What I Read: The Dispossessed

Almost every time I talk about science fiction on this blog, I bring up my brother's gorgeous Easton Press collection of leather-bound science fiction classics. Fortunately, he was cool about sharing, so I got to enjoy the collection as much as he did (maybe even more?) and my first experience with a lot of classics of the genre came out of it: Neuromancer, She, Dying Inside, The Doomsday Book, and Dune, to name a few. (Aside: the ideal form of Dune is in a leather-bound hardcover edition with metallic trim. Somehow that elevates it from space opera into grand epic.)

But sometimes those books fell a little flat. The Diamond Age was one of those. The Dispossessed was another. I must have been 13 or 14 when I tried reading it, maybe a bit older, and it just couldn't stick. I had this problem with LeGuin generally—A Wizard of Earthsea was on a semi-required reading list a few years before I tried to tackle The Dispossessed, but again I couldn't seem to get into it. Since then I just wrote LeGuin off as one of the great and admirable giants of science fiction who just wasn't for me. 

Fast forward to 2017, and I'm getting ready to visit one of my best friends; my visit will coincide with the August meeting of his feminist science fiction book club. This is the same feminist science fiction book club that brought The Fifth Season to his attention, and then subsequently mine when he gave me a copy as a gift back in October. 

Their scheduled book is Karen Memory, but he let me know that:

 "[w]e also might be discussing The Dispossessed, which was this month's book but most people couldn't make it to this month's discussion (and I really want to discuss The Dispossessed again, there's so much to talk about)" 

"man i tried reading the dispossessed in high school and couldn't get into it, but maybe i'm a better reader now" 

"The Dispossessed is sooooooooooooo good. Le Guin is hard to get into (especially in high school, yeesh, I can't imagine), but this is one of the best books we've read so far"

Good news, everyone! I am a better reader now, because I finished The Dispossessed in record time! How many years late to the game am I with this one?

First of all, I'm proud of myself for finishing a book I DNF'd years ago. My own book club tackled The Invisible Bridge for April? May? and despite picking at it for two months I just couldn't get into it, and finally I returned it to the library, DNF'd. It's not fault of the book's; the writing is actually fluid and snappy, and the rather large cast of characters are unique and well-sketched. I guess a novel about Hungarian Jews during World War II is a little too real, right now? Whatever the reason, it slowed down my reading and I went from being 5 books ahead of my GoodReads goal to being a book behind. Madonna in a Fur Coat was the shot in the arm I needed to get back to reading again, and The Dispossessed  was the self-esteem boost I needed after the first DNF I've had in a long, long while.

But while I can see why teenage me couldn't get into The Dispossessed, adult me really liked it. I liked the little grammatical nuances of Pravic (like the total absence of possessive pronouns), I liked the world-building, I liked how Urras was a whole planet full of nations at cross-purposes instead of a single monoculture. I liked how neither Urras nor Anarres were all-good or all-bad, but both oppressive and less than ideal in their own way, though maybe that's pessimism on Le Guin's part. (Or maybe it's just realism. #bleak)

But I think the most pertinent part of The Dispossessed is actually connected to some complaints leveraged at the March for Science: science shouldn't be political! science doesn't have an agenda except the truth! and so on. But Shevek's presence on Urras (and specifically, within the nation-state of Io) is entirely political, as is the knowledge Io hopes to gain from him. Knowledge doesn't exist in a vacuum, and scientists have an obligation to be clear-eyed about the impact of their science beyond the narrow scope of academia. If scientists are only willing to engage in politics to the extent that politics interferes with their ability to do science, rather than to ensure the responsible application and dissemination of the work they do, then we're boned.

Talky Tuesday: Overdue Like Whoa 101 in 1001 Check-In

This blog has been quiet for a while now (is that why my Etsy shop is so dead, too?) (#thingsthatmakeyougohmmm). I hate that, though. While other work has picked up (yay!), the truth is that the reason I've been quiet here is because I suck at time management, not because I've been busy in any meaningful way. So let's come back to 2016's word of the year and reintegrate that into my life or however the heck frou-frou life coaches would put it.

I won't bore you by slapping my entire 101 in 1001 list in this entry and calling it quits. You can read it over here, if you really want to know what I'm trying to do with my life over the medium-term. I mostly want to talk about it in a big picture sense.

1. First of all, I'm almost at the end of my 1001 days and there's a whole bunch of goals that I know I'll miss, most of which constitute some kind of daily or weekly habit: checking in, #resisting, etc. The one I'm most bummed about is, I guess, my 1001 sun salutations goal. It didn't seem ambitious when I wrote the list, because that comes down to just one sun salutation every day, and that's easy, right? That's like a minimally easy goal, totally! I was already on board the yoga train when I wrote the list and that was going to continue, right?

Bzzt! Nope, guess not. And I should be doing yoga, since my running habit has stuck in a serious way. I'm fat, but probably more importantly, I am seriously deconditioned and don't have the kind of muscle strength I should if I want to keep running without fucking up my ankles or knees. (Knees, realistically: that seems to run [hah!] in the family.) I need to sit with why I've opted out of yoga, an activity I legitimately love.

2. Part of that might be that I'm actually literally sitting—meditating, that is. This wasn't a habit I had on my 101 in 1001 list, but I just picked it up (again) organically. So even though I'm not practicing yoga at the moment, I'm still getting a daily chill pill. This without actually adding it as an official goal. I might add it, just so I can have the satisfaction of crossing off something I'm already doing.

Image courtesy GarboFromHungary

3. Speaking of new habits, running is now a thing I do. And this fat kid jogged a non-stop mile for the first time in her life, maybe, just a couple of weeks ago, so I guess I get to call myself a runner now? I should make it to Mordor (FINALLY!) by the end of this list!

By Dr. Blofeld [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

4. A goal that I'm going to be able to check off in a few weeks is visiting continental Europe. I have a 6-hour layover in Copenhagen en route to the US, and I fully intend to go out and see as much of the city as I can between my flights. It's arguably not a true "continental" visit, as Denmark is still part of Scandinavia, but it'll still be a new city and a new country for me, so that counts!


5. I still haven't read the handful of books left on my (altered) TIME Top 100 list. Still! But it's going to happen, This year's my year. I can feel it. The good news reason behind why I've been so pokey with the end of this list is that I've been diving into good books thanks to NetGalley, Blogging For Books, and my Facebook book club. I originally decided to tackle the TIME Top 100 list when I was fresh out of university and didn't know what to read next. Now college is far behind me and I'm pretty good at finding books, so I don't need that guiding hand as much anymore.

Friday 5: Tiny Gestures

loli Clement

What might you put in a small, pretty glass bottle as a romantic gift to someone?

I imagine some kind of memento from a place that's important to both of you, like some sand from the beach you went to on your honeymoon, or water from the stream you went fishing in for your first date, or a petal from their favorite flower. That kind of thing.

Image from jdurham on MorgueFile.com

Someone you care very much for is leaving for a long time but will be back. What small object (not a photo) might you give him or her to remember you by?

One of my best friends from college has a family tradition of using something white to wave goodbye to someone leaving on a trip. Anything white—when either of us have remembered to do it with each other, it's usually a receipt from a wallet, purse, or glove compartment. Who doesn't always have fifty million receipts hanging around?

But I don't think I would really gift anyone leaving on a trip a proper memento. They'll be back, right? So what's the point?

Nik MacMillan

If you were to leave a small mark in your current residence, as lasting evidence that you lived there, what would you leave, and where would you leave it?

My family often vacationed at a cabin up in Danby Vermont, right on Tinmouth Pond. We always got at least one breakfast at Sugar and Spice, and my brother and I were allowed something from the gift shop. I almost always opted for a watercolor paint set. They came with maybe five or six thematic pencil sketches (kittens, natural vistas, etc.) for you to paint yourself, and one year I left one of my masterpieces propped on a beam in my loft. I hope it's still there!

Shawn Appel

What would you like to toss into the fires of Mount Doom?

Can I get really abstract here for a moment? Ignorance, or maybe greed. If it has to be a physical thing, then I have some garbage headphones that weren't all that cheap but still had garbage sound quality and broke after a few months of normal use. I have the worst luck with headphones.

Those adopt-a-star things are gimmicky rip-offs, but if they weren’t, and someone gave you one as a gift, what would you name it?

Probably after someone I care about. It would depend on who was on my mind at the moment I got the little certificate.

Happy Fourth?

Nothing says "America" like a gay first-generation Lithuanian-American Jew!

It's Midsommar!

This is my life now.

Book Review: Madonna in a Fur Coat

As the paucity of book reviews here would suggest, I've been in a reading slump recently. As an avid reader, I always find it troubling when I go for weeks without finishing a proper novel. Madonna in a Fur Coat was exactly what I needed to break my losing streak.

I'm a member of an informal Internet book club that's going on two years old. It's done a really good job of balancing light fiction, classics, and nonfiction, so I have to say that our two founders (who started the club and who pick most of the books, though with input from everyone else) have excellent taste! Other books I've read (and enjoyed!) for this book club include  The Road to Mecca, Passing, and The Price of Salt.

I am a sucker for character-driven stories that feature moody, introspective protagonists. I guess that even as an adult, I'm an angsty teenager at heart. That's not to suggest that there's anything callow or self-indulgent about Madonna in a Furcoat. Even if it leans heavily on romance tropes that might strike some readers as overdone or tedious, what makes Madonna in a Furcoat stand out isn't the love story but the writing and the characters. It would have been a welcome palate cleanser after The French Lieutenant's Woman, a novel with a similar plot but altogether different style and attitude towards its characters, particularly its love interest. I'll leave off with a favorite quote:

Just as warm sunlight can, by passing through a lens, turn to fire, so too can love. It's wrong to see it as something that swoops in from the outside. It's because it arises from the feelings we carry inside us that it strikes with such violence, at the moment we least expect.

Newly Relisted: Peridot Bloodstone Rhodonite and Shell Root 2 Necklace

This is another Kokoba beta release, so to speak. It's not among some of the very first sciart jewelry I ever made, but it's still been sitting in storage for a while—probably six or seven years, I'd say.

Root 2 necklace featuring peridot, rhodonite, bloodstone, and seashells by Kokoba

Pi is usually the darling of the "math-for-the-masses" world, and it's easy to see why. It has a cool and instantly recognizable Greek letter for a symbol; it's a concept you touch on relatively early in your math career (at least in the US, I was in 6th grade when we learned about pi); you can make puns about pies and pirates.

Somewhere in my calculus notes there's a doodle of a pi symbol with a tail, some paws, and a rat face in pirate costume and the caption "pi-rat." It's probably been lost to time (and by "lost to time," I mean "thrown out with the rest of my calculus notes"). I don't think anyone was celebrating Root 2 Day on January 4, 2014 (or on April 1 2014, if you're in Europe). But pi gets a day every year!

So this is my tribute to poor, neglected root 2. I admit, I've played some part in neglecting it. Did you know, for example, that root 2 is the first number proven to be irrational? The Ancient Greeks actually cooked up an elegant proof on the topic. 

There's a lot going on in this necklace: there's chips, there's cubes, there's regular round beads, and there's shells. But it still feels fairly balanced, rather than haphazard or chaotic.

If you want to show some love for an overlooked irrational, this root 2 necklace is available in my Etsy shop. I'm thinking I should sit down and whip up some more root 2 bling. Just for variety's sake.