Two Black Stallions (by Walter Farley)

One of the categories of this year's Read Harder Challenge was to re-read a childhood favorite book. The Black Stallion's Filly was the only Black Stallion book I read as a child, and I re-read it so many times; I think I still have it, all beaten up, on a shelf somewhere.  Everything I know about horse racing and the Kentucky Derby is from that book, and I loved the main character, the horse Black Minx.

I don't know how I stumbled across it, but I found a review of the book that said The Black Stallion’s Courage also features Black Minx, so I checked that one out as well. And it's almost a direct sequel! It's very strange to read about so many of the same people and horses 40 years later.  But here's my review of each:

The Black Stallion’s Filly (by Walter Farley) 

Read this through the haze of nostalgia. I know more about horse racing these days than I did in the 80s, and I can see more flaws in the writing. (In particular, Farley does that thing where the "dialogue" contains sentences nobody would actually say aloud.) Also while growing up I skimmed right past the part about Alec spending time in the "breeding shed" and certainly didn't have the internet to look up exactly what thoroughbred breeding is all about, and it turns out it's crazy.  But I remember so many moments about this book and it was just a comforting read all around.

The Black Stallion’s Courage (by Walter Farley) 

In this one, I noticed the uneven writing a bit more (there are perspective shifts mid-chapter sometimes that are a bit weird, and suddenly all the horses from the last book have nicknames?) but Black Minx falls in love with another horse, which is pretty hilarious. The main plot is the Black Stallion (who, was basically not in Filly so I have no attachment to him at all) racing in various handicap races, which entails different horses being given different weights so the race comes out even. (I never knew what a handicap race was. Again for 40 years I basically only knew what was in The Black Stallion’s Filly.) The plot is thin - they have to raise $100,000 to rebuild a barn that burned down and $20,000 to buy Black Minx her horse boyfriend. But my inner child was thrilled by the whole experience.

The Book-Censor’s Library (by Buthaina Al Eissa)

A Tournament of Books entry from a Kuwaiti author, translated from Arabic. It's a pastiche of (and explicit homage to) dystopian novels like Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 as well as Alice in Wonderland and Zorba the Greek. A Book-Censor starts to read forbidden books, and is drawn into an underground (see: Alice) world of illicit literature.

The plot goes a bit off the rails at the end - I did enjoy the metatexual ending a lot as well as the inversion of Orwell, so maybe I'm just holding the daughter's fate (which made me sad) against the author here. Still, it's going up against James in the first round, and although underdogs win in the ToB all the time, my personal vote would go to James. 

Martyr! (by Kaveh Akbar)

A book from the Tournament of Books that also qualifies for the RHC under the category of "a book about immigration or refugees."  Cyrus's family is Persian; his mother was killed when an Iranian passenger flight was shot down by the United States, and he and his father relocated to Indiana. 

It's told in vignettes (for example, Cyrus pairs up people and listens to their conversations in dreams, so there is an interlude of his father talking to Rumi, or his brother talking to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar); there are multiple points of view in addition to Cyrus's, like his best friend or his mother or a dying artist he befriends. Cyrus wants his death to mean something; he longs for martyrdom and is writing a book about it.

I'm not a huge short story reader because the context changes so often; I felt the same in the first part of this novel, where the POV kept shifting and I had to regain a toe hold on the material.  It comes together in the back half though, where the throughline of the novel becomes clear.  It's interesting how many of these ToB novels are from the perspective of, frankly, whiny men. Cyrus is like George from Book of George is like John from Liars - but he's the best of the three and I enjoyed where the narrative takes him. 

I loved this less than many ToB fans did, who raved about it in the Goodreads group, but I did enjoy it and it has lovely passages and moments. The Persian-American perspective was especially good. Overall, I liked it. Four stars.

Into Every Generation a Slayer Is Born: How Buffy Staked Our Hearts (by Evan Ross Katz)

One of my reading resolutions this year is to read or pass along 10 physical books, since I have a backlog of books on paper now that I do most of my reading on Kindle via the Libby app.  This was the first one I chose, as it also fits a RHC category: "a book about a piece of media you love."

I wanted a bit more oral history and a bit less of Katz inserting himself into the narrative as a fanboy of Sarah Michelle Gellar who clearly has his biases (Buffy and Angel yes, Buffy and Spike no) and doesn't manage to interview many of the people involved in the show, most notably David Boreanaz, Alyson Hannigan, and Joss Whedon.  Instead he spends a lot of time quoting Cynthia Erivo at length.  (I enjoyed her thoughts but, the choices were a bit strange.) 

My understanding is many interviews were cancelled after the allegations came out about Joss Whedon in 2020, and to Katz's credit, he fully engages with them.  But Live from New York did it well, incorporating material from previous interviews by people who declined to be interviwed into a coherent oral history.  And Katz sort of does this, pulling quotes from DVD commentaries for example, but then spends a lot of time editorializing them.

My favorite tidbit in this book is that Clare Kramer's audition for Glory was inspired by Jack Nicholson in The Shining. There are lots of fun tidbits, I just wanted it to be a little tighter and a little less memoir-y overall.

The Book of George (by Kate Greathead)

Like Liars, another Tournament book about an annoying man-child. However, because he's aware of it and often quite self-loathing, it was more entertaining than rage-inducing. Sometimes hilariously funny, in fact.  And people call out George directly all through the novel, which is satisfying. 

The blurb describes it as a "razor-sharp but big-hearted excavation of millennial masculinity" and I agree that it's big-hearted. The reader does feel for George, even as he bumbles through his life making terrible decisions, losing his temper, and being an awful boyfriend to his long-term partner Jenny.   

I also enjoyed the format, which is vignettes from George's life that each generally skip ahead about a year each time.  Overall, as you can probably tell, I liked it a lot!

Beautyland (by Marie-Helene Bertino)

I may be a little tired of coming of age novels (which is unfortunate since I think at least two more Tournament books are coming of age novels) but Beautyland is in the tournament and was highly regarded and my library had it so, here we all are.

The premise is that our main character, Adina, is a Generation X alien sent to learn about earth culture, and she transmits messages back and forth to her superiors via fax machine.  It's not quite other-y enough for me, but the writing is beautiful and the ending is just exquisitely sad.  Whether or not Adina is an actual alien (and I think the ending of the book makes that clear), I enjoyed her meditations on her human life and relationships. 

Will be an interesting tournament discussion. It's up against Great Expectations in the brackets, which I hope to get to soon. Oh, and total sidebar, Adina sings "Simeon the Whale" instead of "Send me on my way" and I thought that was just me! It's been Simeon the Whale for years! I was delighted.