December Book Log
Welp, I am forced at this point to admit that I am not going to finish the interminable chunkster of a novel I'm currently making my way through before the year ends, so I fear my 2021 reading list ends with a little bit of an anti-climactic whimper, in the form of the sparsest month of book-reading (or at least book-finishing) for me in recent memory.
Still, here's what it looks like:
110. The Adventurists by Richard Butner
A collection of short stories all with a fantastic or slightly surreal feel to them. Which is something I often like, but most of these, despite the obvious recurring theme of people returning to places where they grew up, just didn't feel like they had any real point to them. Lots of buildup with very little payoff, emotional or otherwise. I honestly wouldn't be remotely surprised to learn that the author just built them all around random elements and images from his dreams, although the prose itself is clear and matter-of-fact and anything but dreamlike. The overall result is plenty of stuff that's perfectly readable and mildly interesting but seldom very satisfying.
Rating: 3/5
(Note: This was a LibraryThing Early Reviewers book.)
111. The Circle by Dave Eggers
A dystopian satire (although at times it feels barely satirical) about social media and tech companies, featuring a corporation called The Circle, which is sort of like Google, Facebook, and Twitter all rolled into one and then made even more cult-like. The folks at The Circle not only fail to value privacy and cheerfully subordinate it to the desires of capitalism, they actually regard it as something akin to a moral evil. And they see it as their mission to make the world a better place.
It's a good premise, very Black Mirror-ish, and I appreciate the way Eggers carefully avoids straw-manning his targets (even to the extent of being willing to stipulate to some of the positive effects of the Circle's approach that I really don't personally find particularly creditable). But I'm afraid I never liked it anywhere near as much as I wanted to. The whole thing just feels entirely too heavy-handed. Certainly we did not need 400 pages to get the point, and I can't help thinking that it would have been far, far more effective if cut down to the length of a novella.
Rating: 3/5
112. The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher
Carrie Fisher talks about being cast in Star Wars, the affair she had with Harrison Ford while filming (which she had previously spend decades not talking about), and the awkward legacy of fame that the movies left her with. She also includes excerpts from diaries she kept at the time, which she'd recently rediscovered, most of which center on her relationship with Ford and the turmoil it caused her.
Fisher's writing is a bit unpolished, often kind of rambly, and sometimes a little too self-conscious, but there is real charm and honestness to it, too. The diaries contain some painfully sharp writing, and some poetry that ranges from surprisingly good to, well, less so. And they present a picture of a very, very young woman wrestling with her own insecurities and her feelings for a married man who never seemed to express any kind of feelings of his own. Honestly, I can't exactly say I enjoyed reading them, just because they made me feel far too much like a voyeur, emotional and otherwise, even though she never goes into any of the gory sexual details.
Rating: 3.5/5
113. Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente
Humanity's first contact, unexpectedly, comes in the form of fish-flamingo creatures (or, more accurately, lots of projections of the same fish-flamingo creature) who have come to invite Earth to participate in the intergalactic version of Eurovision. They've also picked out our contestants: the remaining two-thirds of has-been glam rock group Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros, who are no longer even speaking to each other. And they'd really better not come in last, or our species will be deemed to have failed to prove its sentience and be exterminated.
This was a lot of fun. The plot's pretty thin, with a somewhat rushed-feeling ending and probably as much time spent on describing the various weird aliens and their history as on advancing the story. But I honestly don't think I care very much. The various weird aliens and their history are interesting, in a way that's half genuinely creative SF worldbuilding and half utter ridiculousness, blended together surprisingly seamlessly. There's a lot of laughs, some sardonic philosophy, and a bit of real heart, and ultimately it does a decent job of scratching that itch left behind by Douglas Adams.
Rating: 4/5
114. A Lost Lady by Willa Cather
This short novel was published in 1923, but it begins several decades earlier, in the American West. The lady of the title is Mrs. Forrester, the wife of a man who amassed considerable wealth in the railroad business, but who, in the course of the story, finds himself in what such folks might call "reduced circumstances." It's told from the point of view of a young friend of the family, who idolizes her as having all the virtues considered most fitting to a woman of her social class: beauty and charm and a certain air of purity. But, through his eyes, we also see tiny glimpses of the woman behind that exterior, someone flawed, and much more complicated, and sadder.
I'm really impressed by Willa Cather's ability to make a character like Marian Forrester feel so much like a real, complex person in such a surprisingly minimalist way. Everything about her is more suggested than explored, and it doesn't feel like that should work remotely as well as it does.
This is also an interesting glimpse into a small piece of American history. A history, it must be said, that invites judgment from 21st-century readers with its causal racism, its ingrained classism, and its musings on the whole Manifest Destiny thing as a lovely, idealistic dream, albeit one now giving way to a sort of degraded banality. Such things can sometimes be uncomfortable to read, but in this case I felt mostly a sort of anthropological fascination with it all.
Rating: 4/5
115. Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs by Ken Jennings
Ken Jennings talks about his experiences being on Jeopardy! (over and over and over...) and what his life was like before, during and after his unprecedented run of wins. Interspersed with that, he talks about trivia: its history as a pastime, why it's interesting and whether it's worthwhile, and what kind of person turns that pastime into a full-blown obsession. (Jennings himself honestly seems to have been born to it. Some of the stories about what he was like even as a small child do kind of make me feel much better about the fact that I haven't won seventy-four games of Jeopardy! in a row. I like trivia, but I think I'm lacking some gene for it that this guy was born with.) He also talks a lot about particular trivia contests and events, including college bowl quizzes, rigged 1950s game shows, and a weird town in Wisconsin where the biggest event of the year is an insanely nitpicky fifty-four hour trivia event.
I found some of the trivia-obsessed people and places he visits a lot more interesting than others, but overall this was an entertaining read, and I love the way he peppers the book with trivia questions to challenge the reader in a way that makes them part of the narrative. And his descriptions of his Jeopardy! career are especially interesting, and much more exciting than I might have expected from the fact that I already knew perfectly well how the whole thing went.
Rating: 4/5
This entry was originally posted at https://astrogirl.dreamwidth.org/1020487.html. Comment here or there, whichever you like.
Still, here's what it looks like:
110. The Adventurists by Richard Butner
A collection of short stories all with a fantastic or slightly surreal feel to them. Which is something I often like, but most of these, despite the obvious recurring theme of people returning to places where they grew up, just didn't feel like they had any real point to them. Lots of buildup with very little payoff, emotional or otherwise. I honestly wouldn't be remotely surprised to learn that the author just built them all around random elements and images from his dreams, although the prose itself is clear and matter-of-fact and anything but dreamlike. The overall result is plenty of stuff that's perfectly readable and mildly interesting but seldom very satisfying.
Rating: 3/5
(Note: This was a LibraryThing Early Reviewers book.)
111. The Circle by Dave Eggers
A dystopian satire (although at times it feels barely satirical) about social media and tech companies, featuring a corporation called The Circle, which is sort of like Google, Facebook, and Twitter all rolled into one and then made even more cult-like. The folks at The Circle not only fail to value privacy and cheerfully subordinate it to the desires of capitalism, they actually regard it as something akin to a moral evil. And they see it as their mission to make the world a better place.
It's a good premise, very Black Mirror-ish, and I appreciate the way Eggers carefully avoids straw-manning his targets (even to the extent of being willing to stipulate to some of the positive effects of the Circle's approach that I really don't personally find particularly creditable). But I'm afraid I never liked it anywhere near as much as I wanted to. The whole thing just feels entirely too heavy-handed. Certainly we did not need 400 pages to get the point, and I can't help thinking that it would have been far, far more effective if cut down to the length of a novella.
Rating: 3/5
112. The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher
Carrie Fisher talks about being cast in Star Wars, the affair she had with Harrison Ford while filming (which she had previously spend decades not talking about), and the awkward legacy of fame that the movies left her with. She also includes excerpts from diaries she kept at the time, which she'd recently rediscovered, most of which center on her relationship with Ford and the turmoil it caused her.
Fisher's writing is a bit unpolished, often kind of rambly, and sometimes a little too self-conscious, but there is real charm and honestness to it, too. The diaries contain some painfully sharp writing, and some poetry that ranges from surprisingly good to, well, less so. And they present a picture of a very, very young woman wrestling with her own insecurities and her feelings for a married man who never seemed to express any kind of feelings of his own. Honestly, I can't exactly say I enjoyed reading them, just because they made me feel far too much like a voyeur, emotional and otherwise, even though she never goes into any of the gory sexual details.
Rating: 3.5/5
113. Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente
Humanity's first contact, unexpectedly, comes in the form of fish-flamingo creatures (or, more accurately, lots of projections of the same fish-flamingo creature) who have come to invite Earth to participate in the intergalactic version of Eurovision. They've also picked out our contestants: the remaining two-thirds of has-been glam rock group Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros, who are no longer even speaking to each other. And they'd really better not come in last, or our species will be deemed to have failed to prove its sentience and be exterminated.
This was a lot of fun. The plot's pretty thin, with a somewhat rushed-feeling ending and probably as much time spent on describing the various weird aliens and their history as on advancing the story. But I honestly don't think I care very much. The various weird aliens and their history are interesting, in a way that's half genuinely creative SF worldbuilding and half utter ridiculousness, blended together surprisingly seamlessly. There's a lot of laughs, some sardonic philosophy, and a bit of real heart, and ultimately it does a decent job of scratching that itch left behind by Douglas Adams.
Rating: 4/5
114. A Lost Lady by Willa Cather
This short novel was published in 1923, but it begins several decades earlier, in the American West. The lady of the title is Mrs. Forrester, the wife of a man who amassed considerable wealth in the railroad business, but who, in the course of the story, finds himself in what such folks might call "reduced circumstances." It's told from the point of view of a young friend of the family, who idolizes her as having all the virtues considered most fitting to a woman of her social class: beauty and charm and a certain air of purity. But, through his eyes, we also see tiny glimpses of the woman behind that exterior, someone flawed, and much more complicated, and sadder.
I'm really impressed by Willa Cather's ability to make a character like Marian Forrester feel so much like a real, complex person in such a surprisingly minimalist way. Everything about her is more suggested than explored, and it doesn't feel like that should work remotely as well as it does.
This is also an interesting glimpse into a small piece of American history. A history, it must be said, that invites judgment from 21st-century readers with its causal racism, its ingrained classism, and its musings on the whole Manifest Destiny thing as a lovely, idealistic dream, albeit one now giving way to a sort of degraded banality. Such things can sometimes be uncomfortable to read, but in this case I felt mostly a sort of anthropological fascination with it all.
Rating: 4/5
115. Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs by Ken Jennings
Ken Jennings talks about his experiences being on Jeopardy! (over and over and over...) and what his life was like before, during and after his unprecedented run of wins. Interspersed with that, he talks about trivia: its history as a pastime, why it's interesting and whether it's worthwhile, and what kind of person turns that pastime into a full-blown obsession. (Jennings himself honestly seems to have been born to it. Some of the stories about what he was like even as a small child do kind of make me feel much better about the fact that I haven't won seventy-four games of Jeopardy! in a row. I like trivia, but I think I'm lacking some gene for it that this guy was born with.) He also talks a lot about particular trivia contests and events, including college bowl quizzes, rigged 1950s game shows, and a weird town in Wisconsin where the biggest event of the year is an insanely nitpicky fifty-four hour trivia event.
I found some of the trivia-obsessed people and places he visits a lot more interesting than others, but overall this was an entertaining read, and I love the way he peppers the book with trivia questions to challenge the reader in a way that makes them part of the narrative. And his descriptions of his Jeopardy! career are especially interesting, and much more exciting than I might have expected from the fact that I already knew perfectly well how the whole thing went.
Rating: 4/5
This entry was originally posted at https://astrogirl.dreamwidth.org/1020487.html. Comment here or there, whichever you like.