In working through my thoughts after reading this trashfire of a novel, I wrote five first drafts of a review. They’re incomplete but I’m posting them here mostly un-edited (just some typo fixes) for posterity. They’re either too incomplete, too snarky, too snooty or too mean-spirited to post on Goodreads.
Conserve your semen.
Achieve immortality.
Rejoice.
Not my cup of tea. Philosophy should be understandable, this text is incomprehensible.
Maybe if was downing absinthe with Sartre and his crew back in the forties when this was written, I would “get” it. As-is though, this is pretty hard to get through.
“The Raven Tower” is one of the worst books I have ever read. I’ve only covered the tip of the iceberg in this review because reading through this book has left me completely drained of energy. Please don’t read this book, it is beyond trash. If you really want to, I can’t stop you but I really wish I could.
Joshua Halberstam is the king of strawmanning. Every chapter involves him describing these absurd caricatures of human beings and then using them to try to say to something interesting (keyword: try).
This book is terrible. I read through this whole novel and I don’t have anything to show for it.
I probably should have put the book down and lit it on fire when the gigantic black Rastafarian sumo wrestler in a diaper showed up. I probably should have stopped reading when the profoundly unlikable protagonist turns out to be a pedo. I probably should have stopped reading when I realized that none of the characters were interesting.
I’m deathly allergic to cats (especially unneutered cats) so despite liking them in theory, I can’t spend much time with them.
I’m not allergic to philosophy though. This book talks about cats, talks about philosophy and uses the promise of cats to ease you into thinking about philosophy.
At least, that’s what I think it’s trying to do?
This book is a joke and not a very funny one. It fails completely in its stated goal of being funny.
The tonal clash between the comedic intent of the author and the violent story centered around a group of janitors trying to stop a genocide is jarring.
The characters are nothing more than caricatures and this is a trainwreck waiting to happen given the inclusion of a comic relief autistic character.
A bunch of mistakes climbers (apparently) make and how to avoid them. Not as concrete and concise as I would like but if you’re willing to filter out the fluff, there’s some interesting information here.
The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten offers one hundred philosophical thought-experiments. To get the most out of it, you might want to pull it out and discuss a thought-experiment with some friends because the book doesn’t do much more than present the thought-experiments one after the other.
The Anthropocene Reviewed is a book where author/youtuber John Green reviews a random assortment of things and concepts that you wouldn’t expect to see reviewed. This conceit gives him a lot of room to write about anything he feels like. John Green is an expert at what he does, but I don’t find what he does to be very compelling.
Sandcastle is the french comic book that the recent M. Night Shyamalan’s movie Old was based on. A bunch of different people arrive for a relaxing day at the beach and find themselves aging extremely rapidly, babies become teens and older folk die. Hijinks ensue. I don’t get it.