October was special. Managed to run purges.rolling.cz in both Czech and international versions, do lots of work and well, got married, hopefully for the final time. Good point to realise how blessed I am. Banger of the month was certainly Project Hail Mary, loved that one (not really looking forward to the movie due to the number of very weird choices they made in the PR).
You can see the wedding photo by Daniela Dlabolová in the thumbnail of the article.
The corpse and the sofa
Tony Sandoval
I just like Sandoval, ok? It’s weird, it’s lyrical, it’s painful and beautiful and once again, just weird. First love, first drama, gossip, bullying, endless possibilities of first kisses and the definite death. Poem in pictures and words.
Project Hail Mary
Andy Weir
Great sci-fi adventure with all that excitement of exploration, discovery, smartish sounding use of physics and biology and very solid characters. Did not care much about the flashback structure, but it served its purpose. Also, one of the rare books that gets maybe even better in hindsight. Lots of great memories in this one, can only recommend - and recommend going in blind.
Moonlight Express: Around the World By Night Train
Monisha Rajesh
I came in expecting a great sprawling travelogue, and got quite an interesting review of the number of trains. I felt a bit disappointed with the overall repeating structure: the author boards the train, gives some basic review of what she sees (cool), meets random people and then sometimes tells us a bit about the country, sometimes does not. The overarching anti-imperialism/ emancipation tone is an interesting and fine addition, but the episodes blend a bit to each other.
However, what rubbed me the wrong way started in the second half and it just kept coming.
Gaza.
Disclaimer: even when coming from CZ, I am very much outspoken on “this is industrialised famine, oppression, mass killing and crime against humanity”. I agree with the author on the point and I appreciate it.
However - I came to read about trains AND to get to know other countries and people living there, the problems, everything. One episode about “it is horrible what is happening there” would be fully understandable, even humane, but when every single episode started to be much more about Gaza and even more obnoxiously, how much is the author an ally and how horrible are people who do not share her exact perspective I was annoyed. Perhaps a bit more than annoyed, because this book is not only quite a strange place to put the argument, but it also completely overtook the emotional and factual journey through other lands. Train through Andes deserves full attention on the country and its people, not a winding episode about the author and her like minded friend who…met up there. And were allies. With pins.
In the end, it even sounded less of a narration about Gaza and its plight and more as a tale of virtue of the author. I really do hope that was not the goal, but it was very hard for me to read that differently - and it made the problem of “each episode is kinda the same” even more difficult.
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Not a Speck of Light: Stories
Laird Barron
According to some aesthetic theories, there are two basic kinds of monsters: sublime, indescribable ones and contained, catalogued, tamed ones.
And it is fully understandable that after near all the “classic monsters” have been catalogued and belittled, the horror author needs to go further, in case of Barron to cosmic horror, paralel dimensions and what not. Than you mix that with returning characters, recurring horrors, different points of views and on and on…and in the end, you get this book.
It did not work for me too much. I liked some of them (feverish nightmare of Mobility is great poetry) , adored the writing and so on: but felt just sliding over the surface and when bigger than life, bigger than universe heroes/ heroines fight unstoppable super mega horrors and, well, I am not scared. Maybe not even entertained and for sure not seeing any deeper thoughts under the surface.
But if you are in for feelings, descriptions and that Barron poetry, it works great.
Coffin Moon
Keith Rosson
Solid horror with interesting attempts to build its own version of vampires, solid 1970s setting and “hard boiled noir” style approach. The stereotypes and archetypes are done well and tasteful, at the same time it was a bit hard to take them somehow seriously. Some plot twists are well built, many of them feel closer to an RPG campaign than to a novel with “here is a KNOWLEDGEABLE NPC TO PASS ON INFO”, but as a fun little read, this does work.
When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows…
Steven Pinker
I often did not agree with Pinker, but he always provoked me with strong concepts, interesting ideas and forced me to think about them and to update quite often.
This is…mostly buzz, continuous flow of words with hard to specify points or key ideas. It is really hard to see the connections at times, it is hard to see which points are being built up: aside from very, very strong ideas on cancel culture. Do not get me wrong, cancel culture is bad and has a horrible impact on people and can twist words and meanings. But, let’s be honest: is it really the most present problem of current common sense?
In the end, this is definitely the weakest Pinker I have read. Not pricing in some quite weird notions around covid (“no scientific reason for the lockdowns” is well, pretty strong opinion, one would say bullshit)
The October Film Haunt
Michael Wehunt
I obviously had to read this in October.
It seems that being very meta, deconstructing and reconstructing the genre and going into THIS IS THE STORY ABOUT A STORY AND STORY HAS POWER AND THEY ARE NOW IN A STORY is the new thing that everybody wants to jump on, the bandwagon that allows you to be both frightening and both very philosophical.
October Film Haunt gets the “frightening” part quite right. Some scenes are properly disturbing, elements of imagery are quite strong (crowns) and some twists and turns and horrible death scenes are, well, horrible.
The “philosophical” part is completely off, tiredly repeated over and over. Tulpas, demons without religion, cosmic horror and other elements were so tedious and devoid of meaning that even short “hmm social media might be bad and young people lonely” parts seemed interesting and reasonable.
The worst crime of the book is still the pacing. The first quarter, maybe even third, manages to be interesting and somehow even shows some human elements. Then the slog begins and it is painful to read through, with the ending dialing up the bleakness and the ambiguity of “ooo what is real”.
If you never read a book that is concerned with meta-ideas about a story, this might be a new thing for you. Or you can just read Tremblay or King. To end on a more positive note: yes, the imagery and lyrical parts ARE good, the very civil “need to earn that money” parts are also good. They just ended up completely overshadowed by convoluted pseudo-smart.
Abroad in Japan: Ten Years in the Land of the Rising Sun
Chris Broad
I have never seen a single video from the author, did not know he is a YouTuber and well, went into the book blind as our “before the sleep” listen with my wife.
And it delivered! Insightful, honest, reasonably funny and not overloaded with personal drama or anecdotes about relationships. I can’t verify the quality of the information here in every instance, but it seems solid, well structured and very, very humanistic. Can recommend as mostly light relaxing read.