Unusual Writing Style Choices

I can’t remember how I first learned about Lauren Groff’s novel Matrix. What I do remember is being attracted to the subject matter. A story about a reluctant nun who uses her newfound role as abbess to build her abbey and protect the women in it. It deals with feminist themes during a time (England in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries) when women’s roles were limited, to say the least. After reading the novel, I can’t say that I’d recommend it to everyone.

On the positive side, it is extraordinarily well-written. The reader is absolutely immersed in the convent and the life of the sisters there — the cycle of church services, the prayer, the work. And you are immersed in the emotions of the characters as well. And while the novel is very feminist in its philosophy, it emerges gently from the experience of the main character Marie. I never felt like I was hit over the head with it. On the contrary, I often found myself trying to navigate what exactly the main character was aiming at ultimately.

Unfortunately, while the writing is excellent, it is also very laden with terms of the world in which it takes place. Many of these are understandable from the context, but many are left unclear. This pulled me from the story to try to figure out what was being said. And there were absolutely no quotation marks in the whole book. Dialog takes place in this odd sort of reported way without the use of direct quotation. And the text almost reads like it was written in first person, though it is not. I found this combination of style choices jarring, repeatedly taking me out of the story.

In the end, I have to say that I am happy to have read the book and I enjoyed it somewhat while reading it. However, I would not recommend it to the casual reader. This feels like a book that is best read in a college English class exploring feminist themes and/or medieval monasticism. So if those themes are your happy place and you enjoy exploring an unusual writing style, this book may be for you. Everyone else, I suggest giving it a pass.

What to Expect at the End

Being solidly middle-aged, I have started to experience the fact that I can no longer do many of the things I used to do in my twenties and thirties. And those that I can do, I can’t do to the same extent. I am slower, less nimble, and get tired faster. Naturally, this has led me to think more of my own mortality, both how I can live longer and what will happen when I die. For this last of life’s events I highly recommend The Beginner’s Guide to the End by B. J. Miller and Shoshana Berger.

The book is aimed at the patient but also covers the perspective of caregivers before, during, and after the death process, whether that involves a terminal illness or simple gradual decline. It is very thorough starting with all the things that you can and should do to prepare for this inevitability, such as wills and health care proxies. There is a whole section on illnesses, what to expect at the end, and how to treat symptoms of those who are dying. Perhaps most importantly, it covers how to ask for help as well as where to find it. It is a very thorough and helpful guide for anyone who is close to death or those caring for them.

Given its topic you would be forgiven for thinking that the book is dark and depressing. I did not find it so. Death is an unavoidable part of living, and this book takes a gentle caring approach to this journey. The authors are informative and sympathetic, taking the stigma, ignorance, and fear out of dying.

Science Fiction in Translation

I wasn’t sure at first what to make of The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, translated from Chinese by Ken Liu. I still struggle with how I feel about it. There is much that I enjoyed and appreciated. It is based on hard science and isn’t a space opera. But about a third of the way through it just sort of bogged down for me. Fortunately it picked up again and I ended up liking the book overall. I can certainly see why it won the Hugo Award for best novel in 2015.

Part of what I struggled with was that the translation felt like a translation. The occasional foreignness of the prose was challenging for me. Upon reading the translator’s postscript, I learned that this was on purpose. He wanted the text to reflect as much as possible the original. That means it won’t feel like native English. Perhaps that is what led to the feeling of being immersed in the “Chineseness” of the story, which I liked very much.

The story starts during the Cultural Revolution in China and ends in modern times. It deals with difficult people and difficult times, politics and science, as well as relationships of all sorts. I am grateful that such a unique novel was translated into English so that I could experience something outside of my culture in my favorite genre.

Exploring the Human Condition

It took me a while to pick a copy of Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven. It is about a flu outbreak that is so virulent and deadly that civilization collapses. Not exactly cheery reading in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally published in 2014, I expect that the concept at the center of the book felt extreme at its release. No more. Reading it left me grateful that humanity has thus far avoided being completely brought to its knees by a microbe.

The story is told primarily through the lives of The Traveling Symphony composed of actors and musicians who travel around Lakes Michigan and Huron performing Shakespeare and classical music. The reader gets a glimpse of how the plague started through the stories of those who later became part of The Traveling Symphony or encountered it. The writing is engaging, drawing you into the experiences and inner lives of the characters.

Slowly, bit by bit, you begin to learn about how some of the characters are connected. The hints at what might come later are part of what drew me to keep reading, as well as characters whose flaws felt real and relatable. In a world where civilization has collapsed, there are no angels. And yet there are a remarkable number of people who seek to make the world a better place. Through her characters the author show the absolute humanity of the people who inhabit this book, filled with both hope and deep disappointment.

If you are looking for an uplifting, feel good read, this book isn’t for you. But if you like stories of authentic people and a somewhat optimistic yet realistic look at the human condition, this book is a winner.

Adam Smith’s Other Book

How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life book cover

Most people are familiar with Adam Smith’s book An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, more commonly referred to as simply The Wealth of Nations. But seventeen years earlier he published his first and less famous book The Theory of Moral Sentiments. This is the book that Russ Roberts sets out to summarize and modernize in his book How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life.

One of Smith’s key ideas that Roberts emphasizes is the idea of the “impartial spectator”, what we might today call a conscience. The concept is that we all operate with this spectator in our heads, judging us, telling us what to do. It is this “impartial spectator” that keeps us on the straight and narrow even when no one is looking. Ultimately, we all want to be seen as good and this is the tool by which we do so.

The book applies this thinking to other concepts like knowing yourself, how to be happy, and how to not fool yourself. I found that all the concepts really struck home for me. They rang true. And I found myself feeling like Adam Smith’s first book is the missing companion to his second.

There is much criticism in the world today for capitalism and markets. They are cold and have led to tremendous inequality. We lament that this system only sees people for their utility. Where is the humanity? It is in the first Adam Smith book! And in the last chapter, Roberts even touches on this.

At the end of the book Roberts points out that Smith’s first book is about the people close to us while Smith’s second book is about strangers. We need to learn to live with both, but in order to get much past subsistence living, we need a way to reliably work with strangers. Markets are how we rely on self-interest to direct public good among strangers. But for those we are close to it isn’t markets or money but culture and the “impartial spectator” that comes from shared culture that directs us. Perhaps the solution here is to combine what we learn from Smith’s two great works about how to deal with both strangers and our loved ones.

Getting Stronger

My latest romance read was Heartbreak for Hire by Sonia Hartl. I found this short novel much more enjoyable than my previous read. This was in many ways its opposite. That one was sex with a bit of story to hold it together. The sex scenes in this novel can be counted on one hand, but the story is pretty good. Don’t get too excited, though. It is a take on the enemies become lovers trope. Nonetheless it is fairly well done and enjoyable.

I prefer romances with strong female leads. The main character in this one wants to be strong, but she isn’t quite there. She is coming out of a bad breakup with an emotionally abusive boyfriend that she let control her. Now her employer is controlling her through that broken relationship. What makes the story mostly work for me is that the narrative is about the main character’s learning to take control of her life and what she wants to do with it.

As with all my experience with romance novels so far, this is not great literature. But it isn’t bad. I enjoyed it. But I am not sure how many more of these I will read. There are so many more books on my to read pile that are potentially much better than anything I expect to find in the romance genre.

A Little Taboo and Not Much Story

For my second romance novel, I picked up more of a novella. It was part of a series called A Touch of Taboo by Katee Robert. Each story has a hint of a taboo subject. I saw the fourth book of the series recommended in my latest search. It is called Seducing My Guardian and is about a young woman who lost her parents in a tragic car accident at the age of sixteen. On her twenty-fifth birthday, at which she gains full access to the trust her parents left her, she decides to seduce her guardian. She never lived with this guardian. He shipped her off to boarding school and managed her financial affairs.

This was a quick read and falls into a subgenre that I would call “steamy sex held together with just enough story”. Obviously, she succeeds in seducing her guardian. They spend the night exploring and acting out sexual fantasies. The sex is well-written with a bit of the woman wondering about the motivation and psychology behind what she is doing. I largely found the novella simplistic and disappointing.

The author could have explored the relationship side of the story a bit more. And that led me to realize something about myself. I am not really interested in erotic stories for just the steamy sex. Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate it. It’s just not enough. I want to know how they came to be together, how they might have a life together and deal with the challenges that life throws at two people sharing their bodies and their lives. That just wasn’t there in this book, and it left me wanting more.

Love at the End of the World

A few years ago, I got curious about romance novels. I had never read one. I had seen a lot of them growing up in the 80s – paperback covers with shirtless men and long blond hair blowing in the wind. But this is a huge industry, and I wanted to know more about it. When I asked my girlfriend for a recommendation, she told me to read Outlander.

I had heard of this book but never thought of it as a romance novel. It was time-traveling historical fiction, right? Yes. But is was also a romance novel with steamy sex scenes. The quality of the writing was way beyond the reputation that I had heard of for romances. I read the series through book four before I decided to drop it, and I didn’t read any more romance.

Recently, I decided to dive back into romance, maybe something a little less literary and a bit more mainstream for romance novels. I logged onto the subreddit r/romancebooks and searched for books with strong female main characters (FMC) and steamy sex scenes. I never knew there were so many subgenres in romance! After some digging through recommendation, I landed on reading Last Light by Claire Kent.

Last Light takes place after an asteroid hits Europe causing the breakdown of civilization. The setting reminded me a lot of Stephen King’s The Stand but without the deadly virus. The narrator is a young woman leaving her home town to join others who left before her. Her love interest is an older man who was a mechanic in that same town. They end up traveling together for safety. Obviously, they fall in love.

The plot was well-written and engaging. I genuinely wanted to know what would happen next. The sex scenes were steamy and fit well in the course of the story. None of it felt out of place and a break simply for a sex scene. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel with one exception. At the end of nearly every chapter (or maybe every chapter, I didn’t go back and check), the author makes some sort of reference to “love at the end of the world”. It was cliche. It was absurd and redundant given the plot. And it was tiresome to read over and over again.

Despite that one annoyance, I enjoyed my first dip into the waters of more typical romance fare. And I did some more research to find other novels that I might enjoy. I must admit is takes some work. A lot of the stories that I found in my research just make me shake my head. They aren’t my thing and aren’t for me. But I have some new possibilities. If I make it to the end of any of them, I’ll share here.

A Contemporary SFF Magazine

I am a huge fan of science fiction. I read many sci fi novels in high school, and recently subscribed to the semi-pro Uncanny Magazine. It publishes every other month and includes short stories, novellas, poetry, and essays on the topics of science fiction and fantasy. The latest issue is number 45, March/April 2022.

In this issue I dogeared five different pieces – two short stories and three essays. Flowerkicker by Stephen Graham Jones (available online April 5) is the story of a couple on a hike up a mountain. She is stopping to view every flower. He wants to get to the top and back before sunset. And they come across something out of the ordinary along the path.

In Requiem for a Dollface by Margaret Dunlap (also available online April 5) a teddy bear seeks the “murderer” of a child’s favorite doll. Upon discovering the perpetrator, he must make a very difficult ethical decision.

The essay Acknowledging Taiwanese-American Vampire Foodies by Jo Wu discusses explores cultural prejudice in the foods we eat and how they affect our attitudes toward those who eat differently. I thought the title absurd, not expecting much from the piece. Instead I found it poignant and insightful.

Resisting the Monolith: Collecting As Counter Narrative by Rebecca Romney is an essay by a collector of feminist science fiction. She traces the history back before Margaret Atwood to the nineteenth century. I added at least two titles to my “to read” pile after reading it.

Wax Sealed With a Kiss by Elsa Sjunneson (available online April 5) discusses the role of letters in general and love letters in particular throughout history and their use in fiction such as The Screwtape Letters and This is How You Lose the Time War. She even explores how her own letter writing helped her get perspective on her divorce.

I encourage anyone with an interest in contemporary science fiction and fantasy to read and subscribe to this excellent magazine.

Why Humans (and Machines) Play Games

Author Oliver Roeder in his book Seven Games uses those seven games (checkers, chess, go, backgammon, poker, Scrabble, and bridge) to explore both the human history of games in general as well as how the approach to creating artificial intelligence (AI) has changed as it has been applied to games. At first those developing AI tried to develop machines that think like humans do. But that direction was unfruitful due to the depth of the games. There was simply too much to these games to simply use brute force calculations. New approaches were attempted and the results were a completely different way to think about games, a machine way.

The book also highlights the best players of each of these games and how AI has affected them and game play in general. The author does an excellent job of showing the human side of playing games and their importance to human development. And he takes what could be a very dry topic (AI) and makes it extremely relatable. For anyone interested in games in general or the development of AI, I highly recommend this book.