Month 33: What I read in addition to watching the World Cup

Month 33 of 260 (12.69 percent)

Size of list: 86,832 pages (11.64 percent above start)

Pages read: 17,111 (19.71 percent)

H-list: 4,932/23,114 (21.34 percent)

N-list: 6,584/36,694 (17.94 percent)

O-list: 5,595/27,024 (20.70 percent)

Finished: The Fifth Season, The Fires of Heaven
Next up: Aerie

This month overlapped nearly perfectly with the World Cup, so honestly I'm amazed I read anything at all. I had set a target at the beginning of the year that accommodates the World Cup; I didn't meet it. Oh well.

The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin, was the 2016 Hugo Best Novel winner. Its sequel, The Obsidian Gate, was the 2017 winner; the final volume, The Stone Sky, is a finalist this year, and if it wins it will be the first trilogy to win for all three volumes, and the Jemisin will be the first author to win Best Novel three years in a row, so I'm going to be watching the Hugo ceremony this year like I used to watch the Belmont Stakes, waiting for the first Triple Crown winner in decades. (When I was 10-ish one of my favorite books was The Triple Crown Winners, a collection of biographies of the horses that had won; it ended with Seattle Slew in 1977 so for years I was unaware that Affirmed had won in 1978.) 

Anyway, the book itself was wonderful. It is three stories, each told in a different tense: third person past, third person present, and second person present. The characters are orogenes, who honestly I'm not sure whether they're human or near-human, but anyway they are people with an affinity and control of the earth, who can cause or stop the earthquakes that rattle the continent ironically called The Stillness. Orogenes remind me of the telepaths of Babylon 5; they are hated and feared, and regulated into an organization that trains them and sends them on missions for the good of the greater government, or not. 

The other book I finished, after months, was The Fires of Heaven, book 5 of The Wheel of Time. At the end of nearly a thousand pages, all I can say is ugh. Some of the characters join a traveling menagerie; a legend of the past is brought out of the dreamworld into reality; what appears to be a battle with one Forsaken turns into a confrontation with another; and a character actually has sex without it being written around to the extent that I wonder if it actually happened. All of these things should be interesting, but Jordan writes so long that honestly I'm questioning why I'm taking the time to read all this. I probably still win. Probably. But comments from my friends like "the next six books are the doldrums, but then it picks up" do not help.

Month 32: Nonfiction, but then fiction

Month 32 of 260 (12.31 percent)

Size of list: 86,832 pages (11.64 percent above start)

Pages read: 16,442 (18.94 percent)

H-list: 4,464/23,114 (19.31 percent)

N-list: 6,383/36,694 (17.40 percent)

O-list: 5,595/27,024 (20.70 percent)

Added: Girl in Translation

Finished: Girl in Translation, Masters of Modern Soccer
Reading: The Fires of Heaven

Ahead of the World Cup, I read Masters of Modern Soccer by Grant Wahl, a soccer reporter at Sports Illustrated. It was initially a bit jarring to go from novels to nonfiction — Wahl just isn't as florid a writer as a novelist is, which is appropriate for his job. Once I settled into his voice, I was glad I spent the time on it. I've been watching soccer for 24 years, but I learned a lot from this book, and it has made watching the World Cup more enjoyable and informative. (Although I finished this book more than a month ago, I'm writing this entry on the night between semifinals; Belgium, who Wahl writes about in this book, went out today.) My favorite part was when he talks to Mexican forward Javier Hernandez and coach Juan Carlos Osorio, and Hernandez, the forward, explains Osorio's system. This is where Wahl's writing suddenly shines — no, he's no novelist, but Osorio's pride radiates off the page. 

Girl in Translation is an immigrant story, picked for the book club as a followup to I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. It was a page-turner, but I forgot that it was a novel, and when I got to the end I felt cheated. The depiction of sweatshop work in New York City, in particular, was so vivid and felt so real that I was angry, while reading it, that such a thing still exists in America; but when I realized this was fiction, I felt I could no longer point to this book as illustrating a real problem. The main character, the narrator, is super smart, and this feels like a deus ex machina to pull her story forward and her family out of poverty. 

Month 31: The introduction of non-fiction

Month 31 of 260 (11.92 percent)

Size of list: 86,513 pages (9.8 percent above start)

Pages read: 15,858 (18.33 percent)

H-list: 4,464/23,114 (19.31 percent)

N-list: 6,211/36,694 (16.93 percent)

O-list: 5,595/26,705 (19.41 percent)

Finished: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Reading: The Fires of Heaven, Masters of Modern Soccer

In order to get out of entirely genre fiction, and even out of entirely fiction, I read Maya Angelou's memoir (or at least the first volume of said memoir). This also got me into a book club my wife organizes, which is nice, because this reading has been a solitary activity, so it was good to vary it, and sit down at the end with a bunch of other readers who highlighted themes of the book.

The book deals with Angelou's life from her earliest memories at about age four to the end of her adolescence, in the period of the Depression to World War II. Like most stories about the era of segregation and before, I feel an impotent rage at the cruelty of white people, especially the dentist who won't care for a child with a raging toothache.

The highlight of the book is a trip to Mexico with her father, who gets so drunk that young Maya has to drive a car down a mountainside. This is where she spends the most time on any one day; it stands in sharp contrast to the revelations of the last three pages or so.

Another highlight was a series of parallel stories in which blacks worked to prove to themselves their superiority, first through Joe Louis' boxing, then through religious revivals in which they assured themselves of their status in heaven. It's part of the human situation, I guess, that those who are oppressed seek ways to fight back even if only spiritually, to restore their own pride.

Month 30: The Chinese style of science fiction

Month 30 of 260 (11.54 percent)

Size of list: 86,513 pages (9.8 percent above start)

Pages read: 15,250 (17.63 percent)

H-list: 4,464/23,114 (19.31 percent)

N-list: 5,953/36,694 (16.22 percent)

O-list: 4,833/26,705 (16.22 percent)

Finished: The Three-Body Problem
Reading: The Fires of Heaven, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Added: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Masters of Modern Soccer

The Three-Body Problem is the only Chinese fiction I’ve ever read, and it was a fascinating read. It stars out with the Cultural Revolution, about which I knew practically nothing, and it was horrifying. Then it slowly turned up the science fiction.

There is a lot of narration in a style that we would expect from a historical narrative and not a novel;  I figure that’s the difference between Chinese and English fiction. The last several chapters unravel in a sequence of holy-shit moments and really creative ideas.


It’s a trilogy, but it’s more self-contained than a lot of first volumes. The story could end here and still be great. I want to read the sequels, though, partly because the second volume has a different translators and I want to see how it’s different, but mainly because I want to see what Cixin Liu, the author, comes up with next. 

Month 29: The Permanent Institution that is the Catholic Church

Month 29 of 260 (11.15 percent)

Size of list: 85,470 pages (9.8 percent above start)

Pages read: 15,050 (17.61 percent)

H-list: 4,352/23,114 (18.83 percent)

N-list: 5,953/36,694 (16.22 percent)

O-list: 4,745/25,662 (16.33 percent)

Finished: A Canticle for Leibowitz
Reading: The Three-Body Problem, The Fires of Heaven

This month's read was the 1961 Hugo winner A Canticle for Leibowitz. I came in expecting it to have not aged well, but I enjoyed almost all of it. It's a postapocalyptic tale, and like Foundation shifts point-of-view characters as it advances through time. The characters are part of the Catholic Church, which a thousand years after the apocalypse is the institution holding on to what knowledge can be saved, and restoring it. Even as civilization rebuilds and prepares to destroy itself again, the Church preserves.

I ended this book feeling that it made a good case for the Church as an enduring institution -- not religion, not faith, but the Church itself, its structure of authority and support of monasteries, the small institutions that carry out the larger institution's work. It's 2,000 years old now -- why wouldn't it be the one thing to live through the fires of nuclear annihilation?

Month 28: The Overworld

Month 28 of 260 (10.77 percent)

Size of list: 85,470 pages (9.8 percent above start)

Pages read: 14,385 (16.83 percent)

H-list: 3,968/23,114 (16.17 percent)

N-list: 5,672/36,694 (15.46 percent)

O-list: 4,745/25,662 (16.33 percent)

Finished: The Eyes of the Overworld
Reading: A Canticle for Leibowitz, The Fires of Heaven

The Eyes of the Overworld is the sequel to Jack Vance's The Dying Earth. Unlike the first book, Eyes of the Overworld is a single story about a single character on a single quest. Caught burglarizing a wizard's treasures, Cugel the Clever is sent to procure a magical item, the Eyes mentioned in the title, and then must find his way back, dreaming of revenge the whole time. Vance is a competent writer, and this would be a perfectly fine D&D adventure, which is one reason why Vance is so important in D&D history. But its real value is in the creativity of the world; the society that uses the Eyes, and all the others Cugel finds on his odyssey. Cugel is not a wizard but a thief, like Bilbo but with more malice and less heart.

One interesting angle is that the Overworld has been adopted by D&D offshoot 13th Age, but there it's the world above us, the cloudscape; Vance's Overworld is the illusory world seen through the Eyes, in which every building is a palace and every food is delicious, despite being hovels and slop in reality.

Month 27: Trump in Space

Month 27 of 260 (10.38 percent)

Size of list: 85,470 pages (9.8 percent above start)

Pages read: 13,956 (16.33 percent)

H-list: 3,729/23,114 (16.13 percent)

N-list: 5,482/36,694 (14.94 percent)

O-list: 4,745/25,662 (16.33 percent)

Finished: Foundation and Empire, Life Debt
Starting: The Eyes of the Overworld, The Fires of Heaven

Life Debt is the second of the flagship trilogy of the new post-Return of the Jedi continuity. This one featured more of the classic characters — Leia and Han play a major role in this story, merging the classic characters with the new ones created by Chuck Wendig in the first volume, Aftermath. The first half of this book was pretty good; the second half was really good, after a twist is revealed. Wendig's writing still doesn't have the same tone I associate with Star Wars novels, which is to say he's neither Zahn nor Stackpole. 

The second Foundation book, which is not Second Foundation but Foundation and Empire (and oh how that drives me crazy), is almost as good as the first. Unlike the first, it's a single story about a single set of characters. I've seen people saying "Trump is the Mule," and I think I understand how — he's the individual that political science or psychohistory can't predict and thus can't guard against. Anyway, the book is about the Foundation and Empire both under attack by a force they can't predict, and both falling; at the end, the only hope is the Second Foundation, which I expect the third book will be about.