whoischels's Reviews (116)

I really liked this book. It took me a bit to get used to the writing style but I did grow to really love it. The disjointed paragraphs, without much indication of how much time has passed between reflect experience of reality in a way I haven't seen a book do. It's reminiscent of the way we actually feel about how time has suddenly become a blur of very similar days when we're in a period of sameness in our lives. I felt like the obsession with doom and climate apocalypse was really relateable, and there were some really beautiful turns of phrases throughout. It is a beautiful book with quite a lot of nuance. 

Not really as good as Dune plot-wise, but content-wise it's much better, I guess. Once again, I really like the headiness of this book compared to other science fiction I've read and it oddly pairs well with 1984. The bombing scene was very stunning and good. It was a good use of the blind prophet trope and posited a good "explanation" for why that sort of thing would work. The prophet has already seen the future so well he is able to walk through the present without seeing because he has and can already see the vision of the future and superimpose it. 

 This is not as good as I thought it would be. The only thing that I think made me actually finish it this time is that my friend had read it for the first time and I wanted to be able to discuss it before he forgot. That said, I think it does a wonderful job of describing the type of thinking someone would have in an environment like Oceania, and it imagines the psychology of a place like this really well. 

Really imaginative premise. Largely based on the idea of "the only way the world will come together peacefully is by going to war with another planet." The way this occurs is that a man who has become chrono-synclastic infundibulated (unstuck in time and space) engineers an Army of Mars to invade Earth and lose, then establishes a religion based around god being utterly indifferent. He uses Malachi Constant (basically Jeff Bezos) as a fetishe for looking at luck the wrong way, which is acting like you deserve it or like god intended for you to be lucky. Malachi Constant is converted into a soldier of the Army of Mars and his memory is erased, but he doesn't participate in the war. He gets stuck on Mercury for a long time and then returns, in a sort of Jesus way, to Earth, where he is then banished to Titan. It's a book that feels strangely desolate while being rich in plot. 

This book was lovingly written. It is poetic and gentle in its illuminations of deeply hurting characters. Despite their flaws, they are described with care and affection by a narrator who simply wants to understand them. This book deals with themes like the immigrant experience in the United States, growing LGBTQ in an environment at the least unwelcoming to it and at worst hostile, and with drug use and abuse in the age of fentanyl. Vuong takes tragic emotional material and makes something beautiful out of it. Well worth a read.

Fortier writes exactly what you need to know if you're someone looking to start intensively farming a small amount of land. It's a great jumping off point to do more research about specific aspects of farming, like weed control, pest control, and irrigation issues.