Q3 2021 Roundup

With the fall equinox, summer is now over.

This blog has passed 2800 daily posts in a row, though reported hits are way down from last year.  Posts will continue until readership improves.  : – )

This summer saw many posts on favorite topics, including dinosaurs, robots, solar energy, and cryptocurrencies.  And robot helicopters on Mars.   And the melting cryosphere.

If we hear about a solar powered robot dinosaur that eats cryptocurrency you know it will appear in this blog!  Especially if it emerges from a melting icecap and goes to Mars to transform into a helicopter.

Book Reviews

As always, weekly reviews of 14 fiction and 6 non fiction books.

Notable book:  The Amazons by Adrienne Mayor

Fiction

Antkind by Charlie Kaufman
The World Gives Way by Marissa Levien
The Very Nice Box by Laura Blackett and Eve Gleichman
Trouble the Saints by Alaya Dawn Johnson
Captain Moxley and the Embers of Empire by Dan Hanks
The Paris Labyrinth by Gilles Legardinier
The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris
Questland by Carrie Vaughn
The Past is Red by Catherynne M. Valente
Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds
Elysium Fire by Alistair Reynolds
The Invention of Sound by Chuck Palahniuk
Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Beautiful Ones by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Non-fiction

The Amazons by Adrienne Mayor
Area 51 by Annie Jacobsen
Venus and Aphrodite by Bettany Hughes
Forget the Alamo by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford
We Had A Little Real Estate Problem by Kliph Nesteroff
Pastels and Pedophiles by Mia Bloom and Sophia Moskalenko

Great Names For a Band

Terms found in real technical papers, not made up at all.

“Spin Orbit Torques”
“Cadmium Telluride”

Book Review: “Antkind” by Charlie Kaufman

Antkind by Charlie Kaufman

I guess I’m supposed to know Kaufman’s movies, but I really have no idea.  And this book is really deeply interested in cinema and film criticism.  Which I’m not into.

So, it is clear that I’m missing a ton of context for this novel.  If it even is a novel.

For me, this is a long (700 pages!), rambling, exercise in first person absurdism.  And a lot of it is random thoughts, unconnected and not pursued.  A LOT of random thoughts. There is no conventional plot, and it’s difficult to know about the characters.

From this point of view, the main question is, out of this absurd pile of short thoughts, did I find anything interesting, entertaining, educational, or whatever. 

Well, sure.  I mean, I kept reading, flitting from incomprehensible event to incomprehensible event.  On and on.

Maybe I was expecting some sort of resolution (nope) or explanation (nope) or whatever.

OK, out of thousands of random, absurd, scenes;  at least a few should appeal by chance alone, right?

Here is one image that really stuck with me:

At one point, the narrator muses on a dark twisted version of the old echo principle of love; the ancient notion that each of us is separated at birth from our perfect love match, the one person that is an exact fit for our personality.  We go through life searching for this one, perfect love.  Most of the time, we are not satisfied, because nothing is exactly what we are looking for.

In a twist on this idea, the narrator comments that he feels like he is half of a vaudeville comedy duo; and he has never met the other half.  Specifically, he’s the fall guy in the duo, the dunce who doesn’t understand anything, the guy getting pies in the face and falling on his rear.  With only one half the act, nothing makes sense. He’s searching for the straight man of the act who will make it all make sense; to give his life meaning and perhaps make all the pain funny.

This is a charming image, and as good a summary of the book as anything.

Would I recommend this book?  Not necessarily.  But, as already noted, it’s really aimed at film snobs and academic film theorists and New York cinema enthusiasts.  So, yay for you guys, and have fun.

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1. Charlie Kaufman, Antkind, New York, Random House, 2020.

Sunday Book Reviews