Michael Kevane

Tremendous short highly literary fiction. Loved it, perhaps because it is short. But so rich. I definitely could spend hours reading literary scholars about what Keegan does and how she does it. Filled with allusions, it seems, to mythology and Joyce… What could be more moody than the snow falling, on the living and the dead. Here is a relevant review by Mark Phillips.

Page turner police procedural. First one I read about the L.A. detective Harry Bosch. I’ll take Chandler, Chester Hines, or George Higgins I think. Serviceable, but I found the prose super-clunky and the characterization wooden. I can see the appeal. At the end I turned the pages so fast because I couldn’t wait to get out of the book, not because I was appreciating it.

Since I just finished Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Memory (and will add Children of Time, but not Children of Ruin), I was thinking about what other sci-fi – fantasy novels I have enjoyed reading so much that I can see myself looking forward to reading again in 5 years (say)…. Here are the other 11, in no particular order:

*Bloodchild by Octavia Butler
*The Hainish novellas and stories, by Ursula Le Guin
*Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie
*The Raven Tower, by Ann Leckie
*A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge
*The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss
*Station Eleven, by Emily St. James Mandel
*Eifelheim, by Michael Flynn
*Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke
*The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks
*China Mountain Zhang by Maureen McHugh

Gripping for the first 7/8, especially if you are familiar with the earlier novels of the trilogy. Tchaikovsky manages to join, in one novel, the space opera genre (new planets, new technologies, faster than light travel!), with the Ursula Le Guin careful anthropological detail about a small community, and a reader favorite, the looped story with slight variations generating the feeling in the characters and reader at the same time that “something is not right.” The corvids are a great innovation. The aliens are right here, if we take the proper time perspective and have a rich enough imagination (echos of Ted Chiang’s parrot short story?). But that last 1/8 was a hot mess in my opinion… maybe really careful reading would uncover what Tchaikovsky was doing, but I just found it poorly edited.

A well-written and interesting historical young adult novel about two survivors of slavery in early 1900s West Africa and Brazil.

Here is the link:

The first half was excellent. Just the kind of involved, detailed, ordinary life scifi, about a sub-light-speed travel to colonize a world far away. But the second half spiraled out, for me… and so I skimmed it. And a very clunky ending.

Enjoyable action sci-fi about colonists on a new world. Sort of like the Murderbot series. I tend to prefer more literary and involved reading, but sometimes a light touch is enjoyable.

A student passed this book on to me. Incredible story about the Osage murders of the 1920s, and the involvement of the nascent FBI. Early staff of FBI solved the case, but left many stones unturned. The facts of the story tell an unrelentingly grim history of how settlers, often in collusion with local officials and law-enforcement and judges, used violence and corruption to leave a trail of tears. Reading this 100 years after the events should still fill every American with shame. Libertarian types especially should be confronted, over and over, with this historical record. Their naive self-serving “clean slate” rhetoric is maddening.

An interesting novella. Her typical sharp sentences. A complex theme. A disastrous ending. Africa? My question reading it: Apparently she wrote this aged 82…. so, is it just confused, slapdash, but it comes across (the repetition) as profound? Did her publisher just say, “Muriel, whatever, your readers will love it and it’s another vacation cottage for you (and me) so who cares if it makes sense?!” Or is incredibly dense, and if you were a PhD you could do text analysis of the repetitions and “see” underlying layers of complexity that are riffing on the simple story?

Over the last few days I read Burn-In, by P.W. Singer and August Cole. The pretension is a “realistic”-likely sci-fi thriller of the U.S. around 2040, with lots of AI automation, and the social reaction to that displacement. The prose is clunky- an odd paradox that despite million-fold improvement in computing power, most humans still cannot write good literature! Anyway, while provocative, and probably good for teaching, I found it pretty humdrum as a thriller.

The blurbs from famous creatives on the front and back cover are so over the top, it is one reason to not buy this book. Pure marketing gimmickry. The book may be worth borrowing from the library.

I read about half of Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs and then stopped. As usual, the writing is witty and insightful. But the story, of an undergraduate working as nanny for a flamboyant college-town chef with a handsome, elegant husband… well, I just lost interest.

A.S. Byatt’s The Virgin in the Garden is an involved, minute look at the lives of several characters in an English town on the eve of the coronation of the queen in 1953. The characters are connected, directly and indirectly, to a playwright and a play, about Elizabeth I. In is very erudite, very literary. Most of the characters are tightly bound by social and class constraints. Some yearn to be free, some yearn to be anything but what they are. Ultimately, after slogging halfway through it, I gave up. Apparently I am not the only one. Tough novel to “enjoy.”

Another novel I could not finish. I had wanted to read some novels set in Wales, and this was first on many lists. To me, it started out interesting and complex, but then when the twins take over, with a little bit of magical realism and a lot of heavy-handed descent into tragedy (the auction scene in particular) I just gave up and read the Wikipedia summary of the plot (rather abbreviated). I wanted to like it, but something about the prose- is “florid” the right word?- put me off. I didn’t care to follow the trajectory of the twins, and the father (Amos) limitations I found a bit odd.

Got about halfway through this and for some reason had a hard time continuing. The realism and alienation of Silas Marner’s early life was bracing, but the interaction between Godrey and Dunstan Cass I found clumsy. I think Trollope and Dickens did those kinds of “small gentry” better, maybe? Anyway, read the Wikipedia plot summary for the ending and don’t think I missed that much by not continuing.

Sometimes I have a small craving for science fiction, and it kicks in especially when reading regular fiction drama (in this case Lorrie Moore, in one of her slightly more serious novels, which I am 3/4 way through and was just getting depressed and not looking forward to reading, so I decided to switch). I randomly picked up On the Steel Breeze, by Alastair Reynolds, at Recycle Books in San Jose, our local used bookstore. My assessment: it definitely was a break, but frustrating. poorly written and poorly plotted, this space opera has a lot of interesting elements (3 clone central character, several levels of AI interacting with humans, super-advanced but silent “alien” intelligence). But the science, the character development, the plot, were all underwhelming, and I found myself engaged in reading drudgery that quickly leads to skipping. So, a decent airplane or resort sci-fi if expectations are low, but this is no Ted Chiang. The readers of Goodreads appear to have liked it more than I did.

Another nice police procedural. This one a bit more psychological as Maigret confronts someone from his childhood. As usual, great insights into 1950s France, at least one perspective. The descriptions of Paris in rainy/foggy weather, with everyone in the Palais de Justice sick from colds and flu, resonates! Also definitely next visit to Paris I am going to Parc Monceau. By today’s standards, the whodunit is pretty “blah” but it is good to see some of the origins of the genre. You could see this particular plot being recycled for any current detective series.

The Female American: Unca Eliza Winkfield, is a re-edition of an anonymous proto-novel published in 1767, in a new edition edited by Michele Burnham. Super interesting novel about a “mixed” early American, daughter of native American princess and son of governor of Virginia (it is fiction). She ends up abandoned on a deserted island, Robinson Crusoe-style. hijinks and adventure. A bizarre mix by contemporary standards. But if Gulliver’s Travels was your model… Lots of great insights into social relations during those times.

La colère de Maigret, by Georges Simenon. Great cinematic descriptions of Montmartre strip clubs of the 1950s, and their denizens. Spoiler: The corrupt defense attorney picked easy cases, but told clients he needed a very large bribe to seal the deal. Nice asymmetric information setup.

Stefan Zweig’s short novella, The Burning Secret. A powerful literary experiment in point of view (from 1913!). Zweig slowly swings from the Baron to Edgar, the 12-year-old who desperately wants to know the secret. Set in an Austrian hotel over three days. Highly recommend.