Books of November ’24
My reading mood took a nonfiction, political, anarchic bent this month. (Gee, I wonder why?)
Deviant Matter: Ferment, Intoxicants, Jelly, Rot — Kyla Wazana Tompkins (2024) ⚭
It’s a bummer that I am so very interested in the premise of this, but the dense academic writing, chock full of jargon, makes it nearly inaccessible. It’s especially a bummer that for someone purporting to “queer the narrative,” it’s impenetrable to those without the author’s credentials. I liked the bits I gleaned from it, particularly the compostocene (cf. Donna Haraway) and administrative violence (cf. David Graeber). I’m used to reading above my head, but this was one of the worst offenders in a while. I would have liked to like it more, had it not been written, as Graeber might say, for the cloistered elite. :/
What Are You Afraid Of? The LaMDA Sonnets — JP Seabright (2024) ⚭
The LaMDA transcripts reconfigured as sonnets. A lovely, eerie little rumination on humanity and consciousness. Is AI just a mirror, reflecting us back to us?
Beneath the Rising — Premee Mohamed (2020) ⚭
The coincidence of snagging this series on sale the night before I finished Rakesfall, where Vajra Chandrasekera names Premee Mohamed in his acknowledgments.
Indeed, it plays on similar themes, albeit in an entirely different style. Here we’ve got an action-adventure race across the continents when Johnny, young super-genius inventor/do-gooder in a kind of Greta Thurnberg mold, accidentally creates such a powerful clean energy reactor that it warps space and time and calls up eldritch gods from the deep… which she knows full well because she’s made a deal with those same gods to exchange her mortality for the fame and brains to save the world. Her best friend Nick is along for the ride, and through his eyes, it’s a rumination on power and corruption, on complicity, on the fate of humanity in one young girl’s hands. Cosmic horror (and smartass banter) at its finest.
The Sugared Game — K.J. Charles (2020) ⚭
Re-read. Way back the first time I read it, I praised all the talk—long pages and chapters full of Will and Kim talking. That still stands, but I would also like to add praise for the long pages and chapters full of Will and Phoebe talking, and Will and Maisie talking. For a book so plotty and pulpy to actually center on such lengthy, deep conversations, without sacrificing any forward momentum, is remarkable. All these characters are defined in relation to each other, and I wish more books knew how to do that.
Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words — David Whyte (2014) ⚭
Re-read. I picked this up last month after Forest of Noise, when a full year of ongoing genocide seemed to pass without fanfare. Despair is the necessary state of repair, Whyte writes. Where we go when we can’t take it any longer.
I ended up reading through the rest, as I often do, over the course of the past month. Despair, fear, joy, xx. Words powerful enough to be a gentle container for those emotions.