Reading Roundup 2019

I read 33 books this year.  Mostly e-books, borrowed from the library on the Libby app, or printed paperbacks.

I tried to vary my selection, including non-fiction, contemporary literature and some classics, but my guilty pleasure is still Science Fiction.

Here are some highlights, with the full list below:

Man's Search for Meaning

A book in two parts - the first is a bleak tale of life in a concentration camp, told by a man with a thousand yard stare.  Cold, clinical descriptions of the cruelty and inhumanity.  if anything, he feels a bit stoic, with only a paragraph here and there expressing his misery, pain, terror and sadness over the loss of everything he's known.  Almost feels like a long-suffering Job, listing out the trials he's faced without ever putting his soul on the line.

The second part is a sort of psychological treatise and self-help manual, digging into his theory of "logotherapy", the search for meaning.  He talks about three forms: meaning in creating, meaning in experiencing love with another, meaning in enduring suffering.

It's an intriguing premise, and it has some potential, but I never feel like he bridges the gap why these three (which probably can play the trick of keeping human's from despair) actually catalyze meaning.  Is there's any existential "material" to meaning, or is it just an illusion that drives people in the moment? Does it have a metaphysical "currency"?

Even in this framework, we can look at the suffering millions of the holocaust (and other countless tragedies) and still ask, "what was it for?" A warning for the future?  A bleak reality for some souls to eke out minuscule demonstrations of hope, perseverance and grace in the face of an ocean of horror?

Her Body and Other Parties

Cutting, intimate stories that have a dark visceral feel.  Lots of themes about women's vulnerability, sexuality, weakness and power.  Some interesting slipstream and sci-fi nuances as well.  A strong voice who doesn't shy from hard themes or fall back on old short story literary tropes.

The Name of the Wind

Pretty standard coming of age story with the light trappings of the fantasy genre. perhaps its the harry potter effect - the appeal of the boarding school upbringing with a character who has magical powers.

The writing itself is functional enough, but lots of the flourish and fantasy world-building falls away to generic teenager tropes.  Kvothe isn't that interesting as a protag, and the character arcs aren't complete.  Perhaps Rothfuss is intending the entire thing to stretch into a trilogy, but there's not enough narrative urgency to make me care.

11/22/63

King certainly knows how to evoke the mes-en-scene of a place with a few simple, well-crafted sentences - whether its rural Maine, or Dallas in the 60s. This is a weird Frankenstein of a book, combining a mostly straightforward doomed romance in a 1960s American high school (like something out of Back to the Future), with throwbacks to his mythology of dark cursed towns (Derry, Dallas).

The insight into Lee Harvey Oswald's character is the strength of the book: a little man who feels self-important and wronged, and thus must take a momentous horrible act to change history. King's true gift is revealing the horror in men's souls.

Master and Margarita

Considered one of the best of Russian literature, but very different from the brooding moral tragedies of the 19th century (Dostoevsky, Tolstoy). This book is told with a lightness and sarcasm. I read this leading up to Easter (along with the gospel of Matthew) and it was a fascinating combination. The devil went down to Moscow and delighted in royally wrecking the best laid plans of men. And yet the tale within a tale of the devil as Pontious Pilate's right hand man at the trial and execution of Christ. The Rolling Stones classic (Sympathy for the Devil) is probably the closest evocation of the book's tone.

The Overstory

Lots of beautiful, third person narrative descriptive sections, revealing the wonder and glory of nature - specifically trees. the best sections were the "roots" where our assorted collection of characters are introduced with lots of allusions and references to various species of tree - the chestnut, the ginkgo, the maple, etc. These sections almost could stand alone, as literary short stories publishable in the likes of the New Yorker. They are clean, tight and bring to live a well rounded character possessing of both beauty and sorrow.

The rest of the book mostly just coasts on the strength of those early roots. The trajectories of the characters don't move very much - they coast on the momentum they were launched in those early pages. Mostly they join radical environmental groups in the late 90s, some even verging into eco-terrorism. The conclusions (the canopy) are pretty bleak - long prison sentences, suicide attempts, betrayal, strokes.

And yet there's so many pages of strong writing I never was bored or annoyed with the book. Even if the tale is lacking in rich dialog or character growth or pure plotting, the prose (which often flirts with purple verbosity) is a joy.

The message of the book: yes the world is doomed, but not from the perspective of nature. Nature has been evolving for millions of years, and wont stop now. It will outlast us. We're merely dooming ourselves, robbing our children of the beauty of the natural world.

Sapiens

The tale of humans rising out of the evolutionary darkness of the past - the Cognitive Leap forward 50k years ago, and our subsequent domination of the world. Some interesting points about how earlier versions in the homo genius didn't possess that gift (language, recursive thought, imagination, gossip?) to conquer, and were doomed to small tribes that were eventually subsumed. Fascinating to think about all the unwritten history - kingdoms, sagas, tragedies, etc - that persisted for tens of thousands of years before anything we know. The world was already old when those first babylonians and Egyptians started stacking stones into monuments. And so their gods, legends and beliefs were not invented wholesale, but simply inherited from long generations of ancestors before them.

Super Sad True Love Story

A mix of a Woody Allen romance and a cyberpunk dystopia. The primary narrator (Lenny Abramov) is very Jewish and neurotic. Has a manic pixie cute Korean girlfriend. Lots of interesting stuff about image, lack of literary values in the social media age, the Silicon Valley ethos of personal life extension, the decay of New York City, the rise of the surveillance state, modern romance. Some good stuff in here, told purely through "diary" entries - both sides of the equation are unreliable narrators, but thankfully both are honest with their intentions and so the general outlines of the story are well known.

the relationship follows a predictable arc - meet cute at a party, the first nervous interactions, the drunken lusts, second thoughts, deeper love and companionship falling into habit, a drifting away, and finally a breakup. The parabola is almost too mathematically perfect.

Fall; Dodge in Hell

This is a strange and lopsided book - but because the writer is Neal Stephenson the whole thing is pleasantly readable, and at times a page turner. The premise - in the near future a rich guy (dodge) suddenly dies and his will stipulates his brain should be uploaded to the cloud. Queue a hundred pages of his trust executors fighting legal battles and the various tech initiatives spawned to implement the thing. His niece finally turns the simulation on, but not before a number of fascinating side adventures.

First - some mysterious force spawns a mass hoax on the internet (complete with a DDOS, fake video, paid off eye-witnesses, etc ) that a nuclear bomb has destroyed Moab Utah. the initial DDOS cuts the small town off from civilization, then the coordinated disinformation campaign persuades the rest of the world. The truth comes out later, but the "truthers" can't be made to see reality - any alternate explanation is just an extension of the "deep state conspiracy".

Second - Dodge's niece and a few college friends drive around in Middle America that's devolved into Americastan. This is a natural (and extreme) progression of Trump Country, where the the divide between Red State and Blue State is a lethal slow-burning Cold War. One character - (Stephenson's Avatar - Enoch root) has to be rescued from an extreme splinter group that crucifies "unbelievers" on welded metal crosses. Nevermind that their religious doctrine is algorithmically cooked by AI "feeds" constantly streaming to VR goggles.

After "bitworld" is turned on, most the novel lives within those confines. Dodge awakens to an endless sea of static but manages to construct a "physical" world for his soul to reside. So begins a retelling of many of humanities core myths from the various religions - Greek and Norse mythology, Judeo-Christian tales of the fall, etc.

I was much more interested in how the tidbits of how bitworld affects the real world (people ceasing to travel due to the risk to their connectome and the failure to be uploaded). the creative and edge world building of Americastan is missing from bitworld, which just feels like generic fantasy MMO.

At Home

Mostly a collection of trivia related to the etymology and structure of the house, from an English perspective. Bryson delights in the weird idiosyncrasies (whether its an invention or an oddball person) that had an outsized effect on history. Thought his basic premise (take a tour of a modern home, explore the history of each specific room) isn't followed too strictly, its enough of a framework to lead us through lots of fun, macabre strange and weird turns of history (mostly Victorian England)

Native Son

Very intense intro. Reminds me of a Stephen King first person stream of conscious as he goes down the rabbit hole of fear, second degree murder, disposing a body.

Interesting perspective that portrays the experience of black people in mid 20th century as post-traumatic stress, leading to all sorts of strange behaviors (violence, fear, etc)

In a way, the book is a vehicle for a long monologue on social-politics (in this case communist thought). The anti-Atlas Shrugged. A growing liberal idea that capitalism is at odds with racial justice, that the free market is inherently racist because individual actions will always be biased and these will be magnified in the marketplace, and individuals aren't responsible for their own actions.

The crux of the argument to save Bigger's life (which fails, and is written as a tragedy in the book) is that it will serve a larger purpose to somewhat mend race relations. This removes the crux of justice away from individual actions and into larger socio-political aims. In this case, we see it as mercy, but what about the other direction? Punishing folks who have too much privilege? Going down that rabbit hole has some nasty snags.

I enjoyed the book for the initial sections (Bigger and his pals hanging on the streets, the thriller aspect of the crime + flight). The larger communist / monologue stuff felt a bit heavy-handed and preachy.

Steep Trails

Muir's enthusiasm and love of the wilderness comes through. Interesting how writers of the past would express themselves with scientific curiosity, even positing various theories of biology, geology, etc even if they weren't certified experts. Given the title "Naturalist" Simply required an enthusiasm and and passion to get out there.  The book can still act as a guide to the peaks, rivers and forests, even as the settlements surrounding them have dramatically changed (wild west to 21st century).

Oryx and Crake

Written back in 2003, this is a harrowing look at our horrible future: climate change, corporate gated communities, porn addictions, the fear of "terrorism" to cover all sorts of government abuses.  In a short novel, it basically wraps up all the fears of the 21st century into a compact package, along with a coming of age buddy dark-comedy (and sad pathetic romance).  Some real horrors here.

Full List:

Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl
Her Body and Other Parties - Carmen Maria Machado
Alone on the Wall - Alex Honnold
The Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss
Kitchen Confidential - Anthony Bourdain
11/22/63 - Stephen King
Swimmer Among the Stars - Kanishk Tharoor
Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
Best American Essays 2014
The Overstory - Richard Powers
Sapiens - Yuval Noah Harari
Super Sad True Love Story - Gary Shteyngart
Exhalation - Ted Chiang
Authority - Jeff VanderMeer
The Fall of Hyperion - Dan Simmons
Best American Travel Writing 2014
Damned - Chuck Palahniuk
Tribe - Sebastian Junger
Acceptance - Jeff VanderMeer
Largesse of the Sea Maiden - Denis Johnson
Utopia for Realists - Rutger Bregman
Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson
Foundation - Isaac Asimov
At Home: A Short History of Private Life - Bill Bryson
Native Son - Richard Wright
Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth
The Dark Forest - Liu Cixin
Binti - Nnedi Okorafor
What I Talk About when I Talk About Running: A Memoir - Haruki Murakami
Steep Trails - John Muir
When Breath Becomes Air - Paul Kalanithi
Collected Fiction: A Variorum Edition 1 - H.P Lovecraft
Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood