Here are my notes for book club.

First book - Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

Hot take:

• I’m honestly surprised this is on the bestseller list.
• Character development was very one-dimensional and the narrator is just 100% a bad person.
• Story line is also a bit far fetched and in that it’s not super nuanced.

In terms of themes, the first thing that strikes me is that this is a hit back at everyone who ever criticized R.F. Kuang and painting them in as bad as possible light. There’s the “Asian-American author who struggles in publishing” themes that come throughout but I was honestly hoping this book would be a bit deeper than that. Instead I’m left dissapointed.
On the other hand maybe I’m not the audience for this book.

Other takes: Most people in the book club also agreed this was a far fetched storyline. And why doesn’t the narrator have any friends but her alleged best friend is super popular and loves people? This book is just complaining and that’s no fun for anyone.

My Rating: 2/5 stars

Average Book Club Rating: 3.5/5 stars

Second Book - Drive your plow over the bones of the dead by Olga Tokarczuk

Hot takes and reading notes

• Why are we personifying every damn plant and animal here. This lady must have a close connection w nature.
• Oh no she likes horoscopes. Looks like I’m in for a ride.
• Murder mystery? Horoscopes? What’s the probability that there is a natural explanation to it all?
• Meta-comment: I’ve a hard time to understand if this is a book of fiction or a fantasy book where the supernatural part will only be revealed in the end.
• this lady doesn’t believe in names, which is cute if you’re 14 but weird if youre 64 … or however old this nutjob is
• Lady definitely does not like people. Wow. No love lost between her and neighbors, with some small exceptions of
  • people who let her rant without telling her she is insane
  • people who share (some of) her particular convictions.
• III: She has the TV on all the time, from breakfast until bedtime. Rationalizes by saying “Dawn imperceptibly fades into the Dusk […] the window panes merely reflect the inside of my kitchen, the small, cluttered centre of the Universe.” I want to kill her
• For some reason this lady keeps talking about the Czech Republic as this magical place where all is good. Why does she keep thinking that?
• IX: I’m about 98.5% sure this lady is killing all her neighbors who like hunting. And just trying to explain why she is a murderer by horoscopes and Saturns sixth Mars ascendant.
• Is she trying to get caught by writing these letters to the police? Like, why? This lady is clearly delusional.
  • Is this a Cassandra type thing? Is she like prescient and understands animals (is it a fantasy novel?).
• ANOTHER LETTER! come on lady make it more obvious that you killed these people in cold blood. At this point I’m only finishing the book to avoid the penalty.
• XV: ok, what a funny Blake reference. It all makes sense. I looked up the poem:

In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.
The cut worm forgives the plow.

Italics and bold is mine, but I suppose that’s the theme. The ugly old maid courted by Incapacity is the narrator, and she sees her acts ploughing down her neighbors as tilling the field and removing worms. Cool. That didn’t really resonate with me. I’m wondering how this type of ideas would be seen if we were discussing Marc Andreesen’s Techno Optimist Manifesto.

My Rating: 3/5 stars. Better than Yellowface because it kept me on edge until the end to figure out if I was in fact reading a fantasy novel about elves.

Average Book Club Rating: ?/5 stars

Third Book - Lord of the Flies

Reading Reading Reading.

Read it some years ago so re reading will be cool.
I think I’ll read with the eyes of an adult looking at how the world has changed since 1954, when .

Since most of Goldings’ thoughts about young kids have been shown to be completely unrealistic, I guess it could be an interesting study of building a narrative that supports your own point of view? Golding was an alcoholic war veteran turned schoolmaster after all, the type of which inspired this great Pink Floyd lyric:

When we grew up and went to school
There were certain teachers who would
Hurt the children in any way they could
“OOF!”
By pouring their derision
Upon anything we did
And exposing every weakness
However carefully hidden by the kids

Fourth Book - On the Road by J Kerouac

Immediate Thoughts

• Enjoyed the language describing Bebop and jazz clubs. Evident that music definitely touches the narrator closely, also shown in the parts discussing mambo music in mexico
• Paradoxical situation: Sal describes all Deans adventures and frenzies as sometimes downright irresponsible and “far out” but seems to brush of his own, similarly crazy experiences.
• Towards the end, re-introducing the people that adored Dean but now are grown up and tell him to grown up, are an interesting piece of plot. It brings out the theme that many of these were not necessairly Deans friend rather just using him or somehow gaining from his prescence under the pretense of friendship
• Towards the ending the monotony of travel seems to have worn our narrator out as even the Road becomes mundane. I think many backpackers can relate to this feeling.
• In contrast, it seems like there is nogthing in the narrators life except from life On The Road, since he never mentions his life actually staying in the cities.

My Score: 7/10 Average book club score: 6/10

Fifth book - Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes

This book has everything, I’m impressed. The Icarian reference pierces the entire book, but the most poignant part is that the protagonist is aware.

Themes

• Man vs Nature
• Man vs God
• Man vs Man
• Man vs Society

Snippets I found cheesy but good

• Where Charlie references Atreus, the greek family doomed to repent their ancestors sins. Very two-layered
• When Norma meets Charlie again and says about Rose, their senile mother: “I could not put my own mother in a home … an institution.”

Thoughts

I can’t help but think that there is a sense of irony throughout the book.

When Charlie realizes (and conveys to his assosciates/experimenters¹) that intelligence is worth nothing without affection, they invariably strike back that he has “lost something of himself … the warm, likeable smile” that wishes to get to know others. However genuine that impression may be, the experimenters, throughout the entire first part of the book, urge him to think of himself, keep track of himself, and otherwise focus all his mental energy on introspection.

My main qualm with this is that for some reason none of the experimenters realize that Charlies developmental path forces him to go through socialization one more time. Considering that all his social cues point him to focus on himself it’s not very unnatural that he turns out arrogant, with a strong chip on his shoulder to authority.² He’s even explicitly rewarded for questioning authority early on - why are the experimenters surprised when he, as the prodigal lab rat, escapes?

Work Book Club - The Player of Games (Culture book II)

This was a very interesting read. SciFi can be really fun and thoughtful and in this case I feel we hit a good balance of both.

My notes are my own and very SoC this time.

Overall I think this book is a layered response to the trope that “men used to go to war”. It was written in 88, by a baby boomer - and probably the author used to hear the older generation talk about going to war - but instead just always going to parties, having casual sex, and being in an overall “safe” society that must have seemed like utopia compared to growing up in the 1920s and 30s.

1 - Culture Plate

I can understand this guy really well. The Culture, as a post-scarcity society has a very utopian themed of the sort, with the happy hedonism that we see in so many sci fis. I can clearly relate to Gurgeh feeling a lot like hes just going through the motions, even if he is the best of the best and so on.

Oh but the cheating? Mawhrin Skel is really a sneaky guy - recognizing that Gurgeh is bored beyond anything reasonable, and providing him some excitement. There is probably a theme here - that man needs struggles to develop and go on. This is probably why the games are so important to Jurjeh - he needs a challenge.

I like that they have terminals that are much like the phones we have today, but I am happy to see that people are not glued to them like in WallE.

2 - Imperium

Now Gurgeh is going on a long training trip before he needs to play games against a potentially mortal enemy of the Culture. For some reason I am wondering if this is going to be like Enders Game? I think it predates this novel by some years. He ends up being in a “fake battle” that turns into a real battle, wonder if this could be the same?

The most fascinating part, is that Gurgeh is a hero before even being a hero. There is obviously subtext here - Gurgeh doesn’t have the full picture of what he’s been sold as, or what the Imperium has to offer. When talking to the corrupt (or corrupted) Za, it becomes obvious that he was just brought in to play the game and not introduced to other aspects of the society he is playing against.

3 - Machina Ex Machina

Ok this title makes me like 95% sure that the Fleme drone is Marwhin Skel.

The title is a play on “Deus Ex Machina” - but in the Culture there are no Gods, and only the Imperium has Gods. Gurgeh is losing himself in the game, and they say he plays more like a machine.

Machina Ex Machina also refers to the fact that the Culture has introduced Minds - benevolent hyperspace-enabled beings / computers that control all, and have eliminated the need for Gods. And this in itself is reflected in the Imperium/Culture conflict. The Imperium is us, humanity’s barbaric, 1940s might-is-right way of living, with all the vices of hierarchical power structures, a God that arches over us all and hierarchies that people live up and down to. But the Culture is also us - with no clear requirements or things to do, since we have proceeded from scarcity.

It is cool to see the fact that Gurgeh needs to lose part of his Culture-way of being to fight Emperor Nicosar, and become more ruthless.

The last symbolism I find funny is the Fire Planet. The ever-lasting cycle of full destruction of the habitat plays on Plato’s Social Cycles (Aristocracy, Timocracy/Militocracy, Oligarchy, Democracy, Tyranny). I love it!

4 - The Passed Pawn

What a title to a section. Awesome. Brings so many questions, most of all, who is the passed pawn? Is it the Culture? Or is it Gurgeh? There are so many things to do with just this title:

1. The first layer - Gurgeh is the player, and he is the passed pawn who now has no challenges ahead since he has completed his ultimate game. This is why he sleeps the whole way home - he is done.
2. The second - relation back to Gurgehs reflection at the end of the game. When he tells Nicosar that he is sorry the game is over, since it was the best game he ever played.
3. The third - Gurgeh was the player, but also Contact’s (and Marwhin Skels) Pawn. He may have thought of himself as brilliant but he has been continuously played by Marwhin Skel

Rating

4/5 for entertainment, not for depth. Reminds me a lot of Dune, Enders Game, and the short story “The Evitable Conflict” in Asimovs I, Robot.