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Alright in direct contrast to last month, this month started off strong and ....uh...let's hope 2020 is NOT like this.

February Book Reviews

Voices from Chernobyl (Svetlana Alexievich)

9/10 I read this because someone said the TV show was really good, and while this was nothing like the TV show, it was still stunning. This is a great personal perspective of a tragedy too often popularized for it. The first chapter hits you with references to Chernobyl dramatized for its radiation, it's popularity as a location for sci-fi or horror movies, and its fame as a ghost town and nature reclamatio - and makes it clear that it isn't about any of these. It reminds you that this was a place, live with real people who truly had no idea what was happening. The horror of radiation was something that only happened in hindsight, overridden by the fear and ignorance of the evacuation itself. Especially as these stories are coming from survivors of a war in recent memory, the comparison between that war (in which you might die, but if you lived then you 'won') and this war (where it's the surviving part that's hard) was striking. I loved that she found anecdotes from people in all aspects of the tragedy, from the people just doing their jobs in clean up, the people who couldn't bear to part from their homes, the people in government, both those who lied and those who couldn't. It's a stark reminder that sometimes history tends to be remembered for the events, but the people themselves are often overlooked. That this book gives voices to them is something to be appreciated.

Vox Machina: Origins (Matthew Colville)

8/10 I'm pleasantly surprised by this comic book 'spin-off' of the first Critical Role campaign! While they're already on campaign 2, with fun new characters, there'll always be a special place in my heart for Vox Machina. The comic focuses on the unseen adventures of VM getting their start, which I think gave it the advantage of not having anything to compare it with (as opposed to the TAZ comic adaptation). I think they captured the characters really well, and I could definitely see events play out as they did in the actual show. (Maybe not too surprisingly considering the actors probably had a hand in it) The character interaction is fun and their progression into a party doesn't feel forced. It might be less enjoyable for a non-fan, but I definitely enjoyed it. Also, Vex was my fav in this one.

Without You, There Is No Us (Suki Kim)

6/10 A journalist pretends to be a missionary pretending to be a teacher in North Korea. It's an interesting look at the world inside North Korea but unfortunately lacking a structure or meaning to it that might've made it even better. The parts that highlighted the atmosphere of country are probably the best parts for me. I don't make it a point to read memoirs about North Korea so there were a few things that stood out to me: feeling physically tired/drained all the time just because of the mental pressure of having to lie and self censor all the time, the monotony of routines there, not being sure whether the people there are lying out of fear or if they genuinely believe everything they're saying - and not knowing which would be worse. As a fake missionary, she also makes an interesting comparison between the God that the missionaries worship and the way North Koreans treat their leader. While these were all interesting anecdotes, I couldn't really get a sense of her purpose, which made lose sight of the book's purpose. There wasn't much development, just a straightforward log of her time there. The book left me feeling like 'what was the point...?' and kind of unsatisfied by the end.

How Carrots Won the Trojan War (Rebecca Rupp)

2/10 UNSUBSCRIBE FROM VEGETABLE FACTS. I'm begging you, please, stop giving me information about vegetables. This was a book club book but you know what, it's fine because I thought the premise was fine! Vegetables and their role in changing history! Maybe it'll have some interesting stories in a Buzzfeed listicle kind of way! It turns out even that kind of low expectancy hope was misplaced. There was no coherent outline save for each chapter being about a different vegetable. It jumps all over the place without any attempt at connecting the paragraphs. There's not even stories, it's literally just random vegetable facts. An example is the chapter that started off with 'how asparagus seduced the French king' and you read it and there's like two sentences about Madame de Pompadour liked to eat asparagus. That's it. Don't read this book.

All Men Are Liars (Alberto Manguel)

3.5/10 You know what, maybe Spanish fiction just isn't for me. I felt the same way as I did reading Shadow of the Wind, just thinking the entire time 'wow I really hate this writing style'. It's so hard cut through the layers to find a semblance of plot. Maybe that's the problem? That I'm looking for plot at all? The concept itself was fine; it sounded really cool. An account of a man's life as told by different people and the different ways people interpret a story and their memories. Doesn't that sound neat? Unfortunately the execution of said concept was excruciating to read through for me. There were so many tangents that I couldn't see the point to, random facts about random things that I didn't care for, and too much sex. And not actual sex, just a lot of talking about sex and describing it but not actually having sex. Like it's done not in a raunchy or erotic kind of way, just in that pretentious literary way where you feel like every character should just be asexual just to get them to stop. The ending was so super unsatisfying and maybe if I really tried I could come up with some thing about how it's a metaphor for life but I'm not an English major, I'm just a casual reader who's gonna swear off Spanish fiction for a while.