H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life (1991) by Michel Houellebecq

Book Review

H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life (1991)

by Michel Houellebecq

   There is an actual H.P. Lovecraft museum up the street from me located in, of all places, the Glendale Burbank border.   It's just a store front, with a storage area for their printing press in back- they publish books related to Lovecraft.   It reminded me that French author and personal favorite Michel Houellebecq is a huge Lovecraft fan and that he wrote a book length (one hundred pages, anyway) essay about Lovecraft and his hatred of immigrants in New York City.  I mean, that is the startling part, the rest is a by now concluded argument that Lovecraft is a canon level author.  Was that an issue into the early 1990's?  Is it still? 

All Systems Red (2004) by Martha Wells

Book Review

All Systems Red (2004)

by Martha Wells

      Science Fiction writer Martha Wells caught my eye this past year when she won a trifecta of science fiction awards for her latest entry in her series,  The Murderbot Diaries.   All Systems Red was the first book in that series- individual titles in the series are brief- novellas at best, lengthy short stories at not, but the whole series is a continuous, sequential story about one narrator, a "rogue" sec-unit, he gave himself the "Murder Bot" name- it is what it calls its self (no sex organs for murderbots) on a galaxy-wide quest to find out the truth about itself and it's past.

   There is no denying the sophistication of Wells' treatment of complex subjects like AI.   It looks like Recorded Books did Audiobook versions of all the titles in the Murderbot series, so it is a good opportunity for non-genre fans of potential cross-over literature to take a listen via your local Libby library app.

     

Black Paper (2021) by Teju Cole

Book Review

Black Paper (2021)

by Teju Cole

   Black Paper is a book of collected essays by author Teju Cole.  Anyone who has read Coles novels is well aware that he is incredibly erudite and sophisticated, a characteristic that manifests in his professional life, where he authors criticism for publications like the New York Times and teaches writing at Columbia University.  My initial interest in Cole was spurred by his similarity to W.G. Sebald in terms of the themes of places and psychology (and tremendous, cross-cultural erudition) and I wasn't suprised to see Sebald referenced by Cole in these essays, 

       "W. G. Sebald, who, of the writers I have studied, might be the one in whom this intense, emotionally charged but intellectually unflagging approach is most pervasive. Sebald wrote entire books that are almost nothing but the headiness of an associative dream. The Rings of Saturn is a narrative of a fictional walk in Suffolk, the journal of a man who seems to carry around an antiquarian hypertext library in his head."

    It was one of those "a-ha" moments but unfortunately I didn't take careful notes- which I should have because I checked the book out on the Library app in eformat (you can take notes via the Kindle App.)  Alas, the hold at this point is several weeks long.  There is no questioning that the collected essay format of literature is a weak sibling of the novel.  Maybe a handful of essays in any collection have some kind of staying power, and then its like, you have to read the rest.