Books Read July 2020

How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems by Randall Munroe (aka the xkcd guy)

I really needed a laugh and xkcd never fails to deliver. This book includes instructions on How to Dig a Hole (feat. roasting The Curse of Oak Island), a futile attempt to baffle Col. Chris Hadfield with absurd flying/landing scenarios, How to Catch a Drone (feat. Serena Williams & robot ethics), and the coolest theoretical selfie you could possibly take. 9/10 because it also triggered the occasional bout of extreme anxiety about climate change.

Wild Seed by Octavia Butler 

In 1690 Africa a 4000-year-old immortal who kills to survive and has been using controlled breeding to try to create another creature like himself meets a 300-year-old healer and shapeshifter- the closest to an equal he's ever met. What follows is 150 years of an abusive relationship between the only two immortals in the world.

Even when it's uncomfortable, Butler's work is always gripping and totally engrossing. She does tend to stick close to certain themes (commune-style living, kidnapping/mind controlling people into said commune, control over one's own body at the cellular level, controlled breeding to genetically engineer a new species, etc), and I don't always agree with her take/execution of it, but it's usually hard to put down her novels.

Current events have been reminding me a lot of Butler's Parable of the Sower/Parable of the Talents duology.

Mind of My Mind by Octavia Butler

In the present-ish day (I assume the present when it was written 1977-ish) Doro's controlled breeding project comes to fruition in a young woman named Mary, who takes his unstable, dangerous offspring and binds them together into a network of telepaths who start taking over a huge section of Los Angeles.

This was Butler's second novel ever, the Patternist series was written extremely out of order:

4/5.) Patternmaster (1976)
2.) Mind of My Mind (1977)
*4.) Survivor (1978, *never reprinted because Butler disliked it so much)
1.) Wild Seed (1980)
3.) Clay's Ark (1984).

It shows a bit as an early work, it's not as well-developed as other works, Anyanwu/Emma is barely involved after being the protagonist of Wild Seed, and it's never explained why Mary dislikes her so much, but it's still an interesting and enjoyable read.

Star Wars: Thrawn: Alliances by Timothy Zahn

Thrawn is a bigger Mary Sue than Mara Jade ever was, you can't change my mind.

Thrawn is brilliant. His mind his orderly and logical, and his emotion are oddly muted, making him rational and not driven by emotion. He's a Sherlock Holmes level of observationist, but unlike book!Sherlock Holmes he never gets led down the wrong path by any of those observations. He comes up with flawless plans, and no extraneous elements or unforeseen circumstances mess those plans up. Whenever any else tries to make a plan, or alter one of Thrawn's plans in the slightest, it leads to disaster. Thrawn is a great leader, the best leader. No other commanders a visiting stormtrooper has encountered have engendered the same degree of loyalty Thrawn does, and with that loyalty comes efficiency and competence the rest of the Empire could learn from. Thrawn is also no longer a ruthless villain, but a noble, byronic anti-hero working for the Empire for the sake of the Greater Good, namely some vague threat lurking in the Unknown Regions. Thrawn rescues kidnapped kids, goes out of his way to avoid civilian casualties, and saves loth-cats stuck in trees. He also just straight-up takes stuff out of Padme's hands in the middle of battle without getting decked for some reason.

( cut for length and complaining but for the record I liked most of Zahn's legends novels, I have no idea how he went so wrong with the new stuff )

I've run out of coherent things to say about it (if any of this was coherent in the first place), it was such a frustrating slog to read. At least it's off my TBR shelf.