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| 0061142026
| 9780061142024
| 0061142026
| 4.10
| 465,402
| 1999
| Aug 29, 2006
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liked it
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**spoiler alert** One last book review from 2017! I almost forgot I read this, because I read it into a microphone. I recorded a bespoke audiobook of
**spoiler alert** One last book review from 2017! I almost forgot I read this, because I read it into a microphone. I recorded a bespoke audiobook of Stardust as a Christmas gift for a friend who hasn’t had a lot of time to read and is trying to get back into it with audiobooks. I chose Stardust for its length and because it has an upbeat ending, which is something my friend expressed more interest in after not really enjoying
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
. Much to my surprise, when I went to read my previous review of this book … there wasn’t one! I have never read this book since I joined Goodreads in May 2008. So I guess I need to review it now that I’ve recently read it again. Stardust is a Neil Gaiman novel and has many of the hallmarks of such. Yet it’s also somewhat odd. When I started re-reading it this time, I actually found myself … not enjoying it at first. Gaiman adopts a somewhat more stylized approach to narration and storytelling. Although elements of his typical wit shine through in places, there are moments when the story seems to get bogged down. Also, I forgot how whiny and entitled Tristran is, at least at first. And not a little bit creepy when the discovery that the fallen star he wants to retrieve is a woman with a mind of her own. Basically, the book took a while to endear itself to me—but endear itself it did. The gradual raising of the stakes and masterful use of dramatic irony to increase the tension leads to some delightful moments as the various subplots come together. And as much as I’m not a fan of Tristran at the start, I enjoy his character arc across the novel. Stardust is part fairytale and part bildungsroman. I don’t actually enjoy this as a love story. Putting aside for the moment the way Yvaine falls for a guy whom she meets when he kidnaps her, I’m not sure what they see in each other. Yvaine is (understandably) pissed off about her fall and subsequent situation, yet beyond that, we don’t really learn much about her personality. Tristran grows, matures, and learns, for certain, but he basically seems to stick with Yvaine because that’s what he has been doing this entire time. I’ll divulge a dirty little secret now: this is one of the few books in existence whose movie adaptation I feel is superior. Almost always the book is better than the movie, but Stardust is an exception. From the changes to the story to the actors and the new characters, the movie is a revel and romp that I absolutely adore. The novel, while it has its high points, feels like a very flawed work in comparison. In the end, if you’re looking for some fairytale-esque fantasy, then this book has something for you. It has a quest-like structure and a happily-ever-after and various set-pieces that might feel familiar. And I really did enjoy re-reading it, and literally reading it, and I hope it warms my friend’s heart when she listens to it. Yet Stardust is far from one of my favourite of Gaiman’s works. That’s not a bad thing—he has some pretty strong entries!—but it makes me less eager to revisit this in the future. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 2017
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Dec 15, 2017
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Jan 15, 2018
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Paperback
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| 0998702226
| 9780998702223
| 0998702226
| 3.84
| 515
| Jan 23, 2018
| Jan 23, 2018
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it was ok
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Loves me some time travel, so of course when I saw this on NetGalley, I jumped on it. Thanks NetGalley and World Weaver Press for the eARC. The Contin
Loves me some time travel, so of course when I saw this on NetGalley, I jumped on it. Thanks NetGalley and World Weaver Press for the eARC. The Continuum is a quick jaunt, if you will, into both past and future. Wendy Nikel keeps us guessing with numerous twists and turns, though I wish I were more interested in both the protagonist and the overall plot. The Continuum opens with Elise Morley in 1912. She is there to Extract a wayward temporal tourist; that’s her job. When she succeeds, she returns to 2012, only for her boss, the enigmatic Dr. Wells, to whisk her away to a top-secret facility. Turns out he has been dealing with some black-ops type people on the side, and that contrary to what he told Elise, the technology they use can also take them into their future. Soon she’s in 2112, attempting to retrieve wayward agent sent to investigate the future and report back. Of course, that’s not all she was lied to about, and she soon finds herself trapped, with no real options. And some dude originally from 1912 is there, somehow, with knowledge and technology far beyond what he should have…. As far as time travel mechanics go, Nikel keeps this pretty simple. The timelines are “synced” in that “Meanwhile, In the Present…” kind of way; you can only travel to the current date, just certain years in the past or future. The technology is crude: for the most part, you have to use a specific machine to get you where you need to go. And there isn’t much in the way of advanced technology beyond that—even in the 2112 setting, Nikel doesn’t invest too much time trying to establish that technology has advanced all that much. Everyone has some suped-up Google Glasses and retinal scans, and that’s about it. Taken altogether, this means your mileage may vary here. As a SF nerd, I was loving the travel but a little tired of the set-pieces. There is little here in terms of whizz-bang, gee-wow, that’s-new SF territory. A more casual SF reader, or someone just dipping their toes into this subgenre, won’t be as bothered by that. They might prefer the clean-cut action-paced nature of this novel. And I’ll give it that: The Continuum does not linger or waste any time (no pun intended). I actually really like the situation Elise finds herself in. Cut off from allies, she basically discovers that she can’t return to her present and expect to live, nor can she stay in this future, because reasons. So for a good chunk of the book, she seems to have zero options. This kind of pressure on a protagonist always appeals to me, because it’s when their back is to a wall that you can really see their mettle. I also like that there doesn’t seem to be any sexual or romantic tension between Elise and her target, Agent Chandler. It would have been very easy for Nikel to go down that route. I’m glad she didn’t—I love reading books where romance, especially with a female protagonist, isn’t on the agenda. Elise and Chandler develop a grudging respect for one another, and they work well enough together. Ultimately, though, the plot just seems to lose steam. After the climax, the denouement drops a predestination paradox on us that seems to put Elise on a bus, even as it hints that this is not the end of this story arc. And so, I’m just left with a sense of … mehhhhh. Like, what was the point? It doesn’t help that the character development is practically nonexistent: I didn’t learn much about Elise outside of this immediate job, nor did I ever get attached to any of the other named characters, most of whom we saw for about 2 pages, if that. We spend almost all of this book in Elise’s head, yet at the end of all this, I feel like I hardly know her. The Continuum has its moments and isn’t half-bad, but it doesn’t measure up to my standards. I’m not saying you won’t enjoy it (and wouldn’t judge you if you do), but there is nothing here that grabs me and says, “this is a series you need to be following”. And that’s a shame, because I do love me some time travel. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 30, 2017
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Dec 31, 2017
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Dec 30, 2017
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Paperback
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| 0307269647
| 9780307269645
| 0307269647
| 3.56
| 6,247
| Jan 12, 2010
| Jan 12, 2010
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it was ok
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My first reaction upon starting this book was trepidation regarding how long I had put it off. Published in 2010 (and therefore probably finished in l
My first reaction upon starting this book was trepidation regarding how long I had put it off. Published in 2010 (and therefore probably finished in late 2008 or early 2009), You Are Not a Gadget is nearly 10 years old. That’s an eternity in the world of technology. I’ve had this sitting in my to-read pile for years, just haven’t gotten around to it! I was curious to see how well Jaron Lanier’s self-titled manifesto would hold up, considering that 9 years is an eternity in the tech world. The answer: quite well, although that doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily like this. It really is a manifesto, with all that connotes. You Are Not a Gadget is a dense, philosophical tract. It can trace its roots to Lanier’s involvement in the tech scene in the 1980s, but his analysis is broad enough that a lot of it is still relevant to 2017. To summarize it in one sentence: Lanier is concerned about a school of thought he dubs “cybernetic totalism”, which essentially privileges a technology-first perspective of digital innovation at the expense of what he views as more “humanist” agendas. Lanier points to Singularitarians as an extreme example of cybernetic totalists but identifies the influence of cybernetic totalism to varying degrees in much of our online society. In his view, the trend towards cybernetic totalism dehumanizes us and sabotages any hope of the Internet and the web actually improving our ability to empathize and relate to one another. As an alternative, he proposes that we have to find new ways of distributing cultural content and media and embrace technologies, like virtual reality, that have the potential to help us communicate in novel ways. I don’t agree with everything Lanier says here—either because I’m not persuaded, or because some of his ideas are simply outlandish (songles?). That being said, one thing is clear: he has put a lot of thought into this. He attempts to unpack very complex issues. This is not a pop culture “here’s how I think we can fix the Internet” type of book. Lanier draws deeply on history, science, and philosophy to make his arguments, and for that reason, this was an enjoyable way to spend a Thursday morning during my holiday break. I felt like I was back in university, reading a book for my Philosophy of Science and Technology course. I particularly enjoyed some remarks Lanier makes near the end. He talks about how he has two opposing views of humans sometimes: when designing tools for humans, as he puts it, he thinks of us as spiritual beings, with souls; when trying to understand how the human brain works, from a neuroscience perspective, he thinks of us as machines. Lanier justifies this by pointing out that these different philosophies make it easier to complete these very different tasks. I think this is a pretty nuanced perspective. His chapter on how creative media might be better offered as a service rather than a product is semi-prescient (in that it doesn’t quite anticipate but certainly applies to the emergence of Netflix and other streaming services, like Spotify). I’ve always sneered at the service-rather-than-product philosophy and largely eschewed things like Kindle e-books for that reason. I will admit, though, that some of Lanier’s arguments in this chapter challenged my thinking. I’m not saying he has convinced me, but I think I better understand this alternative point of view beyond the naive or surface-level assumption of “people just want control so they will make more money.” I’m less crazy about some of his arguments in favour of security through obscurity. Lanier says, “obscurity is the only fundamental form of security that exists”. This is not wrong, but it seems rather tautological and reductive. He argues that it’s unethical for white hat hackers to go around finding exploits in unexploited technology because black hats probably won’t have enough time and the resources of a university lab to do it. This seems short-sighted, in retrospect, given the government-funded cyberterrorism, ransomware, exploits found in car software, etc. The idea that we shouldn’t test-penetrate systems is, in my opinion, laughable. The really unethical idea here is that we should be putting proprietary programs into our bodies that haven’t been properly tested and regulated first. As I mentioned at the start of this review, my initial concerns involved whether or not You Are Not a Gadget would feel dated. Indeed, Lanier makes the occasional comment that has since become obsolete. He points out that the then-nascent Facebook hasn’t started making much money. His analysis of how digital copying affects music sales and other creators doesn’t anticipate the emergence of platforms like Patreon. (He kind of gropes around in the dark and hints at similar ideas, but I’m kind of surprised he never actually brings up a Patreon-like experience. Same goes for cryptocurrency.) And, the ludicrous songles suggestion aside, there is almost no commentary on the Internet of Things. Let me be clear: I’m not blaming Lanier for not predicting the next decade. Just trying to document the few ways in which this book does feel dated to a contemporary reader. Most of the manifesto, however, still applies. “Lock in” is still prevalent. Trolling is a problem. Nerd Rapture supporters are still all around us. And yeah, even with Patreon, musicians still aren’t always making money. Frankly, the biggest issue with You Are Not a Gadget, though, is simply that it isn’t always coherent. The introduction is all right, and most of the individual chapters at least have a thesis. Yet the book just kind of … keeps going … and then stops. The last chapter is not really a conclusion but rather a climactic, grand ramble that ends with some kind of exhortation for us all to be better humans and better communicators. There’s no recapitulation or summary of Lanier’s ideas and arguments. And I’ve got more than a little side-eye going on for the idea that virtual reality, a technology he just so happens to be heavily involved in, is the most promising tool to tackle the problems he has identified. Basically, this book might blow your mind, in a good way, but it’s also a messy philosophical rant of the kind you’ll hear from your computer-obsessed neighbour at a party where everyone is having a good time. I’ve heard elements of these arguments before from people I know; hell, I’m sure I’ve made some of these arguments, or similar ones, myself. Once you reach a certain level of familiarity with the Internet and digital technologies, some of these ideas become common currency. So You Are Not a Gadget has some high points, but in the end, it didn’t leave me gawping in appreciation or amazement. I just kind of nodded my head, non-committally, and went on with my day. I really like Lanier’s attempt to appeal to a deeper, more philosophical discussion on these ideas, but he doesn’t always come across as clearly as he could. I’ve heard this before, and heard it said better. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 28, 2017
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Dec 28, 2017
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Dec 28, 2017
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 9781435249158
| 1435249151
| 3.97
| 1,639,548
| Mar 03, 2005
| Dec 28, 2006
|
liked it
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First John Green book I’ve read despite enjoying various of his videos and other productions sporadically. (Also, I watched the Paper Towns movie a wh
First John Green book I’ve read despite enjoying various of his videos and other productions sporadically. (Also, I watched the Paper Towns movie a while back and liked that.) My experience with Looking for Alaska was mixed. At the time I was reading it, I had a lot of trouble getting into it—especially the first part. Looking back now while pondering this review, and after talking it over with a friend (who hasn’t read it but was able to answer my Questions about things), I’m inclined to be a little more charitable. Looking for Alaska concerns Miles “Pudge” Halter’s junior year at Culver Creek Boarding School. Bookish and not-popular at his old public school, Miles enters Culver Creek, his dad’s alma mater, with the hopes of turning over a new leaf. Not of becoming popular, per se, but maybe of becoming someone interesting. And he seems to get off to a good start: he befriends his roommate, “the Colonel”; as well as the free-spirited Alaska Young, for whom he feels an irresistible attraction. As Green counts down the days to an incident that divides the book asymmetrically into “before” and “after”, we watch Pudge slide into the social dynamic of this private school. When “before” becomes “after”, Pudge and his friends have to pick up the pieces of a tragedy that, to them, doesn’t make any sense. So, my issues with this book started early and are mostly about Pudge’s narration/Green’s style. Basically, Pudge, who is a 16- or 17-year-old boy, is horny and focuses a lot on pretty girls. In particular, he’s rather focused on assessing Alaska’s attractiveness. Here’s an example, coming at the end of a very long paragraph that ruminates upon her beauty: And not just beautiful, but hot, too, with her breasts straining against her tight tank top, her curved legs swinging back and forth beneath the swing, flip-flops dangling from her electric-blue-painted toes. It was right then … that I realized the importance of curves, of the thousand places where girls’ bodies ease from one place to another, from arc of the foot to ankle to calf, from calf to hip to waist to breast to neck to ski-slope nose to forehead to shoulder to the concave arch of the back to the butt to the etc. I’d noticed curves before, of course, but I had never quite apprehended their significance. Pudge recapitulates such thoughts throughout the book; I stickied a few other times, such as scene where Alaska shimmies out a window and says, “Don’t look at my ass” and he’s all, “Reader, I totally looked at her ass.” As an asexual person, I don’t get it. I don’t identify with Pudge’s 16-year-old obsession with the hotness of girls, and so his entire narration on the hotness of Alaska Young was very distracting. I found myself constantly yelling, “Get on with it!” in that very Monty Python-esque voice. I’m not sure what it is about this novel in particular, because obviously I’ve read descriptions like this before. A case in point is Caitlin Moran’s How to Build a Girl , wherein Johanna constantly describes how horny and DTF she is and how hot all her conquests are. Maybe it’s their frequency, or just Green’s particular style, but they really pulled me out of the story. Or it’s possible that, while other characters often describe their attraction in metaphorical terms (“so and so is so scrumptious”), the specificity with which Pudge lists off all the physical things that make him attracted to Alaska distracted me. I took some time to talk to a friend of mine (she hasn’t read this book, though she has read How to Build a Girl) who is always down to endure these kinds of Questions from me. Mainly I was wondering when she first noticed she had power, of a kind, over boys in school, etc., based on her body and what she wore or how she presented herself. It’s not something I ever paid my attention to (in any sense). Although Looking for Alaska is from the POV of a (presumably) straight male, I was curious because Pudge portrays Alaska as someone who is obviously aware of her attractiveness and happy to flaunt it—though to her own ends. There’s also a hilarious scene about blow jobs (… which is a sentence I never thought I would write), so I asked some questions about that, but we won’t get into that here…. So, anyway, I couldn’t identify very well with Pudge in these moments. I don’t think that’s going to be a problem for every reader, of course, but it is a significant component of the book and the characterization of our narrator, particularly after the climax that upends the entire story. I like what Green does here with an unreliable narrator and the deconstruction of what it means to be a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Pudge himself acknowledges that he is unreliable, that his interpretation of Alaska and Alaska’s behaviour is flawed, particularly After. And that’s where Looking for Alaska transforms from a merely mediocre story about teenagers doing drugs and drinking and having parties into a moving look at how adolescents try to figure out who they are. When After strikes, Pudge and his friends have to pick up the pieces. They try fitting them together, try figuring out why the tragedy that happened actually happened—and find that it doesn’t make sense. And while they discover enough for Green to give us a little bit of closure, he also leaves enough room for doubt in there, echoing the real world, where tragedy doesn’t always make sense and answers aren’t always available. So in terms of how this book portrays the way teens react to tragedy, it’s pretty good. I am somewhat dissatisfied, however, that for a book trying so hard to be progressive, it doesn’t seem to pass the Bechdel test. Alaska and Lara are the only two named women of note, and I’m struggling to recall if they ever really talked about anything not related to boys … Lara essentially exists only as a foil to Alaska, and part of Pudge’s big realization in the last act of the book is that, hey, she’s a human being too and is having all these feelings about the tragedy and maybe he shouldn’t just ignore her because he’s not in the mood for nooky at the moment. Pudge does come to this realization, but all I’m saying is that Green sets the bar really low here. I’ll conclude with a line that I absolutely love. At one point, Alaska says, “Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia.” I had recently watched the Doctor Who Christmas special, “Twice Upon a Time”, which once again deals with the Doctor not wanting to regenerate. This line resonated with me, and made me think of Doctor Who, and how the Doctor is never eager to discuss or think about or revisit (sometimes literally) his past or his past selves. He isn’t one for nostalgia—and he doesn’t like seeing his future, either. He is always running towards the present. Alaska does the same thing here. Looking for Alaska is a somewhat messy, not entirely satisfactory, but still enjoyable YA novel about being young, getting up to mischief, and dealing with life-changing events. Despite having a hard time with the beginning part of the story, I’m glad I stuck with it, and it really improved towards the end. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 26, 2017
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Dec 26, 2017
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Dec 26, 2017
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Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0399592806
| 9780399592805
| 0399592806
| 3.67
| 10,367
| Sep 05, 2017
| 2017
|
liked it
|
If I were younger, I would be all over this book. If I were slightly older than that, but still younger, then I would probably sneer at this book’s pr
If I were younger, I would be all over this book. If I were slightly older than that, but still younger, then I would probably sneer at this book’s pretentiousness. As it is, having advanced to the ripe old age of 28, I have now acquired enough wisdom neither to gush nor to sneer but simply to shrug. The Golden House is most definitely Salman Rushdie, but it’s also a little bit different. And perhaps one of the marks of a great writer isn’t just the quality of their books but whether or not they are willing to experiment with their style. Réne Unterlinden is an aspiring filmmaker. He befriends his neighbours, the Goldens, expatriates from an unknown country. The patriarch, Nero Golden, has an imperial presence that would make politicians squirm, and each of this three sons has their own unique hang-ups and personalities. Réne watches it all, takes it all in, taking notes for his eventual film about this enigmatic family. Unfortunately, he also finds himself drawn into their drama, so that the subject becomes a character in his own story…. The somewhat embarrassingly ingratiating jacket copy calls this Rushdie’s “triumphant return to realism”, but I disagree. The Golden House might not be magical realism (aka fantasy) in the same sense as Midnight’s Children or many of Rushdie’s other novels. However, to label it realism in the strictest sense indicates that the marketing department in charge of this book just missed the point. This book is a mirror to the present-day situation in the United States, and it achieves that through a healthy dose of surrealism. This is a modern-day fairy tale. The surrealist elements of the story actually work well for me. I almost see this as a Wes Anderson kind of film, with characters who are more caricature than people. Rushdie explicitly sets them up this way, with our narrator dressing them up in pseudonyms and assigning them roles as he plans to turn their stories into a film of his very own. These aren’t people. They’re plot points, and the fact that they are plot points is the point. Réne is totally an unreliable narrator too. I wonder how much of what we see or hear is made up or embellished. I wouldn’t go so far as to say he’s unhinged, but I definitely get the impression that Réne, in his retelling of the events to us, has started mixing his film with reality. And, of course, that brings us to the whole postmodern question at the centre of this book: who are people, really, except the stories we tell about ourselves and each other? Unlike my last foray into Rushdie, with the beautiful-but-redundant Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights , The Golden House didn’t leave me feeling like I’ve seen this all before. I admit that the last part of the book really dragged for me: Rushdie spends a lot of time following Réne down these rabbit holes of backstory, and at some point I was just ready to call it quits. Nevertheless, I stuck it out … and it was mostly worth it. There is some interesting commentary here on how we perceive the lives of others, particularly those we call the rich and powerful. There’s some commentary here on taking responsibility for one’s own actions (see how Réne deals with the situation he creates with Vasilisa). For all of the caricaturization happening, at the end of the day, characters like Nero are the ones who seem most real, most human in this book—perhaps because they are the most flawed. Is Nero Golden a mobster at heart? Or is he an exiled emperor? A disgraced kingpin? A dolorous yet doting father? A jealous husband? Is he all of these things? None of them? Same goes for Vasilisa, or any of Nero’s children, or Réne himself. Each of them is all just a story, packaged and presented to us by Réne, and Rushdie goes out of his way to point this out to us. He draws the reader in and reminds us that characterization is a fragile form of narrative. We see this, too, in the events that play out in the background, the constant references to American politics, to Donald Trump (the Joker) running against Hillary Clinton (Batwoman). The Golden House feels very topical because of how it was written, but the truth is that this is a story that could be told anywhere, of any time. I suspect it will endure long after the current political climate has faded. I really like how Rushdie experiments in this book, even if there are times when that experiment feels too drawn out or errs towards the side of pretentious. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 24, 2017
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Dec 26, 2017
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Dec 24, 2017
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0439115175
| 9780439115179
| 0439115175
| 3.86
| 2,399
| Jun 01, 2000
| Jul 2000
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liked it
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Alternative title: Tobias is Not OK. Another extremely well-written, gut-punching character story with an otherwise uninteresting plot to keep it chug
Alternative title: Tobias is Not OK. Another extremely well-written, gut-punching character story with an otherwise uninteresting plot to keep it chugging along. The Test reveals that Tobias is still basically shattered from his torture at the hands of the sadistic, and possibly mad, Yeerk Taylor. While the rest of the Animorphs have been dealing with their own shit, apparently, for the last ten books, Tobias has been keeping it together around them but then metaphorically going off and crying in a corner. We see Applegate explore PTSD and related symptoms of war in many ways over the course of this series. The Test is different in that Tobias’ trauma is linked to a very specific incident, rather than the culmination of years’ worth of battle scars and moral dilemmas. It’s also still quite raw, and when he suddenly encounters Taylor again—and has to work with her—all those feelings come flooding back. I also think there’s something to the fact that Tobias, now living in the form of a hawk, suppresses a lot of his emotions. He always describes his hawk-self as a cool, calculating, deadly being. There isn’t much room in the hawk for mercy. So I get the sense that it’s much easier for Tobias to push down his more human emotions when he’s cruising around in hawk-mode, especially if he’s hunting. You don’t want your compassion for living creatures to get in the way of that dinner you need. Yet this means that it becomes ever more difficult for Tobias to process his feelings, and I think we really see that here. Basically, The Test is a roller coaster of emotion. In addition to the prominent problems of our protagonist, Applegate shows Cassie breaking ranks once again when it comes to the morality of a mission. The Animorphs have gone from “how do we fight the Yeerks” to “should we even be doing this” and seeing the Yeerks as a more diverse, rather than monolithic, enemy. In an era where a lot of villains came in Saturday morning cartoon flavour-of-the-week cookiecutter squads of minions and bad guys, this kind of shades-of-grey portrayal is stunning. In this book we’re reminded that there are Yeerks who are much worse than Visser Three (like Taylor), Yeerks who want peace, and of course, Yeerks who are just there, Yeerking it out. And as the Animorphs come to terms with this, it becomes harder and harder to accept just wholesale slaughtering Yeerks as a way of fighting their invasion. Tobias’ voice ultimately carries this one. It’s not a coincidence that this book was written by the same ghostwriter who did The Illusion. Tobias isn’t usually my favourite character/narrator, but I have to admit that a lot of his books are just good, and this is no exception. I’ll finish with another retro tech thought: wow, the lengths to which Ax goes to get Internet out in their little hideaway, and the whole thought of dialing in to go onto AOL. Wild. Next time: Cassie is stranded in Australia! Let’s guess how many stereotypes we’ll get to see. My reviews of Animorphs: ← #42: The Journey | #44: The Unexpected → [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 23, 2017
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Dec 23, 2017
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Dec 23, 2017
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Paperback
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| 1623367913
| 9781623367916
| 1623367913
| 3.85
| 2,323
| Jul 11, 2017
| Jul 11, 2017
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liked it
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When I taught in England, I wore a bow-tie every day to work, because I was not down with neckties. They are too long and floppy. While I was, in part
When I taught in England, I wore a bow-tie every day to work, because I was not down with neckties. They are too long and floppy. While I was, in part, emulating the Eleventh Doctor, I’d be remiss if I didn’t give some credit for this sartorial preference to a much older role model: Bill Nye the Science Guy. My favourite line of Everything All at Once comes in the very first chapter: “Thinking like a nerd is a lifelong journey, and I am inviting you here to take it with me.” This is so true. More to the point, we must remember that different people nerd out over different things. Pop culture occasionally creates a myopic vision of nerdery as something restricted to technology, video games, science fiction and fantasy settings, etc. But you can be a nerd about basically anything. When I go back to work after the holidays, the question I’m going to pose to my new classes on day one will be: “What do you nerd out about?” Because everyone is probably a nerd about something. Bill Nye’s memoir is very different from his previous book that I read, Undeniable . Whereas that was focused on laying out the arguments for evolution and, more largely, rational considered use of the scientific method to make policy, Everything All at Once is more philosophical and personal. It’s part memoir, part autobiography, part self-help/motivational text—it’s Nye using his own personal experiences to explain how he thinks humanity could be better, if only we looked at the world slightly differently and acted slightly differently. It never sugarcoats the challenges that we face as a species, but it is also brimming with Nye’s trademark positive and optimistic outlook. It’s hard not to love Nye for his enthusiasm and passionate views of how science and engineering can improve our lives when implemented humanely and with foresight. This is where this book excels: Nye always links the technological improvements in our society with social improvements, not suggesting that the former lead to the latter, but that the two must go hand-in-hand. In some ways, Nye’s tone and ferocity have much in common with a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher at the pulpit—but instead of holding eternal damnation over our heads, Nye is simply exhorting us to be better—and that’s a moral I can go along with. I really enjoyed hearing the personal anecdotes about Nye’s own life. I knew, of course, that he had a career as an engineer before turning to edutainment. But it’s something else to hear about it from him, personally. I love hearing about how engineers and scientists had to unravel problems prior to the widespread availability of personal computers and the Internet, and Nye’s stories certainly hit that spot. Similarly, hearing how he slid from engineering into television by taking a huge chance on his comedy career was inspiring. Just think how close our world came to never having Bill Nye the Science Guy on our TV screens…. Along with the anecdotes come reminders about humility. In some cases, it’s Nye describing times he made some interesting mistakes. In other cases, he describes learning from other people—whether they are fellow engineers, scientists he admires or works with, or people in entirely different fields. Nye reminds us that everyone can have something to teach us—everyone, as he quotes one of his mentors, knows something you don’t know. We are all nerds about different things, and sometimes it is worthwhile stopping and listening to people nerd out. The chapters in this book are short, which makes it easy to read this a little bit at a time. However, the overall impression I got as a result was a little bit scattered. Nye addresses so many topics—and occasionally goes off on so many tangents—that at times the book feels like it’s lacking a single, unified message. I suppose this is to be expected from the title (though Nye himself admits that multitasking isn’t what he means by “everything all at once”). The tone in parts of this book also rubbed me the wrong way. By and large I didn’t have any problems, but on occasion, it felt like Nye was yelling at the sky. I had the same problem with Bill Nye Saves the World and did not, in fact, finish watching that series—there were too many moments when I felt like Nye was just haranguing the audience; it was no longer, “wow, isn’t this so cool, don’t you want to learn more about how this works?” but instead “c’mon people, it’s really this simple, we just need to act, don’t you see?” I guess what I’m saying is that the kid in me with nostalgia for The Science Guy wants lab-coat-wearing-smiley-Bill and not older, wearier, let’s-just-save-the-planet-Bill. Still, Everything All at Once is pretty inspirational. I’m glad I read it. It’s not a stunning memoir, by any means, but it’s a solid work that underlines Nye’s ongoing legacy of outreach, education, and pushing for change through action in addition to words. It contains practical ideas about what we can do, how we can think and act, as well as plenty of stories about how Nye became who he is today—Science Guy, bow-tie–wearer, CEO of the Planetary Society, and generally cool dude. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 21, 2017
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Dec 23, 2017
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Dec 20, 2017
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Hardcover
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| 0345491599
| 9780345491596
| 0345491599
| 4.11
| 10,056
| Jan 01, 2007
| Feb 27, 2007
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liked it
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Oh wow, remember how I thought
Engaging the Enemy
was boring and plodding? Command Decision is the complete reverse of that. With this book, Eliza
Oh wow, remember how I thought
Engaging the Enemy
was boring and plodding? Command Decision is the complete reverse of that. With this book, Elizabeth Moon revitalizes the Vatta’s War series. She advances the storyline considerably, for everyone involved. The result is a slick, faster-paced adventure that leaves the galaxy on the brink of hope—and war. As usual, spoilers for previous books but not this one. Command Decision opens not with Kylara Vatta but rather Rafe Dunbarger. Once Ky’s protege and an undercover operative for ISC, Rafe has returned to his homeplanet of Nexus II to confront his estranged father—CEO of ISC. Except his father is nowhere to be found, and something strange is happening, requiring Rafe to go deeper undercover and discover a conspiracy and a coup in progress. When we finally catch up with Ky, she and the other two ships forming her nascent space navy are looking for supplies. They run into some obstacles, eventually having to pick a fight with pirates to defend a one-time ally of Ky’s. The end result: Ky demonstrates her command chops once again and makes more friends, even as she definitely becomes more than a thorn-in-the-side for her piratical enemies. Meanwhile, back on Slotter’s Key, Ky’s Aunt Grace is now in government—what fun! And on Cascadia, Stella is discovering a knack for steering the newest incarnation of Vatta Enterprises, even if she doesn’t want to admit it to herself. Moon’s near-obsession with logistics proves more asset than liability in this volume. Things are constantly looking up for Vatta and its allies, yet Moon is always careful to take slightly more than she gives. Got some shiny missiles for your ships, Ky? How about a big ol’ space battle to deplete those reserves? And some more bad news about your ship while we’re at it? Finally proving yourself as a commander? How about a reminder that starting an interstellar, multi-government space navy is a nigh-impossible and impractical undertaking? If there’s anything I like more than a book just stacking the odds against its characters and slamming them with one challenge after another, it’s a book going out of its way to give its characters everything they want only for those things to be totally useless in the conflicts ahead. Can we also celebrate, once again, Moon’s talent for both the military and the science fiction aspects of military SF? There’s a lot of focus in Command Decision on the nature of a military or paramilitary organization: the requirements for discipline, the need for a commander to delegate certain tasks, and the nature of permissible risks. Similarly, Moon has a great handle on how much science she needs to drop into her science fiction. There are some great developments regarding the shipboard ansible technology, but Moon keeps the technobabble to a minimum. So you can read the book as semi-hard SF, albeit without as much exposition as one might expect, or as semi-soft SF, albeit with a little more realism when it comes to the nature of accelerating and decelerating and the limitations of lightspeed on acquiring information in a big ol’ space battle. However you interpret it, Moon’s writing is exactly what I was looking for, as usual: exciting and entertaining. It’s just like a cup of tea that really hits the spot. And unlike the previous book, this book just flies along. Ky and her allies get into one scrape or situation after the other. Rafe finds his family, but that’s only the start of his troubles. Not as much Stella in this one—she is mostly a bridge character here, to connect others together. Perhaps my only real complaint for this book is that, in some ways, it is much more of a setup for the next (and final?) instalment of the series. I cannot wait to see what Ky gets up to next—but I will hold off, just a little longer than I did between these two books, because I don’t want it to be over just yet. My reviews of Vatta’s War: ← Engaging the Enemy | Victory Conditions → [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 17, 2017
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Dec 19, 2017
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Dec 17, 2017
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Hardcover
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| 1580056776
| 9781580056779
| 1580056776
| 4.49
| 106,132
| Jan 16, 2018
| Jan 16, 2018
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it was amazing
|
Do you ever accidentally inhale a book? Like, you meant to read it with your eyes, but, whoops, suddenly there it is, lodged in your esophagus and now
Do you ever accidentally inhale a book? Like, you meant to read it with your eyes, but, whoops, suddenly there it is, lodged in your esophagus and now you have to go to the hospital and explain, in various gestures, how you breathed in an entire book? This happens to me more often than I would like to admit. So You Want to Talk About Race, by Ijeoma Oluo, is just the latest instance. Thankfully, this was an eARC from NetGalley (thanks Perseus Books) and not a physical volume—though I’m certainly going to need to buy one, or maybe two, when it comes out. This book is the first in what will hopefully be an avalanche of books to plug an embarrassing hole in my ongoing education. I’m trying to ride the intersectionality train, but if I’m doing an honest accounting of things, I have not been doing a great job of reading books by Black women when it comes to issues like feminism and race. It has literally been a whole year since I read Roxane Gay’s amazing short story collection Difficult Women. More recently I did read Between the World and Me , and Coates obviously touches on some of the same issues that Oluo does here. But the two books are very different, both in terms of audience and purpose. So You Want to Talk About Race is clear and upfront about what it is and what it is trying to do. Oluo is uncompromising (emphasis mine): So a good question to ask yourself right now is: why are you here? Did you pick up this book with the ultimate goal of getting people to be nicer to each other? Did you pick up this book with the goal of making more friends of different races? Or did you pick up this book with the goal of helping fight a system of oppression that is literally killing people of color? Because if you insist on holding to a definition of racism that reduces itself to “any time somebody is mean to somebody of a different race” then this is not the book to accomplish your goals. Each chapter title is a question, the chapter being Oluo’s answer: “What if I talk about race wrong?”, “Why am I always being told to check my privilege”, “What is cultural appropriation?”, “What are microaggressions?”, “I just got called racist, what do I do now?”—there seventeen, so I won’t list them all here, but they are, every single one, fantastic. I could go on, chapter-by-chapter, for quite some length about all the wonderful parts of this book. Instead, I’ll highlight some of her explanation of cultural appropriation: Cultural appropriation is the product of a society that prefers its culture cloaked in whiteness. Cultural appropriation is the product of a society that only respects culture cloaked in whiteness. Without that—if all culture (even the culture that appropriators claim to love and appreciate) were equally desired and respected, then imitations of other cultures would look like just that—imitations. If all cultures were equally respected, then wearing a feathered headdress to Coachella would just seem like the distasteful decision to get trashed in sacred artifacts…. I’ve had the cultural appropriation conversation with fellow white people before, and I’ve struggled to explain it sufficiently (the best I can do is link to this explainer from Everyday Feminism). Oluo’s chapter has helped me to realize that, often, I make the mistake of letting the conversation fall back into the unproductive territory of discussing specific examples (“well what about X, is X cultural appropriation?”) when (a) I can’t answer that because I’m not a member of that culture and (b) that’s not actually what cultural appropriation is about. Cultural appropriation, as Oluo explains here, is about the wider trends and power imbalances within our society. It’s why, to certain parts of white society, Macklemore is an artist while Tupac was a thug. But my conversations would often divert away from these crucial parts of the discussion, straying towards the more defensive territories (see Chapter 16: “I just got called racist, what do I do now?”). This book is full of so many useful ideas, tips, and strategies—particularly for white people who want to be allies to racialized people. The aforementioned chapter 16 and chapter 4, which deals with privilege and “checking” it, are both essential reminders, even for someone like myself who has already been engaging with social justice for a while now. I’ve carefully avoided using the word “primer” to describe this book. It’s accurate, but I don’t want to pigeonhole it as some kind of introductory text. Certainly, if you are a newcomer to these issues, this book is accessible. But there is so much here for readers of every level of familiarity with the issues. If you are truly open to learning more about social justice and how to dismantle institutionalized racism, you are going to find useful ideas here, in plain language you’ll understand, and in a tone that helps you hear her frustration but also her intense empathy for humanity, and her hope for a better future (because you don’t write a book like this if you think dismantling racism is a lost cause). Oluo’s writing style never wavers from being confrontational and candid—she is not trying to appease anyone—but it’s also witty and incisive. A few parts of this book get a little bit into specifics of American anti-Black racism, but by and large, almost all of the topics for discussion are relevant to a wider audience. As Oluo herself points out, Canada has its share of problems with racism. (A lot of it is directed much more vociferously towards Indigenous people—if you want momre information on that, check out Chelsea Vowel’s Indigenous Writes , or Tanya Talaga’s Seven Fallen Feathers , about the intersection of racism and violence in my own city of Thunder Bay. For writing on anti-Black racism in Canada, particularly state-sponsored racism like carding and brutality, I’ll point you towards Desmond Cole.) Moreover, Canada absorbs (whether we like it or not) much of its cultural fare from our neighbours down south, so even if policies like affirmative action or United States Supreme Court decisions don’t quite affect us in the same way, the attitudes seen in media and the language being used still does. I never felt like Oluo was losing me by spending too much time talking about American-specific concerns. So I can make a few guarantees, here. First, if you read this, you’re going to learn something—hopefully lots of things. Oluo will crystallize notions that might already be forming in your head or introduce you to ideas and show you a new way entirely of looking at things. Second, if you read this, you will come away with a praxis for actually doing the work—it isn’t enough to read books like this and then pat yourself on the back for being “woke”. That’s what the final chapter is all about, and boy, are there ever some practical tips. That’s why I’m going to be buying a copy of this book since I received a review copy for free—because we need to pay Black women when they do the work of educating us. So You Want to Talk About Race is everything I’d look for in a book on social justice issues. It’s informative, educational, and thought-provoking. It is topical in the post-Trump sense of the word. It hits that sweet spot of being academic and smart but also accessible—this is by far one of my favourite non-fiction books I’ve read all year, and probably the best I’ve received on NetGalley ( Beyond Trans and The Radium Girls are close runners-up). If you are at all interested in social justice, in dismantling racism, in making our world a better place, this is a must-read. Show up. Do the work. For more of my reviews or to subscribe to my review digest newsletter, check out Kara.Reviews! [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 13, 2017
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Dec 15, 2017
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Dec 13, 2017
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Hardcover
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| 0676973221
| 9780676973228
| 0676973221
| 4.04
| 9,574
| Jan 25, 2000
| Jan 09, 2001
|
it was ok
|
Almost a year ago I read Eden Robinson’s new novel,
Son of a Trickster
, and I immediately wanted to read more of her stuff. But, of course, wantin
Almost a year ago I read Eden Robinson’s new novel,
Son of a Trickster
, and I immediately wanted to read more of her stuff. But, of course, wanting and actually getting around to it are two different things. So here I am, at the end of 2017, finally reading Monkey Beach. Which I bought, mind you, a month or two prior, but it was finally a friend/former coworker reading it and wanting my opinion that galvanized me. I don’t know; as the end of the year approaches I’ve very much been yearning for fluffier or at least more upbeat fiction rather than so-called “serious” stuff. Yet I don’t think that mindset is what soured me on Monkey Beach. Rather, Robinson’s style is different here from Son of a Trickster, and I just can’t stop comparing this one unfavourably to it. Trigger warning in this book for rape; I mention it (in very general terms) much later on this review. Nineteen-year-old Lisamarie Hill’s younger brother, Jimmy, has gone missing while on a commercial fishing trip off the coast of B.C. After her parents leave their small community to coordinate the search, Lisa decides to strike off on her own in her dad’s powerboat. She finds herself drawn to the eponymous Monkey Beach, so named for the history of b'gwus (sasquatch) sightings on or near the island. While she travels, she ruminates upon her life to date, and we relive it through a series of (mostly) linear flashbacks that shed light on Lisa’s relationships with Jimmy, her parents, her uncle, her grandmother, and the kids she grew up. It’s not that I think Monkey Beach is bad or even poorly written. Like Son of a Trickster, there is a powerful story here. Robinson is very good at connecting the background of her story (in this case, Kitamaat, B.C. and the surrounding Douglas Channel area) with her protagonist’s personal life. She makes connections between how the colonial and industrial history of this area, the pressures and trauma of residential school, the ways in which the logging and mining and manufacturing industries have had an impact on the people of the area, particularly the Haisla people for whom this is their traditional territory. Robinson explores what this means personally for Lisa, as a 19-year-old on the cusp of the new millennium. The book starts to lose me gradually, as we start touring through Lisa’s childhood. Robinson’s writing style here is very stream-of-consciousness, with a lot of attention to what I might term superfluous detail. I think I’m just more used to these kinds of frame narratives and flashback structures having a much more obvious trajectory. With Monkey Beach, time is a more slippery concept, and that made it harder for me to stay present within the narrative. It isn’t a hard book to read by any means, and I actually enjoyed the act of reading it and wanted to keep reading it constantly. Yet so much of it seemed to slip off me like rain rather than into me like a cool drink of water. And that’s how I know it’s a difference in the writer’s style versus how I read. I’m going to digress for a moment to talk about one interesting part of my experience reading this: I headcanon Lisa as asexual. Throughout the flashbacks, she describes the sensation of feeling left behind as her female friends start pining over classmates and experimenting with their sexual expression, while Lisa doesn’t see the point. She starts hanging out more with boys, and even when some of them express interest in her, she doesn’t ever speak of reciprocal sexual attraction on her part. (If anything, she might be romantically interested in Frank, but she doesn’t seem to have a corresponding sexual attraction, resulting in a lot of confusion as she watches him hook up with other girls). Regardless of Robinson’s intention (Lisa’s sexuality definitely seems to depart from the heternormative narrative), I like that there is space within this book to interpret Lisa as ace-spec. I especially appreciate that Robinson seems to make a point of remarking on Lisa’s lack of attraction before her rape, because if there’s anything we don’t need more of, it’s conflating asexuality or sex-repulsion (which are themselves not the same!) with trauma. Part of me really wishes that we spent more time with Lisa processing and working through her feelings following her rape. But I get that this is a complex issue, that sometimes there is no processing, or that the processing works very differently, and that a lot of what happens much later in the book is part of that journey towards healing. Again, it’s just that the style in which Robinson does this means I didn’t I have yet to Skype with my friend Emma, the one who just finished this book. She asked, “Did you like the ending??” and I replied, “I didn’t really like the whole thing. I’m ambivalent about the ending.” The more I think on it, though, perhaps the ending is what I liked best. Monkey Beach is not about finding one’s missing brother, or even about fixing one’s own life. It’s an introspective story about one’s relationships to people and the land, and the ending really captures that well. Unfortunately, I just wasn’t as invested for the majority of the book. It’s strange, because Son of the Trickster stays with me to this day, and I’m super excited for that to come out in paperback so I can look into getting a class set and teaching it to my adult students. Monkey Beach, on the other hand, has not left the same impact on me. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 07, 2017
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Dec 11, 2017
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Dec 07, 2017
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0756412749
| 9780756412746
| 0756412749
| 4.01
| 3,324
| Nov 07, 2017
| Nov 07, 2017
|
liked it
|
Jim C. Hines has been on my radar for a long time, but I haven’t actually read any of his books until now! When I saw this on NetGalley, I was intrigu
Jim C. Hines has been on my radar for a long time, but I haven’t actually read any of his books until now! When I saw this on NetGalley, I was intrigued. I know Hines mostly as a fantasy writer, so I was curious to see how his science fiction would be. Turns out Hines’ Terminal Alliance reminds me a lot of John Scalzi’s
Old Man’s War
universe. Side note: This book was published in early November, but I was only approved towards the end of last month. Terminal Alliance is set in a future where humanity has only recently been rescued from a self-inflicted “feral” virus by the Krakau, squid-like aliens who have formed a loose confederacy of worlds. Humans are infants compared to most species in the galaxy now: the Krakau are slowly “reawakening” as many feral humans as possible, but they’ve had to reassemble human culture and history from our spotty records. So all the humans alive take their names from historical figures. The protagonist is Marion Adamopoulos, or Mops, her name chosen after the scientist responsible for the virus that wiped out her species. Mops is the chief janitor—yes, janitor—aboard the EMC Pufferfish. But when a bioweapon takes out the Krakau in charge and renders everyone except Mops’ janitorial team (and one other alien comrade) feral again, it’s up to Mops and her janitor squad to save the day. It sounds tongue-in-cheek, I know, and in some ways it is. In other ways, it’s devastating and heartbreaking. I mean, Hines has essentially created a universe in which humanity has no real connection to the past and no real future. Mops might be a fan of Jane Austen’s work, but she probably lacks a coherent grasp of the context of what Austen was writing. And because there are so few reborn humans, and they are essentially dependent on the Krakau, humanity’s position in the galaxy is tenuous at best. No amount of situational comedy is going to soothe this wound. But, it might contribute to a very enjoyable plot. The sinister secret conspiracy stuff is about as subtle as a panto villain, but I suppose it gets the job done. Much more enjoyable is the way that Mops and her crew aren’t that competent at what they attempt. As space janitors, they aren’t exactly a crack military squad—and it shows. They rely on their ingenuity, training, and grit—and it gets them far. But they make lots of mistakes too. Although there is much to be said for competence porn and watching Jason Statham–like action heroes just mow through crowds of bad guys, I also enjoy the obverse scenario where people are plucked out of their comfort zone and struggle realistically with adapting to their new situation. I like how Hines uses the opening of each chapter as a way to infodump without overwhelming the reader. It works well here, because it allows him to push the plot forward very quickly while still informing us about the wider universe. I found myself anticipating these moments at the start of every new chapter, but they are never so long that they overstay their welcome. There are a few things that didn’t quite work for me. Much of the characterization, for example, was a little too glib (this is a problem for me with Scalzi’s work too)—Wolf and Mops’ interactions are a case in point. Similarly, I just never really got to know many of the characters beyond, perhaps, Mops. They all feel fairly cookie-cutter and stock to me. Finally, the climax feels like it drags on for a while, with a lot more false starts or red herrings and exposition than there needs to be. So, Terminal Alliance is a competent, fun, and rewarding book. I might read the sequel—it will be interesting to see what is in store for Mops and her crew now. However, it isn’t making any of my lists, so to speak. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 05, 2017
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Dec 07, 2017
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Dec 05, 2017
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1534300600
| 9781534300606
| 1534300600
| 4.48
| 46,081
| Apr 04, 2017
| Apr 04, 2017
|
really liked it
|
Oh. Em. Gee. Saga, Volume 7 might just be the saddest, most heart-wrenching thing I’ve read this year. It’s not quite at the nadir of A Fine Balance,
Oh. Em. Gee. Saga, Volume 7 might just be the saddest, most heart-wrenching thing I’ve read this year. It’s not quite at the nadir of A Fine Balance, but it comes close. I am struggling to recall a single positive and redeeming moment in this book. There’s … there’s a lot of bleakness and heartbreak here. As with many a long-running series, I’m starting to run out of new and creative commentary. Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples once again deliver a packed collection of chapters that both advance the story and drive the characters to new heights (or, er, in this case, depths). This volume might be notable for how it is more tightly focused on certain characters. There is a little bit of attention on the wider galactic politics, particularly as they involve a comet where much of the action takes place. For the most part, however, this story focuses on Alana, Marko, Hazel, and the people closest to them. The worldbuilding remains top notch. I love the imagination and dedication involved in portraying such a diversity of intelligent, alien life in this universe. It isn’t just the myriad and miraculous forms that Staples depicts—it’s the whole aesthetic, the way everything fits together (or doesn’t), the very ideas involved, like a bounty hunter with two heads. As someone who doesn’t visualize when I read, I find that this is where the graphic novel medium excels for me. I just finished Terminal Alliance, in which Jim C. Hines similarly attempts to describe a diverse universe. But because it was just words on paper, I couldn’t picture it, so I had got a lot less from his descriptions than I do from something like Saga. Although Hazel is growing up, she is less prominent here except as a plot device around which the other characters revolve. Indeed, it’s hard to say that any of the regular cast really shine as protagonists in this book. It seems more like they have things happen to them, and react, as they each struggle with their own demons. That isn’t a bad thing—if anything, it just makes this volume feel more like an interlude from one massive adventure to the next. Where will the ship go next? What will Marko be like now? How will he and Alana deal with this latest round of setbacks? And when will their paths finally cross with the Will, still broken and now disbarred from the bounty hunting union, scheming a way to get back everything he feels has been ripped away from him. Will Sir Robot find his kid? I miss Ghüs. My reviews of Saga: ← Volume 6 | Volume 8 → [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 04, 2017
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Dec 04, 2017
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Dec 04, 2017
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0765392070
| 9780765392077
| 0765392070
| 3.58
| 17,132
| Sep 19, 2017
| Sep 19, 2017
|
liked it
|
You have to watch out for those robots. Never know when they might develop thoughts of their own. Or sexual orientations, kinks, and an understanding
You have to watch out for those robots. Never know when they might develop thoughts of their own. Or sexual orientations, kinks, and an understanding of the way humans misunderstand them. Autonomous plumbs the depths of humanity through split narration. Annalee Newitz follows a very human, and very flawed, anti-patent crusader and a pair of patent-enforcement agents, one of whom is a self-aware robot just starting out. As the two stories unfold, so too does Newitz’s vision of a 22nd-century Earth altered by economic upheavals, global warming and climate change, and AI evolutions. The powerhouse blurb from Neal Stephenson on the front of my edition—“Autonomous is to biotech and AI what Neuromancer was to the internet”—is as intriguing as it is exciting (not to mention the vague but squee-worthy blurb from Gibson himself on the back!). More on that later. I picked this book up in the hopes it would get me out of a two-book slump, and I wasn’t disappointed. Newitz’s narration is crisp and clear. I love how she paints the picture of a very different society without descending too far into extraneous exposition. The nature of her ideas has a strong Doctorowish quality to them, but she eschews Doctorow’s tendency towards overly-didactic hypothetical conversations (this is not a criticism of Doctorow, mind you, but there is a time and place, Cory). Autonomous is a short book, but it feels like a lot happens and it covers a lot of ground. I love that. Our initial protagonist is Jack (Judith) Chen. Once an ambitious grad student, she realized in her younger days that her path lay outside academia. After a protest leads to a stint of jail time, Jack disappears, resurfacing as an anti-patent pirate who reverse-engineers drugs so she can sell them to people who can get them in the hands of those who can’t afford the pharma versions. Jack is a high-tech biohacking Robin Hood, in essence, though she is no saint. I quite enjoy how Newitz unfolds Jack’s backstory through flashback throughout the novel, revealing enough to interest us and provide insight into her character without distracting us from the main thrust of Jack’s plot. Soon we meet the flip side of the coin. Eliasz and Paladin are enforcement agents who have jurisdiction to go after people infringing upon patents (among other things). One is an experienced Polish man and the other is a military-grade robot with a dead person’s brain in her carapace that is basically just for facial recognition processing. As they begin working together, they also develop a close personal relationship. Eliasz expresses an attraction towards Paladin that is mixed up with his misinterpretations of Paladin’s gender. (Paladin nominally uses he for the first part of the book, then switches to she mid-way through, for reasons I’m not going to get into here, which is why I’m using she/her throughout my review.) This allows Newitz to comment on some interesting ideas around sexuality, gender, and embodiment. Although she never goes as deep, perhaps, as I’d enjoy, there are some nuggets in there worth exploring. These two plots take a long time to dovetail, but the parallelism is entertaining in and of itself. Newitz is exploring issues of identity and autonomy (surprising, I know) from different sides. Jack nominally has so much autonomy, being essentially a free spirit and a free agent, yet she is constrained by resources, by having to keep out of reach of law enforcement, and by the ghosts of her past. Paladin, in her capacity as an IPC agent, has more resources and, essentially, a license to kill, yet she lacks true autonomy—her very memories are accessible to IPC botadmins, stored as they are in the cloud. On a wider level, mostly in the background and occasionally intersecting with the main plot, we glimpse a society that allows human indenture, sells enfranchisement and citizenship packages, and has basically rethought what it means to be a participatory member of our society. As a result, Autonomous ponders what power we will have and the form our social capital will take if we enter a world where governments are fading-to-nonexistent and corporations vie with economic coalitions for control over the fabric of our society. This is the type of science fiction I love, and I appreciate how Newitz tries to walk the fine line between gushing and speculating and extrapolating like the sci-fi–loving nerd she is and dangling just enough tantalizing ideas in front of the reader to get us gushing and speculating and extrapolating about it. This is the novel’s strength: it offloads much of the cognitive load onto the reader but does so in a way that is neither demanding nor disappointing. I want to return to that Stephenson blurb. Taken at face-value—which is, I’m sure, how the marketing department would like you to take it—this is quite a coup, this comparison between Autonomous and Neuromancer , arguably one of the touchstones of cyberpunk. Yet let’s step back for a moment and consider another interpretation: Stephenson says this book is “to biotech and AI what Neuromancer was to the internet”. If you’ve read Neuromancer, you know that its depiction of cyberspace is nothing like what we ended up with online. Gibson’s novel was prophetic in some ways, certainly, but it was highly limited to a very 1980s vision of what a networked society could be. The elapsed decades have since demonstrated marked divergence with Gibsonian cyberspace. And so, Stephenson is doubly correct here. Autonomous, like Neuromancer, presents a breathtaking look at how the relatively new fields of biohacking and autonomous AI might work in the future. At the same time, it is a prophetic look constrained by the current situation of our early twenty-first century. I have no doubt that we’ll look back at Autonomous 30 years from now and see that our society has already diverged a great deal from what Newitz shows us here. This is not a criticism—it would be odd to ding an author for not being able to predict the future, unless, of course, they are claiming some kind of psychic ability. Rather, it’s a reflection upon and reminder of how our perceptions of science fiction change over time. The people who read Neuromancer when it came out had a very different reaction to me reading it as a 19-year-old in 2009 who pretty much matured on our own version of cyberspace. Similarly, I’d be very interested in what future readers think of Autonomous as technology like 3D-printing, self-driving cars, and organically-grown limb replacements becomes more ubiquitous. Newitz’s debut novel provides me with a great mixture of story, food for thought, and characters. There are times when I think she could have done more. And I’m ambivalent about Eliasz and Paladin’s ending—part of me thinks it is corny and trite, and the other part thinks it’s kind of sweet, and an innovative twist on an old trope. I’d be interested in hearing others’ thoughts on this. On the whole, though, Autonomous is definitely worth picking up if this is the kind of fiction you’re into. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 26, 2017
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Nov 27, 2017
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Nov 26, 2017
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Hardcover
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| 1487502184
| 9781487502188
| 1487502184
| 4.05
| 22
| unknown
| Sep 27, 2017
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really liked it
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As Canada celebrated its 150th birthday this year, reconciliation was increasingly a buzzword on the lips of politicians, journalists, and celebrities
As Canada celebrated its 150th birthday this year, reconciliation was increasingly a buzzword on the lips of politicians, journalists, and celebrities. Most people seemed to recognize that we have a ways to go in our relationship with Indigenous peoples—but most people also seem unwilling to put that recognition into action. As my recent review of Seven Fallen Feathers shows, our country is still a hostile place when it comes to Indigenous lives. And the present situation is a direct result of the more-than-150 years of colonialism executed as official government policy, including the residential school system. Residential Schools and Reconciliation is an historical overview of the actions taken by governments and churches involved in residential schooling in the years since the residential school system was wound down. J.R. Miller provides a brief description of residential schools but assumes the reader is generally familiar with the term. The book focuses not so much on the schools themselves, on the abuse and suffering, but rather on the ways in which our society and some of its largest organizational entities have attempted to respond to and reconcile the harm done to Indigenous peoples. Miller’s book is very scholarly but never too technical or too dry, and their treatment of the subject matter is both sensitive and comprehensive. I’ve been reading a lot about residential schools over the past few years, but I still managed to learn so much from this book. Miller begins by examining the apologies offered by the official church bodies that ran or co-ran residential schools. He discusses why these apologies came about, the internal strife that often accompanied them, and the reactions on the part of survivors and Indigenous members of these congregations. While I was aware of the role that many churches had played in residential schools, and that various attempts at apology had happened, Miller helped fill in a lot of gaps in my knowledge. I appreciate the way he highlights how different survivors reacted very differently to these apologies. There is a tendency for settlers like myself to paint Indigenous issues in these broad, sweeping generalizations: oh, Indigenous people are opposed to pipelines; Indigenous people are upset with Trudeau’s government, etc. The reality is, unsurprisingly, so much more complex. The more I follow and listen to Indigenous people, particularly on Twitter, the more I get a glimpse of the internal arguments—arguments that I’m not party to, that I don’t participate in, because they are none of my business, but that reveal and remind me of the great diversity of individual and cultural voices within the group settlers have labelled “Indigenous”. A great deal of Residential Schools and Reconciliation focuses on this idea of whether or not the responses have been appropriate and sufficient. In their discussion of the church and, later, government apologies, Miller refers to the criteria for a successful and intentional apology as outlined in The Age of Apology. He points out areas in which the apologies worked well, such as the way they have allowed some survivors to open up, come to terms with, or more openly express their feelings about their experiences. He also points out where people or groups have expressed dissatisfaction with the apology process. Next, Miller chronicles the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) and how its mandate gradually shifted to include residential schools as the commissioners recognized how important it was to the people they interviewed. This chapter and the next, which details the government’s response to RCAP’s report, are full of details that, at times, bogged me down—but it’s very interesting, and I suspect someone reading this for purposes of research will find it extremely useful. I was more interested in the next part of the book, which discusses the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. Basically, government was tired of being taken to court so many times, so they eventually agreed to litigate everything en masse and have one big settlement. Obviously I’d heard of this, but Miller does a good job explaining how it came about, what it entailed, and who did and did not benefit. It’s really messy and really, really bureaucratic. In general, it just gives you a good sense of why Indigenous people are so fed up with trying to deal with the governments—for every little bit of ground (sometimes literally, if we’re talking about land claims) regained, kilometres of red tape must be negotiated. The result is a process so dehumanizing that it retraumatizes the people who have already had their dignity and humanity stripped from them once by the government. The final part of the book concerns the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, along with related attempts by the government to advance the cause of reconciliation. The TRC’s final report was only released a few years ago, so this is still fairly fresh. I learned a lot about the origins and workings of the TRC that I hadn’t—I knew it had been funded by the money from the settlement, but I didn’t know there were three original commissioners who eventually ended up resigning and the commission essentially restarted after that! Reminds me a lot of the current inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. One conviction, which this book strengthened for me, is that the government still doesn’t get it. I think individual people do—some of the politicians and some of the public servants who, collectively, run what we call “government” in this country. But the system as a whole remains a very colonial and racist institution. It is obsessed with, beholden to, budgets. It wants to bottom-line the issues of residential schools and reconciliation, to attach a dollar value, to pay that out, and then declare the matter closed. As long as this type of thinking prevails, reconciliation can’t truly happen. The government has to stop saying, “OK, if we do this, then we’re even. OK, if this happens, then we start fresh.” That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works. But the government keeps trying it, because it is scared that if it actually ever admits how much work it needs to put into reconciliation, then voters will revolt over the potential cost. That’s why it’s so important for settlers to educate themselves on these issues—because, yeah, it will cost taxpayer money to fix this mess. But the human cost of not fixing it is so much higher. Much of what I have read or watched about residential schools focuses on explaining the schools themselves and what survivors endured there. Those are important stories, of course. And I was sceptical, going into this book, precisely because I was wondering what an academic might reveal that I haven’t been learning from other sources closer to the issue. Yet Residential Schools and Reconciliation actually serves a very important purpose. It educates about the response to residential schools, what happened afterwards, much of which occurred at a time when I was too young to appreciate what was happening in our society. I’d highly recommend this volume for anyone with an interest in the steps that churches, governments, and survivors have taken, and that after reading, you ponder whether or not it really is enough. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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Nov 05, 2017
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Nov 09, 2017
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Nov 05, 2017
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Hardcover
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| 0345447573
| 9780345447579
| 0345447573
| 4.07
| 9,773
| Jan 01, 2006
| Jan 30, 2007
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it was ok
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I want to give this entire series 5 stars even though I probably won’t give any of its individual instalments that rating. Does that make sense? Vatta
I want to give this entire series 5 stars even though I probably won’t give any of its individual instalments that rating. Does that make sense? Vatta’s War is just such a fun and compelling space opera with a strong central character, and Elizabeth Moon is a great storyteller. I say this while simultaneously admitting that, even though I really, really enjoyed reading Engaging the Enemy, I don’t think it’s actually all that good of a book. Yeah, this is going to be one of those reviews. Buckle up. (Spoilers for previous books but not this one.) Engaging the Enemy opens with Kylara and Stella Vatta plotting their next move. Leaving Stella in command of the Gary Tobai, Ky departs for a system that is more likely to recognize her prize claim to the Fair Kaleen, which she wrested from her pirate uncle in the previous book. What ensues is basically Ky trying to get her prize recognized as legitimate while also forming a governments-funded space navy to fight the organized pirates that appear to be disrupting trade. Meanwhile, she leaves Stella mostly to fend for herself, which Stella doesn’t appreciate. And back on Slotter’s Key, Aunt Grace has to get all wetwork on government-sponsored assassins. It’s pretty cool. This book’s strengths are similar to the previous books in the series. Moon does make anything easy for our protagonists. There are no convenient outs here, no crowning moments when someone waltzes in with exactly the right plan to save the day. If anything, the running gag in this book is that everything Ky does makes her situation worse—except that she continually manages, against all odds, to survive. I love these books because I love watching Ky struggle and agonize over her decisions, over the burden of command on her young shoulders, and most recently, the loss of her family. Moon sends her and her associates through the wringer, yet Ky still has only one thing in sight: stopping the people who started this mess. On balance, though, I have to admit that there is little of note about this third book in the series. I mean, Moon basically relies on two things to stymie Ky: communication difficulties (or people not being in the right place at the right time) and other people being obstreperous buffoons. There is very little action here; most of the conflict comes from Ky navigating legal challenges, including dealing with the possibility that someone is going to accuse her crew of stealing a dog. Also, not a big fan of the conflict between Ky and Stella. Its existence makes total sense, but the way Moon has written it makes it sound so contrived and really doesn’t do justice to Stella. Her attitude towards Ky is totally justified, especially considering the stress that both Vattas are under after the deaths of their family. Yet Moon essentially hands Stella the Idiot Ball to drum up enough tension while trying to get us to doubt whether Ky is even actually Ky. So, yeah, I can’t pretend that this book is a masterpiece of plotting, conflict, and characterization. But I can’t deny that it still satisfied every space opera bone in my body. I curled up with this over the weekend and just revelled in the atmosphere of this universe. That’s the thing about science fiction: even the pulpy stuff (and, to be clear, Engaging the Enemy is far from pulp) feels so good. The very act of inhabiting a hypothetical future, of imagining space travel and space pirates and space … uh … legal wrangling … is such a fulfilling, stimulating experience. And despite perhaps failing to create a truly compelling story here, Moon still has this fantastic world. And even though her actions aren’t all that interesting in this book, Ky herself remains a great protagonist. The major theme here is how to deal with having killed someone, with having to kill someone—and what you do when you discover that you liked it. Ky’s brain is basically asking, “What if I’m a bad person?” on repeat, and you can see this weighing heavily with her every decision. There is some great psychological tension here, and I’m not talking about the paternity plot. There is so much here that Moon could have done better, but in the end … I just don’t care. Totally a fanboy. My reviews of Vatta’s War: ← Marque and Reprisal | Command Decision → [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 02, 2017
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Nov 04, 2017
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Nov 02, 2017
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 0553448129
| 9780553448122
| 0553448129
| 3.69
| 282,524
| Nov 14, 2017
| Nov 14, 2017
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liked it
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One of the hallmark tropes of the Golden Age of Science Fiction is colonies on the moon. You couldn’t swing a cat in a lunar lander without hitting a
One of the hallmark tropes of the Golden Age of Science Fiction is colonies on the moon. You couldn’t swing a cat in a lunar lander without hitting a 1950s moon colony. Artemis reminds me a lot in vibe and atmosphere of these books, like what Heinlein’s
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
could have been if we had more accurate knowledge of lunar and astro chemistry and physics in the 1950s. That’s not to say that it’s similar in style or to say it’s better—rather, Andy Weir captures some of the themes and ideas that Golden Age SF explored with these tropes. Artemis examines how the economy of a moon colony might work (or not) and its hypothetical relationship with organizations back on Earth, but with reference to semi-rigorous ideas about available resources and actual challenges of life on the moon. Let’s start with the elephant. I feel sorry for Weir, because the success of The Martian has heaped impossible expectations upon Artemis. There is just no way it can live up to that first book. Indeed, I’m going to dodge this discussion by declaring Artemis neither better nor worse than The Martian, merely different. I suspect that some people will prefer the former, and some people will prefer the latter. In achieving difference, though, I think Weir has managed the best possible scenario. Nothing is worse than trying to bottle the same lightning with one’s second book. Both The Martian and Artemis feature extremely competent protagonists who are happy to explain clever science-based gambits to the reader. In some respects, both Mark Watney and Jazz Bashara are fighting for their survival in inimical environments, although one is slightly more isolated than the other. That’s about where the similarities end, however. The Martian is a pure survival thriller, and I’d argue it’s slightly less enjoyable than Artemis simply because the outcome is either “he dies” or “he survives”—it isn’t all that complex. In contrast, Artemis is an intricate economical thriller, and that is much more the science fiction I enjoy. I can totally see how other people would come to the reverse conclusion (but those people are wrong—er, differently minded). I’m ambivalent about Jazz’s involvement with Trond Landquivst, both her motivations and the nature of her commission. It’s not quite a “thief with a heart of gold” type mission; it is very self-serving and at the very least amoral. But I guess that’s what makes her interesting and gives her a redemptive ark. She’s somewhat like Peter Quill in this regard: she certainly thinks she’s all that, even while she’s flunking EVA mastery tests. Weir’s characterization and creation of a voice for Jazz are, neither of them, particularly deft. His writing skills haven’t developed markedly from The Martian. But this is even more evident now that he’s writing a non-white, non-male protagonist. Jazz is basically a textbook example of a man trying to write a woman narrator who is confident in her sexuality and her independence, trying to make her a smartass, and failing so hard I, a dude, must cringe. It’s a shame, because this mars an otherwise interesting plot. In particular, I love how well Weir uses the various minor characters—the way Bob, Dale, and even Kevin all have these roles to play that ultimately intersect with Jazz’s final, self-determined mission. Weir keeps raising the stakes, transforming what is originally a selfish mission by Jazz into something that will determine the future of her entire home. The fact she keeps making spectacular mistakes along the way only makes it more interesting. I suspect that if you liked The Martian, you will also like Artemis, whether or not you agree with my comparison of the two, above. Artemis has different goals and a very different atmosphere to it, however, and in my opinion that’s all to the good. Aside from the clunky voice of the main character, this novel has a solid plot, an excellent setting, and the kind of science-based storytelling that Weir likes to infuse into his books. I’m quite pleased that he was not a one-hit wonder. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 27, 2017
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Oct 28, 2017
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Oct 28, 2017
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Hardcover
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| 0199682011
| 9780199682010
| 0199682011
| 3.68
| 60
| unknown
| Oct 10, 2017
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liked it
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First of all, can we agree that it should be “95” or “ninety-five” but never “ninetyfive”, like WTF. Distinctly weird hyphenation aside, 1517: Martin L First of all, can we agree that it should be “95” or “ninety-five” but never “ninetyfive”, like WTF. Distinctly weird hyphenation aside, 1517: Martin Luther and the Invention of the Reformation, is a thoughtful examination of one of those well-celebrated yet mythologized moments in history. Peter Marshall uses the stories surrounding Luther’s apocryphal posting of the 95 theses to examine the character of the Reformation in Luther’s time, his legacy and effects on the Reformation, and the enduring nature of the thesis-posting as a watershed moment in European politics and religion. The intricate differences between and among the Catholic church and various Protestant denominations provide no end of fascination for me (I have lost many an hour to the very detailed Wikipedia articles on these topics—seriously, that stuff is complex). As such, when this book showed up on NetGalley, it immediately caught my eye. Thanks to NetGalley and Oxford University Press for making it available. Prior to reading this, I had little knowledge of Martin Luther or his 95 theses beyond vague recollections of something in a Grade 12 history class (and even then I think we spent more time on Giordano Bruno). I knew that Luther had played a significant role in the early Reformation, and that he had written his 95 theses, and I had heard the story of him nailing them to the church wall. I was unaware of the larger context, or the way in which this story has been magnified and repeated even though the event itself might not have happened. Marshall himself takes the stance that Luther almost certainly did not nail his theses to the Wittenberg church(es) on October 31. However, he also pushes back against the idea that the thesis-posting is as unimportant a detail as, say, the apple that didn’t fall on Newton’s head. He argues that the theses may have been posted on church doors at some point in the following month, because—and this I did not know—posting stuff you wanted to argue about on church doors was the Hot New Thing back in Luther’s day, kind of a post-Renaissance version of shouting into the abyss that is Twitter. Marshall concludes from his examination of the story around this story that the mythologizing of the thesis-posting tells us so much about the early Reformation. This is the kind of history book I do quite enjoy. Rather than simply retelling history to me in a way that claims to be objective, Marshall examines it, as if under a microscope. He pulls it this way and that, asking contradictory what-ifs and then pursuing lines of inquiry to their logical conclusions. He points out where contemporary writers may have been mistaken, or deliberately conflated things. He reminds us that translations are fallible, and especially back in that time, for many people a single translation would be their only way to read and understand a text. As such, those translations might propagate unintentional errors across entire generations. Marshall reminds us that history is not this static thing left here for historians to lecture about; it is a dynamic series of snapshots, some of which lie or are too grainy to make out, and we are constantly re-interpreting it. Marshall points out that whether or not Luther posted the theses to the church door on October 31 matters. If Luther did this, it was much more an act of deliberate rebellion against the Church than if he simply posted (as in mailed) the theses to his bishop for approval to publish them. Indeed, like everyone else who hasn’t actually read the theses and made a study of what Luther was arguing, I wasn’t aware how Luther began his journey as a reformer from a conciliatory position. At first he’s all, “Well, the pope isn’t that bad; it’s these local corrupt officials who are misusing indulgences!” and it isn’t until years later, after the usual song-and-dance of persecution and excommunication, that Luther actually changes his tune and declares the pope anathema. At some points, the depth of Marshall’s inquiry goes beyond my tastes as a lay person. I’m increasingly finding this is the case with the university press publications I grab from NetGalley. That’s not a criticism of them, because obviously I’m not the target audience here. But I always like to mention it, in case you are also not in the target audience; you should know what you’re getting into. 1517 is among the more accessible works I’ve read lately in this format. Nevertheless, this book’s topic is very specialized. Although Marshall brings up more points of general history and talks about the Reformation in general during parts of the book, he (rightly) focuses tightly on Luther’s light-cone. So, if you’re looking for a book specifically about Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the posting of the 95 theses, you came to the right place. If you want a more general history of the Reformation, or a more narrative presentation of the subject matter, you might be disappointed. 1517 is scholarly but not stupefying, informative but not imposing. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 23, 2017
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Oct 24, 2017
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Oct 23, 2017
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Hardcover
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| 0439115167
| 9780439115162
| 0439115167
| 3.58
| 2,381
| Apr 01, 2000
| Jun 2000
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it was ok
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The Helmacrons, first seen in #24: The Suspicion make their second appearance in Animorphs. This time, the Animorphs voluntarily shrink themselves to
The Helmacrons, first seen in #24: The Suspicion make their second appearance in Animorphs. This time, the Animorphs voluntarily shrink themselves to extract the Helmacrons from Marco. Hilarity(?) ensues. My feelings for this book are similar to my feelings for The Suspicion. If I were to make a list of the “essential” Animorphs novels to read, The Journey wouldn’t be on it. The B-story, in which Marco must retrieve a camera that might contain images of the Animorphs de-morphing, is under-developed (no pun intended). The few scenes that ghostwriter Emily Costello deigns to actually give it do little to create any real tension. The plot basically exists to give Marco something “dangerous” to be doing while the other Animorphs cruise through his digestive tract. The Journey reminds me of that episode of The Magic School Bus where everyone tours Arnold’s digestive system. However, this story lacks some of that show’s charm. The best part is almost certainly just imagining what it would be like to morph into something like a shark in order to swim through a bloodstream rather than an ocean. And while I know that kids often like things adults find annoying (such as the Helmacrons), I have to wonder if at this point in the series many of the readers might be old enough to find these tiny, grating aliens as annoying as I do. Misgivings about the B-story aside, this book and story are extremely competent in terms of their use of Animorphs tropes. We get into the story fairly quickly after yet another in media res battle opening. But that’s the thing—I feel like everything, from the opening to the Helmacrons to the dilemmas, is something we’ve seen before in other Animorphs books. I don’t mind standalone stories as a general rule, but I at least want them to give me something new. The Journey feels like someone gave Costello a grab bag of “generic Animorphs story elements” and said, “Pick 5 and go to town.” With no new morphs, though, no real Yeerk threat, and little in the ways of moral dilemma beyond “Marco should avoid morphing because problems”, The Journey lacks any element strong enough to make it impressive. Next time, fortunately, we have a definite moral dilemma as the Yeerk Peace Movement asks for the Animorphs’ help…. My reviews of Animorphs: ← #41: The Familiar [image] ...more |
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Oct 18, 2017
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Oct 18, 2017
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Oct 18, 2017
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Paperback
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| 039360909X
| 9780393609097
| 039360909X
| 4.10
| 327,346
| Feb 07, 2017
| Feb 07, 2017
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liked it
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First of all, let’s be clear: Norse mythology is hella cool. In his introduction to Norse Mythology, Neil Gaiman echoes what draws me to it. Like him, First of all, let’s be clear: Norse mythology is hella cool. In his introduction to Norse Mythology, Neil Gaiman echoes what draws me to it. Like him, I was entranced by the stories of the Norse gods from an early age. I remember vividly my elementary school library having this big, thick book on Norse mythology full of illustrations. When I went through my mythology phase, I tolerated the Greek gods and occasionally talked to the Egyptians, but Norse mythology was what really got me obsessed. The tragic nature of these gods’ stories, and the built-in ending of Ragnarok, just left me hooked. When I rediscovered my love of fantasy many years later, I think the preferences I developed from reading those first stories really influenced the way I read fantasy. So Odin, Thor, Loki, and I are old friends. When I heard Gaiman had retold some of these stories, almost “from scratch”, if you will, by consulting some of the closest stuff we have to source material, I was intrigued. I’ll inhale pretty much anything Gaiman writes, so this book was a no-brainer. Norse Mythology has the curious quality of probably appealing even to people who eschew Gaiman’s other works as well as Gaiman fans like myself. It’s not quite a departure from his style—there’s still traces of Gaiman in this—but he has layered another style atop his own. It’s as if the narrator is telling these stories orally to the audience, with a certain stilted cadence reminiscent of Ye Olde Times but never strong enough to become distracting. The stories flow into one another, discrete yet inseparable. This isn’t an anthology, nor is it a novel. (Trust Gaiman to write books that don’t fit easily into my shelves here on Goodreads.) You can safely read this one story at a time, over a long time, or virtually all at once. And you could dip into it at different intervals, but like a music album, there’s a more cohesive meaning when you read it from beginning to end. There’s little I have to say that’s critical of this book, but it still didn’t wow me the way I want a five-star book to do. Mostly I think I’m just used to reading stories with far more developed characters. While I understand why Gaiman doesn’t flesh out his gods more than he does, it’s just not as satisfying. If anything this just makes me want to read American Gods or Anansi Boys again—Mr. Wednesday was Odin personified, and therefore even more interesting. I think, in striving for technical perfection, Gaiman almost doesn’t infuse this book with enough of a soul. (There are some pretty good moments, that being said. I think he nails the self-destructive qualities of Loki perfectly.) Norse Mythology is the kind of book you should buy for that friend who “doesn’t like that fantasy stuff” but likes myths and legends. Or maybe someone who watched the Marvel Thor movies one too many times and needs a lesson in where Thor’s really from. This is not the most beautiful, or thought-provoking, or moving of Gaiman’s works. But it was a nice way to pass a few evenings, and really, that’s sometimes all you need from a book. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 17, 2017
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Oct 23, 2017
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Oct 17, 2017
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Hardcover
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| 1610393058
| 9781610393058
| 1610393058
| 3.72
| 701
| unknown
| Oct 10, 2017
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liked it
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Not actually my cup of tea, The Future of War: A History is a massive data dump and analysis of what we used to think about the future of warfare. Law
Not actually my cup of tea, The Future of War: A History is a massive data dump and analysis of what we used to think about the future of warfare. Lawrence Freedman has clearly Done the Research, and I have to hand it to him: there’s compelling stuff here. Thanks to NetGalley and Public Affairs for the eARC. I love the premise of this book. It kind of merges my passion for literature and my mild interest in history. It is very easy for us to interpret the actions of people in the past through our hindsight and our own cultural lenses. Freedman reminds us what any good historian tries to remember: people in the past had a very different conception of the world, and as such, their motivations might be hard to unravel if they didn’t write them down. To us, the multitudinous causes of World War I and the line connecting it to World War II seem obvious. To someone living in 1920 or 1930, not so much. To us, the outcome of the Cold War and its influence around the world is just a matter of fact now—to someone living in 1950 or 1960, with the spectres of Hiroshima and Nagasaki still lingering in recent memory, it’s a very different story. Freedman’s survey of the literature is thoughtful, perceptive, detailed, and critical. He intersperses the literature between arguments for an overall thesis—which basically seems to be that, following the end of the Cold War, we’ve reached a point where it is increasingly difficult to predict the “future” of war, simply because we have yet to settle on a redefinition of the word. One part of the book that really jumped out at me is where Freedman explains the intense efforts put into statistical analysis of wars. In particular, he describes late-twentieth-century attempts to compile casualty databases. He points out all the assumptions that necessarily went into this work, since it is difficult to define what war is, how long it lasts, or what counts as a “death” or “injury” attributable to the war. As such, while these sources of information are invaluable for discussing war and the related politics, they are also flawed and biased. Freedman reminds us that methodology in these situations is so tricky—it’s not a matter of getting it right, but of understanding that there is no one right way to collect and interpret the data. I also really enjoyed the first part of The Future of War, where Freedman analyzes what people were writing prior to and then following the First World War. I liked the glimpse at war fiction, from people like Wells and others whose names aren’t quite as well known today. And it’s interesting how Freedman draws connections between fiction and its influence on the population, as well as politicians. Later on, he recapitulates this by recounting President Reagan’s reaction to Tom Clancy’s first novels. The last part of the book was less interesting, for a few reasons. By this point, I was getting fatigued. This is a long book, and more to the point, it is incredibly dense and detailed and technical. A student of history will find this a useful resource; the casual reader, like myself, might start feeling bogged down. Also, the incredibly globalized nature of warfare in the 1990s, the sheer number of internecine affairs, means that Freedman has to cover a lot of ground in comparably few pages. Like, entire books have and can be written about small parts of each of these conflicts. So it all starts to feel overwhelming, but rushed. None of this is Freedman’s fault in particular. The Future of War is quite well-written and informative. It is a little drier and less engaging than I typically want my non-fiction to be, but I can’t really hold that against it. I’m just not quite the target audience. History buffs, though, particularly those who want to learn more about how we used to think about war, might have more patience and inclination to really dive deep into this. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 11, 2017
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Oct 14, 2017
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Oct 11, 2017
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Hardcover
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| 4.10
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liked it
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Dec 15, 2017
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Jan 15, 2018
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| 3.84
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it was ok
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Dec 31, 2017
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Dec 30, 2017
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| 3.56
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it was ok
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Dec 28, 2017
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Dec 28, 2017
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| 3.97
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liked it
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Dec 26, 2017
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Dec 26, 2017
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| 3.67
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liked it
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Dec 26, 2017
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Dec 24, 2017
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| 3.86
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liked it
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Dec 23, 2017
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Dec 23, 2017
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| 3.85
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liked it
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Dec 23, 2017
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Dec 20, 2017
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| 4.11
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liked it
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Dec 19, 2017
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Dec 17, 2017
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| 4.49
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it was amazing
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Dec 15, 2017
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Dec 13, 2017
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| 4.04
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it was ok
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Dec 11, 2017
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Dec 07, 2017
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| 4.01
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liked it
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Dec 07, 2017
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Dec 05, 2017
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| 4.48
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really liked it
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Dec 04, 2017
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Dec 04, 2017
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| 3.58
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liked it
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Nov 27, 2017
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Nov 26, 2017
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| 4.05
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really liked it
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Nov 09, 2017
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Nov 05, 2017
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| 4.07
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it was ok
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Nov 04, 2017
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Nov 02, 2017
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| 3.69
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liked it
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Oct 28, 2017
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Oct 28, 2017
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| 3.68
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liked it
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Oct 24, 2017
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Oct 23, 2017
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| 3.58
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it was ok
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Oct 18, 2017
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Oct 18, 2017
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| 4.10
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liked it
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Oct 23, 2017
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Oct 17, 2017
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| 3.72
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liked it
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Oct 14, 2017
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Oct 11, 2017
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