Avaland and Dukedom in 2023, Part 2

NOW READING

MICHAEL'S Current Reading :



Dialogue with Darkness Short Stories by Poul Anderson, (1985)
Novelties & Souvenirs: Collected Short Fiction by John Crowley (2004)
Failed State by Christopher Brown
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MICHAEL'S 3rd & 4th Quarter Reading:



Rapture of the Nerds by Corey Doctorow and Charles Stross (novella, 2012 , collaboration.)
A Haunting on the Hill by Eizabeth Hand (2023)
The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow War by Jeff Sharlet (Nonfiction, 2023)
Peter Watts is an Angry Sentient Tumor by Peter Watts (Revenge Fantasies and Essays)
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LOIS'S Current Reading:



Zelensky: The Unlikely Ukrainian Hero Who Defied Putin and United the World
A Ukrainian Christmas by Nadiyka Gerbish and Yaroslav Hrytska (translated, nonfiction)
What We Live For, what We Die For: Selected Poems by Serhiy Zhadan, translated
American Ghosts & Old World Wonders (stories) by Angela Carter

(I expect my Ukrainian obsession to continue into the new year.....)


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Lois's 4th Quarter Completed Reading



NONFICTION Standing My Ground: A Capitol Police Officer's Fight for Accountability and Good Trouble After January 6th… by Harry Dunn (Memoir, nonfiction)
Conversations on Writing by Ursula K. Le Guin "with" David Naimon (2023, nonfiction)

FICTION
*The Orphanage by Serhiy Zhadan (novel, 2017, trans.2022, Ukraine)
So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan, 2023
The Bloody Chamber and Others Stories by Angela Carter (reread)

POETRY
*Words for War: New Poems From Ukraine edited by Oksana Maksymchuk
*How Fire Descends: New and Selected Poems by Serhiy Zhadan, 2023
Love: poems by Carol Ann Duffy, 2023 UK
So Far So Good Final Poems 2014-2018 by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Carrying: Poems by Ada Limon , 2018
The Best American Poetry 2023
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* notes Ukrainian books

Michael's completed reading




Dagger Key by Lucius Shepard: 4 Stars
Empire V: The Prince of Hamlet by Victor Pelevin
Scale by Greg Egan
Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong by Terry Teachout (2014, biography)
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The Best of Michael Swanwick by Michael Swanwick
A Few Last Words for the Late Immortals by Michael Bishop

Lois's Third Quarter Reading



Fiction
The Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville (Australia, 2002) REREAD!
Cardiff, by the Sea: Four Novellas by Joyce Carol Oates (fiction, 2020)
AfterLives by Abdulrazak Gurnah (partial re-read)
Walk the Blue Fields: Stories by Claire Keegan
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (Irish, 2021)
Foster by Claire Keegan (Irish, 2022)

Nonfiction:
*Partial read: Writing from Ukraine: Fiction, Poetry since 1965 edited by Mark Andryczyk (2017)
Worn: A People's History of Clothing by Sofi Thanhauser (2022)

Poetry:

Lois's Second Quarter Reading:

FICTION
The Night Stages by Jane Urquhart (novel, Canadian)
The Forester's Daughter by Claire Keegan (Faber Stories, Irish)
Antarctica by Claire Keegan (1999; short fiction)
Dark Paradise (stories) by Rosa Liksom (1989, trans from the Finnish, 2007)
Sanctuary Line by Jane Urquhart (novel, Canadian, 2013)

POETRY
The Arctic Diaries by Melissa Davies (poetry, 2023)
Best Canadian Poetry, 2023
Content Warning: Everything Poems by Akwaeke Emezi
Tender the River: Poems by Matt W. Miller (US, New England, 2021)

Lois's First Quarter Reading:

Non-fiction:
Tangible Things: Making History through Objects by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich et al. (nonfiction, 2015)
Middlemarch and the Imperfect Life by Pamela Erens (2022, Literary commentary)
The Psychology of of Stupidity Explained by Some of the World's Smartest People by Jean-Francois Marmion (trans. French, 2022)

Poetry:
The Selected Works of Audre Lorde (US, 2020. literary studies)
Best of Australian Poems 2022 Guest eds. Jeanine Leane & Judith Beveridge
No Place Like Home: Poems Everyman's Library (poetry, 2022)
The Forward Book of Poetry 2023, (UK, 2023)

Fiction:
Cancion by Eduardo Halfon (2022)
Journeys by Ian R. MacLeod (UK, fantasy, short fiction 2010)
An Altered Light by Jens Christian Grøndahl (Denmark, 2004)
Pilgrim's Way by Abdulrazak Gurnah (fiction, UK, 1988, reread)
This Other Eden by Paul Harding (fiction, US/Maine, 2023)
A Memory for Murder by Anne Holt (Norwegian, 2021) skimmed the second half....
Salonika Burning by Gail Jones, (Australian, 2022)
Storytellers by Bjorn Larssen (Nordic, 2018)
Dinosaurs A Novel by Lydia Millet (US, 2022)

Some good reading Lois.

Thanks, Caro. I haven't been reading as much as I've been outdoors doing stuff.

Best Canadian Poetry 2023

Series editor: Anita Lahey
Guest editor: John Barton

As the title suggests this is an anthology of the "best" of new Canadian poetry published for 2023. After introductory pieces by both editors, this collection offers the reader fifty poems on a multitude subjects, by a wonderfully inclusive list of talented poets. The editors note that much effort was made to have representation of “historically marginalized voices”. At the end of the poetry, there are the contributors’ short bios, and commentary.

I very much enjoyed this collection, I might say, a bit better than some of the other anthologies I’ve read recently, but if you ask me tomorrow or next week I might have a different answer. The editors’ introduction pieces were interesting, but I suggest reading the poetry first and going back to those pieces on your second run through the book. The commentary from the poets, which came after their bios in the back of the book, were a terrific addition.

And, of course, so many good poems. Here is one, relatively short, poem I really liked (and yes, I have tinnitus)

Tinnitus
Colin Morton

I read John Cage and, in a silent room,
listened to the low thrum of blood in my veins,
the hiss of nerves in my head.
Proprioception I called it, after Olson.

For years I believed what I heard
was the microbiome of my inner ear—
cells living out their lives in there–
and I wondered about this thing called me.

How much of me is a population
of microbes doing I don’t know what
to or for me, living and dying
as I say these words.

Now I accent the first syllable,
call it tinnitus, as if that’s an explanation.
I told the doctor, I guess there’s little I can do.
You can complain, he said.

First published in PRISM international

Dark Paradise by Rosa Liksom
c. 1989, translation 2006, this edition 2007

I have read two Liksom novels in translation* and enjoyed both very much, but this slim book, which I picked up way back in 2010, kept being passed over for no good reason…until now.

This 1989 book is a collection of very short fiction, which might be called ‘flash fiction” these days. It’s 117 pages of short pieces varying in length from a half page to perhaps six pages (and the pages have fairly liberal margins top and bottom). But, those stories!

Liksom is a master of dark humor. Many of her first lines seem so subtle, so ordinary, to the reader, one hardly expects to be caught by it, but so we are. A few examples of first lines:

"I got out of the handcuffs on Friday morning",
"The sun was shining behind the factory"
"Every day I eat at least two bars of Marabou Chocolate"
"While the ‘soldiers at the military were putting on their leather suits and flying boots…"

So, yes, I was hooked.

I note that user "bluepiano" has an excellent 2016 review of this book on the book’s page

*Compartment No. 6: and The Colonel's Wife

Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong by Terry Teachout

As a newly-minted, 20 year old jazz fan, I didn't give much thought to Louis Armstrong. Knew him then as the smiling singer of popular tunes, not much like the Coltrane/Davis/Sanders groups I was discovering. But then there was that famous four-word summary of the history of jazz from Miles Davis: "Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker." I understood about Parker, but why Armstrong? He had disparaged Parker and the other beboppers, younger musicians who played edgier music and didn't care about pleasing their white listeners. I later discovered Armstrong's Hot Fives and Hot Sevens from the 1920s; OK, he'd been one of the inventors of jazz. Over the years, I heard more Armstrong recordings, and gained new appreciation for ones I already knew.

Armstrong (1901-1971) was born in deep poverty, deprived of even knowing his birth date, which was about a year later than the July 4, 1900 he claimed. He supported himself with his music from age 17, spending most of his life on the road. Beyond helping to invent jazz, he gave us some of the most sublime versions of Great American Songbook tunes - "Blueberry Hill", "Mack the Knife", "What a Wonderful World" - singing in his gravelly voice, proving that art needn't be pretty to be beautiful.

Teachout looks to reclaim the long middle part of Armstrong's career, normally associated with mediocre backup bands, especially in the 1930s. He notes some fine work in the period, but I'm not sure he makes the case. Armstrong had to live with the presence of gangsters in the music business, and seems to have accepted the protection of one in particular, his longtime manager Joe Glaser, at the cost of half of his earnings. Maybe Armstrong thought such a disadvantageous deal was his best prospect, as a Black man in America, for getting on with his music and a secure living.

As usual in a biography, I discovered endless facts I hadn't known. Armstrong was self-taught on the cornet and trumpet, and his technique caused steady harm to his embouchure. He had the first star billing for a Black performer in a Hollywood movie, and at one point in 1941 was associated with an Orson Welles project to make a movie about jazz. He and Bing Crosby were friends. The book includes 54 pages of notes with lots of bits like these. Teachout drew on much previously unavailable material for this book, including many hours of candid recordings Armstrong made of himself.

Besides wanting to know more about Armstrong, I read this book for insight into the late Terry Teachout (1956-2022). I followed Teachout's twitter account for several years, and found him an interesting and humane writer on the arts. But he was a political conservative, working for National Review and organizing "The Vile Body, a social club of right-wing intellectuals from the fields of publishing and journalism in New York City." Considering the general barbarity of right wing discourse in the US today, I wondered how Teachout could exist as an exception. I still don't understand it, except that we all compartmentalize.

There's a conservative aspect of his subject that must have appealed. Armstrong was abandoned by his father at birth, and later wrote of his contempt for those of his race who shirked their responsibilities. Still, Teachout does not downplay Armstrong's own recognition of racism: "Why, do you know I played ninety-nine million hotels I couldn't stay at? And if I had friends blowing at some all-white nightclub or hotel I couldn't get in to see 'em - or them to see me."

This is from one of the finest musicians America has produced. Armstrong's life is as inspiring a testament to overcoming odds as we could ask for.

Four and a half stars

Enjoyed your review of the Louis Armstrong biography. I have not read any biographies of Louis Armstrong, but I love his music, especially the early stuff.

Armstrong's life is as inspiring a testament to overcoming odds as we could ask for. This is the right wing stance that smacks of self help, which might put off some readers.

>9 dukedom_enough:

I met Teachout a few times in 2000-2001 (he was a good friend of someone I dated at the time--or at least he made her feel she was a good friend. Whenever we met it was on her arrangement.) Whatever bad and ugly that you could point out to him on the conservative side was no match for the crimes and hypocrisy of the left, as he saw it. (On his spectrum Hitler wasn't a right-winger but somehow an "extreme" result of leftism, which is basically equivalent to the Trumpian claim that antifascists are the "real" fascists.) Abortion was a big stumbling block to his ever making a rapprochement to the other side, far greater a problem than any unease he might have felt about the discourse of the Tea Party.

To generalize from the handful of such conservatives that I have met, they all had this in common: a cherished experience of all-white smalltown America, which is then idealized for the entire life, a reverence for the Western Canon in its all-white-male form, a deep conviction (perhaps deep enough to be correctly described as unconscious) in the superiority of Western thought, a love of discipline and hierarchy. They were also all religious, although some were reluctant to admit a great zeal. Not Teachout, though, who said once he was Christian before anything else.

I've wondered exactly the same the same in relation to that woman I was dating. We bonded over love for Shakespeare--but aside from that, she was a self-described libertarian who voted Republican (her family was prominent in the party for several generations), whereas I'm, to cut things short, a communist. She couldn't understand how I could be a communist and love Shakespeare. I couldn't understand how she could love Shakespeare and be a conservative. I suspect this reflects a more basic difference between the US and Europe even more than it relates to different ways we had of reading--"high culture" has been made inaccessible to the not-haves in the US even more than it is in Europe and thus a more sure marker of class (ironically enough) in the US than anywhere else.

Speaking of Armstrong, I've linked this somewhere before but it's worth repeating:

Not a wonderful world: Louis Armstrong tapes reveal how racism scarred his life and career

It's a problem of generational difference, same problem that actors like Mantan Moreland and Butterfly McQueen faced. On the one hand it's true that "for some reason" their movies get a portion of praise from racists (enough to look at YouTube), but at the same time, they worked, survived, and opened doors to others. Without Armstrong, where would Parker and Davis have come from?

>11 LolaWalser: "high culture" has been made inaccessible to the not-haves in the US even more than it is in Europe and thus a more sure marker of class (ironically enough) in the US than anywhere else

I was made aware of this as a young adult on the bus of all places. In Europe, especially Eastern Europe, people on the bus would be reading Anna Karenina or Kafka. It seemed incongruous to me to see little old babushkas in their kerchiefs with a grocery cart reading the "classics." When I returned to the US, it was glaringly obvious that hardly anyone was reading and those that were it was usually newspapers and magazines (this is pre-smartphones).

P.S. Thanks for the link about Armstrong too. Have you seen the documentary they were making? How is it?

>10 baswood:

This may be why the project appealed to Teachout. The bits playing up Armstrong's conservative facet are only a small part of the entire narrative, though.

>11 LolaWalser:

How interesting to have known Teachout. Hitler as a leftist is pretty crackpot. As for his growing up in a small-town, white world, I lived my teens in a somewhat similar world; anyone who cared about books and culture in that kind of place risked getting beaten up or ostracized. You'd think that would reduce one's idealization of the experience. The American right wing used to have a niche for the Teachouts, to exemplify the Western Civ they claimed to be guarding. Maybe fitting that niche reduced the sting of youthful maltreatment? In its current form, that niche seems to be growing smaller. I wonder if Teachout noticed that. I'm thinking this shows the importance of life experience on who we are; raised in a milieu, hard to escape it.

Thanks for the article link. The Armstrong tapes were among Teachout's sources, and so not as new as the Guardian implies.

>12 labfs39:

The documentary is currently on Apple TV here in the US, I see.

>12 labfs39:

I don't think I've seen that docu. Regarding reading classics and similar, I used the term "inaccessible" which may be misleading--I'm guessing it's more about some general cultural attitude that gets (or doesn't get, as the case may be) inculcated in school, a question of education, of what is considered worthy etc. and not a physical lack (if anything, books are far more affordable and easy to procure in the US than anywhere in Europe). Shakespeare becomes "inaccessible" not for the lack of editions but the lack of education that places value on Shakespeare. One can have a peasant society with universal valuation of "high culture" (see ancient Greece).

Europe can (or could) also be seen as simply lagging behind the US on this trend. However, it's true that economic inequalities are much sharper in the US and this is also increasingly visible in who gets what kind of education.

>14 dukedom_enough:

The Norman Rockwell nostalgia may be easier to nurture once you leave the small town and find yourself surrounded by the big city godless who seem to diss everything your grandparents held dear... I really can't figure it out, I just assume there are some complicated psychological reasons behind it all--in the end I too could never reconcile humanities and conservatism. But maybe it's some extinct kind of conservatism. And there are perplexing people on the left too--Nat Hentoff, for instance, almost a perfect Teachout counterpart, was also vehemently anti-abortion. Frankly it bothered me more in him; the other one at least wasn't supposedly on "my side".

>16 LolaWalser: I think of it more as anti-intellectualism in the US, as Michael says, "anyone who cared about books and culture in that kind of place risked getting beaten up or ostracized."

>17 labfs39:

Agreed--anti-intellectualism exists everywhere but the US seems unique in promoting that as a kind of virtue, or in the success that view has had.

>18 LolaWalser: Especially dismaying given that whole dream of the 1950s in which much of American culture would be in reach of the average joe. Obviously unrealistic in hindsight—that would be the average white, working- or middle-class English-speaking joe—but it was a decent ideal that tanked hard in this century.

One of my favorite telling details about the shift in American culture involves the old game show What's My Line?. There might be a few here too young to remember it, but it involved a panel of four celebrity wits attempting to guess the profession of mystery guests by asking yes/no questions. In 1962, William Schuman was one of the show's mystery guests; he was an American classical composer and the president of Lincoln Center. The panel was blindfolded -- not the usual procedure -- before Schuman made his entrance; the assumption was that they'd all just recognize him if they saw his face. Sixty years later, is there a classical composer whose presence would require the panel to be blindfolded on today's version of the show?

>20 KeithChaffee: did they guess correctly?

>21 dianeham: Yes, they did.

>9 dukedom_enough: "But then there was that famous four-word summary of the history of jazz from Miles Davis: "Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker."

Louis Armstrong's musical contributions to American (and world) music cannot be overestimated. Tone, phrasing, use of time, technical prowess and inventiveness: it's all off the charts where Louis is concerned. Another Miles quote about Armstrong was, "You can't play anything on a horn that Louis hasn't played— I mean even modern."

Listen to Armstrong's duet work with Ella Fitzgerald sometime. Their recording of the music of Porgy and Bess is on my desert island list. Armstrong's singing on "I've Got Plenty of Nothin'" is among the swingingest male vocal work I can think of. That's the thing about Armstrong. He was highly influential both as a trumpeter and as a vocalist. Wynton Marsalis has written and spoken at length about this.* Or, as Tony Bennett put it, "The bottom line of any country in the world is 'What did we contribute to the world?' We contributed Louis Armstrong."

As a non-musician, it's hard for me to really hear how revolutionary his playing was back in the 20s and 30s. I know it sounds great, and I just have to take the word of musicians who know what to listen for regarding how ground-breaking that work was. But when you listen to his bands of the 50s and 60s, you can hear both how hard those bands swing and how shining Armstrong's solos are.

One of the things I can't wait to do when my wife and I move to New York for a year in June is visit the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens:
https://www.louisarmstronghouse.org

* Here's a decent enough article from the Smithsonian Magazine regarding Marsalis' appreciation of Armstrong:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/to-really-appreciate-loui...

>19 lisapeet: et al.

With apologies to Michael for going on, but I just came across Rachel Cusk's article on Annie Ernaux, and, in the spirit of "no, we're not crazy, other people noticed it"...

(...) It was pleasant, I had often been told, for a writer to live somewhere where reading and writing were accorded the highest respect, and it was true that — in Paris at least — these were semipublic activities: In every park and cafe, on the Metro and on the benches along the Seine, people were openly engaged in what for me had always been the most private and solitary of occupations. Bookstores still held their ground here among the shopfronts, and the deification of French writers living and dead was evinced everywhere in street names and statues and advertising hoardings for new novels. I listened on the radio to an astronaut reading passages aloud from Marguerite Duras from his space station to his earthbound audience below. (...)

During my initial months in Paris, when it seemed for the first time in my life that lying on a sofa reading a book was something I was not only permitted but encouraged to do (...)

It's that underlined part that's the difference.

(Not sure the link will work, but it's here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/02/magazine/annie-ernaux-delphine-de-vigan.html )

Earlier this year, I took a trip though my almost 17 years of books added to my LT library, curious about any highly-rated authors (of fiction, in this case) that may have fallen away as I discovered more and more new-to-me authors. Did I let these authors go because they were a 'lesser' author? Or Was I no longer interested in what they wrote about? Did I outgrow their works? Or did they just fall off my radar?

I actually went back and browsed my book entries beginning in Oct. 2006 (when I joined), page by page. I noted I had added to my LT library six books by Canadian author Jane Urquhart read during the era I was still a bookseller. Six books!…what has she written since?

Turns out, she has written nine works of fiction to date. I immediately chased down the two I had not read. Below is a short review of one of them, and I am currently reading the other.



Sanctuary Line by Jane Urquhart (2010, Canadian)

Liz Crane, a scientist, returns to her family’s farm and apple orchard on Lake Erie, Ontario to study the migration patterns of the monarch butterfly. The property has been deserted for years. In her solitude, she revisits family history, from the death of her cousin in Afghanistan, and the much earlier disappearance of that cousin’s father. She is haunted by old love affairs, a family secret, and tragic events.

This is an intimate family story, with a strong sense of both place and the connection of the people to the land. It is a wonderfully-rendered story, written with great empathy, and a reader has to give the time… to fall into it.

>25 avaland: How nice to fall in love with an old favorite author once again.

>26 labfs39: Funny, though, I have only a vague memory of the earlier reads, but, six books....

>25 avaland: - I thought the author sounded familiar and, sure enough, I read The Stone Carvers 10 years ago. Even the description brought nothing to mind.

>28 dudes22: Thanks for stopping by, Betty. My reading is rather intermittent currently. Have several non-book projects I'm trying work on (like cleaning out the garage; getting the gardens up to stuff...)

>16 LolaWalser: Misogyny? Inability to think of women whom you don't know as people?

>20 KeithChaffee: Is there a composer people would know today even if given the name?

>23 rocketjk: The Armstrong/Fitzgerald Porgy and Bess was familiar to me before I picked up the book; great recording. Good to see Marsalis appreciating Armstrong.

>24 LolaWalser: I was fortunate to have parents who read at least somewhat themselves, and no one in my life who tried to get me to stop.

>30 dukedom_enough: They wouldn't recognize the face, probably, but most people would probably know who John Williams was, and there might be one or two other film composers in that category (Hans Zimmer, perhaps?). Among a certain demographic, some video game composers are fairly well known. And I suppose a fair number would know of Lin-Manuel Miranda or (shudder) Andrew Lloyd Webber. But composers known primarily for their concert music? Hard to think of any. Maybe Phillip Glass?

>9 dukedom_enough: Adding to my list Michael.

>25 avaland: I read this some while ago, gave it 4*s (no review) but have no recognition of it at all Lois. Not uncommon. It will probably come back to me or seem familiar if I reread.

>32 Caroline_McElwee: I have that 'no recall' thing often while looking through my back reviews.

The garden work and some household organization is getting in the way of writing some sort of reviews (the longer it goes, the harder it's going to be)

>33 avaland: Well, this is the time of the year where needing to do work in the garden and wanting to be outside in the garden happily coincide! As for household organization, I love having everything organized and clean, but I dislike the activities required to make things so.

>34 RidgewayGirl: So true on both accounts! Thanks for stopping in. I think I'm going to have to catch-up by doing some short reviews (perhaps better called 'comments'. I no longer finish books that aren't doing anything for me, so ....

A series of injuries/ailments has hindered my gardening, but I'm slowly making progress. My daughter gave me a 6' long gardening box on legs that I'm eager to plant with some veggies. Cut down a little tree that was too close to the foundation and pulled up a juniper in preparation for redoing the beds in front of the house. Rock garden is looking good, but the side garden still has leaves on half of it. Mowed the lawn for the first time yesterday.

>36 labfs39: Oh, very nice (the box). That gardening stuff tends to interfere with reading....

>32 Caroline_McElwee: My favorite jazz-star biography (that I've read) is still Kansas City Lightning by Stanley Crouch, about Charley Parker. Unfortunately Crouch died before he could publish the second volume.

Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days by Alastair Reynolds

I ought to be a big Alastair Reynolds fan. PHe has physics and astronomy training, writes a lot of space opera, with nanotech, ancient civilizations, and kilometers-long relativistic spacecraft crossing between stars; just my thing.

This volume collects two novellas set in his Revelation Space series. In "Diamond Dogs" the protagonist is tempted by an old friend/rival to meet the challenge of a fantastic structure on a distant planet. Progress through the serially arranged rooms of the Blood Spire is achieved by solving increasing tough mathematical problems. Choosing the right solution opens the door to the next room. The wrong solution draws attack from hidden weapons. The expedition members must repeatedly retreat to their spacecraft to replace missing body parts with prosthetics, before they can go back in. As the explorers' bodies become increasingly artificial, the protagonist wonders just why he is doing this.

In the second story, the planet Turquoise is mostly covered by an ocean which hosts a complex ecology of organisms humans call Pattern Jugglers. Swimming among them allows telepathic contact. The human settlers comprise a scientific backwater, engaged in a slow paced research project into the Jugglers, until a spacecraft arrives with sweeping plans for change.

As with other Reynolds stories, I find these lacking. He is as inventive in this genre as one might want, but the vividness of his descriptions disappoints. It's had to pin down, exactly, but I've yet to be enthusiastic about any of his work.

Two and a half stars

>25 avaland: Interesting that you've dug out some old Jane Urquhart novels. I too read a lot of hers back around that same time. I've read 6, and I'd like to pick her up again one day. I own two more, one I think is short stories.

>40 Nickelini: The last one read seemed a bit long....I think her work is better when a bit shorter 350 pages or less.

We have been much distracted by other things. Besides the gardens and setting up to the year's charity quilts, we had the 8 yo grandson for the weekend. We took him to Portsmouth to the old Albacore submarine, which he really liked.



Got home and at dusk onef our NH bears paid a visit The neighbor texted that a bear was headed our way and sure enough it was in the back yard. After a tour of the property and the perimeter of the house he headed elsewhere

(We assume this same bear had come through late the day before and took down all my bird feeders (we usually take these down late afternoon but it was raining and we were tired from the trip so left them up. Lesson learned as the critter took all the feeders down for me and not gently).


-------------------------------------

We'll catch up as soon as possible!

I started feeding the birds again just recently. I was into it in WA, but hadn't set up feeders in Maine because of the bears. Not that we didn't have bears in Woodinville, but we had a tall wooden fence that deterred all but the most determined. Here we are wide open.

Sounds like a fun outing with your grandson. He is getting so big!

>42 labfs39: I think we get them because we might be the only house that doesn't have a dog. Yesterday a rangy doe wandered into the backyard to eat from the 'freedom lawn'... between that and the pair of pileated woodpeckers and their jungle cries it seems and sounds like an episode of" Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom" LOL

>41 avaland:

Omg that is serious wildlife!

Cute grandson.

I can't believe how big your grandson has gotten. Seems like just last week I sent him that reading pillow.

And - Yikes! That bear!

>44 LolaWalser: I agree on both!

>45 dudes22: I know, time is flying!

Bookstores we visited in the area of Northampton, Massachusetts (mid-state, where Smith College is)

BOOKLINK This bookstore was downtown, part of a large indoor 'marketplace'; remember those late 19th century buildings? this is one of them. Here us the history: https://www.visitingnewengland.com/thornes-northampton.htm The bookstore was a bit congested but was a good size. They sold new books and has some sale books.

After finishing there the five of us went out and around the corner to to visit RAVEN USED BOOKS . https://www.ravenusedbooks.com/

After this shop someone mentioned lunch and we all were happy to sit down at a nearby tavern/brew pub. Decent meal, GREAT company. it was then suggested we go next to BOOKENDS, a store of used books about three miles north, in a part of Northampton called Florence. Note: No bathroom here. It was a short visit before we decided, at different times to head south to find BOOK MOON in Easthampton.

We found BOOK MOON BOOKS ( https://www.bookmoonbooks.com/) on a busy side street. What a fab bookstore! This store was established by authors Kelly Link and Gavin Grant who run Small Beer Press. Their published books were there, of course, but also an eclectic selection of new books: general poetry, poetry, social issues, history...etc. It really was a wonderful little bookshop.

Books were bought BUT as we are all over the age of 50 and have homes full of books*, we did not buy recklessly but a good time was had by all.

*Lisa's house still might have room :-)

Books we bought

His:
Lost Places: Stories by Sarah Pinsker (new)
The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War by Jeff Sharlet (new)

Hers:
Season of the Rainbirds by Nadeem Aslam (used)
Wondrous Journeys in Strange Land by Sonia Nimer (new)
All the Women Inside M9newe by Jana Elhassan (new)
Foster by Claire Keegan (new)

Shared: White Cat, Black Dog: Stories by Kelly Link (new)

>47 avaland: I used to go to Harvard Square for bookstore runs. There were so many there. Last I saw, it was down to just Harvard Bookstore, which isn't even in the square proper. Northampton/Easthampton recreate a little of that experience. Except that I'm no longer in my 20s/30s.

It was a fantastic trip. Thanks for letting me tag along. My favorite bookstore was Raven, because as soon as I walked in I saw an entire table of NYRB and Archipelago Press books. Just my cuppa!

You got me with The Arctic Diaries Lois.

>47 avaland: Sounds like a great trip, but great restraint shown here!

There is a great used book store in Burlington VT. Are they connected?

>48 avaland: Great, yet suitably restrained haul of books!

I am horribly behind with my reviews and I'd just jump to the most currently finished book except all the others deserve a bit of attention....


You might remember I went back in my EARLY years on LT to look for authors I enjoyed but who got lost in the constant wave of new or new-to-me authors. I've already reviewed Jane Urquhart's Sanctuary Line but I also very enjoyed her The Night Stages, great storyl lovey landscapes, although I thought the book a bit long. The publisher's description is thus:

After a tragic accident leaves Tamara alone on the most westerly tip of Ireland, she begins an affair with a charismatic meteorologist named Niall. It's the 1950s, and Tamara has settled into civilian life after working as an auxiliary pilot in World War II. At first her romance is filled with passionate secrecy, but when Niall's younger brother, Kieran, disappears after a bicycle race, Niall, unable to shake the idea that he may be to blame, slowly falls into despondency. Distraught and abandoned after their decade-long relationship, Tamara decides she has no option but to leave.

Jane Urquhart's mesmerizing novel opens as Tamara makes her way from Ireland to New York. During a layover in Gander, Newfoundland, a fog moves in, grounding her plane and stranding her in front of the airport's mural. As she gazes at the nutcracker-like children, missile-shaped birds, and fruit blossoms, she revisits the circumstances that brought her to Ireland and the family entanglement that has forced her into exile. Slowly she interweaves her life story with Kieran's as she searches for the truth about Niall.

(A bit of a cheat, but it's the only way I'm going to catch up :-)

>54 avaland: I have one book by this author sitting on my tbr shelf, The Underpainter. I'm going to have to get to it soon.

>55 RidgewayGirl: Oh, I read that one when I was still at the bookstore, before LT. Very good. One has to wonder if a now 26 year old book reads the same....

The Best of Michael Swanwick by Michael Swanwick

The stories in this volume have picked up numerous awards and award nominations, befitting one of the best SFF writers of his generation. I had read most of them previously; on re-reading, motifs become apparent. Psychological experiments on the Moon? "Trojan Horse" and "Griffin's Egg". The ambiguous, dreadful results of optimizing human intellect? "Griffin's Egg" again, and "Wild Minds". "The Dead" and "Radiant Doors" are the most obvious examples of Swanwick's fondness for grim, meathook futures. Looking for stories about cryptic alien intelligences on moons of the outer planets, showing up during a life-threatening emergency? See "Slow Life" and "The Very Pulse of the Machine".

The stories start at quite good and get better from there. One of my favorites is "Legions in Time", involving time travel, evil supermen, and a plucky heroine. It's an homage to A. E. van Vogt and, in the grand van Vogt tradition, it's fast-moving, tremendous fun while making no sense at all.

There are fantasy stories too. In "The Changeling", an old man tells how he left his village to join the warrior elves, and what that cost him. "The Edge of the World" is located somewhere in the Middle East; one can stand at the edge and look down into endless sky. But mainly we have science fiction here.

In "Griffin's Egg", the small population of Lunar settlers watch nuclear war unfold on Earth. They will have to survive without Earthly supplies, and baseline human personalities won't be sufficient.

"The Dead" imagines that the recently dead can be revived. They are perfectly obedient servants, excellent workers, and beautiful besides. What will become of the living people they replace? Maybe Swanwick's overarching theme is survival - of the body, in emergencies, or of the spirit, in the face of the plans that the powerful have for us all, or that we have for our own upgrades.

If I have a reservation, it's that most of these stories lose some impact with a second reading. The brutal ending of "Radiant Doors" is not a surprise the second time, and provides a different experience.

One story that did hold up for me is "The Edge of the World". In the 1960s, the Twilight Emirates where the Edge lies are an American protectorate. If you're a bored teen, brought there by your US-official parents, the idea of skipping school to climb down the precarious cliff face at the Edge is irresistible. Swanwick gives us a perfect mix of teen angst and weird menace.

There's also "The Dog Said Bow-Wow", the author's most popular story, featuring two rogues, one of whom is a bio-engineered, bipedal dog, looking for the main chance in a future London. Swanwick is most inventive. If you're interested, better start now, because The Best of Michael Swanwick, Volume 2 should be published this month.

Four and a half stars

>57 dukedom_enough: I'm not looking ....

Darwinia: A Novel of a Very Different Twentieth Century by Robert Charles Wilson

This novel starts out with an uncanny event that transforms the world. One night in 1912, a giant circular patch of the Earth, roughly Europe and a bit of North Africa, goes silent. Arriving ships find that all the people and every trace of their works have vanished. The general topography of the land is the same, but its flora and fauna are nothing that have ever been seen in the planet's history - yet nonetheless betray an evolutionary history just as long as the one we know.

The history of the world proceeds differently. No 1914-1918 Great War, slower technological progress, the US the sole world superpower, and a revival of creationist explanations of the origin of Earth and life follow the apparent miracle. In 1920, Guilford Law and his wife and child travel to England, which is being resettled by the remains of the British Empire. He will join an American scientific expedition into the interior of the land now called Darwinia. But Guilford is haunted by dreams of another life, one that ended in a war that his history and his memory say never occurred. Other men around the world are likewise haunted, by dreams or, for certain men without conscience, by terrible phantoms they think of as gods - evil gods with real-world powers.

Wilson loves setting ordinary human relationships against a backdrop of cosmic scale, and Darwinia eventually becomes cosmic indeed - this 1998 release is a very 1990s SF novel. Not Wilson's best, but quite satisfying.

Four stars

Tender the River: Poems by Matt W. Miller 2021, Poetry

This book of poetry takes as its inspiration the Merrimack River which is an 117 mile long river which begins in Manchester, New Hampshire and ends in northeast Massachusetts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrimack_River

The Merrimack River has a long history and has provided much to the people who have lived here for hundreds of years. Native Americans were known to camp on it’s shores and soon it became a star of sorts in the Industrial Revolution, first with water power, then steam…

Matt Miller grew up in the shadow of the river in Lowell, MA. He infuses in his poetry all aspects of the river itself and the world around it. There is even a poem about the filming of the 2010 movie “The Fighter” (Mark Wahlberg & Christian Bale). And while I read through the volume several times I often failed to connect with the poet’s writing. Which is not to say I didn’t like his work, I often did— on some level.

The Arctic Diaries by Melissa Davies (poetry, 2023)

In 2018 this author went to Fleinvaer in Norway, which is an archipelago off the Arctic coast consisting of 365 islands. She lived there, with the few adult residents from November - April (there were no young people)’

This is a wonderful little book, well-put together beginning with a short intro to the area of Fleinvaer and a guide to the Norse words used. She has separated the thirty-eight poems into three sections’Her poems are sometimes spare, which seemed appropriate…but the collection has many other pieces that are longer.

I’ve read through this small volume several times now and each time I pick it up I find something new in it’s pages. Here is a very short poem from the collection….

Seaweed

So black against the snow
I can taste the summer tang.
Roll
tiny bubbles
with the new shape
of my tongue.

Saliva rushes
to meet the salt
of their language

————————————————————
Antarctica (Collection}, by Claire Keegan 1999

Walk the Blue Fields (Collection) by Claire Keegan (2007/UK)

The Forester’s Daughter by Claire Keegan (2007, novella published recently in this small independent booklet, 2019, but also included in the collection Walk the Blue Fields

Foster (novella, 2010) by Claire Keegan

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (2021) short novel

I was way back in my LT library some time ago looking at authors I had once enjoyed years back, but what with the overwhelming choices in books, many of these authors, after a few books, got lost (or maybe drowned) in the mountain of possibiliities. But while doing this, Claire Keegan's collection Antarctica popped up. Must have been a suggestion, because it wasn't in my library. I love fiction set in colder places,.. so call her first collection a 'gateway' read....

Prize-winning Irish author Claire Keegan is a gifted storyteller. She writes various short fiction from short stories to novellas*, she works with a brew, mixing brevity, emotional depth, a cast of very fallible and relatable humans...all in a way to pull in and bewitch the reader. It's as simple as that. I acquired and read her books in the order written, but it is no means obligatory.

*the latest is being marketed as a "short novel" but it's really another novella.

>63 avaland: I think that Claire Keegan has reached the level where every single short story she writes is now published in hardcover to great fanfare. It helps that she writes so slowly.

>64 RidgewayGirl: I'm good with that, because I really dislike long short stories published in so-called short story collections, and I'm always looking for good novellas and short books.

>64 RidgewayGirl: Really? I haven't bothered with chasing hardbacks, but if I had to....

>65 Nickelini: Agree about very long short stories included in a collection.

Worn: A People's History of Clothing by Sofi Thanhauser, 2022, nonfiction.

This is a brilliant and fascinating historical and social study of both cloth, cloth-making and clothing...an the consequences of (a sort of an holistic study) . The author covers so much in just 300 pages, the good and the bad about the clothing industry, and everything between...bringing us up and into the modern era.

I don't think I expected it to be so engrossed in this book. But, don't take just my word for it...https://mitpressbookstore.mit.edu/book/9780525566731

Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah (fiction, 2020) Not really a proper review.

I chased this book when it came out in 2020 ...being a serious Gurnah acolyte. I began to read it, but partially into the story I panicked (?)...what if this is his last book?! I set it aside, half read.

...Until yesterday. As the rain fell and lightning and thunder kept up the drums, I was in Africa with Gurnah. I read Afterlives almost cover to cover (saved the last ten pages or so for this morning). Another wonderful read from a master storyteller, who infuses his stories with great empathy.

My first Gurnah was 2001's By the Sea which was published in the US while I was still working at the bookstore, before LT. I have been chasing his work for 22 years....

>68 avaland: - I came across this author while I was researching books for our book club this year (theme - award winners) and managed to snag The Last Gift at a library sale earlier this summer. Sounds like I have some good reading in my future.

>69 dudes22: This one is probably not for everyone…more complex, me thinks.Best to read some of the more usual reviews that are posted before deciding😎

>68 avaland: I too started Afterlives, but set it aside fairly quickly. I thought it was me. Perhaps I need to try again when I can dedicate some extended time to it.

>71 labfs39: It is somewhat congested, and I was prone to mixing up characters (which might be just me). You might check with Darryl on his experience, as he has read it.

Finishing up JCO's collection of four suspenseful novellas, Cardiff, By the Sea. As with most collections some are better than others, and these were entertaining on varying levels (Having read so much of her work, I might be immunized from her suspense at this point....)

>68 avaland: Real life atmosphere can really make or break a book. What a great way to read this one.

Reminds me that I have a Gurnah to review. Still haven't made it to JCO - in another life maybe?

>68 avaland: glad you picked this latest Gurnah back up. I really enjoyed it on audio.

>75 SassyLassy: I'm wondering if JCO will be still read after her death....

>76 dchaikin: Glad you enjoyed it.

'

I'm a bit off new books these days..so I've decided to re-read some of my FAVORITE books (in all genres, and all eras).

I have begun with The Idea of Perfection by Australian author Kate Grenville, 1999 (read before LT while I was still at the bookstore). So much fun and yet....

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/kate-grenville/the-idea-of-perfection...

>78 avaland: I love the line from the Kirkus review, a cockeyed romance that will have you cheering for all of these unlikely, wayward lovers.

>79 labfs39: There's more than just that romance ... good medicine all around.

On vacation lakeside with a pile of books

>73 avaland: I'm a little worried that it might be possible to burn out on JCO! Incidentally, there is a new documentary out about her.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15346136/

>81 avaland: sounds lovely. I’m hiding behind my air conditioner. We expect 105° tomorrow. (With my ebook phase, i’m holding all my books in the same tool I’m using to type this - my smart phone)

>78 avaland: This sounds really nice!

It's been so hot and muggy, the lake sounds perfect. I hope the upcoming storms don't impinge on your plans.

>78 avaland: This sounds fun! Adding to Mt. TBR.

The picture above is Lois's, taken during our lakeside vacation in Maine. Looking westward from the eastern shore of Damariscotta Lake, a distant storm partly blocks the sunset. Later that night another band of the storm gave us a scary lightning show.

Gorgeous!

Really great photo. Was the lake swimmable? I see the deck has stairs leading into the water.

>87 avaland: What a beautiful photo! I hope you both had a relaxing and enjoyable vacation.

>89 dchaikin: We've never seen this phenomenon before at the lake.

>90 LolaWalser: Yes, swimmable - Lois is the swimmer, not me (I went in once).

>91 labfs39: It was fun, if rainier and hotter than we looked for.

It's been a weird summer, weather wise.

>93 labfs39: indeed!

>88 dukedom_enough: >92 dukedom_enough: Looks lovely! Rainier and hotter was a good motto for the summer in Georgia too.

Chiming in late, but wow that looks nice. I'm notably more relaxed just looking at that photo.

'>96 lisapeet: Waving to Lisa! (I am still stunned by that display....)

Hi there! As I've joined CR very late I've only caught up on this part of your thread, but will look forward to following your reviews for the rest of the year. :)

>98 chlorine: Thank you for the compliment. There are two of us here, Michael (dukedom_enough) and myself. My reviews are somewhat less than they used to be, his remains wonderfully thorough.

>98 chlorine: >99 avaland:

Also wonderfully slow to show up.

Lost Places by Sarah Pinsker

This is Sarah Pinsker's second short-story collection.

My favorite here is 2022 Hugo & Nebula winner "Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather", which takes the form of an entry on the fictional website LyricSplainer. A small collection of regulars have met there to dissect the eponymous song, an old English ballad, Child 313 (note there are actually just 305 Child Ballads), variations of which have been covered by such folk luminaries as Steeleye Span and Windhollow Faire. As the discussion proceeds by means of notes, web links, and snarky comments, we realize that, even in modern times, it's not wise to look too closely into witchy doings in the English countryside.

Or maybe my fave is the magical-realist "I Frequently Hear Music in the Very Heart of Noise." Pinsker starts in 1924 with George Gershwin working on "Rhapsody in Blue", and expands her story to embrace all of the musicians and artists associated with New York City in the 20th Century, and the hotels they lived and partied in, and the ballrooms where they played the music and the studios where they painted the canvases all somehow coming together on one ecstatic night, in one ballroom: people whose lives never overlapped digging the music together. Also there's a bit on mathematician David Hilbert's infinite-hotel paradox, plus a woman pianist named Bess Morris, (whom I think Pinsker made up) whose composition is at the center of it all.

The remaining ten stories are all excellent and imaginative. A woman learns unexpected things about her past from old videocassettes of a creepy children's show. A rural pond is a popular spot for diving - even though sometimes the divers disappear, never to come up. A boy is hired to read aloud the intertitles of silent movies in a theater.

Several stories are dystopias in which the possibility of hope or escape or resistance appears. Is this what kids these days call hopepunk? A nice change, perhaps, from the darker stories I read.

Definitely looking up more of her books.

4.5 stars

>101 dukedom_enough: I was inspired by your review to look for an online version of the story, and found a list with links to several covers, including the ones you mention, on Uncanny Magazine, where I think the short story was first published. It's not often that you see Kingston Trio and Metallica on the same list.

>101 dukedom_enough: >102 labfs39: I just read Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather and loved it! Thank you both.

>102 labfs39: Thanks for tracking that down; I was too lazy.

>103 FlorenceArt: Glad you liked it.

I've bought Pinsker's novel We Are Satellites, after being so impressed by the stories.

I searched for Pinsker on my Kobo, and I found her in three short stories collections, one of which I already read. It’s the one about the boy who reads out movie intertitles. I don’t remember much about it, it wasn’t among my favorites from Some of the Best of tor.com 2021.

>99 avaland: I did not skim over your thread so fast that I did not notice that there are two of you! :) I should have said that I'm looking forward to reading you'all's reviews ;) (as a French person the lack of a plural "you" in English is somewhat aggravating)

>101 dukedom_enough: Lost places is on my wishlist (BTW your touchstone links to another book).
I read Where Oaken Heats do gather and thought it was OK but it did not work for me as well as for many people, but I really liked Two truths and a lie, the one about the tapes from a childhood show. I'll be looking forward to your review of her novel.

>106 chlorine: Thanks for the correct touchstone.

>106 chlorine: You can pretend you're from the southern US and say y'all, as in y'll come back.


Sky Above Kharkiv: Dispatches from the Ukrainian Front
Serhiy Zhadan, 2022

Serhiy Zhadan is a celebrity in Ukraine—a poet, author and musician (just three of his talents), When the war started he was living in the city of Kharkiv, on the border with Russia. Zhadan volunteered to do whatever was needed in the community all while trying to keep his fellow Ukrainians from despair.

This book is a collection of his FaceBook posts between February 24th, 2022 when the war started, and June 24th (five months later). One gets a vivid picture of a city and its inhabitants during wartime, and life does go on.

I found it fascinating, riveting and powerful. Zhadan is admirable (not your average FaceBook posts!) If I could, I would buy you all a copy (I hope Yale University donates the proceeds … )

More) : https://www.wordsforwar.com/serhiy-zhadan-bio

I love your last sentiment. I think i’ll keep this in mind next bookstore stop.

>108 markon: y'all is the spelling I was looking for, thanks! I'll have trouble pretending I'm from Southern US because I tend to use british spelling though. :p

>109 avaland: This seems fascinating. I guess those FaceBook posts were originally written in Ukranian or Russian then translated to English?

>109 avaland: I was waiting for your comments on this one as I knew you were reading it. Sounds like it might be one for me (“not your average FB posts” - thank goodness!)

>109 avaland: Oooh, this looks interesting.

>109 avaland: Noted. That looks like a valuable read.

How Fire Descends: New and Selected Poems
by Serhiy Zhadan, 2023

This volume of poetry is a fab introduction to the Ukraine poet and all-around renaissance man, Serhiy Zhadan. The English translation of this work is relatively smooth and well done. Here is one of my favorites from the collection:

How Fire Descends: New and Selected Poems (2023 translation)
Serhiy Zhadan (Ukraine)

"Maybe the Most Important Thing"

Maybe the most important thing I’ve see
in my life are the stones in the city from which
trees grow. The granite foundation of Scandinavian capitals,
stability and a landscape full of love.

The dubious joy of being a tree,
the dubious honor of holding the spine straight,
while feeling beneath the deadly cold of your homeland;
standing in the wind teaches restraint
and makes you hold on the hardness like a last hope.

My friends the trees,you have been cast onto stones,
like preaches thrown to the lions,
did you ever regret
you were born here, to this trouble,
never knowing the ease
of Mediterranean shores?

My friends the trees, did you ever complain
about the wind that made you so indestructible?
Did you ever complain about your place,
formed by the winds of your homeland?

We will tale everything we can get from life.
We will shout words of thanks to the sunlit skies of our cities.
We will cry with joy
and laugh at the impossibility of changing anything.
We will strengthen our place:
a country cold as stone,
a people warm as trees.

(translated from the Ukranian by Virlana Tracz and Wanda Phipps)

duplicate post!

>115 avaland: I like that poem, Lois.

I'm anxious to get to his book you sent me. Intrigued by the poem.

Excellent poem!

>115 avaland: Very good poem indeed.

Thanks, all. Wish it was one of my poems ;-)

The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War by Jeff Sharlet

Reporter Jeff Sharlet is best known for The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. The current book, published in 2023, is mainly a tour of the world of Trump followers, plus some other chapters bearing on our predicament. I worry about the people who dwell in Trump world, drilling with their guns and trading insane stories about the evils of people not in their cult. Sharlet, a political progressive, goes and talks to them, bringing back what he's learned in ten chapters across three major sections, most with photo illustrations.

He starts the book with a section titled "Day-O:On Hope". There's a chapter on Harry Belafonte, singer and civil rights activist, whose smile hid his anger. Following is a piece on the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011, through the lens of a Cynthia Ozick book that once was part of the Occupy library.

The next second major section, "Dream On:On Vanity", starts with portraits of a couple of preachers of the so-called Prosperity Gospel - the theory that Jesus wants his followers to be, not good so much as rich, which fortune they may attain by sending money to these preachers. Sharlet next explores the "manosphere", the online groupings of men who feel, deeply and personally, that the world owes them sexual access to women, and threaten or commit violence when the world doesn't make good on the debt.

In "The Trumpocene", Sharlet recounts his attendance at numerous rallies of the Trump 2020 presidential campaign. He talks to voters who believe in more secret knowledges and conspiracies than you could shake a demonic stick at, including that Bill and Hillary Clinton are serial murderers (they killed one of his interviewees' uncles!) who eat babies. There's a subpart on Gnosticism and its natural blend with right wing delusion.

The section ends with "Tick-Tock", on the Qanon conspiracy theorists, for whom every inconsistency, every Trump brain glitch, is a clue.

The third and last major section, "Goodnight, Irene:On Survival", begins with the 123 page heart of the book, "The Undertow", which follows the story of Ashli Babbit. That's her knife on the book's cover illustration; she was carrying it when she was shot to death while breaching the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Babbit has become a sort of saint on the right. The chapter is a road trip across America, starting at a "justice for Ashli" rally in California. There, a pastor wears a t-shirt featuring Joshua 1:9, which he takes as an exhortation to kill in Trump's righteous cause. Proud Boys trade punches with Antifa as the police look on. A French-speaking Native American Jew-for-Jesus January 6 rioter is interviewed. A jobless ex-TV host declares what Ashli would want today. Ashli's mother asks why Ashli is not proclaimed a hero. Kyle Rittenhouse's former lawyer says that Ashli "was all of us". An Ashli flag is flown. Sharlet is threatened by men calling themselves Saviors, and leaves for his next stop, Yuba City California, where he visits a church known for giving Michael Flynn a rifle, for holding mask-free services throughout the COVID years,and for a pulpit made from swords. A guest speaker, David Straight, talks about heading a secret team under Melania Trump which arrested many child traffickers, and notes that Hillary Clinton has already been executed.

Getting dizzy yet? But the reader must follow Sharlet farther as he travels east across Nevada, hearing talk-radio hosts make machine-gun noises over the air. He gives us more of what his subjects say about Ashli, in Rifle, Colorado and Omaha, Nebraska, among other places. In Wisconsin he meets the Brumms, who show him some of (the legal part of) their arsenal and boast that their adult daughter is the family's best shot and a rare natural killer; the dad opposes abortion because it makes for fewer soldiers when China will invade the US. And on: so many guns, so many weirdly decorated flags, so many characters whose self-defined individualities overlay political tendencies all pointed in the same direction.

Sharlet's last chapter, "The Good Fight is the One You Lose", is another musician's biography, that of Lee Hays, the bass voice of The Weavers, who fought fascists with song, sometimes in venues where that put his life at stake.

The Undertow is impressionistic, not analytical. There's not a thesis so much as a theme: we're all here together in America, distrusting one another, fed different streams of information. The main fault I find with the book is that it's hard to know what to do with what he gives us. But that's the main problem with contemporary politics; we know what's wrong, but what do we do?

Four stars

>122 dukedom_enough: Great review, Michael. I'm not sure I could handle the book though. Irrationality is so frustrating.

>122 dukedom_enough: "getting dizzy yet" pretty much sums up how I feel after reading your review, so I can't imagine how one feels after reading it.

I wonder how the people interviewed react to the final book. It makes me feel of a former French TV program called Strip-Tease which consisted in documentaries about people who seemed completely crazy to the audience, yet the show openly interviewed these persons and they willingly explained their way of life, and it always made me wonder what they thought about the show, whether they realised that they were considered weird and that it is why they were being interviewed.

>122 dukedom_enough: Frightening

>122 dukedom_enough: Thanks for that review. I've read what Sharlet has posted online and I find his point of view terrifying and no doubt accurate.

The section on the Brumms is excerpted in this Vanity Fair article. You may be blocked by a paywall.

>122 dukedom_enough: Man, now I am equal parts interested in reading that and sick and weary at the very thought of reading that. But I think it's going to have to go onto the wishlist, anyway.

>123 labfs39: Not sure how I handled it.

>124 chlorine: I can imagine that many of them were pleased that Sharlet represented their beliefs to his readers. I think he must have a deft touch as an interviewer.

>125 baswood: Indeed.

>126 RidgewayGirl: Of course there are many Trump suppoters who are not (yet) so crazily ready for violence, but he certainly found plenty who are.

>128 bragan: It's probably not the best single book to read on the present political situation. There are so many books now. No one will be able to say we weren't warned.

Ursula K. Le Guin: Conversations on Writing: with David Naimon

Between the palm-sized hard covers of this book is a treasure of wisdom from one of American’s great writers. In 2018, before her death, Ursula K. Le Guin sat down with David Naimon to discuss, yes, writing, but also so, so much more. Naimon is an excellent interviewer, but it really is more a conversation between himself and Ursula. Whether or not you have ever read any of her fiction, poetry or other works, this little book might blow your mind.

if needed:
https://www.biography.com/writer/ursula-k-le-guin

>130 avaland: I can't wait to read this! Thank you :-)

>131 labfs39: She was an extraordinary woman. I think the interviewer was excellent. Yes, more of a conversation than an interview....

Words for War: New Poems From Ukraine, 2018
Edited by Oksana Maksymchuk & Max Rosochinsky

After a very nice preface by the editors, the reader is treated to an excellent introduction by poet Ilya Kaminsky.

This collection covers sixteen different Ukrainian poets, eight women and eight men. Their works have been translated from the original Ukrainian or Russian. Interestingly, most of the poems are NOT about war, but I transcribe here one, poem by Anastasia Afanasieva that is about war:

Can there be poetry after:
Yasynuvata, Horlivka, Savur-Mohyla, Novoazovsk
After:
Krasnyi-Luch, Donetsk, Luhansk
After
Sorting bodies in repose from the dying
The hungry from those on a stroll
Long after
Poetry devolves to “autistic babbling”
Lips mating in the darkness
I ask
Half-awake
Is poetry possible
At the moment history stirs
Once its steps
Reverberate through every heart?
Impossible to speak of anything else,
Talking becomes impossible.

As I write this
Very close to me
Every hope is being ended.

Translated from the Russian by Kevin Vaughn & Maria Khotimsky

----------
Note: I’m not enamored with the cover art. I think I get what they were trying to do but it doesn’t work well, and comes off a bit creepy

I love all the reviews of Ukrainian literature. Interesting gender balance in the poetry book. I find that uncommon.

>134 labfs39: Thanks. Yes, I noticed that gender balance also.

A Haunting on the Hill by Elizabeth Hand

Why would anyone want to live in a haunted house? In this authorized sequel to Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, Elizabeth Hand has an up-to-date answer: real estate! The COVID era migration to remote work in the countryside has driven housing costs up, so even Hill House looks worth renting.

This is a bad idea for playwright Holly Sherwin, who rents Hill House for two weeks in late Fall to workshop her play, about a witch with a demon dog. Fading diva Amanda will be the witch, Holly's girlfriend Nisa will be a one-person chorus singing rewritten murder ballads, and their friend Stevie will do sound design and play the demon. Omens pile up fast, often related to dark episodes in Holly's and the others' pasts. But the rental money has been spent! And the house seems perfect in many ways...

It's not necessary to read The Haunting of Hill House to appreciate this book. There are a few allusions to earlier occupants of the house in the 1950s and 1980s, and an old tree stump where the fatal tree stood in Jackson's book. Hand is good at this, and the ending delivers all of the uncanny I could ask for.

Three and a half stars

Midsummer Century by James Blish

This 1972 novella is quirky in ways I don't often see in contemporary SF. In the 20th century, John Martels, astronomer, slips and falls from the top of his radio telescope. When awareness returns, his consciousness is hosted in a brain-in-a-box 23,000 years in the future. The brain's owner, the Qvant, Supreme Autarch of Rebirth III, can't evict him - and anyway, Martels is a change from endless staring at decaying exhibits in the disused museum where the Qvant is stationed, Rebirth III having given way to Rebirth IV long ago. At intervals, one or another 250th century human visits, to ask the Qvant for advice in their losing war against the Birds - avian species having become larger, smarter, better organized, and much more hostile than in our era. Can the mind from antiquity save the human species from extinction?

The struggle against the Birds is paralleled by Martels' increasing understanding of the psionic forces that brought him to the future and govern the afterlife humans go to. Blish provides a lot of moments where Martels comes to a realization that just is not evident in what the reader knows. I had forgotten how like A. E. van Vogt he could be in this way.

We're also reminded that Blish didn't deserve his reputation as a writer of hard SF, which mainly rested on his having heard of one or two more physicists than most mid-century SF writers. For example, at one point Martels looks at the Moon and notices that it's gotten visibly farther from the Earth over 23,000 years. At 3.8 cm per year, we actually expect less than a kilometer's difference - not visible.

Still, quirky: the psionics, plus various of Blish's hobbyhorses, e.g. that history moves in cycles - the Rebirth eras. So my rating is higher than the story deserves. A newcomer to Blish should skip this one and try "Surface Tension" or A Case of Conscience.

Mine is an old SFBC copy missing its cover.

Two stars

I finished Ten Years of the Caine Prize for African Writing this morning. Thanks for sending my way!

>137 dukedom_enough: Whenever I see Blish mentioned, I'm reminded of the extremely pleasant experience I had back in my teens reading Cities in Flight. Cheers!

Interesting to read a review of a little known James Blish novel - He is usually dependable and the City in Flight series just about holds up now, I read it a few years ago

>139 rocketjk: >140 baswood:
I thought of mentioning Cities in Flight, but the entire four books is a long series to recommend, especially with each part so different from the others. Fun fact: They Shall Have Stars's variant title is Year 2018!. Where's my spindizzy?

>137 dukedom_enough: Interesting review. I don't think I have read any James Blish, and if I want to get to him I will follow your advice and not start with this one. ;)

>142 chlorine: When I review one of an author's lesser books, I like to suggest ones they're better known for.

>137 dukedom_enough: I've read some Blish (starting with his Star Trek novelizations when I was ten, something that has had a ridiculously outsized impact on my life), but not that one.

I have to admit, as someone who operates radio telescopes for a living, the only thought in my head right now is: how did he manage to fall off, what was he doing up there, and which safety regulations was he breaking? :)

The Orphanage : A Novel by Serhiy Zhadan (Ukraine, 2017, English translation 2021

March, Wartime, Kharkiv, Ukraine. Pasha is a relatively young high school teacher of Ukrainian. He shares an apartment with his father. His sister asks that Pasha to make a three day trek to pick up her son from the orphanage there (where she put him as she has a drug problem) Pasha is a good guy and leaves to get the kid.

Did I say this is in wartime? Pasha’s journey is not easy and he faces many challenges but he does make it to the orphanage and collects his 17-year nephew, (who he doesn’t really know, so they will get to know each other) and heads back with just enough juice in his cell phone for one phone call.
————-

This is a unusual book, and I think it requires flexibility from the reader. While reading this I thought of other books…other kinds of books i.e. post-apocalypse, madcap, epic …. I began to dog-ear page corners (gasp!)

Pasha’s journey reveals the absurdity and messiness of war, and yet, in some way the story is part bildungsroman, and or a hero’s journey. Wild and non-stop, but what a splendid, crazy read.

*I note that came to this novel after reading and enjoying Zhadan's most recent translated volume of poetry, How Fire Descends and a nonfiction Sky Above Kharkiv: Dispatches from the Ukrainian Front (essentially, a collection of his FaceBook posts). But I have three more of his books to read :-)

>145 avaland: Zhadan sounds like an author I must get to sooner rather than later. I've been intrigued by your reviews of his works. I hope the US doesn't leave Ukraine out in the cold this winter...

>144 bragan: The newly built radio telescope of radical design (at "Sockette State" in the American midwest) can't "...be made to pick up anything but the local rock-and-roll station." After testing, Martels suspects "...a flaw in the gross construction of the telescope, probably something so simple as a girder out of true in the wave guide...". So he climbs up the wave guide with a field strength detector.

Safety regulations? Buddy system? Climbing gear? No mention.

>63 avaland: I loved Antarctica - I loved the first story - the titled one. I love the edge Keegan has in her stories.

Re going back to books by authors once enjoyed, it’s sad that many seem to be declining and seem out of date. Ian McEwan for example could always be relied upon.

Standing My Ground: A Capitol Police Officer’s Fight for accountability and Good Trouble After January 6th by Harry Dunn, 244 pages

Readers might recognize Harry Dunn from footage of the capital on January 6th…(2022) He’s a big guy (6’8”) and he was on duty that day. In this book he tells his own story in his own words, both of the chaos and violence of that awful day but also the aftermath.

I picked up this book for two reasons…one, because I have worked in several police departments and dispatch centers and was curious how this all went down. Second, I’m sure he was thoroughly interrogated professionally but I wanted to hear this man’s story…in his own words. Seems to me we owe these brave officers, bona fide heroes, our gratitude. This is my way of doing so.

>147 dukedom_enough: OK, that definitely hurt my brain. Ow. :)

>150 bragan: Does get the plot moving.

Lois and I have decamped to our new thread at Club Read 2024. See you there.