When Roland was 11 his piano teacher, a woman, molested him, altering his life in indiscernible ways, even when looked upon by him at a much older age. For much of it is essentially a dual timeline story at the point of which is wife has left him with their son and his story from 11 old is told until it catches up. It didn’t feel completely strict on audio, more as though certain moments would suddenly dovetail into boyhood.

And then are (annoyingly) ruminated upon as he gets further old. I’m sure it’s helpful for some readers to get a refresher; it is a fairly long novel. I would have rather just had his story purely linear and Bildungsroman, womb to tomb. It is intentionally overwritten, which works for it in some instances. There is so much detail on many things, I imagine only some will be of interest, not all.

It did work for me that in retrospect, Roland, in going through his journals, finds no specific themes or flourishes of writing; he’s exceptional at a thing or two and not much else. He is very ordinary and his story still is worth reading about and knowing. But I have to agree that it isn’t exceptional above and beyond the amount of detail summoned to ink the character and bring his life to the page. He was always believable and easy to empathize with and understand. So much verisimilitude present must connect the reader to something they care about, I think. Especially with prose work that are quite good.

There’s a lot to like, nothing extraordinary about the novel, for me.except for narration, which was impeccable. Highly recommend the audiobook format for this one.

This did what it says on the tin. Bit silly and meta, but enjoyable if you are just along for the ride. I don’t think it’s going to be something that stands-out, but it was fun popcorn fiction that I wanted today.

Maybe it’s down to the fact that I retained not much of what had happened, nor the emotion I had tied to the first book—but I failed to connect to this beyond thinking the worldbuilding and characters are a step above the typical modern fantasy I’ve attempted. I even read a chapter catch-up on the first book to see if that would help, which did prompt me to remember some of the beats that I particularly liked. I just couldn’t get invested this time around. Maybe some time in the future I’ll re read them back to back and see how they hit at that time.

What a mission of a book. Nonfiction is not a muscle I have developed in my brain. While this is undoubtedly a feat to have constructed and written, it certainly remains a product of its time as well. The author has some really heavy blind spots - calling Hitler a pervert, a short hand for gay men or anything queer, and has a very self admitted (at the start of the book) personal stake and lens to apply to history. Many times his own diaries are quoted. This is really effective because I think the voice crafted works quite well. And the structure… more or less works. But one can’t help but wonder what other blind spots there are, especially when he goes off about vagrants and mocks Hitler as stating he was a great artist, which is hilarious. I mean, you don’t need to imbue further undesirable qualities he has many already, and he devised pretty indisputably effective propaganda, which is… art.

However, when it actually segues into the movements and machinations of the war I think it is really valuable and feels like it is meticulously constructed, holds reinforced conclusions. It collects a staggering amount of information and that particular arrangement of books 3 on, or so, are great. It is so much information I don’t know how much I actually retained, but it effectively shows what is known, what is thought to be known, and some suppositions in very clear and stark terms.

It has been criticized for the thesis of the formation and dissolution of the “third reich” itself, but I didn’t particularly care about that aspect and so had no dog in that race. Whatever reasons of the formation, the death blow seems incontrovertible. Mostly, it’s valuable for a macro perspective during the war. Go to it for that. Turning points and decisions, the dissection feels good to me, a laymen.

I’ve read this book, more or less, every year for around 15 years now. No other book has its hooks in me like this. One of the rare ones that become formative experiences. I don’t even like sports all that much; never sat through a ball game as an adult. What really gets me about it is the idea of a man who knows he’s a boy, not yet fully grown, clinging to a throughline of love. So long as that love is true there is no real other, or so he thinks. Billy Chapel is a born to be, tried and true, 37 year old baseball pitcher. Part of the vanguard—the old guard. He has pitched his entire life, and is an antiquated relic of a past way of both playing, and the game itself. Which has morphed into a for profit-less spirit, money changer. Few players play.

But Billy isn’t that way. Only, he’s also at a crossroads. At the last game of a terrible season, his team goes to play a team that stands a chance, with a win, to go to the series. He’s old enough that he can’t pitch all game; but he’s got hit skill and his wits, and not much of him has faltered with age. He learns he’s to be traded only after a woman, Carol, a ship that passes in the night when he is lucky, for more than ten years, stands him up, and might stand to leave. During the course of the ball game we see Billy enter his internal mechanism, as the curated house of cards he’s maintained falls apart. But because it is falling apart while he is playing the game, and can enter himself in a way usually inaccessible—he may yet stand a chance of negotiating these trials, and, possibly, growing up.

Even the prose work and dialogue feel like Chapel is antiquated. But he also manages a forthright earnestness forged in those past times. There is a depth to his boyishness and the idea of the game being something like Neverland, and he Peter Pan. So long as the game continues as it should he is invincible, but also cursed. And the perspective is unique, offering stream-of-consciousness paired with 3rd person. The verisimilitude gives everyone a nonfiction quality, like it hasn’t been coached in editing dialogue. They’re clumsy and messy and pause often; reiterate and obfuscate. The unique qualities reinforce the themes and especially annunciate a fantastic, earned end.

It never ceases to work on me. It’s a book that ages with me like no other. Most I don’t even care to see them try. If I ever want to be really moved I only need to pick one of my three copies of the book. Because when I travelled for work I would seek it out in used book stores just for fun, but also because, and I didn’t know this then, I needed this kind of comfort I’ve yet to find elsewhere, in a confluence of boyhood, sports, love, brokenness, and purity. Somehow unsullied.

An analyst pulls on various knowledge in his field when he convinces himself of the Doppler effect, and determines his wife is a doppelgänger herself. He then discerns esoteric clues based on esoteric clues as to where he might find his real wife. But it’s actually a story about rifts in identity shifting the perception of people. A literalization of the “I don’t even know who you are anymore”, but from a psychological travelogue romp where you don’t know if he’s right or wrong, or what that quite means. It won’t be the kind of story some people will be able to be invested in, but I found it engaging and insightful, and quirky—in a good way. Just the right amount of challenging. Plus, lots of interesting analyst shop talk. A confluence of stuff I’m interested in, basically.

The brilliant thing about this book is how deftly it illustrates how a straightforward noir-in-the-big-city can be so fresh and different, creating a wildly compelling narrative. Through the voice of a protagonist with Tourette’s syndrome, enabling a confluence of word play that humanizes Lionel, even as it reveals a sub layer of power dynamics that comes with language, irrevocably tied to how it is wired into our minds. It’s an amazing juxtaposition with the necessary obscurity of a detective seeking out and contextualizing clues.

And so much information there is to be revealed, as Lionel actually knows very little of his present circumstances. Only now he is galvanized despite the social perceptions pressuring him, and discovering who he is when his identity is divorced from his mentor, role model, brother, father, and friend.

A very happy byproduct of this reframe is some of the most pleasurable prose work I’ve consumed. It drips with grit yet subverts expectations of genre, bringing in a high degree of specificity and interesting diction under Lionel’s ecosystem of references manifest in tics. Even when stifled they “say” something. The result is literary experience in prose and character work; subverting just the right amount of tropes; evoking similar standbys. It is immeasurably satisfying and completely unique, at least to me.

3.5 rounded (very) magnanimously up

I wonder if I hadn’t seen the movie at a young age, many times, if I would have liked this even more. But… I think the massively truncated version of the film works better, overall. The poison storyline is genuinely interminable and there is a lot of superfluous content embedded throughout. It’s easy and fun reading, but it becomes quite uneven from 2/3 and on. Sure, it ties up much more in a nice little bow, but it does so in the page count of an additional very long novel. The planning of the death of a billion cuts—so small as to just Jack someone’s favourite horses because he can—is so much more fun than the just desserts, imo.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still fun, though heavy handed. But the unspooling of the work is so long an undertaking you aren’t exactly left reeling as some imply. Perhaps in the abridged version, or the antiquated translation things pop off better.

Heavy on world building and characterization, the motley crew of the Wayfarer won me over quite quickly. I’ve often seen people describe it as “plotless”, but I thought it was solid on that front. They get a job near the start, creating a new tunnel (a very cool concept for a ship and crew) in a nearly forged alliance space, and a “hot zone”. At the same time a new crew member is introduced and we spend much of the time learning about them, as many are different, imaginative and creative species—not at all the standard scifi affair—and seeing their personal arcs play out. It is really well done, compulsively readable and manages to hit emotional highs without feeling manipulative.

The only real complaint I have is that it does feel slightly overwritten in some parts where it is clear what’s happening and what will happen, dragging the pace of the scene down. Some of the diction and structure feel unironed as well. But it is something easily acclimated to. Especially with the immersive shifts in perspective happening and integration of some mixed media. It never gets stale.

Somewhat relieved to find Ferrante true to form after consuming the Neapolitan novels. When her mother dies, Delia is confronted with a veritable onslaught of memories that unmoor the seemingly cemented stories of her past, sending her on a reckoning that reads quite like a descent. The tone is a lot more stark and confrontational that I initially expected, and sure navigates to some dark and disturbing places.

Notions around women being caged and hindered by patriarchal shackles and violence become prevalent motifs that dog Delia as she attempts to find out why and how her mother died, with essentially no one else helping her, and men often stymying her efforts for obscure reasons. And that opaqueness is the only really incongruent thing, for me. It felt a bit padded and had similar plot beats along the descent; I thought it might have been originally a short story that was fleshed out. Otherwise, I think it’s on point. Bold and exacting, it certainly does not pull its punches.