Brandon Sanderson - The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, Edgedancer & Oathbringer

This is the first three 'main series' books out of a projected 10 - plus a fill-in novella to flesh out the back story of a key character, Lift - in what is, of course (given that description and the books' titles), an epic fantasy series, and the most promising mainstream fantasy series I've come across in a long time at that. 

It's very page turny, but one of those that feels good to race through, while also rewarding a bit of attention to what's actually on the page. The craft of it is quite exceptional - it starts fast, with a few major characters amidst the action, and their connections to the main thrust of the story quickly apparent. The way it follows a small number of major characters - Kaladin, Shallan, Adolin, Dalinar - and brings them together keeps up the interest (with secondary characters also nicely fleshed out - Jasnah, Szeth, Taravangian, various of the bridgemen), combined with ample use of relatively short flashbacks that track through time to meet the present.

Sanderson is good at keeping the reader oriented without too much exposition every time a new character, place, event, idea etc is introduced, and he uses interludes to introduce other characters whose significance is often initially unclear - in their own right or caught up in larger machinations and events? - but which adds to the richness of the world and often presses into the main narrative over time without detracting from the overall momentum. 

Also notable is the way that the obligatory introductory quotations at the beginning of each chapter are used to actually advance plot and build suspense, not just 'worldbuild' and provide historical colour, as are the illustrations, which sometimes provide important info and are interestingly diegetic (eg Shallan's drawings).

The characters are sturdy enough, especially by the standards of the genre, and rarely fall into cliche or shortcut characterisation (Shallan's wordplay is distractingly arch at times, but what Sanderson does with her character via Veil and Radiant pretty much makes up for it), and the narrative, while somewhat standard issue, holds the attention. Familiar motifs - knights, magic, spirits, monsters, talking swords, humans as invaders, ancient and powerful beings - are given a do-over that's impressively thought-through and integrated. It's not overly dark but it does have a sense of stakes, and manages some striking images, like the scenes with the men carrying the bridges into battle to lay them across the chasms, and the 'cognitive realm' of Shadesmar with its oceans of small dark beads.

I don't know how much this series really has up its sleeve, but it's plenty well enough done for me to continue reading.

Hamilton

Great to watch a second time around, and this time - from the vantage of this filmed version - with the benefit of seeing the actors and set close-up, and with the words in subtitles so as not to miss anything, not to mention the original Broadway cast including Lin-Manuel himself.

(on stage)

Miranda Lambert - Four the Record

Has some good tunes and a few interesting flourishes up its sleeve, but overall one of the less distinguished in Lambert's back catalogue.

Joe Abercrombie - Best Served Cold

 Pacy enough, and convincingly gritty and lived-in, but on the thin side.

Haim - Women in Music Pt III

A peppy outing from Haim, as always, with a bit of evolution in their sound. Good, but largely not that exciting. Best songs (and exceptions to the not being that exciting): "The Steps", "Gasoline" and closer "FUBT".

Jenny Odell - How to Do Nothing

Odell's central argument is simple: that we must reclaim our attention from the many manifestations of neoliberalism and late capitalism that are actively seeking to occupy and commodify it - hence the book's subtitle, 'Resisting the Attention Economy'. 

And the way she develops it is supple and nuanced; she works with recurring ideas like the importance of resistance (or refusal) without disengagement, of attentiveness to context, place, communities and ecologies, of historical awareness and physical space, and the political possibilities that such an orientation opens up, developing and illustrating them through a series of hermeneutic readings of artistic works, historical figures and events, local initiatives, contemporary trends, and, of course, specific places, often in her home state of California, including her own experience of them.

I've been at How to Do Nothing for a few months now, and reading it has been equal parts consoling and energising; it's also been a little bit inspiring, in that way of books that give us language as a tool to make sense of what's happening all around and how it's possible to be different and better.

More or less as an aside: the chapter on 'Ecology of Strangers' is introduced by a quotation from Gary Snyder - who's been described as the 'poet laureate of Deep Ecology' according to wikipedia - which sheds light, whether via direct connection or more obliquely (but very appositely), on one of my icons:

There are more things in mind, in the imagination, than "you" can keep track of - thoughts, memories, images, angers, delights, rise unbidden. The depths of mind, the unconscious, are our inner wilderness areas, and that is where a bobcat is right now. I do not mean personal bobcats in personal psyches, but the bobcat that roams from dream to dream.

Phoebe Bridgers - Punisher

Nice. High points: "Kyoto", "ICU", "Graceland Too".

"The Line" (The Public Theater)

The unavoidably lo-fi nature of this performance - live streamed and recorded as an intercut set of seven monologues by medical and health workers who were effectively first responders to the crisis of COVID-19 in NYC, from their own homes - worked in its favour, buttressing the sense of realism that already came with its concept and form. The workers are actually actors, but playing real people (not composites), telling stories of the pandemic, the response to it, and the systemic failings that it highlighted. 

It's an excellent piece of 'recorded theatre', ultra-contemporary in subject and depiction, and highly convincing, with most - not quite all - of the performances persuasive about the reality of the people behind them, and the political messages delivered in a way that, again, felt true because unforced.

(live streamed and recorded; w/ R and - virtually - Hayley)

Annabel Crabb - "Men at Work: Australia's Parenthood Trap" (Quarterly Essay 75)

Been meaning to read this for a while and hadn't realised it was already on our bookshelf via R!

Annabel Crabb is always good and this is lucid on the way that social and institutional expectations about men's roles shape attitudes, laws (notably availability of paid parental leave), behaviour and ultimately happiness (the last is more sketched than argued, but difficult to disagree with) in relation to parenting. 

By centring men and the costs to them of these patriarchal structures, Crabb brings a less commonly explored perspective to the issue, perhaps with the potential to persuade some who mightn't otherwise be? Hard to say how many of those are reading quarterly essays or adjacent enough to be caught in any resultant attitudinal headwinds. I suppose some might say that this issue shouldn't be made about men - but both as a recognition that feminist concerns are inevitably engaged with effects on all members of society (not just women) given that patriarchy is produced society-wide, and as a tactical intervention, this angle made a lot of sense to me.

As an aside, the examples of paid parental scheme were one case where examples from other countries were particularly compelling in throwing Australia's approach into contrast. I was also struck by Jenny Macklin's take on the political acceptability of publicly-funded parental leave at minimum wage vs Tony Abbott's 'gold plated' model at full pay.