Time March...es on

[Liiisa]

Just finished the following, so I needed a new book thread to describe it in.

10) Naomi Alderman, The Future

Ooh lillie - thank you for reminding me that this had come out. I liked it as much as you did!

A very familiar world, where billionaires controlling companies that feel very much like Facebook, Apple, and Amazon are just making things worse. Is there a way to fix things?

Loved the characters and setting, and yes, much of it is told via an apocalypse prepper internet forum, which was highly amusing for an ex-TTer like me.

[Liiisa]

Oh, and: here's the link to the February thread

And mods, when you have a second, could you unsticky December through February and sticky this one? Thx

[ozziegiraffe]

Thank you Liiisa. Bookmarking.

[sophie]

The Phoenix Crown by Kate Quinn and Janie Chang. An easy read about 4 women, united by seeing a murder, in San Francisco just before and after the big earthquake and how it affected their lives. I enjoyed this book; it’s better written than many chick-lit books.

[lillielangtry]

Thanks Liiisa! I'm glad you enjoyed the Alderman too.

Liliana Corobca, Der erste Horizont meines Lebens
In the original Romanian and in English, this book is called Kinderland, and I did wonder why the German edition changed it, but I suspect that there are just other books with the same title here.
This novel is about the very real situation that occurs in many villages in Moldova where a lot of adults go to Italy, Russia or elsewhere to earn money, leaving their children with grandparents, other relatives, or alone.
The narrator, 12 year old Cristina, is completely responsible for looking after herself and her two younger brothers.
It's a quiet, slow book without any great plot development, but sheds a light on a side of Europe I knew very little about.

[scrubb]

Thanks, Liiisa. I'm almost done2 books so should be back soon!

[scrubb]

Hey, I AM back soon! Just finished Bad Cree, by Jessica Johns. Sophie read this last month and it's a candidate for Canada Reads, the annual book program on Canadian public radio.

I liked it quite a bit. It's not a happy book - the main character moved away from her family to Vancouver, after her grandmother died, and then her sister died and she didn't come home when that happened. She's dealing with grief and guilt and loneliness. The author overlays this very basic human experience with some dark Cree legend/lore. But there are also warm moments with lots of loving people.

The author's style isn't consistently strong, but she made me see her characters and settings. Really good for a first book. It was the 3rd book I've read of the 5 in Canada Reads this year and although I'm not sure it is "better" than the others, it did speak to me more.

[scrubb]

Finally read a book i've had on my list for years.

Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Matters So Much, by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir. The authors are behavioural economists, I believe, and this book looks at what the effect of scarcity (of money, food, time, friends) is on human behaviour, and tries to understand it. It's very interesting. One fascinating discovery is that in times of scarcity, people's IQs decrease. Their "fluid intelligence" and "executive function" both decrease significantly. And regardless of what you think IQs measure versus what they think they measure, their findings demonstrate that people are much more likely to make poor decisions when they are poor. (That was interesting - they gave IQ tests to Indian sugarcane farmers both just after harvest when they got paid, and just before harvest, when they had run out of the money they'd received after the previous harvest. IQs dropped 13 points on average.)

The whole book has a lot of interesting studies and information, and it provides some recommendations for improving the methodologies of charities/programs aimed at alleviating poverty. Importantly, it shows a lot of evidence that no, in general people aren't poor because they're stupid, have no self-control, or simply aren't trying.

[Liiisa]

That sounds like something I should read, scrubb. I took a class a while ago called "Sociology of Scarcity," which was really interesting and turned up things like you describe there. (The prof also said that some studies showed that people also can turn to authoritarian governments, which is unfortunate.)

[scrubb]

Sounds like your class probably addressed a lot of the same things. It's not a long or difficult read. The authors are University profs.

[Liiisa]

11) Liliana Colanzi, You Glow in the Dark

lillielangtry this one is for you

A tiny book of weird little short stories by a Bolivian author.

Will definitely be on my best of 2024 list. I had only read about it for the first time and put it on my list this past weekend, and miraculously it was on the new acquisitions shelf when I went to the library yesterday!

[lillielangtry]

Mar 5, 2024 19:57:42 GMT -5 Liiisa said:

11) Liliana Colanzi, You Glow in the Dark

lillielangtry this one is for you

A tiny book of weird little short stories by a Bolivian author.

Will definitely be on my best of 2024 list. I had only read about it for the first time and put it on my list this past weekend, and miraculously it was on the new acquisitions shelf when I went to the library yesterday!

Thanks for the rec! I read her previous collection, Our dead world I think it's called, some years ago.

[ozziegiraffe]

Mar 5, 2024 17:36:33 GMT -5 scrubb said:

Finally read a book i've had on my list for years.

One fascinating discovery is that in times of scarcity, people's IQs decrease. Their "fluid intelligence" and "executive function" both decrease significantly. And regardless of what you think IQs measure versus what they think they measure, their findings demonstrate that people are much more likely to make poor decisions when they are poor. (That was interesting - they gave IQ tests to Indian sugarcane farmers both just after harvest when they got paid, and just before harvest, when they had run out of the money they'd received after the previous harvest. IQs dropped 13 points on average.) .

I’m interested in what instruments they used to test IQ. The usual tests don’t have parallel forms, and can’t be repeated for 2 years, or it invalidates the scores. If a test was used before harvest, then the same test used after the harvest the same year, the practice effect could easily result in a 13 point increase.

[Liiisa]

lillielangtry I'll have to look for that previous collection - it didn't make it onto my list when you described it before? I think sometimes I'm not in the mood for short stories, but these were great.

[sophie]

Endurance by Alfred Lansing. Originally written in the late 1950’s, this well researched account of Shackleton’s expedition is an excellent read. The writing is well paced, descriptive and not boring or overly technical. I enjoyed it.

[scrubb]

Hey Sophie - have you been listening to Canada Reads? I'd read 3 of the books, and 2 of those 3 have been eliminated. They're down to the last 2.

I might have to read the 2 I haven't read, although listening to the discussion I'm not sure I'd actually much enjoy either of them. Looking back at their previous years, some years I don't think they have a particularly strong pool, and this might be one of those years.

[sophie]

Scrubb, I haven’t at all yet.. but glad the ‘Meet me at the Lake’ got eliminated.

[scrubb]

That was unanimous by all except the person arguing for it!

[ozziegiraffe]

11. Aunt Bessie Observes by Diana Xarissa. Another enjoyable cozy mystery set on the Isle of Man.

[lillielangtry]

Agatha Christie, Three Act Tragedy
A less good Poirot, because there wasn't enough Poirot in it. She lulls you into a false sense of security by introducing him right at the beginning, and then he disappears for a good two thirds of the book.

[scrubb]

Andrew Sean Greer, Less.

The story of Arthur Less, an insecure, sometimes foolish writer about to turn 50. His long term "arrangement" with a 15 year younger lover, Freddy, has ended and he's pretending to be ok with it, yet can't bear to attend Freddy's upcoming marriage. The book is about him travelling around the world to avoid being available for the wedding, by taking advantage of a bunch of opportunities that he'd been ignoring (attending various literary events/awards ceremonies, etc.).

While he travels he reminisces, mostly about his youth in the '80s and '90s while he was together with a much older and very famous poet, Robert, but also about the last 9 years, with Freddy.

Overall the book is about his fear of approaching old age. One comment is really confronting - that his generation doesn't know how to be old gay men because they didn't have any role models when they were younger - they all died of AIDS. I mean, it's an exaggeration but not a huge one.

Less is a comic figure quite often - in a fairly slapstick way, and I didn't like those parts of the book as much as the rest of it because it seemed a bit cheap. But even those parts were done with obvious affection, so they weren't too annoying. It's a bit of metafiction, too - Less's latest book is about a middle aged gay man revisiting places of his youth and being sad; late in the book he realizes he needs to rewrite it as a comedy.

The author won the Pulitzer. I've read one earlier book of his which I remember thinking was beautifully written, but weak on content, so I thought I'd keep an eye on him. This one was really good, IMO. I'll read more by him.

[Liiisa]

Huh scrubb - I abandoned that a year or so ago; I think it felt a little lightweight for my mood at the time. But maybe I should give it another chance.

(ETA Ah yes, I found my notes in the Abandoned Books thread: "It's a book about a morose novelist who's accepted a series of invitations to various literary events and parties around the world in order to avoid going to his ex-boyfriend's wedding. There are some amusing descriptive passages, but it's too lightweight to sustain my interest and keeps reminding me of other very similar novels that I somehow liked better. Other people must really like it, though, because I found out about it from an amusing interview with him in the book review section of the New York Times; maybe I'm just not in the mood at the moment for a breezy possibly-romance-novel about someone who is morose about turning 50 and being dumped by his younger boyfriend.")

[scrubb]

It did feel pretty lightweight, to be fair. But I think what put it on the plus side for me was that I became quite attached to the guy as the book went on.

It's also kind of self aware - it asks what's so exciting about a reasonably successful gay guy navigating middle age? He makes it funny and affectionate, and even in the comedic parts (which i didn't love), he manages to just skirt making his readers cringe at the character's foolishness.

But when I said I thought it was "really good", that doesn't mean excellent.

[Liiisa]

Huh, it sounds like I abandoned it too quickly then!

[scrubb]

Or it just wasn't right at the time.

[Liiisa]

Yup, that definitely happens!

[lillielangtry]

Zaina Arafat, You Exist Too Much
This month's book club pick. I think the person who selected it was hoping for an insight into a young Palestinian American woman. It actually didn't have much to do with Palestine at all. Sure, the main character has Palestinian heritage but the book is mostly about her attending therapy and her unhealthy relationships with men and women.
She's incredibly unsympathetic and annoying - that was deliberate I guess? I mean, I think so?! And the whole thing feels very self-indulgent. Really not for me. I wouldn't have finished it if we weren't going to be discussing it.

Edited to add: I think this book might fit in the genre of unlikeable narrators like those written by Ottessa Moshfegh, etc. And certainly women do not always have to be "likeable". I just found myself bored by the repeated descriptions of sex, infidelity, lying, criticism of others, and so on.

[lillielangtry]

THanks to scrubb for reminding me I owned Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

I really enjoyed this speculative novel with different timelines. I have not read her book The Glass Hotel, looking at the summary it seems like it would have been better to read that one first, but never mind.

I did find myself wondering how heavily Mandel was influenced by David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas (and, indeed, his other works). The interlinking characters aspect for one thing, but especially the structure of SoT, going forward in time and then coming back, is extremely similar. In the first half of the book I was being a bit critical of this and thinking SoT was rather derivative, but I did really like the second half a lot, so I guess I have room in my reading life for more than one author like this.

Speaking of which I think I saw it is the 20th anniversary of the publication of Cloud Atlas! I have read it twice, but it might be nearly time for a third.

[Liiisa]

12) Annalee Newitz, The Terraformers

Sci-fi in the far future: a corporate-owned planet is being terraformed for future real estate development. I really enjoyed it. It's very imaginative - three parts, each 700 years apart. It's steeped in environmental management stuff, and is much more political than I'd expected (in a good way). There's a wonderful quote on the last page: "[The] revolution is actually happening in the boring details, like how you manage housing and water, or who is allowed to speak."

[ozziegiraffe]

12. Ice Station by Matthew Reilly. Very American for an Australian author, and too much blood, gore and gratuitous killing for my taste, but the underlying story, although highly speculative, was interesting, the setting in the Antarctic fascinating, and I really liked some of the characters.