Comfort, or No Apocalypses for a While

I think there are two reactions, bookwise, to the current political situation.  Some people are stepping up in their reading--reading about politics, social justice, and activism.  Aarti's been posting some amazing, thoughtful reviews this week.

I, on the other hand, am going the other way.  I am avoiding the real world in my reading life--which meant actually dropping a couple of books I was in the middle of, because they were too much about oppressive regimes or fear-mongering charmers who turn the world against your heroes.

Instead, I'm thinking comfort reads.  I was already reading Sarah Waters's Fingersmith, but it's been my go-to this week, because the whole story is so immediate and intimate.  Sue may be a thief, but she's plucky and smart, and reading the book, you could believe that there were only two houses in the world--the little pawn shop and the great dank manor.  I also love an imposter story, and a thief pretending to be a lady's maid seems like the best thing ever. Mike and I have tickets to see the show at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge in a few weeks, so this is kind of perfect to read right now.

I have also turned aggressively in a nunward direction.  In following Jenny's recommendation of the book The Nuns of Sant'Ambrogio, I wound up in the nun aisle of the library, which of course means I walked away with more than I bargained for.  So I just finished a book called New Habits: Today's Women Who Choose to Become Nuns, by Isobel Losada.  The book was published in 1999, so most of the women were interviewed when I was in college, and there have been a lot of changes in the Catholic church since then.  This book very much made me want to find an even more recent book on a similar subject.

I'm also thinking of rereading Shining Through, by Susan Isaacs, one of my longstanding comfort reads.  I think watching people be heroic in World War II--especially in a world of clear good guys and bad guys (without ignoring that the good guys were no always as good as you wish they were) might be right up my alley right now.

And finally, I'm avidly reading a Buffy fanfic that is so good I can't even tell you.  Just yesterday I caught up on he published chapters; it's near the end, but from now on I have to wait a chapter a day like everyone else.  It's called Otherwise, by one of my favorite fanfic authors, Sigyn, and it's sweet and hard at the same time.  It's a time travel story--sort of--which often just end up being wish fulfillment, "if I knew then what I know now" stories about how much better things would have turned out if the characters had done what we wanted them to.  But this is about might-have-beens, and about what you lose by dwelling on what you already lost.  I love Sigyn's older Buffy, who is harder, but also much stronger in her feelings and sense of self.

So, sweethearts, this is what I read when my heart doesn't know where to turn.  What about you?  I am always looking for another comfort read.  I think it will be a while before I read any dystopian fiction.

Review: Everything Belongs to the Future

Note: This post was written several days ago.  This book is truly excellent and amazing, but I think it would have devastated me if I'd read it today. There's a lot of anger about haves and have-nots here, and right now it's hurting my heart to think about any subject like that.  You should read this book, but if you feel like I do, you might want to wait a couple of weeks.
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There are so many levels on which to love Everything Belongs to the Future that I almost don't know how to talk about it. It's about politics and terrorism and friendship and power. It's about haves vs.  have-nots and about innocence and the health care system and time.  I want to unpack the whole thing and lay it out for you, but I can't do that without spoiling it (and the slow unfolding of details here is so beautifully crafted that I can't bring myself to spoil any of it).

In this future, there is a drug that halts aging.  If you take the fix--one pill every day--you will essentially stay healthy and not age indefinitely.  But of course, the drug company can charge a fortune for it, and does, and so only rich people--and those who are chosen by them as great artists, musicians, actors--can afford the fix.  The rest of the world muddles through outside their inner sanctum.

So right there, you have a very basic fact that I've always thought was interesting about the gap between rich and poor; a lot of what the rich have is time, in a lot of ways.  They can afford to pay others to do tedious, time-consuming parts of day-to-day life--someone to clean your house and mow your lawn. A drive instead of a long bus commute, a job that gives you paid sick days so you can take care of your health.  There are a thousand little ways in which money buys you time.

This is only the tiniest pinpoint of light in the constellation of this novella's thoughtfulness.  Ask about terrorism and betrayal and sacrifice and you imagine a huge, sweeping story, but this is about a bunch of poor kids trying to make their way in the world and maybe make the world a little better.  Every character in here is smudged and shining, broken and beautiful.

Laurie Penny did something here that I want to talk about--every moment that slides past you in the book is worth stopping over and examining, whether it's the politics and economics of the food truck, or the real fraught intensity of making out with someone so as not to get caught doing something worse, or what it means to be an old woman in a world where that is theoretically optional.  I wish I could do a book club about just this book.

Many deep thank yous to Netgalley for my review copy.

Romancing My Heart of Stone

I need to stop reading romance novels that do not come recommended by people who know what they're talking about, like Sarah.  And I really need to stop being tempted by romance novels on Netgalley, because I'm far too picky and far too inexperienced to choose things that fit my very niche romance needs.

The Lady Who Drew Me In is a novel by Thomasine Rappold, third in a series but I didn't realize that till I was almost done and there was nothing lost there at all.  It's the story of Daisy, a young widow of an older, not particularly loving husband who can draw images from other people's minds. This has caused trouble in her life before and she's sworn to herself not to do it again.  Then handsome rogue lawyer Jackson turns up with a case where her talent might be the only thing that can save a little boy's life. So now they're embroiled in an adventure.

Daisy has a soft spot for kids--she desperately wanted children but her older husband was controlling and frigid (of course); now she wants to start a day home for poor children. She really likes kids. Kids are her thing. Kids.  One thing leads to another, and yada yada yada, Daisy and Jackson have to get married. But it's cool--they'll get married, have fun sex, not get emotionally involved, solve the mystery, and then go their separate ways, right?

Nothing unexpected or even really troubling there.  The mystery is actually pretty great, with suspicious townsfolk and sabotage and clues. Jackson is trying to be a better person, Daisy Loves Kids. And they fall in love but of course they can't tell each other--actually, this book is a lot better than some in this respect, in that they often tell each other things that they overhear or why they're being reserved or whatever.

I think the biggest weakness is that there is a lot of internal monologing about how much they love and want each other.  I mean, you expect a lot of emotional thought processes in a romance, but there's no actual forward motion in the feelings department, but a lot of repeated thoughts about how much the love and want each other in spite of all that stands between them.  I'd estimate that it was fully a third of the word count of the book, which was way too much.

That said, those parts were pretty skimmable, and I truly did like the mystery.  I had hoped that the spirit writing thing meant that this would be a slightly magical universe, but it wasn't; it was more like the spiritualism fad of the Victorian era was actually real.  So it wasn't as special as I'd hoped, but it wasn't bad.  Not the highest praise, I'm afraid, but solid.  And thanks to Netgalley for the review copy. And advance thanks to Sarah for further romance recommendations.

The Opposite of the Literal Best

Just after the amusing, charming, and edifying pleasure of whimsical nonfiction that was Unmentionable, I was so excited to have the opportunity to follow it up with The Science of Game of Thrones--pop science themed around one of my favorite shows! Perfect follow up to pop history themed around one of my favorite authors!

Yeah, but no.  I mean, not that I had a lot of hope that there would be a lot of actual science to talk about in GoT.  Dragons, white walkers, the Wall, and how long does winter last?  There's not a lot to work with here.  But the fact is that I will take any excuse for a good science niblet, so all you really needed to do is put a little theming around the edges.

Alas, it was not meant to be.  First, Helen Keen's sense of humor is not my cup of tea.  Maybe it's how very British it is, but there's a combination of silliness and mean spirit that I just can't connect with.  She reaches REALLY far to make silly puns, makes fun of people's names and bodies and hobbies.  And while yes, people who speak Klingon recreationally are an easy target, she doesn't tease them in a fond or respectful way.

Even the science, though, is a little--well, rough around the edges.  I was kind of hoping for a set of deep dives into areas that are touched on in the story, but there was no deep dive at all here.  No topic is covered for more than a couple of pages, and some of the concepts are kind of a reach to associate with the show.

Take wildfire.  This is a burning substance that is used in war (Tyrion fires it at Stannis's invading army to defend King's Landing) and it's horrible.  So how does that work?  Now, the Mythbusters would have tried to come as close as they could to it, chemically, which I think would have been interesting.  Keen took a different tack and went with something more historically related than scientifically and talked extensively about napalm.  Okay, that's definitely an acceptable angle.  But first: napalm isn't funny, which I think she struggled with.  And second, it wasn't a very interesting history of napalm.  It was more like a compare and contrast of napalm vs. wildfire, which is not that edifying, since a) I know they're different, and b) wildfire isn't real.

My favorite parts were about the genetics of inbreeding and about possible astronomical (am I the only one who always wants to write astrological when I mean science and not horoscopes?) causes of a winter of unpredictable and dangerous length.  Those were the two sections where I felt like I really learned something. In the wild, inbreeding can actually be beneficial to animal populations--in an environment where weak individuals die off quickly, the "good" genes are the only ones left pretty quickly (though scientists admit this is hard to test, since by the time your population is so low that everyone's inbreeding, you're just on big rockslide away from extinction). And winter could be caused by something besides the orbit of the planet--passing through clouds of space debris that changes the way the sun strikes the planet--which would account for the unpredictability.

But most of it ended up being fake history lessons, and I hate fake history lessons.  I'm all there for worldbuilding, but stories about war machines and the history of armed combat that touch on but don't elucidate how war happened in the real world as an excuse to basically ramble on about Westeros with a lot of bad puns...I was very disappointed.

And now, I shall go read a bunch of the nonfiction suggestions from Jenny at Reading the End, which will make me smarter and happier as a person, I bet.