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What I Finished Reading This Week
Witch Wood – James Buchan
I picked up this book thinking I would like it well enough for what it was, i.e., a product of its time. I was not expecting to like it—let alone really like it—on its own merits, but I did. This is a really good book. Witch Wood is based on an old Scottish manuscript from 1719, Satan’s Artifices against the Elect, which contains a chapter on otherworldly troubles that afflicted the lowland parish of Woodilee and culminates in the disappearance of its well-meaning but ineffectual minister, either at the hands of fairies or the devil.
I’m kind of amazed that Witch Wood was published in 1927. Buchan makes very pointed observations on the role of religion in government and government in religion, religious hypocrisy, and fundamentalism that remain topical today. He does this while telling a layered, engaging story set in 1644 about the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and the internecine struggles it fed in church and state, and its effects on a people who are already at constant war with the natural environment. His characters are complex and subtly portrayed; you get a true sense of who they are as people, and become quite attached to many of them. His descriptive language is stunning, some of the best I’ve read since Tolkien. And modern authors could learn a thing or two from Buchan on how to effectively portray psychological and physical horror.
There are a few faults. Unsurprisingly for its time (but still disappointingly) the main female character is fridged for the sake of the protagonist’s personal development.
Even more disappointing is how Buchan opts to handle the witch trials. One of the neat things he does with the plot is to take the hints in Satan’s Artifices and extrapolate from them the survival of pre-Christian religion in the parish. (This itself is a bit of a mess: the “cultists” conduct Celtic rituals at an altar to Jupiter, for instance. But I digress.) The protagonist’s efforts to root out the cult and the identities of its members in his parish lead to the summoning of a sadistic witch hunter to the Kirk. An old woman, accused of witchcraft, is tortured to death as a result. It is brutally, but not graphically, described, in a way that will make your skin crawl.
But then the protagonist realizes that the woman’s death was the intention all along: the cultists knew the witch pricker would torture her to death—she wasn’t a victim, but a human sacrifice freely offered to the gods they worship.
This is the one point in the novel where Buchan takes the cowardly narrative option. The victims of the witch hunts were accused by Christians, tortured by Christians, and executed—one could even say made human sacrifices—by Christians for the glory of the Christian god. One understands why this would make Buchan uncomfortable and why he tries to explain their deaths away as the fault of someone other than Christians, but that doesn’t change the facts.
It’s a big misstep that would have tanked my enjoyment of a lesser book. But Witch Wood is so well written, so beautifully and subtly narrated, that I really enjoyed it and will definitely read it again.
How To Destroy Surveillance Capitalism – Cory Doctorow
More extended op-ed than book, How To Destroy Surveillance Capitalism is poorly organized and argued, but occasionally insightful. Much of it consists of Doctorow's attacks on Shoshana Zuboff's much better written The Age of Surveillance Capitalism and one rather gets the sense that Doctorow is somewhat jealous of the influence of that book, judging by how many of his criticisms rely on a fundamental--and sometimes deliberate--misreading of Zuboff's points.
Doctorow's argument, as far as I was able to discern, is not that it's troubling and dangerous that Apple, amazon, facebook, and google surreptitiously collect and sell as much data on everyone--users and nonusers alike--as they can, but that they are monopolies. But Zuboff devotes a good portion of her book to discussing the dangers these companies pose because they are monopolies and it's disingenuous of Doctorow to pretend otherwise.
He's on steadier ground when criticizing one of Zuboff's main conclusions: that surveillance capitalism threatens free will. I myself believe that Zuboff somewhat overstates this threat, and fumbles in failing to identify the more proximate one (additional thoughts here, here, and here). Yet Doctorow immediately undermines his criticism by arguing that amazon, facebook, google, et al. are dangerous because of persuasion, and their twin abilities to control what information users see (or don't) and to keep users endlessly engaged on their services. But what does all of this amount to, if not the limiting of free will through behavior modification and the withholding of data that could help users make informed choices?
Doctorow argues that the solution is to revive antitrust enforcement to break up the big tech companies, rather than compel them to regulate their own actions vis-a-vis privacy concerns, harassment, etc. But making companies smaller won't magically make them nicer: Clubhouse is far smaller than facebook but also home to bad and dangerous user behavior. If, as Doctorow repeatedly says, only big tech has the financial resources to monitor the actions of tech users, who will be left to monitor the far more fragmented small tech Doctorow proposes, other than the government whose surveillance creepiness he deplores? Finally, none of this would "destroy surveillance capitalism" as promised by the title; several hundred companies can collect, store, and sell personal data just as readily as a handful of big ones.
So yes, this is an op-ed, not a book, and not a particularly good examination of the topic.
The Sins of the Cities of the Plains – Jack Saul
This reads like bad fanfic, and I'm amazing any modern day academic could seriously entertain the idea that it's autobiographical.
What I Am Currently Reading
The Strangler Vine – M.J. Carter
The Strangler Vine sync read is heading into its third week! I’ll post the discussion post for Chapters 9-12 on February 19. The previous discussion for chapters 5-8 is here and the one for chapters 1-4 discussion here. (The full schedule is here.)
Join in if you are so inclined!
The Broken Raven – Joseph Elliott
I’m about halfway through with this one, and should have it finished by next week.
The Silver Bough vol. 2 – F. Marian McNeill
This week, I read the chapter on Fastern E'en, which absorbed many of the original Lammas traditions.
The House On Vesper Sands – Paraic O’Donnell
I’m already about 20 percent of the way in, and the novel is deeply enjoyable.
What I'm Reading Next
Aside from the Doctorow, I didn’t acquire any new books this week.
これで以上です。
Witch Wood – James Buchan
I picked up this book thinking I would like it well enough for what it was, i.e., a product of its time. I was not expecting to like it—let alone really like it—on its own merits, but I did. This is a really good book. Witch Wood is based on an old Scottish manuscript from 1719, Satan’s Artifices against the Elect, which contains a chapter on otherworldly troubles that afflicted the lowland parish of Woodilee and culminates in the disappearance of its well-meaning but ineffectual minister, either at the hands of fairies or the devil.
I’m kind of amazed that Witch Wood was published in 1927. Buchan makes very pointed observations on the role of religion in government and government in religion, religious hypocrisy, and fundamentalism that remain topical today. He does this while telling a layered, engaging story set in 1644 about the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and the internecine struggles it fed in church and state, and its effects on a people who are already at constant war with the natural environment. His characters are complex and subtly portrayed; you get a true sense of who they are as people, and become quite attached to many of them. His descriptive language is stunning, some of the best I’ve read since Tolkien. And modern authors could learn a thing or two from Buchan on how to effectively portray psychological and physical horror.
There are a few faults. Unsurprisingly for its time (but still disappointingly) the main female character is fridged for the sake of the protagonist’s personal development.
Even more disappointing is how Buchan opts to handle the witch trials. One of the neat things he does with the plot is to take the hints in Satan’s Artifices and extrapolate from them the survival of pre-Christian religion in the parish. (This itself is a bit of a mess: the “cultists” conduct Celtic rituals at an altar to Jupiter, for instance. But I digress.) The protagonist’s efforts to root out the cult and the identities of its members in his parish lead to the summoning of a sadistic witch hunter to the Kirk. An old woman, accused of witchcraft, is tortured to death as a result. It is brutally, but not graphically, described, in a way that will make your skin crawl.
But then the protagonist realizes that the woman’s death was the intention all along: the cultists knew the witch pricker would torture her to death—she wasn’t a victim, but a human sacrifice freely offered to the gods they worship.
This is the one point in the novel where Buchan takes the cowardly narrative option. The victims of the witch hunts were accused by Christians, tortured by Christians, and executed—one could even say made human sacrifices—by Christians for the glory of the Christian god. One understands why this would make Buchan uncomfortable and why he tries to explain their deaths away as the fault of someone other than Christians, but that doesn’t change the facts.
It’s a big misstep that would have tanked my enjoyment of a lesser book. But Witch Wood is so well written, so beautifully and subtly narrated, that I really enjoyed it and will definitely read it again.
How To Destroy Surveillance Capitalism – Cory Doctorow
More extended op-ed than book, How To Destroy Surveillance Capitalism is poorly organized and argued, but occasionally insightful. Much of it consists of Doctorow's attacks on Shoshana Zuboff's much better written The Age of Surveillance Capitalism and one rather gets the sense that Doctorow is somewhat jealous of the influence of that book, judging by how many of his criticisms rely on a fundamental--and sometimes deliberate--misreading of Zuboff's points.
Doctorow's argument, as far as I was able to discern, is not that it's troubling and dangerous that Apple, amazon, facebook, and google surreptitiously collect and sell as much data on everyone--users and nonusers alike--as they can, but that they are monopolies. But Zuboff devotes a good portion of her book to discussing the dangers these companies pose because they are monopolies and it's disingenuous of Doctorow to pretend otherwise.
He's on steadier ground when criticizing one of Zuboff's main conclusions: that surveillance capitalism threatens free will. I myself believe that Zuboff somewhat overstates this threat, and fumbles in failing to identify the more proximate one (additional thoughts here, here, and here). Yet Doctorow immediately undermines his criticism by arguing that amazon, facebook, google, et al. are dangerous because of persuasion, and their twin abilities to control what information users see (or don't) and to keep users endlessly engaged on their services. But what does all of this amount to, if not the limiting of free will through behavior modification and the withholding of data that could help users make informed choices?
Doctorow argues that the solution is to revive antitrust enforcement to break up the big tech companies, rather than compel them to regulate their own actions vis-a-vis privacy concerns, harassment, etc. But making companies smaller won't magically make them nicer: Clubhouse is far smaller than facebook but also home to bad and dangerous user behavior. If, as Doctorow repeatedly says, only big tech has the financial resources to monitor the actions of tech users, who will be left to monitor the far more fragmented small tech Doctorow proposes, other than the government whose surveillance creepiness he deplores? Finally, none of this would "destroy surveillance capitalism" as promised by the title; several hundred companies can collect, store, and sell personal data just as readily as a handful of big ones.
So yes, this is an op-ed, not a book, and not a particularly good examination of the topic.
The Sins of the Cities of the Plains – Jack Saul
This reads like bad fanfic, and I'm amazing any modern day academic could seriously entertain the idea that it's autobiographical.
What I Am Currently Reading
The Strangler Vine – M.J. Carter
The Strangler Vine sync read is heading into its third week! I’ll post the discussion post for Chapters 9-12 on February 19. The previous discussion for chapters 5-8 is here and the one for chapters 1-4 discussion here. (The full schedule is here.)
Join in if you are so inclined!
The Broken Raven – Joseph Elliott
I’m about halfway through with this one, and should have it finished by next week.
The Silver Bough vol. 2 – F. Marian McNeill
This week, I read the chapter on Fastern E'en, which absorbed many of the original Lammas traditions.
The House On Vesper Sands – Paraic O’Donnell
I’m already about 20 percent of the way in, and the novel is deeply enjoyable.
What I'm Reading Next
Aside from the Doctorow, I didn’t acquire any new books this week.
これで以上です。
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