Books Reviewed 2015

Here is  housekeeping post, collecting all the books reviewed here in 2015.

Looking back at this list, I see that this year saw Terry Pratchette’s last book (a wrenching experience), and new novels by old favorites Stross, Perry, Macguire, Holt, Gaiman, among others. I also read older but still good histories by Goodwin and Graeber. I read several books about banking, Papal and otherwise, and overlapping works about Italy, fictional and (supposedly) real.

Over the year, I reviewed a sampling of important books about contemporary digital life, including cryptocurrency, the “sharing economy”, social media, and “mind change”.   These works covered a spectrum from enthusiasm to dark worry, giving us much to think about. There are many more I did not have time or energy for. (I will say more on this topic in another post)

Throughout 2015 I continued my ongoing investigation of the question, “what is coworking?”, including reviews of two recent (self published) books about coworking by practitioners. (More on coworking in another post.)

Shall I name some “Best Books” out of my list? Why not?

Fiction:

There were so many to pick from. I mean, with Neil Gaiman in the list, how can I choose? But let me mention two that are especially memorable

Radiance by Catherynne M. Valente
Very imaginative and well written, and, for once, not so horribly dark. This book lodged in my memory more than others that are probably equally good.

Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon
Published a few years ago, but I didn’t read it until this year. A wonderful, intricate story. The flight of the parrot is still in my memory.

Nonfiction:

There were many important works about digital life, and I shall try to comment on them in another post. But three books that really hit me are:

Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber
From several years ago, but I didn’t read it until this year. Highly influential on the ‘occupy’ and other left-ish thinking. This is an astonishingly good book, and long form anthropology, to boot. Wow!

Reimagination Station: Creating a Game-Changing In-Home Coworking Space by Lori Kane
An exlectic little self-published book about “home coworking”, which I didn’t know was a thing. Kane walked the walk, and made me think in new ways about community and coworking.

Fangirl’s Guide to the Galaxy by Sam Maggs
Unexpected amounts of fun reading this short book. It does an old, graying nerd no end of good to see that at least some of the kids are OK. Really, really, OK.

List of books reviewed in 2015

Fiction

A Darkling Sea by James L. Cambias
After Alice by Gregory Maguire
Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson
Bats of the Republic by Zachary Thomas Dodson
Book of Numbers by Joshua Cohen
Chasing the Phoenix by Michael Swanwick
Candy Apple Red by Nancy Bush
Chicks and Balances edited by Esther Friesner and John Helfers
Corsair by James L. Cambias
Count to a Trillion by John C. Wright
Diaspora by Greg Egan
Distress by Greg Egan
Electric Blue by Nancy Bush
Forty Thieves by Thomas Perry
Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits by David Wong
Get In Trouble by Kelly Link
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear
Koko the Mighty by Kieran Shea
Luna: New Moon by Ian McDonald
Mort(e) by Robert Repino
Numero Zero by Umberto Eco
Radiance by Catherynne M. Valente
Rebirths of Tao by Wesley Chu
Redeployment by Phil Klay
Satin Island by Tom McCarthy
Secondhand Souls by Christopher Moore
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
Shark Skin Suite by Tim Dorsey
String of Beads by Thomas Perry
Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon
The Annihilation Score by Charles Stross
The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year Volume Nine ed. by Jonathan Strahan
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Enchantment Emporium by Tanya Huff
The First Bad Man by Miranda July
The Fortress in Orion by Mike Resnick
The Future Falls by Tanya Huff
The Good, the Bad, and The Smug by Tom Holt
The Mark and the Void by Paul Murray
The Relic Master by Christopher Buckley
The Rook by Daniel O’Malley
The Shepherd’s Crown by Terry Pratchett
The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu
The Unfortunate Decisions of Dahlia Moss by Max Wirestone
The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
The Wild Ways by Tanya Huff
Time Salvager by Wesley Chu
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances by Neil Gaiman
Ultraviolet by Nancy Bush
We Are Pirates by Daniel Handler
Witches Be Crazy by Logan J. Hunder
Zer0es by Chuck Wendig

Non Fiction

Arrival of the Fittest by Andreas Wagner
Blue Mind by Wallace J. Nichols
Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber
Digital Gold by Nathaniel Popper
Fangirl’s Guide to the Galaxy by Sam Maggs
God’s Bankers by Gerald Posner
LaFayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell
Let’s Be Less Stupid by Patricia Marx
Live Right and Find Happiness by Dave Barry
Merchants in the Temple by Gianluigi Nuzzi
Mind Change by Susan Greenfield
Mindsharing by Lior Zoref
Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari
No More Sink Full of Mugs by Tony Bacigalupo
Not Impossible by Mick Ebeling
Pax Technica by Phillip N. Howard
Peers, Inc by Robin Chase
Reimagination Station: Creating a Game-Changing In-Home Coworking Space by Lori Kane
Speculative Everything by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby
Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
The Age of Cryptocurrency by Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey
The Art of Forgery by Noah Charney
The Next Species by Michael Tennesen
The Reputation Economy by Michael Fertik and David C. Thompson
The Social Labs Revolution by Zaid Hassan
The Ugly Renaissance by Alexander Lee
Twentyfirst Century Robot by Brian David Johnson
Women of Will:  Following the Feminine in Shakespeare’s Plays by Tina Packer

 

Book Reviews

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book Review: “The Relic Master” by Christopher Buckley

The Relic Master by Christopher Buckley

Christopher Buckley has written a number of excellent novels, mostly with a strong strain of contemporary political satire. His skewering of US political and business elites, and the symbiotic media are hilarious and cringeworthy. (You should definitely read his earlier novels.)

His latest novel departs from the current political scene (and who can blame him—how can a satirist compete with the real life spectacle of Donald Trump seriously contending for the US Presidency?). Fortunately, he does not depart from his smooth, dry wit, and eye for human folly.

The Relic Master is set in Europe at the turn of the sixteenth century. Long before the excesses of Imperial America, Europe was rife with political and religious power plays, petty tyrants, religious divisions—and hype, fraud, and conspiracy of all kinds. We feel right at home.

The Relic Master himself is a professional purveyor of religious artifacts, pieces of the cross, thorns from the crown of thorns, bones of martyrs, and so on. By 1500, this tradition had evolved to become one of the more absurd and shameful manifestations of Western Christianity, engendering a large trade supplied by unscrupulous fakers and fueled by the less-than-pious whims of ambitious elites. Through the eyes of an “honest “relic hunter, Buckley gives us a view of the hype and fraud rife in the trade, and makes it familiar in our own age of excess.

The story itself involves the most famous relic of that or any other period, the Shroud of Turin. As the Relic Master notes, there were dozens or even hundreds of “shrouds”, each allegedly the one true artifact, and most of them cheap and obvious fakes. As an experienced relic man, he knows how fakes are made, and how fast buck artists get rich from them.

The Relic Master works as an agent for two of the political powers in Germany, and with one thing and another ends up in deep trouble and forced into a crazy scheme to steal the Shroud of Turin itself. This plot isn’t exactly sensible, but in the setting and with the comic undertones, it is a nice vehicle for touring Germany at the start of the reformation, and meeting various historical figures along the way, improbably including Albrecht Durer and Paracelsus.

Buckley’s characters and plot live up to his earlier works. Everyone is a bit nutty, but most have good in them, and even the worst can be seen to be flawed human beings. He clearly has spent time visiting Switzerland and Germany and the historic churches and towns in the area, and has researched the time of Martin Luther. This gives the novel solid historical footing, and he does a great job portraying everyday life.

It is interesting to watch as Buckley does a careful dance around the religious issues so relevant to the plot. He makes extremely clear the questionable morality of many of the  practices of the time, including the sales of indulgences and greedy relic trade. For that matter, he pulls no punches about the violence of the period, the excesses of the wealthy, or the frequent scapegoating of Jews and women.

At the same time, he is generous in his portrayal of the anxieties and hopes of ordinary people, and the pious desires and aspirations that motivate the belief in relics and the power of prayer and indulgence. We can look back on some of the shenanigans and see them as obvious nonsense, but Buckley helps us see why people of the time might want them to be true.

We know all about the power of wishful thinking over rationality in our own time. So we are inclined to be sympathetic.

He actually does a pretty skillful job to be ambiguous on some contentions issues, especially about the provenance of the Shroud of Turin itself. Despite overwhelming evidence that it was created in the fifteenth century, even today it remains an object of veneration and is vigorously defended by some as a real artifact.

Buckley gives you plenty of reason to think the shroud must be a fraud (not least by explaining how to make one), yet even the most cynical characters in the book are awed by it and think it must be a true relic. This leaves the reader the liberty and room to view it how you want, and perhaps to respect other views.

Buckley does add spice to the mystery by suggesting that there might be excellent counterfeits of the original, inviting us into head spinning speculation about faked fakes, faked fake fakes, and so on. Perhaps the Turin artifact is “the real fake”, worthy of at least some form of admiration.

But let’s not get too deep into all that. This is a fairly light story, well written and fun to read.

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1. Christopher Buckley, The Relic Master, New York, Simon & Schuster, 2015.

 

Sunday Book Review