The Other Don Kelly

Some quick reviews:

Boss Lincoln: The Partisan Life of Abraham Lincoln by Matthew Pinsker: This was a look at Lincoln’s career as a partisan operative, from the early 1840’s or so through his death. I thought it was fascinating (though I could see others finding it dry); much of the general history of the era was background to Lincoln’s efforts and machinations, which were mostly done through various open letters and interviews in the press, along with confidential letters to other party leaders. I especially liked how the 1850’s were covered, it really fleshed out the period.

Platform Decay by Martha Wells: The latest (I think) in one of my not-so-guilty pleasures, the “Murderbot Diaries.” I read this in about a day.

Picks and Shovels by Cory Doctorow: I liked the story, and I usually like Cory Doctorow, but this one left me wishing he wrote it better. He leaned pretty heavily on foreshadowing, especially at the ends of chapters — “little did I know, the situation would change…” It got tedious after a while, which is a shame because with a little editing this could have been a classic.

Right now I’m reading some nonfiction: Endless Forms, a book about wasps by British entomologist Sirian Sumner. This is pretty cool — I’m still not going to like wasps, but I think I’ll end up appreciating them a little more.

We watched The Godfather a few weeks ago for “movie night.” I’d seen it before (as well as the sequel) but was so fascinated that I got the book from the library — I finished it in about two days. I’m not going to call it “Capital-L Literature,” but it was well written and a compelling page-turner. The book version ranged more widely, and at the same time had a tighter plot, than the movie(s). Great book, great movie?

I saw another movie just this week (on my own on the laptop): Prometheus. It was supposed to be a prequel to Alien, and it was, but despite the decades of film and SFX tech improvements since the original (and the first sequel, Aliens) it was a much weaker, more scattered story than either. There, I said it: they can’t all be winners.

Well, today marks the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the SS Edmond Fitzgerald.

Probably one of my favorite songs, I didn’t realize until just a few years ago that it was about a contemporary event, not some ancient story of a shipwreck — the wreck was in 1975, and the song came out in 1976.

I’ve seen some joking, an uptick in Internet interest; the song and story are having a bit of a moment. Good.

I decided (pre-crash) to read as many Hugo Award winners as I could. This seemed to be a good way to explore my favorite genre, while avoiding the unexpected dreck I usually find on my own. I found that I’d already read quite a few of the more recent winners, and there are some I already know I’ll avoid, but that leaves plenty of books to check out.

Here are three I read recently:

• A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine, a space opera. I really liked this; I’m finding I especially like galaxy-sized world building.
• A Desolation Called Peace also by Arkady Martine, a continuation of the story from her other book. I think I’d read a third (and a fourth, and a fifth…) if she wrote one.
• Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher, a young-adult-ish fantasy adventure. Nice enough, but fantasy is less and less my thing as time passes.
• I started on The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowall, an alternate history where 1950’s America takes an extinction-level meteorite hit. It’s the start of a series, but I didn’t finish this one so I probably won’t track down the rest.

That’s about when I lost interest in my reading project. I reread some Arthur C. Clarke (Expedition to Earth, The Fountains of Paradise) and called it a day.

There was a new Slow Horses novel that just came out (Clown Town, by Mick Herron), so I got that on Kindle and read it, but then I kind of hit a wall with my reading, until I picked up a new-ish treatment of Alexander the Great, focusing on the last seven years of his life.

This was Alexander at the End of the World by Rachel Kousser, and it dealt mainly with Alexander’s difficulties in the eastern part of his empire, his attempts to create a lasting state from his conquests. It was based on the usual classical sources, plus a lot of fairly modern archaeological research, and it was really good for fleshing out the story of Alexander in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Currently I’m rereading Anne Leckie’s Translation State.

So that John Denver song about Jacques Cousteau in my last post, it got me thinking about the latest Richard Powers novel, which I’d read a few weeks ago but now I couldn’t remember its name. So, I Googled it (it was Playground) and happened to read a few random reviews, and I won’t post any spoilers but I found I completely misunderstood the entire book! Like, the entire point of the story went right over my head… I guess I’ll just have to give it a re-read.

I got interested in a recent presidential ruling, a two-year exemption for some coal-fired power plants from the new, stricter EPA regulations on mercury emissions. I took a look at the list of plants in the proclamation and mapped the ones in Pennsylvania; you can check out my new page with (one version of) the map here. Enjoy! If that’s the right word.

But that map is not what I came here to talk about, I came here to talk about yodeling.

There is a song I really like called “I Am The Mercury,” by Jimmy Spheeris. The title caught my attention at first because it reminded me of an image from a science fiction novel involving alchemy, where a student sees a plate in one of the secret texts: it was described as a wild man’s face, maybe caught halfway into a scream. The picture (inside the book, in the novel) was titled “Lead Man,” but I remembered it as something-something Mercury — possibly because of the connection between mercury and insanity?

Anyway, there is no connection between the book and that song, but the song is incredible:

What I really like is that chorus, “let it rain on the mountain,” and then that wild yodeling shout — I don’t know if that even is yodeling, it seems very Americana, a folksong-ey barbaric mountain yawp. I know I’ve heard it somewhere before…

I knew it had to be in some John Denver song, so I Googled “John Denver yodeling” and found the one I was looking for pretty quickly: “Calypso,” a song about Jacques Cousteau and his research ship. And so, just because I can:

And that brings us back to thinking about the environment. And, now that I think of it, that definitely is yodeling.

PS This is what I wrote twenty years ago.

Well, well, it looks like Thomas Pynchon has a new novel coming out this fall!