A Far Better Thing, H. G. Parry

 

A Far Better Thing:  I feared this was the best of times; I hoped it could not get any worse by H. G. Parry.  I enjoyed The Scholar and the Last Faery Door, so I thought I would give this one a shot.

Started: October 12, 2025
Completed: October 24, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Media: Audio
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

It would have been better if I had realized that this was a sort of retelling of a A Tale of Two Cities.  This should not be a shock to anyone reading this review (and if it is, you're welcome).  So it should be clear where this book is headed.  Nonetheless, this is a good trip and I enjoyed it.  I got as attached to the characters as one should and enjoyed the development of several of them.  There were a couple of characters who were clearly foils and embodied their stereotypes to the fullest.  No harm in that.  The fairy pieces were interesting and well crafted, although the author created a fairy world that she could then not adequately describe which didn't leave much to the imagination so much as leave a little extra mystery.

The Sirens' Call, Chris Hayes

 

The Sirens' Call:  How attention became the world's most endangered resource by Chris Hayes

Started: October 12, 2025
Completed: October 18, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended

Media:  Audio
Recommended By: Barrack Obama

Review:

I do not follow Chris Hayes closely (perhaps that is sideways music to his ears), but I was quite surprised to see a reference to Epictetus show up in this book.  There is no reason a news anchor should not be well educated (and many reasons why they should be), but this borders on someone who actually has an interest in philosophy and his interest in other topics (like Death of a Salesman) could be a side-effect of having acted or could be a side-effect of a deep education.  I dunno what it is, but I like it and I think he would make an interesting person with whom to speak outside of the context of what he does for a living.

I wonder about the particular type of utopia he has in mind.  SPOILER ALERT.  I'm not sure that the return to a directed way of looking at the world (such as a physical copy of the New York Times or a vinal album) is where we are headed.  Surely there will be pockets of people who will use this kind of method to view the world and, perhaps, it will not be dwindling pockets.  In the end, however, I wonder if they will be sufficiently large to function as a brake on the rest of society.

A Dead Djinn in Cairo, P. Djèlí Clark

 

A Dead Djinn in Cairo by P. Djèlí Clark I read Ring Shout and enjoyed how this author wrote, so when I saw another of his books, I picked this one up!

Started: October 14, 2025
Completed: October 15, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

This is really a short story.  Clark does a huge amount of world building very succinctly and takes some commonly understood character types (djinn, for example) and plays with the stereotype (what if there was an immortal play boy who became besotted).  He also does a good job of crafting an investigator who must solve a mystery while throwing in a decent amount of her personal life.  Generally very well done.  The mystery is impossible to solve, but enjoyable none the less.

The Daughter of Odren, Ursula K. Le Guin

 

The Daughter of Odren by Ursula K. Le Guin is a book in the Earthsea Cycle

Started: October 13, 2025
Completed: October 13, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

The key to Le Guin's magic in Earthsea is that in order to bring one thing to this place, it must come from that place.  There is a loss associated with magic and not simply a gain.  That is a critically important concept to my mind and switches magic from being "magical" to being a form of theft.  Sometimes this theft is appropriate and some times it is not.  It has felt to me in other books of Earthsea that Le Guin has explored that trade-off.  Here, however, there is much more the perspective of magic being simply gain without loss.  This time, she explores the hollowness of victory.  It is still a good story, but not the excellence I anticipate from an Earthsea lay.

The Spinning Heart, Donal Ryan

 

The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan

Started: October 7, 2025
Completed: October 13, 2025
Recommendation: Highly recommended
Recommended By: I picked up the sequel without realizing that this book came first, so I had to read it.

Words for which I sought help:

craic -- fun, good times, an enjoyable atmosphere

creche -- a day nursery or full-day care center

culchie -- someone from rural Ireland

demesne -- the land attached to a country house or manor that is kept for the owner's own use, distinct from lands leased to tenants

dipsomaniac -- an alcoholic, especially one who experiences intermittent bouts of craving for alcohol

flaker -- an unreliable, eccentric, or unconventional person

mither -- fuss over or moan about something

quare -- strange, peculiar, or odd

solipsist -- a person who is very self-centered or selfish

tash -- a moustache

Review:

Oh, this was a delightfully odd book.  Each character is a chapter.  What develops is the community as a whole, not a single character (although there is one, Frank, who changes over the course of the book).  I just enjoyed it.  This is not a happy book and it is not an adventure.  It is, however, a real look at a community for good or bad from the people who live in the community.

The Big Myth, Oreskes and Conway

 

The Big Myth:  How American business taught us to loathe government and love the free market by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway

Started: September 19, 2025
Completed: October 12, 2025
Recommendation: Highly recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

The reality is that the "magic" of the free market is not really magic.  It is a drive to profitability and numerous examples (such as electrification of rural areas) detail how ineffective the free market can be.  Thus, the free market does need some bounds and some regulations (don't dump your waste into the river).  The big myth we have been sold is that the free market somehow solves things that "big government" cannot.  Yet actually looking at the data, "big government" is highly effective at helping address social ills.  That is because the free market and profitability do not necessary align with resolving social ills (indeed, child labor and slavery show that it can aggravate social ills).  Reagan's trickle down that never trickled is the heart of the data set that shows clearly how untempered self-interest does not make things better for us.  The dichotomy between free market capitalism and communism is a false dichotomy with a LOT of space in between.  Our liberty as a people is not at risk when the free market is properly supervised.

Erasing History, Jason Stanley

 

Erasing History:  How fascists rewrite the past to control the future by Jason Stanley

Started: 10/11/2025
Completed: 10/11/2025
Recommendation: Highly recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

It is interesting to hear how fascists fight to get rid of history.  It is important that the history of a fascist state be "good" and attributable to the fascists.  Stanley argues that a large part of the work happens in schools where history is codified among children.  This explains the focus on censorship of books in the school libraries.  The justification was that someone could always go to the regular library to read the book, but the regular library is coming under fire.

History is also better when viewed from many facets (several people can experience the same event in different ways).  Fascists, however, want to control the story (honestly, like everything else), so they want one history to be told (their history).  This is short book, but it is very clear and the topics covered are kept close to actual history and its erasure which allows for some context while at the same time applying brevity.  Very well done. 

The Myth of American Idealism, Chomsky and Robinson

 

The Myth of American Idealism:  How U.S. foreign policy endangers the world by Noam Chomsky and Nathan J. Robinson  I got this book as part of a book club sponsored by the authors.  I have read Chomsky's books on language and programming, but not his works on politics.  I have been a long time subscriber to Current Affairs which is Nathan Robinson's project.

Started: June 1, 2025
Completed: October 11, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: the authors

Review:

This book is eye-opening.  First, there is the distinction between what America says and what it does (looking out for the good of a populace and then actually bombing that populace).  This can be seen in speeches from politicians and then the actual orders given by those same politicians.  While the right is more culpable, this has been happening from both the right and left.  There are also draw dropping statements on the public stage where the USA says simply horrible things and then follows through on the horrible stuff.  The back end of the book is focused on what can be done, but, honestly, there is not a lot of advice there that anyone can act upon.  Getting the media to focus on the facts and the facts alone is hard and it is something that no individual can do.  Supporting universities and their efforts to offer multiple views of history, but, again, it is not at all clear how that can be done.  In the end, the value if this book is in seeing what the USA is doing in the name of "We The People."

The Silk Roads, Peter Frankopan

 

The Silk Roads:  A new history of the world by Peter Frankopan

Started:  August 11, 2025
Completed: October 9, 2025
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody in particular, but I think that this caught my eye because of my niece's recent visit to Morocco where she sent me pictures of ruins that once were part of the silk road.

Review:

This look at the history of the world focuses on what we would call the East (here in the West) and identifies how the countries of the East have been the focus of modern history with the start of everything in the general area (think Babylon or Ur if you know that).  The perspective is refreshing and offers new insights if you are even only thinking about trade (which is how this book looks at it).  Surely there are other ways to view the world, but from the perspective of trade Frankopan makes a good argument that what we think of as the Silk Roads were the entry point of West into the lucrative markets, resources, skills, and culture of the East.  Ridiculously long book with an incredible amount of detail.

Arden's Act, Elizabeth Thomas

 

Arden's Act by Elizabeth Thomas

Started: August 11, 2025
Completed: October 7, 2025
Recommendation: Mild recommendation
Recommended By: The Author

Review:

I am trying to enjoy the romance genre.  SPOILERS AHEAD.

This book looks at romance through the lens of rape.  Arden is almost gang raped at the outset of the book.  A flashback tells you she was abused.  As the book progresses, she is living with "kept women" most of the time.  She, herself, becomes a kept woman (and has sex with a lord in exchange for safety from her childhood abuser).  Later, she marries (in order to keep her child) a man with whom she is friends, but not a romantic interest.  She comes to love this man who faces an untimely death and she returns to her lord where she is more of a girl toy.  Eventually, she prostitutes herself to save her child and nurse maid (who, meanwhile, is raped).  Finally, she ends up marrying the lord who gives up his title to be with her.

As a result of the focus on rape, I found the sex scenes (even when conceptually mutually agreed) to be mildly unattractive.  The concept of the book as a whole put me off.  I will grant that at least the lord comes to realize he has effectively raped Arden though by the end she freely loves him.  I just didn't find this book romantic and, with the overtones of rape rife throughout, I did not find it pleasant.  I offer a mild recommendation because this book did not feel formulaic and some of the characters do change over the course of the book.  The plot was fairly straight forward with the exception of the step father who, of course, is raped in jail and comes to understand what he had done to his step daughter (I did not expect that nuance).

Rosarita, Anita Desai

 

Rosarita by Anita Desai

Started: October 2, 2025
Completed: October 4, 2025
Recommendation: Mildly recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

The omnipotent narrator has an odd habit of addressing the protagonist as, "you."  It is an odd third person personal (?) form of story telling.  It was so incredibly distracting to be so directly addressed by the narrator in the persona of the protagonist as to constantly distract me from the story which unfolds from a series of descriptions and vignettes which feature people who are not present (most notably the protagonist's mother who has died). 

Desai is celebrated for her turn of phrase.  In this book I was captured by, "The bells ring unexpectedly at irregular times."  I like this sentence because it suggests that if there are bells, they should be ringing expectedly at regular times.  In the following paragraph there is a discussion, effectively, of unexpected memories intruding.  It is a nice link and something that I can appreciate.  I liked that the metaphor was implied by proximity.

How To Be A Saint, Kate Sidley

 

How To Be A Saint:  An extremely weird and mildly sacrilegious history of the Catholic Church's biggest names by Kate Sidley

Started: October 1, 2025
Completed: October 2, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

I am not a Catholic.  I did enjoy this book (it isn't the first time that I've found the stories of saints interesting).  This one is fun because author is funny.  So the turns of phrase had good timing and this tongue in cheek book was a quick and enjoyable read.

Dominion, Addie E. Citchens

 

Dominion by Addie E. Citchens

Started: September 28, 2025
Completed: October 1, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

This was an interesting book.  The characters are rich for their ages and the story benefits from multiple perspectives.  While several of the characters are children, they are old beyond their years.  This was not a happy story, it was really a slow demise of a family and, with it, part of a community.  Sadness, heaped on sorrow, heaped on pain is the way that the Joker describes this Mississippi community and this exploration of that experience describes the effect of that environment more eloquently than spelling out the details of each piece.

Atmosphere, Taylor Jenkins Reid

 

Atmosphere:  A love story by Taylor Jenkins Reid was recommended by my wife after reading a review in the AARP magazine

Started: September 16, 2025
Completed: September 19, 2025
Recommendation: Mild recommendation
Recommended By: My wife

Review:

Eh.  This is a love story and I think it would be seen as an improbable love story.  A woman who thinks she is asexual falls for a woman.  Honestly, I think that Reid did a good job showing how love can sneak up on someone.  Other than that, I wasn't thrilled by the book.  The astronaut/astronomer angle was not compelling to me.  The closeted couple was, but I have no sense of how realistic it was in those times.  All in all, this wasn't a bad read, I just wasn't ever rushing to find out what happened next and I feel that the ending was telegraphed throughout the book, so the minor "maybe not" didn't go far.  The relationship after about half way through the book became flat.

Shroud, Adrian Tchaikovsky

 

Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Started: August 26, 2025
Completed: September 5, 2025
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

I think I have read enough of Tchaikovsky's books to start to discern a pattern.  He tells an adventure story.  In the process, he builds a world and explains how the main characters overcome the adversities uniquely presented by this world.  Pretty cool.  He is so smooth in his telling that it is easy to be sucked in and believe that this "other world" must exist and that the characters are real.  Wonderful.

Throne of Glass, Sarah J. Maas

 

Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas

Started: August 21, 2025
Completed: August 26, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended for Young Adults
Recommended by: My niece who insists this is not smut and she really enjoyed the story.

Review:

I am not particularly a fan of anti-heroes (one big exception is Covenant in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen Donaldson) and the protagonist, Celaena Sardothien, in this book is such an anti-hero.  She is untrustworthy, abusive of relationships (both romantic and non-romantic), quick to insult (she would see it as being snappy, I guess), and quick to be insulted (she wears her feelings on her sleeve).  The context does matter.  Celaena is 17 and somehow renowned throughout the world as a first class assassin.  How this happens in the age of the horse is not described and she somehow has years of experience becoming an assassin and even more years to become famous.  So, OK, grant all of this.  Her inner dialog has her as a virtually unstoppable force, yet when it comes down to it, she is not quite all of that.  She, also, somehow has survived a year in a brutal mine known to be a death sentence, so she does have something.

Meanwhile, the captain of the guard and the crown prince are both hot for her.  In fairness, it seems like everyone who can get close enough to look her up and down is hot for her.  So, OK, grant all of this.  She had a secret boyfriend who died and that's about all you know.  She is also a piano virtuoso in case you thought she was one-sided.

The plot is not challenging and the characters are all flat.  For a young person, however, who is looking to model after a brash person who unexpectedly finds herself at the center of many levels of power, well this is your thing.

My niece is very up on this series, so I am likely to continue reading and the rest of the series.

1491, Charles Mann

 

1491:  New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus by Charles C. Mann

Started: July 22, 2025
Completed: August 21, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

The titular date is more of a lodestone then an actual constraint on the book.  Mann moves forward and backward of this date with lots of breathing room and this is welcome.  Instead of being the story of a year (or even being the story of the Americas before Columbus as the subtitle says) this is a broader story which focuses on the state of the native American before Columbus while leaving room to examine how things changed not simply with Columbus, but with all the Europeans.  This is a broad expanse to cover in one book (a couple of continents for thousands of years) and, as such, it examines more the tip of the iceberg.  As a reader, the tromp through the cultures of the Americas with constant name dropping (the name dropping is surely important to researchers in each culture, but amounts to a constant rumble of single or infrequent mentions that drown out the larger story in some areas) is exhausting.  There are few touchstones to other histories, so almost all of the information provided is new and is, thus, overwhelming.

In studies of European history, one might start with the Greeks, then learn of how the Romans overtook the Greeks and learn of how that went.  It is rare, in my experience to consider the Greeks, then look at how the Greeks interacted with, say, the Egyptians or Persians and the myriad of other city states (with the possible exceptions of Sparta and Troy)--much less the many societies impacted by Alexander the Great, yet this is the approach taken by Mann.  Surely he is glossing over the history of say, the Maya, but yet the number of cities he describes and various rulers of each become a froth of names that are hardly related to one another and only have minimal carry-over when he is talking about other nearby cultures (in time or space) much less distant cultures.  It is just too much information to take in properly (compounded by the nature of the names being both distinct from European names with which I am familiar and being overlapping such as name changes upon coronation).  I find it hard to say that this is a good introduction, but, yet, the high pace of archaeology which has put this book out of date on more than one occasion makes it difficult to find a coherent history of any one of these groups in some other independent book or set of books.  As such, this becomes an introduction which stitches together so many societies over such a breadth of time that it can be a reference of sorts for a more detailed study of any one to understand the greater context (sort of looking at a Celtic history within a broader sense of European history in general).  It feels like much ground was covered, but from such a height as to artificially blur details (to stretch a metaphor:  the forest has oaks, maples, and pines and some of the characteristics of each are described to include some of their interactions, but the details get reduced to "forest" in order to look at the plains nearby by this reader.)

All-in-all, I'm glad to have read it, but unlikely to remember the details (say, comparable to parts of the Two Towers in The Fellowship of the Ring; I'll never remember the lines of various dwarves, but it is good to know for the story that there were distinct Dwarven clans).

Solaris, Stanislaw Lem

Solaris by Stanislaw Lem is classic Sci-Fi and I cannot remember why I wanted to pick it up.

Started: July 30, 2025
Completed: August 19, 2025
Recommendation: Not Recommended
Recommended By: I cannot remember

Review:

This is a truly weird book.  I honestly do not know what to make of it.  Of course, it seems to me that the author and characters don't really know what to do with it either.  I cannot really recommend it on any grounds.  Perhaps someone who is really into weird stuff that truly goes nowhere.  I don't know anyone like that.

Endurance, Alfred Lansing

 

Endurance:  Shakelton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing

Started: August 11, 2025
Completed: August 17, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: My son, N; It is worth noting that several people (Brian D'Amato, Ann, and Jan) recommended that I read South which is Shakelton's own recounting, but I have removed that book from the list (and donated my copy to a local book sale) given this one.

Review:

Most of these shipwreck style tales are horrifying.  Well, this one is also.  On the bright side nobody dies (it is history, unlikely to ruin someone's day with that).  I think that this is likely to be my last shipwreck story.  I started around 12 reading the original Robinson Caruso (not the kid versions I'd been reading up until then) and though that was a novel, it was one in a series of shipwreck stories that hopefully culminates with this one.  Ending on an "up" note.

Orbiting Fortunes, A.L. MacDonald

 

Orbiting Fortunes by A.L. MacDonald

Started: April 26, 2025
Completed: August 11, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: The author

Review:

This is a fun read.  The writing style is casual and I got the feeling that the protagonist was a "regular guy" in unusual circumstances.  The story is believable on several levels which is always fun for sci-fi.  The details were not perfect, but the story was fun, approachable, and kept me engaged.  It also was an interesting look at how a space cowboy might go around trying to make a living--that part was a little hard to believe, but having accepted the rest of the premises, it wasn't a stretch.  This is not hard scifi that will grab you with the harshness of space and you won't be constantly reminded of the bitter tang of outer space each time you turn a chapter.  The fight scenes are a little stretched, but they are fun and they get the job done--this isn't a science manual.  Think MacGyver not Carl Sagan.  I enjoyed it for what it was and find it a bargain on Kobo! 

You Are Not American, Amanda Frost

 

You Are Not American:  Citizen stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers by Amanda Frost

Started: August 3, 2025
Completed: August 11, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: A local book club

Review:

I was aware that people could lose their citizenship.  I was absolutely aware that slaves were not considered citizens as a result of Dred Scott.  I was not aware of how recently this citizenship stripping had been happening and it was shocking.

Who Is Government?, Michael Lewis

 

Who Is Government?:  The untold story of public service by Michael Lewis

Started: July 31, 2025
Completed: August 3, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

This is a good collection of stories that helps put a face on government workers.  Not only is it a look at the "common" worker, but there are several stories of extraordinary workers.  My experience with government workers is that are service oriented hoping to make the United States a better place.

Changing Planes, Ursula K. Le Guin

 

Changing Planes by Ursula K. Le Guin

Started: July 28, 2025
Completed: July 31, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

As usual, Le Guin wrote good stuff.  By the end, however, the motif of changing planes had started to wear off and the morality lessons were beginning to add up.  I enjoyed these stories both as stories and as morality plays, but this is not my genre.

Between Me and You, Allison Winn Scotch

 

Between Me and You by Allison Winn Scotch I bought this book on CD several years ago (it came out in 2018 and I must have bought it somewhere around 2020.  This has been sitting in a basket near the door (amongst other audio books) for car listening.  I imagine that at some point in the future, I will no longer have a CD player in the car, so I probably should be busy listening to the books in this basket before I end up giving up on the old Nissan Leaf.  I'm sure I bought this book on audio because I simply could not get it at the library at the time, but I cannot remember what brought me to want a Romance novel--not really my genre.  Maybe I was branching out or had read a review about the book telling the same story from multiple points of view (something I do really like).  I dunno.

Started: May 17, 2025
Completed: July 30, 2025
Recommendation: Not recommended
Recommended By: Not sure

Review:

I did not enjoy this book.  The plot "twists" were rather obvious and only twists by virtue of not travelling the story linearly in time.  The characters were shallow and did not develop.  I think that this counted as a "meet cute" which ran the traditional story line of boy/girl meets girl/boy, boy/girl loses girl/boy, and boy/girl gets girl/boy.  The only redeeming portion of the book is that it was written from both the main characters' point of view, so they were some occurrences where the same event was viewed differently, but mostly it was each validating the other's perspective internally without doing so externally.  The whole story just left me flat.

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.