Novel Gazing Redux

Things are really quite bad here. Lots of time on the couch with a book. Hoping for it to ease up…any time now, really. Any time now would be good. In the meantime, here’s what I’ve been reading:

Jesse Bering, Perv: The Sexual Deviant in All of Us. I cannot think of any reason you might want to read this book. Bering has a breezy, jokey tone, but he’s very patchy on documentation vs. blathering on with his opinions. There are several interesting books to get written on how we know what we know about sexual response and hard-wiring vs. experiential wiring and how knowledge of taboos and accepted practices gets passed along culturally. This is none of them. Also, Bering starts early on with the assumption that harm should be a gold standard for what is and is not tolerated by a wider society, though individuals and groups may have additional standards for what they personally cannot or will not do or stand for; sounds reasonable enough to me, but he never makes the argument for why–and then halfway through the book says that he hopes he has demonstrated why. Well…no. He didn’t even try to demonstrate why. (Seriously, it was: “I hope I demonstrated the thing I asserted.” “No, you just asserted it.”) And that kind of shaky logic underpins all sorts of discussion here, on a set of topics where it is least helpful and most fraught. NOT recommended, and this is the second book in as many months I’ve gotten on New Scientist’s recommendation only to find it shallow and disappointing.

Gillian Bradshaw, London in Chains (Kindle) and A Corruptible Crown. A pair of English Civil War novels about a young woman who comes to London and becomes a printer and a Leveler. They’re pretty melodramatic–the villains twirl their mustachios with great glee–and there is an element of sexual violence for our heroine to get past. But how often do I get English Civil War novels, much less novels whose plot is “our heroine becomes a printer and a Leveler”? I mean, feel free to go write me more without the sexual violence if you like; until then, beggars, choosers, you know.

James L. Cambias, A Darkling Sea. Discussed elsewhere.

Betty Boyd Caroli, The Roosevelt Women. Mothers and wives and daughters and aunts and cousins of the two Roosevelt presidents, very different personalities and politics. In some places this volume went more in-depth than I’d seen, and in others it glossed over, so it was a good companion volume for others, I think, rather than a place to start. Caroli pointed out that when she’s written about First Ladies in the past, she’s discovered that it’s less that they’re interesting for the men they’re married to and more that we get better documentation of these independently interesting people because of who they married. That’s certainly the case here. I think her decision to deal with Eleanor entirely in the context of her relationships with the rest of the Roosevelt family was a good one, since there is so much available Eleanor material elsewhere, and that’s not the case for the others.

Lyndsay Faye, Seven for a Secret. This has happened twice in a row now: I have mistaken a Lyndsay Faye title and cover on my library list for a random urban fantasy thing. “Oh, I’ll try whatever this urban fantasy thing is,” I have thought. “Maybe it’ll be good.” Lyndsay Faye does not write urban fantasy, brain! (Lyndsay Faye does not write urban fantasy, cover designers!) She writes historical mystery. No fantasy elements. Try to remember this, brain! Also, you already know you like her series, brain! Seriously, brain, keep up! (I remembered the book, just not the author/title. Oh, brains.) This is the series that’s set immediately after the founding of the New York police. This volume deals with blackbirders and the evil they did, entangled with the politics of the early New York City police being funded almost entirely by the Democratic Party, which was not at all sympathetic with abolitionists. I enjoyed it. It would probably be okay to start with this volume, but there is some arc plot that will have more emotional impact if you have the first one under your belt.

Zoe Ferraris, City of Veils and Kingdom of Strangers. Second and third in the series of mysteries set in Saudi Arabia, written by an American woman who married into a Saudi family and lived there for awhile. I think the third one is really the best, so I hope she keeps writing more, if that’s an indicator of how she’s learned to do it. The way that she explores what women manage to do within the Saudi strictures, and how the Saudi strictures change how a murder mystery can be solved, both make for fascinating twists on mystery fiction.

Valerie Hansen, The Open Empire: A History of China to 1600. A pretty good first text if you need a first text on this period. Does what it says on the tin. Also had a screamingly funny section on an extant phrase book for Korean businessmen traveling to China at the end of the period described. Every conversation included phrases like, “You’re joking! Tell me the real price!” and, “Please stop shouting!” I feel that more early language lessons should include, “Please stop shouting!” Especially language lessons for Minnesotans. Teaching us to say, “Can you please say that louder?” in Japanese but not, “Please stop shouting!” looks like a grave oversight in retrospect.

Rawn James Jr., Root and Branch: Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, and the Struggle to End Segregation. I hope Rawn James Jr. goes and writes more books, because I liked this one pretty well, and the one he wrote on the desegregation of the US military was excellent. While it just says “segregation” in the title, the main focus was on educational segregation, with a little bit of union segregation thrown in where it was relevant. James’s legal experience came in very clearly with the relevant court cases. Good stuff, interesting stuff.

Snorri Kristjansson, Swords of Good Men. Grimdark Vikings. Such grimdark Vikings. There were a few quite good moments, but I…don’t actually like grimdark. Even when it’s done really quite well. I don’t enjoy the levels of bodily fluids and sexual violence. So if you want one of these, yep, here’s one of these. I don’t want one of these. You go ahead.

Peter H. Lee and Wm. Theodore de Bary, Sources of Korean Tradition Volume One: from Early Times Through the Sixteenth Century. What they mean here is Korean Religious tradition, which is why I ended up muttering, “too much Buddhism, not enough roller derby” at this book repeatedly, and at one point wailed, “there is no Dana, only Buddhism!” Don’t get me wrong: I recognize that Buddhism is immensely important to Korea’s history. It’s just that every time I would come upon a reference to something else–anything else–that might in the broader sense be considered part of Korean tradition, I would seize upon it eagerly. “So-and-so got on the ship to China.” Yes, ships? Tell me about the ships. Merchant fleets separate from the fishing boats in this period? How big? Made of what? What kind of sailing technology? “Here is what Buddhist texts they studied when they got to China.” Aughhhh. Or else something about mulberries and silk, and I would perk up, yes, tell me about the silk, tell me about the weaving industry, the dyeing industry, the silk trade, the mulberries. “Here is how they are a metaphor for Buddhism.” AUGHHHH. So I now have an extensive reference about how Buddhist and Confucian thought affected Korea in this period, which is good to know, it really is. It’s just…Korean history. A continuing quest.

Nancy Mitford, Christmas Pudding and Pigeon Pie. Two comic novels, not really upbeat but not tragic either, one in the 1930s and the other in the 1940s. The spy novel ending of Pigeon Pie had me just howling, so if you’ve read ten million non-comic spy novels, by all means go to. They’re quite short, and while there’s not a lot there, there are worse things for a day on the couch.

Chris Moriarty, The Watcher in the Shadows. I have been waiting for this sequel to The Inquisitor’s Apprentice, and then it slipped out without my noticing somehow. Definitely recommend that you start with the first one for full effect, but: magical early twentieth century New York with all sorts of class warfare and ethnic variety thought through. Very much my cup of tea.

Kenneth Oppel, Such Wicked Intent. Another of his prequels to Frankenstein. Gothy, angsty YA. Meh. Not sorry I read it, glad there aren’t more so I wouldn’t have to decide whether to keep going.

Guy Rickards, Jean Sibelius. Tolstoy was so wrong. Dozens, thousands of Finnish families of this era were unhappy in precisely this way: father drinks and everyone is miserable; father stops drinking awhile and everyone is miserable; father starts drinking again and everyone is miserable. Death of one of the children. Additionally, typhus. Seriously, the biographer was of that suboptimal kind who went around armchair-diagnosing with all sorts of things, but even so it really looks like the only interesting thing Janne Sibelius ever did was write music. If you ever think that being brilliant is enough to save you from being a crashing bore and kind of a jerk, go read a Sibelius biography. Also: I have read a great deal about a great many Finns, and Sibelius appears to be the first one who hasn’t had anything whatsoever strange and amusing happen to him. Really. Anything. Unless it’s the fault of the biographer, who didn’t seem that bad, you just would not want this man to dinner, because he would be devoid of anecdote and drink up all your booze. Go listen to the music instead and save yourself the trouble.

Marie Rutkoski, The Cabinet of Wonders. First in a middle-grade Middle-European fantasy series. Clockwork, magic globes, alchemy, plenty to like. I look forward to the rest, but the afterword made me howl with laughter, because apparently Rutkoski’s Czech relatives are my Swedish relatives in disguise.

Anya von Bremzen, Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing. Oh, I loved this. So glad that Zalena recommended it, because I probably wouldn’t have gone and found it on my own. von Bremzen goes through the decades of the Soviet Union from a culinary perspective but with digressions into other points of interest–the fate of the 1927 Uzbek Women’s Day festivities made me cry and go put various books on Uzbekistan on my wishlist, for example, and apparently I’m going to have to make Stalin’s favorite dish this summer when the little eggplants are good at the farmer’s market. Fascinating book. Vivid, funny, sad, fascinating.

Jo Walton, What Makes This Book So Great. Discussed elsewhere.

Sylvia Townsend Warner, Scenes of Childhood. Perfect for curling up on the couch while not feeling good, especially if you have an Edwardian sense of humor, which is one of the kinds of sense of humor I have. This book features The Poodle, and I kept reading bits of it out to the long-suffering Mark; it’s that kind of book. The only down side is that the rest of Sylvia Townsend Warner is not easy to get, and now I want it more.

Harriet A. Washington, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. This is an extremely important book to have out there, and an extremely difficult book to read. For example, the things that the “father of gynecology” actually did with black women to figure out how to treat fistula…the details are harrowing to think of. Even if you think you’re thinking of them now, unless you actually have the details, they will be more harrowing than you think. Washington was apparently quizzed by more than one person while writing this book about whether the book would make black people distrust medicine, and I think she’s correct that the practices in it would, but the book would not. I think it’s extremely important to have this information available for people who need it for specific purposes, and also I think it’s important for some people who don’t specifically need it to know it. That said, you’ll want to consider carefully whether you want to be one of those people, because…as I said, harrowing. Carefully researched, carefully considered, really intelligent and thorough. But oh, those poor people. I told a family member that I am okay with being the one in our family who holds this knowledge. It needs knowing, but…not everyone has to make themselves deal with it. We can spread that out a bit.

Review copy provided by Tor.

This is a sort of book I don’t get enough of: the sort of book I refer to as planets-and-aliens. (I know there are other planets-and-aliens fans out there reading this and doing a little happy dance.) There are two kinds of aliens in this one, the Ilmatarans and the Sholen, and they are in quite different relationship to each other and the humans, and everyone is trying to figure out each other and the universe. And that is just the sort of thing I miss and don’t get enough of hurrah go team. And! And and and! It all takes place under the surface of a frozen alien planet! So there is ice and lots of water and two kinds of aliens!

The down sides are fairly small. There is a small incident of sexual violence, noted for those of you who may, after the last five years or so of the field, be fed up enough to be avoiding all such. There is also a moment wherein a character asks another if he could please make his reply to a question a bit less bathetic, and this criticism could in fact be leveled at the human interactions in general. And this may be part of what makes me not attach particularly strongly to any of the human characters.

But bah, humans, who needs ’em? You can pick up nearly any book in the store and find humans. Thick on the ground, humans. Can hardly dodge ’em. This book has two kinds of aliens, one of whom is entirely blind and it doesn’t matter in the least because they understand about tasting things in the water and using sonar so thoroughly that we are most of the way through the book before it occurs to them that the funny monkeys have a silent head sense that sneaks up on them. And every time you go thinking that one of the aliens is acting awfully human, something happens that…well, no, really, they’re not.

So I am quite pleased and satisfied. More aliens, Mr. Cambias. More. Humans only if you feel it entirely necessary. But ice and water and aliens: more.

Review copy provided by Tor. Also I am a friend of Jo’s.

Also in personal connections to this book: Jo quotes me as saying that the physics in Anathem is no good, which it true, and which pleases me, because this is just the sort of book I would have read when I was an undergrad doing summer research and trying to find books in Library of Congress system libraries, and having the aside from me and Chad Orzel about the physics might well have saved me from diving enthusiastically into Anathem based on the rest of Jo’s essay only to find out about the physics with dawning horror. I shout through the world of letters to younger versions of myself and people like me: “You’re welcome!”

I read most of this book in its original blog post form, but for me it reads very differently in book form. I’m not sure why. Partly I think that it flows when there’s stuff to go on to: there is the sort of clear path from one essay to the next that is the sort of sensible train of thought that is the exact opposite of what my own reading does, that is how I would construct someone else’s reading if I was going to do it but is not how it actually works out for me. (I am more likely to say, “I’ve just finished Dragon, what do I want to read next, oh, I know, this photography book on the First Nations people of Northern Canada,” than, “I’ve just finished Dragon, next I’ll read Issola.” And I love Issola; it’s my favorite.) (Yes, even more favorite than Tiassa even though I am a Tiassa.) (Yes, even more favorite than Teckla even though it has barricades.) (I digress.) (But so does Jo’s book! So it’s thematic.)

Despite Issola (a graceful sweep, not a trap door!), Jo and I are quite a lot alike in the bits of this that are not about the specific books: the reading in sips throughout the day, the conviction that there are never, ever, ever enough books, and the whole thing is great fun to read. I have seen other people saying that What Makes This Book So Great is going to be an expensive book for them, and it might be that, if you don’t have a good library either in your home or close by. But for me it was mostly a book that made me have to stifle email impulses. The Cetagandans aren’t effete, they’re decadent, it’s not the same thing! And like that. There’s a lot like that. But I like doing that. Genre is a conversation; well, this is a conversation about a conversation. The last essay in the volume is about criticism versus talking about books, and how what this book is doing is talking about books. Well, most of what I do here is book posts talking about books, too. (None of it is criticism, but I reserve the right to talk about food and my dog and so on.) And if you want more of that, here’s a whole lot of more of that, all at once, with Delany and Bujold and all sorts of cool books talked about. Fun, and somehow different fun in book form.

Lawrence Block, The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons. The good news is, Lawrence Block is just the same as the last time he was writing Burglar books. The bad news is, Lawrence Block is just the same as the last time he was writing Burglar books. I think I am still reading this series out of nostalgia, but on the other hand I still do have the nostalgia.

George Dyson, Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship. Workmanlike and moderately interesting. Does what it says on the tin, talking about the design of a nuclear-powered spaceship.

P. V. Glob, The Bog People: Iron-Age Man Preserved. Also does what it says on the tin. I think this book is why all this information was out there circulating so people like me could take it for granted.

Bernd Heinrich, The Snoring Bird. Kindle. This was my Grandpa’s birthday present this year. (Today would have been Grandpa’s birthday.) I was not really done picking out books for Grandpa when he died, so…I kept doing it, things we might both have liked. This one was a bit disappointing. Too much boyfriend, not enough roller derby. In this case, too much annoying horrible father, not enough birds and ichneumon wasps. Not the best Heinrich, and also not at all the most self-aware Heinrich. And the titular bird was almost completely absent in any detail, alas.

Crystal Lynn Hilbert, The Trickster Edda. Kindle. I’m not sure how I am to handle things I read for blurbing as opposed to review. I have had things I’ve read for review lifted for blurbs before, and that’s fine? I hope I’m not violating any norms by talking briefly about this novella here. It was a romp with junk food and Norse mythology and dating and laundry. Good fun.

Adam Hochschild, The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin. Fascinating book. Hochschild interviewed not only those who had suffered but also those who were still, in 1991 or so, fans of the late dictator. Disquieting and horrible but very, very interesting.

Kyung Moon Hwang, A History of Korea. This is not where to start. It is where I started. It is not a good place to start at all. It’s a good thing I have another book of Korean history on my desk and probably more to come, because this is sort of an “interesting anecdotes” history of Korea, and…really you need more than that. Really. It is a brief romp through the history of Korea. One can enjoy brief romps, but one can enjoy them even more when one is entirely clear on what one is romping through. So: more needed here.

Ari Marmell, Lost Covenant. Start early in the series for full impact, but still swashing and buckling and thievery and joking and fun.

Nnedi Okorafor, Kabu-Kabu. This is a rare short story collection in a few ways. 1) It is pretty thematically unified. 2) None of the short stories annoyed me enough that I quit reading them. 3) I am pretty sure they were all short stories rather than novelettes or novellas. Anyway, mostly African settings/origins, interesting characters, many tie-in points with Okorafor’s novels, highly recommended. Oh, and Whoopi Goldberg wrote the introduction, which made me think not a bit more highly of Nnedi Okorafor and quite a bit more highly of Whoopi Goldberg.

Philip Reeve, A Web of Air. Very much a sequel, but a fun one. Structurally a bit odd–I was expecting the younger child’s POV to go further and was a bit disappointed when it didn’t.

Marie Rutkoski, The Winner’s Curse. Discussed elsewhere.

Sara Ryan and Carla Speed McNeil, Bad Houses. Graphic novel about hoarders and estate sales and…yeah, very much off the beaten path.

Sally Satel and Scott O. Lilienfeld, Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience. Ah, a sherbet book. Chilly and insubstantial? Yes, but what I meant was: okay, sure, but…. The argument this book makes is fine; there are all sorts of things the current state of neuroscience can’t touch. I don’t really understand why New Scientist recommended it, because anyone who reads New Scientist even a little bit should have found this book not in the least bit surprising. How is that a useful book recommendation? “Books to bore our regular readers!” Thanks, New Scientist! The other thing is: once you’ve gotten into the minefield that is Stuff MRIs Can’t Show Us About Culpability, 150 pages is not nearly enough to handle questions of culpability and forms of justice, so then you end up with a very slick and shallow version of philosophical questions that people have been wrestling with for thousands of years. Disappointing.

John Sayles, A Moment in the Sun. Oh, oh, oh, this book. This gigantic wrist-busting book. I’m not even sure it works as a book, and I loved it, and I’m so glad I read it, and I want more books like it even if it sort of doesn’t really work. Yes. Because John Sayles is a one of us. Like a you and me and Jon and that other lady, that us! It’s a good us. John Sayles is a voracious inclusive polymath one of us. I mean, you can tell that from the better end of his movies. You can tell that from Lone Star and Matewan and Brother, right, that he’s one of those people who will set out wondering about something and look up five years and four bookshelves later telling you about the mating habits of pandas and how it relates to the silver trade. And he’s a one of us because he can’t look at those things and just see white dudes. I read this book and felt less alone in the world because John Sayles wrote this book about the American war in the Philippines, so naturally it started in the Yukon, like, of course. Naturally. You just let your breath out because we’re like that and there it is. And he’s allowed to do a book like that because he’s John Sayles, but I love him because what he wants to do with being John Sayles is a book like that and not, like, buy a yacht or fancy grills or something. It goes all over the damn place and is so full of people named Mei and Frantisek and you don’t even know who next, white people, black people, Filipinos, Chinese people, men, women, able-bodied, disabled, sick, whoever. I am not coherent about this book. I am not reasonable about this book. I don’t have to be reasonable about this book; it is not a reasonable book. The things people say about James Michener, I don’t really get those things, because Michener has point A, and then he has point B, and eventually you get to Z, and then you are done, and he has gone through the alphabet, whereas John Sayles, he teaches you four alphabets and perspective drawing, and then you’re not sure why, but it’s okay, because you know four alphabets and perspective drawing and whether Jessie’s family is okay maybe. Yes. This book. I would be mad at anybody else who went and made movies instead of writing me more books like this book, but it is John Sayles, so I am not mad, except maybe about Silver City, because that sucked. But this book, oh, oh.

Karl Schroeder, Lockstep. Discussed elsewhere. Kindle, in case you were keeping track for some reason. More to the point in case I was.

Evelyn Sharp, Rebel Women. Kindle. Guys, this was awesome. It’s free, go download it for your own device. It’s an early 20th century British feminist fabulist writing thinly fictionalized stories of her own experiences in the suffrage movement, and they’re sharp and real, and some of them are funny, and they really won’t take you long. And then some of the early 20th century perspective is so “Whaaaaaa?” Like the idea that the 1910s were short on cranks, seriously. It was an eye-opener. And free. Go, acquire, acquire like the wind.

C. J. Underwood, An Army of Judiths. Indifferently-written historical fiction about Kenau Hasselaer of Haarlem. Who was awesome, and honestly, no, the book was not that great on its own, but yes, I did want a novel about Kenau, thanks all the same. I mean, there are things like: if you are writing in English, do not give two of your major characters the nicknames Am and Erm. (Or Um and Is. Or whatever. Common words and mumble-noises: try to avoid as nicknames.) Do not make your readers stop and think about why Dutch servants are speaking with Cockney accents. Etc. But really: Kenau Hasselaer, I am not spoiled for choice in novels about her, I will put up with a lot.

Jean-Christophe Valtat, Luminous Chaos. Sequel to Aurorarama, and I think you’ll want that first. I missed New Venice; the steampunk Paris was fun and interesting but not as vivid and polar-bear-ridden, not as Mris-targeted. Still worth the time. Still will follow Valtat, despite the…central Parisian pun in part of it. (Ow.) I think one of the things that I enjoyed about this is that I don’t as often see time-travel within parts of someone else’s timeline, and I liked that.