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Booknotes 3.17

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Nonfiction

  • An Immense World, by Ed Yong, published 2022. One of the most fascinating books I’ve ever read. It’s about the different ways animals sense the world (smell, sight, electric fields, etc.) and is chock-full of facts and scientific discovery stories that lit up my brain, like this one, to take an example at random: “Octopuses are different. Unlike squid, they can touch every part of their bodies. They can even reach inside themselves to groom their own gills—the equivalent of a human putting a hand down their throat to scratch their lungs.” While reading the book I wanted to switch careers and become a scientist. Definitely planning to read it again someday. (Which is saying something; I’m not much of a rereader.)
  • Medieval Horizons, by Ian Mortimer, published 2023. Also fascinating, about the large-scale changes that happened in different parts of life during the Middle Ages (travel, literacy, warfare, sense of self, etc.), and how those changes set the stage for modernity, in some ways more importantly than the technological changes of the Industrial Revolution. A compelling antidote to the idea that medieval times were static and boring.

Fiction

  • The Witness for the Dead, by Katherine Addison, published 2021, fantasy. Cemeteries of Amalo book 1. Really liked it. I think I even liked it as much as The Goblin Emperor, different though it was. The worldbuilding really works for me, even (and perhaps especially) the long, complicated names and the traditions and protocols. Looking forward to the rest of the series and to trying out Addison’s earlier books.
  • The Wolf of Oren-Yaro, by K. S. Villoso, published 2017, fantasy. More action-packed and less of a character study than I expected from what I’d heard about it.
  • High, by Adam Roberts, published 2024, science fiction. Interesting ideas, decent prose, generally liked it. I feel like I haven’t read nearly enough of this sort of idea-driven science fiction in a while, though that may say more about my memory (or lack thereof) than anything. Looking forward to reading more of Roberts’ work.

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Booknotes 3.16

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Nonfiction

  • Young Stalin, by Simon Sebag Montefiore, published 2007. Quite good. For me — who didn’t know much about Stalin beyond a vague “leader of Russia during WWII who killed a lot of people” and who also didn’t know much about the October Revolution beyond it taking place in 1917 — this filled in a lot of details. Fascinating (and tragic) to see where single-minded devotion to revolution can take a man. Stalin feels like a real person in my head now, human and all (surprisingly human, really), no longer just a vague supervillain. Also, I had no idea about all the exiles. Or all the many girlfriends. Or the disturbing age gaps with some of them. That part was gross. (Different times? Sure, to some degree. But still.)

Fiction

  • Hidden, by Benedict Jacka, published 2014, fantasy. Alex Verus book 5. Liked it. The overarching story continues to be interesting. (I don’t want to spoil anything with these reviews, which makes it hard to say much of anything about books later in a series like this. Apologies.)
  • The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, volume 6, by Beth Brower, published 2022, fiction. Good as usual. Delightful and witty and fun. I’m debating whether to hurry up and read volume 7 so I can finally get caught up with my wife (and be ready for volume 8, which hopefully drops sometime this year) or wait a bit first since volume 8 isn’t ready quite yet and I don’t want to run out of Emma M. Lion books yet.
  • Come Tumbling Down, by Seanan McGuire, published 2020, fantasy. Wayward Children book 5. Dark and imaginative and somewhat uncomfortable. I don’t know that this one worked quite as well for me, but I still plan to continue reading the series.

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Booknotes 3.15

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Nonfiction

  • 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.

Fiction

  • 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!

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Booknotes 3.14

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Nonfiction

  • The Wager, by David Grann, published 2023. Whew, what a story. Compelling throughout, and I learned lots of interesting things about seafaring to boot. I’m so glad I was not a sailor in the 1700s.
  • The Power Broker, by Robert A. Caro, published 1974. This was almost 1,200 pages long and took me over a year to read (though for much of that year I was admittedly only reading a couple pages per week; it’s actually quite readable and I sprinted through the last 200+ pages in a single day). Really good book, and what a fascinating (and detailed!) study in power. While it was very long, I feel that the length was fully warranted and worth it. (Stockholm syndrome? Maybe. But I do think I’m going to remember this book a lot more than some shorter books I’ve finished in a sitting.)

Fiction

  • The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, volume 5, by Beth Brower, published 2021, fiction. Witty and delightful. Loved it. Looking forward to volumes six and seven, and I’m glad there are many more to come. I can see myself rereading these often over the years, which is saying something since I’m not a rereader at all.
  • The Saint of Bright Doors, by Vajra Chandrasekera, published 2023, fantasy. Well crafted and inventive, with good prose and worldbuilding, and an interesting take on religion. Also, that twist near the end! Great and unexpected. There were some gross parts I didn’t care for, though, and even without taking those into consideration, I don’t think I would say that I loved the book. But I’m glad I read it.

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Booknotes 3.13

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Nonfiction

  • Four Thousand Weeks, by Oliver Burkeman, published 2021. Some good advice in here, but for the most part I feel like religion fills this need for me, so I wouldn’t say I loved it. I do enjoy Burkeman’s newsletter, though.
  • The Sisterhood, by Liza Mundy, published 2023. A history of women in the CIA. Interesting throughout. I’m glad things have improved somewhat over time.

Fiction

  • The Beast of Ten, by Beth Brower, fantasy, published 2018. A loose retelling of Beauty & the Beast. I liked it, but it was a bit slow going and the voice didn’t have the same spark and wit as the Unselected Journals.
  • The Big Score, by K. J. Parker, fantasy, published 2021. Quite enjoyed it. As I think I’ve said before, Parker’s writing really clicks with my brain, and this was no exception. Saloninus here is a fun amalgam, too.

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Booknotes 3.12

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Nonfiction

  • A Midwife’s Tale, by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, published 1990. It’s about the diary and life of Martha Ballard, a midwife living in Maine in the late 1700s and early 1800s. I really liked it. Loads of interesting details about life in that time and place.

Fiction

  • The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion volume 3, by Beth Brower, historical fiction, published 2020. The series continues to delight. I’m enjoying the character development, too.
  • The Hidden Girl and Other Stories, by Ken Liu, sf&f, published 2020, read for book group. Overall, I liked The Paper Menagerie more. Also wasn’t quite in the mood for a short story collection, which no doubt skewed my reading (and was no fault of the book). That said, I liked the title story a lot, and the uploaded-consciousness stories were interesting.
  • The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion volume 4, by Beth Brower, historical fiction, published 2021. So good. Humor seasoned with sorrow. A solid deepening of several different parts of the story, and more connections coming together, too, which I loved.

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Booknotes 3.11

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Nonfiction

  • The Education of an Idealist, by Samantha Power, published 2019. A memoir of serving in the Obama administration and as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Really good, right up my alley, liked it a lot.
  • Confessions of an LDS Sex Researcher, by Cameron Staley, published 2024. Not my usual fare, but the juxtaposition of sex lab researcher + member of the Church was intriguing. Good book. It might make more conservative readers uncomfortable, but I think it’s the kind of discomfort that helps you become a better person.

Fiction

  • The Hallowed Hunt, by Lois McMaster Bujold, fantasy, published 2005. Third book in the initial World of the Five Gods trilogy. So good — easily as compelling as Curse and Paladin. Great twist in the middle, too, and whew, that ending hit kind of hard for me. I love the portrayal of religion in this series, and I’m glad I still have a decent amount of Bujold left to read for the first time (looking forward to the Penric novellas!).
  • The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion volume 1, by Beth Brower, historical fiction (I guess? I’m not great at labeling genres), published 2019. A friend recommended these a while back and my wife read them and has been telling all her friends, who’ve all gone on to read and love them, and I decided it was time to stop missing out. Glad I did: this was delightful. Loved it, particularly the voice. Very much looking forward to reading the rest.
  • The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion volume 2, by Beth Brower, historical fiction, published 2019. I don’t often binge read these days — I like to space series out so they last longer — but I couldn’t help myself. (I also need to get caught up with my wife so we can talk about the series sans spoilers.) Witty and again delightful.

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Booknotes 3.10

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Nonfiction

  • The Disappearing Spoon, by Sam Kean (2010), about the periodic table. Enjoyed the heck out of it. Fascinating throughout, with lots of interesting history about the discovery of various elements and other tidbits.
  • Beauty Sick, by Renee Engeln (2017). An important corrective to my mental model, with what seems like good advice on what to do and what not to do.
  • A Molecule Away from Madness, by Sara Manning Peskin (2022), about cognitive neurology. Also fascinating and hard for me to put down. Maybe not as great for my hypochondria, though. But still very much worth reading.

Fiction

  • Children of Ruin, by Adrian Tchaikovsky (2019, science fiction), second in the Children of Time trilogy. It’s been five years since I read the first one, so my memory’s a bit fuzzy, but I think I liked this one about the same. Looking forward to Children of Memory. (And Tchaikovsky remains one of my favorite writers. I’m delighted that he’s so prolific.)

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Booknotes 3.9

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Nonfiction

  • New York Burning, by Jill Lepore (2005), about several fires set in New York City in 1741 and the accusations and trials that followed. (Sound similar to Salem? Yes, yes it does.) A bit slow going at times, but overall interesting and worth it. The first appendix, about the database Lepore built, was particularly interesting. Also, I didn’t know that the name of Fly Market came from the Dutch vly, “valley” after getting squished.
  • Why You Should Read Children’s Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise, by Katherine Rundell (2019). A lovely little book, and what an amazing title and cover. Rundell also wrote Super-Infinite, the John Donne biography I recently read.

Fiction

  • The Comedy of Errors, by William Shakespeare (1632, play). Read it for book group. A bit too silly for me (to be honest, I still don’t know whether I like Shakespeare or not), but there was some fun wordplay.
  • The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty (2023, fantasy). A bit earthy, but otherwise really liked it. Loved the medieval Indian Ocean setting, and the older protagonist. Looking forward to the sequels. (And at some point I need to go back and finish Chakraborty’s Daevabad trilogy.)
  • In an Absent Dream, by Seanan McGuire (2019, fantasy). Wayward Children book 4. As always, I loved the dark fairy tale feeling, with strong, heady undercurrents of danger and bittersweetness. The voice feels perfect for these types of tales. Also, I’d completely forgotten about the Mushroom Planet books! I loved those as a kid.

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Booknotes 3.8

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Nonfiction

  • A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies, by Bartolomé de las Casas (1552). Essentially a catalog of the awful horrors the Spaniards inflicted on Native Americans, some witnessed firsthand and others related secondhand to las Casas by priests in other provinces. Brutal and bleak, but I’m glad I read it.
  • Agent Zigzag, by Ben Macintyre (2007). A history of Edward Chapman, a double agent for Britain and Germany during WWII. My main takeaway, as is always the case when I read books about espionage: I am so not cut out to be a spy. Anyway, this book was interesting enough but felt like it lacked a bit of pop and zing, which I apparently crave when reading spy history. Still worth reading, though. I have most of the rest of Macintyre’s books and plan to read them.

Fiction

  • I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith (1948, general fiction). Absolutely delightful. Loved it. The voice is so good and the book is funny and charming and I just really, really liked it. More books like this, please. (Recommendations very welcome.)
  • The Heroes, by Joe Abercrombie (2011, fantasy), second of the First Law standalones. Dang, that man can write. It’s an extremely violent, visceral, and fairly earthy book, so there’s your strong caveat, but aside from all that I really, really liked it. (Quite a bit more than I liked Best Served Cold, by the way.) It’s a very well crafted novel, in my view — surprising plot twists, characters doing interesting and unexpected things (while staying in character), compelling voices (with zing! with pop!), and wry, funny prose with hardly a sentence out of place. The POV hopping during the first part of the battle was quite effective, too. Also, war: awful.

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