What Have I Been Reading (and Culling)
Aug. 8th, 2018 01:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroGet Out of Your Mind & Into Your Life by Steven C. Hayes – An introduction to a therapy style called ACT (by the guy who created the style), which is mostly just “mindfulness” with a “then go do stuff” overlay. You can speed-read this by skipping every other chapter, because he tends to say the same things over and over again. The general idea seems sound, but it appears that it has similar clinical results to CBT in depression and anxiety, and I’ve generally found that to be more effective for the way my brain works. I did find the idea that you can derive your values from what you fear/avoid to be interesting; given that my biggest anxiety tends to come from not doing “enough” or being good enough for people, clearly I care about making people think highly of me.
Powers by Ursula K. Le Guin - Apparently book three in a series but standalone enough to enjoy; this is the life story of a slave named Gavir who is blessed with perfect recall and some mild precognition. It plays out like a travelogue of the fantasy world, showing the different cultures and how Gav interacts with each of them, looking for his proper place in the world. (A world that is kind of terrible for the most part, mind you—slavery, murder, rape, and torture all figure into the narrative repeatedly.) I think my only big complaint is that when the plot threads all come together in the fourth segment, the terrorizing figure from Gavir’s past is only briefly glimpsed and disappears as an afterthought. He might as well be something Gav imagined or hallucinated, for all his impact on the plot. For that matter, I found it mildly disappointing that we didn’t find out what happened to most of the first-segment characters who were left behind, though I suppose we can make certain assumptions and guesses (none of them pleasant). I read this on impulse after getting it as part of a Humble Bundle, and while it doesn’t have me rushing out to devour the other books in he series, I enjoyed it.
Long Hidden ed. Rose Fox & Daniel Jose Older - Billed as “speculative fiction from the margins of history,” it's a collection of stories revolving around non-European cultures and marginalized people. And boy oh boy, does it have the anthology problem in spades. The examination of different types of African ogres that opens the collection? Really solid. The next half-dozen stories? Meh. And the thing is, if you can get through the first half-dozen stories and they’re all weak, the odds of finding anything worthwhile in the rest of the collection are minimal. Every editor knows you front-load your best stuff in an anthology to get the reader engaged, and they just didn’t have enough here.
Geek Wisdom by Stephen H. Segal - This feels like a collection of blog posts rolled up into a book—each segment (and they’re short, a page or two each) opens with a geeky quote or reference, and then gives some wisdom or moral philosophy that vaguely relates to it. Some of these connections make sense; many of them, less so. I put it on my phone and randomly read snippets instead of Tumblr, but eventually got bored by the repetitive nature and the fact that they weren’t actually very entertaining.
Ten Dead Comedians by Fred Van Lente - Not actually funny; this is a murder mystery that thinks it’s smarter than it is. I lost interest quickly.
Powers by Ursula K. Le Guin - Apparently book three in a series but standalone enough to enjoy; this is the life story of a slave named Gavir who is blessed with perfect recall and some mild precognition. It plays out like a travelogue of the fantasy world, showing the different cultures and how Gav interacts with each of them, looking for his proper place in the world. (A world that is kind of terrible for the most part, mind you—slavery, murder, rape, and torture all figure into the narrative repeatedly.) I think my only big complaint is that when the plot threads all come together in the fourth segment, the terrorizing figure from Gavir’s past is only briefly glimpsed and disappears as an afterthought. He might as well be something Gav imagined or hallucinated, for all his impact on the plot. For that matter, I found it mildly disappointing that we didn’t find out what happened to most of the first-segment characters who were left behind, though I suppose we can make certain assumptions and guesses (none of them pleasant). I read this on impulse after getting it as part of a Humble Bundle, and while it doesn’t have me rushing out to devour the other books in he series, I enjoyed it.
Long Hidden ed. Rose Fox & Daniel Jose Older - Billed as “speculative fiction from the margins of history,” it's a collection of stories revolving around non-European cultures and marginalized people. And boy oh boy, does it have the anthology problem in spades. The examination of different types of African ogres that opens the collection? Really solid. The next half-dozen stories? Meh. And the thing is, if you can get through the first half-dozen stories and they’re all weak, the odds of finding anything worthwhile in the rest of the collection are minimal. Every editor knows you front-load your best stuff in an anthology to get the reader engaged, and they just didn’t have enough here.
Geek Wisdom by Stephen H. Segal - This feels like a collection of blog posts rolled up into a book—each segment (and they’re short, a page or two each) opens with a geeky quote or reference, and then gives some wisdom or moral philosophy that vaguely relates to it. Some of these connections make sense; many of them, less so. I put it on my phone and randomly read snippets instead of Tumblr, but eventually got bored by the repetitive nature and the fact that they weren’t actually very entertaining.
Ten Dead Comedians by Fred Van Lente - Not actually funny; this is a murder mystery that thinks it’s smarter than it is. I lost interest quickly.
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Date: 2018-08-10 01:32 pm (UTC)