I finished Blindsight yesterday... It needs to roominate in my head before I can know for sure, but I'm pretty sure it's my favorite book I've ever read! Thank you for introducing it to me and convincing me to read it!
i just finished it too a couple weeks ago. loved it. i especiallly liked its very clean, hard and yes flinty prose. i was enjoying so much i did not want to finish it. also loved the twist ending.
@@meesalikeu I definitely feel a bit of a reading slump coming because it was so good! I loved that he mixed the horror of the unknown with the unease of the known. The alien and vampire created such a fascinating dichotomy to the atmosphere
I tried listening to it on audible and DNFed it. I don’t think audible is a good platform for this book. It’s got pretty convoluted prose, and it’s really easy to miss important details. I might try it again on kindle.
Extraordinary episode, BP. One always anxiously awaits your next post and once it arrives, one is never disappointed. Your Steinbeck mention when discussing The Doomsters has prompted me to get my hands on a copy, having not ever read MacDonald. Thanks for that. Glad to hear you dodged the C-19 bullet and survived. Well done. Cheers.
Wishing you a full recovery soon. I've read all of MacDonald's Archer books. Although the early ones are fine, they get better as they go along. Try Sleeping Beauty.
I read On The Beach while working at a middle/high school library. I'm a huge apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic fan, and as I was doing a library inventory, this book found its way into my hands. I was working on purging books that hadn't been checked out in a long while, and when I read the back of this it sounded very intriguing so I decided to read it. Wow. That book hit me so hard. It stuck with me for weeks afterwards, and I decided that I 100% would not get rid of it. In fact, I immediately put out a display of apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic books and included this one in it. I assume the book is still there on the shelves, probably having not been read by anyone, but I will, hands down, always recommend it to anybody who likes that genre of book. Edit to add: I feel like the whole fact that everybody kept living their lives is what made the book so unsettling. If you know your end is coming, what do you do? Do you run around with your hands over your head, screaming in panic for the next who knows how long? Or do you just live as you normally would? It's surreal, and it really makes you think. When the world is going to end, what's the appropriate way to act?
i found it was a very parochial story about britishness, to the point of complete parody. of course you know in the 1950s there was no ironice parody back then, which makes it rather dull. great premise though and it does feel correctly elegiac. the movie is very good too.
After this, I'm going to have to read On The Beach. Sounds like a suitable metaphor for how humanity as a whole is going about dealing with the global changes we are driving through global warming and declining biodiversity. The vast majority are either ignoring it or in denial, and going about the business as usual that is the root cause of it all.
A few years ago I read a series that is similar to On the Beach called The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters. It's about a comet coming to destroy Earth and how people react to it in the last few months. The main character continues being a policeman and investigating crimes for as long as he can. Not the best series, the crimes aren't all that interesting, but it does have interesting ideas about impending doom and how people face it.
I wish I had your skill of sticking with a book even when you don't like it, find it very slow, and/or find it predictable. While occasionally I can do that (depending on the writing and other factors) I can't. "The Beach" is a good example. It was so slow and dragging and without hope that I just gave up on it. Life is to short and there are too many books out there I want to experience to but myself through the suffering. Also I suspect your a better reader than I am, you probably read a lot faster, and these days I listen to books more than I read them on audio while I'm driving, in the gym, walking around, going for a hike, etc... Great reviews.
Ross MacDonald's (Kenneth Millar's) Lew Archer books are indeed a treasure. I re-read them more or less continuously, one of the 11 novels every 6 months or so. Your description of Archer as sometimes receding from the stage and allowing other characters to dominate is spot on: one critic put it beautifully when he described Archer as a "roving conscience," the private eye as an invisible eye that sees the other characters and provides a moral context for their stories but does not really have a story of his own. In the context of the novels there are reasons why Archer's emotional life is in stasis -- but as a narrative device the private eye as a roving moral context is a fantastic idea and MacDonald executes it beautifully.
Thank you for the recommendation of "We who are about to..." which I would probably never have noticed without you. This is truly a very unique book. The bleak tone and the weird 2nd half will probably turn off a lot of people, but the story managed to utterly draw me in and it's themes will stay in my head for a long time.
The holding to tradition and maintaining order feel of On The Beach I interpreted as the way people felt in the 1950s and 60s where once the Soviets tested a nuclear bomb and the Cuban misleading crisis occurred left a sense of powerlessness in people, like events were occurring beyond people’s control and we were all just waiting for the world to end. All you could do is live your life and cross your fingers. Like dancing on the edge of a volcano
I'm glad you are reading Joanna Russ. "Picnic on Paradise" might be my favorite SF novel -- it's a much easier entry point into her bibliography. (It's in the "Adventures of Alyx" anthology that you had at one point.) I think you would like "The Female Man" as well. Stay well!
I read On the Beach a couple years ago -- I randomly picked it up off my grandma's shelf -- and I mostly liked it. I agree it wasn't great and maybe I wouldn't recommend it to most people, but I felt there was something worthwhile there, especially at the end. I disagree a bit with your disappointment in how everyone was keeping the status quo until the end. I think enjoyed that part. To me it felt like people simply desperate for a modicum of normalcy at the end of days. They all know it's fake and futile but it's better than the alternative. I don't know. It was nice somehow. It's not often we see much grace in character's under pressure like these, so it felt comforting. Any, cool that you read it and reviewed it here! Cheers!
i agree! to me it almost felt as if by performing their duties/daily routines, they were able to hold off the wave of death for as long as possible. if you know the end is coming, maybe it's not the worst thing to continue on with your lives instead of panicking and giving up.
My deep hate for On The Beach is that they made us read it in seventh grade English class. A book about impending death! And SPOILER… A dog is euthanized in it!!!! WTF? This book is not suitable for 12 year olds. I would argue that it’s not a book suitable for ANYONE. And because I was so young, I thought all science fiction was about death and dying and dystopian governments. Luckily, I discovered the works of William Tenn and Kurt Vonnegut the following summer.
@@Bookpilled By the way, I didn't mean to imply that the dog and your health news were the highlights of the video. I also enjoyed your reviews, so thank you. (And I've correctly spelled "bout" now.)
Nice review on We Who Are About To … . Back when I was in college, we were force fed a lot of contemporary feminist books (we were force fed a lot of things). They all were strident, trite message books; less like literature and more like the type of pamphlet you’d find on a rack at the student health center. Messaging seems to be the point of most pop culture today, which, again, makes it all seem like pamphleteering rather than art. I had always enjoyed sci-fi, but sci-fi wasn’t welcome in the hallowed halls of the university except for a few outlier classes. Anyway, I always thought Russ was much more effective with feminist critique than the contemporary writers of the ‘80s and ‘90s, when I was in school. And yet none of the professors or women in the class had heard of her. “We Who Are About To …” is pretty hardcore, yet the motivations of the protagonist are so well developed, and she has some regrets. It tortures you as you read. “The Female Man” is even more powerful. You mentioned that Russ didn’t seem to give a damn about her reputation. It shows in her writing. In the Female Man, she writes like a modernist stylist. Sometimes it’s beautiful; sometimes it drags. But you can feel her thinking, “whatever, I don’t care. I’m going to do as I like.” She doesn’t give a damn and for me, it felt freeing. The most remarkable thing she does in “The Female Man” is she coaxes you into episodes in the story with humor, some ridiculous situation one of the protagonists gets into, and you laugh to yourself. Then you realize the situation has a parallel in reality, in the world. The humor is gone and you are left with horror. You feel how this person is oppressed by culture. From humor to horror in the length of a few paragraphs. Indeed, she was a master writer. I’ve gone long here. Sorry. Hope you feel better. If you make it to Wales in your travels, you should do a video with Outlaw Bookseller. Bet it would be a great discussion.
I am far from an expert on crime fiction, but I also find myself not caring much about the whodunit or how they might catch the bad guys. Divorce yourself from that and you’ll find a lot of excellent writing among the crime writers. I’d recommend Ed McBain and Joseph Wambaugh, the prose style and their quick wit in general carries their stories.
I hate suggesting novels b/c 1) you've probably already read my suggestions or 2) are swamped, but here goes: if you'd like a breezy crime read made up of almost 90 percent dialog, check out Gregory Mcdonald's Fletch series. (The movie(s) don't do the novels justice.) The prose is bare-bones minimalist, but the banter sparkles, and the plots are fluid but twisty in all the right places.
Margaret Millar (Mrs. Ross MacD) wrote a great mystery which takes place among Mexican farmworkers -- braceros -- as they were known then -- Beyond This Place Are Monsters is the title. Joe Bob says: Check it out. Too much niceness, btw, was a weakness of Shute's. I read one of his novels called The Trustee From The Toolroom and I recall the whole thing being ruined because every single character in it was so f***in' nice.
Sorry you had Covid . I appreciate your comments as always... I do disagree with On the Beach a movie i saw over 40 yrs ago and read the book 13 years ago. For its time Beach was daring. It is similar to Earth Abides and both have people trying to throw off the social yolks of society. The 1950s held a rebellious undercurrent that exploded in the 1960s ..but were repressed in the 1950s but thankfully the authors did persevere.
I have always loved your descriptions of the books. Will definitely be putting We Who Are About To on the list, sounds amazing. Glad to see you’re feeling better!
I enjoyed the Hunter novels by Richard Stark. Some are better than others, but I remember number 1-3 and 14 and 15 are good. (I give the numbers over titles for condensed reasons). Another great video, Matt.
So sorry you got Covid my dude - speedy recovery to you! I'm really excited by your take on "We Who Are About To..." (never heard of it or of Joanna Russ!). I've recently read a few space opera-type books (including Red Mars - very excited by Robinson's takes). But I did start wondering what a space-opera WITHOUT the assumptions of colonialism might look like. Just about every projection of space travel seems to assume that humans will just colonise other worlds, whether there's an indigenous population or not. Actually had a really interesting conversation with my dad about the human impulses around property ownership and colonialism / imperialism and whether it is essentially an accidental outgrowth of human development or something more innate. So very excited to read Russ's take - thanks again!!!!
A great book that plays with some of these questions is Semiosis. New intelligences. Survival. Colonisation. Cooperation. Trust. Interesting new visions of society. There's a breathtaking "negotiation" scene that had me slack-jawed.
@@Bookpilled Finished it this morning. It is incredible. Thank you so much for introducing me to another amazing author! Might I recommend the experience of reading it using text-to-speech software? She makes a comment in her journal about her Vocorder being unablee to spell "amenorrhea" - hilarious when your text-to-speech software inevitably can't pronounce it!!!!
Russ is a special one. Similar book to 'We Who Are About To...' is 'Shipwreck' by Charles Logan, which I mentioned briefly on my channel once- bleak, but realistic. There's a Library of America Russ coming out in October. Interestingly, I've hardly ever met any female Sf readers who have read her, despite having been selling -or trying to sell her books -for over 35 years...nicd vid as ever, Matt! You watch out for those viruses, man!
I probably won't read the MacDonald. I read the Shute, it didn't bother me the same way it did you, although I question why people didn't just try to build bunkers or protective suits and shelters, etc. The Russ sounds super dark. I can't wait. Gracias.
As someone who has a great connection to where you are, just roll with the background. Its part of the flavor of living in a neighborhood over there. Nbd.
I love your review of We Who Are About To, but I would add an essential word to describe the kind of bleak and psychotic dystopia that Russ recognizes as our world: Patriarchy.
I have to say that I did not even hear the dogs until you mentioned them. Probably the parrots in my own background drowned them out. All your points about On The Beach are very apt. When I first read it, as a teenager, I thought it was terrible. As an adult I actually like it more, it has a kind of horrified fascination to it. Though I have to say that the young woman starting a shorthand course to 'Get her life back on track' when they clearly knew they had less than three months of it left - that just seemed ludicrous beyond suspension of disbelief.
on the beach by shute is on my look for in bookstores list. i came to it from my interest in dystopian/utopian conspiracy novels.i want to say it came into my radar when i was reading alas babylon by pat frank. (also looking for mr adam by frank)
for hardboiled crime i would suggest you dont give up that ship just yet - look for chester himes real cool killers, jim thompson the grifters, and james ellroy american tabloid. or anything by them they are great writers. of course hammett, chandler and spillane are thee classical hardboiled guys, and great writers too, but i think my first 3 choices have a bit more modern sensibility. best movie is postman always rings twice 1946 version adapted from cain’s great book. funny i say all that as i dont care for this genre either, but i did really get into the hipsterish hardboiled stuff at one point for a bit.
_On the Beach_ - I find it a refreshing respite from "post apocalyptic" novels where all that's happening is fighting fellow survivors. Yes, I know that's (American, anyway) reality where the main prepper's kit are weapons, and society pretty much breaks down after two hour long blackout, but I like this different vision. This does not make the novel any less bleak; if anything, i find it more poignant, as depressing as, say, _The Road._ Interesting - you describe it in similar words as I would, but with different reaction to it... And thanks for the Russ recommendation.
new here, and loving your content a lot, so very clear, concise, thoughtful, and covering a lot of stuff other people don't. Can't wait to dive in - Question though, are the 100 books pulled from a particular list? I've skipped around a couple videos but haven't found anything about that. Or just some random 100 books? Edit: Oh hey. commented this before I realized what the last book was, and oh yeah oh yeah, We Who Are About To is *incredible*. Gotta be my favorite Novella out there, or damn close to. So dark, so smart. Incredible stuff.
Welcome. The 100 books were originally meant to be 100 books I already owned physical copies of. That became "read 100 books" post moving abroad and putting all my books in storage.
There’s a decent Australian movie called these final hours which may have been loosely taken from on the beach. The movie explores a little more of the chaos that would ensue. Decent movie if you’re interested in something new.
Glad you liked the McDonald, because I'm really hoping to hear your review of a Raymond Chandler novel one day and maybe this success with a crime novel will incline you towards Chandler.
An interesting juxtaposition of two different approaches. However, I prefer Shute's 'conservative' approach and willingness to remain human in the face of death over Russ's anti-natalism.
I wouldn't characterize Russ as antinatalist. And the protagonist's entreaty to not struggle for life is in order to not prolong inevitable suffering. She is the rational actor.
@@BookpilledLooking at it superficially from the perspective of the protagonist, this is true, but not when you apply the message to the whole society.
Interestingly I only ever read On the Beach because one of my favourite Finnish bands has a song that's inspired by the book and/or the movie. Personally, I prefer the song but the book did leave some pretty lasting impressions even though I found it a bit dated.
One random book I recommend if you come across it, is The Memory Tree by John R. Little. Based on a true story with a time travel aspect. Obviously the time travel is the fictional part but it is a book that will possibly break you emotionally. Highly recommended!
Thanks for the great review. I feel your pain with the yippie little dogs…safe to say I’m more annoyed by the thoughtless owners for allowing them the bark incessantly. BTW, have you scored any other great books lately?
Sorry to hear you had/have Covid. Sounds like you had it worse than me. I was mostly good after about two weeks, though still lacking energy for a while after that. I hope you had a speedy recovery. I have a copy of Joanna Russ's "The female man" on my TBR list for a while. I started it, but didn't get into it, but your review has really make me try again. BTW: Have you read and James Triptree? We read one of her books of short stories for a journal club a few months ago and really like it.
I've read "On the Beach". The movie was just about as good as the book. It's more like a war story. It is Gothic at its core. I know it's hard for you to believe, you have no ties to that generation. But people in the 1950's until the hippy-dippy culture of the 1960's had character, a profound respect for the feelings of others. Thus, the sense of self-control that this book illustrates. Life wasn't just about them, a very foreign concept to modern culture.
Cresson Kearney, who wrote " Nuclear War Survivor Skills " was very critical ( in later editions of that book ) of science fiction trope that once the catastrophe hits , every man panics & thinks only for himself... ( you know the deal : " Mad Max " society, " you gotta be cruel, survival of the fittest " etc.. ) His experiences from WW2 told him that people are much more noble in crisis like that...
This sounds very strongly like mythopeia and nostalgia, and not the good kind. Any kind of moral superiority given to any generation is obviously false. Given to people before 1960, it's laughable. Between you and me, in one breath we could list a dozen peoples who were given none of the "profound respect" this generation supposedly had. Think Jim Crow, think Maori, think Sami, think Viets, think Afrikaners. Point to media forms or point to movements that resisted social rigidity, but the coming to consciousness of other people's pains was still in development, as it remains today. The self-control you mention was internalized rigidity, a mask (read Goffman's works on dramaturgy). I don't throw Jung around but he has a great quote: "One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious." Your vision of the past is an imagined figure of light, and erases far too much darkness.
@@phaedrus2633 My response is fairly well-informed (and I even waited a day to let it settle, instead of being reactionary. Go figure!). I had thought Spec Fic helped people consider an issue from its various complex angles. Clearly I was naive, not ignorant. Mea culpa. I guess your "profound respect" for others does not apply to the "woke," or the above list of victimized peoples.
A lot of the California crime/noir fiction (Hammett, Chandler, Macdonald, Ellroy etc) is at core mainly about class and class divides, so it’s perceptive of you to compare Doomsters with Steinbeck. Also if you’re still kind of in the mood for that weird rural fringe world of Los Angeles but in the early 20th century, check out Day of the Locust by Nathaniel West. Fringes of the film industry… the weird and uncomfortable contrast of the fantasy and reality of being so close you can touch the glamour yet still underclass.
Actually, turns out that is literally the origin of the characters name- Matt Groening named Homer Simpson after Homer Simpson, which he liked because Homer was his father’s name and Simpson sounded like simpleton. Source: Wikipedia
I’m a little worried about that funny looking little dog falling off that terrace with the missing railing. I live a sheltered first world existence I guess.
I think "On the Beach" was reflective of that 1957 post war generation's way of chit- chatting past tragedy in the name of survival, even if that is not rational and that sounds strange to our ears in modern times.
Fuck I hated We Who are About to. Sloggiest 120 pages I've ever read. I've tried to reevaluate it multiple times (including now) but I think over time my hatred has just turned stubborn and irrational. I also went in expecting maybe a different or less introspective sort of dark and hopeless- something like Farewell Earth's Bliss, which was a much better experience. I do think the book is definitely unique and at times daring, and some of the imagery sticks with me (the sloshiness of time-space during warp travel), but the character motivations and the style/substance of the second half annoyed the absolute shit out of me, whereas some will really love it. To me there was also nothing really interesting or alien about the world- the trees were just trees, the river was a river. I know the setting isn't important in this case, but it just felt like lazy outback australia in space, and with such an introspective and human-centric story with minimal and background SF elements, it really just felt way too terrrestrial/Earthly to me. Glad you enjoyed it, but kinda really wished you hated it hahaha.
To my mind the flimsiness of the science fictional elements of the story were more middle fingers to the genre. "Yeah it's some planet, there's grass on it, who gives a fuck, that's not what we're here for." Like I said in the vid, definitely do not expect everyone to love or even like the novel, it's the 31st flavor of ice cream that nobody ever eats.
Peep the Underworld U.S.A. trilogy by James Ellroy, if you haven't already. It is an absolutely transcendental masterpiece. American Tabloid is one of the greatest books of any genre i've ever read, and the trilogy only gets better from there.
If I were to encounter such a fatalist attitude in a similar scenario, I would severely limit the freedom of that woman. We are descendants of beings who did not give up.
I realize it’s hard for folks to understand understand how different the World was when we still had faith in our social systems! It truly was a different experience!
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New video! 10 minutes of quality content worth waiting for.
Thanks thanks
@@BookpilledI’d like to talk to you about a book…
I finished Blindsight yesterday... It needs to roominate in my head before I can know for sure, but I'm pretty sure it's my favorite book I've ever read! Thank you for introducing it to me and convincing me to read it!
You love to hear it
i just finished it too a couple weeks ago. loved it. i especiallly liked its very clean, hard and yes flinty prose. i was enjoying so much i did not want to finish it. also loved the twist ending.
@@meesalikeu I definitely feel a bit of a reading slump coming because it was so good! I loved that he mixed the horror of the unknown with the unease of the known. The alien and vampire created such a fascinating dichotomy to the atmosphere
I tried listening to it on audible and DNFed it. I don’t think audible is a good platform for this book. It’s got pretty convoluted prose, and it’s really easy to miss important details. I might try it again on kindle.
I read it last winter. As soon as I finished the last word I flipped to the beginning and read it again. I still don't know what I think about it lol
Extraordinary episode, BP. One always anxiously awaits your next post and once it arrives, one is never disappointed. Your Steinbeck mention when discussing The Doomsters has prompted me to get my hands on a copy, having not ever read MacDonald. Thanks for that. Glad to hear you dodged the C-19 bullet and survived. Well done. Cheers.
Thank you much
Wishing you a full recovery soon. I've read all of MacDonald's Archer books. Although the early ones are fine, they get better as they go along. Try Sleeping Beauty.
Thanks thanks
I read On The Beach while working at a middle/high school library. I'm a huge apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic fan, and as I was doing a library inventory, this book found its way into my hands. I was working on purging books that hadn't been checked out in a long while, and when I read the back of this it sounded very intriguing so I decided to read it.
Wow. That book hit me so hard. It stuck with me for weeks afterwards, and I decided that I 100% would not get rid of it. In fact, I immediately put out a display of apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic books and included this one in it.
I assume the book is still there on the shelves, probably having not been read by anyone, but I will, hands down, always recommend it to anybody who likes that genre of book.
Edit to add: I feel like the whole fact that everybody kept living their lives is what made the book so unsettling. If you know your end is coming, what do you do? Do you run around with your hands over your head, screaming in panic for the next who knows how long? Or do you just live as you normally would? It's surreal, and it really makes you think. When the world is going to end, what's the appropriate way to act?
i found it was a very parochial story about britishness, to the point of complete parody. of course you know in the 1950s there was no ironice parody back then, which makes it rather dull. great premise though and it does feel correctly elegiac. the movie is very good too.
After this, I'm going to have to read On The Beach. Sounds like a suitable metaphor for how humanity as a whole is going about dealing with the global changes we are driving through global warming and declining biodiversity. The vast majority are either ignoring it or in denial, and going about the business as usual that is the root cause of it all.
You could stretch it to fit, yeah. It would be more like if half of Australia believed that radioactive fallout was a lie drummed up by the media.
A few years ago I read a series that is similar to On the Beach called The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters. It's about a comet coming to destroy Earth and how people react to it in the last few months. The main character continues being a policeman and investigating crimes for as long as he can. Not the best series, the crimes aren't all that interesting, but it does have interesting ideas about impending doom and how people face it.
I wish I had your skill of sticking with a book even when you don't like it, find it very slow, and/or find it predictable. While occasionally I can do that (depending on the writing and other factors) I can't. "The Beach" is a good example. It was so slow and dragging and without hope that I just gave up on it. Life is to short and there are too many books out there I want to experience to but myself through the suffering. Also I suspect your a better reader than I am, you probably read a lot faster, and these days I listen to books more than I read them on audio while I'm driving, in the gym, walking around, going for a hike, etc... Great reviews.
Ross MacDonald's (Kenneth Millar's) Lew Archer books are indeed a treasure. I re-read them more or less continuously, one of the 11 novels every 6 months or so. Your description of Archer as sometimes receding from the stage and allowing other characters to dominate is spot on: one critic put it beautifully when he described Archer as a "roving conscience," the private eye as an invisible eye that sees the other characters and provides a moral context for their stories but does not really have a story of his own. In the context of the novels there are reasons why Archer's emotional life is in stasis -- but as a narrative device the private eye as a roving moral context is a fantastic idea and MacDonald executes it beautifully.
Thank you for the recommendation of "We who are about to..." which I would probably never have noticed without you. This is truly a very unique book. The bleak tone and the weird 2nd half will probably turn off a lot of people, but the story managed to utterly draw me in and it's themes will stay in my head for a long time.
The holding to tradition and maintaining order feel of On The Beach I interpreted as the way people felt in the 1950s and 60s where once the Soviets tested a nuclear bomb and the Cuban misleading crisis occurred left a sense of powerlessness in people, like events were occurring beyond people’s control and we were all just waiting for the world to end. All you could do is live your life and cross your fingers. Like dancing on the edge of a volcano
I'm glad you are reading Joanna Russ. "Picnic on Paradise" might be my favorite SF novel -- it's a much easier entry point into her bibliography. (It's in the "Adventures of Alyx" anthology that you had at one point.) I think you would like "The Female Man" as well. Stay well!
I remember owning that book, ruefully.
I read On the Beach a couple years ago -- I randomly picked it up off my grandma's shelf -- and I mostly liked it. I agree it wasn't great and maybe I wouldn't recommend it to most people, but I felt there was something worthwhile there, especially at the end. I disagree a bit with your disappointment in how everyone was keeping the status quo until the end. I think enjoyed that part. To me it felt like people simply desperate for a modicum of normalcy at the end of days. They all know it's fake and futile but it's better than the alternative. I don't know. It was nice somehow. It's not often we see much grace in character's under pressure like these, so it felt comforting. Any, cool that you read it and reviewed it here! Cheers!
i agree! to me it almost felt as if by performing their duties/daily routines, they were able to hold off the wave of death for as long as possible. if you know the end is coming, maybe it's not the worst thing to continue on with your lives instead of panicking and giving up.
@@skyclad1989 yeah that's the feeling I got
My deep hate for On The Beach is that they made us read it in seventh grade English class. A book about impending death! And SPOILER…
A dog is euthanized in it!!!! WTF?
This book is not suitable for 12 year olds. I would argue that it’s not a book suitable for ANYONE.
And because I was so young, I thought all science fiction was about death and dying and dystopian governments. Luckily, I discovered the works of William Tenn and Kurt Vonnegut the following summer.
Glad to learn you're recovering from your bout with COVID. Also, thanks for showing us that dog.
Thank you
@@Bookpilled By the way, I didn't mean to imply that the dog and your health news were the highlights of the video. I also enjoyed your reviews, so thank you. (And I've correctly spelled "bout" now.)
Nice review on We Who Are About To … .
Back when I was in college, we were force fed a lot of contemporary feminist books (we were force fed a lot of things). They all were strident, trite message books; less like literature and more like the type of pamphlet you’d find on a rack at the student health center. Messaging seems to be the point of most pop culture today, which, again, makes it all seem like pamphleteering rather than art.
I had always enjoyed sci-fi, but sci-fi wasn’t welcome in the hallowed halls of the university except for a few outlier classes. Anyway, I always thought Russ was much more effective with feminist critique than the contemporary writers of the ‘80s and ‘90s, when I was in school. And yet none of the professors or women in the class had heard of her.
“We Who Are About To …” is pretty hardcore, yet the motivations of the protagonist are so well developed, and she has some regrets. It tortures you as you read.
“The Female Man” is even more powerful. You mentioned that Russ didn’t seem to give a damn about her reputation. It shows in her writing. In the Female Man, she writes like a modernist stylist. Sometimes it’s beautiful; sometimes it drags. But you can feel her thinking, “whatever, I don’t care. I’m going to do as I like.” She doesn’t give a damn and for me, it felt freeing.
The most remarkable thing she does in “The Female Man” is she coaxes you into episodes in the story with humor, some ridiculous situation one of the protagonists gets into, and you laugh to yourself. Then you realize the situation has a parallel in reality, in the world. The humor is gone and you are left with horror. You feel how this person is oppressed by culture. From humor to horror in the length of a few paragraphs. Indeed, she was a master writer.
I’ve gone long here. Sorry. Hope you feel better.
If you make it to Wales in your travels, you should do a video with Outlaw Bookseller. Bet it would be a great discussion.
I am far from an expert on crime fiction, but I also find myself not caring much about the whodunit or how they might catch the bad guys. Divorce yourself from that and you’ll find a lot of excellent writing among the crime writers. I’d recommend Ed McBain and Joseph Wambaugh, the prose style and their quick wit in general carries their stories.
Appreciate the suggestions
I hate suggesting novels b/c 1) you've probably already read my suggestions or 2) are swamped, but here goes: if you'd like a breezy crime read made up of almost 90 percent dialog, check out Gregory Mcdonald's Fletch series. (The movie(s) don't do the novels justice.) The prose is bare-bones minimalist, but the banter sparkles, and the plots are fluid but twisty in all the right places.
Margaret Millar (Mrs. Ross MacD) wrote a great mystery which takes place among Mexican farmworkers -- braceros -- as they were known then -- Beyond This Place Are Monsters is the title. Joe Bob says: Check it out. Too much niceness, btw, was a weakness of Shute's. I read one of his novels called The Trustee From The Toolroom and I recall the whole thing being ruined because every single character in it was so f***in' nice.
Well put. Thanks for the rec.
Sorry you had Covid .
I appreciate your comments as always...
I do disagree with On the Beach a movie i saw over 40 yrs ago and read the book 13 years ago. For its time Beach was daring.
It is similar to Earth Abides and both have people trying to throw off the social yolks of society.
The 1950s held a rebellious undercurrent that exploded in the 1960s ..but were repressed in the 1950s but thankfully the authors did persevere.
I have always loved your descriptions of the books. Will definitely be putting We Who Are About To on the list, sounds amazing. Glad to see you’re feeling better!
Thanks thanks
I enjoyed the Hunter novels by Richard Stark. Some are better than others, but I remember number 1-3 and 14 and 15 are good. (I give the numbers over titles for condensed reasons). Another great video, Matt.
So sorry you got Covid my dude - speedy recovery to you! I'm really excited by your take on "We Who Are About To..." (never heard of it or of Joanna Russ!). I've recently read a few space opera-type books (including Red Mars - very excited by Robinson's takes). But I did start wondering what a space-opera WITHOUT the assumptions of colonialism might look like. Just about every projection of space travel seems to assume that humans will just colonise other worlds, whether there's an indigenous population or not. Actually had a really interesting conversation with my dad about the human impulses around property ownership and colonialism / imperialism and whether it is essentially an accidental outgrowth of human development or something more innate. So very excited to read Russ's take - thanks again!!!!
We Who Are About To is for you.
A great book that plays with some of these questions is Semiosis. New intelligences. Survival. Colonisation. Cooperation. Trust. Interesting new visions of society.
There's a breathtaking "negotiation" scene that had me slack-jawed.
@@YouWinILose Thanks! I was interested in the blurb I read on Semiosis, must check it out!
@@Bookpilled Finished it this morning. It is incredible. Thank you so much for introducing me to another amazing author! Might I recommend the experience of reading it using text-to-speech software? She makes a comment in her journal about her Vocorder being unablee to spell "amenorrhea" - hilarious when your text-to-speech software inevitably can't pronounce it!!!!
Russ is a special one. Similar book to 'We Who Are About To...' is 'Shipwreck' by Charles Logan, which I mentioned briefly on my channel once- bleak, but realistic. There's a Library of America Russ coming out in October. Interestingly, I've hardly ever met any female Sf readers who have read her, despite having been selling -or trying to sell her books -for over 35 years...nicd vid as ever, Matt! You watch out for those viruses, man!
Thanks, Steve. You too. Will keep an eye out for Shipwreck.
I probably won't read the MacDonald. I read the Shute, it didn't bother me the same way it did you, although I question why people didn't just try to build bunkers or protective suits and shelters, etc.
The Russ sounds super dark. I can't wait. Gracias.
In the Beach would have been very deeply rooted in British WWII attitudes, hard for us to relate today.
Glad you liked Ross Macdonald-terrific writer. Yet, I haven’t read that one. Love the title though.
As someone who has a great connection to where you are, just roll with the background. Its part of the flavor of living in a neighborhood over there. Nbd.
I love your review of We Who Are About To, but I would add an essential word to describe the kind of bleak and psychotic dystopia that Russ recognizes as our world: Patriarchy.
I have to say that I did not even hear the dogs until you mentioned them. Probably the parrots in my own background drowned them out.
All your points about On The Beach are very apt. When I first read it, as a teenager, I thought it was terrible. As an adult I actually like it more, it has a kind of horrified fascination to it. Though I have to say that the young woman starting a shorthand course to 'Get her life back on track' when they clearly knew they had less than three months of it left - that just seemed ludicrous beyond suspension of disbelief.
Agreed. Her character arc is the weirdest.
Yeah ''On The Beach'' more like romance melodrama. I have an old copy of the book but have only watched the movie. Thanks again!!!
Thank you for We Who Are About To... by Joanna Russ
I don't think I've ever read a book like it, so different and so so good.
on the beach by shute is on my look for in bookstores list. i came to it from my interest in dystopian/utopian conspiracy novels.i want to say it came into my radar when i was reading alas babylon by pat frank. (also looking for mr adam by frank)
for hardboiled crime i would suggest you dont give up that ship just yet - look for chester himes real cool killers, jim thompson the grifters, and james ellroy american tabloid. or anything by them they are great writers. of course hammett, chandler and spillane are thee classical hardboiled guys, and great writers too, but i think my first 3 choices have a bit more modern sensibility. best movie is postman always rings twice 1946 version adapted from cain’s great book. funny i say all that as i dont care for this genre either, but i did really get into the hipsterish hardboiled stuff at one point for a bit.
_On the Beach_ - I find it a refreshing respite from "post apocalyptic" novels where all that's happening is fighting fellow survivors. Yes, I know that's (American, anyway) reality where the main prepper's kit are weapons, and society pretty much breaks down after two hour long blackout, but I like this different vision. This does not make the novel any less bleak; if anything, i find it more poignant, as depressing as, say, _The Road._
Interesting - you describe it in similar words as I would, but with different reaction to it...
And thanks for the Russ recommendation.
new here, and loving your content a lot, so very clear, concise, thoughtful, and covering a lot of stuff other people don't. Can't wait to dive in - Question though, are the 100 books pulled from a particular list? I've skipped around a couple videos but haven't found anything about that. Or just some random 100 books?
Edit: Oh hey. commented this before I realized what the last book was, and oh yeah oh yeah, We Who Are About To is *incredible*. Gotta be my favorite Novella out there, or damn close to. So dark, so smart. Incredible stuff.
Welcome. The 100 books were originally meant to be 100 books I already owned physical copies of. That became "read 100 books" post moving abroad and putting all my books in storage.
Perfect, ty!
Well said . Russ is not an easy read . Try taking a gander at The Female Man . Ever read anything by Tiptree .Jr .Another of my fave female writers .
I read part of a Tiptree novel forever ago, when I was a much worse reader. Will circle back to her eventually.
There’s a decent Australian movie called these final hours which may have been loosely taken from on the beach. The movie explores a little more of the chaos that would ensue. Decent movie if you’re interested in something new.
Thanks for the rec
Good video as always 👍🏻
Glad you liked the McDonald, because I'm really hoping to hear your review of a Raymond Chandler novel one day and maybe this success with a crime novel will incline you towards Chandler.
Wanna read The Big Sleep eventually.
@@Bookpilled Yes! Very much looking forward to that!
@@Bookpilled Chandler's The Lady in the Lake might be more up your alley.
@@jimjackson509I love that one.
The Big Sleep is kinda like The book though.
I listened to other reviews of 'We who are about to' no one liked it. The decider was it's less that 200 pages so I'll give a read
So sorry! I hope you're in tip top shape soon. I love listening to your reviews. Be well.
Thank you
An interesting juxtaposition of two different approaches. However, I prefer Shute's 'conservative' approach and willingness to remain human in the face of death over Russ's anti-natalism.
I wouldn't characterize Russ as antinatalist. And the protagonist's entreaty to not struggle for life is in order to not prolong inevitable suffering. She is the rational actor.
@@BookpilledLooking at it superficially from the perspective of the protagonist, this is true, but not when you apply the message to the whole society.
Im glad to see your video pop up. Im going to read The Doomsters. I need a new book. I love listening to your book review snippets. Thanks!
Thank you
Interestingly I only ever read On the Beach because one of my favourite Finnish bands has a song that's inspired by the book and/or the movie. Personally, I prefer the song but the book did leave some pretty lasting impressions even though I found it a bit dated.
One random book I recommend if you come across it, is The Memory Tree by John R. Little. Based on a true story with a time travel aspect. Obviously the time travel is the fictional part but it is a book that will possibly break you emotionally. Highly recommended!
Thanks for the great review. I feel your pain with the yippie little dogs…safe to say I’m more annoyed by the thoughtless owners for allowing them the bark incessantly. BTW, have you scored any other great books lately?
Sorry to hear you had/have Covid. Sounds like you had it worse than me. I was mostly good after about two weeks, though still lacking energy for a while after that. I hope you had a speedy recovery.
I have a copy of Joanna Russ's "The female man" on my TBR list for a while. I started it, but didn't get into it, but your review has really make me try again. BTW: Have you read and James Triptree? We read one of her books of short stories for a journal club a few months ago and really like it.
Thanks. I think my Covid recovery has been relatively fast. I read part of a Tiptree novel a long time ago, need to go back to her.
Pokémon Dog got my subscription. Just kidding it was the last video I watched, but PD confirmed it was a good decision.
I've read "On the Beach". The movie was just about as good as the book. It's more like a war story. It is Gothic at its core. I know it's hard for you to believe, you have no ties to that generation. But people in the 1950's until the hippy-dippy culture of the 1960's had character, a profound respect for the feelings of others. Thus, the sense of self-control that this book illustrates. Life wasn't just about them, a very foreign concept to modern culture.
Cresson Kearney, who wrote " Nuclear War Survivor Skills " was very critical ( in later editions of that book ) of science fiction trope that once the catastrophe hits , every man panics & thinks only for himself... ( you know the deal : " Mad Max " society, " you gotta be cruel, survival of the fittest " etc.. )
His experiences from WW2 told him that people are much more noble in crisis like that...
@@holydissolution85 Well said. The characters of the book know they are doomed. Why not conduct yourself honorably? That's the core of conservatism.
This sounds very strongly like mythopeia and nostalgia, and not the good kind. Any kind of moral superiority given to any generation is obviously false. Given to people before 1960, it's laughable.
Between you and me, in one breath we could list a dozen peoples who were given none of the "profound respect" this generation supposedly had. Think Jim Crow, think Maori, think Sami, think Viets, think Afrikaners. Point to media forms or point to movements that resisted social rigidity, but the coming to consciousness of other people's pains was still in development, as it remains today.
The self-control you mention was internalized rigidity, a mask (read Goffman's works on dramaturgy). I don't throw Jung around but he has a great quote: "One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious."
Your vision of the past is an imagined figure of light, and erases far too much darkness.
@@YouWinILose Yep, that's the ignorant type of response I expected from the woke.
@@phaedrus2633 My response is fairly well-informed (and I even waited a day to let it settle, instead of being reactionary. Go figure!). I had thought Spec Fic helped people consider an issue from its various complex angles. Clearly I was naive, not ignorant. Mea culpa.
I guess your "profound respect" for others does not apply to the "woke," or the above list of victimized peoples.
A lot of the California crime/noir fiction (Hammett, Chandler, Macdonald, Ellroy etc) is at core mainly about class and class divides, so it’s perceptive of you to compare Doomsters with Steinbeck.
Also if you’re still kind of in the mood for that weird rural fringe world of Los Angeles but in the early 20th century, check out Day of the Locust by Nathaniel West. Fringes of the film industry… the weird and uncomfortable contrast of the fantasy and reality of being so close you can touch the glamour yet still underclass.
I read Day of the Locust a few years back and remember loving it.
@@Bookpilled Awesome. It’s a pretty fantastic book once you get past the fact that there’s a character named Homer Simpson.
Actually, turns out that is literally the origin of the characters name- Matt Groening named Homer Simpson after Homer Simpson, which he liked because Homer was his father’s name and Simpson sounded like simpleton. Source: Wikipedia
@@helpfulcommenter Completely forgot about that.
I’m a little worried about that funny looking little dog falling off that terrace with the missing railing. I live a sheltered first world existence I guess.
I enjoyed on the beach , really liked the sound of We who are about to can’t be any bleaker than The Road ! Great video as always stay well mate.🫡
Thank you
I think "On the Beach" was reflective of that 1957 post war generation's way of chit- chatting past tragedy in the name of survival, even if that is not rational and that sounds strange to our ears in modern times.
On The Beach is a relentlessly bleak reading experience, reminded me of The Road
Love listening to your insights
Fuck I hated We Who are About to. Sloggiest 120 pages I've ever read. I've tried to reevaluate it multiple times (including now) but I think over time my hatred has just turned stubborn and irrational. I also went in expecting maybe a different or less introspective sort of dark and hopeless- something like Farewell Earth's Bliss, which was a much better experience.
I do think the book is definitely unique and at times daring, and some of the imagery sticks with me (the sloshiness of time-space during warp travel), but the character motivations and the style/substance of the second half annoyed the absolute shit out of me, whereas some will really love it. To me there was also nothing really interesting or alien about the world- the trees were just trees, the river was a river. I know the setting isn't important in this case, but it just felt like lazy outback australia in space, and with such an introspective and human-centric story with minimal and background SF elements, it really just felt way too terrrestrial/Earthly to me. Glad you enjoyed it, but kinda really wished you hated it hahaha.
To my mind the flimsiness of the science fictional elements of the story were more middle fingers to the genre. "Yeah it's some planet, there's grass on it, who gives a fuck, that's not what we're here for." Like I said in the vid, definitely do not expect everyone to love or even like the novel, it's the 31st flavor of ice cream that nobody ever eats.
Agree, but that IS what I'm here for, lol. Wrong book/wrong mood/wrong time for me. Shoutout for Farewell tho, that book was [kisses fingertips]
Ross Macdonald is awesome. Just read The Moving Target again. The movie they made from it is terrible but the book is great.
I liked Ross MacDonald's stuff (haven't read this but I'll check it) and On the Beach I read a long time ago and it was good.
Peep the Underworld U.S.A. trilogy by James Ellroy, if you haven't already. It is an absolutely transcendental masterpiece. American Tabloid is one of the greatest books of any genre i've ever read, and the trilogy only gets better from there.
Another fan wishing you a quick full recovery from your Covid bout.
Thank you
Bookpilled, the internet's busiest sci fi nerd
Excellent, good health to you. Loved the dog.
Thank you
You should be proud of that patreon! It’s great!
Thank you much
Stay well.
Shute, Science Fiquaresque? Dude did you hate Lyonesse? Lyonesse II is a better yarn.
All the best from Scotland 🐱🙏🖖
Haven't read Lyonesse yet, it's been looming long-ly
Hey man where are you located in the video? Mexico? where
If I were to encounter such a fatalist attitude in a similar scenario, I would severely limit the freedom of that woman. We are descendants of beings who did not give up.
ruclips.net/video/L6mNa_QZVHg/видео.htmlsi=zIKZDI2s3zSadXLp
you sound like a scary person to be in that scenario with
Or got lucky. Or had power over other people who did the dying for them.
Russ has been a highlight author of my year thus far.
We Who Are About To... is incredible
We Who are About to completely astonished me when I read it in the 80s and it remains one of the best books I’ve ever read.
I just started a book store on ebay, was really hoping this was a whats good to sell kinda channel
Great short reviews, the Russ sounds great.
I realize it’s hard for folks to understand understand how different the World was when we still had faith in our social systems! It truly was a different experience!
Well if you were white, heterosexual, and middle class at least then yeah that was true.
On the Beach and Alas Babylon.