Alicia Kranjc
Honestly I loved almost every piece of this book. The narratives, the racing, the profiles, maybe not so much the science, but I don't really think that's what this story is about.
As long as you don't take too much of the “science” as fact (and resist the urge to start barefoot running throughout whatever city you're reading this from), this book is pure hype on the human body and spirit - and a sport that unites the entire human race.
I've gone through all the personal phases of running as the author and I found myself cheering him on throughout the entirety of the book. Am I inspired? Yes. Am I more hyped on going on my next run? Yes. Did I just sign up for a 50 mile ultra? No. But who cares!
The worst part of this book - he follows every basic Spanish phrase with the exact English interpretation. Give your readers a little faith they know some basic Spanish or can get through with context clues.
My face is tight with tears drying from my cheeks as I write this review for Hanya's paragon of fiction. A Little Life will be a novel perpetually present in my life - the nuanced lessons changing with each decade. In my 20s, I am reading a novel reflexive of the maturing into ourselves we do during this period. The deep friendships we build our lives around, the friends we keep, then lose, then bring back. Our frustrating inability to fully and appropriately react to those in our lives with different privileges, or those with very few. How piercing it is to see someone we love so incredibly deeply and uniquely unable to ever see what we love about them in themselves.
The novel's focus transformed - like a funnel. First deeply analyzing a unique group of four friends, then pulling forward the two bounded by the most uncertainty in their prior lives, then one. The main character the entire time - Jude. The way Hanya supports the optimistic (and privileged) reader rooting for a character so tortuous left me in a puddle at every major event Hanya delivers. And she delivers these moments in a way that mirrors moments in our lives. I compared my own stories, my own friendships in my 20s with the way she laid out the first quarter of the novel. I can't even imagine what will come when I re-read this novel in my 30s, in my 40s, in my 50s... but I can't imagine crying less.
It took me too long to read this book, but the dragging of my feet led to me starting this novel, one year from its fictional start date.
Octavia's near term California dystopia is a world we are familiar with. We can see how she build these scenes by extrapolating the societal issues of the 90s to today. Though our immediate 2023 world is not as bleak as the one she narrates, I found eerie truths that are highlighted today - severe weather patterns, inequality of wealth, societal drug reliance, and a dose of anarchy are continued forces of concern.
And we see these all from the eyes of a determined, mature, natural leader in Lauren. She guides us through countless heart breaks and losses, but your confidence in her ability to survive doesn't waiver. It's the same with the people she picks up along the way, then slowly believing in this preacher's daughter. Their strength grows around the new faith she built and her innate ability to create hope when you just can't believe there should be any left.
Concise, general overview of the current state of Global Warming (according to Bill Gates, so take it all with a little grain of salt). I walked away with some tips for thinking and talking about global warming - specifically the segmentation of greenhouse gas contributors and scaled geographical and governmental approaches. This book was alarmist without being defeatest - something that's I find incredibly important when disseminating information about Global Warming. And Bill Gates is endearing if not also a little self-gratuitous. Would recommend if you are looking for a high-level summary of the current state. If you are well versed at all in the clean energy space, I would take a pass.
Chiang writes with such intention and purpose that I inhale each sentence as fact, even when just a story before I constructed another world entirely. But I also believe his intention is to let us know these aren't fully different worlds, but evolutions of our world as we know it today. Different prisms maybe, alternating outcomes once one small molecule shifts out of place. Just one minuscule change can make the difference in our collective human experience even as purpose of the stories he writes remains consistent. A overlying purpose I understand to be - there is an end to everything. A lifecycle that begins with ingenuity, grows through gaining knowledge and disseminating what is learned, experiences it's height, then slowly dims as we head towards an inevitable conclusion. But that inevitable is always always meant to have a purpose (or is it? Either way it's better to believe it does). Something that we as a collective, feeling species can use to spurn new growth in the future.
All I know is I want more, and I'll hold my breath until I can exhale.