Review Shorts: August 2022

Book opinions, but short ones.

Spellhacker by M.K. England

See it on The StoryGraph here

Status: Complete

On the surface, an entertaining heist fantasy where a group of teenage magic thieves stumble on a conspiracy that they have to stop before it destroys the world. But it’s also a viciously emotional story about loss, fear, friendship, and love. I can see how some people might find the emotions over-the-top and Diz’s reactions ridiculous, but I found them spot-on to my experience with Borderline Personality Disorder. Even though I could see where Diz was making things harder for herself, I could relate. A solid read all around.

Tags: Nonbinary Love Interest, Nonbinary Author, Queer Author

Trigger Warnings: Parent death, grief, pandemic, natural disaster, terminal illness, chronic illness, ableism (minor, challenged), abandonment, death, guns (mentions), excrement (minor)

Across the Nightingale Floor (Tales of the Otori #1) by Lian Hearn

See it on The StoryGraph here

Status: Completed

This is a very slow-paced book. The actual plot doesn’t kick in until over halfway through. The main focus is politics in this slightly-magical version of feudal Japan, and I found the Japan part interesting but the politics not at all. (That’s not the book’s fault – I am not known for enjoying politics-heavy books). The setting is not as vibrant as I’d hoped, but still enough to keep it from being completely boring. The dispassionate, exposition-heavy narration from both protagonists made it hard to connect with either, and considering one of those protagonists is trained in fighting as a nobleman’s son and also possesses supernatural ninja powers, there’s remarkably little action. It was okay for one read, but I have no desire to keep reading the series.

Tags: Nonwestern Setting, Protagonist of Color

Trigger Warnings: Death, death of parent, blood, murder, torture, religious persecution, animal injury, animal death, sexual assault, forced marriage, pregnancy, suicide, suicidal thoughts, sexual content between minors (consensual), adult/minor relationship (mentions)

Necrotech (SINless #1) by K.C. Alexander

See it on The StoryGraph here

Status: Completed

This book started as a fun, high-octane adventure about a tech-enhanced mercenary who apparently did something truly terrible during a period of time she can’t remember. I enjoyed the cyberpunk ideas and the tough, violent protagonist. But it got old quick. The book is unrelentingly violent (perhaps trying to evoke a rough life on the streets?) and it burned through any shock value or emotional response pretty early and then became both boring and over-the-top. Riko is in yet another fight, of course she is, let’s move on. Her only setting seemed to be rage and violence – even when her girlfriend dies (not a spoiler, it’s the inciting incident), she’s more concerned with the damage to her reputation. Even though she knew how to win many of the situations she got herself into, she still got beaten because she couldn’t stop trying to solve everything with violence, and that got really frustrating. I haven’t read a lot of cyberpunk so I found it interesting for that, but if you’ve never thought extreme violence could get dull, you should give this book a try!

Tags: It’s Queer!, Bisexual Protagonist, Mentally Ill Author, Genderqueer Author

Trigger Warnings: Blood (severe), death, love interest death, gore (severe), body horror, violence (severe), injury (severe), guns, unreality, sexual content (mentions), nudity, infidelity (mentions), loss of bodily autonomy, profanity

The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd

See it on The StoryGraph here

Status: Completed

An enjoyable, magic-tinged puzzle with a ton of different pieces to put together, featuring a present inextricably bound to the past, interesting and mysterious family friends that the protagonist’s father never told her about, and interesting thoughts on the nature of maps and navigation. The first half was about figuring out why this particular map is so special, and the second half about trying to keep it away from the antagonist, with small pieces of the story behind the map running throughout. My only complaint is that the protagonist just seems to accept that the antagonist shouldn’t get the map without reason, as it’s never made entirely clear what would be so bad about them getting it in the first place. It was a fun adventure of discovery and magical realism weirdness and cartography, and I enjoyed it.

Trigger Warnings: Parent death, fire/fire injury, infidelity, stalking, murder, death, blood (brief), gun violence

Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li

See it on The StoryGraph here

Status: DNF at 28%

This is not a heist story, this is a book about immigrant identity, and to a lesser degree art and the Western habit of stealing other countries’ art and saying it’s not theirs anymore. I really appreciate a book critiquing Western imperialism’s art crimes and I love the idea of a Chinese diaspora team stealing the artwork back, but the idea would have been better done in a movie or TV show – or even a more action-oriented book. These characters aren’t a cohesive team (and aren’t putting effort into becoming one), they go about heist planning terribly (watching heist movies and discussing committing felonies over Zoom), and they’re focused more on inner monologues about their immigrant identities as both Chinese and American than the heists. If you go in expecting that it might not be bad, but calling it a heist book is major mismarketing.

Tags: Chinese American Protagonist, Immigrant Protagonist, Chinese American Author, #ownvoices Chinese American

Trigger Warnings: Death of parent, terminal illness (mentions)

Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport

See it on The StoryGraph here

Status: Completed

There are good ideas here but – ironically – the book feels unfocused. I appreciated the idea of digital minimalism and the philosophy behind it, the idea that reducing technology use has to be based in your deeply held values made a lot of sense, and the “detox” and three-step process for minimalist-izing your technology use explained the blind spot that kept me from successfully doing it on my own. But then it just starts meandering through different ways your life could be better with less technological interference (e.g. your relationships will be stronger if you call or meet in person instead of text!). I don’t remember all the topics he covers because I started spacing out because very little of it seemed relevant. The first half is good, but this book could have been (and probably should have been) about half as long.

Trigger Warnings: Mental illness (mentions)

The Antagonists: Book One (The Antagonists #1) by Burgandi Rakoska

An Unread Shelf 2022 book

See it on The StoryGraph here

Status: DNF at 13%

I don’t want to be too hard on this book, because many things about it are great. I heard about it from a Tumblr post where someone proposed a story concept where the superheroes are horribly ableist so the disabled person with super powers joins the not-ableist villain instead, which is an absolutely amazing concept. (I loved the idea so much I bought the ebook.) I also think we need to see more disabled characters in fiction, especially ones with multiple marginalized identities. But the writing was so poor I couldn’t bring myself to keep reading. The idea (and the writer) definitely have promise, but it felt like a beginner’s first novel – flat, rushed, awkward, missing the patience and vividness that comes from writing experience and/or a good editor. I love the premise and think the ideas have merit, but the way it’s written feels more like amateur online fanfiction than an actual polished book.

Tags: Black Protagonist, Disabled Protagonist, Disabled Author, #ownvoices Disabled

Trigger Warnings: Ableism, ableist slurs, violence

Review: The Cloister Walk

Title: The Cloister Walk

Author: Kathleen Norris

Genre: Memoir/Religion

Trigger Warnings: Death (mentions), sexual assault (mentions), mental illness (mentions), murder (mentions)

Back Cover:

Why would a married woman with a thoroughly Protestant background and often more doubt than faith be drawn to the ancient practice of monasticism, to a community of celibate men whose days are centered on a rigid schedule of prayer, work, and scripture? This is the question that poet Kathleen Norris asks us as, somewhat to her own surprise, she found herself on two extended residencies at St. John’s Abbey in Minnesota.

Part record of her time among the Benedictines, part meditation on various aspects of monastic life, The Cloister Walk demonstrates, from the rare perspective of someone who is both an insider and outsider, how immersion in the cloistered world– its liturgy, its ritual, its sense of community– can impart meaning to everyday events and deepen our secular lives. In this stirring and lyrical work, the monastery, often considered archaic or otherworldly, becomes immediate, accessible, and relevant to us, no matter what our faith may be.

Review:

This is another recommendation from my mother-in-law. It sounded somewhat interesting, but wasn’t high on my priority list until she actually gave me a copy. I haven’t read a physical book in a long time, but I am trying to work through my unread shelf, so I figured I’d give it a shot.

This is not at all what I was expecting. I was expecting something solidly memoir about the author’s experience of being a Protestant-raised nonreligious person spending time in Catholic monastery. I expected a series of events presented in chronological order, along with what she learned about religion and monasticism and some reflections on monastic life. I was not expecting … whatever this is.

Kathleen is a poet, and this book reads like a poem in prose form. I know that’s an oxymoron, but I don’t have a better way to describe it. It reads like poetry – reflective and metaphorical and not limited to a particular place, time, or sequence of events – but it’s written in proper sentences and paragraphs and such like prose. It was an interesting and unique reading experience, and I rather enjoyed the slow, reflective pace.

I also found a lot to relate to in Kathleen. She was raised Protestant but rejected the religion of her youth. Although when the book opened she considered herself generally nonreligious, she still was a sort of spiritual seeker, looking for some kind of religious or spiritual transcendence. The main difference between us in this regard is that she is willing to go back to Christianity to search for it.

I’m glad she did, though, because the result was this book, which is fascinating. I have never been Catholic, so it was interesting learning about little details of Catholicism, and especially about monastic life and the Benedictine monks that she spent time with. She reflects on a lot of different topics in regards to religion and monasticism – everything from saints she particularly likes to the experience of singing psalms every day to more controversial aspects like mandatory celibacy. All of it was fascinating, and some of it was even inspiring.

Even though I have no intention of looking to Christianity for my spiritual seeking journey, I’m glad Kathleen could find positive things. And I’m very glad she decided to write about them in this book. It’s more an invitation to reflection than any sort of memoir, but I found it engaging, poetic, and surprisingly resonant in many places. It feels especially crafted for the spiritual seeker.

Review Shorts: February 2022

Fairly often, I read a book that I have a sentence or two of thoughts about, but not enough to write a full review. Since I’m trying to not stress myself out and review everything, I’ve been torn about whether or not to write a whole review for a couple sentences of opinion.

So to solve that problem, welcome to the February 2022 edition of Review Shorts: All the books I read in February that I have a few thoughts on, but not a lot.

Rule (Rule #1) by Ellen Goodlett

See the book on The StoryGraph here

Status: Completed

A solidly okay story that was interesting enough to finish (acceptable characters, solid magic system, not horrible political intrigue) but not interesting enough to bother with a sequel. And then I couldn’t stop conjecturing about who was actually blackmailing the sisters. So maybe I will read book two after all.

Body Respect: What Conventional Health Books Get Wrong, Leave Out, and Just Plain Fail to Understand about Weight by Lindo Bacon and Lucy Aphramor

See the book on The StoryGraph here

Status: Completed

I thought this one was going to be expanding on Health At Every Size. Turns out it’s more like a condensed version, aimed at being given to people who are unfamiliar with or even hostile to HAES and might be unwilling to read a long book about it. Useful for its niche (I’ll probably give a copy to my mother eventually), but not useful reading if you’ve already read Health At Every Size.

Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman

See the book on The StoryGraph here

Status: DNF on page 70

This may have been helpful in the 70s, but it’s basically useless now. Nobody in 2022 needs tricks for getting free calls on a pay phone, publishers no longer send free books to anyone who writes them a letter claiming to be a journalist, and you’re likely to get shot before you get close enough to a plane to try any of the plane-hopping tips. There is a good recipe for yogurt, though.

Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence by Anna Lembke

See the book on The StoryGraph here

Status: Completed

I had intended to do a full review of this one, but it’s so unmemorable that the day after I finished it I had a hard time recalling the main points. It was interesting to read about the biopsychology of addiction and case studies of former addicts, but for the casual reader that one popular YouTube video on dopamine detox will give you the same basic idea.

SKIP: A Framework to Connect Industrious People with Elderly Land Owners by Paul Wheaton and Mike Hassl

An Unread Shelf 2022 book

See the book on The StoryGraph here

Status: Completed (kinda – I skimmed quite a bit of it)

I’m already doing the SKIP program for free through the permies.com forums. If I’d realized this was just the SKIP masterpost and program requirements put into book form with no additional content, I wouldn’t have bothered buying a copy. (That said, if you’re interested in SKIP and would rather work out of a book than a forum post, it might be worthwhile to get a copy.)

Review: Friending

Title: Friending: Creating Meaningful, Lasting Adult Friendships

Author: Gina Handley Schmitt

Genre: Relationships

Trigger Warnings: Abuse (mentions), toxic friendships (mentions)

Back Cover:

Friendships are like any other relationships–when they work, they make our lives better. When they aren’t working, or are hard to find, they make our lives more difficult.

Gina Handley Schmitt saw her therapy clients struggling to make and keep close friends, and wrote this book to help solve what is becoming a full-blown friendship crisis in the age of social media. In this book, you’ll learn:

• How to identify and reach out to potential new friends
• How to maintain long term friendships through busy times and life transitions
• When and how to state your needs and set boundaries with your friends
• Skills for strengthening your friendships by resolving conflicts
• The difficult art of ending a friendship

You’ll do all this using the five core skills of being available, authentic, affirming, assertive, and accepting. Life is so much sweeter with good friends by your side

Review:

I picked up this book because the subtitle promised advice about adult friendships, which is something I really struggle with. I am also a fan of the publisher, Microcosm Publishing, which is a small independent press publishing a fantastic array of useful nonfiction. So I had high hopes.

However, this book didn’t really deliver. There were some tidbits of useful advice, but most of it was well-trod tropes (like the sandwich method for discussing problems) and surface-level discussions. Each of the five core skills in friendships (being available, authentic, affirming, assertive, and accepting) is one section, and each chapter in that section is 2-5 pages long – not nearly long enough to cover anything in depth.

Gina discusses ending friendships when the relationship is toxic, but advises working to keep the friendship in all other cases. She talks about accepting different opinions, but offers no advice on whether it’s worth trying to keep a longstanding friendship with someone who doesn’t think you deserve rights (e.g. you’re gay and your high school bestie is outspokenly homophobic). She seems to be operating under the assumption that every friendship should be a close and intimate friendship and says nothing about how relationships with “my best friend who I tell everything” and “we’re not super close but we play D&D together every other Thursday” should differ.

I guess I just wanted more from this book. It’s a good overview, but that’s all it is. Personally, I think it would have been better as a long-form article than a full book. The five core skills framework was definitely interesting, but most of the content was stuff I’d already heard by googling “how to friendship.” If you really have no idea where to start, this is a good place to do so, but if you’ve done even a modicum of research, look elsewhere.

For more in-depth books about friendships and relationships in general, I highly recommend Set Boundaries, Find Peace (about how to set and maintain boundaries in all relationships) and The Art of Gathering (about how to host fantastic gatherings with friends that deepen your relationships).