Thomas

Surprised I didn't like this more. Neo-noir with corporate espionage and sci-fi elements. It ended up feeling like a shallow collection of all these elements, without a lot of depth. Apparently, it was conceived as a low-budget sci-fi film, so I guess that makes sense. Ultimately, I barely followed the plot. I suppose you could call it a vibes book since it's about 150 pages.

This didn't really grab me in the way I thought it would. The first third is quite slow, though it picks up a lot on the second and third planets explored. I love stories about space travel and found the time dilation interesting, though executed in a way I didn't expect.

Chambers explores the ethics of space travel, particularly a sort of reverse-Alien consideration - what do we bring to planets, and how may that impact them? (Of course, thinking about the examples throughout our history of colonization and infectious disease...) I liked that. I have some qualms with the closing pages that I'm going to write out in the following spoilered section...

There is a passage in the final third that made me sit the book down and go through some memories though. I write about that over on my SubStack here: https://tbindc.substack.com/p/home-space-travel-and-updates.

Okay - so there is a big focus on not impacting the local environment throughout the book. For most of the story, this as one of the prime directives of the crew makes sense. They seem quite happy to ignore it to escape from Opera as they fry up a few hundred leaching rats on the side of their ship in blasting off the planet's surface (in fact, our main character directly discusses it). They do this to carry on their mission and to survive.Yet, when they are faced with the potential of Earth's (or, humanity's) destruction and wonder what to do, they make some really weird decisions. Ariadne suggests they go to another planet, out of reach but likely to sustain life. Yet, the crew says if they do this - they will have to live on the ship, in orbit. This really baffled me - that's a high fidelity to their value of not impacting the environment!I hesitate to say it's not "realistic" because I don't exactly look for total fidelity to realism in science fiction. I do, however, find it a bit arrogant, and inconsistent with what they said previously in the book, where Ariadne mentioned that if just their presence impacted an evolutionary line, it wasn't that stable to begin with.Sure, their mere presence and their living a life on a planet are not the same thing. That said, 4 people living in an isolated camp is not exactly the stuff of tectonic evolutionary changes. Or, maybe it is. I'll noodle on it a bit more.That aside, I can say pretty firmly that I wouldn't surrender my agency to a distant and potentially destroyed planet. Sorry, folks!

I found this fascinating to read. I have read very little African fiction, most of that being Afro-Futurism. Most recently on that list is [b:Binti: The Complete Trilogy 40382407 Binti The Complete Trilogy Nnedi Okorafor https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1535553295l/40382407.SY75.jpg 62682909], which (perhaps strangely) I found helpful as a sort of primer.It's not a happy book, but the story is interesting as many “slice-of-life” tales interwoven as Okonkwo experiences his life over a generation with his people. I found a lot to relate to in his overwhelming drive not to be like his father - perhaps this story is the other side of that knife. One wonders what Unoka's father was like, and what Nwoye's life continued to be. It's a compelling look at how the motivation of “I will not be like my father” can be shared by a father, son, and grandson, and all have different causes and manifestations.I loved Chinua's writing style, the language at once sparse and rich. There is a lot to be uncomfortable, mournful, and even angry within the writing. Okonkwo is terrible to his wives and children - but this is a view as to how Okonkwo's generation existed and how Okonkwo existed within himself. The overriding drive to demonstrate no fear - itself creates the biggest fear of his life and ultimately destroys it (as well as the lives of several others). It is so tangible and sad.

I finished this today and have been sitting on it for a bit. It's certainly good, though I prefer Deacon King Kong to this. McBride is excellent at weaving together many characters and many plots into one cohesive picture, and I enjoyed reading this. I particularly enjoyed hearing Mr. McBride talk about the story and his experiences when he came to Sixth & I to talk about it.

That said, there were a few parts of the story where the pacing felt just a little off for me. This is a 3 instead of a 4 because I kept butting my head against the way McBridge describes female characters. Many female characters are described by their breasts or rears (“perky” was the word that threw up a red light for me). At one point, I started to go back and re-reading, wondering if this was a trait of a particular character so that it could be interpreted as that character's thoughts and views. I don't think that's the case, though. I didn't notice this so much in Deacon King Kong, and I wonder if it just flew past me because I found that story so engaging.

McBride also does a fair bit of sermonizing - particularly in the closing chapter or two. It's his book, and it's pretty good (and I agree with a lot of it), but in the same way that I complain about contemporary authors firing off tweets in their books -I'd rather be shown, not told. I'd probably have put it down if the book started this way (and it wasn't McBride). For better or worse, it is a part of how McBride wraps up this story and delivers his analysis of our times.

When I finished reading through the final chapter's last pages, I wondered: what's the most important book ever written? I did a quick Google and found that all the suggested lists used the word “influential” instead, not what I wanted. I put quotes around the query and was not too pleased to find a bunch of christian websites using SEO to convince Google to serve an answer: the Bible.

I'm not going to suggest that The Making of the Atomic Bomb is the most important book ever written. I think it's up on the list, in the top quarter, at least. It is probably one of the most important books I've read. Many Americans know a vague sketch of the Manhattan Project; I expect very few could trace its history back to Leo Szilard reading Ernest Rutherford calling the idea of liberating atomic energy “moonshine.”

The book is a tome, and there's no way around it. Some readers will think the history too far-flung, too detailed, and too long. I scratched my head through passages of the book and had to read and reread a few of them. Yet, this is a literary work of high quality. The whole book is a gentle but consistently rising crescendo.

The final two chapters - Trinity and Tongues of Fire - are astounding. It may be the best non-fiction writing I have had the pleasure and discomfort of reading. In Trinity, Rhodes walks us on a nearly second-by-second countdown to the terrible culmination of centuries of scientific work. Tongues of Flame elevates numerous accounts of survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, deploying language to try and communicate the incommunicable.

There are so many roads one could go down following this. I found Colonel Stimson compelling. I've known the tale of his removal of Kyoto from the list of targets for a long, long time - but I always understood the reasoning as little more than his honeymooning there (a tale the movie OPPENHEIMER recounts). This book paints a much more nuanced view of Stimson as someone horrified by the bomb (and horrified by the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo) and as a statesman straddling generations and losing purchase in an evolving world.

It took me a long time to get through this book, but I'm glad I did. Astounding.

I hesitate to log this as it is certainly more of a reference book. I took a 3-day training for change management certification and received this book as part of that. I found the training really great - so much so that it overshadows the book significantly. The training covered everything in the book and more usefully, I think. The book feels a bit dated at times, though I admit I mainly skimmed it.

This is good - but at times repetitive. I recommend treating this like a reference text. Parts 1 and 2 (Principles and Methods) are required reading for the mechanics. You'll have fun reading them, too. Part 3 the reader can pick and choose from. I'd suggest Chapter 11 as a starter (Nonfiction as Literature), and then reading the section relevant to your project. Skim the rest, except Chapter 19 (Humor), which you should read.

Part 4 (Attitudes) blends the mechanics and Zinsser's experience. I found this part to be repetitive, but I would recommend Chapters 20, 21, and 23 (The Sound of Your Voice, Enjoyment, Fear, and Confidence, and A Writer's Decisions). If you're interested in his thoughts on working with editors, Chapter 25 (Write as Well as You Can) as well.

Published first in 1976 and reissued repeatedly (this edition in 2006), the text shows its age in some places. I would take a crack at updating the whole section on “pronouns” for today's times and understanding. I'm not as big a fan of the King James Bible as Zissner seems to be from his several references from it, though the references make sense.

Some of his core advice:
* Ask yourself - what am I trying to say? have I said it?
* Eliminate any element not doing useful work - put brackets around things not doing useful work in editing.
* SIMPLIFY
* Write for yourself
* Read your writing out loud
* Maintain unity in pronoun, tense, and mood (and time)
* Write sequentially - make sure you're telling the reader when and where you're at
* Subjects - think small
* Use precise, active verbs
* Most adverbs and adjectives aren't needed
* The quickest fix for a difficult sentence is often getting rid of it

* Rewriting is the essence of writing.
* Never let anything go out into the world that YOU don't understand.
* When writing memoir - think NARROW with detail

* Zinsser's 4 Tenets: Clarity, Simplicity, Brevity, & Humanity

I have a few notecards of notes, but these stand out.

This isn't a book I can leave much review for. It isn't a book that is read once and then put to the side. For one, I'm not competent to review a book of poetry. And, these are thoughts on morals and power. Much of the translation appears simple, but sometimes the metaphors are hard for me to understand, but sometimes they are so simple that it gives me pause.

Each time I read poetry, I realize I don't know how to read poetry. Especially poetry that doesn't rhyme. Oh well.

I enjoyed and appreciated Le Guin's notes throughout and at the end. My plan is to keep this on my desk and crack it open at random to think on one every once and a while.

At some point, I want to give individual ratings, because I really liked “Binti,” “Binti: Sacred Fire” and “Binti: Home” - I liked “Binti: The Night Masquerade” until the closing chapters when things started to feel a little strange. I'd probably call this a 3.5/5 instead of just 3, but it's closer to a 3 than a 4 for me, and I can't do half ratings.

The writing is pretty splendid. It's approachable, and the stories are interesting. I was interested in all of the devices, the cultural examinations, and Binti's exploration of her different identities and how they impacted one another. I did get a little annoyed at frequently seeing the phrase, “a Meduse-like people” - it made the world feel much less diverse than it portends (that world being Oomza Uni). I think using the word “astrolabe” for that device is a very cool detail.

Binti's reactions to some events and people in the second half of “The Night Masquerade” really puzzled me. Some of it just didn't make sense. I needed a lot more out of Dele and I have to say I agreed with Mwinyi's assessment of the rather performative mourning over one character.

I also thought the frequent incorporation of other species DNA to be a little challenging. How many things can one person be? That is explored very lightly in here, and would be something to explore further. It started to feel very trope-ish with the last one. Similarly, I felt some things got very rushed and convenient explanations (especially at Oomza Uni), but that's the price to be paid for short form.

I think I'd love another story or two about Binti's time at Oomza Uni! All in all, I enjoyed reading these.

I picked this book up at my LBS over my lunch break. It's been on my TBR for a while but each time there is another wave of controversy, I feel a need to go purchase it and support the author and learn about their experiences. I have a lot to think about after reading this, and I'm going to write out just a little bit of that here and I might develop some of these thoughts for a posting elsewhere. For context, I am a cisgender white male who identifies as bi, though for the past 10 or so years identified as “exclusively” gay.

The book is clearly a work of writing-as-processing/therapy, and Maia uses it to explore eir growth and experience navigating gender and sexuality. Something that I really appreciated about how E described eir “coming out journey” (pg 98). I really loved how this graphic communicated the evolution of our sense of self, our understanding of that sense, and the tremendous confusion that permeates our minds as we develop over our lifespans. I find the cloud backdrop, which E has labeled “clouds of background gender confusion” a nice addition too. I think a process of writing out one's journey like this would be therapeutic. I also really like how E has “ended” the graphic with an arrow – noting (by my interpretation, at least) that this isn't a process that ends.

In this vein, I like that the memoir deals so much with the uncertainty that lives with us over things that are not concrete (and so few things are). There are several places in the work where the use of labels really stands out – every little bit of the author is catalogued and categorized, from zodiac, (Hogwarts) house, Myers-Briggs, kinks, etc. There is certainly a sense of power in being able to identify something about yourself, ascribe a word to a conceptual thing that holds meaning for you, and be able to find community around “common” language. Words make things easier to understand, sometimes easier to communicate (although very much not always, as Maia's interaction with eir aunt demonstrates on page 198). Personally, I struggle a little bit with our want to make concrete things that are not concrete, especially when those things live in a context of uncertainty and ever-changingness. At what level of specificity do labels serve more to alienate than to communicate a shared experience? Where does a label stop being an empowering shorthand for communicating identities and start informing a person's behavior? In essence, does the desire to “fit” into a label create some of the exact stress that Maia navigates working eir coming out and life process? I'm not sure there's an answer, but I think it's worth thinking about personally as we explore how we assign concrete words to fluid concepts when we communicate things about ourselves to others.

I really liked reading this. There were some parts that gave me a pause (is the scale art on pg. 124 really the clearest metaphor – doesn't it sort of reinforce a gender binary?), but overall, I can see this book being a critical entryway for many different kinds of people, and that is often helpful. Yes, it is certainly a manifestation of writing as therapy, and there are some things to think about when reading something like this, but in my mind that comes with the territory.

Speaking of the territory – I found myself thinking a lot about the memoir as a format, reading this. In an extra at the back of the book, Maia writes, “Who wants to read a memoir by someone not yet 30?” I heard a similar thought when I told someone I was going to read this. I don't think a memoir has anything to do with age, I think it has to do with the navigation of a complex thing or idea and charting the process by which the person navigated it – warts and all. Warts most importantly. These are a way for us to relate to one another, see another person's process, and understand the experiences described and build empathy. For the memoirist, the act of writing is intensely therapeutic, and trying to balance authenticity, clarity, sensitivity, and a sense of responsibility for those who may read the work is a significant task. I imagine that those weights were especially significant given how deeply personal this work was, and I think we should be grateful to Maia for sharing, even if there are some areas of imperfection. No one is perfect, and a memoir that reflects perfection is not likely to be worth the paper it is printed on.

Life is deeply uncertain, and navigating uncertainty means we have to be willing to take risks and make mistakes and redress them where and when we can. If we could become more comfortable with uncertainty and with accepting concepts as fluid, I think all of us would be safer, happier, and more able to seek help when we need it.

Quite moved by how much I liked this book. The best I can do is pick up a few lines from it and write some wounded memories around them.

“It is difficult–it is very difficult, to befriend where you wish to consume, to find those who, when they ask Do I have you still, when they end a letter with Yours, mean it in any substantive way.”

As the all-time King of reading too much into words and writing too much into them too deeply, I found this so moving to read. It speaks to the yearning that starts to grow in you when you see their face and think of their voice, and you hang on to everything they say, hoping for some sign, but not trusting yourself enough not to invent it (“I am so good at missing things. At making myself not see.”). How to keep love on a shallow level without drowning yourself to go deeper?

“Letters are structures, not events. Yours give me a place to live inside.”

A place to live inside. Someone once told me they'd written me a letter about what I meant to them as a friend and a person. Months later we were at a crossroads and missed each other, and they said they would mail it. Some months later, on my last gray morning in Chicago, the very last thing I did when all my possessions were packed into an SUV, and my cat sat in its front seat, I checked my mailbox. It was heartbreaking never to receive it, and to wonder about meaning so little on that long drive across the country. Unmoored.


“I hope you can forgive this. To be soft, for me, is so often pretense, and pretense does not come easily while writing to you.”

I loved the anxiety manifesting through the characters being nervous about their writing - and talking about their nervousness in their writing. How many hours have we all spent staring at half-written e-mails, texts? How many to regret what's written and left unwritten?

“But when I think of you, I want to be alone together.”

Just beautiful.

PS: I have some G Lalo paper that the authors cite in the Acknowledgements and can attest that it's lovely to write on. Personally, I prefer Original Crown Mill's Pure Cotton paper, and if you ever get a letter from me, that's probably what it's written on <3.

I've owned this book for several years, but other than a really light skim some time ago, haven't picked it up. I'm coming into a change management role right now and thought I should pick it up. Once again, this is a technical reference book (it's literally called “A Practitioners' Handbook” - so I don't think it is really designed for someone to sit down and read it work for word like a piece of literature. That's not what I did - I did a version of academic skimming with a few sections that seemed particularly relevant getting a deep read. I think the book wants to be read this way given it is highly sectioned and labeled, with key text highlighted. I really liked this.

This is certainly an element of change management from a very particular viewpoint: designers, primarily in the technology domain. That said, I think there is a lot here that can be applied analogously elsewhere. Many of the facilitation, ideation, and planning tools, in particular, strike me as useful. I really liked the tools around Personas and Journey Maps. I saw these in practice for the first time this week unrelatedly and it was great to see a different view of them.

A lot of this book comes across as... Not exactly “dumbing down” academic subjects, but certainly making them easier to digest. If you haven't had an academic research course, and you're not engaging in academic research, the research component of this book is probably very useful. If you have, it might just be a helpful refresher.

I made a lot of marks and bookmarks to come back to this as a technical reference and I do plan to keep it around for access to the tools and cases to see what I can use from it analogously in organizational and programmatic change management.

I read this book for work. It's a pretty interesting text, though somewhat dated. Much of the theory and advice that Tufte gives here survives the more than 20 years since this edition's publication. But, not all of it.

For one, Tufte has rather lost the battle on data graphics being best serviced by artists. I would not argue that artists would be better suited to creating stunning graphics than someone doping around in Word and Excel, but I think the budgets of most of the folks producing data graphics would. The proliferation of easy-access office suites, and even slightly more advanced (but just as easy to access) chart builders, has made the standard format of many of these graphs concrete in our society.

A third edition of this book - or a technical accompaniment - would best focus on how to implement some of these changes within software that is accessible to users. Tufte's description of range frames is interesting - the use of negative space in bar charts to intuit the grid is interesting. There are a variety of things that I would like to take from this - but practically, I do not know how to accomplish them within the grammar of our data graphics life today.

There are a few parts of the book that have either aged poorly or were sour on writing. For one, I think much of Tufte's advice is not very accessible to folks with eyesight concerns, and also lives somewhat divorced from how data graphics are translated and proliferated over time. On pages 124 and 125, Tufte explores adaptation of the range bar and bar plot to consistency with his design principles. The results are illegible. The range plot works alright.

The box plot, however, is adapted by creating variance in line-weights, and then Tufte delights in his second adaptation - offsetting the box one pica above baseline. These are the sorts of design changes that look lovely in a picture book, but are not good for practical data use. For one, one pica (or one pixel on a screen), is not a sufficient offset - it could easily look like an error in printing (especially after numerous copies). This ultimately makes the chart communicate less and less fluently. I think if Tufte had combined the line-weight and offset, this would have accomplished his goal more fluently.

A very interesting reference text, but something that (for a reader today) is best taken as theory rather than practical advice. Unless the user is handcrafting charts by pencil and plane or digitally in photoshop or some such, some of the more innovative practices are perhaps lost to time.

I'm attaching some of my notes as a comment to this review for future reference.

Another read for work, though I hesitate to log this because in truth I skimmed it aside from a few particularly relevant chapters (notably, the Sparkline sections and the chapter where Tufte lights up powerpoint). This is certainly a very pretty book to look at, with a great variety of charts, pictures, and views on how various types of evidence come together (or don't). That said, the age of the text shows.

Tufte repeats a theme throughout the book - words, numbers, charts, pictures, these are all pieces of evidence, and should live within the same universe. Sparklines are a terribly interesting example of this. They have certainly been standard in the financial world as long as I can recall, but when I think of how to apply them to things like homeless services and other domains, I get a little finicky. Tufte notes that these typography-sized charts are able to stand on their own, unadorned by labels and grids and such, because the text around them provides the context. That is very interesting, but I wonder. The most powerful example of these is the glucose chart - but it is adorned with a variety of labels (or at least, the colored points - which I like).

I found myself very curious to apply these to datasets I work with - I just wrote a 6 page memo with a variety of graphs and charts that I grated my teeth at when e-mailing them out. How could I have improved these with some of Tufte's theory? How could Sparklines have been used? If I want to do this, though, I have to have some capacity to MAKE them, and that is a question even Tufte doesn't know how to answer. On page 61 he notes that it is cumbersome (in 2006) to produce these, people need a page layout software (ie Word, though I think he's probably really talking about InDesign), a graphic design program (which again, I think could be collapsed into InDesign), and a statistical analysis software capable of generating a chart that could be resized in the other softwares. This is a bit of a mess. It is no easier, so far as I know, in 2023. The most time consuming part of my 6 page memo (other than the actual data analysis) was figuring out how to make the charts align properly in MS Word. We still haven't figured this out, and Tufte doesn't make any meaningful suggestions. The one suggestion he seems to make is going back to the MS-DOS days, where everything was in one program. I think that ship has probably sailed. I am also skeptical of all these functionalities living in one software - I'm concerned it would be a software that does many things poorly instead of one thing relatively well.

I did particularly enjoy Tufte's hatred of powerpoint. Though, in the nearly 20 years since this book's publication, I wonder if we're starting to slowly move past it. I think if I e-mailed out a 2-page technical memo ahead of a meeting it might cause a row of seizures (though I would certainly prefer it). This certainly comes from the era of powerpoints as content rather than powerpoints as an aid to content. I think many of us (but not all) have gotten better about this. A recurring problem that I've had when trying to break past powerpoint is how to show large tables of data on a screen - I need something that I can intuitively zoom in and out of, but that is a tall order when you can break a table across multiple powerpoint slides for emphasis.

An interesting text - if you walk into someone's house and this is their coffee table book, ask to see the incredible fold out of Minard's map of the retreat of the French army from Russia. Tufte is clearly in love with this graphic, and for good reason.

What a good book! Thank you to my friend Hannah for lending it to me!A lot to think about with this. The Acknowledgements suggest that [a:Ray Nayler 6447152 Ray Nayler https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1642102511p2/6447152.jpg]'s main theme here was the difficulty we would experience in encountering and then communicating meaningfully with another intelligent species. Much of this in the book is very interesting, and I found myself wanting to google things to see how true they were.What really stood out to me, though, was the exploration of loneliness and connection among ourselves as people and as a people. Most of the characters in this book are lonely - some crushingly so. I can relate very deeply to the experience of heartbreak and then burying oneself in work and study to try and make that fill the hole - though (as is a little less explored in this book), that is never successful for long. I expect this will be what I explore in my substack post...The description of the point fives was fascinating to read as a social worker. I can't imagine ever prescribing something like this - I'd break out my copy of [b:The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy 21029 The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy Irvin D. Yalom https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388176092l/21029.SY75.jpg 22216] and write out a referral for a good group so folks can experience universality. The nature of the point fives in here really comes across as something that would be even more isolative for the person - it isn't teaching the patient how to interact with others, it is providing an artificial means of buffeting the world from them.Then, though, I started thinking about Evrim vs Kamran. What are the meaningful differences, here? Of course Evrim's origin is different, but they are an artificial construct. The main difference is physicality. If you put Kamran in a person-shaped oculus and gave them movement... Would I think it is as far out as I do? Something for me to think about.

Going to cook on this a little before I write a review. It might end up getting up to 5 stars. I'll update when a review is ready!

What a lovely story! If I ever find someone I can be in a kitchen with without one of us spontaneously combusting, I'll know I've found the one.

I found Yutaka's semi-phobia of eating with others kind of relatable. I was born with a significant birth defect that took many surgeries to repair (the most recent only a year ago, and I'm nearly 30...). I've never loved eating around other people. At the same time, I've always recognized cooking for someone as a show of great and deep love. I remember years ago waking up at 4 am to make homemade cornbread for my coworkers, and everyone loved it, but I definitely didn't eat any in the clinic!

I also relate to the feeling of missing my great-grandparent's cooking and the serious crisis that happens when you realize you can no longer remember the taste. Even with the same recipe, it just isn't the same. I always spent Christmas with them, and since their passing a long time ago, Christmas has always had a heavy tinge over it, so a lot hit home in this story.

I am not the best cook in the world, but of the few things I can cook well, I hope someday I can cook them for someone with the love akin to that in this story.

Found this to be a pretty middling sci-fi pulp that didn't really meet my expectations. The expectations were tainted, I admit, by the game Star Fox and my desire to read about space ships fighting each other - which there is virtually if not literally none of in this.The start of the book had some genuinely interesting world building with a federation, aliens, political intrigue, the promise of privateering, etc. The middle of the book diverts into a long planet-based survival that felt a tad boring. The final part promised some genuine starship combat, but we never see any. We rejoin the crew months later after several successful raids, and we depart the crew as soon as they are about the face their greatest challenge in the deep of space.After, we rejoin our protagonist (who has some rather revolting approaches to women in this book, more on that later) acting out his own little George Washington fantasy on New Europe. It was fine.Re: Heim and women. At the start of the book, Heim is mourning his deceased wife, who he seems to have cheated on with a character named Jos. Later, we meet Jos, and they entertain the idea of renewing their affair - Jos even graciously says outright she wouldn't mind if he fooled around with other women (how kind). Along the story, we find that Heim's main (?) purpose in his privateering is to save/see an old flame again. When he gets to the planet, her weight is commented upon alongside that she's married. Then they meet and he is INSTANTLY more interested in the woman's daughter than he is his old love herself. To make it even better, Heim points out to the daughter that she is his daughter's age, and gets all pissy when another character (more age-appropriate, maybe ? I don't think we know) swoops in and starts flirting. Yuck.I'd have left out the middle, left out the daughter and old love story, kept Jos but left out the misogeny, and brought in more space ships and more space fighting.The next book club book is 700 pages long so I, even now, am denied reading the book I want to ([b:Warbreaker 1268479 Warbreaker (Warbreaker, #1) Brandon Sanderson https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1240256182l/1268479.SY75.jpg 1257385]) because I don't think I can squeeze it in. So, I am fleeing to one of my all-time favorites [b:The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 11 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1) Douglas Adams https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1531891848l/11.SY75.jpg 3078186] to cleanse my palette of this before starting in on [b:Perdido Street Station 68494 Perdido Street Station (New Crobuzon, #1) China Miéville https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1680461055l/68494.SY75.jpg 3221410].

I enjoyed reading this! I haven't read much “weird fiction” before (the only one to mind is [b:The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories 129798 The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories (Dover Mystery, Detective, & Other Fiction) Robert W. Chambers https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1416873291l/129798.SY75.jpg 954927], which I found rather boring); I appreciated this book's take on “weird” fiction and the modernization of it.The concept of cities as people / living entities resonates. I am originally from a very small town and moved to Chicago when young, and cities certainly have an individualized energy to them that I have always enjoyed. While I'm not familiar with Staten Island, Jemisin's description of a more rural-like, “simple” life and beliefs rings true. The power of fear in these communities, particularly, rings true.I like that Jemisin doesn't bog us down with long, technical explanations of how things work. Even Bronca, our link to this world's knowledge, doesn't bother us with that. We're expected to accept magic at face value because it's magic. I do have some quibbles with powers being inconsistently used, but I think for the most part this can be excused as our heroes don't really know how to use their powers.The elevation of different cultures and ways of thinking elevated the story and provided some A-plus social commentary, without devolving into tweets. I think that's been my #1 criticism of recent speculative fiction I've read - the commentary comes tweet-sized and shaped. Not so for Jemisin's work, where the thoughts are more nuanced, more deeply integrated into the story and characters, and shine the truer for it.I'll talk about more specifics in the spoiler section below - but two things stick out to me in the book that I'm not super satisfied with. I think things come very easily to our characters, all the way through. At almost no point do I see consequences for anyone in the story - what are the stakes? The problem with the main stake in the story being the end of the world is that it is intangible. There are two plot points that go against this, but one of them is rather lost, and the other quite short-lived.Secondly, the pacing of the final third or quarter of the book felt a little rushed. The ending in particular, came all at once and resolved in a really unexpected and bizarre (even for weird fiction) way, that I don't think works very well. I do wonder if the story was more complete at some point before the decision was made to write a sequel. Perhaps the sequel addresses some of my concerns.SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE BOOK FOLLOW:I have a lot of mixed feelings about Staten Island's character. We get a lot of good backstory for SI, but the story paints them as irredeemable. I was really surprised that the redemption of SI's character was not the major plot point of the final parts of the book - this would seem natural to me. Instead, Jemisin seems to say that the Island has dissolved itself of the City and is a lost cause. Why would we connect a character who we know lives in an abusive household, who does long for more, who is nearly the victim of attempted rape in this story - does it track that our story would abandon this person? Is the message here that the programming this person has gone through is impossible to reverse? So much of Staten Island's fear, insecurity, and false facades ring true to rural, more conservative-leaning life. And yet, maybe because I know so many people like this, I don't believe that SI is a lost cause. Her father? Yes. Her? No. To add to the above, it seems really strange and totally out of nowhere that Jersey City suddenly appears as a new borough at the end of the story. I guess the commentary here is that what something says on a map doesn't matter, because a City is a concept more similar to a nation - a collection of thought and culture - rather than lines on a map (like a State). Fair enough, but it seemed to me more like the writer making a rapid adjustment to bring the book to a rapid close than something well thought out.

I have so many thoughts on this book, so many notes. There's a pretty good chance I come back and update this or write something of some length elsewhere about this.This is the second Bernal I've read. I loved the first ([b:His Name was Death 56760368 His Name was Death Rafael Bernal https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1616806546l/56760368.SY75.jpg 1783878]), but hated the main character. I thought that was a bit of the point. I started questioning that relatively soon into this book because the main character here is not likable - and I went back and forth on if you're supposed to like this character or not. In the end, I don't think so. However, I think, ultimately, Bernal is interested in pointing out that there simply are not a lot of likable people. People are complex and hypocritical, and these people are being written into trope-like roles by an author writing for a late 60s audience.The book is awash with racism, sexism, homophobia (wow, the homophobia). Toxic masculinity, of course, but also a sort of glimpse at what an alternative would be (though fleeting, in the closing pages). The main character's thoughts, the obvious connections they have to senses of inferiority, shame, and fear are deeply interesting.At some point, I'm going to go through my notes and think about this a little more, and perhaps I'll update it.

I'd probably put this at 3.5. Everything seemed to come together in the closing chapters, and those were my favorite. This is a pretty strange book, with interesting explorations of conscious and subconscious, and what those might look like. I found the writing to be a little odd at points - I'm not sure if that's an element of translation, or if the writing is just... a little odd.

Some favorite lines:

“First, about the mind. You tell me there is no fighting or hatred or desire in the Town. That is a beautiful dream, and I do want your happiness. But the absence of fighting or hatred or desire also means the opposites do not exist either. No joy, no communion, no love. Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope.” (p. 334)

“Even if I had my life to live over again, I couldn't imagine not doing things the same. After all, everything–this life I was losing–was me. And I couldn't be any other self but my self. Could I?” (p. 341)

“Had I done the right thing by not telling her? Maybe not. Who on earth wanted the right thing anyway? Yet what meaning could there be if nothing was right? If nothing was fair?” (p. 392)

Essentially a late 19th century creepypasta with Lovecraftian tones (aren't all of them? and in this case, I think, predating Lovecraft's work). Creepy, but not really scary. It's the sort of book that is creepy because you wonder if there's any truth to it, the sort of book that makes you want to open up wikipedia and go down a rabbit hole. I think the creepy factor of those books was significantly more back before there were things like the Lovecraft wiki.

Perhaps the most violent book I've ever read, certainly one of the most disturbing. It is dark, depraved, disgusting, and funny enough to feel bad about. Passages make you want to put the book down and stare, others make you laugh ruefully - others are just outright funny. I walked away from this book, not really knowing what to make out of it.

Bateman is a vapid nitwit, knowing essentially nothing except for fashion, audio/visual equipment, and how to misuse power tools. He clearly does not know himself or those around him. There is a recurring bit throughout the book that no one recognizes anyone else, and this relates to one of the core themes of the book: it simply doesn't matter. Vanity, surface, status - the image of status - that's all Bateman understands, and all anyone in the book is interested in (except for Jean, and a few characters that Bateman totally dismisses).

I feel compelled to share: I am wearing a “Slaughterhouse Five” shirt from the Writer's Museum in Chicago, white khaki pants from Old Navy, the socks and briefs are from Bombas, the watch is from Apple, the glasses Warby Parker (prescription, to Bateman's chagrin). The last haircut was... perhaps five months ago. My shoes are perhaps four years old and from Shoe Carnival.

Pretty good! Typical whodunit set in the Prohibition era. Lots of jazz, glasses tinking, and flatter's dancing in speakeasies. The actual mystery is sufficient; I didn't think it was mind-blowing, but it keeps the reader engaged. I enjoyed the portions of the book showing textile working conditions and the living conditions of Vivian and her sister, as well as the exploration of race and gender in this time period (though that exploration is a little sparse).

I'd recommend the book to fans of the genre.

For such a short book, I have a lot of thoughts! I really enjoyed this. There are definitely some parts that show the time in which it was written, but putting those aside, I thought the play with god concepts really fun.

I'm not sure what my favorite line of the book is, but at first glance, it might be: “I know the gods love blood, and that is why I have offered it to you...“

The other thing that stands out: emotionally-stunted, angry, men in the 40s were a lot like emotionally-stunted, angry, men in the 2020s. Crazy, huh?