China plays a bigger role in geopolitical affairs every year, and since my knowledge of Chinese history is pretty out of date I thought I’d pick up this book.

If any country needs a short version of history, it should be this one. Even in this relatively short book I often got confused by all the names of emperors, heroes, villains – all of which came in and out of history’s favor over the long history of China.

But despite this I really enjoyed the read. The writer had a tough job to distill the episodes that had a significant historical impact, and include the histories that are echoing into today. It was written in a style that is easy to read, with clear attributions and what I felt was a neutral approach.

The author is a big fan of Chinese culture. She took an open-minded approach and avoided including any agenda (from whatever source) and tried to report as much as possible about what actually happened. In this case it illustrated why it is important to think about a country as more than just its government.

Next I am reading The Creative Act by Rick Rubin.

This book was recommended because of its wisdom and advice on investing. I haven’t been investing very long (unfortunately) but this book would be a great one for people just starting out as well as for more advanced financial advisors or professional investors.

It was helpful to pick up some of the terms that are used in the investing world and to hear from someone who has seen a lot of ups and downs in the market. For the most part this book is aimed at the active investor – someone who is always trying to beat the market (in a good year) and limit losses (in a bad year). As you might expect it takes a lot of work and research to do something like this.

However my investment strategy is to simply follow the market using index ETFs and there is enough diversification (and what the author calls defensive investing) to be perfectly suitable for my needs. So as for specific strategies there wasn’t really much here for me.

Next I am reading The Shortest History of China by Linda Jaivin.

Non-fiction about a woman who truly is in tune with nature, and her surprising friendship with a fox living on her land.

There is some beautiful writing on nature in this book, and author has deep knowledge about the living things all around. She has worked as a park ranger, field guide, and her love for living things really shows in this book.

The format of the book is interesting – events don’t take place according to a traditional timeline. She gets into the heads of some of the animals and show what she imagines their lives and feeling might be like. What comes out of this is a unique view of nature, and I think she did accomplish that goal.

There are some allusions to her childhood (sounded tough) and how hard she has worked to learn and earn a doctorate degree, and you can tell she is intensely proud of her accomplishments and her intelligence. The Mensa group is mentioned (a few times) and I thought that her intelligence or what other people thought about her kind of detracted from the central story here – a unique relationship with an “unboxed” animal.

I was glad to read this book, because it was an unusual look into someone who really does live well with nature.

Next I am reading The Most Important Thing by Howard Marks.

I’ve seen Apocalypse Now before, and recently I was trying to remember if I had already read the story it was based on. After reading this novella the answer was no, I had not.

There are a few layers to the story, and despite some pretty outdated Anglo-centric language it remains a chilling tale of what really lies in the hearts of men. It is a short story but for me a bit too much philosophical musing. I especially like the descriptions of the African jungle and how the view of civilization shifted after the main character’s return.

I may have been assigned this book back in high school English class, but I’m sure that if I had read it then it would have gone right over my head. I’m not certain that it didn’t go over my head this time around to be honest. But it might be a lot to ask high school students to contemplate the nature of good and evil in a person’s heart.

Next I am reading Fox & I by Catherine Raven.

It has been a little while since I’ve read some science fiction, and this book was recommended as something a little different.

The book had all the right stuff for good science fiction – an interesting world (universe?), a deep backstory, and some likable characters. The story itself is quite short, however, and I was hoping for more details.

It seemed like some writers could really expand on the events of this story, and for whatever reason this author kept it short. Apparently there are more books in the series, so I may give the other ones a shot later on.

Frequently science fiction books end up in trilogies or series – what is it about the genre that lends itself to serialization?

Next I am reading Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

This one has been on my list of books to read for a while now. It is an eye-opening view of a reporter who after losing her job when her newspaper goes under finds entry-level jobs at McDonald’s, Amazon, and a call center company called Convergys.

What this book showed me was that these jobs have completely changed over the past twenty years, and these changes are focused on squeezing every bit of productivity out of each worker to the detriment to the happiness, health, and mental condition.

I’ve often heard people say that “flipping burgers” back when they were younger was a time that was carefree, with low wages but low stress. This book outlines the changes that employers have made to automate scheduling through software and algorithms to use the least amount of workers to do the job if they are working all out.

The workers (including this author) are pushed to their limits, and when they leave or quit there are plenty more to replace them. The author reminds the reader that she always had the option to leave – but for most of her coworkers that option was much less viable.

The book was grim, but also it showed the cost of rock-bottom prices and 24 hour customer service. Sometimes the tone got a little over dramatic, and although there were sources for some of the academic journals cited other times it felt like more word-of-mouth when relating the point of view of the workers themselves.

She wrote in a very approachable way, and it was fun to kind of sneak into these jobs and see what they are like on the inside. But in the end it tells a pretty depressing story, and shows just how easy some of us have it.

Next I am reading Sisters of the Vast Black by Lina Rather.

The second time reading this was as good or better than the first. This time around I focused more on the tone, the writing, and the characters – and you could see the effort and skill that went into every sentence of this novel.

One genre of fiction I’ve seen become more popular lately is the “cozy” book. While not entirely fitting into that category, this book is sort of the ultimate cozy book for me. The whimsical, almost fairy-tale like tone, the main character as we get to know his situation, history, and how he expects a gentleman to behave.

It is hard to define exactly why I like this so much. If I could figure that out, I could look for other books with a similar style. So far I haven’t found anything quite like it.

I am looking forward to re-reading this in the future, after a few years, and I’m sure it’ll be just as good then.

Next I am reading On the Clock by Emily Guendelsberger.

This is the second (or third?) time reading this book – I was recently thinking about the story so thought I’d read it again to see how it held up.

For the most part it was as good as I remembered it. Lots of details that I didn’t recall from previous reads, and a couple of twists that I luckily had forgotten about.

Of course I knew the big surprise delivered towards the first part of the book, so it wasn’t really a WTF? moment for me this time. But it was good to see how well Crichton set up his stories, and his skill at taking on topics with a blend of science, realism, and fiction.

Without an understanding of quantum mechanics I can’t really comment on whether his scientific portions held up, but I did like the blend of action and (pseudo)science.

For another re-read I am going back to Amor Towles A Gentleman in Moscow. I really liked it the first time – one of my favorite novels ever – so it’ll be interesting to see how it goes the second time around.

This is one of those, “I heard the book was better than the movie” choices. I don’t remember the movie very clearly, so I thought it would be a good time to read the book.

There are a lot of good stories here – mainly about the survivors of a zombie apocalypse. The stories are told by the survivors in a sort of interview/Q&A style, and told in the past tense as the Zombie War has already been won.

Because the storytelling style is unique it lends a certain amount of realism. Lots of characters use lingo that was created during the war, with the author providing footnotes to explain them. Often the interviewees will treat information they give out as common knowledge (which of course it is not for the reader) and the methods that the writer has to employ to overcome this gap didn’t feel very graceful to me.

In the end the format of the book caused more problems than it was worth. I’d have liked to hear some of these stories told in the first person as they happened, but I suppose that once the author committed to this format they had to follow through.

So a so-so zombie book, but not as interesting as I had hoped.

Next I am re-reading Timeline by Michael Crichton.

What starts out as a story of a hired assassin with a heart of gold turns into an improbable but I think successful meta exercise on writing.

This book is set in an entirely real (no spooky ghosts in this King book) contemporary America just before the pandemic begins. It outlines the situation and places the lead character in a position of writing a book to pass as a writer. This gives the author (Stephen King) a chance to write about an author who is in fact a killer. King skillfully sets up the situation so we can explore the power of writing, and get a taste of why he likes it so much.

It takes some writing skill to get us to care about (and start to really like) a hired killer. The way the story develops is a little too perfect – the right things happening at just the right moments – but I was willing to forgive based on being a fan of his other work. And I thought that the “book within a book” device was a little forced. I even cringed a little when the typeface changed – and had a feeling of dread near the end when the current events of the “real” story had the typeface as well. It is hard to explain without giving away anything here.

This novel was a quick read but I really enjoyed the time I spent with it. Next I am reading World War Z by Max Brooks.

This is my first time reading anything by Faulkner, and unsure where to start I chose this based on a few comments in other books.

My initial impression was confusion. The book introduces a lot of characters early on, peeking into their minds as they describe things from their perspective in a stream of consciousness style. I’ve read more modern books written in a similar way and it made me wonder if this was the first book to be written in this style.

Characters appear and disappear suddenly, speak from dead, kids speak like kids do, and the initial bout of confusion turned me off. Fortunately as I read things cleared up a bit, but there is a lot to unpack here after reading.

This book did an excellent job of showing the reader what life was like back then for poor people living in America, and it was tragic and poignant. It was less dated than I had expected given that it was originally published in 1930.

So in the end I liked the book for the skill of writing rather than the storytelling style, and for the ending which was absolutely perfect. Will I read more by Faulkner? Still not sure about that but we’ll see!

Next I am reading Billy Summers by Stephen King.

I think this is the first book I’ve read by this author. I’ve been interested in trying out his writing, especially about travel, and apparently this is his newest book.

The idea of this book is his exploration of finding “paradise”, and exploring what that word has meant to people throughout history and across the world. It is a pretty ambitious theme, and maybe since I had few expectations I wasn’t really disappointed with the result. It was interesting to read about some of the places that we have been – Sri Lanka, Bali, India, and Japan. Some of the holy sites that he visited were completely new to me.

The writer’s writing style is pleasant to read and tends towards dramatic prose. He seemed to look beyond what he was seeing and add some kind of spiritual element to just about everything. In fact, most of the book seemed centered on spirituality, religion and the metaphysical. Writing about paradise I suppose will slant the book a certain way, but I prefer to read more reality-based writings (for example, Paul Theroux).

In contrast to other travel books there is less interaction with local people. There were hired guides in this book, but unfortunately few conversations with people who live in these places. That makes us depend exclusively on the writer’s view of these places.

One thing that comes up a lot is the author’s friendship with the Dalai Lama, and it seems like his name and his words are over-invoked to explain all sorts of things.

I wonder if his writing is similar in other books. For the time being I got my fill, but it wasn’t as interesting a book as I’d hoped for.

The next book I’m reading is As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner.

I really enjoyed this book showing the hidden world of British spies, operating in London while digging up (and hiding) secrets.

While it started slow, part of that was me getting used to the decidedly British feel of the prose. After a while it was fun to learn the unfamiliar words – however some expressions left me baffled.

There are plenty of interesting characters here, all with a deep backstory. The writer was skilled at misdirection, too. There were plenty of surprises, but once I realized how many misdirections were happening I started to read more carefully to watch for the next one. It just seems to be his storytelling style.

There are quite a few other books, so I’m looking into continuing the series when I’m between other library books. Highly recommended!

Next I am reading The Half Known Life by Pico Iyer.

This was a beautifully written book on certain subcategory of Americans living off grid in southern Colorado, with the author sort of falling in love with the lifestyle and joining them.

I often enjoy books where people make a big change to their lives and start over in a new place. There was a lot of people making dramatic life changes in this book. For most of them, however, they are doing it because they have few other choices, or as a last desperate measure. One exception is the author, who continues to live in New York while dabbling in this lifestyle, with the option to leave any time he needed to.

The book moves at a pretty slow pace, covering the history of the area, meeting many of the inhabitants, and exploring why they (and countless other Americans) would live so far away from civilization. Thanks to his writing and the beautiful photos included the author shows why people would be attracted, but it is clear that life there isn’t for most people.

Since there are not really many police or any kind of governmental presence in the area people have more freedom to do what they like (legal or otherwise). Also there are wider cracks to fall through without a safety net.

While hearing about the hardships of living here I sometimes wondered what the mission of the author was in this book. Sometimes he follows stories or gives out information that while curious or interesting didn’t seem to lead his tale anywhere. At the end of the book I knew a lot more about the area but I’m not sure I felt like I got a deeper meaning out of the book.

I’m glad I read the book just for the writing – especially describing the natural beauty of the area and the people that live there. He made great efforts to depict the residents fairly and without prejudice, rather than focusing on the more scandalous parts of their lifestyle. There was a delicate balance of happy and sad stories, but the balance worked.

It is hard to say without ever having seen the area, but just from reading this book I don’t think off-grid living is for me. Maybe when I was younger, or maybe with a seriously powerful generator and a well-stocked wine cellar. But it was certainly interesting to read about.

Next I am reading Slow Horses by Mick Herron.

It has been a while since I read a cookbook. This one is focused on vegetables, and since that is mostly what we eat I borrowed it from the library.

This one isn’t a comprehensive reference but it is written by someone who knows how to grow, choose, and cook veggies in combination with meat or fish, so it closely matched up with how we eat at home. The food photography is really well done – someone should get an award just for the photos! I also liked how creative the author was in the kitchen. Sometimes it is hard to do something interesting with winter root vegetables besides roasting them up.

The author is based in the northern mid-west so most of the veggies are ones that grow there and therefore the book is pretty USA-centric. Some of the personal stories didn’t really click with me, but that is kind of par for my course.

Overall it was a good cookbook – I put it on my wishlist for when it goes on sale.

Next I am reading Cheap Land Colorado by Ted Conover.