I like reading about solo journeys, and this was technically solo although having some camels and a dog as traveling companions threaten that definition.

Traveling across half of Australia with some tamed wild camels, the author explains in detail how she ended up doing this trip, which was featured in a 1978 issue of National Geographic magazine. There are always a lot of questions on why she did the journey, and this book has some answers. It seemed to be written as a response to people who were curious after reading the magazine article.

She seems like a pretty live wire back in the 1970s and there is definitely an agenda in this book – to point out the poor treatment of the Aboriginal people, call out misogyny, and to shock the audience a bit with the differences between the National Geographic experience and the more personal one that she went through.

I liked the book, and although I wasn’t as curious or interested in the traveling with camels aspect, it was interesting to read about travel in a wide open and dangerous place. In the afterword the author says that it is probably impossible to do the trip these days – there are fences and checkpoints to get in the way of a true solo experience.

She has a great writing style – startling to think that she was in her 20s when she wrote it – and although there was a little woo-woo in there I was following along on the journey with a lot of anticipation.

If there was any downside to this book for me, it would be all the time spent before the trip which was important to the success of the adventure but wasn’t as interesting for me. There wasn’t really a solid plan to go – so the reader has to watch her put up with a lot of crap with the possibility of no eventual payoff. Of course from the cover of the book we know it was a successful journey, but the is a lot of aimlessness in the beginning.

I was able to read the National Geographic story after finishing the book, and especially the photos were well done. I wouldn’t recommend reading the book without first flipping through the photos to whet the appetite.

Next I am reading The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab.

Before reading this book I would have had no real mental picture when hearing the term “Dark Southern Gothic” but this book was an educational experience for me.

A collection of short stories published in the early ‘50s, it more than holds up today and shows some of the same racial and immigration tensions existed then as now. The style of writing also holds up – it doesn’t feel like something written 70 years ago. The stories are varied and powerful, and each one had me pondering the message. These were really good.

I guess the only bad news here is that there aren’t a lot of other works by this author as she passed away fairly early. I wonder how many authors she influenced, and where I can find more work like this. For me the southern setting wasn’t the key point, but the slow slide into darker areas that each character experienced.

Next I’m dipping back into non-fiction, reading Tracks by Robyn Davidson.

This book was recommended to me by ChatGPT based on my prompts for similar books in feeling/tone to A Gentleman in Moscow. While reading it I could see some similarities and I think it was a solid recommendation by the AI engine, but the bittersweet tone of this book put me off a little.

Books about libraries, book stores, booksellers, and bookworms have sort of a safety net built-in. People who are reading your book already like reading, many of them love reading. So they are a receptive audience to a story that exalts books and the act of reading. Some stories can rest on their laurels and come out OK, and some take risks and build on these positive foundations.

This book took some chances, and although I wasn’t really into the vibe of the story and the plot felt a bit too unbelievable, the book’s heart was in the right place and I enjoyed it. Within these pages are plenty of references to great books both old and new, and so at the very least I could add some books to my reading list.

Speaking of which, the next book is one recommended by the main character of the this book. I am reading A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor.

Made up of three short novels: Empress of Salt and Fortune, When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain, and Into the Riverlands, this series celebrates great storytelling with some pretty good storytelling of its own. Along for the ride is a fantasy setting akin to ancient China, with talking tigers, spooky ghosts and war mammoths.

This series has a comforting feel to it – the writer has somehow captured the feeling despite the characters being in dangerous places and situations. Part of it is a sense of journey and exploration, and we follow the cleric Chih on their mission to chronicle the stories of the land on behalf of their temple. Chih is always on the move, hearing the stories of others and occasionally telling their own. This clever device maximizes the stories we get, and avoids what might be at first glance a more dramatic choice if Chih was a martial arts expert or something.

Of the three novels I preferred the first, Empress of Salt and Fortune but they were all quite good. Chih is an observer and because the stories are short there isn’t much development in them, but rather a revealing of something else entirely. I wonder if this kind of story could work in a longer novel, and hopefully the author is experimenting with that for the future. I am looking forward to reading more!

Next I am reading The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin.

Living outside of America does not relieve me of the curiosity of how things are going now and what life might have been like if I had stayed there.

Reading internet news is not as simple as just searching for “news” and digging in. Source reliability, bias, advertising money – all these must be considered. Bad news gets more attention than good, and outrage brings eyeballs (and advertising dollars).

But just about every news source I read says that things aren’t going well in America, and there are lots of problems that are getting worse rather than better.

This book focuses on a problem from a long time ago, poverty, which seems to be reaching a breaking point in some areas of the United States. There are plenty of books that look hard at poor people and try to figure out how they got that way, but this book instead focuses on how people who aren’t poor tend to benefit from the people that are, and how the current system is difficult to change because it is in affluent people’s best interests for this state of affairs to remain as it is.

There are a lot of statistics used in this book while examining the problem – maybe too many for my taste but I understand that the author needs to back up some of these contentions that will be hard for affluent people to hear.

The writing can be a little bit idealistic, but more importantly it is solution-oriented writing. It is easy to point out problems but much better to give some ideas on how to begin to solve them. The author is realistic as this kind of societal repair would mean a dramatic shift. But he remains positive and seems like someone who wants America to do better.

I liked this book and after reading so many articles decrying poverty and homelessness it is good to see someone handing out ideas. I guess the big question is: Is anyone in America listening?

Next I am reading a trio of novellas by Nghi Vo.

The dramatic true story of a group of Indian workers trafficked into the USA to work as welders for a major corporation – held against their will under the false promise of a green card, while their families back in India struggled under the debts of the huge loans they took out to finance the welders’ journey.

This book was extremely well-researched and told from the viewpoint of the (Indian-American) community organizer who stumbled on the situation and helped to get them out of it. It was a very unusual situation – not the usual thing you think about when talking about human trafficking. Even worse was that the US government (at least the ICE organization) was helping exploit these guys as well.

I’m not sure I liked the author so much, however. As a writer he tended towards building up situations (even minor ones) into as much drama as possible, and I felt like sometimes as a participant in this story he was kind of self-focused and humble-bragging a bit. The dialogue is reconstructed from notes, affidavits and testimony, and it felt artificial. Maybe because much of these conversations was translated from another language into the English that I was reading?

The best parts of the book for me were the scenes taking place in India, and of course all the food that the starving workers were dreaming about. I can’t wait to do some Indian cooking of my own to sate the appetite that this book raised. The author may want to look into food writing as well.

So good book, great story, and more than a little shocking. Come on, US government, you can do better than this.

Next, piling on the US government a little more, I am reading Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond.

I had heard good things about this book that takes a broad look at influential people over history, especially but not limited to women and their roles in overcoming a male-centered society.

This is a long book, and one of the things that made it worth reading was the writer’s beautiful writing, a sort of poetic prose that made every sentence worth considering and savoring.

She describes her work as a “project”, and I can understand given the huge amount of information and research that went into this. One of the key features of this book is the author’s ability to tie together people from across history, and see how they influenced each other’s thinking. For the most part I found these connections interesting, but some felt a little forced or vague or unsubstantiated – more like wishful theories than fact.

The scale of this project is huge, and for me sometimes it was a little overwhelming. Within some chapters points of view changed abruptly, and stories are completed in a non-linear way that had a discussion of Darwin’s feelings on hydrotherapy suddenly appearing in the middle of someone else’s history.

There are many key figures examined here, including Maria Mitchell, Johannes Kepler, Margaret Fuller and Emily Dickinson. But I found the section on Rachel Carson the most interesting, and I’m looking forward to reading some of her work in the future.

It was a long read – but overall I thought it was worth the time. If you are a big fan of more of the people I mentioned above, then I’d strongly recommend the book.

Next I am reading The Great Escape by Saket Soni.

This was a book with a pretty unusual perspective: the memoirs of a security guard who was paid to stand around the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, killing time and protecting countless works of art for around ten years.

With all that time on his hands, the author had the opportunity to really appreciate the art that surrounded him, from the old masters, to the Egyptian gallery, and each chapter focuses on some area of the gigantic museum combined with some aspect of his life experiences – his relationship with his family, the loss of his brother to cancer, meeting his eventual wife, having kids.

While I really enjoyed the art analysis from a layman’s viewpoint, I didn’t get a cohesive feeling from the way the book was structured. I understand what the author was trying to do, but it felt a little awkward sometimes.

I also experienced a strange jarring feeling when hearing his thoughts on New Yorkers and their behavior – it has been a long time since I’ve been exposed to the sort of brusque NY attitude and it was interesting to see that he preferred that kind of interaction. Living in Japan so long I’ve gotten used to the careful, calculated and polite conversations that are necessary here.

In this book there are a few sketches of some of the art that he is describing, but the best way to read this book is with Google Images ready to go and to load up the artworks that he is talking about while reading each passage. This book made me take the time to really look deeply into the artwork, and also made me want to visit a museum to try it out in person. In this aspect at least the author hit the mark.

Next I am reading Figuring by Maria Popova.

I haven’t read much by Kurt Vonnegut, and most of what I have read was back in high school and university. I heard good things about this book so I picked it up at the library.

The story was an extremely clever and sharp look at humanity and the power of time and nature. Unfortunately it was not exactly a celebration of the human experience.

But the sharp satire here was pretty funny, and it holds up well even well past the publishing date of 1985. There is some outdated stuff (Japanese economics, acid rain) but for the most part it was very entertaining.

Although the tone was a little wearing on me I enjoyed the book, and I liked that the author took the chance to be completely ridiculous on purpose to make his points.

Next I am reading All the Beauty in the World by Patrick Bringley.

My first work of fiction by this author, and it was a pretty good one. Set in the early stages of Vietnam conflict (before America got truly “involved”) the story is told from the viewpoint of a British news correspondent.

There is a lot in here that tells the future, for America and for colonialism in general. The way he writes the main character I could see how locals were treated, and why they would fight against foreigners living in their country. I don’t know much about what kinds of social issues were going on in the UK and the USA at the time this was written, but I suspect some of that background knowledge would make the book even more interesting.

The writing really makes you feel like you are there – Saigon, Hanoi, and the villages in between that were caught in the crossfire.

This book also jumps back and forth through time, which is common enough nowadays but struck me as a little unusual for an older story. It was done very well, and was instrumental in setting up the tense conclusion. I really enjoyed this book.

Next I am reading Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut.

This was recommended to me by a friend, but other than the title and the author I had no info going into reading the book.

In that spirit I won’t reveal any of the details of the story here. The book tells a compelling story, it is educational (at least for me it was), and the pace keeps you turning the pages. There was a lot of action inside a courtroom which I enjoyed – I didn’t realize there would be a legal aspect to the story and that made it more interesting for me.

However, this book came off to me as a sort of mom-targeted. The details, hints and undercurrents of the story were blunt and oversimplified, and I felt like there was a lot more room to gracefully approach the topic rather than hit you over the head with it. So much time and energy is spent on the relationships between mother and son, mother and daughter, and mother and abusive husband.

Overall the book didn’t really work for me. Maybe part of the problem is that it was written by two authors. For me, the oversimplification of the issues was the biggest problem of this book.

Next I am reading The Quiet American by Graham Greene.

Here is a travel writer that I haven’t read yet, and here is an area that I am curious about. The last time I read about Patagonia was when I read about Paul Theroux train journey from North America to South, and the two writers share a certain similarity in style.

Chatwin is very observant and analyzes people and situations well, just like Theroux. I liked Chatwin’s beautiful descriptions of nature – while Theroux focuses more on people and what they are doing.

This book started with an interesting story related to some “dinosaur” skin, and then ended in a very satisfactory way with the author finding the source and even a few fragments. But in between these two well chosen bookends there are many stories, broken into oddly short chunks. Some of them are about his journey, while others explore the history of people who have come before – pirates, relatives, revolutionaries, and criminals (even Butch Cassidy!)

I found myself wishing for more about what Patagonia was like at that time – but the focus here is on its history and it seemed a waste to be there and describe things that had happened long ago. There was little information about the author’s actual travels and logistics – these are things that are interesting to me.

Overall it was an interesting read but maybe it wasn’t quite my style.

Next I am reading Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan,

I think this is the first book I’ve read by Carl Sagan, and since I had enjoyed the movie I figured it would be a good place to start.

This was a fairly long book, so the story could be technically in-depth. I was surprised that there was so much weight on the technical side of things, and I really enjoyed this sort of nerdy style. Especially interesting were the predictions of “the future” of 1999, written by Sagan back in 1985. In some ways we’ve done a lot better than Sagan imagined, but as you might expect we’ve done worse, too.

He builds up the story well, telling of the female main character’s challenges entering the science field, and how she is underestimated her whole life. It is cool that there is this positive view of women in science back in 1985 – but I don’t know how much has changed since then. Probably not as much as he’d hoped.

On the downside all the tech-heavy writing leaves his writing of human issues and dialogue sort of lacking. Especially the conversations between characters felt unnatural and stilted. The author prefers to just download a bunch of information to the reader rather than introducing organically – and when it comes to talk of the future and technology it started to get old.

I can see when making the movie how they wisely cut out some of the fat and made a much more compelling story. I doubt fans of Sagan would complain about the book version, though. As for me, I’d prefer some version of the story that falls between the book and the movie.

Next I am reading In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin.

This book was a little frustrating for me to read. The subject matter is game design, and also it is a novel about love. Being a fan of both those things I expected to enjoy it more than I did.

The book starts with two young people growing up differently than others their age, and we follow their lives as they get older and more experienced with “life”. I usually like books that span a long time and show development in the characters. Unfortunately, the development here was strictly game-related.

Sometimes I see a movie or read a book where the characters don’t just communicate their feelings to each other. The reasons why might be a lack of self-confidence, or they are scared, or they just forget to do it. This book is filled with these moments where they could decide to do the right thing but don’t. And the author then distills as much drama as possible out of the results of this lack of communication, drawing out the drama whenever possible.

The big moments of this book are telegraphed and predictable, so when they finally come they have little impact. The author also has wedged in plenty of contemporary social issues: gender identity, racial identity, sexual harassment and assault, drugs, homosexuality. These felt like they weren’t organically part of the story to me.

This story reminded me a bit of Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell, and I think Mitchell pulled off a similar story in a much more satisfactory way.

The story does revolve around gaming and developing games – a topic I am always interested in – but when the characters are discussing games and how to make them it felt similar to Ready Player One – just checking off names to give itself credibility.

It is too bad as this was an ambitious project, and the writer’s writing style was fairly easy to read. It sort of felt like a Young Adult book for Adults.

Next I am reading Contact by Carl Sagan.

This is a book about art and the creation of it. How do artists come up with new ideas? If you are an artist how can you push yourself and become more creative? And maybe everyone needs a little creativity now and then.

Something about this book made me feel like I was listening to some stoner dude in the bedroom of a house party surrounded by black light posters and lava lamps. It felt sort of quasi-Buddhist and statements weren’t really statements but possibilities. After a while every time he wrote “maybe”, “could”, or “can” I felt like there wasn’t much conviction here.

But it was full of interesting ideas on reviewing your filter, your habits, and thinking about how you think about things. There was insight into the life of an artist, and despite the image of a free and relatively stress-free life, artists have a need to create and to answer the call of creativity in a way true themselves is a (noble) burden.

Also I could see a little more into what it means to “understand” art. I enjoyed the content of the book, but apparently the style and presentation of the content – not so much.

Next I am reading Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin.