Ayyy ayyy. Why didn't anyone warn me.
This was basically pulpy Catholic schoolgirl hurt/comfort fanfiction. In spaaace. Look, if I want to read about sexy Latino space priests being made to suffer... and suffer.... and suffer... then I already have one, and that is Dan Simmons's Father Federico de Soya who, iirc, is literally turned into a meat smoothie and then magically reconstituted using his magical space crucifix every time he makes a jump into hyperspace.
I say this also as a former Catholic schoolgirl who read and wrote her fair share of ridiculously over-the-top, angsty, hurt/comfort fanfic about various priestly studs. I feel like I've grown out of that though (I mean, I do hope I have), and so I spent much of this book just groaning and rolling my eyes and going, “oh GAWD stahpppp about Emilio Sandoz's hair [SO MUCH ABOUT HIS HAIR FALLING INTO HIS EYES], his eyes, his sexy chest” blah blah blah. But I feel like I can recognize a fellow traveler when I see one. And this book was just waaaaay too invested in Sandoz's (a) sexiness and (b) suffering. It was also EXTREMELY Catholic - to the point of it should be advertised as Christian fiction? - and also, oh, so dated, so 1990s. Like, come on: people in 2019 are not still quoting commercial jingles from the 1980s.
So many things that were just absurd.
- First, I kinda got into the characterizations at first - I did like Anne Edwards (Ann? I listened to this on audiobook, so forgive my spellings). But then I noticed that they all... sounded the same? And while I did enjoy some of the dad joke bantering, I did eventually tire of it. Like, maybe this is the Platonic ideal of salt o' the Earth humanity in Russell's mind, but I just found everyone kinda provincial and similar and nerdy? Some of the jokes were real groan-inducing. And to have the aliens ENJOY THESE JOKES TOO? I was like, Gawd, please.
- Second, the Big Reveal. I will not spoil it, but it seemed so terribly unrealistic. Like, when they find an emaciated, clearly-tortured Sandoz in some space prison whorehouse, their first instinct is to think... that he willingly became a space prostitute??!! Uh, what? So when Sandoz has his big Good Will Hunting-esque therapy breakthrough that he was instead repeatedly raped, and all the other Jesuit priests are Pikachu face shocked and sobbing, I was like, AND THIS IS A SURPRISE?!
- Third, they plant a garden? On a random alien planet? Has Russell traveled internationally, cuz like even most airport Customs + Immigrations will tackle you if you try to walk in with an apple!? Also, they just eat random space vegetables (AND MEAT)? Apparently none of these characters have heard of the Columbian exchange? Honestly, the book jumped the shark for me when the Jesuit mission was put together, because it just strained belief that this group of mediocre-seeming pals would actually ALSO be the ones who (a) hear the SETI signal, and (b) get to go?!
I spent most of the book comparing it unfavorably to Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, and Ursula Le Guin's Hainish Cycle, because those authors have tackled many similar themes - first contact, other cultures, space anthropology - but, like, with way more believability and intelligence? This just seemed so hokey in comparison! AND PLEASE, NOT ONE MORE SENTENCE ABOUT EMILIO'S EYES OR HAIR.
Unexpectedly lovely. A portrait and memoir of a friendship over 40+ years.
Someone somewhere called it a deep look into male friendship. Ah yes, male friendship, that thorny beast. Don't men struggle to make and keep friends? That's what Richard Reeves and Bowling Alone and that Kurzgesagt video make me believe. Isn't there a loneliness epidemic?
Anyway. I didn't really see this book in such a gendered, macro way. I saw it in a very intimate, micro way - a celebration of, indeed, our ape-y need to have close friends. A shoulder to cry on!
The author, Will Schwalbe, describes himself as a nerdy, bookish, unathletic, gay man who “should not” be friends with, the friend-love of his life, Chris Maxey, described as a big, strapping jock with a heart o' gold. This book is really a loving paean to “Maxey” - as he is called by loved ones. Schwalbe often comes across as peevish and rigid, I even started getting annoyed with him. Until I remembered he was the author. But he really sings the praises of Maxey, and what his friendship with Maxey has brought into his life. It's touching. Deeply sweet. I found myself with tears in my eyes at the end - and recommitted to keeping the flames of my friendships alive and burning sweetly! MAYBE EVEN I SHALL CALL YOU PEOPLE, AND YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I HATE TALKING ON THE PHONE.
Incidentally, Maxey founded a school in the Bahamas - The Island School - which Schwalbe also sings the praises of. I wonder how much of an applications bump they'll get because of this.
Parts of it, I loved very much. Much of it, I found very dated. How amazing! But the world of gender has changed a LOT since this book's release date (2011): namely, we've had the 2013 Supreme Court decision, #MeToo, the 2016 election, and an explosion of gender diversity on the cultural consciousness (and transphobia becoming a political platform :vomit:). So, I found a lot of this book to be - maybe outdated and rendered moot?
Anyway,
The things I liked
Preschool girls are definitely obsessed with princesses. The blooming of gender consciousness among the preschool set is really a sight to behold (and annoying to deal with). Boy, this tiny gender police. So the book was great in framing that: framing how, for example, kids as old as 6 don't understand that their sex is (barring medical intervention) unchanging. So they reckon, yeah, if you cut my hair short, maybe I will become a boy. And so on. I found this very adorable, enlightening, and compassion-giving: ooooh, so that's why you can't wear the baggy shorts. Okay, fine, whatever.
I also appreciated the author's awareness of her own hang-ups, and the (colorful!) interaction between second wave (mostly white lady) feminism - which sounds lovely, tbh, I wish I was wearing overalls in 1977, full of women's lib hope, fighting for equal pay and so on - and early 2000s reactionary feminism. DID U KNOW that the number of stay-at-home-moms increased in the 2000s? (DID U ALSO KNOW that “parenting” was not a word until the 1970s, and, indeed, women out of the workforce were previously called housewives or spinsters (aka, it was marital status - not kid status - that labeled you)). Anyway, I found Orenstein's ability to also recognize her own ridiculousness - NO TULLE SKIRTS FOR U! - relatable and, again, compassion-giving.
Did you know that “tween”, as a word, was invented by marketers? AND “toddler”?!!
Anyway, I appreciated how much Orenstein focused on marketing - THE EVILS OF MAD MEN - and how insidious capitalism is in defining our culture, our childhoods, etc. The brand recognition stuff was, ugh, revolting.
The things that made me go, “oh, jeez”
I didn't necessarily dislike anything in the book, but I did find it quaint. First of all, one of Orenstein's big focuses is the sexualization of girls - and the way (American! corporate!) culture inundates girls with an emphasis on appearance and performance, at the expense of their own internal selves. Fine, okay. Yes. Toddlers and Tiaras is an aberration, as are Bratz. I had literally just read a research report (argh, which I can't find right now - I think by Pew), something that had surveyed teens, about their hopes and fears. Their TOP worry was mental health (top worry for parents too). Their top pressure was academic. Sex and sexuality was way down the list - something that makes Jean Twenge, e.g., get worried (the kids!! always glued to their screens!). Girls are also, on average, outperforming boys academically - at all levels (see Richard Reeves's book). Sooo I just couldn't really take seriously Orenstein's concerns (which go on for quite a while) about the early 2000s Mad Men/Disney Princess marketing machine/Britney Spears/Hannah Montana breeding a generation of empty-headed bimbos.
Another quaintness that I feel is no longer helpful was Orenstein's hand-wringing over social media (which included... MySpace!!!). In this regard, I found Richard Culatta's book a lot more down to Earth, reasonable, and helpful. Orenstein was basically like “these crazy kids with their thefacebook.com”. I mean, she's right about social media being intricately linked with advertising, social performance, and social-performance-as-free-advertising, but Facebook is ded now. :p And TikTok is just so very different.
Super what I needed, but also - didn't land for me? Not completely?
So this is a SUPER gentle and super self-compassionate take on housecleaning. It's specifically addressed to neurodivergent and PTSD folks - especially women - and it has some nice wisdoms in there, both practical and psychological. This didn't land for me, though, since the BIG tldr of the book is something I've already internalized. Namely: there's no such thing as laziness (it is a Puritan/Calvinist lie!!!), and cleaning is NOT a moral task (“cleanliness == godliness” - again, those frickin Calvinists!). Anyway, thanks to my deeply Medieval Italian internal self - where I value things like “bella figura” and “il dolce far niente” - I feel zero MORALITY about my cluttered-ass home or children wearing mismatched socks (it's cute!). So all the many many sections on helping the reader overcome their tidiness-related guilt was just wasted on me. Similarly, when she mentioned that - for those who can afford it - they should not moralize buying help. This was something I used to have a hang-up about - before I (a) became an economist, and (b) lived in developing countries. I will someday write an essay about this.
The author also alienated me a bit because she mentioned, numerous times, the way some social media comment or social media pressure (“Instagrammable”, “pinterestable”) made her feel shitty. And I just wanted to take HER hand, hold it gently, and be like, “Have you considered deleting your accounts? Is social media serving you?”
Maybe I'll write a book and I'll call it “Social media and the Calvinists and Puritans: Why they are out to get you”.
That said, this book did have some very helpful practical tips. Namely:
- Half-assed is better than zero-assed.
- Every room's cleaning can be broken down into (and ranked by): (1) trash, (2) laundry, (3) dishes, (4) things out of their place, and (5) things that have no place.
- Yes, cleaning/keeping house is an endless, cyclical slog with no finite end - so don't wait for that finite end to have fun/relax. Just think of the evening reset: what kindness can you do future you?
Now that a few days have passed, I have noticed myself being kinder to myself (and my partner, probably crucially, HA) re: how our house is a cluttered zoo of toys of mysterious origin. This too shall pass! A season of life!
A rare YA book that I find charming and relatable.
I guess I find most YA books these days extremely pedantic and prim. It's like we're fighting the culture war on them? I mean, we are. But it's so very, very moral. Are you Left or are you Right?! I only read the leftist ones, and they're... fine. The way Daniel Tiger is fine. Like, it's good. Daniel Tiger teaches important social-emotional skills. But BOY OH BOY is it a slog of moralizing pedantry. Sing-song “when you get frustrated, take a deep breath, and count to 4!” Or “saying sorry is the first step - then, how can I help?!” My God.
What I yearn for, then, is amoral, imaginative, weirdo YA fiction and children's stories. Take Heidi, for example. The anime. In Heidi, shit is sometimes grim (her parents are dead, indeed, and her forced-parent grandfather is a real grump), and emotions are certainly acknowledged and real, but we're not, like, in a cognitive behavioral therapy session. Ooh, here's a very Jonathan Haidt theory: maybe all this focus on “how can I help?!” and “take a deep breath” and assuming we need to stop and pause and socially-emotionally learn everything is making the kids fragile?! The Death of Resilience?! Maybe the culture will swing back and we'll start re-emphasizing self-sufficiency and resilience and “yeah, life is shit sometimes, oh well, learn to get over it”.
ALL THAT TO SAY. I think I enjoyed this because this is actually a quite grim, Roald Dahl-esque tale of people being grotesque to each other, told through the eyes of innocent, not-always-well-meaning kids. Prosper and Boniface Hartlieb are two German brothers and runaways. Their (single?) mother has just died, and their quite terrible aunt and uncle want to adopt Bo (cuz he's 5 and thus a cute “teddy bear”) and dump Prosper in a boarding school. Their mom was apparently a big-time romantic, who filled their heads with tales of Venice's glory. So they flee there - jumping trains from Hanover (or was it Hamburg?) to Venice.
They land in the city of canals in the year 2000 - aka, cell phones but ALSO fax machines. Flooding, pigeon shit, AND SO MANY TOURISTS. They take up with a gang of street children led by a charismatic, snobby little peacock named Scipio, who calls himself the Thief Lord - so wily are his break-ins.
Plot #1: Prosper and Bo's aunt and uncle enlist the services of a cheapo detective to come hunting for the kids.
Plot #2: A mysterious “Conte” (Count) hires the Thief Lord to steal a mysterious piece of wood for a mysterious purpose. Such mystery!
So I enjoyed this quite a bit, especially more and more as the story went on. I just, like, APPRECIATED FUNKE'S CHOICES, MAN. e.g. There was something Studio Ghibli-ish about how independent and resilient the kids are; they are just making their way, man. I also appreciated that villainy was MOSTLY not one-note (with two notable exceptions) - like, I was surprised and delighted by how some of the characters came around and were welcomed. The book also jumps the shark a bit towards the end, but I was 100% here for it - it aligned with the general fantasy-ness of being a kid.
I listened to this as an audiobook with a talented and very English narrator; I would have LOVED to have heard this in Italian, since I think that would have really set the scene more - especially with the Venetian accents and German accents and so on. Apparently they made this into a movie in the mid 2000s?
Chess has eaten my brain, and the brains of my family, this month, and so it wasn't really a choice to read this. I simply had to.
And, generally, this was a fun, romantic cultural history of chess. It was - like many non-fiction “object memoirs” - a bit hagiographic. Like, I think the author overstated chess's influence over, you know, CIVILIZATION. But, at the same time, I think the author PERFECTLY captured the inner world of chess - what happens in our brains, how it's been used and abused in different cultural contexts. I do wonder how much a total non-chess person would enjoy this. Chess is already super romanticized in our culture (Queen's Gambit blah blah), and the author is definitely deeply in love with the game and that romance, but I mostly enjoyed this as someone who's just started playing obsessively. I felt SEEN by his descriptions of what happens to you when you play, and how some people play (oh god the blunders THE BLUNDERS), and so on.
I think my favorite parts of the book were the ancient chess history - especially the Islamic era stuff, its travel along the Silk Road to Europe, the way the pieces evolved in these cultural contexts (from elephants to knights, from ministers to queens), the way the queen piece was probably based on Holy Roman Empress Adelaide. I also loved learning about the history of chess theory: the romantic era, the strategic era, the hypermodern era, and the new dynamism?
The author also touched on some interesting cognitive aspects of chess as a perfect petri dish for studying cognition. I was very curious to learn more about chess's close relationship with mental illness - the author mentions that there's a theory that it literally drives you crazy, and I KINDA GET THAT. I also really resonated with the quote by one Medieval chess hater about how chess gives you no rest, but just torments your soul. So true, goodness. Look how miserable both the loser AND the winner of the recent World Chess Championships are!
What I did think was missing was: (1) there was zero mention of chess's very weird gender history - that is, it has long been an exclusively male “sport”, and is still extremely skewed. I would have loved some probing of why this has been the case, some discussion of the Polgar sisters, for example. And, (2), there was also no deep investigation of modern scholastic chess - except for a very happy final chapter about NYC's push for chess in public schools. From what I understand, current scholastic chess world is a bit of a shark tank - hyper-competitive and unhappy? That's the vibe I've gotten, but I'd love to learn more. Maybe this book was published before the current scholastic chess boom, so fair enough.
Anyway, if you ever have the (mis)fortune of getting sucked into this game, this is a great overview of its cultural history.
Really good. Evocative, bare, deeply humanistic. A tiny bar and whorehouse in the middle of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We mostly zoom in on the owner, Mama Nadi, and the women who work for her. A war rages outside. It gets scary but never too grim - quite the opposite, this was an optimistic, hopeful play.
Holy shit. A short children's book to teach them the Triestin dialect (aka the dialect from Trieste, Italy - a dialect that has like 250k speakers?). A way for me to face my angst and grief that the dialect will almost certainly die with me? But at least I can show my kids the words?!?! And, like, a picture of Miramare and some iota?! This is the barest drop of Triestine culture and life.
Ha! I remembered reading this book as a middle schooler? High schooler? And my memories were that it was transformative! Captivating! Ethics thunderdome! Super deep! Amazing! Like, the way 12 Angry Men feels to me now.
So I re-read it with great anticipation and enthusiasm.
And was surprised??? By how, like, maudlin and kinda trashy and overly simplistic it felt? Some books just meet you where you're at and then, I guess, you grow apart!
A sweet, bite-sized version of Susanna Clarke's world. I much preferred her massive tome, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which I still consider a supreme masterwork of fantasy fiction. Mamma mia.
But that one is, admittedly, a kinda daunting read: 1k pages! This is a much more manageable ~300, and it has many of the same charming qualities of her other book:
- Magical Englishness
- Deep (19th century, capital R) Romanticism
- Characters who are fallible and amusing and fussy
This one has a much slower reveal - the book itself is basically a slow reveal, and we conclude with the “ah ha!” - but there's no surprises, necessarily. Or no false leads; every hint is just a straightforward increment in knowledge.
It was fine, good.
Good. Fine. Decent.
I don't feel very invested in the paradoxes of Christianity - certainly not anymore. And, if I did, I think I'd read something like Ted Chiang's Hell Is the Absence of God (chef's kiss!!), or maybe Karen Armstrong's book on how Christianity kinda lost mysticism back in Medieval times and isn't that a shame, or maybe that angry atheist book whose title now eludes me (not by Dawkins and not by Hitchens).
This was fine. It's about the core paradoxes of Christianity, as embodied by Judas, as told in the kinda awkward early 2000s, ahem, cool slang. I skimmed the original cast list and saw that Sam Rockwell played (originated?) the role of Judas and, well, that kinda ruined it for me. I couldn't hear any other voice, see any other actor. Aw, damn. I don't love Sam Rockwell. He's fine. I loved him in Galaxy Quest (“man, I'm just jazzed about being on the show” - one of my go-to quotes). Here's a great trailer of one of his movies. Shrug!
I guess I read this author's Atlantic article, because I do remember getting swept away with sympathy for Joe Biden's surprise stutter back in 2019/2020? This book is a memoir by that same journalist, about his own lifelong struggle with the disease.
On the one hand, I enjoyed the specificity of the author's upbringing: he grows up Catholic, on the outskirts of DC, as an old Millennial. His mindset, his childhood, his music tastes - all were VERY comfortingly familiar. On the other hand, this is a memoir specifically of his stutter - and it was painful and moving to walk that mile with him.
Hmmm. There was something about this that I really didn't like.
This is a collection of slice-of-life one-panel comics, mostly gag jokes around domesticity and - eventually - parenting. The art itself is VERY good; Yehuda Devir has incredible draftsmanship. And the themes are right up my alley: I am 100% in the householder phase as well right now. BUT, a lot of this kinda rubbed me the wrong way. It felt... conservative? Like, it's a celebration of red-blooded, hetero-normative, patriarchal stuff; and the hyped-up Adonis figures that the author puts himself and his wife in just felt odd. Like, there's lots of perfect bodies being perfect, and jokes about just wanting to eat Nutella. I'd love to have Slavoj Zizek read this and comment.
Oh, this one got me right in the heart.
I knew nothing of Annie Sullivan, the young woman who was Helen Keller's lifelong teacher. This is a short biographical comix about Sullivan, who had a very difficult life indeed. Told with gentleness, humanity, and care, we jump back and forth between Sullivan's work with a very young Helen Keller, to Sullivan's own childhood in a western Massachusetts poorhouse.
The book could have had larger font and less cramped panel ordering, or maybe I'm just getting old. But, really, a phenomenal story.
Absolutely phenomenal. Apparently, this is what my heart and mind have been after since childhood. I used to draw lots of these little things throughout my childhood - and, as an adult, I've always felt a strong kinship and attraction to the Renaissance artistic scientist/engineers like Brunelleschi. I've always been amused and tickled and romanced by things like the golden ratio. Well! Apparently what I've been after is math art!!!
This is ostensibly geared towards kids - and I wish I had had this as a kid - but I found this just as amusing and enriching and enchanting as an adult. I don't know why SOME types of games and puzzles are considered “intellectual” or virtuous - the NYT Crossword, for example, or Wordle - while others, like figuring out an Euler circuit are just nowhere to be seen?
I will dive more into this rich and promising vein! Huzzah for math art!
Really phenomenal. This is what I wanted The Theory That Would Not Die to be - that is, a book that explores why Bayesian statistics/Bayesian rationalism is meaningful and powerful. I guess that one was a pop stats history book, whereas this is aimed more towards practitioners.
That said, this book is written with such a lively, passionate tone, such joie de vivre and humor and brio and so on, that I often cackled with glee. He also made me get pumped again about being Bayesian. Someone at work recently asked me, “Are you frequentist or Bayesian?” My response: “Bayesian. But we all are, in our hearts.” I definitely believe that. Bayesian stats aligns with what people THINK many frequentist concepts (confidence intervals being a big one, p-values being another big one) are conveying.
But this book also tied things together in an unexpected way. Namely, I had never thought that the replication crisis which created such drama in so many fields (psychology, economics, medicine) was almost a deterministic result of using frequentist statistics. My take had always been a pragmatic/economic one: that is, that the incentive structures of academia and “closed science�� (aka paywalled journals) had created a perverse system of p-hacking, etc. Clayton (who taught a course at Harvard's Extension School that became this book - I WISH I had taken that course!!!) argues that frequentism is just rotten to the core, and it's now pulling the rest of empirical science with it.
Very eye-opening, Pikachu shocked gawping, was that the American Statistical Association had been sounding this alarm as well - for years! I had no idea.
Anyway, I'm going to go tell everyone at work that we need to be Bayesian from now on!
An unexpected FEAST. I really, REALLY loved this one.
This is a historical fiction graphic novel about Hipparchia, a rare FEMALE Ancient Greek philosopher. This shows her daily life in ye olde Athens (circa 400BCE?). She is a dorky bookworm who likes to ponder the big questions - why is there anything, etc - and who constantly gets shut down by the well-meaning, but very basic, men in her life. Oh, also there are a lot of lecherous idiotic men, because the Patriarchy be patriarching super hard in this time and place.
This book really tickled me pink. I 100% related to Hipparchia - I was that nerdy bookworm back in my teen years. I also enjoy, still now, re-imagining my daily life in the garb of 19th century Victorian England, or 14th century Renaissance Florence, or whatever. I love to look at the people passing me on the street and imagine us all in some historical point in time: what would map onto what? Instead of worrying about ChatGPT, would we be worrying about those damn Guelphs and Ghibellines? I love it.
Oh yeah. I also realized this book is basically Disney's Beauty and the Beast, only much much purer and better. (And I like Beauty and the Beast, don't get me wrong.)
Hmm, given how much I loved this and how much I loved Kaoru Mori's A Bride's Story, I think I'm just 100% desperate for historical fiction, slice of life comix featuring relatable women and tons of anthropological detail.
Oh goodness. I spent much of this book in tears. A coming-of-age novel about a girl named Sam, from ages 7 to 19.
This is written in the present tense, third person, and the voice - Sam's voice - feels immediate and authentic. It felt VERY true to a girl's interior; the writing matches Sam's maturity as she grows.
Ugh. This book was honestly gutting. Sam's mom is a young, single mom in Massachusetts, near Salem. Sam has a half-brother, Noah. Noah and Sam's dads are both deadbeats who make intermittent appearances. Sam really pines for her dad. Unreliable kid narrator that she is, we - the adult reader - understand pretty quickly that he has a substance abuse problem. Oh, it's just heartbreaking.
I found this all incredibly real, naturalistic - humane and compassionate. The thread which weaves through the book is that (a) Sam is introduced to rock climbing at a young age by her dad, shows a talent for it, and it becomes her guiding passion, and (b) Sam also has an inborn curiosity about geological things. But geology don't pay the bills.
Oh goodness. As soon as this ended, I wanted to restart it. Just a wonderful wonderful book, if you have a girl in your life or are a girl or are raising a girl etc etc.