Short Book Reviews #1

Wherein I write very short reviews of the books I've been reading.

Watership Down

by Richard Addams

(I always thought this was a book about naval warfare; turns out it was about rabbits.)

When I told my sister I was reading this, she told me she’d heard it was a book about dead rabbits. After reading it, I told her it was about as much a book about dead rabbits as Harry Potter was a book about dead children.

Basically, some rabbits leave their burrow on the advice of a seer-rabbit named Fiver, and with the leadership of his brother Hazel they cross the countryside to find a new warren and new female rabbits to have babies with.

The best part is the stories about El-Ahrairah, The Prince With A Thousand Enemies, a trickster rabbit of fable who outwits predators and gods alike.

Contains: lots of mentions of eating grass and being afraid of stoats.

The Glass Menagerie

by Tennessee Williams

(A play, not a book, but I read it all the same.)

A mother tries to match-make for her chronically anxious daughter, while the long-suffering son contemplates leaving like his father did long ago.

This play had some of the best characterization I’ve ever read of mental illness and familial dysfunction. If you’ve actually got any of those, it will likely hit close to home. The daughter’s panic attack is painful to read.

The way the characters’ dreams of better things are mirrored - the mother’s past as a desirable maiden versus the son’s future of adventure - is striking.

Contains: harm done to small glass animals.

Waiting For Godot

by Samuel Beckett

(Another play, although at least it didn’t try to make sense.)

Vladimir and Estragon screw around while waiting for someone named ‘Godot’, who is probably never going to come.

There were a couple of really good passages that made me understand why it’s considered a masterpiece, and the rest was dumb postmodern bullshit. If you’re into that, read it; if not, it can be safely skipped.

Contains: kink, kink-shaming, and boots that don’t fit right.

The Sandman

by Neil Gaiman

(A graphic novel series about Morpheus, who is Dream of the Endless.)

Dream, of the seven Endless, is captured, freed, and wanders throughout the waking and sleeping worlds in this saga of duty, imagination, and sacrifice.

This is a masterpiece, as good a story told as ever there was. Highly recommended.

Special mentions go to the side characters, from the immortal Hob to the down-to-earth Death, from Morpheus’s son Orpheus to the (clear) best girl, the Lady Delirium.

Contains: existential questions, esoteric references to literature and mythology, and a good doggy.

The Truth

by Terry Pratchett

(An artist uses lies to tell the truth. A journalist uses lies to sell papers.)

Dwarves create a printing press in the city of Anhk-Morpork, and the newspaper is born, squalling and covered in filth. The story of how William de Worde begins selling papers by learning the difference between news and olds.

Also, there’s a vampire photographer who disintegrates himself every time he takes a picture, due to the flash.

If you’ve read any Terry Pratchett, you know what you’re in for: puns, dry humor, and a look at society from a perspective that isn’t quite sideways but definitely isn’t rightside-up.

Contains: plots, talking dogs, the unhoused, and vertically challenged machinists.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

by Eliezer Yudkowski

(An online piece of Harry Potter fanfiction available here.)

An old favorite that I reread for the umpteenth time, HPMOR follows Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres as he takes the Wizarding World by storm, by simple virtue of not being an utter moron.

While too didactic for some, this is easily one of my favorite pieces of literature, diving into morality, humanism, economics, psychology, game theory, biology, physics, and more with a sense of humor and compassion for the characters.

The setting, on the other hand, is somewhat drastically upended, as the story has the express goal of making sense.

Contains: the power Voldemort knows not, Hermione Granger, and Dumbledore setting fire to a chicken.

Attached

by Amir Levine and Rachael S.F. Heller

(Pop-psych introduction to attachment theory. The book honestly should have been a blog post.)

There are three kinds of attachment styles: secure, anxious and avoidant. Securely attached people are comfortable with intimacy. Anxiously attached people need constant reassurance of intimacy. Avoidantly attached people are put off by intimacy and seek to defend their own independence. Anxious-Avoidant relationships usually end up miserable for everyone involved, as the anxious person gets clingier and the avoidant person gets more distant in a vicious cycle.

There, now you don’t have to read the book. It’s not bad, but it’s about as information-dense as a packing peanut.

Contains: quizzes (are you anxiously attached?), anecdotes, advice to communicate honestly with one’s partner.

I Kill Giants

by Joe Kelly and Ken Nimura

(A graphic novel about a little girl using fantasy to deal with her mother’s cancer.)

There’s a lot of fertile ground in the ‘child experiences grown-up problems as fantastical elements’ genre, and I Kill Giants plants its flag there proudly. The art is great, and the story is well told, even if it winds up exactly where you think it will.

*Gasp* you have to… accept death and make your peace with it???

Aside from the moral (which I disagree with), it’s a good read and even got me a bit teary at times.

Contains: ambiguously sourced bunny ears, an implausibly large hammer, and more baseball trivia than you might expect.

The Picture of Dorian Grey

by Oscar Wilde

(An incredibly gay novel, and I mean that in the most affectionate way possible.)

Dorian Gray is an untainted and fine-looking young lad who receives some very bad advice and a picture upon which all his sins are reflected, most damnably the sin of growing old. He proceeds to become tainted with hedonism and a preference for cynical aesthetic over all else, while remaining (in appearance) a fine-looking young lad.

It’s a well-written book, if somewhat overwrought with emotion and philosophical diatribe. For those willing to follow the repartee and long-winded digressions of high-class English lords in the late eighteen-hundreds, it’s a lot of fun.

The Picture of Dorian Gray reads as if Terry Pratchett wrote a gay novel about the debauchery of the late nineteenth-century aristocracy. While also attending a sophomore-level college class on the philosophy of art and moral relativism.

Also, some of the quotes are pure gold:

Like all people who try to exhaust a subject, he exhausted his listeners.

Society, civilized society at least, is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating.

"It is perfectly monstrous," he said at last, "the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true."

Contains: copious descriptions of masculine good looks, rich people sniping at each other over dinner, terrible advice for living, and murder most foul.