Review of Reviews, May 2025: Andor, Sinners, and Books by Okorafor, Maas, King, Harvey, Hannah-Jones, Pargin, and Stanley

 

I have gotten behind on posting book reviews lately (I did get one last month), so I thought I should get around to that now that the spring semester is over and grades are entered.

And today just happens to be May the 4th, aka Star Wars Day (as observed recently based on the pun on the date), so I figured I would add a little bit about the latest season of the Star Wars show, Andor. Also, like many other people, I saw and had a lot of thoughts about Ryan Coogler's Sinners.

Books reviewed here: She Who Knows by Nnedi Okorafor, A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas, The Waste Lands by Stephen King, The 1619 Project, edited by Nikole Hannh-Jones, Orbital by Samantha Harvey, John Dies at The End by Jason Pargin, and How Fascism Works by Jason Stanley.

There is also a super secret Star Wars day review hidden in here...

Let the reviews commence!

Beautiful Bleakness: The Road by Cormac McCarthy

 

My trip to Worldcon in Glasgow and Eurocon in Rotterdam was great! I may write a little about that later, but I came home to immediately start teaching for the fall semester (literally the next day), and the last month has been a whirlwind.

I'm finally ready to get back to my regular blogging with one of my most regular types of posts: a book review!

I imagine Cormac McCarthy asked himself, "What if I wrote a book filled with beautiful sentences about horrific things, set in a bleak post-apocalyptic wasteland? And what if I only occasionally used apostrophes?" And that's pretty much what he succeeded in doing with The Road.

Random Thoughts, Part 24: Opinions, Generations, AI, Ambition, 666, Doppelgängers, Noticing the Beauty of the Universe, etc.

 

My long-running Random Thoughts series has continued, randomly. Here we are at Part 24, which I'm happy to announce includes Random Thought 666! And there are also memes, because why not? Enjoy!

Retellings, Buddhisms, and Other Fantasies: The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera

Vajra Chandrasekera's The Saint of Bright Doors just won the Nebula and it's part of my Hugo reading, so this seemed like a good time to finally review it (I read most of it on a trip and didn't have time to review it until now).

The Saint of Bright Doors is a difficult book to describe: South Asian inspired magical realism about doors leading to mysterious realms? A critical retelling of the life of the Buddha from the Buddha's son's point of view? A queer love story? A story of revolution? All of the above, and more?

So I Watched All the Oscar Nominees for Best Picture... Again!

 

Last year I wrote a post called "So I Watched All the Oscar Nominees for Best Picture." I didn't set out to do so, but at some point I realized I had seen a few of the nominations and figured I might as well complete my tour. So I did! And it was mostly pretty fun. It didn't hurt that my favorite, Everything Everywhere All At Once, was the winner.

Well, dear reader, as Britney Spears once said, "Oops, I did it again." 

Spooky Reads for Spooky Season: Halloween 2023!

 

Spooky Season has been in full swing for almost two full months here in the US. One of the better things my fellow Americans have done in recent decades: turning Halloween into a full two-month-long festival of ghoulish goodness!

I've been watching a lot of spooky movies, from the old school The Wolf Man to The Descent to the entire Pet Sematary cinematic universe (I re-read the novel, which remains better than any of the films, watched both film versions, even got to Pet Sematary 2, which I don't necessarily recommend, and the brand new, Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, which I do recommend). I've also been trying to branch out more internationally with films like Kandisha from France and Kaali Khuhi from India. 

And there's spooky TV, too, most excellently The Fall of the House of Usher (Mike Flanagan's fantastic take on Edgar Allan Poe) and The Changeling (based on a novel by Victor LaValle starring LaKeith Stanfield). I may write up some thoughts about my spooky cinematic adventures later, maybe sometime before my horror and philosophy students present their films on November 16! (stay tuned for details on that)

But for now, here are a few of my spooky reads for spooky season 2023! Happy Halloween!

Movie and TV Mini-Reviews: The Boogeyman, Yellowjackets, Star Trek: Picard, Beavis & Butt-Head, and More

As the prophecy of a recent post foretold, I'm back with some short reviews of movies and TV I've been watching lately. I'm including The Boogeyman, Yellowjackets, Star Trek: Picard, Beavis & Butt-Head, John Wick 4, Sinister, Insidious, and X. These reviews get weirdly impressionistic, so if you're looking for elaborate plot summaries and the like, you may be disappointed. Just the mood I'm in these days, I guess. Enjoy!

Review of Reviews: May 2023

 

I'm a bit behind on book reviews, but rather than doing a few separate shorter reviews, I figured I'd do a review of reviews! This time it's Billy Summers by Stephen King, Dreaming Me by Jan Willis, and Beneath the Rising by Premee Mohamed.

I'll stick to books this time, but I may do some reviews of some notable TV and movies soon (maybe including Star Trek: Picard, Beef, Yellowjackets, Sinister, X, Dungeons & Dragons, John Wick 4, and the latest (surprisingly science fictional!) iteration of Beavis & Butt-Head.

Old Grey and Ethan's Excellent Adventure

The moment in Wyoming I realized the road trip had been an excellent idea

A couple months ago I realized that I would have family visiting Reno, Nevada right before I had to be in San Francisco, California for the American Philosophical Association Pacific Meeting (for a few panels, including one for the new Science Fiction and Philosophy Society!). I'm also on sabbatical this semester. I also have been wanting to do an epic Western US road trip for a long time.

Putting all this together, a plan was hatched. A bonkers plan. A long plan. One that I'm happy to inform you, dear reader, came to delightful fruition.

Nebraska state capitol in Lincoln

I left my house in Chattanooga, TN in late March and didn't return until about two and a half weeks later. All with my trusty Ford Focus, Old Grey. Hence, Old Grey and Ethan's Excellent Adventure! 

(Okay, poor Old Grey had to stay behind in Reno for a couple days while I went to Lake Tahoe and then several more days at the Oakland Airport while I took the train and conferenced it up in San Francisco. But for the most part it was just the two of us on our excellent adventure!)

Random Thoughts, Part 20: Non-dualism, Tacos, Chattanooga, James Bond, and Such

I haven't made a "Random Thoughts" post since October, but rest assured: the random thoughts have kept coming. Here are a few of them! With memes!

Two Short Kings: The Colorado Kid and Cycle of the Werewolf by Stephen King

 

In my perhaps ill-advised and loosely-resolved quest to read all of Stephen King's books, I have come to two shorter ones published over 20 years apart (2005 and 1983). I figured I would review them together on the blog. So here are The Colorado Kid and Cycle of the Werewolf!

The Colorado Kid

I don't know how Stephen King does it, but he took a story of two folksy small town newspaper reporters telling a 25-year-old story to a 22-year-old reporter and turned it into a probing thought experiment on two kinds of stories: those that recount events loose threads and all and stories that wrap things up with a nice beginning, middle, and end. If you think about it, the first kind of story is what really happens in life. And if you think about it some more, you'll see that the "complete" stories where everything is wrapped up are entirely artificial: they always leave some things out or take liberties for the sake of narrative unity. 

In The Colorado Kid, our folksy reporters call these news stories versus features stories. I'm also thinking about a distinction used by Noam Chomsky between mysteries and problems. A problem has a solution, or at least a resolution. But a mystery may not. It may go far beyond our cognitive capacity as human beings to understand. It may remain open-ended. Like life itself. 

A lot of the so-called "mystery" genre really consists of stories of problems in this sense, or features stories to use the terminology of this book. And if I'm being honest, this is probably why I usually don't care for the mystery genre (and why I have only recently delved into King's forays into more mystery-tinted fiction, but I should have known that King's mysteries would still be, well, Stephen King). 

While I understand the appeal of wrapping up a mystery or solving a problem with a nice little bow (maybe precisely because we are usually denied such things in real life), my experience in my decades of existence has taught me that reality is rarely like that. It's simply not true to my basic sense of this universe. Our universe is full of mysteries that we may never solve. This could in some cases be horrifying or disappointing (and King explores those Lovecraftian depths elsewhere), but I prefer the answer that King hints at in this novel and seems to confirm in his Afterword: it is precisely these unresolved mysteries, these loose threads of reality, that make our lives more interesting, perhaps even more meaningful.

See also my Goodreads review.

Cycle of the Werewolf

This is a fun little story (maybe a novella, maybe really just a long-ish short story) that was originally based on an idea for a calendar (no, really). It's vintage 80's Stephen King: mysterious murders are taking place in the small Maine down of Tarker's Mills (no relation). And of course the murders take place when there is a full moon each month for a year (so this is a kind of calendar, after all!). 

And you get all of this with cool artwork from Berni Wrightson. Honestly the artwork is probably what sells this for me. The werewolf story is solid enough, but nothing all that great within King's larger oeuvre. The movie Silver Bullet is a bonkers expansion of the story in the tradition of the best schlocky 80's Stephen King adaptations.

Like other monsters, werewolves are, from the outside, a reminder of our mortality. Be they werewolves, vampires, Frankenstein monsters, mummies, creatures from the Black Lagoon, etc., monsters are there waiting for us all. You don't know when. But they will get you eventually. In particular, werewolves are a reminder of the duality within us all and a reminder that the more brutal, base side of our nature can sometimes come out unexpectedly. 

I hesitate to say "animalistic," because I like animals just fine and think they get a bad wrap. As a werewolf in wolf form, you're just trying to eat, which is little comfort to the victims, I suppose, and a horror all its own. 

Still, the real evil in this story is the conscious decision made by the human side of the werewolf character. I won't spoil it, but that, I think, is a common theme for King: the real evil isn't the monsters, it's the people. And what they do with their inner turmoil. That's a far more terrifying idea, ultimately much harder to escape, which is probably the key to King's enduring popularity. (Along with the schlocky adaptations, of course!)

See also my Goodreads review.

Folksy Absurdism: From a Buick 8 by Stephen King

 

From a Buick 8 is one of Stephen King's more explicit forays into science fiction, albeit with horror elements. Let's call it "folksy absurdism."

In a series of flashbacks told to the 18-year-old son of a recently-deceased Pennsylvania state trooper, we get the story of how a mysterious old Buick was abandoned at a gas station in rural Western Pennsylvania in 1979. But it's no ordinary Buick. In fact, it's not really a Buick at all, but something made to look like one with fake radio controls and everything. How did it get to the gas station? Where did the mysterious driver go?

Grief and Creativity: Lisey's Story by Stephen King

Lisey's Story is a strange Stephen King book in many ways, but I found it as engrossing as most of his other work.

I had read somewhere that King says this is his favorite of his books, and somewhere along the way toward my King fandom in recent years I vaguely decided to try to read all of King's books at some point (a major undertaking given how prolific he is!). Then with the TV adaptation coming to Apple TV, I figured it was time to read Lisey's Story.

Stairs to Nowhere: A Photo Essay of Things I See on my Daily Walks

Dark Tower Re-Read, Book 7: The Dark Tower

The Dark Tower on the porch with a beverage

I started a Dark Tower re-read in June, and I've come to the end of the series (not counting The Wind Through the Keyhole, which I read in story order this time rather than publication order).

Book 7 is to the Dark Tower series as Jupiter is to our solar system. It's not separate from the larger system, but it has enough of its own gravitational pull to form a system of its own. You couldn't read Book 7 without having read the previous books, but there's enough going on to fill a series of its own. It's not just the longest book in word-count, it leads the others in sheer goings-on, not to mention emotional impact. Seriously, I challenge any fan to get through this one without tearing up at least a little.

It took me a long time to read this one, partly because I had a lot going on, partly because it's just a long-ass book, but mostly because ending another trip to the Tower was a little melancholy for me.

But I, for one, find the ending completely satisfying. More on that later.

We start with Jake and Callahan entering the Dixie Pig, a den of vampires, taheen, can toi, and other assorted baddies. And...

I can't really write most of this review without spoilers, so be forewarned. I will be as merciless with spoilers as King is with character deaths in this book.

New Article: "Ursula K. Le Guin's Science Fictional Feminist Daoism"

Ursula K. Le Guin

I'm thrilled to announce that my article "Ursula K. Le Guin's Science Fictional Feminist Daoism" is now available in The Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy. You can download it here.

Horrific Analysis: Danse Macabre by Stephen King

 

Danse Macabre is another Stephen King book I've probably meant to read for 30 years. Seeing this book around is how I first learned the word "macabre." I'm glad I found a used copy like the one I remember from back in the day with that weird pink writing and creepy picture of King's face (see above). So was it worth the wait?

Pandemic Journal, Part 12: Back-to-School Doom-Anxiety Edition

 

My pandemic journal continues with Part 12, Back-to-School Doom-Anxiety Edition.

Tomorrow is the beginning of the 2020-21 school year for me, so this juncture in my life and the lives of many others seems like a good time to post a journal update. You can see my latest thoughts at the end.

In recent week's I've come to feel what I've been calling doom-anxiety about the impending school year.

And as always, there are plenty of doom-memes to make the doom-anxiety go down a little easier. 

Whether you're here for the memes, my random thoughts, or you just realized you clicked on the wrong thing: good luck to us all!

Dark Tower Re-Read, Book 4.5: The Wind Through the Keyhole

The Wind Through the Keyhole on my porch with a beverage

 

At the end of my review of The Wind Through the Keyhole the first time through, I wondered if we might get another one of these latter day Dark Tower books in 2019 given the importance of the number 19 in the series. (Quick note: The Wind Through the Keyhole was published in 2012 while the core books of the series finished in 2004, but in terms of the story it fits in between books 4 and 5... hence, 4.5).

Well, we didn't get another Dark Tower book in 2019, but I am re-reading the whole series in 2020, a year that has given us... lots of stuff, I guess.

2020 Hugo Ballot, Part One: Novel, Novella, Novelette, and Short Story

I started voting for the Hugos in 2016 for two main reasons. I wanted to take more part in science fiction fandom, and I found the Sad and Rabid Puppies to be really obnoxious. Luckily the Puppies have since taken their pack elsewhere, but I'm still excited about taking part in fandom and being part of science fiction history and all that.