Edgar's Book Round-Up, October 2023

Here we are, tailing out October in yet another terrible year. Before you spend money on the Bookshop links that follow, consider instead giving to Doctors Without Borders or another one we’re fans of over here. Anyway, here’s books.

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We start this round-up with a sequel, Shelley Parker Chan’s He Who Drowned the World, which I read in audiobook form. Picking up a little after the events of She Who Became the Sun, our various protagonists (basically) from the first book are, essentially, following the paths they embarked on the first book. Zhu has declared herself the Radiant Emperor, and seeks to consolidate that role; Ouyang, the eunuch, continues his quest for revenge; Baoxiang continues his move from hated also-ran to power broker in the Henan court. Parker Chan’s examinations of gender and identity continue to be nonpareil, but their plotting feels a little labored this time around. I’m willing to accept, however, that my relative coolness towards this volume may be more a factor of taking a minute to recall who, exactly, these people are, since I didn’t want to wait to reread the first volume. I will note that the audiobook is very good: Natalie Naudus does an excellent job of differentiating the many voices in the novel. I know I sometimes hesitate to pick up something as intrigue-heavy as these books are in audio form because of that, and it seemed worth noting that it is not a concern here.

Next up was Lorsque j'‘etais une oeuvre d’art by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt. I’ve been eyeing this book for a long time, and finally picked it up recently (it was the other book that I brought on the trip I thought would be taken up by The Spirit Bares Its Teeth). The narrator, quasi-nameless throughout much of the novel, is the younger brother of two twins who have become famous for being very beautiful; because he views himself as unloved and unexceptional, he is resolved to kill himself — but when he encounters famed artist Zeus Peter Lama, and enters into an agreement to become the man’s newest work of art, his life changes in ways he could never have foreseen. Or so it would seem: frankly, the novel came out in 2002 and you can tell. Unfortuately, given that the premise could have gone in some very interesting directions, it felt more like Life of Pi than the Calvinesque direction I so badly wanted it to take. Maybe it just needed to be hornier? In any case, Schmitt’s French is lovely, if a bit more Academic than I really like. I don’t feel like I wasted my time — but I do feel like this was a lot less fun than I’d hoped. I think it just wasn’t horny enough: if your main character is being surgically altered into a work of art — including a “sonomegaphore” where his member used to be — and has sex with other people, I want a little more description of what, precisely, is up with his art-work body and how it feels to live in it.

I followed that with David Gerrold’s The Man Who Folded Himself, a classic of time-travel fiction and also of queer science fiction. Young Daniel Eakins inherits a time travel belt (just come with me on this one, I swear it gets good) and quickly learns that he can shape not only his own life but the very course of history. To get it out of the way for time-travel nerds: Gerrold comes down on the side of multiverse-generating time-travel. But more importantly, Gerrold was brave enough to have a character declare — in 1978, no less — that not only would he fuck himself, he’d enjoy being gay and go out of his way to ensure that he was gay, instead of trying to branch off of his own existence to create a version that wasn’t. It’s not long, and its claim that the 1950s were a great time to be and raise a kid feels like a very white-guy kind of assertion, but for my money, it’s definitely worth your time.

Next up is the first of a bunch of audiobooks: Nick Harkaway’s Titanium Noir. Cameron and I are both Nick Harkaway fans as a general principle; Angelmaker, especially, is a bop. Titanium Noir never quite rises to that level of considered weirdness, but it’s also not trying to. It’s about as played-straight a cyberpunk detective story as Harkaway could possibly produce — which means that, as far as that genre goes, it’s pretty weird, just not as weird as I had come to expect from Harkaway. We follow Cal Sounder, the go-to guy for cases involving titans — fantastically wealthy people who have been genetically modified to far outlive normal humans, but due to the nature of the modification also grow into giants — as, unusually, one of them has been murdered. Harkaway leads us on a merry dance through a future city that feels simultaneously like LA and Chicago as Sounder entangles himself with characters ranging from the dizzying upper echelons of society to its very lowest rungs, often tapping into the unsettling quiet that characterizes fantastic wealth. It’s a good time, and at only 8 hours, the audiobook is a quick sprint.

I followed that with Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert — yes, the Eat, Pray, Love lady, and yes, a book on “creative living.” It was recommended by a very dear friend, who also prefaced their recommendation with, “Yeah, I know, it’s the Eat, Pray, Love lady, BUT —” when they brought it up in the context of a local pagan meet-up (and don’t act surprised that I was at a local pagan meet-up — I’ve mentioned at least once elsewhere my thoughts on magic). But despite my general trust in this friend’s taste, I was still extremely pleasantly surprised by how simultaneously thoughtful and committed to seeing through some kind of woo concepts to their natural conclusions. Per Gilbert, ideas have agency, and they can come and go from person to person until they find someone who can see them to fruition; people have genii in the Roman sense, a personal daimon that metes out inspiration and creativity in handling those ideas when they arrive; most gratifying, Gilbert cautions against pinning the money you need to live to your inspiration. Her voice — in addition to, you know, having written the book, she also reads it — is charming and friendly, matter-of-fact about very heady concepts, tender and almost romantic about more conventional ones. It was genuinely a delight, and one I have enthusiastically recommended to several people since reading it (in more or less the same terms as my friend recommended it to me).

Next up was My Stroke of Insight: a Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Taylor. Initially recommended by my therapist, this one was also recommended to me by someone else at that very same local pagan meet-up, which provided the push I needed to finally pick it up. Another audiobook read by its author, My Stroke of Insight details Bolte Taylor’s experience of being an actual neuroscientist and also having a rare type of left-hemisphere stroke. As someone who specializes in brain anatomy, Bolte Taylor was uniquely well-positioned both to recognize what was happening to her and to understand its mechanisms, even as the part of her brain that had cataloged that information in a way that could be communicated to others was shutting down. Her descriptions of her experience of a purely right-brain life were especially compelling. It was definitely an interesting read, and her narration of the audiobook was charming, capturing her unique delivery, which is also on display in this TED Talk.

I followed that — or, really, I next finished, because this is the last print book on this list — with Andrew George’s translation of The Epic of Gilgamesh and associated fragments, which a friend had loaned to me at my request. And here I must confess: I don’t get Gilgamesh. Like, I get the importance of the text, the importance of the first epic (that we know of), the importance of this story for what we often call the cradle of civilization. But I do not get it the way I suspect, for example, Johnny Flynn and Robert MacFarlane got it when they made this album. I don’t get it the way I also don’t get Jane Austen, or, I don’t know, certain pop musicians: I can see the quality, it just doesn’t speak to me. I certainly do not get it the way Andrew George gets it — but George makes a truly delightful argument in its favor. His introduction, translator’s note, and other front- and back-matter are the highlight of the book. Especially memorable were his remarks on the certainty of further revelations of cuneiform texts as opposed to other (specifically Greco-Roman) antique texts, due to the nature of the materials on which they were recorded. But the translation offered here, while probably quite faithful, was a bit of a hard march, enlivened only occasionally with unusual lines or sentiments. Still, I’m glad I read it, if only because I haven’t read it since I was a kid and I’ve run across a fair few references to it in the last few years. For those in a similar position, or who want to have a very thorough-going introduction, the George translation seems like a good bet.

We close out this round-up with another audiobook: Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold. I quite enjoyed Curse of Chalion, to which this is a sequel, and was sort of between things and also in a bit of a weird personal spot that I’d rather not detail here.

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And here, dear readers, (Cameron writes) we have a spot of technical difficulties: Edgar is traveling abroad, visiting family this week, but wanted to stay on track with their book reviews. A small amount of technical difficulties prevent them from finishing (as you might guess from the images being put in this post in my style.) They communicate via text this possible ending:

The document ends here. I understand that [Edgar] liked it, but further specifics are lost. If you like religio-political fantasy, enjoy this also! If you don't, avoid.

The links at the top of this post are where you should spend your money, though we’d feel thrilled if you bought some of these reviewed books (or others) through our bookshop. You can find Edgar through the socials (Twitter, Bluesky) and both of us through Facebook and Tumblr.