sunn_bleach's Reviews (249)

 A continuation of a small theme for me this year in which I read more Central and Eastern European literature, from "The Master & Margarita" to "Roadside Picnic" to "Satantango". There's a curiosity to pre-Moon landing science fiction that feels so different from anything that comes out past then. Space was a true frontier, and advances in spacecraft meant realization of early science fiction but also meaning any future books had to be more grounded in the realities of space travel.

With this in mind, "Solaris" is two books in one: the first, an intense psychological drama where group of earthling scientists come to the sentient planetwide ocean that is Solaris and start doing experiments - but what happens when Solaris does experiments on its own? The second, a deep love affair with mystery and the fantastic in which space seemed truly unbound by our earthy preconceptions of life and existence. While I felt the book mired itself a bit in its own fascination, it was worth ticking-off this highly influential progenitor to weird fiction. 

Goddamn. Okay, first - there is a plot here, and you'll see it as you work through our Midwestern-by-transfer Molly Bloom's psychoses and obsessions. But just like "Ulysses" (God, what a comparison), you're getting into the absoluteness of a single life. Tons of references, foibles, worries, obsessions, and ennuis that wouldn't make a lick of sense to anybody who isn't her - and that's the point. You're not supposed to get it all, other than the deep stress of mere existence in 2019 Ameri[c/k]a.

So, at 700 pages in, it clicked. Yeah there's an undercurrent of suburban angst through this, but as it progresses I realize it's much more than that. It's the kind of excoriation of the destruction of civilization and settlement, especially the myths that we tell ourselves as Americans both the topical one of our "taming of the land", but also the deeper myth that we can live sustainably. And we can't! We've destroyed it. Our backyards and homes are ecological wastelands with sterile lawns. Did you know there used to be buffalo in Ohio until the early 1830s? Now it's parking lots everywhere, and it's called a triumph of humanity.

In this book, there's a story about a mountain lion and her cubs on the edge of humanity - in the beginning, it's unclear where she is as it sounds like it's on the savannah, but she interacts with humans more and more until her cubs are taken from her by "do-gooders" who think they're lost kittens. This tension on the edge of nature and humanity - really a destroyed nature with a lion so desperate to say the land is still hers - becomes the undercurrent of our Ohio housewife's monologue, where everything she feels and says has the undercurrent of a painful awareness that this land is a lie, it was built on lies, and her fears and worries are reflective of the more insidious alienation that is at the very heart of the American Myth.

All because I said I liked "Satantango" earlier this year and one of my buddies was like "hey so there's this book on ducks you might want to check out..."

This nonfiction book by one of the UK's premier modern nature writers was also one of his first, and boy I wish I were writing like this when I was 27. Macfarlane does not want to tell you about mountaineering so much as why mountains are interesting; why they are iconic pieces in our brains and how they enrapture our attention. But also how that view changed, both in context of early colonialist European history and in more modern times, culminating with a 50-page account of Mallory & Irvine's failed 1924 attempt on Mt. Everest. Did they make it? It doesn't matter. What matters more is that we *want* to believe that Mallory and Irvine stood atop the world, even for a short time.

My only complaint: while Macfarlane is more aware than other members of his class about the truth of British colonialism, lots of this book is still steeped in the European mountain myth. This isn't too much of a problem for someone like me with a lot of knowledge about mountaineering's history, but a little bit more upfront recognition would have been nice. That kind of thing might be a vorpal flaw for readers who are more sensitive to colonialist histories; Macfarlane does well in knocking down some of the myths that Europeans tell themselves, but in a book about myths, that could have been more of a focus.

Hoo boy. This is a faux-biography of the artist simply known as X, a woman who made her career over having no fixed identity both in her work and literally as a person, taking the concept of pen names to the absolute extreme. The biography is written by her widow, who not only seeks to clear up misunderstandings of X's life and work but also find out just who in the hell she married. It's also an alternative history in which the USA dissolved in the late 1940s into three territories, most notably the ethnoreligious Southern Territories from which X escaped as a young woman.

It's a two-pronged book that will click well with former college radio kids; it's as if an artist made her entire life the work by taking subjective vs. objective to the logical conclusion, including making other people her "works". This includes the marriage, and it's not a spoiler to say that the widow must come to terms with being an artpiece. This concept would be amazing on its own, but the alt-history part is another fascinating layer (even if I think Lacey dines a bit too much on it). It's one of the few books I would have preferred to be longer.

Much quicker read than I anticipated. Overall, I feel kinda disappointed - mostly because it wasn't as fucked up as some of the recommenders stated it would be. A lot of the plot points felt like standard love triangles, and although it starts off strong with the main character falling in strange love with the troll child, it doesn't really explore that in a way I found actually unnerving. It was treated like rehabilitating a stray dog for 140 pages? And while there are some strange obsessive factors lurking underneath (including one very uncomfortable orgasm), they were never anything more than offhand before getting back into the banality.

Still, I did like it for the eventual macro-plot of it being a twist on the folktale of trolls stealing maidens to take into their mountain halls. I just wish that aspect were more of the focus rather than 140 pages of "oh no my weird dog has worms" and then 100 more pages of "my weird dog is jealous of my lovers" before anything approaching a climax (heh). 

I love the conceit of this novella - brief little vignettes and reports where you can still kinda suss out who is saying what as it evolves. My one complaint is that Ravn gets a little too coy for the book's own good, especially at the start, which is oddly juxtaposed by some very talking-to-the-reader moments two-thirds through even for a book where the characters are literally talking to the reader. (I think that made sense.)

Growing up is realizing that Palahniuk is full of shit.

On one hand, I'm almost disappointed by the reveal of there being no fantastic elements in the cities. On the other hand, I'm almost more horrified by there being no fantastic elements in the cities. What I wouldn't give for a one-handed critic.

"Babel-17" is an attempt to take the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis to its absolute extreme, but unfortunately you'll realize pretty quickly that it's so absurd as to be very, very silly. The premise very quickly becomes absurd, and fittingly it shows how much the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (alongside newspeak in "1984") has had a rather unfortunate influence on pop culture. Yes, language influences your perceptions. No, it doesn't literally change your mind. No, not having words for something doesn't mean you can't think those thoughts, else nobody would learn language to begin with.

The book has some fascinating concepts regarding sexuality and body modification - both of which would be constant through-lines in Delany's work (especially "Dhalgren"). For that (and if you can take a deep breath at the whole "language equals thought" thingy), it might be worth reading, but it wouldn't be the first Delany book I recommend, much less New Wave science fiction.

Pacing's a mess, too.

I deeply enjoyed BOTNS, but I'm torn on this entry. The first half is a war novel, and while the stories of each of the characters reveal much of the plot in the same way as the play or legends of previous parts, that part is half the book. The war scenes are brutal, but I like how Wolfe describes battle in context of what happens in a battle rather than line-by-line.

Where the book frustrates me is the last 50 pages being far more expository than Wolfe ever was before. Malubrius lays out the plot and purpose. You are told directly who Dorcas is. You are simply told things in general in a way that just doesn't happen in the rest of the series. Don't tell me! While I appreciate Severian's totally-missing-the-point epiphany, it doesn't make up for what felt like Wolfe trying to wrap things up in a book that, until now, trusted me to do that myself.