A Bit More Variety

5 book reports this time.

1. "The Corn King and the Spring Queen", by Naomi Mitchison, 1931, 985 pages. I blogged Mitchison's "Travel Light" here. This one seems to be regarded as the best of her 90 or so books. Set in the Black Sea area, Sparta, and Alexandria around 150 BC. Fairly historical, except for a main character who is a practicing witch. Very good account of fertility magic; Stoic and Epicurean Greek philosophers; an attempt to reinstill traditional values in Sparta; intrigue in the court of Ptolemy, king of Egypt, in Alexandria.

   I was surprised, for 1931, at its matter-of-fact retelling of Greek homosexuality, particularly between older men and (pre)pubescent boys - Wikipedia does say that the book was somewhat scandalous for its time.

   The book has lots of interesting characters and ideas and plenty of plot. By the end I was definitely ready for it to be over. Then there was a very random Appendix set 100 years later which seemed to me to be almost completely pointless???

2. "Crucible of Time", by Jeffrey A. Carver, 2019, 481 pages. The 6th of this series, I thought it was supposed to be the last 1, but, no ... still 1 more in the pipe. This installment pretty much follows in the footsteps of #5. Our expanded team of intrepid galactic trouble-shooters gets mostly reunited. I'll be glad to put the last one behind me.

3. "seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees: expanded edition", by Lawrence Weschler, 2009, 336 pages. Subtitled "Over Thirty Years Of Conversations With Robert Irwin". This was a belated birthday gift from my oldest daughter Erica, the Brooklyn graphics designer.

   Robert Irwin is (still alive, age 91) an LA based artist, active since 1960. He is a fascinating genius of a man. He grew up in the LA area, into cars, girls, dance contests, and gambling in his teen years in the 1940s; he went to various art institutes; he supported himself in a lot of his adult life betting on the horses.

   He did some abstract impressionistic paintings to start, but quickly got a LOT more conceptual. A painting should have no images; it should be only what was in the artist's mind when he created it. With his Line paintings in 1962, he spent 2 years creating 10 12"^2 paintings in a solid color, usually orange, with 2 1/8" horizontal lines somewhere. He said things like "moving 1 line up a tiny fraction of an inch completely changed the result".

   Next up were his Dots paintings - 2 of which were vandalized by some very serious art critics in Sao Paulo. Then came his Discs, which were paintings without frames.

   Trying to abstract his way out of the figure/background dichotomy of paintings, he became an installation artist. He later designed gardens, buildings, all kind of stuff.

   I really liked 1 story he recounted. A NYC art critic was in LA for a show & got into a discussion with Irwin of Folk Art. To the NYC guy this meant pottery etc. Irwin found an ad for a hot-rod being sold. He took the critic to meet the late-teens guy who was working on a new hot-rod. All the aesthetic decisions the guy was making, expose bolts or not, how many coats of paint - to Irwin this was modern folk art. The NYC critic was having no part of it - as opposed to LA, NYC has 0 car culture. When he couldn't convince the critic, Irwin stopped his car somewhere in Southern California and told him to get out. Nice!

   Erica also got me, by the same author, "true to life: Twenty-five Years of Conversations with David Hockney". I have found that art must be done in small doses, particularly when Erica is involved. Good art is like getting punched real hard in the head - I need to definitely control the dosage. So this 2nd book will be put off for a good while - hopefully I will remember to come back to it.

4. "The Last Supper Before Ragnarok", by Cassandra Khaw, 2019, 222 pages. Apparently this is Gods and Monsters #5 - I've read only 2 others by Khaw, here's the latest. Hmmm, this shows as "Persona Non Grata" series - no mention of "Gods and Monsters" - apparently we have some quantum series indeterminacy, hopefully the competing wave functions will collapse out soon. Researching, the GaM novels 2 & 3 are by other authors, just bought #1 & #4 by Khaw. Persona Non Grata seems to indeed be a different series, with the demon-possessed cheap detective protagonist.

   I somehow thought this was novel length, but it is another novella. Very good use of competing mythologies, an interesting cast of somewhat supernatural characters. A fun read. Khaw is from Malaysia, and incorporates much Malaysian (and Chinese) mythology and cuisine.

5. "Ninth Step Station", by Malka Older & others, 2019, 414 pages. From Serial Box: 10 episodes, feeling very much like TV series episodes, an intro (pre-credits teaser), followed by 4-5 Acts. I have pretty much sworn off of TV police procedurals as of 2-3 years ago. But, these have some good new SF elements - eye implants with IR vision, other implants/bionics, drones everywhere - so I gladly un-foreswore procedurals for at least this series.

   Following serious earthquakes & a lame North Korean attack, followed by a Japanese response, the Chinese have invaded Japan & hold the western 1/2 of Tokyo. The other half is what's left of the Japanese government propped up by US peacekeeping forces.

   Our main character is a Tokyo police inspector (lesbian or bisexual of course), her partner is a Japanese-American peacekeeper forwarded in the spirit of cooperation. It does the good thing of having each episode have a case to be solved, while meanwhile a larger story arc re China vs Japan + US develops. It is well done, but I was a little burnt out by the end. But, the ending sets up Series #2 for lots of drama, as the China vs Japan + US narrative heats up.

Time to go back to the magazine stack. I just switched my last print magazine, Technology Review, over to electronic only, yay! But, I am embarrassed to admit, somehow with my magazines all being electronic I seem to be losing track of where I am on the stack much more easily. Hard to beat a stack of physical magazines being read and then moved to a different physical stack across the room for tracking.