essentialsaltes | Entries tagged with book

I've been remiss. In no particular order:

Equal Rites, by Terry Pratchett. Hey, it's a Discworld novel. It does what it says on the cover. I was never big into Discworld in its heyday, and I'm still not. The best parts, as is often the case, are little humanist asides. Chosen by work book club

The Poisoner's Handbook, by Deborah Blum. Really a fascinating nonfiction look at the development of forensic science in the 1920s and 1930s in the New York coroner's office, bringing a professional scientific eye to something that had been slapdash at best previously. Also an interesting look at various poisons. Each chapter is devoted to a particular poison and there's a wealth of historical detail on famous criminal cases and horrific industrial accidents and mishaps. Very good.

19th century interlude...

Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of the dog), by Jerome K Jerome: Three upperclass twits go on a boating holiday by mistake. Hilarity ensues. There are some laugh out loud moments, and it's generally amusing in a Dave Barry-esque breezy way. Two n-words appear as landmines in the middle. Anyway a sample:

[Travelling with cheese in a close railway carriage] And then they both began sniffing, and, at the third sniff, they caught it right on the chest, and rose up without another word and went out. And then a stout lady got up, and said it was disgraceful that a respectable married woman should be harried about in this way, and gathered up a bag and eight parcels and went. The remaining four passengers sat on for a while, until a solemn-looking man in the corner, who, from his dress and general appearance, seemed to belong to the undertaker class, said it put him in mind of dead baby; and the other three passengers tried to get out of the door at the same time, and hurt themselves.

...

Now, I’m not like that. I can’t sit still and see another man slaving and working. I want to get up and superintend, and walk round with my hands in my pockets, and tell him what to do. It is my energetic nature. I can’t help it.

...

Rather an amusing thing happened while dressing that morning. I was very cold when I got back into the boat, and, in my hurry to get my shirt on, I accidentally jerked it into the water. It made me awfully wild, especially as George burst out laughing. I could not see anything to laugh at, and I told George so, and he only laughed the more. I never saw a man laugh so much. I quite lost my temper with him at last, and I pointed out to him what a drivelling maniac of an imbecile idiot he was; but he only roared the louder. And then, just as I was landing the shirt, I noticed that it was not my shirt at all, but George’s, which I had mistaken for mine; whereupon the humour of the thing struck me for the first time, and I began to laugh. And the more I looked from George’s wet shirt to George, roaring with laughter, the more I was amused, and I laughed so much that I had to let the shirt fall back into the water again.

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Ramona, by Helen Hunt Jackson: The book that brough so many Midwesterners to California in the late 19th century, a romance in Southern California as Mexico gives way to the United States. Race prejudice from white Americans to Mexicans to natives. Miscegenation. Hidden treasures. Missed connections. Horse thieves and gunplay. Plenty of tragedy. I'm not sure it really presents a pleasant picture that should attract people, but there are a few lyrical passages of description of mustard fields and hills and whatnot that really are part of the SoCal landscape and may have felt exotic in Dubuque cornfields.

Back to a more modern century

Lessons in Chemistry, by Bonnie Garmus: Female scientist in the 1950s has really bad experiences at UCLA, pretty bad experience at a Lawrence Livermore-esque lab, finds and loses love, has a second act as a TV cooking/chemistry host, and then a rushed final act where vengeances and come-uppances come up. Enjoyable, but a few cheats and gimmicks and dropped plot threads. On the last point, I'm thinking particularly of the host stating she's an atheist on her live TV show in 1960. Although there's a bit of a flap, the book trundles on and takes the express train to the finale without fully dealing with that.

That Librarian, by Amanda Jones. A Louisiana school librarian thrust into prominence when she stands up for a public library (not school library) being attacked by censors. She is vilified by some of the townsfolk, and ultimately sues a couple of the worst for defamation. She's be the first to tel you she's no saint or superhuman figure, and she's right about that. What I think is both charming and yet detracts from her reliability as the teller of her own tale is how much she indulges in some score-setlling with some of the folk in her own small town. It's petty and yet dish-y. There's some "I won't name any names, but everyone in my town will know exactly who this is." No, really:

Another huge disappointment to me was a local elected official whom I had thought was a friend. I will call her Katie, although people in my community will know the person I am talking about. I’m not bringing her up to settle a score—at least, I hope I’m not. I’m including her so that you know the whole story.

...[different person below]

I almost came unglued and wanted to ask her who was she to quiz me about religion, morals, and agendas when she had a very public affair while she was married, to a police officer who was also married, and both of their marriages ended in divorce because of it. I kept thinking that she had a ton of gall.

But on the good side, the book does do a good job of telling people how librarians deal (within the system) with challenges to books, and why that's probably an adequate and professional way to handle things, and the public can have its say. (And there's no need for grandstanding and running off to lawyers and politicians to start passing laws.)

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Space Chantey by RA Laffery: A tall-tale science fiction-y retelling of the Odyssey. Bonkers and genius in parts, but a little too bonkers. If Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius is NOT BONKERS ENOUGH for you, this might be perfect.

A Delicate Truth, by John Le Carre

Maybe not a great book, but a very good one, and an interesting wrinkle. Certain spylike shenanigans occur, and then rather than Le Carre's usual cast of spylike people, the attention focuses on civil servants who start pulling threads on something that just doesn't look right. And in fact isn't right. But will governments allow their amoral fiascoes to be exposed? Haha, of course not, silly.

Never, by Ken Follett

Chosen by the company book club. It's a great airplane read, with some more spylike people doing spylike things, and then geopolitical tensions increase until the Uberplot takes over, threatening the world. But will governments come to their senses rather than following tit for tat escalation until everything gets out of control? Haha, of course not, silly.

Playing with Reality: HOW GAMES HAVE SHAPED OUR WORLD By Kelly Clancy

Not quite what I expected, but fascinating nonetheless. A historical look at how games have done more than amuse, but change how we look at war, economy, intelligence, etc. Once upon a time, warlords played chess to hone their strategy. Then, in a bid to make it more pertinent as a simulation of battle, Kriegsspiel was developed, and that became a craze in the Prussian military (and beyond). I presume other wargames also developed out of this, but some people are going back to the original, including the Southern California Kriegsspiel Society, which meets at Strategicon according to Wikipedia. Game theory and how it is and isn't like the economic and political applications made of it in 'real life'. The development of game-playing software and its development from checkers to chess to Go to playing Atari 2600 games. DeepMind, which recently formed part of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for its protein folding solutions, also trained an AI to play Atari games.

Winter of the Gods, by Jordanna Max Brodsky

I gave it a chance, but I just couldn't get past the first few chapters. The Greek gods are alive and well in Manhattan. Just something about the overall tone and characterization -- not for me. Picked up for a pittance at a library sale -- I didn't realize then that it's a book 2 of a series, but that really wasn't the problem.

Behold the Ape by James Morrow

A bonkers short novel of early Hollywood monster movies and a brain-swapped Charles Darwin, placed in the body of a gorilla. What if a vamp found her muse in gorilla-Darwin and found a way to circumvent the benighted education laws of the Scopes Trial days by putting more accurate versions of natural selection into horror movies? Strange and silly and enjoyable, but its heart is obviously in the right place since the creationists are the villains.

Is Math Real? by Eugenia Cheng

I initially hoped (given the title) that this was about whether math is fictional. After reading a review, it's clear it wasn't, but she actually does touch on it a bit in the epilogue, and I think she would be amenable to the idea. But what is it actually? I think one of the goals of the book is to introduce math (like real math-y math) to people who may be math-phobes or 'not good at math'. The book does a great job explaining lots of things with copious analogies, some very clever, and some more strained. I think for people who are curious about math, but maybe imagine that professional mathematicians multiply REALLY BIG NUMBERS together or something like that, this would be a great introduction to what math is really about. The only drawback to the book is that there are some glaringly intrusive passages in the book that I can't help but call 'Woke'. I mean, woke is not a term I self-apply, but I'm about as liberal as they come, and these still stand out like a sore thumb. The author could have achieved a similar effect if there was a reminder to the reader every 25 pages to stare at a picture of Greta Thunberg's scowling face for 15 seconds.

Given the cruise, I'm a bit behind (and getting behinder)

After Dark, Haruki Murakami

Naturally, there's some stylish choices, but ultimately this tale of the wee hours fails on a couple points, mainly due to authorial cheating. We're given a tense set-up, and the resolution is just a deflating rabbit out of a hat rather than a release of tension. Similarly, the whole novel just ends. I can't even add an adverb to that. It stops.

Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Gothic romance/horror is full of tropes and this (naturally) hits them. But I appreciated the phantasmagorical sense of our protagonist getting unsettled by the mansion and getting to doubt her senses. If our heroine were just slightly less competent, she'd share the fate of her cousin she's come to rescue.

The Future was Now, Chris Nashawaty

A non-fiction look at the origin stories and making of 8 classic science fiction(*) films that blasted into theaters in a short summer span in 1982. Nicely follows the threads of writers, directors, producers as they move from recent projects into the featured ones. Probably only of great interest to people (like me) who were sentient and movie-going in 1982 -- of the 8 films, I own 5 on disc. For the record, the 8 films are Blade Runner, Tron, ET, Poltergeist, Wrath of Khan, The Thing, Mad Max, and Conan [*definitely not!]. I fear Nashawaty's right about the ultimate effect of summer blockbusters on the industry:

By the dawn of the ’90s (continuing right up till the time this book is being written), what should have been a new golden age of sci-fi and fantasy cinema became a pop-culture beast that would devour itself to death and infantilize its audience in the process. Four-plus decades ago, we were entertained, enthralled, and enlightened.

Now we get a firehose of MCU and unnecessary Ghostbusters-flavored or IntellectualProperty-flavored content.

Ladylord, Sasha Miller

Fantasy set in a vaguely Japanese milieu, where a daughter is declared the heir (and son) to one of the 5 kingdoms. She has to prove herself to the Big Cheese by cutting down the tallest tree in the forest with a herring. It starts a little ham-fisted, and ends in an absurdly abrupt courtroom scene, but the middle of the book has lots of nice scheming and political machinations that's mostly separate from the protagonist's far less interesting quest. Goes slightly too far out of its way to be spicy sexy.

The Guncle, Steven Rowley

An intoxicated cruise guest pressed this into our hands when he saw us reading quietly in a space on the ship. I vaguely remember seeing a favorable review, so why not? It owes a lot to Auntie Mame. I mean a LOT; it's practically a modern retelling. It doesn't quite absolve it of its lack of originality, but it does clearly make this debt explicit. Rather than an aunt 'inheriting' a nephew to raise, we have the gay uncle inheriting his brother's kids after their mother dies (and the brother goes into rehab). A good job of touching on both the humor and tragedy/humanity of the situation. Some truly funny moments.

Plastic, by Scott Guild is a pretty wild idea.

Both a crypto-comedic dystopian fantasy [definitely that] and a deadly serious dissection of our own farcical pre-apocalypse [not sure it's quite that], Scott Guild’s debut novel is an achingly beautiful, disarmingly welcoming, and fabulously inventive look at the hollow core of modern American society—and a guide to how we might reanimate all its broken plastic pieces.

Hard to summarize, but in this universe, people are essentially animate Barbie dolls -- hollow and plastic. Rather than living in a Barbie world, theirs is a bit darker, with eco-terrorists carrying out deadly attacks to draw attention to the "heat leap", the analogue of global warming caused in this case by using chicken bones as fuel (as we might use plastic doll oil feedstocks in our own self-created problem). Another odd point of the world is our doll-people speak in a simple caveman-esque diction. Fortunately, our heroine Erin has a rich internal monologue that fleshes (or plastics) out her thoughts in more compelling prose. Enjoyable characters, gonzo presentation. And while I appreciate the farcical/satirical elements, I didn't care for the ending, which just kind of rammed the dial into 11 and crashed the plane rather than trying to attempt a landing.

The Storm is Upon Us, How QAnon became a movement, cult, and conspiracy theory of everything by Mike Rothschild

I picked this up from a Little Free Library. It was published in May 2021, so it tells the story, in journalistic fashion, of the rise of QAnon from its origins to its role in January 6th. Obviously, we've had almost another 4 years of history after that. QAnon has gotten a bit quieter, but in some ways, as soon as it became the theory of everything, now some pieces of that (say election denial) have practically become GOP orthodoxy now. Really useful as a history of the origins and original threads of the movement, but (hey, not it's fault, I'm reading it 3 years too late) not that applicable to the situation now. Has some nice sections with how 'cult' experts think of QAnon, and some material from Mick West about how to pull your friends and loved ones out of the rabbit hole (and how not to).

The Tailor of Panama by John Le Carré

I feel sure I saw the film with Pierce Brosnan and Geoffrey Rush, but I don't remember a damn thing about it. Anyway, Le Carré's writing is so dry that it takes a while [me anyway] to figure out that this is something of a black comedy. It has the feel of Basil Fawlty pursuing some plan, with layer after layer of lies building up to a fiasco. But instead of a crappy gourmet night, we have death and an invasion of Panama. A good read.

The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett

Set in a very strange fantasy world, a detective assistant duo unravel mysterious murders that also tie into the political elites of the world. Many have commented on the similarity to Holmes/Watson in the main characters. It's very strong in the first chapter, where our Holmes does annoying Holmes-like deductions. But later, I think the book settles down and finds its own weird groove, and feels fresher than warmed over Conan Doyle. Also a good read.

Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson

Very different people from very different worlds become psychically linked and must work to solve the problems facing their worlds. I found much of the story appealing, but a lot of elements bothered me. The story purports to be narrated by a particular well-informed narrator; when it intrudes more into the story, it's both unhelpful and, well, intrusive. Conscious or not, the book has a streak of anti-science. Coming off the Tainted Cup with a very weird world that was somehow real, this novel gives us two very weird worlds that are bullshit. The author must be doing something right to get people to fork out millions for a Kickstarter, but I was not impressed.

I've Been Thinking by Daniel C. Dennett

It's something of an autobiography of philosopher Dan Dennett, who is my spirit animal. He's done a lot of good (IMHO) work in dispelling a number of *wrong* ways of thinking about consciousness, and his other interests in artificial intelligence, evolutionary theory, etc. are also of great interest.

There's an awful lot more celebrity name-dropping in this than I expected, but I won't begrudge him his fame. Nothing earth-shattering, but a lot of interesting details, like that he was essentially one of the inaugural professors at UC Irvine when the campus got started, only later moving to Tufts where he's been happy ever since. A nice vignette about his farm in Maine with some description of his neighbors that are more sympathetic than those he gives to a number of asshole philosophers when he finally unloads on them in one short chapter about academic bullies. If Dennett is also your spirit animal, then you'll enjoy this. If you don't know who I'm talking about, it's not likely this will appeal

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

Supernatural skullduggery among the 'secret' societies of Yale (like Skull and Bones). An enjoyable, but very dark, rollercoaster ride, but the number of smug Ivory Tower elitists is maddening. It helps somewhat that our heroine is a SoCal gutterpunk, but I did keep rooting for asteroid strike -- a pox on all their houses. Lots of interesting prose and more than enough action, but the whole set-up seems a bit contrived, and the possibilities of magic seem pushed by the requirements of the plot more than any coherent system. Go Bruins.

The House at Awful End by Philip Ardagh

I picked this out of a little free library initially because of the Gorey-adjacent illustrations by David Roberts. And the story clearly has a pleasantly dark theme. Allegedly the author wrote this story out, chapter by chapter, for a lonely nephew trapped in a boarding school. Maybe it doesn't go quite as dark as Ninth House, but it goes pretty dark for something aimed at kids. And not just dark, but kind of nasty in a way that goes beyond Roald Dahl's stories if not Roald Dahl's actual life. The book's humor (as such) is a series of random improbable predicaments. I can see how the episodic nature of its composition might lend to that, but it's just not funny. I'm probably wrong, though. The Financial Times writes 'it would be a sad spirit that didn't find this book hilarious," and if any journal is an expert in comedy, it's FT.

Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro

Given how much I enjoyed Klara and the Sun, this was a disappointment. Some good character studies as a cohort comes up in school and then leaves for 'the real world' as alliances and friendships and petty cruelties shift back and forth. But that's about all it is. Maybe that's enough. An additional layer of dystopian horror (to which our protagonists are largely blind) is almost irrelevant.

Miskatonic Missives, by the HPL Historical Society.

I ponied up for the kickstarter for this matched set of volumes exploring 3 letters from HPL to Duane Rimel, Barlow (his future literary executor) and Robert E Howard. They are a sui generis take on presenting the letters, sortofa printed/illustrated attempt at a hypertext. Short stories mentioned by Lovecraft are printed in full or part later in the volume. Covers of magazine. Maps of places visited. Occasional commentary. Glosses. News clippings related to mentioned events. At its best, it's like soaking in 1934, giving more context and color to the world from whence the letters come. Additionally, a fourth volume of loose ephemera includes postcards, bus tickets and other tangible goodies. All the art and presentations throughout have the kind of production values one would expect of the HPLHS.

At the same time there are some minuses; it's a little hard to navigate the book. In principle it's no worse than looking at end notes rather than footnotes, but when some of the 'notes' are complete 20 page short stories, it's very different in practice. Of course, there are always going to be questions about editorial choices, but I think the most egregiously gratuitous one was an idle reference to Bob Howard about fisticuffs being 'linked' to a 1930s brochure for self-defense classes. The brochure was authentic and historical, but it had no earthly connection to either man.

The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas (père)

Chosen for the work book club, but we maybe should have noticed it runs to 1000 pages. I'm reading it via a free e-book from Project Gutenberg. The translation is very readable, but it doesn't seem to have much verve. I don't know if that's the translation or the work itself. I may slowly push my way further on, but my interest has waned.

The UMBRAL Anthology of Science Fiction Poetry

UMBRAL was (I gather) a journal edited by Steve Rasnic Tem in the 70s and this anthology of poetry that appeared in it was published in 1982.

A lot of it is free verse and flutters past my glazed eyeballs without leaving much impression. One definite exception is Thomas Disch's "On Science Fiction", which seems to balance the warring feelings of "Fans are Slans" and the lack of self-confidence among science fiction fans. Fans are simultaneously better than and inferior to everybody else. A few other good ones, but that Disch poem stand out. And I guess I have good taste -- it won the Rhysling Award in 1981. Most of the poets are unknown to me, but a few (like Disch) are familiar names from science fiction.

Aha, found "On Science Fiction" reprinted here in a collection of Rhysling winners.

Some of my read-books have piled up for various reasons. Anyhoo.

Speculative Los Angeles (Akashic Books): Alas this was one I finished first and remember least about. There's a dedication to Octavia Butler and it goes downhill into mediocrity town after that.

The Best of RA Lafferty: One of the best things about the book are the varied introductions from everybody from Gaiman to Patton Oswalt to Harlan's original introduction from Dangerous Visions. But I wonder at the story selection -- it seems to favor stories where Lafferty really goes off the narrative rails. I like Lafferty when he's funny, and when he's absurd, but many of these wander too far into incoherence. I'm not sure it's either his best or his most representative. But still plenty to love. One thread that does come together well is (him being an Oklahoma writer) his way of tying the Native experience to the alien experience.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac. I seem to have read most of On the Road In the Air, which doesn't seem quite right. I don't see what the fuss is about. Sure, I get the allure of the open road, but otherwise it's kind of interchangeable medley of feckless losers getting drunk, chasing tail and committing petty crimes.

A Convenient Hatred: The HIstory of Antisemitism by Phyllis Goldstein

Not a cheerful read by any means, but interesting to see things traced from Roman times through 'Christ-killers' to the blood libel, to the Protocols to the Holocaust and later times. As much as the story is often about individuals (or mobs) who scapegoat the Jews, it's also interesting to see some of the allies who made efforts here or there to turn back the tide of hatred (seldom for long, alas)

[Soldiers restored order in Karlsruhe after civil nrest and anonymous messages called for a massacre of Jews] A "new message read, "Emperors, kings, dukes, beggards, Catholics, and Jews are all human and as such our equals." To emphasize that idea, the grand-duke of Baden showed his solidarity with the city's Jews by spending the night at the home of a prominent Jew. The gesture helped restore calm to the city."

I found both of these in the LA Time list of books about Los Angeles in the speculative literature sublist.

After Many a Summer by Aldous Huxley is a very odd work. Something like Citizen Kane smashed into The Last Coin with a chunk of mostly annoying philosophy crammed into the middle. While it skewers a certain vision of Hollywood as it may have been in the 1930s, it rides off on its own hobbyhorse quite too far to be recognizable as LA. A crass Los Angeles millionaire funds various charities and research activities, but his obsession is eternal life. I really have to wonder if Jim Blaylock is referencing this novel in The Last Coin, or if it's just a coincidence based on the longevity of carp.

Perhaps my favorite passage has a nice LA nod to a Forest Lawn-esque cemetary:

Was it possible, Jeremy asked Iiimself, that such an object existed? It was certainly not probable. The Beverly Pantheon lacked a verisimilitude, was something entirely beyond his powers to invent. The fact that the idea of it was now in his mind proved, therefore, that he must really have seen it. He shut his eyes against the landscape and recalled to his memory the details of that incredible reality. The external architecture, modelled on that of BoeckUn’s ‘Toteninsel.’ The circular vestibule. The replica of Rodin’s ‘Le Baiser,’ illuminated by con- cealed pink floodlights. With its flights of black marble stairs. The seven-story columbarium, the endless gal- leries, its tiers on tiers of slab-sealed tombs. The bronze and silver urns of the cremated, like athletic trophies. The stained-glass windows after Burne-Jones. The texts in- scribed on marble scrolls. The Perpetual Wuriitzer crooning on every floor. The sculpture . . . That was the hardest to believe, Jeremy reflected, be- hind closed eyelids. Sculpture almost as ubiquitous as the Wurlitrer. Statues wherever you turned your eyes. Hundreds of them, bought wholesale, one would guess, from some monumental masonry concern at Carrara or Pietrasanta. All nudes, all female, all exuberandy nubile. The sort of statues one would expect to see in the re- ception-room of a high-class brothel m Rio de Janeiro. ...
Statues of young ladies crouching ; young ladies using both hands to be modest; young ladies stretching, wnthing, calli- pygously stooping to tie their sandals, reclining. Young ladies with doves, with panthers, with other young ladies, ■with upturned eyes expressive of the soul’s awakening. ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life,’ proclaimed the scrolls. ‘ The Lord is my shepherd ; therefore shall I want nothing.’ Nothing, not even Wurhtzer, nor even girls in tightly buckled belts. ‘Death is swallowed up in viaory’ — the ■victory no longer of the spirit but of the body, the well-fed body, for ever youthful, immortally athletic, indefatigably sexy. The Moslem paradise had had copulations six centuries long. In this new Christian heaven, progress, no doubt, would have stepped up the period to a millennium and added the joys of everlasting tennis, eternal golf and swimming.

But on the whole not a winner.

Greener than you Think (1947) by Ward Moore turned out to be a delightful discovery. A much broader parody than After Many a Summer, it's a disaster story of a scientist who invents a tonic to make lawns grow. And does it ever. One lady buys the first batch and from one lawn springs an earth devouring monster of green. Not a lot of detail about Los Angeles, but a few namechecks that help Angelenos mark the spread of the grass:

The southernmost runners crept down toward Hollywood Boulevard where every effort was being marshaled to combat them, and the northernmost wandered around and seemingly lost themselves in the desert of sagebrush and greasewood about Hollywood Bowl. Traffic through Cahuenga Pass, the great artery between Los Angeles and its tributary valley, was threatened with disruption.

Oodles of casual sexism and racism, although often with a wry touch than seems to point the finger more at the haters:

Nationalists hinted darkly that the whole thing was the result of a plot by the Elders of Zion and that Kaplan's Delicatessen—in conspiracy with A Cohen, Notions—was at the bottom of the grass.

Our protagonist wears many hats in this somewhat overlong story, but spends much of it as a journalist covering the spread, who is ordered out by an editor that would make J Jonah Jameson happy with his level of smack-talk:

The Intelligencer picked you out of a gutter, a nauseous, dungspattered and thoroughly fitting gutter, and pays you well, mark that, you feebleminded counterfeit of a confidenceman, pays you well, not for your futile, lecherous pawings at the chastity of the English language, but out of the boundless generosity which only a newspaper with a great soul can have. Get down to whatever smokefilled and tastelessly decorated room that committee is meeting in and do not leave while it is in session, neither to eat, sleep, nor move those bowels whose possession I gravely doubt.

And one final epitaph for LA, courtesy of Time magazine:

Time, reporting the progress of the weed, said in part: "Death, as it must to all, came last week to cult-harboring, movie-producing Los Angeles. The metropolis of the southwest (pop. 3,012,910) died gracelessly, undignifiedly, as its blood oozed slowly away. A shell remained: downtown district, suburbs, beaches, sprawling South and East sides, but the spirit, heart, brain, lungs and liver were gone; swallowed up, Jonah-wise by the advance of the terrifying Bermuda grass

Like I said, a bit overlong, but pleasantly zany.

Turtles all the way down is a young adultish novel that I picked up at the Enigma book swap a while back.

Part young romance, part teen buddies mystery solving, our main character is also distinguished by obtrusive thoughts and other OCD symptoms that get in the way of her life. Apparently the author (probably best known for The Fault in Our Stars) also suffers from OCD, so the descriptive elements ring true to life and are fairly terrifying. I wonder whether people with OCD would be helped by reading a sympathetic treatment or harmed by echoing their own difficulties in a feedback loop.
Well-drawn characters and interaction, but even if the mystery was not really the reason for the book (the real treasure was the friends we made along the way!) the resolution of the mystery was pretty lackluster.

A curious volume from Tartarus Press

Supernatural-tinged stories of vanished or never-was Europe. Really nails the fin de siecle or post-Great War feel with prose poem dreaminess. But they may take the nihilistic pose a shade too far in that many of the stories ultimately seem to be more nothing than something. I think my faves were The Fencing Mask and Lost Gonfalon.

The Science of Human Obsession

The book won a number of awards when it came out in 2006, and has been incorporated into some college classes. It relates what is (or was then) known about the neuroscience of musical perception.
I really enjoyed the earlier parts of the book that focused very tightly on the perception of sound and music, probably because it bridged the physics of sounds and music (that I know to some degree) with the neuroscience. Like, you may know that a plucked string or an organ pipe has many resonant frequencies other than the fundamental -- the one we think of as 'the' note it's playing. But we don't experience it as a group of separate frequencies, but as a unified note. And if a guitar and an oboe are playing the same note simultaneously, we don't experience it as a guiboe, but we hear the two instruments more or less distinctly.
As the book goes on, it moves from tones and notes to chords and songs and harmony and genres and musical tastes, and at each step along the way, it seems the connection neuroscience gets more diffuse. I can't fault the science for being what it is, but for me it was less compelling and interesting.

City of Strife, by Claudie Arseneault

This was a pick of the Enigma book club -- I've been idly hanging out on the Enigma Discord server seeing what the younger generation are up to. I didn't manage to get to the discussion, but earlier I went to their bookswap and managed to unload a bin's worth of antiquated books on them. Anyway, the book is an easy read, and the author has a good sense of characters bumping into each other in various combinations. What it reminds me most of is more of a larp. Characters are created and there are reasons for them to come into conflict or conspiracy. So I guess I'm not surprised that (as I understand it) the novel developed from a D&D campaign. At the same time, what the book is missing (like a larp) is any sense of a larger world of NPCs inhabiting the space. It's almost eerie. Apart from a guard or two and a waif, there is really nothing other than people with PC glow. And in book that centers in part on political intrigue, it's just very strange. There's no sense of a real place. And (also as in RPGs and larps) there's something of a lack of plausible reactions to extreme situations. Oh Bob's just done an arson; surely the townsfolk will be enraged at his faction. But with no townsfolk, there's no reaction. My good pal Brenda has casually announced that she kills people for money. But we need a third hand for card games (because there are no other people in this allegedly crowded hostel other than those of us with PC glow.) So, like I said, there was some snappy writing, but I found it really unsatisfying in the realism of the world. Even fake fantasy 'realism'. All the characters are queer in some way, and this fact enhances the story as much as this fact enhances my review.

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Dr. No, by Percival Everett

A very quirky read. I liked it, but I didn't love it. Obviously, the author is making a huge nod and wink at the world of James Bond. In brief, a supervillain attempts to enlist the aid of a mathematician who has devoted his life to nothing. Not zero, not a lack of ambition, but the serious study of nothingness. And our villain wishes to weaponize it. This allows the author a lot of opportunity to make equivocal use of the word 'nothing'.

As Sill says, “Professor, think of it this way. This country has never given anything to us and it never will. We have given everything to it. I think it’s time we gave nothing back.”

This happens perhaps a mite too often. But again, all in good fun and nice to see many Bond tropes through the funhouse mirror. FWIW, the plot such as it is borrows much more from Goldfinger than Dr. No. Almost all the characters are African American, and this fact enhances the story somewhat more than this fact enhances my review.

What similarities are there in the works of Lovecraft and Douglas Hofstedter?

H.P. Lovecraft and Douglas Hofstadter are two very different authors with distinct styles and subject matters. Lovecraft is known for his horror fiction and cosmic horror, while Hofstadter is known for his work in cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and mathematical logic. However, there are some similarities that can be drawn between the two authors.

One similarity is their interest in exploring the limits of human knowledge and understanding. Lovecraft often wrote about the dangers of encountering knowledge that is beyond human comprehension, while Hofstadter has written extensively on the nature of consciousness, the limits of artificial intelligence, and the mysteries of the human mind.

Another similarity is their use of intricate and complex language. Lovecraft was known for his verbose and ornate prose, often using archaic language and obscure words to create an otherworldly atmosphere. Similarly, Hofstadter is known for his playful and witty writing style, often incorporating puns, paradoxes, and wordplay into his works.

Finally, both authors have been influential in their respective fields and have inspired others to explore similar themes and ideas. Lovecraft's horror fiction has inspired countless writers and filmmakers, while Hofstadter's work has influenced the fields of artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and philosophy of mind.

While Lovecraft and Hofstadter are very different in many ways, their work shares some common themes and ideas, making them both significant figures in their respective fields.

Gone Fishin' by Walter Mosely is the creation story of Easy Rawlins, covering some Louisiana incidents largely instigated by his friend Mouse. There's some blood, guts, chicanery and sex, but the story as a whole doesn't amount to anything. Just fleshing out the biography.

I confess I only got through about half of Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi. The diffuse story-telling just isn't grabbing me. A lot of science fiction futures are really about our present, and that's certainly true of Goliath. Rather than white flight emptying out inner cities leaving hollowed-out unmanageable cores, now the rich have gone offworld leaving behind an earth in bad shape. And now there's a whiff of gentrification as some of the offworlders come back. I love a good allegory, but this one doesn't seem to have any point. Granted I didn't stick with it all the way to its destination.

Christianity Made Me Talk Like and Idiot, by Seth Andrews

I got this for free for paying my dues in American Atheists. (Signed, no less). But the title and the book is a bit of a cheat. Andrews was once an avid Christian, and even a Christian radio broadcaster. But a dozen years ago, when he was around 40, he gave up religion.

So the book could have been extremely valuable, hearing his own story from the inside of what it was like before. And how now he realizes that Christianity made him say stupid things. But the book is nearly all about how Christianity makes other people say stupid things. As such, most of it is not very interesting. Any internet atheist could write that book (waves). There are some parts where he talks more directly about his former life, and when he gets on that topic, he tends to express more compassion for other victims of extreme Christianity. But these touches are largely wiped away by how mean-spirited most of the rest of the book is (waves).

Darwin's Blade by Dan Simmons

An action-thriller focusing on an accident investigator. Kind of trashy with a strong element of gun-porn. Some of the technical aspects of the accident scenes are interesting, but veer off into minutiae and improbability (though allegedly all are based on real world events). Our protagonist gets wind of large scale fraud going on, backed by Russian bad guys. While I didn't exactly enjoy it, I'm sorry Simmons apparently didn't manage to sell the rights to make a film, because it would make a successful (albeit bad) action thriller.

Machinehood by S.B. Divya

OK, something written more recently. A Sci-Fi action thriller focusing on a professional bodyguard. In the future, bioengineering and drugs give people almost superhuman powers. Soft AIs handle a lot of work in concert with people, but one group is working to make a greater fusion of man and machine (and AI). Cyberpunky, bio-futurism, explosions. It rollicks along quite explodingly, but the climax and conclusion seemed very incomplete, unmotivated, tacked on. Author didn't know how to stick the landing, so just walked away.

I'm about 80% of the way through Jake Arnott's The Long Firm, the first of a trilogy of works about fictional 1960s London gangster Harry Starks (who happens to be gay NTTAWWT). Really liking it so far. I liked his The House of Rumour, and this is making me a fan. It's told in a somewhat strange way, in a half dozen sections, each narrated by a different person who comes into Harry's orbit for a greater or lesser time -- some coming to bad ends, while others manage at least a temporary exit. Apparently there's a TV miniseries with Derek Jacobi, but it doesn't appear to be streaming, and the DVDs are region 2.

Lastly, I'm a fair way through Jason Sheehan's Cooking Dirty: A Story Of Life, Sex, Love, And Death In The Kitchen. Turns out I don't need to write a review, because the AV Club has already hit it on the head:

"Sheehan protests several times that his book is the antidote for the artificial, antiseptic world of celebrity chefs and the Food Network, but because he has to out-Bourdain his unacknowledged predecessor, the excesses he chronicles often stink of playground boasting and general bullshit."

Having read and enjoyed Bourdain's book, certainly I hoped for something similar. And I got that in spades, but it's only believable because I believe Bourdain, and Sheehan takes things to extremes that not even "well, it got a little better in the retelling" can excuse. And what use is a memoir when you think the guy is lying (sometimes)? But some of the writing is amusing (even if things didn't necessarily actually happen as described).

Bedlam: An Intimate Journey into America's Mental Health Crisis
by Kenneth Rosenberg, MD

A while back I watched the PBS documentary and Kristen mentioned there was a book. Dr. Rosenberg is not just a psychiatric expert, but also lived the experience of his sister struggling with severe mental illness. It was an interesting experience having seen the documentary first, as some of the same patients are profiled, and I could vividly picture some of the situations being described in text.

Disturbing and depressing as the book is, Rosenberg has a few recommendations. I'm not entirely sold on his idea to make it easier to commit people involuntarily, but it's also clear to see the problem of getting sick people to volunteer, due to the sickness itself, and the mind's ability to discount that it is sick. More obvious and acceptable is the idea to stop treating mental illness with criminal incarceration. I don't think it's anybody's intent, but the jails and prisons are the default 'care' in many cases. I think the one fact that sticks out most in my mind is that there are limits to how many beds a hospital can have dedicated for mental illness in order to qualify for Medicaid reimbursement. No more than 16 beds. Naturally this creates scarcity - when the beds are full (and they are) there is no way for new patients to get treatment.

However, there are no such limits on prison beds.

---

A Master of Djinn
by P. Djèlí Clark

The book won the Nebula for Best Novel. I found it entertaining, but not that outstanding. In a world where the djinn have returned, an agent of the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities has to deal with murders, secret societies, a mysterious figure, and magic being flung back and forth hither and yon. And possibly the end of the world. In some ways it recalled City of Stairs, which I faulted for having too perfect a heroine. And for somewhat the same reason, although at least Fatma gets beat up a bit more.

---

Assassin's Creed: Valhalla

Merciful All-Father, this game is enormous. I usually explore every little sidequest and thingummy, but there's just too much. As absorbing as the game was, it literally started to wear out its welcome. I won't really knock it for that, because I got at least 2 games' worth of enjoyable content out of it. On we sweep with threshing oar.

And you can pet the cat. That's really all I need.

The Gates by John Connolly

A lightly humorous novel of the end of the world. A bit too winky-winky and young adult-ish for me, but it races along amiably. There was one good laugh, regarding a zombie medieval bishop who had a rather one track mind about how he wanted to get medieval on everyone's asses.

Magic: A History: From Alchemy to Witchcraft, from the Ice Age to the Present by Chris Gosden

By training, Gosden is a professor or archaeology, so much of the focus of the book is on prehistory rather than history. Much of it is inherently fascinating stuff from sites all over the world. And of course a bit frustrating, since we don't really know what this or that meant to those people. Although obviously we have to speculate, I think Gosden occasionally speculates too much, or worse, employs wiggle words to make things seem more magical than they are.

All in all, it's not what I expected from a 'history of magic', but I did like what I got (anyway). Some notes:

In 1951, relatively early in the campaign of excavations near Dolní Věstonice, a structure sometimes known as the ‘magician’s hut’ was excavated. A circular depression had been dug into the soil above the permafrost, its edge marked by stones and bones, which probably held down the roof of the hut, possibly made of animal skins or branches. The hut was small and at some remove from the other winter shelters. In its centre was a small structure made of clay, thought to be a kiln, within which were found the remains of 2,300 small clay figurines. These were mainly effigies of animals that had been deliberately exploded in the kiln

Perched on top of a limestone ridge in the Turkish Province of Urfa are several mounds of stone with many Neolithic flints on their surface and initial indications of large limestone slabs. Here the German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt excavated with the Şanlıurfa Museum from 1996 until his death in 2014. The archaeological world is still coming to terms with the discoveries they made. Partly cut into the underlying limestone are up to twenty-two circular stone-walled features, some of which also have benches. Most are yet to be excavated. Either set into the walls or free-standing in the middle of the structures are stone pillars up to 6 m tall and maybe weighing 50 tonnes. The pillars appear to have been people, with the t-shaped top a head, occasionally showing a face, and some with arms carved on the sides, meeting as hands at a belt on the front. On to these stone humans was carved a range of beasts, all of which were fierce or dangerous in some way, either because they were large cats, or smaller deadly creatures such as snakes or scorpions. The animals that people ate, primarily gazelle, were not depicted.

[wiggle word example:] People shaped matter and channelled energy to create sophisticated jade and pottery.

Late in the Mesolithic we find a new-born baby laid on a swan’s wing in its grave at the cemetery at Vedbæk-Bøgebakken in eastern Denmark, a poignant indication of possible links to a bird that is seen on water, land and in the air, bridging all three elements. Next to the baby is the body of a woman thought to have died in childbirth.

[Innsmouth look] - As younger generations made the slow shift to farming, older cosmologies were not immediately given up, and they maintained their links between houses and mountains, to the Danube and to the hybrid fish/humans embodied in the sculptures of their ancestors in Lepenski Vir.

Various regions have their geographies of deposition, indicating local cultural norms, so that in the Iron Age (800 BCE–43 CE) in southern Britain swords were regularly thrown into rivers, but in northern England and Scotland swords are found only on dry land, mainly in graves.

[pretty harsh horoscope] The role of astrology more generally within Jewish magic is controversial, with some insisting on its importance.7 The ‘Treatise of Shem’, surviving now in a version probably written from the first to third centuries CE in Syriac, but probably using earlier material, contains an almanac. How your year will be is laid out through the zodiac signs, and the predictions given are surprisingly specific, being worked out from the rising sign at the spring equinox: ‘If the year begins in Virgo: Everyone whose name contains Yudhs or Semkat, and Beth and Nun, will be deceased and robbed, and will flee from his home … and the first grain will not prosper … and dates will be abundant, but dried peas will be reduced in value.’

The large complex at Paquimé flourished between 1200 and 1450 CE in present-day Mexico, and exhibited sophisticated symbolism combining elements of land and water, with many canals between earthen mounds. Plumed serpents in the art show the influence of Mesoamerica, as do ball courts, but local peculiarities occur, including the ritual killing of 300 scarlet macaws, which were probably bred for sacrifice

Amadeus: Saw the movie with live orchestral and choral accompaniment. I think this was my first time at such a thing -- movie with the music recreated live. So much of it was done so faithfully it was basically seamless and unnoticeable. One of those magic tricks where you don't see how difficult it is because it's all invisible. The only major tonal difference was the celeste (or whatever) in the Magic Flute. This had a very different mellower sound from the very bright tinny one in the film.

And since the focus is on the film screen, it's hard to notice what the orchestra was up to. Probably the most challenging bit is where Frau Mozart has brought examples of his work to Salieri, who examines the scores and flips through them with the music changing at each turn. I tried to pay attention to the orchestra for that stretch, and it looked like a well-oiled machine.

Anyway, a very neat experience.

--

Starfarers by Poul Anderson

This has been sitting in my TBR pile for a long time. And my TBR pile is getting remarkably small as I transition more to e-books. So it's a 25 years old book by someone who was already a septuagenarian SF grandmaster. But it's a pretty engaging story with some great ideas, the main one being... after discovering a very-close-to-light drive, humans have to deal with the huge spans of time that still attend flight to the stars. A few years of shiptime can be centuries of Earth-time. You can never go home again, so they say. The main crew is fairly diverse with clear and distinct characters; the only let down is a tendency for them to exclaim "Ay Caramba!" or "Mazel Tov!" to clumsily reinforce their ethnicities.

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Page Summary

Catching up on books
A Delicate Truth, Never, Playing with Reality, Winter of the Gods
Behold the Ape, Is Math Real?
Book Backlog
Plastic / The Storm is Upon Us (QAnon)
The Tailor of Panama, The Tainted Cup, Yumi and the Nightmare Painter
I've Been Thinking / Ninth House / A House Called Awful End
Catching up on books
Speculative LA, RA Lafferty, On the Road, Antisemitism
After Many a Summer (Dies the Swan) - Greener Than You Think
Turtles All the Way Down by John Green
Inner Europe by John Howard and Mark Valentine
This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin
City of Strife & Dr. No (not that one)
Playing with ChatGPT
Gone Fishin' - Goliath - Christianity Made Me Talk Like an Idiot
Darwin's Blade, Machinehood, The Long Firm, Cooking Dirty
Bedlam; A Master of Djinn; Assassin's Creed: Valhalla
The Gates; Magic: A History
Amadeus at the Bowl ; Starfarers by Poul Anderson

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Journal of No. 118

Entries tagged with book

Catching up on books

A Delicate Truth, Never, Playing with Reality, Winter of the Gods

Behold the Ape, Is Math Real?

Book Backlog

Plastic / The Storm is Upon Us (QAnon)

The Tailor of Panama, The Tainted Cup, Yumi and the Nightmare Painter

I've Been Thinking / Ninth House / A House Called Awful End

Catching up on books

Speculative LA, RA Lafferty, On the Road, Antisemitism

After Many a Summer (Dies the Swan) - Greener Than You Think

Turtles All the Way Down by John Green

Inner Europe by John Howard and Mark Valentine

This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin

City of Strife & Dr. No (not that one)

Playing with ChatGPT

Gone Fishin' - Goliath - Christianity Made Me Talk Like an Idiot

Darwin's Blade, Machinehood, The Long Firm, Cooking Dirty

Bedlam; A Master of Djinn; Assassin's Creed: Valhalla

The Gates; Magic: A History

Amadeus at the Bowl ; Starfarers by Poul Anderson