Book Bites: Biological War

Biological War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Jacobsen’s “Biological War” is, in the most academic sense of the word, bullshit. The book is not one to let the facts get in way of a gripping narrative. If this were marketed closer to fiction it would be a fascinating page-turner. However, Jacobsen’s narrative peddles such a staggering volume of utterly specious claims (Mongols caused the Black Death, COVID-19 was a lab leak), that the book ends up feeling like the tinfoil hat ravings of a doomsday prepper.

Its bad enough that I'm now wondering if her previous book, Nuclear War, which I loved, is as shoddily thrown together.

This hypothetical mega-plague relies on, no joke, an exploding Russia lab (even though there have been previous lab explosions which did not result in mass death), a rave-attending Catholic study abroad student, jetsetting rich assholes and Gavin Newsom’s turn to podcasting. The scenario also relies on LA's Skid Row as a major disease vector; in doing so Jacobsen (accidentally or no) makes unrestrained late-stage capitalism the main driver of this disease. So, according to Pulitzer-prize finalist and reporter Annie Jacobsen, re-appropriating wealth from Smaugish billionaires will stop the next COVID. 

 

If the text would at least admit its far-flung (and sometimes downright false) nature, there could be something of a discussion. As is, Biological War is best shelved alongside slop fiction and skipped.

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Book Bites: Piranesi

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Piranesi is a delightful mystery box of a novel. We read the journals of a man wandering endless hallways of marble statues, of rooms filled with clouds, and tides that crash through the house. Clarke's prose and pacing is perfect here; revealing the mysteries of this impossible house word by propulsive word. Along the way we encounter shadowy scholars and dangerous interlopers and covered-up murders. Those willing to be confused by Clarke's intentionally spare narrator at the start will find delight by book's end.

P.S. I've seen a lot of readings claiming Piranesi is some sort of cypher for mental illness? While there's certainly an argument to be made (and, as always, art is subjective) removing the book's magical elements with labored metaphor would suck the air right out of this book's balloon. Let the magic be magic, y'all.

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Book Bites: Say Hello to the Bad Guys

Say Hello to the Bad Guys: How Professional Wrestling's New World Order Changed America by Marc Raimondi
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Say Hello to the Bad Guys is, essentially, a TV recap blog expanded into book form. Make no mistake, it’s an absolute delight for wrestling fans and grown-up nWo kids, but the bulk of the text is dedicated to recapping WCW story beats between 1996-2000, including Nielsen ratings and PPV buy numbers. The behind-the-scenes reporting is fascinating and Raimondi does well to juggle contradictory sources. There is also some analysis of how nWo fits with reality tv (and later Trumpist politics), but mostly it’s a recap of WCW Monday Nitros Past, which for those who are nWo 4-Life, should be a ton of fun.

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Book Bites (Expanded Edition): Theo of Golden

Theo of Golden by Allen Levi
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Theo of Golden is an overlong, oversweet, novel-length parable. There is no conflict or narrative tension or character growth; the book unfolds as a series of "and then..."s almost entirely free of hurdles or consequence. Any obstacle against Theo getting to know the residents of Golden GA through the gifting of portraits is quickly hand-waved away.

The supposed lesson aims well: that if we only slow down and see one another, listen to one another, then the world becomes a more beautiful place. The execution of said message, however, is clumsy to the point that the story feels cynical (and really, Becky Chambers' Monk and Robot books hit the same morals only much, much better). There are sidelong critiques of how things are versus how things used to be, reading like an old man shaking his head and muttering, "kids these days..."  

Book Bites: Japanese Gothic

Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Japanese Gothic is moody and atmospheric but flat. It's more style than substance. Our two main characters feel wooden. Lee, who flees to Japan after murdering his college roommate, spends much of the action self-medicating, creating narration that feels detached. 19th Century Samurai Sen exists only to please her domineering father and lacks agency. Baker sets a wonderful moody scene, built a ghost house far from civilization, but the blood inside feels token. The heart of the book sparks with Sen's and Lee's relationship, but, sadly, they only spend the last third of the book actually interacting. There's simply too much prologue here. There are themes of myth and time travel and love and loss, and Baker does manage to spin these threads into a clever denouement, but a clever ending only shines a light on Japanese Gothic's otherwise plodding narrative.

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Book Bites: Wild Love

Wild Love by Elsie Silver
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Gave this one twenty percent of its wordcount before throwing in the towel. Yes, romance novels often deal heavily in tropes, but Wild Love's opening chapters read like cardboard cutouts being puppeted across a bland backdrop. Tropes like the hunky, brooding billionaire and the type-A woman moving from the big city to the country work well if an author does them well or puts an interesting spin on them; Wild Love did neither, content to be a patched-together quilt of familiar plots and characters.

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Book Bites: Cave Mountain

Cave Mountain: A Disappearance and a Reckoning in the Ozarks by Benjamin Hale
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Cave Mountain spins a true crime tale connecting the brief disappearance of a young girl in the Arkansas Ozarks and a murderous doomsday cult arrested nearby some 30 years prior. Hale's book began life as a piece for Harper's and often reads like a padded-out essay. The text attempts to interweave the 2001 disappearance of Hale's cousin Haley, a doomsday cult that in 1978 murdered a young child, Ozark religious extremism, and an atheists' questioning approach to Christianity; only the weft and warp never quite mesh. Cave Mountain works reasonably as a true crime book, but its nonlinear storytelling and wide thematic net make for a text that often feels jumbled.

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Book Bites: Spread Me

Spread Me by Sarah Gailey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Spread Me is a wry, winking spin on John Carpenter's "The Thing" centering on a desolate desert outpost, its virus-obsessed captain (is there a term for those sexually attracted to viruses?), her motley crew, and a strange new lifeform attempting to seduce its way into host bodies during a sandstorm. Our limited cast of characters are vibrantly drawn. The text is a hard R bordering on NC-17; Gailey excels at writing erotica that doesn't feel smutty. The sex is natural to the story and the science feels believable. The only downside here, especially given Spread Me's slim wordcount, are problems with pacing and tension. Middle chapters feel like a plateau rather than a ratcheting up. Those game for body horror and sex should tear through this in no time.

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Book Bites: All Boys Aren't Blue

All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Given how often "All Boys Aren't Blue" is challenged and removed from school and public libraries, George Johnson's coming of age memoir as a gay black young adult is surprisingly chaste, family-affirming and, dare I say...normal? Outside of a (very frank) chapter showing how conservative mis-teaching of sexuality and reproduction leads to predatory behaviors and fumbling sexual encounters--especially so among queer youth--Johnson's book mostly centers on the importance of family and how utterly affirming it is to be allowed the space and grace to grow and make mistakes and learn. It is ironically because of wine-moms (who, by the way, read just the dirtiest smut) and lifted-pickup-truck-dads (with toxic browser histories), who are constantly trying to silence Johnson's voice, that this touching and honest queer coming-of-age story is so important.

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Book Bites: Super Nintendo

Super Nintendo: The Game-Changing Company That Unlocked the Power of Play by Keza MacDonald
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Super Nintendo is an enjoyable history of video game giants Nintendo through the lens of some of the company’s greatest games. MacDonald clearly knows her stuff and by dissecting hanafuda cards, Super Mario, Pokémon or Splatoon, deftly shows the collaborative, goofy environment that has allowed Nintendo to flourish while competitors—Atari and Sega and now even Microsoft—have come and gone. 

There’s lots of fun trivia to surprise even hardcore gamers.  Although, let me push up my nerd glasses here and say there are a few factual slips; Kirby's Adventure is misattributed to the SNES and the text omits that the  Donkey Kong arcade game began its life as a Popeye game that Nintendo couldn't secure the rights to. The text also hints toward Shigesato Itoi and Mother/Earthbound without ever really discussing the game, and I'm not sure if this is some sort of oversight or a sly in-joke at Nintendo's own attitude toward the Mother game series. 

Accessible and breezy, the text, much like Nintendo itself, should be pick up and play fun for even casual video game fans.

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Book Bites: Bunny

Bunny by Mona Awad
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Bunny is an intentionally confounding bit of sad girl dark academia. The story follows loner Samantha as she navigates her second year of graduate study in a top-flight Creative Writing MFA program…by joining a coven of barbies who magik campus bunnies into malformed, brainless men to serve at their beck and call (and sometimes be axe-murdered). However; the text is so full of sly references to schizophrenia and meta-commentary on fiction that the line between what is real and what is not in the world of the book becomes blurry bordering on nonexistent. Awad gleefully plays with themes of belonging, of the love/hate relationship between art and money, of generational trauma, all while dousing the reader in buckets of blood and gore. It's an admirable effort, but the text is averse to endorsing any one reading to the point that no single punch really lands. Bunny is an interesting book, that, by design, spins a hollow-feeling narrative.

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Book Bites: Half His Age

Half His Age by Jennette McCurdy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Half His Age, much like it’s teenage protagonist, feels like a book that wants to be but does not quite achieve. McCurdy shows great talent; the prose sparkles with moments of pure, truthful insight. There is a passage about couples going through the motions of recounting dinner party anecdotes that feels beyond McCurdy's years. 

However, the narrative is thematically muddy. Is it about a teenager being groomed? Waldo our protagonist would probably say no. The object of her affection, nebbish Mr. Korgy is a slumping shrug of a character. The book is often bold, brazen in its sexuality, but also oddly timid, only dancing around the fallout of a teacher sleeping with his teenage student.

While McCurdy’s playing with gray morality is laudable, in the end the narrative feels like a sting of “and then” “and then” “and then” that doesn’t quite grasp any narrative string. Character growth feels unearned. There’s a lot to enjoy and themes to sink one’s teeth into, but the book doesn’t quite stick it’s landing.

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Book Bites: Dungeon Crawler Carl

Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Dungeon Crawler Carl is, to use the appropriate lingo, an enjoyable dungeon crawler slightly undone by its repetitive gameplay loop. Dinniman's accomplishment here shouldn't be understated: he's successfully written the Hunger Games for the Hitchhiker's Guide crowd. The book is a rollicking good time. Carl and Princess Donut (a sentient cat) are a delight to follow through this never-ending maze of traps and sophomoric humor and off-the-wall monsters. The book is legitimately funny (if sometimes groan-inducing). The downside here is that Dinniman hasn't quite mastered the tension and release of a smoothly-flowing plot. The battles themselves are so full of action they can drag, and the spaces between can feel empty. A lot this book is Carl MacGyvering plans and, by narrative tricks, not divulging them until a battle scene hits. There's plenty here to like though; genre fans should eat it up and ask for seconds.

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Book Bites: Listen for the Lie

Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Listen for the Lie is a solidly entertaining thriller. The narrative follows amnesiac Lucy, unable to remember the night 5 years ago when she (supposedly) killed her best friend, Savannah. When a podcaster starts digging dirt, she's forced to return to her rural Texas and face the truth. Tintera does a good job of ratcheting up narrative tension without cheap twists or intentionally withholding information. Certainly, amnesia is used to its full effect here. And although the story falls deep into the small town politics of who is sleeping with who, with characters who only exist to be red herrings for a chapter, Listen for the Lie manages to to be a fun, sexy thriller.

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Book Bites (Expanded Edition): Lollapalooza

Lollapalooza: The Uncensored Story of Alternative Rock's Wildest Festival by Richard Bienstock and Tom Beaujour My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Bienstock and Beaujour's Lollapalooza is a wildly self-aggrandizing, heavily varnished look at the 90's rock festival. Consisting entirely of firsthand accounts from artists and promoters with little editorial context, the text has very little interest in recounting what actually happened. 

Early chapters read like (excuse my crudeness) a Perry Farrel circlejerk. Artists gush over Jane's Addiction, fawn over their music and artistry and envelope pushing ways--while chuckling through overt assholery and heroin addiction. A lot of truly horrible behaviors are waved away with a 'boys will be boys attitude.' 'It was a different time.' At one point the text unironically credits Farrel with creating music to "save the world." It's almost too much to bear.

Book Bites: Martyr!

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Martyr! is what fiction strives to be. Iranian-American Cyrus Shams is an addict in recovery, writing a never-ending poetry collection about martyrs, desperate for a death to give his life meaning. On a whim, he decides to visit an artist who has turned her dying into performance, and in doing so begins to unfold the tucked-in corners of his life. A mother erroneously shot down by US airstrikes. A father who did the best he could. A roommate who might be more. The prose is playful and profound, bold and unafraid to bend reality to the narrative's will, teeming with absolute truth ("...after he got sober, when poetry became a place to put his body"). In Martyr!, Kaveh Akbar has written a masterpiece, a book that will reverberate with readers long after the last page.

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Book Bites: The (Most Unusual) Haunting of Edgar Lovejoy

The Most Unusual Haunting of Edgar Lovejoy by Roan Parrish
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Most Unusual Haunting of Edgar Lovejoy feels like two novels. On one hand, we have an adorably sweet romance between cat cafe worker Edgar and professional haunter Jamie. They meet at Jamie's burlesque show and have to navigate the sometimes-tricky ground of queer love (Jamie is trans, Edgar gay, both their families are a mess), yet their steamy romance never feels anything other than grounded and cozy and real. On the other hand, we have a ghost story; Edgar sees ghosts that scare him to the point he avoids leaving his house. While the spooky novel does interface a bit with the romance, it doesn't sparkle in the same way. The plotting drags and the denouement is oddly passive. Make no mistake, Edgar Lovejoy is still a wonderful spooky romance novel, more romance than spook.

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Book Bites: Levels of the Game

Levels of the Game by John McPhee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Levels of the Game is masterful sportswriting. Through McPhee’s telling, Arthur Ashe’s US Open Semifinal match against Clark Grabner wasn’t just a tennis match but a battle of archetypes; old versus new, black versus white, liberal versus conservative. The action is propulsive and McPhee wisely uses backstory as a highlighter.

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Book Bites: One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against this is required reading. At what cost do we purchase our normalcy, purchase our comfort within the status quo, when that normalcy also includes genocide? Omar El Akkad, through reporting, through lived experience, presents a powerful treatise on what it is to resist the systems that would eat our souls. Whatever sand is in your hand, throw it in the cogs of the machine. It's not a walking away from capitalism, from society, but a walking toward something better. Like the Transatlantic Slave Trade, like the theft of Native Lands, and now like the Genocide of Palestinian people and the uncaring capitalist systems that support it, one day, everyone will have always been against this.

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Book Bites: Three Bags Full

Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Three Bags Full is a delightful premise that fumbles its execution. A flock of sheep investigating the murder of their shepherd should be a whimsical romp. The issue is that Swann doesn't fully lean into her premise. The sheep--of which there are probably too many to fit the narrative--lack agency. The mystery only unfolds with the intervention of humans, and even then it's mostly sheep overhearing conversations. There is a detective, but he is a token at the very end; it would have been more satisfying for the sheep to use the detective as their pawn throughout the narrative. The dénouement is clumsy, plot threads left dangling. The tone aims for depth but only manages to skip across the surface. The sheep are wonderful characters, the mystery well set up, I only wish Three Bags Full embraced the silliness of its premise and allowed the sheep to solve their own mystery.

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