Women’s History Month series
Links to interviews (and transcripts) with Melbourne women who protested against the Vietnam War and the National Service Act.
(list continues below)
Continue reading →Beyond the Graves Waits Mist and Sea
Read courtesy of NetGalley. It’s out in September.
The short version is I liked the ideas behind this quite a lot, but I found the execution lacking.
The positives:
Sometimes I like a chosen one story. There’s something a bit cosy, a bit comforting, about reading a book where the main character is really special. I know it’s not for everyone, and that’s ok! So, here, Harper is a marine biologist and she’s looking for some evidence that will help show her PhD idea is real and viable rather than just a crackpot theory. So she ends up on the remote and mysterious Bell Island to do the research. She’s been a loner all of her life; her parents died when she was 13 and she’s been emotionally closed since then. Her mother was a Bell Island native, but Harper’s never been there. She’s also had weird dreams for her whole life. So yes, it’s pretty obvious there is Something Special about Harper.
Some of Kaufman’s description is pretty great. It’s a windlashed island – there’s a lot of scope for it.
The less positive:
I have some big complaints, and some smaller one.
First, it’s too long. Harper’s dreams – especially early on – and her internal agonies get repetitive.
Second, some bits are simply unbelievable. I’m not talking the existence of huldafolk or an octopus who communicates with humans; I mean someone with both a 17-century diary (which she can read with ease) AND a historical account in front of her, and she CHOOSES to go back and forth between them rather than reading one in entirety. With no explanation like ‘she’s looking for context’.
Third… I just got bored. It was very obvious very early on what some of the twists would be – which isn’t necessarily a problem, but when the book treats the reveal as a surprise, it is a problem. Harper is meant to be looking for evidence of a mysterious octopus, but there is a remarkable LACK of octopus. Also a lack of science, but that’s because of the epic storms the island faces, and that’s fine in the context of the geography.
And a small issue in the context of the story, but rather large theologically: pretty sure no one prays to “Christ the Father.” Because, uh, that’s kinda the point of Christ – that’s he’s not the Father…
Overall, I was disappointed.
As You Wake, Break the Shell
I read this courtesy of the publisher and NetGalley. It’s out in October (sorry).
A more complete review of this will appear in Locus eventually, but: it’s brilliant.
I read Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet when it first came out, I think, and I bounced off it hard. Why? I do not remember. Not a jot. Probably I was in the wrong frame of mind – at least, I can only assume so; after reading this I wonder if actually I was too much in a ‘big space adventures’ mode.
Chambers does some clever narrative things across this novel. Firstly, the chapter sequencing: it starts with Chapter 1… but then all of a sudden you’re in Chapter 764, and no you didn’t skip a lot of pages. So there’s two parallel timeframes. Which means one of the big character questions is resolved very quickly, which means that you can get on with looking at the other questions: how do the characters get from here to there? What changed?
It would be easy to read this mostly as an almost domestic novel, focused on two people and their experiences; there are even recipes! But the reality is that Chambers is doing some really cool political stuff here. The reality of the initial planet’s colonisation, the way the two societies structure themselves, how difference is viewed… yeh, there’s a lot going on.
It’s really good.
Object Lessons: Laboratory
I read this courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, Bloomsbury Academic. It’s out in September.
I have said this before and I say it again: I love the Object Lesson series. Sometimes the Object in question seems relatively simple – a skateboard! – but sometimes it’s a bit more abstract: like The Laboratory. (One of those words where you can hear an Aussie / Brit vs US accent difference.)
As is so often the case, York uses her own experience – of sort of working in a lab, and sort of not; being science-adjacent – to illuminate all sorts of interesting aspects of the lab, and along the way varying reactions to science as a discipline. She looks at labs in science fiction – in film, in particular, since that informs so much of what non-scientists think of as “a lab” (ask me how I feel about the lab in Fringe).
I enjoyed the expansive view of “the lab” that York brought in this book, and how passionate she clearly is about communicating the realities of scientific research to a broad audience – that it’s piecemeal, that it involves many, many contributors, that it’s usually safe! She has a good section on the development of scientific rigour, and laws around things like animal experimentation – and, of course, given it’s Now, touches on some of the issues around Covid and its genesis.
This is a really great intro to the idea of “the lab” for the non-scientist, but I suspect it might also be a nice thought-provoker for those who work in science to think about how the rest of the world views their work, and their world.
Bodies of Magic
I read this in ARC. It’s out in September. (And it’s worth waiting for.)
A proper review of this is forthcoming in Locus, but the TL;DR is I loved it. I’ve loved everything of Marske’s I’ve read so far, so that’s not a huge surprise – but this is quite different from her other books in some ways. Some similarities, though, too.
Set in secondary world, where some people are born with magical ability and that’s no real big deal. You get tested, you see whether you might have a gift. If you live in Sieuxerr, though, you might have the ability to be a healer – in which case you have no choice but to be a healer. And after five years of study you undertake five days of exams with four other students – not of your choosing – before you graduate. And then you have to go off and be a healer, either in whatever place paid for your training (because of course it costs), or at home if your family is rich enough to have paid upfront.
Sounds familiar, really, doesn’t it.
The book focuses on five students in those final days. All of the characters are beautifully developed. They all have their struggles, and their achievements.
Did I mention there’s a death? There’s a death. Finish your medical exams AND figure out whether the death is a murder or not! No drama! So there’s investigatory shenanigans; there’s falling in love, arguing with family, making your place in the world, defying expectations, etc etc. It’s a lot of fun. I did get about 4/5 through and have to go stare at a wall, For Reasons.
This is such a great book.
The Book of Bots
I received an ARC from the author. It’s out in August – but preorders are love!
I often love a robot story; I also enjoy a well-thought-out AI story. And thus, James Patrick Kelly’s The Book of Bots: completely in my wheelhouse.
Covering around 25 years of his career – which is impressive in itself – the range of stories in this collection is fascinating. Some of the robots are actively meant to be caring for humans, in very different ways; stories like “Itsy Bitsy Spider” could come across as cutesy but it is deeply, deeply creepy, from my perspective anyway. Indeed, several of the stories end up crossing into the Creepy realm, because of the way they imagine bots interacting with humans – and, more to the point, humans interacting with bots. “Bernando’s House” is, if anything even more creepy than “Itsy Bitsy Spider;” a house has a personality, and a human figure to represent it, aaaaaand then things go weird. “Yukui!” confronts the idea of humans owning bots, and questions of sentience/slavery. “Your Boyfriend Experience” likewise asks questions about humans creating bots to their own specifications, and how that plays out with and around other humans. And “Je ne regrette rien” is kind of the culmination of the stories about human-like bots, and a quest to be more than they have been created to be.
On slightly different notes, “Undone” brings in a sentient spaceship – the concept itself not unique, but the playing-out and ramifications are what make it worth reading. “What it means to be a car” consists of dialogue between a car and a passenger – the only story that has a particularly different narrative structure, and one I enjoyed for that reason.
The collection also has two essays, one about the modern use of bots and one doing a short history of robots/ AI in literature. Both are entirely appropriate in the context of the collection, and add to the overall story of “what do we mean when we talk about bots.”
This is a great collection. Highly recommended.
Eat Like a Sardinian
I was sent this book by the publisher, Allen & Unwin, at no cost. It’s out now, RRP $45.
On the one hand, this book has really excellent recipes.
On the other hand, I deeply object to the whole ‘live to 100’ vibe, given probable realities about so-called blue zones.
On the third hand, you can look past that (I do), and it’s a fine book.
As you would expect, this is a beautifully produced book (although to my sadness, there’s no ribbon bookmark; I do love a ribbon in a cookbook). The photography is great, it’s mostly about the food rather than the cook, there are some adorable handdrawn (they look like embroidery!) images scattered throughout, and the recipes themselves are laid out well. No complaints at all about the presentation.
There’s a good range of recipes – the book is structured like a traditional Sardinian meal, Mattana says: Aperitivo and Antipasti; Pane and Pasta; Primi; Secondi; Contorni and Verdure; La Dolce Vita. Within the chapters, there are harder and easier recipes. I would note that this is not a book for a beginning baker: the recipe for (the delicious) sultana and saffron bread asks you to judge ‘if the bread looks ready to bake’ with no suggestion for what that looks like, for example. And in the Culurgiones recipe there’s no indication of when the ravioli is cooked / how long to cook for.
Recipes I have made:
- Pizzette Sfoglia – puff pastry pizzas. So simple! Quite tasty, although I do think the filling (tomato passata, oregano, capers) could have been tastier.
- Su Pani Arrubiu – sultana and saffron bread. Also with orange zest. Absolutely delicious. And he recommends a long, overnight, proving, which I think was really good. Mine wasn’t as good as it could have been – I’m blaming winter – but 100% would make again.
- Tallutzas con noci e ricotta – I made this with bought orecchiette; the combination of ricotta and walnuts and nutmeg was an absolute delight.
- Culurgiones – potato stuffed ravioli. Yes, I made ravioli. Was it worth it? Look, I’m not sure. They were very tasty and I made quite a lot so a bunch went into the freezer. Are they better than very generic supermarket ravioli? Oh yes. Did they take a long time? Also yes.
- Li Puligioni – ricotta ravioli – no, I did not learn my lesson. Yes, pasta stuffed with ricotta and orange and lemon zest is very tasty.
- Spizzulus con cardoncelli e salsiccia – pasta with sausage and mushroom sauce. Had to make a sub here as my local supermarket doesn’t have dried porcini (!), so I used fresh mushrooms instead. It will have tasted a bit different, therefore, but overall this was absolutely excellent. And getting the butcher to de-case the sausage first was also brilliant.
- Panada – Sardinian pie. Further to ‘not learning my lesson,’ yes I made the shortcrust pastry for this pie. The pie has a really interesting structure: basically you’re cooking a really dry stew inside a pastry shell. You’re putting raw meat and uncooked potato inside and it comes out… perfectly cooked. Also a lot of work, but did feed two of us for three dinners.
- Bombas – meatballs. I love meatballs. These are fine but nothing out of the ordinary.
- Involtini di carne con verza. Never again will I stuff cabbage rolls. Maybe using ordinary cabbage rather than Savoy was a mistake – I don’t know, I don’t know cabbage.
- Torta di mele – apple cake. It was fine! I was lazy and didn’t do the apple slices on top, which meant it wasn’t as apple-y as it should have been, so that’s all on me.
There are more recipes I’m looking forward to making, so this one will be staying on rotation.
The Hunger of Those Who Built It
Read courtesy of the publisher, Stelliform Press. It’s out in September; you can preorder it now.
Wendy Waring does an intriguing narrative thing in this novel. The first 60 or so pages alternate between Lou, who has managed to infiltrate The Oxbow – an exclusive and exclusionary colony, basically, set up in the middle of a crumbling Paris – and Diane, Lou’s aunt, Green architect/designer and largely responsible for The Oxbow.
Then all of a sudden we get a timeshift: back 16 years, before The Oxbow exists. Diane is offered a job in Paris, creating vertical farms and helping to green part of the city, at the same time growing food for the inhabitants. It’s a world where in theory, at least, technology is greening, and so some aspects of early-21st-century urban life can change – massive highways, for instance. But, as Diane slowly learns, there are still privileged groups seeking to keep all the good stuff to themselves.
Basically, the majority of the novel is following Diane as she learns how her dream gets turned into the gated community of The Oxbow.
So on one level, it’s a story of a woman watching her dreams get manipulated and changed away from her vision. And it’s powerful for that: how hopeful intentions can be subverted, how good plans can be made to go astray, and so on. How corporations can destroy individual hopes. And, as well, there are some intriguing ideas for how cities might indeed change – for good; this is being advertised as solarpunk, after all.
The novel is not only about ambition and technology and urban infrastructure, and the big picture, though. It’s also focused squarely on the smaller picture: Diane wants to go to Paris because she is seeking reconnection with her sister, from whom she has been estranged for many years. There are many reasons for their separation; some familial, others political and philosophical. None of them have easy solutions, and Diane is frequently conflicted about her own as well as her sister’s attitudes. What I liked about Waring’s story is how very real it feels. Siblings are exactly those people who know how best to get under your skin, and who are also (often, not always) the people you want to be drawn back to.
I have one quibble with the story: an event in Diane’s history turns out to be very different from how she understood it, which has serious ramifications, many of which are part of the point of the story. But one consequence, about the dating of other events, doesn’t seem ever to be addressed, which is unfortunately something I really struggled to reconcile.
However! All up, I very much enjoyed this novel. It’s well written – I devoured it – and Waring balances the macro, urban issues with the micro, personal issues beautifully. They each feel as important as the other.
As a debut, I am deeply impressed, and hope that we can expect more of the same in future from Waring.
Department of the Vanishing
This is another book I read because of Ian Mond. If you’re interested, here’s the publisher, Transit Lounge.
Poetry is very much not my vibe. I have always worried that I just don’t get it and so almost feel I shouldn’t be allowed to read it, and certainly not comment on it. Is this ridiculous? Of course it is. Well, mostly. Am I actually afraid of some beret-wearing, cigarillo-smoking, pretentious white man tut-tutting me?
Well. A little bit. Yes.
Anyway, I’m going to comment on this book despite my fears. And it is poetry – almost all of the text is set out as couplets, with almost no punctuation. Sometimes the story is hard to follow as a result, when it’s not clear how the clauses fit together. Which is, I presume, part of the point. A lot of the time, it’s completely clear, and a delight to read.
This is not, though, just a poetic novel. It’s also playing with the idea of found footage.
Almost every poetic page has a library stamp on it: RESTRICTED, or an accession stamp, or the link. In between poetry pages, there are collages of newspaper headlines; excerpts from the narrator’s police interviews; photographs and stills from video; pages where birds sounds are turned into text; transcriptions of the narrator’s mother’s maybe-dementia ramblings; and many lists.
Some of the found footage includes excerpts from other books, and friends, I dogeared a page because I didn’t have a bookmark handy when I got to the bit about Shifting Baseline Syndrome: “a gradual change in the accepted norms for the condition of the natural environment due to a lack of experience, memory, and/or knowledge of its past condition. (Soga & Gaston, 2018).
Ava lives in a too-near-future Australia, in 2029. She works for the Department of the Vanishing, archiving references to birds that are, or are nearly, extinct. (There’s a moment where she’s allocated the pelican: where to start? With Stormboy, of course – and my mid-40s-heart gave a great big heave.) She is also caring for her ailing mother, grieving her long-lost father, and seeking connection through a series of flings. Plus, of course, all the heartache that comes with her work.
It’s almost eye-rollingly trite to call this novel is a wake-up call, but of course that’s what it is. The idea that I would no longer hear kookaburras or magpies or the various teeny little tweety-birds I hear on the regular is horrifying. Is there something I can personally do? Probably not. Maybe I should send a copy of this book to some politicians.
It’s a splendid piece of art and I hope it gets more attention.
Platform Decay, Martha Wells
I read Platform Decay! Of course! And of course I liked it! Although… it’s a bit different from what I was expecting.
What was I expecting? I think I was expecting more pew-pew space adventures with ART, to be honest. It’s where System Collapse appeared to be leading, after all.
Instead, we get a story that’s focused on very few characters – none of whom we’ve had much, if any, interaction with in the past (Murderbot excepted, obviously) – on a new and potentially hostile space ring. There is a tie back to the previous two stories; there always is, because the Corporates are small-minded, vindictive, petty, bullies who can’t let anyone get away with anything if they can possibly do something to them.
TL;DR there is a good amount of action, there is an excellent amount of banter and snark, we get to experience quite a different space habitat, and Three is still around. I won’t be sad to come back to this one as part of my maybe-it’s-annual re-read of the series.
A few more thoughts:
Murderbot: continues to be an absolute delight to follow. I wouldn’t keep reading if I didn’t find its style immensely enjoyable. I like that we can see real change in the way it thinks about humans, more along the lines of ‘weary acceptance’ but in reality it’s a little bit more… well… emotional than that. Although it wouldn’t appreciate me using the word. I also continue to take great joy in its competence. I am a sucker for competence. Also, it’s actively learning about its organic side and taking steps to look after itself, and following other people’s suggestions (sometimes). How healthy is that??
Slight spoiler:
Continue reading →Julian: Rome’s Last Pagan Emperor
My knowledge of Roman history goes: not great to okay for the Republican period; not bad for the Julio-Claudians; verrrry sketchy and potted post the Year of Four Emperors, right up to… like, the fall of Constantinople. There are bits and persons in there I know about! But it’s not connected up.
Anyway then I learned there was a newish (2023) biography of Julian, and I was excited.
Julian “the Apostate” is one of those fascinating characters who pop up in Roman (and other) history: they don’t last long but they have an outsized legacy because of a key thing or moment. In Julian’s case, it’s that he is the nephew of Constantine – our man who moved the Roman Empire’s capital to the city he modestly named for himself, and also paved the way for Christianity to become the dominant religion in said empire. Was Constantine a “real” Christian? What do you even mean by that? Not relevant, for the purposes of this biography (and, uh, completely impossible to answer anyway). What IS important is that after Constantine, the empire was basically expecting a Christian emperor. And so when Julian comes along and goes PSYCH! I’ve been pretending for a decade or so!, there are a lot of people who are Unimpressed.
This is a short biography: we’re talking 133 pages, and they’re not huge pages either. So there’s not super detailed info about every day of Julian’s life. What Freeman does present, though, is an excellent overview of the main stages of Julian’s life: upbringing in Asia Minor after his now-emperor cousin kills the rest of their family (… yeah…), then raised to Caesar (sub-emperor) and sent to fight in Gaul – with no military experience! but apparently sometimes reading about a thing does make you good at it! Then back towards Constantinople, expecting to fight the cousin, who conveniently (fr) dies on the way, leaving Julian uncontested as Augustus. At which point he begins to try bringing back pagan ways, and eventually oppressing Christians.
And then he heads off to Persia. Apparently he paid more attention to Alexander than to, like, pretty much everyone else. It doesn’t go well.
Freeman’s writing is immensely readable. I don’t think you need to have much knowledge of Roman history to understand what Julian is doing; Freeman presents enough background that the various issues – like the place of Christians in society by this point – is easy to grasp. He doesn’t go into the weeds about what the Senate and others are doing at this point, or even what’s happening in the rest of the empire; this is a very focused, narrow biography, and it works for that reason.
Randomly Yours, Alex 