It’s almost comical how much Gladwell contradicts himself in this particular case. He draws conclusions that he directly disproves in subsequent sections.

More than anything, it’s just entertaining to consume his work, but also, so long as you’re paying attention, always seems to end up like the scene in The Prestige when Michael Cain explains misdirection and makes the bird disappear. Only we know the bird is crushed by the cage and dead. And we just aren’t supposed to catch the dead body.

Well so it is with all Gladwell books. And really it makes a lot of sense when you see an interview with him where he says he considers his books launching pads for conversations. Kickstarts into the general intellect. But… no where in his actual books, that I’ve read anyways, is his actual intent every stated. He presents his thinking through the gesture of seemingly factual evidence and leads the reader on through the small hoops of his logic in order for his conclusions to appear factually true.

Yet… the reader is supposed to infer that even he thinks this is just the beginning of the conversation as a whole? He clearly states what he thinks and why, even when drawing comical biased conclusions from information that would disprove something in the first section. What reason is there for the reader to think that he thinks he’s sending them on toward the actual “hard data”. (See below for a reference)

And the problem is that now those conclusions from the book are used as short hand in the general intellect, even when completely untrue. Like the 10,000 hour thing, or underdogs, or really any of his popular concussions. And because he is so popular, he really does have a larger responsibility. Especially now that we’ve seen the effect Gladwell has on culture. It’s legitimately disturbing, and easily remedied with a clear intent stated upfront on the book that is never there.

At least with other books, as far as I could tell, he did not contradict himself so much. It hampered my enjoyment and that’s really all I came to these books for, knowing to take everything with a grain of salt. But even the prestige takes a turn from the fun of a magic trick to something far more sinister when you know the bird is dead, crushed by the cage for the audience.

“In an interview with The Telegraph, Gladwell said, "The mistake is to think these books are ends in themselves. My books are gateway drugs—they lead you to the hard stuff." Gladwell himself is discrediting his own work, essentially saying you also need a Psych 101 textbook at your side to make sure everything jives with actual fact. If his books are not "ends in themselves," why does he go on with doing Ted talk after Ted talk, business meeting after business meeting masquerading around ideas that are truly stories that are inspired by science? The citations and studies he uses are simply the starting point for him to draw completely different, unrelated, and non-peer reviewed conclusions. They give his ideas unwarranted scientific legitimacy.”

https://www.thecrimson.com/column/behavioral-economist/article/2014/8/7/why-you-shouldnt-trust/

This had some interesting stuff going on, especially given how tropey the potential for the antagonist to be in a techno thriller type book such as this. It is a lot of fun and is a strange hybrid. It definitely feels like commercial fiction in terms of flow, pacing, dialogue, and diction. But the techno aspects are also far more developed than that kind of fiction too. It’s granular in its mathematics and in its themes, especially regarding “free will”, which was a pleasant surprise.

I think if you really like both of those kinds of fiction, especially action movies and one-liners and what not, it would be a perfect sweet spot for you. I wanted more of the later and something more literary, finding the dialogue especially a bit cringe worthy. But it was still plenty of enjoyable.

This is a book that deals with big themes through the lens of a perspective most often erased: a young Native American woman; and the book handles that weight well.

CW for off-screen sexual assault

“Firekeeper’s Daughter follows 18-year-old Daunis Fontaine, a half-native, half-white former hockey player/aspiring scientist who never feels fully settled in either her reservation or the outside world. She finds herself even more torn when she witnesses her best friend’s murder and is pulled into an FBI investigation centered on a lethal new drug running wild among her friends and family. It doesn’t help that she’s falling for the mysterious Jamie, a new player on her brother’s hockey team who (spoiler alert) turns out to be an undercover FBI agent who asks her to be an informant on the case.”

Even as Daunis takes it upon herself to try and deal with a major community problem, she also has to contend with being an 18 year old who has lost her father under complex and harmful circumstances. She has to deal with a hockey injury, the expectations and weight of her community, and the effects of the meth addiction in the community directly. Daunis has to decide whether she wants to even attempt to be officially enrolled in the reservation as a recognized, blood member the community because her status is in question due to circumstances of her birth she had no control over.

There is a lot going on in this book, and a lot being communicated at a sociopolitical level. It’s honestly very impressive how different the perspective reads and how though provoking it is. Concepts divorced from western civilization are ingrained in the point of view. Especially regarding restorative Justice and other touchstones of socialization.

It’s also highly effective at showing how outsiders, even when they have good intentions, often do more harm than good because they do not understand the people or the community at a fundamental level.

The plot itself is straightforward and I think most readers will see each twist and turn that comes. But even when that’s the case, part of what makes this book work is how each aspect of the plot is interpreted by Daunis and what she does in response to the events.

That said, because the story is constructed in that way there is a degree of suspension of disbelief involved that is a bit beyond the genre. The plot does feel manufactured at points precisely because it is trying to communicate very specific things to the reader, and so it’s a bit strange in so far as character driven versus plot driven. The interplay of agency as it is taken from Daunis and clawed back, makes it feel like a constructed plot, rather than wholly organic at some times.

Daunis’s voice actually doesn’t sound, to me, like an 18 year old either; more like a 15 or 16 year old, but she couldn’t help the FBI without being 18 years old. And even that feels like the first major ask of the reader. But it’s early enough that it’s fine. When the impossible love story aspect starts and things snowball and become more and more dangerous, and when the voice doesn’t feel like it isn’t as complex and intelligent as an 18 year old, it cultivates some dissonance. You could probably go on Twitter and see 18 year olds use more complex diction and sentence structure, whereas this feels middle grade stuffed into a complex 18 year old who is described as being beyond her peers on academic levels.

However, the other effect the young voice has is a sort of childlike intensity when it comes to sheer earnestness, which leads to some impactful dialogue in its simplicity.

So I’m torn.

Luckily I try and rate books at an expectations level. Does this book do what it set out to do? Does it meet its pitch? Yes, and it exceeded it as well. Which makes it 4 stars for me. I didn’t love it because of the qualities I mentioned above, but it also surpassed the basic plot and some strange beats in its effort to communicate complex cultural aspects. It is Definitely worth picking up.

This is hard to rate for me because it’s not anything new to me, so it’s more of a clarifying text. As such, it’s hard to exceed my expectations beyond what it sets out to do: Describing the solider mindset and the scout mindset. What each look like in practice, and the benefits of being a scout.

I like the real world examples, though sometimes they are overly simplistic, as with Bezos and Musk, who both supposedly gave minor odds to their succeeding in various companies and attributed taking the risk because the benefit to “the world” was worth it, regardless of failure. It doesn’t take into account something really obvious though: They can also afford to fail; the correlation of such examples to the average individual is… negligible, at best; we know they are not morally just people. Empirically, we know this. So that part bugged me.

Regardless, though, I would rather give a higher rating so that more people encountered this mindset and attempted to implement it and the reality is many consumers on this site are pretty snobby about rating scores, even though 3 stars means it’s actually still good. And I do feel comfortable assigning a higher value to something like this than fiction, since it can actively benefit you more than most self help and is directly actionable to online interactions, which I myself assign a lot of value.

It’s strange reading this prequel because most of the large events you already know, if you’ve read The Hate U Give. But it is still interesting seeing these characters as their younger selves and the events that snowballed into the powder keg that was the sequel too.

I ended up vacillating between being really interested in what was occurring and feeling like I already knew everything, so the tension in the plot wasn’t really present. In the end, this is another book where the voice is so quintessentially YA, in the same earnest and heartfelt way the authors other books are, that even when you’re retreading ground, it’s an empathic and compelling experience.

What a history, honestly. One of the earliest memories I have is my mom and dad making a fuss over, probably a second televising of Roots; setting my brother and I down in a mandatory viewing, something I don’t think had ever occurred. What seemed annoying at the time for prepubescent boy what a formative experience, so my parents obviously knew what they were doing.

Tyson mentions that out of all her portrayals people approach her mentioning Roots the most often. I believe it. Tyson is ingrained in history to a faceted degree. Knowing this, I also had absolutely no idea she was married to Miles Davis.

This is an interesting memoir because, unlike most, it is not rooted in a specific theme, particular life trajectory, or anything at all. It’s mostly straight forward and chronological with the odd peppering of anecdotes. It is also very conversational and both of these lend the text as a whole ungrounded qualities that felt less interesting because of the narration, which often didn’t jibe with the authorial voice.

Tyson describes getting into a part so fervently that a “hump” appeared as if by magic, as her body inhabited the roll. And after the part was played, it similarly magically disappeared, and a body shaping mold thing was never needed, as many assumed was used, apparently. The interesting thing to me about this was the quality of that recollection is pretty matter-of-fact, and I was wondering to myself, How could it feel to lose yourself to a part so much so that your own body is coopted by that headspace?

There is also a pretty heavy amount of proselytizing, which I didn’t expect. Tyson had a firm belief in god and her place in the world via that lens. She also goes into bouts of speaking on prophetic dreams and a strong sixth sense that has her characterize her life as a sort of moving through Gods’ channel, yet with a degree of agency that seems like it’d be at odds with it.

But the largest characters in life are always contradictory, I find. When things line up too well, those are the stories that feel incongruent with a human experience, imo. Though, this memoir does feel like it has a finger on the scales, and you expect that, given the conversational tone.

Either way, this is a staggering amount of years to cover. 96? Almost inconceivable. Tyson lived through so many events and thought that her staying so long on this earth was rooted in her working right up until she died.

When you stop, you stop, essentially.

Well worth a read, though I would recommend it in print.

This is really great. I was exactly in the mood for a mystery with a heavy literary bent. It is not at all conventional in its presentation, structure, and even prose. I’ll clarify that structurally it is kind of like a thriller in its pacing, which is structural with short chapters, but within each chapter time us malleable.

This book does not hold your hand. In no way is it commercial fiction. There is no quotation marks marking speech, there’s no helpful markers for chapters that show what time period the section is taking place.

We follow events around a murder of a young girl in a town, and then ten years later, two women narrowly evade what would probably be sexual assault, but when driving home go over a bridge into a frozen river. Only one escapes with her life.

The very suspect circumstances of the “accident”, as well as what the survivor remembers, and how this correlates to ten years prior, is the main plot of the novel.

However the narrative jumps around often to many different members of town; as such, the town becomes a character that’s explored as much as the events are elucidated. It also is very effective at showing how a tragedy effects a town as the events are happening and how it shapes and molds people.

It’s also pretty effective at displaying wide ranging culpability beyond the typical whodunit as well. The community is somewhat on trial, along with the main suspects, how the people treat the suspects, and how power dynamics and authority and hate and love all play a part in each aspect of what happens.

It tows the line well between enough information to feel the events without it being for shock value or gratuitous. Something make writers in crime thrillers with young female victims can easily mess up. I didn’t feel a male gaze but still understood some characters applying that to women. I thought it was quite well done.

So why not 5 stars? It does meander somewhat, feeling a bit overwritten. It has wonderfully descriptive prose, but as is that danger, it does make any kind of pacing signals basically coherent. And you need to give it a some latitude to get what you pay for, so to speak.

It’s a pretty interesting intersection. Not to many books I’ve read in this genre are capital l Literary. Or perhaps I’m just not as well versed in them. But I certainly felt like I got a lot more out of this than a typical commercial fiction read in the genre and will stick with me longer, having steeped its themes in the prose.

3.5 rounded up

I think, had I not read Whiskey When We’re Dry and Blood Meridian pretty recently I would have liked this more.

What I liked the most was the structure and the plot. While the former serves up mixed results—sometimes serving to propel the pacing pretty well and effectively cutting away to build tension and interest—it also sometimes hampers the pacing as often as it helps, imo. It’s most satisfying than a straightforward linear and chronological progression though. Which means that the point of view, which made it difficult to get attached to any character, might have just exacerbated an otherwise small issue for some readers.

The plot though, I feel is quite strong. It’s highly evocative and when the narratives dovetail it is very satisfying. Heavy themes on loss and guilt, the nature of nourishment and growth, all made it compelling to me despite the authorial voice not being my favourite.

Had the overall craft surrounding character and dialogue been stronger I think this would have been a 5 star read, so I can easily understand why many people have it such a high ranking. Equally, I can see why it’s a polarizing book. It alienates genre enthusiasts and it takes quite a while for the structure of the plot to break ground. More than normal, this might heavily depend on if you just really dig the voice or not.

A thing about this book is that I had to pause, as I was just about to give it 3 stars, having more-or-less met my expectations and no more, because I actually don’t agree with, or was impressed by, its themes and what it has to say on school and the coming of age experience. But that doesn’t really matter. I like to think expectation evaluation is the easiest and fairest way to rank things 5 stars, and so “liking” it is more of an X factor question for me that sometimes propels a title into 5 stars from 4, but otherwise is lumped into expectations.

Anyway, this story is about a young man pretty literally waxing nostalgia about his boyhood prep school days, which makes him think on the nature of his selfhood, essentially.

As a teenager he was quite the wanker it turns out. At least when it really counts he is. Knowles compares the moral failings of the main character to the First Fall: Adam and Eve, loss of innocence, and coming-of-age. This makes sense given the historical context of the book when a world war was going on. Even the elites were set to become men by waging war, even though there is a discussion regarding the legitimacy of war and how it’s old men puppeteering, essentially. Yet it’s a life event expected of them, that the protagonist shirks even as he has his fall from innocence well before school ends.

It feels both prescient and antiquated, in my opinion. These themes have been beaten over the head, though they are universal and interesting. No doubt this is why, here in Canada, we were made to read this in English class. I actually read my copy from my school days, now probably 20 years old or so (the spine still intact and the paperback looking mint, too.).

But I really dislike the view of all men having an inner demon to contend with and loss of innocence is a fall, rather than an ascent; a failing of our socialization and puritanical culture, no doubt. And to the inner demon and nature, I’m sure it’s a lovely idea that so much responsibility can be adjudicated to a nebulous ingrained substance etched there at birth that we must contend with. It’s a very western book that acknowledges the military-industrial complex, draws themes from the bible, yet completed ignores the responsibility of the group and the individual to become more ethical than the society that raised them. Chalk it up to original sin.

I hated school and so the nostalgia that permeates the book; this “innocence”, when really, we are most likely the very worst version of ourselves, seems like a wild dichotomy to me. It makes me distrust the narrator and elicits very little sympathy from me. A story of growing up without any real accountability or responsibility, and our main man forever a selfish boy.

It did solidify something for me though: Those who long for high school are highly suspect. Who knows, perhaps I first learned that from this book. For as long as I’ve been an adult I’ve certainly subscribed to that. Perhaps that began 20 odd years ago.

A hard book to rate for me, because the voice and style are very much up my alley. Many of the negative reviews I found to be a bit silly, citing, essentially, just diction. The idea that the author’s prose is flowery or overwritten is such a boring critique at this point. Because really, you just mean this doesn’t read like Hemingway or commercial fiction. It’s not purple, it’s descriptive writing. It’s good writing. It’s just not to your taste and because you dislike them, you completely miss the point of their implementation, assuming a lack of craft. I would rate a book higher just to spite the opinions of these clipped and robotic prose advocates tbh.

But I digress, clearly. The sentence-by-sentence and overall craft at a prose level is really pleasing to me. It serves a purpose in characterizing each character and codifying their perspectives. This matters a lot, since the book is interrogating the demographics of the characters in relation to the dread of the ostensibly nebulous world-ending events.

On this front, when it’s at its best, the novel truly excels.

I love the way it critiques class, racial divides, generational gaps, education, maturity level. All these various components of a person, as well as their digressions into their past, generated a unique interest in the narrative for me.

Where this falls apart for me somewhat, is I felt like only some characters were more realized than others. The seemingly ostracized feel like they garner only a very myopic context, which goes somewhat against the theme. And more importantly, against the tension trying to be evoked.

I like the idea of not being able to retreat from the world-altering. The reliance on our somewhat archaic, somewhat unknowable infrastructure definitely is not in place to nurture us. The novel slowly becomes a stark depiction of white western culture from multiple vantage points. Another in the plus column.

But I only somewhat cared about not knowing what was happening; by the time stakes are involved, the ball was already rolling and gone. This whole story feels before an impetus. A short story before the plot. Fairly toothless, to be honest. Almost perfunctory without a plot to ground the themes and concept, which are rich. Ultimately, I felt like this entire book completely hinges on whether you find a very specific kind of horror—one in which, I think, most millennials and younger have already accepted as a sort of daily reckoning.

It’s no wonder it’s polarizing.

To conclude: I had a good time consuming it; couldn’t put it down, in fact. So I happily straddle the good, 3 stars, mostly hit my expectations, mark.