D. E. Dickerson

Perfect For What Its Author Intends

Revisado: 06-03-22

I am a picky reader, but I was hooked by this story immediately, partly because of the stakes involved (for a trans person, merely navigating the world carries constant potential risk), but also for the really carefully selected details, especially the Southern touches, which all feel 100% perfect. (I lived in North Florida for seven years). Also, the narrator is simply outstanding, capturing not only different voices but different types of Southern accent. It's just an amazing performance all around for everyone involved. Just be sure to heed the author's note at the end: Amanda's story was made artificially clean in several ways that most trans lives are not. This is a great first book for any readers who are new to the trans experience. It should not be your last.

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Cute but by the numbers

Revisado: 10-01-17

My first toe dip into chick lit, this bright confection went down easy. It has all the best things about romance (fun characters, witty dialogue, a happy ending) as well as several of the deficits (here, notably, it's a ridiculous and probably illegal premise that starts with a job interview gone screwy.) Almost no sex scenes (which I guess makes it chick lit instead?), but also not quite as much flirting as I was hoping for (they mostly seethe in private corners, unable to admit how they feel). This one delivers clean romcom content directly into the strike zone, but it's not especially challenging. How you like it will probably depend on what you want. This one definitely made me want to read more Crusie.

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Bad female acting, great drunk acting, mostly good

Revisado: 09-30-17

A terrific concept with a number of hilarious moments--If you're a particular type of Star Trek geek, anyway--marred in the audio by the fact that Wil Wheaton, who is PERFECT whenever he has to play someone drunk or panicking, makes no attempt to distinguish between male and female voices. This is especially jarring in Chapter One where a character named Dahl (male) meets and talks with one named Duvall (female), but it's a problem throughout in a story that identifies all characters by last names, and where sex/gender jokes are a regular part of the banter. If you've read the basic description and you're interested in a Star Trek parody, I can't see how this would disappoint you. Scalzi is smart and good and he delivers. Also, ends on a series of surprisingly sweet notes.

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More conservative than I expected

Revisado: 05-22-17

Tons of fascinating information, elegantly delivered, about (mostly) the history of the American musical from the 19th century to 1920-1940ish. I can't give it a full five stars, though, because after lots of buildup, he completely ignores Showboat (!), is oddly dismissive of Steven Sondheim (!!), and really hates Cabaret. I fully expected a lecture about how Showboat changed musical history, but instead he jumps from a discussion of songwriters (Kern, Gershwin) straight to "musicals of the 40s"--emphasis on Oklahoma!--and never circles back. He discusses the motif of the schlemiel and the schlimazel without actually explaining the terms! So I'd recommend it for people with some knowledge already of musical history and the Great American Songbook--the 19th century info is GREAT, and takes up most of the lectures--but there are a few too many head-spinning leaps for me to recommend it unreservedly to a newcomer. BONUS WARNING: The lecturer is apparently in his sixties, and clearly means well, but he has a habit of referring to "the blacks" in a way that I found consistently jarring. Younger listeners, and nonwhite listeners, might want to mentally adjust for the age of the lecturer's idioms.

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Amiable But Slow

Revisado: 04-23-17

This felt like more of an interesting community profile than an actual mystery, as the titular rabbi is only in about a third of the scenes. When there's a large cast to handle, it helps to have a distinctive voice for each person, and the narrator doesn't pull it off here, alas. A frequently startling look at life in the non-hippie part of the 1960s, but wow was it slow going. There isn't even a crime until a third of the way through the book. I enjoyed it anyway, but I wish I'd been warned about the leisurely pace ahead of time. That's why I'm warning you.

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Yojimbo in Baltimore

Revisado: 04-10-17

Tough-guy noir bloodbath as The Continental Op takes down the entire corrupt city of Personville (based, I'm told, on Baltimore, a city that Hammett deeply loathed.) Fun, fast-moving, with lots of snappy dialogue--and, to my mind, better written than The Glass Key. Just stay alert--there are a lot of names to keep track of.

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Mostly Restated the Obvious

Revisado: 01-10-17

I wanted to like this, and the author is undeniably engaging (both on the page and as a narrator). But the book spends most of its energy pointing out things that would be obvious to any reader. (Bilbo is often torn about how to react to events; Thorin is overcome with greed, but displays a change of heart in the last battle, Beorn is good, but it's not a tame goodness, etc.) There are a couple of nice bits I'm glad I learned (such as an allusion to a different spider story that strangely survives in modern versions, and the allusions to medieval Elf lore after they escape the goblins), but I think this book is mostly for megafans who just want to hear another can talk excitedly about a book they both love. Actual non-obvious literary or character insight is pretty thin throughout.

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Perfectly Serviceable Urban Fantasy

Revisado: 06-04-15

Likeable main character. Love that there's only light romance and plenty of swearing. Good humored. Short. It's just not doing anything terribly unexpected or surprising.

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Nasty, brutish, and short...

Revisado: 05-28-15

This fast-paced, no-nonsense noir from master Donald Westlake (writing as Richard Stark) starts tense, adds twists, and doesn't seem to waste a single word as Parker is hired to plan a jewelry heist...while learning other criminals also want the diamonds. As Parker says, "You can plan a job, but you can't plan for people." Taut, smart, and wholly unsentimental, Parker continues to fascinate as one of crime fiction's most interestingly focused and professional anti heroes. Not a bad Parker novel to start with, if you're curious.

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Hilarious and touching

Revisado: 10-01-12

What other book might you compare The Financial Lives of the Poets to and why?

It definitely fits into what you might call the "middle-aged suburban comic nightmare" genre of fiction on the lines of Franzen's "The Corrections," Chabon's "Wonder Boys" or Clarke's "An Arsonist's Guide to Writer's Homes in New England." What makes this stand out in the field is that the story is small and controlled (none of the sprawl that often makes books like these wander too far), and absolutely every element pays off in larger meaning. (The fact that the first chapter takes place at a 7-11 becomes a parodic model for references to 9/11 later, and it works smartly.) In short, there is warm intelligence and compassion for ever character on every page, while at the same time Walter creates a tremendously important document about the human costs of the 2008 recession, and of the modern world in general. Just amazing, and well worth the visit. He had me at chapter one.

What does Jess Walter bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

He has the delivery EXACTLY, as you might expect, so that even parenthetical comments sound perfectly parenthetical and don't stop the forward flow of a sentence. Best of all, and most important, is that he delivers all the jokes perfectly: not only in their timing, but in the voice of the appropriate characters. He's got a good ear for humanity, and it shows in his telling.

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