Reader’s Notebook, 4/4/24

My reading pace has slackened a bit. I’m actually taking a day or two off between books, which is likely a good thing. Because of that I only finished three books in March.

Nettle and Bone – T. Kingfisher
I famously don’t read much Fantasy fiction, yet something about the genre always holds an allure. I occasionally search for something that can reignite the magic of reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time when I was 12, only to be disappointed by another impenetrable story.

This book isn’t strictly Fantasy. It does take place in a mythological world that is both more primitive than ours and where magic plays a large role in daily life. There are parallel worlds people with certain powers can visit, kings and queens, and weird creatures. But no dragons or dwarves or wizards.

Inevitably this story becomes a quest. A quest for a third sister to save a second sister, who took the place of a first sister who died in an arranged marriage to save their home kingdom. The third sister makes unlikely friends along the way. She discovers she has strength and abilities she was unaware of. Her quest is successful despite some tricky moments near the end.

It’s all pretty standard stuff. But Kingfisher is a terrific writer, and they sprinkle their story with little moments of dialogue that tie their fictional world to our modern one. There is sarcasm and ironic detachment in the characters that you don’t expect in strict Fantasy writing. Those modern touches combined with Kingfisher not trying too hard to build an elaborate world helped me to really enjoy this book.

Brooklyn Crime Novel – Jonathan Lethem
My spring break book. The trip, with its many distractions, combined with the style Lethem wrote with made it a little tough to stay engaged with the story.

The book slowly builds to describe a specific act of violence. But the lead up to it stretches across decades, both setting up the characters and what life in Brooklyn was like in each moment.

Where the book excels is in Lethem’s scene setting within his Brooklyn. All the little details that help paint the picture of what life was like in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, or later. I’ve been in Brooklyn for the couple minutes it took my tour bus to cross the bridge then turn around and head back to Manhattan. Lethem’s details fit right in with what I expect the Brooklyn of my youth to be.

The title is designed to throw the reader off. This isn’t a book about crime, as in a detective novel, or one about a spectacular caper, or whatever. It’s about regular life in Brooklyn. How that life, in ages gone by, was often about avoiding and surviving the little crimes that were a part of daily life. It’s about how the borough has changed over the years, with the racial and financial status of the people who dominated it changing over time. Pre-gentrification Brooklyn was one type of city. Post-gentrification Brooklyn was completely different. Lethem’s story mostly falls into the long years of transition between ages. And while the book leads up to that specific moment of violence, that is really secondary to setting up what it was like for Lethem’s generation to come of age in the borough.

Lethem’s Fortress of Solitude is one of my all-time favorite books. This doesn’t reach that level, but I’m not sure that’s a fair comparison. I believe I also failed to connect ever so slightly with this book because I was reading it on planes and at the pool when there were other things going on, and it never had my total concentration. Not an all-timer, but still pretty solid.

The Future – Naomi Alderman
A really fun speculative fiction story set in the near future. The three biggest tech leaders in the world have come together to find a way to save themselves should a catastrophic event put modern society’s survival in jeopardy. When an event with that potential does appear on the horizon, they follow the correct protocols to protect themselves and their interests. Until things begin to go sideways.

There is a very large twist in the final third of the book that I don’t want to give any hints about as they would affect how you would read the first two-thirds. That twist is terrific, one that took intricate planning by many of the book’s characters to pull off. While wildly unrealistic, it gives some hope that we can adjust the direction of the world. Maybe not on the scale as in the book, but enough to avoid some of the catastrophes that could be in our future.

I really enjoyed this book. It fits our moment in time, both in terms of how we interact with technology and how it dominates our lives, and how a handful of unelected business leaders likely have too much sway on the direction of society.