This was a short book that was written in an unusual style. It is set in a science fiction world, but is a sort of comforting, philosophical exploration of what we want. Most of the story takes place in dialogue between a monk, and a wild-built robot.

The monk is named Dex, who says they prefer to be genderless. This makes the reading a little more difficult as the pronouns used for Dex are they/their. I often got confused about who was being referred to, and especially in reading science fiction you don’t know if the people on this planet have two heads, three genders, or whatever.

I thought the story was short, simple and mildly interesting, but I wasn’t sure that much was resolved by the end of it. Apparently there is another book or two in the series, but I don’t think this one caught my attention enough to keep on going.

Next I’m reading The Shadow of the Gods, by John Gwynne.

This book really caught me by surprise. I like books that build worlds that are full of color and life, and the author of this novel has done that and much more.

Something about the writing style was unusual and refreshing – full of vibrant descriptions of color, flavor, aroma, passion and poetry. I was at times reminded of our times in Istanbul, in southern Spain, and Greece. The descriptions here are of far-away cities and people, with special attention paid to the act of reading. Reading and storytelling are critical to this book, and a reminder of why we love to read in the first place.

The story moved from an isolated island to a the spectacular imagery of a grand city, then on to a mysterious island of towers and intrigue, and then next towards the north and the snow and deserts, where we concentrate more on a critical relationship of our protagonist.

This story is filled with stories, which in themselves contain other stories, and it was fun to peel through the layers and discover what lies within.

I’m looking forward to reading more from this author – you can tell she worked hard to bring this book to fruition, and it was worth the effort.

Next I’m reading A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers.

I’ve read a few of Ruth Reichl’s other non-fiction books, mainly about her life growing up and working for Gourmet magazine. This book is a collection of recipes that she wrote up in the year following the end of Gourmet magazine and the beginning of her search for her next steps.

Right away something about this book’s format rubbed me the wrong way. She introduces each section with (what I am guessing is) a tweet that she made at that time, and they’re sort of written like a little poem/haiku/emotion bomb. For example:

“Cool, rainy. Autumn’s on its way. Pasta, perhaps? Cauliflower, olives, anchovies. Rich red wine. Ripe pears. So fine.”

There are a lot of these throughout the book and so each chapter I had another chance to be annoyed. I guess I just didn’t really enjoy the attempt to over-romanticize the experience of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches:

“Hot. Hawks dance in the air. Grass prickles. Warm peanut butter and jam on thick white bread. Summertime picnic. Feel about five.”

p. 397

But enough about my grouchiness – the recipes were why I was reading, and they are a great selection of different kinds of foods, mainly fitting an American diet. I liked that the format was simply a description and not written analytically. It was like hearing how to make something from a friend in the kitchen.

So, I’d recommend the book for the variety of recipes. Reading about how a very successful lady survived a year off work while living between two of her houses and shopping for organically grown heirloom vegetables at the local farmer’s market every week – well, that wasn’t so compelling.

I’m not sure where I heard about this book, but I figured it would be an interesting read. It is about some people in Japan processing their grief after losing loved ones, from the tsunami of 2011 as well as people lost for other reasons.

The book hinges on the (true life) presence of a phone booth in a garden near the ocean in northeastern Japan, not connected to anything but used by people to speak to people they have lost.

The writer worked hard to include lots of Japanese culture into the lives of the Japanese characters, and for me it felt a little forced. But the stories of the people were quite compelling – and seeing how they deal with their loss is somewhat inspiring. I’ve been lucky enough to avoid having to go through this kind of grief and loss, but for readers that have or are going through it currently, I think this kind of story would be beneficial. It seems like the author was greatly moved by this phone booth and the benefits it gives – it shows in the writing.

Another point about the the writing was the inclusion of intermittent breaks detailing the realia of the characters. This was a unique way to make the story seem even more real and heartfelt

The book was OK, not really my style, but I think I’d recommend it for people going through tough times.

Next I’m reading Ruth Reichl’s My Kitchen Year. It has been a while since I’ve read a new cookbook.

This book is all about the deleterious effects of stress on the human body, and a fine example of when reading an ebook rather than a paper book pays off.

First, the book goes into great detail, down to the neuron level on how and why stress causes damage, and why the body tends to behave that way. It is dense with scientific explanations, but the author takes a friendly approach and guides the reader through the unfamiliar lingo until even the most casual reader feels comfortable reading words like “glucocortocoids“.

I was impressed with how each chapter deals with a different aspect of our health, both physical and psychological. The idea to end the book with advice and strategies for prolonging our life (or improving our happiness with what we get) was a good idea to balance with the bad news from most of the previous chapters.

Secondly, I read this book by checking it out as an ebook from my library. That meant that the most recent research could be included in this edition, and it seems like there were a lot of changes in the time between editions. It is a little startling to think how differently I might have taken the information from an older version – research in this area seems to have come a long way.

So despite its relative density, this was an interesting book to read and it was nice to get a little more detail into how my body is dealing with its upcoming disintegration (eventually).

Next I’m reading The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina.

I picked up this book because it was recommended as a good way to change the way people think about finances and investments. The book is written by someone who focused on investing strategies as a way to fund his retirement and lifestyle, without big inheritances or other sources of starting income.

As it turns out, the information in this book is pretty much the same as what I’ve already researched through other sources – a passive investment strategy revolving around index funds and balanced between stocks and bonds for stability.

The book explains (and justifies) this approach, but for me he was just preaching to the choir. There were some interesting parts about thinking about when to buy (not sell), and the balance between stocks and bonds, but for me most of the advice has already been followed.

I do think this is a good book for people starting out. The writer has a slightly quirky writing style, and he sometimes focuses a little too much on specific data and examples, but I suppose that people that are serious about maximizing their investments will want concrete, precise data.

Next I’m reading Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by Robert M. Sapolsky.

This book was gifted to me by my dad, and the author is from the Sonoma area.

The book introduces us to a subculture of the USA: the railroad riding hobo. The story starts off quickly and mainly deals with two people who meet on the rails – the veteran “professional” called The Duke, and his new friend (and budding hobo) who goes by the name of Frisco.

I didn’t have much background info on the life of the hobo, and this book packages that information into a simple story that was fun to read. I thought the dialogue between characters was a little unnatural, and some of the plot points were far-fetched, but overall this was a decent book.

One thing that surprised me was how dangerous that lifestyle was. There are lots of wild situations described within these pages – so many that I wondered what the good points of the lifestyle happened to be. The characters didn’t seem to focus much on the enjoying their lives. One important theme in this book is the addictive nature of the hobo life, but most of the story focuses on the dangers and drawbacks.

The writer did a good job of introducing this world. I don’t think I’ll ever have the chance to hitch a ride on a freight train, so this book was a good way to see what I am missing out on.

The next book I am reading is Millionaire Teacher by Andrew Hallam.

This is the first book I’ve read by Joshua Ferris, and right away you can tell he is a very skilled writer. His style is sharp with plenty of clever turns of phrases to amuse the reader.

What he has put together here seems on the surface to be a story about a father and a family – but as you read it you get the sense that there are different layers here that may or may not be fiction. The author uses shifting time, a narrator that has motivation to break the reader’s trust, and a unique structure that could have given away the game if I had been paying more attention early on.

I liked reading this book, despite the sometimes over-the-top characters and meta references sprinkled throughout. The way it is written makes you rethink your previous opinions.

It is always a pleasure to read books that clearly took a great deal of effort and planning to write. This felt like a labor of love that happened to be entertaining. I’d like to re-read the book in the future, and see how much more I get out of it.

Next I’m reading The Last Professional by Ed Davis.

Cormac McCarthy is one of my favorite writers, but I have to take his writing in small doses. Somehow his writing seems to distill human experience into sharp jolting slugs that tear into you and leave you either hurting or wanting more – sometimes both. I really liked The Road, loved Blood Meridian, and I also was taken by this book which starts so gently that I dreaded what might happen next.

I liked that the writing doesn’t worry too much about grammar and subject, and instead drops you into a boy’s life and forces you to figure it out. He starts out at night with a friend on horseback, leaving his Texas town for good and heading south to Mexico for adventure.

“…they rode out on the round dais of the earth which alone was dark and no light to it and which carried their figures and bore them up into the swarming stars so they rode not under but among them and they rode at once jaunty and circumspect, like thieves newly loosed in that dark electric, like young thieves in a glowing orchard, loosely jacketed against the cold and ten thousand worlds for the choosing.”

It is writing like this that really makes it an epic read. I especially liked the dialogue between the main character and his friend, effortlessly riffing off of each other. You can tell they know and trust each other so well. I love reading the dialogue in Robert B. Parker’s Spenser books, and I think they are in a similar style, which I don’t see often in other books.

A great story, fascinating characters (without being over-the-top), and brutality and beauty in equal measure. This was brilliant writing.

I need a little emotional break after reading this one – so I’m reading a different style of book now called A Calling for Charlie Barnes by Joshua Ferris.

I met Nancy Dome through friends back when I lived in San Diego, before moving to Japan. In sort of a weird coincidence she lived in Sonoma and Glen Ellen for a while, and I think now she is living in Montana with her husband. I was pleased to be able to catch up with her via this new book that she has written.

The book’s cover says that we’re going to talk about race, and certainly that seems to be a timely topic in America. She introduces a model of communication, called Recognize-Interrupt-Repair, and then explains how it can work to approach tough conversations. Through examples from her own life and her consulting work she illustrates how the model can help talk about not only racial topics but other delicate topics as well.

This book seems like a positive step towards meaningful dialogue, and hopefully it will help people who read it, and also create a less combative atmosphere out there. There was a lot of terms that I don’t hear very often – “triggered”, “PC”, “people of color”, and “critical race theory”, and these are discussed almost without explanation, so I assume they are common expressions in the USA currently. Nancy’s personal history comes out (often) through the stories and examples, and she is clearly an intelligent and thoughtful person.

If I had any constructive criticism it would be that the organization of each chapter seemed a little scattered. The writing occasionally seemed to spend too much time on her personal experiences and not enough time on how her system could work for the reader. I was also a little thrown off by the conspicuous use of the trademark logo for a few terms that she has trademarked. It lent the book a corporate/profit-driven/business-oriented note that didn’t seem to match with the overall positive/friendly/understanding vibe of the book.

But overall this was a pleasant book to read and I hope that by using her method I will be able to stop and think a little more next time something comes up that bothers me.

Next I’m reading All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy.

This book is a thorough history of the East India Company, and how they started from a small business trying to import spices and tea and then became the de facto ruler of an entire country, eventually handing over a defeated India to the British crown for another 150 years of rule.

Unlike some dry history books that I’ve read, this one is full of exciting battles, behind the scenes intrigue, and colonial domination. One significant point in this book’s favor is that it was written recently, and the author has conscripted various Indian historians and translators to review historical documents from India in those days. There are already plenty of documents in English from the archives of the East India Company, but contrasting these with the viewpoint of the Indian people (and rulers) of that time gives the book a balanced aspect that I suspect is missing in previous books through the years.

In the beginning of the book and near the end the author cautions us that the book is about the power of an unchecked corporation, and says this book should be taken as a cautionary tale. However between those two warnings is hundreds of pages of vivid descriptions of battles, artillery movements, cavalry charges, and plenty of foot soldiers dying for their commanders. Despite what the author says, this book read more like an adventure to me.

I really enjoyed this book because it really brought you to that era and you could judge the behavior of these people through modern values. It is hard to imagine today some company enslaving a nation and sucking all the wealth out using its own army and navy. In this book it apparently seemed like a perfectly natural thing to do. All while sipping a gin and tonic from the comfort of your tent as you order your local staff to make your dinner.

One other point I really enjoyed was the occasional appearance of foreign individuals traveling in India, They gained employment here and there by offering their skills and experience, and seemed to be greatly prized by Indian rulers for their advice and wisdom. These people were unattached to any army, and were simply traveling to see the world. In this book they played some key roles in events, and they were referred to as “adventurers”. I liked the idea that you could strike out into the world and do what you felt like doing, all the while being considered as on an adventure. I don’t hear about many professional adventurers these days, but it seemed like quite a lifestyle back then.

This book was a long one, but it held my interest throughout and I hope that more books on history will be written in this style in the future.

Next I am reading Let’s Talk About Race by Nancy A. Dome, who is a friend that I haven’t seen in a long time.

The title of this book indicates the estimated time that a person would have to live their life – your lifespan (on average) can be expected to last only about four thousand weeks. So how do we finish everything we want to get done during this relatively short timeframe?

The author’s answer is that we don’t. It’s impossible. No matter how many life hacks and email tricks and todo lists you make, it ain’t gonna happen, so learn to let go of the stuff clogging up your daily productivity (which is probably bullshit anyway) and instead focus mindfully on the things that are important to you.

This is my own brief summary and the book goes into far more detail with plenty of information from various scholars and thinkers to explain the author’s ideas. There is a lot here about avoiding the distractions of media (both social and traditional), consumerism, and boredom.

I enjoy reading books that change the way your mental models are set up, and maybe make you rethink some things. This book is tailored towards people that are caught up in the rat race and are perhaps overwhelmed with things they are trying to finish off so that they can finally relax and achieve success. Maybe this book can help those people to rethink things and have a more peaceful and fulfilling life – it is a noble thing to write a book to help people do that.

Most of this book had information and ideas that I’ve already come across, but there were some interesting points on focus and attention, and where exactly they should be. I also was interested in what they had to say about the false productivity gains of multitasking. But the final message came across clearly and it is one I agree with – in the grand view of history few people will know or care about how you lived your life, so you have the right to live it the way that you want to live it. This book aims to give people the chance to do that.

Next I’m reading a history book called The Anarchy: The East India Tea Company, by William Dalrymple.

This was a powerful book, extremely well-written, that was depressing and pessimistic about human nature. It was such a contrast to the positivity and joy of life coming from the last book I read, Still Life. Maybe this book suffered a bit from the comparison, but still it was a great read.

The book tells the story of a white family – settlers in South Africa – that disintegrates over time. There are so many bad people in this book that you can’t help but feel a little sad for the human race. Not much redemption in here, and the narrator’s voice is biting, acidic and mocking. There are a few writing tricks that felt superfluous (character switches in mid-sentence for example), but overall the writing pulls you briskly along through this family’s dark history.

You could read this book on the micro level, and explore the characters and see what motivates them and root for their downfall, or you could read this on a macro level and see them as merely symbols and instruments of the tale of the history of race and apartheid in the country over the past 30 years. There is a lot to learn here, especially for people like me who have almost no knowledge of this history.

I liked this book, but found it a jarring experience. I wish I had read this and the previous book in reverse order, but in the end both books and their styles have a place.

After a long run of fiction I’m switching over the Four Thousand Weeks, and non-fiction book on time management by Oliver Burkeman.

What a pleasure to read this book. It must have been quite a project to write something with this much scope, beauty, art, wit, humor and most of all, love. Picking up this book based off a website recommendation last year I had no idea going in what I was getting into.

This is a sweeping story, involving a chosen family of people that gather in both England and Italy. The center stage is for the most part the city of Florence, and the timeframe starts in the early 1900’s and ends near the 1980’s. I particularly liked the writing style, full of beautiful scenes and special moments. One can hope for a few of these special moments in a lifetime – in this book they come along every few pages. The writer really packs in the emotion, and especially focuses on the appreciation of art and beauty, and the formation of love (in all its various ways).

There was something special about the way each character is so heartfelt – with a very few exceptions (Peg and Claude) I was totally invested in them, and ended up cheering for their triumphs. There are a lot of triumphs in this book – more than I think are realistic but eventually I learned to just go with it and enjoy the experience. Of course tragedy sometimes comes up, but this book is much more about the joy of life rather than dealing with the downsides.

So, a great book, and one of the best I’ve read in the last year or so. It scratched my travel itch a little bit – but usually that itch will come back even harder later on.

After a great book I always feel bad for the next one – but I’ve heard good things about Damon Galgut’s The Promise, which is next on my list.