Novella & other stuff in the His Dark Materials series. Originally, I thought it would just kind of be a directory of the His Dark Materials Oxford, instead it was a small adventure, along with a map, and some random materials, such as a catalog, a postcard from Mary Malone, and an itinerary for a cruise to some other universe’s Mediterranean. A very fast read. 

 Collection of mostly surrealist comic stories by Eric Haven from the early 2000s. These comics remind me of Daniel Clowes’s comics, only more surreal. I mean surreal in the sense that they follow dream logic, or maybe were inspired by dreams. The Accuser especially has the creepy late-night radio vibes of Joe Frank. I could really feel myself being sucked into 15 page comic I wonder if the Gregory character is supposed to be Klaus Kinski. 

History of the life & work of a Yaqui community organizer in 1960s-70s Tucson. Gives an idea of what community organizing looked like in the 1970s (and now too). The newsletters & newspaper at the end were especially interesting & useful in that respect. I've found that anytime a comic artist/writer makes a book about their great-grandparent, the result is good. (see also Soviet Daughter by Julia Aleksyeva). I would have liked an epilogue to show how the community fared after the 70s. Lacking that, I looked at google maps imagery of the area, & saw the I-10 Freeway going by the west side of Ramon’s community, & that next to the church there’s an old mall that looks kind of abandoned. 

 Great overview of the evolution of alcohol making & drinking traditions through a feminist perspective. Includes the stories of various women brewers, distillers, smugglers, & drinkers throughout history. I especially like the story of Sunny Sund & Don creating the first Tiki Bar out of all of Don’s knick-knacks & Sunny’s artistic vision & commercial sense. I also like this book's overview of various folk & home brewing traditions throughout the world, & how women have traditionally been home brewers & distillers throughout the world. Girly Drinks me want to try all of the drinks O’Meara describes, even the thick gloppy homemade ones of yore. I was hoping the chapter on Cleopatra would say something about the tales of her drinking pearls dissolved in vinegar, but no such luck. Makes the point that distilled spirits have only been made for the past 600 years, so humans still aren't sure how to handle them. The stories of the modern state trying to suppress home brewing & distilling, which were the domain of women, reminds me of the story told in Que Vivan Los Tamales of how Mexico tried to suppress street food, which was also the domain of women. The writing style is very radio program or audiobook friendly. It makes me interested in O’Meara’s podcast. 

 Brilliant example of the 1980s-90s popular techno thriller fiction. Jurassic Park is a tech novel. So many issues it touches on are issues in the biotech industry even now over 30 years later. 

I’ve seen Jurassic Park the movie a few times over the years, so I couldn’t help but compare the movie & the novel as I read along. Now, having seen the movie first, & thus having had no reflex to say “book is better” I can safely say that the book is better. The action is much more twisty-turny than in the movie; there's a lot more moving parts & I can totally see why the movie simplified the plot. 

The description of the fictional InGen & Hammond sounded like it was copied by Theranos & Holmes in real life. I really enjoyed the Hammond character a lot more than the one from the movie. He really is the villain of the story & the movie's changing the antagonist role from him to Newman + the dinosaurs themselves kind of mirrors Hammond's effort in the book to create a family theme park out of genetically engineered dinosaurs. Casting Wayne Knight as Nedry was inspired. He was one of the few characters in the movie who really matched their depictions from the book (Although, when my parents saw the movie in a Marin County theater back in the 90s, Nedry’s appearance on the screen was greeted by murmurs of “Newman!” from throughout the audience). Of course, the characterization was kind of a secondary concern in this story, where the main focus was the dangers of unregulated biotech, capitalism, neocolonialism, & cloned dinosaurs. 

The "White Hunter" Muldoon wanting to be armed with LAW missiles (presumably the M72 LAW?) makes me think of Tremors, the (real-life) Emu War, & the general plausibility of use of military weapons against fictional megafauna. According to Dr. Wu, Muldoon and others are concerned that the Dinosaurs are "too fast" or quick to be controlled in the event they get loose on the island for the tranquilizer guns, tazers, etc to handle. The idea of using what's essentially a bazooka to hit a speeding dinosaur is hilarious! It makes me think of the survivalist character in Tremors getting all tricked out with anti-tank weaponry for Tremors 2 but then declaring that if he had been provided with more relevant information, he would have chosen weapons that are "fully automatic, preferably belt-fed!" 

I wondered which military arrives at the end to rescue everybody. Costa Rica, where Jurassic Park is set, famously has no military, and has possessed no armed aircraft since at least 1948. The soldiers didn’t seem to be characterized as American, so I like to imagine they were rescued by the Sandinistas, or maybe Manuel Noriega sent some helicopters to help the Costa Ricans shortly before being deposed by George Bush. Either way, the movie should have ended with some exploding jungle footage reused from Apocalypse Now. 

Can’t wait to read the Lost World! 

 Finally a book about sports that actually makes me more interested in the sport! This book is everything I was hoping it to be. Perfect primer for those who know bugger-all about baseball & baseball history. The glossary in the back is very helpful. Do not take the Jeopardy test before reading this book!  Highlights how central baseball stats have always been to baseball culture. The story of the game's evolution is very fascinating. The art really feels like it brings the people & places of past eras to life. Also discusses the place of baseball in American culture. I liked the quote from Virginia Woolf about baseball writer Ring Lardner: “He writes the best prose that has come our way… often in a language which is not english”. Packed with info & so is pretty dense reading for a comic book. Maybe that's just because I am so unfamiliar with baseball to start with, & so needed to consult the glossary to understand basic concepts. I now feel ready to read further books about Baseball, or maybe even watch more baseball! 

 This novel feels like 45% Mitchner, 35% Crichton, 5% Ballard, 5% PKD, & 10%... unknown. Although Antarctica is set in the future & includes some speculation about the geological impacts of the Anthropocene on Antarctica, this novel is really mostly about the “thin” human history of Antarctica. Has some characteristics of the “90s thrillers that teach you real facts” genre, but with more of Robinson’s trademark optimism, & a little bit of PKD or Ballardian absurdism. The idea of Antarctic adventure tourism taking off, and in the form of punishing, guided trips in the footsteps of the heroic-age Antarctic explorers feels like something out of a PK Dick or JG Ballard story, as do the expeditions to “repatriate” the explorers’ artifacts to where they were abandoned in Antarctica. The Chinese geomancer character felt especially like someone from a PK Dick novel. Antarctica is my favorite of the 4 or 5 Kim Stanley Robinson books I’ve read, & Robinson’s writing about those early polar explorers is the best aesthetically & style-wise that I’ve seen him. The explanation of “Gotterdammerung capitalism” on page 57 is extremely relevant to understanding our present & recent history. I liked how the action did not get in the way of the vibes. I was somewhat pleasantly surprised to find that the "action" half of the novel is more like the "utopian vision" half of the novel. Robinson depicts an "artificial indigenous" egalitarian society which seems to subsist on seafood, hydroponics, remote work, & youtube follows (before youtub was invented). I liked the parts with the would-be “indigenous” or “feral” people, but I kind of feel like the book would have been stronger if they’d been left as more of a mystery, the way Viktor was. The part that felt most dated about this 25-year-old sci-fi book was its ideas about the political power of scientists & technocrats. Overall a great read that makes me want to read more about the polar explorers of both yesteryear and today. 

 Amazing adaptation of Parable of the Sower. Jennings’s art goes well with Parable of the Sower’s themes of sadness & loss. Jennings’s art from this or his adaptation of Kindred remind me of some sort of revolutionary mural style (I can’t put my finger on whose). I’m reminded a tiny bit of the Mexican revolutionary muralists. This book made me want to re-read the novel (& the sequel). I’m amazed this hasn’t been adapted into a miniseries, or a full on series complete with spin-offs, etc. For me, one of the things that feels the most true about Parable of the Sower & Octavia Butler’s writing in general is that when a person dies “off screen”, it does NOT mean they’re going turn out to be alive after all later. I also appreciate how Sacramento got a mention as a place too boring to have any action occur there, even after the collapse of society. 

 Very readable example of newly popular & expanding scams nonfiction genre. I can see why Elizabeth Holmes’s defense tried to pin everything on Sunny; he sounded like a douchebag who nobody liked. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that Theranos took so many people in because so many “legit” companies (especially tech startups) are indistinguishable from scams themselves. The whole idea of the internet was sold by using tech speak to promise riches materialized from thin air. The real business model of so many companies, whether Silicon Valley tech start-ups or Modesto pizza chain franchises is to create just enough of a business that the owners can sell the company & cash out. It's almost as if Holmes discovered some sort of "cheat code" to get all the big bosses to drop all their coins in front of her. Ever since hearing about Theranos, I have joked that Holmes’s “deep voice” is actually “the voice” from Dune. Another theory accounting for Holmes's success in winning over prominent backers is that she successfully mimicked the young of whatever species the George Schultzes & Henry Kissingers are (similar to the cuckoo bird). It’s clear that Tech-Bullshit is the most potent form of bullshit in our society. It's amazing how so many people were so captivated by the promise of at-home blood panels, but not by anything that would allow more people regular access to a doctor. It’s just like the Joey Alison Sayers comic where a school is begging for money for air conditioning, while someone with an idea for an unlicensed taxi service is being buried in piles of cash. One detail I was struck by is that George Schultz could be regularly found in his office at the Hoover Institution; it’s mentioned that his grandson Tyler knew he could find him there. I had always thought that the positions given to people like George Schultz were basically fake jobs providing welfare for the rich & powerful, but this detail provided in Bad Blood showed me that the real function of these think tank fake jobs (I mean, fellowships) is to provide opportunities for out of work political elites to act like they have real jobs & feel important (thanks to my wife for that insight). I was especially amused (impressed?) by Elizabeth Holmes's younger brother, who came to work as his sisters company and spent his time copying and pasting ESPN articles into official looking email templates, to make it look like he was working when he was really just reading about sports. Now there's a Duke University man. I’m trying to remember if there was a period 2011-2012 when my local Safeway had a mysterious, unfinished space set aside that would line up with the clinic based around the Theranos gadget. Is it a boast or a deprecation to say that I never heard of Theranos or Elizabeth Holmes before there was a HBO documentary about them? 

 Fantastic adaptation of Vonnegut’s great novel. Kept all the horror of the original novel, & maybe then some? My only complaint is that the horror-struck-German-guards-as-barbershop-quartet was not fully illustrated. The recurrence of the a Barbershop Quartet in Slaughterhouse-Five highlighted to me how truly odd an institution the Barbershop Quartet is. The Wikipedia article for “barbershop music” says “[some] researchers argue that today's barbershop music is an invented tradition related to several musical features popular around 1900….“ While I was reading it, I didn’t really notice the parts from the novel that were left out of the graphic adaptation; I only remembered some later, when thinking about the book, and writing this review. I was perfectly fine with North & Monteys dropping the part comparing the mountain rescuers to golliwogs, and some of the parts making fun of Pilgrim’s wife. In my mind, the closest comparison to this comic is the Slaughterhouse-Five movie, which I thought was pretty good. The only aspect that I thought the movie did better than the graphic novel adaptation was having Ekkehardt Belle & Friedrich von Ledebur as the very young & the very old German guards. I meant to pace myself a lot more reading this book, but I just couldn't help myself & had to keep reading it. Very glad I followed my impulse & picked this up at the library.