Book Blog #307: The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason

 

Title: The Richest Man in Babylon

Author: George S. Clason

# of Pages: 194 (paperback)

Genre: Philosophical, Finance, Self-help 

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Synopsis: Countless readers have been helped by the famous “Babylonian parables,” hailed as the greatest of all inspirational works on the subject of thrift, financial planning, and personal wealth. In language as simple as that found in the Bible, these fascinating and informative stories set you on a sure path to prosperity and its accompanying joys. Acclaimed as a modern-day classic, this celebrated bestseller offers an understanding of—and a solution to—your personal financial problems that will guide you through a lifetime. This is the book that holds the secrets to keeping your money—and making more.

Review: I'm on a roll with these 3 star reviews. 

Definitely a huge contrast from Severance; this is very capitalist. While Ling Ma would tell you to NOT work until the end of the world, Clason's parables encourage people to have grit and determination, be hard working, and increase your wealth through smart investments. My favorite quote: “In my youth I looked about me and saw all the good things there were to bring happiness and contentment. And I realized that wealth increased the potency of all these. Wealth is a power. With wealth many things are possible” (p.13). 

This book was okay. Short but not sweet - The Richest Man in Babylon was about 3 times too long. Like a long winded email, the main points could have been easily summarized in a bulleted list (you can find such a list on the Wikipedia page for this book). The parables provide basic financial advice that seem intuitive once you read them, covering the main tenants/rules in broad strokes and thus making it a pretty simplistic read despite the old fashioned language. 

My takeaways were: as long as you are determined to be wealthy, you can be. Once you are determined, seize opportunities because luck comes most to those who do not hesitate. Then, when you have some sort of income no matter how small, save (and keep safe) at least a tenth of it and invest it WISELY (huge emphasis on not making a dumb investment - this point was repeated multiple times throughout the book). Finally, you are rich. 

Congrats! If you read this review, you don't have to read the book. I just saved you a couple hours of reading. In all seriousness, it's not a bad book, but it's long winded; reading a summary would be sufficient. 

Book Blog #306: Severance by Ling Ma

 

Title: Severance

Author: Ling Ma

# of Pages: 291 (hardback)

Genre: Adult Fiction, Science Fiction, Dystopia

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Synopsis: Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. So she barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Then Shen Fever spreads. Families flee. Companies halt operations. The subways squeak to a halt. Soon entirely alone, still unfevered, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost. Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers?

Review: I'm surprised thriller wasn't a top genre for this book. 

It's interesting because this book felt like a cross between the last two books I read: Migrations and Beautiful World, Where Are You. This is probably me noticing small similarities; Ma also doesn't use quotation marks around dialogue like in Beautiful World, Where Are You. Both Severance and Migrations were told in first person with time skipping (something I don't enjoy). However, where Severance and Migrations differ is that Migration's time skips helped build suspense and slowly unveiled a mystery while as Severance attempted to do a lower scale version of this with Candace's life during the Shen Fever, but it's much less exciting.

Beautiful World, Where Are You and Migrations also differ from this book in another major way; these books made me feel something - they touched my heart or evoked emotion (usually sympathy/sadness) at least once throughout their stories. For Severance, I was just scared during some parts (there's always a bit of a thrill when characters are exploring an apocalyptic world and the suspense of what would happen/show up). Candace might have been a more realistic protagonist than Franny in Migrations (and this might have been because Ma may have drawn from her experiences to develop this character since they have similarities in their backgrounds), but when it came down to who's story was more interesting, I would have to say it was Franny's.

This story actually is a little too real; it was written pre-pandemic, but there are some startling similarities between how this dystopian world was impacted by the Shen Fever and how the real world was affected by COVID-19. This is no fault on the author/book, but since everyone has lived through the pandemic, Severance didn't offer much unique perspective in terms of dystopian world building (thus making it less of an interesting story to read). Considering that she wrote this before knowing how COVID was to be handled in our past and present, I do still applaud her unintentional prediction of how the world would respond to a pandemic/epidemic. 

The final gripe I have with this book is that the ending was incredibly unsatisfying to me. It feels like this book should be part of a series, but at the same time I don't know how interested I would be in reading the rest of the series. The ending felt like Ma was tired of writing and left a lot of questions unanswered. Sometimes there's an art of leaving the reader wondering, but in this case it felt like the story barely got anywhere when it suddenly ended.

On a more positive note, I really liked the theme of change vs routine that Ma decided to explore with this book. Set in New York, one of the most upbeat and diverse cities where things seem to be full of change - everything is happening in New York. This backdrop was an interesting choice to show how the people within can still be stuck in a monotonous lifestyle. While Severance's plot an overdone apocalyptic journey, it still sends a powerful message on how a capitalistic society can negatively affect our values and in turn affect how we lead our lives. 

This book had potential, but it falls short. It's a quick read, but I would not be recommending it in a hurry; the theme is worth reading about, but I feel like there are other books out there that will have a similar message AND everything that this book was missing. 

Book Blog #305: Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy

 

Title: Migrations

Author: Charlotte McConaghy

# of Pages: 256 (hardback)

Genre: Adult Fiction, Science Fiction, Contemporary

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Synopsis: Franny Stone has always been the kind of woman who is able to love but unable to stay. Leaving behind everything but her research gear, she arrives in Greenland with a singular purpose: to follow the last Arctic terns in the world on what might be their final migration to Antarctica. Franny talks her way onto a fishing boat, and she and the crew set sail, traveling ever further from shore and safety. But as Franny’s history begins to unspool—a passionate love affair, an absent family, a devastating crime—it becomes clear that she is chasing more than just the birds. When Franny's dark secrets catch up with her, how much is she willing to risk for one more chance at redemption?

Review: This book was so CONFUSING.

Not confusing in the sense that I didn't understand what was going on in the story, although there is a fair bit of that as you peel the onion on our protagonist's life. I didn't realize that this book would be written in first person, which means she's a bit of an unreliable narrator at times. The story is also presented in slices from her life; sometimes you'll be reading about her present as she follows the terns on their migration to Antarctica, sometimes you are thrown a snippet of her life from her childhood, sometimes you're given a memory from somewhere in between. 

Time skips are always annoying to me as a reader because I always find myself wanting to learn more about a different slice of time but have to read through more boring time slices first before going back to the interesting part. It's frustrating, but I can understand why McConaghy decided to tell this story this way; it adds to the mystery. 

I was honestly surprised that mystery wasn't one of the genres for this book because I think that aspect of it is what kept me coming back to this book. It reminded me a bit of Silent Patient, which also time skipped around. Migrations differs however because I was not completely blindsided as I was in Silent Patient; although I could not predict everything that happened in Migrations, everything was not entirely unexpected either which weakened the shock value upon the big reveals. 

I was almost going to give this book four stars because it had me feeling emotional, especially at the end. When a book makes me FEEL something, that usually means it's a pretty good book. However, I didn't love the McConaghy's writing; the way she portrayed her characters felt unrealistic to me. For example, something felt off with the way she portrayed children; they way they acted seemed exaggerated, like how people would imagine a child would act instead of how they actually are. 

Another aspect I did not like was the first person narrative from Franny; she is such an extreme character since she is a huge environmentalist. It's difficult to be able to read from her perspective and hear her internal thoughts when she's not relatable (I want to help the planet and save the animals as much as the next person, but her love for birds and other creatures goes above and beyond). 

I was also shocked to find that this was basically a dystopia. The world isn't too different from the present, and I don't think this was clearly described in the synopsis. However, this was basically a cautionary tale on what could happen if we are not mindful of human impact on the Earth and other species. While this is a great message, it does come off as preachy since the characters were such extremists. 

So why was this book confusing? I don't know how to feel about it. I was emotionally affected, and even though I cannot relate to Fanny's personality, I still felt sympathy toward her and wanted to know more about her story. This alone would have led me to give it four stars at least, but there were so many other issues that I mentioned above that forced me to dock off an additional star; I think the story is good but the execution could have been better (such as in developing the characters to be more realistic). 

Although it wouldn't be at the top of my list, I would actually recommend this book; it's not that long of a read, and I'd advertise it as a mystery around our protagonist - who is Franny Stone, what is she doing, and why is she doing it? Framed as a mystery, it's actually a pretty gripping story. 

Book Blog #304: Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

 

Title: Beautiful World, Where Are You

Author: Sally Rooney

# of Pages: 356 (hardback)

Genre: Fiction, Contemporary, Romance

Rating: ★★★★☆

Synopsis: Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a break-up and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young—but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?

Review: I was flipping between 3 and 4 stars for this book, but I firmly see it as a four star book now that I finished it. 

I can see why this is "John Green for adults" (where the adult part is that it would be more relatable for adults, and there are more descriptive sex scenes); it scrutinizes the little details in the characters' lives and includes at great length Alice's and Eileen's existential pondering. This leads me to the first aspect that I didn't like about this book; every other chapter or so include a letter (written of course in the first person) between Eileen and Alice. This is where most of the existential pondering occurred, and honestly I was bored of it. They would ramble about religion or something they read recently, and overall it really broke the flow of the story. 

The rest of the book is written in third person, switching between Alice and Eileen for the most part. Rooney takes advantage of the third person POV to also go at great lengths to write flowery descriptions of the characters' situation; this I actually enjoyed sometimes or at the very least didn't mind Rooney including these. I found it helpful to understand the sentiment behind the characters' interactions, and I was better able to visualize the scene. 

Nevertheless, Beautiful World, Where Are You is far from groundbreaking; the TLDR is that four people (Alice, Eileen, Simon, and Felix) all have varying degrees of mundane lives and struggle with happiness in their lives. It's very slice of life, albeit one of the better ones, that depicts the cruel plainness of life and how easy it is (especially in adulthood) to feel lost and lack meaning in one's life. 

Definitely not giving me the warm and fuzzies, but I appreciate that it made me feel a mix of happiness and sadness/sympathy toward the characters; if it makes me feel something then it deserves some brownie points. 

It wouldn't be on the top of my recommended list and definitely won't be for everyone (it took me a while to get myself to sit down and read this book because often times I didn't see where this book was going/what the point was). If you like reading slice of life / people struggling with themselves and their relationships with others while they just live their life, then this is the book for you.