I wanted to like this one, set in a grungy and messy Paris under King Louis, but in the end it was a little over-written with everything ending just about perfectly. All mysteries are explained – every little detail – and so I think the book was lacking a sense of wonder. It needed something special and felt like a lost opportunity.

The setting had great potential – I really liked that through most of the book we were wondering if this was a realistic world or a magical one. The villains of the story were pretty one dimensional, the women are put in tough positions but rise up and show their tormentors that they have more power and ability than expected.

The secret to the central mystery was telegraphed early when one of the main characters dies “off screen” – always a red flag for any readers of mystery. I wish that the resolution could have been handled differently.

Next I am reading Art Work: On the Creative Life by Sally Mann.

Ooh, spooky book. But who are the spooky ones and which ones are getting haunted. Things are not so clear in this tale that centers on the daily life of a young girl in a small town.

I like reading books with mystery as well as intelligence – this had a great balance of both. A lot of things are unclear, and despite having a villain appear things were not what they seemed.

There is an overarching message here, maybe about small town life and our responsibilities towards each other, and the way the tale unfolds it gradually becomes more apparent.

Next I am reading The Clockwork Girl by Anna Mazzola.

Some deep thinking this time, with a look at how Socrates approached critical thinking. The book is not really written as a practical guidebook but more as a high level survey of some of Socrates’ “conversations” and what they might mean to us now.

What I really liked about this book was the multiple thought experiments where the author guides you through a mental experiment to illustrate her points in more detail. I also liked how the author didn’t linger too much on historical backgrounds and instead got right down to the deep thoughts.

However I soon realized that this book is delving farther into debates of thought than I had expected, and despite being aimed at the layman I often felt like I was reading an academic work. Which is fine – but books for an academic setting and for a layman’s consumption have different goals and approaches. While this one started easy enough, I found myself less interested in the second half of the book.

Still, there was some great stuff in here. It was fascinating to hear the musings of someone who is paid to think professionally.

Next I am reading We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson.

I realized that I hadn’t read this one when talking with my mother about Project Hail Mary. I really liked that one and The Martian, so I thought I should go back and check out Artemis.

And it was so-so.

Like the other books we get lots of science and physics, but this is wrapped up in a sort of mystery/heist caper that provided the characters with lots of chances to make witty comments. Unlike the other books it was written from a female main characters point of view, but otherwise pretty much the same.

I guess my problem was that I wasn’t too invested in the fate of the characters. The story was a bit simple (outside of the technical descriptions) and sometimes I wondered if it was written as a young adult book. But then rewashable condoms came up and I guessed not.

Maybe this was created as an airport read that you can get through quickly – and for that I think it accomplished the goal.

The more I think about it, the other two books have strong themes of isolation, while this had much less of that. Maybe that was why I didn’t vibe with this book as much as the others.

Next I am reading Open Socrates by Agnes Callard.

This is the first book for adults by the author of Holes, one of my favorites. I enjoyed both these books as adults – there isn’t really anything too “adult” about this new book except for some themes that might be a little dark. This book captures the whimsical spirit of his other books, and I guess that is what I was looking for.

The author has created a great title character and sort of built the story around him. From an outside view you wouldn’t notice quite how important the magician is in the events that come about. This magician is also unlike others – short, hairless, and prone to smelling bad. He’s got a sharp sense of humor and knows exactly how close he is to falling out of favor.

While I enjoyed this as a quick read, I felt like I wanted a little more depth to it. Sort of like a fairytale everything magically comes together, but I thought it could have been drawn out a bit more so when the twists hit they have a little more impact. But that’s just my opinion, man.

I think there is room for more from this character, although the way it is written I do not expect that more will appear in the future. Still, I hope that the author writes more like this as his storytelling skills are really top-notch.

Next I am reading Artemis by Andy Weir.

This book really helped me to learn that I do not enjoy reading books with “experimental” writing styles.

Her previous book was not exactly traditional, but it seems like she took chances here that maybe other people will reward her for. Just being confused through five hours of reading gets exhausting, and I wasn’t getting the payoff – hopefully there is indeed a payoff and that people more intelligent than I are enjoying it.

Next I am reading The Magician of Tiger Castle by Louis Sachar.

This short novel made me wonder why I don’t read more Westerns. It nicely captures the changes that come with modernity both good and bad. Using a likable main character’s point of view we can see how people react to things we might take for granted.

Books like these are the closest thing to time travel. Nothings is juiced up for excitement and we examine things happening at a slow pace. I liked how the author jumps around in the timeline – just enough without being annoying.

I’ve never read any other books by this author but I’ll have to remedy that in the future. Next I am reading Will There Ever Be Another You by Patricia Lockwood.

After reading a book as long as the last one, I accidentally chose another long one. But this book turned out to be much better.

Going in blind was perfect for this book – I hate to write too much about it here. I loved how the author built an entire town and history, and had me wondering if these people and places were real. There are elements of nostalgia (like “A Christmas Story”), Stephen King (small town kids against something much bigger than them – like “It” and “The Stand”), but also some moments that take an adult look at the challenges of growing up as a boy. And I could really relate to the stories in here, even though I was born ten years after.

But the real spark here is how the author shows us how events and people shape this boy as he grows up. This is like a collection of stories tied together that show what makes this boy into what he becomes later. And while reading it we see much of this in our own backgrounds.

There are plenty of metaphors and meta moments. Many of the bits of wisdom and sequences still resonate now – and we’re pretty far past 1991.

Weaved into all this is a magical element that pops up when you least expect and keeps you guessing the rest of the book. This was exceptionally well-played. Some of the situations have you wondering what is real and what is not, and since we spend so much time in this no-man’s land we start to feel a little unmoored.

My only small criticism was the over-abundance of the little folksy expressions. At first they are used to put you back into the 1960’s as a kid, but after a while they got a little wearing. But then I’d hear one that I hadn’t heard before and laugh out loud.

This is one of the best books I’ve read this year – so glad that I picked it up! I can’t wait to read it again after a couple a years and go back to the little town of Zephyr, a place and time lost to history.

Next I am reading Train Dreams by Denis Johnson.

We are heading to Australia in less than a week and so when this title came up as being set in Australia I thought: why not? I had seen this book on the shelves for years, it was a mini-series with Richard Chamberlain, so why not find out for myself if it was any good?

It was OK.

On the side of the good – the setting and descriptions of the home ranch in Australia were really well written. The author took the time to really flesh out the place and the excitement of the family as they went from poverty to the edge of riches. Somehow the book delivers on the sense of scale – the vast lamb ranch and what it takes to manage it.

Also I like stories that cover entire generations – and here we meet them as a young family and then follow them mostly to the end of their lives. They live through world events (including World War II), although some of these are skimmed over a bit.

On the other side of the ledger the writer’s style is a little dated, and everything is told (rather than shown), sometimes becoming pretty dry and simplistic. The dialog often devolves into cheesy lines that imagine would be agony to watch actors chew through.

There are a lot of ridiculous situations that felt totally unbelievable, simply built quickly to serve the plot, and these quickly dispelled any sense of belief for the reader. Towards the second half of the book I felt like the whole story was overly mother-centric – from the long descriptions of what people were wearing to the frustration at children abandoning the wisdom of their mothers.

It was a long read, and towards the end it felt like work getting through it. But it’ll be hard not to think about it while visiting Sydney next week.

Next I am reading Boy’s Life by Robert McCammon.

This book takes a hard look at China and the USA, and some of the contrasts and similarities between them. The author is a young American with Chinese ties and has a lot of interesting ideas about how the Chinese government operates and what America needs to do in order to improve.

One thing I liked right away is the author’s caution – both countries need to do better to make life better for the citizens who live there. This is not a zero-sum game, and it would be simplistic to look at it that way.

Thanks to his insights, and his experiences in China there is a lot of timely information that I think would contribute to a better understanding for Americans reading the book.

While the first half of the book did a great job of looking at some key events in the history of China and how they see themselves, the second half of the book is almost entirely anecdotal stories which I got less benefit from. There is a very long chapter on how China handled the COVID pandemic, and that was interesting to me. Most people I meet are eager to forget that chapter of history (wherever they are from) but I appreciated the in-depth coverage here.

There is also a long section on the author’s family and background, which felt sort of self-centered to me – I would prefer a bigger picture view.

Next I am reading The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough.

Wow – this book caught me by surprise. I had heard it was a great book involving time travel – and that was certainly true. However the way it is done was extremely clever and has just the right amount of ambiguity to make you step through the story carefully.

I liked how the author set up the book with a character at a crossroads, and then set them off in a direction while we watched and worried. I was worried most of the book – to the point where it was becoming stressful to read on. There are so many points where you can see clouds on the horizon – and you are hoping that things don’t go wrong but also we know that they probably will. In a very real sense this book could also be about the hazards of drug use.

There are some good twists in the book, especially when you have your guard down, and although the author sometimes got too tied up in ancestry the payoffs are there in the end.

Next I am reading Breakneck by Dan Wang.

It has been a while since I’ve read a mystery. This one was unique – a history/mystery mix set in 1950’s Bombay, India, just after Partition. The main character is the first female police investigator, and so we join her in her struggles to deal with prejudiced coworkers, bosses, family members, and even regular people on the street who can’t imagine a woman doing what had been a man’s job for so long.

Oh, and she also has to solve a murder.

I thought the book was well-balanced between telling the history of that time along with telling a compelling story of a murder. Thanks to the history the possible motives suddenly multiply and make her task even harder.

It was an entertaining book but I sometimes felt like it was a little too formulaic – it has all the necessary beats of a detective novel, which sometimes pulled me out of the story and setting. The big reveal at the end had a Scooby-Do feeling to it – with every detail fully explained. As long as we are inventing why not invent a little more?

The series continues, but I’m not sure if I’ll keep reading. Next I am reading The House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier.

Light, simple, and hilarious – these books are apparently part of a new genre (to me, anyway) called GameLit. I can see why gamers would enjoy the books. The author has distilled the enjoyable parts of loot grinding games, and the main characters are suitably clever/snarky/funny/entertaining.

Reading these books made me feel like I was eating birthday cake for breakfast – delicious but with a side of guilt. They aren’t completely simple – there is an underside to the books that hints at mysteries as well as subtle mockery of contemporary figures and events.

While they are a breeze to read there are a lot of rules to explain in this completely new world, and unfortunately there are only so many variations to having other characters explain things to poor Carl and Donut.

After reading the first two books I will definitely continue (I think there are five or six) but now I need a little break. Next I am reading Midnight at Malabar House by Vaseem Khan.

I heard about this book on a website where authors recommend their favorite books in a given genre. This book was recommended as an adventure, and it certainly was that – I really plowed through it and was entertained all the way.

It is a historical fiction novel, focusing on the first queen of Assyria, and how she rose from orphan to leader of this powerful city-state back in ancient times. This unique setting made the story more interesting for me, although some of the historical references to gods, the epic of Gilgamesh, and the reading of animal organs felt a little like they were shoehorned into the story.

The plots and machinations going on around the king and his generals, spymaster, and family members (especially his mother) reminded me a great deal of all the plotting going on in the Game of Thrones series. But it was more like the author had enjoyed the TV series rather than the books. While there are great scenes between power players, things moved too quickly and felt over-simplified.

I guess it is a fine line to walk – writing an adventure novel or a comprehensive work of historical fiction. This one definitely fell on the side of adventure.

Next I am reading Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman.

This book was sort of a historical comfort novel, set mostly in England and Italy. I enjoyed the story – and it was cleverly set up so that I wasn’t expecting how things turned out.

Some of the situations were pretty far-fetched, but most of the comfort and joy of this novel was derived from the simple comforts of taking a break from your usual routine. In the end the story is about love, and how and when it blooms and how important it is not to let it wither.

The book was pretty old, so I got some new vocabulary from it. One surprise was when two characters were described as “making love” but at that time it simply meant they were treating each other in a loving way.

I’m not sure where I got this book recommendation from, but it was an entertaining (and rather short) read.

Next I am reading Babylonia by Costanza Casati.