[Book Reviews] Books not in sets
From the holiday season, "Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us about Ourselves" (a girl_on_a_stick recommendation) was an intriguing dive, pun sorta intended, into the gonzo DIY worlds of freediving and deep-water scientific research. Of those, the freediving part was the more foreign to me, and also the more interesting. Tons of my friends enjoy scuba, and given my not-well-controlled asthma, that's not in the cards for me. I used to love swimming as a kid, though, and felt sad to miss out on their underwater adventures. Reading about the breathing exercises that freedivers use did make me wonder if those would be helpful to me in swimming. I don't think I'm setting my sights on any 200 foot dives or anything, but maybe I could get to 20 feet. [grin] There were places where I had some doubts about the author's summations or abbreviations of the science (he is an author and not a scientist), but for the basically scientifically literate I think it's pretty easy to pick out where to raise an eyebrow. I also appreciated his drawing attention to the underfunded nature of a lot of our ocean sciences, and the awesome things that we have found there. Three and a half wetsuits out of five, and a curious intent to learn more about freediving.
I had intended to read a bunch of books about the history of Africa all together to have a solid historical context for reading "Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela", but when both my father and project_mayhem_'s sister bought me "Long Walk to Freedom" for a holiday present, well, the time had come. So now I'm doing it the other way around -- first the central autobiography, then all the background knowledge. It's an interesting test of meta-vision, in a way... for a work so long, some stuff is just going to have to be left out. Trying to read into the empty spaces gives you a peculiar kind of insight (though it's debatable whether that's into Mandela or into his editors, heh). So I certainly learned a lot about the history of South Africa, and post-colonialist African politics in general, but the book is as much or more about how you define yourself as a moral person while engaged in a difficult struggle that is going to continually test your principles. It ties in well to many of the military history, African history, and insurgency/counterinsurgency books that I've read, but it's more a book about strategy than it is about tactics. I particularly appreciated Mandela's grace in difficult circumstances... his appreciation for his second wife's support for his political struggle and her stalwart presence through his years in prison, while also acknowledging but not condoning the actions of her bodyguards that caused so much difficulty, anger, and trouble. His story isn't about that series of events in particular (there are about eight hojillion similar events in that era of history, which is a big part of why reading about it is difficult and unpopular), and he tries to take the high road when discussing most peoples' atrocities, but ugh. I would get divorced over that too. (Not that he explicitly says that that was why, he takes more of a "people grow apart and choose different paths" tack, but I can't even imagine how awful to have a loving partner who supports you for years in prison, with whom you have several children, and then they go do that.)
There are a lot of similarities both to books that I've read about the American civil rights struggle and to a lot of the histories about the IRA. I appreciated his difficulty in struggling with how to balance his lack of wanting to be a Communist or to have his movement taken over by Communists with the ugly reality that that was where most of his available allies among the white population of South Africa at the time were. You can't choose who is willing to be on your side or partners in your struggle for freedom, and there's a strange bedfellows tension in how much you're going to accept help and from whom. Set against the larger geopolitical stage of the era, that's particularly fraught... it was important to him to succeed in having a "for all South Africans regardless of race" movement and background, but what do you do when many of the people willing to help you come with a lot of baggage? (I am reminded of "The Terrorist's Dilemma" and how much I would not want to have that job. Ugh, having to ride herd on and be responsible for the actions of a lot of angry armed people who feel very hard done by and want to blow things up in response. Mandela definitely had those problems.) The book stops soon after his release from prison, which is a pity... I would have loved to hear more about Truth and Reconciliation and the peace-building process afterwards. I'll just have to note that for my follow-up reading. Four and a half thoughtful pragmatists out of five.
"The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics" was one of the best books I read this year. I rowed my way through college and this brought back all my love of the sport, as well as being a cluebat of empathy towards people who grew up during the Great Depression. While the book was substantially about one rower's life in particular (because the author had access to his family and their records), it was simultaneously a local-interest history work, an instructive tale about cooperation and determination, a kinda terrifying biography of someone tougher than I can imagine having to be, and a paean to a wonderful sport. I kept stopping and indignantly reading parts of it to Mayhem, who is not a rower. Highly recommended if you have any interest in Washington history, the early parts of the 20th century, or rowing; five ways to piss off Hitler out of five.
On a lighter note, I also enjoyed "A Butler's Life: Scenes from the Other Side of the Silver Salver". In another world, one in which I was better at cooking, I could totally see myself having this job. [grin] This is a collection of no-shit-there-I-was stories, told with dry understatement and considerable humor. I enjoyed watching Christopher go from stumbling into a beginning service job to remaking himself into an estate managing executive with style and efficiency... and humor. People who didn't intend to make their life in the career they ended up with (I suspect this is most of us!) may particularly find a lot to love here, as the glamorous setting and not-so-glamorous tasks combine to make a pretty fine series of opportunities for our hero. I don't think I would have had the patience to take the live-in jobs that he did, I need more time to myself than that, but one of the interesting parts is getting to speculate on what it would be like to have this be your life. Four and a half "will that be all, sir?"s out of five.
I fell in love with Sudhir Venkatesh's writing in "Gang Leader For A Day", but I just didn't love "Floating City: A Rogue Sociologist Lost and Found in New York's Underground Economy" as much. It has many of the things that I enjoyed about "Gang Leader", including deeper ethnographic studies of particular people and how their stories change over years. I liked and agree with his assessment that New York is less geographically bound and more socially mobile than Chicago, particularly for black marketeers who can learn to move between social contexts. And I even sympathized with his tension between the "be a scientist" sentiments from his sociology department at Columbia/his desire to do statistically significant studies with large numbers of participants and the deep-dive of seeing how things worked out over time. But oh boy, did I get sick of his personal angst suddenly centering itself in the story. I'm sympathetic to ethnographers having feelings about the subjects they study, and his horror at feeling like he had facilitated making people's lives worse by introducing Shine and Analise even though he didn't mean to. But, dude. Get over yourself! You were just there! It's not all about you! He acknowledges that the folks he's studying, working with, and befriending even yell at him about this, and yet still he's more present in the narrative there than I wish he had been. (I suspect that he was trying for "researchers are human and flawed too, I'm not somehow setting myself up as better than the people I study" but ended up with something more like "I, too, am flawed and human! Behold, everyone, how the madam and the johns and the drug dealer all tell ME that I should get over MYSELF, and lo they were right".) So even though I was interested in his work and I'll read his future books, I hope he can put the angst to bed some. Three weird hangups out of five.
"Laws in Conflict" is another fine medieval mystery by Cora Harrison. I appreciated the way that she brought out the differences between Brehon Law, English law, and Roman law, and how they all interacted with each other in the period described. I know more than the average layperson about Brehon law and Gaelic western Irish culture, and I still learn something every time I read one of her mysteries. (And going to look up all the details afterwards is half the fun! Not required to read and enjoy the book, of course, but it's a fertile jumping-off point if you are this flavor of nerd.) Mara remains a stalwart and intelligent protagonist, and while the structure of the mysteries is often kinda formulaic (there is a really notable "and then the protagonist SUSPECTS PEOPLE" in the middle), it is more than made up for by the teamwork of her law scholars, the discussions about how one would uncover information at a lower level of technology, and the insights into how kinship-based societies respond to wrongdoing by their members. Great fun, four stealth O'Flaherties out of five.
I am giving up saying that I'm not a romance reader... it turns out that I (understandably!) don't like the gender-policing heteronormative scripts and heroes who are inexplicable broody emotionally stunted jerks, but fortunately, I have now read four non-mainstream romances where things aren't like that! So here's to good romance! "Thief of Songs" is genre-busting in ways that I predictably loved... it's a book about art, where the spark of connection between the lovers is based in their shared creative dynamic and deep love of creating music. It's a book about the baggage of history, and how that can inform your view of yourself even when many people around you don't see it similarly. (I was super sympathetic to the hero on that one... I know what it's like to have a cultural identity that you're very attached to, and for most of the people around you to find your political views dismayingly bafflingly archaic. But without growing up in the political context you did, they'll find it harder to understand.) It's a poly romance -- one of our leads is already in a happy relationship as the story starts, and that is not threatened, undermined, or displaced by the arrival of the other lead. Hooray for a writer who can find her dramatic tension *somewhere else*. [grin] And it's a multigender book set in an interesting world with a lot of possibility for development. There are four genders in the book, and no systemic oppression of any of them, and relationships between people are encouraged regardless of your gender or the gender of the person or people you fall in love with. So there are a lot of different kinds of relationships shown, both deeply and in passing, and sometimes the most interesting things about them aren't the gender combinations of the partners. I appreciated that. I had a lot of fun with some of the worldbuilding features (asking my friends what their poem name would be, if they had to pick one), and winced sympathetically at the geographic unfairness of how magic works in the world there (it flows downhill, so highland people are magic-starved and lowland people are magic-rich, and that informs economic and military geopolitics a lot). I'd love to read more in this setting; five annual magic runs out of five.
This entry was originally posted at http://ivy.dreamwidth.org/448107.html and has
comments there. Please feel free to comment on either site; comments rock.
I had intended to read a bunch of books about the history of Africa all together to have a solid historical context for reading "Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela", but when both my father and project_mayhem_'s sister bought me "Long Walk to Freedom" for a holiday present, well, the time had come. So now I'm doing it the other way around -- first the central autobiography, then all the background knowledge. It's an interesting test of meta-vision, in a way... for a work so long, some stuff is just going to have to be left out. Trying to read into the empty spaces gives you a peculiar kind of insight (though it's debatable whether that's into Mandela or into his editors, heh). So I certainly learned a lot about the history of South Africa, and post-colonialist African politics in general, but the book is as much or more about how you define yourself as a moral person while engaged in a difficult struggle that is going to continually test your principles. It ties in well to many of the military history, African history, and insurgency/counterinsurgency books that I've read, but it's more a book about strategy than it is about tactics. I particularly appreciated Mandela's grace in difficult circumstances... his appreciation for his second wife's support for his political struggle and her stalwart presence through his years in prison, while also acknowledging but not condoning the actions of her bodyguards that caused so much difficulty, anger, and trouble. His story isn't about that series of events in particular (there are about eight hojillion similar events in that era of history, which is a big part of why reading about it is difficult and unpopular), and he tries to take the high road when discussing most peoples' atrocities, but ugh. I would get divorced over that too. (Not that he explicitly says that that was why, he takes more of a "people grow apart and choose different paths" tack, but I can't even imagine how awful to have a loving partner who supports you for years in prison, with whom you have several children, and then they go do that.)
There are a lot of similarities both to books that I've read about the American civil rights struggle and to a lot of the histories about the IRA. I appreciated his difficulty in struggling with how to balance his lack of wanting to be a Communist or to have his movement taken over by Communists with the ugly reality that that was where most of his available allies among the white population of South Africa at the time were. You can't choose who is willing to be on your side or partners in your struggle for freedom, and there's a strange bedfellows tension in how much you're going to accept help and from whom. Set against the larger geopolitical stage of the era, that's particularly fraught... it was important to him to succeed in having a "for all South Africans regardless of race" movement and background, but what do you do when many of the people willing to help you come with a lot of baggage? (I am reminded of "The Terrorist's Dilemma" and how much I would not want to have that job. Ugh, having to ride herd on and be responsible for the actions of a lot of angry armed people who feel very hard done by and want to blow things up in response. Mandela definitely had those problems.) The book stops soon after his release from prison, which is a pity... I would have loved to hear more about Truth and Reconciliation and the peace-building process afterwards. I'll just have to note that for my follow-up reading. Four and a half thoughtful pragmatists out of five.
"The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics" was one of the best books I read this year. I rowed my way through college and this brought back all my love of the sport, as well as being a cluebat of empathy towards people who grew up during the Great Depression. While the book was substantially about one rower's life in particular (because the author had access to his family and their records), it was simultaneously a local-interest history work, an instructive tale about cooperation and determination, a kinda terrifying biography of someone tougher than I can imagine having to be, and a paean to a wonderful sport. I kept stopping and indignantly reading parts of it to Mayhem, who is not a rower. Highly recommended if you have any interest in Washington history, the early parts of the 20th century, or rowing; five ways to piss off Hitler out of five.
On a lighter note, I also enjoyed "A Butler's Life: Scenes from the Other Side of the Silver Salver". In another world, one in which I was better at cooking, I could totally see myself having this job. [grin] This is a collection of no-shit-there-I-was stories, told with dry understatement and considerable humor. I enjoyed watching Christopher go from stumbling into a beginning service job to remaking himself into an estate managing executive with style and efficiency... and humor. People who didn't intend to make their life in the career they ended up with (I suspect this is most of us!) may particularly find a lot to love here, as the glamorous setting and not-so-glamorous tasks combine to make a pretty fine series of opportunities for our hero. I don't think I would have had the patience to take the live-in jobs that he did, I need more time to myself than that, but one of the interesting parts is getting to speculate on what it would be like to have this be your life. Four and a half "will that be all, sir?"s out of five.
I fell in love with Sudhir Venkatesh's writing in "Gang Leader For A Day", but I just didn't love "Floating City: A Rogue Sociologist Lost and Found in New York's Underground Economy" as much. It has many of the things that I enjoyed about "Gang Leader", including deeper ethnographic studies of particular people and how their stories change over years. I liked and agree with his assessment that New York is less geographically bound and more socially mobile than Chicago, particularly for black marketeers who can learn to move between social contexts. And I even sympathized with his tension between the "be a scientist" sentiments from his sociology department at Columbia/his desire to do statistically significant studies with large numbers of participants and the deep-dive of seeing how things worked out over time. But oh boy, did I get sick of his personal angst suddenly centering itself in the story. I'm sympathetic to ethnographers having feelings about the subjects they study, and his horror at feeling like he had facilitated making people's lives worse by introducing Shine and Analise even though he didn't mean to. But, dude. Get over yourself! You were just there! It's not all about you! He acknowledges that the folks he's studying, working with, and befriending even yell at him about this, and yet still he's more present in the narrative there than I wish he had been. (I suspect that he was trying for "researchers are human and flawed too, I'm not somehow setting myself up as better than the people I study" but ended up with something more like "I, too, am flawed and human! Behold, everyone, how the madam and the johns and the drug dealer all tell ME that I should get over MYSELF, and lo they were right".) So even though I was interested in his work and I'll read his future books, I hope he can put the angst to bed some. Three weird hangups out of five.
"Laws in Conflict" is another fine medieval mystery by Cora Harrison. I appreciated the way that she brought out the differences between Brehon Law, English law, and Roman law, and how they all interacted with each other in the period described. I know more than the average layperson about Brehon law and Gaelic western Irish culture, and I still learn something every time I read one of her mysteries. (And going to look up all the details afterwards is half the fun! Not required to read and enjoy the book, of course, but it's a fertile jumping-off point if you are this flavor of nerd.) Mara remains a stalwart and intelligent protagonist, and while the structure of the mysteries is often kinda formulaic (there is a really notable "and then the protagonist SUSPECTS PEOPLE" in the middle), it is more than made up for by the teamwork of her law scholars, the discussions about how one would uncover information at a lower level of technology, and the insights into how kinship-based societies respond to wrongdoing by their members. Great fun, four stealth O'Flaherties out of five.
I am giving up saying that I'm not a romance reader... it turns out that I (understandably!) don't like the gender-policing heteronormative scripts and heroes who are inexplicable broody emotionally stunted jerks, but fortunately, I have now read four non-mainstream romances where things aren't like that! So here's to good romance! "Thief of Songs" is genre-busting in ways that I predictably loved... it's a book about art, where the spark of connection between the lovers is based in their shared creative dynamic and deep love of creating music. It's a book about the baggage of history, and how that can inform your view of yourself even when many people around you don't see it similarly. (I was super sympathetic to the hero on that one... I know what it's like to have a cultural identity that you're very attached to, and for most of the people around you to find your political views dismayingly bafflingly archaic. But without growing up in the political context you did, they'll find it harder to understand.) It's a poly romance -- one of our leads is already in a happy relationship as the story starts, and that is not threatened, undermined, or displaced by the arrival of the other lead. Hooray for a writer who can find her dramatic tension *somewhere else*. [grin] And it's a multigender book set in an interesting world with a lot of possibility for development. There are four genders in the book, and no systemic oppression of any of them, and relationships between people are encouraged regardless of your gender or the gender of the person or people you fall in love with. So there are a lot of different kinds of relationships shown, both deeply and in passing, and sometimes the most interesting things about them aren't the gender combinations of the partners. I appreciated that. I had a lot of fun with some of the worldbuilding features (asking my friends what their poem name would be, if they had to pick one), and winced sympathetically at the geographic unfairness of how magic works in the world there (it flows downhill, so highland people are magic-starved and lowland people are magic-rich, and that informs economic and military geopolitics a lot). I'd love to read more in this setting; five annual magic runs out of five.
This entry was originally posted at http://ivy.dreamwidth.org/448107.html and has
comments there. Please feel free to comment on either site; comments rock.