August 2022 Reads
11 Books (pretty Sci-Fi heavy), 5 Reviews and a subsection of the depressing reads you honestly might want to avoid :)
As usual, below you’ll find the list of the eleven books I finished this month (this time with a subset on a theme) with a microview of each, followed by slightly longer reviews of my five favorites and an ICYMI featuring a link to an additional post from this past month and a brief explainer on StoneWright Bonus Reads, a brand new subsegment of StoneWright Reads.
The Books (sorta but not really in the order I read them):
*Parable of the Talents (1998) by Octavia E. Butler (second and final extant book of the Earthseed series) - Novel (Sci-Fi)
Excellent, maybe even more prescient follow-up to The Parable of the Sower, following Lauren Oya Olamina as she tries to balance motherhood and building a better world
Brown Girl in the Ring (1998) by Nalo Hopkinson - Novel (Fantasy)
A dystopian Toronto, Caribbean traditions and magic, and a young woman fighting for her family—fabulous intro to Hopkinson
*Tell the Machine Goodnight (2018) by Katie Williams - Novel (Literary Fiction/Sci-Fi)
What if a machine could give you a list of concrete things you could do that would make you happy? What would a world where this machine exists look like? What if a thing that would make you happy is not a good thing?
The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer (2022) by Janelle Monáe (Sci-Fi)
Enlisting the help of established authors, Monáe gives us dystopian stories of thought control, stolen memories, as well as nonconformity, resistance, and art
*The Swimmers (2022) by Julie Otsuka - Novel (Literary Fiction)
A simple premise of the regulars at a subterranean pool where a crack appears at the bottom becomes a meditation on unraveling selfhood
*Goliath (2022) by Tochi Onyebuchi - Novel (Sci-Fi)
Near-ish future with Earth nearly uninhabitable from ecological disasters and in which “white flight” is quite literal: those with means escaping to orbiting colonies in space
*Cloud Cuckoo Land (2021) by Anthony Doerr - Novel (Literary Fiction/Sci-Fi)
Spanning multiple time periods from the fall of Constantinople to the Korean War to modern day and into the future, Doerr tracks the ways stories sustain us as the world crumbles
The Depressing-Research-for-Depressing-Novel Zone (at least one was a little hopeful, too):
Note: as a white guy with a beard and occasionally shaggy hair, I am sensitive to the fact that the following list could lead people to become concerned, and I considered just leaving these out, but then that seemed to defeat the original idea for this thing, which is a detailed reading log. So I just want to emphasize a bit more directly this month that I am currently working on a novel involving mass shootings, from the POV of a survivor/survivors, and it is in the very earliest of stages still, but I am trying to get the necessary background info to work with this subject matter as ethically and constructively as possible. I’m hoping that this month and probably next month will get the bulk of the research out of the way, and I will gratefully leave this subject matter behind ASAP since reading all this has not been the funnest of times (and then will dive into the probably more depressing task of the bulk of the writing, wheee!). On the plus side, maybe publicly disclosing the novel-in-progress will make me actually write it. One can dream.
Of these four books, if you are interested, I thought Trigger Points and Another Day in the Death of America were the best for a more general audience (i.e. those not masochistically immersing themselves), with Trigger Points focusing more on success stories and potential intervention solutions to mass shootings and Another Day in the Death of America being a broader and fascinating overview of the problem of gun violence through ten specific cases in a 24-hour period. Anyway…
Trigger Points: Inside the Mission to Stop Mass Shootings in America (2022) by Mark Follman - Nonfiction
Detailed look at threat assessment efforts: history, successes, failures, and how we might scale them up and maybe, like, do something about mass shootings
From a Taller Tower: The Rise of the American Mass Shooter (2021) by Seamus McGraw - Nonfiction
More about the culture around mass shootings: media, misperceptions, motivations, fetishization
If interested you can also watch the Georgia Center for the Book event with Seamus McGraw below:
Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives (2016) by Gary Younge - Nonfiction
Over the course of a somewhat randomly chosen 24-hour period, ten children die in incidents of gun violence, and this book charts their shortened lives and how they died
Columbine (updated 2016 edition) by Dave Cullen - Nonfiction
Detailed and meticulous account of the event, perpetrators, victims, aftermath, and survivors: unravels persistent myths, charts failures and successes, examines the media’s role
(Note: starred entries above are reviewed in more detail below)
My Top Five (in no particular order):
Parable of the Talents (1998) by Octavia E. Butler (second and final extant book of the Earthseed series) - Novel (Sci-Fi)
Okay, I know I knew this at some point—people made these connections in posts and articles since 2016 or before—but it is still very… striking… to see a dystopian novel written in 1998 feature a demagogue presidential candidate with the slogan “Make America Great Again,” who stokes religious aggrievement and fervor, and comes to power leading to violent mobs, etc. Yet again, with this sequel to The Parable of the Sower (reviewed in last month’s newsletter here), Butler proves just how clearly she saw what loomed at the end of road we were walking back then, and which we have continued to tread so faithfully, much (I’m sure) to her chagrin (RIP). Coastal communities with houses falling into the rising ocean, worsening more frequent natural disasters, wars, the space program privatized, slavery reinstituted for criminalized groups, and a fractured narrative: a mother trying to save the world and find her daughter, a daughter caught between the desire to know her mother and resentment of her mother’s cause that kept her from the life she wanted.
Good quote: “The religious poor who are ignorant, frightened, and desperate to improve their situations are glad to see a man of God in the White House. And that’s what he is to them: a man of God. Even some of the less religious ones support him. They say the country needs a strong hand to bring back order: good jobs, honest cops, and free schools. They say he has to be given plenty of time and a free hand so he can put things right again. But those dedicated to other religions and those who are not religious at all sneer at [President] Jarrett and call him a hypocrite. They sneer, they hate him, but they also fear him. They see him for the tyrant that he is. And the thugs see him as one of them. They envy him. He is the bigger, the more successful thief, murderer, and slaver. The working poor who love Jarrett want to be fooled, need to be fooled. They scratch a living, working long, hard hours at dangerous, dirty jobs, and they need a savior. Poor women in particular tend to be deeply religious and more than willing to see Jarrett as the second coming. Religion is all they have. Their employers and their men abuse them, they bear more children than they can feed, they bear everyone’s contempt.”
Tell the Machine Goodnight (2018) by Katie Williams - Novel (Literary Fiction/Sci-Fi)
I love it when a novel makes one slight change to the world we know and explores what this new altered world looks like. In this case, a company has developed a machine that can tell you exactly what you can do to be happy: eat more tangerines, for instance, or move your desk to get more sunlight, or amputate the tip of one finger. The novel revolves around Pearl, who works for this company giving people their recommendations, and her high-school-aged son, Rhett, who has no interest in using the machine on himself despite seeming incredibly unhappy. Compelling, quick read with excellent characters that I enjoyed spending time with, and also not super depressing in its treatment of the world or the characters, which is nice considering the bleakness of some of my other favorites this year ;)
Good quote: “I let her clasp my hand and stare at me with her big, dark eyes. Because I know that when people comfort you, they're really just comforting themselves.”
The Swimmers (2022) by Julie Otsuka - Novel (Literary Fiction)
Told in three distinct parts with different perspectives, this slim novel begins with a simple premise: what if we followed the regulars at a pool. Part 1 uses the first person plural to give a sense of the community and the individuals it’s comprised of: it’s funny and revealing and poignant, as the swimmers find a crack that threatens their subterranean haven. Then, in Parts 2 and 3, the novel shifts focus to one of the swimmers in particular, in an achingly lovely exploration of dementia and mother-daughter bonds. Beautifully rendered, I loved the way the novel was constructed, the poetic prose, the distinct voices and characters, its compact complexity. Another not super dark (though it is sad) novel this month!
Good quote: “She does not remember saying to you, the other night, right after your father left the room, He loves me more than I love him. She does not remember saying to you, a moment later, I can hardly wait until he comes back.”
Goliath (2022) by Tochi Onyebuchi - Novel (Sci-Fi)
I absolutely loved Riot Baby (2020) by Onyebuchi, so when it came time to choose the next novel for my Sci-Fi/Fantasy book club, I went with Onyebuchi’s latest novel. Like Riot Baby, this novel is bleak and powerful, expanding on similar themes of race and social stratification and the systems that separate us. Like The Parable of the Talents, the future Onyebuchi brings to life feels incredibly prescient. Some of my favorite Sci-Fi takes us to the logical conclusion of society as it is today, the future mirroring the now mirroring the past, etc.: white flight, but earth is the inner city and space is the suburbs. Hipsters returning and gentrifying. People who can afford it having access to life-saving technology that makes the broken planet endurable, and those who can’t doing what people always have: survive as best they can. Honestly maybe not the best to read via audiobook (it took me like twice as long as a book of similar length usually would, with lots of rewinding and focus required), as the novel jumps from character to character, sometimes leaving the connections pretty vague, asking a lot of the reader, leaving a lot implied. It doesn’t have a clear plotline or an it’s-all-okay-now resolution; instead, it gives a slice of existence in this time and place, with vivid characters that fade in and out, and the society itself as the main focus. Not an easy read, but well worth it (for me at least).
Good quote: “When the streets were animated with socio-economic caste struggle, this was a place with all history and no future.”
Cloud Cuckoo Land (2021) by Anthony Doerr - Novel (Literary Fiction/Sci-Fi)
Not sure what got into me this month, but this is a solid third novel I read and enjoyed that I would not classify as dark, brooding, or depressing. Okay, sure, there’s war and destruction and plague and climate change and ecoterrorism and all that, but also hope and beauty and a celebration of librarians and bookishness and the power and persistence of story-telling to get one through hard times. Similar to Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell in the way the novel bounces from antiquity to recent past to present to future (though all of these are mixed together throughout rather than told in distinct sections), the central character of the novel is really an endangered story from ancient Greece that is preserved (barely) and refurbished and leaves its mark on the human characters who come across it from each time period. It’s a novel that is meant to make you feel good (or at least better) in the face of steadily worsening prospects for the future, and I think that’s an okay thing from time to time (probably don’t get used to it though). Reading Goliath and Cloud Cuckoo Land back-to-back was like taking a hot shower after having first plunged into a freezing lake, which—I think we can all agree—is something everyone loves doing.
Good quote: “But books, like people, die. They die in fires or floods or in the mouths of worms or at the whims of tyrants. If they are not safeguarded, they go out of the world. And when a book goes out of the world, the memory dies a second death.”
In Case You Missed It:
You may notice on the StoneWright Reads homepage that there is a new tab at the top for “StoneWright Bonus Reads.” This is a subsection of the site where I will collect all of the mid-month posts between monthly newsletters, so you can find them quickly and easily if you want to. The monthly newsletter is the only thing that comes to your inbox, but if you *want* emails for bonus posts as well, you can create a substack account and muck about in the settings to make that happen.
This month, there was only one bonus post, in which I went through some recent and upcoming releases that I’m excited about. Check it out to pad them reading lists!