The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In the midst of all the devilish mischief in the first part I started to flag, which makes me think I’m not going to be a great fit for hell.
But I loved the background of this book, the introduction from Simon Franklin in the Everyman’s Library edition, in the oppressive artistic environment of early twentieth century Russia. The set pieces of different surreal events where the devil visits the people of Moscow are entertaining, peppered with hints of the story to come in the second half, of the master and Margarita and the master’s burned novel about Pontius Pilate. The swirling confusion that accompanies the devil’s visit to town is perhaps too well realized for me, since, like Margarita at the devil’s night in the second half, I started to get worn out from all the visitors attending the ball.
The book lights on fire when have the one, two threads that drive the second half to the end, when Margarita, the master’s lover, tries to track down her disappeared lover and winds up enlisting the help of the devil (or he enlists her help for his own ends).
The devil’s companions, Behemoth and Koroviev and the rest get more of the stage to themselves and their antics, which are even more entertaining when they are stuck together, without humans to distract them — a great bit of slapstick and nonsense. The chess match between Behemoth, the cat, and Woland, the devil, in which Behemoth attempts to stall his inevitable defeat by searching beneath the bed for his knight is a riot, even more so because this is Margarita’s first time meeting the man, himself.
I loved the way Bulgakov wrapped the stories, transitioned from one chapter to the next (often by repeating the final phrasing from the previous chapter), and even the multiple endings that match the ending to the master’s own manuscript, which no one but Margarita has been able to read, since he burned it up, failing to get a publisher (oh, a familiar feeling). And the recurring revelation of the story of Pontius Pilate and Matthew the Levite, Judas, and Jesus is really well-managed and compelling.

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Dearly Devoted Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I felt like I was back in the television series.
The over-the-top hokeyness of Dexter’s internal monologue might go so wrong, the cuteness just a little too cloying for someone who calls himself a monster, but Lindsay manages to pull it off and make my own Dark Passenger (who is a reader, and gets murderously outraged if it senses the writer pulling a fast one) settle down and accept it. For each of the two books of the Dexter series I’ve read I’ve had moments where I pause at a certain point (usually one of the many alliterative descriptions of Deadly Dexter), but every single time I’ve thrown Jeff Lindsay the benefit of the doubt and kept on going. I don’t know if it’s the folksy dialogue Dexter keeps up with the reader or the fact that Michael C. Hall did such a great job bringing him to life for the screen, but you forgive the little idiosyncrasies because, well, Dexter’s kind of a charming monster, and hell sometimes repeat himself as he tries to work out just how a human might react to his situation.
Repetition aside, the book just roars along. I think reading too many of these in quick succession might wear down the patience of your Dark Reader, but grabbing one from the shelf every few months seems to be working, so far, and I’ve loved revisiting with everyone’s favorite serial killer and provider of donuts.

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If This Isn’t Nice, What Is?: Advice for the Young by Kurt Vonnegut
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a great little collection of Vonnegut’s speeches, and the audiobook is well read — the reader hasn’t got the gravel of Vonnegut’s voice, but it also removes some of the alarm you might have felt if the ghost of Kurt Vonnegut were actually reading it.
Like watching a good stand-up comic’s every YouTube video, you’ll find a lot of repetition of the things, the material that Vonnegut really cared about, but if you dole out the speeches piecemeal and just listen every once in a while you’ll get a good heaping of humanist philosophy every few days that’s worth hearing over and over again.

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On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This book was like an uncle, the eccentric uncle who your parents don’t like to hang out with, and with whom *you* don’t like to hang out with, much, who will tell you how smart he is, how everyone else is so dumb, how super intelligent he is, how so very dumb everyone else is, and they’re dumb because it’s just so *obvious* they’re dumb, but then you hear one thing he says and you think, “Hey, that might be an interesting thought…” but then you remember it’s your crazy flipping uncle and he starts telling you the same story, but this time by naming all the synonyms he can name for ‘discourse,’ just a straight list of them, and not for nothing he knows *a lot* of synonyms for the word ‘discourse.’
Or maybe, let’s think of it another way, like it’s a song, only the song only repeats itself over and over and over again. The notes are all the same set of three, and they are repeated endlessly. Occasionally different words are sung over the same three notes, but mostly they’re the same, usually in the same order.
Imagine, because you’re not as smart as the author, that the book is like a mighty river at the bottom of a valley that you hold in higher regard than a crummy little stream at the top of a mountain. Now just because, stupid, the river is actually *physically* lower than the stream it doesn’t mean that your regard for it is necessarily lower.
“Can we trust that the world is as it seems? Yes. The world really does exist in an absolute form very close to how we perceive it.” I’m just going to toss that out there, not going to back it up, but I said it, so there it is.
I think this book could have been interesting (and far, far shorter if he didn’t feel the need to make three or four or five or more different comparisons to try and explain how we perceive things), but the author and I just didn’t get on pretty early, and I found myself desperate to get to the end, just to get it over with. And I did. Thank goodness.

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Slade House by David Mitchell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I received an advance copy of this book through NetGalley.
I can’t believe I received an advance copy of this book through NetGalley. I felt a little astonished, like, surely the publisher knew that everyone who was into David Mitchell (I count myself amongst them) would rush out and buy at least one copy of Slade House. They couldn’t really be offering to give me this book for free, could they?
I’d read the collected Twitter story (“The Right Sort”), which starts the whole book off, I’d been following (sporadically) the new Twitter account of @I_Bombadil, of *course* I was up for reading Slade House.
I really enjoyed the story (devoured it, even). Like a “Bone Clocks”-lite, we skip through the years, nine at a time, starting in 1979, only we’re focused on the one house from the title and twin brother and sister who inhabit it through the years. The style remains the same throughout the years as people approach the house and enter through the alleyway, but takes on the aspect of a palimpsest, as we recognize things that have gone on before at this house, things that bleed through the same each time.
Which is true until we get to the final chapter, when the perspective shifts, and we see the story from the other side. For those people who have read much David Mitchell, when they see Dr. Marinus arrive, they’ll know how this is about to play out and there might be more tension for people who haven’t met any of these characters yet, but it’s still an entertaining story.
I worry, a bit, for my soul, as the publisher giving away this book is a little like the lure the twins use to gather souls unto themselves, so I wonder if I haven’t stumbled into my own Slade House by taking the bait and that this whole experience of reading the book hasn’t been some orison-like hallucination, and I try and think back and remember if I ever ate something during the course of my reading, and, if so, whether the twins are already on their way to eat my soul.

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The Little Red Publishing Hen by Matthew Hanlon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an amazing tour-de-force of the self-publishing world, sure to brighten any author’s day! And it’ll explain to little Philbert and Marigold why their mom or dad spends countless hours locked in a room, tapping away at a keyboard.

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The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I haven’t had a lot of success reading books with a blurb along the lines of “Could be the finest comic novel since Flann O’Brien’s…” or anything comparing an author or book to Flann O’Brien, but here I go with my own comparison: “The Sisters Brothers” is like some long-lost cousin to Flann O’Brien’s novels. The American cousin, if you will.
I loved the voice and I thought the way Patrick deWitt developed the brothers’ relationship was excellent, the driving force behind their trip down south to kill a man for the Commodore. But the whole cast of characters — the crying man they meet along their way; Mayfield, the bigwig in a small town; Warm, the man they’re meant to kill; and the boy, abandoned by his gold prospecting party — they would be comfortable showing up in “The Third Policeman” or “At Swim-Two-Birds.” There is an exchange between Mayfield and the brothers, mid-way through their meeting, where Mayfield recounts being robbed by a man with a limp in their hometown of Oregon City, then thinks to ask them if either of them walks with a limp. The dialogue back and forth is pretty snappy and well-timed.
Each and every one of these characters has a little bit of despair at their core that keeps the humor pretty black, and it’s a sometimes matter-of-factly gruesome ride with these notorious Sisters Brothers, but I thought the book was brilliant from start to finish.

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Press Start to Play by Daniel H. Wilson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I was sucked in by the vibrant colors of the cover and the promise of fictional video game nostalgia, I’ll admit.
I enjoyed “God Mode,” “NPC.” “Respawn” reminded me a little of Claire North’s excellent Touch, and I liked “Desert Walk” and “Rat Catcher’s Yellows” wasn’t bad. So the collection was going along at an okay clip. “1UP” was a fun little chase of a story.
Some of the magic of video games seems to get sucked out, dried out on a table, and then pinned into a memory book like a pixelated butterfly in fiction form, especially when the story dwells just a little too long on the description, the whimsy, and cotton-headed stupor video games can induce. It’s a little like being the sober person at a raging, drink-soaked party. Maybe it’s the experience of reading story after story after story about video games that you begin to feel like the kid left to the side, relegated to just watching the other kids play the video games, never getting your own chance. Which is exactly what the next story, “Survival Horror” feels like, and is about, in fact. The sense of drama, of tension, is all watered down and it takes a real effort to care about what’s going to happen, even though you’ve been told you should care, because the stakes are high. Or so you’re told.
“REAL” was another good story, though, with a bit more at stake, without beating you over the head with it. I thought “Roguelike” was a cute story, buried amongst the next pile, and “Twarrior” wasn’t bad, nor was “Select Character,” but I think by that point (those were the last two stories in the collection) I was just looking to get out more than anything.

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Armada by Ernest Cline
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I found this one really tough to get through. I enjoyed Ready Player One, and that’s why I grabbed this book the second I saw it available.
But even as early at page 16 I noted that I was feeling like the author was just stalling, the writing and action stagnated: “First I needed a moment to prepare myself.” I prepared myself by sighing a little bit and hitching up my nerd pants, which I’d put on specially for the reading of this book.

Shortly thereafter we get a list, which I felt was Ernest Cline just loosening his belt buckle as if after a big Thanksgiving meal, saying, “Ah, *now* I feel more comfortable,” as if just a straight up, three plus page list of video game nerd porn was exactly what he’d been dying to work into a book all along.

By page 38 we were watching other people play video games, only the literary version of it. I know… I *understand* that people watch other people’s video game escapades online and even, in some cases, in vast auditoriums around the world. I had the sinking feeling that I’d wandered into the wrong room, say the back room in a dirty old arcade where the lighting isn’t so great, there’s a peculiar smell, and maybe I didn’t want to be in there, after all. The vicarious thrill of watching someone play something with no real consequences isn’t particularly thrilling. I didn’t like the gaggle of guys fondling and espousing different controller types (in the page 44 corner of the room), they just seemed kind of… unwell.

The writing just seemed more stilted than Ready Player One, as well. Instead of figuring out a better way to give us the backstory of the company who created these video games (or maybe leaving it out altogether?), we’re told in this way:
“I clicked through to [Chaos Terrain, the games’ developer]’s website’s “About Us” page and scanned it. As a longtime CT super fan, I already knew quite a lot about the company’s history…” and then we get the contents of the web page, as dictated by the super fan of Chaos Terrain.

But that’s the book. It felt to me like I was doing the reading equivalent of watching someone play a video game, only with a lot more lists of older video game and sci-fi movies and their characters. There are a lot of tangents that you might think make a reappearance later in the book, something worthwhile having remembered, but I guess they’re intended as quick-ish one-liners, jokes that fall flat about as often as they work.

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A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I normally love Christopher Moore and his writing style, but I just didn’t find this one as engaging. It’s set in San Francisco, his new(ish) home, and it just seems like a paean to all the things he loves about the city and I just don’t share the same enthusiasm.
It’s also less subtle than his stuff usually is — the main character is happily oblivious to most of his surroundings and we get beaten over the head with a certain assumption he makes so many times that, by the third time (of many, many more times) you feel like shaking the character and maybe just dropping the book altogether.

But if you want to read something fantastic, have a look at Sacré Bleu or Fool by Christopher Moore.

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