2021 in Books!

‘Tis the season to post at least one blog for the year: the reading wrap-up.

1. How many books did you read this year?  38, according to GoodReads – though that leaves out 7 children’s books, and 11 books on quilting that I flipped through and read portions of.
   
2. Did you reread anything? What?  The only reread I recall was The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.  I never DID get all the way through my sentimental items, and thus feel the need to re-reread it for another round through clothing, books, papers, and komono (once I’ve clarified my vision of what I want life to look like: always the difficult part).
   
3. What were your top five books of the year?  Himself and The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue both had an interesting conceit and storytelling style.  So did The ABC Murders, which was rendered even more intriguing by contrast with the BBC series.  Digital Minimalism could change my life if I actually put it into practice.  I suppose we could put Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom as one long magical heist book, since they’re basically two halves of the same story.
    
4. Did you discover any new authors that you love this year?  Not sure about love, but I’d read more Jess Kidd, Megan Whalen Turner, Eleanor Arnason, and Cal Newport.
   
5. What genre did you read the most of?  I thought it might be mystery, but fantasy won out.  This is what happens when you dive into a bunch of Leigh Bardugo.  Plenty of Ngaio Marsh left for this year!
   
6. Was there anything you meant to read, but never got to?  As ever, yes.  Huge swaths of my shelves are one big TBR list; the same could be said of my roommate’s shelves; ditto the whole Ann Arbor library. 
   
   More specifically: Why We Sleep, A Praying Life, The King of Attolia, and Everything Sad is Untrue were due back before I could finish them; Howl’s Moving Castle/House of Many Ways/Castle in the Air, Essential McLuhan, and a guide book to Japan were requested by someone else before I even started them; and eventually, my boyfriend convinced me that I should winnow down my checkouts, such that after reading Anteater of Death, I returned the Koala, Llama, and Puffin of Death (among other things).  The idea is that if I can’t bear to live my life without finding out who else dies in/near the Gunn Zoo, possibly with a puffin as witness, I’ll check them back out.
   
7. What was your average Goodreads rating? Does it seem accurate?  3.4, which is the same as 2020.  I think I err on the side of generosity, but continue to wish for a 10-point scale rather than a 5-point scale, so it would be easier to differentiate between middling-fair and middling-poor reads. 
   
   A friend shared that she’s stopped using GoodReads ratings, since the significant point is whether or not she enjoyed the book; I continue to feel that the ratings of friends whose taste I trust is a useful metric, so I’ll keep including them for the time being. 
   
8. Did you meet any of your reading goals? Which ones? I completed my GoodReads goal of 33; read some things that had been on my TBR for a while (A Gathering of Ravens, You Need a Budget, A Discovery of Witches, The Thief, The Medium is the Massage); and successfully read 10 pages of nonfiction (with a bent toward self-improvement) for 75 days straight as part of 75 Hard.  This last item was most helpful and significant for reaching my yearly goal.
   
9. Did you get into any new genres? On account of 75 Hard, I guess so; I don’t suppose I’d read so many self-improvement-centric nonfiction books otherwise.  Not sure if I’d call it a new genre for me, just an unusual focus.
   
10. What was your favorite new release of the year? The closest I got to a new release were books from 2020: Delight!; The Invisible Life of Addie Larue; and Subversive: Christ, Culture, and the Shocking Dorothy L. Sayers.  Of these, Addie Larue was the most entertaining to read, but that’s rather comparing apples and oranges.
    
11. What was your favorite book that has been out for a while, but you just now read?  All the Ngaio Marsh (and Christie, come to that) were published in the 1930s, but that doesn’t make them any less delightful!
        
12. Any books that disappointed you?  A Gathering of Ravens was more grimdark and tedious than I expected it to be; Aurora was a tremendously thorough thought experiment, but didn’t quite go where I expected or wanted; and Option B was billed as a book about resilience rather than a book about grief.
    
13. What were your least favorite books of the year?  Option B. 
    
14. What books do you want to finish before the year is over?   N/A at this point.    
    
15. Did you read any books that were nominated for or won awards this year (Booker, Women’s Prize, National Book Award, Pulitzer, Hugo, etc.)? What did you think of them?  Hmmm.  Some of them were nominated for awards, but not any of the awards listed, so I’m not sure it applies. Perhaps I should seek out a handful of award-winners to see if their qualities are particularly distinct.
    
16. What is the most over-hyped book you read this year?  Probably Shadow and Bone.  Not that it was tremendously hyped, mind you, but because there’s a show based on it, I figured it would be better than it was.  Apparently the show relies on a fusion of Shadow and Bone with Six of Crows/Cursed Kingdom, which would make it somewhat stronger.
    
17. Did any books surprise you with how good they were?  No.  More frequently, though, a lackluster beginning would surprise me with how intriguing it got by the end.  Even some of the weakest books had compelling endings – although this may be a function of narrative lust; you know how it goes.
    
18. How many books did you buy? …let’s see.  7 books for my boyfriend’s parents, 2 for my roommate, a couple more for other friends, 1 for my niece, and 2 for me.  So 14?
    
19. Did you use your library?  For sure!!  I should actually use my library a bit less (ie, make fewer requests) so as to use it more effectively (read more of my checkouts).
    
20. What was your most anticipated release? Did it meet your expectations?  Subversive, as it’s the one book I can think of where I requested that the library obtain it and was 4^th in line to read it when they did.  It explored more or less what I expected it to explore, though I thought the style a bit lacking; the strongest parts quote Sayers herself, such that perhaps one should have just done so from the start.
    
21. Did you participate in or watch any booklr, booktube, or book twitter drama?  Nope.  Ain’t nobody got time for that.
    
22. What’s the longest book you read? A Discovery of Witches: 579 pages. Although I reckon Aurora FELT longer. 
    
23. What’s the fastest time it took you to read a book?  An hour or two for a shorter book; I read some Avatar graphic novels which I expected to take longer than they did, and zipped right through The Biggest Story.
    
24. Did you DNF anything? Why? As noted, some things went back to the library before I finished them, and may or may not be checked back out in future.  Ninth House and Everything Sad is Untrue were two of these.  On the other hand, I got about 5 pages into Illumination: poetry to light up the darkness before I decided that I wasn’t interested in its typewritten #aesthetic, because the poems themselves didn’t take the intangible and give it form in a way I appreciated.
    
25. What reading goals do you have for next year?  The biggest one is taking my boyfriend’s challenge seriously: I’m not requesting anything else from the library until I’ve read the 18 books I have checked out, the 5 requests that are already set to come in at some point, the 12 books friends have lent me, and Studies in Words / The Ode Less Travelled (which have been my “currently reading” for about 6 or 7 years, and which went on this EXACT list at the end of 2019).  Then all the gift-books that I meant to blog about and didn’t.  Then all the Shakespeare.  Then whatever else is alone and unloved on my shelves. 
    
    Obviously at some point the Summer Game will happen and I will probably request 57 more things.  So it continues.
    
    Tell me about your 2021 reading, or what you look forward to reading in 2022! If you’ve got a particular item for my TBR, I’d love to hear about it!

2020 in Books!

It’s only been 3 posts since the last summary post, but…I figured I’d do another, even if we all want to forget 2020 and hope for better from 2021 (despite how unimpressive the 7-day free trial’s been).

1. How many books did you read this year?  34 – but don’t tell GoodReads; I technically missed my goal of 35 but accidentally marked The Girl Who Drank the Moon twice and couldn’t figure out how to correct that.  It’s enough that I got the “Completed!” ribbon instead of being taunted with my failure (like when I aimed for 65 in 2017 and whiffed it).
2. Did you reread anything? What?  Storm Front, Fool Moon, and Grave Peril, as I started a Dresden Files reread.  Unfortunately I have something of a feud with another AADL user, who keeps checking out the next book I want.  I also reread The Little Prince, The Four Loves, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, and Out of the Silent Planet.
3. What were your top five books of the year?  Spinning Silver, Anna and the Swallow Man, Plum Rains, The Girl who Drank the Moon, and…well, one of those I reread, I guess.  Or perhaps one of the mysteries – When in Rome or A Shilling for Candles.
4. Did you discover any new authors that you love this year? Naomi Novik (wrote Spinning Silver) and Gavriel Savit (wrote Anna and the Swallow Man).  Also, while I’d heard of Ngaio Marsh earlier than 2020, I guess that was the first year I’d actually read any of her work (and she’s got about 3 dozen books to look into)!  Additionally, I’m not certain whether I love Kelly Barnhill and Adromeda Romano-Lax, but I’m willing to read their other books to make that call.
5. What genre did you read the most of? Fantasy – at least 13 of them.  Must be down to Book Group Thing.  Other genres included sci-fi, teen, magical realism, and whatever Notes from a Public Typewriter might be.
6. Was there anything you meant to read, but never got to? Always and forever.  I meant to reread all the Dresden Files, I meant to finish all the books friends lent me, etc. etc.  At least I got Anna and the Swallow Man back to the friend who lent it to me.
7. What was your average Goodreads rating? Does it seem accurate?  3.4. That’s down from 3.7 in 2019 – perhaps I’m more critical than I used to be.  I definitely recall a lot of books where I wished for a 10-point scale instead of a 5-point scale, so as to distinguish between middling-fair and middling-poor books.
8. Did you meet any of your reading goals? Which ones? I got close enough to 35 to content myself, and I mostly finished my Book Group Thing books early enough to discuss them with others.   
9. Did you get into any new genres? Not really.
10. What was your favorite new release of the year? The closest I got to a new release were Another Kingdom (May 2019) and The Starless Sea (November 2019).  Neither of them were great.
11. What was your favorite book that has been out for a while, but you just now read?   A Shilling for Candles is from 1936, and When in Rome is from 1970.   
12. Any books that disappointed you? The Starless Sea (too many motifs, trying too hard to be Current^TM, soggy); The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (too depressing without a narrative payoff); Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (so much potential! So many threads left hanging).
13. What were your least favorite books of the year?   The Starless Sea wasn’t great.  The Shadow of the Torturer went on and on forever, using obscure words for kicks, without giving me any characters I cared about.  Another Kingdom was so ridiculous in several ways.
14. What books do you want to finish before the year is over? Well, it’s a bit late to ask that.  I managed to squeeze in that Out of the Silent Planet reread but did not quite finish rereading Perelandra before it was January. 
15. Did you read any books that were nominated for or won awards this year (Booker, Women’s Prize, National Book Award, Pulitzer, Hugo, etc.)? What did you think of them?  Okay, so, I don’t think any of them got awards this year, but The Girl Who Drank the Moon is a Newberry winner.  I thought it was a lovely story with an interesting twist on witch tropes, city elders tropes, etc.
16. What is the most over-hyped book you read this year? Starless Sea (you’re not as cool as The Night Circus!  You’re just not!); The Sunlit Night (you don’t deserve to be made into a movie); The Illustrated Man (I am very fond of Bradbury!  But it got to a point of just feeling like the same story told different ways). 
17. Did any books surprise you with how good they were?   Spinning Silver.  It was SO tidy.  I appreciate stories that tie up so neatly and recommend it to anyone who enjoys fairy tales or fantasy.
18. How many books did you buy? …let’s see.  I bought my boyfriend a book in February, my friend a book in December (which I still need to give her), and I was tempted to buy Huxley’s Music at Night in September before coming to my senses and going “You can just get that from MelCat once it’s up and running again!”  Which I did.  I should finish reading that.
19. Did you use your library? Definitely.  The pandemic meant that 1-month checkouts turned into 3- or 5-month checkouts, which meant that I finished….like…3 additional books.  Maybe.  I basically didn’t finish anything in March, May, or July, which is why I had trouble meeting my yearly goal.
20. What was your most anticipated release? Did it meet your expectations?  
    I’d anticipated Starless Sea, Particular Sadness, and Sunlit Night.  …seems I was most let down by the ones I anticipated most.
21. Did you participate in or watch any booklr, booktube, or book twitter drama?  Nope.  Ain’t nobody got time for that.
22. What’s the longest book you read? The Starless Sea: 498 pages.  Maybe part of what I disliked about it was how long reading it took.  Also, though Bitter Seeds, Shadow of the Torturer, and Titus Groan were shorter books, I think they all felt like they took as long.
23. What’s the fastest time it took you to read a book?  An hour or two for a shorter book, especially since I had so many rereads (Best Christmas Pageant Ever is only 80 pages, which I’d forgotten, and The Little Prince has never been that long).
24. Did you DNF anything? Why? I didn’t finish On the Map because someone else requested it from the library; ditto Outwitting Squirrels and Possum Living.  There were several sequels to Book Group Thing reads (Tombs of Atuan, Farthest Shore, Desert Spear) which I requested but never actually had enough interest to crack open.   
25. What reading goals do you have for next year?   Some are the same as before – 33 books, get closer to keeping up with my library checkouts, read all the Shakespeare I haven’t yet, finish and returned borrowed books to friends.  But I also vacillate wildly: I should read more doctrinal books!  I should read more history and/or critical theory!  I should read all my cheap paperbacks and cull the ones I don’t love!  The list goes ever on and on, down from my pen where it began. 
    
    Tell me about your 2020 reading, or what you look forward to reading in 2021! If you’ve got a particular item for my TBR, I’d love to hear about it!

2019 in Books!

I’ve been trying to compose a retrospective post about 2019, despite it being three whole days into the new year, when old things are passed away and, largely, forgotten in the mists.

So whilst my mind sorts that out, I thought I’d follow a collection of prompts to tell y’all about this year’s reading.  Do share your own reading experiences as you like!!  Here’s to further work on our respective TBR piles throughout 2020.

1. How many books did you read this year?   33!
2. Did you reread anything? What? Curse of the Pharaohs (as I hope to continue the Amelia Peabody series, and had forgotten how this story went), As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust (ditto, but re: the Flavia de Luce series), Good Omens (before watching the Amazon show’s depiction of it).
3. What were your top five books of the year? Persuasion, A Gentleman in Moscow, The Stature of Waiting, Good Omens, and Thoughts on Creating Strong Towns.  The first 3 were beautiful, beneficial to the soul, and felt classic.  Good Omens remained hilarious, if blasphemous.  Strong Towns was so thought-provoking that I think it’s given me a bit of a paradigm shift in how I think about communities.
   

   

   

   

   
4. Did you discover any new authors that you love this year? I definitely enjoyed Ted Chiang, what I’ve read of Amor Towles, and WH Vanstone.
5. What genre did you read the most of? Mysteries – 7 of them (2 Amelia Peabody, 4 Flavia de Luce, 1 Sherlock pastiche).
6. Was there anything you meant to read, but never got to? Oh, always.  Kristin Lavransdattir, Crazy Rich Asians, some things other friends lent me.  Still haven’t finished Benedict Option or A Gathering of Ravens.  At one point I had three copies of The Ode Less Traveled, but I had trouble on Exercise 4 so I haven’t finished the exercises therein yet.
7. What was your average Goodreads rating? Does it seem accurate?  3.7, I guess, which sounds fair.  Just as I try not to go overboard on standing ovations, I try to save 1- or 2-star reviews for the truly terrible, and 4- or 5-star reviews for the truly edifying or life-changing.
8. Did you meet any of your reading goals? Which ones? I read 30 books, which was my main goal.  There will always be a TBR pile, though. I tried giving up fanfiction, which would work for a month tops before I returned to old habits.
9. Did you get into any new genres? No, I guess not, unless you count “Spanish baby books” as a genre.
10. What was your favorite new release of the year? The only new release I read was, apparently, The Golden Tresses of the Dead.  So I guess that wins.
11. What was your favorite book that has been out for a while, but you just now read?   The Stature of Waiting was originally published in 1982; A Month in the Country, 1980.  Oh, and Persuasion! 1818.  I’d seen the movie but hadn’t read it before.
12. Any books that disappointed you? A Study in Sherlock.  It’s an anthology written in homage of Doyle’s canon, but several of the entries seemed to say “Look how much I’m into memorabilia and name-dropping!!” instead of “Hey, look, a well-composed story.”
13. What were your least favorite books of the year?   Hmm.  Robinson’s Housekeeping was strange to me.  Olive Kitteridge was delicately written but so godless!  So depressing.  Bright Bazaar was a book I checked out in hopes that it could give me decorating ideas, but instead it just infuriated me – apparently bright colors are only possible for wealthy homeowners who are aggressive minimalists.  Ugh.
14. What books do you want to finish before the year is over? I squeezed The Stature of Waiting in, and got started rereading The Buried Giant, which I haven’t finished yet.
15. Did you read any books that were nominated for or won awards this year (Booker, Women’s Prize, National Book Award, Pulitzer, Hugo, etc.)? What did you think of them? …okay, possibly I did?  But also, who knows.  I don’t care enough to go look it up.
16. What is the most over-hyped book you read this year? I dunno about ‘overhyped,’ but – I read 3 books by Jason Fung (The Obesity Code, The Complete Guide to Fasting, The Diabetes Code) and they could have/should have been edited down into one book.  I’m also surprised that Olive Kitteridge has been made into a show; it was so depressing that I’m not interested in learning more about the characters in it.
17. Did any books surprise you with how good they were?   The Stature of Waiting did.  It was also surprising in terms of content – I don’t know that I’ve ever read a gloss of the Passion narrative like this.
18. How many books did you buy? Seven, I think – 4 as gifts, 3 for me.  And I received at least 2 as gifts in return.
19. Did you use your library? Oh, for sure.  This is part of why I’m an irresponsible reader: I check out everything that catches my eye, and then it sits and waits for me for ages.
20. What was your most anticipated release? Did it meet your expectations?   Probably Stories of Your Life by Ted Chiang?  Which.  I wanted to read it because Arrival made me cry a lot.  It was both what I expected and…not at all what I could have expected.
21. Did you participate in or watch any booklr, booktube, or book twitter drama?  Nope.  Ain’t nobody got time for that.
22. What’s the longest book you read? A Gentleman in Moscow, apparently – 396 pages.
23. What’s the fastest time it took you to read a book? Probably an hour or two for a shorter book.
24. Did you DNF anything? Why? I didn’t finish The Story of a Soul because someone else requested it from the library.  I didn’t finish Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story because it Just Wasn’t What I Expected; I honestly thought it was a story, not a philosophical enterprise.  Lastly, I checked out several Spanish children’s books in the expectation that they would suit my level of Spanish vocabulary.  Some (Nariz, Naricita; Besos for Baby; Los Sueños) were feasible; some (Cómo Esconder un León a la Abuela; El Príncipe de los Enredos; Rooster; Los Arboles Están Colgando del Cielo) were beyond me. 
25. What reading goals do you have for next year?   To start with, I want to read at least 35 books.  I hope to read through my current library checkouts and not get out more than I can get through (even during the Summer Game)!  I want to finish The Ode Less Traveled and Studies in Words so I can, at long last, remove them from my “Currently Reading” tab.  I want to reread The Lord of the Rings.  I want to read all of Shakespeare’s plays, or at least, all those I haven’t read or watched before.

Tell me about your 2019 reading, or what you look forward to reading in 2020!

 

On the Reading of Books in the Bath

Back when I did that series of Why I Haven’t Read that Book Yet, Thalia submitted that she might leave a book unfinished because she had dropped it in the bath.

I noted that my fear of getting a book wet had dissuaded me from ever trying to read a book in the bath, and for the most part, this remains the case.

However.  It would be remiss of me not to share this image with those of you who would love nothing more than to take a book and read it amid the delight and bubbles of outrageous bathtime:

Tsundoku

My beloved Mark Forsyth noted last January that he has two tsundoku (“a pile of books you’ve bought and haven’t got round to reading yet”).

I have something like that.

First, I have The Pile of Books I’ve Read, But Want to Review Before Returning to the Library:

Then, the Pile of Shavian Poetry (thankfully Luci’s, not George Bernard’s):

Then, the Pile of Apple Books – i.e., the books I took one bite of, and then put down to take a bite of something else.  If I’m not careful I shall have to make a bucket of applesauce.  So to speak.

All that said, since I took these pictures, I’ve managed to remove a couple books from each pile.  Hurrah!

What’s in your tsundoku?

Variation on a Theme

“I’m back.”

“Oh, good.  …good Lord.”

“What?”

“Nothing, just – I’m sorry, how many bags of books do you have there?  I thought you said you were going off to read, not raid a bookstore.”

“It wasn’t a bookstore.  It was the library.”

And there wasn’t a book sale. I didn’t even get that many new requests. This was just me cleaning out my car.

“Oh.  I’d thought maybe a coffee shop…?”

“No, coffee shops are full of people buying coffee and chatting over their tea and – and then there’s the pressure to earn your seat by buying more coffee, which I don’t need.  Bookstores have no BYOB policy and in fact discourage bringing your own book….whereas the library has a fine parking lot, and a quiet table inside.”

“Sorry – what, exactly, does the parking lot have to do with anything?”

“Oh!  Well, on a fine evening like this, you can read in your car.  More airflow than indoors, and there was at least an hour of light.  And then inside for another hour and change.  I almost finished off that volume of Milosz, finally.”

“Seems a shame to read so fast instead of lingering over the words.  You can’t get as much out of it.”

Quirk of a bemused eyebrow.  “Is that how you always read?  Lingeringly?”

“Well, yeah.  More or less, depending on the book.”

“Tell me: do you always sip daintily at every glass of water?”  A blank look in response.  “Do you always, always let your beer or wine set for five whole seconds on your tongue before you swallow it?”  Sheepish shifting of feet, eyes drifting to the floor.  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.  Sure, maybe I don’t remember as much of it as you do, or as much as I’d like to recall – but good God, man, sometimes it’s sweltering out and you’re sweating too hard to do anything but gulp.  Sometimes you’re too caught up in conversation to attend so studiously to your beverage.  And that’s all for the best, honestly – drinks go with your food and conversation, not the other way ’round.”

“But contemplating words makes a good deal more sense than contemplating wine.”

“Not all words.  And, for that matter, not all wines, either.”

Review: Technopoly

As in my post of last week, I am in the position of reviewing a book long after I first read it.  However, after reading Neil Postman’s Technopoly last March, I reread it in May, took copious notes on it in June, and still have it to hand for further consideration, because this book gave me so very much to ruminate upon.

Having stumbled over the book’s prologue while idly Googling the story of King Thamus and the Egyptian god of invention Theuth, I wondered how I had never heard of this author before.  Postman wrote at least seventeen books about the nature of education, how various technologies and media can contribute to (or interfere with) it, and the effect this all has on humans, particularly children.  The bulk of his work and writing occurred between 1960 and 1990, and Technopoly was published in 1992.

All of this is to say that, though Postman analyzes a technological landscape over twenty years old, so much of it still rings true that the man seems somehow prophetic.

His thesis: technology appears to be a friend, but does not give us time for reflection on potential losses before it changes the world.  As scientists and inventors strive to make life easier, healthier, and longer…technology begins to usurp the place of our critical thinking and our consciences.  It is so intertwined with modern life that most of us have difficulty finding a distant enough vantage point to see what consequences, secretly intended or unintentional, may follow.  As King Thamus tells Theuth (or Thoth), “the discoverer of an art is not the best judge of the good or harm which will accrue to those who practice it.”  The king referred to writing, distinguishing memory and wisdom themselves from the recollection and appearance of wisdom which writing would make possible.

Basically, technology can be used for good or ill – but once the tool is in the culture, it will change it: not just here or there, but throughout.  For example, a culture that can produce written records can – eventually will – shift away from having an oral tradition.  Hurrying toward what is ahead, the inventor does not necessarily examine all these implications, all the ways his invention will change the world – nor do those using it ask, typically.  Instead, everyone emphasizes their hope for all the good this invention will bring.  The culture thus conspires against itself: the onlookers cannot know how this novelty will change their existence, nor that they might well end up on “the losing side” of a technology.

Maintaining that technologies reflect and create the ways people perceive reality, Postman sets out his definitions (by description) of tool-using cultures, technocracy, and technopoly.  Tool-using cultures use tools – many or few, simple or sophisticated, beloved or held in contempt – to solve problems of physical life, or to serve the symbolic world (e.g., art, politics, myth, ritual, religion).  The tools are determined and directed by the culture, thus they generally do not attack the dignity or integrity of it.  Rather, the culture is unified in belief (possibly theocratic), which provides order and meaning for the people within it.

He does list some tools which can intrude on cultural beliefs – the stirrup, the clock, mills, matches, and rifles – so I think those can be tied to the rise of Technocracy.  Here, tools are central to the world of thought.  Technocracy disdains and subordinates, but does not destroy, social or symbolic traditions (partly because it’s too new to change venerable phenomena like elder wisdom, regional pride, or social structure; partly because it’s busy doing other things).  Postman notes that Western technocracies were rooted in the clock, the printing press, and the telescope: three tools which changed the fabric of how society organized time, disseminated many new ideas to all sorts of new readers, and how men viewed the cosmos and their place in it. Listing off various natural philosophers-become-scientists, Postman avers that the precision of man’s knowledge of the cosmos “collapsed [the] moral center of gravity,” causing “the psychic desolation of an unfathomable universe.”  Even so, the believing scientists remained faithful, concerning themselves with learning and truth, not power or progress…until Francis Bacon came along.  Thereafter, people came to believe that knowledge was power and continuing progress was possible, while their belief in God was shaken if not obliterated.

More inventions, more factories, more production, faster communication…generally, people learned how to make this all happen, but didn’t spend as much time asking why.  And so western society approached Technopoly: a totalitarian technocracy, wherein efficiency, objective data, and unambiguous calculation is valued more highly than human judgment, human dignity, or the complexity of the unmeasurable.  “Lacking a lucid set of ethics and having rejected tradition, Technopoly searches for a source of authority and finds it in the idea of statistical objectivity.”  Thus ideas are reduced to objects, abstractions are ranked, and realities which were never meant to be reduced to numbers – human intelligence, a student’s understanding of a subject, beauty, ability, how people regard political candidates, etc. – are flattened and simplified until they fit into such boxes.

Postman acknowledges that a certain amount of generalization or oversimplification is necessary for everyone, given that we are awash in information: the sorcerer’s apprentice, with only a broom against the flood.  But in the past, some institution (familial society, religion, etc.) provided the framework for belief and understanding, dictating what was of greater or lesser importance.  Technocracy unraveled that moral and intellectual coherence, and now such institutions, and such overarching structures of belief, are held in suspicion by the Technopoly-addled.  What do they have instead?  An incomprehensible universe, and an unending river of data sans context.  Data management becomes the driving concern – again, not asking why this information or that must be preserved, but only caring how.  “Information appears indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, in enormous volume and at high speeds, and disconnected from theory, meaning, or purpose.”

So.  Having been alarmed by the way in which society regards the universe as incoherent, the vicious cycle of bureaucracy, and blatant reductionism, what can we do?

Postman’s response – he admits that it’s not really a solution – is that, at an individual level, we must cling fast to the narratives and symbols which quicken us and organize our thought.

At a societal level, schools are probably the best arena for improvement. The curriculum therein tends to have some coherence and connectedness, and presents ideas or attitudes that can permeate “a person with no commitment, no point of view, but plenty of marketable skills.” Or so we hope. Since it’s unlikely that religion, love of country, or emotional health would be used to provide structure for students’ knowledge, something else must do so.  Postman suggests “the ascent of man” – the idea that “humanity’s destiny is the discovery of knowledge.” The arts and humanities can be joined with science “to gain a unified understanding of nature and our place in it.” Instead of excising anything religious, a study of religious systems can (apparently) help tell “the story of humanity’s creativeness in trying to conquer loneliness, ignorance, and disorder.”

The sudden influx of quotations probably displays my feelings toward this approach: I can’t actually summarize it and keep a straight face. I agree that it’s valuable for our culture to have a nontechnical or noncommercial concept of education, but I don’t know that this approach to learning would be able to overwrite society’s years of emphasis on education as the means to achieve material or financial success; after so many years of people asking “How?” I don’t know how to convince everyone to ask “Why?” instead.

Postman also recommends teaching as much history as possible – not only the history of political events, or of each school subject, but of history itself. This, he hopes, can help illuminate why we know the things we know, whence our ideas and sensibilities issue, and how cultures change. He urges that different theories be propounded if not endorsed or established: “To teach the past simply as a chronicle of indisputable, fragmented, and concrete events is to replicate the bias of Technopoly, which largely denies our youth access to concepts/theories, providing only a stream of meaningless events.”  Which has always been my problem with understanding history: why bother remembering distinct events if I don’t understand the point of them?  Postman agrees with that: “The worst thing we can do is present [facts] devoid of coherence.” Rather, we should go beyond the event into larger concepts, theories and hypotheses, comparisons and evaluations.

For my own part, stuck in my unfashionable Christian beliefs and morality system, it’s clear that human-centered solutions cannot fill a spiritual pit.  Technology cannot cure its own disease.  Practical decisions cannot solve moral quandaries.  There can be no experts in child-rearing and lovemaking and friend-making, because individual people are not problems to be solved.  If the great danger is to become Adolf Eichmann – the Holocaust organizer who was indifferent to the fact that the timetables and logistics he oversaw were part of the deportation and killing of millions of people – then our defense is to care more about our actions and their consequences, especially the effects on our fellow man.

This is similar to Postman’s final conclusion: that to resist Technopoly, we must be loving resistance fighters.  We must understand that technology is a product of a particular economic and political context; that all technology carries with it “a program, an agenda, and a philosophy that may or may not be life-enhancing;” and that all technology demands examination, judgment, and control.”

My corollary: Keeping an “a epistemological and psychic distance from any technology” requires an understanding of, and respect for, the dignity of the human soul.  Distrust of technology will not change our society, our culture, our world so much as love for our fellow man.

Review: The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin

Last August, T. Everett recommended I read The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin, saying “Have you ever wondered what Harry Potter would be like if it were about Hermione instead?”

I hadn’t wondered this, because of Ann Margaret’s excellent stories on that very premise – except that, okay, I had, because those still revolve around Harry and his path as the Chosen One.  So the question becomes, “What would Hogwarts – and Hermione – be like without Harry’s shenanigans?”

If we took Rachel Griffin’s Enlightenment as the answer, it would be “Largely the same; other shenanigans would arise to fill the gap.”  There are, in fact, so many shenanigans springing up that the whole 360 pages or so comprise five days, assuming I counted properly.

However, Rachel and Hermione, and their respective worlds, are dissimilar enough that the question of Granger-sans-Potter remains unanswered.  Rather, we are presented with a whole lot of other questions, answers, and characters, including:

– Rachel, a wizard girl of Noble Blood, with an eidetic memory, a strong work ethic, an unyielding compulsion to obey adults (until she tries really really hard and breaks said compulsion), a devotion to her father which must eventually be transferred elsewhere, and complete religious ignorance…but I’m getting ahead of things.  By dint of memory and effort, she flies very well. She remembers everything she looks at, though there were too many instances of Let Me Stop And Review The Picture In My Head for my taste (though I must concede their purpose: to help her see past magical obfuscation). She is super concerned with Who Likes Whom.

– Siegfried, an orphaned dragon slayer who often exclaims “Ace!” while hoarding his gold and food (so much so that he doesn’t know to buy an extra set of clothes), and whose quixotic ideas move the narrative forward, if haltingly.

– Nastasia, a Russian princess…of Magical Australia, for whatever reason.  She has a Bag of Holding, a violin, several skills which I have forgotten, a deeper commitment to the rules than even Rachel has, and the blessing/curse of having Visions when she touches certain people.

Many other figures crop up, though their development is flimsy.  Honestly, a lot of it reads as flimsy: the number of talents every single character has, the fact that a “girl reporter” is under threat of death, the amount of improbable things figured out by a bunch of 13-year-olds, the rapid escalation of threats interspersed with a lot of concern over dating.  The names – Gaius Valiant, Salome Iscariot, Dr. Mordeau, to name a few – are either super-literal or the reddest of herrings; I’m betting on the former.

Still, a few subtler details await development by the margins.  For one, individual takes on magic and magical worlds are generally diverting, and this world is no exception.  The American wizarding school, the Roanoke Academy for the Sorcerous Arts, explains how the colony of Roanoke went missing: the school’s founder turned it into a floating island, safe from the eyes of the Unwary (this world’s Muggles).  Magical familiar animals, music, and particular materials (including wands of metal and jewels) contribute to one’s magical abilities.

One of the most intriguing facts is that Rachel Griffin, Devourer of Library Books, is ignorant of all religious information – to the point where she doesn’t understand why a broom would be branded a “steeplechaser,” or what a friar is, or what the winged statue in the forest might be.  The dramatic irony involved might carry on through another book; given the visions, Morningstar references, and discussions between a prophetic raven and a miniature lion, I expect some kind of celestial showdown in the end.  Hopefully it doesn’t get too preachy.

Altogether, it’s a story that’s mostly drawn in Crayola colors – but here and there are shades in between, shadows implying that something deeper may come.  The concept is better than the execution; by the end of the narrative, I wasn’t certain what Rachel’s “unexpected enlightenment” actually consisted of.  Hopefully the next three installments can answer the questions this book left hanging, and further illuminate the reality (and history) of the Wise.