Locke & Key

Locke & Key - Audio Recording
Based on the graphic novels by Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodriguez
Released October, 2015

I may have mentioned before that I am a recent (and arguable somewhat fanatical) convert to audiobooks. Audiobooks make my daily commute tolerable. They make me far more enthusiastic about walking my dogs. I am far more likely to do things like wash dishes and fold washing nowadays than I ever was in the dark times before I discovered audiobooks.
Having said that, audiobooks work better for some books than others. Anything with lots of dialogue feels a little weird if there's only one narrator. Books with plenty of action tend to work better than slower, more literary works. First-person narrative generally works better than third-person. Books with a large amount of journal- or report-style content work particularly well (World War Z and Sleeping Giants are both absolutely fantastic on audio). And if anyone had asked me a week ago, I would have assumed that you can't make an audiobook from a graphic novel. As it turns out, this isn't true - the audio recording of Locke & Key is better than you could possibly imagine.

Something of a modern classic, the Locke & Key graphic novels were written by Joe Hill and illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez. They follow the Locke family (teenagers Tyler and Kinsey, with little brother Bode and their mother) who move back to the old family home in Lovecraft, Massachusetts, following the violent murder of their father. Somewhat appropriately named "Lockhouse", the huge old house is packed full of mysterious doors, locks and keys with all sorts of magical powers. There's horror, humour and graphic violence aplenty, which is all fabulous for a graphic novel but presumably a little tricky to translate into an audio format.

Clearly, you need to read the printed version too, otherwise you miss out on some fairly stunning artwork like this...

The Audible version of Locke & Key is less like an audiobook and more like a full-scale audio production, complete with full cast, sound effects and music. It's like listening to an old-school radio play, except that there's a whole lot of screaming and you're moderately terrified throughout. It works so well, partly because the actors are so good at what they do - the cast includes the fabulous Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black), Kate Mulgrew (Orange is the New Black) and Haley Joel Osment (The Sixth Sense) but every performance on this recording is absolutely spot-on : despite all the screaming and panic and general weirdness, there's not a single moment that feels awkward or doesn't ring true.
The music is atmospheric and lends this general atmosphere of creepiness to the entire recording, while helping to amp up the tension at appropriate moments.
The sound effects, voiceover and dialogue all work together so that the listener understands exactly what's happening throughout, even in the absence of an pictures (usually a fairly integral part of any comic experience).  

Seriously, look at how cool this is.

At 13 and a half hours, Locke and Key does require something of a time commitment, but it's such a captivating, immersive experience that it doesn't feel long enough. The story is unique, complex and hugely imaginative and this production brings it to life in a completely new way. It's an extremely high-quality dramatic production of some very high-quality source material and quite honestly, it's the coolest thing I've listened to all year.

Mischling

Mischling
by Affinity Konar
Published September, 2016

It's probably not news at this point, to hear that Nazi Germany was a nasty place, run by some very nasty people. We know about the Nazis. We know about Kristallnacht and the Final Solution and Dachau and Auschwitz. This is not new information. And yet, every now and then a book (or movie, or play) comes along to shed a completely new light on events and make the horror of Nazi Germany feel awfully, viscerally real. Mischling is one of those books.

Infamous physician and war criminal Dr Josef Mengele used the population of Auschwitz as his own personal pool of experimental subjects, picking out prisoners to add to his "zoo", where they were subjected to some priveleges and countless horrors, the subjects of grotesque experiments. Mengele broke their bones; poisoned them; blinded or deafened them; he even injected chemicals into their eyes in an attempt to change eye colour. Of particular interest to Mengele were children and twins; it is estimated that around 1,500 pairs of twins became subjects of Mengele's experiments at Auschwitz. Of those 1,500, fewer than 200 were still alive at the end of the war.

Survivors of Mengele's "zoo" at the liberation of Auschwitz.

Twin sisters Stasha and Pearl Zagorski, twelve years old when they arrive at Auschwitz, are promptly sent to Mengele's "zoo". As the chapters alternate between Stasha's and Pearl's points of view, Mischling tells the story of personalities adapting under horrific conditions and two halves of a whole growing apart as the twins are each damaged in different ways by Mengele's monstrous experiments.

Mischling was inspired by twins Eva & Miriam Mozes, survivors of Mengele's "zoo"

Clearly, Mischling is based on real, historical events so upsetting that a reader can't help but be affected. The story of the fictional Zagorski twins is based on the true stories of countless children subjected to Mengele's "research" at Auschwitz. But part of the success of Mischling rests on the fantastic characterisation of these fictional girls. Somehow, Stasha and Pearl are incredibly close and very similar, yet each has her own voice - there are very subtle differences between the two and its a testament to author Affinity Konar's talent as a writer that both twins feel like utterly real, complex and unique individuals.
The fantastic writing doesn't end there. Affinity Konar uses language in a way that elevates her sentences to absolute poetry. Mischling includes some of the most horrifying passages I've ever read, but also some of the most beautiful: about her beloved grandfather, Stasha says "With him, we once saw a rainbow that ran only red, saw it straddle a mountain and a sea, and he toasted the memory of it often. To unbearable beauty! he'd cry, eyes abrim". In the midst of pain and illness, Pearl says "Night - it had forgotten that it shouldn't be beautiful in Auschwitz. There was no stopping its velvet sway at the messenger's back"
It is this depiction of beauty amongst horror that elevates Mischling to something truly special.
Following an injection with god-knows-what by Mengele, Stasha explains "The needle made me a mischling, but the word took on a meaning different then the term the Nazis imposed upon us, all those cold and gruesome equations of blood and worship and heritage... One part was loss and despair. Such darkness should make life impossible, I know. But my other part? It was wild hope. And no one could extract or cut or drain it from me. No one could burn it from my flesh or puncture it with a needle". This is exactly what makes Mischling unique. It is just as affecting and upsetting and grim as you would expect, but it is also full of beauty and love and (perhaps unexpectedly) hope. It is a beautiful, hopeful story based around an utterly grim and seemingly hopeless historical event.

Meticulously researched, undeniably moving and fantastically well-written, Mischling is an absolute work of art.

Darktown

Darktown
by Thomas Mullen
Published September, 2016.

Named for a seedy neighbourhood of Atlanta, Darktown opens with the attempted arrest of a local big-wig for traffic offenses. Drunk, arrogant and entitled, the driver resists arrest. So far, it's all pretty standard police-procedural fare, right? Except that the driver is white, the police officers are black and it's 1948. As Atlanta's very first African-American police, officers Boggs and Smith aren't actually allowed to arrest a white man, so their errant driver is free to go and quick to let them know in no uncertain terms just how little he thinks of their positions of "authority".

Never judge a book by its cover and all that, but how good is this one? Suitably sinister.

This is the conflict at the core of Darktown - dedicated, educated and highly capable new recruits (many of whom are recently-decorated veterans of WW2) sign up to the force in the hopes of helping their communities, only to be treated like a bad joke. Boggs, Smith and their fellow officers aren't permitted inside Police HQ - instead, they work from the basement of a run-down YMCA. They must patrol by foot, as the police vehicles are for the use of white officers only. They cannot arrest white suspects. They are forbidden from wearing their uniforms when entering or leaving the courthouse to testify, forcing them to change in a closet. The city's attitude towards the new officers ranges from bemusement to casual racism through to outright hostility and threats of violence.
When a young black woman is found dead, discarded amongst trash in a Darktown alleyway, Boggs and Smith suspect foul play. Forbidden in no uncertain terms from asking questions, the officers begin their own undercover investigation, putting their jobs - and quite possibly their lives - at serious risk.

Darktown combines a fantastically atmospheric crime noir vibe with a confronting look at race relations, violence and injustice in a fairly horrifying (and disturbingly recent) period of world history. It's a well-written, tightly-plotted detective story and this would be enough on its own for an entertaining read. The introduction of fantastic characters in the form of Boggs and Smith adds another level to the story - admirable, sympathetic, idealistic but imperfect, Boggs and Smith provide the ideal viewpoint from which to view 1940s Georgia. These are men who risked their lives to serve their country, men willing to risk their lives again to serve their community; deserving of respect and admiration they're instead belittled, harrassed and abused. It's heartbreaking.
What really sets Darktown apart though, is the setting. Author Thomas Mullen brings to the page a living, breathing,vibrant representation of 1948 Atlanta that feels so real, it's like the city itself is another character. It's grimy and dark, hopeful and violent, energised and delapidated all at once. The racial tension and social upheaval is apparent on every page, but there's also something indefinable about the Atlanta of Darktown that helps you understand why people like Boggs and Smith might give everything they have to try and save their city.

Officers Dixon, Hooks, Jones, Lyons, McKibbens, Sanders, Strickland & Elkins in April, 1948. 

Darktown is prefaced with a dedication to the memory of the eight men on whom the fictional officers are based - Claude Dixon, Willie T. Elkins, Henry Hooks, Johnnie P. Jones, Ernest Lyons, Robert McKibbens, John Sanders and Willard Strickland. These are historical figures I had never heard of before, but they're people who played an essential role in American history and they are people we should never forget. While it's ultimately a fictional detective story, Darktown does something hugely important in telling part of these men's story and reminding a modern readership of just how much they sacrificed in the hopes of making their city a better place.
This is a great read, but it's also an important story and a timely reminder of how poorly we often treat the people who least deserve it.

Sleeping Giants

Sleeping Giants
by Sylvain Neuvel
Published April, 2016

A few months back, I started listening to audiobooks based on a friend's recommendation that this might provide a good distraction on my morning commute. Suffice to say, she has created a monster. Audiobooks are amazing. With audiobooks, you can "read" while driving. You can "read" while you're cooking, or doing the dishes, or having a shower. And, while this should not be interpreted as any kind of personal confession, you could even "read" all day long at the office, when you're supposed to be working.

Some books translate particularly well to audio (Neil Gaiman reading any of his own books; Ernest Cline's Ready Player One as read by Wil Wheaton; all of Bill Bryson's books), while others don't work quite so well (books with lots of emotion and little action don't hold my attention as well as they would on the page). Then there are the audiobooks that are so fantastically good, I would even go so far as to recommend audio as a better option than reading. Marlon James' A Short History of Seven Killings is read by several different narrators with fantastic Jamaican accents - it's like listening to a really good movie, minus the visuals. Max Brooks' World War Z is written as a series of interviews with a huge number of different characters from all over the world. The audiobook's extensive cast of voice actors is absolutely perfect for this - it really does feel like the zombie war is happening all around you in full colour, right now.
Another fantastic audiobook to add to your must-listen list is Sylvain Neuvel's new novel Sleeping Giants. Written in the form of a series of reports and interviews and read by a number of difference voice actors, Sleeping Giants is absolutely ideal for the audiobook treatment.

Sleeping Giants opens with eleven-year-old Rose Franklin sneaking out at dusk to ride her new bike. Calamity strikes; Rose takes a tumble into a huge hole in the ground and finds herself - rather unexpectedly - resting in the palm of an enormous metal hand. Eventually the hand becomes part of a University of Chicago research project, headed up by the very same Rose Franklin (now a talented physicist). The hand is somewhat of a mystery - decorated with complex but mysterious symbols; weighing in at only one-tenth of what it should considering its composition; seemingly tens of thousands of years old. As Dr Franklin and her team start to uncover the secrets of the object, international tensions grow and Sleeping Giants takes its reader on a fantastic ride.

Rose Franklin and friend. No, not really.

Part sci-fi, part futuristic thriller, part political commentary, Sleeping Giants weaves together narration from a number of key characters - there's the earnest and dedicated Dr Franklin; hot-shot helicopter pilot Kara Resnik; socially awkward Quebecois linguist Vincent Couture; Resnik's squeaky-clean co-pilot Ryan Mitchell and a mysterious, unnamed man who conducts all of the interviews that make up the narrative of the novel.

It's worth mentioning that Sleeping Giants is composed entirely of log entries, interviews and mission reports. There is no action in the book whatsoever - it's all just interviews or reports from each of the characters, one at a time, slowly building a picture of events. Quite honestly, I usually hate these kinds of books. Anything in diary form or letter form or interview form - ugh. It often feels like a gimmick and personally, I struggle to become properly absorbed in anything with this kind of format.
It's a testament to Sylvain Neuvel's talent as an author that this book is compelling from the first page, with a feeling of fast-paced suspense that doesn't let up until the last page.
It's no doubt a reflection of the author's background in linguistics that Sleeping Giants is so very compelling and that each individual character takes own their own unique voice and persona very quickly, simply through the things that they say. There's no description of the characters' appearances, personalities or backgrounds - we only have their words and somehow, that's enough to form these fully fleshed-out characters. The added benefit of the audio version is that each of these characters is also voiced by a different actor, adding even more dimension and personality to the narrative.

Seriously, all just reports and interviews. Like this one. 

Not only is Sleeping Giants a fabulously constructed page-turner, it also features wonderfully three-dimensional, complex female characters. Rose Franklin is a dedicated, brilliant scientist. She didn't just luck into her job working with the giant hand; she earned it through hard work, talent and arguably a little bit of an obsession with the object she unearthed in childhood. Kara Resnik is a strong-willed, confident and skillful pilot with an distinguished record of service in the armed forces. These are not shrinking violets. They are not one-dimensional characters written only as decoration for the central male characters. They aren't there to be rescued by men. While the novel can't really pass the Bechdel test because the characters don't really talk to each other at all (remember, weird log/interview/report format?) but you can bet that Dr Franklin and Chief Warrant Officer Resnik have had plenty of conversations about all sorts of important science things, so I feel like this counts.

Sleeping Giants is Sylvain Neuvel's debut novel and was originally self-published due to a lack of interest from publishers. Now making waves internationally, with the movie rights already snapped up, it's fair to say that the book is doing very,very well (and thank god Neuvel didn't give up after a few rejection letters). The second book in the series is scheduled for release in April 2017 with a third book to follow - I'm not at all hesitant to say that I can't wait and that I'll be going the audiobook route next time, too.  

Underground Airlines

Underground Airlines
by Ben Winters
Published July, 2016

Underground Airlines is  set in a modern-day America that feels very familiar - everyone has smartphones, social media is everywhere, there's a Starbucks on every corner - but with a difference. In this version of the present day, the Civil War never happened. In this ever-so-slightly different alternative history, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated before he could take office. In this version of 21st century USA, slavery remains legal in four southern states - the "hard four".

Narrator and mystery man Victor (definitely not his real name) is an escaped slave turned soul-catcher, securing his own freedom by tracking down and returning fellow escapees to their masters. Haunted, conflicted and generally pretty messed up, Victor is hot on the trail of a runaway slave known as "Jackdaw". It's far from Victor's first such case, but there's something different about this one and the plot quickly thickens as Victor comes to realise that Jackdaw is much more than just another runaway.

Victor is a fantastic character. Deeply complex, with a long and complicated back-story, Victor tells himself that he's a good person who does bad things, but he's deeply disturbed by his own choices and the lies he tells. "I do it even now, you see? I play false, I dance and dance. I murmur the stories in shadow of half-shadow, I pretend to myself like I don't remember the names - the details - when in fact I do - I did and I do - I remember all of their names". His complexities keep the story moving (what side is he really on?) and make for a genuinely believable, flawed protagonist.

As Victor uncovers secrets, Underground Airlines weaves a gripping, suspenseful and action-packed tale, equal parts fascinating and horrifying. The world of Underground Airlines is deeply disturbing not so much for the imagine-if aspect (imagine if slavery was still legal!) but because it's so awfully close to the America we see on the news every day.
In Underground Airlines, anyone with dark skin needs to be very careful. Even if you're free, you'd better make sure you don't do anything suspicious. You'd better not be seen in the wrong place at the wrong time. You'd better not be seen in the wrong company. You'd better not be caught with a gun, even if you're legally entitled to carry it. Sound familiar?
It's a different perspective on racism in the USA that makes you wonder how far we've actually come.

It should go without saying, right?

Underground Airlines is deeply affecting because it really feels like things might have happened this way. It's easy to discount the idea that slavery would ever be accepted by an enlightened, western society but Ben Winters weaves in just enough 21st-century corporate detail to make this chillingly believable. In this world, you don't own a "slave", but a "person bound to labor". People are classified by skin colour in a pantone-style Pigmentation Taxonomy - "moderate charcoal, brass highlights #41" or "late-summer honey, warm tone, #76". Officially, cruelty and mistreatment of slaves is not premitted. The largest-scale slave-owners are huge southern companies, the world of slavery becoming so bound up with corporate double-speak that it's easy to imagine the whole thing being somewhat overlooked by the masses.
It's so creepy because it seems like it really could've happened that way - what if there'd been compromise instead of war?

Underground Airlines is fast-paced, compelling and affecting. It's clever, confrontational and very well-written. I absolutely could not put this book down and I could not recommend it more highly - it's truly exceptional.

The Humans

The Humans
by Matt Haig
Published July, 2013

"I know that some of you reading this are convinced that humans are a myth, but I am here to state that they do actually exist. For those that don't know, a human is a real bipedal life form of midrange intelligence, living a largely deluded existence on a small waterlogged planet in a very lonely corner of the universe". So begins Matt Haig's The Humans, a fabulous study of humankind as seen through the eyes of an (initially underwhelmed) extraterrestrial visitor.

One night, Cambridge mathematics professor Andrew Martin solves the Riemann hypothesis (this is apparently an actual mathematical thing), thus discovering the secret behind prime numbers, a very large step towards understanding all of the secrets of the universe. Concerned that humans are far too primitive and violent to be trusted with such knowledge, the advanced extraterrestrial Vonnadorian civilisation sends an agent to Earth. The Vonnadorian agent's mission: to murder the unfortunate Professor Martin, take possession of his body and assassinate anyone who might happen to know about his mathematical breakthrough.

I think this is a mathematician joke. The book is significantly funnier than this.

Despite the Vonnadorians' highly advanced understanding of technology, something goes a wee bit wrong along the way and the would-be assassin arrives on Earth not in the secluded university office he'd expected, but rather in the middle of a busy motorway, stark naked. Disoriented, uncomfortable and extremely confused, the new "Andrew Martin" promptly gets himself arrested and then sent to a psych ward (but not before he discovers some important truths about human life, like "running without clothes is not entirely compatible with external testicles"). A public indecency arrest is just the start as the narrator settles in to life as Andrew Martin, eventually finding himself quite at home amongst humans.

The Humans is funny. It's genuinely, quietly amusing throughout and sprinkled with the odd laugh-out-loud-in-public moment; clever and witty and observational like Douglas Adams on a good day. Matt Haig uses the unusual perspective of his alien narrator fabulously well to show us some uncomfortably amusing truths about ourselves : "Magazines are very popular, despite no human ever feeling better for having read them. Indeed, their chief purpose is to generate a sense of inferiority in the reader that consequently leads to them needing to buy something, which they do, and then they feel even worse, and so need to buy another magazine to see what they can buy next. It is an eternal and unhappy spiral that goes by the name of capitalism and it is really quite popular."
It's amusing and it's entertaining and it's interesting enough to catch you up in the story very quickly, but then before you know it, The Humans has become something more than just a humorous take on human irrationality.
Quite honestly, I'm finding it hard to put into words just how much this book affected me. If it was just a well-written, funny book then that would be enough for me to happily recommend it. But it's not just funny; it's startling and confronting and absolutely beautiful. Much as it pains me to say this, it's inspirational.

Inspiring, like a kitten poster.

I do not enjoy self-help books. I don't think I will ever voluntarily read something from the "Inspirational" section of the bookstore. This book, though - this is self-help for people like me. Any time I'm feeling less than positive, I will re-read this book to remind myself that life is fantastic and humanity is a beautiful thing and (in the words of the narrator) "Failure is a trick of the light".
At one point in the book, the narrator writes a letter, made up of 97 points of advice for humans; any one of these could well go onto a kitten poster, but somehow the context of this list means that this comes across not as trite or sentimental but instead as honest and heartfelt.

I loved this book. I cannot stop thinking about this book. It's a celebration of everything that's wonderful about being a human; it may just be exactly what you need to feel a little more positive about the current state of the world and the future of humans. After all, "Technology won't save humankind. Humans will.". It's a nice thought.

The Passage

The Passage
by Justin Cronin
Published June, 2010

As a reader, one of my absolute favourite things is a "genre" book so spectacularly written that it elevates the whole thing beyond its genre to something truly unique.
Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie series is like this (Case Histories; One Good Turn; When Will There Be Good News and Started Early, Took My Dog); detective novels so beautifully written and peopled with such believable characters and such richly detailed settings that they feel utterly real.
Neil Gaiman does this too, writing fantasy novels that are somehow so much more than that; they're more like these layered, subtle meditations on love and time and mortality (even his children's books are like this, The Graveyard Book left me a sobbing, heartbroken mess).
The magnificent Jasper Fforde plays with genres like nobody's business - his award-winning The Big Over-Easy is a dark, noir-style crime novel that just happens to be peopled by a cast of Nursery Rhyme characters. In a crime novel. For adults. It shouldn't really work but it does. Really, really well.

Ok, so this is completely unrelated to The Passage but honestly, SUCH A GOOD BOOK

The Passage is like this too. Ostensibly, it's a kind of blockbuster (film rights having been sold before the book was even released) sci fi/horror novel with vampires. All of which sounds interesting enough that I eventually got around to reading The Passage a good six years after it was published, with relatively low expectations and hopes of a lightweight-but-fun romp of sci fi silliness. Instead, The Passage completely blew my mind.

The story begins neither with soulless blood-suckers nor sparkly emo teenagers, but instead with the genuinely affecting story of young mum Jeannette and her much-loved daughter, Amy Harper (named for Harper Lee) Bellafonte. Mistreated by men and unlucky in life, Jeannette's life eventually implodes in such a way that Amy is abandoned at a convent, where she meets the wonderful Sister Lacey Kudoto. Lacey is originally from Sierra Leone, where she experienced childhood brutalities that she has now supressed to the point that she doesn't actually remember any more.

There aren't many vampire novels that also educate you on world history.

Meanwhile, Special Agent Brad Wolgast meets with a series of Death Row inmates, recruiting for a top-secret government project whereby death sentences are waived in return for participation in a very unpleasant medical experiment. Recently divorced, Wolgast is tormented by memories of the young daughter he lost to a heart condition. One of the inmates recruited by Wolgast is formerly-homeless Anthony Carter. Convicted of (but probably not guilty of) the murder of a woman he loved beyond all reason, Carter has clear learning disabilities and a heart of gold.

It's these richly developed characters that really set The Passage apart in the early chapters. Everyone has a back story. A detailed, complex back story that helps to explain their actions and means that their stories really ring true. It's unusual to find a vampire novel that actually makes you cry because you feel bad for a convicted murderer. I am willing to admit, hand on heart, Jeanette Bellafonte's, Lacey Kudoto's, Brad Wolgast's and Anthony Carter's stories all made me cry before I was even 10% of the way through this book. I was an absolute blubbering mess. It was completely ridiculous.

Eventually, we get to the Horror part of the book as government experiments (and when do those ever turn out well?) go horribly wrong, releasing a plague of many-toothed, lightning-fast, ultra violent and practically immortal predators onto an unsuspecting world. Obviously, this is not a new idea so it's hard to explain exactly why it's so incredibly captivating - Justin Cronin is an absolute master of building suspense and before you know it, it's 4am and you still haven't gone to sleep because you MUST FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.

This is a very good question. And also the reason that you may never sleep again. 

At 766 pages, The Passage is clearly a very long book, but it doesn't really feel that way. The book is quite definitively split, with the second half taking place in a notably different time and place than the first half, with a group of entirely new characters. With a large cast of these wonderfully well-developed characters (along with millions of soulless immortal monsters) and an apparently endless series of horrifying events, The Passage managed to keep my attention throughout, for every single one of those 766 pages. In fact, I was so caught up in the whole  thing that I immediately went out and bought the next two books the same day... That's right, there's not just 766 pages; there's three whole books' worth of this fantastic story.

Three whole books! Thousands of pages of this stuff!

The Passage is a beautifully written epic of post-apocalyptic America (not dissimilar in a lot of ways to Cormac McCarthy's wonderful novel The Road), complete with detailed imaginings of the breakdown of society under an overwhelming threat to humanity. It's an absolutely engrossing read, an extremely well-written, perfectly-paced sci fi novel, but also a novel about human life and relationships, full of colour, action, complicated morality and even the odd bit of well-placed humour.
It's not a perfect book - the central character of Amy feels sadly underdeveloped as we don't often get to know what she's thinking; the characters in the second half of the book don't quite have that same depth and distinctiveness as those in the first half (there was much less sobbing on my part in the second half); some characters have this incredibly annoying habit of saying "Flyers!" when they really mean "Fuck!". If you're going to make up swear words, they should really be good ones. Like, "cockwomble" perhaps? These are all pretty minor complaints though - taken as a whole, this book is very, very good.

If you have not already done so (and I'm kind of assuming you have, since I am way behind the times on this one), read this book immediately. But maybe on a weekend, I really wouldn't recommend that whole reading-til-4am-on-a-weeknight thing in retrospect.