Two non-fiction books

Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens by David Mitchell (2023): lirazel posted about the audiobook version of this, which got me to put this on my list, but alas my library only has access to the print version; I feel that the audiobook version is probably superior. There were several parts in the book that were a slog to get through the paragraph, that would be perfectly fine if you were listening to a patented David Mitchell Rant about the subject. In fact, imagining them in David Mitchell's voice is how I got through them.

This book reads entirely like David Mitchell wrote some notes on notecards, turned on a recorder, ranted out the book, and then someone transcribed it, did the most minimal of polishing, and then published it. Based on some details in the book, this definitely seems like his lockdown project.

I do not know if this book has any appeal for anyone who doesn't know who David Mitchell is, or have an affection for David Mitchell Rants.

However, as someone who has watched my share of David Mitchell, it is a good book and it is enjoyable, but yeah, I imagine the audiobook is superior, because then you can just let David Mitchell propel you forward.

Now, as for who the actual audience for this book is... It's certainly written for a British audience, especially one contemporary to the writing, who have done teenage level studying about the British monarchy. Mitchell seems to write from the idea that, for the famous monarchs, he doesn't have to say much, you the audience will know all there is to know. For the later ones (he ends at Elizabeth 1), he even skips around the chronological order of events. The idea is, you know all this already and he's just making jokes. So it's David Mitchell Rants About A Subject You Already Know All About Because You Learned This At School.

If this is not you, this book assumes you have not picked up a pop history book written by a comedian. Fair enough.

Subpar Parks: America's Most Extraordinary National Parks and Their Least Impressed Visitors by Amber Share (2021): A bookified version of a Instagram account I never followed, a copy of which I read at someone's house who was using as a bookmark something that indicated they had gotten it as a gift when it came out and never got past the first fifth of the book. This book would have been fine if it had not decided it was going to fight the one star reviews, and instead just showed the artwork and mentioned how great the park was. As it was, it positioned itself as an argument between the one star reviewers and the author, and the one star reviewers won.

Because the author kept relying on defensive statements like "well, that is the name of the park" and "here's things you can do at this park: drive around, walk around, canoe, snorkel, bike, and hey even if there is nothing, spending time looking at the nothing is pretty great, too."

And that's not persuasive.

Especially because the reviews often were pointing out flaws in going to a national park for people who don't like going to national parks: there's no phone or internet connectivity, and if you are not active in a specific way, there is fuck all for you to do at most of them.

I am someone who does not enjoy going to national parks or state parks. I have been to many. And they are full of things I cannot do, and not full of things I can do. So it's like, okay, time for me to spend a couple hours in the car with the windows rolled down, sitting in the front seat reading a book while everyone else goes biking. Again.

As an adult, I've skipped many family trips that were focused on state/national parks and always felt frustrated and sad about it, but the few times there's been last minute plans and I've been dragged along to them have always been miserable experiences. So I can't agree with any argument that posits that saying there's nothing to do is ridiculous, of course there's things to do there, here let me list them with the same list over and over again. No. For me and for many others, there is nothing for us to do there, and saying we should be happy to sit there and contemplate the "nothing", aka just look at the pretty scenery is missing the point on a lot of the reasons that even that is just not a realistic thing for some people to do.

Now, is it inherently absurd to rate a national park on Yelp? That depends on what you use Yelp for. I do not use Yelp. But to use Yelp to point out the downsides of a national park... I don't think that's an off-topic use for the platform.

Also a lot of these reviews were frankly hilarious, and also I'm not really a fan of the whole idea of "take people's reviews and mock them, in a way that it's actually not impossible to trace those words back to the people who wrote them, who I assume are not getting any royalties from this use of their review." These are random people who wrote reviews on Yelp. These are not powerful politicians who control funding for the national parks. Let them be.

So yeah, you-the-author might think it's bad that most people (by what metrics is this being tracked, who knows?) spend only half a day at a park, but there really are limited multi-day options for you if you don't want to camp and don't enjoy endless hiking. And it's not inherently ridiculous for someone to say "okay I saw the pretty lake and left, this was a waste of time" considering the author admits how remote these parks can be and how hard they can be to get to and the limited built-up stuff around it to support the tourists because the tourists aren't the point. And even in the part at the end about planning ahead admits that there might be multi-hour waits for shuttle buses. I cannot do a multi-hour wait.

But I understand and accept that there is no way these parks can accommodate me. This is not news to me. Reading through a book that repeatedly made the unconscious claim that yes they can and I'm just a whiner who can't find anything fun to do was unconvincing.

The author made this a fight and then lost it.

Also the art was kind of repetitive; would have been nice if it was shown next to the source photos and also showed her process, the way it seemed like from the introduction that there would be.

...the one that is haunting me is the one complaining about bugs and the way the author deals with it, and, okay, once a very long time ago, I went to a specific park in Canada. I remember very little of the actual park, I'm sure the scenery was objectively nice. Here's what I do remember: we weren't in there for longer than a couple hours, but I left covered in mosquito bites. No one else was heavily bitten, just me. So my enduring memory of that park is: not only was it miserable, the misery lasted for more than a week.

The only way I can experience these parks is via someone else's camera, either still photography or video. I should have been able to see pretty art in this book, dammit, and not wanted to go up to the author and said "hello I have something to introduce you to, and it's unconscious ableism, it's okay, you're not the first outdoorsy person I've encountered who thinks it's a personality flaw to not enjoy the great outdoors".

I'd vaguely heard that David Mitchell had written something about the monarchy but if I knew any specifics I'd forgotten about it. It sounds like something that'd be great as an audiobook, I love his rants. Not sure I know enough about the history of the monarchy for it but I my library has the audio book (and a 100+ hold list on one copy) and give it a try if/when it actually comes.

Yeah I think it would be great as an audiobook. He goes off on the usual tangents, which I'm sure would work naturally with his voice, but on page it's like "wait what how did we get here and why".

His overall thesis to the book is "monarchy was invented and even in the invention, changed over time", so I also didn't know much about specific British monarchs but could follow his argument. It also made me think some stuff about the nature of, like, national identity and "Brtitish culture" and re-beginning numbering monarchs and how it's like okay these are the Normans, and at what point were these monarchs considering themselves British, let alone speaking the language most of the people living there spoke. I might be interested in reading more about that from folks who've studied it, but on the other side, that kind of thing can get into xenophobia so easily, you know?

Oh yeah, the subject could easily tip into unpleasantness. True. And just unintended bias, which I guess is probably impossible to completely avoid. Still, could be interesting.

Yep. I think David Mitchell handles it well, for a surface level thing focused entirely on the monarchy, and he does note many times that focusing on just the monarchy is missing out on everything going on with everyone who isn't a monarch.

Thanks for the review of Unruly. It sounds like just my sort of jam. (I am way more familiar with the history of the British monarchy than the average American citizen. I started with Thomas Costain's histories of the Plantagenets back when and just kept going.)

It's a nice light read, with the expected share of Plantagenets. One thing I noticed is that I'd always heard it as "the Magna Carta", whereas Mitchell refers to it exclusively as "Magna Carta", so I have to assume that usage is more correct.

For what it's worth, I see that Wikipedia also refers to it without the leading "the." That's especially interesting given that other charters referred to in that entry do have "the" before the name. A minor mystery.

Good to know, as always

Two non-fiction books

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