We're five weeks into the new year, and I've read more than five books, so I guess I'm ahead. Some of this is because I've been trying to get back into a more regular treadmill schedule, and I read the Kindle on the treadmill to make me forget that I'm on the treadmill, but also I've read a few interesting books that I kind of flew through.
1) Void Star, by Zachary Mason - I must have read about this in an article, because it was sitting on my Amazon wish list when I logged in to spend my holiday gift cards, so I ordered it. It takes place in the near future, where sea levels are rising and vast AIs serve tech millionaires. Irina, who has a cybernetic memory implant, reads a secret in her employer's glasses and finds herself in danger while Kern, a thief and street fighter, is hired to steal a phone and finds himself pursued across the planet. Meanwhile, Thales tries to recover from injuries he received during an assassination attempt on his father, and all three of them end up on a collision course with each other in surprising ways. This was interesting, but also felt a little hollow. I liked it, but it felt like something undefined was missing.
2) The Meaning of Mariah Carey, by Mariah Carey - I'm just going to go ahead and say at the front end that I underestimated Mariah Carey. Even knowing that she writes her own songs and is not an unintelligent person, I was still expecting this to be a fluff book, and it was anything but. I was definitely not expecting a compelling discussion of racism and classism, not just in the entertainment industry but also just in every day life. There are a few parts where things are clearly glossed over, notably any part that would reflect poorly on Mariah, but most of this is honest, entertaining, and sometimes heartbreaking. If you like stories about other celebrities, there's enough of that to entertain, too. This was a really good book.
3) Red, White, and Royal Blue, by Casey McQuiston - The son of the American president and the younger prince of the UK (not Harry, because this is fiction) have been tabloid rivals for years, and after a disastrous incident at the royal wedding of the crown prince, the two of them are thrown together in a goodwill tour. And then they're in a very hot and heavy secret affair. Will the Crown accept a gay prince? Will the scandal sink the President's reelection? And will the relationship survive when the whole thing blows wide open? This was a cute little fantasy, and a very entertaining read.
4) X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga, by Stuart Moore - I knew, going in, that this was an adaptation. Movie and comic adaptations tend to take the main story, and embroider a little. There will be things that add some depth, give some background, or show you what characters were doing when they weren't featured. For example, the novelization of the final episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation", "All Good Things", includes a scene with Dr. Pulaski that wasn't in the show. It fits in the book because thematically, it felt like it should be there.
This is a long way of saying that good adaptations add to the story instead of subtracting from it, and that this book is not a good adaptation. Some of the changes are to update the story, as cell phones and the internet didn't exist when the original was written, but some of them make no sense whatsoever, and add nothing. Professor X is absent for most of the novel, the subplot with Dazzler is removed entirely, and a subplot of Jean and Emma Frost fighting over Scott is added in, decades before that happened in the comics. Overall, this book was kind of a mess and you should skip it.
5) Severance, by Ling Ma - Candace Chen works in the publishing industry in Manhattan, and keeps coming in to work as Shen Fever spreads throughout the city and the world. Moving into the office as the city empties and shuts down, she finds herself completely alone until she finally leaves New York and ends up with a group of survivors led by Bob from IT, who is leading them to a mysterious Facility in Chicago where they can survive. Bob isn't what he seems, and neither is the Facility, but by the time Candace realizes that, will it be too late? This was entertaining but a little bit sad, making it maybe not the best thing to read during a pandemic.
6) Night of the Mannequins, by Stephen Graham Jones - Sawyer and his friends wanted to play one last senior year prank on their friend, sneaking Manny the mannequin into the movie theatre where she works. It all seemed like fun and games until Manny got up and walked out with the rest of the crowd at the end of the movie, vanishing into the night, and then Sawyer's friends started to die. Is the supernatural at work, or is there a problem a little more grounded in reality? In the end, as the deaths circle closer and closer to Sawyer, will it even matter? This was a short, fast read made even faster by how quickly it ratchets the tension up, and I enjoyed it.
7) The Invention of Sound, by Chuck Palahniuk - Gates Foster has been searching for his missing daughter for 17 years. Obsessed with tracking pedophiles across the Dark Web, his life and sanity are on the verge of disaster. Mitzi Ives is one of the leading Foley sound engineers in Hollywood. If you want the sound of a man being eaten by rats or a woman screaming as she's stabbed to death, you call Mitzi, but where does she get her authentic sounds from? As the two of them head closer and closer to each other, will they bring each other down, or will they expose the terrible truth about Hollywood and the value of human suffering? This wasn't Palahniuk's best or his worst, but it did feel kind of skippable.
Having finished all of these, I'm reading a fictional book about a rich family with dark secrets on the treadmill, and a nonfiction book about a rich family with dark secrets off the treadmill. I guess maybe I have a theme for February?
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