“The Tyrant’s Tomb” by Rick Riordan

This is yet another book in The Trials of Apollo series by Rick Riordan (see previous posts here, here, and here). I thought this book continued the series, and it did deal with some disappointing aspects of the previous books. You can tell that Riordan is stepping up his game to get to the finale of the series.

The book starts with Apollo and Meg bringing Jason’s casket to New Rome. They join the Roman demigods who are recovering from a rough battle where a lot of them died and they see the impacts of this on the people there. They also meet up with a harpy who is writing out prophecies, and learn from that to go on an information-gathering quest. So they head out on that with some new and old friends, and learn about the plans for a bigger attack soon. And that they are keeping an old god captive, this god’s power is scrambling communication for the demigods. So on the eve of the attack Apollo, Meg, and Reyna head to free this god where they also find the remains of one of Apollo’s oracles. Apollo has to confront his past where he cursed the oracle and bullied this god. In the end, both decide to pass peacefully. They head back to camp in the middle of the battle, Apollo does a ritual to summon his sister Artemis. He then returns to the fight to watch Frank sacrifice himself, then heads to find and protect the harpy who is wanted for her gift of prophecy. Artemis finally shows up and defeats the last of the forces. A lot of characters die in the aftermath of the battle, but Frank is revealed to be alive! Apollo and Meg realize they have to head back to New York to confront the last remaining tyrant.

Alright so it is nice to catch up with some old characters. Thalia, Hazel, and a few others make an appearance. The battle in this book does also have stakes, there are characters that are beloved that die. Frank being revealed to be alive though is a nice twist as he would have been the second point of view character to die. I was actually really satisfied with that, as you see the characters grieving others so it isn’t a cop out to avoid their harm. And we do see the impacts of the battle that I criticized earlier for just being described as bad but not naming who died and giving consequences to that. You don’t often see that in the series, since it is for kids, and while it’s depressing it is important.

I also liked that Apollo had to confront parts of his past here. Again, still worried that he won’t be as entertaining, but his changes so far have been more in the way he approaches things rather than a totally different narrative tone which I like. In effect, he’s becoming a more fleshed out character as he becomes more human which is a cool twist. Like he has a backstory and a past and weaknesses and strengths (as his godly strength returns). Honestly the way this is being handled is masterful, really nice work by Riordan for making that happen.

All this is leading up to the final book in the series which I can’t wait to get my hands on!

This Is Beautiful: Audre McDonald

 Last weekend I had the absolute pleasure of seeing Audre McDonald perform for the second time! She came to my undergrad back in the day, and now I get to see her in graduate school! She was incredible, such a stunning and powerful voice. Heck, she sang "Summertime" without a microphone! I also didn't remember her being so funny the first time, this time around she shared stories and jokes and was super entertaining. I hope someday to see her on Broadway, but who knows when I'll be able to make that.

“Little Fires Everywhere” by Celeste Ng

I picked up this book while I was waiting for some others to come in at the library, it just happened to be available and I had heard it was good before. Other than that, I didn’t know much about the plot or anything, I just thought it looked good and would be something to read. I ended up really enjoying the book, I want to read Ng’s other book as well now.

The story starts at the end. The Richardsons’ house is burning down while the family watches, they are all certain it was the work of the youngest daughter Izzy. It then goes back to before the fire, when the latest tenant at the Richardson’s rental place is moving in. The new tenants are Mia, an artist, and her daughter Pearl. Pearl meets Moody, one of the Richardson kids, and becomes integrated into the Richardson family fairly easily, becoming friends with the older daughter Lexie as well. Mia even ends up doing some cleaning for the Richardsons, which is where Izzy meets her, and Izzy starts to help Mia with her art.

Shortly after this, Mia overhears at the Richardsons’ that their friends recently adopted a baby that was abandoned at a fire station. Turns out that Mia knows the mother and that she wants to get her baby back, so Mia starts helping Bebe (the mom) fight a legal battle for custody. Bebe is Asian, but her daughter was taken in by a white couple. This triggers a reckoning in the town about whether white parents can adequately raise an Asian baby when they know nothing about Asian culture. Meanwhile, Lexie has accidentally gotten pregnant from her boyfriend and takes Pearl with her to get an abortion. She even uses Pearl’s name as a cover! Mia ends up caring for Lexie while she recovers, causing Lexie to look more leniently on Bebe for abandoning her baby. However, Mrs. Richardson sees Pearl’s name at the abortion clinic, and thinks Pearl got an abortion with her son as the father. Mrs. Richardson then kicks Mia and Pearl out of the rental, causing Mia to come clean to Pearl that Pearl was supposed to be another couple’s baby, Mia was just the surrogate. Mia and Pearl drive off, Izzy sets fire to the house and then heads after them.

Obviously a big theme of the book is motherhood. There’s Mia being a surrogate and then keeping the baby, Lexie getting an abortion, Bebe fighting to get her baby back, and Mrs. Richardson running her brood. I kept expecting the book to have some sort of stance on motherhood, this is right this is wrong, but in the end it feels fairly ambiguous. Obviously Ng supports Bebe having her child back and Mia keeping Pearl, but while the family that takes Bebe’s baby is unsuited to the task they aren’t evil. Same with the family Mia was having the baby for, they look really good care of her. It didn’t hit me until I got to the end of the book that maybe this expected judgement is the point. Motherhood comes with so much pressure and expectations, do this to be a good parent, when maybe we just need to be more lenient. Everyone is imperfect and going through their own issues; there is no right way to be a mother.

Another big theme is race. The book takes place in the 90s and the color-blind messaging of that era is everywhere. Lexie talks about how her boyfriend is Black and how lucky they are to be in a town that doesn’t see race. Mrs. Richardson talks up her friends who took Bebe’s baby as a family that doesn’t see race, something good for an Asian baby. But as the discourse around the trial shows, race is still very much present and impacts our reactions regardless. So in the end the color-blindness ends up being a myth.

I also enjoyed this book because I fell in love with Mia and Izzy. Mia is a wonderful character, an artist with a big heart. The descriptions of her art are really inventive and cool to imagine as the text doesn’t have images. So of course I, like Izzy in the book, fell for her hard. Izzy is a more extreme version of me from high school, a rebel who is the black sheep of her family. She only finds acceptance with Mia and in helping Mia with her art. I also just think that Mia is interesting in that it’s explicitly said she’s had no romantic relationships. She got pregnant from a baster to be the surrogate and hasn’t pursued anything else. It probably wasn’t intended by the author, but I think she’s an asexual/aromantic icon.

Despite how much is packed into the book, I found this to be a really fun and entertaining read! It was great to pick up something totally different while waiting for my other books to come in.

This Is Beautiful: Sleeping In

 What with lab work and the semester winding down, this past weekend was the first one in a while where I didn't have to go into lab and also didn't have something else important going on so I could afford to relax a little. It was so nice, I slept in, got to read in bed, and was not freaking out about work I had to do the whole time. What a time! Hopefully with summer coming there's more of this in store.

“Superior: The Return of Race Science” by Angela Saini

I was recommended this book by a friend who knows I’m interested in science broadly and genetics in particular and how these practices are co-opted by racists to bolster their ideals. This book takes a more historical view of the subject and details how race has been impacted by science and politics over time, but primarily from World War II to the present.

The book starts with the colonization of indigenous cultures and how colonizers saw them as racially inferior. There’s a lot of talk about having inferior peoples die out, leading to the suppression of indigenous cultures and livelihoods. Scientists then enter the conversation as they begin to categorize humans, a sort of natural extension of categorizing plants and animals. This turns the concept of race into an unchangeable aspect of your identity that gets passed down from your parents. This leads to the eugenics used during the Third Reich and to justify the Holocaust. But it wasn’t just the Germans, scientists all over were studying race. It just got much less popular after the war so it moves to the sidelines. And it still exists in this form!

Racist scientists now aim to just get their words out there, in any form, and to simply keep doing this. Then they can cite each other’s work and make it seem more respectable than it is. The mainstream though starts using terms like “human biodiversity” to talk about race without using specifically the word “race.” This allows them to avoid the baggage from the word while being able to investigate the biological differences between groups of humans. She ends with talking about how to get medical approval on treatments, clinicians have started sometimes only testing treatments on Black individuals. This isn’t motivated by racism, it’s simply to get it approved more quickly, but it leads to the idea that some treatments only work on some races. And it’s allowed the idea that there are inherent differences between the races to continue.

Saini also gets into a really interesting concept about stories and the stories we tell ourselves about where we come from. And Saini could only get into this as a non-scientist. Basically the facts don’t matter, people will manipulate what facts are published to support their beliefs and claims. And this matters because we understand ourselves through stories! So we have to be careful what facts we are using to support those narratives.

In case you cannot tell from my abbreviated notes above, I thought this was a great book. It gets less into the biological science and more into the social science of race which is a perspective I don’t often seen as a research scientist. Definitely would recommend to anyone else interested in this subject!

This Is Beautiful: Solidarity

 My graduate student union has been on strike for over a week now. The strike has been in response to contract negotiations and the university refusing to even have a conversation with us, or make a counter-offer, literally they've been wasting the union's time since the fall. This past week I took on a number of picket shifts, and this week I decided to upgrade myself to a picket captain! I was on strike once before in 2020, and both times it's been just such an outpouring of solidarity and care. It's really rare that graduate students feel connected, we are so separated from each other and in different fields and buildings. But the strike brings us all together. And so many community members and others in the university as so supportive! Anyways, I hope that the strike ends and we get our contract, but in the meantime I'm having a good time.

“The Burning Maze” by Rick Riordan

This is the third book in the Trials of Apollo series from Riordan (book one and two can be found at the links). I’ve been a big fan of this series, and this book was just as fun and enjoyable to read!

Our main duo of Apollo and Meg are navigating the labyrinth with Grover as their guide. They pop out over on the west coast, near Grover’s headquarters where they’re trying to control wildfires and save the plants and dryads of the region. Apollo thinks the fires have something to do with the resurrected Roman emperor in the region, Caligula, who was known for his ruthlessness. Caligula also wanted to replace Apollo as the sun god, and to do this he has enlisted a sorceress who wants to take Apollo, boil him down to his godly essence, combine it with the energy of Helios (the sun Titan), and use that to turn Caligula into a god. It’s Helios’ essence that’s causing the fires in the area, so Grover wants to stop them as well. Caligula also has a Sybil, a immortal human with the power to spout prophecies as word games trapped in the labyrinth, who Apollo must free. Meg and Apollo team up with the newly broken-up duo of Piper and Jason to find Caligula’s shoes which will lead them to the Sybil. Jason dies in the attempt. Grover, Meg, and Apollo then head into the labyrinth to find the Sybil. They free her, but also their new friend that Apollo was going to teach how to play the ukulele dies as well. Leo then arrives saying that Camp Jupiter is safe. Piper and her dad head to Oklahoma with Leo, Meg and Apollo go to bury Jason and then onwards to Camp Jupiter.

The main thing I want to talk about is pretty obvious: Jason is the first point of view character to die. It’s a really bold choice, and there are things I like about it and things I don’t. It’s a little disappointing to me in the sense that Jason was only in the book for a few chapters. He barely had a presence. He also just broke up with Piper, which nicely wraps up their relationship just in time for him to get erased out of the series. And let’s be honest, the guy is a carbon copy of Percy. If any of the characters were going to die, Jason is the most dispensable. His whole mission is to make sure all of the gods are worshipped, which is similar to what Percy promised after the first series. So with all that in mind, killing him off feels like just a way to up the stakes without having to develop him into his own character. It does up the stakes considerably though, Jason was a child of Zeus and a pretty powerful demigod. If you want to emphasize how murderous Caligula is, then this isn’t a bad way to do it. Riordan isn’t messing around here.

This book also gave a lot of insight into Meg’s backstory. What’s really nice is that Riordan is giving up bits of her story each book, so we learn more and more about a really central character. If we learned everything about her in the first book, then we wouldn’t keep reading. But developing this keeps the interest going without forcing it.

Like the rest of the books in the series, there’s a great mix of new and old characters. I loved seeing Grover again, he’s one of my favorite characters, and Coach Hedge makes an appearance. It’s a good connection to the rest of the Percy Jackson universe without making the series a direct extension.

I’ve talked about this before, but it is interesting to watch Apollo’s character development. In this book Jason tells Apollo to remember what it is like to be human, which Apollo interprets as remembering his relationships and friendships and grief. I do wonder where this is all going to go though, Apollo has become mortal before, so is all this development going to come to nothing? So far Apollo has kept his same snark and self-centeredness throughout, but how will that change? It’ll be interesting to see what Riordan does with him for sure.

Still a good series, still excited for the rest of it. We are getting close to the end now, will have to see how this wraps up!

This Is Beautiful: Dance Performances

 I'm not sure if it's just because it's once a year, but I love doing my annual dance performance so much. It makes it really rewarding to see it all come together, especially since we've been working on it for so long. And you finally get to celebrate all you've accomplished with each other! This is also the art form that I've been doing the longest, it's where I feel the most comfortable. I wish my group was able to perform more often, but at least I get the one!

“Zizek’s Jokes” by Slavoj Zizek

This book also has contributions from Momus (who wrote an afterword) and Audun Mortensen. I assume the latter two actually put together this collection, but there isn’t a ton of information on that.

The gist of this book is that Zizek is a philosopher, political, and cultural critic. In this book, the editors pulled all of the instances he makes a joke or talks about a joke from his writings. He usually takes the jokes and uses them to illustrate a point, and very frequently he pulls from the same joke in multiple instances. The editors were great at classifying the same jokes together so you aren’t going through the same thing multiple times.

It's hard to classify this book because it can be hard to figure out exactly what Zizek is talking about without seeing the full work and the full context of the joke. But that also isn’t the point of this book, so I don’t want to fixate on that. To be honest, my favorite part was probably the afterword from Momus since that sheds light on how Zizek uses jokes and what his favorite one means. It was nice to get that extended context and analysis to know how to think about these excerpts.

I probably should have known this going in, but a lot of his jokes are pretty raunchy. Which in and of itself is fine, but it can slide really easily into misogyny which is less fun. I don’t know, I should have seen that coming but I also thought this would be more fun lighthearted jokes and not sex jokes all the time.

Anyways as a casual Zizek person (I’ve read some of his stuff, mostly articles and not full books) I found this to be entertaining if at times slightly inscrutable. It’s short and it doesn’t have the really dense sections that no one wants to read. So very little risked and very little rewarded.