Playground

My brother gifted me this back in November, but I'm glad I waited til break to read it. Felt bizarre how much the details resonated generally or even specifically with my life:

- UIUC, and specifically my current town Urbana

- Polynesia (although I've mainly been studying Polynesian languages, not the actual land)

- French, which I started learning last January

- AI (my advisor and I have had several discussions on this)

- Friendship among two avid readers of different cultural backgrounds, one of whom introduces the other to Go (subtle nod to my buddy Tanfu who taught me the game last January)

- Taoism, about which I just started reading this week (also at Tanfu's recommendation)

- Lady Wisdom. Literally YESTERDAY at church the pastor discussed Proverbs 8, of which verses 22-31 Powers inserts into the funeral scene before closing the book

An ambitious novel that occasionally soars only to plummet like an anvil pages later thanks to cringey characterizations and clunky dialogue that had me rolling my eyes—but perhaps that's all part of the larger point being made given the late-stage twist Powers deploys, which turns the entire book on it's head and makes the story into something much darker, sad, and quite depressing. I'm left with mixed feelings but my thoughts are racing so that's a sign this book left an impression and earns the appeal of being truly 'thought-provoking.

Powers was able to weave together multiple rich and fascinating storylines into one, while also raising many questions about our world and the technology at our fingertips. A beautiful, emotional, and captivating work.

Giving myself permission to put this one down for a while. I'm about half way through, and listening has been powerful. The book is brilliant – smart, moving, descriptive, funny, important. But there is a heaviness to Richard Powers because his messages are serious and urgent, and it's just too much for my sensitive self right now, in light of recent events. I will return to this sometime, hopefully soon.

This is my third Richard Powers novel. All three I've read primarily because of their placement on the Booker Prize longlist. While I greatly respected the two I read before, I was unable to really connect while I was reading them, and forgot them very shortly after. I had much better success with Playground, but in all honesty, this might have more to do with me as a reader than with the book itself.

For years now, I've continued reading when I just didn't feel like it. I felt like something was wrong with me if I wasn't reading, and so I pushed through dozens of books, my eyes scanning the pages, but not really connecting. Recently, after telling myself for much of that time I was going to be more deliberate with my reading, I actually followed through, and really started to slow down and absorb the books. The irony is that by slowing down, I seem to be reading more. So, while I can say, Playground is the best of Powers' novels I have read, I honestly cannot say that it's really any better or worse, just that I was personally more engaged and that it's stuck with me longer than the others had. Maybe that's what reading is for all of us, the right books at the right time, and ratings are asinine. But I continue to digress.

Powers tackles quite a bit in Playground. Honestly, the set-up for the actual story really takes over half of the book, but most of that feels interesting and forward moving. There are a number of characters, cultures, technologies, and ideas that need to be unpacked and explored through backstory. Powers manages to pull all of these seemingly unrelated threads into a finale that works, though is perhaps overwrought. As expected, the depictions of nature are gorgeously rendered and left me running to the Internet to learn more about some of the wildlife and places Powers named.

Perhaps the biggest critique I imagine Playground will face is in Powers' diverse cast. At times, the author feels out of touch with the characters he inhabits. Even his depictions of college students felt off, cramming randomly strewn profanity into their mouths at odd times. This section is also where the story meanders a bit too long, getting lost in a part of the backstory that could've easily been trimmed significantly. Lastly, the ending surprised me, and that's a feat as I generally have a pretty fair guess of where a story is going, but I don't know that this conclusion really worked for me. It will definitely leave some readers fuming, I promise.

Given Powers' track record–every novel he's written since Americans were admitted into the Booker Prize has been listed–I suspect I'll be reading another of his books in three to four years. That is assuming the world will then be in a state where such things will matter.