The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty

(bad title and cover quote ngl)

first reread of the year goes to this novel which was actually one of the first books that made me fall in love with reading when I was like 16. Paul Beatty is best known for The Sellout but this debut novel of his is dynamite in a bottle with unforgettable scenes & characters. written in poetic prose with biting humor regarding heavy topics, it's about a black kid in 1990's LA who grew up in a beach town with white kids until his mom decides he isn't black enough and moves him to a gang ridden neighborhood. still hilarious and probably more profound than I could understand, I enjoyed this as much as when I was a kid but now I see it does feel a bit rushed and some parts/characters could've used more fleshing out

singularly funny and thought provoking, could've used 100 more pages

8.5/10

Un Episodio en la Vida del Pintor Viajero (An Episode in the Life of A Landscape Painter) by César Aira

part biography part fiction, this novella starts out charting the life of a real German painter who traveled through South America painting landscapes in the mid 19th century. what starts as routine suddenly takes a fictional turn for the worse and we follow the painter try to recover from tragedy. non-violent western which touched on topics of identity, madness, and art. read it in Spanish and tbh I really couldn't get into the prose and wasn't a fan of Aira's (who unbeknownst to me is a bit of a underrated Argentine legend with cosigns by Roberto Bolaño, who wrote the preface, and Haruki Murakami) writing style. the story was memorable and it stuck with me but I didn't enjoy reading it that much and might've enjoyed it more in English

but to all western fans itt give this a go think ya'll will like it

7/10

Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig

this mfer don't miss. Zweig's longest fictional work at 353 pages, this psychological novel tells the story of a young Austro-Hungarian lieutenant who meets a rich man and starts to feel pity for his downtrodden daughter. the title really says it all and what starts as sympathy and kind-heartedness leads to chaos. Zweig excels at character studies and the psychology and perspective of the main character made this an engaging read that was both frustrating and moving. I enjoyed every paragraph the more I read Zweig the more it reminds me of my experience with Murakami books with his easy flowing yet descriptive prose. Chess Story was special for being so short but BoP is my favorite work of his so far

criminally underrated classic, master at work

10/10

Fire

finished "Catching the Big Fish" by Lynch, was a nice, quick and easy read. RIP goat

His memoir/biography Room to Dream is a great read as well

Wow! I don't think I'll ever fully digest this but jesus christ what a journey. An absolute headache at times but some of the best prose and storytelling I've ever read. Equal parts cartoonishly funny and heartbreakingly beautiful. Amazing book

dawg you have no idea how crazy this is. I finished reading will of the many last year, and i just started red rising, and i got to a point where i was like "hold up, am i really bout to read the same book again?"

then i want to see what people on this site were saying about will of the many and your post was the first result I knew i wasn't tripping.

i ain't mad at the similarity, though, i love this trope.

Is this convoluted like his other work or pretty streamlined in narrative?

I haven’t read a book since summer of ‘22 unfortunately. I started with gravities rainbow and started a new job around the same time and I fell out of it. Thankfully I’m still at the same job, but I’ve found a way to work reading in.

I started small with Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia.

I started this book I want to say mid January and took small portions at a time. It’s about if Washington State, Oregon, and Northern California broke off and seceded making their own country. The author of the story (not the book) is the first journalist allowed into Ecotopia since their secession. The romantic in me reaaally enjoys this book. I think a lot of the ideas are comforting in theory, but the pessimist in me likes to remind myself it’s a work of fiction and we wouldn’t know if any of this book would actually work. I think Ernest does a great job balancing the column portion and the personal portion. I think it would have been sick if the formatting was done differently, but that’s whatever. At times it did feel like Ernest was a bit too h**** even if that was apart of their culture. Otherwise I believe he did a decent job at world building and making me believe this could possibly be a reality. On a good day I’d give this book a 7 on an average day I’d give it a 6/10.

I have started Dream Story since I watched Eyes Wide Shut already. My goal is to have the mindset to read Gravities Rainbow by next January.

I've only read Lot 49 and Inherent Vice so I can't talk to his other big books, but I think this is probably fairly similar to them.

I will say that the plot is sort of linear and the fact that the focus is usually on the two main characters makes it a bit simpler to follow. But obviously there are a hell of a lot of digressions, and the writing style itself is confusing at first as it's written in his usual prose but with 18th century spelling and grammar.

For me at least it got easier the more I read, it's the kind of book that teaches you how to read it as you go

Star Wars: The Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn

Not even much to say, they're pulpy and they kind of suck. I would describe it as "playing the hits" from the original trilogy, not pushing the stories or characters in any new or interesting directions. Also it's pretty clear the author just didn't care that much. One sentence is like "The planet was green and blue from space, like most planets Han had visited." Han Solo? The guy who famously spent a s***load of time on desert and ice planets?

Neuromancer by William Gibson

Re-read for a podcast that's doing Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy. I love this f***ing book. Every sentence William Gibson writes is basically the coolest thing I've ever read. Something that always surprises me about this book is how humanist it's concerns are. The characters are surprisingly believable for a world where most people spend their quality time in cyberspace. It's got space rastas that are dripping with swagger, orbital bourgeois wasp nests, AI gods, razor girls with implanted reflective smart lenses. Gibson was cool in the 80s and maybe even cooler today.

Life for Sale by Yukio Mishima

This one was pretty cool. After a failed suicide attempt a young man puts an ad in the paper offering to do anything (no matter the danger) for money. It's got a cool noir vibe although it was pretty absurd throughout and sometimes pretty funny. Expands to reveal a paranoid thriller similar to Pynchon or Delillo. It suddenly dawned on me as I was reading it: this is what Murakami has been trying to do his entire career.

Blood Over Bright Haven by ML Wang

first fantasy book I read in a while as a part of the KTT Book Club (JOIN US). thought it was good! enjoyed the magic system and the conspiracy at play as well. ending was perhaps not as satisfying or cathartic as I was hoping for but still very sobering and well-written. good stuff

I definitely agree with you about the ending. You will definitely love her other book The Sword of Kaigen. The character development in that one still gives me goosebumps.

Project Hail Mary next for our club lets goooooo 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

oh bet, didn't realize it was decided! luckily i already own that one!

I actually don’t own it but that’s just another excuse to hit the bookstore

Reading this rn as I've been in to economic history as of lately. Would recommend Kanye to read it as well, his head would explode

finished miles the autobiography that i had on my bookshelf for maybe six years prior to that. its an amazing read and that ending left me smiling. that said miles was a motherfucker and the hardest parts to get through were the ones where life would go back to bite him big time. him being a deadbeat and then admitting his two sons were failures was tough to read, and basically everything that had to do with his health, women, getting into fights, and d**** was tough to read through. that said hes a prototype black musician celebrity and the entire read is absolutely essential.

the fact that one of the very last sentences in the book cites Prince is also heartwarming

and that part when hes old and if he wants to see his parents or bird or coltrane he jus says he 'wants' to see them, that got me chocked up a bit too

Hyperion by Dan Simmons

Fantastic sci-fi novel, loved the stylish prose and the huge lore/worldbuilding. A must if you love the genre. The psychology of the characters is super rich and the mistery just pushes you to explore it more, Lost before Lost but on steroids interwined with space politics and so much more.

Below my full spoiler thoughts.

It's like a fusion of multiple, misterious worlds. I swear I could picture Hyperion territories, culture, in Akavir from TES, from ASOIAF or The Dark Continent from HxH, the Pandyssian continent from Dishonored ecc. ecc. It's also crazy how influential it is, like the Kassad story reminding of Shepard "Earthling" origin plus that "Butcher" reputation, I could see it being an ispiration most likely for Shepard (possible) actions on Torfan.
I think obviously it wasn't the case, but again, the scene where the Priest walked into that Tesla, hellish forest reminds me so much of the scene where there is the oil explosion in There Will Be Blood.
Speaking about Durè, you can't tell me that I was the only one who believed Durè was possessed (by them Bikura) and killed his guide. The details were very subtle, like the touches on his chest he dreamed, suggestin' the poor guide was trying to defend himself while the man murdered him. But nope, the reality was way more creative and delivered with a mouthwatering mistery.
About Kassad... my first theory was that bro was on sum Viktor Reznov s\*\*\* with him trapped in the schizo-sex but then nope, it turned into Dishonored meets Halo when he tag-teamed with the Shrike to massacre them Ousters. That whole andrenaline-driven section felt like it would have been peanutbutter (and blood) if turned properly into a videogame.
Loved the witty humour of the Poet and the tonal switch he brought, almost as he was some sort of avatar for the author to use as meta-commentary and again, I love the newly introduced layers he brought to dis "Shrike", a lovecraftian antagonist I adore.
I liked Lamia too, she acts like a girl of my age and it felt so natural reading her, like listening to a friend until she turned into sum into time-traveling IA s\*\*\*. Surreal and creative stuff, with the pursuit of the other Bun-man being nuts too, Blade Runner meets Tron with a sprinkle of Avatar, if I had to describe the plot of the girl. Imagine the last fight of her story adapted, James Bond choreography level...
The Console storyline jumping between timelines was confusing at times but even his granny story was appealing, it was like reading some sorta of Christopher Columbus falling in love with a native that turned inevitably into one of the most damaging revenge story, generating basically a sci-fi Littlefinger that broke the galaxy.
The bittersweet message of the series, as the one I got from another fantastic space-opera that Legend of The Galactic Heroes is, is that across the centuries, humanity keeps being the same, thriving in its flaws and decadence.
No adaptation yet is brazy, those worlds would have been simply terrific to have seen on a TV, somehow.
Expected more from the finale but from what I understand this is basically a gigantic act one that builds up on the second book, kinda what Dune did with Messiah if I had to guess...
P.S: The s\*\*\*scenes were enjoyable and written very well!

Was enjoying this until the climax and denouement, which I found really unsatisfying. Felt totally pointless and mishandled when all was said and done. I’ve not read a single theory online about the ending that hasn’t irritated me and made me roll my eyes. I have seen more positive reviews than negative ones, though, so I guess it just wasn’t for me. Wouldn’t personally recommend it, since the ending to me didn’t at all justify it being nearly 600 pages, but if you’re already into Ellis I suppose you might dig it?

Maybe it went over my head, but it feels like anyone can write a novel with an unreliable narrator and an ambiguous ending and call it art.

Never understood the hype for this one, not close to touching his early work. I only made it halfway through this one tho.

It would have honestly been better just as a queer coming-of-age story. The serial killer s*** felt shoehorned in. It’s like he no longer has the confidence to write a book that doesn’t feature people being tortured to death. A Less Than Zero/Rules of Attraction-style story where nothing too outlandish really happens and it’s more of a vibe would have been so much better than recycling the same kind of violence he’s been writing about since the late 80s and trying to vibe his way out of a bunch of plot points he’s set up that don’t go anywhere.

I enjoyed this one but took it p much like a Lifetime movie and it didn't have to be 600 pages haha..

Did you ever read Lunar Park ? Thought it did the whole meta fictional biography w/e better than The Shards.

I have! Lunar Park had always been my favorite of his. Reread it recently and it held up for the most part. I agree that he did this faux memoir thing better there. But I also wasn’t even really mad at this one until the knife fight, where I guess he’s now lying to us, but that takes it into “What’s the point, then?” territory for me? I dunno, just didn’t like that ending after all damn near 600 pages of what came before it.

Native Son by Richard Wright

3.5/5

Ahh, nothing more satisfying than the feel of a book in my hand. Fills me with joy as a hardcopy w****. Anyway, this book was always gonna end up on my radar one way or the other. When I was a kid, all I had access to was the opening chapter where the main character, Bigger Thomas, fights off a rat in the squalor he shares with his little brother, little sister, and mother. Now that I've read the whole book, this rat sequence is a microcosm of what's to come in the book, and the violence that haunts Bigger till the very end, where he makes peace with the reality that he's just like the rodent in The Man's world.

Set in Chicago, Illinois in the 1930s, the story focuses on Bigger taking up a job as a chauffeur for a wealthy white family, as part of an NAACP placement program. Without spoiling anything, something goes wrong on his job immediately. Deathly wrong, and Bigger finds himself eroding in the swirling violence around him, finding out the systemic oppression put in place to keep everyone else of his kind in line because of one fatal mistake he makes on the job.

This book is divided into three parts:

The first one establishes the conditions that Bigger comes from as an African American young man barely getting by. It's slow, but deliberately so.

Part II is when s*** hits the fan. That's all I'll say.

Part III lays out the barbaric justice system and how it masquerades as anything but.

Bigger himself is rough around the edges and not an easy character to get behind. There's a brutal scene where the author doesn't hold back (Trigger warning and potential spoiler: rape and murder right after ) but that scene serves as a blueprint for the rationale behind "misogynoir" as we've come to know it nowadays.

Anyway, it's not an easy read and it's almost 500 pages on a small print, but it was essential.

Think I need something light now to wash away this heaviness I got from the book, so I'm gonna read Paradais by Fernanda Melchor next!

Aysa and Manu are looking for a new apartment in a foreign city.

I love how this book's synopsis can be explained in a single sentence. Really, really enjoyed this. We follow this couple as they live their life. Told through short vignettes (sort of), we experience the often times mundane and normal life of this couple as they navigate friends, family, and each other. Aysa is a documentarian and Manu works at a non profit. They live in a small apartment, enjoy watching detective shows, going to bars with friends, spending time with their elderly neighbor, and walking the streets of this unknown city. This is exactly the type of story I love. it's very loose and the prose is excellent. short read and I didn't want it to end at all.

4/5

This was the March pick for our KTT book club on the Fable app (Join us fable.co/club/book-club-to-the-with-jael-mino-448448206794)! This review might contain slight spoilers if you want to go in completely blind.

Project Hail Mary made me feel a full range of emotions. That is saying something for a hard sci-fi book. Already, Rocky has become one of my favorite characters ever. The relationship between Grace & Rocky was amazingly well done. I loved the way Andy Weir showed us how they learned to communicate with one another and how that learning brought them closer. I also really enjoyed the structure of the memories and how they helped move the story along at a good pace.

The speculative science in this book was also AWESOME!!! Andy Weir did such a good job at taking real scientific concepts and convincingly infusing them with his imagination. I found the science-heavy portions of the story interesting and pretty easy to digest. The diagram at the beginning of the book actually helped me quite a bit with visualization. — 5/5 ⭐️

This was overall an interesting and thought-provoking story. The rural North Carolina setting was brought to life by good descriptive writing. There were some points that somehow felt very slow in this relatively short book, though. I also found that the way the “curse” works is just a tad too complicated. There were a handful of pages that I had to read like 3 times due to confusion. Overall I think this delivered emotionally and had some interesting characters. I guessed one of the big twists, which I don’t really hold against a book. I’m just proud when I do because I’m a terrible twist guesser 😂😭. -- 3.5/5 ⭐️

Wow I’m kind of sad that I’m finished with this series 😭😭😭😭 It was such a journey for everyone and John Gwynne does an amazing job of making you feel just as much a part of the journey as all of the characters! This was a truly epic conclusion to an epic trilogy! -- 4.75/5 ⭐️

I don’t know how to even begin putting my thoughts about Jade Legacy and the entire Green Bone saga together. This book is a feat of literature! Fonda Lee masterfully depicted interesting characters navigating complex socioeconomic issues, fighting wars, and experiencing personal tragedies and triumphs over a span of decades. The way she was able to do that ALL while weaving in a culturally rich magic system is awe-inspiring. My heart was torn out, ripped apart, and sewn back together multiple times within this book (as well as the entire series). This was the perfect ending to such a journey of a series. -- 6/5 ⭐️