Category Archives: Book Reviews

Review of Possession by A. S. Byatt

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Time Magazine Top 100 Novels

Book 73: Possession by A. S. Byatt (1990)

This is a series of reflections reading through Time Magazine’s top 100 novels as selected by Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo published since 1923 (when Time magazine was founded). For me this is an attempt to broaden my exposure to authors I may not encounter otherwise, especially as a person who was not a liberal arts major in college. Time’s list is alphabetical, so I decided to read through in a random order, and I plan to write a short reflection on each novel.

S. Byatt’s Possession is exactly the type of treasure I hoped to discover when I embarked on reading through the Time Magazine top 100 novel list, a truly gorgeous work in its use of the English language, method of telling the story, and its truly rich characters. There were several times I would stop and remark how beautiful a poem, letter, or dialogue was. I could identify with almost all the characters in this book and see a portion of myself reflected in each of them. It is a novel of stories within stories that is often told by the imagined writing and correspondence between the characters. It begins when Roland Mitchell, an underemployed scholar of the fictional poet Randolph Henry Ash, discovers in a volume Ash used two drafts of a letter to an unknown woman. Roland retains the letter and begins his quest to discover who this unknown woman is and to see if their relationship, whatever it may be, sheds any light on the work of Ash. Once his investigation leads him to the poet Christabel LaMott he is introduced to Maud Bailey, a feminist scholar with a keen interest in LaMott both as a writer and as a distant relative. Together they discover a collection of letters between these two poets which leads them into a re-evaluation of the lives of both the poets the study and themselves as they both become captured in this quest to uncover the story of this previously unknown but highly impactful relationship. Although Roland and Maud have not published their discovery, rumors begin which also brings Maud’s former lover and scholar Fergus Wolf, English Ash scholar and Roland’s boss James Blackadder, American Ash scholar and collector Mortimer Cropper, American feminist and Cristabel LaMott scholar Leonora Stern, and a scholar who studied Ellen Ash, Randolph’s wife, Beatrice Nest into the pursuit of the correspondence, Maud and Roland who disappear for a time, and the truth of this previously unknown relationship.

Possession is a phenomenal story, but the creation of the poetry of both Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMott as well as a beautiful set of letters between them is incredible. This was a joy to read. The narration evoked a rich sense of the people and the landscapes they encountered. Some of the best use of descriptive language I have ever read. The correspondence was frequently as poetic as the actual poems created and it made me wish I could read more of both poets. There were surprises all the way to the end of the book and I was awestruck with this incredible piece of literary artwork. I loved this book.

Review of Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

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Time Magazine Top 100 Novels

Book 83: Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (1992)

This is a series of reflections reading through Time Magazine’s top 100 novels as selected by Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo published since 1923 (when Time magazine was founded). For me this is an attempt to broaden my exposure to authors I may not encounter otherwise, especially as a person who was not a liberal arts major in college. Time’s list is alphabetical, so I decided to read through in a random order, and I plan to write a short reflection on each novel.

Snow Crash is a dystopic view into the future from the early 1990s when the internet was emerging to an imaginative world of a United States that has devolved into corporate, religious, and ethnic enclaves and the metaverse, the virtual world created by hackers and populated by avatars, becomes the escape from reality. Hiro Protagonist and Y.T. are the two primary protagonists that are navigating this chaotic world where they are exposed to a plot which threatens to grant control to all humanity to the mysterious L. Bob Rife and his religious front Reverend Wayne’s Pearly Gates. The plot moves from technological to religious to philological speculation about the original human language being similar to the binary language of computer language. Through infecting hackers who have learned the machine code and using their blood to create a drug which allows his followers to practice glossolalia, the Pentecostal practice of speaking in tongues which is also for the book the base language that was shattered in the story of Babylon. In a plot that involves the Central Intelligence Corporation (formerly CIA), the Mafia, Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong (a multinational business franchise), the muscle bound and menacing Raven who carries his own nuclear device, the Raft (a conglomeration of ships centered around the U.S.S. Enterprise and a tanker) the plot is inventive if excessive.

Science Fiction is probably the toughest genre to write an enduring story within because as time passes the technology evolves in ways that can undercut the story’s credibility. Snow Crash is one of those rare novels where its concepts become the language of future technology: for example, the metaverse and the popularization of the term avatar. It also provided a fertile base for other works that would project a future where the metaverse becomes the escape from reality like Ready Player One. The religious and philological speculations were a part where, because of my background, I had trouble suspending my own knowledge to accept the premises of the novel and the devolution that the novel foresaw into commercialized interests thankfully never occurred in the United States in the way the book envisions. Yet, in the thirty years since the publication of this book there are areas where the author was accurate as we live in a time where they are beginning to construct an alternative reality and a corporation which rebranded itself Meta is one of the leading forces in creating this metaverse. Unfortunately, the book is accurate that there are many people who escape from the real world into the digital world and what was envisioned as a dystopic reality is at least partially being adopted as normal.

Review of the Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden

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I received an advance readers copy of the Warm Hands of Ghosts and I am a fan of Katherine Arden’s The Bear and the Nightingale series as well as her middle grade series Small Spaces. The Warm Hands of Ghosts takes the reader back to the historical fantasy genre of The Bear and the Nightingale, but this time the environment is primarily the hellish environment of Belgium in 1917 during the World War I battle for Passchendaele. Katherine Arden does a phenomenal job of presenting the environment of a world at war through the eyes of Laura and Freddie Iven. Laura begins the narrative home in Canada after several years as a field nurse for the medical corps, while her younger brother Freddie later joins the Canadian army in the trenches near Ypres. There is both a spiritualist and an apocalyptic framing of the war (particularly in a Jehovah’s Witness sense) and into the soul stealing space of war enters the beguiling but also devilish Faland. There are some similarities to the Smiling Man of the Small Spaces series, but the devil in a different context calls a different tune and plays a different game.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts is a story of humans caught in the inhumanity of war, of men and women who will sell their souls to forget what they have endured, of love that allows broken men and women to slowly rebuild their shattered lives, and of the death of a world as it gives birth to a new one. Laura and Freddie are both believably broken and yet still heroic characters who struggle to embrace this world at war instead of becoming ghosts of their former selves. It is the story of an ugly era of history beautifully written, of love struggling against the demons both outside in the world and the ones that dwell in the shattered hearts of the characters, and humanity trying to come to terms with the inhumanity of World War I. I appreciate the careful way she narrates this war that saw the advent of modern technologies like aircraft, long range artillery, submarines, and machine guns which was still primarily fought using the tactics of the 1800s and the disconnect between the experience of the soldiers at the front and the generals making their plans in houses miles away from these hellscapes. Even in this place of devils and destruction love still exists and it is the only hope for the lost men and women who journey to hell and back again for one another.

Review of Loving by Henry Green

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Time Magazine Top 100 Novels

Book 55: Loving by Henry Green (1945)

This is a series of reflections reading through Time Magazine’s top 100 novels as selected by Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo published since 1923 (when Time magazine was founded). For me this is an attempt to broaden my exposure to authors I may not encounter otherwise, especially as a person who was not a liberal arts major in college. Time’s list is alphabetical, so I decided to read through in a random order, and I plan to write a short reflection on each novel.

Loving is set in an aristocratic household of the Tennants in Ireland early in World War II, but in an unusual manner the main characters are the servants in the household and not Mrs. Tennant who is the matriarch of the household. Mr. Raunce assumes the role of butler at the beginning of the book when the previous butler dies and now, he is responsible for the management of the household. Throughout the story he is balancing his new responsibilities in the household with his budding relationship with Edith, one of the other servants in the household. There are several small and large scandals that are a part of the life of the household: from a peacock killed by a visiting cousin to the affair between Mrs. Jack (the daughter-in-law of Mrs. Tennant) and Captain Davenport (the next-door neighbor) while her husband is at the front, to a missing sapphire ring. The conversations between the servants of the household can be humorous and enlightening but this little world is disconnected from the big events occurring in the world around them.

The plot of Loving proceeds at an unbothered pace as it slowly reveals the scandals underneath the stolid surface of this world which is nearing its end. I can see why many people enjoy the dialogue and the gossip among the household but this world caught in its own little troubles only tangentially aware of the struggle for survival going on in the battle for Brittain. The war and the Irish Republican Army both make occasional appearances, but that is far removed from this world of old ways and old money. Ultimately Henry Green’s gift for dialogue was not able to keep me engaged in the meandering plot of mundane events. Like Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time, this one was not for me but others have found this work incredible powerful so please make your own judgments, these brief reflections are merely my consolidation of my thoughts on each work.

 

Review of the Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

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Five Star Book Review

Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea

For me a five-star book is something that either I want to read again or something that is so profound it makes an immediate impact. There are lots of ways that books can be compelling: a unique idea, an interesting set of characters, a complex plot, an artistic use of the English language and more. Reading is also a subjective experience, so what appeals to me as a reader may be very different for you. I read a lot for both pleasure and work but these short reviews are a way for me to show my appreciation for the work and the craft of the author of the reviewed work.

Erin Morgenstern is the author for two of my top ten all time books: The Night Circus and The Starless Sea. I read the Starless Sea when it came out in 2019, and this was my second journey through this incredible world. She writes in a way that is as beautiful as the magical worlds she describes in her two novels. The Starless Sea is not a book that everyone will love because it is like a nesting doll: stories within stories and worlds within worlds. If you can hold these multiple stories which all allude to the central storyline within your imagination and you want a journey to a fragile but magical world then this is the story to take you into a world where acolytes record the stories they hear buzzing in the air around them, keepers maintain and care for the world of stories on the harbor of the starless sea, and guardians attempt to guard the world. It is a world where fate falls in love with time, where the moon arrives in a great storm and interrupts the world of a lonely innkeeper, where a pirate in prison tells stories of sweet sorrows to a young woman who brings his food. The parliament of owls, bees, key collectors, swords of prophecy, a story sculptor, two lovers lost in time, and more surround the story of Zachery Ezra Rollins, the son of the fortune teller, and Dorian the former member of the Collectors Club as they are brought by doors painted by fate to the magical world of stories.

“To seeking” is the greeting of this world and the proper response is, “to finding.” This sentiment is appropriate for a book that invites you deeper and deeper into this magical world as you are invited into the experience of Zachery as he discovers the mysteries of the world at the end of its life and the dangers of those that attempt to defend it at all cost. It is a multi-tiered world of harbors along the sea full of stories and myths where lovers are torn apart and reunited. Is the book occasionally confusing as the characters attempt to muddle through the broken magic all around them, yes, but I also found myself content to linger as the strings of the plot from the various stories converge into the ending of a world and the beginning of a new possibility.

As one of the stories in the book tells us, this is a book, “For those who feel homesick for a place they’ve never been to. Those who seek even if they do not know what (or where) it is that they are seeking. Those who seek will find. Their doors have been waiting for them.” There is something spiritual in the Zachery’s quest into this world, and it is a world I want to continue to explore. Reactions to the Starless Sea seem to be polarized-some find it confusing and hard to finish and it is very different than most fantasy. It is a love story to stories and imagination and it is not your traditional linear story, but as a lover of stories and magic it was a beautiful journey into a place that I didn’t know I was homesick for. The harbor on the starless sea could be at times troubling, at times incredibly comfortable, but always with an edge of the unexplained and magic. The book is a door that opens into a magical world and if you choose to open it may what you are seeking find you.

Review of Ubik by Philip K. Dick

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Time Magazine Top 100 Novels

Book 94: Ubik by Philip K. Dick (1969)

This is a series of reflections reading through Time Magazine’s top 100 novels as selected by Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo published since 1923 (when Time magazine was founded). For me this is an attempt to broaden my exposure to authors I may not encounter otherwise, especially as a person who was not a liberal arts major in college. Time’s list is alphabetical, so I decided to read through in a random order, and I plan to write a short reflection on each novel.

Ubik is a strange novel which combines a science fiction future (as projected in the late 1960s) with a noir aesthetic in a world which combines time travel, space travel, a heavily commercialized future, psionic powers, and half-life (a way of preserving mental life by putting the person into a cryogenic state). The primary protagonist, Joe Chip, is a down on his luck tester of psionic abilities for the powerful Runciter corporation and a friend of the company’s owner Glen Runciter when a mysterious woman, Pat Conley, is brought to his residence by a talent recruiter to be tested. Joe quickly discovers that Pat Conley’s powers, her ability to manipulate time, would be an incredible asset for the Runciter corporation but would also pose an extreme threat to them as well. When presenting Pat Conley to Glen Runciter for potential employment the company is offered a job to deal with a psionic threat to a corporation at a moon base and Glen Runciter, Joe Chip, Pat Conley and nine ‘inertials’ (individuals with powers that can thwart the psionic powers of companies that the Runciter organization provides protection against). The mission leads to a disaster for all involved as the present and reality seem to unravel and the team begins to individually age rapidly while their world regresses to the late 1930s.

Reading science fiction from an earlier time period is a little disorienting, especially when the projected future is now thirty years in the past. The world of Ubik is a strange imagining of what the 1990s would be by a person in the 1960s complete with all manner of talking appliances and doors that are coin operated. The reality of rapid space travel, cryogenic half-life, psionic powers, and radically different geopolitics never occurred as the novel projected, but the reality twisting plot of the second half of the novel is interesting. The book gets its name from a substance called Ubik which is advertised at the beginning of each chapter and becomes a key need for the protagonists as they try to navigate a reality which is being pulled by opposing forces of degradation and preservation. It is a strange but imaginative plot with a mysterious ending.

Review of I, Claudius by Robert Graves

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Time Magazine Top 100 Novels

Book 46: I, Claudius by Robert Graves

This is a series of reflections reading through Time Magazine’s top 100 novels as selected by Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo published since 1923 (when Time magazine was founded). For me this is an attempt to broaden my exposure to authors I may not encounter otherwise, especially as a person who was not a liberal arts major in college. Time’s list is alphabetical, so I decided to read through in a random order, and I plan to write a short reflection on each novel.

I, Claudius is a fascinating first-person narration of the life of Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (or Claudius) who would become the fourth emperor of Rome. The novel takes the historical backdrop of Rome under emperors Augustus, Tiberius, and Caligula and portrays the world of the elites of the Roman empire. Claudius is often overlooked because of his lameness and his stuttering, but he learns to use his sharp mind as a historian. He is despised initially by Augustus and his wife Livia but late in his life Augustus realizes that his evaluation of Claudius has been mistaken. The novel portrays Claudius, presumably late in his reign as emperor, setting down an honest history of the Roman empire complete with assassinations, the debauchery of those in power, and the dangerous world that those in proximity to the Caesars must navigate.

As a person with some familiarity of the early Roman empire the book was a fascinating interweaving of fact and conjecture. Robert Graves gives a personality to these figures so often portrayed in statues and shows the humanity and sometimes the depravity of these men who will be viewed as deities throughout the empire. Livia occupies a major place in the narrative and is portrayed as a ruthless manipulator of Augustus and Tiberius. Yet, after her death it also becomes clear how she has kept the worst tendencies of Tiberius under control. Claudius is presented as a character who it is easy to empathize with, who endures the loss of his brothers, his first love, and is constantly at risk of being eliminated by Livia, Tiberius, and eventually Caligula. Yet, he survives all of them and to his dismay is eventually named the emperor of Rome.

This is a great example of early twentieth century historical fiction. Graves does a masterful job of inviting the reader into the time of Augustus, Tiberius, and Caligula without expecting the reader to be well versed in the history of the first century, but remains believable by a reader who is familiar with it. I look forward to reading more from Robert Graves and will probably read Claudius the God the sequel next.

 

Review of Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most by Miroslav Volf, Matthew Croasmun, and Ryan McAnnally-Linz

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Miroslav Volf has been an influential theological voice for me since his publication of Exclusion and Embrace and I have learned a great deal from his writing over the past two decades. Volf has been wrestling with the question of what makes a life worth living in his publications for the last eight years and this book feels like the successful culmination of years of writing, teaching, and seeking wise partners from his position at the Yale Divinity School and the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. His previous books on this topic (Flourishing: Why we Need Religion in a Globalized World and For the Life of the World: Theology that Makes a Difference) have helped frame the questions that now A Life Worth Living provides a guide for working through. A Life Worth Living models the class that Volf, Croasmun, and McAnnally-Linz teach at Yale, as well as at Danbury Federal Correctional Institute where they invite their seekers to consider several faith and wisdom traditions as they pose several key questions that are a part of seeking an authentic life. These questions include: What is worth wanting? What is the place of happiness in an authentic life? What is the authority are we responsible and what traditions form our vision of truth? How does a good life feel and what role do negative emotions/suffering have in the good life? What is worth hoping for? How should we live and what provides for a meaningful life? How do the various answers come together to form a life worth living? How does our good life fit within our bigger picture of the world? What do we do when we fall short of our visions of what life should be? How do we react to the suffering we experience and the suffering we encounter in the world around us?

One of the gifts of this book is it invites the reader into an encounter with a diverse set of wise voices who provide very different answers to each of the questions the book poses and provides a spectrum of possible answers for one willing to engage the questions. It is not a difficult book to read and it does not expect any previous engagement with philosophy or theology, instead coming out of the experience of teaching both undergraduates and inmates it simplifies the voices which come from across the religious and non-religious spectrum into an approachable set of stories. But the simplicity of the presentation does not take away from the deep nature of the reflection prompted by the questions that the book presents. This is an invaluable resource for those seeking to live a life that authentically reflects the values of the person trying to construct a life worth living.

Review of Babel: An Archane History by R.F.Kuang

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R. F. Kuang, Babel: An Archane History

For me a five-star book is something that either I want to read again or something that is so profound it makes an immediate impact. There are lots of ways that books can be compelling: a unique idea, an interesting set of characters, a complex plot, an artistic use of the English language and more. Reading is also a subjective experience, so what appeals to me as a reader may be very different for you. I read a lot for both pleasure and work but these short reviews are a way for me to show my appreciation for the work and the craft of the author of the reviewed work.

Babel is a book that is going to evoke a strong reaction from its reader. I love languages and have done a lot of work in translating and so a magical system which is built upon the distortion in meaning between languages when they are engraved on a silver bar was a fascinating concept. The attention to translation and understanding languages as systems of value and meaning may be boring to some readers, but for me this discussion resonated strongly. It is a story which can celebrate both the magic of the university but also the dark side of academia when it becomes tangled with the goals of the empire. The book deals with the difficult reality of colonialism and the difficult choice that the non-white students at Babel must make as they discover the ways in which their work is being used to exploit the countries of their birth. This is a smart, well written story set in a nineteenth century world modified by the advantages of enchanted silver working.

Robin Swift loses his family to sickness in China and is given a chance to come to England to be prepared for Babel, the Royal Institute of Translation at Oxford University. Robin Swift and his classmates Ramy, Victoire, and Letty become incredibly close as students at Babel, and as either non-white students or women they must navigate the wealthy, white, and male world of Oxford. They live a privileged life as Babel students who receive a full scholarship and a generous stipend, but they are also asked to commit themselves wholeheartedly to their studies. All of them are gifted students who have been trained for much of their life for this course of study. When Robin meets a person who looks like an older version of himself, he finds himself entangled with a secret society called Hermes. The Hermes society opposes the work Babel does to further the colonialism of the British Empire. Robin later sees the impact of the Royal Institute of Translation on his motherland of China and how it is allied with the trading companies who want to export opium to his home. This experience initiates a chain of events that sets Robin and some of his friends in opposition to the work of not only Babel but the empire itself.

R. F. Kuang does an excellent job of helping the reader see the world through the eyes of Robin, and to a lesser extent Victoire and Letty. It portrays the world of a brilliant young man who is often viewed as both important to the work of the Institute and by extension the empire, but who also is never fully accepted as a person who belongs at Oxford or in England. The characters are caught in the tension between the magic of the place and the devilish manipulation of the world using language. It is a sharp book both in its intelligence and its cutting and sometimes painful perspective on the abuse of both knowledge and people.

Review of Uprooted by Naomi Novik

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Naomi Novik, Uprooted

For me a five-star book is something that either I want to read again or something that is so profound it makes an immediate impact. There are lots of ways that books can be compelling: a unique idea, an interesting set of characters, a complex plot, an artistic use of the English language and more. Reading is also a subjective experience, so what appeals to me as a reader may be very different for you. I read a lot for both pleasure and work but these short reviews are a way for me to show my appreciation for the work and the craft of the author of the reviewed work.

I read Uprooted when it came out in 2015 and loved it, and a part of my reading habit is including books that I enjoyed previously and rereading them. I’ve read most of what Naomi Novik has written and this is my favorite of her books. Uprooted is set within a fantasy kingdom where a corrupted and malicious forest yearns to destroy the people who find themselves planted near its boundaries. The region is protected by a wizard named Sarkan, but who is commonly known as the Dragon. Every ten years the dragon selects a seventeen-year-old woman to come to his tower for the next ten years. Agnieszka is the protagonist of the story who is the surprise choice of this immortal wizard to spend the next ten years of her life in the Dragon’s tower. Agnieszka soon proves to be a difficult student but a gifted witch with her own relationship to magic which is more intuitive than Sarkan’s more precise and rigid approach. Despite their different gifts and approaches to magic their gifts weave together to allow them to do magic neither would be able to do alone.

The malicious wood plants devious seeds to attempt to entrap Sarkan and Agnieszka and to provoke confusion and conflict in the surrounding kingdoms. The wood makes an intriguing antagonist with its inhuman and corrupted drive to consume, and its ability to corrupt animals, humans, and objects. The story maintains an air of continual tension where the stakes are the destruction of the two kingdoms surrounding the wood. The wood’s manipulation of the vain Prince Marek springs a devilish trap which threatens to destroy Sarkan and Agnieszka as well as the kingdom. Naomi Novik does an impressive job of articulating a beautiful vision of magic within her world that can move between the elitist and rigid abilities of Sarkan and the folkish and musical abilities of Agnieszka.

Uprooted is both a fantasy story but also a coming-of-age story. Agnieszka as a young woman discovers her talents as a magic wielder and her voice within the political struggles of the kingdom but she is also a young woman discovering attraction. The intertwining of Sarkan’s and Agnieszka’s magical abilities unlocks feelings for both but there is also a vast gap between them to be overcome. It is a dangerous but beautiful world with well written characters, a constant threat of destruction by the environment which seeks revenge on all humanity, and a compelling vision of magic. The book invites you to walk barefoot into these dark woods and stay rooted in the magic of the place.