Books to Read While the Algae Grow in Your Fur, March 2015

Attention conservation notice: I have no taste.

Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East

Shadid's memoir of restoring his family's ancestral home in a small Christian town in south Lebanon, inter-cut with the scenes from the story of how his family came from Lebanon to Oklahoma, and the history of the town itself. It's more fascinating and lovely than an account of a mid-life crisis resolved through remodeling has any right to be, and becomes almost unbearably sad when one knows about how the author died.

Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald, Mageworlds series: The Price of the Stars, Starpilot's Grave, By Honor Betray'd, The Gathering Flame, The Long Hunt, The Stars Asunder, A Working of Stars

Mind candy. I'd read the first two years and years ago, and enjoyed them, but was inspired to pick up the rest of the series by James Nicoll's recent review of the first book. While it would be astonishing if the story didn't begin as Star Wars fanfic, one should really think of these as that universe re-imagined by writers of talent and imagination, trying to come up with decent reasons for everything, and freely reworking as necessary. I won't pretend they're high literature, but they are a non-guilty pleasure.

Daniel Davies and Tess Read, The Secret Life of Money: Everyday Economics Explained

A compact series of brief vignettes about the economics of lots of different sorts of businesses, running from trade-shows to martial arts schools. It's not as hilariously funny as the best of Davies's blogging, but it is good, and makes me wish they'd be quixotic enough to write a systematic econ-for-beginners book.

(The writing is colloquial enough that I found myself looking up perhaps half-a-dozen Anglicisms; I didn't mind, but others might.)

Disclaimer: I've been a fan of Davies's blog, and sporadic correspondent, for many years.

Charlaine Harris, A Secret Rage

Harris's second (?) novel, from 1984, a mystery about an ex model returning from New York to a small Southern college town — which is not dealing very successfully with a serial rapist. I hesitate to label this one "mind candy", because it deals with much more serious themes than usual, and does so well. I can't speak to its portrayal of surviving rape, but it's really convincing at the emotional pain, dis-orientation, and shame that can come from experiences that break one's self of who one is, or the kind of live one has, including the feeling of "this can never be repaired". In the end, though, I'm not sure it isn't candy of a sort. (That is not a complaint or a put-down.)

— Of course, this was written more than thirty years ago. It's striking to me how little the cultural politics have moved on, even while many things large and small for the story are quite transformed. Ones which struck me (some of them arguably spoilers, so I ROT-13'd): gur bcravat ivrj bs Arj Lbex Pvgl nf n uryyfpncr, be ng yrnfg n chetngbel, bs ivbyrag pevzr; vg'f abg orvat pbzzba xabjyrqtr gung encvfgf, bapr pnhtug, pna or purzvpnyyl zngpurq gb gurve fcrez; gjb beqvanel crbcyr orvat qrsrngrq ol gur cebfcrpg bs pbyyngvat gjb yvfgf bs n uhaqerq anzrf; gur urebvar'f oblsevraq glcvat ure rffnlf sbe ure (abg uvf orvat pbafvqrengr gung jnl, ohg gur vqrn gung fur jbhyqa'g whfg unir jevggra gurz urefrys ba n znpuvar); gur urebvar'f abg dhrfgvbavat sbe n zbzrag gung n pynff va Punhpre jvyy uryc ure orpbzr n pbagrzcbenel abiryvfg.

Laura Bickle, Dark Alchemy

Mind candy: contemporary Weird Western, heavy on alchemical symbolism (reasonably well-researched). Lots of mysteries are left unexplained at the end; I hope they stay that way.