Edgar's Book Round-Up, August 2024
More books! Please again consider sending eSims to Gazans in need, or picking out something from the Liberation Lit KC wishlists. You can also take approximately 120 seconds to call the office of Governor Mike Parsons and tell him not to execute Marcellus Williams, if you’re seeing this before 24 September 2024.
Anyway. Links to Bookshop, as per.
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In the midst of repeated heat advisories at the tail end of July and into the first few days of August, being a glutton for punishment, I decided to read the audiobook of The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet by Jeff Goodell, which I heard about via bookstagram. Goodell, who has written for Rolling Stone, brings some of that publication’s bent for high-quality and approachable journalism to a truly frightening problem: global warming, and specifically the dangers posed by high heat conditions. Beginning with the tale of a young family who all perished due to heat injury, Goodell explores the myriad impacts of heat on both individual bodies and whole societies. Although Goodell’s information is good, his anecdotes are better, including encounters with people as varied as some guy moving away from the American Southwest due to the heat to the woman attempting to put probabilities to specific extreme weather and climate conditions. It’s a fascinating read, especially if you currently or in the past have had to deal with extreme heat conditions — if only because it’s nice to have those feelings put into words.
Next up was another audiobook: Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle. I was excited for this one, having quite enjoyed Camp Damascus, and got even more excited when I saw the audiobook credits, which include many authors I love doing voices for it. That said, I was somewhat let down by a lot of the actual story, which follows Misha, an anxious, neurodivergent and semi-secretly gay writer for movies and television who finds himself plagued by horrors from his own works. That’s all well and good, and is, in fact, very much within my wheelhouse, but too often Tingle allowed the character to get on a soapbox and enter a Tumblr-esque didactic mode. That too might have been fine had the story more clearly signalled its eventual turn — because once it made that turn, I absolutely loved it. Much of the novel hinges on the titular trope, and the pressures exerted on Misha to engage in it in his TV show, but honestly, I found Tingle’s eventual exploration of corporate sanitization of queer stories (with, of course, notes of supernatural horrors) much more engaging. And despite my reservations, I did still finish it in approximately two days, so it’s got pacing going for it. It was fun — but it never quite made it past “fun” to the level to which it plainly aspired.
Love that cover design, too.
In print, I next finished Tears of the Trufflepig by Fernando A. Flores. The novel had been loaned to me by John Elizabeth Stintzi (whose short story collection, Bad Houses, is now out in the world, and is a truly delightful read) when, in conversation, they noted that Woman in the Dunes reminded them of it. Having quite liked Woman in the Dunes, I can see the comparison: Flores’ novel is set in a near-future south Texas and Mexico, and the main characters spend a lot of their time sweaty and itchy in their arid environs. But it’s also a Texas where cartels and corporations war for Olmec heads and churn out illicit, “filtered” animals, not least of which is the mythical Trufflepig — which is all a bit of a long walk to say that Tears has more than a little Pynchon in its DNA as well. And both Bellacosa, a protagonist on a quest both for mislaid construction equipment and a sense of purpose, and Paco Herbert, the gonzo journalist he befriends, are incredibly entertaining characters to follow through this world. I could go on, but this LARB review hits most of the points I would. It’s a delight of a novel, and I am very much looking forward to reading more of Flores’ work.
I next finished another audiobook: What You Are Looking for Is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama, which my mother recommended to me. A braided novel, What You Are Looking for… follows five strangers, each alienated in their own ways, as they are gently guided to a sense of self and belonging by the mysterious, ursine librarian in a community center library. From the 20-year-old shop girl trying to stay afloat as an adult on her own for the first time, to the publishing professional cast adrift by stay-at-home motherhood, to the retiree seeking a hobby, all do indeed find what they are looking for in the library. Alison Watts’ translation strikes a nice level of localization, maintaining Japanese words where appropriate, bringing across a sense of efficient yet whimsical prose that was totally charming. Also made me — as I usually do — want to go to the library, which is always a bonus.
I only hope that Colquhoun, who is also a photographer in their own right, can forgive this very mid photograph of their book.
In print, I next finished Narcissus in Bloom: an Alternative History of the Selfie by Matt Colquhoun. Colquhoun, who edited the posthumous collection of Mark Fisher’s lectures in Postcapitalist Desire, is a Broken Hands HQ favorite already, so I had been looking forward to reading Narcissus. And it was certainly a rewarding read: Colquhoun, working through the lens of the “selfie” — i.e. the more-or-less-impromptu photographic self-portrait — examines self-formation by means of self-presentation in the modern age. They begin with Albrecht Durer, and work their way up through a variety of self-portraits into the modern age; as they travel through these works, they make a compelling argument for the performance of self as foundational to the self, rather than the self informing the performance unidirectionally. Throughout, Colquhoun juggles high- and low-brow references, Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan’s epoque-defining selfie sitting comfortably alongside Derek Jarman’s daffodil garden and the mythological figure of Narcissus, whose classical reaction to his entrapment was one, not of erotic fascination, but of relative horror. It’s a thoughtful, thought-provoking book, and one I suspect I’ll return to in the future. I’m very glad to have read it, and equally glad that I accidentally ordered two copies so I can foist it on more people.
My next audiobook was one that had been on my radar for some time: Kassia St. Clair’s The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History. Focusing around a succession of textile artifacts, St. Clair deftly weaves (I will try not to make too many more easy puns, but it’s so easy, for reasons St. Clair also explores) archaeological finding with literary depiction and historical context. I’ll admit, it was difficult for me not to compare this to Postrel’s Fabric of Civilization, which isn’t fair: St. Clair is much more invested in the cultural impact of textiles and their role in society, while Postrel is essentially writing science history about the development of technology spurred on by advances in textile production. That said, St. Clair’s writing is elegant and if you are in the market for a softer-science exploration of what fabric is in societies across time (as well as wool sails, how hard it is to make flax spinnable, and early twentieth-century cold-weather gear) — or if you, like me, are an insufferable dork about fabric, textiles, and fashion — it’s very much worth the read.
I mean, just look at that design! It's so good!
I followed it with, in print, R. B. Lemberg’s Yoke of Stars, the latest in their Birdverse series. As in the other entries, I have to note right up front that Tachyon Press’s design team is really going all-out on these: between the stylish, evocative covers and the gorgeous illustrations, these books are truly lovely objects, in addition to being extremely thoughtful literature. Set some time after the events of The Unbalancing (reviewed here), Yoke… gives us an apprentice assassin who is being pitched their first job — but this is Birdverse, and it’s never that simple. The apprentice in question comes from a race of amphibious beings; the would-be contractor is a princess fleeing both her family’s scorn and her ex-husband’s wrath; the acknowledgements mention Soviet-era linguistic theory projects which, while ultimately unprovable, Lemberg nevertheless acknowledges as fascinating. There’s a sense of opacity to Lemberg’s prose, less in the sense of difficulty but more in the sense of having form and depth beyond simple relation of facts. I await whatever they produce next eagerly.
Closing out this round-up, we have Ursula K. LeGuin’s classic, The Lathe of Heaven, which I read as an audiobook. This is another recommendation from my mother, who also, long ago, gave me a DVD of the 1980 made-for-TV film adaptation. While the film adaptation is an admirable attempt to get a weird little story into a visual medium, it fails — as it almost couldn’t help but do — in the face of LeGuin’s short novel, which follows a man who can change reality in his dreams and the initially well-intended but ultimately corruptible psychiatrist who attempts to control them. As always, LeGuin’s prose is nonpareil, but I was pleasantly surprised, too, by how much in the vein of classic sci-fi this felt, having only read some of the Hainish books and the Earthsea cycle. I also felt — for whatever it’s worth from me, a white guy — that LeGuin’s exploration of Heather Lelache’s Blackness was thoughtful and well-handled. The protagonist, George Orr’s, total discomfort with having power was also a well-used instrument to contrast the paternalistic liberalism of Haber, the psychiatrist to whom he is entrusted at the beginning of the novel. Deservedly, a classic.
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That’s all for now. Stay cool, and follow me and Cameron on Bluesky, and/or Broken Hands on Tumblr and Facebook.