Tag: the52bookchallenge2022

Crime Fiction, Fiction, Historical Fiction

Number 4: Title Starting with the Letter “F”

KC

The Family

Naomi Krupitsky

In a reversal of Get Rich or Lie Trying, where I read a book recommended by a YouTube video, The Family is a book that inspired me to watch a YouTube video (although without the explicit call to action, the book just reminded me of the video).

The video in question, of course, is the supremely entertaining Alice Cappelle’s explanation of why fiction is better than self-help.

The Family is better than self-help.

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This is not to say that this historical crime-family fiction novel resembles self-help in any overt way, nor does it try to achieve the same goals as self-help books. And despite the plethora of terrible entries into the genre, I do have an issue with self-help as a style. But The Family is still better.

It’s a book that shares a lot of the same themes that self-help does: self determination, autonomy, the role of our upbringing in who we become, and it does it in a nuanced way. The varying viewpoints and third-person omniscient narration allows Krupitsky to make contrasting arguments within the same story, and allows the reader to come to their own conclusions.

Fantasy, Ghost Stories, Horror

Number 8: Involving the Art World

KC

The Castle of Los Angeles

Lisa Morton

No one has ever sounded more like a native Los Angeleno in the year 2010 than the writer of this book, set in Los Angeles and published in 2010. I think it was the narration about the freeways that cinched it. And putting “the” in front of the freeway’s number. The vocal fry pretty much adds itself.

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels.com

The setting felt realistic, is what I’m trying to say. Which is good, because The Castle of Los Angeles is a ghost story, so you want the world to be grounded in reality. And it was a good one, fun and unexpected, but not so long that you have to spend a bunch of nights with the lights on, jumping at every noise, until you finally finish it.

The Castle of Lost Angeles did get me thinking, if every place has a genre that resonates with it. LA would be horror. New York is rom-com (of course), Boston is heartwarming biopic, and all of the South stakes its claim to gothic romance, but California is the place for horror.

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Los Angeles is creepy, it’s hard to pinpoint, but the movie The Craft does it well. This is a different creepy from the creepiness of the sunset district in San Francisco where Patty Hearst held up a bank, or the bone-like tentacle creepiness of the trees outside of Lake Tahoe where the Donner family met their fate. The whole of California has a haunted quality, distinct by region, but connected, part of a greater disturbing whole.

Sorry to get sentimental, I must be feeling homesick.

Photo by Roberto Nickson on Pexels.com
Adventure, Fairy Tales, Fantasy, Graphic Novels

Number 14: A Character with Superhuman Abilities

KC

Grimm Fairy Tales: Arcane Acre Volume 1

Pat Shand (writer) & Andrea Meloni (illustrator)

Graphic novels have gained quite a bit of legitimacy over recent years, so I’m not going to call them an under-rated medium. But what tends to get lost in the conversations about Alan Moore’s books is just how much fun graphic novels are!

It is the written medium that most resembles a movie, and of all the storytelling styles, I find it the easiest to get lost in. The way your eye flows from panel to panel feels more natural than paragraphs. It’s overall a more immersive medium.

Grimm Fairy Tales in particular is cute, and manages to pack a lot of world-building in a short amount of time. I enjoyed it and I’ll probably read the next in the series, but I wasn’t obsessed like I might have by an Alison Bechdel or Harley Quinn graphic novel (which clearly says more about me than the story itself).

Financial, Nonfiction, Pop Culture

Number 52: Published in 2022

KC

Get Rich or Lie Trying: Ambition and Deceit in the New Influencer Economy

Symeon Brown

I know I was around for the rise of the influencer, yet I know nothing about them.

Their rise coincides with my young adult years, when theoretically I was paying the most attention, and yet I missed it.

Maybe my technophobia was to blame (I regarded iPhones with extreme skepticism as late as 2014), or the fact that hipster culture back then was not particularly glamorous. Our early-teen-aughts aesthetic was ironically ugly and thrifted from the worst Salvation Army’s in Ohio. We had graduated into an recession and we were angry about it.

But clearly some people were not, and they became influencers. Regardless of how or why I failed to notice them, they exist now, and they are here to stay (maybe).

So I read a book about them to catch up. All in all, I enjoyed this little treatise on the influencer. Sometimes I was depressed, sometimes I was horrified, but mostly I learned cool facts about recent history. For example, one of the founders of Black Lives Matter, Alicia Garza, has a masters degree from my alma mater. That was inspiring, unlike the rest of the book, which was more unsettling.

In conclusion, influencers are a menace to society, thank you for reading.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Ironically, I learned of this book while watching a Youtube video by influencer Jordan Theresa, who is clearly effective at her job, as she influenced me to read this book.

20th Century Fiction, Fiction

Number 1: A Second-Person Narrative

KC

Bright Lights, Big City

Jay McInerney

I admit, I was skeptical that a novel written in second person would be anything but a gimmick, but I was wrong. It is actually quite engaging. It is also well-suited to a navel-gazey unreliable narrator (the best kind!).

But what you are left with is a premonition of the way your life will fade behind you, like a book you have read too quickly, leaving a dwindling trail of images and emotions, until all you can remember is a name.

To all the reviewers on Goodreads who wrote their reviews in second person, I salute you. It is a temperamental style, and you are braver than I.

Biography, Nonfiction, Reviews, True Crime

Number 24: Addresses a Specific Topic

KC

Shooting Star: The Brief Arc of Joe McCarthy

Tom Wicker

I did not know much about this era of American history when I began this book, but now that I’ve finished, I still don’t.

It is not the fault of the author, it is just that the subject is so banal, like evil. I fall asleep even thinking about it.

That’s why he was so successful.

Wait, was he successful?

It seems to me idle to argue that he was not a demagogue. If he enjoyed his success, he was not entirely sanguine about its cost in ruined lives and damaged careers.

That sounds successful to me.

Joseph R. McCarthy was a demagogue, certainly, but… he was also intelligent, energetic, audacious, personally generous… too avidly craving the affirmation of others, too recklessly seeking it in the battle he exalted, McCarthy too carelessly believed that the approval he won justified the means of its achievement… who fought desperately and with uncommon success to achieve the wrong dream.

Indeed.

Adventure, Dystopia, Fantasy, Pulp Fiction, Reviews, Science Fiction

Number 36: Recommended by a Favorite Author

KC

The Heads of Cerberus: The First Alternative Worlds Novel

Francis Stevens

I admit I was not a fan of the last dystopian novel I read. So I went back in time a little to see what I could find. And lo and behold, the pioneer of the time travel genre herself, Francis Stevens!

I love science fiction for its timelessness. Despite, or because, it deals with the future, its tone has not changed much since it began. Sure, we aren’t still debating the morality of the microscope (like Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World), but the tension between skepticism of new technology and embracing it for the creative potential it unlocks is a consistent theme.

Heads of Cerberus was written in 1919, but it still feels current. I think part of the reason for this is because she does not try to imagine the technology that might exist in Philadelphia in 2118, which might read as silly today. Technology is stalled at 1918 levels, and society is the thing that is drastically restructured.

Stylistically, it works. Pulp entertainment at its finest!

Also, I took some liberties with the category. Rather than being recommended by a favorite author, The Heads of Cerberus was actually recommended by the Monster, She Wrote audiobook I was listening to. It has introduced me to some of my new favorites.

Fantasy, Poetry

Number 45: A Book With Illustrated People on the Cover

KC

Electric Arches

Eve L. Ewing

It must be said, I love poetry. It’s such a visceral experience. It’s much more exciting than reading a novel. Poetry absorbs you, it take you under. It’s the only writing style that gives enough credit to the form of the words themselves, and we should appreciate poetry more. Turning the pages feels like an adventure.

I saved some cornbread for you in the skillet on the stove.

I saved some cornbread for you in the skillet on the stove.

I saved some cornbread for you in the skillet on the stove.

I saved some cornbread for you in the skillet on the stove.

There is not much else to say except I loved it (which I suppose is a weird thing to say about something that covers so many heavy topics, but it made me feel, and that matters with art). Electric Arches is a great book, and I finished it all in one sitting. Also the cover is especially cool.

Dystopia, Fantasy, Reviews, Young Adult

Number 41: Involves a Second Chance

KC

The Program

Suzanne Young

In this book’s defense, it was going to feel dated.

After all, The Program is a dystopian young adult novel set in Oregon with an exciting premise that, predictably, fails to deliver.

To start with the good, the writing is clear, several of the characters are engaging, and the author is particularly good at depicting action. The plot moves along quickly, and I could be curious to see where the series goes.

Okay good parts over, complaining parts ahead.

To begin, wow. Just, wow, were we ever pick-mes back then. This book is that mentality in 405 easy-to-read pages. It is peak Mary Sue, peak not-like-other-girls. It’s hard to be reminded of that cultural moment. And in book form, no less! I was certain one of my complaints was going to be this book’s abject failure to pass the Bechdel test, but the first page proved me wrong.

The air in the room tastes sterile. The lingering scent of bleach is mixing with the fresh white paint on the walls, and I wish my teacher would open the window to let in a breeze. But we’re on the third floor so the pane is sealed shut- just in case anyone gets the urge to jump.

I’m still staring at the paper on my desk when Kendra Phillips turns around in her seat, looking me over with her purple contacts. “You’re not done yet?”

Like most heroines of the era, Sloane is beloved by men, inexplicably liked by women (who are underdeveloped compared to the male characters), and totally incapable of relating to anyone who is not in love with her. It is possible this was relatable to teenagers in the Obama years, but teens today are more sophisticated than that.

Like many premises of the era, The Program is underdeveloped, and insensitive by today’s standards. To state the obvious: depression as a plot device is icky. Mental healthcare in America is a travesty. Conflating suicidal ideation, depression, and self-harm as being one and the same (which this book does frequently) is lazy writing. This may have been okay in 2012, but we can do better now.

Aside from being insensitive, it is underdeveloped. We don’t really understand why suicide has become contagious, why it is an epidemic, or why it seems localized to teenagers. Although this vagueness can work for stories that are more about the character’s journey than the setting itself, this book is very much about the Program as a character, and one girl’s journey not to be changed by it. In a very real sense, the Program functions as the villain, and it is a poorly understood one.

Which is all a bummer. I like dystopian novels. It’s a pity this one was not done well.

I glance past her to make sure Mrs. Portman is distracted at the front of the room, and then I smile. “It’s far too early in the morning to properly pyschoanalyze myself,” I whisper. “I’d almost rather learn about science.”

“Maybe a coffee spiked with QuikDeath would help you focus on the pain.”

Anthology, Financial, Nonfiction

Number 44: An Anthology

KC

Women Talk Money: Breaking the Taboo

Rebecca Walker

This is one of those books that you know from the beginning is going to get you. Anytime you have a group of diverse individuals sharing their honest feelings on one of society’s biggest taboos, at least one of them is going to hit a little too close to home and give you too many feelings. And that certainly happened with Women Talk Money. There were parts that were emotional, parts that were maddening, and a few sections that made me uncomfortably aware of aspects of my privilege I never even considered.

It was motivating, and reminded me that radical honesty about finances is necessary. The only way forward is to lift the veil of shame and secrecy until we understand how to do better.

I will definitely be looking into these writers in the future.

We tell ourselves so many stories about money; that it is the reward for our hard work, that is signals what is valuable, that it cannot buy things that will give our lives meaning, that we will never have equality until women assess their worth in the same ways men do. But none of these stories feel completely true to me.

P.S. I would be remiss not to mention that Rebecca Walker is the daughter of Alice Walker, whose essay is featured as the foreword of this book. While Alice Walker has done admirable work, her anti-Semitic views are, to say the least, problematic, and I cannot blame anyone for passing on anthology for that reason.

This world and these rooms might not have been designed for you, but you have to walk into the room and take the knowledge you need. Walk out with it. Don’t take anything else home.