Books In Conversation -- Here We Go!

But, what are Books in Conversation?

Before 2016, I used Twitter with a frequency that made my husband raise his brows. I live-tweeted debates; I followed the news to the point that I never lost a Breaking News Off. I had always been exposed to the news—my parents never thought to protect me from current events, for better or worse, and some of my earlier memories are of my mother talking about Carter’s inauguration, watching Carter at Camp David with Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, and Reagan getting shot on live television. And don’t get me started on the Iran Hostage Crisis. I was better informed than most seven and eight year olds, though my understanding was probably more age-appropriate.

I studied history in college. I talked to people. I’d like to think my understanding improved. Some things still didn’t make sense to me, but at this point I think that was because they didn’t make sense, period. I was very, very well-informed by 2016, and for more than twenty years had been “the political one” in most circles that weren’t, well, political. I expected Hillary Clinton to win the US presidential election not because I wished it so, but because the smartest people in media told me I should.

The smartest people were wrong.

I was as devastated as many other people by the results of the election. I didn’t believe Trump could be as evil as he turned out to be, if only because I thought he would be stopped. I was wrong. But I was also angry that I had been so misled. By my reckoning, the media had told a story that they thought should be true because it always had been before; they saw what they wanted to see, and it wasted precious time. (Also: “But, her emails.”)

I had already intended to start writing my science-fantasy series, and I needed to know a lot more than I already did to flesh out the family saga that dealt with the aftermath of genocide. I had an ambitious amount of reading to do, and after stumbling onto a book about recent Japanese history, it occurred to me that my time was going to better spent reading books for a deeper understanding than memorizing how many children a tertiary character in an ongoing news-of-the-week story had, or what color tie they favored. I wasn’t going to be the person who kept track of intrigue in the presidential cabinet—boy, would that have been a full-time job—but I was going to be the person who understood better what was really going on.

I read more history. It’s what I do and how I am, but I branched out into military history and areas of the world I’d been too afraid to delve into because they were so complex. I read less political history and finally dived into Edward Said’s Orientalism. That was intense! However, I’m a better person for it. I found Ibram Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning and had my mind blown every other paragraph as I read about things I thought I already knew. I learned about Asian American history and later South Korean sociology. I read King (the civil rights leader, not the horror author), Fanon, and more Said. I finally found someone who put into words my feelings about the Syrian Civil War and reminded me that my memory wasn’t faulty. I learned the term “settler colonialism”, and I’ll probably never stop shuddering.

I read about the value of solitude and that, no, you actually don’t want everyone to be a prodigy a la Tiger Woods. I read about the importance of nature in our lives, and I read yet more Marie Kondo before I read about what it really means to “collect”.

Because of what I wanted to write, I finally decided to read science fiction and fantasy, even as I cringed over getting caught up in medieval imperialist fantasies. I got started with The Colors of Madeline, V.E. Schwabb’s Shades of Magic trilogy—Amazon’s Vine Program was good for something—and then read Naomi Novik’s standalone novels. I branched out to N. K. Jemison’s Broken Earth trilogy, and started feeling seen. I finally jumped into Liu Cixin’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, and everything followed from there, including Ken Liu’s amazing Dandelion Dynasty Quartet, Fonda Lee’s Green Bone Saga trilogy, the Nameless Republic Series by Suyi Davies Okungbowa, the devastating standalones of Tochi Onyebuchi, and the Akata series by Nnedi Okorafor. (And how can I leave out the works of Shannon Chakraborty?) And more! I had finally found the niche I wanted to spend a lot of time in.

Through it all, I’ve been struggling to be the most productive, Modern person that I can be, and believe me when I tell you that I loved my Bullet Journal as much as I loved Marie Kondo. That community, as well as the artist Austin Kleon, recommended How to Take Smart Notes by Sonke Ahrens, and the idea that I could do something interesting with my nonfiction observations and book reviews beyond using the perspectives in my fiction began to take shape. Ahrens talked about notes beginning to “converse” with each other to create new information, and I got excited because it reminded me of all of the times I’d made an off-the-wall connection between two disparate facts. I took copious notes in my Bullet Journal—I am Team #OneNotebookToRuleThemAll—and half-heartedly took some notes on note cards (500 isn’t that many, is it?).

My husband read many of these books with me, but at a certain point that wasn’t tenable, and I didn’t have people to discuss these topics with. I can write book reviews, but that doesn’t invite the same kinds of conversation on my library website as I might like. I have been thrilled to interview authors in the past, but while I’ve enjoyed most of those writers, I wanted to put some of those people in the same room and have them talk about specific ideas in their books. I’m really not that persuasive, especially when the subject matter is vastly different, and some of the authors in question are gone. (How sad to know Edward Said isn’t here for me, since he was the person who made me realize I hadn’t been imagining racism everywhere I turned.) I can’t get the authors to talk to each other, but I can—after a fashion—get the books to talk to each other.

“In Conversation” will hopefully not only apply to books but to readers as well. I desperately hope that people who have read some of these titles will chime in—whether in the comments or their own blogs or videos—to talk about the themes that I see and what these books meant to them. I don’t know how we get out of this mess, but I do know that we have to do it together, in solidarity.

At the time of this writing, we are seeing a degradation of the establishment news media we could only barely imagine eight years ago. Major papers pulled endorsements for Kamala Harris because they were betting Trump would win and they wanted to make sure that their other businesses wouldn’t be punished for allowing some journalistic integrity. This is a predictable outcome of monopolization—and by predicted, I mean people were warning of it in the 1990s, not just the 1910s—but to see it happen so shamelessly is still shocking.

Do I sound smug about my reliance on books over current event coverage? Sure, but please know that I rarely enjoy feeling superior about anything for long. I’m an indie author, and I’ve followed Amazon’s predations on traditional publishing. I’ve also been aware since the 1990s that all aspects of the media landscape, including book publishers, have been subject to consolidation. With very few exceptions, publishers are always more powerful than their authors; this is the way of the world, and this is why so many of us jumped at the chance to publish independently. But when there were twelve important publishers, authors at least had more theoretical options. Today, there are four that are making decisions about the vast majority of what is being read and discussed, and publishers and editors are not making decisions in a vacuum. Those decisions are shaping our narrative, and it is *always* worth pausing to consider to what extent our beliefs are being actively shaped. Questioning your own beliefs is always a good idea. I would add that reading older books—going back at least one generation—can be one way to diversify perspective, but again, those books were chosen by someone as well. Another is to look for truly independent authors, although it is much rarer to find indie history and politics than it is indie fiction.

I want to mention a couple of invaluable resources for helping me build my virtual library. The selection at the New and Notable area of the Boston Public Library at Copley should win an award; if I’m ever hurting for reading material, I know I can go there and find a title that I’ll be glad to have read—I would never have found Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti Series without them. The NoveList feature on the library website helped me find or confirm fiction titles that enriched my life. Brooke Gladstone of On The Media is amazing—I found the magnificent Fearing the Black Body on one of her shows, as well as the author Cory Doctorow, whose blog pluralistic.net has been an invaluable source of information. I reluctantly admit that the blog of Austin Kleon has pointed me in the right direction more than once; now, I hope, someone will convince Kleon to get off of Substack and let someone else keep Nazis company. Finally, I must also admit that Goodreads has been helpful—not because of their algorithm, but because of the recommendations of several authors, including N.K. Jemisin, Ken Liu and Shelley Parker-Chan; without them, it probably wouldn’t have occurred to me to read Consider the Fork, Orality and Literacy, and Women in the Picture. I also would not have found the podcast Gaslit Nation, which has been a source of irreplaceable community during this bleak moment in history.

If any of that sounds like an endorsement for a subsidiary platform of Amazon, it’s NOT. I’m not so grand to hope that my little project will be the beginning of a return to a decentralized blogosphere, but I do hope we start writing about what we’re reading and what we’re experiencing in spaces that can’t be weaponized against us on a whim. Let’s stop worrying about SEO—the fact that you’re not going to make a lot of money on Facebook hasn’t stopped you from posting there—and start talking to each other again. Who knows? A conversation in the ether just might turn into a meaningful relationship...one that hopefully includes discussing new ideas, and acting on them.

I'll update this page as I post the "conversations". Thank you for your patience!

Volume 1

Deb in the City