2012 book about the mass transit, mostly in the Northern Hemisphere. The book described the experience of taking transit in various cities he visited there while also discussing the history of those transit systems. The mix of travel writing & history reminded me a bit of No Immediate Danger/No Reasonable Alternative or Do No Pass Go, minus Vollmann’s & Moore’s shitty attempts at humor. I would have liked Straphanger to have included even more of the transit history; maybe that means I should be looking for the numerous books written about each of those transit systems that he visited. There is probably a lot more to be said & read about Bogota & other transit systems of the global south. I also would have liked more exploration of the intersections between transit & structural inequality (including gentrification & displacement); again, maybe that is a whole other book I need to find. Something about the tone (maybe it’s smugness?) reminded me of syndicated opinion columnists whose schtick is falling all over themselves for free-trade & market solutions, except he’s falling all over himself for mass transit instead of for inequality, which is a healthy substitution. Finally, I wish this book was more recent. There have been a lot of changes in many of these urban areas and in the world over the past 8-9 years, and it would be interesting to see how different a book Straphanger would be.

Collection of Earthsea stories from 1999-2001 + LeGuin’s “historical” notes on Earthsea at the end. In the forward LeGuin said that the stories should be read after reading the 1st four Earthsea novels, even though some of them are set before even Wizard of Earthsea, but I’d already read three of the stories in The Found & the Lost before I read the novels and I think The Finder is at least as good an intro to the series as A Wizard of Earthsea. Definitely as good as the novels!

The real final book of Earthsea. Further develops the ideas introduced in Tehanu & the novella Dragonfly (e.g. Dragons & dragon people, taking the story back from the boys, & getting old). Going in, I kind of thought it was going to be the kind of series ender that would blow up the rest of the series behind it. Rest assured, it did not. The Other Wind might be the Earthsea book that is the most about death. Can’t wait to find the few more Earthsea stories I haven’t read yet!

Finished Not a Nation of Immigrants just in time for Thanksgiving! Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz argues that the American claim to be a “nation of immigrants” is a founding myth of the U.S. used to obscure the fact that the U.S. was founded as a white settler society that was based on the ethnic cleansing of native peoples, saying “If Europeans in the United States were immigrants, they would have joined the existing societies in the New World. Instead they destroyed those societies and built a new one that was reinforced by later waves of settlement.” It’s not that immigration is not important in U.S. history, but rather that immigration is not the defining characteristic of the United States. Not a Nation of Immigrants also points out that many of the immigrants who came & come to America are refugees, who are often fleeing crises that the U.S. fueled or instigated. The endnotes are mostly worth reading for further reading recommendations on the topics covered. Dunbar-Ortiz cites many interesting authors & titles. The first chapter about the musical Hamilton really drew me into the book. Not a Nation of Immigrants is a great intro to looking at the world through a de-colonial perspective.

This book is about the world of high-tech tasks-for-hire companies (aka crowdworking platforms), which offer low-paying work in the form of small tasks to be done online. The conditions Work Without the Worker described for workers who depend on this “clickwork” sound like something out of a cyberpunk dystopia, once again bringing to mind the William Gibson quote “the future is already here, just not evenly distributed….” Describes the ways that gig work platforms breaking “skilled” or “professional” jobs down into discrete tasks transmutes them into “unskilled” labor. I was surprised how much work we assume is being done by algorithms &/or AI is actually done by online gig workers. I was more surprised at how much of this work is done by actual prisoners & refugees. I liked the utopian possibilities hinted at in the conclusion.

This is a RELENTLESSLY humorous round up of technological developments that authors Kelly & Zach Weinersmith believe are just around the corner (as of 2017). Kind of like Flash Forward but with the ratio of comics to textual discussions reversed. Or like a Mary Roach book, but with more technical explanations & dorkier humor. Or maybe like Zach Weinersmith’s SMBC-Comics if the ratio of comics to pop-up text was reversed.
I found the space chapters most interesting, but I wish there had been a bit more treatment of obstacles to & arguments against space exploration in the future. The “whys” of space colonization & crewed space flight are treated as givens, for instance.
The programmable matter chapter was interesting, despite programmable matter being an area technology I don’t have much interest in. I liked the descriptions in that chapter of the studies finding that humans trust robots, though I feel like those demonstrate the success of pro-robot propaganda in pop culture more than anything about human nature.
I enjoyed the conclusion chapter which rounded up all of the chapters the authors had to leave out of the book. Towards the end, the Weinersmiths say “We hope that, unlike so many books, we have not tried to sell you on a philosophy of futurology, or on a vision of the future.” But by treating our current capitalist economic system as the natural or neutral state, they are still presenting a vision of the future, albeit one in which all the future technological developments will be controlled by capital.
Overall I liked Soonish. I recommend it to anyone who likes SMBC-Comics & hard sci-fi.

Story of slavery, resistance, & liberation in antebellum Virginia. Can be read as the superhero origin story of an Underground Railroad agent. He discovers his power, he is helped by friends, mentored by teachers, including other Superheroes. Explored how one held in slavery could come to identify with the slave holders (especially when the slavers were also family), & with the slave/enslaver society in general, including how the enslaved characters connected their hopes & fortunes to the fortunes of estates they lived on. Touches on how the main sources of wealth in early America were real estate & enslaved human beings (one of the central themes of Not a Nation of Immigrants). I also liked the depictions of 1850s Philadelphia. The note at the end makes me want to read The Underground Railroad Records. Worth reading again!

Art student abroad in Paris graphic memoir. Does not follow the stereotypical trajectory of an “artist in Paris” memoir. Describes hitchhiking as a very boring, but when someone stops for you “it feels like you’re winning a game.” Explores the limits of individual acts of rebellion against capitalism, especially in the context of hitchhiking during a school break. Towards the end, Yanow says (while hungry) “if individual acts of rebellion are the path to revolution, then we suck at revolution” to which her anarchist travelling companion says “even if that were true, I don’t think every act can be an act of rebellion.” I like the art style, especially the characters.

Kind of a queer Watchmen, set in London, & with an aesthetic that is more comics page than comic book style. Dragman is much less bleak than Watchmen, despite dealing with the hate & violence directed at trans women. A major theme is the power of belief to remake the world & the future. Dragman exceeded all of my expectations, & is worth reading & re-reading. When I finished reading the 1st time, I re-read to try to figure out what August’s mom’s deal is, & I’ll probably re-read again to try to figure out what Dog-Girl’s deal is.

Comic satirizing Antifa, the left, police, fashy provocateurs, & “both sides-ing”. The differing levels of exaggeration required to make the satirical caricatures of Antifa & the police somewhat equal foes highlights how much of the hysteria about Antifa is projection by the police & their enablers. On the one hand, I’m glad that at 50 pages, The Antifa Super-Soldier Cookbook knows when to quit, but on the other hand, it did leave me wanting more. Was perfect reading before Xmas dinner.