The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1 star)

I loved the Goldfinch. Loved it. I think it's one of my favorite books ever. I don't understand how the same person wrote this.

The secret history is spectacularly boring, with ridiculously unlikable characters who don't even seem like plausible humans.

Richard is inexplicably drawn to this cast of pretentious assholes who accidentally, or maybe on purpose, killed someone. And he seems determined to fit in with them for god knows what reason. He almost dies from hypothermia because he's an idiot and doesn't ask anyone for help, and then seems really really determined to get involved in another murder for no reason. He's not the one being blackmailed, and the blackmailer and blackmailee deserve whatever dumb hell they have built for themselves.

I should have stopped reading. 18% into the novel my note was "Where are we going? Rich kids do greek class is all I got". There's no payoff.

1 star.

Monkeys on the Road: One family's vanlife adventure south in search of a simpler life by Mary Hollendoner (5 stars)

Mary and John did what for many people is only ever a dream: opting out of careers in tech for #vanlife and a multi-year adventure from Yosemite to Patagonia with their 6-yr old daughter.

This is different from many of the other adventure memoirs I've read that tend to be feats of strength or endurance: riding bikes across a continent etc. Those accounts often have to convey tales of brutal monotony and courage in the face of weeks of grinding hardship in a way that somehow manages to be interesting. Here Mary gets to pick only the most fascinating parts of a huge multi-year multi-country adventure, and there are plenty: both heart-warming and heart-wrenching. No boring bits :)

Part of me wants to use this as an inspirational travel checklist, and it certainly is that. Assuming of course that you can handle the most off-the-beaten-track version of travel where there are no guides, very few plans, and generally a great willingness to follow what may or may not be a passable road over the well-traveled routes.

But what really stands out is not the sights. Mary reaches a point that I've occasionally got to in travelling where you don't really care about more cities, or rocks, or ruins, or gorges, or rivers, or whatever, and just want to hang out with cool people. And what I totally believe from this book and my own travelling experience is that to find interesting people you can just turn up and be super friendly with whoever you encounter. It's also true that the people with the least will give the most and find joy in the giving: time, food, shelter, love.

Other things I learned about traveling overland in South America: borders with a vehicle can be crazy stressful and complicated, it's essential to have good Spanish, and you'd better be a mechanic. Oh, and a global pandemic will constantly redefine what you thought your travel experience was going to be.

Loved it!

5 stars.

Shorefall by Robert Jackson Bennett (4.5 stars)

The sequel to foundryside! I was a little disappointed to be back in heist mode again, it felt like doing the same thing all over again, but OK. This one is definitely darker and I think the pacing is a bit more uneven. Everything becomes super-powerful beings and it seems unclear why those beings wouldn't just be able to crush everyone immediately.

I continued to enjoy the descriptions of Clef hacking his way through magical doors and locks. There really are a lot of programming and software themes in these "ancient" magic systems set in what otherwise feels like fairly medieval times. Clef opens doors by convincing the programs running those doors that they are allowed to open backwards, or are already open etc. This is a really really clever layperson's description of computer hacking.

The dark dark view of capitalism continues:

“There is no innovation that will ever spring from the minds of men that will not eventually be used for slaughter and control.

An emperor’s hunger for control will always outlast a moralist’s desire for equality and idealism.

“That humankind will always invent, but the powers of these inventions will always eventually accrue to the most powerful, and they will use them for conquest and slaughter?”

“Scriving is the root of all these problems. Polina quite literally calls it an evil magic. And after what I just went through…I find it hard to argue. I am forced to wonder—would it be better if…if we just didn’t have it?” Sancia thought about it. “If it wasn’t scriving,” she said finally, “it’d be something else. Land. Money. Iron. Or, hell, even beans, if Crasedes told me the truth. People are inventive. And anything they invent they can use to raise themselves up over everyone else.” “Then…could we ever win?” Gregor said. “Is this just a dance we do over and over? Will everything we build turn to nothing but ugliness?” 

“True,” she said. “I know the hearts of men. I know that so long as humankind possesses a power, they will always, always use it to rule the powerless. And there is no alteration, no scriving, no command that either I or the Maker could ever wield that would burn this impulse out of you. Better to destroy what power you have.” 

I'm eagerly awaiting the final book in the trilogy, but this one definitely felt like a "middle" book. I think the most impressive part of the writing here is that the reader is not at all convinced that the "bad guy" is actually wrong. It could be that these well-meaning citizens we're empathizing with are actually making the whole world worse. Are we the baddies?

Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett (5 stars)

Really excellent fantasy that had me hooked quickly. It's China Meiville level worldbuilding, but a bit less dark and with a heist flavor and an interesting magic system. The themes of the novel are about the winners and losers in capitalism and how power naturally concentrates and elevates a few at the cost of many. 

The magic system is based on a forgotten alphabet, and how those that understand how to use it can build libraries of tools that perform powerful functions. Everything from weapons to building re-inforcement. This "scriving" has a lot of similarities to programming, here they build functions:

They’d figured out that you could take a blank slate of iron, write out that extensive, complicated scriving command; but then, you could follow it with the sigil for “meaning,” and next write a completely new sigil, one you yourself just made up.

And it made me wonder if it wasn't supposed to be commentary on the powerful software houses of the modern era where power concentrates because they have the best libraries, and software "foundries".

The world building really is impressive, and the plot is unpredictable.

Some favorite quotes:

“Traditional,” she echoed. “What a curious word that is. So bland, and yet often so poisonous.”

Every innovation—technological, sociological, or otherwise—begins as a crusade, organizes itself into a practical business, and then, over time, degrades into common exploitation. This is simply the life cycle of how human ingenuity manifests in the material world.

Gregor stared at the lorica. He had seen such things before, and he knew what they were meant for: war, and murder.

“Remember—move thoughtfully, give freedom to others, and you’ll rarely do wrong, Sancia. I’ve learned that now. I wish I’d known it in life.”

Any given innovation that empowers the individual will inevitably come to empower the powerful much, much more.

5 stars!

 

 

 

 

Normal People: A Novel by Sally Rooney (3.5 stars)

Boy is this book getting attention at the moment, it seems to be really divisive. It's also been made into a TV series.

I think I'm going to spoilertown on this one, so come back once you've read it?

Straight out of the gate it annoyed me with the lack of quotation marks and dialog that felt...weird to read. Like you're watching a Gilmore girls episode on 1.5 speed.

I got an A1, he says. What did you get in German? An A1, she says. Are you bragging? You’re going to get six hundred, are you? She shrugs. You probably will, she says. Well, you’re smarter than me. Don’t feel bad. I’m smarter than everyone.

But OK, Cormac McCarthy did it I guess. Somehow it was less annoying. Anyway.

Connell goes around being a complete dick to Marianne. And my experience of teenage boys kept looking to find something wrong with Marianne, what was the big problem? Why was he so embarrassed at the thought of his friends knowing they were together? Was it the class thing because his mum was her house cleaner? Something about her appearance? She certainly wasn't stupid, she's top of the class for the entire novel. This is as close as we get to an explanation along these lines coming late in the book:

Marianne says nothing. It’s true they did bully her. Eric called her “flat-chested” once, in front of everyone, and Rob, laughing, scrambled to whisper something in Eric’s ear, some affirmation, or some further insult too vulgar to speak out loud.

Which is incredibly petty. But spoiler: there's nothing really wrong, Connell is just a dick to her in high school. This annoyed me at the time, but on reflection I think it's actually clever. Teenage boys really don't need much reason at all to act like this, who cares what the reason was? It was Connell's problem not Marianne's.

He didn’t say anything. Eventually she laughed, because she wasn’t totally without spirit, and it obviously was kind of funny, just how savagely he had humiliated her, and his inability to apologize or even admit he had done

And later we find out all of that sneaking around and the hurt caused over the debs was for nothing, everyone knew anyway. Good. Connell should feel bad.

He knew then that the secret for which he had sacrificed his own happiness and the happiness of another person had been trivial all along, and worthless. He and Marianne could have walked down the school corridors hand in hand, and with what consequence? Nothing really. No one cared.

But then Marianne goes to university and suddenly being super smart, sarcastic, and your own independent person means she's cool, not weird. This is a transition that I think lots of people can relate to. High school is for conforming, university is for standing out: weird is cool.

Frustratingly Marianne and Connell circle each other again. And Connell fucks it all up again

He told her that, when she asked him who his best friend was. You, he said. Then at the end of May he told her he was moving home for the summer.

...because he's too dumb to ask if he can stay at Marianne's house for a few months, when he has been practically living there anyway. Because of the class dynamic and he wants to be the big man I guess? But we don't really know. And Marianne doesn't offer because she expects to be hurt and expects Connell to leave her?

The reality was that he stayed in Marianne’s apartment most nights anyway. He could just tell her about the situation and ask if he could stay in her place until September. He knew she would say yes. He thought she would say yes, it was hard to imagine her not saying yes. But he found himself putting off the conversation, putting off Niall’s enquiries about it, planning to bring it up with her and then at the last minute failing

It sounds semi-plausible when I write it out like that but it drove me nuts when I was reading because it was so unbelievable. What follows is a series of sadder and sadder emotionally and physically violent relationships for Marianne that is pretty depressing to read. Each one breaking her a bit more.

So the plot is really frustrating, and the punctuation is annoying, but there is some serious 5 star writing in here. This. This one gives me the chills:

Marianne thinks cruelty does not only hurt the victim, but the perpetrator also, and maybe more deeply and more permanently. You learn nothing very profound about yourself simply by being bullied; but by bullying someone else you learn something you can never forget.

And people saying there wasn't enough character development must have been asleep for gems like this:

She’s missing some primal instinct, self-defense or self-preservation, which makes other human beings comprehensible. You lean in expecting resistance, and everything just falls away in front of you. Still, he would lie down and die for her at any minute, which is the only thing he knows about himself that makes him feel like a worthwhile person.

 I can see why it rated well with book critics.

3.5 stars.

A Children's Bible: A Novel by Lydia Millet (2 stars)

I'm on board for the premise here. The older generation has ruined the planet and are sitting around having petty squabbles and taking drugs while it burns. Checks out.

I'm also onboard for the dark humor. On paper this should be exactly the sort of weird novel I love, but I found it pretty underwhelming.

The humor is there but felt like it needed to be just a touch more absurd to really get me laughing. It's definitely not a "real" post-apocalyptic novel, but it also is a bit too real to be truly funny. It isn't as funny noir as something like Hard Luck Hank, but seems like it could have been.

“Do you blame us?” asked a mother. Pathetic-sounding. “We blame you for everything,” Jen said evenly. “Who else is there to blame?” 

“You gave up the world,” said David. “You let them turn it all to shit,” said Low. I almost forgot the taste of old banana, then. “I hate to disappoint you, but we don’t have that much power,” said a father. “Yeah. And that’s what they all said,” said Jen. “Listen. We know we let you down,” said a mother. “But what could we have done, really?” “Fight,” said Rafe. “Did you ever fight?” “Or did you just do exactly what you wanted?” said Jen. “Always?”

2 stars.

The Overstory by Richard Powers (4.5 stars)

I came to this one, a Pulitzer prize winner, from various recommendations: friends, podcasts, and a quote from President Obama who said "it changed how I thought about the Earth and our place in it". I can see why, it did the same thing to me.

In this book Powers has given to the climate movement the greatest gift an artist can give: inspiration for the cause. He's quite transparent about what he's doing:

“The best arguments in the world won’t change a person’s mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.”

“Yes! And what do all good stories do?” There are no takers. Neelay holds up his arms and extends his palms in the oddest gesture. In another moment, leaves will grow from his fingers. Birds will come and nest in them. “They kill you a little. They turn you into something you weren’t.”

The setting where I was reading this book contributed to its ability to have a significant effect on me. We were staying in the forest near La Push, WA on the Olympic Peninsula, and hiking in the temperate rainforests of Olympic National Park: home to the densest biomass on earth.

Completely surrounding the national park are huge swaths of clear cutting, usually deliberately hidden with thin green strips from the major freeways traveled by tourists, so as to avoid igniting any inconvenient anti-forestry sentiment. Clear cuts are a private destruction whose only evidence is a parade of logging trucks and massive lumber mills. Driving past the logging trucks made us sad an angry. Take a look at the satellite view and you'll see brown/grey patches of clear cuts everywhere that isn't national park.

The Northwest has more miles of logging road than public highway. More miles of logging road than streams. The country has enough to circle the Earth a dozen times. The cost of cutting them is tax-deductible, and the branches are growing faster than ever, as if spring has just sprung.

I also recently learned that Frank Herbert drew inspiration for Dune and the once verdant but now sand-covered planet of Arrakis from time spent with the Quileute Nation of La Push and learning of ecological destruction in the region.

The Overstory speaks the language of the pacific northwest: hemlock, sitka, doug, and western red. It's something I feel in my bones now having lived, run, hiked, and biked in these forests for years. Our dougs are throwing their mouse-tailed cones at our roof and dropping them in among the kinnikinnick that foams over our front yard as I write this.

...the drooping females with their mouse tails sticking out from the coil of scales, a look he finds dearer than his own life.

...secret congregations of salmonberry, elderberry, huckleberry, snowberry, devil’s club, ocean spray, and kinnikinnick. Great straight conifer monoliths fifteen stories high and a car-length thick hold a roof above all.

Before I moved to the temperate rainforests of cascadia ("THE FREE BIOREGION OF CASCADIA"), I lived for years in mountain view, home to the character Babul Mehta, and another area that features prominently in the book.

Outside, in the Valley of Heart’s Delight, the ghosts of almond, cherry, pear, walnut, plum, and apricot trees spread for miles in every direction, trees only recently sacrificed to silicon.

Descriptions of driving up sand hill road to skyline and seeing the massive redwoods at Big Basin brought back many memories of biking and camping in those woods. That's all a very long way to say that this book was definitely up my alley.

I was surprised to find it really tough going in the beginning though. And that's mostly due to the high number of different POVs (nine) that are used to tell the story. Keeping track of who they all were was a bit of a struggle, and even though I figured the stories would start converging at some point it was hard to care about so many different disconnected characters.

Powers is trying to do exactly as the text states: motivate us to action with a good story. And he's targeting the widest possible us: you're an immigrant who can't vote? someone without the physical ability to chain yourself to a tree or even really get to a forest? a struggling artist with no money? a young undergraduate scientist with no publications? No problem. You all have things you can do to protect the environment. You need to start by knowing we're pointed in the wrong direction and do something.

No: life is mobilized on a vastly larger scale, and the world is failing precisely because no novel can make the contest for the world seem as compelling as the struggles between a few lost people.

A seed that lands upside down in the ground will wheel—root and stem—in great U-turns until it rights itself. But a human child can know it’s pointed wrong and still consider the direction well worth a try.

If nothing else stays with me from this book it will be the knowledge of massive interconnectedness of forests through the astonishing work of Suzanne Simard whose biography shapes one of the major characters. Dying trees giving nutrients to their neighbors, warning of insect attacks through the mycelium network, and inter-species nutrient sharing are all things I'd never really considered before.

Some spoilers ahead.

The book has a certain fatalism and realism. The characters try a lot of things: building computer games that give people a way to explore and connect with the natural world, replanting old growth with weak monoculture forests, chaining themselves to trees, protests, living in a tree canopy to prevent mother trees being logged, blowing up logging equipment, considering public suicide as a protest. Everything fails. The giants die. The activists get pepper sprayed, tazed, and go to prison.

During the blowing-up-equipment section I thought Powers might end up documenting, and semi-advocating for, a guerrilla war against the destruction of trees. But he swerves away from both that and also a sad on-camera form of green matyrdom. If you're hoping to find a 3-step action plan for environmentalism, you'll be disappointed, this is fiction after all.

I found the resolution of the nine different stories somewhat unfulfilling for all the investment, they don't all exactly converge. But it was really brutally realistic.

“We accomplished nothing,” Adam says. “Not one thing.”

Ultimately I think Powers is telling us it's going to be messy, but we need to get involved. High school students will undoubtedly be studying this one for years.

It's a difficult read, I definitely wasn't enjoying it in the beginning. And I suspect that with less plot threads, more unification of threads and a more memorable ending it would have been 5 stars. But any book that permanently changes my view of the world needs at least:

4.5 stars.