And so, we have the third reading list of 2022! We’re at that point where spring might be coming, but we’re not sure. Do we catch up on the end of those winter readings? Or do we move along to something a bit warmer and sunnier?

I think I did a bit of both here. Continue on to see what I’ve been reading lately. I’ve even thrown in a couple of TV shows as a bonus! And let me know what you’re reading!

Books

Iain M. Banks – Matter

This is the second book I read from Iain M. Banks’s Culture series. Yes, I still haven’t gotten around to reading Consider Phlebas. Don’t blame me. My local public library had a damaged copy and had to order a new one.

This book explores some of the history of the Culture universe as well as relations among some of its more nested and marginal groups. It concerns a specific isolated world called a ‘shellworld’ – a set of spheres in space with their own special, artificially constructed system of lighting and heating (often called a ‘Dyson sphere’).

Like everything else I’ve read from Banks in the Culture series, it’s fresh. Banks seems capable of infinitely generating new, original stories in the same universe. And one  refreshing aspect is that this story really concerns the Culture itself only at the margins. It’s mostly set on a planet – and among a group of species – outside the obvious and direct influence of the Culture. Though the Culture is still there.

James S. A. Corey – Leviathan Falls

And so, The Expanse now has an ending! After 9 books and 10 years, the two authors who collaborate under the pen name James S. A. Corey have concluded their series.

As a friend pointed out to me on Facebook, the ending was both predictable and satisfying. I won’t spoil it for any readers who haven’t gotten around to picking up Leviathan Falls yet. But the short version? We more or less learn what the killer alien race (the ‘Leviathan’ of Leviathan Wakes and Leviathan Falls) is up to. And we more or less see a final battle between the alien and humanity.

And James Holden ends up being a big part of that final battle.

I’ll leave it at that. For readers who want more, go read the novels (starting with Leviathan Wakes)! And watch the TV show!

Susan Jacoby – Freethinkers

So, I’ve read yet another book on American history! This one comes from the perspective of ‘freethinkers.’ Or, as Susan Jacoby puts it, people who don’t follow conventional religions.

As with several of these books, I found the parts on early American history most interesting. Jacoby convincingly shows that many early Americans ‘founding fathers,’ and so on, remained quite secular in their views and habits.

Jacoby also highlights various secularists and freethinkers who get ignored by conventional American history. She focuses on Thomas Paine, for one. But, even more so, she tries to rehabilitate the image of Robert Ingersoll, probably the most important 19th century American secularist.

Along the way, Jacoby stresses the secular basis of American feminist movements, especially certain segments of the suffragist movement. She points out the extent to which American history pushes aside the secular elements of suffragists in favor of a focus on conservative elements of women’s rights movements (e.g., the WCTU).

Michael Patrick Lynch – Know-It-All Society

Another philosopher writing about mainstream culture and politics? Despite the hesitation on my part, it goes well enough. Lynch takes as his target ‘extreme’ political forces. He blames these forces on a culture of intellectual arrogance across the political spectrum, with the Internet and social media as key multipliers. Americans cut themselves off from anyone who disagrees with them and interact only in their self-contained worlds.

On Lynch’s view, people share news stories on social media to express themselves. Not to engage with the evidence or with one another. He points out, as many people know, that most people don’t even bother reading news stories before sharing them.

For my part, I’m skeptical of the idea that intellectual arrogance is central to what’s going on here. I suspect the intellectual arrogance we see – which is very much real – is more a byproduct of deeper social forces at play. With Trumpism, in particular, the ‘intellectual’ views often end up skimpy and basically an afterthought. The movement is borderline nihilistic. To put it all in my favorite Marxist terms, Lynch analyses only the superstructure.

That said, he analyzes it well. He’s at his best in Chapter 3 when he discusses convictions as a source of beliefs. We take a wide range of beliefs and make them central to our identities, our conceptions of ourselves and those around us. That blocks communication with those who differ.

TV Shows

Foundation, Season 1

I’ve written a few posts on Isaac Asimov and his Foundation and Robot novels. As readers might infer, I’ve been a fan of the Foundation series since I first read it in middle school.

Many people think of Foundation as something that simply can’t be filmed for TV or the big screen. So, they – and me, too! – took a skeptical attitude toward this TV series. How could anyone film a story with little in the way of action, no characters who stick around for more than about 10% of the story, and where time jumps cover a period of about 400 years? Who could film a story where the central plot concerns a play on Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire? And where the narrative is every bit as grand as the one Gibbon told?

The short answer is that they do it by significantly rewriting the story to update it. While eyes might roll here, for the most part it works out fine. I think they capture much of the underlying spirit of the story. But they do so in a way that makes sense in 2021-2022.

Not that they don’t miss a few things. So far, the show hasn’t built a narrative as grand and sweeping as the one Asimov did in the 1940s and 1950s. Nor does the TV show come anywhere near writing the kinds of interesting little mysteries that Asimov scatters throughout his stories. But the first season of the show surpassed my expectations.

The Handmaid’s Tale, Seasons 1-4

I’m sure plenty of readers know Margaret Atwood. And I’m sure most of those know that she wrote The Handmaid’s Tale. I recently watched the TV show version, and so far I’ve generally been pleased with it. I’ve watched the first 4 seasons. The real upside of the show is that it greatly expands on a limited fictional universe. Atwood’s first book is great, but she tells it in diary form and therefore from the perspective of only one character. The show greatly expands the telling, especially in Season 2.

On the other hand, the show largely runs out of source material by the end of Season 1, where it finishes most of the narrative from Atwood’s first book. This provides the show creators with the opportunity to do more background work in Season 2. But once that background work is largely finished, the show stalls a bit in Seasons 3 and 4.

I plan to stick with it, as it moves into Season 5. But I do think the show should get rather quickly to the finale – the main events and results of the Mayday resistance movement.