First Lines of Stephen Clark's "Katahdin"

"Baxter State Park and Katahdin are unique natural features not only of Maine, but of the Northeastern United States. ... Baxter Park is owned by the people of the State of Maine. The circumstances by which they came into possession of this land its natural wonders are unusual, with few parallels in the history of our country."

- Stephen Clark, Katahdin, A Guide to Baxter State Park & Katahdin

 This book was invaluable for our recent trip to the park. Highly recommend picking it up if you'll be anywhere within Baxter SP.

Freud on Group Psychology

Reading about the anti-vaxx communities who continue to refuse vaccines and the need for masks reminds me of what Freud wrote about group psychology:

“The impulses which a group obeys may according to circumstances be generous or cruel, but they are always so imperious that no personal interest, not even that of self-preservation, can make itself felt.”

Book Review: "The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories" (ed. Jeff and Ann VanderMeer)

Jeff and Ann VanderMeer's The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories is an impressive accomplishment. I've tried to write this review a number of times and nothing I do is capturing my experience of reading it's 1000+ pages. So let me just write some words.

The VanderMeers compiled the best "weird" stories over the last century. By weird, we're not talking horror - although that is often an element in these stories. Weird here often means surreal and bizarre, but can also be tender and moving. To me, the common element is often an element of surprise, not from jump scares but from a joyful examination of an impeccable internal logic. Exploring the strange takes one many, many forms, and all of them are included here: From the different worlds in Michel Bernanos' surreal "The Other Side of the Mountain" to SciFi dystopias (perhaps best represented in Craig Padawer's "Meat Garden"), to lots and lots of strange creatures (Lovecraft's classic "Dunwich Horror" but also "Margaret st. Clair's "The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles").

The first portion of the book (its arranged chronologically) is almost quaint in it's pre-ironic story telling. There's a good slice of surrealism, a lot of monsters, and a good amount of gothic tales. 

As the book progresses, the stories get more brutal - or more tender. The older I get, the less appeal gore and horror have for me, but Daniel Abraham's masterful "Flat Diane" plays horror wonderfully with parental guilt and the "Flat Stanley books (and killer lines like "The best trick Hell has to play against its inmates is to whisper to them that this - this now - is the bottom. Nothing can be worse than this. And then to pull the floor away.") The tender - yet often creepy - is represented by two tales I can't stop thinking about: Martin Simpson's moving domestic ghost tale "Last Rites and Resurrections" and the slow burn of child fantasies gone sour in Micaela Morrissette's "The Familiars." 

There are also stories here that, to me, are undisputed masterpieces. These include:

• Michael Chabon's "The God of Dark Laughter". Brilliant combination of the paranoid with the weird, told with an impeccable literary voice.
• Jorge Luis Borges's examination of infinity in "The Aleph"
• Kafka's brilliant "In the Penal Colony"
• Ryunosuke Akutagawa's "The Hell Screen." Which turned me on to Akutagawa's brilliance (Jay Rubin's translation of this fantastical tale is the better version IMO).
  
• James Tiptree Jr. (aka Alice Sheldon), “The Psychologist Who Wouldn’t Do Terrible Things to Rats” 

Not every tale in the book was good, but then again, that's the greatest part about these collections. If you don't like one, wait a moment and the next one comes along. There were so many good stories in The Weird you won't be waiting long!

First Lines of Allistar River's "Century Rain"

 "The river flowing sluggishly under Pont de al Concorde was flat and grey, like worn-out linoleum. It was October and the authorities were having one of their periodic crackdowns on contraband."

- Alastair Reynolds, Century Rain

My beach read this year, I picked Century Rain because of it's interesting "alternative history" premise, a promise of a lot of Paris, and fond memories of his entertaining opera Pushing Ice. Alas, I was greatly disappointing. I found it to have wooden dialogue that stretched on for far too long, and interesting ideas buried beneath obscurely described action. I'm sure some people love this kind of thing, but it didn't do anything for me. For my next Reynolds book I'll stick to the deep space operas.

First Lines of Cixin Liu's "The Three-body Problem"

 "The Red Union had been attacking the headquarters of the April Twenty-eighth Brigade for two days. Their red flags fluttered restlessly around the brigade building like flames yearning for firewood."

Cixin Liu, The Three-Body Problem

I picked this up after reading Cixin Liu's excellent story "Moonlight" in Ken Liu's curated Broken Stars compilation. Marketed as "the best Chinese science fiction novel translated into English," the book plays out a unique spin on a first-contact scenario. The perspective of such an event from someone who has a completely different experience and culture from mine alone was worth reading. I can't say I enjoyed all of the novel: I found it's tone to be schizophrenic, and the chapters detailing the eponymous "Three-Body" game didn't speak to me at all. But Cixin Liu's immersive worldview is powerful and got me thinking. I just won't be reading the rest of the trilogy. 

First lines of David Toop's "Oceans of Sound"

"Sitting quietly in never-never land, I am listening to summer fleas jump off of my small female cat into the polished wood floor. Outside, starlings are squabbling in the fog tree and behind me I can hear swifts wheeling over rooftops. An ambulance siren, full panic mode, passes from behind the left centre of my head to starboard front."

David Toop, Oceans of Sound

Subtitled "Ambient sound and radical listening in the age of communication," Toop's book so far is an idiosyncratic examination of what it means to listen in a world where are inundated with inputs, with stimulus - with all sorts of sounds. I've been enjoying his take on what music is, his observations and thoughts on music both old and contemporary. In just the first third of the book, I've been exposed to  interesting music I was not aware of - from the wondrous ringing of gamelan orchestras to the quiet, halting piano of Eric Satie, to the "machine music" of Luigi Russolo's Intonarumori.  

 

First Lines of Maya Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings"

 "When I was three and Bailey four, we arrived in the musty little town, wearing tags on our wrists which instructed l—“To Whom It May Concern”—that we were Marguerite and Bailey Johnson Jr., from Long Beach, California, en route to Stamps, Arkansas, c/o Mrs. Annie Henderson."

- Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Such a well written and powerful book. Each chapter feels like a full recognized short story, and yet the book is a cohesive whole. Angelou makes her childhood  come alive - with all of it's childhood magic, racial injustice, coming-of-age confusion, and terrible tragedies. She went through some terrible experiences, and I'm in awe of her strength and skill in surviving it all and capturing it in such a powerful artistic statement.