Books read, late August
Sep. 2nd, 2025 04:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mrissa Pria Anand, The Mind Electric: A Neurologist on the Strangeness and Wonder of Our Brains. This is the most like Oliver Sacks of anything I've read since Oliver Sacks died, and one of the ways in which that's the case is that Anand is writing from her own experience as a neurologist but also as someone who has gone through relevant symptoms and has a particular perspective, so: in the tradition of Sacks rather than attempting to clone him. If you like "weird things brains do oh goodness" stories, this will be your jam, and it sure was mine. Also Anand is meticulous about gender: if there are relevant studies that talk about the occurrence of a particular condition among trans women as compared to cis women, cis men, or trans men (or etc. with other groups in the spotlight), she will note them as clearly and calmly as she would something about cis women, treating it all as part of our composite picture of how the brain works and what affects it. Highly recommended.
Charlie Jane Anders, Lessons in Magic and Disaster. This book completely wrecked me. It's in some ways a gentle story about subtle and small-scale magic and about human relationships in our own structurally substantially unequal society. It's also about long-term grief where most stories that touch on grief are fairly short-term (months or 1-2 years) or muted somehow, and it's the only recent book I recall really delving into helping your parent with their grief while you, an adult, deal with your own differently-shaped grief for the same person. It's really beautifully done, I wanted to be doing nothing else but reading it once I started reading it, and also it was emotionally devastating in parts.
Scott Anderson, King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion, and Catastrophic Miscalculation. Sometimes I feel like the most confusing parts of history are not the really distant ones--who doesn't like a good Ea-Nasir joke--but the things that happened just before you arrived or as you're arriving. They're simultaneously foundational to a bunch of the world around you and happened while you weren't looking, in ways no one thinks to teach you formally. For me, born in 1978, the Iranian Revolution is one of those things, so when I spotted this on the library's new books table I picked it up immediately. This is a detailed history from someone who got to interview many of the Americans involved, and who is committed to not oversimplifying the benefits or detriments of the shah's reign. I could have wished for somewhat deeper Iranian history, though there was some, and stronger regional grounding, but also those things can be found elsewhere, it's all part of the process. The fact that there's an American flag on the cover of this book as well as an Iranian flag is not an accident. A book that was focusing on Iranian relations with for example France in this period would have a very different take.
Stephani Burgis, A Honeymoon of Grave Consequence. Discussed elsewhere.
Robert Darnton, A Literary Tour de France: The World of Books on the Eve of the French Revolution. This is a microhistory of booksellers and their job routes and wares in the pre-Revolutionary era. Of all of Darnton's books, I'd say this should be low on the list for people who are not deeply interested in the period, least of general interest. Luckily I am deeply interested in the period. So.
John M. Ford, From the End of the Twentieth Century. Reread. Satisfying in its own inimitable way. Those poor skazlorls.
Karen Joy Fowler, Black Glass. Reread. And the threads Karen was pulling out of the genre/literary conversation at the time were so different from the ones Mike did, I hadn't intended to read them in close proximity to compare and contrast but it was kind of fun when I landed there.
Gigi Griffis, And the Trees Stare Back. This is not my usual sort of thing--creepy YA with eventual explanation--except for one major factor: it's set in the lead-up to the Singing Revolution in Estonia. Really great integration of historical setting and speculative concept, bonded hard with the characters, loved it. Most of the historical fiction I read has me reading through the cracks of my fingers, wincing at what I know is coming but the characters do not. This was the opposite, I spent the entire book super-excited for them.
Dave Hage and Josephine Marcotty, Sea of Grass: The Conquest, Ruin, and Redemption of the American Prairie. I am always disappointed to find out that I am already pretty expert in something, because I learn less that way. The American Prairie! Soil restoration, water conservation, habitats, farming...it turns out I already know quite a lot about this. Darn. If you don't, here's a good place to start.
John Lisle, Project Mind Control: Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA, and the Tragedy of MKULTRA. Ooooof. This is another "I saw it on the library's new books shelf" read for this fortnight, and its portrayal of CIA misbehavior was...not a surprise, but having this amount of detail on one project was...not cheering.
Ada Palmer, Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age. If you internalized the idea that historians should be effaced as completely as possible from the writing of history, in the pretense that the history wrote itself really, this will not be the book for you. Ada Palmer is as major a factor in this book as Machiavelli or any of the Medicis. If, on the other hand, you enjoy Ada's classroom lecture voice, it comes through really clearly here. There are some places where I was clearly not her target audience--I honestly don't have a personal investment in what Machiavelli's personal religious stance was, so the chapter about why we want him to be an atheist was speaking to a "we" I am not in. Still, lots of interesting stuff here. Including, surprisingly, cantaloupes.
Jo Piazza, Everyone Is Lying to You. This is a thriller about social media influencers in the group that would have been called "Mommy bloggers" a generation ago, set in the Mountain West. It's very readable, and if you know anything about tradwife influencers you'll see lots of places where it's spot on. I think people who read a lot may find the twists less twisty, but it doesn't rely solely on twists for its appeal.
Joe Mungo Reed, Terrestrial History. I haven't had a satisfying generational epic in a long time. This one spans Earth and Mars, with point of view characters in four generations and multiple points on their partially shared timeline. My preferences would have been for more of everything, more all around--for a generational epic this is comparatively slim--but still very readable.
Sophy Roberts, A Training School for Elephants: Retracing a Curious Episode in the European Grab for Africa. The subtitle calls this a curious episode. It is instead a staggeringly depressing demonstration of how colonialism was fractally horrible. Zoom in a little closer! more horrors! hooray! No. Not hooray. And Roberts is clearly not claiming it is a cause for celebration, but...well. For me this microhistory was more upsetting than illuminating. Maybe I should stop looking at the new books shelf at the library for a minute.
Jessie L. Weston, The Three Days' Tournament: A Study in Romance and Folk-Lore. Kindle. Comparison and contrast of different appearances of a particular legend throughout western/northwestern Europe and England. Nostalgic for me because I used to read a lot more of this sort of thing.
Darcie Wilde, A Purely Private Matter, And Dangerous to Know, A Lady Compromised, A Counterfeit Suitor, and The Secret of the Lady's Maid. This is not all the Rosalind Thorne mysteries there are, but it's all the Rosalind Thorne mysteries my library had. If you like the first one, they are consistent, and I think you could probably start anywhere and find the situation and characters adequately explained. Regency mysteries! Do you want some of those? here they are.
Charlie Jane Anders, Lessons in Magic and Disaster. This book completely wrecked me. It's in some ways a gentle story about subtle and small-scale magic and about human relationships in our own structurally substantially unequal society. It's also about long-term grief where most stories that touch on grief are fairly short-term (months or 1-2 years) or muted somehow, and it's the only recent book I recall really delving into helping your parent with their grief while you, an adult, deal with your own differently-shaped grief for the same person. It's really beautifully done, I wanted to be doing nothing else but reading it once I started reading it, and also it was emotionally devastating in parts.
Scott Anderson, King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion, and Catastrophic Miscalculation. Sometimes I feel like the most confusing parts of history are not the really distant ones--who doesn't like a good Ea-Nasir joke--but the things that happened just before you arrived or as you're arriving. They're simultaneously foundational to a bunch of the world around you and happened while you weren't looking, in ways no one thinks to teach you formally. For me, born in 1978, the Iranian Revolution is one of those things, so when I spotted this on the library's new books table I picked it up immediately. This is a detailed history from someone who got to interview many of the Americans involved, and who is committed to not oversimplifying the benefits or detriments of the shah's reign. I could have wished for somewhat deeper Iranian history, though there was some, and stronger regional grounding, but also those things can be found elsewhere, it's all part of the process. The fact that there's an American flag on the cover of this book as well as an Iranian flag is not an accident. A book that was focusing on Iranian relations with for example France in this period would have a very different take.
Stephani Burgis, A Honeymoon of Grave Consequence. Discussed elsewhere.
Robert Darnton, A Literary Tour de France: The World of Books on the Eve of the French Revolution. This is a microhistory of booksellers and their job routes and wares in the pre-Revolutionary era. Of all of Darnton's books, I'd say this should be low on the list for people who are not deeply interested in the period, least of general interest. Luckily I am deeply interested in the period. So.
John M. Ford, From the End of the Twentieth Century. Reread. Satisfying in its own inimitable way. Those poor skazlorls.
Karen Joy Fowler, Black Glass. Reread. And the threads Karen was pulling out of the genre/literary conversation at the time were so different from the ones Mike did, I hadn't intended to read them in close proximity to compare and contrast but it was kind of fun when I landed there.
Gigi Griffis, And the Trees Stare Back. This is not my usual sort of thing--creepy YA with eventual explanation--except for one major factor: it's set in the lead-up to the Singing Revolution in Estonia. Really great integration of historical setting and speculative concept, bonded hard with the characters, loved it. Most of the historical fiction I read has me reading through the cracks of my fingers, wincing at what I know is coming but the characters do not. This was the opposite, I spent the entire book super-excited for them.
Dave Hage and Josephine Marcotty, Sea of Grass: The Conquest, Ruin, and Redemption of the American Prairie. I am always disappointed to find out that I am already pretty expert in something, because I learn less that way. The American Prairie! Soil restoration, water conservation, habitats, farming...it turns out I already know quite a lot about this. Darn. If you don't, here's a good place to start.
John Lisle, Project Mind Control: Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA, and the Tragedy of MKULTRA. Ooooof. This is another "I saw it on the library's new books shelf" read for this fortnight, and its portrayal of CIA misbehavior was...not a surprise, but having this amount of detail on one project was...not cheering.
Ada Palmer, Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age. If you internalized the idea that historians should be effaced as completely as possible from the writing of history, in the pretense that the history wrote itself really, this will not be the book for you. Ada Palmer is as major a factor in this book as Machiavelli or any of the Medicis. If, on the other hand, you enjoy Ada's classroom lecture voice, it comes through really clearly here. There are some places where I was clearly not her target audience--I honestly don't have a personal investment in what Machiavelli's personal religious stance was, so the chapter about why we want him to be an atheist was speaking to a "we" I am not in. Still, lots of interesting stuff here. Including, surprisingly, cantaloupes.
Jo Piazza, Everyone Is Lying to You. This is a thriller about social media influencers in the group that would have been called "Mommy bloggers" a generation ago, set in the Mountain West. It's very readable, and if you know anything about tradwife influencers you'll see lots of places where it's spot on. I think people who read a lot may find the twists less twisty, but it doesn't rely solely on twists for its appeal.
Joe Mungo Reed, Terrestrial History. I haven't had a satisfying generational epic in a long time. This one spans Earth and Mars, with point of view characters in four generations and multiple points on their partially shared timeline. My preferences would have been for more of everything, more all around--for a generational epic this is comparatively slim--but still very readable.
Sophy Roberts, A Training School for Elephants: Retracing a Curious Episode in the European Grab for Africa. The subtitle calls this a curious episode. It is instead a staggeringly depressing demonstration of how colonialism was fractally horrible. Zoom in a little closer! more horrors! hooray! No. Not hooray. And Roberts is clearly not claiming it is a cause for celebration, but...well. For me this microhistory was more upsetting than illuminating. Maybe I should stop looking at the new books shelf at the library for a minute.
Jessie L. Weston, The Three Days' Tournament: A Study in Romance and Folk-Lore. Kindle. Comparison and contrast of different appearances of a particular legend throughout western/northwestern Europe and England. Nostalgic for me because I used to read a lot more of this sort of thing.
Darcie Wilde, A Purely Private Matter, And Dangerous to Know, A Lady Compromised, A Counterfeit Suitor, and The Secret of the Lady's Maid. This is not all the Rosalind Thorne mysteries there are, but it's all the Rosalind Thorne mysteries my library had. If you like the first one, they are consistent, and I think you could probably start anywhere and find the situation and characters adequately explained. Regency mysteries! Do you want some of those? here they are.
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