The month has been unpleasantly eventful, but I still managed to get the main Brightdreamer Books site updated.
Enjoy!
Saturday, September 30, 2023
Wednesday, September 20, 2023
Holmes on the Range (Steve Hockensmith)
Holmes on the Range
The Holmes on the Range series, Book 1
Steve Hockensmith
Minotaur Books
Fiction, Humor/Mystery/Western
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: It's 1893, and the Amlingmeyer brothers - Otto and Gustav, better known as "Big Red" and "Old Red" for their fiery hair - are looking for off-season work in Montana cattle country. As cowpokes, they've been up and down the prairies plying their trade, but Old Red harbors secret aspirations. Ever since he heard the stories of the English detective Sherlock Holmes, he's got it into his head that he, too, could be a great detective, even if he never went to school or learned to read. Big Red, of course, has some doubts. Even if his big brother has the mind for deduction, where in the middle of nowhere is he going to prove it?
While washing the trail dust from their mouths at the Hornet's Nest saloon in Mile City, the Amlingmeyer brothers stumble into a job with a local ranch... one with a decidedly unfriendly foreman and some odd expectations. Instead of roping steers and riding the range, the handful of new hires are set to work cleaning up the dilapidated grounds, warned never to wander out of sight or mix with the other hired hands. Indeed, the crew are watched all day by decidedly unfriendly eyes. Big Red has distinct misgivings about the position, for all that beggars can't be choosers, but Old Red is positively ecstatic: he just knows there's something foul going on at the Cantlemere Ranch, and this is the closest to an actual case he's come across. When the dapper general manager, Perkins, is found trampled to death after a storm, everyone's willing to write it off as bad luck - except Old Red. With his large little brother in tow, he sets out to crack the case... not realizing just how much trouble he's about to ride into.
REVIEW: Sherlock pastiches can be tiresome and overplayed, particularly when it feels like the author just cut-and-pasted a caricature of the great detective and his dogged companion into another setting. Holmes on the Range, on the other hand, is more homage than pastiche. Gustav "Old Red" Amlingmeyer may have devoted himself to studying Sherlock Holmes's methods via Doctor Watson's written accounts in Harper's Weekly magazines (in this iteration, Holmes and Watson are real people, not fictional creations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), but he's very much his own personality, firmly rooted in his own history. Despite having no formal schooling, he's determined to prove that he's more than just a lowly brute laborer, and indeed shows himself to have a brilliant mind, if one that works in its own ways. Likewise, Otto "Big Red" Amlingmeyer is no Watson. Though devoted to his last surviving family member, who taught him everything he knows about cowpunching, he's not beyond clapping back at his brother, and isn't set up to be the bumbling fool that Watson was sometimes reduced to in Holmes's adventures. The setting isn't a sanitized Old West, the kind seen in paintings or old TV shows, but one full of unruly cattle and unruly cowboys, stinking outhouses and stinking bodies pounded to mush in the Montana mud, classism and racism and other ways humans find to treat other humans worse than the pigs they slaughter for sausages. By aiming to capture the spirit of Doyle's iconic characters rather than the strict letter, Hockensmith succeeds where many others fail.
From the start, Old Red has suspicions about the ranch and its crew, but it's not until Perkins's body turns up that his detective skills kick into high gear. Though he keeps some things to himself, he lets his brother in on a fair bit of his reasoning, making Big Red more of a partner and less of a struggling tagalong. With logic, observation, and the instincts born of a hard life on the frontier, not to mention prodigal tracking skills, the would-be detective starts piecing together a picture that involves fishy hired hands, a suspiciously-timed visit by the English stakeholders, scandals stretching from America to the old country, and even a subplot involving an escaped madman known as "Hungry Bob", a notorious convicted cannibal who may or may not be implicated in crimes around the property. Big Red's narration has a humorous streak, but also serious weight, bringing the distinctive characters to life. Along the way, the Amlingmeyers learn the hard way that detective work isn't at all what they imagined it would be like from those Harper's Weekly stories, much more complicated and much more dangerous. The action and intrigue ratchet up nicely through the tale, with hardly any lulls along the way to a breakneck climax that sees many truths revealed, though at a cost neither brother could've anticipated. This is a series I wouldn't mind following for at least another book, with a nice balance of humor and mystery in a gritty Western setting.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) - My Review
Unwanted: Dead or Alive (Gene Shelton) - My Review
Girl Waits With Gun (Amy Stewart) - My Review
The Holmes on the Range series, Book 1
Steve Hockensmith
Minotaur Books
Fiction, Humor/Mystery/Western
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: It's 1893, and the Amlingmeyer brothers - Otto and Gustav, better known as "Big Red" and "Old Red" for their fiery hair - are looking for off-season work in Montana cattle country. As cowpokes, they've been up and down the prairies plying their trade, but Old Red harbors secret aspirations. Ever since he heard the stories of the English detective Sherlock Holmes, he's got it into his head that he, too, could be a great detective, even if he never went to school or learned to read. Big Red, of course, has some doubts. Even if his big brother has the mind for deduction, where in the middle of nowhere is he going to prove it?
While washing the trail dust from their mouths at the Hornet's Nest saloon in Mile City, the Amlingmeyer brothers stumble into a job with a local ranch... one with a decidedly unfriendly foreman and some odd expectations. Instead of roping steers and riding the range, the handful of new hires are set to work cleaning up the dilapidated grounds, warned never to wander out of sight or mix with the other hired hands. Indeed, the crew are watched all day by decidedly unfriendly eyes. Big Red has distinct misgivings about the position, for all that beggars can't be choosers, but Old Red is positively ecstatic: he just knows there's something foul going on at the Cantlemere Ranch, and this is the closest to an actual case he's come across. When the dapper general manager, Perkins, is found trampled to death after a storm, everyone's willing to write it off as bad luck - except Old Red. With his large little brother in tow, he sets out to crack the case... not realizing just how much trouble he's about to ride into.
REVIEW: Sherlock pastiches can be tiresome and overplayed, particularly when it feels like the author just cut-and-pasted a caricature of the great detective and his dogged companion into another setting. Holmes on the Range, on the other hand, is more homage than pastiche. Gustav "Old Red" Amlingmeyer may have devoted himself to studying Sherlock Holmes's methods via Doctor Watson's written accounts in Harper's Weekly magazines (in this iteration, Holmes and Watson are real people, not fictional creations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), but he's very much his own personality, firmly rooted in his own history. Despite having no formal schooling, he's determined to prove that he's more than just a lowly brute laborer, and indeed shows himself to have a brilliant mind, if one that works in its own ways. Likewise, Otto "Big Red" Amlingmeyer is no Watson. Though devoted to his last surviving family member, who taught him everything he knows about cowpunching, he's not beyond clapping back at his brother, and isn't set up to be the bumbling fool that Watson was sometimes reduced to in Holmes's adventures. The setting isn't a sanitized Old West, the kind seen in paintings or old TV shows, but one full of unruly cattle and unruly cowboys, stinking outhouses and stinking bodies pounded to mush in the Montana mud, classism and racism and other ways humans find to treat other humans worse than the pigs they slaughter for sausages. By aiming to capture the spirit of Doyle's iconic characters rather than the strict letter, Hockensmith succeeds where many others fail.
From the start, Old Red has suspicions about the ranch and its crew, but it's not until Perkins's body turns up that his detective skills kick into high gear. Though he keeps some things to himself, he lets his brother in on a fair bit of his reasoning, making Big Red more of a partner and less of a struggling tagalong. With logic, observation, and the instincts born of a hard life on the frontier, not to mention prodigal tracking skills, the would-be detective starts piecing together a picture that involves fishy hired hands, a suspiciously-timed visit by the English stakeholders, scandals stretching from America to the old country, and even a subplot involving an escaped madman known as "Hungry Bob", a notorious convicted cannibal who may or may not be implicated in crimes around the property. Big Red's narration has a humorous streak, but also serious weight, bringing the distinctive characters to life. Along the way, the Amlingmeyers learn the hard way that detective work isn't at all what they imagined it would be like from those Harper's Weekly stories, much more complicated and much more dangerous. The action and intrigue ratchet up nicely through the tale, with hardly any lulls along the way to a breakneck climax that sees many truths revealed, though at a cost neither brother could've anticipated. This is a series I wouldn't mind following for at least another book, with a nice balance of humor and mystery in a gritty Western setting.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) - My Review
Unwanted: Dead or Alive (Gene Shelton) - My Review
Girl Waits With Gun (Amy Stewart) - My Review
Tuesday, September 19, 2023
Rise (Mira Grant)
Rise: The Complete Newsflesh Collection
The Newsflesh series
Mira Grant
Orbit
Fiction, Collection/Horror/Sci-Fi
***** (Great)
DESCRIPTION: The zombie apocalypse known as the Rising reshaped human civilization, after nearly destroying it. From the viral origins of the dreaded hybrid Kellis-Amberlee contagion to a new generation that has never known a world without bleach and blood tests and the risen dead as part of daily life, there are countless stories to be told. This collection includes the short stories and novellas in the Newsflesh world:
Countdown: Two scientists work to cure disease, one cancer and the other the common cold, entirely unaware of each other's work... or how their breakthroughs, which could have ended so much human suffering, will instead nearly end the known world.
Everglades: A young woman reflects on childhood visits to Florida as she decides whether life in a zombie apocalypse is worth living.
San Diego 2014: A group of fantasy and science fiction fans gather for a weekend of cosplay and fun, only to find internet rumors of a zombie outbreak to be all too true when the undead crash the gates.
How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea: A prominent internet journalist travels to Australia to experience their radically different take on the apocalypse and visit the infamous "rabbit-proof fence" that contains their viral-amplified wildlife.
The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell: A Seattle elementary school thought it had effective protocols in place to prevent a zombie outbreak on the grounds, only to be proven disastrously wrong.
Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus: An off-the-grid scientist and her team find an emaciated, insane stranger, harbinger of an all-too-human threat.
All the Pretty Little Horses: After becoming heroes during the Rising, a Berkeley professor and his grief-shattered wife struggle to fill a gaping, child-sized hole in their lives.
Coming to You Live: After taking on top government agencies and losing too many colleagues, former internet journalists Shaun and Georgia Mason had thought that fleeing to the Canadian wilderness meant they could be free of the traumas that had warped their lives, only for their fragile peace to be broken.
REVIEW: Grant's Newsflesh world, based on solid viral research and understanding of human nature, expands beyond the core cast with these additional tales. From the origins of the outbreak, a tragic combination of unintended consequences and the fallout of fearmongering "fake news" journalism that doesn't care what wildfires it sparks so long as it feeds the lucrative outrage machine, through the chaos and tragedy of the early days and on past the end of the third book in the core trilogy (I have yet to read the fourth entry), Rise fleshes out what already felt like a solid world and fills in more details on several characters. Here, we get the backstory of the elder Masons whose artificial, camera-dependent "love" of Rising orphans Sean and Georgia left the two adoptive siblings so psychologically damaged, as well as the origins of the drug-addicted killer "Foxy". We also see how the rest of the world responded to the Rising, and what might be on the horizon if people can let go of their addiction to fear (and the power that some groups gain through manipulating that fear). Hidden in the cracks are glimmers of hope that a better future is possible, though there's also plenty of death and darkness and violence, enough to break the strongest wills. Through all the tales, the world leaps to life in its many well-researched details and distinctive characters. As in the original stories, the biggest threat is often not the hybrid Kellis-Amberlee virus or the undead, but the all-too-living terror and calculated monstrosity of people, though some of the worst damage they do is not out of malice at all. Short introductions by the author explain inspirations and intents. My only real complaint, one that I can't exactly blame this collection for, was that it had been long enough since I read the Newsflesh books that it took me a while to remember the whos and whats and wheres of the core cast and referenced events. The rest ranks right up their with the main series, earning it top marks.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Feed (Mira Grant) - My Review
Dread Nation (Justina Ireland) - My Review
I Am Legend and Other Stories (Richard Matheson) - My Review
The Newsflesh series
Mira Grant
Orbit
Fiction, Collection/Horror/Sci-Fi
***** (Great)
DESCRIPTION: The zombie apocalypse known as the Rising reshaped human civilization, after nearly destroying it. From the viral origins of the dreaded hybrid Kellis-Amberlee contagion to a new generation that has never known a world without bleach and blood tests and the risen dead as part of daily life, there are countless stories to be told. This collection includes the short stories and novellas in the Newsflesh world:
Countdown: Two scientists work to cure disease, one cancer and the other the common cold, entirely unaware of each other's work... or how their breakthroughs, which could have ended so much human suffering, will instead nearly end the known world.
Everglades: A young woman reflects on childhood visits to Florida as she decides whether life in a zombie apocalypse is worth living.
San Diego 2014: A group of fantasy and science fiction fans gather for a weekend of cosplay and fun, only to find internet rumors of a zombie outbreak to be all too true when the undead crash the gates.
How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea: A prominent internet journalist travels to Australia to experience their radically different take on the apocalypse and visit the infamous "rabbit-proof fence" that contains their viral-amplified wildlife.
The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell: A Seattle elementary school thought it had effective protocols in place to prevent a zombie outbreak on the grounds, only to be proven disastrously wrong.
Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus: An off-the-grid scientist and her team find an emaciated, insane stranger, harbinger of an all-too-human threat.
All the Pretty Little Horses: After becoming heroes during the Rising, a Berkeley professor and his grief-shattered wife struggle to fill a gaping, child-sized hole in their lives.
Coming to You Live: After taking on top government agencies and losing too many colleagues, former internet journalists Shaun and Georgia Mason had thought that fleeing to the Canadian wilderness meant they could be free of the traumas that had warped their lives, only for their fragile peace to be broken.
REVIEW: Grant's Newsflesh world, based on solid viral research and understanding of human nature, expands beyond the core cast with these additional tales. From the origins of the outbreak, a tragic combination of unintended consequences and the fallout of fearmongering "fake news" journalism that doesn't care what wildfires it sparks so long as it feeds the lucrative outrage machine, through the chaos and tragedy of the early days and on past the end of the third book in the core trilogy (I have yet to read the fourth entry), Rise fleshes out what already felt like a solid world and fills in more details on several characters. Here, we get the backstory of the elder Masons whose artificial, camera-dependent "love" of Rising orphans Sean and Georgia left the two adoptive siblings so psychologically damaged, as well as the origins of the drug-addicted killer "Foxy". We also see how the rest of the world responded to the Rising, and what might be on the horizon if people can let go of their addiction to fear (and the power that some groups gain through manipulating that fear). Hidden in the cracks are glimmers of hope that a better future is possible, though there's also plenty of death and darkness and violence, enough to break the strongest wills. Through all the tales, the world leaps to life in its many well-researched details and distinctive characters. As in the original stories, the biggest threat is often not the hybrid Kellis-Amberlee virus or the undead, but the all-too-living terror and calculated monstrosity of people, though some of the worst damage they do is not out of malice at all. Short introductions by the author explain inspirations and intents. My only real complaint, one that I can't exactly blame this collection for, was that it had been long enough since I read the Newsflesh books that it took me a while to remember the whos and whats and wheres of the core cast and referenced events. The rest ranks right up their with the main series, earning it top marks.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Feed (Mira Grant) - My Review
Dread Nation (Justina Ireland) - My Review
I Am Legend and Other Stories (Richard Matheson) - My Review
Friday, September 15, 2023
Wolfwood (Marianna Baer)
Wolfwood
Marianna Baer
Harry N. Abrams
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Horror
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Seventeen-year-old Indigo Serra has grown up idolizing her mother... or the woman her mother used to be. Once, Zoe Serra was the toast of the New York City art scene, a young rising star whose Wolfwood series of watercolors is still talked about and sought after by collectors. But she hasn't picked up a brush in years, sliding into a deep depression that leaves her unable to function most days. Indigo tries to pick up the slack, working two summer jobs and talking their former landlord into letting them sleep (illegally) in the basement in exchange for cleaning services, sacrificing her own hopes and dreams to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table, but there's only so much a teenage girl can do... which is why, when a gallery reached out to Zoe about completing the Wolfwood series for a new exhibition, Indigo reached back.
She just wanted to give her mother a little nudge, something to get her back in the studio: surely, with the deadline of an exhibition and the interest of major buyers, that would be enough to shake off the crippling self-doubt. Then she thought maybe Zoe would get her confidence back if Indigo transferred the sketches to full-sized watercolor paper... Before Indigo knows it, she's painting the pictures her mother refuses to even look at - and finding out just why Zoe walked away from Wolfwood all those years ago. Whatever she paints, she finds herself living: a nightmare jungle of monstrous plants and silent clones and four terrorized girls, all controlled by an unseen master known only as the Wolf. By the time Indigo realizes the danger, it's too late to stop - even if finishing the Wolfwood series might mean finishing her own life.
REVIEW: Wolfwood is a different, dark fantasy that vividly illustrates the damage done by unresolved trauma and mental illness down through generations, as well as the pain and shame too often endured because of deep poverty.
Indigo has every reason to hate her mother, and in some corner does harbor some anger toward their circumstances, but still loves Zoe deeply and fiercely, sacrificing her own life and future trying to help a woman who can't even admit the depth of her own troubles. For all the girl gives up, though, and hard as she tries, she can't fix someone else, especially when the mother she knows is only one facet of the woman Zoe Serra; flashbacks take the reader back to Zoe's own teenage years in the 1980's, where young love and teenage impulsivity lead her to a small Mexican town with a man she just met and a life that's too good, too naive, to possibly last. It's here that the iconic Wolfwood series of paintings has its roots, for all that Zoe wouldn't actually create them until years later... and it's here, or rather a twisted, nightmare version of the Mexican jungles, that Indigo finds herself transported when she tries to finish her mother's paintings. In the painted world, she takes on the persona of one of the four girls in the pictures who face horrific torments and torture, though it takes Indigo a little long to connect these "dreams" with her mother (especially as she's called "Zoe" by the other girls in the jungle world).
Meanwhile, in the real world, Indigo struggles to juggle this new obligation and deception, fending off increasingly pointed questions from the gallery owner and from an old friend, the owner's son, with whom she used to be close back when life was better and Zoe still worked as an artist. Her impoverished circumstances fill Indigo with dread and shame, not just from having no money or free time but from a nagging sense of guilt that it's all her fault somehow, that if she were a harder worker they'd have more money, or if she were a better daughter she could fix whatever's wrong with her mother just like she fixes their perpetually-malfunctioning refrigerator. There are people she could reach out to for support, places she could turn, but she's so used to hiding the family secrets and shames that it doesn't even cross her mind to try, even as she slips further underwater and the painted world exerts more and more power over her. She starts falling into similar mental patterns that led Zoe to where she is, the paralyzing fears and mental loops that have sapped the woman's will to live. Still, even when she sees from a friend's life how it's impossible to help someone who is not in a position to even try helping themselves, Indigo keeps trying, and failing, to be the perfect daughter and make everything better. The paintings, Indigo's mental health, and Zoe's condition grow darker and more twisted as they near the finale, even as the flashbacks point to the roots of Wolfwood's bleak narrative in Zoe's younger years, building to a reasonably powerful climax. Not everything is magically fixed by the ending, but there is a reasonably satisfactory resolution.
There are times when the twisted tortures of the Wolfwood grow repetitious, and where Indigo's repeated denials that anything unusual is happening when she paints get tiring. A few characters and incidents also felt extraneous by the end. On the whole, though, Wolfwood is an interesting, often dark exploration of art and trauma and family secrets and how the ones we love can sometimes be the ones who hurt us most, even when they don't intend it.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Light From Uncommon Stars (Ryka Aoki) - My Review
Shadowshaper (Daniel José Older) - My Review
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (V. E. Schwab) - My Review
Marianna Baer
Harry N. Abrams
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Horror
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Seventeen-year-old Indigo Serra has grown up idolizing her mother... or the woman her mother used to be. Once, Zoe Serra was the toast of the New York City art scene, a young rising star whose Wolfwood series of watercolors is still talked about and sought after by collectors. But she hasn't picked up a brush in years, sliding into a deep depression that leaves her unable to function most days. Indigo tries to pick up the slack, working two summer jobs and talking their former landlord into letting them sleep (illegally) in the basement in exchange for cleaning services, sacrificing her own hopes and dreams to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table, but there's only so much a teenage girl can do... which is why, when a gallery reached out to Zoe about completing the Wolfwood series for a new exhibition, Indigo reached back.
She just wanted to give her mother a little nudge, something to get her back in the studio: surely, with the deadline of an exhibition and the interest of major buyers, that would be enough to shake off the crippling self-doubt. Then she thought maybe Zoe would get her confidence back if Indigo transferred the sketches to full-sized watercolor paper... Before Indigo knows it, she's painting the pictures her mother refuses to even look at - and finding out just why Zoe walked away from Wolfwood all those years ago. Whatever she paints, she finds herself living: a nightmare jungle of monstrous plants and silent clones and four terrorized girls, all controlled by an unseen master known only as the Wolf. By the time Indigo realizes the danger, it's too late to stop - even if finishing the Wolfwood series might mean finishing her own life.
REVIEW: Wolfwood is a different, dark fantasy that vividly illustrates the damage done by unresolved trauma and mental illness down through generations, as well as the pain and shame too often endured because of deep poverty.
Indigo has every reason to hate her mother, and in some corner does harbor some anger toward their circumstances, but still loves Zoe deeply and fiercely, sacrificing her own life and future trying to help a woman who can't even admit the depth of her own troubles. For all the girl gives up, though, and hard as she tries, she can't fix someone else, especially when the mother she knows is only one facet of the woman Zoe Serra; flashbacks take the reader back to Zoe's own teenage years in the 1980's, where young love and teenage impulsivity lead her to a small Mexican town with a man she just met and a life that's too good, too naive, to possibly last. It's here that the iconic Wolfwood series of paintings has its roots, for all that Zoe wouldn't actually create them until years later... and it's here, or rather a twisted, nightmare version of the Mexican jungles, that Indigo finds herself transported when she tries to finish her mother's paintings. In the painted world, she takes on the persona of one of the four girls in the pictures who face horrific torments and torture, though it takes Indigo a little long to connect these "dreams" with her mother (especially as she's called "Zoe" by the other girls in the jungle world).
Meanwhile, in the real world, Indigo struggles to juggle this new obligation and deception, fending off increasingly pointed questions from the gallery owner and from an old friend, the owner's son, with whom she used to be close back when life was better and Zoe still worked as an artist. Her impoverished circumstances fill Indigo with dread and shame, not just from having no money or free time but from a nagging sense of guilt that it's all her fault somehow, that if she were a harder worker they'd have more money, or if she were a better daughter she could fix whatever's wrong with her mother just like she fixes their perpetually-malfunctioning refrigerator. There are people she could reach out to for support, places she could turn, but she's so used to hiding the family secrets and shames that it doesn't even cross her mind to try, even as she slips further underwater and the painted world exerts more and more power over her. She starts falling into similar mental patterns that led Zoe to where she is, the paralyzing fears and mental loops that have sapped the woman's will to live. Still, even when she sees from a friend's life how it's impossible to help someone who is not in a position to even try helping themselves, Indigo keeps trying, and failing, to be the perfect daughter and make everything better. The paintings, Indigo's mental health, and Zoe's condition grow darker and more twisted as they near the finale, even as the flashbacks point to the roots of Wolfwood's bleak narrative in Zoe's younger years, building to a reasonably powerful climax. Not everything is magically fixed by the ending, but there is a reasonably satisfactory resolution.
There are times when the twisted tortures of the Wolfwood grow repetitious, and where Indigo's repeated denials that anything unusual is happening when she paints get tiring. A few characters and incidents also felt extraneous by the end. On the whole, though, Wolfwood is an interesting, often dark exploration of art and trauma and family secrets and how the ones we love can sometimes be the ones who hurt us most, even when they don't intend it.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Light From Uncommon Stars (Ryka Aoki) - My Review
Shadowshaper (Daniel José Older) - My Review
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (V. E. Schwab) - My Review
Thursday, September 14, 2023
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (Mark Manson)
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck series, Book 1
Mark Manson
Harper
Nonfiction, Self-Help
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Accentuate the positive! Start each day with a smile! Everyone is extraordinary if they just let themselves be! Seek joy in all things at all times! Don't see the obstacles! Never give up! And if all else fails, buy this self-help retreat, or that product, or both! With all the motivational messages and admonitions against negative feelings or failures flying around these days, it's a wonder the world isn't chock full of literal superheroes by now, spontaneously combusting with enough extraordinary energy to outshine the sun... but it isn't, and despite the vast material comforts and opportunities available to many, we're possibly the most miserable, least satisfied generation ever. Maybe we're just not thinking enough happy thoughts, or reciting enough self-love affirmations in our mirror - or maybe, by avoiding all talk and experience of negative emotions and failures and sometimes-unpleasant self examinations, we're robbing ourselves of the vitally important experiences that lead to true growth and more fulfilled lives. Maybe we're just trying to give too many fucks about too many things that don't ultimately matter. Author and personal growth advisor Mark Manson offers advice without the shiny happy warm fuzzies.
REVIEW: There is an epidemic of positive thinking and self-esteem-over-self-growth messaging in the world today, not at all helped by social media and how it distorts perceptions: everyone else looks like they're either having the best time ever with the most positive hashtags or are the most picked-on and unlucky soul ever to emerge from the primordial ooze (and more hashtags), making everyone else feel awkward and inadequate and unable to compete on either end of the spectrum. Manson may not be the first to challenge this thinking, but he does it effectively, with more than a few curse words and verbal smacks across the face, along with some humor. All this positive thinking, he successfully argues, are distracting at best and harmful at worst. Failure and pain are essential to human growth and maturity, and things we need to learn how to cope with and learn from rather than avoid or cast blame about, but too many voices in society are urging us to reject this vital experience, even to feel shame or guilt for not always being happy or successful. Heck, many of us struggle to even tangibly define what success or happiness mean to us outside of parameters we've been trained to value by outside influences... or to redefine those terms when our previous ideas failed to come to fruition, or came to fruition and didn't bring us what we expected. Picking battles, picking where to invest our limited supply of fucks, is necessary. He even emphasizes the importance of coming to grips with our inevitable mortality as a part of personal growth, the one end-point none of us can predict or avoid.
As with many self-help books, he glosses over some pitfalls that can trap people (lack of money, for instance, or being stuck in repressive or abusive communities), but all in all he offers some solid food for thought.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Myth of Multitasking (Dave Crenshaw) - My Review
10% Happier (Dan Harris) - My Review
How to Be Perfect (Michael Schur) - My Review
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck series, Book 1
Mark Manson
Harper
Nonfiction, Self-Help
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Accentuate the positive! Start each day with a smile! Everyone is extraordinary if they just let themselves be! Seek joy in all things at all times! Don't see the obstacles! Never give up! And if all else fails, buy this self-help retreat, or that product, or both! With all the motivational messages and admonitions against negative feelings or failures flying around these days, it's a wonder the world isn't chock full of literal superheroes by now, spontaneously combusting with enough extraordinary energy to outshine the sun... but it isn't, and despite the vast material comforts and opportunities available to many, we're possibly the most miserable, least satisfied generation ever. Maybe we're just not thinking enough happy thoughts, or reciting enough self-love affirmations in our mirror - or maybe, by avoiding all talk and experience of negative emotions and failures and sometimes-unpleasant self examinations, we're robbing ourselves of the vitally important experiences that lead to true growth and more fulfilled lives. Maybe we're just trying to give too many fucks about too many things that don't ultimately matter. Author and personal growth advisor Mark Manson offers advice without the shiny happy warm fuzzies.
REVIEW: There is an epidemic of positive thinking and self-esteem-over-self-growth messaging in the world today, not at all helped by social media and how it distorts perceptions: everyone else looks like they're either having the best time ever with the most positive hashtags or are the most picked-on and unlucky soul ever to emerge from the primordial ooze (and more hashtags), making everyone else feel awkward and inadequate and unable to compete on either end of the spectrum. Manson may not be the first to challenge this thinking, but he does it effectively, with more than a few curse words and verbal smacks across the face, along with some humor. All this positive thinking, he successfully argues, are distracting at best and harmful at worst. Failure and pain are essential to human growth and maturity, and things we need to learn how to cope with and learn from rather than avoid or cast blame about, but too many voices in society are urging us to reject this vital experience, even to feel shame or guilt for not always being happy or successful. Heck, many of us struggle to even tangibly define what success or happiness mean to us outside of parameters we've been trained to value by outside influences... or to redefine those terms when our previous ideas failed to come to fruition, or came to fruition and didn't bring us what we expected. Picking battles, picking where to invest our limited supply of fucks, is necessary. He even emphasizes the importance of coming to grips with our inevitable mortality as a part of personal growth, the one end-point none of us can predict or avoid.
As with many self-help books, he glosses over some pitfalls that can trap people (lack of money, for instance, or being stuck in repressive or abusive communities), but all in all he offers some solid food for thought.
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The Myth of Multitasking (Dave Crenshaw) - My Review
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How to Be Perfect (Michael Schur) - My Review
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