Vladimir, Julia May Jonas

 

Vladimir by Julia May Jonas is another attempt to find a way to enjoy romance novels.

Started: July 19, 2025
Completed: July 22, 2025
Recommendation: Mild Recommendation
Recommended By: The Guardian

Review:

I guess I am a pretty pedestrian (some might say, "Hallmark," romantic).  I don't find masturbation romantic.  I'm not a BDSM kinda guy.  I guess I just really like when two people click.  I do see this in the Hallmark romances, although it is not common there.  The push me, pull you style of romance has no attractiveness for me.  I don't get a rush over the enemies turned lovers (although I have room for that...it is more that there is not the "thin line" between these two things as some suggest for me).  I get how everyone has a bunch of angst around romance and so a touch of that is just realistic...a month of that seems, to me, like a wild indulgence.  Not so interesting for me.  The book is well written with pretty good character development and a reasonable story line (until the end when it all falls apart in my mind and becomes a rush to stop writing at some word requirement).  There is a lack of transition to the ending (imagine, and they all lived happily ever after--though that is not the exact nature of this particular ending).  It just felt like it wrapped up once the romantic drama was done, then there was a bunch of hand waving and it is over.

Frames of Mind, Howard Gardner

 

Frames of Mind: The theory of multiple intelligences by Howard Gardner

Started: July 10, 2025
Completed: July 19, 2025
Recommendation: Mild recommendation
Recommended By: Nobody

Words for which I sought help:

oeuvre -- the sum of the lifework of an artist, writer, or composer

Review:

This book is dated.  I knew that when I selected it, but I was still surprised at how dated it was.  The concepts behind multiple intelligences were all new to me, so it was not dated in that sense.  It was dated in how it referred to society and computers in particular.  I don't find fault with this (it was written quite some time ago), but it did surprise me.  In any case, I thought it was great to see the story behind the concepts of multiple intelligences and how the research sort of began.

Lawless, Leah Litman

 

Lawless:  How the supreme court runs on conservative grievance, fringe theories, and bad vibes by Leah Litman

Started: July 7, 2025
Completed: July 11, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: Lots of political reviews

Review:

It seems like this is an effort to make the book more approachable, but there are a lot of references to the Barbie movie, the Mean Girls movie, Game of Thrones, Arrested Development, and American Psycho.  I found these largely distracting and rarely applicable beyond the surface level.  On the other hand, I've gotten rather well versed in how the Supreme Court works and didn't really need analogies in order to see where things were headed.  More important to me, was the collection of information that pointed the entire activity of the court to grievance.  I can easily see Justice Kavanaugh acting on the basis of grievance.  As Kavanaugh said in his own testimony, "This is a circus...what goes around comes around..."

Heretic, Catherine Nixey

 

Heretic:  Jesus Christ and the other sons of God by Catherine Nixey

Started: July 3, 2025
Completed: July 7, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: I cannot remember how I came to choose this book.  I must have read some sort of a review, but I cannot remember what it might have been.

Review:

Nixey uses the word, "heretic," grounded in the original Greek and meaning to choose.  In a survey of other saviors before, during, and after the time of Jesus, Nixey presents a world of choice.  She explains why we are mostly unaware of these choices in terms of the Catholic church's effort to burn books, outlaw teachings, kill believers (of alternative versions of Jesus, etc.), and destroy churches.  Remember the inquisition?  Well, all of this works, and Nixey has to work with scant works (only pieces remain) and deal with partially or poorly understand religions.  This isn't fully eye opening (it is hard to say that Gilgamesh remains "news"), but it is revealing and that is very interesting.

How To Lose Your Mother, Molly Jong-Fast

 

How To Lose Your Mother:  A daughter's memoir by Molly Jong-Fast

Started: July 1, 2025
Completed: July 3, 2025
Recommendation: Mild Recommendation
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

Jong-Fast does not think much of herself as a daughter.  Or her mother as a mother.  Or her step-father as a father (though she does give him some credit).  She seems to feel that her father, especially now, has stepped up somewhat.  A child who wanted for nothing, self-described as obnoxious, was reared largely by a nanny with occasional swoop-ins from the parental figures around her.  She fought a battle with drug abuse (alcoholism apparently being the worst of it) and is now sober.  Her mother much less.  Her mother is not dead at the time of the book's writing (nor now as I write this), but she has dementia which has become increasingly intense.  This book pivots around Jong-Fast's realization that she is never going to be able to fix her relationship with her mother and, ironically, she is required to care for a mother who did not provide personal care for her in largely the same way (by hiring help).  Meanwhile, in what can only be described as a year from hell, Jong-Fast deals with deaths in her family and her husband's very serious bout with cancer.  It is a lot.  Jong-Fast reads the book and I find her voice grating...I may have gotten more from it if it didn't seem like she was whining at me the whole book.  Maybe not.

The Bones Beneath My Skin, TJ Klune

 

The Bones Beneath My Skin by TJ Klune with a bit of trepidation I step into "spine tingling" as I'm not particular a horror fan, but I am a TJ Klune fan, so...

Started: June 28, 2025
Completed: July 1, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

This book was not horror.  I did enjoy this book, but cannot really say anything about it without giving something away.  I have to admit, as odd as it sounds, that this book was very normalizing in the midst of almost constant unreality.

A Drop of Corruption, Robert Jackson Bennett

 

A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett is the next book in the Shadow of the Leviathan series.

Started: June 24, 2025
Completed: June 28, 2025
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

I truly enjoy reading what I have read by Robert Jackson Bennett.  This series is truly rich and, somehow, Bennett manages to continue world building with strong character development and simply excellent turns of phrase.  I do not generally enjoy mysteries, so I think it is likely that I am not a good person to recommend them.  I enjoyed this mystery.  I particularly enjoyed the lack of a "secret clue" and I also fully accepted that Ana could connect things that I could not.  A fun, adventurous mystery with enough fantasy to make the world richly different.  The author's note at the end was particularly fantastic.

The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door, H.G. Parry

 

The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door by H.G. Parry

Started: June 17, 2025
Completed: June 24, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: I think that this was recommended by Kobo.

Words for which I sought help:

prat -- a fool

Review:

I enjoyed this book.  The characters were rather flat, but the plot was nicely elaborate.  Parry's foreshadowing was blunt, so it was easy to see where the story was going, but it was a sufficiently elaborate plot with enough interwoven pieces to keep my interest despite being a bit transparent.  It was a fun read.

The Philosophy of Epictetus, Scaltsas and Mason

 

The Philosophy of Epictetus Edited by Theodore Scaltsas and Andrew S. Mason.  I picked this book up as a result of cascading endnotes/footnotes.  While reading and marking Open Socrates (I first listened to this book from the library, then bought a copy so that I could take notes), I found that there were several references to Epictetus (mostly from Robin Hard's translation: Epictetus Discourses, Fragments, Handbook), so I picked up Robin Hard's translation.  In the introduction to that work, there were several references to this book, so I got a copy of it.  I have been only obliquely aware of Epictetus (I thought he was a "founding father" of the Stoics, which isn't really true, more a professor of the Stoics, whereas Zeno is actually a founding father).  I found the references intriguing and suddenly was reading another book.  This is a collection of essays about Epictetus' philosophy which came about as a result of a conference.  I plan to attend a workshop on Morality at the University of Maryland (Moral Metaphysics at Maryland Workshop) at the end of the month, so I thought that understanding Epictetus' take on morality would be useful.  I have been reading a bit each morning and taking notes as well as referencing Hard's translation of Epictetus' known work.  Anil Seth keeps getting shuffled back and now Agnes Callard is taking a back seat.

Started: May 1, 2025?
Completed: June 18, 2025
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Christopher Gill (in the introduction to Hard's translation of Epictetus)

Words for which I sought help (English only, lots of Latin, Greek, French, and German):

conduce -- help to bring about

eudaimonist -- a proponent of eudaimonism, an ethical theory that emphasizes the pursuit of happiness and flourishing as the ultimate goal in life

hendiadys -- the expression of a single idea by two words connected with "and" e.g. nice and warm

protreptic -- a speech designed to instruct and persuade

Review:

I truly had not intention of studying Epictetus.  Stoicism, to me, has always felt like either a cold way to live or remarkably self indulgent (rarely both simultaneously).  As a result, the works of the Stoics have had little interest to me and, frankly, seemed to be misplaced.  I read some of the references in Callard but it was the morality workshop that encouraged me to read this book--though, as it turned out, that workshop was at a completely different level than the practical morality of Epictetus.

There is a vast difference between reading an Ancient Greek writer and studying an Ancient Greek writer.  The words are not necessarily meaningful in today's context (even with a good translation).  This book facilitates study.  Even while the study is rather isolated to specific areas of Epictetus, the reams of references in the back of this book could easily lead to another 5 years of reading and studying.

Credit needs to be given to Oxford University Press who published this book and must have realized that the market would be remarkably small.

The Ideological Brain, Leor Zmigrod

 

The Ideological Brain:  The radical science of flexible thinking by Leor Zmigrod

Started: June 11, 2025
Completed: June 17, 2025
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

What if you had an answer for every situation?  Wouldn't that make action easier?  There would be no need to think in any given situation, simply to take action based upon your prior understanding of what should be done.  What would that do to your brain?

A dogmatic thinker (in the extreme) ceases to interact with the real world to foster understanding, rather assets his/her dogmatic understanding as a way to frame the real world and pigeon-hole decision making.  Once one accepts a particular ideology, everything can be framed in terms of that ideology and the reason for action becomes clear based on the tenets of the dogma.

Zmigrod identifies ideologs by asking basic questions, performing simple tasks, and monitoring for specific brain activity.  Having identified a person with dogmatic thinking, Zmigrod starts to examine his/her perspective on the world and finds that dogmatic thinking shades into many areas, not simply the political.  Identifying that dogmatic thinking is a pervasive effect, Zmigrod attempts to understand dogmatic thinking in terms of genetics, physical structure, and culture.

Dogmatic thinkers are not predestined to think they way that they do from something physical (though there may be a disposition).  Dogmatic thinking is fostered through ritual and repetition.  Sometimes it is inculcated through mentally and physically painful initiations (although, Zmigrod makes the argument that the brain structure may allow the initiations to be passed rather than creating the thought pattern itself).  Culture can foster an environment which facilitates dogmatic thinking.

Zmigrod leaves open the possibility that ideologs can be reached and their thinking made more flexible, but she argues that the path an ideolog must follow to overcome this thinking is non-linear (she suggests a spiral of thought) and there are many ways that the ideolog can easily turn into dogmatic thinking on the way out (albeit perhaps via a different dogma).

A Friend of the Earth, T.C. Boyle

 

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A Friend of the Earth by T.C. Boyle

Started: August 17, 2024
Completed: June 14, 2025
Recommendation: Not Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Words for which I sought help:

exophthalmic -- having or characterized by protruding eyes

mendacity -- untruthfulness, lying

scrim -- something that conceals or obscures something else

timbales -- shallow single-headed drums with metal casing

Review:

I think that I just don't like Boyle's writing style.  This book is OK, the characters are a bit flat and the plot is pretty thin.  Boyle does a good job of painting a picture of a world that has been crushed by climate change and the weird ways that people adjust to living in the new normal.  The foreshadowing is clunky and the way the story is put together just rubs me the wrong way.  It is an OK story, but when I compare it to something like The Overstory (which is a very similar tale) all the holes in this telling become readily apparent.

1177 B.C., Eric H. Cline

 

1177 B.C.:  The year civilization collapsed by Eric H. Cline Personally, I have thought that it is unlikely The Sea Peoples are the cause of so much trouble in the Mediterranean.  My thought has been that they are problem a symptom of another problem and served more as a domino than cause.  The descriptions I heard sounded like they were more refugees rather than marauders.

Started: June 7, 2025
Completed: June 11, 2025
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: I saw this on the bookshelves behind Marc Elias during a Democracy Docket Youtube

Review:

It is important that you be interested in what happened at the end of the Bronze Age.  This is not a narrative that is going to easily carry you, so if you don't have an interest, it is probably not for you.  The breadth of the research that Cline covers is pretty good, though the depth is not great for scholars.  There is enough narrative, however, to make it interesting.  Foreshadowing does not really exist (Cline just refers you to later chapters) so, again, this book does not carry you.  It is an interesting read and Cline draws from multiple disciplines in order to try to make sense of the end of the Bronze Age (1177 is not so terribly important, I think that the actual tipping date tends to move +/- 100 years--I seem to remember an interview with the author where he decided on the title, then had to change it, then it flipped back right before the book went to press).  That is both a cool and weird thing about archaeology, it is an on-going study and at any minute some artifact may come out and change everything.

Polostan, Neal Stephenson

 

Polostan by Neal Stephenson is the first book in the Bomb Light series

Started: June 3, 2025
Completed: June 7, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By:  Nobody, I just pretty much read what Stephenson writes.  It isn't all perfect, but it is always interesting

Review:

This feels like a Forest Gump sort of walk through the history of the atomic bomb.  The protagonist here is wicked smart and female.  I enjoyed the start, but find it hard to highly recommend this book as it feels so very incomplete.  I also did not like the torture scene.  Maybe there is a really good reason for that beyond the scope of this book, but if it is just the scope of this book, then I feel it was more than was needed to make the point.

All Fours, Miranda July

 

All Fours by Miranda July

Started: June 2, 2025
Completed: June 3, 2025
Recommendation: Not Recommended
Recommended By:  A friend on good reads

Review:

To some people, I'm sure, this book is a revelation and a triumph.  To me, it is mostly raunchy.  Far too much of this book is spent masturbating for me.  I just did not enjoy it.

The Traitor Baru Cormorant, Seth Dickinson

 

The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

Started: May 27, 2025
Completed: June 2, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: I cannot remember how I came across this book

Review:

What is the right thing to think?  I am horrified by the main character.  The main plot line is horribly confused.  There is a second book (maybe a third).  So, I don't want to give anything away because this book is best read without any idea of what is coming next.  It isn't that there is a particular thrill to be had around every corner but that things are very fluid.  I'm just not sure what to think.  The characters are broadly hideously complex.  The level of calculation in every move is astounding.  I cannot say that I walked away from this book happy, but there is a low level yearning to find out what happens next or, perhaps more importantly, to better understand what already did happen.

Alien Clay, Adrian Tchaikovsky

 

Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Started: February 7, 2024

Completed: May 27, 2025

Recommendation: Highly recommended

Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

Tchaikovsky has developed a whole other way for intelligent life to form.  Saying anything so easily gives things away.  The stressed characters have to deal with extreme circumstances and that stress changes how they interact with each other and how they view themselves.  There are some big changes.  Meanwhile, the world building is awesome and the ideas put forward are truly mind bending.

I truly enjoyed the interview at the end of the audio book.

Hey, Zoey, Sarah Crossan

 

Hey, Zoey by Sarah Crossan is a book I stumbled upon when looking up information about Irish authors.  I think that there was just the blurb from the back of the book and the premise felt like it could be fun.

Started: May 26, 2025
Completed: May 27, 2025
Recommendation: Mild recommendation
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

So, not fun.  This was weird.  So, it is odd that some dude wants to have sex with a doll.  It is also weird that a woman becomes obsessed with the doll in the role of a companion.  This book is weird.  It isn't bad, but it is weird.

Blood Over Bright Haven, M. L. Wang

 

Blood Over Bright Haven by M. L. Wang  I cannot remember how I came across this book.  The author is more of a YA author and generally self published, so I'm not really clear in my own head how I came across it.

Started: May 22, 2025
Completed: May 25, 2025
Recommendation: Highly recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

What a wonderful book!  The creation of the world is detailed.  The characters are rich.  The plot and sub-plots are complicated, consistent, and believable (within context).  It is very important that this book is not a feel good book.  It is much more a realistic book.  It is not a story of a super hero coming of age.  In a way it is a book about holding true to your principals.  It also feels like this book is an exploration of philosophy and, perhaps, ethics.  I just cannot recommend it highly enough.

Patriot, Alexei Navalny

 

Patriot: A memoir by Alexei Navalny

Started: May 16, 2025
Completed: May 22, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: Presidents, etc.

Review:

This is a brutally sad book.  Of course, you know before starting that Navalny died in prison and was almost certainly poisoned (a 45 year old who survived and recovered from a hunger strike as well as prior poisonings does not die easily).  You know that he was a person who dedicated his life to Russia and struggled to bring to the light the corrupt practices of the members of Putin's entourage.  You probably assumed, but didn't have hard proof that he was a loving husband and father.  You likely didn't know that he was a Christian.  Odds are good that you didn't know anything about his "prison Zen."  What an incredible man and what a horrible loss to the Russian people.  Recommended, but know that this is a very sad book.

All These Worlds, Dennis E. Taylor

 

All These Worlds by Dennis E. Taylor is the next book in the Bobiverse

Started:  March 14, 2025
Completed: May 17, 2025
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

I just love this series.  The basic concept (a mind is uploaded to a computer) is interesting, but combining it with a von Neuman machine is brilliant.  Add in alien contact on many different levels and it is hard not to love this book.

The Witchwood Crown, Tad Williams

 

The Witchwood Crown by Tad Williams is the first book  in the Last King of Osten Ard

Started: November 23, 2024
Completed: May 16, 2025
Recommendation: Highly recommended
Recommended By: Nobody, but I did read the first set of books in this series quite some time ago.  I have met the author at a book signing and brought all my copies of his books when I did meet him.  He was kind enough to sign them all and I really enjoyed talking with him.

Review:

It is with relief and a sense of homecoming that I have rejoined Osten Ard, once more in trouble and struggling to resolve issues likely beyond simple understanding.  As this book ended, I felt I was immediately ready to dive into the next!  It took me so long to read, however, as I had to take it out of the library several times in order to finish it and there were frequently long delays between holds.  It seems likely that I will need to purchase the next one.  I enjoy the richness of the races, the detail of this other world, and the growth and development of the characters.

Abundance, Klein and Thompson

 

Abundance:  How we build a better future by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

Started: May 9, 2025
Completed: May 12, 2025
Recommendation: Mild Recommendation
Recommended by: Nobody, I seem to be on an Ezra Klein kick

Review:

So, the thesis of this book seems to be:  create abundance and then we will live in abundance.  That is true.  The obstacles to abundance are, well, OK.  If regulations are relaxed, then it will be easier and faster to build, well, everything.  So, why not ease the regulations?  After all, some of them don't make sense, like, well, zoning.  Oh, and, also make it easier to get research grants and make those grants on high risk projects.  After all, nobody is going to abuse that funding.  So, this is the liberal agenda without any safe guards.  Or is it?  Is this the conservative agenda?

Experience has shown that easing regulations leads to abuse.  Now, taking bigger risk on research grants and making it easier to comply with the paperwork for a research grant makes some sense.  The problem is that whenever regulations are eased, there are abuses and the those abuses (for, say, construction or even research) have been seriously egregious.  There is a case to be made that private money can get this stuff done faster.  When it happens that way, though, we end up fires that take out Chicago or San Francisco.  We end up with sinking buildings in Florida and buildings/roadways that cannot survive an earthquake in LA.  We end up with mining tailings in the water and air so thick it cannot be breathed.  But just the relax the regulations.  Maybe the onerous ones that prevent industrial sites near schools (Love Canal anyone)?  Or the ones that govern how mines are managed (Centralia Pennsylvania)?

I get that there is a real problem with NIMBYism and I can see how regulations (particularly zoning laws) facilitate that.  This book, however, simply says that those regulations which make it hard to build stuff (like environmental impact studies) should just be removed.  So, yes, the building would move forward faster and cheaper, but the world would not be better for the effort.  Why not look at how to make environmental impact studies for efficient and faster?  Maybe more people working on the impact study would help?  Maybe there is a way to consider cascading impacts that could be handled by integrated assessment teams?  Maybe NIMBY can be solved by reducing the impact of the rich on government (hold meetings when everyone can attend like 2:00 on the weekend), require petitions with signatures to halt things (instead of some wealthy guy hitting up his friend on council), and require quality of life impacts that match the quality of life impact of completing the project (so reduced value of the neighborhood housing is not used to weigh against providing housing for more people).  I don't know, but it feels to me like the authors cherry picked some regulations that they don't like and decided that no regulations are good if they impact PROGRESS.

The Dream Hotel, Laila Lalami

 

The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami

Started: May 4, 2025
Completed: May 9, 2025
Recommendation: Not recommended
Recommended By: I really enjoyed Conditional Citizens, so I thought I should give the author another try.

Review:

In this dystopian near future, constant monitoring of activity and even dreams leads to crime prevention by putting people in retention facilities prior to committing a crime.  These facilities are capriciously run by for-profit companies.  I really found it hard to constantly immerse myself in this environment.  I did not enjoy the experience nor find it enlightening (this kind of thing is already happening in our existing prison system).  The solution to the problem (instead of not being noticed, basically, be noticed for reasons the for profit doesn't like) seems pat and too quick.  I did not enjoy it.

A Brief History of Intelligence, Max Bennett

 

A Brief History of Intelligence:  Evolution, AI, and the five breakthroughs that made our brains by Max Bennett

Started: April 28, 2025
Completed: May 4, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended

Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

This book is what it says it is in the title.  I thought it might be a book skewed towards AI because it was written by Bennett, but it is not.  This book is far more skewed towards the evolution of intelligence and, more pointedly, toward the 5 major changes in that evolution that Bennett thinks led to modern intelligence.  Because Bennett is an AI expert and not an evolutionary biologist (or anyone who is an expert in the history of intelligence), I have decided to take his breakthroughs with a grain of salt.  In fairness, he makes a good case and he is motivated by his study of AI to do a good job in his analysis.  I could see a few obvious mistakes, but I also could feel his passion for the subject and that that made up for the issues.  There is nothing glaring and there is good reason to believe that this 5 breakthroughs are pretty reasonable tilting points (thinking of Gladwell) that led to modern intelligence.  My ignorance of the field overall makes it difficult for me to claim any sort of understanding that would allow me to judge for certain what is and what is not crucial.

Babylonia, Costanza Casati

 

Babylonia by Costanza Casati

Started: February 2, 2025
Completed: April 28, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

I have read a lot about ancient Greece and ancient Rome.  My knowledge of ancient Persia and ancient Babylon is more sparse.  I am familiar with the myths and legends of the former, but know little of the myths and legends of the latter.  This book was a welcome look at some of the legends.  A female ruler in that era was virtually unknown and so it is always good to read a little bit more about how a woman might have come to power.  Surely, the author has gone into a considerable amount of fiction in order for this book to work as the actual historical record amounts to so little.  Nonetheless, I found the book enjoyable and an interesting way to imagine a woman coming to power in an environment where it seems so unlikely.  The cutthroat period was also something I knew only from an occasional glance at Bas reliefs and those were pretty awful.  Casati does a good job of offering a possible explanation for both how such things came about and how they might have affected those involved.  A good read.

The Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson

 

The Diamond Age Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson is a book that has been on the shelf for a while.  I generally enjoy Stephenson.

Started: August 31, 2021
Completed: April 25, 2025
Recommendation: Not Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Words for which I sought help:

abattoir -- a slaughterhouse

abos -- An Aboriginal person

adumbrate -- indicate faintly

afflatus -- a divine creative impulse or inspiration

aleatory -- depending on the throw of a dice or on chance; random

anfractuous -- sinuous or circuitous

ashlar -- masonry made of large square-cut stones, used as a facing on walls of brick or stone rubble.

atelier -- a workshop or studio, especially one used by an artist or designer

barquentine -- a sailing ship similar to a barque but with only the foremast square-rigged and the remaining masts rigged fore and aft

brocade -- a rich fabric woven with a raised pattern, typically with gold or silver thread

caducity -- the infirmity of old age; senility

callipygious -- having a shapely or beautifully formed buttocks

caryatid -- a stone carving of a draped female figure, used as a pillar to support the entablature of a Greek or Greek-style building

castellan -- the governor of a castle

cicatrix -- the scar of a healed wound

coarct -- compress or constrict; press together

cocklebur -- a herbaceous plant in the daisy family with broad leaves and burred fruits, native to tropical America

coronach -- (in Scotland or Ireland) a funeral song

coruscating -- flashing; sparkling

crepuscular -- resembling or relating to twilight

decussate -- (of two or more things) cross or intersect each other to form an X

dramaturge -- a dramatist

dromond -- a large medieval ship of a kind used for war or commerce, chiefly in the Mediterranean

empennage -- an arrangement of stabilizing surfaces at the tail of an aircraft

enchiridion -- a book containing essential information on a subject

faience -- glazed ceramic ware, in particular decorated tin-glazed earthenware of the type which includes delftware and maiolica

foolscap -- a size of paper, about 330 x 200 (or 400) mm

foramen -- an opening, hole, or passage, especially in a bone

gallimaufry -- A confused jumble or medley of things

gamine -- (of a young woman) attractively boyish

histological -- studying microscopic biology or tissue under a microscope 

imprecation -- a spoken curse

ineffable -- too great or extreme to be expressed or described into words

ingenuous -- (of a person or action) innocent and unsuspecting

integument -- a tough outer protective layer, especially that of an animal or plant

jocose -- playful or humorous

knacker -- tire (someone) out

lacuna -- an unfilled space; a gap

lambent -- (of light or fire) glowing, gleaming, or flickering with a soft radiance

liminal -- occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold

masculate -- mark with a spot or spots; stain

mickle -- a large amount

milfoil -- the common Eurasian yarrow

Minnesinger -- a German lyric poet and singer of the 12th-14th centuries, who performed songs of courtly love

opprobrious -- (of language) expressing scorn or criticism

opprobrium -- harsh criticism or censure

oriel -- a large upper-story bay with a window, supported by brackets or on corbels

palimpsest -- a manuscript or piece of writing material on which later writing has been superimposed on effaced earlier writing

particolored -- having or consisting of two or more different colors

pentatonic -- relating to, or based on, or denoting a scale of five notes, especially one without semitones equivalent to an ordinary major scale with the fourth and seventh omitted

Percheron -- a powerful draught horse of a grey or black breed, originally from France

perfidy -- the state of being deceitful and untrustworthy

perfuse -- permeate or suffuse with a liquid, color, or quality

petrichor -- a pleasant smell that frequently accompanies the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather

pibroch -- a form of music for the Scottish bagpipes involving elaborate variations on a theme, typically of martial or funerary character

pissant -- an insignificant or contemptible person or thing

prurient -- having or encouraging an excessive interest in sexual matters, especially the sexual activity of others

ramify -- spread or branch out; grow and develop in complexity or range

retroussé -- (of a person's nose) turned up at the tip in an attractive way

salver -- a tray, typically one made of silver and used in formal circumstances

scapular -- a short monastic cloak covering the shoulders

sintered -- produced by or subjected to sintering (the process of coalescing a powdered material into a solid or porous mass by means of heating without liquefaction)

snug -- a small, comfortable public room in a pub or inn

soporific -- tending to induce drowsiness or sleep

spall -- break (rock, ore, or stone) into smaller pieces, especially in preparation for sorting

spirochaete -- a flexible spirally twisted bacterium, especially one that causes syphilis

tantivy -- a rapid gallop or ride

tatterdemalion -- tattered or dilapidated

thermogenic -- relating to or involving the production of heat, especially in a human or animal body

trencherman -- a person who eats in a specified manner, typically heartily

vituperative -- bitter and abusive

Weltanschauung -- a particular philosophy or view of life

whilom -- formerly; in the past

Review:

I started this book as a loan from the library, but it was a very slow start and the constant need to look up words had me on the Kobo. The story plods along and I found it very hard to engage until near the end.  The sub-stories interlocked, but it took so long for each piece to find the other that it felt like I was reading several books at once within this one book.  The frequency of words that were obscure or unusual in their use made the book feel unapproachable.

Murder the Truth, David Enrich

 

Murder the Truth:  Threats, intimidation, and a secret campaign to protect the powerful by David Enrich

Started: April 18, 2025

Completed: April 25, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By:  Nobody

Review:

Enrich does a good job of bringing together the stories of individual cases and several law firms to argue that there is an active conspiracy to make it easier for the powerful to shut down news stories via libel suits.  It seems like the suits rarely (if ever) target the thrust of the article, but find some tiny mistake around the edges and attempt to tar the media organization as malicious.  There are some notable exceptions (Dominion's suits against media organizations like FOX, go after the heart of the matter).  Meanwhile, the lawyers who attack the media argue that the laws need to be changed as they face an exceedingly uphill battle to "hold the media accountable."  That is as it should be.  Media should minimize their mistakes (and, when a mistake is made, should own up).  There should be no need to go to court.  When media is doing its job well, it should be very difficult to sue them because they are, well, doing their jobs well!

Toto, A. J. Hackwith

 

Toto by A. J. Hackwith

Started: April 12, 2025
Completed: April 18, 2025
Recommendation: Mild Recommendation
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

I have read a lot of books that take place in Oz.  This wasn't awful and it was an interesting take of sorts.  The "good dog" is taken to quite an extreme and I did not find it compelling.  If you like dogs, this may work.

Gender Trouble, Judith Butler

 

Gender Trouble by Judith Butler  the subtitle for this book is generally "Feminism and the subversion of identity"

Started: April 7, 2025
Completed: April 12, 2025
Recommendation: Highly recommended
Recommended By: My cousin

Review:

This is a technical book written in the jargon of the professional in gender studies.  I found a lot of the terms seemed archaic (to my ears the use of terms were just so unusual).  I listened to an audio book where the performer pronounced words like, "corollary" as "carol-aerie," and I found the pronunciation jarring as well as quickly making the sentence unintelligible.  I coped by going back and listening again, frequently.  This book is far from an easy read, but it is kind of fun to hear Butler reduce Freud to gibbering nonsense.

The Tusks of Extinction, Ray Nayler

 

The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler

Started: April 5, 2025
Completed: April 7, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: Nebula Award Committee

Review:

This book is both a conservation work as well as a Science Fiction work.  That is a tough combination.  I have been sort of wrapped up in the concept of "uploading" one's intellect into a computer and this book examines that possibility while also looking at the possibility of recreating extinct creatures (not really Jurassic Park) while at the same time examining how those creatures would impact the environment and still be subject to the very conditions that brought them to extinction.  This is well done for the most part and the shifting perspectives are useful.  The book is brief, however, so it feels like the characters are truncated and only one of the characters undergoes meaningful change or development.

When the Clock Broke, John Ganz

 

When the Clock Broke:  Con men, conspiracies, and how America cracked up in the early 1990s by John Ganz

Started: March 30, 2025
Completed: April 5, 2025
Recommendation: Mild recommendation
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

I feel like this book was intended to show how politics became broken and how that led to electing a broken candidate like Trump.  Then, it feels, like there were slight modifications to the text to understand how he could be elected again.  I sort of feel like politics were less broken and were more an actualization of some pretty horrible points of view.  Those points of view remain and there does not seem to be some kind of a change or generally realization of how wrong Trump is, but some kind of acceptance of his horrible assumptions as being an accurate reflection of reality.  This is very scary to me.

Open Socrates, Agnes Callard

 

Open Socrates:  The case for a philosophical life by Agnes Callard

Started: March 8, 2025
Completed: March 15, 2025
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Words for which I sought help:

desiderata -- things that are needed or wanted

Review:

Talking about raising children, "Every time I approach my kids and am in a corrective mood to nudge them towards what I see as a superior way of living, I feel as though I've walked on the the stage of a play where the characters were given their direction at some previous time by some previous person.  Sometimes it amazes me--how could it be that I missed my chance to give my instructions given that I've been around since the minute that they were born?"

This book completely changes the way I have looked at Socrates.  I bought a copy and I'm reading it again and marking passages.

The Witch’s Heart, Genevieve Gornichec

 

The Witch's Heart by Genevieve Gornichec

Started: March 25, 2025
Completed: March 30, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

I really enjoyed this retelling of a Nordic myth.  It is hard to make me like the Nordic gods and so it was good that this book didn't do that!  I like the story behind the creatures in the book and it is hard for me to look away from Loki.

The Anxious Generation, Jonathon Haidt

 

The Anxious Generation:  How the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness by Jonathan Haidt

Started: March 23, 2025
Completed: DNF
Recommendation: Not Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

The research presented was great.  The solution (free range kids) was not.  Free range kids may work in a rural environment, but I think it is a real challenge in an urban or even suburban environment.  Crime has come down and we probably don't need the detailed helicopter style parenting, but part of the way that free range worked was because neighbors were empowered to help raising children.  Now, however, neighbors may not even be home and I remember from being a key latch kid that the responsibility devolved onto the oldest sibling--not a good arrangement (that sibling becomes a substitute for parents, not another kid).  Excellent perspective and a good broad solution, but the details need some serious work.

Intermezzo, Sally Rooney

 

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

Started: March 16, 2025
Completed: March 23, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

I have heard many good things about Sally Rooney, but I was not thrilled with Normal People.  I guess I am a bit of a prude because I found the amount and descriptions of sex to be a lot and rather graphic.  On the other hand, as the book unwound the need for the sex scenes with their similarities and differences did feel important to the book.  The foreshadowing was excellent and the writing was very good.  The ability to view several different character flaws through the lens of different characters (both internally and externally) was very well done.  I'm a weirdo and I wish that there had been more chess, but I get that it was a means, not an end.

Untethered Sky, Fonda Lee

 

Untethered Sky by Fonda Lee

Started: March 15, 2025
Completed: March 16, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: I cannot remember how I came across this book, but it has been on my To Be Read audio book list for quite a while.

Review:

I enjoyed this book.  It was an odd combination of romance and adventure which was not fully part of either.  This was an interesting way to look at the start of a new profession.  Sort of a journey woman thing, but also a look at adventure that comes from a challenging profession.

A Man On The Moon, Andrew Chaikin

 

A Man On The Moon:  The voyages of the Apollo astronauts by Andrew Chaikin

Started: February 14, 2025
Completed: February 22, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

This was a good walk through the history of the Apollo program.  A lot of this was familiar to me, but it included details I had not heard before.  One thing that always catches me off guard was that Ed White was one of the three astronauts who died in the fire on the pad.

Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir

 

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Started: December 6, 2024
Completed: March 14, 2025
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

Wow, what a great book.  This has everything that I'm looking for in a Science Fiction novel.  Some real science, character development, aliens, just everything.  The book was very well written and extremely engaging.  The audio book is completely worth it--Ray Porter is awesome (I love him also in the Bobiverse books).  Cannot recommend this highly enough.

The Forever War, Nick Bryant

 

The Forever War:  America's Unending Conflict With Itself by Nick Bryant

Started: March 2, 2025
Completed: March 8, 2025
Recommendation: Mild recommendation
Recommended By: I think that this came via The Guardian, but I cannot find a review from them, so I'm not sure how I stumbled across it.

Review:

I really thought that this was going to be about January 6th, the cover fooled me, mea culpa.  I am very familiar with the history that was reviewed in this book and I found only one memorable quotation:  America does not need to learn how to live with civil war, America needs to learn how to live with civil peace (or something like that...I listened to the book and I did not jot down the quotation as I heard it because I have a bit of a life today).  Aside from that, this is American history fairly well recounted with a focus on contentious issues (slavery, abortion, etc.)  I just really spent too much time on the book as it was mostly a retelling of history with which I was already familiar.

The Most Powerful Court in the World, Stuart Banner

 

The Most Powerful Court in the World:  A history of the Supreme Court of the United States by Stuart Banner

Started: February 28, 2025
Completed: DNF
Recommendation: Not Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

I did not check when I started, but Stuart Banner is a member of the Federalist Society.  I knew something was off as I started reading the book because the first step was to normalize politicization of the Supreme Court.  It worried me as it started, but as the book went on it became an apologist for such things as Dred Scott (bad decision, but Tawney was a pretty good guy).  As I was listening to the book after about a quarter of the way through things added up and I checked to see if Banner was a member of the Federalist Society.  Sure enough, he was.  So I started this book thinking that I was getting a historian's perspective and I realized that I was getting a right twist on everything.  Really threw me off coming from a UCLA professor in good standing.

Stone Yard Devotional, Charlotte Wood

 

Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood

Started: February 26, 2025
Completed: February 28, 2025
Recommendation: Not Recommended
Recommended By: Booker Prize committee

Review:

As I have read more Booker Prize winners, I've come to understand that the committee has a long standing favoritism for blood, gore, and torture.  This particular book only falls short on the torture angle (though there is a fair amount of emotional distress and general angst).  I think I am going to use the Booker Prize as an indicator of a book I do not want to read.

The Silence of the Girls, Pat Barker

 

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

Started: February 23, 2025
Completed: February 25, 2025
Recommendation: Mild recommendation
Recommended By: The Booker Prize folks

Review:

You cannot get a Booker Prize unless there is some horror in your book.  That is just the truth.  This book is about the horror of women surviving the sack of their city (in this case in and around Troy).  It is pretty horrible.  Lots and lots of blood and gore as well as serial rape.  Not a fun read.  Well written

The Strategists, Phillips Payson O'Brien

 

The Strategists:  Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt, and Hitler how war made them and how they made war by Phillips Payson O'Brien

Started: January 24, 2025
Completed: February 2, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By:  This probably came to me through The Atlantic magazine where O'Brien is a frequent contributor

Review:

This book is neither history nor biography.  It looks at the development of strategic thinking of the major leaders during World War II.  To some extent it is amazing what we now know of how they thought.  It was also interesting to see what drove their thinking.  I cannot say that this will change my thinking (I don't operate on a global scale), but it was interesting to see how failure functioned and how success required deference.

Someone Like Us, Dinaw Mengestu

 

Someone Like Us by Dinaw Mengestu

Started: January 13, 2025
Completed: January 20, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: I'm sure I read a review someplace, but I cannot remember where.

Review:

This is an oddly introspective book which is reminiscent of MC Escher's drawing of hands drawing hands:

There is also a playfulness with both tense and location.  This book is interesting in other ways as it looks at death from several different angles.  At one point, the narrator is told how to lie:  basically, use Steve Bannon's approach of "flooding the zone" with extraneous information so that it is difficult to tell what is the lie and what isn't and basically distracts the questioner from the question that was asked.  It was shocking to realize that this is what my own children did (I cannot count the number of times I pointed out that they had provided a lot of information without actually answering the question I had asked).  It must be a cultural thing that is common in many cultures, but seems to be lacking in American culture (or maybe it is simply lacking in my friend circle).