tbrnichols's reviews
151 reviews

Book of Numbers by Joshua Cohen

mysterious slow-paced

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

3.0

pages enjoyed 1-~110, 182-~240, ~520-Fin.

There's an idea here and maybe that idea is slightly compelling but it's a bit of a slog to get to and it's wrapped in a plot that's boring and tragic and banal but I'm not really sure in the interesting slice of life kind of banality but more like the insufferable white dude aping other insufferable white dudes kind of banal. This book could have been a short story as like this review could have been comprehensible.

But was the interesting banality the author in the first place? Is the internet and it's fascination with the surrounding circumstances the the parasociality beyond the screen any more compellingly parasocial than that of the novelist? Though not of Cohen or RAJC, as my nomenclature dictates (distinct from FAJC) since the self insert is not in fact the self. 

Some parts of this book were really compelling, with FAJC's observational flourish and creative diarism, verbal dia- well no that seems low hanging. Unfortunately far more seemed a nearly personal vendetta to show how shitty an author must be, personally, again verging into the uninsightfully banal. And then the interview section, the making of the sausage rather interesting, but the sausage abandoned in favor of the raw, uncooked, unfinished, uncurated, in fact natural and perhaps organic feedstock. Which I did not find particularly nourishing slurping it from the auditory trough. 

But and so I must admit that RAJC ties it all together quite nicely, though still I think the misanthropism towards his fellows Joshs Cohens as like considering himself roko's namesake inverted, a rather Catholic notion for a Jew, entirely unnecessary, though perhaps all print condemns to samsara until recycling, and so may the cloud holding this review return to rain and the bucket holding the reflection of the moon fall and may it's water leach into the ground, my anguish and triumph in the book of numbers lost as like C beam glitters near the Tannhaüser gate. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer and Death of parent

Moderate: Infidelity, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Sexual content, Terminal illness, and Pregnancy

Minor: Drug use and Alcohol

Kimmy by Alyson Greaves

dark sad fast-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? No

4.0

The book makes a very interesting conception of thought and personal identity being downstream of agency and a rich inner life being something that can only come from seeing yourself as someone that can interact with the world and create in it, as a means of caring about and respecting your wishes. And I think makes some compelling points about the limitations of play agency over actual agency to allow for growth and personal development, rather than  weird simulacra thereof. Also I found the book generally enjoyable to read, though the violence against the main character was a lot and was often emotionally exhausting but it was really hard to put down and really consumed me while I was reading it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Confinement, Incest, and Rape

Moderate: Gore and Gun violence

Minor: Car accident

Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle

dark sad medium-paced

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

3.75

An odd book, like maybe being adept at observation of small things, and in blurring the lines between observation and invention, makes the small life admirable rather than sad or harrowing, despite its circumstances, or perhaps because of them. On some level it seems like maybe too many words to devote to the mystery of putting a gun to your head and pulling the trigger, it doesn't really seem that mysterious to me, despite never having done it, and frankly the poetry of needing to contemplate what your done during the fall makes it so I never would. I guess it feels kind of cheap as a reason to write really gorgeous prose about unglamorous daily life and I'm not sure prose needed to be justified through this romance of cold steel. Anyway, I'm going to go listen to going to Georgia.

Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It by Richard V. Reeves

dark informative fast-paced

3.25

Overall I thought the problem statement and the call for honesty about the problem were good. But I think actually existing masculinity among boys was deeply under theorized, leading to a set of policy prescriptions that make little sense to me. Probably would have benefitted from a narrower focus on what solutions would achieve individually (e.g. the focus on CTE seems reasonable, but what are we trying to solve with it and would we not see fewer college bound men if it succeeded?). And I think I would have been open to more facially neutral proposals that happen to fix culture among boys and therefore aid them in schools, rather than just throwing up his hands and saying that neutral proposals mostly benefit girls. Also the education portion seemed much stronger than the labor market or fatherhood portion, both of which seemed to suffer even more greatly from the absence of analysis of the mechanics of masculinity. 

Assorted more specific gripes:
It seems insane to both say that boys are underprivileged in college admissions and that private colleges select for them, why are boys self selecting out of education? Is this a policy issue or a cultural issue?

Similarly, he talks about both men and women being interested in only relationships where men make more, so clearly men are also culpable in creating an inequitable culture where low earning men have no marriage prospects (similarly true for high earning women ofc).

Also more men kill themselves because they are more likely to use violent, efficacious methods, where women are more likely to try and poison themselves and fail. 

The examinations on boys being less mobile and more prone to being negatively influenced by environs feels like solid evidence for "cultural issue" diagnosis, like boys don't reach out to friends as much, are bad at staying in touch because letting a friend know they are important is too gay, boys internalize the violent expectations they are raised around and so fare worse if they are raised in poorer zips, wealthy boys do fine because their culture is softer and more effeminate. 

While his point about gaps and overlaps is well made, the lack of applying it to social forces is confusing: is it applicable to social forces? Does society affect different men differently via their genetics? Their agency? And it seems odd as your signature policy to have a fully gapped policy, redshirting boys, instead of coming up with some metrics to acknowledge the maturity gaps within adolescent genders as well as between them. 

The other policy prescriptions seem also unclear: if one of the indicators of male underachievement and bisiegedness is their absence from higher education, how will CTE and apprenticeships help? Won't these policies lead to even fewer men in HEAL jobs? Why does he think the solution to getting men into heal jobs would be scholarships and not increased wages in those sectors? Why would anyone want to build better infrastructure for men becoming home health aides (or even elementary school teachers) when those jobs suck (recall the new majority of parents actively disfavoring their children becoming teachers)? 

A Dream of a Woman by Casey Plett

reflective sad fast-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? Yes

4.5

I really loved the thruline of obsolution weaved between these other stories that contrast the sort of different but still extremely challenging problems that exist pre/during and after transition and seeing those contrasted against the problems before and during and after the alcoholism has really set in. And maybe too there's an element of the difficulties before and after you lose your family and your connection to the way of being you were brought up in. This book does a beautiful job of capturing all of those things and communicating the meaning and beauty in facing, whether willingly or otherwise, these challenges. 

Enough trouble really tore me apart, in particular, just the loss of control that she's feeling, but within that loss of control sometimes being granted access to the magic and needing the access to the medicine and glimpsing the misery ahead and behind and all around her. And within that hiding and controlling, the time that makes it work is when she leans into what she knows and puts aside some of the control and does something selfless and uncalculated and loving, because that's within her capacity when liberated from the image management that her medicine exacts.

Also I think the thruline of obsolution keeps this contrast between the deep internal anguish happening in that story and the external consequences and struggles that impact but can have meaningful solace within, rather than merely being endured more or less successfully that parallels adulthood vs childhood and early vs late substance abuse rather elegantly. 

Log Off: Why Posting and Politics (Almost) Never Mix by Katherine Cross

informative slow-paced

2.5

I was hoping to get more insight into exceptions of the (almost) in the title and felt it came a bit short on that. It seems to me that posting really can make a difference in the world of policy entrepreneurship but that posting is not the shit post or the call out post or the catharsis post, but the earnest take, something that is more the domain of blogging than microblogging but feels publicizable through it. But the book was a good look at why those three listed varieties of post and the dunk post feel like politics, but very rarely have meaningful effects and why they are easier to transmit and to follow via open platforms than the organizing, the community meeting schedule, or the site plan commenting campaign is. But I did enjoy it less than I expected to, and it just didn't have that spark in inspiration I was looking for, despite making it's rather conservative argument quite well. Also I imagine the more revolutionary aspirations of the author make her more dismissive of the possibility of posting (or really takesing) into the minds of elected officials and other policy makers, or dismissive of that as constituent of politics. 

Heartstopper Volume 1 by Alice Oseman

hopeful lighthearted relaxing medium-paced

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

3.5

I'm getting used to the under drawn style. It makes it feel a little like I am mostly reading for the story, which is odd, given I've already seen the show for this part of the story, but it's cute and made me happy to reexperience so I think I will continue reading them especially when I am in stressful situations and need to relax a little, as I was this weekend at a family wedding. 

Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America by Abraham Riesman

informative reflective medium-paced

3.5

I'm not sure this book really succeeds as a biography in the traditional sense, it was very difficult to get an understanding of Vince's motivations and drivers from it (beyond perhaps an extreme understanding of nietzchean master morality). But it did function as a good history of the WWE up to the turn of the century (in that sense perhaps a history of the WWF) and of the rise of the attitude era "neo-kayfabe". As someone who started watching wrestling in the 2010s, it was great to get a better understanding of the history of my culture (smarkdom) and it was astonishing to see just how much AEW was inspired by those years of the Monday night war. I found it a bit off putting for a book to be a love letter to wrestling, a "journalist trying to be smarter than the industry" in the traditional "it's all fake" sense that she even catalogues in the book (why are people often referred to by their names outside kayfabe when it's their characters we're talking about?), a history of one man's misdeeds, and a shoehorned theory about trumpism all at the same time and think the book probably would have been better cutting one of two of these threads. The trumpism angle was made even more bewildering by the lack of inclusion of political and policy questions about competition and anti-trust that seem so obvious given the return to PG programming after the collapse of WCW outlined in the coda. 

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor

adventurous lighthearted medium-paced

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

4.25

I found this book to be a really interesting mix of nostalgia that feels alien to me and that I long for and cultural themes that resonate with me today. Nostalgia for the cheap rent and dark rooms, with the  recognizable erotics of mutability and sameness, the dark cloud of the plague in mind but leaving our main characters untouched. Similarly youthful nostalgia for the formation of community through sexual ties, contrasted with the mature condescension towards the directionless wander of Paul's life without conventional desires. Nostalgia for a time when trans people were not as commonly a target of political fervor, combined with the liberatory joy of sexual transformation. It's hard for me to read this book and not feel less than, that my less raucous life has been a subset of the depicted, familiar with the put on vegetarianism for romantic connection, but unfamiliar with surviving as a dirt bag bartender in a small but still extant gay scene. But Lawlor's depiction of the glamour and insecurity of Paul's sexual escapades, unable to distinguish what will be soaring highs and ignominious lows provides both a compelling propaganda for cruising and a relief to return to one's own post-adolescent stability. 

Ask Iwata: Words of Wisdom from Satoru Iwata, Nintendo's Legendary CEO by Satoru Iwata

inspiring fast-paced

1.0

Essentially no detail whatsoever, 150 pages of feel good platitudes with occasional management style tips. Would not have started, continued, or finished if I hadn't been reading it with a book club