Angela Ambroz
Kinda 3.5-ish stars.
Very reminiscent of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, in that it's a poetic, meditative exploration of the horrors of war. Megan Stack was a foreign war correspondent for the LA Times during the mid-2000s. Each chapter in the book covers another warzone or conflict state: Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Yemen, Egypt, Saudi Arabia. She writes lyrically - sometimes too lyrically, sometimes perfectly (and beautifully) capturing a human detail. She also does a laudable job of humanizing American foreign policy in the Middle East, and keeping track of the macro geopolitics at play. It feels clear-eyed, angry, informed.
Despite all this, I will admit that I spent most of the book feeling kind of awful and willing it to end. It was just very, very depressing. I was about to 3-star it, but then her masterful chapter on the young Iraqi distance runner basically left me teary-eyed and amazed. A beautiful portrait; harrowing and sad. There were a lot of moments like that.
OMG. I finished it. I FINISHED. Hoooo my God. I no longer have this goddamn Mars trilogy hanging over my head like a hard-sf socialist Damocles sword that WILL NOT LET ME SLEEP WELL AT NIGHT. I am free of KSR! FREEEEEEE!!!
By the end of this massive, MASSIVEEEE book (and trilogy), the now-200+ year old original characters are wringing their hands about the limits of their “gerontological treatments” - that is, the fancy future medicine that has allowed them to live over two centuries. There is a lot of meditation on aging, and memory, and cognition. I guess this is KSR's way to reflect on this magnum opus he has just completed. Remember back in 2061, how crazy shit got, when John died and the space elevator fell down? Yeah, holy shit right. For me, however, it was a reflection of HOW MUCH OLDER I FEEL NOW THAT I HAVE FINALLY FINISHED THIS SERIES.
I mean, I kid. I love KSR. I love this series. Well, love/hate. Love that is sometimes excruciatingly dull. Like meditation! I am glad I no longer “have to” read any more KSR!
I started this LONG GERONTOLOGICALLY CHALLENGING JOURNEY in 2012, with Red Mars. I would highly recommend Red Mars to anyone and everyone. It is visionary. In 2015, I read Green Mars, which I would still basically recommend. Actually, there are lots of great bits in Green Mars - like the introduction of Nirgal, Mars's enlightened young Buddha/golden boy, and the sudden emergence of Sax as one of the best characters. The bit when a traumatized, chaotic, very-neuro-atypical mad scientist Sax decides to blow Phobos out of the sky! SCREW YOU, PHOBOS! I liked that scene so much I named my computer after it (“Phobos”).
In the intervening years, I have read a bunch of other KSR: namely, 2312 (fine), The Years of Rice and Salt (glorious), Aurora (fine, but library loan ran out), New York 2140 (omg indulgent, threw across room), and Lucky Strike (good insight into KSR's KSRness).
And now, finally, Blue Mars. I can safely say that you do not need to read Blue Mars. The power and the glory of KSR's vision is well-established in Red and Green Mars: the struggling post-capitalist utopia, the metanational corporations screwing everything up, the many, many, MANY diversions into Martian geology, the science-maker resourcefulness. It is all there. Also the not-so-good bits: the many, many, MANY diversions into Martian geology (good Lord), the KSR favorite “angry unlikable lady” caricature (man, he loves those angry ladies). Then there are the bits that challenge your Zen calm: the INCREDIBLY LONG digressions about the color of soil or the color of the sunset.
Anyway, Red and Green Mars was - and I kid you not - life changing for me. Blue Mars was like the incredibly indulgent, boring tail-end. I still completely buy the world. I buy this future. I BELIEVE in it, very strongly. But Blue Mars is basically just KSR playing around in the glorious sandbox that he has just built, and not really worrying about plot or whatever. Like, it's just about LIVING in this world... and LIVING... and LIVING... and living for many years. Hey, you know what? Maybe this is all a meta commentary on the longevity of these characters' lives; the monotony; the recurrence of the same old political tensions? If so, bravo, KSR. I too felt that sweep of nostalgia coupled with INCREDIBLE boredom.
But yeah. Blue Mars is so indulgent. It kinda hits New York 2140-levels of indulgence. Like, every sex scene felt - oh God, very very bad, please stop. We spend pages and pages with Sax's color chart, as he looks at the sky and tries to identify the color. Long, long lists of colors. We have a few interesting digressions that are clearly setups for later KSR books. For example, there's a nice sequence when a group of the characters flies back to Earth on a diplomatic mission. Earth has now suffered from one massive polar ice cap “pulse” and is half-drowned. Also overpopulated. Anyway, this is clearly the Earth of New York 2140. Another example: we follow a third? fourth? generation Martian, Zo, around as she flies diplomatic missions around the developing solar system - we visit the equatorial train city on Mercury and the kinda glum outposts way out on Pluto (I think it was?). Anyway, this is all (especially the Mercury train city) clearly setup for 2312.
But, honestly, I had to skim the final section of this book - I just couldn't take it anymore. And yet - I also miss it now that it's over! I think I might read Red Mars again! IT'S JUST SO GOOD. Maybe I'll make some Red Mars fanart. Truly, good KSR is life-changing. Mediocre/indulgent KSR - and Blue Mars is definitely that - is just OK, propelled forward on the previous glories and nostalgia we have for this amazing world and amazing future he has built.
Oh, wow. That was like... a religious experience. I honestly don't want to speak of it, except in hushed tones and very indirectly. Let's just say that:
- After A Princess of Mars, this was SUCH a balm. Like rain on the desert.
- Once I figured out the meta of this book - i.e. its structure, and how each chapter related to the book as a whole - I may have peed a little from excitement.
- 99% of it was perfect. The only 1% was one chapter (the House of Usher one) which threw me out of the story with its hokey, sci-fi/goth humor vibe.
- Deeply moving, and troubling, and amazing. Like all really good sci-fi, it makes you think about the here and now.
- If, like me, you choose to YouTube “Martian Chronicles” and you end up at the 1980s TV miniseries clips, beware. They may re-ignite some childhood fears of the dark rooms in your home. Eeeeeep.
Overall, amazing. Just amazing. I guess that Bradbury fella is good! Who knew!
Intoxicatingly pulpy sci fi, back when men were men and women were pouting babies. Seriously, this is sci fi just coming out of the good ol' boy stuff of the 50s/60s, and into the slightly more psychadelic, feminist stuff of the 1970s. It's also often called a proto-cyberpunk text, which is seeable: it feels like an unreconstructed Blade Runner, full of manly men as hardboiled detectives rescuing dames from sure destruction. Also features air bullets and mind-reading and a business Ubermensch that feels like he stepped out of an Ayn Rand novel (noooo). Despite all this, a (very) guilty pleasure. I guess I just like pulp.
Poetry is a little daunting, and, like many people, I feel a bit like a dim-witted plebe on this stuff. Am I getting it? No, really. Did I just get that? I will just never know.
Anyway, I'm not sure if I GOT any of these, but I did enjoy them. Meditations on death, being a lady (and the damn patriarchy), and beautiful, serene nature. Also ancient classical stuff. Lyrical (which I guess is like, duh, it's poetry) and often enchanting.
This was one of those books that I spent several years (!) preparing myself emotionally for, and - God - I really didn't need to. Also, Montaigne would probably not advocate for such reverence.
Basically, what I imagined this book to be was a Deep, Meaningful, Philosophical Treatise that would be sort of boring, but would have some awesome, dharma payoff of wisdom, if I just managed to clear my mind/life enough to struggle through it. I imagined it as something akin to The Snow Leopard. Instead, this book is - well - okay, it sort of is a Deep, Meaningful, Philosophical Treatise, though it advocates a fierce irreverence and humility in the face of life's big questions.
The book is a biography/hagiography about Montaigne, 16th century French philosopher, who advocated a plain, Soto Zen-style “just sit to sit” humanistic philosophy in a series of essays called, Essays. The funny thing about this book is that it spends a lot of time deconstructing, analyzing and commentating on the Essays, couching them in a chronological journey through Montaigne's small town 16th century France life, and... I've never read the Essays! So yeah. I think this book must have a big payoff for existing Montaigne fans. As a Montaigne intro, it piques the interest, but often left me going, “Maybe I should just read these damn Essays...“
Nonetheless, you do get the JIST of the Essays, and that is that folks should just chill the eff out sometimes (most of the time), and stop allowing themselves to get carried off on flights of seriousness and importance. Montaigne, it seems, was my kinda guy: endlessly equivocal, deeply irreverent, a Stoic with a sense of humor. Sounds great! This type of sensibility (which is basically captured in Italian movies from the commedia all'italiana 1970s period) is very special, indeed.
A real romp. Milo's initial tricks are “pathetic” (HA!). Mr. Popovich - what a name - is threatening to fire him. Milo needs to find an animal companion for his next trick. I love, LOVE the subtle cues of NYC-ness - riding the subway, Mr. Popovich's super Slavic name, I can just hear the New Yawk accent.
Aw man, I really liked this! A lot more than I thought I would - I thought I would medium-like it, approving of its general values and such, but I ended up being totally charmed, crushing it in two sittings and thinking about it a lot after finishing. This is a YA fantasy novel about an albino Nigerian-American girl, Sunny, who ends up having magical powers. It offers an affectionate portrayal of modern Nigeria, and was thus UGH SO REFRESHING because HONESTLY PEOPLE THERE IS A WHOLE BIG WIDE WORLD OUT THERE IT'S NOT ALL ANGLO-AMERICAN YA KNOW
Heeennyyywayy. Yeah, I do think a lot of Harry Potter's success is the world's general Anglophilia and the fact that people get pretty charmed by adorable Britishnesses - good Lord, Downton Abbey is hard to resist, I will admit. But it was just so FUN to see Lagos and Abuja and MAGGI NOODLES and all that stuff.
Okay, so Sunny is a tween/early teen girl going about her usual ho hum life. Pretty early on, she learns that she's a “Leopard person” (i.e. person who can do magic) and, on top of that, a “free agent” (kinda like a witch with Muggle parents), which has all sorts of complicated consequences in Leopard-dom. The usual YA fantasy journey is undergone, wherein a gang of other magical friends are gathered, and grumpy teachers are encountered, and a magical sport is witnessed. Interspersed are some primary documents from a book, “Fast Facts for Free Agents”, which includes a wonderful recipe for “tainted” pepper soup that warns that if you use the wrong Maggi noodles IT WILL EXPLODE aaahahaha I loved that part. Another favorite part was the vain wasp artist diva!
Okay, but definitely there was some fraught things. Like, for one, I don't know if it's the same in Nigeria, but albinism is really discriminated against in Tanzania - actually, that's putting it mildly. There are folk beliefs in Tanzania that albinos have magical powers and people have murdered and mutilated people with albinism, stealing their body parts, because of this. So having a story about a literal magical African albino without ever alluding to this horrible prejudice made me go, huhhh? Maybe it's not a thing in Nigeria?!
Another thing that was perplexing was the patriarchy (ISN'T IT ALWAYS): on the meta level, this book is a huge Bechdel pass and clearly has a progressive heart. On the within-the-book level, there's lots of plain sexist talk, which - again - okay fine, that happens a lot. But I was sometimes, uhhh, UNSATISFIED with the insufficient femrage at these sexist moments? I dunno how to articulate it, and I have no examples. I know, very helpful.
Anyway, very very nice, a wonderful fun YA book.
Wttfff is up with the unhealthy, Calvinist shaming in this book?! Hay Pig is a TV watcher - aka he's not just an idiot for building his house out of hay, but also apparently lazy for seeking a rest in front of a - GASP! - SCREEN (insert shrieks of horror). Sticks Pig likes to eat - this is also not okay, kids, and means you're an idiot AND a glutton (and fat, btw - wolf comments on this?!). Brick Pig is just HUNGERING for chores and work to do - and so he gets to cook the wolf and eat him. Good for him?
So I hated this. I just wanted to share the fun fable to my kids. The moral of the story for me was always: invest in cement. Not that resting or eating are somehow sins we should avoid?!!? What nonsense, mamma mia. It's taken me until middle age to realize that needing to rest is a NORMAL PART OF BEING HUMAN, and I don't need to maximize my productivity all the damn time. Also, can we please not start demonizing food at the preschool ages already?
Inevitably provoking strong feelings of love and hate, Christopher “Hitch” Hitchens does his job well. He's a deliciously articulate polemicist with a fearless, chutzpah-soaked ego that revels in pointing out how hypocritical, weak-minded and, well, stupid other people are. At times - such as when - together with Dawkins and the New Atheist troop - he attacks All Religion, it can be grating and overly self-satisfied. At other times - such as when he lurches from a Trotskyist youth to a pro-Iraq War stance railing against “Islamofascists” - it is riveting (if, still, provocative). This memoir, which is less a traditional biography and more a series of essays about different parts of his life - childhood, parents, Iraq, Salman Rushdie, Edward Said - is just wonderful. Like all good intellectuals writing their memoirs, he drops names left and right - and the names are pretty badass (Susan Sontag! Martin Amis! Rushdie and Said!). Furthermore, he paints a fascinating picture of the intellectual movement as it was experienced in the 80s and 90s. Overall, even if you don't (or can't!) agree with everything he says, he's a wonderful sparring partner and an inspirational mind. In 2010, he learned he had stage 4 cancer of the esophagus - very sad news indeed. I can only augur that he confronts this with his usual courage and wit. From his sharp, touching essays from Vanity Fair regarding his illness (“Tumortown”, “Miss Manners”), it seems he's doing just that.
Gah. Ugh. Phew. That was gigantic. I need someone to talk about it with. Agh. I need someone to digest that all with! Are there essays about this book? There should be.
So much! So much is happening! I picked this one up for a bunch of reasons. It's a Strong Female Protagonist (weak Monty Python yey). It's social/political sci-fi, similar to (and loved by, apparently?) Ursula Le Guin and Kim Stanley Robinson, two authors I greatly admire. It's a “lost classic”, which is always appealing (pretty obscure; hipsterfood).
And just, wow. I feel a little emotionally exhausted.
The story is set in the Medium-Far Future, where the solar system is way different from how it is today. Most of the planets are colonized, and radically different. Mars is a consumerist-Fascist dystopia that kinda felt like a creepy Miami/Malibu to me - or like Mars from Total Recall. Earth is a giant anarchist commune, and also an eco-disaster (so people live in domes). The moon is a theocratic dictator state. And Uranus, Saturn and Pluto have this kinda Mongolian, kinda old-fashioned hill tribe thing going on, where the people there - “Styths” - have mutated/evolved due to Unexplained Future History stuff. They now live in interesting-sounding domes, and are a Mighty and Warlike Race blah blah. Also, they have claws. They're basically Klingons. Am I the only one who saw them as Klingons?
The hiro-protagonist of the story is Paula Mendoza, this tough-as-nails lady from Earth. Paula starts the story unemployed and dating this mansplainy jerk named Tony (TONY! fist shake), but then - through bizarre and interesting anarchist-commune labor-rotation stuff - gets a job with the Committee - the commune's semi-somewhat government stand-in thing. Which is, incidentally, run by extremely Machiavellian types! Paula is tasked with drafting an interplanetary treaty between the Styths and Martians, who hate each other. Wow, responsibility. But I guess that's how anarchists swing? Anyway, because she read that one paper by Paul Krugman, she writes an awesome treaty leveraging cool trade stuff. She also gets impregnated by one of the Klingons, and decides to go live in Stythsville for, like, ten years.
A war happens at one point. Shit gets really intense. Work camps, despair. I despaired. Spoiler? Whatever.
The book definitely carries very strong Le Guin and Kim Stanley Robinson vibes. It's Le Guin-ish during the whole Styth Living section; where we have the outsider visiting a far-off planetary culture that resembles a mash-up of Earth cultures (the Styths are apparently based on Genghis Khan et al.?) and is all about anthropology and development economics and racism. It's Robinson-ish because every character is SO. DAMN. POLITICAL. To the point of feeling just cruel, dude. Also, like Robinson, Cecila Holland (the author) kills people off pretty mercilessly.
Overall, it was gigantic, and I generally loved it. It's definitely a missing classic, since the scope is vast and I could pick apart the feminist themes forever. (Like, dude, Paula is a super-independent anarchist lady who spends 75% of the book under the heel - sometimes literally! - of her über macho Genghis Khan husband.) The writing style is also brilliant, in that it's completely spare, journalistic, telegraphic. There is NO exposition, and very little feeling. This is especially awesome when something very strange and alien is being described; Holland lets you fill in the blanks. Space flight was described with a vividness I've never seen in sci-fi, film or book. And the flights over Uranus were psychadelic, mind-bending. It was kinda like a very trippy Hilary Mantel at times (and Hilary Mantel is already pretty trippy - imagine it in a gas giant!). I loved (and was disturbed by) the moments when Holland opened up her already weird universe to a potential even freakier: the allusions to civilizations beyond this solar system; or the ambitious Styth, Tanuojin, and his freaky healer hands. What!
Some stuff I loved less: despite it being like 90% awesome, I did find a couple things tedious. The characters, as written by Holland, were ambiguous, complex, weird creatures who behaved unexpectedly. Cool. BUT! It felt like some of her secondary characters were very briefly sketched out, and mostly caricatures. I especially wasn't into the fat-shamey portrayals of one prominent Committee politician, and one of Klingon Dude's other wives. Seriously, stop describing the rolls of fat and how appallingly fat these two women were. It's getting old. I also spotted a few other repetitive phrases, but I'll live. Despite these relatively minor flaws, it is a pretty brutal, mind-opening epic, and should rightly sit aside Frank Herbert's Dune and the like.
Slightly pedantic (a downfall of many YA books), Cory Doctorow explains economics, labor movements and socialism to kids via this near future romp through the MMORPG sweatshops of India and China.
MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games) are hugely popular (see: World of Warcraft), and Doctorow uses real life examples of players creating real mini-economics as a springboard. Just like you can apparently buy credits in Second Life using REAL MONEY, so do Doctorow's young teenage heroes discover the various ways to make money and get exploited via your talents in the online world.
The story moves along quickly, and Doctorow paints a variety of settings (California; Bombay; a company town in China; Singapore) in a realistic, fascinating light. He clearly knows his stuff. Role players of the world unite!
By taking us through all the banal, ludicrous details of sending people into space, Roach succeeds in suddenly investing the space program with humor (I mean, who doesn't like poop jokes? AT LEAST A LITTLE?) and, oddly, humanity. While her focus on the mundane (how do you design a zero G toilet? what kind of food do astronauts?) may make you yearn for a bit more FACTS, this is an addictive read. She loads the book with humorous, insightful snippets from primary docs (shuttle transcripts, astronaut interviews, etc.). It's hard not to be dazzled. Like “The Right Stuff”... for poopy pants.
A lot more fun than I thought it'd be! I read this mostly since it was like paying a tithe into the sci-fi community; like, ugh, it Simply Must Be Read (eventually). And certainly I enjoyed Blade Runner; but mostly for its atmospheric set design (yeah Moebius), moody music (yeah Vangelis, yeah synth) and, oh wow, do I love Harrison Ford (luv ya big time). So I figured this'd be a kinda dated, kinda whatever obligatory read that would make me just want to listen to the OST again.
Imagine my surprise when: the electric sheep are real! Literally real! OK, I thought they were a metaphor! But get ready for lots of fake animals, and Rick Deckard pining after them with great bourgeois yearning. It is initially trashy-feeling, but grows into an increasingly wonderful plot point/prop.
Imagine my further surprise when: I really enjoyed this! I'm a troublemaker and always say Ghost in the Shell is the One True Cyberpunk Tale; since, honestly, I could never hear any of the mumbly Blade Runner dialogue over all that rain, and they spend a lot of time in Ghost in the Shell explaining philosophical issues to each other (in a good way). But here! In this book! Suddenly it's all clear and - complicated and nuanced and heartstring-pulling and omg am I an android? I certainly have bourgeois yearnings! And as much as I enjoyed the crunchy, slimy body-horror type stuff of Blade Runner's props and set design (JR Isidore, what a great character; those weird tiny puppets?!), this book had some truly surreal sections which were - gosh - startlingly weird and fun. Like, that Mercer stuff. Wtf was up with that wonderful, weird Mercer stuff?!
A book to pick apart at length, over coffee. Definitely recommended.
PS I heard once, on the winds of the internet, that Paul Giamatti had been tapped to play Philip K. Dick in a biopic. IMAGINE THAT. That would be so cool.
Disappointingly Basic Tech Bro-ey. I thought this would be a bit more like “Halt and Catch Fire”. Oh well.
Gah. So important. Beyond important. Depressing. I spent much of the book internally screaming, basically like that one moment for David after the dentist.
Also makes you realize how it's not just humans, it's post-industrial, consumerist humans that are the problem. Seven billion of them. Our lifestyle just isn't sustainable. Agh. Aaaaaaaaaagh.
The book's about ocean conservationism. Sylvia Earle, who I didn't know before, is, apparently, super awesome. And so inspiring! Read her wiki. I wonder how many dives she's logged? Oh wow. And her writing is fun, witty; her knowledge like a vast ocean (ho ho ha ha). Loved hearing about the deep sea stuff. Just amazing. Who needs sci-fi when you've got the ocean?!
Should be required reading. Beautiful and horrible at the same time.
The title's a bit misleading, as this is more a history of perceptions of race and whiteness than a literal history of white people. From the ancient white slave trade around the Balkans during the classical period, to the Visigoths/Gauls/Rome's general misperceptions of anyone north/northwest, to British imperialism and American racism, this is a broad, fun, informative book. It's also, apparently, really polarizing (the Amazon ratings are an inverted U) - I'm not sure exactly why, since I didn't find anything terribly provocative there, but I suppose people who study race/racism may feel differently. I found the most interesting chapters to be those entitled “The Enlargement of American Whiteness” - examining immigration and assimilation and eugenics in 19th century America. Some crazy stuff. Overall, an engaging primer on a fascinating/weird topic.
I like Zen and I like punk, but Brad Warner's (puerile?) voice really grates on me, and I ended up feeling sour on both. Oh man.
Wonderful. Italian! Math! Renaissance (well, ish)! What's not to love. HIGHLY RECOMMEND.
Bummed, but DNFed this at ~25%. I just couldn't mesh with it. The stories were repetitive. I feel so sad. My dear beloved nonna LOVED the Don Camillo series. She would often tell me, chuckling, about it. I can see why. This was 100% her speed of Catholicism - humane, human, funny. But Don Camillo's “little world” was too little for me. I tired of the macho heroics of Don Camillo and the Communist mayor, Peppone, each described as having big hands, big heads and (implicitly) big hearts. There's lots of humorously outrageous violence that I just found weird and outdated. This is Italy right after the war, shit has been real for a while, I guess folks are much more inured to daily violence. e.g. Don Camillo using a machine gun to argue over some town resources. Sigh. Just not my speed. I spent most of the stories wondering what everyone else - especially the wives! the nonnas! - were doing in the village.
Eh beh, non e' per tutti.
I tend to be leery of computer geeks waxing philosophical about social contracts or economic systems, usually because there's something so strangely entitled about them as a group. Why does being a hacker make you understand democracy and freedom better than everyone else? I'm looking at you, Anonymous. Is it just because you can bully others into hearing your viewpoint, because “information should be free!” is so simple a rallying call and Bank of America is so easy to hack? Anyway. Jaron Lanier is not a hacker from Anonymous. But he does suffer from that computer geek cheekiness of thinking he knows what's best for society. I guess he would argue that that's because the internet is swallowing up all our lives, society is moving online, and poorly-designed softwares/websites are locking us into behavioral grooves that devalue us as human beings (i.e. living only in a way that is filterable into Facebook status updates). This part of his argument, I can agree with. The part about how we should establish financial systems and online payment, I get a bit fuzzy on. But apparently he took all of that from early 90s Ted Nelson, so I may seek some answers there. Overall, though, Lanier offers an important alternative to the slightly crazy-eyed techno-utopianism of Singularists and Creative Commonsists and BoingBoing readers. Of which I am one, if not completely zealously. It's refreshing to see that, yes, there is Another Way.
I like this “Outspoken Authors” series a lot, though - gosh - they could use a bit more editing. I keep catching typos in these things!
Anyway, this one - like the Cory Doctorow one - is just super interesting cuz the subject (Kim Stanley Robinson) is super interesting. The format is the same: first, a short story by the author, and then a long interview. The short story was an alternative history of a WW2 bomber pilot struggling with his mission: dropping the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It's fine, whatever.
The interview confirms much of what you imagine Kim Stanley Robinson to be like: a curmudgeony, cranky dude who lives in a utopian commune (!) in Davis, CA, is best buds with a Marxist prof, used to write his mind-blowing sci-fi in cafes all the time, hates all the descriptors they've used of his work (“humanist” - bah! “hard sf” - hum bug!) and now goes on hyper-minimalist treks through the Sierras. Like... yeah, of course he does. I was VERY intrigued by the suburban utopians, where do I sign up!? I was also intrigued by his acumenly insight that “hard sf” is often code for “right-wing sf that hates poor people”. Gosh, that is kinda true. I also liked that KSR found sci-fi late-ish in life, cuz that “I grew up with sci-fi, I read Asimov in the cradle, check out my bonafides” bullshit is so tiresome sometimes, yes.
Also, sigh, Kim Stanley Robinson - YOU SO SMART. RED MARS IS SO GOOD. Even 2312 had such smart moments! This just made me get pumped about the new book about a flooded NYC.
OH YES, and he had a WONDERFUL point where he was bah-humbug-ing the way his work has been labelled, and he said, “utopian sf - but that's just me, you, and Ursula”. YES! I was just like, YES YES OMG THAT'S SO TRUE THAT'S WHY I LOVE YOU PEOPLE. And when he spoke of how easy and lazy it is to write dystopias, but how hard and important it is to write convincing utopias!!!
And so I light another candle at my shrine to KSR. Ommmmm.
Oh mannn. Or should I say, oh son of Adam! Oh daughter of Eve!
So I listened to the audiobook of this because it was Kenneth Branagh and I love Kenneth Branagh. I never read the Narnia books as a kid, though I do have memories of some old 1980s TV movie version, and I saw the mid-2000s movies too. Turkish delights!
Anyway, I didn't think I would like this as much as I did, but I ~~~LOVED~~~ it. I thought I'd huff about C.S. Lewis's uber-Christian themes, but instead I BASKED IN THE FLOWING GOLDEN GLOW of Aslan and the kids and the maaagic. It was absolutely charming. And enchanting! And, oh jeez, I surprised myself by LOLing at some of the jokes and sobbing uncontrollably when Aslan asks the London cabbie and his wife to become the first king and queen of Narnia. Just like Tolkien's Samwise Gamgee, that cabbie is a good, stolid West Country bloke - AND HIS ACCENT COMES BACK WHEN HE IS CALLED UPON TO RULE THIS GREEN AND PLEASANT LAND! I cried and cried, I don't know why.
The plot is also masterfully told - and there was such affection in the characterizations (I especially loved the kids fighting, heh). The portrayal of magic was VERY English magic, and I now see Lewis's work(s) as a direct ancestor to lots of other stuff: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell, Lev Grossman's books, Philip Pullman's. Mystical woods. Women in ponds as systems of government. Fairies and the name “Fey” and strong Druidy vibes of a pre-industrial rustic Albion.
Another great thing about the audiobook is, of course, Kenneth Branagh's masterful performance. If I had to describe peak Kenneth Branagh, it would be VERY C.S. Lewis-y: he's a real master of his craft, and his performances are always so clear, humanizing, affectionate, resonant and FLOWING WITH GOLDEN GLOW. Branagh doing this audiobook was likewise touched by, ahem, HIS GENIUS with voices and characters and performance. Every character was distinct, none were caricatures (well, maybe Uncle Andrew the crappy magician, but that guy was kind of a joke anyway). He also did something I appreciated: he DIDN'T modulate his voice in the “typical male narrator reading a female character” way - now that I listen to audiobooks so much, I've noticed a trend where the way male narrators portray women's speech is by going wispy and breathy, and the way female narrators portray men's speech is by going croaky. It's so weird! Thank God, Branagh doesn't do that - he just reads the evil queen like some badass evil queen. And Aslan like God, of course, HAAAA. And the kids as kids! He's so good. Here's one moment of peak Branagh: “Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars, and say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'“
And SPEAKING of English-Magick fantasies from 1950s authors, this reminds me of how wonderful T.H. White's The Once and Future King was, and SUCH GOOD VALUES. It merits a re-read. Anyway, this was wonderful.
in booming Aslan voice GO FORTH, SON OF ADAM, DAUGHTER OF EVE, AND DOWNLOAD IT FROM YOUR LIBRARY APP.
Alas, such a bummer, but I couldn't finish this.
I really enjoyed Stille's later book, about Berlusconi, The Sack of Rome. This book likewise featured a super-important figure of post-war Italian political history: Giovanni Falcone. It seemed like a sure-bet.
I'm always on the look-out for good English-language books about Italy, since there aren't many and lots of crazy shit has gone down and continues to go down in il bel paese (cue music). Alas, then. I just couldn't get into this book, even though Falcone was such an admirable, amazing person: he was an anti-mafia Sicilian prosecuting magistrate who was eventually murdered by the mafia in 1992 (they blew up the highway he was driving on (!)). His murder was one of the most pivotal (and depressing) events of 90s Italy.
This book, unfortunately, just felt very rambley and dry. I guess I would have preferred a long-view history of the Sicilian mafia, from its origins to how it developed under the Bourbons. Stille, instead, gives us just a few short brushstrokes of the Cosa Nostra's history (about half a chapter), and then he dives into the minutiae of the 1980s mafia landscape: in particular, the rise of the Corleonesi family (from Corleone), which was more violent and more out of control than the old time mafia families of Palermo. Stille goes into fastidious detail about the various mafiosi and their networks in 1980s Sicily, but it just feels like a lot of names and a lot of tangled relationships. I kept asking myself if this info was still relevant, thirty years later.
I should also admit that I'm not one of those people who finds the mafia intrinsically interesting. For better or worse (mostly worse), lots of people (1) make mafia jokes to me when they learn I'm Italian, or (2) romanticize stuff like The Godfather and so on. Yo, I'm all about a good “Take the (x), leave the cannoli!” joke, but this naive fascination is sometimes pretty tiresome. It's like, no, it's not really that funny and certainly not cool, it's just a giant parasite of organized crime, and it's sad and frustrating. For that reason, learning that Mr. So-and-so was part of this-and-that family, who killed Mr. Other-guy, was making my eyes glaze over. After seven chapters, I went out (BUT THEY PULL ME BACK IN). Obligatory Godfather joke.