Another month, more books. Again I’ve summarised what I read over the past month and what I think about it.
The Best Horror of the Year: Volume Eleven
editor Ellen Datlow
A few great pieces, lots of “ok,” a few outright pointless ones. I reviewed it story by story on Goodreads.
Bjorn Lomborg
Lomborg knows what he’s doing, mixing a few relevant criticisms with loads and loads of really wild cherry-picking and outright lies into a chicken soup for people afraid of change. I’m devoting a chapter to the central argument “how much would climate change cost in a catastrophic version” in an upcoming Voxpot article, so more there.
Junji Ito
Despite a weaker ending and a few pieces that are quite repetitive, an excellent collection about a town being consumed by the Spiral. A few stories are outright genius even as standalone reads, some images truly get stuck in your head. Very, very body horror.
Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All
Michael Schellenberger
A kind of stumbling between “we used to do environmentalism better back in our day,” relevant criticism that is mostly well-known enough (yes, shutting down nuclear power plants is bad), and completely unhinged takes on wind turbines or “young people bad.” If with degrowth books I occasionally felt “what is this section even about,” here entire chapters are flat-out in “for god’s sake” mode.
Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell
Nathan Ballingrud
A horror story collection connected by the theme of Hell and Ballingrud’s specific style, which plays a lot with narrator and language. Sometimes it tries to be the new Lovecraft, sometimes it just paints miniatures. While Visible Filth got a film adaptation and isn’t actually very interesting, Skullpocket (an old ghoul tells children how the symbiosis between him and the town began) and Butcher’s Table (an extensive story about a secret Satanist expedition at the end of the eighteenth century to the borders of Hell, featuring nearly a dozen main characters, intrigues, secret societies, and a SAILING SHIP) offer two bizarre, extremely genre-savvy, and actually almost adventure-like excursions that I very much enjoyed.
Usagi Yojimbo 32 (Mysteries) and 33 (Hidden)
Stan Sakai
While Mysteries is a somewhat routine set of detective stories centred around Inspector Ishida with a few nice moments but no surprises, Hidden might be the best Usagi ever. Organised crime, hidden Christians, overlapping interests, murders, duels, and an atmosphere somewhere between Quo Vadis and Guy Ritchie films (seriously). The last in black and white; the next ones will be under a different publisher.
Cogs and Monsters: What Economics Is, and What It Should Be
Diane Coyle
A meta-book about the new economics — what it should and could address, how it works in practice, and where classical economics fails. I think it’s sober and really neat. Coincidentally, I’m now reading Sowell’s basic “textbook” Basic Economics, and it’s a funny comparison, because all the absurd nonsense that Sowell spouts as axioms are just casually debunked by Coyle. Cool stuff.
Karl Edward Wagner
An eighties collection by one of the more important horror authors. Besides the fairly well-known “Sticks,” it also contains other goodies, more here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5407092653.
North American Lake Monsters: Stories
Nathan Ballingrud
This one and I practically completely missed each other. The stories didn’t interest me at all, felt terribly artificial and sometimes completely hollow. It’s probably objectively great, it just didn’t connect with me.
(Guy Major, massive Mighty Boyz edition)
The basic premise (a new president discovers there’s a secret space program) is great. Then complications arise — relationships, intrigues… and it’s all terribly dumb. Letter 44 tries to work with international relations, war, space physics, and many philosophical wisdoms. I don’t know much about physics and wisdom, but the degree to which it’s off in the first two is completely beyond limits. The well-known warmongering nuclear power Germany is just the beginning of how stupid it gets. Add to that the need for a twist at the end of every episode, which leads to total plot collapse, the authors’ outright active love for the main president (like, this is a president who not only wins politically and is super smart, he also just beats up the villains), and I haven’t suffered this much finishing something in a long time.
No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age
Jane F. McAlevey
Useful mainly as a glimpse into what American unions face, how they solve problems, and about all the people the author thinks are idiots who have never done and will never do anything right. If not for a few interesting cases and small insights into everyday realities (where “negotiations between employees and companies are still literally mediated by priests” genuinely surprised me), it can be summed up as “don’t do campaigns, do strikes and organise.”
Kieron Gillen
300 is Miller’s hyper-macho myth about dudes who totally saved Europe from evil brown people. Three is Gillen’s myth about people who don’t want to live in bondage. It’s not significantly more realistic, but the role reversal, relatively thorough historical research (the detailed articles and interviews at the end of the book are very wow), and the ability to describe the Spartan system as hurting not only the perioikoi but also the Spartans themselves, is very cool. Again Mighty Boyz and this time absolutely excellent.
Jeruzalém: Rok v rozděleném městě
Guy Delisle
Delisle spent a year in Jerusalem while his partner was doing important work for Doctors Without Borders. And it happened to be the year of Operation Cast Lead and other misfortunes. This isn’t a wise treatise or historical study — it’s a reportage of an atheist’s everyday life in Jerusalem. And it’s good, though today the situation is literally worse in every way.
Eric Grissom
A terrifying warrior kills the hero’s parents and the hero sets out on a path of revenge. Except he’s a goblin. A nice fairy tale that goes beyond reversing stereotypes and is simply a fine mini-story about revenge and forgiveness.