Tag: literature

The Green Door by O. Henry

For “Throwback Thursday” I have a less well known story by the short story master that they named the award after. This one is from his collection The Four Million, so called because it takes place in New York City, which had four million residents at that time. A young man is led by destiny to the door of a damsel in distress. It has his trademark twist at the end. Enjoy!

The Green Door by O. Henry (1906) – 2,679 words (about 11 minutes for the average reader)

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

I learned about this book through Locus Magazine. In February, they had their reviewers list their best books of the year. Archita Mittra included Orbital in her list. On one of my regular road trips to referee a soccer tournament, I listened to this winner of the 2024 Booker Prize.

The book covers a day in the life of four astronauts and two cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station. Each chapter is titled according to each of the sixteen orbits taken in a single day. Not a lot happens in this short novel. Much of the book is given to evocative and vivid descriptions of the views from the ISS. We also learn a bit of the back story of those on board and how they are dealing with life on the station as well as how they are relating to their family left down on Earth.

Unfortunately, this book goes nowhere. Nothing interesting or exciting happens on the station. There is no inciting incident. I kept waiting for something to go wrong and for those on board to work together to overcome it. Nada. Don’t misunderstand, the writing is incredibly powerful and descriptive. You feel like you are experiencing what it must be like to be in orbit. And those on board have rich pasts and incredibly supportive relationships with each other despite the politics of their countries. But there is no plot whatsoever. This book is everything that English teachers love and their students love to hate.

My rating: 2/5

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

My book club’s latest genre was classics. As usual, we had a vote between three choices. As the voting deadline approached, all of our members (four) had voted but me. They had each voted for one of the three books, leaving me to break the tie. I selected this book. It is considered a classic and many of the sources I have for finding new books rated it highly as did both Good Reads and The Story Graph. I’m not sure I made the best decision.

The story is very unusual. The devil arrives in Moscow talking to an editor and a poet. They discuss whether Jesus Christ ever lived and if the devil is real. The devil then goes on to tell the tale of Pontius Pilate differently than is found in the Bible. After the editor dies in a way that the devil predicted, things get even crazier across Moscow as the devil and his retinue perform all sorts of supernatural trickery. About a third of the way through the book we meet the Master and Margarita at which point the story also becomes a love story between these two.

I am not sure why this book is so beloved and considered a classic. It’s okay, but for me it was all over the place. It didn’t seem to have much of a point, at least not one that was clear to me. Maybe this was because it was written in Soviet Russia and the writer needed to be careful to avoid being censored or rounded up and killed. In any case, I found myself forcing my way through it. If it weren’t a book club read, I likely would have not finished it.

My rating: 3/5

In Ascension by Martin MacInnes

I have been a subscriber and reader of Locus Magazine for over a year now. It is the monthly magazine of science fiction, fantasy, and horror and includes numerous book reviews in each issue. The February issue included various reviewers’ best of 2023 books. One such favorite was this book. The book was also longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2023. The premise sounded interesting, so I gave it a go.

The review that interested me in this book states in part that “it serves as a technical demonstration of how to continue asking big science-fictional questions while starting from the world as it is, rather than as we’d like it to be.” The book is told in the first person and starts with a rather lengthy description of the main character’s childhood and eventual decision to study marine biology. She eventually gets the opportunity to go on a scientific expedition to a place in the mid-Atlantic where there is a trench much deeper than ever measured in the Atlantic before. Odd things start happening that begin to move the plot forward at a less slow pace.

This book is well-written and filled with thoughtful ideas. At times it reminded me of thoughtful science fiction books like Contact and 2001: A Space Odyssey. And while I enjoined both of those books and movies, I found this book to be way too much prose and not engaging enough with the story. Even the ideas are barely hinted at. I enjoyed the contemplation of the ideas raised in this book, but it was as much an exploration of childhood trauma and its affects on the main character’s future. Sometimes it felt that was the main point of the book rather than exploring the science fictional elements of the story. That may be what others want in their literary science fiction, but not me. Give me Rendezvous with Rama any day over this dry, almost pretentious, over literary book.

My rating: 2.5/5