American Gods by Neil Gaiman

After finishing my previous audiobook, I looked for another Hugo award-winning novel that was available to borrow without a wait. I ended up borrowing this one. It was published on the tenth anniversary of the original. The text of this audiobook is that favored by the author. It is somewhat longer than the original with some minor changes, as the author explains in his “Note on the Text” in the front of the book.

Shadow, a man just getting out of prison, is approached and offered a job working for a man named Wednesday. He is to be his driver and errand boy. At first he declines. After a tragedy in his life, with nothing else going on, he agrees. The book is largely the story of their relationship. As you can probably guess from the book’s title, Wednesday is a god. I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide which one. The story follows the two as a war brews between the old gods and the new gods.

I really enjoyed the storytelling in this book. The audiobook is a full cast production and really brings the story to life. Shadow struggles with meaning in his life and his relationships. I really appreciate stories that explore aspects of the human condition. Interestingly, even the gods seem to struggle with that. The writing isn’t in any sense what I would call literary. That said, it does get out of the way and let the story sing.

My rating: 4/5

Blood in the Machine by Brian Merchant

I’ve heard about this book many times in the year since it was first published. I think I first read about it when Cory Doctorow reviewed it on his blog. But the most recent time it came to my attention and that finally nudged me to pick it up was Austin Kleon’s weekly Friday post on Substack. With all that is going on in the world with technology in general and AI in particular, I felt it was time to read this. In fact, I should have read it much sooner.

If anyone has heard the term “Luddite”, it was most likely used as a slur to refer to someone who doesn’t like technology and is vehemently against its adoption. This is a slander against the original Luddites. The book sets out to correct this mistaken myth about them and also to show how we can learn from them how to resist technology when it is bad for workers and for humans in general. The Luddites did not hate technology. They embraced it when it improved not only business but also their lives, both at work and at home. They began to resist when new machines became a danger to both. They took action to destroy those machines when their government would do nothing to protect them or their children against that negative present and future. Interestingly, they never set out to harm any individual, with a single exception.

The author definitely has a thesis that he sets out to prove. This is no neutral history. That said, his case is supremely persuasive. The background politics seem to rhyme with what is happening now, especially with the attitude of big business toward technology as an unmitigated good and the treatment of anyone who resists those technologies as ignorant fools fighting against the future. Ultimately, this is the story of power over others. It made me wonder why one small group of people is so unwilling to share the financial rewards of technology with the very workers who make that improvement possible? My entire life I have seen economic systems that represent capital (capitalism) and labor (socialism/communism) at war with one another. Is there no system that we can design that honors the value brought to economies by *both* capital *and* labor? This book creates the fertile ground on which we may one day find an answer to that question.

My rating: 5/5

The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon

I recently started listening to audiobooks while working on projects around the house. My first one was finishing a book I started listening to on a recent trip. Then I went looking for something new to listen to. At the beginning of this year I had briefly toyed with the idea of reading Hugo Award winning novels this year, so I searched for one of the those. This book was the first I came across that was immediately available to borrow from my library.

It is not science fiction in the traditional sense. There are no aliens or spaceships. It does not take place in the far future or on another planet. It is more of a detective story that takes place in a speculative alternate history. In this version of history, Israel was destroyed shortly after its founding and Jews found a temporary “home” in a district in Alaska that the US carved out from among Indian land in Alaska. Sixty years later, this district in Sitka is still intact but was never made permanent. Now it is looking like there will be a reversion back to the natives, leaving the Jews there with no place to go.

That’s the background. The story itself revolves around a murder (naturally) that takes place in the same fleabag hotel where the main character lives. He is a detective for the Sitka police, and he is a complete mess. He is divorced with no kids and no self-respect. His partner is his half-Indian, half-Jewish cousin who was more or less raised as his brother. Together they investigate this murder even after they are told to leave it alone. Of course, they begin to uncover things that others in powerful places want left alone.

The writing is absolutely brilliant. It is filled with down-to-earth but often odd metaphors that evoke feelings and imagery that could be achieved in no other way. The audiobook reader is incredible with the voices and accents, really bringing the story to life. There are subplots that touch on different aspects of the human condition and how everyday people struggle with them. It is an amazing work of fiction that deserves all the awards it received.

My rating: 4.5/5

It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis

When I reached out to the adult services librarian at my local public library recently, he invited me to join a book club that just had an opening for a new member. This club meets every other month. They each read a different book on a theme and then tell the group about the book at the next meeting. For the meeting I attended, they all read a book published the year they were born. Gretchen, the woman sitting next to me, read this book, originally published in 1935. She spoke so well of it that I immediately picked it up and read it.

The author‘s wife was a newspaper reporter in Munich in 1931 as Hitler was rising polically. She interviewed Hitler and saw him for what he was—a petty, dangerous tyrant. In 1934 after describing him in part as “the very prototype of the little man”, she found the Gestapo politely but insistingly inviting her to leave the Fatherland. Back in the USA, many people told the author and his wife that she was overreacting. At least such things could not happen here the US. The author did not agree and wrote this book as an illustration of that.

The book is the story of an inexperienced politician who rises to power through populist tactics. He gains the Democratic nomination for president in 1936 by promising to make everyone financially secure in the midst of the Great Depression. Naturally, he goes on to win. He immediately becomes a dictator and begins to target his enemies. The main character is a newspaper editor in Vermont who only very slowly comes to see the danger of the candidate and then new president and eventually starts speaking against him. You can guess at what follows.

The plot and the storytelling do not reflect the best of this author. But that isn’t the point. Instead the author seeks to show how easy it could be for Americans to fall for a petty tyrant who is wiling to give us what we think we want. And even the people who know better don’t believe it enough to do something until it is too late. In this he succeeds admirably. Some of the things he writes could be right out of today’s news in our politically divided country. That makes this book particularly haunting and perhaps particularly important to read right now, almost eighty-nine years after it was published.

My rating: 3.5/5

The Extinction Trials by A. G. Riddle

My partner and I had a recent road trip to meet family in Virginia. As we do, we borrowed an audiobook from the library to enjoy on the road. We chose this one as my partner had read some of the author’s other books and liked them. We didn’t finish it on our trip, but when I had some work to do around the house I finally finished listening to it on my own.

It opens with a prologue describing an idea for how to save humanity from itself. As the novel itself starts, things are going very wrong. Eventually, the two main characters end up in some kind of bunker with a bunch of others. They learn that they are a part of the “extinction trials” and begin to try to figure out what to do.

Much of this book feels like an escape room game that you might play on your smartphone. That feels like a criticism to me, but somehow I actually liked it. There is a lot of action and mystery in this one, making it a thriller (that’s part of why my partner chose it). One giant reveal waits at the end after a series of smaller ones unfold. It was pure entertainment with only a little bit of message. Overall I very much enjoyed it.

My rating: 4/5

Address Unknown by Kathrine Kressmann Taylor

I came across this gem on the Patreon member feed of the *What Should I Read Next?* podcast. It was their “One Great Book” segment. These are short episodes where one of their staff members gives a quick review of a book they liked. Based on Shannan’s review, I immediately added to my list of books to read.

This short novel (more of a novella or short story, really, at just over ten thousand words long) was originally published in 1938 in Story magazine. It is the story of two good friends who are partners in an art gallery. One of them returns to Germany while the other remains in San Francisco to mind the store. Max, the one who stays, is a Jew. Once he arrives in Germany, Martin writes back to Max about the wonders of a revitalizing Germany in the early 1930s. As their correspondence continues (this is an epistolary novel), their relationship deteriorates.

Wow! This one is a real gut punch. It shows how people who were once so close can be alienated from each other so quickly. It feels very contemporary in our divided times. The change is slow and realistic. The two main characters come alive in their different writing styles. And the slow change in Martin is haunting as he succumbs to Nazi propaganda. It shows how any one of us, liberal or conservative, can find ourselves alienated from those we love when we give up and let others think for us.

My rating: 5/5

Time’s Convert by Deborah Harkness

I learned about this book from my partner. She had suggested I read the first three books in the series. Not long after, she told me that the author had written a fourth. We recently watched the entire TV series on Netflix, so I decided to finally read this book as it picks up where the series left off.

This is the story of Marcus and Phoebe. Phoebe becomes a vampire in order to mate with Marcus. We follow her experience as a fledgling and learn about the tribulations of the change. At the same time, we learn of Marcus’s past, including how he met Matthew and became a vampire himself. While I highly recommend reading the other books in the series first, the author does an excellent job of bringing to the reader’s mind the things that came before.

There wasn’t anything spectacular about this book. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed learning about the continuing lives of characters that I have come to care about in earlier books. But there isn’t any great conflict that drives this story. It just kind of sits there. I’m glad I read it and spent more time in this world. But it would not have been any great loss if I had skipped it either.

My rating: 3.5/5

Comfort Me With Apples by Catherynne M. Valente

I came across an interview with the author of this novella in Locus, “the magazine of science fiction and fantasy field”. What really got me interested enough to read it was this passage from the interview. “… you can’t discuss what that book is about without spoiling it. It’s got a big twist, and even to summarize what the book is about is to take a step towards spoilers. It’s basically a Stepford Wives meets ‘Bluebeard’ thing – but it’s not either of those things.” I was intrigued.

Despite what the author says, I will make a short attempt to summarize the plot. This is a fantasy thriller. Each chapter is named after a variety of apple. It opens with the beginning of an agreement that residents of a neighborhood have to sign and live by. The next chapter opens with the protagonist saying, “I was made for him.” Right away that was creepy for me, making me feel something was wrong. From there the chapters alternate between continuing the resident agreement (which gets weirder and weirder) and the woman as she slowly starts to question her life and her world. As the author says, there is a big twist at the end that will have you looking back on what you read and seeing it in a very different light.

The writing here is very engaging. I was enveloped by the story and the mystery. The use of the first person is very effective at bringing you into the protagonist’s world and viewpoint. At first I was turned off by the whole “I was made for my man” vibe. But as the protagonist grows to question things, the story become more and more feminist. in the end, it is a fantastic fresh look at an old familiar allegory.

My rating: 4/5

We Are the Crisis by Cadwell Turnbull

This is the sequel to No Gods, No Monsters and the second book in Cadwell Turnbull’s Convergence Saga. My book club read the first two years ago and decided to read the sequel in October.

The story picks up about a year after the climactic events of the first novel. Monsters continue to seek recognition and equal rights from their human neighbors. Naturally, a group rises to oppose this, othering monsters as inherently dangerous. The story climaxes in a similar devastating event as the first novel.

This just felt like more of the same without adding much. The writing is engaging and the subject matter is a telling metaphor for LGBTQ+ rights. But the storytelling is still disjointed. It jumps around and left me feeling confused and a bit disoriented. Worst of all for me was that the author did little to nothing to help catch up those who read the first book in the series. Often authors will seamlessly add little reminders of what happened previously. There was little to none of that here. I recommend reading this one immediately after the first. And if you plan to read the whole series, wait until the last one comes out so you can read them one after the other. Despite all these shortcomings, I still enjoyed the novel.

My rating: 3/5

Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind by Molly McGhee

I had never heard of this book when I read Cory Doctorow’s review of it on his blog. Having gone through a period of deep indebtedness, the experience of the main character felt familiar from the review. I added it to my list of books to read and finished it recently.

The titular character is a twenty-something young man who never completed college but still has the debt from it that cannot be dismissed in bankruptcy. He lives in a one-room basement apartment of his divorcee landlord. He is invited to apply for a job that he can literally do in his sleep. But as with all things that seem too good to be true, things don’t go as he envisions.

My main characterization of this novel is that it delivers how desperate and unsolvable being in debt is. It feels like a death trap. No one tells you how expensive it is to be poor. You get fined for not having enough money in your bank account. You can’t afford quality goods and spend more on having to buy junk over and over. The story never goes in to those details yet somehow delivers the desperation that poverty delivers. The story is just the right amount of weird and the main character is flawed but sympathetic. It is not the most comfortable or uplifting read, but it sure delivers a gut punch about what many young people today are going through.

My rating: 4/5