Month: June 2018
June 29, 2018
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Review
The Freeze-Frame Revolution (Peter Watts, 2018)
Got to love a novel that measures time in millions of years. This is my first encounter with Watts, but I’m diving into one of his bigger, more challenging novels (Blindsight) immediately after reading this.
June 28, 2018
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Bookmark
A Disgruntled Federal Employee’s 1980s Desk Calendar
On any given day, the rare-book trade can cough up anything from an illuminated medieval manuscript to the pages of an unfinished novel. This week, an unusual…
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Bookmark
Scholars Sound Alarms on Trump’s Border Crackdown. But Academic Nuance Doesn’t Always Break Through.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Rio Grande Valley Sector via AP U.S. Customs and Border Protection circulated this photo of boys being held at a facility…
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Bookmark
Wrestling with ‘Angels in America’ – Electric Literature
The play that was once my entire world turns out to be very small Photo by Uark Theatre I have read Angels in America so many times, and was reading it so…
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Bookmark
How Old Are Successful Tech Entrepreneurs?
Silicon Valley’s tech workers can go to great lengths to appear youthful—from having plastic surgery and hair transplants, to lurking in the parking lots of hip…
June 27, 2018
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Review
In The Distance (Hernan Diaz, 2017)
I’ve read a few novels about the final days of the American frontier, but none have given me this visceral sense of the immensity and the brutality of that landscape.
A (very) rare five-star review from me.
June 24, 2018
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Review
Convenience Store Woman (Sayaka Murata, Ginny Tapley Takemori (Translator), 2018)
A short glimpse into the very odd existence of a misfit in a world with little room for misfits. I’d mention Catcher In The Rye and Confederacy of Dunces as American counterparts, but this feels less grand and more subtle.
June 22, 2018
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Review
American War (Omar El Akkad, 2017)
Reading this during the Trump-induced immigration crisis and creation of internment camps made this a difficult respite from the news. Still, what a fantastic read.
El Akkad spends little time on exposition about this climate-shocked future America. Instead, he focusses on the impact of geographic and political upheaval on a small group of climate refugees in the American south some 70 years from now.
I found it fascinating, compelling, and beautifully written.
June 19, 2018
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Review
Annihilation (2018, Alex Garland)
I had to think long and hard about how I felt about the movie adaptation of Jeff Vandermeer’s Annihilation which I loved. I was a big fan of Alex Garland’s “Ex Machina” too but thought the psychedelic and literary novel was going to be pretty much impossible to film without major reworking.
Visually the movie is absolutely stunning and ultimately I feel that Garland’s decision to drop some of the more out-there stuff in the book (including some major plot elements) was probably wise.
On first viewing (in the theatre) I couldn’t get my head around the lighthouse scene. This felt nothing like the book and looked so oddly out of keeping with the organic mutations earlier on in the film. But on second viewing I’ve decided that everything in the lighthouse is metaphorical because it is beyond our comprehension – much like the acid trip Jupiter and Beyond scene in 2001. With that in mind, I decided the film was great.
June 18, 2018
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Thought
I weep at what America has become, and what it could have been.
June 17, 2018
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Thought
Of course, America knows a thing or two about concentration camps.
Censored Photos From Inside U.S. Japanese Concentration Camps
June 11, 2018
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Thought
“Toronto” is the Algonquin word for construction
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Review
Sea of Rust (C. Robert Cargill, 2017)
This was loads of fun. Having killed all humans, robots now need to worry about being killed by global AI.
June 7, 2018
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Thought
Took me six minutes to vote in the Ontario election. Including getting to the voting station and back home again.
June 6, 2018
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Review
The Outsider (Stephen King, 2018)
King mixes real-world police fiction with supernatural horror with greater success in The Outsider than the Mr. Mercedes series. I got mad at the latter because it flipped genres without warning and I felt cheated. I knew what I was getting with The Outsider, so it didn’t bother me.
