I made a mistake last year. I started the year off slow and didn’t think I was reading as many books – although I did end up reading a respectable 78 – and so I didn’t do a mid-year review. And I wasn’t writing as much so I wanted to catch up before I started my summaries, which honestly never worked. All of which meant that I was a good three months late to doing my review of the books from 2023, and that it’s really long. I do apologize for that. But it’s finally done, so here we go – short reactions to all the books I read last year, with longer reviews linked to when applicable.
Sophie’s World, Jostein Gaarder
Gaarder, a philosophy lecturer, wrote a very creative and engaging novel that is actually a series of philosophy lectures. This is a significant feat, and I was really enjoying this book and its clear description of the early parts of philosophy for most of the book. Unfortunately, though, by the end it went off the rails and the ending of did not make sense and seemed to break away from the points in philosophy he had previously been exploring before as well. Disappointing as the first two-thirds were great.
This is the type of book I should really like, with an unreliable and out of place narrator and a vague feeling of unease throughout. But despite that, and the good reviews, the book never came together for me. The feeling of unease was there, but never seemed to have anything to explain or justify it, and I never did quite grasp the world the story took place in. It felt thin and unrealized and I ended up disappointed.
Pulitzer Prizes in the mid-1920s seemed to gravitate towards stories of people in the mid-western plains, often immigrant communities, and the lives they were building. I really appreciated and enjoyed this one, about a girl who lives a fairly privileged although unstable upbringing in Chicago until her father dies. She has to leave school and takes a job as a teacher in a Dutch community in the prairie, one which for most is deprivation and hard work, which she experiences for several years. But this is not so much a tale of struggle, but one of the beauty and value of trying to live a real and authentic life, to search for your joy and what you want rather than what should be done. It is a story of finding beauty even in the mundane and how this can lead to your own success. A very beautiful story.
This is How You Lose the Time War, Amal el-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
My second time reading this book and I still love it. The book is written from the perspective of two of the best warriors, Red and Blue, on opposite sides of a war that has been ranging across the many different strands and throughout the timeline of various Earths. The warriors come to respect and then love each other, leaving increasingly elaborate letters to each other woven in to the fabric of space and time. The book is absolutely delightful. For one thing, as far as I’m concerned once you’ve accepted that time travel is possible anything is possible so just lean in to that absurdity, you know? And they do that in a huge way, really enjoying and exploring how extreme this could get. El-Mohtar and Gladstone wrote this in a relatively short burst, with a general outline but primarily responding to one another with no time for research and planning. You can really sense the way they are having fun with it and trying to out do one another with their chapters, also perfect for the way Red and Blue are baiting and competing with each other. I love, love, love this book. It is one of my favorites, and can be read it one sitting by anyone looking for how to spend an afternoon.
T. Rex and the Crater of Doom, Walter Alvarez
I picked this up because in a What If? answer long ago Randall Munroe said that he thought that this was one of the best popular science books ever written. And you know what? He’s right. It is very easy to forget that some things that are accepted as truths today are relatively recent discoveries, scientifically speaking. The one that always throws me for a loop is how plate tectonics aren’t only fairly new as a theory, but were actively ridiculed at first for going against scientific orthodoxy. And even in Jurassic Park what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs is debated. The asteroid theory went against the general belief of gradualism in evolution and geology. Walter Alvarez, however, and his father, a geologist and physicist respectively, discovered the layer of iridium between the ‘dinosaurs’ and ‘no dinosaurs’ layers of earth and formulated the asteroid theory. In order to prove it, it took people working together across disciplines from geology, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, paleontology, and more. It is a long story of scientific critique and collaboration, but eminently readable, and really great tale for anyone interested in how science works at its best, or just in reading a extremely entertaining scientific mystery.
The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder
This was an intriguing little book! While it was a novel, I can understand why it has been adapted for stage and screen so often, and it still often had the feel of a play. The book tells the story of five people who were on an old Incan bridge in Peru in the late 1700s when the bridge collapsed. A priest, trying to make sense of this tragedy and God’s place in it, finds out all he can about each person. What is told is the hidden stories of people in a town, their tragedies and hopes, and a story of life in this village. It isn’t about Peru so much as a tale of what people had looked for in their dreams and what had brought them to that point. A poignant portrait.
Early Autumn, Louis Bromfield
I do believe that stories of someone feeling adrift in their world of wealth, privilege, and social constraints is and always will be a staple American books and movies. Early Autumn, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1927, fits nicely in this niche. The story of a woman of some wealth who has married in to one of the wealthiest and oldest families in Boston, who lives on “the income of their income.” She feels asea, but is also the one who clearly holds the family together. A black sheep cousin has come home and befriended a boarder on the property, an up and coming successful Irish Catholic immigrant who makes her question her life, while at the same time her daughter is searching for the next steps in her life and some secrets from the family are coming to a head. It was pretty good, but these books from long ago are always feel a bit strange to me as the big moments of drama are things that wouldn’t make anyone bat an eye even 60 years ago now.
The Skeptic’s Guide to the Future: What Yesterday’s Science and Science Fiction Tell Us About the World of Tomorrow, Steven Novella
This is an exploration of what the future might look like, divided in to technologies that are being actively researched and feel like they might be in the near future (like Genetic Manipulation, AI, Quantum Technology), things that are being serious discussed but are still not really real (Fusion, Space Elevators and others), Space Travel tech, and then the real Science Fiction stuff (like Cold Fusion, Faster than Light anything, and Uploading Our Consciousness). This the type of nerdy book I’m in to, and it does a good job diving in to the potential upcoming technologies, but it not a great one. I barely remember the book at this point, and it didn’t really stand apart from others in this general wheelhouse.
Dinosaurs: A Novel, Lydia Millet
Children’s Bible was one of the best books I’ve read in the last few years, so I made sure to pick up Lydia Millet’s newest book when I saw it around. Millet is a fantastic author who is able to pull the reader in from the beginning. The story follows a man who has decided to up and move the Arizona desert and ends up next to a glass house. Being able to see into his neighbors at all times, he finds himself pulled in to their life. The story itself ends up being an exploration of loneliness, connection, and the need to be part of more than just ourselves as an island. It’s a very touching book, and one that I was able absorb in just two nights.
Better Buses, Better Cities: How to Plan, Run, and Win the Fight for Effective Transit, Steven Higashide
This is a relatively short book that packs a lot of information on the reasons to and challenges to improving public transit in the US. Anyone who has tried to get around in the US outside of a major city knows how dismal the state of public transit is, and this is a problem for people who want to limit their car use/carbon output, and for people who can’t afford their cars. The book does a good job of outlining the problems, and just how insanely wired everything about our society – up to and including the justice system—is towards cars, but like most books I want more of the ‘how’. There are things that look like common sense solutions, and more on why these can’t be done and what specifically we have to overcome would be useful to me. But still a good primer for people getting engaged in these issues.
The Secret Chord, Geraldine Brooks
Okay. Look, here’s where I am. I just think I’m done with books about Bible characters that are actually bad and all the torture and terror and humiliation of women that occurred at the time. Brooks is a good writer, and this is a well researched fictionalized deep dive into David, narrated by his prophet, Nathan. And there’s nothing wrong with the book itself, it’s just – I get it, okay. These characters aren’t all good, and being a woman just out and out sucked and it’s all awful. Really going in to detail about what happened to Tamar, or how Bathsehba may have not been entirely willing or appreciative of David’s attentions and his murdering of her husband, drives that home. But I don’t think I need to read about it anymore.
Uncommon Type: Some Stories, Tom Hanks
I watched something recently about the only extant typewriter repair shop and storefront in New York, and how Tom Hanks is a big fan. Honestly, seeing that made everything about this book make a lot more sense. These are a series of relatively sparse short stories, all centered around a typewriter in some way. Some are a bit mystical, some absurd, some straight forward tales of starting over or going through life. There are few recurring characters, but they mostly stand independently. I thought it was fine. Serviceable stories; there were a few that stood out but mostly they just passed the time.
No One is Coming to Save Us, Stephanie Powell Watts
Centered around a Black family in North Carolina, this takes place in a declining town as the kid who got away and made good is back. JJ has returned to his hometown to buy the most prestigious home and lot and fix it up, winning back his high school sweetheart, Ava. She’s in a strained marriage trying to have a baby; her husband is worried about keeping his job; her mother is sick of and not fully wiling to end her marriage; her brother hasn’t spoken to them for ages although her mother regularly has long ‘conversations’ with him. The whole town, mostly Ava, want to know what JJ is doing back, and his return puts the rest of their lives in stark relief. I’m not sure I fully grasped everything about this book, but I am sure the feeling of it is going to stick with me for a long time.
Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires, Douglass Rushkoff
Just like we found that Exxon had been secretly planning for how the worst of climate change would impact their bottom line while fighting fiercely against stopping it, the wealthiest people who could easily put money towards climate solutions are instead funding right-wing fascists fighting against climate policies and paying ridiculous amounts of money for their own climate escapes and climate security. There’s a lot of things that are terrible about this, and mostly Mark O’Connell covered them better in his wonderful book about dealing with climate hopelessness while raising kids and planning for the future. Rushkoff does a pretty good job with explaining what the wealthy escapists and preppers are doing and why; so much of it has to do with a horrifying level of individualism and disdain for community and humanity. My one complaint is based on his own background Rushkoff is more willing to take it as a given that this is awful rather than exploring why it is so bad and it’s implications they way others have done.
The Body is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love, Sonya Renee Taylor
We read this for my book club, after a few people had been to talk by the author. I would say it was fine. Memoirs and self-improvement/self-empowerment aren’t exactly my jam. Other people really enjoyed it and felt affirmed by it. It was a short read, though, and definitely a YMMV situation.
The Immortalists, Chloe Benjamin
This is another type of book that I wasn’t really sure I loved while I was reading it, but I have thought about it a lot since. Four Jewish siblings, children of immigrants, go to see a Roma ‘witch’ they’ve heard about who can predict the future. What she can do is tell you exactly when you are going to die, but nothing more about how or why or what happens in between. We then follow each sibling and how it affects them; how much of their deaths are because they knew the future and went towards it rather than tried to avoid it; whether it gave them freedom or constraints; and how it is tied up with their family and heritage and pain.
What We Owe the Future, William McAskill
Here’s the thing about longtermism: it feels like I should agree with it. I do think that owe something to future generations. I do think that we should plan for the long term. I do believe that we should think about how what we’re doing today can have consequences in the future. But then longtermism takes what should be an easy sell and takes some very weird turns. For one thing, they seem to be under the belief that most people don’t think we should care about the future and we need philosophical contortions to get there and, well, I don’t think that’s true. Even economics and the discount theory don’t think people ignore the future completely. Then there’s the fact that to prove we should care it takes utilitarianism to the extreme. Taking hedonic calculus to the extreme — and trying to calculate it across billions of years — can end up with some very weird conclusions. About whether a life is worth living if you’re miserable, but also if one billion miserable people today are acceptable if there will be trillions of people capable of happiness in the future. And if increasing the total number of people means increasing the total amount of potential happiness in the future, then can’t we justify anything in the current days if we say it could lead to the potential for the greatest happiness overtime? Reading about all of this and the ridiculous hypotheticals and hedonic calculus over time based on nothing makes one realize this can be used to justify anything.
New York 2140, Kim Stanley Robinson
Stanley Robinson is probably one of the most admired climate fiction writers because of Ministry of the Future. New York 2140 similarly looks at what may be possible in the future. It takes place in a New York that has already mostly flooded. People get around by boat and real estate is even harder to come by than it is now, as it can only be higher levels of buildings. Another megastorm and financial crisis lead to the possibility we need to make real economic change and create a positive future. I like novels where nationalizing banks and turning socialist are serious plot points, and I enjoyed the different branches of the story, but I didn’t think it was nearly as solid as Ministry of the Future. The character development and arcs weren’t really there for me and some of the character choices didn’t make that much sense. But there’s still no one else really exploring in a deep way the themes of what changes we need that Stanley Robinson does – even in the nonfiction world – so it’s worth reading.
A History of the Universe in 21 Stars, Giles Sparrow
The problem with doing these round ups at the end of the year is that if I forgot to take notes at the time I sometimes can’t fully remember the book. This one, unfortunately, fall in to that category. It’s an exploration of human knowledge and the solar system based on some of the more important and recognizable stars. I do remember finding it interesting at the time, but not fascinating, and it seems to have faded as I’ve gotten farther away from it.
Laughing Boy, Oliver LaFarge
The Pulitzer’s go through cycles, and they went through one with White author’s writing from the perspective of other cultures. (Something that has returned at other times, unfortunately.) This novel is from a young Navajo man who meets a girl at a ceremony and decides to marry her, even though she is considered an outsider because she had been taken away and sent to one of the Schools. It was a short book that was certainly meant to more truly demonstrate Native culture to Whtie Americans. I can’t speak to how well it did that, but I did find one review that said it wasn’t a real representation of Navajo culture. However, whatever troubles we may see in the representation in the book today, at the time it was criticized for being anti-American for mentioning once that the Indian Boarding Schools weren’t a good thing. So, I guess good for this book for at least challenging the culture and ideas at the time? Yea?
Destroy All Monsters, Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips
One of the NPR book concierge picks for 2022. This was a great graphic novel of a film noir, hard bitten detective type. It’s actually the last in the Reckless series, and I’m sure I would have benefited from the others, but it also stood on its own. It was a fun fast read for anyone who likes 70s style old school detective stories.
How to Take Over the World: Practical Schemes and Scientific Solutions for the Aspiring Supervillain, Ryan North
This book was sort of funny the way it was written. I liked their charts, and their chat group explanation of evolution. However, for my tastes I think North leaned in a little too hard in to the “practical” part, and not enough in to the “aspiring supervillain” part. I think I was expecting something a bit more like What If? that might take me through the crazy things that would happen if I really did have a lair inside a volcano, rather than something talking me down and asking me to have a boring lair. He basically explains why all our supervillain plans wouldn’t work, which I already know. I wanted some tips on how to at least get close.
Playlist for the Apocalypse, Rita Dove
I would like to read more poetry, and starting last year have been trying to teach myself more about how to think about and appreciate it – I’ve actually really enjoyed the archives of the New Yorker Poetry podcast. But I still don’t really know how to think about it critically, even in an amateur sense. The details of poetry, including these, didn’t completely stick with me. But the sense of it did, and I do remember appreciating reading this book quite a bit.
Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, Kim Fu
This was an intriguing, sometimes unsettling, collection of short stories. Some are surreal, some are futuristic, some fun and some disturbing, but it’s a really interesting collection of stories that I enjoyed heartily. The first, someone trying to convince an AI to let her experience a holographic interaction with her mother, was my favorite, but not the only one that stuck with me. Fu creates fully realized characters and brilliant scenes with a few short pages, and that’s what we always ask for in a short story.
Walking on Cowrie Shells, Nana Nkweti
The description that comes up most often when looking up this book was “genre bending” and that is 100% correct. The stories run the gamut from coming of age stories about a nerdy girl finding her place to someone recounting their time stemming a zombie outbreak after supposed mass death from Lake Nyos to the tale of a Mami Wata. It was excellent, though. And while I usually tend towards the science fiction or fantasy stories—and the zombie story was part of what made me want to read it—what surprised me was how much I loved the more slice of life stories. I know nothing about Cameroon, but the stories of a teenage girl finding her place – breaking out of the friends from the immigrant community to find her own people—and a tale at the end of a woman in her 30s going back to the American town she grew up in and the immigrant community and feeling out of place everywhere, and the pressures of the community, were surprisingly relatable. It was a great group of stories and Nkweti shows an amazing breadth of style.
Scarlet Sister Mary, Julia Peterkin
Well, it’s the Pulitzers in the late 20s, so it must be another White person writing about a non-White culture. In this case, Peterkin, who grew up in South Carolina, wrote a few books about the Gullah peoples of South Carolina. While the facts there are uncomfortable, I think this was pretty good? It was actually a very feminist book in the style of something like Sister Carrie or even There Eyes Were Watching God where a woman decides to live her own life, even as everyone else sees her as scandalous or a whore, and has a good life where nothing extra-ordinarily bad happens to her. In this case, Mary gets married to a very handsome player who takes off with another woman. Mary asks the local healer/witch to make her a love charm to get her man back and instead decides to use it for a succession of lovers while having kids she loves and a good life in her community. It’s great! I liked this one. And while yes, Peterkin writes in dialect, it never felt particularly othering or as if we were watching someone alien. And hey, I should stop complaining because we’re just a few years away from Gone with a Wind and a whole series of Lost Cause celebrations.
The Sandman Vol. 1-6, Neil Gaiman
I really like Neil Gaiman, and I finished all the Discworld books last year and was thinking of a new series. Then the Netflix adaptation came out, so I decided to pick this up. I went through the first few paper back collections – there are two more and a finale, I think—and they were, well, a lot. Gaiman’s knowledge of myths and stories is encylopedic, and it’s on full display here, but man, a lot of this was dark. Like, DC Comics after Alan Moore had showed how dark it could get dark. Which I guess is what it is. I was going to continue through for some of the mythology stuff, but it was too much for me and I don’t think I’ll complete it.
Bea Wolf, Zach Weinersmith, Boulet (illustrator)
Ah, another graphic novel but the complete opposite. Zach Weinersmith, of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal fame, was telling stories to his kids, including classics like Beowulf. And he decided to change it for his 8 year-old daughter, creating a new version of kids and their amazing magical playhouse, and the evil grown up Grendel who wants to squash joy and turn kids into grown ups. In this tale, the nights of partying are forced to come to an end until young Bea Wolf shows up to fight the monster. It is so much fun, and so well done, and I adored it. It works on extra levels if you know Beowulf, but my kids loved it without that context and it works all on its own, too. Strongly recommend this, especially for precocious kids. You should definitely get it.
A Tree or a Person or a Wall, Matt Bell
Another short story collection, and another book that was just too dark for me. It was dark without redemption and dark without a point, and I don’t like reading about bad things happening to kids. I ended up sort of skimming with my fingers in front of my eyes like I was watching I horror movie for the last few stories because I was close enough to the end I thought I should finish, but I probably should have put it down earlier. May be something for others; definitely wasn’t for me.
We Do This ‘Til We Free Us, Mariame Kaba
Mariame Kaba has been part of the abolition movement for a long time. And now that we’re having real talks about changing policing, we can also talk to those who really do mean defund the police, and who really do want to get rid of prisons. I think that it’s very important to expand our imagination of what is possible and think through what we could really do and mean. And I think it’s important to remember that some people have been involved in limiting policing and moving towards restorative justice in real ways for a long time – this isn’t a new conversation, even though it’s new to many. So I’d recommend this book. That said, Kaba’s short story at the end about a world without police and prisons runs up against the same problem this always does – what do we do with the worst and with people who do something evil? I’m not sure I or others would really approve of her solution, either. And while I don’t think we should treat everyone with systems we need for extremes, I do think the movement needs to grapple with them more. But other than that disappointment, it’s a valuable book to read.
Havana, Mark Kurlansky
I’ve been a fan of Kurlansky for a long time – narrative nonfiction that does a deep dive into a common but secretly fascinating substance is definitely my jam. Havana takes a different tack than some of the others, as it’s much more a memoir and history at the same time. The book takes us through the founding and history of Havana, Kurlansky’s memories of it, and some of the changes that have happened not just since the travel bans from the United States were lifted, but since the loosening of restrictions and need to raise funds after the Soviet Union collapsed. And while obviously some things need to change, capitalism and change always bring their own sadnesses, as well. Kurlansky mentions people being able to make contracts with their choice of national baseball teams slowly eroding the community sense the teams brought before, and the opening up and introduction of new products and new money always changes the feel of a place. Kurlansky is writing as a frequent visitor, not a resident, so it’s hard to take from the book how things are changing for people who live there. But it is a reminder that there’s so much to every single place, even those that seemed closed off.
Adrift: America in 100 Charts, Scott Galloway
I heard Scott Galloway interviewed on Pitchfork Economics and knew this was my type of book. I bought it and before I read it my husband, who is not nearly as political as me, picked it up and ended up keeping it by his work desk to flip through constantly. His verdict, “I think everyone should look at this book.” It is a simple distillation of so many issues that combined tell a story about where we are today.
Zone One, Colson Whitehead
I haven’t read Underground Railroad yet (it’s on the list!), but I have read Harlem Shuffle and loved it, and Zone One has zombies, so… . I didn’t love it nearly as much. It’s written from the perspective of Mark Spitz, part of a team of sweepers finishing off zombies and rebuilding after the apocalypse. I thought the world building and take on zombies were fine, but the book felt a bit uneven to me with some parts more fully realized than others. I actually thought it was an early novel of Whitehead’s, as it had that feel to me, but it’s right in the middle of his body of work. All in all, fine, but I wasn’t blown away.
The Buddha in the Attic, Julie Otsuka
This slim volume is a creative exploration of the lives of Japanese brides arranged to be married to Japanese immigrants in the US, primarily coming to the states in the 20s, and following their lives up to the internments at the start of WWII. I was afraid this book would be too sad and difficult – at this point in my life I am very aware of suffering, thank you very much – but the book was not all pain and really explored the variety of experiences these women had. Its unique presentation helped, and kept me intrigued, as the book takes the first person plural or third person plural the whole time, and describes several different experiences that also blend together weaving a full breadth of experiences that nonetheless have similarities and shared lives. It was expertly done and a vivid and beautiful book.
The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium, An Englishman’s World, Robert Lacey
I loved this. I’ve explained before that far more than the tales of harrowing experiences and suffering, I’m interested in how people go through their lives, almost no matter what. There are so many ways society and politics and economics can be! This was right up my alley, then, and talks about every aspect of life in England in the year 1000, whether what people could wear, what you might eat, how you’d travel, and how marriage worked. And Lacey is a very entertaining writer; the book is very informative and academic but not dry at all. I learned a lot.
Uggggh. I enjoyed this book so much until the twist at the end. Sorry for SPOILERS but there’s a vein of storytelling that seems to think that any creepy, possessive, psychologically abusive, distrusting, behavior by a guy is justified because of True Love and might even make the woman a better person and that is just not true. I really thought this might have escaped it and the ending would take it in the opposite direction, but Nope. Dislike.
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, Charles Yu
I love the premise of this book – bored 20 something is floating through life as a time repair person of sorts when a handbook falls in to his life and things take a timey wimey shift. Really seems like my type of thing. But somehow it just never hung entirely together for me. Something felt too thin or not fully realized and it just didn’t hit all the notes. It seems like there’s something there, but it didn’t show up for me.
The Candy House, Jennifer Egan
This is a sequel of sorts to one of my favorite books ever, Welcome to the Goon Squad. At least it takes place in the same universe and with some of the same characters even if it doesn’t really connect to the previous story. Goon Squad was more creative, but Candy House is still unique and wonderfully written. In a very near future where tech can literally store and project your memories in the cloud, there are also people who have decided to disappear and remove themselves entirely, sometimes even hiring someone else to pretend to create memories and social media for them so they can remove themselves. This sounds like the set up for dystopia, but it’s really just the background for life for the characters trying their hardest to get through the world, but with diversions like an entire chapter written as the field notes and instruction manual for a spy with memory implants, in between just the memory of summers by the pool with a selfish and inconsistent father.
Not a Pulitzer winner, but a nominee back in 2019 that maybe should have won. To be fair, I haven’t read The Overstory yet, but this book was excellent. Several Native Americans, with varying degrees of attachment to their heritage and tribe, have their lives intersect in different ways culminating in an armed robbery and shootout at a huge and important powwow. And in between are explorations of identity, heritage, colonialism, art, belonging, and family. I know that sounds like it could be sort of trite or sappy, but it’s not—it’s excellent and I’ll be thinking about it for a while.
And here we’re back to White Westerners writing about other cultures. Pearl S. Buck lived most of her life in China and said she couldn’t write about anything else, but she wrote about Chinese peasants, not, you know, White missionaries like her and her family. I know this is one of the Pulitzer winners that’s stuck around for some reason, but I found the way she wrote about Wang Fun, the peasant who manages to raise himself to a wealthy landowner, really othering and dehumanizing, as was the way she approached almost every other character. That being said, there were flashes of interesting insight and if a Chinese author wanted to rewrite this from his wife, O-Lan’s, perspective I would read the heck out of that book.
Picked this up at a used book store because it sounded interesting. It was fine, but it’s a later book in a series so there wasn’t a lot of character build up to hang some of the interactions on. That being said, I think I caught up alright and it was a pretty serviceable British mystery. There’s a hard bitten detective with a by-the-rules but grudgingly indulgent boss, a lot of baggage, who has a problem with these new kids today but appreciates how they help him get things done. The plot can be filled in around all that.
Okay, this book was excellent. I loved its creative take on the questions of sentience; I loved its world building; I loved the propulsive writing. The Infinity Gate itself – which uses quantum probability to explore the infinity of universes –was creative and smart and is still enough of a mystery that I didn’t have to immediately dismiss anything that involves FTL travel. There were several strands of plot that come together expertly and I inhaled this book. My only problem with it is that it’s the first of a series, the next one won’t be out until 2024, and this isn’t a book that stands on its own. It just sort of stops, rather than ends, and I would like to read what happens next now, please and thank you.
Drunk on All Your Strange New Worlds, Eddie Robson
This was another fun one! An alien culture has made contact, but they only communicate telepathically. Only a few humans have the capability to do so as well and serve as translators. But the act of doing so makes them feel groggy and, well, drunk, at some point. Lydia has recently become the translator for the cultural ambassador when he turns up murdered. This ends up being a sci-fi book, a cli-fi book, and a murder mystery that attacks anti-immigrant sentiment. But even with touching on serious themes, it’s done so lightly. They’re basically snuck in to what is, at its heart, a really fun sci-fi murder mystery with a bumbling, sympathetic protagonist.
Heavy: An American Memoir, Kiese Laymon
I’ve probably mentioned before that memoirs are really not my cup of tea, but the book club voted on this one so what can you do? This book is written from a Black man who talks about his painful childhood – and in to adult life – in Mississippi. It covers abuse –sexual, physical, and emotional—racism, poverty, his struggles with weight, his brilliant mother who also abused him and who’s life is a mess. It’s a lot. Others in my group loved it. I always feel so, I don’t know, creepy and voyeuristic when I’m reading about a real life like that for entertainment, even if the person wrote it themselves. I’ll put this down in the “not written for me” category, I suppose.
Once Upon a Space-Time and A Total Waste of Space-Time, Jeffrey Brown
My kids love graphic novels, and my son picked up these two books about a group of kids who get to be part of a elite group of children from several planets exploring the universe and different realities. It is really funny, it is full of very nerdy jokes, and it primes kids for some good tropes by including a grumpy robot. Very good for nerdy middle grade kids who like science, bad jokes, and cats.
The Value of a Whale: On the Illusion of Green Capitalism, Adrienne Buller
I really expected this book to have a more philosophical bent, along the lines of how we really do think about the value of a while. Instead it’s a critique of almost all economic-focused solutions to climate change or the conservation movement. Primarily market based criticisms, but also ones that look at finance and divestment. I sympathize with a lot of the critiques, and think offsets are useless at best and a harmful scam at worst. And carbon markets are useless and another way of moving money around. But even for my cynicism, I thought this book was a bit simplistic and ignored the way some economic critiques and actions are meant to be part of a wider movement and add to or build on other policy advocacy, not stand on their own. Plus, I felt a little duped by the title and wanted more philosophy and fewer bank statements.
Vacationland, John Hodgman
A bit of a memoir from John Hodgman of the time after writing his fantastic fake trivia books, and about he and his wife moving part time to his childhood home in New Hampshire and his wife’s childhood vacation town in Maine. I like reading Hodgman, and I appreciate how much he still finds his success surreal and recognizes his luck in the world. This was a good collection of essays on his thoughts on a number of things (mostly but not exclusively New England related), and with his delightful dry humor.
How to Stop Time, Matt Haig
My husband is a huge softy, and he has decided he loves Matt Haig. I like him alright. This one follows a man who ages extremely slowly, around 1/10th the rate of normal humans. And he’s not the only one, although it’s largely a secret. Partly because for a lot of human history it just wasn’t believed and people who had his condition were likely to get burned for witchcraft; partly because for the last 100 years or so they’ve been trying to keep themselves secret. There were some silly plot points, and I sort of saw the main twists coming, but mostly it was a good book to read. And I do have to say that I appreciate Haig’s earnestness and love of humanity and goodness, even if it’s not always for me. Most books by an immortal guy would have had their main character drowning his loneliness in fulfilling their fantasies and sleeping with hundreds of women over the centuries, but he keeps his loyal and in love and still connected to humans even though he has to live apart. He realizes characters, and does appreciate the nicer things in life, and sometimes that’s really nice to read.
Convenience Store Woman, Sayaka Murata
Another book club pick, and one that split the group. I really liked this book! I do think that it’s a bit oversold by a lot of reviews that say that it’s odd or quirky or has surprising twists, when it’s a pretty straightforward book. But I liked the main character, and I really appreciated what it said about people being themselves and the criticism of how people are forced in to different roles. The central message is really how many would rather see their friend or family following a script they know and miserable then doing their own thing and being happy, and how it’s important to still be true to ourselves despite that.
Old Gods, New Enigmas: Marx’s Lost Theory, Mike Davis
I dunno, man. Listen, I love The Communist Manifesto, and I appreciate Marx. I have a heavily marked up copy of Ideology on my bookshelf; I hate capitalism. But there’s a need for a certain strain of intellectual, Marxist, leftists to try to apply his (heavily modernist, heavily materialistic, heavily anthropocentric, written 150 years ago) writings to everything today and I think it’s okay to say that he didn’t think of everything. In particular, the need to pretend that Marx himself has a lot to teach the environmental movement, which is what this book tries to do, rather than think through how to apply Marxist analysis to the environmental movement or grapple with whether a modernist philosophy that was primarily concerned with liberating workers and thought industrialization was a step on that process is what we need for the current moment. Again, mad love to Marx, just, I don’t see the point or think it’s honest to pretend he was thinking of the non-human environment for even a second.
Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World, Rutger Bregman
Humankind is one of my favorite books I’ve read in the last few years, so I had to pick up Utopia for Realists. I so appreciate Bregman, and especially his holding on to the fact that things should be better. We’re in the richest time of human history, and can feed and house and give medicine to everyone, and somehow we don’t. We should all be gobsmacked by that. Bregman holds on to that and looks to policies we could enact now that would make the world better.
Mercury Rising, R. W. W. Greene
Some people get in to steampunk, but super futuristic Atomic Age science fiction is always catnip to me. That’s what we have here, with a world where space exploration and space settlements were much more advanced in the 50s and 60s, and there’s an alien civilization from Mercury that has threatened and occasionally attacked us and so far we’ve held at bay. That is the background against which a young Black man in New York whose father died in the space wars, and who has a good heart but occasionally gets in to trouble, ends up killing a shapeshifting alien at his friend’s enlistment party, gets caught with a bunch of contraband in his car (from the alien), enlists to stay out of jail, and ends up learning the secret that there are at least two alien civilizations at war that both want Earth and one of them used to be on the used up planet of Venus and currently keep numerous Earthlings there prisoners. As you might be able to tell from that brief summary the plot of this book is A Lot and I’m not sure it all entirely hangs together. The book is also the first in a series, but I’m afraid I was too overwhelmed by the plot—and too underwhelmed by the characters—to go further. It’s a shame; I’d had high hopes.
Turn Right at Machu Pichu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time, Mark Adams
I loved Meet Me in Atlantis is one of my favorite books. Mark Adams undertakes the search for Atlantis with such an open and skeptical mind at the same time. So I’ve been eager to read others. This one covers his trek to Machu Pichu, a consideration of the many theories on how many other cities there are, and why and how the amazing cities of the Incas were even built with the technology they had. The book is part hiking travelogue by an aging explorer, a la Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, and part real discussion of the amazing world that exists hidden in the rainforest. The civilizations that were built in the Americas are astonishing, and we know so little thanks to how much was deliberately destroyed, and how much is taken over quickly by the environment – a sphinx in the desert is going to last far longer than an entire city in the Amazon. It was a really fun and enlightening read by an entertaining story teller, and definitely put Machu Pichu higher on my dream travel list.
Years of Grace, Margaret Ayer Barnes
This is sort of a much, much longer – and less sheltered – version of Age of Innocence. Or a version of Early Autumn where we meet the protagonist far earlier. Years of Grace follows the life of Jane, a young debutante in Chicago. She has a group of friends, but only one who she is particularly close to—the others are more frivolous and she has quite shallow relationships. She has a young courtship with a young man, Andre, the son of European parents and with a dream of being an artist. For all her depth and yearning – she argues with her parents to go away to Bryn Mawr for a few years – she ends up married to rather drab and boring wealthy man from Boston; raises children; contemplates an affair but realizes that it is not the life she wants and she loves her children; lives a conventional by all accounts life while not entirely buying in to it. The reason it’s less sheltered than Age of Innocence is because there are families where the woman or the man have affairs and everyone knows it; she talks of her sister-in-law – and later daughter—who have never had a beau and want nothing more than to move out to a farm with their best (female) friend. When Jane’s daughter gets divorced and marries someone else, it is seen as both a scandal and the way things now are. I don’t love the ‘poor rich people trapped by convention’ vane, but I have to say, of them, this was one of my favorites. It recognized the variety that existed even within those conventions, and truly painted the choice to go along as just that—a choice—and why it may be good and bad at the same time. It’s longer than Age of Innocence, but I’d definitely suggest this taking the place in the cannon.
Pineapple Street, Jenny Jackson
My mom read this book for her book club – a bunch of retired English teachers, the youngest of whom is probably at least 60 – and was fascinated by it. She sent it to my sister and I. Part of it was that this is a very 2023 book, and my mom made a vocab quiz for her group based on the language in the book. Another is that she said it was like reading a 2000s era Jane Austen, and I have to say I see what she means. It’s the story of three women in New York, two of whom are part of an incredibly wealthy long-time New York family, and one of whom has recently married in to it, as they go through some challenges in their life. It was also like Jane Austen in that sometimes you should just talk to other people and it would help a lot. Now, and I know this is heresy to many, I don’t particularly like Jane Austen and I would never have picked this up on my own. But it was very readable, and actually pretty fun even as it confirmed my idea that there should be confiscatory income and wealth taxes on the rich. (The other way it’s like Jane Austen is that she shows up a lot in Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century as a site for rent-seeking in the 1800s and I can totally see this being used that way in another hundred years.) Jackson is an entertaining writer, and there were parts on motherhood that were relatable even to someone like me. I can see why it’s been such a hit.
Climate Change as Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Planet, Matthew T. Huber
My year for reading Marxist climate books, I suppose. There was so much that was interesting and so much that was so, so wrong about this book. I have many of the same complaints about Huber as I do about Mike Davis, in that Marx definitely didn’t think of any intrinsic value of nature in his analysis and no twisting and turning can change that. Added to that is some current context. Imagine writing a book where you complain that Biden of all people didn’t have enough labor solidarity. This came out a month after Biden became the first sitting president to make a public statement in support of unionizing. With book deadlines it probably would have been impossible to revise, but even before then he’d shown some labor bona fides. Anyway, there is some that I liked in this book – climate change is continuing to enrich the incredibly wealthy, and impoverish others. Environmentalism like so much else can only be solved by building popular support by organizing the working class, and unions are the best case to do so. But as someone who has actually worked with BGA and tried to make this sort of connection, his assertions about how it would just be so easy if people would do this, the next steps seemed very naïve. So, liked some of this a lot, but bottom line, it is an incomplete analysis. I’ll try to do a full review of this one because I have a lot to say on this topic.
How to Survive History: How to Outrun a Tyrannosaurus, Escape Pompeii, Get Off the Titanic, and Survive the Rest of History’s Deadliest Catastrophes, Cody Cassidy
Okay, this one was pretty fun. Basically, Cassidy takes us through a simple thought experiment – if we had all the knowledge of modern times, could you survive all sorts of past disasters, threats, and emergencies. And then he uses that as a jumping point to explore different disasters. I like this sort of book, and the framing trick really worked for me. I think I knew the broad strokes of a lot of this, although not the details of lava flow in Pompeii, but still a fun read.
The Parrot and the Igloo: Climate and the Science of Denial, David Lipsky
It is absolutely amazing how long the conversation on climate change has been happening. I work in this sphere; I give talks where I emphasize that we’ve known about this since Eunice Foote and Svente Arrhenius. And yet, I had no idea of how long the concept of global warming has actually been in the public consciousness. There were articles about the changing weather in the 1950s, there were public testimonies to Congress and stories on the cover of Times and in the Washington Post in the 1960s and 1970s. It makes sense—the plot of Soylent Green is actually based on global warming destroying agriculture and the economy. And yet somehow it has been pushed as a new plot. It is absolutely maddening and mind-boggling the resistance and the massive disinformation and political lobbying campaign against global warming. There’s a lot of parallels that have been well documented before this book between the cigarette lobby and the global warming lobby, but cigarettes only kill the people using them and those around them. Global Warming will potentially destroy the world as we know it. Seems like people should care more.
Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Toshikazu Kawaguchi
This was a charming little book. There is a café where you can travel through time. But you can only go back once; you cannot leave your stool; and you must return before you coffee gets cold. It seems like it wouldn’t be worth it, but there are so many small conversations and exchanges that can take place in that time frame. This was a sweet and charming book. It’s the first in a series, and I won’t say that I had further questions. But as a self-contained world I really liked it.
Feed them Silence, Lee Mandelo
This is a very short book that packs a ton in to its 105 page count. A scientist has devised a way to interface with nonhuman animals, using a neurolink that allows her to experience the life of a wolf, one of the few family groups still in the northern U.S. She gets funding and interest based on both commercial applications and conservation, but the book is also very honest that it is based on an identifiable dream of being a wolf. At the same time her marriage is breaking down and we get a tight 105 pages on science research, commercialization, ethics of animal research, capitalism, colonialsm, and a fully realized story. An impressive feat.
The Black Agenda: Bold Solutions for a Broken System, Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman (ed)
My main complaint about this book is that the solutions here weren’t all that bold! The book is a collection of essays by Black authors and activists on how to address racism and the massive racial disparities in the United States. And yet, the solutions proposed are pretty mild, and mostly don’t challenge or dismantle the system. We should address AI bias; we should recognize the biases in medicine and support Black maternal and infant health; climate change harms Black and Brown people and we should recognize housing discrimination. But other than a glancing mention of civil disobedience around voting rights, this was solutions that have been publicized elsewhere and leave the basic frameworks in place. I was underwhelmed.
A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?, Kelly and Zach Weinersmith
An incredibly well researched and well thought through tome on what space settlement actually entails. The book is from a couple of certified nerds (Zach Weinersmith writes the Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic, and the two of them together also wrote Soonish) who think moon colonies are cool but we’re maybe not there just yet. They go into everything from the incredibly limited knowledge we have about reproduction in space to how completely lacking most non-Earth places are in literally everything we need for life and how full they are of things like cosmic radiation that will kill us, to the challenges of figuring out how international and space law apply. The legal parts were the only parts I quibble with—the current international order is actually pretty new and while I agree space settlement has the possibility to be destabilizing we can’t take current legal and political structures as a given. But in that section as the rest what really stands out is how little we know, how much we have to think all of this through, and how hard space settlement is. Earth at its worst is still probably easier to survive than the best set up Mars colony, and we’d be good to remember that when billionaires pitch that as plan B.
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries, Heather Fawcett
This was easily one of the best books I read all year. At first it feels like it’ll be a serviceable fantasy novel that you’ll be able to predict. And there are some beats that are easy to see coming. But for the most part, this was a creative story and the character building was fantastic, as new facets are explored throughout the novel. And the world building was wonderful, taking place in a late 1800s Europe that is mostly the same but with a few more women (still incredibly looked down on) in the university and, of course, all the faeries. How you’ll go about addressing the rules of the fae is always interesting to me, and the construct of this universe felt very complete to me. I cannot wait to read the sequel that came out in early 2024.
Alexander Hamilton, Ron Chernow
Oooof, I was reading this book on and off almost the entire year. It is a lot. Memoir is not my favorite genre, nor is biography, and I’m not particularly interested in the Revolutionary War. But I do absolutely love Hamilton, and I do find the creation of a new system of governance awe-inspiring. The fact that Hamilton was able to create so much out of whole cloth, and see the way the pieces of the government needed to work together, really is amazing and we owe so much to the luck of our country’s existence to what he created. This was just real long. You’ve also probably got the gist from the musical, although there are some parts that are different – Lin Manuel Miranda compressed and overlaid some parts of the timeline to make the story hang together in a few short hours, and made the good character choice to avoid getting in to the fact Hamilton was turning in to a bit of a crank as he aged. Still, I’m grateful to this book to making us rethink our national stories and what we want to celebrate in our founding.
At Night We Walk in Circles, Daniel Alarcon
Based in an unnamed Latin American country, Alarcon explores memory, community, rebellion, and the search for meaning. A young man whose life is not where he’d hoped it was takes a position with the two former members of a revolutionary theatre troupe, taking on the road the play that had gotten the original author thrown in jail. In it the story jumps back and forth to the earlier days of the troupe and the time in jail, and the members unravelling in different ways. While nothing in it is actually mystical, it has an absurdist and surreal feel, and the ending was both predictable and confusing at the same time. I did like this book, but not sure I grasped all of it.
Mobility, Lydia Kiesling
Kiesling’s book follows Bunny Glenn through the years, opening with a boring summer spent in Tirana with her father (a State Department employee) and older brother while her mother and younger brother are home in Texas caring for her grandmother. Bunny goes to boarding school; her parents get divorced; Bunny ends up doing marketing for an energy (primarily oil) company in conservative Texas. She wants to commit to this industry and her job, while also recognizing climate change is real and being liberal in a bit of a vague way. The story is told from a distance, which also makes sense as Bunny seems to drift through life at a distance never really feeling attached to any of her decisions but living a decent enough life that takes her through to her first granddaughter bought in a new city that has been put together to escape the worst of climate change. For all of that, it was still a good book with Bunny as a protagonist living a very specific and unique life while somehow having a very relatable life and lack of meaning, and the vague politics presented are a decent way to explain one facet of the current world we’re in.
Friday Black, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brentan
Too much. This collection of short stories takes us from darkly humorous stories of working at a megamall on a Black Friday even more extreme than the current ones to a particularly horrifically violent story of a town (maybe world) that has gotten trapped in a repeating day, but the tone of the latter is even more common than the former. And it’s just too much. It was too much darkness and too much violence and if I weren’t reading for book club I would have put it down two stories in. I know it works for some, but page on page of violence and torture are not what I want and it was too much.
Kill the Farm Boy, Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne
And this satire of traditional story telling was a welcome respite. A sprite comes to tell a farm boy he’s the chosen one, leading to a series of adventures with a humanoid rabbit bard, a mild-mannered lord trying to become an evil wizard, a secretly reformist wealthy witch, barbarian, talking goat, and oh so-much-more. It played with so many tropes and actually made me laugh out loud in a couple places.
The Store, T. S. Dribling
Oh, hey, it’s the part of the Pulitzer’s where the committee went all in on the Lost Cause. Colonel Miltiades Vaidan fought in the Civil War and got the Klan started in his area after the South lost, but has been stuck in his life ever since. He’s living in a city with carpetbagging Republicans who are in charge of government services, and it’s the eve of Gover Cleveland being elected which everyone is convinced will restore the racial order and the South. The racial politics in the book are actually not as terrible as they could be with that summary Pretty bad for sure! But they could be worse. I expected them to be the sticking point, but the real problem with The Store –which is largely out of print and was really hard to find, actually—is that the story is incredibly confusing and didn’t make any sense as Colonel Vaidan tries to get back at the cousin he blames for his lot in life by working for him (?) and doing a good job (?) and then sending all his cotton down the river (?) in an easily catchable way (?) And then opening a store (?). I did not follow the plot at all. It was all very confusing and I can understand why this one didn’t stand the test of time.
Heart Broke, Chelsea Bieker
This book is like an album where you like all the individual songs, but it gets to be too samey when you listen to it front to back. Bieker’s God Shot was fairly melancholy although had some hope at the end, with a young woman trapped in a cult in the Central Valley and struggling to find a way out. The stories here are similar, with young women and the occasional boy trapped by circumstance and family and an unhealthy love or relationship with varying degrees of independence. How much hope there is at the end depends on the story. I liked a lot of these individually and I really like Bieker’s writing; I did think they started to run together when I read the whole book. I would have liked the stories more in a collection.
The Mysterious Benedict Society, Trenton Lee Stewart
I know we’re late to this series, but I got this for my 12 year old and he loved it –which I thought he would – and begged me to read it, too. It was a lot of fun and definitely a fun and overly complicated twist on the special orphan thee we all love so much. Plus it adds a special dose of how children are better than grown ups because they’re more creative and also can see the truth more clearly. He’s on to the rest, I don’t know that I need to read them all, but this one was a fun ride and I can see why they’re so popular.
Books 2023
Sophie’s World, Jostein Gaarder
Gaarder, a philosophy lecturer, wrote a very creative and engaging novel that is actually a series of philosophy lectures. This is a significant feat, and I was really enjoying this book and its clear description of the early parts of philosophy for most of the book. Unfortunately, though, by the end it went off the rails and the ending of did not make sense and seemed to break away from the points in philosophy he had previously been exploring before as well. Disappointing as the first two-thirds were great.
This is the type of book I should really like, with an unreliable and out of place narrator and a vague feeling of unease throughout. But despite that, and the good reviews, the book never came together for me. The feeling of unease was there, but never seemed to have anything to explain or justify it, and I never did quite grasp the world the story took place in. It felt thin and unrealized and I ended up disappointed.
Pulitzer Prizes in the mid-1920s seemed to gravitate towards stories of people in the mid-western plains, often immigrant communities, and the lives they were building. I really appreciated and enjoyed this one, about a girl who lives a fairly privileged although unstable upbringing in Chicago until her father dies. She has to leave school and takes a job as a teacher in a Dutch community in the prairie, one which for most is deprivation and hard work, which she experiences for several years. But this is not so much a tale of struggle, but one of the beauty and value of trying to live a real and authentic life, to search for your joy and what you want rather than what should be done. It is a story of finding beauty even in the mundane and how this can lead to your own success. A very beautiful story.
This is How You Lose the Time War, Amal el-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
My second time reading this book and I still love it. The book is written from the perspective of two of the best warriors, Red and Blue, on opposite sides of a war that has been ranging across the many different strands and throughout the timeline of various Earths. The warriors come to respect and then love each other, leaving increasingly elaborate letters to each other woven in to the fabric of space and time. The book is absolutely delightful. For one thing, as far as I’m concerned once you’ve accepted that time travel is possible anything is possible so just lean in to that absurdity, you know? And they do that in a huge way, really enjoying and exploring how extreme this could get. El-Mohtar and Gladstone wrote this in a relatively short burst, with a general outline but primarily responding to one another with no time for research and planning. You can really sense the way they are having fun with it and trying to out do one another with their chapters, also perfect for the way Red and Blue are baiting and competing with each other. I love, love, love this book. It is one of my favorites, and can be read it one sitting by anyone looking for how to spend an afternoon.
T. Rex and the Crater of Doom, Walter Alvarez
I picked this up because in a What If? answer long ago Randall Munroe said that he thought that this was one of the best popular science books ever written. And you know what? He’s right. It is very easy to forget that some things that are accepted as truths today are relatively recent discoveries, scientifically speaking. The one that always throws me for a loop is how plate tectonics aren’t only fairly new as a theory, but were actively ridiculed at first for going against scientific orthodoxy. And even in Jurassic Park what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs is debated. The asteroid theory went against the general belief of gradualism in evolution and geology. Walter Alvarez, however, and his father, a geologist and physicist respectively, discovered the layer of iridium between the ‘dinosaurs’ and ‘no dinosaurs’ layers of earth and formulated the asteroid theory. In order to prove it, it took people working together across disciplines from geology, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, paleontology, and more. It is a long story of scientific critique and collaboration, but eminently readable, and really great tale for anyone interested in how science works at its best, or just in reading a extremely entertaining scientific mystery.
The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder
This was an intriguing little book! While it was a novel, I can understand why it has been adapted for stage and screen so often, and it still often had the feel of a play. The book tells the story of five people who were on an old Incan bridge in Peru in the late 1700s when the bridge collapsed. A priest, trying to make sense of this tragedy and God’s place in it, finds out all he can about each person. What is told is the hidden stories of people in a town, their tragedies and hopes, and a story of life in this village. It isn’t about Peru so much as a tale of what people had looked for in their dreams and what had brought them to that point. A poignant portrait.
Early Autumn, Louis Bromfield
I do believe that stories of someone feeling adrift in their world of wealth, privilege, and social constraints is and always will be a staple American books and movies. Early Autumn, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1927, fits nicely in this niche. The story of a woman of some wealth who has married in to one of the wealthiest and oldest families in Boston, who lives on “the income of their income.” She feels asea, but is also the one who clearly holds the family together. A black sheep cousin has come home and befriended a boarder on the property, an up and coming successful Irish Catholic immigrant who makes her question her life, while at the same time her daughter is searching for the next steps in her life and some secrets from the family are coming to a head. It was pretty good, but these books from long ago are always feel a bit strange to me as the big moments of drama are things that wouldn’t make anyone bat an eye even 60 years ago now.
The Skeptic’s Guide to the Future: What Yesterday’s Science and Science Fiction Tell Us About the World of Tomorrow, Steven Novella
This is an exploration of what the future might look like, divided in to technologies that are being actively researched and feel like they might be in the near future (like Genetic Manipulation, AI, Quantum Technology), things that are being serious discussed but are still not really real (Fusion, Space Elevators and others), Space Travel tech, and then the real Science Fiction stuff (like Cold Fusion, Faster than Light anything, and Uploading Our Consciousness). This the type of nerdy book I’m in to, and it does a good job diving in to the potential upcoming technologies, but it not a great one. I barely remember the book at this point, and it didn’t really stand apart from others in this general wheelhouse.
Dinosaurs: A Novel, Lydia Millet
Children’s Bible was one of the best books I’ve read in the last few years, so I made sure to pick up Lydia Millet’s newest book when I saw it around. Millet is a fantastic author who is able to pull the reader in from the beginning. The story follows a man who has decided to up and move the Arizona desert and ends up next to a glass house. Being able to see into his neighbors at all times, he finds himself pulled in to their life. The story itself ends up being an exploration of loneliness, connection, and the need to be part of more than just ourselves as an island. It’s a very touching book, and one that I was able absorb in just two nights.
Better Buses, Better Cities: How to Plan, Run, and Win the Fight for Effective Transit, Steven Higashide
This is a relatively short book that packs a lot of information on the reasons to and challenges to improving public transit in the US. Anyone who has tried to get around in the US outside of a major city knows how dismal the state of public transit is, and this is a problem for people who want to limit their car use/carbon output, and for people who can’t afford their cars. The book does a good job of outlining the problems, and just how insanely wired everything about our society – up to and including the justice system—is towards cars, but like most books I want more of the ‘how’. There are things that look like common sense solutions, and more on why these can’t be done and what specifically we have to overcome would be useful to me. But still a good primer for people getting engaged in these issues.
The Secret Chord, Geraldine Brooks
Okay. Look, here’s where I am. I just think I’m done with books about Bible characters that are actually bad and all the torture and terror and humiliation of women that occurred at the time. Brooks is a good writer, and this is a well researched fictionalized deep dive into David, narrated by his prophet, Nathan. And there’s nothing wrong with the book itself, it’s just – I get it, okay. These characters aren’t all good, and being a woman just out and out sucked and it’s all awful. Really going in to detail about what happened to Tamar, or how Bathsehba may have not been entirely willing or appreciative of David’s attentions and his murdering of her husband, drives that home. But I don’t think I need to read about it anymore.
Uncommon Type: Some Stories, Tom Hanks
I watched something recently about the only extant typewriter repair shop and storefront in New York, and how Tom Hanks is a big fan. Honestly, seeing that made everything about this book make a lot more sense. These are a series of relatively sparse short stories, all centered around a typewriter in some way. Some are a bit mystical, some absurd, some straight forward tales of starting over or going through life. There are few recurring characters, but they mostly stand independently. I thought it was fine. Serviceable stories; there were a few that stood out but mostly they just passed the time.
No One is Coming to Save Us, Stephanie Powell Watts
Centered around a Black family in North Carolina, this takes place in a declining town as the kid who got away and made good is back. JJ has returned to his hometown to buy the most prestigious home and lot and fix it up, winning back his high school sweetheart, Ava. She’s in a strained marriage trying to have a baby; her husband is worried about keeping his job; her mother is sick of and not fully wiling to end her marriage; her brother hasn’t spoken to them for ages although her mother regularly has long ‘conversations’ with him. The whole town, mostly Ava, want to know what JJ is doing back, and his return puts the rest of their lives in stark relief. I’m not sure I fully grasped everything about this book, but I am sure the feeling of it is going to stick with me for a long time.
Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires, Douglass Rushkoff
Just like we found that Exxon had been secretly planning for how the worst of climate change would impact their bottom line while fighting fiercely against stopping it, the wealthiest people who could easily put money towards climate solutions are instead funding right-wing fascists fighting against climate policies and paying ridiculous amounts of money for their own climate escapes and climate security. There’s a lot of things that are terrible about this, and mostly Mark O’Connell covered them better in his wonderful book about dealing with climate hopelessness while raising kids and planning for the future. Rushkoff does a pretty good job with explaining what the wealthy escapists and preppers are doing and why; so much of it has to do with a horrifying level of individualism and disdain for community and humanity. My one complaint is based on his own background Rushkoff is more willing to take it as a given that this is awful rather than exploring why it is so bad and it’s implications they way others have done.
The Body is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love, Sonya Renee Taylor
We read this for my book club, after a few people had been to talk by the author. I would say it was fine. Memoirs and self-improvement/self-empowerment aren’t exactly my jam. Other people really enjoyed it and felt affirmed by it. It was a short read, though, and definitely a YMMV situation.
The Immortalists, Chloe Benjamin
This is another type of book that I wasn’t really sure I loved while I was reading it, but I have thought about it a lot since. Four Jewish siblings, children of immigrants, go to see a Roma ‘witch’ they’ve heard about who can predict the future. What she can do is tell you exactly when you are going to die, but nothing more about how or why or what happens in between. We then follow each sibling and how it affects them; how much of their deaths are because they knew the future and went towards it rather than tried to avoid it; whether it gave them freedom or constraints; and how it is tied up with their family and heritage and pain.
What We Owe the Future, William McAskill
Here’s the thing about longtermism: it feels like I should agree with it. I do think that owe something to future generations. I do think that we should plan for the long term. I do believe that we should think about how what we’re doing today can have consequences in the future. But then longtermism takes what should be an easy sell and takes some very weird turns. For one thing, they seem to be under the belief that most people don’t think we should care about the future and we need philosophical contortions to get there and, well, I don’t think that’s true. Even economics and the discount theory don’t think people ignore the future completely. Then there’s the fact that to prove we should care it takes utilitarianism to the extreme. Taking hedonic calculus to the extreme — and trying to calculate it across billions of years — can end up with some very weird conclusions. About whether a life is worth living if you’re miserable, but also if one billion miserable people today are acceptable if there will be trillions of people capable of happiness in the future. And if increasing the total number of people means increasing the total amount of potential happiness in the future, then can’t we justify anything in the current days if we say it could lead to the potential for the greatest happiness overtime? Reading about all of this and the ridiculous hypotheticals and hedonic calculus over time based on nothing makes one realize this can be used to justify anything.
New York 2140, Kim Stanley Robinson
Stanley Robinson is probably one of the most admired climate fiction writers because of Ministry of the Future. New York 2140 similarly looks at what may be possible in the future. It takes place in a New York that has already mostly flooded. People get around by boat and real estate is even harder to come by than it is now, as it can only be higher levels of buildings. Another megastorm and financial crisis lead to the possibility we need to make real economic change and create a positive future. I like novels where nationalizing banks and turning socialist are serious plot points, and I enjoyed the different branches of the story, but I didn’t think it was nearly as solid as Ministry of the Future. The character development and arcs weren’t really there for me and some of the character choices didn’t make that much sense. But there’s still no one else really exploring in a deep way the themes of what changes we need that Stanley Robinson does – even in the nonfiction world – so it’s worth reading.
A History of the Universe in 21 Stars, Giles Sparrow
The problem with doing these round ups at the end of the year is that if I forgot to take notes at the time I sometimes can’t fully remember the book. This one, unfortunately, fall in to that category. It’s an exploration of human knowledge and the solar system based on some of the more important and recognizable stars. I do remember finding it interesting at the time, but not fascinating, and it seems to have faded as I’ve gotten farther away from it.
Laughing Boy, Oliver LaFarge
The Pulitzer’s go through cycles, and they went through one with White author’s writing from the perspective of other cultures. (Something that has returned at other times, unfortunately.) This novel is from a young Navajo man who meets a girl at a ceremony and decides to marry her, even though she is considered an outsider because she had been taken away and sent to one of the Schools. It was a short book that was certainly meant to more truly demonstrate Native culture to Whtie Americans. I can’t speak to how well it did that, but I did find one review that said it wasn’t a real representation of Navajo culture. However, whatever troubles we may see in the representation in the book today, at the time it was criticized for being anti-American for mentioning once that the Indian Boarding Schools weren’t a good thing. So, I guess good for this book for at least challenging the culture and ideas at the time? Yea?
Destroy All Monsters, Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips
One of the NPR book concierge picks for 2022. This was a great graphic novel of a film noir, hard bitten detective type. It’s actually the last in the Reckless series, and I’m sure I would have benefited from the others, but it also stood on its own. It was a fun fast read for anyone who likes 70s style old school detective stories.
How to Take Over the World: Practical Schemes and Scientific Solutions for the Aspiring Supervillain, Ryan North
This book was sort of funny the way it was written. I liked their charts, and their chat group explanation of evolution. However, for my tastes I think North leaned in a little too hard in to the “practical” part, and not enough in to the “aspiring supervillain” part. I think I was expecting something a bit more like What If? that might take me through the crazy things that would happen if I really did have a lair inside a volcano, rather than something talking me down and asking me to have a boring lair. He basically explains why all our supervillain plans wouldn’t work, which I already know. I wanted some tips on how to at least get close.
Playlist for the Apocalypse, Rita Dove
I would like to read more poetry, and starting last year have been trying to teach myself more about how to think about and appreciate it – I’ve actually really enjoyed the archives of the New Yorker Poetry podcast. But I still don’t really know how to think about it critically, even in an amateur sense. The details of poetry, including these, didn’t completely stick with me. But the sense of it did, and I do remember appreciating reading this book quite a bit.
Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, Kim Fu
This was an intriguing, sometimes unsettling, collection of short stories. Some are surreal, some are futuristic, some fun and some disturbing, but it’s a really interesting collection of stories that I enjoyed heartily. The first, someone trying to convince an AI to let her experience a holographic interaction with her mother, was my favorite, but not the only one that stuck with me. Fu creates fully realized characters and brilliant scenes with a few short pages, and that’s what we always ask for in a short story.
Walking on Cowrie Shells, Nana Nkweti
The description that comes up most often when looking up this book was “genre bending” and that is 100% correct. The stories run the gamut from coming of age stories about a nerdy girl finding her place to someone recounting their time stemming a zombie outbreak after supposed mass death from Lake Nyos to the tale of a Mami Wata. It was excellent, though. And while I usually tend towards the science fiction or fantasy stories—and the zombie story was part of what made me want to read it—what surprised me was how much I loved the more slice of life stories. I know nothing about Cameroon, but the stories of a teenage girl finding her place – breaking out of the friends from the immigrant community to find her own people—and a tale at the end of a woman in her 30s going back to the American town she grew up in and the immigrant community and feeling out of place everywhere, and the pressures of the community, were surprisingly relatable. It was a great group of stories and Nkweti shows an amazing breadth of style.
Scarlet Sister Mary, Julia Peterkin
Well, it’s the Pulitzers in the late 20s, so it must be another White person writing about a non-White culture. In this case, Peterkin, who grew up in South Carolina, wrote a few books about the Gullah peoples of South Carolina. While the facts there are uncomfortable, I think this was pretty good? It was actually a very feminist book in the style of something like Sister Carrie or even There Eyes Were Watching God where a woman decides to live her own life, even as everyone else sees her as scandalous or a whore, and has a good life where nothing extra-ordinarily bad happens to her. In this case, Mary gets married to a very handsome player who takes off with another woman. Mary asks the local healer/witch to make her a love charm to get her man back and instead decides to use it for a succession of lovers while having kids she loves and a good life in her community. It’s great! I liked this one. And while yes, Peterkin writes in dialect, it never felt particularly othering or as if we were watching someone alien. And hey, I should stop complaining because we’re just a few years away from Gone with a Wind and a whole series of Lost Cause celebrations.
The Sandman Vol. 1-6, Neil Gaiman
I really like Neil Gaiman, and I finished all the Discworld books last year and was thinking of a new series. Then the Netflix adaptation came out, so I decided to pick this up. I went through the first few paper back collections – there are two more and a finale, I think—and they were, well, a lot. Gaiman’s knowledge of myths and stories is encylopedic, and it’s on full display here, but man, a lot of this was dark. Like, DC Comics after Alan Moore had showed how dark it could get dark. Which I guess is what it is. I was going to continue through for some of the mythology stuff, but it was too much for me and I don’t think I’ll complete it.
Bea Wolf, Zach Weinersmith, Boulet (illustrator)
Ah, another graphic novel but the complete opposite. Zach Weinersmith, of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal fame, was telling stories to his kids, including classics like Beowulf. And he decided to change it for his 8 year-old daughter, creating a new version of kids and their amazing magical playhouse, and the evil grown up Grendel who wants to squash joy and turn kids into grown ups. In this tale, the nights of partying are forced to come to an end until young Bea Wolf shows up to fight the monster. It is so much fun, and so well done, and I adored it. It works on extra levels if you know Beowulf, but my kids loved it without that context and it works all on its own, too. Strongly recommend this, especially for precocious kids. You should definitely get it.
A Tree or a Person or a Wall, Matt Bell
Another short story collection, and another book that was just too dark for me. It was dark without redemption and dark without a point, and I don’t like reading about bad things happening to kids. I ended up sort of skimming with my fingers in front of my eyes like I was watching I horror movie for the last few stories because I was close enough to the end I thought I should finish, but I probably should have put it down earlier. May be something for others; definitely wasn’t for me.
We Do This ‘Til We Free Us, Mariame Kaba
Mariame Kaba has been part of the abolition movement for a long time. And now that we’re having real talks about changing policing, we can also talk to those who really do mean defund the police, and who really do want to get rid of prisons. I think that it’s very important to expand our imagination of what is possible and think through what we could really do and mean. And I think it’s important to remember that some people have been involved in limiting policing and moving towards restorative justice in real ways for a long time – this isn’t a new conversation, even though it’s new to many. So I’d recommend this book. That said, Kaba’s short story at the end about a world without police and prisons runs up against the same problem this always does – what do we do with the worst and with people who do something evil? I’m not sure I or others would really approve of her solution, either. And while I don’t think we should treat everyone with systems we need for extremes, I do think the movement needs to grapple with them more. But other than that disappointment, it’s a valuable book to read.
Havana, Mark Kurlansky
I’ve been a fan of Kurlansky for a long time – narrative nonfiction that does a deep dive into a common but secretly fascinating substance is definitely my jam. Havana takes a different tack than some of the others, as it’s much more a memoir and history at the same time. The book takes us through the founding and history of Havana, Kurlansky’s memories of it, and some of the changes that have happened not just since the travel bans from the United States were lifted, but since the loosening of restrictions and need to raise funds after the Soviet Union collapsed. And while obviously some things need to change, capitalism and change always bring their own sadnesses, as well. Kurlansky mentions people being able to make contracts with their choice of national baseball teams slowly eroding the community sense the teams brought before, and the opening up and introduction of new products and new money always changes the feel of a place. Kurlansky is writing as a frequent visitor, not a resident, so it’s hard to take from the book how things are changing for people who live there. But it is a reminder that there’s so much to every single place, even those that seemed closed off.
Adrift: America in 100 Charts, Scott Galloway
I heard Scott Galloway interviewed on Pitchfork Economics and knew this was my type of book. I bought it and before I read it my husband, who is not nearly as political as me, picked it up and ended up keeping it by his work desk to flip through constantly. His verdict, “I think everyone should look at this book.” It is a simple distillation of so many issues that combined tell a story about where we are today.
Zone One, Colson Whitehead
I haven’t read Underground Railroad yet (it’s on the list!), but I have read Harlem Shuffle and loved it, and Zone One has zombies, so… . I didn’t love it nearly as much. It’s written from the perspective of Mark Spitz, part of a team of sweepers finishing off zombies and rebuilding after the apocalypse. I thought the world building and take on zombies were fine, but the book felt a bit uneven to me with some parts more fully realized than others. I actually thought it was an early novel of Whitehead’s, as it had that feel to me, but it’s right in the middle of his body of work. All in all, fine, but I wasn’t blown away.
The Buddha in the Attic, Julie Otsuka
This slim volume is a creative exploration of the lives of Japanese brides arranged to be married to Japanese immigrants in the US, primarily coming to the states in the 20s, and following their lives up to the internments at the start of WWII. I was afraid this book would be too sad and difficult – at this point in my life I am very aware of suffering, thank you very much – but the book was not all pain and really explored the variety of experiences these women had. Its unique presentation helped, and kept me intrigued, as the book takes the first person plural or third person plural the whole time, and describes several different experiences that also blend together weaving a full breadth of experiences that nonetheless have similarities and shared lives. It was expertly done and a vivid and beautiful book.
The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium, An Englishman’s World, Robert Lacey
I loved this. I’ve explained before that far more than the tales of harrowing experiences and suffering, I’m interested in how people go through their lives, almost no matter what. There are so many ways society and politics and economics can be! This was right up my alley, then, and talks about every aspect of life in England in the year 1000, whether what people could wear, what you might eat, how you’d travel, and how marriage worked. And Lacey is a very entertaining writer; the book is very informative and academic but not dry at all. I learned a lot.
Uggggh. I enjoyed this book so much until the twist at the end. Sorry for SPOILERS but there’s a vein of storytelling that seems to think that any creepy, possessive, psychologically abusive, distrusting, behavior by a guy is justified because of True Love and might even make the woman a better person and that is just not true. I really thought this might have escaped it and the ending would take it in the opposite direction, but Nope. Dislike.
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, Charles Yu
I love the premise of this book – bored 20 something is floating through life as a time repair person of sorts when a handbook falls in to his life and things take a timey wimey shift. Really seems like my type of thing. But somehow it just never hung entirely together for me. Something felt too thin or not fully realized and it just didn’t hit all the notes. It seems like there’s something there, but it didn’t show up for me.
The Candy House, Jennifer Egan
This is a sequel of sorts to one of my favorite books ever, Welcome to the Goon Squad. At least it takes place in the same universe and with some of the same characters even if it doesn’t really connect to the previous story. Goon Squad was more creative, but Candy House is still unique and wonderfully written. In a very near future where tech can literally store and project your memories in the cloud, there are also people who have decided to disappear and remove themselves entirely, sometimes even hiring someone else to pretend to create memories and social media for them so they can remove themselves. This sounds like the set up for dystopia, but it’s really just the background for life for the characters trying their hardest to get through the world, but with diversions like an entire chapter written as the field notes and instruction manual for a spy with memory implants, in between just the memory of summers by the pool with a selfish and inconsistent father.
Not a Pulitzer winner, but a nominee back in 2019 that maybe should have won. To be fair, I haven’t read The Overstory yet, but this book was excellent. Several Native Americans, with varying degrees of attachment to their heritage and tribe, have their lives intersect in different ways culminating in an armed robbery and shootout at a huge and important powwow. And in between are explorations of identity, heritage, colonialism, art, belonging, and family. I know that sounds like it could be sort of trite or sappy, but it’s not—it’s excellent and I’ll be thinking about it for a while.
And here we’re back to White Westerners writing about other cultures. Pearl S. Buck lived most of her life in China and said she couldn’t write about anything else, but she wrote about Chinese peasants, not, you know, White missionaries like her and her family. I know this is one of the Pulitzer winners that’s stuck around for some reason, but I found the way she wrote about Wang Fun, the peasant who manages to raise himself to a wealthy landowner, really othering and dehumanizing, as was the way she approached almost every other character. That being said, there were flashes of interesting insight and if a Chinese author wanted to rewrite this from his wife, O-Lan’s, perspective I would read the heck out of that book.
Picked this up at a used book store because it sounded interesting. It was fine, but it’s a later book in a series so there wasn’t a lot of character build up to hang some of the interactions on. That being said, I think I caught up alright and it was a pretty serviceable British mystery. There’s a hard bitten detective with a by-the-rules but grudgingly indulgent boss, a lot of baggage, who has a problem with these new kids today but appreciates how they help him get things done. The plot can be filled in around all that.
Okay, this book was excellent. I loved its creative take on the questions of sentience; I loved its world building; I loved the propulsive writing. The Infinity Gate itself – which uses quantum probability to explore the infinity of universes –was creative and smart and is still enough of a mystery that I didn’t have to immediately dismiss anything that involves FTL travel. There were several strands of plot that come together expertly and I inhaled this book. My only problem with it is that it’s the first of a series, the next one won’t be out until 2024, and this isn’t a book that stands on its own. It just sort of stops, rather than ends, and I would like to read what happens next now, please and thank you.
Drunk on All Your Strange New Worlds, Eddie Robson
This was another fun one! An alien culture has made contact, but they only communicate telepathically. Only a few humans have the capability to do so as well and serve as translators. But the act of doing so makes them feel groggy and, well, drunk, at some point. Lydia has recently become the translator for the cultural ambassador when he turns up murdered. This ends up being a sci-fi book, a cli-fi book, and a murder mystery that attacks anti-immigrant sentiment. But even with touching on serious themes, it’s done so lightly. They’re basically snuck in to what is, at its heart, a really fun sci-fi murder mystery with a bumbling, sympathetic protagonist.
Heavy: An American Memoir, Kiese Laymon
I’ve probably mentioned before that memoirs are really not my cup of tea, but the book club voted on this one so what can you do? This book is written from a Black man who talks about his painful childhood – and in to adult life – in Mississippi. It covers abuse –sexual, physical, and emotional—racism, poverty, his struggles with weight, his brilliant mother who also abused him and who’s life is a mess. It’s a lot. Others in my group loved it. I always feel so, I don’t know, creepy and voyeuristic when I’m reading about a real life like that for entertainment, even if the person wrote it themselves. I’ll put this down in the “not written for me” category, I suppose.
Once Upon a Space-Time and A Total Waste of Space-Time, Jeffrey Brown
My kids love graphic novels, and my son picked up these two books about a group of kids who get to be part of a elite group of children from several planets exploring the universe and different realities. It is really funny, it is full of very nerdy jokes, and it primes kids for some good tropes by including a grumpy robot. Very good for nerdy middle grade kids who like science, bad jokes, and cats.
The Value of a Whale: On the Illusion of Green Capitalism, Adrienne Buller
I really expected this book to have a more philosophical bent, along the lines of how we really do think about the value of a while. Instead it’s a critique of almost all economic-focused solutions to climate change or the conservation movement. Primarily market based criticisms, but also ones that look at finance and divestment. I sympathize with a lot of the critiques, and think offsets are useless at best and a harmful scam at worst. And carbon markets are useless and another way of moving money around. But even for my cynicism, I thought this book was a bit simplistic and ignored the way some economic critiques and actions are meant to be part of a wider movement and add to or build on other policy advocacy, not stand on their own. Plus, I felt a little duped by the title and wanted more philosophy and fewer bank statements.
Vacationland, John Hodgman
A bit of a memoir from John Hodgman of the time after writing his fantastic fake trivia books, and about he and his wife moving part time to his childhood home in New Hampshire and his wife’s childhood vacation town in Maine. I like reading Hodgman, and I appreciate how much he still finds his success surreal and recognizes his luck in the world. This was a good collection of essays on his thoughts on a number of things (mostly but not exclusively New England related), and with his delightful dry humor.
How to Stop Time, Matt Haig
My husband is a huge softy, and he has decided he loves Matt Haig. I like him alright. This one follows a man who ages extremely slowly, around 1/10th the rate of normal humans. And he’s not the only one, although it’s largely a secret. Partly because for a lot of human history it just wasn’t believed and people who had his condition were likely to get burned for witchcraft; partly because for the last 100 years or so they’ve been trying to keep themselves secret. There were some silly plot points, and I sort of saw the main twists coming, but mostly it was a good book to read. And I do have to say that I appreciate Haig’s earnestness and love of humanity and goodness, even if it’s not always for me. Most books by an immortal guy would have had their main character drowning his loneliness in fulfilling their fantasies and sleeping with hundreds of women over the centuries, but he keeps his loyal and in love and still connected to humans even though he has to live apart. He realizes characters, and does appreciate the nicer things in life, and sometimes that’s really nice to read.
Convenience Store Woman, Sayaka Murata
Another book club pick, and one that split the group. I really liked this book! I do think that it’s a bit oversold by a lot of reviews that say that it’s odd or quirky or has surprising twists, when it’s a pretty straightforward book. But I liked the main character, and I really appreciated what it said about people being themselves and the criticism of how people are forced in to different roles. The central message is really how many would rather see their friend or family following a script they know and miserable then doing their own thing and being happy, and how it’s important to still be true to ourselves despite that.
Old Gods, New Enigmas: Marx’s Lost Theory, Mike Davis
I dunno, man. Listen, I love The Communist Manifesto, and I appreciate Marx. I have a heavily marked up copy of Ideology on my bookshelf; I hate capitalism. But there’s a need for a certain strain of intellectual, Marxist, leftists to try to apply his (heavily modernist, heavily materialistic, heavily anthropocentric, written 150 years ago) writings to everything today and I think it’s okay to say that he didn’t think of everything. In particular, the need to pretend that Marx himself has a lot to teach the environmental movement, which is what this book tries to do, rather than think through how to apply Marxist analysis to the environmental movement or grapple with whether a modernist philosophy that was primarily concerned with liberating workers and thought industrialization was a step on that process is what we need for the current moment. Again, mad love to Marx, just, I don’t see the point or think it’s honest to pretend he was thinking of the non-human environment for even a second.
Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World, Rutger Bregman
Humankind is one of my favorite books I’ve read in the last few years, so I had to pick up Utopia for Realists. I so appreciate Bregman, and especially his holding on to the fact that things should be better. We’re in the richest time of human history, and can feed and house and give medicine to everyone, and somehow we don’t. We should all be gobsmacked by that. Bregman holds on to that and looks to policies we could enact now that would make the world better.
Mercury Rising, R. W. W. Greene
Some people get in to steampunk, but super futuristic Atomic Age science fiction is always catnip to me. That’s what we have here, with a world where space exploration and space settlements were much more advanced in the 50s and 60s, and there’s an alien civilization from Mercury that has threatened and occasionally attacked us and so far we’ve held at bay. That is the background against which a young Black man in New York whose father died in the space wars, and who has a good heart but occasionally gets in to trouble, ends up killing a shapeshifting alien at his friend’s enlistment party, gets caught with a bunch of contraband in his car (from the alien), enlists to stay out of jail, and ends up learning the secret that there are at least two alien civilizations at war that both want Earth and one of them used to be on the used up planet of Venus and currently keep numerous Earthlings there prisoners. As you might be able to tell from that brief summary the plot of this book is A Lot and I’m not sure it all entirely hangs together. The book is also the first in a series, but I’m afraid I was too overwhelmed by the plot—and too underwhelmed by the characters—to go further. It’s a shame; I’d had high hopes.
Turn Right at Machu Pichu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time, Mark Adams
I loved Meet Me in Atlantis is one of my favorite books. Mark Adams undertakes the search for Atlantis with such an open and skeptical mind at the same time. So I’ve been eager to read others. This one covers his trek to Machu Pichu, a consideration of the many theories on how many other cities there are, and why and how the amazing cities of the Incas were even built with the technology they had. The book is part hiking travelogue by an aging explorer, a la Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, and part real discussion of the amazing world that exists hidden in the rainforest. The civilizations that were built in the Americas are astonishing, and we know so little thanks to how much was deliberately destroyed, and how much is taken over quickly by the environment – a sphinx in the desert is going to last far longer than an entire city in the Amazon. It was a really fun and enlightening read by an entertaining story teller, and definitely put Machu Pichu higher on my dream travel list.
Years of Grace, Margaret Ayer Barnes
This is sort of a much, much longer – and less sheltered – version of Age of Innocence. Or a version of Early Autumn where we meet the protagonist far earlier. Years of Grace follows the life of Jane, a young debutante in Chicago. She has a group of friends, but only one who she is particularly close to—the others are more frivolous and she has quite shallow relationships. She has a young courtship with a young man, Andre, the son of European parents and with a dream of being an artist. For all her depth and yearning – she argues with her parents to go away to Bryn Mawr for a few years – she ends up married to rather drab and boring wealthy man from Boston; raises children; contemplates an affair but realizes that it is not the life she wants and she loves her children; lives a conventional by all accounts life while not entirely buying in to it. The reason it’s less sheltered than Age of Innocence is because there are families where the woman or the man have affairs and everyone knows it; she talks of her sister-in-law – and later daughter—who have never had a beau and want nothing more than to move out to a farm with their best (female) friend. When Jane’s daughter gets divorced and marries someone else, it is seen as both a scandal and the way things now are. I don’t love the ‘poor rich people trapped by convention’ vane, but I have to say, of them, this was one of my favorites. It recognized the variety that existed even within those conventions, and truly painted the choice to go along as just that—a choice—and why it may be good and bad at the same time. It’s longer than Age of Innocence, but I’d definitely suggest this taking the place in the cannon.
Pineapple Street, Jenny Jackson
My mom read this book for her book club – a bunch of retired English teachers, the youngest of whom is probably at least 60 – and was fascinated by it. She sent it to my sister and I. Part of it was that this is a very 2023 book, and my mom made a vocab quiz for her group based on the language in the book. Another is that she said it was like reading a 2000s era Jane Austen, and I have to say I see what she means. It’s the story of three women in New York, two of whom are part of an incredibly wealthy long-time New York family, and one of whom has recently married in to it, as they go through some challenges in their life. It was also like Jane Austen in that sometimes you should just talk to other people and it would help a lot. Now, and I know this is heresy to many, I don’t particularly like Jane Austen and I would never have picked this up on my own. But it was very readable, and actually pretty fun even as it confirmed my idea that there should be confiscatory income and wealth taxes on the rich. (The other way it’s like Jane Austen is that she shows up a lot in Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century as a site for rent-seeking in the 1800s and I can totally see this being used that way in another hundred years.) Jackson is an entertaining writer, and there were parts on motherhood that were relatable even to someone like me. I can see why it’s been such a hit.
Climate Change as Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Planet, Matthew T. Huber
My year for reading Marxist climate books, I suppose. There was so much that was interesting and so much that was so, so wrong about this book. I have many of the same complaints about Huber as I do about Mike Davis, in that Marx definitely didn’t think of any intrinsic value of nature in his analysis and no twisting and turning can change that. Added to that is some current context. Imagine writing a book where you complain that Biden of all people didn’t have enough labor solidarity. This came out a month after Biden became the first sitting president to make a public statement in support of unionizing. With book deadlines it probably would have been impossible to revise, but even before then he’d shown some labor bona fides. Anyway, there is some that I liked in this book – climate change is continuing to enrich the incredibly wealthy, and impoverish others. Environmentalism like so much else can only be solved by building popular support by organizing the working class, and unions are the best case to do so. But as someone who has actually worked with BGA and tried to make this sort of connection, his assertions about how it would just be so easy if people would do this, the next steps seemed very naïve. So, liked some of this a lot, but bottom line, it is an incomplete analysis. I’ll try to do a full review of this one because I have a lot to say on this topic.
How to Survive History: How to Outrun a Tyrannosaurus, Escape Pompeii, Get Off the Titanic, and Survive the Rest of History’s Deadliest Catastrophes, Cody Cassidy
Okay, this one was pretty fun. Basically, Cassidy takes us through a simple thought experiment – if we had all the knowledge of modern times, could you survive all sorts of past disasters, threats, and emergencies. And then he uses that as a jumping point to explore different disasters. I like this sort of book, and the framing trick really worked for me. I think I knew the broad strokes of a lot of this, although not the details of lava flow in Pompeii, but still a fun read.
The Parrot and the Igloo: Climate and the Science of Denial, David Lipsky
It is absolutely amazing how long the conversation on climate change has been happening. I work in this sphere; I give talks where I emphasize that we’ve known about this since Eunice Foote and Svente Arrhenius. And yet, I had no idea of how long the concept of global warming has actually been in the public consciousness. There were articles about the changing weather in the 1950s, there were public testimonies to Congress and stories on the cover of Times and in the Washington Post in the 1960s and 1970s. It makes sense—the plot of Soylent Green is actually based on global warming destroying agriculture and the economy. And yet somehow it has been pushed as a new plot. It is absolutely maddening and mind-boggling the resistance and the massive disinformation and political lobbying campaign against global warming. There’s a lot of parallels that have been well documented before this book between the cigarette lobby and the global warming lobby, but cigarettes only kill the people using them and those around them. Global Warming will potentially destroy the world as we know it. Seems like people should care more.
Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Toshikazu Kawaguchi
This was a charming little book. There is a café where you can travel through time. But you can only go back once; you cannot leave your stool; and you must return before you coffee gets cold. It seems like it wouldn’t be worth it, but there are so many small conversations and exchanges that can take place in that time frame. This was a sweet and charming book. It’s the first in a series, and I won’t say that I had further questions. But as a self-contained world I really liked it.
Feed them Silence, Lee Mandelo
This is a very short book that packs a ton in to its 105 page count. A scientist has devised a way to interface with nonhuman animals, using a neurolink that allows her to experience the life of a wolf, one of the few family groups still in the northern U.S. She gets funding and interest based on both commercial applications and conservation, but the book is also very honest that it is based on an identifiable dream of being a wolf. At the same time her marriage is breaking down and we get a tight 105 pages on science research, commercialization, ethics of animal research, capitalism, colonialsm, and a fully realized story. An impressive feat.
The Black Agenda: Bold Solutions for a Broken System, Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman (ed)
My main complaint about this book is that the solutions here weren’t all that bold! The book is a collection of essays by Black authors and activists on how to address racism and the massive racial disparities in the United States. And yet, the solutions proposed are pretty mild, and mostly don’t challenge or dismantle the system. We should address AI bias; we should recognize the biases in medicine and support Black maternal and infant health; climate change harms Black and Brown people and we should recognize housing discrimination. But other than a glancing mention of civil disobedience around voting rights, this was solutions that have been publicized elsewhere and leave the basic frameworks in place. I was underwhelmed.
A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?, Kelly and Zach Weinersmith
An incredibly well researched and well thought through tome on what space settlement actually entails. The book is from a couple of certified nerds (Zach Weinersmith writes the Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic, and the two of them together also wrote Soonish) who think moon colonies are cool but we’re maybe not there just yet. They go into everything from the incredibly limited knowledge we have about reproduction in space to how completely lacking most non-Earth places are in literally everything we need for life and how full they are of things like cosmic radiation that will kill us, to the challenges of figuring out how international and space law apply. The legal parts were the only parts I quibble with—the current international order is actually pretty new and while I agree space settlement has the possibility to be destabilizing we can’t take current legal and political structures as a given. But in that section as the rest what really stands out is how little we know, how much we have to think all of this through, and how hard space settlement is. Earth at its worst is still probably easier to survive than the best set up Mars colony, and we’d be good to remember that when billionaires pitch that as plan B.
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries, Heather Fawcett
This was easily one of the best books I read all year. At first it feels like it’ll be a serviceable fantasy novel that you’ll be able to predict. And there are some beats that are easy to see coming. But for the most part, this was a creative story and the character building was fantastic, as new facets are explored throughout the novel. And the world building was wonderful, taking place in a late 1800s Europe that is mostly the same but with a few more women (still incredibly looked down on) in the university and, of course, all the faeries. How you’ll go about addressing the rules of the fae is always interesting to me, and the construct of this universe felt very complete to me. I cannot wait to read the sequel that came out in early 2024.
Alexander Hamilton, Ron Chernow
Oooof, I was reading this book on and off almost the entire year. It is a lot. Memoir is not my favorite genre, nor is biography, and I’m not particularly interested in the Revolutionary War. But I do absolutely love Hamilton, and I do find the creation of a new system of governance awe-inspiring. The fact that Hamilton was able to create so much out of whole cloth, and see the way the pieces of the government needed to work together, really is amazing and we owe so much to the luck of our country’s existence to what he created. This was just real long. You’ve also probably got the gist from the musical, although there are some parts that are different – Lin Manuel Miranda compressed and overlaid some parts of the timeline to make the story hang together in a few short hours, and made the good character choice to avoid getting in to the fact Hamilton was turning in to a bit of a crank as he aged. Still, I’m grateful to this book to making us rethink our national stories and what we want to celebrate in our founding.
At Night We Walk in Circles, Daniel Alarcon
Based in an unnamed Latin American country, Alarcon explores memory, community, rebellion, and the search for meaning. A young man whose life is not where he’d hoped it was takes a position with the two former members of a revolutionary theatre troupe, taking on the road the play that had gotten the original author thrown in jail. In it the story jumps back and forth to the earlier days of the troupe and the time in jail, and the members unravelling in different ways. While nothing in it is actually mystical, it has an absurdist and surreal feel, and the ending was both predictable and confusing at the same time. I did like this book, but not sure I grasped all of it.
Mobility, Lydia Kiesling
Kiesling’s book follows Bunny Glenn through the years, opening with a boring summer spent in Tirana with her father (a State Department employee) and older brother while her mother and younger brother are home in Texas caring for her grandmother. Bunny goes to boarding school; her parents get divorced; Bunny ends up doing marketing for an energy (primarily oil) company in conservative Texas. She wants to commit to this industry and her job, while also recognizing climate change is real and being liberal in a bit of a vague way. The story is told from a distance, which also makes sense as Bunny seems to drift through life at a distance never really feeling attached to any of her decisions but living a decent enough life that takes her through to her first granddaughter bought in a new city that has been put together to escape the worst of climate change. For all of that, it was still a good book with Bunny as a protagonist living a very specific and unique life while somehow having a very relatable life and lack of meaning, and the vague politics presented are a decent way to explain one facet of the current world we’re in.
Friday Black, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brentan
Too much. This collection of short stories takes us from darkly humorous stories of working at a megamall on a Black Friday even more extreme than the current ones to a particularly horrifically violent story of a town (maybe world) that has gotten trapped in a repeating day, but the tone of the latter is even more common than the former. And it’s just too much. It was too much darkness and too much violence and if I weren’t reading for book club I would have put it down two stories in. I know it works for some, but page on page of violence and torture are not what I want and it was too much.
Kill the Farm Boy, Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne
And this satire of traditional story telling was a welcome respite. A sprite comes to tell a farm boy he’s the chosen one, leading to a series of adventures with a humanoid rabbit bard, a mild-mannered lord trying to become an evil wizard, a secretly reformist wealthy witch, barbarian, talking goat, and oh so-much-more. It played with so many tropes and actually made me laugh out loud in a couple places.
The Store, T. S. Dribling
Oh, hey, it’s the part of the Pulitzer’s where the committee went all in on the Lost Cause. Colonel Miltiades Vaidan fought in the Civil War and got the Klan started in his area after the South lost, but has been stuck in his life ever since. He’s living in a city with carpetbagging Republicans who are in charge of government services, and it’s the eve of Gover Cleveland being elected which everyone is convinced will restore the racial order and the South. The racial politics in the book are actually not as terrible as they could be with that summary Pretty bad for sure! But they could be worse. I expected them to be the sticking point, but the real problem with The Store –which is largely out of print and was really hard to find, actually—is that the story is incredibly confusing and didn’t make any sense as Colonel Vaidan tries to get back at the cousin he blames for his lot in life by working for him (?) and doing a good job (?) and then sending all his cotton down the river (?) in an easily catchable way (?) And then opening a store (?). I did not follow the plot at all. It was all very confusing and I can understand why this one didn’t stand the test of time.
Heart Broke, Chelsea Bieker
This book is like an album where you like all the individual songs, but it gets to be too samey when you listen to it front to back. Bieker’s God Shot was fairly melancholy although had some hope at the end, with a young woman trapped in a cult in the Central Valley and struggling to find a way out. The stories here are similar, with young women and the occasional boy trapped by circumstance and family and an unhealthy love or relationship with varying degrees of independence. How much hope there is at the end depends on the story. I liked a lot of these individually and I really like Bieker’s writing; I did think they started to run together when I read the whole book. I would have liked the stories more in a collection.
The Mysterious Benedict Society, Trenton Lee Stewart
I know we’re late to this series, but I got this for my 12 year old and he loved it –which I thought he would – and begged me to read it, too. It was a lot of fun and definitely a fun and overly complicated twist on the special orphan thee we all love so much. Plus it adds a special dose of how children are better than grown ups because they’re more creative and also can see the truth more clearly. He’s on to the rest, I don’t know that I need to read them all, but this one was a fun ride and I can see why they’re so popular.
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Cavalcade of Whimsy 