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tachyondecay
Books with unlikable protagonists are difficult. I love the conceit of an unlikable protagonist in some circumstances. Yet if one is not in the right mood, not liking the protagonist doesn’t help. Solar compounds this problem with Ian McEwan’s dense narration which, while providing excellent insight into Michael Beard’s interior life, means that we spend a lot of time on little moments that aren’t actually all that interesting. As with several books I’ve picked up lately, Solar seems like it isn’t the right book for me right now, and at a different time, I might have liked it more. Somehow, though, I doubt that I would ever have loved it.
What most intrigued me about this book from the beginning was its portrayal of global warming from an early 2000s perspective. It’s so fascinating to see a book recapture sentiments in the early 2000s, when the scientific consensus was still pretty solid, but we had yet to observe things like the disturbing trend of consecutive hottest years on record. Beard’s own perspective as a scientist (albeit a physicist) slowly waking up to the dangers and reality of global warming (but still, it seems, never really caring beyond how it affects his own personal life) is an interesting case study. And, of course, since this book was published in 2010, our global perspective on this issue has shifted too. This is contemporary fiction that already starts to feel somewhat historical in nature simply because of how fast our collective ideas about this issue have developed.
Still, this is only really a background issue, barely even a subplot. Solar is almost exclusively about Michael Beard versus the World. Since Beard’s internal voice never really interested me, I had a tough time enjoying most of this book. I also didn’t hate it, and I wasn’t exactly bored. But it’s like when you have movie on, and the only reason you’ve yet to turn it off is because silence would be worse and trying to find something else to watch on Netflix would waste more time than you have left. Except, you know, I have tons of other books I could have … why didn’t I DNF this again? I must have been super stubborn that week.
Really, truly, I’m trying to come up with some praise for this book, because I didn’t hate it enough to give it one star. Yet it was so bland and mediocre that little remarkable is sticking in my mind. This is definitely more like A Child in Time rather than Enduring Love, sorry to say.
What most intrigued me about this book from the beginning was its portrayal of global warming from an early 2000s perspective. It’s so fascinating to see a book recapture sentiments in the early 2000s, when the scientific consensus was still pretty solid, but we had yet to observe things like the disturbing trend of consecutive hottest years on record. Beard’s own perspective as a scientist (albeit a physicist) slowly waking up to the dangers and reality of global warming (but still, it seems, never really caring beyond how it affects his own personal life) is an interesting case study. And, of course, since this book was published in 2010, our global perspective on this issue has shifted too. This is contemporary fiction that already starts to feel somewhat historical in nature simply because of how fast our collective ideas about this issue have developed.
Still, this is only really a background issue, barely even a subplot. Solar is almost exclusively about Michael Beard versus the World. Since Beard’s internal voice never really interested me, I had a tough time enjoying most of this book. I also didn’t hate it, and I wasn’t exactly bored. But it’s like when you have movie on, and the only reason you’ve yet to turn it off is because silence would be worse and trying to find something else to watch on Netflix would waste more time than you have left. Except, you know, I have tons of other books I could have … why didn’t I DNF this again? I must have been super stubborn that week.
Really, truly, I’m trying to come up with some praise for this book, because I didn’t hate it enough to give it one star. Yet it was so bland and mediocre that little remarkable is sticking in my mind. This is definitely more like A Child in Time rather than Enduring Love, sorry to say.
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. Save on Dropbox Ben Babcock
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 →
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 →
The difficult relationship between power, responsibility, and humility is on full display in The Mistress of Spices, where Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s empathetic and passionate writing merges with magical realism. I loved a lot of the ideas in this book, and the meditative way in which CBD punctuates the narrative with beats on each spice. Yet the execution of the story itself, and the characters, left much to be desired.
Tilo is a young woman with an old woman’s body. Born in India, unusual from the start, she eventually finds herself on an island where the Old One teaches her the mysteries of spices. Along with a handful of other girls, Tilo undertakes a transformative journey that places her in present-day San Francisco, where she is the eponymous Mistress of a spice shop primarily serving Indian immigrants and their descendants. Tilo’s training allows her to pick out the right spices for different people’s situations. However, this power comes with a price (it always does). In addition to inhabiting an elderly body and being forbidden to look upon her own reflection, Tilo is prohibited from ever using the spices for her own ends, either to benefit herself or others; she must only work the spices’ will. Moreover, she must never leave her shop, but rather stay within it, rooted in place, a conduit for the spices to distribute themselves to anyone and everyone who might need their intercession. When a mysterious American visits Tilo’s shop and catches her attention, her life as Mistress soon starts unravelling.
The most obvious theme here is one of hubris, the idea that personal flaws can undermine anyone with great power, no matter how carefully they train or study. I greatly respect CBD’s portrayal of a flawed, occasionally unlikeable protagonist. In Tilo we see someone who, from the start, admits to being selfish, admits to being headstrong—but she doesn’t learn. This is why I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I had hoped: I don’t mind flawed or even unlikeable protagonists, but I want to see some change. I want to see some remorse. With Tilo, all we really get is, “Oh well, I fucked up, I guess I’ll take the consequences, unless the universe maybe decides to let me off the hook? Just this once?”
Fortunately, there’s room enough to revel still in CBD’s writing. Her prose is every bit as flavourful as the spices she describes. Not going to pretend to have any understanding, however superficial, of Indian cuisine and the nature of these spices or their flavours. This is not a cookbook. It’s a love letter to an important part of culture, to the way food can have a significant impact on the lives of those we love. Spices have long been recognized as these transformative agents. So it makes total sense for there to be this entire book about mediating relationships through spices.
I also like the reflections Tilo provides on the different ways in which Indians have adapted to life in the United States. There are the traditionalists, those who came over from India and have tried to maintain as much of their culture as possible. There are the first- and second-generation children, who feel varying degrees of connection to their culture but also embrace many American ideas. There are the “bougainvillea girls”, the affluent women of Indian descent who have the looks and sometimes, as a result, are treated in certain ways, but for whom their cultural connection is tenuous at best.
Deep down inside, then, something lurks within The Mistress of Spices, a meditation on what it means to be “Indian enough” in a country that is not India. CBD never fully examines this here—then again, I’m not sure that’s the primary focus of this novel. Still, I like how she acknowledges the dazzling diversity of ways in which people learn about and interact with their heritage. Tilo might occasionally be bemused by the bougainvillea girls, but she acknowledges that they are every bit her people and every bit as deserving of her help as the staunch, more traditional patrons who know the right terms and phrases.
At its core, though, this novel is a love story. I didn’t enjoy this aspect of it. To be honest, I literally skimmed all of Raven’s story. He bored me. His pursuit of Tilo, and the schoolgirlish way she allowed herself to succumb to his charms, bored me. It’s not bad—but I just didn’t feel like letting myself succumb to this plot’s charms, if you know what I mean.
I enjoyed dipping my toes into CBD’s writing again. I always love the way she creates interesting situations for her characters, and how she never shies away from the more difficult aspects of reconciling culture and country. However, The Mistress of Spices is not my favourite example of her work.
Tilo is a young woman with an old woman’s body. Born in India, unusual from the start, she eventually finds herself on an island where the Old One teaches her the mysteries of spices. Along with a handful of other girls, Tilo undertakes a transformative journey that places her in present-day San Francisco, where she is the eponymous Mistress of a spice shop primarily serving Indian immigrants and their descendants. Tilo’s training allows her to pick out the right spices for different people’s situations. However, this power comes with a price (it always does). In addition to inhabiting an elderly body and being forbidden to look upon her own reflection, Tilo is prohibited from ever using the spices for her own ends, either to benefit herself or others; she must only work the spices’ will. Moreover, she must never leave her shop, but rather stay within it, rooted in place, a conduit for the spices to distribute themselves to anyone and everyone who might need their intercession. When a mysterious American visits Tilo’s shop and catches her attention, her life as Mistress soon starts unravelling.
The most obvious theme here is one of hubris, the idea that personal flaws can undermine anyone with great power, no matter how carefully they train or study. I greatly respect CBD’s portrayal of a flawed, occasionally unlikeable protagonist. In Tilo we see someone who, from the start, admits to being selfish, admits to being headstrong—but she doesn’t learn. This is why I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I had hoped: I don’t mind flawed or even unlikeable protagonists, but I want to see some change. I want to see some remorse. With Tilo, all we really get is, “Oh well, I fucked up, I guess I’ll take the consequences, unless the universe maybe decides to let me off the hook? Just this once?”
Fortunately, there’s room enough to revel still in CBD’s writing. Her prose is every bit as flavourful as the spices she describes. Not going to pretend to have any understanding, however superficial, of Indian cuisine and the nature of these spices or their flavours. This is not a cookbook. It’s a love letter to an important part of culture, to the way food can have a significant impact on the lives of those we love. Spices have long been recognized as these transformative agents. So it makes total sense for there to be this entire book about mediating relationships through spices.
I also like the reflections Tilo provides on the different ways in which Indians have adapted to life in the United States. There are the traditionalists, those who came over from India and have tried to maintain as much of their culture as possible. There are the first- and second-generation children, who feel varying degrees of connection to their culture but also embrace many American ideas. There are the “bougainvillea girls”, the affluent women of Indian descent who have the looks and sometimes, as a result, are treated in certain ways, but for whom their cultural connection is tenuous at best.
Deep down inside, then, something lurks within The Mistress of Spices, a meditation on what it means to be “Indian enough” in a country that is not India. CBD never fully examines this here—then again, I’m not sure that’s the primary focus of this novel. Still, I like how she acknowledges the dazzling diversity of ways in which people learn about and interact with their heritage. Tilo might occasionally be bemused by the bougainvillea girls, but she acknowledges that they are every bit her people and every bit as deserving of her help as the staunch, more traditional patrons who know the right terms and phrases.
At its core, though, this novel is a love story. I didn’t enjoy this aspect of it. To be honest, I literally skimmed all of Raven’s story. He bored me. His pursuit of Tilo, and the schoolgirlish way she allowed herself to succumb to his charms, bored me. It’s not bad—but I just didn’t feel like letting myself succumb to this plot’s charms, if you know what I mean.
I enjoyed dipping my toes into CBD’s writing again. I always love the way she creates interesting situations for her characters, and how she never shies away from the more difficult aspects of reconciling culture and country. However, The Mistress of Spices is not my favourite example of her work.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.