The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby

By F. Scott Fitzgerald 

Set in during the Roaring Twenties, this masterful story by F. Scott Fitzgerald is told through the eyes of Nick Carraway, a young man who moves to Long Island and attempts to learn the bond business in New York City after the war. There, he co-mingles on Long Island with his affluent and wealthy socialite cousin Daisy Buchanan, her brute of a husband Tom, and friend Jordan Baker.

Nick's new residence sits across the bay from Daisy and Tom's house, and right next to a mysterious mansion. He begins to hear rumors of an infamous man named Gatsby who resides there. Eventually, when Gatsby learns of Nick's ties to Daisy, he extends Nick an invitation to one of his lavish parties. Gatsby's plan to court Daisy, in an attempt to revive a previous love affair, eventually bubbles to the surface and tragedy ensues.

Brief aside: Do you know how hard it is to find a reasonable description of a so-called "classic" book? Everyone just describes the accolades rather than the plot. c.f. "Amidst extravagant parties and societal excess, Fitzgerald weaves a narrative of love, betrayal, and the dark undercurrents of the Jazz Age. Through vivid prose and complex characters, the novel explores themes of disillusionment, class divide, and the relentless pursuit of an idealized past. With its timeless exploration of human desires and the consequences of unchecked ambition, ""The Great Gatsby"" remains a literary masterpiece that resonates across generations." blah blah blah.

 

As a counterpoint though, my library had this to say about the book's description, transcribed in its entirety: 

 

"Nick Carraway meets Jay Gatsby, a young millionaire with shady business connections and who is love with Daisy Buchanan, Nick's cousin." 

 

I love that this basically says: "We all know you're going to read this book regardless of what it's about, let's not pretend we have to intrigue you with jacket copy."

***

Ah, one of those classics that was written by men about the American Dream in which everything is a symbol and life is meaningless! Women are unfathomable, men are noble, or brutes, or dogs, and we all learn a Very Important Lesson, like an afternoon tv special. 

I liked the first chapter, but as we get introduced to all the characters, none of them, or it, appealed, so that by the end, Daisy's decision to stay with Tom was as boring to me as what color dress she planned to wear, and Jay's death didn't feel tragic so much as exhausting.  

As Nick, the narrator says, they're all terrible people, and not even in interesting ways. They're terrible in terribly boring ways. I can understand why the book was a failure when it came out, and why it became popular by soldiers in WWII: it appeals to a man's sense of thinking they're deeper and more philosophical than they are. It's easy enough for most people to read and understand while giving the impression of importance and intelligence when you tell people you've read it.

It's short enough to get through quickly, a mark in its favor. I was struck by how literate it was. Just the style and vocabulary that would have commonplace in the 1920s feels ornate and antiquated now, even though it would be hard to point to any one sentence and say it couldn't have been written today. It does make you feel that people, on the whole, are becoming much stupider.

 

There's a musing cadence to the story which infuriated me. Not only the dreaded navel-gazing but the absolute mush of a main character. There's absolutely no point to Nick at all, may as well have had an omniscient narrator. For all he complains about the wealthy, careless folks he meets here, he has absolutely no curiosity about any of the non-white or non-wealthy characters.

I suppose I'm glad to have read it, as now I never will have to again.  

39: A Classic You've Never Read

Double Header: Duck Duck Taco Truck & Mabuhay!

Duck Duck Taco Truck 

By Laura Levoie and Teresa Martinez

"Duck. Duck. Taco truck. Working hard to make a buck."

Two food trucks staffed by sworn enemies: ducks vs. geese. Before you can say "curly fries", these two rivals are in an epic food truck face-off. "Battle on! At dawn, we ride!"

But soon, Goose becomes overwhelmed by hangry crowds. He sure could use some extra wings to help out! Will these foes find a solution and become feathered friends?

This clever, high-energy, taco tale, packed with bright art featuring kids' favorite foods, shows young readers how cooperation and teamwork can overcome conflict. It's a superbly silly summer story, the perfect pick for taco and truck fans.

Mabuhay!

By Zachary Sterling

Can two kids save the world and work their family food truck?

First-generation Filipino siblings JJ and Althea struggle to belong at school. JJ wants to fit in with the crowd, while Althea wants to be accepted as she is. To make matters worse, they have to help their parents run the family food truck by dressing up as a dancing pig and passing out samples. Ugh! And their mom is always pointing out lessons from Filipino folklore -- annoying tales they've heard again and again. But when witches, ogres, and other creatures from those same stories threaten their family, JJ and Althea realize that the folklore may be more real that they'd suspected. Can they embrace who they really are and save their family?

It seemed a little skimpy to use one illustrated kid's book as a prompt, so instead I used two! Duck Duck Taco Truck is a picture book for the 2-4 crowd, which is who I read it to. It wasn't an instant hit there, but I enjoyed it at least.

For me, the key to enjoying reading kids books for toddlers is that they need to be at least a little bit smart. Good rhythm is important (one of my recent favorites to read is The Seven Silly Eaters), although rhyming isn't essential (we also enjoy a good Marianne Dubuc story), decent illustration and compelling story. It doesn't have to be complicated, and in fact that sometimes hurts the experience. Very little actually happens in the evergreen Blueberries for Sal, but what does happen is beautiful.

All that is to say, the unexpected resolution of Duck Duck Taco Truck charmed me. I thought for sure it would be a great battle in which the taco ducks emerge victorious over goose, but this was better, a little bit kinder, even if I think the revised food combos sounded grosser than the original offerings. It's not a perennial classic, but I won't mind reading it a few more times.

Mabuhay! is a graphic novel for older kids, maybe the 8-10 year olds. It's a good little book, even if (like Duck Duck Taco Truck) it doesn't meet the high standard of similar books (here I'm thinking of Vera Brosgol's oeuvre).

There's good elements in it, characters, setting and illustrations, but I do think the shift to a supernatural battle would have been better served if it had been a longer book. The coming of age story alone would be fine in something this size, but once the paranormal element was brought in, it felt like we just got sidelined character development in order to rush through the plot. The revelations the kids have in the third act feel less important in light of the battle for light over darkness. 

That's probably why all my favorite parts are in the first half: Tito Arvin is great whenever he appears, the video game all-nighter with JJ, Althea, and Victor is hilariously accurate, and the side stories about Juan Tamad and Pinya are fun digressions. But having Juan be the one to tell JJ that being yourself is best feels like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Like it was shoehorned in because someone needed to do it and otherwise there was no point to Juan. There also didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason for the magical powers that JJ and Althea developed: why did the unathletic kid get martial arts weapons?

Of course, the book doesn't stint on the most important part (especially a book about food trucks): descriptions of food, including a recipe for chicken adobo in the back. That would have been real cause for complaint. Mabuhay!

 

29: A Book About A Food Truck

Mistress of Rome

Mistress of Rome
By Kate Quinn

Thea, a captive from Judaea, is a clever and determined survivor hiding behind a slave’s docile mask. Purchased as a toy for the spoiled heiress Lepida Pollia, Thea evades her mistress’s spite and hones a secret passion for music. But when Thea wins the love of Rome’s newest and most savage gladiator and dares to dream of a better life, the jealous Lepida tears the lovers apart and casts Thea out.

Rome offers many ways for the resourceful to survive, and Thea remakes herself as a singer for the Eternal ’City’s glittering aristocrats. As she struggles for success and independence, her nightingale voice attracts a dangerous new admirer: the Emperor himself. But the passions of an all-powerful man come with a heavy price, and Thea finds herself fighting for both her soul and her destiny.

Many have tried to destroy the Emperor: a vengeful gladiator, an upright senator, a tormented soldier, a Vestal Virgin. But in the end, the life of Rome’s most powerful man lies in the hands of one woman: the Emperor’s mistress.

Ah, Mistress of Rome: A Series of Unfortunate Events.  It sounds weird coming from someone who just read The Feast of the Goat, but long stretches of Mistress of Rome feel like torture porn. Or tragedy porn or whatever the name is for it when the characters go through one miserable obstacle only to find themselves in front of another, higher, one. Over and over and over.

Part of that comes from two of the worst villains to grace the pages of historical fiction : Lepida Pollida, spoiled senator's daughter who is sex and power mad, and who kicks off her career by separating our lovers and selling Thea to a dockhouse brothel and then later upping the ante by seducing her husband's son and being mean to her epileptic daughter, and Domitian, the emperor, who is introduced as a potential rescuer of Thea only to turn out to be a torturer and abuser of women and slaves, including his own niece, Julia. Domitian, obviously, was a real person, and I sure hope he was as bad as all that because otherwise Quinn has sadly maligned his character here.

Quinn's writing, is, as usual, exemplary, breathless and urgent as she takes us back thousands of years to the Roman Empire. Having just read her most recently based, Briar Club, you can tell that Quinn revels in the historical details available from whatever period she's writing in. Here, being so much more in the distant past, she's not able to bring as much of that in, but there's still a wealth of ground to cover, as the book takes us from 82 ad to 96 ad.

The early sections skip great chunks of years at a time, and those are some of the harder ones to get through- our heroes just keep getting kicked when they're down, and much of the activity is just place setting for the final confrontations that take place in 95-96. By the time our heroes emerge triumphant over the villains, I was mostly just tired and wanted it over with.

Quinn's talent shines when you consider that the whole book hinges on the relationship of a couple who have a few months together fourteen years before most of the action takes place - and the couple is separated most of that time.  We have to both believe in the relationship and care about it, and Quinn manages to do that, for me at least, although Vix, the erstwhile scamp born to Thea, mostly bugs instead of endears. He becomes a primary character later in the series, which doesn't tempt me to read them.

There's a supernatural thread running through the book as well: a soothsayer who is eerily accurate, some characters who escape certain death because of the implied favor of the gods, the mysterious healing powers of gladiator blood. It lets us suspend disbelief on some of the more unlikely plot points Quinn inserts (a gladiator who only loses ONCE in eight years?? somehow everyone keeps winding up at the same places together??).

It's odd to me, that although this and The Feast of the Goat both concern fictionalized re-tellings of famously assassinated dictators (and include invented women characters who were abused by them) they feel very different. Quinn's books are comfortable reads because although some characters do get sacrificed (I won't forget you, Hercules!) she tends to leave readers on a optimistic note: Domitian's death ushered - in real life - almost ninety years of Roman prosperity.  Our core couple, reunited at last, retires to the country. Marcus, the poor beleaguered husband, gets a new wife who likes him. Whereas in The Feast of the Goat, the assassination brings not relief but torture. Thirty years on, citizens have forgotten the horrors of the regime, and reminisce for better days. Quinn doesn't trade in that kind of punchline. But the cynic in me sometimes wishes she would.

06: A Book That Fills Your Favorite Prompt From The 2015 PS Reading Challenge [13: Set In Another Country]

Broken (in the best possible way)

Broken (in the best possible way)

By Jenny Lawson

As Jenny Lawson’s hundreds of thousands of fans know, she suffers from depression. In Broken, Jenny brings readers along on her mental and physical health journey, offering heartbreaking and hilarious anecdotes along the way.

With people experiencing anxiety and depression now more than ever, Jenny humanizes what we all face in an all-too-real way, reassuring us that we’re not alone and making us laugh while doing it. From the business ideas that she wants to pitch to Shark Tank to the reason why Jenny can never go back to the post office, Broken leaves nothing to the imagination in the most satisfying way. And of course, Jenny’s long-suffering husband Victor―the Ricky to Jenny’s Lucille Ball―is present throughout.

Reading Broken is like looking through glasses with the wrong prescription: at first it's funny to see how weird everything looks, but after a while it just gives you a headache.  Lawson is funny in smaller doses (hence the success of her blog, and why so many of the chapters are written like blog entries) but the constant digressions and look-at-the-outrageous-hijinks-I-just-manage-to-fall-into-because-I-have-funny-anxiety-like-Larry-David style forced humor is wearying. 

Luckily, or unluckily, as it happens, the anecdotal stories are interspersed with chapters on various medical maladies Lawson suffers from, which are interesting, at least, even if the diatribe on her insurance problems goes on for way too long. And obviously, you could argue that the length of the diatribe is the result of her insurers actions, not hers, but still, there's a point at which this is basically masturbation, not art. 

I sound grumpy and it's probably harsher than necessary, but although I've found Lawson occasionally amusing in the past, it does feel like her tragicomic theatrics are worn out in this book. Maybe I'm just older and more risible. Maybe I'm expecting everyone to have aged just like me, into a sedate curmudgeonly attitude that doesn't find the mere idea of little plastic penises hilarious.

If you read and like her blog, I assume you will like this book. For better and for worse, it's all just more of the same.

 

34: A Book Written By An Author Who Is Neurodivergent

The Briar Club

The Briar Club

By Kate Quinn

Washington, DC, 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic room, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss, whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; policeman’s daughter Nora, who finds herself entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Beatrice, whose career has come to an end along with the women’s baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy’s Red Scare.

Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears the house apart, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: who is the true enemy in their midst?

I've had this on my hold list for probably seven or eight months at least, patiently waiting my turn. At this point, Kate Quinn is now one of those authors of whom each new release will be guaranteed a spot on my reading agenda.  Although the blurb didn't exactly grab me - a far cry from her books on WWII spies, codebreakers, and other assorted heroines - it still ended up carrying her trademark: secrets, women, and yes, ultimately, spies.  

It's also stuffed full with a panoply of 50s historical references and side plots. There's almost too much going on, between the birth control pill, gangsters, segregation, the Korean War, modern art, the All American Women's Baseball League, gay rights, and the ever looming spectre of McCarthyism. Not to mention the recipes, for everything from swedish meatballs to honey cake. Quinn does post a lengthy author's note at the end describing some of the real stories behind her fictional ones. The breadth of the historical detail is astonishing at times - there's a scene involving a real dessert called Candle Salad that makes you wonder how Quinn managed to find such an offbeat but perfectly apropos recipe. The only one I wasn't at least a little familiar with was the invasion of Texas, Operation Longhorn, which is both so insane that it's hard to believe it's just a historical footnote now as well as perfectly believable given how nuts everyone else was.

The book is a little bit chunkier than her others: the framing structure involves a murder (or, at least, a dead body) and the police investigation of a Washington D.C. boarding house full of women. Most of it though, is lengthy chapters chronologically preceding and leading up to the murder, each focusing on the key characters and tenants of the house in turn: Pete, the landlord's son, Nora, the secretary and gangster's moll, Bea, the baseball player, Fliss, the English nurse drowning in motherhood, Reka, the former artist who narrowly escaped Germany only to find the American Dream not all it was promised, Claire, the gay pinup girl, and Grace, whose entrance starts the book, and who flits in and out of the others lives in a cross between a fairy godmother and puppet master.

There's certainly some things which, if you're familiar enough with the period (or, ahem, some relevant popular entertainment about the period) come as not-very-surprising surprises and the book itself feels much slower paced than her others, which is to be expected since it takes place over four and a half years. I assume Quinn kept the timeline that way for both historical accuracy as well as to give the relationships time to feel genuine growth, but it does make some things feel like they're being artificially set back, in order to have all the players at the table for the denouement (i.e. Nora reuniting with her boyfriend and Sid's planned escape both get delayed YEARS so they're all at the fatal dinner, plot wise). Those issues aside though, the book doesn't feel very slow, since each chapter concerns a mini crisis of sorts for its respective narrator. It would almost fit the series of interconnected stories prompt. I couldn't not use The Briar Club here though - the blurb literally mentions the unlikely friendships!

It also managed to make me feel somewhat optimistic about how things have trended in the US lately: if we can manage to get through all the shit the 50s pulled, perhaps there's hope for us as well. Overall, it was an enjoyable, if not necessarily demanding, read. I will continue to put my reading trust in Quinn. In fact, I have my eye on one of her older books to fill another prompt.

 

28: A Book That Features An Unlikely Friendship

The Terrible and Wonderful Reasons Why I Run Long Distances

The Terrible and Wonderful Reasons Why I Run Long Distances

By The Oatmeal (Matthew Inman)

This is not just a book about running. It's a book about cupcakes. It's a book about suffering.

It's a book about gluttony, vanity, bliss, electrical storms, ranch dressing, and Godzilla. It's a book about all the terrible and wonderful reasons we wake up each day and propel our bodies through rain, shine, heaven, and hell. 

From #1 New York Times best-selling author, Matthew Inman, AKA The Oatmeal, comes this hilarious, beautiful, poignant collection of comics and stories about running, eating, and one cartoonist's reasons for jogging across mountains until his toenails fall off.

This one was kind of a gimme, as it's not technically about a running club, but it is very much (except for the digression on Japanese murder hornets) about running. And I picked it up as I've started running again as well and thought it might be helpful, humorous, or thought provoking. Unfortunately, I don't think I would say it's any of those three, but it was easy enough to read and inoffensive.

I'd read, and reasonably enjoyed, the book he did on Why My Cat is More Impressive Than Your Baby, but this one wasn't nearly as amusing, probably intentionally. It ends up reading more like illustrated diary entries than comics. The best part is the story about the vending machine and the hornets, but there's no punchline, just an attempt to make sense of the force that drives us to run, and that's just not what I want from The Oatmeal. 

The good news is that it was very short and easy to read, so it's not like it was a waste of time. And fwiw, people I know who love his work were also chortling at this one too, so I think we'll just chalk this up to the wrong book at the wrong time.

 

17: A Book About A Run Club

The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King

The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King
By Carissa Broadbent

In the wake of the Kejari, everything Oraya once thought to be true has been destroyed. A prisoner in her own kingdom, grieving the only family she ever had, and reeling from a gutting betrayal, she no longer even knows the truth of her own blood. She’s left only with one certainty: she cannot trust anyone, least of all Raihn.

The House of Night, too, is surrounded by enemies. Raihn’s own nobles are none too eager to accept a Turned king, especially one who was once a slave. And the House of Blood digs their claws into the kingdom, threatening to tear it apart from the inside.

When Raihn offers Oraya a secret alliance, taking the deal is her only chance at reclaiming her kingdom–and gaining her vengeance against the lover who betrayed her. But to do so, she’ll need to harness a devastating ancient power, intertwined with her father’s greatest secrets.

But with enemies closing in on all sides, nothing is as it seems. As she unravels her past and faces her future, Oraya finds herself forced to choose between the bloody reality of seizing power – and the devastating love that could be her downfall.

Finally finished! This wasn't agonizingly slow, like Curious Tides, but nor was it zippy and short like Beneath the Star Cursed Skies. In retrospect I don't know that it was worth the effort, but the previous book ended on SUCH a hook, and it came so fast from the library, that I couldn't resist, and, since we're talking about PopSugar now, I feel like I can't just stop books halfway through when I'm bored, the way I've been doing more and more often lately.

It's fine. It's fine! I really shouldn't complain, I could have simply stopped at the first one, but, like I said, the revelation that they had to get married! To a former love who has betrayed them! was like trope catnip. Alas, while it makes the most sense for plot and characterization that the hatred only lasts about, oh, 15% of the way into the book, and then it turns to lusting and banging, I was really hoping for more angst.  Angst with a capital A!

This book is all about mood. Everything is dark and seductive, fire flashes in people's eyes, the glimpse of a city from far away is all ancient beauty, yada yada yada.  What ashes and star-cursed king are we talking about? Who knows, baby, it's all about the mood. The first book was all about rising to power and this second one is all about holding on to it through, gosh, at least two, if not three attempted coups. We gently gloss over torture and the hunting down of rebels. At the end, Oraya and Raihn unite the two vampire tribes who have been warring for thousands of years (because they have an unbreakable bond now! Everyone else gets to forget aeons of historically founded hatred and opposition. And I guess humans are living peacefully with the vamps now too, even though they are literally vampire food. Whatever! Oraya has wings now and that's super cool!), they bang a lot, and we leave the book having nicely set up the next duology, featuring Mishe and her trauma dump. 

I know it sounds like I didn't like the book, but I didn't hate it, I just... once again, am finding these romantastic stories of tyrants overthrown to be childish and sanitized in the wake of The Feast of the Goat, and that's obviously a me problem more than a book problem, but the stakes just never felt high. Admit it: was there ever a point at which you, dear reader, thought that either Oraya or Raihn might die? No matter how badly they are beaten (and they are crucified multiple times, not to mention both getting beaten by some sort of god-like avatar) they manage to heal themselves up just fine and come back to fight another day! Gosh! Vincent slaughtered thousands, if not millions of people, but in the end, he did love Oraya, so that's okay!

36: A Book With Silver On The Cover Or In The Title

Beneath These Cursed Stars

Beneath These Cursed Stars

By Lexi Ryan

Princess Jasalyn has a secret. Armed with an enchanted ring that gives her death’s kiss, Jas has been sneaking away from the palace at night to assassinate her enemies.

Shape-shifter Felicity needs a miracle. Fated to kill her magical father, she’s been using her unique ability to evade a fatal prophecy.

When rumors of evil king Mordeus’s resurrection spread through the shadow court, Jasalyn decides to end him once and for all. Felicity agrees to take the form of the princess, allowing Jas to covertly hunt Mordeus—and starting Felicity on the path that could finally take her home.

While Jasalyn teams up with the charming and handsome Kendrick, Felicity sets out to get closer to the Wild Fae king, Misha. Kendrick helps Jasalyn feel something other than anger for the first time in three years, and Misha makes Felicity wish for a world where she’s free to be her true self. Soon, the girls’ missions are at risk right alongside their hearts.

The future of the human and fae realms hangs in the balance as fates intertwine. Between perilous tasks, grim secrets, and forbidden romances, Jasalyn and Felicity find that perhaps their stars are the most cursed of all.

This was just what I needed as a palate cleanser after both The Feast of the Goat and Curious Tides. The first was way too heavy and the latter was way too slow, and this hit the sweet spot of being not too serious and a light, easy read.

Sidebar time: frankly any YA adjacent fantasy which involves despotic rulers feels so much more juvenile though, after reading The Feast of the Goat and all the real ways that people can be hurt and demoralized under a terrible regime. I happened to read two after The Feast of the Goat, and the feel so simplistic in how they treat tyranny. Tyrant=bad, resistance=good. Scars make you look tougher. PTSD is mostly nightmares that go away when you meet a hot guy. You've never given up on your humanity, and in the end all suffering is noble. I certainly don't think we need to get graphic in our fantasy, but it does add inauthenticity to the genre, which was already fantastical to start with.

Some reviews recommended reading this after the first duology in the world, These Hollow Vows and These Twisted Bonds.  Not only did I not realize this was set after a previous series and referencing the same characters, I also thought it was a standalone novel, and it very much is not.  So you could say I started with part 3 of 4. Nevertheless I was able to follow the storyline and setup decently well, although I did occasionally confuse the two female protagonists, which, since one is the princess and the other is pretending to be the princess, I don't take full responsibility for.

It's a good little book, moving quickly along, doesn't waste much times drawing out the central mystery of the resurrection of the aforementioned tyrant. The one thing that didn't make much sense, and is a critical plot point, so perhaps it will be explained in the next book, is why/how Felicity was inserted as the pretend princess without any apparent means for her to communicate updates to the rebels. She just had to wait for her contact to show up? Seems kinda like a problem waiting to happen, especially when they keep alluding to their spies on the inside.

The romances, while admittedly, ridiculously sudden and convenient, were both written well enough to get you to suspend disbelief and I appreciated the plotting behind both couples' splits- Felicity's was almost guaranteed as a result of her impersonation, but the idea of Kendrick being in cahoots with the tyrant was something I was surprised by, yet also felt pretty organic from the prior plots, so kudos on that. None of the weird sword/portal thing made much sense though, but it didn't bother me excessively since it was pretty obviously just there as a Macguffin.

I enjoyed it enough to consider seeking out the first duology and am kicking myself for reading a book which ends on such a cliffhanger when the next one won't be out for at least six months. We leave both Felicity and Jasalyn in danger, Felicity in King Misha's dungeons, at his mercy for having betrayed him twice over - once for impersonating the princess and the second time for impersonating Felicity, i.e., the woman who he's seen in his dreams (of course), and Jasalyn setting out for the Macguffin on foot by herself, feeling betrayed by Kendrick in her turn, for his having lied to her about his reasons for being in the dungeon to begin with (not to mention his long-lost fiance, who (of course) will make another appearance in the next book, I'm sure. There's not much mystery about the plot beats, but Ryan does a decent job with it notwithstanding. I will say that now I've gone back and read the first book in the series (well, the excerpt, anyway) and it is startling how different Jasalyn comes across. Is it wrong to say I prefer the depressed, killer version instead of the stupidly optimistic one?

18: A Book Containing Magical Creatures That Aren't Dragons

Curious Tides

Curious Tides 

By Pascale Lacelle

Emory might be a student at the prestigious Aldryn College for Lunar Magics, but her healing abilities have always been mediocre at best—until a treacherous night in the Dovermere sea caves leaves a group of her classmates dead and her as the only survivor. Now Emory is plagued by strange, impossible powers that no healer should possess.

Powers that would ruin her life if the wrong person were to discover them.

To gain control of these new abilities, Emory enlists the help of the school’s most reclusive student, Baz—a boy already well-versed in the deadly nature of darker magic, whose sister happened to be one of the drowned students and Emory’s best friend. Determined to find the truth behind the drownings and the cult-like secret society she’s convinced her classmates were involved in, Emory is faced with even more questions when the supposedly drowned students start washing ashore— alive —only for them each immediately to die horrible, magical deaths.

And Emory is not the only one seeking answers. When her new magic captures the society’s attention, she finds herself drawn into their world of privilege and power, all while wondering if the truth she’s searching for might lead her right back to Dovermere…to face the fate she was never meant to escape.

Curious Tides can be summed up in one word: it's boring. It was boring when I read the first few chapters, it was boring when I was halfway through, it was mildly interesting at the end, and when I finished it and read the teaser for the next book in the series, I found myself completely uninterested in following up. In fact, not only do I keep forgetting that I've finished it, I've been forgetting that I've read it at all. In fact, when I was writing this review, I kept typing the title as "Cursed Tides" because I was getting it confused with another book.

If you look through other reviews there's two common complaints: one, even by those who ended up liking it, is that it's very slow to start. I agree. Somehow the author has taken a scenario in which our protagonist washes up on shore with four dead bodies and made it ... uncompelling. 

Second, people find Emory, our ostensible hero, annoying. I also agree with this, and with the person who says Emory comes across super young, and possibly was aged up to 19 just so a sex scene could be included (although I have no idea why, since that was also boring to read). Emory is the kind of person who somehow inherits a mysterious power that we're told is incredibly dangerous and could lead to her destruction and the death of other around her, like a bomb, and when her friend Baz, whom she's harassed into helping train her surreptitiously, tells her to call it a night, she tells him he's being too cautious and she just starts using it willy-nilly. And it's all okay! Absolutely nothing happens as a result of this idiotic decision. She won't tell Baz crucial information about that night, but shares everything with Kieran, because he...keeps looking at her meaningfully, I guess.

I don't know if Emory was meant to be as annoying as she was, but she consistently uses Baz (and his crush on her) to get him to do things for her, she beelines for this secret society despite secret societies always being bad news, falls hard for this Kieran kid who is clearly using her, assumes her 'friend' Penelope has ratted on her to the dean even though Penelope literally knows nothing, MOPES about every damn thing, even the fact that her best friend got invited to this secret society and didn't tell her, like she isn't doing the exact same damn thing, and at no point is she written like these are the actions of an asshole. Does she get an indefinite pass because her friend disappeared after doing a stupid ritual for a secret society? Because Romie was Baz's sister and he didn't come across as an asshole. It's like the author has to have Emory do all this for the book's plot, but then didn't want to have her be an antihero, so instead we all have to pretend her actions are forgiveable.

The third thing I didn't like about the book, which wasn't necessarily something others agreed with me on, was the magic system.  Lacelle sets it up with four moons (full, waxing, waning, and new) and each of these has like four "specialties", like soultending and wardcrafting and purifying and lightkeeping and dreaming and unraveling and memorists and reaping and amplifying and wordsmiths and sowing and glamouring and darkbearing and shadow guiding and healers and seers, and then there's also eclipses which also have separate powers and now we're at, like 20+ random powers (and which is which and who is what are RELEVANT to the plot, so you gotta try to remember all this shit) PLUS there's some fairy tale book about the powers being taken over by shadow which is also important except that it was introduced in the first chapter with all this other stuff and I promptly forgot. So the whole villain's motivation is like, making a path between worlds and undoing stuff about the four original moon gods, but none of it ever made much sense to me. There's tides and water magic and fake magic that comes from siphoned off stuff from people who have Collapsed, but also apparently after you collapse you're super strong but this is a complete secret. Anyway, there was a lot to keep straight and I had no interest in doing so.

What else can I say? It's already forgotten.

16: A Book Set In Or Around A Body Of Water

The Feast of the Goat

The Feast of the Goat

By Mario Vargas Llosa

Haunted all her life by feelings of terror and emptiness, forty-nine-year-old Urania Cabral returns to her native Dominican Republic - and finds herself reliving the events of l961, when the capital was still called Trujillo City and one old man terrorized a nation of three million. Rafael Trujillo, the depraved ailing dictator whom Dominicans call the Goat, controls his inner circle with a combination of violence and blackmail. In Trujillo's gaudy palace, treachery and cowardice have become a way of life. But Trujillo's grasp is slipping. There is a conspiracy against him, and a Machiavellian revolution already underway that will have bloody consequences of its own.

You can tell the book is written by an expert. Despite the heavy (and at times excruciating - the rape of a pre-teen seems mild in comparison to some of the horrors described) material you are kept rapt, pressing on to the inevitable conclusion. The book deals in turn with three storylines: Urania, a woman returning to the country after 35 years, who comes to reckon with the past and her family's involvement with the regime (wholly invented by Vargas Llosa), a collection of collaborationists, traitors and conspirators, waiting to assassinate the dictator (real people fictionalized), and the dictator himself, Trujillo, on what will become the last day of his life (also, obviously real but fictionalized). There's multiple flashbacks in each story-line and, especially in Urania's story-line, the text will switch abruptly between present and past conversations with no noticeable delineation. This is used more heavily in the later chapters, when we have a better understanding of all the players and plots, but it's still not an easy book to read.

Since it's not entirely fictional, there's a need to include certain prominent figures, even though it can complicate and confuse the reader. There's seven conspirators waiting for the car, and more who are waiting in the wings. There's multiple government officials and hangers on. All of these people are known to each other and in some cases are brothers, cousins, uncles and nephews. The sections involving Urania's story are relatively contained in comparison: her, her father, aunt, cousins, and a nurse, all of whom are made up, are the only characters in the present. Although I managed to keep most of the large cast straight, I did struggle, particularly in the last few chapters, at the culmination of the assassination, when the scope of the plan widened and the ripple effects began to be seen.

It's also interesting to note that although the beginning of the book takes each of the three story-lines in turn, around chapter 19, when we leave Urania waiting to be delivered to the belly of the beast, several chapters in a row focus more on the immediate and long term period after the assassination, and Vargas Llosa instead slots in the finale to Urania's story as the very last chapter. It's both out of order and interestingly, Urania's last chapter follows the "Balaguer chapter" which ends, somewhat optimistically, with the removal of the Trujillo family from the country and the pardoning of the living conspirators - they literally walk into Balaguer's open, welcoming arms. Balaguer's chapter is also the last chronological moment before Urania comes back to the country 35 years later, which is the start of the book. As tempting as it might have been to leave it at Balaguer, Vargas Llosa instead returns us back to the scene of one of Trujillo's final, personal, petty crimes (albeit wholly fictional one), and reminds us that no matter the events to follow, the effect of the regime cannot and should be be forgotten - and in the character of Urania, physically unable to forget, as others in the book appear to have done. 

I think Vargas Llosa does an incredible job of setting us in the time and place, and in differentiating between the various narrators, which is something that can be hard for authors to do. Here, it's immediately apparent when Urania or Trujillo is narrating, although some of the assassins are not as easily distinguishable from each other. Although we know what happens to Trujillo (he was in fact, assassinated in May 1961) you anticipate the moment as a reader with some relief of anxiety and joy. After so much detail about the degradation and horrors that Trujillo presided over, you want Trujillo to be done, you want the assassins to succeed, and you know (as someone with access to Wikipedia) that they do. I don't know whether Vargas Llosa assumes knowledge of the outcome on the reader's part. Surely, as it become more and more distant past - it's already been 23 years since the book was first published - fewer and fewer readers can be expected to be familiar with what happens next. Certainly I didn't know, and didn't "spoil" myself. This section was the hardest for me to read, perhaps because it was so immediate, perhaps because it seemed so unjust for an action which should have been celebrated (and in fact was, if only they could have lived long enough to see it).  History is written by the victors.

In the end, I am left with only two questions, both of which come from Urania's fictional story-line, and which therefore the author has even more deliberately decided not to address overtly: Who hid the memo (if, in fact it was deliberately hidden) from Trujillo about Urania's departure? One reviewer attributes the memo's disappearance to Balaguer as a nod that no action of Balaguer is ever unconsidered, and states that it is a demonstration of Vargas Llosa's appreciation for him as a politician, by showing Balaguer's compassion in that (completely fictional) moment. That's a compelling argument. I did think that Balaguer, of all the characters, was probably the hardest to write about, given his outsized importance to the country later, and the fact that, at the time the book was written, he was still living and still actively involved in politics, despite his age and health. It is hard to judge the legacy of a living person.

My second question was about the ostracization of Cabral in the first place. Was it just a loyalty test, as Trujillo seems to allude to in one chapter, or was it designed with ulterior motives in mind? I also think it's interesting that Vargas Llosa so clearly lays out the torture and consequences for those in opposition to the regime in the later chapters. It adds more layers to Cabral's decision to pimp his daughter out, in his effort to appease the Generalissimo. There are real, and not imagined, consequences for angering that type of person.  In this case, the choice was fatal not only due to Trujillo's inability to perform and further angering him, but also being ultimately pointless given his assassination weeks later. But would there be a devil on the shoulder to say that, in the absence of that foresight, Cabral's choice was unreasonable? When you live in hell, what salve to conscience can you afford? "In this country, in one way or another, everyone had been, was, or would be part of the regime. 'The worst thing that can happen to a Dominican is to be intelligent or competent,' he had once heard Agustín Cabral say ...and the words had been etched in his mind: 'Because sooner or later Trujillo will call upon him to serve the regime, or his person, and when he calls, one is not permitted to say no.' Egghead was proof of this truth....As Estrella Sadhalá always said, the Goat had taken from people the sacred attribute given to them by God: their free will."

 It is possibly the best book I never want to read again.

 

21: A Book Where A Main Character Is A Policitician