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huerca_armada's reviews
73 reviews
The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey
3.0
Partly a work of attention-grabbing fiction and part field manual for eco-radicals and the environmentalist underground, Edward Abbey's book has a storied pedigree behind it. The characters are well fleshed out, eccentric in their own ways, and united by their common cause: opposing The Enemy (as central character George Hayduke labels all the manifestations of consumptive capital, heedless industry, and the intricacies of a modern civilization).
Abbey's prose conveys the natural beauty of the American Southwest in his short, snappy prose and glib textual intricacies. The vistas, cliffs, and the beauty of the animals that roam there are given lush descriptions in the book, as are the central targets of the gang. Bulldozers, coal conveyor belts, and the destruction of the Colorado River as a result of the Glen Canyon Dam are given piercing description in the text, enough to make you empathize with their ultimate destruction.
Well worth a read despite some rather drudge-worthy parts and its most pulpish moments.
Abbey's prose conveys the natural beauty of the American Southwest in his short, snappy prose and glib textual intricacies. The vistas, cliffs, and the beauty of the animals that roam there are given lush descriptions in the book, as are the central targets of the gang. Bulldozers, coal conveyor belts, and the destruction of the Colorado River as a result of the Glen Canyon Dam are given piercing description in the text, enough to make you empathize with their ultimate destruction.
Well worth a read despite some rather drudge-worthy parts and its most pulpish moments.
The Seven Madmen by Roberto Arlt
3.0
Arlt's novel is less of a story about its titular characters and more about its main protagonist, Augosto Remo Erdosain. Tackling issues of intense alienation, revolutionary ideology, and the path to power, Erdosain is an excellent vehicle for the look into the deprivations that modernity brings. The only thing that mars this book is perhaps some slight issues with the translation that I read, giving some of the characters' dialogue a stilted, flat affect; there is also a bit of intense filler at certain points that is hit or miss without also exploring Arlt's sequel to this novel, the Flamethrowers.
Red Plenty by Francis Spufford
3.0
While rather dry in many points for those who aren't economists, Red Plenty is an excellent look into a series of slices of Soviet-era life. All the promise and potential that was had as the Soviet Union emerged into a time of rapid economic growth into a brave future, before it all came unraveling from party bureaucracy, tentative policy-making, and other such problems. Its somewhat evocative of another book that I've read in a similar vein, E. L. Doctorow's , and if you are familiar with that particular book, you will likely find this one enjoyable as well.
Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton
2.0
Ponderously slow. I get that it's supposed to be a space opera rather than hard science-fiction in the vein of Asimov, Clark, and so on, but even still, there is entirely way too much going on in the book to justify its absurd length at 950+ pages. It's not a good sign that it took nearly four months to plow through the middle arc of the book, in which the exploration of the titular star is going on...
With that said, when the ball finally gets rolling, it gets rolling well in hand. Hamilton can write some good action sequences, with the first major conflict of the book being fairly gripping, and the last 100 pages being a fairly nice payoff. Ultimately however, more than a third of the book is non-essential fluff that could have stood to be cut. Disinterested in reading the follow-up; simply too much
With that said, when the ball finally gets rolling, it gets rolling well in hand. Hamilton can write some good action sequences, with the first major conflict of the book being fairly gripping, and the last 100 pages being a fairly nice payoff. Ultimately however, more than a third of the book is non-essential fluff that could have stood to be cut. Disinterested in reading the follow-up; simply too much
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner
2.0
Exhaustive, if overly long at certain sections, and with such a deluge of names that are flitting in and out of frame that it is hard to keep track of.