I recently read the first book in this series, and enjoyed it enough to want to try the next one. The first book left you on a cliffhanger, so I was eager to see how it resolved. Unfortunately I couldn’t get into this book, and for the first time in a long time I gave up on a book and didn’t finish.

I hate to write about something that I didn’t finish – it doesn’t seem fair to critique it not having experienced it in its entirety – but I think I should write about why I didn’t like it here for my future self, just in case I forget why I gave up on the book.

The short version of why I gave up – there is a lot of content in the beginning about the side characters dealing with the loss of another character from the first book. Dealing with the loss and also their own social issues takes up so much of the story that I felt like this was more of a self-help book rather than a science fiction story. The group of people from multiple races each have their own issues with identity (race/gender/sexual/etc), confidence, finance, parents, and so on. They consume huge amounts of social media and deal with fame and when are we going to get to the good stuff?

I guess what I missed was the joy – the joy of unwinding the mystery, and the sense of discovery when they unveil some clue. I wasn’t getting that from this book after dedicating a couple hours of reading – so I decided to move on to something else.]

That something else is The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie.

This book was a long read on where some key international cities stand on the issue of public transportation. The author travels the world looking firsthand at different approaches to transport, and as a travel writing fan I enjoyed this aspect of the book the most.

The idea in the beginning is to contrast cities that have handled public transport well with those that depend on cars and freeways. But it goes deep into the reasons behind each city’s design, the history that dictated that design, and how it may work out for the future.

The author clearly states at the beginning that they prefer living without a car, and so that point of view certainly carries through the entire journey. While he had his mind made up, I felt like the choir that he was preaching to – one of the nicest things about living where I am now is that I don’t really need a car. Walking to the supermarket or reading books on my train commute are some of the best parts of my day.

Because the author clearly has a lot of passion on the topic the history and detail offered on the history of each city can sometimes go long, and it took me quite a while to finish this book. But I did learn a lot, especially why American cities are mostly car-dependent, and how far they have to go before that changes.

My only real criticism of the book is certainly not the author’s fault – this experience was done about 10 years ago, and I am sure that many things have changed since then. I do hope that someday in the future he’ll go out there and see what happened since his first visit to these destinations.

Next I am reading A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor by Hank Green.

This was a fun, sort of cozy fairy tale that was written in a very efficient style. Thanks to the tight storytelling we get right into the heart of the story, and the cast of characters takes off on their quest.

The book was an easy read, there are some interesting characters and quandaries, and I was satisfied with the resolution. Surprisingly it doesn’t lead into a sequel like so many other books from this genre seem to.

If I had any complaint, it would be that at some points it was just a little too cute, and I felt like there was a very specific target audience that the author had in mind when writing this. I don’t think I was in the target audience, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

I read this while continuing to read Straphanger by Taras Grescoe. That book is full of statistics and history so it is going a little bit longer than I expected!

I really enjoyed this book and the idea behind it, despite the sometimes dark subject matter. It has been a long time since I read Huck Finn, and it took a while to get back into the character and the situation. The main character of this book, James, has an entirely new (previously hidden) personality and seeing how this works in the alternate reality that the author created was enjoyable.

There are plenty of books looking at the horrors of slavery in the United States, but where this book is different is that it may have a greater effect on a new generation that is even farther separated from this period of history. Having characters speaking in clean and educated English where they so often speak in a different way in older books or movies – it may be a little easier for younger people to empathize with them and see them as humans rather than characters.

The book really packed in a lot of situations, and sometimes I thought that it suffered from being restricted to the timeline of Huckleberry Finn as written by Mark Twain. There was time to explore what was happening to Jim while Huck was having his adventures, but sometimes it felt artificial. But again, it has been a long time since I’ve read the original work and so I’d have to go back and re-read it. And I’m not sure that I’ll see any of the characters in the same way – which I suppose is one of the author’s goals.

Next I am reading Straphanger by Taras Grescoe.

One of my students recommended this book to me – he enjoyed reading it as a way to study English, so I thought I’d check it out.

The theme of this book is survival and independence, sort of like a Jack London book of trying to get along with nature, although the main character of this story is a young teenager (named Brian).

For the reasons above I enjoyed the book, although it was clearly written with an agenda – don’t take the food, conveniences and simple luxuries all around you for granted- with a dash of “if you got up off your ass and went out into nature for a while you might learn something”.

The writing is simple and it seems like it was written with younger people in mind. We are constantly peeking into the main character’s head and telling us about his ideas – how about more showing instead? Also there is a weird backstory about a secret that he knows about his mother, who is in the process of getting a divorce from his father. Not sure why this was important other than adding to the pressure on this kid.

The ending comes abruptly, and at first I thought it came too quickly, but the more I thought about it the more I liked how it wrapped up.

Next I am reading James by Percival Everett.

So many books with this unoriginal title structure, but I didn’t hold that against the author as I read this book. Overall I liked the concept of the book – it is full of things that I’ve liked in other books – but the execution of the story wasn’t to my taste.

So we’ve got secret societies, doors to other worlds, books, loyal dogs and (possibly) vampires – lots of good stuff. But the main character’s voice was a little aggravating to me, and the book had an overall theme of breaking out from the white male dominating society and overcoming their systemic advantages. I like the idea of exploring this in a book but it seemed spoon-fed and overly-simplified.

Some characters were flat, villains unsurprising and doing monologues to explain their motivations, predictable turns in the story and just the feeling like you know what the character should do but you have to wait several chapters before they do it.

Finally, they have a book being read within this book, and the way it is levered into the main narrative felt awfully contrived. Couldn’t we get this information in a more organic way?

So it sounds like I didn’t really like the book, and before writing all this down I felt like I had enjoyed it overall – but now that I look at it maybe not.

Next I am reading Hatchet by Gary Paulsen.

A long time ago a friend of mine set up a celebration with his then-girlfriend (now wife) for their one year dating anniversary. He got a room at the Ritz Carlton, set up a big 12-course dinner, and really spent big. They had a great time, but after something like that how do you follow it up? What do you do for the first wedding anniversary?

I was thinking about this when I was reading the end of this book, as the 33-year old author finished his seven year adventure walking around the world. It is great to do something like this at such a young age, but I worry about what he can do to keep that sense of adventure in the future.

The end of the book has him considering this, and I think that once the experience of writing and promoting this book wraps up, it’ll be interesting to see where he ends up.

I love stories like this – just like Paul Theroux books where the “rules” of the journey are laid out in advance, we follow the travels and imagine what it’d be like if we were doing the same thing.

The author writes a great deal about his growth during the walk, which is natural especially at the age that he started. I found myself more interested in the logistics – how did he get from A to B and why did he choose that way? Why this country and not that country? There is a lot of fast forwarding and events skipped over – which is understandable because seven years is a long time. Still, I felt that there was more that could be told, and I hope that someday he writes a book with more details on the nitty gritty.

Things I really liked – the sheer freedom of walking and stopping when you want to. Sometimes he decides to stay for a week in a particular place that calls out to him, and I envy the ability to do that. In the seven year walk there are some interludes that have him hanging out in a place because he is waiting for something – a visa, COVID restrictions to lift, a border to open. Then he settles into a sort of almost-regular lifestyle, but without needing to work. Spending days learning languages or reading books at cafes sounded like heaven to me.

As I said, the author talks a lot about his growth during the journey. He attributes a lot of his growth to the meditation of walking and walking with nobody but his dog Savannah to talk to. Sometimes I felt like his thoughts on meditation felt sort of shoe-horned into the story, not naturally coming out. Maybe this is because it this is his first time writing a book – but to me it felt a little artificial.

Finally the story often came back to Savannah, his adopted dog and almost the main character of this book. It felt sometimes like the author was struggling to put himself back at the center, but my attention (and I think most people’s) was drawn back to how Savannah was growing up in such a unique situation. It must have been difficult to write this book balancing both stories in a satisfying way.

Overall I really enjoyed the book and I’ll keep my fingers crossed that there is something else coming from this author down the road – another adventure or a deeper dive into this one.

Next I am reading The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow.

This book was another one I went in blind on, and this time it turned out to be a good thing. Now I know the theme of the book (at least on the surface) but it was fun to discover that on my own. And that made it easier to delve a little deeper and discover some other themes.

The book follows the narrator who is a (overly) snarky design student that turns their life over to social media in an attempt to capitalize on their brush with a very, very rare event. There is a lot of social media featured in this book, and since I am a person that is not a big fan of the media as a whole, sometimes it was a little tedious to get through all the critical considerations that influencers go through when posting.

But the themes underneath the story is where I found more interest. There are thoughts on fame, cultism and power in here, and I think these nicely fit in with society today – social and political issues being at the forefront in some countries.

I also got the same sort of vibes I got when I read Ready Player One. That book (and perhaps this one) was pretty divisive for various reasons but both books feature puzzles, a hunt for clues, and a worldwide competition to find the needle in the haystack. I think maybe I detected a callback to Ready Player One in this book – a dream sequence in an arcade that had a quarter on the machine.

So while I wasn’t a big fan of the main character I enjoyed the book, and I’m looking forward to reading the sequel.

But next I am reading The World Walk by Tom Turcich.

The Slow Horses series of books is always a good read, written in a style that is by now familiar. There is tension and excitement as events speed up, but the author is also not afraid of setting up some pieces in the background so you can watch them come into play much later (sometimes in subsequent books).

While I enjoyed this book as much as the others, you could feel that the author was trying hard to ramp up the clever lines (mainly from Jackson Lamb) to the point where it got a bit much. Almost as if were a dry humor competition.

A lot of the events from this book are taken from real headlines (around 2017) so there may be a risk of dating itself out of comprehension many years hence. But certainly that won’t be anything I’ll be worried about at the time.

I know this is fiction, but even with the realistic characters and events some stuff was a little far-fetched. Hopefully in the next books the author will take it down a notch and take a more measured (subtle?) approach.

Still, not a bad book in the series. Next I am reading An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green.

I had heard somewhere that this was one of the books that makes you re-evaluate how you think about something – in this book’s case the topic is death.

It was available at the library so without much thinking I checked it out. Quickly I realized that it seemed to be written for young adults, and the writing of the teen dialogue and the vocabulary they were using was pretty cringeworthy. “Yo, that was mad dope” etc.

But I pushed through that and although it was distracting throughout the book I was looking for the deeper message here. Unfortunately the message was pretty simple – seize the day because life could end before you know it. Maybe this message resonates more with younger people who believe they’ll live forever, but it didn’t have much effect on me. Maybe because I am closer to death than the average teenager?

But one good point was that the book didn’t hesitate to look death square in the eye, since it was the main topic of the book it could hardly be taboo. Since the characters knew they were going to die soon they could also speak plainly about it when I think probably most people don’t have opportunities to discuss this stuff with their friends or family. So at least here it was getting the thought process going and maybe it will lead to some positive outcomes for some people who would have rather set the topic aside for “later”.

Next I am reading London Rules by Mick Herron.

Here’s an interesting idea for a book. The writer picks some substances that are banned in various places around the world, and then visits each place to try to learn more about why they are banned. The twist here is that he isn’t just talking about them, in (almost) each place he tries out the banned substances to see what the fuss is all about.

This makes for some occasional childish situations – chewing gum on the train in Singapore, for example – but is far more interesting when he tries coca leaves in Bolivia or absinthe in Switzerland.

One drawback about reading this book is that since it was written about 20 years ago a lot of the situations and bans may have changed. One example – he describes the area around Oslo central station as strewn with junkies and broken syringes, trash and police and hopelessness. But we were there a month ago and it was the complete opposite, a peaceful clean area that was not unlike any other train station in Europe or even Japan. Apparently a lot has happened in 20 years, so the info I was getting from the book needed to be taken with that in mind.

The book theme shifts slightly towards the end as the writer spends a lot of time (and pages) cogitating about the philosophy of banning substances and what situations warrant it, the war on drugs, and the goals of a nanny state.

I thought the author had a very reasonable viewpoint – that as long as a person is making a rational choice and that choice is not causing any harm to others then it is the responsibility of society to let them do it. There are some exceptions to this, and the author lays out the argument in detail. I liked his philosophy, and his admission that it is probably difficult to pull off in the real world.

The book ended differently than I had expected when I started the book, but I like the more intellectual shift that it made and this content more than any of the other stories will make the book worth reading even after another 20 years or more.

Next I am reading They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera.

This book is really sort of an extended short story, but it really packs in plenty of details, undercurrents and history. The stakes of the story appear at a leisurely pace, and I enjoyed waiting for them.

I suppose that this could have been drawn out, with some extra scenes stuck in there with fireworks between conflicting characters or dramatic revelations and tearful declarations – but the author dialed this down to the perfect amount.

The message of this story was received without it being overly preachy and I appreciated the calm, quiet approach here.

This was the second book that I’ve read by the author, and I enjoyed both of them very much. I’ll be on the lookout for more.

Next I am reading The Devil’s Picnic by Taras Grescoe.

One of the better non-fiction books I’ve read so far this year. The book is written in an unusual style, and even though it is translated from German to English, the writing is natural and clever.

Starting with the author’s childhood growing up in Yugoslavia and escaping the country as it exploded into civil war, the story follows him and his family as they try to get by as refugees in Germany, and then as their family is divided to different parts of the world.

The story shows the challenge for refugees forced to fit into wherever will take them, and how those challenges brought out the best in some and the worst in others.

I liked the unusual format – not a linear story but not a wacky time jump thing that is hard to follow, either.

The author has done some fiction so if I can find a translated version I am eager to read that and see what it is like.

Next I am reading Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan.

This is the first work of fiction that I’ve read by the author – I had enjoyed a non-fiction book a while back, and thought since I liked the movie Big Fish I should check out the book.

The film is a bit different from the book, but I thought that having seen the movie it actually improved my feeling of the book. Although they were different they weren’t mutually exclusive.

The story in the book was a little more intimate and I enjoyed how it was written. The structure of the book is unconventional – and in this case I thought it worked out quite well given the storybook nature of the main character.

More details into the stories that are told here would have been welcome. After a long story about how the main character met and married his wife she sort of faded away in the rest of the book.

And although the ending was really good (as was the movie’s ending), I thought that the strings of the story weren’t tied off quite as much as I’d have liked.

But I did get to read a ton of jokes, both good and bad.

Next I am reading Where You Come From by Sasa Stanisic.

This book was a struggle to get through. I’ve found that I don’t like books that use absurdity or outrageous characters/behavior to hold your attention – and unfortunately there was a lot of that in this book.

I liked the idea of it at first, kind of a whodunnit in the forests of Poland with a group of translators struggling to figure things out. But it gets weird quickly, and it is full of people doing silly things which I guess was an effort to entertain the reader.

This was a long book, and towards the middle of it I started questioning if it was worth going on.

After finishing the book I can say now that it wasn’t.

Live and learn, I guess. Next I am reading Big Fish by Daniel Wallace.