Sarah's Key

by Tatiana de Rosnay

This book was one of those that tries to explore history by having chapters that take place seventy years ago alternate with chapters about a character living in the present. That would have been fine if I had not wanted to strangle the modern character.

The book was about a terrible roundup in Paris in the summer of 1942 where they pulled out of bed all the Jewish men, women, and children they could find and sent them off to Auschwitz. The title character, Sarah, is only ten years old when she and her parents are rounded up with all the other Jews. They are taken to a large stadium where they are kept for days without food or water or functioning toilets. Then they're taken to camps outside the city where they are separated into three groups: men, women, and children. The men are sent off first, then the women. The children are kept at camp for weeks before they are finally sent after their parents.

It is at this point that Sarah makes a break for it. She escapes with another girl to a farmhouse that is far enough away from the camp that the elderly couple there are willing to help. The other girl doesn't make it, but Sarah enlists the help of the old couple to get back to her home in Paris.

Except it's no longer her home. Another family has already moved in. There's a whole lot more than that, but I don't want to spoil it for you.

The modern character is Julia, the daughter-in-law of the boy that moved into the apartment with his parents right after Sarah and her parents were taken away. She was the one that drove me crazy. She's stuck in this loveless marriage to an awful man who never treats her well, except when they're in bed. That's great, but is that really a reason to put up with the rest of his shit? I'm sorry, but after reading about the hell that this poor little girl went through (HER ENTIRE FAMILY DIED!) I can't say I was terribly sympathetic of the woman who was too afraid to leave her husband.

Then Julia feels the need to hunt down Sarah and her son and tell them that they've never been forgotten. Why? What good does that do anyone? Why can't Julia just let people get on with their lives? I don't think that Julia honestly wanted to help anyone other than herself. I think she wanted to let Sarah know her family's side of the story so that Sarah wouldn't think they were all terrible people. When she went to hunt her down, Julia was thinking about what was best for her, not what was best for Sarah or her son (whose life, by the way, Julia ruined when she told him the truth about his mother).

Sarah's chapters are written in third person and they are awesome. Julia's chapters are written in first person and they are significantly less awesome. Part of that, like I said, is because I just didn't like Julia. Part of it was because there was way too much longing and gasping. Every time Julia wanted to do anything she "longed" for it. I don't think I ever read 10 pages without encountering "longed" or "longing." Then there were people gasping way too much. Sometimes in places that didn't even make sense. At one point, Julia imagines her husband's "gasp of joy". What does that even mean? It made all of her chapters were way too melodramatic.

I wasn't too fond of her dialogue either. There were times when I felt that the narrator was having characters say things because de Rosnay wanted to talk about those feelings, not because it was believable. That, combined with a total lack of segues left the dialogue feeling very stunted and unrealistic.

I don't want to leave you with the impression that I hated this book. Sarah was awesome and I loved reading the chapters that followed her. At first, reading about Julia was a nice break from the heavy shit that Sarah was dealing with. But the chapters devoted to Sarah stop about half way through the book and it was after that point that Julia really started to get on my nerves.

Redshirts

by John Scalzi

After having read a serious nonfiction book, I thought it was time for something lighter. A word of advice, if you just want to be entertained, Scalzi is the way to go. Every time. 

Confession: I was never a Star Trek fan. Of course I've seen a few episodes here and there and I get most of the jokes, but I never saw a reason to sit down and really watch the series. Given that, it's probably safe to say that there are some jokes that I missed in this book, but I think I got most of them and they were hilarious. Scalzi points out things that don't make sense that I had never realized were so stupid, like shooting a door panel to shut the door, or things exploding on the bridge when other parts of the ship get hit by enemy fire.

It didn't take long before I realized that this book was actually Stranger than Fiction meets Star Trek. Once I realized that, I was completely on board because I am a huge fan of Stranger than Fiction and because Scalzi is an extremely talented story-teller. I was worried about the premise having already been done, but Scalzi has his own twist on everything and this book is no exception. Also, Scalzi is never more entertaining than when he's having fun and I think he had a lot of fun writing this book.

I had two problems with Redshirts. The first one is the overly explanatory narrator. It wasn't terrible, but there were more than a few times where Scalzi describes a character's actions or body language and then the reason behind them, even when the reasoning is already obvious. He also felt the need to give us a character's name after each and every line of dialogue. This makes sense when there are more than two people in a conversation, but there were times when it was already obvious who was speaking and the reader didn't to be beat over the head with it.

My second issue is with the codas at the end. They were entirely unnecessary and I wonder if they were there because Scalzi's editor told him he had to make the book longer. He tried to use them to make some interesting points on writing and fate and that's fine, but I don't think the codas were necessary to do that. I think he had already done a pretty good job of accomplishing that in the story itself. The first coda in particular felt way too preachy and I think Scalzi got a little carried away writing about a character that I, personally, had very little interest in.

Moral Tribes

by Joshua Greene

I asked for this book for Christmas and was surprised when I actually got it. So of course it sat on my bookshelf for four months before I got around to actually reading. It was totally worth the wait.

This book is a mix of psychology and philosophy, which is weird because I normally think of those two things as being incompatible. Having majored in psychology and taken one or two courses in philosophy (all of which I enjoyed, by the way) it seemed to me that psychology was using science to find the answers that philosophy was looking for. I had a friend who started as a philosophy major, but after one psych class, felt disillusioned when it came to philosophy and so she converted to a psych major.

Apparently I was wrong about their inability to mix, as this book clearly shows. Greene, a social scientist, has also studied philosophy extensively. The book is really a pro-utilitarian book, explaining all the reasons why utilitarianism is the best solution available to all of our current problems. He is careful to make the distinction of "best solution available". He does not pretend that it is a cure-all, merely that it is the best tool currently at our disposal.

I tend to agree with him. I was only vaguely familiar with the notion of utilitarianism before reading this book. I had never heard the list of arguments against it (I just knew that there are people who oppose it), but the basic principle made sense to me: the greatest good for the greatest number of people. How can that not be a good thing?

It turns out that there are a number of hypothetical scenarios in which that's not such a good thing, but hypothetical is the key word there. Most of the arguments against utilitarianism involve situations that simply don't happen in real life, or don't happen in the way the scenario is set up. I won't get into all of the arguments, but suffice to say I'm sold on the pro-utilitarianism front.

Although Greene acknowledges the human tendency towards a self-serving bias (something I think most of us are aware of), I think he does a relatively good job of remaining objective in his arguments. On the other hand, his "deeply pragmatic" reasoning for supporting a number of political issues that I also happen to support aroused my suspicions. It seemed too good to be true. Although I like to think I know what's best, I have to admit that I'm not always right. I still have a hard time (sometimes) saying that my way is objectively better and that's exactly what Greene did. Some of his conclusions made me feel that I am right at least most of the time which, like I said, makes me suspicious.

Nevertheless, this book did exactly what I wanted it to when I added it to my to-read list: it opened up my mind. It helped me to better understand myself, as well as those with different viewpoints from my own. Thanks to this book, I now feel better equipped to have conversations with those sitting on the other side of the fence.

The Blade Itself

By Joe Abercrombie

I read this book because my dad read it and recommended it to me. As he was reading it, he noted that the writing wasn't very good, but the story was engaging enough to keep him reading, so I figured it was worth a shot.

I had a couple issues with this book. The first problem was the overly-explanatory narrator. It really wasn't that bad, but I think my tolerance for that kind of writing has actually decreased. I was OK with the it for most of the book, but by about page 300 it started to wear down my patience and the book is 527 pages. An excessive use of adjectives and adverbs was also an issue. Not that I am opposed to ever using adverbs ever, ever, ever, but I do think that it can be easy to go overboard on them and I felt there were a number of instances where Abercrombie did that.

Most of the overly-explanatory narrator was a result of the fact that Abercrombie likes to give his characters thought bubbles, so to speak: sections of prose written in italics to convey a character's direct thoughts. I'm not against this except when those thoughts are subsequently conveyed in the character's actions and/or dialogue, sometimes word-for-word. That drove me crazy, but like I said, the thought bubbles in and of themselves did not drive me crazy. For the most part, I really enjoyed them.

Which brings me to my favorite part of the book: the characters. The characters were all awesome and definitely fun to read about. I am all for finding out what happens to these people. My only remaining qualm is the fact that this book didn't have much of a plot. Knowing that it's the first of a trilogy, I asked my dad if the second and third books have more structure and he assured me that they do. This book is merely introducing the characters and setting up the situation for when shit really goes down in the next book.

If that's the case, then I might actually want to read the next book. At the moment, I still haven't decided. I'll have to let this one sit for a few weeks before I decide if I want to get back into that world.