This book was a dud. It is a book written in the category of “thriller” but it felt amateurish. The writing style is ponderous and awkward, and there way too many instances of telling us about someone rather than showing us.

The men in the book are all bad. The women tend to be good, but naive. The women in this story pull together to become more powerful and to overcome the bad guys.

There is an entire section of the book where a person is called “it” rather than “he” or “she” simply to avoid giving away the gender of the bad guy. With a little more effort this could have been handled more elegantly.

All of the story takes place during the pandemic, and for some reason all the masks and social distance rules are brought up again and again, for no apparent reason other than to point out that it was taking place during the pandemic.

But I did finish the book, so there must have been something worth reading in there.

Next I am reading Unbeaten Tracks in Japan by Isabella Bird.

A short book of musings on what the author went through growing up, with parallels made to plants and animals in nature.

I enjoyed this book as it showed a childhood different from most, and it took an artistic view on just about everything. Coming of age is never an easy path, but the way the author thought about it in comparison with other creatures was creative.

There are a lot of great memories in here, and I was glad to read that her mother was still alive to read these and see things from her child’s point of view. Obviously she did a great job raising her kids, although it must have been exhausting.

This book was nice walk off the pathway of books I have read recently, and although I’m not really into poetry the prose here strikes a happy medium. Well written.

Next I am reading The Darkness of Others by Cate Holahan.

This short thriller drops you right into the middle of the action, with both you and the main characters unaware of just about everything around them except for what is seen. It is a tricky way to start a story, and provides a lot of mystery.

There are a lot of memorable scenes in the story – and I felt like they were written with the screen in mind. Is this book hoping to be a movie? A mini-series?

As a book, it was a little too unbelievable for my tastes. Like an attempt at the evolution of zombie stories, but I guess I was hoping for more. Especially at the beginning when it could have been anywhere – once they said the word “London” I felt a big drop in my interest in the book.

Next I am reading World of Wonder by Aimee Nezhukumatathil.

Fresh from reading a traditional private eye mystery from Robert Crais, this book was the same genre but a completely different style. It moved in a slow, deliberate way that sort of mimicked the setting – the Irish countryside far from the big city of Dublin.

Because of the unique setting and storytelling style, I had no real expectations and without knowing anything about the plot beforehand I was totally unaware of how things might unfold. I’m glad I approached the novel that way – it made it more fun to read.

The story was a little predictable, especially the twists, and the main character was supposed to be a retired American cop living in Ireland but for me I didn’t buy it. He seemed a little too Irish and blended in a little too easily. This isn’t a book about moving to a new country and starting over, but the author could have added a little more to the culture shock side of things to make it more realistic.

So, I enjoyed the book for the novelty of the format, and learned a few Irish English words. Not a bad mystery but not a great one.

Next I am reading Red River Seven by A,J. Ryan.

I started reading the Elvis Cole books because I missed Spenser, and while Elvis still doesn’t quite measure up, he has always been able to scratch the same itch.

What makes these books entertaining for me are the side characters, especially Joe Pike. I would have liked more Joe in this one, but I’ll take what I can get here.

The story was just OK, the jokes fell a little flat this time, the ending felt a little unsteady and weird, and something about the book as a whole felt like a middling effort.

It was worth reading, but I’m looking forward to the next Joe Pike book down the line.

Next I am reading The Searcher by Tana French.

What makes a dish a “national dish”? What is your country’s national dish? Can there be more than one? Can countries share a national dish?

After a pretty long book I’m not sure I’m any closer to knowing the answer to any of these questions. I read about a lot of foods, but I also got a great big helping of sociology, history, and politics. Of course the foods we eat are enjoyed in the shadow of these big issues – but shouldn’t eating be a non-political act? I don’t think that people should be adamant about where the dish comes from or what ingredients are required – if it is delicious and we share it together then it is mission accomplished.

Maybe I am naive but it felt like the author went looking for controversy here, and spent a lot of time, money and effort to visit various countries on what seems like a fool’s errand. Was she hoping to get everyone to agree on something? You can walk around a big city and find people to agree or disagree with whatever facts you’d care to throw out there.

I just would prefer to hear the history of a dish and learn how it came to be, in all its variations and regional differences. I know that some countries have invested political capital in the idea that a dish is unique to that country, but maybe the author would have benefitted from starting from a point before that political statement was made.

I enjoyed the book overall, but some of these points kept coming back to me and it was a little frustrating after a while. However the extremely well-written epilogue on borsch and the conflict between Ukraine and Russia was some of the best writing of the whole book. More like that, please!

Next I am reading Racing the Light by Robert Crais.

The second book in the Dark Tower series was written 13 years after the first book, and you can really feel the style change. I guess that a lot had happened to the author during that time, and he had a lot of hit novels that matured and defined his style. I preferred the loneliness of the first book, and the more meditative mood – this one adds some sidekicks and their own backstories.

There’s plenty of action thanks to this change, however, and it makes for an entertaining reading experience. Not as deep as before, but it really keeps you turning the pages.

One thing I disliked was one of the characters, a young black woman, is a schizophrenic and her alternate personality speaks in a pretty flagrant black dialect. The portions of the book written in that voice take a while to get through, and I’m not sure that the effort is worth it. I don’t have any particular qualms against it racially, but purely as its ponderosity (is that a word?) makes for a tiring time for this reader.

When I get another blank in my reading schedule I’ll continue the series. For now, the next book I am reading is National Dish by Anya Von Bremzen.

All about Jim Jones and the people who followed him, this book goes into a lot of detail about just about everyone and everything that led up to the group suicide in Guyana back in the late 1970s.

I didn’t know much about the group or Jim Jones before I read the book. Growing up in the Bay Area in the 1970’s it seemed like I was closer than I knew to the activities of the Peoples Temple, and it was intriguing to read about their move to Ukiah and what they were doing there.

The book is extremely well-researched, and if anything it goes into almost too much detail. I sometimes lost track of who was who with so many members coming and going. The book took a deeper look at what motivated the group, and the long history of religion for Jim Jones pointed at a start that was very different from how it ended.

I thought that the book did a good job avoiding titillation and instead showed just how a huge group of people could end up following a strong personality like Jones. In an effort to simplify the narrative it seems like many things that were fairly important got lost or deliberately excluded.

The book doesn’t do a lot of judging, but rather points out a wide range of things that may have led to the tragedy. For example, some members stayed part of the group because they strongly believed in the socialism that the group practiced. The group (and Jim Jones) seemed to think that if they showed themselves living peacefully and equitably in a socialist model that it might lead to a greater change worldwide.

But things slowly go off the rails, and it was interesting to read just how it happened.

The writing style of this book is a little old fashioned (I read the word “chums” for the first time in a long time), and I felt like it could have been written a bit more smoothly to keep the reader’s interest as the accounting and politics often went pretty deep. Overall, though, it was a pretty good book and I’m glad I read it.

Next I am reading The Drawing of Three by Stephen King.

I haven’t read this book in a long time, so I thought I’d re-read it and see if I still enjoyed it as much as I remembered. And I did!

Since I read this book the first time I have read other westerns – Virgil Cole from Robert B. Parker (who seems a lot like Call from Lonesome Dove) and the poetic and sometimes shocking west written by Cormac McCarthy. This book still holds its own, with classic storytelling that features long character arcs, and great dialogue, especially between Gus and Call.

I had forgotten what happened with just about every character, so I could feel the shock and tragedy again with some surprise. I’m looking forward to an older age when every book I re-read will seem new to me!

I’m not sure I’ll read the other books in the series – it seems like a beautifully written and self-contained story that ended to my satisfaction. But maybe down the road I’ll give them a try.

Next I am reading The Road to Jonestown by Jeff Guinn.

I had heard good things about this book but I ended up disappointed with it. I almost gave up near the middle of the book, but there were just enough threads worth following that I managed to finish it.

The idea of the world and how each person had the ability to control a “fury” (a sort of elemental spirit) – that was interesting. They didn’t really delve into this relationship between the humans and their furies – how does it work? What are the limitations?

Instead of explaining the rules and relationship, we have people using their furies on each other like a Pokémon battle. The writing doesn’t really draw us into the world – things happening seem like the solutions to a developing plot rather than a product of one.

The story was predictable – and even without reading the next five books in the series I can guess where it is going.

This series might be better for a teen audience except for the occasional scenes of cannibalism and rape. Some of the goofy lines felt like they came right out of Scooby Doo – yikes!

Next I am reading Lonesome Dove (again) by Larry McMurtry.

I liked the idea behind this book – take a deep dive into the history of food, identify some ingredients that were lost to time, and see if it is possible to find them again (and cook with them). Written by someone who loves eating, cooking, history, and is overall very curious – the book takes us to various places in search of ingredients and people who know more about them.

The author apparently has a lot of time and motivation to research these ingredients (it was written during the pandemic). Apparently they also have a nearly unlimited budget to fly all over the place and eat at nice restaurants. What happened to eating local?

Although I liked the idea, the whole pursuit sort of created a dilemma for me: by increasing interest in rare ingredients will we be able to sustainably produce them for a wider audience, or are we putting the final nail in the coffin after it becomes a rare luxury found only in Michelin starred restaurants?

The first section of the book deals with some eggs laid by a certain kind of insect found living on a certain lake in Mexico. The author and some other people lament that the eggs have become a lost delicacy, and pollution and demand has made them even harder to source. Will serious foodies and readers of this book fly down to Mexico to get a last taste? Or will they fund measures to bring the food back from the brink? My cynical side says it is the former.

Because of travel restrictions the author didn’t really write about Asia, but still there is a wide range of different foods. I also liked that the author called out the monoculture of Big Food, and how hard it is to avoid processed food or food additives these days.

It was a good book but I felt a little like it may end up doing more harm than good, at least to some of the more endangered food items out there.

Next I am reading Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher.

This is the second (or third?) time to read this book, easily more than ten years since the last time. I never read the complete series – maybe I lost interest after the third book, so I thought I should give it another go.

The story contained a lot more details than I remembered, which is a good sign for a re-read. Also it contains a foreword that is written more recently, which is one of the benefits of reading an ebook version.

I enjoyed the book – it went by quickly – and it has all the marks of a typical story by Stephen King. There are also the italicized flashbacks of some characters, complete with all their backgrounds and motivations. I’m not a big fan of these diversions from the main story, but it is just the part of reading books by this author.

In a few weeks the next book in the series should come up from the library – I’m looking forward to continuing the journey.

I’m really glad I read this book – a deep thinking look into what consciousness means in humans and whether that idea of consciousness can be seen in other things. What is the difference between the mind and the brain? Is it possible for machine to evolve to have consciousness? Have they done it already?

I liked that the author went into the history and different schools of thought behind the topic. In the end notes the author claims that she is writing this book as a layman, but it is so well thought out and researched that I don’t think you can classify her as that.

One unique point that is repeatedly brought up is that the author attended a religious university and was brought up as a religious fundamentalist – and ended up losing her faith while studying. This gives her a unique viewpoint into the different theories out there, and also shows the ability to change her opinion based on what new information or arguments that she comes across.

This book is pretty deep and covers a lot of ground. I especially enjoyed reading about her thoughts on robots and AI chatbots, and the predilection of humans to prematurely think of things as living organisms (in their own image).

Also there was a good section on the idea of the internet as an evolution of human consciousness. If users are like neurons, and viral memes and messages are like neurons forming links and pathways that lead to memory and knowledge – you might be able to say the internet is a conscious organism.

Finally the section on algorithms (and AI) was interesting as it seems like more and more the algorithms are unexplainable to humans. At some point do we need to just give up trying to explain how they work? To give up and enjoy the ride? At the rate of the expansion in complexity, it might already be too late.

I like books that make me think about things in different ways, so this was a very enjoyable read for me. It was a little bit challenging in terms of the use of academic/technical terms, and sometimes I thought ideas and schools of thought were over-labeled and therefore possibly over-simplified. Still – if there reader wants to dig deeper the author left plenty of threads to pull on.

Next I am reading The Lost Supper by Taras Grescoe.

This book takes a unique approach to give a message to the reader. It starts out with a family going on vacation, staying at a nice AirBnB rental in Long Island, far from the city and their daily stresses.

Then the writer introduces some complications, slowly and then more quickly, and we watch how the people involve navigate this increasingly complex social situation. In the end the message is pretty clear, without being beat over the head with it. It is kind of like a horror story in that scary things are happening, but the stakes are different from your normal horror story.

The writing style of this book is slightly on the side of poetic, with plenty of repetition to illustrate points, and an odd insistence on the use of brand names – this choice becomes clearer later on.

I liked how things developed in this story without getting bogged down in details. Things happen that are completely unexpected and there is an allusion to the source but we don’t need to spend a lot of time and energy to concretely link the source with the result. It is enough to say that the source is the root issue here in this book.

I’m struggling to describe the book without giving away the premise. I just worry that the people that need to receive the message the author is broadcasting here are probably the ones who won’t get it.

Next I am reading God, Human, Animal, Machine by Meghan O’Gieblyn.

This series is really good. The stakes aren’t always end of the world, but the character writing and the introduction of new characters seems to keep things fresh.

As usual there is plenty of witty dialogue, that is clever and funny. Sometimes it is a little over the top but it seems to be in service to the characters, and is plenty entertaining.

I’m enjoying these books as fast-moving distractions, and I think there are still a few left in the series.

If there is anything to complain about it might be the author’s reliance on the cliffhanger, which in turn relies on the reader not being able to see the situation, only read about it. Some events in this particular book couldn’t be done without this trick – it’ll be interesting to see if they can adapt it to the TV series.

Next I am reading Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam.