el dang wants to read The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and …
#SFFBookClub May
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I'm currently the coordinator of the #SFFBookClub so a lot of what I'm reading is suggestions from there.
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el dang reviewed Showa 1926–1939 by Shigeru Mizuki
"First volume of Shigeru Mizuki's meticulously researched historical portrait of twentieth century Japan. This volume …
Taught me a lot, beautifully drawn, at times confusing
4 stars
Well, I was wondering if this would be a quick read because manga or slow because of the heaviness of the material. Quick won out, though it certainly is very heavy material.
It's two stories interwoven: Mizuki's personal memoir (this volume is from early childhood - young adulthood), and the history of Japan. He's a great storyteller, and the art is beautifully done. At times he editorialises explicitly, and at times intentionally lays off passing judgement. In the middle of the book this was confusing, but by the end I felt like I could understand the editorial choices he was making. It comes across as a very compassionate way to tell stories that in the end he is clearly horrified by--both the politics and some of his behaviour as a kid.
The personal memoir + history book work better together than I'd have expected in this volume. My reservations were …
Well, I was wondering if this would be a quick read because manga or slow because of the heaviness of the material. Quick won out, though it certainly is very heavy material.
It's two stories interwoven: Mizuki's personal memoir (this volume is from early childhood - young adulthood), and the history of Japan. He's a great storyteller, and the art is beautifully done. At times he editorialises explicitly, and at times intentionally lays off passing judgement. In the middle of the book this was confusing, but by the end I felt like I could understand the editorial choices he was making. It comes across as a very compassionate way to tell stories that in the end he is clearly horrified by--both the politics and some of his behaviour as a kid.
The personal memoir + history book work better together than I'd have expected in this volume. My reservations were about the combo of hindsight and childhood stories specifically (as opposed to vol 2 which will clearly be that much more personal), but the childhood stuff ends up illustrating the social atmosphere in interesting ways. My one complaint is that the timeline jumps around in ways that make sense for the personal story, but at times make the history hard to follow. Probably if I had been less clueless about Japanese history before reading this it would have been less distracting.
I'm very glad I read this, both for the enjoyment and to start filling a big hole in my knowledge. I'm looking forward to getting hold of vol 2.
@mouse@bookwyrm.social Had couches not been invented yet?
el dang
boosted
Tak! quoted Roadside Picnic by Boris Strugatsky
Roadside Picnic is set in the aftermath of an extraterrestrial event called the Visitation that …
sometimes you think about it and you wonder: maybe we really should leave Satan’s works for Satan?
— Roadside Picnic by Boris Strugatsky, Boris Natanovich Strugatsky, Arkady Strugatsky, and 1 other
Every time somebody tries to pitch ai to me
el dang wants to read What Tech Calls Thinking by Adrian Daub
Adrian Daub's What Tech Calls Thinking is a lively dismantling of the ideas that form …
I just happened to notice that one of the hosts of Project 1933 also has this book out, which feels apropos.
I've started wanting to quote so much of this book to specific friends that it makes more sense to send them copies instead.
el dang started reading These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart by Izzy Wasserstein
Security expert Dora left her anarchist commune over safety concerns. But when her ex-girlfriend Kay …
Catching up on last month's #SFFBookClub pick
el dang reviewed Countess by Suzan Palumbo
A queer, Caribbean, anti-colonial sci-fi novella, inspired by the Count of Monte Cristo, in which …
I wanted to like this book but it ultimately frustrated
2 stars
The concept is one I really want to like: a twist on the Count of Monte Cristo that recasts it to make racism the motivating factor of all the betrayals, and uses a future setting to make a point about the durability of colonialism. But the pacing is so off that it takes away the impact from most of its own story.
el dang started reading Showa 1926–1939 by Shigeru Mizuki
"First volume of Shigeru Mizuki's meticulously researched historical portrait of twentieth century Japan. This volume …
Not sure if this will be a quick read because manga or a very slow read because heavy and timely subject matter.
el dang quoted Rimonim by Aurora Levins Morales
Rimonim is a richly woven tapestry of poetry meant for use. From a time of …
Content warning Long quote about antisemitism
Imagine racism is a millstone, a crushing weight that grinds and presses down relentlessly on people intended to be a permanent underclass. Its purpose is to extract the oil of profit from us, right to the edge of extermination and beyond. It presses and crushes and grinds, but the people push back, and it generates heat that begins to rise. If the owners of the mill, their handle on the switches and cranks, don't insulate themselves, it will all get too hot to handle.
Image the oppression of Jews is that insulation, a pressure valve, a shunt that redirects the steaming rage of working people away from the mostly white and Christian 1%, who own the machine and collect the oil pressed from our lives. Imagine a valve they can open at will, a pipe that diverts the scalding heat off to the side. For Jews to be blamed for oppression, some of us must be seen to prosper, must be well paid and highly visible, positioned as the public faces of an inequality we help to administer, but do not own. The purpose of oppressing Jews is not to crush us day after day. It's to have us available for crushing. To be the bone they throw.
Nobody sees the owners. They don't let their faces appear on the cover of Time and Newsweek. They hire us to be their faces. They send us to collect taxes. They appoint us as judges. Long before they let us live in their neighborhoods, they let us manage their inner city buildings full of brown people. And some of us agree. And some of us don't. But they keep telling stories about how we're greedy. When they cut 500 million dollars from the budget of the City University of New York, the tell the working class people of color who study there that the reason isn't that they hate public universities. The reason, they say, is that the people of color have upset the Jews. We are 1.7% of the world's people and 1.7% of the world's rich, but they say we are the reason people are poor.
Imagine the people under the grindstone are in a fury, marching down the road toward where the owners live. Imagine the oppression of Jews is a conjuring trick that works through misdirection, that the Protestant heirs of slaveholder fortunes, pilgrim entrepreneurs and railroad barons grown rich from stealing Indigenous land, the people who shoot our children, poison our water and break the circle of seasons are holding a great big DETOUR sign with red arrows pointing toward the Jews, and some of the marchers on the road begin to think the problem with Jewish financiers is that they are Jewish, not that they are financiers, that the problem with Jewish slumlords is that they are Jewish, not that they are slumlords. They don't notice that nobody ever says Presbyterian banker, Baptist slumlord. Some of them wander onto the side road, the momentum of their fury drains away into resentment, and they talk about Jews instead of class, begin to think maybe Jews ARE class. The steam thins out and blows away, and the owners are safe for another day.
— Rimonim by Aurora Levins Morales (Page 61 - 62)
This is a much longer excerpt than I would normally take the trouble to type out, but what it has to say is so important, and the specific example used so prescient, that it feels worth sharing. If you want to read more about this idea, I would actually recommend Levins Morales's essay in outside.ofa.dog/book/151039/s/on-antisemitism which gives a longer historical perspective and unpacks the idea further.
el dang
boosted
Tak! quoted Countess by Suzan Palumbo
A queer, Caribbean, anti-colonial sci-fi novella, inspired by the Count of Monte Cristo, in which …
Space colonization had not been the great equalizer the capitalist billionaires had advertised.
— Countess by Suzan Palumbo
el dang reviewed Our Share of Night by Megan McDowell
Come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly
5 stars
Content warning relatively minor setting spoilers
This is one of those books that took over my head at times, and I'll be thinking about for a long while after finishing it.
Before I say any more, general content warnings for the book itself: there is a lot of gruesome violence, and particularly physical and sexual abuse of children in here. Some of the violence is what I understand to be realistic descriptions of Argentina's 1970s & 80s history, some is taken much further than that. It never feels gratuitous in that it establishes characters and story, but it is A Lot.
So, a simple summary of this huge book would be to say that it's Enriquez processing the horrors of Argentina's dictatorships through fantastical macabre fiction. But that could be just the first chapter. As it goes on, the book encompasses so much more about modern colonialism, the utter ghoulishness of the rich, the hollowness of Swinging London, the AIDS crisis, and so on. The most consistent theme is how completely those with power are willing to treat those without it as un-people, which makes the death / immortality cult at the centre of the story a perfect microcosm. And the ways different characters struggle to make sense of what's going on with limited or no knowledge of that cult feels like a very realistic exploration of how conspiracy theories develop.
I'm definitely a little biased in favour of this book because the author and the main character are just a couple of years older than me, and because an assortment of random factors left me a little less ignorant about Argentina's 20th century history than most of Latin America's. So the real world parts and the cultural references hit home particularly well - even down to a scene when Gaspar puts on "The Cure's new album" to work through his feelings about something and I could identify which album and remember how I'd felt when I first heard it. But I also think it's just a very well told story in general.
el dang commented on Countess by Suzan Palumbo
A queer, Caribbean, anti-colonial sci-fi novella, inspired by the Count of Monte Cristo, in which …
#SFFBookClub April
el dang reviewed Those Beyond the Wall by Micaiah Johnson
Faced with a coming apocalypse, a woman must reckon with her past to solve a …
Bitter, entirely devoid of subtlety, and very very good
5 stars
This is the rare sequel that I like even better than its predecessor. The action is all in one world this time, and that lets the magical physics element disappear into the background. It also lets Ashtown and Wiley City both feel more developed - they're much more complete places in my mind now. More importantly, this is a much more direct, much more straightforwardly angry book. Johnson clearly wanted to wield a chainsaw, and she's very good at that.
It was not an escapist read in 2025, but the conclusion was very satisfying.
el dang started reading Our Share of Night by Megan McDowell
I'm actually about 3/4 of the way through this by the time I got around to updating here. It is an incredible book but oh god it needs so many content warnings especially right now.
Obvious general things: gore, violence, intense macabre, supernatural death cult, lots of abuse including sexual, including intra-family, including of children. More specific: a major strand of it is the author wrestling with the trauma of Argentina's era of military dictatorships, and the role of colonialism in them, by way of a supernatural horror story.
One thing it doesn't have, at least so far, is jump scares. The plot unfolds slowly and every new horror revealed is such a clear consequence of or context to what happened before that it's never terribly surprising. Which in itself feels like a stunningly effective allegory for a lot of political horror.
I'm very glad to be reading this, but …
I'm actually about 3/4 of the way through this by the time I got around to updating here. It is an incredible book but oh god it needs so many content warnings especially right now.
Obvious general things: gore, violence, intense macabre, supernatural death cult, lots of abuse including sexual, including intra-family, including of children. More specific: a major strand of it is the author wrestling with the trauma of Argentina's era of military dictatorships, and the role of colonialism in them, by way of a supernatural horror story.
One thing it doesn't have, at least so far, is jump scares. The plot unfolds slowly and every new horror revealed is such a clear consequence of or context to what happened before that it's never terribly surprising. Which in itself feels like a stunningly effective allegory for a lot of political horror.
I'm very glad to be reading this, but not sure I can recommend it for right now, especially to people in the US. I am also very much wishing I'd got around to reading it last year.