robertrivasplata's Reviews (631)

Harry Potter meets Squid Game meets His Majesty's Dragon, with some Ender's Game. Dialogue reminds me a little bit of the dialogue from Andy Weir novels. Features big nerds who fuck, and who say “fuck”. To me, the appeal of The Fourth Wing rests upon world-building, teen drama (I know they're supposed to be in their 20s), and dragons. The kingdom of Navarre seems like a dystopia run by dragons and a military which kind of functions as a priesthood to the god-like dragons. The riders quadrant is basically a combination Hogwarts and death camp. It reminds me a lot of the priests in Berserker Planet with their sacrificial rites and battle royale for the evil computer they worship. The dragons often say they don't really care if the humans understand them or not, but at the same time, they do seem to have an interest in running the humans' kingdom. I think a lot about the dynamics of places where the main avenues for career advancement is the demise of your superiors or your competitors (e.g. resistance movements, Roman politics), so I feel like such an environment would reward loyalty to cliques/gangs over following the codex to the letter. We kind of see this with the marked sticking together the way they do, but I still feel like the rule-follower characters are somewhat over-represented. This book has confirmed for me that I do not have a kink for people who want to kill me. FYI it takes over 300 pages to get to the sex stuff. The twist at the very end is very messed up. 

Series of essays from 1902-03 about the natural and human environment of Inyo County, CA (generally). Uses many dated or idiosyncratic names for animals, plants, and places. Condors are referred to as “Buzzards”, and the Clark's nutcracker is the “Clark's Crow”. she's upfront that “Las Uvas” is a pseudo-toponym, and “Jimtown” is not to be found on contemporary maps. Mary Austin's house in Independence CA still stands, but a lot has changed in the past 120 years. The LA Aqueduct wasn't built yet, Manzanar did not exist yet, nomads of various stripes still roamed, the California Condor was still common, and the Alabama Hills had not yet graced a silver screen. Great book for lovers of the High Sierras, the Owens Valley, and the Mojave. Also good for nature lovers, CA native plant heads, and eco-poetry practitioners. (So, my mom and dad.) A good book to take on your road trip down highway 395, with a stop at the Eastern California Museum in Independence CA. 

The genesis of video games as told through the perspective of Ralph Baer's & Nolan Bushnell's rivalry over claim to the title of father of video games. Depicts the freewheeling 70s tech industry scene with small companies & corporate giants alike racing to get in on the video game gold rush. Both Baer & Bushnell are figures that I could read a whole book about each. Baer was an electronics inventor whose inventions included the first video game console, & later the Simon. Bushnell founded Atari, then went on to found Chuck E Cheese. Easy to Learn, Difficult to Master also portrays Baer & Bushnell's rivalry as a contest between the corporate and entrepreneurial images of the early days of the tech industry. This book makes me want to read more about the history of the computer industry. Maybe Harris's Palo Alto might be a good start, or maybe I should finally read Vineland. Finally, I was pleased to learn a little bit about the creation of one of my old-time Mac game favorites, Brickles. 

Page-turning neo-noir southern serial killer mystery. S.A. Cosby has a some good turns of phrase. “Death, darkness, terror: nothing would stop them from setting up the pie-eating booth and the crab-pot-pulling platform.” I think he has a good horror novel in him; All the Sinners Bleed is already kind of a slasher. The part with the Fall Fest reminded me a bit of the “Thanksgiving” trailer from the early 2000s Grindhouse movie. its a lot of mystery novel/neo-noir tropes: the detective with a past (& whose first love is the law), the very genius killer, the phone call with the killer (quoting bible verses). Has a good deal of commentary on 2020s era southern local politics, with old money, black liberation theologians, neo-confederates (with statue), old-time religion/cult types, & good ole boy gangsters all represented. 

Fight Club meets Patience meets Killing and Dying meets Mimsy Were the Borgoroves. Very high WTF-factor. Are there acting classes that are like this? If so, is this what acting does to people? Or is this what happens to would-be theatre kids, if they're not exposed to theatre at an early enough stage? In any case, it makes acting classes seem much more terrifying and creepy than I thought possible. Drnaso's art is reminiscent of the world through the eyes of someone slightly nearsighted. I can kind of tell who is who, but the faces are indistinct until they come very close. Would probably be a good book club pick. A great present for any theatre lover or aspiring actor in your life. I think my favorite character is the dog. 

Pretty much just picks up where the Two Towers left off. Gandalf and friends are pretty much triumphant everywhere they go, so most of the suspense is in the second half which picks up Sam and Frodo's harrowing adventure through Mordor's barren landscapes. I like the scene where Frodo and Sam get press ganged into a company of orcs heading to war, but maybe that's just because that scene had the most bangin' song in the Rankin/Bass Lord of the Rings movies. While on the subject of adaptations, Peter Jackson's version did a pretty good job of capturing the true love relationship of Sam and Frodo. They truly are the OTP of the books as well as the movies. 

The stilted fantasy language is very silly, but it really laid the groundwork for the wave of fantasy novels from the 60s-70s that have journeyed from bargain bins, to vintage paperback sections in used bookstores, to be reprinted and appear in Barnes and Noble new release sections again. 

Includes the appendices to Lord of the Rings, including pronunciation guides, histories of the elves' (and others') languages, a guide to Middle Earth's Calendar, time lines, and more. The best part of the appendices is the brief epilogue of Aragorn and Arwen, telling how after Aragorn finally dies, Arwen goes back to Lorien and everybody's gone and the place is empty. The big question I think about when I think about Lord of the Rings is what is going on with the Elves? Why is everyone always talking about leaving Middle Earth? More importantly, why does Tolkien write this race of wise elders with one foot out the door, and why does it feel so powerful to me? That said, don't go into the Lord of the Rings expecting a super serious read. You can read various meanings into various elements, but it is still a silly read. 

City-by-city history of urban transit systems in North American cities. The history of mass transit systems in North America reminds me of the trajectory of the internet (especially social media), with public services and infrastructure being built by private companies on the basis of speculation, followed by market consolidation by ever more hated monopolists, finally followed by the service being run into the ground once it's found to be unprofitable (or not sufficiently profitable). The maps in this book make are a great accompaniment to Arcadia Publishing's Images of Rail books that you see seemingly everywhere. The chapters on Rochester and Cincinnati are very interesting and informative. I wish that the chapter on San Francisco had more about the other Bay Area transit systems such as the Key System and the Southern Pacific Interurbans. I also wish there'd been a chapter about Denver which has been investing heavily in transit since the 90s, & one about St. Louis, which was a center of the U.S. streetcar industry (until the demise of the U.S. streetcar industry). Each of the chapters in The Lost Subways of North America could be expanded into a book, and there could have been many more chapters, and the result would be a kind of Borgesian library of mass transit history. I'll have to content myself with the further reading section at the back. 

Guy Delisle reprises his idiot abroad persona (who you may recognize from Pyongyang & Shenzhen), this time in 2008 era Jerusalem. For some reason, Delisle seems more French than in his other memoirs I've read (even though he's from Quebec). Maybe it's because he's having more conversations in Jerusalem than in Pyongyang, Shenzhen, or the Factory back home, so his attitudes show more. Or maybe it's the ways the Holy City & it's people play foils to Delisle's atheism. Depicts the prosaic everyday aspects of his family's year living in East Jerusalem, such as supermarkets, cafes, playgrounds, traffic jams. He also goes out of his way to witness the occupation, visiting checkpoints, the separation wall, Settler violence flashpoints (e.g. Sheikh Jarrah), & among other places in the West Bank. The various religious sects (both obscure & mainstream) get their share of attention from Guy. Islam gets less coverage, but maybe that's because his access to the Muslim Holy Sites, & even to secular Muslim spaces & to Muslim people themselves is more restricted. Jewish & Christian communities appear able to be as open or closed as they want to be, while Muslims have movement & association restrictions which place limits on their contacts with outsiders. Delisle meets many Jewish settler fanatics, but never any Palestinian ones, probably because no Palestinian fanatic can risk meeting anybody. I was struck by the image of the Gaza MSF building's rooftop markings lost among the other buildings in its neighborhood during the 2008-9 Israel-Hamas conflict. 

After a whole book of being pursued by (mostly) mysterious faceless terrors through deserted landscapes and ancient ruins, suddenly there's great battles with hordes of barbarians and barbaric orcs, and then just as suddenly, we're again trudging through ruins and wastelands in fear of the watchful eye of Sauron. The narrative in the first half isn't always strictly chronological, with mysterious happenings (e.g. the Ents saving the day at Helm's Deep) not being explained until later when perspective switches back to the other characters' perspective. The second half of The Two Towers really does feel like a continuation of Fellowship of the Ring, with the landscape descriptions, the cowering on the ground from watchful eyes, the secret safe resting place to take a break from all the trudging and cowering. There is somewhat more characterization of all of the characters; Gimli's and Legolas's odd couple relationship is fully established, we get to know Gollum as also Smeagol, we see that Sam and Frodo really have something special going on, and we probably learn something about Aragorn too. The Ents are as cool as I remembered from previous readings and from the movies. Gandalf's resurrection and reappearance to suddenly save the day wherever he goes is a little jarring, though I may be biased against plot-driven resurrections in SF/fantasy. 

A history of the Caribbean's grapevine in the 18th century. As with so many scholarly history books, the choices of primary source quotes are really what make the book. Shows that even though the rise of the Caribbean's plantation economy displaced the buccaneers and freebooters of the 17th century, there were still many opportunities for ordinary people (importantly including people of color) to escape authorities and live a masterless existence at sea, or with the Maroons in the highlands and jungles, or even just in town the next island over from one's last known whereabouts. Scott highlighted the ways in which colonial authorities and planter elites were constantly worried about but also dependent upon the flow of information that the Caribbean's sailors carried between the islands and the continents. The Common Wind also illustrates how class (or caste) identities transcended national or colonial identities across the region. And why not? While the various colonial powers jealously guarded their possessions and their trade with them, they would also from time to time swap territories along with their populations to one another. And at the time aristocratic officers and bourgeois thought nothing of pursuing careers in the service of foreign kings. An interesting factoid from this book is how few people were in all of these places during the time period. Kingston Jamaica was the largest British held city America in 1790 with a population of 23,500; all of Haiti had fewer than 600k people before the revolution. The common wind isn't exactly a history of the Haitian Revolution, but it gives a lot context to any other history of this era of the Caribbean.