The Invisibles Omnibus – Grant Morrison
The first thing I have to mention is the sheer physical heft
of the book. It’s hard to read in a normal way. It makes it hard to find the time
to sit down and read it because the only way I was able to read it with some
momentum and not want to put it down every few minutes was propped up on a desk
that I cleared of other stuff.
Content-wise, it was interesting. Morrison is a good writer,
and the individual stories are connected to some larger arcs and there is
payoff at the end, but it does feel like it takes a while for it to get there. He
weaves in stuff from the situationists and mentioned memes way earlier than I
had heard of them. Also, huge props to the series for including a trans
character in the nineties.
The other thing that was weird reading the story now is that
the Myan great cycle that hit the news at the end of 2012 is a plot point that
is important but for a reader now it was just a quaint thing in the past (or did
everything actually reset?).
Worth reading but I would recommend finding smaller versions
because of the dang size of the omnibus book.
The Portable Door – Holt
At this point I have read a dozen books by Tom Holt. And I
like Tom Holt but I’m not an evangelist for him. I heard of him at some point
where I was asking for writers like Pratchett and his name came up and it was
good that he’d been fairly prolific so there are a number of books one can read
by him. But there’s something missing. Like all the ingredients are there but
like maybe it’s too British or something. I like it for the absurdist comic fantasy
that it is, and I will read more of the books, but maybe it was a detriment
that his work was compared to Pratchett because it is hard to stand in that
comparison. I’m still going to read the next one in this series, and well keep going
from there.
The Red and the Black – Stendhal
If there’s one thing that I learned from this book, is that
if you have women in your house, don’t invite Julien Sorel in. I had a
challenging time getting into this book, as the first parts where Julian is in the
provinces and then in seminary go a bit slow, but then once he’s in Paris, it picks
up.
I didn’t see his crime coming, but it does seem to be in
character because Stendhal makes this guy pretty loathsome to me. I don’t know
why it’s not obvious to the other characters in the book. I think it may be a
dramatic irony built in, but I am far enough removed from living in the context
of the book to not really know if I should be rooting for Sorel or not, or if
Stendhal likes his creation or not (or if that even matters).
I’m glad I read it because it is an important part of the
canon but also enjoyable on its own, no matter what you make of the central
character.
Nights at the Circus – Angela Carter
Carter here creates a meditation on truth and storytelling,
as she tells the story of Sophie Fevvers and the journalist who is telling her
story, Jack Walser.
We meet the characters in London and follow them across Europe
to Petersburg and then to Siberia. Sophie is part human and part swan, or is
she? Jack follows and falls in love with her, and they end up in a train accident
in Siberia and meeting an exiled piano teacher. It’s weird and really peaks after
the first third of the book where the characters have met in London and Sophie
is telling her back story. But it is also beautifully written so even though it
felt like it was spinning out and I was waiting for some resolution it was worth
reading.
Think Python – Downey
I used this book as a supplement to a class I was taking in
Python. It was good as a supplement, but I do worry that it would not be
sufficient for someone who was only using this book or someone who had not had
a bit of a background in doing some programming stuff. The exercises are also
made for someone who has a decent understanding of math and personally I
stopped trying the exercises after the first few chapters because of that, as well
as having other problems that had been assigned to me for the course I was
taking.
Camp Damascus – Chuck Tingle
I had only known Tingle as the author of the seemingly silly
titled erotica but having followed him on social media for a while, I know the
person behind the façade is an interesting and thoughtful writer. So, I was interested
to see that he was making a more mainstream book.
Camp Damascus is a horror novel with a queer female teen protagonist
who seems to have some sort of autism spectrum disorder. She is in a family in
a town that is strongly centered on the titular camp that is run as a
conversion camp. It is not giving too much away to say that hijinks ensue. The
characters, especially the main one, are beautifully written and developed and
the action flows really well. If you were raised around or within the evangelical
movement, you might find that Tingle hits some notes perfectly. It feels almost
like a backhanded compliment to say that the book is really professionally
written and to note that I have already pre-ordered the next “serious” title,
but you really should read this book if you like religious themed teen horror. It’s
really well done and not even something that is in my normal wheelhouse.
Giants in the Earth – Rolvaag
My wife’s family is from the northern plains – Scandinavian
immigrants to the Dakotas and Nebraska territories, and the story of their ancestor’s
descendants is broadly the story told here. Rolvaag tells the story of a group
of settlers and the dangers and trials they face trying to tame the empty
wilderness and make it their own. If you have ever driven through the plains,
you know the barrenness and emptiness of the landscape, but also, its wide-open
beauty as the land is just an open ocean all around you.
Our heroes face locusts and snowstorms and wandering cows,
as well as the natives (though I was surprised how little the people that the settlers
were displacing on the land came into the narrative) to make the land their
own.
The book made me think of how important the relationships
you build were in the settlement process. You only had your family and your
immediate community, and often you were on your own. The book it reminded me of
most was Steinbeck’s East of Eden, not just because of the settlement aspect of
it, but also there is the same sort of edge of misogyny in the female
characters. The main character’s is Per Hansa and his wife is drawn almost as if
she has clinical depression from the move to the prairie and Per Hansa doesn’t address
her needs – ignoring them to his detriment.
There’s also what felt like a weird lack of tragedy in the
book for a set of characters who are facing hardship – right up until the last
chapter (spoiler alert). It’s well-written and made me feel like I was part of
the settlers. I would call it an engrossing read.
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