Andrew > Recent Status Updates

(also that same narrative voice is also one of the easiest narrative voices to write... snarky smart-ass ... let's see some more variety Adrian please)

2nd novella has many of same issues as first... too long, the narrative voice was basically identical... less interesting ending though, 2/5

Read 1st novella... too long and and takes a lot of runway to get rolling, but the last 30-40 pages are great, with a pleasantly disturbing twist ending. Probably 3/5

So far my only disagreement would be that Che doesn't give sufficient consideration to the global context of USSR socialism, in which from their inception they were competing with capitalist superpowers (Germany, GB and the U.S.) in a literal existential struggle. Unclear if there was any pathway apart from something like NEP to preserve both nation and revolution, and I don't think Che fully takes that into account.

A large point of disagreement is also in USSR's emphasis on proletariat and working class, giving them primacy in a socialist revolution/state over farmers/campesinos. This directly contradicts the experience of the Cuban, Chinese and Vietnamese revolutions and Che isn't shy about pointing it out. I don't know much about Maoism but my impression is that this puts Che solidly in the Maoist camp.

He points out clear propagandistic passages that are unsupported by real-world evidence, and is also heavily skeptical of state socialism in general.

Seeing the manual lay out their argument and then Che respond passage by passage is really a perfect learning tool not only for the subject of political economy, but also for how to read a text critically.

Obvious why this was suppressed until mid-00s... very critical of USSR, Lenin, and specifically Lenin's NEP as sort of an original sin of state socialism (trying to create a hybrid economy with capitalism).

Loving this so far, not only is it fascinating to see Guevara's personality while commenting on the USSR Manual, but it's an incredibly helpful way to learn about the intricacies of 20th century state socialism, and the problems therein.

Irritating technique of having characters cryptically hint at things or almost remember them, but get somehow interrupted. Until 10-20 pages later the mystery is resolved. Artificial stakes-building.

Day is clearly attempting to craft high-stakes, tense action scenes, yet fills them up with such incomprehensible technical jargon that the lay reader has no idea what is happening. I'm just skimming to the end of the sequence to get to the outcome.

On a hunch I've looked up Day's bio to find that his day-job is in tech/aerospace. Let's just say that tracks with my reading experience.

Bizarre obsession with G-forces, without ever actually having done the legwork to explain how they work or why we should care.

Feels like the book could have started about where they are now, having established colonies on a new system and dealing with Earth geopolitics they've dragged with them.

Writing still feels pretty bad... at least not as dated/stilted as Asimov but otherwise about at that level.

Remarkably poor world-building and character development, with instead a perplexing emphasis on procedural minutiae and (fictional) tech specifications

Noam Chomsky had some glowing comments about Orwell and specifically "Homage to Catalonia," which is one of my all-time favorites. . . so I decided I'd read Orwell in conjunction with Chomsky.

Finished the 2nd book, "The Track," about Barea's time as a sergeant in the Spanish-Morroccan war in the 1920s. It continued the better pacing of the 2nd half of the 1st book and did well to depict the corruption and hypocrisy plaguing the Spanish military and government, in addition to Barea's growing disillusionment with the status quo.

Finished the first book, "The Forge," which was about his childhood. It was a slog -- the 1st half had flashes of beauty but was largely a painstaking depiction of the minutiae of his childhood setting.

The 2nd half was much better though -- it actually chronicled formative events of his youth and documented the beginnings of his preoccupation with justice and equality (and socialism).

I'm slowing down. . . the main story's pretty interesting (though decidedly more Dickensian than Tolstoyian), but Hugo's horrendously frequent asides really bog it down.

The principal characters have grown flat too -- all of them appear to be motivated solely by Love, blech.

But Gavroche is the man! What a slog this would be without him peppered throughout. . .

Finally got some payoff with the Valjean/Thenardier confrontation after the uneven "Marius" section. I'm now skipping a good percentage of pages dealing with historic context and minor characters -- beginning to wish I had just gone with the abridged version.

Also, at risk of being a killjoy: wouldn't it have made a lot more sense for Jean Valjean to just abscond with Cosette to Switzerland or any other neighboring country once they had smuggled themselves out of the Convent? I realize that would have maybe precluded any further dramatic action in the story, but still -- wouldn't that have pretty much been checkmate?

After "Cosette" the bloat is intruding somewhat: 50 pages describing Waterloo and 50 more on the history of a specific convent. . . these things I could do without.

The story itself is still gripping but I find myself skimming over a lot of description, setting, history, etc. . . Isn't it weird that this was written at the same time as War&Peace, another huge tome that depicts a famous Napoleon defeat?

Finished the "Fantine" section, enough for a small novel in itself. I'm hooked! Already loving the iconic characters -- Bishop de Digne, Jean Valjean, Fantine, Javert -- though they suffer a bit in authenticity due to Hugo's Dickensian propensity to beatify or vilify.

So far falling between Dickens and Tolstoy on Blake's Scale of Melodrama. . . neither as cartoonish as the Brit nor authentic as the Ruski.

Here goes. . . my Huge Summer Read is officially underway.