Books we read in 2023

[Mike]

Books Kyle finished in 2023:
Nothing- Janne Teller
Words of Radiance- Brandon Sanderson
The Way of Kings- Brandon Sanderson
A Memory Called Empire- Arkady Martine
Oathbringer- Brandon Sanderson
The Archive of the Forgotten- AJ Hackwith
Garth Marenghi’s TerrorTome- Garth Marenghi
The Long Earth- Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett
I Must Betray You- Ruta Sepetys
The Long Cosmos- Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett
The Left Hand of Darkness- Ursula K. Le Guin
Oath and Honor- Liz Cheney
A Desolation Called Peace- Arkady Martine
Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock- Matthew Quick
We Could Be Heroes- Mike Chen
The Silent Patient- Alex Michaelides
The Long War- Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time- Mark Hadden
Oona Out of Order- Margarita Montimore
The Long Utopia- Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett
The Long Mars- Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett
The Lesson- Cadwell Turnbull
The Dinner- Herman Koch, translated by Sam Garrett
Rivers of London- Ben Aaronovitch
The Other People- CJ Tudor
One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories- B. J. Novak
The Summoning- Bentley Little
The Daughter of Doctor Moreau- Silvia Moreno-Garcia
The Paris Apartment- Lucy Foley
I'm Glad My Mom Died- Jennette McCurdy
Gratitude- Oliver Sacks
The Kaiju Preservation Society- John Scalzi
Moon Over Soho- Ben Aaronovitch
Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore- Matthew J. Sullivan
Before the Fall- Noah Hawley
Stories of Your Life and Others- Ted Chiang
Working for Bigfoot- Jim Butcher
The Lost Village- Camilla Sten, translated by Alexandra Fleming
The Couple Next Door- Shari Lapena
The Deep- Nick Cutter
Home Before Dark- Riley Sager.
Revival- Stephen King [Quit 25% of the way through]
Amish Country Ransom- Mary Alford


Mike's list (alphabetically by author)
The Goblin Emperor -- Katherine Addison (18)
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian -- Sherman Alexie (5)
Feed -- M.T. Anderson (5)
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl -- Jesse Andrews (6)
Oryx and Crake -- Margaret Atwood (11)

Beowulf -- Beowulf's Author (3)
The Shining Girls -- Lauren Beukes (11)
The Last Girl on Earth -- Alexandra Blogier (6)
A Closed and Common Orbit -- Becky Chambers (11)
The Galaxy and the Ground Within -- Becky Chambers (10)

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy -- Becky Chambers (4)
Record of a Spaceborn Few -- Becky Chambers (12)
To Be Taught, If Fortunate -- Becky Chambers (5)
The School for Good Mothers -- Jessamine Chan (12)
A Beginning at the End -- Mike Chen (12)

Here and Now and Then -- Mike Chen (10)
We Could Be Heroes -- Mike Chen (11)
A Dead Djinn in Cairo -- P. Djeli Clarke (2)
Gregor the Overlander -- Suzanne Collins (7)
The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina -- Zoraida Cordova (11)

Dark Matter -- Blake Crouch (10)
The Recovery Agent -- Janet Evanovich (7)
The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home -- Joseph Fink and Jeremy Cranor (9)
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk -- Ben Fountain (12)
Neverwhere -- Neil Gaiman (14)

InterWorld -- Neil Gaiman and Michael Reeves (6)
Looking for Alaska -- John Green (7)
Paper Towns -- John Green (7)
Turtles All the Way Down -- John Green (8)
The Archives of the Forgotten -- A.J. Hackwith (13)

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time -- Mark Haddon (6)
The Midnight Library -- Matt Haig (9)
Exit West -- Mohsin Hamid (5)
Homo Deus -- Yuval Noah Harari (15)
Reckless Girls -- Rachel Hawkins (8)

The Mere Wife -- Maria Dahvana Headley (6)
The Twilight World -- Werner Herzog (3)
The Buried Giant -- Kazuo Ishiguro (12)
The Haunting of Hill House -- Shirley Jackson (7)
All Boys Aren't Blue -- George M. Johnson (5)

Night of the Mannequins -- Stephen Graham Jones (3)
Before the Coffee Gets Cold -- Toshikazu Kawaguchi (7)
Switch -- A.S. King (6)
A House with Good Bones -- T. Kingfisher (7)
Nettle and Bone -- T. Kingfisher (9)

Thornhedge -- T. Kingfisher (4)
The House on the Cerulean Sea – TJ Klune (12)
The Dinner -- Herman Koch (9)
Time Squared -- Lesley Krueger (12)
Babel -- R. F. Kuang (22)

Yellowface -- R. F. Kuang (9)
Everything the Darkness Eats -- Eric LaRocca (5)
The Left Hand of Darkness -- Ursula K. Le Guin (10)
The Glass Hotel -- Emily St. John Mandel (10)
Sea of Tranquility -- Emily St. John Mandel (6)

A Memory Called Empire -- Arkady Martine (16)
Do Not Disturb -- Frieda McFadden (8)
Into the Heartless Wood -- Joanna Ruth Meyer (11)
Certain Dark Things -- Silvia Moreno-Garcia (9)
How High We Go in the Dark -- Sequoia Nagamatsu (9)

Thistlefoot – GennaRose Nethercott (15)
Noor -- Nnedi Okorafor (7)
Remote Control -- Nnedi Okorafor (4)
The Swimmers -- Julie Otsuka (4)
Pageboy -- Elliot Page (8)

Humble Pi -- Matt Parker (10)
Out of Darkness -- Ashley Hope Pérez (13)
Dragons at Crumbling Castle -- Terry Pratchett (4)
The Long Earth -- Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter (12)
The Long War -- Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter (14)

The Long Mars -- Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter (12)
The Long Utopia -- Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter (12)
The Long Cosmos -- Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter (12)
Rhythm of Time -- Questlove and S.A. Cosby (4)
Please Report Your Bug Here -- Josh Riedel (9)

Arch-Conspirator -- Veronica Roth (3)
The God of Small Things -- Arundhati Roy (12)
Swamplandia! -- Karen Russell (13)
The Original -- Brandon Sanderson & Mary Robinette Kowel (3)
Lincoln in the Bardo -- George Saunders (7)

Old Man's War -- John Scalzi (10)
Signal Fires -- Dani Shapiro (8)
Scythe -- Neal Shusterman (11)
Calypso -- David Sedaris (7)
Otherworld -- Jason Segal and Kirsten Miller (11)

I Must Betray You -- Ruta Sepetys (7)
The Cartographers -- Peng Shepherd (15)
Sorrowland -- Rivers Solomon (12)
Road Out of Winter -- Alison Stine (10)
This Time Tomorrow -- Emma Straub (9)

Children of Ruin -- Adrian Tchaikovsky (15)
Nothing -- Janne Teller (3)
The Lesson -- Cadwell Turnbull (9)
The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle -- Stuart Turton (17)
Annihilation -- Jeff VanDerMeer (6)

Slaughterhouse-Five -- Kurt Vonnegut (5)
The Murderbot Diaries: System Collapse -- Martha Wells (7)
Nothing to See Here -- Kevin Wilson (7)
Another Brooklyn -- Jacqueline Woodson (3)
Crying in H Mart -- Michelle Zauner (7)

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow -- Gabrielle Zevin (14)


Zen's list (in the order read... if I remember to update this)
Legends & Lattes - Travis Baldree
Tress of the Emerald Sea - Brandon Sanderson


Tahlvin's List
The Holcroft Covenant - Robert Ludlum


Phoebe's List
Philosophy Made Simple -- Robert Hellenga

Books we read in 2022
Books we read in 2021

[Mike]

Babel -- R. F. Kuang
Technically, the full title is Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution. How awesome is that shit? And having read the book, I just now read that title knowing the full context, and I got chills. This book is so good!

It's a dark historical fantasy about a cohort of mostly foreign students studying translation at Oxford in the 1830s, at the height of the British Empire's power. There is magic here. It's part and parcel of the theme, and unlike anything I've seen before.

The world created here is detailed and vibrant. The characters feel true and operate from sincere and believable motivations. The book addresses colonialism and slavery. It has an overarching theme of contradiction and contrast that I thought was superbly done. But more than all of that, it is a book about language. Language is so vital to the events of this book that they hired a whole separate reader to be the voice of the footnotes.

Holy shit this was good. I know it's my first book of the year, but I'm calling it as top five material for this year. Kuang deserves every literary award the world is going to throw at her for this. So good.

[zen]

Legends & Lattes: A Novel of High Fantasy and Low Stakes by Travis Baldree

This fantasy novel with a twist is ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC! It's the story of Viv, an Orc Barbarian adventurer who decides to hang up her sword, Blackblood, and set down roots, opening up, of all things, a coffee shop. Going into the story, I was prepared for it to be an isekai story, with the protagonist having discovered a "coffee like" plant on her world she was born into, but that is not what's going on here.

Coffee is a Gnomish drink. Gnomes are the race that drives technology in this fantasy world and, in her travels as an adventurer, Viv ran across a coffee shop, or "Café", in one of the Gnomish cities and fell in love with the drink. She found that drinking it gave her a sense of peace... unless she had too much... then she got all jittery... but that's neither here nor there...

To ensure her success, the story starts with one last job with her crew, killing a fabled monster that she found an old song about. That monster has a magical element to it that can grant good fortune if placed correctly in the ley lines. Having secured her prize, she leaves the adventuring life behind without so much as a word to her crew and heads to the city of Thune, where her research has determined will be a good place to open her business.

There she meets quite the collection of cast offs and unappreciated geniuses who manage to help her get her shop up and running. The rest is best read, or better yet, read along with (you know how you can listen to audio books while the ebook moves along with the audio...?) or simply have it read to you by the author himself, who evidently has been doing audio book narration for quite some time and is ABSOLUTELY AMAZING at it! He voices each character with a distinct voice (though some of the minor male characters are a bit hard to distinguish) with a high, cackling falsetto for the old crones; a rough, raspy tenor for Viv; a slightly higher, smooth and melodious voice for Thandry, the succubus who responds to Viv's ad for an assistant and takes the job, and eventually a much more important role (advancement opportunities...); a lower, gruff voice, with his signature "Hrm" for Cal, short for Calamity, the Hob (I presumed this was short for Hobgoblin, especially since the term "Puck" was tossed out at one point I believe) shipwright Viv hires to help her fix up the old Livery she bought and transform it from an old stable that's falling apart to a coffee shop with a small kitchen (Cal insisted... need heat in the winter at least and, if that bean water don't work out at least you could sell food to people... Hrm...); a light, whispery voice for the shy Ratkin named Thimble, the genius baker who gets hooked on Lattes and is hired by Viv to provide pastries for the shop; etc...

It is truly one of the best narrations I have heard. Evidently this is the author's first book, but he is also a game designer. The novel started out as a NaNoWriMo project in 2021 and was self-published. As the author states on his own site: "A cozy, low-stakes novel of found family and reinventing oneself, it became an instant Amazon bestseller and word-of-mouth success." Now it's been acquired by TOR and republished, hitting multiple bestseller lists, including NYT and USA Today and is being translated into 9 languages.

I could probably prattle on about it endlessly... to give you an idea... I pretty much listened to it in a day. (I started it a couple days earlier at lunch, but then had a long stretch where I could listen to it and... just didn't stop.)

[Mike]

Legends & Lattes: A Novel of High Fantasy and Low Stakes by Travis Baldree

This book has come highly recommended to me from a couple other sources, so I'm glad to hear you liked it as well.

I tried it a few months ago, and it just wasn't for me. After the first chapter, I just put it down and never came back. And I can't articulate why. It's exactly the sort of book that I oughtta love, but it just failed to resonate or something. I'm assuming it just caught me at a bad moment, because I seem to be the only person who doesn't love it.

I may have to go back and try again in a couple months.

[Mike]

Old Man's War -- John Scalzi
Nebula award winner for best scifi novel 2005. It is an extremely well written space opera about war. I enjoyed it a lot, and will likely try the next book or two in the series (there are 6 total) to see where it is going.

If I sound reserved, it's because I am. The book tries to give us a glimpse of the horrors of war, but it still very much glorifies war, glorifies military culture and is very in love with the technology that makes all this possible. And it's really good sci-fi, so I get it.

There was a lot to like, but also a lot that felt just a bit off. If anyone else has read it and wants to talk--maybe in a new, spoiler-full thread, I would enjoy that.

[Tahlvin]

The Holcroft Covenant - Robert Ludlum
I've watched the movie, now I've read the book the movie was based on. The movie has a very different, much darker ending than the movie. For a book released in 1978, I thought it actually held up pretty well. If you like thrillers, then this is a good one from one of the godfathers of the genre.

[Mike]

Children of Ruin -- Adrian Tchaikovsky
This is the sequel to Children of Time, which I LOVED! The third book, Children of Memory has yet to be released, but I will eagerly xonaume that as well, because Tchaikovsky is so freaking good at this! And for the second time this year already, I get to read an awesome book there the protagonists are a team of linguists. Apparently, I have a type. Now if only I could get a time-traveling linguist... Oh wait... Arrival.

Anyway, this series is about what follows the collapse of the old Imperial Earth, a spare faring culture on the verge of terraforming and colonizing far-flung star systems. The surviving humans have to deal with "aliens" that are actually uplifted earth creatures (but not in a cheesy way). You haven't read book 1 yet, so I won't give anything away, but I'll tell you that we get more of this in book 2. In this one, we see what happens when a species of octopus develops intelligence. And it's frickin amazing. You see aliens in all sorts of fiction, and very rarely are they anything more than a stand-in for some group of humans. But in both of these books, Tchaikovsky is building up the intelligence and culture from first principles. An octopus has no brain, only a primary processor surrounded by a ring of secondary processors that can act independently. What sort of sentient being does that make? How do they think? How do they communicate and interact? It is FASCINATING! How would humans and cephalopods go about even attempting to communicate?

Okay, I'm not making this exciting enough, but I'm telling you, it's really really well done.

[Kyle]

Wow. Being home sick has really cut into my reading.

The Deep- Nick Cutter. Even though I didn't like this book, let me start by saying how much I like Nick Cutter. Nick Cutter is the pseudonym for a writer to write his horror books. And its very reminiscent of Richard Bachman. Nick Cutter tells horror the way I remember it being told a long time ago- visceral, gory and cruel to its characters. But it's easy to tell bloody, mean horror stories without having heart and characters that the reader gives a shit about, and that's where Cutter shines. His stories are punch you in the face horror, but you care about the story. You care about the characters. So to this book: I didn't like it. And even though it's written in the typical Cutter style I just described, this book suffers from an exhaustion problem. The premise is that the protagonist has to go to an underwater lab where his brother is looking for the cure to a plague that is killing humanity. When he gets down there, bad stuff happens. Here's the problem. Remember Event Horizon? And remember how the last 25% of that movie was pure mind-bendy hellscape... and it was awesome?!? Well this book spends a chapter setting the scene, then the character gets into the lab and the book accelerates to that level of Event Horizon. The whole book is 100% End-of-Event-Horizon. It's just exhausting. The book never lets you get a chance to breath or consider what's happening, it's just one hellish nightmare after the other and its just too much. So even though I love Cutter, I didn't love this book.

[Mike]

Here and Now and Then -- Mike Chen
Time travel! Yay! Kin is a timecop who stops criminals from altering the timeline. He gets stranded in the 1990's and is stuck for almost 20 years. Now Kin has to reconcile his two lives, and that's what redeems this story and keeps it from being a dumb timecop story. Yes, the time travel is cool and integral, but really... it's all about family, brah.

Having said that, this story would make a fantastic movie, if it was possible for Hollywood to make a movie about a secret agent timecop that ISN'T a full-on action thriller. There's minor action, sure, but none of the drama or resolution relies on beating up bad guys or defusing the time bomb (see what I did there?)

My criticism is that a lot of the emotional conflict could have stood to be a little more complicated. I loved the characters, and their motivations felt real, but most times the path to resolving those issues felt a little too convenient. But also, I feel like I've been spoiled by reading a string of really great novels lately, so I'm trying not to be too harsh. It's a solid B. Worth your time if you're into that sort of thing.

EDIT: Oh shit... 10 hours of listening to this book, and I just got it: hero's name is short for Quinoa, cuz names in 2142 have their own weird trends. But he's Kin because, you know... family, brah.

[Kyle]

Nothing- Janne Teller. Wow. Nihilism meets Lord of the Flies in rural Denmark. For real. This is a very short (I read 75% waiting for a doctor's appointment and then chest x-rays yesterday) YA book translated from Danish. It focuses on a 7th grade class which, on the first day of school, has a student stand up and declare, "Nothing matters. School doesn't matter. We don't matter. I'm going to go live in the tree out front and appreciate the nothing." That student then goes out, climbs a tree and refuses to come down, shouting at his classmates about how unimportant they are. The book, however, doesn't focus on him. It focuses on the rest of the 7th grade class and their decision to, as a group, collect things that have meaning so they can prove their classmate wrong. And it's pretty odd, but then something happens and you say, "Oh shit. That's... wow." Then something else happens and you're like, "Oh fuck. Like... christ." And the book goes on like that until the end. AND I LOVED IT. To be clear- this is a very, very dark book. If you're triggered by... most anything... then don't read it. But it's an extremely well thought-out and excellent read. I really, really loved it. Also- weird note- I read this because my wife assigned it to her high school world literature homeschool class. I'm interested to see what they think. Anyways- high recommend.

[Mike]

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy -- Becky Chambers
This is a Monk & Robot book. It's the sequel to A Psalm for the Wild-Built. It is friendly and happy and glorious. Go read both of them in order. They are each under four hours. They do not have a recognizable western literature style plot or story arc, and they are the better for it. This is a journey of identity, meaning, doubt and self discovery in a world where people are good. Both books just make me happy to read. Just happy. Her book A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet had a similar effect. Becky Chambers' writing makes me happy.

[Mike]

Nothing -- Janne Teller
Wow. Go read Kyle's review... it's just two posts up. I was reading this book within 10 minutes of finishing his review. He's dead on.

And it's pretty odd, but then something happens and you say, "Oh shit. That's... wow." Then something else happens and you're like, "Oh fuck. Like... christ." And the book goes on like that until the end. AND I LOVED IT.

Yeah. All of that. It's a search for the meaning of life to spite a single existential nihilist in a plum tree. It is harsh and grotesque and hypnotic. Very well done.

[Kyle]

The Kaiju Preservation Society- John Scalzi. While I'm tangentially familiar with Scalzi's work, I've never read anything by him until this. As described in the author's note at the end, this book was written as a light-hearted, fun "pop song" for people to enjoy after we all went through the experiences of the pandemic and the Trump debacle ending in the insurrection. It's not meant to be deep. It's not meant to win awards. It's meant to be fun, and it really, really is. The premise is that giant godzilla-like Kaiju are real, and there's an organization dedicated to preserving them and keeping them secret. Our main character gets involved, there's complications and, after predictable but exciting action, there's resolution. It was great and I really enjoyed this book for what the author intended: bubblegum, big action fun. One caveat to this: Wil Wheaton narrates it and, at least to me, was very offputting. I don't like when they hire actors and not voice actors to narrate books. There's an art to it, and it's an art that Wheaton isn't very good at. This book is light and the characters are largely sarcastic and nerdy, which is part of why it's endearing. But Wheaton, as an actor and not a voice actor, doesn't do voices-- so every character sounds exactly like every other character (except the French Canadian character, which is a weird choice to start doing accents). But that's... not fine, but whatever. What isn't acceptable at all is that Wheaton makes a choice to read every single line like it's dripping with sarcasm. Imagine if every line in a novel was read to you by Chandler Bing, but each line is a punchline to one of his jokes. ("Could you BE more annoying?!?") Half the lines he reads with a chuckle in his voice, so you know he's "winking at the camera" even though there's no camera and it's an audio book. It was the worst. However, while I believe in ranking some books higher when the narration is excellent (i.e., Murderbot books or the Broken Earth series), I don't think they should be given demerits because the narrator is horrible. So I'm still ranking this book highly and giving it a high recommendation for y'all.

[Mike]

A Dead Djinn in Cairo -- P. Djeli Clarke
This is the second tale I've read from Clarke in this world. A magical awakening centered in Cairo in the mid-eighteenth century put an end to British imperialism and saw the rise in power and influence of Muslim nations. Our heroes are cops who specialize in magic related crimes.

The world is brilliant and detailed. The characters are well developed, and Clarke's writing is great. But this is the first time with him that I felt like that wasn't quite enough. The supernatural mystery here involves various djinn, some ghouls, a couple angels, weird magics, but it's not much of a mystery. It's a really short story, and the protagonist is just sorta walked directly to a solution. And I can't stress enough that this concepts explored are fantastic. This is a world to roleplay in. But it's as if Clarke just wanted to tell us about a really cool idea he had and dressed it up with just the barest of plot.

I wanted more. A fuller novel with some sort of character arc would have been awesome.

[Mike]

The Shining Girls -- Lauren Beukes
A time traveling serial killer stalks young women across the decades of Chicago. The one girl who survived his attack is now hunting for him. Awesome premise. Great writing and cool time travel that is amazingly consistent and logical. But Jesus are there some badly written characters in here. I had to check the publication date, and even though the book came out in 2013, almost every character is written like some horrible stereotype straight out of central casting in the 1980's. Mom is a dumb hippie from the sixties, and despite seeing her over the course of several decades, spaced out oblivious hippie artist is the sum total of her character. Black characters are all from the projects, leading horrible lives in constant fear of gang violence, including a crack head informant and a pregnant 14 year old. The Korean girl has a stereotyped overbearing Korean mom telling her to marry a nice doctor or lawyer. Etc.

Then I saw that Apple TV has turned it into a series starring Elisabeth Moss. That makes a lot of sense. I imagine (hope) they've cleaned up the most egregious of this stuff.

I read Kyle's review of this book a little bit ago, and he's right on: this was a book written to be optioned as a movie script. It didn't occur to me in those terms, but it put words to exactly the things that made me uncomfortable. I was invested in the time travel and how it would resolve itself, but at no point did I care about any of the characters.

[Mike]

Night of the Mannequins -- Stephen Graham Jones
Horror novella. I saw the blurb for it, and thought the blurb gave too much away, but turns out it was also the first lines of the book:

"We thought we'd play a fun prank on her, and now most of us are dead. One last laugh for the summer as it winds down. One last prank just to scare a friend. Bringing a mannequin into a theater is just some harmless fun, right? Until it wakes up..."

Did not work for me. I love most of what Jones does, but even at three hours, this felt tedious. Five teens slowly getting picked off one at a time. It has a different perspective, sure, but I figured out the gimmick just a short way in, and then the book gives away the gimmick about a third of the way through, and then it's just repetitive paint-by-numbers until we get to the inevitable twist, which did surprise me when it came. But it wasn't enough for me. The kids had zero character development, and the adults were easily recognizable archetypes.

Like I say, I love Jones, and I think he's a brilliant writer, but the is the second thing of his I've read that I think as more 'mainstream', and they're just not for me.

[Phoebe]

I mean, most of us here probably can appreciate a Jones too?

For reasons that weren't really clear, because I had other things to read and do that were not this, I read a non-fiction book about Indian boarding schools in Canada (just as applicable to anywhere). If anyone wants to read such a thing let me know and I'll send you the link. The myriad ways humans find to rob one another of their humanity are incredible but it's important to know. Presumably if we want to encourage people in their full humanity, It's also good to learn what not to do.

[Mike]

Humble Pi -- Matt Parker
Matt Parker is a stand-up mathematician who has his own YouTube channel and also appears on other maths channels as well. I've followed him for years, and he entertains me a lot. Humble Pi is his book of math mistakes through history and the effects they've had. And... it's fine. Despite how much of a Matt Parker fan I am, this book wasn't for me. I knew almost all of the stories in here already, either from Matt's show or elsewhere. Additionally, the math was pretty simplified, I assume in an attempt to reach and educate a wider audience. But really just not for me.

[Mike]

A Closed and Common Orbit -- Becky Chambers
This is book #2 to follow A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. We leave the intrepid crew of the Wayfarer, and instead, this book follows a couple side characters from the last book. It's pretty awesome. There are two parallel tales here, one tells of Jane23, a child escaping from servitude and being raised by an AI. The second Sidra, a fledgling AI who is in an illegal human-looking body. The tales are separated in time, but are obviously bookends of one big tale.

As usual, Chambers is a brilliant writer with amazing world building and characters to fall in love with. She writes fantastical sci-fi tales of good people doing good things. I love it.

[Kyle]

I Must Betray You- Ruta Sepetys. A YA fictional telling of a 17 year old boy's life in communist Romania in 1989, just before the revolution. This isn't one of those historical adventures where there's some wunderkind that happens to be involved in all the important things during the time period- ala Forrest Gump. Instead, the real focus of the book is just how oppressive life was like during the 24 year reign of Nicolae Ceaușescu. It's just brutal. There's aspects that are horribly, physically brutal. But worse than that is the psychological torture that the entire populace was subjected to living under constant surveillance and threat of torture. It's a depressing read, but extremely compelling. High recommend.

[Mike]

Added to my list. Thank you.

[Mike]

Annihilation -- Jeff VanDerMeer
Kyle recommended this book. He hated it and then loved it. He mentions that ultimately all of the weirdness comes together as a metaphor for the narrator's failed marriage. That was my prior knowledge going in.

I missed where Kyle pointed out that there was a movie version, because just a couple chapters in, I'm thinking, "Holy shit! This was a movie! I've watched this movie! It had Natalie Portman in it! I enjoyed this movie, but HATED the end!" But I kept going, because Kyle gave me the metaphor. Maybe I hated the movie because I was just too dumb.

The book is hypnotic, but then it never came together for me. I was so disappointed by the end. But then, after I've finished the whole book, that's when I decide to go confirm that this was the Natalie Portman movie I was thinking of. It was. But then a link said it would tell me what it all means...

It was cancer.

Oh damn! I don't know if that's the right interpretation, but it definitely clicked all the pieces into place for me. Now suddenly I'm not hating the book. As my mind runs through the whole thing and shines the cancer spotlight on it, it all makes sense. I think I like the book now, and possibly even the movie once I retcon in this new understanding.

Normally, I am not a fan of spoilers. The less I know ahead of time, the better. This book is an exception. I WISH someone had told me it could be cancer before I started reading, because it turns out I really AM too dumb to enjoy it otherwise.

[Kyle]

Aww man? I didn't pick up on that at all! Now I'm wondering if I should read the other two books in the series.

[Mike]

I Must Betray You- Ruta Sepetys
Kyle's review above is spot on. It's YA dystopian fiction, except the dystopia is real. Oh sure, Hunger Games was horrible and Panem oppressed it's people, and once a year 24 teenagera had to fight to the death, but that's some fucking bush league dystopia compared to the very real psychological horror of 1989 Romania. The protagonists of this story are only a couple years younger than I was at the time. Holy shit.

And within this framework of very gritty realism, it still manages to be a great YA novel. Like, this would be a genuinely compelling story even if the setting were entirely fictional. I don't just recommend it; I feel like it should be required reading in high schools. It's a good book.

[Kyle]

I so happy you read it! I like the comparison to Hunger Games: But This Shit Really Happened. It's a really powerful book, but still accessible and easy to read. I agree- should be required reading.

[Mike]

I appreciate the recommendation.

This year, I've finally put in a little work to set up a real wishlist in Libby, and learn how to use filters to best effect, not to mention putting some rational thought into how I use their hold system. As a result, I'm pretty much never without a book (usually two). So I went back through the previous three years of recommends and added in all the stuff I had told myself I'd get to but never had yet. Your stuff keeps filtering to the top.

[Kyle]

The Dinner- Herman Koch, translated by Sam Garrett. Having just watched The Menu (a great movie, check it out on HBO), I was in a great place to read a book that pointedly skewers the elite. This book, originally written in Dutch and translated masterfully here into English, does just that. The entire novel takes place over a single dinner from the perspective of our protagonist. He and his wife go to dinner with his brother and his sister in law. They "need to talk." What transpires is a twisted story of dysfunction and alienation. As you start the book, it's clear that this author has all knives out to carve up the elites and classists. But as the story gets more complicated and involved, everything gets flipped and, while still a sharp criticism of elitism, comes at it from a completely unexpected angle. That's all I really want to say about the plot. The writing is simply great. The author's use of every word and image is meaningful. As a small example, in the beginning our protagonist explains how he always refers to his wife as "Claire" and never as "his wife" because that's belittling and reduces her to a possession. But then throughout the book the narrator uses both terms whenever Claire is involved in the story, and each decision on how to refer to her is so intentional. It's very beautifully written, and I credit the translation for maintaining that awesome writing into a second language. High recommend.

[Mike]

How High We Go in the Dark -- Sequoia Nagamatsu
The story of global pandemic and it's aftermath and the reshaping and rebuilding of the world. It's ambitious and huge and deals with some really fantastic speculative sci fi. But at the same time the whole thing is told as a series of fourteen intensely personal vignettes.

Much of the book is about loss and grieving, but then it's also the interconnectedness of family and community. What it means to be a person. Hope and love. It's a bit uneven in tone, but even the less emotional impactful segments advance the story on amazing ways. The whole thing is a very surrealist trip and totally worth reading.

[Phoebe]

Is it based in the reality of this particular pandemic we've had or is it a fictional pandemic?

[Mike]

It is a fictional pandemic, but the book was published in 2022, so it was (I'm sure) inspired and informed by COVID.

[Kyle]

The Lost Village- Camilla Sten, translated by Alexandra Fleming. This is kind of a by-the-numbers horror/thriller (they market everything as "thriller" now instead of "horror" unless it's crazy gory).The story follows our protagonist as she returns to her grandmother's secluded village in rural Sweden to make a documentary about how the entire village of 900 people (including her grandmother) disappeared overnight without a trace. She shows up with her Scooby-gang of film crew, who are only there to scout the location to raise more funding, when "bad things happen." Is it ghosts? Is it a curse? Is it all in their minds? Who knows?!? Well... actually, I know because I finished the book. Look, this book is fine. The writing is good, the translation is good, the plot is atmospherically creepy enough. The problem is that I just wasn't drawn into it, partly because of the predictable story arc and partly because I just found the characters uncompelling. Either way, it was fine. I didn't dislike it, but I didn't overly like it- but I'm not sorry I read it or felt like it was a waste of my time. It was just... fine. So I guess I'm not going to recommend it, unless something about the plot really appeals to you.

Side note- the narrator on this book was amazing. Special kudos to Angela Dawe for such an awesome performance.

[Mike]

The House in the Cerulean Sea -- T.J. Klune
Wonderful and joyous! It seems like every second or third book I read is positive and funny and uplifting feel-good material, and I'm loving it! This book played my emotions perfectly and had me weeping with joy at all the right moments. Very good!

It's billed as LGBT Humorous Contemporary Fantasy Fiction. It's not listed as YA fiction (the main protagonist is in his mid-forties), but it would be perfectly appropriate for teen readers. And it feels like YA.

Linus Baker is a slightly pudgy, slightly balding, 17-year employee in the oppressive bureaucracy of DICOMY, the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. He is a caseworker who investigates orphanages that house magical children.

Linus's new assignment is to evaluate an orphanage he's never even heard of before, one that cares for the most extreme "special cases". And all the characters are charming and interesting. There's a love story that is very sweet and pure.

And there's messages: The orphanages are an obvious parallel to "Indian schools" in the U.S. and Canada. There's systemic discrimination and oppression analogous to the treatment of black Americans. Plus not-at-all subtle representation of anti-queer bigotry.

I don't know where I'm going with all this, but it's a good book.

[Kyle]

I LOVED that book. An overweight, middle aged, gay protagonist? Never seen it before in a fantasy book. I also liked that the main character was gsy, but it wasn't a plot point. It didn't define him. It was just another aspect of his character. We need more of that.

[Mike]

Homo Deus -- Yuval Noah Harari
Nonfiction. Futurism looking at the evolution of humanity and human society in the next century--mankind's transhumanist future and the attempt to transform human beings into amortal gods... Homo Deus.

At least that's the opening premise, but there's more than that. It's a great hook, but Harari is writing this with a very serious purpose, and so how he writes is shaped 100% by that goal.

He outlines right away that he thinks the next big goals for humanity as a whole are going to involve conquering the aging process for real, connecting human brains to computers, and using technology to upgrade human bodies and minds. He's very meticulous... and probably right.

Then he ominously (and meticulously) demonstrates how knowledge of a possible future can change behaviors and allow people to actively prevent it.

After that, the bulk of the book is actually history as he shows how and why humanity got to it's current state and at the very end walks us through how these same tendencies are going to drive us into a data-ist future which could be good or bad. He works very hard not to make value judgments, but to my mind, the most likely outcome seems bad.

So ultimately he's introducing a vast amount of complicated ideas to what (he hopes) is a general public that hasn't had a lot of exposure to this stuff. Thus the reason he works slowly and meticulously. He provides numbers and research when he can make them dramatic and entertaining, but much of his evidence is through anecdotes and metaphors. So I don't agree with all of his logic or conclusions, but that's not important. He makes lots of good points as well and provides much food for thought. And ultimately, he's not claiming to predict the future, but rather is clearly warning the public of what he thinks is a likely potential future so that maybe someone can make some rational decisions along this path of progress.

It's worthwhile. I was very entertained, and his ideas and arguments will color my thoughts on the matter for a long time. Truth though: I had to listen to the whole thing (14 hours of it) at double normal speed to keep my attention from wandering. Otherwise the information just wasn't hitting me fast enough. I almost never do that, because I think it detracts from the author's voice, but it worked in this case.

[Kyle]

I read this several years ago and really liked it, but I liked his book before that one even more. You should look into that one. This guy is a great thinker.

[Mike]

I read this several years ago and really liked it, but I liked his book before that one even more. You should look into that one. This guy is a great thinker.

Cool! I did not know you had read it. Sapiens (his first book) is also on my list.


You saying "years ago" reminded me of another quirk of this book. It was written/published in something like 2015, so it's just barely pre-Trump. The notable absence of Trump for some of the political and cultural analysis is jarring, because it makes some of his conclusions much less firm just seven years down the road.

[Kyle]

Yeah- that's interesting. I will say that Sapiens was just a fascinating, near perfect read for me. This book at times took me into the "okay, this is cloud talk" which I understand is the point, but seemed just a little too aspirational for me. Particularly at the end.

[Kyle]

The Couple Next Door- Shari Lapena. I picked this book because I was looking for something different, and even though billed as a "thriller" (the most overused bs term, which means anything from horror to mystery to detective novel) it's really just one of those "family in peril" novels that populate summer best-seller lists. A couple is at a dinner party at their neighbor's house in the brownstone attached to their house. They leave their baby asleep in their own house and bring a monitor with them. When they get home at 1 am, the baby's gone- kidnapped. The rest of the book plays out in a predictably "twisty" fashion- however if you're paying attention, none of the twists will catch you by surprise. Adequately written, this a by-the-numbers mystery that finishes exactly as you expect it to. If this is your bag- then read it. For everyone else, not worth the time.

[Mike]

Sorrowland -- Rivers Solomon
Vern is a pregnant teen escaping from a religious black separatist cult. At the time of her escape, she is 13(?), Black, pregnant with twins, intersex, suffering from albinism, queer, and... I don't know... I'm sure I missed something. We follow Vern through the next several years as she survives and learns the truth about the cult that raised and tormented her.

It's good, but it's missing something. Yes, it speaks to systemic racism and oppression. It throws a spotlight on the horrible things the U.S. government is willing to do to marginalized groups. But it could have been more. Vern undergoes a transformation through the process of the novel, and It speaks to history and the voices of the voiceless. But then it makes a huge deal about sexuality and barely does anything with it. Vern has suffered sexual trauma in her life, and the childhood portion of that is alluded to without specifics, but then there are extremely graphic sex scenes later, one of which occurs when Vern is seventeen and with a much older woman. It just didn't quite line up.

I was just dissatisfied by the end. I even found myself wanting to hurry through the final chapters, because I was done by then.

On the other hand, Rivers Solomon has written other books that are critically acclaimed and look awesome. Sorrowland wasn't for me, but then she has things like An Unkindness of Ghosts, where the plantation structure has been imported to a generation ship that is traveling across the galaxy. That one is still ony list.

[Kyle]

Update- I started reading Revival by Stephen King and stopped about 25% of the way in. What I read was about a preacher whose wife and child die, so he forsakes God. In what I read, it was clearly a thinly veiled screed by Stephen King to talk about all the things he hates about organized religion and hypocrite religious people. I suspect that by the end of the book- after talking about how dumb and stupid religion is, he was going to end by finding some vague purpose in God, though that everyone needs to understand to be enlightened. My wife, who read the book, confirmed my suspicions were true and revealed that she hated the book. So I quit reading it. I'm now into a super fun superhero book for adults. Updates later.

[Mike]

Before the Coffee Gets Cold -- Toshikazu Kawaguchi
This premise kicks ass! There's a teeny tiny basement cafe hidden somewhere in Tokyo. If you sit in the right chair and they pour you a cup of coffee, you can travel in time. But there's all these rules, including: you can't leave the chair, nothing you do will change the present at all, and you return by finishing your coffee, which you have to do before the coffee gets cold. All the rules are supernaturally enforced, these aren't optional. So you can only time travel within the cafe, you only have a few minutes, and nothing you do can change anything... so what's the point? The book then explores loss and grief and connectedness through four intimately interconnected vignettes to answer that question.

Unfortunately, this awesome premise is completely ruined by what I assume are cultural and translational differences in bringing it over from Japanese. They are sweet stories, but it's as if someone who assumes you are stupid is trying to explain to you a group of really cool Twilight Zone episodes, but they do it in an amazingly slow fashion that takes two hours to describe every 30 minute episode while giving away the entire story in the first 10 minutes. It was painful.

And again, I know there are cultural differences having to do with obligation and propriety and expectations, but my god some of this was so overwrought. In many places, one character will assume that another must just hate her and she builds up this long internal monologue about all the reasons why they must resent her, only to later find out that the other person actually feels exactly the opposite. And rarely did I feel like these overly dramatic feelings were justified or earned by the story.

I don't need my hand held through a story to such an extreme extent.

[Mike]

Sea of Tranquility -- Emily St. John Mandel
Emily St. John Mandel is a fantastic writer. Sea of Tranquility is a lovely little time travel story. Spread over five or six centuries, we follow time agent Roberts as he investigates a time anomaly. It's good. I liked it.

[Kyle]

We Could Be Heroes- Mike Chen. Aw man, I know there's probably not a huge market for it, but you know what genre we need more books in? Superhero stories for adults! I freaking love these books, and I freaking loved this book in particular. Let me be clear-- this novel is not creating anything groundbreaking or changing the landscape of literature. But it's exactly what it wants to be: a fun superhero story that's not dumbed down to YA level. For real, I just really enjoyed this small story about a superhero and supervillain that have to team up and blur the lines between who's good and who's bad. And it's devoid of unnecessary romance or gross unnecessary sexualization. It's just a well-written good story with great characters and narrative. I really enjoyed this book- you don't need to know the details. Read it if you like supers stories.

[Mike]

We Could Be Heroes- Mike Chen. Aw man, I know there's probably not a huge market for it, but you know what genre we need more books in? Superhero stories for adults! I freaking love these books, and I freaking loved this book in particular. Let me be clear-- this novel is not creating anything groundbreaking or changing the landscape of literature. But it's exactly what it wants to be: a fun superhero story that's not dumbed down to YA level. For real, I just really enjoyed this small story about a superhero and supervillain that have to team up and blur the lines between who's good and who's bad. And it's devoid of unnecessary romance or gross unnecessary sexualization. It's just a well-written good story with great characters and narrative. I really enjoyed this book- you don't need to know the details. Read it if you like supers stories.

Added to the list. Cool.

[Kyle]

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau- Silvia Moreno-Garcia. I just have to own up to it. I'm a sucker for Gothic Romance novels- I'm a sucker for period piece romance classics (War & Peace; anything by Jane Austen; etc.). So I'm a sucker for Moreno-Garcia's novels. Gothic romance with horror? Yes, please! I loved her first novel, Mexican Gothic, and I loved this. I don't know if I ever read the Jules Verne original (was it even Verne? I'm too lazy to google), but this book is just so smart, well-written and compelling. Dr. Moreau isn't a main character, it's his titular daughter and the alcholic majordomo that oversees the day-to-day of the estate. Reset to the Yucatan in the mid 1800s, this halls all the Dr. Moreau elements you need: isolation; crazy doctor; hybrid human/animals. But it's told through the two main character's eyes. The narrative starts slow, but that's so that you can get into the heads of the main characters and, when they get the feels (and they certainly do) you can relate to it. And by the end, shit gets totally bananas and out of hand. So great! But look- I'm a sucker for the unrequited love/angsty tails. If a Gothic Romance isn't something you've really dipped into, then it probably isn't the book for you. But I LOVED it!

[Mike]

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle -- Stuart Turton
This came highly recommended and the blurb that caught my attention told me it was a Victorian murder mystery with a time loop, so that the protagonist repeats the day 8 times trying to find the killer. I'm sold already.

But it's way better than that. First off, it is a fantastically told mystery. It gives enough information to make me think I can solve it, and sometimes I actually DO figure something out, but then there's layers. And there's layers. And the ultimate mystery brings together all the loose ends that I knew were hanging but just couldn't quite fit together. On top of that, these 8 interwoven days of time travel are intricately plotted and they unfold in a way that holds together and makes a sensible tale.

But all that is technical stuff. The author also gives us believable characters, and the ability to live realistically inside these character's heads impresses the shit out of me. There's some stuff about where this story lives that I wasn't sure quite worked for me as the story wrapped up, but it all came together as I've given the book time to mellow.

I thoroughly enjoyed this experience.

[Mike]

We Could Be Heroes -- Mike Chen
Kyle just reviewed this above. He's right: it's a solid pulpy super-hero action novel that is made for grown ups and deals with realistic grown-up characters. Like Kyle, I was surprised and thrilled that that the author didn't turn this into a love story. If anything, it's about the nature and strength of their friendship.

Sidenote: I love Emily Woo Zeller as a reader. She's very good. This is at least the fourth book I e heard her read. She seems to be the preferred reader for books by authors of Chinese descent who have female protagonists. I imagine a big part of it is that it is less controversial to have a woman with Asian ancestry doing various Asian accents. I would love to hear behind the scenes industry conversations about stuff like this to hear what considerations for into a choice like this.

Sidenote 2: Didn't realize til I was adding this to the list that the author also wrote Here and Now and Then, which I read earlier this year. It makes me appreciate the other book even more as I've come to understand and appreciate his style.

Anyway... do you like superheroes? Then read this.

[Kyle]

The Other People- CJ Tudor. I know I read and liked The Chalk Man, another CJ Tudor book, but I don't want to reread that review for fear it will influence what I thought about this book. But what I remember was that the book was very bleak and a constant puzzle you were trying to figure out. And that's exactly what this book is. Well written and plotted, the book keeps you engaged the whole time, but like an Agatha Christie novel, you start to kind of see the "formula" to it all and it seems more like a game you're playing as you read it instead of a book. The premise is there's an organization of people who have lost loved ones to violent trauma. This group, the titular "Other People," have banded together to help other victims of trauma get justice through any means necessary. The plot revolves around a man whose wife and daughter are violently murdered in a home invasion, but he's convinced his daughter is still alive and is desperately searching for her years later. Then the twists and turns take their turns and twists. It's a fun read and Tudor is very good at this, but much like The Chalk Man, it's SO bleak. There's not a spot of sunshine on the face of any character in this book. Still, I enjoyed it.

Gratitude- Oliver Sacks. This is a series of four essays written by Oliver Sacks. The first on his 80th birthday, reflecting on his life, and the other three over the next couple of years after he was diagnosed with an incurable progressive cancer, which ultimately killed him shortly thereafter. The essays are interesting in that Sacks is so very optimistic about the life he lived and recognizing the blessings and luck he's had in getting to do the things he did. Refreshingly, there's not a dash of melancholy or remorse-- it's all very positive and speaks to how we need to all realize that life truly is a joy and we're on this earth to experience that joy. Ultimately, however, I didn't really connect much with the essays because I share the exact same viewpoint on life- which I guess sounds weird because you think that means I'd connect with it more. But I think for a lot of people these essays were more powerful because they made them question their own outlooks and served as a tiny revelation that might shift their perspective. But as I read it, I kept thinking, "Yeah. Exactly. Okay. You preach, I choir." So while it was a positive, short read, that's all it really was for me. But I do recommend it, especially considering you can read all four essays in under 30 minutes.

[Mike]

Neverwhere -- Neil Gaiman
Apparently, this was Neil Gaiman's first actual novel, adapted from a TV series he wrote. Has also been a radio play. It's the story of Richard Mayhew, a Londoner who chooses to help a person in need and as a result, finds himself in London Below, a dark and gritty fairie-like world that mirrors(?)/parallels(?)/is co-existent with London Above. Poor, hapless Richard finds himself stuck in this underworld and is now forgotten by and nearly invisible to the "real world" and so tags along with the young woman he helped and her increasingly strange traveling companions. He helps her quest with the hope of finally being able to return home.

It's an adventure. A quest. It is in a very Gaiman-y tongue-in-cheek style that manages to be sardonic and humorous while also being creepy and tense. It's the kind of thing that Hollywood would really really want to give to Tim Burton, and he would ruin it.

It's very well done. The world is huge and developed. The characters are endlessly fascinating. I enjoyed the ride. If you like Gaiman, I can't imagine you wouldn't like this.

There are no set rules to magic in London Below, which normally annoys me, because then magic is just a convenient excuse to bail out the plot when needed. But Gaiman alleviates this by showing us the preparations for the tricks, letting us know the work characters have to go through to get that last minute save when they need it.

The only thing that annoyed me was the handling of recurring bit characters. I've seen guidelines for making bit characters memorable so that when you bring them back after a huge gap, you can quickly remind the audience of who they are. Gaiman though, repeatedly would mention or reintroduce a character after a looooong hiatus, and the big reveal would be just a name. Gaiman read the book himself, and you can see the build-up and tension... movement in the dark, a shadowy hand, etc etc. And then we get the big reveal and: "It was Serpentine." Now I'm stuck. Which one was Serpentine? Because she wasn't snake-like. And we've seen dozens and dozens of quirky side characters. I couldn't figure it out, so I was distracted, and the impact of the moment totally missed me, and I had to wait for a few more paragraphs of context before the pieces fell into place. Another time, the punchline of a point someone made was: "You remember Neil," and there was no context. I had to pause for a couple minutes to finally come up with who that must have been.

And I know I'm dwelling on it, but it was a huge distraction for me the four or five times it happened to me in what was otherwise a thoroughly enjoyable adventure. I chalk it up to this being the first novel from a very talented writer who was previously used to writing for visual media.

Anyway, you should still read it.

[Kyle]

Oona Out of Order- Margarita Montimore. I don't want to read Mike's review again until I've written mine, but I vaguely recalled that he liked this book, but had some small issues with it. Which, if true, matches my experience. The conceit of the book is that Oona, the protagonist, was born on New Years Day. And at the stroke of midnight after her 18th year of existence, she blacks out and wakes up in the future in the future version of her body when she's like 50 or something. And she lives that year of her life before- boom- it happens again and she then wakes up to live a different year of her life. So she's living a full life, but not in order (thus the clever title). I'm absolutely in love with the premise, I love the characters, I love the overall theme (life is full of joy and grief, but it's our experiences of those that make life fulfilling), but... I didn't love the execution. Conveniently, all the big events in Oona's life occur during the calendar year-- usually right at the beginning or right at the end. So the story is told in this weird way where we're in a new year, and 90% of the story is told about the first month, then we get an "executive summary" of the rest of the year before we leap to the next one. The timeline is awesome and a perfect little puzzle box- very well thought out and plotted. But there were several times I'm reading a chapter and all this shit is going on and then the book says, "And then the last week of January hit" and I'm like, "Wait. We're not in October yet? What the hell?" All of that said, I'm not sure there's a better way to have told the story, unless the author wanted a 1700 page opus that no one would read. And also, for all this criticism, I really enjoyed the book and even recommended it to my wife's book club. So take it all with a grain of salt. Also- thanks to Mike for recommending it to me.