Review: The House in the Cerulean Sea

The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The House in the Cerulean Sea, by TJ Klune, 2020

Delightful, timely, and relevant. Though considered fantasy, it's very light on the supernatural aspect and doesn't get bogged down with the mechanics of magic. Some also might consider this work YA, but I preferred to think of it as simply breezy reading. Don't get me wrong,  allusions to the struggles of LGBTQIA+  folks are there, just not shoved in your face. What is heavy-handed, however, is the mushy and hallmark channel romance-- which I am not complaining about.

The cast of characters is diverse, even by current standards. Themes of "chosen family" and love are elegantly handled. The protagonist Linus Baker, and the entire cast of main characters, for that matter, are lovable. All in all, an uplifting fantasy with a positive message for adults and the young.

I rate this book 4.75 out of 5 stars.

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Review: The Candy House

The Candy House by Jennifer Egan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Candy House, Jennifer Egan, 2022

The novel is a sequel of sorts to the 2011 Pulitzer prize-winning "A Visit from the Goon Squad." While it's not necessary to have read the former to understand the latter, there may be some benefit in doing so if you want a fuller set of details for some of the characters appearing later in the book.

It's hard to describe this book as a whole other than a collection of loosely connected short stories centering around a Black-Mirror-ish world where human memories are recorded and, at times, reviewed. "Own Your Consciousness" is a technology that allows people to upload a life's worth of memories — even long-forgotten ones — share them in a collective archive and access others'.-- kind of like all the social media apps integrated into one and pumped up on super steroids.

There are so many characters that it may have made sense to take notes to make it easier to see the connections to the other stories in the book. Some characters were exciting and memorable, while others were forgettable. The same applies to the set of stories-- in fact, it may be better to describe them as vignettes were it not for the fact there were time jumps, location jumps, and sometimes both.

I dare hazard that I understand what the author is trying to do as a whole with the book, but the moirée of stories was just too jarring going from one to the next. Don't get me wrong, the book was written well and a pleasure to read, but I think I would have enjoyed it more if the stories weren't so seemingly disconnected by the order in which they were placed.

Lulu, the spy, was my favorite story, followed by the story of the heroin-addicted woman.

I rate the book 3.25 out of 5 stars.

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Review: The Reservoir

The Reservoir by David Duchovny
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Reservoir, David Duchovny, 2021

Interesting story, definitely gave me Hitchock vibes. Psychosis, crackpot conspiracy theories, a lady in red, a bear in the woods (not the kind you think-- wink wink), conflated in Covid-19 pandemic times, well, made a creative construct to tell the author's story.

The writing felt a tad bit forced, as if Duchovny was trying to prove his ability as a serious writer-- choosing almost-abstruse word pairings over simple eloquence for voice and stylization. 

I give it a 4 out of 5 stars.

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Review: Rubyfruit Jungle

Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

RubyFruit Jungle, Rita Mae Brown, 1973

Not the book I expected, but glad it turned out so. Don't let the words  "feminism" and "lesbianism" others use to describe this novella be the main deciding factor if you want to pick this book up or set it back down. Yes, it's a coming-of-age story of a poverty-stricken lesbian; yes, there is lesbian sex, and yes, there is a lot of talk of vaginas (see title). But it's so much more than that. It's an autobiographical novel written in 1973 and considered remarkable in its day for its explicit portrayal of lesbianism. The filter of time hasn't "dated" the writing or the subject matters. If anything, it was ahead of its time and maintained relevance in today's landscape of equality (job).

The book starts with an outrageous scene with mischief only kids can cook up. From there until halfway through the book, we follow Molly, the main character, through her teen years into adulthood. And it wasn't until then that I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I was delighted and giddy with some chapters and laughed loudly at others.

I rate this book 4.85 out of 5.00 stars.

#feminism #lesbianism #lgbtq

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Review: This Is How You Lose the Time War

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This Is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, 2019

I really wanted to like this story. The book has received so much praise from various sources, and I can understand why. The heavy use of poetic prose and lengthy indirect expositions to tell the story was just too much for me to hold my attention-- fighting off sleep had never been so hard.  

However, if you are the type who relishes in word crafting and do not mind a thin plot couched in heavy descriptive pulchritudinous prose, you will probably find joy in reading every syllable palavered.

I would describe this book as "soft science fiction" accessible to Young Adult (YA) readers-- I probably attribute that to the epistolary format of the book reminding me of teenagers' diaries.

I rate this book 1.25 stars out of 5 stars.

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Review: Train Dreams

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What a sad and beautifully told story of a rugged and rough life in the American Northwest during the first quarter of the 1900s. Fundamentally ahistorical fiction, elements of magical surrealism adds to the depth of and emotions conveyed in Train Dreams. The novella is a Pulitzer Prize nominee for 2012.

The language and prose is evocative of the brutality of nature entwined with human life from days gone by. It's hard to fathom in our current times how Americans used to live about a hundred years ago- or at least a lifestyle that is considered outside of the mainstream in early 1900s.

I've read somewhere a book reviewer describing the book as "imagine Toni Morrison flirting with Paul Bunyan" with how the Denis Johnson uses magical surrealism "as a means of melding humans and 

animals into a single life-force that animates the mountains and valleys." I would have to agree.

I rate this book 4.25 out of 5 stars.

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Review: 56 Days

56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

With the book described as a mysterious thriller set in Covid-19 pandemic backdrop, I rolled my eyes set the it back down on the shelf.  As I started to walk away someone suggested I should give it a try as it's one of the better ones around capitalizing on "pandemic stories", and the sucker who I am, so I did.

I went through the book in 6 days, but felt more like 56 days. The time jump was just too jarring-- I don't know if the editor is to blame for that or the author envisioned the the time jumps from the get-go to build the mystery and tension but simply missed the mark in execution.

I didn't find anything redeeming with any of the central characters, or a journey I could get behind. The incidental characters were probably more interesting in fact. 

But hey, I stuck with the book and it was reminiscent enough of Shonda Rhimes TV show, "How To Get Away With Murder,"-- not that I cared much for that show either.  If you self-diagnose as "pandemic-fine" and want to read something interesting enough but easily consumed, and possibly vaguely remember down the line enough to to chit-chat with some lady in the queue at the bookstore, then this book is for you.  

I rate it 2.5 stars.

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Review: Stories of Your Life and Others

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Stories of Your Life" and "Exhalation" by Ted Chiang.

Both books contain a collection of short stories. I read them back to back unintentionally and found almost every other story enjoyable-- only a couple I disliked.

I was very surprised to find one of the short stories to be the basis of the Luc Besson’s (sp?) movie Lucy. The movie was good, but the short story filled in some blanks and made much more sense.

The movie Arrival was also based on one of the short stories. The movie adaptation was fantastic when compared to the source material. The movie filled-in the strokes of the book’s plot that made events and characters more relatable to viewers of the movie adaptation.

Now if I could just take half the stories from one book and half from the other book and make two piles with one with all the good stories and the other lackluster ones, then.. well.. then I would've only bought one book.

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