Jean-Paul’s rating: 2/5 stars

Never trust Amazon book reviews.  Or maybe online user reviews on any generic website.  I finished my previous book and needed something to read at short notice so I decided to take advantage of Amazon Prime’s Lending Library and the reviews for this book were pretty high with the caveat that it followed very closely to “Battlestar Galactica” the TV show.  I can deal with that.  Nope.  To say that “Constitution” follows “Battlestar Galactica” is like saying that “Romeo Must Die” follows “Romeo and Juliet”.  Sure, there are similarities to the story, but how the heck do you eff up the source material so bad?

The truth is that “Constitution” is just your standard pulp military sci-fi book and nothing more.  If it can be said that someone has plagiarized a genre, Nick Webb has done so with this book.  There is not a single original idea and every character and plot point is a cliche.  This doesn’t necessarily make for bad reading, but it definitely doesn’t make for good reading.  If you decide to read this book, “Constitution” will forever be in the “books you have read” category, but not much more.

As the story went on and I knew there wasn’t going to be much enjoyment to be had, I changed my reading style from “enjoyment” mode to “guess the author’s political bent” mode.  I came to the conclusion that Nick Webb is either a libertarian or decided to make his main character attractive to libertarian fanboys by having him casting dispersions against the incompetent government that happened to create the very ship he is in charge of and which will certainly save the human race but only if the captain can do what he wants when he wants with the tools that are given to him by that government.  Libertarianism in a nutshell.  I assume the former,though there is little Nick Webb information out there.  I still give some credence to the latter as being possible as military sci-fi seems to be inundated with libertarian readers and they would certainly explain all the good reviews given to this simplistic book.

The best things I can say about “Constitution” is it’s not bad and it’s a very quick read at 362 pages, half of which are taken up by chapter titles.  I kid you not.  There are 71 chapters in this book.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

“Seveneves” contains everything that is wonderful about Neal Stephenson and everything that is frustrating about Neal Stephenson.  It starts with a bang.  Or an explosion.  Or something.  Regardless of what it is, the moon is now broken up into many large chunks.  No one knows why it happened and what starts as a curious search for answers quickly becomes a desperate fight for survival as pieces of the moon continue to ping pong off of each other and some tear through the atmosphere to collide with the Earth.  Thus is the story of Part One of “Seveneves”.  Neal is on very solid Stephensonian territory here.  Good story.  Good characters.  Lots of dense science grounded mostly in reality.  It’s a very fun read but there’s all sorts of minutiae seeded throughout that, if you don’t make sure you understand and remember, will make latter parts of the book mostly incomprehensible.

And how does Stephenson make sure that he loses most of his audience in the latter parts of the book?  By creating a Part Two that is a novel unto itself and mostly puts on hold much of what were introduced to in Part One.  Still, it continues to be a great story.  A desperate fight for survival in the kludged together space station filled with daring rescue missions and plenty of political intrigue as the Earth below burns.  By the end of Part Two, we finally learn why the title of the book is “Seveneves”.  It would have probably been wise to end to story here.  Stephenson is still on terra firma even if the Earth in the novel is still a molten hellscape.  It would be a little open-ended of an ending, but plenty of ideas are planted in the reader’s mind to make you think about what kind of a future, if any, the human population might be in for.  But then Stephenson decided to add another novel telling us the kind of a future he perceived that human population will be in for.

Enter Part Three.  Five thousand years later.  Imagine you were thrown back into Earth history five hundred years and had to put into words for that population how things worked in the present day.  Now imagine that you had to do it for the chimpanzees of that time.  A fairly impossible task.  Stephenson tries.  Boy, does he try.  There is page after page after page after page of descriptives as seen from the point of view of a single brand new character.  Inflatable gliders and bot-guns and flynk chains and bola-like space elevators and a slew of new races and an incomprehensible habitat ring with a Cradle and an Eye and Boneyards and somehow divided up between a Red and Blue faction.  I really have no idea if I got any of that right.  The descriptions are dense and thrown at you at a speed impossible to digest.  Much of this could be forgiven if the story that goes along with the descriptions were captivating or if the descriptions had anything to do with the story, but it is not and they do not.  What’s even worse, the ending is so incredibly disappointing.  It just kind of…ends.  There’s no resolution.  There’s no attachment to characters.  I’ve not seen an ending to a book this bad since every Michael Crichton book ever.

This is the first Neal Stephenson novel that I can safely say you should probably pass on.  Or maybe just read the first two parts, because they are worth it.  There aren’t any of those “wow, that’s just brilliant” moments that made his “Cryptonomicon” one of my favorite books or that made his “Baroque Cycle” still worth reading despite its ponderously slow parts, but the first two parts still tell a compelling story.  Thus three stars.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

Mark Watney has been left behind on Mars.  Oops.  These things happen.  The only thing left to do is survive and try to come up with a plan to get off the planet.  This is all revealed on page one.  The rest of the book deals with Watney’s survival and NASA’s plans to get him back.

Man vs. Nature stories are nothing new, but we’re dealing with a whole new level of Nature here.  Mars.  This allows uber-nerd Weir to delve deep into his knowledge of all things Space to come up with a unique take on an old plot.  A majority of the story is told in the form of log entries by Mark Watney as he recounts his efforts to stay alive and not accidentally kill himself on the unforgiving planet.  The log entries are counterbalanced by a real-time third person narrative of the efforts of NASA and JPL to get their astronaut back home.  Weir gets the mix right.  The log entries can get a bit dry at times , but are packed full of science and humor which works really well.  There are also a few bird’s eye view of Mars chapters as Weir describes what’s going on with the planet.  They are necessary pieces that seem a bit out of place with the general narrative style, but Weir handles them as well as can be expected.  And really, Mars can be considered the antagonist so why not check up on what’s happening with it and its attempts to make Watney not alive.

It is not often that I can say the movie is better than the book, but that is true in the case of “The Martian”.  What is even more amazing is the book is pretty darn good.  The movie very deftly cuts much of the problem parts of the book out completely while still keeping the book’s smarts and humor.  I would have much preferred to see the book’s ending in the movie than the Hollywood ending they went with and I was very happy that the book didn’t have the movie’s ending as I worried about when I did the movie review.  You should both see the movie and read the book.  They are both worth your time and each has its unique charm.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 5/5 stars

You should read this book.  Yes you.  If you think #blacklivesmatter, it will settle in your psyche what it’s like to grow up Black in the United States.  If you think #alllivesmatter, it is required reading for you to understand how uniquely put upon Blacks in the U.S. have been, are, and will continue to be as long as you remain so short-sighted to their struggle.  If you don’t know what all the commotion is about or are of the opinion that Blacks just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, you owe it to yourself and our country to get educated on the subject and “Between the World and Me” is one of the best primers around.

I have now read “Between the World and Me” twice and it hits just as hard with the second reading as it did with the first.  Ta-Nehisi Coates is quickly becoming the voice of our generation.  He is the conscience of the U.S.; that nagging thought in the back of our minds that things aren’t right and need to be fixed; that thought that gets louder and louder until you can ignore it no longer.  No modern day writer can so effortlessly spring to life with the written word the state of race relations as he.

Coates’ story is told as a letter to his son.  It is an interesting vehicle.  Coates is speaking to you as though you are his son.  He is asking you to be a black teenager and to try to see the world that Coates sees through the lens of your experiences so far as his son.  As someone who has seen racism first hand and knows as least something of the Black Experience and is sympathetic to it, I found it very effective.  I am not sure that others who are outside the Experience will have the empathy to relate.  Books like this make me wish there were reality TV shows about book clubs where people of varying backgrounds get together to discuss the topics brought up in the book.  Man, this is total NPR bait.  Why has this not happened yet?  But I digress.

“Between the World and Me” is part biography, part history, part evolutionary, and all devastating.  Coates brings a clarity to race relations that most writers can’t manage. For example, the Dream.  The Dream is the ugly and all too real underbelly of the axiomatic American Dream.  Work hard, do right, be successful.  America, can do no wrong.  The flaw is in you if you don’t make it.  Ignore the past.  Put blinders on to the present.  The future is bright for everyone.

The most devastating of Coates’ stories is his retelling of the murder of Prince Jones, an acquaintance of Coates’ during his time at Howard University, at the hands of a police officer.  Prince’s family was THE success story.  His parents had “made it”.  They were able to provide safety and comfort.  But the success story of Black America can still be snatched away by the Dream.  Prince’s success story ended at the hands of a Prince George County police officer who followed a black man (that didn’t nearly match the description of the person he was looking for) through three states and gunned Prince Jones down steps away from the house of his fiancee.  The shooting was ruled justified.  Everyone quickly forgot.  It is as familiar a story as it is heartbreaking.

I am as pessimistic as Coates that things will get better.  That we, as a country, will someday remove our blinders.  That we, as a country, will someday see the ugliness of our past and learn from it.  But I have to say, despite the pessimism, despite the sadness, despite the rote stories of blacks being gunned down, “Between the World and Me” still brings me hope.  The stories are getting out there and seeping into our subconscious.  Coates has a vision and a new mandate in the form of a MacArthur Genius Grant to continue fueling the struggle with his gift of words.  I look forward with relish to his works yet to come.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

There is a lot of controversy over the seeming disparate views of Atticus Finch in Harper Lee’s two books.  I say that anybody who believes that the character of Atticus Finch in “To Kill a Mockingbird” and the character of Atticus Finch in “Go Set a Watchman” must be two distinct individuals knows nothing about what it means to be a racist.  Not believing in the whole Atticus Finch is much the reason why racism can still be so prevalent today and yet so hidden from most people’s existence.  Humanity is more Atticus Finch than we would like to believe.  Humanity is also more Jean Louise Finch than we should be comfortable with.  We have all the racism of Atticus while at the same time we have all the naivety and blindness of Jean Louise when it comes to that racism.

“Go Set a Watchman” is an important book more for the subjects it brings up than for the content it contains.  It is basically a loss of innocence story.  Content-wise it is quite uneven.  The first half of the book contains much of the magic that made “To Kill a Mockingbird” one of America’s most beloved books.  An adult Jean Louise Finch comes back to Macomb County from New York after being away for an unspecified amount of time and spends much of the first half of the book reacquainting herself with family and friends and reminiscing about her youth.  This is all a setup for the second half where realities are revealed that makes Jean Louise question everything she holds sacred as her hero father is revealed to be all too human.  Jean Louise’s attempts to reconcile all of this new knowledge is much weaker.  Racism and the way it presents itself is a very difficult task to tackle and Harper Lee, in some ways, gets the nuance of the argument right.  In other ways, it seems a bit forced and lacking in depth.

Much of the problem, I think, is that Harper Lee might have had a very specific portion of the population in mind when she wrote the book.  That is, those people who believe that States’ Rights are being overrun by the U.S. government.  I say this because the whole argument starts with the premise that the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a horrible decision because it infringed on States’ Rights.  Both Jean Louise and Atticus agree on this point.  This is an argument that could only ring true for those individuals who still think the Civil War was about States’ Rights and not slavery.  This is such a blatantly false premise on which to start an argument that much of what follows can be toppled by the slighted poke against the Jenga tower of rationalization that Lee builds.  And yet, Lee is presenting the argument that is the foundation of a good portion of the population’s belief system.  So maybe Lee is talking to everybody.  She gets across the rationale of the South (for lack of a better word) to those who might not have been exposed to such thought; and she takes digs at racism in small ways that might be enough to shake the fragile foundations on which racism stands.  Yeah, I’m probably reading way too much into this now.

The book ends more on an inspiring tone than a hopeful one.  Yes, Jean Louise and Atticus make up and Atticus is proud of Jean Louise for taking her stand, but there is still this new gulf between them that is only bridged by Uncle Jack’s wise words: “The time your friends need you is when they’re wrong, Jean Louise.  They don’t need you when they’re right.”  Words to live by as we confront those who believe in a “real America”.

And I will end with another quote from the book that rings quite true to me, again spoken by Uncle Jack: “Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.”  May reason never end.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

Fully titled “Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances”, this book contains a series of short stories written by Gaiman throughout the years with the a bit too common theme of stories that might trigger some latent emotion in either the characters or the readers.  Gaiman can be forgiven for this easy bait of a title because he starts the book off with a foreword about trigger warnings that is both educational and elucidating and shows the mounds of respect for people with different experiences that Gaiman has always shown.  For those of you who don’t know or never heard, Gaiman recently made popular the replacing of the phrase “political correctness” with the phrase “treating people with respect”.  Which is about as spot on a response to people who complain about political correctness as I can think of.

Before Gaiman gets to the stories, he provides a section where he describes various details about each story, whether it was how the story came to be or who inspired him or where he was during the writing.  I am a sucker for stuff like this even though it neither adds nor subtracts to the stories themselves.  It gives a writer’s insight into the murky process of story creation.  My one complaint is Kindle.  Or, more likely, whoever put the Kindle version together.  Gaiman put these insightful tidbits all in one place with a command to the reader do with it as they will.  Read them now.  Read them as you read the stories.  Read them all afterwards.  Ignore them completely. I wanted to read them as I read the stories and each story title was actually a hyperlink and I was so excited that someone had actually thought of linking back to the tidbits.  Well, they didn’t.  They linked back to the table of contents. Ugh.  So I just ended up reading all the tidbits at the end of the book.

On to the stories.  It is very difficult to rate the true worth of an anthology of short stories.  Do you give heavier weight to the Doctor Who story that made you want to give the Doctor Who TV show one last try no matter how many times you’ve been disappointed because if they were written like Gaiman can write it, the show’s got to be good? Or the Sherlock Holmes retirement story that rekindled your love for Arthur Conan Doyle’s prose? Or being able to reacquaint yourself with Shadow from “American Gods” and falling back in like he was a fast friend from youth?  Then there are the stories whose existence seems to stem from the command that a writer must write; always.  Should their presence detract from the magic within the pages?  But there are also the stories that kindle your fears; that winding path to emptiness inside your own head that you both know and forget that you are on over and over again.  That isn’t easy to capture. I lean towards the magic.  And there is much magic to be had with “Trigger Warning”.

If you enjoy short stories as much as I do, you will get a lot of pleasure from reading “Trigger Warning”.  If you fall more on the meh side of short stories, there’s a bit of chaff to get through to get to the wheat, but it’s still worth it.  If you don’t like short stories at all, you should burn in the sixth circle of hell which is eternal death by paper cut because you obviously have no soul. #kiddingnotkidding

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 1/5 stars

“Mockingjay” is book three of the grossly overhyped “Hunger Games” trilogy.  One last time, we join Katniss Everdeen and her thoughts as they both wander mostly aimlessly through the world of Panem as a revolution is fought around them.

“Mockingjay” is a testament to the severe limitations of a first-person present tense narrative.  You are stuck in the head of one person who, for much of the book, just has things happen to her and around her instead of her actions leading the narrative.  Throughout the book, Katniss devolves into something almost less than human as she deals with the PTSD from the Games and heaps blame on herself for the deaths of the thousands who are losing their lives in the revolution against the Capitol.  The book is, just like Katniss Everdeen’s sanity, purely superficial.  It is not exciting.  It is not insightful.  It does not delve deep into any of hundreds of interesting topics or moral questions brought up in its pages.

Looking back, I recognize that even the first book had these limitations.  Why the much better review for that one than the next two?  Simply because there was a world building aspect to it that the second book almost stopped doing and the third book completely stopped doing.  Without the thoughts and ideas of a brand new world, there’s not much there.

What’s most galling about the third book and what earns it the one star in my estimation is the absolutely ludicrous series of decisions that are made by people who should know basic rules of combat and the downright silly series of traps that make up the defenses of the Capitol.  The latter is by far the worst offender.  If you had your choice between a series of certainly deadly but much less deadly than the deadliest trap or the deadliest trap which can really only be avoided by pure luck, which would you spread around the city for your defenses?  If you didn’t choose the latter, you are either a moron or developing a video game.

Even the big twist surprise at the end of the book is a snore.  Without spoiling anything, Katniss does something pretty stupid and shocking.  She then sits in a room alone for months.  Exciting.  Although, you really shouldn’t be surprised at the letdown by that point.  Variations on that theme happen a few times to Katniss.

Quite disappointing to say the least.  My suggestion is to pretend that Katniss and Peeta eat the berries at the end of the first book.  That way you can skip the next two books.  Dammit, I’m still going to see the final “Mockingjay Part 2” movie.

Oh, and a special message to Katniss Everdeen and fans of Cinna everywhere.  You do realize that he was as much of an evil person as everyone else who Katniss is pissed at for manipulating her.  In fact, Cinna is the worst of the bunch.  He was obviously in on the plot to make Katniss a rallying point.  He is solely responsible for sculpting Katniss’ image into the girl the world wanted instead of the girl she actually was.  He also designed her battle armor.  But Cinna’s the one looking out for Katniss while Haymitch, Plutarch, and Coin deserve nothing but scorn?  Please.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 2/5 stars

“Catching Fire” contains absolutely zero character development and produces very little in the way of furthering any meaningful plot.  This was surprising to me as I really enjoyed its movie equivalent.  I can report that all the stuff that I thought would be explained better in the book than in the movie was not.

The plot for “Catching Fire” can best be described so: The Capitol is watching you, Katniss, you made us look silly.  I’ll be good.  Oh, look, rebellion!  Oh, look, another Hunger Games and the twist is Katniss and Peeta are back in it!  I will save you!  No, I will save you!  No, I will save you!  No, I will save you!  No, we all will save you!  Game over!  There’s a rebellion?  The end.

The…whatever it is between Peeta and Katniss…is especially vomit inducing.  It’s like a romance between two kindergarteners.  Peeta has always loved Katniss even though you could count on one hand the number of words the two had exchanged before the first Hunger Games.  Katniss at least has conflicted feelings for how/why/if she loves Peeta, but she keeps up the whole “does he love me or is he playing a game” thing no matter how many times he chastely sleeps beside her.  Why in the world would she want to risk all to save him?  Because he’s a good person.  Ignore all the doubts Katniss expresses throughout, there’s a book to write.

The Quarter Quell, what each 25th year of the Hunger Games is called, is a complete waste of time.  It’s used solely as a mechanism for producing intrigue when any thinking person would have made damn sure there is no intrigue to be had this late in the game.  The design of the Arena is pretty cool at least with its hourly horror shows.  Even that is spoiled, though, by the absolutely preposterous plan thought up by a supposed genius to kill the final two remaining Career Tributes.

The book ends with one of those “oh, so that was the plan all along” moments followed quickly by “boy, was that stupid”.  And with that it reminds me why it’s classified as young adult fiction.  But this is young adult fiction that thinks young adults are shallow.  If I weren’t a completist, I’d probably skip reading the third book, but alas, I will power through the third.  There is a war coming after all.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

Yes, I’m reading the “Hunger Games” trilogy.  No, so far I don’t regret it.  I actually found the first book quite enjoyable.  It has a very good pace and is quite exciting.  It is also a very easy read and the 400 or so pages just fly by.  I’m not sure if Collins wrote the book with a movie in mind or if my judgement is clouded by actually seeing the movie, but the book reads like it was made to be a movie.

There are basically three acts to the book.  You have the build up to the Hunger Games, the Hunger Games themselves, and the aftermath of the Hunger Games.  The build up establishes the world of Panem and especially the coal mining District 12.  It establishes the major characters and their relationships.  It’s a pretty solid introduction.  Act 2 introduces a bunch of secondary characters who are really superfluous except for Haymitch who is the only one that it actually feels like there is a human connection to the main characters.  More on that later.  The post-Hunger Games stuff is kind of meh.  There are lots of “oh, you’re in even more danger than you were when you were fighting for your live” and little in actual explanation.  It was a poor way to end a book, but i assume this will be rectified in the next book because I have seen the movies.

Collins’ main flaw is in character interaction.  Katniss and Peeta…ugh.  Peeta’s motivations and actions make some sense, but Collins writes Katniss as completely out of character deliberately dense towards Peeta just to make the story more “interesting”.  And I still don’t get how Peeta’s alliances in the Games makes sense.  Then there’s Katniss’ relationship with Cinna.  Katniss and Cinna become fast friends because, well, it can probably just be boiled down to “he dresses me pretty”.  It is not unbelievable that Katniss would strike up a friendship with Cinna, but that possibility is not at all conveyed by the written word.  And here’s where I get in trouble.  Even Rue…  Poor little Rue who reminds Katniss so much of her sister Prim.  At least that establishes some sort of emotional tie with Rue, but it’s really with Prim.  The entire time spent with Rue is probably two days max.  But you, the reader, do get to know Rue in that time so the bait is set and the hook is drawn and Rue becomes a favorite character for all of eternity.  For me, the best thing about the Rue story (and the whole book) was when the people of District 11(?) sent the gift of bread to Katniss.  Now THAT was sad and touching.  It’s not all bad, though.  District 12 is alive with interesting characters that Katniss interacts with on a daily basis.  Collins is very comfortable writing about that.

The world of Panem is pretty interesting, if a little vague. You can actually imagine a country being built around Panem’s ideals.  Keep the plebeians segregated and poor but producing while the oligarchs live it up in outrageous luxury in the Capitol.  It’s easy to imagine because those countries exist already to varying lesser degrees.  And while there are no Hunger Games, there is certainly privileged disdain for the poor and downtrodden to the point of not really caring if they live or die.  I look forward to the fleshing out of the world of Panem in the future novels.

“The Hunger Games” is a solid young adult book.  Sure, it has its glaring flaws, but they are easily overlooked by just how readable the book is.  The plot is good, if a bit derivative, and just vague enough where you get to throw your own ideals into the holes to make the book about whatever you want it to be about.  This is a great beach reading book.