Pages

Sunday, February 9, 2020

Shots from the Zoo

A few shots from a recent visit to the Houston Zoo with friends.

Baby Giraffe Framed by Mother

Ring-necked Duck

Okapi? OK!

Fossa at Rest


Cheetah

Cheetah


Baby Giraffe
Baby Giraffe


Baby Giraffe and Mom


Elder Chimpanzee

Ankole Cattle Locking Horns


Ankole Horns

Ankole Cattle in Locked Horns

Giant Anteater

Clouded Leopard on the Prowl

Jaguar in Repose
Lemur

American Bald Eagle

The End (White Rhino)



Monday, January 6, 2020

My Half-year in Books, July to December 2019

My book-reading always tails off in the latter part of the year, so as predicted in my mid-year summary, I missed my lofty "book a week" goal. I did, however, hit a lesser "4 books a month" goal, for 48 total, so I'm ok with that. And, as I also referenced in my midyear post, I used some of that non-reading time to successfully keep my children from causing grievous bodily to themselves or the greater world. You're welcome.

This last six months of reading was...pretty bad overall. There were a lot of disappointments, a lot of "I need an audiobook, and this is what's available from the library", and just some bad choices. Thankfully I ended the year strong with the fantastic The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri. The only other books that stood out were Haruki Murakami's usual mastery on Colorless Tsukuru Tsaki and a couple surprisingly good debut novels; American Rust by Philip Meyer, and Let me Out Here, by Emily Pease. One-man book clubbing is hard.

Freedom – Jonathan Franzen
This book is the absolute best book I read all year if, and only if, you judge its merit on girth alone. Otherwise this never-ending tome of a book falls just short of average. The story of a family's slow dissolve set against an odd conservation subplot is fairly well written, just not terribly engaging. Supposedly a meditation of sorts on pursuit of our personal freedoms. Shortened by a few hundred pages, it might make a better read. I was happy to be free of this book.

Armada – Ernest Cline
From Ready Player One author Ernest Cline, this is another 80s pop culture-infused sci fi that borrows liberally (by which I mean, completely steals) from The Last Starfighter's plot of earth video gamer recruited to save the galaxy from something or other, space ships, pew pew pew, death blossom, etc. I wasn't a huge fan of Ready Player One, but this feels even more phoned in, without at least the novelty of the former's storyline.

Black Beauty – Anna Sewell
This was a read with my daughter Lydia, that was probably ill-selected. I, in some sleep-deprived moment, apparently mistook Sewell's polemic on the treatment of 19th century horses, for The Black Stallion. To her credit, my daughter soldiered through it, but I owe her several sparkly princess pony books for this one. I'm sure this was a shocking expose on animal cruelty in its day, but it doesn't translate well.

Two Years, Eight Months, and Twenty-Eight Nights – Salman Rushdie
I have wavered on liking and disliking Rushdie in the past. His skill is considerable, but sometimes his writing feels a bit pretentious. This novel of sudden reappearance of djinn weaves fantastic small stories against a larger historic epic, with heaps of wry social commentary. It was enjoyable, and deftly written, but also felt to drag in parts. Still, Rushdie has an excellent eye for the glory and fallibility of mankind as reflected in the myths we tell. 

Omnivore's Dilemma – Michael Pollan
This overly-wrought diatribe on modern food production is just what I feared it would be. Some interesting bits and perspective about industrial food chains with heavy sermonizing on what are often generic, unnuanced recommendations. I don't disagree in principle with a lot of it, I just find his writing tiresome, and often smacking of "let them eat cake"; somewhat elitist recommendations that ignore the financial and logistical limitations of average people. A lot of the content is not new ideas or information to me, so I think it was probably more impactful when it was first released. But it really does feel like Pollan didn't really dig down into the broader economic systems that make slapped on, one-size-fits-all solutions often unworkable. 

Artemis – Andy Weir
Weir's debut, The Martian, was a fun read that appealed to the problem-solver but reflected his prior career as a software engineer in its pretty repetitive problem in/solution out pacing. Some of the power of that original novel stemmed from the isolation of the character and setting. Artemis, essentially a heist caper…in space…with forgettable characters…and cringeworthy dialogue, has a storyline so generic it could easily be subbed in as an episode of any given second-rate sci fi show. Weir's writing was ok enough to carry on the unique setting of Martian. It's not enough to make a forgettable story and less memorable. 

Black Klansman – Ron Stallworth
I still haven't seen the Spike Lee movie this book inspired, but thought I'd check out the original material. It's an interesting story but didn't work well as an audiobook. The author read it, which is sometimes a good idea (I have a standing "shut up and take my money" policy for anything Neil Gaiman reads), but often isn't. In this case, it was listening to someone read from a spreadsheet. The story of a black police officer working to infiltrate the KKK is interesting, and Stallworth is obviously a brave guy, but it doesn't end up being much actual content. His investigation was of a small branch of the KKK, over a short period of time, without much climax. Not to take anything away from his service, but it didn't really rise much above "interesting historical blip". 

Wildwood – Colin Meloy
So, I hate leaving books unfinished, and as part of a recent conversation with a friend, was guilted into going back and picking up Wildwood, which I had abandoned years ago. I had gotten a chapter or two in at the time, mostly just because it was written by Decemberists frontman Meloy but found it too twee and disengaged. I got through the intro and found a book that, once you got past the rough edges, ended up being a little more earnest than I got from the first chapters. The story of a magical wood inside Portland draws heavily from other classics (Narnia, Secret Garden, etc.) but ended up being imaginative enough to be worth the read. I can only assume it's also better as an actual book (it has a lot of illustrations) read with a child, then as an audiobook listened to in adult traffic. 

Failure is an Option – H. Jon Benjamin
I'm a big fan of Jon (Archer, Bob's Burgers, etc.) Benjamin, so when I came across this audiobook for a long ride, I gave it a shot. It's mostly a rambling collection of failure stories, with a very loosely tied premise that failure is important and should be seen as such. But mostly it's a vehicle for Benjamin to riff in self-deprecating glory. And it works, mostly. I was worried that Benjamin wouldn't be as funny sans written show dialogue, but in both delivery and content it's really funny stuff.  

Barracoon – Zora Neale Hurston
A long unpublished work, Barracoon is the accounting of Hurston's interview with a former slave presumed to be the last survivor of the Middle Passage slave trade. I expected more, but it's a brief, unkempt work. The horrors of slavery are undoubtable but are almost dulled by the folksy interactions with the interviewee. Their Eyes Were Watching God this is not. Interesting, and well written for what it is (it's also very short), it really doesn't enter into the realm of Hurston's other work. 

Colorless Tsukuru Tsaki – Haruki Murakami
I have never been disappointed by Murakami. Ever. And that streak continues here. As usual for Murakami, the novel delves deeply into messy reality of human relationships, captured perfectly in his dialogue, despite what is assuredly something being lost in cultural translation. Unlike some other works (Norwegian Wood, etc.) the story has more drama and mystery attached, making a great combination. The story takes place in two phases of the protagonist's life, his childhood with four friends who unexplainably disown him, and his adulthood where he starts to piece the answer together. It's a tragic take on how we hurt each other, and how we resolve our personal history as we age. 

East of Eden – John Steinbeck
I've picked up East so many times I've lost count. I finally soldiered through an audiobook, and I'm glad I did. It took well over a month, but Steinbeck's magnum opus tale of generations of California families is everything you want Steinbeck to be, even with some heavy-handed Biblical allegory. Its side-story discussion of Lee's code-switching from pidgin Chinese to educated English was ahead of its time. 

The Seven 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle – Stuart Turton
Deaths is just your typical Victorian murder mystery with time looping meta prisons and body-swapping. Saying it was an odd read is an understatement. The main characters are caught in a Groundhog Day-esque time loop of a single day, in which they will successively inhabit a series of host bodies, while trying to solve a murder for mysterious games master. The rules are only revealed in pieces, as clues mount over the course of each variation of the day lived. While it went on a bit longer than it needed to, it was a really ingenious take on the typical murder mystery. If Groundhog Day, Primer, and Clue had a baby, this is what it would read like. 

The Noble Hustle – Colson Whitehead

Whitehead gets someone to take him in high stakes poker tournament, then muses on his misadventures. Funny bits, and some astute satire, but mostly just more of an elongated "did I tell you about that one time I...". It tries to be Fear and Loathing and can't pull it off. That being said, Whitehead's writing is decent enough here to carry the short work through. 

Emerald City – Jennifer Egan

I go back and forth on like Egan. I still don't understand the popularity of Visit from the Goon Squad, but no one else seems to like Manhattan Beach to the degree I do, so, I'm not sure whether my novel radar is off, or what. Emerald  is a collection of short stories, that landed as just meh to me, and I had to look up the book to remind myself of what was actually in the collection. A couple poignant moments in stories of loss, but mostly generic stuff. 

American Rust – Philip Meyer
Debut novels are always tricky, especially when you're trying to write that Great American Novel. And if there's anything that's been overdone as a topic, it's the Tragic Plight of the Rust Belt White Folk. All that being said, Meyer (who authored  the reasonably enjoyable Texas generational epic The Son) takes a premise that could be every Bruce Springsteen song ever written, and makes it unique. Dissolving families and small towns spur young adults to get away, or give up. The Stand By Me-esque start gives way to some really subtle and powerful writing on family dynamics as the "oddball" son tries to make his escape from a crumbling household, the urbane sister deals with her guilt on surviving, and the personified decay of the town pulls the football star who went nowhere. The unique character quirks and interplay makes this novel one of the better of this year's bunch. 

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage murders and the birth of the FBI – David Grann
This nonfiction account of the brutal killings of several Osage in the early part of the 20th century broadens out to shed light on the extent of institutionalized and expansive white exploitation of Osage resources.  The direct and indirect violence that plays out in the story mirrors a wide-ranging, deliberate and systemic preying on the Osage (and Native Americans in general) taking place under the veil and weight of white America. The FBI angle is involved, but I really don't think it gets much into the "birth of the FBI". The FBI play a prominent role, but the birth of the FBI really isn't the focus, thankfully. A great, if tragic, read.

Wicked Plants: The Weed that Killed Abraham Lincoln's Mther and other Botanical Attrocities – Amy Stewart
I had read Stewart's account of the history of various plants involved with our alcohols and cocktails (The Drunken Botanist), and enjoyed it, but found it suffered from not deciding whether it wanted to be a cheeky historical overview or a desk reference. Wicked Plants, which details the various deadly and dangerous plants, is premised on a similar format (sensationalized botany) but falls into the same trap. It may have worked better as an actual book than an audiobook (she reads all of the intro reference material verbatim...e.g., "scientific name - (etc), place of origin - Brazil, … stuff we would have skipped over in a reference guide). It's interesting stuff, and there were several plants that I now eye more warily, but in general it was only half as salacious as her title. 

Ghost Wall – Sarah Moss
This novel tells the story of a strained English family devolving into madness as part of a historical recreation project where they live as primitive hunter-gatherers. The leadup and accounts of abusive family interactions lays the groundwork for a slow dissolve into madness....that gets completely rushed in the books' latter chapters. It really feels like the first half of a really well paced novel got sewn onto its last chapter, missing all of the slow psychological burn inbetween. I really liked the book, but was incredibly disappointed at the rush of the storyline with what turned almost into an almost very-special-episode ending. A great start that finished far too quickly. 

Sag Harbor – Colson Whitehead
In the continuing theme of on again/off again relationships with authors (Whitehead was stunning on last year's Underground Railroad), I'm off again with Whitehead. Sag Harbor is the mostly autobiographical account of Colson's youthful summers in the books eponymous town. Colson tries to describe the odd surrealism of a middle/upper-class black vacation community enclave on Long Island in the '80s. However, a lot of it comes across as a very claustrophobic set of innocuous anecdotes. I'm not saying he should have pumped up the drama (I mean, thinking back on family vacations, even in turbulent coming-of-age times, things are never like the movies), but there really wasn't a good central narrative to the novel. The Colson stand-in Benji and his brother spend summer doing typical teenage boy stuff, there are a couple slight encounters with racism, and mostly it just meanders around. It felt like someone Hamilton'd the Goonies, but not in a good way (if you're reading this, Lin Manuel.....man, why?....but if you are, write this down: diverse Goonies musical. Let's do this.)

Let Me Out Here (Stories) – Emily Pease
The only reason I've even heard of this collection of dark stories of obsession and faith turned bad and the down and out is because my (second cousin? daughter of my cousin? Neice-once-removed?) Emma is featured on its cover in a truly striking/chilling photograph. I was at our family's house and a copy of it was on the table, so I read most of it over a couple days. I hadn't expected it to be very good, but was pleasantly surprised. The writing is lacking in places, and some of the stories strain the limits of what is too short to be a short story, but there's a strong central corridor of storylines dipping into visceral failure and self-deception. 

The Lowland – Jumpha Lahiri
After a pretty lackluster season of reading, with only a few bright points, Lahiri's Lowland was an inspiring novel to end the year with. Its poetic story of two brothers separate by geography and ideology but united by a generations-spanning tragedy. At the same time incredibly intimate and also encompassing of the vast differences between politics and countries, Lowland weaves the history of a family and a revolutionary period in India as a whole inextricably. A powerful novel of transitions and the continuing ripples of tragedy. 

Notes

Books I started but didn't finish this year include The Road to Little Dribbling (which seemed mostly a nonstop curmudgeonly complaint by Bill Bryson), Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates (which slanted a little too heavily into "boo Islam, Yay America"), and The Color of Water (which I think was too much of a jarring transition from McBride's Lord God Bird). 

Monday, November 11, 2019

Manhattan, black and white

For all its color and suffusion of densely packed life, for some reason I'll always love Manhattan in black and white. All lights and angles and layered complexity. I never get tired of wandering around the city with a camera. I think I could do so for a long time before I really scratched its surface. I got a chance to get out and about during a recent conference, and here are a few pieces of a night or two of wandering (and a couple of daytime sojourns too).

Evening Crowds, Chelsea

Icons

Empire State of Mind


Shake Shack!

Spires

City of Lights

Steam and Sky

Scaffolding

Pedestrian

In Between

For the Earnest and Young, Times Square

Light and Fog


Doors 

Converging Lines

Vines and Brick

Saturday, August 3, 2019

Book Reviews, January to June 2019

I tore through a lot of books these last six months (26), on my way to what will surely be my perennial failure at a lofty "book a week" goal. In my defense, I did pretty well at the "keep my kids from destroying each other/the world" goal, so we take our victories as they come. If you only give one of the book from this list a shot, it should be Sing, Unburied, Sing; Exit West; or The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. However, if you're up for some writing that pushes comfort levels and nuance over ideological purity a bit, The Good Lord Bird was a pleasant surprise.

Julie of the Wolves – Jean Craighead George
This was one of the foundation books of my childhood. George's beloved YA book (before YA was a thing) about a solitary Inuit girl caught between traditional and modern worlds is expansive and literary, with a not-subtle focus on the agency and emotions of a self-sufficient young woman. I read this with my older daughter (admittedly, I did leave out the attempted rape scene at the start, and translated the archaic "Eskimo" into "Inuit" on the fly) who I hope loved it. I never know what to do about reading more challenging books with her...I don't want to take away her own discovery by reading them too early, but I also want a bulwark against the mindless learning to read series lining our shelves as well.

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness - Arundhati Roy
Roy's The God of Small Things had been one of those books that sat on my shelf for the better part of a decade before I got to it. I'm glad I did, and I'm glad I followed up with Ministry. The interwoven tales of outcasts and nontraditional characters has Roy's trademark dense imagery and subtly complex dialogue against a vibrant and violent background of India's cultural and political clashes. It's a big story writ in small details, that allows itself the nuances of human existence...humor, tragedy, self-deception, hope, all jangled together.

Bossypants - Tina Fey
This was a "I don't have any audiobooks queued up, let's see what's available last minute at the library" selection for a long road. Almost the identical set of circumstances that led me to read Amy Pohler's Yes Please. And with similar results. Both are intermittently funny sort-of-memoirs, but neither as funny as the women who wrote them have capacity for. It was ultimately forgettable and disjointed.

Sweet Land Stories - E.L. Doctorow
I've been trying to read more Doctorow, having really liked Book of Daniel and some other works. Sweet is a collection of short stories that really didn't land for me. There wasn't a really coherent theme, and the stories themselves, while I remember them being mildly enjoyable, don't stand out at all. I had a vaguely positive reaction to it at the time.

Darwin's Ghosts - Rebecca Stott
It's always been incredible to me how opponents of the scientific theory of Evolution focus with such intensity and antipathy on Darwin. Admittedly, Origins was a watershed moment in our understanding of the natural world, but evolution and natural selection as concepts did not start (and absolutely didn't end) with Darwin. The "Were you there? Derp derp derp" crowd somehow thinks poking holes in Darwin's understanding somehow invalidates everything that comes after (let alone Darwin's work itself). Stott's book does a fantastic job of dispelling the lone-evolutionary-gunman conception by delving into Darwin's precursors and the context in which ideas about the natural world evolved. She uses Darwin's own list of references as a starting point, but also considers who didn't make his cut, and why. It's a fascinating look at not only how ideas about natural systems and our place in them have changed, but how that specific topic relates to our evolving systems of knowledge, and the controls we attempt to place on them.

Exit West - Moshin Hamid
Hamid's novel of refugees is a powerful vision without an on the nose polemic. With a foot in the current era, and another in the magical realism of unexplained portals as the vehicles for refugee escape, Hamid builds poignant literary constructs around the real world drama playing out concurrently. The novel follows a young couple escaping a repressive regime. With the time-compression of the refugee journey into the symbolic portals, Hamid allows for the exploration of the human experience that prompts their flight, as well as the alien experience of starting over in a new landscape, and the constant uncertainty that surrounds it all. The NYT book review made a great comparison to the bending of the physics of transit overlying an examination of the bending of moral physics that's so evident in the current debates but also has a timeless quality. Exit lives up to the well-deserved hype. 

The English Major - Jim Harrison 
I have a love-hate relationship with Harrison, or, I guess, a love-sometimes-creeped-out-by relationship. He's one of my favorite contemporary American writers, with classics like Legends of the Fall and others demonstrating a sweepingly epic and austere style, and Brown Dog, a genius for capturing the characters and character of a place in dense, messy human form. However, once in a while (his Detective Sunderson novels mostly) his characters devolve so far into human failings that the uncomfort level outweighs the literary mastery. English Major is a nice balance between the two, a road trip by a divorcee full of messy nuance, that plays out against a general commentary on the nature of the landscape. It's elevated enough to be enjoyable enough, but still full of Harrison's trademark fallible characters and squishy, real, humanness.

Wise Man's Fear - Patrick Rothfuss
Wise Man's Fear is the sequel to The Name of the Wind an ambitious effort in world-and-character-building by Rothfuss focused on a rouge-ish young protagonist making his way through a magical training academy on his way to revenge for his family's deaths at the hands of otherworldly denizens. Yeah...so it's hard to do sword-and-sorcery type stuff without tripping over a dozen tropes before the end of the first chapter (the resemblance between this and other works like Piers Anthony's -inferior- Apprentice Adept series is noted), but Rothfuss has a deftness and ingenuity that makes his world work. If for no other reason I like this archetypal rags-to-prominence story because it allows it's protagonist to fail, and not in an epic self-sacrificing way, but in the little small human failures of pride, ambition, uncertainty, etc. I look forward to seeing the conclusion of Qvothe's story if Rothfuss ever gets his butt in gear with the third novel.

Get in Trouble - Kelly Link
Link is another new author for me and I picked up Get in Trouble mostly because of the sheer weight of review and accolades (including generous praise from longtime favorites Michael Chabon and Neil Gaiman). The hype was right on target here, as this collection of short stories is weird, funny, and engaging. Chabon's robust characters and Gaiman's beautiful weirdness are exactly the combination of styles I would ascribe to the book, so it's fitting they lent their names in praise. The fully realized teens in some of the story are such a great (and if there is justice, intentional) counterpoint to the vapid YA supernatural teen genre. I will be reading me some more Link.

After the Quake - Haruki Murakami
Murakami is a constant favorite, and I'm regretting slowly running out of his works to read. While I always feel I'm missing a little bit of the cultural context of Japan needed to really get elements of his novels, they usually touch deeply on something universal enough to human experience to make them relatable across that boundary. This collection of short stories takes various looks at the intangible, personal shock waves of a 1995 earthquake in Kobe on his characters. The quake is a guiding theme in exploring their own deeper personal turbulences, from the tragic to the absurd (giant crime-fighting frog!).

Good Birders Don't Wear White - Lisa White
Ostensibly a collection of anecdotal strategies, tips, stories, etc. from birders, it was mostly a skim read. There were a couple of well written bits, but most of it was basic level tips, somewhat lame attempts at humor, and just dry writing. Enough said.

The Son - Phillip Meyer
A Texas take on the classic generational empire novel, Son was enjoyable, but seemed caught between whether it wanted to accent traditional western elements, or more literary character development. It didn't ever really successfully meld the two for me. The story of Texas oil and cattle families was a fun read, with some nice changes to the typical trope, but it felt a little washed out for such an ambitious scale. I also never really got the sense of place that crowds into similar novels like Annie Proulx's Barkskins. That being said, any disappointment was only that a really good novel missed some chances to be great, still leaving a decent read in its wake.

Sharpe's Tiger - Bernard Cornwell
I grew up watching a lot of PBS (being one of 3 channels we got in the North Country at the time), so I got to live through a lot of truly fantastic period piece shows (varying runs of Masterpiece Theater, Robin of Sherwood, etc.) One of my favorites at the time was the Sharpe's Rifles series, most of which focused on and around the British involvement in the Peninsular War and other period conflicts. I had never read any of the source materials, so I gave it a shot. In general the series (see subsequent entries in this list) is certainly not the pinnacle of literature, but its focus on the rise and ambition of its namesake antihero (in a very real sense of the word) echoes similar (albeit slightly better) historical series like Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels. It's high adventure, and damsels in distress, and war, but without the pompous fawning over the British Empire of Kipling and his contemporaries. The ground-level view of the machine of British imperialism may still have some banners of over-glorification strapped to it, but this is a grittier, more nuanced context that matches its not-so-selfless protagonist.

Sharpe's Triumph - Bernard Cornwell
Same as the last entry, with 20% more of everything. 'Splosions! Also, is there a more British name than "Bernard Cornwell"?

Hero of the Empire - Candice Millard
While I was slogging through India with Sharpe on the prior two entries, I came across this interesting historical bit on a supposedly key excerpt from the life of young Winston Churchhill. The account of his service in South Africa, capture, and "daring escape", was passingly interesting, but any soft of lessons drawn from that experience on his future career seem tacked on as an afterthought. The bulk of the book is on that one part of his life, with very little buildup or follow-through. It felt like a single, somewhat poorly scripted episode of Young Indiana Jones (remember that, kids of the 80s?). If you want a good bio on Churchhill, my guess is this is not the place to start.

The Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky - N.K. Jemisin
Last year I read The Fifth Season on a friend's recommendation, and enjoyed its weird sciencey-fictiony-geology-based-apocalyptic bent. Gate and Sky are the other two books in the series. Generally I am not a fan of the current obsession with trilogies (especially among the YA set), but this series was worth the read. The world-building is masterful, with an interesting take on magic-but-not-magic-but-maybe-magic? as a function of connection with primal geologic forces. While it could have devolved from there, Jemisin spends a lot of time fleshing out the culture, politics, and minutia of her weird, traumatized societies. While not antiheroes, per se, her protagonists are flawed, no one gets an unblemished happy ending, etc. There were a couple looseish ends, but the sheer ambition of the novel makes up for it. Not going to win the Mann Booker prize (though it did score the Hugo and Nebula awards..), but very engaging and unique in a very derivative genre.  Definitely not sparkly-vampire-werewolf-whatever fare.

Future Home of the Living God – Louise Erdrich
I am a longtime fan of Erdrich, so your mileage may vary on this one. A marked distancing of her existing body of contemporary Native American fiction, Future Home is a near-future fictional commentary on rising moral extremism. Much like The Handmaid's Tale, the focus is on the subjugation of women as breeding machines, though the details differ a bit. It was rightfully criticized as being a little too derivative of Tale, but I liked that it began pre-dystopia, and Erdrich's characteristic artful and subtle prose really capture the slow slide of a democracy into fascism and then dark theocracy. It loses points for originality, but blows Tale out of the water in terms of style and prose.

Manhattan Beach - Jennifer Egan
After reading A visit from the Goon Squad last year and being mostly underwhelmed, and uncertain how it rated the accolades it received, Manhattan Beach was a pleasant surprise. The Depression/WWII era novel follows several interelated characters involved in the war effort, organized crime, etc. Some of the characters are a little two-dimensional, but the interactions and unique human moments Egan manages to squeeze out of them made for a good read. Still nowhere near the accolades for Goon Squad but a much more enjoyable read.

The Slow Regard of Quiet Things - Patrick Rothfuss
Unfortunately, Rothfuss's Kingkiller series (see The Wise Man's Fear above) remains without a third novel. Slow Regard was a short interlude that followed a secondary character doing...basically nothing. Literally, it was mostly a day in the neurotic life of sort of deal. The whole book was just a delving into the character's damage, but not in a meaningful or even explanatory way. I get that it was a personal book for Rothfuss, what he wanted to write, but it just came off as inconsequential. The upside was that the audiobook was narrated by Rothfuss himself.

The Good Lord Bird - James McBride
McBride's best work so far is a fictional account of the abolitionist John Brown's campaign against slavery, from the viewpoint of a young African American boy, who spends the better part of the story in drag as part of Brown's ragtag army. The novel is subversive without being polemic, casting shade at any number of historical idols. Brown gets a complex treatment both tilting at windmills but also a madman who more embodies true principle, however insane, then traditional heroes like Frederick Douglass (who gets practically skewered). McBride doesn't shy away from satire at the expense of all sides, with a greater message that seems to revolve around the very human, fallible, and self-deceiving nature of humanity as it plays out in social struggle.

Sharpe's Rifles - Bernard Cornwell
Another of the Sharpe's series described above. Enjoyable, but I still think I like the TV series better.

Hellboy Omnibus - Mike Mignola
Before Hellboy became a series of movies, cartoons, etc. of varying quality, it was an oddly beautiful series of graphic novels. Mignola has a flair for austere, understated storytelling which may seem odd to say of an epic involving a cigar chomping demon who spends no small amount of time punching things. His story starts, it progresses, and it comes to its inevitable end. Mignola creates a modern hero archetype even as he draws from a deep well of mythos. I counted this because the saga really is what a graphic novel should be...a self-contained, finite story that is best suited for a visual form.

The Wind Through the Keyhole - Stephen King
A side-quest in the chronology of the Dark Tower series, Keyhole follows young Roland Deschain on a diversion shortly after the events of Wizard and Glass. It was an enjoyable mini-adventure, but really didn't add anything to the primary story, and felt a little tacked on. However, I enjoyed the young Roland parts of the story far more than the old Roland parts, so I didn't mind an extended reverie in the past.

Sing, Unburied, Sing - Jesmyn Ward
This was easily one of my favorite books of the past six months. Sing is an artfully told story of family struggle as a lens on contemporary racial struggle, but without a heavy hand. At heart it's a literary boiler room, telling an increasingly claustrophobic tale of a mixed race couple, their children, and their community, all in decay and free-fall. Jesmyn adds a touch of magical realism with ghosts as a plot device, but it's handled deftly and doesn't deter from the power of her characters. It interweaves seamlessly with the more abstract ghosts of the characters pasts and traumas. An exceptional read.

Hiroshima - John Hersey
I don't know how I managed not to read this post-war examination of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. It seems like the sort of book that gets over-prescribed to freshman English classes or college Sociology intro sessions. Hiroshima is a critical evaluation of the impacts of the bombing told through the eyes of 6 survivors. From the incredible scenes of carnage to the chilling tiny details, the power of the book is in translating an event that happened on a scale we can't fathom into real, tangible people. What amazed me is that the book originally debuted in 1946, in a world still steeped in propaganda. I can't imagine what an incredible blow to the zeitgeist it must have been for the average reader at the time.

Thursday, February 28, 2019

A Day Afield

Hole in the Prairie

Once in a great while I get to shake off the shackles of cubicle confinement and get out into the field. A week ago I joined some team members on the western edge of our region, to help uninstall some monitoring equipment along the San Bernard River. It was dirty, exhausting, physical work. I loved every minute of it. As much as I enjoy what I do, I think I would be a good deal happier if more of it took place outdoors. 

Muddy boots, good day.

Our monitoring sites were deep into rural areas west of Houston. The sort of places where you can feel the tight mental personal space of the city expand to fill a broader horizon. Also the sort of places with pretty great wildlife and photographic opportunities. We spent all day deep in farm fields, and rural streams, and in the medians of country highways.  While most of me was focused on the task at hand, there is always lurking within that 10 year old explorer with wandering eyes.  As we rooted out concrete emplacements, I noted bird calls in the morning woods. As we dug up buried cable, my labored breath enjoyed the clean air. While taking pictures of the site for reference, I snuck in a few of the local sights as well. 

Old tractor

 
Rust/paint
Lone tree road

Vesper Sparrows

 At the end of the day, there was just enough time to stop by Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge on my way home. Attwater is a big sweep of land with big Texas skies and the gentle roll between prairie and river bottom. The big attraction to many is the endangered bird who lends its name and purpose to the Refuge, but for me the vast, expansive feeling of the refuge gives a sense of what the land might once have been. Complete with creaking Aermotor windmills, blowing prairie grasses, and circling hawks, it's far closer to the stereotype of Texas most have than the busy urban swamp of Houston. While it doesn't have the dense natural beauty of the mountains and lakes of my homeland in upstate NY, it does have an austere beauty of its own. 

Northern Harrier over prairie grasses

Road, meet sky

Hawk sees you

Raptor exclusion
Sunset tree

Bird on a wire (Savannah Sparrow)
Prairie depression(al wetland)

Last light on prairie grasses