aaronj21's Reviews (912)

When covering the facts and history of the D.B. Cooper hijacking case, this book does an admirable job. I haven’t read any other books on this specific topic but I found the writing to be clear, compelling, and showing all the signs of being well and thoroughly researched, the best type of non-fiction writing.

After the hijacking itself however, things deteriorate somewhat. Learning about the litany of Cooper suspects makes for fascinating reading, but an author can only stretch that subject matter so far and I got the distinct sense this writer was trying to inflate his page count.

Overall this was an interesting, if not exceptional read.

I find some nonfiction books difficult to break in to, but once I’m invested I’m usually hooked for the rest of the book. This history of Carthage presented almost the opposite problem for me. Opening the book with the final sack of the city by Roman forces is riveting history and also makes for a great hook in the introduction. I was enthralled from page one. After that however, the author lost me for a bit and didn’t really recapture my full attention until the Punic Wars (even the best non-fiction writers can only make ancient commerce and mercenary contracts just so interesting). That being said, the author does a difficult job (writing the history of ancient civilization based on archeology and almost exclusively hostile primary sources) well and history fans will find everything they’re looking for. I particularly enjoyed Miles’ willingness to tackle historical prejudices that have been passed along as fact; Hannibal crossing the Alps was not as crazy an idea as it may seem, the Romans and Carthaginians were not mortal enemies from their inception, etc.

One final, quibbling point: you could make a party game out of this book by having your guests take a drink every time the author mentions the Heracles/Hercules myths, everyone would be on the floor by the end of the second chapter, but you could do it. I don’t disagree with Richard Miles’ case that the Herculean legends were important in Greek colonization and in Carthage in particular, but the extent to which he revisits this topic over and over again felt…labored.

A scathing and nuanced exploration of how people can be terrible in general and small town America can be terrible in particular. This book proves why Lewis was popular during his life and highlights the shame of the fact that he’s more or less forgotten today. My favorite character was Miles Bjornstam, a hard working but caustic and critical Swedish immigrant who felt like someone visiting Lewis’s world from an Upton Sinclair novel.

Many thanks to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book.

I have so much to say about this book.

Let’s start off with the good sentiments.
So this book has a lot going for it, the characterization of Robbie and Anton was really very solid. These were two fully fleshed out characters with their own motivations, personalities, and weaknesses and I really enjoyed getting to know more about them and getting a peek into their respective histories. The writing also has moments of brilliance and several times the author really outdoes herself with encapsulating something complex and rich in only a brief sentence or two. For instance, one I especially liked comes from the chapter “Conversation” in Book One, the context is Robbie musing on how his desires, which seem so benign and natural to him are vilified as perverse in the eyes of society, the church, and the law. (note: this quote comes from an advance copy of the book and not a final edition)

“Men were beautiful things: Why could God create such things and not allow them to be touched? Wasn’t it natural to touch a beautiful thing?”

Excellent stuff.

The author also excels in portraying the mix of apprehension and longing endemic between two men in Edwardian England who see each other as potential partners but unsure of how, or even if, to make the first move. These early chapters showing the beginning of their relationship were some of the finest in the book.

Now for the not so great elements.

At times the pace of this book was jarring and disjointed. Sometimes events and characters would shift perspective, setting, or even whole countries, in only a few words. This took some getting used to and by the end it wasn’t quite so disorienting but it still made the story feel jumbled in places. The dialogue too, both internal and verbal, could use some work. Almost all the characters speak in the exact same, matter of fact, way and sometimes their exchanges are as abrupt and full of non-sequiturs as the scene transitions. Additionally, the book felt repetitive at times and certain phrases (“his face grew stern”) are relied on to an all too noticeable degree.

Finally, my biggest problem with this novel was the eternal back and forth between Anton and Robbie, perpetually breaking off and then mending their relationship in an everlasting emotional tug of war that exhausts the reader and saps even the abundant vitality of this otherwise charming and earnest book. I lost track of the number of times either of our main characters left the other, always “for their own good” and then regretted it and eventually returned. It strains the heartstrings and after the third or fourth “final” break up or reconciliation it’s difficult to care or wish for anything except maybe a permanent resolution, of any kind, to this Sisyphean “will they, won’t they” pattern.

These characters also seem to learn nothing from any of their many break ups. Anton always goes on repressing his feelings and hoarding his words and Robbie always manages to drink too much too fast at the most inopportune times. And in every break up neither of our leading men ever just talk or even attempt to communicate! Our leading men would rather jump at any opportunity to board the earliest train out of London or Nottingham depending, rather than speak for even a few moments longer about their relationship or their emotions.

I understand relationships are hard, and they’re work, and it must have been fiendishly challenging to do that work in this time and place with a prison sentence or denunciation hanging over you. But people don’t behave this way. People learn and grow emotionally (which they do in the novel, to be fair, though never enough to prevent another inevitable, tearful, break up), and when they’re in love and want to be together they don’t invent reasons to leave and return ad infinitum over the span of decades as happens in this book. By the end I found myself thinking, these aren’t people, or even characters, they’re puppets.

I can appreciate an author trying to write a gay historical romance story where most of the roadblocks to a relationship are internal and stem from the challenging nature of relationships rather than from the explicitly homophobic society they live in (though that plays its part too); but this novel just didn’t accomplish that and for me and didn’t quite stick the landing. Despite its shortcomings I couldn’t seem to stop reading it, even as I grew frustrated with its compounding issues.

This was a charming book full of concise information about odd and half-forgotten topics and trends that shaped the 90’s. The scope of the book was admirable (grunge, video rental stores, sports, politics, Y2K, etc.) and made it feel like a true overview of the decade. The author’s writing style and distinct voice are what really shines through however, he somehow made a chapter on college football (a sport I have no attachment to, at any level) keenly interesting.

The Late Americans was an interesting reading experience for me. I went out and bought it on the basis of a local bookstore billing it as “the book everyone is fighting about on Twitter”. I haven’t been able to find any evidence of this fighting but I also didn’t look too hard and was mostly just glad this possibly apocryphal designation got me to read the thing.

This is a novel about a series of vaguely interconnected grad students in a liberal arts college in Iowa. Everyone is more or less unhappy and messed up in their own unique ways and while the plot doesn’t move forward so much as wander, meander, mosey, and turn around and ask for directions, I still found it to be a very compellingly propulsive experience. Each character felt like a real individual, with all the complexity, irrationality, and banality that comes with being human. I wanted to know more about these characters, to spend more time in their heads even as part of me craved a more traditional story pacing. The author’s evident skill was certainly an asset in this roaming narrative, the prose was sparse yet utterly well-crafted with frequent beautiful sentences.

Taylor manages to capture the misunderstanding and jagged emotions around things like race, sexuality, and class, and the whole book thrums with the tension of those elements as they’re represented in a single, loose knit, friend group. Without seeming to truly take sides, the author shows you the lived reality of all these disparate characters and how they understand, and misunderstand, each other. The novel struck me as an ultimately hopeful mediation on the importance of connection, even, or maybe especially, the tenuous connections we form as we’re starting to embark on our adult lives.

Between the Head and the Hands was an understated yet engaging and memorable novel focusing on Michael, a young gay man who comes out to his conservative Lebanese parents and is kicked out for it. the plot follows Michael as he struggles to find a place to live, to finish college, and to come to terms with his radically new life. I connected with Michael as a character, his aimless, headlong dive into dating and gay life mirrors the formative years of many young queer people as they’re defining themselves and just starting to grasp at their identities. Sure, he makes mistakes and sometimes behaves in an immature way, but this felt very believable given his previously sheltered background and the sudden freedom and relative isolation he experienced after leaving home. I also appreciated how true to life the story felt, there was tragedy and triumph, yes, but of the everyday variety. Michael comes out to his parents on a whim, absent any huge cinematic monologue, and he drifts through the next few years of young adulthood the way many people do, with highs and lows but without any improbable plot twists or Dickensian story arcs.

Overall, the book felt like an honest, compelling, and thoroughly modern coming of age story, I burned through it in one day.

There was something earnest, engaging, and fundamentally optimistic about this book. Like the antithesis of a Cormac McCarthy novel.

I liked the beginning the best and was a little puzzled since I thought the majority of the book was going to be about Alexandra struggling to make her family’s homestead succeed. That was the element of the story I was most invested in. in reality that portion of the book passes relatively quickly and the rest of the novel delves into the family’s personal lives. Not a bad narrative by any means but not quite the one I was expecting / hoping for.

This was a quick, quirky read about Alice, a woman who can time travel to the date of her sixteenth birthday. The more she goes back, the more she tries to change the course of her life and save her ailing father. The writing was wonderful and the characters felt fleshed out and organic. The novel was also something of a love letter to New York which was delightful and charming to read. Despite the sometimes heavy subject matter the overall tone of the book was hopeful and optimistic, with a heartening message about embracing the messiness of life and focusing on the few things that truly matter.

I’m removing a star because, despite going back to 1996 dozens of times, Alice never once tries to stop 9/11. Selfish.

What to say about this book, this brick of a historical fiction novel?

First off, the positives, and there is a lot going in this book’s favor.

The novel is imminently readable, no small advantage for a book of this length. The reader can breeze their way through several chapters without the fatigue that sometimes attends sprawling, historical narratives like this. True, the characters are a bit simple, the heroes are absolute paragons and the villains are cartoonishly evil. However, the plot flows wonderfully and the author juggles the dozen or so interesting characters and their crisscrossing plotlines adroitly.
The principal virtue of this book is its entertainment value. The historic details are present and integral but somehow feel surface level at times. Overall this book narrowly misses the distinction that some historical fiction attains (from the pen of someone like Mary Renault, for instance) of breathing vibrant life into a specific time and place long past, fully capturing the feel for a certain period. This novel presents the history as linear and apparent, which of course it is to us now, but somewhat strains credulity when the main characters back in the mid 1800’s regularly foresee the nature of events, elections, succession, battles, etc. and are almost always right. One almost gets the sense that every main character already knows all about the Civil War in general, just not their specific part to play in it.

Now on to the less positive impressions this book left me with.
First and foremost is the problem of Virgilia.

Virgilia, sister of George Hazzard, is the only truly staunch abolitionist we see in in the entire novel. She is also portrayed as raving mad, vindictive, and seemingly more interested in the cause of abolition for personal motives (resentment, a desire to “get even” with the world, etc.) than for any real moral reasons. Her portrayal only deteriorates as the novel progresses. In the beginning she’s unpleasant, (repeatedly other characters theorize she only does abolition work because she is homely and therefore needs something to occupy her time) and may say something unkind and too pointedly political during dinner. But by the book’s end she’s a complete lunatic who wants to see Orry hanged by a mob. Now I don’t deny some abolitionists were extreme in their views, but it bears repeating that Virgilia is the ONLY abolitionist we spend any time with in the book. Without any other abolitionist characters, she becomes a representative sample which makes her characterization extremely troubling. The only one adamantly against the whole institution of slavery is a spiteful, vindictive person with an apparently serious set of mental disorders.
There were many persuasive, moral, and eloquent abolitionists from this period in American history. We have their speeches, essays, and letters and their assertions were, of course, proven correct. But we hear from none of them in this book, thus we miss a vital element of the debates going on at the time and the work of good people horrified by slavery is omitted.

The problem of Virgilia is really just a symptom of a larger issue I had with the book, that is that it veers incredibly close to ahistorical “Lost Cause” talking points and removes and responsibility for the institution of slavery from any individual slave owners.

At one point towards the end of the novel, Cooper Main, a likeable and honorable South Carolinian, speaks to his wife about his upcoming service to the confederate government. He states he believes the cause “already lost” yet feels compelled to serve his state for the sake of honor. Further, by the end of the novel every “good” character who owns slaves is convinced of the institutions’ moral wrongness yet feels unable to give it up. Indeed, Orry finds a note from his father disclosing that he too knew slavery was wrong despite never expressing those views publicly. This framing attempts to portray the slave holders themselves as victims of a sort while at the same time ameliorating or obviating their own personal responsibility for the “peculiar institution” and didn’t sit well with me.

In their repeated forays into the North, the Mains are often accosted by bigoted Yankees and held personally responsible for all the evils of slavery in America. The author points out, through tone and framing, that this is doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. But they ARE responsible for owning slaves themselves, something the novel never seems eager to address head on, and if they’re not individually responsible for their own actions then who in history was?

I understand the novelist’s impulse to make characters on both sides of the Mason Dixon relatable, to make both families morally good people, it makes for excellent story telling. But this humanizing impulse shouldn’t extend to wiping out personal responsibility for one of the worst institutions to ever exist in the history of our species. I may read the other books in this series but I am thus far skeptical for the reasons mentioned above.