Short Book Reviews #2
The Sequel
Classic Fiction
The Old Man and the Sea
By Earnest Hemingway
(A story about a man, a fish, and some saltwater that apparently won Hemingway the Nobel in literature.)
An old fisherman hooks a really big fish, catches it, and hauls it back to shore, during which most of it is eaten by sharks.
If you think that summary is short, try the book; it’s something like a quarter of a novel in length.
I will say that the stream of consciousness is handled masterfully, as the old man battles his own weaknesses along with the fish and sharks. The insight into how he thinks, his experience with the wind and waves and tide and sea creatures - it’s all seamless.
On the other hand, I think Hemingway may have been overpaying for ink, or taxed by the syllable, or something, because the man is allergic to vernacular. I’m not sure I found a single word with more than four syllables.
Safe to say, unless you’re interested in reading the classics or in the art of prose, you can just read the summary of this one.
Contains: hand cramps, eating raw fish, and many references to the great DiMaggio.
Gulliver’s Travels
by Jonathon Swift
(A satire of travelogues written in 1726, which more people in my life than I expected had never heard of.)
Gulliver’s Travels is the fictional first-person account of Lemuel Gulliver, detailing his travels as a ship’s surgeon to (principally) Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and the Land of the Houyhnhnms. It’s full of sharp commentary and biting sarcasm, and for a book written almost 300 years ago I found it to be delightfully funny.
In Lilliput Gulliver meets a race of people who are all six inches tall (with everything else in their country scaled down to size), acquires the name man-mountain, and pees on the empress’s abode to put out a fire. Peeing in the empress’s abode being illegal, this causes political problems for him, and he leaves.
In Brobdingnag Gulliver receives the inverse of his experience in Lilliput, meeting a race of people who are ~80-100 feet tall. He is kept as a curiosity at court, until one day he is seized by a bird and carried off into the ocean.
In Laputa and neighboring cities everyone is normal-sized, but Gulliver visits a renowned college full of ‘professors’ trying to make their ideas work. This was one of the funniest parts of the book, as the professors are trying to do things like curing gastrointestinal distress by sticking a bellows up a person’s ass, or solve the enmity of two political parties by transplanting half of each person’s brain into the head of someone in the opposing party.
Lastly, the land of the Houyhnhnms is a place where humans (called Yahoos) are savages, and horses rule with Reason and every noble virtue. The humor here comes from Gulliver explaining things like lawyers to a Houyhnhnm, which in particular he describes as parasites that descend upon disagreements to ensure no justice ever results.
Contains: large amounts of scatological humor (the Lilliputians have to cart away his poop by wheelbarrow), references to Swift’s political opponents, and a general condemnation of travel writers.
Science Fiction
The Man Who Fell To Earth
By Walter Tevin
(A relatively short piece of ‘classic’ science fiction that caught my eye.)
Written in the 1960s, The Man Who Fell To Earth is a novel preoccupied with two questions:
Is humanity on a path to destroy itself with nuclear weapons?
What is it like to be human, from the perspective of someone who’s close enough to pass as one but fundamentally alien?
The story follows an alien, Thomas Jerome Newton, as he arrives on Earth with a plan to get rich quick (via licensing advanced technology) so he can build and send a spaceship to collect the rest of his people from their dying planet.
Slow and meandering, the novel winds through Newton’s interactions with a lawyer named Oliver, a chemist named Bryce, a nurse named Betty Jo, and eventually the American government. Most of the time is spent in conversations and quiet moments, highlighting how alienated Newton feels and how he sees little hope for humanity to avoid the fate of his people, who destroyed themselves and their planet with radioactive weaponry.
Contains: mentions of science, heavy-handed references to Icarus, and large quantities of gin.
Elder Race
by Adrian Tchaikovsky
(A neat little two-for-one science fiction book I stumbled across.)
There are two books within the novel Elder Race.
The first is the story of Lynesse Fourth Daughter, a princess who seeks the help of a sorcerer sworn to aid her bloodline when a demon threatens the land. With his help and that of her closest friend, she sets out to destroy it in a quest echoing the stories she was told growing up.
The second story is that of Nyr Illim Tevich, an anthropologist stationed on a far-distant colony of earth that has since been cut off from any advanced technology. Initially there only to observe the locals, he finds himself (and his advanced technology) tempted to interfere when the medieval people face danger from the remnants of the technology they’ve forgotten.
The fun part, of course, is that these are the same story told from different viewpoints.
I found Elder Race to be a brisk little read, fun in how it plays with fantasy and science fiction tropes as wildly different understandings of the world and the universe collide. Of particular note was how it dealt with Nyr’s depression, the way history is woven into culture and myth, and the difficulties Nyr and Lynesse have communicating when the translations between their worldview is so extreme.
Contains: Sufficiently advanced technology being mistaken for magic, body horror, and very poor anthropological standards.
The Martian Chronicles
by Ray Bradbury
(A strange novel written in the 1950s. More of an anthology of short stories, all centered around humans reaching a Mars that already contains a millennia-old civilization.)
Vividly described and at times delirious, Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles is a haunting book. The plot is straightforward, if told in snippets:
Humans come to Mars to find an ancient civilization of telepaths.
Almost all the Martians die from chickenpox in a complete accident, leaving their cities empty and forsaken.
Humans settle Mars. First the pioneers and adventurers, then the civilians, then the regulators and high society people.
Nuclear war on Earth. Almost all the people on Mars go back, for some reason.
Mars is empty, and the few humans left contemplate their identities as the new Martians.
Several of the stories stuck with me. A rich eccentric builds a House of Usher on Mars, invites all the regulators and socialites that got books banned and burned on earth, and kills them all in Poe-esque ways. A telepathic Martian tries to survive by impersonating the long-dead son of an old couple, only to lose their identity by being too telepathic, unable to resist becoming other people when in the presence of a crowd. An early explorer of Mars decides to mutiny and kill his crew in the hopes that it’ll stop more humans from coming and ruining the ancient beauty of the planet and its people.
There’s a theme running throughout the book of people on Earth getting rid of literature, adventure, and anything that isn’t carefully regulated. (Did you know Bradbury doesn’t like book burnings? Because he really doesn’t like books being banned or burned.) The people who value such things leave Earth for Mars, only for the regulators to follow them (once civilization reigns and the danger is gone, of course).
Contains: Beautifully described (almost fetishized, really) Martian imagery, an asylum of insane telepaths convinced they’re from another planet, meditations on beauty and philosophy, politically incorrect words for referring to African Americans that weren’t politically incorrect in the 1950s, and a complete lack of description of the process or difficulties of space travel.
Childhood’s End
by Arthur C. Clarke
(A stand-alone science fiction novel, and the first time I’ve read Clarke.)
Aliens have invaded Earth, and their reign brings…utopia?
Childhood’s End is an interesting novel that takes the premise of Earth’s first contact with Alien life and asks - what if the Aliens were effective altruists?
From that premise we see a world slowly transformed through the eyes of several of its inhabitants over the years. The first half of the novel concerns itself mostly with humanity’s curiosity regarding the aliens - called the Overlords - while the societal changes take place in the background.
The second half of the novel reveals the Overlords’ reason for coming in the first place, and it’s a strange and wild turn from the matter-of-fact and grounded nature of the story to that point.
Childhood’s End felt a little bit like two novels crammed together, but it depicted its characters and world vividly and coherently. I’m still not sure what to think of the ending, but it’s a strong choice powerfully written, giving new context to the title.
Contains: science talk, the correct application of energy, alien bureaucracy, and a life-size replica of a whale eating a giant squid.
Graphic Novels
Saga
by Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples
(A well-known graphic novel series. I haven’t finished it, but I’ve read through volume 9.)
Saga is the story of Alana and Marko, soldiers from opposite sides of a galactic war that fall in love, as told by their daughter. It’s a mishmash of science fiction and fantasy, set in a galaxy with androids and tree-spaceships and magic and guns.
It’s quite good - the art is gorgeous and the story captivating - but there are two things that surprised me when reading it.
The first is how sexy the series is. As in, there’s a lot of sex, and it’s depicted pretty graphically. Like, porno-graphically.
The second is how progressive the series is, and I say that not as a political statement but as a fact. It felt a little like the series was taking me on a tour of progressive causes. It starts with the leads, Alana and Marko, whose relationship is incredibly transgressive within their societies, but winds through topics like pacifism, homosexuality, responsibilities of the press, abortion rights, drug addiction, prison systems, and transgenderism. The series mostly addressed these issues within the narrative and in non-condescending ways, but I wouldn’t blame someone for getting tired of the political messaging in their scifi/fantasy graphic novel.
Contains: character death, a cat that knows when you’re lying, people with televisions for heads, and a bounty hunter with entirely too many legs.
Black Orchid
by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean
(A graphic novel about death, life, identity, and plants.)
Black Orchid takes place in the DC comics universe, pulling from its more famous characters when necessary but focusing on smaller figures.
The basic plot is something like this: Black Orchid, a superheroine, is killed attempting to infiltrate a company owned by LexCorp, on the orders of Lex Luthor. Her memories survive, however, in the experiments of her colleague, as he works to grow human-plant hybrid people. The story follows the new Black Orchid as she attempts to discover her origins, untangle her memories, and figure out where she fits in the world.
Along the way she gets directions from Batman, talks to Poison Ivy and Swamp thing (who were both involved in college with the same research that led to her existence), and flees from Luthor’s hired mercenaries.
It’s a strangely and beautifully drawn comic, filled with meditations on memory and life and death, but I didn’t quite connect to it, for reasons I can’t articulate. I can’t really recommend it unless you’re already a DC fan, but it was worth a read for me.
Contains: Murder most foul, plant people, meditations on life and memory and identity, and badly sung lyrics.
Nonfiction
The Art of Gathering
by Priya Parker
(Most popular nonfiction I’ve read could be condensed into a few blog posts. This treatise on how to host gatherings is not an exception, but was still very valuable for all the fluff.)
I’ve been to plenty of family dinners and holidays and game nights. Not once, not ever, did I really think about how these events happened, what they were and what they could be, until reading this book.
Priya Parker breaks down how to create and host a gathering, from before it begins to the very moment it ends, and while the book is perhaps a bit too long her advice is stellar.
She urges hosts to rule with generous authority in order to avoid making the mistake of thinking that kindness equals letting everyone do what they want. She tells you where to put the logistics in a funeral - generally as the second-to-last element.
Above all else, Parker urges the reader to gather intentionally - don’t just host a meeting or business trip or dinner and lazily default to the way it’s always been done. Instead, bring meaning to the gathering by thinking about what you want to accomplish and structuring everything to support that meaning.
Contains: advice on beginnings, middles, and endings, Parker’s period party, and useful lessons on achieving genuine connection with other human beings.