Finished reading Saving Time by Jenny Odell. I read it slowly and sporadically, as I do with a lot of nonfiction, and I’m not sure what to make of it. There seem to be some deep insights about how we perceive time and how parts of it are a social construction, along with digressions about labor and inequity that Odell manages to pull back to the main topic, along with bits that feel a little too woo-woo for me.
Finished reading Dead Country by Max Gladstone, book seven or one in a series, depending how you count. (It’s seven, I think.) Anyway, interestingly, this book sort of rhymed with Gladstone’s previous, Last Exit, sharing some motifs, but I think this was the better book: tighter and with less clumsy preaching.
Finished reading The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz. I almost put this one down unfinished: The setting and story are incredibly inventive, and the characters’ portrayal and motivations very one-dimensional and clumsy. I actually found myself skimming parts, which I almost never do with fiction.
Finished reading Babel by R.F. Kuang, about the translators’ college at Oxford in the 1830s that worked magic based on the tension between imperfectly-translated terms, and thus fueled the British Empire. About empire of course, and appropriation and systemic racism and such. I enjoyed this.
Finished reading Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel, about plague, time travel, and the simulation hypothesis. Includes some more-mature forms of her standard tropes, plus links to other parts of the St. John Mandel Literary Universe. Quite good.