Reading Thursday
Dec. 21st, 2017 12:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat did you just finish?
What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank. A nonfiction book attempting to explain the upswing in conservative voters in the midwest and other rural areas. It's a bit out of date; it was published only in 2004 but things change fast in the politics game. Nonetheless, this book is pretty amazingly prescient; a lot of his discussion of conservative Republicans choosing to vote for their values (pro-life and anti-gay marriage in particular) against their own economic self-interest could apply perfectly to the Trump tax bill that passed just yesterday.
Frank focuses on Kansas because it's his home state, but it also makes for a very interesting case study. Although these days it's almost a byword for conservatism (perhaps moreso in 2004, when the Kansas School Board had recently declared all students must be taught 'evolution is a theory, not a fact'), it once had an equally radical liberal history: Bloody Kansas, John Brown, the Populist movement of the 1890s. Frank blames the shift on Democrats more-or-less abandoning their economic principles of supporting unions, New Deal-esque social welfare programs, high taxes for the rich and strict regulations for corporations. With little to distinguish between Democrats and Republicans in economic terms, the Republicans were able to corral the cultural backlash against the social changes of the last few decades into votes – which they promptly used not to actually repeal abortion or make profanity on TV illegal, but to pass taxes and deregulations that made the rich richer.
It's a sound enough argument. My one criticism of the book is that Frank doesn't address race at all. Or rather, he does bring it up once: to say that it's not a factor in Kansas. Which, uh. I've never been to Kansas, and certainly I don't remember race coming up particularly frequently in the pundit discussions of GWB's first election, but I find that hard to believe. Even if it was true at the time, it's certainly no longer true after Obama. Frank, in general, discounts all social issues compared to economic ones – race, feminism, lgbt rights, etc. And it's not that I don't agree that economics are important! But I think he's incorrect to reduce everything that could possibly fit under the category of 'civil rights' to province of "the self-righteous" (YES THAT IS AN ACTUAL QUOTE, WTF). Both sides can matter.
Anyway, like I said, it's a good book overall, even if I think Frank would benefit from considering stuff other than economics. Like, anything. Anything at all.
The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy B. Tyson. A historical nonfiction about, well, look at the title. I've had my copy of this book for a year now, but I've only just gotten around to reading it. Real life has been so full of racist and depressing politics that I couldn't handle facing more of the same in my reading.
However, it turns out that The Blood of Emmett Till is more suspenseful than depressing. I mean, it's still about the violent murder of a 14-year-old child, don't get me wrong. It's not exactly light-hearted. But Tyson doesn't describe in detail what happened to Till after he was taken from his great-uncle's house until the last chapter. Instead most of the book is focused on recreating the wider cultural setting of the lynching, the personalities of the people involved, and the drama of the trial. There are some outright exciting stories in here, particularly one where reporters, lawyers, and activists go racing about rural Mississippi in disguise, hoping to find witnesses to help the prosecution.
I found the historical details to be the most fascinating part of the book. The Brown vs Board of Education decision had been handed down only the previous year, and rage against school desegregation and the possibility of interracial marriage was being actively flamed by various white supremacist groups. Two voting rights activists had been murdered (and a third shot who survived) nearby earlier that same summer; none of the cases were even investigated, much less tried. These events likely influenced Till's killers to attack him, and their belief that they would get away with it. Tyson also shows how Till's death helped the burgeoning civil rights movement. Many of the most famous names come up in the reaction and protests during and after the trial: Medgar Evers, Rosa Parks, Bayard Rustin, as well as events like the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Greensboro Woolworth Lunch Counter Sit-ins.
It's an excellently written book with a page-turning quality nonfiction doesn't often have. I highly recommend it if you have the least interest in civil rights or America's racist history.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
What are you currently reading?
Nothing yet! But I want to ask for recs: I’m in the mood for sci-fi, preferably of the space opera sort, with lots of alien species and bouncing around from one cool planet to the next. I want a fun and light book though, definitely nothing that could be described as military sci-fi. The Star Wars or Guardians of the Galaxy movies are good examples of what I want, but in a book. Basically I want the equivalent of those fics that are like ‘it’s our fave characters, but now they’re iiiiin spaaaaaaace!’.
The closest thing I can think of to what I’m looking for is Martha Wells’s Books of the Raksura, which is not space opera, but does have all the awesome worldbuilding with many cool species and tons of fantastic imaginative settings. So, more stuff like that, please!
Things I’ve already read and so you don’t need to rec them to me: the Vorkosigan Saga, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Dune, N.K. Jeminsin’s books, Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis series, the Mars trilogy (all of KSR’s books, really), and The Left Hand of Darkness. Most of these are close to what I want, but way more serious than I’d like right now. I’m in the mood for fun!
What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank. A nonfiction book attempting to explain the upswing in conservative voters in the midwest and other rural areas. It's a bit out of date; it was published only in 2004 but things change fast in the politics game. Nonetheless, this book is pretty amazingly prescient; a lot of his discussion of conservative Republicans choosing to vote for their values (pro-life and anti-gay marriage in particular) against their own economic self-interest could apply perfectly to the Trump tax bill that passed just yesterday.
Frank focuses on Kansas because it's his home state, but it also makes for a very interesting case study. Although these days it's almost a byword for conservatism (perhaps moreso in 2004, when the Kansas School Board had recently declared all students must be taught 'evolution is a theory, not a fact'), it once had an equally radical liberal history: Bloody Kansas, John Brown, the Populist movement of the 1890s. Frank blames the shift on Democrats more-or-less abandoning their economic principles of supporting unions, New Deal-esque social welfare programs, high taxes for the rich and strict regulations for corporations. With little to distinguish between Democrats and Republicans in economic terms, the Republicans were able to corral the cultural backlash against the social changes of the last few decades into votes – which they promptly used not to actually repeal abortion or make profanity on TV illegal, but to pass taxes and deregulations that made the rich richer.
It's a sound enough argument. My one criticism of the book is that Frank doesn't address race at all. Or rather, he does bring it up once: to say that it's not a factor in Kansas. Which, uh. I've never been to Kansas, and certainly I don't remember race coming up particularly frequently in the pundit discussions of GWB's first election, but I find that hard to believe. Even if it was true at the time, it's certainly no longer true after Obama. Frank, in general, discounts all social issues compared to economic ones – race, feminism, lgbt rights, etc. And it's not that I don't agree that economics are important! But I think he's incorrect to reduce everything that could possibly fit under the category of 'civil rights' to province of "the self-righteous" (YES THAT IS AN ACTUAL QUOTE, WTF). Both sides can matter.
Anyway, like I said, it's a good book overall, even if I think Frank would benefit from considering stuff other than economics. Like, anything. Anything at all.
The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy B. Tyson. A historical nonfiction about, well, look at the title. I've had my copy of this book for a year now, but I've only just gotten around to reading it. Real life has been so full of racist and depressing politics that I couldn't handle facing more of the same in my reading.
However, it turns out that The Blood of Emmett Till is more suspenseful than depressing. I mean, it's still about the violent murder of a 14-year-old child, don't get me wrong. It's not exactly light-hearted. But Tyson doesn't describe in detail what happened to Till after he was taken from his great-uncle's house until the last chapter. Instead most of the book is focused on recreating the wider cultural setting of the lynching, the personalities of the people involved, and the drama of the trial. There are some outright exciting stories in here, particularly one where reporters, lawyers, and activists go racing about rural Mississippi in disguise, hoping to find witnesses to help the prosecution.
I found the historical details to be the most fascinating part of the book. The Brown vs Board of Education decision had been handed down only the previous year, and rage against school desegregation and the possibility of interracial marriage was being actively flamed by various white supremacist groups. Two voting rights activists had been murdered (and a third shot who survived) nearby earlier that same summer; none of the cases were even investigated, much less tried. These events likely influenced Till's killers to attack him, and their belief that they would get away with it. Tyson also shows how Till's death helped the burgeoning civil rights movement. Many of the most famous names come up in the reaction and protests during and after the trial: Medgar Evers, Rosa Parks, Bayard Rustin, as well as events like the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Greensboro Woolworth Lunch Counter Sit-ins.
It's an excellently written book with a page-turning quality nonfiction doesn't often have. I highly recommend it if you have the least interest in civil rights or America's racist history.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
What are you currently reading?
Nothing yet! But I want to ask for recs: I’m in the mood for sci-fi, preferably of the space opera sort, with lots of alien species and bouncing around from one cool planet to the next. I want a fun and light book though, definitely nothing that could be described as military sci-fi. The Star Wars or Guardians of the Galaxy movies are good examples of what I want, but in a book. Basically I want the equivalent of those fics that are like ‘it’s our fave characters, but now they’re iiiiin spaaaaaaace!’.
The closest thing I can think of to what I’m looking for is Martha Wells’s Books of the Raksura, which is not space opera, but does have all the awesome worldbuilding with many cool species and tons of fantastic imaginative settings. So, more stuff like that, please!
Things I’ve already read and so you don’t need to rec them to me: the Vorkosigan Saga, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Dune, N.K. Jeminsin’s books, Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis series, the Mars trilogy (all of KSR’s books, really), and The Left Hand of Darkness. Most of these are close to what I want, but way more serious than I’d like right now. I’m in the mood for fun!
no subject
Date: 2017-12-22 01:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-22 09:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-22 02:05 am (UTC)It is deeply hilarious. And in space!
no subject
Date: 2017-12-22 08:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-22 02:45 am (UTC)I assume people have already recommended Becky Chambers' The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (2014) and A Closed and Common Orbit (2016), which I have heard placed in this category [edit: yes!]. I've also heard very good things about James White's Sector General series. My personal favorite far-future multi-species space opera setting is Phyllis Gotlieb's GalFed, which starts with A Judgement of Dragons (1980) and involves the rest of her published novels. I can say more if desired.
no subject
Date: 2017-12-22 03:41 am (UTC)Many of the books can be read out of internal chronological order. I found The Genocidal Healer a good start even though it's quite late in the series.
no subject
Date: 2017-12-23 04:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-22 09:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-22 09:53 pm (UTC)You're welcome! Phyllis Gotlieb was one of my earliest formative science fiction writers and remains criminally obscure in the U.S., although Canada's Sunburst Award is named after her first novel. (Her second novel is her only realist one; it's about a Holocaust survivor in Toronto in the late '60's; it is not at all what you are looking for right now, but it is not what
[edit] Okay, this is probably a more coherent set of recommendations. From 2012. Disregard duplicate information.
no subject
Date: 2017-12-23 05:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-22 03:20 am (UTC)I hate to say this, but is he white? Because you really can't sensibly address economics and voting in America without also talking about racism, IMO. Trump's base is willing to completely sacrifice their economic interests in the interest of sticking it to people of color.
Light space opera:
Walter Jon Williams' Drake Majistral books (caper comedies) and possibly Aristoi (sf in a utopian future with martial arts and lots of gosh-wow) might suit. They're all available as ebooks.
Scott Westerfeld's obscure space opera Risen Empire. It's super-fun zipping around the galaxy with an undead aristocratic class, also lots of gosh-wow. It ends on an unresolved cliffhanger but the ride is so fun that I didn't really care. Also features a really sweet lesbian love story. It does involve a war, but it doesn't really feel like military sf. This has much more of a "faves in spaaaaace" feel than the Williams books.
no subject
Date: 2017-12-22 08:45 pm (UTC)Yup. I also hate the you-sound-white kind of attitude, but there is a certain sort of obliviousness that makes it hard not to leap to that conclusion. Like I said, I think it was a bit easier to get away with in 2004, but it doesn't sound like he's changed his tune in his more recent books and articles, and at this point there's really no excuse.
Thank you for the recs! They all sound like exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for. I'm okay with a war! I mean, Star Wars has one, after all (it's right in the title!). It's just Mil Sci Fi has a certain focus on endlessly describing how laser guns work or Manly He-Man posturing that I tend to find boring.
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Date: 2017-12-22 03:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-22 09:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-22 03:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-22 08:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-22 11:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-23 04:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-03-18 11:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-03-20 03:34 am (UTC)