Martha Wells short novella All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries is really more like a comic. I cannot be the first to point this out. Lots of action, centered on a trained killer who has “grown” a conscience. And because the killer is partly AI, there is plenty of room for “strange” perspectives and interactions. Enjoyable short read!
Enjoyed reading Alexander Todorov’s book, Face Value: The Irresistible Influence of First Impressions, and discussing in my Friday morning (early!) book group. Coincidentally, in my class on the economics of gender in developing countries, I had touched on evolutionary psychology of gender differences. A student asked whether that kind of research (evolutionary approaches to the mind, etc) were not discredited. Indeed, most older research certainly has been discredited. Plenty of present research will also be discredited. And Todorov does a great job showing that! Does that mean the no new research should be conducted? I think not. Every responsible academic, though, should acknowledge how fraught the subject matter is. Todorov is an excellent writer, and a careful researcher. So this book is a fine introduction.
Premier amour by Ivan Tourgueniev is an enjoyable novella. The modern reader finds it a bit overwrought… we can tell that the “other lover” is the young man’s father almost immediately. If the skill of the novel is portraying how the boy might not be aware of that, and might be incapable of apprehending that, then indeed a feat. But I think that at the time the skill was in portraying a young woman who was frankly coquettish, and frankly a mistress, and the social reality of that situation. Why not have told the story from the young woman’s point of view, then? Beyond the writing skill of anyone, I suppose, in 1860. Maybe George Eliot? So amazing that the novel, as a sustained literary ecosystem (with novelists reading other novelists and adapting their writing accordingly), was really less than 100 years old at the time.
I wish that The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin had been a better novel, but unfortunately it is juvenile and humdrum. I love her later work, and the Earthsea novels. My cover calls this novel “an astonishing tale of one man’s search for utopia” and indeed it reads as if Le Guin had read Ayn Rand and wanted to riff off of that and earn some money and fame? But I don’t know whether in early 1970s that was the case? So I would recommend reading something else. And I followed my own recommendation, skimming extensively after about 200 pages.
My neighborhood book club read and discussed Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner. We’re an odd mix, and it is always interesting to see who “likes” and who doesn’t. Leaving the Atocha Station is about as high literary-meta as you can get: a bored precocious poet is writing, and the novel is about how he’s not writing, and how he’s not even sure what writing, and communicating in general, means, especially not in Spanish in Spain. It is very short, and not much happens. The narrator can be deliberately annoying. But everyone agreed it was an interesting deconstruction of the idea of writing. Everyone liked it!
I really enjoyed reading Earthsea by Ursula K. le Guin in French translation by Philippe Hupp. I had previously only read the first volume in English. Maybe reading in translation lends gravity to what might be, in native language, an ordinary young adult fantasy novel? I found the themes of the second two novels to be far more adult. This was an adventure into the mind, and discovering the country of who we are and what gives life meaning. The occasional action sequence is definitely secondary to long scenes of sitting. First, Ged and Tenar in the treasure caves, and second, Ged and Arren on the sailboat. Sometimes the sitting is accompanied by talking, but very often the sitting is a chance for characters to think. They think a lot, and their thinking changes over the course of the novels. Highly recommended!
Very enjoyable, very readable, Katie Mack’s The End of Everything is good cosmology overview of where the field is at on the question of what happens when the universe winds down. Obviously the math is way beyond me, but Mack does a good job helping you think you understand a little bit more than you did before.
Finished Eifelheim by Michael Flynn… a bit exhausting, but the “everyone is going to die” reader anticipation of plague novels is pretty compelling nevertheless. The frame story doesn’t work very well, but the Krenken-Dietrich-Manfred main story is very moving. I’d read a good novella told from Manfred’s point of view.
I thought this short story, “Blushes,” by Graham Swift, in The New Yorker, January 18 2021, was tremendous as a statement of quiet competence in writing, on a well-trodden theme: towards the end of life, looking back and having a childhood memory stick. (Rosebud?) Every human, one imagines, over a certain age is familiar with this sentiment, and one can imagine more clearly, when confronted with writing like this, what it would mean to not have these kinds of memory flashes. The sense of continuity constructed by the brain: “that self was myself, even as it was a different self,” is arguably one of our most mysterious human traits. Some commentary over at Mookse.
The story “Good-Looking” by Souvankham Thammavongsa in the March 1, 2021 issue of The New Yorker. Quite enjoyable read, for the craft. About as concise as possible as a portrayal of how the child remembers something, knows a bit of the backstory, can fill in many gaps, and sits there 30 years later, as an adult, and wonders about the gap between “knowing” someone like your own father, and your father’s knowing of himself. I found it interesting that she chose to use “air bubbles” at the end…? Carbon dioxide is not usually thought of as air. Deliberate? Mistake? Everything else is so precise, why that? Anyway, one cannot really complain about two pages written so lucidly and insightfully.
Reading this sci-fi “empire” novel A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine (the new labeling for what used to be called space opera, I guess) was enjoyable. Very good characterization of the two central characters. A decent science-fi idea, though in the end perhaps underdeveloped. A good editor I think could have taken this one step further – there were numerous small grammar issues and repetitions (the main character was “on the verge of a hysterical laugh” enough times that I started noticing the construction). I will admit that I skimmed the last third: denouement is such a hard problem in novel writing. I’m becoming more of a fan of “circular” writing where the ending turns around to go right back to the beginning (influence of reading Pnin, I suppose).
A fine moody, noir-ish, crime novel where the crime is really quite tangential and left for the very end. The focus is on a washed-out ex-punk photographer. Lots of interesting discussion of photography, landscape (desolate parts of Maine, that I know only vicariously and from one trip during the summer), gender, and purpose. Crisp writing. It isn’t for everyone, I think. But I found it quite rewarding.
I think the answer is pretty simple: if you care that inequality in the United States has risen and that many, many people are being “left behind” then you should be in favor. The pundits, including many prominent economists who are associated with the Democratic Party, and many reactionary economists associated with Republican party and libertarian-y types, will say this is “irresponsible” because the large transfer will be inflationary. The solution to the inflation possibility is very simple: raise taxes on the wealthy and reduce military spending and stop the giveaways to the corporate farm sector to ensure interest rates do not rise dramatically and that the increase in spending by the bottom half of the income distribution is not putting pressure on prices. Maybe while you are at it reform housing regulations (allow fourplexes in every single family zoned neighborhood) so that the bottom half of the income distribution in expensive urban areas is more likely to invest/consume better housing stock.
“The Wind” by Lauren Groff, in The New Yorker, was a straightforward, powerful story of domestic violence. I confess it is a genre that no reader, let alone me, enjoys, told, as it is, from the eyes of a child. But sometimes you have to, you should, go out of your way, grit your teeth, and read. You need the constant reminder of the world. She is a beautiful, lyrical writer.
A very short allegory, “A Wrinkle in the Realm” by Ben Okri. Okri had a whole volume of short allegories some time ago, that I found difficult to read. Here the idea is straightforward, but it is a wrinkle. I think maybe a wrinkle on Recitatif, by Toni Morrison? The fiction works because the reader is constantly aware of all that they are bringing to the story: an immense cultural and literary understanding through which the simple story is filtered. Like Recitatif, it feels like an exercise, and the allegory’s subject matter is so serious that maybe we humans do need regular exercise in this realm? I listened to Okri, with his quiet straightforward delivery, and I think that might be better than reading it?
I really enjoyed Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. It is a short novel, an allegory, really. But she deftly works in the “real” world, and the writing is extremely satisfying: I lingered over her choices of words and sentences, and definitely want to read again. Oddly, something in common with The Traitor Baru Cormorant was the concept of a palimpsest, which in our current multiverse understanding of reality is perhaps becoming an organizing principle for cultural production.
The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson was a good “close to alt-history” novel. In a world similar to the world in 1500, an imperial power uses a variety of techniques to divide, conquer, rule, exploit, extract, and “develop” the periphery. Magic is hinted at but no more so than writings from Spain or Portugal in 1500 would have hinted at supernatural forces, and they did. I confess I started getting bored and skimmed the last third. but I appreciated his craft.
The New Wilderness, by Diana Cook, follows the wanderings of a small band of humans in a dystopian future (though not always clear it is really a dystopia or whether the group wandering the wilderness are the ones who cannot abide the everyday future). They sew clothes from animal sinews and fur, etc. Many of them die, but some children are born, and the arc of the novel takes place over a decade. The small group dynamics occupy a lot of the novel, silverback male stuff, matriarch stuff, etc. It can be very painful to read, the way a nature video of a challenge to the dominant chimpanzee is painful to watch. The writing is excellent, but to be honest I do not find these intense psychological stories of survival to be what I am looking for when reading. My preference leans towards the exotic and distant (you know, a time-traveling AI exploring the concept of gender while solving the problem of the weapons ship that disappeared). My 15 second pitch: The Road meets The English Passengers (the Tasmanian natives sections as they wander the country harassed by the settlers).
Got this for Christmas: A Song of Wraiths and Ruin, by Roseanne Brown. Young adult fantasy novels keep improving the genre, as authors take the best elements from prior work, clean up the writing, put into interesting new contexts. I enjoyed reading this as decent escape entertainment. Could definitely see this becoming a novel that especially might appeal to young adult readers in Ghana (with advanced reading skills), for FAVL libraries.
Nice Youtube review is here.
Our neighborhood book club read The Stranger by Albert Camus. Everyone thought it was worth reading, and we had a good discussion about the fiction/story aspect of the novel, the philosophical aspects, and the psychological possibilities. Probably modern readers immediately focus on the last possibility as think, “Oh, some guy with severe Asperger’s syndrome?” I don’t really think Camus intended that. I found it an excellent provocation for thinking about meaning in a world without external “truths” that by osmosis infuse lives with meaning. the scene of the prosecutor and his crucifix was key, for me, in underscoring that point. Just as the reader is intended to think, “How could anyone actually think that?” Camus is asking, “How is that different, really, from any other meaning-infusing story about the universe?” Fortunately, I was born with the pragmatic get on with life gene, so I spent only a few minutes feeling that despair, before “i should feed my sourdough starter” popped into brain. I did read in French, and enjoyed a few interesting words not immediately obvious to me from context. Followup is to reread Bartleby, The Scrivener, which anticipated Camus by almost by 100 years.
Friends of African Village Libraries (I post regularly here)Thoughts about books, information, libraries and related matters, with an Accra focus
