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| 1781128855
| 9781781128855
| 3.78
| 442
| unknown
| Jul 25, 2019
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liked it
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This middle-grade novella was a great way to get into the New Year and relax in the bath during my first arduous week back at work. What Magic Is This
This middle-grade novella was a great way to get into the New Year and relax in the bath during my first arduous week back at work. What Magic Is This? is short and sweet. Let’s be clear: if you go into this expecting Holly Bourne’s usual perspicacity from her adult or young adult reads, you might feel disappointed by how simplistic this book is in comparison. But if you approach this from the mindset of your middle-school self, you’ll have much more luck enjoying this. Aimed at alloromantic girls in Year 9 (Grade 8) in particular, this is a book about the tensions between friendship and infatuation, and the lines we draw between reality and fantasy. Trigger warning in this book for discussions of self-harm/cutting. Sophie thinks of herself as the boring one in her friendship trio. Alexis is the dramatic one, Mia is the dark/quirky one, and Sophie is the boring one. She hopes to change that one night by casting a spell. Each of the girls wishes for something different, and by the end of the night, it’s possible each girl’s spell came true. Or maybe it’s just wishful thinking. This is not a book about magic. It’s a book about teenage relationships. Bourne’s characterization, while obviously less subtle than her novels for older readers, remains just as skilled and apt as ever. In particular, I love her turns of phrase and I love the way she establishes the bonds among friends. The running gag with Alexis’ ability to eat entire frozen pizzas from (insert any feeling here), for example, feels quite real, like it’s something that would have actually happened if I had such a friend group at that age. Likewise, Sophie’s first-person narration feels every bit a type of Year 9 girl who is beginning to explore her romantic feelings. Bourne captures the urgency of youthful infatuation. The plot that frames this story and ties together its characters’ struggles is perhaps the least important element of the book, ironically. What Magic Is This? uses witchcraft to help us learn what these girls are dealing with, but this isn’t a book about girls who believe they are witches. The epilogue that takes place a year later makes this clear, draws a nice line underneath the whole story and provides some good closure. While Sophie and Mia receive a fair amount of development, Alexis feels like the odd girl out. Her struggle is coming to terms with grief—she lost a dog, whom we are told she actually hated while he was alive—and we also learn she has a flair for drama. That’s about it. Unlike Mia, who at least is revealed as Sophie’s foil through her flare-ups with both Sophie and Alexis, Alexis herself remains the most enigmatic and least used character. This is a cute book, with many satisfying elements, tightly plotted so it doesn’t overstay its welcome. I think for its target audience it’s a win. As I said in my introduction, older readers will need to approach it with that awareness in order to appreciate it. But I am a huge Holly Bourne fangirl, and I love that she now has stories for all ages. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Jan 05, 2021
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Jan 06, 2021
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Jan 05, 2021
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Paperback
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| 9781646140060
| 4.20
| 2,472
| Aug 25, 2020
| Aug 25, 2020
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really liked it
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There were many reasons I added Elatsoe to my to-read list when it started making the rounds on Twitter: supernatural mystery, asexual protagonist (wh
There were many reasons I added Elatsoe to my to-read list when it started making the rounds on Twitter: supernatural mystery, asexual protagonist (which I forgot until I started reading it), Indigenous author and protagonist, etc. It’s great when a novel has so many draws, isn’t just a single thing. Darcie Little Badger’s debut is one part ghost story, one part educational piece about stolen land and colonial ambitions—and all about a main character who embodies “spunky.” This eponymous protagonist goes by the name of Ellie for most of the book. In this alternative United States, magic exists in a variety of forms. For Ellie’s family, who are Lipan Apache like Little Badger herself, this means passing down traditional knowledge about summoning spirits. Ellie has been practising this skill from childhood, and she has a loyal companion in her ghost dog, Kirby! After her cousin, Trevor, dies near a small and mysterious town in Texas, Ellie receives a visit from him in a dream. Trevor tells her he was murdered and even reveals the murderer—but that’s all. And Ellie is forbidden from waking the spirits of dead humans, lest they return as vengeful ghosts. So as she and her parents visit her cousin’s widow to help out, Ellie launches an investigation, with Kirby and her best friend Jay by her side, against the most prominent and wealthy man in town. I enjoyed Elatsoe from the beginning, and it just gets better and better. Little Badger’s plotting and pacing is very smooth, and while there are moments of infodumping here and there, overall I like that she doesn’t spend too much time trying to explicate how this universe is different from our own. You just kind of get thrown into it—vampires and fairy rings and ghosts and all—and I appreciate that. There is room to grow if this turns into a series, and if this is a standalone then it strikes the right balance between plot and worldbuilding. There’s also a healthy balance with Ellie’s characterization. Ellie is a great protagonist in terms of her growth. At 17, she is on the cusp of adulthood and quite independent, yet her dynamic with her parents is a healthy one. She respects their boundaries but pushes them just a little when she believes she is capable of more. Her parents, in return, set those boundaries out of concern for her safety, but they also respect her agency and believe her when she says things like “my cousin’s spirit told me he was murdered.” People are classifying this as young adult, and that’s cool, I guess it technically is from the age of the protagonist, but if anything this is definitely crossover … regardless, more books with healthy relationships between the protagonist and her parents, please! Similarly, more asexual representation like this! I love, love books that emphasize and explore a character’s asexuality, of course. But I have said and will say again here: we need books where characters are just casually asexual. Ellie hints at this early in the book when she talks about not wanting children and not needing a partner—but of course, that doesn’t equate with asexuality. The word finally gets used on page later, when someone says, “I know you’re asexual,” suggesting Ellie is out to people in general, and that’s lovely! It’s not explained, not interrogated, just accepted. Moreover, it was so important to me that her friendship with Jay was platonic and lacked any hint of romantic/sexual tension or unrequited love. Just two peeps being pals, and I can stan that. This kind of casual representation extends to Ellie’s identity as Lipan Apache. This identity is asserted more often and firmly than her asexuality, and Little Badger drops in nuggets of education for us settlers about what Indigenous people, and the Lipan Apache in particular, suffered at the hands of settlers. She works ideas of land and belonging into the vampire mythos in a really cool way. And of course, the entire mystery itself is rooted in a group of settlers’ beliefs that they can take what they want, from the land and its people, over and over indefinitely, without ever paying recompense. Overall, Elatsoe grounds itself in Indigenous roots and integrates, on every level, lessons in the harms of colonialism and the extant colonial mentality within American culture and history. It’s sophisticated and powerful. Ok, ok, Kara—but what about the ghost story??? The mystery?? Does it work? Short answer: yes. My main fear as the story developed would be that Ellie would turn into a kind of Mary Sue, that her magic or detective skills would make solving, and resolving, the case too easy. Without going into spoilers, I’d say Little Badger averts this through careful foreshadowing, as well as the way she uses stories of Ellie’s ancestor. The connection between Ellie’s power and the land/her ancestors is so important, another example of what I was talking about above when I said that this book is grounded in Indigenous roots—Ellie prevails not just as a result of her own strength but because she knows who she is and where she comes from. Elatsoe is a book about the power of remembering yourself in the face of a world that wants you to forget. Sometimes you read books because you know what to expect: they are predictable, comfortable reads. Other times you read a book because you are expecting an experiment, something that might or might not work for you. Elatsoe fits comfortably into a third category of book: the type of book that isn’t really an experiment, but it is much more than a comfort read. It stretches you but in a way that does not demand cerebral contortions, educates you in a way that does not make you feel patronized, entertains you in a way that is fairly conventional for a novel yet layered and nuanced as well. If you like any of the things I listed at the top of this review, check it out. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Dec 31, 2020
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Jan 04, 2021
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Dec 31, 2020
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ebook
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| 0593135059
| 9780593135051
| 4.00
| 9,764
| Aug 04, 2020
| Aug 04, 2020
|
liked it
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**spoiler alert** The idea of the multiverse is captivating, no? The thought that there are infinitely-many yous out there, that at any moment the cho
**spoiler alert** The idea of the multiverse is captivating, no? The thought that there are infinitely-many yous out there, that at any moment the choice you make diverges you from them a little more. I do so love parallel-universe fiction and other, similar, world-hopping stories, so I was excited for The Space Between Worlds. The fact it has a queer protagonist of colour? Even better! Indeed, Micaiah Johnson isn’t just telling a multiverse thriller here. This is a postcolonial novel about not belonging, about belonging only when you are useful, and how you calibrate your life when that is all you know how to do. Minor spoilers in this book because it is rather difficult to discuss the story without them, but I won’t spoil anything major. Cara is one of a small number of people who are useful to the Eldridge corporation as traversers, world-walkers. She is useful because she has died in most of the nearly 400 worlds that the corporation can access. She travels to these worlds to collect information that could enrich Eldridge. But Cara has secrets—for one thing, she isn’t Caramenta from this Earth 0; she is Caralee from Earth 22, who managed to impersonat Caramenta after the latter arrived, broken and dying, on Caralee’s Earth (this is what happens when you try to visit an Earth where your counterpart lives). Matters at Eldridge are coming to a head, because Cara and all the other traversers might be out of a job soon. So she has to find a way to protect her interests, lest she is deported back to the impoverished town on the outskirts of Wiley City that she hails from (in any universe). Unfortunately for Cara, it isn’t even clear who her allies or—or her enemies. Cara’s secret identity is revealed early in the book (this is why it’s a minor spoiler) and is what got me hooked on the whole plot. Up until that point, I wasn’t sure what Johnson was playing with here—there are so many directions a multiverse story can go in! When she revealed Cara is not actually from this Earth, holy wow, yes, I was so in for stakes like that. As Cara travels to visit her family in Ashtown, and flirts/spars with her handler, Dell, we see the cracks in her facade. It’s hard to pretend to be someone you’re not, even when that person is also you. Indeed, Cara is a great example of an unlikable protagonist. She is very self-interested and spiky, a result of her rough and difficult upbringing, so she doesn’t fit into the mould of lovable heroine that we might want from a book like this. I like this choice by Johnson, just as I like that Johnson doesn’t shy away from social commentary about the way we (white people and corporations) use Black and brown bodies as labour to build our cities and businesses while simultaneously impoverishing and punishing those same bodies. There’s also a queer romance hiding in here, although to be honest it was developed in a somewhat slapdash way with far too much of a helping of exposition. That would be my complaint about this book: the characters are cool, but the plotting that brings them together doesn’t always satisfy me. After electrifying me for the first few acts, the final act was convoluted and even anticlimactic. In the end, I was left wanting more. More use of the multiverse and traversing. More poignant scenes between characters. More careful plotting and exposition in a way that didn’t leave everything so obvious. The Space Between Worlds is intriguing and enjoyable, yet there was something about it that didn’t quite gel for me. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Dec 21, 2020
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Dec 22, 2020
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Dec 21, 2020
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0735277184
| 9780735277182
| 3.77
| 4,477
| Sep 17, 2019
| Sep 17, 2019
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really liked it
|
Empire of Wild is a supernatural thriller that combines the legend of the rogarou with a woman’s search for her missing husband. But it would be a mis
Empire of Wild is a supernatural thriller that combines the legend of the rogarou with a woman’s search for her missing husband. But it would be a mistake not to recognize that this is also a story about colonialism, about European/settler ideologies clashing with Indigenous ideas of hearth, home, and connection to one’s community and the land. Just as
The Marrow Thieves
showcases how settlers can go to any length to extract and exploit resources they see as necessary, Empire of Wild charts how we can lose ourselves to ambition and ego. Nearly a year ago, Joan’s husband, Victor, walked out on her and suddenly went missing. In the tight-knit, predominantly Métis town of Arcand, Ontario, this was a big deal for a long time, especially given that Victor’s entrance into Jean’s life finally allowed her to settle down in a way that her community never thought she would. Now, Jean stumbles across Victor—except he is the Reverend Eugene Wolff, preacher for a small group of touring Christian revivalists led by the enigmatic, entirely-too-slick Thomas Heiser. Reverend Wolff claims he doesn’t know Jean, isn’t Victor at all—yet Jean is convinced he is her husband. Her resolution to get to the truth leads her into the woods of magic and shadows, even as Victor tries to find the way out of his own woods. What stands out for me about Empire of Wild is the characters. There are so many interesting characters here: Joan, Zeus, Ajean, Victor, Heiser, Cecile—all of them are significant and, in turn, receive plenty of development from Dimaline. Yet even minor characters, like Jimmy Fine, take on this larger-than-life quality that make this book feel like a kind of modern fairy tale. Joan has gone off the path into the woods, and the people she encounters along the way aren’t just people but parables for her education. Joan’s relationship with Zeus, the way he tags along like a sidekick but she ultimatly decides she doesn’t want to put him in harms way, is adorable. I enjoy the complex interplay of the characters here, whether it’s the way Joan’s mom and brother give her tough love, or Zeus’ complicated teenage relationship with his mom. Perhaps the most surprising character for me was Cecile, whom I assumed was going to be a one-dimensional minion for the side of the antagonists. Dimaline instead gives us an entire backstory that makes her into an interesting, three-dimensional character whose betrayal both of Joan and of Heiser makes the book all the more fascinating. Then we have Heiser, whose rapport with canines forms the basis for the supernatural aspects of the book. Heiser isn’t just the leader of a small group of Christian revivalists—he is mainly a consultant for development projects that want to move north. Empire of Wild lays bare the depressing but not surprising ways in which mining companies, other similar corporate outfits, will use religion as a way to captivate and manipulate Indigenous communities whose land they want to develop or exploit. In this way, Dimaline illustrates how colonialism in Canada is ongoing. This book is pointed social commentary about the fact that neither government nor corporations truly treat First Nations, the Inuit, or Métis as sovereign nations. Their consent to development projects is seen as an obstacle to overcome rather than a collaboration to be earned. Heiser is a toxic, irredeemable character—not because he is a white man of European descent, but because he is a white man of European descent who willingly steeps himself in colonial tactics of control and exploitation for his own advancement. The inclusion of the rogarou mythos precludes reading this story as a simplistic tale of “settler = bad, Indigenous = good” though. Rather, Dimaline stresses (especially through the mouthpiece of Ajean) that there must be balance among the forces of nature. A rogarou is the most extreme example of someone who is out of balance, a man who succumbs to his most atavistic self until it consumes him and leaves him nothing but a beast. Without going into spoilers, the way that Dimaline portrays characters’ internal struggles against their rogarous is fascinating, and while it isn’t always straightforward to follow what’s happening, these dream-like sequences create an important backbone to the novel. They underlie the theme that connection is what is most important. The characters in this novel who succumb to the infection of the rogarou are characters who, in their hearts, feel disconnected as a result of their actions and the actions of others. This is more than a thriller. It’s a carefully crafted mystery laced with the supernatural the way a chef seasons a soup with the finest of spices. I became very invested in Joan’s quest to get Victor back, and the abrupt and shocking ending—which invites but does not promise a sequel—feels oddly fitting for a book that is simultaneously punk rock and rockabilly/blues. When you read Empire of Wild you need to grab and hold on, but if you manage to do so, this book will take you places. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Dec 18, 2020
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Dec 23, 2020
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Dec 18, 2020
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Hardcover
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| 1523508612
| 9781523508617
| 4.04
| 49
| unknown
| Dec 22, 2020
|
liked it
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I have listened to Jenn and Trin’s Friendshipping podcast for a couple of years now. I adore it, mostly for their amusing and endearing banter, but al
I have listened to Jenn and Trin’s Friendshipping podcast for a couple of years now. I adore it, mostly for their amusing and endearing banter, but also for their compassionate takes on listener questions about doing friendship—I enjoy their emphasis on this idea that friendship is a verb, because I agree. So when I heard they had turned their podcast into a self-help book, I pre-ordered the hell out of it—and I was also fortunate enough to get to read it early thanks to Workman and NetGalley. Friendshipping: The Art of Finding Friends, Being Friends, and Keeping Friends is a very straightforward book, divided into three parts per its subtitle. From its tone and overall language to its art design (by Jean Wei), the target audience is millennials—I suspect older generations will find Jenn and Trin’s brand of humour too youthful, whereas Gen Z and younger will look at them as “oldies.” This is a book for people of an age that is used to moving for work and school, to navigating the Internet but still holding it slightly at arm’s length, to embracing nerdiness as something that we still think is uncool (even though it is now mainstream). I’m not saying younger or older people wouldn’t benefit from this book, but it knows its niche and goes for it, which is probably for the best. Indeed, I think this book will appeal to people who are looking for friends or friendship advice but who are skeptical of more polished, adult-looking self-help books. The chapters here are very conversational, with plenty of sidebars with practical tips. This isn’t a book I would recommend reading from start to finish—rather, you can dip into it for reference as and when you need help with various situations. I love the inclusive nature of the book. There is a section dedicated to pronouns, for instance. They talk about healthy boundaries in friendships. They acknowledge that friendships are difficult work, sometimes, and that more often than not the issues in a friendship are the result of both parties, not just one. They talk about what to do if you are the toxic friend. If I personally didn’t get that much out of this book on my initial read, it’s only because—and I am totally bragging here—I am very satisfied with my friendships at this point in my life. Indeed, for about the past 3 years, I feel like I have finally cultivated the types of healthy friendships and acquaintances an adult should have in her life: I have found close friends who support me and who let me support them; I am beginning to get more comfortable at making new acquaintances and expanding my circle ever so slightly. So I am lucky enough to report that I am happy, at least in that sense, and at least for now. But friendship is something you do, not something you have indefinitely. I am sure I will face rocky moments of indecision, and when I do, this will be a good book to have on my shelf. Jenn and Trin’s wisdom comes from the fact that they don’t pretend to know it all—you will find practical advice in this book, tips for starting difficult conversations, that kind of thing, yes, but the majority of this book boils down to a single thesis: be kind to your friends and potential friends. And although I can’t remember if they say it in the book, perhaps the single best thing I have learned from Jenn and Trin’s podcast is that there is a difference between being nice and being kind. Sometimes in our attempts to be nice, to not ruffle feathers or make people upset, we do no kindness through dissembly. Sometimes telling an uncomfortable truth is kinder. Kindness is not always easy to figure out, just like friendship isn’t always easy to put into practice. I think the best way you can decide if this book is for you is to listen to an episode of their podcast. The book is the podcast, just curated and then frozen in carbonite; the podcast is the book on a weekly release schedule with more discussion of snails and Animal Crossing. As I said at the beginning, I don’t think this book is for everyone, and that is ok and probably for the best—self-help books should target a niche. For some people, though, I suspect this book will give useful succour and guidance, and that pleases me. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Dec 12, 2020
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Dec 12, 2020
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Dec 12, 2020
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| B07XDM254H
| 4.52
| 1,651
| Dec 01, 2020
| Dec 01, 2020
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really liked it
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When I heard Ijeoma Oluo had written another book, there was no question in my mind that I would run, not walk, to NetGalley to request it. Publisher
When I heard Ijeoma Oluo had written another book, there was no question in my mind that I would run, not walk, to NetGalley to request it. Publisher Seal Press made it happen! Medicore: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America is a formidable follow-up to
So You Want to Talk About Race
. In her first book, Oluo outlines all the ways that white people can move past ignorance and fragility to have authentic dialogue about race and racism. In this book, Oluo explains how white supremacy (particularly in the United States) creates a culture of mediocrity in which white men receive the message that they deserve greatness, even if they haven’t actually done all that much. I’m sure many people will dismiss this book as an attack on white people. But if you go into it with an open mind, the history that Oluo outlines demonstrates incontrovertibly the hostility that the United States has shown and continues to show Black people and people of colour. At first, I wasn’t sure what Oluo was doing. But soon the picture emerged: each chapter began with the white supremacy of the past, from which Oluo draws a line into th white supremacy of the present. This is a history lesson, one that establishes how today’s racism exists atop a foundation of racism from centuries prior. In this way, Oluo demolishes the myth so often sold by white men to each other—the idea that it is possible to make American great again. America has not been great, especially for Black people and people of colour. The United States has always privileged the feelings of white people over the lives of non-white people. Now, I am Canadian, so I am slightly outside the target audience for this book. Canada has its own dangerous legacy of colonialism and racism and is also a white supremacist state. I’ll have to seek out pertinent books about anti-Black racism here. Nevertheless, I think non-Americans would benefit greatly from reading this book. First, it will help us understand what the hell is going on in America. A little history lesson goes a long way. Second, although the details are different here, the story arc is the same: white people show up, steal the land, import cheap labour by people of colour, and then marginalize and oppress them when they’ve gone from useful to inconvenient. Oluo’s chapters are illuminating regardless of where you live. Take her chapter on education, for example. I like how she explains the paradox of post-secondary education for people of colour. Right-wing pundits sometimes insist that post-secondary institutions are bastions of socialism and political correctness gone wrong. In fact, post-secondary institutions are still racist, sexist, classist, etc. Oluo points out, therefore, that attending college or university is simultaneously the best path people of colour have for attaining middle-class stability and one of the worst places to be, in terms of facing discrimination. This paradox is but one of many in American society—and I’m sure it is much the same here in Canada too. For my fellow white people, this book asks us to examine how we are complicit in white supremacy and patriarchy. And those of us who aren’t men are still complicit. Oluo’s entire thesis is that we cannot allow the conversation to be distilled down to “some white guys are terrible.” Her whole point is that this is not about individuals; this is about systems. So you do not have to be a white man to participate in upholding a system that privileges white men. Additionally, Oluo points out that the system really wants to help rich white men—the system by design punishes poor white men too. This, in turn, motivates them to uphold white supremacy by encouraging them to feel superior to people of colour. I’ve said this before, and I will say it again: if you want to consider yourself anti-racist, you need to do that work. And that means you need to do more than read books. But Mediocre is a great starting point in your quest for information. What matters going forward is what you do with the information, how you throw around your metaphorical weight to help dismantle the system Oluo exposes here. I would like to quote at length from this book, but if I did that, this review would contain almost the entire book. Oluo’s writing is just that dense with meaning. This is a book that can be savoured as you explore each chapter, and it is rich with connections and ideas. Mediocre invites you, as I said, to truly consider white supremacy as a four-dimensional system—and when you can see the shape of a thing, through time as well as space, you have a better chance of understanding how to manipulate—or in this case, dismantle it. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Nov 29, 2020
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Dec 02, 2020
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Nov 29, 2020
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Kindle Edition
| |||||||||||||||
| 0553278398
| 9780553278392
| 4.13
| 69,317
| May 1988
| Sep 2004
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it was ok
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There must be some law about how, the longer an author is allowed to play in their sandbox, the worse their stories get. At some point, every author w
There must be some law about how, the longer an author is allowed to play in their sandbox, the worse their stories get. At some point, every author who has a long-spanning saga feels encouraged to go back and fill in gaps in the chronology, creating that wonderful dichotomy of possible reading experiences: publication order and chronological order. L.E. Modesitt’s Recluce saga is one of the most notable modern examples. Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series is a classic. Prelude to Foundation is one of the last Foundation stories Asimov wrote, yet it is chronologically the earliest. It is in many ways a great folly yet it also shows Asimov’s abiding love for a genre that he nurtured and helped kickstart into a thriving industry. I am starting to think Asimov himself is very much like this book: he should not be overlooked, but when you do look at him, he isn’t all that great. Hari Seldon arrives on Trantor to give a talk at a conference. He speaks of a glimmer of an idea—psychohistory—and this is enough to get the attention of Galactic Emperor Cleon I. After a disappointing audience with the emperor, Hari thinks he is on his way home to Helicon. Instead, he is swept up by a journalist who is obviously so much more into a whirlwind adventure, touring various sectors of Trantor while under the protection of a love/lust interest, Dors. As Hari and Dors flee from sector to sector, experiencing each one’s diverse culture and customs, Hari considers whether predicting the future of humanity is indeed mathematically practical. The answer seems to lie in a common theme that arises throughout these novels: the forgotten origin of humanity, and the truth behind Earth and robots. Frankly, as a novel, this book makes sense in many respects. Yet in some ways I miss the early Foundation novels that were compilations of shorter novellas. Working at that length, Asimov had reason to keep his plots crisp. Prelude to Foundation feels too long for all it accomplishes, too prone to filler. It is the indulgence of an author so established in his career that he gets a pass when it comes to editing. In previous reviews of this series, I have tackled Asimov’s writing style as well as his relentless and gross male gaze. The latter is still present here, although I am pleased to report someone told him to tone it down. Sexism lurks beneath subtly undermined attempts to portray societies here as equal. Hari and Dors’ story is obviously one of those romances where the characters start at odds yet, as they overcome bigger struggles, they grow to love one another. Hari is just as much of a dog as the other Asimov protagonists; he just doesn’t have as much opportunity to put this into practice given the predicaments of plot. In terms of big concepts, Prelude to Foundation is probably, at this point in the publication order of the series, Asimov’s most honest attempt to explain the nature of psychohistory. Up until now, he has handwaved it as incredibly complex mathematical formulas that only really really really smart people can know how to do. This book humanizes Hari in a way that the previous books couldn’t, and we come to see how fraught the early days of psychohistory were. And thus comes Asimov’s big idea, exemplified by the role of Chetter Hummin, this idea that it could be possible to guide humanity to a better future. Writing this in the late 1980s, having lived so long a life already and experienced so much of the tumultuous twentieth century, with its technological upheavals, I can bet that Asimov more than ever wished psychohistory could be science fact rather than science fiction. And the power hungry nature of those who would abduct Hari to use him for their own ends underscores this belief. For Asimov, psychohistory is the ultimate triumph of human ingenuity over human atavism: if we can predict and guide humanity in a way that overrides the follies of flawed individuals, we will be better. We will evolve. I am close to the end of my re-read of the series. I intend to stop with Forward the Foundation; I don’t plan at this time to read any of the estate-authorized works, nor do I feel compelled to dive into the rest of Asimov’s oeuvre. I’m glad I embarked on this project, but my opinion of Asimov remains decidedly mixed. On one hand, he is so overrated. On the other, as noted above, his works contain a true genius of hopefulness about humanity, a commitment to writing science-fiction stories that show us ways forward beyond our own single world. In my last review of this series, I will discuss how I feel about Asimov’s place overall in the canon of science fiction. For now, know this: Prelude to Foundation is a valuable insight into the final era of one of the most prolific science-fiction writers of the twentieth century. Given that, it would be, if it came from any other writer, a profound disappointment of a novel. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 24, 2020
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Nov 28, 2020
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Nov 24, 2020
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 125025051X
| 9781250250513
| 4.43
| 14,246
| Sep 01, 2020
| Sep 01, 2020
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really liked it
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**spoiler alert** This was one of those books where I was afraid it would not live up to the hype, because people I follow on Twitter have not been ab
**spoiler alert** This was one of those books where I was afraid it would not live up to the hype, because people I follow on Twitter have not been able to stop talking about it. Fortunately, Cemetery Boys lived up to the hype—perhaps even exceeded it in some ways—and I went from being apprehensive about possibly not liking such a popular book to being really happy I took this chance. It’s great as a trans story, great as a supernatural mystery, probably great as a romance too (not such a fan of that part, myself). I love how Aiden Thomas combines supernatural elements of Latinx beliefs with the hunt for a missing community member and the main character’s own struggles to belong. Yadriel is seventeen years old, two years past when he should have celebrated his quinces and been inducted as a brujo, a male member of his community who can use magic to send spirits on to the afterlife. The issue? Yads is transgender. His late mother was very supportive of his transition and how that related to his future in the brujx community. His father and the other leaders of the community? They are supportive in some ways—doing their best to call him by his proper name, for instance—yet they do not embrace him as a brujo. This stings, of course, and the novel opens with Yadriel and his best friend, Maritska, sneaking into the church at their community’s cemetery to perform Yadriel’s quinces ceremony themselves. In a classic case of “be careful what you wish for,” Yadriel acquires the power that is his male birthright, and immediately ends up entangled with the spirit of a boy his age who died that night. As the community reels from one of their own dying under mysterious, unexplained circumstances, Yads must help Julian find out how he died so he can get closure. I love the setup in this novel. For the first few pages, I admit I was a little lost, but you quickly adapt to Thomas’ style of narration and lose yourself in the action. I love that Thomas sets up the death/disappearance of Miguel and then immediately sidetracks us into the main plot—Yadriel and Julian—while making it clear that there must be some kind of connection happening. Indeed, one of my criticisms of this book would simply be that the mystery is fairly obvious: it was easy for me to connect the dots, to deduce who was behind everything and what they were up to, right up until the climax. Neverthless, Thomas executes it so artfully that I don’t mind I saw it all coming. The foreshadowing, the fulfilment … mmm, yeah, it’s all there. There are some excellent themes about family here, both blood and found. Yads and Maritska’s bond is great. Similarly, Thomas portrays the realities of many poor youth (particularly Latinx) in places like southern California—Julian and his friends are not exactly running in a gang, but many of them have precarious home lives that cause them to be on the streets more than is safe for them. Julian sums this up perhaps most poignantly when he confesses to Yads that he never expected to live very long—perhaps only to thirty. His is a life already circumscribed in potential not by dint of anything he has done, or who he is, but rather because of how the system works. Thomas explores similar issues of race and racism throughout the novel. Community members have difficulty filing a police report, for the police would prefer to interrogate them about their immigration status rather than provide them an interpreter. Similarly, neither Julian’s friends nor his brother Rio consider filing a missing persons report for Julian, because the police will probably consider him a runaway and therefore not worth their time. This exact issue comes up in Hood Feminism , which I just finished! All in all, Thomas deftly highlights the cracks in our society in a way that young Latinx readers will recognize while people like me, who don’t experience such issues, will hopefully learn and become more aware as a result. I also really like how Thomas (who is trans) characterizes Yadriel and portrays his transition. For example, we never learn Yadriel’s deadname. At one point, a character slips up and uses it, but the narrator simply says that she uses Yadriel’s deadname without sharing it with us. Similarly, although the book contains misgendering and transphobia, it does so in a way that is compassionate to the reader’s experience. I like how, at one point, Julian challenges Yadriel, asking why it’s so important that Yads prove to his father and the other brujos that Yads is real brujo. This sparks a powerful discussion that forces Yadriel to consider his motivations—is proving himself something he’s doing for his family, or for himself? As Julian points out, statistically speaking Yadriel cannot be the first trans brujx. And—this is why I’ve flagged this review as containing spoilers—I have to say that when the moment comes and Yadriel’s father realizes that Yadriel can perform the brujo magic, it’s anticlimactic. I think this is what Julian was trying to get at when he challenges Yads: sure, Lady Death has acknowledged your true gender, and that’s cool, but isn’t it messed up some of your family members need that acknowledgement? Shouldn’t they have taken you at your word anyway? So the sanguine ending in which Yads is suddenly taken in as a true son and true brujo by his father because he proved useful, heroic, etc., isn’t super satisfying to me. That being said, I don’t think I would have liked the alternative (Yads going his own separate way because his family doesn’t support him), and I understand what Thomas was going for with such an emotional moment of climax and acceptance. I just wish that trans characters didn’t have to prove their usefulness for reluctant family members to see them as the people they are. That’s my major criticism of Cemetery Boys. Everything else, I loved. The dialogue. The wit. The slightly predictable mystery. The portrayal of gender and sexuality. This is a novel that has been honed to a razor’s edge of competent, compelling characterization and prose. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 21, 2020
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Nov 21, 2020
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Nov 21, 2020
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ebook
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| 0345807464
| 9780345807465
| 4.31
| 278,825
| May 14, 2013
| May 14, 2013
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really liked it
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Unlike Half of a Yellow Sun, which is a historical novel, Americanah is a more literary offering. Adichie examines how where we live—where we grow up,
Unlike Half of a Yellow Sun, which is a historical novel, Americanah is a more literary offering. Adichie examines how where we live—where we grow up, where we work, where we find relationships—affects how we relate to other people. In particular, this is a book about race and Blackness as a construct of American society. Trigger warnings in this book for anti-Black racism, anti-Semitism, suicide, infidelity, sexual harrassment. Ifemelu and Obinze grow up together in Nigeria, each other’s first loves. She moves to the United States; he moves to England. They struggle to adapt to their new countries—or rather, their new countries try to adapt them. Ifemelu meets with more success, albeit perhaps at greater cost. She becomes, in the eyes of some of her fellow Nigerians, an eponymous Americanah: someone who adapts too well to her American setting, so that she isn’t fully Nigerian any more. Obinze has a rougher time with his immigration status, eventually returning to Nigeria years before Ifemelu finds her way back there. Adichie tells the bulk of the story in a flashback mode—we begin with Ifemelu leaving the United States for Nigeria, and then we flash back to hers and Obinze’s childhood together. We watch them grow and grow apart and see the trials they face before they are reunited. But even then, finding happiness is far from assured. There’s a lot about this novel that isn’t my thing. The on/off romance, the relationships between the characters … this is why I usually prefer genre fiction, which offers more to its plot than a narrator telling me why a character is unhappy at this point in their life. But what makes Americanah a little more interesting, of course, is the way Adichie weaves nuances of race throughout the story. While in the United States, Ifemelu writes a blog called Raceteenth, where she teaches non-American Blacks about life in America. In this way, Adichie creates a distinction that many non-Black Americans (or Canadians, in my case) might not think about: Black people who grew up in the United States are quite different from Black people who immigrate from elsewhere. Ifemelu points out that, until she came to the United States, she didn’t have any conception of race or of Blackness. What Adichie is doing here is gently explaining to readers this idea of racialization. Someone is racialized when their race, as determined by our society, is the minority in a given place. Consider how race versus ethnicity functions: in the United States, Ifemelu is seen as Black—she identifies more closely with other African Black people more so than African Americans—and her ethnicity as Igbo is largely irrelevant. In contrast, when she returns to Nigeria, her Blackness is entirely unremarkable, and her status as Igbo matters more. So, I obviously can’t speak for how Black people of various origins would interpret this novel. As I white woman in Canada, I wanted to observe the way Adichie discusses race, and particularly Ifemelu’s experience of race in Nigeria. There are two white characters who caught my attention: Kimberly and Laura. Kimberly hires Ifemelu to be a babysitter/nanny for her two children. She does charity/NGO work related to Africa, and she is one portrait of a well-meaning, progressive white person: she always tries to say the right thing, try to be respectful of Ifemelu as a person—but as Ifemelu observes, she is anxious to please in this way. Laura, Kimberly’s friend, is another portrayal of a progressive white person: she’s too confident of her own wokeness, too ready to make pronouncements that Ifemelu can belie from her own experiences, offending Laura’s white fragility in the process. I like how Adichie carefully shapes these distinctive white women to show us various ways that white women treat Black women (and in particular, African women) in the United States. This richness of the interactions of characters of various races and racializations is what makes Americanah so interesting, at least to me. There are many other examples: Ifemelu’s interactions with the other African women who work at the salon she visits; Obinze’s relationships to other Nigerians who go to England to make their fortune; Aunty Uju’s tenuous attempts to find another husband, to raise her son well in the United States. And so on. I wasn’t all that bothered by the underlying romance between Ifemelu and Obinze, but I was very happy to explore all these nuances of race. A little long and drags a little in parts, Americanah is nevertheless thoughtful and quite successful at what it sets out to do. It showcases Adichie’s endearing talent at creating characters who move beyond the single story, as she cautions against in her TED talk. And it remains relevant in a post-Obama America, which is not a post-racial America like some hoped or pretended. As we challenge and dismantle white supremacy, it’s worth remembering that race (and in particular, Blackness) is not a universal, monolithic idea. Like any social construct, it is real, but its meanings and barriers and boundaries are fluid, and that must be taken into account. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
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1
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Nov 11, 2020
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Nov 15, 2020
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Nov 11, 2020
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ebook
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| B084ZZM6YJ
| 3.87
| 47
| Nov 13, 2020
| Nov 13, 2020
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it was ok
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When I learned after finishing this book that Kimberly Unger is a video game designer, much more about this book began to make sense. Nucleation is a
When I learned after finishing this book that Kimberly Unger is a video game designer, much more about this book began to make sense. Nucleation is a science-fiction novel that wants to wow you with its video game–like aesthetic—this is a novel that craves the label of cinematic for its descriptions of how its protagonist virtually manipulates robots in another star system in high-stakes, high-pressure situations. Nevertheless, even if such moments capture your attention (I’m not sure, for me, that they did), they do very little to hide this story’s paucity of plot or character development. I got this for free from NetGalley and Tachyon Publications, but that isn’t going to stop me from being brutally honest here. Nucleation is a snooze-fest. We open in space. Helen is virtually manipulating a robot in another star system from the comfort of her job back here on Earth. She and her partner run into a problem, and Unger unfolds what should be a nail-biting scene of intense action … except she holds it for too long before pulling us out and giving us enough exposition to understand what’s going on. This opening chapter drags on past its expiry date, establishing what becomes a theme throughout the book. Indeed, we’re a quarter of the way through the book before we’ve even moved past the inciting force, and well over halfway through before the main conflict really picks up steam. The urgency Unger wants us to feel when Helen is in her coffin, doing her virtual OP stuff, is nowhere within the scenes outside the coffin. With that being said, this next critique might seem contradictory: this book is way too focused on its main plot. Seriously, though, the cast of characters here is slim, the sets are like something from a budget cable TV show, and the scenes are so restricted in scope I started to chafe. I think we get like … two parts of the book that take place outside of Helen’s work—a wake at a bar, and then later on in a hospital. Otherwise, all the scenes (not counting the parts in space, obvs) take place on the Far Reaches campus. Helen barely interacts with anyone outside of her team—and yes, Unger handwaves this because Helen is “sequestered” along with the rest of her team, fine. But even her interactions with other members of her team don’t work for me. Pretty much the only downtime we get are meals that actually serve as a chance for some exposition. Meanwhile, Helen herself seems to have a single mood (“damn you all, I’m just trying to do my job while you’ve got one arm tied behind my back!”) without much range. She’s got depth but it’s like … not used. She gets stuck in that emotional feedback loop (probably because we don’t get to see her breathe, as discussed above), so focused on this single plot that takes too long to develop anyway. I wasn’t interested. I didn’t care about her beyond a base level of empathy. This is all so unfortunate, because the science fictional premise of this story has legs! Tiny robot swarms in another system, building jump gates and possibly making first contact with alien robot swarms? Yes, sign me up for this adventure! Wait, you’re going to make me read repetitive chapter and repetitive chapter without really advancing the plot or telling me more until the very end of the book, in the hope that hey, I’ll stick around for book 2? Eject. Eject. Eject. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Nov 03, 2020
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Nov 04, 2020
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Nov 03, 2020
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Kindle Edition
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| 0385692382
| 9780385692380
| 4.51
| 3,323
| Mar 26, 2019
| Mar 26, 2019
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it was amazing
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You ever read a book and have an epiphany, only for that epiphany to evaporate before you get around to writing it down or telling others? I think tha
You ever read a book and have an epiphany, only for that epiphany to evaporate before you get around to writing it down or telling others? I think that happened here—I think one of Alicia Elliott’s essays in A Mind Spread Out on the Ground inspired an epiphany regarding my relationship with poetry … yet I have totally forgotten the thought now! I even paged through the book again to see if I could recover it. Nope. Maybe one day it will return. I was drawn to this book by Elliott’s social media presence and some of her other writing online, such as this superb article for Chatelaine about 1492 Land Back Lane and Canada’s ongoing colonialism. Elliott’s writing balances past and present tense in a way that helps us connect how the colonial actions of the past reverberate into the colonial present Indigenous people are experiencing today. A Mind Spread Out on the Ground is a very personal collection of essays. Its title comes from a translation of a Mohawk word that roughly means depression, and a great deal of this book is concerned with the effects of colonialism on Elliott and her family. Yet the essays transcend colonialism, and as Elliott mentions in “Not Your Noble Savage,” she does not want to be pigeonholed as “just” an Indigenous writer. I really appreciate the nuance on display in these essays. For example, Elliott’s parents often appear in her writing. She makes it very clear that she thinks of them fondly—yet at the same time, her childhood and teenage years are full of moments of tension, abuse, even violence. We are so prone to simplifying people in our lives into single stories—a parent is either loving or abusive, rather than loving and abusive. Elliott rejects the dichotomy and displays both the loving moments and the darker ones. Moreover, her intention here isn’t to excuse these contrasts or to show that she has worked through and somehow processed and come to understand all of this. Rather, she admits to us that it can be difficult to fully puzzle out the way we react to, understand, and respond to the people closest to us. Within these pages you’re going to find what you expect: the violence Canada does to Indigenous people (especially Indigenous women), the nasty fallout of racism both systemic and targeted, the pain that comes with uprooting and re-rooting oneself and one’s family and—for Elliott is light-skinned enough to “pass” as non-Indigenous—feeling like one never quite belongs anywhere. However, you will also find the moments that are often erased from Indigenous experiences that make it to the mainstream: the moments of joy—particularly when Elliott is talking about her husband and child; the moments of triumph; the moments of honesty. As she mentions herself in several essays, we place Indigenous writers in boxes. We elevate those who conform to what we expect an Indigenous writer to write, and we find reasons to ignore and erase those whose writing breaks out of those boxes. So as a settler, what I take away from this collection is that reminder that I have to be careful about how I approach the Indigenous storytelling that makes it into mainstream CanLit. (Joseph Boyden’s meteoric rise and subsequent fall from grace is perhaps the textbook case for this issue.) I must do my best to check my preconceptions at the door, not to laud something merely because it meets some subconscious checklist for Indigeneity, nor to reject something from an Indigenous author merely because of its departure from that unspoken norm. And then more generally, I just valued Elliott’s candidness. The way she spoke about her traumas, about her difficulty navigating both the racism and the misogyny of modern Canada. Hers is a life so very distinctive from mine, by dint of so many axes of experience and identity. I appreciate being able to hear her stories and briefly glimpse my country through her eyes, so I can better understand how it is failing other women less privileged than me, how it is failing Indigenous people, how it is silent about survivors of abuse and assault, and how the very structures—such as public education and childwelfare—we supposedly put in place to protect our most vulnerable turn into the most oppressive, most inequitable parts of our society for some. A Mind Spread Out on the Ground is many moments of intensity punctuated by poetical prose and thoughtful ways of weaving facts and education about this country’s colonial attitudes into very personal stories. My mind is not spread out on the ground after reading this, but you can bet that it is buzzing with ideas and interest sparked by Elliott’s essays. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Oct 25, 2020
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Oct 26, 2020
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Oct 25, 2020
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0732259320
| 9780732259327
| 3.90
| 5,194
| 1998
| Jan 01, 1998
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it was ok
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This is a marked improvement over the first book in this trilogy, but that isn’t saying much. Pilgrim is very much Drago’s redemption story, and Sara
This is a marked improvement over the first book in this trilogy, but that isn’t saying much. Pilgrim is very much Drago’s redemption story, and Sara Douglass is determined that we care for him as a person and a hero. And you know what? I think she might actually succeed. Not because Drago is all that great, but because our choice of other heroes is … not great. Axis and Azhure (well, to be fair, mostly just Axis in this book) continue to be the literal worst. WolfStar is awful. Caelum is, for reasons I won’t spoiler, not really in the picture on this one. StarDrifter and Zenith kind of get relegated to supporting roles, and the human princes are basically non-entities. Nope, folx, it is definitely the Drago and Faraday Show. The Timekeeper Demons are loose in Tencendor. Their plan? Gotta collect ’em all. Except instead of Pokémon, they need to travel to each of the 4 magical lakes and retrieve a part of their evil uber-colleague, Queteb. Once they’ve reassembled and reanimated him, they’ll be unstoppable! Until then, they are limited to each having sway over a specific span of hours in the day—during which time anyone not in shade can be mind-controlled and turned into a raving lunatic/zombie thing. I don’t think I’ve discussed how ridiculous the Timekeeper Demons are, so let’s pause and reflect on that. They are Metaphor Demons, in the sense that each represents a certain negative trait—despair, hunger, etc. Their personalities, however, leave much to be desired, and any time we spend with them makes me think of them as petty, squabbling children. This is the problem with personifying your nigh-unstoppable mystical forces: they feel small. Meanwhile, everyone is engaged in a race against time. The Demons are racing to the lakes. WolfStar is trailing them because he wants to reanimate Niah the same way the Demons plan to reanimate Queteb. What happens with WolfStar and Niah both … well … let’s just say, Douglass’ fascination with strange sex/sexual violenc stuff reaches new levels in Pilgrim. And that’s in addition to Zenith quite literally complaining that she is too disgusted by the idea of sleeping with her grandfather, StarDrifter, and how much that sucks because she really wants to sleep with him. And everyone is all, “Ooooh, Zenith, don’t worry, you’ll get over and it then the two of you can boink like proper SunSoars” and I just … I can’t. I can’t. This book goes beyond kink into a very uncomfortable place. I mentioned in my intro that Axis continues to Axis it up all over the place. Without spoiling things, suffice it to say that he is the oldest person I have ever seen to throw a temper tantrum. He would rather kill Drago on sight than admit that Drago might have a role to play in saving the entire world. Axis is the epitome of fragile, toxic masculinity—he always has been, right from Book 1, but whereas the original trilogy was about his growth into a hero, this trilogy seems determined to cast him as a crabby, closed-minded old man. And then we have Faraday. I fucking loved Faraday in this book, because Faraday is tired of your bullshit. Faraday is not having it anymore. She has spent 4 books being put through the wringer, being killed and transformed and assaulted and married off and basically told what to do for every major decision in her life, and she is done. She majestically and quite rightfully rejects all notions of destiny in Pilgrim, and it is the best part of this book. Finally, let’s talk about Drago. In the original trilogy he was a minor villain, an instigator of a plot to kill the baby Caelum so he could be the StarSon. His face turn is perhaps the most surprising aspect of this second trilogy, and Pilgrim works hard to explore that. Despite all my other criticisms of Douglass’ writing and storytelling, I will hand it to her: she does a good job here. Drago doesn’t suddenly embrace his new role, doesn’t immediately step up and say, “Yes, now I am the hero! Hahaha.” He struggles with it, much like Axis struggles with the idea, because Drago too has spent 40 years being told he is the worst person alive. So it makes sense that he needs to adjust to the new reality. Oh, and there is a lot of magic happening. Those races against time? They involve discovering magical secrets, magical sanctuaries, etc. This might seem like a weird remark for a fantasy series, but … sometimes I feel like The Wayfarer Redemption has too much magic. Like, everything and everyone in this book is mysterious and magical, and it’s likely one reason that this book is over 700 pages long. More importantly, when everything is magical, nothing is magical; if magic becomes the norm, if ordinary physics and logistics cease to matter to your storytelling, then you fall down a very deep rabbithole of handwavery. Douglass in particular seems fixated on closure and the idea that every character, every loose end, must be accounted for, wrapped up, tied off, and connected (Urbeth’s secret identity, revealed in this story, is a prime example). Yet I would argue that one of the most powerful actions a writer can take is to leave some mystery, leave some questions unanswered—not in a way that creates inconsistencies or continuity errors, and hopefully not in a way that leaves readers unsatisfied. Rather, leave enough room for interpretation and speculation and doubt, because that’s what keeps our brains hooked on your world. Pilgrim actually has some worthwhile moments in it. But it is buried beneath a torrent of weird violence, sex, and substandard storytelling. I have one more book in this series to go, and then I will be happy to draw a line beneath these books forevermore. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Oct 17, 2020
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Oct 18, 2020
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Oct 18, 2020
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Mass Market Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| unknown
| 4.39
| 18
| unknown
| Apr 03, 2017
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liked it
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I picked this up several years ago and am finally diving into it. It’s not what I expected—I was looking for something with essays, including personal
I picked this up several years ago and am finally diving into it. It’s not what I expected—I was looking for something with essays, including personal essays, but this includes a lot more poems and other, shorter and more artistic pieces. IMPACT: Colonialism in Canada is an anthology that makes quite a statement. If it’s what you’re looking for, it’s going to satisfy. In my case, it wasn’t quite what I wanted, but don’t interpret that as a bad thing. Let’s talk about storytelling and colonialism. When my ancestors came to this land that has become Canada, we set out to take away the stories. English and French became the lingua franca. Residential schools and other strategies separated Elders from youth and broke the line of oral storytelling that had been unbroken from time immemorial. Don’t practise your arts. Don’t dance your dances or sing your songs. Don’t tell your stories. I think a lot about the fact that so many stories by or about Indigenous people are told in English or French rather than their original languages. IMPACT is a book that meditates on this by telling us stories, personal and political and old and new, in an attempt to help demonstrate the wide-ranging effect of colonialism. Yes, you will get stories in here about residential schools and other more “obvious” signifiers of colonization. But you also get stories about fitting in. About being an Indigenous woman. About food and family and love and hatred and the difficulty of navigating growing old in a country that doesn’t often treat you like you are human. This is not an academic book, and that’s probably a good thing. If you don’t want academic discussions of colonialism; if you want personal and emotional connections through poetry and song and careful reflection, you’ll get it here. I think the average Canadian wouldn’t do much wrong picking up this book. That generality, that lack of focus in its attempt to include so many voices and conceptions of the effects of colonialism, ultimately is why I didn’t enjoy this as much as I could. That is not a problem with this book, just an incompatibility with what I want: I want to read more focused books about colonialism, books that discuss the impact of colonialism within specific spheres. So if you are looking for depth rather than breadth, you should keep looking. IMPACT is a nice little anthology, but its appeal is for the general, not the specific. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Oct 14, 2020
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Oct 15, 2020
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Oct 15, 2020
| ||||||||||||||||
| 0593199308
| 9780593199305
| 4.44
| 19,661
| Sep 29, 2020
| Sep 29, 2020
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did not like it
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**spoiler alert** You should read my review of Peace Talks before you read this review. Also, I don’t know how to talk about this book without spoiler
**spoiler alert** You should read my review of Peace Talks before you read this review. Also, I don’t know how to talk about this book without spoilers. So if you want a spoiler-free review: Battle Ground is a flawed attempt to give fans of the Dresden Files the climax Butcher thinks they want, but it falls short. There are definitely crowning moments of awesome, low moments, and the thoughtful moments we have come to expect. Spoilers from hereon out. Seriously, you have been warned. Battle Ground picks up quite literally where Peace Talks ended. This is kind of what happens when you split a book in twain because it has grown too large. Harry Dresden and his reluctant allies are facing off against Ethniu, the Last Titan, and an army of Fomor intent on destroying and conquering Chicago. We are told over and over that this is it, this is the biggest, baddest apocalypse to come since Storm Front. And, to be fair, it definitely is. People are comparing this to Avengers: Endgame because of its huge battle against a single, uber-powerful opponent and the assembly of so many characters from previous books. I get it. There is definitely a Marvel vibe here—but I haven’t seen Endgame, so instead let’s talk about Deadpool. Because Harry definitely has that kind of sarcastic, fourth-wall-breaking attitude that Ryan Reynolds brought so well to the screen. I’ve always enjoyed Harry’s snark, of course, along with his introspection into whether or not he has become a monster. But here’s the problem with trying to keep it going in the midst of a novel that is 100% battle. It gets old. Harry spends the book literally racing from one confrontation to the next. Each confrontation is supposedly bigger or badder than the last. Yet you can only say, “This was like nothing I had ever seen before!” so many times before it starts to wear thin. Butcher attempts to keep raising the stakes, but it feels like a sliding scale: suddenly the baddies from the first confrontation are easily being slaughtered by volunteers with shotguns, because the next set of baddies is even more powerful and more invulnerable. All the while, there is no sense of momentum to the plot, because we know what the climax has to be: Harry squaring off with Ethniu, trying to bind her. The rest of the book is literally filler until Butcher can bring us to that moment. I’m not saying nothing important happens. But I’m not happy about the important happenings. First, can we talk about how an entire book passes without nary a mention of Thomas? He was such a big part of Peace Talks! And sure, Harry has a lot on his mind tonight as he tries to save Chicago. But Butcher could at least have thrown us a bone—there is a coda called “Christmas Eve” that is supposed to be charming and heartwarming, but all I can think is, “It’s already Christmas and you haven’t saved Thomas yet???” He doesn’t even rate a mention then. Huge spoiler coming up soon, by the way. If you thought I was exaggerating earlier about spoilers, you are wrong and should stop reading now. Second, Harry’s excommunication from the White Council makes sense, and I am on board for that. However, I don’t understand the hostility from people like Ebenezar. Here’s what I mean: Ebenezar presumably knows Harry’s secret path, the whole starborn chosen one bullshit that I really wish weren’t in the background of this series. He and others, including Harry’s faerie godmother, have manipulated and shaped Harry’s life from birth onwards. Now he has the gall to turn around and chastise Harry for seeking power, chastise Harry for getting into bed with the fae, chastise Harry for his choices? You set Harry up for this, my dude. I mean, I guess Butcher is trying to support Harry’s contention that most wizards are hypocritical asshats who wouldn’t know an apology if one dropped on them from the sky. But it’s one thing for Ebenezar to support a political censure of Harry and quite another for him to be so incredibly rude to his grandson like that. Third, of course, is the unfair, unjust, terrible death of Karrin Murphy. (I warned you about spoilers.) Karrin Murphy dies because Randolph’s poor trigger discipline means his gun accidentally goes off and shoots her. Yeah. Murph dies from a stray bullet. The book seems embarrassed by this, because later it attempts the shittiest, laziest retcon within a book I’ve ever seen and tries to reframe her death as an honourable on that happened after slaying a Jotun. Seriousy, I felt gaslit and actually had to flip back and re-traumatize myself with her death a second time to confirm how it actually goes down. So, no, Murphy does not sacrifice herself to die a hero’s death. Even if she did, I couldn’t get behind this because one of the axioms of the Dresden Files is that Karrin Murphy does not die. She is our badass normal. She is Harry’s anchor to the mortal world that he is increasingly being pulled away from. One could argue, based on that point, that Murphy must die, that it’s thematically necessary in order to deepen Harry’s separation from mortality. After all, they just almost hooked up in Peace Talks; we can’t have Harry ever being happy, can we? Gotta kill the woman then! Look, others have written extensively at the misogyny within this series, so I won’t rehash all that. But the women of this series do not get treated well, Murphy no exception, and insisting her death is a necessary plot device is an extension of that misogynistic dehumanization. (Let’s not even mention that, after spending most of Peace Talks disabled as a result of the events of Skin Game, Murphy magically gets a boost that lets her fight tonight thanks to some handwavery from Butcher so she doesn’t have to sit this out and, you know, survive.) It would be hyperbolic to say that Murphy was the only good thing left in his series—Mouse and Maggie are pretty sweet. Nevertheless, whatever my qualms or reservations about certain developments in this series, Murphy was always there as a touchstone. Solid Murphy. Mortal Murphy. Love interest Murphy. Now she is gone and Butcher better fucking not cheapen that by bringing her back but you know he’s going to and oh my god am I hate-reading this series now? I think I might be hate-reading this series now. For a long time, I have praised the Dresden Files for the way it has gradually built out its mythos over these 17 books and some short stories. That is an achievement for which I am happy to praise Butcher. Where did it go wrong? I don’t think I can point to a specific book. Almost certainly things were going awry by Proven Guilty, what with Harry’s creepy relationship to Molly. But rather than lay the blame at any particular book’s doorstep, I’d rather critique the general storytelling decisions Butcher has made throughout the series. After 20 years, he has matured and improved as a writer, but he has also wrapped himself up in an incredibly complex continuity and demonstrated a devotion to the idea of “epicness.” This has always been at odds with the urban fantasy genre, particularly those books wherein the majority of the mortal world is unaware of the supernatural. Perhaps that tension, then, between the series’ epicness and its urban fantasy roots, has been one of the reasons it is so successful. On the other hand, this obsession with epicness is unhealthy. While there is nothing wrong with wanting to tell epic stories, there is also nothing wrong with searching for small stories that matter as well. I think that’s why Skin Game worked so well for me. Although the scale of its setting was epic, at its core it was a return to the original Dresden Files format of small plot, big ideas: Harry was pulling off a heist. That’s cool. Harry defending Chicago from a Titan alongside most of the supernatural world? That’s epic, but it isn’t as interesting, because we’ve lost the intimacy of the plot along the way. Battle Ground did what Peace Talks couldn’t, I guess … it has quashed what love I had for this series. Don’t get me wrong … I still appreciate and adore this series. I’m going to keep its books on my shelves, and if someone asks, I will recommend it (with caveats). But we have outgrown Dresden Files. There are newer series, newer authors, that strive for far more creative, original, breathtaking acts of storytelling. I don’t fault this series for being what it is, but like many book series I started reading as a child or a teen, I have grown and changed while it has largely remained the same. When that happens, you know it’s time to move on. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
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Oct 12, 2020
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Oct 13, 2020
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Oct 13, 2020
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| 4.13
| 44,803
| Sep 21, 1998
| Sep 03, 1999
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As someone who is interested in the history of colonialism, I was very intrigued when I learned of this book about the Belgian exploitation of Congo—o
As someone who is interested in the history of colonialism, I was very intrigued when I learned of this book about the Belgian exploitation of Congo—or should I say, King Leopold's exploitation? For indeed, it’s one thing to read about British or French colonization elsewhere, or to hear the famous phrase “Scramble for Africa,” and another entirely to be reminded that the creation, colonization, and exploitation of Congo and the peoples therein was initially driven by a single man. Yet Adam Hochschild is careful not to fall prey to Great Man Theory: he argues that Leopold was the primary visionary behind creating Congo, yes, but the atrocities that were implemented in his name were the result of centuries of a system of white supremacy designed to enslave Indigenous peoples for their land and resources. King Leopold’s Ghost is as much about the complicity of Europe as it is about one man’s avarice for Africa. This is quite a rich book in terms of information. Roughly chronological, Hochschild establishes Leopold’s motivations for colonizing Congo while also diving into the lives of some of the more prominent people in this story—Henry Morton Stanley, George Sheppard, etc. He provides enough context for us to understand what the world was like in the late 1800s when this went down: most of the world had been colonized, or at least “discovered” and claimed, by one of several European powers, with Britain still leading as the empire on which the sun never set. The brave days of exploration were seemingly over—yet the so-called dark continent of Africa continued to beckon. Leopold became an expert at enticing explorers like Stanley, diplomats, and businessmen to act as his proxies in Africa. He provided the nudge that sent thousands of people trekking into jungles, portaging up rivers and through mountains, ultimately succumbing to sickness or violence or worse. Hochschild balances this tale of last-ditch exploration with a sobre reflection on the de facto use of slavery in African colonies. Towards the end of the book, as he gives a final accounting of the atrocities in Congo, the lives lost, etc., he points out that Congo is not an exception to Africa—rather, it is just a particularly poignant example of the rule. Although slavery was theoretically abolished in most countries by this time, that didn’t stop white people from forcing Africans to serve as militia, harvest rubber, or otherwise labour for the good of empire. King Leopold’s Ghost is careful not to over-simplify history, particularly when it comes to atrocities. He also presents, lucidly and logically, the case for how economic imperatives drove these exploitative and inhumane practices. Often when we talk about racism, we think about it as highly personal (you were being racist to her) or abstract (ugh, that policy is so racist). What we forget is that there is a reason behind racist policies—exclusion and discrimination is often driven by the need to make subjugation and exploitation more palatable, more acceptable. Hochschild is quite detail-oriented. At times I found his presentation of minutiae to be less interesting than some of the larger picture he was portraying. Yet as Hochschild himself acknowledges, when faced with large numbers and statistics, we are often overwhelmed. Only by burying us in a plethora of anecdotes and records can he hope to help touch us through the human plights he unveils. It’s one thing to tell me 6 million people died; it’s another to show me photos of women tied to stakes as hostages while their husbands collect rubber, or for a grisly recounting of what happened to one African man who tried to travel to testify before an inquiry into the Congo atrocities. In addition to exposing the human cost of colonialism, Hochschild draws a clear line from Leopold to the present day situation in Africa. We say that those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it, and I’m not sure that is true—we are awfully good at coming up with new ways of being terrible. Nevertheless, if we don’t learn history, we won’t understand why things are the way they currently are, and that leaves us at a great disadvantage. The current issues in many African countries are a direct result of the colonialism of the late 1800s—after all, most of those countries wouldn’t exist in their present form had it not been for the Berlin Conference and other such fun “let us draw the map for you” moments. We (white people) literally created this mess, and it is ignorant at best and disingenuous at worst to say we should turn around and make African peoples sort it out and figure it out on their own. That being said, drowing their countries in debt they can’t ever pay back while we continue to extract massive amounts of conflict minerals to build more iPhones is … well, it’s not a good look. At the end of the day, this is a necessary book. It is not a sexy book, or a happy book, or a book with much in the way of good news. But it is a necessary book. I would recommend it to anyone who considers themselves even casually a student of world history, anyone who wants to compare notes versus what was done here in Canada, or in the States, or South America or Australia. The language changes but the song is the same, and it will never truly end until we decide to abandon the instruments of exploitation that play it. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
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Oct 04, 2020
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Oct 08, 2020
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Oct 04, 2020
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Kindle Edition
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| 4.01
| 1,925
| Sep 22, 2020
| Sep 22, 2020
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really liked it
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Last year, I read the BuzzFeed article that inspired this book, and Rebecca and I discussed this topic in an episode of our podcast. I didn’t learn th
Last year, I read the BuzzFeed article that inspired this book, and Rebecca and I discussed this topic in an episode of our podcast. I didn’t learn that Anne Helen Petersen had turned her article into a book until just around the publication day. Fortunately, I was still able to receive a review copy through NetGalley! I was very excited to dig into this book. Although in some ways this book could never have completely satisfied me—more on that later—Petersen nevertheless lays out many interesting ideas, theories, data points, anecdotes, and just in general a wealth of information that helps to describe, untangle, and name the systemic issue of overwork that plagues our society. I saw much of myself and my fellow millennials in Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, and it is one wild ride. So first thing first: yes, I am a millennial. Petersen defines millennial as anyone born between 1981 and 1996, and even if you quibble with those boundary conditions, I am firmly planted in 1989. So I describe myself as a “middle millennial”: I have no memory of the ’80s, unlike Petersen, but I was already a teenager by the time the web, and then social media, became mainstream. So I kind of have an interesting perspective of being exposed to a variety of the phenemona Petersen describes here—for one of her points is that your experience as a millennial can still differ quite a great deal depending on when within the generation you were born, as well as where, of course, and in what conditions. Petersen acknowledges the influences of race and class on upbringing; she carefully notes how the people she has interviewed describe themselves (white, Black, mixed race, Latina, etc.) and where possible she includes studies that focus on the additional disparities visited upon people of colour. As she says in her introduction, we have a tendency to associate the millennial stereotype with whiteness, even though, statistically, a great proportion of millennials in the United States are not white. A few other things about me: I am white, and I live in Canada, not the States. Some of what Petersen examines doesn’t apply to us in exactly the same way—we don’t worry about paying for health insurance, for example, although our so-called universal healthcare doesn’t actually cover everything, and many of us do worry about paying for glasses, dentist visits, etc. I also feel very privileged, because unlike many of my millennial cohort, I have fallen into a relatively stable teaching job, and I bought a house at the age of 28. Yet I am not immune to burnout. As Petersen points out, burnout is a systemic monster: you can avoid it, for a time, with care and self-care—more often than not, however, it creeps up on you all the same. Much of what she describes was not new to me. I do not need to be convinced of capitalism’s rapacious demands for people to work more, more, more, despite the evidence that working less, less, less actually might make us more productive. Similarly, the additional burdens that fall on women (particularly mothers) don’t surprise me. (I would have loved for Petersen to talk about trans people at some point, but I suspect this omission is more due to the lack of data on this subject than an oversight—she seems to be pretty inclusive.) So, for many readers who are keeping up with the issues and the times, Can’t Even is a lot of “already knew.” So why did I find it so compelling? First, there are definitely things I didn’t know or consider. One of the early chapters discusses the effects of boomer parenting on millennials, and it was quite mind-blowing. Petersen points to a movement from free-range parenting to concerted cultivation and draws a link between this parenting style and adult millennials’ tendencies to overschedule ourselves, to feel like we are never doing enough, and to conflate busy-ness with success or worth. It made me reflect on my own upbringing, and I realize now that my parents gave me a lot of time and space to do my own thing; they seldom pressured me to take certain paths or think about my resume. I believe, now that I’ve read this book, that I owe my parents a lot more for my “chill” attitude than I thought! Second, even for the parts that sounded familiar to me, Petersen includes compelling data and anecdotes that provide depth. She discusses intersections. She emphasizes that burnout is systemic, not personal. This is the most important yet also the hardest part of this book. When I told Rebecca I was reading this, she said, “I hope she gives solutions too.” That is, we both hoped that Petersen can offer some alternatives, some ways to fix burnout. The truth is that this book is short on solutions. As Petersen points out, individual fixes are temporary at best. You can seldom beat the system. To be fair, however, Can’t Even makes it clear that we can change the system for the better. Better healthcare that isn’t tied to your job. More time off for new parents—more support for parents (like childcare) in general—and a more frank discussion of unequal parenting and household responsibilities. Stop defining yourself by how much you work, and stop looking down at people for taking it easy. This past summer, as I lay on my deck reading a book and drinking tea, I told a couple of friends that this is how I want to pass my days. I don’t particularly care if my name is ever recorded in some book with a contribution to society. I want to live well, and be good, and of course I would like to advocate and agitate for change—but I can do that in a collective way. At the end of the day, I want people to remember me as that mellow girl who was there when you needed her. I want to read good books, and have good conversations with interesting people, and live my life for myself instead of for the enrichment of others. I know—typical, entitled millennial. But if we are going to fix the culture of burnout, we have to begin by rejecting generational stereotypes. Millennials might be the “burnout generation,” but Petersen freely acknowledges that every generation is susceptible to burnout. We do not have a monopoly on it—rather, we get the distinction of that label because ours is the generation that has so solidly ingrained it into the capitalist culture of the United States. Hence, Can’t Even is not an anti-boomer, pro-millennial polemic. Rather, it’s a diagnosis of an inter-generational problem that is everyone’s responsibility to fix. This book is a mirror for millennials but an important read for anyone, regardless of age. Brush aside the stereotypes, and listen to the stories and the data. I do not like the cover image at all. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
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Oct 2020
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Oct 03, 2020
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Oct 01, 2020
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| 1250159474
| 9781250159472
| 3.66
| 179
| Jul 14, 2020
| Jul 14, 2020
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liked it
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Ever since I was a child, space has captivated my imagination. I love space. I love space science. I love science fiction. I have literally spent mont
Ever since I was a child, space has captivated my imagination. I love space. I love space science. I love science fiction. I have literally spent months of my life by this point, I would estimate, with the crews of the various starships Enterprise, Voyager, and the station Deep Space Nine. Yet never have I really had much desire to go to space. It seems like a cold, forbidding place, and the cost of getting there—monetarily, but also physically, is so much! Also, I’m a tall witch (192 cm), so they’d probably take one look at me, laugh as they visualized stuffing me into a launch capsule, and then pass. Kate Greene, on the other hand, has at least entertained what it would be like to be an astronaut. While she never quite achieved that dream, she came close by participating in a HI-SEAS experiment to live in isolation with five other astronaut-like people. For four months, they ran experiments and simulated living in a habitat on Mars. Then she wrote about it, including for this book. I received an ARC from St. Martin’s Press in return for a review. Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars starts strong. I really love Greene’s awareness of and appreciation for the history of spaceflight. She weaves this history, along with personal anecdotes, throughout the book. Greene gets it in a way that some people don’t; as I read, I felt like we were speaking the same language. She describes her excitement and fascination for not just space itself but learning all about the people and projects who go to space, and I can dig that. Organizationally, however, this book leaves much to be desired. Each chapter includes tidbits of Greene’s time participating in HI-SEAS. Yet these seem merely to function as launch pads for ruminations on larger issues, like climate change, or to discuss other aspects of the history of spaceflight. Sometimes Greene discusses her personal life, from having a brother who lives with a significant disability to the breakdown of her marriage. I like personal stories as much as the next person, cool—but I went into this book thinking I would hear more about Greene’s experience living “on Mars,” and I feel like I barely heard about that. She never fails to return to the HI-SEAS mission at least once a chapter, but it never seems to be the focus of the writing. And I could accept that, could live with it being merely a framework on which to craft essays, if the essays themselves were organized. But too often, I didn’t feel like Greene was making much of a point—or when she was making a point, it didn’t feel like something new and interesting to me. There is a related issue to this: Greene is constantly referring to books that are cooler than hers. At one point she’s diving deep into Scott Kelly’s book about spending a year in space. Another time she quotes extensively from Michael Collins’ book. Now look, I love intertextuality as much as the next English teacher. I love that she is referring to and building upon past discussions of spaceflight. Yet it happens in such a way that the thought honestly crossed my mind that I should just be reading those books, not this one. What, exactly, is Greene contributing to the conversation in these chapters? She was obviously very moved by her experience, and there are times she alludes quite directly to this idea. Still, for something so significant to her life, I was expecting … more. Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars is a book that lacks confidence in itself. It never really settles down into a formula that is fruitful or reliable. Overall, I did enjoy it. When Greene’s writing veers towards the interesting, it is quite interesting. But I’m not sure it will leave much of an impression, especially not about what it might be like to one day live on Mars. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
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Sep 17, 2020
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Sep 19, 2020
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Sep 17, 2020
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| 1137279842
| 9781137279842
| 3.49
| 709
| Jan 06, 2015
| Jan 06, 2015
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it was ok
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The origins of our numbers, of our decimal place value system, of our numerals, is certainly an interesting topic! After all, we take for granted that
The origins of our numbers, of our decimal place value system, of our numerals, is certainly an interesting topic! After all, we take for granted that we write numbers the way we do today—most of us learned Roman numerals as kids and quickly realize they are clunky and formidable as we try to write the year we were born (although anyone born after 2000 has a much easier time of it now!). But Amir Aczel was curious about the origins of our number system, and in particular its linchpin of zero. Finding Zero is his very personal story of searching for evidence that the earliest known use of what became our zero symbol was in what is now Cambodia. Aczel opens the book by describing his childhood aboard the cruise ship his father captained across the Mediterranean. Here, his father’s steward fostered a love of mathematics. Now, as a professor of mathematics in the United States, Aczel still dreamed of the origins of our numbers. Eventually he took a trip to India, which was basically the birthplace of the Arabic numerals we use today, to visit some of the oldest known examples of zero. Finally, he discovered the work of Georges Cœdès, an anthropologist who had previously noted the presence of a 0-like symbol in a Khmer inscription on a stele. The actual artifact, however, went missing during the Khmer Rouge’s destruction of Cambodia’s cultural history. Aczel’s story climaxes with his trip to Cambodia to find this artifact—if it still exists. Often when a writer includes personal anecdotes, it’s relatable and interesting. I can’t say the same for this book. I was so interested in hearing Aczel talk about the properties of zero and why it’s important, but I could have done without the discussion of his childhood, etc. While it’s ultimately his choice how he decides to tell this story, it isn’t satisfying to me, and it’s quite self-aggrandizing. Aczel seems to see himself as a mathematical Indiana Jones on an epic quest to find the first 0. This is less about his discovery and more about his discovery. I would be much more tolerant of that if the writing were better—to be clear, I don’t think Aczel is doing anything wrong by writing this in a memoir form. I applaud him for trying to make the history of mathematics into an intense, exciting quest. Similarly, this book sheds light on the bias of Western mathematicians, the way we have shunned or dismissed the contributions of Asian—particularly south Asian—mathematics. Aczel does his best to explain how the inscription fits into what was a vibrant, advanced culture; similarly, he asserts the importance of making sure that the inscription survives and remains in Cambodia. These are laudable attitudes. But honestly, there are better books about zero. Although 20 years old now, Charles Seife’s Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea remains my favourite book about this number. Seife certainly doesn’t go into the same level of detail that Aczel devotes to tracking the origin of the 0 symbol, that’s true. He basically attributes it to India and leaves it at that. Nevertheless, Seife’s book is so rich in history and ideas—and very well-written. Moreover, it’s worth noting that in the years since this book was published, the Bahkshali manuscript has been carbon dated. Aczel mentions this manuscript in his book—it contains some of the suspected earliest examples of a 0 symbol in India. At the time he wrote the book, no one had been allowed to extract samples from the manuscript to date it for fear of irreparably damaging the fragile artifact. I guess that changed, and the results are in: pars of the manuscript pre-date, by several centuries, the inscription Aczel rediscovered in Cambodia. So Finding Zero is also somewhat out of date in this respect. This is not a bad book, but it also isn’t one I would recommend. The mathematics are explored elsewhere in more detailed and interesting ways. And as much as I applaud Aczel’s adventurous spirit, I didn’t enjoy the way he told the story of his quest for the 0 symbol. I had hoped for a lot more here. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
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Sep 04, 2020
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Sep 06, 2020
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Sep 04, 2020
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Hardcover
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| 1784298891
| 9781784298890
| 3.99
| 1,852
| Sep 03, 2020
| Sep 03, 2020
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it was amazing
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Just absolutely devastating. But of course, I have come to expect that of Louise O’Neill. After two brilliant forays into young adult novels, both well Just absolutely devastating. But of course, I have come to expect that of Louise O’Neill. After two brilliant forays into young adult novels, both well worth a read, O’Neill brought her unstinting criticism of patriarchy to her first adult novel Almost Love in the best and most scathing way possible. After the Silence is a more-than-worthy second adult novel. While both have passing similarities—depictions of emotional abuse, gaslighting, male partners treating women poorly—O’Neill looks at these issues from an entirely different angle. She forces us to confront not the darkest parts of relationships (particularly with men); rather she forces us to confront the greyest parts, the parts we seldom talk about because to admit they are present would be to admit our entire model of romance is broken. Hopefully the description of the book is enough, but in case it isn’t, seriously, massive trigger warnings for partner abuse, gaslighting, controlling and manipulative behaviour, murder, etc. I struggled with this at times, and I have never had a romantic relationship, let alone a toxic or abusive one—I can only imagine how triggering this book would be for some people who have, and you should really, really think hard about whether you want to expose yourself to that before you read this. But to be clear: if you are up for it, After the Silence is a stone-cold masterpiece. On one level, this is a psychological thriller. A documentary crew arrives on the small island of Inisrún. They are investigating the unsolved murder of Nessa Crowley, who ten years ago was found dead during a party on the storm-embattled island. The islanders blame Henry Kinsella and, by association, his wife Keelin, who is our protagonist. As the story progresses, we must wonder whether or not Henry is guilty—and if so, is Keelin covering for him, an unreliable narrator?—or if the mystery goes deeper. In actuality, Henry is guilty of many other things—whether or not he is the murderer is not something I will spoil. Do not expect a simple thriller here though. Almost from page one, O’Neill makes it clear that the psychology in this psychological thriller is far more focused on Keelin Kinsella’s relationship with Henry. The brutality of O’Neill’s depiction of abuse is in its very mediocrity. Keelin, having left a physically abusive husband and subsequently trained as a domestic violence counsellor, believes she knows what abuse is. So when Henry begins to control her, to encourage her not to leave Inisrún, cut her off from her credit cards, her phone, her friends, medicate her—all “for her own good”—and because he does it gradually enough, Keelin doesn’t see what’s going on. Or maybe she does, but she is too afraid to acknowledge it. Because you can’t forget the death of Nessa Crowley. You can’t forget the way it ostracized the Kinsellas, and how, against such opposition, they would necessarily feel the need for solidarity. So not only might Keelin feel like she can’t run—she also doesn’t really have anywhere to run to. If you’re anything like me, you’ll turn these pages while your skin crawls, and you’ll want to yell at the book, as if it could transmit your words to Keelin: leave him, run, wake up and realize what he’s doing. Every moment of reading After the Silence is a visceral moment of feeling Keelin’s sense of swimming through lead. If that were it, if this book were just a portrayal of a woman being gaslit and manipulated by her husband in the decade following a murder, then the book would be good. But what makes this book sublime is how O’Neill connects the dots for us between Henry’s behaviour and our patriarchal society. I think there is room to read Henry’s behaviour in two ways. On the one hand, he knows exactly what he is doing: he is the mastermind, the manipulator, cunningly controlling his wife for his own ends. On the other hand, I prefer the idea that Henry is somewhat oblivious to the harm in his behaviour—that is to say, he is not naive and he knows that he is good at manipulating people, but he genuinely believes that this is what love is. We see this throughout the book. He uses all the right phrases, condemns obvious incidents of sexism, tells Keelin she needs to listen to him “express his feelings” because isn’t communication important in a relationship? Henry is the epitome of the woke misogynist. This is the true danger lurking at the heart of After the Silence. The problem is not the women who are abused. And without trying to excuse individual responsibility, the men who are the abusers are a symptom of the ultimate problem: our society enables abuse, particularly the abuse of women at the hands of male partners. It does this in multiple ways. Some are pretty obvious when you think about it—the way abused people can so easily be isolated in an age where we all seem connected at the hip through our phones, the victim-blaming and lack of supports to people who actually leave their situation of abuse. But most of th ways our society enables abuse are far more pernicious, and Henry is a textbook case. This is particularly evident towards the end, when we hear more about his backstory. No one taught Henry how to have a healthy relationship. He learned bad lessons, built atop a tower of white and male privilege. In Henry’s mind, his love for Keelin justifies how he behaves towards her, because our society teaches men that to love a woman is to want to control her, to put her on a pedestal, to bind her to you so that you can admire her and praise her—but on your terms and in a way that can never threaten your own success. Just think back to the vast majority of romances and romantic comedies with these kinds of messages. Echoes of this theme abound throughout the book. Consider how Nessa and her two sisters were mythologized as the beautiful, slightly alien Crowley Girls. From an early age, we teach girls—intentionally and unintentionally—that their beauty is tied to their self worth. Nessa, even at 20, was still a very young, very inexperienced woman. She gets taken advantage of, not because she lacks agency, but because the messaging she received for the first two decades of her life have twisted that sense of agency. What we view as unacceptable she views as acceptable because it validates the messages we have told her for 20 years. Did Henry Kinsella kill Nessa Crowley? Does she ever get justice? You’ll have to read the book to find out! I won’t lie: it will be a difficult read, but it is so worthwhile. O’Neill engages me, gets me thinking about these issues, all while telling a deep, rich, dark story. This is the power of fiction at full strength; what would be dry or too stark when laid out in non-fiction becomes moving, terrifying, paramount when told through fiction’s lens. After the Silence is an abiding story of abuse, patriarchy, toxic masculinity, and the tolls that these take on women—up to and including their very lives. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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Oct 10, 2020
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Oct 12, 2020
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Aug 23, 2020
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Hardcover
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| 9781406366945
| 3.72
| 146
| Aug 06, 2020
| Aug 06, 2020
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really liked it
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Every writer with each novel hones their craft. One of my joys in writing reviews of each of an author’s novels, in the order they’ve been written, is
Every writer with each novel hones their craft. One of my joys in writing reviews of each of an author’s novels, in the order they’ve been written, is getting to see that development over time. (Meanwhile, my own review-writing skills have developed and changed over the years.) In Non Pratt’s case, Every Little Piece of My Heart showcases how her talents at characterization and particularly perspective have evolved over the years. With each novel, Pratt continues to tinker and imagine and play with how to tell stories from the point of view of diverse teenage characters. The result is invariably entertaining and poignant, and this latest book is no exception. Every Little Piece of My Heart shares superficial similarities with Unboxed , an earlier novella of Pratt’s. Both books involve a group of teens coming together as a result of the absence of someone common to all their lives. Whereas Unboxed was about recovering a time capsule the main characters had intentionally buried, however, Every Little Piece of My Heart is about discovering secrets and relationships that were, until recently, buried. Sophie is grieving the decay of her best friendship with Freya, who moved to Manchester in the middle of Year 11. She’s hyped to receive a package from Freya, except it’s more of a quest: within her package is another package, addressed to someone else Freya knew, and so on. This game of “pass the parcel” brings these characters together in a way that should be sweet but isn’t, because of course, this is a Non Pratt novel. Friendship has always been an important motif in Pratt’s work, which is perhaps one of the reasons her novels resonate with me. As an aromantic and asexual person, I am all about friendship being just as valuable and important as romance—and I think this is particularly true for teenagers, for that time in your life when (as I am given to understand) you are often making your first forays into sex/romance and prone to stumbling. Friends are the ones who are there to pick you up and help you figure out all the tough things happening while you are adrift on the sea of hormones and expected grades. Moreover, to me, books that talk about the end of a friendship—the heartbreak that comes with it—are so vital. So much is written about romantic break-ups, but friend break-ups—whether bombastic and sudden or quiet and gradual—deserve time in the spotlight too. Freya reminds me of Margo from Paper Towns (I haven’t read the book but I enjoyed the movie). Both are subversions of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope, and the theme of both stories entails the main characters understanding how they projected their expectations onto this person. Sophie realizes this later in the story, realizes that Freya was always performing—even with her; indeed, Sophie realizes she was performing right back. In this way, although we get flashbacks with and letters from Freya, she is more of an abstraction, an idea rather than a character. She is also the manipulator behind the event that drives this entire plot. I admire the deftness with which Pratt portrays this manipulation. On the one hand, this is the kind of adventure that is made for a YA novel: lost friend re-enters your life only to send you on a madcap quest that ingeniously helps you find your people. If Pratt had wanted to play this straight, it would have been fun and quirky and probably too sugary for me. Instead, Freya’s ingenious plan backfires, as the main characters resent the way they’ve been manipulated, and the letters she leaves each of them like so many little nuggets of truth and wisdom inspire ire rather than awe and appreciation. I love this, because it just so effectively subverts the movie trope of grand gestures working out perfectly as planned. Freya left, and we don’t ever fully get to hear her story, but her attempt to reach out and touch the lives of these friends one last time does not go as planned. She could have just picked up her phone or computer, called or texted or otherwise messaged everyone. But no, she had to make it a big thing, and the result is much messier and more complicated than she probably ever imagined it would be. So in this sense, I love the reactions that each character has to their encounter with the others. I love Sophie’s careful and deliberate way of setting out to prove to herself that her chronic illness will not define her. I love Winnie’s reaction to receiving a giant Pride flag as her present from Freya, the complicated relationship she has with her sexuality and her feelings about possibly coming out to others IRL. I love Lucas’ gradual realizations about how he has let others define his role in friendships. And I love Ryan’s slow and silent heartbreak. Finally, because not to mention her would be a crime, I love Sunny, Winnie’s sister and the only character not connected to Freya. Her presence as a foil for everyone else is so delightful, owing to her personality being about three times her stature, and she’s just a wonderful character for everyone else to play off of—at the same time, I like that Pratt gives her an arc as well. Does Freya’s plan work after all? Do these characters come together? I’m not going to spoil the ending (I love the ending, and particularly Sophie’s ending)—but I will give you the heads up that there is a welcome ambiguity here. It invites the reader not only to draw their own conclusions but to recall what it feels like, that potential hanging in the air when you are about to embark on a new relationship (or rekindle an old one), that hair-tingling sensation of excitement mixed with butterflies in the stomach. At least, I imagine that’s what people feel about romance, because it’s totally what I feel about friendship! I love that Pratt leaves us with Sophie having the option to take one of two paths, because either path is totally valid when we’re talking friendship. Plus, this is a way better Sophie’s choice than that other one! I want to conclude by discussing the last act of this book and the way Pratt chose to write the scenes therein. Although earlier in the novel we are treated to your conventional “teenage party scene,” the last act is an impromptu day trip, and what I love about it is that Pratt expertly portrays teenagers doing nothing much at all, which is something I would like to see more of in YA. Time passes in this book, conversations happen, clothes are wrecked, but if you pay close attention you quickly notice that this is all happening at the same time that nothing is really happening, and that really reminded me of my adolescence and the way that a day could feel incredibly significant in some ways yet, if someone asked me to look back and recount what I did, I wouldn’t have much of an answer. For fans of Non Pratt like my unabashed self, Every Little Piece of My Heart builds clearly and triumphantly on the themes and tropes that have percolated throughout her earlier works. From the messiness of real friendships to the fact that we seldom ever truly know someone, especially during the rocky years of adolescence, Every Little Piece of My Heart captures a small yet diverse slice of perspectives as it explores some of the most significant and important parts of adolescent life. I find myself so happy for these characters and what they’ve experienced yet also sad—particularly for Sophie—and my adult self layers atop that a kind of fatalistic awareness that … this is just how life is. For a reader closer to Sophie’s age, that feeling might instead just be one of deep sympathy and close identification. This is a book about realizing that sometimes the people you thought you were closest to will let you down in unimaginably mundane ways, and what you can do to pick up the pieces of yourself and move forward. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 20, 2020
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Aug 20, 2020
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Aug 20, 2020
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Paperback
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| 0451475577
| 9780451475572
| 3.83
| 560
| Feb 25, 2020
| Feb 25, 2020
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liked it
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Two years ago I picked up, on a whim, Sarah-Jane Stratford’s
Radio Girls
, and I fell in love. The book was the perfect blend of history, politics,
Two years ago I picked up, on a whim, Sarah-Jane Stratford’s
Radio Girls
, and I fell in love. The book was the perfect blend of history, politics, and feminism. I’m pleased to say that with Red Letter Days, Stratford has done it again. While the protagonists share some superficial qualities—both move from North America to Britain, both work in communications industries in some capacity, both become somewhat embroiled in espionage and skullduggery—Stratford has chosen a different era and a different set of problems for her heroines this time around. Although slow to start, Red Letter Days did win me over. Their stories told in parallel, the two protagonists are Phoebe Adler and Hannah Wolfson. Both Americans, Phoebe is a TV writer while Hannah is a TV producer. When Phoebe is blacklisted (for being accused of communist sympathies), she moves to London, where Hannah has been building her own production company—and hiring blacklisted Americans like Phoebe. The two must navigate the treacherous waters of the entertainment industry, sexism, sexual politics, and espionage. It’s quite the story. I just love Stratford choices of time periods! Just as I didn’t know much about the founding of the BBC, I know very little about McCarthy-era America—my history class in Canada tended to stop around World War II, and everything after that was, I guess, too modern. So while I was aware in general of McCarthyism and the Red Scare in the United States, Stratford brings it to life in an empathetic, dramatic way. Phoebe’s sudden and unexpected blacklisting is hard to swallow, and the merciless and cruel treatment she receives as a result might seem melodramatic and unrealistic to those of us who have grown up with more privileges and apparent freedoms. Yet is it really so unbelievable? Looking at the way people treat each other here and now, I don’t see all that much difference. As Phoebe observe in the book, people don’t change that much across history—certainly not within a century. These days we condemn people scurrilously over social media, and our governments continue to practise surveillance techniques that would make the HUAC drool in envy. So it was interesting to immerse myself in this time period, but probably even better was just living with Phoebe and Hannah for a while. Stratford gives us two strong yet very distinct women. Phoebe is headstrong but young, and she feels an immense sense of responsibility towards her sister, who is immuno-compromised and lives in a sanitarium at Phoebe’s expense. Hannah is older, more experienced, has a husband and two children—her struggle is with her sense of responsibility over the people she has chosen to bring in to write for her and her company in general. Whereas Phoebe debates whether or not she wants a relationship, Hannah debates whether or not her relationship can survive her being a working mother. Of those two stories, I found Hannah’s more interesting. My aro/ace self was less interested in Phoebe’s romance arc. It would have been nice if the story were to confirm her choice to be a single, working woman—but I do like the decision she makes at the end, regarding her marital status—I thought that was very mature. Hannah’s story, on the other hand, is extremely predictable: 1950s husband is jealous of his wife’s success, feels emasculated, etc. Nevertheless, Stratford writes this with such feeling that you can’t help but be drawn into the messiness of Hannah’s emotions as she processes this upheaval in her life. My only complaint is probably about the writing style in general. I don’t remember if this was an issue with Radio Girls, but in this book, there is an awful lot of telling rather than showing. This creates a kind of distance from the main characters, which can undermine my observation above regarding the amount of feeling on the page. In the same way, some of the more antagonistic characters are far too flat and one-dimensional—I’m including Charlie Morrison here, along with the Hound guy. Red Letter Days would, like Stratford’s earlier novel, make an excellent film adaptation. It has the story, the characters, the setting—everything you need. It also has the heart. All these elements mean that I am more than willing to overlook those little stylistic issues that occasionally jarred me. When you get right down to it, this is a story of adventure and betrayal at a time in history that I needed to know more about. It doesn’t get much better than that. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 19, 2020
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Oct 22, 2020
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Aug 20, 2020
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Paperback
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| 9780698173880
| unknown
| 3.96
| 1,683
| Nov 03, 2014
| Nov 04, 2014
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liked it
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Time travel. Like Captain Janeway, I hate it. I mean, I love stories about it (hello, I watch Doctor Who every Sunday with one of my besties). But the
Time travel. Like Captain Janeway, I hate it. I mean, I love stories about it (hello, I watch Doctor Who every Sunday with one of my besties). But the kinds of paradoxes in The Future Falls are not exactly my cup of tea. If you can look past that, this is another fun fantasy novel that benefits from being mostly set in Calgary, and you don’t see enough of those! If you liked the first two Gale novels, then this one is a nice conclusion to the trilogy. Trigger warning here, as with the previous books, for incest. Charlie features prominently in this book, as does her fellow Wild Power Jack. Kind of picking up where The Wild Ways left off, this book explores Charlie and Jack’s relationship and “forbidden love.” Meanwhile, an asteroid is on a collision course for Earth. When Aunt Catherine Sees the threat, she alerts Charlie in the hopes that she or the other Gales can avert this catastrophe. So this is very much an existential crisis, and at first there is no obvious solution. The Gales’ powers have always been good for smaller things: charms, influencing the weather or people’s decisions, etc. Moving or destroying an entire asteroid? Tall order. There are a few distinct things that make The Future Falls compelling. First, as always, is the way Tanya Huff weaves her magic through this urban fantasy setting. Since Charlie is once again the protagonist, magic and music intertwine, with frequent allusions to songs I am not cool enough to recognize. For Charlie and the other Gale women, magic is something you do even if it isn’t something you are, as in the case of Jack. So there’s this easy effortlessness with which Charlie slides into the Wood and visits Ontario or Vermont, for example, that makes the narrative compelling. Next we have the relationship between Charlie and Jack. It’s very much a star-crossed lovers situation: both Charlie and Jack feel a connection, but because their age difference is greater than seven years, the Gale family bylaws prohibit them from ever really being a thing. I guess we’re supposed to feel sorry for them, but it’s difficult for me to get behind a 30-year-old and a 17-year-old, especially when they are cousins. Huff seems determined to transgress certain boundaries in the romance/sexuality department, and I’m not always here for it. Nevertheless, it’s still the case that this is an interesting subplot and a thorny issue. In fact, I think what I’m trying to say is that I wasn’t pulled in so much by Charlie/Jack as I was by the family dynamics around them. Allie’s obsession with keeping Charlie at home, the interplay with Graham and the aunties, etc. … Huff writes family dynamics well, even if they can be too incestuous for my tastes. Finally we have the actual plot. Huff establishes, fairly quickly, the stakes. I like that we don’t spend too much time away from the Gales in the back offices of JPL; this is not a book about JPL. Rather, most of the book comprises Charlie investigating the problem, trying to understand it, and then considering a solution. There’s also a question of jurisdiction—she debates who to involve, starting only with Jack because he is also Wild and then gradually widening the circle of trust within the family as they realize they can’t sort this by themselves. The ending is … ok, I guess. As I said above, time travel can be annoying sometimes. I like what Charlie did, and I guess it puts a nice bow on the whole Gale family story. However, the way Huff presents it feels rushed and doesn’t come with as much exposition as I would have liked. We don’t get to sit with these revelations, don’t get to hear Allie’s reaction for example to the story that Charlie must have told. So in that respect I was disappointed. Overall, The Future Falls is another great entry in this series. I would read more Gale books. I like that Huff writes fantasy set in Canada and featuring compelling female magic-users. Still not on board with the incest or the low-key gender essentialism going on here, as I’ve discussed in previous reviews. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. My reviews of the Gale Women: ← The Wild Ways [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 18, 2020
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Aug 19, 2020
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Aug 18, 2020
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ebook
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| 1541646509
| 9781541646506
| 3.79
| 140
| Jul 16, 2020
| Aug 25, 2020
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liked it
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At first I admit to some scepticism about the idea that we could use mathematics to rethink our conversations around gender. I was apprehensive becaus
At first I admit to some scepticism about the idea that we could use mathematics to rethink our conversations around gender. I was apprehensive because science, and even to some extent mathematics (or at least more applied subsets of its, like statistics) have been misused and abused in service of gender stereotype fallacies. Indeed, Eugenia Cheng points this out herself, and this, along with her careful and patient exposition of her topic, eventually won me over. X + y: A Mathematician’s Manifesto for Rethinking Gender is a good example of how an interdisciplinary approach to gender issues can often yield interesting new ideas. Cheng has clearly taken a lot of time to consider how to model and talk about disparities in our society when viewed through the lens of gender. Her conclusion? Sometimes when we think we’re talking about gender, we aren’t, and that creates too much confusion for us to make effective change. Cheng’s central argument goes like this. We spend a lot of time observing differences between men and women in various aspects of society (professional life comes up a lot as an example). Some people hold that these differences are innate. Otherwise believe the differences are caused by environment—that is, structural inequities. And the truth, probably, is somewhere in between. But as Cheng points out, researching innate gender or sex-linked differences is very hard and every time someone purports to have sorted it, people come along and very easily poke holes in the findings. Similarly, we have this tendency to refer to certain behaviours as masculine or feminine, yet that association is not as useful as we think: there are plenty of women who behave in so-called masculine ways, and likewise there are many men who exhibit so-called feminine attributes. As a side note, I have struggled with these terms myself lately as I transition. Technically anything I do, as a woman, is feminine by definition. Yet in everyday language, when I discuss how I dress, wearing makeup, etc., I talk about “expressing my femininity” and “being feminine.” I do this because I have an idea in my mind about how to express myself as a woman, but that idea is wrapped up in what we have been socialized to believe is feminine as a result of our society. For me, as a woman, wearing makeup is a feminizing act—but if a man wears makeup, is that feminine or feminizing? I would argue that context matters greatly here: some men put on makeup to feminize themselves (e.g., drag); others do it merely to hide a blemish or look better, just as many women do, and in that context I would argue that wearing makeup is in fact a masculine behaviour, if we are defining masculine as something done by men. Hopefully you can see how this quickly becomes confusing! Cheng points this out and then tries to help us make sense of it by falling back on her experience as a mathematician. If you were hoping to escape any mathematics in this book, you’ll be disappointed, but you also don’t need to understand the mathematics Cheng references to understand her point. Basically, math is good at definitions. Math is also very good at contextual definitions: infinity means something different depending on which mathematical world you’ve chosen to play in. Finally, Cheng argues that her particular field, category theory, is of supreme usefulness in this discussion because it tries to discuss different items in terms of relationships rather than membership/attributes. Now, in this particular case I don’t think Cheng is on to anything new. Plenty of people before and after Foucault have written about social justice from the point of view of power dynamics. If all she brought to x + y was some category theory, I don’t think this book would be very useful or successful. However, the discussion of category theory merely lays the ground work for Cheng’s main thesis. This goes back to what I discussed above about the equivocating around the terms masculine and feminine. Cheng proposes two new terms: ingressive and congressive. I’m not going to explain it as well as she does, but the gist goes like this: ingressive actions look inwards, centreing the individual; congressive actions work to bring the community together. When I first heard these terms, I immediately thought, “is this just a rehashing of individualism versus collectivism? In some ways, perhaps, but I will credit Cheng with building atop such concepts. My next thought was, “this is a nice attempt, but won’t people just use ‘ingressive’ as a synonym for ‘masculine’ and ‘congressive’ as a synonym for ‘feminine’?” I didn’t think Cheng was intending it, but I can see how someone who isn’t being careful might view this as a one-to-one mapping. Cheng makes it clear that this isn’t the case, going so far as to outline her journey from acting ingressively to keep up as a research mathematician to realizing that she truly preferred to foster a congressive environment while teaching mathematics. Lest you think that this is merely semantic sophistry to chronicle her journey from trying to act like one of the guys to reclaiming her femininity, Cheng tries to help us understand that this is not, in her opinion, a matter of gender. What these terms allow us to do, she argues, is discuss our ways of relating to one another without making stereotypical statements about gender. When someone jumps to ask a question that highlights their own expertise, that’s not “typical masculine behaviour”; it’s ingressive. People of all genders can do this. Likewise, if someone is trying to build consensus and help everyone get on to the same page, that’s not the empathetic behaviour of a woman—it’s congressive, and again, people of all genders can do this. So we can challenge the dominance of ingressivity in areas like academia in a way that removes the complication of talking about gender. Great, right? I’m not sure. I do like the new terminology, and I see the value in what Cheng proposes. I agree that sometimes our focus on gender can obscure the true power dynamics at work. Cheng demonstrates this aptly by referring to critiques of “lean in” feminism as trumpeted by Sheryl Sandberg. Cheng understands, and I agree with her, that merely putting women in positions of power within the current system is insufficient. It ignores intersectionality and the idea that there may be other marginalizations at work (race, class, etc.) that contribute to oppression or unequal power dynamics. Her solution is to restructure parts of our society to encourage congressivity, presumably because a congressive social order would allow people to participate more equitably regardless of their identities. It’s a nice vision. I want to acknowledge that it’s not entirely pie in the sky, that Cheng takes her time to lay out how we can build a congressive future from the ground up. That’s more than some dreamers do in their books where they try to explain why their one neat trick for saving society is the one we should enact. I hesitate to endorse this fully, however. Cheng tries hard to be congressive here, to encourage us to rethink our discussions around gender because she doesn’t want us to be “divisive.” She offers up competing definitions of feminism and slogans like “smash the patriarchy” as examples of how current thinking on gender polarizes the conversation and prevents true progress. I am sympathetic to this view. Yet I think there is an appropriate time and place for polarizing or divisive messages. Let’s take transgender people, for example. (And I note that Cheng makes every effort to be inclusive here, using cis and trans appropriately and acknowledging that, for example, some trans men are capable of becoming pregnant.) We trans people are, just by existing in current society, polarizing. TERFs or gender-critical feminists or whatever you want to call them (I prefer the simple transphobe label) would really rather prefer we don’t exist at all. No amount of re-labeling or rethinking the gender conversation will change this fact, because at the end of the day, this is not about how trans people behave or even about how transphobes behave: it is, ultimately, an ideological divide. It is not one that can be argued away. For trans people to be safe and able to participate fully in society, we and our allies must fight, passionately and aggressively, against discrimination. I, personally, hope that some transphobic people, if they are exposed to more trans people and come to know us and understand that we are not a threat, will change their tune. In that respect I do not think this is an “us vs. them” situation. Nevertheless, this is an example of how some aspects of gender-linked discrimination cannot be rectified through new labels. If you come to x + y expecting a totally revolutionary blueprint for how to think about gender, you might be disappointed. I came to this book with sceptical expectations, however, and I was pleasantly surprised. This book reminds me of Beyond Trans: Does Gender Matter? , in which trans man Heath Fogg Davis argues that there are many areas of society where gender doesn’t matter even though, at the moment, we insist it does. Cheng and Davis would probably agree on a lot of points, I think, as do I with both of them. I see value in critiquing the epistemology of gender, and I like that Cheng tries to apply the rigor and flexibility of mathematics. However, her arguments and ideas here can only take us so far. This is a great contribution to the ongoing meta-discussion. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Aug 16, 2020
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Aug 18, 2020
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Aug 16, 2020
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0765378035
| 9780765378033
| 4.19
| 4,088
| Mar 07, 2017
| Nov 28, 2017
|
really liked it
|
For some reason I thought this book semed way shorter than the first one, but I’m realizing now it’s just that I read Too Like the Lightning in hardco
For some reason I thought this book semed way shorter than the first one, but I’m realizing now it’s just that I read Too Like the Lightning in hardcover, so it seemed thicker and more imposing. That being said, Seven Surrenders was less exhausting and easier to digest than the first book. At first I thought that was because I was just used to Ada Palmer’s writing, but now I think it’s also because this book is more focused. Whereas the first book educated us about this future world, Seven Surrenders is much more invested in unravelling both the political plot at the heart of this book as well as the existential and epistemological questions Palmer cloaks in this science fiction story. This book picks up where the last one left off (so spoilers for the first book, but not for this one). Mycroft Canner, convicted murderer in a world of peace, must protect Bridger, a child with god-like abilities, from those who would corrupt or manipulate them. Meanwhile, we learn more about a conspiracy at the highest level—a conspiracy to murder just enough people every year, basically using statistical analysis to determine who to murder to keep the world’s powers balanced and humanity at peace. At the centre of this story? Mycroft’s fervent belief that J.E.D.D. Mason is another universe’s god made flesh, and that they and Bridger together can avert a war brewing despite anyone’s best efforts to the contrary. What strikes me immediately about Palmer’s writing is how she brings her Renaissance historian perspective to writing the future. I commented on this in my review of the first book, but let’s talk about it again. This book has shadows of Umberto Eco. Its scenes are mostly intense dialogues between two or more characters, dialogues that verge upon philosophy and shade into the deepest questions of the human condition. Seven Surrenders asks us to consider what qualities make good leaders, how gender roles and ideas influence our behaviour, and how our religious and spiritual beliefs shape our ability to conceive of the world. Although set in the future, the language and intrigue would equally belong to the seventeenth century (something one character lampshades after the climax of the story). This is, of course, the purpose of science fiction in general (to explore the human condition and hypotheticals thereof), but Palmer’s use of Renaissance and Enlightenment motifs creates an interesting, compelling style to the entire piece. It’s challenging and not something I would like to read all the time, but I appreciate having my mind challenged in this way. The gender stuff, of course, really jumped out at me. I read and reviewed Too Like the Lightning at the same time that I was questioning my own gender (and eventually landed on woman, hi!). So of course I’m interested in how science fiction books reimagine gender. In this 25th century, Palmer imagines a world that has pursued what we might call gender abolition. It’s not that sex is gone, but no one is supposed to care about anyone else’s gender—everyone is supposed to use they/them pronouns. This sounds liberating, but honestly as a trans person it kinda sounds like just a different kind of hell. Having fought so hard to figure out (and now assert) my true gender, the idea of erasing/ignoring that identity in a quest to erase gender roles and stereotypes doesn’t appeal to me. Gender abolition’s goals are noble but conflate the symptoms with the disease: gender as a social construct is not a problem, but the ways we police gender are. So I appreciate that Palmer depicts some of the problems with this approach to dealing with gender stereotyps. A kind of prohibitionism of gender is apt to backfire because it creates the opportunity for a “gender-aware underground,” which in this case becomes the framework for allowing an egotistical megalomaniac to corrupt and manipulate the major leaders of this world. One of the subplots in Seven Surrenders eventually coalesces around the Cousins, a Hive (think … philosophical movement turned into club) that focuses on doing good for others. Without getting into spoilers, let’s just say that the subplot hinges on the idea that the Cousins embody the feminine in our society, but because this future society has worked to eradicate stereotypical gender roles, they’ve also eradicated the language that allows people to express this idea. As a result, the Cousins are at an existential impasse, unable to fully grasp and articulate the true nature of their work. This made me think of Eugenia Cheng’s thought-provoking x + y: A Mathematician’s Manifesto for Rethinking Gender . Cheng also zeroes in on the difficulty of using terms like masculine and feminine while avoiding stereotypes. For that reason, she proposes new language—particularly the terms ingressive and congressive to describe behaviours, because we can more easily divorce these from our concepts of genders. This seems to be missing from Seven Surrenders—that is, I don’t agree with Palmer that it follows that, if we abolish gender, we also lose language to discuss traditionally gendered activities. As Cheng points out, it is going to be work, but I think we can shift our language to abolish gender stereotypes when talking about behaviour (I just don’t think that should or needs to then turn into an abolition of gender itself). Finally, let’s consider the religious themes in this book. One of the big reveals of Too Like the Lightning was that Mycroft (and many other powerful people) think J.E.D.D. Mason is literally the incarnation of a god from another universe. Palmer further develops this idea here while still keeping the idea fairly postmodern: there is room to interpret this as metaphorical, to view J.E.D.D. Mason as a particularly delusional youth shaped by his bespoke upbringing. Consequently, I found this particular mystery unremarkable. I don’t really care whether or not J.E.D.D. Mason is a god. But the idea that J.E.D.D. and Bridger complement one another is far more intriguing. And here we come full circle, for Palmer uses this plot to explore Western ideas on the best way to govern a society, to avoid war, to have peace. Some characters believe a benevolent dictatorship by J.E.D.D. Mason, perhaps assisted by the miraculous powers of Bridger, would ensure the continuity of peace. Others believe it would lead to stagnation or more division. That is ultimately one of the most interesting mysteries in Seven Surrenders. Will I read the next book? Yes but not right away—I need a break again. This is definitely not candy science fiction; there’s so much going on here. And just in general, the style and the heavy focus on so many named characters is exhausting. So take this as the high praise it is when I say that, despite such frustrations, I still enjoyed and found this book a valuable addition to my 2020 reads. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Nov 15, 2020
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Nov 17, 2020
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Aug 15, 2020
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Paperback
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| 1481487752
| 9781481487757
| 4.00
| 2,639
| Sep 11, 2018
| Sep 11, 2018
|
really liked it
|
I’m having a hard time with books about grief lately. I tried reading another YA novel similar to this one in terms of dealing with a recent death, an
I’m having a hard time with books about grief lately. I tried reading another YA novel similar to this one in terms of dealing with a recent death, and I ended up abandoning it—not because it was bad, but because there was something about the rawness of the emotion that made it a difficult read. Maybe it’s because I haven’t yet experienced that type of grief in my life. I don’t know. But the raw grief at the beginning of Summer Bird Blue made this a challenging read. Also, I’m not a big fan of musical novels—that is, books that incorporate songs or music as a part of the plot. So Akemi Dawn Bowman set herself a tall order, impressing me despite these preferences of mine. But she did it, as the 4-star rating attests. Rumi loses her sister (and best friend), Lea, in a car accident that she and her mom survive. Her mom is so wrapped in grief that she ships Rumi off to Hawai’i (where her mom’s originally from) for the summer. Living with an aunt she doesn’t know well, Rumi initially struggles to connect to others. Eventually she begins visiting the next door neighbour, eighty-year-old Mr. Watanabe; she also makes friends with some kids her age. But what really eludes her is music: Rumi and Lea were going to start a band together, and Rumi is at a loss how to write music without her partner in crime. She knows she needs to, but she equally knows that she can’t. Once I got past my discomfort with the grief on display, Summer Bird Blue swept me up and carried me away on Rumi’s journey. I say this very deliberately: the prose here is gentle and very careful. I wouldn’t describe it as lyrical, but it has a quality of distance to it. Descriptions of characters, for example, are there but easy to miss if you aren’t looking. Bowman focuses instead on actions and activity. This has the effect of some characters, like Kai, jumping off the page, whereas others, like Aunty Ani, tend to be more subdued. It’s all about the degree to which Rumi deigns to interact with them. I also liked the flashbacks embedded within the book. In particular, Bowman skilfully intersperses them at changing intervals. In the beginning, the flashbacks come fast and frequently, as if to correspond with the rawness of Rumi’s grief. As the story progresses, the flashbacks slow down—but they never quite fade away, and if anything they pick up towards the end, when Rumi is finally coming to terms with this first phase of her grief. Sometimes flashbacks can be heavyhanded or jarring in their juxtaposition, and that just never happens here. But probably the best part of the book for me, even if it is something that others might easily overlook, is the love story—or lack thereof. Indeed, Rumi’s asexuality was why I chose to read Summer Bird Blue even though I wasn’t all that hot on a novel about grief. I think it is so important we have more novels featuring ace and/or aro characters who just are. Where their aromanticism or asexuality aren’t huge parts of the story. And that’s what we get here. These parts of Rumi’s identity are important, and Bowman treats them with respect. She uses those words (and others) on page as Rumi sorts through her confusion regarding how she feels about Kai. Rumi basically says that she is probably asexual and maybe also aromantic, but she stops short of embracing those labels. They feel too definite for her tastes, and she is also uncomfortable with how they revolve around attraction—she expresses some sentiments that I would interpret as feeling sex-repulsed, perhaps. Rumi’s discomfort is completely understandable for someone who is 16 or 17 years old and trying to figure herself out. It’s unrealistic to expect every ace or aro person to immediately find and adopt labels that work for them, and I really appreciate Bowman validating this stance while also making it clear that asexuality, demisexuality, aromanticism, etc., are completely valid identities in and of themselves. That is to say, Bowman isn’t having Rumi hedge as a way of portraying asexuality as some kind of transitional state. Rumi’s asexuality is valid; what’s in question is how she chooses to express it to others. Yes, we need more books with characters who are unapologetically out as ace, sure. But we also need books like this, where the label matters less than the love story itself. And that not-so-romantic romance? Loved it. Kai is a nice guy who is understanding without being unrealistic, and Bowman provides him with plenty of his own challenges and opportunities to grow. Meanwhile, Rumi explores how she feels about Kai in a way that I can only describe as courageous. And when she realizes that dating and romance and kissing are not what she wants, she makes that clear. Mad respect for her and for Kai for negotiating these complex feelings, and for the way Bowman models what mature and consenting friendships between teenagers can be. This is why I decided to praise Summer Bird Blue. For a novel grounded in grief, it nevertheless focuses on growth and strength. Bowman won me over because she is a writer who sharpens her skills by taking the more difficult path. It would have been easy to write a story about summer love redeeming a grief-stricken girl, maybe throw in an evil ex-girlfriend as a rival, kill off the old mentor neighbour character in the third act for some pathos, etc. Summer Bird Blue revels in its complexity and nuance, yet it never drowns you in them. I am, frankly, incredibly surprised yet also very pleased to have enjoyed this book so much. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Nov 07, 2020
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Nov 10, 2020
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Aug 15, 2020
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1781088055
| 9781781088050
| 3.86
| 220
| Aug 18, 2020
| Aug 18, 2020
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it was amazing
|
Let me tell you how I thought this review would go. As I began reading The House of Styx (which I received free via NetGalley and publisher Solaris),
Let me tell you how I thought this review would go. As I began reading The House of Styx (which I received free via NetGalley and publisher Solaris), I thought that I would enjoy this book, for sure. Derek Künsken had, after all, reignited the faint embers of my love for posthumanism with
The Quantum Magician
and then fanned those flames with a dose of time travel in
The Quantum Garden
. However, I also thought that the thesis of this review would be, “This is a fun SF book that I liked but did not love as much as The Quantum Evolution books.” I prejudged it based on its being a planetary romance rather than a space opera. I am so, so wrong. The House of Styx surpassed my expectations in every conceivable way. Not only does Künsken deliver another excellent, diverse science-fiction future, but he does so with humour and grace—and he just drops a trans character in my lap like oops no big deal. More on that at length, I promise, in a bit. Trigger warnings in this book for portrayal of gender dysphoria/gender incongruence, as well as scarification. In the future, humans have colonized the upper atmosphere of Venus. More specifically, Québécois have colonized Venus—yes, Künsken, Canadian, reaches into his Québécois heritage for some cultural inspiration here, exposing a wider audience to the glorious, sacrilegious profanity of Québécois French. La colonie, in debt to a powerful bank, barely scraps by, and the D’Aquillon family is even worse off. That is, they make a discovery, in a cave on the inhospitable and nearly unreachable surface of Venus, that could change everything. It could certainly alter the fortunes of the family, not to mention all of la colonie—if this monumental discovery doesn’t fall into “the wrong hands.” So the book quickly turns into a race of against time: how does the family recruit enough trustworthy allies to capitalize on this discovery before the executive powers that be complete their political de-clawing of Marthe, the family’s representative in l’Assemblée? It’s going to take a combination of political and social negotiation as well as good ol’ engineering know-how! Along the way, Künsken gives us these amazing scenes of what he conjectures life in the Venusian clouds could be. From herding, modifying, and even bio-engineering the “trawlers” (gigantic Venusian life forms that live in the lower clouds) to flying with wing packs while wearing survival suits designed to resist the corrosive and toxic atmosphere, The House of Styx is replete and resplendent with a fantastic imagining of what life on (or at least, above) Venus might entail. I haven’t read much fiction concerning Venus; Künsken lampshades this in the book by reminding us that the major exploratory nations kind of wrote Venus off as a dead end after their few probes. So I love that Künsken looked at this planet and said, “No, there is so much more to talk about here,” and then turned that into reality. While this imagination was present in The Quantum Evolution books, it was spread across the numerous settings within those novels. Here, Künsken deploys it in a more concentrated way. There are exciting, cinematic scenes that would be incredible to reify on film if anyone ever wanted to adapt this series. After the success of The Expanse I could easily see this working as a TV show. Beyond the poetical vistas and musing on the stark, brutalist beauty of Venus’ surface and atmosphere, The House of Styx also features excellent characters and relationships. First we have the interplay among the D’Aquillon family themselves. Künsken invests each character with such an interesting, three-dimensional personality, from the steady, dependable Marthe to the black sheep of Étienne. There’s the relentlessly warm Jean-Eudes, who has Down’s syndrome, and then of course, there is my personal favourite character, Pascale. I was not expecting a trans character in this book, and I think that says something important about our expectations for trans representation in literature. There is this misconception sometimes, I think, that for books to feature trans characters then their coming out/transition/journey must be the main focus of the story. That’s all that’s important about us, right? So the fact that here it’s not the main plot, and that feels unusual, is so important. Künsken’s portrayal of Pascale’s journey—the questioning, the agonizing over the questioning and her dysmorphia, the acceptance she receives from the people in whom she has confided so far—is excellent. Yet it all happens as a subplot within a book that is, really, more about exploration and the power struggles within a small colony. Other cis authors, pay attention: this is how you do it. Normalize trans people existing against the backdrop of your larger story. Pascale is far from the only character who grows and undergoes challenges in this book. Each of the main characters struggles with the responsibilities that the D’Aquillon discovery foists upon them, as well as their own flaws and fears. And of course, there is a truly heartbreaking event at the climax of the story that no doubt will set up some intra-family conflict in the sequels. Indeed, the character dynamics in The House of Styx are just great. There are very few one-dimensional characters here—even the nominal antagonist, Présidente Gaschel, gets some page-time from her third-person limited perspective so that we can understand why she’s acting the way she does and avert the idea that she is a bumbling, maniacal villain. Meanwhile, the people who ally themselves with the D’Aquillons do so cautiously. There is no automatic, trite pledges of loyalty here. There is careful discussion of the economic and political ramifications of what they plan to do. There are also other power dynamics at work: sex and attraction, resource management in a resource-scarce environment, etc. Künsken carefully layers all of the rich ingredients that together form our spheres of human motivations. So, in the end, what do we have here? The House of Styx is a science-fiction novel set on/above Venus but with the potential to open up into so much more in the sequels. It focuses on a core group of characters who are diverse in personalities, sexualities, gender identities, etc., including an excellent portrayal of a young trans woman. I do want to be clear: I’m not giving this book 5 stars just because there’s a trans character here (though that helps); even without such a character this novel is an excellent story in every respect. But Künsken’s attention to so many aspects of characterization truly elevates it. After the clunky, sexist read that was Foundation and Earth , this was such a refreshing contrast from the tunnel-vision of so-called “classic” science fiction. The House of Styx is exactly what I want from modern-day science fiction: it is imaginative, inclusive, and incredible. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Aug 12, 2020
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Aug 13, 2020
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Aug 12, 2020
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0345339967
| 9780345339966
| 4.06
| 57,129
| 1986
| Oct 1987
|
it was ok
|
I simultaneously enjoyed and loathed reading Foundation and Earth. This might be the best Foundation novel yet also the worst. I know I called
Foun
I simultaneously enjoyed and loathed reading Foundation and Earth. This might be the best Foundation novel yet also the worst. I know I called
Foundation’s Edge
the best, but this one surpasses it in terms of plot. Asimov does as amazing a job of ratcheting up the tension surrounding the search for Earth as he does a terrible job of avoiding the objectification of women. Moreover, when we look at this novel in the context of the Foundation series and Asimov’s other works, it’s possible to read this as Asimov giving up on Foundation. Yeah, this review is going to be … interesting. Trigger warnings for this book, by the way: in addition to the massive amounts of Asimovian sexism/womanizing you would expect, add a hefty dose of highly inappropriate, medicalized portrayal of an intersex person, including the use of the h-slur. Foundation and Earth picks up exactly where Foundation’s Edge ended. It follows a classic quest structure: Golan Trevize has decided, somehow, that the planetary networked consciousness that is Gaia will one day be allowed to expand and form a galactic consciousness called Galaxia. But he isn’t happy with this decision; he doesn’t understand it. So he decides to take up, earnestly, the bogus quest for Earth that was his initial smokescreen in Foundation’s Edge. Janov Pelorat and his newfound Gaian lover, Bliss, accompany Trevize on what proves to be a dangerous expedition across the galaxy. This time, the search for Earth seems to have lesser stakes—no one really cares this time, except Trevize and maybe Pelorat in an academic way—yet it is all the more intense. It’s worth noting that both of these novels were written in the 1980s, thirty years after the original Foundation stories were written and published. Asimov’s writing has markedly improved over that time. I spent most of my review of Foundation and Empire criticizing Asimov’s writing style, criticism I think was fair and justified but which I can’t level against these books. Moreover, whereas the earlier stories were shorter and compiled into novel-sized books for retail purposes, these two stories were definitely conceived of and designed to be unified novels. As someone who has repeatedly stated her highly subjective and personal preference for that literary form, there’s no wonder I prefer these two books to the previous ones. So, there I was, enjoying this book thoroughly until I ran into a scene fairly early in the novel where Trevize seduces his way out of a situation. Ok, maybe it would be more accurate to say he allows himself to be seduced. However, you interpret it, the fact remains that Asimov’s writing skills have improved in every category except his portrayal of women:
If that didn’t make you throw up in your mouth a little bit like it did me: the next chapter begins with Trevize congratulating himself on being such a stud. Not only did he correctly surmised that the poor, sexually-repressed woman in a position of power “would want to be dominated,” but she goes on to call him “a king of sexuality.” This is the kind of stuff I expect to read in bad erotica. Moreover, aside from being bad writing, it’s just so incredibly exclusionary—there is little doubt for whom Asimov is writing here (straight, cis men)—while the rest of us just have to deal. That’s not the only example, of course—Asimov doesn’t seem capable of not objectifying women—just the most egregious that jumped out at me. I could go deeper into the gender dynamics aboard the Far Star, the way Bliss is portrayed as the nurturing and soft personality who naturally has to go out of her way to rescue a child (while Trevize casually advocates not just leaving the child behind to be killed but, later in the novel, genociding all Solarians because he “fears” them), the constant jokes or questions about the nature of Bliss’ relationship with the two other men on the ship. And then we have the intersex characters, Bander and Fallom. After the promising beginning of Bander interrupting Trevize to request that Trevize stop misgendering them, Asimov quickly dehumanizes these characters by using the pronoun “it” and dwelling most inappropriately, as he does with his female characters, on their various physical attributes. We’re supposed to excuse this as the curiosity and flawed biases of our main characters, but it’s still a gross portrayal of a marginalized identity. (I should acknowledge at this point as well that there’s additional conflation happening here of sex/gender: intersex is not the same as non-binary, agender, or bigender, which are all gender identities. Many intersex people use he/him or she/her pronouns. It’s complicated!) Indeed, this is perhaps the most striking thing for me, as a trans woman reading this book in 2020: Asimov, like so many other straight white dudes writing science fiction in the 20th century, has this brilliant imagination when it comes to a future humanity sprawled across the galaxy. He dreams up hyperspace, positronic robots, and mental telepathy; his books touch on the complexities of empire-building, linguistic drift, history versus mythology, and the Gaia theory of consciousness. Yet this same man is unable to wrap his imagination, in an empathetic way, around alternative presentations of sex and gender. And this is something that will never not boggle my mind about the so-called “great” and classic science fiction of the previous century. It seems to me that all science fiction must be queer simply because science fiction is about embracing and exploring the most amazing variety of possibilities for our future, and queerness is necessarily present among the varieties—unless it is deliberately excluded, as Asimov and others do by dint of a very limited worldview. Finally, there’s also a sense of fatigue in this book. This comes across most stridently in Trevize’s fixation with finding Earth, but it is also evident in the rushed denouement and Daneel’s Wizard of Oz reveal. I don’t have anything against Asimov wanting to unite his Foundation and Robot novels into a shared universe. Nevertheless, the way he does this across these two novels strikes me as an interesting bit of retconning of the original premise of the Foundation books. Trevize lampshades this when he questions the legitimacy of psychohistory as a science. I’m not sure if this represents Asimov trying to revise his views after over three decades of contemplating it—certainly an author should be allowed to change and evolve in their attitudes towards their earlier works and the ideas therein—or if Asimov is just kind of … done … with Foundation and wants, at this juncture, to move on from it once again. In any case, the ending to Foundation and Earth is rushed, perfunctory, and disappointing compared to the quest that led up to it. Two more books now to read, both prequels, one published posthumously! Will they be improvements? We will find out soon. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. My review of the Foundation series: ← Foundation’s Edge [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Aug 11, 2020
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Aug 12, 2020
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Aug 11, 2020
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Mass Market Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| B08222KZJV
| 4.01
| 2,407
| Feb 06, 2020
| Aug 11, 2020
|
liked it
|
As a few other people on Goodreads have remarked, the subtitle of this book is more accurate than the title. How to Argue With a Racist: What Our Gene
As a few other people on Goodreads have remarked, the subtitle of this book is more accurate than the title. How to Argue With a Racist: What Our Genes Do (and Don't) Say About Human Difference definitely discusses genetics as it relates to race. It is less useful if you’re looking for rhetorical tips on arguing with or debating racists or white supremacists. Adam Rutherford clearly and coherently lays out why such people are wrong to base their beliefs on a genetically-codified notion of race. Nevertheless, he dances around the ultimate problem with arguing with racists. I’ll come back to that later in my review. For now, let’s talk about what’s actually in this book, which I received for free via NetGalley and the publisher. Rutherford starts with a history lesson of racism-as-science. Some of this was familiar to me, but he keeps it interesting and doesn’t go too far into the weeds. Basically, he examines how the post-Enlightenment world’s obsession with categorizing and classifying everything included classifying people, and many scientists used this as an opportunity to try to codify their particular biases and prejudices. Yet the fact that no single, reliable system of linking race to actual biological attributes has emerged after over 3 centuries of trying really demonstrates that race is socially constructed. Rutherford emphasizes that this is true for genetics as well, pointing out the flaws inherent in breakdowns of one’s ethnicity provided by private genomics companies like 23andMe. I particularly like his point regarding the resolution of genetic data available to these companies. Rutherford points out that 23andMe can only compare your genes to the genes it already has on file—i.e., to anyone else who has paid to have their genome sequence, i.e., disproportionately people from wealthier countries that are often descended from a European population. This type of selection bias is, of course, notably absent from these companies’ marketing material. The next part of the book questions the utility of linking gene-tracing with ancestry. This had a lot of interesting mathematical and scientific points that were new to me. For example, Rutherford points out that, mathematically, it’s impossible for you to go back more than a handful of generations before you encounter overlap in your family tree. As a result, for any given population, we can trace backwards to a most-recent common ancestor—in the case of the entire world, it’s 3400 years. That means that claims like “all of my ancestors come from this one place in Scotland” are spurious—if true, you would be very, very inbred, because there just aren’t enough unique individuals within that population to create an unbroken lineage as far back as you care to trace it. Indeed, Rutherford’s overall thesis throughout the book is that global migration of human populations, and the resulting admixture of genes, makes it impossible to establish any concrete definition of race on a genetic level. The final part of the book is devoted to challenging claims that we can easily connect genes to certain types of superiority, be this intellectual or physical. Are West Africans genetically predisposed to being the best at sprinting 100 m? Rutherford points out that there’s precious little evidence for such a belief. Not only does he outline the problem of using elite Olympic athletes (small sample size) for such research, but he points to the numerous environmental factors at play, not to mention the overriding confirmation bias (the idea that certain types of people are better at a sport means we invest more in finding and training those types of people, so of course more of them go on to excel in that sport). Similarly, while Rutherford provides an interesting defence of IQ tests as general indicators of large populations, he challenges the idea that an individual’s IQ test is a meaningful metric for evaluating them; moreover, he points out that the link between genetics and intelligence is still not well-understood. All of this is well and good, and I enjoyed spending about 2 hours hanging out with Rutherford and listening to him refresh me on what I learned in Grade 12 biology and then stretch my understanding further still. And yet. As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, this book doesn’t fundamentally deliver on the promise implicit in its title. I suppose the idea is that, armed with these scientific facts, you’re supposed to bravely go forth and use them next time someone in your company spouts a racist line of reasoning. I guess? Except that it’s fairly well established that facts don’t change people’s minds. I can easily anticipate a racist with whom I’m arguing falling back on one of the numerous conspiracy theories Rutherford himself acknowledges in this book: scientists know that race exists, but they just refuse to admit it because it’s politically incorrect; the Jews are controlling the scientific establishment; look at this one article by a discredited and very racist scientist that repeats all the garbage I just spent fifteen minutes debunking … and so on. I don’t think we’ll win debates with racists with facts. Truth be told, I‘m not interested in debating racists at all. I’d rather deplatform them. That being said, if you are interested in being anti-racist and having a better understanding of why scientific ideas of biological race are bunk, you couldn’t do much better than read this book. You’ll come away with an accurate, up-to-date-as-best-we-know-right-now understanding of how our genes actually influence our development. I’m going to follow this up with Superior by Angela Saini as soon as possible for a look at the socio-historical side of this as well. So, I highly recommend this book, but maybe not for the reasons implied in its title. Educate yourself; try to educate the racists if you feel like it but don’t hold your breath that logic is going to win the day here. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Aug 09, 2020
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Aug 10, 2020
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Aug 10, 2020
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Kindle Edition
| |||||||||||||||
| 1250126436
| 9781250126436
| 3.72
| 9,491
| Aug 28, 2018
| Jul 07, 2020
|
it was ok
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Mirage reminds me, in a good and less racist way, of Dune. I wish I had liked it more, because honestly this is the type of science fiction I want mor
Mirage reminds me, in a good and less racist way, of Dune. I wish I had liked it more, because honestly this is the type of science fiction I want more of: science fiction that might be set in space and in the future, sure, but that focuses more on the intrigue and relationships than on the tech and whizz-bang special effects, and in a way that centres people of colour. Mirage does all that, a great elevation of the planetary romance subgenre—unfortunately, I personally found it boring. Amani has the misfortune of appearing nearly identical to the Vathek Crown Princess, Maram. As a result, the Vatheks kidnap her to act as Maram’s body double at precarious public appearances. Amani is Andalan, her world occupied by the Vatheks somewhat extralegally, her culture only barely hanging on after decades of oppression. She has no love for the Vatheks, but her choices are cooperation or death (not even cake!). Unfortunately, as Amani studies how to be the cruel and callous Maram, she worries she might get too good at her job. And she has to balance her desire to help her people—as a spy, for example—with her own survival. Like, every ingredient of this book sets it up for success. I love everything I mentioned in the above paragraph. The setting is great, the clashing cultures Daud has created are fantastic. There is life to this setting, a sense of history. There is richness here. I say this all because I don’t want to damn this book with faint praise—I don’t think Mirage is poorly written, bad, and even though I found it boring, I don’t think that means you necessarily will. So I feel like, as occasionally happens to me, I let down this book. The romance subplot was predictable (and maybe that is fine for some!). The spy subplot was under-developed. Amani’s precarious bonding with Maram was actually kind of fun—I really liked the baking/cooking scene! That too, however, felt like it never really went anywhere. I guess, upon reflection, that’s what I disliked about Mirage: the subplots together lack a sense of unity and coherence in their structure, and individually they might be entertaining, yet they don’t culminate in any fulfilling way. I originally sought out Mirage because so many people on Twitter were hyped for its sequel, Court of Lions—but I want my first book in a series to really stand alone while also setting up future conflict. Mirage does the latter but is not as good at the former. So my advice would be not to pay too much attention to my review and try the book for yourself, if it seems like it’s your thing. If it doesn’t seem like your thing, don’t go into it expecting it to change your mind. I’m happy so many people enjoyed this one, but it didn’t work for me. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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Dec 29, 2020
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Dec 30, 2020
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Aug 03, 2020
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Paperback
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| 0553248561
| 9780553248562
| 4.09
| 363
| May 1985
| Apr 10, 1985
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really liked it
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Delany remains one of the authors who most consistently fascinates, educates, and challenges me. His science fiction and fantasy novels are never exac
Delany remains one of the authors who most consistently fascinates, educates, and challenges me. His science fiction and fantasy novels are never exactly what they seem—or perhaps are exactly what they seem—and if
Dhalgren
is perhaps his most widely-known inscrutable work, his Return to Nevèryön series, and particularly Flight from Nevèryön, are the most obviously inscrutable. I’m not sure how to summarize this book. I wanted to say that the first two tales are fairly straightforward, but that isn’t true. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that the first two tales take place solely in Nevèryön, whereas the last two parts of the book—the two appendices—begin to break down the fourth wall and deconstruct the allegorical conceit of that fantastical place. All four parts examine motifs for which Delany is well known: sex/sexuality and queer politics/power. If you’re someone who is wondering where the queerness is in classic SF/F, you really do need to read Delany’s work, because it is right here. Gorgik the Liberator, so prominent in the first two books, is present here but in a more subdued fashion. He is the object rather than the subject of “The Tale of Fog and Granite.” Here Delany revisits some of the ideas already trodden in Nevèryön, particularly around homosexual mores as well as sexual kinks and the master/slave dynamic. Once again, the seemingly foreign and strange land in this book serves as a good analogy for the cosmopolitan and conflicted 1980s in which Delany writes, particularly as it applies to sex. Yet in this regard it’s truly the last two parts of the book that steal the show. As Delany breaks down the fourth wall, he begins to talk explicitly of AIDS. The AIDS epidemic as recorded here happened prior to my birth; for me it is history but on these pages it is raw fact. And without trying to create a false equivalence, reading this during the COVID-19 pandemic did hit hard. Delany discusses how surreal it felt, to live with the spectre of AIDS around every corner yet never actually be touched himself by the disease, and even though our respective times and circumstances are very different, I see what he means. Delany peels back yet another layer in the final appendix, where he explicitly discusses the semantic and semiological aspirations of these books. As a writer and a reader, not to mention a huge fan of Umberto Eco, I found this part extremely fascinating. I love that Delany embraces what is regarded as a quintessentially pulp genre in order to play with and manipulate the boundary conditions of language. He pokes at and prods what he calls “patriarchal language,” and this is apparent throughout these stories. Many of his gay characters discuss their relationships, sexual or otherwise, with women, as well as their identities as fathers. While some of this might be attributed to autobiographical insertion, there’s more happening here. Delany in 1984 is doing what we nearly forty years later are once again attempting to do: queering queerness itself. Delany is pushing the boundaries, blurring the precision of labels like gay, not because he sees them as unnecessary or useless but rather because he wants people to be able to embrace them on their own terms. We see this today, as people embrace a variety of new or newly-reclaimed labels that better help them describe themselves. Will you get a little lost in this book? Almost certainly, and that’s the point. Everything from the title to the cover to the copy will lull you into a false sense of security, make you expect a simple pulp fantasy novel with some hot! queer! action!. But there’s so much more happening here, and it hurts my brain to even think about it. I know that, contrary to his pronouncements in this volume, Delany does revisit Nevèryön once more. Even if he hadn’t, however, this would have been a fitting conclusion. Eco was right when he says Delany “has invented a new style.” Metafictional, intertextual, steeped in semiotics—Flight from Nevèryön is challenging as a work of fantasy and philosophy. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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Aug 03, 2020
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Aug 10, 2020
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my rating |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| 3.78
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liked it
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Jan 06, 2021
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Jan 05, 2021
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| 4.20
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really liked it
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Jan 04, 2021
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Dec 31, 2020
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| 4.00
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liked it
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Dec 22, 2020
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Dec 21, 2020
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| 3.77
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really liked it
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Dec 23, 2020
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Dec 18, 2020
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| 4.04
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liked it
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Dec 12, 2020
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Dec 12, 2020
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| 4.52
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really liked it
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Dec 02, 2020
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Nov 29, 2020
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| 4.13
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it was ok
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Nov 28, 2020
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Nov 24, 2020
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| 4.43
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really liked it
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Nov 21, 2020
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Nov 21, 2020
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| 4.31
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really liked it
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Nov 15, 2020
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Nov 11, 2020
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| 3.87
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it was ok
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Nov 04, 2020
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Nov 03, 2020
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| 4.51
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it was amazing
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Oct 26, 2020
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Oct 25, 2020
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| 3.90
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it was ok
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Oct 18, 2020
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Oct 18, 2020
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| 4.39
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liked it
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Oct 15, 2020
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Oct 15, 2020
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| 4.44
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did not like it
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Oct 13, 2020
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Oct 13, 2020
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| 4.13
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liked it
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Oct 08, 2020
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Oct 04, 2020
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| 4.01
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really liked it
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Oct 03, 2020
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Oct 01, 2020
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| 3.66
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liked it
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Sep 19, 2020
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Sep 17, 2020
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| 3.49
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it was ok
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Sep 06, 2020
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Sep 04, 2020
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| 3.99
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it was amazing
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Oct 12, 2020
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Aug 23, 2020
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| 3.72
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really liked it
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Aug 20, 2020
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Aug 20, 2020
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| 3.83
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liked it
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Oct 22, 2020
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Aug 20, 2020
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| 3.96
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liked it
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Aug 19, 2020
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Aug 18, 2020
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| 3.79
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liked it
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Aug 18, 2020
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Aug 16, 2020
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| 4.19
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really liked it
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Nov 17, 2020
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Aug 15, 2020
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| 4.00
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really liked it
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Nov 10, 2020
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Aug 15, 2020
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| 3.86
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it was amazing
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Aug 13, 2020
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Aug 12, 2020
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| 4.06
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it was ok
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Aug 12, 2020
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Aug 11, 2020
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| 4.01
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liked it
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Aug 10, 2020
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Aug 10, 2020
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| 3.72
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it was ok
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Dec 30, 2020
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Aug 03, 2020
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| 4.09
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really liked it
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Aug 10, 2020
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Aug 03, 2020
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