Okay, I knew I was going to do these on the Facebook page, but I haven’t done that, and I’m under a great deal of time pressure right now — I had to get a replacement phone yesterday, and in 12 days begin my first class intended to be a completely online class. So…yeah. Let’s jump in to the seventeen books I’ve read thus far this year:

Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia vol. 1 by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari

Mentioned by me here and Edgar here.

There’s no easy way to explain Anti-Oedipus — but it’s the only hard-copy book by these two that Edgar and I have read. It’s an entry-point, of sorts, to a whole other way of thinking about the world, fusing Freudian and Marxist tendencies while simultaneously undermining their foundations.

It’s not for the faint of heart, and is best approached as a work of poetry, rather than as a work of philosophy.

The Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville

I’ve read just about every book by Miéville, with the exception of Three Moments of an Explosion, and this is perhaps one of the more pulpy ones he’s attempted. It’s an alternate history, where the Surrealists of Paris fight a long guerrilla war against the Nazis as reality frays around them.

It’s Miéville’s second foray into contemporary fantasy (I hesitate to say “urban fantasy” because just about every book he’s written has been “urban” in one sense or another; what I mean is this work is set in our world, even if an alternate historic version, though one could make the argument that his The City and the City is his second and this one is the third, but one could argue that this is only the second contemporary fantasy book he wrote. It’s complicated) the other being his first published novel King Rat. That book felt more like Miéville’s take on superhero stories, whereas this one is something like an impression of Tim Powers.

It’s highly recommended, if only to see a young Jack Parsons hobnobbing with surrealists and using his engineering skills to show that he’s every inch the sorcerer that he claims to be.

The Mere Wife by Maria Dahvana Headley

Headley’s novel is one of two that Edgar gave me for Christmas last year, the other being The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth — both are adaptations of Anglo-Saxon literature, and I made it through The Mere Wife because it’s an adaptation of Beowulf., while The Wake is an original story written in a modernized version of the Anglo-Saxon language, and is thus somewhat difficult.

In The Mere Wife, the story of Beowulf is reproduced in a fashion that reminds me of the sections of House of Leaves that reproduce the myth of the Minotaur: the monster (in this case not only Gren[del] but of his mother, Dana Mills — a veteran of the endless war) is made sympathetic, and the “hero” is revealed as a boorish, violent man (Ben Woolf) but what makes it interesting are the magical realist elements that Headley layers in: is Gren a monstrosity with claws and slavering teeth, as Willa Herot sees him? Or is he a child, worthy of love and affection, as Dana and Willa’s son Dylan sees him?

While it has some of the hallmarks of MFA writing (Headley studied writing in school, and began a professional career soon afterward,) but it has enough of a weird edge to be worth reading.

Capital is Dead: Is This Something Worse? by McKenzie Wark

After that dip into fiction, I wanted theory. Wark (mentioned here) is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at The New School in New York City, and I was pointed to this book as a counterpart to Mark Fisher (subject of our long-running series “Fisher’s Ghosts”) but it honestly connects more readily to another contemporary leftist writer, Peter Fleming (specifically his book The Worst is Yet to Come, which I looked at in an earlier roundup.)

In this book, Wark argues that, just as the Capitalist mode of production differs from the Feudal mode of production without completely wiping it out, so to did the cultural shocks of the 1970s signal the end of the dominant capitalist mode of production, and the emergence of the new “Vectoralist” mode of production, and just as the Feudal Landlord was joined by the Peasant and the Capitalist by the Proletariat, so is the Vectoralist joined by the “Hacker” — The Vectoralist owns the “vector” upon which information flows and the Hacker works the flow of information.

It’s a compelling read of the situation, supplementing Marx with Max Weber and Émile Durkheim, and attempting to read the contemporary moment through this lens. I’m not completely sold on her theories, but it was a fascinating read that I may return to at another point.

Cannibal Metaphysics by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro

Upon realizing just how white and euro-centric my theory reading had become, I decided to supplement. Edgar reviewed this book here, but I read it first: it’s sort of a “reading guide” to a Deleuzian read of Anthropology, hypothetically called Anti-Narcissus. All of this being said, it had the common problem of a lot of post-strucutralist theory of just being the philosophy equivalent of Harsh Noise music: enjoyable, interesting, but often impenetrable.

The first several chapters, where de Castro describes Perspectivism, are a fascinating read: there are passages in there that I still think about months later, most notably the phrase “When everything is human, the human becomes a wholly other thing.” The keystone of Perspectivism is the idea that all living beings are fundamentally the same kind of being — the human being is the same kind of creature as the buzzard and jaguar and peccary and the ant, its simply that all of these beings are dressed in different sorts of “regalia” and their view of the world is shaped by the regalia in which they are dressed.

It was a fascinating read, and I want to dive deeper in to philosophy from a Native American and African perspective — resources, I’m sorry to say, are scarce, however. The next book I’m hunting for this purpose is Aztec Philosophy: Understanding a World in Motion, by James Maffie — which is longer, but seems perhaps a bit more accessible, but Cannibal Metaphysics was written by someone who was a bit closer to the source on what he was writing, being a Brazilian Amazonist, as opposed to an American anthropologist.

This is How You Lose the Time War by Amar el-Motar and Max Gladstone

I listened to this one on the Libby app, which we have talked about a great deal on this website. Mostly I did this while doing the dishes and working around the house.

I feel like the concept of a “time war” has become a lot more prevalent — most likely in the wake of the revived Doctor Who. I feel like this topic receives its best treatment here, the authors depict a situation much more like a non-linear Cold War than anything else, as two rival timelines try to make themselves more probabilistically likely.

Cue a romance between two agents, one on each side of the war. The whole story is told in the form of letters, bearing instructions like “burn before reading”. It’s quite interesting and clever, and — to be frank — Edgar wrote a much better review of it here.

Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin

(I’m going light on this, because I imagine Edgar is going to have a lot to say about them, and will leave that principally to them.)

After all that philosophy, I needed fiction. I had read The Fifth Season back in 2018, and remembered it being a brilliant, if somewhat slow, book. I knew, though, if any of my own writing was to get traction I had to read those who were considered the best in the field, and there can be no dispute the Jemisin is the best living fantasist: each entry in the Broken Earth trilogy won the Hugo Award for Best Novel.

This would be roughly the equivalent of each entry in a movie trilogy coming out — one year after another — and winning the Oscar for best picture each year.

The world that Jemisin builds is a fascinating one: set on a single massive continent that is often rent by extinction-level events, society has adapted to survive intact through volcanic winters that can last years or decades. The most powerful — and dangerous — beings in this society are the ostracized “Orogenes”, people who can control seismic and volcanic energies, but can be deadly without proper (and extensive) training, to the point where it is often safer for a community to attempt to exile or kill an Orogene.

Jemisin sets up this world in The Fifth Season, which also portrays the beginning of a thousand-year winter, and expertly weaves a powerful family drama through the epic narrative she writes. Also highly recommended.

No Logo by Naomi Klein

I actually began reading this much earlier in the year, but it struggled to hold my attention. I love Klein’s short writing, and I think I would enjoy the history that she lays out in The Shock Doctrine a lot more than I did No Logo.

A big part of this is the fact that the book is about twenty years out of date, and while some material was added in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the fact of the matter is that a lot of the information that it presents has been superseded several times over by now, and it frankly wasn’t the sort of book that I was hoping that it was.

I was hoping — for no good reason, mind you — for a longer and deeper examination of the role of advertising in society, looking at the movements and counter-movements that shape the deeply branded world that we live in now. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the book that Klein wrote, and — again — I had no good reason to think that it was, other than the fact that that was what the first part was about.

It’s an interesting piece of activist history, but it isn’t a terribly current text.

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

Back to Jemisin — Edgar bought this for me for the anniversary of our first meeting, which is an undetermined day in May — and another masterwork. This is a contemporary fantasy (see how I define that up in the section about Miéville,) where the city of New York becomes incarnated to fight against a Lovecraftian horror. After a Pyrrhic victory, each individual borough of the city is likewise incarnated to help save the city as a whole, with the help of the last two “awakened” cities: Hong Kong and São Paulo.

The world that Jemisin draws here is a loving portrait of a city I’ve never been to, but which I feel like I’ve experienced enough third-hand to get the gist. Her fascination with the geography of the city enriches the book, instead of causing a barrier to entry. The central conceit — that cities aren’t really Cities until they enter their own culturally and historically, and that when they come into their own they’re like baby sea turtles, preyed upon by opportunistic predators — is deeply weird and I love it dearly.

I’m given to understand that this is the first book in a series. I will be picking up the next few.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick

I wanted some low-hanging fruit because I was running behind on my reading, and saw this on the bookshelf that sits to my left. Around the same time, Edgar began talking about running a game of "The Veil” for one of our gaming groups, so it was synchronicitous. Unfortunately, it kicked off a cyberpunk phase that you can see below and also in recent publications on this site.

Androids is not like Blade Runner. In some ways it is a weaker story, in others it is a deeper and more fascinating one. The biggest difference is that, in Blade Runner, we’re invited to sympathize with the title character, Rick Deckard — a hard-boiled Harrison Ford with a flying car and a cool gun. I do not feel similarly invited by Androids: Rick Deckard here reminds me more of the father from Cartoon Network’s Moral Orel — a licentious drunkard who is plugged into a position of extreme power who never seems to face any real consequences for his actions. Dick was inspired by the research he was doing for The Man in the High Castle, and it’s supposed to be an examination of the mindset of people living in a Fascist society.

I’m very glad that I read this years and years after I saw Blade Runner and read other Dick — I think that both are great works of art, but I also think that proximity between the two can be somewhat dangerous for people who aren’t prepared to separate them.

Vurt by Jeff Noon

Published by Crown. Now, apparently, adapted into a tabletop RPG by Raven’s Desk Games.

A continuation of the cyberpunk phase: Vurt is an impressive book, stylistically, and possibly the weirdest one that I read this entire year. It is the story of Scribble, a gang member in some distant future time living in Manchester: he and his friends spend all of their time searching for drugs, in the form of feathers, which are complicated narcotic virtual reality programs of disputed realness.

While the other members of Scribble’s Gang — led by a violent and unstable man known as “the Beetle”, and featuring the literal monster called “the Thing from Outer Space” — are content search for the newest and most outre feathers, Scribble is only interested in finding one: “English Voodoo”, which contains within it the mythic feather called “Curious Yellow”. He is looking for this because his sister disappeared while they were inside of it.

It’s a difficult book, and parts of it are intentionally repugnant. Scribble and Desdemona are incestuous lovers, and this is not only presented as consensual, but is also unarguably one of the least objectionable sexual relationships in the book (that’s a value judgment on the other sexual relationships, not on theirs, by the way.) That being said, Jeff Noon is one of the best stylists that I’ve read in a long time — he uses an updated version of the Surrealist Cut-Up method, mingled with the techniques of Dub music, to make his work.

When I get the time, I’m going to read the follow-up, Pollen.

Doom Patrol Trade Paperbacks 1-4 by Grant Morrison

Mentioned by Edgar here and here.

When the Pandemic started, we got CBS all access, watched through Star Trek: Discovery, Picard, the new Twilight Zone, and the Legend of Korra, then cancelled it. Shortly thereafter we got HBO all access and blew through all of Doom Patrol, which kicked off a reread of the trade paperbacks that we have on hand and a search for the missing two (we found #6 — #5 remains at large.)

The series deserves its own write-up, so I won’t comment upon it, but the comics are a classic run. Morrison attempted to derive a version of the superhero from the writings of Jorge Luis Borges, WIlliam S. Burroughs, and Post-Punk, instead of the traditional four-color fare that most superheroes grew out of, and it shows.

Morrison’s run on Doom Patrol is essential reading for any comic book fan: other people may hold up one of any number of Crisis events or The Dark Knight Returns or Watchmen, or a particular run on X-Men or Spider-Man or anything else.

I will smile and nod politely and then say: “That’s nice. What are your thoughts on Grant Morrison’s run on Doom Patrol?”

Regardless of their answer, I’m not going to gatekeep, but if they don’t have thoughts on it I’m not going to take their recommendations as seriously. It’s a foundational text for me.

The Umbrella Academy, Volume 3: Hotel Oblivion by Gerard Way

I think Gerard Way probably shares my stance on the Doom Patrol — it seems really obvious to me that Way created Umbrella Academy because he couldn’t get control of Doom Patrol, and it shows in the DNA, though it has the added benefit of art by Gabriel Bá. I know Bá’s work (and that of his brother, Fabio Moon — the two of them have no right to such amazing names, honestly,) through his contributions to Matt Fraction’s Casanova (which I should reread soon.F)

I picked up Hotel Oblivion at the same time as I did the sixth Doom Patrol trade paperback, and immediately set upon reading it. The plot’s a bit looser than I normally like, and it lacks a bit of context because I haven’t read the prior two trade paperbacks in a while.

Still, excellent surrealism, beautiful art, possibly the basis for Netflix’s Umbrella Academy Season 3 (if that ever gets made.)

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Currently reading

Trouble and Her Friends by Melissa Scott

Good, but long chapters make it hard to read as I normally do.

Future Histories: What Ada Lovelace, Tom Paine, and the Paris Commune Can Teach Us About Digital Technology by Lizzie O’Shea

Fascinating read. Need to hurry on it, as Edgar wants to read it.

The Work of Art in the Age of its Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin

Important work on aesthetics. This writer influenced my thoughts on History.

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Cameron's Book Round-Up -- 2020, part 1