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jasonfurman's reviews
1367 reviews
Verity by Colleen Hoover
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
It was a long day after little sleep. I had a long flight with a connection. I started a short story collection and read and loved several of the stories Machado de Assis's The Looking-Glass: Essential Stories. But you never want to read too many stories in a row and I was a bit too unfocused for 19th century Brazilian literary fiction. So I turned to Verity--partly based on my daughter's recommendation, partly based on seeing Colleen Hoover everywhere and being curious about what it was all about, but mostly because I read the first two (short) chapters in the Kindle sample and was completely hooked. The 20 seconds it took to buy the full Kindle book was probably the longest pause I took in my breathless and fully absorbed reading of the entire book, finishing just before my flight landed at 1:30am.
Is Verity great? No. Some of the writing is weak. The characters and situations are a bit cliched. A bunch of it is over-the-top absurd (although some of that turns out to be a clever aspect of the artifice). BUT, as snobby as I would like to be, I can't escape the fact that I could not turn my eyes away from it. I've read a few domestic thrillers (e.g., The Girl on the Train) and liked them but always found myself disappointed because their entire raison d'être was being thrilling and they somehow fell short. This one, however, did not and delivered exactly what it promised--thus rating it five stars when evaluated on its own terms.
Is Verity great? No. Some of the writing is weak. The characters and situations are a bit cliched. A bunch of it is over-the-top absurd (although some of that turns out to be a clever aspect of the artifice). BUT, as snobby as I would like to be, I can't escape the fact that I could not turn my eyes away from it. I've read a few domestic thrillers (e.g., The Girl on the Train) and liked them but always found myself disappointed because their entire raison d'être was being thrilling and they somehow fell short. This one, however, did not and delivered exactly what it promised--thus rating it five stars when evaluated on its own terms.
Dickens and Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius by Nick Hornby
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
I came for Dickens but stayed for Prince. "Dickens and Prince" is an extended essay that is overflowing with enthusiasm and worship for two very different artists, modesty about his own role, and a paen to the genius that emerges from a combination of protean talent and relentless obsessive drive. I listened to the Audible version which is 2.5 hours (at 1.3X).
I'm a huge Dickens fan and have enjoyed the movie versions of Nick Hornby's books (have not read the books themselves). I know the most famous Prince songs and once saw him in a truly stunning concert, a late night jam session in the East Room of the White House, at one point joined by Stevie Wonder. But beyond that I knew absolutely nothing about Prince and was not particularly intrigued.
The Dickens parts of the books were very familiar, most of them coming from the excellent Claire Tomalin biography Charles Dickens. But they were still enjoyable, one professional craftsman admiring another.
But the Prince parts blew me away, mostly because of my own previous ignorance. Learning about how young he started, how sure of himself he was, performing all the instruments and backup vocals on his first five albums, his prolific recording and performing career, and the perhaps thousands of unreleased songs he left behind in his vault. All of this is presumably just as familiar to Prince fans as the Dickens parts were to me but also the way in which Hornby expresses his enthusiasm and appreciation is infectiously exciting.
The book alternates between the two, going through their youth, their twenties, thematic issues (e.g., women) and their deaths. There are a surprising number of parallels but Hornby does not push them in any sort of forced of awkward way. Instead his book is ultimately a meditation on what he sees as the most important parallel between them: "This book is about work. And nobody ever worked harder than these two or at a higher standard while connecting with so many people for so long."
I'm a huge Dickens fan and have enjoyed the movie versions of Nick Hornby's books (have not read the books themselves). I know the most famous Prince songs and once saw him in a truly stunning concert, a late night jam session in the East Room of the White House, at one point joined by Stevie Wonder. But beyond that I knew absolutely nothing about Prince and was not particularly intrigued.
The Dickens parts of the books were very familiar, most of them coming from the excellent Claire Tomalin biography Charles Dickens. But they were still enjoyable, one professional craftsman admiring another.
But the Prince parts blew me away, mostly because of my own previous ignorance. Learning about how young he started, how sure of himself he was, performing all the instruments and backup vocals on his first five albums, his prolific recording and performing career, and the perhaps thousands of unreleased songs he left behind in his vault. All of this is presumably just as familiar to Prince fans as the Dickens parts were to me but also the way in which Hornby expresses his enthusiasm and appreciation is infectiously exciting.
The book alternates between the two, going through their youth, their twenties, thematic issues (e.g., women) and their deaths. There are a surprising number of parallels but Hornby does not push them in any sort of forced of awkward way. Instead his book is ultimately a meditation on what he sees as the most important parallel between them: "This book is about work. And nobody ever worked harder than these two or at a higher standard while connecting with so many people for so long."
The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution by Sean B. Carroll
4.0
Any book with a subsection called "The Second Coming of the Trichromatic Monkeys" is bound to be good. And this book was no disappointment. After reading a number of evolution books over a long period it was exciting to read a completely new set of ideas and evidence based on actual gene sequences. The focus on opsins and color vision was a useful antidote to some of the "just so" stories you occasionally read in evolution books.
I could have done without the chapter on why intelligent design is wrong, it seems like a waste of a good scientists time to bother to write about this topic.
I could have done without the chapter on why intelligent design is wrong, it seems like a waste of a good scientists time to bother to write about this topic.
Dark Cosmos: In Search of Our Universe's Missing Mass and Energy by Dan Hooper
4.0
This is a very good book for somebody, just not for me. It is well written and Hooper conveys enthusiasm. But I was hoping for an up-to-date book that focused exclusively on dark matter and dark energy. Instead most of this book is devoted to necessarily superficial pop science review of general relativity, quantum mechanics, supersymmetry, string theory, and cosmology. As a result there wasn't much that was new to me. Although I did learn one interesting new fact: Ladbrokes was taking bets on the discovery of the Higgs Boson by 2010, putting the odds at six-to-one. If only there was an Intrade market.