ThunderPeel2001

Books, books, books...

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I've been bouncing around a bit in my book reading recently.

 

Fiction-wise, I finally got around to actually reading The Heart of Darkness. While it's definitely a book whose commentary is somewhat of its time, the power of the writing remains very affecting. I also appreciated the more delicate touch in the "horror" elements - it's never really explicitly spelled out precisely what Kurtz has been doing, and is left deliberately unclear as to what his dying exclamation ("The Horror, The Horror!") refers to. As a fan of early horror/sf fiction (Poe/Lovecraft/Machen), I appreciated those elements most of all. 

 

(Now, somewhat rebounding, I'm in the middle of the third book in the Glass Books sequence by GW Dahlquist (The Chemickal Marriage), which I only recently discovered had been published. Obviously, if you don't like knowing gothic steampunk written around three archetypes of Victorian fiction, then you won't enjoy it, but if you're not sick of steampunk then the whole trilogy is worth the effort. [Certainly, I enjoyed it a lot more than quite a lot of other steampunk around...] The only disappointment is the fairly obvious allusion in the title, really.)

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Hot off Hampton Sides' excellent Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West, a dual biography of the Navajo people and Kit Carson, the man who brought about their destruction, I allowed myself to be talked into reading S.C. Gwynne's Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History.

 

Honestly, I was very disappointed with it. Maybe I should have been able to tell from the disparity between the two books' subtitles, but Blood and Thunder was an intimate portrayal of two extremely private subjects, largely interested in rediscovering and reassembling their own words in order to understand them primarily on those terms. When the evidence is wanting, Sides says so and then is silent. Conversely, Gwynne revels in the silences, imagining a version of the American West where extreme coincidences were commonplace, mostly through liberal use of the phrases "must have been there" and "must have spoken." He is deeply enamored with the century-long Comanche empire that dominated the southern United States, but lacking the contemporary accounts to understand it in full, he falls back repeatedly on what were its most striking aspects to white observers: its primitive technology, its underdeveloped culture, its functional poverty, and most of all its extreme brutality. Never did I think I'd read a book published in my lifetime that contains the phrase "Stone-Age pagans" unironically, but there you go. Despite appearances, I don't think that Gwynne was trying to demean the Comanche, really, but to emphasize how improbable and underappreciated their power has been, at least to a popular audience, yet the terms he uses are clumsy and sometimes offensive. Hence, It's not surprising, then, that he has a similar attitude towards the people about whom he writes. Barring a few well-documented military careers that prevent him from doing it, and even then the most detailed one about Ranald Slidell Mackenzie is an exception, Gwynne frequently descends into historiographical ecstasy about how important this person or that person was to the exact sequence of events that changed some aspect of the nineteenth-century American West. Even if it's a single conversation or a ten-man shootout, Gwynne takes pause to wonder at the marvel that is human causality.

 

The only real exception to Gwynne's overly sensational take on past people and events are the final two chapters, plus the epilogue, on Quanah himself. I have to assume that this man, a half-breed Comanche who was a violent opponent of peace but later became a prosperous cattleman and advocate of Indian interests, had inspired the study, but whose life prior to his late thirties or early forties turned out to be too poorly documented to hold an entire book together, because it is fascinating how well he ended up playing the white man's game while still preserving a distinctive personal and cultural identity. I wish I could have known more about him, but Gwynne is more content to crow about Quanah's fame overall than document his life in too much detail. Oh well, at least that last bit about a truly unique figure in the Indian Wars meant that I didn't hate this book entirely...

 

My father-in-law gave me a copy of that and raved about it, and I felt like it was a real chore to get through.  Probably the only reason I did is that it was a gift from him. 

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I recently finished Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me and I loved it.

 

What really surprised me was how Coates came to where he is now, racial politics wise; it's surprising because it almost mirrors my journey: from living in a bad neighborhood, realizing the racial policies of my brown body, my coming to Malcom X and the Black Panther party, realizing my atheism and how that distances me from the Latin/Arab community--not there haven't been other reasons that distance me--and coming to a "nihilist" philosophy to life.

 

I also have a good goddamn feeling that I'll be in the somewhat same spot as Coates is at his age.

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A friend lent me Ready Player One, cautioning me that it reads like a book written for teens.

 

Yes, it does, but teens who are weirdly really into 80s pop-culture. Peculiar! Set in the future, the plot involves a VG "easter egg" hunt in an almost-limitless virtual environment known as The Oasis, which basically everyone in the world is addicted to and connected to as often as possible. After the creator of the Oasis, Halliday, passes away, a video is broadcast of him promising to turn over full control of the Oasis to whomever can decipher his clues and ultimately find his easter egg. 

 

Now, this prize is so incredible that millions of people, who become known as "gunters", devote themselves full-time to hunting for it. The protag is Wade, and it is he that solves the first clue and becomes the first on the path to grabbing the grand prize. 

 

Several things seem a bit off to me right from the start. Firstly, despite the overwhelming number of people trying to crack the clue Halliday leaves behind, it takes over a decade and is achieved by one person, with no help from anyone. Even more astounding when you consider that Halliday was utterly self-obsessed, and all the clues directly involve his favourite things. Games he played or programmed, films he watched dozens of times etc. And all the gunters realised this long ago, and have been microscopically poring over every detail of his life and interests. 

 

And yet still, over a decade. Huh.

 

(With this as the foundation, it should come as no surprise that the whole book is basically an excuse to reverentially refer to nerdy stuff from the 80s, which rapidly induces a queasy feeling)

 

There are a couple of points where I naively though the book would try to make some kind of statement about the dangers of addiction, or about how slavishly imitating ones idols is not the path to self-enlightenment. Nope! It's just "ooh, here's pacman!" or "wow, a whole chapter about Wargames! I love Wargames!"

 

There's one female character and she's basically a trophy to be won, as well, so that was gross. I was actually quite angry and disappointed when I finished the book, because clearly it had the opportunity to be something really creative and wonderful (an infinite virtual world!) but doesn't have an original bone in its body.

 

Laura Hudson says it better than I do:

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2015/07/armada_by_ernest_cline_follow_up_to_ready_player_one_reviewed.single.html

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RP1 is a weird one.  I enjoyed it for the fun/fantasy/escapist elements of it, but I know parts of nerddom that fucking worship that book and I don't really get that out of it. 

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Set in the future, the plot involves a VG "easter egg" hunt in an almost-limitless virtual environment known as The Oasis, which basically everyone in the world is addicted to and connected to as often as possible. After the creator of the Oasis, Halliday, passes away, a video is broadcast of him promising to turn over full control of the Oasis to whomever can decipher his clues and ultimately find his easter egg. 

 

Now, this prize is so incredible that millions of people, who become known as "gunters", devote themselves full-time to hunting for it. The protag is Wade, and it is he that solves the first clue and becomes the first on the path to grabbing the grand prize. 

 

Several things seem a bit off to me right from the start. Firstly, despite the overwhelming number of people trying to crack the clue Halliday leaves behind, it takes over a decade and is achieved by one person, with no help from anyone. Even more astounding when you consider that Halliday was utterly self-obsessed, and all the clues directly involve his favourite things. Games he played or programmed, films he watched dozens of times etc. And all the gunters realised this long ago, and have been microscopically poring over every detail of his life and interests. 

 

And yet still, over a decade. Huh.

 

It's funny, I had the same problem with Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem, one of the Hugo nominees for this year. It also involves a popular but mysterious game that's about solving a massively complicated and multi-stage problem, but i) the author makes a point of reinforcing that only the "best" members of society, professors and CEOs and scientists, are really interested in playing it, and ii) it's solved individually by reclusive players who don't even try to work together. It's very weird how writers across cultures have this one idea about how the mysteries of video games are solved that is entirely made up and could be disproved by a visit to literally any online community for any video game...

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I can't say what I thought about Ready Player One without coming across as a judgmental asshole, so... it was bad and I didn't like it at all and I hope none of you did either!

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I haven't read it but I'm pretty should I would enjoy it a lot. I'm just bad at reading as much as I should.

 

I'm currently reading Terry Pratchett's Dodger, which is definitely a Terry Pratchett book and also definitely not Discworld and probably not all that fantastic but I'm enjoying it anyway. It's sort of like a more grounded Assassin's Creed style of historical fiction (minus the aliens or whatever and I guess before George fucking Washington showed up) where a bunch of figures from history and/or fiction are all together in this city but aren't really the important part of the story (except, of course, Charles Dickens). Which is strange.

 

It also wholly embraces the damsel in distress trope in the most brash and stereotypical way possible, which is disappointing, because Discworld was always so good at not being stereotypical and tropey.

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I can't say what I thought about Ready Player One without coming across as a judgmental asshole, so... it was bad and I didn't like it at all and I hope none of you did either!

 

It was bad. I didn't like it. I still read all of it, and that's not just because I feel obliged to when it's a book I've borrowed from a friend.

 

Throw a few VG references my way, and I'm all yours...

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I been reading a decent amount of non fiction recently.

 

The highlights would be :

 

Russia against Napolen, the battle for Europe which covers the war from the events leading up to Napoleons invasion of Russia to Russian army marching into Paris. This is a part of history I had very little knowledge of (part of which was war and peace which the author has some problems with in it's portrayal of the war particularly the german generals in the russian army). This book covers everything from the major figures to how Russia recruited, trained organised and supplied it's armies and the role of diplomacy in regards to the creation of the final coalition. One of the facets I found particularly interesting was how the culture of Russian nobility/militray played in how command what armies and whether those command were obeyed which had a major impact in different battles. 

 

It reminded me of another book I re-read called soldiers and ghosts which looks at the what influenced ancient greek and roman soldiers conception of what the honourable/right method of fighting was and how it changed over time. The book's focus on how the tension in the roman armies between discipline and the desire for individual honour  and how that informs the type of formation the romans used over time was very interesting.

 

Continuing books on war I will finish with the 30 years war : Europe Tragedy which covers the 30 years war which was a period of history I knew next to nothing (bar the change military organisation and tactics) about which meant this book had a very high new information to page especially in the start when there is an overview of Europe before the wars begin. The complexity of the holy roman empire and how it effected the ability of the various Emperors to wage wars and deal with the Protestant nobility is something I could read a whole book on. I also gained a better idea of the nature of the relationship between the Spanish and Austrian Hasburgs. The tension between the two over how involved each would be in the others conflicts was fascinating. I came away from the book thinking the 30 years warwould be a better description of the subject matter since the book chronicles a parade of various non-german kingdoms getting involved for different reasons whom without which is would have lasted a lot less and involved a lot less death. 

 

If you are interested in the history of south Asia since partition or how Italy went from a collection of different states to a single country Midnight's Descendants and the Pursuit of Italy are both worth checking out.

 

Next up are books dealing the Irish war and independence and civil war's in particular counties of which there is alot of books from all over the country.

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A former professor of mine was inducted into the sci-fi Hall of Fame recently, so that's cool.  Gunn is a pretty amazing guy, and I highly recommend his work if you ever run across any.  I'm particularly fond of The Immortals, which envisions a dystopian future in with the KU Medical center becomes a fortress like structure in Kansas City, where the rich pursue dreams of immortality while the poor voluntarily allow themselves to be experimented on just to eke out a living.  The Listeners is also really good, telling the story of what is is like to be a scientist listening for the sounds of alien civilization (basically SETI), knowing that you could be dedicating your entire professional life to a goal that may never be achieved.  His anthology series The Road to Science Fiction is probably my favorite collection of stories ever, charting the history and development of sci-fi. 

 

Okay, plugging of old friend done, please return to your regular programming :)

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I really want to get to the TNC book! I love his writing,

 

 Books read since last post:

 

1) Farabeuf or Chronicles of an Instant - Salvador Elizondo: First time translation of this 60s Mexican surrealist horror cult "classic". Short novel about real life surgical innovator has his involvement in subversive chinese activities, erotic torture, and obsession. Really hypnotic and creepy. Kind of reads like Eco doing a novelization of Flower of Flesh and Blood. Shameless half-self plug/full disclosure zone: Translated/published by some good pals, and I work on their covers.

 

2) Brief History of Seven Killings - Marlon James: 1976 unrest and crime story in Jamaica. Rasta Goodfellas? I'm about 30% through it, and it is totally electric. Brutal and violent, but very compelling. Electric prose. Each chapter is like a confessional by one of the many many characters, and he does an amazing job establishing a voice for each one, from ghetto boy shooters, to rolling stone reports, to CIA string pullers. Long listed for the 2015 Man Booker Prize, which has yet to fail me as a place to find books. Exactly my taste. 

 

3) Story for the Time Being - Ruth Ozeki: Beautiful and sad story of a young japanese girl who's home life sucks, gets bullied, but connects with her radical feminist Buddhist monk grandmother. Interest frame story told by somebody reading the girl's diary. 

 

4) Telex from Cuba - Rachel Kushner: Stories told from the viewpoints of several people on the eve of Castro's uprising in Cuba, from united fruit company workers to local kids. Two books into her career (this and Flamethrowers) and I think Rachel Kushner is one of my favorite modern writers. 

 

 

 

I recently finished Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me and I loved it.

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Marlon James is amazing, and is exactly as cool as you think he might be. He's an English professor at my alma mater.

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A former professor of mine was inducted into the sci-fi Hall of Fame recently, so that's cool.  Gunn is a pretty amazing guy, and I highly recommend his work if you ever run across any.  I'm particularly fond of The Immortals, which envisions a dystopian future in with the KU Medical center becomes a fortress like structure in Kansas City, where the rich pursue dreams of immortality while the poor voluntarily allow themselves to be experimented on just to eke out a living.  The Listeners is also really good, telling the story of what is is like to be a scientist listening for the sounds of alien civilization (basically SETI), knowing that you could be dedicating your entire professional life to a goal that may never be achieved.  His anthology series The Road to Science Fiction is probably my favorite collection of stories ever, charting the history and development of sci-fi. 

 

Okay, plugging of old friend done, please return to your regular programming :)

Hah, I live in Lawrence now (and grew up in KC) so that book sounds like a trip. Thanks for the recommendation!

 

Relatedly, a former prof of my wife's (John Kessel) was in town this summer for the annual sci-fi writing contest and from the stories he told, getting published in that field sounds so depressing if you're not a young upstart or writing in an established trope. He's the guy who wrote that great essay kneecapping the morality of Ender's Game a while back.

 

Book-wise, I managed to get myself in the middle of reading three huge books, which is going about as well as you'd imagine. The only one I'm making any progress on lately is The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which is way more epic than even its title promises. It's over 200 pages before Rhodes even gets to scientists realizing that Uranium was being split! It's definitely one of the great non-fiction books of the last century, though, deserving all the accolades it boasts of on the cover—Pulitzer, National Book Award, etc.

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The new Franzen book is so bad I hope it makes people realise Freedom was garbage and the Corrections was pretty awful.

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Freedom was garbage but the Corrections was good... I at least liked the part about Chip, possible because I too am an early thirties white guy struggling with monotony etc. 

 

I read some cool books this summer: 

 

1. I read some books my Julio Cortazar. I read a book of his short stories called "Blow-Up". Very good magical realist/weird latin American fiction. One of the stories is available online here. Obviously influenced a lot by Borges and (I think) French existentialists. Apparently Bolano liked him, and so does Vandermeer (The guy who wrote the Southern Reach books) and it shows. I also read one of his novels called "Hopscotch". It's basically an anti-novel. There's about 150 chapters presented more-or-less chronologically, but rather than reading it front to back there is also a set of instructions presenting an alternate course through the book. I have heard it is called the first hyperlink novel, which I don't really agree with, but it is extremely well written and cool. 

 

2. I read "A brief history of portable literature" by Enrique Vilas-Matas, which was written in the 1960s or 70s but only recently translated. It's about a fictional avant-garde movement of artists/writers comprised of Marcel Duchamp, George O'Keefe, etc. Very short and absurdist. I liked it, but not as much as I thought I would? 

 

3. I read "Gringos" on the recommendation of someone in this thread. I love Charles Portis and this one was for sure one of his best. His books always remind me of the Coen brothers for some reason, and this one was no exception. A weird rambling story of one man's search through Mexico for a mystical Aztec city....

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I finally started reading James Ellroy's The Big Nowhere (which has been sitting on my bookself for ages) because it was mentioned in the True Detective Weekly. There are indeed a startling amount of similarities between the two stories.

 

Anyway, I am breezing through the book, so I guess I'm sort of enjoying it, but damn this a brutal read. Not just in terms of depictions of sadistic violence, but in terms of all-pervading racism, homophobia and misogyny as well. I'd like to try out some more of Ellroy's books, but preferably something not quite this extreme. How do his other books/series compare to The Big Nowhere? Underworld USA trilogy for example?

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Marlon James won the Man Booker prize today for his Brief History of Seven Killings!

http://t.co/nKLZDpQDyA

 

Here he talks about in an appearance on Seth Meyers

 

http://t.co/PlsWV5iV8U

 

here's the NYT piece on it. He's the first Jamaican author to win the prize and I'm very happy for him!

(Full disclosure: I went to Macalester College, where he is an English professor. I never took a class with him, but I did once eat easter dinner with him and my boyfriend's friend's family. We gave him a ride to Edina as he doesn't drive. We had lamb and horseradish mashed potatoes and it was very good.)

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