I decided to read this novel for two reasons: First, I'd read and generally enjoyed P. Djèlí Clark's previously Hugo-nominated short story The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington and the previously Hugo-nominated novella The Haunting of Tram Car 015, which is set in the same fantasy alternate-history Cairo as A Master of Djinn. Second, I'm shooting to read all the Hugo nominees this year, something I haven't done for a while, but which gives one a great feeling of being a part of something that matters.
While the indirect prequel The Haunting of Tram Car 015 is certainly fairly light popcorn entertainment, I enjoyed the unique world and the relatively understated characters and conclusion. Well, A Master of Djinn keeps and even dives further into the popcorn, but it loses the understatement, with a world-threatening cartoon supervillain and characters drawn cartoonishly broadly.
Actually, let's focus on the word cartoon for a moment. Throughout the time I was reading this novel, I kept thinking that the writing felt somehow less mature than what I think of as Hugo Award faire, though it's a trend I seem to detect in several of the nominees of late. I suggested to my wife that they feel like YA novels, but she shut that down, correctly pointing out that many YA novels are dark as all getout and often have a surprising amount of character depth and meaning. It was only when I made it to the pew-pew-stop-the-world-from-ending climax that it hit me: This feels like an actual cartoon. Maybe like a classic Saturday morning action cartoon or possibly even more like a Dreamworks animated tentpole (not near enough texture or emotional depth to be compared to Pixar).
And since this seems to be representative of a whole wave of popular scifi and fantasy, it set me to wondering, is this something like a Marvel-effect, where popular entertainment aimed at twelve-year-olds is informing all the stories we tell as a culture? Or is it something else about this cultural moment that is focusing our stories on elements other than textured and deep characters? I think it might be a little of both, really, but I want to dig into the latter just a bit.
Something undeniable about the current wave of popular sci-fi and fantasy is that there is a strong focus on inclusive stories by diverse authors, which is wonderful. But I hypothesize that there might be something of a Mary Sue phenomenon at work (or might I call it the Rey-from-the-new Star-Wars-movies phenomenon?), where we want to show that lots of different types of people can be great protagonists, but in our desire to show how awesome they are, we shy away from giving them the foibles and conflicts that create truly deep characters and nuanced situations. I could be way off here, but it's a thought.
Which brings me back to one of the things about this novel (and these kinds of novels) which doesn't work for me. All of the central protagonists are just far too nice and understanding of each other. Sure, there are some extremely shallow moments of temporary disagreement, but it's always resolved in no time flat. Not that I want miserable characters who hate themselves and everyone else, but there's a level of mature interaction that is extremely lacking. This is a story that nominally follows the structure of classic hard-boiled noir detective fiction. But when no one gets any emotional scrapes
As fun, compulsively readable, and original as Asimov's other works. My only note is that, for me, the ending feels just a bit too pat. It's a quality of the earlier Foundation novels as well that the brilliant hero masterminds events just so, but in this one the plan of Gaia feels more like a scheme of the author's than something that is totally believable within the world of the story. Overall, I still loved it though; minor complaints only.
One of the best comedy plays, with a rather intricate plot and little of the formula that governs most of the others. I read the scenes between Beatrice and Benedick as a forerunner to the screwball comedies of the early twentieth century. And the character of Dogberry is a sort of silly that is timelessly funny,
I really enjoyed reading Sinclair's The Jungle when I was in high school, but had never yet gotten around to any of his other works. Then a few years ago I watched Paul Thomas Anderson's brilliant and chilling There Will be Blood, which I learned is loosely inspired by this novel and its seemed like the perfect excuse to get back to Sinclair's work.
The first thing I have to report is that the writing is superb. Lovely prose, fantastic structure, characters you can believe, sardonic humor, and messaging that is (almost) never heavy handed. I mention messaging because this book is all about capitalism versus labor (and socialism and communism). Written a hundred years ago, all the big questions it asks are still shockingly relevant today. How do we know who's version of events to believe? Where is the line between getting things done and cheating the system? How do you find balance when your beliefs are opposed to those you love most?
It's a very long book, but one that kept me hooked the whole way through.
I didn't finish this book. The reasons I picked it up were that it won the Hugo award for Best Novel in 1969 and that Jo Walton, in her An Informal History of the Hugos, gives it a lot of praise. And based on those factors I stuck with it until about halfway through (of a fairly long page count), but ultimately I couldn't do it anymore. I understand why it impressed people when it came out.
The tone of hip cynicism is very representative of the time it was written, and the slightly psychadelic found-text montage style is unique and again very of it's time. But the point of view and culture it depicts are downright nasty. Every nonwhite character is invariably refered to by their race as defining characteristic whenever they are mentioned. All females are referred to entirely as sex objects. A riot starts in a black nieghborhood simply because the locals are stirred up by a white man walking through. On top of all that, the none of the protagonists have any redeeming qualities and the plot is vague and meandering. I don't have to have my characters and stories easy to swallow, but there has to be something to make me want to keep reading.
I doubt I'll pick up another Brunner novel any time soon.
I've always enjoyed Shakespeare's villains. He paints them with such texture, such depth. You can really revel in Richard III's Machiavelian scheming or feel yourself sinking into Macbeth's guilt-haunted madness. And I enjoy Iago as well, but Othello is the most painful story to witness.
Shakespeare starts the play by showing you an unlikely couple who struggles against difficult odds to be together, only for us to watch Iago destroy them both utterly, without mercy or even much explanation beyond his own slighted ego. And it's all the worse because every other character believes him to be the most trustworthy and honorable of friends.
So perhaps of all the Bard's tragedies, this is the most tragic. It's also among the best paced and best structured. And Act IV Scene III is among the most emotionally gutting things ever written.
What Technology Wants is a book after my own heart. It looks deeply at the nature of not only technology, but of the trajectory of life, the universe, and everything. Much of what Kelly observes and posits runs parallel to my own ideas about how technology fits into the past, present, and future of the world, but he examines the issues with far more detail and nuance than I ever have.
This book is dense with ideas—reading it, I probably highlighted more frequently than in any other book I've read—and many, many of them caused me to drastically reconsider or reframe the way I look at something.
I'm demanding that my book club take this one up as our next read just because I want to see what others have to say about these big concepts.
I'd consider As You Like It to be one of the best of the comedies. It certainly features some of the Bard's most famous turns of phrase and most eloquent speeches. The plot does meander quite a bit, but, with the help of an actual deus ex machina, everything comes together at the end and none of the threads are left dangling.
Among the most interesting aspects of the play is Shakespeare's particularly meta-level play with gender. Toward the end, you have the boy actor who would have played the female Rosalind, masquerading as male Ganymede (a name with homoerotic mythological origins), who is play acting as a female love interest for her own unwitting lover, whilst also becoming the love interest of a female character (again acted by a boy). One can't help but wonder whether Shakespeare was just having fun or there was more behind it. (Given his sonnets, it's not unreasonable to guess that there might be.)
A collection of four novella's is a strange format for this Korean scifi luminary's debut English-language book, but, I have to say, the stories are great. I've said before that my favorite scifi is the kind that has big ideas and wild creativity on display, and this book delivers. My only editorial note might be that the stories could probably stand to be trimmed just a bit, but the depth of exploration and humanity of the writing vastly outweight this quibble.
This one is a very middle-of-the-pack Shakespeare work. There are plenty of dramatic scenes and arresting turns of phrase, but there's really no character central enough to be considered a protagonist, no one to whom the audience ever really feels a sense of attachment. It's as though you can feel the Bard treading ever so gingerly through the messy tale of Queen Elizabeth's parentage, lest he should run afoul of his sovereign's good graces. Indeed, the play's end leans heavily into Elizabethan propaganda.
Not that I blame Shakespeare for that. His shrewdness was certainly a part of his success. But it does mean that this particular play is more interesting as a historical artifact than as a work of drama.
This short book is a great little manifesto detailing the values and methods of a master designer. The central lessons are Vignelli's emphasis on deliberate decision making, care with details, and value for simplicity.
I hadn’t read this since I was maybe twelve years old, and I was really surprised at how much the details and even the specific words resurfaced in my memory as I read. A classic for a reason, I enjoyed this every bit as much as when I was young.
Continuing my journey through Asimov’s Foundation series, this one continues adding complexity and questions onto the original premise. And it’s just so readable, with a plot that twists and turns.
This one was rather disappointing, and I confess that I didn’t make it quite all the way to the end. Too episodic. Too cartoony. Not enough depth.
I don’t know if I wasn’t in the mood or if maybe this kind of comedy plays better on stage than on the page, but this quintessential Shakespearian farce of lookalikes and mistaken identities just didn’t land for me.
Sometimes you read a book that restates a lot of what you already believe and know, but it’s still worthwhile because you needed to have it brought to the forefront of your thoughts afresh.
A minor Shakespeare work for a reason. This one is thought to likely be a collaboration and it shows in its lack of Shakespearean depth of character and interiority. Still, interesting for a completionist like myself.
A Hugo Award winner for a reason, Joe Haldeman’s military sci-fi epic takes one character skipping across the surface of time through a thousand year interstellar war. It’s grim, it’s episodic, and it’s brilliant. The book portrays the futility of war with a sharpness that is just as relevant now as it was in the Viet Nam era during which it was written.
I love Shakespeare’s great villains and Richard III is one of the greatest of them all. Unapologetically evil, it’s a joy to watch him scheme, lie, and murder his way to the top (though his subsequent downfall feels a bit rushed and perfunctory, as if the bard knew he had gotten past the juicy bits and was eager to wrap it up). On this read I really noticed how much House of Cards and even A Song of Ice and Fire draw elements from it.
The second book in Asimov’s famed Foundation series. It’s clear that he’d grown quite a bit as a writer by this one, with a plot more intricate, subtle, and less predictable. A classic for a reason. (In case you’re wondering, I have no interest in Apple’s new TV series based on the books. It’s not the kind of thing that can be done properly on screen.)
