From Sy Montgomery’s The Soul of an Octopus:

p. 190
In casual Western conversation, karma is used interchangeably with destiny, kismet, luck, and fate. Bill had chosen the name while still in the grip of what felt to us all like a star-crossed tragedy of Shakespearean proportions. During the Elizabethan era, most Europeans believed each person’s fate was predetermined, hardwired by the positions of the planets and the stars. Some people still do. But the idea of karma has a deeper, more promising, meaning than that of fate. Karma can help us develop wisdom and compassion. In Hinduism, karma is a path to reaching the state of Brahman, the highest god, the Universal Self, the World Soul. Our karma is something over which, unlike fate, we do have control. “Volition is karma,” the Buddha is reported to have said. Karma is not fate, but, in fact, its opposite: Karma is choice.

I was hooked by page six, when Montgomery reminds readers of the octopus in Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. Synchronicity, serendipity, synthesis.

My last entry for August, The Soul of an Octopus was the ninety-fourth book I finished reading so far this year and the twenty-third title in my quest to read at least thirty non-fiction titles in 2018. Last month, I also (finally!) finished The Aeneid, and during the drive down to visit my youngest yesterday, I listened to the remaining lectures in Elizabeth Vandiver’s The Aeneid of Virgil.

Other reading highlights from the past month:

■ Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century (Jessica Bruder; 2017. Non-fiction.)
As I mentioned here, Janesville, Squeezed, and Nomadland (related entry here) formed a sobering trilogy.

■ Hope Never Dies: An Obama Biden Mystery (Andrew Shaffer; 2018. Fiction.)
What silly fun this was! My older daughter and I listened to this while walking and running errands.

■ Things We Lost in the Fire (Mariana Enriquez; 2017. Fiction.)
Wow. Just… wow. From the Amazon blurb: “Written in hypnotic prose that gives grace to the grotesque, Things We Lost in the Fire is a powerful exploration of what happens when our darkest desires are left to roam unchecked, and signals the arrival of an astonishing and necessary voice in contemporary fiction.”

■ When You Reach Me (Rebecca Stead; 2009. Fiction.)
This beautiful Newbery Award winner reminded why I love to read.

The Kristin Lavransdatter readalong began today, and I have nearly finished this week’s objective: Part 1 of The Wreath (seven chapters). It was easy to become absorbed in this old-fashioned but well-told story.

I will likely finish The Children, a play by Lucy Kirkwood, this holiday weekend and The Third Hotel, a new novel by Laura van den Berg, a little later this week. Another new release, Vox (Christina Dalcher), is also on my nightstand. Derivative, flawed, and strictly plot-driven, it may be done sooner than the atmospheric and disturbing Hotel, which I find I must set aside periodically — not unlike my experience with the brilliant Things We Lost in the Fire. Perhaps I need time to think about the images and ideas the writers have presented; or maybe, more accurately, I need to look away for a bit.

More soon.

From Jessica Bruder’s Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century (2017):

p. 88
For this community, making an effort to gather in person was no trifling thing. Members spend much of the year scattered across the country. Often they lack the gas money to drive long distances in a straight shot. And many consider themselves loners. Among the hermits, RV Sue has cultivated an especially solitary reputation, pleading with her blog readers not to drop in on her campsites unannounced, explaining that “blogging suits me well because I can interact with all kinds of interesting people without having to actually meet them.” Some of her fans have written about coming across a familiar seventeen-foot Casita during their travels — then realizing who that trailer belonged to and immediately hightailing it in the other direction.

Janesville (Amy Goldstein), Nomadland (Jessica Bruder), and Squeezed (Alissa Quart) have formed a fascinating — and sobering — trilogy.

When I recall “cultural capital,” I think of my favorite theorist from when I was a graduate student, Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu theorized that capital extends beyond economics, encompassing credentials, skills, and tastes. Financial capital is convertible — if you have the latter, you can gain cultural capital through education. Then, if you have the former, you can convert that back into even more economic capital through the right social networks.

Related articles here, here, here, and here.

Read in anticipation of seeing the Lookingglass Theatre production.

“Twelve thousand, Monsieur Aronnax. These are my only ties with life on dry land….”

p. 187
“A cannibal can still be an honorable man,” replied Conseil, “just as a glutton can be honest. One doesn’t exclude the other.”

“That’s all very well, Conseil. I’ll even grant you that these cannibals are honorable and that they go about devouring their prisoners honorably. But since I don’t like the idea of being devoured, even honorably, I’ll stay on guard, for the commander of the Nautilus seems to be taking no precautions whatsoever. Now to work.”

From page 219 of The Cabin at the End of the World (Paul Tremblay; 2018):

Andrew has taught literature for years, calling his course How the World Ends. The course has occasionally included a literary analysis of the Bible’s Book of Revelation and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse riding their red, black, white, and pale horses. Over the years the course syllabus has evolved, but one of the main arguments / discussions he has with his students remains a constant. No matter how bleak or dire, end-of-the-world scenarios appeal to us because we take meaning from the end. Aside from the obvious and well-discussed idea that our narcissism is served when imagining we, out of all the billions who will perish, might survive, Andrew has argued there’s also undeniable allure to witnessing the beginning of the end and perishing along with everyone and everything else. He has impishly said to a classroom, to the scowl of more than a few students, “ Within the kernel of end-times awe and ecstasy is the seed of all organized religions.”

From page 69 of The Hole (Hye-Young Pyun; 2017):

It was impossible to capture the trajectory of life in a map. Without one, there was no way of wrapping your brain around it all, and yet he was skeptical as to whether you could ever represent the world through maps alone.

But it was meaningful. Someone had taken these invisible trajectories that could not be studied with any sort of accuracy and had tried anyway to turn them into a tangible space. He found it boring sometimes for the same reason. A world that could not be understood perfectly, could not be explained unambiguously, and was interpreted differently based on political purposes and conveniences was no different from the world he was already living in. And yet, the one way in which maps were clearly better than life was that they improved with failure. Life itself was merely an accumulation of failures, and those failures never made life better.

The jacket copy suggests that The Hole evokes the work of Shirley Jackson and Stephen King. While I appreciate the assertion, I thought this meditation on the horror of finding blank emptiness at the center of a career, a marriage, a life was more philosophical than the comparisons to psychological thrillers suggests.

This was the book I completed before heading to bed last night, so I have completed sixty-eight books so far this year:

27 novels
10 plays
18 non-fiction titles
13 graphic fiction works
18 works published this year

My complete list can be found here.

Even better on rereading:
■ Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro; 2005. Fiction.)
■ Childhood’s End (Arthur C. Clarke; 1953. Fiction.)
■ Daytripper (Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá; 2011. Graphic fiction.)
■ Mrs. Caliban (Rachel Ingalls; 1983. Fiction.)

Forgot how wonderful this writer is:
■ Memento Mori (Muriel Spark; 1959. Fiction.)

For those who loved The Elementals (Michael McDowell; 1981):
■ The Reapers Are the Angels (Alden Bell; 2010. Fiction.)

A new-ish author who deserves the hype:
■ Little Fires Everywhere (Celeste Ng; 2017. Fiction.)
■ Everything I Never Told You (Celeste Ng; 2014. Fiction.)

Fabulous story for a long car trip:
■ American Kingpin (Nick Bilton; 2017. Non-fiction.)

Honorable mention:
■ The Idealist: Aaron Swartz and the Rise of Free Culture on the Internet (Justin Peters; 2016. Non-fiction.)

The most engrossing book I’ve read so far this year (not including rereads):
■ Behold the Dreamers (Imbolo Mbue; 2016. Fiction.)

Honorable mention:
■ Killers of the Flower Moon (Dan Grann; 2017. Non-fiction.)
■ An Abbreviated Life (Ariel Leve; 2016. Non-fiction.)
■ After the Eclipse (Sarah Perry; 2017. Non-fiction.)
■ The Hole (Hye-young Pyun; 2017. Fiction.)