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gregzimmerman's reviews
1194 reviews
My Struggle, Book 3 by Karl Ove Knausgård
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
A theory: These Knausgaard books are for middle-aged (sometimes pretentious?) white dudes what Ali Hazelwood or Emily Henry books are Millennial and Gen Z women: Pure reading enjoyment.
Three books in now, and I’m really loving this, though I’m still at a little bit of a loss to explain exactly why.
This third book is about Knausgaard’s childhood and his cruel father and beginning to discover his love for books…and girls. He cries a lot, does stupid kid things like throw rocks at cars, and starts figuring out how the world works.
Normally the childhood section of any memoir is my least favorite part, but this was really fascinating. Onward to the fourth….
My Friends: A Novel by Hisham Matar
challenging
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
Hisham Matar's 2024 National Book Award-finalist novel My Friends is about making your way in the world when you can't go home again. It's about the loneliness of exile, the importance of friendship, and the horrors of authoritarianism.
Imagine your life being on pause for more than 25 years. You exist in limbo, away from your country, apart from your family, even having to lie to them, knowing your infrequent correspondence and even more infrequent conversations are monitored. Such is the fate of our narrator, Khaled, a Libyan national who arrives in Edinburgh in 1984 on a university scholarship. Young and idealistic, but also naive, Khaled becomes swept up in political currents much stronger than his ability to deal with him.
He rues the day he didn't listen more closely to his university friend, who told him when he arrived in Edinburgh: "I have resigned myself to the fact that I live in a world of unreasonable men and the only reasonable thing to do in this situation is, best we can, avoid their schemes."
So for reasons I won't spoil, Khaled becomes stuck in the UK. He can't return home because if he does, he likely won't be allowed to leave Libya again. Being trapped in an authoritarian state, though, might be the best case scenario. In a worst case scenario, he'd be murdered by the regime, as so many before him had.
So he stays in London, building a life with his friend, Mustafa, and later, a writer named Hosam Zawa, who'd been one of the inspirations for him to go to university and study literature in the first place.
When the revolution breaks out in the spring of 2011, each of these men must again weigh his priorities. Each man must take an accounting of his courage.
The pace of this novel is deliberate and contemplative, and the tone is sober and earnest. The story is told in 108 short chapters, which gives the effect of pulling you along a little more quickly than you might read otherwise. But to me this still felt a little like homework. Yes, it's a VERY GOOD NOVEL. The reviews are universally exceptional and it's won tons of literary awards. But it felt more like something I *should* be reading, like a long New Yorker expose, than something I'd read strictly for pleasure. That said, I'm still really glad I read it. It's a stunning piece of literary fiction, and provides fascinating context and a new perspective on events on which I'd only known a little about.
Imagine your life being on pause for more than 25 years. You exist in limbo, away from your country, apart from your family, even having to lie to them, knowing your infrequent correspondence and even more infrequent conversations are monitored. Such is the fate of our narrator, Khaled, a Libyan national who arrives in Edinburgh in 1984 on a university scholarship. Young and idealistic, but also naive, Khaled becomes swept up in political currents much stronger than his ability to deal with him.
He rues the day he didn't listen more closely to his university friend, who told him when he arrived in Edinburgh: "I have resigned myself to the fact that I live in a world of unreasonable men and the only reasonable thing to do in this situation is, best we can, avoid their schemes."
So for reasons I won't spoil, Khaled becomes stuck in the UK. He can't return home because if he does, he likely won't be allowed to leave Libya again. Being trapped in an authoritarian state, though, might be the best case scenario. In a worst case scenario, he'd be murdered by the regime, as so many before him had.
So he stays in London, building a life with his friend, Mustafa, and later, a writer named Hosam Zawa, who'd been one of the inspirations for him to go to university and study literature in the first place.
When the revolution breaks out in the spring of 2011, each of these men must again weigh his priorities. Each man must take an accounting of his courage.
The pace of this novel is deliberate and contemplative, and the tone is sober and earnest. The story is told in 108 short chapters, which gives the effect of pulling you along a little more quickly than you might read otherwise. But to me this still felt a little like homework. Yes, it's a VERY GOOD NOVEL. The reviews are universally exceptional and it's won tons of literary awards. But it felt more like something I *should* be reading, like a long New Yorker expose, than something I'd read strictly for pleasure. That said, I'm still really glad I read it. It's a stunning piece of literary fiction, and provides fascinating context and a new perspective on events on which I'd only known a little about.
The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.25
A fascinating premise here: In a near-future America even more terrible than our current right-wing dystopia, everything about your life contributes to your risk score, including your dreams which are recorded and monitored by the government's Risk Assessment Administration. If your risk score rises above a threshold, you're sent to a retention facility, even if you've not actually committed a crime or done anything at all wrong. It's like a much more realistic version of the Tom Cruise vehicle Minority Report.
Sara is our protagonist here, a normal LA woman whose risk score suddenly breaches the 500 threshold because she and her husband, parents of newborn twins, are stuck in a rough patch. So she's detained at LAX after a work trip because the RAA thinks she might try to kill him, based on some dreams. She's whisked off to a "retention facility" where she's told she has to "calm down" for 21 days...but of course that turns out to be much longer.
Through Sara's harrowing story, Lalami examines:
--the horrific evil of for-profit prisons and mass incarceration
--the loss of privacy and how personal data is bought and sold to be used for nefarious purposes
--the loss of dignity under the cover of security and capitalism
--how climate change will continue to wreak havoc on everyday life
--the loss of civility and basic human consideration when everyone is just out for themselves (EFF YOU, AYN RAND)
Like any good dystopian novel, this one is made so much more chilling because it's not hard to imagine this "world" at all. We're well on our way there.
Sara is our protagonist here, a normal LA woman whose risk score suddenly breaches the 500 threshold because she and her husband, parents of newborn twins, are stuck in a rough patch. So she's detained at LAX after a work trip because the RAA thinks she might try to kill him, based on some dreams. She's whisked off to a "retention facility" where she's told she has to "calm down" for 21 days...but of course that turns out to be much longer.
Through Sara's harrowing story, Lalami examines:
--the horrific evil of for-profit prisons and mass incarceration
--the loss of privacy and how personal data is bought and sold to be used for nefarious purposes
--the loss of dignity under the cover of security and capitalism
--how climate change will continue to wreak havoc on everyday life
--the loss of civility and basic human consideration when everyone is just out for themselves (EFF YOU, AYN RAND)
Like any good dystopian novel, this one is made so much more chilling because it's not hard to imagine this "world" at all. We're well on our way there.
The Best American Short Stories 2024 by Heidi Pitlor, Lauren Groff
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
inspiring
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
5.0
Heidi Pitlor, the retiring series editor, writes in the Foreward that after the first batch of 30 stories she sent this year’s guest editor Lauren Groff, Groff replied that she wanted more stories that took “wild swings, risks, pushing against narrative expectations.”
You’d expect nothing less from a book with Groff’s name on it.
Then, in the introduction to the collection, Lauren Groff writes: “What I tried to draw together for you, here, are twenty stories that buzz with their own strange logic.”
Two things: 1) I LOVE Lauren Groff, and 2) Mission accomplished.
All this is to say that there isn’t too much traditional in this year’s collection. And for that reason, I loved it.
Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World by Katie Arnold
adventurous
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.75
I haven’t run much at all since the Chicago Marathon last October — I’m not injured, I’m just not motivated.
So I picked up this memoir by elite ultra runner Katie Arnold who broke her leg in a rafting accident, used Zen practice and meditation to help her deal with the mental impact of her injury, and then came back stronger than ever barely two years later to win the grueling Leadville 100 in 2018. Yes, wholly inspiring.
I learned once again — for about the 2,329th time, it truly is a lesson you have to learn over and over and over again — not to take running for granted. It can be gone in an instant.
Arnold is an astute writer, and tells her story with passion and profound insight. Banish the thought that she’s a good writer “for a runner.” She’s an amazingly talented writer, period. (I found out after finishing this she regularly teaches at writing retreats — which makes sense.)
If you’re looking for a great running book to inspire you to get your ass off the couch, this is it. No excuses!
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
adventurous
funny
informative
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
One thing I sure don't miss about Twitter is the constant cycle of outrage. It was exhausting, even if you weren't participating in it!
Yes, this novel is positioned as a skewering of publishing, and oh my, it is that! But it's also a skewering of our tendency toward jumping to judgment, group-think, and performative outrage on the internet when any type of literary scandal breaks.
Here, though, we have a legit literary scandal. So maybe the performative outrage is justified. But only Juniper knows the truth. What if she HAD been innocent? Aren't we supposed to take writers at their word? But she lied -- we know she lied, she knows she lied, but no one else does.
That's the genius of this book -- its "layers" are designed to make readers uncomfortable. I absolutely inhaled this book -- and it's probably a good thing, 'cause it would've made me deeply uncomfortable if I'd stopped to think too long.
I'd even start to sympathize with Juniper, who did an absolutely unforgivably terrible thing. But does she deserve death threats? Of course not. Does our sympathy for her receiving death threats start to spill over into, hmm, maybe she's not so bad? She's just a writer trying to push the rock uphill in the crazy world of publishing? Maybe her justifications for doing what she did make a little sense?
But, wait! No! She did an absolutely unforgivably terrible thing.
This was such a fun read -- a book fascinating to engage with and play "what if"...
This is my first time reading Kuang, and even though I'm not a huge fantasy fan, she's such an astute and engaging writer, I'm definitely interested in trying her other work.
Yes, this novel is positioned as a skewering of publishing, and oh my, it is that! But it's also a skewering of our tendency toward jumping to judgment, group-think, and performative outrage on the internet when any type of literary scandal breaks.
Here, though, we have a legit literary scandal. So maybe the performative outrage is justified. But only Juniper knows the truth. What if she HAD been innocent? Aren't we supposed to take writers at their word? But she lied -- we know she lied, she knows she lied, but no one else does.
That's the genius of this book -- its "layers" are designed to make readers uncomfortable. I absolutely inhaled this book -- and it's probably a good thing, 'cause it would've made me deeply uncomfortable if I'd stopped to think too long.
I'd even start to sympathize with Juniper, who did an absolutely unforgivably terrible thing. But does she deserve death threats? Of course not. Does our sympathy for her receiving death threats start to spill over into, hmm, maybe she's not so bad? She's just a writer trying to push the rock uphill in the crazy world of publishing? Maybe her justifications for doing what she did make a little sense?
But, wait! No! She did an absolutely unforgivably terrible thing.
This was such a fun read -- a book fascinating to engage with and play "what if"...
This is my first time reading Kuang, and even though I'm not a huge fantasy fan, she's such an astute and engaging writer, I'm definitely interested in trying her other work.
Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley
adventurous
emotional
funny
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Woohoo! It's only the first week in February and I already have a favorite book of the year.
This story -- about collaboration and creativity and inspiration...and love -- is just an absolute delight. I ripped through this book. Music MUSIC music -- so much music!
It's also of such a specific time (the early aughts) that the nostalgia is fierce! Anyone else remember the "Hey Ya!" summer of 2003?
I'm in awe of how astutely Brickley writes about music here -- she is able to completely deconstruct a song and make us understand why it works (or doesn't). Believe me, it's SO DIFFICULT to write intelligently about music. Or maybe it just is for me: "Uh, yeah, I liked it."
If you are a fan of Matthew Norman's Charm City Rocks, or Liz Riggs's Lo Fi, or...and this is a deep cut itself...Arthur Phillips's The Song Is You, you'll love this novel. (Yes, Daisy Jones, too, I suppose -- but the hipster indie characters in this novel would be pissed if I went with the obvious comp.)
This story -- about collaboration and creativity and inspiration...and love -- is just an absolute delight. I ripped through this book. Music MUSIC music -- so much music!
It's also of such a specific time (the early aughts) that the nostalgia is fierce! Anyone else remember the "Hey Ya!" summer of 2003?
I'm in awe of how astutely Brickley writes about music here -- she is able to completely deconstruct a song and make us understand why it works (or doesn't). Believe me, it's SO DIFFICULT to write intelligently about music. Or maybe it just is for me: "Uh, yeah, I liked it."
If you are a fan of Matthew Norman's Charm City Rocks, or Liz Riggs's Lo Fi, or...and this is a deep cut itself...Arthur Phillips's The Song Is You, you'll love this novel. (Yes, Daisy Jones, too, I suppose -- but the hipster indie characters in this novel would be pissed if I went with the obvious comp.)
Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor
adventurous
inspiring
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
First appeared here: https://www.thenewdorkreviewofbooks.com/2025/02/death-of-author-by-nnedi-okorafor.html
The hardcover edition of Nnedi Okorafor's new exhilaratingly original novel, Death of the Author, includes a tagline at the top that says "The future of storytelling is here." I'd already been planning to read this book after reading a great review in the Chicago Review of Books, but the first time I saw that tagline, I thought, "hmm, okay, so some publishing marketing person has gotten a little out of their skis here. But fine." Turns out that line is a really funny and terrifically clever inside joke which you only get when you to the very end of this book.
The hardcover edition of Nnedi Okorafor's new exhilaratingly original novel, Death of the Author, includes a tagline at the top that says "The future of storytelling is here." I'd already been planning to read this book after reading a great review in the Chicago Review of Books, but the first time I saw that tagline, I thought, "hmm, okay, so some publishing marketing person has gotten a little out of their skis here. But fine." Turns out that line is a really funny and terrifically clever inside joke which you only get when you to the very end of this book.
And read this book, you should! It's as inventive and fun as storytelling gets. It's really three stories in one. We have the main story about Zelu, at rock bottom of her writing career and fired from her adjunct professor job, who then pens a majestically successful sci-fi novel titled Rusted Robots. The second story is the text of Rusted Robots itself. And the third includes interviews with friends and family of Zelu giving important context to Zelu's life and career.
Regarding that last part, one of the themes of this novel is how we should rise above expectations or even limitations imposed upon us by family and friends who may think they have our best interest at heart, but maybe don't. Zelu's ever increasingly "crazy" ideas (though they don't seem to crazy to her), like volunteering for an MIT engineer's experiment to fit her crippled legs with exoskeletons so she can walk again, grate on her family who think she's just doing things, like writing bestselling novels, for attention. But this is her life! These are her decisions, and no one else's!
All the while, we get segments of Rusted Robots, a story about a post-human apocalyptic class of robots called Humes who are in a war of survival with a cadre of sentient AIs called Ghosts. Except an unexpected thing happens: A Hume named Ankara falls in love or at least like or maybe just a symbiotic relationship with an AI name Ijele. Expectations subverted again!
Of course, telling a story with another story (soooo meta) isn't itself original. But how all three pieces of this novel converse with each really is so smart. Yes, it's a novel (that subverts expectations) about subverting expectations, but it's also about the origins of stories and the power of storytelling, which I'm always here for. A few quotes from the novel:
"Stories contain our existence; they are like gods. And the fact that we create them from living, experiencing, listening, thinking, feeling, giving — they remind me what’s great about being alive."
And, cogent perhaps to today's moment: "What better time to listen to a story than when the world is about to end?"
I'd been looking for an onramp to read Okorafor for a while. She's a hugely popular writer with rabid fans. This is it! I highly recommend this as something to jolt you out of a reading slump or just if you need something new and different.
Familiaris by David Wroblewski
Can I interest you in a thousand-page novel about dog breeders set on a farm in northern Wisconsin that's a prequel to a novel published 16 years ago? Wait, don't go! Let me explain! I promise it's really good!
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Can I interest you in a thousand-page novel about dog breeders set on a farm in northern Wisconsin that's a prequel to a novel published 16 years ago? Wait, don't go! Let me explain! I promise it's really good!
So, in 2008, a novel titled The Story of Edgard Sawtelle by an unknown writer named David Wroblewski took the book world by storm. It landed on Oprah's Book Club list (when that was still a big deal), was lauded by critics (here's WaPo's Ron Charles's glowing review), and was beloved by readers (me, included). The story, a retelling of Hamlet, is about a mute boy named Edgar Sawtelle whose family breeds a special kind of super smart and train-able dog on their bucolic northwoods farm.
Last June, Wroblewski gifted us with a prequel, Familiaris, about the origins of that farm and how the Sawtelle dogs came to be. When I found out this book was coming, I asked a lot of readers if they were as excited I was. And I was met with mostly blank stares. What was happening? Maybe I was misremembering Edgar Sawtelle's impact?
Anyway...every year, around Christmas I have a tradition of trying to tackle one of the "big, important novels" I missed during the year. Familiaris definitely fit that bill. Besides with all that's happening now (gestures at the whole world), a big, lush, sink-in-able novel seemed like just the thing.
At its root, Familiaris is a love story. The novel begins in 1919 with John Sawtelle (Edgar's grandfather) meeting and falling in love with Mary Svoboda. Through a series of events, the two find themselves on a farm in northern Wisconsin with one of John's childhood friends named Elbow, a disabled and grouchy war veteran named Frank, and a few others.
Life ebbs and flows. They building their lives on this farm. There's a long backstory about their friend Walter who runs the general store in town, and his harrowing escape from the Peshtigo fire in 1871. John and Mary have two boys named Claude and Gar. And they begin their dog-breeding operation, creating a one-of-a-kind breed known simply as the Sawtelle dog.
Oh, and the dogs! The dogs! This isn't just John and Mary's love story. It's the story of how pure and wonderful dogs are, and yes, how we probably don't deserve dogs. There are Violet and Forte and Gus and Needles and Ocky and Jug and so many more dogs. The dogs are as fully realized as characters in this novel as the humans, and it's one of the many reasons I LOVED this novel.
Of course you can't summarize 1,000 pages (okay, it's really just 979) of plot in a few-hundred word review. But I'll tell you this: Familiaris is the type of novel you pick up and lose all trace of time. You sink in and it may be hours before you realize you need to blink or pee or eat something. Wroblewski is THAT good of a storyteller.
If you've read A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving, which is one of my favorite novels of all time, you'll understand that feeling. And the similarities between the two books don't stop at how immersive they both are. There are themes of fate and purpose in both books, of finding meaning and doing good.
I know not everyone will be interested in this book, but I'm here to tell you, if it's been on your radar, and you've been tempted: Do it! It's such a rewarding, wonderful reading experience. This kind of book is why I love reading. I wish there were more books like it.
All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffall
adventurous
hopeful
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
“What alters wanting is what’s behind it. Greed and hope aren’t opposites. Greed and hope are twins grabbing for the same thing, one in fear and one in faith.”
I am putting that quote at the top, just because I loved it so much. It stopped me cold. Read and reread. Caffall's writing is so profound throughout this adventure story. Another example: Instead of telling us a character is tired, she says the character "barely felt her sleep." Just little moments like that are so engaging.
Also engaging: It's an extremely fast-paced adventure story!
There are lots of comparisons to Station Eleven with this novel, and they're apt. Whereas Station Eleven though was about art making us human, this is about preserving the science that can remind us what the World As It Was was like, and could be again. Either way, preserving what made us human is what gives us hope. And the main similarity is that a small but determined band of humans endeavor to keep that hope alive.
I am putting that quote at the top, just because I loved it so much. It stopped me cold. Read and reread. Caffall's writing is so profound throughout this adventure story. Another example: Instead of telling us a character is tired, she says the character "barely felt her sleep." Just little moments like that are so engaging.
Also engaging: It's an extremely fast-paced adventure story!
There are lots of comparisons to Station Eleven with this novel, and they're apt. Whereas Station Eleven though was about art making us human, this is about preserving the science that can remind us what the World As It Was was like, and could be again. Either way, preserving what made us human is what gives us hope. And the main similarity is that a small but determined band of humans endeavor to keep that hope alive.