Angela Ambroz
Literally, old news. But, oh, such a story. What a story. Sometimes I marvel at the insane experiences some humans have had. The 127 hours guy. The Titanic people - especially those still hanging on when the boat went right-side-up in the water. Delhi in 1857. Lest I sound ghoulish, I'm thinking of Hamlet's quote: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,/Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Shit can just get really crazy! Ya know!
Anyway, these 33 men certainly had a really crazy adventure, and thank goodness, it has a happy ending. Or sort of? The genius of the book (which I wouldn't necessarily call genius, but instead really-quite-nice) is how it begins as a story of survivalism, religious fervor, and the extremities of human experience, and then morphs into a kinda tragic look at the Great Big Social Machine, lubricated by a 24-hour news cycle. That is, the latter half, after the men have been discovered starving and barely alive in the mine, the mythical-adventure quality evaporates, people become normal people again, and it's kinda about sleazy journalism and platforms and celebrity and reality TV and the absurdity of it all and so on.
So much did it become about the about-the-story (meta!) that the book eventually spins out from the fourth wall, concluding with - well - itself! And the movie deal. Which will star Antonio Banderas and Lou Diamond Phillips. Yeesh!
In other news, weeping frequency on this book was a solid 25%.
Gah. Life's too short to torture myself further with this book. Adieu, overhyped book that makes me question my sanity (seriously, how are people loving this book? how?!). Adieu, flatness and boringness and sexist stuff. Adieu, adieu. This book was so painful to get through - and I was having so much cognitive dissonance about how it's Nebula-nominated and people luv-luv-luvvvv it - that I'm starting to feel crazy, like, do I actually like books?! Am I sure about this science fiction thing?!
Sheesh. Let me just put this down and walk away.
FWIW, I agree with jess and Lightreads's reviews.
What a bum. Another DNF at ~20%. But 20% was nearly 5 hours of my life, and it was just a slog. My mind would wander almost as soon as I hit “play”. Bad sign. Man, do I even like books? Do I even like reading? Learning? I'M NOT SURE. IT'S BEEN TWO DID-NOT-FINISHES IN A ROW, PEOPLE. TIMES ARE BAD. OH JEEZ.
Daaaaaaamn, son. Just... damn.
And hooray! The first Nebula nominee this year that is (1) completely unknown to me, and (2) now on my “must read everything else by author” list.
So, this story was freaky as hell. And it completely wasn't up my alley, at all, since it brushed dangerously close to that awful sub-genre of horror: torture porn. That is, the characters in this story are all recovering from awful traumatic experiences that wouldn't sound out of place in Silence of the Lambs. But - how to put this? - this was maybe the most charmingly written and unexpectedly humorous quasi-torture porn I can imagine.
It was also layered with a sci-fi/fantasy element that was “supernatural” without being cheesy and included, hooray, monsters! It also included another trope I always find amusing: the therapy session-as-flashback-exposition gimmick (used so well, for example, in Fred Pohl's Gateway).
Anyway, the plot centers around a kind-hearted psychologist getting together a new group therapy group. Reminiscent of that forgotten comedy classic from the 80s, The Dream Team (just me?), this is a motley crew trope (another fave!). There's Harrison, the seeming protagonist and former teen monster detective (if there was ever a 80s movie waiting to be made...), covered in hideous scars. There's Barbara, the pantsuit-wearing soccer mom (also covered in hideous scars). There's Martin, the dude who never takes off his Google Glass (because of hideous scars?!). And then there's young, manic pixie nightmare girl Greta - yes, she is also covered in hideous scars, and this becomes a major plot point. Oh yes, and there's Stan, the old guy who was a victim of semi-cannibalism (!).
I was veeery wary of this story once it started, since I had trouble handling the implied gore and grotesquerie (even if, thankfully, it was all basically off-screen). I was also reading it with the lights off late at night - big mistake. But the writing - which was full of frothy, casual wit - kept me coming back, and I ended up laughing and basically being, like, wow, fun novella! It was similar, in many ways, to RJ Astruc's The Perfume Eater (except way more grotesque).
A small voice in my head nagged at the troubling reinforcement of a bunch of tropes (beyond the ones I liked): handsome white male protagonist, goth version of the manic pixie dream girl, magical Middle Easterners and so on. But, oh Lord, Daryl Gregory's pen was so smart and self-reflective - these meta/implicit shortcomings are forgiven!
Edited to add: Gah! I just checked out the author's Twitter, and it turns out he's got a whole YA novel prequel about Harrison's teen monster detecting days out, like, today or something! Quick, someone buy those movie rights!!
What a bummer! This series is usually my go-to for good science writing; I've read the previous editions with great joy and fascination. And sure, as with any collection of essays, it can be hit and miss. But the hits are usually big hits! With the 2014 collection, I was just... meh. A serious case of the science blahs. Everything was just sort of... OK. I appreciated the pretty heavy topics (mortality, the good death, apocalyptic climate change, other various woes). But nothing really stood out. It felt like a slog. Sadness.
Maybe the best essay was about the Ojibwe trapper; it was surprising, meditative, naturey, touching, fun/funny, and pretty damn deep. The rest though: the science blahs.
What do I do!? Back to Michio Kaku!?
A “good”, but not great, disaster movie/apocalypse book.
After some random Killer Virus destroys human civilization, leaving only some stragglers living in the abandoned shells of McDonald's, we follow a traveling band of musicians/Shakespearean actors around the Toronto-Michigan area, and cross-cut back and forth between Before and After the bio-apocalypse. Okay, that sounds super trite - especially the traveling actors thing - but it's fine, and quite fun. Written in the style of Modern Airport Paperbacks, chapters are short (sometimes just dialogue snippets or a few paras), and things move quickly: it's all action, action, action, with little internal or external reflection (I do not know what color the leaves were). i.e. It's written with movie rights in mind. :)))
The ensemble cast of characters are all quite interesting, and I loved the description of the glorious graphic novel one of them was writing, and the core storyline was satisfying - because, HOT DAMN, I figured it out on page 20!!! I never figure out mysteries so soon!!!! But as soon as the Prophet was noted as being “familiar” to Kirsten, the protagonist, and he called his dog “Luli”, I was like, I KNOW EXACTLY WHO THAT IS! Ahh, such self-satisfaction. I also finished this book in one sitting - another thing that hasn't happened in a long time - so YES, it's a page-turner. But who doesn't perversely enjoy survivalist/apocalypse disaster movies?
Not HUGELY imaginative on the actual destruction stuff; for a more mind-bending, but still quite trashy, bio-pocalypse, I recommend the hot mess that is Blood Music.
If Guy Delisle had just taken it easy on the “hubba hubba” machismo/sexist jokes - which are very rare, but they do appear and are jarring - this would have easily been a 5-star graphic novel.
A memoir of Guy Delisle's year in Jerusalem, where he accompanies his wife - a Medicins Sans Frontieres administrator - and their two young children. Guy arrives in Israel as I would: a non-Judeo-Christian agnostic/atheist, almost totally ignorant of the history and context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unlike many (MANY) graphic novel memoirs, the center of attention is not Delisle himself - but rather his surroundings. He is a wry, relatively open-minded observer: he is upfront about his misgivings, prejudices, and feelings, and he is - for me, at least - relatable. I knew very little about how severely the Israeli-Palestinian conflict infringes on daily life there, especially for Palestinians. This was really a transporting and illuminating travelogue.
I'm reviewing this now, even though I haven't finished it. But I wanted to jot down some notes since, gah, this is SUCH THE PERFECT BOOK and what I was looking for! For the record (since I may update this review as I progress through the book), I just completed the Week 1 exercises and I'm rating this 5/5 stars (or should I say 5/5 STRUMS?! ho ho ho). YES, 2% THROUGH AND I'M ALREADY 5/5 HAPPY.
So I learned to play guitar in high school and used to be super passionate about it: I played hours and hours every day, I was in the guitar ensemble and a bunch of theater orchestras (community and school), I performed solo compositions during talent show and shit like that. I had big sparkly (but vague) dreams of becoming a, ahem, Master Guitarist, in the style of... John McLaughlin? I dunno. Anyway, then college happened and then life happened and then that dream died. How very sad.
This past month, I busted out my dusty-yet-still-beloved guitars, since I finally had (a) the space to play them and (b) an amp again. YAAAAASSSSS.
BUT. Butt. My knowledge has grown Swiss cheese-like with many years passing. I had my open and bar vanilla chords down, I remembered like one single jazzy chord, I half-remembered parts of a couple scales, and my strumming rhythm was just basically terrible. I needed some STRUCTURE and GUIDANCE. How to find it?! Where to begin again!?! I knew I wanted to fill all these gaps: chords (which I could remind myself through accumulating songs to play), scales (exercise book?), rhythm (exercise book?), and - ideally - some music theory (watching random explainer videos and that one scene from Whiplash?!). I debated getting an instructor, or joining the local music school - but, man, I ain't got time (or budget!) for either of those, really. Also, the guitar playing world seemed to have gotten so chattery with online (charlatans?) guitar instruction websites and Reddits and YouTube tutorials!? WHAT TO DO?!
ENTER THIS BOOK. I actually got a bunch of guitary books for Xmas, all in the service of this de-cheese mission, and I've futzed with several of them. BUT THIS BOOK. OH MAN. It has been the best. IT IS WHAT I SEEK. IT IS WHAT YOU SEEK, GUITARIST OF INDETERMINATE SKILL AND BACKGROUND. Because it really is super handy.
I thought it was just going to be strumming exercises, but it's so much more! First, as an intro chapter, we get a deep end dive into music theory. Honestly, most of this went over my head. I mean, I get that chords are made up of (mathematical?) combos of notes. And... uh... you can make chords in lots of different ways. Then, every week, we get a chord progression for the week. Week 2 is I-IV-V-I, key of A major, which translates to A-D-E-A. Then, every day of said week, you play that chord progression in a variety of styles: funk, jazz, country, folk, classical, metal (!?!). So many ways to skin a cat! Along the way, you learn about rhythm (I shake my fist at you, R&B!!!), but also - again - theory (since you're playing the chords in a bunch of pretzel configurations up and down the neck - I shake my fist at YOU, jazz!!) and ample picking as well (classical guitar, what a pain also!). You're giving both your left-hand AND right-hand fingers an excellent workout, AND your rhythm brain. I didn't think I'd enjoy essentially rote exercises so much but... it's VERY ENJOYABLE? You can practice practice practice and each exercise gets a bit easier. Some (R&B!!!) remain challenging, but that's even better: you're working on your weak spots! And it really is enlightening to see, again, how very many ways one can skin a cat.
Oh yes! Forgot to mention, but a KEY thing is that the book comes with some audio files you can download from the Hal Leonard (who is that guy anyway) website. That is KEY KEY KEY. Having those files on-hand, playing along with them, listening to them first, man, it's like having your personal guitar teacher patiently replaying it to you again and again. For the challenging exercises, I slow it down to 0.5x or 0.75x speed and stumble along. It's awesome.
I'm pumped. I can't recommend this highly enough. I don't know if it'd be good for someone who's just starting out as a guitarist - like, I might focus on having a bit of fun then and just learning a bunch of songs and building up your fretboard calluses. But if you want a comprehensive/holistic approach to the entire beautiful instrument, this book has just been awesome.
(Putting this on my did-not-finish shelf since I don't want to have it lingering in my currently-reading shelf for YEARS, which is how long it would take to legitimately get through all of it.)
These four stars are purely and specifically for the artist, Jamie McKelvie. The art in this MASSIVE TOME of a graphic novelcomix is sublime, gorgeous, wonderful. It's just so damn beautiful. It's so damn beautiful in a very straightforward, easygoing, just plain beautiful way. There is very little in the way of hanky panky gimmicky art stuff; excepting one exceptional panel that's hard to describe in words and a bit more abstract/designy, everything was just Pure Magical Gold Dust of Gwageous. Anyway, the art in this - SO DIVINE.
Okay, I didn't realize I was going to make that joke, but - okay, fine - the WICKED thing about this tome (which runs ~400 pages) is how thin the story actually is, how stilted the dialogue, and how cheap the drama. The basic thrust is that every X years, twelve gods reincarnate into the bodies of young, sexy people (in London?). The young sexy god people become celebrities - as in, they literally have rock concerts, where there are screaming fans, etc. They also have cons of the Comic Con variety. And they have some flaky super powers.
The “sad thing”, the thing that's meant to drive this narrative, is that they also die within two years. All the gods featured are ancient, pre-Abrahamic types: Baal, Innana, some Sumerian god I forget the name of. Oh yes! And Lucifer. But all the gods are not really of the omnipresent, omniscient variety; more of the magic tricks and pop songs variety. Our hero is a young London girl who WORSHIPS at the altar of these gods (figuratively, actually); she's the Extreme Fangirl. There's some gore and violence, when the gods fight a bit, but - honestly - what was the point?!!
Anyway, so I guess it's meant to be a meditation on celebrities AS gods in our modern times. And it did give me pause about The Bieber Dilemma, which I will not go into now, but suffice to say I have DEEP SYMPATHY for Bieber, and Shia LaBeouf, and Lindsay Lohan, and Britney Spears, and all these people that became really toxically famous super young and then had giant, public flame-outs and were ridiculed. I have no time for the “en vogue”-ness of “hating” Justin Bieber; it's just stupid. People who think it (especially people who think they are somehow being intellectual when they “hate” Justin Bieber) are actually just being lazy and stupid. /rant ANYWAY. So celebrities = gods of modern era? I guess there'd be some parallels between the transcendental ecstasy of a good concert and the transcendental ecstasy of a Maslow-style “peak experience”.
Yo but I'm adding aaaalll this intellectual window dressing when, honestly, the story just felt shallow, and like a rehash of Neil Gaiman's American Gods (which I also did not care for) and whatever. Who talks like this? I know London people, they don't talk like this. And all that unearned drama, ay ay ay.
But the ART! Man. Jamie McKelvie, bravo bravo bravo.
Really enjoyed the second novella in this series. Am excited for the third!
In this novella, Mohamed delves deeper into the main theses she's been setting up. (And the worldbuilding + values are top notch.) This is a near future (2100?) climate justice spec fic, about a pro-social girl from a grungy post-apocalyptic village coming to study at a university which is preserved in a biodome of individualistic, elitist modernity. The people in this dome are basically the people in EM Forster's The Machine Stops - aka, they are us, right now, pecking away at our screens and co-watching YouTube together rather than dropping into each other's houses (shriek).
I love the voice. I love the characters, especially the salt o' the earth grungy punks. I love the protagonist's anarchist disobedience in the service of pro-social values. Bravissima! Kinda like Cory Doctorow, sans tech nerdery. Also, as I said in my review of the first one, kind of like Last of Us, sans macho libertarian ammosexuality hee hee.
Cory is my guru on all things tech and Singularity-esque. He guides me through this brave new world, and I appreciate him to pieces for it. I also am observing with bemusement his increasing encroachment into my territories: that is, economic development, and India. But so far, he's made no missteps. Huzzah.
This series is a really attractive idea: short stories by prominent sf authors, followed by enriching interviews or non-fic pieces. In Cory's, we have a short piece by him (the titular “Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow'), followed by a speech he gave on copyright and the Internet (very Larry Lessigy stuff), followed by a brief interview. On paper, then, this is the perfect (condensed) way to get to know Cory Doctorow fast. I loved the speech and the interview. Unfortunately, the story chosen is one of the weakest I've seen from him - sloppy both in writing (silly typos, bad turns of phrase) and execution of a concept (jarring shifts in tone, a vague narrative arc), I was really disappointed with it. This, from the man who wrote the blazing “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom”! They should have just used a chapter from that instead of this short story. Or they could have used Cory's wonderful Frederik Pohl fanfic, “Chicken Little”. Now THAT was an excellent Cory Doctorow short story. “The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow”, instead, left me cold: I was frustrated by the poor editing and bored by the plot.
Nonetheless, I remain hopeful for this really well-conceptualized, fun series: the Ursula K. LeGuin and Rudy Rucker entries, in particular, are too enticing to miss!
A fine, sweet children's book exploring the nature vs. nurture debate. Features an unexpected plot twist of romance that made me smile. Meh.
Ha! Very good. That was hilarious. And so smart! I love smart, hilarious comix.
The story: Suzie and Jon discover, independently and during their awkward puberty years, that their orgasms can stop time (literally). Years later, they find each other as adults - and are thrilled (who wouldn't be?). They have this magic stopped-time place (she calls it “The Quiet”, he calls it “Cumworld”, after his favorite porn shop lol) in which they can frolic and be merry. Looming over all this is the rapacious (no pun intended), uber-capitalist, clearly-about-2008 BankCorp - which is threatening to foreclose on Suzie's public library building. Suzie and Jon decide to plan a heist: using their power to stop time, rob the bank, and pay back the library's loans. Looming over all THAT is the sex police.
So yeah, it's wonderful: subversive and sardonic about America's particularly prudish sex culture, as well as its unregulated, anti-human Wall Street. Sex and finance! I laughed and laughed.
Okay, so the marginal added value of this (“GREAT”) course is low if you've already read/listened to John McWhorter's Words on the Move or his podcast, Lexicon Valley. Most of the same ground is covered: the way elderly people in early 20th century shows/movies spoke with rural accent (and this reflected generational urbanization), the “back shift” in cadence as verbs become nouns (“I susPECT him”, “the usual SUSpects”), the way defining “languages” and “dialects” is primarily socio-political and cultural, rather than scientific, McWhorter's fanboying over old timey Hollywood, and so on.
But! That said, I love John McWhorter, he be my fave linguistic prof, so I always love to hear his stuff. In this series, he advances his two usual theses: (1) that language is an ever-changing organic thing, the “blob in a lava lamp”, and that contrarian grammarians (heh) slash obnoxious pedants often seem to be a few steps behind on that one, LITERALLY (ho ho, come at me), and (2) that language is oral first, written second, but that's really the first point told another way.
Anyway, this lecture series is organized into 24 bite-sized lecturettes - actually, no, that sounds sexists and WHY SO FRENCH? - lecturini, one for each letter of the alphabet. It's perfect for a short commute, since each lecturino is ~15 minutes long, which, on 1.5x speed, is a mere 10 min! The “Great Courses” (registered trademark) canned applause which bookends each lecture is awkward af, but no matter, I love John McWhorter's JOIE DE VIVRE, his overabundance of personality, his cheesy dad jokes and his extremely nerdy (in a non-ironic, non-“cool” nerd way) interests. That man loves Looney Tunes. And black and white movies! What a nerd! Love that guy.
None of this - neither his theses, nor his interests and cheesy impressions - is new, again, if you've listened to his other audiobooks or heard his podcast. But I still enjoyed this a lot, and loved the new stuff I learned:
- About how languages, when isolated, can get really baroque and ridiculous, and that that baroque-ness has nothing to do with how “complicated” the lives of the speakers are. To whit: KET! From Siberia! I think McWhorter called it a magisterial Gothic cathedral, anyway it made me lol.
- About how we always assume that language “reflects” reality, rather than creating it (SAPIR WHORF HYPOTHESIS, PEOPLE), and thus we always assume that certain words or concepts MUST be givens. For example, gendered pronouns - “he” and “she”. But no! There are several languages than never developed gendered pronouns (Finnish, Japanese), and McWhorter quotes one of those speakers as asking, “Well, why would you need it?” The same way many English speakers feel with gendered nouns in other languages, like Italian lady-tables (la tavola) and man-books (il libro) and irregular-because-originally-Greek-drama (il drama).
- About how old “like” is.
- About how vague and hard it is to count words in a language, given all those words that - via idiom - are becoming new words (e.g. “pick” and “up” which become “pickup” (the truck) and “I tried to pick him up” (flirting/asking on a date) and “I really need a pick-me-up” (slice of tiramisu)).
Recommended.
I don't know how I found Noelle Stevenson, but I started reading Nimona when it was a web comic - and I loved it. It's funny, heartfelt, and has Great Values (yey). Meaning, lots of little things to chip away at the -isms of the world. For example, Nimona herself is drawn as a young punk girl with a normal-looking body. I'm a 30something lady now, you'd think I'm settled in my body image, but I remember feeling more confident after spending some time absorbing those images. Other little things: the gender balance (we meet women who are scientists, heads of institutions); the sexuality (it's revealed fairly early on that the ‘hero', Ambrosius Goldenloin, and villain/anti-hero, Ballister Blackheart, are former flames); the way it all feels like a maker faire and Ren faire had a baby; the general positivity and sensitivity and “it's not all black and white”-ness.
The setting is kind of Medieval/Ren faire-punk; there are knights, dragons, castles - but there are also cell phones, TVs, pizza delivery and evil mad scientists with labs. Blackheart is the designated villain - and it is emphasized, pretty often, that this is a part, a role, and he's been designated for it ever since losing his arm in hideous accident/revenge thing - and, one day, he gets a new sidekick: Nimona. Nimona is a teen girl with a punk haircut, many piercings, and bad attitude: she basically wants to KILL KILL KILL EVERYONE. She's a rambunctious shape-shifter with a shifty (ho ho) past.
Now that I think about it, I realize the many similarities between this and Osamu Tezuka's Dororo: that is, a sidekick-centralizing comix that features a young, rambunctious sidekick coupled with a straight man anti-hero; featuring many Feelings and much meditation on the way childhoods can scar and traumatize. Of course, Dororo's dialogue feels dated - whereas Nimona feels very much of the times.
Overall, a lot of fun.
The only book I've ever read that explicitly acknowledged that the typical meditation object of “focus on the breath” can be triggering for OCD people. Yes!! Thank you!
Similarly, included nice, relatable highlights of moments of exasperated parenting vs. what you actually want to be like. Ever since I discovered self-compassion, I've been like, wow this is super helpful and I'm so much nicer and FEEL for people so much more, wowww. This book was more of that. I didn't have time at all to sit and do the meditation practices (though I keep thinking I should). But I did do the “casual” mindfulness/self-compassion the author describes - and gosh, it really is kinda life-changing?
I also enjoyed his totally pseudo-scientific but adorable “types”: I think I'm an “Intellectual” (hollaaa) and “Workhorse” (sad hollaaa). But yeah, my Buddhism has always been very brainy. It's interesting to welcome the heart in now!
Kinda feel like a killjoy on this, given my social network loooves - nay, looaafffs this - but I just couldn't get into it. Magical fantasy worlds are a hard sell for me, even though this does check the box of being an intentionally NON-Medieval European LOTR rehash, thank the Maker. That's a necessary, but - alas - not sufficient! - condition.
Story: So it's maybe a far future End Times Earth, where the planet has one big continent full of tectonic drama in the style of that one scene from The Land Before Time. Every so often, these giant, scorching, hellfire earthquakes crack open the land, fill the sky with ash and kill all plantlife and fauna. The poor humans must scrabble hard to survive. These apocalypse moments are called “Seasons”, the “Fifth Season” being the end-all, be-all super killer one.
Amidst this geological drama, human civilization is interestingly weird - but also depressingly familiar. The weird bits: there are people called orogenes, who have magical rock telekinesis. People live in “comms”, and have “use-names” for their “use-caste” and “comm-names”; mine would be Angela Innovator Pittsburgh, I like to think. The depressingly familiar stuff: the world is a rigidly structured survivalist nightmare, full of oppression and superstition and despair. Orogenes are especially persecuted, where their best hope is a life of near-enslavement in the “Fulcrum”, a sort of Game of Thrones-style Hogwarts. Every orogene is watched over by a Guardian, a person who has a magical power to negate rock telekinesis, but mostly just intimidates their orogene by crushing their tiny hand in their much larger hand (ah, the old ‘crush your hand to teach you self-control' style of pedagogy).
We follow three journeys: of Demaya, of Syenite, and of Essun - all three are orogenes. Demaya is a poor, abused girl who gets rescued out of her village nightmare by Schaffa, a creepy Guardian dude (with giant hands, be warned). Syenite is a snarky mid-level orogene with the Fulcrum, who is sent on a public works project + obligatory breeding vacation with Alabaster, a super skilled and super bitter orogene in the mold of Lord Byron. Essun's son has just been killed by her husband, cuz he found out their son was an orogene. He may have also kidnapped their daughter. She's on a mission to track husband and daughter down.
There are a couple excellent side characters - I loved, LOFFED, the Stone Eaters (creepy monotone rock people, very very rock people), and the uber-charismatic, bisexual pirate king on that one utopian island of tolerance and good vibes.
But! But, while I really liked the meta of this book (all except possibly one character are people of color; LGBTQ stuff is portrayed as supremely normalized; there's some potentially interesting notes about the dehumanizing effects of oppression; this is a big glorious Bechdel test pass; also, this book was on the social justice side of the recent SF/F culture wars - google “sad puppies hugo” if you want to ruin your evening), anyway, while I liked the meta, I didn't really enjoy the book itself. First, the writing's tone was jarringly modern-American-snarky for something that (1) was meant to be super-brutal and sad, and (2) was taking place in some freaky far future. I'm not saying ya gotta roll out the purple prose of Gene Wolfe (NEVER DO THAT), but maybe some Dune-style weird cadences and words or I don't know. And sometimes the snarky tone felt jarringly at odds with the brutality on-screen: Essun's tale, especially.
Another complaint was the overuse of people's jaws flexing as a sign of Emotions Happening, the repeated words (‘and - and - ‘, ‘but - but - ‘), and the sometimes monotone personalities of the characters: Alabaster was a hurt/comfort fanfic writer's dream, while Syen had one setting (Snark). Bah, I'm sorry, I'm a killjoy.
A brief, lovely, vaguely horrifying overview of how endemic “bad statistics” is. This is mostly pitched to the statistics practitioner - and especially one coming from academia. In other words, this would've been catnip to me like ~5 years ago. But, for now, having already cleansed myself in the work of Data Colada, Gelman and Ioannidis, much of this was old hat.
Yes, people over-rely on and misinterpret p-values. Yes, people “double-dip” and torture/exhaust their data, hunt for statistically significant results (green jelly beans!) with multiple comparisons, put negative or non-results in the “filing cabinet” and suffer from the “winner's curse” (where randomly large results are more likely to hit the p-value bingo and thus get reported, leading to an upward bias). In fact, EVERYTHING leads to an upward bias in results - as Ioannidis said, most research findings are probably false. Or, at least, not as big and positive as we so believe.
I thought this would have a bit more practical stuff, a bit more Bayes (BAYES), and a bit of a wider scope. The last sections, on the perverse incentive structures of academia (pre-analysis plans that no one really signs up for; journals that reward “winner's cursey” BIG, POSITIVE results, p-hacking), were definitely interesting and got my fist shaking. But I'm not in that world anymore, and so I'm kinda like, “oh well, dudes”. I mean, there is a LOT wrong with academia's incentive structures, and, yes, they definitely corrupt the pure Science, but what about practitioners in industry? Oh well.
I couldn't finish this, and I am ashamed. Especially because I've always said that I'm DYING for (secular) Buddhist history books. And this is even from the coolest subroutine: 1970s+ San Francisco Zen Center, and all the corruption that ensued! Oh man. Wish I could have liked this more, the topic is PERFECT.
Continuing to adore this series. Highlights in this issue include some flying sharks and the shock comedy value of someone puking on the baby (uh, spoiler?). Ohhh, I love you, Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples.
Enjoyable and brief novella about far future aliens examining the remains of human civilization in Olduvai Gorge (a big important hole in the ground in Tanzania, near the Great Rift Valley). Just given that these vignettes took place in Tanzania and Kenya was incredibly refreshing. The portrayal of the Maasai was fun and interesting; I especially enjoyed the short vignette about the stubborn near future Maasai dad. I think I added this to my to-read list long long ago, when I was having a Maszlow-ian peak experience in the Serengeti, and was hungry to read some sf that centered around the magic of BIOLOGY and wild things and ecosystems. This wasn't quite that, but it was v good nonetheless.
A clearly written and clarifying brief philosophical treatise. The basic message is that there's never really a good reason to lie, and there are a lot of ways to tell the truth, while still being discreet or keeping a secret, as long as we're willing to open up a bit and practice some honesty. He explores the “white lie”, and ways to turn white lies around into gentle truths. Overall, it's very convincing - great for dharma practice (right speech!). I also appreciated that, for something essentially philosophical, he kept the writing simple, immediate and understandable. His examples were particularly enlightening.
A series of short (2-3 page) essays, mostly concerning low- and middle-brow culture and the patriarchy. I didn't connect with it, really, which was a bummer - I always try to have a fem book in circulation, mostly to inspire the pure femrage in me, so that I may Fight the Good Fight another day.
Gay opens and closes the book with a kinda defensive meta critique of how she feels like a “bad feminist” because she doesn't do xyz stereotypical feminist stuff (shaving legs, man hating, etc) - even while, at the same time, acknowledging that that trope is a lie and just damaging to women - and then defending her tastes in low- and middlebrow culture. First, mixing culture up and down the class spectrum is awesome and great and everyone should do it, and why should anyone waste time explaining it? Evidence: PBS Idea Channel is great! Evidence: my movie blog (which featured lengthy think-pieces of trash) is great! ( I kid, Nayak is not trash, it's great.)
Also, ugh, I honestly do not care about lengthy meta discussions of feminist apologism: “I'm not a feminist, BUT...” or “Some women don't call themselves ‘feminists' but...”. If some fancy celebrity women find the word “feminist” too edgy for them, yes, it speaks poorly to our brainwashed patriarchal world, but I also couldn't care less. I'm a feminist (duh) and I expect everyone I meet, men and women, to be feminists too, and if I meet people who are weird about calling themselves feminists, I just conclude that they have recently landed here from some retrograde planet and I'm happy to wait for them to catch up. Maybe that's cuz I live in a blue bubble. But I just get super impatient with Fraught Meta-Feminism.
Anyway, most of the essays were just too short to be really enlightening. They were mostly discussions about intersectional oppression (tangential: “What have you done today for the LGBTQ community and Black Lives Matter? Nothing, Grandma, you've done nothing.”) through the prism of early 2010s pop culture and politics. Like many things written before Trump was elected president, it felt immediately outdated - like I was looking at a world through the looking glass. Goodbye, Obama years! So long!
Some of the essays were a bit enlightening (the Tyler Perry critique was v. interesting, but mostly cuz I haven't seen any Tyler Perry movies so it was all news to me), but some felt - I dunno, superficial and bloggy fluff. For example, Gay discusses the whole “coming out of the closet” celebrity stuff, and how meaningful it was when Frank Ocean came out (back in 2012?). She wonders whether his career will suffer - a nice feeling, then, given his last album was super-lauded. But then she - like many folks, I guess? - notes the seeming contradictory-ness of Frank Ocean and his association with Tyler the Creator and the Odd Future gang, since the latter's lyrics are - GODDAMN - so homophobic sometimes. She basically concludes by being like, “Tyler's an asshole, etc etc”. End of essay.
BUT! I think there's so much more to explore and so much more to ask the Odd Future kids about, and I think it speaks to a generational divide that's interesting: because they're just a bunch of like super young Millennials (and hooo boy do I feel old these days), and I think the lines are changing, and I don't think I totally understand it but maybe the f-word (homophobic slur) is being reclaimed?! Because, yes, Tyler the Creator and Earl Sweatshirt's lyrics are aarghhh so gratingly offensive sometimes, yet Frank Ocean and Syd tha Kid are also openly and totally “normalized”-y black queer hip hop/R&B artists. I just think Roxane Gay and I are both 30something women who don't understand what these kids are up to, and might be reacting with the 21st century version of respectability politics (“gasp, you must never say that awful word!”)? I dunno. But the essay definitely ends too soon! Yeah, so I dunno. Here's some music.
Argh, can't rate this, because I'm unsure of myself today - did I not get it because it used a lot of big Italian words (I already knew I don't read so good in italiano, but a lot of this felt like it sailed right over la mia testa)? Or because I NEVER get Italo Calvino, in any language (and feel mildly irritated by him to boot)? Or was it a Tao of Pooh poetickal-formatting-does-not-translate-to-audiobook problem?
WHO KNOWS.
The premise is great: young Venetian adventurer Marco Polo recounts a variety of real and imagined cities to the great and aging Kublai Khan via - I'M GUESSING HERE - a bunch of strangely-formatted prose-ish poems. The cities are VERY MEANINGFUL and tediously symbolic. Sometimes they are fun and imaginative. Sometimes they are about our future, and society, and not sucking. LA is briefly bashed (unsurprisingly).
The city tales also follow a meticulous and mathematical meta-structure because MODERNISM!
Ugh. This is like the nth Italo Calvino book I read and don't understand and am generally irritated by. Welp.