This is for US and Canada only, and you only have until 11:59 PM ET March 23rd to download it.

This is one I've seen mentioned before and was a bit interested in, so I plan on downloading it.

My latest podcast is up on the New Books Network website! In it, I interview Ian West about the book he coauthored with Marilyn Palmer on the use of new technologies in British and Irish country houses. Enjoy!

I was not prepared for what I got in this book. I knew it was a memoir, but it really does focus on asking and all ways we ask people for things and all the things we don't ask for until it hurts too much. It's a beautiful book and made me realize that  I really need to work on asking more.

I absolutely loved this book. I'll be honest, I hadn't actually heard of Amanda Palmer before seeing this book. I'm not as big into music as I am books and I've rarely gone to Kickstarter, so it's not much of a surprise either. I listened to her TED talk (and I do love TED!), which covers many of the same bases as her book. I'd consider it a really condensed version. Here it is:

[ted id=1682]

The art of asking is really rather genius, though it's not exactly foreign to my life. There's a connection between what Palmer refers to as the art of asking and my husband's work in the church. Churches don't make people pay for their services, they ask. But churches are dying off and Kickstarters are getting more money every day. They seem to have lost the art to it. I have recommended the book to him and I hope he reads/listens to it.

I listened to it, which was definitely the way to go. Palmer narrates the book and she even sings a song between chapters occasionally. For me, it did just as promised in the blurb. It made me rethink some things, specifically what it means to ask instead of demand and to share the process of creating art with those around us.

I hate Twitter but I understand her love of it. I've never been good at starting conversations with people in front of me. I've never been good at being seen or letting others know that I see them. With these in mind, the book has created a degree of fear that I will never get to where I want to be. But then it always comes back in a haunting sort of way. I can get there, but I have to grow first and I have to do the things that need to be done.

Plus, I want connection when I get there, not adoration or whatever. It made me pay a bit more attention to the Twitter feeds of the artists I do admire. It makes me want to connect with them on some small level. I'm working up to it. I followed a few more since reading this, mostly comic creators that I love. Reaching out for connection is a little terrifying. But I think about standing on that box, trying to give someone a flower. I want to try something like that one day.

I loved that the book began with a introduction by Brene Brown. Some of you may recall my love for her and her work. Their messages share that connection can only happen after the risk of vulnerability. It only happens when we've reached out to someone who can reject us, but doesn't. If they are forced, it's not connection.

There were plenty of adorable anecdotes, but the meat of the book rests on just what the title implies. There is an art to asking. The book also dives pretty deeply into the art that can be present in giving. Some give, and some do so artfully. There is a difference. My mother has been one of those who give artfully. She has a way of not making the recipient feel shame, which is also important to connection. Palmer sums it up in "take the donut" or "take the flower". I love food, so I prefer "take the donut". I will also have to work on taking to donut in the future. I tend to be the bashful sort that prefers people keep their donut but totally appreciates the offer.

Has anyone else read this book? Did it make you take another look at asking, giving, receiving, connection, vulnerability.....?

Too Like the Lightning is Ada Palmer’s fiction debut, and it is part one of at least a two part series. (I wasn’t warned about this, and I kind of wish I had been. My expectations are different when reading a story that won’t be finished for another book.) And, I liked this book. I think. Mostly. It’s very peculiar and difficult to explain, which makes it sound awful. It’s not awful, but it is a kind of book that I found it hard to grapple with.

Too Like the Lightning is set in the future, in a sort-of utopia, which has achieved its status by a careful balance of alliances and interests. This occurs less across national and international divides and more through clusters of philosophical outlook and tradition which people subscribe to. These are called Hives, and are the main political and personal forces. Public displays of religion have basically been outlawed.

So, this is science fiction, but it’s the kind of science fiction that talks about Thomas Carlyle and Voltaire all the time. The Enlightenment is as powerful a force in this society as any other point in history–we are given a sense of the great philosophers and thinkers of the fictional near past, but they also hearken back to the 18th century. And there’s the kind of science that basically looks like magic, also possibly real magic in the form of a mysterious child named Bridger. This is what I mean by peculiar.

It is mostly narrated by a man named Mycroft Canner–everyone in this book has that sort of name–and he is not entirely reliable. This fact is hammered home a little too forcefully towards the end of the book, but it’s fairly clear from early on*. Mycroft is a Servicer, sentenced to a lifetime of usefully helping society after having committed a serious crime. Mycroft, we’re given to understand, is an extra-specially notorious criminal whose identity has to be obfuscated for his own protection.

We do also have occasional interjections from other characters and points of view, although how many of these are in fact filtered through Mycroft is an open question. But this book is full of other people, because Mycroft has his fingers in all of the pies and knows all the powerful people in this world. This is a book about power and who wields it and how it is balanced and unbalanced. Most of these characters are sketched in quickly, but some of them are given more depth. The sheer number of names and the relationships between them can be pretty overwhelming at times.

And that, I think points to my main lingering puzzlement about this book. It’s almost 400 pages long and I read them all. I feel that I should be able to say if it’s interested in plot (things definitely happen!) or characters (there are lots, and they’re interesting!) or philosophy (there’s so much of it. SO MUCH.) but in the end it all seems somehow very detached. My point earlier about it being interested in power and the shifting and balancing of power is as close as I can come to any kind of a theory of what this book is about, and why you might be interested in it. (Unless you are the kind of person who automatically perks up at the mention of Enlightenment philosophy, in which case this is the book for you.)

I have other lingering puzzlements, however. First: how do I feel about Mycroft at the end of the book? I don’t know. Palmer is playing with the reader’s expectation of trust and I’m not entirely sure if it’s not working, or if it’s working perfectly and I just don’t like it. Second: how do I feel about everyone else? WHO KNOWS? They are all kind of awful in a fascinating way, even–I would argue–Bridger. The narrative really seems to want us to care about Bridger, who is the force of innocence and goodness, but who ends up coming across as Charles Wallace Murry x 10.

Also, two related further puzzlements. Why does everyone seem so pro-Mycroft? Is it simply that we’re getting the story filtered through his perspective? I ended up wondering if I would like the story better if it were about Thisbe. Further: the social understanding of gender in this world confounds our gender expectations, which would be really interesting. Except that Mycroft’s narration, which often puts gender back onto the characters, seems to reinforce them, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. It seems less successful than, say, Leckie’s use of “she” as the default pronoun in the Imperial Radch books.

Finally, this is less of a puzzlement and more of an outright nope–I got very frustrated with a section about icons that does not understand icons or their religious significance and use. I shouldn’t be surprised about this, because it happens all the time, but I found it annoying, and it made me wonder what else the book got wrong.

Sometimes when I’m not sure how I feel about a book, writing the review helps me solidify that. In this case, I still don’t know! It’s a mostly-positive befuddlement. And I’m not exactly sure who I would recommend this book to, either. You don’t need to have an in-depth knowledge of philosophy to be able to read it, but you do have to be patient enough to work through all the names and social conventions and mini-history lessons. Ultimately, for that patient reader, it is a rewarding book, even though I still can’t say exactly why I liked it.

* Yes, yes, arguably all first person narrators are unreliable to a certain degree. Mycroft is a bit beyond that.

Osią całej historii są relacje pomiędzy Cecily i Tate. A są to bardzo skomplikowane relacje. Wszystko zaczęło się przed laty, gdy siedemnastoletnia Cecily zostaje uratowana przez Tate'a od molestowania, jakiego dopuszczał się względem niej ojczym. Przystojny wybawiciel załatwia jej tajemnicze stypendium, dzięki któremu Cecily podejmuje studia antropologiczne. Dziewczyna zakochuje się w nim po uszy, on jednak trzyma ją na dystans. Dlaczego? Gdyż potajemnie sam finansuje wszystkie wydatki związane z jej nauką. Dodatkowo jest on czystej krwi Indianinem z plemienia Lakota i uważa, że za żonę może pojąć jedynie kobietę, która będzie miała takie same korzenie jak on. Ach, zapomniałabym! Kolejnym powodem jest jego zawód - szpieg z tajnej agencji CIA. Dużo tego, prawda?