Hi friends,
It was a good month for reading. I finally got into some Jeff Abercrombie after hearing all about him on BookTube, learned about the development of COVID-19 vaccines and started the Jade City series, which I’ve also heard a lot about.
It was a good month for our family too, and we had some fun times with family on Valentine’s Day.
As always, let me know your thoughts on these books, and if you have recommendations for further reading.
Cheers,
Tonya
Rating: 4 of 5 stars
Recommendation: yes, but you have to read the original trilogy first
Review: This book finished up the last of my Old Kingdom reread that I started in January. This is a sequel to Abhorsen, which focused on Sam and Lirael. The stakes are not nearly as apocalyptic in this one, but I like these characters so much that I just enjoy spending time with them. Nix tries to develop the romance between Lirael and Nick, a secondary character from the original trilogy, but he’s just not very good at it… I mean, I like them together, but they just suddenly fall in love without much time spend developing their relationship. It seems a bit out of character for Lirael, in fact, but I ended up liking them together despite the rushed feeling. I wasn’t a huge fan of the new point-of-view character that we meet either. I can’t think of anything in particular wrong with her, but she just wasn’t my favorite. Still, it was nice to find out what happened after the somewhat abrupt ending of Abhorsen, and I really like the Old Kingdom world.
Rating: 5 of 5 stars
Recommendation: yes!
Review: This was a recommendation from my husband, and he usually picks really good books. This one was no exception. Rauch writes in defense of the liberal order. No, not the US political party, but the liberal political, economic, and scientific order that spread through the West over the past 300 years. He writes about how the liberal order is under attack by the rise of authoritarianism and emphasizes how many aspects of the liberal order, like defending unpopular opinions no matter the content or source and assuming fallibility, are counterintuitive and seem to go against humanity’s evolutionary programming. He says, “We are in for a fight against two insurgencies: the spread of viral disinformation and alternative realities, sometimes called troll culture, and the spread of enforced conformity and ideological blacklisting, sometimes called cancel culture.” He goes on to explain how both of these tactics -- one largely favored and associated with the far-right and the other with the far-left -- are extremely harmful to the liberal world order. He explains how research has shown that highly-educated people are less likely to consider viewpoints that contradict their own and more likely to reject evidence that contradicts strongly-held beliefs. He stresses that liberal orders embrace the concept of fallibility: that there is no one authoritative source of knowledge and anyone can be proven wrong, including oneself. He contrasts this with those politicians and media figures who insist that they are the only valid source of truth, and everyone else is peddling “fake news.” I particularly liked his comments about compromise. He notes, “In today’s polarized climate, people tend to think of compromise as, at best, a necessary evil: a baby-splitting process which bends principles and impedes progress, leaving everyone unhappy. That is unfortunate, because Madison’s view is much closer to the truth. Compromise is a positive good: a balance wheel which keeps the government moving forward instead of toppling, and a source of constant pressure for innovation and adaptation and inclusion.” As a long-time government employee, I couldn’t agree more. The fact is that anything that actually gets done and has a chance of getting implemented are those things that involved compromise. It really does produce better results, and I don’t think that’s true of just public policy. He focuses on how digital media is implicit in the breakdown of the liberal order. He says that digital media providers are finally realizing that they can’t be truth-neutral and points to new policies from tech giants Facebook and Twitter showing how they are finally accepting that they do have to moderate content on their platforms, offering a glimmer of hope for the future. Finally, he devotes the last part of the book to an interesting and compelling discussion of free speech and cancel culture, focusing particularly on the breakdown of free speech on college campuses. He observes that, “Physical safety is assuredly a civil right; but a right to feel safe from words or ideas is a right to criminalize giving offense. It creates a positive obligation to cleanse the world of emotional danger—and so of intellectual diversity.” He talks about his experience as a gay man in the fight to legalize gay marriage and how it’s vital to a successful liberal order to allow free speech, even when that speech can cause offense. I especially liked when he made this point, “The Constitution of Knowledge punishes the idea, not the person; cancel culture punishes the person, not the idea…. Every time I hear a minority-rights advocate say that she should not have to debate haters who question her very right to exist, I say: on the contrary, that is exactly who you need to debate. The hearts, minds, and votes we need to win are those of people who do not already agree with us—a point which might seem obvious but is surprisingly easy to overlook.” This book really opened my eyes to the swirl of maddening confusion that abounds in our media, education, and political cultures, but it also gave me hope that the liberal order can fight back against authoritarianism. OK, I’ll get off my soapbox now and just say that everyone should read it.
Rating: 4 of 5 stars
Recommendation: yes?
Review: I’d heard a lot about Abercrombie from BookTubers that I follow and his First Law trilogy was almost universally recommended. Still, I didn’t think I would really like his grimdark world, and to be honest, there were parts of it that I didn’t like, but I felt almost compelled to keep reading. Everyone talks about how Abercrombie’s character work is among the best, and I agree that it’s really good, but what kept me reading was the unpredictability of the world. While this isn’t really a plot driven book, because the characters aren’t your cookie-cutter fantasy hero tropes, I honestly didn’t know what was going to happen and found myself rooting against the main characters on several occasions. In fact, I didn’t really like any of the main point-of-view characters. I guess Logen Ninefingers was the most likeable, but he hasn’t completely abandoned his blood-soaked past, although he’s trying his best to run from it. Jezal was just THE WORST person to read his point-of-view. He was so annoying, and honestly never got less annoying. Glokta was obviously and intentionally disturbing but I found myself invested in his snarky inner thoughts and again trying to predict what he would do next. Grimdark is definitely a different fantasy reading experience, and I’ll have to wait to see how this series ends before I come to a verdict.
Rating: 4 of 5 stars
Recommendation: yes, if you liked the first
Review: This is the second installment in the First Law trilogy, and it picks up right where the first left off. The two books are more one continuous story. This installment seemed a bit more plot driven as we get to experience the war in the North, Bayaz and Co. journey to the edge of the world, and Glokta’s continuous political scheming. To be honest, I liked the Dogman’s point of view the best in this book. He’s kind of the only good guy in the story? I also really liked seeing West’s character development and totally didn’t see his big moment coming. I was confused and disappointed -- similar to how the characters felt -- with how the Bayaz journeying plotline ended, and although Jezal seems to finally have become more tolerable, we’ll have to see how long this transformation lasts once they get back to civilization. Ferro is the only female point-of-view character, but she’s extremely off-putting to the reader and all the characters around her. I just wanted to shake her and Logen when they were being so dumb! Just talk to each other! Anyway, I’ll definitely finish the series, and I feel like I can’t decide how I feel about this one until I know how it ends.
Rating: 4 of 5 stars
Recommendation: yes, if you want to learn more about the development of the COVID-19 vaccines
Review: This is a pretty fascinating review of the teams that developed the two mRNA, the Oxford Astrazeneca, and the Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccines. Most of the book acquaints us with the researchers who did the legwork over the past 20 years of basic R&D to make them possible, and the last bit talks about the race to get them tested, produced, and distributed after the pandemic was underway. My biggest takeaway from this book is that I don’t want to work in pharmaceutical R&D. Everyone in this book was described as a fanatical workaholic. I guess maybe that’s the kind of dedication needed to make big breakthroughs in a field, but I guess that I just lack that sort of ambition. In any case, I’m glad that people like this exist and for these vaccines that helped shorten and mitigate the pandemic. Now, I’m just praying that this thing is finally over, but I’m not making any bets.
Rating: 4 of 5 stars
Recommendation: yes, if you want an original epic fantasy story
Review: This series was another that was recommended widely on booktube. It’s a pretty cool concept: a mid-20th century setting in an alternate Japan where jade bestows extraordinary mental and physical gifts to those of the correct blood and training who can wield it. Oh yeah, there’s also a strong gang war plotline and plenty of action. To be honest, I wasn’t a huge fan of the main point of view characters at the beginning, but I found myself liking them more and more as the book went on. I was totally taken by surprise by the plot twist in the middle. I didn’t think that the author was going to take the story in that direction, but it definitely made the whole thing more interesting. Fonda gets to explore themes of family, loyalty, greed, drug addiction, and power all through the lens of the characters. I really liked how the characters developed over the course of the book and will definitely keep reading this trilogy. |
| Maya has an interesting taste in food sometimes. Here she's enjoying a peanut butter and banana -- my suggestion -- topped with some Pirate's Booty -- her idea. |
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| Maya's interning at Daddy's work and taking some video calls. |
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| We had a lot of snow in February, and Chloe had fun making a snowman with her friends on the playground. |
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