4/5 Stars So I suppose most people might think this is the China Mieville debut novel, but in actuality, it’s James Clavell’s debut novel. It’s about a Japanese prisoner of war camp on Singapore in the closing year of the war. Some 10,000 English, Australian, and American servicemen are imprisoned in the camp with Japanese overcommanders and prison guards chosen by the units themselves. It’s kind of like an unfunny mix of Hogan’s Heroes, Catch-22, and The Great Escape. That’s not to say that it’s […]
Embattled, Entrenched, or Enslaved….I dunno.
I am at the point with this series where I am still pretty invested, but I feel pretty battered by my reading of this one. I chalk this up to a few possibilities. One, this is the first of the three where I have read it instead of listening to it. I have a pretty clear sense of Michael Kramer and Kate Reading’s voices and how they create all of the characters. With both of the previous ones, I also went hiking a lot while […]
Some books I heard while reading the new Brandon Sanderson
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee – 5/5 stars So somehow, Trump ruined this day of all days with his racist remark to Navajo Codetalkers at a White House ceremony. This is also the day I finished this book….it’s like I made it happen by being so clearly reminded of the inhumanity of US history and the sheer resilience and patience with which Native peoples have had to ask for not only basic decency, but for agreements they made to be upheld. And so the […]
Everyone is apparently legally required to review this book
Sleeping Beauties – 3/5 – SPOILERS by the Way So this has a fable quality to it, obviously. But in a lot of ways, this is like an episode of Star Trek (a Q episode specifically), where the small town created King squared become a stand-in for all humanity. In the same way that the Starship Enterprise becomes the crucible for the humanity and morality of all mankind, the small town of Dooling, West Virginia becomes the crucible for all MAN-kind! Boom! Punned. But in […]
Poems; Girls; Heights; Faces
Long Way Down – 5/5 To paraphrase Jason Reynolds in an interview he gives at the end of the book, this is a combination of “Boyz in the Hood” and “A Christmas Carol.” As with other Jason Reynolds novels, there’s a central conflict between what a character feels is the right thing to do based on his lived experience, the implicit messages that happen around him, the images, his history, and lots of other coded and secretive influences versus the on the paper ethics of […]
Orientalism, Cultural Alienation, and Clones
Crocodile on the Sandbank – 3/5 Stars If you haven’t read this book, it’s a little hard to fully understand how to categorize it. It’s very British-feeling, even though it’s written by an American author. It’s very British-loving to be sure. It reads almost like a mystery novel, but it’s not entirely a mystery. Instead, it’s most close to a few of the antecedents mentioned in the book itself. It styles itself after HR Haggard adventure tales, but in a less buxom/masculine kind of way. […]
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