Reviews and Comments

Ok, THIS is the vacation read you need, the book you can devour in a single afternoon on the beach. If you don't mind reading something that is occasionally very gory and very disgusting. Because it delivers exactly what it promises: a scientifically accurate thriller about a dude who gets swallowed by a whale.

Jay is processing his estranged father's death by trying to retrieve his remains from Monterey Bay, on a particularly dangerous dive that he is no way prepared for. And then, well, let's just say things get a little out of hand. I described it to my mom as "a guy processing his trauma by undergoing a much more dramatic and life-threatening trauma."

I'm a sucker for survival stories, and I couldn't stop reading this. I also could not stop telling my family sperm whale facts. (Sorry guys.) I bounced off the writing at first, but ultimately found that the staccato style really helped drive the urgency and maintain the tension. Might make a good movie, if only our protagonist did not spend the majority of their time being digested.

This was the perfect vacation read; I practically couldn't put it down. It kept me up late at night first because I didn't want to stop reading, and second because I was too creeped out to sleep.

But like all of my favorite horror, this book will also tear the heart right out of your chest. The horrors in here are torn from real life and thus all the more disturbing. And this story is deeply personal: Due names her protagonist for her great-uncle, who died at the Dozier School for Boys. But although this is historical fiction, it's incredibly (and uncomfortably) relevant to this year of our lord 2024. As Due notes in her author's note, these horrors are systemic and ongoing. We live in a society of incarceration and injustice, and we all know that there are still Haddocks viciously enforcing their own perverse tyranny in all corners of this country, while their communities look the other way. Hell, half of them would vote for Haddock for president. It's not the horror of a single monster, or the ghosts they leave behind; it's the horror of the community that protects and feeds the monster.

This book is admittedly intense, it will have your heart pounding and then fill you with grief; but it is also filled with human warmth and hope. I will not forget Robbie, Gloria, Redbone, or Blue any time soon. And I will always, always show up for anything Due writes.

I adore reading books about cosmology and physics, and I am the perfect audience for them. Just smart enough to get the gist (let's just say I barely passed Astronomy and Physics 101), but just dumb enough that I can read the same information over and over again and be amazed by our universe's mystery and complexity every time.

I did get lost in the weeds at times during this book, but overall Cliff does an excellent job at delivering an approachable and engaging read, while still not skimping on the hard science. I'm definitely interested in reading his first book now. ("How to make an apple pie from scratch"... actually I may have already read it. This is why I need to track my books.) This is not the best book if you want an overview of the fundamentals, although Cliff does a good job of covering concepts as he needs to. You'll have a better time if you're coming in with at least a vague awareness of the standard model.

But because this book is new, and written by someone actually involved in the research, it's just an EXCITING read. These are scientists who are poking at and prying apart our fundamental understanding of the universe. I was running to the internet constantly to find any current news on these experiments or theories. If you are similarly excited by scientists having heated arguments about the Hubble constant, or dramatic experiment unblindings that may or may not result in new physics, you will have an excellent time. I mean I now have a news alert set up for Fermilab because I REALLY want to know if they get a five-sigma result when they unblind the latest results on the Muon g-2 experiment. I am now personally invested in the magnestism of muons. Mission accomplished, Harry Cliff.

Paul Tremblay might be my favorite horror author working today. And it is a golden age for horror in all forms. But Tremblay is consistently writing the kind of horror that keeps me up at night; sometimes because I'm too creeped out to sleep, but also because I want to keep contemplating what I've just read. His work has a unique emotional core that resonates deeply with me.

I think that may just be because we're a lot alike. We apparently have similar movie tastes (he starts this novel off with a quote from my all-time favorite director, Andrei Tarkovsky, like c'mon man) and similar tastes in music (based on his novel The Pallbearers Club, which engages with music much like Horror Movie engages with cinema). I also admittedly love the structure of this novel, which is partially a screenplay; novels about fictional films are definitely one of my all-time favorite micro genres. The best of them will create a fully-formed movie in your head, and Tremblay did such a tremendous job creating this fictional movie that I kind of want to leave a Letterboxd review for it.

Not only does this novel deal with one of my favorite forms of media (lost horror films! cursed horror films!), but also one of the themes dearest to my heart: monstrosity, and how closely intertwined monstrosity is with our humanity. As you might expect, the book does not offer easy answers; you will have to decide for yourself who the monsters are, and how much you believe their stories. The novel (like the film) is a shadowy and ambiguous labyrinth, and it is a labyrinth I will gladly wander again someday.

If you love reading about "enshittification," buckle in tight, because you're gonna LOVE The Cycle.

Tim Wu presents a comprehensive history of the rise and fall of information industries in the U.S., and illustrates again and again how unchecked corporate power strangles innovation and impedes progress at every turn. He illustrates his theory of "The Cycle" (in which open systems consolidate and then choke competition and disruption) with the development of film, radio, television, and telephone industries. (Reading this book will certainly make you want to dig up some dead white guys and punch them in the face.)

Since this book was published in 2010, I was a little worried that it would be frustratingly out of date. It's not; the history is solid, his theories are good. But towards the end I definitely had a sinking feeling in my stomach while reading. Wu proposes that the nature of the internet makes it both vulnerable and resistant to corporate control, and he's hopeful that net neutrality will win the day. He places his hopes in Google and its ideals (yikes), and also on effective government regulation (reading this the week that the Supreme Court gutted the federal government's regulatory powers: double yikes).

At times it's incredibly discouraging to read this book in 2024; it's much harder to muster up any hope that the internet will break free of this cycle. I would love a new edition of this book with an afterword by Wu, written today. The future does not look as bright in the year of our lord 2024.

This book may just as well have been written with me as the specific target audience. A short list of things I adore:

-- 19th century literature -- 19th century London -- books that include Dickens as a character (and portray him as an asshole) -- complicated bisexual heroines (lock up your husband AND your wife, Eliza is coming for them both)

Smith took a rather obscure historical event and a person who was previously not much more than a name scrawled in a famous book and breathed tremendous life into all of it. Reading this was just as rich and rewarding as reading anything by my beloved Victorians. (Although certainly more rewarding anything by Ainsworth, judging by the short passages Smith quotes in the book. It does not surprise me that dear William has largely been forgotten and is no longer in print at all.)

I adored Eliza. She's lonely and independent, both yearning for freedom and terrified of it. She feels everything very deeply and lets almost none of it show to others. Her empathy leads her to the abolition movement and eventually towards her attempt at friendship with Mr. Bogle. They're both people who would be side characters at best in a Dickens novel: the caustic spinster and the noble, tragic man who escaped slavery. But here they are full people, with complicated histories and motivations.

Smith is a joy to read and I loved how this novel skipped through time and place to provide an expansive view of this era and its people. I think I could read this novel many more times and get something new out of it every time. Who gets to be seen as "authentic," who gets to decide the truth? And who gets to tell their own story?