Snuff (9/10)

This image starts to make sense in the later part of the book, but that's still not quiiiiiite how things went.

Author: Terry Pratchett

Publication: 2011

Genre: Fantasy

To explain why I loved this book I have to go way back to the early 2000s when I first discovered Terry Pratchett. My introduction was Night Watch. It’s not only one of the ‘Watch’ series-within-a-series of Pratchett books, but one intensely focused on Sam Vimes. Hence he’s always been a favorite character of mine. This is the last Watch book and one of the last novels Pratchett published before his death from Alzheimer’s in 2015, so it was a bittersweet read.

Summary: Ankh-Morpork City Watch Commander and reluctant Duke Sam Vimes is forced by his wife take a vacation at her estate in the country. Almost immediately he discovers a murder has occurred. What was that about a vacation, exactly?

My take: I was a bit annoyed on my reread of Night Watch last summer at Vimes’ qualities of smugly knowing what to do and magically always being three steps ahead of his adversary. Vimes hasn’t changed, but those qualities are deployed more satisfyingly here. They make sense for the older character, and Pratchett does a better job exposing Sam’s weaknesses and limitations. The last nearly 200 pages are a really fun ride, and I was sad to turn the last one. I wouldn’t recommend this as an introduction to Terry Pratchett- it’s probably best enjoyed after a few of the earlier Watch books. But as a conclusion (alas) to a long arc, it’s deeply satisfying.

Some miscellaneous complaints: Could Vimes shut up about about Sybil for eight seconds, honestly? The only other thing was that a lot of time is spent introducing the house and its servants at the beginning of the book, but as it never really led to anything later it came off as unneeded.

One final note: I didn’t buy this book back in February expecting for its content to be topical. But coincidentally I’ve seen this quote going around (page 244 of my paperback copy):

“It always embarrassed Samuel Vimes when civilians tried to speak to him in what they thought was “policeman.” If it came to that, he hated thinking of them as civilians. What was a policeman, if not a civilian with a uniform and a badge? But they tended to use the term these days as a way of describing people who were not policemen. It was a dangerous habit: once policemen stopped being civilians the only other thing they could be was soldiers.”

Snuff has a lot to say on the appropriate role of law enforcement, including a fair bit on the use of violence. Might be useful reading for some of America’s cops, and perhaps its politicians…

Rules of Civility (9/10)

I never did work out which characters are represented by the cover, if any.

Author: Amor Towles

Publication: 2011

Genre: Historical Fiction

I’ve been meaning to pick up this book ever since I read Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow two years ago and loved it. It didn’t disappoint.

Summary: Katey Kontent is a twenty-something Russian-American New Yorker working as a typist and living in a boardinghouse with her friend Eve in 1938. On the eve of the new year, Katey and Eve have a chance encounter with wealthy banker Tinker Grey, around whom much of the rest of the novel revolves. The title refers to Tinker’s copy of George Washington’s notes on good character, which serve as a commentary on the nature of polite society throughout the rest of the novel. After an unfortunate accident draws Tinker and Eve together, Katey proceeds to careen around the upper echelons of New York society while a series of colorful characters flit in and out of frame. She steadily climbs through a combination of wit, charm, happenstance, and, crucially, others’ benevolence disguised as happenstance. I realize this is rather similar to the lack of description given on the back cover, but it’s hard to say much more without giving away significant amounts of plot.

My take: This book is a quite a ride. Just when I thought it was going one way fairly reliably, it took an abrupt 90 degree turn. Characters that dominated the scene for sixty pages are suddenly thrown out in the cold, never to reappear. It’s a fun sort of keeping you guessing that makes you want to turn the page. Katey is an easy narrator to get along with. Towles’ writing is a delight, much in the same style as in Moscow. He has a lovely way of describing a setting in just enough detail so you can picture it while not getting bogged down in the fourteen graded hues of the sunset. Towles has a masterful ability to show rather than tell - to the point where I had to read quite carefully in key moments to make sure I got the implications of events correctly.

Some miscellaneous complaints: Nothing major, honestly! Perhaps that it compares unfavorably to Moscow, but that is hardly fair. I found the character of Wallace a bit too apt; he seemed added in after to fill a gap left in Katey’s year. Oddly enough, the trickle of information about Katey’s background early in the novel left me wondering if she had secrets that were crucial to the later plot; that didn’t really turn out to be the case. Red herring, I suppose.

Though the characters are put through their paces, the results are (spoilers) given away by a reference to Agatha Christie’s novels in act three. Her works, as well as this novel, are satisfying because “men and women, whatever their ages, whatever their caste, are ultimately brought face-to-face with a destiny that suits them.” I certainly found it so. I’m glad to have spent some time with this little slice of the past and I hope Towles will pen a few more like it.

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee (6/10)

A good thick paperback.

Author: David Treuer

Publication: 2019

Genre: Nonfiction/History

I can’t recall where I first heard about this book. It kept cropping up online and so when I made my big Powell’s order a few months ago I added it on a whim. Last summer I read 1492, which explores little-known histories of native peoples of the Americas. I had gotten more interested in the subject after moving to Arizona (although before I moved from St. Louis I did visit Cahokia.) I’d never lived somewhere with substantial numbers of Native Americans, and in many ways I don’t think their experience as modern people was “real” to me. A reminder that learning about my privilege and others’ experiences is an ongoing journey.

Summary: The basic structure of the book follows the history of Indians (the main term the author uses), starting with a brief recap of pre-European contact. The rest of the book is focused on history after 1890, the year of the Wounded Knee Massacre that for some marks the symbolic decline of Indian life. It traces the various ways the American government has failed Indians throughout history, and the ways they responded. Treuer sprinkles interviews and a healthy dose of his own (Ojibwe) family history throughout. The author takes great pains to place this Indian history within the context of United States history as a whole. Treuer’s central thesis is that Indians have not been erased, should not be thought of as “dying out”, and are actively writing their own stories today. This argument gives the book its title, a response to Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. I haven’t read it, but my understanding is it concerns the destruction of Indian cultures.

My take: I learned a *lot* reading this book. A lot that should probably be covered in schools, frankly. I learned a little about the battles growing up and I was aware of, for instance, Indian boarding schools (thanks, Dear America!), but that just scratches the surface. I was never taught how tribes interacted with each other and Europeans after contact other than warfare and disease. I was never taught how migration and consolidation of tribes occurred. I was never taught that the American government actively tried to assimilate Indians and force them to give up their culture. I had never given any thought to the fact that having a Native American identity beyond a tribal identity must be a relatively new phenomenon. And there’s more where that came from.

Some of the sections are easier reading than others. I found I enjoyed later chapters in the book more because the characters who could be interviewed came to life. The earlier chapters about broken treaties and miscellaneous terrible US government officials were harder to get through. I also found the author somewhat abrasive, especially when writing about his own life and family. Some of that content seemed unnecessary to support his points.

Some miscellaneous complaints: Treuer apparently loves lists, because he relies far too heavily on them. Example from page 38 of the paperback: “One archaeological site in southern Maine dated to 3000 BCE included the remains of deer, moose, seal, walrus, beaver, mink, sea mink, river otter, fisher, bear, swordfish, cod, surgeon, sculpin, mallards, black ducks, loons, eagles, and shellfish.” The fact that the area was plentiful with animals is important to the paragraph; the mallards are not. I was also pretty bored during the first chapter’s geographic tour of pre-contact tribal life. This is probably in part because I was comparing it unfavorably to similar content in 1492. Oh well.

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee is a good book on an important topic. The approach is novel, the historical information well-researched and the central argument compelling. But it doesn’t hang together well enough to be a great book. I’m glad I read it, I just wish I had enjoyed reading it more.

Green Mars (7/10)

My copy is a little worse for wear after an airplane beverage incident.

Author: Kim Stanley Robinson

Publication: 1993

Genre: Science Fiction

Let’s start off. Green Mars is the second book in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy. I’d never read any of them before last year, despite making a joke with the titles in my winning submission to a Science as Art competition in grad school. I picked up the first book, Red Mars, last year on a whim and rather enjoyed it. It’s been slow going, since all three paperbacks weigh in at 500+ pages. But it’s well worth it.

Summary: The First Hundred Martian colonists are now mostly in hiding after the failed revolution of 2051. They’re ridiculously old as the result of some fancy-dancy anti-aging treatments and have several generations of descendants born on Mars. The planet is in the control of powerful enormous corporations, which are also consolidating power on a struggling Earth. Martian terraforming has accelerated and adapted life forms are spreading. The First Hundred, younger generations born on Mars, and newer immigrants all have different opinions on how (or if) developing the planet should proceed. They have to figure out how to work together to decide what a free Mars would look like and how to achieve it.

My take: This book was some work to get through, in large part because I enjoy some narrators much more than others. I love the sections focused on the workings of people, particularly the ones focused on Nadia. I cannot stand Sax. I took multiple breaks from reading because I got so bogged down in the hundred-page section where he goes on and on about lichen and baby bonsai trees. Spare me.

As a planetary scientist, the geographic content is really interesting to me. Robinson was writing these books in the early 90s before most of the modern orbital cameras had arrived at Mars. Most of the non-human-constructed locations in the book are very large features. Major sections of the book takes place in Isidis, and yet there’s no mention of the yet-to-be-named Jezero Crater! Regardless, I will admit I learned a little geography following along.

Some miscellaneous complaints: These characters were clearly conceived of in a much earlier era. The author isn’t *fantastic* at character development across the board, but he’s way worse at writing believable women. He’s hardened each of the major female characters in the First Hundred into stereotypes, many of them unflattering. In particular, the Maya/Jackie characterization and dynamic is cringey. Tell me again about the beautiful crazy women everyone can’t help falling in love with, yeah, sure. And Robinson could really lay off the overdetailed color descriptions. If I had a penny for every time he took a full paragraph to describe the sky….

However, the world he builds is fascinating enough to put up with all that. It’s fun to think about the ways that we could transform another planet, and what colonizing one would mean for our own. Robinson does a great job linking the each individual character to the overall social and physical issues facing Mars. I see why this is a classic. The last hundred pages were beautiful, and I’m looking forward to seeing where these characters go next.

Introduction

Not today, just the last time I put on makeup.

Introducing book reviews by me! In case you’re reading this at some far off point in the future, it’s currently April 2020 and I’m stuck in my house due to the coronavirus pandemic. (Yes, I’m aware that I’m technically not under quarantine because I haven’t been exposed as far as I know, but shush, you.) I’ve been reading a bit more than usual since I’ve been home, and hopefully this will inspire me to continue. Also, I need something new to do at this point. I had serendipitously bought half a dozen new titles from Powell’s (no relation, probably) early in the year, so I’ll be starting there.

I enjoy quite a range of genres in fiction and in non-fiction. I’m generally not into anything too pulpy, and for some reason I am put off by dystopian fiction and magical realism. Most everything else is fair game though.

All views are mine, not my employers’. If you don’t like my opinions go write your own. Cheers, y’all.