Another Green World

The Thursday Murder Club, by Richard Osman. Highly entertaining. Four retirees in an upscale retirement community in a fictitious part of Kent like to meet on Thursdays to solve cold cases – and their talents are exceptional. Elizabeth was apparently a spy for most of her life. Ibrahim was a psychiatrist. Ron was a combative labor leader. Joyce, the new member – well, it’s not entirely clear what her talents are, beyond organizing things, making cakes, and improvising, but she’s very entertaining and keeps a journal. Suddenly they find themselves investigating a real-life murder of a not-very-nice person whom they all knew. Considering this was his first novel, the author is very good indeed. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the series.

The Mage-Fire War, by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. Recluce #21. This is the third book about Beltur, and tells about their first months establishing Haven (the future Fairhaven) as a somewhat independent community. Mostly it’s about the war they had to fight to keep one of the neighbors from using it as a launching ground to invade another, and if that’s not what you’re expecting from the book you might find it tiresome – hence the title, I suppose, to tip you off. At the end of the book, Beltur solves their problem with a method that Modesitt has used in quite a few of his recent books, and in this case it seems quite justified. The book doesn’t contribute very much to the overall story of the Recluce series, but if you like Beltur (and I do), it’s fine to spend more time with him.

Spring, Summer, Asteroid, Bird: The Art of Eastern Storytelling, by Henry Lien. In the West, we tell stories in which there’s a problem or challenge that the protagonist resolves – a three-act structure. In the East, a four-act structure is more common: we learn about a situation and the people in it, the situation develops further, a twist comes along and disrupts the situation, then the situation is seen in a new and broader way, with implications for the future. I was already aware of these differences, but Lien adds insights about the psychological and social benefits of the Eastern way, which I appreciated. I also liked learning how various video games and even Western media have used the Eastern structure. He also spends time on nested and circular story structures, which we know from Rashomon and The Thousand and One Nights, which let readers see situations from multiple valid perspectives and explore their nuances. My only quibble, and it’s small, is that in My Neighbor Totoro, the mom clearly didn’t have “just a cold” because otherwise the family would never have moved to the rural area where the story takes place – they move there so she can live in the sanitarium while she recovers, and it takes a while.

Contact, by Carl Sagan. From J’s book club; we saw the movie just a few months ago, so it’s still quite fresh in my mind. I quite liked the book, although the story was rather quietly told. I’m especially interested in the differences between the book and the movie, which I’ll tell without spoilers for the movie. Ellie’s social world was moderately different, but that makes sense given that movies need to have many fewer characters for us to learn over the span of a couple of hours. The eventual strange adventure is similar in some ways but different in one very important way that makes the book far better. Then, at the end, the book and movie have different ways of proving that everything was real. I thought the movie’s way, which was much simpler, was also far more realistic. In the book, the big discovery is that in a sense, circles are embedded within the math for circles – which is cool, but for the average person, it would be very hard to understand why it’s more cool and important than, say, the repeating pattern you’d find when zooming into the Mandelbrot Set fractal – if, in fact, it is. I’m certain that it would be very hard to build a future social movement based on the fact that mathematicians believe something extraordinary is true. So – it’s a fine book, I recommend it, and it’s also fine to read the book if you’ve already seen the movie.

Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, by Arlie Russell Hochschild. In this 2016 book, a Berkeley sociologist shares the results of her extensive interviews with residents of the Lake Charles area in Louisiana, where people have mostly learned to ignore the heavy levels of pollution inflicted on them by the petroleum industry. I was interested in the book because she repeatedly uses the phrase “deep story,” which I’ve used in my own research to refer to the story-shaped beliefs groups tell themselves, like a need to make America “great again” or to invest in progress, etc. She uses the phrase differently – rather than societal meta-narratives, she’s focused on personal meta-narratives that gradually became ripe for others to turn into a group identity. At the time of her research, the Tea Party was that group, but of course many of these folks got excited by Trump and probably now identify as MAGA. Hochschild uses the analogy of waiting in line for the American Dream, and tells us that many of these people feel that other groups have gotten to cut ahead of them in that line, often (they believe) at the expense of their own tax dollars. They see the federal government as the villain and are probably delighted now that Trump is trying to gut it – oddly, many of them think that 40% of Americans work for the feds. Also, apparently it’s a big thing to them that Northerners want all Americans to be more sympathetic to groups that have historically struggled; they see this as an attempt to shame them, resent being told how they should feel, and apparently are thrilled that Trump says it’s fine to ignore or dismiss the needs of these groups. I especially enjoyed the short Appendix C, in which the author debunks many beliefs that were common in the community (like that 40% thing). Her goal was to create empathy for these people among her readers, but it was pretty exasperating to hear how they’ve embraced their own exploitation by multinational corporations and the super-rich.

Outcasts of Order, by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. Recluce #20. This is one of my favorite of the Recluce books, because it has an interesting protagonist (Beltur) doing things other than the usual military / police / magical assassination typical of Modesitt books, in a reasonable and reasonably appealing place (Axalt). As the book opens, Beltur has become a military hero in Elparta, but soon he has to flee, along with his blacksmith colleague and his sweetheart. They head to Axalt, where he continues his smithing and learns more of the nuances of magical healing. By the end of the book, though, they have to flee again – Beltur is just too powerful a mage for Axalt, plus he’s feeling responsible for young Taelya, who’s only seven but likely to become a powerful white mage, and white mages aren’t welcome in Axalt. The book ends with Beltur, Jessyla, and Taelya’s parents taking on the challenge of creating a city that will work for people like them. It’s interesting and relaxing reading.

By the Book, by Jasmine Guillory. Both of the books I was reading yesterday were slightly tiresome, so I picked up this one, and it totally hit the spot. Guillory writes fun modern romance novels that usually have Black main characters; this time Isabelle is a writer and editorial assistant who finds herself temporarily living with a handsome author with writer’s block, at his fancy Santa Barbara home. There are hints of “Beauty and the Beast”! It turns out Disney was the publisher, so there’s a very high ratio of conversation to sex scenes, which I appreciated.

Service Model, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I’m trying to read some or all of this year’s Hugo nominees, and this was first (other than the one I read last year). Charles is a robot valet with an extremely monotonous existence, then suddenly he finds himself free to do whatever he thinks best. The world has become a robot dystopia, though, and it’s hard for him to figure things out. Tchaikovsky does a wonderful job with satiric humor – I kept laughing out loud – and also with vividly illustrating the difference between humans and robots by letting the reader realize things that Charles cannot. I also appreciated the value judgments that come up in the last few chapters. All in all, a very entertaining book that’s also worthwhile for bigger reasons.

The Burning God, by R.F. Kuang. Poppy War #3. Anyone who knows me knows that I’ve been really dragging my heels about reading these books – the first part of the first book, in the military academy, is fine, but after that we’re plunged into so much horrific war and our point-of-view character is such an angry, emotional, intellectually shallow person, and it’s pretty hard to read much of it. I understand that our character, Rin, is inspired by Mao, and she does get a bit more thoughtful in the third book, but she just doesn’t have the maturity to deal with her reality very well. All that said, I found the ending rather brilliant and satisfying, and I’m actually somewhat tempted to reread them, now that I know what to expect at every point.

Orbital, by Samantha Harvey. This prizewinning book could well be one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read. It’s the story of 24 hours in the lives of six people living on the International Space Station, in the near future – they are constantly reminded and astonished by how much they love the Earth. I suppose it might not appeal as much to readers who want more action and a stronger plot, but even then, it’s a short book and so lovely! Maybe they would like it too?