I recently read that Ridley Scott is going to direct a film based on this book. So I read it. I think it has the bones of a good screenplay, with accelerations into high energy action sequences and decelerations into flashbacks and contemplative musings, but overall the story was a bit thin.

Heller has a nice style which tread into literary territory while staying grounded in popular writing. His protagonist, the widower Hig, is an appealing one, with a big heart — almost naively so. And the story reads more like a memoir than an adventure novel. We are handed plenty of passages about the inner emotional life of Hig, both from his past as well as present. But the challenge our author was not able to meet was to construct more of the context this individual was residing within. One doesn’t get a sense there’s any critique of disease control in modern society, or civilization’s tenuous existence, or a commentary the tension between humans’ base and higher abilities. These opportunities appeared to be passed over to where I wonder if the book really could only exist within this post-pandemic societal collapse context. I bet a period western might be able to be crafted just as easily, for example.

In most instances, the book is better than the movie. I’m eager to see the movie in mid-2026 to see if this plays out or if fortune will reverse the normal stereotype.
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#thedogstars #peterheller #sciencefiction #scifi #apocalypse #pandemic #cessna #airplane #colorodo #widower #ex_libris_jz

Having previously read Kindred, Fledgling and some other minor short stories, I wasn’t sure I was going to return to Butler’s work. But this was recommended by a friend who mentioned that a portion of it takes place in 2025. I’m glad I did.

To start, the prescience of Butler to conceive of a future time when society is degrading under weakened and corrupt government authority, when even police protection is privatized is as poignant at Orwell’s 1984. This is how the world will end, not with a bang but a whimper. And so begins our tale of a unique young woman, Lauren Olamina, with the ability to feel others pain, who is bright and confident enough to construct her own cosmology and reach for a better future with the inevitable collapse of her community in southern California.

The book is a combination of narrative and meditation. The narrative outlines a conception of society as an alternative to the existing brutality — an appeal of sorts to being a more evolved being, in tune with others as equals, including other species. The book is fairly human-centric, but as the technocratic world crumbles, Lauren’s preparation for hunting and growing one’s own food infers a greater value upon holistic world views. At the core of Lauren’s cosmology is that she believes the world is dying and humankind’s future is off-world among the stars. Did Butler really believe the world was unsustainable? It’s a profound position to take, to essentially say that there is no redemption possible here on Earth.

Butler has a relatively direct, unflowery writing style. One does not get a sense of the sculpting of language — I maintain my belief that her craft is entirely lodged in the story’s structure and the words are simply a delivery system. Seeds of grander ideas, rather than a preoccupation with the formal aspects of literature. Highly recommend!
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#parableofthesower #octaviabutler #sciencefiction #california #society #collapse #empath #earthseed #offworld #ex_libris_jz

A paean to the living world, and trees in particular, Powers’ story is epic in scale and also an embodiment of contrasts. Highly romantic in nature, the writing style leans more clinical and the majority of the narrative enfolds in a deliberate, linear fashion. The book is even organized in 4 sections: Roots, Trunk, Crown and Seeds — poetically descriptive, but also very follows the deep, middle, present and future histories of the diverse characters. I found a deep love for many of these personas and a tearful sympathy with their paths. In some ways, this is a fictional variety of those non-fiction books Looking for Longleaf, Entangled Life and the Secret Life of Trees which reveal and celebrate the web of existence that we share with the biomes. Depending on your disposition, the poetics of Powers’ work might reel you closer to the issues at hand. When my children were young, they loved finding old branches and sticks and beating the low-hanging tree limbs with them. I used to tell them, “Just because we cannot hear them, does not mean they are not crying.” Their initial, quizzical looks, even at 4 and 5 years old, revealed that we had unknowingly conditioned them to assume that if they are not like us, we may do with them what we wish. Timothy Morton has been my lighthouse of a thinker who adapted Object Oriented Ontological principles to art and ecology and the awareness of our relationship to the world. I now see how one can choose to leverage their right (the Overstory, Morton) or their left (Morton, Longleaf, Secret Life, etc.) brain to understand what is at stake.
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I unintentionally began reading this a few weeks prior to a trip to Northern California. I was so glad to have finished I prior to travel to gain the book’s full force while wandering the forests. Those places are unlike anything else. Nearly verbally and visually impossible to describe.
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#theoverstory #richardpowers #redwoods #activism #environmentalism #trees #mycelium #ex_libris_jz

I write this a significantly greater distance from the work than I usually do. There’s been almost 2 books read since I finished this.
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This book seemingly was linear, but I’m not sure if I took my eye off the ball in the first 20% of the book or what. Eventually things got sorted and the remaining balance was fine, but I feel like I overlooked something and have a lack of appreciation -- but it could have been the way the author obscured some of the details. Curious what others might think. There were some aspects of the story that reminded me of the pseudonymous author qntm’s stories, but lacking in the snappy Chandleresque momentum with the text. It also lacked a strong philosophical/ontological foundation and just became an amusing story. Well, perhaps it was there, but it was buried within a relatively conventional spy/mystery/thriller plot arc. There is something epic that underlies the simple story, but it because a footnote to the main thrust.The pace as brisk and it kept me wanting to know what would happen next but, ultimately, I found it a bit pedestrian. I think this will catch conventional readers off their guard and they will find it unique. If you already have spent some time reading Herbert, qntm, PKDick, Bradbury, Vonnegut, Vandermeer, etc., you might skip this.
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#occupyme #triciasullivan #sciencefiction #angels #multiverse #ex_libris_jz

Tockarczuk is never an easy lift — as to be expected from a Nobel-winner. This was, thankfully, not as heavy duty as The Books of Jacob which, epic in scale, was an endurance contest. Here, we have a book inside my sweet spot of 250-350 pages (301 to be exact), richly layered with well-researched historical contexts, curious characters and meta narratives on western culture’s chronic chauvinism. Tockarczuk pulls no punches. There is an epilogue that lists the real figures from literary history and beyond that she paraphrased when constructing the mysogynistic dialog between all the men. The tale is set in the early 20th century, in a German (now part of western Poland) mountain town, famous for having the largest resort facility for tuberculosis patients in the world. Our narrator appears to be supernatural, who tells us of our main character, Wojnicz and the band of men staying at the resort’s less expensive guesthouse. The narrator hints at the inner thoughts of Wojnicz but mostly remains somewhat clinical and linear in conveying the events during their stay at the resort. The last 15% of the book is the most dynamic. And the author could have found a way to embed that energy in the rest of the novel. Despite that, I enjoyed the blend of (mildly historical) fiction, philosophy, mystery/thriller and the paranormal. The twists of the final portion of the book were genuinely something I could not anticipate and found myself shocked and drawn further into the goings-on. Of all of Tockarczuk’s books, this is the one I think I would be most inclined to read again sometime.
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#theempusium #olgatockarczuk #horror #mystery #philosophy #germany #poland #historic #tuberculosis #ex_libris_jz

Super niche non-fiction book from a novelist who is writing/reflecting about writing and the influences to her thinking. I cannot recall how I came across this or why I picked up other than the first section on “Plants” touched on ecology and the landscape with big mentions of Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach books and Timothy Morton’s concepts of Dark Ecology and Hyperobjects. There are some distinctly female oriented views on the books topics (‘Plants’, ‘Planets’, and ‘Bleed’) and that offered up some powerful, persuasive notions of women as receptors — of the good and bad — and the body becomes the site for dealing with these issues. As the husband of a breast-cancer survivor, I’m very sensitive to this notion that the civilization’s literally high toxicity writ itself large within women’s bodies. Those observations by Wilk spurred me to purchase my next three reading projects, so we’ll see where that rabbit hole takes me!
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#deathbylandscape #elviawilk #margaretatwood #jeffvandermeer #southernreachtrilogy #timothymorton #ecology #hyperobjects #plants #sciencefiction #ex_libris_jz

Time for a bit of ‘professional development’ reading. When did the tide (start to) turn from progressive, future-thinking agendas in American culture —specifically as reflected in architectural projects— to what in 2025 can only be described as a society gripped by nostalgia and almost completely absent of innovative, creative endeavors? Well, this book by Douglas Murphy starts to make a good argument for the 1960s and 70s. Murphy’s book takes us through the realm of World’s Fairs, Buckminster Fuller and Brutalist estate projects to shed light on a period of architectural history where Post-Modernism captured more attention in the books than these last grand projects of Modernism. Murphy does a really good job of not being exhaustive but, rather, focused on a selection of strong cases that illustrate the point: that these top-down projects were not resonating with a society where current events were undermining any confidence in the experts. The civil unrest of the late 60s knocked a few things loose, and the economics of the 70s continued to foster dissatisfaction in the citizenry. But the following couple of decades managed to be, arguably, a distraction from the continued erosion of confidence in the experts. And here we are today, where teachers, scientists, politicians have joined the architects as untrustworthy. These things really do take time to manifest profoundly in the everyday.
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#lastfutures #douglasmurphy #architecture #modernism #buckminsterfuller #brutalism #civicprojects #publichousing #worldsfair #expo #geodesicdome #distrust #postmodernism #ex_libris_jz

pixelfed.social/p/jnzllwgr/8... . . . . #percevaleverett #james #nationalbookaward #slavery #slaves #adventure #marktwain #huckleberryfinn #ex_libris_jz

jon zellweger (@jnzllwgr@pixel...

https://pixelfed.social/p/jnzllwgr/808106801287903711
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#percevaleverett #james #nationalbookaward #slavery #slaves #adventure #marktwain #huckleberryfinn #ex_libris_jz

These need little introduction. The forward author noted that Tom Sawyer is a children’s/teen’s book while Huck Finn is more for adults. That lands in retrospect. Tom Sawyer is a Peter Pan type, always concocting extravagant conceits for imaginary play. I’ve been there, done that, and that’s part of childhood for sure. But I walked away despising his existence — mostly due the contrast of the character arcs in HF and the return of Tom at the end of that book. Both books are adventure novels. HF is also a coming of age story, wrestling with adulthood and all the temptations and bad things men have/do. Huck’s inner compass is what ultimately redeems him. But Tom’s return in the conclusion of HF invoked my disappointment and anger and it ultimately destroys the potential of the novel. Was this intentional? Was this a commentary on the upper societal castes’ remove from the daily struggles of the poor and enslaved? Huck’s capitulation to go with Tom’s plans means our ‘hero’ does not overcome the social order. Despite his ‘friendship’ with the slave, Jim, he’s still not empathetic enough to minimize that suffering. Has the culture indoctrinated him to believe poor people follow behind the affluent; does he believe no one will believe him? Is this the dark underlayment that makes the book great? Or is that an unintended reading and Twain is simply an unserious writer? I think if Twain was conscious of civil rights, he could have used Huck as a foil for Tom’s establishment complacency. But he doesn’t So to hell with Twain, really. A dark book, indeed.
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#marktwain #huckleberryfinn #tomsawyer #adventure #illinois #mississippi #slavery #fishing #graverobbing #impersonation #ex_libris_jz