"To Be Taught, If Fortunate" by Becky Chambers

This story chronicles the activities of four astronauts as they catalogue the life on four planets, light years from Earth.  The plan is to catalogue the planets and then return to Earth.

This is a gentle, slow paced book, packed with detail of the day-to-day life of four people doing science, and maintaining their space craft, on alien worlds.

There is no peril.  There are no fights.  There is no conflict.

The two mechanisms that enable this adventure are: suspended animation (”torpor”) during space flight, which is fair enough; and “somaforming”, which allows the people to adapt to the environment, rather than needing to adapt the environment to the people.  The latter is an interesting concept that I hadn’t come across before.  There is no physics-defying magic that allows the astronauts to travel (or communicate) faster than light, so distance from Earth, and the time it takes communication to travel either way, is also a character in the story.

Nothing really happens.

The descriptions of the activity of doing science and the day-to-day social interactions of four astronauts in a moderately confined space are detailed and thoughtful.  There is a grounded sense of reality to what they are doing.

This is a novella, so there is little opportunity to explore many things in detail.  The impact of torpor and somaforming are briefly explored, and the character development is enough to get a sense of four different people, but no more than that.  The narrative space that this leaves is filled with description of the activities of the astronauts, and this description is quite engaging.  There is a real sense of “doing science”, and the author has gone to some lengths to describe a few niche pieces of science that crop up on the four planets - although this can feel a bit like a TED talk at times, when I felt like I was being educated rather than told a story.

So if you’re happy with sci-fi that focusses on description rather than plot or character, then this may be for you.  Personally, while I appreciated the detail and the sense of gentle activity that I felt throughout the book, I found that ultimately I didn’t really care about the people or their situation.  So my rating for this book has more to do with my subjective experience than the quality of the writing.  This book may be for you.  It just wasn’t for me.

My rating: ✦✦✦✧✧

"The Woman on the Ledge" by Ruth Mancini

What an excellent story. This is a gripping tale of suspense where everything is not as it seems. A woman has fallen from the 25th floor of a building to her death and you (Tate Kinsella) are suspected of her murder. But the more you protest your innocence, the more holes and inconsistencies appear in your story. What aren’t you telling the police?

The plot is incredibly engaging, and had me intrigued at every twist and turn (and there are many!) as the story gradually unfolds. To say anything about the plot would be to give too much away - you just have to read it and enjoy the ride.

The author straddles the line of reveal vs. conceal perfectly as we gradually find out more about what happened. The pacing is spot on: I was just about getting used to one revelation or twist of the plot when another one came along that made me question everything that I thought up to that point.

There is a particular kind of mystery novel that I *don’t* get on with - those where several equally plausible possibilities are developed by the author, then one is arbitrarily revealed to be the truth at the end (Agatha Christie, I’m looking at you). This book isn’t like that. Throughout the story, there is usually just one version of “what happened”, but that version warps and bends as new information is revealed - and I *really* liked that.

The story deals with some emotive and difficult issues around vulnerability and predatory behaviour, and I thought that it was done with great sensitivity.

This is a plot-driven story, and packs a lot in. Consequently, the character development (especially of the secondary characters) isn’t very deep. But this is a minor quibble, and there is an authenticity about all of the characters; I found some of the scenes towards the end of the book incredibly moving.

Thank you #NetGalley and Random House UK Cornerstone Century for the free review copy of #TheWomanOnTheLedge in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

My rating: ★★★★★

NetGalley Review

"The Kaiju Preservation Society" by John Scalzi

Jamie Gray gets fired and, out of desperation, gets recruited to “an animal rights organisation.”  This turns out to be the Kaiju Preservation Society (KPS), working with massive, dinosaur-like creatures on an alternate Earth in a parallel dimension, where everything wants to eat everything else.

This is an enjoyable, lightweight, fish-out-of-water tale, with likeable characters, an engaging plot, and massive monsters.  In the Author’s Note at the back of the book, John Scalzi says:

“KPS is not, and I say this with absolutely no slight intended, a brooding symphony of a novel.  It’s a pop song.  It’s meant to be light and catchy, with three minutes of hooks and choruses for you to sing along with, and then you’re done and you go on with your day, hopefully with a smile on your face.”

And that’s exactly what it is.  And it does it very well.

This is quite a short book, but there’s a lot of world building to do in order to set up everything you need before the jeopardy kicks in.  This world building is achieved through the experience of our main character and three other new recruits - so the explanations of the alternate Earth, the kaiju, and the KPS itself, come naturally out of the characters having to learn or be taught.

The need for this amount of world building in a short book means that things only start to get ‘interesting’ (a.k.a. actual jeopardy) about 70% of the way through the book.  Up to that point, while I was enjoying the characters and finding out about the alternate Earth, I was wondering what was going to actually happen.  I was also wondering what a gang of 4 newcomers could do in the face of jeopardy involving massive monsters that could wreak havoc on a global scale.  But the book really starts to deliver at this 70% point, with a pay-off for all the world building, and a scope of ‘peril’ that fits perfectly with the characters.

The characters are all likeable, albeit quite similar to each other: they’re all bright, quick-witted, and slightly sarcastic, and the dialogue between consists largely of banter.  They’re people I’d probably enjoy hanging out with.  This made the story accessible and an easy read, but with very little depth of character, and no real emotional inner life for any of them.  But for a plot-driven book of this length, that was fine.

Perfect length chapters, too.  Is that a strange thing to include in a review?  It has such an impact on my progress through a book… that “just one more chapter” feeling when the clock is ticking towards 1:00am.

Anyway… very enjoyable.

My rating: ★★★★☆

Lampshade Hanging

I came across the term "Lampshade Hanging" or "Lampshading" as a literary device in chapter 13 of The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi.  It comes up in conversation between two characters in the story:

"It's a reverse lampshade," I said.
"I don't know what 'lampshade' means here, much less its reverse."
"It's a literary term.  It means calling attention to something improbable in the text, and the moving on." 

I'm very happy to have learnt about a new literary term, and having two characters in a book talk about lampshading is in itself slightly messing with the fourth wall - which I also love.

Blogging About My Reading

I have been recording my reading on Goodreads for a couple of years now, and have recently started reviewing every book that I read.  I like Goodreads as a platform, and I enjoy interacting with other readers about books that we're reading, or want to read - but I wanted to also record some of my thoughts on the experience of being "someone who reads".

Hence this blog.  I've copied across all of my Goodreads reviews here, and I will continue to post reviews in both places.  But in this blog my intention is to also post a bit more narrative about my experience of reading, about Goodreads, about being "someone who reads", and anything else book related.  I also intend to augment future book reviews on the blog with more personal thoughts, which won't be included in the Goodreads reviews.

At least, that's my intention.  Let's see how it goes.

"The Night I Spent with Aubrey Fisher" by Christopher M. Tantillo

I’m very conflicted about this book. I really wanted to give it a higher rating, but in the end, I felt that a potentially great story was let down by execution.

As per the blurb, Grayson’s life is in turmoil since the death of his little brother, for which Grayson (”Gray”) blames himself. Aubrey Fisher, a misfit foster child, comes into his life, and they spend 24 hours together.

There are powerful themes in this book - most notably suicide ideation. This has to be handled sensitively, and it was (the Acknowledgements at the back of the book explain that many of the themes are issues that the author has dealt with in his own life).

First, the good: I really liked the character of Aubrey. Her depth of emotion seemed real to me, and I wanted to get to know her better - there was a point in the book that I cried in response to learning something about her past. The story is told in the first person from the perspective of Gray, largely through dialogue, so the fact that Aubrey felt so alive to me speaks to the skill of the author. The supporting cast of friends (Kris, Jenna, Kyle, Tim, Reefer) were also well drawn (although Tim and Kyle seemed a bit interchangeable), and I could really feel the shared history between this friendship group: the glue that holds them together amongst the inevitable bickering and tension.

I also enjoyed the plot. The story of Aubrey and Gray’s escapades in this 24 hours was engaging and satisfying. And, although the ending was largely how I expected it, the journey carried me along throughout.

But, while I liked Aubrey, she had a wisdom beyond her years that I found jarring. She has a chequered background, and some questionable current behaviour, but she somehow has a crystal clear idea of what’s important, and what people need in order to get through life in the presence of severe emotional trauma. Some of her own traumatic background is touched upon, and contributes to her depth of character, but I just found it infeasible that she would be so worldly-wise given her age and life experience.

I also couldn’t connect emotionally with Gray at all - which is a problem, given that this story revolves around Gray’s intention to kill himself in response to the death of his little brother. This is also surprising, given that the story is written from Gray’s point of view (and doubly so given how real Aubrey’s emotions felt to me). My inability to connect emotionally with Gray meant that his intention to kill himself also didn’t seem real to me - it felt like an intellectual idea to end his life rather than a driving emotional need. So my personal experience of reading the story was that Gray was never in any real danger of taking his own life, but had an interesting and transformative 24 hours with the misfit kid from school. And, while I still enjoyed reading it, I’m sure this isn’t what the author intended.

The book is structured as a series of chapters, each covering one of the 24 hours. While this is a neat device, it meant that the story seemed to drag a little near the beginning where very little was happening in each hour. At one point it also meant that Gray ended up waking someone up in the early hours of the morning in order to have a conversation with them - which seemed like it had to be crowbarred into the remaining ‘per hour’ structure of the book in order to tie up some loose ends.

The style also got a little preachy at times, and there were a few too many “You see, Timmy” moments where the moral, meaning and conclusions of the story were explained in excruciating and slightly patronising detail.

So, for me, a potentially great story let down by execution.

My rating: ★★★☆☆

"Convenience Store Woman" by Sayaka Murata

Keiko has difficulty fitting in. She doesn’t inherently know which emotions to express, or how to express them - taking her cues off the ‘normal people’ around her. But she finds comfort and belonging in the Convenience Store, where rules and procedures make sense to her.

This is a story of how Keiko navigates this world, trying to balance her own inner life and comfort with the expectations of her friends and family - most of whom don’t understand her, and want to ‘cure’ her.

I found Keiko’s character very sensitively written, and I really felt for her. Her ‘differences’ (which, to my untrained understanding, seem like they might be somewhere on the autism spectrum) are kindly written, giving Keiko a coherent and self-consistent inner life.

I found the fact that she felt the need to change her behaviour, to ‘conform’, to meet the expectations of many of those around her, to be utterly heartbreaking - although I was satisfied by the ending, which I thought was appropriate and warm. I loved this book, despite how sad it made me - and I finished it within 24 hours (which, although it is a short book, is still rare for me).

My rating: ★★★★★