When I found out there was going to be a graphic novel version of the first Tales of the City book, obviously I was going to jump on that ASAP. The onWhen I found out there was going to be a graphic novel version of the first Tales of the City book, obviously I was going to jump on that ASAP. The only catch? The graphic novel was in French, no English version available, and as I've previously mentioned here, my French is poor to nonexistent. No matter! I went on Amazon.fr and managed to click the appropriate buttons, and a copy made its way to me across the ocean.
I figured between the little French I did have, the pictures, and the fact that I already knew the story quite well, I'd have a good experience reading this, and I was mostly right. I was able to tell what was going on, but I was acutely aware that the writer of this comic probably made her own choices about what dialogue to include or perhaps even modify, and that I was missing out on nearly all of that. Still, as I continued to read I was able to figure out some of the text through sheer repetition of certain words. It made me think that if I just read enough graphic novels in French I might indeed master it someday!
The art was wonderful. Some of it reminded me a bit of Tintin and some of Chris Ware, but mostly it was its own delightful thing, a bit impressionistic and full of vivid color. The characters were all perfectly drawn, and thinking of them now makes me smile.
Although I got this book sometime last year, the craziness of 2021 meant I just got to it this month. It's an odd bit of timing, because today I learned that an English version is coming out next month after all! Still, although I'm happy I'll have an opportunity to read and understand all the speech bubbles, I don't regret "reading" this French version; it was a lovely experience all its own....more
These are the days of miracles and wonder this is the long-distance call the way the camera follows us in slow-mo the way we look to us all the way we looThese are the days of miracles and wonder this is the long-distance call the way the camera follows us in slow-mo the way we look to us all the way we look to a distant constellation that’s dying in a corner of the sky these are the days of miracles and wonder and don’t cry, baby, don’t cry
I heard Paul Simon’s “Boy in the Bubble” in the car this morning and felt the way I always do when I hear it: That it could have been written yesterday. And because I’ve been thinking about Uncanny Valley lately, it made me think about that.
I don’t know why I’m so fascinated by startup culture. I think part of it is that I feel like it happened while my back was turned. While I was working for a small press that still sent authors hard copies of proofs, people on the other side of the country were remaking the world. I took a programming class when I was twelve; it I had been able to recognize the future when I saw it, maybe I could have been one of them! Of course, I graduated college in 1993, so I might’ve been gone after the first pop of the bubble, who knows. But for some reason I think about this.
So a memoir like Uncanny Valley, about a young woman who leaves the idea of a life in publishing for a career in Silicon Valley, is automatically interesting to me, and for me this book primarily functioned as a workplace memoir, taking place in one of the weirdest and yet most powerful and influential industries imaginable. I reveled in the bizarre stories. I identified with the existential angst. I learned a lot about how things work out there, but I was always aware that it was just one woman’s story and that probably every single person she worked with had their own take, some diametrically opposed to Wiener’s. Some of it I expected: the sexism, the outrageous sums of money. I guess none of it was really unexpected.
Well, except this: Sorry to generalize, but in a lot of books and articles by younger people who’ve grown up with the internet, they may acknowledge that the internet is harming us, but still they seem to resist the idea of a life that doesn’t revolve around it (Jia Tolentino, whose work I like, may be the most prominent example of this). Wiener is different: Her time in the trenches makes her want to get as far away from the whole thing as she possibly can. She wonders if she can break away from analytics and customer support, and become a writer instead. And although she is humbled by how irrelevant serious writing and books are in Silicon Valley, she does it anyway. (The cashed-in stock options helped, of course.) So that was different, and rightly or wrongly, it made me trust her a little more.
And because I trusted her a little more I was willing to overlook some of this book’s faults, most particularly a weird tendency to turn everything into a symbol, from the décor of bars to company-branded T-shirts of the sort that have actually been around for decades. I couldn’t help thinking, this all happened 5 years ago; it’s too soon to know what’s really a symbol of anything and what those symbols might mean. It added a level of portentousness that felt artificial.
Except that maybe it didn’t feel that artificial, not really. Having it spelled out, exactly how much information tech companies have about us and how seriously they were not taking it, it was terrifying, and grim. Things are moving a lot faster than they used to; it’s possible all the portentous symbols mean exactly what they look like they mean. And maybe that’s the reason why something that initially seemed so miraculous already feels like it’s become what everything else becomes—a few people grabbing a lot of power and a lot of money while the rest of our backs are turned. We don’t know where it’s going, and with people like Wiener bailing out, who’s even going to tell us now?...more
I Moved to Los Angeles to Work in Animation is a friendly, pretty comic about exactly what it says it's about: After spending years barely scraping toI Moved to Los Angeles to Work in Animation is a friendly, pretty comic about exactly what it says it's about: After spending years barely scraping together a living as a freelance illustrator in Portland, Oregon (as housing costs go through the roof), Natalie Nourigat decided to try to get a full-time job working for an animation studio, and eventually succeeded. The book describes how she got the job, what it's like being in the job, and what it's like moving to and adjusting to living in Los Angeles. If you'd like a similar career, this information will be very useful to you. As for me, I just enjoy reading about creative people and how their creativity manifests in their lives, and this was a fun and entertaining entry in that category....more
Natalie Tan's Book of Luck and Fortune shouldn't have worked for me at all. This tale of a young woman who returns to her hometown, Chinatown in San FNatalie Tan's Book of Luck and Fortune shouldn't have worked for me at all. This tale of a young woman who returns to her hometown, Chinatown in San Francisco, following her mother's death and pledges to re-open her late grandmother's restaurant, thereby revitalizing the block, is slow-moving and repetitive: We hear over and over again about how the block has fallen onto hard times, how Natalie wants to re-open the restaurant, how Natalie fears she isn't a talented enough chef to succeed with the restaurant, how everyone else believes Natalie is talented enough, but Natalie fears she isn't, but she has to be, because the block has fallen on hard times and needs to be revitalized, etc., etc. There are also too many food-related similes and some magical realism that doesn't jibe with book's casual tone; that took some getting used to.
Ultimately, though, I was won over by the appealing setting and premise, and mostly by Natalie herself—she's a simple soul, but she really wants to improve herself and her lot in life, live up to the accomplishments of her ancestors, and make connections with her neighbors. There's a love interest—a very appealing one—but he's an afterthought. This book is about Natalie figuring out what she wants in life and making it happen, in the setting of a close-knit community. I appreciated that! This was the lightest of light reads, but if that's what you're looking for, you might have fun with this book, as I did.
I won this ARC in a Goodreads giveaway. Thank you to the publisher....more
It was a cowardly move, he knew, but he was a coward.
As has already been established here on Goodreads, I was a big fan of Schulman's novel P.S. but wIt was a cowardly move, he knew, but he was a coward.
As has already been established here on Goodreads, I was a big fan of Schulman's novel P.S. but was underwhelmed by the more recent This Beautiful Life. Initially, to my dismay, Come with Me seemed to have a lot in common with the latter book: Privileged white straight middle-aged married couple; wife in a constant state of feeling put-upon, husband completely clueless in the emotional intelligence department, teenage son depressingly pervy and self-centered, younger sibling(s) in need of protection from the well-meaning but oblivious adults around them. Both novels also contain more viewpoints than seems strictly necessary for such short (200-300 pp.) books. I was so disappointed that I nearly DNF'd this.
Then Schulman threw a curveball and suddenly I was riveted. Obviously I won't tell you what it is, and it might have been kind of a cheap trick in another writer's hands, but in this case it made me realize what a good writer Schulman really is. Somehow she had set the whole thing up so that by the time the shocking event happened, I was invested without even knowing it. An odd compliment, I know, but I cannot deny that after that I didn't want to do anything but read Come with Me, and it ended up being a completely satisfying reading experience.
The book is bafflingly flawed. In addition to all those viewpoints, it tries to do too much—major world events and issues are incorporated; the lives and concerns of middle-aged folks, both married and divorced, are dealt with in ways that seem to be trying to say something bigger; the culture of Silicon Valley/Palo Alto and really, the entire internet itself, not to mention the weird complicated topic of multiverses, are all up for discussion. But the sci-fi element the book description promises... isn't quite there, and the people are pretty much all terrible. It seems like the novel should barely hang together, but for some reason, for me it did.
So, yes, Come with Me is ambitious, and it also manages to be vivid and nimble and thought-provoking and engaging. It defied my expectations over and over again, and when it comes to novels I can't think of much I admire more than that....more
In case you weren't already aware: Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
I so want to discuss various elements of Bad Blood, but I want even more not to In case you weren't already aware: Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
I so want to discuss various elements of Bad Blood, but I want even more not to give anything away for those who haven't read it yet. I'll just say that this book is about power and money and megalomania and extreme cowardice and fear but also the kind of extraordinary bravery for which we should all be grateful. I was riveted and APPALLED and it was such a good story that I didn't want it to end, but at the same time I really wanted those bastards to get what they deserved. Highly recommended!...more
For some reason I recently got it into my head that I should read The Dharma Bums in the near future, so when I spotted a pristine copy on my library'For some reason I recently got it into my head that I should read The Dharma Bums in the near future, so when I spotted a pristine copy on my library's "New Arrivals" shelf it seemed like fate. Now that I've read it, I'm bewildered. What is this book? Are we meant to take it seriously? I was alternately amused, annoyed, disturbed, and edified by it, and there was no overlap in these feelings. I never felt amused AND annoyed; never felt disturbed AND edified. Only one thing at a time. And so I will take these feelings one by one.
I was amused!
Most of The Dharma Bums is written in a casual style and is simply about "Ray Smith" (Jack Kerouac) and his friends "Alvah Goldberg" (Allen Ginsberg), "Japhy Ryder" (Gary Snyder), and other lesser Beats hanging out together. This casual, conversational style had the effect of making me feel like I was there with them. Pretending I was in the room with these obnoxious party people who are somehow some of the most revered writers of the 20th century was fun! I imagined how I would laugh at the way they drunkenly ran their mouths off, so in love with their own brilliance. I pictured myself rolling my eyes when they suggested I participate in "yabyum." I thought about what it would be like to laze around Berkeley and Oakland, bumming rides off people, drinking jugs of port (did people do this a lot back then? There seemed to be jugs of port everywhere), and crashing on other people's floors. It was like a vacation to a world I never knew I wanted to visit.
I was annoyed!
Except for an amusing episode when Kerouac and his friends decide to climb Matterhorn Peak, The Dharma Bums had no narrative momentum whatsoever. Despite the book's appealing elements, it was easy to put down and easy not to pick up again. It was self-indulgent to an absurd degree. And it was pretty sexist and occasionally racist. I was expecting that so it wasn't a dealbreaker for me, but that doesn't mean it wasn't unpleasant. Kerouac and his friends are all about personal freedom, but only when it comes to young white dudes like themselves.
I was disturbed!
Jack Kerouac depicts himself as an obvious alcoholic, yet it somehow doesn't seem obvious to him. He's unable to do anything without the ubiquitous jugs of port, and when his friends and family call him on it, he's dismissive. The poet Gary Snyder is both his best friend and his biggest challenger in this regard, asking him how he expects to be mindful when he's in a near-constant state of intoxication, often wondering why he spends so much time lying around drinking instead of doing things. Kerouac just brushes it off. At one point while hiking with Snyder, Kerouac idly wonders which of them will die first. As of this writing, Gary Snyder is still alive. As of this writing, Kerouac has been dead for nearly 50 years, succumbing to alcohol-related ailments 12 years after the events of this book, at the age of 47. Knowing this cast a shadow over the book that was impossible to ignore.
I was enlightened!
I said "edified" above, because this book doesn't literally cause enlightenment. It is, however, a fascinating document of the way people try to live out their Buddhist ideals. Kerouac often depicts himself meditating and trying to be at one with the natural world, but he's also willing to admit that he's sometimes depressed on his solitary travels and has to take a few moments to cry. The arguments he has with Snyder and Ginsberg about the various tenets of Buddhism and how they should play out in their lives were fascinating, real, and unlike anything I've read before. And Kerouac's compassion for people in general comes through all the time. He laments the way people seem mesmerized by TV ("everybody's thinking the same thing") but also has faith in their ability to be better; while hitchhiking he talks about meditation with a random stranger who picks him up, and isn't surprised with the stranger admits that he's always wanted to try it himself. "Everybody knows everything," Kerouac says approvingly, and as a reader you can really believe it, that everyone is trying to be better, that everyone has the answers deep inside of them if only they can get in touch with them. But it's a process that's full of contradictions. Kerouac spends a couple of months on fire lookout high in the mountains of Washington State, where there's a daily battle between his awed appreciation of the natural world, and his complete isolation. He has moments of sadness and depression but then is shocked awake by beauty: "Okay world," he says, "I'll love ya." These contradictions and battles are at the heart of Kerouac's entire personality, his entire view of the world and his place in it. At one point, Kerouac marvels at a sunset high in the mountains, the light seeming to illuminate a hope that's "brilliant and bleak beyond words." He could just as easily have been describing himself....more
I'll Be Gone in the Dark does several things very successfully. It reports compellingly on the Golden State Killer and the various law-enforcement perI'll Be Gone in the Dark does several things very successfully. It reports compellingly on the Golden State Killer and the various law-enforcement personnel who tried to track him down—and in some cases, are still trying. It gives a fascinating window into Michelle McNamara's own psyche: why she became interested in serial killers and the effect her fascination has had on her entire life. And most indelibly, for me, it creates an immersive portrait of California during the 1970s and early 1980s—not the major cities everyone's heard of, but the smaller cities, less glamorous and also much less inclined to be expecting crimes like the ones the GSK perpetrated. I genuinely felt I was there, in those suburban towns with their sunny, 75-degree climate, their manicured lawns and freeways and condos. As a result, the creeping menace of the GSK was even more indelible. I still feel it now as I think about I'll Be Gone in the Dark, nearly two weeks after I finished it.
If I had rated and reviewed this book immediately after I finished reading it, I would have given it four stars. Not long after I put it down, though, my conscience started bothering me. In her foreword to I'll Be Gone in the Dark, Gillian Flynn writes about her enthusiasm for true-crime books, and how she deals with the guilt of being entertained by other people's immense suffering by reading only the best—and this book, Flynn is quick to assert, is one of the best. I don't disagree with her assessment of the book's quality, but I'm afraid my guilt wasn't as easily ameliorated as Flynn's. Maybe it's because I very, very rarely read true crime, but I feel kind of upside-down on this book: There wasn't enough that was edifying about it—in terms of insight into serial killers, for example—to justify the rapt absorption I felt while reading about these hideous, cruel, and violent events. This is not to say that I think people who love true-crime books are doing something morally questionable—not at all. Just that for me, who is pretty new to this genre, the riveting reading experience I got may not have been worth the stain the detailed descriptions of sadistic rapes and murders left on my soul. YMMV....more
On reading California Calling: A Self-Interrogation (hey, someone was going to do this, so it might as well be me)
You were really excited to win this On reading California Calling: A Self-Interrogation (hey, someone was going to do this, so it might as well be me)
You were really excited to win this book in a Goodreads giveaway, weren't you?
Yes, I was! In fact, of all 123 books I've won in Goodreads giveaways, I may have been most excited about this one.
Hold up. You've won 123 books in Goodreads giveaways? But no one ever wins those. Do you have a fix in or something?
Sigh. You have to be fairly systematic about it. I check the giveaways every day and probably enter at least 3 or 4 a day. In that sense, 123 books is actually a fairly small percentage of the giveaways I've entered. But you can't just enter one every few months when you come across it and then be amazed that you never win. The odds are against you; entering more giveaways increases your odds. Anyway, you're derailing the review. Can we move on?
Sorry. So why were you so enthused to win this book in particular?
It just sounded like my kind of thing: Unusual structure, intellectual inquiry. I thought it might be along the lines of Maggie Nelson or Eula Biss. And the California thing can't help but bring Joan Didion to mind. Plus I like California and, as a person from a landlocked northeastern state, have always been low-level fascinated by it. And California Calling is published by an interesting small press from Oregon. I was excited to check out one of their offerings.
So did the book live up to your expectations?
In a word, no. It did have an unusual structure, but as I read I thought the structure was mainly serving to obscure the fact that there weren't a lot of original ideas here, and that the writing didn't exactly sparkle. Meanwhile the most interesting parts of the book, the parts about her family and her emigration from Montreal, would have benefited from a more straightforward presentation. Ultimately the book offered little in the way of either intellectual stimulation or emotional impact.
Not every author needs their writing to have emotional impact, you know.
I think every writer wants the reader to feel something besides impatience and annoyance.
So what annoyed you about this book?
The language was esoteric in a way that wasn't convincing. In particular, writing from the point of view of your childhood self in an esoteric way just doesn't work. Children don't think that way, and even if Singer did think that way as a child she probably doesn't really remember it. Save the esoteric language for talking about how you're reacting to your childhood as an adult; don't try to force that kind of thinking on your young self. In any event, for all the book's esoteric qualities, its thinking was also at times irritatingly simplistic.
You're just angry that she was condescending about Tales of the City.
I am angry, yes, but it's also a good example of what I'm talking about. She describes Maupin's characters as "archetypes" but seems not to realize that most of them weren't archetypes back when the book was written. A "pot-growing landlady" and a "girl's-best-friend gay guy" might seem more common now, but if that's the case it's probably because of Maupin's groundbreaking work. This seems like a fairly obvious point and it's strange that Singer missed it. But it's not the only example of simplistic thinking here. In particular, the stuff about the consumerist wonders of American malls was so cliched and done. Singer seems not to realize this ground has been gone over so many times in the past few decades that there's no further insight to be wrung from it. Really, the whole myth of California as promised land has been visited and revisited so many times—as Singer herself acknowledges—that it's hard to imagine anyone being able to say anything truly new about it. Certainly this book doesn't seem to.
You also didn't like it when she kept implying Hester Prynne was a slut, did you?
Again, that idea, in addition to being inaccurate, is so done. It's possible she was trying to be funny, but the mix of dead-seriousness and humor in this book was so awkward that it's hard to tell.
Anything else that annoyed you about the book?
Yes, when she made the brutal murder of a young woman by the Yosemite Killer all about herself and her loneliness. That's a rookie mistake, and an offensive one. I could barely believe what I was reading.
Did you like how the end of the book seemed to imply that the solution to her loneliness and feelings of worthlessness was meeting the right man?
I think you can guess how I felt about that.
As a copy editor yourself, how did you feel about the "device" of footnoting the copy editor's queries and then including her responses?
Well, it made me think that she must have been hard to work with. I also wonder what she was trying to prove. Does she think there's something clever or deep about providing enigmatic, pseudointellectual responses to straightforward queries? The fact that she chose to include these exchanges in the book was ineffective at best and obnoxious at worst.
Is it possible you're just envious that this author published a mediocre book with a cool small press and got gushing quotes from people like Lidia Yuknavitch and Claire Dederer?
Yes. I mean, many of us could write a mediocre book and not achieve this kind of success, so I do get envious and my envy colors my reading. But the prerequisite for this envy is the book not being that great to begin with. I don't get envious of amazing writers who get success and praise, because it's well deserved.
You were alternately annoyed by and bored with this book and considered giving up, or at least taking a break for a while. Why didn't you?
I don't know.
You seem to have a lot of complaints about this book. Why did you give it 3 stars instead of 2 or 1?
I don't know.
As you mention, the book has an unusual structure. Is it possible that if you had the time and inclination to go back and really study it, you might find that the whole thing actually works much better than it seems on first reading?
Yes.
Do you have the time and inclination to go back and study it?
Meanwhile in San Francisco was maddening and ultimately disappointing. Illustrator Wendy MacNaughton took to the streets of SF, interviewing and sketcMeanwhile in San Francisco was maddening and ultimately disappointing. Illustrator Wendy MacNaughton took to the streets of SF, interviewing and sketching various residents of the city, and the results are reproduced here. The stories the people have to tell are mostly quite interesting, but the art leaves a lot to be desired. Most notably, the vast majority of the people are sketched against a plain white backdrop—the distinctive cityscape is almost completely lost, and along with it the true sense of place I was expecting. In some cases, the art seems bafflingly halfhearted: In a drawing of several men on computer terminals in the SF library, for instance, the background is entirely plain white, and above each man is the word "computer," with an arrow pointing to a space in front of him. That's it! How that is supposed to be an image of anything besides a row of men's backs is beyond me. Having said that, some of the more involved drawings—people's faces, a burrito (yum), maps of the city and the main library—were lovely and fun to look at. Those, combined with the stories being told, bump the book up a star for me, but it's hard not to feel that this could have been so much better....more
I grew up in a small blue-collar Catholic town where there weren't exactly a lot of different models for how a person might choose to live his or her I grew up in a small blue-collar Catholic town where there weren't exactly a lot of different models for how a person might choose to live his or her life. I somehow emerged from my (also Catholic) university a more progressive person than when I'd gone in, but I still couldn't conceive of a life beyond the get-random-job, get-married, have-kids, give-up-job-to-raise them paradigm I'd seen all around me growing up. Then I read Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City, and I was enthralled. All these interesting characters! All these varied lives and lifestyles! All this time spent figuring things out instead of defaulting to what everyone else seems to be doing! It was so interesting, and so fun, and so endearing, and it made me fall in love with the 1970s San Francisco it portrayed. The Tales of the City books were formative for me, and I adored and devoured all six volumes, not to mention the three modern-day volumes Maupin wrote later. I also consider Maupin's insanely suspenseful and completely unputdownable stand-alone novel The Night Listener one of my all-time favorites. Avoid the movie version, but don't avoid the wonderful Tales of the City miniseries, of which there are three installments. There may even be a fourth coming soon, and as long as Paul Hopkins will be back to play Michael "Mouse" Tolliver, I will be totally on board. Oh, who am I kidding; I'll be totally on board either way. I love Armistead Maupin so much I can barely stand it sometimes.
So it was a major disappointment to find that I hated this memoir. Just kidding! Of course I totally loved it. If I had given it anything less than 4 stars, I would hope someone would call 911 on my behalf, because clearly something would be seriously wrong with me. If you read the Tales of the City books, you may feel you already know a lot about Armistead Maupin, but Logical Family will surprise you with how much else there is to know. As it turns out, Maupin did not crawl out of the San Francisco Bay fully formed, wearing tight Levis, a button-down plaid shirt, and the same seventies-tastic mustache he still sports to this day. He was raised in the South by a conservative father, and considered himself conservative until well into his twenties. He served in the Vietnam War! He considered becoming a lawyer for his father's firm! This was all fascinating, as was the story of his transition to an out gay man, writer of a popular daily series for the SF Chronicle, and social justice warrior. I'd always seen the Michael Tolliver character as Maupin's stand-in, but reading Logical Family made me realize how many of his characters represent parts of his past and personality, from the small-town naivete of Mary Ann Singleton to the worldly and mysterious Mrs. Madrigal, and everyone in between. I read most of this book in a state of unfettered joy, interrupted only once or twice by heartfelt weeping.
Logical Family has a lot to offer any reader, but I think it's best for people who are familiar with Maupin's past work. Without that background, you're going to miss a lot of the references. But this shouldn't serve as a deterrent for anyone. Rather, it should serve as the spark to acquaint yourself with Maupin's delightful Tales and the unique reading experience they offer.
If I had one complaint about this memoir, it could only be that I wanted more. As much as Maupin included in Logical Family, I'm sure there's a lot that he left out. So my next step will be to watch the recent documentary The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin, which, as luck would have it, is showing on PBS on the evening of January 1. A better way to begin 2018 I cannot imagine. Happy New Year!...more
Little & Lion is a likable YA novel. It's got mostly interesting characters, makes good use of its Los Angeles setting, and isn't afraid to tackle a fLittle & Lion is a likable YA novel. It's got mostly interesting characters, makes good use of its Los Angeles setting, and isn't afraid to tackle a few heavy topics, including racism, coming to terms with your sexuality, and living with a mental illness. Unfortunately, the main character was a little blah and I wasn't super invested in what happened to her, so this book didn't always hold my attention very well. I almost put it on my pile of books to give away, which is where 3-star reads usually end up, but then it occurred to me to save it for my niece and nephew. When they're in high school they'll probably really enjoy Little & Lion and get a lot out of it....more
Ellen Ullman's memoir Close to the Machine is one of the books I remember most vividly from the 1990s. She followed it up with two novels; I admired bEllen Ullman's memoir Close to the Machine is one of the books I remember most vividly from the 1990s. She followed it up with two novels; I admired but didn't love 2003's The Bug, but I thought By Blood, from 2012, was fantastic. When I found out about Life in Code, I was ecstatic, expecting Ullman would take the writing chops she'd honed with her novels and combine it with the fascinating subject matter of Close to the Machine, resulting in an an artful, up-to-the minute document of our times. What could be better?
But that's not quite what's happening with Life in Code. I'd been under the impression that this was a memoir, but in fact it's actually a collection of essays that span 20 years. I hadn't read any of them so it was all new to me, but that doesn't mean it was all... new. An essay about the Y2K bug was interesting, for example, and taught me a lot I didn't know back then, but without some kind of present-day commentary it felt pretty irrelevant. There's also a lot of material in here discussing whether we can make computers or robots that are sentient in the same way humans are. Presumably this issue loomed large back when it first seemed possible that we could do this, but it just doesn't feel as urgent now. As a culture, we've moved on.
Expectations are everything. I was initially disappointed when I realized what Life in Code consisted of, and I put it aside for a bit. When I returned with adjusted expectations, I liked the book much more. It helped that as the essays went on, they became more relevant to the present day, addressing the battle for the internet (individual vs. corporation vs. government); the way companies (like Google and, ahem, Amazon) are mining our data to market to us and we kind of don't even care anymore; the ever-changing role of our online activity in our day-to-day lives; and the ever-changing Bay Area now that the startups have moved in, shut down, moved in again. This stuff was fascinating, and I regretted having a library copy because there was so much I wanted to underline and remember and contemplate further.
Life in Code did also delve into Ullman's personal life, with some amusing essays about her early jobs in programming, a touching piece about her elderly pet cat, some remarks on how she came to write By Blood (which was a major departure for her, writing-wise, and wholly a success, in my opinion), and ruminations on where she sees herself now in the world of software engineering, in her longtime home of San Francisco, and in Trump's America. As I had hoped and expected, Ullman's writing has become even better over the years, and she's able to move from topic to topic gracefully, always entertaining and informative, smart but not intimidating, filled with compassion for human beings but not afraid to criticize those of us she thinks are on the wrong path.
Granted, I have no idea if there are other software engineers out there writing at Ellen Ullman's level. It's possible that if I call this book essential I'm just displaying my ignorance of all the other books and authors doing exactly the same thing she does. But, oh well—surely there are a lot of other amateurs out there who, like me, would benefit from reading about topics like these presented this invitingly. So I'm going to go ahead and deem Life in Code essential....more
On page 284 of my copy of The Marriage Pact, our narrator, Jake, contemplates the high, gated walls of a federal prison building.
Jake (thinking): "TheOn page 284 of my copy of The Marriage Pact, our narrator, Jake, contemplates the high, gated walls of a federal prison building.
Jake (thinking): "The gate opens and we drive through. As I hear it roll closed behind us, I calculate whether it is too high for me to climb. And, if I could, how long would it take? What would they do if I tried?"
Me: Are you kidding? You have meekly agreed to every single batshit crazy thing that has been proposed to you for nearly 300 pages, and NOW you think you're going to grow enough initiative to escape your cell, bust out of prison, and scale a high wall? I really don't think so.
Jake: "Escaping this place would be like swimming from Alcatraz. Once you're out, how do you survive? The desert is too remote, too unforgiving. Without water, I'd be dead within hours."
Me: Probably. But it doesn't matter, because there is NO WAY you're escaping.
Jake: "What is a better way to die: in a prison, at the mercy of your captors, or alone in the desert?"
Me: Why are you still talking about this?
Three pages earlier:
Jake: "Experience, time, and education have taught me how to read people and situations."
Me: They really have not.
I was excited to win this book in a Goodreads giveaway! I read Richmond's earlier novel, No One You Know, several years back and really enjoyed it—I still remember its great characterization and vivid detail. Of course, I knew The Marriage Pact, being a thriller, would be a different reading experience, but I expected Michelle Richmond's obvious writing talent to carry the day, regardless of genre. I turned out to be both right and wrong about that.
The Marriage Pact is completely preposterous. When Jake and his wife Alice are invited to join The Pact, ostensibly a club of like-minded married folks interested in having great marriages that last a lifetime, it is obvious from the very beginning that something is off about the group. There's no honeymoon period where everything seems great—everything seems totally off the chain (in a bad way) right from the start. There is literally no way two characters as (supposedly) intelligent as Jake and Alice would actually join a group like this, much less stay in it, much less constantly rationalize the weirdness and authoritarian aspects of it, much less agree to so much of what they agree to, much less never go to the authorities. It makes zero sense, and for a long time I thought about DNFing but kept reading out of sheer amusement at the preposterousness of what we were meant to swallow. It was absurd! Totally absurd.
But the thing is, eventually I started to care. The characterization, the detail, the plain old good writing Michelle Richmond is capable of wore me down, and at a certain point I couldn't deny it: I was fully invested, and the fact that I would finish the book was now a foregone conclusion. Finish it I did, and I was satisfied by the ending. But the thing is, I'm also angry. I'm angry that Michelle Richmond made me care about a premise that was so ridiculous as to be insulting to the intelligence. So I'm mad. I'm mad at this book. I look at it and I feel anger.
So The Marriage Pact has its good points. It's genuinely well written and it keeps you turning the pages. It does have the vivid details and great use of setting I'd expected from Michelle Richmond. But in addition to the lunacy of the plot, it's overlong and contains extended (view spoiler)[elements of torture (hide spoiler)], which I wasn't down for. Still, I thought by thriller standards it was probably better than a lot of the more poorly written books out there, and I considered giving it three stars. Then I thought of Gone Girl, another thriller about marriage that felt way less forced than this one did, and which messed with the reader's mind in a much more genuine way. I consider Gone Girl the gold standard for domestic thrillers, and I gave that three stars. So The Marriage Pact gets two. I'd definitely read another book by Michelle Richmond, but definitely not another book like this one....more
The documentary The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill was released in 2003 and proceeded to migrate on and off my Netflix queue for more than a decade beThe documentary The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill was released in 2003 and proceeded to migrate on and off my Netflix queue for more than a decade before I finally watched it this spring. I have absolutely no idea why it took me so long—the film contains all my favorite things! By which I mean birds, the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco, and lovable misfits. When I saw it back in April I immediately became a bit obsessed, and procuring and reading this book, written by the "bird man" himself, became job one on my to-do list.
I had high expectations for this book; I wasn't looking for just some cheesy movie tie-in. The fact is, Mark Bittner spent decades living close to the bone precisely because he wanted to be able to devote his life to creativity and contemplation. I hoped that would translate into a decent first literary outing for him, and fortunately it did. Like the movie, this is an absolutely charming story. After devoting some chapters to his early years on the streets of North Beach (fascinating stuff), Bittner effectively depicts the searching and despair that caused him to start paying attention to the wild parrots of San Francisco. Apparently up until then no experts had wanted to study the birds because they weren't native to the area (!), so eventually Bittner was able to carve out a niche as the go-to wild-parrot person in the city, which brought the film crew calling and changed his life completely. It's all in the book, which is structured bird by bird, with Bittner managing to chart his own life and growth via the stories of the individual wild parrots that most captured his imagination.
I'm a little sad that I waited so long to see this documentary and read this book. The fact is that it's now been about 20 years since Bittner could really be called the "bird man"—he's moved on, emotionally if not geographically, and the whole thing is now an episode of recent history. But I think the fact that I'm now around the same age as Bittner was when the movie was filmed made me understand and relate to him a bit more. Who knows if I would've been as touched by the whole thing if I'd experienced it when I was much younger?
A quick internet search reveals that Bittner is currently working on another memoir, one that delves more deeply into the many years he spent living on the streets (or nearly so) in North Beach. I find this prospect insanely exciting. This is the aspect of his life that I'm most curious about, and The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill makes it clear he's got the writing skills to do it justice. Hurry up and finish your new book, Mark Bittner! Just because it took me over a decade to read your last one is no reason to keep me waiting now....more
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