July Reads

Hmmm... it's been slowing down this month.

1. The Lunchbox (2013)
• I saw the trailer for this in one of the pre-movie trailers from another movie and remember marking it down, but I rarely ever actually follow up on stuff like that, so I was pretty surprised to see The Lunchbox on display when I went to cover at another library, making sure to bring it home with me.
• The Lunchbox is a very gentle love story, but not just a romance, because it touches on some of the insecurities and worries both Saajan and Ila as people living their own lives, but also both in Mumbai as they live through the ever-changing city. We see only snippets of their lives through their letters to each other and how they respond to them, and it is this remove that allows them also to develop the affections for each other that they do. I found the movie very satisfying, and am glad it ended where it did.
• That lunchbox delivery system is pretty cool. How do they make sure they get the right lunch to the right person? I saw a number written on the lunchbox handle in a shot, so I'm assuming those do the trick, but the workers who actually hand out the lunches must have amazing memory! I wonder if the strong message against smoking (literally printing "smoking kills" on the screen in a corner whenever Saajan smokes on screen, as well as having a lengthy information session before the movie starts about how smoking affects your health) is government-enforced?
2. Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus by Laura Kipnis
• I never really understood why any attempt to even just think about proposing that both men and women get educated on how to ask for consent and protect themselves respectively (or perhaps not strictly respectively, since there are also men who are victims of sexual harassment and abuse) made me feel as though I were going down the route of victim shaming, even when I wasn't. There's this need to qualify the statement, "Now, I'm not suggesting that the blame lies in the victim, but..." And now Kipnis has written about it! Hurrah!
• Well written, with a touch of wry humour throughout, Unwanted Advances is a delightful read that makes every bit of sense. Title IX sounds horrifying and it's a surprise to me that something with that much power should not be standardized, at the very least. I would have liked to see more of an exposition of how Title IX investigations and proceedings go, and how flawed they are, in a more systematic study, to absolutely crush public perception of them and reveal how arbitrary the system is/can be, but this is not the book to do so.
3. The Beguiled (2017) by Sofia Coppola
• I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but watching the trailer certainly gave me a good idea in terms of the atmosphere and the whole aesthetic of the movie. My friend was telling me how people generally either love or hate Coppola's works, precisely because of her aesthetic and the unconventional plot lines, and while I have yet to watch anything else of hers, I can see why that might be so. I did enjoy the almost dreamy quality to the entire film, an everyday mundaneness made eerie by the danger lurking outside, contrasted with the young girls and women living in this school. I'm not sure how unexpected the turn of events was, in that the man (spoiler alert) dies by the women's hands, and even in the trailer, you see the turning point already. What does surprise me is that Edwina was able to calm him down (by confirming his masculinity and what he thinks his place is amongst all these young ladies) - or rather, that she should want to at that point - and yet still deign to return to the way things were before (or a version of things as they once were, before the disturbance).
4. Golden Boy by Abigail Tarttelin
• I was working on a display about sex and gender, and a couple of fiction books popped up with "intersexuality - fiction" as the subject, of which this was one, another one being Annabel by Kathleen Winter. I have yet to read Annabel, but I'm pretty interested to see how these two novels featuring an intersex protagonist differ in their portrayal of the individual, especially since they are categorized as being for different target audiences (Golden Boy being for young adults; Annabel for adults). I realize that differences in the way intersexuality is presented between the two novels of course will be due to differences in the authors as well, but it'll be interesting to compare how intersex characters are portrayed in fiction.
• I really enjoyed reading this. While some characters were less developed than I would've liked (e.g. Karen & Steve, the parents, as well as even Sylvie), Tarttelin did a wonderful job switching perspectives and presenting where all the characters stood. It's also one of those novels that doesn't tie up all the loose ends: the mother and father live separately at the end; Max tries to kill himself; and his being intersex does not become public knowledge, so there's still the question of how everyone is going to navigate that.
• While it sort of feels as though Tarttelin tries to deal with too many topics at once - gender & sex, intersex, identity & coming of age, rape & the domino effect of its consequences for everyone - I think she did a pretty good job juggling them all.
• One little quibble I've got concerns the doctor. The parts where she explains her research about intersex individuals and what she uncovers in her brief search online (at Wikipedia... despite being a doctor and thus very likely being more than qualified to look at the scientific literature), was presented in an information session-like form. There's also the fact that it's only when she slips up that Karen, the mother, realizes what happened. Karen's character isn't entirely believable, in how childishly she deals with everything - not facing reality, refusing to listen to Max, her inability to realize that Max is a person rather than a thing - but it certainly drove the story along.
5. Search and Spot: Animals! by Laura Ljungkvist
• Yeah, I know, I jump from one end of reading topics to the other. This reminds me of the way there are now adult colouring books; this search and spot book of animals is absolutely delightful. And that's not an exaggeration in the least. I couldn't find the last hooting owl, or two of the snail buddies, or one of the fish swimming upstream. Admittedly, I had been staring at the entire thing for probably a good half hour to an hour, but that it entertained me for so long, and that my joy was unabated throughout, is a testament to what a wonderful book this is! The illustrations are playful and set the mood for the entire book, which I love, and it's surprisingly complicated, with layers upon layers of things to look for - between finding animals, spotting line colours, directions, and different colours of a variety of animal body parts, you'll be absolutely consumed by the illustrations and instructions. In the best of ways, of course. I see that there's also a Go! edition that features vehicles and things related to things that go, so I'll have to keep that in mind for a lazy day like when I stumbled upon this treasure.
6. Hector and the Search for Happiness by François Lelord
• I liked the movie quite a bit, which is the reason I'm picking up this book, but I'm really put off by the writing. It's kind of imitating that patronizing way adults can write when writing for children, except you don't find that in children's novels so much nowadays, I don't think, because it's a bit of a sly wink at the child also, in that the author knows the child must know more than what's written, and thus it's written the way it is, but it's strangely frustrating this time.
• The movie was a lot better. I didn't like the novel at all! I know it's trying to imitate a bit of that fairytale style, but it's a bit too much. I don't really know what the takeaway is, either? I feel as though it was just poorly executed for a story with some promise. Characters weren't developed, and came across as incredibly flat. Clara in particular had no role in the novel. I much preferred the movie adaptation on this front, as well as on Hector's part.
7. The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood by Irving Finkel
• So... there's a notes section, but none of it is directly noted in the text, and I'm kind of confused why they're not. How else are you supposed to know that there are notes to look at at the end of the book? There were also some sentences I couldn't be sure were just poorly written or I couldn't parse it because I was trying too hard, and one part that referred you back to chapter 10 (while you were in chapter 10), except I think it meant chapter 9.
• Very interesting! It's amazing how the discovery of one small tablet unleashed all this new information, allowing us to reinterpret older tablets that have long been decoded. All the cuneiform tablet photos look like gibberish to me, so it's pretty cool that so much information could be written into such small tablets, made of clay no less. Not that I have much interest in learning how to read them, personally, but I do think the decoding and comparing of various sources is fascinating nonetheless. Especially as it concerns what may be the source of some Bible stories (apart from, obviously, the Flood). I was expecting something else altogether, in part because I had been reading up so much on the ocean, so I was quite pleasantly surprised to see that this book is based pretty much entirely on written tablets.
• I love that Finkel includes the math in an appendix! Not that I went through it in much detail, but I still love that it's there!
8. Angels, Mobsters, and Narco-terrorists by Antonio Nicaso & Lee Lamothe
• I was chatting with coworkers about how I really wanted to have someone have already published a book comparing different criminal organizations and exploring how they all interact with one another, and lo and behold! It just so happened one of the people I was chatting with had also read John Dickie's Cosa Nostra & Blood Brotherhoods, and upon hearing my plea, guided me over to this title over here. We are on the ball with reader's advisory!
• I guess what I'm more interested in is simply information as to why certain organizations arose of the society that they did - i.e. why it's not just different incarnations of the mafia the world over. There are subtle differences to each of the organizations, I'm sure, in terms of both the structure of the organizations themselves, as well as myths, but also in how they fit into the societies they grew out of. And of course, why some of the differences may have arisen: why, for example, is it allowed for those in the Russian mafiya & the Japanese yakuza to wash their hands of that life, but not the Sicilian Mafia? This book does not cover much of the history behind the organizations.
• Did anyone proofread this book before it hit the press? No? I didn't think so. Beyond weird sentence structures (e.g. starting off a sentence with "while..." and not balancing it back out with anything on the other side of the sentence), there are at least ten typos where entire words - conjunctions for the most part, granted, but still! - are just wrong.
• I also did not feel like the entire volume was very cohesive as a whole. I suppose rather than a finished product, it feels more like the in-between stage where the authors have clearly done their research, but they haven't tied everything together nicely. There's no conclusion to sum things up either, though I suppose the Canada chapter serves, in theory, as the conclusion? Overall impression: weakly compiled, repetitive (how many times do you have to define "snakehead" immediately after mentioning the term? Once should be plenty, thanks), uncompelling writing.
• Nicaso & Lamothe do a good job covering organizations around the world, though, and I think it's a good starting point for if you're interested in reading about mafias and gangs around the world and aren't sure where to start. There's the obvious ones like the Italian mafias and the Chinese Triads, maybe even the outlaw motorcycle gangs, but others might not immediately come up as something to look into, for example other Asian crime organizations, the Russian mafiyas, or the involvement of Africa despite the absence of a traditional crime organization native to the land.
• There's a clear difference in how much weight is given to each organization - the yakuza only gets about a page or two, for example, which is especially odd considering the fact that the yakuza are introduced as being the largest crime organization worldwide, as compared to the entire chapter dedicated to Italian organizations - but if you're just starting to look at the topic, this is a good place to get terms & names to continue your research, I suppose.
• The entire book could have been expanded into at least three times the size to be a bit more comprehensive and produce more information about each of the areas, as well as benefit from proofreading and better structure in general. It's not bad, but I wouldn't really recommend it either. It would probably be more worthwhile to simply track down more in-depth books discussing each of the different types of organizations around the world. But then again, it might just be my own expectations.
9. Tabu (2012)
10. The Journey by Francesca Sanna
• The style of illustrations and my expectations based on the cover were so incongruous with the story that there was this disconnect when I flipped to the second page and the war started. What a powerful book. And the illustrations are absolutely phenomenal.

Working on:

1. Toppamono: Outlaw. Radical. Suspect. My Life in Japan's Underworld by Miyazaki Manabu
• The straightforward style of writing, and frank admissions that come of it throughout, made this a really enjoyable read for me. Miyazaki makes sure to note the social context around which he grew up, and explain how that affected even the yakuza side of his upbringing by contrasting it with how things are now (as of first publication, I assume, in 1996).
2. Gold Boy, Emerald Girl by Yiyun Li