Dune by Frank Herbert

 

Goodreads synopsis: Here is the novel that will be forever considered a triumph of the imagination. Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, who would become the mysterious man known as Muad'Dib. He would avenge the traitorous plot against his noble family--and would bring to fruition humankind's most ancient and unattainable dream.

A stunning blend of adventure and mysticism, environmentalism and politics, Dune won the first Nebula Award, shared the Hugo Award, and formed the basis of what is undoubtedly the grandest epic in science fiction.

My rating: 4 stars.

Content warnings: PG-13. Some death and blood, as well as implied homosexual rape.

Thoughts: The world is very clearly heavily thought out and developed, and I appreciate that very much. There is so much detail to the world, but it's not over explained, in fact some of it I wish was a bit more explained, but it worked within the world and the story, and I couldn't really complain that it under explained instead of over. It made the world seem so real to the author.

I am very curious about his inspirations, and the cultures and ideas he drew from in writing this. It's something I would like to read more about, as I found it very interesting, and neat in that it seemed very non-Western whereas most other sci-fi that I've read is mostly white Western inspired.

The one complaint I had is that the third division of the book seems almost unconnected to the rest of the story. It's such a whiplash-y change in the timeline, and a rapid skip of years without any warning or indication did strike me as hard to follow at first, and somewhat confusing. I would have liked to see Paul and Jessica adapting to their desert life a bit slower, and perhaps the third section have been its own sequel book.

But that may be a personal complaint, and this book has more than enough positives to outweigh that annoyance. 

I Don't Want to Kill You by Dan Wells

 

Goodreads synopsis: John Cleaver has called a demon—literally called it, on the phone, and challenged it to a fight. He’s faced two of the monsters already, barely escaping with his life, and now he’s done running; he’s taking the fight to them. But as he wades through his town’s darkest secrets, searching for any sign of who the demon might be, one thing becomes all too clear: in a game of cat and mouse with a supernatural killer, the human is always the mouse.

In I Am Not a Serial Killer we watched a budding sociopath break every rule he had to save his town from evil. In Mr. Monster we held our breath as he fought madly with himself, struggling to stay in control. Now John Cleaver has mastered his twisted talents and embraced his role as a killer of killers. I Don’t Want to Kill You brings his story to a thundering climax of suspicion, mayhem, and death.

It’s time to punish the guilty.

And in a town full of secrets, everyone is guilty of something.

My rating: 3 stars.

Content warnings: R. Violence and mild sexual content. Trigger warning for suicide and self harm.

(spoilers below)

Thoughts: I'm a little disappointed in this story, and especially the ultimate culmination of John's story. The world of monsters still feels like something of an afterthought, and wasn't really tied in to the unfolding of the story very well, in my opinion. It could have been integrated a lot better.

And the ending both in terms of stakes, and in what happened for the characters, seemed to fall flat in a lot of ways. I'm disappointed that there had to be a death to kill the demon, and not finding another way around it seemed like a massive oversight on the part of the author. I get how he tried to redeem that fact, but in the end it didn't really work.

Plus, the theme of suicide that was being woven into the story, was completely undermined by the monster. I'm not saying that idea couldn't have been done well. But it needed much more capable writing, and a longer period of time to deal with the impacts and what that meant for the story and the theme, rather than it just being a thing that happened.

I know I would have been very curious if I hadn't read the second and third books of this trilogy, but I do hold that the first one is really the only one worth taking the time to read, unless you have absolutely nothing else to read. 

Seven Brief Lessons in Physics by Carlo Rovelli

 

Goodreads synopsis: All the beauty of modern physics in fewer than a hundred pages.
This is a book about the joy of discovery. A playful, entertaining, and mind-bending introduction to modern physics, it's already a major bestseller in Italy and the United Kingdom. Carlo Rovelli offers surprising—and surprisingly easy to grasp—explanations of general relativity, quantum mechanics, elementary particles, gravity, black holes, the complex architecture of the universe, and the role humans play in this weird and wonderful world. He takes us to the frontiers of our knowledge: to the most minute reaches of the fabric of space, back to the origins of the cosmos, and into the workings of our minds. “Here, on the edge of what we know, in contact with the ocean of the unknown, shines the mystery and the beauty of the world,” Rovelli writes. “And it’s breathtaking.”

My rating: 4 stars.

Thoughts: It's a complicated and confusing book to read sometimes, I felt like my brain was melting, but maybe that just proves I'm not a science-y person. But there is a beauty and a wonder to the world that the author is trying to share with the reader, and that alone makes it a lovely book, and it certainly has a lot of reread potential, at least for me, in trying to glean even more information from the short and simply written pages of the book.

Politically Correct Holiday Stories by James Finn Garner

Goodreads synopsis: Whether your favorite holiday story is A Christmas Carol, The Story of Hanukkah, or 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, you'll find it transformed to reflect current sensibilities in Politically Correct Holiday Stories. Injecting our popular holiday fables with a modern perspective is no easy task, but someone had to do it -- and who better than the proven master of cultural sensitivity? James Finn Garner joyfully frees these holiday tales from sexism, ageism, religious imperialism, and every other sorry vestige of our flawed, low-consciousness past. So gather the family (whether traditional, dysfunctional, co-dependent, or otherwise) around the hearth, and read aloud these tales as they should have been told the first time.

My rating: 4 stars.

Content warnings: PG. Some mild off color jokes.

Thoughts: It's funny how this book isn't even that old, relatively, but half the stuff in it probably wouldn't even be considered politically correct anymore. Either way, it's a quick, funny read and I enjoyed the ride.

The Republic of Imagination by Azar Nafisi

Goodreads synopsis: Ten years ago, Azar Nafisi electrified readers with her million-copy bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran, which told the story of how, against the backdrop of morality squads and executions, she taught The Great Gatsby and other classics to her eager students in Iran. In this exhilarating followup, Nafisi has written the book her fans have been waiting for: an impassioned, beguiling and utterly original tribute to the vital importance of fiction in a democratic society. What Reading Lolita in Tehran was for Iran, The Republic of Imagination is for America.

Taking her cue from a challenge thrown to her in Seattle, where a skeptical reader told her that Americans don’t care about books the way they did back in Iran, she challenges those who say fiction has nothing to teach us. Blending memoir and polemic with close readings of her favorite American novels—from Huckleberry Finn to The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter—she invites us to join her as citizens of her "Republic of Imagination," a country where the villains are conformity and orthodoxy, and the only passport to entry is a free mind and a willingness to dream.

My rating: 5 stars.

Content warnings: PG. Some mentions of violence.

Thoughts: If Reading Lolita in Tehran was important for further understanding life in Iran, this book was at times painful to read, because of how much it calls out about our way of living, and what we take for granted. Nafisi uses literature accepted as "classics" but that modern readers may not really think about deeply, and uses her down to earth writing and sharp observations to touch deeply to the heart of the reader. It can be rough to read sometimes, but definitely very worth it, and I would suggest it to almost everyone.

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Goodreads synopsis: Dostoyevsky's passionate concern for people and his intense desire to grasp the meaning of life led him to explore the secret depths of humanity's struggles and sins. No action or thought was ever too corrupt or too inhuman for his understanding. The Brothers Karamazov was his last and greatest work. This extraordinary novel tells the dramatic story of four brothers-Dmitri, pleasure-seeking, impatient, unruly...Ivan, brilliant and morose ...Alyosha, gentle, loving, honest...and the illegitimate Smerdyakov, sly, silent, cruel. Driven by intense passion, they become involved in the brutal murder of their own father, one of the most loathsome characters in all literature.

My rating: 5 stars.

Content warnings: PG-13. Some violence, descriptions of violence, and sexual content.

Thoughts: The story is so rich and deep it's hard to do it justice in a summary review of it. This book delves into the deepest parts of mankind, from depravity to holiness, and doesn't shy away from showing things as they really are. But it shows us hope in humanity too. Definitely worth a read, or a reread.