Book Review – Absolute Pleasure

Absolute Pleasure: Queer Perspectives on Rocky Horror by Margot Atwell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The essays in this anthology have remarkably homogeneous origins: almost without exceptions, the authors grew up queer in the suburbs and first found validation and community in screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. But from their common starting points, they derive a multitude of interpretations and life lessons from this single source. I'm fascinated by the depth of kinship that gay, lesbian and trans people feel to a movie that doesn't have any gay, lesbian or trans characters, a testament to the powerful need for any kind of challenge to heteronormative social constructs. And while I was glad several writers expressed concerns about the scenes of nonconsensual sex, I was disappointed that Frank’s psychotic narcissism went largely unaddressed (or worse, openly admired). Though I didn’t see the movie the same way some of the contributors did, I valued the opportunity to experience new perspectives on a familiar subject. As a side note, I was also surprised at just how familiar the movie was, despite the decades that have passed since the last time I saw it. How familiar was it? So familiar that they wrote a book about it. No! Not the book!

View all my reviews

Book Review – Cabinet of Curiosities

Cabinet of Curiosities by Aaron Mahnke
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a lot like the author’s Lore series, only the stories aren’t quite as much fun. Some of the tales are entertaining and even informative. But most of them are familiar territory and/or depend far too heavily on the “gotcha” ending. Indeed, the latter is so prevalent that it gets annoying, a problem easily solved by skipping to the last line of the entry where the twist ending is revealed. In fairness, if I could have read this a story or two at a time rather than rushing to finish in time to return the book to the library, it might have been less tedious.

View all my reviews

Book Review – Creative Acrylics

Creative Acrylics: A Step-by-Step Beginner’s Guide to Creating with Paint & Mediums - Create Paintings Filled with Color, Texture, Unique Effects & More! (Volume 5) by Carla Co Chua
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a gentle, pleasant introduction to the art of painting with acrylics. The target audience appears to be makers and hobbyists, so the lessons go step by step and don’t involve anything too complicated. Instructions are clear, and the author does a good job of explaining concepts such as glazes and textures. If you’re brand new to painting in general or acrylics in particular, this is a good starting point.

View all my reviews

Book Review – The Matryoshka Memoirs

The Matryoshka Memoirs: A Story of Ukrainian Forced Labour, the Leica Camera Factory, and Nazi Resistance by Sasha Colby
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is three stories combined into a single narrative: the tale of the author’s grandmother’s experiences as a slave laborer in Nazi Germany, the tale of her employer Elsie Kuhn-Leitz’s run-in with the Gestapo, and the author’s own experiences with her grandma. The 21st century parts of the book serve mostly as counterpoint and would have been more welcome if they’d been less florid. But the accounts from the 1940s supply a pair of powerful perspectives on the horrors of their times.

View all my reviews

Book Review – Homefront Horrors

Homefront Horrors: Frights Away From the Front Lines, 1914-1918 by Jess Nevins
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This should have been an interesting organization scheme for an anthology: short horror stories written between 1914 and 1918 but not about World War One. Unfortunately that means that most of the entries are sorely afflicted by the enduring 19th century trends in Brit lit. Using the stiffest possible language, the majority of these tales take the most roundabout routes when advancing their plots. Everything seems to center around trivia. I found myself imagining a parody in which a parson accidentally paints the pulpit in the village church ecru when it was supposed to be eggshell. Occasionally patience is rewarded when the ecru paint opens a portal to hell. But more often than not the ecru paint itself is the only horror to be found. And while at the outset I was ready to applaud the editor for publishing lesser known stories by authors famous for writing something else, a lot of these have remained obscure for a reason. That’s a genuine shame, because all of these authors had talent, and all of these stories had potential. Also this really ought to have come with a sterner warning about racist content. While none of the slurs are out of keeping with the times and the social class of the authors, they’re still jarring by 21st century standards.

View all my reviews

Book Review – Mad Kings and Queens

Mad Kings & Queens by Alison Rattle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Though mildly diverting, this isn’t anyone’s idea of an in-depth study of the mental illnesses of European monarchs. The quality of thought and prose is on par with AI-generated text; I’m not saying this was written by a machine, but it reads like something that could have been (typos notwithstanding). And while the authors avoid outright slurs, the ableist language is disturbingly frequent. Overall a reader could learn more and have a more enjoyable experience by doing Wikipedia searches for the names in the table of contents.

View all my reviews

Book Review – Ring Shout

Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Someone needs to make a movie out of this. It’s a perfect combination of anti-white-supremacist themes and cinematic storytelling, and in the right hands it would be as much fun to watch as it was to read. It’s also a good combination of authentic Black cultural traditions and standard cosmic horror tropes. I understand why the author felt the need to draw distinctions between extra-dimensional monsters masquerading as Klansmen and just plain old Klansmen, though to my mind their evil is at best equivalent (and really the so-called humans are arguably much worse). The plot is solid, the protagonists are likable and believable, and the book length worked well (though honestly it could have included more detail for some elements without damaging the pace). I would definitely read the sequel hinted at in the epilogue.

View all my reviews

Book Review – The Book of Horror

The Book of Horror: The Anatomy of Fear in Film by Matt Glasby
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Though the introduction suggests that this is an attempt to draw universal conclusions about horror movies, the rest of the book reflects the author’s personal tastes more than the genre as a whole. It must have taken a lot of work to carefully map out scary moments on a minute-by-minute timeline for each entry, though I admire Matt Glasby’s passion more than his proofreading. Here and there his tastes intersect with mine; for the most part I enjoy a good Asian ghost story. But oh so many of the films on the list dwell exclusively or primarily on serial killers and other forms of crass, misogynist violence. Those entries consistently left me unpersuaded. The result is a catalog of the author’s loves, a reasonably accurate snapshot of the genre in the 2010s, and a showcase for some fun illustrations by Barney Bodoano.

View all my reviews

Book Review – Godzilla: The First 70 Years

Godzilla: The First 70 Years: The Official Illustrated History of the Japanese Productions by Steve Ryfle
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Before I started reading, I was worried this might prove to be an empty-headed coffee table book full of pictures and little else. So I was pleasantly surprised to find that it’s actually a reasonably well written history of Godzilla’s film career, at least in Japan. Going movie by movie, the text supplies fascinating behind-the-scenes details ranging from storytelling decisions down to minute details about production techniques. I particularly liked the longitudinal sidebars, such as the in-depth descriptions of how the Godzilla suits differed from movie to movie. Coverage is strongest for the millennium series, though the rest of the book is also thorough. I had a couple of issues with the e-book version on Hoopla, including formatting problems and occasional spots where captions and pictures didn't match. But overall this book is well worth the attention of anyone with an interest in the subject.

View all my reviews

Book Review – The World War I Reader

The World War I Reader by Michael S. Neiberg
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Overall this is a good set of primary and secondary accounts of the title subject. But be aware of the text’s limitations. As most perspectives are subjective and limited in scope, this isn’t the best choice for one’s first ever reading about the war. And several entries work better as artifacts than as education, particularly those where the writing is so terrible that it verges on unreadable. However, if you already have a firm grasp of the bigger picture, these snapshots from many particular angles prove fascinating more often than not.

View all my reviews

Book Review – Everything Is Tuberculosis

Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The author of The Fault in Our Stars turns a nonfiction spotlight on the triumphs and tragedies in the battle against tuberculosis. I admit that before I read this I probably would have guessed that malaria or cancer was the world’s single deadliest health problem, but that’s mostly because I live in a country where this curable illness is easily treated in most cases and deaths are exceptionally rare. After establishing the history and biology of the bacteria, John Green spends the rest of his book explaining the roadblocks (mostly economic) that prevent people in many places in the world from getting the assistance they need. He puts a human face on the problem by focusing on one young victim from Sierra Leone, a case study that shows the perils of poor quality treatment and the promise of improved systems. The book is short but makes its points effectively enough.

View all my reviews

Book Review – Jesusland

Jesusland: Stories from the Upside Down World of Christian Pop Culture by Joelle Kidd
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

From the outside looking in, mass media produced specifically for evangelical Christian consumers looks a lot like a slightly distorted mirror image of its mainstream counterparts: somewhat crappier production values, the total absence of profanity and nudity, the bizarre delusion that Kirk Cameron is talented and smart, and of course the omnipresent evangelical agenda. But as Joelle Kidd ably demonstrates, the view from inside looking out is much darker. Focusing on her church school childhood in the early 2000’s, she explains how music, movies and other media produced by Christian nationalists are designed to unite “true believers,” often at the expense of everyone else. Thinking back on my own often-awkward younger years, I can only imagine how much worse things would have been if, in addition to masking my thoughts and feelings from those around me to avoid bullying, I also had to hide myself from myself in order to avoid spending eternity in Hell. Tempting as it is to regard right wing media as dumb but essentially harmless, Jesusland serves as a well-written reminder of the dire consequences of regarding this stuff as acceptable.

View all my reviews

Book Review – Not Built in a Day

Not Built in a Day: How Slavery Made the Roman Empire by Emma Southon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This must have been an extremely difficult book to write. Emma Southon’s affection for ancient Rome is evident in all her books. But here she undertakes 350 pages of unflinching discussion of the essential underpinning of Roman society: an unspeakably brutal system of slavery. And I do mean “unspeakable.” Despite her tireless scholarship, extensive vocabulary and brilliant wit, the author frequently finds herself at a loss when trying to express her feelings about just how cruel the Romans were to enslaved people. Nonetheless, she does her job as a historian. The result is an excellent account of the various forms of slavery in the republican and imperial eras, described in detail with a constant care for viewing things from the perspective of the enslaved.

View all my reviews

Book Review – The Disappearing Spoon

The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements by Sam Kean
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Sam Kean does another good job of making a scientific discipline accessible, this time bringing wit and history to bear on the chemistry and physics of the periodic table. Despite his best efforts, some of the doings of subatomic particles remained elusive. But I was fascinated by the personalities and processes that organized the table and put the elements in their places.

View all my reviews

Book Review – The Plutonium Files

The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War by Eileen Welsome
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is an impressively thorough study of the US government’s experiments in which human subjects were dosed with radiation without their informed consent and often without regard for the danger to their health. Journalist Eileen Welsome follows multiple paths taken by the Manhattan Project, Department of Defense, Atomic Energy Commission and other agencies to figure out what happens when radioactive materials find their way into the human body. The author adds an important extra dimension to the study by including the personal backgrounds of many of the victims, transforming a disturbing history from statistics to tragedies. This is a must read for anyone interested in the functions of science in the absence of morality.

View all my reviews

Book Review – How Comics Are Made

How Comics Are Made: A Visual History from the Drawing Board to the Printed Page by Glenn Fleishman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Glenn Fleishman possesses an impressive amount of knowledge about the historical relationship between printing and cartoon creation, a subject I find fascinating. And yet I found myself disappointed by this book. It’s poorly written, with far too much time and space devoted to points that have already been made or points he hasn’t gotten to yet. But more surprisingly, the layout is also awful. The main flow of the text is chopped to bits by side bars, pull quotes that look like sidebars, illustrations that don’t appear on the same page with their descriptions, and interruptions that hit in the middle of paragraphs and sometimes go on for pages before the narrative resumes. The book is also plagued by technical glitches including shifting font sizes and words that run together. The author has plenty of interesting facts and important insights to share, so it’s a real shame that the bad design work gets so thoroughly in the way.

View all my reviews

Book Review – The Knights Templar

The Knights Templar: A History Strange and True by Dorsey Armstrong
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’m in an awkward spot with the media here. “Audible Audio” was the only format option for this title on Goodreads. However, I actually watched the Great Courses video series and read the companion book. Regardless of delivery method, Dorsey Armstrong’s excellent expertise and witty delivery are the main appeals. She runs the gamut on the Templars, from historical context to rise and fall to cultural impact (including some fun and some not-so-fun conspiracy theory stuff). If you’ve any interest in the subject, this series is worth your attention.

View all my reviews

Book Review – The Fiends in the Furrows

The Fiends in the Furrows: An Anthology of Folk Horror by David T. Neal
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Though I could’ve done worse for a quick summer read, overall this anthology wasn’t great. It got off to a good start with the first story or two, but then the problems set in. I abandoned two of the stories, one for excessive world building and the other for excessive (and frequently kinda random) adjectives. Animal abuse was also a frequent theme, which automatically isn’t a relaxing reading experience for me. One of the stories I liked had proofreading problems that made the flow choppy. And so on.

View all my reviews

Book Review – 101 UX Principles

101 UX Principles: A definitive design guide by Will Grant
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

At last someone wrote a book about UX principles that’s actually about UX principles. This is aimed at designers, coders and other folks working directly in the title realm, not at mid-level managers trying to wedge user experience into a project management scheme. All of Will Grant’s advice is excellent. Even the points I didn’t entirely agree with were well made and worth at least considering. And though my focus tends to be more on the graphic design part of the process (roughly 20% of the book), I nonetheless gave enthusiastic amens to the technical points I don’t work with directly. Grant’s principles tend to focus on how to improve user interfaces rather than how to create them, so this might not be the best starting point for absolute beginners. But anyone who has mastered the basics and wants to get better at what they do will find plenty of useful tips here.

View all my reviews

Book Review – White Coat, Black Hat

White Coat, Black Hat: Adventures on the Dark Side of Medicine by Carl Elliott
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I may be in a bad position to review this book. I picked it up as part of a research project on medical ethics that’s more focused on the Nazi krankenmord programs. And no matter how bad corporate dishonesty and greed get, they still don’t reach quite that far down. That said, Carl Elliott makes some excellent points about some of the pharmaceutical industry’s practices that definitely need to stop. However, he also points out some places where dancing with the big pharma devil has produced laudable results, such as cooperative efforts with AIDS activists back in the 1980s. Thus the narrative often washes the coat and hat in the same load of laundry, with a resulting tendency for things to come out looking grey.

View all my reviews