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juushikaTitle: A Simple Plan
Author: Scott Smith
Published: Vintage, 2006 (1993)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 395
Total Page Count: 355,365
Text Number: 1286
Read Because: personal enjoyment, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Three men conspire to keep the money they find in a crashed plane. The "when you think you're the smartest man in the conspiracy but it turns out you're just human and consumed with class anxiety" first half of this grows tedious—there's so much classism and fatphobia, so many unlikable characters, and it lacks the film adaptation's engaging tension of conspiring with/conspiring against one's co-conspirators. But as events escalate à la Macbeth they obtain a car-crash fascination—less tragic, sympathetic, and mad than Macbeth; more hopeless, ironic, staged. It's not artful or natural but it is effective, and I particularly love how the ending beats play out. The protagonist's wife is the stealth best character, a Lady Macbeth figure whose ruthlessness is enabled by her relative distance from the violence; her barely-glimpsed interiority is borderline inscrutable but intriguing. I frequently wished for a tighter, shorter version of this, but of course the film exists; the film is also more fun where this is frequently unlikeable—but it grew on me.
Title: The Phantom Tollbooth
Author: Norton Juster
Illustrator: Jules Feiffer
Published: Random House, 2011 (1961)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 255
Total Page Count: 358,635
Text Number: 1301
Read Because: reread, paperback from my personal library but that didn't stop me borrowing an ebook from the Multnomah County Library
Review: I love the wordplay in the Alice and Oz series, but it turns out that when wordplay makes up the whole book I find it less effective. The jokes are frivolous and the punchlines are generally about the practical downfalls of a "literal" application of language, so it doesn't hold up when turned into worldbuilding or plot—or, worse, bland moralizing. The bits I best remember from my childhood are the Doldrums, which taught a baby depressive a useful new world but aren't all that interesting to revisit; the color symphony, which is still great; and Tock, perpetually beloved, although I wish the art were more committed to his alarm clock body. But I didn't find myself fondly rediscovering half-remembered and wonderous elements or building rich, new readings of the text, which I often get from revisiting childhood favorites. It just doesn't resonate in that way. The illustrations hold up better—Maurice Sendak calls them "superb scratchy-itchy pen drawings," which is phenomenal phrasing, and they translate surprisingly well to e-ink displays.
Title: Beyond Black
Author: Hilary Mantel
Published: Picador, 2006 (2005)
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 160 of 440
Total Page Count: 359,165
Text Number: 1303
Read Because: reviewed by Rosamund, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: DNF at 35%, a case of [???] book, wrong time. I like the bones of this, the cruel nuance of the relationship, the interplay of grinding reality and the slippery spiritual/supernatural/traumatic backstory elements. But relentlessly bleak is a specific aesthetic & I'm just not in the mood for it right now, which makes this is tedious and miserable rather than that plus weirdly compelling.
Author: Scott Smith
Published: Vintage, 2006 (1993)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 395
Total Page Count: 355,365
Text Number: 1286
Read Because: personal enjoyment, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Three men conspire to keep the money they find in a crashed plane. The "when you think you're the smartest man in the conspiracy but it turns out you're just human and consumed with class anxiety" first half of this grows tedious—there's so much classism and fatphobia, so many unlikable characters, and it lacks the film adaptation's engaging tension of conspiring with/conspiring against one's co-conspirators. But as events escalate à la Macbeth they obtain a car-crash fascination—less tragic, sympathetic, and mad than Macbeth; more hopeless, ironic, staged. It's not artful or natural but it is effective, and I particularly love how the ending beats play out. The protagonist's wife is the stealth best character, a Lady Macbeth figure whose ruthlessness is enabled by her relative distance from the violence; her barely-glimpsed interiority is borderline inscrutable but intriguing. I frequently wished for a tighter, shorter version of this, but of course the film exists; the film is also more fun where this is frequently unlikeable—but it grew on me.
Title: The Phantom Tollbooth
Author: Norton Juster
Illustrator: Jules Feiffer
Published: Random House, 2011 (1961)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 255
Total Page Count: 358,635
Text Number: 1301
Read Because: reread, paperback from my personal library but that didn't stop me borrowing an ebook from the Multnomah County Library
Review: I love the wordplay in the Alice and Oz series, but it turns out that when wordplay makes up the whole book I find it less effective. The jokes are frivolous and the punchlines are generally about the practical downfalls of a "literal" application of language, so it doesn't hold up when turned into worldbuilding or plot—or, worse, bland moralizing. The bits I best remember from my childhood are the Doldrums, which taught a baby depressive a useful new world but aren't all that interesting to revisit; the color symphony, which is still great; and Tock, perpetually beloved, although I wish the art were more committed to his alarm clock body. But I didn't find myself fondly rediscovering half-remembered and wonderous elements or building rich, new readings of the text, which I often get from revisiting childhood favorites. It just doesn't resonate in that way. The illustrations hold up better—Maurice Sendak calls them "superb scratchy-itchy pen drawings," which is phenomenal phrasing, and they translate surprisingly well to e-ink displays.
Title: Beyond Black
Author: Hilary Mantel
Published: Picador, 2006 (2005)
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 160 of 440
Total Page Count: 359,165
Text Number: 1303
Read Because: reviewed by Rosamund, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: DNF at 35%, a case of [???] book, wrong time. I like the bones of this, the cruel nuance of the relationship, the interplay of grinding reality and the slippery spiritual/supernatural/traumatic backstory elements. But relentlessly bleak is a specific aesthetic & I'm just not in the mood for it right now, which makes this is tedious and miserable rather than that plus weirdly compelling.
