If I was awarded a fellowship to live and write (whatever I would like) in the city of Rome for one year, I think I’d look at the city in a somewhat positive light. Writing about the city would be a sort of thank you for the opportunity, and the resulting work might feel like a travel brochure sitting lonely in a rack in front of the tourist agency.

However, the author of this book certainly made a go of it and describes his and his family’s year in Rome with such care and attention to details that make you wonder if you live in the same world as he does. He has a unique writing style (which he is happy to describe in the pages of this book) that describes just the right details from a given moment enough to allow the reader to visualize and feel it, without going too far and making it clinical.

I enjoyed his writing style in Cloud Cuckoo Land, so I was happy to find that it is here in non-fictional writing as well. Having breezed through Rome myself during our honeymoon trip, it was nice to see the details that we missed. The author was uniquely situated to be there for the previous Pope’s death and the subsequent conclave of Cardinals and choice of a successor. He and his wife had a chance to explore the surrounding areas and see a little deeper.

Surprisingly the author and his wife had had twins just three months before arriving in Rome, and so there is plenty of nervous parenting going on in this book, but also the twins serve a way for us to see a very old city in a fresh way.

On top of all this, I always like books where people drop everything and start somewhere new, so this book really hit all the right notes for me.

I haven’t chosen the next book to read yet – I’ll probably pick something over this weekend. Lots of books on the list!

A while back I read another book by John Fowles, The Magus, and really enjoyed his writing style and the near-supernatural feeling of the situations. The dialogue of the characters was educated and captivating, and it made me want to read more of his work.

Apparently The Collector was released as his first book, and is seen as a prelude to the psychological thriller genre. Sort of like a 1960’s Silence of the Lambs.

There are two voices in this book, one of the collector and the other of the collected. We see things from two different perspectives, neither of which is clearly good or evil. Although the subject matter is chilling it is not grotesque, and there are themes of classism in Britain and the effect of money on people’s perceived place in society.

I liked the book, and although it wasn’t as mind-bending as The Magus I read through it quickly and was satisfied with how it ended. A good book, and worth a read if only for the intelligence of the writing and the humanizing of what are now often portrayed as prototype good/bad characters.

Next I’m reading Four Seasons in Rome by Anthony Doerr. Hopefully it will satisfy my travel cravings a little bit.

Here is a book that I really enjoyed. The story of two agents battling against each other through time – with plenty of world building and epic letter writing. This isn’t a particularly long book, but it is chock full of detail, and still I wanted more.

We visit places and get tantalizing glimpses of lives lived and battles lost, and hidden amongst these scenes are communications subtle and nearly invisible except to the intended targets.

I liked how this book handled time travel – not as a gimmick but an essential part of the characters’ lives. The mysteries are well placed and satisfyingly revealed.

After reading the book I was ready to read it again and catch more details, and I almost wish that the authors would spend more time digging deeper into the worlds they created. This book could easily be expanded into an longer epic-scale novel.

One of my favorite books this year – and one I’ll come back to in the future. Next I’m reading The Collector by John Fowles.

In part an effort to stay in touch with how education is going back home in the USA, I picked up this book from the library. It is based on an essay written 5-6 years ago addressing the changing state of students in American universities.

I enjoyed reading this book – it was written in a clear and accessible style, and since it was fairly new the examples (and links) were still relevant.

Of most interest to me were the sections on identifying cognitive traps and keeping your thinking flexible and adaptable to deal with whatever problems arise. These steps are equally useful for adults out college as well as for the students still in it.

It seems to me that the authors did a good job of portraying events and people fairly, and also followed their own advice to give people the benefit of the doubt. That being said, I’m sure some people will take offense to things in this book, and perhaps to things left out.

This was a well-written effort that made me think twice about some assumptions and constructs that I had. And that made it well worth reading for me.

Next I’m reading This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone.

This was a long and frankly, depressing book that I just couldn’t stop reading. In a sort of classic “can’t look away from the car accident” situation I turned each page and watched my hope for humanity run down the drain. There is some good news to find in this book, but it is few and far between.

The book does a great job of providing the deep background to this continuing attack on science. By weaponizing one of the characteristics of the scientific method (doubt and uncertainty) and then ignoring evidence and shouting nonsense enough times these (surprisingly few) people manage to sidetrack and delay measures that would save people’s lives, and cost their bosses a lot of money.

There is a lot of detail here – sort of like reading a legal brief – and in a sense the authors are prosecuting a case. There are times when I felt like they were cherry-picking information now and then, even as they accused others of doing the same. Overall they tell a story richly supported with evidence and with plenty of footnotes to follow up on for the curious.

I was very surprised that this book also included an updated epilogue written after Mr. Trump came to power and including some comments on the misinformation (from both sides) that we see now in the mass media and social network sites.

This was a bummer to read, simply because the forces of good were completely outmatched. I fear that with how sharply divided the USA is now, things won’t be getting better soon.

Next I’m reading (by coincidence) The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff.

Some older science fiction this time, and my first book by this author. Written back in the 1970s, but it still holds up well today.

The story is quick to pull you in, and this is one of the more cerebral sci-fi books I have read. There is a lot of psychology (including a clever psychiatric software program) throughout, and an odd focus on sexuality that eventually turned out to be part of the story.

Even though most of the story happens out there in the uncharted galaxies, the climax occurs somewhere more mundane, and it was a very tense ending – I loved it.

Also the book was unique in that it used short snippets of background information in such a way as to make the whole thing seem more lifelike and real. Sometimes this is done in other books but this much more effective. Space station classified ads, emails from side characters, and excerpts from academic courses contributed to make the ending all the better.

I liked this book – and I’ll be looking for more of his work in the future.

Next I’m reading two books in parallel, one is The Science of Spice by Stuart Farrimond, and the other is Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway.

I haven’t read much on archaeology although I’ve had an interest ever since high school. Maybe the influence of Indiana Jones was the driving force, but of course the reality of the science is different and I wanted to learn some more about it.

This book provided a pretty good layman’s view of four cities that were exceptional in their time, that rose and then for various reasons fell and faded away. It is written with a sort of millennial generation style so that it is pretty easy to get into.

While reading this book I was struck by just how much guesswork is involved in digging up a lost civilization. There is only so much that lidar and magnetometers can tell you before you have to use your imagination and see the lost scenes that are around you. The author is skilled at this, and helps to bring these cities alive for the reader. On the other hand, of course these are educated guesses, and the author points out that they could certainly be off the mark.

One of the more modern schools of thought in contemporary archaeology (at least according to this book) is the idea of studying the activities of the “regular people”. Previously investigations tended to focus on things that were unusual, big or dramatic. Instead in this book they focused on finding how most people lived, and reading about how they sussed out these things was really interesting.

I enjoyed this book and learned a lot – which is a great combination when reading new books. I get the sense that this book might not be as dry as other books in the field, so if the topic holds an interest for you this is a good first step.

Next I’m reading Gateway by Frederik Pohl.

I keep a long list of books I want to read, added to a website called GoodReads, and whenever I am looking for my next book I see what is available from that list at the library. Often times I can’t remember how the book got onto my list, so I am truly going in blind. When reading ebooks, I don’t even have the sleeve or back cover to get a summary.

Sometimes this produces a profoundly sublime experience – I don’t even know the genre I am reading so there is plenty of room for surprise and mostly they are pleasant. However this book produced some surprises that had me going, “WTF?”

This book is set in New York in 2015, including all the technology and pop culture from the time, and already six years afterwards it feels dated. The story revolves around a couple of people in love, and then careens out of control to include witches on forgotten New York islands off the shores of Brooklyn, spooky hackers and underground dwelling demons.

I suppose I could have gone along with the story but since it started out so normally I couldn’t really suspend disbelief long enough to get caught up in it. In addition, I thought the dialogue between characters had a amateurish quality that didn’t ring true, and too much needless info was written in that could have easily been cut.

I’m no writer and it isn’t for me to judge, but it seemed like a good editor would have gone a long way here. Let’s hope the book turns out to be a learning experience for the author.

The next book I’m reading is Four Lost Cities, a non-fiction book on ancient lost cities by Annalee Newitz.

The final book in this series, and everything gets all wrapped up in a surprisingly short book. In fact the book felt rushed, as if the author had something better to do and had to get this out of the way.

Like the others in the series, this book leans heavily on the clever and witty comments, and less on character development and world-building background. As usual I had hoped to hear more about the normal people, and they are all summarized in a very broad way over a few pages.

The ending and how it comes about is less than satisfying, and without giving things away we once again have the tricky situation of is the character really dead or not.

Overall I was disappointed in the series overall, but very entertained with the characters and how they are clever/smug/witty/reprehensible. A good book on a small scale, but lacking when considered as a space epic.

Next I’m reading The Changeling by Victor LaValle.

After reading a lot of John Grisham when I was younger I stopped for a while, and only recently I have been dropping in now and then to read some of the books that I missed. Especially his recent stuff has been really good – written lean and moving at a brisk pace through the stories.

When I go back to some of his earlier books (like this one) you can see where his pacing needed work, and where he started finding his targets.

This book takes place largely in Italy, and I remembered that he came back to Italy in a big way later on in Playing for Pizza, one of my favorites of his. While reading this book it felt like he was just relating his own personal experiences in Italy (except for the hit squads and spy cameras). The language lessons went on and on, and the cultural notes seemed like they didn’t add a whole lot to the story, although I’m sure Italian readers really liked to see them.

The tail end of the book feels more like a thriller and has a kind of traditional ending, but I was hoping for more of the main character on the run. Maybe there is a book genre out there with the main character trying to hide and make a new life – hmm… I‘ll do some research.

Next I’m reading The Last Emperox by John Scalzi to wrap up that trilogy.

This was a book that told an epic tale that crossed between many characters, following a long span of history (and future). It also managed to deliver on the promise of being an ode to stories and the power they have over us. This book has mystery, travel, love, hope, change and redemption, great character and world building, and even some secret Easter eggs for the characters to find.

It is hard to imagine the process of writing a story like this. At first there is a sense of confusion for the reader as we wonder what exactly is happening, but as usual it pays off to be patient and keep reading. We start to see connections here and there, and also see the parallels in our own lives.

I couldn’t help but think of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas as a comparable work with a similar (albeit more rigid) structure. I seem to like stories that have an epic scope – from birth to death we see how someone deals with the cards life has dealt them – and see their relatively short life in perspective with the thread of history.

So this was a story well-told, and one I’m sure will stay with me for a long time. One of my favorite books I’ve read this year.

Next I’m reading The Broker by John Grisham.

I’m not sure how this book was recommended to me – for some reason I have the faint memory of it being related to the popularity of Squid Game (a show I’ve never seen). The idea of this book intrigued me, but ultimately the characters and their relationships didn’t appeal to me so I was left disappointed with this one.

The idea that I liked was that in a small town “where nothing happens” kids in the school contribute some money every year into a big pot, and then award that significant sum to the person who wins a series of games they call the “Panic”. Two people are chosen every year to organize the event, and the students compete in dangerous events until they are left with just one winner.

Part of the reason I didn’t like this book is that it is probably written for young adults who are struggling with their own issues of confidence, bravery, and also the importance of being cool and/or looking cool to their peers. There is plenty of story based on these themes, and not much on overcoming fear, which I thought would be a stronger theme.

I think there could be comparisons to the Hunger Games here, but that series had enough futuristic elements to help carry the story. This book is firmly set in a boring small town in contemporary America, with adults you can’t relate to and not much to look forward to in the future. Maybe contemporary America is dystopian enough these days, I don’t know.

So this book didn’t really grab me, and it was a bit of a chore to finish it. I guess it will be a movie or mini-series in the future, though. I don’t think I’ll be in line to see it.

Next I’m reading Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr.

By one of the writers of Game of Thrones, this book tells an intriguing story encompassing a week during the siege of Leningrad during World War II. About a couple of new friends, a unique mission, and plenty of starvation.

The author really writes characters well – it was easy to get caught up in the story, and the scenes in the bombarded city of Leningrad were excellent. This is great writing full of detail and depth, but still pushing the plot so that you don’t want to put down the book.

There were some rough parts of the story, some parts that seemed unbelievable or added just to illustrate the situation of the siege and the people caught up in it. Through it all the likable young characters kept it from sinking into despair and dread – there was always some hope out there, and everything is connected in the end in a very satisfactory way.

Next I’m reading Panic by Lauren Oliver.

Mark Manson knows how to write a catchy title, maybe from his long experience writing blog articles. This is the second book of his that I’ve read, and I’m not sure I liked it as much as the first. This book is all about how humans (extrapolated from Americans?) think according to what the author calls the “feeling brain” and the “thinking brain”.

He writes in a very amusing style and does a great job of breaking down very complex topics into easy to consume pieces. Immanuel Kant’s ideas on enlightenment? No problem – in just a few pages he gives a clear summary of where Kant is coming from and where others went as well.

While I enjoyed the book overall, I thought that maybe the best target for this book is people who are struggling with mood swings, depression or facing uphill challenges in their lives right now. This is the kind of encouragement that could really help people steady their minds and deal with issues much bigger than what typical self-help books deal with.

At the end there is an eye-opening section on developments in artificial intelligence, and the way it is written makes it sound like big changes are right around the corner. I’m not sure if I believe it is coming quite that soon, but it was exciting to read. This might be a direction I read more of in the near future.

Next I’m reading City of Thieves, by David Benioff.