I don’t have much to say about April, except that the biggest flop was Death’s End (the final book in the trilogy starting with The Three-Body Problem), and the biggest banger was, completely unexpectedly, the essay collection on the border between music writing and reflections on life, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us. Which is one of those sentences you won’t read anywhere else but here – greetings to both of my fans.
Book of the month: They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us;
Flop of the month: Death’s End.
Remembrance of Earth’s Past #3
Some explorations of the moral topics are quite interesting, but it is both super, super long, weirdly chauvinistic (the civilization literally falls because of femininity), and everything after the plot twist in the first third felt very forced and contrived, and based on super weird „gotchas“ of super space physics. This was a linear description of civilization fighting for survival – but civilization completely devoid of any characters, civilization without people.
Can’t recommend; a shameful end to a great series.
The whole meta-meta plot is a bit too much, but the rest of it is so great and, most importantly, masterfully written that it’s hard to complain. Very pleasant experience, even as a re-read after many years. Different shades of madness are used as a prism to break down American culture into different elements, highlighting the conflicts of free will and determinism of social/market forces against basic values like “we are killing the planet.”
They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us
A book of essays connecting music to real world issues, feelings, connections and movements. Very personal and universal at the same time, and a book I extremely enjoyed as a trip outside of my usual area of reading.
And I realised not only many cultural connections and details of which I was quite oblivious (especially regarding US race politics), but also learned quite a lot about music, from My Chemical Romance (that was a concept album??) to Macklemore. Might not suit everyone, but I really, really enjoyed it.
Gritty noir which is not afraid to kill off nearly everybody and still follows the basic rules of the genre. Schematic and predictable, but an enjoyable read nevertheless.
I thought I was a bit over the whole „unreliable narrator does true crime“ thing after reading too much of Tremblay, but this deep dive into the craziness of the lives of high school girls was simply a great read. Including commentary on social class, political divides, podcasts, true crime, crumbling infrastructure, social media storms and growing up in a world that is a bit crazier than the one 20 years ago.
It won’t change you, but it raises up a few questions and, most importantly, is just entertaining and disturbing in reasonable measures.
There’s Nothing Like This: The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift
Career of Taylor Swift gets compared with some basic marketing / economic strategies (like „people do not like if your image is too far from reality“), with the result saying that yep, she is successful and has made quite a few right choices. That’s the book about.
But is there any system, any consistent strategy, that could be considered unique behind this? Not really. She is super hard-working, obviously talented in many ways and able to reach broad audiences. In crisis, she is able to decide her next moves and choose a new way that is more consistent with her base. And expand that base step by step.
People will be running around in circles saying „I learned so much from it“. But honestly, if you did not know that hard work is good, that it makes sense to have some sort of plan and follow it (with the exception of the phases when you need to be flexible and change it), there are probably other books you could benefit from much more.
What is nearly missing is a wider look at the environment in which TS moves. The change to streaming is described in a few words, some trials and errors in trying to milk the system are present, but it’s really hard to find an actual learning experience in it. And what in the end kills the book is the simple, basic assumption: Taylor is a genius (she certainly is), everything she does works or is used as a stepping stone to success (well), and there are certainly no problematic parts of her work. It even seems a bit weird to point out how she gets criticised for being childless (which is crazy, of course), but the bit more relevant criticisms of „let’s talk about her carbon footprint“ are not even mentioned.
PS: I am not a Swift fan – not as in „I do not like her,“ more like in „never got into listening to her music“. I very much see and respect her as a cultural phenomenon though.
Thug Kitchen: Eat Like You Give a F*ck
(re-read)
The thug stylisation is still SUPER icky and awkward. Literally 1/5 for that.
At the same time, as a vegan cookbook, it works and has managed to teach me quite a few things, and even revisiting it after years sparked some new inspiration. If you are able to disregard the simply horrible language and style, it does serve some purpose. But there are simply too many options around.
The setting was interesting enough, the basic hook even fascinating at the start. Then, the story got going – and not only got super derivative, repeating itself all over and over and over again, but also getting immensely random and worst of all: horny in a boring way.
The whole „heroine falls down a hole“ (figuratively OR literally) gets old quickly and the character development is just…too shallow. But the worst offenses were the horrible, even parodical instances of the heroine fawning over her love interests.
All in all, can’t recommend even as a very low key before the sleep couple book.