What Am I Reading Wednesday - June 26

[lebateleur]

What I Just Finished Reading

Nuthin.


What I Am Currently Reading

The Strangler Vine – M.J. Carter
Still chilling in Jubblepore.

Japanese Grammar – Keiko Uesawa Chevray & Tomiko Kuwahira
Fifteen more freaking pages. I can do this.

The Broken Kingdom – N.K. Jemisin
Maybe because I’m not gaga over these novels, it took me a fair while to figure out the big reveal. (Which, once I did, really upped my enthusiasm because a sullen, rageful fallen god cursed to live as a human until he comes to care for humans is Highly Relevant To My Interests. So I was intrigued when Jemisin unveiled said big reveal to the main characters one third of the way in, because what then is the climax?

Unfortunately, the answer seems to be “a return to overdone YA tropes and (probable) hamfisted love story with a supersized side of exposition.” None of this is helped by Jemisin's over-reliance on adjectives and clunky prose (e.g., in one scene, protagonist wears “an ankle-length skirt that swirled nicely about my ankles.”) At least the exposition is delivered as responses to questions that characters would logically ask in X situation vice “As you know, Bob” conversation, although their reactions often suit the needs of the narrative instead of flowing naturally from the situations in which they find themselves. Still, it's the best thing by Jemisin I've read yet.

Outlaws of Sherwood – Robin McKinley
Robin Hood has set about assembling his merry band of outlaws in the chapters I read this week. McKinley's writing is excellent in this one.

The Truth – Terry Pratchett
I miss PTerry. The puns, the engaging characters, the social commentary, the ripping good story. He'd really hit his stride by this book.

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism – Shoshana Zuboff
Some good quotes from this week's reading:

One can easily choose not to purchase a Roomba, a SleepNumber bed, or a Nest thermostat, but each of these is merely emblematic of the immense project of rendition [of personal data] as the first and vital step in the construction of the apparatus of ubiquity. ... The very idea of a functional, effective, affordable product or service as a sufficient basis for economic exchange is dying.

As we are shorn of alternatives, we are forced to purchase products that we can never own while our payments fund our own surveillance.

For all of the elaborate ways in which surveillance capitalists labor to render reality as behavior for surplus, the simplest and most profound is their ability to know exactly where you are all the time. Your body is reimagined as a behaving object to be tracked and calculated for indexing and search. Most smartphone apps demand access to your location even when it's not necessary for the service they provide, simply because the answer to this question is so lucrative.

What I'm Reading Next
Who knows? I've lost all ability to predict what I might pick up next.


これで以上です。