Angela Ambroz
First: please imagine this review written in this font.
Second: so, goblins, eh!
Third: I read this as part of the Nebula Nominees for Best Novel list, and would probably have missed it otherwise. Despite what I am about to say, I was happy to be given a chance to read it! Because, different!
So, The Goblin Emperor is a fairly charming, one-note high fantasy book about Maia, a half-elf, half-goblin teen kid who ends up - thanks to a blimp accident which kills his dad and everyone else ahead of him in line for the throne - becoming the all-powerful emperor of Elflands. Or part of Elflands? There is a map somewhere (of course there is! high fantasy!). Imagine the emperor and his empireness as a sort of late 19th century Russian thing, a la Romanovs. There are blimps, steam, iron and other “steampunk” (STEAMPUNK!!!, the jacket cover screams in advertisement) things. People have notable, expressive, possibly pointy ears.
Anyway, Maia is a Sensitive Soul. He's been raised outside of the Palatial Palace by Setheris (NOT Severus, one needs to remind oneself), his evil tutor who berated him and abused him and never bothered to give him any helpful hints about how to be an emperor. Maia is thus woefully unprepared when it comes time to be crowned, woefully unprepared to even survive socially at court, and he's also super insecure, and basically a woobie. If this feels like fanfic, yeah. It felt like fanfic to me, at least in terms of his characterization.
The rest of the book is about courtly intrigues, both petty and grand, and if that stuff rocks your boat, cool. I found it mostly dull, and very predictable. What saves the book is its general humanistic charm: Maia's entourage is mostly lovable, from the lovable secretary man to the lovable bodyguards (1 wizard guy, 1 soldier guy) and so on. There is a visit from Maia's full-goblin grandfather, the king/ruler/pasha of the neighboring goblin kingdom. There is a fair amount of Jane Austen-style “human drama”, if you will, about people's feelings and relationships. Again, I say, if this sounds good to you, you will enjoy this stuff, because it's very satisfying on those dimensions.
I myself! However! Found it pretty blah, and it tried my patience after a while. In particular, I was sooooo(ooo) disappointed by the kinda lame “let's be socially liberal!” attempts. i.e. Elflands are a land where elves are white (like snow), goblins are black (like charcoal), mixed people are gray (like slate, aluminum, etc.), men wear the pants, and gay stuff is like whaaaat totally not cool. Maia, being Maia our Sensitive Hero, is thus: conflicted about his ethnic heritage, kinda thinking maybe women can be more than babymakers, and kinda OK with gay folks. He makes some kinda small-fry attempts to fix the homophobic sexism around him. Good? Yo, I was disappointed. The book really missed a golden opportunity here (as, well, so many, many sci-fi/fantasy books do), in that, instead of just making Elflands a matriarchal, bisexual empire full of purple-skinned oppressors and polka-dotted oppressees, we instead had to suffer through a tediously usual replication of our own social mores. Again! Sci-fi/fantasy! Should be visionary! And yet - on the social stuff, such failure of vision. So I found this stuff lame, and I worry about the little girls reading about the little girls who do nothing but act cute, or the grown women who are basically all either vamps or butch.
I was also miffed by the “evil Marxists coming to kill us all” assassination subplot/allegory, but I guess that fits in with the emperors-as-Romanovs stuff? Oh, and another failure of vision: imagine, in your mind, what a foreign dignitary from a foreign land would look like? One who is introduced as pasha-like? Do you imagine a very large, very bearded man who booms, bellows, blusters, is gruff and so on? Yes, so does everyone else, so it was kinda cliche to have the goblin king be basically that.
OK, I will stop abusing this book. It is not bad, and I'm sure most people will forgive it these things and be charmed by the Austeny Romanov courtly drama stuff. For me, though - meh. I wanted more.
A sociological history of African-American athletics, and how the community has basically been undermined repeatedly by white ownership/power structures. Really interesting, infuriating, and I didn't realize I had so much love for baseball/football history in me as I apparently do! But someone needs to make a Jackie Robinson movie. Oh wait - they did.
It feels sacrilege to say this, but not only did I find this Classic Text of Data Visualization a complete bore, but I also disagreed with a lot of Tufte's principles! Uh oh. Is no one going to let me near a data visualization again? Hope not. But seriously. I'm surprised this remains the go-to graphic design book for social scientists, data scientist people, etc. It feels completely outdated, not only because it's more 1970s than a pair of huge Dan Aykroyd sideburns, but also because it's all about static, dead-on-the-page graphics - and we live in a world where we can make our infographics animated and interactive!
Yes, I agree that the Microsoft Office Hegemony is a bad thing - especially the way PowerPoints and Excel homogenize and bleed the passion from our work - but I just could't agree with some of Tufte's other principles.
Oh, man. This was really good. Full disclaimer: I used to work for Esther Duflo, who is mentioned a couple times in the book. And I've lately been thinking unconditional cash transfers are a thing. Like, a really cool thing. Is it a MAGICAL BULLET-like object? I have been trained not to think so. But one gets excited.
Anyway. This book shares many similarities with another excellent, modern bio about a big guy in development: Mountains Beyond Mountains. First, both are reeeeally well-written, telling a narratively coherent tale full of emotional depths. This is not something to smirk at, given that development economics and public health can be pretty sterile, scientific, sloggy stuff when you get down into the details of things. Second, the subjects are very similar: Jeff Sachs and Paul Farmer are both portrayed as hyper-intelligent, tempestuous firebrands, driven by incredible drive and energy to fulfill a near-saintly moral mission. They are also well-full of moral clarity, and are thus unambiguously convinced of their correctness - nay, their duty - to do things exactly the way they have conceived of doing them.
The big difference is that, while Mountains Beyond Mountains is a near-hagiography that has inspired who-knows-how-many public health professionals, I don't think The Idealist will be inspiring much beyond some heavy sighs; of discouragement, of lament. Sachs has always been a controversial, occasionally smirk-inducing figure in the profession - but then, anyone who confidently asserts he's found the solution to it all would be met with such reactions. The MTV/Angelina Jolie video diary thing, I remember, got some LOLs when it came out. But his reputation really started to take hits when the inevitable questions came up: just how well are those Millennium Villages doing? I won't get into the details, though I did enjoy this blog about it.
The author, Nina Munk, does a great job of describing, in great detail, the human aspect of the Millennium Villages - as embodied in two of Sachs's front-line soldiers; that is, the managers of two such villages in Uganda and Kenya. Their backgrounds, their optimism, their highs and lows really make the book what it is. It's fascinating and heartbreaking. And it really encapsulates the, at times, disheartening job of development: all the myriad ways things go wrong, the layers and layers of problems. Because a lot of “high-level” development, the stuff done by high-powered academics and donors, takes place in the cushy hotels and endless airport lounges of the world. And what's sad (for a young professional, like me) is that this isn't new: Ross Coggins was already sardonically lamenting it almost 40 years ago. It really makes you wonder about the “development” industry, and incentive structures, and politics, and so on.
Munk alludes to some of these “development set”-y notions, by noting Sachs's hyper-brief, hyper-energetic, hyper-packaged visits to his Villages, and the disconnect between the theories and the reality.
But I digress too much. Is this a useful introduction to someone who knows nothing about development? Yes, I think so. I think it introduces many of the major “characters” (Sachs and beyond), and many of the common pitfalls of doing this work. It doesn't answer why some countries are rich and some poor, but it does show what it means to be rich and poor, and why it's so difficult to change things. And Sachs's “fall” is not so unique - how many idealistic, intelligent people have seen their elegant theories crash and burn against reality? - but what makes it special is, perhaps, that we watched it live and it encompassed so many millions of dollars.
Very, very recommended.
What a fun book! This was an absolute hoot: the story of the 2012 US elections, told with granular, grimy human details that are often (often!) very funny, even warm. I say this with some surprise. But maybe I'm just naive. I lived through the 2012 elections as a semi-engaged citizen: I mean, I watched the debates and had a general sense of who the GOP hopefuls were, and I had made up my mind of who to vote for (but mostly for a vague partisan feeling, rather than any granular understanding of specific policies). And I still saw them all - Obama, Romney, Ryan, Biden, Trump! - as relatively paper-thin representations of people, rather than people people.
Thanks to the author's fancy access, we get - instead - so much backstage humanity. And it's great. It made me admire Obama and his entourage even more than I already do, brainwashed as I am by their 8+ year long charm offensive on my demographic. Oh, Barry, I can't stay mad at you, despite all that NSA bullshit. But it also - whattttt - made me feel almost warm to Romney. Suddenly he became more than just the hilariously alienating Mormon plutocrat with the sculpted hair-face combo. Okay, I mean, he is that too, but he's also just a dude! A person with people feelings! And people failings (in both senses of the phrase).
In short, it made me see hyper-recent US history the way I see more ancient US history (e.g. 19th century politics, Civil War): with a warm, affectionate light, with less a sense of panic/fear (my usual feeling towards current politics) and more a feeling of forgiveness/equanimity (oh, Confederates). People became less villainous and infuriating, and instead become a bit hapless.
And, OH MAN, did it make me a Politico convert. And it made me miss Slate's Political Gabfest - oh wait, what am I saying? It's Friday - new episode day! Seriously, that podcast is all sorts of wonderful, go download it.
A note: Many other reviewers have commented on the writing style. It is indeed, well, grating. They write like two proper good ol' boys, with a (what I presume they see as) whimsical mish-mash of $1 words (“potentates”, etc.) and Dad jokes. If there is an opportunity to make a joke of something, they do. OH, HOW THEY DO. I admit this annoyed me a lot at first, but, like dads, eventually you just give in and let the chuckling commence.
Oh my goodness, shame on Peter David. He turned one of the cutest couples (Riker/Troi) from one of the most progressive sci fi shows out there (The Next Generation) into a pair of flat, one-dimensional characters out of some steamy, B-grade bodice ripper. What's most annoying is how stupidly regressive this is: capable Troi suddenly becomes a helpless damsel in distress; Riker's not much better than some beefy ape using his physical brawn to save her. And the entire Betazoid culture becomes a land of touchy-feely, wimpy art lovers. Spare me!
Two stars only because the IDEA of the book - Data chasing a bitter, old Riker through parallel universes - could have been so good.
Very interesting, quite a bit of pizzazz and gosh-darn shock for this lapsed Catholic. The first 12 years of my life were very, VERY Catholic, but I had NO IDEA Jesus had siblings. He had WHAT? James was his BROTHER?! WHAT!?!
Anyway, a lot of fun. Is it going to offend devout Christians? Oh gosh, maybe? I guess a devout Christian will just toss this out/ignore it. Because Reza Aslan's (revisionist?) book looks at the historical Jesus of Nazareth and richly contextualizes him (Him?!) in the hyper-violent, apocalyptic politics of the Middle East 2,000 years ago. Honestly, that context sounded brutal, and Jesus sounded a looot more hardcore, and completely unlike the rainbows and unicorns vibe the New Testament has had in my mind since Catholic school.
Because the context was this: Imperial Rome oppressing everyone, corrupt collaborator high priests/rich people, and apocalyptic Jewish “messiahs” calling for end times, the decimation of Rome and the unification of the twelve tribes of Israel. Apparently, there were lots of these folks: hating on Rome and the priests, and then ending up crucified for “sedition”. The ways Jesus fit into this pattern, and the ways he didn't, were super interesting. For example, the Old Testament/Torah/Jewish tradition had lots of attributes of the messiah, and the gospel writers spent a lot of time back-revising the Jesus biopic so that he either fit into them better or had a good reason for not fitting into them. (Apparently resurrection is NOT one of these attributes!)
So why do I, and many modern cultural Christians, have this peace-and-love vibe about Jesus and the New Testament? Apparently - and this blew.my.mind - the canny political genius of the late first century CE gospel writers had the forethought to revise Jesus's story so that it could be palatable and understandable to Romans and gentiles and little anxious girls in Pittsburgh PA. After the fall of Jerusalem (~40 years after Jesus died), the gospel writers knew that - for Jesus's ministry to survive - it had to become palatable, generic, apolitical. It had to lose all the “my Jewish God's gonna smite you, Roman bastards!!!” stuff. Hence you get a reluctant Pontius Pilate (who is a saint in the Coptic Church whaaaaat, but - historically - apparently executed so many people that his bosses back in Rome got complaints about it), a Jesus who preaches about the sick and suffering and MUCH PEACE AND LOVE, EVERYONE, and you get the evil, no-good, corrupt Jewish high priests. This political decision that the gospel writers made, in the light of Jerusalem's fall, yep, leads to 2k+ years of anti-Semitism. MADNESS!
The other madness, of course, is the wonderful, infuriating, crazy story of Paul. Would it be crazy to say that modern day Christianity owes as much (maybe more?!) to Paul as to Jesus? Because he certainly came on pretty strong following his conversion, and bent much of the church to his will - and then worked to spread that version - and changed a bunch of the story - etc etc. There's an interesting play about it by Howard Brenton. Eddie Izzard does a funny bit about his obnoxious letters. Anyway, Paul and Jesus's brother, James, apparently battled much for the soul (pardon the pun) of the church - and this section was v v interesting. So Paul was like, “screw this, I'm going to Rome!” where he found PETER - agent of James! I loved the in-fighting.
Sooo... Yeah. Read it! Lots of fun.
Jeeeeeez, what a blooowhard. I liked De Brevitate Vitae (On the shortness of life) well enough, and I'm still charmed and stunned by how clear and immediate Seneca's advice can be, given he lived 2000 years ago. I didn't love this one, though, since - okay - this is not Seneca's fault - but the Italian audiobook producers of this WAAAY over-produced it, and had constant (CONSTANT) background music a la massage therapy studio style. So if you like your Stoic philosophy with some Buddha Bar beats, you will enjoy this. I was like, ARGH ARRRRGHHHH
Interesting tidbits: So Seneca's guide to finding happiness is: (1) let nature be your guide (NATURE), and (2) destroy desire and seek moderation. (2) is JUST PLAIN BUDDHIST, and I was interested in what (if any) influence Buddhist thought could have had on, ehhh, when was Seneca alive? OK, Wiki says 4BC - 65AD. Perfect! So Buddhism had been around for ~500 years by that point, and hmmmm the Romans probably traded spices and silks (???) and PHILOSOPHICAL/LIFESTYLE IDEAS via the Silk Road (hollaaa). So that's very interesting!
I mean, we speak a lot about the Greeks' influence on the Romans (and the Romans spend a lot of time talking about Greeks, jeez), but I wonder... I guess Seneca wouldn't have known who to attribute the great idea of non-desire/non-attachment (except HIMSELF).
On (1) (follow nature), I was curious because WHAT, exactly, does Seneca mean by nature? “Nature” and “unnatural” are words usually invoked by people who are actually VERY IGN'ANT about biology and are making conservative/hegemony points - e.g. Jordan Peterson saying we must be “natural” in our gender relations, like the lobster (or something). Fool, don't you know that dolphins have sex with EVERY HOLE?! And lesbian albatrosses have long, monogamous pairings complete with sperm donor-ed offspring? I mean, I find it very funny with ignorant social conservatives use their thin knowledge of the natural world to make points about when men were men, etc. It's funny because they're dumb. Was Seneca being dumb? I dunno, it was unclear to me WHAT we were supposed to follow in nature. Be like the tree and stand firm? Be like the wind and fart? I dunno.
HENYWAY. Stoics are great. But they suffer with muzak (as we all do).
A solid entry for both the Buddhism and self-help/self-improvement shelves, though I found it slightly missing the mark for me on both. Then again, both spirituality and what's therapeutic can be deeply personal things, and so I don't fault the author, Brach, for this. If you're vaguely into Buddhism or meditation, and vaguely in need of a self-helpy pick-me-up (or just into self-improvement!), then I'd encourage you to pick this up and give it a try.
Some pros:
- I was largely skeptical of the dharma in this book, as it was of the Mahayana Buddhism (i.e. Tibetan) strain, and thus stressed things like compassion, lovingkindness meditation, and all sorts of gooey stuff that I just ain't into! Phooey! (Said the evil Buddhist.) What can I say?! I like the austerity of Zen. Anyway, despite this arm's-length skepticism, I found myself getting inspired to “just pause” (as Brach encourages) during each day and thus, indeed, remember to practice that whole mindfulness business. So useful!
- Similarly, my meditation practice can sometimes become a bit like Shifu's - i.e. a bit forced, irritable, and totally counter-productive - but I enjoyed reading Brach's suggested meditations at the end of each chapter. I didn't do them as described (which should probably lead you to be skeptical of this review, since I didn't consume the book as intended), but did feel that they were interesting. I've put them down as something to try in the future.
- One thing I do gosh darn love about books like this is the examples of People Just Like You. This book was chock full of them, and I found myself unexpectedly moved by Person X dealing with Problem Y.
- Brach makes an excellent point of “social Buddhism” - i.e. we often get lost in a single-minded, solo pursuit of meditation and whatever, and forget that the real Buddhist practice is in how you interact with the lady at the checkout counter. Or the annoying guy on the bus. Or your loved one, who is also being annoying. Etc. A great reminder, and a great (subtle) call for greater engagement with the mundane and social and distinctly-not-sacred.
Some cons:
- Not many, though I did find Brach's Use of Capitalization a little jarring, especially when she'd end certain sections with, “And that's why you should use Radical Acceptance!” or “But when Person X did Radical Acceptance, all was well!” (I paraphrase, obviously.) Repeating the title of a movie in the movie always leads to some lols, and the same was somewhat true here: it started feeling like a registered trademark.
- I'm not sure why this missed the mark for me, but I know that I wanted something a bit more. Perhaps a bit more self-deprecating humor on the part of Brach? Perhaps a few fewer Rumi quotes? And y'all know I be up on my Rumi quotes (see my own Goodreads profile). It just felt very New Agey Book Club - a book club, I hasten to add, that I have long since belonged to as well. (Let he who is without sin, blah blah.) At least, Me of 2004 was all into Rumi, Hafiz, Thich Nhat Hanh and that transcendental stuff. But I guess I wanted to see less of that, which is predictable, and more... weird, innovative, inspired American Buddhism? e.g. Why not quote Studs Terkel?! You know, there must be loads of Buddhisty goodness in all those Studs Terkel oral histories. But, again, this is just my personal opinion, and aaalll this stuff is just personal opinion.
A cri de ceour in favor of the scientific method, and completing the Enlightenment's haphazard hold on our culture!! I CAST THEE OUT, DARK SHADOWS OF AUTHORITARIANISM AND WOO!
In a way, this book is a spiritual ancestor of Conspirituality, another book that covers similar themes of anti-scientific social ape nonsense and its ramifications throughout society and politics - though in the post-Covid age.
THIS book, by the very lauded Carl Sagan, is, in many ways, a very 90s book. So I actually struggled through the first half of it. I would rate the first half 2 stars (!). But I just cannot tolerate chapter upon chapter of garbage - and Sagan spends MANY chapters debunking UFOs, crop circles, the X-Files (!), and other super outdated 90s woo. He then spends a fiery chapter on Medieval witch hunts, and his clear-eyed assessment of them as expressions of patriarchal power and control, chef's kiss. But then it's back to alien abduction stories. Mannnn...
I mean. I guess his argument is that humans' capacity to engage in woo is (a) directly tied to our social ape ancestry, and thus (b) TIMELESS. Oh, how I wish he had lived miraculously until now - so he could lock arms with Tony Fauci and fight the forces of anti-vax fear-mongering. Because, indeed, 1995 Sagan predicts 2025 America dismally well. And his tight linking of Enlightenment ideals - the scientific method AND “liberte, egalite, fraternite” (aka social justice) - was just, mwah, so heartening. Thank you!! We must bang this drum again and again and again!!!
Indeed, the second half of the book was much more exciting - and got me very amped up. He circles back to witch hunts (damn the patriarchy!), laments education and the cultural caricatures of scientists (mad scientists, nerds, etc), ponders the link between literacy/education and civic empowerment and democracy, and - single tear - envisions various utopian scenarios of e.g. our political leaders being intelligent and informed and comfortable with uncertainty. SOB.
By the end, I was:
- Ready to re-read Ted Miguel's research on modern witch hunts (and how they occur more often during periods of food insecurity...): http://emiguel.econ.berkeley.edu/research/poverty-and-witch-killing/
- PUMPED to dust off all my pop quantum mechanics books so I could go “whoooooa”
- PUMPED to read about “scientism” as well (sorry, Carl!!!)
Unfortunately this was a meh collection. It ran heavy on eco and nature, lighter on hard science. The only physics essay (that I can recall) was a bio-essay on Higgs (of particle fame). Even that article felt thin. Nothing on computers or jiggery pokery Internettery, alas.
At its best, this series has blown my mind and opened up my horizons. At its worst (and this 2015 edition was pretty bad), it's just OK. I mean, it's never been BAD. But the disappointment of non-inspiration can be acute. Oh well, obviously I'll read all the other editions I can get my hands on, and I recommend you do too. :)
Yo, so this won like every sci-fi award a book can win last year, and I somehow only heard about it last week. WHUT. How?! Why!?
Anyway, I was super excited to read this. It ticked a couple important boxes for me - Strong Female Protagonist (yey), freaky far future stuff - and it had the added extra bonus that, being a Hugo/Nebula joint winner, it fulfilled my spiritual quest/obligation to read all Hugo/Nebula joint winners ever. So, double whammy. Great. Also, the last time I read a Hugo/Nebula double-winner, I was super disappointed. Very ready for a good one.
And this one was a good one. Was it a great one? Meh. It was like a really, very, quite good. But not great. The author, Ann Leckie, has two totally awesome Big Ideas, dressed up with a lot of pedestrian space opera window dressing, and her writing is mostly talky, sometimes inspired. The story follows a rogue AI named Breq, 20 years into her hunt to destroy the emperor of the Radchaai civilization. Big Idea #1 is that Breq is a former spaceship. As in, she was the AI of a spaceship, the Justice of Toren, and, via some super-cool far future freaky sci-fi technology, could seed her AI consciousness out to a bunch of “ancillaries” - human cadavers re-animated by her consciousness to serve as robot troops (but also robot butlers! because, fun!). Now Breq is the last meatspace body she has left! STAKES ARE HIGH, PEOPLE.
Big Idea #2 is that, the Radchaai civilization is so post-gender stuff that they don't even see gender anymore, and don't have gendered pronouns (he/she), and so refer to everyone as “she”. This means you're often having to second- and triple-guess yourself about which characters are which genders. Until you give up because, dammit, it doesn't matter at all to the plot, you gender-obsessed troglodyte! Meta win, though it's a bit of a sledgehammer point, and Ursula Le Guin made the same point in The Dispossessed with much more subtlety.
The plot centers around how and why a spaceship became Super Snow Commando Breq, Mission to Kill. It involves lots of space politics. They felt a little soap opera after Floating Worlds (also far future, also space opera, also lady protagonist, also politics - but much fancier politics). But that doesn't matter, the main selling points are those two big ideas.
Leckie spends a lot of time also explaining Radchaai culture, which is basically a bunch of snobby folks who obsess about tea, conquer planets, and practice what felt to me like Hinduism. The British Raj? Amirite or amirite? They're also sometimes sneakily described as not-white (another diversity win!). But, honestly, I found the Radchaai stuff - like the politics - also a bit ho-hum and usual and shrug. Le Guin and Herbert have done far future space civilizations with a more deft hand.
I want to stress, though, that this book was fun, fun, fun. During the flashbacks, when we live in Breq's head the way she used to be, pre-commando times - as a many-bodied spaceship AI with the wit of Data/Jeeves and the kung fu killer-android vibe of Terminator - it could be amazing. The floating first person POV was fun, and sometimes felt marvelously cinematic. (IMAGINE THE CROSS CUTS.) I thought Breq's love of music, and using her bodies to make impromptu, dispersed choirs, was brilliant. (Again, imagine that on celluloid!) Indeed, I found myself highlighting sections - not because they were well-written or particularly deep, but just because they were SO DAMN APPEALING. I didn't think I could love a spaceship, but, apparently, I can. (And so can Breq's drug-addicted, socially-fallen sidekick, who is so clearly in love with her. Is there fanfic about that pair yet? There must be. THERE MUST BE.)
Recommended, cuz it's pretty awesome. But not highly recommended, cuz it's not highly awesome.
Hmm. I don't know what I think of this. On the one hand, I'm attracted by the world-building future history of it: I like the far future, weird, post-apocalyptic, Soviet-descended setting. I also like the whimsical art and design of it: bursting at the seams with colors and hijinx, it feels like a blend of Dr. Seuss and Moebius (yeah, yeah, I know, I'm comparing everything to Moebius these days.) Vast vistas of weird landscapes; the cities are especially convoluted. You know the jokey bits in Blade Runner? Like the little toy soldier that welcomes Harrison Ford to the creepy gene splicer's apartment? Yeah... capture that jokey-weird tone, purify it, and blow it up BIG.
So that's all good. But, I also found this VERY slow - plodding, even - to read. And this is because of... more Moebius! That is, I read this Moebius thing that talked about his innovative use of linguistic and visual puns and endless referencing. Well, Brandon Graham has stuffed this FULL of puns puns puns, endless puns. OMG. I can't handle it. But, like a puzzle, they called me, and so I had to read each and every tiny little scrawl on each and every item (and Graham literally labels almost every item in this story). There's the “Organ Trail”. There's “Multiple Wormheads”. There are others. I can't remember them.
At times, this extreme referencing/punnage, coupled with the Soviet inspirations and surrealism of the setting, made me think of good ol' fashioned Russian surrealism. Which I hate. Here, I didn't necessarily hate the surreal, fourth-wall-breaking puns; it didn't even pull me out of the story (which is what surrealism usually does for me). But it did slow everything way way down. It just took me FOREVER to get through every panel and its million hidden whiz-dings, and thus the actual plot just kind of limped along. Overall, I don't know if I'll be coming back for the next few issues.
The author's note raised this book from a 3 to a 4 for me. Ha!
But srs. This is a long, looong historical novel set in the darkest of dark ages: 7th century British Isles, during the period when they went from Anglo-Saxon (aka Viking/Nordic/pagan/Germanic) to Christian (aka when the Romans came back and won - again!). I know nothing - and I mean NADA - about this place in this period in history, so this was basically like reading science fiction. Which I am good at! And enjoy! But yes. I listened to this on an audiobook (so pure - so connected to this illiterate kingdom), and so all the names and places in this review are being phonetically transcribed. Maybe if I had seen it on the page, I would have understood a bit more who X and Y were and how they connect to the present-day England/Wales/Cornwall/Scotland/Ireland. I recognized East Anglia!
Anyway, we follow Hild, the second daughter of a crafty, widowed lady in the court of the ...Northumbrian (???)... king, Edwin. Hild's mom - Brgeswith? - is super crafty, and imbues in Hild (a) a messiah complex (“you are the light of the world! I had prophetic dreams about you while pregnant!”), and (b) a super realpolitik brain. Indeed, Hild grows up canny and observant AS HELL. She becomes a “seer” in Edwin's court - and we know from history/wikipedia that she'll eventually become a nun and Catholic saint. But the spirituality in this book - from the prophetic dreams to the Wodin (Odin?) worshipping to the Jesus stuff - is totally stripped of any otherwordliness. Hild doesn't believe any of it, neither does (it seems) anyone else, not really. It's all a giant political game of endless 3d chess.
So this book quenched my specific thirst for deep, deeeep cut historical fiction. Oh boy, did it. But I didn't love it, mostly because I found Hild - in her various incarnations of precocious toddler, kid, teenager - an unpleasant heroine. I just found her humorless, self-important, self-pitying and a martyr. She reminded me of Harry Potter in the later books, when all his dialogue is in ALL CAPS. I much preferred her ...yamache (?)/bosom buddy/female life partner (?), Begu (?), as well as her house slave, Uladus (?). But hey - that's just me. YMMV. And there are some lovely, epic scenes and moments peppered throughout.
Always enjoyable; this edition had maybe more hits than misses, compared to the series' average. Enjoyed the articles on the entrepreneurial Autism Inc (where autistic are matched into jobs for which they're uniquely suited), the immortal jellyfish clone (and the eccentric Japanese scientist who's dedicated his life to studying it), those kinky and hypersmart dolphins, and - of course - a good, wholesome undermining of Facebook and how it's soul-destroying. Indeed, the Facebook article informed my reading of E.M. Forster's The Machine Stops next!
Well, I liked it. But my audience did not. Oh well. We'll try again in a few months/years.
Edited: Tried again, with more involved narrating. I got goosebumps. Audience enjoyed.
Oh my God - the end-all, be-all Star Trek (or any tie-in) book for me. Remember that episode when McCoy jumps into the enormous Cheerio of Space and ends up causing Hitler to not-lose and not-die? YOU KNOW. The one where Kirk falls in love with Joan Collins and Spock fashions the Internet out of 1930s junk material (mostly wood). REMEMBER NOW?
Anyway, like all good Star Trek episodes, this one left some MAJOR issues hanging. Such as, umm, the fact that McCoy bifurcated the world line and thus there's a second McCoy running around some second universe out there. In this most wonderful of books, a book that captures Star Trek's multicultural, zany-physics-professor essence in all its glory, we follow BOTH MCCOYS.
McCoy #1 is basically a rehash of the TOS seasons and movies, with a little bit of filler from his life off-screen. Like, his dating life. You know.
McCoy #2, meanwhile, soon realizes that he's stuck in 1930s New York City FOR KEEPS. And he better get a move on and fix himself a life! So, being industrious, he jumps a train down South and becomes the good ol' country doctor he always was, living amid the small town trials and tribs of Peachville, Georgia (or whatever it's called). That is, until Nazi fighters start bombing America. WTF! You may ask. WTF indeed. WTF, thinks McCoy. Ah yes - he and the Cheerio messed up the world line. And remember when Spock told Kirk about the whole WWII/Hitler issue? Oh, shit, consequencesss. Now McCoy gets to live through it. And so do we!
Sooo good. This book hit all my buttons. It was engaging, intelligent, silly and - at times - absolutely addictive. It made a real effort at portraying non-white, non-male characters (well, apart from the good doctor), and its eventual moral was a progressive, almost post-Freudian, “yo, therapy is awesome and will make you better at relationships!” thing. Adorable and funny, engaging and sad. Highly recommended.
A surprisingly engaging read, considering how completely over-done vampires are. Bram may have set in motion an unfortunately tenacious legacy of sexy-vampire morality plays about the evils of temptation (and foreigners), but that's not his fault. And Dracula's actually pretty fresh (irony)! It also makes you admire? hate even more? the Twilight stuff, since I hadn't realized Victorian notions about gender roles and sex were part of the vampire package from day one!
Anyway, Count Draaaacula is a creepy, undead (or, as Stoker prefers it, UnDead) ForeigNer who has gone all camp in his decay, what with his “voluptuous red lips”, strange manicure, and nasty, big, pointy teeth. After terrorizing Diarist #1 (Jonathan Harker) in his ill-kept and empty castle, the action flies to London, where various English people are having various problems.
Told in a series of diary entries, letters, memos, telegrams, newspaper articles and... more diary entries by various characters, this tale is basically a sexist, classist, slightly porny tale about how evil (and yet tempting) sex is. And how women are frail, delicate flowers we must protect, lest they get infected by the sex disease. Read this before you read.
Anyway, this tale has awakened in me an UnDead interest for other vampirey things, and I'm suddenly revisiting trailers for movies that I very intentionally ignored long ago: Gary Oldman's pompadour from hell, or that one movie that I think is actually about the French Revolution, or even the fact that stodgy, silly old Van Helsing is worthy of Hollywood's imagination.
Heartbreaking, as the companion Boxers also was. Similarly straightforward art and dialogue coupled with some trippy magical-realist bits (here, a misfit village girl in China starts seeing apparitions of Joan of Arc) and really brutal, emotional moments.
Devastating. I knew nothing about the Boxers before reading this, and it's a sad story indeed. I enjoyed Gene Yang's American Born Chinese quite a bit, and found this to be much the same: it's arrow-straight dialogue with steady even pacing, steady even drawing, and the occasional psychedelic dip into Chinese folklore. Very curious to read the companion piece, Saints.
Brilliant. Ended too soon. This is why I read spec fic short stories - there's a special genre of them which is lively, well-written, and totally different from the sci-fi/fantasy books they're ostensibly related to.
Another thing: this story made me realize how many good spec fic shorts I've read and lost. Like Practicing My Sad Face (which I've since remembered right now), and that one about invading aliens that look like piles of sticks and talk by clacking the sticks around. Or the aliens that invade and take on “comforting” forms like toasters. I think I found those in Apex & Abyss Magazine, but can't find them anymore - a great tragedy!
Fun, short. Post-Einstein physics is so freaky. The tldr: going FORWARD time is easy (just travel as close to the speed of light as possible). Going backward is tricky, but also - thanks to the multiverse - basically possible.
Related reads:
- Seven brief lessons in physics, Carlo Rovelli
- Astrophysics for people in a hurry, Neil DeGrasse Tyson
- The accidental universe, Alan Lightman
- Why is there anything?, Matthew Rave
-
McCoy: The Provenance Of Shadows (Star Trek: Crucible, #1), David R. George III
Ahhh, it has been TOO LONG, TECH/DIGITAL CIVIL LIBERTIES BOOK SHELF. Oh, how I missed thee. How I have missed thine refreshing icy showers. How inspired I am to finally go full Linux!
So this book is nothing new, if you've listened to The Surveillance State, or read Cory Doctorow, or were paying attention during Ed Snowden's explosive whistleblowing in 2013. I would also recommend Jaron Lanier and Sherry Turkle and the spam book and Richard Stallman, specifically his encyclopedic reasons not to use Facebook (the nudge that finally pushed me over into deleting my account).
Anyway, tl;dr: we have every reason to be paranoid, as total, mass surveillance by corporations and most governments is the de facto status quo in a post-9/11 world. We have a giant, automated, big data apparatus designed to know every intimacy of every person all the damn time. Most people don't realize this, and it's sucking the oxygen out of our freedom.
Schneier believes - and I agree with him - that the lazy security nihilism many people express (including some people I know AHEM especially younger people, shame on you kids) - anyway, that lazy idea that “why should I worry about [digital overlord]'s invasive privacy settings? ultimately, I have nothing to hide?” is a sign that: people are MASSIVELY underestimating how invasive these digital “services” are, and people are thus MASSIVELY undervaluing their own privacy and their own worth. If it's free, you are the product! Also, why do you want a profit-seeking platform to monetize your social connections so they can better serve you ads?!
Schneier writes clearly and comprehensively; I think this book would actually be a great intro and gift for the digital civil liberties noob in your life. You can give it to them with a copy of Ubuntu (or Kali Linux, haha!) and a burner phone.
Some notes for myself:
- Digital serfdom. Cory Doctorow has been using this term more and more recently, and Schneier gives a great overview of how, indeed, our digital rights and digital society is, indeed, a feudal state. It's impossible to live in modern society while opting out of everything (Google, Facebook/social media, etc), and so what you end up doing is selecting the digital lord you want to be a vassal/serf for. In exchange for tilling their fields (by giving up your data, every single day), they get your ad revenues and you're plugged you into the world economy. Can you imagine getting a job without access to Google? I'm starting to think it's impossible to get a date without having a Facebook account, given the tight integration between it and all the dating apps.
- No opting out. As the Internet of Things grows, we'll have networked devices passively collecting data on everything: our wifi fridge and wifi toaster spying on us, basically. I mean, people at iRobot already have floor plans of your house thanks to your spy Roomba. And End User License Agreements (EULAs) are essentially meaningless legal ass-covering: they're not designed to be read/understood, they're not designed to truly inform and allow consent.
- The interesting, tight coupling between the micro/commercial trade-off of convenience in exchange for privacy (“ok, Google, I'll let you know where I am 24/7 and what my darkest fears are and 90% of my communication, if you just let me have free maps, email, and synced calendars”) and the macro/government trade-off between security and freedom. And, of course, how these are false dichotomies meant to entrap us.
- The delicious hypocrisy of tech moguls like Eric Schmidt (Google) and Zuckerberg, who pontificate from on high about living in a post-privacy, radical-transparency world, where good people have “nothing to hide”, while they themselves cover their webcams.
- The interesting notes about our data “exhaust” and how we're producing more data, every day in 2017, than we did in all of human history before ~2012 or something. And how Charles Stross calls this event horizon the “end of prehistory”; after this point, all of human experience and data will become retrievable (e.g. kids growing up publicly on social media, etc).
I have MANY MORE THOUGHTS and pontifications of my own on the mindless way we use social media and our networked computrons these days, but I will pause my sermon for now. Suffice to say: for the love of God, at least put a sticker over your webcam!
I cannot get enough of these sheep. Ha ha ha. Ho ho ho. Hee heee. Hooooo boy. These sheep. Man.