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A handful of book reviews brought over from GoodReads and Tumblr
+ The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance by Laurie Garrett (audiobook):
+ The Story of Your Life: How Social Media Shapes the Way We Experience Everything by Kathryn Jezer-Morton (audiobook)
+ The Quiet Before: On the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas by Gal Beckerman (audiobook)
+ Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It by Cory Doctorow (audiobook)
And now for some brief words on fiction:
+ These Burning Stars by Bethany Jacobs:
What a fun space opera! This definitely had its flaws, but I had a blast. Fun worldbuilding, fun characters, it's very clear that the writer is Jewish lol. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the trilogy, and I can do that right away because it's all published! Bonus points to this book for name-checking Becca in the acknowledgements. I am always so delighted when I'm reading a speculative fiction novel from the past five or so years and there's Becca's name in the acknowledgments! It happens with surprising frequency!
+ Death Has Deep Roots: A Second World War Mystery by Michael Gilbert
A solid Golden Age mystery novel where the past is haunting the present. I love how it deals with the aftermath of WWII and how that time still affects all the characters. It's built around a court case, but several people are off investigating to find more information while the court case is unfolding, which adds some nice tension. Like with Death in Captivity, there's a certain kind of weight to Gilbert's writing where the deaths feel like they matter, which I appreciate. I need to read more of his work.
+ Translation State by Ann Leckie
I liked this a lot but I didn't love. I am very into it being a stand-alone novel (though it's set in her wider fictional universe), that it's really weird, and that it felt unique. I somehow didn't feel as invested in the characters as I wish I had (especially since one of them is a middle-aged woman just starting to live life on her own terms, which is a favorite trope of mine), but it was well-paced and interesting throughout. I will read more Leckie at some point! She's just such a good writer!
(As an aside, it's got the most unique take on arranged-marriage-mutual-pining I've ever seen.)
I know it's crazy to say "everyone should read this book" about a 720-page book, but everyone should read this book? I'm sure there are some things that are outdated since it was published back in 2009, but it's such a good resource for understanding how new diseases arise, global health, how and why it's underfunded, why that's dangerous, and what we could theoretically do about it if we were more concerned with human life and less concerned with maintaining global capitalism. (Also I feel like it put Covid in context for me. I repeat what I said: we got lucky that that was the strain that took off. It could have been so much worse.)
That said, it is intensely frustrating because we could pretty easily solve many global health crises, but we refuse to do it because it would cost too much money in the short term EVEN THOUGH IT WOULD SAVE MONEY IN THE LONG TERM. Humans are so short-sighted! And incentivized to be so by our economic structure! We try to "manage" problems instead of fixing them, throwing money in a panic at things after they've snowballed instead of going back to the root of the problem, fixing that, and saving money and lives long-term.
Garrett would relate a story about how an earnest but almost-unfunded clinic in sub-Saharan Africa or post-Soviet Russia/Central Asia would use syringes over and over and over again to vaccinate kids and end up spreading something like AIDS, and I would have to go lie down. If we just made sure that all healthcare facilities in the world had enough syringes, that would not happen! If we actually funded public health facilities in the US, then medication-resistant forms of diseases would not emerge! If we stopped chopping down millions of square miles of rainforest, previously unknown pathogens carried by animals and insects would not bring new diseases to human beings! If we funded watchdog groups, we could shut down new diseases before they arise! If we realized that pathogens know no political borders, we could protect all of humanity!
We absolutely have the knowledge and tools to extend and save lives and protect each other. We could do it. We just refuse to because of money and lack of "political will." It's so distressing.
Anyway, back to the review: I am not at all a STEM person, but Garrett does such an incredible job explaining things that I felt like I had a baseline understanding of just about everything she was trying to tell me, which is a real achievement. There was only one spot late in the game (at about 89%-94%) where my eyes started to glaze over, but that didn't last long. Garrett sure did deserve that Pulitzer.
That said, it is intensely frustrating because we could pretty easily solve many global health crises, but we refuse to do it because it would cost too much money in the short term EVEN THOUGH IT WOULD SAVE MONEY IN THE LONG TERM. Humans are so short-sighted! And incentivized to be so by our economic structure! We try to "manage" problems instead of fixing them, throwing money in a panic at things after they've snowballed instead of going back to the root of the problem, fixing that, and saving money and lives long-term.
Garrett would relate a story about how an earnest but almost-unfunded clinic in sub-Saharan Africa or post-Soviet Russia/Central Asia would use syringes over and over and over again to vaccinate kids and end up spreading something like AIDS, and I would have to go lie down. If we just made sure that all healthcare facilities in the world had enough syringes, that would not happen! If we actually funded public health facilities in the US, then medication-resistant forms of diseases would not emerge! If we stopped chopping down millions of square miles of rainforest, previously unknown pathogens carried by animals and insects would not bring new diseases to human beings! If we funded watchdog groups, we could shut down new diseases before they arise! If we realized that pathogens know no political borders, we could protect all of humanity!
We absolutely have the knowledge and tools to extend and save lives and protect each other. We could do it. We just refuse to because of money and lack of "political will." It's so distressing.
Anyway, back to the review: I am not at all a STEM person, but Garrett does such an incredible job explaining things that I felt like I had a baseline understanding of just about everything she was trying to tell me, which is a real achievement. There was only one spot late in the game (at about 89%-94%) where my eyes started to glaze over, but that didn't last long. Garrett sure did deserve that Pulitzer.
+ The Story of Your Life: How Social Media Shapes the Way We Experience Everything by Kathryn Jezer-Morton (audiobook)
I listened to an interesting audiobook this weekend called The Story of Your Life: How Social Media Shapes the Way We Experience Everything. It’s basically the way that social media has narrowed and warped the way we craft narratives about our own lives, which is something that doesn’t get talked about enough, imo. I recommend the book!
I liked all of it, but one thing that really stuck out to me was the exploration of “flat narratives” and how marginalized/invisible they are in our culture. The author tied them specifically to people who have a disability or a chronic illness, which I think is dead on, but she and I both think they have wider applicability. She also pulled in Le Guin’s carrier bag theory, too, which I appreciated.
Talking explicitly about what narratives are available to us is really important, and I wished she’d at least alluded to the ways in which queer and genderqueer people are the source of most alternative narratives in our culture, since we figure out early on that many narratives do not apply to us and we have to create different ones. It was quite a straight book, which is fair enough as the author is straight, and so are the majority of people, but it would have been nice to talk a bit more about non-normative narratives.
But yeah, this was an accessible beginning to a really important conversation.
I liked all of it, but one thing that really stuck out to me was the exploration of “flat narratives” and how marginalized/invisible they are in our culture. The author tied them specifically to people who have a disability or a chronic illness, which I think is dead on, but she and I both think they have wider applicability. She also pulled in Le Guin’s carrier bag theory, too, which I appreciated.
Talking explicitly about what narratives are available to us is really important, and I wished she’d at least alluded to the ways in which queer and genderqueer people are the source of most alternative narratives in our culture, since we figure out early on that many narratives do not apply to us and we have to create different ones. It was quite a straight book, which is fair enough as the author is straight, and so are the majority of people, but it would have been nice to talk a bit more about non-normative narratives.
But yeah, this was an accessible beginning to a really important conversation.
+ The Quiet Before: On the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas by Gal Beckerman (audiobook)
So I liked this quite a bit for what it was, but what it was is not what it claimed to be.
What it claims to be (through its title, copy, marketing, and introduction): a primer on how to spread radical ideas and affect real change.
What it actually is (as revealed through reading the book itself): a series of vignettes of moments where new, radical ideas were beginning to spread through innovative use of new technology.
The vignettes were great! And the technology was wide-ranging, from letters to petitions to manifestos to zines to Twitter to Discord. All were built around one or a handful of interesting historical (or contemporary) figures and were very well-researched. Beckerman made the potentially controversial but (I think) correct decision to write about people espousing all kinds of radical ideas, both good ones and bad ones. So we get Chartism and riot grrrls and Covid epidemiologists alongside the Italian Futurists and the Alt Right. And a lot of these moments of historical unrest either don't quite work or never really get off the ground.
My favorite chapters were definitely the ones about the African Morning Post newspaper and the one about samizdat (self-published, hand-typed publications) in the Soviet Union, both of which are worth the price of admission, imo. I am not sure whether the historical (by which I mean pre-21st century) chapters are really stronger than the second half or if I was just more interested in them because I am me.
But while I do think there are things to learn from these vignettes, this is not a book that is really providing practical applications or even high-level principles for change. It's not a manual of "lessons learned from past movements that we can use in our own moments," alas.
The lessons I drew from it are these:
1. It takes years or decades of people laying the groundwork of new ideas before those new ideas filter out enough to reach the wider culture.
2. Real, substantive change takes time. And it will face rollbacks, and defeats, and you have to just try again and again and again. Something I already knew, but it's always good to be reminded.
3. Technologies (widely defined) are not neutral but have characters which shape how they can be used and even shape their users, for good and ill. (Shades of McLuhan.)
4. Social media is a very, very bad way of actually organizing. It can stir up emotion, which is important, but that's entirely insufficient if you actually want change.
5. There are always people everywhere who are fighting for change, even when it seems impossible.
So yeah. Worth engaging with if you go in with the right expectations. Maybe read the actual book, though--I will never get over the narrator's complete failure to deliver riot grrrl zine quotes.
What it claims to be (through its title, copy, marketing, and introduction): a primer on how to spread radical ideas and affect real change.
What it actually is (as revealed through reading the book itself): a series of vignettes of moments where new, radical ideas were beginning to spread through innovative use of new technology.
The vignettes were great! And the technology was wide-ranging, from letters to petitions to manifestos to zines to Twitter to Discord. All were built around one or a handful of interesting historical (or contemporary) figures and were very well-researched. Beckerman made the potentially controversial but (I think) correct decision to write about people espousing all kinds of radical ideas, both good ones and bad ones. So we get Chartism and riot grrrls and Covid epidemiologists alongside the Italian Futurists and the Alt Right. And a lot of these moments of historical unrest either don't quite work or never really get off the ground.
My favorite chapters were definitely the ones about the African Morning Post newspaper and the one about samizdat (self-published, hand-typed publications) in the Soviet Union, both of which are worth the price of admission, imo. I am not sure whether the historical (by which I mean pre-21st century) chapters are really stronger than the second half or if I was just more interested in them because I am me.
But while I do think there are things to learn from these vignettes, this is not a book that is really providing practical applications or even high-level principles for change. It's not a manual of "lessons learned from past movements that we can use in our own moments," alas.
The lessons I drew from it are these:
1. It takes years or decades of people laying the groundwork of new ideas before those new ideas filter out enough to reach the wider culture.
2. Real, substantive change takes time. And it will face rollbacks, and defeats, and you have to just try again and again and again. Something I already knew, but it's always good to be reminded.
3. Technologies (widely defined) are not neutral but have characters which shape how they can be used and even shape their users, for good and ill. (Shades of McLuhan.)
4. Social media is a very, very bad way of actually organizing. It can stir up emotion, which is important, but that's entirely insufficient if you actually want change.
5. There are always people everywhere who are fighting for change, even when it seems impossible.
So yeah. Worth engaging with if you go in with the right expectations. Maybe read the actual book, though--I will never get over the narrator's complete failure to deliver riot grrrl zine quotes.
+ Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It by Cory Doctorow (audiobook)
Another book you wish you could make everyone read. I was familiar with a lot of these arguments from reading Cory's blog on and off, but it's so very nice to have them all in one place, clearly explained, and in support of his larger thesis. He's so good at explaining tech-y things in ways that anyone can understand, which is such an underrated skill.
Basically, it's an explainer for why all tech has started to suck. It's sooooo gooooood.
Basically, it's an explainer for why all tech has started to suck. It's sooooo gooooood.
And now for some brief words on fiction:
+ These Burning Stars by Bethany Jacobs:
What a fun space opera! This definitely had its flaws, but I had a blast. Fun worldbuilding, fun characters, it's very clear that the writer is Jewish lol. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the trilogy, and I can do that right away because it's all published! Bonus points to this book for name-checking Becca in the acknowledgements. I am always so delighted when I'm reading a speculative fiction novel from the past five or so years and there's Becca's name in the acknowledgments! It happens with surprising frequency!
+ Death Has Deep Roots: A Second World War Mystery by Michael Gilbert
A solid Golden Age mystery novel where the past is haunting the present. I love how it deals with the aftermath of WWII and how that time still affects all the characters. It's built around a court case, but several people are off investigating to find more information while the court case is unfolding, which adds some nice tension. Like with Death in Captivity, there's a certain kind of weight to Gilbert's writing where the deaths feel like they matter, which I appreciate. I need to read more of his work.
+ Translation State by Ann Leckie
I liked this a lot but I didn't love. I am very into it being a stand-alone novel (though it's set in her wider fictional universe), that it's really weird, and that it felt unique. I somehow didn't feel as invested in the characters as I wish I had (especially since one of them is a middle-aged woman just starting to live life on her own terms, which is a favorite trope of mine), but it was well-paced and interesting throughout. I will read more Leckie at some point! She's just such a good writer!
(As an aside, it's got the most unique take on arranged-marriage-mutual-pining I've ever seen.)
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It was a real joy reading such a competent writer, though. That sounds like damning with faint praise, but I mean it as a true compliment.
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I have got to read more Michael Gilbert, too!
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but the second one is the one that has to sit with 'all these people blew up their lives/went to found Utopia/irrevocably altered their identities and now what?'
YES! It's so rare in specfic, actually? And it's the thing I'm most interested in? How do we build something?