Ask Not For Whom the Micro Reviews Tolls

Books

YA/MG fiction
Blood Red Road (***** – loved)
Where Things Come Back (***** – loved)
Insurgent (**** – liked)
The Clockwork Three (*** – enjoyed)

Graphic novels
Friends With Boys (**** – liked)

Adult fiction
Deadlocked (*** – enjoyed)
Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders (**** – liked)
Uncle Fred in the Springtime (**** – liked)

Adult non-fiction
Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior (**** – liked)
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America (**** – liked)
Life Below Stairs: True Lives of Edwardian Servants (*** – enjoyed)

TV 

The Wire season 3 (**** – liked)

Blood Red Road by Moira Young (YA fantasy novel, 2011) – I loved the voice of our protagonist, Saba, as she narrates the story of her journey across post-apocalyptic America to rescue her twin brother. There were a couple elements of this story that didn’t work for me, like the romance and the is-there-or-isn’t-there question of magic. But mainly, I liked how Saba is allowed to be mean and violent without either of those things overwhelming the story: she’s got a long way to go as a person, and the book respects that.

Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley (YA novel, 2012) – Read this book to join teenaged Cullen Witter, his best friend Lucas, his younger brother Gabriel, and a host of other characters from small-town Southern U.S. as the alleged sighting of a supposedly extinct woodpecker upends their lives in drastic ways. The book does a good job of balancing the sad and the sweet as Cullen’s sardonic personal narrative alternates with chapters telling the interwoven story that starts with an eighteen-year-old missionary named Benton Sage. Although the author keeps the reader in suspense until the very end, this book is more about voice and writing than plot.

Insurgent by Veronica Roth (YA fantasy novel, 2012) – In this continuation of the Divergent series, we follow our protagonist Tris, her sort-of-boyfriend, and her companions both good and evil as they struggle to raise a force against the Erudite and deal with the aftermath of last book’s climactic battle. It was great to get a more detailed picture of the inner workings of the two factions that had less to do in the last book, Candor and Amity, and I like how Roth shows that each faction has major problems. If there was one thing that didn’t work for me, it was the “surprise” at the end of the novel — although it left me going “… so?”, I’m still eager for the third book (scheduled for Fall 2013!!!).

The Clockwork Three by Matthew J. Kirby (MG historical fantasy novel, 201o) – I enjoyed this story about three children chasing their dreams in a turn-of-the-century American city, and I liked how the author brought their diverging plots together and showed how each needed the others, not magical artifacts, to unlock the courage inside him- or herself. But my opinion is totally biased because one of the plots involved the history of automata, a subject that featured in my doctoral dissertation, so it was hard for me to suspend my disbelief. Anyway, although the characters’ problems were engaging, I was emotionally unsatisfied by the way the resolutions involved each character summoning the confidence to confront an intimidating adult, who then turned out to be nice and awesome.

Friends With Boys by Faith Erin Hicks (graphic novel, 2012) – Maggie has a lot of stuff going on: being haunted by a lady ghost, dealing with her mother’s abandonment of the family, and following her three older brothers from homeschooling to public high school. I liked the characters and the presentation, but because I’m more interested in the ghost plot than the family drama plot, I found the end a little frustrating. Still, there were plenty of vivid, emotional moments.

Deadlocked by Charlaine Harris (fantasy novel, 2012) – The writing is just as sharp as ever, but the crazy cast of fairies, vampires, shifters, werewolves etc. who populate Sookie Stackhouse’s world is getting overwhelming and unwieldy. I liked the end, which brought an important emotional development with it. Sadly, both mystery and romance felt slipshod compared to the ones in the first few books in this series.

Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders by John Mortimer (mystery novel, 2004) – Rumpole’s Penge Bungalow murder case is like Calvin’s noodle incident, so I didn’t have my hopes high for this tell-all. The novel sees Rumpole finally writing his memoirs of the trial, in which a young man is in danger of receiving the death penalty for shooting his father and his father’s friend, a crime of which he insists he is innocent. The case is hopeless, blah blah blah, but of course you’re here to see Rumpole be witty and rude and hilarious, and that’s what you get, with an occasional foray into his and Hilda’s “courtship.”

Uncle Fred in the Springtime by P. G. Wodehouse (humour novel, 1939) – I could summarize the plot, or I could just say that a bunch of British aristocrats with names like “Pongo Twistleton” get up to hilarious hijinks regarding young people’s marriages, bets, and prize pigs. This is the first Wodehouse book I’ve read, and I like how it goes down easy. It’s hard to get anxious about people getting caught in deception (one of the things that normally makes my insides twist) when the consequences will be that they have to sit next to the butler at elevenses or something.

Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior by Leonard Mlodinow (non-fiction book, 2012) – I enjoy Leonard Mlodinow’s writing, and the subject matter of this book, the subliminal mind and its important roles in our daily actions, was interesting. Lately, with psychology written for popular audiences, I find that I get frustrated hearing the surface-level synopses of the same dozen or so Really Cool Social Experiments. It’s not fair to blame this book for not being something I wanted it to be rather than not being something the author wanted it to be, but I am  in the mood for an analysis of what these findings really mean.

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson (non-fiction novel, 2003) – On one hand, this popular history of the concurrent stories of the Chicago World’s Fair and turn-of-the-century serial murderer H. H. Holmes is gripping enough for another-chapter-before-bed. And I approve whole-heartedly of the author’s reliance on archival primary sources. But I guess I missed the level of rigour, both theoretical and historical, to which I’m accustomed in academic histories.

Life Below Stairs: True Lives of Edwardian Servants by Alison Maloney (non-fiction book 2011) – This book about Edwardian servants seems to be aimed at the Downton Abbey-loving crowd, so any criticism I have is probably just me being a petty historian. It was easy to read, with short chapters and eye-popping facts (how did the Edwardian upper class eat that much at a dinner party?). The inclusion of bite-sized chunks of primary source worked well too.

The Wire season 3 by David Simon (TV show, 2004) – This season has two main appeals: a multi-layered plot that explores why the war on drugs is misguided and major! changes! for several key characters. I like how this show doesn’t hold your hand; either you watched the previous season(s) or you didn’t, and too bad for you if you’re not keeping up. But I still don’t feel for any of the characters — none of them is someone I can root for or care about.