Entry tags:

books, reviews

The Demon and the City, Stumbling on Happiness, The Praxis
In addition to the other stuff, I picked up the Penguin Book of Horror Stories, which is irritatingly hard to track down, so I could read a particular Lord Dunsany short story in it (The Two Bottles of Relish) which is also irritatingly hard to track down (unlike a bunch of his other stuff, it's apparently not public domain). As usual, horror is way less terrible than the petty annoyances of everyday life.


The Demon and the City (Liz Williams): Uh-oh. Obviously I don't think I'm really objective as a reviewer (for one thing, I am totally biased in favor of things which are awesome), but it's still a little disconcerting to see my judgement going all doo-la-lally with this book, the sequel to Snake Agent. Like, to start with bare facts, this book has more than 64 chapters and 242 pages. There are viewpoint changes every couple of pages and new characters coming in right and left. Inspector Chen, though nominally the main character, only shows up halfway through the book, and the main villain shows up late in the story and has a plot with a really rushed resolution. It actually feels like the author changed her mind a couple times about who the major villain was -- the one who seems to fill that spot for the majority of the book just disappears by the end with no ending whatsoever. Maybe this is to set up a sequel, but if so, it's really unsatisfyingly done. Also, the book jacket gives away a plot point that didn't need to be given away, but I can't blame the author for that, and I shouldn't read book jackets anyway.

Nevertheless, I am still totally enthralled by the setting here. I cannot get enough of near-future sf combined with real Chinese magic. Like, there's a guy who works at a butcher shop and all the hormones in the meat give him breasts and make him androgynous -- which he's turned into a profitable sideline, since being androgynous means he's got an affinity for witch powers. And there's a mention about the mining companies bribing the governor to cover up the problems their digging is causing with the ley lines. And then there are companies who manipulate their architecture to engage in silent Feng Shui warfare with their competitors. You'd think this would be more common as a setting but I can't really think of anything -- China Mountain Zhang has some of this vibe, but it's not really the same unless the magic's real, and Bridge of Birds isn't sf (although both of these are good books).

So, yeah, I hope the next book is structurally better, but apparently I am going to read it regardless.


Stumbling on Happiness (Daniel Gilbert): This book is totally depressing. The good news is, being depressed makes my predictions about it more likely to be accurate, since I'm less likely to assume special circumstances will apply in my case, more likely to figure I'll react basically the same as other people, and less likely to focus exclusively on factors that reinforce my preconceived expectations about my future.

To get more directly at what the book is about, here is the summary of the summary:

• People are not good at remembering how happy they were in specific past situations (or how they were in general)


• People are not good at estimating how happy they will be in specific future situations (or how they will be in general)


• People would rather stick their hands in ice-cold water for 60 seconds followed by slightly warmer water for 30 seconds than just stick their hands in ice-cold water for 60 seconds


• People regret things they didn't do more than things they did (this one, at least, matches conventional wisdom)


• People accustom themselves much more quickly and effectively to large losses versus small ones -- but they don't realize or predict they will do so


• People claim to dislike losses more than they like gains, but it's actually the other way around


• People consider themselves unique and different but in practice asking any random person who is doing* the thing you are wondering about predicts how you'll feel about it better than you just thinking about how you'll feel
  *Not 'has done' -- see the first point.

If you don't believe these, you should read the book, since there is plenty of supplementary material demonstrating it. Even if you believe it you may as well read the book, since it has jokes and funny anecdotes and all that stuff. Almost too many, in fact -- it's a little hard to take the thesis seriously at first because the guy peppers the discussion with so many wisecracks.

The one place where I feel like the arguments in the book were a little lacking was when it came to defining happiness. He does spend some time on this, but it turns out to be more complicated than his original discussion and the book never really re-examines the assumptions even as it brings up issues that challenge it. For instance, a big thing in this book is that you get different numbers if you ask someone to rate their happiness for the last week vs polling them at intervals over a week and taking an average.

So what does this mean about happiness? If you're very happy every time you're polled, but think of yourself as being unhappy, are you happy or unhappy? If a depressed person has one or two really bad periods a day that might not pull down their overall average too far, are they happy or unhappy? And where's the borderline for this effect? What happens if you ask the people about the last ten minutes or last hour when you poll them? Does it begin to approach their estimate for the last week as soon as they start predicting/analyzing their happiness instead of just reporting it? Plus there are all these cultural factors -- apparently Asians in US culture give a lower-than-average number if asked about the past week, but higher-than-average on a current-moment poll.

P.S. It is great to hear that psychological subjects are still being totally lied to by experimenters. This is awesome and I thought all those boring Milgram regs prevented from happening any more, but at least judging by this book it's alive and well. It describes dozens of experiments that sucker people, like the one where it puts them in a chat room and everyone is supposed to write an email to the person they like best, and gosh, everyone writes to you! How nice! Now just fill out this survey saying how you feel about it.

P.P.S. As loyal bookclub members already know, this has also been reviewed by lpsmith. He is basically an optimist, and I am basically not.


The Praxis (Walter Jon Williams): One of the major categories of sf books I don't read is the one where "Martinez and Caroline Sula, a pilot whose beautiful face conceals a deadly secret, are now the last hope for freedom for every being who ever languished in Shaa chains -- as the interstellar battle begins against a merciless foe whose only perfect truth is annihilation." And, yeah, the most surprising thing about the book is that it manages to go through the entire story without having any surprises whatsoever*.

On the other hand, it was pretty competently done. There are two main characters: one has a fairly tedious and irrelevant backstory, but in the present she's funny and appealing and does stuff, so props for that. The other one is .. interestingly muddled. He is, as the story requires, jerky, considerate, friendly, stand-offish, commanding, demotivational, eloquent, stumble-tongued, creative, and narrow-minded. But I didn't actually have a problem with this most of the time -- I think this is just not one of those stories where the protagonist's personality matters that much. He's in the right place at the right time doing the right stuff and stuff explodes when it's supposed to and the plot goes on.

One thing that did stand out a bit for me was the business with his accent. He's a noble, but he's supposedly kind of a hick noble, from the back country of the galaxy and with some kind of hick accent. The problem is, it's totally easy to forget he is supposed to be a hick for most of the time he's talking and interacting with people, and then some noble will say "man, I can't believe this bumpkin is doing X with his ca-razy accent and I say "accent? oh yeah." (Non-fans of my Virtu review presumably will take this to mean that I am just incompetent at picking up how characters talk, and that may be right.)

This is actually kind of a complicated problem for an author. How do you get across a character trait which is important to how other characters see the viewpoint character, but doesn't necessarily come up in every interaction, and doesn't naturally come up when the character interacts "with themselves". We get plenty of thoughts from the character and scenes with him interacting with other characters, and in almost every case it's important and obvious that he's a noble and that he's male and that he's an ambitious officer. These are defining traits of how he sees himself. His accent, on the other hand, mostly gets lost in the shuffle (in particular, it's complicated because in most cases the fact that he's a noble overshadows the fact that he's a hick noble -- it's only when he's interacting with other nobles that it's much of an issue). So what do you do? I guess you could just make a really huge point of it in the first part of the book, and then you'd just need occasional reminders of it later on. But that risks making it ultra-important instead of just mildly important (but then again, if it's just mildly important, does it really, truly need to be in the book?)

*There were a couple points where I said "wait, I bet all this telegraphing of the punchline is a setup for where it does a totally awesome right turn." But no, it was setup for where it goes on exactly where it was expected.

P.S. I picked this up because of non-book-club-member perkinwarbeck2, who also wrote a review which has more plot details and stuff.


Next up: whatever I lug on the plane with me.