Booknotes 3.15 — Blog

Turning Pages, by John Sargent, published 2023. Ah, I love books about publishing. Several good bookmaking stories in here, though perhaps not as many as I would have liked. I somehow went into this book thinking Sargent was a mid-level editor or something; it wasn’t until at least halfway through that I realized he was the CEO (of Macmillan). And…CEOs are quite a bit less interesting to me than the people who actually work on the books. But this was still a good book.
Breaking Bread with the Dead, by Alan Jacobs, published 2020. I’ve been reading Jacobs’ blog for a while and it’s good, as was this book — in particular, I liked the temporal bandwidth idea and the acknowledgment that the past is strange. “These are the writers who help us to encounter our ancestors not as anthropological curiosities whom we observe from a critical distance, but as those with whom we can, and should, break bread.” I need to read more old books, and study more history.
Slow Productivity, by Cal Newport, published 2024. Some good ideas and anecdotes in here. The core message — do fewer things, work at a natural pace, obsess over quality — resonated with me.

The Giver of Stars, by Jojo Moyes, published 2019, historical fiction. I read this for book group. Enjoyed it more than I was expecting to. (Until recently, my interest levels in historical fiction have been fairly low.)
Penric’s Demon, by Lois McMaster Bujold, published 2015, fantasy. Liked it a lot, as with pretty much all her books and especially the World of the Five Gods series. Looking forward to the rest of the Penric stories.
Broken Homes, by Ben Aaronovitch, published 2013, fantasy. Rivers of London book 4. A bit earthy as usual, but other than that, liked it as usual. And that twist at the end!