Books I Have Read from 2013 to 2024

I read this novel fast. It really felt like a sequel to Holy Orders. There was more about Quirke, although I don't know if his "ailment", with the halucinations and other symptoms, has been resolved. Nor have Phoebe's sexual proclivities been clarified. Overall, a very good novel by Benjamin Black, again.

This novel was very good. I believe it is the sixth Quirke novel. In this novel, Quirke is starting to have some "mental problems" the symptoms of which seem like maybe PTSD. Quirke's daughter is more involved in this story also, which I prefer. Overall, one of the better Quirke novels for me. I want to know what happens to Quirke and Phoebe now.

I bought this book in The Louvre when we were in Paris last week. Brocvielle discusses some of the more famous pieces of art in The Louvre, like the Mona Lisa, The Odalisque, The Cheat With The Ace of Diamonds, The Raft of the Medusa [which looks like Ship of Fools, which seems imitated by Liberty Leading the People], etc. It was fun to read about these artworks after having just seen them in the museum. Probably better to read before going to The Louvre, and probably not worth reading for someone who'll never go the this museum. It certainly helped to reinstate some of my memories of the museum.

This novel was okay but not as coherent as some of Herron's earliest "slow horses" novels. Not much character development in this novel either. We do not find out much about River, Lamb, Catherine, Shirley, Rodney, Louisa, or Coe. We find out a bit more about Lech. Overall, better than most contemporary novels but not as good as Herron's best.

Hannah Weiss appears in this novella as a triple agent. She was in The List also. We are also introduced to Alec (Lech) Wicinsky, who I think shows up in the next novel Joe Country. The story this time was mediocre and a bit convoluted. Still, I'm looking forward to hearing more about what happened to Alec, because it was not perfectly clear in this novella.

I bought this book before it won the Booker Prize. It was very good. The novel is very meditative and somewhat poetic. There is no plot, no real conversations, no real character development. It is mostly a description of the mostly mundane tasks of astronauts aboard the International Space Station, and some of their thoughts as they engage in these tasks. Overall an interesting book.

This novel was very good. I believe it is the fifth Quirke novel. Quirke's family was not as central in this novel. Quirke seems a bit more sexually active in this novel. The detective story was fairly satisfying. Overall an excellent novel.

This was the fifth of the "Slough House" novels. I didn't think this novel was as good as the previous four. I don't know why Herron suddenly was using "gunna" for "going to". Some of his jokes were too obscure for me to figure out this time. He didn't really develop the characters much this time. We find out a little bit more about Lamb and Catherine's past, but not much on Cartwright, only a little of Rodney Ho, and really no history or development for Shirley, Louisa, or JK Coe. The story concerning the politicians was disturbing, given when I read this. Still, overall, it was a very good novel but had more weak sections than I noticed in the previous novels.

This novella is supposed to fit between Dead Lions (#2) and Real Tigers (#3) in the Slow Horses series. It is in this collection Standing by the Wall. The story was good and I wonder if we will see Hannah Weiss again.

I think the hype for this book was too high because I found the novel disappointing overall. Perhaps it was the fault of the translator. I found three errors right away: conflating "reluctance" with "reticence" and not using the correct subjunctive case "if I were", not "if I was". Those are common errors but she also has the girls receiving first communion when they are 13 or 14. This would have been confirmation. I found the story to be mediocre and the number of characters unwieldy and unnecessary. Several of the characters were interchangeable (Ada and Carmela). The prologue was frustratingly left dangling, as was the end of the novel. I suppose this sets us up to want to read the next installment, but I am not convinced it is worth the effort.

This book is non-fiction but reads like fiction. Jacobsen goes through about 72 minutes of nuclear war from beginning (a single missile launch) to end (the end of civilization, period). That is how long it takes. The scenario she depicts is terrifying and all too plausible. There are probably not enough guardrails in place especially when we have leaders that are lacking in intelligence and imagination. The nuclear war scenario is complex, but the outcome is simple. The problem is the mindset of people who cannot imagine the apocalyptic consequences of nuclear war (or perhaps some are cheering on the final end of the world.)

On a Raft is a short story. [I read an online PDF file.] It is essentially about a boy whose father arranges his marriage and then takes the wife as his mistress. At the end of the story the father and the mistress seem to like the idea of the boy becoming dead. I don't know what to make of this story. [Nabokov did not seem to have much that was favorable to say of Gorki.] I also read the last two sections of this Nabokov book concerning philistines and translations. These last two sections were short but interesting.

This play seemed better upon reflection. It seemed very short to me. It was almost like a Shakespeare comedy like Twelfth Night, with all Chekhov's characters essentially in love with the wrong person, because the loves are all virtually unrequited. Each of the loves are for different reasons (ego, status, etc.), and several involve sex, but none seem to involve companionship. There is also a lot of emotionally abusive behavior demonstrated by several characters. Although the play is sadly funny, the story is essentially a tragedy.

These were both pretty good short stories. The Lady With The Pet Dog [Nabokov called it The Lady With The Little Dog] was interesting and different from most typical short stories. It wasn't very dramatic, was only a little humorous, and the ending was open-ended. In the Ravine [Nabokov called it In the Gully] was almost a fable. Virtually all the characters were false in some way, and the tragedy with the child just seemed absurd. This story seemed somewhat Kafkaesque and I didn't care for it as much.

This novella was okay. Somewhat like The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. The first 40 years of Ivan's life were very similar to mine but Ivan died at the age of 45. Nabokov really liked this novella but I'm not sure I'd want to read it again.

Chuck Hoffman wanted me to read this book; probably because the character Alfred has some kind of Parkinson's disease. Overall the book was excellent. Franzen is very good at describing the details of family dynamics, especially in the way people converse. Franzen frequently gives us access to the characters' thoughts as well. Overall the story is rather sad, but also humorous in a very acerbic way. Franzen is good at describing scenes and uses funny lists throughout the novel. My one complaint is that he has too many characters named that we don't need to know [and one character that was pretty important that I completely forgot]. Perhaps this is a book that is meant to be read a second time, although I think I might prefer to read one of his other books instead.

Geoff recommended this book. Storr's premise is that "status" is a principal motivation for people. However, I think status is just one reinforcer and I think Storr is so focused on status in the book that it seems to be almost the only thing he sees as explaining human behavior. Storr certainly makes the case that a lot of otherwise inexplicable behaviors can be attributed to the need/desire for status. Also, some of his categorizations seem a bit restrictive. In one example he says people play games like Idi Amin, Mother Theresa, or Einstein. However it is difficult to tell where to place someone like Tom Petty. Is Petty's prestige due to genius or morality or some kind of dominance game? Although the book was interesting, Storr's premise might not be all that insightful.

This was the fourth of the "Slough House" novels and catches me up with the TV series. It was as good as the previous three novels. We find out a bit more about River Cartwright's background in this novel. Herron introduced more characters (with aliases as well), almost as a challenge since we readers already know the main characters. Overall, Herron is a very consistently good writer and I am looking forward to the three subsequent novels in the series.

This was the third of the "Slough House" novels. It was just as good as the previous two novels. Herron reminds me of Robert Crais even more now. The character of River Cartwright is being (rather slowly) revealed; somewhat like Elvis Cole in Crais's novels. Jackson Lamb is the other central character who has a role like George Smiley but has a character like an irascible/cantankerous Zen master, with a biting sense of humor. A few seemingly important characters have been surprisingly killed off, so it is not certain which other characters are likely to survive. Overall, since there is a general continuation of characters, these novels are pretty quick reads. This novel seemed pretty fast and was a little shorter and seemed to have more action toward the end.

Dead Lions was very fun! After Anna Karenina this novel seemed extremely fast-paced. This novel has the same main characters as Slow Horses, with River Cartwright and Jackson Lamb seeming most important. This story concerned something code-named "cicadas". All the action takes place in and around London. I am planning to read the next 2 books right away (Spook Street will be streaming by October 9, 2024).

This novel was excellent! (I somewhat understand Nabokov's preference for Tolstoy over Dostoevsky, but I might say that where The Brothers Karamazov is superb, Anna Karenina is sublime.) I found myself wanting more scenes with Anna. We get to know her most when she has a stream-of-consciousness section on the train in Part Seven. But it remains somewhat of a mystery what men found seductive/attractive about her. It seems to me that the novel could haved ended with Part Seven, but Tolstoy seems to need to wrap things up and give them meaning in Part Eight. It is apparent that Tolstoy is struggling (unsuccessfully) with the conflict between science (materialism) and religion (Christianity). It is really only in this last section of the novel that Tolstoy makes an explicit argument, essentially about morality. In the rest of the novel, the arguments are more organically integrated into the story. I suppose you could say that Levin has an epiphany but it is really rather random and disconnected from the central events in the novel. Tolstoy's prose, his metaphors, his imagery, the realness of his characters, his artistic touches all seem more refined than in Dostoevsky. For example, the way Tolstoy uses the dream, that Anna and Vronsky share, is a much more subtle device that the dreams of the characters in The Brothers Karamazov. Tolstoy also frequently uses descriptions of a character's body language (sucking on his mustache, squinting her eyes, etc), that somewhat authenticate the words people say. In some ways this novel wasn't quite as dense as The Brothers Karamazov. I think I would re-read Anna Karenina more because of the experience than an expectation that I would pick up on things I missed in the first read.

This novel was excellent! The Brothers Karamazov was a real leap from Dostoevsky's previous novels. This novel seems modern and very different from Gogol (or Kaffka for that matter). Nabokov did not seem to accentuate his attention to The Brothers Karamazov and I wonder if perhaps it is because it is too good to be consistent with his judgment of Dostoevsky. The novel is probably too long but I really like the structure with the very short chapters in the longer "books" which are contained in the 4 "parts" of the book. (Also, funny that Nabokov refers to the "sixth" part of the book, as though he had forgotten its structure.) There are a lot of interesting arguments in this book concerning faith, science, psychology, etc. I can understand why a lot of philosophers (including Freud) really liked this book. It may not be as popular among the literati, but even Einstein attached some value to it. This novel would not be in my top 10 but probably would be in my top 50 books. I could imagine reading this book again, despite its length.

I am beginning to have a better understanding of Dostoevsky. One of the themes of this novel, Demons, is atheism versus belief. This theme is really what Dostoevsky is struggling with in all these novels. The "nihilists" represent the "godless", but their tactics are really a form of terrorism. This political/religious issue mucks up much of what Dostoevsky is trying to do in his novels so far. He tries to fit the story to the outcomes he wants and the characters thus seem motivated in weird ways. Rather than psychologically realistic, these personalities seem exagerated and extreme. The narrator of this novel is also strange, sometimes a regular character and other times like an omniscient observer. One example of Dostoevsky's flawed approach is the deleted chapter wherein Stavrogin confesses to extremely abhorent behavior and Dostoevsky believed this experience was needed to explain his later behavior. However, the chapter was somewhat lurid and couldn't get past the censors. Regardless, the story still didn't seem to really adequately explain Stavrogin. I'm interested to see how The Brothers Karamazov compares to the rest of these novels.

I enjoyed this novel more than Notes from Underground or Crime and Punishment. Some aspects of the novel were overwritten, but especially the last of the four parts was quite compelling. There were still a lot of characters with long Russian names to remember, but these characters were pretty interesting most of the time. I think it really helped that there were many women in this novel and the men's interactions with them kept the plot animated. The message to me was that the entire trajedy could be laid at the feet of Afanasy Ivanovitch Totsky, who abused Nastasya Filippovna when she was a child. Overall a pretty good novel and more modern-seeming than the previous novels I've been reading along with Nabokov's lectures.

Notes from Underground is really a novella and quite short. Nabokov says its title should really be translated as Memoirs from a Mousehole. The title, Notes from Underground, seems famous and the structure was interesting, but the story and message were weak. The novella is somewhat against determinism but the arguments seem psychologically weak. The depiction of the "underground man" as a real loser was quite credible. The main character in Taxi Driver does seem to resemble this "underground man".

This novel is the first by Dostoevsky covered by Nabokov in Lectures on Russian Literature. I liked Turgenev better than Gogol and I like Dostoevsky better than Turgenev. Nabokov has some complaints about Dostoevsky being too "sentimental". I was looking for this in Crime and Punishment and what bothered me was the end being somewhat "sappy" in that Raskolnikov is somewhat "redeemed" by his acceptance of Christianity, which colors the whole story somewhat brightly at the end. However, the novel overall is pretty dark and dirty. Several of the male characters seem malevolent or crazy or both. Raskolnikov always seems somewhat crazed throughout the novel. Dostoevsky sometimes has too much needless exposition. For example, some of the dreams near the end of the novel seemed superfluous. I am curious to see how the other novels of Dostoevsky compare.

Turgenev is the second author discussed in Nabakov's Lectures on Russian Literature. I liked Turgenev better than Gogol. Fathers and Sons is the only work by Turgenev discussed by Nabokov. In some ways, this novel reminded me of Jane Austin. Lots of talking indoors and outdoors. Lots of people falling in or out of love. Overall, the novel was good but the style felt a bit dated, perhaps due to the translation. However, the descriptions of the scenes from around 1859 or so were probably pretty authentic to the time period. It seemed almost midieval, with lots of people in the fields, troika-drawn carriages, the town being central, the church always hovering in the background, and several other non-modern appearances.

This short story is the other title by Gogol discussed in Nabakov's Lectures on Russian Literature. I enjoyed this story a little bit more than Gogol's novel. It is also rather absurd and pathetic, like Dead Souls.

This novel is the first one discussed in Nabakov's Lectures on Russian Literature. Gogol's novel seemed rather absurd, somewhat like Kafka. The main character is essentially a con man, who has some success until he is caught. The novel gives some impression of early 19th century Russia and is sardonically funny in some places. The novel had some similarities to Dickens but without as much compellingness to the plot.

This sequel was not even close to being as well written as its predecessor The Firm. The main characters, Mitch and Abby, were never all that deeply described in The Firm and so they are not really familiar in this novel (as, for example, George Smiley is recognizable from story to story in Le Carré). The last 30 pages or so were okay but a lot of the early narrative goes nowhere. There was a hint that the whole plot might have a Bendini-related twist, but regrettably that didn't occur. This novel had a lot of unexploited potential and wasted pages on pointless exposition. Overall a disappointingly mediocre novel.

Some people have called this book "claustrophobic", which I think is accurate. There are no quotation marks and no paragraph indentations in the text, which adds to the tension. The novel concerns the Republic of Ireland taken over by a fascist regime, and one mother's ordeal as the regime gains power. It is a terrifying and depressing novel. The book raises the question of whether these events could happen in places like America. Overall a challenging but rewarding book. However, the reward is the novel's effect as a warning.

This book was a little dry. This book has a lot of statistics comparing Irish immigrants to other immigrants and Catholics versus Protestants, over different time periods in American history. There are some stories about individuals, that help to make this book more readable, but overall this book was mostly interesting to me because I am part Irish American. I would have preferred less discussion about politics and religion and a lot more about art and culture, which were only touched on superficially. Some of this book reminded me of the "union" section of Palo Alto by Harris; both of these had a lot of names of unions that are now non-existent.

This author has been compared to Le Carré. I thought this novel was similar to a Le Carré, with a bit more action, and a more sardonic viewpoint. The main character could arguably be River. However, Jackson Lamb is perhaps the most interesting character; sort of a cross between Smiley and Sherlock Holmes. Lamb seems to be underestimated by everyone. [I have not read the short story included in this book: The Last Dead Letter. I will read it some other time, perhaps.] It looks like the same characters from this novel appear in the next book Dead Lions, which I will probably get.

The story in this book concerns the gradual inclusion of women in the CIA. [Muriel bought this book.] Mundy argues that the precursor of the CIA came into being around the time of the Second World War and that it was largely based on the more developed intelligence agencies of the British. Part of the misogynist culture of the CIA can be attributed to this origin and partly to a dismissal of women in the American culture generally. Mundy argues that over time women have brought special skills to the intelligence services (the CIA specifically), including post-9/11 achievements like the capture of bin Laden. Overall a pretty good book.

This novel was one of my favorites by Stephen King. Holly is a good character and Jerome and Barbara give King a chance to discuss literature. This novel did not have any supernatural events (although Holly alludes to her experiences of them), and the novel feels much more like a straightforward detective novel. In a lot of ways, this novel could have been a Robert Crais novel, albeit without Elvis Cole's snide character. I hope King has more "Holly" novels.

I know I read this book in High School but I have a feeling I didn't finish it. For some reason, I thought the climax of the book was the revelation of the wedding cake in the room next to Miss Havisham's bedroom. Overall, this was a pretty good novel but it seemed longer than I expected it to be. It really concerns the life of Pip over a pretty long period of time; 20 years or so. Pip seems to be a pretty good guy and it hurts to see him get crushed so much in this story. The ending seems to offer some hope for Pip, although I'm not sure if he and Estella could really be happy together.

This book was very interesting in general. It specifically helped me to understand what parts of the Marvel creations are consistent with each other. It helps to know that the books are generally different from the movies and that the only movies that are consitent are the ones by Marvel studios after Iron Man. Also, the whole issue with Spiderman, The Hulk, and The Fantastic Four is much more clear. This book reiterates the notion that a lot of people in positions of financial power are absolute idiots with no sense of the value of art, empathy, creativity, fairness, or talent. I suppose these financial kinds of people are only concerned with money. [In the book, Bob Iger seems to be an exception in that he seems to respect people and see beyond the money.] Overall a good book, but it will probably be dated soon.

This novel was not so much about the Kennedy assassination as it was about culture in the late '50s and early '60s. King handled the time travel aspects of the story adequately but did not really address potential paradoxes directly. I was a bit disappointed that King didn't have more time-travel effects especially since the novel was long. There were plot lines that were not so important (like the line concerning Walker) and could have been cut and the end of the novel could have been lengthened instead. I think King could have done a lot more with the Green Card Man, for example. Overall the novel was okay, but not one of his best.

This was the second or third time I've read this novel, and I've seen the movie several times and it is still good. Muriel just read it on my recommendation and so we watched the movie afterward. Hammett is very descriptive in his narrative. Details abound, especially concerning the body language of the characters. Bogart was excellent in capturing Sam Spade. I got more details this time, like the homosexual hints about Cairo. Also I noticed the weird statement by Spade: "What about his daughter?" near the end of Chapter V. It is not clear how Spade can know about Gutman's daughter yet; if that is the daughter he is talking about. It seems to be an uncaught error in the text. Great book! I actually read this collected version but I like displaying the separate book cover.

This autobiography is one of the best I have read. Streisand's book was much better than Dave Grohl's or Keith Richard's autobiographies. I would compare Streisand's book to Sammy Davis's Yes, I Can. Streisand has a lot of great stories with a lot of well-known people. She seems to have insights and lessons learned from the experiences she discusses. She tends to psycho-analyze herself and the people she interacts with. I really enjoyed this aspect of her writing and thinking. The beginning of the book felt a little stilted and the end of the book seemed a bit rushed. However, I think the most interesting parts of her life were more in the middle than the beginning or end of her life. Overall a very compelling book. She is clearly an extraordinary person.

This book was a compilation of four novellas. I liked all of these stories for different reasons. I liked the story in both Mr. Harringan's Phone and Rat. Mr. Harringan's Phone was more like a Ray Bradbury story; somewhat darkly magical with a coming of age plot. Rat was a twisted fairy tale with lots of allusions to writing literature. The longest story is If It Bleeds and it is good because it has Holly Gibney in it. I think she was better as a background character in the previous novels, but King may develop her better in the new novel Holly. The other story The Life of Chuck had some good scenes but the overall novella was a bit incoherent. [I think everything in the first section was in the imagination of Chuck, but I am not sure.] I read this book mostly so that I would be current with Holly before I read King's new book with her as the title character.

Once this novel gained steam it was a real page-turner. I found I didn't want to put it down during the last 150 pages. Lots of lawyer stuff in the exposition. The characters are well-described and are pretty easy to remember in general; and there are quite a few important characters in the novel. It was much more about plot than character but there were some moral musings throughout the narrative. I am looking forward to reading the sequel: The Exchange.

This book was well written. The author incorporates some of his interesting travels into the book. The basic premise of the book is that we don't know if plants have some kind of awareness. Plants demonstrate some behaviors and some learning and perhaps something akin to basic emotions like "aversion" and "attraction". Calvo makes some arguments that essentially there is so much that we don't know and that plants may have some kind of sentience. I'd only recommend this book to people who are into science but still willing to entertain some stuff on the fringe.

I did not enjoy this novel and was disappointed that it ended inconclusively, requiring me to read at least one more of this series to understand how things end. I read somewhere (after reading the book) that Simmons spends too much time on exposition and not enough on plot, and I think that is exactly right. He also introduces ideas like "spinships", "torchships", "mobius boxes", etc. without really explaining what these are. This novel is structually based on The Canterbury Tales with the "tales" of 6 "pilgrims". Of these stories, the only one I found fairly compelling concerned the kid with the "merlin" disorder. I think Simmons was trying too hard to be "serious" and did not pay enough attention to plot coherence. I don't plan to read any more of his books, the payoff is too small.

This was a good novel but I found while in the midst of the story, I wasn't generally looking forward to reading it. The novel reminded me a lot of The World According to Garp, which I also knew was good but didn't really enjoy. Toltz is humorous and the characters are well-developed. However, the plot is a bit prolonged. The trip to Thailand is worth the wait but I think the pacing was a bit protracted. Having the narration switch between Martin and Jasper seemed unnecessary, and their voices were not very distinguishable. Toltz seemed to waver about how to end the novel, but still overall a good novel with some flaws.

The basic idea of this book is that our behaviors always have a biological or environmental cause and thus there is no room for free choice. We have the illusion that our choices are freely chosen but our intentions are always a product of either biological or environmental influences. Sapolsky spends the first half of the book essentially describing how biological and environmental effects determine our behavior. People really want to believe in free will and have come up with weird ways of trying to explain its existence. The three main approaches are Chaos Theory, Emergent Complexity, and Quantum theory. Sapolsky goes into detail to refute these three approaches to trying to rescue free will. In the second half of the book Sapolsky tries to argue why we all won't become criminals if we recognize we don't really have free will. I essentially have had this disbelief in free will before reading Sapolsky's book, but he makes the arguments almost irrefutable. [Sapolsky is humorous at times and his writing style reminds me of my brother Scott a bit.] Sapolsky alludes to this rejection of free will as having a resonance with Buddhism, but I think it also is consistent with the non-judgmental message of Christianity. However, I am almost certain that almost all Christians would dismiss, immediately, the ideas in this book.

The first half of this novel was essentially a mystery whose only solution seemed to require a supernatural explanation. The second half of the novel involves the characters pursuing what turns out to be essentially a shape-shifting vampire. I read this book because it is the last novel with Holly Gibney as a character before King's most recent novel: Holly. She is in a short-story/novella called If It Bleeds, and I'll read that before I read the new book. Holly Gibney was a very compelling character in this novel. She has some of the appeal of the girl with the dragon tattoo. I liked this novel but I was a bit put off by King somewhat implying that a belief in magic is not such a bad idea. But that is a quibble since horror is at least his first chosen genre.

I did not read all the poetry. I reread The Raven. I read all the tales (around 65 or so) and skimmed the 4 sketches. I also did not read his longer works. There weren't really any hidden gems in these tales; the best stories were the ones I had read before. I noticed the similar theme of the fear of discovered truth in The Black Cat, The Tell-Tale Heart, and The Pit and the Pendulum. Lots of his stories have to do with death or entombment like in The Black Cat and The Cask of Amontillado. The 3 detective stories, with the August Dupin character, seem to be the precursor of the genre with Dupin acting much like an early "Sherlock Holmes" with the narrator, like Watson, describing the brilliance of his friend's analytical abilities. Interestingly, Poe's best stories tend to be his shortest.

The subtitle for this book is A Steely Dan Companion. Hoskyns has compiled interviews and reviews of Steely Dan and of Walter Becker's and Donald Fagen's solo efforts. Some of Steely Dan's songs were about strange things. Some, like "Rikki Don't Lose That Number', are rather mundane; this song about a girl that Fagen tried to pick up at a party. Overall the book gave me a greater appreciation of the musical thinking of Fagen (and to a lesser extent Becker). Becker seemed mostly to hone the edges of the lyrics to make them edgier. Most of the music seems to be created by Fagen. However, Steely Dan would not be a very good instrumental band, they really need the singing. The music supports the singing and the singing supports the music. Both would be sorely lacking without the other. Metallica on the other hand could probably eliminate or replace the singing with another instrument with little or no loss, and more likely an improvement. This book was fine and I probably don't need to read the other (or any other) book about Steely Dan.

This novel was the last of the Bill Hodges trilogy and has Holly Gibney as a character also. Of the three novels, only this one really involved supernatural behavior. It was fun. It is interesting how King has a seemingly trustworthy character like Holly claim there is evidence for something like telekinesis. The plot somewhat demands this kind of "deception", but it would be interesting to know how that kind of comment affects more credulous readers. How effectively do we compartmentalize fiction from the truth?

I enjoyed this Quirke novel even better than the last one, which was the best of the first three, I thought. Anyway, this novel focuses less on Quirke's relationship with his daughter and spends more time on each of these characters' own separate lives. They come together but somewhat less cataclysmically. Great prose. Clever metaphors and interesting scene descriptions. Black (Banville) sets scenes for their emotional impact as much as anything. I am glad I discovered this writer.

This was a very good book. It is a little dated (published in 2003) but most of the science Bryson discusses probably hasn't changed much in the last 20 years. The principle motive of the book is to explain how "humans got here". He essentially starts with the Big Bang and then talks about physics and how that explains much of the behavior of the earth. He then talks a little about quantum mechanics and chemistry. He also talks about plate tectonics, volcanoes, earthquakes, and asteroid impacts on the earth. He then talks about the origins of life in general and then about human life in particular. Overall a very good book.

I found this novel even more fun than Mr. Mercedes; I think mostly because of the literary allusions. The central plot revolves around the Moleskine notebooks of a renowned but reclusive author. This author seems to be a bit of a cross between Philip Roth and J.D. Salinger. Because of this plot element, King makes allusions to several literary figures; which I particularly enjoyed. The end of the book is a teaser for the next novel in the trilogy End of Watch, where Mr. Mercedes [Brady Hartsfield] seems to have developed some supernatural powers.

This book was supposedly fiction but was more like a continuous commentary on a variety of subjects prompted by locations viewed by the narrator during a walking tour of the eastern coast of England. Apparently Sebald lived in England for 30 years but writes in German but is very involved in the translations. The prose of the book is sometimes notably well-crafted. I think I liked the first few chapters the best. Sebald frequently has an oblique or direct reference to the holocaust but I'm not sure if there is any general rationale for the stories he chooses to tell. The book ends with a section about silkworms. There are also a lot of blurry photos accompanying the text. I chose to read this book because it was mentioned by Le Carré (I think in Silverview.)'

This is the second biography I have read by Isaacson; the first was about Ben Franklin. Elon Musk is certainly interesting. He is erratic though. Isaacson ends the biography by asking whether the genius of people like Musk comes at a price like Musk's frequent lack of concern for other people. Isaacson says in the Acknowledgements that Musk did not read the book or have any control over it before publication. The structure of the book was interesting with 95 relatively short chapters. It made it easy to reach a stopping point. The book is mostly chronological but focused on some area of Musk's life, like SpaceX, or Tesla, so that sometimes the timeline gets some overlap from one chapter to the next. Quite compelling to read and overall a good book.

Very good thriller. Not very scary but lots of tension. King's characters are a bit exagerated (somewhat like Dickens), but they are interesting (also somewhat like Dickens). King keeps the plot rolling and jumps perspectives to keep up the tension. Good to adequate scene descriptions. King for me tends to exceed expectations. He often writes a little better than what I am expecting.

I enjoyed this novel. It was clever, with a dead character being a thinly veiled version of Kuang. Mostly this is a novel about writing and publishing but it also deals with racism to some extent. There are parts of this novel that seem rushed whereas her previous novel Babel seemed more polished. The ending of this novel was clever but not very satisfying. Still, however, this was a very good book and I look forward to her next.

I thought this book was mediocre. The author focused on many details but not many of which clarified the philosophies of the four men he writes about: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, and Heidegger. Eilenberger narrows the narrative mostly to the period of 1920 to 1929, the latter year being when a Davos convention occurred. All of these philosophers had something to do with time and existence, but Eilenberger is quite vague about describing their philosophical perspectives. [I wonder if the translation is problematic.] For example, I would have thought he would have said something about Wittgenstein's notion of language as a game. Overall, I found the book a disappointment.

Interesting preface by Ken Liu (translator for The Three Body Problem). This novel was very similar to Ringworld. However Ringworld had better characters and the world was more awesome and interesting. It surprised me that Niven wrote Ringworld in 1970 and Rendezvous With Rama was written in 1973. It's easy to imagine Clarke may have been influenced by Niven. The better book is Ringworld but Rendezvous With Rama is still worth reading.

This is one of the few novels by Crais that is not Elvis Cole or Joe Pike. The main character in this novel is an ex-con named Max Holman. He has just gotten out of prison and finds out his son (a policeman) was killed in a suspicious way. Holman starts his own investigation and enlists the help of an ex-FBI agent (Katherine) who had arrested him for the bank robbery that lead to his 10 year stint in prison. The resolution to the somewhat convoluted plot was okay. Overall, the plot was mediocre and Crais put most of his effort into the character description of Holman (and Katherine a bit). Holman is not really much like Pike or Cole. Holman has a lot of self-doubt. Although, he is actually quite resourceful and surprisingly charitable. Overall a good book.

Walton writes mostly about the Russian spies against the British and American spies. He starts the chronology around 100 years ago. It seems as though Russia has always had a culture of spies but the spying against the west really began after the Bolshevik revolution. Stalin in particular liked using spies. Walton brings the chronology up through the cold war to the present conflict in Ukraine. His last chapter is about the Chinese threat, which is more cyber-espionage than traditional spying. This was a very good book with a lot of interesting stuff about the successes and failures of all three nations. Mostly the book is pretty frightening because of the potential authoritarianism of a republican president.

The beginning of this book was okay, but the end of the book in "Bitland" became a bit of a slog. This last section of the book was a Tolkienesque/Wagner quest but it took too long with not much happening. The beginning part of the book was better but problematic. It never seemed there was a very good explanation for the Moab hoax, which seemed to be the focus of quite a bit of the first part of the book. Overall I thought this novel not his best, and just "okay" in general. However it did have two quotes I really liked: The "Red Card" has the premises that bad faith arguments have in common: "Speech is aggression, Every utterance has a winner and a loser, Curiosity is feigned, Lying is performative, Stupidity is power." The second quote was: "Agreement got by compulsion or trickery is not agreement, but a thing akin to slavery."

I think I liked this novel the best of the three Quirke books I've read so far. The story, the prose, the character development, the dialog, all seemed better; especially better than The Silver Swan. Rose Crawford does come back. However, it is the development of Phoebe and Quirke that is most interesting. I'm looking forward to the next in the series: A Death in Summer.''

This book was very good. Not quite a "swashbuckle" adventure, but pretty close, with a little Robinson Crusoe thrown in. Most of the book is "man against nature" but every once in a while it is "man against man". Somewhat the opposite of most stories today. David Grann is very good at describing the nautical battles and the nautical navigation problems. I might pick up one or two of his other books: Killers of the Flower Moon or The Devil and Sherlock Holmes and maybe The Lost City of Z.

This book was about as good as Ringworld. There were so many more possibilities with this premise. Perhaps the last two Ringworld novels are worth considering. It looks like it took Niven a while to get back to writing about Ringworld again (1996 then 2004).

I had remembered enjoying this book. I'm pretty sure I've read it at least twice before. I also remember being frustrated that it left a lot still unexplained and unexplored. I started to doubt my memory after reading The Mote in God's Eye, which was pretty bad. Ringworld has echoes of The Wizard of Oz, with Nessus as the Coward, the kzin as the Tin Man, Teela as the Scarecrow, and Louis Wu as Dorothy; which is actually kind of cute. However the rest of the novel is extremely original. Niven really left me wanting more. I think The Ringworld Engineers was similar in that the novel was great with the exception of leaving several plot points dangling. This novel is near the top of my list, especially in terms of SciFi.

This novel was very good. At first I thought it was a memoire, but the main character is in an age cohort with my mom and the author is in an age cohort with my sister. The book was darkly funny. Lots to say about feminism, blame, guilt, and science as a remedy for religion. The story was compelling because of the mysteries surrounding the parents of several characters. [BTW, one of the best characters was the dog.]

Wagner was much more influential than I had realized. Movies, music, spectacle, norse mythology, all these things are connected to Wagner. Tolkien said something like he didn't like Wagner's interpretation of the Volsunga Saga. Wagner is clearly problematic because of his professed antisemitism. There are certainly interpretations of his operas that could be contrived as racist. And Wagner is also strongly associated with Hitler and the Nazis still. This book was enjoyable to read. Alex Ross knows a lot about a lot of artistic things. [I read The Rest is Noise by him sometime before I started recording the books I have read.]

Overall this book was very good. The novel was essentially described from two perspectives. One side of the story is from the spiders' points of view. The other is from the human perspective. I found that I really wanted to get to the human sections and get the spider sections over with. The final battles near the end of the novel were pretty exciting and overall the book was mostly fun to read and somewhat insightful in some ways. I might consider reading a sequel.

I was a bit disappointed with this novel. I wanted Highsmith to develop the character of Heloise more. Instead, most of this novel was about another character (Jonathan Trevanny), who is essentially corrupted by Ripley. This novel was okay but I hope the last two of her Ripley novels concentrate on either Tom or Heloise.

I didn't like the first half of this book but it got better in the second half. It is almost a textbook definition of a picaresque. There are a lot of allusions to Shakespeare and heroes in literature. Overall not as good as A Gentleman in Moscow or Rules of Civility but still a good book. I had to look up the Shakespeare that ended the book. (It was Hamlet, not Iago.)

I got this book at a Skeptics presentation. Horgan signed the book. I probably got it in 1997 or so. It was surprising to me that after about 27 years, the book is still pretty current. There have not been any really big discoveries in the last 30 years. Most of what has been accomplished is more like engineering than pure science. I suppose the biggest change is in the success of AI in many ways that were pretty much unanticipated in the 1990s. Neural networks just were not all that capable back then. Deep Blue still had not beat Kasparov when Horgan wrote the book. Overall, a very interesting book and still pretty relevant.

This novel was excellent. The premise is that magic can be created, in 1830s Oxford England, by inscribing silver bars with words from different languages having similar meanings but with particularly different connotations. However the story is really about four students studying languages together at the University. The main character, Robin, is a boy from China. Ramy is a boy from India. Victoire is a girl from Haiti, through France. Letty is British girl. The mixed ethnicity of this group is the central issue throughout the novel with the narrative concentrating on the colonial asperations of Britain and the tactics they employ to attain superiority. Much of the power of the country stems from the work done at "Babel", the language school at Oxford where the magical silver bars are created. The story is well constructed and not formulaic and the characters are all complex. Overall a great novel.

This novel is most recent in the Elvis Cole novels and it feels like Crais may be wrapping some things up. I have read all of the Elvis Cole and Joe Pike stories up to now. There are still two Crais novels I haven't read yet. This book (Racing the Light) was again one of his best, for me. I found it very compelling and didn't want to stop reading it. It was basically about Cole's search for a young man (boy) who gets entangled in an international web of corruption. I read this book in 3 days, pretty fast. I realize now that Josh was supposed to be about 26, and his mother was now in her seventies, and Cole treated Josh more like a boy than a young man. Those flaws didn't really affect the logic of the story so much, but there were a lot of complications that distracted from the mystery but didn't really connect up with the main part of the story. Still, it was a great Elvis Cole/Joe Pike story!

I was disappointed with this novel. It had an interesting premise that everyone in the world received a box that told them the length of their lives. However Erlick did not really execute the conceit very well. There were lots of inconsistencies (e.g., why wouldn't people take the boxes of other people?') Granted that the novel was mostly about the characters, even the characters were not very interesting. The more I think about this book there just was not very much to like about it. Even the book cover seems almost unrelated to the story.

Isaacson may have been more of an interpreter as a biographer than David McCullough. I enjoyed that aspect of this book. Franklin was complex and difficult to pin down in some ways. He was manipulative but not a bully. He was somewhat hypocritical and got away with alot by being naïvely charming. He was somewhat of a populist (which I would not have liked). He was also a bit "preachy". But he was clever and unpretentious. He was clearly the oldest of the founding fathers and was essentially self-educated (somewhat like Leonardo). He sailed the Atlantic something like 8 times and I think the shortest voyage was 30 days. He was a rather incredible person with his studies of lightening and his travels and his importance in the forming of the United States. Overall an excellent biography about a very interesting man.

This novel was perhaps even better than the first Ripley novel. It's only drawback really is that it ends in a pretty clear cliffhanger. Some things are wrapped up but it is absolutely not over and we are left hanging, waiting for the next novel. I am hoping Heloise becomes more important in the sequels because she seems very interesting.

This is the fourth "Discworld" novel by Pratchett that I've read. This novel was a bit like a hardboiled detective novel with the major crime being the enslavement of goblins. Although the novel is frequently funny, the topic of slavery is still a bit unsettling even in this format. I think of the four books I've read I liked Mort best and maybe Guards! Guards! next best. Snuff was about as good as The Color of Magic.

Geoff gave us this book for Christmas (appropriately). Allegro's hypothesis is essentially that the Bible is mostly code for a cult of mushroom users. This hypothesis is supported by some seemingly strong scholarship with regard to linguistics. However, the support for most of his argument is in Sumerian, which is represented in his extensive notes (about 100 pages of a 300 page book). Allegro's hypothesis was just too extreme for the time the book was first published (1970). However, a weaker version of his hypothesis that the writings in the Judeo/Christian tradition were influenced by mushroom users, seems plausible. The strongest objection to his theory seems to be the lack of consensus about the influence of Sumerian on Indo-European languages. An addendum by Carl A. P. Ruck at the end of this 40th anniversary edition is a bit of an apologia for Allegro's book. Ruck suggests that Sumerian may have had an indirect influence on the authors of the Gospels through the incorporation of foreign terms, as foreign and thus not really a part of that language (Aramaic, Greek, or whatever). An interesting book.

This novel is the next to most recent in the Elvis Cole novels. When I read the next novel (Racing The Light), I will have read all of the Elvis Cole and Joe Pike stories up to now. There are still two Crais novels I haven't read yet. This book (A Dangerous Man) was one of his best, for me. I found it very compelling and didn't want to stop reading it. It was basically about the result of Joe Pike being a good Samaritan to a young woman who is the target of a very wealthy person with a very long-lasting grudge. I read it pretty fast. I'm looking forward to Racing The Light.

I read this book again because I received this new illustrated edition; even though I read it back in May of this year. I was surprised how much I did not remember. I think I read this edition a bit more carefully. Partly because of the illustrations, I paid more attention to descriptive details. Rowling is very good at keeping the levels of suspense fairly high throughout the novel, whereas I think this time I backtracked a bit more because I already knew the gist of the outcome. This novel was worth the second reading (some of the illustrations are exquisite) and probably a third a well.

I enjoyed this book. You could hear Paul Newman's voice. Most of the text was from tapes of Newman but these exerpts were interspersed with comments from friends and family. Newman was initially shy but eventually took advantage of his good looks and transformed himself into a sex symbol. He had some struggles with alcohol. His first marriage was based on the pattern in our culture. His second marriage to Joanne Woodward was long lasting and seemed essential to him.

I was not expecting this novel to be so good. One of the main characters is from The Book of Evidence, but I don't know which other characters are from previous novels. It helped a little to know who Mordaunt really is but not that much. This novel was much more of a meta-novel, very self-conscious. One of the narrators is a first-person godlet (Mercury?) who claims to have created the characters in the story. Another narrator is Jaybey (J.B.). There is also an element of science fiction, with this story occurring in an alternate reality. Lots of doubles (the fly, the pearls, etc.). Lots of word play. Lots of allusions to Joyce, Shakespeare, and other artists (mostly literary). [I could not figure out who is the boy-man that looks like Rimbaut on page 296.] This is a book I could reread.

This novel was good but its pacing was less than compelling. It is certainly a novel of ideas with the characters arguing about philosophical and political issues. The story is essentially a chase but it doesn't really become a chase until almost two thirds of the way into the novel. Everything up to then is mostly leadup. A lot of characters to keep track of and some are not really that necessary. I also found myself sometimes wondering how the characters ended up physically in the places they were. Near the end is an interlude of a sequence of chapters that look pretty deeply at grief, which is good but also changes the feeling of continuity. On the other hand, the universe Morgan creates with trips to Mars and spacecraft crashing into the ocean, is pretty cool.

Pinker's book was mostly a rehash of critical thinking issues I was already familiar with. His section on Bayes theorem was somewhat new but did not help me to understand it intuitively (there seem to be at least a couple of ways to use the theorem.) He also had a chapter on "What's wrong with people?" but it wasn't very enlightening. Pinker's book is okay for someone who hasn't read much about critical thinking but otherwise it doesn't really cover any new ground. Overall just an okay book.

This is another Elvis Cole and Joe Pike novel and was again one of his better stories. Much less sloppy than a few of his other novels. I thought everything made sense in this novel. One of the interesting aspects of this novel was the storyline with the two bad guys who are pretty smart. (The early Elvis Cole novels used to be all first person. I don't know when Crais started mixing first and third person narratives in a single novel but it clearly allows him more flexibility.)

This is the third "Discworld" novel by Pratchett that I've read and it is the first in his series. This novel reminded me more of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy than the previous two books in this Discworld series. This novel seemed a bit more visual. The plot was a bit weak but it was generally funny overall.

I found this book fascinating. DeSilva describes just how important bipedalism is to who we are as humans. It affects our socialization in various ways. It certainly allows us to carry things like children, food, and weapons. Humans are the only truly bipedal mammals. Most (if not all) of the rest of the bipeds are birds (which are dinosaur descendants.) DeSilva argues that we probably developed bipedalism before we dropped out of the trees something like 3 or 4 million years ago. He also sings the many, many praises of walking (not just exercise) and especially in nature. Overall I highly recommend this book.

This was a strange book. The narrator is telling his story to a judge about his guilt in a murder the narrator committed. Therefore there really is no dialog. The narrator, Freddie Montgomery, is a scientist with quite a vocabulary. Freddie's behavior throughout is dispicable and I did not find this novel as compelling as Snow or The Sea. This book reminded me a little of Lolita and also As I Lay Dying; because the narrators in each are not very likable. (Still, I'm looking forward to reading The Singularities.)

This book was mediocre. It was interesting because the central issue in the novel was the apocalyptic consequences of a Flu pandemic. She published in 2014 though, so this topic was a bit prescient. Mandel writes well but the content of the story is weak. There is almost no plot, nothing anyone seems to be trying to attain. The "stories" (such as they are) switch between prepandemic scenes and scenes from its aftermath. Throughout the novel, Mandel drops a few mysterious "clues" like the snow globe, the "t" with the extra line at the bottom, the "preacher", and so on. However, the ultimate reveals are not very satisfying. The way the preacher dies is anticlimactic. The movie might be better than the book.

This book was very interesting. The author is a professor of English at West Point. A lot of the book is about how movies have portrayed various wars. She discusses novels and plays as well, but many of these were also made into movies. Her main premise is that we have looked back at World War II and whitewashed it so that it seemed more noble, less self-centered, less corrupt, etc. However, she gives many examples of how the popular media depictions of the war were not reflective of what the evidence indicates. She criticizes the lies we have perpetrated about the Civil War and the inherent racism and sexism that were still prevalent despite the lip-service given to civil rights. Mostly, however, she seems to argue that all wars are fundamentally based on frivolous arguments. The overall cost of wars always results in overall loss.

I read this book when I was in high school. As I reread it, I didn't find much of anything to be familiar. Perhaps some parts were vaguely familiar. The book was certainly sexually provocotive and frequently somewhat funny. There was no plot to speak of. It seemed somewhat autobiographical, almost like Roth's version of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Some aspects of the novel were a bit experimental. The entire novel is essentially the narrator talking to his therapist. Overall a clever book. [The copy below is the one I read in high school.]

This book was good. Similar (although not as good) as Ringworld. The main character (Charlie) is a 17-year old boy and he finds his way into a magical realm. The story is best at the beginning. There is a long stretch where Charlie is imprisoned and that drags the momentum of the novel down. Once out of prison, the narative picks up again. Overall a fun book to read with only minor imperfections.

Subtitled: Trump in the White House, 2017- 2021. This book was very compelling. Trump's presidency was not boring. However, I think that this book was okay to read mostly because I already knew that Trump lost. This book was really a reminder that there was almost nothing good that Trump did in his entire time in office. One of the quotes by someone in his administration (John Kelly?) was something like "Trump doesn't have trouble determining right from wrong, he just always chooses wrong." Perhaps that sums him up.

This is another Elvis Cole and Joe Pike novel and was one of his better stories. Maggie, the dog, makes it a little more interesting. I think he may be a little sloppy sometimes and so I don't push some of the needed suspension of disbelief. Just as an example, at the end of the novel, Elvis offers Joe a Falstaff saying there are "two left". A few minutes later he tells Janet Hess to help herself to the beer in the fridge. I suppose we could assume that Elvis is teasing her for some reason, but that takes a lot of supposing. Still overall, Crais is a dependably good writer.

This is the second "Discworld" novel by Pratchett that I've read. I think this book was just as good as Guards!Guards! The main character, Mort, is taken on as an apprentice by Death. Pratchett is quite visual and quite funny. I did not get all the jokes however. Sometimes I would think that something was supposed to be a joke and I would think about it for a few seconds and then give up. [e.g. "I didn't even remember walking under a mirror"?] Overall though, this book was a nice diversion and I will probably get more books in this series.

Subtitled: "Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America". This book was surprisingly good to me. Macy's message is about the things we did wrong and are still doing wrong and will probably continue to do wrong with regard to addictions because some people are too invested in seeing things the way they do and will not change their minds even though they are wrong and probably know they are wrong. It is pretty clear in this book that the 12-step programs are not effective and are probably harmful in many ways. Over and over Macy finds that Medically Assisted Treatment (MAT) is probably necessary (maybe not for cigarettes but for most addictions). And MAT goes against the fundamentals of the 12-step methods. The "War on Drugs" is also shown to have done a lot more harm than good; mostly just incarcerating a lot of ethnic minorities, mostly black males. Money of course is behind Big Pharma, and money is behind the war on drugs, and money is behind the illegal drug trade, and lack of money for treatment is behind the prominence of free 12-step meetings. I think Macy is optimistic but I don't think I share that optimism. I think there are some people in the U.S. (the world?) who really are hoping that the people they don't like will be killed, or put in jail, or deported, or erased in some other way so that they don't have to even see them.

The beginning of this novel was very good. The first-person description of the main character (Logan Ramsay) undergoing the genetic upgrade in real-time was well-written. However, the plot was a bit weak. Why couldn't Logan's mom save herself? Logan's relationship with his sister seemed forced rather than realistic. Also the end of the novel seemed too abrupt. However what I think was most unbelievable was how Logan is supposedly okay with his wife and daughter having another man "replace" him at the end of the novel. Overall the book was okay, it just could have been better.

This book was surprisingly good. I thought it was fiction but it seems to be a memoir about a card cheat. However, it has strong aspects of fiction (including the subtitle: "A true story and other lies.") The book is rooted in Plato's analogy of the cave and the author describes how his life has been a reflection of Plato's philosophical metaphor. However, what made the book good were the stories that Delgaudio tells. The book is short and well worth reading. Great book cover also. Highly recommended!

This book was of mediocre interest to me. It was a little too superficial. I've been exposed to so many puzzles from several years of reading Games Magazine that this book did not add much to what I already knew. The author has a somewhat annoying style as well in which he sort of plays the "dumb dad" role. Overall I found this book just mildly diverting.

I read this book again after returning from our Lord of the Rings tour in New Zealand and also before the new Rings of Power TV show comes on in September. I found most of this book to be a slog. I liked the story of Beren and Luthien. The only part of the book that seems likely to be relevant to the new series is the 25 pages or so on "Of The Rings of Power and the Third Age". This section describes most of what happens in the First and Second Ages before Sauron is robbed of his ring by Isildur. It is really difficult to recommend this book to any but the most dedicated fan. The Appendices at the end of Return of the King are much more readable and have more content. I skimmed through some of these also (although not the ones on the languages.)

This novel was a quick read. The story focused on a few characters who were moderately humorous. There was a bit of a social justice theme. However, I also found the discourse of the narrative a bit lurid. I think that may be what my father and grandfather liked about westerns. [I actually read this collected version but I like displaying the separate book cover.]

This book was included with the 50th aniversary Let It Be CDs. Interesting tidbits about each of the songs on the album. This book helped reveal to me that the Get Back LP [the 1969 Glyn Johns] Mix is what should have been the album. It would have been a more hopeful album and could have been placed before Abbey Road in the sequence of Beatles albums. Phil Spector in some ways killed the Beatles with his over-produced mix of what was supposed to be their closest to reality album.

Overall I found this novel a disappointment. It was a sequel to The Peripheral but also goes back in time so it is a bit of a prequel also. The premise was interesting with the main character Verity having a PDA named Eunice who is a special AI. However, Gibson seems to spend too much time moving from place to place rather than elucidating and elaborating on the capabilities of the AI. It was also odd that Gibson had Verity and Eunice both be African American. Their ethnicity seemed to have nothing to do with anything; but the coincidence seemed to flag it as somehow relevant. Gibson sometimes phrases sentences in odd ways also. He opens one chapter with: "Someone was freeing Verity's left wrist, someone else the other." Once I correctly parsed the sentence I wondered why Gibson wrote it that way and why it even mattered that two people were untying her. This novel also has too many characters to keep track of who are really not essentially different in what they contribute to the story. I was never really even that impressed with Neuromancer or the other books in that trilogy. Neal Stephenson writes so much better in essentially the same genre. I may be done with Gibson.

This is not an Elvis Cole novel and at first I was not going to read it but when I started to look at the blurbs for The Promise before I read it I realized that there was a character in Suspect that then appears in The Promise. I wanted to read them sequentially so I postponed reading The Promise until I had read this book. It was okay. The best parts were about Maggie the dog. Apparently Scott James and his dog are going to show up in The Promise. This book seemed less carefully constructed than most of his other novels. The dialog sometimes seemed wrong ("why would he/she say that?"). One scene that bothered me was when James impersonates another officer at the jail when he is dressed in his uniform. It seems unbelievable that the people in the jail would not check his badge, thus easily blowing his impersonation. Still, overall it was worth reading for the introduction of Maggie.

Zauner writes really well considering this is her first book. She comes across in this memoir as highly emotional with what seems to me to be an extremely close relationship with her mother. The book revolves around the death of Zauner's mother, but Zauner goes back in forth in time to tell other stories from her childhood. The other principal theme in the book is her and her mother's relationship to Korean food. Overall an interesting book. [I wonder who the two girls are in the photo after the title page.]

I have been looking for this novel for several years. I have read at least six of Leonard's crime novels and like his style; generally humorous. I had heard that Valdez Is Coming was one of his best Westerns but I could not seem to find any of his Westerns in print. Then I found this copy [below] from the Library of America. It is a really nice edition. I really like the books in this library. This novel was good. Very short and a fast read. Quite brutal. The picture on the more lurid cover gives an idea of atmosphere of the novel. Apparently Leonard liked this best of his Westerns. I am interested to read the other stories in this collection. [I actually read this collected version but I like displaying the separate book cover.]

I don't think I liked this book as much as Christine Falls, the previous Benjamin Black (a pseudonym for John Banville) book I read. He didn't seem as careful with the dialog and the prose in this book. It was still very good, but not as good as the other books I read by him. Still I'd like to find out more about Quirke and his daughter Phoebe. [Also I wonder if Quirke's stepmother (Rose) comes back. She's supposed to start living in Dublin now.]

The essential argument that Wilkerson makes in this book is that there are systematic similarities to the ways the Nazis treated the Jews, Americans treat Blacks, and Indians treat the "untouchables". She argues this treatment is a result of the social construct of "caste". "Caste" is characterized by what Wilkerson calls the "8 Pillars of Caste". This distinguishes her notion of caste from race. [Since "race" is not a scientific term I am tempted you use "caste" as an alternative from now on when I can.] Wilkerson seems to suggest that most social systems are going to have a hierarchy of classes; however the problem with caste structures is that they are inflexible and people in the lower class are doomed to stay there. And the people above this lowest class tend to prefer to be higher and thus are not much motivated to change the system. Overall an interesting perspective.

Rowling deserves the money she made on these books. The Deathly Hallows is a very satisfying conclusion to the series. Everything in the ending feels just right. The last couple hundred pages were a page turner. I would probably read this series again. There are things I missed as I was rushing to get through the plot. I was very appreciative of Rowling's writing throughout but I think a re-reading would be revealing and fun.

This book is much more of a cliffhanger. Dumbledore is apparently dead (and I don't remember if he comes back in the concluding novel.) We know more about the past, but Snape still needs unravelling. What is the message in the locket? Who is RAB? I liked this novel. Harry is more in love. Slughorn is more interesting than Dolores. I can imagine re-reading these novels and trying to pay more attention to the clues (and also how Rowling hides them.) I'm looking forward to how Rowling wraps things up in the final book.

This is the first of the paperback books in the series I'm reading because the illustrated version is not available until this coming October. Based on Wikipedia, this book seems to be the longest of the series. Overall, this novel was excellent. In this novel, a lot fewer things happened in Harry's favor. He suffered a lot of losses in this novel. The conclusion of this book seemed a lot more bittersweet and closer to tragic. I'm looking forward to seeing what Jim Kay does with his illustrations for this book.

This book was significantly longer than the previous three books with almost twice as many chapters. Rowling is good at introducing questions and then revealing their answers. I liked the explanation for the journalist's surprising knowledge. I have been reluctant to use the internet to look up characters, spells, etc. because I don't want to spoil the reveal. I can imagine reading these books again and being better at catching the hints she gives. I do look forward to reading these books. They are quite compelling. This is the last of the illustrated books I have. The next illustrated book is scheduled to come out in October of this year.

This book seemed a little darker and a bit deeper than the first two. The trio (Ron, Harry, Hermione) fight more in this novel. Harry finds his father in himself more literally. Some possible inconsistencies around the "time-turner". However, it seems whenever writers work with time travel, they end up with plotholes. Still this book was very good and the illustrations were also quite enjoyable.

I had lower expectations for this sequel and my expectations were exceeded. Rowling is very good at keeping the story going. She has such a fruitful imagination. I'm really looking forward to reading the rest.

This book was extremely fun to read. Like the Hardy Boys version of Tolkien. This kind of book is why I fell in love with reading. Each chapter is one clear episode. Very nice storytelling. Nothing challenging. Rowling's clues are hard to miss. Weird and easily remembered names: Snape, Malfoy, etc. The ending is a bit abrupt but exactly what I was expecting. I think with most novels, the end has to somehow justify what came before. With books like this, it is just a story. Which is very refreshing. I'm looking forward to the next book. This book (and I expect the next three) is illustrated by Jim Kay. I really enjoyed the illustrations; some of which are "poster" quality. [Originally Titled "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" but marketers believed the "p-word" would scare off American children.]

This biography of Roth was very compelling. It is very difficult to determine just what kind of person Roth was but he certainly seems to have been interesting; which seemed to have been his goal. I found Bailey confusing sometimes. He frequently left his pronouns ambiguous. Switching to using first names and last names for the same person was also frequently confusing. There are a lot of characters in Roth's life, and keeping them straight is difficult enough. Roth could probably have gotten in trouble with the MeToo movement. There was some controversy around Bailey also, but Norton ended up publishing this version of the book anyway. Depending on how truthful Bailey was, the biography gave some insight into the life of a successful writer, both in terms of discipline, and in terms of reward. Overall a very interesting, but probably distorted, biography.

This novel had an interesting premise concerning an airliner that landed once with all its passengers and then landed again three months later with duplicates of the original passengers on board. Even with this interesting premise, I found the novel boring. There were too many characters, most of whom were not very interesting, and none of whom were really very well developed. The plot was almost non-existent; mostly simple vignettes of how the duplicates interact with each other. This book received more acclaim than deserved.

This book is a relatively old fantasy fiction. Vance was friends with Frank Herbert. The book is a compilation of stories and novels about the "Dying Earth" where magic is somewhat of a "technology". The stories seemed more akin to the Arabian Nights than to Tolkien. Vance sometimes has bursts of colorful descriptions and then there are passages that are nonsense. The most annoying aspects of the stories were a lack of internal consistency and too many dead-end details. His heroes are also not very likable. Overall, I would not recommend this book except as an example of how not to write.

The first section of this book about "how we got there" was pretty good. I liked that Coloumbe was influenced by Scientific American. He had some other good literary alusions (Dante, Shakespeare, Faust, etc). The second half of the book about "mac the knife" and his post-Trader life was less compelling. I didn't really completely understand some of the business principles he alludes to. I think Coulombe was a smart guy with two Stanford degrees (BA '52 and MBA '54), who made a lot of mistakes but also got very lucky. He tended to be in the right place at the right time. Which is a kind of foresight, I suppose.

I bought this book for someone as a gift and got a copy for myself as well. It was pretty good. The ghosts and auras didn't really add up to much and could have been dropped. This is another book that I bought without knowing it had lesbian themes, which was fine, just surprising to me. Overall a good book especially for her first novel. I don't think I'd read another book by her though and I'd only recommend this book for people who specifically wanted the feminist perspective or something particularly about warriors in Asia.

I enjoyed this book overall. Some of the incidental characters were more confusing than necessary but other than that this book was good. I sometimes felt I was reading Neal Stephenson because the two authors seem stylistically similar. The time travel element was an interesting conceit and I think I might like to read the sequel/prequel Agency. They also seem to making a TV show of this novel with Chloë Grace Moretz as Flynn.

A very interesting book. Ribeiro is Brazilian and some of his examples are clearly culturally influenced. I think there may have been a few errors in the translation as well. Still, Ribeiro discusses historical and artistic connections to dreams. Ribeiro is defensively Freudian, which I really enjoyed. Ribeiro discusses the relationship of dreaming to learning (REM seems to influence procedural memories and NREM seems to consolidate declarative memories). He discusses the basic ideas of how memory is related to "reverberations" of neural paths. He hypothesizes that dreams are useful independent of REM sleep and that they are potentially helpful in "predicting the future". In other words, dreams can be a kind of safe sandbox to try things out in before implementing real-world changes. He also discusses the similar effects of psychedelics and dreams. In the last chapter Ribeiro discusses lucid dreaming (milam). Overall a rather extraordinary book.

This novel was very fun. Even though I saw the movie, I found the book quite suspenseful. There are four Ripley sequels that I think I want to read. The only drawback to this novel is that I feel guilty and ashamed for a bit after reading and identifying with Tom Ripley. I almost have to remind myself that I am not doing the things I'm reading about. In some ways (like with Lolita also), this novel gives a somewhat different meaning to the phrase a "guilty pleasure".

Stephenson is such a versatile author! This novel was a "techno-thriller" and was very fun to read. Very similar in some ways to REAMDE. The main idea of this novel is that a super-wealthy Texan is trying to use geo-engineering to reverse the weather problems caused by global warming. However there are a lot of surprising (at least to me) political, and dramatic, issues that result from this effort.

Dave Grohl tells several stories that are interesting but generally not very deep. In other words, although some of the experiences he had were intense, Grohl tends to skim the surface of the emotional impact. There is a hint of the self-congratulatory and a tone a bit less than humble at times. I did identify with some of the superficial similarities between us: the Legos, the lost wallets, love of the Beatles, and a few other things. Overall, though, Dave Grohl still seems somewhat of a façade to me. I felt like I knew Keith Richards a little better after reading his autobiography; I don't feel the same way with this book. There was not so much who Dave Grohl the person is.

This novel is very well written. I especially liked the description in the Museum of Natural History with the butterfly metaphor. Overall the story was nicely set up with the Preface. But Towles is really trying to describe the personalities of these characters and what drives them, especially the main character. There are events that happen but what is interesting is what the narrator thinks about the experience. This is a very internal novel in many ways, with almost a kind of stream of consciousness to the first person narration. Towles even uses the indication of dialog with the long dash rather than quotation marks (like Joyce). This novel was not quite a focused as A Gentleman in Moscow but the story was still quite compelling. There were also a lot of literary allusions, especially to Great Expectations. Also, I suppose an unanswered question is if Eve knew about Tinker. (Probably?)

I counted this novel as "fantasy" but it is probably more aptly categorized as "comedy". It was fun to read but was never really connected to reality. In a sense this kind of literature is about as "escapist" as one can get. The characters seem derived from Monte Python skits but this novel has a bit more of a story and the magical events are not compromised by bad special effects. The dragons of my imagination are more awesome than anything in a movie. This book is one of 41 Discworld novels by Pratchett, and one of 8 City Watch novels. I'm looking forward to reading more of these.

with

Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge

I did learn some things about the Beatles from this book. It was a nice summary of Lennon's life and death. The sad story of Lennon's killer is detailed and dramatized. It seems evident that Americans are violent and gunthirsty. I enjoyed the book even though I knew some of the stories already. It seems more than coincidental that this book came out around the same time as "Get Back".

This book was mostly fun to read. Korelitz seems to have a bit of a modernist style with some longer sentences containing parenthetical exposition. However this is not consistent and is also used when the narration is supposedly a different person. I think Korelitz divulges the plot twist too early and thus the end of the novel is less surprising and more a validation of expectations. On the other hand the book is about a writer as the protagonist and it is interesting to see this profession fictionalized. I read the book in a couple of days, partly because it is a bit thin but also because it was compelling. A good "airplane" read.

A long book but generally worth it. I read the last third of the book in one sitting but it took the whole day. The beginning two thirds of the book are good but the military magic becomes a bit sludgy. The book picks up quite a bit in the last third. The beginning is much more magical realism and the last third is much more fantasy. Clarke's style is similar to Dickens in the way her characters are somewhat exagerated, with funny names. The time of the early 1800s is also close to Dickens's epoch. The illustrations also seem to hearken to the Phiz drawings in some of the Dickens novels. I was glad I was able to finish this book fairly rapidly because there were quite a few characters to keep track of. Overall I'd recommend this book and it might be worth a second read if I have a lot of extra time.

I bought this book because I wanted to read another book by McCullough but I read it now because we are seeing Hamilton at the Pantages next week. Most of the events in this book took place during the single year of 1776. McCullough discusses a little about the end of 1775 and a little about the beginning of 1777. This book is almost a hagiography of Washington, but very interesting nonetheless, showing the development of Washington as a military leader. Washington is a military novice in these years and has a success in the siege of Boston but then suffers four defeats before turning things around when he crosses the Delaware, taking the Hessian mercenaries by surprise. After all the events described in 1776 it was very surprising to read that the war would drag on for another more than 6 years.

This novel was magnificent. It is short and very compelling. Every word seems well-chosen. The novel is somewhat of a meditation on grief. This novel won the Booker Prize in 2005. This is the second novel that I have read by Banville but I also read a mystery by him under the pseudonym of Benjamin Black. Banville has been compared to Nabokov, but he also reminds me of Faulkner and Joyce in places. Banville/Black is becoming one of my favorite authors.

Sterling is part of the cyberpunk movement along with William Gibson and others. This book was a combination of the novel Schismatrix and 4 or 5 short stories (one of these is hardly a story.) Sterling is supposed to be "weird" and this characterization was somewhat true with the short stories. However the novel was not very weird, nor was it very compelling. There was not much of a plot in the novel. The short stories were much better and my favorite was Spider Rose. There were too many ideas in the novel that Sterling left unexplored; especially the "Look" and the special responsiveness Lindsay is supposed to have due to his training. Overall I found the writing to be mediocre and would not recommend the novel and the short stories were good but not spectacular.

Laird Wilcox

I got this book signed at a Skeptics meeting but I never got around to reading it. It was published in 1996 so it is a bit old. The book discusses the KKK, Nazis, communists, The John Birch Society, and several other groups. All the extremists seem similar whether they are right-wing or left-wing. It just seems that the right-wing nuts are more prone to racism. They all seem to lie and they all seem on the lower end of the intelligence scales. This book was diverting but I would not recommend it.

I wanted to read these stories after listening to Finnegans Wake. I've read them two or three times before but I think they might be a bit more memorable to me this time. All these short stories were pretty good. Sometimes the epiphanies were experienced by the characters, but sometimes the epiphany must have been for the reader. My favorite stories in order were The Dead, The Sisters, A Little Cloud, Counterparts, Araby, and Grace.

This novel was excellent. I found it very interesting, a bit challenging, and very compelling. I liked some of the detailed science. Not much in the way of character development. There are really only two characters throughout most of the story. Weir is a good writer with a sardonic sense of humor, a bit like Robert Crais. I would recommend this novel to anyone who likes good science fiction.

This is the ultimate "desert island" book. I could spend years just trying to read the book aloud. The readers for this audiobook were fantastic. It was so much easier to have the book read to me rather than me stumbling through the text myself. The thunderwords, like "bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner -ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoo -hoordenenthurnuk", are great examples. Listening to this book I had a better understanding of the importance of epiphanies in Joyce's aesthetic. He makes the Wake difficult because he wants the reader to make the discoveries. I clearly liked the ALP episodes best (1.8 and Book 4). The "Study Period" chapter (2.2) was also interesting. I think I would try listening to the audiobook a few more times (total time around 29 hours) before trying to actually read the monster. [Unless I had a lot more free time.] I relied heavily on the skeleton key while listening to the book. I skimmed through the physical book in conjunction with each chapter. I read a little of "Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress". The Sigla was a bit beyond my reading of the book yet. Overall a really positive experience.

I was generally disappointed with this book. Wilczek (a Nobel laureate) is frequently overly vague. Most of what he discusses in the book seemed to be what I already somewhat understood. I did like his analogies of the number of atoms in the body equaling the number of stars in the visible universe and the number of neurons in the human brain being equal to the stars in our galaxy. And he suggests that dark energy is Mercury (orbit skewed by curvature of space-time) and dark matter is Neptune (affected by a mysterious gravity). Wilczek tries to be a poet and reconciler but I think his book fails in almost all these areas. I would not recommend this book.

I think this novel was one of the better ones by Crais. I think it is the most non-linear of his novels and it also takes the perspectives of several characters. Elvis is the only first person narrator, but Crais also focuses on Joe Pike, Jon Stone, Nancie, etc. The times also go back and forth into the future and past, but these jumps are designated with overt descriptions like "3 days before Elvis is taken". It gets a bit hard to follow at times but not much. I read this book fast though, and that probably made it a bit easier to keep the timeline straight.

I bought this book because I really liked the cover; mostly the colors! I did not like the novel much though. I was expecting science fiction (which it was by a stretch) but it was more of an anti-hard-boiled-detective novel. Instead of the male hero's stream of consciousness we get the thoughts of Jane/Jill. Mostly I did not like this main character. It was somewhat interesting that she was big (over 6 feet and 230 pounds) and threw her weight around. However, she was clearly an unreliable narrator because she kept doubting herself. Names of people were frequently arbitrary and confusing. Jane/Jill as the main character was paranoid, depressing, aggressive, pathetic, mostly lacking in much cleverness, and overall not much joy to be around throughout the novel. The rest of the characters in the novel were not really developed at all. The plot was weak and plodding with no real sense of discovery. The last 20 pages were pretty good, but not worth the wait. So, I guess the old adage is essentially true that (to paraphrase) one should not buy a book based on its pretty cover.

This book was more fun to read than I expected. It is essentially literary criticism of several fairy tales from the perspective of Freudian analysis. What this means, for example, is that when discussing Cinderella the stepsisters have sibling rivalry with Cinderella. The stepmom represents the evil personality of "mother" whereas the fairy godmother is the good personality of "mother". Many, if not most fairy tales deal with family and developmental issues and so while reading the interpretations I would think of my own childhood and if and how it would fit in the interpretation of the stories. It was useful in disentangling and clarifying some of my childhood experiences and how they corresponded to our family relationships.

The last section (of 6) really redeemed this novel for me. I liked best the two chapters with Holly Sykes as the narrator. I rather put up with the supernatural stuff in Mitchell's novels. This novel has several similarities to Cloud Atlas. However, all of Mitchell's novels are starting to have crossovers in terms of history, characters, styles, and structures. His novels are becoming a bit mythological, somewhat like Faulkner. Overall I would rate this book excellent with me having a personal struggle with the character of Marinus as narrator because of the ambiguity of his/her gender (which Mitchell does NOT designate as "him/her"). Still, overall a novel worth reading.

Somehow I lost my original copy of this book [see below]. I think I have read Dune three or four times before. One thing that I noticed more this time was that the terms in the glossary were frequently unexplained in the body of the novel. In other words, really understanding what was going on required the reader to stop and look things up. However, this was a much different experience for me on the subsequent reads because I already knew the terminology. Dune really holds up over time. It never seemed anachronistic to me. Most of the SciFi stuff still seemed sufficiently explained. I have to remember that re-reading a great book like this is very rewarding.

I began reading this book years ago but only got up through the section on prototype effects. In some ways this book is an extension of some of the ideas in Metaphors We Live By by Lakoff and Mark Johnson. In fact, I'm not sure that the ideas in this book are really that useful whereas the ideas in Metaphors We Live By are very applicable. What Lakoff does in this book (of which the title is magnificent) is develop an argument for the idea of "embodiment" in the way we categorize (and thus use language and also think.) In other words, the ways we categorize, think, and use language are dependent on the way our body interacts with the environment. I'm convinced that this idea is essentially valid, but the argument that Lakoff makes is overly complex to my understanding. I found the structure of the book problematic as well. He puts most of the examples in the back of the book as "case studies". But the earlier text sometimes really needs more examples. It would have been better to incorporate the case studies into the prior part of the book where he makes his central arguments. This book is not for the novice. Lakoff assumes a lot of understanding about several ideas in psychology and psycholinguistics in particular. I suppose my reading this book is more of an accomplishment that anything else.

Benjamin Black is the pen name for John Banville, whose novel Snow I read just a few months ago. Perhaps the author is a tad more meticulous in the John Banville persona but overall the prose in both novels was good. Good rhythm, good metaphors, good descriptions, good character development. The package is tied up a little bit too tidily in Christine Falls, but I only noticed this kink in directly comparing the two novels. [I had to stop reading this novel for about a week and a half and I was pleasantly surprised to find I was able to get right back into it.] I am really looking forward to how the author develops Quirke (the main character) in the subsequent novels.

This book is the sequel to Ready Player One. I think I liked this novel better than the first book although they are very similar. They both have essentially the same plot and characters. However I liked the "Tolkien" planet and the "Prince" planet in this sequel. I did not like the ending with the "immortality" idea, but this ending didn't really interfere with the enjoyment of the novel.

I had listened to a podcast of the history of the English language and this book looked like it was a similar approach to all languages. Ostler essentially discusses [mostly] written languages from the earliest times up to now. He discusses how and why they rise and fall in popularity and sometimes disappear. He argues that the The Tower of Babel is a problematic parable because the diversity of languages is a benefit, not a drawback. He argues this diversity enhances cognition:
"...Arabic's austere grandeur and egalitarianism; Chinese and Egyption's unshakeable self-regard; Sanskrit's luxuriating classifications and hierarchies; Greek's self-confident innovation leading to self-obsession and pedantry; Latin's civic sense; Spanish rigidity, cupidity and fidelity; French admiration for rationality; and English admiration for business acumen."
There are around 6000 languages in the world today. Most people are multilingual, with the brazen exception of most monolingual native English speakers.

Shirley Hazzard's novel is difficult. It reminds me of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury in that I think this book can only be appreciated with a second reading. I found the first (of four) sections, called The Old World, quite confusing. Each subsequent section seemed to get a little easier until the end of the book seemed almost unexperimental. I knew there was a "trap" in the book for the "inattentive reader" and yet I still missed it. We are told in the second chapter that Ted Tice will commit suicide. On the first page of the 35th chapter we are told that an opthalmologist will die in a plane crash. On the last page we are told that the opthalmologist is on the plane with Cora. However the novel ends before Ted commits suicide. So we have to project into the future why this happens. This projection reminds me of the way Infinite Jest ends. Hazzard's prose is good with a lot of clever metaphors. This book raises a question for me: Do I want to reread a book that may be more rewarding the second time, or do I prefer to spend that time reading a new book.

This book was good. Geoff recommended it. I found the novel very compelling to read but there were a few plotholes. For example, the computer technology is so advanced in general but they still need humans to run the call center? There were a few other errors like this but I just tried to suspend disbelief as much as possible and it made the book okay. I am curious to read the sequel Ready Player Two.

I have read a few other books by Johnson which were also good. This book was almost a pirate story like Treasure Island. The book was about Henry Every, a rather notorious pirate at around 1696. Coincidentally, there was an article in Smithsonian Magazine by Isis Davis-Marks on April 12, 2021 suggesting that Every may have escaped to Rhode Island. Overall a fun book to read.

Williams is a clever author. Her prose is worth the read. Lots of allusions to obscure words and their relation to mountweazels (fake words inserted into dictionaries). [This is the second book by a lesbian author that I happened to purchase for other reasons.] The novel is essentially composed of two narratives, one contemporary and one about 100 years earlier. These two stories take place in the same building where Swanby's dictionary is being "published"." Both stories are fairly compelling. I am not sure I completely understand the end of the Winceworth story. Still, overall the novel was very good.

The first three-fourths of this novel is excellent but the last 75 pages or so seem less coherent. I liked the nanotech ideas and the character of Nell was really good. Of the novels I've read by Stephenson I'd rank Cryptonomicon at the bottom, Quicksilver at second from the bottom, and this book third from the bottom. All the rest of his novels I'd rank as some of the best books I've read. The Diamond Age was still worth reading but just not as good as the others I've read by him.

This book was quite good. Wilson discusses cities from 6000 years ago (Uruk near Iraq) to Lagos (in Nigeria) today. Wilson also discusses ancient Babylon, Athens, Rome, 18th century London, Chicago, Paris, New York, and Los Angeles (as well as several other cities). Wilson focuses on large cities but digresses quite frequently to discuss social, economic, and other issues that arise from his analysis of the structure and history of these cities. The book is a bit unstructured in places and does not have a unifying message but the overall result was generally informative and rewarding.

The basic premise of this book is that the narrator's (Eve's) 10 year old brother Jack is given a copy of A Child's Bible and event's in their lives start to resemble these biblical stories, eventually leading up to a rather apocolyptic climax. Jack believes that he and his friend Shel have discovered that this Bible is written in code and that God is code for "nature", Jesus is code for "science" (knowing things) and the Holy Spirit is code for making things (the "arts"). The beginning of the book is fairly realistic with hints of global warming leading to some catastrophic weather problems. Toward the end of the book the style becomes more like magical realism. In many ways the book seems to be meant as a kind of fable, a fabulist tale with a metaphorically contemporary meaning. The book is short, the writing is clever, and the story is pretty compelling. Overall I liked the novel even though it was difficult not to think of it as rather depressing.

This book is the first of the Long Winter trilogy. I had two major problems with the writing. Firstly the behavior of the characters is often difficult to believe. For just one of many examples, the length of time it takes for Emma and James to get physical just seems absurd. Also, I felt too frequently that I had to severely suspend disbelief with regard to the science in the book. For example, when everyone is freezing because of the solar energy depletion and the solution is to try and use thermal vent energy, which fails, it would have made total sense to use nuclear energy. They equip their space ships with nuclear bombs so why not use this energy for non-military purposes. Also, the communication constraint the author puts on the ships flying to the artifact and to Ceres later also never seems consistent or even very important to the plot. In some ways it seems that the author wrote the novel rapidly and then never went back to polish his prose and plot. [BTW, this book pales in comparison to the Three Body Problem novels.] I probably won't read the two sequels in Riddle's trilogy.

This book was somewhat in the style of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Kaag tells a story (a bit of a memoir) which he intersperses with digressions on American philosophy. He concentrates on William James's philosophy as it relates to William Ernest Hocking. Hocking was a Harvard philosophy professor who left a library called "West Wind" in Madison New Hampshire. Kaag serendipitously stumbles onto the library and starts to work there sorting the books. During this time Kaag divorces his first wife and falls in love with his second wife. Kaag breaks the story into three parts in an apparent homage to Dante: Hell, Purgatory, and Redemption. Similarly to Dante, I preferred the first two parts over the last part, which in both cases I found somewhat anticlimactic. Overall I found this book worth reading.

This book really focused on Pike and Cole and there was not much development of any of the other incidental characters. However, Lucy and Chen reprise minor roles and the bad guy is spooky. Lots of action. Very fast read, as are most of Crais's novels. I'd rate this novel as one of his better books because the plot seemed pretty tight compared to some of his others.

I got this book as a Xmas present for Scott and Jordan and got a copy for myself. It is very much like the TV show. This is only the first volume and only gets to the death of Mad Sweeney. Some of the art is pretty good but I probably won't get any more of the graphic novel versions of this story.

Henrich essentially argues that people like me are WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic), and that we are not the majority of humans but are the majority of psychologically studied people. He argues that we tend to be individualistic, analytical (not holistic), non-conforming, and patient (willing to delay gratification). We tend to feel guilt more often than shame. We base judgments of morality more on intention than outcomes. He argues that these characteristics stem in large part from the historical effects of the diminishment of kinship ties that was encouraged by the Catholic Church. He calls this Catholic manipulation the MFP (Marriage and Family Program) that essentially eliminated polygany and cousin-marriages among WEIRD people. Some WEIRD characteristics are also related to the Protestant Reformation, especially the importance of reading and education. WEIRD characteristics are also a good fit for a more global community that is largely connected through commerce. Arguably, WEIRD people are more successful in today's world which is why we tend to be richer. Henrich was largely influenced by Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel. However, Henrich argues that Diamond did not emphasize the psychological issues sufficiently and Henrich is trying to correct this deficiency. Most of the book was fairly compelling. However I did get bogged down when trying to make sense of kinship-based thinking. Overall an interesting book.

Banville is an Irish winner of the Booker Prize and several other awards and I had never heard of him before. The blurbs on the back cover of this book enthused over Banville's prose with one person saying that "we read him slowly" because his writing is extremely "polished", which I found to be true. He also writes crime novels under the pseudonym of Benjamin Black where the main character is a Dublin pathologist named Quirke, who is mentioned in passing in this novel. Actually, this novel was a crime novel and I really enjoyed it. The setting is mostly in a rural area south of Dublin. As the title suggests, snow is a pervasive element in the novel. The characters are a bit quirky but interesting. Banville's commentary is also quite interesting. I intend to find some other novels to read by him.

I read this book in one sitting so it was pretty compelling. This book was one of the best of the last five books of the Amber series. The ending was okay, not exactly disappointing but not spectacular either. Overall the Corwyn series was better than the Merlin series but they were so similar that the differences are negligible. I doubt that I would read these again but I would recommend them to anyone who wants a fun diversion.

In this oversize book, Jimmy Page has pictures and comments about his career from childhood up to around 2020. These include his time with the Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin as well as The Firm, Coverdale-Page, and It Might Get Loud. Many of the pictures are of his guitars, amps, electronic effects, and costumes. Page goes into quite a bit of fun detail about the provenance and the technical aspects of his equipment. Page comes across as very kicked back about life and seems quite happy about how things have turned out.

A really well-crafted novel. A bit like Dickens or Austen. Very compelling to read. Lots of twists and turns. The novel is told first from the perspective of Susan, then Maud, then finally Susan again. This structure was very well done with the overlaps nicely accomplished. I did not realize when I bought the novel that the author is known for her lesbian heroines. The sexual issues in the novel were minor but were present. Overall a great read.

This Amber story was mostly fun. However, Merlin spends 2 or 3 chapters "between shadows", which seemed too long. The last 2 or 3 chapters were pretty good but could have developed things a bit more. I hope we get to find out more about Brand's ring and sword in the next/last book. There are a lot of things I'm hoping Zelazny ties up in the last book: Corwin's part, the ghostwheel, Julia, to name three. [I actually read this collected version but I like displaying the separate book cover.]

William James seems very modern in some parts of this book. He does a good job of discussing conversion and saintliness. His discussion of mysticism is weaker. He tries to be fairly skeptical but sometimes seems to be trying to avoid alienating believers. It was never clear to me exactly what James believed in terms of atheism. Overall, very well written and very readable. Some of his examples were excellent. Overall a book well worth reading.

I didn't really want this novel to end. I really enjoyed reading about the four members of the fictional band called Utopia Avenue. Dean Moss was the bassist, Elf Holloway played keyboards, Jasper De Zoet played lead guitar, and Griff played drums. The chapters corresponded to the 4 or 5 songs on each of 3 albums by the band (with sides one and two since this was during the age of vinyl around 1967 to 1968 or so). Each chapter focused on Dean, Elf (the woman in the band), or Jasper (who is related to Jacob de Zoet from The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, another novel by Mitchell). (Actually one chapter was focused on their manager Levon Frankland.) There is not really an overall plot but rather a sequence of character studies. However they all go to different places in the world of rock music: London (where most of the novel takes place), the Netherlands, and America. Lots of cameos by rock musicians like Jerry Garcia, David Bowie, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, and so on. Some somewhat supernatural ideas that linked some of Mitchell's other novels to this one. Strangely, this is the third book in a row that I've read that discussed LSD. This novel was not all that deep, but it was very fun to read.

This Amber story seemed a bit weaker than some of the previous novels (novellas?). It was still fun though. The to allusions to Lewis Carroll's Alice in the beginning were okay. Some of the characters do not really do anything, or at least not much until the end of the story. In general, it seemed like Merlin spent more time in rooms waiting for something to happen rather than actually doing things. Still, overall a quick, compelling read and I am looking forward to the next two volumes. [I actually read this collected version but I like displaying the separate book cover.]

I was surprisingly resistant to reading this book. When Pollan mentioned that he was apprehensive before each of his psychedelic journeys and that he attributed this anxiety to a fear for his ego, I considered my feelings might have been related. Pollan does a great job describing his journeys. He makes a good case for the effects of several of these drugs (LSD and Psilocyben, e.g.) being related to the suppression of the DMN (default mode network) which seems related to our self-reflection (ego), theory of mind, metacognition, mental projection, and time travel. Three of its major components are the PCC (prefrontal cingulate cortex), the medial prefrontal cortex, and the hippocampus. The DMN (resting brain) also came up in Social. Pollan also discusses the history of research of psychedelics in the '50s and '60s which was suppressed by the "war on drugs" but that is now in a (hopefully) renaissance period. It seems that these drugs are almost certainly beneficial for people facing death, depression, and addiction. They also seem beneficial for healthy people who want to expand their consciousness to achieve personal growth. Overall this was an excellent book.

I read that HBO was producing a miniseries of this novel and I wanted to read more by Roth. I got the Library of America anthology because I have liked these in the past. I found this novel well-written and somewhat prescient. Certainly some of the descriptions of Lindbergh's relationship with Hitler resonated with our current president and Putin. Having the main character be a childhood version of "Philip Roth" was interesting, but makes it difficult to determine what was autobiographical. I might read some of Roth's other works (perhaps The Human Stain?) I would like to see the miniseries when I get a chance.

Overall as good as the previous Amber story (Trumps of Doom). Also ends with a cliffhanger: with Merlin "going down the rabbit hole"? Some allusions to Lewis Carroll's Alice in the end. Zelazny does have some philosophy he throws in like the difference between "morality" and "duty" (which I think is a Kohlberg issue with "duty" being a less advanced developmental stage.) I liked the line that civilization is just "the art of living in cities." I still am not really seeing much difference between the character of Merlin and his father Corwin; which is fine. I actually read this collected version but I like displaying the separate book cover.

This book seemed to end rather abruptly as though the author were trying to get it published with Trump still in office. The author's surname is a propos as he's the finance editor for the New York Times. Most of this book was about Deutsche Bank and how they became an important trader in derivatives and also how they probably laundered alot of Russian money. And of course, they loaned alot of money to Trump even though most banks were reluctant to do so. Overall an interesting book that gives some insight into the complexity of the banking industry, which probably needs alot more regulation.

I really enjoyed this novel, especially the first half. There was a certain symmetry with the fictional character of Alexander under house arrest while we are in the reality of Covid lockdown. Many fun surprises in the first half. Lots of descriptions of eating. Towles's prose and emotional insight are excellent. His literary (and other artistic) allusions motivate me to want to read Anna Karenina. The second half of the book is also good and is strongly influenced by the movie Casablanca, which I also am motivated to watch again. I think I missed some things (Alexander's sister's picture and peaches and Osip's scar?) in the first reading and it might be fun to read it again. Overall an excellent novel.

These novels go by so fast. I am going to stretch out this collection. This novel is very similar to the first five in the Amber series. Merlin is not all that different from his father Corwin. Lots of moving between Amber and "shadow", use of Trump cards and other magic. Overall a very fun read. Ends with a cliffhanger of Merlin trapped in the "crystal cave". I actually read this collected version but I like displaying the separate book cover.

This book discusses Madison and the War of 1812, Polk and the Mexican-American War, Lincoln and the Civil War, McKinley and the Spanish-American War, Wilson and World War One, Roosevelt and World War Two, Truman and the Korean War, and Johnson and the Vietnam War. Beschloss does not cover the Revolutionary War because Washington was not the president then. I would have liked to read more about how Truman concluded the Second World War and how Nixon continued the Vietnam War but for some reason Beschloss glosses over these stories. Most of these presidents were morally ambiguous, including Lincoln. These presidents all seemed quite confident in the necessity of their behavior and pursued just about any means, lawful or not, to attain their ends. I do find it striking that Beschloss mentions that the Founders of the United States could not have predicted nuclear weapons or cyberwarfare, both of which seem to require more immediate responsiveness, and thus more presidential power. However Beschloss states that the Founders hoped that future Presidents would be "people of sagacity, self-restraint, honesty, experience, character, and profound respect for democratic ideals." Beschloss took about 11 years to write this book and he finished it when Trump was in office but only mentions this president two times and really only in passing.

This book was more about Joe Pike and I liked most of it. However, some of the interactions between Pike and the baby seemed unbelievable. Also, after a plot twist, I am not sure if we know how Rina got the baby in the first place. Still, overall a fun read.

This book was included with the 50th aniversary Abbey Road CDs. I read this in a few hours. Interesting tidbits about each of the songs on the album. Nice discussion on the influence of the album cover and how it came to be photographed.

This book is my COVID-19 book. I have been reading it for the last two months during the "lockdown". The first "book" ("Quicksilver") was a slog. I found almost everything about Daniel Waterhouse to be very uninteresting. These parts included Isaac Newton as a character, but there was no real discussion of his ideas. For about 300 pages nothing seems to happen. There is the London fire and the plague (ironically), but the characters do not really seem to be doing anything. The second "book" ("King of the Vagabonds") was the best section. Jack Shaftoe and Eliza were great together but when Jack leaves the story (captive on a slave ship) the story winds down substantially. The third "book" ("Odalisque") is better than the first book, but mostly only when Eliza is in the story. But even her story takes too long. Daniel does act against Jeffreys but not in a very satifying manner. I did not like Cryptonomicon that much but I have really enjoyed all of the other books I've read by Stephenson, but I do not think I will read the rest of this "Baroque Cycle" which comprises two more volumes and another 1200 pages or so.

This book was fun to read overall. I would highly recommend it except that the conclusion was disappointing. I really liked reading about Elvis and Joe but the resolution seemed cobbled together to simply be unexpected rather than a fit for the clues. Still, overall a very entertaining story.

This book was good to read during this pandemic. It changes one's perspective. Dinosaurs dominated the earth for a hundred million years or so. We humans have been around maybe a million years. Brusatte is an adequate writer, although a bit disorganized at times. The title really is descriptive of the book in which dinosaurs emerge after one cataclysmic event (volcanic eruptions) and are extinguished (except for birds) by the cataclysmic impact (roughly equivalent to a billion nuclear bombs) at the Yucatan 66 million years ago. Overall, if one has even a passing interest in dinosaurs, this book is worth reading.

This was an interesting book. It is a little paranoid-inducing. I didn't post this when Trump was in office because I assumed it would probably be viewed by the NSA or the CIA or some other entity. Now that Biden is president the paranoia is a bit less.

This was an interesting biography of Teddy Roosevelt. It only discusses his life up to the age of about 28 or so. Roosevelt had a very active life and was involved in so many things: reading, ranching, politics, exercise, hunting. He had two wives, six children, and an extraordinary family overall. McCullough is a good writer, although a bit disorganized at times. Still overall I liked this book.

Subtitled:"Why generalists triumph in a specialized world", Epstein actually makes some other points as well. Epstein discusses the importance of "match quality", or a good fit between personality and career. He also discusses how education does not really encourage this approach. A lot of our behaviors are the result of "sunk cost fallacy" (what I call "entrapment"). I am not certain about the validity of all his claims, but the book is interesting because of the stories he tells about Darwin, Tiger Woods, Roger Federer, Van Gogh, and many less famous examples.

I didn't want this book to end. It was so much fun to read about the development of Disneyland, it was almost like being present for the excitement of its establishment. There were so many nice stories but I really enjoyed it that Walt Disney's favorite attraction at the park was the Storybook Canal Boats, which is also one of my favorites. Perhaps one of the more telling stories was about a woman who was visiting a natural phenomenon (pools of steaming liquids) who said it reminded her of Disneyland.

This novel was mediocre. It is difficult for me to understand how this author could have written over 50 books. The action scenes were okay, but there was not enough development of the characters. Kirsten and Dorian are the principles but only Kirsten really gets any background. The mix of SciFi and "ghosts" was somewhat incoherent, which was the problem with the novel in general. The epilog was overly long and seemed disconnected from the through-line of the rest of the novel.

This novel was very fun to read and featured Joe Pike. Elvis Cole plays a background role. The door seems to left open for Larkin to return as a love interest character for Joe. Also John Chen in forensics gets a little more development. Elvis is still limping in this novel, from what happened to him in The Forgotten Man.

This novel was a fast read but very predictable and inconsistent in parts (The general can command the ship with ideosyncratic voice commands but needs to send a soldier to gather people.) I don't think I will read the other installments.

Max Tegmark is much more of a physisist (and computer scientist) than a psychologist. Some of his ideas are interesting but he is clearly striving for a planful optimism. He has a website at Future of Life. My major quibble with the author is that for all the intelligence of AI he still considers punishment to be an integral part of society. It seems this would be one of the first things to ask the AI to facilitate, the collaboration of humans.

I enjoyed this novel more than Embassytown. The idea of half the population of each city not "seeing" the others was quite interesting. How much do we delude ourselves? Perhaps this is the deeper meaning of this novel for me after the last election.

This novel helped me appreciate trees more. The structure of the novel reminded me a little of Cloud Atlas. The first eight chapters introduce the nine principle characters; which constitutes the "Roots". The "Trunk" is an interweaving of the stories of these nine characters, some of them interacting with each other in some way. The "Crown" is the mostly sad outcome of these stories. "Seeds" is a bit of hopefulness at the end of the novel. My only quibble with the book is that I frequently mixed up Nick with Douglas; however I suppose that could have been my fault.

This book was included with the 50th aniversary CDs. The authors describe the overall production of the white album with historical milestones. They also describe the details of each of the 30 songs independently. These descriptions refer to the demos on the supplemental CDs. There is also a chapter on the album cover. The whole book was interesting to me.

I liked this novel overall better than Indigo Slam. There were a lot more relationships: Elvis and his Dad, Mom, Lucy, Carol, Joe. And then the relationships of the family that includes the man who might be Elvis's father. Elvis is beginning to have more of a history. Albeit, I've read the books out of order. I still have several Elvis novels to catch up with and am looking forward to them.

This novel was very fun to read. The idea of nested realities does seem a bit like something Philip K. Dick might write. There did seem to be a lapse in logic when a character is returned in time but before the nosebleed. This does not seem to be consistently handled throughout the story but otherwise it was very cleverly written. Arguably, not so much in the way of character development. Crouch plays with tenses a little, occasionally using the present tense. The best part of the novel was his approach to time travel and its relationship to memory.

Much of beginning of this book was trying to justify the importance of social rewards and punishers. SCARF is an acronym for social rewards (status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness). Lieberman also argues that our "resting" brain engages in what he terms "mentalizing", which is somewhat like imagining social interactions. When we attend to something we shut down our mentalizing so that, in some respects, we become less socially trained when we are focused on other things like algebra, philosophy, art, music, etc. I believe there are some errors in the logic of his arguments (concerning increased memory via mentalizing, e.g.) and some facts (the number of neurons in the brain e.g.) However, he does mention Asimov's Foundation in the last paragraph of the book [interesting synchronicity].

This novel seemed like an action film on steroids. It felt a bit to me like Ice Station Zebra, with a stream of continous battles, especially in the second half. Stephenson devotes a lot of attention to the exposition of the scenes, making them believable because of the details. There is a lot going on in this novel and it all comes together in a believable climax. This novel seemed quite different to me because I had read mostly Stephenson's science fiction previously. I might be tempted to read Fall just because Richard ("Dodge") is an interesting character.

I am glad I read this book. It was published posthumously and I don't think Asimov really finished polishing the narative. In particular it struck me that what happens to Dors just does not make sense. I think Asimov must have wanted to clean that part up. Still it was fun to read Asimov somewhat wrapping things up [with Hari as a proxy for Asimov as both were about 71 years old.]

Azar contends there are two characteristic aspects of American culture: commercial consumerism and individualism. She sees these protrayed through three novels in particular: Huckleberry Finn, Babbitt, and The Heart Is A Lonely Humter. However, the book is more of a discussion about how literature is a gateway to a particular type of knowledge. The argument holds true for art in general for her, but she focuses on literature. She uses many other authors to make her point and it was fun to read because I had a familiarity with most of the authors she discusses.

This is the second novel I wanted to read before I read The Republic of Imagination. This novel was set in the 1920s (during prohibition). All the interesting aspects of the novel really occur in the last third of the book. The beginning of the novel is dull as is the life of Babbitt. Babbitt was simply luckier than some of the other characters in the novel. What Babbitt passes on to his son seems of questionable wisdom. I am curious to read what Nafisi has to say about this novel.

I enjoyed this novel. I do not believe I read it before but I could still seem to guess some of the reveals without much effort. I don't think Asimov is good at leaving hints, they tend to be too obvious. Still this novel answers some questions left open in the other novels. Particularly detailed is how Seldon is directed toward developing psychohistory. But a lot of obstacles are seemingly placed in the way. There is a bit of a love story also [which seems "experimental" for Asimov.] Even though Asimov can be a bit cliché, the pace of the novel is rapid and so I overlook some of Asimov's faults as a writer.

This was a good biography of Houdini. He was a fascinating man who mixed it up with many of the other celebrities of his time. He was perhaps foremost an escapist, then a magician, a showman, a movie-maker, and a debunker. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle comes out looking very irrational and vindictive in this biography. (However, his wife was a medium.) The biography is full of short, interesting stories. Really just enough details to understand the trick without giving everything away. Overall a good biography and a good book about magic too.

I wanted to read this novel before I read The Republic of Imagination. I am not sure that I ever heard of this book before. I may be confusing it with Miss Lonelyhearts. This novel was also set in the 1930s (during the depression) but in the south. There are elements of Flannery O'Connor and Faulkner in McCullers's themes. However, McCullers is not as grotesque as O'Connor and not as poetic as Faulkner. Still, it is amazing that she wrote this novel when she was only 23 years old. The novel is very well-structured and words are not wasted. There is not much of a plot but the characters' stories are still fairly compelling. I am curious to read what Nafisi has to say about this novel.

Several of these stories were in I Robot and I skipped them. I think the two best stories in this compilation were Feminine Intuition and Bicentenial Man. Several of the stories had weak endings. I found the essays to be better in many ways than the stories. He relates several jokes that could have been funny but he tells them wrong. The one about the best friend should have begun "The man is joyfully drinking and when asked why he is so happy explains that his wife ran off with his best friend." Asimov describes the man at the bar as "solemn" and "grave", but it won't work that way. I also find it ironic that Asimov believes he has a sense of humor. [Perhaps this is related to his weak character development.]

I believe I read this before but I am not sure. Out of the 10 stories I thought that only 2 were good and 2 more were good except they had weak endings. The other six stories were okay. The ones I liked were Liar and Evidence. The two that I thought had weak endings were Little Lost Robot and Escape! However, all the stories are worth reading because they are short.

I really enjoyed this book, especially the beginning. The evidence Orlean provides for the guilt of Harry Peak for the arson is compelling. Her stated uncertainty is surprising and I wonder if it is more for liability reasons that she makes the assertion. I liked her discussion of owning books rather than borrowing them. I liked her discription of her aversion to the destruction of books. I loved the evanescent presence of Ray Bradbury throughout, with the very clever and realistic back inside cover [in addition to the elegance of the book's binding and cover with no jacket.]

Lucy Chenier is again in this novel but in a very background role. However the novel sets up the conflict with Richard Chenier, Lucy's ex-husband. Overall the story was good but I had several nits. There were scenes where it just seemed like the bad guys would have just killed Elvis and instead they hesitated and Elvis escaped. (This problem seems to be a trope in many genres.) I liked the scenes in Disneyland but did not believe that Charles would not have just run away from the bad guys. Still overall a pretty good novel.

I found this novel to be much better than Foundation's Edge. There were nice descriptions of solar systems. A nice description of a special musical talent. Quite a few nice touches. Asimov's attempts at describing romantic relationships is still a bit awkward. [Bliss seems overly maternalistic and the other females are minor characters.] Still a very good SciFi novel.

This book was only interesting because of its overview of almost everything I already know. I found the book overall to be a disappointment. (Granted this book was published in 1987.) Gardner fails to adequately explain many of the issues he brings up. There are frequently studies referred to in which the methods and results are assumed to be known by the reader. I think this book would be an unbearable read for someone not already familiar with the cognitive domain. I think his book Creating Minds was much better.

This novel was more consistent than Voodoo River. I think it helps that the setting is Los Angeles instead of Louisiana. Lucy Chenier returns as Elvis's love interest. In many ways I think that Crais is better depicting the interactions between Elvis and males (and the cat) than with females. Although scenes seem very believable whenever Lucy says "What?" and Elvis responds. Overall one of his better novels, I think.

This is the first new novel (1982) in the Foundation series since 1953. I remembered some of this novel and may have stopped here in the series earlier. This novel was the weakest of the ones I have read so far. He starts to combine the robot stories into the novel this time. I am still looking forward to the other books. Perhaps this novel was just a bit of a stumble.

This book has a multitude of stories related to salt. Many are about food. Many are about taxes and rebellions. There is a little bit of science. There is a lot of geography because salt is really everywhere. Salt was harder to get in the past so it tended to be more valuable. I found this book disorganized. Even after reading the book, if it has a structure it is hard to see. Still, it was an interesting read, it is just hard to remember some of the stories because they seem so disconnected.

This novel felt a bit cobbled together. There were essentially two different stories that were really not related to each other. Some of the events were less believable than I remember in other Elvis Cole stories. (I didn't believe the characters being taped up in the shed during the climax.) Still, the novel was fun to read. Crais depicts the south (his birthplace apparently) pretty harshly (especially the men). However, the snapping turtle just seemed ludicrous to me.

The final volume of the Foundation trilogy was rewarding even though I remembered some of the surprises. Our understanding of psychology is not much better than when Asimov wrote the stories. However the idea that a human could alter someone's emotions directly without some kind of instrument now seems improbable. But paraphrasing Asimov, nothing is really impossible but may be astronomically unlikely.

It is hard to believe this series did not have a major influence on Lucas. The Empire is the "enemy" here also. One of the characters first name is Han. This book was closer to a novel with a long story about the Mule. Quite clever overall.

I'm not sure when I first read these Foundation novels. I think this is only the second time I've read this series and I don't think I've read any of the post-trilogy novels. I was struck by two things. These novels are more like long short stories. He jumps ahead in time frequently allowing for a whole new set of characters. The characters from the beginning of the series are not carried throughout. Also, his future still holds up. He didn't foresee cellular phones, but most of what he describes we haven't even gotten close to achieving. Science Fiction writers have always been so optimistic that we would create really cool futuristic stuff.

The subtitle of this book is A Secret History of 1968. I was expecting it to be more about Van Morrison's album. The book actually focused more on a cult leader in Boston named Mel Lyman. Morrison happened to be in Boston when lots of strange things were happening coincident with him composing an unusual album. The album is less rock and more jazz. It's also serendipitous that I happened to read two books about Boston in a row. It helped to have the geography in mind already.

This novel was mediocre. It was fun to read about Boston but it seemed like a drawn-out version of a Sherlock Holmes story. I found that with all the exposition in this novel I still did not believe what the characters said or did sometimes. I could not simply attribute these discrepancies to the distance of a hundred and fifty years. I probably would not read another novel by Pearl.

This series is great SciFi. This book is the third in The Three-Body Problem trilogy. Cixin Liu is continuously inventive. He keeps the internal consistency high and fairly good consistency with current science. The only weakness in the books is the lack of any character development. Emotions are rarely expressed. Characters do not really get angry or frustrated with other people. Among the characters there is a seeming assumption that everyone has good intentions. "Bad" things happening are more a consequence of the nature of the universe than of peoples' personal flaws. Perhaps that is more an issue of culture than a novelistic quality. Still this book is good enough to compare with Dune, which had most of the innovation of Cixin Liu but also great characters (Paul and Jessica were very well developed.) Cixin Liu is more similar to Isaac Asimov. Many SciFi authors before Herbert seemed a lot drier (in the vein of H.G. Wells). This series would probably be in my top 10 of SciFi (with Dune, Foundation Trilogy, The Man in the High Castle, Snow Crash, Ringworld, Altered Carbon, Stranger in a Strange Land, Ender's Game, and Darkover.)

I read this book in one sitting. (I skipped the last 40% of the notes; mostly math I didn't know and Italian book titles.) Rovelli has some very interesting things to say about "time". He insists we are mistaken in thinking about "things" that "move" through "time" but that rather we are in a web of interactions and what we experience are "processes" and "events" rather than "things". From this perspective "time" is irrelevant and the physics seem to support this sort of idea; the trajectory of an object thrown up into the air will come down according to the same physical laws, forward or backward in time. We know time is relative, time moves slower when we are at higher altitudes and when we are moving. (Do our cells divide more slowly then? Does this have anything to do with why the astronauts seemed to move in slow motion on the moon?) Rovelli argues that the only physical phenomenon dependent on time is "thermal time". Entropy is always greater than or equal to zero. Heat only move toward the cold, never the other direction. He also argues that even the direction of entropy may be a matter of perception. He uses the example of an arbitrarily ordered deck of cards (all red cards at the top, e.g.) that is shuffled leading to a disordered deck. However if you take the perpective of the future and arbitrarily declare the shuffled deck in order then send it back in time through the shuffle, the cards would be in order to the past but disordered from the perspective of the future. I'm not sure this example exactly addresses the issue of the second law of thermodynamics and I undoubtably missed a lot in this book. I would recommend this book to someone who is mostly interested in modern physics. However it is interesting in the end of the book that Rovelli suggests that time may ultimately be much more of a psychological issue than one for physics.

This book was hard to put down. Not quite science fiction but similar to Time And Again, a time travel love story. Very short chapters that propelled the novel. Mastai's voice is fun, especially in the beginning of the book. Any of the last few chapters could have ended the book. The last chapter seemed overly contrived and superfluous whereas most of the book was a sequence of surprises.

I liked this book only because it was Le Carré. I wish I had read The Spy Who Came In From The Cold more recently because this new novel essentially fills in some of the blanks in that story; from the perspective of Peter Guillam, a more minor character in the other books. It was fun to read about Smiley again. Le Carré uses many memos, dipatches, reports, letters, and other documents as exposition of his story. These documents are interspersed with Peter's narration and the voices tend to blur. I would not recommend this book to a non-fan.

I found this book to be depressing overall. Harari argues pursuasively that humans have become algorithms and the goal of humanity will be to deseminate data. Consciousness will likely be a deficit. We will become biologically and technically engineered to increase the spread of data. In some ways perhaps he is saying that is the meaning of life: to embrace the loss of consciousness?

This novel was very original but not very compelling until nearly halfway through the book. The first 100 pages or so should probably have been reduced to about 20. There were too many characters who really did not propel the plot much. There was some humor and character development that I appreciated. I think the book needed more of Erwin and Scott and less of the adopted children. Perhaps this book is pretty good for a first novel.

This novel was interesting in that the plot was almost all about relationships: betrayal, competition, status. The characters were fairly well-balanced with the exception of Dawn. I found her character to be unredeemable. She just seemed like a creep.

Godfrey-Smith brings up some very interesting ideas about consciousness and cephalopods (octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish). He also describes their color-changing skin, their monochromatic visual system, and their strangely distributed neural system. The behaviors of cuttlefish and octopuses seem to show curiosity, attentiveness, problem-solving, and perhaps tool-use to some extent. These animals typically have very short lives of a couple of years or so. There is evidence that they can differentiate humans and humans may attribute personality traits to the animals. These animals seem highly intelligent despite being low in social behaviors. (Social animals seem more likely to have intelligence, like ants or bees.) An interesting question is how would episodic memory work without language as a cue? Although the author is a philosopher, he seemed to leave the whole question about consciousness somewhat dangling in the middle of the book. I expected more of a summary of his speculations near the end and thus I felt the book ended too abrubtly. On the other hand, this was a very fast book to read, even with me looking things up on the internet.

I didn't expect this book to be as good as it was. This book is the second in The Three-Body Problem trilogy. This book seems to end, but in retrospect the ending seems false. Almost as though the author knew this ending was problematic and intended to fix it in the last book. [I hope I am correct]. I am looking forward to the final book, Death's End. Some of the author's ideas need a lot of suspension of disbelief, but he also has a really nicely described space battle near the end.

I really enjoyed this book. Thompson's idea about MAYA seems to be accurate despite it being no guarantee of success. Popularity seems to be largely a numbers game. However, who you know makes a huge difference. I really enjoyed Thompson's writing. Nearly all the allusions were familiar to me, which was a pleasurable surprise. He makes good arguments and tells good stories.

This novel is the third and final volume in the Snopes "trilogy". I read it fast and liked it the most. I do not believe it would be nearly as good without having read the first two novels. This story really completes what was started in the very beginning of The Hamlet. This series is a bit of a microcosm of Faulkner. The first novel is more about prose and less experimental. The last two novels are clearly more experimental, with the last novel having more drama to propel it as well. I do find myself thinking differently after reading Faulkner; my thoughts seem to accrue more adjectives.

This novel, the second in the Snopes "trilogy", has more of a plot than The Hamlet, centering around the affair between Eula and De Spain. Faulkner writes from the perspectives of Gavin Stevens, Charles "Chick" Mallison, and V.K. Ratliff. (We find out what the V and K stand for in this novel.) I think the voices of Gavin and Ratliff are very similar [perhaps a composite of Faulkner himself.] Chick's voice is a bit younger most of the time and generally emotionally flatter than the other two voices. Most of the characters have awful sounding names like Flem, Eck, I.O., and Wallstreet Panic. Even "Mallison" sounds like the "son of malice". I enjoyed Gavin Stevens throughout the novel and he and Ike McCaslin are my favorite characters in Yoknapotapha County.

I do not know of another author who is quite as good as Faulkner is so many ways. He really tells stories but always obliquely. His characters are real and get hit with real abuses. Nothing is really happy about Faulkner's world but there is still humor in the abject stupidity that we all fall prey to from time to time. There is always something of a puzzle to be solved in Faulkner, whether in the storyline or in the prose. Faulkner's characters speak a normal vernacular but the narrator's voice is almost Shakespearean with long run-on sentences, not merely imbued with, and not just the irredeamable and indominable, but the castaways dispatched to barren stricken archipelagos, and never even given a complete look or even a glimpse at the formidable and inevitable. For his sentences never falter and repay gratuitous attention. In some ways his prose is also somewhat Biblical. This is the first of the Snopes Trilogy. I read the paperback version once before, but I read this hardback version this time. Flem Snopes moves to Frenchmen's Bend in the beginning of the novel and is moving to a better place in the end.

I was disappointed in this book. I was hoping Stipp would integrate a conception of the natural logarithm (and its reciprocal function "e") with a conception of Euler's equation. A lot of this book was about the historical mathematicians and a bit of politicking and joking filled out the rest of the book. He does point out that raising "e" to an imaginary power is akin to a rotation function around the unit circle. And although this is a nice conception, it really is just based on the equation having the implicit trig functions embedded. Stipp demonstrates the relationship between the exponential function and the trig functions with infinite series examples. However, I find that very uncompelling as an argument. The question to me is how to visualize the exponential function becoming an oscilating function.

An interesting mystery novel set in Australia which could be central California except for the lack of diversity. Falk is an interesting character and the childhood mystery and adult mystery are cleverly entertwined in exposition and themes. I don't like the title and I think the issue of dryness is weakened by the climactic scene, which I found unbelievable. The rest of the novel and the resolution of the mysteries were overall worth the read. A satisfying book with some exploration of the (completely negative) effects of secrets and lies on people's lives.

I bought this book at the almost insistance of an engineer whom I worked with. The first section was very well written and interesting; very novelistic. The second section was more of a necessity to validate the author's credibility. One of Schonfield's interesting insights is that if you think of Jesus as a man, it is very likely that he tried to fulfill the prophecies. The only real speculation is that Jesus in his youth became convinced that he was the Messiah and made sure that events unfolded to be interpretable as having fullfilled many of these prophecies (most/many of which are in Isaiah.) Assuming that Jesus was bright, charismatic, well-versed in Jewish teachings, and highly motivated to achieve his perceived destiny, it is not far-fetched to think he could have orchestrated some events. Schonfield makes this narrative quite plausible.

This was an Elvis Cole novel, with Joe Pike as support. Carol Starkey from Demolition Angel made brief appearances. We find out more about Elvis as a child and his stint in Vietnam, which was enhanced by my having just watched the Ken Burns documentary about the war. I liked this novel. Not a challenging read but it was written such that I was compelled to read it.

After seeing Saunders get a lot of acclaim for his short stories in Tenth of December, I had rather high expectations for this novel, and was a bit disappointed. When I put it down after reading about 80 pages, I was still not really looking forward to reading it some more. The ghost story was done better by Mitchell in Slade House. The style was somewhat experimental (someone accurately compared it to Our Town) with the voices of "ghosts" interspersed with historical citations. Which raised the question for me of whether or not there is that much difference between the selected (only the saved) and biased historical voices and the voices of fictional characters as long as they are not entirely contradictory to what is known. I cannot imagine ever wanting to reread this novel, though.

Tucker describes a continuously conservative DC Comics that has been pitted against the upstart Marvel. Marvel surpasses the Superman/Batman[/Wonder Woman?] franchise with a slew of characters including Spiderman, X-Men, and all the Avengers. DC has tried to catch up but always ends up with a chaos of continuity issues because most of their characters never really were created to be in the same universe. Most of the Marvel characters come from Stan Lee or were influenced by him and so they more readily fit together in the same world. It also makes more sense to me how Warner Bros. owns DC, but Marvel's characters are split between its owner Disney, and Fox which has X-men and Spidey. Tucker tries to suggest a continued parity in some ways between the two rivals, but for now Marvel is clearly succeeding in more domains.

This novel was less about Rachel and more about Kitty, Colette, and Astrid. Nicky is still the center of gravity but his story is less important. We find out more about the grandmother Su Yi also. There are some funny plot points that seem unresolved [What was the deal with the scrolls? And what happened to that black pearl?] Kwan is a good writer with lots of alusions to current pop culture [mostly]. Uses footnotes like watered-down David Foster Wallace. He is good at ending chapters with a cliffhanger of one kind or another.

The continuing saga of Rachel Chu. Now it seems as though her stepmother may be the culprit. Lots more food and lavish displays of wealth, well-described. Lots of problems with families, from kids to grandparents to stepparents to inlaws. Compelling to read.

A basically chronological collection of essays by various authors from various publications about rock music. Reading these essays gave me a better understanding of some of the ways that we classify music. In particular, I think my tendency is still to think that danceable music is not usually Art. The interweaving and continual segregation of black and white music is also made obvious by many of these essays. The Beatles and the distinction between rock and rock'n roll also tends to pervade these essays. Some of these essays are by critics like the one who disliked Born to Run for the same reasons I have. Some of the essays are by academics, journalists, encyclopedists, and fans. All but one of the essays were good in some way with the exception being the essay by Amiri Baraka which I found to be incoherent.

This novel is quite different in some ways from The Name of the Rose. There is more of a story in the earlier novel. In Foucault's Pendulum the actual story takes up the first few pages and then the last thirty or so pages. Most of the rest of the novel is less about people doing anything and more about people talking about what they will eventually do. This novel seems somewhat of an inside joke. Perhaps it inspired Infinite Jest is some ways. The most striking aspect of the novel to me though is that I had difficulty reading it even with my having read a lot and also having access to the internet. I wonder sometimes with authors like Eco (and Cormac McCarthy) how much they really expect their readers to understand.

Story: Jonathan Hickman

Artists: Jim Cheung, Jerome Opeña, Dustin Weaver

I liked that there were lots of scenes in space. A very large cast with the Avengers, New Avengers, Illuminati, some X-men, Rocket Raccoon, and more. The basic plot is the Avengers are off the planet Earth to save the universe, with the help of some other aliens, from the Builders. Thanos tries to take advantage of the Avengers' absence to invade Earth. Worth reading again.

A very fast read. Good storytelling, nothing deep, very Catholic cardboard Christmas thriller. Clark uses a series of coincidences to develop her ball of yarn and then untangles it thread by thread. What is lacking is an understanding of the motivations behind the characters' behaviors. The kidnapper seems to reflexively jump to murder as an idea, as though he were destined to villainy. The "magic" of the St. Christopher medal was simply annoying.

This was a nice biography of Leonardo. Not much detail about the interpretation of paintings but Nicholl gave me a better sense of Leonardo as a young man rather than the old man from the portraits. Appreciating the Mona Lisa is a little easier now. But I still am more impressed by The Last Supper. Leonardo really was peripatetic, an autodidact, and a bit of a procrastinating polymath. He was working around 1500, really right around the time Columbus discovered the New World.

This novel is the conclusion of Auster's New York trilogy. Auster alludes to Ghosts and City of Glass in this novel, incorporating them into the story. The Locked Room takes place around the world. The style of this novel seems less experimental; less contrived. When I thought more about Ghosts, I started to appreciate it more. I am not sure what to make of the story in The Locked Room. Part of the interpretation seems to be that our lives in a sense are always from within a "locked room".

This "story" is part of Auster's New York trilogy. Ghosts felt very similar to its predecessor City of Glass. Ghosts takes place in a narrow strip of area around the Brooklyn Bridge in 1947 to 1948. The fictional characters are Blue, Black, White, the future Mrs. Blue who becomes the ex-future Mrs. Blue, Violet, Gray, Green, and perhaps Redlands [which could be a place rather than a person.] Auster alludes to several historical figures who to me seemed somehow more real and less abstract than the fictional characters who discuss them. Reading Auster gives me a feeling similar to reading Kafka. Stark. Somehow we know the characters are doomed, I think simply from having no first names, they become ghosts drifting among the already dead.

I bought this book almost exactly 20 years ago. It was signed by Jared Diamond on October 5, 1997. The book is a credible discussion of the influence of evolution on human nature. We humans seem to be unique in our unprecedented genocide and habitat destruction, which it seems is likely to culminate in either nuclear holocaust or global climate chaos. The main controllable culprit as far as I can infer is population growth. When Diamond wrote the book the global population was only around 5 billion people. Now it is around 9 billion, almost a doubling in 20 years. The current United States administration seems hell-bent, and probably will be for the next three years at least.

This is the end of the trilogy with the first two books The Map of Time and The Map of The Sky discussed below. Very fun to read, much like its predecessors. This book seemed a bit less structured and not nearly as clever as the first book in particular. It will be interesting what the author decides to work on next.

This novel is the second volume in a 10 book series. The graphics are similar to its predecessor. The stories are generally darker and I am not sure what the creators are getting at. Overall a mediocre novel.

I found the artwork to be similar to Batman: Arkham Asylum. The story was an origin story with a quest. Overall a good graphic novel but not nearly as interesting as Watchmen.

I read this novel faster than I expected. It felt a little as though two stories were forced to be about the same characters. The second part did not seem as connected to the first part as it could have been. McEwan writes cleverly, especially in the first half. I found myself emotionally moved by some of the scenes, particularly the anger and sorrow. More serious than most novels, but not likely to be a classic. I would still recommend it as a good novel.

Kelly gives some structure to the rapid transformation of the relationship between humans and information technology. Kelly delineates twelve interacting (and overlapping) aspects of increasing trends. First he argues that it is better to perceive tech "becoming" (a verb) rather than "extant" (a noun). [Should I say "teching"?] Second: everything will be "cognitized". Third: everything will "flow" (thus allowing sharing, remixing, etc.) Fourth: everything will move away from non-digitized forms to being "screened" (books, money, etc.) Fifth: "access" to almost all commodities online. Sixth: everything will be "shared". Seventh: tech (like AI) will improve "filtering". Eighth: the components of the internet will be continually "remixed". Ninth: "interactivity" will become the norm for every thing. Tenth: everything will be "tracked" and stored. Eleventh: answers are less important than good "questions". Twelvth: we are at an inflection point, the "begnning". Kelly is almost entirely optimistic about what seems to me to be a pretty awful future. However, he is arguing that since these horrible things are inevitable we might as well embrace them.

Much better than The Yiddish Policmen's Union (which I don't seem to remember much of at all). Not sure how I feel about the novel being some proportion of fiction and non-fiction. I want to believe that most of the things really happened to Michael's grandfather (as well as the other characters). Since the author inserts himself it is difficult to distrust him. I don't want to distrust the narrator. There were a lot of allusions to the manned space program, which I liked. Fairly captivating story. Almost as good as, and in some ways similar to Kavalier and Clay.

This book was fun to read. The last couple hundred pages I read in one sitting. Interesting depiction of a scarred, female, alcoholic cop. Apparently she shows up in an Elvis Cole novel which I am looking forward to reading. Crais is a consistently good writer, not very deep, but never boring.

The importance of politics over reason again is highlighted in this book. The stories Witt describes are captivating. He focuses on three people: a record label executive, a psychoacoustic engineer, and a CD manufacturing plant floor-worker. What was most interesting to me was the movement from an album orientation to a singles-producing market because of iTunes. The seeming importance of free music videos was also a bit surprising to me. This change also seems to result in more money for live performances than recorded music. I think the music market is still amorphous and how people will choose to consume may still be a surprise.

A very interesting novel. Cervantes seems modern in his clever structuring of the novel, but a bit archaic in exposition. The dialog feels a bit stilted but the stories are well-crafted. Although Quixote is a lovable character, it is difficult to make a judgment about his madness, since it is of his own making and of which he seems to cure himself in the end. I believe a major theme for Cervantes is the ambiguity of our experiences. We cannot trust the authors of Don Quixote's history, we cannot trust Quixote because of his madness, we cannot trust Sancho because of his simpleness, we cannot trust the many character who try to decieve Sancho and Quixote, we cannot trust anything really. Although God is mentioned, clearly religion is much less important in guiding Quixote than the code of chivalry. I don't think Cervantes sees much truth in the Bible though and his novel is in competition with it in some ways; just as Shakespeare also competes with the Bible. (Harold Bloom argues that Freud does also.) Perhaps the most notable aspect of the novel is the relationship between Sancho and Quixote, maybe the progenitor of all hero-sidekick pairings: Watson and Holmes, Frodo and Sam, Batman and Robin, Elvis Cole and Joe Pike, etc. This is a long novel (in two parts actually) but well worth the time.

This is another book I had not intended to read from cover to cover. Most of the book was somewhat like reading the important sections of all my arithmetic and mathematics classes from grade school through grad school. It was fun to read through some of the math. I got pretty lost with hyperbolic functions and I realized that I really only vaguely understand how the natural logarith was invented [or discovered]. This book made me realize that at some point I would like to understand Euler's formula.

When I bought this book I had not intended to read it from cover to cover. However it turned out to be easy to read when I only had short bursts of time to spend. These stories are what you would look up if you were curious about something strange. Like "why are toy banks shaped like pigs? why aren't there lots of lion banks?" [It is because they were made of pygg.] I am curious about how many of these origins I will remember.

Another translated novel. Interesting premise that France is taken over by Islamic law in 2022. Unemployment would be low because no women would be in the workforce. The fallout seems to be that Islam is attractive to men who are pretty much free to do whatever they want. Christianity is a female religion. Houellebecq's writing style reminded me a bit of Humbert Humbert. Very fast read; more of a novella.

I saw this book in an airport bookstore and bought it later on Amazon. Interesting to read SciFi from a Chinese perspective. The novel starts during the Cultural revolution and that issue comes up throughout the book. Where do we, or should we, or can we draw the boundaries for technology? Is human life more valuable than life in general? Is life intrinsically valuable? What would the existance of extraterrestrial intelligence, or even life, have on the inhabitants of earth? Do we plan for conquerors or appeasers? I am not sure that the author can outdo this first novel in a sequel. In many ways, some of the most interesting ideas seem used up in this story. This is great science fiction but not what I would consider great literature. The characters are never in real relationships with each other. Dialog is always to propel the plot and not to give much insight into the thinking of the characters. However I am unlikely to ever know how much of this is a problem of translation.

I think this is the first book by Sacks that I have read although I am pretty sure I have read some articles by him. I really liked the chapters on Williams syndrome and synesthesia. But overall Sacks make clear that the right temporal lobe is pretty central to music but that music seems to push and pull from more areas of the brain than perhaps the language centers do. Thus damage to the left temporal lobe is more likely to result in catastrophic language loss but more areas of the brain need to be damaged to eliminate all the affects of music. Case after case seems to show the resilience of music processing when many other cognitive capacities have all but vanished. He almost subconsciously seems to be hinting at a hidden untapped power in music.

An Elvis Cole novel. I'm not sure if there is much more to say. Elvis and Joe Pike are fun to read about because they are already familiar to me. Their characters stay pretty much the same all the time, thus not a lot of character development. The action and scene discriptions are very good. Elvis seems a bit more sardonic (and funny) early in the novel but it sort of dissipates later. The story starts off interestingly, but it seems to fizzle out when Peter is fizzling. But since the novel is short, I feel lenient toward the plot. I do not see much difference between Elvis and Jeff Talley from Hostage. Bruce Willis played Jeff Talley credibly in the movie. However, I think someone else (a non-Italian DeNiro) would be a better choice for Elvis Cole. I am still looking forward to reading more of Crais.

Our housekeeper gave us this book (after she read it) along with two other books we already had and I had already read. Patchett's writing is okay with very good construction of the story lending the novel a great deal of low-key suspense. The most apparent themes to me in the book concern the vagaries of perceptions, the power of music (but singing and opera in particular), reading (of anything), and other diversions like chess, cooking, gardening, love and lust, and soap operas. It is probably the multiple perspectives drawing attention to characters altering their judgments of those around them that led to Patchett winning the PEN/Faulkner award for this novel. The title is apt, a "pretty song".

I also got this book when I saw the author speak at a Skeptics meeting about 20 years ago. I already knew most of what the author wrote about. However I really liked the idea that 2001 A Space Odyssey had only one notable scientific error when a weightless character sips from a straw and the fluid goes back down!

I think Muriel read this book after my sister Julie suggested it. Set during the Chinese cultural revolution (around 1968 or so) this short novel reminds me of Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. I'm not sure if this book will motivate me to read Balzac, but perhaps Dumas. Overall a good book for a fast read.

I think this was Muriel's book but she doesn't think so. It was interesting to see the early portrayal of Smiley (le Carré's second novel with Smiley in both, as well as the third [The Spy Who Came In From The Cold]). Smiley is sort of a cross of Columbo and Sherlock Holmes, not exactly like who he becomes. The plot is okay. Great descriptions and pretty good dialog. This was a very short fast novel. This novel certainly sets up some of the problems poor George will have with Ann. Worth reading for Smiley fans.

I got this book when I saw the author speak at a Skeptics meeting. The examples Glassner gives are somewhat dated but even that is quite interesting. His basic point is that Americans are afraid of the wrong things. And that statement is still clearly true. He brings up the old Orson Welles radio hoax and points out that despite several clues that what they were hearing was fiction, thousands of people panicked [because the smart people were listening to another radio station?] Glassner says we should fear failing schools, gun availabiity, and the consequences of poverty. At the end of the book he writes: "Will it take an event comparable to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to convince us that we must join together as a nation and tackle these problems?" Glassner wrote this book before nine eleven and yet the same psychology seems to apply.

I found this novel hard to put down. I thought there were one or two plotholes but on reflection I think Crais covered these through implication rather than exposition. Quite clever if intentional, as it seems to be with Martin smoking. Crais is rather pscyhologically sympathetic toward the abductors. Clearly Crais does not see justice being served. Mostly from the point of view of Jeff Talley, Crais uses other perspectives as well. The Elvis Cole novels tend to be a bit more humorous (a bit like Elmore Leonard), whereas this novel has fewer lighthearted moments. Even the ending was satisfying for me, a loosely wrapped up package. I'm looking forward to reading about Cole again, just to see if I notice the contrast.

I think this is Muriel's book. This is Crichton's second novel (not as John Lange). Crichton said it was his least favorite novel. I think it is a steppingstone in developing his craft. It was compelling but also very short. It was scientifically dated but somewhat interesting for historical reasons.

This book was a gift from my brother. I enjoyed reading it because it helped to explain the resistance to evolutionary psychology. A lot of what Wright speculates seems much like the "just so stories" he suggests his narratives differ from. It seems that a lot of the examples he uses have other plausible evolutionary explanations. However he uses biographical examples from Darwin's life that end up holding Darwin to be a kind of model of morality and are compelling and lead to their own interesting hypotheses. Also Wright seems to have arrived at a similar understanding of the intellectual vacuity of retribution. And he also points out the problem of convincing people of this flaw in our inheritance. We want to get even. We just can't seem to help it. We can decide to not get even but that is not what we truly seem to want.

Cleverly written mystery. Seems to me to capture well the ugliness of a bad marriage, although much more intensely executed in the novel. Nick was certainly bad but I cannot really imagine anyone truly rooting for Amy. But, in a way, I suppose they almost deserved each other, although I still think Nick would be getting the short end of the stick.

This book was also an Xmas gift from my niece. Well crafted. Very compelling read. Somewhat of a novel of manners like Jane Austen. Lots of food! Lots of fashion (which others might appreciate more than I did.) Kwan has a clear message about the inherent problems of wealth for the sake of status. Still, quite fun to read.

Cialdini is much in line with Kahneman and Freud in that unconscious fast thinking is very strongly influenced by stimuli. By controlling those stimuli, one can have greater influence on the way people think and behave. Only the first 90 pages or so (Part One) of this book is really relevant. In Part Two Cialdini meshes his other research with these new priming effects. The last section (Part Three) was about the ethics of disseminating his research and was a very weak set of arguments. I think he would have been better off just saying that "information wants to be free." The book was definitely worth reading just for the first part.

Very different from Gibson's Neuromancer novels, which were okay but I think Stephenson took the virtual reality novel to another level in Snow Crash. Still, I enjoyed Gibson's writing but the story was disappointing. He set things up to have an interesting ending and I kept waiting for it and it never came. At the end I wondered if he were setting this novel up for a sequel.

This is the last novel in this omnibus edition. It was similar to his two previous Mike Hammer stories but his ferocity is toward all the women in this novel. And there are several. The whole thing was a bit over the top. I wonder if he settles down in the next novel. I actually read this omnibus version but I liked the other book cover better.

I found this book surprisingly interesting. I had expected it to be somewhat of a trudge but it was quite readable. Rychlak begins with Aristotle's causes. The material, efficient, formal, and final causes are described with billiards. (I am not sure what Joyce means by the secret cause.)The material cause is the ball hitting the other balls. The efficient cause results from the laws of physics. The formal cause results from the rules of the game. The final cause is to determine who wins. The last two causes are in the Logos and Socius (as contrasted with Physyks and Bios) and are teleological in that they are purposeful. Logos is essentially the ability to transpredicate. Unipredication is a fixed symbolic representation, like a dogma, unquestioned. Transpredication extends one symbol to incorporate a new association. The learning process involves transpredication. This is also related to counterfactual (or Socratic) thinking. Rychlak argues that psychology has focused almost entirely on Bios to the exclusion of Logos, when addressing the question of Consciousness. His proposed model is the Logic Learning Theory (LLT).

I liked this novel overall. However I thought it was best up until the chapter Messal. It is similar to Dune in the coming of age story for a somewhat messianic character. Both novels have space opera allusions. However I found the polycosmic resolution to the novel to be too much handwaving for my tastes. Perhaps, though that seems a bit more satisfying than clearly unresolved issues. Although I thought Stephenson could have told us why Erasmus's chant was special, for example. I think Herbert had his ending rather worked out from the beginning of the novel. Anathem does not seem to have been written that way.

This is the second biography I have read about Hearst. This biography really only concerned his time with the newpaper business up to the turn of the century (19th) whereas The Chief spanned most of his life. This biography had lots of stories about people who seemed rather indifferent to danger. Perhaps that was a theme of the author that in someways Hearst was successful, as those around him, in the areas where he acted rather fearlessly (or at least confidently.)

Great Ending! But only upon reflection and internet mining. Somewhat like a professor saying the conclusion is "an exercise for the reader". Or like Miles Davis saying he didn't bother to play all the notes because "everyone already knows where their going". I enjoyed reading the book. Very little of it was tedious. Always something interesting. I guess the Hamlet scenario fits with Hal (and Orin and Mario) as the prince, his father's ghost as the wraith, Avril as Gertrude, CT Tavis as Claudius, Joelle as Ophelia, and Gately as Fortinbras. Perhaps Hal is the Ego, Orin the Id, and Mario the Superego. Also Mario is Yorick, a fellow of infinite jest. This novel took me about 90 hours to read, averaging around 5 minutes per page. Certainly comparable to Ulysses and Gravity's Rainbow. However I found Wallace to be much more cleverly funny, although Joyce and Pynchon are essentially humorous rather than despondent, Pynchon much more ironically. Wallace deals with darkness but the novel is not generally overly heavy. The book requires at least a second reading. LOL.

I am about to read Infinite Jest and I read this book just to bone up on the most basic ideas like cave paintings, architecture, electronics, inventions, and such. This book seems best as a launching point. I found myself looking things up on the internet because Christianson only devotes a page of text to each diagram. Some things didn't interest me as much (like steam engines). I looked up things like clock parts, triple spirals, the Phaistos Disc, and Vetruvius (for "Vitruvian Man".) [Dave Eggers's foreward implied that he took one month non-stop to read this Infinite Jest. My next entry may be very late.]

Nicely written overall. After the chapter [le1o9n8a0rd], the last two sections were anticlimactic, a long denoument. He captures the argumentative dialog realistically. Most of the problems seemed to stem from dishonesty. Some of the deceptions can be seen as related to some sense of "purity". Quite a few alusions to literature and music. I found the descriptions of the Bay Area to be good. However I was never sure which city we were in on the East Coast and Colorado. Reminds me of Delillo but with more dysfunction in the relationships.

I bought this book at "The Last Bookstore" with a gift card from Scott and Chris. This is a James Bond story but it is updated with Bond in the 21st century with cell phone technology and such. Nicely written. I particularly liked the way Bond gets past a keypad locked door. A lot of twists and very different from LeCarre in that way. Interesting cars. Curiously, Bond seems to restrain his drinking a lot more in the beginning of the novel than toward the end. Deaver's dialog is pretty good. His action and scene discriptions are okay. Deaver is pretty economical in his hints. He doesn't reveal much that is not going to be pretty important later in the story. A couple of memorable bad guys (especially Hydt - Dunne is less consistent). Every woman is potentially in love with Bond. Overall Deaver's exposition is quite clever with Bond relying on guile more than strength (Odysseus vs Achilles). Overall I enjoyed this book.

I think Scott gave me this book. The portrait by Alain Moreau on the cover is Lord Byron (who looks unusually effeminate to me.) Jamison's central premise is that artists seem to suffer from manic-depression (bipolar disorder) more frequently than expected. Her case seems most dependent on poets and Lord Byron in particular for some reason (he clearly had some things to be depressed about.) Her analysis is plagued by the diagnostic criteria used to identify these disorders. Applying these criteria with no known mechanism is tenuous with living interactive patients, however trying to diagnose from historical records (that we know are unreliable) seems specious to me. Still it is difficult to ignore the obvious and public difficulties of many artists. But it is almost impossible to determine if artists really vary from baseline because the definition of artist is overly subjective and variable and furthermore the definitions of these depressive disorders are also questionable. Jamison spends a lot of her book justifying the influence of genetics on the incidence of these disorders, but I think everyone already realizes that virtually all personality traits reflect a mixture of nature and nurture. I think we are also more likely to label compositsions artistic when they are dark rather than joyful. Happy art seems suspicious. But to compose dark art honestly, you must at least experience the dark sides rather deeply. Methinks.

Very brutal and sexual. I am not sure I would call it compelling. Captivating, perhaps. It does facilitate conspiratorial thinking however. I bought this book for $27 in a used bookstore in Solvang in July 2009 because it was a signed first edition. After I bought this book I bought the first book of the series, American Tabloid, which is perhaps a little better. I don't think I need to read the third book of this trilogy. There is certainly a cleverness to his style but it gets repetitive and probably its best feature is that it generally reads fast. However sometimes Ellroy's terseness becomes so cryptic it is almost indecypherable, upsetting the rhythm, so to speak.

I found this ghost story more efficient than Stephen King's horror. Very quick read. Requires suspension of disbelief like with Tolkien. No real character development but no real attempt at it either. Mostly just a nice premise with a well-told plot. Nice jacket cover also.

Interesting development of McCourt as a teacher. His early experiences teaching High School reminded me of my year teaching the girls at the priory. However his later teaching (even though still High School) reminded me of my college teaching. It is the forsaking of trying to control the class with "discipline". A bit unstructured at times but overall a nice set of stories with a few "redemption" tales at its heart.

Higgins's' protagonist is Sean Dillon (not "Dylan"?) who is essentially an Irish James Bond. Fun and fast to read. Minimal complexity and not many plotholes, but some of both. Characters are all pretty cookie-cutter from Bond, U.N.C.L.E., Charlie's Angels, etc. I wish he had described the underwater scenes better. His parachuting scene could have been more dramatic. Too much of the novel is people introducing each other without really developing their characters. But of course that is not the kind of book this is supposed to be. Still, it could have been better.

Kevin Barry writes from the perspective of John Lennon, and he captures John's voice cleverly. In the novel Barry alludes to songs, Joyce, Ireland, and death. This novel is experimental in a way that reminded me of China Miéville's Embassytown. Barry inserts himself in Chapter 6 (Eleven Eleven Eleven - Dakota). There are nine chapters and Barry is clearly playing with numerology a bit. Both novelists are linguistically interesting, however Barry's novel is much more playful than Miéville's. Barry is aiming more for the readers' mood than for any expository reason. The novel is more akin to prose poetry than a narrated story, but not proton-dense like Finnegans Wake.

I bought this book when I saw Pinker give a presentation that was an overview of this book. He is a cognitive scientist and also on the usage board for the American Heritage Dictionary. I found the first three chapters of this book more satisfying than the last three. Pinker's introductory chapter is fine. I also like Pinker's' argument that descriptions employing our visual imagination tend to be more effective. His third chapter reminded me again of the importance of knowing my audience; so as to neither bore nor condescend. The fourth and fifth chapters are just okay and the last chapter is more of a reference than an argument or narative. Overall I think Pinker has some sound advice and this book may serve as a good reference when I want to be particularly careful about grammatical decisions. [Perhaps it is a good replacement for Strunk and White.]

This is the unfinished novel that was apparently substantially reworked by Joyce into Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It is more like a memoir but maintains Stephen's (Joyce's) arguments concerning the artist's responsibilities. The anti-religious theme comes through more in the dialogue here whereas in Portrait the fire-and-brimstone sermon makes most of the point more artistically. But in Portrait Joyce's perspective is of a younger Stephen whereas in Stephen Hero it seems more clear what Joyce was thinking. I expected this "novel" to be disjointed but I was surprised by how much I still enjoyed it.

This book is more of an argument in favor of cross-fertilization as a universal principle. I suppose it is rather easy to see how taking different perspectives is necessary for any learning but Sousanis concentrates on the comicbook as metaphorically representing the combined utility of visuo-linguistic communication. Sousanis considers visual phenomena as more holistically perceived wherein linguistic representations are nearly always linear. Richard McQuire's novel Here makes the case better. However both compositions expand the notion of what constitutes a good "book".

I think I started this novel and only got a few chapters in before I stopped. Some lines seemed familiar: Hammer didn't have to "pay for it"; wind "throwing rain around". I didn't remember the story really but I knew the girl had to die or run away. And the bad guy was pretty obvious from the beginning. The description of New York 60 years ago is worth the read. The sex and violence seem tame now. However, Spillane has a rhythm to his writing that only really breaks when Hammer needs to make a speech. I'm looking forward to reading the last of this omnibus edition. I prefer Dashiell Hammett, but he didn't write enough. I also like Crais who kind of splits Hammer into the more sensitive Elvis Cole and the more physical Joe Pike. I actually read this omnibus version but I liked the other book cover better.

Battles calls his book "A history of the written word". Largely what he discusses is how writing has influenced history, this being somewhat of a meta-statement itself. There is a recursive nature to the act of writing about the historical influence of writing. Battles knows his "letters" both literally and figuratively (again, strangely recursive since a "letter" is just a figure until combined with other "letters" to evoke a literal meaning. Even the word "literal" seems to connote "letter") Battles argues that writing and reading change our consciousness, and thus the new kinds of reading promoted by the internet are likely to influence our cognitive processes; using the notion of neuroplasticity to support his argument. Battles is very Darwinian and his prose reminds me of Philip Morrison (who wrote book reviews for Scientific American). Battles firstly and finally suggests that the mind is the ultimate palimpsest. But he also suggests that a "book" is a kind of "mind". This equivalence struck me because I read someone describe the movie Inside Out as essentially having a "consciousness".

This book is actually Muriel's. It was a fun read, albeit much too formulaic in story resolution. However, the exploration of what it means to be human, through the eyes of Data, kept my interest. Rather than leaving things rather ambiguous, Lorrah gives somewhat pat answers to some profound questions. For this type of novel, I would say it exceeded expectations simply because it was faithful to the TV show.

I am not sure how I got this book. Zerubavel provides an interesting perspective on cognition making the argument that all aspects of thinking are rooted in social interactions. He considers these influences are particularly powerful along the six dimensions that he emphasizes in the book: perception, attention, language, memory, categorization, and time. For example, our schemas for time are almost completely severed from any natural delineation of this dimension. It would be difficult for anyone in the world to not have an idea of how "nine-eleven" has something to do with time, even though that "time" does not really have a physical referent.

Not very informative but still pretty entertaining.

I guess nothing compares to Le Carré's earlier novels so compared to other contemporaries, this novel was very nice, although short and a somewhat abupt ending. Good characters and nice descriptions of Gibraltar, and other less exotic settings. Interesting structure to this novel also. Another character named Toby is surprising also.

I picked this book up used at The Last Bookstore in downtown LA after having read a review describing the first time the reviewer had read Marcus's book. Marcus primarily discusses the six artists: Harmonica Frank, Robert Johnson, Robbie Robertson (and The Band), Sly Stone (and the Family Stone), Randy Newman, and Elvis Presley. Marcus really is best when he connects this music to the way that Americans respond to it. How the music has deep American roots (however deep can be here). Lots of funny footnotes in The Presliad reminded me of David Foster Wallace. Years ago my sister gave me the Randy Newman album Sail Away and I never really appreciated it. But through a story, Marcus explains the meaning of the title song which clarifies the rest of the songs on the album. I still don't really enjoy Robert Johnson all that much, but Marcus gave me a new appreciation for the first two albums by Tne Band.

I enjoyed the first part of this book better than the last section, 5000 years later. In some ways I would have preferred this last section had been expanded into another novel, exploring the pingers more. This novel seemed a lot less convuluted than Snow Crash or Cryptonomicon. Still, overall it is one of the best contemporary straightforward SciFi novels I've read recently.

I saw this book while browsing through Powell's Books on Burnside in Portland Oregon. I couldn't remember the name of the book though. I kept thinking of "perception", "vision", "literature", "writing". I finally found it by the look of the book jacket. This experience is ironic because Peter Mendelsund designs book jackets, and he designed this one. The book makes many allusions to Joyce, Kafka, Wolff, Homer, Shakespeare Tolstoy, Dickens, and other authors in the "Western Canon". So, I really found reading the book fast and pleasurable. His reflections on the relationships between dreams, consciousness, reading, hallucinations, and reality are provocative.

I wanted to read something light and this qualified. Okay story, but really it is the humorous dialogue and the interactions between Pike and Elvis that are most interesting. The LA setting (wedding in Prebyterian church in Lake Arrowhead) is also fun, and different from reading about New York, for example. Good descriptions of action scenes. Cole sometimes has some aphoristic insights. Not too deep but Elvis Cole is a well-developed character throughout these novels.

This book was loaned to me by Jim Alison, after I told him that Faulkner was one of my favorite writers. Probably considered a minor work because it comprises previously published short stories in a single collection. However, these stories are all about Bayard Sartoris and are chronological from age 12 or so to about 24 years old. Thus the plot is much less convoluted but the language is still in Faulkner's more experimental voice. Reminded me of "Blood Meridian" with regard to the ubiquitous brutality.

I do not remember what motivated me to buy this book but I have postponed reading it for years. It was quite good. The distinction between "eccentricity" and "mental illness" is quite well argued throughout the book. I have been called "eccentric". Wouldn't most of us rather avoid being "conformists"?

This book was a gift from my niece. It was particularly easy to read because I already knew many of the characters from True Blood (Jason, Sookie, Sam, Bill, Eric, and some others). The plot was quickpaced but not exactly ingenious. Lots of problems get resolved "magically" (not like in Sherlock Holmes for example.) I couldn't help comparing it to a Hardy Boys book, with a little sex added. There was some complexity to the family tree relationships, but remembering these connections had no real payoff in terms of the storyline. No real attempt to develop the characters, or even describe them much. The TV series relied much more on character.

It is about time that I finally read this novelette. I should have read it in High School, especially since it's scifi and Burgess has written about Joyce and was surely influenced by him in his nadsat slang. Better than the movie. Still a graphically violent and somewhat disturbing read. I am not sure that the last chapter really fits the tenor of the rest of the story.

Johnson describes the manner in which six different areas of discovery had profound affects on modern western culture: glass, cold, clean, sound, time, and light. (Light and glass seem a bit redundant). Interesting in the manner of Gladwell’s books. Johnson’s central theme seems to be the importance of cross-fertilization, sometimes from individual dilettantism, other times from collaboration.

Fun to read but with a sustained feeling of impending doom, dread. Some of the minor characters, like Bunny's father, are more memorable than some of the major characters. The twins seem a literary convenience. Still, lots of allusions to literature, music film, and culture in general. Compelling, and for me a satisfying ending.

Very clever. More like a graphic novel but with some surprises and tricks. I didn't keep careful track of the chronology but I think this book requires a "re-reading".

Harry Bosch is an interesting character. Some of the plot points are a bit predictable (especially after reading Inherent Vice. Very compelling story. Long chapters make it hard to put down. Not quite as clever as some hard-boiled detectives, but Bosch is fairly easy to identify with. Not nearly as brutal as some of the characters in American Tabloid, for example.

I wanted to read this book again before I saw the movie. This second reading was easier but even in this novel the prose is dense. I really had fun with it but it is not exactly clear to me if Pynchon is essentially saying that everything is absurd, but in an ironically meaningful kind of way? It was also fun to have the character named Larry "Doc" Sportello, especially since this character may be a bit autobiographical.

Great pictures! Tufte does a good job of illustrating examples of good and bad graphic design. However, he does not seem to have a very coherent set of principles that drive good design. It still seems to be more of an art than a science in this book. This book putatively concerns "pictures about verbs". His other companion books The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and Envisioning Information are meant to concern "pictures about numbers" and "pictures about nouns", respectively. [This book has the famous chart about rock music.]

The story reminds me a bit of The Godfather with a lot of lurid violence and some sex. But the staccato style of Elroy's is distinctive if not unique. A fun romp into the Kennedy years. I'm looking forward to the sequel: The Cold Six Thousand.

[Originally published in Spanish as El Mapa del Cielo.]

Much like The Map of Time (see below), this sequel seems to be influenced a bit by many authors. It does not exactly fit the category of steampunk but it does allude mostly to 19th century events.

Gould is simply a very good writer. I most enjoyed his essays on the three French and four British scientists. The short pieces were okay. I least enjoyed the last two sections on society and scale. These last two sections seemed overly simplistic compared to the depth of analysis in his other essays. Still, overall a great collection of essays.

Liked most of novel but the ending was somewhat predictably unsatisfying.  I enjoyed some of his “departures” into extraordinary situations to be very fun.  I also really enjoyed Maxine’s wisecracks, like a female Sam Spade.

Writer: J. Michael Straczynski Artists: Andy and Joe Kubert

Writer: J. Michael Straczynski. Artist: Adam Hughes[

Nite Owl was not as good.

Dr. Manhattan was the best of the two.

Written by: Grant Morrison

Illustrated by: Dave McKean.

Very interesting illustrations. The story is a bit obscure and is more Freudian and introspective than anything else. Lots of extras at the end also (scripts, sketches, etc.)

Story by: Kurt Busiek

Painted by: Alex Ross

Good illustrations. The story was always truncated but okay. Interesting concept of viewing the superheroes from the perspective of a non-superpowered reporter.

Pretty good illustrations. A bit like reading one of those comic books that "mom" always wanted us to choose. A bit like propaganda but it gives a good contextual overview of Anne Frank's life and diary. I got this book when we visited the
Frank house in Amsterdam in the winter of 2011.

Interesting to read something written by a 19 year-old girl. I think I may hear the influence of her husband at times. However, she is trying to write in the voices of several men. I did not find the novel "scary". It was exciting in parts but the monster is the most sympathetic character.

Very little about the psychological aspects of hypnotism (somewhat disappointingly.) Winter is an historian of science at the University of Chicago. I got this book at a CalTech Skeptics lecture where she was teaching at the time. Her central concern seems to be the slow establishment of the notion of "consensus". People at the time were pretty much all-over-the-map concerning the "meaning" of hypnotism. Her narative discusses Dickens, doctors, Colonial India as a laboratory, showmen, politicians, musicians, artists, lots of likely frauds, but Winter does not go much into debunking the various reports of hypnotism. A very different kind of book to read.

Fairly well written for this genre. Better than Clancy but no Le Carre. My dad loaned this book to me.There was a Xmas card from Jordan in the book. I just now got around to reading it, so now I cannot return it to him.

Rather a depressing novel. With all the violence around the world right now, her world seems fearfully possible. Well written with many literary and cultural allusions.

Categorization is the same as analogical thinking and is at the root of all cognition. The chapter on Einstein was climactic with the Socratic dialog a nice denoument at the end. With Kahneman's book, captures much of cognitive psychology.

A fast fun read, and fairly well-crafted. Interesting in a clever but not a deep way.

[Embassytown was more demanding but dealt better with questions concerning language.]

[Originally published in Spanish as El Mapa del Tiempo.]

A very nicely crafted novel. Interesting that a Spanish author focuses on Victorian England. Lots of alusions to literary figures. Seems to be influenced a bit by Jorge Luis Borges. I knew nothing about this author before my niece gave me this book for Xmas. The sequel, The Map of the Sky, is on my Amazon wishlist.

My order of preference for Salingers nine stories

"Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes"
"Teddy"
"Down at the Dinghy"
"A Perfect Day for Bananafish"
"Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut"
"De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period"
"Just Before the War with the Eskimos"
"The Laughing Man"
"For Esmé – with Love and Squalor"