The Pluto Files, by Neil deGrasse Tyson (#1)

[coraa.livejournal.com]

The Pluto Files, by Neil deGrasse Tyson

I got this book because I saw Tyson on The Daily Show, talking about it, and the whole interview made me grin ear to ear, like a loon. (You can watch it here, if you like.) It's relatively rare that I watch an interview on a show like that and actually want to go get the book, but I did -- immediately. And I'm really glad I did.

The Pluto Files is about 'the rise and fall of America's favorite planet' -- it charts the history of Pluto's discovery, and its special status to Americans. (Pluto was the only planet discovered by an American, and, of course, there's the cartoon dog, named shortly after the planet's discovery.) And then, of course, the complicating factor of the discovery of other Pluto-like icy bodies, which threw into question: was Pluto really a planet at all?

At the heart of the book is a question: what makes a planet a planet? Apparently this question didn't have an actual answer for a surprisingly long time -- effectively, a planet was the set of things we called planets. This was more or less fine when the state of astronomy and astrophysics was such that we weren't aware of the other things out there... but that changed dramatically over the course of the twentieth century, what with the Hubble Space Telescope and the various unmanned probes.

Much of the book is about this debate: what makes a planet a planet? When the other icy bodies orbiting beyond Neptune were discovered (the Kuiper belt objects), the question became: if we find another icy body as big as Pluto -- or bigger -- do we call it a planet, too? What if we find a bunch of them? Will we cheerfully up the number of planets to ten, twelve, fifteen, twenty? (Indeed, at least one Kuiper belt object was found that was bigger than Pluto; if Pluto was a planet, then Eris definitely was a planet, too.) Or does the presence of a wide variety of Kuiper belt objects, much more similar to one another than to the rest of the planets, mean that Pluto isn't really a planet at all? Indeed, the famous 2006 vote to de-planetize Pluto wasn't actually about Pluto at all, something I hadn't been aware of: the vote was to ratify the first formal definition of a planet, and that definition didn't include Pluto.

But the other key topic of the book was the intersection between culture and science. Several people, scientists among them, argued for a cultural definition of 'planet' that could keep Pluto under sort of a historical grandfather clause. In other words, the argument was that Pluto is a planet because 'planet' has more to do with public opinion and historical tradition than scientific definition. And this part of the book included all kinds of fascinating things: songs about Pluto, letters from elementary school students (in the interview, Stewart says, "You got some hate mail about this decision, didn't you?" and Tyson laughs and clarifies: "Hate mail from third graders."), explorations of the effect that nearly eighty years of the Disney dog had on perceptions of Pluto's status, descriptions of the various 'funerals' for Pluto.

One of the things that I really liked about it, too, is that Tyson doesn't pretend neutrality. He's clear from the beginning that his opinion was that Pluto wasn't a planet, and the book is partly an argument for that opinion. I liked that it was straightforward in its biases, and that's part of what made it so entertaining and so... not-textbook-like.

This book was, as far as I'm concerned, a rare find: a pop science book, accessible to practically anyone, but still written by an expert in the field; a book that is informative and funny and opinionated and absolutely delightful. Highly recommended -- and I'm going to track down more of Tyson's books soon.

Calling You, by Otsu-Ichi. 15.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Three fantasy novellettes, plus illustrations by Miyako Hasami. (Prose novellettes, not manga.)

Click here to get it from Amazon: Calling You (Novel)

The first story, "Calling You," was my favorite. A lonely girl who doesn't have a cell phone because no one would ever call her imagines herself one... and one day, it rings. The working out of this conceit is clever and, despite what I at first saw as an overly melodramatic twist, quite moving.

"Kiz/Kids," about two lonely kids in a special ed class, didn't grab me as much as the other two despite featuring one of my favorite tropes, psychic powers. I did enjoy the gruesomely logical approach the kids take toward exploring the limits of the power, which is to move injuries from another person onto the psychic kid's body.

In "Flower Song," the narrator recovers in a hospital from a tragic train crash, and there discovers a flower with a woman's face. I liked the slow movement from numbed stasis to connection and healing, and how the flower isn't quite what it first seems to be. I'm not sure if the very ending was supposed to be as surprising as I found it...

( Read more... )

#10: Cast in Courtlight by Michelle Sagara

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

This is the second book in Michelle Sagara’s (aka Michelle West) Chronicles of Elantra series. While the Sun Sword series she writes as Michelle West is epic fantasy focusing on women and with cultures based on a broad variety of cultures, Elantra is more urban fantasy in a high fantasy setting.

Our heroine, Kaylin, is a Hawk-the equivalent of a police officer-who was once a street child. Currently, she’s chafing against expectations that she learn magic after coming under the wing of one of the city’s lords. She gets pulled into the affairs of the Barrani-the immortals who rule the city-when Teela, a Barrani who works with the Hawks, and so is something of a black sheep, asks her to help with a private matter that turns out to be saving the life of the High Lord’s heir.

Cast in Shadow focused on Kaylin’s backstory and developing the world of Elantra’s lower classes. Cast in Courtlight focuses more on the upper classes and the Barrani (a society that chafes at Kaylin’s delicate street sensibilities) and the history of the city, kicking off what seems to be the main plotline of the series.

I like the Elantra books, and how they catch the better aspects of urban fantasy and use them in a high fantasy setting, but I miss the scope of the Sun Sword books, and the larger world and how it bends genre expectations for the roles of women. And am I the only person to read both series and think that Kaylin is a lot like Jewel? Especially when confronted with arrogance?

I Did 50Books_POC, and All I Got Was A Link From the FAQ

[sanguinity]

So, in the post about the FAQ draft, puritybrown and rydra_wong suggested linking to some of the posts people have written about why they do 50books_poc, or what they've gotten out of doing it. carenejeans and I think it's a good suggestion. I've already asked a few people for permission to link their posts -- oyceter, vassilissa, and rachelmanija. However, I don't know who else has written posts about their experiences in the comm and might like to be included.

If you've written elsewhere about 50books_poc and what you've gotten out of doing it (or are getting out of doing it), and would be willing to have that post linked from the FAQ, would you please drop me a comment?

(no subject)

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

This doesn't count toward my 50 because I read it already, but I highly recommend The Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad, by Minister Faust, for those who like science fiction.

The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga (#2)

[coraa.livejournal.com]

The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga. (Man Booker Prize winner.)

The White Tiger is written as a letter from Balram, the protagonist, to Wen Jiabao, the Premier of the People's Republic of China -- a letter whose purpose, Balram says, is to explain "the truth about Bangalore" by describing his own life story and the way that he became what he calls a "self-made entrepreneur." Most of the book -- apart from asides where the adult Balram addresses Wen Jiabao directly -- are a depiction of Balram's childhood of extreme deprivation in rural India, and his efforts to pull himself out of it before it kills him, as it did both his parents.

The name of the book comes from a scene early in the book while Balram was still in school, when his (drunk -- at the time and in general) teacher got a surprise inspection from the government. The official questioned the students; Balram, bright and ambitious, was the only one who impressed him. He compared Balram to the white tiger, 'the rarest animal in the forest -- and by the comparison indicates that he has no expectation of finding intelligent and determined students in rural villages with any more frequency than he would find a white tiger. He arranged for Balram to receive a scholarship. And in a more hopeful book, that would be the first step in the direction of Balram's progress out of poverty: that Balram should get a scholarship, better education, movement out of the crushing inequity of his childhood.

This is not that kind of hopeful book. Before Balram got even a sniff of the scholarship, his grandmother pulled him out of school and sent him to work in the teahouse to pay for the wedding of one of his female cousins. (Weddings are treated much like natural disasters in the book, unavoidable crises -- at least the weddings of female relatives: each of the men in Balram's family got pulled out of school to work to pay for the wedding of a female relative.) There's no question after that that he'll get more education. He was sucked into the pattern of work and death that doomed his father and mother both.

(I should pause here and say that I know embarrassingly little about poverty and class in India. For the purposes of this review, I'm taking the book at face value -- although it's a sign to me that I could definitely stand to educate myself more on this subject.)

Balram does find a way out -- but it's got nothing to do with the naive 'pull yourself up by your own bootstraps' fantasies that I'm familiar with from most rags-to-riches stories.

( And I can't talk about it more without spoilers, so, cut. )

This book reminded me a great deal of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian; I tried to avoid too many comparisons in the rest of the review in order to allow this one to stand alone, but I can't help it, I have to indulge the comparison here. They're both about ambitious, intelligent young men born to crushing poverty, living in towns/villages with very little possibility for improvement, and fighting for a better chance -- and more to the point, both are exceptionally depressing but written in a way that's very funny. I think I'd like The White Tiger better if it didn't remind me of Absolutely True Diary, because... because I just didn't like Balram as much as I liked Junior. I don't think this is a failing of the book: it's pretty clearly partly about the way people act in extremity, and the way people act in extremity is not always pretty. It's a bleak, bleak book, and the fact that it's funny doesn't obscure the way that it's deeply depressing.

And yet -- and yet Balram gets a happy ending, of sorts. It's just -- it's not a cheerful happy ending. It's a making-the-most-of-horrible-things happy ending. It's a happy ending in which the protaginst admits that he still has to ignore certain things that have happened, certain things he has done.

It was a very good read, sucked me in and didn't let me go, and gave me so much to think about. It was also about as far from a comfortable read as I can imagine, so do be aware of that if you're planning to read it.