Man Up and Read Sara Benincasa's "D. C. Trip"

I bought this because I follow the author on Twitter.

I have bought several books because of twitter people. It has been, let me tell you, hit or miss.

I thought I would try this one out though I had the idea it wasn’t really my demographic. I thought it was YA (The author was nice enough to talk to me a bit on twitter after I had read it and disabused me of the notion that the book was YA – just because it was about teenagers mostly, it wasn’t necessarily YA).

The thing is that genre classifications here don’t really matter. It’s a good book, full stop. The story is some kids from Jersey go to DC and find themselves. It could be the recipe for formulaic emptiness, but of the four main characters of the book, they are deep and interesting and you care about their growth and development. You end up rooting for them. It is well paced to the point it feels a bit cinematic with a larger arc with some smaller embedded arcs. If it is not on its way to being a movie yet, it should be.

My only worry is that some of the secondary characters are a little flat. The love interests are one-dimensional, and the rivals of the central group of girls are a bit stereotypical, but the central characters are so strong so this both erases that to me (even if the secondary flatness is only visible because of direct comparison to these central characters – it’s a paradox). This is a definite recommendation on my part, even if you may not think it is your demographic, it is. The last time I really felt this way was 12 year ago, reading the great Julianna Baggott’s “Girl Talk” in its bright pink cover.

The Cure, Not the Disease: "Lean Out" by Dawn Foster

When I first read the Sandberg book that this takes its name from, I was excited. 

Basically, here was a feminism that someone can do on your own. No mass movement needed. 

But I was thinking in context of the world that Sheryl brought us into. It was one of privilege and one that couldn’t be changed, so it must be navigated. It’s actually a really pessimistic book, and one that only will work for the educated white-collar classes who have some say in the terms of their own exploitation under capitalism –those so deep in their own exploitation that they don’t see their chains.

So it has been refreshing to see antidotes to the leaning in. I first saw it in part of Aschoff’s book “New Profits of Capital” (cited in this work), and in other more radical publications that don’t take the establishment view for granted. I came across this text because the Verso blog called it one of the best books of 2015 (Even though it wasn’t published in the states until early 2016, which to me is a recommendation to get into publishing and criticism if only for early access to crucial texts). I like this book. It is a call for the mass movements and a justification for them. It touches on that other book early on, but becomes more general on what is needed for women to do (still!) in terms of making the world work better in gender terms. It is a short but meaningful read, and one that should be undertaken. It will help explain why feminism is necessary (still!)

So Much Promise Missed: The Difference Engine by Sterling and Gibson

This book is pretty uneven, but I suppose that comes from two authors mailing floppy disks back and forth to each other.

The world that they build is pretty interesting, and it seems that that was the basis of more of the conversations between Gibson and Sterling (I have to confess, I’ve only read like three previous Gibson books, and none of Sterling’s full-length books. I think that though they are still working writers, there’s a very 80s sense of their being, maybe like the Bright Lights Big City guy or the American Psycho guy (Yes, I know their names.)).

There are several characters in this world where some tech is advanced and the US is divided between several nations – more like Europe now than the US is now. And there’s some stuff happening about luddites fighting back and breaking down the computerized government set in motion by Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace (and many of the Eminent Victorians make an appearance).

I don’t know who invented steampunk, but this one has the fun hallmarks of the genre – tech, Victorian London, fun anachronisms…. Is this the start? Here’s the real thing though. You need interesting characters doing interesting things to make a 500-page book readable. For me, there was a lot of stuttering, and the real interesting part of the narrative spanned pages 200-400 approximately. The narrative starts to break down at the end, and I was really close to abandoning the book in the last section, but I figured that there has been ok stuff going on until that point so maybe there is going to be some pay off. There was no payoff.

It turns out the authors were trying to convey that the book was unraveling because it was being written by the computer in the book. It wasn’t obvious to me. I regret the time I spent finishing it up, hoping in vain that there would be something worthwhile. There was nothing. It could have been edited to its core and been a quality instrument. As is, there is too much chaff.