PositiveLos Angeles Review of BooksTrue to the anthology’s title, these tales paint a picture of a world divided, but there are also hints about how to unite. I was struck, for instance, by a strand of conservatism running through the pain of those most deeply affected by poverty, environmental devastation, and climate change ... I came to see how conservation and conservatism, divided politically, come from the same spiritual root, giving me hope that we can unite people with disparate values around the shared intuition that destroying ancient systems is deeply tragic, and should not be undertaken merely for the sake of luxury condominiums. There are a few weaker moments of oversimplification...but far more often the authors highlight complicated truths ... Tales of Two Planets is not soothing. It is not simple or stable, and it refuses easy pieties. You may struggle to make sense of the voices, to fit them into your own overarching narrative, and you will fail because there is no single narrative—these are tales, not a tale, and they force you to ask instead of answering, to continue asking, each tale an answer you’ve probably never heard. When writing can make you do that, at least for a moment, it’s another reason for hope.
Ian Bogost
PositiveSlateMy guess is that Bogost knows his target audience is filled with people like me, and he does his best to conceal the self-help or deliver it obliquely. But honestly, one of the book’s great virtues is the self-help. Reading it helped me to realize I didn’t need to treat self-help ironically.
