And basically everything else he’s written.
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I’ve not got 'round to his other series yet.
Guessing they’re worth it.
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The Nursery Crime series is basically a crossover with the Thursday Next series.
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Just finished the The Road to the Country: A Novel by Chigozie Obioma. More emotional than I was intending to tackle these days, but a great book. A naive, immature college student in Lagos gets sent to find his disabled brother on the wrong side of the Biafran/ Nigerian Civil War.
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So, I have a nice fat book-token* to spend on Thursday (two days from now).
I’d love to get into a series of scifi that’s up there with Banks’s “Culture” series.
Any pointers?
(I’ve read all the Becky Chambers).
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Yes, I know I’m feckin’ old. My dad was surprised I wanted a book-token, even though this is like the tenth year in a row of asking for one and receiving one. It’s the best gift for me.
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I would like to get either a tablet or an e-reader to read books. I kind of think that a tablet would be the best form factor since i can do general browsing with it, on top of reading. But something dedicated for reading (and possibly note taking for work), plus long battery life is also attractive to me.
Not sure who has used both, i haven’t used either so i have no point of reference for what to lean towards.
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I use both. I have a Kindle Paperwhite I use for reading, and various tablets for doing non-reading stuff. I find that trying to read on an LCD display is fatiguing; it’s OK for doing quick skimming of (e.g.) PDFs of technical material, but for in-depth reading the Paperwhite wins every time.
It’s very thin and much easier to hold than any of the tablets I have, and mine is new enough (~6 years old at this point) that it has a frontlight, so I can use to read in the dark. It also has the advantage over most tablets that it’s an eInk display, so it’s readable in daylight, too.
My only complaint about the Paperwhite is the display size; it’s roughly the size of a paperback novel. The current model has a display that’s slightly larger than the one I have, but some other devices have an even larger screen.
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I appreciate your thoughts. I guess i can start with the wider use-case and look at getting a tablet for now, see how reading and note taking feels. And if those are things that i need a separate e-ink device for then i’ll look into it further. Secretly i hope i can convince my job to either pay for partially pay for an e-ink tablet because i do want to use it for note-taking for work. I really want to improve my organization and time management, and taking notes on paper or on my computer doesn’t work for me.
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Notetaking is another thing the Paperwhite doesn’t really do - you can bookmark and highlight things, but that’s note really “notetaking” in the general sense. There is a newer Kindle ereader that allows you to actually take notes, but there are other eInk devices out there (reMarkable, Supernote, Onyx Boox, etc.) that you should consider.
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I have been pondering getting something along the lines of reMarkable, Supernote, and Boox. They’re all pricey, some more than others.
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I’ve found the paperwhite excellent for reading books. And I like the portability and huge battery life.
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A friend that I get my book recommendations from was posting about re-reading The Country Girls trilogy by Edna O’Brien (which I had not heard of). OMG this passage is 
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I’ve been chewing over Affliction by Russel Banks, finished it a couple weeks ago. Almost more than anything else, It’s just great writing. I almost couldn’t read the next book I had lined up after because of the steep drop-off in the quality of the writing.
I wasn’t that enthusiastic because I was worried it was going to read like “oh let’s really try to understand the MAGA sort” which is obviously not something many of us are in the mood for these days, but it was far more complex and subtle and rewarding. From the NYTimes Book Review:
It’s essentially a story of intergenerational trauma, but the book is so much more than just what it’s about. The myriad ways someone can find themselves feeling hemmed in by forces that feel beyond one’s control, feeling tiny humiliations every day that reinforce one’s lack of agency and dash hope for something better. And how trauma feeds into that and an inability to really feel connected and have the tools to improve one’s behavior. And how the lack of agency and control leads a person to actions that make complete sense to them but look like lunacy to everyone else. The central tragedy of the story is that Wade is actually smart and has enough awareness to desperately want something better and to be a good father but is completely utterly unequipped to do so, is only able to find moments of peace in fits and starts which are then overwhelmed by his fuckups, and seems unaware of how his own actions self-sabotage his efforts.
Speaking of which, hope for something better, the novel is a fantastic feels-true-to-life account of small rural towns. I grew up among, but not of, such a place. It captures well the psychology, which is easy to imagine applies to any community that is both poor and looked down on by the larger world, and in which the main decision that defines people is whether to stay or leave and never come back. People who have education are viewed with suspicion, and people who try to improve something inevitably do it slightly wrong and then feel foolish for even trying, because of course this place is crap and the people who don’t have the impetus to leave sink into regional low self-esteem. The novel makes Wade sympathetic because of his own trauma and desire to be a better person; by the end you realize that was never going to happen, you realize by the end that his hopes for a better relationship with his daughter were thwarted before the book even started, everything is failure and being a fool for thinking otherwise. At the end the only person able to change things does so not by improving anything but by transforming the town into something else. The town has to figuratively die before being able to improve. Mr. Banks wrote so well that I cared so much about this person that I had trouble finishing it because he was in so much pain by the end and I was actually disappointed he didn’t die so his suffering would be over.
I thought I would want to see the 1997 movie (looks like a fantastic cast) but now I don’t think so.
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I had a tablet for a while, color was nice but they are heavier and battery life sucked. They are probably better now than they were 7 years ago though.
My latest reader was a Kindle but it simply stopped holding a charge. I discovered that I really prefer reading on my phone, which is color, just as lightweight, always with me, much faster, always kept charged, and does smooth vertical scrolling. And it supports not just Amazon books, but Alibris and other things.
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I have read graphic novels, novels, and manga/manhwa/manhua on my phone. It’s doable and convenient, but ultimately not entirely comfortable/to my liking.
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Wow indeed, but “riding a doorknob”? 
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Thanks for sharing, that’s a great description of that novel. I read several of his books long ago, Continental Drift and Rule of the Bone (?) having stuck strongest with me; I think the former seemed better. I don’t think I’ve read Affliction, but now I want to. I have seen the movie, and thought it was good but yeah, likely not as good as the novel.
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Given our Interesting Times, I’ve been tempted to given this Roth novel a try. But, yet again given problems I’ve had with his novels before, probably won’t.
What’s so brilliant about this one passage (and I think the novel is overall pretty weak, though more on that in a second) is how skillfully Roth interweaves the language of corporate transfers, economic opportunity, Homestead and pioneers, with the reality of political repression and punishment and ethnic cleansing.
What’s doubly brilliant is how when the family argues over this move, the father defends it as an act of the company and the mother attacks it as an act of the government. “Bess, please,” says the father, “this is what it is like to work for a big company. Big companies transfer people all the time. And when they do, you have to pick up and go.” She replies, “I’m talking about the government. The government cannot do this. They cannot force people to pick up and go—that is not in any constitution that I ever heard of.”
The reality, of course, is that this is a move by both the government and the company, who are acting together, somewhat but not entirely, like the merchant sovereign that Adam Smith warned of in The Wealth of Nations. But insofar as the family understands it as an act of the company, the transfer is seen as legitimate. It’s only if it’s an act of government that it becomes illegitimate.
I can’t help but feel that Roth, unintentionally, is narrating the real back story to the right-wing politics of our time. For decades, entire communities in America have been wiped out by corporate decisions. Employees have been moved around (if they’re lucky) like pieces on a chessboard. More often, the company picks up and move and people and communities are left to die; they’re disposable. This has been the story of capitalism since the beginning: Just read Edmund Morgan’s chapter “Boom!” in American Slavery, American Freedom, on the tobacco boom in 1620s Virginia, how it created garbage towns made of people who were equally disposable. And it’s been the story of deindustrialization since at least the 1960s, when Black writers and political figures began to point out what was happening to Black neighborhoods in urban centers across the Midwest and Northeast as companies picked up and moved south or west or out of the country.
When you get so inured to this kind of reality in the economic world, it becomes awfully hard to resist in the political world.
As I said, I don’t think this is one of Roth’s strongest novels. It has a lot of interesting material, but it’s lacking in many ways. But in many ways, its weaknesses are inadvertently revealing of the politics of our moment. So it’s a good time to be reading the novel.
And why am I doing so?
Because I am going to be talking about it fairly soon on a wonderful podcast called “Roth and Company,” which is hosted by Sam Graham-Felsen, historian of the Philip Roth Personal Library. The podcast focuses on one novel per episode with a discussion among various writers. It has featured Adelle Waldman (on The Ghost Writer), Ariel Levy (on Sabbath’s Theater), Taffy Brodesser-Akner (on American Pastoral), and, now, this coming week, the New Yorker writer Andrew Marantz and I discussing The Plot Against America with Graham-Felsen. When the episode goes up, I’ll make sure to post it. In the meantime, you can catch up with earlier episodes. Link is below.
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I’ve not read his other work, but I did read this novel. It’s very well done, I think. Not sure if it has the same problem you’ve had with his other work (misogyny, maybe?), but it’s a very interesting counter-history of the 30s in the US that feels all too plausible. The focus on one family and the community that they are embedded in provides a real useful lens to think about how fascism actually might function on a bottom up level. Much of the story is told through the eyes of the youngest son, and how all this impacts him and his family.
But as always, YMMV! There are probably lots of other great books that can speak to our present moment, so I don’t think it’s a “necessary” read…
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I’ve tried both.
I can read and read on e-ink screens; I get migraines on other tablet screens.
I also have an easier time with button controls than touchscreen controls, especially if the system puts important functions in the corners and the touchscreen doesn’t work in the corners.
A Kindle would probably be cheaper, but Amazon is cutting support for older Kindles, and for sideloading Kindle books, and might cut support for sideloading other books too.
A Boox is an all-purpose e-ink tablet. A Meebook should be similar. A ReMarkable is, I think, mostly intended for reading, and a BigMe for note-taking.
A Kobo might be another option.
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