Calum
Anybody could be invisible. The real miracle was to be known, to be loved as you were.
I think I tend to have a preference for invisibility. It's probably not my preferred superpower (that would be flight, also a revealing choice) but it's all too often I feel like being able to vanish would be the best option. I wonder what would have happened if I'd had a high school year like Maya's, or even a book like this. Perhaps I'd be a little less avoidant, or perhaps I'd just have more practice at it. The vexing thing with visibility is that I want to be seen, I want the validation just like anyone else. And yet it's agonising; every piece reminds of you of the lack, of your own awareness of your own flaws. It's particularly intolerable when it's coming from a parent, when you're their “whole hearts”. There's no other time when I want more to disappear. And yet the nature of joy is apparently wrapped up in the intolerable - the distinction from pleasure is supposed to be accepting this kind of discomfort, the pressure of becoming known. That's the miracle, if I can let it happen.
City of Illusions feels like it has two main sections, one much cleverer than the other. The majority of the novel is Falk's journey west, which reprises a lot of such journeys west and doesn't feel particularly engaging. Many of the events along the way don't seem to add a ton to the narrative besides giving us more time with Falk himself. The payoff comes at the culmination of the novel, where upon reaching the City Es Toch, we find that Falk is an alien from another world that sent an expedition to Earth. He has had his prior memory erased, and upon recovering it must navigate the hostile city while combining the two experiences. This is a compelling conceit, touching on questions of the sense of self and the nature of truth. I'm also intrigued by the barebones skeleton of how the League of All Worlds fell to the Shing, an enemy whose ability to lie appears to be their sole advantage. I haven't read much in the way of space war, so thinking about how an ansible-connected galactic civilisation could crumble is fascinating. I love that the Hainish universe is able to provide a setting for all sorts of different stories, including this one.
Binyamin Appelbaum produces a stunning overview of the changes in the role and prestige of economists from the 1960s to the present. I majored in economics and think myself fairly conversant, but I was not fully aware of the extent to which economic language and methods are relatively new to society; a shift amounting to nothing less than a revolution. Appelbaum describes how in the 1950s, there were no economists working in the Federal Reserve's leadership, instead being treated there and elsewhere as primarily data analysts. Over the course of the book, he looks at how in fields from taxation and currency valuation, to antitrust and corporate regulation, economists propounded a particular laissez-faire approach to policymaking with often devastating consequences.
What particularly struck me is the naked ideology described in the narrative. Milton Friedman shows up repeatedly, bringing a libertarian approach to topics from the draft to tax cuts but his motivation is not evidence, but belief in “freedom”. Alan Greenspan is the chief proponent of zero regulation in the financial sector, despite mounting abuses and failures. The narrative highlights the extent to which economists were declaring truths that they did not have evidence for; an unearned confidence that remains today. I don't think Appelbaum believes, nor do I, that the pre-economic ways of thinking were ideal. Tools such as cost-benefit analysis or principles of quantifying problems are clearly beneficial. But for all the economic discussion of positive vs. normative analysis, the ideology clearly shaped (and shapes) the kinds of analyses being proposed, and excludes factors that a society might wish to include. It's particularly shocking when confronted with the human costs of this thinking; in the gutted Rust Belt, in Pinochet's Chile. Even more so when you recognize how deep this neoliberal ideology rooted itself, since most of the relevant actors knew these costs and forged ahead anyway.
I strongly recommend this book; it's an invaluable reminder of the relative newness of certain “facts” that neoliberalism has tended to portray as such. For economists, lauded by society, it's a suggestion to preserve some humility. In an era of rising populism and criticisms of capitalism it remains to be seen whether we can build something better, but I hope this book will give us some of the context to get us there.
Continues on from where Mistborn: The Final Empire left off. Elend and Vin are left to deal with the aftermath of their defeat of the Lord Ruler, dealing both with internal politics in Luthadel and besieging armies.
Sanderson introduces more information about the Feruchemical powers that Sazed had. We learn more about the way that the power differs from Allomancy, as well as Vin's experiments with new Allomantic metals. Fighting and movement are as fluid as ever; the novel concept of Pushes and Pulls makes almost cinematic fight scenes possible. The level of excitement in the book is kept at a high, as the mysterious mists equivocate between help and danger and ancient legends of the Hero of Ages and the Well of Ascension are investigated.
I think that more so than in the first book, Sanderson displays his willingness to tackle more complicated issues than capers, albeit magical. We see the conflict of love and duty between Sazed and Tindwyl, and the importance of trust between Elend and Vin. Each member of the crew is given a distinctive story that deals with family, friendship, rebellion and deception. We also are prompted to consider aspects of politcal theory and theology as Elend and Sazed respectively try to tackle their respective challenges.
The Well of Ascension is a thrilling sequel to the first in this trilogy. I normally pride myself on working out plot twists while reading, but this book invites only pleasurable mystery. Highly recommended.
What a change of pace from East of Eden and the Grapes of Wrath! Cannery Row is a small distillation of what I'm beginning to recognise as Steinbeck's trademark style, the heartfelt descriptions, the humourous yet poignant characterisations, the matter-of-fact narrative. It feels different here though, when the stakes are so much lower. I think I can only feel like the characters of Cannery Row are cute, rather than emotionally taxing in the same way that the other two books are. I particularly liked the briefer anecdotes rather than some of the more extended ones, since I felt like they had just enough flavour without wanting to do more and not having the words for doing so. The Malloys moving into the boiler, Henri and his boat, the soldiers and Dora's girls, Mary Talbot and her parties, the bachelor gopher. I get that I wouldn't enjoy a novella with solely 3 page vignettes, but I think without them Cannery Row would suffer a great deal. The more “philosophical” moments fall a little flatter, like Doc opining about capitalism and how Mack and the boys have actually figured it out. The quips get me more; I loved describing boring parties as “not parties at all but acts and demonstrations, about as spontaneous as peristalsis and as interesting as its end product” (p168). Good, tight read.
This was a really interesting experience. As I'm realizing is Kim Stanley Robinson's style, Aurora has two main thrusts: the imagining of what it would physically look like to put a settler colony on a starship and the inevitable politics and fracturing that the group goes through. I get a certain amount of joy just from reading about how the biomes work, the problem of deceleration, the challenges faced on reaching a new planet. True, at points it gets a little over the top with the vocab, and you're reminded that you're reading fiction and not a paper written by scientists who know what they're talking about. But it's still amazing to think about the balances needed to arrive on a new world.
The interpersonal conflicts here feel a little more forced than in the Mars Trilogy, where the motivations and reasoning for different factions had more time to develop. Here, it kinda just happens, and we don't actually have the ability to really get to know any of the people. Partly, this is because so much of the novel is dedicated to the narration by the ship's computer, which has it's own mental development and associated doses of feels. As an idea, I'm glad to see it explored, even if we lose some of the actual human character development.
The last thought the book leaves you with is the analogy between the starship and Earth. After all, our planet is really the same, just bigger; hurtling through space with finite resources and a crew that can't agree on how best to proceed. It's an interesting filter to look at Earth through; I realised I had a tendency to yell at the starcrew to just get along, when I don't think anything is remotely that easy on Earth. Ultimately, this was a mishmash of fun ideas and a good read, if not as coherent as the Mars Trilogy or 2312.
Incredible. Believe the goddamn hype. Sometimes, I really dislike the Goodreads star system, where a five-star is “amazing”. What about when a book pushes all the boundaries of fantasy in ways you were never expecting? N.K. Jemisin has written a heartbreaking tragedy, a masterfully built world, a beautiful romance, and a pointed political critique. They're all called [b:The Fifth Season 19161852 The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, #1) N.K. Jemisin https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1386803701s/19161852.jpg 26115977].The tragedy is painful. Unlike some other fantasy where you think the feelings are so much larger than life they become intellectualised, more explorations of emotion than experiences of it, the pain of the characters is incredibly relatable and deeply felt. I love the world of the Stillness, the feelings when orogeny is described, the histories of conquest, the neat mappings of culture - comms, stonelore - to the pecularities of the Stillness' tectonics. The characters' loves are unexpected, gripping, and thankfully inclusive. It's not merely refreshing to see nonwhite, nonstraight relationships, but a genuine load lifted; it's a moment of gratitude that this can be written and can exist in the world of fantasy. I love my classic fantasy as much as anyone, and I have always been ready to defend it; I identified with Kvothe and Kaladin and Rand al'Thor. But until I read Alabaster, I hadn't realised how much of a difference it can make to have those commonalities of identity with characters. ‘Baster's identities not only helped me understand him, but also (ironically, since this is a fantasy novel) made me feel remarkably normalised and accepted.Of course, not all of the characters' identities are so easily borne. The dedication is, after all, made out to all those who have to fight for the respect that everyone else is given without question. Hatred for orogenes in the Stillness is incredibly virulent; this despite the physical power that they can display. The parallels are extremely obvious - after all, the primary slur for orogenes is “rogga”. I don't know how best to interpret the parallels though. Is the power, refined by control, an statement of what black people and our other oppressed have, latent? Is it meant to indicate the futility of respectability politics, when extreme focus on that control doesn't lead to any kind of better life? Is it a mirror to the horrors that mainstream society is willing to stomach? To be clear, this is not just allegory, it's also beautiful prose, but certainly part of that beauty comes through the allegorical lens. When the Big Bad is really just us, just everybody, what exactly can you do about it? Apparently, nothing except the end of the world, for the last time.
Nice to get some background on the actual start of this trilogy! The book is focused on Yarvi, which fills in a lot of information about his character that we missed from the second book, where he is much more of a secondary character. Compared to the second, I didn't find the rest of the cast as compelling, and the plot felt a little more contrived, but there's still fun to be had.
I was wondering what I'd get when I noticed what appeared to be fantasy from [a:Kazuo Ishiguro 4280 Kazuo Ishiguro https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1424906625p2/4280.jpg] on the library shelf. [b:The Buried Giant 22522805 The Buried Giant Kazuo Ishiguro https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1451444392s/22522805.jpg 41115424] proves to be remarkably Kazuo. In this fictional Albion with ongoing Anglo-Saxon conflict, he threads an underlying question of what it means to be British, that to me feels like the kind of interrogation you can only really have when you grow up a non-native Brit. It's startling, at least to me, to see the landscapes of England shifted to fantasy and yet described so accurately (or what I imagine to be accurately). He gets the spirit of the place.Setting aside, the novel is an odd, timeskipping piece. We're kept in the dark about most of the plot, since the characters don't really know what's going on half the time anyway. It's interesting to meet characters who don't remember their own lives, but I wouldn't say the experience is particularly fun. The jumps in perspective and time, even mid paragraph, are disorienting. Again, that's sort of the point, I suppose, but it's not easy to read. Ishiguro gets an amazing sense of tone and atmosphere here; it's certainly “literary” or at least feels that way. Yet impressive prose doesn't make it entirely enjoyable, so come into this with appropriate expectations...
I get that this is supposed to be weird. I get (some of) what the Surrealists were trying to do and the context in which they were thinking. I even kinda get the origins of this novella after reading the explanation after finishing it. It still didn't really capture me. Sure, it's fun and weird to think about this alternate history, but I couldn't really let myself float into it and allow subconscious reaction. I even tried when I couldn't relax into it, which didn't exactly help. Instead, the constant name-dropping and switches in timeline forced a constant running critic, attempting to keep track and think about whether I should have known about someone. Ultimately, an interesting piece, but only okay.
Late thoughts and consequently a little less coherent. Steinbeck gets polemical, but I don't fault him in the slightest. Honestly, I don't know the mindset that would be offended by this; I could only get guilt at my ignorance and complicity. I think the scary part is the recognition of the same capitalistic impulses around us today, the xenophobia, the sense of dignity and defeat that characterises the Joads and their fellow migrants. I've read some who thought the ending was abrupt, but I feel that betrays the desire for a neat conclusion, a happy ending, some grand finale. There was no real happy ending to the Dust Bowl and Great Depression, only war; people just died, and those who killed them spewed their indignation as they continue to do now. If there's one thing that bothers me, lacking the Christian fervor, it's that I don't think the hope and threat in the title came to pass, not in the novel and certainly not in real life. The grapes of wrath didn't grow heavy in the souls of the people, mine eyes have not seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, and deliverance from oppression will not be automatic.
Read this, build some empathy, and decide what you're going to do about it.
I think I started this with more than a little suspicion as hesitation. I feel like I've generally approached science-fiction and fantasy from two directions; becoming wedded to particular authors with particular styles and devouring most of their oeuvre. But after being gifted this over the holidays I decided to try something different, and I'm certainly grateful.I think I'd mostly thought of the science-fiction and fantasy I'd read as escapist and only incidentally interesting literarily or with relevance to the present. Favourites such as [b:Hyperion 77566 Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos, #1) Dan Simmons https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1405546838s/77566.jpg 1383900] or [b:Red Mars 77507 Red Mars (Mars Trilogy, #1) Kim Stanley Robinson https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1440699787s/77507.jpg 40712] obviously have allusions, but they're not necessarily the focus and the setting is just as important. A lot of these stories, by contrast, have less to worry about in terms of worldbuilding, in terms of keeping you engaged for a multi-volume epic, and so they can play more directly with ideas. I think I appreciate this a great deal, because though not every idea resonates it's refreshing not to be reading genre fiction as fiction for the sake of being in or appealing to a genre, but fiction that uses the genre as a means to an end. I always described what I got out of SF/fantasy this way, but I think I can say it more confidently now!I'll walk through some in the collection I have relatively cogent thoughts on:The Witch of Orion Waste and the Boy Knight by E. Lily Yu absolutely nailed its tone, for me. I want to read this out loud at some point, to listen to it. It skewers the tropes of fairytale in a way I hadn't seen before, not just saying “what if we empathised with the witch” but “what does it mean to be a witch in fairytale?” Thought-provoking and enjoyable.Openness by Alexander Weinstein is one I wish was longer. Exploring the consequences of the secrets and layers and technology dependence his characters have demanded a relatively swift resolution in short-story, but (and my worldbuilder is leaking) could be an amazing setting for longer drama.Vulcanization by Nisi Shawl made me want to read more alternate-history fiction. It's easy to forget and hard to imagine the minds of colonisers of the time, and if anything I think Shawl's portrayal misses some of the likely lack of conscience/banality of the perpetrators, which might be scarier in hindsight.The Venus Effect by Joseph Allen Hill really had me questioning at first. I think I had a tendency to view metafiction as somehow easier than the regular kind, because you relinquish some of the need to allow the reader to draw their own interpretations. But what you gain, at least here, is a unusually specific and revealing understanding of the patterns of stories of police brutality, and the ways they are left out as well.In any anthology there will be some stories you like more than others, but at least I felt exposed to more niches in SF and fantasy than I had been previously, and enjoyed almost all of the stories. Excited to follow up on some of those leads!
I think as compared to [b:Mind of My Mind 116254 Mind of My Mind (Patternmaster, #2) Octavia E. Butler https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1389676159s/116254.jpg 111957], this novel felt a little out of left field. I think I can see where the series is headed, but to have a nominal sequel feature an entirely new cast and mechanic was jarring. I also felt that the action takes place over a strangely limited time span and area, but then I have always been a sucker for expansiveness. I think what I'm getting at with that last point though, is that the characters in [b:Wild Seed 52318 Wild Seed (Patternmaster, #1) Octavia E. Butler https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388462753s/52318.jpg 1330000] and [b:Mind of My Mind 116254 Mind of My Mind (Patternmaster, #2) Octavia E. Butler https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1389676159s/116254.jpg 111957] change a ton because they are given the time to develop themselves. Here, it feels like in the span of a day or two Rane and Keira go from being naive and shy/foolhardy girls (despite their experience they still grew up walled and Blake says so, with the possible excuse that he would be overprotective) to managing rapid and brutal escapes from their captors. Perhaps this is me just underestimating either female characters or the ability of the alien microbe to rapidly change its hosts. Nevertheless, I think something was missing that prevented me from really getting into this one. Still a great read though, and has its moments.
It's hard to summarize this book succinctly, and I understand the feeling that it brings together a host of narratives and feelings, many of which not obviously thematically linked. Nevertheless, to me the very improbability of their occurrence is somehow more compelling; this is a fictional account of real experiences that captures something particular about each of them. For me, I took away so much. The literal American saga of the expulsion from war, immigrant experience and struggle, the Great Depression, the second war, the postwar boom, the 60s, the 70s. Race riots, white flight, San Francisco, the morphing and multiple views on religion, sex and life. The sensation of feeling out of place, at the bottom of the heap. The reassurance of the present-day narration. The repetitive cycles of life, the motifs that return, the lessons learned, the people along the way. The tropes, even. The secrets, the shame, the confusion, the inability to communicate, the struggle of making it work. Unchanging natures. The old men nattering. The teenagers. The fundamental existence of people, somehow, the contrast to the hubris of the present, to mine perhaps. Icarus rather than Prometheus.
Apparently, a review full of sentence fragments at 5am. It's good, read it.
Isn't it a little bit funny how screwed up people can be, even when they're trying to do the best they can? I can't empathise with the Cold War mentality, and it's staggering how differently we think these days, but I do see something of myself in most of the Watchmen. Idealism, cynicism, hope, narrowmindedness, uncertainty, determination. This book will make you question a great deal about who you are and what you do. Read it.
There are a lot of naysayers here, but I really liked this book. It's a thriller novel with suitably short chapters about the problems of an aircraft company, Norton, as it tries to deal with the media, business partners, engineering problems, the mysterious provenance of an accident, and many others. It doesn't sound immediately enticing, but I enjoyed this book more than Sphere - it felt somehow more tangible and the characters more convincing.
This was not actually my first read, but the last time was sufficiently long ago that I couldn't remember any plot details. The story is largely presented from the viewpoints of two characters - Casey Singleton, a press officer for Norton tasked along with others with finding out what happened on a flight incident which left many passengers injured and a few killed, and Jennifer Malone, reporter for Newsline, looking to tear apart Norton for a 15 minute story. Events unfold and Crichton is able to push his message that the media is getting too powerful, while maintaining tension and keeping me awake (I read this in one sitting!)
This is a serious study in how to keep a reader on edge. Maybe I'm just easily scared, but I find surprising that such a simple concept can generate such a strong reaction from me.
Four scientists are called to a crash site. It turns out to be the site of a spaceship that has been there for more than three hundred years. As they explore, mysterious events and messages begin to appear around the site of their habitat. The mission becomes a race to discover who or what is causing these attacks and why, before it kills them all.
For me, Sphere derives a great deal of its power from the veneer of science that it layers over the entire experience. We're placed among a group of intellectuals who knife away at the problems using the tools they are normally accustomed to. The origin of the ship, the nature of the codes, their mutual behaviours - I could spot no obvious, immersion breaking discrepancies and I was consequently quite vulnerable to the feelings that the book generates. Crichton uses Sphere as a way to indicate the issues surrounding alien contact, caricatured somewhat but still a real indicator to someone who is not aware of the situation. I think it would be best not take his novels too seriously, though. Not everything is quite as clear cut as he makes it out.
The other issue I would mention is the relative lack of feelings that the characters have. The main character is a psychologist, but I don't think that you can explain the weird reactions of the scientists to deaths and inexplicable events as just hiding from the reality. I think most people would have some kind of more extreme reaction than that. It makes Beth and Harry, in particular, feel like constructions more than people.
The “message” of the book then, if there is one, would probably go something like this. We're looking at a clash between the soft and the hard sciences, and their ways of interpreting problems. Norman ends up proving that the hard scientists that ignore psychology and their own psychological problems are a danger to themselves and others (although the sequence of deductions that he generates is enough to make any reader feel inadequate). The other topic is the power of the human imagination. Norman decides that the ability to control our thoughts and maintain self-control is the factor being tested by the sphere. As a species, we have to learn this kind of restraint if we are going to explore the stars.
Highly recommended if you have a little time on your hands. No literary masterpiece, but thoroughly enjoyable and it will get you thinking hard about a great deal of increasingly relevant issues.
An entertaining “stroll”, as the cover says, through the etymology and origins of many English words. Helps expand on your vocabulary and is chock full of random tidbits of trivia to annoy your friends with. If you have ever studied any Latin or Greek, you will be well aware that they form the roots of many English words today, but exactly how the meanings and spellings of words shift is pretty fascinating. A single event, or a single usage of a word, can set the ball rolling for a whol wave of different meanings. Not exactly burdened with a particular message or anything, this is continous links between one word and the next, easy to pick up and read for a few minutes at a time. Forsyth is humourous and keeps the subject engaging. A good read.
Only actually read The Death of Ivan Ilyich here: the other stories will have to wait. Nevertheless, my first taste of Tolstoy and I can see why he is acclaimed: he writes with an intensity and purpose that brings out the struggles of Ivan Ilyich as he dies. Particularly compelling was the idea that we lie to ourselves about hope and the inevitability of death, and when this is gone you can only suffer. More thoughts to come, but perhaps I will attempt other Tolstoy at a suitable opportunity.
Brief review. I felt slightly bad about the relatively low rating I have given the frontrunner of modern fantasy, but I think it should reflect how much I enjoyed it and was compelled to carry on reading it. I am probably on well trodden ground, but here goes.
Tolkien is not that great a writer. He creates an incredibly complete world with myth and history and a great deal more, and there are legions of Tolkien scholars who have ensured the consistency of the whole thing and noted the precious few places that there is a mistake. I think that Middle-Earth is certainly one of the most complete universes I have come across in fantasy. Unfortunately, what I have seen of it is still not enough. I think the books occupy a strange middle ground between a universe where you can know everything - there is a truly complete history - and ones which are content to leave you wondering. Westeros and Essos, by way of comparison, are certainly less fleshed out than Middle-Earth. Much of the history is not written, but just alluded to; many of the languages really consist of just a few words in comparison to Tolkien's tour de force that is Elvish. Yet in reading, the impression you get is not significantly different. There is still a great deal of unknown surrounding Middle Earth, and filling in the gaps with cryptic references to Valinor and Light, not to mention anythng east of Mordor, is no more satisfactory than ASOIAF's oblique mentions of ancient kings. In both cases the reader feels that there is so much more to be said.
The characters of the Fellowship are often equally bland. Aragorn is a mighty king when it suits him, but helpless the rest of the time. I don't think he mentioned any desires of his ever, not even like for food or to sit down for a time, except when he returns to the king-place with Elendil and whoever and when he makes a reference to Arwen/Eowyn - don't even know which one he likes because they haven't even been met. Legolas and Gimli are stereotypes of elves and dwarves respectively, with little individuality. Boromir is practically a non-character. I don't think Tolkien realises that saying "Boromir had a greedy glint in his eye" several times leading up to his attempt on the Ring is not actually great suspense. Gandalf is boring - he is super powerful in all respects other than those in which he needs to be. The hobbits: Merry and Pippin are just non-characters. Sam is one dimensionally devoted to Frodo, and Frodo just seems clueless the entire time. There was a brief moment when he had some resolve at the Breaking, but he was still stupid then.
There's a whole thing on heroism I'll talk about once I finish the trilogy, since that was why I started in the first place. In any case, I think this book was impressive in its scope and historical importance, and contains enough that you won't dislike reading it, but I didn't find it exciting by any other means.
I will just copypaste my personal summary of the book below, made as I read through for easier recall. As a summary of moral concepts, it is frustratingly dense but thankfully short. Williams spends a lot of time saying little, yet manages to condense a good deal of moral philosophy into this book. Nevertheless, a taxing read. 2/5 based on the Goodreads guidelines of “it's ok”.
Please feel free to point out if I misunderstood Williams - very likely -.-
coming soon
