Reviews and Reflections on Books, Literature, and Writing: Volume Two

By John Walters

From the author's introduction:

Preparing the second volume of Reviews and Reflections on Books, Literature, and Writing has caused me to think about the role not only of reading books but also of writing book reviews in my life. To write about the thoughts and impressions brought about by a book is as valid as writing about a physical journey that I take to another location. The author of the book serves as my traveling companion.

Because of the inevitably profound effect that books have on me, I have to be careful about what books I read. If you are what you eat, physically, then you are what you read, mentally. I try to select books that entertain me and also nourish and strengthen me mentally and emotionally.

Among the multitudes of books I have read in my lifetime, some of my particular favorites have been books about books. Why? Because they make the task of finding new reading material easier. I read them eagerly, pen and paper nearby, and make new lists of books I have not yet discovered, realms of thought I have not yet explored. That's one of the delights of this present volume, part two of Reviews and Reflections. Consider it a guidebook to point the way on your own journeys of discovery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Astaria Books
• Release date: Oct 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201752682

John Walters

John Walters recently returned to the United States after thirty-five years abroad. He lives in Seattle, Washington. He attended the 1973 Clarion West science fiction writing workshop and is a member of Science Fiction Writers of America. He writes mainstream fiction, science fiction and fantasy, and memoirs of his wanderings around the world.

Book preview

Reading Addiction

As I write this, the world remains in the midst of the COVID pandemic, although vaccinations have been found and programs to administer them are underway. My son and I have been isolated for well over a year now, cut off from those we usually visit and socialize with, cut off from events we usually attend...

And cut off from libraries and bookstores.

Ah, that has been difficult - because I am not just an avid reader; I am a reading addict. I have to have something available to read all the time or I get anxious and intellectually hungry. I try to plan ahead so that I have something ready at hand to begin as soon as I finish the current reading project - something like a smoker who lights a fresh cigarette off the smoldering butt of the previous one. However, sometimes I am unprepared, and when I finish one book I haven't another to take its place. In those instances I am ill at ease until I have found a new book on which to focus my attention.

During the early stages of the pandemic when things were shutting down to cope with the rapid spread of the disease, I read an announcement that our city's public library system was temporarily closing. On the day before this was to happen, I took a walk over to check out a few books to see me through the closure. I went fairly early, my intention being to avoid crowds.

When I got to the library, though, it was a chaotic mob scene. There were long check-out lines with people staggering under heavy stacks of books. Some rows of shelves, especially those in the new books section, had been completely stripped bare. It was one of the worst things that people could be doing from the standpoint of containing COVID; it was opposed to the very essence of the reason why the library was closing. And yet it was understandable. If people had heard that food supplies would be curtailed, they would mob the supermarkets - and they did, in fact, for a time. Supermarket shelves were stripped of toilet paper, hand soap, and other supplies because people were afraid that they might not be able to find more. That's what these people were doing at the library. They could see things closing down, they envisioned being trapped in their homes, and they wanted to be sure they had enough intellectual stimuli to tide them over.

In those early days of the pandemic, many people didn't really understand what was happening or how dangerous and even life-threatening it was to get together in such close proximity. They only saw the confusion of society as they knew it crashing down around their ears. I was the same. I hadn't even purchased a mask yet. In fact, it was almost impossible to find decent masks online except at scalper's prices. Some people wore masks in the midst of the library mob scene, but these few were the anomalies. I cautiously slid past the hordes, trying not to touch anyone, to conduct my own search. I was too late. I went around to all my favorite sections, but I couldn't find a single thing that interested me. Additionally, all around me people swarmed, and I heard coughing here and there. I realized that the safest thing to do was to get out.

But that left me bereft of books. An intolerable situation. What could I do? What were my options?

There are multiple Little Free Libraries in my neighborhood - that is, cabinets with glass doors people had set up in front of their houses so that passers-by could exchange books - and I had occasionally found something good to read in these. However, as I learned more about the pandemic and began to realize how truly deadly it was, I lost confidence in using those open sources of reading material. I had no idea who might have been handling the books before me. I didn't feel I could take the chance; I might bring a disease home that would imperil not only me but those that I love. So I backed off from Little Free Libraries.

Interestingly, though, I noticed on my walks that in several locations next to the Little Free Libraries, in response to the suffering that many were undergoing as a result of COVID, Little Free Pantries began to spring up. They were built exactly like the libraries, except instead of books people could leave or take nonperishable food. I thought that this was an interesting juxtaposition: side by side there was food for the body and food for the mind.

My predicament remained: Where could I find the books I needed?

One obvious answer would be to download digital copies onto my Kindle Fire. The digital-only portion of the library remained open. That would have been a viable solution except for two important considerations. First of all, as soon as the library closed its physical doors, reservations for copies of electronic books multiplied. You would think that because digital books consist only of data that there would be an endless supply of them, but such is not the case. To protect their profits, the major publishers have put strangleholds on electronic books, especially for libraries. These volumes cost much more for libraries than they do for individuals, and the number of readers who can check out books at one time is strictly limited. As a result, reservation lists for popular books became so long that it would be many months before the books would be available. This was not the only, or even the main problem, however. The fact is: I don't enjoy reading digital books. I'll do it if I have to for specific reasons, but I much prefer having a physical copy in my hands when I sit or lie down to relax and read. I grew up with physical books, and for me at least, handling the book and turning the pages is part of the pleasure of the experience.

Again the question: Where could I get those books?

As I saw it, I had two options: I could reread books that I already had on my shelves, or I could purchase new ones from online booksellers.

I settled on a combination of these tactics.

Fortunately, I have several bookshelves in my apartment filled with at least two or three hundred volumes. Books I was no longer interested in I had been donating to the aforementioned Little Free Libraries, and so the books that were left were those I appreciated and didn't want to part with. I scanned the shelves carefully for titles I might be interested in revisiting. To do this properly, I would contemplate the spines of the books one by one to see if a spark of interest flared. If it did, I would set that book aside.

I soon had a small stack consisting mainly of classic science fiction novels I hadn't read for decades such as Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny, Nova by Samuel R, Delaney, and The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester. To balance my reading, since I habitually alternate reading fiction and nonfiction, I ordered several nonfiction titles from an online bookstore, including Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe, and Nomadland by Jessica Bruder. (These last two I had already read but wanted to reread.)

The point is that in the absence of the ability to simply head over to the library and select a book off the open shelves, I had to make additional efforts to plan ahead and ensure that by the time I had finished one book, the next would be there ready and waiting.

This proves to be complicated for someone with as eclectic tastes as I have. When I say I like to alternative between fiction and nonfiction, that's just the beginning of the categorizing. I also try to diversify the types of fiction that I read; for instance, if I read a science fiction novel, for my next fiction project I might like to switch to a mainstream, historical, or literary work, or a collection of short stories; my nonfiction interests include history, biography, memoirs, travel, and much more.

How do I find all these books? As I mentioned above, when the library is open I can scan the shelves; however, lately a lot of my scanning for interesting titles has been done online. I scroll through lists of award winners and nominees, favorites of readers, all-time-best polls, and other sources. I conduct web searches according to genres and subject matter. I write down titles mentioned in passing by other writers. When I find interesting possibilities, I zoom in on them even more by reading reviews and articles about the books and the authors.

Why go to all this trouble? Because reading is important to me. It always has been for as long as I can remember. No one ever had to force me to read; more often than that, they'd have to pry books out of my hands to get me to go outside. Even during my road phase when I roamed the world with all my possession in a single olive-colored duffle bag, I always had a book to read.

Among the multitudes of books I have read in my lifetime, some of my particular favorites have been books about books. Why? Because they make the task of finding new reading material easier. I read them eagerly, pen and paper nearby, and make new lists of books I have not yet discovered, realms of thought I have not yet explored. That's one of the delights of this present volume, part two of Reviews and Reflections. Consider it a guidebook to point the way on your own journeys of discovery. Guidebooks are no substitutes for going there yourself; they merely suggest destinations you might not have thought of and supply supplementary details to enhance your experience. I hope I have accomplished that for you in these pages. Each reader who picks up a book embarks upon an adventure of the mind. In offering these thoughts to you, I recall what Walt Whitman wrote in Song of Myself about the open road. He would hook his arm around his listener's waist, point to the open road, and exclaim that not I, not anyone else can travel that road for you, you must travel it for yourself. Whitman was writing of physical road journeys, but in these pandemic days when many of us have been isolated from one another, closed away in our homes to avoid spreading a deadly disease, it is important to remember that though we may be physically cloistered, our minds and spirits are not bound. In the conclusion to Walden Thoreau emphasizes exploring whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. He further admonishes you to explore yourself, and adds that herein are demanded the eye and the nerve. Books are means by which we journey into endless fascinating mental landscapes from which we return refreshed, invigorated, renewed, and better able to face whatever vagaries of life we may encounter.

*     *     *

The process of compiling the reviews present in this book is a story in itself. When I decided that it was time to publish a second volume of Reviews and Reflections, I figured that I would simply get together the reviews that I had written since the first book came out, arrange them, proofread them, write an introduction, and that would be that. However, after gathering all the unpublished reviews into one computer folder, I found out that there were over two hundred and thirty of them, which would have made a book more than twice as thick as the first volume. At this time I wanted to publish just one, not two more volumes, so I realized I would have to trim the contents down.

Where to start? Each of these essays tells you something unique about literature and about me, and I didn't want to leave out even one of them. Nevertheless, I had to make some hard choices.

You may have noticed in the table of contents that there are less titles of fiction than nonfiction, even though I generally alternate between the two when I select reading material. The reason for the imbalance has to do with this overlarge table of contents. A lot of the fiction I read is in the form of collections and anthologies of short stories. When I review these, I usually tell you what I think of the collection as a whole and also discuss individual stories that particularly struck me. These reviews can be interesting and informative, but they are inherently not as cohesive as the essays that focus on individual novels and nonfiction books. These reviews of story collections were the first things I eliminated from volume two of Reviews and Reflections. Many of them are best of the year compilations that have come out over the last several years. My tastes of what is best often do not align with those of the editors of these collections, but you can usually find in them plenty of stories that hold your interest, and you can always skip those that don't agree with you. If you want to dig them up, all of these reviews of collections and anthologies are available on my website.

After I eliminated over forty reviews of short story compilations, the list was still too long. I would like to have included everything, but I had to trim some more titles to get the volume down to a size that would not be overly bulky or expensive. The only thing I could do was assess the titles one by one, eliminate some, and preserve others. I looked for balance, relevancy, and importance, but I realized that some of the titles I was leaving out were as impressive as those I had decided to retain, and so I relegated these essays into another folder in my computer for a possible third Reviews and Reflections. You never know, right?

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the present volume as it is. As I mentioned, you can find many more reviews on my website.

For now, enjoy.

Book Reviews as Autobiography

Preparing the second volume of Reviews and Reflections on Books, Literature, and Writing has caused me to think about the role not only of reading books but also of writing book reviews in my life. Long ago, when I was raising my young family in Greece, I started my author's website/blog: johnwalterswriter.com. Around that time I decided to write reviews of almost every book I read. That decision was not made solely to have material to put into the blog. I had already started to make a list of all the books I read, and it seemed a natural progression to then write something about how those books influenced me. I realized that in reading a book I was not only interacting with a person, the author of the book, but also choosing to spend some of the finite time I have on this planet undergoing an experience brought on by the words presented to me on the page.

To write about the thoughts and impressions brought about by a book is as valid as writing about a physical journey that I take to another location. The author of the book serves as my traveling companion. To undertake the reading of a book is a fascinating experience in that as a reader I have voluntarily stripped myself of my senses, except the vision that allows me to see the words on the page, and I have put myself at the mercy of someone, most often a stranger, who constructs a mental and emotional world out of words, places me in it, introduces me to its inhabitants, and then draws me into a story based on all the assembled parts. This is true for nonfiction as well as fiction.

How can someone not be changed by such an experience?

Because of the inevitably profound effect that books have on me, I have to be careful about what books I read. If you are what you eat, physically, then you are what you read, mentally. I try to select books that entertain me and also nourish and strengthen me mentally and emotionally. After all, as I mentioned above, we have a limited amount of time; it is important that we use well the years, months, days, hours, minutes, and seconds at our disposal. For this reason, I have become more liberal about tossing aside books I begin that I soon realize are not good, or at least not good for me at that specific time. Life is short; I want every moment I spend reading to be a quality experience. I also have an aversion to writing negative book reviews. I'm a writer; I know how I would feel if someone wrote and published negative comments about something I had written. Rather than subject a fellow author to such a discouraging experience, I'll stop reading the book, or, if I've already finished it, I won't write a review. My purpose in writing reviews is not to skewer my peers; it is to provide helpful insight.

My reaction to books is not the same as yours. How can it be? We are two different human persons with unique backgrounds, educations, environments, and methods of processing the input we receive. The thoughts I have and the conclusions I come to concerning the books I read are as much about me as they are about the books. Two travelers may enter the same country, go to the same places, and even meet some of the same people, and yet the memoirs they would write would be completely different. Each would be comprised of the individual personalities, proclivities, and decisions of its author; each would be profoundly diverse from the other. If we consider a book as a place that we explore and a book review as a travel memoir, the same principle applies. Every writer approaches their subject matter differently, and every book review says as much about the reviewer as about the book.

In my opinion, any reviewer who pontificates as if speaking en cathedra is laughingly pretentious. Reviewers are just people; they have their opinions and you have yours. Their opinions count little when you portion out the moments of your own life. These are your decisions, not theirs.

In conclusion, let me emphasize that I write book reviews because I enjoy writing them, and I hope you enjoy reading them as well. If they guide you to books you want to explore, fine. If you only read the reviews and yet never read the books they describe, that's fine too. Decide for yourself. One of the glories of human existence is freedom to choose. I'm glad, at least, that you have chosen to be my companion as we take this journey together through some of the books in my life.

Fiction

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

As I have mentioned before, with the libraries closed, I am searching my shelves for overlooked books that I may have bought sometime in the past but never read. The Windup Girl is one of these. I found it in a Value Village a few years ago and meant to read it - after all, it's a Hugo and Nebula award winner - but never got around to it. Until now, that is.

This dystopian novel is set in Thailand a few centuries into the future. Global warming has raised the level of the ocean, and Bangkok is kept from flooding by seawalls. Genetic plagues ravage the globe, and huge corporations use bioterrorism and monopolies on seed stocks to subjugate most of the world. Thailand stands out, though, as a bastion of independence, although even there life is a debilitating struggle for survival.

Bacigalupi tells his story through the viewpoints of several major characters. These include an American who works for one of the major agricultural corporations, his Chinese refugee factory manager, two Thai members of an elite force that is loyal to the country's Environment Ministry, and the windup girl of the title, an artificially created being whose owner uses her as a prostitute. Everyone regards the windup people as machines that have no souls and can be used and discarded at whim, but the author soon makes it clear that the windup girl is as human as anyone else.

To be honest, I got off to a slow start with this book. I found the setting up of the story by switching from one character's perspective to another to be somewhat confusing. It was interesting enough to persevere, though, and I'm glad I did. As the various threads of the characters progress, the situation clarifies, and I found that I became more and more invested in what was happening.

One thing that works well in this novel is the setting. It is evident that the author has done his research, as he presents a future Thailand that is believable, albeit depressingly dark. For the most part, he focuses the story within the city, and so he is able to provide a dense, detailed microcosm of a closed-off realm from which the outside world is perceived as the habitat of malevolent political and economic forces. This creates an almost claustrophobic atmosphere of paranoia, deception, and subterfuge.

The novel is particularly relevant in light of the pandemic that is changing all of our lives. It swept in on us suddenly, caused us to close ourselves off to each other, and made us realize that things will never be the same again. In a sense, our complacency has become our undoing. We were seemingly on a roll, going along with business as usual, and all of a sudden the lives of everyone on Earth were upended. The world has changed, and it continues to change daily. Each news report carries frightening new realities. I didn't realize that worldwide plagues comprise one of the focuses of this book; if I had, I might not have picked it up. Now that I have read it, though, I am thankful for the experience, and thankful for this vision and the visions of other science fiction writers who often have premonitions of things to come decades or even centuries before they arrive.

I'm not saying that science fiction novels are prophetic. However, they offer thought-provoking possibilities that cause us to ponder the consequences of our actions, now and in times to come. That's what this novel does.

Moving Mars by Greg Bear

This is another classic science fiction novel that I didn't get around to reading until the pandemic. Spoiler alert: It's a good one. Often I synopsize the books I am reviewing, but I don't know if I will be able to do it in this case. Moving Mars is long and complex, and I have to admit that I do not understand all the intricacies of concepts and hardware that Bear postulates. Thankfully, though, it is not necessary to grasp all of the details to be able to greatly enjoy this book.

Moving Mars starts out somewhat deceptively; my first impression was that it might be a young adult space opera. The first person viewpoint character is a woman named Casseia Majumdar. As the story begins, she is a teenager involved in civil resistance when authorities try to shut down her school. That crisis is averted, but Casseia develops the urge to participate in politics and is chosen to join a delegation from Mars to the Earth. Bear goes into fascinating details concerning the months-long flight from Mars to Earth and Casseia's impressions of Earth, which is intent on subjugating and exploiting Mars.

As Mars begins to form a republic, Casseia becomes vice president. She finds out that an old schoolmate has been experimenting with momentous innovations in physics that would allow humans working with AIs to physically move moons and entire planets. Earth's aggression increases when it becomes aware of this breakthrough. It attacks Mars and...

You don't really want to tell you the ending, do you? For me this book started a bit slowly during Casseia's teen years, but my interest picked up as I realized that Bear, in each section, adds complexity and depth until it becomes epic in its speculations on politics and science. He creates a vast futuristic solar system full of drama and intrigue, focusing mainly on the planet Mars, its inhabitants, its landscape, and its biological and political history.

This is one of the goals of good science fiction: to take readers into new worlds and maintain verisimilitude while doing it. Some science fiction writers are great with ideas and some are great wordsmiths, but Bear is both. His ideas are absorbing, deep, and meticulously thought out, and his prose is clean, clear, and sometimes poetic. Throughout the narrative, Casseia's voice is consistent, compelling, and intelligent. The book is presented as the memoir of an elder statesperson written after the amazing events at the story's climax. An afterward emphasizes the value of her memoir as a history of how Mars comes to be what it is.

In conclusion, this book is a well-told science fiction novel. It takes you on a journey to an imaginary world and gives you a tour in fascinating detail. It's one of those books that grips you more and more tightly until by the end you wish it didn't have to stop. Pick up a copy and find out for yourself.

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

Until recently I hadn't read The Stars My Destination in years, or perhaps even decades. It was first published in 1956 when I was three years old. One of the amazing things about this novel is that it hasn't aged since then. It can still stand up to the best of contemporary work. The ideas and concepts in it are still outrageously but effectively outlandish - in a good way. It definitely deserves to be on a shortlist of the best science fiction novels ever written.

I'm not going to be able to give you a proper synopsis of the story; it is too intricate and convoluted. By saying that, I don't mean that it is confusing. Bester throws one thing after another at readers, but it all fits in like infinitesimal pieces of an enormous jigsaw puzzle.

The protagonist is a man named Gulliver Foyle, or Gully for short, who is barely surviving a death-like existence in spaceship wreckage in a remote part of the solar system. Another spaceship passes him by despite his array of distress signals, and Gully becomes consumed with rage and a desire for vengeance. He manages to get his ruined spaceship, the Nomad, running well enough to make it to an asteroid, where the resident cult pulls him in and tattoos his face with the grotesque visage of a savage tiger. Later a surgeon manages to remove the tattoos, but whenever Gully gets angry or otherwise deeply emotional, the tiger image shows up again on his