What are you reading these days?

So, I want to start with the book that took me a little while. Upgrade (2022) by Blake Crouch was quite difficult to get through and from what I’ve seen, I kinda stand alone in this opinion. I’m a fan of Crouch’s other titles, but this is the first one that I left disappointed in. There were two fake-outs of the same occurrence that kinda annoyed me and it did a poor job of convincing you the protagonist had this abnormally high intelligence when time and time again he’s at a loss of words. And it’s a nitpick, but after already giving a poor super-intelligent portrayal, finding a typo in the letter he wrote was salt in the wound. I also really disliked the constant references to existing companies within this futuristic world. It seemed that technology evolved but culture hadn’t changed at all. All in all, poor world-building. I really wanted to like this, but it fell flat.

Next up, I read Cabin at the End of the World (2018) by Paul Tremblay in anticipation of seeing Knock at the Cabin (2023) in theatres. Now, I had a bit of a hard time getting through this one because of one particularly long chapter. I’m partial to many short chapters to few long chapters. Unfortunately, the book was very repetitive as the antagonists were trying to drill home the point: sacrifice one of yourselves or the world will end. That went on a little too much for me without ever adding much to the story, but once I got over that hump I was able to look forward to continuing. Overall, I enjoyed it, but it was poorly paced.

Now, pardon the brief interruption from the primary topic and allow me to discuss the movie. Reading the book, I had already seen the trailer for Knock at the Cabin and was impressed by how faithful the contents of the trailer was to the book. And perhaps it’s because I’d seen the trailer before starting, but I felt like Dave Bautista was an excellent choice for Leonard. I am not one to complain when a movie isn’t completely faithful to the source material, I believe when done right, a divergence can be excellent (e.g., The Shining (1980), dir. Stanley Kubrick; The Thing (1982), dir. John Carpenter). However, in this case, I felt M. Night Shyamalan played safe. The differences felt like studio intervention, but I don’t believe M. Night Shyamalan was pressured to change anything. I didn’t hate the movie, but I feel it was forgettable and an insult to audiences.

Back to the books. I read Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864) and was pretty impressed by how undated it feels after a century-and-a-half. I was kinda expecting the wonder of the “inner-world” to be the highlight, but it really was the journey and not the destination. I was hesitant to start a book this old after trying The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) by Oscar Wilde which I DNF’d (though I guess I should give it another shot before it gets banned by the “freedom-lovers”), but I guess that was very narrow-minded.

Finally, I took a total blind shot at Sea of Tranquility (2022) by Emily St. John Mandel. I saw that it was written by the same author of Station Eleven (2014) which I had not read, but I enjoyed the HBO Max series. This was a very pleasant read and totally not what I expected. I went in looking at the title, cover, and first chapters thinking I was getting a historical fiction, but instead it pivoted into a science fiction, and I’m so thankful for that as it acted as a pallette cleanser for Upgrade. Also, I’m not sure as I don’t know much about the author, but it really felt like Olive was supposed to be her?

So, onto what I am currently reading: Black Cake (2022) by Charmaine Wilkerson, Remarkably Bright Creatures (2022) by Shelby Van Pelt, and The Writing Retreat (2023) by Julia Bartz. Listing those out reminds me that I wanted to read more classics, so I am committing here to have one of cfabbro’s classic suggestions read by the next thread.