drowned cities

Apparently, The Drowned Cities is part of a trilogy, and as luck would have it, this is book two. The front matter in this book indicates that it is a 'companion book' to Ship Breaker, and it doesn't talk about a trilogy. But maybe this is one of those things where the third book just grew out of the success of the first two. Ship Breaker won a couple of awards; Drowned Cities was nominated for a few as well. The Ship Breaker Trilogy is rounded out by Tool of War. So, I guess I'll stick that on the list as well.

The Drowned Cities is listed as teen or young adult science fiction, so it is a little simpler in its overall story arc than either The Water Knife or The Windup Girl, which I have to say, I enjoyed more. That said, I did enjoy this, and it was a welcome break from the crime/spy novels I've been reading.

A quick look at the cover art will tell you that this story takes place in a time in the not too distant future when society has broken down. That post-apocalyptic world is Paolo Bacigalupi's playground, based on the stories I've read thus far. I assume the stories share the same universe, and therefor the same apocalypse, but that isn't touched on specifically in this book. The world does seem hotter however, so... there is no such thing as global warming. note: this sarcastic remark is posted in the color of smog. see, that's art

This story goes together like a kit of parts. Its fast moving, not overly complicated, has some compelling characters, and an interesting backstory that seems to drive the background narrative. Easy, right? I burned through this pretty quickly, and not just because its written in an easy-to-read manner, but because its engaging. I have ordered book 1 (Ship Breaker) from the library; our local library is doing self-service holds, so I can just put them on hold on the interwebs, and then trot down and pick them up.

An interesting aside from our local library. When I picked this book up, along with the Charles Yu book, about 3 weeks ago, a sign on the door read "Masks Welcome." Now the sign on the library door says "Masks Required." My city went to masks required in all public buildings in the middle of August, sometime. I assume its in advance of school starting up, and the Commonwealth's DESE (Department of Elementary and Secondary Education) decision to not allow remote learning in public schools this year.

science fictional universe

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu was pretty popular when it came out in 2010 if I remember correctly. I added to my reading list then, but I haven't gotten around to it until now. I get a kick out of the cover art, which appears to be a study in old school ray gun design, along with a Star Trek font for the text. A closer look at the ray guns shows that they aren't all different--which is slightly disappointing--and one of them isn't a ray gun at all.

What is great about this story is that it reads a little like an autobiography (written in first person, and the protagonist's name is Charles Yu) and a little like the diary of an emotionally damaged man, and a little like the service manual for a futuristic device that isn't really well explained, and a little like a letter to one's future self about how to be better, and a little like wholly metaphoric construct created to path to reckoning with regret and time wasted.

I think that amorphous quality of the story may be what makes it so popular. It has the ability, like a good fortune teller does, to spin a tale charged enough to latch onto our shared experiences, and vague enough to allow us to bring more of ourselves to the story as readers. In the end, it looks like Yu has told us a story of himself, and ourselves, and maybe hasn't told a science fiction story at all.

Read this book.

book of treasures

was scrolling through LinkedIn today, as I normally do not do, and I found a video post from the American Library Association which offered a glimpse at the Book of Treasures, or in the original old French "Li livres dou tresor," a medieval illuminated manuscript by Brunetto Latini, politician, historian, poet, philosopher, and teacher (and friend) of Dante Alighieri. Ooo, I thought, a glimpse at a great old tome from the National Library of Russia, count me in.

My first thoughts when the video starts: Wow, that book looks great for its age. Wow, that's not the book that's a box. A box? Wow, that book looks great for its age. Why does that guy opening it have his bare hands on it? Wow (now looking inside at the illustrated manuscript pages on vellum) that book looks great for its age. Well... [spoiler] its a copy. Limited? sure. Less than a thousand copies? yep. Handmade? no doubt. For sale, and this is the glam video for all those patrons of book porn? you got it. The LinkedIn poster: Victor Moliero. The Company: M. Moliero. to be fair, Vic is proly a member of the ALA. whatever.

Its a nice copy, I'm sure. I would have preferred to ogle the original however.*

Also known as Tesoro or Trésor (the treasure) the encyclopedia was written in French during Latini's exile to France between 1260 and 1267. There is a copy of the manuscript in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence, where it is labeled as Ashburnham 125, which may or may not be the very volume from his old teacher that Dante read. The encyclopedia contains three books: biblical, Troy, troyian? Roman, and Middle Ages histories, and natural history, including astronomy, geography and animalia, the second book is about ethics, vices, and virtues, and the third book concerns political science as seen, and in the opinion of, the author. 

The National Library of Russia manuscript is rife with decorated initials, borders, and miniature illustrations including many "arabesques and drolleries" according to the Moliero video, which is why they chose this version to reproduce. Arabesques are ornate designs of interwoven geometric, floral, foliate figures. Drolleries are comedic images, designed to be oddly amusing, whimsical, or jesting. Examples of drolleries in this book include: deer-riding arrow-shooting monkeys, children jousting while riding piggyback on their parents, and a sword swallower. Many of the illuminations are gilded. Other versions are not as illuminated.

More about M. Moliero and what they do can be found on their website if you're interested in, what I assume, is an expensive copy of an awesome old book.

* I tried to find images of the original the Moliero folks copied on line so I could check it out--and share it here--but no luck. If you find it let me know in a comment.

english assassin

Gabriel Allon book two, The English Assassin, was a good installment in the series and a fun read. Given what our man Allon has had to go through its surprising he stays in the game. I guess that is maybe what makes the difference between a storybook hero and a real one; storybook heroes are what we expect heroes to be, real heroes aren't. They are just folks doing their job, doing what's right, doing what needs to be done. 

When folks call other folks heroes, it usually pisses them off. Being compared to something dreamed up, isn't always flattering I guess, when viewed from the receiving end. Calling someone a hero, is like saying "you aren't real, your accomplishments are imaginary, fanciful." I guess I may not like it either, but then, we all do these tiny thought experiments in our heads; ask others "what would you do if..." questions, but none of us really knows how to answer truthfully. Or maybe accurately is a better term. When we think about these hypothetical situations, how we would react is just how we hope we'd react. None of us really knows, I'm sure. We're just guessing. 

Thought experiments like this, strung together into a narrative, is what a story is. Silva has created a character in Allon that he uses to test these thought experiments, and create a dreamworld where Israel works secretly through their clandestine services to right the wrongs done to the Jews for centuries, and we we cheer yearning for justice as we follow along. Justice is what heroes do after all.

What does all that have to do with an English assassin, or Switzerland, or Venice? You'll have to catch up and read this thing! I'll give you some time, I have another few books I'll be reading in the meantime, and I'm sure I'll get back to Gabriel Allon at some point.

kill artist

Daniel Silva's first Gabriel Allon book is called The Kill Artist. As I mentioned in my last post, my wife has decided to go back and read all of Daniel Silva's works, and has collected them in paperback from a variety of sources. A quick look through 'The Books' page here on the blog tells me that the first one I read was in 2013, which I bought in a tiny English language section of a bookstore in Sulmona, Italy. there's my blog, doing its job as intended. thank me very much

After reading this one, I read a second, which I just finished. I'll write about that one in a little while, but I am going to hold off on the Silva books for a while as my library has re-opened--a little while ago actually, but has just recently returned to regular hours so I can go over there after work. Which I have now done, and I now have a few books lined up that don't have Silva's name on them.

Allon is a great character for a variety of reasons, including his reluctance to do what he knows needs to be done, his haunted past, his professionalism, his humanity (in spite of what he does) and his weaknesses and fallibility. When I spell it out like that, it sounds a lot like the advice the give writers on what makes up a good hero, so I guess Silva has been listening. I thought that going back to book one would be like an origin story, but it isn't. I hope that's not too much of a spoiler, but its seems to me that that story hasn't been told yet, except as background. But who knows, maybe it in one of the others I haven't read yet.