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Wednesday Supposes Erroneously
Feb. 16th, 2022 06:17 pmWhat I've Finished Reading
In the end I gave up on the idea that The Power Broker was too large to take to bed or to the local coffee shop, even though it really, really is, and just let it bulldoze straight through all the hours of my life until it was over. The day after I finished it, I was on the porch of said coffee shop, trying to describe the desolation of the Cross-Bronx Expressway to someone who hadn't read it, when a guy from the other side of the porch leaned over and said, "Are you talking about The Power Broker??" And just like that, we were all talking about The Power Broker.
The subtitle of The Power Broker is "Robert Moses and the Fall of New York," and that's because the premise of the book is that while New York City in the twentieth century could theoretically have been ruined by a lot of things, it was actually ruined mainly by one guy, his unchecked power over all things concrete, and his insatiable love of gigantic freeways and bridges. And the New York Times being a magnifying mirror for the characteristic errors of every age, but that probably goes without saying. I don't have the background to know if this is an accurate analysis, but it's definitely a vivid one. If you like deep dives into city infrastructure and its discontents, or dazzlingly lucid descriptions of arcane political manuvering, you might like this book! Side effects may include nightmares about living by firelight in half-demolished buildings in the shadow of an unfinished freeway, and/or never again being able to shut up about Robert Moses for generations to come.
I also finally made good on my promise to read one of Kevin Kwan's rich-people books, which I've been making to myself ever since Crazy Rich Asians made a splash . . . what, ten years ago now? The one that turned up in the Little Free Library is Sex and Vanity, and it's a lot sweeter than I expected. It's also a meticulous homage to or hand-tinted xeroxed photocopy of A Room With A View. Some of the plot-driving mores fit a little awkwardly into the contemporary setting, but I know so little about Haute New York poshos, and Kwan serves them up with such breezy assurance, that I was willing to go with it 80-90% of the time.
And I spent a long time wishing to love but not really feeling His Dark Materials, which I bought in a big three-in-one paperback years ago. Why I didn't actually love it, it's hard to say. It's chock full of Cool Stuff that I wasn't super into. The only point at which I got emotionally involved was briefly when Will and Lyra met, and later when the worldbuilding contrived itself to force Will and Lyra to live in separate worlds. This is probably my own fault for not being ten.
What I'm Reading Now
It's Franzen O'Clock! Time to give the fiction of Jonathan Franzen another shot with The Corrections. The prose is admirably deep and specific but I don't care for it. Reading it feels like someone is gently forcing my head into a large fish tank, only instead of water, the fish and my head are swimming in Mid-American Malaise. But maybe, eventually, in a good way? Who knows; I'm just getting started.
I'm also reading A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge. My impression of Vinge based on one and a half books is that his plots don't thrill me but his aliens are the best. A year after reading it, I couldn't tell you with any certainty what happened in A Fire Upon the Deep, but I doubt a day has gone by since that I haven't thought of its pack-intelligent space dogs or its tragic cyborg kelp. A Deepness in the Sky alternates between the representatives of a couple of antagonistic human cultures investigating a very weird star system and trying to manipulate one another, who are all right I guess, and the star system's inhabitants, a civilization of hibernating spiders trying to reckon with the effects of industrialization on traditional culture, whom I will love to my dying day.
What I Plan to Read Next
I just bought a short-story collection called Shit Cassandra Saw, which looks promising! But I might not get to it for a while.
In the end I gave up on the idea that The Power Broker was too large to take to bed or to the local coffee shop, even though it really, really is, and just let it bulldoze straight through all the hours of my life until it was over. The day after I finished it, I was on the porch of said coffee shop, trying to describe the desolation of the Cross-Bronx Expressway to someone who hadn't read it, when a guy from the other side of the porch leaned over and said, "Are you talking about The Power Broker??" And just like that, we were all talking about The Power Broker.
The subtitle of The Power Broker is "Robert Moses and the Fall of New York," and that's because the premise of the book is that while New York City in the twentieth century could theoretically have been ruined by a lot of things, it was actually ruined mainly by one guy, his unchecked power over all things concrete, and his insatiable love of gigantic freeways and bridges. And the New York Times being a magnifying mirror for the characteristic errors of every age, but that probably goes without saying. I don't have the background to know if this is an accurate analysis, but it's definitely a vivid one. If you like deep dives into city infrastructure and its discontents, or dazzlingly lucid descriptions of arcane political manuvering, you might like this book! Side effects may include nightmares about living by firelight in half-demolished buildings in the shadow of an unfinished freeway, and/or never again being able to shut up about Robert Moses for generations to come.
I also finally made good on my promise to read one of Kevin Kwan's rich-people books, which I've been making to myself ever since Crazy Rich Asians made a splash . . . what, ten years ago now? The one that turned up in the Little Free Library is Sex and Vanity, and it's a lot sweeter than I expected. It's also a meticulous homage to or hand-tinted xeroxed photocopy of A Room With A View. Some of the plot-driving mores fit a little awkwardly into the contemporary setting, but I know so little about Haute New York poshos, and Kwan serves them up with such breezy assurance, that I was willing to go with it 80-90% of the time.
And I spent a long time wishing to love but not really feeling His Dark Materials, which I bought in a big three-in-one paperback years ago. Why I didn't actually love it, it's hard to say. It's chock full of Cool Stuff that I wasn't super into. The only point at which I got emotionally involved was briefly when Will and Lyra met, and later when the worldbuilding contrived itself to force Will and Lyra to live in separate worlds. This is probably my own fault for not being ten.
What I'm Reading Now
It's Franzen O'Clock! Time to give the fiction of Jonathan Franzen another shot with The Corrections. The prose is admirably deep and specific but I don't care for it. Reading it feels like someone is gently forcing my head into a large fish tank, only instead of water, the fish and my head are swimming in Mid-American Malaise. But maybe, eventually, in a good way? Who knows; I'm just getting started.
I'm also reading A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge. My impression of Vinge based on one and a half books is that his plots don't thrill me but his aliens are the best. A year after reading it, I couldn't tell you with any certainty what happened in A Fire Upon the Deep, but I doubt a day has gone by since that I haven't thought of its pack-intelligent space dogs or its tragic cyborg kelp. A Deepness in the Sky alternates between the representatives of a couple of antagonistic human cultures investigating a very weird star system and trying to manipulate one another, who are all right I guess, and the star system's inhabitants, a civilization of hibernating spiders trying to reckon with the effects of industrialization on traditional culture, whom I will love to my dying day.
What I Plan to Read Next
I just bought a short-story collection called Shit Cassandra Saw, which looks promising! But I might not get to it for a while.
