David G. Cookson's Blog, page 9

Pizza Girl

Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


An 18-year-old Korean-American pregnant pizza delivery girl living with her mother (circa 2011) and boyfriend in suburban Los Angeles meets a special woman who orders pepperoni and pickles pizza (the only kind her son will eat), which sets this delightful story on its course.

She doesn’t know where she’s going. She doesn’t know what she wants. We don’t even know her name until the very end. At night she sneaks out to sit in the shed that her father used to sit in while he drank himself to death, picking up where he left off. Her mother and boyfriend are two of the most loving and supportive people a person could ever have. Her job at the pizza shop is easy, her coworkers are her friends. But soon she becomes enamored of Jenny, the lady who orders that unusual pizza combination every week. And that’s when things get messy…

Pardon me while I gush about the best book that I’ve read this year.

I LOVED this book (I am a sucker for these types of stories anyway, or really any coming-of-age type of story). Our narrator (Jean, we discover her name only after we’ve been through the bulk of the story) is funny, insightful, complicated and self-deprecating. She is a uniquely fascinating and relatable character. I was on her side after about 20 pages and I cared so much about her that I was a little worried that something would happen before I finished that would diminish my feelings for the book (it mostly held up).

The writing in this debut novel from Jean Kyoung Frazier is straightforward, logical, with relevant backstories at the right time. In just under 200 pages, in a narrated tour, Pizza Girl delivers. I’m here for whatever she comes out with next.




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The Patient

The Patient by Jasper DeWitt

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Parker H is a young psychiatrist who gets involved in a mysterious case of a 41-year-old man who has lived most of his life in a dreary New England mental institution. The young man is Joe, and he was initially brought in for night terrors…and everyone who treats him winds up being driven to suicide or other self harm.

The story is told through a series of online posts which dig deeper into the mystery of how Joe came to be here and how he came to be regarded as a danger to anyone who tried to care for him. And Parker H is only the latest to view Joe’s case as a potential career maker. But as he gets closer to the truth, it reveals a terrifying secret more shocking than anyone could have imagined…

This clocks in at 205 pages and I read it in three sittings over 4 days, though a determined reader could breeze through it in a few hours. It’s very addictive and page-turning and engrossing and it comes very close to being a potential classic. The author doesn’t waste any time getting to the heart of the story, and the mystery combines nicely with the backstory offered about the narrator. I’ll let you make up your own mind how you feel about the conclusion. For my money, this is a fun, quick read that begs to be filmed.




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QualityLand

Qualityland by Marc-Uwe Kling

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


In the not-so-distant future…countries have been reorganized, and what was once the United States has been rebranded as QualityLand. In QualityLand, needs are met before you even know you have them: it is like Amazon on steroids. Products are obtained because the service knows you will be thinking about it soon. Relationships are determined by a foolproof algorithm, and ended coldly and bloodlessly while the app helps you seek out a new mate. Your value as a human being is determined via something called “Quality Points,” and a low score can brand you a “Useless” for life. And to reinforce this caste system of the future, you are also saddled with a last name that is the job of the parent at the time you were born (aka, I’d be Dave Teacher, you might be John Garbageman, etc.…) which doesn’t work so well if your parents were unemployed or in an embarrassing line of work. The President of QualityLand is expected to die at a certain time on a certain date (according to the algorithm) and as a result, there is an election underway that promises to make history as the first artificial life form vies for the nod.

Enter Peter Jobless, a machine scrapper whose job it is to dispose of outdated smart machines: robots. He has been dumped by his girlfriend but rather than being allowed time to grieve he is immediately forced to deal with the loss of Quality Points and the standing that the relationship had given him. He secretly has been refusing to destroy his robots, who all sit in his basement watching TV all day. One day he receives an item he doesn’t want, which (among other things) leads him to question the infallibility of the all-mighty algorithm that runs people’s lives in QualityLand.

This is a comic take on a scary modern phenomenon of how humankind has given itself over to the convenience of Amazon and Google and getting what you want at the click of a mouse at the sacrifice of privacy. And beyond that, QualityLand (the novel) offers another take: that maybe the image that we see of ourselves through the products and service we use is being determined by those very services we are using to acquire those products.

This is like Idiocracy meets Blade Runner meets Star Trek. I laughed out loud many times at this. It is a lively book with lots of sidebars and breaks and for the most part, it moves along nicely. Highly recommended.







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Ready Player Two

Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


(Rated 4, but Closer to 3.5)

2011’s Ready Player One, where a world-wide “Easter Egg Hunt” in the virtual world of the Oasis ends with young Wade Watts becoming the heir to Oasis creator James Halliday’s fortune. (Think: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory meets the Matrix—I didn’t make that up, it’s a review on the back of the book.)

Ready Player Two is the long-awaited sequel, and it begins just days after that contest ends. Wade a.k.a Parzival (his avatar within the simulation) discovers a dangerous secret implanted within the Oasis and before he knows it, he is thrust into another quest with his friends, including his now estranged ex-girlfriend Art3mis as well as his best friend Aech, as well as Sho and Daito. But this time, (because it is a sequel) the stakes are much higher, up to and including the very fate of humanity.

Along the way there are 80’s references galore: John Hughes, Prince…as well as the standard Lord of the Rings and other tropes of the Dungeons and Dragons foundation that lays the foundation for many of the quest video games from which this series derives its inspiration. It can be overwhelming and a tad confusing if you are not well-versed in this stuff. But to Kline’s credit, he devotes many words to explaining things.

Some criticisms I had: the initial excitement I had in reading this was somewhat tempered by the stain of Parzival no longer being a lovable underdog. In Ready Player One he was the little guy, poor and desperate with nothing to lose, while here, it becomes necessary to put him in a REALLY bad spot for us to care about his fate. Also (in the nit-picky category) there are flaws: the release date of the Tim Burton Batman movie is listed as 1990 (it was actually 1989); he mentions Magnum PI wearing a Detroit Lions hat (um, I never watched the show, but I think he meant Tigers) and I don’t want to spoil anything…but there is a live action stunt by one of the characters that I quite simply do not believe. I didn’t toss the book away in nerd disgust, but nonetheless here we are.

If you are a fan of the first book, you will most likely enjoy this one. If you are reading this first, maybe go back and read Ready Player One, but you don’t have to, as all you really need to know is written in the book jacket to this one.
All in all, Ready Player Two is a fun sequel that leaves us in good position to either end the series or to continue…..





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The Last Taxi Driver

The Last Taxi Driver by Lee Durkee

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The Last Taxi Driver takes us through the days of cab Driver Lou, driving in a town called Gentry, Mississippi, taking us through a cross section of the crazed and the desperate. All are trying to eke out an existence in a world that has largely forgotten them. And for Lou’s part, he is working 70-hour weeks for a sometimes-psychotic dispatcher and a woman named Stella who runs the cab company. He earns just enough to keep working, all the while threatened by the impending appearance of Uber ride sharing service.

The Last Taxi Driver is mostly set up to cover different subjects in every chapter, making it seem random, a randomness that would probably resemble that of a night driving a taxi. And a picture begins to form of a Waiting for Godot existence that we are all just going along with. There are drug addicts, old flames, old enemies, people coming out of prison, people going to the hospital, people going to work who have no other way to get there than through him…old people who cannot climb into anything higher than his low-to-the-ground Town Car. There are stories in every encounter.

Lou’s life story is scattered throughout his taxi runs, where we learn that he has a son who once suffered a near fatal brain injury; where we learn of his prolonged dead-end relationship with a live-in girlfriend that is slowly eating away at his soul. We also learn of his past as a novelist and his foray into Ufology. Knowing what a cursory examination of the author’s bio taught me, I can assume that a lot of this is autobiographical. There is an embrace of the absurd in all things: the complicated explanation for his feelings toward Bigfoot and aliens seem less strange the more time you spend with Lou.

This novel is apparently Lee Durkee’s long overdue 2nd book, and it hits on almost all cylinders. Oddly, the UFO bits didn’t hit for me as well as some of the other observations of life at the lowest rungs did. It’s a little bit like reading Bukowski, with a much less harsh tone to it.
I enjoyed it; I recommend it. It’s a pretty quick read that can pass the time while you sit somewhere in your car.








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Too Much and Never Enough....

Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man by Mary L. Trump

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Mary Trump, Donald Trump’s niece (daughter of Donald’s brother Freddy) has written a slim but at times scathing tell-all about growing up as a member of the Trump family, watching Donald as he fumbled and stumbled his way up to the highest office in the land. And while it is at times shocking and some of the family’s bad behavior ranges from just plain tacky (regifting) to the obscene (cutting people out of the will for no good reason=Fred Trump, the family patriarch—for purposes of clarity, I will refer to the father as “Fred”, the eldest son as “Freddy”), this is largely a rough sketch of the man who would become the future one term president of the United States.

These are awful people. While Mary Trump presents Fred Trump as a successful businessman, he is also a terrible father, a terrible man who controlled everyone in his orbit. He ruined eldest son Freddy, cut his grandchildren out of his will (he cut off Mary because her father had divorced her mother), and then the final indignity to Fred: refusing his final wishes to have his cremated ashes scattered into the sea at Montauk, instead insisting that his ashes be buried in a family plot.

But presenting a view of Fred only helps to understand the world from which Donald came. As the second son, he served a role that older brother Freddy never could. Fred put a lot of pressure on Freddy to take the reins on the Trump Empire but when he did not meet expectations and tried to branch out on his own (he was an airline pilot for ten months until he was pressured into coming back to re-join the family business) Fred was done with him. Meanwhile, Donald watched and learned how to survive in this family. He learned all the worst traits of bullying, deflecting blame from his failures to others, and promoting an image over reality to become Fred’s unquestioned favorite.

It may all sound like gossip and family gripes and airing dirty laundry. Maybe it is. She hits a turning point in their relationship when he becomes president where she decides he must be stopped, and this book is most likely part of that. To that end, Chapter 14: A civil Servant in Public Housing lays out a devastating case against him.

Re: his manipulation of the media:

“We must dispense with the idea of Donald’s ‘strategic brilliance’ in understanding the intersection of media and politics. He doesn’t have a strategy; he never has. Despite the fluke that was his electoral advantage and a ‘victory’ that was at best suspect and at worst illegitimate, he never had his finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist; his bluster and shamelessness just happened to resonate with certain segments of the population.” (203-204)
There’s more, but I’ll leave it at that.

Like any other books about Trump, to half of us it is shocking (though really, who is shocked anymore) and to the other half its fake news.




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Pretty Things

Pretty Things by Janelle Brown

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Nina is a thief who specializes in stalking people on Instagram. She works her way into her victim’s lives by showing up at the places where they go, flirting, doing whatever is necessary to take advantage of her targets, who are usually drunk, and usually male. She takes things weeks later after she is nothing more than a drunk memory and then gets away with no one the wiser.

She does this with her companion, Lachlan, an older Irishman whom she met through her con artist mother, who is ill and needs money for an expensive treatment. Nina and Lachlan’s thefts are never personal, and they only take from people who can afford to be taken, and who also deserve it.
Meanwhile, Vanessa is a rich heiress who has crossed paths with Nina before, albeit only superficially. Her Instagram triggers Nina’s vindictive streak: “sunshine and light!”; mindless aphorisms that belie the privilege beneath it.

With Lachlan’s help, they concoct a scheme to rob Vanessa blind and finally get revenge for a past transgression. But things aren’t what they seem, and soon it is unclear who is fooling who.
My two main criticisms are connected:

1. It’s about 100-125 pages too long which

2. Forces a plot development that I wasn’t crazy about.

The beginning was so promising, I was hoping for an Ocean’s 11 style caper where it’s fun to root for the thief. But the con job that is at the center of the story takes you into a backstory and the way it ties together might have been tighter without the last development. Just my two cents.

Told from the point of view of the dueling narrators, Pretty Things is a lively and entertaining novel that mostly delivers. It’s fun and keeps you guessing. It was a solid read and I’m happy to give it four stars.




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Damascus

Damascus by Joshua Mohr

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


It is 2003 and tensions over the war with Iraq are bubbling over. In bar called Damascus, located in the Mission District in San Francisco, a desperate bar owner named Owen is cursed with an unfortunate birthmark that causes people to irritate him with the constant jokes until one day he dons a Santa suit and people love him again. There is Shambles, a middle-aged woman with a heartbreaking backstory who exercises her damages in a unique way. There is No Eyebrows, a terminally ill cancer patient who arrives with very little to lose…there is Rev, a rock and roll singer living his very best rock and roll cliché… and then there is Owen’s niece, an artist whose controversial new show provides the catalyst for the action in this short but powerful story.

At just 206 pages in a story that mostly takes place in one setting, Joshua Mohr paces the action well. It is like Cheers without the laugh track; a good representation of the desperate characters that populate these places in the day time. At many points it is just very raw and not always easy to deal with. But it feels true. There is a conflict between artistic expression and those who would seek to stifle it. There are unexpected turns of heroism and cowardice, there is a conflicted bad guy who you can almost understand and maybe empathize with.

All in all, Damascus is very tight but not always easy. But it really sticks with you, and I think that is a testament to how well written it was.




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Fantasyland

Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History by Kurt Andersen

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The basic premise of this breezy, entertaining view of the past 500 years, is that America is unique in the world because of our insistence on creating our own reality.

Andersen argues that our history has been a unique blend of dreamers, deluders, deniers, optimistic and opportunistic people who have led us down a dark path where reality is not only denied, but considered secondary to fantasy. Starting with the Pilgrims in the 1600s and moving all the way up to present day; through the Salem Witch Trials and P.T Barnum and Disneyland and the flat-out envelopment of the country in politics as entertainment, Fantasyland is deeply entrenched and baked into the fabric of this country.

500 years are summarized through the lens of fantasy, starting with religion and Protestantism and the roots of America, moving to the Industrial Revolution and then a period he labels as “The Long Arc Bending Toward Reason (1900-1960)” before giving way to the 60s and 70’s and then winding up in an often-forgotten Satanic Panic of the 80’s. He touches upon many potentially controversial issues (he’s already probably stepping on many toes with the long section about religion) and through the view of the “anything goes” mentality of Americans, Andersen forms the first honest to goodness description that explains the country we have today, where science and reason don’t stand a chance against gut feeling and blind faith.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. While reading this, I could watch something on TV or see something online and I could suddenly understand why things are the way they are: why people question respected medical professionals in favor of random information online. Why educated people are not trusted. Why science gets a bad name. How we got to be so divided and what we have to fight to overcome this.

Excellent.





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Dead Wake: The Last crossing of the Lusitania

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


In 1915 while the world was at war (minus the U.S.) a luxury ocean liner set sail from New York to Liverpool, England. It was the Lusitania, and it was going into a potential war zone.
But at the time it was thought that civilians would be off limits: a belief that Captain William Thomas Turner held to.

The ship ran at something less than full speed (to save money) and as it steered across the Atlantic and into seas that the German U-boats patrolled, few believed that they were in any real danger.

Then one day toward the end of the voyage, disaster struck when German U-boat Captain Walter Schwieger catches sight of them…and all the rules of war that had previously been at play get lost at sea as he gives the order to fire the torpedo that sinks the mighty boat.

“Dead wake” refers to the trail that a boat or other seafaring object (like a torpedo) leaves in the water behind it. One thing that is striking about this tale is the number of things that had to go wrong for this to happen. The timing, the route, the belief in gentlemanly conduct that was held by the people of the time…all of it played a part in this tragedy that killed 12,000 people…

Another thing…World War One has got to be one of the most murky and inscrutable conflicts in American history. I know that Woodrow Wilson was trying to keep the US out of it, that the sinking of the Lusitania and other ships bearing American passengers is a common historical justification for our entry into that war (though US entry did not occur until at least two years after this attack) …but the reasons for this hugely destructive conflict seem downright convoluted. (And if one article I read is to be believed, the driver of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand took a wrong turn that put him in the path of the assassin? That’s a bad day.)

One noteworthy section: a passenger yelled “The Captain says the boat will not sink!” causing people who were waiting for lifeboats to turn away…the ship’s purser and surgeon strolled through the decks reassuring people that the boat wouldn’t sink. (p 254-255). Beware the people who tell you that everything is going to be all right.

Dead Wake builds its narrative through the stories of the passengers and crew and is a fascinating look at this slice of history. Highly recommended!






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