Ursina's Shelf - The future is coming
Issue 51
Dear readers,
As a young reader, I was fascinated by authors writing about their vision of the future. Brave New World was a transformative experience: so powerful, shocking, and mesmerizing that I sketched my imagined new world in my notebook. I also starkly remember the image of everyone attached to their personal devices in 2010’s A Visit from the Goon Squad (previously featured in issue 33). Would that really be us? Today, I'd like to share three books with an imagined future with you.
The future imagined
To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara (2022)
Description: The author of the critically acclaimed A little Life is back with another hefty tome, covering three stories set in and around a townhouse on New York's Washington Square in the past, present, and future. Yanagihara locale is inspired by the eponymous Henry James novel.
My take: I found the three stories and the author's take fascinating, not only of the future, but also of an altered past where Free States means something altogether different to our history's definition. I enjoyed both the stories, especially in part one and three, and the interpretation of acceptance of sexual preferences, government policy in response to pandemics, and the impact of humans on nature and the environment and vice versa. While I liked the book, I also think it’s about 150 pages too long. (Link to buy)
Bonus tip: If you want to make a project out of this, read Henry James' Washington Square first (link to buy). A book I would not recommend on its own but makes a great pairing with To Paradise. For more great pairings, see issue 24.
The Candy House by Jennifer Egan (2022)
Description: Egan imagines a world in which everyone can upload their memories and in exchange can access everyone else's memories. A series of loosely related characters through time and space grapple with the technology's implications and their part in it. The story mechanism is analog to that in a Visit from the Goon Squad, but reading them in order is not required.
My take: As a Goon Squad fan, I was both thrilled and terrified to crack this book open. What if it’s not as good? I wasn't disappointed. I love the storytelling mechanism, the web of related characters, and how we get to know each character’s perspective differently in a short number of pages. Of course, I also enjoyed the myriad music related details and plot lines, including that gold record awards cannot be played! (Link to buy).
Bonus fact: The author went to Penn and the book includes a Penn mention early on. Egan, like Doerr below, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author.
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr (2021) (previously featured in issue 35)
Description: The book follows the adventures of five characters in three different time periods from medieval Constantinople to the near future. All five characters are bound together by the story in an ancient Greek text. Each story explores friendship, love for a story, and humans’ connections to nature, which the author encourages us to believe is worth preserving and coming back to.
My take: This was the kind of book that made me want to cancel all my plans to keep reading; I just could not put it down. The plot is fascinating in bite-sized and quick chapters with expected and unexpected twists. The characters are loveable despite their flaws and fundamentally this book is a homage to storytelling and to our wondrous planet. (Link to buy).
Bonus tip: Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize-winning All The Light We Cannot See was previously featured in issue 5 on historical fiction.
Currently reading: Long Bright River by Liz Moore, set in Philadelphia. (Link to buy)
Thank you for reading and I hope there is a great weekend in your near future!