The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and the Sea

By Ernest Hemingway

The story of an old Cuban fisherman and his supreme ordeal: after a long period of bad luck, a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream.

Very little did I think I would ever be in the position of reading Ernest Hemingway. Nothing I've heard of him or his stories has quickened my appetite or tempted me to cracking a work of his.  I suppose I cannot argue with his talent, which manages to turn a story about a man fishing into deep drama that is never (well, rarely) boring.  I will say though, that I have no compliments for the format I read it on, an e-book which not only made every short page feel like an eternity, but also, at some point towards the end, began excising sections between pages, so that I would end on a question and pick up the next page halfway through a harpoon attack. I was so close though, I just kept going. 

I'm certainly not capable of saying anything about Hemingway that hasn't been said before: his prose is short but compelling, this story full of masculine energy and pride and nature's agony (this could have easily qualified for the prompt in which nature is the antagonist). Surprisingly, I did find myself rooting for Santiago. I didn't expect to care or like him much, fishing is not my interest, and I've perhaps been predisposed to dislike anything of Hemingway's, but Santiago was so matter of fact and had so little pity for himself that I felt none for him as well, and without pity, you can begin to admire, at least a bit, his determination to see it through, even in the face of overwhelming odds. There is a poignancy in finishing a game in which you have been roundly defeated, for your own pride. Interestingly, the only other game in which Santiago participates in the course of the novel is arm wrestling, which he wins so soundly that he loses interest in it.  Hemingway lightly connects the dots between that man and the present Santiago, who is barely phased by eighty-five days without a catch, by alluding to Santiago's unnatural doggedness, both in arm-wrestling and fishing. 

The appeal of the book is easy to understand: the setting of a challenge between man and beast, where there is literally nothing else to impinge or impede on the battle, just your will against its will.  A clean and pure contest, of which the man is the victor even after his prize is taken away, a loss without defeat.

The Old Man and the Sea reads like a fable or a fairy tale, and it is simple enough that a three year old can understand it. I know this for a fact, because I had just finished reading it and my three year old asked for a story and, fresh out of ideas, I told the story of the fisherman who didn't get a fish for 84 days and then hooked the biggest fish of all, but before he could get it back to shore sharks ate it.  Being as it lacked any kind of magic, happy ending, or princesses, I don't think my three year-old was at all impressed, but who should you believe: a small doubting child or the Pulitzer Prize committee?

44: A Book You Have Always Avoided Reading

The Midnight Feast

The Midnight Feast

By Lucy Foley

It’s the opening night of The Manor, and no expense, small or large, has been spared. The infinity pool sparkles; crystal pouches for guests’ healing have been placed in the Seaside Cottages and Woodland Hutches; the “Manor Mule” cocktail (grapefruit, ginger, vodka, and a dash of CBD oil) is being poured with a heavy hand. Everyone is wearing linen.

But under the burning midsummer sun, darkness stirs. Old friends and enemies circulate among the guests. Just outside the Manor’s immaculately kept grounds, an ancient forest bristles with secrets. And the Sunday morning of opening weekend, the local police are called. Something’s not right with the guests. There’s been a fire. A body’s been discovered.

 I suppose I have a weakness for thrillers. I tend to find even the bad ones readable.  I relish the experience of trying to figure out the twists (there are always twists in today's thrillers. I remember when thrillers could earn the name by atmosphere and plot alone but those aren't nearly as fun) and usually have no trouble putting on the blinders required to overlook plot holes. I'm not generally reading these trying to look too closely at how it all hangs together, I enjoy the thin facades. All that is to say, I have no complaints about The Midnight Feast. It fulfilled all expectations, which is that it required very little in the way of concentration, verily zipped by, and contained enough outlandish shenanigans, both criminal and revenge-oriented, to satisfy anyone's thirst for skullduggery. 

To be fair, the plot does involve both past murder and present arson and there's a fair number of people who all have duplicate aliases in each timeline, so there are some who complain about trying to remember everyone. I didn't find it that hard though, everything gets repeated and then spelled out in detail, just in case you're very slow. Everyone has a secret and everyone is keeping tabs on everyone else. 

I did find the way it all tied together to be gratifying, and no plot holes were so glaring that they intruded on the afterglow. Does it make any sense how often people were both lost and yet constantly finding other groups of people and/or mysterious scenes in the woods? No!  Was I confused about how Eddie managed to jump on his bike after it specifically mentions that he lost it in the woods the previous day?  Yes! Does it make sense that Eddie was able to duck back into the Manor, get a costume on and catch up to Francesca on said bicycle while she's driving a car?  No! Did I enjoy the discovery that the explanation for one character's mysterious and oddly-timed disappearances was "playing fortnite at a local club"? Yes!

Read this one if you're in the mood for escapist thriller fun, where all the bad guys get their comeuppance and the good guys all make it out intact.  Read it if you're in the mood for cow-butchering secret societies who "right the wrongs" and you like hearing about rich people losing their investments.  Read it if you don't take yourself too seriously and have some spare time to wallow on the coast of Dorset in the fictional town of Tome (pronounced "Tomb" because of course!) enjoying the summer solstice.

27: A Book Set At A Luxury Resort

 

A Walk in the Park

A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon

By Kevin Fedarko 

A deeply moving account ever of walking the Grand Canyon, a highly dangerous, life-changing 750-mile trek.

The Grand Canyon is an American treasure, visited by more than 6 million people a year, many of whom are rendered speechless by its vast beauty, mystery, and complexity. Now, in A Walk in the Park , author Kevin Fedarko chronicles his year-long effort to find a 750-mile path along the length of the Grand Canyon, through a vertical wilderness suspended between the caprock along the rims of the abyss and the Colorado River, which flows along its bottom.

Consisting of countless cliffs and steep drops, plus immense stretches with almost no access to water, and the fact that not a single trail links its eastern doorway to its western terminus, this jewel of national parks is so challenging that when Fedarko departed fewer people had completed the journey in one single hike than had walked on the moon. The intensity of the effort required him to break his trip into several legs, each of which held staggering dangers and unexpected discoveries.

Accompanying Fedarko through this sublime yet perilous terrain is the award-winning photographer Peter McBride, who captures the stunning landscape in breathtaking photos. Together, they encounter long-lost Native American ruins, the remains of Old West prospectors’ camps, present day tribal activists, and signs that commercial tourism is impinging on the park’s remote wildness.

An epic adventure, action-packed survival tale, and a deep spiritual journey, A Walk in the Park gives us an unprecedented glimpse of the crown jewel of America’s National an iconic landscape framed by ancient rock whose contours are recognized by all, but whose secrets and treasures are known to almost no one, and whose topography encompasses some of the harshest, least explored, most awe-inspiring terrain in the world.

It would be hard to say that any book or video (but especially a book without many pictures) can do justice to the experience of being at or inside the Grand Canyon but Fedarko gives it a good go. There's a point at which he says that he realizes that he's been trying to "experience" the Grand Canyon at its most pure, i.e., by walking through it, but eventually comes to acknowledge that even the casual hikers who skim just the merest part of it can still find real appreciation of its natural beauty and power. 

Speaking as one of those casual hikers who, upon approach to the Grand Canyon was immediately awestruck, I appreciate the concession.  The Grand Canyon is aptly named. It is so magnificent a landscape that I cannot conceive of a thinking, feeling person who, when confronted with it, is not in some way awed and amazed.  

That being said, I really don't think even reading this book (or any book) can do justice to it, so it's no fault of Fedarko's that it falls short. There is just no replacement for being in the canyon itself, something is apparent when we hear about the people who are drawn, again and again, to hiking and exploring it, regardless of the dangers. We learn about several people who did in fact die while exploring it, who are only small steps of association away from the author himself. It's sobering and comes at a point when you almost feel that the risks are overstated.  Fedarko admittedly likes to cast himself and his hiking partner Pete McBride as somewhat hapless, unprepared "off the couch"ers, which can be amusing at points, but I think also does a disservice as it understates the preparation and fitness required to make an adequate attempt at what they achieved. 

The first sections are mostly scene setting and the first initial foray into the planned through-hike, which ends in disaster.  The latter sections, as Fedarko and McBride get further underway (and more comfortable) also explore the connection of the native tribes to the land (for better or for worse) and the prospect of further development and commercialization. There's an upsetting couple of chapters as they hike past Grand Canyon West, the skywalk and helicopter tour on Hualapai tribe land, which begs the question of whether and how tribes and other landowners should be allowed to profit off of the Grand Canyon (given the deterioration of the canyon unders also the kind of non those conditions), especially when the policies of the American government towards the tribes has created the conditions of poverty and social ills which they seek to escape by commercializing the only asset left to them. 

 If nothing else, this book certainly does not make me want to hike the Grand Canyon. Preserve it, yes. Boat through it, maybe. But definitely not walk through it. As far as non-fiction books about hiking misadventures go, I think Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods sets the gold standard. A Walk in the Park, while paying homage, fails to meet the high standard set. But still, it calls up memories of one of the most wondrous places on Earth. And even a fainter echo is still something special.

46: A Book Where Nature Is The Antagonist

The Comeback

The Comeback

By Lily Chu

 Who is Ariadne Hui?

• Laser-focused lawyer diligently climbing the corporate ladder
• The “perfect” daughter living out her father’s dream
• Shocking love interest of South Korea’s hottest star

Ariadne Hui thrives on routine. So what if everything in her life is planned down to the minute: That’s the way she likes it. If she’s going to make partner in Toronto’s most prestigious law firm, she needs to stay focused at all times.

But when she comes home after yet another soul-sucking day to find an unfamiliar, gorgeous man camped out in her living room, focus is the last thing on her mind. Especially when her roommate explains this is Choi Jihoon, her cousin freshly arrived from Seoul to mend a broken heart. He just needs a few weeks to rest and heal; Ari will barely even know he’s there. (Yeah, right.)

Jihoon is kindness and chaos personified, and it isn’t long before she’s falling, hard. But when one wrong step leads to a world-shaking truth, Ari finds herself thrust onto the world stage: not as the competent, steely lawyer she’s fought so hard to become, but as the mystery woman on the arm of a man the entire world claims to know. Now with her heart, her future, and her sense of self on the line, Ari will have to cut through all the pretty lies to find the truth of her relationship...and discover the Ariadne Hui she’s finally ready to be.

I was just idly scanning the 2024 prompts and realizing I'd just read something that totally qualified, through no intention of my own.  Serendipity!  However,  I have read like, three books in between (the two Robert Galbraiths and the Emily Wilde one) so my recollection is already a bit faded. I like to write the reviews as soon as possible afterwards, when it's fresh because it's too easy for me to forget. I was also considering whether Where the Dark Stands Still qualifies as an "enemies to lovers" since I read that out of turn too, but I wasn't sure whether they truly qualified as "enemies" from the get-go. 

[For a very mini review of Where the Dark Stands Still: fun, but seems like almost a complete knock-off of Uprooted? The author thanks Naomi Novik in the notes, so presumably she's aware of the influence, but a young woman who semi-accidentally falls in with a long-lived tree magician who is fighting creeping corruption in the woods? In an eastern-European (i.e., Polish) inspired setting? If you wanted to read two almost identical books, read these!]

Anyway, back to The Comeback: I have no idea how the book wound up on my potential read list but I checked it out because I was entertained by the idea that some korean pop star is hanging out undercover at his cousin's while this lawyer goes about her business.

[I'm pretty sure I also read Chu's The Stand-In, which I thought was... fine? I don't remember hating it, but I also don't really remember it at all, which I suppose is damning it with faint praise. I vaguely recall the premise, but the plot points described in the blurb don't ring a bell. The Comeback is more of the same: fun while you're in it, but easily forgotten.]

Back to business: a lot of the complaints are about Ari - she's wishy-washy, gets in her own way, too naive to be a 30-something, one review calls her "bitter, judgemental and close-minded" which I assume is because she initially thinks k-pop is for stupid, etc - or the melodrama in the last third of the book (some reviewers had no idea why there would be issues after Ari and Jihoon decide to get together, and one reviewer complained that Ari's valid objections to his intense superstardom were talked down, others complained about the multiple break-ups) but I really didn't have an issue with any of that. I felt like Ari, although certainly more of a "sit on the sidelines" kind of a person than most romantic heroines these days, made reasonable decisions for herself and her life. Certainly she didn't display any of the confidence that you'd hope to see in a 30 year old, but she also didn't feel like a teenager, just someone desperately unhappy in the wrong job and unable to imagine anything else.  I didn't feel like other characters were unfairly criticizing her for turning down the position of pop-star girlfriend - sure, you want your two friends to make it, but no one called her a coward for turning him down (that I can recall). The Big Misunderstanding here that in an effort to quell public interest in their relationship, Jihoon goes along with the idea that they're not dating  - and implies that she's some sort of stalker - doesn't feel like a cheap manipulation just to keep them apart. 

I don't know. I was never a fan of One Direction, but I was still appalled and taken aback by Liam Payne's young death. The hyper-scrutiny and public fascination and parasitical relationships that fans form with the stars is so skin-crawlingly weird, it was  interesting to read about it from the perspective of the girlfriend. 

I guess I just don't agree with all the negative reviews. Is it going to win the next Nobel Prize? No, but that's not the point. It was a fun, inoffensive foray into a modern day Cinderella story - handsome prince plucks a nobody out of obscurity and makes her his queen - and I wasn't spending too much time worrying about whether they'd get back together or whether Ari would get a new job doing tours once she's fired as an attorney. The conflicts didn't bother me, and the personalities didn't grate. To each their own.

20. A Book That Fills A 2024 Prompt You'd Like To Do Over (Or Try Out) [5: A Book About K-Pop]

Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales

Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales

By Heather Fawcett 

Emily Wilde has spent her life studying faeries. A renowned dryadologist, she has documented hundreds of species of Folk in her Encyclopaedia of Faeries. Now she is about to embark on her most dangerous academic project studying the inner workings of a faerie realm-as its queen.

Along with her former academic rival-now fiancé-the dashing and mercurial Wendell Bambleby, Emily is immediately thrust into the deadly intrigues of Faerie as the two of them seize the throne of Wendell's long-lost kingdom, which Emily finds a beautiful nightmare, filled with scholarly treasures.

Emily has been obsessed with faerie stories her entire life, but at first she feels as ill-suited to Faerie as she did to the mortal world-how could an unassuming scholar like herself pass for a queen? Yet there is little time to settle in-Wendell's murderous stepmother has placed a deadly curse upon the land before vanishing without a trace. It will take all of Wendell's magic-and Emily's knowledge of stories-to unravel the mystery before they lose everything they hold dear.

Another small disappointment. The book is enjoyable and a reasonably satisfying conclusion (I assume) to the series, but the entire plot hinges on Emily reading a bunch of fairy tales and then doing the things in the stories, to the same effect. It's kind of boring. There's very little in the way of surprise, and Emily displays basically no ingenuity, which is one of the most entertaining parts of the previous books - her plans and plots.  Although the book is as long as the earlier ones, it seems like very little happens: she and Wendell journey to his realm and get settled in, they discover the old queen has poisoned everything, they investigate and stop her (mostly by dull research and using again, the exact templates we see Emily read about several times when comparing various stories) and then Emily has to ask someone else to save Wendell (this involves more library time for her and the actual rescue is done by someone else off screen pretty quickly) and then Emily decides to save the queen - this is pretty much Emily's only action piece and it's arguably far too little, too late.

 We spend some time with Wendell and Emily, there's a few entertaining pieces, mostly concerning Wendell's uncle, when Wendell has to win a battle against him, and when Wendell's cat, Orga demonstrates her irritation with him. But Taran never really manages to fulfill early hints at menace or duplicity, so it's another piece of tension gone. The book flirts with the idea that Wendell becoming a faerie king could change him for the worse and make him tyrannical as well, but then kinda just backs off of it completely. Emily rescuing Wendall from his own transformation might have been an interesting point of tension, but again, it peters out to a big old nothing-burger.

Look, there's absolutely nothing wrong with a cozy story with characters one presumes you like, but it doesn't live up to the earlier books in the series and if it had been the first in the series I would not have gone further. 

19: A Highly Anticipated Read Of 2025