Bart's bookshelf: all en-US Tue, 15 Apr 2025 11:44:53 -0700 60 Bart's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Boek 1 226950166 En over mijn ouders
die hoog in de hemelen
dood aan het zijn zijn

Een boek over ex-geliefden, darkrooms,
kilocalorieën, ziekenhuisrekeningen, cruiseschepen, Marc-Marie
en andere micro-obsessies, erfenissen, begrafenissen, twitterbots, sterfhuisconstructies, kunst, hyperinflatie

Met de energie van spoken word
maar de precisie van poëzie
en een nur-code die het de roman maakt
die ik altijd al heb willen schrijven]]> 283 Martin Rombouts 9493399168 Bart 5 dutch, reviewed
Is het trouwens wel ironie? Echte ironie? “Ironiseert� Rombouts effectief “klassieke elementen�? Want Rombouts schijnt te menen wat hij schrijft.

Toegegeven, het boek lijkt soms wat te spotten, en we gebruiken tegenwoordig met z’n allen het begrip ironie wat ruimer. Het klinkt ook zo goed en waar en lekker om te zeggen. Maar nergens veinst Rombouts onwetendheid. Nergens schrijft hij het tegenovergesteld van wat hij bedoelt.

Dus nee � Boek 1 is niet ironisch, het doet soms zo aan omdat gortdroog en schwung niet zo vaak samen voorkomen en het dus soms onoprecht lijkt, maar lijken en zijn zijn lijken en zijn. Of misschien lijkt het wel ironisch omdat het net die andere schrijvers zijn die zoveel versieren waardoor dit boek soms onoprecht lijkt omdat je die directheid niet gewend bent.

Met zijn feitelijke eerlijkheid beschrijft Rombouts het leven zoals het is en de feiten zoals ze zijn, en weet hij hier en daar toch nieuw licht te werpen op dingen die ik dacht te kennen. Dat is geen kattenpis.

(...)

]]> 3.49 Boek 1
author: Martin Rombouts
name: Bart
average rating: 3.49
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/14
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: dutch, reviewed
review:
(...)

Is het trouwens wel ironie? Echte ironie? “Ironiseert� Rombouts effectief “klassieke elementen�? Want Rombouts schijnt te menen wat hij schrijft.

Toegegeven, het boek lijkt soms wat te spotten, en we gebruiken tegenwoordig met z’n allen het begrip ironie wat ruimer. Het klinkt ook zo goed en waar en lekker om te zeggen. Maar nergens veinst Rombouts onwetendheid. Nergens schrijft hij het tegenovergesteld van wat hij bedoelt.

Dus nee � Boek 1 is niet ironisch, het doet soms zo aan omdat gortdroog en schwung niet zo vaak samen voorkomen en het dus soms onoprecht lijkt, maar lijken en zijn zijn lijken en zijn. Of misschien lijkt het wel ironisch omdat het net die andere schrijvers zijn die zoveel versieren waardoor dit boek soms onoprecht lijkt omdat je die directheid niet gewend bent.

Met zijn feitelijke eerlijkheid beschrijft Rombouts het leven zoals het is en de feiten zoals ze zijn, en weet hij hier en daar toch nieuw licht te werpen op dingen die ik dacht te kennen. Dat is geen kattenpis.

(...)


]]> Distress 156781 456 Greg Egan 0061057274 Bart 3 reviewed, speculative
To end, an existential musing on science fiction. It is clear our science and technology has had lots of benefits, but it has also led to ecological overshoot. Many people think we will somehow engineer our way out of the several catastrophes that are looming, and do not realize that engineering is what caused the predatory consumption and pollution of our habitat in the first place. I’m not a Luddite, but it’s pretty clear that our social systems aren’t up to the task of regulating ourselves in such a way that we keep our biosphere safe from our use of technology.

While it has produced dystopic warnings, science fiction as a whole has generally supported this mythos of unbridled technological progress, and also Egan has contributed to it with his transhumanist en techno-liberation fantasies. One could frame them as an iteration of the idea that optimism is a moral duty, but in the end, these fantasies seem a form of hubris � energy blind and blind to the realities of material production. Technology will not save us, it will be our species downfall.

30 years after the publication of Distress, and halfway on the road from 1995 to 2055, its predictions seem off � even though it has “greenhouse storms�. Greg Egan is a smart guy. My guess is that nowadays he knows we are heading for societal and ecosystem collapse, possibly even extinction. 2019’s Perihelion Summer is indicative of that: while not without hope, it was bleak and apocalyptic.

After 2010’s Zendegi Egan appears to have thrown out his techno-optimism, and instead doubled down on the intellectual puzzles. Judging by the blurbs, his recent books have become more and more abstract � thought experiments that generate world building. I have no interest in those. Instead, I would love to see a data-driven Egan take his best shot at near-future fiction, plotting the next 5 decades, in the tradition of Kim Stanley Robinson and Stephen Markley. The keen insights in human sociobiology that he displays in Distress indicate that he would be more than apt to take up that gauntlet.

]]> 3.86 1995 Distress
author: Greg Egan
name: Bart
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1995
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/05
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
(...)

To end, an existential musing on science fiction. It is clear our science and technology has had lots of benefits, but it has also led to ecological overshoot. Many people think we will somehow engineer our way out of the several catastrophes that are looming, and do not realize that engineering is what caused the predatory consumption and pollution of our habitat in the first place. I’m not a Luddite, but it’s pretty clear that our social systems aren’t up to the task of regulating ourselves in such a way that we keep our biosphere safe from our use of technology.

While it has produced dystopic warnings, science fiction as a whole has generally supported this mythos of unbridled technological progress, and also Egan has contributed to it with his transhumanist en techno-liberation fantasies. One could frame them as an iteration of the idea that optimism is a moral duty, but in the end, these fantasies seem a form of hubris � energy blind and blind to the realities of material production. Technology will not save us, it will be our species downfall.

30 years after the publication of Distress, and halfway on the road from 1995 to 2055, its predictions seem off � even though it has “greenhouse storms�. Greg Egan is a smart guy. My guess is that nowadays he knows we are heading for societal and ecosystem collapse, possibly even extinction. 2019’s Perihelion Summer is indicative of that: while not without hope, it was bleak and apocalyptic.

After 2010’s Zendegi Egan appears to have thrown out his techno-optimism, and instead doubled down on the intellectual puzzles. Judging by the blurbs, his recent books have become more and more abstract � thought experiments that generate world building. I have no interest in those. Instead, I would love to see a data-driven Egan take his best shot at near-future fiction, plotting the next 5 decades, in the tradition of Kim Stanley Robinson and Stephen Markley. The keen insights in human sociobiology that he displays in Distress indicate that he would be more than apt to take up that gauntlet.


]]> The Kraken Wakes 91092 240 John Wyndham 0140010750 Bart 2
So indeed � like Robinson in Antarctica � Wyndham goes explicitly epistemological. His protagonists are journalists, a very clever narrative device to focus on how society generates truth. Serendipitously, Greg Egan uses the exact same technique in Distress, the book I’m reading now.

Just like the epistemological gap between us and alien intelligence, there is an unbridgeable gap between us and the truth � the gap between our conception of truth and the Ding an sich. Wyndham explores a bit of the processes through which various humans and human organizations shape and change what they consider to be true.

Paradoxically, it is my own subjective reaction to what could very well be true that hindered my enjoyment of the novel.

(...)

]]> 3.76 1953 The Kraken Wakes
author: John Wyndham
name: Bart
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1953
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/19
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves:
review:
(...)

So indeed � like Robinson in Antarctica � Wyndham goes explicitly epistemological. His protagonists are journalists, a very clever narrative device to focus on how society generates truth. Serendipitously, Greg Egan uses the exact same technique in Distress, the book I’m reading now.

Just like the epistemological gap between us and alien intelligence, there is an unbridgeable gap between us and the truth � the gap between our conception of truth and the Ding an sich. Wyndham explores a bit of the processes through which various humans and human organizations shape and change what they consider to be true.

Paradoxically, it is my own subjective reaction to what could very well be true that hindered my enjoyment of the novel.

(...)


]]> Het zomert in Barakstad 1464192 119 J.M.H. Berckmans 9038802730 Bart 5 reviewed, dutch, favorites
Van normaliteit � wat dat ook moge wezen � is in 'Het zomert' inderdaad geen sprake meer. Nergens in de 14 verhalen is er nog een spoor van iets wat lijkt op een gewoon leven, en ook het schrijverschap zelf blijft zo goed als buiten beeld.

Berckmans� werk wordt vaak nihilistisch genoemd � maar is dit boek wel nihilistisch? Was Jean-Marie Berckmans wel een nihilist?

Het antwoord op die vraag hangt ten dele af van de definitie die je geeft aan het woord ‘nihilisme�. Laten we het houden op de Wikipediaanse uitleg: een begrip dat wordt gebruikt om de ontkenning van het bestaan van betekenis of waarde in de wereld aan te duiden. Op de Engelstalige pagina komen daar de ontkenning van kennis en moraliteit bij.

Het moet voor recensenten zeker niet makkelijk zijn geweest om grip te krijgen op de schriftuur van Berckmans, laat staan op wat hij wilde uiten. In mijn bespreking van 'Taxi naar de Boerehaavestraat' � het boek dat verscheen na Het zomert � had ik het er al over dat “Célineske tirades�, “wrange ironie�, “superieur sarcasme�, “het paranoïde genre� of “haveloos� allemaal doel missen, fout zijn.

Jos Van Tienen recenseert 'Het zomert' in 1994, en heeft het in Streven over “nihilisme�. En Joris Gerits had het in 1993 in DWB over een “nihilistisch vitalisme�. Met dat laatste woord bedoelde de sympathieke professor wellicht de stroming die “de drang om intens, vurig en gevaarlijk te leven� probeert literair te vatten, en in die omschrijving kan ik me nog min of meer vinden, maar opnieuw: nihilistisch?

'Het zomert' geeft volgens mij vooral uitdrukking aan frustratie: frustratie geen vrouw meer te hebben, frustratie over het gebrek aan liefdevol contact met zijn ouders, frustratie over te weinig diepgaande connectie met andere mensen. Het is niet omdat Berckmans geweld beschrijft, of in de verf zet naar seks te verlangen, of moreel beschadigde personages schetst, of maatschappelijke illusies doorprikt, of existentiële angsten uitdrukt, dat hij geen waarde of betekenis hecht aan het bestaan. Berckmans is geen nihilist � integendeel. Het is een man die ja wil zeggen, maar een nee krijgt � omdat hij een fundamentele ongelukkigheid heeft geërfd van zijn vader, en omdat hij aan de goegemeente dingen laat zien waarvan men liever wegkijkt. Hij is patiënt, en hij is te eerlijk � geen nihilist.

Als professionele lezer zou je toch beter moeten weten dan “Het maakt niet uit.� letterlijk te nemen. Als ik even over mezelf mag beginnen: telkens wanneer ik, in echt betekenisvolle situaties, “het maakt niet uit� heb gezegd, dan maakte het eigenlijk feitelijk wel uit. “Het maakt niet uit� is een bezwering, geen ontologisch of metafysisch of ethisch statement.

Berckmans is geen nihilist: zijn geigerteller staat gewoon gevoeliger afgesteld dan die van de meeste mensen. Want laten we wel wezen: onze samenleving is overduidelijk ziek, ons politieke systeem niet bij machte oorlogen te stoppen of armoede uit te roeien, en we kannibaliseren onze planeet. Is normaal blijven dan niet de echte waanzin?

En ook op kleinere schaal kan je hem geen ongelijk geven: Jean-Marie’s moeder heeft het met hem nooit over zijn boeken gehad, erkende hem niet als schrijver, zag hem als een werkloze � niet als kunstenaar. Het is niet dat ze niet belezen was: volgens biograaf Chris Ceustermans zat ze dagelijks uren met haar neus in de boeken, maar las ze geen enkel boek van haar zoon. Over zijn broer Jan, die professor was in Amerika, kon ze dan weer niet zwijgen. En toen er op 25 april 1993 een reportage over J.M.H. werd uitgezonden op de nationale televisie, in het highbrow kunstprogramma Ziggurat, ging moederlief een halfuur voor de uitzending slapen. Je zou als zoon van minder gek worden. Een ware nihilist zou er niet om malen.

En nu ik het toch heb over kemels van recensenten: Arnold Heumakers beschreef 'Het zomert' in De Volkskrant als “monotoon�. Mja � misschien, de frustratie druipt inderdaad van de 120 bladzijden, en er zit bijna altijd een directheid in J.M.H.’s taal. Qua stemming is er misschien iets van een eenheid te ontwaren, maar zowel inhoudelijk als vormelijk is het boek erg gevarieerd. 'Het Zomert' is door- en doorgecomponeerd. Niks wilds, niks waanzinnig primair gebrul zonder nadenken, geen repetitief doe-maar-op. Ik heb zulks ook al in vorige J.M.H. recensies geschreven, en het is een fout die recensenten bleven maken.

(...)

]]> 4.01 1993 Het zomert in Barakstad
author: J.M.H. Berckmans
name: Bart
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1993
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/05
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves: reviewed, dutch, favorites
review:
In mijn review van 'Café De Raaf nog steeds gesloten' schreef ik dat J.M.H. Berckmans� late werk misschien wel begint met Het zomert in Barakstad. In zijn vorige boeken was er immers altijd nog wel iets wat deed denken aan de quasi normaliteit, zoals autobiografische verhalen van voor hij afgleed in de marginaliteit, of sporen van literaire ambities om door de mainstream erkend te worden. Een aanzet van zo’n erkenning kwam er met dit boek: 'Het zomert' werd niet alleen uitgegeven door Dedalus in Antwerpen, maar ook door Nijgh & Van Ditmar in Amsterdam � eindelijk bijval in beide lage landen.

Van normaliteit � wat dat ook moge wezen � is in 'Het zomert' inderdaad geen sprake meer. Nergens in de 14 verhalen is er nog een spoor van iets wat lijkt op een gewoon leven, en ook het schrijverschap zelf blijft zo goed als buiten beeld.

Berckmans� werk wordt vaak nihilistisch genoemd � maar is dit boek wel nihilistisch? Was Jean-Marie Berckmans wel een nihilist?

Het antwoord op die vraag hangt ten dele af van de definitie die je geeft aan het woord ‘nihilisme�. Laten we het houden op de Wikipediaanse uitleg: een begrip dat wordt gebruikt om de ontkenning van het bestaan van betekenis of waarde in de wereld aan te duiden. Op de Engelstalige pagina komen daar de ontkenning van kennis en moraliteit bij.

Het moet voor recensenten zeker niet makkelijk zijn geweest om grip te krijgen op de schriftuur van Berckmans, laat staan op wat hij wilde uiten. In mijn bespreking van 'Taxi naar de Boerehaavestraat' � het boek dat verscheen na Het zomert � had ik het er al over dat “Célineske tirades�, “wrange ironie�, “superieur sarcasme�, “het paranoïde genre� of “haveloos� allemaal doel missen, fout zijn.

Jos Van Tienen recenseert 'Het zomert' in 1994, en heeft het in Streven over “nihilisme�. En Joris Gerits had het in 1993 in DWB over een “nihilistisch vitalisme�. Met dat laatste woord bedoelde de sympathieke professor wellicht de stroming die “de drang om intens, vurig en gevaarlijk te leven� probeert literair te vatten, en in die omschrijving kan ik me nog min of meer vinden, maar opnieuw: nihilistisch?

'Het zomert' geeft volgens mij vooral uitdrukking aan frustratie: frustratie geen vrouw meer te hebben, frustratie over het gebrek aan liefdevol contact met zijn ouders, frustratie over te weinig diepgaande connectie met andere mensen. Het is niet omdat Berckmans geweld beschrijft, of in de verf zet naar seks te verlangen, of moreel beschadigde personages schetst, of maatschappelijke illusies doorprikt, of existentiële angsten uitdrukt, dat hij geen waarde of betekenis hecht aan het bestaan. Berckmans is geen nihilist � integendeel. Het is een man die ja wil zeggen, maar een nee krijgt � omdat hij een fundamentele ongelukkigheid heeft geërfd van zijn vader, en omdat hij aan de goegemeente dingen laat zien waarvan men liever wegkijkt. Hij is patiënt, en hij is te eerlijk � geen nihilist.

Als professionele lezer zou je toch beter moeten weten dan “Het maakt niet uit.� letterlijk te nemen. Als ik even over mezelf mag beginnen: telkens wanneer ik, in echt betekenisvolle situaties, “het maakt niet uit� heb gezegd, dan maakte het eigenlijk feitelijk wel uit. “Het maakt niet uit� is een bezwering, geen ontologisch of metafysisch of ethisch statement.

Berckmans is geen nihilist: zijn geigerteller staat gewoon gevoeliger afgesteld dan die van de meeste mensen. Want laten we wel wezen: onze samenleving is overduidelijk ziek, ons politieke systeem niet bij machte oorlogen te stoppen of armoede uit te roeien, en we kannibaliseren onze planeet. Is normaal blijven dan niet de echte waanzin?

En ook op kleinere schaal kan je hem geen ongelijk geven: Jean-Marie’s moeder heeft het met hem nooit over zijn boeken gehad, erkende hem niet als schrijver, zag hem als een werkloze � niet als kunstenaar. Het is niet dat ze niet belezen was: volgens biograaf Chris Ceustermans zat ze dagelijks uren met haar neus in de boeken, maar las ze geen enkel boek van haar zoon. Over zijn broer Jan, die professor was in Amerika, kon ze dan weer niet zwijgen. En toen er op 25 april 1993 een reportage over J.M.H. werd uitgezonden op de nationale televisie, in het highbrow kunstprogramma Ziggurat, ging moederlief een halfuur voor de uitzending slapen. Je zou als zoon van minder gek worden. Een ware nihilist zou er niet om malen.

En nu ik het toch heb over kemels van recensenten: Arnold Heumakers beschreef 'Het zomert' in De Volkskrant als “monotoon�. Mja � misschien, de frustratie druipt inderdaad van de 120 bladzijden, en er zit bijna altijd een directheid in J.M.H.’s taal. Qua stemming is er misschien iets van een eenheid te ontwaren, maar zowel inhoudelijk als vormelijk is het boek erg gevarieerd. 'Het Zomert' is door- en doorgecomponeerd. Niks wilds, niks waanzinnig primair gebrul zonder nadenken, geen repetitief doe-maar-op. Ik heb zulks ook al in vorige J.M.H. recensies geschreven, en het is een fout die recensenten bleven maken.

(...)


]]> The Committed Men 304251
The new humanity must be preserved - whatever the cost.]]> 223 M. John Harrison 0575042206 Bart 2 reviewed, speculative
But gradually, I felt the book began to suffer under its own weight. Sometimes phrasing boarders the pretentious, and as the story progressed, it also started to show its seams: weirdness for the sake of the weird, so to say � that generally disengages me as a reader. The writing and staging draws attention to itself rather than to the characters or the story. I’m aware this is Harrison’s intention, but I started to lose interest because of it.

In its choices about the particulars of weird it’s also clearly dated, and I’ve noticed before I have a harder time these days to read primarily through a historical, forgiving lens. I don’t want to be a speculative fiction scholar, I want to be immersed first and foremost.

Harrison could probably distill 40 pages of brilliant flash fiction from this book. As it stands now, I don’t think The Committed Men will appeal to many contemporary readers. It does make me curious about Viriconium, a fantasy series considered to be classic, as it still gets high ratings. Its first book, The Pastel City, was also published in 1971. But if I’m honest, I’m way more interested in what Harrison � 79 nowadays � will publish later this year. In 2025, the future is clearly already here.

]]> 3.45 1971 The Committed Men
author: M. John Harrison
name: Bart
average rating: 3.45
book published: 1971
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/01
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
(...)

But gradually, I felt the book began to suffer under its own weight. Sometimes phrasing boarders the pretentious, and as the story progressed, it also started to show its seams: weirdness for the sake of the weird, so to say � that generally disengages me as a reader. The writing and staging draws attention to itself rather than to the characters or the story. I’m aware this is Harrison’s intention, but I started to lose interest because of it.

In its choices about the particulars of weird it’s also clearly dated, and I’ve noticed before I have a harder time these days to read primarily through a historical, forgiving lens. I don’t want to be a speculative fiction scholar, I want to be immersed first and foremost.

Harrison could probably distill 40 pages of brilliant flash fiction from this book. As it stands now, I don’t think The Committed Men will appeal to many contemporary readers. It does make me curious about Viriconium, a fantasy series considered to be classic, as it still gets high ratings. Its first book, The Pastel City, was also published in 1971. But if I’m honest, I’m way more interested in what Harrison � 79 nowadays � will publish later this year. In 2025, the future is clearly already here.


]]> Juice 207627291
Two fugitives, a man and a child, drive all night across a stony desert. As dawn breaks, they roll into an abandoned mine site. From the vehicle they survey a forsaken place � middens of twisted iron, rusty wire, piles of sun-baked trash. They’re exhausted, traumatised, desperate now. But as a refuge, this is the most promising place they’ve seen. The child peers at the field of desolation. The man thinks to himself, this could work.

Problem is, they’re not alone.

So begins a searing, propulsive journey through a life whose central challenge is not simply a matter of survival, but of how to maintain human decency as everyone around you falls ever further into barbarism.]]> 524 Tim Winton 1035050838 Bart 3 reviewed, speculative
None of that in Winton: his future projections seem way off, both underestimating the dangers of climate change, and overestimating our engineering capabilities. By now it’s clear that the IPCC’s projections have been way too moderate � just read up a bit on what scientists like James Hansen and Leon Simons have published recently. There are feedback loops and tipping points, and global warming seems to be accelerating, possibly exponentially. Even within the next decade it could get really ugly, and in a few centuries our biosphere might have evolved in such a way it won’t be able to support human life whatsoever.

Winton handwaves away international supply lines for batteries, water is just made, and soil doesn’t need much more than ground bones to continue to be fertile. The psychology of some of the future humans portrayed is baffling: they have adapted to living months in underground caves, yet even underground they are often unable to speak because of the oppressive summer heat � and still our characters don’t feel the need to move to a more hospitable part in the south of Australia?

(...)

]]> 3.95 2024 Juice
author: Tim Winton
name: Bart
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/12
date added: 2025/02/14
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
(...)

None of that in Winton: his future projections seem way off, both underestimating the dangers of climate change, and overestimating our engineering capabilities. By now it’s clear that the IPCC’s projections have been way too moderate � just read up a bit on what scientists like James Hansen and Leon Simons have published recently. There are feedback loops and tipping points, and global warming seems to be accelerating, possibly exponentially. Even within the next decade it could get really ugly, and in a few centuries our biosphere might have evolved in such a way it won’t be able to support human life whatsoever.

Winton handwaves away international supply lines for batteries, water is just made, and soil doesn’t need much more than ground bones to continue to be fertile. The psychology of some of the future humans portrayed is baffling: they have adapted to living months in underground caves, yet even underground they are often unable to speak because of the oppressive summer heat � and still our characters don’t feel the need to move to a more hospitable part in the south of Australia?

(...)


]]> The Stand 149267 For hundreds of thousands of fans who read The Stand in its original version and wanted more, this new edition is Stephen King's gift. And those who are listening to The Stand for the first time will discover a triumphant and eerily plausible work of the imagination that takes on the issues that will determine our survival.]]> 1152 Stephen King Bart 2 speculative, reviewed
It came out in 1978, and as it was such a success, King decided to add 400 cut pages in 1990, totaling at 1,138 pages. I’m pretty sure I read a translation of the uncut version, but today I regret going all in.

King is a great writer on a sentence & scene level, and I was pretty invested at first. But gradually it becomes clear the novel doesn’t really go anywhere, getting bogged down in descriptions of a certain kind of America, with characters that have loads of backstory, but remain pretty cardboard nonetheless. You could call it immersive writing, but to me it felt like padding, and this uncut version is pretty self-indulgent.

It takes a long time to set up the second half of the book, and it turns out that isn’t interesting either from a thematic point of view either, with a very simple, supernatural good vs bad dichotomy.

It might have worked much better in it’s original version, but I guess I’ll never find out. I bailed out after 500 pages. I must have read over 15 King books as a teenager, but I don’t feel like revisiting any of them again based on this partial reread, even if I can see some of them working very well as a beach read.

]]> 4.35 1978 The Stand
author: Stephen King
name: Bart
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1978
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/20
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: speculative, reviewed
review:
I read a Dutch translation of The Stand when I was 14, and I absolutely loved it back then. It’s considered King’s magnum opus by many, and I decided to reread it in English 3 decades later.

It came out in 1978, and as it was such a success, King decided to add 400 cut pages in 1990, totaling at 1,138 pages. I’m pretty sure I read a translation of the uncut version, but today I regret going all in.

King is a great writer on a sentence & scene level, and I was pretty invested at first. But gradually it becomes clear the novel doesn’t really go anywhere, getting bogged down in descriptions of a certain kind of America, with characters that have loads of backstory, but remain pretty cardboard nonetheless. You could call it immersive writing, but to me it felt like padding, and this uncut version is pretty self-indulgent.

It takes a long time to set up the second half of the book, and it turns out that isn’t interesting either from a thematic point of view either, with a very simple, supernatural good vs bad dichotomy.

It might have worked much better in it’s original version, but I guess I’ll never find out. I bailed out after 500 pages. I must have read over 15 King books as a teenager, but I don’t feel like revisiting any of them again based on this partial reread, even if I can see some of them working very well as a beach read.


]]> Outline 21400742
Beginning with the neighbouring passenger on the flight out and his tales of fast boats and failed marriages, the storytellers talk of their loves and ambitions and pains, their anxieties, their perceptions and daily lives. In the stifling heat and noise of the city the sequence of voice begins to weave a complex human tapestry. The more they talk the more elliptical their listener becomes, as she shapes and directs their accounts until certain themes begin to emerge: the experience of loss, the nature of family life, the difficulty of intimacy and the mystery of creativity itself.

Outline is a novel about writing and talking, about self-effacement and self-expression, about the desire to create and the human art of self-portraiture in which that desire finds its universal form.]]> 249 Rachel Cusk 0571233627 Bart 5 reviewed
After reading it, and reading up on it, it turns out the novel is autobiographic to a large extent.

It’s great, 5 star stuff. It touches on lots of themes, with the theme of divorce looming largest. It also deals with literature, art, the self, how personal identity is formed and changes. The human condition, in short. People make each other, and, like Cusk, I’m not interested approaching “life as a progression� either. I’ll read more of her.

]]> 3.68 2014 Outline
author: Rachel Cusk
name: Bart
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/27
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: reviewed
review:
I didn’t know much about it going in, except that it is somewhat inventive in how it portrays the main character through the lens of 10 conversations she has. I wrote down “elliptic� and found that word in other reviews too.

After reading it, and reading up on it, it turns out the novel is autobiographic to a large extent.

It’s great, 5 star stuff. It touches on lots of themes, with the theme of divorce looming largest. It also deals with literature, art, the self, how personal identity is formed and changes. The human condition, in short. People make each other, and, like Cusk, I’m not interested approaching “life as a progression� either. I’ll read more of her.


]]> 2024 on ŷ 195342176 2024 on ŷ should make an interesting and varied catalogue of books to inspire other readers in 2025.

For those of you who don't like to add titles you haven't actually 'read', you can place 2024 on ŷ on an 'exclusive' shelf. Exclusive shelves don't have to be listed under 'to read', 'currently reading' or 'read'. To create one, go to 'edit bookshelves' on your 'My Books' page, create a shelf name such as 'review-of-the year' and tick the 'exclusive' box. Your previous and future 'reviews of the year' can be collected together on this dedicated shelf.

Concept created by Fionnuala Lirsdottir.
Description: Fionnuala Lirsdottir
Cover art: Paul Cézanne, The House with the Cracked Walls, 1892-1894
Cover choice and graphics by Jayson]]> Various Bart 0 year-end-list
I wrote a bit more on music & television this year, scroll down for that if you’re interested.

Before I’ll get to 2024’s favorites, some blog stats for those of you who are interested in such a thing. Traffic has way increased. The main factor seems to be a renewed Dune hype generated by Part Two of Denis Villeneuve � my Herbert reviews continue to generate most traffic.

In 2024 I got 63,374 views and 39,431 visitors � about 23k and 17k more than in 2023. My most visited 2024 post was about Stephen Markley’s highly recommended The Deluge, with 598 views. I read it in 2023, but only published the review in January. Kim Stanley Robinson’s Antarctica comes second, with 517 views. Most viewed post in 2024 was that about Children of Dune: it got 2903 views, adding up to a total of 7531.

As for all-time stats, most read so far are the posts on Children of Dune (7531), Dune Messiah (7432), Heretics of Dune (5628), God Emperor of Dune (5446) and Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun (5260). I’ve been blogging for 9 years, and so far I’ve published 343 posts.

FAVORITE READS

The actual favorite book list is a short one this year. Below are the 3 titles I gave 5 stars on ŷ in 2024 � way less than last year’s 10. There’s 10 that I gave 4 stars, so honorable mentions for: Too Late To Awaken: What Lies Ahead When There Is No Future?, Gehuwde Rotsen, Verre Uittrap, Antarctica, The White Rose, In Ascension, Goede Zachaar, The Spear Cuts Through Water, The Art of Clara Peeters and Orbital.

I’ve read no scientific non-fiction this year, I hope to get back to a few of those in 2025.

(...)

]]> 4.15 2024 2024 on ŷ
author: Various
name: Bart
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: year-end-list
review:
I started 21 titles in 2024, about half of what I read in 2023. We’ll see how it goes in 2025, but I do want to get back to reading and writing about it on a bit more regular basis.

I wrote a bit more on music & television this year, scroll down for that if you’re interested.

Before I’ll get to 2024’s favorites, some blog stats for those of you who are interested in such a thing. Traffic has way increased. The main factor seems to be a renewed Dune hype generated by Part Two of Denis Villeneuve � my Herbert reviews continue to generate most traffic.

In 2024 I got 63,374 views and 39,431 visitors � about 23k and 17k more than in 2023. My most visited 2024 post was about Stephen Markley’s highly recommended The Deluge, with 598 views. I read it in 2023, but only published the review in January. Kim Stanley Robinson’s Antarctica comes second, with 517 views. Most viewed post in 2024 was that about Children of Dune: it got 2903 views, adding up to a total of 7531.

As for all-time stats, most read so far are the posts on Children of Dune (7531), Dune Messiah (7432), Heretics of Dune (5628), God Emperor of Dune (5446) and Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun (5260). I’ve been blogging for 9 years, and so far I’ve published 343 posts.

FAVORITE READS

The actual favorite book list is a short one this year. Below are the 3 titles I gave 5 stars on ŷ in 2024 � way less than last year’s 10. There’s 10 that I gave 4 stars, so honorable mentions for: Too Late To Awaken: What Lies Ahead When There Is No Future?, Gehuwde Rotsen, Verre Uittrap, Antarctica, The White Rose, In Ascension, Goede Zachaar, The Spear Cuts Through Water, The Art of Clara Peeters and Orbital.

I’ve read no scientific non-fiction this year, I hope to get back to a few of those in 2025.

(...)


]]> Parallel Lives 38256676 One of comics� true visionary formalists reinvents science fiction in this graphic novel.

This collects six wildly inventive short comics stories that might collectively be dubbed “speculative memoir.� Schrauwen’s deadpan depictions of his and his offspring's upcoming lives include alien abduction, dialogue with future agents, and coded messages in envelopes at breakfast.]]> 120 Olivier Schrauwen Bart 1 speculative 4.12 2018 Parallel Lives
author: Olivier Schrauwen
name: Bart
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2018
rating: 1
read at: 2024/03/24
date added: 2024/12/24
shelves: speculative
review:
Rather juvenile. Possibly a matter of expectations too, but I can't see me liking this had I read it before the brilliant .
]]> Tracey Emin Paintings 211951886 352 David Dawson 1838668616 Bart 5 art-books, reviewed
Tracey Emin's paintings are truly exceptional. Somehow they combine the best of Rembrandt's understanding of the body in his free, quick sketches and Cy Twombly's use of paint and space on the canvas.

]]> 4.83 Tracey Emin Paintings
author: David Dawson
name: Bart
average rating: 4.83
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/22
date added: 2024/12/22
shelves: art-books, reviewed
review:
Simply outstanding. This book features 300 of Emin's paintings from 1996 to 2024 - generally each painting gets a full page. It also has an interesting 10-page interview with David Dawson and a 7-page essay by Jennifer Higgie. Phaidon has done a great job: the print quality of the paintings is excellent, this really is a first rate book.

Tracey Emin's paintings are truly exceptional. Somehow they combine the best of Rembrandt's understanding of the body in his free, quick sketches and Cy Twombly's use of paint and space on the canvas.


]]> <![CDATA[Stories of Your Life and Others]]> 8130318 Stories of Your Life and Others, includes his first eight published stories plus the author's story notes and a cover that the author commissioned himself. Combining the precision and scientific curiosity of Kim Stanley Robinson with Lorrie Moore's cool, clear love of language and narrative intricacy, this award-winning collection offers readers the dual delights of the very, very strange and the heartbreakingly familiar.

Stories of Your Life and Others presents characters who must confront sudden change—the inevitable rise of automatons or the appearance of aliens—while striving to maintain some sense of normalcy. In the amazing and much-lauded title story, a grieving mother copes with divorce and the death of her daughter by drawing on her knowledge of alien languages and non-linear memory recollection. A clever pastiche of news reports and interviews chronicles a college's initiative to "turn off" the human ability to recognize beauty in "Liking What You See: A Documentary." With sharp intelligence and humor, Ted Chiang examines what it means to be alive in a world marked by uncertainty and constant change, and also by beauty and wonder.

Ted Chiang is one of the most celebrated science fiction authors writing today and is the author of numerous short stories, including most recently "Exhalation," which won the Hugo, British Science Fiction, and Locus Awards. He lives near Seattle.

Contents

1 � Tower of Babylon � (1990) � novelette by Ted Chiang
29 � Understand � (1991) � novelette by Ted Chiang
71 � Division by Zero � (1991) � short story by Ted Chiang
91 � Story of Your Life � (1998) � novella by Ted Chiang
147 � Seventy-Two Letters � (2000) � novella by Ted Chiang
201 � The Evolution of Human Science � (2000) � short story by Ted Chiang (variant of Catching Crumbs from the Table)
205 � Hell Is the Absence of God � (2001) � novelette by Ted Chiang
237 � Liking What You See: A Documentary � (2002) � novelette by Ted Chiang
275 � Story Notes (Stories of Your Life and Others) � (2000) � essay by Ted Chiang]]> 281 Ted Chiang 1931520720 Bart 1 reviewed, speculative
Yet the real reason this collection won't be read anymore 100 years from now, when the hype has passed, is that Chiang is first and foremost a writer of artificial ideas and philosophical concepts, not of stories. This became obvious fairly quickly when reading this book, and the author's 'story notes' at the end confirmed it.

Basing art on ideas is not necessarily a bad thing, as most literature starts with an idea or a message an author has or wants to convey. The problem is that Chiang doesn't try to hide his ideas, but leaves them out in the open, glaringly obvious. Nothing is left to the reader's own mental devices. A story shouldn't be a treatise or a sermon. I am of the firm conviction that most Great Literature uses ideas as an invisible base on which to build a plot, not as the explicit surface level message. It's the difference between a Book that makes you think, and a book that tells you what to think.

My thoughts on the individual stories:

The first two stories (Tower of Babylon, 29 pages andUnderstand, 40pp.) have a great build up, but both suffer from a disappointing ending. One is left with the feeling: "did I read all these good pages to arrive to this?" All and all, after these 2, I was curious and eager to read more.

Division by Zero (20pp.), is well constructed, but ultimately unbelievable. Its mathematical premisses is preposterous, and if it were like it is described in the story, and nobody - including other well respected mathematicians - would find a fault in the proof of a humongously important mathematical claim, it would cause a giant stir in science/math land. Yet nothing like that even happens, it reads like nobody seems to care. To make things worse, it also builds on theoretical mumbo jumbo, and that's not a good thing for a story that relies so much on theory. If one could prove 1=2, math itself wouldn't become just empirical, as the main character says & regrets, but something else entirely. It would become a mere game of semantics, or better yet, something useless, not empirical. I guess Chiang simply doesn't understand the ramifications himself, and just trew a word like 'empirical' at it. Then again, maybe I should not try to appreciate this for the hard science, but for the vague epistemological metaphor at the story's centre.

The fourth tale,Story of Your Life(60pp.), may hold something of interest for those uninitiated in Linguistics 101. But everybody with a bit of basic knowledge about language and writing systems won't find much here, except their old course books disguised as a story. The main premises - that a human can predicted the future because she learned an alien language - is again preposterous. The fact that Chiang tries to sell it to the reader via some half-baked science and philosophy makes it even worse. Don't try to write hard science if you are actually writing magic. There's also an emotional side to the story, that deals with grief for a dead child, but the heavy-handedness of the linguistics and the unbelievable premise get in the way of actually conveying emotions.

Seventy-Two Letters (50pp.) is a story in the realm of magical realism and starts of with a spectacular first scene. ´Finally´, I thought - ´this must be the stuff all those high praise reviews rave about.´ It quickly becomes boring though, filled with lifeless dialogue, and a story of which the plot is more the result of 2 thought experiments (what if golems have been real, and something else) instead of the want to write about a succession of interesting events and/or character development. At this point in the book, I began to sense this is more or less Chiang's standard way to approach writing.

Next up isThe Evolution of Human Science, not even 3 full pages long. It's a sketch of a few ideas in the form of a fictional scientific magazine article, no story.

Hell is the absence of God(32pp.) features the same trick asTower of BabylonandSeventy-Two Letters: what if X were real? As this time the X are angels. It's a good story, but again the ending is mildly disappointing. And again I have the feeling Chiang wants to drive something home, more than to tell a story.

The final piece,Liking What You See: a documentary(38pp.) is the worst of the entire collection. Chiang introduces the concept of 'lookism' (cf. sexism, racism,...) and a pill that disables one to see people's beauty, and lets an array of characters ponder about that in diary fragments and the likes. This alternative, 'clever' narrative structure disguises the fact that this is again no story, but a tedious homily filled with clichés about beauty and its place in human society.

---

This is the sort of book that makes some readers feel special because they get all the tidbits of science and philosophical stuff that's mentioned, and at the same time appreciate the author's smooth chiseled way with words. So, popular award stuff for sure, all the more since it seems deep & serious, but ultimately goes down easily, because it's shallow in essence, having only one level. Undeniably, Chiang has heaps of skill. But he needs to stop trying to come across as a 'sharp', multi-disciplinarian intellectual with a soft touch, and write some real goddamned stories.


]]> 4.30 2002 Stories of Your Life and Others
author: Ted Chiang
name: Bart
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2002
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2024/12/11
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
This collection of speculative stories is highly polished, and certainly shows the author's skill to compose short stories - at the same time, it's all fairly standard composition: Chiang surprises you in the story when you expect to be surprised. So, polished, yes, but sterile too. Moreover, there's hardly any interesting characterization.

Yet the real reason this collection won't be read anymore 100 years from now, when the hype has passed, is that Chiang is first and foremost a writer of artificial ideas and philosophical concepts, not of stories. This became obvious fairly quickly when reading this book, and the author's 'story notes' at the end confirmed it.

Basing art on ideas is not necessarily a bad thing, as most literature starts with an idea or a message an author has or wants to convey. The problem is that Chiang doesn't try to hide his ideas, but leaves them out in the open, glaringly obvious. Nothing is left to the reader's own mental devices. A story shouldn't be a treatise or a sermon. I am of the firm conviction that most Great Literature uses ideas as an invisible base on which to build a plot, not as the explicit surface level message. It's the difference between a Book that makes you think, and a book that tells you what to think.

My thoughts on the individual stories:

The first two stories (Tower of Babylon, 29 pages andUnderstand, 40pp.) have a great build up, but both suffer from a disappointing ending. One is left with the feeling: "did I read all these good pages to arrive to this?" All and all, after these 2, I was curious and eager to read more.

Division by Zero (20pp.), is well constructed, but ultimately unbelievable. Its mathematical premisses is preposterous, and if it were like it is described in the story, and nobody - including other well respected mathematicians - would find a fault in the proof of a humongously important mathematical claim, it would cause a giant stir in science/math land. Yet nothing like that even happens, it reads like nobody seems to care. To make things worse, it also builds on theoretical mumbo jumbo, and that's not a good thing for a story that relies so much on theory. If one could prove 1=2, math itself wouldn't become just empirical, as the main character says & regrets, but something else entirely. It would become a mere game of semantics, or better yet, something useless, not empirical. I guess Chiang simply doesn't understand the ramifications himself, and just trew a word like 'empirical' at it. Then again, maybe I should not try to appreciate this for the hard science, but for the vague epistemological metaphor at the story's centre.

The fourth tale,Story of Your Life(60pp.), may hold something of interest for those uninitiated in Linguistics 101. But everybody with a bit of basic knowledge about language and writing systems won't find much here, except their old course books disguised as a story. The main premises - that a human can predicted the future because she learned an alien language - is again preposterous. The fact that Chiang tries to sell it to the reader via some half-baked science and philosophy makes it even worse. Don't try to write hard science if you are actually writing magic. There's also an emotional side to the story, that deals with grief for a dead child, but the heavy-handedness of the linguistics and the unbelievable premise get in the way of actually conveying emotions.

Seventy-Two Letters (50pp.) is a story in the realm of magical realism and starts of with a spectacular first scene. ´Finally´, I thought - ´this must be the stuff all those high praise reviews rave about.´ It quickly becomes boring though, filled with lifeless dialogue, and a story of which the plot is more the result of 2 thought experiments (what if golems have been real, and something else) instead of the want to write about a succession of interesting events and/or character development. At this point in the book, I began to sense this is more or less Chiang's standard way to approach writing.

Next up isThe Evolution of Human Science, not even 3 full pages long. It's a sketch of a few ideas in the form of a fictional scientific magazine article, no story.

Hell is the absence of God(32pp.) features the same trick asTower of BabylonandSeventy-Two Letters: what if X were real? As this time the X are angels. It's a good story, but again the ending is mildly disappointing. And again I have the feeling Chiang wants to drive something home, more than to tell a story.

The final piece,Liking What You See: a documentary(38pp.) is the worst of the entire collection. Chiang introduces the concept of 'lookism' (cf. sexism, racism,...) and a pill that disables one to see people's beauty, and lets an array of characters ponder about that in diary fragments and the likes. This alternative, 'clever' narrative structure disguises the fact that this is again no story, but a tedious homily filled with clichés about beauty and its place in human society.

---

This is the sort of book that makes some readers feel special because they get all the tidbits of science and philosophical stuff that's mentioned, and at the same time appreciate the author's smooth chiseled way with words. So, popular award stuff for sure, all the more since it seems deep & serious, but ultimately goes down easily, because it's shallow in essence, having only one level. Undeniably, Chiang has heaps of skill. But he needs to stop trying to come across as a 'sharp', multi-disciplinarian intellectual with a soft touch, and write some real goddamned stories.



]]> Orbital 123136728 207 Samantha Harvey 0802161545 Bart 4
In that regard, it’s interesting Alexandra Harris of The Guardian wrote that Orbital is “a hopeful book (�) it studies people who act on their hope. It’s an Anthropocene book resistant to doom.� I couldn’t disagree more. Is that yet another a case of the eye of the beholder, or did Harris misread?

I admit Harvey leaves open a small, small possibility for some kind of future interplanetary harmonious human life, but as she shows too much awareness of climate change, deep time and human nature, that possibility is one on paper only, purely academic, “some grand abstract dream�. All things considered, there is no techno-optimism in Orbital. Our “restless spirit of endeavour� made space flight possible, but will end it too. She mentions the Challenger, and our four astronauts and two cosmonauts each flew up to the ISS on a “kerosene bomb�. Pietro hesitates to call progress good, and it is human want that has clearly wrecked the planet � the orange of fires in the Amazon forest visible from space. It’s not humanity per se either, Orbital does not play the blame/shame game, Harvey admitting that probably all life “leaves some kind of destruction behind it�.

I’m not even sure the book’s main characters act on hope: they seem to be driven by deep irrational urges just as the next guy, and lack free will � both in their decisions to go into space, but also in how they spend their meticulously schemed time aboard their close quartered titanium trap.

(...)

]]> 3.56 2023 Orbital
author: Samantha Harvey
name: Bart
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/01
date added: 2024/12/03
shelves:
review:
(...)

In that regard, it’s interesting Alexandra Harris of The Guardian wrote that Orbital is “a hopeful book (�) it studies people who act on their hope. It’s an Anthropocene book resistant to doom.� I couldn’t disagree more. Is that yet another a case of the eye of the beholder, or did Harris misread?

I admit Harvey leaves open a small, small possibility for some kind of future interplanetary harmonious human life, but as she shows too much awareness of climate change, deep time and human nature, that possibility is one on paper only, purely academic, “some grand abstract dream�. All things considered, there is no techno-optimism in Orbital. Our “restless spirit of endeavour� made space flight possible, but will end it too. She mentions the Challenger, and our four astronauts and two cosmonauts each flew up to the ISS on a “kerosene bomb�. Pietro hesitates to call progress good, and it is human want that has clearly wrecked the planet � the orange of fires in the Amazon forest visible from space. It’s not humanity per se either, Orbital does not play the blame/shame game, Harvey admitting that probably all life “leaves some kind of destruction behind it�.

I’m not even sure the book’s main characters act on hope: they seem to be driven by deep irrational urges just as the next guy, and lack free will � both in their decisions to go into space, but also in how they spend their meticulously schemed time aboard their close quartered titanium trap.

(...)


]]> The Art of Clara Peeters 34258619 This book provides the most up to date study of her career and her works. It places the artist in the cultural and artistic context of Antwerp, and calls attention to the way in which she transformed collecting and display practices into art. The paintings of Clara Peeters also reflect the material culture of the time in Europe. The texts in this book explore the meanings that contemporaries associated with foodstuffs such as fish, cheese, artichokes or pies, with exotic shells and Wanli porcelain, and with birds of prey and other animals.
Also considered are the possibilities and limitations that women artists faced in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries due to widespread prejudices. Clara Peeters’s will to be recognised as a woman painter is manifest in the small self-portraits that exist reflected on the shiny metal surfaces of vessels in several of the paintings reproduced in this book.
The curator of the exhibition of her works and the editorial director of this accompanying publication is Alejandro Vergara, senior curator of Flemish and Northern European Paintings at the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid.]]> 136 Alejandro Vergara Bart 4 art-books, reviewed
The exhibition held 15 paintings by Clara Peeters, of whom about 40 works are known. Peeters is an exceptional talent, working in the early 17th century. She masterfully evokes still-life paintings with a very high degree of realism.

I was godsmacked when I recently saw a still-life of hers in the Mauritshuis in The Hague, and sought out a publication on her. This was the only one available. In 1992 Pamela Hibbs Decoteau published another monograph, which appears to be the standard work on Peeters, but it's OOP.

Alejandro Vergara en Anne Lenders texts are well-documented, insightfull and interesting. There is a fair amount of repetition, due to the fact that they approach every text accompanying the 15 paintings as one that can be read as a stand-alone.

The print quality of the illustrations is generally very good.

I do think the book would have benefited tremendously from an inclusion of a list of all know Peeters' paintings, including their whereabouts and a small illustration too. That would have added only a small number of pages, and I'm guessing for an institute like the Prado getting the rights on the images shouldn't be that hard. The fact that the Decoteau is OOP such an inclusion would have been a nice service to any fan of Peeters, and, most importantly, it would have further contextualized the 15 paintings of the exhibition.

Luckily, there's a list on the site of the RKD.

Click for a list of all my art book reviews.]]> 3.00 The Art of Clara Peeters
author: Alejandro Vergara
name: Bart
average rating: 3.00
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/29
date added: 2024/10/31
shelves: art-books, reviewed
review:
Catalogue published for the exhibition held in Museum Rockoxhuis in Antwerp in 2016, which later moved to the Prado in Madrid (from October 2016 tot February 2017).

The exhibition held 15 paintings by Clara Peeters, of whom about 40 works are known. Peeters is an exceptional talent, working in the early 17th century. She masterfully evokes still-life paintings with a very high degree of realism.

I was godsmacked when I recently saw a still-life of hers in the Mauritshuis in The Hague, and sought out a publication on her. This was the only one available. In 1992 Pamela Hibbs Decoteau published another monograph, which appears to be the standard work on Peeters, but it's OOP.

Alejandro Vergara en Anne Lenders texts are well-documented, insightfull and interesting. There is a fair amount of repetition, due to the fact that they approach every text accompanying the 15 paintings as one that can be read as a stand-alone.

The print quality of the illustrations is generally very good.

I do think the book would have benefited tremendously from an inclusion of a list of all know Peeters' paintings, including their whereabouts and a small illustration too. That would have added only a small number of pages, and I'm guessing for an institute like the Prado getting the rights on the images shouldn't be that hard. The fact that the Decoteau is OOP such an inclusion would have been a nice service to any fan of Peeters, and, most importantly, it would have further contextualized the 15 paintings of the exhibition.

Luckily, there's a list on the site of the RKD.

Click for a list of all my art book reviews.
]]> <![CDATA[Black Helicopters (Tinfoil Dossier, #2)]]> 37941807
Just as the Signalman stood and faced the void in Agents of Dreamland, so it falls to Ptolema, a chess piece in her agency’s world-spanning game, to unravel what has become tangled and unknowable.

Something strange is happening on the shores of New England. Something stranger still is happening to the world itself, chaos unleashed, rational explanation slipped loose from the moorings of the known. Two rival agencies stare across the Void at one another. Two sisters, the deadly, sickened products of experiments going back decades, desperately evade their hunters.

An invisible war rages at the fringes of our world, with unimaginable consequences and Lovecraftian horrors that ripple centuries into the future.]]> 202 Caitlín R. Kiernan 1250191130 Bart 1 reviewed, speculative
Black Helicopters is the second book of the Tinfoil Dossier series, but there is no indication of this on this 198-page book whatsoever � it was published before Agents of Dreamland, the first of the series. The Tindalos Asset is the concluding title. Tor considers all three books novellas.

Kiernan jumps between 2012, 2112, 2001, 2035, 1966, 2152 and so forth, with vignettes hinting at a larger spy story between two rival agencies waging an invisible war, with dashes of magic and Weird.

I must admit that she’s good at scenes, but I craved for a story, and lacked the stamina to solve the puzzle and keep all the hints in my mind to construct that story myself.

I’m also slowly beginning to realize that most weird and Lovecraftian things are not for me.

Jesse published a glowing review on Speculiction, give that a read for balance. This was a case of not for me � too tired (lazy?) these days, so I stopped after 100 pages.]]> 3.27 2015 Black Helicopters (Tinfoil Dossier, #2)
author: Caitlín R. Kiernan
name: Bart
average rating: 3.27
book published: 2015
rating: 1
read at: 2024/09/21
date added: 2024/10/30
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
Kiernan is a paleontologist and a writer � she has 10 novels and over 260 short stories under her belt.

Black Helicopters is the second book of the Tinfoil Dossier series, but there is no indication of this on this 198-page book whatsoever � it was published before Agents of Dreamland, the first of the series. The Tindalos Asset is the concluding title. Tor considers all three books novellas.

Kiernan jumps between 2012, 2112, 2001, 2035, 1966, 2152 and so forth, with vignettes hinting at a larger spy story between two rival agencies waging an invisible war, with dashes of magic and Weird.

I must admit that she’s good at scenes, but I craved for a story, and lacked the stamina to solve the puzzle and keep all the hints in my mind to construct that story myself.

I’m also slowly beginning to realize that most weird and Lovecraftian things are not for me.

Jesse published a glowing review on Speculiction, give that a read for balance. This was a case of not for me � too tired (lazy?) these days, so I stopped after 100 pages.
]]> <![CDATA[Schrijven in de Grauwzone: J.M.H. Berckmans, de biografie]]> 41439510 Op basis van vele ongepubliceerde teksten, brieven en gesprekken met familie, vrienden en collega's reconstrueert biograaf Chris Ceustermans Berckmans' literaire en existentiële zoektocht.
Of hoe een teruggetrokken jongen uit een arme arbeidersfamilie en Italiaans handelsagent in goedkope schoenen de virtuoze vuurspuwer met woorden werd.]]> 326 Chris Ceustermans 9460016588 Bart 5 dutch, non-fiction, reviewed
Het leven van Berckmans tart elke verbeelding, en deze biografie is zo een van die gevallen waar het cliché dat de realiteit fictie overstijgt ook effectief klopt. Hierdoor leest dit boek ook als een soort picareske roman, en moet het volgens mij ook boeiend zijn voor wie niet vertrouwd is met het werk van de bipolaire schrijver. Aangezien leven en schrijven voor JMH sterk met elkaar verweven zijn, werpt dit boek ook een verhelderend licht op zijn oeuvre. Kenners van zijn verhalen zullen daardoor zeker worden aangezet om Berckmans te herlezen.

'Schrijven in de Grauwzone' is alles wel beschouwd een intriest verhaal: de kroniek van een trage zelfmoord van een manisch-depressief miskend genie met een zware alcoholverslaving. Ik hoop dat dit boek een fatsoenlijke uitgave van Berckmans� verzameld werk een stap dichterbij kan brengen. 'Verhalen uit de Grauwzone' � de nieuwe bloemlezing die gelijktijdig uitkwam met deze biografie � is al mooi, maar bijlange niet genoeg.

]]> 4.05 Schrijven in de Grauwzone: J.M.H. Berckmans, de biografie
author: Chris Ceustermans
name: Bart
average rating: 4.05
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2018/09/29
date added: 2024/10/19
shelves: dutch, non-fiction, reviewed
review:
Jean-Marie Berckmans is tien jaar geleden op 54-jarige leeftijd van ontbering overleden, en nu publiceert Uitgeverij Vrijdag eindelijk deze dappere biografie. 'Schrijven In De Grauwzone' leest als een trein: Ceustermans schrijft erg vlot en trefzeker. Het boek is bovendien erg goed gedocumenteerd, Ceustermans� research moet erg veel tijd hebben gekost � hij heeft met tientallen en tientallen mensen gesproken, en Berckmans heeft ook erg veel papieren sporen nagelaten van zijn chaotische bestaan. Daardoor had Ceustermans toegang tot een groot archief van ongepubliceerde teksten en brieven. Hieruit wordt vaak geciteerd, op een manier die erg organisch is, zonder dat het de flow van het lezen stoort. Daardoor overtijgt het boek de loutere biografie: pakweg een 5e van dit boek is immers door JMH zelf geschreven.

Het leven van Berckmans tart elke verbeelding, en deze biografie is zo een van die gevallen waar het cliché dat de realiteit fictie overstijgt ook effectief klopt. Hierdoor leest dit boek ook als een soort picareske roman, en moet het volgens mij ook boeiend zijn voor wie niet vertrouwd is met het werk van de bipolaire schrijver. Aangezien leven en schrijven voor JMH sterk met elkaar verweven zijn, werpt dit boek ook een verhelderend licht op zijn oeuvre. Kenners van zijn verhalen zullen daardoor zeker worden aangezet om Berckmans te herlezen.

'Schrijven in de Grauwzone' is alles wel beschouwd een intriest verhaal: de kroniek van een trage zelfmoord van een manisch-depressief miskend genie met een zware alcoholverslaving. Ik hoop dat dit boek een fatsoenlijke uitgave van Berckmans� verzameld werk een stap dichterbij kan brengen. 'Verhalen uit de Grauwzone' � de nieuwe bloemlezing die gelijktijdig uitkwam met deze biografie � is al mooi, maar bijlange niet genoeg.


]]> Transition 6436659
Among those operatives are Temudjin Oh, of mysterious Mongolian origins, an un-killable assassin who journeys between the peaks of Nepal, a version of Victorian London and the dark palaces of Venice under snow; Adrian Cubbish, a restlessly greedy City trader; and a nameless, faceless state-sponsored torturer known only as the Philosopher, who moves between time zones with sinister ease. Then there are those who question the Concern: the bandit queen Mrs. Mulverhill, roaming the worlds recruiting rebels to her side; and Patient 8262, under sedation and feigning madness in a forgotten hospital ward, in hiding from a dirty past.

There is a world that needs help; but whether it needs the Concern is a different matter.]]> 404 Iain M. Banks 0316071986 Bart 2 reviewed, speculative
Although the book has a veneer of science fiction � using many-world science as a starting point � there’s actually zero consistent science in the book. The mind-body problem is just sidestepped � a bit like in Altered Carbon � and used inconsistently to be able to do something gimmicky with OCD and with polyglotism. In this sense, Transition is like a 21st century version of all that laughable telepathy focused scifi of the 50ies and 60ies.

Similarly, there’s a veneer of deep thought and philosophy: solipsism gets some pages, but it’s simply not that interesting � maybe if you´re 15 it is. It’s all painting by numbers. Let’s try this insightful passage as an example:

"He did recall, despite the pulsings of such concentrated extended pleasure, that there were people who existed in a state of perpetual sexual arousel, coming to orgasm continually, through the most trivial, ordinary and frequent physical triggers and experiences. It sounded like utter bliss, the sort of thing drunk friends roared with envious laughter over towards the end of an evening, but the unfunny truth was that, in its most acute form, it was a severe and debilitating medical condition. The final proof that it was so was that many people who suffered from it took their own lives. Bliss � pure physical rapture � could become absolutely unbearable."

DEEP!! DEEP!!!

Themes are typical hedonist Banks: lots of sex, some drugs. He opens the book explicitly by embedding the setting between the fall of the Berlin wall, 9/11 and the 2008 economic crisis. That seems promising at first, as Banks does it with quite some aplomb, but sadly none of the political stuff is explored � except for some asides about torture (in an interview he said to have Guantanamo in mind) and a few rants against capitalism. There’s also the typical stuff about those that have superpowers and try to influence reality for the better, and that power corrupting� you’ve read it all before.

(...)

After all these negatives, let me backtrack a bit: this is an okay book.

(...)

]]> 3.87 2009 Transition
author: Iain M. Banks
name: Bart
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2009
rating: 2
read at: 2019/06/02
date added: 2024/10/07
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
(...)

Although the book has a veneer of science fiction � using many-world science as a starting point � there’s actually zero consistent science in the book. The mind-body problem is just sidestepped � a bit like in Altered Carbon � and used inconsistently to be able to do something gimmicky with OCD and with polyglotism. In this sense, Transition is like a 21st century version of all that laughable telepathy focused scifi of the 50ies and 60ies.

Similarly, there’s a veneer of deep thought and philosophy: solipsism gets some pages, but it’s simply not that interesting � maybe if you´re 15 it is. It’s all painting by numbers. Let’s try this insightful passage as an example:

"He did recall, despite the pulsings of such concentrated extended pleasure, that there were people who existed in a state of perpetual sexual arousel, coming to orgasm continually, through the most trivial, ordinary and frequent physical triggers and experiences. It sounded like utter bliss, the sort of thing drunk friends roared with envious laughter over towards the end of an evening, but the unfunny truth was that, in its most acute form, it was a severe and debilitating medical condition. The final proof that it was so was that many people who suffered from it took their own lives. Bliss � pure physical rapture � could become absolutely unbearable."

DEEP!! DEEP!!!

Themes are typical hedonist Banks: lots of sex, some drugs. He opens the book explicitly by embedding the setting between the fall of the Berlin wall, 9/11 and the 2008 economic crisis. That seems promising at first, as Banks does it with quite some aplomb, but sadly none of the political stuff is explored � except for some asides about torture (in an interview he said to have Guantanamo in mind) and a few rants against capitalism. There’s also the typical stuff about those that have superpowers and try to influence reality for the better, and that power corrupting� you’ve read it all before.

(...)

After all these negatives, let me backtrack a bit: this is an okay book.

(...)


]]> <![CDATA[Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?]]> 28927917 New York Times Bestseller: “Astonishing . . . has the makings of a classic—and one fantastic read.”�People

What separates your mind from an animal’s? Maybe you think it’s your ability to design tools, your sense of self, or your grasp of past and future—all traits that have helped us define ourselves as the planet’s preeminent species. But in recent decades, these claims have eroded, or even been disproven outright, by a revolution in the study of animal cognition. Take the way octopuses use coconut shells as tools; elephants that classify humans by age, gender, and language; or Ayumu, the young male chimpanzee at Kyoto University whose flash memory puts that of humans to shame. Based on research involving crows, dolphins, parrots, sheep, wasps, bats, whales, and of course chimpanzees and bonobos, Frans de Waal explores both the scope and the depth of animal intelligence. He offers a firsthand account of how science has stood traditional behaviorism on its head by revealing how smart animals really are, and how we’ve underestimated their abilities for too long.

People often assume a cognitive ladder, from lower to higher forms, with our own intelligence at the top. But what if it is more like a bush, with cognition taking different forms that are often incomparable to ours? Would you presume yourself dumber than a squirrel because you’re less adept at recalling the locations of hundreds of buried acorns? Or would you judge your perception of your surroundings as more sophisticated than that of a echolocating bat? De Waal reviews the rise and fall of the mechanistic view of animals and opens our minds to the idea that animal minds are far more intricate and complex than we have assumed. De Waal’s landmark work will convince you to rethink everything you thought you knew about animal—and human—intelligence.]]> 353 Frans de Waal 0393246191 Bart 0 to-read 4.08 2016 Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?
author: Frans de Waal
name: Bart
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Exhalation 48588075 For your 2009 Hugo Award
"Best Short Story" consideration
Ted Chiang’s "Exhalation"

As Published in

Eclipse Two:
New Science Fiction and Fantasy

Edited by Jonathan Strahan]]> 32 Ted Chiang Bart 3
So at first I decided to skip Exhalation: Stories, his second collection, published in 2019. But then I read a glowing review on Speculiction that dubbed the title story "one of the greatest science fiction stories ever written". As it is available for free on Lightspeed Magazine's site, I decided to read just that.

It turned out to be a typical Chiang story: exquisitely crafted, good prose, convincing atmosphere, smart ideas. But sadly, for my taste, it's also a bit too didactic, for two reasons.

It tries to convey a message - the clichéd 'be thankful for the wonder of existence', but more importantly, because it follows the typical Chiang template: he read some interesting stuff, and tries to mold his newfound wisdom into a story.

This time the main focus is on neuroscience, and the debate on the classic boxological Theory Of Mind: do our brains have representations of their content inside their brains, or not? The Nobel Prize winning research by Kandel and O’Keefe & the Mosers on rats has proven the classic T.o.M. wrong, and Chiang has managed to translate that into a kind of steampunk-ish robot setting. At least, that's my guess, as I haven't read any author notes. I know Chiang included those in this first collection, but I'm not sure if they exist for this particular story. (If they do exist, and somebody could prove or disprove my hypothesis in the comments, that would be great.)

The other focus is a classic cosmology conundrum: is our universe finite, and will it get to a final (dead) state of equilibrium? He cleverly inserts a bit of speculation about possible multiverses too.

What Chiang does absolutely brilliantly is marry these two ingeniously via a subdued steampunk setting, and as such this is a truly great science fiction story indeed. It is really a tour de force.

What Chiang fails to do, is tell a compelling story about characters. As the story progresses, the clinical, mechanical nature of his modus operandus becomes clear. One could say: it suits this particular story about automatons, and that's definitely true, but for my tastes Exhalation lacks emotion & something resembling a real character - instead of a mouthpiece for ideas. I even dare to claim that 'Exhalation' lacks a real plot, and at times it felt a bit drawn out. As such, it kinda reads as something formulaic, written for a creative writing class - however brilliantly done.

So where does that leave me re: Exhalation: Stories? I might try and source a few of the other recommended stories for free online, but at the moment I'm not buying the collection.

]]> 4.24 Exhalation
author: Ted Chiang
name: Bart
average rating: 4.24
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2020/05/08
date added: 2024/09/10
shelves:
review:
I was conflicted about Stories of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang's much lauded first collection. There's something about this guy: he can write - but are these really, truly stories?

So at first I decided to skip Exhalation: Stories, his second collection, published in 2019. But then I read a glowing review on Speculiction that dubbed the title story "one of the greatest science fiction stories ever written". As it is available for free on Lightspeed Magazine's site, I decided to read just that.

It turned out to be a typical Chiang story: exquisitely crafted, good prose, convincing atmosphere, smart ideas. But sadly, for my taste, it's also a bit too didactic, for two reasons.

It tries to convey a message - the clichéd 'be thankful for the wonder of existence', but more importantly, because it follows the typical Chiang template: he read some interesting stuff, and tries to mold his newfound wisdom into a story.

This time the main focus is on neuroscience, and the debate on the classic boxological Theory Of Mind: do our brains have representations of their content inside their brains, or not? The Nobel Prize winning research by Kandel and O’Keefe & the Mosers on rats has proven the classic T.o.M. wrong, and Chiang has managed to translate that into a kind of steampunk-ish robot setting. At least, that's my guess, as I haven't read any author notes. I know Chiang included those in this first collection, but I'm not sure if they exist for this particular story. (If they do exist, and somebody could prove or disprove my hypothesis in the comments, that would be great.)

The other focus is a classic cosmology conundrum: is our universe finite, and will it get to a final (dead) state of equilibrium? He cleverly inserts a bit of speculation about possible multiverses too.

What Chiang does absolutely brilliantly is marry these two ingeniously via a subdued steampunk setting, and as such this is a truly great science fiction story indeed. It is really a tour de force.

What Chiang fails to do, is tell a compelling story about characters. As the story progresses, the clinical, mechanical nature of his modus operandus becomes clear. One could say: it suits this particular story about automatons, and that's definitely true, but for my tastes Exhalation lacks emotion & something resembling a real character - instead of a mouthpiece for ideas. I even dare to claim that 'Exhalation' lacks a real plot, and at times it felt a bit drawn out. As such, it kinda reads as something formulaic, written for a creative writing class - however brilliantly done.

So where does that leave me re: Exhalation: Stories? I might try and source a few of the other recommended stories for free online, but at the moment I'm not buying the collection.


]]> The Spear Cuts Through Water 55868456 Two warriors shepherd an ancient god across a broken land to end the tyrannical reign of a royal family in this new epic fantasy from the author of The Vanished Birds.

The people suffer under the centuries-long rule of the Moon Throne. The royal family—the despotic emperor and his monstrous sons, the Three Terrors—hold the countryside in their choking grip. They bleed the land and oppress the citizens with the frightful powers they inherited from the god locked under their palace.

But that god cannot be contained forever.

With the aid of Jun, a guard broken by his guilt-stricken past, and Keema, an outcast fighting for his future, the god escapes from her royal captivity and flees from her own children, the triplet Terrors who would drag her back to her unholy prison. And so it is that she embarks with her young companions on a five-day pilgrimage in search of freedom—and a way to end the Moon Throne forever. The journey ahead will be more dangerous than any of them could have imagined.

Both a sweeping adventure story and an intimate exploration of identity, legacy, and belonging, The Spear Cuts Through Water is an ambitious and profound saga that will transport and transform you—and is like nothing you’ve ever read before.
]]> 525 Simon Jimenez 0593156595 Bart 4 reviewed, speculative
The biggest delight of reading Spear was the wonder Jimenez offers. His worldbuilding and the details of the story offered a fairly consistent stream of the new � like psychic tortoises being used as telecommunication, just to name one thing. Not that Jimenez veers into Weird territory: there is no weirdness or otherness just for the sake of it in this novel.

The result is a story that delivers the unexpected and fantastic regularly, surprising the reader with things they never read about before, but still in a consistent, solid secondary world. For me, reading fantasy is generally about that: invoking awe and escapism through the power of an author’s imagination. Jimenez also describes a fair amount of violence and action. As such, for me this was a book about sets and scenes, and Jimenez excels at it.

There is another layer to this book, a meta one. The story is partially told in the second person (a you that’s a descendant of one of the characters), and some of the story is told to him by his grandmother, and he also sees big parts of the story performed as a dance in some kind of dream theater. That latter mode is the bulk of the novel, and as such Spear mostly reads as a regular 3rd person narrator.

Much is made of this formal structure in other reviews � some even calling the book an experimental triumph. I don’t fully agree.

It’s clear some readers are confused or put off by the formal choices Jimenez made, judging by some ŷ reviews � mind you, the book still has an excellent rating. Others, like Jake Casella Brookings in the Chicago Review of Books go full on with their praise.

(...)

]]> 4.17 2022 The Spear Cuts Through Water
author: Simon Jimenez
name: Bart
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/07
date added: 2024/09/09
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
The Spear Cuts Through Water is a fantasy story: two boys � one an outcast, the other of royal blood � are on the run, escorting the nearly deceased body of a goddess trying to escape her husband, a despotic Emperor, and their monstrous sons, the Three Terrors.

The biggest delight of reading Spear was the wonder Jimenez offers. His worldbuilding and the details of the story offered a fairly consistent stream of the new � like psychic tortoises being used as telecommunication, just to name one thing. Not that Jimenez veers into Weird territory: there is no weirdness or otherness just for the sake of it in this novel.

The result is a story that delivers the unexpected and fantastic regularly, surprising the reader with things they never read about before, but still in a consistent, solid secondary world. For me, reading fantasy is generally about that: invoking awe and escapism through the power of an author’s imagination. Jimenez also describes a fair amount of violence and action. As such, for me this was a book about sets and scenes, and Jimenez excels at it.

There is another layer to this book, a meta one. The story is partially told in the second person (a you that’s a descendant of one of the characters), and some of the story is told to him by his grandmother, and he also sees big parts of the story performed as a dance in some kind of dream theater. That latter mode is the bulk of the novel, and as such Spear mostly reads as a regular 3rd person narrator.

Much is made of this formal structure in other reviews � some even calling the book an experimental triumph. I don’t fully agree.

It’s clear some readers are confused or put off by the formal choices Jimenez made, judging by some ŷ reviews � mind you, the book still has an excellent rating. Others, like Jake Casella Brookings in the Chicago Review of Books go full on with their praise.

(...)


]]> Blindsight (Firefall, #1) 48484 Two months since the stars fell...

Two months since sixty-five thousand alien objects clenched around the Earth like a luminous fist, screaming to the heavens as the atmosphere burned them to ash. Two months since that moment of brief, bright surveillance by agents unknown.

Two months of silence while a world holds its breath.

Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune’s orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever’s out there isn’t talking to us. It’s talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route.

So who do you send to force introductions on an intelligence with motives unknown, maybe unknowable? Who do you send to meet the alien when the alien doesn’t want to meet?

You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees X-rays and tastes ultrasound, so compromised by grafts and splices he no longer feels his own flesh. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won’t be needed, and a fainter hope she’ll do any good if she is needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called “vampire,� recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist � an informational topologist with half his mind gone � as an interface between here and there, a conduit through which the Dead Center might hope to understand the Bleeding Edge.

You send them all to the edge of interstellar space, praying you can trust such freaks and retrofits with the fate of a world. You fear they may be more alien than the thing they’ve been sent to find.

But you’d give anything for that to be true, if you only knew what was waiting for them…]]> 384 Peter Watts 0765312182 Bart 4 reviewed, speculative
My main issue with Blindsight is that it’s not as clever as it makes us readers believe. For one, the protagonist is just another version of the autistic savant, and one that claims he can do things that I think are bullshit, future or not. Sure, understanding systems just by looking at their surface output will work in some cases, but as a general guideline I would not put my money on it. And while there’s lots of talk about said principle, in the end Siri Keeton doesn’t do much more than read body language, and that’s a bit of a disappointment after all the build up. Another crucial part of the plot � roughly speaking: human language being perceived as a dangerous virus because we tend to contradict each other and ourselves � doesn’t ring true either, as a super-quantum-intelligence should be able to tackle seemingly paradoxical systems. But I’m nitpicking: also the final third of the book is still a good read. It’s just that the beginning creates expectations Watts can’t uphold.

(...)

]]> 4.01 2006 Blindsight (Firefall, #1)
author: Peter Watts
name: Bart
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2018/11/17
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
(...)

My main issue with Blindsight is that it’s not as clever as it makes us readers believe. For one, the protagonist is just another version of the autistic savant, and one that claims he can do things that I think are bullshit, future or not. Sure, understanding systems just by looking at their surface output will work in some cases, but as a general guideline I would not put my money on it. And while there’s lots of talk about said principle, in the end Siri Keeton doesn’t do much more than read body language, and that’s a bit of a disappointment after all the build up. Another crucial part of the plot � roughly speaking: human language being perceived as a dangerous virus because we tend to contradict each other and ourselves � doesn’t ring true either, as a super-quantum-intelligence should be able to tackle seemingly paradoxical systems. But I’m nitpicking: also the final third of the book is still a good read. It’s just that the beginning creates expectations Watts can’t uphold.

(...)


]]> <![CDATA[The Wandering Earth: Classic Science Fiction Collection]]> 18146792 482 Cixin Liu 1489502858 Bart 4 reviewed, speculative
The book features 11 stories, mostly about 50 pages each. The translations were done by Ken Liu - who also translated The Three-Body Problem. - and Holger Nam. Four of the stories won the China Galaxy Science Fiction Award. I'll use the title story to point out some general remarks about this collection, and give a quick write-up and a hint about the subject matter of each of the other stories afterwards.

(...)

In a way, most of these stories are about the tension between hope and the inevitability of demise; and the insignificance of the individual when compared to the whole of society or the whole of the universe. In that sense, Cixin Liu clearly is an Eastern writer. The mild strangeness of these Chinese stories may well be an additional delight for most Western science fiction readers that crave Otherness.]]> 4.31 2000 The Wandering Earth: Classic Science Fiction Collection
author: Cixin Liu
name: Bart
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2015/10/24
date added: 2024/06/25
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:


The book features 11 stories, mostly about 50 pages each. The translations were done by Ken Liu - who also translated The Three-Body Problem. - and Holger Nam. Four of the stories won the China Galaxy Science Fiction Award. I'll use the title story to point out some general remarks about this collection, and give a quick write-up and a hint about the subject matter of each of the other stories afterwards.

(...)

In a way, most of these stories are about the tension between hope and the inevitability of demise; and the insignificance of the individual when compared to the whole of society or the whole of the universe. In that sense, Cixin Liu clearly is an Eastern writer. The mild strangeness of these Chinese stories may well be an additional delight for most Western science fiction readers that crave Otherness.
]]> A Perfect Vacuum 28767
Beginning with a review of his own book, Lem moves on to tackles (or create pastiches of) the French new novel, James Joyce, pornography, authorless writing, and Dostoevsky, while at the same time ranging across scientific topics, from cosmology to the pervasiveness of computers. The result is a metafictional tour de force by one of the world's most popular writers.]]> 229 Stanisław Lem 0810117339 Bart 1 reviewed, speculative
I expected something different - Lemian versions of M. John Harrison's great fictional short reviews in 'You Should Come With Me Now'. What we get instead often has more to do with the canon of literature (think Crusoe, Dostoevsky, etc.) than actual science fiction. The fictional reviews are dense, longwinded and have a lot of meta-literary stuff - and there're more tedious synopses than actual reviews, by the way.

'Pericalypse' and the introductione were great though, and there might still be gems in the second half of the book, but I lacked the stamina to hunt for them.

]]> 4.17 1971 A Perfect Vacuum
author: Stanisław Lem
name: Bart
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1971
rating: 1
read at: 2024/06/21
date added: 2024/06/21
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
DNF at 50%

I expected something different - Lemian versions of M. John Harrison's great fictional short reviews in 'You Should Come With Me Now'. What we get instead often has more to do with the canon of literature (think Crusoe, Dostoevsky, etc.) than actual science fiction. The fictional reviews are dense, longwinded and have a lot of meta-literary stuff - and there're more tedious synopses than actual reviews, by the way.

'Pericalypse' and the introductione were great though, and there might still be gems in the second half of the book, but I lacked the stamina to hunt for them.


]]> Goede Zachaar 215032655 De geestige brieven verschijnen hier met een uitvoerig nawoord door Lemahieu, en met een foto en drie tekeningen van Berckmans.
De tekst van 28p. is met de hand gezet uit de 14 punt Van Dijck en met de handpers gedrukt op geschept Römerturm vergé papier met watermerk.
Alle 50 exemplaren zijn gebonden en hebben een stofomslag en een schuifdoosje.


Geen ISBN i.v.m. beperkte oplage.]]> 28 J.M.H. Berckmans Bart 4 dutch, reviewed
Gezien de beperkte oplage van 50 exemplaren, het beperkt aantal pagina's en postume uitgave zeker geen sleutelwerk in het oeuvre van Berckmans, maar gezien de kwaliteit van de eerste brief toch meer dan de moeite waard om op te sporen voor Berckmans fanatici.

Als er ooit een verzameld werk zou worden uitgegeven, mogen deze brieven zeker niet over het hoofd worden gezien.

]]> 4.00 2021 Goede Zachaar
author: J.M.H. Berckmans
name: Bart
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/17
date added: 2024/06/21
shelves: dutch, reviewed
review:
Deze drie brieven uit 2001 zouden oorspronkelijk ook worden opgenomen in 'Het Onderzoek Begint' uit 2002, maar dat is niet gebeurd. De eerste brief is krachtig, en typisch Berckmans, zowel qua taal als inhoud - wat mij betreft is het een van zijn beste brieven. Brieven 2 en 3 borduren voort op de thema's en motieven uit de eerste brief.

Gezien de beperkte oplage van 50 exemplaren, het beperkt aantal pagina's en postume uitgave zeker geen sleutelwerk in het oeuvre van Berckmans, maar gezien de kwaliteit van de eerste brief toch meer dan de moeite waard om op te sporen voor Berckmans fanatici.

Als er ooit een verzameld werk zou worden uitgegeven, mogen deze brieven zeker niet over het hoofd worden gezien.


]]> Flowers for Algernon 18373 Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, the powerful, classic story about a man who receives an operation that turns him into a genius...and introduces him to heartache.

Charlie Gordon is about to embark upon an unprecedented journey. Born with an unusually low IQ, he has been chosen as the perfect subject for an experimental surgery that researchers hope will increase his intelligence � a procedure that has already been highly successful when tested on a lab mouse named Algernon.

As the treatment takes effect, Charlie's intelligence expands until it surpasses that of the doctors who engineered his metamorphosis. The experiment appears to be a scientific breakthrough of paramount importance, until Algernon suddenly deteriorates. Will the same happen to Charlie?]]> 311 Daniel Keyes 015603008X Bart 3 reviewed, speculative
The novel’s themes by themselves are not superficial: what does intelligence do to a person? What does being smarter than most people around you do to someone? How are emotions and intelligence correlated? I’m sure lots of brainy people that read lots of books have bumped into these questions as teenagers, and possibly in their later lives as well.

But sadly this novel doesn’t show a lot of insight in the human condition � not that Keyes doesn’t have ambition, opening his novel with a quote from Plato’s Republic. Yet the end result is more philosophical soap opera than probing analysis: it seems as if the book only adds plot & emotion to the original short story, not so much ideas.

(...)

]]> 4.19 1966 Flowers for Algernon
author: Daniel Keyes
name: Bart
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1966
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/10
date added: 2024/06/11
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
Sentimentality is the book’s main draw. We feel for Charlie when he slowly realizes he was once retarded. We feel for Charlie as he remembers being bullied. We feel for Charlie when his mother can’t accept him being different. We feel for Charlie when he has trouble connecting with women. Again, making readers feel something is no mean feat at all, and Keyes deserves credit for that.

The novel’s themes by themselves are not superficial: what does intelligence do to a person? What does being smarter than most people around you do to someone? How are emotions and intelligence correlated? I’m sure lots of brainy people that read lots of books have bumped into these questions as teenagers, and possibly in their later lives as well.

But sadly this novel doesn’t show a lot of insight in the human condition � not that Keyes doesn’t have ambition, opening his novel with a quote from Plato’s Republic. Yet the end result is more philosophical soap opera than probing analysis: it seems as if the book only adds plot & emotion to the original short story, not so much ideas.

(...)


]]> In Ascension 197063361
Leigh grew up in Rotterdam, drawn to the waterfront as an escape from her unhappy home life and volatile father. Enchanted by the undersea world of her childhood, she excels in marine biology, travelling the globe to study ancient organisms. When a trench is discovered in the Atlantic ocean, Leigh joins the exploration team, hoping to find evidence of the earth's first life forms � what she instead finds calls into question everything we know about our own beginnings. Her discovery leads Leigh to the Mojave desert and an ambitious new space agency.

Drawn deeper into the agency's work, she learns that the Atlantic trench is only one of several related phenomena from across the world, each piece linking up to suggest a pattern beyond human understanding. Leigh knows that to continue working with the agency will mean leaving behind her declining mother and her younger sister, and faces an impossible choice: to remain with her family, or to embark on a journey across the breadth of the cosmos.

Exploring the natural world with the wonder and reverence we usually reserve for the stars,In Ascensionis a compassionate, deeply inquisitive epic that reaches outward to confront the greatest questions of existence, looks inward to illuminate the smallest details of the human heart, and shows how � no matter how far away we might be and how much we have lost hope � we will always attempt to return to the people and places we call home.]]> 496 Martin MacInnes 0802163467 Bart 4 reviewed, speculative
At the same time, even though it is set in the near future, In Ascension keeps it real � and MacInnes� realism is what makes the later space scenes so harrowing and claustrophobic. Those might be the most true space ship scenes I have ever read � and that’s including Aurora from Robinson or Redemption Ark by Reynolds � who both in their own & very different ways tried to convey possible realities of fictional space flight.

But realism is not the full denominator: the alien stuff is handled differently, and remains vague & unresolved. There’s a bit of how Christopher Priest might handle such stuff there, and, as said, Stanisław Lem. MacInnes writes something that is both creepy and mystical, yet he doesn’t make it feel less real even if it is all handwavium. It also doesn’t dominate the story at all, and like the other speculative near future elements, generally remains in the background. Very well done, and rather unique.

Also the character arcs are well-done, and MacInnes lets our perception of the main character end up in some kind of liminal space. In a way there is no resolution or conclusion, or at least no definitive answer to the exact psychology of Leigh, and somehow it fits the story and its themes.

Serious novels get serious reviews, and googling will get you some quality writing on the book easily. As such, it’s nice to review this a few months after the fact, and engage in a dialogue not only with the book itself.

A few reviewers, like Duncan Lunan of Shoreline To Infinity and Stuart Kelly on The Scotsman, refer to an author’s note accompanying the review copies of the book � nowhere to be found in the edition I bought.

(...)

]]> 3.70 2023 In Ascension
author: Martin MacInnes
name: Bart
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/16
date added: 2024/05/19
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
First the good: the novel is well-written, well-crafted, well-constructed � even if it’s sometimes transparent & obvious. Pacing is excellent, and the progression feels great: it starts as a regular book about an abusive dad, and slowly morphs into a mystery in the cold depths of space. I can see non-SF readers being sucked in, surprised by what they ultimately end up reading.

At the same time, even though it is set in the near future, In Ascension keeps it real � and MacInnes� realism is what makes the later space scenes so harrowing and claustrophobic. Those might be the most true space ship scenes I have ever read � and that’s including Aurora from Robinson or Redemption Ark by Reynolds � who both in their own & very different ways tried to convey possible realities of fictional space flight.

But realism is not the full denominator: the alien stuff is handled differently, and remains vague & unresolved. There’s a bit of how Christopher Priest might handle such stuff there, and, as said, Stanisław Lem. MacInnes writes something that is both creepy and mystical, yet he doesn’t make it feel less real even if it is all handwavium. It also doesn’t dominate the story at all, and like the other speculative near future elements, generally remains in the background. Very well done, and rather unique.

Also the character arcs are well-done, and MacInnes lets our perception of the main character end up in some kind of liminal space. In a way there is no resolution or conclusion, or at least no definitive answer to the exact psychology of Leigh, and somehow it fits the story and its themes.

Serious novels get serious reviews, and googling will get you some quality writing on the book easily. As such, it’s nice to review this a few months after the fact, and engage in a dialogue not only with the book itself.

A few reviewers, like Duncan Lunan of Shoreline To Infinity and Stuart Kelly on The Scotsman, refer to an author’s note accompanying the review copies of the book � nowhere to be found in the edition I bought.

(...)


]]> <![CDATA[What Can We Hope For?: Essays on Politics]]> 59149227
Richard Rorty, one of the most influential intellectuals of recent decades, is perhaps best known today as the philosopher who, almost two decades before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, warned of the rise of a Trumpian strongman in America. What Can We Hope For? gathers nineteen of Rorty’s essays on American and global politics, including four previously unpublished and many lesser-known and hard-to-find pieces.

In these provocative and compelling essays, Rorty confronts the critical challenges democracies face at home and abroad, including populism, growing economic inequality, and overpopulation and environmental devastation. In response, he offers optimistic and realistic ideas about how to address these crises. He outlines strategies for fostering social hope and building an inclusive global community of trust, and urges us to put our faith in trade unions, universities, bottom-up social campaigns, and bold political visions that thwart ideological pieties.

Driven by Rorty’s sense of emergency about our collective future, What Can We Hope For? is filled with striking diagnoses of today’s political crises and creative proposals for solving them.]]> 248 Richard Rorty 0691217521 Bart 5 non-fiction, reviewed
When I saw the spine of this newly published book in the awesome Athenaeum bookshop in Amsterdam last summer, I decided to see if Richard Rorty could still teach me something. What Can We Hope For? Essays on Politics collects 19 essays that were written between 1995 and 2007 � 4 of which unpublished, and many lesser-known and hard to find pieces. It also has a 17 page introduction by editors W.P. Malecki and Chris Voparil.

I want to stress the collection is accessible to readers without any prior knowledge of Rorty.

Included is “Looking Backwards from the Year 2096�, a kind of science fictional essay that first appeared as “Fraternity Reigns� in the New York Times in 1996 and was also reprinted in Philosophy and Social Hope, a collection from 1999. Rorty imagines a future American history, looking back from 2096 to “our long, hesitant, painful; recovery, over the last five decades, from the breakdown of democratic institutions during the Dark Years (2014-2044)�, a recovery that “has changed our political vocabulary, as well as our sense of the relation between the moral order and the economic order�.

I highlight this here already, because political philosophy is clearly a matter of the imagination. In the remainder of this text I shall try to summarize some of Rorty’s main points, and also compare some of his ideas to those of Kim Stanley Robinson � another intellectual & writer, one who has thought about the future too, in the hope of bettering the world.

As such, this post can be read as a companion piece to my recent analysis of Antartica � KSR’s epistemological novel, in which Robinson ties together science, ethics, utopian praxis, imagination, ideologies and stories.

This post will be quote heavy, because I simply can’t say it any better than Rorty himself.

(...)

]]> 4.08 What Can We Hope For?: Essays on Politics
author: Richard Rorty
name: Bart
average rating: 4.08
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/05
date added: 2024/05/08
shelves: non-fiction, reviewed
review:
6000 WORD REVIEW

When I saw the spine of this newly published book in the awesome Athenaeum bookshop in Amsterdam last summer, I decided to see if Richard Rorty could still teach me something. What Can We Hope For? Essays on Politics collects 19 essays that were written between 1995 and 2007 � 4 of which unpublished, and many lesser-known and hard to find pieces. It also has a 17 page introduction by editors W.P. Malecki and Chris Voparil.

I want to stress the collection is accessible to readers without any prior knowledge of Rorty.

Included is “Looking Backwards from the Year 2096�, a kind of science fictional essay that first appeared as “Fraternity Reigns� in the New York Times in 1996 and was also reprinted in Philosophy and Social Hope, a collection from 1999. Rorty imagines a future American history, looking back from 2096 to “our long, hesitant, painful; recovery, over the last five decades, from the breakdown of democratic institutions during the Dark Years (2014-2044)�, a recovery that “has changed our political vocabulary, as well as our sense of the relation between the moral order and the economic order�.

I highlight this here already, because political philosophy is clearly a matter of the imagination. In the remainder of this text I shall try to summarize some of Rorty’s main points, and also compare some of his ideas to those of Kim Stanley Robinson � another intellectual & writer, one who has thought about the future too, in the hope of bettering the world.

As such, this post can be read as a companion piece to my recent analysis of Antartica � KSR’s epistemological novel, in which Robinson ties together science, ethics, utopian praxis, imagination, ideologies and stories.

This post will be quote heavy, because I simply can’t say it any better than Rorty himself.

(...)


]]> <![CDATA[The White Rose (The Chronicles of the Black Company, #3)]]> 400906 ]]> 317 Glen Cook 0812508440 Bart 4 reviewed, speculative
I don’t have a ton of analysis to offer this time, and the main intention of this review is to get you to start book 1 if you haven’t read this series yet. I’ll start by reiterate its selling points.

No bloat. Lean & mean, nothing spoonfed, nothing stretched nor repeated, no world building except for what happens.
No bullshit. No self-serious convoluted magic system, no glossary, no maps.
No borders. Cook writes what he wants, in full freedom and with an unrestrained, original imagination.
No brainwashing. Cook has no political agenda � except maybe showing that morals are messy, and that evil exists.

(...)

]]> 4.20 1985 The White Rose (The Chronicles of the Black Company, #3)
author: Glen Cook
name: Bart
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1985
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/27
date added: 2024/04/28
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
(...)

I don’t have a ton of analysis to offer this time, and the main intention of this review is to get you to start book 1 if you haven’t read this series yet. I’ll start by reiterate its selling points.

No bloat. Lean & mean, nothing spoonfed, nothing stretched nor repeated, no world building except for what happens.
No bullshit. No self-serious convoluted magic system, no glossary, no maps.
No borders. Cook writes what he wants, in full freedom and with an unrestrained, original imagination.
No brainwashing. Cook has no political agenda � except maybe showing that morals are messy, and that evil exists.

(...)


]]> Antarctica 41126
What he finds is an interesting blend of inhabitants who don't always mesh well but who all share a common love of Antarctica and a fierce devotion to their life there. He also begins to uncover layers of Antarctic culture that have been kept hidden from the rest of the world, and some of them are dangerous indeed. Things are brought to a head when the saboteurs—or “ecoteurs� as they call themselves—launch an attack designed to drive humans off the face of Antarctica.
]]> 672 Kim Stanley Robinson 0553574027 Bart 4 reviewed, speculative
At first sight it is a blend of near future adventure thriller, historical report, political treatise and landscape travelogue. But when I looked closer, rereading the parts I had highlighted to possibly quote here, it slowly dawned on me: this is KSR’s big epistemic novel. It is epistemology that subtly & cleverly holds together the different themes of this book: storytelling, imagination, science, ethics, politics, economics, the reality of nature.

As such, it might be the richest book Robinson has written � at least from an philosophical point of view. Robinson convincingly ties utopia and science together once and for all: this is no scifi, but realistic fiction about the essence & scope of science.

More on that after the jump.

(...)

]]> 3.79 1997 Antarctica
author: Kim Stanley Robinson
name: Bart
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/14
date added: 2024/04/18
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
Antarctica is � like all of his other novels � unique in his oeuvre: Robinson never writes the same book twice.

At first sight it is a blend of near future adventure thriller, historical report, political treatise and landscape travelogue. But when I looked closer, rereading the parts I had highlighted to possibly quote here, it slowly dawned on me: this is KSR’s big epistemic novel. It is epistemology that subtly & cleverly holds together the different themes of this book: storytelling, imagination, science, ethics, politics, economics, the reality of nature.

As such, it might be the richest book Robinson has written � at least from an philosophical point of view. Robinson convincingly ties utopia and science together once and for all: this is no scifi, but realistic fiction about the essence & scope of science.

More on that after the jump.

(...)


]]> Zondag 204114625
Die herfstdag in 2017 was geen willekeurig gekozen dag: het was een dag gevuld met doelloosheid, verveling, ledigheid, Voor Thibault was het weer een ‘verspilde dag�. Toen hij zijn neef Olivier erover vertelde, had die meteen door dat dit een ideaal onderwerp was voor een nieuwe grafische roman.

Op aangeven van Thibault inventariseerde Olivier minutieus de gebeurtenissen van die bewuste zondag. Vervolgens ging hij praten met mensen die die dag met Thibault te maken hadden en noteerde hij ook hun verhalen. Uit al deze elementen construeerde hij de magistrale striproman Zondag.]]> 476 Olivier Schrauwen 9461740417 Bart 5 dutch, reviewed
In 2023 Bries Space published Zondag in Dutch as one tome of 472 pages, an event of sorts, and an object of delight for any lover of paper and fine print. English, French and Spanish editions are being prepared by other publishers.

The story banal � one day in the life of a fictional nephew � it nevertheless manages to convey something of the human experience, as Schrauwen focuses on somebody that is alone with his thoughts for an entire day. Highly creative and original, Schrauwen doesn’t flinch from the less noble side of what it means to be alive. 5 star material for sure.

]]> 4.40 Zondag
author: Olivier Schrauwen
name: Bart
average rating: 4.40
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/18
date added: 2024/04/08
shelves: dutch, reviewed
review:
Published in English in 4 installments between 2018 and 2021, Olivier Schrauwen’s Sunday is a testament to the possibility of the graphic novel as a form. Schrauwen was born in 1977 in Flanders and currently lives in Berlin. He is considered to be one of the most important authors working in the field � think of Chris Ware for reference.

In 2023 Bries Space published Zondag in Dutch as one tome of 472 pages, an event of sorts, and an object of delight for any lover of paper and fine print. English, French and Spanish editions are being prepared by other publishers.

The story banal � one day in the life of a fictional nephew � it nevertheless manages to convey something of the human experience, as Schrauwen focuses on somebody that is alone with his thoughts for an entire day. Highly creative and original, Schrauwen doesn’t flinch from the less noble side of what it means to be alive. 5 star material for sure.


]]> Verre uittrap 36616653 Op een volstrekt eigenzinnige manier haalt F. van Dixhoorn de banden tussen taal, muziek en visuele kunst strakker aan. Zijn minimal art laat zich eindeloos bekijken en beluisteren, terwijl nieuwe betekenissen zich in de taal nestelen. Hoe weinig woorden ook, poëzie van Van Dixhoorn is nooit uit.]]> F. van Dixhoorn Bart 4 dutch
Volstrekt origineel - bij mijn weten ongezien in de Nederlandse of internationale letteren.]]> 3.93 Verre uittrap
author: F. van Dixhoorn
name: Bart
average rating: 3.93
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/03
date added: 2024/04/05
shelves: dutch
review:
Erg spaarzaam, maar het bezit een grote kracht.

Volstrekt origineel - bij mijn weten ongezien in de Nederlandse of internationale letteren.
]]> Recht op antwoord 20884868 123 Roger van de Velde Bart 4 reviewed, dutch
Anno 2022 is al wat van de Velde schreef oud nieuws en bekende hap, maar dat maakt het niet minder sterk: als tijdsdocument uit 1968 blijft het meer dan overeind, en een groot deel van de geschetste problematiek blijft actueel.

Door Uitgeverij Vrijdag heruitgegeven in 2020 met 'De Knetterende Schedels', en misschien nog wel sterker dan die verzameling kortverhalen. Aanrader.

]]> 4.23 1969 Recht op antwoord
author: Roger van de Velde
name: Bart
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1969
rating: 4
read at: 2022/06/11
date added: 2024/03/27
shelves: reviewed, dutch
review:
Retorisch erg sterke aanklacht tegen het onrecht van het Belgische interneringsbeleid. Van de Velde was er zelf een slachtoffer van en werd 6 jaar opgesloten wegens een palfiumverslaving. Het pamflet is rigoureus, eerlijk en genuanceerd. Maar ook ietwat breedvoerig en een beetje pedant, zeker in de woordkeuze.

Anno 2022 is al wat van de Velde schreef oud nieuws en bekende hap, maar dat maakt het niet minder sterk: als tijdsdocument uit 1968 blijft het meer dan overeind, en een groot deel van de geschetste problematiek blijft actueel.

Door Uitgeverij Vrijdag heruitgegeven in 2020 met 'De Knetterende Schedels', en misschien nog wel sterker dan die verzameling kortverhalen. Aanrader.


]]> The Sea and Summer 17394804 364 George Turner 0575118695 Bart 0 to-read 4.03 1987 The Sea and Summer
author: George Turner
name: Bart
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Gehuwde rotsen 57466282 verbonden met een dik strooien koord.

Zo luiden de slotregels van een kleine Japanse parabel, over de archetypische Moeder en Vader. Moeder heeft een razende doodsdrift. Vader hunkert minstens zo hard naar meer geboortes. En wat heeft dat koord te betekenen?

Seg Jan, zoagt tegen oe weurmkes. (Te vertalen als: ‘Zeg Jan, zeur tegen je wormpjes.�) Op dit aangeven van zijn dode moeder gaat de genoemde zoon tien dagen lang wroeten in zijn geheugen, dat misschien ook wel een geweten is. Overigens spookt niet alleen de moeder nog. Ook de dode vader wil niet vergeten worden.

Alles bij elkaar blijkt de materie door en door menselijk, met gebrekkige liefde, aanlokkelijke zwartgalligheid en tot mislukken gedoemde huwelijken.

In Gehuwde rotsen laat Jan Lauwereyns het verhaal maar stromen zoals het zich aandient, in de vorm van een nieuwe (en tegelijk superklassieke) kruisbestuiving: Augustinus met Boccaccio. Bekentenissen, met veel aandacht voor vader en moeder, in tien dagen, tien hoofdstukken, geschreven in de moedertaal. Met flarden van een soort Antwerps dat zich liever met het oor dan met het oog laat lezen.

Tsjak, zoê, en voorts, en verder, wordt er getokkeld. Terwijl er buiten een pandemie woedt, bidt het binnenste tevergeefs om troost.]]> 336 Jan Lauwereyns 908308986X Bart 4 dutch, reviewed Anophelia! De mug leeft, zijn vijfde dichtbundel, en toen ik Gehuwde rotsen van twee verschillende mensen getipt kreeg, besloot ik het boek te halen in de bib.

Er prijkt ‘roman� op de cover, maar dat strookt toch niet helemaal met de gangbare definitie. Gehuwde rotsen is vormelijk atypisch: een tiental hoofdstukken start telkens met een foto uit het familiearchief, dan een stuk of tien gedichten en daarna een twintigtal bladzijden fragmentarisch proza � biografische & filosofische beschouwingen.

Lauwereyns� focus ligt op de zelfmoord van zijn moeder, het mislukte huwelijk van z’n ouders en zijn eigen scheiding � liefde en de vraag of het leven wel de moeite waard is ondanks al de angst en pijn. Het boek is een geslaagde mengeling van autobiografie, poëzie en essay, en toch werkt het wel degelijk als een roman omdat het een verhaal betreft: geen netjes afgelijnde vertelling, maar we zijn als lezer wel getuige van de poging van een man om grip te krijgen op zichzelf en de zelfmoord van zijn moeder. Het is geen vrolijk boek: miserie “geeft de contouren�, is “het raamwerk van dèes, van da getokkel ier, d’iên misère en d’aender, en wa doe’d’ermé�.

Gehuwde rotsen is nog op een andere manier een mengeling: Lauwereyns is een intellectueel die veel gelezen heeft, en verwijst naar allerlei auteurs, maar tezelfdertijd is hij lichtvoetig, volks zelfs � het proza is doorspekt met Antwerps dialect, en zijn formele keuzes geven hem ook veel vrijheid, alles is soepel in dit boek, soepel en naakt en eerlijk.

Ook al permitteert Lauwereyns zich vormelijk veel, en staan er citaten in van Darwin en David Benatar en Blanchot en Spinoza, toch is Gehuwde rotsen niet pretentieus � integendeel. Het resultaat is een roman die “Ambitieus én onnozel� is, in een toonaard die je niet zo veel tegenkomt in onze letteren.

Het boek zit vol gevoelens, en Lauwereyns probeert die in hun waarde te laten door hun veelheid en veelkantigheid te beschrijven. Het volgende fragment deed me beseffen dat mijn eigen drang naar nuances eigenlijk een soort gulzigheid is. Lauwereyns toont dat de tegenstelling tussen hoofd en hart vals is, en dat de ratio � in termen van begrip & twijfel & onzekerheid � net de weg is naar een groter hart.

"veel kanten, veel aspecten, veel gevoelens en gedachten, die in hun veelheid troost bieden, uitbreiding, deling, uitgebreidheid, een groter bereik, meer zin, zoals in die titel van Hans Groenewegen, Met schrijven zin verzamelen, meer zin, een groter hart"

Die gulzigheid is een verslaving, en ik denk dat ik, net als Lauwereyns zelf, ook behoor tot “iedereen die verslaafd is aan het mysterie van lichaam en ziel, het brein en het bewustzijn�.

Lauwereyns komt over als iemand die heeft geleerd om de dingen die je niet in de hand hebt of kunt houden los te laten, en daarom misschien wel op zijn grootmoeder lijkt: “ik stel me voor dat Moeke tegen de tijd dat ik haar begon te kennen al zo veel had meegemaakt dat weinig dingen haar nog uit haar evenwicht brachten�.

Laat ik stoppen om dit boek te vatten of uit te leggen. Ik laat jullie met citaten die me troffen, ik zet ze gewoon onder elkaar � hopelijk overtuigen ze om Gehuwde rotsen een kans te geven.

(...)

]]> 3.40 Gehuwde rotsen
author: Jan Lauwereyns
name: Bart
average rating: 3.40
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/10
date added: 2024/03/15
shelves: dutch, reviewed
review:
In 2007 las ik met veel plezier Anophelia! De mug leeft, zijn vijfde dichtbundel, en toen ik Gehuwde rotsen van twee verschillende mensen getipt kreeg, besloot ik het boek te halen in de bib.

Er prijkt ‘roman� op de cover, maar dat strookt toch niet helemaal met de gangbare definitie. Gehuwde rotsen is vormelijk atypisch: een tiental hoofdstukken start telkens met een foto uit het familiearchief, dan een stuk of tien gedichten en daarna een twintigtal bladzijden fragmentarisch proza � biografische & filosofische beschouwingen.

Lauwereyns� focus ligt op de zelfmoord van zijn moeder, het mislukte huwelijk van z’n ouders en zijn eigen scheiding � liefde en de vraag of het leven wel de moeite waard is ondanks al de angst en pijn. Het boek is een geslaagde mengeling van autobiografie, poëzie en essay, en toch werkt het wel degelijk als een roman omdat het een verhaal betreft: geen netjes afgelijnde vertelling, maar we zijn als lezer wel getuige van de poging van een man om grip te krijgen op zichzelf en de zelfmoord van zijn moeder. Het is geen vrolijk boek: miserie “geeft de contouren�, is “het raamwerk van dèes, van da getokkel ier, d’iên misère en d’aender, en wa doe’d’ermé�.

Gehuwde rotsen is nog op een andere manier een mengeling: Lauwereyns is een intellectueel die veel gelezen heeft, en verwijst naar allerlei auteurs, maar tezelfdertijd is hij lichtvoetig, volks zelfs � het proza is doorspekt met Antwerps dialect, en zijn formele keuzes geven hem ook veel vrijheid, alles is soepel in dit boek, soepel en naakt en eerlijk.

Ook al permitteert Lauwereyns zich vormelijk veel, en staan er citaten in van Darwin en David Benatar en Blanchot en Spinoza, toch is Gehuwde rotsen niet pretentieus � integendeel. Het resultaat is een roman die “Ambitieus én onnozel� is, in een toonaard die je niet zo veel tegenkomt in onze letteren.

Het boek zit vol gevoelens, en Lauwereyns probeert die in hun waarde te laten door hun veelheid en veelkantigheid te beschrijven. Het volgende fragment deed me beseffen dat mijn eigen drang naar nuances eigenlijk een soort gulzigheid is. Lauwereyns toont dat de tegenstelling tussen hoofd en hart vals is, en dat de ratio � in termen van begrip & twijfel & onzekerheid � net de weg is naar een groter hart.

"veel kanten, veel aspecten, veel gevoelens en gedachten, die in hun veelheid troost bieden, uitbreiding, deling, uitgebreidheid, een groter bereik, meer zin, zoals in die titel van Hans Groenewegen, Met schrijven zin verzamelen, meer zin, een groter hart"

Die gulzigheid is een verslaving, en ik denk dat ik, net als Lauwereyns zelf, ook behoor tot “iedereen die verslaafd is aan het mysterie van lichaam en ziel, het brein en het bewustzijn�.

Lauwereyns komt over als iemand die heeft geleerd om de dingen die je niet in de hand hebt of kunt houden los te laten, en daarom misschien wel op zijn grootmoeder lijkt: “ik stel me voor dat Moeke tegen de tijd dat ik haar begon te kennen al zo veel had meegemaakt dat weinig dingen haar nog uit haar evenwicht brachten�.

Laat ik stoppen om dit boek te vatten of uit te leggen. Ik laat jullie met citaten die me troffen, ik zet ze gewoon onder elkaar � hopelijk overtuigen ze om Gehuwde rotsen een kans te geven.

(...)


]]> Anophelia! De mug leeft 62109239 111 Jan Lauwereyns Bart 0 dutch 0.0 Anophelia! De mug leeft
author: Jan Lauwereyns
name: Bart
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/28
shelves: dutch
review:

]]> Kolyma Stories 38813815 I - Kolyma Tales
II - The Left Bank
III - The spade artist

Life in a Russian gulag, based on the author's own years in the Gulag, chronicled in an epic masterpiece.

Kolyma Stories is a masterpiece of twentieth-century literature, composed of short fictional tales based on Russian writer Varlam Shalamov's fifteen years in the Gulag. This NYRB Classics edition (and an accompanying second volume forthcoming in 2019) is the first complete English translation of Shalamov's stories, based on the definitive edition of his collected works, published in Russia in 2013.

Shalamov spent six years as a slave in the gold mines of Kolyma, a far northeast region of the USSR and one of the coldest and most inhospitable places on Earth, before finding a less intolerable life as a paramedic in the prison camps. He began writing his account of life in Kolyma after Stalin's death in 1953 and continued until his own physical and mental decline in the late 1970s.

In Kolyma Stories, the line between autobiography and fiction is indistinct: Everything in these stories was experienced or witnessed by Shalamov. His work records the real names of prisoners and their oppressors; he himself appears simply as "I" or "Shalamov," or at times under a pseudonym, such as Andreyev or Krist. These collected stories form the biography of a rare survivor, a historical record of the Gulag, and, because the stories have more than documentary value, a literary work of creative power and conviction. This new complete translation of Kolyma Stories will fill a significant gap in the English-language library of Russian literature.]]> 1660 Varlam Shalamov 1681372150 Bart 5 favorites, reviewed
Shalamov paints a world where people eat boot grease; where they have calluses on their chests from pushing wagons; where they would murder a fellow prisoner just to get a trial and escape labor in the mines for a while; where men won’t move from a fire when somebody was murdered nearby, as they don’t have the energy to move away from the warmth, just like they don’t have the energy to take a bath or disinfect. A world were such disinfection is merely an ineffective but obliged formality, “creating additional torment for the prisoner.� A world where people smear their faeces in an open wound to get an infection to escape labor by being admitted to hospital, or break an arm or a leg on purpose, for the same reason, or eat a gob of spit from someone who was infected by tuberculose � even though it wasn’t a guarantee for anything, as there were also bureaucratic limits to how many people could be off work and in hospital. Hospital patients did receive better food, but were often too ill to eat it. The food, bureaucratically, obviously, couldn’t be given to other, starving prisoners. A similar illustration of the absurd logic of the system, is Shalamov’s story of a very sick man, Soldatov, who was treated in hospital until he was well enough to be shot. Add to that the ironic tragedy that non-political prisoners � i.e. real criminals � generally had it much better, and got much shorter sentences.

I will leave you with some more quotes, quite a lot. They serve a double function: as a reminder for myself, but I also hope they will do the book justice, and convince you to pick up this human masterpiece.

(...)

]]> 4.54 1978 Kolyma Stories
author: Varlam Shalamov
name: Bart
average rating: 4.54
book published: 1978
rating: 5
read at: 2023/05/21
date added: 2024/02/10
shelves: favorites, reviewed
review:
(...)

Shalamov paints a world where people eat boot grease; where they have calluses on their chests from pushing wagons; where they would murder a fellow prisoner just to get a trial and escape labor in the mines for a while; where men won’t move from a fire when somebody was murdered nearby, as they don’t have the energy to move away from the warmth, just like they don’t have the energy to take a bath or disinfect. A world were such disinfection is merely an ineffective but obliged formality, “creating additional torment for the prisoner.� A world where people smear their faeces in an open wound to get an infection to escape labor by being admitted to hospital, or break an arm or a leg on purpose, for the same reason, or eat a gob of spit from someone who was infected by tuberculose � even though it wasn’t a guarantee for anything, as there were also bureaucratic limits to how many people could be off work and in hospital. Hospital patients did receive better food, but were often too ill to eat it. The food, bureaucratically, obviously, couldn’t be given to other, starving prisoners. A similar illustration of the absurd logic of the system, is Shalamov’s story of a very sick man, Soldatov, who was treated in hospital until he was well enough to be shot. Add to that the ironic tragedy that non-political prisoners � i.e. real criminals � generally had it much better, and got much shorter sentences.

I will leave you with some more quotes, quite a lot. They serve a double function: as a reminder for myself, but I also hope they will do the book justice, and convince you to pick up this human masterpiece.

(...)


]]> <![CDATA[Too Late to Awaken: What Lies Ahead When There is No Future?]]> 75583464 192 Slavoj Žižek 0241651751 Bart 4 non-fiction, reviewed
It has been over 20 years since I read something of the man, and this title caught my eye � especially after I read The Deluge. 2024 promises to be something of a year celebrating the existential crisis, so in search of denouement, I turned to Žižek again.

Too Late To Awaken has 163 pages, subdivided in 17 short chapters. It was written around the one year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The bulk of the book � the first 100 pages � mainly deal with Žižek’s thoughts on what this invasion means for global politics. The picture ain’t pretty: maybe we should stop worrying about the coming calamity, and admit we are already knee-deep in it. That future dystopia we all fear is already happening, right now. We might be well aware of that, but we choose to ignore it.

Žižek offers some thoughts on the culture wars as well, and his analysis is not that original, if well put: both sides of that war ignore economic foundations. Are we even aware how thoroughly our lives have changed the last few decades? Referring to Alenka Zupančič and Yanis Varoufakis, he ends with a chapter warning about the current form of neo-feudalism, as our most important commons today are privately owned.

He ends with the notion that markets move too slowly to solve the current environmental and political crisis. Remarkably, the book is a call to arms to switch to some kind of war economy, one that bypasses our failing democracies. “Our [only] hope today is the crisis.�

]]> 3.80 2023 Too Late to Awaken: What Lies Ahead When There is No Future?
author: Slavoj Žižek
name: Bart
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/20
date added: 2024/01/22
shelves: non-fiction, reviewed
review:
Another reason to feel old: reading Looking Awray: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan and a Plea for Intolerance somewhere in 2002. Slavoj Žižek is somewhat of a rockstar among philosophers, but that should not detract from what he has to say � nor should his incessant referring to Jacques Lacan, Marx and Hegel. When I heard him exclaim “the true dreamers are those who think the things can go on indefinitely the way they are� on YouTube in October 2011, I’ve always thought of him as someone that is able to pull away the curtain on certain things.

It has been over 20 years since I read something of the man, and this title caught my eye � especially after I read The Deluge. 2024 promises to be something of a year celebrating the existential crisis, so in search of denouement, I turned to Žižek again.

Too Late To Awaken has 163 pages, subdivided in 17 short chapters. It was written around the one year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The bulk of the book � the first 100 pages � mainly deal with Žižek’s thoughts on what this invasion means for global politics. The picture ain’t pretty: maybe we should stop worrying about the coming calamity, and admit we are already knee-deep in it. That future dystopia we all fear is already happening, right now. We might be well aware of that, but we choose to ignore it.

Žižek offers some thoughts on the culture wars as well, and his analysis is not that original, if well put: both sides of that war ignore economic foundations. Are we even aware how thoroughly our lives have changed the last few decades? Referring to Alenka Zupančič and Yanis Varoufakis, he ends with a chapter warning about the current form of neo-feudalism, as our most important commons today are privately owned.

He ends with the notion that markets move too slowly to solve the current environmental and political crisis. Remarkably, the book is a call to arms to switch to some kind of war economy, one that bypasses our failing democracies. “Our [only] hope today is the crisis.�


]]> <![CDATA[To Hell & Back Again: Part I: My Black Metal Story]]> 204981486
Vikernes provides a unique insider perspective on the birth and evolution of the Norwegian Black Metal movement. Explore the shocking stories of notorious musicians, church burnings and the intense ideological struggles that defined this subculture.

Feel the raw intensity and unapologetic authenticity as Vikernes reflects on his personal experiences. Understand the background for the profound impact of Norwegian Black Metal on global music and culture. Gain a deep understanding of the mindset that fueled the movement and its lasting influence on the metal genre.

Immerse yourself in the story of the Norwegian Black Metal scene by grabbing a copy of Varg Vikernes' book. Uncover the secrets, controversies, and the rebellious Pagan spirit that shaped an era in heavy metal history.]]> 150 Varg Vikernes Bart 3 non-fiction
Vikernes spent 16 years in the Norwegian prison system, and the book is interesting from a psychological perspective: Varg admits incarceration injured him spiritually, and that is clear from the obvious emotions displayed in this book about the events that led to his conviction.

To Hell & Back Again would have benefited from some heavy professional editing, but nonetheless it should be read by anyone with a genuine interest in the matter. Except for the title, there is no mention of a part 2, but I’d welcome more insight in the music and artistic proces of his albums, and the surrounding scene.]]> 3.23 To Hell & Back Again: Part I: My Black Metal Story
author: Varg Vikernes
name: Bart
average rating: 3.23
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/13
date added: 2024/01/22
shelves: non-fiction
review:
Vikernes self-published this short booklet of 150 pages via Amazon’s print-on-demand. It’s basically a long rant about how and why he ended up killing Euronymous � founder of Mayhem, another seminal group, and Deathlike Silence Productions, an underground label based in Oslo.

Vikernes spent 16 years in the Norwegian prison system, and the book is interesting from a psychological perspective: Varg admits incarceration injured him spiritually, and that is clear from the obvious emotions displayed in this book about the events that led to his conviction.

To Hell & Back Again would have benefited from some heavy professional editing, but nonetheless it should be read by anyone with a genuine interest in the matter. Except for the title, there is no mention of a part 2, but I’d welcome more insight in the music and artistic proces of his albums, and the surrounding scene.
]]> The Strange 61272810
Since Anabelle’s mother left for Earth to care for her own ailing mother, her days in New Galveston have been spent at school and her nights at her laconic father’s diner with Watson, the family Kitchen Engine and dishwasher as her only companion. When the Silence came, and communication and shipments from Earth to its colonies on Mars stopped, life seemed stuck in foreboding stasis until the night Silas Mundt and his gang attacked.

At once evoking the dreams of an America explored in Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles and the harder realities of frontier life in Charles Portis True Grit , Ballingrud’s novel is haunting in its evocation of Anabelle’s quest for revenge amidst a spent and angry world accompanied by a domestic Engine, a drunken space pilot, and the toughest woman on Mars.

Nathan Ballingrud’s stories have been adapted into the film Wounds and the Hulu series Monsterland , The Strange is his first novel.]]> 304 Nathan Ballingrud 1534449957 Bart 2 reviewed, speculative
After some time, I started to notice it simply didn’t engage me. I didn’t care about what happened to the characters, and I wasn’t interested in the world building either. I stopped reading at 55%. It might have been the prose � somehow it seemed devoid of a soul. In all fairness, this got high praise elsewhere, amongst others from Speculiction.

I still have high hopes for Ballingrud’s short story collection North American Lake Monsters though. The short form seems better suited for his kind of fantastica � for this particular reader at least.

]]> 3.76 2023 The Strange
author: Nathan Ballingrud
name: Bart
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2024/01/13
date added: 2024/01/22
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
Ballingrud’s novel length debut is not ‘bad�, so to say, but the story failed to connect with me. I can’t fully point at what the problem was � it might have been the fictional 1930s Mars, which was obviously a fake construct � a cross between Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, Western movies and a bunch of other stuff.

After some time, I started to notice it simply didn’t engage me. I didn’t care about what happened to the characters, and I wasn’t interested in the world building either. I stopped reading at 55%. It might have been the prose � somehow it seemed devoid of a soul. In all fairness, this got high praise elsewhere, amongst others from Speculiction.

I still have high hopes for Ballingrud’s short story collection North American Lake Monsters though. The short form seems better suited for his kind of fantastica � for this particular reader at least.


]]> The Deluge 60806778 From the bestselling author of Ohio, a masterful American epic charting a near future approaching collapse and a nascent but strengthening solidarity.

In the first decades of the 21st century, the world is convulsing, its governments mired in gridlock while a patient but unrelenting ecological crisis looms. America is in upheaval, battered by violent weather and extreme politics. In California in 2013, Tony Pietrus, a scientist studying deposits of undersea methane, receives a death threat. His fate will become bound to a stunning cast of characters—a broken drug addict, a star advertising strategist, a neurodivergent mathematician, a cunning eco-terrorist, an actor turned religious zealot, and a brazen young activist named Kate Morris, who, in the mountains of Wyoming, begins a project that will alter the course of the decades to come.

From the Gulf Coast to Los Angeles, the Midwest to Washington, DC, their intertwined odysseys unfold against a stark backdrop of accelerating chaos as they summon courage, galvanize a nation, fall to their own fear, and find wild hope in the face of staggering odds. As their stories hurtle toward a spectacular climax, each faces a reckoning: what will they sacrifice to salvage humanity’s last chance at a future? A singular achievement, The Deluge is a once-in-a-generation novel that meets the moment as few works of art ever have.]]> 896 Stephen Markley 1982123095 Bart 5
This moment refers to the ongoing predicament of our biosphere: The Deluge is climate fiction.

As with any book, it won’t work for everyone. Especially if you don’t believe rapidly reducing our carbon emissions is necessary, or if you feel the current American political & economical system generates enough equity, The Deluge might annoy you for ideological reasons. Markley does try to be balanced � more on that below � but it’s no denying this book advocates progressive measures rather than conservative ones. It’s impossible to write books that appeal to everybody on the political spectrum, and this book won’t convince anyone who doesn’t already think society is in peril because of human emissions. But for those who do, it will put the urgency in much, much sharper focus.

So, for me, Markley did achieve his goals: the novel gave me new insights, and it affected me emotionally. I cried numerous times while reading it, and it put a knot in my stomach � tight and then even tighter.

The Deluge is set in the US, and its 880 pages chronicle 2013 to 2040. It is a big, big book of the sprawling kind, told through the eyes of seven characters � a scientist, a poor drug addict, an ecoterrorist, a Washington policy adviser, an advertising strategist, a high profile activist and her partner.

These characters all have families and friends, and it is trough their well-drawn relations Markley managed to evoke strong emotions in me, as the cast experience climate catastrophes and political upheaval primarily while they are connected to other human beings. In a sense, this book is as much about love and friendship as it is about ecological systems and politics: we fear for what’s coming, because we fear for our loved ones.

The Deluge is immersive, cinematic reading. Stephen King called it the best book he read in 2022 and “a modern classic (�) Prophetic, terrifying, uplifting.� I concur. At times I felt 14 again, utterly absorbed by The Stand. Markley wrote that kind of book � with the occasional boardroom debate thrown in. It’s arguably better, as The Stand had no real-world stakes.

The novel was 13 years in the making, and so Markley had to constantly revise and change stuff he’d already written to suit new political and scientific developments. It makes it an exceptionally timely book: to really experience what Markley pulled off, you need to read this now � not in 10 years.

So what exactly does he achieve in The Deluge � aside from showing, on a basic level, what could happen the coming decades: drought, fire, flood, food scarcity, inflation, migration & death?

(...)

]]> 4.20 2023 The Deluge
author: Stephen Markley
name: Bart
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/28
date added: 2024/01/07
shelves: favorites, reviewed, speculative
review:
Stephen Markley had high ambitions for his book: “emotionally reorient the reader around what’s happening, so we can actually feel in our hearts what the stakes of this moment actually are.�

This moment refers to the ongoing predicament of our biosphere: The Deluge is climate fiction.

As with any book, it won’t work for everyone. Especially if you don’t believe rapidly reducing our carbon emissions is necessary, or if you feel the current American political & economical system generates enough equity, The Deluge might annoy you for ideological reasons. Markley does try to be balanced � more on that below � but it’s no denying this book advocates progressive measures rather than conservative ones. It’s impossible to write books that appeal to everybody on the political spectrum, and this book won’t convince anyone who doesn’t already think society is in peril because of human emissions. But for those who do, it will put the urgency in much, much sharper focus.

So, for me, Markley did achieve his goals: the novel gave me new insights, and it affected me emotionally. I cried numerous times while reading it, and it put a knot in my stomach � tight and then even tighter.

The Deluge is set in the US, and its 880 pages chronicle 2013 to 2040. It is a big, big book of the sprawling kind, told through the eyes of seven characters � a scientist, a poor drug addict, an ecoterrorist, a Washington policy adviser, an advertising strategist, a high profile activist and her partner.

These characters all have families and friends, and it is trough their well-drawn relations Markley managed to evoke strong emotions in me, as the cast experience climate catastrophes and political upheaval primarily while they are connected to other human beings. In a sense, this book is as much about love and friendship as it is about ecological systems and politics: we fear for what’s coming, because we fear for our loved ones.

The Deluge is immersive, cinematic reading. Stephen King called it the best book he read in 2022 and “a modern classic (�) Prophetic, terrifying, uplifting.� I concur. At times I felt 14 again, utterly absorbed by The Stand. Markley wrote that kind of book � with the occasional boardroom debate thrown in. It’s arguably better, as The Stand had no real-world stakes.

The novel was 13 years in the making, and so Markley had to constantly revise and change stuff he’d already written to suit new political and scientific developments. It makes it an exceptionally timely book: to really experience what Markley pulled off, you need to read this now � not in 10 years.

So what exactly does he achieve in The Deluge � aside from showing, on a basic level, what could happen the coming decades: drought, fire, flood, food scarcity, inflation, migration & death?

(...)


]]> 2023 on ŷ 62316199 2023 on ŷ should make an interesting and varied catalogue of books to inspire other readers in 2024.

For those of you who don't like to add titles you haven't actually 'read', you can place 2023 on ŷ on an 'exclusive' shelf. Exclusive shelves don't have to be listed under 'to read', 'currently reading' or 'read'. To create one, go to 'edit bookshelves' on your 'My Books' page, create a shelf name such as 'review-of-the year' and tick the 'exclusive' box. Your previous and future 'reviews of the year' can be collected together on this dedicated shelf.

Concept created by Fionnuala Lirsdottir.
Description: Fionnuala Lirsdottir
Cover art: Paul Cézanne, Bibémus Quarry, c.1895
Cover choice and graphics by Jayson]]> Various Bart 0 year-end-list
I wrote a bit more on art this year, scroll down for that.

(...)

As for the actual favorite book list: below are the titles I’ve given a 5-star rating on ŷ in 2023, ten books � four more than last year. It’s impossible to choose just one book � the set is too diverse for that � but if I had to pick three: Wish I Was Here, The Deluge and A Mountain to the North, A Lake to the South, Paths to the West, A River to the East.

(...)

]]> 4.10 2023 2023 on ŷ
author: Various
name: Bart
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/01
shelves: year-end-list
review:
I started 39 titles in 2023. It seems like I found a good ratio of speculative fiction and other stuff � some Dutch, some non-fiction, some regular literature. We’ll see how it goes in 2024, but it’s safe to say Kim Stanley Robinson, M. John Harrison, Greg Egan, Stanisłav Lem and Flemish authors L.P. Boon & J.M.H. Berckmans will remain regulars on this blog.

I wrote a bit more on art this year, scroll down for that.

(...)

As for the actual favorite book list: below are the titles I’ve given a 5-star rating on ŷ in 2023, ten books � four more than last year. It’s impossible to choose just one book � the set is too diverse for that � but if I had to pick three: Wish I Was Here, The Deluge and A Mountain to the North, A Lake to the South, Paths to the West, A River to the East.

(...)


]]> <![CDATA[Black Are The Stars (Ralph Azham, #1)]]> 57693164 152 Lewis Trondheim 1545808805 Bart 4 speculative
It is very promising: a creative story that keeps on doing unexpected things without feeling contrived. My hunch atm is that I'll give 5 stars when I complete the full series.

Let's hope the final 2 volumes of the English translation will be published sooner than later.


]]> 3.40 Black Are The Stars (Ralph Azham, #1)
author: Lewis Trondheim
name: Bart
average rating: 3.40
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/22
date added: 2023/12/19
shelves: speculative
review:
Hard to pass a definite judgement - this is just the first 4th of the full story.

It is very promising: a creative story that keeps on doing unexpected things without feeling contrived. My hunch atm is that I'll give 5 stars when I complete the full series.

Let's hope the final 2 volumes of the English translation will be published sooner than later.



]]> Excession (Culture, #5) 9447868 Two and a half millennia ago, the artifact appeared in a remote corner of space, beside a trillion-year-old dying sun from a different universe. It was a perfect black-body sphere, and it did nothing. Then it disappeared.

Now it is back.

'Banks is a phenomenon ... wildly successful, fearlessly creative' William Gibson

'Thrilling, affecting and comic ... probably the finest science fiction he has written to date' New Scientist

'Banks has rewritten the libretto for the whole space-opera genre' The Times

]]> 464 Iain M. Banks Bart 3 speculative, reviewed
(...)

Last time I read a speculative work of Banks was in June 2019, over 4 years ago. I didn’t think Transition was a success, and I vehemently disliked The Algebraist, which I started in 2018. Before that I read Inversions, and I didn’t really like that either. So I was starting to wonder: was I too easily impressed in 2008 and 2009? Or did, by sheer luck, I read all the Iain M. Banks books that where least to my liking last?

It turns out � as expected � the answer is a bit of both. I did like rereading Excession � mostly, that is. But I wouldn’t call it a favorite book anymore, and I’ve taken it off my list.

Let’s do a quick run-up of the good and the bad.

(...)

]]> 4.30 1996 Excession (Culture, #5)
author: Iain M. Banks
name: Bart
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1996
rating: 3
read at: 2023/12/13
date added: 2023/12/16
shelves: speculative, reviewed
review:
People change. It must have been 2008 when I started reading fiction again, and Iain Banks� Culture series became among the first things I devoured. Excession was my favorite of the series back then, and I decided it was time to reread it � hopefully to be entertained and awed again, and, at the very least, to take a long, hard look in the mirror of time.

(...)

Last time I read a speculative work of Banks was in June 2019, over 4 years ago. I didn’t think Transition was a success, and I vehemently disliked The Algebraist, which I started in 2018. Before that I read Inversions, and I didn’t really like that either. So I was starting to wonder: was I too easily impressed in 2008 and 2009? Or did, by sheer luck, I read all the Iain M. Banks books that where least to my liking last?

It turns out � as expected � the answer is a bit of both. I did like rereading Excession � mostly, that is. But I wouldn’t call it a favorite book anymore, and I’ve taken it off my list.

Let’s do a quick run-up of the good and the bad.

(...)


]]> Independent People 77287 Kristin Lavransdatter. And if Bjartur of Summerhouses, the book's protagonist, is an ordinary sheep farmer, his flinty determination to achieve independence is genuinely heroic and, at the same time, terrifying and bleakly comic.

Having spent eighteen years in humiliating servitude, Bjartur wants nothing more than to raise his flocks unbeholden to any man. But Bjartur's spirited daughter wants to live unbeholden to him. What ensues is a battle of wills that is by turns harsh and touching, elemental in its emotional intensity and intimate in its homely detail. Vast in scope and deeply rewarding, Independent People is simply a masterpiece]]> 482 Halldór Laxness 0679767924 Bart 4 reviewed
Bjartur is of the strong, silent type, and he buries his stillborn children without tears. This is not to say there is no longing or love in these pages. The relationship between him and Asta Sollilja, Bjartur’s daughter who is not of his own blood, is touching, and a sharp portrayal of a time and a culture wherein people were ill-informed about their own psychology, reluctant to express themselves, and as a result much more lonely than they need have been.

Laxness� naturalist novel is a triumph as it lures people in with a promising title, seemingly waving the banner of meritocracy, but slowly shows true independence does not exist, not at all, and it turns out nobody even knows what ‘freedom� is. It all culminates in the fleeting moment Bjartur and his fellow Icelandic farmers make heaps of money because World War 1 has driven up the demand for their mutton and their wool: their success the result of other people’s misery.

(...)

]]> 4.13 1934 Independent People
author: Halldór Laxness
name: Bart
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1934
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/26
date added: 2023/11/28
shelves: reviewed
review:
(...)

Bjartur is of the strong, silent type, and he buries his stillborn children without tears. This is not to say there is no longing or love in these pages. The relationship between him and Asta Sollilja, Bjartur’s daughter who is not of his own blood, is touching, and a sharp portrayal of a time and a culture wherein people were ill-informed about their own psychology, reluctant to express themselves, and as a result much more lonely than they need have been.

Laxness� naturalist novel is a triumph as it lures people in with a promising title, seemingly waving the banner of meritocracy, but slowly shows true independence does not exist, not at all, and it turns out nobody even knows what ‘freedom� is. It all culminates in the fleeting moment Bjartur and his fellow Icelandic farmers make heaps of money because World War 1 has driven up the demand for their mutton and their wool: their success the result of other people’s misery.

(...)


]]> <![CDATA[Succession � Season One: The Complete Scripts]]> 79330740 The complete, authorised scripts, including deleted scenes, of the multiple award-winning Succession .

** Winner of nineteen Emmys, nine Golden Globes, three BAFTAs and a Grammy. **
With an exclusive introduction from creator Jesse Armstrong.
'The most thrilling and beautifully obscene TV there is.' Guardian

'Extraordinarily entertaining and incisive.' Empire

'One of the most relentlessly paced shows on television.' Rolling Stone
Everything I've done in my life is for my children.

When Logan Roy, the head of one of the world's largest media and entertainment conglomerates, decides to retire, each of his four grown children follows a personal agenda that doesn't always sync with those of their siblings -- or their father.

Collected here for the first time, the complete scripts of Season One feature unseen extra material, including deleted scenes, alternative dialogue and character directions. They reveal a unique insight into the writing, creation and development of a TV sensation and a screen-writing masterpiece.
'Monstrous, near-Shakespearean perfection.' New Statesman]]> 840 Jesse Armstrong 0571384005 Bart 5 reviewed, favorites
What The Wire did for the relationship between politics, poverty and crime, Succession does for politics, media and class: it exposes the workings of a failing system, and as such it is indeed about “the blood of billions�. And just as in The Wire, it does so by tracking a few tragic characters that cannot help themselves.

It’s a very timely show, written in and around our new knowledge ecosystem: "the cacophony of media voices spilling out from TVs, laptops, smartphones, radios."

(...)

For a fan like me, the book proved to be a treasure trove that not only enhanced my understanding of the show’s creative process, but also of the psychology of certain characters. For me the greatest worth lay in some of the character directions, that, however small sometimes, gave crucial, new information not available to those that only watched the show.

(...)

]]> 4.85 Succession – Season One: The Complete Scripts
author: Jesse Armstrong
name: Bart
average rating: 4.85
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2023/11/14
date added: 2023/11/15
shelves: reviewed, favorites
review:
(...)

What The Wire did for the relationship between politics, poverty and crime, Succession does for politics, media and class: it exposes the workings of a failing system, and as such it is indeed about “the blood of billions�. And just as in The Wire, it does so by tracking a few tragic characters that cannot help themselves.

It’s a very timely show, written in and around our new knowledge ecosystem: "the cacophony of media voices spilling out from TVs, laptops, smartphones, radios."

(...)

For a fan like me, the book proved to be a treasure trove that not only enhanced my understanding of the show’s creative process, but also of the psychology of certain characters. For me the greatest worth lay in some of the character directions, that, however small sometimes, gave crucial, new information not available to those that only watched the show.

(...)


]]> Aztec Century 2673540 352 Christopher Evans 0575057122 Bart 0 to-read 3.62 1993 Aztec Century
author: Christopher Evans
name: Bart
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Man in the High Castle 216363
This harrowing, Hugo Award-winning novel is the work that established Philip K. Dick as an innovator in science fiction while breaking the barrier between science fiction and the serious novel of ideas. In it Dick offers a haunting vision of history as a nightmare from which it may just be possible to wake.]]> 259 Philip K. Dick 0679740678 Bart 4 reviewed, speculative
Anyway, for me The Man in the High Castle‘s main draw is its collection of really, really good scenes. Scenes about a shop owner. About two guys trying to set up a handmade jewelry business. About a woman having a fling. Small, slow scenes, unspectacular in the light of World Politics or the African Holocaust. Yet somehow Dick manages to imbue them with life and atmosphere and humanity. Somehow they stand their own in the midst of sentences about history “passing us by�, the evocative power of fiction � “even cheap popular fiction�, “plutocrats�, “Fascist theory of action� or the fact that “it’s all darkness�.

So maybe Joe Cinnadella is right when he claims that it is no “big issue� who wins out. Maybe Dick was a cynic who tried to show that either way, life is life.

(...)


]]> 3.64 1962 The Man in the High Castle
author: Philip K. Dick
name: Bart
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1962
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/12
date added: 2023/11/02
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
(...)

Anyway, for me The Man in the High Castle‘s main draw is its collection of really, really good scenes. Scenes about a shop owner. About two guys trying to set up a handmade jewelry business. About a woman having a fling. Small, slow scenes, unspectacular in the light of World Politics or the African Holocaust. Yet somehow Dick manages to imbue them with life and atmosphere and humanity. Somehow they stand their own in the midst of sentences about history “passing us by�, the evocative power of fiction � “even cheap popular fiction�, “plutocrats�, “Fascist theory of action� or the fact that “it’s all darkness�.

So maybe Joe Cinnadella is right when he claims that it is no “big issue� who wins out. Maybe Dick was a cynic who tried to show that either way, life is life.

(...)



]]> Under the Glacier 14265 Under the Glacier is a one-of-a-kind masterpiece, a wryly provocative novel at once earthy and otherworldly. At its outset, the Bishop of Iceland dispatches a young emissary to investigate certain charges against the pastor at Snæfells Glacier, who, among other things, appears to have given up burying the dead.

But once he arrives, the emissary discovers that this dereliction counts only as a mild eccentricity in a community that regards itself as the center of the world and where Creation itself is a work in progress.


What is the emissary to make, for example, of the boarded-up church? What about the mysterious building that has sprung up alongside it? Or the fact that Pastor Primus spends most of his time shoeing horses? Or that his wife, Ua (pronounced “ooh-a,� which is what men invariably sputter upon seeing her), is rumored never to have bathed, eaten, or slept?

Piling improbability on top of improbability, Under the Glacier overflows with comedy both wild and deadpan as it conjures a phantasmagoria as beguiling as it is profound.]]> 240 Halldór Laxness 1400034418 Bart 0 to-read 3.57 1968 Under the Glacier
author: Halldór Laxness
name: Bart
average rating: 3.57
book published: 1968
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Cloud Atlas 49628 A postmodern visionary who is also a master of styles of genres, David Mitchell combines flat-out adventure, a Nabokovian lore of puzzles, a keen eye for character, and a taste for mind-bending philosophical and scientific speculation in the tradition of Umberto Eco, Haruki Murakami, and Philip K. Dick. The result is brilliantly original fiction as profund as it is playful. Now in his new novel, David Mitchell explores with daring artistry fundamental questions of reality and identity.

Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Along the way, Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite. . . .
Abruptly, the action jumps to Belgium in 1931, where Robert Frobisher, a disinherited bisexual composer, contrives his way into the household of an infirm maestro who has a beguiling wife and a nubile daughter. . . . From there we jump to the West Coast in the 1970s and a troubled reporter named Luisa Rey, who stumbles upon a web of corporate greed and murder that threatens to claim her life. . . . And onward, with dazzling virtuosity, to an inglorious present-day England; to a Korean superstate of the near future where neocapitalism has run amok; and, finally, to a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in the last days of history.
But the story doesn’t end even there. The narrative then boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. Along the way, Mitchell reveals how his disparate characters connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky.

As wild as a videogame, as mysterious as a Zen koan, Cloud Atlas is an unforgettable tour de force that, like its incomparable author, has transcended its cult classic status to become a worldwide phenomenon.

]]> 509 David Mitchell 0375507256 Bart 1 reviewed, speculative
I'm sure Mitchell can write: I thought Bone Clocks was magnificent. But this seems an exercise first and foremost - a very serious, slightly pretentious attempt to write in different registers & styles, and to me it just screams: try-hard, untrue, a rendering of something that never existed to begin with. It's so clearly an artifice I never once could get over my suspension of disbelief. My problem, sure, I guess I'm simply past this kind of fiction.

]]> 4.02 2004 Cloud Atlas
author: David Mitchell
name: Bart
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2004
rating: 1
read at: 2023/10/28
date added: 2023/10/28
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
DNFed at 50 pages.

I'm sure Mitchell can write: I thought Bone Clocks was magnificent. But this seems an exercise first and foremost - a very serious, slightly pretentious attempt to write in different registers & styles, and to me it just screams: try-hard, untrue, a rendering of something that never existed to begin with. It's so clearly an artifice I never once could get over my suspension of disbelief. My problem, sure, I guess I'm simply past this kind of fiction.


]]> <![CDATA[Deadhouse Gates (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #2)]]> 55401
Set in a brilliantly realized world ravaged by dark, uncontrollable magic, Deadhouse Gates is a novel of war, intrigue and betrayal confirms Steven Eirkson as a storyteller of breathtaking skill, imagination and originality--a new master of epic fantasy.]]> 604 Steven Erikson 0765310023 Bart 3 reviewed, speculative
After that, I’ll try to voice my assessment of Deadhouse Gates as a work of High Fantasy fiction � the actual review, so to say. That might also be of interest to readers still pondering whether to start this series, as I didn’t feel this book to be as successful as Gardens Of The Moon.

Maybe ‘philosophical foundations� is a bit of a pompous term, but then again, this is EPIC High Fantasy. Erikson portrays a world whose events will ring true to the death metal aficionado: a variant of ‘nihil verum nihi mors� � only death is real. The bulk of this book portrays life as futile, subject to chaos and, ultimately, death � wizard healers notwithstanding. In that sense, human existence is meaningless, and a higher Justice non-existent � endless revenge is the only possibility left to those who feel to need to morally balance things out.

(...)

]]> 4.27 2000 Deadhouse Gates (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #2)
author: Steven Erikson
name: Bart
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2000
rating: 3
read at: 2018/01/17
date added: 2023/10/28
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
Let me start this review by something that could be also of interest to readers not familiar with the series, namely the philosophical foundations underlying the book, and presumably the entirety of The Malazan Book Of The Fallen.

After that, I’ll try to voice my assessment of Deadhouse Gates as a work of High Fantasy fiction � the actual review, so to say. That might also be of interest to readers still pondering whether to start this series, as I didn’t feel this book to be as successful as Gardens Of The Moon.

Maybe ‘philosophical foundations� is a bit of a pompous term, but then again, this is EPIC High Fantasy. Erikson portrays a world whose events will ring true to the death metal aficionado: a variant of ‘nihil verum nihi mors� � only death is real. The bulk of this book portrays life as futile, subject to chaos and, ultimately, death � wizard healers notwithstanding. In that sense, human existence is meaningless, and a higher Justice non-existent � endless revenge is the only possibility left to those who feel to need to morally balance things out.

(...)


]]> <![CDATA[Ralph Azham Vol. 4: The Dying Flame (4)]]> 76028252
When Ralph and his close companions, the religious mage Yassou and the lie-detecting thief Zania, encounter a group of immortals, Ralph finds himself with more in common with his enemy, Vam Syrus, than he ever realized. Ralph Azham’s path as the Chosen One ends here one way or the other. Will he fulfill his dark prophecy? Answers will be revealed when Ralph Azham is forced to make decisions that not only impact the people he loves, but the safety of the entire kingdom of Astolia. These are the climatic concluding chapters of this sprawling fantasy tale full of magic, knights, castles, angry ghost hordes, and deadpan humor, from legendary comic creator Lewis Trondheim!]]> 144 Lewis Trondheim 1545811172 Bart 4 reviewed, speculative
Throughout the 12 volumes, Trondheim takes the reader in unexpected directions. You never know when the story will turn, nor where it will turn too. It is a wild ride, yet all feels smooth and logical. This is no mean feat, and there seems to be some similarity to how the character Ralph Azham approaches things, and the way Trondheim plots. I’m not sure how thought out the full story was beforehand, but to me Trondheim seems to improvise his storytelling � and masterfully so � just like Azham seems to follow his gut.

And just like it often seems all a joke to Azham, the story is not too serious � even though it deals with serious stuff. Paradoxically, Azham mostly manages to do the ethical thing, without being sanctimonious. Similarly, Trondheim’s story touches upon themes of power and moral calculus, all while avoiding pontificating or ideological smug. Ralph nor Lewis put forward grand theories or ethical arrogance or thou-shalt-pomp, there’s just praxis. When Ralph exclaims “I feel like I don’t control anything� in the final volume, even though he has risen to power, Trondheim shows him to be a version of some textbook postmodern anti-hero � even though Azham feels very much its own thing throughout.

In the final pages the character succumbs to disappointment and cynicism, yet choses to break free nonetheless.

This is high quality writing, playful and thoughtful at the same time.

(...)

]]> 4.00 Ralph Azham Vol. 4: The Dying Flame (4)
author: Lewis Trondheim
name: Bart
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/22
date added: 2023/10/25
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
(...)

Throughout the 12 volumes, Trondheim takes the reader in unexpected directions. You never know when the story will turn, nor where it will turn too. It is a wild ride, yet all feels smooth and logical. This is no mean feat, and there seems to be some similarity to how the character Ralph Azham approaches things, and the way Trondheim plots. I’m not sure how thought out the full story was beforehand, but to me Trondheim seems to improvise his storytelling � and masterfully so � just like Azham seems to follow his gut.

And just like it often seems all a joke to Azham, the story is not too serious � even though it deals with serious stuff. Paradoxically, Azham mostly manages to do the ethical thing, without being sanctimonious. Similarly, Trondheim’s story touches upon themes of power and moral calculus, all while avoiding pontificating or ideological smug. Ralph nor Lewis put forward grand theories or ethical arrogance or thou-shalt-pomp, there’s just praxis. When Ralph exclaims “I feel like I don’t control anything� in the final volume, even though he has risen to power, Trondheim shows him to be a version of some textbook postmodern anti-hero � even though Azham feels very much its own thing throughout.

In the final pages the character succumbs to disappointment and cynicism, yet choses to break free nonetheless.

This is high quality writing, playful and thoughtful at the same time.

(...)


]]> Verzamelde Gedichten 8325485 Het is een tweetalige uitgave die de chronologie van de gedichten en de bundels volgt en zo de wordingsgeschiedenis van Celans werk laat zien. Het belangrijkste proza, de poëticale toespraken en enkele kleine, cruciale notities werden eveneens vertaald en naar tijd van ontstaan en publicatie ingevoegd. Zo kan Celans oeuvre voor het eerst in zijn geheel in het Nederlands worden gelezen en bezien. De vertalingen zijn van de hand van Ton Naaijkens, die de uitgave voorzag van aantekeningen, een nawoord en een levensbeschrijving van de auteur.]]> 860 Paul Celan 9029067861 Bart 5 favorites 4.64 2003 Verzamelde Gedichten
author: Paul Celan
name: Bart
average rating: 4.64
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/10/24
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> Habitus 37562411 120 Radna Fabias 9029523808 Bart 5 dutch, reviewed
Habitus werkt erg, erg goed: als klank en ritme, als geheel als bundel, als een poging om iets voor het voetlicht stellen dat zowel politiek als diepmenselijk is. We zijn min of meer generatiegenoten maar we delen niet dezelfde achtergrond noch hetzelfde geslacht, toch is Fabias er in geslaagd een verbondenheid tot stand te brengen. Ook al schrijft ze meestal over het vreemde, ik heb het gevoel dat ik haar begrijp. Zowel vormelijk als inhoudelijk blijven de 100 pagina's verrassen en boeien.

Geen klein bier, geen kleffe bucht.

]]> 4.21 2018 Habitus
author: Radna Fabias
name: Bart
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2023/10/14
date added: 2023/10/15
shelves: dutch, reviewed
review:
Ik heb de laatste 20 jaar amper hedendaagse poëzie gelezen, dus ik kan niet goed vergelijken met anderen. Toch lijkt Fabias me een erg oorspronkelijke, originele bundel te hebben geschreven, in een taal die weinig pretentieus is, maar toch scherp en dwingend.

Habitus werkt erg, erg goed: als klank en ritme, als geheel als bundel, als een poging om iets voor het voetlicht stellen dat zowel politiek als diepmenselijk is. We zijn min of meer generatiegenoten maar we delen niet dezelfde achtergrond noch hetzelfde geslacht, toch is Fabias er in geslaagd een verbondenheid tot stand te brengen. Ook al schrijft ze meestal over het vreemde, ik heb het gevoel dat ik haar begrijp. Zowel vormelijk als inhoudelijk blijven de 100 pagina's verrassen en boeien.

Geen klein bier, geen kleffe bucht.


]]> The Tommyknockers 17660 Librarian's Note: This is alternate cover edition #2
ISBN 10: 0451156609
ISBN13: 9780451156600
See: Original Record Here

Late Last Night and the Night Before ...
... Tommyknockers, tommyknockers, knocking at the door.

Something was happening in Bobbi Anderson's idyllic small town of Haven, Maine. Something that gave every man, woman, and child in town powers far beyond ordinary mortals. Something that turned the town into a death trap for all outsiders. Something that came from a metal object, buried for millennia, that Bobbi accidentally stumbled across.

It wasn't that Bobbi and the other good folks of Haven had sold their souls to reap the rewards of the most deadly evil this side of hell. It was more like a diabolical takeover...an invasion of body and soul--and mind....

Note: All information herein, such as number of pages, publisher, etc., refer to this alternate cover edition and may or may not coincide with the main entry for this ISBN or any other alternate covers.

~]]> 747 Stephen King Bart 0 3.61 1987 The Tommyknockers
author: Stephen King
name: Bart
average rating: 3.61
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/08
shelves:
review:

]]> The Martian Chronicles 76778
The Martian Chronicles tells the story of humanity’s repeated attempts to colonize the red planet. The first men were few. Most succumbed to a disease they called the Great Loneliness when they saw their home planet dwindle to the size of a fist. They felt they had never been born. Those few that survived found no welcome on Mars. The shape-changing Martians thought they were native lunatics and duly locked them up.

But more rockets arrived from Earth, and more, piercing the hallucinations projected by the Martians. People brought their old prejudices with them � and their desires and fantasies, tainted dreams. These were soon inhabited by the strange native beings, with their caged flowers and birds of flame.

Contents:
Rocket Summer
Ylla
The Summer Night
The Earth Men
The Taxpayer
The Third Expedition
-And the Moon Be Still As Bright
The Settlers
The Green Morning
The Locusts
Night Meeting
The Shore
Interim
The Musicians
Way in the Middle of the Air
The Naming of Names
Usher II
The Old Ones
The Martian
The Luggage Store
The Off Season
The Watchers
The Silent Towns
The Long Years
There Will Come Soft Rains
The Million Year Picnic]]> 182 Ray Bradbury 0553278223 Bart 5 reviewed, speculative
While there is a certain naivety in the book � Earthlings just go and bang on an alien door and introduce themselves, unafraid of pathogens or possibly dangerous Martian mores � and Bradbury doesn’t seem too concerned with realism on that front, the book does manage to evoke a real enough image of certain crucial aspects of the human condition.

It will also delight certain readers The Martian Chronicles is critical of colonialism, American imperialism, consumerism and the nuclear arms race. It was published as The Silver Locusts in the UK, a title that clearly advocates a political interpretation. And yes, in a way, this early 50ies book is ‘woke� indeed. But as Jesse pointed out on Speculiction, Bradbury does so without overtly preaching or easy dichotomies � is this really the same guy who wrote Fahrenheit 451?

Content aside, what struck me most was the book’s formal power.

(...)

]]> 4.16 1950 The Martian Chronicles
author: Ray Bradbury
name: Bart
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1950
rating: 5
read at: 2023/09/27
date added: 2023/10/02
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
The Martian Chronicles is one of those titles I saw listed again and again as one of science fiction’s key texts � it ranks sixth on the aggregate list Classics of Science Fiction. But because I thought Fahrenheit 451 was so awfully preachy, it took me 8 years to pick up this other Bradbury title. The lesson here is: never judge an author by one book � The Martian Chronicles indeed is a deserved, enduring classic.

While there is a certain naivety in the book � Earthlings just go and bang on an alien door and introduce themselves, unafraid of pathogens or possibly dangerous Martian mores � and Bradbury doesn’t seem too concerned with realism on that front, the book does manage to evoke a real enough image of certain crucial aspects of the human condition.

It will also delight certain readers The Martian Chronicles is critical of colonialism, American imperialism, consumerism and the nuclear arms race. It was published as The Silver Locusts in the UK, a title that clearly advocates a political interpretation. And yes, in a way, this early 50ies book is ‘woke� indeed. But as Jesse pointed out on Speculiction, Bradbury does so without overtly preaching or easy dichotomies � is this really the same guy who wrote Fahrenheit 451?

Content aside, what struck me most was the book’s formal power.

(...)


]]> The Cyberiad 18194 Solaris. Ranging from the prophetic to the surreal, these stories demonstrate Stanislaw Lem's vast talent and remarkable ability to blend meaning and magic into a wholly entertaining and captivating work.]]> 295 Stanisław Lem Bart 5
Halfway the book, I started thinking about narrative voice. I don’t know how he did it, nor what the qualities are that make it so, but in this collection Lem sounds completely in control and authentic, even though he writes about future goofy rusty robots, doing completely impossible stuff, in situations that are, at times, insane. On top of that, he does so in a seemingly effortless, haphazard way � not at all like the polished stories of Borges or Chiang � even though Lem’s stories are clearly thought out as well.

Maybe it is the mixture of a future setting and the medieval stuff that makes for a voice that is timeless? Maybe the short story format helps the quasi mythical vibes that imbue the collection? Maybe it is Lem’s oblique portrayal of certain truths about the human condition that manages to make his authorial voice ring utterly true, and resonate with my own conception of reality?

I have a hard time parsing it, but, even in translation, Lem has managed to write something singular, authoritative, something that commands attention, and that quality becomes clear very quickly, after having read a few pages only.

(...)


]]> 4.18 1965 The Cyberiad
author: Stanisław Lem
name: Bart
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1965
rating: 5
read at: 2023/09/14
date added: 2023/09/18
shelves: to-read, reviewed, speculative, favorites
review:
(...)

Halfway the book, I started thinking about narrative voice. I don’t know how he did it, nor what the qualities are that make it so, but in this collection Lem sounds completely in control and authentic, even though he writes about future goofy rusty robots, doing completely impossible stuff, in situations that are, at times, insane. On top of that, he does so in a seemingly effortless, haphazard way � not at all like the polished stories of Borges or Chiang � even though Lem’s stories are clearly thought out as well.

Maybe it is the mixture of a future setting and the medieval stuff that makes for a voice that is timeless? Maybe the short story format helps the quasi mythical vibes that imbue the collection? Maybe it is Lem’s oblique portrayal of certain truths about the human condition that manages to make his authorial voice ring utterly true, and resonate with my own conception of reality?

I have a hard time parsing it, but, even in translation, Lem has managed to write something singular, authoritative, something that commands attention, and that quality becomes clear very quickly, after having read a few pages only.

(...)



]]> <![CDATA[The Entangled Brain: How Perception, Cognition, and Emotion Are Woven Together]]> 60462054
Popular neuroscience accounts often focus on specific mind-brain aspects like addiction, cognition, or memory, but The Entangled Brain tackles a much bigger What kind of object is the brain? Neuroscientist Luiz Pessoa describes the brain as a highly networked, interconnected system that cannot be neatly decomposed into a set of independent parts. One can’t point to the brain and say, “This is where emotion happens� (or any other mental faculty). Pessoa argues that only by understanding how large-scale neural circuits combine multiple and diverse signals can we truly appreciate how the brain supports the mind.

Presenting the brain as an integrated organ and drawing on neuroscience, computation, mathematics, systems theory, and evolution, The Entangled Brain explains how brain functions result from cross-cutting brain processing, not the function of segregated areas. Parts of the brain work in a coordinated fashion across large-scale distributed networks in which disparate parts of the cortex and the subcortex work simultaneously to bring about behaviors. Pessoa intuitively explains the concepts needed to formalize this idea of the brain as a complex system and how to unleash powerful understandings built with “collective computations.”]]> 280 Luiz Pessoa 0262544601 Bart 2 reviewed, non-fiction
1) The subtitle is TOTALLY misleading. This book hardly is about perception, cognition and emotion: Pessoa instead makes the case that the (distinct) brain areas that are generally considered to be responsible for perception, cognition and emotion are highly entangled, and that they cannot be "neatly disassembled into a set of independent parts". If you are looking for specific examples of how certain emotions influence perception, or vice versa, or how perception influences cognition, etc., look elsewhere. There hardly are any examples to be found in the book. What Pessoa provides is essentially a long list of nerve connections between the basal ganglia, the thalamus, the frontal lobe, the pallial amygdala, the ventral striatum, the superior collictulus, etc., etc.

By doing so, Pessoa does give a good overview of brain anatomy, and covers a bit of history of brain science too - with classical examples like Phineas Gage, Broca's Tan Tan, and a fair amount of others. I also have to stress he convincingly demonstrates his main thesis: the brain as an highly integrated organ, a very complex system with all kinds of loops, feedback and feedforward connections. If you want to know more about the specifics of that, this book might be for you.

2) It is unclear who he argues against. Pessoa often writes about neuroscientists that look at the brain as if it consists of fairly separate building blocks, with one area responsible for language, another for emotion, another for memory, etc. But he never names any recent papers or books that do so - he only refers to the New York Times archive twice, to show how a certain part of the brain is (was?) used in a newspaper. I'm just an amateur science lover, having read a couple of books about brains and the likes - check out my list of reviewed non-fiction to find out which - but from what I can gather, the opinion of Pessoa isn't really contested, and the fact that the brain is a complex neural network is pretty standard fare - even in the New York Times. I could be wrong here, but either way it would have been better if Pessoa had added specific sources.

3) Pessoa tries to argue against reductionism and the brain as a mere causal input-output organ. But he fails twice.

As for reductionism, he argues that a functioning brain can't be reduced to smaller components. I agree: you need all the components of the brain to have a healthy, functioning brain. BUT that does not make reductionism as a philosophical undertaking invalid: it just shows that to understand certain complex systems, you don't need to reduce things totally to its lowest possible level. Maybe that's why some reductionist tend to speak of 'mechanism' instead, and Pessoa admits the brain functions in a "mechanistic" way, "in the sense that all parts function according to the standard rules of chemistry and physics."

Because, what is often at stake in these debates is the principle of causality, as some scientists want to uphold the idea that the human brain (and so humans too) can somehow escape causality - like Pessoa in a way tries with the notion of "emergent" behavior. 'Emergence' refers to properties that are not present at the lower levels - but that's not what reductionist try to argue: no-one claims every property is found at every lower level. For if we can escape causality, we are free, but if we can't, the freedom of the will becomes a problematic notion. Pessoa never talks about free will in this book, but does try to stress the human brain as a flexible organ, responsible for flexible behavior, behavior that's "emergent" & "complex" - yet no-one that argues against free will claims that our behavior is not complex, or not situationally flexible, or not emergent from our protein brain.

When Pessoa tries to show that behavior is emergent and complex, and not just the result of input-output causality, this is where he fails too. He admits the brain can be thought of as a circuit in between sensory and motory cells. But his notion of input is misguided. Consider this crucial passage on page 153-154, under the telling heading "Decoupling Sensory Signals from Motor Responses":

"In chapter 3, we discussed a circuit involved in both defensive and appetitive behaviors centered on the optic tectum/superior collicus of the mid-brain. This system is extremely important across vertebrates. In rodents, it helps the animal decide if it should flee when movement is detected overhead or possibly approach and explore further if the movement is in the lower visual field. But the animal's behavior is flexible and not fixed by the input - the context in which it occurs, encompassing both external and internal worlds, is critical."

The problem with this part is that the context obviously is part of the input too. You cannot argue for the brain to be an entangled system, and then consider the input to the optic tectum to be only some visual input. The body's internal state (all kinds of sensors measuring appetite, hormone levels, pain, fatigue, etc.) offers constant, diverse inputs into the brain as a system, influencing how its subsystems operate. The same goes for the context, the "external" world: obviously the input is not limited to vision of some movement in the lower visual field. There's the other visual input, but simultaneously also input of all other senses (sound, temperature, tactile, smell, taste,...). On top of that, the brain is a system that evolves over time, something Pessoa does admit, coincidentally on the next page: the system learns. So also input (of whatever kind) received in the past, should be considered as well.

All that makes a sentence like "the animal's behavior is flexible and not fixed by the input" highly misleading. Pessoa here talks about one specific form of input (vision in the lower field) but the gist of his argument gets him to the "decoupling of sensory signals from motor responses", as if the brain somehow overcomes causality.

On page 218 he even goes as far as suggesting there might not be a close link between brain and behavior: "Now, when researches study the rat's brain under such conditions, a close relationship between brain and behavior is established. But as Paré and Quirk warn, the tight link might be apparent insofar as it would not hold under more general conditions. Neuroscience is experiencing a methodological renaissance."

In the final chapter, we get the following, a bit baffling statement on page 221: "In considering the benefits of such ubiquitous mixing of sensory and motor information, the investigators [Stringer et al. 2019] ventured that behaving effectively depends on the combination of sensory data, ongoing motor actions, and internal-state variables."

To which I would say: no shit, Sherlock. Notice again that ongoing motor actions and internal-state variables are decoupled from sensory data, while I would argue that also motor action and internal-state variables are very much part of our sensory data. In trying to (justifiably) break down the walls between brain regions, Pessoa keeps up some other walls that are conceptually just as problematic.

Let's consider a final passage, on page 212, in a chapter about unlearning fear:

"The decision to take flight is not just triggered by threat detection and involves computations that rely on multiple external and internal variables. Together, escape behaviors are far from simple stimulus-driven, stereotypical reactions. The mechanisms involved engage specialized circuits refined by eons of evolutionary times."

I get it, behaviorism and conditioning are a bit creepy. Scientists want to get away from Watson and Thorndike. But why even add the words "stimilus-driven" in the above part? True: real life rat or mice behavior is complex, not-stereotypical, not the same as in a 40 x 40 x 40 cm white laboratory box. But are "multiple external and internal variables" really no part of the brain's input? Aren't those variables stimuli too? Yes they are. Again, Pessea singles out on specific stimulus (predator detection), points at the fact that stuff is more complex, and then uses that cast doubt on the entire idea of "stimulus-driven" input behavior, as if the additional complexity isn't part of the input/stimulus.

All and all, a disappointing read.

]]> 3.97 The Entangled Brain: How Perception, Cognition, and Emotion Are Woven Together
author: Luiz Pessoa
name: Bart
average rating: 3.97
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2023/08/27
date added: 2023/08/28
shelves: reviewed, non-fiction
review:
'The Entangled Brain' is a well-written, smooth read - but that doesn't make it a good book. There are 3 issues that stand-out.

1) The subtitle is TOTALLY misleading. This book hardly is about perception, cognition and emotion: Pessoa instead makes the case that the (distinct) brain areas that are generally considered to be responsible for perception, cognition and emotion are highly entangled, and that they cannot be "neatly disassembled into a set of independent parts". If you are looking for specific examples of how certain emotions influence perception, or vice versa, or how perception influences cognition, etc., look elsewhere. There hardly are any examples to be found in the book. What Pessoa provides is essentially a long list of nerve connections between the basal ganglia, the thalamus, the frontal lobe, the pallial amygdala, the ventral striatum, the superior collictulus, etc., etc.

By doing so, Pessoa does give a good overview of brain anatomy, and covers a bit of history of brain science too - with classical examples like Phineas Gage, Broca's Tan Tan, and a fair amount of others. I also have to stress he convincingly demonstrates his main thesis: the brain as an highly integrated organ, a very complex system with all kinds of loops, feedback and feedforward connections. If you want to know more about the specifics of that, this book might be for you.

2) It is unclear who he argues against. Pessoa often writes about neuroscientists that look at the brain as if it consists of fairly separate building blocks, with one area responsible for language, another for emotion, another for memory, etc. But he never names any recent papers or books that do so - he only refers to the New York Times archive twice, to show how a certain part of the brain is (was?) used in a newspaper. I'm just an amateur science lover, having read a couple of books about brains and the likes - check out my list of reviewed non-fiction to find out which - but from what I can gather, the opinion of Pessoa isn't really contested, and the fact that the brain is a complex neural network is pretty standard fare - even in the New York Times. I could be wrong here, but either way it would have been better if Pessoa had added specific sources.

3) Pessoa tries to argue against reductionism and the brain as a mere causal input-output organ. But he fails twice.

As for reductionism, he argues that a functioning brain can't be reduced to smaller components. I agree: you need all the components of the brain to have a healthy, functioning brain. BUT that does not make reductionism as a philosophical undertaking invalid: it just shows that to understand certain complex systems, you don't need to reduce things totally to its lowest possible level. Maybe that's why some reductionist tend to speak of 'mechanism' instead, and Pessoa admits the brain functions in a "mechanistic" way, "in the sense that all parts function according to the standard rules of chemistry and physics."

Because, what is often at stake in these debates is the principle of causality, as some scientists want to uphold the idea that the human brain (and so humans too) can somehow escape causality - like Pessoa in a way tries with the notion of "emergent" behavior. 'Emergence' refers to properties that are not present at the lower levels - but that's not what reductionist try to argue: no-one claims every property is found at every lower level. For if we can escape causality, we are free, but if we can't, the freedom of the will becomes a problematic notion. Pessoa never talks about free will in this book, but does try to stress the human brain as a flexible organ, responsible for flexible behavior, behavior that's "emergent" & "complex" - yet no-one that argues against free will claims that our behavior is not complex, or not situationally flexible, or not emergent from our protein brain.

When Pessoa tries to show that behavior is emergent and complex, and not just the result of input-output causality, this is where he fails too. He admits the brain can be thought of as a circuit in between sensory and motory cells. But his notion of input is misguided. Consider this crucial passage on page 153-154, under the telling heading "Decoupling Sensory Signals from Motor Responses":

"In chapter 3, we discussed a circuit involved in both defensive and appetitive behaviors centered on the optic tectum/superior collicus of the mid-brain. This system is extremely important across vertebrates. In rodents, it helps the animal decide if it should flee when movement is detected overhead or possibly approach and explore further if the movement is in the lower visual field. But the animal's behavior is flexible and not fixed by the input - the context in which it occurs, encompassing both external and internal worlds, is critical."

The problem with this part is that the context obviously is part of the input too. You cannot argue for the brain to be an entangled system, and then consider the input to the optic tectum to be only some visual input. The body's internal state (all kinds of sensors measuring appetite, hormone levels, pain, fatigue, etc.) offers constant, diverse inputs into the brain as a system, influencing how its subsystems operate. The same goes for the context, the "external" world: obviously the input is not limited to vision of some movement in the lower visual field. There's the other visual input, but simultaneously also input of all other senses (sound, temperature, tactile, smell, taste,...). On top of that, the brain is a system that evolves over time, something Pessoa does admit, coincidentally on the next page: the system learns. So also input (of whatever kind) received in the past, should be considered as well.

All that makes a sentence like "the animal's behavior is flexible and not fixed by the input" highly misleading. Pessoa here talks about one specific form of input (vision in the lower field) but the gist of his argument gets him to the "decoupling of sensory signals from motor responses", as if the brain somehow overcomes causality.

On page 218 he even goes as far as suggesting there might not be a close link between brain and behavior: "Now, when researches study the rat's brain under such conditions, a close relationship between brain and behavior is established. But as Paré and Quirk warn, the tight link might be apparent insofar as it would not hold under more general conditions. Neuroscience is experiencing a methodological renaissance."

In the final chapter, we get the following, a bit baffling statement on page 221: "In considering the benefits of such ubiquitous mixing of sensory and motor information, the investigators [Stringer et al. 2019] ventured that behaving effectively depends on the combination of sensory data, ongoing motor actions, and internal-state variables."

To which I would say: no shit, Sherlock. Notice again that ongoing motor actions and internal-state variables are decoupled from sensory data, while I would argue that also motor action and internal-state variables are very much part of our sensory data. In trying to (justifiably) break down the walls between brain regions, Pessoa keeps up some other walls that are conceptually just as problematic.

Let's consider a final passage, on page 212, in a chapter about unlearning fear:

"The decision to take flight is not just triggered by threat detection and involves computations that rely on multiple external and internal variables. Together, escape behaviors are far from simple stimulus-driven, stereotypical reactions. The mechanisms involved engage specialized circuits refined by eons of evolutionary times."

I get it, behaviorism and conditioning are a bit creepy. Scientists want to get away from Watson and Thorndike. But why even add the words "stimilus-driven" in the above part? True: real life rat or mice behavior is complex, not-stereotypical, not the same as in a 40 x 40 x 40 cm white laboratory box. But are "multiple external and internal variables" really no part of the brain's input? Aren't those variables stimuli too? Yes they are. Again, Pessea singles out on specific stimulus (predator detection), points at the fact that stuff is more complex, and then uses that cast doubt on the entire idea of "stimulus-driven" input behavior, as if the additional complexity isn't part of the input/stimulus.

All and all, a disappointing read.


]]> <![CDATA[The Dragon's Path (The Dagger and the Coin, #1)]]> 8752885
Marcus' hero days are behind him. He knows too well that even the smallest war still means somebody's death. When his men are impressed into a doomed army, staying out of a battle he wants no part of requires some unorthodox steps.

Cithrin is an orphan, ward of a banking house. Her job is to smuggle a nation's wealth across a war zone, hiding the gold from both sides. She knows the secret life of commerce like a second language, but the strategies of trade will not defend her from swords.

Geder, sole scion of a noble house, has more interest in philosophy than in swordplay. A poor excuse for a soldier, he is a pawn in these games. No one can predict what he will become.

Falling pebbles can start a landslide. A spat between the Free Cities and the Severed Throne is spiraling out of control. A new player rises from the depths of history, fanning the flames that will sweep the entire region onto The Dragon's Path-the path to war.
]]> 555 Daniel Abraham 1841498874 Bart 2 reviewed, speculative
Recurring readers of Weighing A Pig won’t be surprised that I hold Daniel Abraham’s exceptional debut series, The Long Price quartet, in very high regard. It was the most emotional story I’ve read last year. The series is secondary world fantasy, but it’s very much its own thing, with a subdued use of a highly original and poetic idea for a magic system.

That’s tough to beat. I was underwhelmed by Leviathan Wakes, the first entry in a space opera series Abraham co-wrote with Ty Franck as James S.A. Corey. And I’m sad to report that I’m also a bit underwhelmed by this first book in the epic high fantasy series The Dagger And The Coin, albeit less so: I don’t think I will continue The Expanse SF-series, but I’ll probably give the second book of TDATC, The King’s Blood, a real chance.

The Dragon’s Path is the first of 5 books, and it suffers from having to set things up. That’s a much read remark in reviews of fantasy series. Still, a first book doesn’t have to suffer from having to set-up things at all, as Abraham proved himself with the stunning A Shadow In Summer.

Of note is this part of an interesting interview with Abraham: (...)]]> 3.79 2011 The Dragon's Path (The Dagger and the Coin, #1)
author: Daniel Abraham
name: Bart
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2011
rating: 2
read at: 2016/02/14
date added: 2023/08/26
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:


Recurring readers of Weighing A Pig won’t be surprised that I hold Daniel Abraham’s exceptional debut series, The Long Price quartet, in very high regard. It was the most emotional story I’ve read last year. The series is secondary world fantasy, but it’s very much its own thing, with a subdued use of a highly original and poetic idea for a magic system.

That’s tough to beat. I was underwhelmed by Leviathan Wakes, the first entry in a space opera series Abraham co-wrote with Ty Franck as James S.A. Corey. And I’m sad to report that I’m also a bit underwhelmed by this first book in the epic high fantasy series The Dagger And The Coin, albeit less so: I don’t think I will continue The Expanse SF-series, but I’ll probably give the second book of TDATC, The King’s Blood, a real chance.

The Dragon’s Path is the first of 5 books, and it suffers from having to set things up. That’s a much read remark in reviews of fantasy series. Still, a first book doesn’t have to suffer from having to set-up things at all, as Abraham proved himself with the stunning A Shadow In Summer.

Of note is this part of an interesting interview with Abraham: (...)
]]> Glitterati 58656126
When Simone accidentally starts a new fashion with a nosebleed at a party, another Glitterati takes the credit. Soon their rivalry threatens to raze their opulent utopia to the ground, as no one knows how to be vicious like the beautiful ones.

Enter a world of the most fantastic costumes, grand palaces in the sky, the grandest parties known to mankind and the unbreakable rules of how to eat ice cream. A fabulous dystopian fable about fashion, family and the feckless billionaire class.]]> 288 Oliver K. Langmead 1789097967 Bart 2 reviewed, speculative
(...)

Does that mean that Glitterati is esthetics only? I wouldn’t say so, but esthetics are the main dish, even if some ruminations about human society can be discerned. The problem is that those ruminations are fairly superficial and mostly standard too, so don’t expect any thorough analysis.

According to Jean Baudrillard the cycle of fashion gets driven by 2 impulses that are contrary to each other: the impulse to belong and the impulse to stand out. I don’t think the way fashion works in Langmead’s book is realistic in any way, not even in the book’s own terms: the social (fashion) rules of the Glitterati sub-society seem primarily there to amuse Langmead and Langmead’s readers, they are not there to reflect human conditions, provide insight in our own society or say something about how creative fashions or art works. Again, it’s mainly esthetics over ethics in Glitterati � and by esthetics I don’t mean theoretical esthetics, but neat shiny things. That’s not necessarily a bad thing: satire also aims to amuse, and there surely is an audience for this.

(...)

]]> 3.68 2022 Glitterati
author: Oliver K. Langmead
name: Bart
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2023/08/19
date added: 2023/08/22
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
1,5 stars - rounded up.

(...)

Does that mean that Glitterati is esthetics only? I wouldn’t say so, but esthetics are the main dish, even if some ruminations about human society can be discerned. The problem is that those ruminations are fairly superficial and mostly standard too, so don’t expect any thorough analysis.

According to Jean Baudrillard the cycle of fashion gets driven by 2 impulses that are contrary to each other: the impulse to belong and the impulse to stand out. I don’t think the way fashion works in Langmead’s book is realistic in any way, not even in the book’s own terms: the social (fashion) rules of the Glitterati sub-society seem primarily there to amuse Langmead and Langmead’s readers, they are not there to reflect human conditions, provide insight in our own society or say something about how creative fashions or art works. Again, it’s mainly esthetics over ethics in Glitterati � and by esthetics I don’t mean theoretical esthetics, but neat shiny things. That’s not necessarily a bad thing: satire also aims to amuse, and there surely is an audience for this.

(...)


]]> Galileo's Dream 6391377
To the inhabitants of the Jovian moons, Galileo is a revered figure whose actions will influence the subsequent history of the human race. From the summit of their distant future, a charismatic renegade named Ganymede travels to the past to bring Galileo forward in an attempt to alter history and ensure the ascendancy of science over religion. And if that means Galileo must be burned at the stake, so be it.

From Galileo's heresy trial to the politics of far-future Jupiter, Kim Stanley Robinson illuminates the parallels between a distant past and an even more remote future—in the process celebrating the human spirit and calling into question the convenient truths of our own moment in time.]]> 578 Kim Stanley Robinson 0007260318 Bart 4 reviewed, speculative
Galileo’s Dream shows two main things about science, and both have to do with science as a weak force.

The first weakness is the fact that science still hasn’t grasped reality in full. The book is a call for epistemic humility, and, while a love song to reality and trying to understand reality with our senses and our rational powers, it is also a love song to the ultimate mystery & unknowability of reality.

(...)

The second weakness is science’s inadequacy to deal with power and politics.

(...)

So indeed, science is no miracle worker, and this novel isn’t perfect either. At times it drags a bit, and its quirkiness won’t be for everyone. But again Robinson shows to be a humanist, writing insightful about characters and reality and feelings and history and being alive. Even though “consciousness is solitary�, via his books � truly a coherent oeuvre if ever there was one � Robinson manages time and time again to share something of real value.

]]> 3.54 2009 Galileo's Dream
author: Kim Stanley Robinson
name: Bart
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/04
date added: 2023/08/07
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
(...)

Galileo’s Dream shows two main things about science, and both have to do with science as a weak force.

The first weakness is the fact that science still hasn’t grasped reality in full. The book is a call for epistemic humility, and, while a love song to reality and trying to understand reality with our senses and our rational powers, it is also a love song to the ultimate mystery & unknowability of reality.

(...)

The second weakness is science’s inadequacy to deal with power and politics.

(...)

So indeed, science is no miracle worker, and this novel isn’t perfect either. At times it drags a bit, and its quirkiness won’t be for everyone. But again Robinson shows to be a humanist, writing insightful about characters and reality and feelings and history and being alive. Even though “consciousness is solitary�, via his books � truly a coherent oeuvre if ever there was one � Robinson manages time and time again to share something of real value.


]]> Speaking to No. 4 62817533
Where is Alma? A future husband—No. 4—is desperately seeking his fiancée, who has disappeared. To locate her, he is interviewing her three former husbands, her sister, and ex sister-in-law. Could she be hiding in a French monastery? A Japanese shukubo (temple lodging)? Or maybe she is the victim of a belief in a Balkan creation myth?

Written in six voices that come together in a seamless and often comical narrative, Speaking to No. 4 is both a psychological mystery and a meditation on our construction of space. As husband No. 3, the Architect, says to husband-to-be No. 4, “Think of Japanese space as a novel in which the main character is absent.”]]> 224 Alta Ifland 1734537973 Bart 1 reviewed
Lots of other convoluted & rather unbelievable stuff in the content too. Felt bloated for its 205 pages. There's the occasional interesting reflection about 'spaces', but basically these characters are infatuated with themselves (satire?) - as is Ifland with her themes and her slow multi-perspective reveal trick.

]]> 3.40 2022 Speaking to No. 4
author: Alta Ifland
name: Bart
average rating: 3.40
book published: 2022
rating: 1
read at: 2023/07/03
date added: 2023/07/03
shelves: reviewed
review:
Lots of the chapters consist of a somebody talking. But people simply don't speak in full, convoluted sentences - Ifland should not have put "..." around lots of her writing. Problematic for a book that has 'speaking' in the title.

Lots of other convoluted & rather unbelievable stuff in the content too. Felt bloated for its 205 pages. There's the occasional interesting reflection about 'spaces', but basically these characters are infatuated with themselves (satire?) - as is Ifland with her themes and her slow multi-perspective reveal trick.


]]> <![CDATA[The Iron Dragon's Daughter (The Iron Dragon's Daughter #1)]]> 25781 424 Michael Swanwick 0380972336 Bart 1 reviewed, speculative
Why? Two main issues:

1) it simply didn't feel real at all: mishmash world building that seems there just for the sake of protesting the norm, and too many undeveloped secondary characters that pop in and out.
2) on a sentence level it wasn't interesting at all: fairly wordy, rather stale prose.

Or maybe it's just that I generally don't like reading about teenagers?

Either way, I DNFed at 40%.

Plenty of people who's opinion I respect give this a high rating, so ymmv.

]]> 3.72 1993 The Iron Dragon's Daughter (The Iron Dragon's Daughter #1)
author: Michael Swanwick
name: Bart
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1993
rating: 1
read at: 2023/06/29
date added: 2023/06/29
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
It started of interesting, but after the first act, I became bored quickly.

Why? Two main issues:

1) it simply didn't feel real at all: mishmash world building that seems there just for the sake of protesting the norm, and too many undeveloped secondary characters that pop in and out.
2) on a sentence level it wasn't interesting at all: fairly wordy, rather stale prose.

Or maybe it's just that I generally don't like reading about teenagers?

Either way, I DNFed at 40%.

Plenty of people who's opinion I respect give this a high rating, so ymmv.


]]> Wish I Was Here 61992093
' Wish I Was Here by M John Harrison is a revival of the writer's memoir ... slippery and fascinating as any of his fiction' Jonathan Coe, Summer Pick of 2023, Guardian

M. John Harrison has produced one of the greatest bodies of fiction of any living British author, encompassing space opera, speculative fiction, fantasy, magical and literary realism. But is there even an M. John Harrison and where do we find him?

This is the question the author asks in this memoir-as-mystery, turning for clues to forty years of 'A note or it never happened. A note or you never looked.'

Are these notebooks, or 'nowtbooks', records of failed presence? How do they shine light on a childhood in the industrial Midlands, a portrait of the young artist in countercultural London, on an adulthood of restless escape into hill and moorland landscapes? And do they tell us anything about the writing of the books, each one so different from the last that it might have been written by another version of the author?

With aphoristic daring and laconic wit, this anti-memoir will fascinate you and delight you. It confirms M. John Harrison still further in his status as the most original British writer of his generation.]]> 224 M. John Harrison 1800812973 Bart 5
I’ve read most of Harrison’s 21st century output, and loved it all � aside from Empty Space, which I DNFed at 60%, and resulted in a fairly lengthy analysis that might interest you if you’re interested in theorizing about literature, genre, deconstruction and science fiction.

I always mean to read something of his 20th century work � his debut appeared in 1971 � but he keeps on publishing new titles. This new book is new indeed: formally inventive. Part memoir, part short fiction, part poetics � with a focus on the latter.

Wish I Was Here contains lucid thoughts about the nature of writing, our culture at large and the function of speculative fiction; but also sharp ruminations on life, growing older and memory, amongst other things. It’s a wonderfully mixed and varied reading experience that frustrated me at times, but which is always imbued with a depth that seems bottomless, steeped in the experience of a life both centered and at the edge of things.

Harrison’s prose is not always easy, but whenever I reread a part I did not get at first, it turned out that I was to blame: there’s nothing in these pages that concentration can’t handle. Moreover, in each case, it turned out that Harrison had found an elegant combination of words to tentatively express something which is hard to express to begin with. Part of Wish I Was Here is about the ineffable � the mystery of life and existence � but not the ineffable as some storified narrative, not the miracle as some event in a causal chain.

So � I’m not ashamed to admit I didn’t get everything, but that doesn’t seem necessary, and I don’t mean this in the way some readers still enjoy certain poems while they don’t get them either. I think that would be the easy way out: approach parts of Wish I Was Here as prose poems. That’s not it. Harrison chiseled his latest from the tremendous amount of notes he made during his life, and it is obvious that some of these notes are private and as such incomprehensible to others � it does not make them poems, even though they are just as composed, contain metaphors too and sound A-okay when read out loud.

All and all, when I turned the final pages, the book had floored me � even though I hadn’t been aware that there was a fight going on. Not that Harrison is a boxer, a chess player or an existential wrestler. But it is about getting grip � grip while you sit, breathe and read, grip on a bunch of words that signal something.

After the jump, some more.

(...)

]]> 4.20 2023 Wish I Was Here
author: M. John Harrison
name: Bart
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/06/14
date added: 2023/06/17
shelves: reviewed, non-fiction, favorites, speculative
review:
“How do you know what to say before you know how to say it?�

I’ve read most of Harrison’s 21st century output, and loved it all � aside from Empty Space, which I DNFed at 60%, and resulted in a fairly lengthy analysis that might interest you if you’re interested in theorizing about literature, genre, deconstruction and science fiction.

I always mean to read something of his 20th century work � his debut appeared in 1971 � but he keeps on publishing new titles. This new book is new indeed: formally inventive. Part memoir, part short fiction, part poetics � with a focus on the latter.

Wish I Was Here contains lucid thoughts about the nature of writing, our culture at large and the function of speculative fiction; but also sharp ruminations on life, growing older and memory, amongst other things. It’s a wonderfully mixed and varied reading experience that frustrated me at times, but which is always imbued with a depth that seems bottomless, steeped in the experience of a life both centered and at the edge of things.

Harrison’s prose is not always easy, but whenever I reread a part I did not get at first, it turned out that I was to blame: there’s nothing in these pages that concentration can’t handle. Moreover, in each case, it turned out that Harrison had found an elegant combination of words to tentatively express something which is hard to express to begin with. Part of Wish I Was Here is about the ineffable � the mystery of life and existence � but not the ineffable as some storified narrative, not the miracle as some event in a causal chain.

So � I’m not ashamed to admit I didn’t get everything, but that doesn’t seem necessary, and I don’t mean this in the way some readers still enjoy certain poems while they don’t get them either. I think that would be the easy way out: approach parts of Wish I Was Here as prose poems. That’s not it. Harrison chiseled his latest from the tremendous amount of notes he made during his life, and it is obvious that some of these notes are private and as such incomprehensible to others � it does not make them poems, even though they are just as composed, contain metaphors too and sound A-okay when read out loud.

All and all, when I turned the final pages, the book had floored me � even though I hadn’t been aware that there was a fight going on. Not that Harrison is a boxer, a chess player or an existential wrestler. But it is about getting grip � grip while you sit, breathe and read, grip on a bunch of words that signal something.

After the jump, some more.

(...)


]]> <![CDATA[My Year of Rest and Relaxation]]> 44279110
Our narrator should be happy, shouldn’t she? She’s young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn’t just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It’s the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?

My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a powerful answer to that question. Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be. Both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, it is a showcase for the gifts of one of our major writers working at the height of her powers.]]> 289 Ottessa Moshfegh 0525522131 Bart 4 reviewed
In author talks on YouTube, hostile reactions from certain readers came up multiple times: apparently some people react angrily to the honesty Moshfegh brings to the table. Kind of meta-connected to this is a part in the book book where the protagonist reflects on Ping Xi, a Chinese artists from the gallery she works in:

“He wasn’t interested in understanding himself or evolving. He just wanted to shock people. His audience, of course, would never truly be shocked. People were only delighted at his concepts.�

Moshfegh thinks the hostility is partly generational, and I’m sure that that’s a factor sometimes. It seems indeed that it is very hard to shock people in the demographic Moshfegh belongs to. Depravity & cruelty are nothing new, but the global flows of information about them are. We’ve seen it all, big screen horror, poverty porn, regular porn, Issei Sagawa, books on the Gulag and newspaper clippings on torture in Abu Ghraib. What could be truly shocking in an age of ecocide, kleptoplasty, 9/11, Mexican drug cartels, Zyklon B, Agent Orange, anal bleach and Big Tobacco lobbying? Sure, people probably are “fundamentally mostly decent�, but the world has been disenchanted and shock presupposes surprise: so what kind of thing is surprising to those with an unflinching eye on the world � surprising even in a moral sense?

All that doesn’t make Otessa Moshfegh and her ilk nihilists: rejecting old school metaphysics or refusing to tune out the uncomfortable is not the same as rejecting life. “Maybe they understood, in fact, that beauty and meaning had nothing to do with one another.�

]]> 3.62 2018 My Year of Rest and Relaxation
author: Ottessa Moshfegh
name: Bart
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2023/06/01
date added: 2023/06/05
shelves: reviewed
review:
(...)

In author talks on YouTube, hostile reactions from certain readers came up multiple times: apparently some people react angrily to the honesty Moshfegh brings to the table. Kind of meta-connected to this is a part in the book book where the protagonist reflects on Ping Xi, a Chinese artists from the gallery she works in:

“He wasn’t interested in understanding himself or evolving. He just wanted to shock people. His audience, of course, would never truly be shocked. People were only delighted at his concepts.�

Moshfegh thinks the hostility is partly generational, and I’m sure that that’s a factor sometimes. It seems indeed that it is very hard to shock people in the demographic Moshfegh belongs to. Depravity & cruelty are nothing new, but the global flows of information about them are. We’ve seen it all, big screen horror, poverty porn, regular porn, Issei Sagawa, books on the Gulag and newspaper clippings on torture in Abu Ghraib. What could be truly shocking in an age of ecocide, kleptoplasty, 9/11, Mexican drug cartels, Zyklon B, Agent Orange, anal bleach and Big Tobacco lobbying? Sure, people probably are “fundamentally mostly decent�, but the world has been disenchanted and shock presupposes surprise: so what kind of thing is surprising to those with an unflinching eye on the world � surprising even in a moral sense?

All that doesn’t make Otessa Moshfegh and her ilk nihilists: rejecting old school metaphysics or refusing to tune out the uncomfortable is not the same as rejecting life. “Maybe they understood, in fact, that beauty and meaning had nothing to do with one another.�


]]> <![CDATA[Ralph Azham Vol. 3: You Can't Stop a River (3)]]> 59807989
Ralph Azham, the wayward, shamed, would-be Chosen One, is still on the hunt to stop the infamous Vom Syrus, Superintendent (and secret age-defying King of Astolia), and save his own reputation and the lives of his family. But more twists and turns abound, as Ralph must recover a new magical relic, Angthar’s wand, from unwelcoming magicians to help grant him the upper hand in this battle of power…easier said than done. Then, a new community of zealots appears which has dangerous repercussions for Ralph. It’s a whole new era for this unfolding fantasy tale full of magic, knights, castles, angry ghost hordes, and deadpan humor. From award-winning comics creator Lewis Trondheim.]]> 160 Lewis Trondheim 1545809801 Bart 4 reviewed, speculative
Trondheim also introduces a bit of political ethics this time, nothing too serious or heavy handed, but fitting the overall mood of the story so far.

Very much looking forward how this will wrap up - curious if more depth will be added, or if the focus will remain on creative entertainment. There's nothing wrong with the latter by the way, especially not if it's so well done.

]]> 4.21 Ralph Azham Vol. 3: You Can't Stop a River (3)
author: Lewis Trondheim
name: Bart
average rating: 4.21
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/05/26
date added: 2023/05/29
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
With 1/4th of the story left, I'm tending towards a 4.5 stars as a final score. Again a creative story that keeps on doing unexpected things without feeling contrived.

Trondheim also introduces a bit of political ethics this time, nothing too serious or heavy handed, but fitting the overall mood of the story so far.

Very much looking forward how this will wrap up - curious if more depth will be added, or if the focus will remain on creative entertainment. There's nothing wrong with the latter by the way, especially not if it's so well done.


]]> <![CDATA[Ralph Azham #1: Black Are The Stars (1)]]> 57693163 152 Lewis Trondheim 1545808791 Bart 4 reviewed, speculative
It is very promising: a creative story that keeps on doing unexpected things without feeling contrived. My hunch atm is that I'll give 5 stars when I complete the full series.

Let's hope the final 2 volumes of the English translation will be published sooner than later.


]]> 3.82 Ralph Azham #1: Black Are The Stars (1)
author: Lewis Trondheim
name: Bart
average rating: 3.82
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/22
date added: 2023/05/29
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
Hard to pass a definite judgement - this is just the first 4th of the full story.

It is very promising: a creative story that keeps on doing unexpected things without feeling contrived. My hunch atm is that I'll give 5 stars when I complete the full series.

Let's hope the final 2 volumes of the English translation will be published sooner than later.



]]> Telluria 58559133 Telluria is set in the future, when a devastating holy war between Europe and Islam has succeeded in returning the world to the torpor and disorganization of the Middle Ages. Europe, China, and Russia have all broken up. The people of the world now live in an array of little nations like puzzle pieces, each cultivating its own ideology or identity, a neo-feudal world of fads and feuds, in which no one power dominates. What does, however, travel everywhere is the appetite for the special substance tellurium. A spike of tellurium, driven into the brain by an expert hand, offers a transforming experience of bliss; incorrectly administered, it means death.

The fifty chapters of Telluria map out this brave new world from fifty different angles, as Sorokin, always a virtuoso of the word, introduces us, among many other figures, to partisans and princes, peasants and party leaders, a new Knights Templar, a harem of phalluses, and a dog-headed poet and philosopher who feasts on carrion from the battlefield. The book is an immense and sumptuous tapestry of the word, carnivalesuqe and cruel, and Max Lawton, Sorokin’s gifted translator, has captured it in an English that carries the charge of Cormac McCarthy and William Gibson.]]> 336 Vladimir Sorokin 1681376334 Bart 1 reviewed, speculative Telluria "is set in the future, when a devastating holy war between Europe and Islam has succeeded in returning the world to the topor and disorganization of the Middle Ages", "an array of little nations that are like puzzle pieces, each cultivating its own ideology or identity, a neo-feudal world of fads and feuds, in which no power dominates."

Set in the same world of Day of the Oprichnik - a book that has been called prophetic given current events - Sorokin seems to indulge in navel-gazing about the 'idea' of Russia. Already on page 10 one of his main insights is spelled out: what if Russia, as an empire, had properly collapsed in 1917? Granted: a sharp thought indeed.

The 50 vignettes this novel consists of don't spawn a larger narrative nor fleshed out characters, and that, for me, results in boredom. It's the old adagio: in a world where everything is possible, nothing really matters.

I was amused or interested occasionally - Sorokin surely can be inventive - but ultimately he didn't manage to engage me. His writing felt pompous and self-serious, a self-seriousness dishonestly disguised by irony, a bit of salacious sex (who cares?), expensive drugs and shapeshifting wordiness.

So I jumped ship at 36%. I'd rather read some of Sorokin's interviews if I want to learn something, or even better, more of Varlam Shalamov's vignettes.

]]> 3.70 2013 Telluria
author: Vladimir Sorokin
name: Bart
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2013
rating: 1
read at: 2023/04/03
date added: 2023/05/27
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
It must be de rigueur today to like exiled Russian authors - living in Berlin no less. Telluria "is set in the future, when a devastating holy war between Europe and Islam has succeeded in returning the world to the topor and disorganization of the Middle Ages", "an array of little nations that are like puzzle pieces, each cultivating its own ideology or identity, a neo-feudal world of fads and feuds, in which no power dominates."

Set in the same world of Day of the Oprichnik - a book that has been called prophetic given current events - Sorokin seems to indulge in navel-gazing about the 'idea' of Russia. Already on page 10 one of his main insights is spelled out: what if Russia, as an empire, had properly collapsed in 1917? Granted: a sharp thought indeed.

The 50 vignettes this novel consists of don't spawn a larger narrative nor fleshed out characters, and that, for me, results in boredom. It's the old adagio: in a world where everything is possible, nothing really matters.

I was amused or interested occasionally - Sorokin surely can be inventive - but ultimately he didn't manage to engage me. His writing felt pompous and self-serious, a self-seriousness dishonestly disguised by irony, a bit of salacious sex (who cares?), expensive drugs and shapeshifting wordiness.

So I jumped ship at 36%. I'd rather read some of Sorokin's interviews if I want to learn something, or even better, more of Varlam Shalamov's vignettes.


]]> And the Ass Saw the Angel 68682 320 Nick Cave 1880985721 Bart 0 3.87 1989 And the Ass Saw the Angel
author: Nick Cave
name: Bart
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1989
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/05/18
shelves:
review:

]]> Diaspora 156785 443 Greg Egan 3453161815 Bart 3 reviewed, speculative
And even though parts of the physics are fictional, and Egan’s brand of advanced transhumanism is a science fictional pipe dream, Diaspora offers an overarching, fundamental lesson: our existence is shaped by our perception and processing of information. As such a certain degree of solipsism is inescapable, and our struggles with that very notion are one of life’s continuous calibrations. Plato has written about a cave too, but Egan explicitly adds the element of identity: getting additional data changes one’s personality. It’s obvious, but I hadn’t thought about it like that, and so Egan changed my perspective, yet again.

Diaspora won two awards, the 2006 Seiun, a Japanese award for best translated novel, and the 2010 Premio Ignotus � basically the Spanish Hugo � for best foreign novel. I myself am unsure about what to award this novel: there are 5-star parts, and 5-star ideas too, but some parts couldn’t grip me at all, having me skim too much to speak of a fully successful read. But even though I didn’t put in the full effort, the ending was somehow very emotional � no mean feat. I hope one day, if I can anticipate it, my own death will not feel as a death either, but rather as completion. What more can one wish for?

So let’s leave it at: ymmv.

]]> 4.12 1997 Diaspora
author: Greg Egan
name: Bart
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1997
rating: 3
read at: 2023/05/07
date added: 2023/05/08
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
(...)

And even though parts of the physics are fictional, and Egan’s brand of advanced transhumanism is a science fictional pipe dream, Diaspora offers an overarching, fundamental lesson: our existence is shaped by our perception and processing of information. As such a certain degree of solipsism is inescapable, and our struggles with that very notion are one of life’s continuous calibrations. Plato has written about a cave too, but Egan explicitly adds the element of identity: getting additional data changes one’s personality. It’s obvious, but I hadn’t thought about it like that, and so Egan changed my perspective, yet again.

Diaspora won two awards, the 2006 Seiun, a Japanese award for best translated novel, and the 2010 Premio Ignotus � basically the Spanish Hugo � for best foreign novel. I myself am unsure about what to award this novel: there are 5-star parts, and 5-star ideas too, but some parts couldn’t grip me at all, having me skim too much to speak of a fully successful read. But even though I didn’t put in the full effort, the ending was somehow very emotional � no mean feat. I hope one day, if I can anticipate it, my own death will not feel as a death either, but rather as completion. What more can one wish for?

So let’s leave it at: ymmv.


]]> <![CDATA[Meganets: How Digital Forces Beyond Our Control Commandeer Our Daily Lives and Inner Realities]]> 61399147
David Auerbach’s exploration of the phenomenon he has identified as the meganet begins with a simple, startling There is no hand on the tiller of some of the largest global digital forces that influence our daily from corporate sites such as Facebook, Amazon, Google, YouTube, Instagram, and Reddit to the burgeoning metaverse encompassing cryptocurrencies and online gaming to government systems such as China’s Social Credit System and India’s Aadhaar.

As we increasingly integrate our society, culture and politics within a hyper-networked fabric, Auerbach explains how the interactions of billions of people with unfathomably large online networks have produced a new sort of ever-changing systems that operate beyond the control of the individuals, companies, and governments that created them.

Meganets, Auerbach explains, have a life of their own, actively resisting attempts to control them as they accumulate data and produce spontaneous, unexpected social groups and uprisings that could not have even existed twenty years ago. And they constantly modify themselves in response to user behavior, resulting in collectively authored algorithms none of us intend or control. These enormous invisible organisms exerting great force on our lives are the new minds of the world, increasingly commandeering our daily lives and inner realities.

Auerbach’s analysis of these gargantuan opaque digital forces yield important insights such Auerbach then comes full circle, showing that while we cannot ultimately control meganets we can tame them through the counterintuitive measures he describes in detail.]]> 352 David B. Auerbach 1541774442 Bart 3 non-fiction, reviewed
More crucial is the fact that Auerbach doesn’t really deliver on the promise of his subtitle: he hardly provides an explicit exploration of how the current form of the internet shapes our inner realities, and also much of its influence on our daily lives is only implicitly described. So do not expect a psychological or sociological study, let alone a scientific one.

A sentence like “With every passing day we intuitively sense a loss of control over our daily lives, society, culture, and politics, even as it becomes more difficult to extricate ourselves from our hypernetworked fabric.� is never quantified or backed up with research or data. I can easily give an anecdotal, equally intuitive counterexample: I for one do not feel a loss of control over my daily live, not at all, and I’ve been an active meganet user as long as these meganets have existed.

Likewise, consider this passage:

“Modern society has so long been accustomed to national or international figures (politicians, celebrities) who speak to silent millions that we still have yet to come to grips with the very unsettling fact that it is now amorphous groups who lead and the celebrities and influencers who follow. The most successful cybercelebrities are, in fact, those who either happen to represent an existing trend or those skilled at going with the flow on which they are carried.�

It is presented without backing from any scientific source. I’m not saying there has been no shift, but I’m not so sure about it, and even if such shift did occur: how big is it? Could you really frame it like Auerbach does here? I can easily imagine that Martin Luther, Lenin, Martin Luther King or Tatcher also tapped into already existing sentiments among the amorphous population. Moreover, consumers, voters and religious believers have always been amorphous groups with significant influence on society � for consumers & religious tribes that even has been the case before the onset of modern society and democracy.

Instead of a scientific study, much of Auerbach’s text is a history and analysis of the aspects of the current internet that are relevant to ‘meganets�, most importantly the spectacular rise of recorded data, the exceptional exponential scaling of computer technology, Facebook & the metaverse, Google’s search engine and its business model of monetizing it, cryptocurrencies, MMORPGs like World of Warcarft, the effects of somebody like Elon Musk on Twitter, a chapter on China’s Social Credit System and India’s Aadhaar, and one about why AI won’t help taming these meganets, but will make them even more uncontrollable.

I have to say his basic analysis � on the reasons why these meganets have become impossible to control � is well argued, in a detailed, clear and utterly convincing manner, and so I do feel I have a much better grasp on why the things described in the blurb are indeed the case.

(...)

]]> 3.69 Meganets: How Digital Forces Beyond Our Control Commandeer Our Daily Lives and Inner Realities
author: David B. Auerbach
name: Bart
average rating: 3.69
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2023/04/17
date added: 2023/04/20
shelves: non-fiction, reviewed
review:
(...)

More crucial is the fact that Auerbach doesn’t really deliver on the promise of his subtitle: he hardly provides an explicit exploration of how the current form of the internet shapes our inner realities, and also much of its influence on our daily lives is only implicitly described. So do not expect a psychological or sociological study, let alone a scientific one.

A sentence like “With every passing day we intuitively sense a loss of control over our daily lives, society, culture, and politics, even as it becomes more difficult to extricate ourselves from our hypernetworked fabric.� is never quantified or backed up with research or data. I can easily give an anecdotal, equally intuitive counterexample: I for one do not feel a loss of control over my daily live, not at all, and I’ve been an active meganet user as long as these meganets have existed.

Likewise, consider this passage:

“Modern society has so long been accustomed to national or international figures (politicians, celebrities) who speak to silent millions that we still have yet to come to grips with the very unsettling fact that it is now amorphous groups who lead and the celebrities and influencers who follow. The most successful cybercelebrities are, in fact, those who either happen to represent an existing trend or those skilled at going with the flow on which they are carried.�

It is presented without backing from any scientific source. I’m not saying there has been no shift, but I’m not so sure about it, and even if such shift did occur: how big is it? Could you really frame it like Auerbach does here? I can easily imagine that Martin Luther, Lenin, Martin Luther King or Tatcher also tapped into already existing sentiments among the amorphous population. Moreover, consumers, voters and religious believers have always been amorphous groups with significant influence on society � for consumers & religious tribes that even has been the case before the onset of modern society and democracy.

Instead of a scientific study, much of Auerbach’s text is a history and analysis of the aspects of the current internet that are relevant to ‘meganets�, most importantly the spectacular rise of recorded data, the exceptional exponential scaling of computer technology, Facebook & the metaverse, Google’s search engine and its business model of monetizing it, cryptocurrencies, MMORPGs like World of Warcarft, the effects of somebody like Elon Musk on Twitter, a chapter on China’s Social Credit System and India’s Aadhaar, and one about why AI won’t help taming these meganets, but will make them even more uncontrollable.

I have to say his basic analysis � on the reasons why these meganets have become impossible to control � is well argued, in a detailed, clear and utterly convincing manner, and so I do feel I have a much better grasp on why the things described in the blurb are indeed the case.

(...)


]]> <![CDATA[Hot Coals: A User's Guide to Mastering Your Kamado Grill]]> 25540551 Two of the world’s foremost kamado grilling experts show you how to get the most out of this amazing, adaptable cooker—includes thirty recipes!InHot Coals, chefs Jeroen Hazebroek and Leonard Elenbaas show you why everyone's obsessed with the kamado grill. They lay out thirteen techniques that showcase the grill's You can bake a savory quiche, grill a flank steak, and sear Moroccan-style lamb—all in the same device.Hot Coalsis packed with essential kamado techniques and information, including thirty recipes, the science behind the cooker, and the key to infusing specific flavors into your dishes. With this indispensable grilling guide, you'll be a kamado master in no time.]]> 162 Jeroen Hazebroek Bart 4 reviewed, non-fiction
The recipes are a nice bonus.]]> 4.07 2015 Hot Coals: A User's Guide to Mastering Your Kamado Grill
author: Jeroen Hazebroek
name: Bart
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2023/04/19
date added: 2023/04/19
shelves: reviewed, non-fiction
review:
Excellent, clear book full of useful, detailed advice, covering the full spectrum of what you can do with a kamado. As far as I can tell it's the only kamado reference book on the market that is so thorough.

The recipes are a nice bonus.
]]> Vergeten straat 4008441 248 Louis Paul Boon Bart 2 dutch, reviewed
Een aantal van die boeken zijn onversneden meesterwerken � Boon had in 1979 niet voor niets de Nobelprijs krijgen als hij niet was doodgevallen � maar Vergeten Straat, zijn 3e roman, is het eerste van zijn boeken dat me tegenviel.

Ik voelde zelden connectie met wat er geschreven stond, en de vorm waarvoor Boon koos � een onophoudelijke stroom paragrafen springend van personage naar personage � maakte het er niet makkelijker op.

Die afwezige klik is misschien wel het gevolg van het feit dat Vergeten Straat niet geheel geloofwaardig overkomt, omdat het verhaal mijns inziens op de tweede plaats komt: Boon onderzoekt in deze roman vooral de levensvatbaarheid van utopieën.

Ik denk dat de analyse van André Demedts uit 1947 nog steeds iet of wat hout snijdt:

"(�) doordat hij (�) een essay als roman heeft vermomd. Wij zetten ons schrap tegen zijn werk, omdat hij het niet als een baatlooze schepping, maar als een pleidooi heeft gewild. Voor hem, zooals voor Walschap, is het uur der beslissing aangebroken. Hij moet naar de levensuitbeelding der kunst terug of verder op naar de levensbeleering der propagandisten. Waar hij nu op een tweesprong aarzelt, verspeelt hij zijn schoonste talent."

Vergeten Straat is in 2009 door De Arbeiderspers heruitgegeven in het verzameld werk, en zoals steeds is het uitgebreide nawoord door Kris Humbeeck en de zijnen � 46 pagina’s met analyse, ontstaans- en receptiegeschiedenis � méér dan de moeite waard voor de Boonliefhebber.

]]> 3.76 1946 Vergeten straat
author: Louis Paul Boon
name: Bart
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1946
rating: 2
read at: 2023/04/12
date added: 2023/04/12
shelves: dutch, reviewed
review:
Je mag me gerust een fan van Boon noemen: ik las al De Voorstad Groeit, Mijn Kleine Oorlog, De Kapellekensbaan, Zomer te Ter-muren, Menuet, De kleine Eva uit de Kromme Bijlstraat, Mieke Maaike’s obscene jeugd en zijn Verzamelde Gedichten.

Een aantal van die boeken zijn onversneden meesterwerken � Boon had in 1979 niet voor niets de Nobelprijs krijgen als hij niet was doodgevallen � maar Vergeten Straat, zijn 3e roman, is het eerste van zijn boeken dat me tegenviel.

Ik voelde zelden connectie met wat er geschreven stond, en de vorm waarvoor Boon koos � een onophoudelijke stroom paragrafen springend van personage naar personage � maakte het er niet makkelijker op.

Die afwezige klik is misschien wel het gevolg van het feit dat Vergeten Straat niet geheel geloofwaardig overkomt, omdat het verhaal mijns inziens op de tweede plaats komt: Boon onderzoekt in deze roman vooral de levensvatbaarheid van utopieën.

Ik denk dat de analyse van André Demedts uit 1947 nog steeds iet of wat hout snijdt:

"(�) doordat hij (�) een essay als roman heeft vermomd. Wij zetten ons schrap tegen zijn werk, omdat hij het niet als een baatlooze schepping, maar als een pleidooi heeft gewild. Voor hem, zooals voor Walschap, is het uur der beslissing aangebroken. Hij moet naar de levensuitbeelding der kunst terug of verder op naar de levensbeleering der propagandisten. Waar hij nu op een tweesprong aarzelt, verspeelt hij zijn schoonste talent."

Vergeten Straat is in 2009 door De Arbeiderspers heruitgegeven in het verzameld werk, en zoals steeds is het uitgebreide nawoord door Kris Humbeeck en de zijnen � 46 pagina’s met analyse, ontstaans- en receptiegeschiedenis � méér dan de moeite waard voor de Boonliefhebber.


]]> De methode 5596295
De Methode verscheen in 1984 bij uitgeverij Bert Bakker. Dankzij deze nieuwe uitgave is deze unieke tekst, ongewijzigd, eindelijk weer beschikbaar.]]> 382 Dick Raaijmakers 9035101340 Bart 2 dutch
De eerste pagina's bevatten meteen de kern van het belangrijkste probleem van 'De Methode': Raaijmakers bouwt zijn systemen op een dichotomie, en ook al probeert hij later te nuanceren, veel van wat hij schrijft blijft steken in zwart-wit en de vereenvoudiging van het schematische.

]]> 4.14 1984 De methode
author: Dick Raaijmakers
name: Bart
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1984
rating: 2
read at: 2022/11/01
date added: 2023/04/12
shelves: dutch
review:
Bijna hoogmoedig in zijn poging complexiteit te vatten in 282 gedichten. Ondergraaft zichzelf bij momenten, en dus twijfelde ik soms of Raijmakers geen pastiche op het oog had. Bevat zeker interessante inzichten hier en daar, maar als alomvattend systeem uiteraard gedoemt te falen, en heel moeilijk echt serieus te nemen.

De eerste pagina's bevatten meteen de kern van het belangrijkste probleem van 'De Methode': Raaijmakers bouwt zijn systemen op een dichotomie, en ook al probeert hij later te nuanceren, veel van wat hij schrijft blijft steken in zwart-wit en de vereenvoudiging van het schematische.


]]> De knetterende schedels 34733199 De knetterende schedels beschrijft Roger Van de Velde zijn compagnons de misère in de instellingen waar hij werd geïnterneerd. We ontmoeten Daniël, die drie dagen aan een stuk lange sigaretten rookt omdat Prometheus het hem zo instrueert, Jules Leroy, die de kat doodt waar hij zoveel van houdt omdat ze zijn rosbief opeet, en markies de la Motte, die schuldbekentenissen voor miljarden franken uitschrijft. Zonder meer het hoogtepunt in zijn literaire oeuvre.

In deze uitgave is ook Recht op antwoord opgenomen, een scherp en vlammend pamflet waarin Van de Velde censuur en het falende interneringsbeleid in ons land aan de kaak stelt. Dit j’accuse heeft helaas nog niets aan actualiteit ingeboet.]]> 198 Roger van de Velde Bart 3 reviewed, dutch
Ik mis wat van Van de Velde zelf: het blijven veelal afstandelijke portretten, in een ietwat steriel maar trefzeker proza. Er sluipt ook iets monotoons in de korte bundel van een 100-tal bladzijden: telkens een andere markante anekdote over weer een andere opgesloten sukkelaar.

Dat wordt in de heruitgave uit 2020 door Uitgeverij Vrijdag ruimschoots goed gemaakt door de opname van 'Recht op antwoord', een retorisch erg sterke aanklacht van nog eens 100 bladzijde tegen het Belgische interneringsbeleid. Rigoreus, eerlijk en genuanceerd. Maar ook ietwat breedvoerig en een beetje pedant, zeker in de woordkeuze. Anno 2022 is wat van de Velde schreef in dit pamflet oud nieuws en bekende hap, maar dat maakt het niet minder sterk: als tijdsdocument uit 1968 blijft het meer dan overeind, en een groot deel van de geschetste problematiek blijft actueel.

3 "liked it" sterren voor de kortverhalen, 4 "really liked it" sterren voor het pamflet.

Aanrader - zeker voor wie affiniteit heeft met het werk van Boon of JMH Berckmans.

]]> 4.06 1969 De knetterende schedels
author: Roger van de Velde
name: Bart
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1969
rating: 3
read at: 2022/06/10
date added: 2023/04/12
shelves: reviewed, dutch
review:
Prima collectie van 20 korte portretten van mensen die, net als Van de Velde, geïnterneerd waren in de psychiatrische afdelingen van de Belgische gevangenissen in Merksplas, Turnhout en Doornik.

Ik mis wat van Van de Velde zelf: het blijven veelal afstandelijke portretten, in een ietwat steriel maar trefzeker proza. Er sluipt ook iets monotoons in de korte bundel van een 100-tal bladzijden: telkens een andere markante anekdote over weer een andere opgesloten sukkelaar.

Dat wordt in de heruitgave uit 2020 door Uitgeverij Vrijdag ruimschoots goed gemaakt door de opname van 'Recht op antwoord', een retorisch erg sterke aanklacht van nog eens 100 bladzijde tegen het Belgische interneringsbeleid. Rigoreus, eerlijk en genuanceerd. Maar ook ietwat breedvoerig en een beetje pedant, zeker in de woordkeuze. Anno 2022 is wat van de Velde schreef in dit pamflet oud nieuws en bekende hap, maar dat maakt het niet minder sterk: als tijdsdocument uit 1968 blijft het meer dan overeind, en een groot deel van de geschetste problematiek blijft actueel.

3 "liked it" sterren voor de kortverhalen, 4 "really liked it" sterren voor het pamflet.

Aanrader - zeker voor wie affiniteit heeft met het werk van Boon of JMH Berckmans.


]]> <![CDATA[Shadows Linger (The Chronicles of the Black Company, #2)]]> 400881
La Compañía es el hogar.

«Todos los hombres nacen condenados. Eso dicen los sabios. Todos maman del pecho de la Muerte. Todos inclinan la cabeza ante el Monarca Silencioso. Ese Señor en la Sombra alza un dedo. Una pluma revolotea hasta el suelo. No hay razón alguna en su canción. Los buenos mueren jóvenes. Los perversos prosperan. Es el rey de los Señores del Caos. Su aliento hiela todas las almas.»]]> 319 Glen Cook 0812508424 Bart 4 reviewed, speculative
In 1985, when the third Black Company title appeared, Cook put out no less than 6 novels. Most of those seem to have gotten only one print run in the 80ies, and yet around 2010 Night Shade Books did reprint them.

That might be on the strength of The Black Company: the series that had a profound influence on Steven Erikson and The Mazalan Book of the Fallen. Cook was a very busy writer, but so far The Black Company remains very, very readable. I enjoyed Shadows Linger a lot.

Most of what I’ve written in my review of the first book holds for this sequel too. And yet this is a different book altogether.

Mind you: it is not different in quality or appeal. Cook still deploys solid prose & snappy writing, and spoon feeds nothing. The pacing is excellent, and there’s no frills or attention to immersive details � demonish enemies are just referred to as “creatures� and Cook doesn’t waste pages nor paragraphs explaining how they look: they are creatures, they are dark, and they attack. It’s a breath of fresh air in today’s fat fantasy market. More importantly: it gives the reader agency.

(...)

]]> 4.18 1984 Shadows Linger (The Chronicles of the Black Company, #2)
author: Glen Cook
name: Bart
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1984
rating: 4
read at: 2023/03/30
date added: 2023/03/31
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
Glen Cook was already an experienced writer when he published The Black Company in May 1984: I counted 9 novels. The Black Company would spawn 11 novels and a bunch of short fiction. Shadows Linger, the second book of the first trilogy, appeared a few months later in October. That same year Cook also published The Fire in His Hands, which started the Dread Empire series.

In 1985, when the third Black Company title appeared, Cook put out no less than 6 novels. Most of those seem to have gotten only one print run in the 80ies, and yet around 2010 Night Shade Books did reprint them.

That might be on the strength of The Black Company: the series that had a profound influence on Steven Erikson and The Mazalan Book of the Fallen. Cook was a very busy writer, but so far The Black Company remains very, very readable. I enjoyed Shadows Linger a lot.

Most of what I’ve written in my review of the first book holds for this sequel too. And yet this is a different book altogether.

Mind you: it is not different in quality or appeal. Cook still deploys solid prose & snappy writing, and spoon feeds nothing. The pacing is excellent, and there’s no frills or attention to immersive details � demonish enemies are just referred to as “creatures� and Cook doesn’t waste pages nor paragraphs explaining how they look: they are creatures, they are dark, and they attack. It’s a breath of fresh air in today’s fat fantasy market. More importantly: it gives the reader agency.

(...)


]]> <![CDATA[Bernd and Hilla Becher: Life And Work]]> 654496 248 Susanne Lange 0262122863 Bart 5 art-books, reviewed
Over the years, I’ve steadily collected all the thematic monographs Bernd and Hilla Becher published � my collection is pictured above. Their work resonates deeply with me, and as their work is among the most revered of 20th century photographers, I know I’m not the only one. For almost 50 years the Bechers documented mine winding towers, blast furnaces, gas tanks, grain elevators, water and cooling towers, processing plants, factory halls, lime kilns, timber framed houses and entire complexes of factory buildings. They did so in much of Western Europe, and the United States as well. In a way, the things they depict are more machines than buildings, as critic Armin Zweite wrote.

Bernd also taught photography at the Düsseldorf Academy from 1976 to 1996, and Hilla was intricately involved with that too. This resulted in the so-called Becher school of photography, with prominent German artists like Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Thomas Ruff & Thomas Struth.

Both books at hand cover similar territory: they try to provide an overview of Bernd & Hilla Becher’s life and work, framed in an historical context. Is one markedly better than the other? And, more importantly, what did I learn from these books about the Bechers and their work? Why does it resonate so deeply with me?

(...)

]]> 4.43 2006 Bernd and Hilla Becher: Life And Work
author: Susanne Lange
name: Bart
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2023/03/10
date added: 2023/03/22
shelves: art-books, reviewed
review:
This time, two books from an artist couple also featured in my favorite art book list I posted back in 2017. The first is a monograph from 2006 I’ve had for ages, but never got around to actually reading. The second book was published last year, and it’s the first posthumous monograph about the Bechers to appear, published to accompany the exhibition in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, an exhibition that traveled to San Fransisco, and is still on display until April 2, 2023.

Over the years, I’ve steadily collected all the thematic monographs Bernd and Hilla Becher published � my collection is pictured above. Their work resonates deeply with me, and as their work is among the most revered of 20th century photographers, I know I’m not the only one. For almost 50 years the Bechers documented mine winding towers, blast furnaces, gas tanks, grain elevators, water and cooling towers, processing plants, factory halls, lime kilns, timber framed houses and entire complexes of factory buildings. They did so in much of Western Europe, and the United States as well. In a way, the things they depict are more machines than buildings, as critic Armin Zweite wrote.

Bernd also taught photography at the Düsseldorf Academy from 1976 to 1996, and Hilla was intricately involved with that too. This resulted in the so-called Becher school of photography, with prominent German artists like Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Thomas Ruff & Thomas Struth.

Both books at hand cover similar territory: they try to provide an overview of Bernd & Hilla Becher’s life and work, framed in an historical context. Is one markedly better than the other? And, more importantly, what did I learn from these books about the Bechers and their work? Why does it resonate so deeply with me?

(...)


]]> Bernd & Hilla Becher 59017732
For more than five decades, Bernd (1931�2007) and Hilla (1934�2015) Becher collaborated on photographs of industrial architecture in Germany, France, Belgium, Holland, Great Britain, and the United States. This sweeping monograph features the Bechers� quintessential pictures, which present water towers, gas tanks, blast furnaces, and more as sculptural objects. Beyond the Bechers� iconic Typologies, the book includes Bernd’s early drawings, Hilla’s independent photographs, and excerpts from their notes, sketchbooks, and journals. The book’s authors offer new insights into the development of the artists� process, their work’s conceptual underpinnings, the photographers� relationship to deindustrialization, and the artists� legacy. An essay by award-winning cultural historian Lucy Sante and an interview with Max Becher, the artists� son, make this volume an unrivaled look into the Bechers� art, life, and career.

Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press
Exhibition The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
(July 11–October 30, 2022)

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
(December 17, 2022–April 2, 2023)]]> 282 1588397556 Bart 4 reviewed, art-books
Over the years, I’ve steadily collected all the thematic monographs Bernd and Hilla Becher published � my collection is pictured above. Their work resonates deeply with me, and as their work is among the most revered of 20th century photographers, I know I’m not the only one. For almost 50 years the Bechers documented mine winding towers, blast furnaces, gas tanks, grain elevators, water and cooling towers, processing plants, factory halls, lime kilns, timber framed houses and entire complexes of factory buildings. They did so in much of Western Europe, and the United States as well. In a way, the things they depict are more machines than buildings, as critic Armin Zweite wrote.

Bernd also taught photography at the Düsseldorf Academy from 1976 to 1996, and Hilla was intricately involved with that too. This resulted in the so-called Becher school of photography, with prominent German artists like Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Thomas Ruff & Thomas Struth.

Both books at hand cover similar territory: they try to provide an overview of Bernd & Hilla Becher’s life and work, framed in an historical context. Is one markedly better than the other? And, more importantly, what did I learn from these books about the Bechers and their work? Why does it resonate so deeply with me?

(...)

]]> 4.50 Bernd & Hilla Becher
author: Jeff L. Rosenheim
name: Bart
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/03/18
date added: 2023/03/22
shelves: reviewed, art-books
review:
This time, two books from an artist couple also featured in my favorite art book list I posted back in 2017. The first is a monograph from 2006 I’ve had for ages, but never got around to actually reading. The second book was published last year, and it’s the first posthumous monograph about the Bechers to appear, published to accompany the exhibition in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, an exhibition that traveled to San Fransisco, and is still on display until April 2, 2023.

Over the years, I’ve steadily collected all the thematic monographs Bernd and Hilla Becher published � my collection is pictured above. Their work resonates deeply with me, and as their work is among the most revered of 20th century photographers, I know I’m not the only one. For almost 50 years the Bechers documented mine winding towers, blast furnaces, gas tanks, grain elevators, water and cooling towers, processing plants, factory halls, lime kilns, timber framed houses and entire complexes of factory buildings. They did so in much of Western Europe, and the United States as well. In a way, the things they depict are more machines than buildings, as critic Armin Zweite wrote.

Bernd also taught photography at the Düsseldorf Academy from 1976 to 1996, and Hilla was intricately involved with that too. This resulted in the so-called Becher school of photography, with prominent German artists like Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Thomas Ruff & Thomas Struth.

Both books at hand cover similar territory: they try to provide an overview of Bernd & Hilla Becher’s life and work, framed in an historical context. Is one markedly better than the other? And, more importantly, what did I learn from these books about the Bechers and their work? Why does it resonate so deeply with me?

(...)


]]> 1984 61439040
Alternate cover edition can be found here.]]> 368 George Orwell 0452284236 Bart 1 reviewed, speculative
That might be one of the reasons I felt this to be utterly boring: I don’t think I learned a thing, it all felt so familiar, generic even.

Because of its central place in the Western literary canon, my feelings about 1984 are hard to parse. Might I have loved this if I hadn’t known so much about it? If I’d read it when it first came out?

I’m not so sure. It felt like Orwell was preaching the entire time, and I generally don’t like MESSAGE literature. I didn’t like Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale didn’t feel fully realistic either.

Another issue: I didn’t buy Orwell’s future world. It seemed so binary � everything in service of Orwell’s didactics. I missed the path towards the state of affairs described: such a path would be complex & interesting, but Orwell basically reduces the Ingsoc state system to a bad boogeyman, and the motivations of the characters that installed and sustain this system aren’t really explored. Indeed: I missed a certain kind of depth.

I know I’m in a minority position. The cultural norm is to like books that are against totalitarianism: over 4 million ratings on ŷ, with a 4.19 average. Most dissident voices on ŷ � the one and two star reviews � say the same: not enough story, too much essay, bland characters, heavy-handed exposition, a cartoon villain.

That said: what Orwell does extremely well is illustrate blatant lies as a powerful political method.

Next!

ps � For those of you who don’t read the comments, somebody posted a link to a 1984 review Isaac Asimov wrote in 1980. Asimov is highly critical, and raises interesting points. Definitely worth your time. Check the link on my blog.

]]> 4.21 1949 1984
author: George Orwell
name: Bart
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1949
rating: 1
read at: 2023/03/13
date added: 2023/03/17
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
I can understand the cultural significance of this book � it’s so significant I don’t need to explain to you what this book is about: you know.

That might be one of the reasons I felt this to be utterly boring: I don’t think I learned a thing, it all felt so familiar, generic even.

Because of its central place in the Western literary canon, my feelings about 1984 are hard to parse. Might I have loved this if I hadn’t known so much about it? If I’d read it when it first came out?

I’m not so sure. It felt like Orwell was preaching the entire time, and I generally don’t like MESSAGE literature. I didn’t like Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale didn’t feel fully realistic either.

Another issue: I didn’t buy Orwell’s future world. It seemed so binary � everything in service of Orwell’s didactics. I missed the path towards the state of affairs described: such a path would be complex & interesting, but Orwell basically reduces the Ingsoc state system to a bad boogeyman, and the motivations of the characters that installed and sustain this system aren’t really explored. Indeed: I missed a certain kind of depth.

I know I’m in a minority position. The cultural norm is to like books that are against totalitarianism: over 4 million ratings on ŷ, with a 4.19 average. Most dissident voices on ŷ � the one and two star reviews � say the same: not enough story, too much essay, bland characters, heavy-handed exposition, a cartoon villain.

That said: what Orwell does extremely well is illustrate blatant lies as a powerful political method.

Next!

ps � For those of you who don’t read the comments, somebody posted a link to a 1984 review Isaac Asimov wrote in 1980. Asimov is highly critical, and raises interesting points. Definitely worth your time. Check the link on my blog.


]]> Drowning Practice 58392925 400 Mike Meginnis 0063076144 Bart 5 speculative, reviewed
(...)

Biggest draw are the characters. Lyd, Mott and David are realistic and recognizable, even though they have severe personal issues. Meginnis� main focus is on how certain people try to dominate others emotionally: both the mother and the father are quite cunning on that front. I’d go as far and say the book is connected to Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, in the sense that this book too is a thinly disguised story about mental problems, resulting in a similar eerie atmosphere. It didn’t surprise me when I read in an interview that Meginnis has suffered from a deep depression � like Jackson.

Meginnis makes this aspect of psychological horror something that is both timeless and very much about our time, like when he has a character parrot discourse about personal growth, exposing a culture high on its own catchphrases & meritocratic therapeutic delusions.

I also felt a connection to the work of visual artist Paul McCarthy, as Meginnis has his characters move inside a social landscape of decay, dysfunction and a certain form of timid excess. I use the adjective ‘timid� here because Meginnis never outdoes it, striking a difficult balance between certain satirical elements and realism, and between genre stuff and originality. McCarthy’s video work comes to mind because he also exposes � admittedly much more explicitly � dark undercurrents in American society.

(...)

]]> 3.42 2022 Drowning Practice
author: Mike Meginnis
name: Bart
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2023/03/07
date added: 2023/03/08
shelves: speculative, reviewed
review:
4.5 stars rounded up.

(...)

Biggest draw are the characters. Lyd, Mott and David are realistic and recognizable, even though they have severe personal issues. Meginnis� main focus is on how certain people try to dominate others emotionally: both the mother and the father are quite cunning on that front. I’d go as far and say the book is connected to Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, in the sense that this book too is a thinly disguised story about mental problems, resulting in a similar eerie atmosphere. It didn’t surprise me when I read in an interview that Meginnis has suffered from a deep depression � like Jackson.

Meginnis makes this aspect of psychological horror something that is both timeless and very much about our time, like when he has a character parrot discourse about personal growth, exposing a culture high on its own catchphrases & meritocratic therapeutic delusions.

I also felt a connection to the work of visual artist Paul McCarthy, as Meginnis has his characters move inside a social landscape of decay, dysfunction and a certain form of timid excess. I use the adjective ‘timid� here because Meginnis never outdoes it, striking a difficult balance between certain satirical elements and realism, and between genre stuff and originality. McCarthy’s video work comes to mind because he also exposes � admittedly much more explicitly � dark undercurrents in American society.

(...)


]]> <![CDATA[The Foundation Trilogy (Foundation, #1-3)]]> 46654 Foundation begins a new chapter in the story of man's future. As the Old Empire crumbles into barbarism throughout the million worlds of the galaxy, Hari Seldon and his band of psychologists must create a new entity, the Foundation-dedicated to art, science, and technology-as the beginning of a new empire.

Foundation and Empire describes the mighty struggle for power amid the chaos of the stars in which man stands at the threshold of a new enlightened life which could easily be destroyed by the old forces of barbarism.

Second Foundation follows the Seldon Plan after the First Empire's defeat and describes its greatest threat-a dangerous mutant strain gone wild, which produces a mind capable of bending men's wills, directing their thoughts, reshaping their desires, and destroying the universe.

This adaptation for BBC Radio 4 was first broadcast in 1973 with a cast which included Lee Montague, Maurice Denham, John Justin, Angela Plesence, Wolfe Morris, Julian Glover and Prunella Scales.]]> 679 Isaac Asimov 0380508567 Bart 4 speculative, favorites
First, a warning: I’ll have to let down recurring readers expecting a long analysis like those of the Dune books or The Book of the New Sun. This post won’t be 5,000 or 10,000 words � only 2,300. I simply don’t have that much to add to all that has been written on this seminal work, considered a “watershed� in literary history by many. Dirda quotes SF editor Donald Wollheim: “Stories published before Foundation belong to the old line, the stories published published after belong to ‘modern� science fiction.�

Before my actual reread of the trilogy, I thought this review might turn into a big examination about how Asimov deals with free will in the books, not dissimilar to my post on LOTR. It turns out that there just isn’t that much to discuss, but I’ll spend a few paragraphs on it nonetheless, as it is the crux of the series.

Did I think this trilogy has become way outdated, and did I enjoy my reread? To answer that and more, let’s get back to Dirda � three times.

(...)

]]> 4.42 1953 The Foundation Trilogy (Foundation, #1-3)
author: Isaac Asimov
name: Bart
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1953
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/03/08
shelves: speculative, favorites
review:
I read the splendid Everyman’s Library edition � a hardback with an excellent 15-page introduction by Michael Dirda that’s isn’t expensive nonetheless. That introduction guided my reading a bit, and I’ll get back to it a few times.

First, a warning: I’ll have to let down recurring readers expecting a long analysis like those of the Dune books or The Book of the New Sun. This post won’t be 5,000 or 10,000 words � only 2,300. I simply don’t have that much to add to all that has been written on this seminal work, considered a “watershed� in literary history by many. Dirda quotes SF editor Donald Wollheim: “Stories published before Foundation belong to the old line, the stories published published after belong to ‘modern� science fiction.�

Before my actual reread of the trilogy, I thought this review might turn into a big examination about how Asimov deals with free will in the books, not dissimilar to my post on LOTR. It turns out that there just isn’t that much to discuss, but I’ll spend a few paragraphs on it nonetheless, as it is the crux of the series.

Did I think this trilogy has become way outdated, and did I enjoy my reread? To answer that and more, let’s get back to Dirda � three times.

(...)


]]> Foundation (Foundation, #1) 29579 The first novel in Isaac Asimov's classic science-fiction masterpiece, the Foundation series

For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future--to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years. To preserve knowledge and save humankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in the Empire--both scientists and scholars--and brings them to a bleak planet at the edge of the galaxy to serve as a beacon of hope for future generations. He calls his sanctuary the Foundation.]]> 244 Isaac Asimov 0553803719 Bart 4 reviewed, speculative
First, a warning: I’ll have to let down recurring readers expecting a long analysis like those of the Dune books or The Book of the New Sun. This post won’t be 5,000 or 10,000 words � only 2,300. I simply don’t have that much to add to all that has been written on this seminal work, considered a “watershed� in literary history by many. Dirda quotes SF editor Donald Wollheim: “Stories published before Foundation belong to the old line, the stories published published after belong to ‘modern� science fiction.�

Before my actual reread of the trilogy, I thought this review might turn into a big examination about how Asimov deals with free will in the books, not dissimilar to my post on LOTR. It turns out that there just isn’t that much to discuss, but I’ll spend a few paragraphs on it nonetheless, as it is the crux of the series.

Did I think this trilogy has become way outdated, and did I enjoy my reread? To answer that and more, let’s get back to Dirda � three times.

(...)

]]> 4.18 1951 Foundation (Foundation, #1)
author: Isaac Asimov
name: Bart
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1951
rating: 4
read at: 2023/02/09
date added: 2023/03/08
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
I read the splendid Everyman’s Library edition � a hardback with an excellent 15-page introduction by Michael Dirda that’s isn’t expensive nonetheless. That introduction guided my reading a bit, and I’ll get back to it a few times.

First, a warning: I’ll have to let down recurring readers expecting a long analysis like those of the Dune books or The Book of the New Sun. This post won’t be 5,000 or 10,000 words � only 2,300. I simply don’t have that much to add to all that has been written on this seminal work, considered a “watershed� in literary history by many. Dirda quotes SF editor Donald Wollheim: “Stories published before Foundation belong to the old line, the stories published published after belong to ‘modern� science fiction.�

Before my actual reread of the trilogy, I thought this review might turn into a big examination about how Asimov deals with free will in the books, not dissimilar to my post on LOTR. It turns out that there just isn’t that much to discuss, but I’ll spend a few paragraphs on it nonetheless, as it is the crux of the series.

Did I think this trilogy has become way outdated, and did I enjoy my reread? To answer that and more, let’s get back to Dirda � three times.

(...)


]]> <![CDATA[Second Foundation (Foundation, #3)]]> 29580 256 Isaac Asimov 0553803735 Bart 3 reviewed, speculative
First, a warning: I’ll have to let down recurring readers expecting a long analysis like those of the Dune books or The Book of the New Sun. This post won’t be 5,000 or 10,000 words � only 2,300. I simply don’t have that much to add to all that has been written on this seminal work, considered a “watershed� in literary history by many. Dirda quotes SF editor Donald Wollheim: “Stories published before Foundation belong to the old line, the stories published published after belong to ‘modern� science fiction.�

Before my actual reread of the trilogy, I thought this review might turn into a big examination about how Asimov deals with free will in the books, not dissimilar to my post on LOTR. It turns out that there just isn’t that much to discuss, but I’ll spend a few paragraphs on it nonetheless, as it is the crux of the series.

Did I think this trilogy has become way outdated, and did I enjoy my reread? To answer that and more, let’s get back to Dirda � three times.

(...)

]]> 4.27 1953 Second Foundation (Foundation, #3)
author: Isaac Asimov
name: Bart
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1953
rating: 3
read at: 2023/02/25
date added: 2023/03/08
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
I read the splendid Everyman’s Library edition � a hardback with an excellent 15-page introduction by Michael Dirda that’s isn’t expensive nonetheless. That introduction guided my reading a bit, and I’ll get back to it a few times.

First, a warning: I’ll have to let down recurring readers expecting a long analysis like those of the Dune books or The Book of the New Sun. This post won’t be 5,000 or 10,000 words � only 2,300. I simply don’t have that much to add to all that has been written on this seminal work, considered a “watershed� in literary history by many. Dirda quotes SF editor Donald Wollheim: “Stories published before Foundation belong to the old line, the stories published published after belong to ‘modern� science fiction.�

Before my actual reread of the trilogy, I thought this review might turn into a big examination about how Asimov deals with free will in the books, not dissimilar to my post on LOTR. It turns out that there just isn’t that much to discuss, but I’ll spend a few paragraphs on it nonetheless, as it is the crux of the series.

Did I think this trilogy has become way outdated, and did I enjoy my reread? To answer that and more, let’s get back to Dirda � three times.

(...)


]]> <![CDATA[Foundation and Empire (Foundation, #2)]]> 29581 256 Isaac Asimov 0553803727 Bart 4 reviewed, speculative
First, a warning: I’ll have to let down recurring readers expecting a long analysis like those of the Dune books or The Book of the New Sun. This post won’t be 5,000 or 10,000 words � only 2,300. I simply don’t have that much to add to all that has been written on this seminal work, considered a “watershed� in literary history by many. Dirda quotes SF editor Donald Wollheim: “Stories published before Foundation belong to the old line, the stories published published after belong to ‘modern� science fiction.�

Before my actual reread of the trilogy, I thought this review might turn into a big examination about how Asimov deals with free will in the books, not dissimilar to my post on LOTR. It turns out that there just isn’t that much to discuss, but I’ll spend a few paragraphs on it nonetheless, as it is the crux of the series.

Did I think this trilogy has become way outdated, and did I enjoy my reread? To answer that and more, let’s get back to Dirda � three times.

(...)

]]> 4.23 1952 Foundation and Empire (Foundation, #2)
author: Isaac Asimov
name: Bart
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1952
rating: 4
read at: 2023/02/16
date added: 2023/03/08
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
I read the splendid Everyman’s Library edition � a hardback with an excellent 15-page introduction by Michael Dirda that’s isn’t expensive nonetheless. That introduction guided my reading a bit, and I’ll get back to it a few times.

First, a warning: I’ll have to let down recurring readers expecting a long analysis like those of the Dune books or The Book of the New Sun. This post won’t be 5,000 or 10,000 words � only 2,300. I simply don’t have that much to add to all that has been written on this seminal work, considered a “watershed� in literary history by many. Dirda quotes SF editor Donald Wollheim: “Stories published before Foundation belong to the old line, the stories published published after belong to ‘modern� science fiction.�

Before my actual reread of the trilogy, I thought this review might turn into a big examination about how Asimov deals with free will in the books, not dissimilar to my post on LOTR. It turns out that there just isn’t that much to discuss, but I’ll spend a few paragraphs on it nonetheless, as it is the crux of the series.

Did I think this trilogy has become way outdated, and did I enjoy my reread? To answer that and more, let’s get back to Dirda � three times.

(...)


]]> <![CDATA[Ralph Azham #2: The Land of the Blue Demons (2)]]> 58724578 152 Lewis Trondheim 1545809070 Bart 4
Hard to pass a definite judgement - this isn't the full story yet.

It remains very promising: a creative story that keeps on doing unexpected things without feeling contrived. My hunch atm is that I'll give 5 stars when I complete the full series.

Let's hope the final 2 volumes of the English translation will be published sooner than later.]]> 3.88 Ralph Azham #2: The Land of the Blue Demons (2)
author: Lewis Trondheim
name: Bart
average rating: 3.88
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/02/23
date added: 2023/02/24
shelves:
review:
Same review for this 2nd volume as for volume 1:

Hard to pass a definite judgement - this isn't the full story yet.

It remains very promising: a creative story that keeps on doing unexpected things without feeling contrived. My hunch atm is that I'll give 5 stars when I complete the full series.

Let's hope the final 2 volumes of the English translation will be published sooner than later.
]]> <![CDATA[Rock & roll met Frieda Vindevogel (Dutch Edition)]]> 1464195 Dutch 92 J.M.H. Berckmans 9052810451 Bart 3
De verhalen zijn in de trant van zijn twee vorige titels: twee ervan gaan over het overlijden van een moeder, andere over moord en sex. Er zitten zeker prima stukken in, maar de raamvertelling is veel sterker, en een pak interessanter. Berckmans mijmert bij monde van zijn alter ego nog wel eens over vroeger en zijn tijd in Italië, maar het wordt meer en meer duidelijk dat hij zich afkeert van een normaal leven, zich ook afkeert van normale mensen.

"Gerrit Matthijs is van de ratten besnuffeld. Nou. Denken jullie maar. Ik denk het mijne van jullie."

In 1991 is de normale wereld is stilaan de “wereld van VTM� geworden, en hoewel Berckmans niet versleten kan worden voor elitair, is zijn fascinatie voor de Soundmix Show wellicht eerder antropologisch, als chroniqueur van de tijd. Rock & Roll met Frieda Vindevogel is het eerste boek waar verbittering en een zekere misantropie echt de bovenhand nemen. De roep om tederheid is veelal afwezig, en ook angst is geen thema. Jean-Marie lijkt eerder in de aanval te gaan.

(...)

]]> 3.77 1991 Rock & roll met Frieda Vindevogel (Dutch Edition)
author: J.M.H. Berckmans
name: Bart
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1991
rating: 3
read at: 2023/02/21
date added: 2023/02/21
shelves:
review:
(...)

De verhalen zijn in de trant van zijn twee vorige titels: twee ervan gaan over het overlijden van een moeder, andere over moord en sex. Er zitten zeker prima stukken in, maar de raamvertelling is veel sterker, en een pak interessanter. Berckmans mijmert bij monde van zijn alter ego nog wel eens over vroeger en zijn tijd in Italië, maar het wordt meer en meer duidelijk dat hij zich afkeert van een normaal leven, zich ook afkeert van normale mensen.

"Gerrit Matthijs is van de ratten besnuffeld. Nou. Denken jullie maar. Ik denk het mijne van jullie."

In 1991 is de normale wereld is stilaan de “wereld van VTM� geworden, en hoewel Berckmans niet versleten kan worden voor elitair, is zijn fascinatie voor de Soundmix Show wellicht eerder antropologisch, als chroniqueur van de tijd. Rock & Roll met Frieda Vindevogel is het eerste boek waar verbittering en een zekere misantropie echt de bovenhand nemen. De roep om tederheid is veelal afwezig, en ook angst is geen thema. Jean-Marie lijkt eerder in de aanval te gaan.

(...)


]]> <![CDATA[A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East]]> 60528571 This exquisitely beautiful novel by National Book Award winner László Krasznahorkai—perhaps his most serene and poetic work� describes a search for the unobtainable and the riches to be discovered along the way. Despite the difficulties in finding the garden, the reader is closely introduced to the construction processes of the monastery (described in poetic detail) as well as the geological and biological processes of the surrounding area (the underground layers revealed beneath a bed of moss, the transportation of cypress-tree seeds by the wind, feral foxes and stray dogs meandering outside the monastery’s walls),making this an unforgettable meditation on nature, life, history, and being.]]> 130 László Krasznahorkai 0811234479 Bart 5
One could also approach it as high literature of the most oppressive sort, like Marcel Theroux did in The Guardian: “It’s not beyond me to imagine that there are readers who want to surrender to the strangeness of his prose, the long, self-cancelling sentences and the obsessive descriptions. My view is that 100 years after Ulysses and The Waste Land, his writing is a belated tribute act to modernism that perpetuates its worst traits: obscurity, self-referentiality, lazy pessimism and lack of empathy with the lives of non-academic readers.�

Having an academic background myself, I guess I’m biased. I acknowledge that A Mountain to the North, A Lake to the South, Paths to the West, A River to the East is not for everybody � what book is? � but Theroux’s remark is terribly misguided: does he ask of Colleen Hoover if she has empathy with her academic readers? So instead of lazy shots as intellectuals, he might have just acknowledged Krasznahorkai’s 2003 title simply didn’t click with him, because, indeed, he failed to connect with the prose and the themes. There is no shame in that. Shaming its writer however, is not very empathic.

But enough with the negative vibes: I think Északról hegy, Délről tó, Nyugatról hegyek, Keletről folyó is an absolute masterpiece. 5 stars! 6 stars even! I’m not an expert on translation nor Hungarian, but it seems more than remarkable that Ottilie Mulzet managed to translate such peculiar prose from an non-Indo-European language and still conveys something of László Krasznahorkai’s flow and poetry.

This is a book to surrender too, and then be rewarded with a certain ecstasy and wonder about the terrifying miracle and baffling mystery that is all that exists. The nature of reality and the reality of nature is often pondered in literature and art, its infinite mystery even celebrated, but when push comes to shove, its profound and utter incomprehensible strangeness is generally ignored. Not so by Krasznahorkai: it seems the very heart of his writing. A 2022 interview in Rekto:Verso confirms this: “I try to express something that I cannot. The highest art can build a bridge, but only until it reaches the border of the hidden reality � you cannot move beyond that. I try to reach that border through beauty. That is not the only way, but it is my way.�

When Theroux goes on in his review, writing that this book doesn’t seem interested in “the relationships, love, toil, conflicts, needs and interactions of ordinary people� he misses the point, as the lives of people are embedded in the miracle that Krasznahorkai tries to come to grips with. To me, A Mountain to the North showcased nothing but sensitivity for what it means to be alive, even if it also expresses the sentiment that a demand such as Theroux’s � to put the human in the center � is a form of self-absorbed navel gazing.

(...)

]]> 3.84 2003 A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East
author: László Krasznahorkai
name: Bart
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at: 2023/02/16
date added: 2023/02/18
shelves: reviewed, speculative, favorites
review:
One could approach this as a sensitive mythopoetic tale, about a grandson of a prince, living outside of space and time, wandering the grounds of a monastry in Kyoto, searching for an elusive, possibly perfect, garden.

One could also approach it as high literature of the most oppressive sort, like Marcel Theroux did in The Guardian: “It’s not beyond me to imagine that there are readers who want to surrender to the strangeness of his prose, the long, self-cancelling sentences and the obsessive descriptions. My view is that 100 years after Ulysses and The Waste Land, his writing is a belated tribute act to modernism that perpetuates its worst traits: obscurity, self-referentiality, lazy pessimism and lack of empathy with the lives of non-academic readers.�

Having an academic background myself, I guess I’m biased. I acknowledge that A Mountain to the North, A Lake to the South, Paths to the West, A River to the East is not for everybody � what book is? � but Theroux’s remark is terribly misguided: does he ask of Colleen Hoover if she has empathy with her academic readers? So instead of lazy shots as intellectuals, he might have just acknowledged Krasznahorkai’s 2003 title simply didn’t click with him, because, indeed, he failed to connect with the prose and the themes. There is no shame in that. Shaming its writer however, is not very empathic.

But enough with the negative vibes: I think Északról hegy, Délről tó, Nyugatról hegyek, Keletről folyó is an absolute masterpiece. 5 stars! 6 stars even! I’m not an expert on translation nor Hungarian, but it seems more than remarkable that Ottilie Mulzet managed to translate such peculiar prose from an non-Indo-European language and still conveys something of László Krasznahorkai’s flow and poetry.

This is a book to surrender too, and then be rewarded with a certain ecstasy and wonder about the terrifying miracle and baffling mystery that is all that exists. The nature of reality and the reality of nature is often pondered in literature and art, its infinite mystery even celebrated, but when push comes to shove, its profound and utter incomprehensible strangeness is generally ignored. Not so by Krasznahorkai: it seems the very heart of his writing. A 2022 interview in Rekto:Verso confirms this: “I try to express something that I cannot. The highest art can build a bridge, but only until it reaches the border of the hidden reality � you cannot move beyond that. I try to reach that border through beauty. That is not the only way, but it is my way.�

When Theroux goes on in his review, writing that this book doesn’t seem interested in “the relationships, love, toil, conflicts, needs and interactions of ordinary people� he misses the point, as the lives of people are embedded in the miracle that Krasznahorkai tries to come to grips with. To me, A Mountain to the North showcased nothing but sensitivity for what it means to be alive, even if it also expresses the sentiment that a demand such as Theroux’s � to put the human in the center � is a form of self-absorbed navel gazing.

(...)


]]> The Man Who Fell to Earth 396329 209 Walter Tevis 0345431618 Bart 3 reviewed, speculative
Sometimes the romantic thought that addicts are better attuned to the human condition and society’s ills takes hold of me. But I’m pretty sure that’s not the case, even though some addicts might have more empathy for those that can’t help themselves � and isn’t that basically everybody, to a certain degree? Being an addict confronts oneself with the non-existence of free will, even though some that have conquered their addiction will pin that victory to their moral strengths rather than their changed conditions.

So it is no surprise that lots of reviews of The Man Who Fell to Earth point to the deep humanity of this book, whatever that may mean. And while I agree the novel is still worth reading 60 years after it was first published � even somewhat of a classic � I found the portrayal of addiction a bit lacking. Tevis wrote an interesting story, even an original one, but I don’t think it is particularly deep or insightful.

(...)

]]> 4.01 1963 The Man Who Fell to Earth
author: Walter Tevis
name: Bart
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1963
rating: 3
read at: 2023/02/08
date added: 2023/02/14
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
(...)

Sometimes the romantic thought that addicts are better attuned to the human condition and society’s ills takes hold of me. But I’m pretty sure that’s not the case, even though some addicts might have more empathy for those that can’t help themselves � and isn’t that basically everybody, to a certain degree? Being an addict confronts oneself with the non-existence of free will, even though some that have conquered their addiction will pin that victory to their moral strengths rather than their changed conditions.

So it is no surprise that lots of reviews of The Man Who Fell to Earth point to the deep humanity of this book, whatever that may mean. And while I agree the novel is still worth reading 60 years after it was first published � even somewhat of a classic � I found the portrayal of addiction a bit lacking. Tevis wrote an interesting story, even an original one, but I don’t think it is particularly deep or insightful.

(...)


]]> The Atrocity Exhibition 70240 136 J.G. Ballard 1889307033 Bart 2 speculative, reviewed
Part of this review also went through an additional process, as I asked an AI to attempt to integrate & summarize some of these fragments into a coherent whole � but I don’t think it did very well on that front.

My editing is fairly minimal, not zero. I also wrote a few sentences or parts of sentence of my own.

(...)

]]> 3.83 1969 The Atrocity Exhibition
author: J.G. Ballard
name: Bart
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1969
rating: 2
read at: 2023/02/01
date added: 2023/02/06
shelves: speculative, reviewed
review:
This review is more or less a random collage of fragments that appealed to me: fragments of reviews found on ŷ, of the book’s preface by William Burroughs, of Hari Kunzru’s introduction, of a 2019 text by Rob Doyle in The Irish Times, and quotes from Ballard & the book itself.

Part of this review also went through an additional process, as I asked an AI to attempt to integrate & summarize some of these fragments into a coherent whole � but I don’t think it did very well on that front.

My editing is fairly minimal, not zero. I also wrote a few sentences or parts of sentence of my own.

(...)


]]> Jellyfish 51511438 224 Peter Williams 1789142156 Bart 2 non-fiction, reviewed
Well, the English pendant to 'Quallen' this is not. At only 180 pages, this feels like an opportunity gone wrong. Williams has written a very strange text: it fails to find focus, as this book tries to present a bird's eye view on 'jellyfish' as a phenomenon, both biological as cultural. We get some biology, but also quite a lot on the history of jellyfish research, dating all the way back to the 16th century, and before, to Aristotle & Pliny the Elder, plus some random ruminations on jellyfish in popular culture - with stuff like a movie still from 'Finding Nemo', a picture of a Roman mosaic of the mythological figure Medusa, contemporary glass art jellyfish, and a paragraph on Margaret Atwood using jellyfish as a metaphor. What's worse: the biology and the cultural remarks are generally woven together, making for a disjointed reading experience.

One has to wonder what the target audience for this little book is: this is not exactly a popular science book: terms like 'phylum' or 'strobilation' are used without explanation, but the cultural ruminations are thin, and even a bit trite. On page 127 Williams talks about an eccentric Japanese professor doing songs about jellyfish in a funny costume, and on the next page the word 'prion' is used. In the end, all the culture stuff is just musings, variations on the fact that jellyfish are strange and fascinating. They fail to be true cultural science: for instance, Williams claims jellyfish tend to be used more in poems than in prose - but this isn't backed up by research.

The book is part of the 'Animal series' by Reaktion books, and this broad view on the animal in question seems a bit of a template for a text that had to fit in under 200 pages. As a result, the biology side is a bit underdeveloped. Williams read through the scientific literature, and knows his stuff, so much is clear. He manages to provide quite a few interesting tidbits of information, and luckily, I did learn a few things. But sadly, he hardly digs deep, and things I would have liked a full page on, only get a sentence or a short paragraph. It's good as an introduction, but would hardly satisfy anyone with an academic interest in the matter - except maybe for the bibliography and the references.

There is a silver lining though: in that bibliography, I discovered a 2016 monograph on jellyfish I wasn't aware of - 'Jellyfish: A Natural History' by Lisa-ann Gershwin. I've ordered that, and I hope that will scratch my itch more thoroughly.


]]> 3.66 Jellyfish
author: Peter Williams
name: Bart
average rating: 3.66
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2020/05/12
date added: 2023/02/02
shelves: non-fiction, reviewed
review:
Good books on jellyfish are hard to find - there hardly exist any. I've had the German 'Quallen' by Thomas Heeger (2004) for years, and that really seems the most comprehensive scientific monograph on the subject: someone should translate that in English. I'm fascinated by the subject, so when I saw Williams' book reviewed in The Economist I bought it instantly.

Well, the English pendant to 'Quallen' this is not. At only 180 pages, this feels like an opportunity gone wrong. Williams has written a very strange text: it fails to find focus, as this book tries to present a bird's eye view on 'jellyfish' as a phenomenon, both biological as cultural. We get some biology, but also quite a lot on the history of jellyfish research, dating all the way back to the 16th century, and before, to Aristotle & Pliny the Elder, plus some random ruminations on jellyfish in popular culture - with stuff like a movie still from 'Finding Nemo', a picture of a Roman mosaic of the mythological figure Medusa, contemporary glass art jellyfish, and a paragraph on Margaret Atwood using jellyfish as a metaphor. What's worse: the biology and the cultural remarks are generally woven together, making for a disjointed reading experience.

One has to wonder what the target audience for this little book is: this is not exactly a popular science book: terms like 'phylum' or 'strobilation' are used without explanation, but the cultural ruminations are thin, and even a bit trite. On page 127 Williams talks about an eccentric Japanese professor doing songs about jellyfish in a funny costume, and on the next page the word 'prion' is used. In the end, all the culture stuff is just musings, variations on the fact that jellyfish are strange and fascinating. They fail to be true cultural science: for instance, Williams claims jellyfish tend to be used more in poems than in prose - but this isn't backed up by research.

The book is part of the 'Animal series' by Reaktion books, and this broad view on the animal in question seems a bit of a template for a text that had to fit in under 200 pages. As a result, the biology side is a bit underdeveloped. Williams read through the scientific literature, and knows his stuff, so much is clear. He manages to provide quite a few interesting tidbits of information, and luckily, I did learn a few things. But sadly, he hardly digs deep, and things I would have liked a full page on, only get a sentence or a short paragraph. It's good as an introduction, but would hardly satisfy anyone with an academic interest in the matter - except maybe for the bibliography and the references.

There is a silver lining though: in that bibliography, I discovered a 2016 monograph on jellyfish I wasn't aware of - 'Jellyfish: A Natural History' by Lisa-ann Gershwin. I've ordered that, and I hope that will scratch my itch more thoroughly.



]]> The Haunting of Hill House 89717 182 Shirley Jackson 0143039989 Bart 2 reviewed, speculative We Have Always Lived in the Castle was a 5-star read, so imagine my surprise that I couldn’t connect with this book, written three years prior by troubled soul Shirley Jackson. It’s a bit of classic, and no less than 13 of my friends on ŷ have read this as well, 12 of them rate it positively, most whip out even 4 or 5 stars.

It started out alright, but when Eleanor Vance arrives at the strange old mansion in the hills, things soon become a bit boring. I felt Jackson managed to convey the psychological horror much better in Castle.

I can’t fully put my finger on it, but I think my main issue was the tone in which Hill House was written. There’s a faux objectivism in the scientific endeavor of Dr. Montague’s semi-paranormal research that felt a bit flat, as it was echoed in Jackson’s tone. Add to that a certain detached irony in Jackson’s narrative voice: that irony made it so that the story didn’t feel real to me. As a result, I became less and less engaged with the characters, and also the house itself gradually lost its attraction, to the point I simply didn’t care anymore, making me stop at the halfway point.

Another thing that killed it for me was the fact that the proceedings were fairly obvious, the story fairly transparant in its method � admittedly also because I read some reviews upfront. Jackson sets up a creepy environment � via a house that has a geometry that is slightly off and a history of suicide, etc. � and in that environment the main character can then start her descent into madness. I didn’t feel there was much mystery in that.

Jackson didn’t convince me during the first half that there was enough of interest to pursue Eleanor’s mental journey, even though I feel she did manage to make her an interesting character, at least at first, when she brakes free from her sister.

I’m truly disappointed, I expected a lot after the triumph that was We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

]]> 3.85 1959 The Haunting of Hill House
author: Shirley Jackson
name: Bart
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1959
rating: 2
read at: 2023/01/26
date added: 2023/01/27
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
I thought We Have Always Lived in the Castle was a 5-star read, so imagine my surprise that I couldn’t connect with this book, written three years prior by troubled soul Shirley Jackson. It’s a bit of classic, and no less than 13 of my friends on ŷ have read this as well, 12 of them rate it positively, most whip out even 4 or 5 stars.

It started out alright, but when Eleanor Vance arrives at the strange old mansion in the hills, things soon become a bit boring. I felt Jackson managed to convey the psychological horror much better in Castle.

I can’t fully put my finger on it, but I think my main issue was the tone in which Hill House was written. There’s a faux objectivism in the scientific endeavor of Dr. Montague’s semi-paranormal research that felt a bit flat, as it was echoed in Jackson’s tone. Add to that a certain detached irony in Jackson’s narrative voice: that irony made it so that the story didn’t feel real to me. As a result, I became less and less engaged with the characters, and also the house itself gradually lost its attraction, to the point I simply didn’t care anymore, making me stop at the halfway point.

Another thing that killed it for me was the fact that the proceedings were fairly obvious, the story fairly transparant in its method � admittedly also because I read some reviews upfront. Jackson sets up a creepy environment � via a house that has a geometry that is slightly off and a history of suicide, etc. � and in that environment the main character can then start her descent into madness. I didn’t feel there was much mystery in that.

Jackson didn’t convince me during the first half that there was enough of interest to pursue Eleanor’s mental journey, even though I feel she did manage to make her an interesting character, at least at first, when she brakes free from her sister.

I’m truly disappointed, I expected a lot after the triumph that was We Have Always Lived in the Castle.


]]> <![CDATA[The Power of the Dog (Power of the Dog, #1)]]> 206236
This novel of the drug trade takes you deep inside a world riddled with corruption, betrayal, and bloody revenge. Art Montana is an obsessive DEA agent. The Barrera brothers are heirs to a drug empire. Nora Hayden is a jaded teenager who becomes a high-class hooker. Father Parada is a powerful and incorruptible Catholic priest. Callan is an Irish kid from Hell’s Kitchen who grows up to be a merciless hitman. And they are all trapped in the world of the Mexican drug Federaci. From the streets of New York City to Mexico City and Tijuana to the jungles of Central America, this is the war on drugs like you’ve never seen it.]]> 542 Don Winslow 1400096936 Bart 5 reviewed
Even so, this book is not a psychological novel. Besides on the action � murders, torture, smuggling, supply chain issues, revenge, corruption, the works � the focus is on the political side of this very real period in world history. In that sense, it is a highly educational book, and even more than Mexico the USA could be considered the chief subject.

Via DEA agent Art Keller, the book’s protagonist, we are exposed to the workings of things like Operation Condor � basically the clandestine killings of tens of thousands of people in South America orchestrated by the USA. Winslow also works in the CIA involvement in Contra cocaine trafficking, which, admittedly, is disputed by the US government. The Power of the Dog is as much about the cartels� drug empires as it is about American imperialism.

(...)

]]> 4.36 2005 The Power of the Dog (Power of the Dog, #1)
author: Don Winslow
name: Bart
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at: 2023/01/19
date added: 2023/01/22
shelves: reviewed
review:
(...)

Even so, this book is not a psychological novel. Besides on the action � murders, torture, smuggling, supply chain issues, revenge, corruption, the works � the focus is on the political side of this very real period in world history. In that sense, it is a highly educational book, and even more than Mexico the USA could be considered the chief subject.

Via DEA agent Art Keller, the book’s protagonist, we are exposed to the workings of things like Operation Condor � basically the clandestine killings of tens of thousands of people in South America orchestrated by the USA. Winslow also works in the CIA involvement in Contra cocaine trafficking, which, admittedly, is disputed by the US government. The Power of the Dog is as much about the cartels� drug empires as it is about American imperialism.

(...)


]]> <![CDATA[The Evolution of Agency: Behavioral Organization from Lizards to Humans]]> 59381689
Nature cannot build organisms biologically prepared for every contingency they might possibly encounter. Instead, Nature builds some organisms to function as feedback control systems that pursue goals, make informed behavioral decisions about how best to pursue those goals in the current situation, and then monitor behavioral execution for effectiveness. Nature builds psychological agents. In a bold new theoretical proposal, Michael Tomasello advances a typology of the main forms of psychological agency that emerged on the evolutionary pathway to human beings.

Tomasello outlines four main types of psychological agency and describes them in evolutionary order of emergence. First was the goal-directed agency of ancient vertebrates, then came the intentional agency of ancient mammals, followed by the rational agency of ancient great apes, ending finally in the socially normative agency of ancient humans. Each new form of psychological organization represented increased complexity in the planning, decision-making, and executive control of behavior. Each also led to new types of experience of the environment and, in some cases, of the organism’s own psychological functioning, leading ultimately to humans� experience of an objective and normative world that governs all of their thoughts and actions. Together, these proposals constitute a new theoretical framework that both broadens and deepens current approaches in evolutionary psychology.]]> 176 Michael Tomasello 0262047004 Bart 1 non-fiction, reviewed
As a result, I decided to call it a day - even though, admittedly, the remaining chapters (about the agency of apes and humans) might play more into Tomasello's strengths. My loss, maybe, but I cannot but operate using inference if I read scientific books: if your base is brittle, I'm not going to risk dwelling in a superstructure that seems solid. It's a form a prejudice, yes, but my time is limited, and there's way too much else to read & learn.

A few examples/thoughts:

1. It starts with an unclear conception of 'agency' itself:

"Agency is thus not about all of the many and varied things that organisms do - from building anthills to caching nuts - but rather about how' they do them. Individuals acting as agents direct and control their won actions, whatever those actions may be specifically. The scientific challenge is to identify the underlying psychological organization that makes such individual direction and control possible."

It seems to me that the real scientific challenge is to identify the underlying neural pathways that guide our muscles to perform specific behavior. Tomasello is not clear at all about what "psychological" entails, and how that ties into neurology, biology & evolution. I would advice him to read 2019's 'The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul: Learning and the Origins of Consciousness' of Simona Ginsburg & Eva Jablonka for an example of how a true scientific account of the evolution of agency could be written. It also struck me that Tomasello often names learning as crucial in his early chapters - thus confirming at least a part of Ginsburg & Jablonka's thesis - but not once does he engage in the biological pathways of learning, nor how these neural pathways might have evolved.

A bit later in the book agency turns out to be about the capability of "choosing to act or not to act, or among multiple possible actions, according to its continuous perceptual assessment of the situation as it unfolds over time (sometimes employing executive processes such as inhibition, as a further control process, during action execution)." This is equated with behaving in "psychologically agentive ways".

2. The book is full of modifiers like 'mostly' and 'to some degree', but then fails to conceptually zoom in on what this actually means for the theory at hand. E.g., page 6:

"Tomesello and Call (1997) explicitly stated that things such as spiders building spiderwebs are interesting and complex phenomena, but they are not psychological, precisely because they are mostly not under the individual spider's flexible control. The concept of agency thus, in a sense, represents the dividing line between biological and psychological approaches to behavior; it is the distinction between complex behaviors designed and controlled by Nature, as it were, versus those designed and controlled, at least to some degree, by the individual psychological agent."

Note the words & phrases "mostly", "in a sense", "at least to some degree" and "as it were". Tomesello never specifies these further. Surely it is conceptually very important in which way the individual spider does flexibly control its weaving, as is implied by the use of the word "mostly"? Again, the dividing line between biology and psychology might be clear to Tomesello himself, but he doesn't manage to make it clear to the reader. At one hand, it seems to be something binary, a dichotomy ("a dividing line") but at the same time it isn't (a matter of "degree").

Another example of this page, on the wormlike C. elegans, page 29: "However, it is unlikely that there is also a comparison with some kind of internal goal to create direction: their locomotion is mostly random or stimulus driven. And these organisms do not seem to exhibit anything that we would want to call behavioral control: they do not inhibit or otherwise control action execution, and what they learn is simply the location toward which to direct their hardwired movements."

For starters, again, "mostly"? I would like to know more on that. Second, if they learn to direct themselves to food, at least part of their movements is not "hardwired" anymore, but goal directed, I would say. Tomasello never goes into the nuts and bolts of the distinction between goal-directed behavior, and stimulus driven behavior. It seems to me an internal goal (possibly accompanied by a conscious mental representation, as sometimes in humans) is a stimulus too. The fact that it is a stimulus originating from the neural systems inside the body does not feel so conceptually different from a neural stimulus that originates outside the body, as it only matters for the onset of the stimulus, not the resulting neural paths inside the body, i.e. not for the processing of the signal. Again, as for stimuli and different kinds of learning, I'd rather read another tome that has the same rigorousness as Ginsburg & Jablonka, than this short, breezy book.

When Tomasello also admits that this worm also knows how to avoid noxious chemicals, doesn't it have some kind of "inhibition" too, and thus forms of action control? What's the difference with the "feedback control organization" he talks about on the next page?

By the way, is the phrase "we would want to call" (my italics) a telltale?

3. Tomasello seems to think that "psychologically agentive species" somehow escape mechanic (neurological) pathways. He seems to forget that everything that happens in the brain, the neural system and the body is the result of molecular movement & energetic signals. Is he a closet Vitalist?

4. It seems to me that behavioral flexibility has not so much to do with agency, as Tomasello has it, but with the capacity for learning. Again, see Ginsburg & Jablonka.

5. On lizards, Tomasello introduces the concept of "go-no-go decisions", p. 39:

"Nevertheless, despite functioning as flexible decision-makers, goal-directed agents can make only simple decisions. They do not survey and choose among multiple behavioral possibilities simultaneously but rather move sequentially from one go-no-go decision to the next. This is to be expected of an organism whose behavior emanates exclusively from the single psychological tier of perception and action, rather than from, in addition, an executive tier of decision-making and cognitive control that formulates multiple action plans and then decides among them before acting, as do more complex agents."

My question here is what happens when a lizard perceives two fat insects slowly hovering in place within reach at about the same distance at the same time?

In the same chapter part of Tomasello's reasoning hinges on the fact that lizards might learn to eat a new insect because of "behavioral agency". It seems to me this kind of behavior has not a lot to do with agency at all. Why do lizards try to eat new insects? Simply because they resemble other insects. They have about the same size, they buzz, they have wings, they have six legs, etc. It seems to me that eating a new kind of insect is not new behavior at all, just the same behavior that operates on a slightly different kind of real world input (an hitherto unmet insect presents itself to the lizard), of which the slight difference does not matter to the lizard's internal decision process, more so, the lizard might not even register that slight difference. It's like certain geese that have been observed to roll back beer cans to their nests because they think the can is one of their eggs. Behavioral agency!


Because of examples like this, I decided to abandon the book 25% in. A go-no-go decision, or a form of inhibitory control? Either way, I'm pretty sure it wasn't a form agency: the decision kinda forced itself through my eyes into my brain.

]]> 3.92 The Evolution of Agency: Behavioral Organization from Lizards to Humans
author: Michael Tomasello
name: Bart
average rating: 3.92
book published:
rating: 1
read at: 2022/11/30
date added: 2023/01/12
shelves: non-fiction, reviewed
review:
I thought developmental and comparative psychology professor Michael Tomasello's 2019 book 'Becoming Human: A Theory of Human Ontogeny' was brilliant and rigorously argued. Imagine my surprise to find the first three chapters of this short work (164 pages) practically insulting because of sloppy writing and terminological vagueness.

As a result, I decided to call it a day - even though, admittedly, the remaining chapters (about the agency of apes and humans) might play more into Tomasello's strengths. My loss, maybe, but I cannot but operate using inference if I read scientific books: if your base is brittle, I'm not going to risk dwelling in a superstructure that seems solid. It's a form a prejudice, yes, but my time is limited, and there's way too much else to read & learn.

A few examples/thoughts:

1. It starts with an unclear conception of 'agency' itself:

"Agency is thus not about all of the many and varied things that organisms do - from building anthills to caching nuts - but rather about how' they do them. Individuals acting as agents direct and control their won actions, whatever those actions may be specifically. The scientific challenge is to identify the underlying psychological organization that makes such individual direction and control possible."

It seems to me that the real scientific challenge is to identify the underlying neural pathways that guide our muscles to perform specific behavior. Tomasello is not clear at all about what "psychological" entails, and how that ties into neurology, biology & evolution. I would advice him to read 2019's 'The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul: Learning and the Origins of Consciousness' of Simona Ginsburg & Eva Jablonka for an example of how a true scientific account of the evolution of agency could be written. It also struck me that Tomasello often names learning as crucial in his early chapters - thus confirming at least a part of Ginsburg & Jablonka's thesis - but not once does he engage in the biological pathways of learning, nor how these neural pathways might have evolved.

A bit later in the book agency turns out to be about the capability of "choosing to act or not to act, or among multiple possible actions, according to its continuous perceptual assessment of the situation as it unfolds over time (sometimes employing executive processes such as inhibition, as a further control process, during action execution)." This is equated with behaving in "psychologically agentive ways".

2. The book is full of modifiers like 'mostly' and 'to some degree', but then fails to conceptually zoom in on what this actually means for the theory at hand. E.g., page 6:

"Tomesello and Call (1997) explicitly stated that things such as spiders building spiderwebs are interesting and complex phenomena, but they are not psychological, precisely because they are mostly not under the individual spider's flexible control. The concept of agency thus, in a sense, represents the dividing line between biological and psychological approaches to behavior; it is the distinction between complex behaviors designed and controlled by Nature, as it were, versus those designed and controlled, at least to some degree, by the individual psychological agent."

Note the words & phrases "mostly", "in a sense", "at least to some degree" and "as it were". Tomesello never specifies these further. Surely it is conceptually very important in which way the individual spider does flexibly control its weaving, as is implied by the use of the word "mostly"? Again, the dividing line between biology and psychology might be clear to Tomesello himself, but he doesn't manage to make it clear to the reader. At one hand, it seems to be something binary, a dichotomy ("a dividing line") but at the same time it isn't (a matter of "degree").

Another example of this page, on the wormlike C. elegans, page 29: "However, it is unlikely that there is also a comparison with some kind of internal goal to create direction: their locomotion is mostly random or stimulus driven. And these organisms do not seem to exhibit anything that we would want to call behavioral control: they do not inhibit or otherwise control action execution, and what they learn is simply the location toward which to direct their hardwired movements."

For starters, again, "mostly"? I would like to know more on that. Second, if they learn to direct themselves to food, at least part of their movements is not "hardwired" anymore, but goal directed, I would say. Tomasello never goes into the nuts and bolts of the distinction between goal-directed behavior, and stimulus driven behavior. It seems to me an internal goal (possibly accompanied by a conscious mental representation, as sometimes in humans) is a stimulus too. The fact that it is a stimulus originating from the neural systems inside the body does not feel so conceptually different from a neural stimulus that originates outside the body, as it only matters for the onset of the stimulus, not the resulting neural paths inside the body, i.e. not for the processing of the signal. Again, as for stimuli and different kinds of learning, I'd rather read another tome that has the same rigorousness as Ginsburg & Jablonka, than this short, breezy book.

When Tomasello also admits that this worm also knows how to avoid noxious chemicals, doesn't it have some kind of "inhibition" too, and thus forms of action control? What's the difference with the "feedback control organization" he talks about on the next page?

By the way, is the phrase "we would want to call" (my italics) a telltale?

3. Tomasello seems to think that "psychologically agentive species" somehow escape mechanic (neurological) pathways. He seems to forget that everything that happens in the brain, the neural system and the body is the result of molecular movement & energetic signals. Is he a closet Vitalist?

4. It seems to me that behavioral flexibility has not so much to do with agency, as Tomasello has it, but with the capacity for learning. Again, see Ginsburg & Jablonka.

5. On lizards, Tomasello introduces the concept of "go-no-go decisions", p. 39:

"Nevertheless, despite functioning as flexible decision-makers, goal-directed agents can make only simple decisions. They do not survey and choose among multiple behavioral possibilities simultaneously but rather move sequentially from one go-no-go decision to the next. This is to be expected of an organism whose behavior emanates exclusively from the single psychological tier of perception and action, rather than from, in addition, an executive tier of decision-making and cognitive control that formulates multiple action plans and then decides among them before acting, as do more complex agents."

My question here is what happens when a lizard perceives two fat insects slowly hovering in place within reach at about the same distance at the same time?

In the same chapter part of Tomasello's reasoning hinges on the fact that lizards might learn to eat a new insect because of "behavioral agency". It seems to me this kind of behavior has not a lot to do with agency at all. Why do lizards try to eat new insects? Simply because they resemble other insects. They have about the same size, they buzz, they have wings, they have six legs, etc. It seems to me that eating a new kind of insect is not new behavior at all, just the same behavior that operates on a slightly different kind of real world input (an hitherto unmet insect presents itself to the lizard), of which the slight difference does not matter to the lizard's internal decision process, more so, the lizard might not even register that slight difference. It's like certain geese that have been observed to roll back beer cans to their nests because they think the can is one of their eggs. Behavioral agency!


Because of examples like this, I decided to abandon the book 25% in. A go-no-go decision, or a form of inhibitory control? Either way, I'm pretty sure it wasn't a form agency: the decision kinda forced itself through my eyes into my brain.


]]> 2022 on ŷ 58628750
For those of you who don't like to add titles, you haven't actually 'read', you can place 2022 on ŷ on an 'exclusive' shelf. Exclusive shelves don't have to be listed under 'to read', 'currently reading', or 'read'. To create one, go to 'edit bookshelves' on your 'My Books' page, create a shelf name such as 'review-of-the year' and tick the 'exclusive' box. Your previous and future 'reviews of the year' can be collected together on this dedicated shelf.

Concept created by Fionnuala Lirsdottir in 2014
Description: Fionnuala Lirsdottir
Initial choice of Paul Cézanne as cover artist for the entire series by Kalliope
Cover art for 2022: Paul Cézanne, Tulips and Apples, 1894
Cover choice and graphics for 2022 by Jayson]]> Various Bart 0 year-end-list
Before I’ll get to this year’s favorites, a bit of blog stats (...)

As for the actual favorite book list: below are the titles I’ve given a 5-star rating on ŷ in 2022, six books in total. If I had to pick one, I’d go for (...)

Honorable mentions for (...)

]]> 4.07 2022 2022 on ŷ
author: Various
name: Bart
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/02
shelves: year-end-list
review:
I started 39 titles in 2022, one more than last year. It seems like I read a bit less speculative fiction, a bit more Dutch, a bit more non-fiction. That trend might continue, it might not, we’ll see, but I think it’s safe to say Egan, Robinson, Harrison and Flemish authors L.P. Boon & J.M.H. Berckmans will remain regulars on this blog.

Before I’ll get to this year’s favorites, a bit of blog stats (...)

As for the actual favorite book list: below are the titles I’ve given a 5-star rating on ŷ in 2022, six books in total. If I had to pick one, I’d go for (...)

Honorable mentions for (...)


]]> <![CDATA[We Know It When We See It: What the Neurobiology of Vision Tells Us About How We Think]]> 51205853 A Harvard researcher investigates the human eye in this insightful account of what vision reveals about intelligence, learning, and the greatest mysteries of neuroscience.

Spotting a face in a crowd is so easy, you take it for granted. But how you do it is one of science's great mysteries. And vision is involved with so much of everything your brain does. Explaining how it works reveals more than just how you see. In We Know It When We See It, Harvard neuroscientist Richard Masland tackles vital questions about how the brain processes information -- how it perceives, learns, and remembers -- through a careful study of the inner life of the eye.

Covering everything from what happens when light hits your retina, to the increasingly sophisticated nerve nets that turn that light into knowledge, to what a computer algorithm must be able to do before it can be called truly "intelligent," We Know It When We See It is a profound yet approachable investigation into how our bodies make sense of the world.]]> 272 Richard Masland 1541618505 Bart 1 reviewed, non-fiction
As Dawn wrote on ŷ: "a combination of extremely dense biology, a pat on the back for the research the author has done, and hero worship and name dropping of the author's colleagues." Annoyingly, it started with an extremely basic overview - too basic for a book like this - of how nerves work, but Mason lost that clarity when he got to his own field.

The problem was Masland's prose wasn't up to the task, and combined with his lack of focus, I couldn't really get into the parts of the book that did interest me. It felt like reading 4 pages of an old man rambling about his Harvard days, and another 3 pages of stuff I already knew, to finally get to 1 interesting paragraph, and so on.

I'm sure there were quite some interesting nuggets buried in this volume, but I couldn't bring myself to dig them out.

]]> 3.83 2020 We Know It When We See It: What the Neurobiology of Vision Tells Us About How We Think
author: Richard Masland
name: Bart
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2020
rating: 1
read at: 2022/12/28
date added: 2022/12/28
shelves: reviewed, non-fiction
review:
Basically, the writing style was off, so I DNFed at 30%.

As Dawn wrote on ŷ: "a combination of extremely dense biology, a pat on the back for the research the author has done, and hero worship and name dropping of the author's colleagues." Annoyingly, it started with an extremely basic overview - too basic for a book like this - of how nerves work, but Mason lost that clarity when he got to his own field.

The problem was Masland's prose wasn't up to the task, and combined with his lack of focus, I couldn't really get into the parts of the book that did interest me. It felt like reading 4 pages of an old man rambling about his Harvard days, and another 3 pages of stuff I already knew, to finally get to 1 interesting paragraph, and so on.

I'm sure there were quite some interesting nuggets buried in this volume, but I couldn't bring myself to dig them out.


]]> <![CDATA[The Mirror & the Light (Thomas Cromwell, #3)]]> 54860229 The Mirror & the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with her peerless, Booker Prize-winning novels, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power, offering a defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between royal will and a common man’s vision: of a modern nation making itself through conflict, passion and courage.

The story begins in May 1536: Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith’s son from Putney emerges from the spring’s bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen, Jane Seymour.

Cromwell, a man with only his wits to rely on, has no great family to back him, no private army. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry’s regime to the breaking point, Cromwell’s robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. All of England lies at his feet, ripe for innovation and religious reform. But as fortune’s wheel turns, Cromwell’s enemies are gathering in the shadows. The inevitable question remains: how long can anyone survive under Henry’s cruel and capricious gaze?

Eagerly awaited and eight years in the making, The Mirror & the Light completes Cromwell’s journey from self-made man to one of the most feared, influential figures of his time. Portrayed by Mantel with pathos and terrific energy, Cromwell is as complex as he is unforgettable: a politician and a fixer, a husband and a father, a man who both defied and defined his age.]]> 759 Hilary Mantel 1250182492 Bart 1
Should I've pressed on? I doubt it. If you can't sell 883 pages to a fan in the first 6%, you've probably dropped the ball for the remaining 94% as well. Crude metrics, I know, but my time on this planet is limited.

]]> 4.38 2020 The Mirror & the Light (Thomas Cromwell, #3)
author: Hilary Mantel
name: Bart
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2020
rating: 1
read at: 2022/01/01
date added: 2022/12/27
shelves:
review:
Absolutely loved book 1 & 2, but I was bored out of my mind after the execution scene - absolutely brilliant by the way. Dropped out of the book at page 50. Tedious, self-absorbed writing.

Should I've pressed on? I doubt it. If you can't sell 883 pages to a fan in the first 6%, you've probably dropped the ball for the remaining 94% as well. Crude metrics, I know, but my time on this planet is limited.


]]> Venomous Lumpsucker 59593576
The near future. Tens of thousands of species are going extinct every year. And a whole industry has sprung up around their extinctions, to help us preserve the remnants, or perhaps just assuage our guilt. For instance, the biobanks: secure archives of DNA samples, from which lost organisms might someday be resurrected . . . But then, one day, it’s all gone. A mysterious cyber-attack hits every biobank simultaneously, wiping out the last traces of the perished species. Now we’re never getting them back.

Karin Resaint and Mark Halyard are concerned with one species in particular: the venomous lumpsucker, a small, ugly bottom-feeder that happens to be the most intelligent fish on the planet. Resaint is an animal cognition scientist consumed with existential grief over what humans have done to nature. Halyard is an exec from the extinction industry, complicit in the mining operation that destroyed the lumpsucker’s last-known habitat.

Across the dystopian landscapes of the 2030s—a nature reserve full of toxic waste; a floating city on the ocean; the hinterlands of a totalitarian state—Resaint and Halyard hunt for a surviving lumpsucker. And the further they go, the deeper they’re drawn into the mystery of the attack on the biobanks. Who was really behind it? And why would anyone do such a thing?]]> 336 Ned Beauman 1641294124 Bart 3 reviewed, speculative
Beauman also seems to imply that all this talk about animals going extinct is ultimately about ourselves, not about ethics, and I agree � the fact that Richard Powers seemed to favor the opposite view in the grandstanding Bewilderment is one of that book’s biggest shortcomings. But that doesn’t save Beauman’s satire completely: is this book nihilist, or does it only pretend to be? It would have been stronger if he had positioned himself more either way.

(...)

]]> 3.77 2022 Venomous Lumpsucker
author: Ned Beauman
name: Bart
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2022/12/24
date added: 2022/12/27
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
(...)

Beauman also seems to imply that all this talk about animals going extinct is ultimately about ourselves, not about ethics, and I agree � the fact that Richard Powers seemed to favor the opposite view in the grandstanding Bewilderment is one of that book’s biggest shortcomings. But that doesn’t save Beauman’s satire completely: is this book nihilist, or does it only pretend to be? It would have been stronger if he had positioned himself more either way.

(...)


]]> The Wasp Factory 567678
The Wasp Factory is a work of horrifying compulsion: horrifying, because it enters a mind whose realities are not our own, whose values of life and death are alien to our society; compulsive, because the humour and compassion of that mind reach out to us all. A novel of extraordinary originality, imagination and comic ferocity.]]> 184 Iain Banks 0684853159 Bart 1 reviewed
Bank's short book seems devoid of any purpose. As horror if falls short. It lacks the urgency of We Have Always Lived in the Castle - probably because it feels like Banks simply amused himself writing this, it has his mischievous boyish smirk all over it, whereas Shirley Jackson was basically writing about her own agony. The language is okay, Banks is a smooth writer, but this book simply started to feel boring & repetitive after page 30. I DNF'ed at 40%.

After I stopped, I read some spoiler reviews of this, and boy, I'm glad I stopped. Psychological depth zero, and the entire set-up of the story hinges on one ludicrous idea.

]]> 3.78 1984 The Wasp Factory
author: Iain Banks
name: Bart
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1984
rating: 1
read at: 2022/12/27
date added: 2022/12/27
shelves: reviewed
review:
While I liked Bank's Culture novels a lot back when I read them 10 years ago, this one failed to grip my attention. Who are these people that find The Wasp Factory shocking or disgusting or horrific? Cruelty to animals seems like a regular thing for some kids growing up on the country side, and lots of the stuff that happens feels generic: imbue small animal skulls with protective powers, etc. Been there, done that.

Bank's short book seems devoid of any purpose. As horror if falls short. It lacks the urgency of We Have Always Lived in the Castle - probably because it feels like Banks simply amused himself writing this, it has his mischievous boyish smirk all over it, whereas Shirley Jackson was basically writing about her own agony. The language is okay, Banks is a smooth writer, but this book simply started to feel boring & repetitive after page 30. I DNF'ed at 40%.

After I stopped, I read some spoiler reviews of this, and boy, I'm glad I stopped. Psychological depth zero, and the entire set-up of the story hinges on one ludicrous idea.


]]> <![CDATA[From Matter to Life: Information and Causality]]> 34043739 514 Sara Imari Walker 1107150531 Bart 1 non-fiction, reviewed
The first essay 'The "hard problem" of Life' by Walker and Davies can't seem to come to grips with the hard reality of causality and the mystery surrounding the origin of our universe. They basically state that because things are too complex and will never be fully grasped, reductionism as a principle can't be true. As a solution, they propose another mystery, some as yet unnamed & undescribed 'new principle' or new set of natural laws that have to do with information, and which amounts to a variation of vitalism.

It also can't come to grips with the fact that our current physical laws are temporal, and possibly subject to change. They might not have existed as they do now before the Big Bang, or during the very first moments of our universe, so why insist that this is just a fringe opinion?

Lots of stuff is posed as 'established', but upon closer inspection hardly anything is. Just some examples:
- "In the case of consciousness, it seems evident that certain aspects will ultimately defy reductionist explanation, the most important being the phenomenon of qualia - (...)"
- "Our phenomenal experiences are the only aspect of consciousness that appears as though they cannot, even in principle, be reduced to known physical principles."
- "A real living system is neither deterministic nor closed, so an attempt to attribute life and mind to special initial conditions would necessarily involve fixing the entire cosmological initial state to arbitrarily high precision, even supposing it were classical." [This is especially baffling as the authors admit that defining life is hard, and they do not provide a definition of life.]

I also found anthropomorphic talk (biological cells are "autonomous agents"), and too much computer analogies (always a tell of muddled thinking, as if the stuff happening in cells is something more than just chemistry).

Basically a set of essentialist thinking. Consider this quote:
"Even if we do succeed in eventually uncovering a complete mechanistic understanding of the wiring and firing of every neuron in our brain, it might tell us nothing about thoughts, feelings, and what it is like to experience something."

Well, uncovering the complete mechanistic understanding of a certain chemical reaction also tells us nothing about what that reaction experiences. Or uncovering the complete mechanistic blueprint of an iPhone also tells us nothing about what it is like to be an iPhone. It is not because consciousness is a hard problem, that reductionism/mechanism is to be discarded.

Doesn't seem to grasp the chemistry of the cell, even though they admit it is highly complex:

"An example from genomics is an experiment performed at the Craig Venter Institute, where the genome from one species was transplanted to another and "booted up" to convert the host species to the foreign DNA's phenotype - quite literally reprogramming one species into another. Here it seems clear that it is the information content of the genome - the sequence of bits - and not the chemical nature of DNA as such that is (at least in part) "calling the shots.""

My questions are these: are these so called 'bits' anything else than molecules in their environmental context? Is the physical process happening with these molecules anything else than biochemistry? What is this "(at least in part)" piece in the quote? What do they actually mean? The authors reduce questions such as mine to "promissory reductionism" because they say "there is no realistic prospect of ever attaining such a complete material narrative". So when I insist that there is probably (very likely) a material narrative (based on the tremendous descriptive & predictive scientific successes in cell biology, chemistry, physics of the last century) that such is in principle wrong because we as humans aren't smart enough to provide that narrative fully; 100%??

The baffling nature of Walker & Davies reasoning is to be seen in this final quote:

"Expressed more succinctly, if one insists on attributing the pathway from mundane chemistry to life as the outcome of fixed dynamical laws, then (our analysis suggests) those laws must be selected with extraordinary care and precision, which is tantamount to intelligent design: it states that "life" is "written into" the laws of physics ab initio. There is no evidence at all that the actual known laws of physics possess this almost miraculous property. The way to escape from this conundrum - that "you can't get anywhere from here" is clear: we must abandon the notion of fixed laws when it comes to living and conscious systems."

Because our existence is hard to grasp/miraculous, other laws than the ones we know now must be in play? So, non-fixed laws would somehow be non-miraculous? Might it just be possible that extreme coincidence is a factor? No evidence? It's like on Wren's tomb: Si Monumentum Requiris, Circumspice. Granted, physics hasn't come up with a unified theory yet, but that doesn't mean we should resort to vitalism or discard currently fixed laws or mechanism out of hand. What is a fixed dynamical law by the way? Is it non-dynamical because it is fixed?

And moreover: what ‘laws� are they talking about? Physical & chemical laws? Because it is clear that biology has no fixed laws � aside the principle of evolution � so if they are talking about biological laws, the last part of statement would amount to stating the obvious and arguing against something hardly any serious biologist argues.

I would advice the authors of the book to read Jan Spitzer's 2021s '' for a better grasp of chemistry and the origin of life question, Alex Rosenberg's 2006s '' for a better grasp of reductionism and the reason why laws (except evolution) are absent in biology and Russell Powells 2020s '' for a better grasp of evolution and astrobiological notions of consciousness and life. As for agency & vitalism, there's the 2010 essay 'The Lucration Swerve' by Anthony Cashmore.

]]> 3.76 From Matter to Life: Information and Causality
author: Sara Imari Walker
name: Bart
average rating: 3.76
book published:
rating: 1
read at: 2022/04/04
date added: 2022/12/08
shelves: non-fiction, reviewed
review:
Muddled volume that lacks an overall definition of what 'information' actually is. Certain essays claim information to be physical, other not so. I must admit I haven't read all the essays, but I gave up after I read the introduction, the first essay, and six more that interested me the most first. I'm not saying there is nothing of worth here, but overall, it reeks of physical antireductionism.

The first essay 'The "hard problem" of Life' by Walker and Davies can't seem to come to grips with the hard reality of causality and the mystery surrounding the origin of our universe. They basically state that because things are too complex and will never be fully grasped, reductionism as a principle can't be true. As a solution, they propose another mystery, some as yet unnamed & undescribed 'new principle' or new set of natural laws that have to do with information, and which amounts to a variation of vitalism.

It also can't come to grips with the fact that our current physical laws are temporal, and possibly subject to change. They might not have existed as they do now before the Big Bang, or during the very first moments of our universe, so why insist that this is just a fringe opinion?

Lots of stuff is posed as 'established', but upon closer inspection hardly anything is. Just some examples:
- "In the case of consciousness, it seems evident that certain aspects will ultimately defy reductionist explanation, the most important being the phenomenon of qualia - (...)"
- "Our phenomenal experiences are the only aspect of consciousness that appears as though they cannot, even in principle, be reduced to known physical principles."
- "A real living system is neither deterministic nor closed, so an attempt to attribute life and mind to special initial conditions would necessarily involve fixing the entire cosmological initial state to arbitrarily high precision, even supposing it were classical." [This is especially baffling as the authors admit that defining life is hard, and they do not provide a definition of life.]

I also found anthropomorphic talk (biological cells are "autonomous agents"), and too much computer analogies (always a tell of muddled thinking, as if the stuff happening in cells is something more than just chemistry).

Basically a set of essentialist thinking. Consider this quote:
"Even if we do succeed in eventually uncovering a complete mechanistic understanding of the wiring and firing of every neuron in our brain, it might tell us nothing about thoughts, feelings, and what it is like to experience something."

Well, uncovering the complete mechanistic understanding of a certain chemical reaction also tells us nothing about what that reaction experiences. Or uncovering the complete mechanistic blueprint of an iPhone also tells us nothing about what it is like to be an iPhone. It is not because consciousness is a hard problem, that reductionism/mechanism is to be discarded.

Doesn't seem to grasp the chemistry of the cell, even though they admit it is highly complex:

"An example from genomics is an experiment performed at the Craig Venter Institute, where the genome from one species was transplanted to another and "booted up" to convert the host species to the foreign DNA's phenotype - quite literally reprogramming one species into another. Here it seems clear that it is the information content of the genome - the sequence of bits - and not the chemical nature of DNA as such that is (at least in part) "calling the shots.""

My questions are these: are these so called 'bits' anything else than molecules in their environmental context? Is the physical process happening with these molecules anything else than biochemistry? What is this "(at least in part)" piece in the quote? What do they actually mean? The authors reduce questions such as mine to "promissory reductionism" because they say "there is no realistic prospect of ever attaining such a complete material narrative". So when I insist that there is probably (very likely) a material narrative (based on the tremendous descriptive & predictive scientific successes in cell biology, chemistry, physics of the last century) that such is in principle wrong because we as humans aren't smart enough to provide that narrative fully; 100%??

The baffling nature of Walker & Davies reasoning is to be seen in this final quote:

"Expressed more succinctly, if one insists on attributing the pathway from mundane chemistry to life as the outcome of fixed dynamical laws, then (our analysis suggests) those laws must be selected with extraordinary care and precision, which is tantamount to intelligent design: it states that "life" is "written into" the laws of physics ab initio. There is no evidence at all that the actual known laws of physics possess this almost miraculous property. The way to escape from this conundrum - that "you can't get anywhere from here" is clear: we must abandon the notion of fixed laws when it comes to living and conscious systems."

Because our existence is hard to grasp/miraculous, other laws than the ones we know now must be in play? So, non-fixed laws would somehow be non-miraculous? Might it just be possible that extreme coincidence is a factor? No evidence? It's like on Wren's tomb: Si Monumentum Requiris, Circumspice. Granted, physics hasn't come up with a unified theory yet, but that doesn't mean we should resort to vitalism or discard currently fixed laws or mechanism out of hand. What is a fixed dynamical law by the way? Is it non-dynamical because it is fixed?

And moreover: what ‘laws� are they talking about? Physical & chemical laws? Because it is clear that biology has no fixed laws � aside the principle of evolution � so if they are talking about biological laws, the last part of statement would amount to stating the obvious and arguing against something hardly any serious biologist argues.

I would advice the authors of the book to read Jan Spitzer's 2021s '' for a better grasp of chemistry and the origin of life question, Alex Rosenberg's 2006s '' for a better grasp of reductionism and the reason why laws (except evolution) are absent in biology and Russell Powells 2020s '' for a better grasp of evolution and astrobiological notions of consciousness and life. As for agency & vitalism, there's the 2010 essay 'The Lucration Swerve' by Anthony Cashmore.


]]> Spring Cannot Be Cancelled 58161437
On turning eighty, David Hockney sought out rustic tranquility for the first time: a place to watch the sunset and the change of the seasons; a place to live a life of simple pleasures, undisturbed and undistracted; a place to keep the madness of the world at bay. So when Covid-19 and lockdown struck, it made little difference to life at La Grande Cour, the centuries-old Normandy farmhouse where Hockney set up a studio a year before, in time to paint the arrival of spring. In fact, he relished the enforced isolation as an opportunity for even greater devotion to his art.

Spring Cannot be Cancelled is an uplifting manifesto that affirms art's capacity to divert and inspire. It is based on a wealth of new conversations and correspondence between Hockney and the art critic Martin Gayford, his long-time friend and collaborator. Their exchanges are illustrated by a selection of Hockney's new, unpublished Normandy drawings and paintings alongside works by van Gogh, Monet, Bruegel and others.

We see how Hockney is propelled ever forward by his infectious enthusiasms and sense of wonder. A lifelong contrarian, he has been in the public eye for sixty years, yet remains entirely unconcerned by the view of critics or even history. He is utterly absorbed by his four acres of northern France and by the themes that have fascinated him for decades: light, colour, space, perception, water, trees. He has much to teach us, not only about how to see ... but about how to live.]]> 257 David Hockney 0500776709 Bart 4
The book is somewhat falsely advertised though: “It is based on a wealth of new conversations and correspondence between Hockney and art critic Martin Gayford, his long-time friend and collaborator. Their exchanges are illustrated by a selection of Hockney’s new, unpublished Normandy iPad drawings and paintings alongside works by van Gogh, Monet, Bruegel, and others.�

This gives the impression that the book consists mainly of “their exchanges�, but that’s not true at all. The book is mainly Martin Gayford’s musings and anecdotes about Hockney and art in general, indeed based on their Facetime talks and emails. I’d say the bulk of the text, about 80%, is Gayford’s prose, intersected with fragments of what Hockney said or wrote.

(...)

Not that it is fully without problems: the main issue being that Gayford isn’t critical at all, and I think the book would have benefited if he would have given a different viewpoint to some of Hockney’s statements � most notably about Duchamp and about photography. Another issue is its overall lightness: some parts border on the clichéd � panta rhei, true, but that isn’t very insightful. Gayford is at his best when he simply tries to describe Hockney’s work: “a seamless blend of the sophisticated and the straightforward.�

(...)


]]> 4.47 2021 Spring Cannot Be Cancelled
author: David Hockney
name: Bart
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/11/30
shelves:
review:
(...)

The book is somewhat falsely advertised though: “It is based on a wealth of new conversations and correspondence between Hockney and art critic Martin Gayford, his long-time friend and collaborator. Their exchanges are illustrated by a selection of Hockney’s new, unpublished Normandy iPad drawings and paintings alongside works by van Gogh, Monet, Bruegel, and others.�

This gives the impression that the book consists mainly of “their exchanges�, but that’s not true at all. The book is mainly Martin Gayford’s musings and anecdotes about Hockney and art in general, indeed based on their Facetime talks and emails. I’d say the bulk of the text, about 80%, is Gayford’s prose, intersected with fragments of what Hockney said or wrote.

(...)

Not that it is fully without problems: the main issue being that Gayford isn’t critical at all, and I think the book would have benefited if he would have given a different viewpoint to some of Hockney’s statements � most notably about Duchamp and about photography. Another issue is its overall lightness: some parts border on the clichéd � panta rhei, true, but that isn’t very insightful. Gayford is at his best when he simply tries to describe Hockney’s work: “a seamless blend of the sophisticated and the straightforward.�

(...)



]]> The Years of Rice and Salt 2723 763 Kim Stanley Robinson 0553580078 Bart 4 reviewed, speculative
Robinson shows himself to be an idealist, having written yet another “romance in which humanity struggles to work out its dharma, to better itself, and so generation by generation to make progress, fighting for justice, and an end to want, with the strong implication that we will eventually work our way up to the source of the peach blossom stream, and the age of great peace will come into being.�

But, as always with Robinson, it is more complex than that, because Zhu Isao, the fictional founder of the League of All Peoples School of Revolutionary Change, continues that passage. It is probably the most explicit formulation of Robinson’s own poetics, so any Robinson aficionado would do well to read this carefully, more so, it should be of any interest to any student & lover of literature.

“It is a secular version of the Hindu and Buddhist tale of nirvana succesfully achieved. (�) The opposite of this mode is the ironic or satiric mode, which I call entropic history, from the physical sciences, or nihilism, or, in the usage of certain old legends, the story of the fall. In this mode, everything that humanity tries to do fails, or rebounds against it, and the combination of biological reality and moral weakness, of death and evil, means that nothing in human affairs can succeed. Taken to its extreme this leads to (�) people who say it is all a chaos without causes, and that taken all in all, it would have been better never to have been born. These two modes of emplotment represent end-point extremes, in that one says we are masters of the world and can defeat death, while the other says that we are captives of the world, and can never win against death. (�) two other modes of emplotment (�) tragedy and comedy. These two are mixed and partial modes compared to their absolutist outliers (�) they both have to do with reconciliation. In comedy the reconciliation is of people with other people, and with society at large. The weave of family with family, tribe with clan � this is how comedies end, this is what makes them comedy: the marriage with someone from a different clan, and the return of spring. Tragedies make a darker reconciliation. (�) they tell the story of humanity face-to-face with reality itself, therefor facing death and dissolution and defeat. Tragic heroes are destroyed, but for those who survive to tell their tale, their is a rise in consciousness, in awareness of reality, and this is valuable in and of itself, dark though that knowledge may be. (�) Now, I suggest that as historians, it is best not to get trapped in one mode or another, as so many do; it is too simple a solution, and does not match well with events as experienced. Instead we should weave a story that holds in its pattern as much as possible. It should be like the Daoists’s yin-yang symbol, with eyes of tragedy and comedy dotting the larger fields of dharma and nihilism. That old figure is the perfect image of all our stories put together, with the dark spot of our comedies marring the brilliance of dharma, and the blaze of the tragic knowledge emerging from black nothingness. The ironic history by itself, we can reject out of hand. Of course we are bad; of course things go wrong. But why dwell on it? Why pretend this is the whole story? Irony is merely death walking among us. It doesn’t take up the challenge, it isn’t life speaking. But I suppose we also have to reject the purest version of dharma history, the transcending of this world and this life, the perfection of our way of being. It may happen in the bardo, if there is a bardo, but in this world, all is mixed. We are animals, death is our fate. So at best we could say the history of the species has to be made as much like dharma as possible, by a collective act of the will. This leaves the middle modes, comedy and tragedy. (�) Surely we have a great deal of both of these. Perhaps the way to construct a proper history is to inscribe the whole figure, and say that for the individual, ultimately, it is a tragedy; for the society, comedy. If we can make it so.�

A bit later, might Robinson talk about himself? “Zhu Isao’s own predilection was clearly for comedy. He was a social creature.� Whatever the answer, it is clear that, as a species, we need more weaving indeed, more cooperation, more family. Isn’t that as good a meaning as any � especially if you consider Robinson’s one line version of human history: “Meanwhile a kind of monkey kept on doing more things, increasing in number, taking over the planet by means of meanings.�

Highly recommended � except chapter 9.

]]> 3.76 2002 The Years of Rice and Salt
author: Kim Stanley Robinson
name: Bart
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2022/11/20
date added: 2022/11/30
shelves: reviewed, speculative
review:
(...)

Robinson shows himself to be an idealist, having written yet another “romance in which humanity struggles to work out its dharma, to better itself, and so generation by generation to make progress, fighting for justice, and an end to want, with the strong implication that we will eventually work our way up to the source of the peach blossom stream, and the age of great peace will come into being.�

But, as always with Robinson, it is more complex than that, because Zhu Isao, the fictional founder of the League of All Peoples School of Revolutionary Change, continues that passage. It is probably the most explicit formulation of Robinson’s own poetics, so any Robinson aficionado would do well to read this carefully, more so, it should be of any interest to any student & lover of literature.

“It is a secular version of the Hindu and Buddhist tale of nirvana succesfully achieved. (�) The opposite of this mode is the ironic or satiric mode, which I call entropic history, from the physical sciences, or nihilism, or, in the usage of certain old legends, the story of the fall. In this mode, everything that humanity tries to do fails, or rebounds against it, and the combination of biological reality and moral weakness, of death and evil, means that nothing in human affairs can succeed. Taken to its extreme this leads to (�) people who say it is all a chaos without causes, and that taken all in all, it would have been better never to have been born. These two modes of emplotment represent end-point extremes, in that one says we are masters of the world and can defeat death, while the other says that we are captives of the world, and can never win against death. (�) two other modes of emplotment (�) tragedy and comedy. These two are mixed and partial modes compared to their absolutist outliers (�) they both have to do with reconciliation. In comedy the reconciliation is of people with other people, and with society at large. The weave of family with family, tribe with clan � this is how comedies end, this is what makes them comedy: the marriage with someone from a different clan, and the return of spring. Tragedies make a darker reconciliation. (�) they tell the story of humanity face-to-face with reality itself, therefor facing death and dissolution and defeat. Tragic heroes are destroyed, but for those who survive to tell their tale, their is a rise in consciousness, in awareness of reality, and this is valuable in and of itself, dark though that knowledge may be. (�) Now, I suggest that as historians, it is best not to get trapped in one mode or another, as so many do; it is too simple a solution, and does not match well with events as experienced. Instead we should weave a story that holds in its pattern as much as possible. It should be like the Daoists’s yin-yang symbol, with eyes of tragedy and comedy dotting the larger fields of dharma and nihilism. That old figure is the perfect image of all our stories put together, with the dark spot of our comedies marring the brilliance of dharma, and the blaze of the tragic knowledge emerging from black nothingness. The ironic history by itself, we can reject out of hand. Of course we are bad; of course things go wrong. But why dwell on it? Why pretend this is the whole story? Irony is merely death walking among us. It doesn’t take up the challenge, it isn’t life speaking. But I suppose we also have to reject the purest version of dharma history, the transcending of this world and this life, the perfection of our way of being. It may happen in the bardo, if there is a bardo, but in this world, all is mixed. We are animals, death is our fate. So at best we could say the history of the species has to be made as much like dharma as possible, by a collective act of the will. This leaves the middle modes, comedy and tragedy. (�) Surely we have a great deal of both of these. Perhaps the way to construct a proper history is to inscribe the whole figure, and say that for the individual, ultimately, it is a tragedy; for the society, comedy. If we can make it so.�

A bit later, might Robinson talk about himself? “Zhu Isao’s own predilection was clearly for comedy. He was a social creature.� Whatever the answer, it is clear that, as a species, we need more weaving indeed, more cooperation, more family. Isn’t that as good a meaning as any � especially if you consider Robinson’s one line version of human history: “Meanwhile a kind of monkey kept on doing more things, increasing in number, taking over the planet by means of meanings.�

Highly recommended � except chapter 9.


]]>