en-US Mon, 28 Apr 2025 02:28:50 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Review7525181518 Mon, 28 Apr 2025 02:28:50 -0700 /review/show/7525181518 K gave 3 stars to The Double (Hardcover) by José Saramago
It was a chore to read this book. I can't say that I liked it, though I appreciated the skill of the author. It's written in a literary style, in this case, without using quotes when referencing conversations, as if it's all interior dialogue for the main character. This makes the words flow, but that has good and bad effects. On the positive side, it's less stilted than dialogue with a bunch of quote marks and he said/she said references. On the other hand, the meaning sometimes gets lost in the jamming together of several sentences with nothing more than commas to separate them. I realize that because it's a "literature" and not a light novel, the reader is expected to work harder. I just feel that the effort wasn't worth the reward in this case.

Maybe a lot is lost in cultural translation from a Portuguese author. Right from the start, I don't "get" the alleged humor around the protagonist's first name: Tertuliano. The omniscient narrator and the protagonist and even a video store clerk seem to think this name is outlandish and funny, and that this is somehow destiny. That theme is mentioned 10 times in the first 50 pages of the book, and then it's dropped. It has no point.

The book's premise is that an anonymous high school history teacher in a big city (5 million residents) is encouraged to watch a video of a low-budget movie. In the movie, he sees a man who is his exact match, and he becomes obsessed with meeting the man and finding out if they really are identical. He does meet, they are identical, and this sends them both spiraling, emotionally and in a practical sense. In the end, tragedy ensues for several people.

I thought the premise is sort of stupid. I'm not a fan of sci-fi or its equivalent, and you have to suspend disbelief to go along with this book. How the history teacher approaches finding his duplicate is a combination of bland (watch videos, call people out of the phone book) and not believable (getting the actor's address with one fan letter to the movie production company). A lot of the book is that way, a weird combination of mundane, boring, and unrealistic.

The best parts for me are the bit characters, especially the man's girlfriend Maria and his mom. For some reason, they seem more real and more interesting. It's not that the history teacher is unreal, because we get all that interior monologue in which he thinks about the creepy circumstances in more or less the way any of us would, and in which he's indifferent to his girlfriend, which seems accurate for a 6-month relationship and his own past divorce. But I just don't care about the teacher (and maybe that's the point of the book, to have a protagonist who's not likeable or interesting). The actor who is the double is less believable on a few levels, and the interactions he has after being surprised by the history teacher are weak. He tells the teacher he's bringing a gun to their first meeting but it won't be loaded. And that's what he does. None of that makes sense -- bringing the gun, not loading it, and telling both in advance. I guess that's part of absurdist literature?

The other thing I don't like about the book -- I really dislike -- is the insertion of a narrator. It's done in the omniscient style of Dickens or other 19th century novelists, but without their wit or charm. It's trying to be witting and charming, but it isn't. In fact, I strongly disagree with many of the statements of this omniscient, rambling narrator. One example: there's something about everyone being equal parts good and bad intentions, greed and generosity, etc. No. Everyone has some of each, but it's rarely in equal measure. There are dozens of these observations that don't make sense at all. This same narrator also tells us what will happen before it happens and steps outside the wall of the novel, so to speak, to say that it's how novels work; that the narrator and author know what will happen before it does, even though we don't. I guess I'm supposed to find this observation to be original or fascinating. It's not. Same with another digression about how a thing has to exist before a word for it is created, and even then we might not have a word that truly captures its meaning. In other words, people needed to kiss before the word "kiss" was invented. Again, so what? The way these digressions are inserted in the middle of super-long paragraphs of plot or the protagonist's mental meanderings is simply annoying.

In sum, I just couldn't get onboard with the style of the book, and I found the plot not especially engaging. It took a lot time to read because of its complicated writing style, and that's ok. But there's nothing to savor for the investment of time and effort. ]]> Review7510883734 Tue, 22 Apr 2025 18:10:04 -0700 /review/show/7510883734 K gave 5 stars to The Great River: The Making and Unmaking of the Mississippi (Hardcover) by Boyce Upholt
Excellent book, exceeded my expectations. Sometimes books that are about science are dry, and books that are about the confluence of science and politics are even drier. This book isn't dry (and not because it's about rivers). It's timely and has an edge to it, but it's also about the history of the Mississippi River and its major tributaries and the deltas it created, and one man's journey to learn about all of its aspects. Part of the book is travelogue, as he relates briefly his canoeing experiences. Other parts are John McPhee-like travels with the men who work the river on barges, levees, etc. Part of it is political discussions with people who want to keep the situation as it is, at whatever cost that will incur (farmers, some politicians) and activists who say that it's impossible to hold natural forces at bay, especially with rising storm surges due to climate change. And part of the book is a look at the history of Mississippi from its creation after the last ice age through to Native peoples who built sophisticated cities and thousands of small villages along its banks and in its floodplains, and the Europeans who killed them and ruined pretty much everything in the name of progress.

In short, the book has all of it covered, but in a gentle meandering way that reminds me of how the river looks from a levee in New Orleans. It's murky there and moves slowly, but there's a deceptive power to it that literally carves the land. To cite one example, the author notes that huge industrial farms receive the vast majority of federal subsidies along the Mississippi, as well as are the primary beneficiaries of the spending on levees and drainage channels. And he notes that it's very productive farmland that could "feed the world," if so desired. But instead the farms are used for growing fibers and for feed that is shipped to China. And the few farmers who've tried to grow healthy crops for local sales have found that the pesticides used for mass-farming are killing their crops.

This book isn't in-your-face, but it gets the point across, Primarily that point is that the 150 years or so of engineering the river has done a lot of harm and has provided benefits only for a few White landowners and bankers. Under current political circumstances, the chances of "solving" the problem are nil, but so is the interest in spending govt. money to prop up the marginal farms that were created by draining swamps created by the river's flows. The author doesn't speculate, but I'll ask if maybe neglect due to lack of federal money could actually open more of the river's floodplain to a more natural state, if patience with propping it up has worn out.


]]> Review7505684438 Mon, 21 Apr 2025 01:50:11 -0700 /review/show/7505684438 K gave 1 star to Kilt Trip (Paperback) by Alexandra Kiley
Alexandra Kiley must have a lot of friends, because there's no way anyone but a friend would rate this book positively. I gave up 1/3 of the way through, as the howlingly bad writing and amateurish internal monologue had lost even its charm of being a trainwreck.

The only positive thing I can say about this book is that a few paragraphs describing the mass-tour experience feel reasonably accurate and have gentle humor. The author certainly went on those types of tours as part of her research, and I'm sure if I'd continued on to finish the book I'd have found a few passages in which she described off-the-beaten-path areas in Scotland that also were fruits of her investigations. But there are more direct ways of building a travel plan, and frankly, those travel bloggers are much better writers (speakers?) than this author.

The only possible appeal this book has is for people who want to go to Scotland or have been there, and who wish to build on their affection for the country. But the cliches in this book won't give you an understanding of anything; instead, go out and read a book about actual Scottish history or life in the Hebrides or the contribution of 18th and 19th century Scottish thinkers to our modern era, or any number of other topics. Don't waste your time on this sappy novel.

]]> Review7461498552 Fri, 04 Apr 2025 05:11:51 -0700 /review/show/7461498552 K gave 5 stars to The Dreams of Reason: Science and Utopias (Hardcover) by René Dubos
This is an eye-opener even today, 60 years after the lectures were delivered. Maybe if you're already steeped in the sciences and philosophy, this book will seem like a summary, but for the average person who hasn't thought about this stuff, it's illuminating and more.

Dubos has a few basic points to make. One is that scientific progress had been astonishingly rapid in the two centuries prior to his lecture (remember it was 1961-62), and the pace was accelerating. This brought unheard-of prosperity, health and comfort to people all over the world. And this was due in large part to scientists 200 or so years prior abandoning the idea that their purpose was to make abstract deductions about the world and look solely for root truths. Instead, they began to apply knowledge that predecessors had gained and to which they added, in order to improve life on earth right now. Practical applications led to basically everything in our modern world, from electricity to vaccines to moon rockets.

This applied science approach has been beneficial, but Dubos notes it comes at a cost. By divorcing science from larger human and universal concerns, science potentially lost sight of even more important things it could do to improve the human condition (and condition of everything else). By leaving those grand ideas to religion and philosophy, science ceded ground on which its actions are actually quite important. And the astonishing discoveries that were just coming to light when he wrote his essays showed that eternal questions about what is life, how does the universe operate, etc., actually seemed to show a convergence of scientific findings and philosophical thought (ie., uncertainty, etc.). Dubos calls for recognition by science leaders and society at-large that science should not be divorced from these grand questions, and he notes that the ability of atomic bombs to destroy the entire world was, ironically, bringing the need in focus for science to become part of the cultural debate.

The author's arguments carry great weight today when AI, to cite one example, potentially can overrun our ability to understand it or stop it. Debate is going on about the utility of AI, but clearly not enough. And when you add in the anti-science bias of Republicans and their efforts to literally close down most federally funded scientific research, we see that the warnings of Dubos have gone unheeded by a huge part of the population. And we will all suffer for it.

Another Dubos observation is that science can't answer all the mysteries of life. The example that sticks in my head goes something like this: all matter is made up of carbon in whatever tiny molecules, atoms, protons, whatever the smallest subatomic particles are. All matter, both living (people, trees, bacteria) and inanimate (rocks, water). We're all made of the same stuff. So why did some of that stuff suddenly at some point come to life and have the ability to reproduce, but other stuff didn't? Why is some static, like a rock, but other is not, like a human? What animates us and sets us apart from a rock, given that we're made out of the same material? That question blows my mind.

Yet another point Dubos makes is that science has become in the 20th century an effort to keep man comfortable and healthy. But this is an assumption that isn't necessarily the best way to go about things. We live with that idea so deeply embedded that we don't think about it, and few scientists do, either. But why is that the purpose? Maybe the purpose should be to figure out eternal questions like what is life. But instead we have this idea based on 19th century notions of utopia that science can solve all health and environmental problems. Yet utopias make no sense at all because they are static environments in which all needs and wants are met and never change, but we know that no part of the world or human nature is static. It just doesn't happen. Utopias are impossible unless everyone could be made into an automaton. This is just one of the many misconceptions that bedevil science and the culture that looks at science.

As a final note, I'll say that my favorite books are those that send me on new routes of inquiry, and this book hits that mark. Dubos quotes thinkers about science through the ages, and I'm going to seek out some forms of summaries of their ideas (not interested in diving directly into their long-winded arguments written in arcane language) as I seek to have a fuller picture of what we are doing about science and, more importantly, life on earth.
]]> Review7453047280 Tue, 01 Apr 2025 04:26:26 -0700 /review/show/7453047280 K gave 4 stars to Unfamiliar Fishes (Hardcover) by Sarah Vowell
My rating is a weird decision. I picked the book because Sarah Vowell is a great writer; she's smart, detailed, witty, moves through subjects quickly. But I don't care at all about Hawaii, and I found that I was often skimming pages because I just don't care about which missionaries came there in the 1800s and met with which prince or king, and how the two sides influenced each other politically or financially.

I realize that Hawaii is a dreamland for many people, a bucket list visit, and so on. And I'm sure I'd like it if I ever have the opportunity to go. But I have met a dozen or so people who live in Hawaii, and I don't like any of them (well, not fair, as a girl I knew in high school and liked a lot did live there for 15-20 years). They are all arrogant and fake. I hate the "Aloha" said with a smugness that they're in on a secret code that you don't understand. Every single one of them is competitive and stuck-up, and I can't stand more than 10 minutes in their presence.

Combine my visceral dislike of the people I've met with the fact that the lovely places are overcrowded (ruined) by tourists, and I'm not sure I would actually enjoy a visit. I'd try to get to the quieter places, the natural beauty in the mountains, and also the historic sites mentioned in Sarah Vowell's book. But I wouldn't be hanging on the resort beaches, and I can't surf. I do love to snorkel, so that would be cool.

Anyway, my point is that this is book does a great job with history in the Vowell style of breezy anecdotes and humorous asides, and it packs a ton of detail into a short work. She's really good at giving the history as it was told by the missionaries who descended on the island just a few years after British Captain Cook visited there and was murdered, and she shows how they brought American ideas to the islands. Basically, over about 65 years they converted the natives to Protestantism, introduced English and literacy (higher literacy than America or most of Europe), created industries such as sugar plantations, and brought the country into the US sphere. This was done without slavery or overt violence, but it did include the loss of 90% of the native population to diseases such as smallpox and measles. (As an aside, I wonder why inoculations weren't tried, or at least mentioned by Vowell, a question that's especially pertinent today when we have top govt. officials who think vaccines are a bad idea and an infringement of freedom.)

At the same time, Vowell is smart enough to look behind the official accounts and say, What a minute, this stuff wasn't good at all. Hawaiians did allow for, even encourage, sex between siblings, but that was a cultural thing that tied them to earth's fertility. They did have an economy based on subsistence farming of taro. They had their religion, their gods, their leadership structure. The fact that they had about 300,000 people on the series of islands, many of which don't get a lot of rainwater, indicates they had figured out a sustainable way to live. And Americans and Europeans wrecked it. This book lays those facts bare and lets activists in the 21st century speak about the decimation and their efforts to revive the old culture.

In short, this is a well-rounded and funny book that stands with Sarah Vowell's other works. If you're planning to go to Hawaii, read this book and take notes because you might find out about some interesting places to go and things to do that the guidebooks don't mention or don't mention enough. ]]> Review7453034035 Tue, 01 Apr 2025 04:26:14 -0700 /review/show/7453034035 K gave 4 stars to Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line (Paperback) by Ben Hamper
I read this book when it came out and reread it recently. It's fine for what it is, but it's not my kind of thing. I don't like the braggadocio, Hunter S. Thompson style of writing, the conceit that the writer is tougher than you as well as smarter. Ben Hamper is the type of person I'd run away from at a party or a bar as fast as possible.

I couldn't care less about how some guy rigged up stereo speakers on the assembly line -- frankly, I'd rather not have to listen to someone else's crappy music. Same with stunts and practical jokes. I'm an adult, and I hate that stuff. Just be serious and work, and then go home and do whatever you like more than work. Work isn't life, but it sort of becomes life in Hamper's book.

This is not to say that he doesn't make great points. He's spot-on with his anger about capitalism and its ill effects in a post-manufacturing world. Everything in his book stands as valid today as it did when he wrote it. If anything, it's more valid as so few people have the job protections and decent wages that Hamper's father had with car companies and that Hamper briefly enjoyed. The gig economy might not put people in the noisy, loud, dangerous atmosphere of an auto plant, but it would be hard to say that working for half the wages (in real dollar terms) on the stress of driving lunches around town is better than the camaraderie of manufacturing.

If you like genre books and like the genre of the sarcastic working class, read this book. If you're looking for more sober policy material, this isn't it.
]]> Review7453034035 Tue, 01 Apr 2025 04:19:22 -0700 /review/show/7453034035 K gave 4 stars to Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line (Paperback) by Ben Hamper
I read this book when it came out and reread it recently. It's fine for what it is, but it's not my kind of thing. I don't like the braggadocio, Hunter S. Thompson style of writing, the conceit that the writer is tougher than you as well as smarter. Ben Hamper is the type of person I'd run away from at a party or a bar as fast as possible.

I couldn't care less about how some guy rigged up stereo speakers on the assembly line -- frankly, I'd rather not have to listen to someone else's crappy music. Same with stunts and practical jokes. I'm an adult, and I hate that stuff. Just be serious and work, and then go home and do whatever you like more than work. Work isn't life, but it sort of becomes life in Hamper's book.

This is not to say that he doesn't make great points. He's spot-on with his anger about capitalism and its ill effects in a post-manufacturing world. Everything in his book stands as valid today as it did when he wrote it. If anything, it's more valid as so few people have the job protections and decent wages that Hamper's father had with car companies and that Hamper briefly enjoyed. The gig economy might not put people in the noisy, loud, dangerous atmosphere of an auto plant, but it would be hard to say that working for half the wages (in real dollar terms) on the stress of driving lunches around town is better than the camaraderie of manufacturing.

If you like genre books and like the genre of the sarcastic working class, read this book. If you're looking for more sober policy material, this isn't it.
]]> Review7436299867 Wed, 26 Mar 2025 04:54:20 -0700 /review/show/7436299867 K gave 3 stars to Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball's Longest Game (Hardcover) by Dan Barry
This author won a Pulitzer Prize? You wouldn't know it from his writing in this book. It alternates between dour and overwrought, completely submerging a charming story in a morass of religious references, complaints of bitter cold, and memories of lost opportunities. I wouldn't have taken this track with the story of the longest game in professional baseball history, and the only justification is that the game started on the Saturday night before Easter and ended in a tie (to be resumed two months later) at 4 am on Easter Sunday. But that doesn't mean I want to read junk like this from the 1st paragraph of the Prologue: "Yet somewhere in the almost sacred stillness, a white orb disturbs the peace, skipping along the night-damp grass, flitting through the night-crisp air, causing general unrest at three thirty in the morning on Sunday, Easter Sunday." I almost threw the book in the donations bin at that point.

There's all this nonsense about time stopping and moving ahead, sort of a paean to how watching an enthralling baseball game takes you out of the concerns of your everyday life. But this guy doesn't get it right. He starts out OK in describing the tie at 2-2 after 32 innings, but then loses it in purple prose that died an inglorious death in the 1950s. "Here it is, eight hours after the first pitch, the score remains tied, 2-2, and in the judgment of baseball, nothing has changed and nothing will until the game resumes--who knows when." But then the paragraph continues ... "With nothing and everything simultaneously unfolding, with eight hours becoming one hour and one hour becoming eight, the night seems to have said something about time itself: the deceptiveness of it and the dearness of it. Beseeched by the older ballplayers to slow the clock, and begged by the younger players to hasten it, the night instead chose to to stop time; to place it under a stadium's laboratory lights and pin it to the Pawtucket clay. See?" Uh, no, I don't see.

Buried under these musings is a brisk account of the game and brief profiles and anecdotes about those involved with it. Not just the players, but Pawtucket's owners, its batboy, the two sportswriters covering the game, the umpires, the most loyal fans (apparently, 19 fans stayed for all 32 innings), the league's commissioner, and others. These anecdotes range from standard bios to charming histories to various tragic and sad stories. Emphasis on the sad. The vast majority of players, of course, don't have successful Major League careers or even get to the Majors. They are either guys who had a chance and didn't do well (the older ballplayers referenced in the prior quote, who are seeking another chance before they are deemed too old) or young guys who don't quite have the right stuff. Two mega-stars are in the game: Cal Ripken, Jr., and Wade Boggs. They both play reasonably well, but neither does anything memorable.

In fact, nobody does much memorable in the game, as the starting pitchers mowed down their opponents, and then relievers and starters pressed into relief did the same, inning after inning. The book brushes through the innings pretty quickly, which is appropriate and even attempts to be poetic (fails). To the extent there's drama in the game, it was in the 32nd when the winning run was thrown out at the plate. But he was apparently out by a ton -- the type of decision to try to score that wouldn't have been made except in dire circumstances.

We are told repeatedly that the wind was blowing in hard from left field and center for the entire game, so at least two blasts that would have been homers on a normal night (both by home team players) were caught relatively easily. And one of the runs that scored was unearned because a pop fly to left field blew all the way back in to nearly the pitcher's mound and was dropped by a shortstop who didn't expect to have to field it there. In other words, a typical baseball game, in the sense that all baseball games have unique quirks.

The anecdotes about the men (and a few wives/girlfriends/moms) are well-researched, and the author takes pains to inform you that he sat with most of these men about 30 years after the game in order to get their impressions of that night and how it has influenced them. Ripken and Boggs, the stars, remember the cold and exhaustion; they've had bigger things in their lives. For Dave Koza, who had the game-winning hit, the call to the majors never came, and the minor league slugger fell into alcoholism, lost his marriage, and then turned things around with a trucking job and sobriety. Another player had a bizarre situation I'd never heard about before in which he was traded to the Detroit Tigers, thus giving him a chance to crack a weaker lineup, but he told the Detroit general manager he had a hamstring pull; this was viewed as him trying to undercut the trade, and he was considered a quitter and never got another chance. A couple of pitchers who had promise and even had pitched a few games in the majors never got back there, and they were out of baseball within a year of the longest game. In fact, I was surprised how many players quit within a year or so, and it's not like anyone cited that game as a reason, but it's a reminder that if you don't make it by 24-25 then there's almost no chance for you, and it's time to take stock of the rest of your life.

So those profiles of guys never heard of before or since are decent. And there are a few other charming moments, such as the fact that the reason the game went on so long is that the league's bylaws for that season didn't include a provision for stopping a tie game for later replay. All other years, there was a rule that no inning starts after 12:50 am, but that page had been dropped from the rulebook, apparently by accident. The umpire stubbornly decided the game would keep going because there wasn't a rule, even though he and everyone else knew there always had been a rule. And when the Pawtucket owner called the league's commissioner to get an ok to suspend the game, the commissioner's wife said he wasn't home, even though it was 1 am. And she said he wasn't home at 2 am. But it turned out he was home and asleep, but they had a pact that she wouldn't wake him up for calls in the middle of the night because he was sick of people calling him from bars to settle bets about the history of the league he was commissioner of (The International League). So it took a third call before he learned what was happening, and then he called and authorized the suspension after the 32nd inning. That is truly bizarre.

In sum, it's a nice piece of reporting on a slice of baseball history that had a couple weeks in the public eye and has long since become a footnote. If you strip out the writing about downtrodden Pawtucket, its stadium built on a landfill, the philosophical musings about time and decay and frustration, then you have a book that's about 2/3 as long and much more readable. ]]> Review7431221981 Mon, 24 Mar 2025 11:31:32 -0700 /review/show/7431221981 K gave 4 stars to Sweet Sorrow (Paperback) by David Nicholls
I'm reading David Nicholls backwards chronologically, having loved "You Are Here" and now picking up this much earlier book. It's not as good, though still enjoyable. It's interesting to see themes in his this book (his third) and writing tics that have continued as his work matured. And matured is the right term because this book is a coming-of-age romp, whereas "You Are Here" is about middle-aged people.

This book is the classic adolescent tale of being lost and sad, finding a new and worthwhile thing to belong to, first love and first sex, and then first breakup. It's done well, except for a bit of excess that's done for comic effect (just like in the more recent book the excessive drinking isn't believable). Nicholls gets to the point, and brings it with humor and wonderful similes and metaphors that seem to pop up like colorful mushrooms after rain (see, I can do it too!). He clearly loves the theme of an outsider, a loner, a lonely person who isn't inherently a loner but takes on that personality out of necessity. Resolving that drives the book's narrative.

So Charlie, age 16, is having a rough time. His parents are split (not yet divorced), and his mom is living with another man. His sister went with his mom, and Charlie is babysitting his father, who's sinking into alcohol and pills and depression. The cause of the depression and separation is the failure of the father's record stores and less, directly, his willingness to take on the stores from his parents rather than pursue a jazz sax career. So the father is angry, lost, incapable, and the mother has moved on. Charlie flunks his final exams at school, thus torpedoing his chance for college immediately, and he works part-time at a gas station, bored out of his mind. Also, he's wondering if his three childhood friends -- his gang -- are all they are cracked up to be, as he realizes they've been cruel to each other and everyone around them in school. He doesn't know another way to be, but he senses that this isn't the best he can be, either. (Note: The author is British and the book takes place in England, so there are various references to the British school system and culture that I'm not familiar with and which might add an eve greater feeling of realism, if I understood them.)

And then through a fluke Charlie meets a beautiful girl who is doing summer theater: "Romeo and Juliet." He joins the troupe in order to get a date with her, and his life is slowly transformed. She is much more sophisticated than he, as well as wealthier. The other kids know theater (including three who he and his friends abused back at his high school), and he's lost, the guy at the bottom rung. But he perseveres because he has nothing else, and gradually things take shape. There are ups and downs, done quite realistically, and he and the girl do fall in love, or as in-love as teenagers can be. He breaks with his three high school buddies, who, incidentally, have more on the ball than he realized (ie., two are going immediately to college). And then in the fall the romance is over. All this is told in a flashback of 20 years, as Charlie has moved on with his life but has an opportunity to see the girl at a reunion of the theater troupe.

It's a poignant story, almost too painful to read at times because the fun is so fun --- more fun than most of us had in real life (teasing buddies, charming and funny girls, party hijinks) -- and the sorrow is so sad (family breakup, poverty, hopelessness, yelling, crime, embarrassment). A lot of "Romeo and Juliet" lines are dispensed in the book, and that part I find a little forced. I can see why they would be meaningful to this teenage boy and the other teens at that time in their lives, but it's also too much. But that's one of the things that gives some heft to a romantic comedy.

Overall, it's a fun and fast read. But because the writing has so many jokes and smart allusions and metaphors, I also reread paragraphs and pages multiple times to savor what was going on. It's way more than a beach read, though it feels like summer. ]]> Review7420180280 Thu, 20 Mar 2025 13:07:57 -0700 /review/show/7420180280 K gave 5 stars to You Are Here (Hardcover) by David Nicholls
Really charming. It's a light book, a romantic comedy, but very well done. I'd say that 1 out of 5 of this type that I read is this good, and I only read those that are considered excellent. Most of my reading is more highbrow, more literary, and so this type of book has to have a lot going for it if I'm going to finish.

What did I like? More than anything, I liked the humor. I was laughing out-loud on numerous occasions, much to the annoyance of my wife, who didn't find the funny passages funny without a full context (and didn't have the patience to hear the context). The dialogue by Protagonist No. 1, Marnie, never fails. It's like having a wisecracking friend at your side; in fact, I have one friend who was a standup comic in his 20s, and he's a male version of Marnie. Creatively funny, original puns, etc.

The second thing I liked were the similes and metaphors. They are endless, and most of them click just right. Example: "People who said they were separated, not divorced, were like people who insisted that a tomato was a fruit, not a vegetable; technically correct, but on shaky ground." Or "On the bed, she laid out the most glamorous of her three dresses, one arm kinked at the elbow, shoes on the floor, to gauge how she might look if surprised by a steam-roller on the way to a date." There's stuff like this every third page.

And bon mots, too. Example about the line between a teacher and a parent "... a parent might teach a child, but it's a mistake for a teacher to parent a pupil."

Meanwhile, between the wisecracking, you hear the private worries and loneliness of Marnie and Protagonist No. 2, Michael. She's 38, he's 42, and due to Covid and blasted marriages, they have both become hermits. Marnie is a real hermit, as her proofreading job enables her to avoid going outside her apartment most of the time, as she recoils from marrying an arrogant, selfish guy about a decade her senior. Michael is a middle-school geography teacher, so he has to interact with students every day, but he shuns everyone else, as his wife has left him due to their inability to get pregnant and rising anger and silence over that matter.

Their friend Cleo brings them together with a few other people on a punishing hike in the Northern English countryside, and they build a bond as everyone else drops out due to boredom and bad weather. And while we know they are destined to be together, there are enough bumps along the way that it feels awkward and tentative and possibly a mistake --- that is, real.

As a final note, I loved the description of the hike itself. My wife and I do long day-hikes when we travel, and we've contemplated the type of endeavor described in this book. I've read plenty about multi-day hikes as well as true adventure hiking (ie., Everest). I know I'm not up to true hardships, and I'm not sure I'm up to a week of hikes of 15-20 miles, such as the people in this book do. But it helps to hear how they do, how they feel physically, what they enjoy visually and what is unattractive, etc. It's inspiring, but also a reminder to take it seriously.

In fact, the only thing that's a little "off" in the book is that the hike is probably too much for Marnie to do as described. Michael is the hike leader, and he's knowledgeable and spends most weekends on his feet as a distraction from his pending divorce. But she isn't active, and she makes the beginner mistake of taking too much gear. It seems hard to believe that she could do those hikes day after day, even at age 38. She would have needed a day break in there. This is especially so because she and Michael each drink way too much on most of the days, sometimes hiking in the afternoon after three beers in the pub. This just isn't realistic. Nor is hiking the day after downing a pair of bottles of wine or a bunch of mixed drinks and beers. I think the story would have worked just as well if the over-drinking was limited to one night or even two, rather than every night.

Still, a lovely book that I'm going to recommend to anyone who wants to forget these terrible political times and fantasize about getting away from it all with a long hike in England (whether or not they also are seeking a mate). ]]>