THE ASTONISHING LIFE OF OCTAVIAN NOTHING, two YA novels dealing with the morality of slavery beautifully

THE POX PARTY (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation #1)
M.T. Anderson
Candlewick Press
$17.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: It sounds like a fairy tale. He is a boy dressed in silks and white wigs and given the finest of classical educations. Raised by a group of rational philosophers known only by numbers, the boy and his mother — a princess in exile from a faraway land — are the only persons in their household assigned names. As the boy's regal mother, Cassiopeia, entertains the house scholars with her beauty and wit, young Octavian begins to question the purpose behind his guardians' fanatical studies. Only after he dares to open a forbidden door does he learn the hideous nature of their experiments — and his own chilling role in them.

Set against the disquiet of Revolutionary Boston, M. T. Anderson's extraordinary novel takes place at a time when American Patriots rioted and battled to win liberty while African slaves were entreated to risk their lives for a freedom they would never claim. The first of two parts, this deeply provocative novel reimagines the past as an eerie place that has startling resonance for readers today.

My Review: I am always up for history, especially if it's presented from an unusual viewpoint or in a fresh manner. I thought this would be a fairly conventional and thus mildly tedious slave-comes-of-age, resists-tyranny thing. But there was that raver...surely someone who bothers to come to LT won't be that impressed by the usual thing....

So I got it, and I am so glad I did. The author recapitulates the bizarre upbringing of Octavian in a place called "The College of Lucidity" which is located in Boston (which is how you know it's fiction, Boston being the least lucid place I've ever been) in the faintly modernized voice of the youth himself looking back on the experience.

It's troubling, to put it mildly. It's flat creepy. But it's all he knew as a childhood, though life has taught him it's not what others knew as a childhood. He even quotes his mother saying he's never been a child. (He, Octavian, our narrator...these are interchangeable references in this review.) His very...well, ummm, inputs and throughputs are weighed and measured and logged for reference. His education is that of the most privileged, enlighted prince of his age. He stresses in presenting us with these facts that he felt no strangeness or otherness to his life. He was, so far as he knew, the object of no untoward interference or unusual interest.

The object speaks. It is a very unsettling reading experience.

As the story progresses and our narrator recalls his budding awareness and emotional growth as regards self and others, it becomes evident that Octvian and his mother are gilded captives. It's a realization that doesn't gall...yet...on him, but the author's subtlety with his emotional flensing knife is such that the older narrator's awareness of his feelings presages quietly the events at the end of the book. (No spoilers...but look carefully at the disturbing jacket illustration.)

Anderson's stated aim in writing this book is that he wished it had been around when he was a young reader. I wish it had, too. It's wonderful writing, no matter it's supposed to be "for" YAs. From p96 of the hardcover edition:

Shortly after two o'clock on June 3rd, 1769, Venus descended into the plane of the ecliptic and came between the Earth and the sun. It is with awe that I treat of the event -- so minute, so silent here upon the Earth -- but there -- one can scarce imagine the roaring of that vast orb through those frigid depths, tumbling, flung through the plane of our orbit; the glaring heat, the searing glare of Sol -- and the gargantuan prodigiality of that body, consuming its own substance ceaselessly while planets whirled like houris, veiled and ecstatic around the throne of some blast-turbaned, light-drunken king.

Our narrator...a youth, a stripling...so beautifully educated that he can create sentences like these! Such a huge bar is set for the youth reading this, but not one that's so far above and beyond comprehension that it's discouragingly impossible to meet. It's a nice sight to see the lack of condescenscion in this type of writing.

So how do the adults fare? Not too well, from the foolish and clueless Mr. Gitney to the aptly named and evil Mr. Sharpe, whose words from p338 (hardcover) I reproduce here that he may damn himself from his own lips:

We have labored too long under a government that has sought to curtail exchange; such interference is unnatural. We shall see a brave new day, Octavian, when the rights of liberty and property are exercised, and when all men are free to operate in their own self-interest. And as each individual expresses his self-interested will, so does the democratical voice speak, the will of the common people, not kings and ministers; and when the self-interest of every citizen speaks together, then and only then does benevolence arise.

So sayeth the free man to the slave. The prosecution rests. Recommended, and most highly.

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THE KINGDOM OF THE WAVES (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation #2)
Candlewick Press
$14.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Fearing a death sentence, Octavian and his tutor, Dr. Trefusis, escape through rising tides and pouring rain to find shelter in British-occupied Boston. Sundered from all he knows — the College of Lucidity, the rebel cause — Octavian hopes to find safe harbor. Instead, he is soon to learn of Lord Dunmore's proclamation offering freedom to slaves who join the counterrevolutionary forces.

In Volume II of his unparalleled masterwork, M. T. Anderson recounts Octavian's experiences as the Revolutionary War explodes around him, thrusting him into intense battles and tantalizing him with elusive visions of liberty. Ultimately, this astonishing narrative escalates to a startling, deeply satisfying climax, while reexamining our national origins in a singularly provocative light.

My Review: Well, second books often don't rise to the level of the first in inventiveness and freshness. This one is typical of the syndrome.

Beginning where the extraordinary and original The Pox Party left off, The Kingdom on the Waves makes the adventures of Octavian Nothing complete. His best efforts are thwarted, his noblest desires unfulfilled, his quest for justice failed. All very true to history, but all very easy to predict. It's not that this is a bad book; it's a very good book. It's not clear to me why Anderson took 561pp to tell this story. I think the book sags a bit under the weight of its tale. It could easily have clocked in under 400pp and led us the same place.

I *love* that this is a YA book, written in so challenging and uncondescending a voice. Octavian is a very erudite narrator. I loved the structure of the book as a reader; it's in tasty-morsel-sized chapters. It's a very good book, and I recommend it.

I am firmly on record in many places as disliking the obesity of modern literary production. It's not that all books should be short in my opinion; it's that there is no reason for many, if not most, books to be as bloated with redundant and sometimes pointless verbiage as they are *stares pointedly at the Outlander books*. This book takes as its canvas a richly colored (no slur intended) part of American history. It's trying to fit a giant Technicolor extravagaza into a TV show. I think the editor would have done better to focus the author's obvious familiarity with the period on fewer episodes and left it at that.

But still, better a flawed and oversized story than none at all. The pleasures of the tale are many and savory, and I really hope you'll venture into YAdom to find this book soon.

NICKED, fun and games holy-relic heist comedy

NICKED
M.T. ANDERSON
Pantheon Books
$28.00 hardcover, preorder for delivery on 23 July 2024

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: From the award-winning and bestselling author of Feed comes a raucous and slyly funny adult fiction debut, about the quest to steal the mystical bones of a long-dead saint

The year is 1087, and a pox is sweeping through the Italian port city of Bari. When a lowly monk is visited by Saint Nicholas in his dreams, he interprets the vision as a call to action. But his superiors, and the power brokers they serve, have different plans for the tender-hearted Brother Nicephorus.

Enter Tyun, a charismatic treasure hunter renowned for “liberating” holy relics from their tombs. The seven-hundred-year-old bones of Saint Nicholas rest in distant Myra, Tyun explains, and they’re rumored to weep a mysterious liquid that can heal the sick. For the humble price of a small fortune, Tyun will steal the bones and deliver them to Bari, curing the plague and restoring glory to the fallen city. And Nicephorus, the “dreamer,” will be his guide.

What follows is a heist for the ages, as Nicephorus is swept away on strange tides—and alongside even stranger bedfellows—to commit an act of sacrilege. Based on real historical accounts, Nicked is a wildly imaginative, genre-defying, and delightfully queer adventure, full of romance, intrigue, and wide-eyed wonder at the world that awaits beyond our own borders.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I seem to be on an historical-queerness religion-themed heist novels jag. Remember RECITAL OF THE DARK VERSES?...now this fascinating, also ripped-from-the-history-books tale of Saint Nicholas of Myra's hajj to Bari, Italy. Y'know, the Chamber of Commerce never really changes, "bring on the punters and their gelt!" is their mantra no matter the language or the time period. "King Arthur" at Glastonbury? Heck, they needed a new roof and GoFundMe wasn't a thing yet. Now add the attraction of Octavian Nothing's author writing for adults for the first time, and I'm gaffed through the gills.

I loved the Octavian Nothing duology, so it wasn't like I had some hill of ignorance, or resistance, to climb. Author Anderson's got a deft way with words and a sharp eye for the telling detail (the dog-headed man who's actually dog-headed is a great start). The seamless way he weaves the medieval world-view into the actions and conversations of the characters; the unstressed way they assume things like miracles and visions are remarkable but unsurprising; the effectively limned but never foregrounded way the quest to steal the saint's relics gets justified, all make perfect sense despite being quite mad.

By twenty-first century standards.

Sexuality is part of the picture so limned, but there's no sex to speak of. It wouldn't have added a thing to the story. It's not glued on awkwardly to tick a box, and it does have a bearing on how the innocent and quite trusting Brother Nicephorus deals with the way his vision is, erm, repurposed by the roguish dashing thief Tyun, but it is not made up out of nothing. I like thngs like this to make sense, and it does. Our Brother, who sets the plot in motion, rides the waves of others' needs and actions. He changes, he learns about his god-given nature, and he changes those he must surround himself with. And it is, for a wonder, all really fun and funny to read.

The wonders of comedy applied to matters of great religious import are many...the idea of a miracle is, inherently to me anyway, funny. The nature of the "pox" afflicting Bari, and the purported miraculous excretions from Saint Nicholas's bones intended to cure it...well, comedy gold! Resurrection, which we see, just...well...I've had surgeries enough to know that there's a lot involved in resurrection and none of it is supernatural. People can and do wake up when it's supposedly impossible. The way Author Anderson does it is, honestly, so affirming, and so full of the joy of being alive inside a body, that I nearly cried several times. "Never forget that your life is a wonder...Never forget that there are miracles everywhere, and you are only present in this world to see them once." This is exactly true, though the miracles aren't religious in nature.

I'd be remiss if I didn't point out how much fun with wordplay there is. Start with the title: Nick (as in Nicephorus, "bringer of victory"), to nick, Old Nick, Saint Nick...you can find more. These grace notes and the general vocabulary Author Anderson uses all flavor the read with an old-fashioned, yeasty head of foam on this draft of literary ale.

Delighted me; will delight anyone who liked Our Flag Means Death, the Locked Tomb series, and Ocean's Eight and its sequels.

June 2024's Burgoine and Pearl-Rule reviews

Author 'Nathan Burgoine posted this simple, direct method of not getting paralyzed by the prospect of having to write reviews. The Three-Sentence Review is, as he notes, very helpful and also simple to achieve. I get completely unmanned at the idea of saying something trenchant about each book I read, when there often just isn't that much to say...now I can use this structure to say what I think is the most important idea I took away from the read and not try to dig for more.

Think about using it yourselves!

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A Champion for Tinker Creek (Tinker Creek Series #1) by D.C. Robeline

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Master mechanic Lyle James built a successful but lonely life in Tinker Creek after rescuing his dad’s auto repair shop until an international development firm conspires with local officials to condemn the shop and steal his land.

Jose “Manny” Porter has come home to take a reporting job at the South Georgia Record, a regional newspaper where his father is publisher and editor-in-chief. As the son of a driven Anglo father and Cuban exile mother, Manny knows all about how competing parental expectations can chill efforts to even find sex—much less love.

After a night of passion, Lyle and Manny are thrown together in a fight to save Lyle’s business. Their struggles may lead to more than either expected for their community and their lives.

I RECEIVED A COPY FROM THE MY YOUNG GENTLEMAN CALLER. THANK YOU, DARLING.

My Review: Series mysteries are about the maintenance of what the Egyptian pharaohs called "Ma'at". The serious work of maintiaing the rightness of the world is in the hands of this goddess. The characters are, in the reader's mind, the vehicles for ma'at to act, so we invest in the recurring characters the most thoroughly and readily. Lyle and Manny have good chemistry, are fun to watch as they figure out the boundaries of their relationship.

Plus I agree with the politics in the story. It all adds up to a recommendation for other series-mystery readers, for left-leaning environmentally concerned readers, and those who really like having A Villain in their crime fiction.

The ebook is only $8.99. I think that is a fair price for reading pleasure received.

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Manny Porter and the Yuletide Murder (Tinker Creek Series #2) by D.C. Robeline

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Riding a tide of success after helping his boyfriend, Lyle, save their neighborhood of Tinker Creek from predatory developers, reporter Manny Porter throws himself into his career and community activism. The last thing he expects is to discover the body of prominent research scientist Phillip Nikolaidis during a laboratory tour. Murder can strike anywhere, and all the evidence points toward Tristan DeJesus, Manny’s nineteen-year-old mentee.

Manny only has the holiday season to overcome jealous colleagues, an angry corporation, and a skeptical publisher to discover who killed Nikolaidis before the judicial system condemns an innocent man to lethal injection.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I wasn't surprised about Manny's love, Lyle, being so very supportive of his dangerous determination to solve a tricky, twisty case until I thought about the Rules of Series Mysteries: Conflict with the spouse is supposed to be a given because it gives the writer an extra source of tension. I like this model, loving and supportive, a lot. I'm all over any story that models not accepting the corporate world's actions and excuses as valid. This story met that need and trumped it with use of the offending party's tactics against them.

Also, Christmas. I am a sucker for holiday stories. I loved that Manny and Lyle were shown to be involved in this life event as well as the crime-solving goodness. The series has a fan in me.

Bold Strokes Books wants $8.99 for this one, too, and that is very worth it.

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Devil's Chew Toy (Hayden & Friends #1) by Rob Osler

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Seattle teacher and part-time blogger Hayden McCall wakes up in a stranger's bed alone, half-naked and sporting one hell of a shiner. Then the police come knocking on the door. It seems that Latino dancer Camilo Rodriguez has gone missing and they suspect foul play. What happened the night before? And where is Camilo?

Determined to find answers, Hayden seeks out two of Camilo's friends—Hollister and Burley—both lesbians and both fiercely devoted to their friend. From them, Hayden learns that Camilo is a "Dreamer" whose parents had been deported years earlier, and whose sister, Daniela, is presumed to have returned to Venezuela with them. Convinced that the cops won't take a brown boy's disappearance seriously, the girls join Hayden's hunt for Camilo.

The first clues turn up at Barkingham Palace, a pet store where Camilo had taken a part-time job. The store's owner, Della Rupert, claims ignorance, but Hayden knows something is up. And then there's Camilo's ex-boyfriend, Ryan, who's suddenly grown inexplicably wealthy. When Hayden and Hollister follow Ryan to a secure airport warehouse, they make a shocking connection between him and Della—and uncover the twisted scheme that's made both of them rich.

The trail of clues leads them to the grounds of a magnificent estate on an island in Puget Sound, where they'll finally learn the truth about Camilo's disappearance—and the fate of his family.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT OF MY LOCAL LIBRARY. USE THEIR SERVICES OFTEN, THEY NEED US!

My Review: A book about Commander would be great, please and thank you. Quozy mystery that doesn't have loads of smexytimes. As that was exactly what I wanted to read, I got my wish. The story felt more than usually contrived...the way the sleuth gets drawn in to the crime was in no way credible outside a novel...but contained so much verve and energy in its pacing that I simply could not bring myself to care about suchlike silliness.

Again this month I'm kept purring by the presence of social attitudes I share. This time the author takes on anti-queer policing attitudes and the nonsensical attitudes towards immigrants infesting our political landscape. The sleuth finds himself dealing with bullying, unsurprisingly as he's short and queer, so we get that facet of stakes-making, too. None of these are in any way added onto the story being told. Fun reading with good messaging.

Crooked Lane Books (non-affiliate Amazon link) wants $13.99...check it out of the library.

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Cirque du Slay (Hayden & Friends #2) by Rob Osler

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In this rollicking mystery, perfect for fans of Steven Rowley and Elle Cosimano, the circus becomes the stage for a high-profile murder investigation.

With quirky LGBTQ+ amateur sleuths, Cirque du Slay will delight readers looking for a madcap mystery with high-flying excitement!

Pint-sized Seattle middle school teacher and gay dating blogger Hayden McCall and his best friend Hollister are invited to a fundraiser for Bakers Without Borders. The celebrity performer, Kennedy Osaka, is the artistic director of Mysterium, an upscale circus arts show combining magic, acrobatics, and a Michelin-star dinner. But Kennedy is a no-show—until she’s found dead in her hotel suite.

When frenemy Sarah Lee is discovered in the room with the body, Hayden and Hollister are on the case to find the real culprit before Sarah Lee is charged with the crime.

The suspects for the murder are as unique as Mysterium a Russian trapeze artist, a cowgirl comedian sharp-shooter, an over-cologned operations director, a feisty, green-haired costume manager, and Adrenalin!, a sexy troop of Romanian male acrobats...If Hayden and Hollister are to clear Sarah Lee of suspicion, they’ll have to outsmart a killer for whom trickery is art.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Like the first in the series, it's very unlikely to occur in real life but it doesn't matter. Too much fun was happening to make it at all important in this quozy. I'm sure the jokes about a woman's avoidupois will put off plenty of readers but the fact is she uses them to reclaim unkindness the same way we're using "queer" these days. That's not to say the conversion is perfect...Hayden likening her to a mattress is cringey indeed...as is her being a lesbian named Burley, so be aware of this, more sensitive readers of size.

The Romanian acrobats in the circus setting are played for fun, too, but there's less to interpret in their presentation. I thought Hayden's interpolated blog posts were deployed well. Sometimes that knowing wink actually helps the context get established in the reader's mind. Entertaining fun but not as much in my wheelhouse as the first one.

Crooked Lane Books (non-affiliate Amazon link) wants $17.99...definitely check it out of the library.
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Puzzle for Two by Josh Lanyon

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: It was like those crazy detective novels he read as a kid…

Fledging PI Zachariah Davies’s wealthy and eccentric client, toymaker Alton Beacher, wants to hire an investigator who can pose as his boyfriend while figuring out who is behind the recent attempts on his life. And Zach, struggling to save the business his father built, is just desperate enough to set aside his misgivings and take the job.

But it doesn’t take long for Zach to realize all is not as it seems (and, given that it all seems pretty weird…). The only person he can turn to for help is equally struggling, equally desperate–but a whole lot more experienced–rival PI Flint Carey.

Former Marine Flint has been waiting for Zach to throw in the towel and sell whatever’s left of the Davies Detective Agency to him. Still, he’s unwillingly attracted to the game but inexperienced accountant-turned-shamus, and can’t help offering a helping hand when Zach runs into trouble.

Especially when it’s hard to imagine any worse trouble than having your client murdered.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Fake dating, faking coming out as gay...this feels like something from the Aughties being republished a bit after its best-before date.

The men are bisexual. There's a LOT of lying around this subject. I think the banter between the men as they fall in love is what saves the read for me. A lot of time has passed, a lot of progress has been made; the cutesy-coy marketing campaign for Deadpool's 2024 film featuring superheros "playing gay" for laffs hits worse than this book's sexuality shenanigans.

But not a lot.

JustJoshin Publishing (non-affiliate Amazon link) asks you for $7.99 for an ebook.

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Come Unto These Yellow Sands by Josh Lanyon

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: Once a bad boy, the only lines Professor Sebastian Swift does these days are Browning, Frost and Cummings. When a student he helped to disappear becomes a suspect in a murder, he races to find the boy and convince him to give himself up before his police chief lover figures out he’s involved.

Max likes being lied to even less than he likes sonnets. Yet his instincts—and his heart—tell him his lover is being played. Max can forgive lies and deception, but a dangerous enemy may not stop until Swift is heading up his own dead poet’s society.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Wow. More lies and relationship fakery...the one who allegedly puts up the barriers and resists the relationship deepening is suddenly the first to utter The Big Three? Hm. The idea of these two being together is, uhhh, unlikely; but the reason they get together does support the connection forming. Again, it's the banter that keeps me going in the book. This time the mystery is one I got invested in.

JustJoshin Publishing (non-affiliate Amazon link) wants $6.99 for an ebook.

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Fire from the Sky by Moa Backe Åstot (tr. Eva Apelqvist)

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Ánte’s life has been steeped in Sami tradition. It is indisputable to him that he, an only child, will keep working with the reindeer. But there is something else too, something tugging at him. His feelings for his best friend Erik have changed, grown into something bigger. What would people say if they knew? And how does Erik feel? And Erik’s voice just the push of a button away. Ánte couldn’t answer, could he? But how could he ignore it?

Fire From the Sky is a sharp and intelligent story about heritage, family ties and age-old commitments to the past. But also about expectations, compassion, feelings that course through your body like electricity.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: It is very much an intelligent story, and one with 15-plus-appropriate explorations of desire (WITHOUT consummation). As one would expect, it's angsty as all get-out. I was very interested in the Sámi people's culture as presented here. I now know more about reindeer than I ever suspected I didn't know before.

I was less convinced about the boys' separate characters. I think something missing in a lot of YA for my reading taste is that very sense of separate *personhood* not simply different dialogue tags. I sometimes lost track of Erik or Ánte being the speaker. That feels like a quibble as I write it...so, on balance, a "yes, but" recommendation for the Elizabeth Acevedo or MT Anderson reader.

Levine Querido asks $19.99 for a hardcover.

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This space is dedicated to Nancy Pearl's Rule of 50, or "the Pearl Rule" as I've always called it. After realizing five times in December 2021 alone that I'd already Pearl-Ruled a book I picked up on a whim, I realized how close my Half-heimer's is getting to the full-on article. Hence my decision to track my Pearls!

As she says:

People frequently ask me how many pages they should give a book before they give up on it. In response to that question, I came up with my “rule of fifty,” which is based on the shortness of time and the immensity of the world of books. If you’re fifty years of age or younger, give a book fifty pages before you decide to commit to reading it or give it up. If you’re over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100—the result is the number of pages you should read before making your decision to stay with it or quit.

So this space will be each month's listing of Pearl-Ruled books. Earlier Pearl-Rule posts will be linked below the current month's crop.

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Normporn: Queer Viewers and the TV That Soothes Us by Karen Tongson
PEARL RULED @ 33%

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: An irreverent look at the love-hate relationship between queer viewers and mainstream family TV shows like Gilmore Girls and This Is Us

After personal loss, political upheaval, and the devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us craved a return to business as usual, the mundane, the middlebrow. We turned to TV to find these things. For nearly forty years, network television has produced a constant stream of “cry-along” sentimental-realist dramedies designed to appeal to liberal, heterosexual, white America. But what makes us keep watching, even though these TV series inevitably fail to reflect who we are?

Revisiting soothing network dramedies like Parenthood,Gilmore Girls, This Is Us, and their late-80s precursor, thirtysomething, Normporn mines the nuanced pleasures and attraction-repulsion queer viewers experience watching liberal family-centric shows. Karen Tongson reflects on how queer cultural observers work through repeated declarations of a “new normal” and flash lifestyle trends like “normcore,” even as the absurdity, aberrance, and violence of our culture intensifies. Normporn allows us to process how the intimate traumas of everyday life depicted on certain TV shows―of love, life, death, and loss―are linked to the collective and historical traumas of their contemporary moments, from financial recessions and political crises to the pandemic.

Normporn asks, what are queers to do―what is anyone to do, really―when we are forced to confront the fact of our own normalcy, and our own privilege, inherited or attained? The fantasies, the utopian impulses, and (paradoxically) the unreality of sentimental realist TV drama creates a productive tension that queer spectators in particular take pleasure in, even as―or precisely because―it lulls us into a sense of boredom and stability that we never thought we could want or have.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA aggregator. THANK YOU.

My Review: By the time I bailed we were still defining terms. Okay, it's an academic book; did it have to be tedious as well? I wish it had been *bad* because I could just ignore it completely.

Not for the distracted or casual reader. I tried three times to get past a third of the way in and could not make it up the hill. I was obviously not the right reader, or did not get to it at the right time. The subject interests me a lot. Well, it will still be on my Kindle if I decide to try again.

NYU Press only wants $9.99 for the Kindlebook.