Things I've Read, November 2015: Pathfinding
Dear reader,
I think sometimes about how stories shape us.
In this Michael Jensen article, "Stories We Live By", he posits a thought experiment about what we might be like if we didn't have stories: things quickly break down into incoherence, a lives into a series of unrelated events. Storytelling is "a matter of survival".
So, we live stories. But we also view stories, we expect the story-shape of our lives to be like the story-shapes that we hear, and read, and watch, and play.
But this is one of the more troubling aspects of depression: it doesn't conform to the story. People expect the problem to mean something, because that's how stories are. To be an obstacle that you climb over, or for the hero to conquer, or learn his lesson from. But depression is a problem without a positive, a cloud without silver lining: it ruins the story by refusing to be part of it.
This last month, I read The Three-Body Problem that I talked about last letter, which was a fascinating book: imaginative in scope, and Chinese not just in subject but in the telling. It may be too dense for the casual reader of SF, but I'm glad I got through it; I'm glad that I read it.
I also read The Six of Crows, a YA book with a fantasy setting built on industrious research, and a excellently diverse bunch of characters. A decently written book where teenage outcasts come together to pull off an impossible heist = my perfect holiday read.
My other perfect holiday read, I was reminded the other day, is the Erast Fandorin series, beginning with The Winter Queen. For some reason I haven't been able to fathom, the rash of detective stories set in modern times usually leave me a bit cold, but transplanted to another day and/or time (like the Nero Wolfe books) ratchets up my interest. All the books are tightly plotted and fascinating, with an insight into turn of the century Russia, and Fandorin is a memorable, flawed and foppish figure.
Lastly, I've also started The Bitterwood Bible and other Recountings which has the double honour of being recommended and illustrated by Kathleen. And with good reason: the stories here are so good they make me not want to write again. Which is perhaps, not the story-shape intended.
And you, what have you been reading?
Guan