My reading life is looking up! Last night I went to a public book club. A local book shop, Blacksburg Books, hosted it at nearby Moon Hollow Brewing, which I’ve been wanting to go to anyway, and this gave me a perfect excuse. When I walked into the cozy, wood-floored brewery, I saw several 4-top and 6-top tables with “Reserved for book club” signs on them, and lots of people seated at them with colorful beers in pretty glassware — pale citrines, foamy apricots, rich chocolate browns — each with a copy of The Bluest Eye on the table next to them.
I bought myself a New Moon Milk Stout in a cute little 12oz goblet glass, and I sat in the last chair at a table of three other women. We all introduced ourselves and mentioned whether this was our first time joining (two of us were first-timers, two had been coming since the beginning), and then we dove straight into the book, and how it’s a challenging book to describe as liking or not liking because the content is not something to be described in terms of like or didn’t like. It doesn’t tell a pretty tale, but it tells a necessary one. A fifth woman soon pulled up a chair, and a few minutes later, a sixth. There were probably 30-40 people in total at this little brewery to talk about this book.
As always happened to me in college literature classes, talking about the book with other people deepened my appreciation of it. I loved lit classes and I love book clubs for this very reason. I love hearing what books made other people think about and reflect on, what messages they pulled from the text, what passages struck them, which characters mystified or magnetized them. I love asking what people thought of some section I didn’t understand, or wtf was up with that preacher, where’d he come from. I love digging in and realizing what the author was doing as we talk about all these different angles and I see things I hadn’t seen before.
I admit, I was nervous about showing up at this random thing without knowing a soul there. As soon as I saw the date of the book club, I put it on my calendar. I also kind of didn’t know, up until the time I needed to leave my house to get to the brewery, whether I would actually go. But I really really like books, and I want to meet more people in my town, and books are a thing I feel super comfortable talking about and sharing with others.
So I went. And I’m glad I did. Now I want another one and I have to wait until next year. But I think going and having such a great time opened up a book magic portal for me, because as soon as I got home, I got a library notification that Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake was ready for me to borrow. I plowed through the rest of my placeholder romantasy before I went to sleep, and today I get to start on Tom Lake.
This has been kind of a bummer year for me, book-wise. I’ve only read about five books that I’ve really liked, and otherwise I re-read a bunch of stuff because I just couldn’t find anything that got me excited to read. Seven of the 34 books I’ve read so far this year are books I’ve read before, and that makes me feel like I’m living in the past.
My hold list at the library has several books on it that I’m eager to read, if not truly excited to read, and I’ve been waiting for weeks for many of them. While I waited, I decided to read Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye for a local book club, and of course as soon as I started reading it, four of my library holds became available. I delayed them so I could finish the book club book, which was fine but not great, and by the time I finished it, the hold that became available was one I’d been waiting on for something like 14 weeks. I couldn’t remember anything about the book or why I’d requested it, but I started it because it was there. It’s very long, and is a romantasy, which I didn’t realize when I started it, and sometimes I like that! but not right now. Now I’m in it, and I don’t really want to abandon it because I feel like I’ve already abandoned a bunch of other books this year, and besides, I don’t have another book lined up. It just feels like a placeholder.
I started listening to book reviews and the Book Riot podcast again as a replacement for actual books I feel are missing in my life. I’ve learned that Lauren Groff and Ann Patchett both have new novels out, and for the first time this year, I’m excited about what I get to read next.
I finished another good book this week, watched some more Shakespeare, binged a podcast series about using AI to create a podcast episode, was inspired by open source, and listened to some new music I love.
Reads
I’m enjoying the anthology of American short stories I bought a few months ago. I like to pretend that one day I might write a short story, and as I read the anthology, I collect the first sentences to study and reflect on. Every stab I’ve taken at fiction sounds self-conscious in the opening sentence, and it’s a joy to read authors who craft a compelling first line. This week I read Katherine Anne Porter’s “Theft” from 1930, along with “Double Birthday” by Willa Cather and “Wild Plums” by Grace Stone Coates, both from 1929, and both about the confines of class distinction and the limitations they place on joy for all classes. I thought Coates’ first sentence was pretty great, and it certainly made me want to keep reading:
I knew about wild plums twice before I tasted any.
– Grace Stone Coates, “Wild Plums”
For longer fiction, I finished Brendan Slocumb’s novel Symphony of Secrets this week, and I loved it. Our trip to NYC jazz clubs catalyzed me to finally do a thing I keep saying I want to do but have never actually done: learn about music. As with everything I’m interested in learning about, I immersed myself in a novel. The setting is today and the 1920s music scene in New York. The characters are musicians and music publicists and music historians. They speak the language of music. They are moved by music. Their hearts and souls are in music. And the story was a page-turner. I recommend it.
In non-fiction, I’m still making my way through Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence. The crux of what I’ve gotten through so far is that, in economic terms, as the cost of prediction decreases due to machines being super fast and good at prediction compared to humans, the value of complements like judgment and decision-making — which require humans — will increase. In other words, our humanness doesn’t make us less valuable: our uniquely human capabilities become more valuable as machines make prediction easier and faster for us. Humans can harness AI to complement our own skill sets, and because AI lacks critical components of decision-making (judgment, action, outcome), an essential role of humans is that of machines’ supervisors.
Listens
This week, I fell in love with the title track from Jenny Lewis’s new album, Joy’All. I’m trying not to listen to it over and over again, even though I want to. I don’t want to wear it out too soon.
I’m fascinated by the implications of AI, what it’s capable of, and how people are reacting to it, so I listened to several podcasts this week, including a three part Planet Money series where the hosts had AI write an entire podcast episode, including creating an AI generated voice of one of the hosts. The result was both impressive in what it was able to do, and funny in how corny and wrong AI got some of the elements. The first two episodes are about how the hosts worked with AI to create the AI-written episode, and the third episode is the AI-written episode itself, along with the podcast team’s reaction to it. My coworker recommended the series, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in AI’s implications for knowledge work and creative jobs (spoiler: we’re safe. See above for human judgment and decision-making).
Similarly, Fresh Air’s Could Artificial Intelligence Destroy Humanity? is a great listen to assuage fears and also explain today’s AI technology for folks who are hearing the buzz but aren’t familiar with exactly what ChatGPT is, how it works, what it’s shortcomings are, and whether it will kill us all (spoiler: unlikely, though given enough time, anything is presumably possible, assuming the infinite monkey theorem that given infinite time, a monkey typing random keys would eventually write the works of Shakespeare).
Watches
Speaking of Shakespeare, I watched Hamlet this week. I didn’t enjoy it as much as Macbeth; I found my attention wandering in several parts. I don’t know how much of that was that the production I watched stayed 100% true to every word Shakespeare wrote for Hamlet, and it was hard for me to follow at times, or how much was simply that I didn’t care for the story as much. As with Macbeth, though, my eyebrows shot up several times when words were spoken, I recognized them, and I had no idea they had come from Shakespeare. For example, the whole “What a Piece of Work Is Man” speech, which I know large sections of from Hair. All these years I’ve been singing that song, and I had no idea it was from Shakespeare. It seems fitting to include alongside all the AI stuff this week.
What a piece of work is man How noble in reason How infinite in faculties In form and moving How express and admirable In action how like an angel In apprehension how like a god The beauty of the world The paragon of animals
– Galt MacDermot via William Shakespeare
Finally, WordPress, the open source software that powers this blog and more than 40% of the web, turned 20 on May 27. In celebration of the anniversary, to talk about WordPress’s history, and to talk about the principles of open source and their implications for our future, WordPress’s co-founders, Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little, joined with Dries Buytaert, founder of Drupal open source project, for the first time ever. They talked about why and how open source — software that’s available to everyone for free to use, study, redistribute, and improve — is one of the most powerful ideas of our generation, is based on rights instead of restrictions, and enables software to evolve and improve because it has a world of contributors instead of a restricted group within a walled organization. I was once again inspired by and proud to work for a company whose mission is to make the web a better place through open source.
I’m tired of feeling bad about consuming other people’s creations instead of making my own. I was originally going to write about fiction I read this week, then I realized I’m also reading some non-fiction, which made me think of the podcasts I listened to, which led to the ear and eye art, so I figured what the heck, I’ll just hit it all.
Reads
I finished the novel Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver this morning, and it was well worth reading. I had no idea it was set right here in Southwest Virginia when I picked it up. I love all of Kingsolver’s books that I’ve read, and especially the ones that take place here in Appalachia. In this one, she dives deep with the main character into the world of foster care, the opioid epidemic, and what it’s like to live in one of these small Appalachian towns. Apparently it’s a loose retelling of Dickens’s David Copperfield, but I’ve never read that, so it’s definitely not necessary to have read it in order to appreciate Kingsolver’s book.
Last weekend I read Hemingway’s “The Killers” in an anthology of American short stories I bought a few weeks ago. Despite his flaws, and there are many, I can’t help but be awed by Hemingway’s ability to tell a story through what he doesn’t say. He leaves the perfect amount of empty space for the reader’s mind to fill.
In non-fiction, I’m working on a book about AI that my statistician friend recommended: Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb. I’m only a few chapters in, but already it’s fascinating to me to think of the role of prediction in intelligence and learning. We as humans are continually taking in data, processing it, and making predictions based on what we’ve taken in. Prediction is what a reader’s brain is doing when it fills in the blanks in a Hemingway story. Prediction is what makes generative AI possible.
Listens
When I walk or run, I like to listen to podcasts, and this week I listened to a couple of great ones. My favorite was a special for Pride month: The Seagulls from Radiolab. It’s about homosexuality and gender fluidity in nature, and it’s funny, infuriating, sad, beautiful, life-affirming, and thought-provoking. I laughed. I cried. I adored it.
I enjoyed Hidden Brain’s Seeking Serenity: part 1 about a neuroscientist who sought to understand the mind from the outside using scientific tools, from the inside by working with master meditators, and the pushback he got from both communities when they were confronted with the other. I’ve also recently started listening to Articles of Interest, a podcast about what we wear, and this week’s episode was about Prison Uniforms, and the role clothing plays in how we feel and are seen in the world. I would have never thought to go deep into what prisoners wear and what kind of impact those garments have on them, though it makes perfect sense after hearing their stories.
Watches
Shakespeare is everywhere. The Weird Sisters, Hamnet, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. I can’t remember what I read recently, but it referenced the wyrd sisters in Macbeth, and I recently read Hamnet without remembering the story of Hamlet, and I’ve read The Weird Sisters probably half a dozen times. I’ve been thinking lately about how I want to revisit Shakespeare so I can connect some of this stuff and see what the big deal is. The last time I experienced any of his original work that all these things are referencing was probably high school, 30 years ago. Our son came home from college with a book of Shakespeare plays he bought at a used bookstore, so last weekend I told him, I’m watching Macbeth, the one by Roman Polanski, if you want to watch with me. He was non-committal, said he might not watch the whole thing. But next thing you know, he’s on the edge of his seat to the very bitter end, just like me. I’m a fan. I get now why Shakespeare is a big deal. I want this to be my summer of Shakespeare; I think I’ll watch Hamlet next.
We finished Ted Lasso this week, and my god, what a great show. I won’t say anything about it for those who haven’t watched yet. It’s just the best. Funny. Hopeful. Lots of swearing. Loveable, hilarious characters. Probably my favorite TV show of all time.
We also finished Better Call Saul, which was infinitely better than Breaking Bad. Saul is so, so good. Where Breaking Bad made me despise everyone in it (except Jesse and Hank and Marie), and I didn’t finish it because everyone was so annoying, I loved everyone in Better Call Saul, even the very, very bad people. The characters in Saul are more complex and deep and human, and even the bad people have kernels of beauty. Plus it’s funny, which I very much appreciate.
It’s been a while since I’ve read a new-to-me book that sucked me in and gave me everything I wanted. The last book that did that — that made me think and feel, that I could sink my teeth into, that was epic, and the characters were alive and real and I loved them, and the writing sang to me, and I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough and I also wanted it to last — was A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. It’s a brutal, brutal book. A real suffer-fest. As happy-loving as I am, I don’t fully understand my attraction to literature that plumbs the depths of human sadness, but sometimes that deep deep pool is what I want. Maybe because there is no such thing as pain-free happiness, that light is defined by dark, and one without the other isn’t the full story, not really. Or maybe because I’m fascinated by human psychology, and how we deal with the cards we’re dealt, and who loves us, and who we love, and whether we love ourselves.
At any rate, A Little Life was probably my favorite read of 2022. I read some other stuff that was fine. Not fine as in exquisite, but fine as in somewhere between okay and great. Looking through Goodreads, I see I gave some books 5 stars, and I don’t recall one single thing about the books! How did they earn 5 stars if I can’t remember anything about them?
A Little Life and a few others ruined me for finding truly satisfying reads. Light page turners are fun, but they don’t go deep and get to the big stuff I like to immerse myself in. Lately I’ve been re-reading books that I know will provide everything I want. I just reread The Goldfinch, and I’m sad it’s over, and now I have to find another book again. While I look and think, I’m reading Madame Bovary, and it’s not doing it for me. I read a few pages and then put it down to do something else. This tempts me to go for something known, like Fates and Furies again, but there are so many books in the world, I don’t want to be in a rut of only reading stuff I know. I’m at a loss. I know I’ll find something eventually, I’m just impatient to get there.
I received a shipment of ink yesterday — a bottle of Diamine Holly to get me through winter, and a small vial of Sherwood Forest. The first is an elegant holiday green with a hint of shimmer in it, and the latter is an earthier green, like fir or spruce needles. Both inks remind me of evergreens, which I need very much when the garden is brown.
I’m taking today off of work. Other than the solstice, today is the only day I’m taking off for the Christmas season, so I want to take advantage of it to do as little as possible. I was on my feet, mostly in the kitchen, for 12 hours on my other day off for the holidays. It was worth it — our yule feast was delicious — but today I plan to do the opposite of what I did on Wednesday. Today, I plan to put my feet up, relax, and do stuff I want to do. Like clean all my fountain pens, which I did this morning, now that I’ve got this pretty new ink.
I might play with my camera some if I feel like it; last night, with time finally free to caper, I used my little tripod to photograph Tootsie in the light of the Christmas tree. The light was low, and I wanted to use my tripod and play with slow shutter speeds, using my phone as a camera remote, and testing different setting combinations in the dimly lit room. I never did get a great focus on her eyes, but I can keep trying. I forget I have practice subjects in the cats, and that when I want to play with my camera, I can photograph them.
Tootsie at Christmas
But mostly today I want to read. In February, my team is meeting up in Istanbul for work, and I know next to nothing about Turkey or Istanbul, except that I know I’ll like the food (kebabs! pastries with pistachios! falafel!), and that the setting of one of my favorite fantasy series is modeled on the land and city-scapes of the Byzantine empire. The two books comprise the Sarantine Mosaic by Guy Gavriel Kay; the main character is a mosaicist, and the setting is rich and textured and gorgeous, and I want to read it again before my trip.
First, though, I will read real-world fiction by one of Istanbul’s celebrated novelists, Elif Shafak. She’s written several books, and I’ve selected The Bastard of Istanbul to start with. I love to learn a place through its fiction, and Shafak has put together a whole list of titles for anyone who wants to read their way through Istanbul. From that list, I learned there’s a hotel in Istanbul that’s the last stop on the Orient Express, and was where Agatha Christie would stay when she visited Istanbul (Hemingway would also stay there). Apparently the hotel is near our Airbnbs. So now I want to read some Agatha Christie as well, which I wanted to do anyway thanks to my friend Zandy who recently finished reading Christie’s entire ouevre and blogged comically about her experience in A year of murder, and also because I loved Knives Out, and I can’t wait to watch Glass Onion, and the director of those two films is of course inspired by Agatha Christie. I’ll need to ask Zandy if Christie set anything in Istanbul I should read.
The wind swooshes down the chimney and rattles the flue. Tootsie cleans herself, calm and unhurried, while trees shake and snowflakes swirl outside. I’m going to slide some brocolli into the oven and read my book while I wait for it to roast.
Butterfly Mind 