Underland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert Macfarlane
429 pages
Published 2019
Read from September 24 to September 28
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
I've long placed Macfarlane in the company of Helen Macdonald, Rebecca Solnit, Ellen Meloy, and Roger Deakin, practitioners of the English language's most affecting and gorgeous nature writing in recent years. He has his moments of transcendence here, whether expounding upon the philosophical weight of the geologic past or the disorienting new realities of climate change, plastic pollution, and nuclear waste disposal. Despite that, I feel this isn't Macfarlane's best effort.
Underland flourishes when Macfarlane makes connections between disparate concepts, forming a coherent and powerful teleology of meaning for those of us adrift in the Anthropocene, such as when the "atomic priesthood" conceptualized by Thomas Sebeok, tasked with relaying warnings of nuclear waste into the far future using folklore and myth, disconcertingly mirrors the warnings in the Kalevala concerning a deeply buried cache of powerful spells and objects, which can only be approached while armored in copper and iron, and must never be loosed upon the surface world.
Oddly, Macfarlane's writing was at its worst when simply describing the scenery. Here he adopts a terse prose, clipped of its subject and flattened into present tense, a mechanical printout of sensory information without anyone to experience it. Perhaps this was a conscious choice reflecting the solastalgia of a world falling apart in our hands. Regardless of intent, it became repetitive and didn't match the fluent, beautiful nature writing Macfarlane has displayed in the past.
Sunday, September 29, 2019
Monday, September 23, 2019
2019 read #14: Circe by Madeline Miller.
Circe by Madeline Miller
394 pages
Published 2018
Read from September 21 to September 23
Rating: 4 out of 5
Women, throughout the history of the written word, have been relegated to roles as helpmeets, trophies, obstacles, cheerleaders, and convenient plot devices. The few famous literary characters who were women tended to appear as chapters in the narratives of men. The mythological figure of Circe exists almost entirely as an appendage to Odysseus: initially a powerful and dangerous foil for him to overcome, subsequently conquered by his supreme manhood and serving a domestic role for him and his crew. In texts where her existence doesn't revolve around Odysseus, Circe is depicted (more or less literally) as a maneater, a manifestation of female libido and power who transforms her male "victims" into swine.
It's satisfying to read a modern novel based on Circe's legends that, for a good chunk of its length, refuses to center Odysseus as the upright pillar of her story. Miller's treatment explores age-old topics like godhood and mortality and the capricious cruelty of the divine, centering Circe herself as a belittled outcast in a divine household where nymphs are treated merely as bargaining chips and as playthings. She is the focus of her own story—an obvious choice rendered significant by the overwhelming numbers of male storytellers (and readers) who would be baffled by it to this day.
I grew up with the safely sanitized versions of the classical Mediterranean myths we all absorbed. Odysseus was my favorite as a child. A hero who used his brains far more than his brawn sailed directly into my nerdy, shrimpy little heart. I put myself in his sandals when I read a bowdlerized and abridged version of The Odyssey, right up until the end, when I also identified with Telemachus and viewed Odysseus as the esteemable and good father figure I lacked. The chapters in Miller's novel when Odysseus arrives on Aiaia, the romance he shares with the wary and cynical witch Circe has become, felt nice, cozy, fulfilling. All of which made Miller's subsequent deconstruction of that little domestic interlude all the more powerful and eye-opening.
394 pages
Published 2018
Read from September 21 to September 23
Rating: 4 out of 5
Women, throughout the history of the written word, have been relegated to roles as helpmeets, trophies, obstacles, cheerleaders, and convenient plot devices. The few famous literary characters who were women tended to appear as chapters in the narratives of men. The mythological figure of Circe exists almost entirely as an appendage to Odysseus: initially a powerful and dangerous foil for him to overcome, subsequently conquered by his supreme manhood and serving a domestic role for him and his crew. In texts where her existence doesn't revolve around Odysseus, Circe is depicted (more or less literally) as a maneater, a manifestation of female libido and power who transforms her male "victims" into swine.
It's satisfying to read a modern novel based on Circe's legends that, for a good chunk of its length, refuses to center Odysseus as the upright pillar of her story. Miller's treatment explores age-old topics like godhood and mortality and the capricious cruelty of the divine, centering Circe herself as a belittled outcast in a divine household where nymphs are treated merely as bargaining chips and as playthings. She is the focus of her own story—an obvious choice rendered significant by the overwhelming numbers of male storytellers (and readers) who would be baffled by it to this day.
I grew up with the safely sanitized versions of the classical Mediterranean myths we all absorbed. Odysseus was my favorite as a child. A hero who used his brains far more than his brawn sailed directly into my nerdy, shrimpy little heart. I put myself in his sandals when I read a bowdlerized and abridged version of The Odyssey, right up until the end, when I also identified with Telemachus and viewed Odysseus as the esteemable and good father figure I lacked. The chapters in Miller's novel when Odysseus arrives on Aiaia, the romance he shares with the wary and cynical witch Circe has become, felt nice, cozy, fulfilling. All of which made Miller's subsequent deconstruction of that little domestic interlude all the more powerful and eye-opening.
Friday, September 20, 2019
2019 read #13: The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon.
The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon
831 pages
Published 2019
Read from September 5 to September 20
Rating: 2 out of 5
This is one of those exceptionally rare occasions in which a standalone epic fantasy novel the size of a cat would have been improved had it been split into a trilogy and padded out with an extra hundred or two hundred pages of worldbuilding and introspection.
Some spoilers ahead.
The first half of this book is great. It has many of the flaws common to epic fantasy—too many coincidental meetings and overheard conversations driving the plot forward, too many feasts where every dish gets listed, too many repetitions of the word "trencher"—but big things start happening a hundred pages in, and for a while, the accelerating pace and the appealing characters are enough to grip your interest and keep you going. Around the halfway point, though, the book begins to feel a bit undercooked. A major climax occurs with the thwarting of a palace coup, and as the dust settles, the narrative sputters out, losing much of its momentum. It feels like a logical place to end the first book of a trilogy: falling action after a climax, wrapping up some loose ends, setting the scene for the next book. Coming as it does in the middle of a single volume, however, it just feels like sloppy pacing—a feeling compounded by how everything after that point feels rushed and only half-finished.
In the aftermath of the attempted coup, a viewpoint character who has completed his first character arc is randomly given the responsibility of interviewing suspects among the nobility (presumably because he has nothing better to do), just so that there can be a couple dramatic prison cell monologues. As soon as those are wrapped up, the viewpoint character gets taken off the case and sent on to his next plot function, never really regaining agency as anything other than a plot device.
The book's strict reliance on the same four viewpoint characters forces similar detours and epic journeys upon each of them. All four crisscross the world in a period of just a few pages; the result feels more like the outline of the second novel in a series than an actual narrative. People we've followed from the very beginning just happen to meet at the ends of the earth, or just happen to be on hand at exactly the right time to witness tertiary characters duke it out, literally half a world away from where they started.
A semi-legendary character teased from the setting's ancient past appears, gains an intriguing layer of nuance in a memorable scene, and then does a ridiculous heel turn that never coheres into something that makes sense. Her "Everything you thought you knew was a lie!" gambit never pays off or affects the plot in any way, and then she dies like a chump.
Worst of all, almost every main character gets a fake-out death scene just to manipulate your emotions. Hell, some characters get two. It all feels like a mess of clumsy plotting, hurrying you along to the preordained set-piece battle between the forces of good and evil. With the rushed pacing, the repeated cliffhanger "death scenes" that get walked back in the next chapter, and the lack of space for the characters to breathe, each new setback the characters face becomes an annoyance for the reader rather than a source of dramatic tension. Like, we know so-and-so will get dramatically reunited with her dragon, and we know the magic MacGuffin sword will do what it's supposed to do in the end, so if you aren't going to bother giving us more than plot checkpoints for half the book, and you're giving us fake death scenes instead of character development, why bother slowing things down with extra steps? Just get to the end already.
So, contrary to all the laws of nature and book criticism, I have to say that stretching this tome into three would have fixed many of its issues. Build up the characters' setbacks organically. Let them experience doubt and growth beyond the plateau they all reach at the halfway mark. Maintain the excellent balance of character beats and plot movement from the first half of the story by giving the rest of it space to take root and spread its crown.
831 pages
Published 2019
Read from September 5 to September 20
Rating: 2 out of 5
This is one of those exceptionally rare occasions in which a standalone epic fantasy novel the size of a cat would have been improved had it been split into a trilogy and padded out with an extra hundred or two hundred pages of worldbuilding and introspection.
Some spoilers ahead.
The first half of this book is great. It has many of the flaws common to epic fantasy—too many coincidental meetings and overheard conversations driving the plot forward, too many feasts where every dish gets listed, too many repetitions of the word "trencher"—but big things start happening a hundred pages in, and for a while, the accelerating pace and the appealing characters are enough to grip your interest and keep you going. Around the halfway point, though, the book begins to feel a bit undercooked. A major climax occurs with the thwarting of a palace coup, and as the dust settles, the narrative sputters out, losing much of its momentum. It feels like a logical place to end the first book of a trilogy: falling action after a climax, wrapping up some loose ends, setting the scene for the next book. Coming as it does in the middle of a single volume, however, it just feels like sloppy pacing—a feeling compounded by how everything after that point feels rushed and only half-finished.
In the aftermath of the attempted coup, a viewpoint character who has completed his first character arc is randomly given the responsibility of interviewing suspects among the nobility (presumably because he has nothing better to do), just so that there can be a couple dramatic prison cell monologues. As soon as those are wrapped up, the viewpoint character gets taken off the case and sent on to his next plot function, never really regaining agency as anything other than a plot device.
The book's strict reliance on the same four viewpoint characters forces similar detours and epic journeys upon each of them. All four crisscross the world in a period of just a few pages; the result feels more like the outline of the second novel in a series than an actual narrative. People we've followed from the very beginning just happen to meet at the ends of the earth, or just happen to be on hand at exactly the right time to witness tertiary characters duke it out, literally half a world away from where they started.
A semi-legendary character teased from the setting's ancient past appears, gains an intriguing layer of nuance in a memorable scene, and then does a ridiculous heel turn that never coheres into something that makes sense. Her "Everything you thought you knew was a lie!" gambit never pays off or affects the plot in any way, and then she dies like a chump.
Worst of all, almost every main character gets a fake-out death scene just to manipulate your emotions. Hell, some characters get two. It all feels like a mess of clumsy plotting, hurrying you along to the preordained set-piece battle between the forces of good and evil. With the rushed pacing, the repeated cliffhanger "death scenes" that get walked back in the next chapter, and the lack of space for the characters to breathe, each new setback the characters face becomes an annoyance for the reader rather than a source of dramatic tension. Like, we know so-and-so will get dramatically reunited with her dragon, and we know the magic MacGuffin sword will do what it's supposed to do in the end, so if you aren't going to bother giving us more than plot checkpoints for half the book, and you're giving us fake death scenes instead of character development, why bother slowing things down with extra steps? Just get to the end already.
So, contrary to all the laws of nature and book criticism, I have to say that stretching this tome into three would have fixed many of its issues. Build up the characters' setbacks organically. Let them experience doubt and growth beyond the plateau they all reach at the halfway mark. Maintain the excellent balance of character beats and plot movement from the first half of the story by giving the rest of it space to take root and spread its crown.
Friday, August 16, 2019
2019 read #12: Rain: A Natural and Cultural History by Cynthia Barnett.
Rain: A Natural and Cultural History by Cynthia Barnett
295 pages
Published 2015
Read from August 8 to August 16
Rating: 3 out of 5
Did I really just go three months without finishing a book, again? Damn.
After making a bit of progress getting myself back into the reading habit this past winter, I find that my attention span and motivation have foundered once again. Time to gather myself up and make another go at it, from scratch.
Non-fiction often seems easier to read when I get into this book lapses. There isn't the requirement to invest emotional energy into characters and their intimate tragedies. On the other hand, the rewards from non-fiction -- especially this sort of journalistic pop natural history that provides a sweeping but shallow overview of a large topic -- are more meager than those found in a well-written novel.
I found Rain to be a straightforwardly enjoyable example of its type, though it left me unsatisfied, as such surface-level reportage tends to be. I want something more substantial than a few illustrative anecdotes; I don't feel like I really learned anything. But Rain was a nice way to break my recent reading drought, pun entirely intended.
295 pages
Published 2015
Read from August 8 to August 16
Rating: 3 out of 5
Did I really just go three months without finishing a book, again? Damn.
After making a bit of progress getting myself back into the reading habit this past winter, I find that my attention span and motivation have foundered once again. Time to gather myself up and make another go at it, from scratch.
Non-fiction often seems easier to read when I get into this book lapses. There isn't the requirement to invest emotional energy into characters and their intimate tragedies. On the other hand, the rewards from non-fiction -- especially this sort of journalistic pop natural history that provides a sweeping but shallow overview of a large topic -- are more meager than those found in a well-written novel.
I found Rain to be a straightforwardly enjoyable example of its type, though it left me unsatisfied, as such surface-level reportage tends to be. I want something more substantial than a few illustrative anecdotes; I don't feel like I really learned anything. But Rain was a nice way to break my recent reading drought, pun entirely intended.
Thursday, May 23, 2019
2019 read #11: The Stone Sky by N. K. Jemisin.
The Stone Sky by N. K. Jemisin
400 pages
Published 2017
Read from March 27 to May 23
Rating: 3 out of 5
As soon as I finished The Obelisk Gate, the second book in Jemisin's Broken Earth Trilogy, I wrote in my review, "I'm excited to complete the trilogy." I had read Obelisk Gate swiftly, finishing it at a pace reminiscent of how I used to read books before events we all know and deplore. The same day I posted Obelisk's review, I started reading The Stone Sky. But something was different, and the final book of the trilogy just didn't sustain my interest the way the middle volume had done.
I think the difference was something as simple as a couple new viewpoint characters. I grew to enjoy and appreciate the several-millennia-back flashbacks to Houwha/Hoa's past, but at first those chapters threw me out of the flow of the books. It's one thing to introduce a new viewpoint and more backstory in the middle of a trilogy; in the last book, though, it feels like the story wasn't quite working out as intended and the plot needed some belated course-correction, even if that isn't the case. The addition of Nassun's perspective felt more organic to the narrative, bringing with it—spoilers!—the perspective of systematic oppression and violence against a minority group can lead to the temptation to just wipe everything away, perhaps by slamming the Moon into the Earth. But as a reader, I can't say that Nassun's chapters were my favorites.
All that aside, I did enjoy this book, and I appreciated how the different story threads and perspectives all came together in the end. The odd narrative structure that had been such a prominent feature since the very beginning of the trilogy in The Fifth Season finally clicked into place—we finally know why the narrator was telling Essun her own story, and it fit in perfectly with everything we knew.
400 pages
Published 2017
Read from March 27 to May 23
Rating: 3 out of 5
As soon as I finished The Obelisk Gate, the second book in Jemisin's Broken Earth Trilogy, I wrote in my review, "I'm excited to complete the trilogy." I had read Obelisk Gate swiftly, finishing it at a pace reminiscent of how I used to read books before events we all know and deplore. The same day I posted Obelisk's review, I started reading The Stone Sky. But something was different, and the final book of the trilogy just didn't sustain my interest the way the middle volume had done.
I think the difference was something as simple as a couple new viewpoint characters. I grew to enjoy and appreciate the several-millennia-back flashbacks to Houwha/Hoa's past, but at first those chapters threw me out of the flow of the books. It's one thing to introduce a new viewpoint and more backstory in the middle of a trilogy; in the last book, though, it feels like the story wasn't quite working out as intended and the plot needed some belated course-correction, even if that isn't the case. The addition of Nassun's perspective felt more organic to the narrative, bringing with it—spoilers!—the perspective of systematic oppression and violence against a minority group can lead to the temptation to just wipe everything away, perhaps by slamming the Moon into the Earth. But as a reader, I can't say that Nassun's chapters were my favorites.
All that aside, I did enjoy this book, and I appreciated how the different story threads and perspectives all came together in the end. The odd narrative structure that had been such a prominent feature since the very beginning of the trilogy in The Fifth Season finally clicked into place—we finally know why the narrator was telling Essun her own story, and it fit in perfectly with everything we knew.
Saturday, May 18, 2019
2019 read #10: Player's Handbook (Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition).
Player's Handbook (Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition) by Wizards of the Coast LLC
312 pages
Published 2014
Read from April 29 to May 18
Rating: n/a
I continue my glacially slow read-through of the core rulebooks of the current edition of Dungeons & Dragons. This one consists of the nitty-gritty rules and counterrules and exceptions and specifics of play, which made for especially dull reading at times. (There's a reason I've never read these books cover to cover before, even though I've been playing the game since 2016.)
These rulebooks are in desperate need of a quick-reference guide. The Player's Handbook gestures toward this with an appendix detailing "conditions" that your character might be subject to during the game (such as blinded, paralyzed, or knocked prone), but fails at completing even this modest goal; the rules for how to get up from the prone condition aren't in the appendix, but in the section on movement during combat, a hundred pages earlier. When I started DMing my own campaign a couple years ago, I tried typing up my own cheat-sheet of important rules, but it wound up an unwieldy twenty pages or so, and I guessed wrong about what the most important rules and exceptions would be. (Most arguments and deliberate "misunderstandings" of the rules revolve around race and class features in the game. Kind of like in real life, I suppose.)
Fifth edition D&D was my first tabletop game, and I'll always be fond of it and eager to play. The rulebooks could benefit from better organization, though.
312 pages
Published 2014
Read from April 29 to May 18
Rating: n/a
I continue my glacially slow read-through of the core rulebooks of the current edition of Dungeons & Dragons. This one consists of the nitty-gritty rules and counterrules and exceptions and specifics of play, which made for especially dull reading at times. (There's a reason I've never read these books cover to cover before, even though I've been playing the game since 2016.)
These rulebooks are in desperate need of a quick-reference guide. The Player's Handbook gestures toward this with an appendix detailing "conditions" that your character might be subject to during the game (such as blinded, paralyzed, or knocked prone), but fails at completing even this modest goal; the rules for how to get up from the prone condition aren't in the appendix, but in the section on movement during combat, a hundred pages earlier. When I started DMing my own campaign a couple years ago, I tried typing up my own cheat-sheet of important rules, but it wound up an unwieldy twenty pages or so, and I guessed wrong about what the most important rules and exceptions would be. (Most arguments and deliberate "misunderstandings" of the rules revolve around race and class features in the game. Kind of like in real life, I suppose.)
Fifth edition D&D was my first tabletop game, and I'll always be fond of it and eager to play. The rulebooks could benefit from better organization, though.
Monday, April 29, 2019
2019 read #9: Dungeon Master's Guide (Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition).
Dungeon Master's Guide (Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition) by Wizards of the Coast LLC
320 pages
Published 2014
Read from April 19 to April 29
Rating: n/a
I've been in another reading lull. I began several books but haven't finished anything since March. I've also been craving D&D, which I haven't played since January. At some point it occurred to me that I'd never actually read the game's core rule books cover to cover, and once I started, I discovered that reading the DM Guide helped me feel like I was part of a game again, even as it left me hankering to play more strongly than before.
To review this as a book, I suppose I'd need to be more conversant with game rulebooks and their comparative merits. Fifth edition D&D certainly has its flaws and shortcomings (social interaction and exploration, supposedly two of the three central pillars of gameplay, aren't given much in the way of specific quantifiable rules; martial character classes peak early and are left to clean up in the shadow of magic-users quickly becoming as powerful as gods), but I enjoy it all the same. I've never played any other tabletop game to compare it to, but I enjoy the rich history and lore lurking within the experience of the game. It has charm and replayability that sleeker, less clunky rulesets seem to lack—though again, I don't have any experiences to compare and contrast with it.
During my read-through of the DMG, I was surprised by how few rules are actually in this book. The bulk of its pages are devoted to worldbuilding advice, tips on handling players and running the game smoothly, and random tables meant to inspire creativity. You could 100% play this edition of D&D without picking up the DMG. As long as you have the Player's Handbook and a nice assortment of monsters, you have all the rules you truly need. That said, I'm a worldbuilder at heart, and I enjoyed those sections of the DMG.
320 pages
Published 2014
Read from April 19 to April 29
Rating: n/a
I've been in another reading lull. I began several books but haven't finished anything since March. I've also been craving D&D, which I haven't played since January. At some point it occurred to me that I'd never actually read the game's core rule books cover to cover, and once I started, I discovered that reading the DM Guide helped me feel like I was part of a game again, even as it left me hankering to play more strongly than before.
To review this as a book, I suppose I'd need to be more conversant with game rulebooks and their comparative merits. Fifth edition D&D certainly has its flaws and shortcomings (social interaction and exploration, supposedly two of the three central pillars of gameplay, aren't given much in the way of specific quantifiable rules; martial character classes peak early and are left to clean up in the shadow of magic-users quickly becoming as powerful as gods), but I enjoy it all the same. I've never played any other tabletop game to compare it to, but I enjoy the rich history and lore lurking within the experience of the game. It has charm and replayability that sleeker, less clunky rulesets seem to lack—though again, I don't have any experiences to compare and contrast with it.
During my read-through of the DMG, I was surprised by how few rules are actually in this book. The bulk of its pages are devoted to worldbuilding advice, tips on handling players and running the game smoothly, and random tables meant to inspire creativity. You could 100% play this edition of D&D without picking up the DMG. As long as you have the Player's Handbook and a nice assortment of monsters, you have all the rules you truly need. That said, I'm a worldbuilder at heart, and I enjoyed those sections of the DMG.
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