Bonfires In The Sky: What Are You Reading, Winter 2021-22?

Myaybe I shouldn't have used Ayn Rand's favorite term, speaking of the 50s! But it fits, in limited way.

it's honestly incredible -- a super-modern effect, after the very VERY 19c vibe of all the preceding 1/2 of the book
I got this from her father's Caleb Williams too! Although that one has a fig leaf ain't-mad-at-the-class-system bit at very end, contrast actually just kind of enhancing what has come before, like screen version of The Magnificent Ambersons.

The conscientious young Caleb has unaccountably offended a gentleman, who won't let him leave the British Isle. which becomes very much like this big greasy rambly boarding house, and he can't figure out how to make amends.

Roma Agrawal Built
architect talks about the considerations for designing buildings. I first came across Ms Agrawal on the Xmas University Challenge series i think, wondered if she was the writer of Sway, then if she was related. i looked her up and saw she had a couple of books out then ordered thsi asan interlibrary loan. So far it is pretty fascinating. First chapter is talking about load and other forces that need to be chanelled through a building constructiion to make sure it remains upright. She starts from talkingf about an early 20th century situation where a bridge in Canada was built too heavy thereby putting even more pressure on itself to stand and wound up snapping and collapsing while still under construction.
So this seems to be a really good popular science book. I was looking for something that would explain a lot of this stuff i think.
Anyway, really good book so glad i came across it. Will probably look for her other one afterwards.

Carl Sagan Demon Haunted World
Famous scientist writes about teh popular misconceptions and folk devils he has to deal with. he starts by talking about his childhood and what influenced him there. Then starts the main book talking about a taxi ride with a conspiracy theorist taxi driver who enthusiastically comes up with a number of misconceptions about things like the existence of Atlantis and fun things like that. I'm still in the first chapter so not sure where else he's going at the moment. So9mebody was making a lot of references to this book in a podcast I was listening to a few months ago I think so hope this isn't the 2nd copy I've bought. Turned up for a couple of Euro in a local charity shop anyway. Have been trying to think which Podcast it was, possibly behind tHe bastards or one the presenter does.

The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution
Eric Foner

An authoritative history by the preeminent scholar of the Civil War era, The Second Founding traces the arc of the three foundational Reconstruction amendments from their origins in antebellum activism and adoption amidst intense postwar politics to their virtual nullification by narrow Supreme Court decisions and Jim Crow state laws. Today these amendments remain strong tools for achieving the American ideal of equality, if only we will take them up.

re the discussion above between poster gyac and poster dow:

I share gyac's tendency to bafflement here for, in my case, the very mundane reason that dow's posts tend to be written in a way that I cannot disentangle. They often don't seem to have paragraphs. They often seem to contain very long sentences which in turn contain abbreviations or personal code.

It's possible that poster dow is a brilliantly insightful reader of literature but that this does not come through to me, because of my difficulty with this poster's way of formatting their thoughts on screen.

Like most readers, btw, I think that LOLITA is a masterpiece; though I think that I wouldn't relish reading it again now.

Having finished Brecht, I returned to Alasdair Gray's UNLIKELY STORIES, MOSTLY (c.1983, but this is an edition from c.1997). I have owned this book for well over 15 years, have read the two major novels either side of it, yet had never really made the effort with most of these stories. This proves an odd omission, for the first few stories are very short and thus easy to finish. Gray here is in a mode of the fantastic, fabulous and darkly allegorical. Longer stories await later in the book.

Lanark has been sitting in my library, unread, for about 10 years.

It's long and dense and often dour! It's frankly not easy to get through - I'm inclined to say.

It's a book that I feel very glad to have read, but I wouldn't particularly want to face the task of reading it for the first time.

Yet I'm sure that many readers find it easy and rewarding. It may be a sign of my own limits that LANARK seems tough going for me.

Like most readers, btw, I think that LOLITA is a masterpiece; though I think that I wouldn't relish reading it again now. Me neither. That's why I was relieved to discover, right away that the book had the momentum, the drive, of the film, right from the beginning
Without the momentum, it might be an unbearable read---it's already claustrophobic enough, being in narrator Humbert's head like that, but he's hellbent on giving us the Grand Tour of his heart, like George Jones, so things never get too dense for too long, though there are so many impressions of people, places, things, some of them nearly interchangeable, except that's part of the author's effect: Humbert struggling through the sea of faces, in his purpose-driven life. (But what the hell was Nabokov's purpose in all that with Rita?)

Speaking of drive, wonder if anybody has ever compared these views of pre-Insterstate America with the ones in On The Road? Wonder what Kerouac thought of this book, if anything. He might have enjoyed all the French (in which he wrote some pre-fame novels, fairly recently published for the first time, I think.)
If you have any questions about what I was trying to say, pinefox, anybody, let me know thx.

I agree, poster Dow, about the claustrophobia, and the parallel with ON THE ROAD.

8 Detectives,Alex Pavesi. The premise being that in the 1930's a mathematician wrote a book of short stories hiding within them the simple rules that all crime stories follow. Then he disappeared. ffwd to the 1960's and an editor revisits them and thinks they contain clues to a real unsolved murder. the problem I'm having so far is that the short stories as revealed, and then critiqued as paired chapters seem unremarkable and mundane. So far they're all pretty crap, but I'm not sure if that is intentional or not and if the greater mystery will hold more interest. I will finish it, but for now someone has put in a request for one of my other library books so had to get cracking on that.

The Woman In The Purple Skirt, Natsuko Imamura. Now this is more like it, 50 pages in a and rattling along, have no idea where it's going, though presumably it's somewhere other than an remarkably odd case of stalking.

― oscar bravo, Tuesday, January 4, 2022 5:32 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

8 Detectives Turns out there was a reason the short stories were dull, not a good enough reason for the pay off to be anything other than mundane and derivative unfortunately.

The Woman In The Purple Skirt was absorbing and didn't really go where i was expecting it to go or anywhere really but not sure that's a bad thing. disquieting.

Currently reading The Plotters, Un-Su Kim. South Korean John Wick but funnier so far. 100 pgs in and loving it but still trying to get an idea of the wider society that exists outside of the protagonist and his associates.

Re-reading Brossard's 'The Blue Books,' her trilogy of experimental novels about/around political radicals and lesbians in 1970s Montréal.

Xpost

I wrote an undergraduate essay way back in the 20th century titled Windscreen, Silver Screen, TV Screen: On the Road in Astral America, comparing experience of driving/perception in On the Road, Lolita and... White Noise. I doubt it was v good :/

I'd like to read it! In his afterword, Nabakov says he haaated people taking it as a European critique of American culture, and he also lashes out at (says someday somebody will get wise and take a hammer to)"topical trash," meaning Balzac, Gorky, Mann, so I'm guessing he wouldn't have much use for On The Road. Did not live long enough to check out White Noise, but might have deigned to take a look at DeLillo's 1973 Americana, in which a Madison Avenue hipster takes a national road trek with a movie camera, catches a lot of good talk, but sure is a lot, and tending to monologues---I still remember some witty moments, incl. back at the office, but gets pretty dense. The author has since said that the less he thinks about his early books, the happier he is, but it's worth checking out (grab a coffee to do so).
Oh yeah, Humbert and the American scene: gradually he stops pouncing on each little flaw of each little person, many of them familiar stereotypes of that era, from other American lit and movies with a satirical or tongue in cheek quality (though he does take great satisfaction in finally telling off a couple of stuffy pests). The more he lets himself become aware of his own shortcomings, to put it mildly, the more he seems to accept his surroundings, trudging toward murder and his testimony. Even comes to see, along the way, where Delores should be, should have never left, not with him. Duh devil

I took the book back to the library as soon as I finished reading it, wanting to be done with it, but now it seems to be why I've started thinking about an old Randy Newman song, "Have You Seen My Baby?":
"She say, 'I'll talk to strangers if I want to, I'm a stranger too.' "

finished the Audre LOrde Compendium this morning.
THat was Cancer Diaries, Sister Outsider and A Burst of Light. Enjoy her writing so wish I had discovered her earlier. Shame this set is no longer available. Would be good to dip back into it. Well I think it may be available individually.
Now need to read Zami

I finished Time Will Darken It. Now I am reading The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois. In the former, I like the "textbook" (adept) use of point of view, particularly at the beginning and the end, to contrast with the primary perspective of the narrative, which still remains satisfyingly opaque.

I've started in on The Three Body Problem, Cixin Liu. It is still setting up its premise (which has taken 65 pages!), so it's premature to draw any conclusions about anything, yet. Preliminarily speaking, it seems to me very 'centrist' sci-fi, by which I mean it feels designed to please readers who read sci-fi almost exclusively, but some of what reads to me as clunky awkwardness might be attributable to the difficulties of translation from Chinese to English.

I think I saw that on the shelf of one of the charity shops i was in yesterday. I was thinking about Cartesian duality and fun things like that when i saw the title.

the duras book i mentioned earlier ('me and other writing') is very good, but i would only recommend it if you're already all in on the extended durasniverse. she says a lot of stuff i disagree with, but says it with such intensity and conviction (but a conviction that can be overturned or compromised a second later) that it's always compelling. the title essay, 'me' is the best example of this, but there's also a longer diary piece which is up there with her best fiction imo, and in fact closely resembles some of the later fiction and films like 'agatha' and 'l'homme atlantique'

i also read eva baltasar 'permafrost' which is a newish translation. a good companion piece to the duras, very voice-y, irascible narrator; a fun read

i started reading the collected kenneth patchen. there's a bit of youthful jauntiness to the early poems, which can be a little off putting, but i mostly get the sense that he was very fearful when writing, but didn't really know what to do with the fear - that sense of everything not being quite right makes the poems still feel quite contemporary despite some of the self-consciously poetic register he's working in

Duras wrote so much I’ve barely made a dent in it over the years but yeah, her voice never fails to interest.

Alasdair Gray's story (1970s I think) about 'The Great Bear Craze' in England in the 1930s is remarkable - a piece of agreeable, readable whimsy which also works as a remarkably convincing political allegory today.

'The Crank That Made the Revolution' is also a very canny, zany, comic yet serious take on the industrial revolution.

On to the stories in the middle of the book: Kafka and his treatment of (Chinese?) empire a big, acknowledged influence.

Started Arthur Phillips Prague, which has been on the shelf for years after my parents gave it me after reading. Read some old ilx talk that made me think it wouldn't be as bad as I feared, but 25 pages in it's very mediocre, already I'm slow to pick it up.

I read Memoirs of a Shy Pornographer years ago and always meant to read more Patchen and never did.
May have tied in with the Grateful Dead group writing pseudonym which was a name lifted from that book.
McGanahan Skjellyfetti
but I thought it was interesting, maybe very of its time

Aimless, you might be interested in this article re: Cixin Liu from a few years back. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/06/24/liu-cixins-war-of-the-worlds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7nQiUl6Iqw

Anyways how’s that going ?

Sorry wrong thread

Pertinent to my interests.

Bessie Chris Alberton
Biography of early female blues singer an updated version of a book originally published in 1972.
Very well researched though he is conscious that some data he could have perused got destroyed before he got to see it.l he found a recording session slog and a room full of further similar data that got destroyed before he could look at it.
Also som efamily infighting caused teh destruction of further material he would have loved to look at.
But so far, 2 chapters in this si really good.

I have like 12 books outof teh library and i'm trying to read tehm all and get them back to the library where I have other things coming through on order. Result of searching through books online and then checking the library catalogue.

Also got
Marlon James A Short History of 7 Killings
multivoiced fictionalised oral history of the events surrounding the attempted assassination of Bob marley.

Roma Agarwal Built
architect talks about the considerations involved in designing buildings in terms of a number of elements.
Finding this really interesting. Came across her as part of one of the teams on Xmas University Challenge

Nell Irving painter The history Of White People
Black academic traces teh history of teh idea of race from way back in the classical world through to present day. I think i'm now somewhere in the 15th or 16th century talking about the slave trade in Eastern Europe.

Carl Sagan Demon haunted World
I'm still in the early stages of his look at the widespread illiteracy of the population where science is concerned. This has been seen as very prescient dating from teh mid 90s since it seems so topical right now still. Though he's talking about tv eating popular cognition instead of the internet

Alasdair Gray's story about 'The Axletree', published in 1979, has a sequel, also I think published in the 1983 UNLIKELY STORIES, MOSTLY. Reading this, I come to see what a vast allegory the story is; for civilisation, empire, religion; technical development, industry, 'modernity'; human capacity to destroy its environment through such progress. The allegory plainly becomes more specific than I'd expected, too, with a version of the USSR involved.

Remarkable ambition, scale of thought or imagination, that Gray had.

I regret to say that, although I will finish reading it, my opinion of The Three Body Problem after reading the first 280 pages of ~400 total is that it amounts to a very long text-only comic book. It might possibly contain some very sophisticated astrophysics. I have no ability to judge if those elements of the book are made up or not. But once those parts are set aside all that remains is a bit of razzle-dazzle and a comic book plot.

This judgement of course has no connection to the amount or type of enjoyment that other readers might derive from it.

it, and the two other parts of the trilogy have been mentioned in the sci-fi threads but, yeah, there be monsters.

Haven't read those books, but I suspect that having Ken Liu as series editor and translator (w Joel Martinson translating the second) was a mixed blessing, judging by some of his choices in the Chinese SF anthology Broken Stars and some other projects I've heard about (some of us were complaining about this Liu problem on science fiction etc. threads)

Also having to write around what govt. etc. might consider problem areas doesn't help, unless you're really, really good at implication x sleight of hand, and it comes across in translation, as sometimes happens.

having to write around what govt. etc. might consider problem areas

Yes. In 3-body the People's Liberation Army is admirable and benign. Now that the war is about to start I expect the PLA will soon be heroic, while it's the 'environmental extremists' and 'disaffected social elites' who are villains. These difficulties are incidental to what I think are even more fundamental problems for the story meeting my standards and my getting enjoyment from it.

I was going to say The Fat Years is plenty critical of the govt but it's never been published in mainland China.

Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How it Changes Us by Brian Klaas

Does power corrupt, or are corrupt people drawn to power? Are entrepreneurs who embezzle and cops who kill the outgrowths of bad systems or are they just bad people? Are tyrants made or born? If you were thrust into a position of power, would new temptations to line your pockets or torture your enemies gnaw away at you until you gave in?

To answer these questions, Corruptible draws on over 500 interviews with some of the world's noblest and dirtiest leaders, from presidents and philanthropists to rebels, cultists, and dictators. It also makes use of a wealth of counter-intuitive examples from history and social science: You'll meet the worst bioterrorist in American history, hit the slopes with a ski instructor who once ruled Iraq, have breakfast with the yogurt kingpin of Madagascar, learn what bees and wasps can teach us about corruption, find out why our Stone Age brains cause us to choose bad leaders, and learn why the inability of chimpanzees to play baseball is central to the development of human hierarchies.

Corruptible will make you challenge basic assumptions about how you can rise to become a leader and what might happen to your head when you get there. It also provides a roadmap to avoiding classic temptations, suggesting a series of reforms that would ensure that better people get into power, while ensuring that power purifies rather than corrupts.

So far, it's highly readable and very interesting.

^Also includes twenty surefire tips for taking weight off and keeping it off.

Aimless, I agree with you about the Three-Body Problem. I kept waiting for the story to start. It felt like the whole thing was just world-building and scaffolding for a story that never quite materialized, and I don't have the patience to read the rest of the series and see what comes of it all.

And I thought the whole business of the video game was very dumb. Like, you have a planet called Trisolaris and a book called The Three-Body Problem, the game is called Three Body - it's not exactly a big mystery that the planet has three suns. And yet people are obsessively playing what sounds like a very unpleasant and not-fun video game just to figure out a piece of information that we already know and that is telegraphed in the name of the game. And really, why does the book give so much attention to the three-body problem at all? It sounds cool but it doesn't go anywhere, it's just a plot device that gives the aliens a reason to invade earth. Just say aliens are invading the earth because their own planet is going to fall into the sun, and start your damn book there.

We aren't the audience for the book, which seems to me to be made up of people who have very little knowledge of or interest in humans.

…

I just deleted a long further explanation of the book's shortcomings as I see them. Nobody needs that. Comic books are enjoyed worldwide by millions every day. It makes no sense to criticize them for not being good literature when their readers do not want or expect good literature.

you aren't exactly wrong about the series' shortcomings but nor does ilb really need its own bargain-basement neil degrasse tyson

friendly reminder that comic books are a medium, not a genre, and as such capable of accomodating as many different kinds of story as, say, the novel

It makes no sense to criticize them for not being good literature when their readers do not want or expect good literature.

My less friendly response is that this is utter horseshit.

I have been interested in when the stigma and association with comics and lack of artistry or communication level came. Since it isn't true in all cultures.

Or to puty that another way, it seems like in the West or possibly the English speaking west there is an association of combination of text and graphics that it is for children or the lesser educated. Which is definitely not true elsewhere and elsewhen.

Not all cultures are capable of producing Matt

>>> friendly reminder that comic books are a medium, not a genre, and as such capable of accomodating as many different kinds of story as, say, the novel

Yes, I agree with this medium / genre distinction.