Book Bites (Expanded Edition): Aftertaste

Aftertaste by Daria Lavelle
My rating: 1.5 of 5 stars

THIS REVIEW INCLUDES SPOILERS

Aftertaste is a novel that feels like it wants to be a short story. Konstantin, following the death of his father, discovers he can “taste” ghosts, and by cooking their meals, can temporarily bring them back. The setup is delightful. Mouth-watering food writing abounds.

Aftertaste’s problem is that the book is over-written.

Book Bites (Expanded Edition): I Know How This Ends

I Know How This Ends by Holly Smale
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

I Know How This Ends is a sharp, funny romp through the spacetime-continuum. Smale takes what is fast becoming a tired trope (lovelorn Margot sometimes slips through time and peeks at her own romantic future) and, through craft and narrative voice, spins a delightful tale. Margot, done with dating after a brutal breakup, is ready to swear off men when a vision of the future entices her to accept a date she otherwise wouldn't. From there, it doesn't take clairvoyance to see exactly where the narrative is going, but, as in life, it's not the destination but the journey. 

Book Bites: The Evening Shades

The Evening Shades by Lee Martin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The short, short version is that the Evening Shades is a stellar sequel undone only by its even more stellar original.

The Evening Shades is a quiet yet powerful story of dignity and picking up the pieces of a shattered life. Martin's prose is spare and beautiful; he captures the settings and people of American Midwest in a way that is absolutely true. It is a delight for the reader to walk among them. The story of unlikely love between Henry Dees and Edith Green, both outcasts, is sweet but not saccharine, simple and lovely in a way that reminds of Kent Haruf. The major knock against The Evening Shades is that it doesn't quite reach the heights or create a the same tension of its superlative predecessor, The Bright Forever. There are also some minor issues with pacing; once the plot 'happens,' it happens quickly. Anyone seeking a literary page-turner, though, will find a lot to like in The Evening Shades.

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Book Bites: I'm Starting to Worry About this Black Box of Doom

I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom by Jason Pargin
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I really wanted to like this one. Pargin is a smart guy and a gifted communicator, and the setup--nuclear road trip--feels like its right up my alley. Which is why I gave it nearly 200 pages before I cried "matae" and gave up. 

The main issue is that "I'm Starting to Worry..." foregrounds its theme--isolation and misinformation in an increasingly connected world--over any plot or characters. This makes for a narrative that flows like chewing dry toast. Instead of dialogue, characters monologue at one another. The plot is built atop shaky logic, requiring tech savvy protagonists to intentionally disconnect from the internet in a way that feels ingenuine. That two digital natives wouldn't even think to check for air tags (and then quickly try to patch that plot hole with some brief dialogue once they do find said air tag) is too much. Pargin is a smart guy and a capable author, and the themes here are rife for exploration, but the execution falls flat. The text is bloated, feeling more like a lecture than a novel.

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Book Bites: Assistant to the Villain

Assistant to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

DNF @ 50%
Assistant to the Villain is perfectly fine. It feels like a "falling in love with the boss" romance novel dressed up in fantasy clothing. The text is swoony and slightly bloated; we could lop off the first twelve chapters and not really miss a beat. There's a plot involving a mole in the titular Villain's organization trying to kill him, but it felt like the mystery plot and the romance plot were wrestling against one another rather than working together. If you want a secretary swooning over her own Mr. Darcy, spiced with a dash of dragons and magic, then this book is for you. It's a perfectly fine, if uninteresting, bit of fluff.

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Book Bites: Good Game, No Rematch

Good Game, No Rematch: A Life Made of Video Games―A Comedian's Memoir of Gaming and Comedy, From Nintendo to The Tonight Show by Mike Drucker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Mike Drucker’s “Good Game, No Rematch” is a delightful dead center bullseye in the humor / video games Venn Diagram. Drucker’s affinity for video games saturates essays on early Nintendo, on his grandparents and Gameboy Golf, on his massive, unplayed Steam library. His bona fides as a standup and Late Night staff writer ensure the text vibrates with actual jokes and laughter. As with any essay collection, some essays drag (hearing about a past D&D adventure is very near listening to someone tell you about a dream they had), but Good Game, No Rematch is so funny, so insightful and, in places, poignant, that even casual gamers will find enjoyment.

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Book Bites: All Fours

All Fours by Miranda July
My rating: 3 of 5 stars (or 4 of 5 stars? I still honestly don't know)

All Fours begins as a masterclass in tension and release. Early sections are pure, ecstatic tension, deeply erotic and overtly sexual (albeit without any actual sex) as our unnamed narrator diverts from her road trip, diverts from her family, and begins nesting in a motel, incubating new relationships and a life. July’s writing is superlative; wry without ever being snarky, honest and raw. There are genuine laugh out loud moments. Themes abound for anyone who cares to sink their teeth into them: marriage and motherhood and inspiration and suicide and art and menopause and aging, and, and…

Where other authors often unleash their characters only to rein them back to safety and normalcy in the third act, July gives her characters freedom to be unlikable, to truly metamorphose. However. The narrative often drags, especially in its closing pages. Everything here is also built on unrecognized privilege (husband and wife are both wildly-successful and wealthy artists) that can't help but read as "spoiled." I've sat with this book for awhile now and I'm still not entirely certain if All Fours is truly good, or merely interesting.

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Book Bites: The Greatest Nobodies in History

The Greatest Nobodies of History: Minor Characters from Major Moments by Adrian Bliss
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The Greatest Nobodies of History is a valiant attempt at a witty, readable history text. Each of the book's brief stories or events (Leonardo DaVinci's painting of 'Lady with an Ermine', Henry VII's marriage to Anne of Cleves) is re-told through fictionalized primary source documents (the Ermine's psychic testimony, the diary of Henry VII's toilet attendant) with varying success. The text is often not so witty as it thinks it is. Especially on events which can be summed in a single sentence, chapters tend to drag. Though a good entry point for people turned off by dry, stolid history tomes, The Greatest Nobodies of History doesn't quite hit the mark it aims for.

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Book Bites: Outraged

Outraged: Why We Fight About Morality and Politics and How to Find Common Ground by Kurt Gray
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Outraged is the rare, shining example of a pop-psychology book worth reading. Many in the genre fall into the tropes of overextrapolation and padding out word counts on what are essentially blog posts.

This is not that.

In Outraged, Kurt Gray lays out a simple hypothesis, backed by mountains of science: all morality stems from a fear of harm. Humans are more prey than predators, our brains evolved to detect harm before it can harm us, meaning our ideologies are far more alike than they are different. Knowing this, Gray provides simple, actionable and proven steps on how we can bridge seemingly impossible gaps and foster understanding. (Bonus points for repeated, gentle dunking on Jonathan Haidt).
One of the few pop-psychology books actually worth your time and effort. Highly recommend.


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Book Bites: Selling Sexy

Selling Sexy: Victoria’s Secret and the Unraveling of an American Icon by Lauren Sherman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Selling Sexy is an unphotoshopped picture of mall-shopping stalwart, Victoria's Secret, warts and all. The short of it is that Les Wexner's timing in buying the brand from Gay and Tom Raymond was extremely, extremely lucky: VS grew as malls expanded, as consumer habits shifted toward single-item stores, as vertical integration in fashion retailing made fast fashion possible. Surfing the wave of consumerism and rampant misogyny in the 90's and 00's to billion-dollar valuation, Wexner's boys-club C-suite, high on their own importance, refused to see their objectification and womanizing as a downside, refused to see the looming importance of Social Media and eCommerce, thus dooming themselves. A later chapter on Pedophile to the Rich and Famous, Jeffrey Epstein, almost becomes totemic for the company at-large; a failure of empathy borne of wealth, privilege and proximity to power. Sherman and Fernandez, much like the Jax song, reveal Victoria's real Secret: she's an old man who lives in Ohio, cashing in on womens' body insecurities with cheaply-made bras and panties.

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Book Bites: Right on Cue

Right on Cue by Falon Ballard
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

DNF @ 40%. Right on Cue’s problem is there isn’t one. Emmy is an Oscar-winning nepo baby who is distressed at having to act in a movie (which she wrote) opposite a (gorgeous) man who said a mean thing about her when they were both teenagers. Boo friggin’ hoo. All her sleights are imagined. I fully understand romance as a genre peddles in fantasy and escapism, but there has to be some sense of reality. Emmy is so entirely unrelatable as to make the rest of the book, written with humor and zip, entirely moot.

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Book Bites: The Heart in Winter

The Heart in Winter: A Novel by Kevin Barry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

To look at the logline, The Heart in Winter doesn't look like much: an opium-addled poet and a runaway elope in the Old West. Barry's writing is what makes this novel a delight. Tom Rourke and Polly Gillespie take turns narrating their escapades in voices so singular, so sharp, and so funny, that turning to the next section is always a delight. Even when being hunted by ex-husbands and overzealous bounty hunters, the text is often laugh-out-loud funny. That the book also manages to be in turns heartfelt and life affirming makes it a must read.

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Book Bites: The Mighty Red

The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Erdrich's skill as a writer is undeniable; there are passages within The Mighty Red that are so beautiful and absolutely true that it takes a reader's breath away. The text describes Hugo's longing for Kismet, engaged to another, as such: "to love with canine devotion was to live in a state of miserable exhilaration, to exist on the knife-thin edge of joy." There is some plotting; a missing husband, a stolen church fund, an ill-fated teenage marriage. Themes of our relationships to our land, exemplified by factory sugar beet farming vs personal gardening, come back again and again. The problem with this literary approach is that the text at times feels too unhurried and tends to lose its momentum. Fans of Erdrich and readers of lit-fic will certainly enjoy, but slow pacing and scant capital-p "Plotting" may turn off others.

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Book Bites: All That She Carried

All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake by Tiya Miles
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

All That She Carried examines how those barred from creating their own histories preserved their stories for future generations. Through the totem of Ashley's Sack, embroidered with the family history of unfree peoples, Miles shows us how those forced into slavery and stripped of their names and families fought injustice. The text has a habit of falling into academic prose, as if proving its worth by adopting a stilted, fact-dense cadence. There are also, due to the limited nature of historical records available, side-tracks into somewhat-tangential subjects unable to grasp a reader's interest like the story of Rose and Ashley (such as a brief history of pecan farming in the US). In the end, All That She Carried proves an important, interesting lens focused on the small print of American history we ignore at our own peril.

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Book Bites (Expanded Edition): Never Lie

Never Lie
by Freida McFadden

★✩✩✩✩
1 star out of 5

The line separating good books from bad, generally speaking, is that in a good book, plot serves characters, and in a bad book, characters serve plot. Not to crap on bad books; I've certainly written my share. There's nothing wrong with scarfing French fries now and again (Ready Player One, anyone?). As long as people are picking up books and visiting their local library, who cares?

Well, me, apparently.

Never Lie by mega-selling literary sensation Freida McFadden is a bad book. The plot follows homebuyers Ethan and Tricia as they tour the house of missing pop-psychologist Dr. Adrienne Hale, only to get snowed in. Creepiness abounds. Not the most original setup, but it works. Chapters are short and the language feels grade-schoolish, but at least it's accessible.

Book Bites: Playing with Power!

Playing With Power!: Nintendo NES Classics by Garitt Rocha
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Playing with Power! is a coffee-table retrospective of the Nintendo Entertainment System. Much (Most? All?) of the text seems to be copy/pasted from existing game descriptions and old Nintendo Power Magazine spreads. The text lacks flavor or perspective. The bulk of the content consists of walkthroughs for 30-year-old games. The wealth of classic Nintendo artwork is a treat to look at, but, especially in a crowded retro gaming book scene, Playing with Power! falls flat.

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Book Bites: Fen, Bog and Swamp

Fen, Bog and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis by Annie Proulx
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Proulx’s Fen, Bog and Swamp is a messy, unfocused overview of wetland scholarship. The text never really outgrows its seed as a personal essay, with haphazard pacing that is rushed in spots and slow and lingering in others. Though a nice overview of wetlands' place in climate and climate change and superbly written, its probably more useful to read the books Proulx cites.

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Book Bites: Cabin Crush

Cabin Crush by Kasey Stockton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Cabin Crush is a well-made piece of unadulterated fluff. It’s unfrosted vanilla cake, a Hallmark movie of a romance novel, a chaste (almost absurdly chaste at times) friends-to-lovers story wrapped in Christmas tinsel and holly. Sparks fly when longtime friends Max and Rachel both are finally single at their families' Tahoe Christmas getaway. Tropes of the genre abound (she’s so quirky! Oops I saw his rippling abs!). Tragedy exists only on the peripheries of the narrative and our characters problems’ are swiftly solved by an Act III kiss. References to scripture feel shoehorned in and there’s a wholly extraneous afterword, but Cabin Crush is otherwise a solid and enjoyable sweet Christmas romance.

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Book Bites: Margo's Got Money Troubles

Margo's Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Margo's Got Money Troubles is a sharp look at modern feminism, at what it means to make art and the relationship between art and artist, candy-coated in upmarket Bookclub plotting. Margo is a teenage mom--knocked up by her ex-professor--living with her addict, Pro Wrestler dad, selling nudes and videos on OnlyFans to make ends meet. Is it a modern take on A Scarlet Letter? Yes. But also more. Margo's voice intentionally shifts between first and third person, sometimes limited, sometimes omniscient, at times reading like a college creative writing exercise. There's impactful discussions of women's sexuality (the dividing line of "slut" being a woman's agency), and meta-analysis of the complex relationship between author and reader, all while the plot merrily chugs along. Some of the specifics here stumble (19-year-old Margo knows about Mr. Beast and Jake Paul but, for plot proposes, has no grasp on TikTok or Fortnite), and the end feels oddly rushed and a little too on the nose, but the characters shine, the plot is deceptively complex and the text leaves the reader with plenty to think about after the last page turns.

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Book Bites: Merlin's Tour of the Universe

Merlin's Tour of the Universe: A Traveler's Guide to Blue Moons and Black Holes, Mars, Stars, and Everything Far by Neil deGrasse Tyson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Merlin's Tour of the Universe is an updated edition Tyson's 1988 book, collecting questions and answers that originally ran in StarDate Magazine. The subject matter varies widely from the basics of the moon, stars and sun, to in-depth questions of angular momentum and planetary motion. The answers are brief to a detriment, sometimes only a single word, "No." There's humor in Merlin's voice and the occasional limerick is a nice addition, but nothing here elevates Merlin's Tour past the basic tier of science facts bathroom book. The material Merlin covers is better explained elsewhere, even within Tyson's own body of work.

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