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

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.

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

Yeah, even as quite the admitted snob when it comes to a lot of lit stuff, this doesn't make any sense, but I'm chalking it up to not having been exposed to the right comics.

I will say that it took comics like Black Hole, the Watchmen, Transmetropolitan, and L&R to really allow me to see how the binary isn't just "trashy superheroes" vs. "graphic novels." As Daniel and others have put it, as in any medium, there are more trashy elements and more high-minded elements, and everything in between. Seems really limiting to shut oneself off from it!

Not all cultures are capable of producing Matt

In fact I think most cultures have at least one cock-and-balls face cartoonist.

I apologise for my ignorance

Many xps: I read patchen’s sleepers awake a long time ago, sort of splurgy proto-Beat prose along with v appealing (to me, then) typographical experiments

& I read duras’s wartime notebooks *checks notes* last May (ha another one I failed to include in my wdyr 2021 list, why do I bother ffs) & even in incomplete or draft form the power of the voice is overwhelming, must read more

Speaking of, I read nothing at all in the first half of January but I made up for it by kicking off with joy williams the changeling, 10/10 masterpiece holy shit. I don’t even know what to say about it except that the sentences are perfect and inflected with a real strangeness and it’s very funny and also belongs in the corpus of great horror fiction imo. Then I went straight into her new novel harrow, which I read half of yday & is fucking me up somewhat. It’s unsparing & free of easy sentiment & yet it’s one of the bluest books I’ve ever read, captures the feeling of These Times perfectly: the world is gone, goes dismally on still

Joan Didion's Where I Was From is an immersive memoir of delusion, collective and personal: the past tense in the title denotes a life-long, sometimes excruciating process of pulling away, like some of her ancestors did from the Donner Party, just in time, from a sense of California pioneer heritage as identity---a phrase repeated from one of many amazing documents included, a letter from a girl who stayed with the Donner Party, "never take no cut-offs, and hurry along as fast as you can"---hurtling via "rugged individualism," sometimes including radicalized survival moves, into dependence on outside money: the main chance, the sweet deal, act now!
She was no fan of the hippies, right? So would not be thrilled to know that her alternation of narratives is like nothing else in my reading experience except Neil Young's Waging Heavy Peace---A Hippie Dream's space-time groove. But where he launch from, say, frozen Western Canada '64, to sunny-smoggy L.A. '67, to leafy polio-y South Ontario '53 to Honolulu and back to Cali at the time of writing (ca. 09, I think), her momentum covers even more ground by going deeper and faster, though carefully (incl. evocative phrasing times pacing that encourages the reader's thought, rather than racing along), in, typically a page or two of detailed exposition, storytelling that is forensic without a whiff of the clinical, or not too much of one(a little bit is bracing, as befits the daughter of a dry land, also a flood plain, long since watered into an artificial paradise and money pit). A page or two soon amounting to a section that may end with a little leap of logic, a cliffhanger, even, but it's okay, she'll come back to fill in some of the gap, in good time.
So I was thinking about this (departure from and with) Neilian grooves, when I came across a brief excerpt from Christopher Hitchens' take on another late Didion book, about her daughter: he refers in passing to "slight syncopation, in the manner of Bob Dylan": the second line of the syncopation here could be the penny of awareness and warning dropping, bouncing off the through-line of destiny as many Californias rise and fall, sometimes crash and burn, as depicted here. (A unity, detected pretty quickly by mark s, is anxiety, a current that runs through all her work, as she in part critiques here, also now finding her debut novelRun River, despite some appealing quotes, to be a case of "pernicious nostalgia.")
Should add that the whole thing is also very entertaining.

So much in a 226 page trade pb.

White Rage Carol Anderson
black female academic's history of white racism in the US.
I was thinking the term White rage was a description of a particularly intense formof anger like white heat was a description of intense heat. & the application of it to entitled racists feeling discomfort wasa secondary meaning. This shows some particularly virulent examples of pretty institutional levels of racist BS pulled on the black population since teh Civil War. I've just read a scathing account of President Andrew johnson and the destruction of the reconstruction. This leaves him looking like a jackass turd and leaves me wondering to waht extent him being the wrong person at the wrong time caused this or if another person in the role at taht point might have done something a lot better.
I caught a webinar book club on this last year and have wanted to read it ever since. Very depressing

On a similar note, the xp Didion book although very entertaining is also affecting, as the cost, not nearly just financial, accrues, including how the author is pushed/pushes toward a higher degree of understanding/extreme degree of perception and recounting, including (spoiler as warning) her parents' lives and how they end---just so you know, in case you're not into reading about that.

Andrew Johnson was a pro-slavery president sitting at the top spot of an abolitionist party that hated him and he felt the same about them.

In Alasdair Gray I at last read his story 'Five Letters from an Eastern Empire'. Remarkable density and extent of imagination (albeit drawing on precursors including Kafka). Curious that he's known to many of us as an archetypally Scottish and Glaswegian figure when some of his major, fabulist work is totally unrelated to those places. The story is ingenious and, I think, a tragedy.

I move on to a historical story called 'Sir Thomas's Logopandocy', which seems to me perhaps the hardest prose of writing to read that I've yet come across in Gray's work.

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.

― Ward Fowler, Wednesday, 19 January 2022 bookmarkflaglink

otm

I read Play It As It Lays!

great novel

At one point, the marketing folks put a cover on that book that showed a man playing chess with a nude woman. Not sure exactly what they were going for.

sales

Seems only fair to reprint an Eve Babitz book with the Didion/Corvette photo on the cover.

The Vintage International trade paperback of Where I Was From has replaced the Didion/Corvette with Eve Arnold's spacious, tight photo: at the bottom, dappled waves of two-story tract homes roll over the hill, rising out of the dry plain of nowhere to 1950 "middle class" worktopia, toward 00s obsolescence---but very pretty, some houses looking like little emoji faces as the sun hits them---sere hill behind them to the left, but waaaaay up in the sweet blue yonder is a jet! This town, Lakeview, is bordered, defined by McDonnell Douglas, name running around the pylon in forward-leaning letters, ready to ascend---past one one of the aircraft industry spokesman dismisses as "green eyeshade," chickenshit coin-poking squints at Free Enterprise: they got the Gov. of Love money tit, they got artistic license, because this is a one-hand-waving-free, rodeo industry: if you want those stars to spangle, here's how.
But by '93, some of the programs are so far over-budget for so long that even the Pentagon, in the Post-Cold-War era---remember?---is getting ready to pull the plug---great found comedy of a glorious flight of eccentric cargo plane through media, even while back at the 'gon debate is over how not if it should be grounded, for more (handed-off) tweaking or pulling of plug.
Contracts are lost, companies are saved by downsizing---McConnell starts to focus on pulling operations back into its St. Louis home, shutting the gates----Didion walks into the Lakeview Center one day---that being the center of town, the shopping center, mall--village, as it was called near where I live: an ultra-modern triumph in 1950---but she says to a clerk, oh I've never seen a home sale booth in a mall before, and clerk says, "Oh, those are just FHA/VA repos."
Ripples spread back to L.A. proper, where the people who have paper on the mortgage holders out there start to feel it in the Beverly Hills, Brentwood etc. real estate market, blaming it on the Rodney King riots.
Meanwhile back in Lakewood, a media scandal erupts, spinning through afternoon talk shows especially: a suburban gang, the Spur Posse, has been accused of rape and other shades of sexual coercion, with pre-memes of "B-but the high school gives out free condomw!" (false, says author), and "blowing it out of proportion"--but this is traced back to a pipe bomb exploding on front porch of a family containing a Spur: it's Spur vs. Spur escalation, turns out---a meeting is held at school, somebody mentions rape, and whole thing gets narrowcast---for a while---yadda yadda at least one Spur goes to prison, and not for rape or bombs---it's like a book-within-a-book, one of several: that's how she rolls.

though her Californias, old and new and old and new and why cant these new new people be like us old right new people

John Aubrey - Brief Lives
Raymond Chandler - The Big Sleep
Joseph Conrad - The Secret Agent

Aubrey's Lives is outstanding. In an era with almost no parallel in England's literature this really has a place. Obviously "Lives" are a thing, but what makes Aubrey stand out is what I can only conceive as a lack of concentration which can reduce a life to scatterings, juicy gossip, plenty of (tall) tales, with an at times review of the funeral that Aubrey has attended. The other is the Civil War: on which side of the fence did the various participants in these lives stand, and what were the consequences? Its an insight into that particular episode in England's history, too, but you can just bask in the wonderful prose (but that isn't necessarily of note, there was so much good prose and poetry in England then).

Then onto Chandler's dialoguing and Conrad's moods.

I've begun Soldiers of Salamis, Javier Cercas, based on many favorable comments here on ILB when it came up during the recent 'Favorite Book of (Year)' polling. So far it seems like a very fine bit of storytelling. My only irritation with it is a pure quibble: the battle of Salamis was a sea battle so I keep thinking "but it's sailors of Salamis, not soldiers!"

The second half of Sailors of Salamis is some of the best stuff I've read in the last, I dunno, five years. Great book.

I'm midway through what feels like about half a dozen things. JB Priestley's English Journey, wherein farty old Jack rambles around a Depression-affected England, visiting factories, drinking stale beer and complaining about how ugly everything is. Despite confusingly standing as an independent MP at one point, Priestley does have a coherent Socialist vision but there is a whiff of one-nationism about him. He sentimentalises his subjects rather than giving them subjecthood and, at times, there's a Heart of Darkness feel about some of the places he visits. Despite all of that, I do find him oddly good company.

Also most of the way through Flyboy in the Buttermilk. This is glib, but I could read Tate about anything, all day.

Peter Bogdanovich's book on Orson Welles (This is Orson Welles). I've got about 1/3 of the way through and it's breezy and damn do I wish I was drinking with them. I need to catch up on some films before I continue.

Pauline Hopkins Of One Blood
Black medical graduate reanimates a trainwreck victim then takes off to Africa with a british expedition in a book by black female writer from 1902. Interesting since this is supposed to be a proto Wakanda society. But she seems to be working with some pretty racist tropes and also seems a bit scathing about Arabs.
I stumbled on this on some recommended list possibly historic sci fi or balck sci fi or soemthing. It is included in a book anthology of Black Sci fi from a publishing house that specialises in sci fi and fantasy anthologies. Book has 4 or 5 stories/longer pieces in dating from mid 19th century to about the 1920s which is interesting. I wasn't sure teh whole novel was going to be included since it isw listed as tens of pages shorter than the listing i found for pp in a standalone copy. But format is different and it all appears to be here.

Kehinde Andrews back to Black
I finished this overview of black political movement in the 20th and 21st centuries. Quite interesting. Shares a lot of his own opinions on things. I may be reading too many things at teh same time but I seemed to devour this less hungrily than his New Age Of Empire at teh beginning of last year. Anyway he is a writer and interviewee that I enjoy. So will be trying to read more by him.

Stephen Fry Mythos
fry's retelling of Greek mythology which I've wanted to read for a couple of years. I find his writing pretty readable so will probably read Heroes his 2nd book in the series when I can.
Started this yesterday cos I wasn't in the mood to take in just how bad teh situations described in

White rage Carol Anderson were
just read about the situation concerning brown vs Board of Education and education in general for the black population.
Read that chapter this morning.
Disgusting history. & she hasn't talked about later attempts to overturn what was eventually achieved yet.

a book anthology of Black Sci fi from a publishing house that specialises in sci fi and fantasy anthologies. Sounds good, what's the title?

Black sci-fi short stories : anthology of new & classic tales / foreword by Temi Oh
from Flame Tree publishing.
I've seen a number of anthologies from the publishing house on various aspects of sci fi and fantasy.