robertrivasplata's Reviews (631)

Sequel to My Alcoholic Escape From Reality. Much more off the wall, & somehow even more emo, which I suppose is to be expected in a book about the author's romantic/gender/sexual angst, & her forays into the terrifying dating scene, & which also includes the disturbing account of the sexual assault she suffered as a young child. The part where her efforts to maximize the red flags in her dating profile elicit greater & greater (& creepier) interest is disturbing, if sort of predictable (maybe that's why it's disturbing). Gives her perspective on Japanese conceptions of gender. I like how the term “Hotel” seems to be used for the American term “third date”. Does not give much update on Nagata-san's drinking problem. I wonder if there is an Alcoholics Anonymous scene in Japan. Whatever AA's faults, they do have an interesting terminology for alcohol abuse. Finally, is the use of “Senpai” for someone at work talking about their dating experience meant to be a little humorous? I guess I'm not familiar enough with the term; would you consider the proverbial 90s friend's older brother who lived in the basement & smoked a lot of weed, & was really into ancient aliens (before they got big on cable) a sort of senpai? Or is the term just being used to indicate that this guy was an older classmate she worked with? 

Graphical biography of Putin. Tries to explain where he came from, & his context Russian history & politics, & also tries to explain that he is not some sort of genius. Gives a view of such events as the overthrow of Milosevic in Serbia & the Orange & Maidan revolutions in Ukraine from Putins perspective in a way that illustrates Putin's belief (& frequent Russian media talking point) that democratic movements are primarily tools of U.S. Intelligence organizations. U.S. material & moral support for democratic movements are seen as indicators of those movements being generated & directed by the U.S. Putin & his intelligencers cannot conceive that a bunch of nobodies would take it upon themselves to challenge governmental authority without a powerful somebody to direct them. Weiss also makes the point that this perspective is at least in part projection. The biographies of a certain KGB Lt Col, an Austrian Corporal, etc show tha nobodies become somebodies commonly enough. Also gives a brief tour of Russia's efforts to cultivate right-wing parties & figures in Europe & America. Implies that the Right-wing obsession with George Soros is driven by his support for anti-authoritarian organizations & movements. Accidental Czar reminds me a bit of the Iran-Iraq War by Pierre Razoux, in which Razoux wrote how Saddam Hussein's early political success gave an appearance of having a strategic mind; an appearance that was exploded the moment he bumbled his way into the Iran-Iraq war, & then again with the invasion of Kuwait. The story of Putin's mother being “not dead yet!” is wild. 

Humorous & somehow upbeat graphic novel about being a minority in a racist & sexist society. Othering & fetishization are major themes. Has a children's story within-a-story. The humor and structure of Cyclopedia Exotica are pretty similar to Woman World, but the different characters' vignettes form more of a unified, romantic-comedical narrative than in Woman World. I like the appendix in the back explaining the mythic backgrounds of the various Cyclopean names. 

Graphic memoir of the author's experience after she almost drinks herself to death. Style-wise this book reminds me a bit of zine comics such as the Invincible Summer collection of Nicole Georges's. Not sure what that says about Manga's influence on the homemade zine comics of the late 90s. The way some of the actions & figures are labeled also kind of reminds me of American political comics. Not sure if this is a common to Manga, or to a certain style of autobiographical comics in general. I'm intrigued by various little things from Japanese life, such as Shochu being sold in cartons, Calpis (I had to look it up), the varieties of fish paste, & 3% chuhai. Nagata's experience reminds me of a couple people I know of who died the way she was going. In one case, the guy didn't even realize he was dying when he was in the hospital. So in that way, the ending feels like a bit of a cliffhanger, since she does not seem to have her drinking under control. I am a sucker for graphical memoirs, so I'll have to check out all of Nagata's other books. 

Stylized & poetical novel following the stories of three different women during the Shining Path's would-be revolution. Sympathetically portrays a revolutionary, a campesina, & a bourgeois journalist, with occasional scenes portraying the president. While the three main characters are sympathetic, Jimenez does not pull any punches when it comes to the Shining Path, the urban upper classes, or traditional rural society. Maybe it's just my perspective, but I felt like Shining Path was portrayed as the most deluded, savaging & terrorizing the people they wanted to found their movement upon in ways similar to the state they wanted to overthrow. There are some especially harrowing scenes of sexual violence. I'd like to see the original Spanish language version. 

 

Riveting historical fiction based on Vilhjalmur Steffansson's two most disastrous Arctic expeditions, plus a sad sack professor who reads about them, and also gets inappropriate with a student. In the afterword, Healy writes that he's a little hard on Steffanson, but the facts of Steffansson's expeditions to Wrangel island, & his advocacy of the all-meat diet will always make me kind of skeptical of the guy. I guess the common thread between the prof & the arctic explorers is that they're all walking on thin ice. Does a good job of explaining some of the difficulties of crossing sea ice. Maybe now I'll finally remember that Dartmouth is in New Hampshire. 

Rutu Modan's archaeological MacGuffin-driven adventure allegory of the Israel Palestine conflict. Like Tintin, if the kid was obsessed with video games to the exclusion of all else, and all the adult sidekicks were 100% unhinged, & the animal sidekick is just there to be sacrificed in a religious ritual later. (Full disclosure, I mostly know about Tintin from Ruben Bolling's Billy Dare parody comics, & Wikipedia). Among targets of ridicule are religious fanatic settlers, the IDF, academia, the apolitical, ISIS, antiquities traders, & kids these days. Focuses on the politicization of archaeology & history in Palestine. I like how the ancient tunnels the characters are excavating have all these layers of historical use dating from ancient times through to the present day, with the archaeologists even encountering other people tunneling who are trying to use the ancient tunnels for their own uses. The afterword kind of spells out most of the themes & references in Tunnels, & the Glossary is interesting too. Most puzzling to me is the “credits” section. Is this kind of an acknowledgments list? Or did they all have to act out the scenes for Modan to quickly sketch and then translate to the page? 

Gritty sci-fi gender cringe humor/horror. Mattie Lubchansky's comics just keep getting better & better. Every page has a joke (somewhere), & every page ends in suspense. Is this some kind of truth about life? Maybe it should just be a rule for writing. Considering how much in Boys Weekend is taken directly from reality, & actual lived experiences, it's also pretty bleak. Small consolation that there's usable public transit to Bloomberg International Airport, & seaplanes are making a comeback. Really takes you inside the experience of being constantly & awkwardly mis-gendered (I imagine). Definitely rewards re-reading. 

I thought I was going to read something like Paying the Land, & instead I got a memoir of two harrowing years working in the hostile environment (& hostile work environment) of the Tar Sands of Alberta. With what she saw & went through, I can see why it took Beaton over 10 years to put this memoir out. Even though Ducks focuses on Beaton's own experiences in the tar sands mines, there are so many different things going on in this book. This is a very Canadian book, with provincial identity playing a big part (especially the Atlantic Provinces). I really want to learn more about Atlantic Canada accents now. So many pages of Ducks contain a strange mix of offering some new bit of trivia & then a memory of some degradation or trauma the author had to go through. The part where Lindsay is looking at comments on a news site is literally difficult to look at. I'm so trained to ignore comments & Beaton did such a good job of rendering that comments section look, that it took extra concentration for me to see & read the ones on the page in this book. It's insane that the tar sands, the place of all this misery, trauma, & destruction, were in full gold rush mode at the very time the world should have been aggressively moving away from fossil fuels (& knew it). I wish we could have seen more about the “cleaning ladies”. I wondered what was going on with them. I also wonder about the first nations people who live in the Tar Sands areas. Why were they completely unrepresented among the workers Beaton encountered? I guess that just illustrates that Canada is as much a settler colonial project as the United States. 

Story about Ukraine from an American perspective set (& mostly written?) 2018-2019. This book is mostly about an American who's a bit of an idiot who wanders far from home, but who also works in an office. Kind of a workplace novel meets Cormac McCarthy, except if McCarthy really loved Mexico (and switched Mexico for Ukraine). (Although thinking about it, workplace-novel-meets-Cormac-McCarthy was already done by Ling Ma, with Severance.) I really liked the depictions of public transit & also the mall/sports center/cultural center. Makes me want to read more about Lutsk. My biggest complaint is that the twist at the end where John didn't actually kill the neighbor felt unnecessary. I was totally weirded out by the murder, but it almost seemed like a cop-out to reveal he didn't actually kill the guy. I totally expected there to be some reveal (to the reader) where Natalia knew he did it the whole time, so credit to Lichtman for keeping me guessing. The real test will be if he fools my wife, who usually sees through this stuff.