[Book Reviews] Interstellar drama
Shortly after I finished 2010's Pulitzer Prize winner for nonfiction, "The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and its Dangerous Legacy", I had the pleasure of discussing it with a Russian friend of mine. I remember the Cold War from childhood, but much of it came during a point in my own development where my understanding was more incomplete than it is now -- I encountered the news coverage of the players at the time, I read Zbigniew Brzezinski in order to try to make more sense of the forces at play, but I had not yet reached the point in my intellectual development where I realized that you had to read more than one book on a topic to understand it, heh. Hoffman's "Dead Hand" goes a long way towards rectifying the incompleteness of my childhood understanding, with many details about the Russian programs and political movers that were highly secret at the time, as well as the handling and devolvement of arms and chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons as what was the Soviet Union deunionized. At the time, I don't think I appreciated what an extraordinary figure Gorbachev was, or how much he differed politically from the rest of the Soviet establishment. It's a strange thing to read a book about weapons of mass destruction and come out with a renewed faith in humanity, but there were so many many ways that could have gone appallingly wrong with far greater loss of life. Hoffman is a compelling guide to these interwoven storylines about the progression of the weapons programs, and leaves the reader better informed and with better questions about where we stand now. Five moments of gratitude for being alive out of five.
After putting off reading Nnedi Okorafor's "Who Fears Death" for months and then loving it, I had a much shorter wait before diving into "Lagoon". This was almost a one-sitting read for me, with a lively and well-realized setting, several compelling characters, and an unpredictable narrative that sweeps you up in the progression of events and carries you along to its rollicking conclusion. No surprise that the marine biologist was my favorite character, but Okorafor's deft weaving of several concurrent narrative threads will likely appeal to readers who enjoy stories where the exercise of perspective is part of the story. While understanding the aliens who have arrived is the stated center of the churn, I found that my developing understanding of the human characters and their backgrounds was more interesting. Four marine witches, the worst kind, out of five.
I wanted to like Karen Lord's "The Galaxy Game" more than I did, but the story just never quite cohered for me. Despite being an NPR book of the year, I felt like I never got as much detail as I wanted about any of the characters. I liked her worldbuilding and the different cultures she populated her galaxy with, I liked Wallrunning as a mixed practice-of-human-social-coherence and gravity-defying sport, but I wish I could have seen a couple Wallrunning matches rather than having the characters around the excitement but never giving the reader a close look at it. I appreciated the cultural differences between the psi-possessing cultures and the ones that lack that, and that we had a character who came from one of them but wasn't able to interact in that way... but I feel like a deeper story could have been told about how that went for him. There was a fantastic buffet of things to explore from the author's imagination, and I feel like we got the top half-inch of all of it and that's it. I want to know more about the mindships, and the intersection of Wallrunning with pilots! I want to know how people from non-psi cultures find their interactions with them! So I simultaneously award many points to the book for making me care so much, and also feel frustrated at the lack of deeper resolution on any of it, heh. Three galaxies awaiting exploration of five.
Much like the authors' previous "Difficult Conversations", I found "Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well" a worthwhile and valuable read. Like pretty much everybody, I struggle when hearing feedback that I didn't expect or don't like. The single most useful thing about this book was the up-front comment that 90% of how a conversation goes depends on the person receiving the feedback, not the person giving it, but we focus a lot of our conflict resolution skills on being the person giving it. Oh! The systematic look about the different reasons that people feel feedback is wrong or unfair or unwelcome was useful -- I can see a number of past conflicts that fell into the categories delineated by the authors, though of course it's much easier to see when other people are doing those things than it is to catch yourself when you're doing it, heh. But I've had a number of difficult conversations in my life recently, so I've had a chance to try to apply the techniques suggested here to my understanding and analysis of those situations. It is helpful, not least because just having something that reminds you to stop and consider the other person's point of view from multiple angles helps in generating a more thoughtful and productive response. It's not always going to go well, you can't control the other person's side of the conversation, all you can do is try to provide a space for them to feel heard and consider what they have to say. Still, that's often better than we do otherwise. I appreciated the toolkit with which to consider the options available. Four attempts to hear it from their perspective out of five.
This entry was originally posted at http://ivy.dreamwidth.org/576856.html and has
comments there. Please feel free to comment on either site; comments rock.
After putting off reading Nnedi Okorafor's "Who Fears Death" for months and then loving it, I had a much shorter wait before diving into "Lagoon". This was almost a one-sitting read for me, with a lively and well-realized setting, several compelling characters, and an unpredictable narrative that sweeps you up in the progression of events and carries you along to its rollicking conclusion. No surprise that the marine biologist was my favorite character, but Okorafor's deft weaving of several concurrent narrative threads will likely appeal to readers who enjoy stories where the exercise of perspective is part of the story. While understanding the aliens who have arrived is the stated center of the churn, I found that my developing understanding of the human characters and their backgrounds was more interesting. Four marine witches, the worst kind, out of five.
I wanted to like Karen Lord's "The Galaxy Game" more than I did, but the story just never quite cohered for me. Despite being an NPR book of the year, I felt like I never got as much detail as I wanted about any of the characters. I liked her worldbuilding and the different cultures she populated her galaxy with, I liked Wallrunning as a mixed practice-of-human-social-coherence and gravity-defying sport, but I wish I could have seen a couple Wallrunning matches rather than having the characters around the excitement but never giving the reader a close look at it. I appreciated the cultural differences between the psi-possessing cultures and the ones that lack that, and that we had a character who came from one of them but wasn't able to interact in that way... but I feel like a deeper story could have been told about how that went for him. There was a fantastic buffet of things to explore from the author's imagination, and I feel like we got the top half-inch of all of it and that's it. I want to know more about the mindships, and the intersection of Wallrunning with pilots! I want to know how people from non-psi cultures find their interactions with them! So I simultaneously award many points to the book for making me care so much, and also feel frustrated at the lack of deeper resolution on any of it, heh. Three galaxies awaiting exploration of five.
Much like the authors' previous "Difficult Conversations", I found "Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well" a worthwhile and valuable read. Like pretty much everybody, I struggle when hearing feedback that I didn't expect or don't like. The single most useful thing about this book was the up-front comment that 90% of how a conversation goes depends on the person receiving the feedback, not the person giving it, but we focus a lot of our conflict resolution skills on being the person giving it. Oh! The systematic look about the different reasons that people feel feedback is wrong or unfair or unwelcome was useful -- I can see a number of past conflicts that fell into the categories delineated by the authors, though of course it's much easier to see when other people are doing those things than it is to catch yourself when you're doing it, heh. But I've had a number of difficult conversations in my life recently, so I've had a chance to try to apply the techniques suggested here to my understanding and analysis of those situations. It is helpful, not least because just having something that reminds you to stop and consider the other person's point of view from multiple angles helps in generating a more thoughtful and productive response. It's not always going to go well, you can't control the other person's side of the conversation, all you can do is try to provide a space for them to feel heard and consider what they have to say. Still, that's often better than we do otherwise. I appreciated the toolkit with which to consider the options available. Four attempts to hear it from their perspective out of five.
This entry was originally posted at http://ivy.dreamwidth.org/576856.html and has
comments there. Please feel free to comment on either site; comments rock.