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: “The Other Black Girl” by Zakiya Dalila Harris

The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris

Yet another installment “revenge of the English majors”, with MeToo and anti racism thrown in.  No wonder lots of people are reading it!

The OBG is a story about young, entry level workers in the New York publishing and media world.  In this case, young, female, Black entry level workers.

There is a lot of slice-of-life in NYC publishing houses, which I have no experience with.  So, not only do I not many of get the contemporary cultural references, I don’t get a lot of the details of the city.

The important thing is that I do like Nella, even if I can’t totally grok her experiences.  Although, a lot of what she is going through is, well, very strange.  And not just because of racism.

I have to say, I found this book hard to read in places – not because its badly written, but because the events are just so horribly, familiarly, cringeworthy.  I didn’t last long in corporate America, and this kind of stuff is why.

To be clear—it’s not just race, racism, racial politics.  Everything is a mess of power, privilege, self-interest, and general lack of decent human relations.  Sexual and racial politics amp up an already basically hostile, inhumane situation.

I hated corporate life, and I couldn’t take it for even a year.

I found myself worrying about Nella, and questioning her decisions.  At places, I’m yelling at her inside, “don’t do that!”   But she does.  Kids always do.  (I won’t even bother to mention all the cringing I did at the idiotic white folks.)

Of course, the main thrust of the plot is about race and racism in the workplace.  The title refers to the frequent experience people have of being the Only Black Person in the room.  In this case, events take off when the second BG, the OBG, arrives.  That event triggers additional tensions around solidarity and competition among the BGs.  It ain’t pretty.

I’m sure that the OBG situation is weird enough in ordinary life.  This story goes off into pretty wild directions, and weird doesn’t begin to describe it.  Like any conspiracy theory, it makes no sense from the outside.  You have to get inside to follow along.

Is this what really happens in media companies these days?  I sure hope not. 

Will this fantasy help or hurt people navigate contemporary office politics?  I have no idea.

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1. Zakiya Dalila Harris, The Other Black Girl, New York, Simon & Schuster, 2021.

Sunday Book Reviews