"Levels of Life" by Julian Barnes

Similar to the opening lines, this is a book where “you put together two things that have not been together before. And the world is changed…” Barnes here combines photography, ballooning, and grief to talk about life and love. It’s a combination that I would not have expected, but surprisingly makes sense. That way, levels of life can refer to vertical levels, as well as life versus death.

The first half is almost like a story, where he discusses eighteenth century ballooning and the different figures that came into play there. The second half is the lack of a story, no characters are mentioned by name and it circles around and back on itself to portray the author’s grief at losing his wife. It makes sense, that way you feel the lack of persons the same way that the grieving do.

Despite the fact that none of the characters in the second half are mentioned by name, it is a deeply personal account. All of his musings hit home and yet also seemed insightful into the nature of anguish without ever becoming too specific. It was a moving, if short, read, and one that I would recommend for anyone getting over a heartache of any kind.

"The Architectural History of Venice" by Deborah Howard

Well this isn’t the kind of thing that I usually read. It was recommended to me by a friend as a book that you don’t really need a lot of prior knowledge for, and an interesting view of a very unique city.

I strongly agree with that second point, Venice is unique in that all of the streets are waterways and therefore the infrastructure is singular. It is very cool to watch this city grow from medieval times to the modern day through this lens. There are many images from maps to drawings to pictures of the city itself which is also fascinating, you are literally watching it grow and adapt.

While the first point is valid (I did understand everything that was being discussed) at points I felt that it would be better experienced with just a little more background information or explanations. A lot of concepts and characters come and go very quickly, and it is hard to keep them all straight and absorb so much information. I feel that the book could have benefitted from being a little longer, but I also know nothing about architecture in general, this might all be common knowledge to someone who actually has studied the field.

So while this is a fascinating perspective on a famous city, it maybe requires some experience with the subject to fully appreciate. Don’t let that scare you off though if you just like Venice or something, there are plenty of pictures if you’re just here for the eye candy.

"All the Birds in the Sky" by Charlie Jane Anders

Ok so this is a really good book. Every once in a while I read a book that’s like really good and sends you to another world, has a sense of humor, and leaves you with something to think about. I hate being cliché and whatever, but this is definitely one of those.

The story follows the lives of two people, Patricia and Laurence, who represent two ways of seeing the world. Patricia is on the side of nature and magic, and learns to be a witch, while Laurence is a scientist who makes machines like a two-second time machine and tries to transport humanity to another planet.

It starts off when the two of them are really young. I didn’t love this part as the way it’s written it just seems as though the entire world is hell bent on making their lives miserable which is just rough to read about and also gives you the sense that it’s not accurate. But I also figured that since this is coming from a kid’s perspective (sort of, it’s third person really) that’s just the way that they saw the world as well.

But also the author has such a great sense of humor. Like there’s an assassin who loves ice cream that you can’t help but feel sorry for, and Laurence tries to make a supercomputer in his closet with the name “CH@NG3M3” which is amusing.

While we are on the subject of said computer, it does indeed reach sentience and changes its name to Peregrine. As in, you know, the falcon. It takes both Patricia and Laurence’s influence to get there, which is significant because it even says flat out later on that Peregrine is the child of Laurence and Patricia. So it takes both technology/science and nature in order to create life. Artificially at least. Which is why it is a piece of technology, but has the name of a bird.

Anyways so the two of them grow up and apart, but then reconnect in San Fran years later. And then there’s a superstorm that sends the whole world into chaos (this bit was a little unclear to me, like we’ve have superstorms before, why does this send us into WW3?) and these opposing factions start fighting it out. So there’s Patricia and her witch crew on one side, and Laurence and his tech crew on the other. They both come up with very different solutions to how to save the world.

The tech people want to send us to another planet. This fails because in order to do so we would have to destroy all of earth and everything on it.

The nature people want to send us back to an age where humans are feral and avoid one another compulsively. This fails because the people who made it are so separated from the rest of the world that they don’t see how this could be a bad idea. An important point that Patricia makes is that really important witches lose touch with the world because they’re so isolated, and they can’t really do magic with others anymore.

So in the end, you need both, the human-centric vision of the techies and the world-centric view of the witches. You can’t create anything without both sides of it.

"A Field Guide to Getting Lost" by Rebecca Solnit

This was a really interesting read. It’s essentially all about getting lost, and the different meanings of the word. Mixed in are stories and memories from the author as well. So it turns into a nice discussion and memoir of sorts.

Sometimes it does focus too heavily on the memoir aspect rather than the discussion of being lost, but I guess that could be a super meta way of “losing” the train of thought. But I’m probably reading too much into it.

The part that most interested me was the discussion of loss and losing. The author brings in anything from philosophy to old maps in this discussion, so there is also an aspect of how this conception of being lost has changed over time. It’s interesting to think about how we perceive loss and how this could be different if we were raised alternatively. Loss is not something that we think about frequently but is constantly underlying our actions, so this is enlightening to read about.

Interesting read, I wish more books were written like this, semi-philosophical, semi-just free associating.