Reading, Read, Read

I went to Switzerland this weekend and read my book. On the minus side, my main laptop is on the fritz again. Ah, the vicissitudes of life.

Reading

So, starting tomorrow, I will spend 3(ish) days in and around Zürich. The centerpiece of my stay is a (kind of) reading I’m giving in an art gallery in Brunnen.

Podcast? Podcast. Podcast!

So after having had to do without my primary computer for a few weeks, I managed to switch it on last night for a while and the first thing I did was to open iTunes and download the most recent episodes of all the Podcasts I was subscribed to. As I saw the number of episodes that were being downloaded climb from one to ten to (in the end) 72, I was moved to contemplate the space I accord to podcasts in my daily life. So I decided to offer a few recommendations. I am subscribed to way too many different podcasts but I will recommend a small handful that will not take up too much of your time, but that WILL provide a nice distraction on your car ride or during a work out. I primarily use podcasts so I don’t have to hear my own thoughts, but even for normal people, podcasts are a nice thing to have.

1.  So the first thing to know that if you want variety, the best bet is one of the millions of interview based podcasts. All 3 of the podcasts that I’m going to list are very uneven depending on their guest, but they do have very specific strengths that come out almost always.

• WTF with Marc Maron. Maron is basically the prototype of the bitter comedian. His podcast is among the most popular and that’s a well deserved popularity because as it turns out, he’s an amazing interviewer. Especially when it comes to other comedians. If you’re interested in a comedian, check whether that comedian has done an episode of WTF. Invariably, that’s going to be the best interview with that comedian you’re likely to find. Recently, he’s been interviewing well known Rock musicians and those interviews are almost as good. Maron is good in general, but with those two kinds of guests? Unbelievable. You have to pay to access older episodes, but there’s a high likelihood someone uploaded them to Youtube. Like this classic episode with Louis CK, or this one with Conan O’Brien.
• The Nerdist Podcast. Three self-described nerds, led by Chris Hardwick, interview various pop culture guests. I find their tone grating after a while, but with the right guests, they prodice very entertaining episodes. Unlike Maron, who tends to go through his guests’ careers chronologically, The Nerdist Podcast is more of a randomised affair, where, while the three hosts play some game of nerdy one-upmanship, you sometimes won’t hear much of the guest for up to 15 minutes. If this show is edited I can’t imagine what they cut. With the right guests though, this is magic. The Harrison Ford episode is amazing.
• The Axe Files with David Axelrod. This is probably the best thing 0n this list. A very recent entry, this is David Axelrod interviewing various political figures (although he also interviewed Joakim Noah at one point). Axelrod is a political insider and this podcast is the politics version of WTF. It is very biased politically, but asks interesting, sharp questions. Most of the guests work very well, if they are willing to go beyond formulas. The first episode is probably also the best, featuring Bernie Sanders.

2. The second group of recommendations is just one Podcast collective. That collective is Radiotopia. Every single Radiotopia podcast is excellent. Excellent. Eminently worth your time. The thing that unites all of them is a mostly short runtime of roughly 20 minutes, a creator/host who is deeply invested in the format, and high quality content. Their best podcast is 99% Invisible, a design-based podcast by Roman Mars who’s also the driving force behind the whole Radiotopia enterprise. There is no other podcast that I have linked so many times to people. Like this episode about nuclear waste, or this episode about the criminalization of jaywalking, or this episode about the strange rebuilding of Warsaw. If you came to this blog post looking for recommendations, trust me on this. Other podcasts are Song Exploder, which is the podcast with the shortest episodes on this list. Every episode looks at the creation of a specific song. There’s no banter, no need to fill minutes. There’s about 5-10 Minutes of the band or artist or producer discussing various parts of the song and at the end, you can hear the song. It’s short, inspired and absolutely lovely. Trust me. You want to add this. Criminal is a podcast to scratch your Serial/Making a Murderer itch. Listen to the extraordinary and mildly disturbing recent episode The Agreement for a taste.  There is The Heart, a podcast about sex and love, Fugitive Waves, a fantastic podcast about…everything? Really, they are all good. Listen to one or two episodes from all Radiotopia podcasts and see which ones you particularly enjoy. I can vouch for all of them except Mortified which sounds too much like other podcasts I have not enjoyed all that much despite their fame (like The Moth). To sum up: Radiotopia in general and 99% Invisible in particular. Go forth and listen.

3. The third group are what I call the science podcasts. Given that so-called nerds and geeks have seized the medium of the podcast it’s no wonder that science based ones rank among the most popular and generally excellent varieties. I’m subscribed to about ten of these but I’ll recommend 3 here.

• Radiolab. That’s probably the most famous one, with one of its hosts having appeared on Colbert and the other having been awarded a MacArthur Genius grant. They tackle various topics. They are always, ALWAYS excellent. It’s a mixture of reporting and banter, which is both enlightening and entertaining. I don’t have a favorite episode, but here is someone else’s list of favorites. It gives you a bit of an idea about the show, as well.
• Invisibilia. This podcast is currently on hiatus, but you can still listen to the full first season, and there’s just nothing to be said here: high production values, very smart, and in general follows the Radiolab template. All the first season episodes are equally good. I can’t wait for ‘season 2’. My favorite episode and one that I have recommended numerous times, is the one called “Batman” about how people’s expectations can limit what we can do and achieve. One of its segments has blind people do echolocation. ECHOLOCATION, people.
• Reasonably Sound with Mike Rugnetta. You might (or you might not) know Mike Rugnetta from Youtube where he does science education for PBS. Snappy edits, quick monologues, the works. As nice as these videos are, this podcast is better. It’s a sound centered podcast, on various sound related topics. There’s no segments. it’s just Rugnetta himself, one topic per week – if you are at all interested in the world of music and sound, you should add this to your list. The topics range from subliminal messages, to the sounds of space, misophonia and the drop in dance music. I don’t know where Mike Rugnetta gets his skills, cleverness and composure. But this podcast thing? He’s very good at it.

4. And the fourth and final group are odds and ends. I’ll mention 6-8 of my favorite podcasts from various networks and on various topics.

• Welcome to Night Vale. This is one of the best things. Period. I am a huge fan of this. This is more than a podcast. My relationship to this podcast is comparable to my relationship to favorite TV shows. There are now, in the wake of the success of Night Vale, a whole range of fiction podcasts with mysterious stories. I have no patience for any of them. Welcome to Night Vale is a fake local radio broadcast from a town that is unlike any other town. You HAVE to listen to this one in order, starting with the first episode. It gets better and better as we explore the various characters and the town. Have a quote:
  

  Notice: there is no digital, static-y hum coming from the Dog Park, Mayor Pamela Winchell announced today. The mayor stressed repeatedly in her 90 second impromptu press conference that there is no unbearable, soul-tearing sound that rips at the sinews of your very being coming from the Dog Park. Mayor Winchell continued with a plea for all Night Vale residents to understand that there could not possibly be a deeply coded message emanating from a small, fenced-in patch of municipal grass and dirt. Citizens are not even supposed to be consciously aware of the Dog Park, so they could not possibly be receiving a menacing and unearthly voice instructing listeners to bring precious metals and toddlers to the Dog Park. “Dog Park,” she repeated. “That could never, ever be real,” the mayor shouted, pounding the podium with her bleeding fists.

  and another one

  Thursday night, the City Council is voting on a new measure that would prohibit breathing as an involuntary muscular action. Historically, the human body has been able to control breathing without the brain having to continuously activate the diaphragm. Under the new rule, all residents of Night Vale would be required to make the physical choice of whether or not, and when to breathe. The City Council said that we have too long taken the receipt of oxygen for granted and that this sense of entitlement must cease.

• A Tiny Sense of Accomplishment is a podcast hosted by the authors Sherman Alexie and Jess Walter. It’s mostly about writing. Sometimes they have guests. Why should you listen to it? Because Sherman Alexie is a Great Writer and listening to Great Writers talk about writing is one of the best things, at least for me.
• The Mental Illness Happy Hour is, well, what is it? It’s a podcast about depression and mental illness. Its host, comedian Paul Gilmartin, is open about his own struggles with depression, which makes him a very believable and reliable person to discuss this issue (I have complained about other people discussing this issue in this review). Most episodes run past the 2 hour mark, and that’s because Gilmartin appears to have no need for editorial self discipline. The main part of most episodes is an interview with a more or less well known person about their struggles with mental illness or difficult childhoods or both. On the website for the show you can anonymously submit answers to a questionnaire that Gilmartin then reads on air. The experience of listening to this podcast is like nothing else. If you have never experienced mental illness, maybe it’s a bit much for you, but even then, the interviews are certainly worth a listen. I don’t have a favorite episode but here is an interview at the AV Club where Gilmartin details 3 of HIS favorite episodes. It also gives you a good idea what the podcast is about.
• You Must Remember This is a lovely podcast with stories from the early era of Hollywood. Stories about Meyer, about Lana Turner, Irving Thalberg, Buter Keaton. If, like me, you loved “Hollywood Babylon” or the Hollywood noir comics of Matt Fraction, you’ll love this. Well narrated, based on solid research, this is comfort food for people who like that sort of story. It is right up my alley, so this podcast hits my pleasure center straight up. Similarly comfort foody is another history podcast. Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History. It appears to be similarly well researched, but that is not necessarily quite enough. It’s stories on WWII are lacking in accuracy now and then, but the narration is great, and in areas where I am not as knowledgeable, it’s great fun. The episodes are long, so it’s a bit of a commitment, but go ahead and listen to the “Wrath of the Khans” episodes.
• Speaking of comfort food. There are two nice cooking related podcasts that are also highly recommended. One is Burnt Toast, a podcast made by cooks and cooking book writers. It’s a bit inside baseball, but really fun. A really good episode to sample is “Man vs. Meatload” which features the fantastic (FANTASTIC) Kenji López-Alt, who has just published a cookbook that I crave with all my heart (and that you should crave, as well!). Part interview, part cooking a recipe from his book. The other podcast is Gravy, a podcast less about recipe and everyday cooking and more about food culture, particularly the food culture of the American South. Every episode is enjoyable.
• This American Life is a classic by now. There’s almost no point explaining it except to say that you cannot go wrong with this. Hosted by Ira Glass, a notoriously hardworking man of broad tastes, each one hour episode consists of various segments touching on all kinds of issues. Most episodes are centered around a certain theme. As for the segments: An American Life is famously picky, which makes for remarkably consistent quality. Along with the aforementioned 99% Invisible, this is the most consistently excellent podcast on an episode by episode basis. I don’t have a favorite episode. They are all good.

Bonus: Bookbabble. How are you not listening to that yet? Shame on you. Mend your ways and subscribe.

There are whole swathes of podcasts I have not added. There’s languages: I listen to a very reasonable German podcast (Kulturjournal), a very good French one (La Fabrique de l’Histoire) and a lovely Russian one (Ночной дневник) but I would honestly welcome recommendationa in all three of those languages. And there’s sports. Among my most frequently updated podcasts are at least 10 that deal with my ungodly obsession for various sports. If you want recommendations for those, ask me in the comments or on Twitter. Meanwhile, I’m off drowning out my thoughts again.

Katherine Addison: The Goblin Emperor

Addison, Katherine (2015), The Goblin Emperor, Tor
ISBN 978-0-7653-6568-2

So when I read books I often tend to read them with a goal to maybe review them, and sometimes I just have these palate cleanser books that won’t turn up as a review or in a bibliography; at best they will make an appearance on Twitter. Especially comic books or fantasy novels – I’ve written numerous reviews of both genres and at some point one worries about repeating oneself. I don’t have something interesting to say about every book I read. Sometimes it’s just a shrug and a thumbs up or down. Brian Posehn’s Deadpool run? Very nice. Jan Peter Bremer’s Döblin Preis winning novel? A bit dull. Bryan Frances’s book on relativism? Very nice. So when I started to read Katherine Addision’s “debut” novel The Goblin Emperor (I’ll explain the inverted commas in a moment) I didn’t expect it to end up here with its own review. However, as I thumbed through its last pages yesterday, I found myself intrigued enough by the book that I wanted to talk about it. So first things first: The Goblin Emperor is, as far as high fantasy goes, a fairly unique, very interesting book, that upholds many flaws of the genre, but, like The Copper Promise (see my review here), provides a very welcome light addition to fantasy that does not run the grimdark gamut. It’s a bit tedious in stretches but overall it’s a light and very enjoyable read if you like court intrigues in a very lightly steampunk setting. It has some of the nicest and most well rounded characters I’ve encountered in fiction in a while, but it relegates most of its truly intriguing characters and character developments to its fringes, whether that’s spare appearances or mere mentions. Look, if you like court intrigues and high fantasy and don’t need it to be “dark” or “realistic”, go for it. The world building in this book is fantastically accomplished, without the usual crutches. Everything that went into this book feels necessary to the structure and plot and doesn’t just add picturesque details or pretty mountains on one of those notorious epic fantasy maps. Despite the book never really leaving the confines of the capital city, we are made aware of the larger world around it. And the best aspect of the book is the way its narrative is restricted to the point of view of its barely-adult protagonist, it never falls into the trap that so much high fantasy falls into, of endless, helpless ruminations. The narrative is tight and the prose is perfectly adequate for its goals.

Fancy map, terrible book. The not-so-mysterious case of Robert Jordan

In fact, the book is so accomplished that it’s hard to believe it’s anyone’s debut novel. And despite the coy author’s bio inside, Katherine Addison is really Sarah Monette, a more seasoned author, with 6 previous novels to her name, two of them co-authored with genre heavyweight Elizabeth Bear. So The Goblin Emperor doesn’t come from nothing, but that would have been hard to believe anyway, given the extraordinarily controlled style and environment we are offered by this twice-named author. In the previous paragraph, I mentioned the “epic fantasy maps” that are so ubiquitous in the genre and which work as crutches for us as readers to not get lost in the multitude of names and places and things. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing and in fact, for many years I (raised as I was on the conscientious cartography of JRR Tolkien and D&D campaigns) thought that the miserable incompetence of Terry Goodkind’s terrible fantasy novels was prefigured in the poor and simple maps of Wizard’s First Rule. Many years of reading fantasy later I find that terrible books can sometimes come with very nice maps. While completely mapless, Addison/Monette’s book does come with a glossary and a brief morphology of names and titles, and while we can do without the maps, it’s hard to do without those things in a book like this. The Goblin Emperor feels like I’m told reading classic Russian novels feels to many readers: we are overwhelmed by an unbelievably large amount of names that all seem somewhat similar. More than once I had to browse earlier chapters to remind myself of who a person was exactly. That’s because, just like Russian novels can be disorienting due to their sheer amount of patronymics, Addison/Monette leaves us right in the thicket of a wealth of honorifics, family names, gender suffixes and much more. There’s no big infodump in the book that tutors the reader – instead, the author serves up a wholly realized world, and just expects us to find our way around all the strange words and names as we tag along with the story. In fact, for all that the world building is meticulous, the lack of maps and the elaborate nature of the names and terminology point to a world building that is based more on philology than topology, a point subtly driven home by the author when, during the course of a formal dinner party, we are allowed to eavesdrop on an actual philological debate between two minor characters. Yet even more than a clever way to deal with world-building, the dearth of explanation that happens in much of this has another effect.

Different beginning, different airship, same steam punk plot device

The book’s protagonist is the youngest son of the recently deceased Emperor. Addison/Monette borrows from the stock of high fantasy races and has the main race of inhabitants of the capital city be elves. Maia, the protagonist, however, is half elvish and half goblin, being the offspring of the late Emperor’s ill-fated political marriage to a goblin princess. Despite being of doubly royal blood, Maia had been exiled to a faraway province where he lived a tranquil but unhappy life. The sudden death of his father, whose steam powered airship was the target of a political assassination [as an aside: what’s with crashing steam powered airships as a plot starting device?], as well as of everybody else that could have a better claim on the throne than the 18 year old half goblin, forces Maia to return to court where he hasn’t been in ten years and where he has never lived to begin with. As Maia arrives, he is overwhelmed by the sheer amount of people and riches around him, not to mention the court intrigue and responsibility. A boy who has lived all his life on what basically amounts to a farm is now thrust into the hot cauldron of a vast empire’s capital city. And yet. we never despair for him, we are not scared or worried. This is because the author has set up her character with just the right amount of knowledge and, more than that, what they call “a good head on his shoulders”. We have all read these books narrated by less than bright characters, as readers most of us remember the anguish that comes with following a narrative of bad choices and impending tragedy or tragedies narrowly averted. Maia, in contrast to these books, has had very solid training and has developed fine instincts for how to relate to people, how to act when under pressure and how to deal with one’s fellow man. He manages to survive the first turbulent days and get himself crowned emperor (no spoiler here, it’s the title of the book). Now, whenever he is explained a fact about court, we are explained the same fact at the same time, so as he grows and learns, we do too. As readers, we cannot, however, duplicate his bewilderment when faced with the plurality of people, objects and the vastness of space that Maia has to traverse, inhabit and command. We are told he is bewildered, but we cannot share that feeling – which is where the author’s insouciant use of names and terms comes in. As a native speaker of the language, these are not things bothering Maia. but for the reader they are a kind of crutch that helps us approximate his confusion.

This is important because, at least through the first third of the book, I thought that the novel does an extraordinary job of being not a book about elves, goblins and court intrigue, but about foreignness, and isolation in a new culture that is not your own. Being myself “half Goblin” (well, half Russian), I found this part truly well executed. But not in the way adult books about foreignness are usually executed (say, Roth’s Call It Sleep) and more the way kid’s books work (say, Abdel-Fattah’s Does my head look big in this?). In many ways, the book feels as if its audience is young adults, more than with other fantasy novels, even though it is, as far as I can see, not categorized that way by author or publisher. But the kindness of the book, the way it takes its reader hy the hand and helps him understand the protagonist’s state of mind, as mentioned in rhe previous paragraph, it adds up to an impression of the author being as patient and careful with her readers as Maia’s tutors and new friends are with him. There are no pitfalls, as readers of the recently popular [I’m using the word recently as old people like me are wont to do. Not necessarily the dictionary definition] “grimdark” variety of fantasy writing would expect. Characters that seem trustworthy are trustworthy. The characters that seem like they have something bad up their sleeve, are generally bad news. This is not just us seeing the world through the eyes of someone with good instincts – this is a fundamentally balanced world. I mentioned The Copper Promise earlier. In a much different way, both books offer a genuine kind of escapism, a way of reading without your guard up. Everything is as it seems. It doesn’t make Maia’s life easy, and, in fact, the book doesn’t skirt dark moments, including executions and the weight that comes with having power over life and death. But at the same time, parts of this are worrisome. The world of The Copper Promise felt mostly democratic, despite one of its characters being a lord. Its main protagonist is a poor mercenary and her triumphs and losses are those of everyday people. Not so with The Goblin Emperor. Politically, it’s a very odd book. All that balance I mentioned? It’s balanced around a center and that’s Maia, the benevolent king.

All the concessions, all the niceness. all the emotions, they are all granted by this king. Maia is told to pick a wife, and that woman has to agree to marry him. And while he’s very nice and shy about it, it still happens that way and a woman who is clearly reluctant does end up marrying him. Many of the emotional bonds Maia shares are bonds with his servants and some of the emotional high points highlight how gladly and absolutely his close servants serve him. There are mere glimmers of their private lives and of lives in general that are not like Maia’s. One of Maia’s aunts lives with a wife as a Sea Captain somewhere and we know barely more than that, it’s just something that comes up in conversation. There’s also a gay couple at a dance one night, and that’s almost all we learn about that. In fact, while I enjoyed the first third as a very effective disquisition about alienness and migration, the longer I followed Maia’s narrative the more irritating I found the fact that racial difference is encoded in terms of elf and goblin. Political change, it’s implied, can only come from the top rungs of a hierarchy. Indeed, the novel is very careful to include a picture of revolutionaries that makes sure to have us understand that they are ruthless and maybe a bit insane. All of this is much more unpleasant by the overall didactic, balanced tone. I will say that part of my unhappiness with the way politics, race, gender and difference is handled in the second half of the novel is influenced by me having read as excellent a work of fantasy as N.K. Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy, or Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn books (review), both of which show the potential of this genre. I will say: this is my main complaint about the The Goblin Emperor (and it’s something many other books in the genre do, as well), which in most other ways, is very accomplished and a truly enjoyable read, if this be your genre.

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On Hold

Due to smoke rising from my laptop – and a personal reluctance to set my apartment on fire – I cannot at this point properly use my laptop – or access the files on it. So if you are waiting for an article or manuscript or something, please be patient. I cannot afford to replace it. I have a very old backup computer which I can use to go online, so that’s not awful.