Reading Update

A variety this time.

Bonds of Brass by Emily Skrutsie

This was a fun tropey sci-fi m/m read. The author definitely had fun cramming in as many tropes as they could: omg they were roommates! secret royalty! only one bed! fake dating! I was of course here for Ettian's first and foremost loyalty being to Gal, even beyond his past empire and his own safety, even as that choice endangers and betrays other people. I am a chump for whom the ending was a surprise - my feelings on that revelation will be shaped by the next book.

The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan

Sometimes reading a random super-didactic religious allegory of a novel is entertaining, actually. Written in the 1670s while its author was imprisoned for holding religious services outside of the auspices of the Church of England, it tells the story of Christian, who leaves the City Of Destruction to get to the Celestial City and suffers a lot along the way, ostensibly to teach the reader a variety of lessons on the importance of (the correct kind of) Christianity. I'm sufficiently far enough into the Bible that I understood/recognized various references and quotations. The super obvious names like Christian, Obstinate, Atheist, Mr Talkative, Wanton, etc were incredible and never stopped. Things that were surprises: Uh, Moses' brief appearance, "Vanity Fair", and Christian having a surprise key to get out of the sitch with Giant Despair.

Trust by Pete Buttigieg

I was looking for his husband's memoir because I like reading random memoirs, but Libby had this, so this I read. A short interesting read on the role trust plays in American democracy and society, and how that trust has decreased overall. It has an excerpt from this Pew Research Center survey on trust and perceived trust in America, which I appreciated on a data level.

Nothing too revelatory in content - it's obvious the way trust/distrust ties into economic inequality, structural racism, persistent misinformation - and yet the rhetorical tying together of these things worked for me. A couple of notions in particular stood out. First, the irony of conspiratorial thinking meaning you can't trust anyone so you might as well trust the latest wacky unproven thing said in the public sphere and how saying "trust no one" often implicitly means "trust me", creating an odd sense of belonging by way of paranoia.

Second, using group belonging as a way of building societal trust runs into danger when there is insufficient overlap between those group memberships. Too much separation of insiders and outsiders. It made me think of the Keep Your Identity Small essay, and a counterpoint essay Keep Your Identity Large. Those essays are more concerned with the self, empiricism and debate than Buttigieg's discussion of civic belonging, but I think both areas benefit more from the "Keep Your Identity Large" approach.