Brief Book Thoughts: Justice, Wittgenstein, Phlebas
After my previous Book Thoughts post, I met with a dear friend who said "I read one of the books from your post, it was the one you recommended not-reading." I thought this was really funny but also extremely relatable: somehow hearing someone tell you not to read a book makes it very compelling. I'm not sure what to do with this information.
Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie
Winner of the Hugo and Nebula and Arthur C Clarke Awards. I thought it was fine – didn't love it, but appreciate how hard it is to write something that's even-fine.
Afterwards I searched for a podcast episode review to see if anyone had interesting commentary / could explain what I'd missed, which lead me to this podcast called SFF Audio that was 10/10 incredible: they did explain a key thing I missed, and interesting perspectives on some of the details, while also articulating many of my own critiques and disappointments much better than I could, and also just giving a really cogent analysis of what makes different SFF books feel the way they do. Also they wasted ZERO time on small talk and just jumped into discussing the book! True heroes among podcasters.
This book is the first of a trilogy, and I found myself wondering what was in the latter two despite not-really having enjoyed the first one, so I went online and read a summary of them instead, to prevent any future temptation I would have to waste another N hours of my life. I assume some of you will find this strategy viscerally appalling but I personally recommend it, burn the boats and save your future self from bad decisions, make Thomas Schelling proud.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, by Anthony Gottlieb
[Disclosure: I have a personal bias towards this book].
It must be crazy to be a guy who goes to an elite university and everyone actually thinks you're the smartest. Statistically most people who go to elite universities think they're hot, but are only-average in their new environment. Wittgenstein barges into Bertrand Russell's life/office, and pretty quickly Bertie is like "this kid is going to change how we do philosophy." How does that feel? (Admittedly Russell also went through phases of thinking Wittgenstein was an idiot, it's not as simple as I'm making out here).
Wittgenstein seems very arrogant/self assured, and willing to argue with his elders and/or betters, and I can't help wondering whether that's because he was a precocious genius or why he was able to be seen as one.
Consider Phlebas, by Ian Banks
The first Culture novel. I have been meaning to get to this series for a while so I started here (book 1), but struggled to get into it. Then I googled and discovered that many people recommend starting at Book 2, Player of Games. So maybe I'll go do that. [Update: since it was still on my phone I eventually listened to most of it, but I'm not sure I should have. Banks is a very competent writer so the narrative is fun and compelling, but... life is short and you only get so many books, I wish I were more deliberate about what I start. As the monks say: Better not to begin; once begun, better to finish.]
Here's a tangential thought: could we start making more-altered audiobook adaptations of novels that were written for print? First priority is adding Greek-style epithets for characters, because it is far harder in audio (for some reason) to remember who is who. Ideally we'd also rename characters for the audiobook versions to give them far more distinct names, starting with different letters, but I understand that's a bigger ask. (This is all especially salient in science fiction, where you're supposed to differentiate the urK'tang, the X'tami and the Ak'ktan while listening at double speed, it's impossible. But if you at least gave them consistent epithets I would track it better....)