortable by the notion of wearing a dress, but now that I better understand that this isn't the common female experience, the masculinity of all the characters in this book (regardless of gender) does stick out. It is still a trope I enjoy though.
3 stars - enjoyed this book, you might too
So on the one hand I would actually recommend reading this book if you don't know much about making things by hand. I definitely enjoyed the book most when it talked about stuff I didn't know much about.
On the other hand, there was a lot that annoyed me about this book.
First of all, the central conceit that there is something called craeft that is different from craft annoyed me, and yes this is the whole premise of the book so maybe it's unfair to complain about, but it still annoyed me every time it came up. I generally agree that traditional crafts are worth preserving and have value in and of themselves, and that they are particularly worth keeping around since climate change might mean we have to move away from certain types of mass mechanization and waste. (It's …
3 stars - enjoyed this book, you might too
So on the one hand I would actually recommend reading this book if you don't know much about making things by hand. I definitely enjoyed the book most when it talked about stuff I didn't know much about.
On the other hand, there was a lot that annoyed me about this book.
First of all, the central conceit that there is something called craeft that is different from craft annoyed me, and yes this is the whole premise of the book so maybe it's unfair to complain about, but it still annoyed me every time it came up. I generally agree that traditional crafts are worth preserving and have value in and of themselves, and that they are particularly worth keeping around since climate change might mean we have to move away from certain types of mass mechanization and waste. (It's also very Britain-centric.)
However, this book is prone to the kinds of romanticization of pre-industrial life which I usually expect from people who have not actually made anything from scratch. Except he has! He should know better! I think the argument that it is somehow more satisfying to be more in touch with nature is somewhat undercut by the fact that needing to spend all day, every day, doing hard physical labour as a matter of survival kind of sucks.
If you ignore this kind of running theme though, the descriptions of various traditional crafts - many of which most people don't have the opportunity to do any more - is quite interesting and worth knowing about. Bonus points for standing up for basket-weaving. My hope is that people reading this book are inspired to learn a craft of their own, rather than just developing some kind of cottagecore theory of how life was better back then.
(This isn't the edition I read but it's what came up in the search)
I never read this in school or anything. I finally read it for the first time because, of all things, a Tumblr post. And I'm glad I'm reading it at this age cause I don't think I would have gotten it in my teens or whatever. Especially the part where you wake up as a bug and the first thing you think is, what happens with my job. Like maybe today it would be, is there some kind of medical leave that applies, and how will I possibly fill out the paperwork? And you know that shouldn't be the first thing, but that's the world you live in. And at first it seems kind of humorous, a parody of careerist attitudes, but he was kind of right in the end
@kingrat@sfba.social oh I just realized I've been using it inconsistently and I should actually slightly downgrade the one I just read to a 4, so thanks for reminding me
