robertrivasplata's Reviews (631)

Book about rocks. Who cares. Boring. 

Entries for 60 different stones & minerals, focusing on the historical & cultural uses of the various stones, while not neglecting the story told by the geology of each mineral. Includes the stories of various chemists, archaeologists, jewelers, prospectors, collectors, among others. One of the most interesting geological facts I learned from Lapidarium is that the process that formed coal only took place in the Carboniferous era 360-300 million years ago, so no more coal is being formed, not even millions of years from now. I also learned from this book that Coltan is valuable because it's an ore of Tantalum. Also points out that the provenances of most of the most famous jewels are fabricated (especially the ones claiming to go back centuries). There is no Discogs entry for “Ujaraaluk Unit”. A good book to read immediately before or after reading The Name of the Rose. 

A very Walter Mosley sci-fi novel. Hits many themes that feature in Mosley's sci-fi: a Black everyman protagonist who is suddenly imbued by aliens or higher powers with incredible abilities (most commonly perception), a quest (usually to save life on earth), breaking away from everyday life (to go on the quest), a team assembled by the protagonist (often composed of people he wronged, or who wronged him), & some weird sex stuff. You can kind of say that most of Mosley's sci-fi writing is about the power and necessity of seeing through the everyday routine to know what must be done. Touched also features the criminal justice system, SoCal's white supremacists, & some transhumanist speculation. In many ways Touched & other Mosley sci-fi are similar to some 70s weird sci-fi I've read, or maybe Stranger in a Strange Land if it was written by a Black socialist instead of a rabid right-libertarian. 

The Brooklyn version of The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman. Takes place in an old housing project home to a wacky & diverse cast of characters. Takes place in 1969: in the middle of the postwar urban neglect, & at the end of the great migration. As such, it's kind of a story of the old generation that came up from the old country being replaced by the younger City-born generation. It's also a gangster story, and much else. Fast paced, despite the many digressions going into the life stories of the many characters, or of the neighborhood itself. Makes me want to visit New York, read some history of New York City, & also find out more about Robert Moses. I feel like someone with more familiarity with New York & Brooklyn than me would probably get more out of Deacon King Kong, & someone with familiarity with 1960s New York would probably get more out of it still. The circular quality of many of the conversations reminds me of The Buried Giant, except the only truly brain-damaged participant is the titular Deacon. The depictions of public life in the Cause Houses remind me of Jane Jacobs' discussions of civic life & the use of the public spaces in cities. I really want to hear Los Soñadores. They sound like my kind of music. 

Conversational book about the science of the search for extraterrestrial life & extraterrestrial intelligence. Covers the state of scientific speculation about how terrestrial life may have first appeared, how that could apply to the appearance of extraterrestrial life, & what that extraterrestrial life could look like. Also discusses UFOs from a historical & scientific perspective, expressing skepticism, but also refusing to rule them out entirely. For me, the best parts of the book were the ones discussing the search for biosignatures & technosignatures using sophisticated telescopes. Discusses the philosophical & scientific implications of finding extraterrestrial life. An easy & amusing read. 

Graphic biography in Box Brown's trademark style. Before reading this, I knew next to nothing about Andy Kaufman. I don't think I've even seen a video of Kaufman, not that any of his performances are particularly telling, going off what Brown writes. In a way, even his biography reveals little. The title question would remain no matter how much any biographer could write about this oddball. I guess the answer that Brown seems to go with is that Kaufman was always presenting/performing some combination of sincerity & put-on. Similarly, Kaufman seemed to always be both attempting to please & to alienate his audiences. Brown builds the case that wrestling was a major formative influence on Kaufman, informing the ways that he performed & stayed in character outside of what was recognized as performances. Wild that even the people who worked with him on Taxi thought his illness & death were stunts, & so missed his funeral. 

Re-read to see how well I remembered it, & to see if my gripes with the movies (the trilogy & the Rankin-Bass) are off base, & also because I wanted to read something fun. The Hobbit really is a lot of fun. I'd forgotten how much character the voice of the narrator has. It's as if it's written to be read aloud by a good-humored storyteller. I forgot how quickly the story moves along, while also packing a lot in. The Hobbit is full of goofy little throw-away lines that hint at the wider world of middle-earth, but makes it clear that such things are not our concern (such as Gandalf's aside that he should see about having a helpful giant block up the new entrance to the Goblin city). I love how the narrator even ends various asides with something like “but that's not part of this story”. I see now that it was the Hobbit that primed my young mind to appreciate food descriptions in fantasy settings. There is no way that I would have been prepared for George R.R. Martin's elaborate food descriptions if I hadn't been prepared by those of Tolkien. Of course my favorite part of the whole book is Bilbo's conversation with Smaug, which the Rankin & Bass cartoon got pretty close to right, but the bloated Trilogy completely fumbled with it's attempts to shoehorn dark LOTR foreshadowing into what is supposed to be kind of a humorous scene. Of course, the 21st century movie wanders even further from the spirit of the book when it has the Dwarves all but defeat Smaug all on their own, but that is a gripe for another review. Now to excavate my Lord of the Rings Trilogy, to see how well they hold up (literarily, & physically). 

Another should-be COVID-isolation classic (consult your physician), that takes you behind the impossibly heavy eyelids of America, just trying to get through another day at the minimum level of consciousness possible. Full of elements that remind me a little bit of other odd books. The young solitary misunderstood misanthropic narrator on a bizarre quest reminds me of Exalted. The whole quest for pharmaceuticals & the elaborate sleep preparations remind a lot of the elaborate & bizarre drug routines in Infinite Jest. The blackout drug that the main character is using to sleep to avoid feelings, but which has her attending parties, wakes, etc during her supposed “sleeping” hours (along with her ultimate disinterest in these “sleeping” activities) reminds me a lot of TV Severance. The psychiatrist kind of has a Catch-22 character vibe. 

The perfect book for quarantining with Covid. A man stranded, isolated, sick, hurting, tiring,weakening eventually forgetting there is any other existence. Applies the Ballard extreme landscape novel template to the land that is stranded between the ramps & viaducts of highway interchanges, effectively taking the general plot & sort of setting of something like the Drowned World, & cramming it into a tiny point on the map. Makes explicit the regressed, atavistic, introversion theme of various other Ballard novels & stories. “The image in his mind of a small boy playing endlessly by himself in a long suburban garden surrounded by a high fence seemed strangely comforting.” In Concrete Island, childhood solitude & loneliness is “mythologized” & being stranded in the middle of a freeway interchange activates feelings of nostalgia, & return to childhood. I would ask “wtf happened to Ballard as a kid?”, but I read Empire of the Sun, so I have a general idea. Of course reading Concrete Island today in 2023, I can't help but think about how today countless spaces like “the Island” across America are settled by veritable communities of down on their luck unhoused people. Maitland would potentially have difficulty finding an open spot for his car-parts shelter, but would probably have a wider community of people whose resources he could draw on, instead of the dubious Man Fridays he does encounter. A very logical follow-up to Crash. 

Box Brown's history of advertising, propaganda, & the monetization of nostalgia. Draws a line from the inception of modern advertisement in the early 1900s to the corporate intellectual property franchise nostalgia engineering of today. Also discusses the child-psychology & child-development aspects of mass media children's programming, especially the advertising directed at children. Includes history of U.S. regulation, & sudden de-regulation of children's programming, showing how “the 80s cartoon toy boom ended up being a unique moment in time” that was a creation of the Reagan-era FCC's (un-) regulatory environment. Not that Clinton's FCC overhaul The ending chapter is full of ominous lines, e.g. “Whatever form future nostalgia takes, it'll be more extreme than it is today”. I imagine this book narrated by a being stern, deep, authoritative voice (similar to the Frontline voice, or maybe even a Ken Nordine, or Joe Frank). Brown's art is simple, but very evocative. It looks like it belongs in wordless instructions, signage, or maybe even old-style agit-prop posters. Something about his Mr.Potato Head image on page 115 speaks to something deep in my subconscious; I would vote for Mr. Potato Head. 

Roz Chast's tour of dreamland. Discusses some theories about dreams, but mostly depicts various dreams that Chast has had, recurring or otherwise. I am 100% in agreement with Roz Chast that dreams are a perfectly fine topic for conversation. I love hearing & talking about dreams! I could launch into a recounting of my favorite recurring dream, but this is a book review, not a dream diary. Anyhow, I love her rejected dream comic ideas. I think my favorite nightmare is the “PRINGLE”, because she basically described my dog. “Incubation” as a term for the cultivation of “helpful dreams” is a term I want to use sometime.