Reviews and Comments

I've said a couple of times how I never get to explore Gibson's entire catalogue, past and present, because the four of his books that I actually have read are so good that I keep rereading them. I do the same with records. There are records I've listened to thousands of times that I love infinitely but still haven't gone and searched up everything else that artist has made. It's a rare a couple of exceptions where I do have everything because usually I fall more in love with an album than with an artist.

So here's me attempting a new-to-me Gibson. Count Zero. It's not one that Kamnert translated (there's a 1:1 correlation between the four Gibson books I'm obsessed with and the four books she improved; I just can't get enough of her mastery at rendering turn-of-the-century pop into glisteningly clear Swedish prose) so I'm reading this one in English (although I'm aware that there are oft-reprinted Swedish versions of this and the other two Sprawl Trilogy books). This is one of "the 26" new books; and it's from the three books I got from the second-hand bookshop. I'm in no hurry to rush through "the 26" and I might get at some other books from my pre-existing to-read pile, and today I wasn't gonna read any prose but I wrapped up The Drought and started this; I'm four chapters in and I love it so far.

What strikes me the most in this cyber future of rooftop antennas and telefax machines is how it's from an era where kanji were called "ideographs". That's probably the one part that took me out of it so far. After all, in the alternate timeline that we acidentally ended up living in, words like "signal", "mail", "telegram", "book", have all taken new meaning so maybe when these guys are talking about velco and faxes, that means something else to them amid the holographic cathedrals and psychoactive door knobs.

Loving this book so far.

I didn't plan to read any books today but I ended up finishing this one. My review for it is probably going to be pretty spoileriffic. I like it but the racism, ableism, sexism constantly flowing as part of the "limited third person" describing people the way the main char sees them got on my nerves. (Hence my rant on fedi about that the other day.)

My new policy is to only put things in here once I've made real headway and not just one page. But I read the first half of this awesome novella today. It's one of the 26. To be specific it's one of the three from the second hand shop. Also read a bunch of Proust today (vols 7 and 8 are from "the 26" and actually were the impetus for the whole project) but now I'm reading Yotsuba in digital, on e-ink. Getting sidetracked from the 26 but the first four volumes did come from there so it's kind of okay 😵‍💫

I'm making headway in the 26 books I added to the to-read pile two days ago and one of the reasons for that is that seven of them were comics; six of which I've read now: the first four Yotsuba& tanks that were released in Swedish (still waiting for part five! I'm reading it in English for now), a collection of David Liljemark's Mad Magazine features, and now this Jason swashbuckler. (The last comic is Born Again by Miller and Mazzucchelli.) I'm not gonna review the Yotsuba or the Liljemark because I read so much comics that I can't review them all or my fingers would fall off from typing. I've even stopped keeping track of them in my techo. But I'll write up a few words about Isle of 100,000 graves later today. Seven books down (with the McCurdy biography), 19 to go! (+ everything I already had on my already overly long to-read list...)

This book was so great but also absolutely horrifying. Well written and paced with a gutpunching twist after every chapter. It made me sad, it made me yell out in anguish. The translation (to Swedish, by Julia Gillberg) was good too; a few mistakes but a strong command of contemporary, casual, natural Swedish that reads like talking to a friend. I loved this book.

I never saw any of her shows so this book was my first introduction to this writer. I'm kind of out of touch with pop culture sometimes.

Yesterday I massively added to my already stressful "to read" pile. 26 new books got added. In hardcopy, not ebooks. But 18 of those were from deep storage and it's always great getting books from there as opposed to buying new-to-me (outside fo the 18 from storage, three were from a second-hand shop and five were new from store, the latter including this intense Jennette McCurdy biography). Getting books I alreay own out of storage is good actually. It's better to rotate my own books than buying new. And it's either books I ought to have read years ago or it's cherished and/or overdue re-reads. I do feel stressed about the giant pile of 26 books in my tiny li'l mini apartment (uh, I mean, 26 + what I already i had in here which was probably sixty or seventy or so but not all of them are to-read, some are reference) because I don't really know where to keep them, maybe I'll put them in a bag or something. And the 8 new ones I feel even worse about but at least only a third were new-to-me and over two thirds were out of storage. Inluding the last few parts of Remembrance of Things Past.

So I'm gonna allow myself to feel the full ambivalence of stress over a "to-read" pile but also fully appreciate and savor the joy of a huge haul / hoard / treasure to dive into over the coming fall and winter months. The book exchange program in our building has made me stress less about books; anything I place there is gone within a few hours so I know I'm not contributing to the typical decay of free book shelves where after a while it's only David Eddings and rock star biographies. I know I'm putting down quality stuff there because people take it and that makes me happy. I'm melancholic and sad and this huge reading project (while tinged with the "why amn't I writing or drawing or playing music or saving the world instead of just consuming culture" lead lining of self-hate) is primarily a source of comfort and delight.

Among the wrapping-up of three volumes I did let myself start a new book also. I'm a few chapters in. Seems like a genre romp akin to Inside Job, Vertigo Comics, or Illuminati. If so, that's perfectly what I'm in the mood for. I bought eighteen volumes many moons ago on a Bundle of Holding of a book series I had never heard of. I love the flexibility of a long series; I can read on or I can jump off.

As a journalistic work this book is a strong reco (don't got confused by how the author's name is similar to a far right writer. It's one of those Naomi Klein or Naomi Wolf situations) I never read the back cover copy of books but this time that decision burned me since it'd've made clearer the throughline of this book as not only a larger essay on bot farms and propaganda machines but also synecdochically a biography of Willi Münzenberg.

The prose is hard to read with many ambiguously counterpunctual sentences, triply negated predicates, and skewedly applied similes. And politically I can get frustrated with Carlberg's initially trusting view of institutions like NATO.

But it's worth pushing through because the main point is great. How it sucks that there's so much secret propaganda and how the cure for that is never to fight fire with same but to instead stick to being honest. Yes please.

It was sickeningly transparent how Åkesson when, a few years after this book was written, SD was revealed to have a troll factory and he called TV4's reporting of that a "påverkansoperation", like how 45 appropriated the appellation "fake news". It's scary that SD has already bounced back in polls after their blatant lies.

I really wanted to start a new book instead of continuing one of my started ones. I longed for a new world to be in and all my started books seemed so boring compared to Expeditdonen and Vitön. But I buckled through and picked this one. It benefited from being in a backpack as opposed to in my to-read pile. I don't feel like writing a review but it was very good. Three stars. I might read more Greene later.