nere's Reviews (86)

Saturday, August 13, 2022 (Reread)

Ari and Dante are two Mexican-American boys navigating teenage-hood. It’s a quiet simmering novel. To pick this up means you’re peering into the mind of a boy in the suburbs, a stream of consciousness of sorts. And it is equal parts introspective, light-hearted, elusive, and devastating. Mind you, not devastating in all the ways queer people are all too familiar with. It’s devastating because it sees you, it understands you, and it aches because it’s nothing you’ve ever felt before. At least, that’s the only way I can rationalize why I end up in snot-filled disgusting tears every time I finally finish this book. Its chapters are short and its prose is quip to match. 

Ari is as insular and alone and freedom-seeking as one constantly is in the grips of young adulthood. It’s one of the few novels I feel capture this feeling so perfectly. The anguished and flighty hormonal mood swings, mixed in with the specific flavor of repression you experience as a gay teenager. I’m admittedly wary of the sequel since nothing I feel can rival this. Nonetheless, its existence doesn’t change the fact that I’ll always have this warm little moment with Ari and Dante to go back to whenever I so choose. I love it I love it I love it I cherish it. To read this is to peer into my soul just a little bit—it's a looking glass. It reminds me to be kind to what I see. 

Monday, August 1, 2022 (reread)

Summary & a note on translation

Solaris is as much psychological horror as it is science fiction and an introspective look at human space colonization. It’s claustrophobic, engrossing, and poetic. I can see why many might trifle or even outright dislike this book if it’s picked up with the wrong expectations. Full disclosure, despite this being science fiction this is not an explosive, action-packed, robot-fighting novel brought to an earth-shattering climax. This is a simmering slow-burn of a thing, that starts slow and only gets slower. (Despite this, I still cling to every word.)

Kris Kelvin is a psychologist who lands on the fictional planet of Solaris from Earth. He arrives to a sparse crew and an eerie situation—the mystery of which the reader, as well as Kelvin, are left to uncover in tandem. I won’t say much else since I feel it is better to discover it on your own.

Translations, I think, are only as good as their translators and unfortunately, the only English translation that is widely available for Solaris at the moment was translated from Polish to French and then English. As you can imagine, it results in a very stunted work losing much of the poeticism and linguistic intent of the original. If you can manage to get your hands on it, I highly suggest the only other English translation in existence currently: Solaris by Stanisław Lem, translated by Bill Johnston (2011). It’s a direct-to-English translation and though I don’t know a lick of Polish, in the brief comparison I did between the French translation and the Johnston one, the difference is stark. And for the better.

“Much is lost when a book is re-translated from an intermediary translation into English, but I’m shocked at the number of places where text was omitted, added, or changed in the 1970 version,” said Johnston. “Lem’s characteristic semi-philosophical, semi-technical language is also capable of flights of poetic fancy and brilliant linguistic creativity, for example in the names of the structures that arise on the surface of Solaris. I believe this new translation restores Lem’s original meaning to his seminal work.” (source: The Guardian)
 

Friday, July 15, 2022 (reread)

Lolita or Lola or Dolores Haze, she (this novel), is a stream of consciousness, a confessional, and a deluge of thought and metaphor from our protagonist H.H., Humbert Humbert. Though the subject matter Nobakov is writing about is horrendous, every line of it is poetry. And it’s perhaps because of that dissonance that the experience of the book is heightened.
 
I had read (and promptly didn’t finish) this book for school. And although I had heard some of these passages several times before, there’s something about the lyricism of the writing that makes it very hard to get tired of. Nobakov’s sparse use of paragraph breaks makes this a strain on the eyes, but the experience of it in any other format affects the rhythm of the thing I think.
 
I don’t think I need to say it. Every content warning under the sun. This isn’t exactly a light beach read. But it’s undoubtedly a masterpiece that I feel the need to pick apart with my teeth and scope the spaces between the words on the page. It was part of the reason why I was perfectly fine reading some passages thrice over for assignments. Each reading is as unique as if it were the first. And this certainly won’t be my last.

Reading a book that got a Pulitzer and rating it anything other than 5 stars feels illegal somehow. Sorry, Columbia University.

At first, I was pretty clear as to what the book was for and what it was trying to achieve. It later spun out of control and lost its central thesis. Pretty interesting collection of research, but otherwise I was left with the impression it didn’t have much else to say. 

I get the message she’s trying to send here. However, I have a REALLY hard time clicking with her writing style/explanations. Not sure why, which results in a reading experience with an appreciation for what she’s trying to do here, but little in the way of digestion and implementation. I can see, however, how it can be useful to somebody else. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case for me. 

my audiobook kept glitching and I kept losing my place! I’ll revisit it eventually 

Friday, March 18, 2022 

I adored the approach when aging them up.

Monty

never loses his characteristic snark, but you can tell he's dulled and exhausted. Seeing

Felicity

as a

respected physician

was splendid. Aging characters up is always a little tricky, it’s difficult to strike that balance between years of experience and age has changed them and this is still fundamentally the same person, but I think Lee does it extraordinarily well. I believed

Monty

was older the second he made his appearance, I felt it. I'm a WEE bit disappointed we didn’t get to spend more time with

Louisa and Edward

, though considering it's the last book I understand the decision to do so. And the plot this time around unfortunately didn’t quite click for me. I think I would’ve preferred it if

there had really been no ship

. I think that would’ve landed the message more heavily, but that’s my onion. Regardless I loved spending time with these characters one last time and I cried at the end.

There are several different ideas that are very insufficiently sourced: magnesium as a valuable supplement when not deficient, cellphone radiation affecting sleep. I cross-checked the sources and MANY were from blog posts or led me to a dead site or dot coms. One was from honest-to-god the Daily Mail.

There are—admittedly—breadcrumbs here and there of ideas that are of merit when the sources are well-backed and credible. But honestly, you would be MUCH better off just reading “Why We Sleep” by Matthew Walker, Ph.D. which says just as much as this book and more with reputable references. 

I would just remind fellow nonfiction readers to be diligent with their sources and always read critically. It’s dangerous to read blindly and take it as fact just because “you read it in a book,” regardless of the title or self-proclaimed expertise of the author. A healthy amount of skepticism is crucial.