dingakaa's reviews
84 reviews

Thoughtful, powerful, important.  

I don't know why I waited so long to start the Stormlight Archive. Absolute banger. Any fantasy buff has to rocket this to the top of their TBR list.

This book is beautiful. This book is bold. This book displays passion and literary mastery. It is a must-read. If this is enough for you, go get the book and consume it.

If you need more....

Normally, I find myself thinking of works similar to whatever it is I am reading. However, I experienced something unique for me while reading a book: Underland reminded me of several books I viewed as the exact opposite to itself... works that were bland, repetitive, and uninspiring:

-The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World (Wulf)
-Einstein's Dreams (Lightman)
-The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-But Some Don't (Silver)

These titles all take a central, interesting idea, and beat it into the ground so thoroughly as to make reading the book laborious and unenjoyable. In these cases, I blame the authors, because there is clearly lots to say about their respective topics. Their approaches are unimaginative; this leads to repetitive chapters; I was left wholly unsatisfied after each.

Underland is the exact opposite. Its central idea is so thoroughly explored and so beautifully presented that the experience of reading it was both informative and almost magical. Each chapter builds upon the previous, but can stand alone if need be. Macfarlane seamlessly switches between poetry disguised as prose, and a more narrative voice. In so doing you get short bouts of learning and narrative intrigue interspersed with periods of spiritual weightlessness, melancholy, and day-dreaming. Even as I read over this review before submitting, I am disappointed by how poorly it relays the experience of reading Underland. Just go read it.

I REALLY wanted this to be a good book. So badly. Taking our most important scientist ever, and compiling an anthology of stories based on dreams that were known to directly influence his discoveries seems like a great idea.

The execution, however, was less than lacklustre.

Conceptually, Lightman neither makes physics accessible nor does he make any meaningful connections to Einstein. It would be fine to borrow Einstein as inspiration and write something for the mainstream, except the short stories themselves were repetitive and bland. The endless description, a tool employed to hammer home the one point of each short story, was more listicle than anything else. My eyes would glaze over for most of each story as I burned through line after line, only to refocus for the last paragraph and realize each ended with a moral. This was the most perplexing part; the consistency of this flourish meant Lightman did this intentionally, and I can't figure out why. Why does a book inspired by the history of physics need to have morals at all? Conversely, why does an author who wants to write about the human condition and morality need to base it upon physics? I just don't get it. Not to mention, each moral was simply a different version of "live in the moment."

If that wasn't enough, Lightman struggled with writing about time. Granted, writing about time travel, time paradoxes, and relativity in narrative form is one of the hardest creative pursuits, but this was among the poorest I've seen.

Einstein was famous for thought experiments and dreams that are widely known to have influenced his work. I feel shame that I wish Lightman had simply taken them and turned them into a series of short stories. He's a prolific science writer who loves his craft and is in awe of the world around him; who am I to criticize him from my vantage point. It's just this book lacked so much when it could have been everything.

Stream-of-conciousness meets incisive. Social commentary on a historical backdrop. Withering critique. This book is work, but worth it if you have the energy.

I remember reading Out In The Great Alone when it was first published on Grantland. Blog posts have this innate feeling of always being almost done; this fear has become increasingly realized as news and blogs adopt shorter and shorter formats. So when I now read a good article, I do so with dread at the thought of it ending.

Phillips' work is the cure to that fear. His are stories that are so long and so good you can let yourself just float through them. By the time they come to an end, you're ready for it. My cup is filled.

The man really did first create MULTIPLE languages and then write a story based on those languages...

Exceptional world-building, thorough character development, blistering-yet-shrewd social commentary. Neverwhere could stand alone but I can't wait to read the sequel.

Gaiman places the protagonist as an unmistakable audience avatar which makes the reader's discovery of this world more organic and natural than other fantasy literature.

His creativity and originality are so refreshing. The Wachowski sisters must have read this before creating The Matrix. Jonas Jonasson must have devoured this book and created his literary voice in the process. I've never been so interested in London before. Go read this book.

This book was a recommendation and so I was excited to be taken out of my comfort zone and into a genre I would never sample on my own. 

Unfortunately, the foreword by Jeff Vandermeer does a disservice by fawning over detail, sophistication, and intrigue that just aren't there. I was ready for subtle social commentary given Holm's history as a writer; what I got was writing that was instead over-simplified and bland. The reliance on contrasting the wealthy Termush guests from "strangers" was overwrought. It was akin to painting "Capitalism is bad" on the side of a truck; true enough but without artistry.

I expected a Lovecraftian reckoning with the "invisible horrors" of a nuclear disaster (albeit, without the racism). Unfortunately, there is no plot and so the inexorable advance of doom didn't seize me emotionally. Users of StoryGraph will know they are asked to assess whether each read is based on plot, character development, or both. "Termush" ticks none of those boxes; it is about an idea, and that idea is so poorly developed that I'm not sure what I came away with after finishing this book. 

Even allowing for atrophy due to translation, or an under-appreciation of linguistic norms of the day, the prose lacks strength. I admire the attempt by FSG with this one, but they missed the mark. 

A must-read. It made me feel things.