The Machine Gunners – 4/5
I picked up this book because it was on the Guardian’s top 1000 novels list and since I had never heard of it, it sounded interesting. It IS interesting, and it’s more interesting that the title might otherwise suggest to you. There’s some irony in the title because the would-be “machine gunners” are a group of raggedy London kids during the blitz. This group is mad as hell that the blitz has otherwise disrupted their childhood, and the novel does a good job of having the kids, in general, promote a sense of bravado to mask their trauma, which reads perfectly reasonable. One of the boys has a tremendous collection of war memorabilia, and considers himself quite a local expert. After a recent attack, they are scavenging and find a downed plane, with a dead pilot, and what seems to be a slightly busted up but salvageable German machine gun (the kind that would be attached to the tail of a plane with a gunner), and so they cut it out and take it to their secret hideout where they have a club. Later, the authorities become aware of the missing gun and become concerned that a local underground cell has found and enlists a local history teacher to help locate it. In the meantime, while the slight cat and mouse game begins, the children find an even greater piece of memorabilia.
This is a book for kids, but in the very right way, it talks UP to kids and not down to them. These kids have already gone through enough and the language in the novel is funny and warm, but also a little dark and a little cynical.
Robot Visions – 3/5
If you’ve read I, Robot and/or Robot Dreams, you don’t need to read this one really, except for a few novellas here and there.
The two new standouts (not entirely in quality, but in importance) are The Bicentennial Man and Galley Slave, but of which are newer novellas that deal with robotics questions.
“The Bicentennial Man” is about a robot who is rewarded by his owner by getting paid, having a name, and giving a little license and self-determination. This of course leads him to wanting more, and he develops his desire to be treated more and more humanely, and more important, more humanly as time passes. The story presents itself very clearly as a not so veiled allegory (or at least a story with allegorical elements) to slavery in the US and Jim Crow (even though it’s written in the 1970s) where the giving of rights/asserting of rights is not always the same as equal regard. It’s interesting because I recently read a Philip Ki Dick story about a future world in which robots are in control of everything and a human named James Crow works to gain equality in the same way.
“Galley Slave” is actually much much more interesting. The US Robotics company offers a robot for use in a college university as a galley proofs reader. This is illegal kind of or at least legally murky as robots are forbidden to work on Earth. The legal status is cleared and the university accepts the robot and after time things to be going well, until a neuroscientist discovers that his book length galley has had near blasphemous passages interpolated that risk his professional career. He sues the robotics corporation for the damage done to his career and the novellas spends a lot of time in the court case.
It’s wild to me that in 1957 you could envision whole universes and empires in space, rockets and space ships, and near human robots, but spell check takes a novella to really deal with the ramifications of. I guess we’re getting more of that now with AI-generative apps that not only correct spelling but suggest phrasing and other syntax elements.
There’s a number of essays in the end of this collection, most of which are repetitive and derivative of the fiction (these are collected, so that’s more fine) and offer more of a historical account of thought, than thoughts at this stage of things.
The Between – 3/5
This might seem like a new novel by Tananarive Due, which would be reason to celebrate, but it’s actually a rerelease of her first novel, with a new edition and new audiobook, which is a reason to celebrate. If you haven’t read any of Due’s previous novels or stories, I recommend it, but you can also easily start here, knowing that your library probably has a copy of the new edition.
In the story, we begin with an image of a small boy being rescued from a near drowning by a grandmother. Years later, our protagonist is haunted by visions and weird occurrences. You can imagine by this opening scene and the title alone the direction the book goes. The main story begins with the scene of our protagonist, a married man in his late thirties successfully avoiding cheating on his wife. Like a former smoker who keeps a pack around for the thrill of temptation, he’s flirting with disaster. It also helps set the stakes in the novel as the marriage is fraught a little between his stress and not sleeping, his wife’s recent election to a judgeship, and a series of threatening calls and letters from a racist stalker and, if to be believed, a would-be assassin. But of course, it just keeps getting weirder.
Not as strong as the African Immortals books, but still very entertaining, this book has the seriousness and dreariness of Due’s writing from the get-go.
Mad about Shakespeare – 4/5
Part memoir and part celebration of literature, this book is long love letter to not only Shakespeare in general, but the role and influence Shakespeare played in the life of the author, Jonathan Bate, a professor and editor of Shakespeare. Bate narrates the book, and that makes the exuberance all the more engaging, especially the line-readings and storytelling. Bate grew up with a father who was a teacher, and when he went off the school it seems like literature was going to be his direction, but he keeps taking different paths along the way. While this book is ostensibly about Shakespeare, it’s also about those also important books that Bate read or didn’t read which shaped him. It’s also a memoir of Shakespeare’s role in shaping so many other writers later. There’s long sections of Samuel Jonson, who published a supremely important prologue to an edition of Shakespeare. There’s a section of Plath, Ted Hughes, and Robert Lowell. One of the most tender moments comes when Jonathan Bate finds his father’s complete Shakespeare where his father not only annotated the plays, but also listed out all the different performances he’d seen over the years, and to Bate’ surprise this list included some near legendary productions, like one from the 1930s in which Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud traded off portrayals of Romeo and Mercutio.
And like good memoirs of fame, and this is a weird one because of the close-knit London theater world, Jonathan Bate’s connection to actors like Judi Dench, Brian Cox, Ian McKellan, and others means that he had tons of access to that world.
The memoir has the subtitle, “From the classroom to the emergency room” as Bate’s story takes us to a medical emergency in his family, in which Shakespeare’s own thoughts and words on loss matter greatly.
Startide Rising – 3/5
It’s been a couple of years since reading the first book in this series, so I recalled a lot of the detail but forgot some too. What I also had forgotten is how fractured at times the narrative is. The world-building in the series involves humans, plus also races of both intelligent animals and aliens have been uplifted, which means granted intelligence and important technological advances, as a way to enhance the variety and diversity of the universe’s species. In the first book, this plays out primarily on Earth as human, alongside uplifted dolphins, and uplifted chimpanzees lives alongside each other in relative order. At the end, a spaceship is crewed by dolphins and humans, with one chimpanzee scientist to go along with them. In this novel, this ship finds a fleet of ships that seems to be a threat to life everywhere, and must determine what to do with this information. It also leads to a mutiny about the ship. The novel tells these stories by jumping around a lot, both moving the plot and building the world as we go, which can get a little overwhelming at times. I plan to finish the first chunk of the series soon, but I can’t tell if I’m looking forward to learning the rest of the story or putting it all behind me.
The Woman Who Killed the Fish – 3/5
This is a short collection of children’s tales by Clarice Lispector, the Ukranian-born Brazilian writer, who was well-known in Brazil in her lifetime, but has had a kind of renaissance in English-language reading in the last 10-15 years. This collection is being republished by New Directions in a storybook kind of way, so there’s some illustrations as well.
Very different from her novels and adult fiction (in some ways at least), this begins with the title story in which Clarice, our narrator, has accidentally killed her son’s pet fish. The story is an apologia for the act, but mainly for herself, as she defends herself against the (self-)accusation of hating animals, by listing out all the animals she’s love over the years. It’s a long list. The remaining stories are little stories about some of those animals.
Real Hero Shit – 3/5 Stars
A fun and jaunty little action fantasy comic where a ne’er do well prince decides to join an adventuring band going out in the kingdom to perform deeds of merit. He’s not quite human like like his mom, and has some kind of devil horns, suggesting his father is not who we think he is, and this is a sore-spot, but he’s prince nonetheless. The story begins as he’s having a threesome with a man and a woman and decides to go looking for more. He hears of the band, asks to join, must prove his mettle in duel with the leader of the group, and in the duel shows he’s perfectly capable, but not as good as the group leader. The art in the duel scenes are especially action-packed. The group is formed having a mage, a rogue, the prince (a royal, duelist), and a paladin. There’s lots of hating and flirting and queerness abound in the group, which of course leads to lots of sexual tension.
From there there’s a montage of deeds leading to our primarily plot, a suspected church corruption in a small village, where spies within the church have correctly spied the alleged corruption. They jump right into action dealing with this plot for the remainder.
Over all it’s a fun adventure that would be nice to revisit in a sequel — it’s light both in tone and heft, but that’s not a bad thing.
The Anthropocene Reviewed – 3/5 Stars (Take that John Green)
Like a lot of contemporary writing, this book is best when talking about insubstantial things, and a little more rough in dealing with serious topics. John Green is a solid writer, with a solid voice, but whether it’s an author issue or an audience choice, the book is mostly light fair, but with an infectious earnest streak.
The weakest thing by far is the central conceit. These are not reviews. These are essays. He gives up the game in the introduction anyway by discussing how writing Booklist reviews was never about a 5 point scale so much as the writing itself. Well, that’s what’s happening here too — earnest and sometimes very good essay about interesting topics — and a goofy two-sentence rating at the end that wears out its welcome by the second one. And even in the sunset review, challenging the system comes off as weak because he goes right back into it.
The essays about topics like Geese and soccer are best, because as he paraphrases from John Paul II, “football is the most important things among unimportant things” and adding weight to lightness is better than inadequately reviewing weighty things.
We Had to Remove this Post – 2/5
This short novel purports to be inside the lives of content reviewers for a social media site. As the job starts, our narrator Kayleigh finds herself trying to distance herself from the job before it even gets started, switching out her first shift. She gets involved with a co-worker, they have sex in the office in various places, and they even film themselves and subject their co-workers to it. There’s a large falling out.
What struck me about this book is how split down the middle it felt. I don’t mean in terms of two different narratives but two different identities in terms of what the book wanted to be. There was a bibliography at the end of the novel not just thanking resources and sources, but citing them. That….felt weird. The split here is between some kind of JG Ballard type nihilistic romp in the world of content moderation (which would have been great) and a cautionary tale ala Requiem for a Dream or an afternoon special program (which feels bad). Neither works because they can’t give way to the other, and the overall novel is weak as a consequence. I don’t really want fiction to act this way.
The King’s Indian – 4/5
The only collection, I think, of John Garnder’s short fiction, which includes a few stories that are linked by way of taking place within the real world (however real John Gardner’s worlds are able to be), a few stories that act almost like Italo Calvino tales in a fantasy or fictional kingdom, and a longer, title, novella.
The real world stories are the most fun and the most weird, because taking a fabulist’s eye to modern drama (late 1960s and early 1970s) works better for me than placing realism in the middle of fables. The prose, as always with Gardner, to rich and weird and wonderful.