stephen_coulon's reviews
499 reviews

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

emotional funny lighthearted reflective tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Shakespeare’s finest comedy. While his tragedies and many of his histories are essential, most of his comedies are messy, excessive, and indulgent, and on top of that comedy rarely ages well. 𝘛𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘧𝘵𝘩 𝘕𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 is a shining exception. For a Shakespeare, the plots are easy to follow and the conceits aren’t too confusing. The romances here, though typically contrived, are the Bard’s most believable, and Viola and Orsino’s emotional courtship is truly touching and thoroughly convincing. Furthermore, Shakespeare’s ironic tempering of the play’s cheerful exuberance with Malvolio’s funny-then-disturbing subplot, marks the play with the maturity and wisdom more commonly seen in his tragedies. After reading, I watched the 1996 Trevor Nunn movie adaption. It’s near perfect and remains remarkably true to the original script. There’s something about the 90s that had Hollywood producing exceptional Shakesperian films.

Quichotte by Salman Rushdie

adventurous emotional hopeful lighthearted reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

It's Salman Rushdie’s second latest novel in which he recasts the story of Don Quixote in contemporary USA. The story follows a retired pharmaceutical salesman as he quests across America with  his imaginary son in a mission to win the love of a daytime talk show host. Here, the quixotic protagonist’s mind is addled by television rather than chivalric poetry, and it’s fun to see Rushdie apply his signature satire entirely to American culture for a change. His swirling magical style is impressively on display here, but the book glances just shy of greatness in his oeuvre. For one thing, so much of the satire runs on television culture, and while Rushdie seems well enough versed in the boobtube milieu it doesn’t come across as entirely genuine. It’s like he knows the lyrics but cannot sing the tunes. I can’t imagine Rushdie spending hours each day in front of the set – the allusions seem more likely to have been compiled by an assistant on his behalf. It’s a detraction. Likewise his attempt to grapple with the opioid crisis in the book. After reading Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead, Rushdie’s less than serious satire comes across as tritely thinned. Nevertheless, there’s a lot to love in Quichotte, not only in Rushdie’s artistry at the paragraph level, but additionally in a layered metafictional element he pulls of quite expertly in this narrative.

The Elephant Man by Bernard Pomerance

challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

 Sure I’d been familiar with the story, but it has been awhile, so I decided to watch the 1980 David Lynch film again, then read Pomerance’s play the same day. I was reminded that the film and play have different scripts, both based on the same real life sources, and mirroring one another at varying points. Both works are masterful. What David Lynch does with ambient sound to set mood in this film groundbreaking; John Hurt cemented his place in acting history in that role. That said, the play is equally as brilliant for its own reasons. It gets off to a slow start, especially if you’re familiar with Merrick’s story. But a few scenes in the playwright starts coupling up characters for extended dialogues, and the play comes to life with poignancy and pathos. For such a short work Pomerance reaches a surprising depth as he explores the idea that Merrick serves as a mirror that reflects to his audience their own prejudices, not just about the disabled, but about the meaning of life as a whole. It’s impossible to read this play without having a bit of an existential crisis, and it’s wonderful. 

The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth by Amy C. Edmondson

informative reflective fast-paced

3.0

It's Amy Edmondson’s conceptual rundown of the theory of psychological safety as a part of group dynamics in the workplace. The concept is simple enough: the best environment for workplace innovation is one that allows employees to openly share dissenting opinions and is a place where failure is seen as a learning experience rather than a mark of shame. Edmondson does a very good job with sourcing her claims when tracing out the history of the idea – these cites and footnotes aren’t common in these businessy books, and their inclusion gives the experience an academic gloss. It’s also fun reading about the real life corporate failures in companies that notably failed to promote a psychologically safe environment. There’s some schadenfreude there. Typically though in books like these, every bit of situational evidence is cherry picked, the author never really addresses the myriad situations in which her favored approaches might lead to massive failure. Nevertheless the central idea of the book is sound, especially in cooperative team building, though it could be summarized in a pamphlet rather than a book. 

Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir by Werner Herzog

adventurous emotional funny informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

It's filmmaker Werner Herzog’s incredulously truthful memoir. I both hate and love Herzog’s films. Some much of what he does is amateur and careless. The boring stretches of mediocre cinematography, weirdly out of tune synth music soundtracks, terrible editing and sound mixing, his shameless self-aggrandizement. On the other hand there is so much to love. He presents a truly unique point of view, his blend of abject nihilism and deep human empathy, his dedication to truthful imagery, his mission to tell stories no one else is willing to voice. It’s sometimes difficult to force myself to finish his films, but after every ending I’m very glad I did. I waffle on this memoir too. Parts are absolutely fascinating, especially if you are familiar with his films. The glimpses behind the scenes of his famously dangerous techniques are harrowing. On the other hand it’s difficult to know how much of it is true. When outlining his style of documentary filmmaking, Herzog explains his idea of “ecstatic truth,” which excuses factual dishonestly in favor of human truths. So every great story he tells in this memoir falls under the suspicion of his own dubious ethos. Nevertheless, he shares so many surprising moments of embarrassment, humility, and error that restore his credibility as a confessor in spite of his reputation for braggadocio. The best part of the memoir overall is Herzog’s manifold insights into the nature of living human life in an obviously hostile universe. If you have any attraction to Herzog’s pov from his films you’ll be fascinated by this book.       

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense 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

4.0

It's a suspenseful family drama by Irish novelist Paul Murray whose last issue, An Evening of Long Goodbyes, is one of my all-time favorite books. That book is crafted in a wry intellectual tone and features a whirling virtuosity of diction. It’s Wildean, truely, and a joy to explore. The narrative voice in that novel, which I suspect is Murray’s natural tone, is exhibited in The Bee Sting too, though only in one of four POVs, so parts of the book flourish with that sophisticated cadence I love so much. The other voices differ, purposefully, and to great effect as Murray tracks an upper middle class family that completely falls apart. It’s almost all characterization, which is Murray’s strong point in storytelling. This family is so real. What’s remarkable about The Bee Sting is Murray’s ability to build suspense in a literary fiction that’s not exactly driven by storyline. The plot is simply this: how far will this family fall apart? Amazingly, by the end of the novel you will be on the edge of your seat anticipating the answer. 

The Murmur of Bees by Sofía Segovia

adventurous challenging emotional inspiring mysterious reflective sad 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? It's complicated

4.0

It’s a family saga that follows the fortunes and misfortunes of a Central Mexican landowner’s clan during a decade or two in Mexico’s volatile early 20th century. Segovia adeptly moves through several points of view, all of which are imbued with a pastoral loveliness and a connection with Mexico’s natural beauty. The tone throughout is sage and sentimental with just a touch of magical realism thrown in, which works very well thematically. This would be the perfect companion piece to Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory (1940). Both share a setting (a time and place shamefully ignored in wider literature) but with vigorously different tones and attitudes toward the polity of the place in time. Segovia focuses in tightly on an intimate view of a single family’s struggles through the time. That she chose, and takes the side of, a family that is essentially aristocratic, opposes Greene’s Catholic racialism, and honestly it’s refreshing, though certainly not typical for today’s literary zeitgeist in the West. Through any lens it’s a beautiful book. It’s old fashioned approach in tone and structure prove that classic technique never fails as long as it is done well. I’m not sure why more people aren’t talking about this one.     

Choke by Chuck Palahniuk

challenging dark emotional funny informative reflective medium-paced

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

2.0

It's a first-person exploration of the traumatic origins of young grifter’s sex addiction. The author does his thing here, writes in an intentionally disjointed, gritty style to spotlight the often wretched lives of people struggling with loss, trauma, and addiction (usually all three mixed up and carrying on together). The protagonist is likable enough even though most of what he does, behaviors driven by trauma and compulsion, are lurid, disappointing, and often gross. By the end of it all Palahniuk explicitly states that he hopes readers will have a better understanding of the reality and difficulties of sex addiction, develop some pathos for those who suffer. It’d be impossible not to, though as a story it’s ultimately unsatisfying. The author’s chunky blocks of plot lack cohesion, and he often gets lost in his own passionate criticisms of culture but has no place to elegantly include them in the narrative. Palahniuk comes off like a cultural journalist diarizing important issues that are lesser known in American life. It’s stuff that’s good to know, but he lacks the craft to mold these stories into a truly great novel. 

How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

dark emotional funny mysterious reflective medium-paced

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

4.0

Ghost stories, horror, and adjacent genres really aren’t my thing, but this was a recommendation from a colleague so I dove right in. I’m glad I did. The book has a couple strengths I hadn’t expected: it develops an affecting thematic arc that explores the value of honesty in family dynamics and it plys an hilarious sardonic wit throughout. The central conceit should be enough to grab your interest, especially if you grew up going to suburban churches: a haunted Christian puppet show terrorizes a grieving family. It’s engaging, and funny, and touching at points, occasionally scary, but never gory or anything. I had a lot of fun reading this book. 

The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri

challenging emotional hopeful reflective tense medium-paced

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

3.0