Gerard's Bookishness in 2023

I'm back once again. I may not get to 75, but I enjoy seeing what's out there to read. I'm still trying to get through the Dewey Decimal Challenge, so my entries here may be well outside the mainstream.

Cheers!

Welcome back, Gerard!

Happy new reading year, Gerard.

Happy reading in 2023, Gerard!

1. Quarantine Highway by Millicent Accardi

A very interesting collection of poems from the early quarantine days by Portuguese-American poet Millicent Accardi. All throughout the verses, there is a sense of disorientation, detachment, and longing, but also a spirit of optimism as well as beautiful prosody. The poems feel as if they were meant to be read aloud at a poetry jam or the like. The flow isn't noticeable until you actually hear the words. I would definitely get into it if you are looking for something more modern in your library.

2. Boyle, Nicholas. German Literature: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. 160 pp.

Nicholas Boyle’s survey of German literature is as no-fuss as you can get. He starts with a quick explanation on what exactly will be covered, a fairly condensed history of the region starting at The Reformation, then walks the reader through major German writers and works in each time period. He adequately situates each work and writer in their age, looking at cultural influences on the writing as well as how larger global changes interact with local idiosyncrasies. If you want a quick reading list to get you started in German literature, I recommend this book.

3. Saval, Nikil. Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace. New York: Anchor, 2015. 312 pp.

There is a sadness here, a sadness so thoroughly ingrained that hope makes it seem all the sadder. Nikil Saval’s Cubed is a look into how Western capitalism naturally evolved to sequester a large proportion of its participants into smaller and smaller cages. In looking at the history of the office, we see the history of work in general and the history of America’s relation to that work and the people that do it. Starting with bookkeepers and clerks in the early 19th century and going through present day tech serfs, Saval’s look into both office work and office philosophy are constantly in a state of tension. No one is ever 100% happy with their office furniture and life, and so there are infinite variations on ways to make that life easier. Designers think that if the office setup was perfectly suited to the worker, they would do it with vim and vigor, but the history of management eschews comfort for control, always trying to get the most work out of the worker for the least pay. Saval’s book is both infuriating and illuminating – definitely a good read.

4. Yanni, Carla. The Architecture of Madness: Insane Asylums in the United States. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. 158 pp.

The definition of insanity is building the same structure over and over again hoping for different results. Carla Yanni’s Architecture of Madness is a history of how a few medical minds tried to cure the world of insanity through certain architectural principles. Many thought that with the right combination of airflow, room placement, and natural environment, the thoughts that plagued a troubled mind would be washed away. Yanni’s look at the timeline of asylum and hospital construction from the mid-1800’s through the mid-1900’s is as interesting as it is infuriating. Very little credence was paid by medical “professionals” on actually looking inward; only grandeur was considered. This led to ever-expanding buildings on ever-expanding tracts of land, but no real results. If you’re into niche architectural trends, this one is a good read; if not, there’s not much else for you here.

5. Moss, Richard. Shareware Heroes: The Renegades Who Redefined Gaming at the Dawn of the Internet. London: Unbound, 2022. 297 pp.

Richard Moss’s Shareware Heroes is a love letter to anyone who scrapped together a computer in the late 20th century, haphazardly cobbled together some code, and sent it out to their friends to try out. Shareware, or software meant to shared with as many people as possible, gained huge traction once home computing became somewhat affordable and allowed an entire generation of promising coders to flourish. Disks, and then later CD-ROMS, were packaged with 1 or more games, sent out to mailing lists, and then each program would ask the user to send back a donation if they enjoyed the product. It was a pretty simple model and soon it became a million-dollar industry. Moss’s look at the people, products, and past is delightful and full of nostalgia for anyone who played at least one of these demo games. A very smooth read.

6. Clarke, Stephen. A Year in the Merde. New York: Bloomsbury, 2004. 276 pp.

Other reviews can give you the general plot, but it's only a paper-thin scaffolding for Clarke's attitudes towards the French, which he uses in this thinly-veiled fiction. The main character, Paul West, is thoroughly unlikable. He derides the working people of France, and constantly objectifies the women. There are very few redeeming qualities about this book. Every once in a great while, Clarke manages to write an effective joke, but most of it is hurtful or sleazy.

7. Hudak, Tina. Poetry From the Porch & Other Writings: Pathway Through a Pandemic. Takoma Park, MD: Not-to-be-Eaten Editions. 77 pp.

There is a wonderful stillness here that does well to capture the air of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. That stillness creates a tension between the thoughts of days and deeds past and the need to focus on the present. When all we did was concentrate on case levels and mortality rates, Hudak looks at birds on the autumn horizon, and says “Science pauses on these evenings.” In the winter, when darkness eats more of the day than we can bear, she escapes the present and writes “The heart sleeps untethered to weights of past loves.”

In the second half of the book are longer, almost poetic, prose vignettes about loss, traditions, and remembrance. Do not read them all in one sitting. Dole them out, one a day. You will be the better for it.

8. Kuzminski, Adrian. Pyrrhonism: How the Ancient Greeks Reinvented Buddhism. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008. 142 pp.

Like almost any book on ancient philosophy, there are parts that are truly interesting and parts that will put you to sleep. One of the great revelations in this one is the cultural osmosis that is recorded and occurred between thinkers of ancient India and ancient Greece. Weirdly, it never really dawned on me that such cross-pollination happened. Some of the same mind-clearing contentedness that shows up on Buddhism found its way into some Greek schools of thought, most notably the Skeptics. This was distilled into the school of thought now known as Pyrrhonism and is explored fully here. If you’re a philosopher, go for it; otherwise, I don’t think I recommend this one to anyone else.

9. Robinson, Andrew. The Man Who Deciphered Linear B: The Story of Michael Ventris. London: Thames & Hudson, 2013. 168 pp.

Andrew Robinson has put together a beautiful, tragic, tight biography of a weird man who managed to tease out the first translations of Linear B, a language found on dozens of tablets throughout Greece and the Mediterranean. Michael Ventris was, by all accounts, a verified eccentric. A lover of both architecture and world languages, he found joy in solving problems. How to correctly orient a Swedish office building, exactly what each pictogram on a clay tablet means, and so on. More remarkable than that is that he enlisted the help of anyone he could find around the world. In an era of hiding innovation from your competition, he simply wanted answers. This one is a fun little book on a niche subject. Give it a go.

10. Blain, Jenny. Nine Worlds of Seid-Magic: Ecstasy and Neo-Shamanism in European Paganism. London: Routledge, 2004. 159 pp.

This book is a weird one. Weird in that Jenny Blain actually makes the usual hippie-dippie world of shamans, soothsayers, and spiritual guides worth listening to. Am I going to become an adherent of the shamanistic ways? No, but I won’t dismiss them outright either. Blain’s text is very well-sourced and her interviews with practitioners around the world are legitimately refreshing. A fair amount of disbelief has to be suspended here, but I found it pleasant nonetheless.