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| 1421500523
| 9781421500522
| 1421500523
| 4.01
| 570
| Dec 22, 1999
| Oct 10, 2005
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really liked it
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"When your master speaks, I expect you to bark!" Oh, right. The Dungeon Dice Monsters interlude. Alright, let's do this. Of all of the filler arcs, th "When your master speaks, I expect you to bark!" Oh, right. The Dungeon Dice Monsters interlude. Alright, let's do this. Of all of the filler arcs, this is by far my personal least favourite, and probably Little Kuriboh's too since in Yu-Gi-Oh! abridged, the big joke is that Dungeon Dice Monsters (DDM) as a game is just Duel Monsters with dice. I actually don't think that's the case, because in the manga at least, DDM establishes the rules and gameplay well enough to cement it as a different type of game that relies on different enough mechanics from Duel Monsters to have a distinct identity. What it is, however, is a pretty shameless reboot of Capsule Monsters (that's right: nothing gets past me!), but more easily translatable to real world gameplay. Just like Capsule Monsters, DDM probably wouldn't work as an IRL tabletop game because, tragically, we haven't yet had a Seto Kaiba to invent Solid Vision, but it does/would work as a video game in a way that Duel Monsters doesn't really lend itself to -- for whatever that's worth. Whatever, none of this really matters because even Takahashi seemed to view this episode as pointless since everything about it draws on more interesting storylines we've already had. Joey/Jonouchi loses a game to someone obviously savvier than he is in an embarrassing way and gets called a dog by someone cooler and hotter than he is who is a teenage game developer that runs his father's business... hmmm (Side note: just to address the elephant in the room, if we had a quarter for every game developer and business owner in Domino that has had a quasi puppy-play relationship with Joey/Jonouchi we'd have 2 quarters. Which isn't a lot, but it is weird that it happened twice). Then, Yugi steps in and is all 'don't talk to my friend like that!' and our absolutely not derivative and very distinct and three-dimensional villain of the week, Duke/Otogi slowly reveals that he was actually after Yugi all along. In another 'sins of the father' twist, it turns out that Duke/Otogi's father was a mentee of Yugi's grandfather in the past, lost to him in a Shadow game, and was horribly disfigured as a result. Ever since, he's had it out for Yugi's grandfather, and passed that grudge along to his son, who now resents Yugi by association. A few things happen in between, but the key point is that Duke/Otogi lures Yugi away from his friends, takes the Millennium Puzzle off of him, and forces him to play DDM to get it back. In this version of events, Duke/Otogi's plotline is crossed with the Millennium items, and he believes if he can defeat Yugi at DDM, the power of the Millennium puzzle will transfer to him. On the one hand, this is kind of interesting, and even Yami Bakura is given something to do because he shows up as Yugi's cheerleader (???) and proclaims that only Yugi can wield the Millennium Puzzle; anyone else who tries will pay a heavy price. Except maybe Kaiba in Darkside of Dimensions for some reason. Whatever. Don't worry about it. Personally, I prefer the anime version of this plot because, frankly, the set up in the manga doesn't really add to either the lore or the worldbuilding. At least in the anime, Duke/Otogi's motivation is more integrated into the overarching narrative, and is grounded in already established events. In the anime, his issue with Yugi is that prior to the Duelist Kingdom tournament, Duke/Otogi had been promised by Pegasus that after the tournament was over, they could discuss Industrial Illusions backing the development of DDM because (Pegasus assumed) after Duelist Kingdom, Industrial Illusions and Kaiba Corporation were set to merge, which would give Pegasus access to the Solid Vision technology necessary to make DDM market viable. But, of course, that doesn't happen because by the time Duelist Kingdom is over... Pegasus is dead. Or missing. Or otherwise out of commission. Little sketchy on the details. And Duke/Otogi blames Yugi for this, which is why he wants to in some manner or other make Yugi pay. Doesn't that sound a little better? A little more complex? Still a bit dumb, but at least less...contrived? The only good thing to come out of all of this in the manga is that Yugi gets a little bit of character development, since he has to defeat Duke/Otogi on his own. And we start to get a better sense of Yugi as a personality distinct from Yami Yugi, and we also get more evidence to suggest that even without the help of ancient Egyptian magic, Yugi is a savvy gamer in his own right. But, surely, we could have gotten this development in a more satisfying way. Oh! And we learn/are reminded that in the manga-verse Yugi actually lives with his mom, and she has like, two lines of dialogue. So, that's nice. Ah, well, at least it only takes a volume and a half to get us through this on the way to the start of Battle City! Random piece of lore: we learn on page 11 that while his soul was floating around (???) Yugi’s grandpa meets up with his grandmother (‘s soul???) before retuning to his body in Domino (???) ...more |
Notes are private!
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2
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Apr 22, 2025
not set
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Apr 22, 2025
not set
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Apr 24, 2025
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Paperback
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| 3.64
| 159,317
| Dec 16, 1916
| 1960
|
really liked it
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What can be said about 'Portrait of the Artist' that hasn't been said already? I suppose the short of it is that if you were even remotely like protag
What can be said about 'Portrait of the Artist' that hasn't been said already? I suppose the short of it is that if you were even remotely like protagonist Stephen Dedalus as a kid/teenager, you're likely better predisposed to enjoy it than if you weren't. At least, that was the case for me. There are two avenues to choose from when talking about this novel (a project that had an interesting conception, evolving from essay to 900-page novel, to 150-page novella). The top layer of analysis is the story itself. In true Bildungsroman fashion, we follow Stephen as he grows from an innocent, impressionable child attending Catholic school into an already world-weary young man in Edwardian Ireland. As the genre goes, 'Portrait' stands apart because it ties the normal tribulations of adolescence (first love, a budding sense of self, the realization that your parents aren't infallible, etc.) to religious trauma, and Joyce strongly seems to signal towards the abusive and damaging nature of Catholic indoctrination and how it can leave its victims...well...pretty screwed up. Smack in the middle of the narrative, we and Stephen are subjected to a fire and brimstone sermon on the nature of hell that puts Dante's 'Inferno' to shame. It's too much for Stephen who, terrified, falls into a religious mania and routine of symbolic flagellation that nearly results in him becoming a priest. He only seems to snap out of it after realizing that per the church, sin comes in never-ending waves more or less dooming everyone to being caught up in the undertow eventually. The exhaustion of facing down a lifetime of running against such an inevitable tide plus the beauty he sees on a walk along the beach while thinking it over make him choose beauty and art over religious fanaticism, and he gives up on Catholicism for good. But this decision to slough off the trappings of religion doesn't bring back what it hollowed out in him, and for the rest of the story, in his pursuit to become an artist, he becomes an increasingly more translucent person, reduced in the end to a vessel for ideas rather than a three-dimensional person with a vibrant spirit. This itself raised in my mind a question: could he go on to be a great artist if he couldn't even allow himself to be a person? This tension comes to a head in a poignant conversation he has with a friend at the end of the novel. When he announces he's leaving Ireland, his friend demands to know if he really intends to go through life alone, and Stephen says 'yes.' Adding: -I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for another or to leave whatever I have to leave. And I am not afraid to make a mistake, even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake and perhaps as long as an eternity too. It was in this scene, right at the end, that it occurred to me how miserable Stephen is. He comes across from the beginning as dreamy and sensitive and out of step with his classmates, but it was only when his aloofness was contrasted with his friend's humanity that I could see how lonely the path Stephen chose would be, and that it isn't something I'd want for myself, even though, like Stephen, I tend to prefer perceiving to being perceived. Then I found myself wondering if it was even worth it for Stephen. Is he actually a budding genius of an artist as he seems to think? Joyce keeps that ambiguous. Stephen talks a big game, and by the end of the novel he's developed his own notions of what beauty and art are and are not, but can he produce it? We only ever read two things he's actually written: a poem, and a slew of diary entries. The poem is...fine, but it's hardly sublime. And in the diary entries, he doesn't exactly leave you reaching for a pen to note down a pretty turn of phrase. Sure, his friends refer to him as 'a poet', but that could be in jest as much as in earnest. And sure, he wins a writing prize at school when he's a young boy, but how high was the bar? I enjoyed this ambiguity a lot, and I choose to view the first-person diary entries at the end as a bit of sleight of hand, a bit of a rug-pull on Joyce's part. In the introduction to this edition, Joyce's brother is quoted as saying that James never wrote anything without irony, so it seems within the realm of possibility that Stephen is meant to have great powers of perception but a complete lack of introspection that comes together in the form of a kind of insufferable, mediocre, pseudo-intellectualism that, ironically, is something the reader can pick up on in Stephen that Stephen would never be able to pick up in himself. But...that could be projection on my part, so I'll mind my manners. The other, and maybe even more notable thing about 'Portrait' than its characters and plot is the writing itself. Love it or hate it, 'Portrait' is a great snapshot of Joyce's writing chops. Who cares if Stephen is a great artist? Joyce definitely is. (could it be part of the sleight of hand that we get so used to the gorgeous language we forget it comes from Joyce and not Stephen? Something to think about) The stages of Stephen's development denoted by the level of complexity of the writing, the fact that Stephen first notices words, then meanings, then begins consuming existing art, then consuming theory on existing art, then beginning to produce art himself, then graduating to his final form of developing his own theories about art. It's all very wonderfully done in a way that doesn't draw too, too much attention to itself. And as someone who went through all the same stages as a teenager and young adult, I got a sweet dose of nostalgia from reliving them through this book. That experience alone I take as a gift worthy of being bestowed on anyone you know who was once that dreamy kid alone on the playground reading a book or writing bad (or, if they were lucky, good) poetry and stories. Buuuuut, a word of caution: much like other works with which 'Portrait' could share a shelf: American Psycho, Notes from Underground, Fight Club, Catcher in the Rye, etc., if someone tells you this is their favourite book of all time, try to find out why before deciding if that's a red or a green flag, because it's one of those ones that could probably swing either way. I'm still trying to decide what it says about me that I enjoyed it so much. But, hey, that's one of the things that makes books like this so great, right? Right?! God, I hope I fall into the 'green flag' group... I'm a reformed insufferable pseudo-intellectual -- I swear! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 30, 2025
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Apr 19, 2025
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Mar 30, 2025
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Paperback
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| 0241341396
| 9780241341391
| 0241341396
| 4.03
| 363,082
| 1911
| Jun 07, 2018
|
did not like it
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'Peter Pan' is the perfect specimen for a 'what went wrong?' autopsy. Because, really, from stem to stern very little went right in this story. Yes, t 'Peter Pan' is the perfect specimen for a 'what went wrong?' autopsy. Because, really, from stem to stern very little went right in this story. Yes, this is a children's classic, and so there is a lowered quality expectation (though there arguably shouldn't be), but nevertheless, even with a relatively low bar, 'Peter Pan' cannot fly over it -- fairy dust or no. The first thing that can be said of 'Peter Pan' is that it reads like a fractured series of scenes only tied together by the fact that the characters remain the same. When discussing the story with another reader, they said it feels a bit like a bedtime story being developed in real time by parents whose kids aren't as sleepy as they should be and so keep asking 'and then what?' The framing device of the 'real world' is probably the most fleshed-out, though that doesn't mean it's pleasant to exist there. The parents are barely sketches of the idea of a mom and dad and the three kids: Wendy, John, and Michael are barely sketches of children, but it's within this vague semblance of a vaguely established middle-class family that there's actual cohesion of plot on both sides. Neverland itself, while iconic conceptually, is also dished out in very vague terms, and even the narration seems uninterested in any world-building because it rushes through the broad strokes of the landscape of the place and lingers instead on describing each of the Lost Boys and pirates by name and with some description, but all of it keeps the reader at arm's length as though the narrator is going through the entire story with a weary, annoyed 'if I must' attitude. And that attitude leaks into every single scene so that every sentence reads like it was an imposition to have to write. This creates possibly the most bizarre atmosphere of anything I've ever read. I cannot stress enough how much it feels as though it were written against the author's will. It brings to mind a presentation given by a student who huffily speeds through their required five minutes before petulantly turning to the teacher and saying "that's it. Can I sit down now?" It's so weird. And because it reads like it was written by someone forced to put it together at gun-point, the pacing is all over the place. We spend a million years with the kids flying to Neverland, we get a laundry list of adventures that they apparently had there so that we can slow down to a crawl and witness a mind-numbing scene of the kids having make-believe food and Wendy putting them to bed and staying up to darn their socks. The 'climax' of the kids getting kidnapped by Captain Hook and the pirates and then rescued again by Peter Pan gets resolved in the blink of an eye. Tinker Bell getting poisoned by Captain Hook and then rescued by Peter who gets kids the world over to heal her by praying 'I do believe in fairies' happens in less than a full paragraph, and the bulk of the falling action (which takes way longer) involves an inane back and forth between Wendy and the Lost Boys about coming back to the real world to live with her, her brothers, and their parents. There's a long section at the end after it's all over about the mundane and drab lives all of the kids grow up to live, and about how Peter Pan comes in and out of Wendy's life from when she's a child to when she's an older woman just to steal away first her daughter and then granddaughter so that the girl of each generation can be his 'mother' in Neverland for a while before he brings her back. This leads to the thing that genuinely took me aback about this story: it's so meanspirited at every opportunity. No one is likeable; not Peter Pan, not the Lost Boys, not Tinker Bell, not any of the pirates, not the kids' father, not even really 'Nana' their nursemaid dog. And the mother and Wendy are only ever allowed to feel a sort of quiet exasperation at the weaponized helplessness of the men and boys around them who are incapable of tying their own ties or taking their medicine at bedtime or feeding themselves without a woman to do it all for them even as they try to buck being 'told what to do.' I also did not know going into this that the 'plot' is wrapped around an analysis of mothers that would have made Freud clap his hands in delight. The concept of a mother in 'Peter Pan' is: 'woman/girl who men rely on and need and want, but resent and dehumanize and are generally beastly to because their (unnecessary) reliance on said woman/girl makes them feel impotent.' And none of this even touches on the way the indigenous characters are portrayed (Tiger Lily, a little girl, being described as 'lusty' pretty well gives you the idea). It only manages to be less awful than the Disney cartoon because none of them speak and there are no visual depictions, though I daresay the cartoon was not far off in what would have been in the minds of the white audience this was intended for. (If it was intended for anyone at all, considering that even Barrie didn't seem to want to write it) All in all, this is a great example of: you had one good idea (Neverland) and you did less than nothing with it and in fact ran in the opposite direction and took a good idea and presented it in the ugliest and yet somehow also most boring way possible. Every moment within the text that could be considered an interesting thread is only so because as the reader I did way more work than Barrie did. If this had been written and framed as a cautionary tale about the danger of relying too heavily on escapism to avoid the angst that comes with growing up, it would have been better. If this had been written as a whimsical tale of children who had magical adventures in a parallel fantasy world it would have been better. But Barrie did neither of those things, and so, in conclusion, all I can say is: thanks for giving us Neverland so that everyone who came after you had it as a sandbox within which to create better stories. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 26, 2025
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Mar 29, 2025
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Mar 26, 2025
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Paperback
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| 080215980X
| 9780802159809
| 080215980X
| 3.92
| 5,131
| Aug 16, 2022
| Aug 16, 2022
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liked it
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"I'm sorry; I have to do this because it's the only way to save my life. Someone from Creepypasta is stalking me." p.86 As someone who absolutely watch "I'm sorry; I have to do this because it's the only way to save my life. Someone from Creepypasta is stalking me." p.86 As someone who absolutely watched 'Marble Hornets' and played the Slenderman online game with a best friend when we were around the age of the two girls involved in the brutal stabbing of a classmate and friend, I was certainly morbidly curious. I have vague recollections of hearing about this when it happened, thought that was in large part after the fact because I better remember the controversy around the Slenderman film being made between then (2014) and its release in 2018. The argument, of course, was that it would be in bad taste to produce a movie about young girls trying to conjure Slenderman after two young girls really had hurt someone in connection with the character. (The resulting edits that had to be made to a film that had obviously already been completed by the time the backlash occurred resulted in an incoherant mess. But that's another story...) But really, I didn't know much more than that. Indeed, I thought that the whole thing had resulted in murder -- I didn't know the victim had survived. This is something that Kathleen Hale points out early in 'Slenderman': many reports on the incident buried the victim to the point that some news outlets reported it as murder because, frankly, murder was probably more narratively satisfying than injury. Despite heavily, heavily narrativizing the entire sad affair, I do get the sense that Hale was trying to tell a macro-level story about internet culture and about mental illness and about the justice system. But it absolutely did not land. A large part of the criticism from reviewers of this book is that Hale presents too sympathetic a view of the perpetrators of a horrifyingly violent crime. At the end of the day, one of them stabbed her friend 19 times with a kitchen knife while the other one watched and egged her on. Sure, there's something intriguing, something sensational about the angle of: '12-year-old girls, unable to tell fantasy from reality, believed the stories they read about a modern-day boogieman and, in his name, stabbed a classmate 19 times and then attempted to walk 300 miles to where they thought his lair to be.' Maybe I'm just not far enough away from being 12 to find it shocking that 12-year-olds would believe a fictional character is real, but that, to me, is the least shocking thing about this entire story. In the aftermath, there was a lot of talk about adolescent brain development and impulse control and so on and so forth, and I do agree with the experts on this one that that played into what happened here in a not insignificant capacity. My Chemical Romance put out a song way back in the times of yore (2006) called 'Teenagers' with the lyric: "All teenagers scare the livin' shit outta me," -- but I think there's something to be said about pre-teens. Teenagers are too sleepy and too cynical to have done something like this, but pre-teens? Wild little schemers. Is that enhanced by unfettered access to the internet, where it's increasingly difficult to distinguish reality from deep-fakes? Sure. But even as a pre-teen consuming this exact Creepypasta content and wondering if it was actually real (and sort of hoping that it was because at 12 the idea of real monsters was still pretty thrilling) I never felt compelled to stab anyone, and apparently neither did anyone else, because for all that this story kicked-up a Satanic Panic-style backlash against middle-schoolers having access to Creepypasta content this did only happen once. And I guess that's what I found kind of frustrating about this book. In relying so heavily on interviews with the stabbers, Hale ironically missed out on the larger argument about loner, 'loser', emo, mentally ill, terminally online kids and how they are so often treated with suspicion and fear despite having done nothing wrong. Unfortunately, these two girls happened to possess all of those aforementioned qualities, but let's be so for real: none of those things are the reason this crime occurred. This was also a tricky case to write about from Hale's side because while she revealed some truly troubling things about the criminal justice system (the fact that 12 year olds were tried as adults is the true insanity, but also a feature and not a bug of a punitive system) as well as about an overburdened and underfunded (and devalued) mental health system, she did so, again, through the narrative of these two specific people and their anecdotal experiences. It's hard to pin down exactly where everything fell apart for Hale in this book, but I'll just say that I am an advocate of restorative justice, I don't believe in punitive justice, and I'm absolutely for more comprehensive mental health services in and out of conjunction with the legal system, and even I didn't find this convincing. It just kind of meandered all over the place without any clear direction. I think she couldn't decide what this was a book about. She just kind of vaguelly gestures at massive systemic issues, and then immidiately goes back to the story of the two girls and quotes from their interviews. And because of this, she did not dovetail the 'Kids, Parents, and The Internet' and 'mental illness' and 'broken legal system' angles well at all. Probably because 'the internet is corrupting our children!' is such a tired and out of touch angle of approach to basically anything. There are things that could be explored about internet culture and how kids relate to it, but that wasn't going to come out of a narrative about this crime in particular. It's really and truly too bad, because in the right hands this could be a good case to use as the focus of a discussion about internet culture and how kids relate to it, a story about how 'adult crime, adult time' is a barbaric symptom of the problem with basing your legal system on punishment (and how in turn, that bleeds into the way mental illness is considered a 'get out of jail free card' rather than a legitimate pathway towards establishing justice after a crime). But this story as presented in 'Slenderman' was not in the right hands, because Hale was more interested in turning this into a human interest story than exploring systemic failings. And hey, listen, I'm willing to take it on the chin that it's my problem this isn't the book I wanted, not a ding against the book because, clearly, it did resonate with a lot of people. But I was annoyed at being forced to look at the more meaty topics through the sheet of ice that was what this actually was. That all being said, I do commend Hale for her transparency in the introduction when it came to her sources and how she went about putting this book together, and for the money she spent getting the transcripts from the legal proceedings out of the stenographer's basement and into public record. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 22, 2025
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Mar 22, 2025
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Mar 24, 2025
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1501160834
| 9781501160837
| 1501160834
| 4.17
| 729,588
| Apr 25, 2019
| Sep 2020
|
liked it
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In a phrase, 'Anxious People' is high quality 'Live, laugh, Literature' (as coined by Youtuber Owl Criticism). That is to say, it fits well on a shelf
In a phrase, 'Anxious People' is high quality 'Live, laugh, Literature' (as coined by Youtuber Owl Criticism). That is to say, it fits well on a shelf beside books like 'What You are Looking for is in the Library' and 'Before the Coffee Gets Cold' or 'The Alchemist.' As defined by Owl Criticism, these are books that filter self help through the lens of fiction. At the end of such a book, you aren't really left thinking about the characters or even really about the plot itself, but rather about what the book had to say about you and the way your live your own life. They're meant to end on a call to action. Whether or not you get on with a book like 'Anxious People' is probably going to boil down to a few things, not the least of which is whether or not you agree with the call to action implied (sometimes heavily) by the ending of the story. In the case of 'Anxious People', Fredrik Backman is telling us that the antidote to feeling lonely and isolated and...well...anxious is to cultivate a sense of community. His call to action is: get to know your neighbors. I happen to agree that this is a good idea. Coming from a country steeped in hyper-individualism, I can only scream into the void about how good of an idea this is. It's good to get to know your neighbors for lots of reasons: easy if somewhat distanced commeraderie, a vague sense of good will towards the people around you that are the individual threads making up the fabric of the society we all depend on to live the 'modern lifestyle' with roads and sewage and libraries and cute little bookshops and so on. People in the 2020s suffer from an eunnui of our own creation, suffer from a genuine belief that things are never getting better -- they're only getting worse. And I can only imagine that this feeling has roots in its network extending even beyond an insane cost of living, the omnipresent climate crisis, fascism feeding what had been dozing monsters. It does sound sort of trite, but if you don't even feel 'it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood' when you step outside, what hope is there to even sow the seeds of optimism? So, in that sense, I think a book like 'Anxious People' is exactly what we need right now. But, on the other hand, as is often the case in this genre, its ideas are greater than the sum of its parts. Backman does this thing that you are either going to find charming or irritating in which he imbues each character with an off-the-charts quirkiness bordering on comedy. Yes, yes, we're all quirky; no one is actually normal, but the quirks of the characters in 'Anxious People' feel like they were just pulled out of a hat full of random characteristics and hobbies. For instance, one character is a very prim and proper grumpy older lady...but she listens to death metal constantly. There is an explanation given for this, but it's not a particularly convincing one. Another example is a couple that split up over the color of a food processor and then move out of their apartment leaving only the food processor behind. Again, could this be? Sure. People reach their breaking points over silly things all the time, but this is just another weird instance in a sea of weird and quirky instances. I think the goal was supposed to be to make every character feel fully three-dimensional, but because they almost all ended up being defined by these odd quirks, they felt incredibly flat. Like, to me this was a case of show don't tell gone horribly wrong. There were moments of sincerity, and there were some characters that felt more thoughtfully constructed, but The White Lotus this was not. The problem was that with little exception the quirks never meant anything. They didn't come together to support a core personality, which is why they so often felt random and absurd in ways that took me out of the story. Even aspects of the plot itself felt goofy and out of place. The tone could not figure itself out and undulated all over the spectrum from very earnest to very silly, making the entire thing feel uncohesive. Also, and very particularly, I do not know what exactly it added to make the gender of the 'antagonist' ambiguous since all it amounted to was a cheap 'twist' that took up far too much time. But again, I think that 'Anxious People' had its heart in the right place, and ultimately, I don't think it was trying to be profound; I think it just wanted to express an idea that I think is a good one, and it did so in a very accessible way that obviously resonated with a lot of people, so who am I to get in the way of anyone live, laugh, loving their way to a less isolated and anxious life? ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 15, 2025
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Mar 30, 2025
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Mar 15, 2025
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1570981019
| 9781570981012
| 1570981019
| 3.75
| 8
| Jan 1995
| Jan 01, 1900
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liked it
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2.5/5 "You used to tell me that the most magical word in the world is And. It means there is more. It was superior to Yes or Amen. It means there is n
2.5/5 "You used to tell me that the most magical word in the world is And. It means there is more. It was superior to Yes or Amen. It means there is no end. It was like everlasting love. But you lied." p.55 'On the Back of the Swallow' is a novel that had a lot going for it, but ultimately flopped because the author, Danny Morrison, didn't seem to know what exactly he wanted the plot to be about. And as a result, a lack of cohesion made for a disjointed reading experience so that by the end I had lost the plot right along with him. That being said, of the three disparate plot threads, two of them were pretty compelling, and I wish he had just written two separate novellas rather than trying to turn these unrelated ideas into bookends in service of a third plot thread that was by far the weakest and most... dare I say, problematic? But I'm getting ahead of myself. The first third of the book was easily my favorite and felt the most emotionally earnest. In it, we focus on the friendship between two boys, Nicky (our protagonist) and Robin as they grow up in Northern Ireland in (I assume?) the 70s or 80s (we never really get any clues that I was able to use to specify). But even though there would have been a lot of political upheaval in Northern Ireland regardless of exactly which decade this was set, that turmoil doesn't really touch the characters who are more concerned with having youthful adventures along the coastline and in the countryside, anywhere they can run around getting into largely harmless trouble. The depth of their friendship was actually really beautiful to read about because rarely do we get to see that level of emotional intimacy in male friendships and I wish that was what the entire novel had been about. But it wasn't. There is a little bit of ambiguity about the exact nature of their friendship and if it could or would have developed into something romantic, but when tragedy separates them, we as the reader are also separated from the best part of what 'On the Back of the Swallow' had to offer. The middle of the book is...how can I put this delicately? A mess. Without Robin to keep him tethered, Nicky just kind of flails around emotionally even though in terms of life milestones, by the time he hits his mid-20s he's doing well. He has a stable job as a postman, he's fairly well-liked, he's still living at home, but not because he has to; just because nothing has prompted him (yet) to forge a more independent life. But in terms of his inner world, he's suffering sever arrested development, unable to grow beyond the person he was when he had Robin in his life. Nicky ends up dating the girl that Robin had a crush on in high school, but he's not particularly besotted with her; he falls into the relationship more out of convenience than anything else, and his attraction to her is very mixed up with the fact that she was someone Robin liked, and being with her is a means to keep Robin alive. So this is trucking along, and it's obvious that Nicky is just letting life happen to him even though he's not excited about any of it, and he's starting to view his relationship to this girl through a very ugly (and lowkey misogynistic) lens when he meets a plucky fifteen-year-old named Gareth. This was where I started to get the prickly, trickling feeling of discomfort because it's very apparent early on that this is going to take a weird turn. Because unlike the relationship between Nicky and Robin, which was innocent and sympathetic, the relationship between Nicky and Gareth is... not. Nicky at this point is 23, and really truly has no business palling around with a fifteen-year-old. At all. But the way Morrison frames this is as though their age gap is a tragedy and as though the problem with it is the way society would view this rather than it actually being a problem. And this is made even more uncomfortable by the fact that Danny Morrison isn't even a queer person writing this; he's a straight man writing a story that plays into the 'man-boy love' stereotype that to this day links gay identity with pedophilia. And this is a stereotype with actual real-world consequences in terms of how gay men working in education or working with kids in any way are unduly scrutinized or assumed to be guilty of predatory behaviour and having to fight their entire careers against that damning assumption from a society that has been fed stories like this one that prop that stereotype up. I really, really did not like that. Because it doesn't matter that Morrison tries to maintain plausible deniability by never having anything actually sexual happen between Nicky and Gareth; this is written explicitly as a love story, and moreover, it's written sympathetically. So, the only possible takeaways from this are either: 'this is fine,' or 'this is not fine.' And I think (I hope) we've grown enough as a culture to realize that no, 23-year-olds should not be in relationships with 15-year-olds. So, then, this is just more fuel on that aforementioned fire, and for that reason, I would have to say that entire part of the plot was bad, actually. Ok, so where does Morrison go from here? Well, the boy's father reports Nicky to the police, and he is arrested and charged, basically, with committing 'gross indecency' with a minor. Which like... no, not actually, but it was very sketchy what he was doing so like, was it 'wrong' to put a stop to this? No, probably not. But again, the weird framing of all of this suggests it was bad that he was arrested on trumped-up charges... As I said: morally, it's a mess. Organizationally, it's a mess. Just a chaotic climax overall. Then, we get the third part which is about Nicky's experience as an 'innocent' man in jail, and how corrupt and awful the prison system is (which, yes, true, big problems in the 'justice' system). I kind of got the impression that this was really what Morrison wanted to write about, and his biography would also support that (he was an activist who experienced imprisonment in Northern Ireland), but there was very little room for characterization much less a character arc between all of the scenes we're shown of the terrible conditions, etc. And then it all just...ends. Another reviewer called it a tacked-on 'It's a Wonderful Life' twist and I completely agree. Morrison did not seem to know how to end this, certainly seemed unsure how to create a through-line from beginning to end, and so it just felt abrupt, vaguely surrealistic, and flailing. But, hey, at least the first 50 pages were really good, and the writing was lovely. Would I recommend this? No. But was it a waste of time? No. ...more |
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| 4.03
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| Mar 27, 2021
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really liked it
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"Her eyes had the flecks that start to fill up around the pupils as we age. The dark patches of wisdom that bodies create as they look out onto the wo
"Her eyes had the flecks that start to fill up around the pupils as we age. The dark patches of wisdom that bodies create as they look out onto the world in a person's final years." ~'These Old Bones' Rather than flinching back from the darker realities of Inuit-Canadians living in southern Canada: the alcoholism, the drug use, prostitution, racism, and loneliness, Inuk-Canadian author Norma Dunning paints vivid portraits of the pain of being Indigenous, of being Inuit, and being made to be an outsider in what was once your own land. But even in the darkest moments, 'Tainna' is not cynical, and it is not ultimately about despair or brokenness; it's a collection deeply rooted in compassion and the warmth of community. It's optimistic while still leaving space for anger and hurt. 'Tainna' is Dunning's second collection, and you can feel the catharsis contained within many of the stories. It is clear that she writes with an Inuit audience in mind, which allowed her characters to feel fully realized as part of a cultural continuum that didn't have to be explained, though there is a glossary in the back with translations of the Inuit expressions/words. Dunning pulls no punches when it comes to villainizing whiteness and spotlighting the deep harm it has done to her community. She also is careful to rarely center white characters; in 'Tainna', they are the outsiders, the otherized group that simply doesn't 'get' it. This subversion comes to the foreground in the story 'Eskimo Heaven', but is certainly omnipresent in the background of many others. Sometimes, these moments are pretty on the nose, but honestly, the kind of overt racism Dunning has the older white men in her stories spew would only seem unbelievable to older white men who have never been on the receiving end of it. I read the entire collection in one sitting, though you could certainly savour them one-by-one. Each story adds something to the overall reading experience, and there were none that I disliked, but I did find the standouts to be: 1. Amak -- The tale that opens the collection, 'Amak' is about 2 estranged sisters who took very different paths in life reuniting for the first time in 10 years. It raises important questions about generational trauma and whether or not we're obligated to love someone just because they're family. 2. Kunak -- Also exploring family, 'Kunak' is a tragic story about a beautiful relationship between a young boy and his grandfather that is cruelly ripped apart under suspicious circumstances, leading the boy to grow into a young man plagued by alcoholism. However, even though he appears down and out, is he actually alone and unloved? 3. Tainna -- The titular story closes the collection on an optimistic note despite telling one of the darkest stories. We follow two timelines: one, of a white veteran trying to discover the identity of a young Indigenous woman whose body he discovers while mowing the grass at a golf course. In the other timeline, we discover what happened to the young woman and how in death she finds her way back to the warmth and love of her ancestors. ...more |
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| 4.05
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| Jun 01, 2021
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it was amazing
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When I read the premise of 'Peter Darling': Captain Hook and trans Peter Pan fall in love in Neverland, I thought it sounded like a lot of fun, but no
When I read the premise of 'Peter Darling': Captain Hook and trans Peter Pan fall in love in Neverland, I thought it sounded like a lot of fun, but not particularly serious. I did not expect this to be nearly as emotional of a read as it was. Just to get this out of the way: 'Peter Darling' is fanfiction in the sense that I actually can't imagine that it wasn't originally written for AO3. The structure and the pacing make a lot more sense if we assume they were published serially. Certainly, the way the romance between Peter Pan and Captain Hook comes about and the pacing around that aspect specifically make more sense if you read this as a work of fanfiction than if you read it as a novel. Not in any way a detraction, just something to keep in mind if you pick this up. And I do think some of the negative reviews stem from expecting this to read like a traditional novel. Something for all fanfiction writers to consider when adapting fanfiction to the medium of a novel. But enough about the structure, let's talk about the story. This was the kind of story that understood exactly what about the original source material made for the perfect springboard into a different, albeit related, angle. Because do you know what the setting of Neverland was perfect for: exploring transmasculine identity. Instead of anxiety about growing up forming the backbone of why Neverland exists, in Austin Chant's version, it's rage. And I really liked that. It's not too often we get stories about trans rage. We get a lot of sadness, and we're starting to see more joy, but not too much anger, and certainly not rage. But Peter Pan in this version is full of it, and I loved that. Especially because it was a type of anger very specific to the experience of being told you're wrong about who you know yourself to be. And sorrow at realizing that because of this, you are going to be denied certain experiences of, in this case, manhood. In this version, Peter's rage stems not from an anxiety around leaving behind childhood, but from leaving behind childhood meaning he's no longer allowed to move through the world the same way his two brothers get to. It's rage at his own body for changing in ways that he feels prevent him from even trying. And so that's what Neverland is: a place where he gets to exist in a cis-male body, where he gets to perform a specific type of traditional masculinity and have that be taken seriously. It's in Neverland that he feels real. Which is ironic, because Neverland isn't real. It's a playground that exists alongside reality in which he can have anything he wants: the body he wants, the authority he wants, the scrappy, adventurous adulthood young cis-men are granted access to. Sure, it's not real, but it's the only way he can have those things. So, after a decade of trying to hack in the real world in his old life where his family can't see him as anyone other than their daughter, Wendy, Peter calls out for Tinkerbell to bring him back to Neverland. And she does. But even though initially Peter is stoked to be back, and ready for war with his old arch-nemesis, as that war takes increasingly bloody turns, it stops being fun, and Peter starts to spiral as he tries to figure out what else there is for him in Neverland other than the trappings of an identity he's fought so hard for. And then we discover that (for all intents and purposes) Captain Hook is the only other person in Neverland that wasn't made manifest by Peter. We slowly get the backstory of how Hook ended up in Neverland, but to be honest, this isn't really Hook's story, so I didn't find that side of things as well developed or explained and in the end it just sort of exists to provide a happy ending I personally found a little unsatisfying, but we'll get there when we get there. Ok, so Peter and Hook both come to the realization that the reason Neverland feels so hollow is because it is; everything there is shaped by their whims, including the Lost Boys and the pirates: they're nothing but dolls for Peter and Hook to play with. And even their identities as 'Peter Pan' and 'Captain Hook' feel like they've peaked and have nowhere else to go, no more fleshing out to do. Hook then decides maybe that means it's over and they should leave Neverland because it has nothing else to give them. However, understandably, that idea horrifies Peter, who knows that in the real world he'd stand to lose a hell of a lot , and he balks at the notion of leaving and runs away. And then the inner conflict becomes: how can this character reconcile that the only way he can live a fully three-dimensional life is by existing in the real world as a trans person (in the early 1920s I guess, if this is set on the same timeline as the original novel)? Because to do this, he has to give up the fantasy of existing in a cis-male body and living the life of a cis-man, and find a way to be at peace with existing in a trans body and living the life of a trans man who may not be accepted or understood much less treated the same as a cis-man. And this was why, at least for me, the conflict felt so incredibly painful. Like, yeah, sure, self-acceptance and self-love are important, but damn is it hard to do, especially when the people around you just... get to have the experiences you probably or maybe or likely can't. For instance (and this is just my personal example), I always really liked hearing/reading about cis-guys roaming around; hitchhiking, accepting invitations from strangers to just go somewhere unexpected, crashing on strangers' couches, or even just wandering off for long walks through an unknown city, experiencing sensitive cis-male angst and ennui. But the catch was, I knew I could never ever reasonably experience those things for myself. Because there are just some physical limitations I face that no amount of testosterone would change. Except in Neverland, I was never going to be a waifish twink. And outside of Neverland (as far as we know), neither was Peter. So he faces this impossible choice. This is where the romance came in. Because maybe outside of Neverland Peter wouldn't be seen by most people as a waifish twink, but maybe that doesn't matter as long as Hook does. And conveniently, in the real world, Hook owns a cottage in the middle of the woods, so maybe that's fine. If only we all could fall into such circumstances. But even though a part of me rolls my eyes at that kind of 'easy', quasi-deus-ex-machina happy ending, there is something to be said for it. Because I think a lot of trans people share the experience of feeling anxious and sad when they realize they aren't cis and then rage when they realize they only feel anxious and sad about it because the world tends to treat trans people...badly. And trans people get this message (one that visibility is crucial in combatting by the way) that being trans makes you: a freak, unlovable, doomed to loneliness and ostracization. But that's... not true. Yes, being trans is different than being cis, and so trans people will experience the world differently than a cis person, but different doesn't have to mean bad. That is an artificial narrative even though it has incredibly real-world consequences. Yes there is beauty in found-family, and of course love as a trans person is far from an impossibility, but we live in times that are also very violent, very cruel, and place trans people under very conservative legal and social restraints. I appreciate that 'Peter Darling' wasn't trying to grapple with all of those things. That its focus was on the joy and the freedom that comes from realizing that 'trans' is a valid type of person to be, and that it doesn't doom you to a life lived alone and unloved. But I do think that creating that ending within the cozy implied bubble of: 'and Peter was able to let go of his rage when he realized he could be himself without the need of a cis body as 'proof' of who he was' feels a tad...out of touch. Which is absolutely not the fault of this book, but rather a sad reminder that progress and acceptance aren't linear processes. Because listen, I was there in the 2010s and early 20-teens when it felt like trans people were beginning to be validated outside of our found families and liberal college campuses. And looking around, that optimism is still very much alive for trans people in their early 20s now who exist within the queer trans utopia of their friend groups (as I do in mine). But reading this did genuinely make me sad (and angry!) that the world outside that metaphorical cottage in the woods isn't actually so different now than it was in the 1920s. And so, I'm glad that Peter got a happy ending, but as a queer reader living in a 2025 reality, I did enjoy the rage. (And also, also, let it not go unsaid what an excellent metaphor for the hollowness of the performance of masculinity Neverland was too. That really hit and could be an entire angle of analysis all on its own). ...more |
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Feb 22, 2025
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Mar 15, 2025
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Feb 22, 2025
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| 1335000593
| 9781335000590
| 1335000593
| 3.73
| 2,895
| 2024
| Oct 01, 2024
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it was ok
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The Drowned was... not good. However, because John Banville is technically a good writer, I'll tack on an extra star for the lovely descriptive passag
The Drowned was... not good. However, because John Banville is technically a good writer, I'll tack on an extra star for the lovely descriptive passages of rural Ireland. This novel was presented as being a standalone, but it was definitely heavily advised by the two mystery series the characters were pulled from. This made it very difficult to get invested, since, like fanfiction, the attachment to the characters was assumed, and thus very little time was spent developing them. That isn't, however, the reason I didn't enjoy this, and is also more the fault of the marketing team than of the novel itself. The problems with the novel were diverse and resulted in a very miserable reading experience. Frankly, the biggest problem I had with 'The Drowned' was the complete and utter fizzling out of the plot almost immidiately so that it went out very much with a whimper and not a bang. The only suspect is the guilty party, which is all but spelled out in neon straight away, and the motivation was so trite I almost couldn't believe a veteren mystery writer used it. And then on top of that, we get a red herring thrown in right at the end that serves no purpose except to be deeply unpleasant. In fact, unpleasant is probably the word I would use to summarize the vibe of this novel. The characters are all unpleasant, the circumstances around all of their interactions are unpleasant, the outcomes for a lot of the characters are unpleasant and vaguelly incoherant. And then, to top it all off, the one central character of the novel that wasn't borrowed from the author's other two series randomly, and with no bearing on the plot, is a convicted pedophile. Ok, sure, you're writing a gritty mystery novel, the world does contain all sorts, alright, fine. Doesn't make the chapters from his perspective nicer to read, but alright, let's see where this goes. Nowhere good. The narrative bends over backwards to make us feel sorry for this guy for I daren't guess what reason. It's one thing to extend human empathy to someone deeply disturbed who has caused incredible harm, but it's another to build that same person up as sympathetic not in spite of such a crime, but because of it. Before we know any of this, this character is built up as a meek social outcast, picked on by the local police when he just wants to be left alone to live out his days in solitude with his dog. Why frame this character that way? And then, we really lean into the 'let's all pity the poor man' framing later in the novel when he's accused of a crime he didn't commit (that, in fact, no one committed as it turns out). And mind you, none of this matters because this guy has no bearing on the plot, simply existing within it as a sometimes POV character. So, again, I ask: why did we need this sympathetic framing and backstory? It made me uncomfortable for reasons extending beyond the borders of this story, I'll put it that way. Indeed, there were a lot of unnecessarily uncomfortable things brewing within an otherwise uninspired plot. Why did the protagonist need to hook up with a married woman in her 4 year old son's bed? Why did there need to be such a huge age gap between the protagonist and his love interest and why did we need to keep emphasizing how young she was? The vibes were rotten is what I'm trying to say, I guess. I definitely do not feel the need to go anywhere near any other books by this author. ...more |
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| 0140172912
| 9780140172911
| 0140172912
| 4.04
| 519,359
| Feb 26, 1985
| Jan 01, 1987
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really liked it
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Well, if you didn't know the word 'olfactory' before going into Perfume, you will know it by the time you finish. Indeed, Perfume beats you into the g Well, if you didn't know the word 'olfactory' before going into Perfume, you will know it by the time you finish. Indeed, Perfume beats you into the ground with sensory overload as every scent, every stench, every whisp of a smell you've never stopped to think about is drawn out and nailed down with astonishing precision. What a juggernaut of descriptive writing. Regardless of what you make of the misanthropy at Perfume’s core (and we'll get to that), Patrick Süskind is undeniably a writer of supreme talent. He has the deeply enviable complimentary gifts of perception and the ability to translate those perceptions into prose that I daresay simply cannot be taught. And he channels this incredible ability into writing that is not only never crushed under the weight of the constant onslaught of information, but is breezy and whimsical albeit oft sardonic. The plot itself is a twisted, cynical fable wherein the protagonist, Grenouille, after a lifelong search for love, decides after achieving this goal to the greatest extent possible that he doesn't want it. Nor, however, does he want to return to the complete isolation he experienced during a seven year stretch in his teen years where he lived alone in a cave. Given this (in his view) impossible choice, he gives up on life altogether. I absolutely reject the misanthropic conclusions of this novel, but it's obvious from the particular demographic that applaud Süskind for how he gives voice to their wretchedness through the character of Grenouille (with whom they obviously identify) that there are many, many, many sad white boys that view such a black-pilled point of view as the reality of the world. Certainly, I think it's childish to take as Gospel the conclusion: humans are disgusting, loathsome creatures, yet it is impossible, being human, to escape an innate need to be liked, accepted, and loved by them. Really, what else can be said to someone who believes this other than: 'that's sad.' Personally, I read Perfume as a cautionary tale about obsession, yes, about cynical misanthropy, certainly, but it's specifically tackling these issues through the point of view of a character who was rejected by every person he ever met starting the day he was born just for being ugly and 'weird'. Is Süskind trying to make a nature/nurture argument here? I think so. Even when he's an infant, Grenouille is perceived as evil because he has no natural scent, and certainly he grows up to be a psychopath so removed from other people that he only views them as their smell, literally objectifying the girls he murders when he distills them into essences to be used in making perfumes. But was this pathway to murder inevitable? Had even one person treated him kindly would he have simply lived out his days as a savant perfumer? That remains ambiguous. However, I do suspect that we're meant to believe Grenouille's actions were inevitable, not because he was born evil, but because there was no person to treat him with kindness. Not a single character we meet in Perfume has any redeeming qualities of note. They're all greedy, gluttonous, grotesquely lascivious, and they all stink -- literally. Well... Except for the girls Grenouille murders. It's such a low-hanging critique that it's almost not worth mentioning, but... I'm gonna just say it anyway: is it not possible for middle-aged men to be normal when writing about teenage girls? Yeah, sure, this is a historical novel set in 18th century France (not that this really matters to be completely honest), so one could argue that the blase sexualization of the girls was just de rigueur, but like, there's something disturbing about the fact that in this novel a perfume made from teenage girls caused anyone who smelled it to become so animalistically horny that they were compelled to screw the person closest to them. Why? Just, why? Again, one could argue that this was just meant to be shorthand for a sort of abstract concept of ultimate beauty and how beauty is the thing that humans worship to this grotesque extent, but... he still chose to use 'teenage girl' as the shorthand for this idea, the poetic connection to perfume being that these girls were 'blossoming' (ew), but it's all still very creepy and gross and could have been done a different way. For instance, given that Grenouille's interest in these girls was ultimately the way they smelled, there was no reason for them to be visually sexualized, and in fact, to me, that kind of weakened the premise. Like, seriously, we're going to lean into: conventionally pretty girls smell good, and the prettiest one smells the best? It's like Süskind never read The Picture of Dorian Gray or something. I dunno, I just found the whole conceit as lame as it was gross, and that alone was enough to kind of take me out of the story a bit there at the end, though not to the extent that I wasn't still curious to see how it would all turn out. All in all, the writing and the set-up were to me the standout elements of Perfume, and it's definitely worth reading and talking about. But yeah, note to middle-aged male writers: you don’t have to sexualize teenage girls. You really don’t. ...more |
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Feb 06, 2025
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| B0DN8C9QGC
| 4.18
| 2,702
| Feb 28, 2023
| Feb 28, 2023
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liked it
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2.5 Oh, I so wanted to really like this. For a novel that purports to be about pirates, there is stunningly little piracy in 'The Wicked Bargain.' So, t 2.5 Oh, I so wanted to really like this. For a novel that purports to be about pirates, there is stunningly little piracy in 'The Wicked Bargain.' So, there's that right off the bat. We get some of the trappings: the outfits, the boat setting. And we're told many times that our protagonist, Mar, has a wildly successful pirate family and is themself an accomplished pirate. But we do not ever get to see this. 'The Wicked Bargain' also claims to be set in the Caribbean, and we get a lot of name-dropping of specific historical locations, but even by the author's own admission in their author's notes at the end of the book, they left out or altered so much of the historical timeline that I have no idea why they didn't just set it in a fictional world given that the veneer of historical accuracy and setting added nothing and in fact I know less than I knew before. But frankly, this is YA Fantasy, so a lot of that nitpicking can somewhat be excused (by some). The pirate theme is just an aesthetic backdrop for the real tale: a Faustian bargain gone wrong, a ‘sins of the father� sort of situation. The plot is that Mar has to rescue their father's soul from the Devil within 2 months. I think. We don't really circle back around to that until 2/3 of the way through. In the interim, we follow Mar, orphaned and rescued by the one other pirate crew remaining in the Caribbean as they faff about and pretend they don't think the Captain's son, Bas, is hot. 'Why is Mar faffing about for 2/3 of the novel' one may ask. Well, that's because Mar has magical ice and fire powers but they don't want anyone to know about it because when they were a kid their magic got the best of them and they accidentally caused a volcano to erupt and destroyed their hometown. And also, there were some instances where people who saw them use magic called them a monster/demon and threatened their life. As a result of this, they work very hard to suppress their magic even though doing so is physically painful and they also hide their magical markings by wrapping cloth around their arms and chest under their clothes so they can pass as 'normal'. If you're thinking this seems like an allegory (albeit a clunky one) you'd be right except that Mar is both transmasculine and hella gay, so... wait, what's the point of the allegory? I dunno. And I don't think Gabe Cole Novoa knew either because Mar being trans matters...not at all. Novoa tries to pretend that it matters by referencing Mar's chest binder from time to time, and even once or twice mentions that it's uncomfortable. But does it stop Mar from literally running around? No. Does Mar ever seem in danger of breaking a rib or hurting themself in any way when they have to go days upon days without taking it off? No. Is it convenient that Mar passes as a cis teenage boy 100% of the time no questions asked? Yes. Does all of this make them getting magical top surgery in the end feel incredibly limp rather than emotional impactful? Yes. It's all very lame. It actually brings to mind something that Booktuber Leah Nicole brings up in her video: about how oftentimes Black and POC authors themselves write whitewashed characters to appeal to/appease a presumed white audience. In other words: they write characters that aren't white in name only, but could be without much changing in the story. I think that's what happened here. Mar could have easily not been trans and nothing significant about the story would have changed. And it's sad, because it was such a missed opportunity to explore how this character being trans would have/should have impacted their life in a situation where they suddenly feel like it's safer to live in stealth. If we had gotten that story, some of the stakes would have felt higher. Mar binding for too long should have been dangerous. There should have been internal conflict about whether to prioritize their immediate physical safety over the risks of outing themself. If there had been, it also would have added tension to the question of whether or not Mar would make a deal with the demon side-character (who, incidentally, was a better representation of a non-binary character in almost every conceivable way) because it would have given a plausible reason for that deal to be tempting. And none of these issues with Mar's identity even touch on the fact that trans or not, Mar was an incredibly unlikable character to have to follow around. This is an issue I have in general with books that do a tragic cold open: we don't get to see the character's personality before the tragedy happens, and so the aftermath is all we get. And in the aftermath of tragedy, most people are more likely going to be very sad, miserable, broken, and uninteresting versions of themselves. The narrative tells us that Mar is witty and makes Bas laugh, but we don't see this happen, so why should we believe that? Why indeed should we believe that Bas likes Mar. Like, what about them moping around appealed to him exactly? Just... Issues abounded. It's readable enough if you don't apply any level of scrutiny, so as long as you don't think about any of it, it's... fine . I am very determined to find good queer stories, but this wasn't it for me. ...more |
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Unknown Binding
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| 1591169984
| 9781591169987
| 1591169984
| 4.20
| 615
| Oct 04, 1999
| Sep 06, 2005
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really liked it
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"Ha Ha Ha! My brother and I are flying out of here in our private helicopter! Too bad you don't have one...losers!" Finally, we have arrived at the en "Ha Ha Ha! My brother and I are flying out of here in our private helicopter! Too bad you don't have one...losers!" Finally, we have arrived at the end of the Duelist Kingdom arc: the match between Yami Yugi and Pegasus. One of the things I really think the anime adaptation failed to get right was the balance between goofy and sinister that made Pegasus such a good villain in the manga. Like, yes, he's super charismatic, but he's also incredibly intimidating and ruthless, and the stakes of this duel are incredibly high. Excellent set-up for a finale. Yes, the 'Pegasus can use the Millennium Eye to read his opponent’s mind' bit is a little repetitive at this point, but at least the payoff of Yami Yugi/Yugi figuring out how to get around it is satisfying since it relies on the unique property of their two minds in one shared body. That being said, all the magic shenanigans mean that this duel isn't really about strategy in the same way many of the other duels have been, so to keep it interesting, we need some good visuals, some banter, and we do get that. That being said, the emotional climax of the arc really is the Yami-Yugi/Kaiba re-match, so everything after that, including this duel, feels like falling action leading to the resolution of Pegasus's defeat. And even that defeat feels limp given that the second he loses, Pegasus just kind of slumps in his chair and sighs and says: "My men will get your prize ready, don't worry." And then we immediately go into the exposition of Pegasus's motivation for throwing the tournament. We are reminded that the entire thing was really about Pegasus gaining control of Kaiba Corporation, and it's finally revealed that the reason this was something he wanted to do badly enough to go to all this trouble is because he wanted to be able to combine the power of the Millennium Eye with Kaiba's Solid Vision technology to create a life-like hologram of his dead girlfriend/fiancée, Cyndia. Ok, great, I can get behind this as a motivation. Not sure what is added by getting this reveal at the end rather than up front, but sure. He goes on to quasi wave away his own incredibly villainous and sadistic behaviour by blaming the 'evil intelligence' possessed by the Millennium items. Yeah, no, I'm not buying it. But Yami Yugi is more interested in hearing about the Millennium Items than pointing out the lameness of this excuse, so Pegasus explains how he came to have the Millennium Eye, which involved a trip he took to Egypt, where he met Shadi, and then is ultimately 'tested' and chosen to wield the Millennium Eye. And that's basically that on that. Bakura summarizes the collective feeling they all ultimately have about this little adventure by saying: "Pegasus is unforgiveable...But I feel sorry for him because of how he got the Millennium Eye." Well, I don't, but I suppose no one asked me... Finally, everyone whose soul was captured by Pegasus is restored, and we get a very sweet reunion between Kaiba and Mokuba, cementing their storyline as the true emotional core of the arc. Yami Yugi comments that Mokuba was the final piece Kaiba needed to complete the "puzzle of his heart" that served as his penalty game after losing to Yami Yugi at the end of 'Death-T'. But we abruptly cut away from this for one page to show that while everyone else gathered outside the castle, Yami Bakura stayed behind and forcibly and grotesquely removed Pegasus's Millennium Eye, saying "two down...five to go" -- a sort of reminder that there is a bigger over-arching plot going on in the background that we still don't completely understand. Is Pegasus dead as a result of this? I think that's kind of the implication, but it's not clear. But who cares, really? We're back with the gang outside, and Mokuba has offered everyone a ride back home in his and Kaiba's helicopter. Kaiba grudgingly agrees, saying that makes them even after Yami Yugi saved Mokuba, but declaring their battle isn't over yet, and that the next time he'll beat Yami Yugi in a 'true' duel. And that's how we leave things until the story picks back up in Volume 9. Compared with the original, pre-Duel Monsters-centric arcs, Duelist Kingdom is definitely more cohesive, but I do kind of miss how unhinged 'Season Zero' could be. However, in terms of storytelling, this arc is definitely stronger, and really hits its stride with Battle City, so I'm looking forward to it! ...more |
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Jan 08, 2025
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Jan 11, 2025
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Paperback
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| 1591168775
| 9781591168775
| 1591168775
| 4.10
| 603
| Jul 02, 1999
| Aug 02, 2005
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liked it
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"Yugi...There are two ways of losing! A loss where everything truly ends...and a loss which is just a step on the road to victory. I will become stron
"Yugi...There are two ways of losing! A loss where everything truly ends...and a loss which is just a step on the road to victory. I will become stronger from this loss!" Duelist, Vol.7 is comprised wholly of the Duelist Kingdom semi-finals: Yugi vs. Mai and Joey/Jounouchi vs. Bandit Keith. Needless to say, Yugi's duel against Mai is infinitely more interesting than Joey/Jounouchi's duel against Bandit Keith. In the match between Mai and Yugi, we get to see Mai really shine both as a duelist and as a character. Yugi allows Yami Yugi to take over and duel, but Yami is in large part distracted by Pegasus and unable to concentrate. Even though this results in Mai taking a strong lead, she's frustrated by the fact that her opponent is barely paying attention. She accuses him of being too arrogant to pay attention to the opponent in front of him; too certain of his own victory to pay her any mind. Ultimately, she realizes that part of Yami/Yugi's hang-up are the feelings of doubt that still linger after being defeated by Kaiba in volume 5, and there's a lull in the duel as Mai describes what Duelist Kingdom has taught her about herself, and the lessons she's learned since losing to Joey/Jounouchi. Her main takeaway was that there can be courage in accepting defeat. And that only by accepting losing as an option when you step into the arena can you develop strength as a player. This unlocks something in Yami Yugi who, in a moment of introspection, realizes that the reason he was willing to risk Kaiba's life in their duel was because he was afraid to lose, whereas Yugi had the clarity to realize that sometimes losing is better. Great character development moment for both of the Yugis, and the first time we get the acknowledgement that Yugi has a strength that his ostensibly stronger, more talented half still needs to develop. It's a bit of an extension of the discussion of winning and losing that we got before, but it's such a central message of the series it's unsurprising Takahashi would really try to hammer it home. If you read the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga, you will walk away understanding that losing does not make you a loser, but sometimes winning does if you don't win in the right way. I've said it before and will say it again: given the target demographic for Yu-Gi-Oh! this is such an important message to convey, and even if it can be on-the-nose and a little bit cheesy, I'm glad this was done in such a methodical and consistent way, and that it's a message the protagonist struggles to embody and take on. Anyway, getting back to the dueling, once Mai gives her pick-me-up speech, Yami Yugi is back in it and prepared to put his all into the match. With his full heart in it, he's able to turn the tables and defeat her to earn a place in the finals. I still think having her surrender rather than lose outright was an odd choice. It's not inconsistent with the message that winning isn't all-important, but she also could have just lost to Yami Yugi and that still would have come through. Finally, Joey/Jounouchi faces off against Bandit Keith in easily the least interesting duel in the entire arc. Not only is it obvious that Joey/Jounouchi is going to win, Keith isn't charismatic enough as a villain to make it fun to read even knowing the outcome. We get a back story about Keith that literally I defy anyone to claim they care about, and on top of that, his deck is also very meh. Sure, we get to see how Joey/Jounouchi has grown as a duelist and actually strategize rather than relying on luck, but it's still a very forgettable duel that just serves to kill time before the match between Yami Yugi and Pegasus. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Dec 17, 2024
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Dec 17, 2024
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Jan 11, 2025
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Paperback
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| 0312851855
| 9780312851859
| 0312851855
| 3.42
| 12
| Oct 1992
| Jan 01, 1992
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liked it
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'Suspicion' isn't a novel that relies on shock, surprise, or twists to keep itself going: you pretty much understand immediately what is happening and
'Suspicion' isn't a novel that relies on shock, surprise, or twists to keep itself going: you pretty much understand immediately what is happening and what's going to happen. Julia Grice tries to throw in a pretty Ludacris third act twist that barely makes sense, but we didn't need that, and the narrative didn't really call for it. At least, not in the way it happens. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Horror is particularly adept at handling duality. That is to say, what you see is very rarely, if ever, what it's actually about. On the surface, Suspicion is about a crazy killer brutally beating women in metro-Detroit to death in their homes, and he just might be the protagonist's handsome fiancé. This part of the plot is pretty by the numbers, but serviceable. What I found interesting about it was why the protagonist was able to get sucked in by a guy who is so obviously a freak even without being a killer. Her best friend doesn't like him, her son hates this guy, but she stands by him even in the face of pretty clear evidence that he's 'The Basher.' Why? Well, because before the start of the story, she'd been dumped by her first husband after battling breast cancer and getting a partial mastectomy. And not only after all that, but because of that. As in: her then husband viewed her, in no uncertain terms, as damaged goods, claiming that her cancer had been hard on him too, and that seeing her sick and now having to live with her and adjust to the physical changes that illness resulted in was too much for him and he simply wasn't attracted to her anymore. Horrible, ew, gross: I hate it. But... is it unbelievable? I don't think so. There's an ugly truthfulness to a set-up like that that made this woman's depression-fueled desperation to believe in the first guy to give her positive attention after that believable and sympathetic. And this is hammered in by Grice over and over again. Every time the protagonist gets a niggling feeling that something isn't quite right about this new relationship, she tells herself that, in a way, she owes him her loyalty because he's willing to; accept' the fact that she's this damaged, deformed, middle-aged creature with a rebellious teenaged son. You really just wanted to shake this woman and tell her to get a grip, except that...well... there was a little bit of truth to her feelings and fears. And that was the real horror of the story. I also enjoyed the character arc her son got, and the ending (after an...imperfect climax) was actually pretty wholesome and thoughtful, and I can't begin to express how glad I was that it didn't involve this woman being rescued by some implied future love interest. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Jan 10, 2025
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Jan 25, 2025
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Jan 10, 2025
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Hardcover
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| 0553266306
| 4.27
| 140,926
| Jun 1971
| Sep 1979
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it was ok
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2.5 "His mouth tasted like a vulture's crotch." A classic of the 'man-lit' genre, 'Day of the Jackal' is an example of 'first doesn't always been best. 2.5 "His mouth tasted like a vulture's crotch." A classic of the 'man-lit' genre, 'Day of the Jackal' is an example of 'first doesn't always been best.' While it may well have pioneered aspects of the political intrigue thriller detective(ish) novels that came after it, on its own it's...not that good. Granted, I am not the target audience for 'pew-pew', self-insert novels of this type (I learned that after reading a Clive Cussler last year), but even on a technical level, 'Day of the Jackal' is a flop. But it is a flop in a few interesting ways. Number one on that list is the pacing. I can't think of many other books I've got under my belt where the pacing was this off. Breaking the novel into three sections ('Anatomy of a Plot', 'Anatomy of a Manhunt' and 'Anatomy of a Kill') seems like it should have helped, but it did not. The first 90% of this novel is mind-numbingly slow, and grinds to an absolute stop when the main POV character and would-be assassin, the titular Jackal, goes to get a custom gun made. Nearly an entire chapter is dedicated to the excruciating back and forth between the Jackal and the gun-maker about the design of this gun. And it doesn't even matter, because according to the gun-fanatics in the reviews, it's not even a plausible gun, so it's not like this is a 'Moby Dick' let me explain the intricacies of whaling in minute detail type of situation. So why, why was it necessary to subject the reader to this? I can only imagine it was for Forsyth's own sadistic pleasure. And then, after this slog of a plot finally (finally) reaches the climax we've all been waiting for: the assassination attempt, the entire novel wraps of so suddenly that if you blink, you'll miss it. As in: the climax, falling action, and resolution comprise the last 9 minutes of the audiobook, and I'm not even exaggerating. Insane. So, that was the first problem. The second problem was a seeming indecision when it came to how/if to ground this story in reality. On the one hand, an immense amount of disbelief has to be suspended for the plot to make any sense. If you think about it even just a little bit, it is obviously neither clever nor plausible. Nothing, from the hiring of the assassin, to the assassin's plan, to the execution of that plan can withstand even an ounce of scrutiny. But hey, that could be find. This is, after all, an airport/beach read. However, Forsyth simply does not allow you to turn your brain off and just get swept up in the excitement because he keeps trying to make you believe this all makes sense through the amount of (unnecessary) procedural information he includes. This flows into the third problem, which was that Forsyth did not seem to understand what about a plot hatched by the remnants of a French dissident paramilitary organisation to kill Charles de Gaulle, the President of France, would be interesting. First of all, the conflict between this paramilitary organization and the French President is built up only in broad strokes, and then falls completely out of the story, never to be referenced again, even though that should be the most interesting part of the set-up and a backbone of the plot. But no. We don't really get to know the dissidents or get an understanding of their motivations and we don't get to know de Gaulle at all, so there is zero tension around whether he lives or dies. Then, halfway through the novel, we get introduced to the French detective who, after the assassination plot is uncovered, is tapped to discover the identity of the assassin and neutralize him before he can take a literal shot at the President. This should have been interesting, because while the Jackal is a lone gunman running around lawlessly, the detective has to operated within the bureaucracy and geo-political constraints of the times. Could be interesting, except that we already know exactly who the jackal is and how he wants to execute his plan, and so we just end up getting almost all the information twice, just through separate POVs (this was part of the reason why the pace was so glacially slow). It genuinely feels like Forsyth is trying to give the reader two options for a self-insert fantasy: choose your fighter; the badass assassin or the clever detective and so they both flop in terms of characterization, though the detective character is slightly more fleshed out. Truly, other than that, I cannot begin to guess why we even got the Jackal's POV at all, nevermind the text being dominated by it. Overall, this was (and I cannot stress this enough) incredibly s l o w and oftentimes dull, with a conclusion that trips over itself in its haste to wrap things up as though the words themselves realize how lame the whole thing ultimately is. There are other things that could be critiqued, like the fact that we're told about a million times how excellent and cool the Jackal is, only for him to...not be excellent or cool. Or, we could discuss the many subplots that are given an insane amount of screen time, only for them to be a small step towards catching up with the assassin. Or, we could talk about how the Jackal's plans always hinge on the person he's talking to be distracted or bad at their jobs. Or, we could talk about how the Jackal is just...a guy, but his mere presence is enough to cow all these top people in the criminal underworld. But I think I've made my points. That all being said, 'The Day of the Jackal' is a masterclass in all the things you should not do if you want to write an action thriller, so it does have that added value. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 05, 2025
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Feb 08, 2025
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Jan 05, 2025
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Mass Market Paperback
| ||||||||||||||||
| 0330411888
| 9780330411882
| 0330411888
| 3.77
| 288
| 1987
| Jan 01, 2003
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it was amazing
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"How could I have loved him like that?" p.1 In languorous, sensuous prose that draws you in from the very opening lines, Duong Thu Huong crafts a compl "How could I have loved him like that?" p.1 In languorous, sensuous prose that draws you in from the very opening lines, Duong Thu Huong crafts a complicated parable about the convictions we hold in our inner worlds, and what happens when they work against our best material interests. 'What are you willing to sacrifice (if anything) to live your truth?' she asks. The plot itself follows Linh, who instantly falls out of love with her once beloved husband when she discovers he's been writing propaganda articles for the government despite having been a staunch defender of honesty in journalism in his youth. This betrayal of what he claimed to hold as a core value causes her to pull away from him emotionally, and then physically, and ultimately, she leaves him. The two spend much of the rest of the novel wrestling with what their separation means for the future of their family unit, and in particular how the break between them impacts their young daughter. Is it ultimately better for their daughter to be with the parent who tells lies for a living but can financially support his child, or with the parent who stands strongly for the truth but can hardly even support herself on her teaching salary? The situation grows in complexity when Linh starts up a very public affair with a famous composer, who, unlike her estranged husband, claims to be willing to speak truth to power. Claims he'd remain true to his art before he'd ever be true to the State. However, unbeknownst to Linh, this composer has designs of his own, and a history of seducing and then tossing aside women. Things comes to a head when a relative of the composer's wife turns out to be in a position to return the composer to his former status within the establishment. Meanwhile, Linh's increasingly isolated husband, Nguyen, faces a moral quandary head on when he is approached by his boss at the journal where he works to write a completely made-up story to save the reputation of a man accused of a heinous crime. Throughout the text, Huong is constantly pitting these ideas of truth and honor against the realities of living in an authoritarian regime against each other. She seems to suggest that there is nuance to be found. The comfortable life Nguyen can provide for his wife and daughter is only possible if he writes propaganda articles. He argues that if he stood up to his boss on principle, he'd simply be fired and replaced with someone else, and the only thing that would change would be that his family would quickly become destitute. “How could we have survived if I had remained as pure as you wanted me to be?� (p.53) But even he has limits to what he's personally willing to lie about, though he only feels able to push back once he gives up the responsibility of providing for his daughter. Perhaps he's willing to put himself into poverty rather than bend his morals, but he wasn't willing to do that to his family. Meanwhile, Linh, in pursuing a life of truth, ends up barely able to earn enough to live off of, often foregoing meals so that her daughter can eat. It is framed as irresponsible and prideful rather than strongly virtuous. One person classifies her pride as 'pathological.' And of course, there's the irony of the man she has an affair with donning the aesthetics of moral conviction while secretly believing nothing of what he says, and abandoning it as soon as it's expedient to do so because his dislike of the regime was based on spite rather than stemming from an axiomatic belief. In a strange way, considering the ages of the people involved, ‘Beyond Illusions� is a coming-of-age story. Linh is constantly classified as very naïve and sheltered in an almost infantilizing way. Some analyses of the novel suggest that she is a stand-in for all Vietnamese people who grew up when revolution was in the zeitgeist and had earnest if ultimately unrealistic, idealized notions of what the new Vietnam could be. Is then the composer an allegory for the Communist Party, reeling these young people in by (in this case literally) seducing them with empty promises of rightiousness? Is Linh's story an allegory for the realization by Vietnam's youth that their dreams of a brave new world were based on lies? Maybe. Read and find out. The novel ends on the somber, but quietly optimistic note that while the only person materially rewarded for their behavior is the composer, both Lihn and Nguyen walk away from the dissolution of their marriage into a life...beyond illusions. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 03, 2025
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Jan 16, 2025
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Jan 03, 2025
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0140440046
| 9780140440041
| 0140440046
| 3.76
| 290,955
| Jan 1759
| Jun 30, 1979
|
really liked it
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3.5 "A dramatist must have ideas which are fresh without being fantastic; he must be able to touch the sublime yet remain neutral; and he must know the 3.5 "A dramatist must have ideas which are fresh without being fantastic; he must be able to touch the sublime yet remain neutral; and he must know the human heart and make it speak."p.103 'Candide', having been written by the pen of Voltaire, might seem unapproachable by virtue of its author sounding so intimidating, but it is not. It's quite possible that this translation by John Butt took some liberties with the language to make it less purple; I don't speak French so I have no idea, but regardless of what may or may not have been 'lost' in translation, the humour of it remains intact. This isn't a novella particularly concerned with characterization, but with ideas, and with one idea in particular: suffering, and how it proves or disproves Providence (spoilers: Voltaire did not seem to care much for Providence). To this end, 'Candide' reads more like a fable, the characters buffeted quickly from place to place and calamity to calamity. The comedy lies largely in the absurd, over-the-top nature of the cascade of tragedies that befall the titular Candide and his friends and the casualness with which they brush them off. When reunited for the first time with his love interest, Candide exclaims: "So you weren't ravished or disembowelled?" to which she replies: "I was indeed, but people don't always die of those mishaps." (p.39) The one respite our protagonist recieves from being beaten, threatened with death, cheated, kicked about, and kept away from his beloved is when he and a companion stumble upon Eldorado, where they stay for a time, basking in an unimaginable paradise where the dirt is made of gold and no one ever suffers. But because he yearns more for his beloved than gold and comfort, he leaves (though not without taking with him a vast, vast fortune that he begins to lose or be swindled out of almost immidiately), and nothing good happens to him ever again. There's hardly a single page without at least one witty remark worth a sensible chuckle, and for a book of its age (first published in 1759) it's aged surprisingly well. Certainly, there are...incidents, but though there are some decidedly cringe lines from sympathetic characters ("Northern races are not sufficiently warm-blooded; their lust for women does not reach the mania that is so common in Africa" comes to mind) Voltaire remains fairly empathetic to the 'others' that populate the story which give rise to some surprisingly progressive moments. While out and about somewhere, Candide comes across a Black slave lying in the road, and when Candide inquires why he's lying there, the man replies: "Those of us who work in the factories and happen to catch a finger in the grindstone have a hand chopped off; if we try to escape, they cut off a leg. Both accidents happened to me. That's the price of your eating sugar in Europe."(p.85-86) Similarly, though for much of the story the female characters exist as pretty little trinkets for the men to ogle and pass around (including Candide's love interest), one of them is given a true voice when Candide asks a young woman if she is happy being the mistress of a monk. She says: "My innocence would not have saved me if I had not been moderately pretty [...]This is how I have been forced to continue in this detestable way of life, which to you men seems so pleasing, but to us is nothing but a hell of suffering."(p.115) Because this comes so late in the tale, it necessarily reframes all the scenes leading up to it, and I was pleasantly surprised by that level of nuance in a story this old. Well done, Voltaire: the bar was in hell and you successfully jumped over it. All in all, this is a fun little story with a central question still so relevant that Lindsay Ellis made a about it that you should really watch if the theme of satirizing suffering is of interest to you. Further viewing, if you will. I had no idea what to expect from 'Candide', but it taught me two things: one, if you find the right 18th century texts, they can be not only readable but quite enjoyable, and two, we do not have to give things grace as 'products of their time' -- if freaking Voltaire was out here being woke in the 1750s, everyone after him could have been too. ...more |
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1
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Dec 12, 2024
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Dec 29, 2024
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Dec 12, 2024
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1591168562
| 9781591168560
| 1591168562
| 4.13
| 647
| Apr 30, 1999
| Jul 06, 2005
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it was amazing
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"I was feeling happy, thinking people might call me a real duelist... But now... If all a real duelist cares about is pride -- I don't want to be like
"I was feeling happy, thinking people might call me a real duelist... But now... If all a real duelist cares about is pride -- I don't want to be like that!!" Another A+ entry in the Yu-Gi-Oh! Duelist series. In the first half of the volume, Takahashi slows things down to let the characters get philosophical and actually react to the incredibly intense duel that just happened between Yugi and Kaiba in volume 5. This is where we really cement each character's core beliefs that will continue to be built up and/or challenged from this point forward. Kaiba sneers at Yugi for having shown him mercy and compassion (even without knowing what Kaiba was fighting for), but Tea isn't having it. She gives a somewhat more convoluted version of her speech from the anime. In the manga, both she and Kaiba use an incoherent metaphor to basically argue about who the real loser of the duel is. Kaiba says that it was Yugi because, objectively, that's true: Yugi lost the duel. Kaiba claims that the outcome of winning or losing is what matters; not how the outcome is arrived at. He also claims that winning is so important that it's something on which you have to be willing to stake your life, or you'll always be a loser.* Tea pushes back, arguing that the means are more important than the ends. She says the real loser behavior is valuing your life so little that you're willing to gamble it over something as unimportant as being the best: "Real courage is protecting that chip [of life] you have in your hands...no matter what!" And Joey/Jounouchi chimes in that it matters that Kaiba only won the game because Yugi chose mercy over victory. That it matters that Yugi valued Kaiba's life more than Kaiba did himself. In other words: in the Yu-Gi-Oh!-verse, being strong is very closely tied to a recognition that we are more than the sum of our victories. But Kaiba isn't particularly interested in mulling this over because now that he's fulfilled Pegasus's arbitrary demand that he defeat Yugi before he can face Pegasus in a battle for Mokuba's freedom, he's ready to enter the castle. In the anime, what follows is a drawn-out panic response from Yugi over the fact that Yami Yugi's moral compass is dangerously close to Kaiba's, and he's freaking out because of his fear of what could happen if he allowed Yami Yugi to duel again. I think that was far more interesting and internally consistent than the version of this in the manga wherein Yugi hesitates to accept extra starchips from Mai because he's afraid that Kaiba's right about him being a loser who can't succeed without Yami Yugi dueling for him(???) and she's like: "no, don't let your pride get in the way of saving your grandfather and take these chips because I want to pay you back for helping me out earlier." And Yugi's like: "Do you know what? Ok." Meh. But then we get into the Pegasus-Kaiba duel over Mokuba's soul. And honestly, the manga does such a better job developing Pegasus as a villain, because we really get to see just how much he enjoys pretending that Kaiba ever had a chance to rescue Mokuba, how much he enjoys using the power of the Millennium Eye to humiliate him before finally crushing him in the duel and sealing his soul in a 'soul prison'. Considering all of Pegasus's unhinged, sadistic behaviour in Duelist Kingdom, it was kind of a wild decision to rehabilitate him in Waking the Dragons by framing him as a sympathetic side-character. And then the audacity to gaslight Kaiba when he reminds everyone about said unhinged, sadistic behavior. Blech! No.Justice.For.Pegasus. But I digress... Despite it being ultimately very one-sided, we get a pretty satisfying duel as Kaiba struggles (unsuccessfully) to beat Pegasus at his own game (literally). We also get a teaser for future Blue Eyes lore when Pegasus comments on Kaiba's love for the dragon. The rest of the volume comprises of some filler involving Tristan/Honda and Bakura running around the castle in the middle of the night and a conversation between Yugi and his grandfather's soul, still housed within a digital camera (I will say it every time: literally why do this?). Yugi is still grappling with feelings of helplessness after his duel with Kaiba, and it’s implied that this is because he doesn't have it in him to be as ruthless as Yami Yugi and he's concerned that Kaiba was right about ruthlessness being a necessary trait for a strong duelist. In a very on-the-nose, but still compelling counter-argument, Grandpa lays out the three types of people upon whom the "God of Duelists never smiles." 1.Cheaters, who will do anything to win. 2. Cowards, who fear defeat. 3. The Arrogant, drowning in their own powers. And this is the framework upon which the outcomes of most of the duels in the rest of the series are based. You can't win in any of the aforementioned cases, but, we learn, sometimes it's morally correct to lose because your humanity and capacity for compassion are always more important than victory. I like it; I think we get some good discourse out of this moral underpinning. So, we end the volume with Grandpa reassuring Yugi that his empathetic notion of justice is a necessary counterweight to Yami Yugi’s arrogance and Machiavellianism. Let's see how it plays out in Yugi's duel against Mai in Volume 7... * I do want to point out the plot hole in the logic here created by the fact that Yami Yugi staked his life in the shadow game vs. Shadi in volume 3 to protect an illusion of Joey/Jonouchi. So, what was the difference supposed to be, considering that Kaiba actually stakes his life here in order to try and save Mokuba? What exactly was Kaiba being punished for? I think it just got a lil convoluted because of two dueling (forgive me a small pun here) plot threads. Plot thread 1 being: Kaiba needs to defeat Yugi to get one step closer to rescuing Mokuba. To do so, he threatens to off himself if Yugi doesn't throw the match (which, under these exact extreme circumstances is... understandable? Maybe even reasonable?) And then plot thread 2 being: we need to establish that Yugi is a better person than Kaiba because Kaiba values winning over compassion (which is true, but not directly relevant in this duel). ...more |
Notes are private!
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Dec 10, 2024
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Dec 11, 2024
not set
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Dec 11, 2024
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Paperback
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| 0063116995
| 9780063116993
| 0063116995
| 3.58
| 7,416
| Aug 09, 2022
| Aug 09, 2022
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liked it
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'The Women Could Fly' is a great example of how important it is for an author to trust their readers. What could have been an excellent novel was hamp
'The Women Could Fly' is a great example of how important it is for an author to trust their readers. What could have been an excellent novel was hampered by too much exposition, and left me wondering who Megan Giddings wrote it for. This is an author who is clearly very interested in looking at the intersections of gender and race and class, at the absurdities and contradictions within the subjugation of minority groups. So, for a novel so short, it was vast in scope. However, there was enough meat on the bones of the plot that it could have held itself up with fewer diatribes and more story. Now listen, I'm a card-carrying 'woke' leftist, so my annoyance with Giddings's 'tell > show' approach had nothing to do with what she was saying and everything to do with the fact that as someone who already agreed with her and is familiar with things like intersectionality, with racialized womanhood, with the oppression of women under patriarchy I didn't need a 101 lesson in a fantasy novel, especially when it felt so redundant since the plot was already presenting these arguments for her. In fact, the best parts were the plot threads that she allowed to exist without exposition. Our protagonist, Jo, being a bisexual woman in a world where unmarried women have to register with the state and who face potential charges of witchcraft was really interesting. It created such compelling tension when the person she fell in love with was a man. Her inner turmoil over whether or not she loved him because of who he was or because being with him made her life easier was incredibly gripping, and I genuinely wanted to know how that was going to be resolved. Especially when her love interest proves himself to be a perfectly likable person who was earnestly invested in her and in their relationship. Yet still, it was understandable why Jo felt weird about it. About the fact that within a straight relationship in this world he would always have power over her, even if he never used it. The actual institution of witchcraft accusation and prosecution felt grounded and pretty well thought out, and I think the disconnect she depicted between 'witch hunts' and the reality of the witches being hunted made for a successful allegory for the persecution in the real world of other marginalized groups (the villainization and persecution of trans people certainly comes to mind...). I thought it was a funny touch to include the irony and hypocrisy of the popularity of witchy aesthetics and witchy art in an anti-witch society. Very: we like the parts of you that can be capitalized off of, but not you as real people (very reminiscent of the commodification of Black art, especially music and street style). Great stuff. The magic was really interesting too. Again, because Giddings didn't spend so much time trying to explain the magic system and how it worked, it was something we simply got to experience through Jo's eyes, and that allowed it to feel a lot more whimsical and, well, magical. I liked that the spells were community-based, and that it was most dangerous to a wielder if someone tried to step out on their own. I thought it was neat that the witches themselves didn't completely understand how it worked or where it came from and were figuring it out as they went along. The idea that spell-casting involved a lot of scientific method style trial and error grounded it well without ever making it lose its wild essence. Overall, there was nothing wrong with the plot, and I actually found the plot itself a lot more interesting even than what the blurb described, but it was everything else around it that dragged the reading experience down for me. The pacing was super off, especially towards the end, and it kind of felt like Giddings herself lost steam and suddenly just tacked 'the end' onto a rushed climax. I really wish an editor or beta reader somewhere along the line had suggested scaling back significantly on the blunt moments of 'd'ya get it? You get it, right? Let me spell it out in case you didn't get it' because 'The Women Could Fly' really didn't need it, and it felt oddly amateurish for someone with a few novels under their belt already. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 10, 2024
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Jan 24, 2025
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Dec 10, 2024
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Hardcover
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| 048641115X
| 9780486411156
| 048641115X
| 3.77
| 5,094
| 1902
| May 18, 2016
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really liked it
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3.5 "There's a girl sitting out there in the kitchen reading a book and crying. Really crying. [...]I says to her: 'What is it, dearie?' and she says: 3.5 "There's a girl sitting out there in the kitchen reading a book and crying. Really crying. [...]I says to her: 'What is it, dearie?' and she says: 'The poor man!' And I says: 'What man?' 'Here in the book,' she says."(p.124) Being incredibly transparent, I think I would have liked my reading experience a lot better in a different translation. The translation I read was very serviceable, but I get the sense in reading other reviews of this play that it strays pretty far from Gorky's original style. That being said, thematically, even in a wonky translation, 'The Lower Depths' has a lot to say, and seems to have stood the test of time on the grounds of both its subject matter and its driving philosophical musing. Plot-wise, we're following a short period in the lives of a group of society's outcasts and bear witness to the squalor in which they live and the bleakness of any prospect that things will or even can get better for them. Thematically, the central question is the role of hope/optimism in the face of such dire, systemic poverty. Can you escapism your way out of misery? In some manner or other, each of the characters explore possible avenues of escape, either literal (as in, impractical dreams of moving to Siberia) or figurative (reading romantic novels). Alcoholics dream of a healthier life of sobriety, and a dying woman wonders whether her impending death is something to dread or celebrate. Then arrives Luka, an aging pilgrim who fosters the escapism everyone else is engaging in. He reassures the dying woman, Anna, that the afterlife will be sweet and without suffering, he encourages the alcoholic actor to consider going to a (for all intents and purposes) rehab facility that may or may not exist. And with his encouragement of this type of escapism he also brings a call for kindness: "Somebody has to be kind in this world. You've got to have sympathy for people. Christ loved everybody, and told us to do the same. And I can tell you truly that many a time you can save a person by pitying him." He goes on to tell a story of two thieves he catches trying to break into his home. First, he punishes them by having them beat each other with switches under threat of death. But then he takes pity on them when they beg for food, and the three of them pass a pleasant winter together with the two would-be thieves helping him look after the property. "If I hadn't taken pity on them, now, they might have killed me or done something else just as bad, and that would have meant a trial, and jail, and Siberia. What for? A jail can't teach a person what's right [...] but a man-- he can teach a person what's right, and very easy at that." This is where the moral and the philosophy get a bit murky. Because, though Luka is a champion of both hope and compassion, only one of those things could possibly create a material difference in any of these people's lives, and it isn't the one that's internal (hope). But it is complicated. Because what about the case of Anna? No amount of compassion could have prevented her death (though it may have extended her life and the quality of life, which isn't nothing). What, then, was the harm in her comforting fantasies of a perfect afterlife? Another character proclaims that the uncomfortable truth is always more valuable than the comforting lie, but in a system where virtually none of these people had the opportunity to raise their quality life in a society with no social safety net, a society not built on compassion, what else did they have but to retreat into fantasy? Is the truth then not an unnecessary cruelty? But, then, on the other hand, if a person languors in the comforting lie, in the escapism, then they are unlikely ever to rise up and push for systemic improvement. But, then, on the other, other hand, is it the responsibility of a society's most downtrodden to lift themselves up by means of revolution? Gorky leaves us with these and many other questions as the curtain falls on the final act, three of the main characters now dead by accidental killing, by disease, and by suicide. Are they the lucky ones? he invites us to consider. The most striking thing about 'The Lower Depths' is how sadly relevant it feels 100 years after its publication. The current addiction and homelessness crises come easily to mind. Refugees have a place in this modern cast. Sex workers, particularly those with identities that intersect with other marginalized identities have their place. I look around at my unhoused neighbors, curled up in dirty jackets and blankets under stoops and shop awnings that offer the barest protection from the elements. How can I possibly blame them for choosing the comforting lie over harsh reality when our modern society despises them just as much as Gorky's did? How can I expect a person to give up on whatever form of escapism they have chosen when just as in the case of Gorky's character of Kleshch (the only one to have a job when the play begins), work as it exists below a certain rung of the social ladder doesn't guarantee that you won't end up shoulder to shoulder with a drug addict or alcoholic or consumptive person anyway? The bleakness of 'The Lower Depths' is, to me, the rage of Caliban at seeing his own face in the mirror. The question of whether or not the downtrodden (as in, those that are figuratively trodden into the ground by those who make the rules and those who uphold them) should abandon the lies that bring them a spark of comfort or hope is a smokescreen. Why are we focussing on that when the actual solution to abject suffering under poverty is a society operating under a system built on collective compassion rather than punishment and callous individualism? Much to think about. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Dec 03, 2024
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Dec 13, 2024
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Dec 03, 2024
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| 4.01
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really liked it
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Apr 22, 2025
not set
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Apr 24, 2025
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| 3.64
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really liked it
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Apr 19, 2025
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Mar 30, 2025
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| 4.03
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did not like it
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Mar 29, 2025
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Mar 26, 2025
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| 3.92
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liked it
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Mar 22, 2025
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Mar 24, 2025
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| 4.17
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liked it
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Mar 30, 2025
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Mar 15, 2025
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| 3.75
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liked it
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Mar 08, 2025
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Mar 02, 2025
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| 4.03
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really liked it
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Mar 2025
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Feb 28, 2025
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| 4.05
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it was amazing
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Mar 15, 2025
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Feb 22, 2025
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| 3.73
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it was ok
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Feb 25, 2025
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Feb 15, 2025
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| 4.04
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really liked it
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Feb 26, 2025
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Feb 06, 2025
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| 4.18
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liked it
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Feb 22, 2025
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Jan 25, 2025
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| 4.20
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really liked it
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Jan 08, 2025
not set
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Jan 11, 2025
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| 4.10
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liked it
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Dec 17, 2024
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Jan 11, 2025
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| 3.42
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liked it
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Jan 25, 2025
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Jan 10, 2025
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| 4.27
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it was ok
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Feb 08, 2025
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Jan 05, 2025
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| 3.77
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it was amazing
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Jan 16, 2025
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Jan 03, 2025
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| 3.76
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really liked it
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Dec 29, 2024
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Dec 12, 2024
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| 4.13
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it was amazing
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Dec 11, 2024
not set
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Dec 11, 2024
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| 3.58
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liked it
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Jan 24, 2025
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Dec 10, 2024
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| 3.77
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really liked it
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Dec 13, 2024
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Dec 03, 2024
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