Happy October, my friends!
Below, updates from a very audiobook-skewed month of reading. And, to be honest, not too many of them I really cared for. Here’s to a month of more enjoyable books!
Cheers,
Maya
Muse-able links
- Hawai‘i Is Not Our Playground- “Learning to Decolonize and Travel Responsibly in Hawaii,” why it’s important to go beyond the leis and surf lessons, and the history of military occupation of the islands that goes beyond Pearl Harbor.
- By Keith Fleck, a corporate logo for each state, inspired by the most recognizable brand headquartered there. Can you name them all?
- Behind the scenes with NatGeo photographer Ami Vitali, who has captured some beautiful and poignant shots of humans, elephants, and rhinos in Kenya, Bhutan, and beyond.
- A map: all of us as dots, state by state. Very cool.
- Never give up hope on that message in a bottle you threw out at sea all those years ago.
- The Arc De Triomphe is finally wrapped in fabric, fulfilling the plan of late artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude. The pictures are magnificent, particularly those of the work in progress.
- You just have to read about this bizarre tradition of mail jumpers in Lake Geneva.
- A beautiful, inspiring, illustrated article about farmers in Northern California using the honor system to sell their produce.
Connections
- Appleseed and On Time and Water examine climate change from seemingly disparate temporal, with the former focused on a fictional catastrophic aftermath of warming, and the latter through the lens of the author’s current lived experience, ponderings, and childhood. Both, however, are embedded deeply in place: Appleseed in the Ohio and the surrounding American Midwest, and On Time and Water in Iceland, and the ties to the land are echoed in myth reverberating through the books. The more I think about it, the more parallels I find between these two, which I had not at all expected to talk to each other quite so much.
- While it’s not as prominent of a theme until the latter part of the book, Bangkok Wakes to Rain has some uncanny similarities to Appleseed in how the technological reaction to climate change is carried out, what with “uploading” people’s… personhoods and living virtual lives.
- Bangkok Wakes to Rain, Gold Diggers, and Red Island House are each embedded deeply into the mythology and culture of their respective characters, from the Thai to the Indian to the various tribes of Madagascar. The latter two novels take this to a point that, from our Western point of view, could be considered magical realism, but Bangkok Wakes to Rain is no less intertwined with Thai social structures, religion, cuisine, and beyond. Proof that fiction is a fantastic way to learn!
Books
- Free Food for Millionaires — Min Jin Lee
- Took a risk choosing an 18+ hour audiobook, but I’ve only heard good reviews about this one! 1/18th in, and I’m refreshingly engaged by the very “show don’t tell” style of Lee’s detailed descriptions to characterize both the stable and emotional aspects of her growing web of characters. Curious to see how this story evolves and to learn more about the story of Korean immigration to America through the novel.
- Very caught up in the sartorial and cultural musings surrounding the cast of Korean Americans (?) in New York City as they navigate friendships and careers and parents and romance— in a way, the style of writing reminds me a bit of the great Russian literature like that in Anna Karenina. I see it as the “horizontal” version of a multigenerational epic; spanning widely over the relational webs of a community for a short period of time rather than a single family over years. I enjoyed the depth with which Lee builds the world and how well we get to know each of the main characters in a novel structured this way.
- Relatable: the beautiful girls want nothing more than to be the smart girls, and the smart girls want nothing more than to be the beautiful girls.
- Made me laugh: Why did God invent wasps? Someone has to pay retail…
- Appleseed — Matt Bell
- At the nexus of fantasy, sci-fi and cli-fi, Appleseed is a much darker novel than I’d expected from my preconceived notion of people going around planting apple trees. Bell explores the real, frightening possibilities of the continuation of climate change, set in the heart of the United States, considering the geopolitical reactions and the response of resistance groups. By including a cast of characters spanning from satyrs to “real” people to some sort of synthetic human-tree life, he further delves into the complex question of what it means to be human, what it means to be natural, and what the significance of those labels really even means.
- Bell does not hold back in his graphic descriptions of butchering hunted game or disintegrating human bodies for “recycling,” but it’s so matter-of-fact that it does not come across as overkill, but contributes to the honest brutality of what the future can hold.
- I began to have suspicions about how the three individual narratives would ultimately connect about 80% through the novel, and my hypotheses were somewhat supported, but the actual explanations were far more complicated and loaded than I’d thought. Ultimately, this was a really freaking weird book, but well worth a read or listen: it serves as a strong warning against a purely centralized response to climate change, and the dangers of global power of geoengineering and climate tech being concentrated in a few individuals.
- On Time and Water — Andri Snær Magnason, transl. by Lytton Smith
- Magnason’s musings on Iceland, climate change, and how they relate to… you guessed it, time and water. The narrative arc is driven by his interviews with his grandparents, documenting their stories, the world as it was for them as children, and the accelerating change that characterizes the world as it is now.
- The parallels drawn between glaciers in Iceland and the Himalayas are powerful, as Magnason points out that the loss of the ice in the latter also deprives large populations of their source of fresh water. A future with less glaciers is not just sad for what our children will not see, but is also a geopolitical crisis.
- Writers & Lovers — Lily King
- Low-stress, romantic drama, introspective, some funny moments and some sad. Set in Boston. Not much more to say- a book I enjoyed as a background listen, which is honestly quite hard to find.
- Okay, I ended up getting way more emotionally attached to the characters and storyline than I expected. King also wove in some wise remarks— about improvisation being the ultimate fear for most people, which I realized was true for me (not just in the public speaking sense, but in the not having a plan for the next hour/day/rest of my life); and of course, what it means to choose true love over comfort.
- Festival Days — Jo Ann Beard
- Quiet, introspective collection of short stories focused on a single female protagonist (something different!), somewhat tied together with common motifs: death (sometimes violent, other times peaceful), a connection to nature (through gardening or simply growing up outside), pet dogs (what else can I say?). The varied lengths of the stories kept my interest piqued, because I never what I’d be reading was going, if it would be more than a drop in to a stream of consciousness, or an abridged narrative arc, or, most often, somewhere in between.
- Something about the (autobiographical?) final short story that named the collection was very compelling- had to read it in one sitting (standing) and it’s been rare for a physical book to hold my interest for that long in awhile.
- Relatable: “Other people’s fear always takes mine away.”
- Bangkok Wakes to Rain — Pitchaya Sudbanthad
- This novel, too, reads like a collection of short stories, but there’s an underlying suspense of how they’ll eventually collide… and when the characters begin to meet, the tension only builds as to how the narratives will intertwine. The storylines vary broadly, covering crises ranging from the geopolitical to cultural, to those involving climate and family and beyond.
- Gets a little weird and sci-fi-y at the end, and could’ve done without the last four chapters or so… will leave it at that.
- Gold Diggers — Sanjena Sathian
- Readable and somewhat relatable with a touch of magical realism. Despite not really liking any of the characters so far, I’m intrigued by the building exposition surrounding the mysterious gold
- Ended up being one of those books that I finished for the sake of seeing what happens, not necessarily because I cared… it wasn’t terrible, but didn’t quite catch my interest.
- Red Island House — Andrea Lee
- Listen-able and somewhat satirical with a touch of magical realism. Lee’s imagery and characterization are vibrant and compelling, and despite not really seeing where the plot is going, I want to know more (even if it’s just more descriptions of the titular house or its island surroundings).
- Time itself is the only real driver of a narrative here, and each chapter comprises a snapshot or event in the life of the protagonist Shea (sp?) influenced by her Madagascar Red House, the confusing dynamics internally of her African American, Italian, and somewhat colonial identities, and externally of her relationships with her family, Italian friends, and employees. It’s a unique structure, and I enjoyed it immensely.
- Unsheltered — Barbara Kingsolver
- Not only one, but two of my favorite kinds of family dramas cleverly woven together, with a common threads of social justice and climate change. What is there not to like?
- Slowing down a little in the middle, as these kinds of books generally do, but I’m still excited to see if and how the two stories directly collide.
- I was very sad when this was over. S sign of a great book, but sad.
- A World on the Wing — Scott Weidensaul
- Non-fiction! It’s been awhile!
- Weidensaul introduces us to the field of migratory connectivity, which is coming to age in the world of ever smaller sensors and geolocators; writing in a style somewhat reminiscent of Barry Lopez, but with a little more candor.
- I can’t help but get caught up in how crazy it is that the little brown bird chirping away in my backyard might spend its winters basking in the Caribbean— and that if flew there on its own two tiny wings, with no Google Maps to help it find its way.
- Okay, Weidensaul gets a little lost in detailing every single study and bird species and case of the point he’s trying to make, so I’m honestly skimming over some portions, but the chapters frame each theme well enough. Just… a little too much information to be helpful. Or interesting.
- Asymmetry — Lisa Halliday
- The first half: a classic young girl trying to make it in the publishing world/older and successful writer romance; engaging but not quite captivating; throws out a few bits of arcane knowledge
- The second half: much more intense, the story of an Iraqi-American being detained at the UK airport, interspersed with memories of his youth and early adulthood. Rising suspense both as to how as to how the narrator and his family will react to the situation and as to how the two parts of the novel will intersect.
- Well. Tension was not resolved. Asymmetry?
- Competitive Grieving — Nora Zelevansky
- Compulsively listen-able, as they say. At the half-way point, not much significant has happened, but I am so into it I hope it never ends. I’d almost call it a beach read, in a dark sort of way.
- Neon in Daylight — Hermione Hoby
- Took me a bit to get into this enough to keep track of what I was listening to, but eventually I got caught up with the three main characters enough to care about what they were doing— especially as their paths began to intersect. Just went on a little too long, and… weird ending.
- We Love You, Charlie Freeman — Kaitlyn Greenidge
- Picked this book up spontaneously at the library, and am a little concerned that it’s going to be a dark story— but I’m reading regardless, because the darkness seems to reveal a truth that needs to be known.
- Got weird and didn’t engage with this at all, to be honest.
- Less — Andrew Sean Greer
- Listening to this despite my initial reaction to the blurb because it won a Pulitzer— and currently very confused by the whirlwind pace (also probably a result of listening at 1.25x), but willing to give it more of a chance.
- I wasn’t into this until the last 20 minutes, but they kind of made it all worth it. Why? You must read to find out!