2022 Imperial Bedroom 40th Anniversary Reading Challenge

I should probably read Shock Doctrine at some point, but I feel Klein references it so much in the more recent books I have read, it’d be redundant at this point.

Update 1!: A week late, I have completed A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab for "Beyond Belief"

This is the first in the Shades of Magic series by YA and fantasy fiction wunderkind Victoria Schwab. It is quite Gaiman-esque, so I enjoyed it. I might even read another -- though I will be selling this volume to Squeezebox, the used bookstore in Evanston. I imagine it will fetch a pretty penny, since it is slated for TV/film adaptation by some big names, including the creator of John Wicke (!).  

How Well Did It Fit the Theme of the Challenge/Why I Picked This: I got this for free at my friendly local independent bookstore (Roscoe Books) when I bought a bunch of children's books to donate to the Little Free Library around the corner from me, which had just been robbed of its books. They had a shelf of remainders to choose from and this was one of the most enticing. 

How likely would you have been to read the book without the challenge? I probably would have read this on the train, but who knows when I will next be on the train...

What's Next? I'm finally going to read The Sea Lies Ahead, which my cousin brought from India for my dad. It's about Indian Muslims who settle in Pakistan, which in my opinion, is a ripe setting for tragedy. 

Update 3: I have completed A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett for "Shabby Doll"

This is just a perfect children's story - a fairy tale, only without magic. The 'princess' of this story has little in common with the daughter of a king aside from money - she's not conventionally beautiful and her father is just a widower who has business interests in the colonies. (This is an extremely colonial story, but thankfully free of racism and sympathetic in its portrayals of brown people. Some language could probably use updating, but more in relation to body image and bullying language among the girls.) Although she starts the story with money, what makes her a princess in the eyes of those around her is her kindness, compassion, and humility. This is a fantastic message for children - that nobility is defined by how you treat people; not who you are or how much money you have. In fact, the injustice of the class system in Britain is kind of a central theme of the book, as the protagonist has to deal with a dramatic reversal of fortune in addition to losing her father. I like how this book fully deals with grief and resilience, stating early on, "If Nature has made you for a giver, your hands are born open, and so is your heart; and though there may be times when your hands are empty, your heart is always full, and you can give things out of that -- help and comfort and laughter -- and sometimes gay, kind laughter is the best help of all." It also directly addresses the moral obligation of rich people to help poor people however they can. 

How Well Did It Fit the Theme of the Challenge/Why I Picked This: I dare say nothing could have fit the theme better. 

How likely would you have been to read the book without the challenge? I'm kind of surprised I hadn't read it already. I loved The Secret Garden as a child, but somehow it never occurred to me until adulthood that I might like other books by the same author. What really cemented it was the adorably illustrated hardcover edition, which I bought to compliment my illustrated hardcover of The Secret Garden. 

What's Next? Just in time for Valentine's Day, I'll be reading Love in a Cold Climate for "The Long Honeymoon"

I understand that might be a difficult trauma to overcome, but it's still a nice little read. 

Update 6: I have completed Plays Unpleasant by G.B. Shaw for "Almost Blue"

This is a collection of three of Shaw's most controversial plays tackling social issues of the day. The first, "Widower's Houses" is a pretty caustic critique of landowners in which the central love story is poisoned by the unscrupulousness of all involved. The second, "The Philanderer" is a satire about "Ibsenism" and progressive thinking around gender that, nevertheless, provides some serious interrogation of the place of women in late Victorian society. My favorite is probably the last and most controversial, "Mrs. Warren's Profession" in which a young woman learns that her education has been funded by her mother's involvement in the sex industry. This play has the strongest and most original character development--with a smart female protagonist, a compelling-but-complicated love story, lots of nuance in its handling of morality, and an empowering conclusion. 

How Well Did It Fit the Theme of the Challenge/Why I Picked This: It was hard to choose without spoiling the ending of every book I considered, so I figured a compilation would give me better odds - especially since Shaw is not known for writing tragedies. I think this fit pretty well. 

How likely would you have been to read the book without the challenge? After reading Shaw's socialist writings, I became more interested in his plays, so I had this lying around. Plays are quick reads, so I would have read it eventually, but I'm glad I can check this off the list now. 

What's Next? The only version of Daring Greatly available at the library is the audiobook, so I'm doing that for my mass-market "...And In Every Home" selection. I've also started Set the Boy Free for "The Loved Ones"

Fair.

Update 8: I have completed Daring Greatly by Brene Brown for "...And In Every Home"

Shame is a deep and important subject, but this discussion is pretty shallow, as befitting a mass market bestseller from a 'woowoo' life guru touted by Oprah/Reese/Gwyneth. Everything Brown claims is sensible and correct, with plenty of research to back it up, but the presentation is so lightweight and repetitive that it loses a lot of impact. The upshot is 'if you cain't love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else?" and I say "Amen" but I can get that from Rupaul. 

How Well Did It Fit the Theme of the Challenge/Why I Picked This: I have very little interest in mass market paperbacks, so aside from Steve Harvey (which I read already), this was the only option on my TBR list. 

How likely would you have been to read the book without the challenge? Not likely. As it is I 'read' half on audiobook and skimmed the rest because it's so repetitive.

What's Next? So far so good on Fully Automated Luxury Communism for "Human Hands"

I've been interested in reading this for a while, even though most takes I've seen on the book seem to be pretty similar to yours in terms of the likelihood of such a vision being put into place at any point in the near future.  It's obviously congruent with Marxism to advocate for the use of technology to liberate people from want and toil, but it's also rather anti-Marxist to treat these technologies themselves as the primary drivers of an egalitarian revolution without first upending the capitalist mode of production.  And imo whatever one thinks of other tenets of Marxist thought, those were pretty solid insights on Marx's part.  This feels like the sort of analysis that could be cynically co-opted by Silicon Valley guys (there's already some overlap between potentially good policy proposals by Bastani and ideas that the likes of Andrew Yang profess to believe in, like UBI).  Anyway, I guess I should just read the book.

What is your opinion of Fisher?  I just read Capitalist Realism a couple of months ago.  I thought there were some fantastic insights about why this current stage of capitalism is shitty (albeit with a focus on mostly middle class people living in well-off countries), and a lot of his descriptions of the malaise of the college kids he was teaching describes the bulk of my 20s uncomfortably well.  The concept of capitalist realism itself and its application to the climate crisis and bureaucracy also have a lot of merit, imo, and his prose is very good at taking Critical Theory guys like Derrida, Lacan, et. al., and articulating what is insightful in their work in language that isn't infuriatingly abstruse.  On the other hand, for a book that's like 100 pages long or whatever, there sure was a lot of shit that made me roll my eyes.  Like, I think Fisher's contrarianism, combined with his use of Critical Theory and Frankfurt School guys as his primary lens through which to view the world at the expense of empirical data, tends to lead him to some poorly supported conclusions (like, for instance "I bet dyslexia is usually just a form of post-lexia because phones" is a pretty annoying take, and one that feels deliberately confrontational in a way that distracts from the grain of insight present in that claim, because imo it is worth exploring how our changing relation to media under capitalism might change the way we think, and it is worth interrogating the ways in which mental phenomena which we pathologize are caused by outside factors rather than our own innate biochemistry or what have you).  Also, while his book isn't particularly focused on imagining the path to an alternative to capitalism, I don't think the way to productively conceiving of such a path will lean so heavily on references to art and pop culture as Fisher's writing does.  Which is all to say, I think he was a very smart guy with a lot of interesting ideas, and I plan to read more of his writing, but I also find him really frustrating at times.

Update 10: I have completed The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul by Douglas Adams for "Kid About It"

I realize I may be voicing a deeply unpopular opinion, but reading this, it occurred to me that the reason why Adams is so challenging to adapt is that -- from a plotting and character perspective -- his books aren't actually that good. I mean, they have lots of amusing ideas and situations and bits of dialogue, but that's it. The plot of this second Dirk Gently outing takes FOREVER to get going (the two protagonists don't even meet until the halfway mark) and never really resolves itself. (Much like Hitchhiker's) a bunch of stuff just happens with no ultimate point. Ostensibly, Dirk is trying to solve the mysterious murder of one of his clients, but this turns out to not be a mystery that concerns anybody -- including him, really.

How Well Did It Fit the Theme of the Challenge/Why I Picked This: The title and author were intriguing, and I greatly enjoyed the Dirk Gently series starring Stephen Mangan. Unfortunately, this had none of the Gondry-esque whimsy of the TV adaptations (haven't seen the other one with Elijah Wood, but it suggests a similar tone). If you read this hoping for more of the TV Dirk, it  will likely disappoint. 

How likely would you have been to read the book without the challenge? Clearly not, since it's been on my reading list for 3 years. 

What's Next? For bedtime reading, I'm skipping A Passage to India for a bit and starting the lengthy trek through Mann's The Magic Mountain. 

Update 11: I have completed A Passage to India by E.M. Forster for "Little Savage"

A Classic in every sense of the word - just a concise, well-written story in an evocative setting that has compelling things to say about colonialism, gender relations, and what decides one's fate. Although it has been criticized for 'orientalism', I think Forster does a better job than his contemporaries of engaging a Western' audience's imagination without completely reducing the East into caricature. He writes the main Indian characters with the same compassion as his white characters and he makes it very clear from the first chapter that the colonizers are the villains -- intruding on the lives of ordinary Indians who are just trying to get by. He doesn't emphasize poverty or 'backwardness' and he maintains a lot of the subtle interpersonal stuff that the Bloomsbury group is known for within a larger story.

How Well Did It Fit the Theme of the Challenge/Why I Picked This: The Bloomsbury Group has always been near to my heart and I've been a fan of Forster since reading Maurice in high school. He's another example of a gay, white, early 20th century British male with unusual sympathy for 'the Orient' (see also: Robert Byron). 

How likely would you have been to read the book without the challenge? Eventually, I'm sure.

What's Next? I'm just past the summit of The Magic Mountain, but it's a loooong way down.

Update 12: I have completed The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann for "Boy With a Problem"

Well that was long and largely pointless. Seriously, 20th century German lit, you owe me a few months of my life back after this and Berlin Alexanderplatz. It now falls to Kafka to redeem you - though considering what was going on in Germany at the time, I suppose boring, inscrutable literature was the least of their problems. The story follows -- in minute detail -- the occasionally interesting experiences (wouldn't go so far as to call them adventures) of a young man who goes to a mountain health resort for a planned three weeks that somehow get drawn out to seven years. Time loses its meaning, as do life and death before 'real life' and WWI make the allegory real. 

How Well Did It Fit the Theme of the Challenge/Why I Picked This: I like both of the Thomas Mann novels I've read, Death in Venice and The Confessions of Felix Krull. Somebody stuck this in my nearest Little Free Library and I thought it would be a proper challenge for the prompt (the protagonist is described as a "problem child of history" so definitely fits the theme). I didn't exactly dislike the book -- the writing is great -- it's just a slog that could have been 200 pages shorter. 

How likely would you have been to read the book without the challenge? Absolutely not. 

What's Next? The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India by a friend-of-friends, Siddhartha Deb for "Pidgin English"

Update 14: I have completed Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen for "You Little Fool"

Although it's often as dry and repetitive as its subject, this is essential reading for anyone interested in history, historiography, and the teaching of social science. The lies of U.S. historical education can be summarized as follows:

1. whitewashing of Columbus' atrocities - We learn nothing about violence committed against indigenous people during the Spanish conquest of North America

2. minimization of advancement of indigenous civilizations - Though we learn about Aztecs, Incas, and Mayans, the assumption is that indigenous tribes in the U.S. were small, disorganized, and not very numerous. We never learn that diseases brought by settlers decimated the native population and that the land wasn't 'empty' when settlers got here.

3. Confederate-friendly telling of Reconstruction - The history of the post-Civil War South is told from the perspective of the losers. Every textbook describes "carpetbaggers and scalawags" without explaining the reforms they were trying to bring (and in some cases did bring, though they didn't take) to the South. Textbooks also minimize white anti-racism by portraying it as viewpoint only held by Christian zealots.

4. no discussion of class/myth of meritocracy - The privileged background of the founding fathers is never discussed; only bootstraps industrial stories like Andrew Carnegie.

5. U.S. government as 'international good guy' - All foreign interventions are justified as somehow defending freedom or democracy. There is no discussion of realpolitik or the government furthering its own interests. This is particularly egregious in discussions of the Vietnam War and Iraq/Afghanistan, which were utterly pointless and wasteful no matter how you look at it.

How Well Did It Fit the Theme of the Challenge/Why I Picked This: I think this was a good fit - it certainly reinforced my desire to teach social studies when I retire from the Fed. 

How likely would you have been to read the book without the challenge? Likely, but maybe not for some time. 

What's Next? More bad news - The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein for "Town Cryer"

Update 16: I have completed My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite for "The World of Broken Hearts"

The title kind of says it all. It's a fast-paced, darkly comedic thriller with just enough depth to be satisfying. 

How Well Did It Fit the Theme of the Challenge/Why I Picked This: I got this for free when I bought a bunch of children's books to donate from one of my local indie bookstores. It could not have fit the theme better. 

How likely would you have been to read the book without the challenge? This is perfect train reading - I definitely would have read it as soon as I had the opportunity.

What's Next? While tackling Absolute Beauty at my bedside, I'll detour to my next Hello Nasty Challenge selection for commuter reading: The Delayed Rays of a Star by Amanda Lee Koe.