Book Blog

Monday, June 12, 2017

The Tenet of Wildfell Hall Anne Brontë
Reasonably feminist and very entertaining. Realistic characters and a fun insight to the 1800s British idle class

Friday, January 3, 2014

Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeymi

I'm apparently on a English-language Nigerian author kick. Helen Oyeyemi is amazing. This book is a loose retelling of the Snow White fairy tale set in the 1950s with race at the forefront of the story. I'd classify it as magical realism. The plot floats around, as Oyeyemi likes to do, but overall the story was much more straight forward than Mr. Fox. I left Mr. Fox with a desperate longing for it to continue. Boy, Snow, Bird was much more hard hitting. I felt ok walking away from it when it was done. The writing was expertly done but I didn't feel better for having read it.

4.5/5

Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart

Set in a not-so-distant future where everyone is judged by their credit score and now scan instead of read, Lenny is just trying to find his way. It's a story about immortality, youth, and fickle relationships in a world where data is produced by the gig but no one really knows or understands one another. The characters were awful, insecure people with selfish motives and incomplete desires. I couldn't stand hearing about them, to be honest. But like in Hunger Games, all I cared about was the world building. The overt public sexuality, broadcasting live at bars with friends, the Federal Reserve going bankrupt, the largest corporations looking to cash in - felt like an apt exaggeration of modern society now as well as an unpalatable premonition for the future. I think any immaturity in the characters might reflect an immaturity in the author. Not a single character questioned their surroundings. So, to call it purposeful or say more mature characters would have been more enjoyable to read might be an unreasonable critique. He is a great writer though, and makes complex ideas sound simple. He fabricated a very real world with Media and Credit and Retail, a slightly exaggerated mirror image of ourselves.
I recommend this book to get some fresh eyes on things we think of as normal and to realize there are people more vapid and unintelligent than yourself.

5/5