Reviewing Every Book I Read in 2023
Wild Bill: The True Story of the American Frontier’s First Gunfighter by Tom Clavin
Does what it says on the tin. The enjoyment one gets from this, I suspect, will be directly correlated with their interest in the subjects at hand - that being the Western frontier, Deadwood, the American mythologization of its most consummate shootists, and other such male-coded concerns.
4 stars.
The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music by Dave Grohl
Not a huge fan of the Foo Fighters as such, but Dave Grohl seems an impossible sort to dislike and that, coupled with my teenage obsession with Nirvana compelled me to pick this up on a whim. Dave is a good storyteller and the memories he includes are endearing and entertaining, but I do fear that his relentless positivity may have done him a slight disservice here. I had hoped that we would dig into the mud a little and maybe hear about his first divorce and some of the seedier aspects of the industry but such topics are conspicuously absent. The result is a collection of anecdotes that are rather sanitized, though again, still entertaining enough on their own.
3.5 stars.
Confessions to Scare… by Munly J. Munly
I don't think I can give a proper star rating for this one. It's not a book I would casually recommend or suggest to anyone that is not already familiar with Munly's more prominent work as a musician. As a songwriter and musical storyteller in the vaguely defined genres of alt-country/southern gothic/dark-Americana, Munly is unparalleled and the absolute best at what he does. Many of his songs suggest a well-read and literary background and in this collection of short, interconnected stories and vignettes he really gets to flex those particular muscles. One can sense the influence of Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, and early-period Cormac McCarthy in the many grotesque, troubled, and earnest characters that inhabit Munly's Lupercalia. But again, I think to fully grasp and appreciate the world that Munly has created, some familiarity with his larger body of work is important here.
Between his last couple books and his last few albums, he has been hard at work creating his own expanded universe and for the sickos like me out there who resonate with his macabre tales, it's a world well worth exploring.
No rating.
Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy
John Grady Cole apparently never learned that the first time that falling in love with young Mexican women across the border doesn't seem to end well for him. In that, and in how much of this book is written and paced, Cities of the Plain resembles All the Pretty Horses more than it does the second book in his Border Trilogy (The Crossing), which is to say a heavy emphasis on cowboys doing cowboy things in a world where the concept of cowboys is starting to seem more and more out of place. Such cowboy activities range from the seemingly banal to the exciting, but all exude a certain mythic masculinity that I can't pretend doesn't appeal to some part of me. I don't think the story reaches the same level of consistent and compelling readability as ATPH, but I will say that the final epilogue of this book, detailing an aged and down-on-his-luck Billy Parham might just be one of the most gorgeous and harrowing passages that McCarthy ever wrote, which is to say, one of the most gorgeous and harrowing passages in all of modern American fiction.
4 stars.
Why We Can’t Wait by Marin Luther King Jr.
Important, crucial, should be read by all, what else have I the license to say?
4 stars.
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki
More for those already on the path, even early on, rather than those about to be, but I suspect you'll get as much out of it as you are willing and ready to, which I suppose is sort of the entire point innit?
3.5 stars.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley
It's not often these days that I read a book that I instantly know will stand the test of time and become an all-time favorite, but here we are. This is another book I tried to read as an eighteen year old during my initial political 'awakening' but I was too young/inexperienced/uninformed to fully grasp and appreciate what I was reading. Reading it again as an adult with bit more understanding of American history, culture, and politics and I can see more clearly how powerful this work really is. It's one of the rare books that I would suggest should be read by any adult regardless of their situation or political leanings, and not just because it serves as an excellent (and more incendiary) accounting of the civil rights movement, but because when you strip away the specific context of Malcolm's story (that being the racist America he grew up in) you see how this story really transcends place and time to present a deeply universal human narrative of change, self-discovery, and the possibility of growth regardless of circumstances. A truly gripping read cover-to-cover.
5 stars.
The Orchard Keeper by Cormac McCarthy
I never thought my favorite modern author would ever get a 3-star review from me, but such is the mystery of life. Actually, it's not much of a mystery at all, it's undoubtedly the result of me reading all of his newer, better books first and saving his debut for last. The DNA of his later work is evident here, as is the mastery of language and syntax that would define them, but there is a certain roughness around the edges, a too-beholden-to-Faulkner tendency that holds this back from reaching the same level of the works to come (already in his follow-up novel, Outer Dark, he would take a massive step forward in quality). Only really recommended for fellow McCarthy completionists, if nothing else to see the first steps of a man who would go on to become one of the best to ever do it.
3 stars.
Buddhism Without Beliefs by Stephen Batchelor
'Acting Without Acting' was a punchline on Curb, take that for what you will.
3 stars.
A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
Anyone with even a modicum of awareness of American history should instinctually respond to everything Zinn covers in this book with a resigned "yeah, that sounds about right." If so, you may be compelled to skip this juggernaut of a book and I wouldn't hold it against you. After all, how many different ways can you hear about how America persecuted/exploited/genocided/[insert other bad verb here] the working class/Black population/Native Americans/foreign country/[insert other marginalized group here]? From our modern vantage point you might be forgiven for thinking that it all bleeds (excuse the word choice) together. But, if you want to expand your outlook beyond 'America bad' in such a way that you can intelligently articulate exactly as to WHY that's the case (beyond repeating the same platitudes), then this is the book you need to read, dates, numbers, names, and all. Long, but compulsively readable, largely due to Zinn being much less dry than some of his more notable peers (I won't name names, but let's just call one of them Noam S., no wait, that's to obvious, let's call him N. Chomsky). Just be cautioned that there is very little here to feel good about, as Zinn does not care to sugarcoat or gloss over the worst of the many atrocities documented therein.
4.5 stars.
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
Widely touted as an anti-war novel, which it certainly is, although not one that's like to sway fence-sitters if in fact 'is war bad' fence-sitters are a real demographic. What we get then is a horrific exploration of an individual who is not quite killed in war (though ultimately wishes he had been giving the new circumstances of his life) that reinforces what most people reading a book like this hopefully already know - war is in fact bad. But, hey, nothing solidifies that opinion more than reading about an absolute nightmare situation that is just about the most terrifying thing I can imagine. It's not often a let out an audible 'oof' when I'm reading something but I got more than one out of this book. Bonus points for the final section that, while maybe heavy-handed, serve as a poignant and very well-written encapsulation of Trumbo's outlook re: war being bad.
4.5 stars.
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
I didn't go to an American high school so I wasn't forced to read and ultimately hate this book the way it seems others were. I read it on my own volition as an adult in one sitting and without having to write a half-assed book report on it. Turns out it's good. Maybe it makes more sense as you get older. Maybe it's male-coded (in a way that much of Hemingway is) to an exclusionary degree. Maybe I just like stories about human perseverance bordering on bewildering stubbornness. Maybe I like the bittersweet message about personal victories on your own terms, even if no one else sees, cares, or acknowledges them.
4.5 stars.
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
War is hell, yes, and the victims are many, yes, and the young people who fight them suffer the most, yes, while men from removed from battlefields make decisions that regard all casualties as faceless and necessary, yes, but remember that scene when Paul goes to visit his sick mother while on leave? That's the one I will always remember.
4 stars.
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
Required reading for those with any seriousness at all about understanding American criminology.
4 stars.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
I get the sense that if I had read this book as a teenager or younger man that it might have gone on to become a formative, all-time favorite of mine. Coming to it in my thirties, however, all I got was a fun, often hilarious, and ultimately a highly enjoyable read.
4 stars.
Buddhish: A Guide to the 20 Most Important Buddhist Ideas for the Curious and Skeptical by C. Pierce Salguero
Good for those starting off on the path, thinking about starting, or for those who need a bit of a refresher.
4 stars.
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams
Fun, though seemingly less so than the first.
3.5 stars.
Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga by Hunter S. Thompson
Hunter Thompson is a complicated sort. On the one hand I get the sense that many of those who idolize the man are sort of missing the point, but on the other , I don't think you can understate just how important he was on the development of modern journalism - for better and for worse (if this book were written today, it would be a 20-minute documentary on Vice).
Hell's Angels is often a book I will discuss with my students in my seemingly unrelated course on research methods. Not because Thompson was as academic researcher, but because I think he can offer us interesting lessons on access, rapport, and representation of that which we seek to know more about. In this case, the HAMC, which at the time of writing were a clandestine and somewhat mythic group that Hunter effectively demystifies by portraying them as the ugly and vicious brutes that they were. In so doing he makes larger reflections on an American society that sowed such a group in the first place, all in the confrontational style that would soon become his trademark.
One of a kind.
4 stars.
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Oddly, you find yourself empathizing with Meursault and you wonder if that's maybe a bad sign and then you realize that everyone probably empathizes with Meursault to some degree but we all have to pretend like we don't and in so doing you realize that you empathize with Meursault even more than you initially thought.
4.5 stars.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
I re-read this for the first time since I was nineteen and I did so somewhat apprehensively, expecting that I wouldn't like it nearly as much now that I'm a little older and at least slightly more mature. As a teenager, this book (and the myth of Hunter Thompson more broadly) resonated with me in ways that are probably embarrassing to admit now. At the time I thought Hunter and his escapades were the coolest things ever and worthy of emulation, and I probably even made poor attempts to do so. And while I no longer feel that way reading this book today, it's still just entertaining and provoking as it was back then, in fact, probably even more so now that I'm free of the delusion of believing that Hunter was some kind of heroic figure. In truth he was a complicated guy with some very ugly aspects to him, but with a preternatural ability to expose the same ugliness inherent in American culture in such a clear and concise way, and that is what makes this book (and most of his work) so compellingly readable and worthwhile, and even more valuable to me now than it was when I first read it.
5 stars.
To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway
Definitely not the worst book I've ever read, but possibly the worst Hemingway book I've ever read, which is to say, still worth a look.
3 stars.
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
I struggled with this one, which is unfortunate because I think on paper it checks a lot of boxes for me. I'm having trouble articulating exactly what it was that didn't work for me. It might be the characters - there's not much there worth remembering. It might be the pacing. It might be the disjointed narrative that prevented me from ever feeling grounded in the story. The prose is certainly good, occasionally even excellent, but alas.
2 stars.
Hell Before Their Very Eyes: American Soldiers Liberate Concentration Camps in Germany, April 1945 by John C. McManus
I read this as a bit of research for a work-in-progress and it delivered adeptly on what's promised in the title. That it's a disturbing read should go without saying. That combined with the somewhat narrow historical focus makes this not a book I'm likely to generally recommend to most people, but hey, if you really want to stare into the core of humanity's capacity for evil, look no further. Wish it was a tad longer/more detailed, but good all the same.
4 stars.
Theos Bernard, the White Lama: Tibet, Yoga, and American Religious Life by Paul G. Hackett
For me, writing a novel typically requires a large amount of detailed research. Often it requires research on obscure or niche people or events that haven't been thoroughly documented. But sometimes you get lucky and discover that someone else has written thick, detailed, extremely comprehensive and thoroughly researched book on the exact topic you need.
Long story short, I needed to know much more about Theos Casimir Bernard than what was provided in the relatively short Wikipedia article on him - which led me to Hackett's book. Adapted from Hackett's PhD dissertation, this book is by far the most rigorous and definitive overview of Bernard's life that likely exists and provided exactly the deep dive I was looking for.
Theos Bernard is an intriguing figure - part adventurous spirit, part charlatan, part parasite of well-to-do women, part true believer, part lapsed academic, part other things I'm sure. From what I can tell, Hackett does a good job presenting him not as a hero or a scoundrel, but as fairly and objectively as possible, with all his triumphs and flaws.
I don't think I can give a conventional star rating to this book and it's not necessarily one I would recommend to people who aren't already interested in the subject matter (and I mean seriously interested, because this is not a quick read) but if you find yourself at all compelled by Bernard or the early history of Tibetan Buddhism in America, you will find this to be an excellent resource.
No rating.
The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation by Thich Nhat Hanh
Intermediate level pathers.
4 stars.
Texas Fever by Donald Hamilton
Given the sheer volume of Westerns that were being pumped out in the early 60s, it's not surprising that so many of them were overly formulaic, tropey, or otherwise forgettable. A quick glance at the cover and one may assume that Texas Fever belongs in that melange, and while it does indulge in some of the Western trappings, Hamilton is able to elevate this book into something a little more. He does this primarily through compelling characters - not wholly good or evil, nor unbelievability hypercompetent as many stock Western heroes tend to be - and with his ability to write realistic and compelling action scenes.
4 stars.
The Gun of Jesse Hand by Lewis Patten
Fun enough romp even though the world of Jesse Hand is filled with tertiary antagonists that are flat as rice paper and seem to only exist to teach moral lessons.
3 stars.
Nimrods: A Fake-Punk Self-Hurt Anti-Memoir by Kawika Guillermo
Full review at the BC Review:
https://thebcreview.ca/2023/10/04/194...
Media and Crime: Content, Context and Consequence by Katrina Clifford and Rob White
Read for potential adoption in my class.
4 stars.
#Crime: Social Media, Crime, and the Criminal Legal System by Rebecca Hayes and Kate Luther
Read for potential adoption in my class.
4 stars.
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
There's nothing unique or novel I can say about this book. You'll get from it what you are willing to. Get out and there and do your best kings.
4 stars.
The Dhammapada by Anonymous
If you're reading this in the first place, you're probably already inclined toward taking the value from it that you are seeking.
4 stars.
The Preacher Series by Garth Ennis
This is a review for the entire Preacher series and will contain minor spoilers from previous volumes.
I first read this series as a teenager based on the request of a friend. I do not read a lot of comics/graphic novels at all, but he figured I would get a kick out of this series and at the time I did.
I re-read the entire run now in my thirties to see how it holds up and the first thing I noticed was that the characters were a little less compelling this time around. I'll stick to discussing the main trio.
I think Jesse has aged the worst for me. As the protagonist who anchors the whole thing I often found myself annoyed, irked, or otherwise disinterested in him and his choices. I get that this is a comic book, but Jesse is portrayed as this super smooth, overly charismatic, strongest, uber-macho, most specialist boy in the world who all the girls love and is always justified with every ass he kicks and I found it quite grating. I get that Ennis was leaning heavily on tropes of conventional American cowboy masculinity but it's played entirely genuine without a hint of satire as if Ennis actually thinks that people like Jesse are just the coolest cats around. I was also mostly confused/not convinced with his entire motivation throughout the series, that being his search to find God and 'make him answer for the world.' It seemed a flimsy and not super well-defined motivation.
Tulip honestly wasn't much better. I get that this was written primarily during the 90s, but she very much comes across as a juvenile man's idea of what the perfect 'cool woman' should be. She's a hyper-competent gunwoman but she's also conventionally attractive and feminine and sexually insatiable, and she lets Jesse go out boozing with his friends and she's never a drag about it and on and on.
Cassidy was my favorite of the main trio and (ironically) seemed the most human to me. His characterization, arc, and background were actually quite compelling and believable - not the immortal vampire part, but the idea of 'what if you never had to be held accountable for the bad things that you do?' If you knew that you were going to outlive everyone in your life, if you knew that you could always just pack up and move and start over, if you never had to face the consequences of your actions, why would you ever be compelled to change or to try to be a good person? By the end of the series Cassidy has undergone the most change and has what I believe to be the best ending of the three.
It sounds like I've been complaining a lot here, so why 4 stars? Well, despite all the faults, I still found Preacher to be compulsively readable and entertaining pretty much from start to finish. Ennis's writing often irks me, but it does have a certain cadence and rhythm that kept me engaging. I disliked a lot of the characters, but I still found myself invested in what was going to happen to them. There were also occasionally some genuinely moving moments and scenes that bought Ennis enough goodwill to keep me going.
So there you go, it may not be high art, but it was a fun time all the same.
Plus the artwork was fantastic throughout.
4 stars.
Manufacturing Consent by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky
Being a responsible adult means that you need to eat your vegetables. Even if they don't taste good, even if it feels like a chore, it's important to eat your vegetables. Not everything can be a treat or a dessert.
If the metaphor isn't clear by now - Manufacturing Consent is a massive heaping of raw spinach, beats, and broccoli.
The propaganda model Chomsky and Herman lay out was subversively insightful at the time it was written and I believe has remained just as relevant (if not more so) in the modern age of digital media. It's an important, even essential book when it comes to understanding how the mass media complex operates in America and its design as a fundamentally 'anti-democratic' enterprise.
But Chomsky has never been the most flashy of writers (and Herman seems to be just as dry) hence the whole vegetables thing. The book does occasionally feel like a bit of a slog to get through, even when you know you're doing yourself some good by reading it.
4 stars.
Big Mall: Shopping for Meaning by Kate Black
Did you know that there are more submarines in West Edmonton Mall than in the entire Canadian navy?
Actually, this hasn’t been true for well over ten years now, but it is a factoid that I will still occasionally hear people in BC repeat as if it were. This being just one example of the many statistical ‘facts’ and urban legends that add to the allure and mystique of West Edmonton Mall – the largest shopping center in the world (another ‘fact’ that hasn’t been true for twenty years now, but is still erroneously stated on occasion).
With Big Mall: Shopping for Meaning author Kate Black attempts to demystify the history of Canada’s most famous consumerist landmark by taking a magnifying glass to West Edmonton Mall specifically, but also to the concept of shopping malls more generally.
As a historical account, Big Mall traces the relatively young concept of ‘the mall’ from its origins during the post-World War II years to the more recent ‘one-stop, bigger than ever, world-class entertainment’ ambitions of places like West Edmonton Mall. We learn about the origins of the mall as a concept, the post-War economic prosperity that allowed them to happen, and the aspiring families that made them a reality. However, while interesting enough on its own, the draw here is not just in Black’s well-researched history of the shopping mall, but in the cultural critiques and anecdotal experiences she provides.
Alberta-raised Black grew up within the figurative shadow of West Edmonton Mall and has a personal history with it that she interweaves with her larger study of the shopping mall as a modern cultural phenomenon. Black’s memories as an impressionable teenager hanging out in the mall’s stores, water park, amusement park, and other attractions provide some personal context and allow us to experience the mall through her eyes, and while these memories are specific to her, I suspect they are somewhat universal in how malls were and perhaps still are experienced by people of a certain age or generation. The mall, as Black remembers it, is a place of endless adolescent and teenage possibilities – of reinvention, of social acceptance, of consumerist fulfillment, of experiencing a world closed off and isolated from the dangers beyond its walls.
However, with the benefit of hindsight and adult reflection, Black peels off this glossy veneer to reveal the less attractive qualities of the mall as a cultural institution. Topics here range from the specific, including accidental fatalities and several examples of the harsh treatment of exotic ‘mall animals,’ to the more abstract, including moral panic around youth deviance and ‘mallrats,’ the inherent colonialism of malls, and the shallow consumerism of late capitalism.
It helps here that Black’s writing style is highly personable, informal, conversational, self-reflexive, and occasionally confessional, as if she is addressing the reader as she would a close friend (or otherwise sitting on our chaise lounge). This is a style that allows Big Mall to shift rather seamlessly from memoir to modern history of the mall, to cultural critique, to self-effacing love letter to her hometown’s most famous institution without the book ever becoming wholly defined by just one of these formats.
The book is also, crucially, a meditation on the nature of change, memory, and nostalgia and the examination of shopping malls acts as an inconspicuous avenue with which to explore these larger themes.
Black depicts malls as spaces that permeate our memories and subconsciousness, both individually (as frequent settings of her dreams and as spaces tied to very specific memories, some of which she shares) but also collectively, as Black considers the recent popularity of the ‘dead mall aesthetic’ among online, predominantly younger demographics. Discourse around and attraction to vaporwave music (which repurposes the ‘Muzak’ once pumped throughout shopping centers), ‘backroom posting,’ and the fetishization of the imagery of eighties and nineties malls amongst Gen Z and Millennials are used as evidence of some collective imagining of what the mall was ‘supposed’ to be, an image that no longer exists and can only now be experienced through the second-hand memories of others.
This is a phenomenon that cultural theorists Jaques Derrida and Mark Fisher (the latter of which Black namedrops as being integral to her own ideological outlook and development) referred to as ‘hauntology.’ Put simply, the imagery and promises of the past continue to ‘haunt’ and influence the future, and there is perhaps no physical space that exemplifies this concept better than the shopping mall – spaces that once represented the height, majesty, and potential of consumer capitalism, now undercut by collapse and decay and semi-ironically venerated by young people who never experienced them firsthand.
“My first reaction to any change is an immediate longing for things to stay the same,” Black confesses, expressing a sentiment likely shared by many. The mall Black experienced as a teenager and nostalgically recalls today may have the same name and be in the same location, but it is not the same place that she remembers and it never can be. Black comes to terms, as much as she’s able, with the idea of change and especially of collapse, whether in the literal sense of the word (as when she details a time when West Edmonton Mall’s parkade ceiling collapsed) or of a metaphorical collapse of the very system that sustains these malls in the first place. “A bigger collapse is surely coming,” Black augurs toward the end of the book, and it is clear that she isn’t just talking about another roof.
Despite this, she ends the book on a note of hope, with a lasting gratitude for the mall and what it could still represent, and with the acknowledgement that it helped shape the person she has become.
Does what it says on the tin. The enjoyment one gets from this, I suspect, will be directly correlated with their interest in the subjects at hand - that being the Western frontier, Deadwood, the American mythologization of its most consummate shootists, and other such male-coded concerns.
4 stars.
The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music by Dave Grohl
Not a huge fan of the Foo Fighters as such, but Dave Grohl seems an impossible sort to dislike and that, coupled with my teenage obsession with Nirvana compelled me to pick this up on a whim. Dave is a good storyteller and the memories he includes are endearing and entertaining, but I do fear that his relentless positivity may have done him a slight disservice here. I had hoped that we would dig into the mud a little and maybe hear about his first divorce and some of the seedier aspects of the industry but such topics are conspicuously absent. The result is a collection of anecdotes that are rather sanitized, though again, still entertaining enough on their own.
3.5 stars.
Confessions to Scare… by Munly J. Munly
I don't think I can give a proper star rating for this one. It's not a book I would casually recommend or suggest to anyone that is not already familiar with Munly's more prominent work as a musician. As a songwriter and musical storyteller in the vaguely defined genres of alt-country/southern gothic/dark-Americana, Munly is unparalleled and the absolute best at what he does. Many of his songs suggest a well-read and literary background and in this collection of short, interconnected stories and vignettes he really gets to flex those particular muscles. One can sense the influence of Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, and early-period Cormac McCarthy in the many grotesque, troubled, and earnest characters that inhabit Munly's Lupercalia. But again, I think to fully grasp and appreciate the world that Munly has created, some familiarity with his larger body of work is important here.
Between his last couple books and his last few albums, he has been hard at work creating his own expanded universe and for the sickos like me out there who resonate with his macabre tales, it's a world well worth exploring.
No rating.
Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy
John Grady Cole apparently never learned that the first time that falling in love with young Mexican women across the border doesn't seem to end well for him. In that, and in how much of this book is written and paced, Cities of the Plain resembles All the Pretty Horses more than it does the second book in his Border Trilogy (The Crossing), which is to say a heavy emphasis on cowboys doing cowboy things in a world where the concept of cowboys is starting to seem more and more out of place. Such cowboy activities range from the seemingly banal to the exciting, but all exude a certain mythic masculinity that I can't pretend doesn't appeal to some part of me. I don't think the story reaches the same level of consistent and compelling readability as ATPH, but I will say that the final epilogue of this book, detailing an aged and down-on-his-luck Billy Parham might just be one of the most gorgeous and harrowing passages that McCarthy ever wrote, which is to say, one of the most gorgeous and harrowing passages in all of modern American fiction.
4 stars.
Why We Can’t Wait by Marin Luther King Jr.
Important, crucial, should be read by all, what else have I the license to say?
4 stars.
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki
More for those already on the path, even early on, rather than those about to be, but I suspect you'll get as much out of it as you are willing and ready to, which I suppose is sort of the entire point innit?
3.5 stars.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley
It's not often these days that I read a book that I instantly know will stand the test of time and become an all-time favorite, but here we are. This is another book I tried to read as an eighteen year old during my initial political 'awakening' but I was too young/inexperienced/uninformed to fully grasp and appreciate what I was reading. Reading it again as an adult with bit more understanding of American history, culture, and politics and I can see more clearly how powerful this work really is. It's one of the rare books that I would suggest should be read by any adult regardless of their situation or political leanings, and not just because it serves as an excellent (and more incendiary) accounting of the civil rights movement, but because when you strip away the specific context of Malcolm's story (that being the racist America he grew up in) you see how this story really transcends place and time to present a deeply universal human narrative of change, self-discovery, and the possibility of growth regardless of circumstances. A truly gripping read cover-to-cover.
5 stars.
The Orchard Keeper by Cormac McCarthy
I never thought my favorite modern author would ever get a 3-star review from me, but such is the mystery of life. Actually, it's not much of a mystery at all, it's undoubtedly the result of me reading all of his newer, better books first and saving his debut for last. The DNA of his later work is evident here, as is the mastery of language and syntax that would define them, but there is a certain roughness around the edges, a too-beholden-to-Faulkner tendency that holds this back from reaching the same level of the works to come (already in his follow-up novel, Outer Dark, he would take a massive step forward in quality). Only really recommended for fellow McCarthy completionists, if nothing else to see the first steps of a man who would go on to become one of the best to ever do it.
3 stars.
Buddhism Without Beliefs by Stephen Batchelor
'Acting Without Acting' was a punchline on Curb, take that for what you will.
3 stars.
A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
Anyone with even a modicum of awareness of American history should instinctually respond to everything Zinn covers in this book with a resigned "yeah, that sounds about right." If so, you may be compelled to skip this juggernaut of a book and I wouldn't hold it against you. After all, how many different ways can you hear about how America persecuted/exploited/genocided/[insert other bad verb here] the working class/Black population/Native Americans/foreign country/[insert other marginalized group here]? From our modern vantage point you might be forgiven for thinking that it all bleeds (excuse the word choice) together. But, if you want to expand your outlook beyond 'America bad' in such a way that you can intelligently articulate exactly as to WHY that's the case (beyond repeating the same platitudes), then this is the book you need to read, dates, numbers, names, and all. Long, but compulsively readable, largely due to Zinn being much less dry than some of his more notable peers (I won't name names, but let's just call one of them Noam S., no wait, that's to obvious, let's call him N. Chomsky). Just be cautioned that there is very little here to feel good about, as Zinn does not care to sugarcoat or gloss over the worst of the many atrocities documented therein.
4.5 stars.
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
Widely touted as an anti-war novel, which it certainly is, although not one that's like to sway fence-sitters if in fact 'is war bad' fence-sitters are a real demographic. What we get then is a horrific exploration of an individual who is not quite killed in war (though ultimately wishes he had been giving the new circumstances of his life) that reinforces what most people reading a book like this hopefully already know - war is in fact bad. But, hey, nothing solidifies that opinion more than reading about an absolute nightmare situation that is just about the most terrifying thing I can imagine. It's not often a let out an audible 'oof' when I'm reading something but I got more than one out of this book. Bonus points for the final section that, while maybe heavy-handed, serve as a poignant and very well-written encapsulation of Trumbo's outlook re: war being bad.
4.5 stars.
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
I didn't go to an American high school so I wasn't forced to read and ultimately hate this book the way it seems others were. I read it on my own volition as an adult in one sitting and without having to write a half-assed book report on it. Turns out it's good. Maybe it makes more sense as you get older. Maybe it's male-coded (in a way that much of Hemingway is) to an exclusionary degree. Maybe I just like stories about human perseverance bordering on bewildering stubbornness. Maybe I like the bittersweet message about personal victories on your own terms, even if no one else sees, cares, or acknowledges them.
4.5 stars.
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
War is hell, yes, and the victims are many, yes, and the young people who fight them suffer the most, yes, while men from removed from battlefields make decisions that regard all casualties as faceless and necessary, yes, but remember that scene when Paul goes to visit his sick mother while on leave? That's the one I will always remember.
4 stars.
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
Required reading for those with any seriousness at all about understanding American criminology.
4 stars.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
I get the sense that if I had read this book as a teenager or younger man that it might have gone on to become a formative, all-time favorite of mine. Coming to it in my thirties, however, all I got was a fun, often hilarious, and ultimately a highly enjoyable read.
4 stars.
Buddhish: A Guide to the 20 Most Important Buddhist Ideas for the Curious and Skeptical by C. Pierce Salguero
Good for those starting off on the path, thinking about starting, or for those who need a bit of a refresher.
4 stars.
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams
Fun, though seemingly less so than the first.
3.5 stars.
Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga by Hunter S. Thompson
Hunter Thompson is a complicated sort. On the one hand I get the sense that many of those who idolize the man are sort of missing the point, but on the other , I don't think you can understate just how important he was on the development of modern journalism - for better and for worse (if this book were written today, it would be a 20-minute documentary on Vice).
Hell's Angels is often a book I will discuss with my students in my seemingly unrelated course on research methods. Not because Thompson was as academic researcher, but because I think he can offer us interesting lessons on access, rapport, and representation of that which we seek to know more about. In this case, the HAMC, which at the time of writing were a clandestine and somewhat mythic group that Hunter effectively demystifies by portraying them as the ugly and vicious brutes that they were. In so doing he makes larger reflections on an American society that sowed such a group in the first place, all in the confrontational style that would soon become his trademark.
One of a kind.
4 stars.
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Oddly, you find yourself empathizing with Meursault and you wonder if that's maybe a bad sign and then you realize that everyone probably empathizes with Meursault to some degree but we all have to pretend like we don't and in so doing you realize that you empathize with Meursault even more than you initially thought.
4.5 stars.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
I re-read this for the first time since I was nineteen and I did so somewhat apprehensively, expecting that I wouldn't like it nearly as much now that I'm a little older and at least slightly more mature. As a teenager, this book (and the myth of Hunter Thompson more broadly) resonated with me in ways that are probably embarrassing to admit now. At the time I thought Hunter and his escapades were the coolest things ever and worthy of emulation, and I probably even made poor attempts to do so. And while I no longer feel that way reading this book today, it's still just entertaining and provoking as it was back then, in fact, probably even more so now that I'm free of the delusion of believing that Hunter was some kind of heroic figure. In truth he was a complicated guy with some very ugly aspects to him, but with a preternatural ability to expose the same ugliness inherent in American culture in such a clear and concise way, and that is what makes this book (and most of his work) so compellingly readable and worthwhile, and even more valuable to me now than it was when I first read it.
5 stars.
To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway
Definitely not the worst book I've ever read, but possibly the worst Hemingway book I've ever read, which is to say, still worth a look.
3 stars.
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
I struggled with this one, which is unfortunate because I think on paper it checks a lot of boxes for me. I'm having trouble articulating exactly what it was that didn't work for me. It might be the characters - there's not much there worth remembering. It might be the pacing. It might be the disjointed narrative that prevented me from ever feeling grounded in the story. The prose is certainly good, occasionally even excellent, but alas.
2 stars.
Hell Before Their Very Eyes: American Soldiers Liberate Concentration Camps in Germany, April 1945 by John C. McManus
I read this as a bit of research for a work-in-progress and it delivered adeptly on what's promised in the title. That it's a disturbing read should go without saying. That combined with the somewhat narrow historical focus makes this not a book I'm likely to generally recommend to most people, but hey, if you really want to stare into the core of humanity's capacity for evil, look no further. Wish it was a tad longer/more detailed, but good all the same.
4 stars.
Theos Bernard, the White Lama: Tibet, Yoga, and American Religious Life by Paul G. Hackett
For me, writing a novel typically requires a large amount of detailed research. Often it requires research on obscure or niche people or events that haven't been thoroughly documented. But sometimes you get lucky and discover that someone else has written thick, detailed, extremely comprehensive and thoroughly researched book on the exact topic you need.
Long story short, I needed to know much more about Theos Casimir Bernard than what was provided in the relatively short Wikipedia article on him - which led me to Hackett's book. Adapted from Hackett's PhD dissertation, this book is by far the most rigorous and definitive overview of Bernard's life that likely exists and provided exactly the deep dive I was looking for.
Theos Bernard is an intriguing figure - part adventurous spirit, part charlatan, part parasite of well-to-do women, part true believer, part lapsed academic, part other things I'm sure. From what I can tell, Hackett does a good job presenting him not as a hero or a scoundrel, but as fairly and objectively as possible, with all his triumphs and flaws.
I don't think I can give a conventional star rating to this book and it's not necessarily one I would recommend to people who aren't already interested in the subject matter (and I mean seriously interested, because this is not a quick read) but if you find yourself at all compelled by Bernard or the early history of Tibetan Buddhism in America, you will find this to be an excellent resource.
No rating.
The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation by Thich Nhat Hanh
Intermediate level pathers.
4 stars.
Texas Fever by Donald Hamilton
Given the sheer volume of Westerns that were being pumped out in the early 60s, it's not surprising that so many of them were overly formulaic, tropey, or otherwise forgettable. A quick glance at the cover and one may assume that Texas Fever belongs in that melange, and while it does indulge in some of the Western trappings, Hamilton is able to elevate this book into something a little more. He does this primarily through compelling characters - not wholly good or evil, nor unbelievability hypercompetent as many stock Western heroes tend to be - and with his ability to write realistic and compelling action scenes.
4 stars.
The Gun of Jesse Hand by Lewis Patten
Fun enough romp even though the world of Jesse Hand is filled with tertiary antagonists that are flat as rice paper and seem to only exist to teach moral lessons.
3 stars.
Nimrods: A Fake-Punk Self-Hurt Anti-Memoir by Kawika Guillermo
Full review at the BC Review:
https://thebcreview.ca/2023/10/04/194...
Media and Crime: Content, Context and Consequence by Katrina Clifford and Rob White
Read for potential adoption in my class.
4 stars.
#Crime: Social Media, Crime, and the Criminal Legal System by Rebecca Hayes and Kate Luther
Read for potential adoption in my class.
4 stars.
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
There's nothing unique or novel I can say about this book. You'll get from it what you are willing to. Get out and there and do your best kings.
4 stars.
The Dhammapada by Anonymous
If you're reading this in the first place, you're probably already inclined toward taking the value from it that you are seeking.
4 stars.
The Preacher Series by Garth Ennis
This is a review for the entire Preacher series and will contain minor spoilers from previous volumes.
I first read this series as a teenager based on the request of a friend. I do not read a lot of comics/graphic novels at all, but he figured I would get a kick out of this series and at the time I did.
I re-read the entire run now in my thirties to see how it holds up and the first thing I noticed was that the characters were a little less compelling this time around. I'll stick to discussing the main trio.
I think Jesse has aged the worst for me. As the protagonist who anchors the whole thing I often found myself annoyed, irked, or otherwise disinterested in him and his choices. I get that this is a comic book, but Jesse is portrayed as this super smooth, overly charismatic, strongest, uber-macho, most specialist boy in the world who all the girls love and is always justified with every ass he kicks and I found it quite grating. I get that Ennis was leaning heavily on tropes of conventional American cowboy masculinity but it's played entirely genuine without a hint of satire as if Ennis actually thinks that people like Jesse are just the coolest cats around. I was also mostly confused/not convinced with his entire motivation throughout the series, that being his search to find God and 'make him answer for the world.' It seemed a flimsy and not super well-defined motivation.
Tulip honestly wasn't much better. I get that this was written primarily during the 90s, but she very much comes across as a juvenile man's idea of what the perfect 'cool woman' should be. She's a hyper-competent gunwoman but she's also conventionally attractive and feminine and sexually insatiable, and she lets Jesse go out boozing with his friends and she's never a drag about it and on and on.
Cassidy was my favorite of the main trio and (ironically) seemed the most human to me. His characterization, arc, and background were actually quite compelling and believable - not the immortal vampire part, but the idea of 'what if you never had to be held accountable for the bad things that you do?' If you knew that you were going to outlive everyone in your life, if you knew that you could always just pack up and move and start over, if you never had to face the consequences of your actions, why would you ever be compelled to change or to try to be a good person? By the end of the series Cassidy has undergone the most change and has what I believe to be the best ending of the three.
It sounds like I've been complaining a lot here, so why 4 stars? Well, despite all the faults, I still found Preacher to be compulsively readable and entertaining pretty much from start to finish. Ennis's writing often irks me, but it does have a certain cadence and rhythm that kept me engaging. I disliked a lot of the characters, but I still found myself invested in what was going to happen to them. There were also occasionally some genuinely moving moments and scenes that bought Ennis enough goodwill to keep me going.
So there you go, it may not be high art, but it was a fun time all the same.
Plus the artwork was fantastic throughout.
4 stars.
Manufacturing Consent by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky
Being a responsible adult means that you need to eat your vegetables. Even if they don't taste good, even if it feels like a chore, it's important to eat your vegetables. Not everything can be a treat or a dessert.
If the metaphor isn't clear by now - Manufacturing Consent is a massive heaping of raw spinach, beats, and broccoli.
The propaganda model Chomsky and Herman lay out was subversively insightful at the time it was written and I believe has remained just as relevant (if not more so) in the modern age of digital media. It's an important, even essential book when it comes to understanding how the mass media complex operates in America and its design as a fundamentally 'anti-democratic' enterprise.
But Chomsky has never been the most flashy of writers (and Herman seems to be just as dry) hence the whole vegetables thing. The book does occasionally feel like a bit of a slog to get through, even when you know you're doing yourself some good by reading it.
4 stars.
Big Mall: Shopping for Meaning by Kate Black
Did you know that there are more submarines in West Edmonton Mall than in the entire Canadian navy?
Actually, this hasn’t been true for well over ten years now, but it is a factoid that I will still occasionally hear people in BC repeat as if it were. This being just one example of the many statistical ‘facts’ and urban legends that add to the allure and mystique of West Edmonton Mall – the largest shopping center in the world (another ‘fact’ that hasn’t been true for twenty years now, but is still erroneously stated on occasion).
With Big Mall: Shopping for Meaning author Kate Black attempts to demystify the history of Canada’s most famous consumerist landmark by taking a magnifying glass to West Edmonton Mall specifically, but also to the concept of shopping malls more generally.
As a historical account, Big Mall traces the relatively young concept of ‘the mall’ from its origins during the post-World War II years to the more recent ‘one-stop, bigger than ever, world-class entertainment’ ambitions of places like West Edmonton Mall. We learn about the origins of the mall as a concept, the post-War economic prosperity that allowed them to happen, and the aspiring families that made them a reality. However, while interesting enough on its own, the draw here is not just in Black’s well-researched history of the shopping mall, but in the cultural critiques and anecdotal experiences she provides.
Alberta-raised Black grew up within the figurative shadow of West Edmonton Mall and has a personal history with it that she interweaves with her larger study of the shopping mall as a modern cultural phenomenon. Black’s memories as an impressionable teenager hanging out in the mall’s stores, water park, amusement park, and other attractions provide some personal context and allow us to experience the mall through her eyes, and while these memories are specific to her, I suspect they are somewhat universal in how malls were and perhaps still are experienced by people of a certain age or generation. The mall, as Black remembers it, is a place of endless adolescent and teenage possibilities – of reinvention, of social acceptance, of consumerist fulfillment, of experiencing a world closed off and isolated from the dangers beyond its walls.
However, with the benefit of hindsight and adult reflection, Black peels off this glossy veneer to reveal the less attractive qualities of the mall as a cultural institution. Topics here range from the specific, including accidental fatalities and several examples of the harsh treatment of exotic ‘mall animals,’ to the more abstract, including moral panic around youth deviance and ‘mallrats,’ the inherent colonialism of malls, and the shallow consumerism of late capitalism.
It helps here that Black’s writing style is highly personable, informal, conversational, self-reflexive, and occasionally confessional, as if she is addressing the reader as she would a close friend (or otherwise sitting on our chaise lounge). This is a style that allows Big Mall to shift rather seamlessly from memoir to modern history of the mall, to cultural critique, to self-effacing love letter to her hometown’s most famous institution without the book ever becoming wholly defined by just one of these formats.
The book is also, crucially, a meditation on the nature of change, memory, and nostalgia and the examination of shopping malls acts as an inconspicuous avenue with which to explore these larger themes.
Black depicts malls as spaces that permeate our memories and subconsciousness, both individually (as frequent settings of her dreams and as spaces tied to very specific memories, some of which she shares) but also collectively, as Black considers the recent popularity of the ‘dead mall aesthetic’ among online, predominantly younger demographics. Discourse around and attraction to vaporwave music (which repurposes the ‘Muzak’ once pumped throughout shopping centers), ‘backroom posting,’ and the fetishization of the imagery of eighties and nineties malls amongst Gen Z and Millennials are used as evidence of some collective imagining of what the mall was ‘supposed’ to be, an image that no longer exists and can only now be experienced through the second-hand memories of others.
This is a phenomenon that cultural theorists Jaques Derrida and Mark Fisher (the latter of which Black namedrops as being integral to her own ideological outlook and development) referred to as ‘hauntology.’ Put simply, the imagery and promises of the past continue to ‘haunt’ and influence the future, and there is perhaps no physical space that exemplifies this concept better than the shopping mall – spaces that once represented the height, majesty, and potential of consumer capitalism, now undercut by collapse and decay and semi-ironically venerated by young people who never experienced them firsthand.
“My first reaction to any change is an immediate longing for things to stay the same,” Black confesses, expressing a sentiment likely shared by many. The mall Black experienced as a teenager and nostalgically recalls today may have the same name and be in the same location, but it is not the same place that she remembers and it never can be. Black comes to terms, as much as she’s able, with the idea of change and especially of collapse, whether in the literal sense of the word (as when she details a time when West Edmonton Mall’s parkade ceiling collapsed) or of a metaphorical collapse of the very system that sustains these malls in the first place. “A bigger collapse is surely coming,” Black augurs toward the end of the book, and it is clear that she isn’t just talking about another roof.
Despite this, she ends the book on a note of hope, with a lasting gratitude for the mall and what it could still represent, and with the acknowledgement that it helped shape the person she has become.
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