6.27.2025 - Weekly Digest
Sometimes a theme just happens to a person and there you are.
Some book reviews, such as they are. Links to everything mentioned in the original posts.
-JA
6.24.2025
So I'm reading on the metro like I often do. I thought being so far away from things and sleeping in a basement at the bottom of a cul-de-sac would further isolate me but it's now clear that's not really possible and anyway I still make the commute to Mile End every day and find a corner in the office space to work on whatever it is I do these days and one benefit to this is that I have about thirty minutes each way to read, which adds about an hour of book time to my already pretty bookish days, and it's good for my brain and blood pressure in a way that reading the news on the phone is not.
I've been keeping notes for a while on the art I consume with the idea I'd put together an essay or something, not really being into criticism, not really sure it's a field whatever they tell you when you're getting a liberal arts education, with the way things are changing all the time and the frames of reference and the individual taste and imposition of rules and standards on everything being such factors that contribute to the burning of the world, such as it is, but then I came across this passage in Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler, a quote from a presidential candidate whose supporters have been known to burn witches:
'Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again.'
Don't worry, this takes place in 2032. Total fantasy.
6.25.2025
Here are some books I've read in recent months that do not make me feel like I'm living through a cracked and even bloodier version of the present. Not that they don't contain their own built-in alarm systems. Most spec-fic does.
The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed: it's hard to say anything about Ursula K. Le Guin without sounding like a gushing fanboy but she's just really, really good and her work reads like well measured literary fiction. The fantasy and sci-fi elements provide organic backdrops for her ideas, rather than being sandboxes for her characters to play in. As she said: a novelist's business is lying. Hallelujah and amen.
Children of Time trilogy (w/ Children of Ruin and Children of Memory)
If your thing is hyperevolved spider species hanging out with humans, then heading out into the universe to mingle with octopus folk and then all of them together meeting something even weirder and being faced with how to deal with that, this whole trilogy is for you.
Alien Clay: same author as Children of Time.
What happens when earthlings go bungling around on another planet with an entirely different biological rulebook.
The Three Body Problem trilogy (w/ The Dark Forest and Death's End)
The politics angle is really only a concern if you're a committed Maoist, I would think. The series is really about humanity finding ways to work together faced with a common threat (okay that sounds relevant), and the twisty narrative lets the author introduce some pretty sophisticated and imaginative world-bending concepts. Read it before you watch any of the adaptations if it's not too late.
The Fifth Season: only read the first one so far and I think I need to take the rest more slowly to really savor what she's up to. Kinda fantastical, kinda smutty, all interesting and rendered earnestly. Book two queued up.
Project Hail Mary: best Andy Weir (author of The Martian) I've read. Hard nerdy sci-fi in the guise of an interspecies buddy comedy. They're making a movie with Gosling. I believe in Gosling. I just hope they don't overdo the CGI and make it look dumb.
6.26.2025
Here are some other books I was less enthusiastic about. Again, I'm not a critic and my take shouldn't mean much, but what good is having a blog if you can't spit your opinions once in a while.
Dungeon Crawler Carl
I like games. Particularly role playing games. When I have to access to a video game console I have to ration myself to keep from disappearing into it. This is a narrative in first person by a character in a combat-heavy video game, including all the mechanics and cheesier elements of the form. That considered one might think I would enjoy this book. I didn't.
Redshirts
Had a good time until the epilogue (which is of considerable length) then I just couldn't take anymore. Even Wil Wheaton's audio narration, usually excellent, couldn't save it for me. Somehow actually made it worse. Anyway, fun Star Trek parody until it goes all meta and turns into something else altogether. I follow the author on Bluesky and I get the impression he's a good guy and I approve of his existence in general. I'll give him another try. He has a new one out about how the moon is made of cheese. This makes me nervous. Not the physics of it, but it feels like a huge conceit to make as a reader and the result will either be hilarious or awful.
Red Mars
Reads like historical fiction set in the future. Epic, sweeping, grand, full of eccentric characters, and doesn't care if you're bored or not. It started strong and the opening sequence had me hooked. After that there's a lot of barren terrain to traverse to get to the interesting stuff. Not bad but maybe a bit long and I tried to start the second one (Blue Mars) and it's even longer. I may never know what happened to those colonists but I'm guessing a few of them or their children survived because there's a third book (Green Mars).
Artemis
Least good Andy Weir I've read. Even lunar sabotage couldn't keep me from feeling uncomfortable about the way the character was written.
6.27.2025
Finding the sweet spot where art and social conscience intersect is a rare talent. One of the few people I know who does it well – and I include my own mother https://kittydonohoe.com/ on that list – is Luke O’Neil. Luke is the publisher of the newsletter Welcome to Hell World, which features essayists and storytellers concerned about the human condition and this moment of perpetual crisis we all feel stuck in. He gave me a space a couple years ago when I was in desperate need of encouragement and I'll always be grateful.
Luke's own stories show up in Hell World but can be found all over the place. He rolls them out in a raw and casual prose that goes right to the middle of your brain. At the risk of inducing writer comparison syndrome I'll say his work reminds me, sometimes, of Grace Paley. I’m sure he devoured Barthelme back in the day and I know for a fact that he and I are both devotees of the hilarious antipoet James Tate.
Anyway, Luke has a new book coming out, We Had it Coming. The announcement came as I was putting together this week’s posts on this very theme. His last book, A Creature Wanting Form was what I needed to read when I read it and I'm really looking forward to sitting down with this one. It's out in August and available for pre-order. I plan on getting a physical copy as soon as I have a table or shelf to set it on.
LUKE O’NEIL