cyrano | Recent Entries

Politics and the world we live in.
Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics by Tim Marshall

This book was published in 2015 but it feels more recent than that. Of course, I still want an updated version for five years later, despite the fact that this book covers back to the point of early civilizations. There's a lot in this book that I hadn't considered in the past, things that in retrospect seem fairly simple, and I feel like I understand the world better now. I mean, I knew about Poland's always being invaded or overrun problem due to its being the bridge between Europe and Asia, but I hadn't thought about the breakdown in South American geography that has made it so difficult to move to economic independence from colonialism despite natural resources that could be exploited.

They're gonna call me sir they'll all stop pickin' on me well I'm a high school grad I'm over five foot three

"This Is How You Lose the Time War" by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

(Note the spotting of the rare five star rating.)

This book tore me open, and crawled inside me like I was a human Tauntaun. I ugly cried through the last two-thirds of the book, which I couldn't go to bed until I had finished. So many feels. I believe these are all of them, in fact. I can't guarantee it'll hit anybody else like it hit me. But if you're looking for a scifi Romeo and Juliet epistolary gothic romance that is in love with language and words, then sib you've just hit the jackpot. This story storms through time, all the way in one direction, all the way back the other, and then returns to the middle for the end. It's an amazingly personal story told on an epic scale canvas. Read it out loud, to yourself or somebody else. Feel the words slip around your tongue, brush against your teeth. It's a tactile experience and a literary experience.

"So You Want to Talk About Race" by Ijeoma Oluo

This is the book I needed two years ago. This is the book that family members and friends who say "I'm not a racist, but I don't understand what all the fuss is about" need right now. Most of this was familiar ground for me, but there was plenty of nuance and extrapolation that made it well worth reading. The tone is non-confrontational which (unfortunate that it needs to be this way but) will increase receptivity from the audience who would be best served by reading it.

An enemy agent caught me vulnerable last night, all cried out over a book. They set me on a styrofoam mounting board, and drove a steel needle four miles long through my skull with steady unforgiving pressure, pinning me down. And then the unbelievable bastard dropped a millstone on top of me and left. So if you need me, you know where I'll be.

Difficult Listening
Maybe lovers dream things that I don't dream

Every deckhand here has a five year plan and an icepick

Just be glad to be here/Machine says yes

Birthday Edition
'Cause you're evil and you lie

Sometimes I feel like I don't have a partner

Independence Day issue

There is no America.

Sitting on the same earth

Sometimes I am troubled by my claim of gender fluidity. I strongly present as male, and so I have suffered very little of the social consequences of being a woman--the wage gap, the constant sexual aggression, and on and sickeningly on. In fact, because of my size and presentation, I have contributed to women's sense of concern for their safety. Somehow in my youth, I picked up a few behavior patterns that women tend to adopt to 'get along' in society. I apologised too much. I let people talk over me. Things I've improved on in the past twenty-five years. But how can I lay claim to a feminine identity when I haven't experienced the culture and collective experience of fifty years in that position?

Which brings me, loosely, to role playing games. I play a lot of women. I play people of color. I play marginalized members of society. Partly because it's the only time I can pretend to look feminine, and because the lack of representation of characters who aren't white and male and straight frustrates me. I've played Donna, the Ravenclaw quidditch player who's dating Tonks, Raj, the pansexual Indian jack of all trades on a Firefly class space ship, Ada Lovelace, two fisted detective, Badger, the street urchin who was shocked by the first time she held an actual gold piece in her hands. Am I a tourist, throwing on these identities as a cheap costume, despite how good my intentions are? And I the RP equivalent of blackface? Do I need to stick with playing what I am in order to keep from appropriating somebody else's experience?

Because I don't already feel anxious about enough things.

EDIT: This is not a call for comfort or validation. I'm not sure what it is, though.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

This book deserves its reputation. Jackson paints the atmosphere on, layer by layer, until we're just as stuck in the house as our four intrepid 'scientists'. Brief summary, a man of letters wants to objectively study paranormal phenomena, and goes about collecting a team of 'sensitive' assistants to live at Hill House, with a long and dark history. Nobody can stay in the house for more than a few days, except for the dour and creepy caretakers who still won't stay after dark, so nobody will hear you screaming if there's any trouble. Eleanor has spent her life caring for her invalid mother and now sleeps in a cot at her sister's house. She's repressed and terrified of everything. Theo is a bon vivant, and Jackson's writing is such that within half a page of meeting her I was terribly in love with Theo. Luke is the family's representative, theoretically there to supervise and make sure no damage is done to the house, but he's all in on the spooky science. Montague is a bit less fleshed out, and seems most human when his wife arrives at the house.

From here on there may be spoilers. Be ye warned.

There's a lot of talk about the lesbian subtext, and while I was thrilled to see it, I don't think it's really lesbian subtext. Eleanor is having an adventure, doing all the things she thinks she's missed. Anybody who shows her affection or attention would be considered a potential romantic partner, and she's so repressed that she's constantly pulling them too close and then pushing them away. Theo is definitely flirting with her, but she's got a 'roommate' back home and none of this is serious, which makes her a particularly bad first crush.

But as the book draws to a close, Eleanor crosses a line and for the first time starts experiencing things that nobody else does, and she no longer needs to behave as she thinks people think she should, she no longer needs these people. There's a lot of talk about the house being haunted and possessing Eleanor, but starting with her childhood and moving on to the phenomena in the house it all looks like a poltergeist energy that Eleanor brought with her. The messages the 'ghosts' send are all to Eleanor, begging her to find a home, to stop the pain of being lost. The house doesn't possess her, she possesses the house. And whatever walks there walks alone.

The scene of her leaving the house was heartbreaking, but you knew how it would end and that's a salve to the reader. You know she's set herself free of all the weight of expectation and the fear of having to start a new life. I have a slew of questions, things like "What did Theo see at the picnic?" but I don't see a lot of writing about that sort of thing on the web, so I'll just have to come up with my own answers.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

This book was particularly affecting because I'm reading it under quarantine. The claustrophobic atmosphere sings isolation and stasis, and after reading the book (staying up all night) it took me hours to shake off the feeling that I was living inside the book. We watch the family through Merricat's slightly feral, brutally honest, and just a touch off kilter viewpoint. Six years ago something awful happened to the Blackwoods, and ever since that day our protagonist Merricat has been using her powers of magical realism to maintain everything as it has always been. Items on shelves or desks may be removed to dust under them, but they must be replaced exactly as they were. Tuesday and Friday were days to go to town, Monday was tidying day, and Wednesday was tea with Mrs. Clarke. And everything is going just fine until CHARLES shows up.
Fuck Charles. Right in the ear. With his creepy cloying politeness covering an avaricious and ever so subtly sexual insinuation into the family as the replacement for the missing patriarchal figure. He's going to fix this family, make them into a normal household who has a proper respect for finances.
But his first mistake is smugly underestimating Merricat.

Kipuka Blues by Michael Warren Lucas

The mystery of Absolute takes a few more twists, but still doesn't make any sense. And if that weren't enough, now the town has to deal with Danger. Not Nick Danger or Carlos Danger. Just Danger. Lake Huron has a personality disorder. Kevin is still adamant that he's not a cop and he's certainly not Kevin. The town's power vacuum has people who want to fill it, despite his best efforts to leave everything very laissez faire and commune like. The girls are growing up, and their anarcho-syndicalist household also suffers some growing pains in an absence of leadership. And now Absolute offers the population the opportunity to be the very best you that you can be.
And by the end of the book, you'll know what a kipuka is. You can't beat that.

Recently the boss of a nonprofit I work for made a post, worried about looting and rioting, and asked that people involved in that please leave the group because we're under scrutiny and that kind of publicity would be really bad. He could have phrased it far better than he did, but he tends to be impulsive and to regret at lesiure. We lost at least three volunteers, and once things cooled down I got to do a Racism 101 lecture on the mobile phone communications app that we use. Nobody shouted me down, and I got at least a little support, and I hope I helped. I can't push too hard, though, because rules are that the app is for talking about work, and not politics or socializing or TV or whatever. I'm sorry I can't march, because social distancing, but at least I got the chance to do *something*.

Terrapin Sky Tango by Michael Warren Lucas

And I thought the first book was explosive. Yes, it was a lot of personal misery, but this book adds twenty years of compacted emotional abuse (giving and receiving) to the action. I'm not exactly sure how a professional cat burglar keeps causing this level of property damage, but it seems to be accompanied with an equal amount of inner turmoil. Her father's death brings her back to the place she's spent her whole life escaping from to deal with the people she least wants to see--including the sadistic human trafficker who kicked the whole story line off. Before she's even finished with the viewing, she's delivered two badly needed beatdowns, so you know there's going to be a lot of satisfying punching, right down to the endurance competition at the climax.

"The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexander Dumas

I enjoyed the beginning of the book, even through the part in Hotel d'If where things started to slow down. Once Edmond escaped and then spent a chapter deciding how to retrieve his money without anybody else finding out about it, there began the slog. I understand that Dumas is setting up dominoes that he will eventually knock down, but the book becomes obsessed with the minutiae of Parisian court life and also just how gosh darn amazing this dashing Count is. Apparently 15 years of malnourishment and limited activity turns you into an ubermensch who knows several languages, the history of everything, all schools of philosophy, in depth personal psychology, grants you banks of charisma to draw upon, and then combined with unlimited stores of money makes you nigh on omnipotent. Of course, the shape of his head may have played into this, because the book believes in the idea that the physical shape of a person reflects their personality and intellect. The book also has a lot of dialogue which, true to the style of the time, talks a lot without really saying much. More so even than usual. I was over the halfway mark by about a hundred pages, the Count was giving his first big party at Auteils, and he was giving his servant a mathematics instruction to determine how many settings to serve at dinner when I bailed. My friends who reviewed it here were all very fond of it, and maybe that party is the pivotal moment when momentum picks up again and the book is once more fun to read. But I hadn't the patience to push through.

The Island of Doctor Moreau

Three stars. All the human men are insufferable self righteous pricks who make all of the animal men miserable by trying to turn them into insufferable self righteous pricks. Which may have been the point of the story, but doesn't make it engaging to read.

Unrelated: As a story that on the surface is an anti-science cautionary tale, this book savages Christianity as lived by upper class British people of the time. And maybe lots of people now.