ingrid@bookwyrm.social finished reading Crack-Up Capitalism by Quinn Slobodian
A pretty good synthesis with a kind of confusing conclusion. (I read an advance review copy so maybe this was changed later, not sure.)
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ingrid@bookwyrm.social finished reading The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz
From science fiction visionary Annalee Newitz comes The Terraformers, a sweeping, uplifting, and illuminating exploration …
Fun and provocative, but this felt like it should have been a trilogy and unfortunately got squished into a single volume. Kim Stanley Robinson blurbed this and is thanked in the acknowledgments, so I don't feel totally dismissive of Newitz's efforts when noting that the influence of the Mars Trilogy is pretty apparent in this epic planetary narrative. But Newitz only gets like 350 pages to create their centuries-spanning world, compared to KSR's set of tomes, and it at times I felt a little rushed along. I wanted to have more time with some of the characters and the political economy.
I love that one of the central characters is a sentient organic flying train though, that's great. Also minor spoiler, the train fucks!
ingrid@bookwyrm.social finished reading The Immortal King Rao by Vauhini Vara
In an Indian village in the 1950s, a precocious child is born into a family …
Pretty good although I found the tech dystopia part a little simplistic and I kind of wanted more detail on Rao's apparent brilliance to make the meteoric rise seem less fable-ish--e.g. we're told he's really good at writing code and making new programming languages but we don't really get any insight into what coding is like for him or what's unique about his languages. If the idea is that he's kind of a Steve Jobs-ian charlatan who isn't actually that good at stuff and the lesson is the happenstance of capitalism, would also like more evidence to support that framing!
ingrid@bookwyrm.social finished reading Economic Poisoning by Adam M. Romero
For school. Really informative and fucked up!
ingrid@bookwyrm.social finished reading Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
I wasn't expecting to be so taken by this but I read it in a few hours and really enjoyed it!
ingrid@bookwyrm.social finished reading White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link
Finding seeds of inspiration in the Brothers Grimm, seventeenth-century French lore, and Scottish ballads, Kelly …
I love Prince Hat!!
ingrid@bookwyrm.social finished reading Upgrade by Blake Crouch
“You are the next step in human evolution.”
At first, Logan Ramsay isn’t sure if …
Content warning mild spoilers but also I didn't like it so who cares
Turns out I just really don't like "what if normal person became Advanced Person" stories! Honestly was hoping for a heel turn moment where we realized the hero had actually lost his grip on reality but...nope he's just the Most Special Boy now, big whoop
ingrid@bookwyrm.social finished reading Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey
"That girl's got more wrong notions than a barn owl's got mean looks."
Esther is …
Just a nice little gay Western
ingrid@bookwyrm.social started reading 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea by Jules Verne
The main reason I am doing this audiobook is it is also narrated by Harlan Ellison, never had strong HG Wells opinions prior to this. Let's see what the fuss is about!
ingrid@bookwyrm.social finished reading A Wizard of Earthsea (The Earthsea Cycle, Book 1) by Ursula K. Le Guin
Ged, the greatest sorcerer in all Earthsea, was called Sparrowhawk in his reckless youth.
Hungry …
This was lovely and Harlan Ellison just read the hell out of it, no notes
Ged, the greatest sorcerer in all Earthsea, was called Sparrowhawk in his reckless youth.
Hungry …
Listening to the Harlan Ellison-narrated audiobook of this, I am completely delighted
ingrid@bookwyrm.social finished reading Heavy: an American memoir by Kiese Laymon
"Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about the physical manifestations of violence, grief, trauma, and abuse …
Read this over a morning Amtrak to a meeting and the Amtrak back home later that day and it fucked me up!!
ingrid@bookwyrm.social finished reading Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré
The man he knew as “Control” is dead, and the young Turks who forced him …
a workplace comedy
ingrid@bookwyrm.social finished reading Davos Man by Peter S. Goodman
A Libby read--some good detailed reporting on bad billionaire things but then it ends with the author being like "capitalism is good though and we can fix it"? Very confusing
ingrid@bookwyrm.social finished reading Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris
Palo Alto’s weather is temperate, its people are educated and enterprising, its corporations are spiritually …
Overall: a valuable contribution to contextualizing the miasma of historical developments generally shorthanded as "tech", and I also hope far from the final word on any of its subjects. The pandemic meant that Harris took a largely desk-research approach to writing this book and while it is voluminously footnoted, it's not based in archival research or extensive interviews. This is fine for what Harris is trying to do, which is very much a big world-systems analysis, but it also means there are some things he sort of glosses in ways that historians will probably find annoying.
As someone who grew up in this part of California I do wish it had hewed its narrative more explicitly to Palo Alto/the peninsula of the Bay Area as a place--most readers won't miss the absence of niche local detail but some of the strongest parts of the book are the ones that ground …
Overall: a valuable contribution to contextualizing the miasma of historical developments generally shorthanded as "tech", and I also hope far from the final word on any of its subjects. The pandemic meant that Harris took a largely desk-research approach to writing this book and while it is voluminously footnoted, it's not based in archival research or extensive interviews. This is fine for what Harris is trying to do, which is very much a big world-systems analysis, but it also means there are some things he sort of glosses in ways that historians will probably find annoying.
As someone who grew up in this part of California I do wish it had hewed its narrative more explicitly to Palo Alto/the peninsula of the Bay Area as a place--most readers won't miss the absence of niche local detail but some of the strongest parts of the book are the ones that ground their argument in the actual local site. It also would have made his final chapter a bit stronger I think. All in all, still glad it was written and glad I read it.