Author: claredibble

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Books

This is How You Lose the Time War: Book Review

Back Cover Blurb:

From award-winning authors Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone comes an enthralling, romantic novel (This Is How You Lose the Time War) spanning time and space about two time-traveling rivals who fall in love and must change the past to ensure their future. 

Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There’s still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war.

“There’s a kind of time travel in letters, isn’t there? I imagine you laughing at my small joke; I imagine you groaning; I imagine you throwing my words away. Do I have you still? Do I address empty air and the flies that will eat this carcass? You could leave me for five years, you could return never – and I have to write the rest of this not knowing.”

Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose the Time War

“She climbs upthread and down; she braids and unbraids history’s hair.”

Amal El-Mohtar, This Is How You Lose the Time War

This book is heavy on the prose and light on defined plot points, but I enjoyed the romance and whimsy. It let me occupy the head space of being newly in love when you read this kind of shit back and forth to each other, seeing the comedy and romance in every tragedy and the tragedy in every comedy and romance. If you yearn to feel gorgeous words tumble through your mind, body, and soul, this is the book for you: sardonic, sapphic, spy vs. spy sci/fi.

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Challenges

Solitude

Every place I have ever lived, I have had a place that I go for solitude. I did not need a seperate space where I grew up, as we lived on 40 acres of rolling hills and forest in southern Indiana, specifically selected by my parents for its solitude. I carry that solitude with me wherever I go, but I also sometimes need a physical place to go to help access this interior state.

Ironically, since then, the physical place I go when I need to access this internal sense of solitude is typically, but not always, a public place. Having other people milling around that I can see but am unlikely to need to talk to somehow opens up something in my brain. Almost always, it is an outdoor place in nature, with the exception of the Cleveland Museum of Art when I was in undergrad at CWRU. My place of solitude among strangers needs to be a place that I can walk around, as it is a place I go to think, and possibly feel. Walking helps me work through whatever I can’t get to in my everyday surroundings. This solitude is a sorting out space.

Right now, my go to solitude is the Würselener Wald, the local public forest. I love seeing the seasons fade into each other. I have not been in a while right now because it is too wet and muddy, and I can feel its absence. I also go there with my family, and apparently that is typically when I take photographs. However, many of the nature details in my minds eye are from my walks alone. I particularly love the mossy roof shelter. Sometimes I will just walk to it and look at it, then touch the trunk in the center.

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Books

The Only Woman in the Room: Book Review

Back Cover Blurb of The Only Woman in the Room by Marie Benedict:

She possessed a stunning beauty. She also possessed a stunning mind. Could the world handle both?  

Her beauty almost certainly saved her from the rising Nazi party and led to marriage with an Austrian arms dealer. Underestimated in everything else, she overheard the Third Reich’s plans while at her husband’s side, understanding more than anyone would guess. She devised a plan to flee in disguise from their castle, and the whirlwind escape landed her in Hollywood. She became Hedy Lamarr, screen star.  

But she kept a secret more shocking than her heritage or her marriage: She was a scientist. And she knew a few secrets about the enemy. She had an idea that might help the country fight the Nazis…if anyone would listen to her.  

“Rulers and movements may rise and fall, but the power of money always prevails,” Fritz said. While ostensibly a summary of some facet of Napoleonic history, it seemed a fitting statement of Fritz’s own political beliefs. Power, it seemed, was an end unto itself for Fritz.”

― Marie Benedict, The Only Woman in the Room

This book is the second I have read by Marie Benedict. I liked it better than The Other Einstein because I did not enjoy fictionalized accounts of Albert physically abusing his first wife. As far as I am aware, there is not confirmed evidence of this. He was a jerk for sure, as a romantic partner, but I’m still in a mindset that allegations of beating up your wife in front of your kids needs substantiated evidence, even if everyone in question are already dead. So, even though I liked learning about Mileva Marić, I was not wild about that book, but intrigued enough about the concept to try again.

I enjoyed The Only Woman in the Room more. I am reflecting on why I have an easier time accepting that Hedy Lemarr’s first husband, an arms dealer known as the merchant of death was controlling and abusive, but it seems pretty well documented that Hedy literally escaped him, so there is that. Anyway, it seems common for Benedict’s book to partially read like romance novels that devolve into abusive situations with a side of glossed over science. It was a digestible way to learn a lot more about an amazing woman. In theory, I love the idea of popularizing narratives of strong woman. In that vein, I like that Hedy ultimately triumphed, which is probably why I enjoyed her story over Marić’s. In some respects, it reminds me of the artist that drew strong women as Disney-style princesses in 2013.

https://womenyoushouldknow.net/flatten-heroine-artist-puts-disney-princess-filter-10-real-life-female-role-models/

When the princesses came out, I loved them. Now, I am older and my feelings are more complex, even when looking at it as satire. Benedict’s books might be a step in the direction of popularizing female scientists stories, but I don’t know if I will keep reading them.

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Challenges

My favorite Me

Today’s prompt asks about our favorite parts of ourselves. Every trait or characteristic has aspects that are both “good” and “bad when viewed from a place of impartial judgement. But none of these parts exist alone, in isolation. So instead, today I am focusing on my favorite version of myself.

Like when you step on your yoga mat and start stretching, you wake up and get to both discover and create the you that you will be today. Is your lower back tight? Is your brain particularly chatty or distractible? Are you on top of things today? Then the honest accountability of seeing if you are living into this version you are telling yourself that you are- Did you make your bed?

My favorite me shows up. She is there for her friends and family and she is there for herself. Showing up is usually at least half the battle. Bonus points for showing up with compassion and openness. May favorite me learns from mistakes, both her own and hopefully, those of others. She can handle the challenges life throws at her and appreciates the moments of joy in the journey. She lives this life experiencing everything as if she can’t go back and she won’t get another. My favorite me is curious and interested in seeking the truth, but also in viewing the truth in its most compassionate light. If I have learned one thing in my time here, it is that when other people do things that you want to judge, they probably have a good reason and a different view of the situation. Trying to see what that is typically removes many false choices between being honest and being kind.

Living into my favorite me is not easy, and not someone I get to meet every day. Bringing her to life is a continuous and imperfect practice. But I’m not sure of any better way to live.

brown wooden framed canopy above yoga mat
Photo by Tiff Ng on Pexels.com
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Challenges

Strength

Today’s prompt is to write about something that makes me feel strong. One way for me to feel strong is to be physically strong. At various times in my life, I have enjoyed lifting weights. I miss it, but it is not something I feel safe doing when I cannot reliably communicate with people around me. For the time being, planks at home are my weigh bearing exercise, and I can always do more of that.

I feel strong when I am able to get things done. Completing tasks, influencing outcomes, and looking back at what I have done makes me feel strong, if not always satisfied. There is value in “finished” even when it is not perfect.

Loving, living life, and being open and vulnerable ironically makes me feel strong. I am resilient in the face of a thing that is ephemeral and cannot last forever because we do not last forever. To be open despite understanding that we come into this life to lose everything we love and yet to experience it, to engage with life and love, feels brave and strong to me.

Sunrise – a new day
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Books

The Midnight Library: Book Review

Back Cover Blurb:

Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?

In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig’s enchanting blockbuster novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.

“A person was like a city. You couldn’t let a few less desirable parts put you off the whole. There may be bits you don’t like, a few dodgy side streets and suburbs, but the good stuff makes it worthwhile.”

Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

I can see why this book is popular. It was quite easy to read. I haven’t heard of pop philosophy as its own category, but that is how I would characterize The Midnight Library. It has little gems of insight like saying the only way to learn is to live, which makes some reviewers think that this novel veers toward reading like a self-help book. While I acknowledge the fluff, it still had really beautiful moments and was fun. Sometimes warm fuzzies are what you are looking for. As such, I wish the author could have come to a similar premise without a suicide attempt.

Without access to my own magical Midnight Library, I already feel like I have tumbled through multiple lives in my time. It does not stop me from occasionally feeling stuck in a sub-optimal life sometimes, but I have learned that regardless of how I feel about a certain phase or season, it will pass. The idea that the loss of any greatness you might have seemed destined for in your youth is probably for the best is probably broadly appealing. Kind of interesting to have this message be delivered by what seems to me to be an internationally famous author.

One small detail that struck me as odd is how much Nora loves Henry David Thoreau. I still enjoy Thoreau’s quotes and appreciate his civil disobedience and awe of nature. Now that I am older, it is harder to take a man’s advice on self-reliance written when he lived in a friend’s cabin and had women attending to much of his cooking, cleaning, and laundry. I’d like to be that kind of “self-reliant” too. I have not met any women with deeper knowledge of philosophy that are Thoreau fans. If you are, please tell me why.

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Challenges

Dreams to Remember

Todays prompt is about dreams and coincidentally, I had a strange dream last night.

I was in my kitchen, cooking. My family was around, but not actively involved. I kept trying to make typical things that I make regularly, but they kept coming out crazy. I would mix up batches of flour and milk and eggs, or pull out a schnitzel to fry in the pan. But the food came out of the pots, pans, and oven unlike anything I have ever seen before. One was about a foot tall mass that was sort of gray brown and moved or wobbled around. It looked like a weeping willow or a shaggy dog. Another was a jewel-toned gelatin-like substance that refracted light all over the kitchen.

I woke up before we sat down to eat, but I hope it tasted good and was a special meal to share!

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Challenges

Favorite Quotes

I started working on today’s prompt by searching for popular quotes. While I easily found several old favorites, I wondered if they really meant something to me why I had to ask the internet for them. So I looked around my computer, and it turns out that I had a file of inspiring science quotes. I picked a few of my favorites to illustrate and share with you.

“Art and nature shall always be wrestling until they eventually conquer one another so that the victory is the same stroke and line: that which is conquered, conquers at the same time.”

Maria Sibylla Merian

“Existing diversity provides the fuel for these innovations; both natural and directed evolution uses this diversity to solve challenges, exploit opportunities, and evade catastrophe. As countless examples from the natural world attest, the alternative to diversity is extinction.”

Frances Arnold

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”

Marie Curie
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Challenges

Time Travel

I already time travel, exclusively in the forward direction, at a rate of one day at a time. Still, given the choice of one time travel trip anywhere, I would pick the future regardless of whether the trip was a round trip or a one way. It could be cool to go back to events in human history, like the first people on the moon or what it was actually like to live in a pre-agriculture society (spoiler alert- it was probably hard). Or I would hang out with my grandparents again.

The question does not specify, but if we visit the past via time travel, a science fiction writer has a choice – can you access other outcomes or not? I actually don’t even care to go to the past if you can access other outcomes, the option that I find more interesting, because for all the outcomes one can image for a different decision long ago, you can make different decisions starting today and have a huge possibility space in front of you. I just finished reading The Midnight Library, which allows the borrower to “check out” all her other lives.

I will admit that possibility space gets smaller as one ages, as there is less time remaining. So I can imagine the benefit of time traveling back to being a kid and doing things differently. However, things were not guaranteed to work out as well as they did, and you probably already did your best the first time. Although after writing this paragraph, I’m thinking about a million small things that I could have done differently in life and wondering where they might have led.

It is unlikely that ruminating on my personal past will make me happier. The future still has all that possibility and potential. So, where would I go? First, I would commit to taking care of my body so that it can continue to serve me in my old fashioned mode of time travel.

For my magic time travel, I would travel to the near-ish future that I don’t expect to see myself, like 2121, because I’m curious how the threads we are currently in turn out. What are my grandkids and great grandkids like? Does climate change become like the hole in the ozone layer (oh yeah, I remember hearing about that problem before we took care of it) or is it a hugely destructive force? How fast is the internet? Did humans create a generalized AI? Or, more specifically, are we aware of generalized AI operating among us? What do people eat? Do bananas still exist? Did cultivated meat become a thing? If so, how many cows and chickens are there in the world? What are governments like? Did we find something better than democracy, did we hold onto it, or did we fall into the allure of authoritarianism? What is a thing then that is not even on our radars now? It is difficult for me not to get excited when thinking about the future.

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Challenges

Favorite Photos

My favorite photo I have ever taken is a picture of my grandfather walking away down a road holding hands with two of my young cousins, but I don’t have a physical or digital copy of it right now. So I went through my pictures and picked out some favorites from the last 3 years. As it happens, I split them into two photo galleries. The first is from before COVID times and the second is during. We are pretty lucky to have such a beautiful life.