August, 2021 Readings: "I do not think I have said enough about the splintered disorder of June, July and August."

This month's quote courtesy Virginia Woolf.

I'm starting August reading Octavia Butler's BLOODCHILD & OTHER STORIES.

Three stories in and quite smitten thus far. Very unique tales.

Reading V2. Bit of a potboiler. Harris brags about his research and then has a SS officer wearing a black uniform in 1944.

"Splintered disorder" is right! My attention is split in so many directions currently that I haven't picked up a book in a month. Not the doldrums, exactly, but definitely a discontinuance of sustained interest in reading. I haven't gone on vacation, but my mind has.

A Gathering Of Old Men – Ernest J Gaines
4****

A dead man. A running tractor. A white woman who claims she shot him. A gathering of old men with shotguns. A sheriff who knows everyone is lying. A father who needs revenge.

What is so marvelous about this work is that Gaines tells it from a variety of viewpoints, as different characters narrate chapters. Candy Marshall is the woman who owns the plantation that has been in her family for generations. It is she who spreads the word among those in “the Quarters” that the men need to show up at Mattu’s place. By the time Sheriff Mapes is called and arrives there are dozens of elderly black men, each with a fired shotgun, though many can barely hold the gun let alone aim and fire it with any accuracy. One by one they tell their stories of how and why they shot Beau Bouton.

Meanwhile Beau’s brother, Gil, comes home to meet with his father, Fix, who wants nothing more than to call up his group of Klansmen to “take care of this problem.” It is Fix’s arrival that the group of old men is awaiting. One by one they tell their stories of how and why they shot Beau Bouton.

Their stories are simply but eloquently told. Oppression lasting for generations. Men who will not take it any longer. Their decision to stand up for what is right and against those who would continue the sins of the past has been coming for a long time and they are united and steadfast in their determination to see this through. And that includes NOT allowing some white woman, however well-intentioned, to “save” them. No, they will save themselves, or die trying.

Gaines’s writing is evocative of time and place. I can feel the humid heat, taste the dust that fills the air, hear the buzz of mosquitos as evening comes, smell the swamp and sweat. This is the second book by Gaines that I have read (and I’ve read A Lesson Before Dying three times), but I have all his works on my tbr. The world of literature lost a great writer when he passed on in 2019.

The Alexandria Quartet and A Promised Land were both excellent, now working on Michener's The Source. Haven't read his historical fiction in years, but this is an intriguing one that explores four millennium in the Holy Land.

FULLY AUTOMATED LUXURY COMMUNISM by Aaron Bastani.

Bastani pictures a bright and shiny future, where technology has overcome all of humankind's problems, we're mining near Earth asteroids and storing infinite amounts on information on a DNA strand. Basic services like education, health and housing are virtually free and, thanks to robots, people only work if they want to. I found his reasoning faulty: there has NEVER been a fair, equitable society built around abundance. During good times, elites just take MORE. The author is employing magical thinking, not ideologically or historically sound.

This book would've fared far better as science fiction, rather than an (overly) optimistic work of non-fiction.

As it stands, it is neither convincing, nor credible.

(That's the short version--I wrote up a three-page critique of FULLY AUTOMATED LUXURY COMMUNISM for my personal use, but I'm happy to share it with anyone who wants a peek.)

>6 CliffBurns: Others who have read Bastani have applied that title to Iain Banks' Culture, though along the way it got expanded to 'Fully Automated Gay Luxury Space Communism'.

>7 RobertDay: The problem with Bastani's book is that he is envisioning a future decades from now, imagining technologies that are presently only a gleam in the eye.

According to the latest comprehensive, peer-reviewed climate report, we don't have decades to turn things around, we have to fully devote our resources and mind power to making this planet sustainable and we have to do so TODAY. The wet dreams of capitalists drooling over the prospect of mining asteroids, etc. will have to wait.

>8 CliffBurns: Indeed. Part of my pitch for continuing to work from home after September has been the dubious sustainability of my making a 60-mile round trip commute daily in a 22-year old car. My other half once said "Move electrons, not people" and I'm quoting her much more regularly these days.

My reading has been a bit all over the place recently.

Orphans of the Sky, which was originally published in 1941 and boy does it show, not to mention its complete misogyny (no female characters, women are treated like chattel, and not even named). Surely one of the worst in Heinlein's oeuvre.

Then The Fall of the Families, the second book of an oddball space opera duology from the mid-1980s. Under-rated.

Followed by Spring Tide, a collection of (mostly) mainstream short stories by a Clarke Award-winning author (and a friend). While all are well-written, it's a bit of a mixed bag as some of the stories are just a bit *too* mainstream...

Now reading The Ordinary, the science fiction sequel to Kirith Kirin, a fantasy I remember being interesting if a little trad in its world-building. So far, The Ordinary reminds me a bit of Le Guin and a bit of Golden Witchbreed.

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee– Dee Brown
Book on CD narrated by Grover Gardner
5*****

Subtitle: An Indian History of the American West

Brown’s interest in the history of the American West took him to many resources that were previously ignored in crafting the official textbooks from which millions were taught American history. This work is one attempt to correct the information so many thought they knew. Instead of reading accounts of glory and conquest, we are given the perspective of the Native Americans, who mostly wanted to live in peace and harmony with the white men. But the “civilized” society of white men would not be denied, and the government waged a continued war against the Indians with the intent of wiping them out.

Brown relates the systemic plunder of Native lands region by region, tribe by tribe, battle by battle, broken treaty by broken treaty. The reader comes to know the chiefs and their efforts to lead their people to a peaceful solution. The many photographs included help to put faces to some of the names we’ve come to know – Geronimo, Sitting Bull, Cochise. It is a very personal account. And it is heartbreaking.

Grover Gardner does a very good job of narrating the audiobook. But I think this is best read in text so the reader has time to absorb the information. I did have a copy of the text and I read about a third of it, listening to the rest.

It's beginning to feel autumnal in this part of the world & different perspective on August from E.B. White came to mind:

'I rememer the clean sparkling days, bright and cool, which come toward the end of summer, the sort of days my neighbor can't stand. He calls them "suicide days". I too have been saddened by the last days of August . . . . the melancholy which he receives, collect from the white clouds in the perfect sky.'

Last book finished--after a couple not worth finishing--was Annihilation by Vandermeer. Well-written, some very cool elements, interesting idea, but the story lay flat on the page with the words that told it. Didn't give me a sense of what that uncanny place *felt* like, never mind atmosphere. Presently reading in chunks one of a haul from Manchester University Press's 1/2 price sale, https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781784992828/. Sounds technical & dry as dust but it's neither & somehow my attention is being held by the likes of mining centuries ago and preparation, from mill to baking, of the Host.

>12 bluepiano: I had no problem getting a feeling for Area X in Annihilation, but then again I have long had a thing about abandoned places - derelict railways, old industrial sites and former military installations (where possible). I suppose I read some of Vandermeer's descriptions and could relate them to places I'd been. (Any weirdness was from my own imagination.)

I've the same liking for places like that though I'm not sure how large a part the abandoning of the place plays in the book. Not so much as in Roadside Picnic at least as I remember it. And I got a feeling of what Area X was like, but not of what it feels like.--I re-read Bernanos' The Other Side of the Mountain recently, also about a very strange place of desolation, transformed humans, w. no explanation & a sense of doom & it might be that I was subconsciously expecting Annihilation have the same horrifying immediacy.

>11 BookConcierge:, it's an incredible book, but I've wondered why he starts only halfway through the story. Someone needs to do that first part, or I'd like directions to someone who has.

>15 Cecrow: Search out Peter Cozzens' THE EARTH IS WEEPING for a more complete look at the "Indian Wars".

It's a GREAT book.

TALES OF TIME AND SPACE, edited by Ross R. Olney.

One of the books that turned me on to science fiction, first read when I was 10 or 11 years old.

Funny, the two stories I liked then--Robert Silverberg's "Birds of a Feather" and Keith Laumer's "The Last Command"--are still the ones that stand out most to me.

The rest of the offerings are mediocre, including efforts by big names like Sturgeon and Clarke.

A keepsake and curio from a less cynical time.

>17 CliffBurns: I was the same with Final Stage, which contains the only Harlan Ellison story I've ever liked. The Dick story in it is one of my favourites, the Russ is good, but the Harry Harrison is terrible.

>18 iansales: An impressive roster of writers--I'll have to remember to look up the Ellison story ("Catman"), I don't recall reading it.

Enjoyed The Ordinary, which started out LeGuin-ish, but then did something very different. Unfortunately, the next book - which I don't think is a sequel, but is set in the same universe - The Last Green Tree is in storage...

Now reading Penhallow, one of Heyer's crime novels. Apparently, Heyer wanted out of her contract but the publisher insisted on more books, so she wrote one that was as horrible as she could make it. The publisher passed on it, and she moved to the new publisher she had wanted to move to. And I can understand why the publishers passed on it. The characters are all horrible people, and halfway in no one has been murdered.

Finished In Patagonia by Chatwin. Loved it. Very original, well written, and full of great stories. He is very dismissive of Argentinians and has this colonizer gaze that is not very attractive. Great book though. Will definitely be looking for more of his work.

I've been seeing a lot of reaction videos to The Shining by Kubrick, which I remember fondly, so I decided to read the book by King. The movie is much better.

I also listened to an anthology of fantastic literature by the good people at Librivox. Out of 40 stories I'd say 4 or 5 were really good. The rest were meh. I was very impressed with one called The Shadow by Hans Christian Andersen. Very interesting and unexpected.

Not sure why I ended reading The Shadow-Line by Conrad. It's a late effort that doesn't quite deliver what I expected. He writes beautifully though.

Right now I'm working on The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert. It's about the extinctions currently occurring everywhere, and about the evolution of the idea of extinction. Very powerful, and very scary.

>21 mejix:, if you liked The Shining movie, there's a pretty great reference to it in Speilbergs Ready Player One.

>22 Cecrow: A couple of reaction videos have mentioned that but I haven't seen it. I will check it out. Thanks!
(Ready Player One looks like an interesting book too.)

Penhallow remained bleak to the end. I'm not a fan of UK crime fiction from the first half of last century - all those terribly posh and fabulously intelligent detectives, while the police are working class plods - and I'd never previously bothered with Heyer's crime fiction... I'll continue with them, I think, but only out of a sense of completeness.

Now reading Graham Joyce's Some Kind of Fairy Tale, in which a teenage girl reappears after vanishing 20 years previously and reveals she has been away with the Sidhe - but it has only been 6 months for her. Seems a bit more slapdash than other works by Graham I've read.

A hot week so chose a fat, undemanding book out of latest haul from cut-rate 2nd-shop for inactive afternoons--Manson by Jeff Guinn. Had qualms when I saw it was by an American journalist--quite a few books that are have a maddening tone or masses of irrelevant detail or both--but it's surprisingly good & has been holding my interest. The discussion about rioting & dissension in late 60's US is overlong but on the other hand a passage re rise & fall of the Haight was nicely informative. It's a biography rather a true crime story, & Manson comes across overall as a garden-variety habitual criminal with masterly manipulative techniques.

Lions – Bonnie Nadzam
3.5***

From the book jacket: A spell-binding story of a modern-day “living ghost town” on the brink of collapse, and a young couple faced with pursuing the promise of a new life elsewhere or – against all reason – staying where they are.

My reactions
Nadzam’s work reminds me of classic fables with tragic heroes, especially opening with a mysterious stranger and his little dog. Her characters are familiar and yet distant. I recognize some of their emotions and motivations: loyalty, inertia, longing, adventure, boredom, duty, wonder, love.

Gordon, in particular, struggles with the competing forces – an urge to leave this desolate, dying town for college and a bright future vs. a duty to honor tradition and continue his father’s (and grandfather’s) work. Leigh is similarly torn. She loves this boy, and yet she longs to go to a bigger, BETTER, place, to experience all that life offers rather than stay in this small town whose only claim to fame is the “ghost town” sign on the freeway exit.

I can always rely on my F2F book club friend to recommend interesting, “odd” books! Unfortunately, our meeting was postponed, and I had been hoping that our discussion would help clarify my thoughts.

This Tender Land – William Kent Krueger
Digital audiobook narrated by Scott Brick
4****

Krueger references both The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and Homer’s The Odyssey in this epic adventure set in America’s upper Midwest during the Great Depression.

Orphaned brothers Odie and Albert O’Banion have been placed at The Lincoln School, in Fremont County, Minnesota, which is primarily for Native American children. It is far from a refuge; rather, it is a prison and a labor camp, where the children are subject to many abuses – verbal, physical and sexual. Following one horrific event, the boys decide they have no choice to but set out on their own to try to find their aunt. They are joined by their friend Mose, a mute Native American boy, and Emmy, a young girl who has suffered a great loss. The plan is to paddle a canoe down the Gilead and on to the Mississippi and St Louis, Missouri.

Krueger is a marvelous storyteller, and he keeps the plot moving with a variety of incidents. The travelers show intelligence, resourcefulness, and tenacity. They are also children - immature and prone to misunderstanding or misinterpretation of information they gather. And, of course, they are vulnerable. Not everyone they meet is helpful; some are violently dangerous, and some want only to use them. I loved watching them grow, both individually and in their relationships, through these experiences.

The novel is very atmospheric. Krueger uses the landscape as a character – terrain, flora, fauna, and weather all have roles to play. He makes good use of magical realism. And there is a painful history lesson here as well, with the treatment of Native American children – ripped from their homes and tribal lands to be “re-educated” in abysmal conditions.

Scott Brick is a talented voice artist and does a marvelous job of performing the audio book.

Enjoyed Some Kind of Fairy Tale. Whizzed through Decline and Fall - some amusing set-pieces, but horribly racist. Stick to the recent TV adaptation. Now reading Terminal Boredom, a collection of short stories by a Japanese writer who committed suicide at the age of 37.

Oh, and I posted a review of The Memory Police last week here - https://ian-93054.medium.com/the-memory-police-yoko-ogawa-c08af763217a

>28 iansales: Hadn't heard of Terminal Boredom and after a quick look at descriptions I might consider getting it, so thanks. Am wondering, though--despite the interplanetary war it sounds as if stories might be generally off-kilter & disturbing rather than standard sci-fi? I'm hoping so.

Good review btw; gave a good sense of the book (which I won't consider getting).

Started listening to Britannia Mews by Margery Sharp. Opening pages are an intense immersive description of a neighborhood in Victorian London that immediately sent me to a Google street map where I "figured out" which actual mews she was portraying. I love it when books do that to me -- send me off to research the where and when in them.