Reviews and Comments

Fullbright scholar travels through Mexico with a migrant caravan. Incredible and infuriating look at immigration in Mexico and its relationship to the U.S. border.

The ending section on methodology is interesting. The book's approach to narrative and voice is explained there, and it's what makes me describe this as "gonzo anthropology." There's not an IRB in the world that would approve this, but I'm glad it was written.

Beautifully-written, brutal tale of eugenics and racism. The story is devastating and tells the story of Apple Island (based on a true story) from the perspective of a group of people who lived there across generations. A mixed-race collective that was ripped from their home, placed in "schools for the feeble-minded" or state hospitals. This is one of many books of historical fiction (or at least "historical fiction adjecent") up for awards recently, and I'm thinking of this trend part of a broader grappling with history. One version is MAGA, of course, or "parents rights" advocates who are banning books. Another version is this book (or The Maniac or Blackouts...two others I've read recently) that are using fiction to engage with history, telling histories without claiming to be offering just the facts of the case. Using the archive rather than claiming to represent it.

I love what this book does with both historical material and with storytelling. Sometimes I leave novels based on actual historical events wondering why a novelization or fictional approach is necessary, but this book both taught me something I didn't about Jan Gay and also reminded me how queer communication is...how true communication never hits the mark, never reveals itself, never lands.

Someone recommended these books to me because 1) I'm researching BBS systems and other pre-internet online communities; 2) They thought my kid would like it.

The picture of 80s life is pretty interesting, the artwork is great, and the depiction of BBS culture is especially interesting in that it's woven into the day-to-day of a world that (for the most part) didn't really know the personal computer was coming.

My favorite part of this book is the section on Emerson, Poe, Whitman, and Wordsworth. The nature writing was less of a draw for me, but even when I wasn't that engaged Oliver would come out what a pearl like this:

"I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything - other people, trees, clouds. And this is what I learned: that the world's otherness is antidote to confusion, that standing within this otherness - the beauty and the mystery of the world, out. in the fields or deep inside books - can re-dignify the worst-stung heart." (15)

This installment focuses on the 70s (Harlem Shuffle focused on the 60s), and the writing is great. There's a lot of New York specific detail about neighborhoods and streets that is lost on me, but it's necessary for a series that is so intent on using NYC much the way The Wire used Baltimore. My favorite moment is probably when the Magnavox Odyssey (the "brown box") makes a cameo. The research behind this book is pretty awesome.

If you're interested in federated social media (and I know that you are), you should check out this book. What's happening here on Bookwyrm shares a lot with the BBSs that Driscoll talks about in this book.

I was especially into the chapter on FidoNet given that I have been thinking for a couple of years about how much ActivityPub/Mastodon/Bookwyrm/etc. owe to FidoNet's attempts to "federate" (not the term they would have used) Bulletin Board Systems.

Re-reading this - an all-time favorite.

While the rest of the Manhattan Project folks were wringing their hands, Von Neumann was buying fancy clothes and drinking scotch. This book plays with rationality/irrationality and madness in interesting ways. The closing section on Go and AI is also really engrossing.

In ways similar to Kasulke's Several People are Typing, this book is taking up the materiality/immateriality of digital media. An app tracking more than just your clicks (biometric data, facial expressions) combines with big data in surprising ways. Plus, the main character is an Art History major who is working in content moderation.

If you liked the FX show Devs (and if you haven't seen that, watch it!), this book has a number of similarities.

Page-long sentences and intense, nested internal dialogue. A picture of bougie life in Japan in the 1990s, through the eyes of a woman who is frustrated and bored.

This is a strange book about Mariella Novotny, who (among other things) was an underage sex worker who had sex with JFK. But the story is much more interesting than that.

The book is interesting in that it peels back the curtain on a British underworld from the 1960s and 1970s. The author includes her own process in the reporting - we hear not only about Novotny but also about Pizzichini's attempts to chase down various threads of the story. This part was less interesting to me and served to kind of interrupt the historical narrative.

The plot of this (unpublished, unfinished) book is much more complicated than most other Manchette novels. It made me sad that he didn't get to finish this book or the series he was thinking would follow it.