Category: Literacy 2023

Book
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

Synopsis
A man returns to his childhood home and feels compelled to visit the farmhouse at the end of his street. While there, he remembers the first time he visited the farm as a seven-year-old, when he met his friend 11-year-old Lettie Hempstead, along with her mother and grandmother, and went on an errand that brought back something horrible.

Pros

• Neil Gaiman in his element, writing about all the things he does best: magic, myth, wonder mixed with terror, childhood, and the melancholy of adulthood.
• Doesn’t pull its punches, feeling genuinely dark and horrifying but without crossing the line into gratuitous violence or edginess.
• Combines all of the flavors of terror unique to childhood: fear of monsters, fear of getting in trouble, fear of loneliness and abandonment, and the sinking feeling that you’ve done something wrong that you can never take back.
• Feels epic and weighty in scope while remaining a focused, concise story — it feels exactly as big as it needs to be.
• You only realize after the fact that there is a non-magical explanation for everything; the story as presented seems so much more matter-of-fact and more real than any attempt to explain what really must’ve happened.

Cons

• A little bit too vague for the sake of maintaining a sense of mystery. This is absolutely not a book about the “rules” of magic, and is instead meant to evoke feelings and the sense of impossibly ancient forces at work. That said, I still wish that there had been more of a sense of structure to what was going on, instead of characters constantly speaking in riddles.

Verdict
This is Neil Gaiman doing what he does best, and it’s one of his most satisfying books. He has a talent for writing about childhood and magic that conveys the full weight and melancholy of adulthood, but with a sense that as grown-ups, magic is only mostly dead to us, not entirely.

Book
Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff

Synopsis
In 1954, African American veteran Atticus Turner returns to his hometown of Chicago on a summons from his estranged father. When he arrives and discovers his father has gone missing, the trail leads to a small town in New England. Atticus sets off on a road trip with his uncle and a childhood friend, eventually getting pulled into the machinations of a centuries-old cabal of wizards trying to perform a ritual to summon eldritch powers and bring about the apocalypse.

Spoiler Warning
Mild spoiler warning below about the format of the book, which surprised me and ended up being one of my favorite things about it.

Pros

• Clever, funny, genuinely horrific, with characters that you can’t help but root for even when they’re being abrasive.
• Somehow has all the fun readability of pulp and genre fiction, and illustrations and accounts of the tragedies and injustices of living in the US in the Jim Crow era. The sci-fi/supernatural horror and historical fiction aspects of the book inform each other and are perfectly intertwined, without sacrificing any of the fun of one or any of the weight of the other.
• The characters are smart, capable, and possibly most surprising, sci-fi and astronomy nerds. It feels like one of the most pernicious stereotypes in popular media that African Americans aren’t interested in the kinds of nerdy stuff that tends to be depicted as only appealing to white males. Even “nice racism” tends to suggest that black men and women are just too cool to be interested in science fiction or horror, which is, of course, complete bullshit. (And yet, when I saw “Tightrope” for the first time, I still found myself surprised that someone as cool and drop-dead gorgeous as Janelle Monáe made a three-album concept series inspired by Afrofuturism and casting herself as an android).
• Because of the above, all of the characters are matter-of-fact and practical when faced with supernatural horrors, making the story work as horror and action/adventure as they find a way out.
• The format was such a wonderful surprise: the initial story is relatively quickly resolved, and then the book becomes more of an anthology of inter-related stories, each focused on a different main character. This allows the book to have sweeping changes in subject and tone — ghost story, sci-fi fantasy, supernatural heist story, body horror — all of which feel as if they’re part of the same story but never slowing down the pace.
• Each story brilliantly acts as a parable/illustration of the injustices African Americans faced in the Jim Crow era: redlining, sundown towns, needing the Green Book to travel safely, the Tulsa riots, etc. It refuses to obfuscate or sugar-coat any of these topics, but it also never feels too heavy-handed. The topic is always given a supernatural twist, where the reality of life in the US is often at least as harrowing as whatever cosmic horror the gang is faced with this week.

Cons

• Slow reading for me, as several parts made me so angry that I had to put the book down for a while. This might be specific to people like me who are super-sensitive to reading about injustices, having never been the target of them ourselves.
• Encounters with the real over-the-top eldritch horrors are wrapped up fairly quickly, which does avoid overly long and drawn-out descriptions of the indescribable, but also feels a bit anti-climactic.
• If you’re vindictive like me, you kind of want to see the bad guys made to suffer a bit more.

Verdict
I absolutely loved this book. While it sometimes made me so angry that I had to put it down for a couple of days, the anger at the injustices just make the victories feel much more satisfying. I’m even more eager to watch the TV series now, especially knowing that the novel was originally conceived as a TV pitch.

Book
You Can’t Be Serious by Kal Penn

Synopsis
Kalpen Modi writes about his upbringing as a member of an immigrant Indian family in New Jersey, his path to becoming an actor, his time on the Obama campaign and in the Obama administration, and his career afterwards.

Disclaimer
I really dislike memoirs, so I was predisposed to dislike this book. I’ve got an irrationally low tolerance for hearing someone talk about themselves at length, and I feel as if it takes an extraordinarily good storyteller or an extraordinarily interesting life to overcome my impression of narcissism. So instead of the usual “Pros” and “Cons” I’ll just make a list of observations about the book.

Observations

• Frequently goes from being toothless to dismissive without ever coming across as gossipy, and full of bizarrely specific details. All of that made it seem more like Kal Penn fan fiction than a memoir.
• It was interesting to see Modi describe his community in New Jersey as being diverse and intersectional instead of insular, since I’ve rarely seen immigrant communities depicted in the media and when they are, they’re almost always shown to be some kind of homogenous monolith that strives to keep to itself. Modi writes more about bar and bat mitzvahs than Indian ceremonies.
• The book was written with a ton of gratitude and respect for his parents for working so hard to give him a stable life where an uncertain career in acting could be possible.
• Has a much-needed reminder that being recognizable or even famous doesn’t always equate to being rich. He says that Harold & Kumar gave him a ton of notoriety but didn’t provide a runway beyond a half year.
• Generally, he talks a good bit about financial insecurity and having trouble finding work, but also seems to have a stability that I would’ve been very envious of in my college years and 20s.
• His description of the Obama campaign and the election was vivid enough to make me nostalgic about that time and the feeling of hopefulness that came with it. His respect for the Obamas and key people in the administration is evident every time he writes about them.
• Goes into absolutely no detail about being gay, the process of coming out, any discrimination he’s faced because of his sexuality, none of it. Almost all of the book treats it as a total non-issue. The chapter about his fiancé is all about NASCAR, to the point that it feels like he’s deliberately refusing to discuss it. Obviously, people can choose to be private and choose what they want to write about. But this book taught me the names of his middle-school classmates and that he has a tree-nut allergy, but nothing about his experiences that I might actually be able to relate to. It’s especially jarring when he’s talking about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell or marriage equality while seemingly refusing to talk about them as things that might affect him personally.
• The next-to-last chapter ends the book on a sour note, insisting that the fate of his series Sunnyside was due to systemic racism and a lack of support and promotion from NBC. Obviously, I don’t know the real story, but one thing I do know is that I’ve had a crush on Kal Penn ever since he was on How I Met Your Mother, if not earlier, and the trailer and the pitch still couldn’t get me interested in the series. It seems like working in TV for 20 years would have given plenty of examples of how sometimes stuff just doesn’t work.

Verdict
As I mentioned, I don’t like memoirs, so it says a lot about the readability of the book that I finished it at all. I saw it at a queer book fair last weekend, and I was surprised to see it on the shelf, since I had no idea that Kal Penn was “dating dudes” as he describes it. It turned out to be a humorous but infuriating account of how people of color are treated in the entertainment industry, and a bit of nostalgia for the days when you could actually feel good and hopeful about a Democratic presidential candidate. I just guess congratulations are in order to Kal Penn for being the one person in America to come out in the early 2000s and have it be a completely uninteresting non-issue.

Book
The Skeleton Key by Erin Kelly

Synopsis
The Golden Bones was a hugely popular art book filled with paintings giving clues to the locations of tiny, jeweled bones buried all across England. The book brought fame and wealth to the artist, but a lifetime of paranoia to his daughter Nell, who’s been stalked, threatened, and attacked by the hunt’s obsessive fans. Now, on the book’s 50th anniversary, there’s a plan to create a modern version of the treasure hunt, launched with a publicity stunt revealing the final bone that had never been found. When the launch goes awry, it ties the family to an actual murder and puts Nell and her family in jeopardy once again.

Pros

• Brilliant concept, building off the real-world existence of Masquerade and, as the author describes it, “the human impulse to uncover secrets”
• Once it gets moving, it’s extremely compelling. I was up until 3 AM reading it last night, and couldn’t wait until bedtime tonight and had to finish it this morning.
• Juggles enough complications and revelations and escalations to make it feel as if everything is just on the edge of collapse, but without feeling too overwhelming.
• Does a good job capturing the style and tone of treasure-hunt and ARG message boards — everyone referring to each other by online handle, and the mix of people fully invested in the subject along those who are perpetually angry at the artists
• Pitch-perfect depiction of an egomaniacal asshole who is incessantly making cutting remarks, undermining everyone around him and passing it off as affection.
• One of the major revelations is astonishingly well done. You immediately have to turn back and read an earlier chapter, to see that all the clues were there all along.

Cons

• The depiction of an egomaniacal asshole was vivid enough to reawaken low-grade anxiety about people like that I’ve met in real life.
• Kind of a stumbling start to the book, as there’s a ton of necessary context that needs to be established, and it all gets thrown together in a bewildering mess of names and events.
• I just plain don’t like the main character; she’s self-righteous and a hypocrite. People kept pointing out she was being insufferable, and they were right, and she ignored them. There I said it.
• Not really a “con,” so much as mismanaged expectations on my part: the book is only barely interested in the puzzle-hunt nature of the premise, and is much more of a “Tiny Secret Whispers”-style family drama.

Verdict
This wasn’t the book that I wanted or expected it to be, but it was surprisingly good at being what it is. It’s been a long time since I’ve read a “can’t put it down” thriller, and this one definitely qualifies. It’s gripping even though there’s very little action or suspense; it’s all plot developments moving everything constantly forward.

Book
Eerie Tales from the School of Screams by Graham Annable

Synopsis
Children in a classroom are called on by their teacher to deliver an EERIE story to the rest of the class, and we get to see five of them play out.

Disclaimer
I worked with Graham at LucasArts and Telltale, but I would think his stuff is brilliant anyway.

Pros

• More of the creepy-funny feel of the Grickle animated short films he’s been making for years, but on paper.
• Suitable for kids — Or maybe more accurate to say that it’s aimed at kids but suitable for adults? I don’t care! — but there’s little sense of anything being watered down. This feels like the creepy stories real kids would tell each other.
• Graham is a master of expressions and poses; even after years of being a fan, I’m impressed by how he can get across a full-on mood and complete state of mind for a character by changing the position of a line by a fraction of a millimeter.
• The anthology format is great; it calls back to kids’ horror shows like Are You Afraid of the Dark? as well as adult horror anthologies, but also carries through the entire framing story.
• “The Face in the Forest” is my favorite of the stories, and it manages to be horrific and heartwarming at the same time.
• I love how it feels old-fashioned and modern at the same time; it feels like it’s not trying to be anything else.

Cons

• I read it too fast, so I’m only an hour from getting it in the mail and I already want the sequel.
• I’d been hoping for Principal Skeleton.

Verdict
I loved it. I wish I’d had comics like this when I was younger, “younger” including “in my forties.” If you’re a fan of Graham’s creepy-funny animated horror shorts, then this is a no-brainer. If you’re not a fan of them, then what is wrong with you?

Book
Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz

Synopsis
A Pinkerton detective arrives in Europe shortly after the climax of the story “The Final Problem,” in which Sherlock Holmes and his nemesis Professor Moriarty had fallen to their deaths at Reichenbach Falls. There, he meets a Detective Inspector from Scotland Yard who appears to be as brilliant a detective as Holmes himself. The two return to England to track down the mysterious American who’d replaced Moriarty as the mastermind of all crime in London.

Pros
Every bit as engaging readable as everything else I’ve read from Horowitz. Much like his entries in the new James Bond series, you get the sense that Horowitz either loves these classic characters and the worlds of their adventures, or else he’s astonishingly good at faking it. He doesn’t try to ape Arthur Conan Doyle’s style (at least for long), but instead captures the tone and mood of the original stories while giving them a more modern and action-oriented plot.

Cons
Difficult to say anything about it without spoiling one aspect of it or another. The famous moments of deduction here don’t land as well as they did in the original stories. The central mystery — or at least, what I’m assuming is the central mystery — isn’t particularly satisfying, since there aren’t enough suspects to make it that interesting.

Verdict
Anthony Horowitz continues to be one of the most dependable authors of interesting and engaging logic puzzle mysteries, frequently with some meta-aspect that makes them especially fascinating. Moriarty was a fun read, but I have to admit that it might be the least satisfying mystery novel that I’ve read by Horowitz. But then, I’ve never been that much of a fan of the original Sherlock Holmes stories, either.

Book
The Twist of a Knife by Anthony Horowitz

Series
Book 4 in the Hawthorne and Horowitz Investigate series

Synopsis
After the events of A Line to Kill, Anthony Horowitz’s reluctant partnership with irascible detective Daniel Hawthorne is complete, and Horowitz is free to pursue a lifelong dream: having one of his plays produced in London’s West End. But when someone is violently murdered after the play’s opening night, Horowitz is the prime suspect. His only hope is that Hawthorne can find the true killer and clear his name within 48 hours.

Pros

• Completely engaging, even among Horowitz’s consistently entertaining and readable mystery novels
• The revelation that I consider to be “the twist” — the real reason someone framed Horowitz for murder — was really cleverly done. I never guessed the truth at all, but the clues were all there for the observant reader.
• Does a great job of juggling lots of sub-plots and individual character intrigue, which serve as kind of a “consolation prize” for piecing together the minor stories, even if you don’t figure out the central mystery.
• Great balance between good, old-fashioned murder mystery and the meta-gimmick that serves as the premise of the entire series. There’s just enough of the real world to remind the reader that this is ostensibly non-fiction, but not so much that it overwhelms or distracts from the rest of the mystery.
• Feels like Horowitz has perfectly hit his stride with this series. There are very few of the weird shifts in tone that were in the other books — descriptions of a violent crime scene, a character’s unexpected homophobia, which were presumably included to make the novel read more like true crime.

Cons

• The case against Horowitz isn’t at all convincing, and I had a hard time believing any prosecutor would ever be willing to take it to court. This undercut the tension and honestly made the book feel slightly juvenile.
• Horowitz has settled on the characterization of himself in this book as being famous and successful enough to be frequently recognized but never respected. I should be used to it by now, but it still comes across as more artificial and a bit annoying instead of self-effacing and charming. (On the other hand, if he’d just gone with “best-selling author with long-running book and TV series” would probably be insufferable).
• Hawthorne is a little less unlikeable in this one, but I still find the character too irritating to be at all interesting.

Verdict
The most consistently entertaining and engaging book of the series so far. It doesn’t have the weird novelty of the first book, but it also doesn’t have the strange shifts in tone. I’m clearly hooked on this series, even if I only like or care about one of the main characters.

Book
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

Synopsis
Roach examines the various ways that human cadavers are used, abused, and disposed of, with topics including organ donation, forensics, crash impact testing, medical studies, cannibalism, decomposition, plus the advantages and disadvantages of having your body composted instead of cremated.

Pros

• Roach has a masterful sense of comedic timing, knowing exactly when to be funny without coming across as flippant, and personal without making herself the focus of the story.
• Extensively researched, with Roach insisting on going to the source whenever possible, seeing all the gruesome details in person.
• Stays positive throughout, stressing the importance of organ donation and ecological responsibility, and also allowing people dignity and respect.
• Full of information I not only never knew, but never even thought about.
• Frequently made me laugh out loud.

Cons

• Absolutely not for the squeamish. Roach tries to lighten the mood when she senses it’s getting too dark or too grisly, but she also doesn’t flinch at all while describing cadavers being opened up, ripped apart, drained, or allowed to rot.
• Uses Mehmet Oz as an expert on the topic of organ transplants, presumably long before most people realized just how much of a shameless prick he is.
• In addition to the gory or grisly descriptions, there are a lot of descriptions of torture, murder, or cannibalism that can upset sensitive readers like myself.

Verdict
Probably the book that made Roach’s reputation as one of the funniest science writers, and the reputation is well-deserved. I think I would’ve been way too sensitive or squeamish for this material if it hadn’t been for Roach’s confidently funny and often compassionate approach to the subject.