Reviews and Comments

Re-reading this one because I'm teaching it. One of my favorites.

This is my first time reading one of these books (Strange Houses and Strange Pictures are lauded by most), so I'd be interested to know what fans of the series think. I like the conceit (floor plans with strange details that end up being linked to dark story lines), but the last quarter of the book is a detailed reveal of a large, overarching story. That last section started to feel a little tedious. Still, it was a fun read, and I'd consider reading the other two books.

This book is really well written. I bought it because the book design was incredible and because it was billed as a "fable." It did not disappoint. Here's a passage in which the protagonist plays jazz on an instrument he fashioned from a goat horn. His audience for this performance is a goat who he has named Harmony:

"The first time Adi played 'Stella by Starlight,' cycling through his old club and crib-side standards, Harmony kept silent. But an hour later, when he played it again under a sky so star-spattered and cosmos-smeared that the song seemed not just befitting but ordained - this time Harmony joined in, rising to her hooves and bleating so gently and forlornly that after a while Adi lowered the horn to just listen. Her voice was deep and warbly, devoid of the staccato blats heard commonly up and down the island, and all the other goats yielded to her voice, choosing to listen like Adi was. Splitting his gaze between the starlight and the firelight, the only conclusion he could muster was that everything in nature, which meant everything everywhere, was more intricate and indecipherable than an outcast man on an obscure island could possibly fathom. The thought was a surrender yet in its wake trailed a peculiar solace, a sudden disburdening: if the questions could be answered then the strain of asking them must be futile. After a while he laid himself down in a soft hollow of sand, still listening to her sing as his eyelids slipped closed." (126)

True story: I didn't know the word "palaver" when I bought this book. I assumed it was a reference to some Portuguese term.

That kind of tells you what I knew about this book before I picked it up - I tend to shop on vibes at the bookstore. But this was a decent account of a mother and son figuring out their relationship and a fun account of queer communities and food in Tokyo.

I'm always interested in reading books about tech from the "near" past. This book, published in 2017, was probably ahead of its time. Addressing the idea of "waiting" in an attention economy that captures every moment is, of course, really necessary. The interesting thing about this book is the historical and cultural reach. Farman does deep historical, archival stuff about the use of seals on letters and with Civil War soldiers writing home, and he also travels around the world.

It is a quick read that is good for both academic and general audiences.

"The delay between sending and receiving a message is something people have always interpreted with anxiety, hope, fear, boredom, or longing. These interpretations are powerful tools for shaping the ways that we understand human connection and intimacy. These interpretations also help unlock innovation, as we speculate about the unknown and create new ways of exploring the universe." (1)

I loved Cryptonomicon, which was waaaay longer than this one (which is the beginning book in a series), but for some reason Cryptonomicon was much more interesting and engrossing to me. I'm not sure if my lukewarm response to this book was about me and my disjointed attention at the beginning of a semester or about the book. However, I did find a lot of moments in this book where Stephenson seemed to be showing off all the research he did. Personally, I wanted more Russian Revolution and communist drama. The narrative sometimes took a backseat to the historical setting.

This book addresses parenthood and the climate crisis - more specifically, the choice to have children given the current state of the world. As I started the book, I wasn't sure about Rush's ability to link these two narrative threads (discussions of birth stories alongside her account of her own trip to Antarctica to see the Thwaites glacier with a group of scientists). But it does come together in ways I didn't expect (and in ways I think Rush didn't even expect). There are some moments of overwrought prose but overall the book is worth a read. Climate literature can be bleak, and that happens somewhat in this text, but it's not only bleak.

A short, wild story about a quirky schoolteacher who is one day visited by a man "with canine tendencies."

Loved this account of the Detroit Printing Co-op. It's mostly a catalog of what the co-op printed in the 1970s, but there are some short bios in there too. The co-op was entirely non-profit and member run, and they printed the first English language translation of Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle.

The book itself is beautifully printed too, unsurprisingly given that it was put out by Inventory Press.

This short book was initially a lecture and then a series of exchanges via blog posts and articles in Jacobin. Malm's main intervention is to argue that the link between the genocide in Gaza and the climate catastrophe comes into focus if we look to deep history. In 1840, Britain first used steam-powered ships for warfare, and it did so in Palestine and Lebanon. Malm argues that tracking this history demonstrates how colonialism and its extractive logics are tied to the climate crisis. Toward the end, he also makes some arguments about Hamas and its tactics of armed resistance. Most responses to his argument focused on these latter arguments and not on the historical research (which really is the bulk of the lecture essay). The end of the book offers some responses to the various critiques about Hamas.

The historical argument is detailed and worth a reader's attention: "But when the Zionist movement was eventually assembled, it was a wagon that could be placed on ready-made tracks, laid out by the British Empire after 1840: the dominant classes of the metropole had already constructed the logic of its satellite colony in Palestine, if only as a mental image." (43)

This book weaves together digestible readings of Paradise Lost and discussions of how writers and thinkers have taken interpreted Milton and recruited him into various political projects. Great writing. I'd recommend this to anyone, regardless of their interest in Milton. As someone who's only ever really skimmed the poem, this book motivated me to return to it.

A short novel about teaching and parenting during COVID that also addresses some of the power dynamics of "Me Too," especially at its tail end. The people with power in this book exert it with a smile and a shoulder squeeze, but that doesn't change anything about the end result.

"I often felt harassed, as though I'd stubbed the same toe repeatedly over the course of the day. During the weekend, I'd carry a book with me from room to room, from the couch to the table, from the able to the couch, starting and restarting the same sentence. Sometimes it seemed that all my family did was insult one another and complain. 'If you hadn't had Lewis,' Jane had said recently, through tears, 'I would have had a peaceful life. A peaceful life.' Sometimes, when my children were sleeping, or walking into their schools, I would feel a drowning kind of love, mixed with guilt and a sense of loss piling upon loss and more losses to come. And very occasionally, for a moment or two, it would be as though I was lying on a warm dock, listening to water pleat itself in little waves; my mind would be clear; I would feel content" (106).

In some ways, this is a standard Jazz book, offering accounts of specific performers and performances, and digging deep into the stories behind this music. Its focus is on the free jazz movement ("The New Music") of the 1960s and 1970s, and that makes it especially interesting. Coletrane, Milford Graves, Ornette Coleman, and others were seeking out new directions for Jazz, and they were often maligned for it.

But beyond all this, Wilmer's chapters on women are the most interesting part of this book. Not only does she account for women who were playing music, she talks in depth about the women who did the reproductive labor necessary to ensure that these musicians (mostly men) could travel and pursue a profession that was usually not very well paid. Chapter 11, "It takes two people to confirm the truth," is the most interesting in the book. Published in 1977, the book feels like it was somewhat ahead of its time when it came to these questions of gender and labor.

I don't really read true crime, but this one was part of my N+1 Bookmatch recommendations for 2025. The writing is very good, and the courtroom drama is laid out in a compelling way. The author is more certain of things than I am, which I find interesting.

An example of the writing - the author is sitting with a friend and watching an episode of 60 Minutes that features people involved in the crime/mystery plot. Her friend falls asleep while watching the videotape:

"Once I would have jostled her, shouted, 'Wake up! Pay attention!' - but I had been learning, during the second trial, that the desire for sleep does not betray only boredom or fatigue. In these weeks of long, slow trauma interspersed with bloody skirmishes, I had found that suddenly falling asleep was a way of defending oneself against the unbearable." (247)