Little Bosses Everywhere (2025) by Bridget Read

 Audiobook Review

Little Bosses Everywhere: 

How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America (2025)

by Bridget Read

  I try to keep at least one non-fiction Audiobook in my Libby mix at all times.  Little Bosses Everywhere: How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America, has been on and off my metaphorical libby loan shelf a half dozen times over the past year, and I finally knocked it off during the break.  I've had an interest in pyramid schemes and multi-level marketing since I started work in the world of federal criminal defense as an attorney.  One of my first tasks was reviewing physical documents at the Boiler Room Taskforce in Mission Valley, San Diego, CA.  This was for a telemarketing scam, but the documents I reviewed contained "training materials" that led me to explore this nefarious world.

 Multi-Level Marketing, as Read details exhaustively, is here to stay, and the second and third generations of some of the founding families of MLM are familiar to anyone who knows Cabinet level appointments in the Trump administrations, one and two.  The roots of multi-level marketing are in the idea of the pyramid scheme, which is an actual event that happened in the US, and not just a generic term to describe a type of scheme to defraud.  The history, in fact, goes quite deep, and spans the country, and, in fact, the entire world at this point.

  I knew many of the details, and found the personal stories of the victims (Read doesn't talk to many winners, if any) pretty tedious, but Read, despite her stated thesis that all multi-level marketing is scam, does point to the reason that MLM's endure despite their scam status- which is that people drop out, in fact, everyone who isn't a "winner" under the system drops out, and the winners maintain their status because they can source new people to recruit.  That is 100% the key to success in any MLM, finding new leads and converting them.

  There was an interesting chapter near the end where Read discusses the newest iteration of this world, the growth of "life coaches" or "mentors" as entrees to the MLM business.  Certainly, this seems like something that would be facilitated greatly by all Social Meida platforms, and it strikes me that is more or less a valid way for such people to make money.

All That We See or Seem (2025) by Ken Liu

Audiobook Review

All That We See or Seem (2025)

by Ken Liu

  Chinese American author-translator Ken Liu is known equally well for both- my introduction to him came through his role as translator of The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin.  He also has a fantasy series that I'll never read.  I checked out All That We See or Seem because, despite the hackneyed "girl hacker" premise and obvious IP/multi art form pitch and description of the first book as being part of a series, I was pretty sure that Liu would have some interesting things to say about hacking and computers and, god help me, AI.

 In that sense, Liu delivers- the actual hacking type stuff is amazing, the rest of it, is, at best average and often bad- like the characters, the back story, the overall predictability of the plot. I think that's the idea though, so who am I to say it isn't good.  I listened the Audiobook, but I wish I hadn't- the teen hacker main character is not particularly interesting, so you end spending much of the listen on her tedious backstory.

There is No Antimemetics Division (2025) by QNTM

 Book Review

There is No Antimemetics Division (2025)

 by QNTM

    I happened across this title perusing the shelves at a Burlington, Vermont bookstore, where it had one of those handwritten "employee recommends" cards attached.  I don't know about you, but I always take the time to read these- whether it's a Barnes & Noble or what, because I think you can really tell about a specific Bookstore based on whether the employees can identify books that I a) don't know about and b) want to read.    There is No Antiemetics Division jumped out to me on a couple levels, first, what the employee wrote on the card was interesting. Second, it was clearly a horror-science-fiction genre title that was placed in the wider "new releases" shelf at the front of the store, that shows me the book or author already has escape velocity from the genre shelf.  Last, the cover promised "cosmic horror" AKA Lovecraftian horror without the not-so-subtle racism.  

  You can describe the plot easily enough, a secret government agency labors against the horrors of the unknown, but that doesn't do the material justice.  Specifically, it doesn't describe the role that memory plays in the horror aspect of the plot, thought there is also non-memory based actual horror along Lovecraftian lines. Unlike most first gen cosmic horror, QNTM (a nom de plume for an English author/programmer Sam Hughes), does describe said horror, rectifying a major issue with that genre (how long can an author keep describing a nameless, unknowable horror without actually describing said horror.). 

  I found There is No Antimemetics Division really mind-blowing in the way of most great genre fiction.  The fusion of memory-language sci-fi and cosmic horror was revelatory in a way similar to the initial Matrix movie- genre but transcendent, classic genre.   Worth reading for sure.

The Houseguest (2018)by Amparo Dávila

Mexican author Amparo Davila

 Book Review

The Houseguest (2018)

by Amparo Dávila

  I'm not sure how I came about reading this 2018 New Directions edition of English translations of Mexican author Amparo Dávila's work.  She was writing between the mid 1950's and the 80's, dying in 2000, and I think this two sentence "Work" description from Wikipedia captures her vibe nicely:

  Davila is known for her use of themes of insanity, danger, and death, typically dealing with a female protagonist. Many of her protagonists appear to have mental disorders and lash out, often violently, against others. Many times the women are still unable to escape from their mental issues and live with the actions they have taken. She also plays with ideas of time by using time as a symbol of that which we cannot change.

  In other words, she is a forerunner of the recent wave of mostly woman authored weird lit coming out of Latin America and Mexico in particular. Reading this collection had some of the same energy as reading I, Who Have Never Known Men by Jaqueline Harpman which is basically, "How have I made it this far with no one ever mentioning her or ever hearing about her independently despite being directly interested in her work and the writers she has directly influenced?"

  It further points to the importance of publishing entities like New Directions and The New York Review of Books, where the goal is often "resurfacing" "lost classics" or raising a lost work to canonical status in part by republishing it.  This is by no means an insignificant phenomenon, and I can confidently say that both Jane Austen and William Faulkner were direct beneficiaries of this same process, going back centuries. 

The Far Edges of the Known World (2025) by Owen Rees

 Book Review

The Far Edges of the Known World:

 Life Beyond the Borders of Ancient Civilization (2025)

by Owen Rees

   If there were more books in this category: general reader level history books about ancient history, I would for sure read them, but the fact is that the underlying research doesn't require more than one new book a decade in most subfields.   Reading everything there is available to a non-specialist about events on the fringes of so-called western "civilization" in English, in the United States, is not hard.  Rees summarizes recent research in areas on the margins of the ancient greco-roman world.   He also includes a section on Europe, and some of the most interesting material is written about modern day Ethiopia. Like all books published in American on this area of interest, the lack of foreign language knowledge condemns the author to reinforce the very historical near-sightedness he seeks to correct.  To take the example of ancient Ethiopia, he doesn't appear to have read anything in Ge'ez.

  Anyway, it is interesting to be sure but nothing mind blowing here, like, I kinda knew what was coming.

Rot(2025) by Padraig X.Scanlan

 Audiobook Review

Rot (2025)

by Padraig X. Scanlan

   The reviews this week are running in January, but they actually represent the end of 2024.  I spent the entire year listening to this Audiobook with months in between (the library only had one Audiobook copy for the entire system).  I checked it out after last year's visit to Ireland, where I noted locals referring to the "Irish Potato Genocide" rather than the "Irish Potato Famine" as we were all taught in school.   I thought it would be interesting to review the scholarship in this area, and Rot does a good job of summarizing recent scholarship for a general reading audience.  

  I thought I had a good idea of where Scanlan would be headed based on similar arguments I've read in the area of Native American history and the history of the Southern United States.  Like many of the arguments that surround the post-erradication campaign attempts of the United States Government to "Kill the Indian and Save the Man," many of the Governmental policies described here as genocidal (he doesn't actually use that phrase) were extremely poorly thought out attempts to "help" the Irish.  Specifically, to help them become good capitalist members of the British Empire, by eradicating the potato, which the rural Irish used as a hedge against the vagaries of the market economy.

   As Scanlan well demonstrates, the Irish were anything BUT outliers from contemporary market economics, rather they were only two well acquainted with the most rapacious aspects of modern market capitalism courtesy of the complicated system of land rights, which had all the unpredictably of modern stock trading in terms of its impact on the rural proletariat.  The Irish peasantry was also roundly betrayed by their elites, who were all either actual British colonialists or the product of families who were long-time collaborators.  

Dominion (2025) by Adie E. Citchens

 Audiobook Review

Dominion (2025)

by Adie E. Citchens

 I listened to this entire Audiobook thinking it was one of the picks for the Mississippi chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project but lo and behold, came to learn it was not.  It should be- Dominion is a very geographically specific novel about the family of a wealthy and successful small town African American Baptist minister.  There are two narrators, the wife of the minister and the girlfriend of the youngest son of the family, a star football player and secret monster.

  I thought Citchens did a great job of imagining this world- far better than many of the authors on the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America list.  This book would definitely make any revised list I put together.

How the Word is Passed (2022) by Clint Smith

 Audiobook Review

How the Word is Passed (2022)

by Clint Smith

  I highly recommend the Monuments exhibit at MOCA-Geffen in Los Angeles- one of the best museums exhibits I've seen in the past decade.   This exhibit features several "decommissioned" Confederate War memorials (mostly from Baltimore) with companion pieces by contemporary artists.  While we were there, my partner mentioned this book, which I strangely was only barely aware of, despite immersing myself in the literature of the deep south for the past six months.  Smith's method is that of an essayist, each chapter takes him to a different location in the South where he takes a tour, talks to the people who work there and other tourists, and contrasts the opinions of those people with his own and gives it the perspective of his own research as a scholar of the period.

   Every chapter is interesting for different reasons.  Smith is an excellent writer and the entire experience reminded me of a Southern-US focused Teju Cole.  After seeing the exhibit and listening to the book, it's impossible to not see the connection between the two.  In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if  How the Word is Passed didn't directly inspire Monuments.  The basic thesis of both works is that southern whites have systematically perpetuated ideas that seek obscure and diminish the truths of the experience of slavery.  I love Monuments, and I loved this book, but at the same time it is hard to ignore (as Smith does) the fact that he himself embraces and embodies an academic tradition synonymous with "cultural relativism." 

  Throughout How the Word is Passed Smith performs an interesting double move that saturates the entire book and indeed many of the novels I've read as part of the 1,001 Novels Project which can be best described this way:

1.  Until the Civil Rights movement there was only a limited critique of the Antebellum South AND contemporary conditions in the south.

2.  The Civil Rights movement forced the abandonment/revision of overt, legally sanctioned racisms by the Governments of the South.

3.  The emergence of cultural relativism in American universities allowed scholar to go back and properly diagnose the earlier period and create a comprehensive critique of the Antebellum South and its universe of horrors.

  However, this third point can hardly be said to have penetrated into the hearts and minds of everyday people living in the south, and the idea that Smith can waltz into these places, and act surprised that educated and non-educated Southerners have different ideas is frequently risible.  It's preaching to the converted, is what I'm saying.  But as one of the converted, I found it this book very illuminating.

The Captive (2025) by Kit Burgoyne

 Audiobook Review

The Captive (2025)

by Kit Burgoyne

  Kit Burgoyne is the horror nom de plume for science fiction author Ned Beauman.  I read Beauman's 2022 novel, Venomous Lumpsucker back in 2023 and it inspired a pretty thorough review. Beauman remained in my mind as a solid example of a genre writer with literary fiction reach, so I was interested when I read that he'd launched a horror alter ego for his new novel, The Captive, which  has been described as, "A Rosemay's Baby for the late capitalism period."   In other words, he wrote an A24 movie.  So be it! I'll take an update on Rosemary's Baby any day of the week.  Within the horror genre, I am particularly interested in the detailed depiction of the craft and practice of horror-genre devil worshippers. Devil worship is such an interesting inversion of conventional religious practices, and I like to see how different authors depict the practices of the various versions.  

  Here, Burgoyne/Beauman links the devil to the UK equivalent of the GEO/Wackenhut group- a privately owned corporation that runs quasi-public institutions like prisons, jails and mental hospitals. As someone who visits privately run prisons on the regular, including immigration facilities, I can testify that Beauman's take is a little hysterical.  His merry band of anarchist-terrorists who put the plot into motion seem to have extremely fuzzy ideologies but are firmly committed to putting the plot into motion by concerted criminal action. 

  The Captive was a fun audiobook; I'd recommend it as a good format here.

  I'm thinking Jenny Ortega as the lead.

The Pretender (2025) by Jo Harkin

 Audiobook Review

The Pretender (2025)

by Jo Harkin

   The Pretender is a rare 2025 Audiobook listen, written by English author Jo Harkin, one of the cover quotes describes it as "Glorious Exploits meets Wolf Hall" and I agree. Specifically, I agree with the comparison to Glorious Exploits which brought some contemporary characterization into a historical milieu while still keeping things from getting anachronistic.  There's a pot of gold for any writer of literary or historical fiction who can pull off this trick- see the endless attempts by the film industry to recharacterize and repurpose novels from the early 19th century.  Clever stuff, recommended.