A young British boy is orphaned and is raised to be a wizard, inwardly dealing with the lack of parental figures in his life. Despite these parallels with Harry Potter this book is really its own beast, for better or worse.

I really enjoyed it – especially the character of Bartimaeus, the djinn that is called to assist (and actually give the boy his powers). The world of magic in this book is a little more complex (and interesting). Here these different magical beings are enclaved by their magician masters. The boy in this book barely has control of Bartimaeus, and that control slips out of his hands quickly. This djinn has a long history and his character, experience and clever quips (including footnotes) really make this book stand out.

The book seems to be aimed at a slightly younger audience, even though there are some abrupt deaths and some heavier themes. The bad guys are not so complex, but I think there is more room for that in the future books.

I would have liked to explore more about some of the issues that are only lightly touched on here – magicians vs. regular people, magical beings and what their life is like being temporary slaves, etc. But this book has a lot of heavy lifting to get the world introduced and allow us to see where the characters are starting. Luckily Bartimaeus is fully developed already and happy to cause trouble right away.

Next I am reading Platform Decay by Martha Wells.

The good news – this book had a lot of information about the art of improvisation (it isn’t just humor) and why aspects of it can help to improve your life. The book is fairly brief, and the writing style is friendly and easy to read.

Unfortunately I found a lot of the advice given was sort of common sense (to me) and sometimes it felt like a bit of a stretch to tie together these improv skills with so many real life situations.

The author has a deep interest in Eastern religious philosophy and frequently ties into various schools of thought, but despite this most of the advice in this book seems to be culturally centered around Americans.

I guess I was hoping for more nuts and bolts about how these things strategies can work for you. It would have been nice if the author took one more step in the direction of practical.

Next I am reading The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud.

I really enjoyed this book – written in a more intellectual style that is challenging, confusing (in a good way), and addresses some big issues without being preachy.

The format is simple – three main chapters that are named after hotels that are keys to the story. Each chapter is in a different stage of the story and we see characters in different stages while major hints about what is happening are dropping everywhere. After finishing the book I went back and saw how well the author had placed information that seemed superfluous at the time.

A major component of the story is the effects of the COVID pandemic on these people, and it was interesting to see all that craziness from a little distance (has it been five years already?) Unlike other books featuring people dealing with the pandemic, this one was written a little bit later when things have settled, and it was a much more interesting take.

One twist that I enjoyed (at the risk of spoiling a bit of the story) was that the guy who was hoping for (and probably needed) a clear transcription of his interview was in stark contrast to another guy who didn’t really want it but got more than he would have liked fully transcribed in the end. That one of them was a son and the other a mentee was a solid twist.

Excellent book – I really enjoyed the world that these people lived in, and appreciated that things weren’t dumbed down. The author trusts that you’ll be able to figure things out.

Next I am reading Improv Wisdom by Patricia Ryan Madson.

Two not great books in a row. This one has an interesting take on the labors of Hercules (Heracles) and tells his story through both his point of view and his patron goddess Hera. I won’t go into how the author’s take is interesting for fear of spoiling, but I did like the originality of it.

Unfortunately there isn’t much else I liked about the book. The author has modernized the speech to the level of a contemporary American high school student, which gets old quickly. Especially the character of Hera comes off as an angry tween – you’d think that living for an eternity as a god would make someone a little wiser and thoughtful.

A lot of the book is concerned with how Heracles treats with kindness, and through this the author manages to wedge in uses of alternative pronouns, as well as overly-emphasized LGBTQ themes. It all made me wonder who the target audience was for this book.

The format of alternating points of view means that we get a lot of direct messages to the read as if the character is praying or speaking to someone (or their image of someone) which means that there is a whole lot of the word “you”. For some reason it began to grate on me but it is throughout the whole book making it a chore to get through.

Oh well, hopefully the next book is better. I’m going to read Transcription by Ben Lerner.

This book seemed like it would have been better as a thought experiment short story than a full novel. The initial concept was cool, and it began at a very brisk pace, but things quickly got repetitive and boring.

The story is strung out a little too long and had me at times shaking my head. The writer kept raising the level of silliness, all the way to the ridiculous ending. The main character’s three year old son had horrible dialog. Yes, I am criticizing the word choices for a three year old boy, but it was so caustically awful that it pulled me right out of any possible suspension of disbelief.

Obviously the writer put a lot of thought into his message and I think that wrapping it in this particular story was not the right choice.

Next I am reading Wearing the Lion by John Wiswell.

Dipping back into non-fiction, this one interested me because it seemed like investigating what makes things funny and how that can be integrated into business would be useful. Maybe not for my own situation, but advising others who plan to go do business overseas in America.

I got a lot out of this book, especially the analysis of what makes something funny. By hearing from actual comedians as well as professors you could start to see the anatomy of a joke. I especially liked the model showing the structure of levity -> humor -> comedy, and understood the need to keep a sense of levity in my own teaching situations.

That being said humor is of course highly culture-dependent, and I would say 90% of what is in this book would absolutely not fly in a Japanese business situation.

There are sections of this book where they are clearly talking to American CEOs or leaders, and when they switch on the business-speak it was a little unnerving for me. I am so glad I am not subjected to that kind of vocab on a daily basis.

Next I am reading The Man Who Saw Seconds by Alexander Boldizar.

This book was sort of a slog to get through. It was full of intelligent writing that I would be happy to spend more time with if I felt more compelled by the story and characters. It is rare for me to read a book where I dislike every single one of the characters. A few good side characters appeared but they were quickly left in the dust.

This book was quite long – perhaps because it is coming back to back with another long (but more pleasurable) novel it came off quite exhausting to read. I felt like there were a lot of things that seemed unnecessary to the story.

A lot of the events in this book relate to history in Asia, specifically between Japan and Korea, and since I live right in the middle of it I had expected to be more interested. Maybe people unfamiliar with this chapter in their history might get more out of the story. I could see what was coming and so for me it was just a matter of waiting to get there.

Next I am reading Humor, Seriously by Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas.

At around a thousand pages this was a big book, but despite some embarrassingly bad dialogue and a lot of overly-horny people it was a pretty good reading experience.

I often talk about world -building – this book ups the scale quite a bit to universe building, and does a fantastic job introducing us to a wide and diverse bunch of planets. Part of the reason the book is so long is that the author really takes the time to sketch out the details of each place, to understand how it fits into the Commonwealth of planets that form the background for the story. It takes a lot of imagination to come up with a whole planet and biome, let alone 20 or 30 of them.

The science fiction here fits the definition of epic – I really loved how it zooms in and out of different places and situations. Some scenes were thrilling – for example the attack of the Alamo Avengers on the shipbuilding facility. It played off like an action scene out of a heist movie – so good.

I touched on the dialogue being on the corny side – although this wasn’t all the way through the book. Some characters just sounded bad. Ozzie, who had a truly boring point of view thread going through the whole book was particularly awful. His POV was the one that I ended up skimming as I did not really care about what he was up to – and I am still not sure what it contributed to the overall plot of the book.

Unfortunately the book ends on a cliffhanger, and I would have liked a little bit more resolution before we have to dive into another thousand page novel. One little hint inside this book seems to telegraph the downfall of the alien villains – I would have liked that to be a little more subtle, but I don’t know the actual ending yet so I can’t tell if I am right or not.

Speaking of the aliens, the (rather long) point of view chapter of the development of the alien race on the Dyson planet was really interesting. The writer really handled that well and I would like to read more like this – it reminded me of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s writing on spider development in Children of Time.

So, great book with a few reservations. I need to take a little break from the genre but I want to come back to this before I forget all the details. A few more books and I’ll come back to read the sequel.

Next I am reading Flashlight by Susan Choi.

I have read a few of the author’s books, most of which I have enjoyed. This one was sort of along the same vein as his other work, but to me the style of the book was a gamble that did not pay off.

Maybe it was the tone of the writing. It is very clever and full of witty quips. The humor runs throughout the book but it is also balanced with parables and symbolism. My issue was these were a little heavy-handed.

The idea of a robot becoming self-aware seems like it has been pretty well covered in other books. I think where this one was aiming was a humorous take on the issue, but for me it somehow didn’t land well. The Murderbot series did it much better (and more efficiently).

I enjoyed the adventure of the story, and the humor mostly was well done. The spooky post-apocalyptic world was really interesting as a setting. But as an overall piece of work I thought it could have been a little more subtle in its messages.

Seems like this book may continue as a series, but for me I think I had enough of the character and the world that they live in.

Next I am reading Pandora’s Star by Peter F. Hamilton.

When I heard that the author spent about 20 years writing this book I immediately thought to myself, “that makes sense…” At first I didn’t realize just how much I was going to like the book. It started off with some scenes from India and New York, and then the author starts laying down the ends of some threads that would take a very long time to reach the end of. This was a very ambitious book, full of thoughts and opinions and beautifully written descriptions and imagery.

I don’t know a lot about Indian culture, but there is enough here to really feel like you are living in it. It was a bit shocking – the author is speaking about individual characters as well as the national character. She does not pull punches and I am sure that some Indian people might feel a little offended. The author delves deep into the psyche of Indians – what makes them tick?

I especially loved the way things were illustrated in the book through language. Paragraphs dripped with images that must have taken a long time to craft.

The author managed to find time to address a lot of issues in this book: life as an expat, filial responsibility, the key to sharing recipes between families, the power and purpose of art, how people can be handcuffed by their culture, and where kebabs really come from. I found myself highlighting passages at about triple the rate I highlight other books.

It was a very long book but I was so glad to read it. Sometimes I had trouble keeping track of the characters, but mainly that was on me, because I wasn’t used to Indian names (and some of them are similar). The author doesn’t shy away from using local language as you would expect the characters to do – so I spent a while online tracking down what this and that was.

Really a great book – one of the best of this year so far. Next I am reading Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

When I lived in San Diego a long time ago I sometimes met my grandparents’ friends, Bob and Jeane Wade. They were a really friendly, talkative couple, older like my grandparents and although I didn’t have much in common with them they were fun to listen to. I remember seeing a movie poster in their study – Kitten With A Whip – and hearing from my grandfather that the movie was based on one of his books.

Years later I figured I would track down Bob’s book, and ended up learning that he wrote as part of team under the pen name “Whit Masterson”, and later on his own after his writing partner passed away. I was able to find this book (also made into a movie), and I enjoyed reading it.

The book is pretty wholesome despite being a crime mystery – a guy gets blown up within the first few minutes of the story. But it is set in the 1950s, and the idea that a police officer could be anything but a good cop is so far out that it forms a twist in the story.

I liked the book, plenty of logic and the dialogue reminded me of an earlier time that I saw mainly through old movies when I was a kid. I plan to read more if I can find the books – it is much more interesting to read when you know who was writing it.

Next I am reading The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai.

Documenting history is clearly a difficult task. What gets into the history book and is taken for fact can be anywhere from zero to one hundred percent wrong. This book takes us a hundred years in the future to look back at a key moment in time from 2014. So of course you have to know going in that what we think in that future time will probably diverge from the truth.

Knowing this means that it sort of spoiled the twist for me. From the start we can kind of see what will happen, despite the author’s attempts to bury us with red herrings and “historical” details of how the world went to shit in the past hundred years.

The first portion of the book (in the future) goes back and gives us an incredible amount of detail into what a researcher thinks happened around this key event, and we learn how obsessed he is. But I think all the effort we put into reading this didn’t quite pay off at the end.

It is an interesting idea for a book – the storyline and approach are unique and we can feel the tension building up as we wonder what is really true (and whether we will actually find out by the end of the book). The writing is quite good – especially the poetry and descriptions of nature. Little hints are planted here and there that will only be found upon reading the end of the book – I liked this attention to detail.

Although the author really lays on the exposition to lead us through history I did like seeing how these events changed the lifestyle of the people remaining in that distant future, and I wish there was more time spent on showing it – but that would make the book a little too SciFi, I guess.

Next I am reading Badge of Evil by Whit Masterson.

Not as good as the first book (but then aren’t most origin stories more interesting?) but still not a bad effort. Most of the same elements are here, and it again gave me vibes of Reacher, but also some flashes of Spenser, especially A Catskill Eagle.

Maybe I didn’t enjoy this as much as the first because the main character is for the most part a lone wolf, and that deprives us of the dialog between allies that makes Spenser and Hawk so engaging as protagonists.

The pacing of the book also felt less fluid – there are several big sections and the connections between them were a little abrupt.

But these were entertaining books to read and I am looking forward to the next book in the series.

My next read is What We Can Know by Ian McEwan.