2020 books

Best book of the year:  Hex
runner up: Radicalized


I don't always write about everything that I read.  For what it's worth, here is a list of all of the books I read this year.

Anders, Charlie Jane.  The City in the Middle of the Night.
Anderson, Poul.  Planet of No Return.
---.  The War of Two Worlds.
---.  World without Stars.
Asimov, Isaac.  Second Foundation.
---.  Foundation's Edge.

---.  Foundation and Earth.

---.  Prelude to Foundation.
Bradbury, Ray.  The Martian Chronicles.
Cebula, Geoff.  The Adjunct.

Cline, Leonard.  God Head.
Corey, James SA.  Abaddon's Gate.
---.  Cibola Burn.

---.  Nemesis Games.
Dillard, Annie.  The Writing Life.
Doctorow, Cory.  Radicalized.

Due, Tananative.  My Soul to Keep.
Golding, William.  The Inheritors.
Halliday, Brett.  Nice Fillies Finish Last.
Hart, Rob.  The Warehouse.
Herbert, Frank.  Children of Dune.

---. God Emperor of Dune.
Hill, Joe.  Full Throttle.
---.  Heart-Shaped Box.

---.  Nos4a2.  

Jay, Martin.  Marxism & Totality.

Kaku, Michio.  Physics of the Future.
King, Stephen.  Firestarter.

---.  On Writing.

Lee, M. Jonathan.  337.

Kolbert, Elizabeth.  The Sixth Extinction.

Lamott, Anne.  Bird by Bird.
Lethem, Jonathan.  Motherless Brooklyn.
MacDonald, John D.  Nightmare in Pink.

Max, D.T.  Every Love Story is a Ghost Story.
Newitz, Annalee.  The Future of Another Timeline.

Ntshanga, Masande.  Triangulum.
O'Brien, Tim.  In the Lake of the Woods.

Olde Heuvelt, Thomas.  Hex.

Paulos, John Allen.  Innumeracy.

Ramone, Marky.  Punk Rock Blitzkrieg: My Life as a Ramone.

Robinson, Kim Stanley.  Red Moon.

Rowling, JK.  Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.
Rule, Ann.  The Stranger beside Me.
Saunders, George.  In Persuasion Nation.
---.  Civilwarland in Bad Decline.

Scalzi, John.  Red Shirts.

Stephenson, Neal.  Atmosphaera Incognita.

Tchaikovsky, Adrian.  Children of Ruin.
Weir, Andy.  The Martian.
---.  Artemis
Wells, H.G.  The First Men in the Moon.
---.  The Invisible Man.
Wells, Martha.  Artificial Condition.
---.  Rogue Protocol.
---.  Exit Strategy.
White, Corey J.  Killing Gravity.



... & the books I started but didn't finish...

Goldberg, Natalie.  Writing Down the Bones.
Pallister, Charles.  The Quincunx.
Trout, Kilgore.  Venus on the Half-Shell.
Wallace, David Foster.   Everything and More.

Swedish Crust Punk

I recently came across the album Det Svenka Hatet by Swedish band Ett Dodens Maskineri on Spotify the other day and I haven't been able to stop listening to it.  

This album may be one of the best punk albums that I have heard this year, and it may even be among my favorites overall for the year.  It is packed with driving songs with melodic hooks.  

"Istrid," the first song that I heard opens with melodic guitar picking that moves into a hook that sounds a bit like something from  a Leftover Crack song.  At times the song reminds of more classic crustpunk with building chord progressions and full-throated vocals. 

While I know that this music isn't for everyone, this is the perfect album for those into hardcore crustpunk.  It is well worth checking out.

God Emperor of Dune

 Last year I decided that I was going to read as much of a few classic sci-fi series as I could. In that time, I have been working my way through Frank Herbert's Dune series, Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, Arthur C. Clarke's Rama series, and the not-yet-classic series The Expanse by James S.A. Corey. So far, I have found Asimov's and Corey's series to be the most enjoyable. I quit Rama after Rama II, and I am officially throwing in the towel on Dune. I just finished God Emperor of Dune and I have taken as much as I care to from this series of novels.

I know that there is much more to go and there is at least one more book written by Herbert himself in the series before his son took over, but I have had enough of them. I won't say that I didn't enjoy the books, but they definitely become a slog. Actually, they are sort of always a slog. The narratives are not straight-forward and Herbert leaves the reader to figure out a lot of the details of backstory. I didn't intend to sit down to write about the whole series, so I will skip to this book.

God Emperor picks up several thousand years after the events of Children of Dune. For those who may not remember or who never intend to read these books, Leto II, Paul Atreides' son has turned a sandtrout skin into a still suit at the end of Children. The worm skin bonds with his own and in the intervening years Leto has pretty much turned into a giant worm with a human face. He retains his powers of prescience that were detailed in Children. Basically, all the cool stuff that made Paul Atriedes a bad ass in Dune are multiplied in Leto and combined with immortality and being a worm.

So it is now the next day and I am working on finishing this review. I just read the phrase, “Paul Atreides' son has turned a sandtrout skin into a still suit,” and realize now how bonkers that sounds. Here is what I find disheartening about this book – please forgive me, I am about to editorialize and probably will not make my way back to the actual plot – for all of the crazy stuff going on, this book is incredibly boring. Like Children, there is a lot of talking and plotting but very little action. At least in Dune there were knife fights and traps. Here, not so much. Leto talks a lot to a guy who keeps coming back as a clone from the first book. There are Fish Speakers and Face Dancers, and all kinds of other ill-defined groups.

Basically, I had to push my way through to the end of this. I think that for the right kind of reader, there is a way to immerse in this world and to invest in these characters. I didn't find them that compelling. It seems to me more that this book was an opportunity to write a divergent narrative in the same universe as Dune.

This, then, is the end of my attempts to read the Dune series and I am likewise bailing on this post.

Fermented Hot Sauce

Habanero-garlic and Ghost pepper sauces

I love hot sauce. A few years back I discovered that I also like growing the peppers and making the sauce myself. My favorite method of making hot sauce is fermentation because it gives you a lot of variables to play with that can result in a wide array of heat and flavors.

In this post, I will provide a process that I recently used to make two different sauces and after that I will discuss some other variations that you can make for your own sauces.

At it's most simple, there are only 3 ingredients for a hot sauce: brine, peppers, and vinegar. The brine is a salted liquid that provides the proper anaerobic environment for fermentation to happen. Vinegar will stop the fermentation and preserve the sauce. Many hot sauce recipes use a simple water brine, but I like to use a sweet white wine for my brine. You may also include adjuncts in your fermentation to change the flavor. I more frequently use garlic or ginger but you can use vegetables and fruits as well.

Here are the steps for two hot sauces that I made recently:

1- Prep brine (1tablespoon salt to 1 cup liquid). Set this up ahead of time so that all of the salt dissolves.

2- Clean and prep peppers. Thoroughly wash the peppers. For a smoother sauce, I try to de-seed as much as possible, though it is okay if some go in. If I am using very spicy peppers such as ghost or scorpions, I will try to remove as much of the seeds and veins as possible. I want the heat, but I also don't want the heat to overtake the flavor.

3- Rough cut the peppers and any adjuncts. Everything is going to get blended together eventually, so your cuts don't have to be pretty. The main thing is to keep the slices even so that everything ferments equally.

4- Pack your fermentables into a non-reactive container. For ease of use, I just use mason jars. When I have made larger volumes in the past, I have also used larger fermentors and pitchers. Ideally, you just want something with a wide mouth that does not have a lot of head space. You can mush this stuff in a bit. Try to pack it in without a lot of voids in it.

Beginning of fermentation

5- Fill the container with brine so that your peppers are covered. Stuff can float, you can use weights if you have them.

6- Cover the mouth of the container with cheesecloth. This is why I like to use mason jars: they come in a variety of sizes and you can use the band without the lid to hold cheesecloth in place.

7- Wait it out. I generally let it go 4-6 weeks. You will notice that your fermentation will start smelling sweeter and you'll see it bubble a bit. This is sort of where the art comes into it. The peppers should be turning translucent and will start to look more broken-down. If you add garlic, it may start to turn blue or green.

8- Making the sauce:

Once you have decided your peppers are ready, uncover them and drain the liquid. Retain this for now, you may want to add it back in or keep it for future fermentation.

-Dump your peppers into a blender or food mill. If using a blender, you can start adding vinegar now.

End of fermentation: peppers are translucent

How much vinegar you add will depend on what kind you use and how spicy you want the sauce to be. I don't have a formula for this. You can get a sense of how strong the spice will be by smell once you begin to blend the peppers. **Note: do not stick your face over the blender when you take the top off, this is a good way to pepper spray yourself. You may also want to ventilate your kitchen if you live with people sensitive to spicy food.**

-Add vinegar until you achieve the level of spiciness you want.

9- Storage:

Pour the sauce off into glass or food-grade plastic containers with air-tight lids.

-Stored in the refrigerator, these are good for a year or more.

10- Variations:

These are the elements that you can change to vary the flavors:

Wine – adjust for sweetness in the brine and end flavor

peppers – blend peppers for flavor and spice level

vinegar – I like to use rice vinegar because it is slightly sweet and does not have a strong flavor on its own. In the past I have also used white balsamic vinegar for a clean, sweet flavor, and champagne vinegar. Fruit-infused vinegars are also good for desired flavor.

Adjuncts – these are anything beyond the brine and peppers that you use to add flavor. My favorites are garlic, ginger, and herbs. You can also add vegetables or fruit to the fermentation. You can add these at the start or further into the fermentation, depending on the item (fruits and herbs hold up better when added a few weeks into the fermentation because they will break down more than most vegetables).

-Use can use thickeners in your sauces as well. I don't mind if my sauces are a little on the watery side, but some folks prefer a thicker sauce. Do it if you want. I don't have instructions for that because I don't do it.

 

Book Notes, pt. 4

 Sometimes I don't feel like writing up full posts on books. Sometimes I want to write short notes about things that aren't books. Here are a few things I came across recently:

Physics of the Future by Michio Kaku

So recently I decided I wanted to try reading more pop science books to bolster my sf reading. I have to stick to pop science because my education in any practical science is decades old at this point and I don't know how to read actual science writing. I may wade into reading science journalism if I get the chance. I happened across two books by Michio Kaku in the local used book store near the house where I used to live and thought that these may be a good intro.

This book is basically a prediction of what the next 100ish years might look like. I kinda liked it for what it is except for three things. Kaku keeps using the phrase “the push of a button” throughout the book to show how easy it will be to do or obtain things. It just struck me that this is an odd turn of phrase for a futurist to use because it seems almost archaic already. There may be a more apt metaphor to use.

The second thing should not be so surprising. It is his fixation on science as a means of solving all of the worlds current and upcoming problems. He does point to some serious problems that we will face, but it seems to me that many of them will have social or political solutions rather than scientific ones. He also tends to make broad historical generalizations (he frequently praises innovations of antiquity that originate in the West but not the East. He also credits Newton as the inventor of calculus without mentioning Leibniz), and makes mistakes of periodization.

Finally, he treats all scientific progress as though it is inevitable and irreversible. In fact, he specifically writes that there is no way to stop this progress. This mainly wasn't a problem in the book as he wrote about potential advances and their implications. However, he would editorialize from time to time and it seemed to reduce the importance of nearly everything except technological advancement and it placed us, now, at an historical cusp. It put this generation at the center point of human advancement and history. This seems misguidedly optimistic.

I liked the book in general and found some interesting ideas in it. His speculations on the near, and even mid-range future (the next 50-70 years-ish) seem accurate and introduced me to a lot of existing tech that I did not know about. The author evinces great credibility in scientific areas. I'll reserve further judgment until I read the other book of his that I bought.

Science Magazine podcast

After listening to the great podcast Our Opinions are Correct, I decided to check out the Science Magazine podcast that one of the hosts, Annalee Newitz, recommended. I really like it. The episode that I listened to was about researching Coronavirus vaccines and what might happen in the competition between these different groups of scientists to develop one.

The show is geared toward a general audience and brings in experts in the field. The reporting is done by science writers who are good at moderating the information and presenting it in an informative way. Some of the content is follow up from the magazine such as interviews with authors or other experts covered subject, and other content seems independently driven. It is pretty good.

Red Moon by Kim Stanley Robinson

KSR is one of my favorite contemporary authors. His writing is crisp, science is hard, and he always includes the political angles that are left out by so many other authors. This is a great aspect of his writing that I want to come back to later. (I intend to write a series on his Mars trilogy, maybe next year.) This book sorta fell to the background of my reading this month. I enjoyed it and made my way through it but didn't focus on it as much as I would have other work.

I had originally hoped that this book would exist in the Mars timeline based on the title, but it does not. The novel imagines a near-future when the Moon is colonized and a lot of the international tensions that currently exist on Earth are expanded/exported to the Moon. It is a cool idea and, as always, the tech is really great. Recommended read.

337 by M. Jonathan Lee

I was recently given the opportunity to review 337 by M. Jonathan Lee, an upcoming release from Hideaway Fall. The narrative follows Sam Darte, a youngish man whose family was destroyed after his mother disappeared from their home when he was young. The novel picks up years later, Sam stuck in a rut and estranged from his wife and the rest of his family. Sam is pulled back to the mystery of his mother's disappearance after he receives a phone call from his father, who is in prison, telling Sam that his grandmother is dying. Realizing the his Gramma might have some information, Sam decides to visit her and reignites his investigation.

The novel is part family drama and part mystery. Sam's mother is absent from the entire novel, but she is its heart and what keeps the whole thing going. A lot of the pleasure of this book lies in slow-burns and reveals, so I will do my best to leave those things in the dark that seem most appropriate. Here are a few things that struck me about this book.

The mystery at the heart of the novel is what has happened to Sam's mother. At the moment the novel opens, Sam seems to be just grinding through his days without experiencing much. The impending death of his grandmother is the inciting incident of the novel and it starts the slow reopening of Sam's character and relationships within the family. Sam's search for the truth about what happened that day allows him to reconnect with some of his family members while he re-covers ground he has already looked into and let go.

Sam hopes that his grandmother may have some information that he has overlooked or that she never mentioned in the past. See, when Sam and his brother were children, their mother left the family with just a note for their father to take care of them. She was never seen alive after that aside from a couple of witnesses who may have spotted her over the next few days. The police suspect the father and he is eventually convicted and imprisoned for her murder. However, no body was ever recovered and the conviction relied on Sam's testimony. The thing of it all is that Sam was never certain that his mother had ever died.

A lot of the middle of the novel reveals Sam's investigations, his relationship with his estranged wife and brother, and his reconciliation with his grandmother. The novel turns slightly as Sam's brother Tom shows up to see their grandmother before she dies and the two are able to reconcile as well. The grandmother's death takes over as the central narrative force in the novel in this section. In this section, Sam realizes that his brother's life is both what he thought it was and a bit more. What Sam had assumed were Tom's lies about people he knows turn out to be true.

After Gramma's death, Sam destroys the box of research that he had kept regarding his mother's disappearance. His grandmother's death seems to signal to him that whatever happened to his mother may remain a mystery to him. The mother doesn't show up and the only new information that Gramma had been able to provide was that maybe three people had seen his mother after her disappearance, but this doesn't lead anywhere. There is one final narrative twist that happens at the very end that I don't want to reveal too much here.

One of the more interesting features that emerges over the course of the novel is the way that Sam's relationship with work is reflected. Lee invents a tool called “mySnug” that tracks Sam's online work. Sam finds some inventive ways to work around the online system to make it look like he is doing more than he does, but he is constantly faced with the mySnug counter, which reads off the amount of time he has logged for the week and also the amount of time that he has left to fulfill. Lee uses this system to help the reader to track Sam's time through the week as well. What this does is to reveal, first, the repetitious nature of Sam's work, and second, the repetitious nature of life and the patterns that emerge whether we mean them to or not. The reader (at least this reader) recognizes the cyclical nature of the work week and the countdown to get it done.

There are two last features that I would mention here: the book format and the title. I am still mulling over the significance of these two items. So rather than providing any kind of analysis of them, I will present my observations and leave it up to you to do with it what you will.

First, this book features similar front and back cover designs and the opening material on both ends is the same. However, if you begin reading from one end, you get to read 15 pages before you are advised to flip the book over and begin reading it there from page 16. You are told, “Nothing is as it seems...” From here, the book seems to proceed in a more traditional narrative way. The chapters are short and tend to narrate in segments as Sam experiences them. I will say that the book flip eluded me. I waited to see if this would pay off and, aside from the warning that things are not as they seem, I didn't catch anything. I am used to postmodern, meta-fictional elements in books, but I didn't catch on to what this was meant to convey. (Please note the double-ended upside-down opening for this book is available in books ordered in hard copy from UK booksellers only.)

The chapter format is also a bit untraditional and I believe that it ties the structure and some narrative elements together. The chapters are structured normally through 66. Chapters 67 through 75 have headings but are left blank. The chapter heading then skip to number 336 and 337, both of which have brief content. Chapter 336 is a bit of a recap of what had happened between chapter 66 and the present and chapter 337 turns the novel in a way I won't mention here in case you want to read it. This last chapter doesn't necessarily change everything in the novel, but it does continue the mystery and leaves it - to some extent – unresolved, but ties in with this last feature.

The title, 337, is not referenced in the novel at all until this final chapter. Even in the final chapter it is not referenced aside from the chapter number. The way that the typeface on the cover is designed, the title and the author's last name mirror one another. This is especially evident on the spine of the book. This could point to some self-reflective or autobiographical elements in the novel, though I am not certain of this at all. There is another potential significance to the number 337 that seems to coincide with themes in the novel. The angel number 337 encourages those who see it to have the courage to live their lives differently. It is an encouragement to having meaningful experiences. This seems to connect with Sam's life before reconnecting with his family and his interface with work and the mySnug app. This final chapter – and what happens in it – may be inducements for Sam to make good on the positive changes that he had lately made in his life and to cheer him on in letting go of the things that were weighing him down.

As I mentioned above, I don't have a final analysis of these last couple of points. Overall, though, I found the book an enjoyable read. Lee does a good job developing characters and establishing tension throughout. I don't mind a lack of resolution in a novel, and I think that some interpretations of this story will lend their own resolution, even if the central mystery of what happened to Sam's mother is never revealed.

The Expanse, part 5. Nemesis Games

 So I just finished Nemesis Games, the fifth book in The Expanse series by James SA Corey. This book changes tactics in a couple of ways from the first four books. The dynamics are different and the story feels fresher for it. Before getting into that, though, I have to say that this series has been good keeping a forward momentum while also hitting a lot of the same beats. What I mean by that is that the first four books, and to some extent this book too, have hit a lot of the same narrative beats. Some disaster takes place in the solar system, Holden and crew get involved somehow, the original disaster turns out to be a part of something bigger that leads back to the government of Earth, Mars, Luna, or the Outer Belt Alliance, and then with some help from one of these factions Holden, et al. manage to resolve the crisis. The narrative paths differ somewhat within each of the novels, but they all tend toward this basic plot arc.

The first major difference that this book adopts is separating the crew. After the last adventure on Ilus, the Rocinante is docked at Tycho Station for some much-needed repairs. Aside from Holden, the crew are all drawn from Tycho to various points for their own reasons. Amos heads to Earth on a mysterious mission, Naomi heads out to try to help out a son that the reader discovers she has, and Alex decides to go to Mars to find closure with his ex-wife. Holden is left alone on the station, feeling unmoored for the first time in the series. For maybe the first time since the opening book, we are reminded of these characters' histories. In Leviathan Wakes, all of the characters aboard the Canturbury are there because of something dark in their histories. Holden was dishonorably discharged from the Earth Navy, same for Alex, Amos had something dark in his past, and we never really knew much about Naomi. Now these personal histories pop back up for the crew and it reinforces the idea that they have become a family by choice, that there is nothing in their past to tie them together. This adds some complexity to the characters that was not there before. It brings more depth to Amos and Naomi, in particular.

While the crew is separated, disaster strikes in the solar system. A terrorist attack on Earth leaves millions dead and changes the power dynamics of the entire system. Coordinated with the Earth attacks are strikes on both Tycho Station and on the Prime Minister of Mars' convoy. All of the important people live, but the alien protomolecule is stolen during the attack on Tycho Station.

Here I am going to gloss over big chunks of the book because, for a while, things will shake out as they do in most of these books.

All of this adds up to the next big shift from the preceding books. That is, we are left with an unknown at the end of the novel. Most of the pieces have been wrapped up: the crew is re-united, those in power have mainly figured out what happened and why these coordinated attacks took place, but the gap that we are left with at the end of the novel is what has happened to the protomolecule. For maybe the first time in the series, we have a cliff-hanger. In the first four books the end has always been left open and there may have been some lingering questions to follow, but this is the first time that it seems that a novel is purposely leading into the next one.

I'm not sure what this means for the series. I didn't mind that this happened, it just seemed to be an interesting change from what the series had lead me to expect from the books. I think that this left me a little more excited to get to the next book. The protomolucule was part of the inciting action in the first novel and it has been in the background of the story for the entire time. It will be interesting to see how it will re-enter the narrative.