keegan_leech's reviews
51 reviews

I think there are pacing and plotting issues which make this a less engrossing book than The Fellowship of the Ring. It's still a great book, and a must-read if you enjoyed the first in the series. The weaknesses are minor, but they made this a slower read for me.

In a word, Black Box is harrowing.

Ito is clearly an excellent journalist. Black Box is extremely specific in its scope and aims, and the book weaves its personal elements very effectively into more general facts about rape and sexual assault in Japan. The result is a book that's informative and direct yet simultaneously personal and deeply empathetic. It's this brilliance which makes for difficult reading.

Although it's barely longer than 200 pages, Black Box felt like it took me a very long time to read. This is entirely appropriate given that the book deals with the trauma of not just rape and assault, but the seemingly impassable barriers to legal retribution. It is impossible not to feel something of Ito's own fatigue and frustration in the writing.

I wouldn't recommend the book if you aren't prepared for an emotionally exhausting experience, but if you are in the right mindset for it, it's a powerful and immensely valuable read.

I would highly recommend this book, but not to everyone. I think there's very much an ideal reader in mind, one perfectly summed up in Remi Kanazi's afterword:

If that does sound like you, then this is a great read. Pick up the book now, and you'll probably get a lot out of it. The essays in the book are thorough and interesting. They discuss in detail not just the history of Palestine, but of the left wing in the struggle for Palestine and how this has shaped modern the political landscape. The essays are worthwhile, and while each one tackles its particular topics in depth, they flow together well and cover a great deal in their aggregate.

On the other hand, I kept thinking that there were many people who I wouldn't recommend the book to. The promise in the title is met, but with a laser focus that is perhaps quite limiting. It isn't an introduction to socialism for those already firmly in touch with the struggle for Palestine, nor an introduction to Palestine for socialists, and it's certainly not something I'd recommend to someone with little knowledge of either topic. I felt that to get the most out of the book would be to have at least some familiarity with both.

I may be wrong. It may be a fantastic introduction for someone who doesn't look anything like Remi Kanazi's imagined reader. But I don't think I could say that with any confidence.

Getting it out of the way, the big thing that might put you off Lord of the Rings is that it's slow reading. It's long, and filled with references to names and histories which don't directly affect the main plot. But even if that doesn't sound like your thing, I'd still recommend giving the book a try, because what's important isn't the names or the histories, or the detailed world building, or the other aspects that have been copied ad nauseam by fantasy writers for the last 60-something years. What matters is the ~vibes~.

The books feel so slow because Tolkien really gives the story time to play out. He includes whole songs in the text, he spends ages describing the landscape and the weather, and characters speak for paragraphs. In contrast, the characters, whether they appear in one scene or are a major focus of the book, get about two sentences of introduction and almost no description of their appearance. Almost everything else is told through their actions and interactions with other characters.

For me, this deliberate slowness and the focus on environment and tone creates an exceptionally memorable vibe. It's pastoral at times, and it can be an escape into another world in a way that only the best books are. I don't have a very good memory for all the details in the books—the names, the histories, and the songs—I don't think Tolkien expect readers to memorise that sort of thing (after all, one of the songs in the book is written in an invented language). What I do remember is the moments and the moods. I remember what the weather was like in a particular forest in autumn, or the feeling of darkness in the mines below a mountain, or the atmosphere of celebration at a hobbit's birthday party.

There are still all the epic fantasy tropes which have been endlessly copied by others (and which Tolkien himself copied from the sagas he was imitating), but I think the softness and slowness of these books are often forgotten, or remembered only as a negative. Anyway, if you aren't sure whether you'd enjoy Lord of the Rings, but this sounds like something you could read, pick up The Fellowship of the Ring and give it a go.
:-)

A very good book, and a surprising one too. I'd expected that Rovelli would write well about physics, but these essays reveal an uncommon depth and breadth of knowledge. Topics include religion, atheism, complexity, statistics, psychedelics, ideology, and philosophy.

It doesn't feel like Rovelli arrogantly assumed that as an expert in one topic, he was qualified to write about all the others he touches on in the book (as books like this sometimes feel). As an aside, if you enjoy writers that get billed as "big thinkers" like Steven Pinker and Malcolm Gladwell, then I think you'll like Rovelli, but I'd especially recommend him to people who don't like those writers for being overly pretentious or conservative. Rovelli does it better. It may be, more than his own insights, Rovelli's ability to clearly explain a concept or flesh out what's important about a topic that makes this book so worth reading.

The essays are all very short (and generally make for quick reading), but there's an incredible amount of nuance packed into them for that brevity. The one area where this seemed to handicap the material was in its tone. As much as many of the essays hit just the right mark, there are some that feel less precise. For example, there is an exoticism in two later essays about Africa which isn't well addressed by Rovelli simply pointing out that he may be indulging "a kind of naïve romanticism". Maybe if he had the liberty of a few more pages he would've been a little more deliberate (Rovelli seems aware, after all, of the biases of his European perspective) and maybe the awkward tone was introduced in the translation of his original essays, but it still leaves something wanting.

The book won't be to everyone's taste, but it is a (mostly) unpretentious and deeply compelling collection of ideas and concepts that would encourage anyone to examine their own preconceptions about how the universe and human society function.

A fast-paced and brilliant time travel mystery. The plot is at times contemplative and thought-provoking, at others a tense thriller. It's certainly darker than I had expected. The conceit of the novel and first few chapters didn't prepare me for the sometimes extremely heavy subject matter. This does balance out a plot that might otherwise seem campy and melodramatic, but if one of those elements would put you off then this may not be the book for you. However, if you like the sound of the book, you'll almost certainly enjoy it.

The conceit of the novel (a story told by a man reliving his life over and over again) was, in my experience, a wonderful bait and switch. The strange metaphysical questions drew me in so quickly and so easily that when the plot began to really take off I hadn't realised just how deeply invested I was. And by the end, the things that had drawn me in seemed absolutely unimportant in comparison to reaching the brilliant final moments. It's a very well-constructed story from start to finish. (As an aside, very few or perhaps none of the books I've read have created so much anticipation with the title alone).

If you liked Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, or The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow, then you'll certainly love The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August. If for some reason those just didn't land with you, then this might be worth a try, but they have a very similar style and appeal.

A really lovely, very personal story about mistakes, life, and not taking the best parts of your life for granted.
The art and layout are gorgeous, and serve the story stunningly well, and the humour adds a levity which offsets the heavier moments. The story itself is compelling enough, but it's the characters and the storytelling which make it shine.

To use a food metaphor, Seconds is like a very good sandwich. It may be a simple recipe, but it's so well-made and with such flavourful ingredients, that it's impossible not to enjoy.

It's not perfect. I imagine some people might find that the writing doesn't strike quite the right balance or the straightforwardness of the story leaves them wanting more. But if you're in the mood for great characters, beautiful storytelling, and a little bit of the mysterious then Seconds is perfect for you.

Well-written, with an interesting story and characters that feel like they have a real depth. The book tackles a lot of lofty-sounding themes, from family to religion. But it never goes for simple or trite answers, and lets the characters play out their stories. They're really strong stories too. The character arcs felt solid, and well-motivated. Even the worst person in the novel isn't treated as an evil cartoon villain, and none of the characters are paragons of virtue either. They all just feel like people.
The novel also plays to its setting really well. Instead of turning characters into commentaries on Johannesburg, they felt grounded in the city.

If you like slightly supernatural mysteries and flawed but sympathetic characters, I'd highly recommend Invisible Strings. Although I can't think of anyone I wouldn't recommend it to. I think anyone would enjoy it.

I couldn't put it down, perhaps because it feels as if reading just a part of it somehow tarnishes the experience. Each moment of despair only heightens the moments of hope and joy, each moment of joy is incomplete without acknowledging the ennui that comes before it. And to think such powerful emotional moments can come from a book about post!

I'd recommend it to everyone, particularly if you like the style of authors like Han Kang—simultaneously melancholy and hopeful. If nothing else, it's hard to describe the feeling it left me with without just reciting the whole book. So I hope you go discover it for yourself.

I found it slow to get into, but absolutely raced through the last section of the book. It's very good, but I don't imagine that it would appeal to everyone. Between a couple of quite graphic moments, and a lot of jargon, the book could be off-putting

I'd recommend it if you like creative, idea-driven sci-fi; or if you just want to read something that's dated, but rightfully defined genres for decades to come. However, the story itself doesn't quite do justice to the ideas and the tone that defines the book.

If you liked Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson, then you'll probably like Neuromancer for similar reasons, but the two books also have similar issues.