War Trash by Ha Jin

 

Goodreads synopsis: Ha Jin’s masterful new novel casts a searchlight into a forgotten corner of modern history, the experience of Chinese soldiers held in U.S. POW camps during the Korean War. In 1951 Yu Yuan, a scholarly and self-effacing clerical officer in Mao’s “volunteer” army, is taken prisoner south of the 38th Parallel. Because he speaks English, he soon becomes an intermediary between his compatriots and their American captors. With Yuan as guide, we are ushered into the secret world behind the barbed wire, a world where kindness alternates with blinding cruelty and one has infinitely more to fear from one’s fellow prisoners than from the guards. Vivid in its historical detail, profound in its imaginative empathy, War Trash is Ha Jin’s most ambitious book to date.

My rating: 4 stars.

Content warnings: R. Scenes of wartime violence and disturbing images.

Thoughts: The Korean War isn't one that I've read very much about, so it was really interesting to get a piece of literature written from the perspective of the "other side." And seeing perspectives like that I think are very important, even if fundamentally people don't agree. It's still important to see the man behind the enemy.

The story is at times, very rough and hard to get through. But it's an important issue to face, not only that "the enemy" are men too, but also what presumed good men are capable of stooping to in altered situations. If Ha Jin's novel is the beginning of a conversation about this, it is very much worth the read.

Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein

 

Goodreads synopsis: In one of Robert Heinlein's most controversial bestsellers, a recruit of the future goes through the toughest boot camp in the Universe--and into battle with the Terran Mobile Infantry against mankind's most frightening enemy.

My rating: 3 stars.

Content warnings: PG-13. Many characters die in battle, but not many in detailed or even very bloody ways. 

Thoughts: Maybe it was because I was reading this combined with several other really fantastic stories for a class, or that I had expected more out of the name "Heinlein," or both, but while interesting and a decently fun sci-fi romp, it wasn't generally super interesting to me. I found some of the action, or what little there was of that, hard to follow and understand. I didn't even realize part of the crucial plot's setting until hearing someone else discuss the book. The parts of the book not dedicated to philosophical discussion was actually more boring. Which I find interesting, because it's usually the opposite. But I will say that Heinlein did that part of this book very well, and I would probably reread this book in several years just for those parts. But the rest of it was solidly just okay.

Going Postal by Terry Pratchett

Goodreads synopsis: Arch-swindler Moist Van Lipwig never believed his confidence crimes were hanging offenses - until he found himself with a noose tightly around his neck, dropping through a trapdoor, and falling into...a government job?

By all rights, Moist should have met his maker. Instead, it's Lord Vetinari, supreme ruler of Ankh-Morpork, who promptly offers him a job as Postmaster. Since his only other option is a nonliving one, Moist accepts the position - and the hulking golem watchdog who comes along with it, just in case Moist was considering abandoning his responsibilities prematurely.

Getting the moribund Postal Service up and running again, however, may be a near-impossible task, what with literally mountains of decades-old undelivered mail clogging every nook and cranny of the broken-down post office building; and with only a few creaky old postmen and one rather unstable, pin-obsessed youth available to deliver it. Worse still, Moist could swear the mail is talking to him. Worst of all, it means taking on the gargantuan, money-hungry Grand Trunk clacks communication monopoly and its bloodthirsty piratical head, Mr. Reacher Gilt.
But it says on the building Neither Rain Nor Snow Nor Glom of Nit...Inspiring words (admittedly, some of the bronze letters have been stolen), and for once in his wretched life Moist is going to fight. And if the bold and impossible are what's called for, he'll do it - in order to move the mail, continue breathing, get the girl, and specially deliver that invaluable commodity that every human being (not to mention troll, dwarf, and, yes, even golem) requires: hope.

My rating: 3 stars.

Content warnings: PG. Some mild swearing, and kissing.

Thoughts: I experienced this book twice in an attempt to like it more than I did. The first time I read it, and ended up speed reading through a lot of parts, and the second time I got an audiobook, hoping that would help me focus on the story more. It didn't, and I had gotten the gist of the story from my speed reading anyway.

It's a decent book and a solid enough story. The general idea of the story is something I actually enjoyed very much. But I think it's just a bit too absurdist for me, and that didn't help in my enjoyment. While I do enjoy a good absurdist story, having a serious story played out in an absurdist world was an okay choice, but not something that struck a chord with me.

I can see why other people liked it, but I ended up being significantly underwhelmed for how much I had heard about this book before.

Mr. Monster by Dan Wells

 

Goodreads synopsis: In I Am Not a Serial Killer, John Wayne Cleaver saved his town from a murderer even more appalling than the serial killers he obsessively studies.
But it turns out even demons have friends, and the disappearance of one has brought another to Clayton County. Soon there are new victims for John to work on at the mortuary and a new mystery to solve. But John has tasted death, and the dark nature he used as a weapon--the terrifying persona he calls Mr. Monster--might now be using him.

No one in Clayton is safe unless John can vanquish two nightmarish adversaries: the unknown demon he must hunt and the inner demon he can never escape.

In this sequel to his brilliant debut, Dan Wells ups the ante with a thriller that is just as gripping and even more intense. He apologizes in advance for the nightmares.

My rating: 3 stars.

Content warnings: R. Blood and gore, some animal abuse, and references to domestic abuse.

(spoilers below)

Thoughts: I was annoyed with the first book a little, for pulling a monster seemingly out of nowhere, and I was annoyed with this book, for not really seeming to know what it was doing with its monster. I'll probably read the third book just to finish the series out, but I don't expect to be very amazed by it.

Going into this book, I knew better than to not expect monsters, but once I was finished it seemed to me it would have been better not to have the killer be a monster at all. The monster's reasons, motivations and powers, all felt very bland and served to make it, as a monster, less impressive than a human killer would have been, operating in the same way. Even the supernatural abilities that should have given the monster an extreme edge over John, didn't seem to be more than a minor inconvenience.

Even the writing style that made me really enjoy the first book, despite its poor set up and marketing, felt more bland and "normal" than before. John didn't feel as unique as he had before, and I can't really figure out why that is.

Then again, the author had the main character driving himself to the police station, at fifteen years old, unaccompanied, with only a learner's permit, so that should have given me an indication of just how much thought was actually put into this book.

For what it ended up being, it was an interesting enough book. But it certainly did not live up to the expectations its predecessor built up for it.

The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

 

Goodreads synopsis: Searing and profound, suffused with beauty, sorrow, and longing, the stories in The Thing Around Your Neck map, with Adichie's signature emotional wisdom, the collision of two cultures and the deeply human struggle to reconcile them. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie burst onto the literary scene with her remarkable debut novel, Purple Hibiscus, which critics hailed as "one of the best novels to come out of Africa in years" (Baltimore Sun), with "prose as lush as the Nigerian landscape that it powerfully evokes" (The Boston Globe); The Washington Post called her "the twenty-first-century daughter of Chinua Achebe." Her award-winning Half of a Yellow Sun became an instant classic upon its publication three years later, once again putting her tremendous gifts - graceful storytelling, knowing compassion, and fierce insight into her characters' hearts - on display. Now, in her most intimate and seamlessly crafted work to date, Adichie turns her penetrating eye on not only Nigeria but America, in twelve dazzling stories that explore the ties that bind men and women, parents and children, Africa and the United States.

In "A Private Experience," a medical student hides from a violent riot with a poor Muslim woman whose dignity and faith force her to confront the realities and fears she's been pushing away. In "Tomorrow is Too Far," a woman unlocks the devastating secret that surrounds her brother's death. The young mother at the center of "Imitation" finds her comfortable life in Philadelphia threatened when she learns that her husband has moved his mistress into their Lagos home. And the title story depicts the choking loneliness of a Nigerian girl who moves to an America that turns out to be nothing like the country she expected; though falling in love brings her desires nearly within reach, a death in her homeland forces her to reexamine them.

Searing and profound, suffused with beauty, sorrow, and longing, these stories map, with Adichie's signature emotional wisdom, the collision of two cultures and the deeply human struggle to reconcile them. The Thing Around Your Neck is a resounding confirmation of the prodigious literary powers of one of our most essential writers.

My rating: 4 stars.

Content warnings: R. Sex and occasional violence.

Thoughts: It's hard to evaluate a collection of short stories, because there is an inevitable difference between each of them, but overall the stories were well written and enjoyable. Several did have me wondering what the point of that story was, but overall the collection was worth the read, and provides a glimpse into a life that many of us aren't exposed to and don't think about. There is a feeling of general lost-ness and lack of hope in these stories, but I'm not sure they were written to give any meaning. Rather, they feel like the confessions and struggles of someone, putting their own experiences behind a veil of fiction in order to explain them, rather than a search or presentation of meaning. But these glimpses into other's lives can be important in reminding us that there are other stories out there beyond our own.

Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton

Goodreads synopsis: Cry, the Beloved Country, the most famous and important novel in South Africa’s history, was an immediate worldwide bestseller in 1948. Alan Paton’s impassioned novel about a black man’s country under white man’s law is a work of searing beauty.

Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or valley. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much.

The eminent literary critic Lewis Gannett wrote, “We have had many novels from statesmen and reformers, almost all bad; many novels from poets, almost all thin. In Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country the statesman, the poet and the novelist meet in a unique harmony.”

Cry, the Beloved Country is the deeply moving story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son, Absalom, set against the background of a land and a people riven by racial injustice. Remarkable for its lyricism, unforgettable for character and incident, Cry, the Beloved Country is a classic work of love and hope, courage and endurance, born of the dignity of man.

My rating: 4 stars.

Content warnings: PG. Mild implications that a character was a prostitute, and brief talked about violence.

(spoilers below)

Thoughts: I will admit I had a hard time getting into this book, but when I started Part 2, there was no way I could put it down. The book is not one sided, but shows the impacts of one stupid action on both "sides" that it impacts, and the outward ripples that actions can and do have. The beauty of this book lies in its open honesty, not shying away from the pain that each character experiences, but gently showing it, while still presenting hope in the midst of the heartache.

While it can be difficult to get into at first, it's definitely worth the time it takes to read.

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

 

Goodreads synopsis: Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. As Islamic morality squads staged arbitrary raids in Tehran, fundamentalists seized hold of the universities, and a blind censor stifled artistic expression, the girls in Azar Nafisi's living room risked removing their veils and immersed themselves in the worlds of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Vladimir Nabokov. In this extraordinary memoir, their stories become intertwined with the ones they are reading. Reading Lolita in Tehran is a remarkable exploration of resilience in the face of tyranny and a celebration of the liberating power of literature.

My rating: 5 stars.

Content warnings: PG-13. Frank discussions on sexuality, violence, and the sexual abuse of a child from a piece of literature. 

Thoughts: I'm not really sure what else to say that the last sentence of the synopsis doesn't already say. But I can confirm that it does not over hype this book. I could even say it might not do it enough justice.

This book was beautiful. And important enough I think most people should read it, for a lot of reasons.

It's well written, lovely, important, and can make the reader face ideas in their own life that they may need to. I'm already looking forward to rereading this one.