A short book on some ideas for why things in America are going the way they are in 2022. The author traces the problems of today back through time to around 1970, when he thinks America went the wrong direction.

Whether the writer’s ideas are correct or not is probably not important for me, but rather this book was an interesting look at how the USA never really moved past slavery, and how a sort of hyper-individualism is causing problems for everyone.

Now I live in a very collectivist society, and although there are plenty of weak points, the strong points of living in Japan are higher than average social cohesion and people willing to make personal sacrifices (in privacy, personal space, or even freedom) to help the greater good.

I appreciated the intelligent analysis of the problems facing Americans these days, and I think it should prompt some healthy discussion. Nothing is black and white but these are some starting points to look at where things might have gone wrong and a possible roadmap to improvement.

There are some broad ideas for recovery, but they felt pretty naive to me, and didn’t delve into details that might make these recommended steps feel more realistic.

There was also a lot of history – both personal and national. I could have done with less of the national history in this book, but the writer’s personal history is closely tied with some key events in the birth of the USA, so I suppose we have to go with it. Much more interesting was the memoir-esque portions that had a good blend of nostalgia and humor.

Next I’m reading Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel.

A while back I read Piranesi by this author, and thought since I enjoyed it so much it might be interesting to read some of her previous works. Little did I know that this book, written back in the 1990s, was such a huge book.

A book of this size allows for a great deal of flexibility and pacing, and certainly the story proceeds at a very slow pace. It was tough to get started, and there were parts in the middle where my attention was wandering, but in the end the book wrapped up with an excellent resolution.

Later I read that the book actually began as sort of serialized short stories, that gradually grew into the complete book. This made sense, as each section worked well within itself but sometimes jarred with the ones around it.

What I liked about reading this was that it felt so very British, containing characters that were warm, polite, sarcastic, and occasionally quite funny. The villains were written especially well.

I think in the end the ambitious scale tripped up the flow of the story for me, and so I would have liked to seen a more slimmed down version of this – I felt like I was reading the “director’s cut” and some judicious editing would have helped out.

There were some hints of Piranesi here – you could see where the idea of that story had occurred to the author – and for that glimpse of the future it was worth reading for me.

Next I’m reading The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon by Bill McKibben.

This is one of those books that convinces you utterly and beyond doubt that there is no way that you have writing talent. No talent like this, anyway. I read later on Wikipedia that Donna Tartt takes about ten years to write each of her books, and that at least made me feel a little better.

Richly detailed, with few shortcuts, this book tells the story of a boy who suffers a horrible tragedy at 13 years old, and follows him as he grows up and makes his own way in the world. Along the way the journey delves into the surprisingly dark and murky New York art and antique markets and the high society that vie for its treasures, drugs and alcohol, furniture restoration, the Ukrainian and Russian underworld, haunting empty houses on the outskirts of Las Vegas, and a full and extensive look at what it means to appreciate, love or simply recognize art.

This is a big book and I couldn’t possibly do it justice with a summary here. Thanks to the detail provided it really puts you there – into the head of this person as they go through the process of growing up (a process that isn’t easy in the first place). We’re so deep in his head that when he makes bad decisions we cringe, and through a lot of the book my nerves were jangling on his behalf.

The writing of the characters was especially well done – even minor characters felt like they had a backstory. A taxi driver taking someone to the bus station reveals that he is a part time magician and gives advice. A doorman does a favor for a kid in need and we find a charming story behind it. All these little details contribute to a long story that was very satisfying and a pleasure to read.

As a person who loves traveling by plane there was a beautifully written section on air travel:

“…I’ve been in a kind of bardo state, flying around in a gray roar, climbing with drop-spattered windows to laddered sunlight, descending to rainclouds and rain and escalators down and down to a tumble of faces in baggage claim, eerie kind of afterlife, the space between earth and not-earth, world and not-world, highly polished floors and glass-roof cathedral echoes and the whole anonymous concourse glow, a mass identity I don’t want to be a part of and indeed am not a part of, except it’s almost as if I’ve died, I feel different, I am different, and there’s a certain benumbed pleasure in moving in and out of the group mind, napping in molded plastic chairs and wandering the gleaming aisles of Duty Free…”

On a surprising note the main character at the end spends time reviewing what he learned, what he (and the author) want to say to you, the reader, and provides a framework to analyze what you’ve read and what they want you to take away from it. This was written in a very natural way – and I appreciated it as I believe it helped me (and my thinking) land closer to where the author hoped I’d be after reading the book.

It was a long book, and I feel a little drained after reading it. Next I’m reading another long book, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. After this one I’ll need a light pamphlet to balance things out…

I’m not sure what kinds of books qualify as a cozy reading experience for me, but this was one of them. Maybe it is because the characters are recovering from some kind of tragedy or trauma, without actually focusing on the trauma itself. Maybe cozy books show a group of warm and kind characters struggling to find happiness. There is a lot of kindness in this book.

On the face of it, a book with an octopus as one of the main characters feels a little gimmicky. But written well, the octopus and his point of view are pretty believable, and they are a key part of the events in this book.

The story was a little predictable, and I felt like the author was circling around the resolution, waiting for all the characters to make the necessary progress with themselves before the final act could actually happen. Sometimes I read situations that I thought were trying to be funny, but I never really laughed out loud. In the end I wasn’t sure it was supposed to be comedic or not, which is usually a bad sign.

This was a well-written book and I felt warm and happy finishing it. Sometimes we need to read books like that.

Next I’m reading The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.

Full of weaponized snark, this book was a sort of nerd-porn pick-me-up that entertained me for a couple of hours. What’s not to like?

My only problem with this book was sometimes it was a little too meta for me, but I understand that is the writer’s style and I have come to expect it. Since the story is quite short there isn’t much depth to the characters but just enough to serve the story.

The story was good – just enough explanation of the science to make it barely believable enough, but nobody in this book is taking things too seriously and it would be a shame if the reader did.

It is good to read stories like this now and then, as sort of an amuse-boche before your next book.

Next I’m reading Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt.

I like books with time travel so I picked up this newer book from the library. It starts off by showing what the main character’s life is like – very modern, and apparently very boring (according to her, I guess). Once the background information is set, the time travel begins and for the most part I enjoyed the mechanism and the “rules” that must be followed.

The book worked well as a fun thought experiment, and a cautionary tale to remind you to be sure to enjoy the here and now – there is no guarantee it’ll be any better in the future (and from a health standpoint, it is almost guaranteed that it’ll be worse).

Where this book missed for me was the loads and loads of pinpoint nostalgia and cultural references, mainly for a teenage girl in the 90’s growing up in New York City. There is a certain amount you’d add to build the world, but this felt like it was a memory download from the author more than anything that helped move along the story.

The main character bugged me a little – she seems to take time travel as not a really big deal. Without knowing the rules she goes off to take an SAT prep course. A little introspection and curiosity would have been more normal, wouldn’t it?

The story was a little predictable, and I was hoping that the author would be a little more imaginative with the possibilities here – dream bigger!

So in conclusion, nice ideas, odd situations but no real risks or threats, and a sort of harmless predictable resolution. I was a little disappointed.

Next I’m reading something completely different – John Scalzi’s Kaiju Preservation Society.

There are some twists in this book so I don’t think I should say much about the story here – but I did like the initial premise and then started to like it less the further along the story went.

The writing here is quite good – sort of like getting into someone’s head and hearing their thinking process (not unlike The Martian by Andy Weir). There are some contemporary references, and even some American racial issues that didn’t seem to fit in to me. Finally I felt like the author was throwing things in and the ending sort of dragged for me.

But the initial thrill of the situation that the main character finds himself in was great – in the future I’ll be looking for books that follow a lead-in like that.

Next I’m reading This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub.

I like books about journeys, and I thought this one might be fun – a couple who just started dating sail together from Los Angeles, California with a goal of crossing the Pacific Ocean to at least Australia, and depending on how it works out, even further.

The author of this non-fiction book has a great sense of humor, and really does a good job of pointing out the funny and embarrassing moments of their adventure. She is very direct, which I found refreshing, and the book is full of great details and beautiful scenes.

One problem she has is that something she freely admits – she tends to worry a lot. She really goes over all the (fatal) possibilities, whereas her companion seems to be too far in the opposite direction, ignoring her worries and relying and his own positive vibes. There are a lot of problems in a journey of this length and duration, but unfortunately she often telegraphs the surprising troubles so that we can see them coming.

Although they had some troubles, they also had some great adventures, and I enjoyed reading about their freedom and the resolution of their trip. It was interesting to contrast this book with another I read a long time ago called Dove, also about a young sailor trying something exciting and adventurous early in their life. Dove was more about the journey, while this book was a little more focused on the relationship.

Next I’m reading City of Orange by David Yoon.

The movie based on this book was recommended to me by my mom, but I thought I’d read the book first. It was one of my favorites of this year.

The story follows two characters, but unconventional and not the kind of people I usually read about in fiction. Captain Kidd is an old guy, easing into the end of his days, but he still has a wealth of experience, sharp vision, and a keen sense of what he needs to put up with and what he doesn’t (or shouldn’t have to). Most of the story has the characters traveling through a very wild and chaotic landscape – the North Texas territory on the cusp of statehood. We don’t know who is the law, who are bandits, and we depend on Captain Kidd’s keen eyes and knowledge of human nature.

The other character, Johanna, is a white child recently recovered from captivity of a tribe of Kiowa, and we are treated to occasional glimpses of what she is thinking and how she sees the strange world of the white man. I loved the way that both characters influenced each other’s development.

The writer wrote with skill about the nature all around them – the beauty and the freedom that they find out there, and also the fleeting safety and danger of the towns they sometimes visited. The words are written in a sort of poetic style – but not syrupy or gushing. The writing really highlighted the natural environment without explicitly pointing things out.

Excellent book! Next I’m reading some Australian humor – Love with a Chance of Drowning by Torre DeRoche.

This was a quick, fun read. It is my first book by this author, and hopefully their other books are as well-written.

The story is fast-paced and reminded me a lot of the old TV show Lost – several characters with deep backstories revealed in flashbacks, struggling to survive in a very demanding location. The author did a great job of cutting the fat and leaving just the lean meat of the story so I was turning pages like an airport thriller.

But although there are a lot of stressful situations for the characters, there is also a lot of history and I felt like the book set in the 1960’s really captured world events that were happening at the time.

On the downside I thought the ending of the story worked a little hard to tie up all the loose ends quickly and almost anti-climatically. There were also times that I could see the author sort of forcing in contemporary social issues (American racism, women’s empowerment) into this fictional 1960’s world – and it stuck out to me as throwing a bone to the modern reader. Not a big deal, but it did catch my attention.

Overall a great book: fun to read, good characters, a believable exciting story in a unique location, and well researched on top of that.

Next I’m reading News of the World by Paulette Jiles.

Despite a promising theme (a strange virus spreading) and a lot of connections with Japan, this collection of short stories felt roughly cobbled together. There were some good ideas here that probably should have stayed as short stories. The “connections” between stories really stood out as overly obvious and felt like they had been added in after the fact to try to make things more cohesive.

So, I didn’t like this book.

I really enjoyed Cloud Atlas, which is similar in scope (and intent?) and written with skill and subtlety compared to this effort. While that book gave hope, this book is full of bleak scenes of death and hopelessness, loneliness and dysfunctional families and relationships. I’m guessing the writer was working out some issues from the recent pandemic. Therapeutic for him, not entertaining for me.

Also, many of the characters in this book are Americans from a Japanese background, or Japanese people living in Japan and there were a lot of racial issues that are sort of tangentially addressed. The Japanese people living in Japan didn’t follow Japanese cultural norms, and almost all the characters felt shallow and not fleshed out. The Japan in this book was just a collection of pop culture references that didn’t ring true to me.

Therefore, I think I’ll have to move on to something a little different. Next I’m reading The Lioness by Chris Bohjalian.

Another book on how the brain works – for some reason I’ve been interested in reading these kinds of books as if I’m searching for the missing instruction manual to my own brain.

There was a lot of good stuff in this book, and a lot of stuff that wasn’t so useful. It sometimes felt like the writer just couldn’t stop and ended up pouring in all the little pet peeves he has had over the years – prostate cancer diagnoses, car repair estimates, and more.

However I did get a lot out of this book. The descriptions of the two states of the mind – active analytical and dream-state, and how there is a daily limit to how much analytical you can do. There was a lot on categorization and how you can (and should) offload information from your brain to the external world.

The focus on developing critical thinking skills when dealing with information (because of all the low quality information that is out there) was appreciated. Also he writes that we have to show understanding – not only to help other people but the characteristic of understanding has some strong positive effects for ourselves long term.

Finally it was interesting to think about where we go from here – now that just about everything is instantly available online it is far more important to have some strategies for selecting what you want.

Next I’m reading How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu.

A book on some of the lesser-known destinations in Italy written by someone who has chosen Italy as their home, and certainly has spent a lot of time traveling.

Part of the reason I picked up this book was because of the extensive wine tastings we did as part of our own enological explorations of the country, and also there is a possibility that we’ll be back in Italy after COVID settles down.

I’ve read another of the author’s books, Under a Tuscan Sun, and I liked the starting over in a new country aspect of that book. This one has a different tone – sort of a dreamy travel log of various regions. It reads a little too poetic/romantic for my tastes (she is actually a poet as well so it should be expected) but the parts of food and wine were fun to read.

As she is already a sort of literary Italy celebrity she has no problem setting up special arrangements – friends and connections hook her up with tastings and the chef often steps out from the kitchen to answer her questions. It is nice to dream but I couldn’t help thinking that these kinds of experiences would be out of reach for commoners like me. Still, this is a book about dreaming, and as long as you treat it like that, or as a very fluffy guidebook to unusual areas, I think it will be an enjoyable read.

Next I’m reading The Organized Mind by Daniel J. Levitin.

A book full of lyrical prose, a blurry romantic look at France, and a large heaping serving of sex. I liked it!

The writing in this book is especially beautiful – written in the third person (usually) from the point of view of an (ostensibly) older man staying in a small town in France ruminating about the romantic life of a younger man discovering love with a local woman. As you can see, there is a lot going on here, and sometimes the reader is at a loss to figure out who is saying what, and what is imagined and what is truly observed.

The writing about France is especially well done – you can get the feel of visiting these places and have the sense of time passing languidly in the heat of the summer sun.

There’s plenty of sex in this book – unapologetic and handled in a way that isn’t lurid or gratuitous. It is not something that you could cut out – it is critical to the story – but it must have been pretty shocking when people first read it back in the late 60’s.

I enjoyed reading this book – I think the story (and how it ended) will stay with me for a long time. I’d like to read books like this that use a country (or a city) as a main character like this one did.

Next I’m reading See You in the Piazza by Frances Mayes.

I haven’t read his other book on food, but I was interested in seeing what kind of things go on in the human body when faced with a steady diet of highly processed foods.

After reading this book it seems like the consumption of processed foods in America is common, and that obesity and other health problems can be tied to this over-consumption. I think most of this is outlined in the previous book that I haven’t read, but here the writer focuses on the psychological hook that food makers use to get people to continue eating their products.

I knew after leaving the USA that the foods I ate there were not especially healthy, and over time I’ve changed over to a much healthier diet here in Japan. Kuniko and I spend the time and money necessary to make what we eat out of whole foods and avoid processed foods and additives as much as possible.

However not everyone has the luxury of time and money to do that, and this book shows some of the ways big food companies take advantage of that. Waving the flag of convenience, “new and improved”, or “new flavor”, the foods attract customers who don’t realize what they are signing up for.

The book spends some time explaining why diets don’t work for most people, and it was interesting to see that most of the big food companies went out and bought diet food companies – so they could make money getting you fat and then make money getting you thinner, too. Scary stuff!

The writing style sometimes gets a little preachy, and the writer has a clear agenda so the stories and evidence given here should be considered as coming from that particular viewpoint. I think this book would really be effective for people that don’t really care too much about what they are eating – understanding who is controlling what you eat (and what you want to eat) is the first step to a better diet and healthier life.

Next I’m reading A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter.