Book Club Review and Discussion: Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska by Warren Zanes

Thank you for allowing me this particular indulgence on the blog. Hopefully it's an easy one to skip, if you don't like to read and/or identify as female. This is PoYB's quarterly check in on Boys/Beers/Breakfast/Book Club, which, as of this publishing time (9:30 AM on 10/17/26), is convening for their 32nd meeting. I think I do it this way for two reasons. The first is that I find that documenting the art and entertainment that I engage with and document too my thoughts on it has a way of helping me remember that it happened at all. So much bullshit passes through our brains, and it's hard to remember the book or the album or the movie you read/heard/watched a couple months ago, let alone years ago. The second is that it's an easy reference for me during the book discussion, having my thoughts organized like this. So thanks. And if you identify as male or non-binary and can read and want to be part of our book club, hit me up!

spoilers for the book below!!!

So I'll want to talk about the music too, which is tricky. Tricky because I feel like I'm gonna get called out on it. We've read books that have been adapted into movies and TV shows, and I usually get pretty defensive about this being a BOOK club, and can we please not talk about the fucking crime detective TV show that the author had a hand in creating, please, this isn't a TV club it's a book club, etc. etc. But this is different, right? The book is about the music. You can't talk about the book without talking about the music. You are gonna react to the book differently depending on how you originally reacted to the music (or if you reacted to the music at all, which will be interesting to hear, if someone doesn't listen to Bruce Springsteen but read this book). It's baked right in.

My Springsteen opinions are numerous and they are already on this blog. My opinion of the book is that it did a great job at continuing the discussion as it was already happening in my head. I love thinking about music and so I loved reading a book written by someone who clearly loves thinking about music too. The basic thing that you can ask from this is that it gives you a different perspective on something you already knew and already had an opinion on. If it adds something new or changes how you think even slightly, then it's a success. I have never been the biggest fan of Nebraska, but I've always liked it (it's Springsteen, after all). I think I like it slightly more than I did before, but I appreciate it way more than I did prior to reading this book about it. That's the important part.

I love a good deep dive on a specific album, and the author here did a fantastic job at doing that. Deep dives usually go in both directions at once: inward and outward. What about the artist informed the art, and what about the art informs the audience. I thought both threads were easy to follow. I thought the best parts of the book were when these two paths intersected. E.g. when we hear from a few other musicians about their take on Nebraska (Steve Earle, etc.), and we are specifically asked, where was Bruce Springsteen while all his fans were being impacted by his album? Then it whips around and talks about the aftermath for the artist, and how it contrasted with the reaction from everyone else.

The reason I liked this book is that it didn't just tell me about an album. It told me about the world that I inhabit, through the lens of an album and the artist who made it. I think ultimately the author wants you to take the book out of the equation and think about the album as a way to connect with the world at large, and connect with yourself as you exist within that world. I don't know if I'm there yet with this album, but I appreciate Warren Zanes holding my hand and trying to get me there. 

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5 (everything about music gets a higher grade)

Discussion Questions

1. The book makes the argument that a song's greatest power is the ability to think about and talk about it afterward. Do you feel this way about Nebraska? Springsteen in general? Other music? None of the above?

2. Interesting to hear Springsteen talk about himself as "alienated," and the art as a way to combat that. Are all artists condemned to feel lonely?

3. Did the book do a good job handling the influences of this album? Like, was the discussion of Badlands handled appropriately, or did it distract?

4. Was the idea of making the demos into the actual album without changing it a good idea? Was it the defining idea that the book made it out to be?

5. I have to imagine that the movie that's based on this book made a huge fucking deal about Springsteen's relationship with his father, but it's not really touched on here at all. Most of that was touched on in Bruce's autobiography anyway. It feels weird to me that the movie would do that, to miss the point of this album being Bruce escaping himself, considering these characters to be their own thing and not some way to deal with the pain. Or were they? I dunno, I would be asking for general thoughts on the relationship between the artist and their family, their art, and their audience.

6. What do we make of the thesis that Nebraska is about the failure of the American dream? I thought this quote was good: "The American dream was always a brand that was sold to us."

7. I felt a kinship with Springsteen when they were talking about how he is weary of big hit songs because they distract from the album as a singular piece of art. I've always said that! What are your thoughts? And don't you think it's funny that Born in the U.S.A. sidesteps this issue by simple virtue of having so many hit songs on it that that becomes the entirety of the album instead of the distraction?

8. Are the other characters in this book served well? I'm talking about Jon Landau, Chuck Plotkin, etc.? Or is this the Bruce show?

9. I appreciated all the discussion about critical reaction to this album too. I liked the theory that Nebraska made it easy for critics to buy in, right before the commercial liftoff of Born in the U.S.A. I wonder what you, an amateur music critic (by virtue of being a member of this blog, whether you like it or not!), think about this theory, and what you might think about music criticism in general, and its role in music?

10. Is there a difference between being a songwriter and being a performer? I thought the comparison to James Brown was an interesting one, in this context. Lots of great comparison littered throughout this book. Springsteen/Landau as Lewis/Clark was another good one. Oh, and Springsteen's creation of Nebraska being his Odyssey!

Book Club Review and Discussion: The Candy House by Jennifer Egan

In approximately 150 minutes, give or take 30 depending on how long it takes to place a breakfast order, we will be meeting for the 31st BBBBook Club session. One of those Bs is Boys, so if you're a boy (either by assignment at birth or in true spirit), you should come out to the next meeting, happening sometime in October, book TBD. For now, here are some of my own thoughts about this quarter's book (chosen by yours truly, my third book pick in our seven-plus years of existence).

spoilers for the book below!!!

What I needed to do before choosing this book was confirm that it was not a sequel, or at the very least did not come saddled with prerequisite reading, because that wouldn't be fair to book club. I was told by multiple sources that it is not a traditional sequel, though it is connected to the 2010 novel A Visit from the Good Squad. I will confess now that Good Squad is one of my favorite books of all time, and possibly the most influential to me in terms of my own writing (the entire rickety 'Til Death structure is based around my love of that book). Do you need to read one to understand the other? After reading both in the past three weeks, I can say no, you do not. But I will be curious to see if anyone who's never heard of A Visit from the Goon Squad will feel this strongly about The Candy House as I do.

Recency bias tells me that I might like The Candy House even better. Holy SHIT!!! Jennifer Egan is my kind of writer. He sentences are punchy, never show-off-y. The pieces are simple, but she lines up so many of these simple pieces like bricks that the resulting structures tower over everything. The shtick with these two novels is that each chapter acts like a short story about a different main character, someone who was briefly mentioned in the previous chapter. And many of the stories are written in a unique style—in this one, we have one composed of email exchanges, one written entire in first-person-plural, one is teenage Xanga-core, one that was originally released as a series of tweets in spy-directive-style second-person, competing narratives, and a bunch of stories about someone as told by someone else, from a removed point of view.

And the way that The Candy House tops Goon Squad is the way that the author manages to take this premise and tear it all down, like tear the fucking curtain away and knock down the fourth wall completely. There is a narrative device that questions whether we should be doing the "different characters" thing in the first place, and then it's revealed that fiction is doing that anyway, and that maybe fiction writing (as written by Jennifer Egan, I'm inferring here) is the only way to understand humanity at its widest scope.

The final words in the novel are "Anything you want." The Candy House manages to be everything I want. I know that's cheating, in terms of the Book Club comparison that we typically do here. I chose the book and I knew from experience that I was going to love this book and so I can't really compare. Nevertheless, I still marvel at its stunning beauty, and take its lessons with me forever.

GRADE: 5 pukes out of 5

Discussion Questions

1. There are hundreds of things I could ask in these discussion questions, but I'll stick with ten for now, and hope we can get to the rest during the actual in-person discussion. What is the overall theme or point of this book? One I kept returning to was "It's never too late."

2. Alfred reflects on why we seek discomfort. Do you think he's right in thinking that there is a "river underneath the human condition and a need to see it again"?

3. There's a moment when Miles thinks "neither gives a shit; I've imagined that entire drama." Does this speak more toward our tendency to think we are more important than we actually are, or more toward our desire for fiction to dramatize our lives?

4. Is Lincoln correct when he says "measuring the mystery makes it more mysterious sometimes"?

5. Are we meant to think that the Choose Your Consciousness is a good thing or a bad thing? Could it be both?

6. Is Chris right in that everything we see and experience is a stock situation? Or can there be experiences outside of that?

7. Noreen via Hannah says "the secret to a happy ending is knowing when to walk away." Any truth to that?

8. How about that hilarious irony of Jazz saying "I don't do reunions" and saying that in a chapter that basically turns into a reunion of every Visit from the Goon Squad character?

9. An author character suspects that Gregory is depressed because "maybe not-writing is what's draining you." Is this what I'm feeling lately, as the blog fades away from my life very slowly?

10. This is a throwaway line in the Lulu passage, but somehow has attached to me and has become the most important point of the book. Tell me what you think? "In the new heroism, the goal is to renounce the modern fixation on being seen and recognized."

Book Club Review and Discussion: Five Decembers by James Kestrel

Four times per year, some dudes and/or non-female-identifying humans get together for book club. Because this is how my brain functions now, here on the blog, I find it helpful to gather my thoughts in blog post form, really about anything but especially about books. So I've taken to writing down brief thoughts and discussion questions here over the last couple years, just to get my shit in order before we sit down at whatever bar or eatery or public park or private house that quarter's captain has chosen for us to meet. Here are some thoughts. If you do not identify as a woman, and you're interested in joining a book club, hit me up!

spoilers for this book below!!!!

The cool thing about Five Decembers is that it sets you up at the beginning to think that this is gonna be your typical gumshoe detective mystery. By the end of the first section, it pulls the rug out from under you completely. It's not hard to guess as to how they do it, once you realize that the initial setting of the plot is late November 1941 in Hawaii. But the way that real history in that specific time and place is woven into the fabric of the who-done-it is... well, I think the best way to say it is that it's the opposite of Forrest Gump. The protagonist is deeply affected by the war in very specific ways, but he is, at the end of the day, more of a witness to its horrors than an active participant in it. This makes the stakes feel personal, and thus, there's an empathy here that is often missing in your typical detective story.

In terms of the actual bones of the writing, Kestrel does a great fucking job. The descriptions of that time and place are extremely vivid. Not that I've read too many detective novels, but I get the sense they are plot-first novels. We've read books in book club that were like this, where the words are at the service of telling a story. We've read other books where the words themselves are beautiful, regardless of whether the story is satisfying or not. I'm still leaning toward placing Five Decembers in the former category, but it's on the fence more than I would've expected. There are little moments throughout the book that I stopped and was like, damn that's beautiful. But overall, we're moving full-steam-ahead to the conclusion, and that's fun too.

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5

Discussion Questions:

1. How about that ending? Was it necessary? And more importantly, what do we think the "basic principle" was? The answer may seem obvious, but maybe it's not.

2. Do you think the mystery / who-done-it was concluded satisfactorily? Did all the clues make sense?

3. Was there anything in the plot that felt like a good swerve, something unexpected? It's tough to read a book that doesn't surprise you at all. I felt like I was satisfactorily surprised by many of the developments here.

4. The title is beautiful, in my opinion. How it gives a sense of how things repeat, cycle, come back after being gone. How everything matters. Or am I reading into it too much?

5. What lessons can we take from this book, especially in the way that it was unequivocally anti-nazi, and especially as we live through the rise of nazism in America?

6. Did the connections between characters feel real and true? The cover of the book probably gives away what the author intended to be the truest relationship in Joe McGrady's life, but still.

7. Did you agree with how the author handled Pearl Harbor? The atom bomb? Does it matter?

8. Joe was pretty down on himself, saying that he made so many wrong choices. Do you agree with him? Or was it just humans expressing normal regret about how things turned out?

9. Did anyone else notice (or even keep track of) how many times Joe said "Okay."? It felt after a while like a koan, something to calm him as the world around him burned.

10. How does this compare to other detective novels, etc. etc. etc.

Book Club Review and Discussion: Stephen Florida by Gabe Habash

Every quarter, some male-identifying friends and I get together to talk about a book. I don't think I've ever noted this before in this space, but: it's kinda rare that dudes are talking about books, right? I read something recently, Reddit or whatever, in which the guy writing was like, I joined a book club, there are 37 members, I'm literally the only man. But guys need spaces to talk vulnerably! That's what this book club is for! My apologies to anyone disqualified from our crew due to identifying as female. I will literally bend over backward to read a book or watch a movie or listen to an album with you, in penance for deigning to allow we disgusting boys to have our own space, just four times a year.

This book was described—on this very blog!—as "weird." And it was, but I'm gonna be a little upset if that somehow becomes the thesis of our book club discussion. That it was weird, that we should talk about all the ways in which it was weird. The description feels dismissive to me. (It wasn't used as dismissive on this blog by our esteemed colleague and erstwhile Boys Book Club member Nate, and the idea of something being tough to read and the value in that has been discussed ad nauseam in our other book club, so I won't belabor that point.) Maybe weird is just the author being descriptive in ways that no one has done before. New is always considered Weird, but let's just this one time consider the possibility that we have in our power the capabilities to acknowledge when New is also Good and that we should not so easily succumb to Weird.

In addition to that, I would say that the weird is serving a point. It's not just weird for its own weird sake; it is instead weird because that's what the main character is experiencing: weirdness. Even if he doesn't have the capacity to describe it as such. What we can say ***SPOILERS*** about the "purpose" of Stephen Florida is that this is a vivid representation of the internal trials and tribulations of knowing that the end is right around the corner. Whether that ending is "winning the championship and ending your sports career on top" or "buying an antique gun and shooting yourself in the head" is left dangling as the tension throughout the novel, but the journey to that mysterious ending is clear. There is a man, and he is about to end the thing he's always done, and so, how does that make him feel? In what ways is he changed? How does it break him? We don't get answers, which is the weird part. The questions make the journey worth it though.

I found the journey both fascinating and touching. Fascinating in that Stephen's thoughts and movements are completely erratic, and you never know where it's gonna go. Touching because I am definitely familiar with the idea of "leaving something behind in life because it's time for it to end." I remember just feeling nothing on the day of my college graduation, just like hollowed out, and I felt seen when Stephen felt the same way before his final match, and afterward. How he keeps looking for meaning, and keeps coming up empty, no matter what he focuses on and when those things end.

But also... yeah, fucking weird. I'm really excited to talk about the weirdness, and to knock that shit down and pin it to the fucking mat if it's presented as the Main Point of this thing. Because it's not, and my knee feels pain-free.

GRADE: 4.5 pukes out of 5

Potential Discussion Questions

1. How long did it take you to adjust to Habash's writing style / Florida's thinking style? For me, I fully bought in at the beginning when Florida announced "I am a motherfucking astronaut."

2. Defining one's legacy—this is Stephen's driving force for a good portion of the book. Do you ever worry about how your own legacy will be defined?

3. "You're only who you really are when you're doing what you really want." Is this true? Is it the flip-side of imposter syndrome?

4. Stephen is told at one point, by his therapist I think, that he creates obstacles so that he can knock them down. Is that true? Does this explain Shane, or Fink, or Silas? Or did things happen to him beyond his control too?

5. He keeps the pain to himself: "It's my own show." Would you say that one of his character flaws, if not his main one, is that he's unwilling to share himself with others?

6. Stephen is obviously unwell. Something I was curious about was to what extent the people around him acknowledge this. Did Mary Beth, and if so, was that why she left? Silas apparently did. Shane didn't, and we're not sure if he was killed over it. Was this literally ALL in his head? Or did the façade crack even slightly to those around him?

7. "How can I be going crazy if I'm winning?" Reminds me of something an alcoholic would say. Is Stephen addicted to winning? What happens when that addiction removes its mask and shows you its ragged-toothed maw?

8. "Sometimes I regret that I'll never have the intensity of feeling that I had growing up." An agreeable statement to you? Does Stephen actually act out this feeling, or is it a false belief? He has some intense feelings now too, wouldn't you say?

9. The idea that a career center worker would imply that a student is really only equipped to work at an oil drill seems insane to me. So first, did this actually happen, or did Stephen make it up in his mind? Especially if we are led to believe that Shane was murdered, which doesn't sound like something that happens outside of Stephen's head. Second, is this indicative of the life that Stephen could have had but has missed out on because there are no sane caregivers in his life? (Like, is that why the coach and the aunt are both separately labeled as nuts?)

10. So wait, what do you think the point of this book is? Assuming you disagree with my theory that it's about what happens to the brain right before the trauma of something important ending?

11. What do you think about jazz, and do you equate it to murder?

Book Club Review and Discussion: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

The 28th BBBBook Club (boys, beers, breakfast, book) is beginning right now. Here's the book we read. I feel like if I don't write about shit that I read or watch or listen to, I forget about it, so I'm here to document my experience with this book. I didn't write about the summer BBBBook Club pick, Vineland, but maybe I'll manage to see the film that's inspired by it in theaters—One Battle After Another, out right now! I think some book club dudes went to see it last night. I had a wedding. No spoilers please.

I looked through the list of the 27 books I've read for this club, and tried to figure out what was the last book that we read that made me feel this way. How I felt: hooked, elated, invested, enthralled. I think maybe Thursday Murder Club in April 2021? So: it's been a while. That's not to say that I haven't liked any books in the past four and a half years. But there's a certain brand of "liking" something that feels like I'm watching an intense movie or something. Just total popcorn fest shit here. Project Hail Mary had the magic.

"We gotta save the world" is usually a solid premise when done correctly. I like how this book approached the concept. There wasn't some evil entity that threatened to wipe out humanity. The villain was... space algae, basically? That works great for me. I have recently found myself drawn to movies that lack a traditional villain, and avoid the "good vs. evil" structure. I think maybe that's because there are too many real-life villains out there, and maybe fiction is a good way to take a break from that.

If I were to name a flaw, I'd say that the hook of "astronaut has amnesia and can't remember why he's in space and has to figure it out" faded a little too quickly. It went from "here's what I'm remembering" to "excuse to give flashbacks." Which is fine. I actually liked the flashbacks, and if you're gonna have them, you might as well attach them to a weak "amnesia" device. I don't think it ruined anything, but it definitely took me out of the story a couple times.

Still, that's petty bullshit when you have a story with this strong of an engine. I was totally locked in. I wanted these characters to win! That's when you know it's a good story—I fucking cared. Some books I'm reading because we have to read them for book club. Others I read because I cannot stop.

GRADE: 4.5 pukes out of 5

BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

(**SPOILERS!!!!!!)

1. What did you think of the humor? Took me a minute to adjust to the style, which was... a little lame. But what got me through it was imagining the humor as Phil Lord / Christopher Miller-style humor. Felt less lame to me to imagine the jokes being told by Legos. I think it's gonna be a fun movie!

2. Thoughts about this book being about "empathy from shared circumstances"? That's my theory. The way Rocky and Ryland bond over being the last ones on their respective ships is so sad and so true.

3. Lots of discussion about language, and then way we communicate. Both between human and alien, but also between people of different nations on earth. And then the idea of "naming" things. Thoughts?

4. More on that: how fascinating is it to try to think about how other languages just don't have words for something? There was a brief interlude about Spain having tornados now and only having a word for it because conquistadors had to make it up when they witnessed them in America. Which feeds into the whole thing where Ryland and Rocky are making up words in their own language.

5. Are the action sequences well-written? I thought they were a little tough to follow, but that might've been just me.

6. How cool is it, like a perspective adjuster for sure, when Rocky expresses admiration for how cool humans are? And vice-versa? Humans are cool. It's nice to be reminded of that.

7. How did you handle all the hard science? Do we think it's accurate? Does it matter?

8. Does all life come from the same source?

9. What do you think about Stratt's decision re: Ryland's forced participation? I think it toed the line of villainy in the perfect way, without actually crossing it. Does her decision's success justify her making it?

10. "If I'm going to die, it's going to have meaning." Thoughts?

Book Club Review and Discussion: The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov

I always feel a little guilty that I am part of a social club that I can't invite half the people in my life to join. It's a Boys Book Club. If you don't meet the requirements due to the gender you feel within you being feminine, then I apologize. Doubly sorry for writing about the books that the Boys read once per quarter here on the blog. I hope the harm inflicted is minimum, since it's a Saturday morning, and the blog has a low hit rate on Saturdays. I also insist that this is a purely selfish endeavor—if I don't write about the art that I interact with, then I find that that art fades away a lot more quickly than the shit that I'm documenting and discussing on this godforsaken blog. So here we are. Please skip if need be.

Fuck, I love time travel stories. Wasn't I just talking about this somewhere on the blog? Right, right, for 12 Monkeys. I really appreciated reading a time travel book from 1955. I know this couldn't possibly be the first time travel story, but it felt like it was an O.G. anyway, being 70 years old. And, like, not much has changed with the idea of time travel in the past seven decades, which means that this is proof that time travel tales are TIMELESS.

So that was one good thing. The other good thing is that this was accessible science fiction. I was worried—perhaps we all were, I guess I'll find out soon—that we were finally gonna run into a sci-fi novel that was too bogged down in technical terms that confused me. Especially because this is an older book, and especially because Isaac Asimov is known as one of the Big Three classic sci-fi writers. But it was actually quite a manageable read. A few parts where I had to stop and figure it out before I moved on, but otherwise, this played more like a mystery novel than a sci-fi novel.

And because of that, I don't want to talk too much about the plot mechanics, since I don't want to spoil anything. Really the only thing you need to come prepared for is a general idea about how time travel could theoretically work. There are time loops, and there are alternate realities. Actually, I heard that Loki was based on this novel? Actually, let's not go there... talking about Marvel will make me hate this book, and I didn't hate it. I liked it a lot.

Probably mid-tier in the list of 26 books I've read with this book club so far, in terms of Stuff We Can Talk About. But in terms of "readable" books, this was near the top. I sped through it. Fuck, I fucking love time travel.

GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5

BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

(**SPOILERS!!!!!!)

1. Are the rules of time travel clear enough? Do the characters act reasonably when confronted with the realities of time travel, or do you think you would act differently?

2. Is the fact that Noÿs, the only female character, is written a bit thinly a failure on Asimov's part, or a limitation of the genre? Or a limitation of the plot of this particular novel?

3. I suppose Asimov attempted to explain the lack of women characters in the novel. Was it a good explanation? Or did you suspect this was just a good way to not have to write female characters?

4. Do we think that Harlan is a well-rounded character? A dynamic one? Did you like his as the protagonist, or did he frustrate?

5. What do we make of Senoff? Not much time is spent on him, but I thought it was fascinating that we got a look at someone who is accused of "thinking too deeply" about the subject of time travel.

6. The interlude about the Maintenance staff was interesting too, how Harlan realizes that they probably live happy lives just working and spending free time relaxing. Are these thoughts applicable in our own world?

7. If there are infinite realities and they can be changed by the Eternals, then are the stakes lowered?

8. What plot holes can you find? There are a few, being as this is a complicated time travel story. Or maybe there are none, and I'm just misreading it?

9. What would you say is the main point of the novel? I suspect it has to do with mankind's struggle and how we need that struggle to survive and flourish, but who the fuck am I?

10. This novel was written fourteen years before we reached the moon. Its eyes are facing the stars. Do we still feel the same way about space travel, or was that a phase?

Book Club Review and Discussion: Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar

Once a quarter, some boys get together for BBBBook Club (boys, beers, breakfast, book). For the past couple of years, I've tried to post some of my thoughts and discussion points about each book on the blog. I don't know why. Maybe as a way to keep those thoughts around, make them permanent, as opposed to let them float off into the sky and out of our lives forever. For those not interested and for those who identify as female, I apologize for the wasted blogging space that you've happened upon on a Saturday morning.

Let's see, if you include the unofficial book club meeting last summer, then this is our 26th book. I've read 25 of them (chose to not go to a book club meeting out of state). Unless I'm forgetting something, Memoirs of Hadrian was absolutely the toughest one to get through. I'm not saying it was the worst (I can think of at least one other one I liked less), and I'm not saying that it's going to be a bad discussion because of it (indeed, sometimes the worse books inspire the better discussions). But I am saying that these past ten days with Memoirs of Hadrian were fucking rough. There wasn't a single point in which I lost myself to the book. Every page, every word felt like a chore.

The premise of the book is that these are letters written by the Roman Emperor Hadrian to his adopted grandson and future emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Hadrian gives an account of his life, as well as offers up some philosophical and emotional thoughts, as his life gradually comes to an end. The endless details of Hadrian's tasks and accomplishments as leader were so dry and uninventive—I'm assuming the 30-page note from the author at the end explained that much of it was historically accurate, based on all accounts we have about Hadrian, but I did not read those 30 pages, because I was tapped out by the end of the book proper.

The philosophical thoughts were intriguing and occasionally thought-provoking. I feel like I stacked up a bunch of them in my phone memo, and I can picture much of them fueling the discussion, which is good. I'd venture to say that, through the act of writing them down and then talking about them today, I'm going to remember some Hadrian quotes for a long, long time. Which is impressive of a book that I did not enjoy!

Still, picking through a bloated and droll book for choice quotes is no way to read a novel. It's not fun! We can salvage the pieces afterward and making it palatable, but it does not make for a pleasant experience while reading. It's like the childhood game hide-and-go-seek-in-the-dark. Most of the time spent in that game is disorienting, with occasional physical contact with another being, but totally at random and mostly by accident.

It's possible that my feelings about my reading experience (as echoed, I have to imagine, by other members of book club, but we'll see) have something to do with the fact that this novel was published in 1951. Many empires have risen and fallen in the 74 years since its release, and it could just be that our modern sensibilities as readers in 2025 are just not in tune with a book written so long ago. I struggled through Shakespeare too, not because it "wasn't good," but because the style shift from what I was used to was just too much for me to handle. Plus, add the fact that this is a 1951 book that is supposed to be historically accurate to a letter that would have been written in 138 A.D. It's probably closer, stylistically, to 1951, but still, the context and setting do it no favors.

My final thought has to do with "modern sensibilities" as well. I think that maybe readers like us, short-attention-spanned millennials, are less inclined to be invested in a book that doesn't have a strong narrative as the engine. I won't go as far as saying that "nothing happened" in Memoirs of Hadrian, but the focus was absolutely more on the thoughts and feelings of the author of the letters, as opposed to the story of that author's life. If a book amounts to a stack of philosophical musings, then your modern-day reader might be inclined, subconsciously perhaps, to dismiss it, since you can get your musings for free on the internet, and in brighter colors.

Anyways, I'm glad to be done this, and I'm excited to talk about it.

GRADE: 2 pukes out of 5

BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

(**SPOILERS!!!!!!)

1. Does it weaken or strengthen the book that we start with Hadrian close to death, and circle back to it by the end?

2. Did the author of Memoirs of Hadrian, Marguerite Yourcenar, have an agenda? Did she, for example, use this mostly historical account to make a case for pacificism, anti-consumerism, etc.?

3. Do you agree with Hadrian when he said that challenges and even torture are bearable if you give your whole self to them?

4. Was Hadrian clear sense of empathy effectively portrayed? E.g. his anti-war stance being formed by his disgusted feelings about stepping over dead bodies on the battlefield.

5. Hadrian's sexuality was made pretty clear without him ever actually defining it. How do you think this was handled? About as well as it could have in 1951, perhaps? Or could the author have been even more daring?

6. To echo a Hadrian question: is courage defined as being cool and detached, or is it defined as a wild recklessness toward life?

7. Not really a question, more a choice quote. When Hadrian writes about how Trajan chose him to be the next emperor: "One of those series of events which will forever be impossible for me to reconstruct, and upon which nevertheless my destiny has been built."

8. Same for this. "All nations who have perished up to this time have done so for lack of generosity."

9. What do make of the references to Judea, Palestine? As well as Jesus, and the "possibility" of a bishop making Rome his capital? Do they stick out in their obvious attempts at the author hinting at history? Or just the sign of a wise emperor?

10. Wait, was Hadrian supposed to be a good person, according to historians? Would knowing literally anything about Roman history have helped me in liking this book?

11. What was the best part of the book? For my money, it was the grieving after the death of Antonous. 

BONUS: How likely, from a scale of 1 to 10, is it that, when Puke on Your Birthday finally calls it quits, the final post will somehow incorporate the following Memoirs of Hadrian quote? "It made me vomit, but the experience had been tried."

Book Club Review and Discussion: Galveston

The 24th installment of the Boys/Beers/Breakfast/Book Club is kicking off at the same time this blog post hits the internet. If you're a boy and you can read and you want to read a book and you want to discuss that book in person and you'd like to do that four times a year for the rest of your life and you live in the Greater Philadelphia Area, please alert me, and I'll add you to the email list.

In the meantime, here are some (very quick) thoughts about this quarter's novel, Galveston, as well as ten potential questions that might spur discussion during a conversation about the book, hopefully steering that conversation away from True Detective, which has no place in any book club discussion whatsoever, no matter who wrote the book and what else that author has done. ***SPOILERS***

Okay, but if there was one aspect of the True Detective series that definitely works, I'll cop to it being the time jump thingy. Ya know, the old person contemplates the shit that he got into as a youngin', and the main timeline of the season following that character as that youngin', and eventually we find out what happens in between, and the old person solves the mystery, finally, after decades. You know. You've seen True Detective. You love being in the zeitgeist. You love chatting around the water cooler. You think time is a flat whatever yadda yadda. I say FUCK True Detective. But I'll say that the time-jumping works, and I'll say that it works well in this novel too.

Thankfully, the characterization is on-point in this book too. There are no A-list celebrities sucking up air in this thing, since it's a book, so how could there be, I guess. At the beginning, I thought Roy Cady (our protagonist) was going to be a little flat. But he got there. Again—seeing him as an old dude with regrets really did help. Pizzolatto knows what he's going there. Maybe Rocky is a little thin, but then again, maybe she wasn't meant to be a character at all. Maybe she was meant to be a plot device to get Roy where he needed to go, emotionally speaking. It's possible that Pizzolatto doesn't write women very well. Who among us, etc. etc.

Generally, I liked the concept of a rough-and-tumble alcoholic finding purpose in life through taking care of two kids, and finding that he is drawn to that responsibility even when he tries to pull away. I also liked the idea of Roy receiving a cancer diagnosis on Page 1, and see throughout the story how that might push and pull him in directions he'd otherwise avoid as a healthy man. The plot was streamlined, and I like being able to bang this out in three days. I usually like books that are "sprawling." Galveston did not sprawl. It slowly crawled forward on one path, toward its inevitable and satisfying conclusion.

Story was B/B+. Beauty of the words was more like B-/C+. Still, I enjoyed reading it, and I guess that's what counts the most.

GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5

BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. We know how the hurricane plays out, with its journey from the background to the foreground of the plot. But what does it symbolize?

2. Is Roy Cady a trustworthy narrator?

3. At one point, Roy makes the case that we tell stories about the past so as to not get swallowed by the past. At another (earlier) point, he says "the past doesn't exist." I think the books wants you to believe in the power of stories (obviously), but which do you think is true?

4. So wait, are women written poorly in this book? Does Roy's subtle misogyny serve to highlight his journey, or is he just an asshole? Or both?

5. Do we agree with this quote from Roy: "All weak people have the same obsession: satisfaction"?

6. Was Killer Trey a necessary character? What purpose did he serve?

7. The thread of alcoholism is handled well throughout. It's never really explicit (beyond the fact that he at one point in the present is at an AA meeting). But the drinking is ultimately his downfall (didn't remember making the call that tipped off the bad guys). I wonder if readers who don't consider themselves get as much out of that thread as I did?

8. What was your favorite anecdote? "Favorite" not necessarily being a happy one. I liked reading about Gary's rabbits. Extremely sad.

9. Were there any parts of this book that you thought might act well as TV or movie? I didn't, but I'm just asking. If I had to choose, I'd say the initial gun fight. I could picture that in my head. Wouldn't have the same impact on the screen though. Especially because the novel says something like "all of this took maybe five seconds." I love when books do that shit. I can't stand TV because it can't.

10. Is Roy Cady a good person?

Infinite Jest Book Club Notes #8 of 8: Pages 845 - 981

In the interest of posterity, I have moved all the notes that were written on the Infinite Jest message board last year. This will serve to preserve something that I spent a ton of time on, plus can act as a digital guide for anyone who decided to attempt to read my favorite book of all time after 2023 (or as a guide for myself when I eventually reread it).

Please see the Infinite Jest tag for other posts already up. This is the last one. Before you read, double-check that you are on the right blog post; the pages are at the top, and I don't want you to be spoiled.

Pages 845-864: 13th-Stepping

Infinite Jest Book Club Notes #7 of 8: Pages 721 - 845

In the interest of posterity, I'm attempting to move all the notes that were written on the Infinite Jest message board last year. This will serve to preserve something that I spent a ton of time on, plus can act as a digital guide for anyone who decided to attempt to read my favorite book of all time after 2023 (or as a guide for myself when I eventually reread it).

Please see the Infinite Jest tag for other posts as they go up. Before you read, double-check that you are on the right blog post; the pages are at the top, and I don't want you to be spoiled.

Pages 721-747: AFR schemes; Joelle cleans

Infinite Jest Book Club Notes #6 of 8: Pages 601 - 721

In the interest of posterity, I'm attempting to move all the notes that were written on the Infinite Jest message board last year. This will serve to preserve something that I spent a ton of time on, plus can act as a digital guide for anyone who decided to attempt to read my favorite book of all time after 2023 (or as a guide for myself when I eventually reread it).

Please see the Infinite Jest tag for other posts as they go up. Before you read, double-check that you are on the right blog post; the pages are at the top, and I don't want you to be spoiled.

Pages 601-619: Gately versus Lenz, the Nucks, the world, himself

Infinite Jest Book Club Notes #5 of 8: Pages 489 - 601

In the interest of posterity, I'm attempting to move all the notes that were written on the Infinite Jest message board last year. This will serve to preserve something that I spent a ton of time on, plus can act as a digital guide for anyone who decided to attempt to read my favorite book of all time after 2023 (or as a guide for myself when I eventually reread it).

Please see the Infinite Jest tag for other posts as they go up. Before you read, double-check that you are on the right blog post; the pages are at the top, and I don't want you to be spoiled.

Pages 489-508: Marathe and Steeply talk temptation; James does math; Ken's NA meeting

Infinite Jest Book Club Notes #4 of 8: Pages 342 - 489

In the interest of posterity, I'm attempting to move all the notes that were written on the Infinite Jest message board last year. This will serve to preserve something that I spent a ton of time on, plus can act as a digital guide for anyone who decided to attempt to read my favorite book of all time after 2023 (or as a guide for myself when I eventually reread it).

Please see the new Infinite Jest tag for other posts as they go up. Before you read, double-check that you are on the right blog post; the pages are at the top, and I don't want you to be spoiled.

Pages 342-379: Boston AA on Interdependence Day

Infinite Jest Book Club Notes #3 of 8: Pages 219 - 342

In the interest of posterity, I'm attempting to move all the notes that were written on the Infinite Jest message board last year. This will serve to preserve something that I spent a ton of time on, plus can act as a digital guide for anyone who decided to attempt to read my favorite book of all time after 2023 (or as a guide for myself when I eventually reread it).

Please see the new Infinite Jest tag for other posts as they go up. Before you read, double-check that you are on the right blog post; the pages are at the top, and I don't want you to be spoiled.

Pages 219-240: All Joelle, All the Time

Infinite Jest Book Club Notes #2 of 8: Pages 95 - 219

In the interest of posterity, I'm attempting to move all the notes that were written on the Infinite Jest message board last year. This will serve to preserve something that I spent a ton of time on, plus can act as a digital guide for anyone who decided to attempt to read my favorite book of all time after 2023 (or as a guide for myself when I eventually reread it).

Please see the new Infinite Jest tag for other posts as they go up. Before you read, double-check that you are on the right blog post; the pages are at the top, and I don't want you to be spoiled.

 

Pages 95-121: More Marathe/Steeply, and lots of the ETA boys

Infinite Jest Book Club Notes #1 of 8: Pages 3 - 95

In the interest of posterity, I'm attempting to move all the notes that were written on the Infinite Jest message board last year. This will serve to preserve something that I spent a ton of time on, plus can act as a digital guide for anyone who decided to attempt to read my favorite book of all time after 2023 (or as a guide for myself when I eventually reread it).

Please see the new Infinite Jest tag for other posts as they go up. Before you read, double-check that you are on the right blog post; the pages are at the top, and I don't want you to be spoiled.

Note about the first 100 pages: when I first started the message board, my thoughts were spread out into different messages for different scenes. Starting after this, the thoughts will be groups together in 25-ish-page increments (according to how we had the page counts designed week-by-week in book club). This is why the following notes are all over the place. I did the best I could to organize.

Year of Glad

Book Club Review and Discussion: The Three-Body Problem

Book club is beginning right now. If you identify as a boy and you are able to read and you're gonna be in the Philadelphia area on an October Saturday morning, hit me up for your invite to the next one.

As a way to get my own book club juices flowing, I try to write a quick blurb-length review and ten potential discussion questions in anticipation of our conversation. Maybe if you've read the book too (no idea how popular this one is, but the existence of a recent streaming-landfill drama TV series indicates maybe it's not unpopular), then you can follow along from home.

Without giving away any significant plot points, I'll say that there was a character at one point that feared the human race because of their rapid acceleration in progress. Moving to the agriculture age took millennia, moving to the industrial age took centuries, moving to the information age took decades, so who knows how fast progress is going to move after that. And I thought that was interesting for a few reasons, not the least of which because it acted as a handy metaphor for the book itself and how much I enjoyed reading it. The first half of the book was extremely slow, the third quarter of it picked up significantly, and the final quarter was a blur of bonkers genius. It took a long time to pick up, but once it did, there was no stopping this motherfucker.

I'm hit-or-miss on the science fiction. I thought the last sci-fi book we read (Lagoon, exactly one year ago) was just pretty okay. This one was a lot better. I'm not impressed when the science elements are, like, an allegory. It needs to go beyond that. The Three-Body Problem got there, and spoke beautiful of the human condition, while of course at the same time speaking of creatures that are not human at all. There's a way to make that hokey, but this wasn't hokey. Just dense with science and Chinese history, a lower start speed but a higher max speed.

What I can tell you about the plot is that it concerns humanity's search for life on other planets. There are personal dramas occurring on earth, but of course they start to seem petty once the narrative reaches those other lifeforms. I will say that most of the characters were well-drawn, like the angry cop Da Shi and the through line between all timelines, Ye Wenjie. Others, like Wang Miao, who is our audience stand-in for a lot of it, seem more like character sketches to get us through the plot. But it's all good, because when he does finally get us to the endgame, it's sublime.

I wonder if we lost something in translation too. Nothing plot-wise. Like, I got the point of the book, and I appreciated it. But, I don't know, at certain points, the English seemed plain to me. We've read books in this club in which every word sizzles, and every sentence is like a song. This wasn't that, and I tend to blame the fact that I wasn't reading it in its original language. Nothing I can do about that. It's not like I'm going to stop reading translated books after this. I wouldn't want to miss out.

Generally, I'd recommend the book. I think it requires a lot of patience to make it to the halfway mark, though, so my recommendations would be parsed out to those whom I know would have that patience. 

GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5

BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

(**SPOILERS!!!!!!)

1. I've probably asked this question before, but do you think that the foreshadowing was handled well? E.g. there was a line in Chapter 2 that was like "historians agree that this was a turning point in human history," and I was like, what? I guess it set the tone. Did it do well when it did this?

2. What did you make of all the science talk? Were you able to hang in there? Did some of it go over your head? Did it matter in the grand scheme of things?

3. Do you think Da Shi's journey from villain to anti-hero was earned? How about Ye's journey from savior to rival to... whatever?

4. There is a LOT of description of the Trisolarian world. Worth it to build this world in the story in addition to ours? I thought so, but I could see an opinion being that it was too much of a distraction.

5. Any thoughts on the differences between Adventists, Redemptionists, and Survivors? How about how it was mostly upper-class intellectuals that we joining this movement, and that the working class were largely uninterested in betraying other humans?

6. What was the most fantastical set piece? The nanofiber across the battleship seemed particular vivid to me.

7. Who wins: Yang or Lei? Or do they both lose for tangling with Ye? But I guess I'm speaking more ideologically.

8. On the one hand, it makes sense that this would be a TV show, since a lot of the chapters seemed episodic to me already. On the other hand: how much does this fucking TV show suck ass?

9. Is it really sunset for humanity? Is it worth reading the other books in the trilogy?

10. What can we say about the fact that there were people so willing to betray humans in favor of alien overlords? In that they just hated humankind, and not because they had faith in aliens or whatever. Is there anything we can do as citizens of the world to make sure that everyone feels wanted in humanity? That sounds corny, but you know what I'm trying to say.

Book Club Review and Discussion: The Iowa Baseball Confederacy

Boys/Beers/Breakfast/Book Club officially meets once per quarter, typically in January and April and July and October, on an agreed-upon Saturday morning. A few of us are meeting right now, though, assuming you are reading this at its publishing time. If you check your calendars, it's a Thursday morning in May. Call it an "unofficial" meeting. A baseball novel was chosen, and then after the discussion in Lot K, we'll be taking in an afternoon Phillies game. As a rule, I write a short review and discussion questions for each book in advance on the blog, and will do so again below, despite the fact that today's meeting will not enter the official record books but will instead slip into legend and myth.

The Phillies won in extra innings last night, and I received a text from a friend about it. I wasn't watching the game. I haven't felt the "magic" in baseball in a few years now. The Iowa Baseball Confederacy is the kind of novel that builds a strong case that I'm wrong in letting the magic go. Baseball is, in fact, beautiful, and absolutely worth fighting for.

The first thing you'll hear about when you come across this book is "this is the same author who wrote Shoeless Joe," and then, when your blank expression gives away the fact that you've never heard of that book either, the second thing you'll hear is "Shoeless Joe was the book that Field of Dreams was based on." I've never read Shoeless Joe and I saw Field of Dreams way too young to retain any of it, but at this point, I don't really need either of those entertainments. I have The Iowa Baseball Confederacy. I can't imagine any other piece of baseball fiction could be better than this.

It's about baseball, yes, but it's also about the idea of obsession, and about how sometimes we hold onto our dreams so tightly that we risk choking them to death. That makes it sound dry, sorry, let's try again—this novel is about a baseball game in 1908 that lasts about 2400 innings. The Chicago Cubs visit an independent team in Iowa, and engage in a battle of baseball over 40 days, a contest that comes to involve the gods themselves (and also Teddy Roosevelt, who—not to ruin one of the best jokes in this very funny book—does indeed carry a big stick).

Unlike last month's book, The Volunteer, this is not a tightly-written book. It also doesn't have many passages that smolder on the page because they are so well-constructed. That's fine. Not every book needs to be like that. Some books, like TIBC, are loose and sprawling and shaggy and goofy and make you perplexed in the very of ways. In terms of pure fun, I mean, I can't remember the last time I read a book that was this much fun.

It was as fun as a great baseball game, if I'm willing to put it plainly. It's the type of thing that gets you to believe in magic. I believe.

GRADE: 5 pukes out of 5

BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
(**SPOILERS!!!!!!)

1. There's a section toward the end of the book that flashes back to Gideon's dad telling him about the beauty of the game. E.g. how the players are a complex tapestry, and how you can find fun if you watch them perform, even when there are no runners on, and etc. Can you see the beauty in baseball today, in 2024, 116 years after the big game, and 38 years after The Iowa Baseball Confederacy is published?

2. Is there any room in life for obsessing over something? Can obsession ever be a good thing? Or do our lives mirror those of the fallen heroes in this novel when we obsess over something? (KEY: "Is it so bad to have an obsession?" "It is when obsession overrides love, takes precedence over brotherhood.")

3. Are you the type of person to get excited over a play at the plate in the bottom of the ninth inning? If so, or if not, did the ending of this novel's big game get you excited?

4. What is the Black Angel meant to represent? Does the symbolism change when she takes over in right field?

5. How do we feel like the Indigenous characters were handled in this novel? About as well as we could've hoped from a 1986 novel? Drifting Away feels well-written to me, and I'm curious about how people feel on this quote: "Baseball is the only thing that white men have every done right."

6. It takes a while to reveal itself, but the novel really revels in the idea of magic. Was it ever too much? Like, it's magical realism... but did the scale ever tip too precariously toward the "magic" and away from the "realism"?

7. What is Missy's role in this story? That she is the happiest, and that she is the one character completely lacking in obsession about anything? Or is that too simple?

8. I wonder if there is any sort of metatextual message to take away from this, especially Part 1, which focuses on the idea that Gideon just had this whole story about the IBC come to him out of nowhere, and so he all of a sudden has this completely story of ostensible fiction in his head... does this mirror what happens to our best authors? Did W.P. Kinsella wake up with the idea of The Iowa Baseball Confederacy in his head, and he could only treat the obsession by writing it down? I wonder what it's like to receive that gift. It is a gift, right? Or can that be argued too?

9. I really, truly hate the question of "was it all a dream?" because that feels so cheap and so insultingly simplistic. Still, though, if we must: was it all a dream?!?!

10. "What, I wonder, are the real stakes of the game?" Is baseball only beautiful because of what we impose upon it? Or is there intrinsic beauty? I can sit here and circlejerk about baseball all day, but is that because of how I feel or because of what it is?

Review and Discussion: The Volunteer

It's time for book club. Like I said three months ago, I'm trying to make a habit of putting down a few words and posting it around the same date and time that Boys Book Club begins. Not that I'm using this blog post as any sort of guidance during the meeting—we're conducting the club in a cave in the Wissahickon woods right now, and I don't think I'm going to have service. I don't know, maybe I just want to say a few words about a book I read so that I can remember this experience, and know that it was real.

Been a while since we've read a book with this much literally heft to it. I like a good story, and we usually get a good story with the books this crew chooses. And I think that the quality of the discussion is independent of the quality of the book, because that all depends on the people, and these boys are on top of their shit. Still, though, it feels real nice to move through a novel as beautifully written as this one, and as meaningful. The type of book in which every paragraph felt like it held some precious truth about the universe. I wrote down a lot of quotes, and I'm going to try to remember them, and use them.

Structurally, what I loved about the book was that it wasn't afraid to get all twisty with it. Not in an M. Night kinda way. There were no tricks. But let's call them feints, maybe. The narrative hook you are presented with in the introduction is "a boy is left at the airport, and no one knows where his parents are." So you're thinking that this is the mystery. But the father is revealed almost immediately, and we follow the father back home, back to his father, or stepfather, and then all of a sudden the novel becomes centered around that stepfather character. It eventually wraps itself around, and takes tangents, and wraps them in too, and so on. This isn't an A-to-B-to-C story. Or maybe it is, but each hyphen contains a multitude.

The best books are the ones that make you think "fuck, I wish I could write something like this." I don't think I would have a huge problem with the story, with making the narrative itself interesting. But I don't come close to having the skills that Scibona does in taking those narrative pieces and making them worth something. It's like he started with some hidden philosophic truths and then managed to fashion them into a coherent story, but the fashioning is so fresh that you can still feel the heat from the alchemy.

I'm typing this literally five minutes after I finished reading, so it's still sinking in. And I'm typing this nine hours before book club starts, so I'm a little sleepy. But my thoughts are with this book, as it sinks in. Not sure if it'll ever settle completely.

GRADE: 4.5 pukes out of 5

BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION QUESTIONS (**SPOILERS!!!!!!)

quickly, quickly, before I fall asleep

1. What are we to make of the bleakness of this book? Is there a lesson to be learned beyond "life is cruel"?

2. Characters often hide their real names, in an attempt to... what, exactly? Gain agency in a fucked-up world? Or hide from something or someone?

3. Interesting that Tilly makes a big deal about not taking the blood money, but when he does, it happens off-screen. Should he have taken it? Does taking the money seal his fate?

4. What are your thoughts about Louisa's original polygamy with Bobby, et al.? "How could you live with a lie like that?" "We didn't ignore it. We decided to love each other."

5. Wild when the story all of a sudden goes into hyperdrive and Elroy grows up in the space of a few paragraphs, and we actually overshoot where we originally were in the intro chapters. Is the use of time speeding up and slowing down but mostly speeding up handled well in this novel? Mirror how our own lives seem to speed up as we get older?

6. Why does Volly want to become a different person? He even admits that it's not like he was mistreated at home. Why the urgency? A human flaw, like he speculates?

7. "The key was never to forget you were likely to let people down; one of the ways we loved people was by studying our wickedness towards them." I wrote this one down because it seemed important. Maybe it is. I think Trisha says it, or thinks it. Poor Trisha.

8. Is the hawk that attacks the priest SYMBOLIC?!

9. Is Loach right when he says we should honor scarcity? Connection to the fact that Tilly spends most of the novel not eating?

10. Who is the most tragic character? Least tragic? Is this book a tragedy? Or is there any objective joy we can take from it as well?

Review and Discussion: Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup

****SPOILERS****

The Boys/Beers/Breakfast/Book Club is celebrating its five-year anniversary right now, as we discuss our 21st book. We meet quarterly, and are open to any literate person who identifies as male or non-binary. I've made it an infrequent habit to write a review and list some discussion questions in this blog space in the past, but consider this a commitment to make it a regular task. And if you're are interested in joining our book club and are eligible and you are somehow reading this blog post without also having had any conversations with me prior to this in which I attempt to force you to join our book club, then hit me up!

I'll say first that reading a book for a book club changes one's interactions with the book in question. Not that it's easier or harder to enjoy it, nothing like that. It's just that the impetus becomes that it is a well-written book, and not just a great story presented in humdrum fashion. I'll cop to loving Bad Blood, but I think it presents an extreme version of "amazing tale, written adequately." A book like this makes me fear that book club will turn into a big discussion about the thing that happened, while completely eschewing the way in which that thing was presented. No!

I'm not saying that John Carreyrou is a shitty writer, either. He's a journalist, at the time for The Wall Street Journal. He's won the Pulitzer Prize twice. He's a good writer! But here, he's not a good author. If that makes sense. The story of Theranos is fucking bonkers, and you can tell that Carreyrou did extensive research. But the whole fucking book is a series of "and then this happened, and then this happened." Which works fine if you're just trying to tell a good story. This is a great fucking story. But there's nothing here that makes it a good book. There is no decision that John Carreyrou makes throughout this process that makes me think differently about life. There's nothing that the author wrote that made me think "goddamn, good job, John Carreyrou."

Which is really interesting and maybe even slightly ironic, because eventually, due to the nature of the story and how it played out, Carreyrou eventually is forced to insert himself into the story. That's the type of meta shit that typically gets my pulse going at a great pace, but it fell a little flat here after the initial realization. I want what the author writes to be the most exciting aspect to any book. That sounds too obvious when I type it out, but not when you read a book like Bad Blood.

I know that there is going to be ample discussion today about the follow-up podcast bullshit and the tabloids and the fucking Amanda Seyfried portrayal of Elizabeth Holmes (though I guess the fact that Ebon Moss-Bachrach plays Carreyrou goes a long way in convincing me that The Dropout might be worth the watch), but I am going to do my best to stay focused on the book, and what it means to read this book, and what we can get from the words on the motherfucking page, both literally and emotionally.

Great book, but only because of the great story. I would've liked a little more creativity embedded in the process of writing about that story, but so it goes.

GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5


BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. As far as I can tell, the book immediately presents Elizabeth as a villain. I can't tell if it's on the page or in-between the lines due to previous knowledge of the subject, but it's there. Is this good storytelling? Are too many cards revealed at an early juncture regarding Elizabeth's character and motivation?

2. Many of the characters state that there are shady practices all over Silicon Valley, but that this case is different, because it's medicine, and there are lives at stake. Is that different? Or is unethical behavior unethical regardless of the who or the why?

3. It's stated that Carreyrou interviewed around 150 people for this project. What I found interesting was how obvious it was that a lot of what was told to Carreyrou became the text. It would be like "So-and-so was a blowhard asshole around the office around that time," but at no point are we to assume that Carreyrou himself is making that judgment. He heard that assessment from someone else. But he presents it as "fact," more or less. Is this an effective storytelling method?

4. Was humor used effectively throughout this book? There seemed to be certain stories designed to get a laugh, and I think it was mostly successful. Thinking about Elizabeth saying "I'm not afraid of anything... except needles." Also thinking about Sunny yelling "He stole property of the mind!" at the cops.

5. It's interesting how the Elizabeth Holmes story is originally presented as "tech's first female billionaire" and how everyone is like "see, girls, you can be whatever you want to be when you grow up!" which are excellent and important lessons for young women, but then the rug is pulled out from everyone's feet, like, fuck, the first and best female in this specific field is actually a total fucking fraud. I wonder if there are legs on the idea that Carreyrou didn't do enough to say "Yes, but..." Like, maybe say that just because Holmes is a crook doesn't mean a woman can't succeed in this business or in the career of her choosing.

6. Also wondering if there wasn't enough underlining of the fact that basically no one associated with Elizabeth faced any consequences. E.g. Mattis getting hoodwinked and then eventually being a trump cabinet member, or e.g. Joe Biden getting hoodwinked and eventually being elected President. Hundreds of people under her spell, and able to walk away when shit came to light. Is this how life works?

7. Was the story of Ian Gibbons handled appropriately?

8. Curious if the various Philly connections made an impact on anyone in book club. That South Philly dude at the ad agency! It was never specified South Philly, but c'mon, we all knew. And Elizabeth Holmes securing her downfall at the Philadelphia Convention Center. Pretty cool, and probably some thematic relevance to be wrung from this.

9. Similar to #5—some of the men of power who were hoodwinked by Holmes were so willing to buy into the facade because they considered themselves "men of science." As someone who considers himself a man of science, that kind of hit hard. Completely undercuts the holier-than-thou attitude that someone like me can sometimes take on in that regard, in a very healthy and humbling way. Does the book do enough to discuss this idea?

10. I appreciated how the end of the book presents a theory that Sunny is the true evil mastermind here, but then prove that theory wrong. Sunny is comically evil, but the focus here is definitely Elizabeth Holmes, one of the great enigmatic villains of our age. Is that focus worth an entire book written about it, though?