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What'cha Reading?

Finished The Subtle Art of Folding Space by John Chu on my way home today. Unfortunately this one fell flat for me. It has a great premise and some really cool ideas, but there's no character development and a lot of the plot and worldbuilding felt very hand-wavey. Most of the major plot points are resolved via dei ex machina and yet somehow there were still a bunch of loose ends leftover. It seemed like the author was halfheartedly trying to set up for a sequel in the book's final pages. I get that it's his first novel and he probably had no idea if he'd get to write a second, but it was too non-committal about it to really get me to care, and as a result the whole ending felt pretty unsatisfying.
 
As Mothra's 2026 Book Backlog Project continues apace, I have finally gotten around to reading I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. Here's my review.

This is a book I kinda wish I'd read growing up, because it is simply a much better version of the many, many similar post-apocalyptic stories we've seen in the 70 years since. Stories that have come far short of evoking the despair of being the last man on Earth, the hollowing absence of purpose that waits at the end of each day survived. Like Tiger! Tiger!, this is an instance of the thing that inspired a genre doing it masterfully the first time.

I went into this with pretty tame expectations. The various adaptations have had good ideas here and there but ultimately blah stories and no real character work. I'm generally a Will Smith enjoyer and he did manage to capture the manic aspect of Neville a little bit, with the mannequins and the wry ramblings to himself, but well, the movie just doesn't revel in the nothingness like Matheson's Neville does, lacking the courage to haunt him and torment him and consume him. The Neville we meet in the book has already been broken, simply staying alive out of nothing more than a fear of death and this nagging thread of curiosity that he comes to hold on to for dear life. For much of the book, it would be so much easier to just let himself die, but he can't, and he hates himself for this.

I was not expecting how moving Matheson's writing would be. You feel the anger and the despair and the listlessness and the breaks of hope, you see these plumes of self-hatred erupt when one little thing is reasonably forgotten and he feels the terror once again, having allowed it back in to claw at him. One of my favorite moments of the book is when he spends too long in a building without windows and doesn't realize how late its become, recklessly pushing his station wagon to the limit as he catastrophizes, knowing he's too late, that the creatures will be waiting for him.

It's also kind of funny in a way that worked for me, simply because it was believably a moment of play that he allowed himself in facing the absurdity. Neville just vamping to himself, doing bits to nobody, amusing himself and becoming tickled by an idea voiced to nobody, it's shit we've all done in the car or in some place where we cannot be heard. Very authentic. When the despair compounds and he starts being frayed apart, well, it's really gripping stuff. I love seeing this dude tormented!!!

Also need to give props to Robertson Dean as the VA for the audiobook. One of the most impressive performances I've heard yet, it fit the tone of the character perfectly. I found this video that inexplicably has the whole thing up, I assume not for terribly long, but gives a sense of how he does the reading. After the conclusion of I Am Legend a comically different, overall fairly ridiculous guy takes over for the readings of Matheson's short stories, and it's hard to separate the two but I generally didn't care much for his short stories.
 
Mothra said:
Pretty good! I’m glad I read it. Here's my review of the book.

I did not necessarily enjoy reading this book but I’m happy I ate my vegetables with this one because there was a whole lot about the origins of many staple American foods, grains, greens, meats, and so on that I didn’t know the first thing about.

I started reading it because a friend had recommended it when I asked about books that talk about the act of cooking itself - like of preparing, cooking, and presenting the food as a “creative” act, in the moment of making it into a meal - and it is absolutely not about that at all, so, I had to sort of give up on that expectation early and let the story take me where it wanted.

It is largely about how soul food, southern cooking, black cooking, all cannot possibly be separated from the history of slavery and forced labor on which the nation was built, and it’s real interesting seeing the origins of a lot of dishes we consider traditionally American. Things like how French cooking would be taught to enslaved chefs so they could cook those things for the plantation owner, and how those cooks would then pass on that knowledge through their family, adding French affects to the unique meats, greens, grains, and beans of America.

A lot of it is about the institution of slavery and the unimaginable suffering brought upon the enslaved, the countless angles of horror to it all, and the utter indifference shown by their keepers. Through this nightmare, cooking and eating were often the merciful moments, these snatched-away pleasures black communities made the most of.

So yeah I didn’t get what I was after but it was a good book!

A few friends helpfully suggested that some cookbooks might be closer to the act of creation itself than the narrative books on cooking - Hetty Lui McKinnon, Asako Yuzuki, Samin Nosrat, authors in that vein.
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Been watching some of Twitty's video appearances and I'm struck by how much more effectively his ideas come across with his physicality and his unguarded moments, in projecting that stone seriousness and that joy, just a better fit than the book. I think this might be why the book ended up listing information, in being this chronicle of facts he'd uncovered as he dug, a lot more than speaking about it or weaving it into any sort of narrative.

These two in particular were great:
 
Mothra said:
Been watching some of Twitty's video appearances and I'm struck by how much more effectively his ideas come across with his physicality and his unguarded moments, in projecting that stone seriousness and that joy, just a better fit than the book. I think this might be why the book ended up listing information, in being this chronicle of facts he'd uncovered as he dug, a lot more than speaking about it or weaving it into any sort of narrative.

These two in particular were great:
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Agreed, this makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the links!

The line "Where'd they get you from? Boston? Toronto?" in the Vice link is the darkest fuckin humor I love it. Really good interview and interesting how much he pushes him out of his comfort zone.
 
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lincolnic said:
You might like The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley, which is a more fleshed-out and grounded kind of time travel story.
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You were right! I really enjoyed The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley, after being underwhelmed by the unearned romance in This is How You Lose the Time War, this put in the time and talk to make the pairing work. Here's my review.

A very pleasant romance with just enough to say about history, imperialism, and the immigrant experience to keep me engaged all the way through. It's pretty dire that this is my metric now but: Characters actually talked to each other, they spent time together, they'd have undramatic moments, moments of vulnerability and moments of the mundane. It earned the romance!

I think weaving in the trauma of the expats with the trauma of the modern immigrant was a very affecting angle to take, that push and pull between assimilation and identity, feeling that betrayal of one's past in adopting to the present. What you need to give up to survive, and how slowly that happens, such that you don't even notice. For me, this was the meat of the connection between the protagonist and her love interest, clearly where the author was drawing from personal experience and thus, had something to say.

Kaliane Bradley's writing style is great. It's evocative, it's often funny without feeling artificial, it conveys the personality of a variety of characters while keeping them distinct. So many stories like this stumble in trying to be sardonic or to entertain, but this felt like her entertaining herself, and it worked.

There are some gripes. I put most of them in the review but yeah, the main character isn't super interesting. She's another person that things happen to, she wants to return to normalcy, and though this anxiety not to stand our or confront the status quo is a theme, it's still underwhelming in the sense of her being one half of the pairing and being the boring half.

Of course, the author watched The Terror during lockdown (as noted at the end of the book) and wrote a self-insert to date Tom Weston-Jones, which, can't blame her! I like the self-indulgence! I think she elevated that idea a lot with the immigrant and refugee elements, and I think she kept aflame the heat of that wish-fulfillment premise of dating a witty, charming British officer, while gracefully dealing with all the baggage that comes with that. A worse story would've lost the flame, or contrived the premise too far, but she sailed that passage nicely without getting stuck in the ice.

Definitely going to keep my eyes peeled for her next novel.
 
Wow, I have been slacking all. Sorry about that. Here's what the rest of my May was like:
The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett
The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett
Barnum: An American Life by Robert Wilson
Gerald’s Game by Stephen King 5/24 - 5/25
This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews 5/26 - 5/31
The Breathing Method by Stephen King 5/30 - 5/31

This Kingdom was my favorite book this month, and it's my new frontrunner for BOTY
 
Last week, Kylie and I were in line to enter Hurricane Ridge and I was looking for things to do on my phone that didn't use the internet because our car was moving through a WiFi dead zone. It was then that I discovered that I'd purchased Chained Flame by Saffron Drake. It's over 450 pages and I finished it in a day. My only criticism is that the ending feels a bit abrupt, but other than that, I think it's wonderful.

It's a story about a dragon named Lindír, born and raised by humans and kept captive in a dungeon. They escape captivity and go on to try and live a life away from their human family, surviving battles against knights, subterranean horrors, other dragons, even war, and they learn a lot about themself in the process, often at great cost.

Make no mistake, this book is a tragedy. Lindír is entirely too naive and traumatized to appreciate the good in their life until they've abandoned it. But it's kind of a beautiful tragedy, if that makes sense, and I'm glad I read it. Highly recommend.
 
Reading Bite by Bite by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, a collection of essays about food. But also about family, friends and identity. Also really beautiful art of each plant that is the focus of a chapter.
 
Got through The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi at 2x speed, simply to have it read and back on the shelf. I got a copy of this ages ago and never read it, and well, as I knew it would after having suffered through Redshirts, it was really underwhelming. Here's my review.

I'll put my review/rant below the cut here since it's maybe a bit of a bummer:

There's some interesting world-building here and there with the genetic engineering, the social engineering, and the transhumanist elements (looking at you, space borne gamera rock soldiers), but these are just told to you in long, dull infodumps, and rarely mean anything. Everyone in the Ghost Brigades is mind-linked and is never alone and this is just not really explored much, despite it presumably being THE thing you would revolve this story around. This squad of child clone soldiers are made to do these horrible war crimes but it's always presented as a "necessary" thing to ensure humanity's survival. Them force-sterilizing an alien infant with nanobots and then killing her on a call with her father - after having made him commit to attacking his ally instead - is presented as a tough but ultimately just act to prevent their destroying humanity.

The arc of the book is extremely centrist-brained where your superiors know best for you, should never be questioned (because you don't "have all the information"), and the worst thing anyone could do is try to change the status quo. The world they live in is considered the best possible situation for humanity's survival, and there isn't really any cost too high for that, so nobody feels any way about the continuing evils they must perpetuate. They just make wry jokes about it, in the voice that is John Scalzi's because everybody thinks and talks in the same voice.

The plot is a sort of Killmonger situation where the villain is completely right but he "does it wrong" and his plan randomly involves genocide, so they have to kill him and maintain the dire status quo, because that's what it means to be a soldier apparently. I honestly would be here for any of this if the book had something to say about it, if it wanted you to despair at the situation, or to be angry about it, but the vibe is that everything is under control, you need to trust your leaders, and you need to not obsess over the war crimes. I could even endure that if the military scifi action was good, but it's written like this is a TV screenplay, with zero attempt made to put you in that place, and feel what the characters feel.

Blah. I'm of course done with Scalzi but I did get this book read and back on the shelf. I will consume the remainder of OMW in the manner it was intended: By skimming the plot summaries for the next four books and then forgetting them days later.
 
Finished Speaks the Nightbird by Robert McCammon. This was technically a reread for me. I had bought the two mass markets (for those not in the know, for the MMP, they split the story in two, which is ridiculous because I owned a single volume of Swan Song which was longer, plus other MMPs which are way longer that are one volume). Anyway, this was my first time reading it as a single volume, and I enjoyed it somewhat less this time around, sad to say. Thought it could've been 100 pages shorter, and Matthew's inquisitiveness bugged me at times. I'll still, at least, read the next book in the series, maybe before the year is done
 
Finished reading The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang, enjoyed it way more than I expected. It's been a long time since I've read a halfway decent war story, and appreciated how much real shit was put into this story. Here's my review.

A good amount of this book is about the main character, Rin, a war orphan with darker-than-average skin, fighting tooth and nail to stay one step ahead of the death and rape and poverty that waits to consume her if she submits herself to it as a person the state considers undesirable in color, gender, and class. She never really slows from this dead sprint, pulling on every tiny advantage she can scrounge up to get the next opportunity, and ride it to the next, and the next.

By the time you're at the war college, she's afforded a single choice in the form of her area of study, which leads to a pretty cool illustration of magic in this setting. To be honest, I did not know this book had any supernatural shit going in, and the book sort of plays with that, with Rin believing the world as the state has presented it, purged of anything that might be embarrassing, with even the definitely true reframed and reinterpreted in their favor. When she learns the nature of the gods and of magic, it's this elemental force of cosmic wills, like hunger or cold or rage, things that humans may choose to submit themselves to and act as a conduit for. I really liked how the book reveals how little control humans have over this force, how clumsy they are entering this new understanding of reality.

The war story I think was honest, the reasons for war are as mundane and idiotic as real wars often are, just the continued desire of nations and individuals for power, deserved for arbitrary reasons they invent. This leads into a fun little Suicide Squad type of setup for a bit where they do missions, and she witnesses the horrors of these god-entities. We then get a number of chapters on them enduring and committing war crimes, most of it drawn on the Second Sino-Japanese War. I did find the Japan stand-in, the Federation of Mugen, to be kind of cartoonishly evil, but a lot of it was drawing on the Rape of Nanking and like... all of that did happen, men are capable of and have done these evils. It's telling that the atrocities committed there are so dire I considered them unrealistic in the book until confirming they were based on real events.

I plan on checking out the next book in the series, something I definitely didn't think I was going to do when I started this one. I also consider myself a fan of R. F. Kuang now and am going to check out her other big novels. This was a fun nightmare!
 
Are they divisive because they touch on Chinese culture stuff? Because her parents being from there and her general good level of research made me feel pretty confident she wasn't making up too much about cultural norms of the time.

I always have my guard up a little with stuff involving the Second Sino-Japanese War because there's so much anger and resentment from it that it's really had to get any kind of narrative written by someone who cares that doesn't paint the other side as mindless ghouls. And like, that kind of thing is really understandable given what happened, but obviously the real world isn't quite that simple. One thing I liked about The Poppy War was that it showed in many ways the desire for power and land and entitlement that leads to wars, again and again, throughout history. They aren't easily fit into a heroic narrative, they're much more political and usually rooted in some extremely out-of-touch leader surrounded by sycophants leading to a horrible imbalance that flows over.
 
Also for example Babel is long and kind of overcomplicated and people have very mixed feelings whether it is worth the effort or not
 
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The library had a number of comics on display and a manga I hadn't heard of caught my eye, The Solitary Gourmet. The note on the back is "the book in which nothing happens but everything is consumed". I've started reading it and liking it so far, peaceful and mundane in a good relaxing way. It definitely has some older sensibilities about women, I checked and some of the stories are from the 90s so 90s Japan matches up with that. Nothing too bad so far though, just odd/awkward statements.
 
Now, for new to me King, I finished Rose Madder, and it was a big ball of meh. Did not need to be almost 600 pages long, maybe 400. Norman was a good villain, and the stuff with the painting world was unique. Other than that, low on the totem pole for me for Stephen King books, and probably my least favorite book so far this year
 
Violentvixen said:
The library had a number of comics on display and a manga I hadn't heard of caught my eye, The Solitary Gourmet. The note on the back is "the book in which nothing happens but everything is consumed". I've started reading it and liking it so far, peaceful and mundane in a good relaxing way. It definitely has some older sensibilities about women, I checked and some of the stories are from the 90s so 90s Japan matches up with that. Nothing too bad so far though, just odd/awkward statements.
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Solitary Gourmet also has a phenomenally delightful show that's been running for 12 years and just started showing up on Youtube and the lead actor also hosts my current absolute favorite show on netflix, K-foodie Meets J-Foodie
 
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