This month has flown by, my friends! I feel like it’s impossible that I actually read the 12 books reviewed below because I’ve been so busy this month with back-to school and things. I’m volunteering the equivalent of a part time job running my dad’s campaign for county auditor and as the PTA council Reflections specialist.
My word count for September was 400 words short of my 4,000 word goal, but not too terrible overall, considering. I ended up writing 2-3 days a week instead of 4 and making up the word count by writing slightly longer. I need to drill into my head that 250 words doesn’t actually take that long, so I’ll just sit down and actually do it.
I finished one story whose working name is “Reclaiming the Desert” but is also known as Solar Punk Utah in my file system. It’s a story about the ecological restoration of Utah and the mending of family relationships divided by a gulf of faith. Hopefully I’ll find a good home for it soon. Submissions are happening, though who knows if they are going well. 7 submissions out this fall, but no bites yet.
We released three episodes of Pop Culture on the Apricot Tree last month: one on Netflix’s The Adam Project, one on the anime film Mirai, and one on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
For October, I’m going to continue writing short stories and start work on my grad school applications. So crazy that this is really happening. Book reviews after the jump!
Speculative Fiction
Parliament of Wizards edited by Joe Monson & Jaleta Clegg – A good variety of stories, all involving a meeting between wizards of some type or other. The breadth of different interpretations of “wizard” is part of the fun of this anthology. Four of my favorites:
“The Business of Dragons” by Jodi L Milner – This story interprets the “Parliament of Wizards” as a pub and has a great spin on the “dragons actually not as dangerous as advertised” trope. The ending is a little pat, but worth it in my opinion.
“Blood Oath: An Orc Love Story” by Sarah E. Seeley – Woah, I was not expecting such a well-developed culture within a short story (granted, one of the longer ones in the collection). I want to read more about the world of these magic-wielding orcs. The titular love story has some great orc-y twists.
“What Burns in the Marshes” by Jeremy P Courville – The perfect Southern atmosphere captured in this story reminded me of Where the Crawdads Sing if it were a fantasy. (See? What book can’t be improved with adding magic!) The adventures of Olive and her unusual familiar were cinematic, heart-wrenching, and triumphant.
“Wizards Die by Stages” by Steve DuBois – I loved the execution of the magic system based on offering small bits of your soul to tiny creatures in exchange for power, which will eventually kill you. You don’t often read stories that center around the care of the elderly, and I loved the way the protagonist uses her ethical concerns to solve the dilemma.
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton – Well, I finally read Jurassic Park as part of my 2022 5×5 challenge, under the “books being made into movies” category. Obviously the singular “movie” is an understatement in this case. I have to admit that because my little brother was super into Jurassic Park growing up, I always thought that it was beneath me and never watched an entire film or picked up the book.
Parts of this book still work well, even after all these decades. CRISPR has brought us much closer to the cheap bio-engineering scenario the book predicts for the 90s, so the ethical arguments made seemed more relevant than ever. The fact that it is set in the 90s is weird, given how radically out tech diverged from the book’s predictions, and is now only just coming around.
The parts that I didn’t enjoy as much were the dinosaur chase scenes, which is basically the entire second half of the book. The little tricks they find to elude the dinosaurs are mildly interesting, but just not to my taste (probably why I also didn’t enjoy the movies). But I am glad to have read this classic in the science fiction genre.
The Assassins of Thasalon by Lois McMaster Bujold – So wonderful to read a new Penric and Desdemona adventure, as always. More intrigue and detective shenanigans in this one, which is a nice return to form after some non-detective adventures. Exploring a possible loophole in the established system makes for a good hard magic fantasy. And I was happy that several threads from other books are resolved by the ending. There’s nothing genre shattering about this series, but that’s not what this book is attempting to be. This series has always felt very Sherlock Holmes to me–you’re here because you love watching these characters find their way out of a puzzle, and that’s just great for me.
The Folk of the Fringe by Orson Scott Card – I skimmed this book in college when writing a paper about Mormons and speculative fiction, but I had never come back and read the whole thing. I have now finally redeemed myself as an aspiring scholar of Mormon speculative lit by reading this work.
Reading some of Card’s recent books, I thought his obsession with procreation and societal structures at the expense of realistic characters was a sign that his work was going downhill from the classics I had read as a teen and young adult. But no, it turns out these were always central themes and they either went over my young head or I’ve lost my taste for his style of storytelling, where a lot of potential endings are essentially enacted through character discussion before settling on what they actually will do.
That’s not to say there’s nothing redeemable here. “West” is the most conventional story of the series, with brilliant parallels to the first Mormon migration and felt relevant considering how many far-right Mormons don’t realize that the Christian right considers them enemies not allies. “Salvage” not only has a brilliant premise (the image of the Salt Lake Temple half-submerged in a reconstituted Lake Bonneville is haunting) but also captures the uncomfortable dynamics of being a non-Mormon in Utah, which is surprising coming from an LDS author. (See, Mormon writers actually can see the faults in their own community. *coughBannerofHeavencough*) I thought “The Fringe” was interesting for its study in community dynamics and consideration of how disabled people would cope with the apocalypse, though maybe not in a way modern readers would be comfortable with. “Pageant Wagon” managed to perfectly capture the type of writing that goes into a typical Mormon-American pageant, and actually made me nostalgic for all the Manti pageants I suffered through as a child (RIP). “America” causes chills by its portrayal of the logical fulfillment of Book of Mormon prophecies we tend to sweep under the rug, in spite of the icky relationship between a 15yo boy and a 40yo spinster doctor.
What I didn’t expect was the epilogue where Card discusses how this collection of stories came to be. It’s more touching than the book itself, seeing that even someone who’s won the Hugo and Nebula multiple times has the impostor syndrome that all writers wrestle with and struggles with figuring out what to write, and Card doesn’t pull any punches in putting all his insecurities out there. Honestly, if this epilogue weren’t there to explain what Card was doing with the stories, I would have liked this book a lot less, which is maybe not a point in the book’s favor since a story should stand on its own without external explanation.
A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers – Becky Chambers is known for her cozy SF novels with no stress or bad things happening. Nothing could exemplify this genre more than this book. It’s literally about a monk who travels around listening to people’s problems and comforting them with custom tea blends. Also, there’s a robot who just wants to understand humans. Obviously, don’t come to this book if you’re searching for plot.
Listening to the book’s final argument that “actually, it’s comforting that your life has no purpose and someday you’ll be gone” was strange as a person who believes radically in the opposite direction. Maybe this works for some people in a “don’t stress, you don’t matter enough to worry about” kind of way, but the logic absolutely escapes me. Overall, though, fun characters and an interesting pantheon of non-religious gods.
Bastille vs. the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson & Janci Patterson – A delightful ending to a silly kids’ series. My children are all so excited to read it. Felt a little more rushed than the other books, but overall achieved a worthy level of silliness.
A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine – For me, this book was just not as good as the first entry in the series. First of all, we’re missing the lovely poetic codes from the first book which I really enjoyed. This concept is there on the periphery (particularly in one plot line) but isn’t center stage. Instead, it’s replaced by trying to understand the aliens. But since the audience has been given the answer to that mystery from basically the beginning of the book, I felt like I was merely waiting for the characters to catch up.
And then there was the very explicit lesbian sex scene. I’ve accepted dealing with same gender couples in my mainstream fiction, even though it’s not my preference. And I can skip over explicit scenes without a problem. I did halfway through the major scene in this novel once it started getting too steamy for me. But then very explicit details keep being brought up in one-sentence character recollections in other scenes, which made them impossible to avoid. And in the end, the two characters don’t even stay together: there’s no real love, just a random passionate encounter. Very much not to my taste.
I would still recommend the first book in this series, but I can’t whole-heartedly encourage people to read this one.
Fiction
The Slow March of Light by Heather B. Moore – I don’t know that I’ve ever read a book set in divided Berlin during the Cold War, so hurrah for historical books set in time periods other than WWII. The story is based on the true story of a man who was a spy who was captured and imprisoned, supplemented with a fictional female German rebel compiled from actual events and stories. The writing is quick and uncomplicated, and each chapter has a clear purpose to accomplish before moving on. It’s an easy read to get through in an afternoon before book club (speaking from experience).
The thing that bothered me about this novel is the clear erasure of the Mormonism in the story. Oh, it’s there if you know the signs: two church congregations in the same building (one in German, one in English), the protagonist refusing cigarettes and alcohol, vague references to his father converting away from Catholicism in Idaho. But the serial numbers of our particularity have been filed off, presumably to make the story palatable to a national audience. Why is it that we can only have identifiably LDS characters if it’s a story about polygamy or leaving the church? Are we not allowed to have stories where Mormons are just people? *sigh* It’s fine, it’s fine.
Spin by John Bennion – I don’t know how to write a review for this book.
On the one hand, it’s the story of Lily, a young woman betrayed by her narcissistic husband, trying to use all her power to reunite with her baby daughter Anne and escape together to somewhere safe. But nowhere ever seems to be safe; her husband is always one step ahead of her, cutting her off. It’s absolutely hard to read. Is it a realistic portrayal of what such an escape might be like? I don’t know, but at times I just wanted the author to give her a break. The times when Lily is settled for a while, off the grid and with a chance to think, allow you to really get to know her, which makes it harder when she is beset by trouble again.
Intruding into this story are autobiographical ramblings, essays in the most literal sense, where the author contemplates what is happening in the story and why and how it relates to his own life. These segments really captured the voice of the author, made you understand how confused and hurt he felt about the nature of the world sometimes. This voice moderated some of the horror and despair of the Lily plotline, inserting a space between the reader and the novel, reminding you that it’s all made up and forcing you to grapple with why the author made it this way.
The portrayal of my own faith community is absolutely painful. No Mormons are ever kind to Lily; most of them are actively hostile and harmful towards her. I willingly agree that there are some people like this in the church, but everyone? It’s hard to read a book that portrays my community with such a dark brush (not just individual characters but the entire structure). But maybe this is the point of the book: Lily’s world is so black that there’s no room for hope, goodness, or even logic. It’s a world determined entirely by chance.
Nonfiction
On Writing (and Writers): A Miscellany of Advice and Opinions by C.S. Lewis – I received a review copy of this book on NetGalley. (Did I mention I’ve signed up for NetGalley? Browsing that site makes me feel like a kid sneaking down to see the Christmas gifts before everyone else is awake.)
Really nice to have so much of CS Lewis’s advice about writing in one spot. Many of the little tidbits from the letters were new to me, though I had recently read several of the longer pieces (“On Science Fiction,” “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s to Be Said,” and his commentary on Lord of the Rings). Lewis’s advice is still relevant in the modern day; I always find some new concept when I read his work. For example, his idea of “narrative-lust” as a distraction in our first reading of a book was interesting in the context of the modern obsession with avoiding spoilers. Though there was less new content than I had hoped, I still appreciated the collection and pulled lots of quotes from it into my quote archive.
Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport – Rereading this book again, I still think the author makes a good argument for using social media less, but not ditching it all together. I’ve found a few of my own techniques which he doesn’t address in the book (like using sites that let you post to social media but not check it). This time I also focused more on the quality leisure and solitude portions of his argument, as I have seen that removing constant internet use doesn’t work without something to replace it.
However, this time I was also bothered by the big gaping hole where his book simply doesn’t address caregivers (aka stay-at-home moms & dads) whose time is already time confetti and have to work around this. Turns out my kids don’t respect my need for hobbies that require a long-time commitment. I’d love to see a version of this book written after the pandemic and addressed more to parents. I’m open to recommendations if you know of such a book.
Into the Headwinds: Why Belief Has Always Been Hard—and Still Is by Terryl Givens & Nathaniel Givens – I’ll be trying to publish a longer review of this one somewhere, but overall, this book tied together a lot of the threads in my personal reading and brought them back around to interact with my faith. I find the ideas to be spot on and fascinating. If you’re interested in neuroscience, behavioral economics, and religion, you owe it to yourself to pick this little volume up.
Can I borrow “Into the Headwinds”? – mom