Angela Ambroz

A high fantasy book that thinks it's a lot smarter than it actually is. Horses are “destriers” - an archaic word that refers to a slightly hardier, slightly speedier horse. Do we ever see the horses get hardier or speedier? Is it important to the plot at any time? No. The man could have just said “horse”. But the man doesn't want to say “horse”. That would be too easy.

I have a writer/editor friend who calls these things “$1 words”. A $1 word is a word that is needlessly fancy. She picked it up when I used “ventilation unit” instead of “air conditioner” in one of my sci-fi stories (because, you know, THE FUTURE). $1 words can be very cheap shortcut worldbuilding (just like Capitalizing Common Words - the Wall, the Citadel, the Stone of Stonelineness).

Wolfe doesn't use $1 words. He uses $5 words. $10 words. This man pours a lot of money into these words. It's not a “cloak”, it's a “capote”. It's not a “boat”, it's a “dhow”. Never, at any point, do these words seem to be needed. Not for the subtle nuances of their extremely archaic definitions (the dhow does not seem to particularly dhowy - and I should know, I live part-time in Zanzibar, where all we do is sail dhows, I tell ya!). Not even for the meta (maybe it's a dhow because this far future setting has mixed up, jumbled cultures, so East African words get used?).

But then, I realized, it's not the content of the words that matters. It's not the meta. It's the meta-meta. It's the fact that he's using them that matters - for him, for us. He's trying to either impress or mock his readers and, either way, it's tedious and silly. I rolled my ocular orbitals. Oh, I mean EYES. Sorry! Too fancy for ya? Well, you know, I do have a PhD in Being Obnoxious.

The setting and setup seemed promising: a far future Earth (“Urth”), which seems to have devolved into a, er, Euro-centric Medieval high fantasy culture. Also, the sun is a massive red cooling giant, so I guess it's End Times. Protagonist is a thoughtful ass-kicker who gets kicked out of the Guild of Torturers because he helps a foxy lady prisoner commit suicide. Thus begins his Quest. A quest, I should note, that goes nowhere interesting, fast.

I was a little leery of the torturer guild business, especially with the foxy lady prisoner, since I worried it'd become dressed-up torture porn. Thankfully, Wolfe skirts around anything too gruesome, objectified, or eroticized. The torture guild stuff in the first third of the book is very restrained; in fact, this is perhaps the best part of the book, because the culture of the guild is so intriguing. They're kind of a combination fussy monastic order/hangman's club.

That said, my relief at Wolfe not going all torture porny quickly evaporated, since, once outside the guild, Protagonist seems to meet only buxom bombshells who - AND I KID YOU NOT - get their dresses torn open at the boobs. And get slapped by him. And are basically not actually female people, but rather walking pairs of boobs. The way that Protagonist describes each woman he encounters also becomes very old, very fast: luscious, lush, voluptuous, pleasant, bladdy blah. YOU ARE BORING ME, GENE WOLFE.

This is the first in the series. Maybe, by the end of the series, there'll be a plot. Maybe.

And, oh yeah, because this led me astray: no, this is not like Frank Herbert's Dune. Dune is Baroque far future space majesty. This is just dumb.

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!

Very very fun. I never really read mystery/thriller fiction, but maybe I should. This was fun.

Briefly: modern UK setting. The cast: An OFF. THE. RAILS. 39yo first-time mom and her shrieking newborn. A little old lady who is super crotchety and has blood splatters all over her rug. Glorious.

I really enjoyed this one. It was basically a PG-13 thriller, not too gory (thank God), centered around - ahem - “women's issues”. And y'all know how NUTS - NUTS, I TELL YOU - 39 year old women with their biological clocks can get. I was cackling with demented 40-year-old glee throughout.

Ever since becoming a parent and, much more importantly, an AUNTIE, I feel like I've graduated into this weird new realm of middle-aged womanhood. And it's great. Now I get where “old wives tales”, etc, come from. I UNDERSTAND THE MYSTIC WOMANHOOD. That shit comes from this off the rails brew of aunties cluckin' and judgin', generation upon generation. Doing all the laundry. Getting crapped on by the patriarchy. And having just a helluva time.

I should also specify: an aunt is someone whose sibling has a child. AN AUNTIE is someone who is just a middle-aged lady UP IN YOUR BUSINESS and ready to hit you with a shoe. “Auntie” is what kids in India call you when they perceive you as OLD - believe me, the pain was deep when I was “auntied” in my early 30s, after many years of being called “didi” (big sister). But now that I am here, in my - as Gloria Steinem promised - increasingly fem radicalized middle-aged, I AM PUMPED.

Anyway, so this is, what I would like to call, AUNTIE LIT. It features tiny babies, incompetent and competent mothering, 1 stupid man, and just all sorts of catnip for the auntie set. I AM HERE FOR IT. Also, give me that baby, I will take care of it, you don't know what you're doing.

For a “very short introduction”, this took me a loooong time to read. Mostly because I found the writing so dry and repetitive. He managed to make something I normally find fascinating (post-Einstein physics, quantum mechanics, etc) so incredibly dense and dull. I'd recommend Michio Kaku or Neil DeGrasse Tyson or the wonderful Best American Science and Nature Writing series instead.

Fun, psychedelic, and SUPER dated. This was very silly and very entertaining. This was also totally unlike Ursula Le Guin's masterworks, The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness. Those are, like, serious books. This is higgledy piggledy.

Plot: In some drab Near Future Portland (SUCH PORTLAND), Oregon, George Orr is suffering quietly as his totally Freudian, hallucinatory dreams accidentally change reality. At best, much embarrassment is had. At worst, SHIT GETS CRAY. After failing to drug himself into dreamless stupors, he's assigned a therapist, Haberman. Much 1960s/1970s psychobabble is discussed, and meanwhile, Haberman is clearly a shady dude. Orr catches on, but how do you fight by “dreaming right”?

Anyway, super satisfying reveals - I was always a step behind or ahead of the plotting (“wait a minute, Haberman's shady!”), which I attribute to Ursula's excellent pacing and mystery-style plotting. This book is essentially pulp, but it's very, very smartly-made pulp.

Good Lord. Frank Miller is an unhappy man. Or he was back in the 80s at least, given these dark, noir, pulpy novels full of jagged moral clarity and massively-muscled (Nietszchean uber)men lamenting the state of the world/urban America. (And let me be clear that by “clarity”, I'm not endorsing Miller's worldview/value system - it's a bit too misanthropic for my taste.)

The Dark Knight is a fascinating, politically engaged, angry screed-like reimagining of good old Bruce Wayne/Batman. Turning the masked vigilante into an ambiguous Nietszchean ubermensch “beyond good and evil” is cool (if, thanks to Nolan's films, familiar) - but the really cool, meaty stuff is that weird subplot with the all-American poster boy Superman taking Soviet missiles apart with his bare hands. Very wtf. BatBruce is also not a terribly likable figure: white-haired, scowly, big-jawed, he spends most of the graphic novel either tearing people apart, getting torn apart, or lamenting society's seemingly infinite ills. His mirror image, Commissioner Gordon, is a similarly super-macho tough guy, while everyone else - the Joker, Harvey “Two-Face” Dent, the new Commissioner Yandel, the mayor - is either effette or female, and always useless. Thanks to this, Miller's Batworld seems a bit neoconservative (anything less than vigilante tough guyism is portrayed as morally relativist weakling-ness) - and no, I don't give him many points for the girl Robin sidekick (cute as she is! a little button!), since it plays into that unfortunate narrative strand of “rugged older man meets innocent waif who tends to his wounds”. Which he is and she is and she does.

Politics aside, you gotta hand it to Miller's Batverse for being such a scathing evisceration of 1980s America - the scary Reagan-gone-nuclear thing is pretty damning. (Where's Kissinger?!) And, despite my personal disagreement with a lot of the stuff, I respect the aesthetic and message he's trying to send. Onto the Watchmen next?

First few chapters, I was like, “Duh, self-evident.”
Next few chapters, I was like, “Ooh.”
Last few chapters, I was like, “...What?”

Yeah, so Python is great. Flexible, durable, like Wolverine's adamantium claws. Can it do anything? Perhaps yes. Maybe we can replace our eco-system with Python and just be done with it.

Highly recommended, especially as a companion piece to Udacity's (wonderful) Intro to Python Programming course, which was bite-sized, basic, and clarified a lot of that Class stuff. (Which was sometimes mysterious in the book.)

I second the request for more (more more) exercises, more code examples, more hands-on stuff. It gets a bit too heady otherwise.

DNF @ 35%.

Trying a new genre! That is: romance!! Look at that cover, wow.

I mean, I'm not completely new to romance - I spent most of the time between puberty and college reading and writing fairly torrid fanfic (oh, Boromir, my love! and not forgetting you, Obi-Wan). So I thought I'd give this a go. This was a recommendation from Claude.ai, aka my new fave recommendation system. He sold it to me as a fanfic-esque costume drama featuring a sexy hero who has autism. HA. Yes. I went looking for smut as a vehicle for neurodiversity lit (neurodiversity is my JAM, right now; THANK YOU to all those disability advocates out there).

Anyway, I simply could not suspend my disbelief. Just as several friends have failed me in the past, when I'd show them some treasure of a Hindi film (aka Bollywood), because they just could not get past the “breaking out into song”, I could not get past the incredible horniness of the people in this book. They just met!!! Hahaha. Also, I wasn't loving some of the window dressing around this smut + neurodiversity story - namely, the dead prostitutes, the random proposal by that random guy, the SECOND random proposal, the way that every single person was described by their eyes and their vivid color, the wandering point of view (I guess it's omniscient but ugh, I drew the line at that even in my fanfic reading).

Ah well. I remain undeterred! Expect more romance in my Goodreads in the future!

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.

What a terribly sad book.

I read this as a mom and as a daughter, and just really really felt for Jennette McCurdy. The earlier stuff, when she's 6 and her mom is pushing her into acting, was so heartbreaking. I just saw a little girl that desperately wanted to be loved by her mom, desperately wanted to connect and be comforted and see her mom be a warm, stable, happy person. Something that that mom could not and would not ever be. The mom definitely had a bunch of unaddressed mental health issues. Watching McCurdy live within that universe of mental illness - and her mom definitely created an entire microcosm of crazy, in a household where everyone bent to her whims, basically - oof.

Later in the book, as McCurdy makes tentative steps towards leaving that little cosmos, a therapist gently notes that what McCurdy's mom did was abusive. McCurdy's intense reaction shows us just how powerful these blind spots can be - when you grow up in crazy, it can take a LONG time to free yourself of it. Indeed, I kinda wanted more catharsis - I wanted to see McCurdy evolve and grow and heal more. I guess the book itself is a testament to her progress, but I was left pretty unsatisfied with the ending. Please tell me how your life eventually did get better, you poor girl!!

An inflamed cri de coeur about the ways the US has been fucked from the beginning. Pardon my French, ho ho.

But srs. Elie Mystal is a legal scholar and plain Englishifier of the law, akin to (wonderful) Emily Bazelon. I felt like I was attending an undergrad course on US law and history, as taught by the most charismatic prof on campus. This was a fun romp (!?) about white supremacy, as embedded in the Constitution. What I appreciated deeply is Mystal's central thesis: so-called “Originalists” - i.e. lawyers and judges like Antonin Scalia who purport to divine the Constitutional authors' “original intent” when writing the document, in order to apply that intent to our modern legal issues - ignore one central (AND OBVIOUS) problem: that the original Constitutional authors were....... uhh, 18th century slave-holding white men who didn't consider women or non-white people PEOPLE?? So maybe it doesn't matter at all what they “intended” and we should happily trash that?

That's the start and end of the book. And I am HERE. FOR. IT. The middle is a deep dive into each of the Constitutional amendments, and why they are, basically, imperfect bandaids applied to the original document in an effort to keep guiding it back to its nobler ideals. Also: in the face of changing times! E.g. maybe enslaving a big portion of the population is a bad idea? Maybe women could have the right to vote too?

I really loved and appreciated Mystal's deep dives here, because I learned a lot and feel - as he promised - way more empowered to just be like “nope, that's stupid” when a right-wing originalist argument is made. I think treating these founding documents with irreverence and a critical eye is, indeed, VERY HEALTHY, and the cultural practice of worshipping them is weird and a shield for racism. Much like how when I meet a libertarian, I'm like, “but haz you heard of externalities and market design????? Because that comes up in econ 102...”

Really fun, interesting comix about gender, sexuality, and - gasp, my favorite of all - RENAISSANCE FLORENCE. A bit o' magical realism. A lot of tolerance. A moderate amount of sex between various people. And the ultimate message is: pride parades in San Francisco are on the right track.

After reading this book to my kid, I had to put it down and gulp down some tears. Hold on, mommy needs to cry a little.

A very sweet, fun, moving portrayal of moving to a new country. It's fun to read - I gibberished floridly through the foreign language (probably English) - and it's so incredibly touching. Dat is a new kid. He can't speak this language. Ugh, how frustrating. Then, one curious kid befriends him. Eventually, Dat learns the language. I died. I ded now. Excuse me while I cry.

Wow. Basically hated this.

Tedious, aimless, superficial. I had to skim the last 20% of this book, as I just couldn't bear to read any more of Naipaul's one-note caricaturing of East Africa, or, as the book frequently proclaims, AAAAAAFRICA. This is a reductivist and therefore incredibly boring portrayal of Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia. Its main message seems to be: “Whoa, this place is a shithole. And everyone here is an idiot!” Yeah, thanks, Shiva.

I can see why this book would be praised for its seemingly gloves-off “brutal honesty” about the racism and political failures of 1970s Africa. But, honestly, I think the people who would offer such praise probably (1) haven't visited the region, and (2) if they have, came away with a pretty skewed interpretation of it all.

Everyone Naipaul portrays in this book speaks with the same voice (a red flag) and exhibits the same one-dimensional stupidity. Everyone in this book - from the over-anxious Indian Kenyan in the first pages, to the lugubrious, hypocritical Tanzanian bureaucrat falling asleep in his AC, to basically any American/European in a “crazy/racist expat” cameo - is a fool. And (I suspect) Naipaul revels in it. “Look at these people! No wonder this place is so poor!” seems to be the implicit conclusion.

I live in Tanzania, and have lived in other developing countries. And I was deeply disappointed by this book, as it covered incredibly interesting topics (the Ujamaa policy in Tanzania, and the troubled history of the South Asian diaspora in East Africa), and there just aren't that many books to read about here.

This is essentially a travel journal Naipaul keeps on his (relatively brief) trip through East Africa, and I don't see any reason why his musings should be any more valuable than, say, just a plain ol' history book. His tone stank of condescension throughout but - when he arrived in Tanzania and visited places I've visited myself - any illusion that his writing was anything but mockery was shattered. I've been to those places. Yes, sometimes things don't work. No, not everyone is such a full-blown idiot. Fans of this book may be surprised to find that there are a number of intelligent, well-rounded, nice folks here too. And sometimes things work really well. COUGHM-PesaIf you're wondering why some places are poor and some places aren't, and if you're curious about a (brief) history of (anywhere in) Africa, I'd recommend this or this instead.I should also note that this book seems to be part of a worrying Cynical and Snarky Among the Less Fortunate genre: similar to things like The Sex Lives of Cannibals or Eksil (Exile). Or Slumdog Millionaire. i.e. “Gritty realism” which is really just poverty porn with a bad attitude. i.e. Stuff that relies entirely on othering the people you choose to write about. Argh, and don't even GET ME STARTED on Naipaul's portrayal of women in this. GARBLE GARBLE FEMRAGE GARBLE. *tears out hair

tl;dr: Mocking caricatures of E. Africa. Don't waste your time.

Mwah, mwah! Thank you, Jeff Friedl, for finally - FINALLY - demystifying this most crucial of meta-programming skills: regular expressions. I had tried online tutorials, videos, even a retro bash game, this and that. Nothing ever helped. This did. FINALLY. FINALLY!

So I didn't “read” the whole book, but whatever, the second half is reference material for languages I never use nor plan to use (Perl, PHP, etc.). Honestly, the first 2-3 chapters were sufficient; once he got into the guts of different regex languages, I felt like I was teleported back to 1983 Bay Area, sitting next to Steve Wozniak as he pecked at his clackety-clack keyboard and wrote the original BSD man pages. Awwww myyyannn, I just did man grep to double-check my facts and DAMMIT the last update to the grep man page was 2010!!!! Way to kill my joke, Unix.

Henyyyway. Highly recommended, though YMMV - people learn in diff ways. I had been daunted by regexes since the 2009 Stata days, and I just WISH I had had this then.

For my future reference (and yours), a muscle must be exercised, and here are some regex games:
- https://alf.nu/RegexGolf
- https://regexcrossword.com/
- https://www.hackerrank.com/dashboard has a bunch
- https://github.com/bchartoff/regexcalibur (the bash game)

The artist in me died of jealousy, since Jordi Lafebre's command over his art is EXACTLY my ideal, what I strive for, and never quite achieve. He is chef's kiss so good.

This is an almost-perfect graphic novel/bande dessinee/Euro comix about a couple, Zeno and Ana, who Love each other but live separate lives. I'm not super into traditional Romantic stories where it's (1) love at first sight and then (2) 40 years of pining. But no matter. I can forgive it, since the art is really just so fluid, so beautiful, so good.

I also appreciated the clever story structure - we move back in time - coupled with teeny tiny little progressive moments.

I have a whole essay in my head about how Euro bande dessinee/comix show so much better craftsmanship/draftsmanship - the art is just so much better, I feel like it's respected and expected more - at least compared to American comix. But, bah, I will write that essay another day.

0.5 point is removed because it's “Nonna”, not “Nona”. But 0.5 added because it's so wonderful.

Strega Nona (“Granma” Witch) lives in a wonderful little Medieval Calabrian (?) town, mixing her various potions to help the townsfolk with their warts, love lives, and family planning. One day, she advertises her need for an assistant and Big Anthony shows up. He's a decent worker - except, one day, he spies her making her magical pasta pot boil magical pasta and gets greedy.

This is a fun, gorgeous little book that has remained a strong favorite in our house for many many months. You can easily adapt it to different ages/attention spans by, well, telling an abbreviated version of the story. But who doesn't love a disaster movie featuring a tidal wave of magic pasta threatening to subsume an entire little town?! WHO? My personal favorite moment is the nuns praying in front of the pasta wave.

Powerful and sad. Cried, got goosebumps. I think I most liked the more romantic, “oh, relationships!” poems, since those seemed a little more hopeful and less tragic. Or maybe it's just because the final poem, with Beau and Crystal, was so tragic. Oh man.

An Italiany, foodie kids' book - yes, my jam. My very specific sub-genre jam.

This one is fine. Most intriguingly, if you peer very closely to the tiny menu that Sally is putting together at her pizzeria, you see some VERY authentic menu items. Has Sally been to il bel paese? Otherwise, this is like that phone game RPG about running a little pizza shop and hectically making customers pizza. The crush is real.

Oooh, fun. So I have inadvertently just consumed TWO - count them, TWO(!!!) - pieces of media that cover almost identical themes: The Last of Us (TV, oh beautiful Pedrito nom nom nom) and this. Both are:
- Post-apocalyptic stories,
- featuring a teenage girl protagonist,
- and a fungal parasite,
- that was caused by climate change, and now,
- infects humans, slowly taking over their human host's brains/behaviors in unhelpful, unsettling ways.

Fine. Fine.

What I liked about this inadvertent comparison was how VERY differently this story can be told - depending on whether you are, ahem, interested in individualistic, militaristic stories featuring lots of violence (Last of Us), or if you're interested in knowledge, community, and survival (this). I also want to shout out that this novella at least acknowledges social justice and climate justice realities, as opposed to completely ignoring them (ahem, Last of Us) - which is another way of reinforcing the status quo, aka patriarchal white supremacy. Plz don't come at me yet, yes yes (1) I know that TV “Joel Miller” is vaguely coded Latino-ish in the show (“adios!”), and (2) that Wyoming commune exists. But, well, come on... Last of Us is kind of a libertarian circle jerk, where those who survive the end of the world are those rugged men who wear Carhartt and carry big guns. I say this with love for the show!!! I did like the show. I love almost all zombie media!

I just... hmm, ALSO like post-apocalyptic stories that don't follow that status quo trope. Cory Doctorow already delighted me splendidly in Radicalized, when he followed a libertarian prepper's actual outcomes after the end of the world... if you took everything to a logical conclusion. I feel like those stories - about an end of the world that isn't all about guns and ammo - are basically what has evolved into solarpunk. Hopepunk? I saw someone use that phrase.

ANYWAY. This book was fun. It's the near future - maybe like 2100 or so. The protagonist, Reid, is a teenage girl living in the decrepit science department building of some Canadian university. Electricity is gone, people, as is most of modern life. The Before Times are called “Back Then” and people mostly scavenge from the ruins to survive, or hunt pigs and rabbits, or grow basic veggies. Two interesting things: The story opens with Reid receiving an invitation to one of the “Domes”, a supposed oasis of pre-collapse life (modernity?!). This whole novella is basically about tearing herself away from her mom, her friends, her community. Second interesting thing: a fungus (“those mushrooms mean business”) has appeared among the human species. This fungus may have come out of the melting permafrost (gawd, I have this fear). The fungus is symbiotic, decorating you with little blue-green tendrils. It sometimes kills you from the inside out (come on!!!). Often it just lightly nudges you towards self-preservation. Reid has lots of arguments in her head with her (silent) parasite, and struggles mightily with understanding her own free will vs. the parasite's. This was fun!

But what was especially fun was - I just really enjoyed the writing. It was fresh. SO CRISPY FRESH. This is how I'd like to write. If I had time to write again. This is how I think I COULD write! (watch out, Premee Mohamed!) Anyway, this is now basically like slice of life solarpunk with a touch of fungus and a touch of Harry Potter, I am very excited to read the next one in the series.

Best line (and illustration): “Llama Llama HATES THAT BOOK.”

God, so relatable. This kid!!!

Several years ago, I read a New Yorker profile of Angela Merkel that made me cry. This book did not make me cry. But it was still quite good. I loved learning about Merkel's upbringing, her values, and her character. I went into this loving Merkel with 10/10 hearts. I had moments when the book felt hagiographic and I was like ehhhh. Or when they stressed just how very Christian/Lutheran Merkel is, and how her favorite presidents are Reagan and Bush Senior, and I was like ehhhh. And one of my 10 hearts dimmed. But, who am I kidding. I love this lady.

Dumping some stuff just cuz it's interesting:
- The remarkable time when Merkel made a young immigrant girl cry. There's something so eminently German about this exchange: just brutal honesty. But also - the compassionate hug? And this apparently got Merkel's Lutheran heart rolling re: her remarkable decision to throw the gates open to refugees.
- The chapter on the AfD's rise agitated me greatly.
- Her awkwardness hehehe. The hand-vee!!
- Trevor Noah's bit on her leaving.

Hmm, okay, I thought this would be a slightly different book. What I got was much more about the Before Covid Times and the pandemic's start. (I was hunting for a book to explain and help me digest the pandemic, comprehensively, start to finish.)

Anyway, Michael Lewis, as always, writes with an eye for warm-hearted, human details. There's something also very red blooded American guy about his writing. Which is fine. He's like the non-fiction Tom Clancy. He's very readable.

Basically, this book follows a handful of Highly Competent People, all working at various levels of government, and all basically stifled by the creaky machinations of our fraying, decaying, crappy government institutions. Each of these competent people struggle to (a) make every leader/authority understand the seriousness of the oncoming pandemic, and (b) do what they can - in their haphazard, not-centrally-planned, not-technically-in-charge way - to limit the damage. Meanwhile, American leadership is asleep at the wheel.

I had mixed feelings, honestly, because it initially felt as if red-blooded non-fic Clancy was making an argument FOR competent individualism OVER functioning collective action and institutions. Color me biased. Now that I finished the book, I actually think Lewis's argument is the opposite: even the MOST competent, well-meaning individuals will get drowned out by broken systems. And these individuals certainly did. Lewis opens his book by noting that while pre-Covid “war game” simulations (by the WHO? I forget) of a worldwide pandemic always modeled that America would fare the “best”, we actually did a pretty shitty job at managing Covid - with more excess deaths and suffering. It was like the country embodied, yet again, that infamous chart showing how much of an outlier America is re: healthcare spending vs. outcomes: https://cdn.theatlantic.com/media/mt/business/assets_c/2011/04/us%20health%20care%20costs-thumb-600x326-47611.png

This is (again) individualized in one of the competent individuals - who is seen by many as a “guru” and with the most humble yet clear-eyed approach on how to manage a pandemic - loses his own mother to Covid. It's a bitterly ironic tragedy, and, I guess, Lewis uses this as his point: again, even the most competent, informed individual will suffer if our systems are broken.

A wonderful, highly readable account of how language defines us as much as we define it (if we define it at all). As the joke goes, “In Soviet Russia, language speaks YOU.” Except it's not just in Russia! This is also apparently a much clearer elucidation of Alfred Zorbyzski's school of “general semantics” - that is, the idea that language “enslaves us by conditioning us to perceive false realities” (wiki's words, not mine!). Remember, the map is not the territory!

New review (where I actually finished it):
coming soon


Old review:
Library loan ran out! Planning to grab it again when I can. It was good!