Review: Babel, by R.F. Kuang.

 

I've just finished reading "Babel" by R.F. Kuang.  The writing was good, although I had to overlook 1883 era characters using the words "morph" and "ridiculous"—two of my pet peeve words—anachronistically.  

I went in thinking the novel would be a high fantasy about a magical library, and in a sense Babel is, but the novel is more an alternative magical history meditation on (the British) Empire and colonialism, capitalism, and on the relationships of academia and the military-industrial complex.  As someone who has worked for a university for twenty-some years, some of the book's observations about exploitive worker-producer-product relations in the institution of higher education hit close to home.  

The novel ends on a grim but open-ended note, sort of like the end of "The Empire Strikes Back," only without a Rebel Alliance.  I will shelve "Babel" with books like "1984," "The Handmaid's Tale," "Animal Farm," and other cultural critique books that are, to paraphrase Anna Russell, "art that one must expose oneself to without thought of reward or enjoyment."

Easter Family Visit

It's Easter Sunday and an atmospheric river has made the morning grey and wet.  In the distant southeast there was a morning glimmer of gold along an edge of pending rain.  Yesterday was sunnier, which is better for my mood.  

We visited my folks for a gathering of ten.  In addition to my immediate family, my vintner cousins, K & B visited.  K & B brought wine, hors d'oeuvres, and an extra boost of energy to the gathering.  My sister put in a lot of effort in to food production, and made a scrumptious chicken main entry.  We (or rather, Mark) brought carrot-cake cupcakes for dessert.  And there were Easter candies. 

The route to my folks' house follows Highway 99 and Territorial Highway.  Over February the bald eagles would gather on the tops of power line poles overlooking the fields where the lambs were being born; one time we must have seen around ten or so.  This time around, we saw five miserable-looking and soaked golden (we think) eagles sulking along the top branches of a tree overlooking the river.  We also saw joggers, who looked like they were inviting hypothermia, but I guess when one is running in 50F rains, it's not so bad.

The rain slacked off some over the day.  In the afternoon a woodpecker visited a dying oak tree next door.  Since it was level with my folk's deck, I managed to get a photograph of it.