kurtwombat's reviews
890 reviews

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

challenging dark emotional hopeful 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

3.5

 

Often, I found this book to be gorgeous: a tender rumination on what it’s like to be the gay son of a Vietnam war refugee in America.  Conceived as kind of an open letter to the author’s mother, remarkably intimate and personally detailed—I was carried right into the heart of their relationship. For the first 80 or so pages this was enough. I loved dipping into the beautiful though often painful emotion, lovely language all around me but gradually I needed more of a narrative structure. Thankfully at times, the story did touch down on solid narration making me wish more of it was as straightforward. Then, we’d lift off again into poetic language that may or may not seem to apply. Especially in the last 50 pages or so, I would have loved the author to take another swing through the text clearing some clutter. For much of the book, the focus was on the author’s mother and his first love—both very nicely rendered—but the last section focused more on his father/stepfather (I kept getting confused—even his grandfather adds to that confusion partly because of the poetic approach) and just doesn’t seem to jell. And especially in these last pages, the concept of it being a letter to his mother became intangible. I could have read a longer book with a little less poetry or a series of poems but this mash up was often frustrating. 

She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement by Jodi Kantor, Megan Twohey

challenging dark hopeful informative inspiring reflective tense fast-paced

4.75

Fascinating. From the investigative work uncovering the vast history of Harvey Weinstein's sexual assaults on women to the powder keg of the ME TOO movement ignited by that work--fascinating. I'm almost sixty (I write the word because I find the number daunting) and fortunately have been quite liberal from a young age. Even so, gender stereotypes that served a male dominant power structure were deeply ingrained in me. Sure more women should be doctors but having a just a few around seemed satisfactory. Someday there will be more. Sure women should be directing major motion pictures--there are a couple. One day there will be more. Etc. And by extension, sexual abuse and harassment are bad but it doesn't happen that often and it will soon go away (and it's only done by strangers). Our culture has long been calcified by these conceits. I knew better. The smartest and most dedicated people I knew were mostly women. I was blessed to be considered a good listener and was stunned to find out how many women I knew had suffered abuse. Once I was married a whole new pipeline of second hand stories entered my life. The extent of such things is heartbreaking. Even knowing all this, I can still feel the box of stereotypes around me. Maybe I had just given up hope that serious change was possible in my lifetime. But the world feels different now. Sure it appears chaotic but that's what happens when you find that crack and push your way up through the ice. There have been advances before but the battles today for racial, gender, and Lgbtqi+ rights feel like they will not stop. I just have to see the fear on the faces of their oppressors to feel this way (fear is most often expressed as hate). So this book fascinates as a You Are There at the dawn of great possibilities.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

challenging emotional hopeful mysterious reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This book opens like the first morning light that eases the burden of the night sky. Subtly the light increases and the world begins to turn. Gently our naive but perceptive narrator awakens and begins to decipher the world--and her potential place in it. And by proxy, she seeks to find out where we all belong. In this vaguely future world are we abdicating our humanity. Is religion to be abandoned whole cloth or is the yearning a necessary part of who we are. Are we never more human than when we seek answers. Is it our lot to find our own way -- a job we used to outsource to God. Is it just simple compassion that makes the sun arc across the sky. Sweet without being saccharine, touching without being manipulative--there is a scene of such desperate longing that it literally look my breath away--I had to put the book down. This book is a miracle of simple narration crafted to be both poetic and dreamlike with an ending that is beautiful, heartbreaking and necessary. 

A Hell of a Woman by Jim Thompson

adventurous dark sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

 

This is pure delicious Thompson. He pulls you in with a protagonist to pity--Dillon who spares no chances to tell you how mean the world has been to him. Then he meets a sweet gal equally under life's thumb. Maybe he can save her...and himself at the same time. Quickly though you begin to figure his intentions ain't so pure and his luck not so much the result of a cruel world as it is the residue of his character. But you still humor the idea of redemption--the girl at least is worth saving. Thompson keeps pulling the thread--unravelling hope for this guy. And then the fall as if pushed out the back of a moving truck. The story slides across hard asphalt, Dillon is dumber, blinder and crueler than we feared, sliding off the road to a hard stop in the bushes. As he so often does, Thompson supplies a great ending. In this case two-- and you are then left wondering who the title actually refers to. 

I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron

emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective medium-paced

4.25

Warm, self effacing and funny. Took a couple chapters to catch my ear but then I was able to just settle in and smile. Her problems are definitely not my problems but the humor pulls you in and you feel like it is your life.

Octopussy & the Living Daylights by Ian Fleming

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

The Interchange by Andrew Orange, Andrew Orange

dark tense medium-paced

1.25

 As they say, I received this ARC for an honest review from Library Thing. And thank you. I didn't feel like I was reading a novel so much as having one described to me. This disconnect stems largely from the clunky translation. Amusingly there is a point in the book where the main character says he only speaks Russian and if he had to explain anything in English he'd be in trouble. Profanity is thrown in at random points seemingly as proof that the translation isn't in trouble. It all hurt my ears. The time travel concept was interesting -- a unique take on the actual travel technique -- and I did appreciate the author mixing religion and Marxism into a far flung dystopian stew but the set up before time travel was too long for such a short work. And it is unpleasant. When he finally does arrive in the future he asks all the wrong questions for a person in his position -- he is asking questions to move the story not questions that come from who he is or reveal how he feels (he should be scared but instead seems annoyed). The final crushing blow was a character in the future world called Junior. He is an uneducated child member of a slave race that seems to know everything and can express complicated sociopolitical concepts like he just rolled out of a community college. His full name should be Junior Exposition. The long set up before the time travel begged for more of a wrap up upon his return than there is. The novel just kinda drifts to a stop. 

The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham: Home Runs, Bad Calls, Crazy Fights, Big Swings, and a Hit by Ron Shelton

funny informative lighthearted fast-paced

3.75

 This book is for a specific audience. You pretty much have to be a fan of the movie Bull Durham to get into this book. I also happen to be a fan of the city of Durham which helps also. If you are, then you will find much of this fascinating--he covers the origin of the story and the birth of it's characters, the crafting of the screenplay and translating it to film in a straightforward informative manner. If you are not a fan of the movie you will likely not care about any of it. Written by the writer/director, the book touches on broader industry topics but usually with a throwaway line or quip. A minor league player himself, his career is treated as a series of impressions rather than a personal history. Alas, I am a fan of the movie and Durham, so this is in my wheelhouse--otherwise this would be three stars. 

The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson

challenging informative tense slow-paced

4.25

 

Mostly interesting, sometimes fascinating look at the birth and blossoming of the CRISPR gene editing technology. CRISPR promises to accelerate advancements in science the way AI suggests it might across all fields of technology (and that’s a book I want to read). Thankfully this book was written with non-science readers in mind—I was mostly able to follow the lab work with minimal re-reading—of course I’m not exactly prepared to write a dissertation (on not much of anything). The book focuses on one scientist, Jennifer Doudna, as an access point to the technology. This works well towards the beginning of the book but as more people hop on the CRISPR train, the biography part falls apart. The author warns at the beginning that several scientists involved in this work deserve their own books—this book would have been better served if CRISPR was considered the biographical center. With CRISPR always at the center such topics as the patent and ethics of use battles might not have felt like narrative stalling digressions. The timing of the book benefits from the Covid pandemic which offers another fascinating chapter—Doudna brought back into the narrative as someone working on the cutting edge of testing research. You can feel the author soft stepping around his sources to keep them talking—maybe this is just par for the course in covering such a topic or another downside to treating it like a biography. Well worth the read though some portions will require you to hunker down and push through to the next interesting topic. 

Praying for Gil Hodges: A Memoir of the 1955 World Series and One Family's Love of the Brooklyn Dodgersc by Thomas Oliphant

4.0

A lifelong Dodger fan, I certainly enjoyed the detailed recreation of the Dodger's only title in Brooklyn but that is only the surface of Oliphant's look at his childhood. The continually thwarted aspirations of the Dodgers mirrored his loving parent's struggles with financial and health problems while steeping their only child in the unique art and culture of a condensed and thriving Brooklyn post WW II. The Dodger's victory acts as a kind of familial crescendo of bonding, love and the understanding that some moments crystalize perfectly who we are, what we want and just what we need to hold onto.