What’s Your Favorite Kind of Book?

Ok, a few months late on this one. In truth, a few years too late. In January of 2020, I resolved to start reading for pleasure. Leading up to this decision, I had convinced myself that I never truly enjoyed reading, and that any endulgance in any book of any kind was simply a byproduct of “my requirements” as a student or as the son of a bookworm of a mom. Certainly by my late twenties, the majority of my reading was confined to an academic setting (and therefore was horribly riddled with a SparkNotes-level interaction with the material). I wasn’t especially bothered by this, it was just who I was: not a reader. But I could not shake the nagging uneasiness I felt whenever someone asked me: what is your favorite kind of book? My lack of answer to this question bothered me deeply, particularly because its broad scope felt like I should have an answer, infinitely more than what my favorite individual book. Everyone would have trouble picking one book as their favorite. But did I really have no idea as to the types of literature I enjoyed? Do I like nonfiction more than fiction? Fantasy more than novels? I couldn’t say.

So, at the turn of the decade, I decided to find out. This excercise began simply: I expected to read one book a month for a year. At 10 - 20 pages a day, I felt this was more than reasonable, but I would need to meet that daily goal every single day or my efforts would immediately implode. I knew this to be true, it was a common villian I’ve fought against in the past, my hobbies stopping sharply when I let my guard down for the first time. In this blog, I chronicle my journey through my books. I will give a star rating as well as either a summary, how I felt while reading, why I chose the book, or anything else of note that comes to mind.

If anything, I hope this blog inspires someone to pick up a book and I hope it provides some proof that “becoming a reader” can really happen to anyone and at any time. You are who you say you are, and if you want to lose yourself in a written story - start now!

Sean’s 2020 Reading List

The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic - Mike Duncan
A series of escalating and compounding political upheavals bore holes through the still beating heart of the most extensive ancient Republic. A perpetual state of war, assassinations of elected officials, and the systematic subjugation of newly conquered peoples all contribute to the rot and decay of the Republic’s foundation that would eventually snap and splinter beneath the weight of impending authoritarianism. - 4/5 stars

Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
A highschool classic!! I don’t respect anyone who describes this as sci-fi. But it was a great read! Vonnegut’s style is prominent, easily digestible, and fun. - 5/5 stars

City of Stairs - Robert Jackson Bennett
I originally purchased this book from Powell’s bookstore of Portland back in 2017 and never made a whole-hearted attempt to actually read it! I had tried several times over the years but always stopped around 50 pages in due to my abysmal attention span and lack of motivation. This was an incredible introudction to the fantasy genre for the beginning of my literary journey. Bennet’s world is beautifully build, the characters are vibrant, well-defined and feel real. Read my full review on my Medium post. - 5/5 stars

City of Blades - Robert Jackson Bennett
I was initially disappointed by this sequel to City of Stairs. I think I had expected something identical to my experience with my previous read. In my novice reader’s experience, my tastes were very one dimensional: I like a style or a story or a character and I want more of it. Nothing else, no changes, just the same. City of Blades, while taking place in the same world as the first book of the series, is certainly a departure. Although my rating would likely be higher if I read this book today, I believe I would still have a similar complaint: in City of Stairs I wanted to learn so much more about the history of the world, the lives of the people, but City of Blades felt limited in that capacity. - 3/5 stars

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Another highschool classic! I needed things to read, so I started borrowing from Ashley’s shelf. This book felt a little clunky to me. The world felt established but not real, the characters didn’t feel like real people. Perhaps that was the point, the state of the world has progressed so far beyond what we know today that people’s interactions with it seem foreign and stilted. Though, if the intended message was something to the effect of “this is the future we are headed to” (which I gather was almost certainly the case) I would have liked to see more humanity within the characters to ground them as still human just with warped views. - 3/5 stars

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick
Blade Runner in text form! Overall, well paced, cool future crime solving. An enjoyable read. - 4/5 stars

Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety - Eric Schlosser
I had purchased this book a while back and finally decided to try to get throughit. This was my first venture into modern nonfiction, and it definitely is a difficult genre for me. Schlosser does a great job and weaving together a story of the Damascus accident (which I believe he takes some literary liberties with to have the story flow like a novel) with the more dry (but harrowing) facts and figures of other nuclear near-catastrophes. Command and Control is certainly depressing and the knowledge of how many “Broken Arrows” have occured since the invention of the Bomb is a heavy weight to carry. Overall I enjoyed the read, but I gathered that nonfiction may not be my style of choice. - 4/5 stars

Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial - Richard J. Evans
I decided to follow up on my feelings about nonfiction, to give it another go. This entry certainly requires explanation as the title alone may be a bit inflamatory. The 2016 election saw the beginnings of the rise of the alt-right: an ultra-nationalist, isolationist, racist wing of the conservative American mind as well as shockingly wide acceptance of consiracy theories like Qanon and the stolen election as well as racist sentiments about immigrants and people of color. Interwoven through all this filth were other tenants of far-right thought including Holocaust revisionism. The “softening” or outright denial of the Holocaust was of course rooted in anti-semitism, but I noticed many conversations about such topics as “just asking questions”, “a pursuit of the truth”, and “pushback against the establishment narrative” rather than blatant hatred. This type of framing seemed disturbingly accessible to audiences that normally wouldn’t interact with other far-right ideas. Much of the American political spaces on the internet (dominated by young white men) seemed to hyperfixate on the value of “objejctivism”, “logic” and “critical thinking.” I put these in quotes because I noticed that what was actually valued wasn’t these concepts themselves but the perception of them. Therefore, these online groups in a way became victims of their own superficiality: anyone presenting information as “logical” or “objective” was considered authoritative, knowledgeable, virtuous - worth listening to. And unfortunately, it seemed that proponents of far-right concepts caught on to this fact earlier than anyone else.
     I was then shocked to learn that these exact same talking points, framed in the exact same detestable yet digestible to the “objective” viewer had been espoused more than a decade prior. Lying About Hitler chronicles the most famous of these past Holocaust revisionists: David Irving. Irving’s tactics were nearly identical to the ones used today: frame the current understanding of the history of the Holocaust as incomplete and deceptive, and then introduce the “true facts” which are, in fact, actually incomplete and deceptive. Irving was (unfortunately) very successful at this, he tapped into a seemingly innate center of some people’s brains that make them yearn to “know something the whole world doesn’t”, to “see the objective truth where the rest of humanity is blinded by emotion and dogma”. Eerily similar to American conservatism today, especially after January 6th.
     This book also follows a detailed dive into the world of British lible laws. When Irving was accused of being a Holocaust denier, an antisemite, and knowingly deceptive, he sued Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt. In Britan, lible laws are shockingly skewed positively towards the prosecution rather than the defendant. This means that rather than the prosecution (Irving, in this case) needing to provide evidence that the defendant (the publication) is guilty of lible, the defendant needs to prove that they are not guilty. Therefore, the stage was set to establish into law the qualities that show, beyond a doubt, that someone was knowlingly lying about Hitler and the Holocaust. Richards Evans (the author of this book) was hired as an expert witness for the defense of Penguin Books and spent two years studying Irving’s works. The trial was ultimately won by the defending publication, they had shown that it was reasonable for them to accuse Irving of such detestible qualities. This book was incredible, it’s one part detailed disection of how to build and present an exquisit legal case, one part exploration into the mind of one of the most famous Holocaust revisionists, and one part psychological analysis into how the populace can become so easily deceived. Everyone should read this, it should be required reading in every highscool, period. - 5/5 stars

City of Miracles - Robert Jackson Bennett
The last book of the Divine Cities trilogy. A culmination of the jouney taken by our smattering of characters. This was action-packed, had Bennet’s typically fascinating descriptions of the world’s “magic” system, and was overall a fitting end to the series! - 4/5 stars

Dune - Frank Herbert
At the time, Dune (the movie) was set to be released in October 2020. So I figured I’d read the book before seeing the film. Because I rarely read before this excercise, I rarely had the experience as watching a movie of show while being knowledgeable of the source material. Dune the book is fine. Honestly a bit disappointing for me. Herbert’s style is certainly non-descript, there’s not much in the way of painting a picture for the reader, most of the text is hopping between the inner thoughts of the characters rather than describing what the characters are wearing, what they look like, etc. I was definitely a victim of high expectations going into this book. Not as stellar as the hype made it out to be. - 3/5 stars

Notes from the Underground - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Ehh. I guess classic Russian literature isn’t my thing. Might try some more out later, but this was a slog. - 2/5 stars

When Breath Becomes Air - Paul Kalanithi
Woo-ee this was a rough one. Amazing account of a brilliant young mind forced to face the abrupt abyss of death far too soon. A beautiful, sorrowful and melancholic journey into the fundamental questions of life and purpose. - 5/5 stars

Foundryside - Robert Jackson Bennett
Bennet’s first book of his new series! This was certainly tainted for me by my incredible experience reading City of Stairs. Foundryside just felt… different, maybe unrefined(?), the world felt fake, the magic a little clunky (part of this was on purpose, other times it felt underdevoloped and mired with unexplained technicalities). It was okay, I will read the entire series though! - 3/5 stars

Old Man’s War - John Scalzi
A cool sci-fi story. This one really felt like something I could write, seemed like an interesting shower-thought that blossomed into an entertaining action story! In all, nothing extrordinary to this book, but I don’t regret reading it. - 4/5 stars