Books we read in 2023

[Mike]

The Lesson -- Cadwell Turnbull
A spaceship full of alien researchers parks itself off the US Virgin Islands. They announce to the world that they will provide beneficial tech to humans (new energy sources, cures for diseases, etc). In exchange they will be allowed to stay on earth to conduct their research. The aliens are far enough advanced that humans cannot compete with them or harm them. However, if a human is aggressive towards an alien in any way, the alien will literally tear them in half. That's the lesson. It's a story about the power imbalance between colonizers and the colonized. Also about empathy and about societal PTSD.

It's good, and I found the ideas fascinating, but it left me wanting in the end. The research McGuffin felt incomplete and I just wish there'd been a little more to everything. It's not overly long, so it's worth reading, but I wanted more.

[Kyle]

That was my exact opinion.

[Mike]

Wow. I'd forgotten I took that recommendation from you. Thank you!

[Kyle]

Before the Fall- Noah Hawley. I've started exercising again, so I've decided to take a break from non-fiction and "heavy" material because I find it much easier to exercise with lighter fare. So I was recommended this "twisty thriller" by my library app. The premise is that a private jet crashes with a handful of rich influential people on it. The only survivors are an eccentric painter that is NOT rich and was invited on the plane by happenstance, and a four year old boy who inherits his parents' $100 million estate. Then the book starts oscillating back and forth with the story of the painter and kid in the aftermath and the government investigation that follows; and the back stories of all the people that died on the plane. This book is extremely well written and well plotted. It kept me guessing until the very end- setting up very elaborate motivations and scenarios where you think you know why the plane crashed, but then change your mind later. But here's the thing: the end comes out of nowhere. You can't really have a "twisty thriller" when the whole book has been a red herring and then the true story is something you never could have guessed without reading the last 50 pages. That being said, this book is also about toxic masculinity and told from the viewpoint of several different, but all toxic, men. I found that interesting, but ultimately felt like I was cheated by the end.

[Mike]

Paper Towns -- John Green
I love John Green. I just reviewed Turtles All the Way Down a couple books ago, and I loved that. This was a good book, but it was not written for me.

Maybe you've read it, or maybe you've seen the movie (I hadn't). Q and Margo are next door neighbors and high school seniors. He's a nerd and she is the most popular girl in school. One night, she climbs in his bedroom window and leads him on the wildest, craziest night of his life. She is his manic pixie dream girl. Then she disappears the next day, and he spends a whole book following clues that he is sure have been left for him, trying to find out what happened to her.

The book is billed as a deconstruction of the manic pixie dream girl trope, and I guess I see that, but more than that, it's about how well you can actually know other people and how much what we see in others is a reflection of ourselves.

The story follows a bunch of high school hijinks as well as some romance and a mystery and a classic road trip. Mixed in with all of this is a whole lot of philosophizing. and I found some of the philosophizing a bit too tedious and repetitive. The author leads us very carefully through revelations and reasoning and ultimately guides the reader to draw a conclusion and the tells you explicitly in a couple different ways what conclusion you just drew. It was a bit much for me, but the whole time, I could see me reading this in high school and thinking it was the deepest thing I'd ever read, and also me feeling really clever for figuring out all the major points just before he had to explain them to me. High school me would have loved this.

So I'm very glad I read it. I think it has potential to be a classroom staple in the future. But middle aged men are not the target audience.

[Kyle]

The Archive of the Forgotten- A. J. Hackwith. I'm going to be sparse with details about this book because I know Mike wanted to read it, but I don't know if he did yet. This is the second book in the Hell's Library series (the first being the Library of the Unwritten)... AND I LOVED IT! I loved the first book and loved this one... maybe?... a little bit more. Hackwith creates such a lived-in, fleshed-out world which involves a library in Hell which contains all the unwritten books from history. Our hero is a stubborn, brutally forthright librarian (now Archivist of the Archive of the Forgotten after the last book). She's got a Scooby-Gang surrounding her which includes a fallen angel, an exiled muse and Hero- who is an escaped character from a book in which he was the villain. This world just drips with ambience and unspoken elements. I don't want to build it up too much, but remember when you first read the Hobbit and you were like, "Holy shit! This is a whole new world I never knew existed and it's awesome!" That's how I feel about Hackwith's world(s). Again, I don't want to give up too many details, but what's great about this book is the two main characters from the last book (the librarian and the muse) are more supporting characters in this book. This story is really about the road trip and adventures of the fallen angel and Hero and it's freaking great. Love it, love it, love it. Read the first book and then read this one. So great.

[Mike]

I have not read it yet, but now I'm excited for it! Loved the first one. I have another book in line already, but I should get to this by next weekend. Thank you!

[Mike]

The Glass Hotel -- Emily St. John Mandel
Emily St. John Mandel delivers engaging prose with deep, well developed characters. The Glass Hotel is a non-linear story that ultimately feels like it is about how people deal with tragedy. The first book of hers that I read, Station Eleven, is mostly about the survivors of a catastrophic pandemic and how that event shaped them. This one is centered around a multi-billion dollar, Bernie Madhoff style ponzi scheme. Like I mentioned, it is non-linear, and even in the linear bits, she gives away the future enough that not much is ever a surprise. But life grinds on throughout.

I didn't like this one as much as Station Eleven, but it was still hypnotic and haunting. This will stick with me for a bit.

[Kyle]

Home Before Dark- Riley Sager. I don't know why I keep coming back to Riley Sager books. That's not true- I do. There's not that many people writing horror novels anymore and Sager's writing is proficient enough and easily digested. Here's the problem: you figure them out right away. Sager has this thing where he (this is actually the pen name for a middle aged dude, but the publisher tried to pretend he was a 20 something woman for his first book- which the internet sussed out right away) writes these books where something supernatural and horrible is going on. But then in the end-- every single time-- you find out it was just people all along. There's nothing supernatural. So this is a problem for me because, particularly when you know this (and honestly, even if you don't), you figure out the "twisty" ending really early in the book. Like in the first 20 percent early. This book is about a haunted house and a young girl who revisits the haunted house 25 years after her family had to flee from it. Blah blah blah whatever. If you've read this far... I won't give away the end or anything... but shocker: it was just people there's no ghosts. Fuck it. I don't care if I spoil it. I realized super early in the book that there were people living in the walls the whole time fucking with them. And then in the end-- get this-- it wasn't even that clever. It was people sneaking into the walls and fucking with them. And as a side note- the title "Home Before Dark" has zero to do with the book. It's just one of those "New York Times Bestseller" titles that was pasted on to the front cover. I get it and I've leveled this criticism before- he writes these books to be made into movies. I don't know if it's worked yet, but it's just dumb. Which is a shame because the conceit of the book (there's a book within the book) is a great idea that's then just shit out into novel form. Hard pass.

[Mike]

The Cabin at the End of the World -- Paul Tremblay
Award winning horror novel, made a bunch of Best Of lists, etc. One page in I realized, "Oh shit, this is the novel that Knock at the Cabin is based on (which I haven't seen). This'll be awesome!" I am one chapter in, and we roll up a movie for random movie night, and we get Knock at the Cabin. Sweet!

The movie is fantastic! Kyle reviewed it somewhere and said it's great, and he's right. Now I can't finish the book. The book is great, but at 31%, I realize I'm dragging my feet and wasting good book-listening time, because so far, it is EXACTLY like the movie. There's no surprises. No interesting comparisons to make. But worst is the reader. She's not bad, but she's not for me. Her male voices all sound alike and to me are kinda cartoony. So in comparison to Dave Bautista and Rupert Grint and Jonathan Groff delivering the same lines, it just didn't work for me. So I gave up on it.

So... good book, but I shouldn't have watched the movie first. Now I've lost days on my 100 book challenge.

[Kyle]

The Silent Patient- Alex Michaelides. Oh my god- what a great mystery novel! Our main character is a therapist at an institution where there is a patient notorious for shooting her husband in the face five times and then slashing her wrists. She's not said a word since the crime (thus, the title). Our therapist then tries, through his treatments with her, to figure out what really happened on that night and determine if she really murdered her husband. It's great!. The less said the better. There were many twists, turns and surprises, but the end felt deserved and I didn't feel cheated. Well written with a great pace. I really had a lot of fun with this book. High recommend.

[Kyle]

The Cabin at the End of the World -- Paul Tremblay
Award winning horror novel, made a bunch of Best Of lists, etc. One page in I realized, "Oh shit, this is the novel that Knock at the Cabin is based on (which I haven't seen). This'll be awesome!" I am one chapter in, and we roll up a movie for random movie night, and we get Knock at the Cabin. Sweet!

The movie is fantastic! Kyle reviewed it somewhere and said it's great, and he's right. Now I can't finish the book. The book is great, but at 31%, I realize I'm dragging my feet and wasting good book-listening time, because so far, it is EXACTLY like the movie. There's no surprises. No interesting comparisons to make. But worst is the reader. She's not bad, but she's not for me. Her male voices all sound alike and to me are kinda cartoony. So in comparison to Dave Bautista and Rupert Grint and Jonathan Groff delivering the same lines, it just didn't work for me. So I gave up on it.

So... good book, but I shouldn't have watched the movie first. Now I've lost days on my 100 book challenge.

Jack and I recently rewatched Dune 2049 and we agreed on this: Small Glasses Bautista is the best Bautista.

So there's one BIG difference in the book. SPOILERS: In the struggle for the gun, the daughter dies. And it broke my heart. And it broke the dads' hearts. And it was SO powerful. The book was also vague about whether they were crazy or legit, but I find that a minor difference actually.

[Mike]

I read your spoiler. That's way better. Watching the movie, I was certain it would go that way, although I didn't see that specific mechanism for it. Way better.

Lesson learned: if I want to read the book, I read it first. Even without your spoiler, I knew I was never going back to this.

[Phoebe]

I have finally read a leisure book instead of all the grim and unleisurely reading I usually find myself doing. It was wonderful! The book is called Philosophy made simple. There is hardly any technical philosophy in the book at all - It's a fictional story about a man trying to change his life. His wife has died and each of his children is going through various changes, and he too now is going to embark upon change. How will it go for him? The book handles this in a remarkable and sensitive and insightful fashion. Plus there is an elephant. I loved it!

Philosophy comes into it only insofar as the man is reading a philosophy book in order to get some perspective on his life. At various points he reflects on what these philosophers are saying in the book. Although the author of the book appears to be a fiction writer and possibly literature teacher, and not a philosopher, It turns out his summaries of what philosophers say are extraordinarily accurate and well done. I would put them up against most any other philosophy commentary and declare them victorious. So that was something. It's a quick read and very enjoyable.

The author's name is Robert Hellenga. I was so enamored of the book that I planned on looking him up and sending him a note, as Kyle often recommends and I think is a great thing. I was going to tell him how much I enjoyed the book and specific passages I had marked out, and then I found out he died a couple years ago. Maybe it's because the book itself deals with weighty issues like this, but I find myself very distressed to discover that he is dead. That was the only bad thing about reading the book.

[Mike]

To be Taught, If Fortunate -- Becky Chambers
Wow. Becky Chambers creates incredible worlds. Her stories are always about people, but the settings she creates to put them in are always stunning. I've been reading her Angry Planet series and her Monk/Robot series, but now here is a stand alone novella that I was sure would feel incomplete and leave me wanting the next chapter, but not so. It is wonderfully self contained, and I really enjoyed it.

Chambers tells sci-fi stories of well-adjusted people who love and support each other to work through challenges, be they internal or external. In this one it is the year 21xx, and a crew of four scientists is on one of the first extrasolar missions 14 light years from earth to explore a star system with four planets in the habitable zone, all with some signs of harboring life. In the midst of both wild success and unavoidable disappointments, they face challenges from unusual sources that make them question their purpose.

It's really good. I promise.

[Kyle]

The Long Mars- Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett. I'm mixed on this book. This is the third in the Long Earth series, and I won't go into all the details of what the premise of the series is- just read the reviews Mike and I posted for the original Long Earth book to get an idea of what it's all about. This one continues the sagas of our large cast of characters, but largely is about two separate exploration voyages- one sanctioned by the military to explore out to 250 million different parallel Earths and another to explore out several million parallel versions of Mars. And while the book does push forward the narrative of all our characters somewhat, the main focus is on all the different variants and possibilities explored in different parallel universe planets and the crazy types of life, atmospheres and other phenomenon that could exist under different conditions on the planets. Looking back, on a surface level, it all seems masturbatory. There's a lot of characters talking to each other and explaining how "Under these foreign environments, life must have evolved to adapt in this way." But on the other hand, all of those variants are pretty cool and fascinating in their own right, and I enjoyed it quite a bunch. The drawback to all this fun "what-if" stuff is that there's not much development of our characters. They're still them (with one exception that's touched on, but I think that's the subject of the next book). All the same, I'm not going to shit on it. I had a lot of fun with this book and, if you like the series up to this point, you'll like this book too.

[Mike]

InterWorld -- Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves
Disappointing. 2007 YA sci-fi fantasy. Feels like it's chasing the Harry Potter and Hunger Games trends. Just very 2 dimensional, even for a YA book. This one is apparently the first of a trilogy, and I did not care for it, so I'm going to spoil the first half of this novel in my review below.

Premise: there are a multitude of alternate earths. Some lean towards magic, some towards technology, with a whole spectrum of places in between. Our hero, ordinary American high school kid Joey accidentally finds himself "walking" between worlds. This causes him much confusion and anxiety and draws the attention of various powerful forces. Turns out there are two major evil empires fighting to control as many worlds as possible--one of magic and one of technology. Joey, though, finally finds himself in the hands of the plucky rebels in the middle protecting the multiverse by maintaining the balance and other cliches. This band of heroes is a group of walkers--people born with the innate ability to traverse the planes. And all of them are alternate versions of Joey--I mean, there's cyborg Joe, and wolfgirl Joe, and superstrong high gravity Joe, magic Joe, centaur Joe, Old Man Joe, etc... but they're all essentially manifestations of the same person... although they all have unique names that all start with J. And each one is defined by a 1-dimensional characteristic that differentiates them from all the others. Also, due to the weirdness of time, there's walkers as young as 11 and as old as maybe 50 or 60, but the overwhelming majority are late teens or twenties.

There's all sorts of technical issues I have with story: if all the walkers are this one guy and ALL planar travel by the two evil empires is powered by the souls of walkers, how do the empires control "millions of worlds" each? Is Joey a repeating avatar over millennia or something? How is it that all walkers are unique and even have different names? We saw a split world where Joey had died at 12. Wouldn't this imply the possibility of dozens or hundreds or thousands of each manifestation of "Joe"? Not to mention the poor story choice of creating this giant compound where most of the residents are hormonal teenagers but also are all essentially the same person. The book avoids any of the squicky implications of such a place by simply making no mention of romance. Plus, universally ugly equates to evil. Like, evil is quite obviously evil--cartoonishly so at times. You can tell someone is evil by looking at them.

But hey--it's a YA book. I can ignore almost all of the above if they give me a good story, but it just wasn't enough. Our hero just didn't have enough agency. He spends a lot of time being dragged along by events, and the few times he takes action, it is usually just panic and desperation without any plan, and he winds up failing forward. Or he has an amazing revelation just in the nick time that somehow manages to save him. Only a couple times in this whole book does he take clear decisive action.

[Mike]

Since Gaiman and Pratchett are friends, I really feel like InterWorld inspired The Long Earth.

[Kyle]

Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore- Matthew J. Sullivan. Well written. A twisty mystery. Good characters. But I think I need to stop reading mysteries for awhile. Too often I figure them out in the first third and then I'm just... kind of bored... waiting for the end. That's what happened here. The plot revolves around our heroine who works in a bookstore. On her shift one of her favorite customers hangs himself in the bookstore and, in his will, leaves all his stuff to her. Then she becomes ensnared in a mystery that sheds light on how/why he died... and more! It was an interesting twist on the mystery genre, but too many times the characters were struggling to figure something out, or to determine the significance of something obvious. And I'm sitting there just waiting, thinking, "Dummies. Stop being so dumb and make the connection." And then they would and then the plot would progress. It was fine. But not for me.

[Mike]

The Left Hand of Darkness -- Ursula K. Le Guin
Kyle already gave a good summary of the tale: emissary from Earth visiting the planet Winter to convince them to join the alliance of worlds called the Ekumen. People on Winter are ambisexual such that they are genderless most of the time and can take on either gender for purposes of actual sex.

It's fascinating. It was written in 1969, and I read it in high school, but remember almost nothing of it, except that I found it interesting and engaging. The book won big awards and was absolutely revolutionary in its examination of traditional gender roles and how their presence or absence might affect a society. Winter has politics and murder, for example, but no war as such. The text explicitly points out the possibilities of a world with no rape, no sexual hangups, no sexual competition. It's all well done and well thought out. But I found it a little antiquated. By necessity the book is a product of it's time, so our "progressive" male protagonist from Earth embodies the mainstream ideas of sexuality and gender roles of 1969. That means our progressive hero is notably misogynistic and homophobic by today's standards. I get why, and it doesn't take away from the message, but it does detract from the impact it has on me as a person five and a half decades later.

What was more engaging and relevant to me was the examination of patriotism, and it's view of patriotism (nationalism) as an evil and destructive worldview that is sadly a necessary step in the development of a society towards a more socialist/globalist worldview. I love the definition of patriotism as hate. Because doesn't love of country above all others involve characterizing everything that is not your country as lesser and ultimately hated? Our hero notes that patriotic elements of Winter and outlines how sharing with the Ekumen would eventually lead to the elimination of the nation-state and thus the elimination of nationalism.

I should also note that while I keep referring to the Earth man as the "hero", he wasn't really. Ultimately, it was Estraven a politician from one of the larger nations on Winter who was the best character here.

I recognize the book's greatness, and I found it intellectually interesting, but not a particularly compelling read for me.

[Mike]

Remote Control -- Nnedi Okorafor
Nnedi Okorafor is probably my favorite afro-futurist author out there. I love everything she does. In Remote Control, she tells the story of Sankofa, a Ghanaian teen known as the Daughter of Death, who walks through near-future Ghana and seems to bring death wherever she goes.

It's a beautiful story. The world is rich, the characters amazingly alive. As always, there is a blend of African tradition with future technology that is rolled up in spirituality and superstition, the kindnesses and corruptions of the world. My only complaint is that it is too short. This is an origin story, the birth of a goddess(?), the rise of something wondrous and terrifying in the world, and I want to see where it goes.

Great book.

[Kyle]

Loved it. Good read. Told like a modern fable. Beautiful.

[Kyle]

The Long Utopia- Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett. I've said this before, but while there are diminishing returns on reading the Long Earth series all in a row, the concept is so good and fascinating that I kind of don't care. These are just fun books with characters that are developed just enough. Well, one exception- the AI character is super deep and well-developed and it sort of makes up for the minimal effort put in to the other characters. I won't get into the details, but this book is a bridge between the first three and the last one and it does that masterfully. Some might find it unsatisfying, but my reaction was quite the opposite. I thoroughly enjoy seeing the breadcrumbs laid out in the first three books all come together for what is going to be the giant climatic ending in the last book. Great read. Love this series.

[Mike]

Rhythm of Time -- Questlove and S.A. Cosby
Rahim is a 13-year-old nerdy kid from North Philly. Kasia is his genius inventer best friend. Kasia gives Rahim a phone that she built herself, and accidentally sends Rahim back to 1997.

Questlove has written an updated (and in so many ways, improved) version of Back to the Future aimed at nerdy black middle-schoolers. And he (and co-author S.A. Cosby) have done a good job of it. It was smart and fun and delivered some solid messages amidst the smart and the fun. I would love to have a kid at the right age for this one so that I could recommend it to them and share the experience.

[Kyle]

The Long Cosmos- Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett. This is the fifth and final book in the Long Earth series. I've talked about it a shit ton because I've read all five this year- so just scroll up if you want to know what it's about. Love sci-fi? You'll love this. I got a little sentimental reading this final installment. I've spent so much time this year with these characters and this world, and this book is basically the Long Goodbye (pun intended) for the series. It seemingly reaches back to elements in all the other books and ties all of them together in a satisfying, meaningful way. I feel like the authors really are not just writing this as a love letter to the world, but also to the readers. They really had fun writing all the wonderful, crazy thought-experiment worlds that inhabit the series, and it's clear they're delighted to share it with us. I just loved it. High recommend.

[Mike]

Record of a Spaceborn Few -- Becky Chambers
It's Becky Chambers. I loved it! This is a sci-fi story about ordinary people living their ordinary lives... IN SPACE! No action/adventure. Just people. And it's so wonderful!

Humans broke the Earth. Some spread out to domed cities in the rest of the solar system, some built domes on Earth. Some left earth in giant ark ships... these formed the Exodus Fleet. Eventually aliens found humanity and began the long process of letting the join the galactic union. Having now maps and FTL travel and immigration procedures to 1000s of inhabited planets, humans are the bastard stepchildren of the galaxy, and the Fleet is outdated. It gets parked around a donated star, and 150ish years later a fair number of humans still live there. This is the story of how their spaceborn society has changed and how it is still changing.

Becky Chambers is a master at world building, and these characters are incredibly real and vibrant. This is technically book 3, following The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet and A Closed and Common Orbit, and I recommend reading all three, but this one stands alone really well if you wanted. It is a snapshot of a living, breathing society as well as an examination of what gives life meaning. Love it!

[Mike]

Gregor the Overlander -- Suzanne Collins
Suzanne Collins, author of The Hunger Games, offers up a pretty straightforward YA portal fantasy/epic quest, but she does it really really well. Written five years before Hunger Games, I knew it was YA, but the heroes are 11 and 13, so I wasn't expecting it to be aimed at middle schoolers, but there it is.

Gregor is a kid in NYC facing a long miserable summer, and then he and his baby sister fall into the Underland, a world far below the surface with kingdoms of rats and spiders and bats... and humans, among others. Gregor may or may not be the prophesied one who will lead a motley crew on an epic quest to save all of Underland and help Gregor and his sister get home. It seems kinda paint-by-numbers, and it is, but Collins creates a remarkably engaging world with well developed characters and a refreshing amount of emotional complexity and depth for being essentially an epic quest tale.

I started this being very cynical, but it quickly won me over, and I was very invested in the characters by the end. I feel like the spiders got short shrift here, but the bats and rats (and even the cockroaches) has fantastic moments. I'm ready to go create a D&D version of my favorite rat right now.

Another thing I was worried about is that as much as I liked Hunger Games, Katniss has very little agency most of the time. She's in a death battle, and yet she wins by essentially being hesitant and not acting on anything while other people do all the killing for her. But I didn't feel the same issues with Gregor. Sure he needed a lot of saving, but I also felt like he was figuring out who he was and repeatedly taking decisive action that had real consequences that were germane to the plot. Nice.

The book is complete and self-contained, but it does end with a hint of a second prophesy, and that leads into four more books in the series. I might read them. I might not

[Mike]

Noor -- Nnedi Okorafor
I will read anything this woman writes. Noor feels very familiar to me. Okorafor has taken me on this journey before: a young African woman with powers and abilities beyond our understanding is on a hero's journey that highlights the blending and conflicts between traditional pastoral African ways and modern/futurist culture, between spiritualism and science. But Noor is also a deeply anti-capitalist work in a wealthy future Nigeria where the oligarchical surveillance state serves only one corporate master.

Our protagonist is AO, a young disabled woman who due to unfortunate birth defects as well as a freak autocar accident in her teens is now as much cybernetic limbs, artificial organs, and neural enhancements as she is flesh and blood. When a gang of young men attack her in the market for being an abomination and a witch, she kills them in self-defense, after which she has to go on the run searching for any safe place, any allies, in a world where everything and everyone is watched and tracked at all times.

The plot itself is pretty simplistic and one you've seen before, but the characters and vision of future Africa makes it all fresh and worth the ride.

[Kyle]

A Memory Called Empire- Arkady Martine. I got this book from my library app because it won a Hugo award and it looked like a meaty space-opera that was the first in a series. Wowza. First- it's not a space opera, but it is sci-fi. Second- this book freaking blew me away. The story involves the new ambassador from a space station serving on the galactic empire home city. The conceit of the book is that the space-stationers have secret technology that allows them to implant the memories of one person into another. They use these "lines" of memory repeatedly to preserve important knowledge from one generation to the next. When the ambassador gets to her new assignment, it immediately dips into heavy political shifting alliances and palace intrigue. And that's what the whole book is about. It's all about politics, diplomacy and duplicity. And it's so good. I don't want to give any more of the plot away- what I've said is in the first chapters. The writing is outstanding. The universe-building is amazing. And the characters are so good. I loved it. I loved everything about it. If you want a western dressed up as sci-fi- this isn't for you. But if you read Dune and loved all the different factions vying to take advantage of each other in pursuit of vainglorious prestige- then this is a must-read. I loved it so much.

[Mike]

Lincoln in the Bardo -- George Saunders
This is a tale of Abraham Lincoln and the death of his young son Willy. It is about grief and suffering and the intense love of a father for his child. It is told from two perspectives: the viewpoint of the various dead souls who still haunt the graveyard where Willy will be laid to rest. This is where the most intimate parts of the story are told. And the historical actions of Lincoln around this time told exclusively through conflicting contemporary descriptions and opinions culled from books, magazines, and correspondence. It is fascinating.

Plus, the audiobook has 160+ readers, which I didn't know. Every ghost, every author, every person quoted speaks in a unique voice. Nick Offerman opens the book describing the how he came to be trapped in his "sick box" with a dessicated piece of his own poop. Bill Hader and Megan Mullaly show up later as a bickering ghost couple. It's really wonderful. There are some humorous bits, but it is not a comedy. Several times it builds to very beautiful moments of realization and understanding.

High recommend.

[Mike]

The Long Mars -- Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter
Don't need to describe this anymore. If you are a fan of sci-fi, you should read the first book and it'll suck you in too.

I do have to say though that there are aspects (yet again) that are problematic. It is pretty Anglo-centric, and most of the attempts at diversity are pretty thin. The very ableist, neo-libertarian bootstrap mentality is again pervasive.

On top of all this, the writing is at best mediocre. And yet, even with all of this, I couldn't put this book down. I consumed it voraciously, and had it done in just a couple days. The story is just that gripping, and I know it won't be long before I finish the last two.

I've never read a Brandon Sanderson book, and don't really have any urge to, but from what I've heard, it sounds like it's the same sort of experience. His writing is just mediocre, and yet the stories and characters are so engaging and so addictive that people simply can't put the books down.

[Kyle]

Rivers of London- Ben Aaronovitch. I'm trying to read lighter fare right now because when I exercise on my treadmill every morning, I find that this makes it faster because it's more fun, even if not earth-moving and deeply meaningful. In a nutshell- this book is Harry Potter for adults. The novel even cracks that jokes in a wink-to-the-reader way a couple times. It's about a cop that realizes he can talk to ghosts, which also makes him realize that there are ghosts. He's taken under the wing of a magic Sherlock Holmes-type and inducted into a secret and neglected section of the London police that investigate supernatural crimes. Then craziness ensues. Again, this isn't super deep and soul-changing stuff. But it's well written and a lot of fun. The author keeps the story moving along briskly and the twists are pretty good. I enjoyed this book a lot and give it a high recommend. So much so that I'm now reading the second book in the series. Note: my library uses the American title for this book (Midnight Riot), but I think the original British title (Rivers of London) is more suiting. So I'm using that.

[Mike]

Calypso -- David Sedaris
A humorous and poignant memoir from David Sedaris, exploring his family dynamic and reflecting on his sister's suicide, his mother's alcoholism, and his elderly father's impending mortality. But the humor is also there as he talks about trying to feed his excised tumor to a turtle and his fear of shitting his pants.

Much of Sedaris's life is not terribly relatable for me--he's a wealthy, childless (petless even), gay man who spends half of every year traveling and maintains homes on two continents. But his every day trials of growing up, aging, coping with relatives... they ring true, and he's a great storyteller.

I thoroughly enjoyed this, even though it's not really my bag. Will I read another of his eventually? Probably so.

[Mike]

The Galaxy and the Ground Within -- Becky Chambers
Damn. I think I have now read all of Becky Chamber's novels. Worth the ride. This is the fourth and final book of the Wayfarers series that started with Angry Planet.

This story is unique in the series for it's lack of humans. The planet Gordon is a barren rock that happens to be a conveniently placed crossroads for interstellar travel. It's like a giant truck stop planet where domed facilities provide lodging and comforts for travelers with a layover in the Goron system. In this case three travelers of very disparate species and cultures find themselves staying in the same lodge run by a lovable muppet-creature and her adolescent child. Then a crisis hits and they are all stuck there for several days without outside communication and no way to pilot their shuttles back to their ships.

It's all about understanding and about dealing with people wildly different from you. The characters are a fully fleshed out as all of Chambers' stories, and as usual, I love them all. This is an amazing and detailed universe, and I'm a little sad that this is the end of it, but I get it.

Read everything Becky Chambers writes. Her stories are wonderful and make me want to be a better person.

[Mike]

Time Squared -- Lesley Krueger
So strange! It opens as a historical romance set in England, centered on Eleanor in 1811, whose wealthy aunt is trying to arrange a beneficial marriage for her. There is much social machination going on, but Eleanor ends up falling for a Captain who is shipping out soon to join the fight against Napoleon. Oh yeah, and there's some sort of flashback where she has glimpses of Connecticut during the Korean War in 1951. Weird.

Then it's 1840. But the characters continue on as if it it just the next week. Details are different, but it's the same characters going through the same trials. Eleanor's captain shipped out a couple weeks ago and she is writing to him as he takes up his post in India.

And then it's 1857, and 1915, and 1940, etc. But this single love story is at the center of all of them, and Eleanor with her mysterious glimpses of other lives, past and future.

And then it gets weird. And then it gets weirder.

It is a love story, but it is also an examination of changing gender roles over the last 200 years... especially the role of women.

The history is rich and deep. The characters are well developed. The story had me hooked. I felt a little dissatisfied with the ending but I may change my mind on that with further reflection. Not perfect for me, but definitely worth reading.

[Mike]

Looking for Alaska -- John Green
John Green's first novel. If you are familiar with Paper Towns, you will recognize the many similar elements contained in this story. Our hero is 16 and something of a loser. But then he finds his manic pixie dream girl and his life becomes way more interesting. But in real life, manic pixie dream girls don't exist to just serve the hero's character development. They are fully developed human beings, and if you examine WHY they act this way, you discover a flawed human who is probably more than a little broken. In fact ALL of the 'side' characters turn out to have actual needs.

As a deconstruction of this trope, I feel that Alaska is a way better book. I never felt impatient with it like I did with Paper Towns. If you have the option, read this one first. It's really good.

[Mike]

Out of Darkness -- Ashley Hope Pérez
I'm spent! This one required some serious emotional work. On the list of most banned books for at least the last two years, Out of Darkness takes the real life tragedy of the 1937 New London School explosion in New London, Texas, still billed as the deadliest school event in the U.S. ever, and it lays over it a story of two high school kids falling in love. Naomi is a Mexican girl attending the all white school, and Wash is a boy from the neighboring Black community of Egypt Town. And most of the white folk are really really racist.

It's well done. It's really beautiful and very powerful, but I often had the feeling of reading a horror novel rather than a YA drama/romance. Because the novel opens on horrific scenes of the aftermath of the school explosion, and then backs up a year to start at the beginning. So through the whole novel, you know this show is just waiting to drop. Plus, there is no safe space in 1937 where these two can ever openly declare their love, so doom just feels like a matter of time. I'm telling you, be prepared going in. Brace yourself.

But go in, you should. It is a great book.

[Kyle]

The Paris Apartment- Lucy Foley. It's a murder mystery, and this author is very good at constructing murder mysteries. I liked her other two books much better than this one, but again, this was really well put together and well written. It involves an English woman investigating the disappearance of her brother in ... DUN DUN DUN... THE PARIS APARTMENT! My one issue with this book was that I just didn't connect with the characters. Maybe because it was set in France, and everyone except the main character and her brother were French. I don't know. There was just something that didn't resonate with me as much. All the same, it was an enjoyable book and if you're into mysteries, then I recommend it.

[Kyle]

Moon Over Soho- Ben Aaronovitch. This is the second book in the Rivers of London series (which I found out- there's like ten books in the series). Read my review for Rivers of London to get the feel for it-- basically it's a policeman who discovers he can do magic. It's Harry Potter for adults. I didn't enjoy this one nearly as much. It was very, very male-gaze heavy. And included unnecessary, gratuitous and very detailed sex scenes. But also, the story was just weird and off-putting. A lot of the story focused on jazz vampires. That's not a typo. The book was fine and I don't regret reading it, but I'm not sure I recommend it.

[Mike]

The Original -- Brandon Sanderson & Mary Robinette Kowel
I've heard weird things about Brandon Sanderson and his compulsive writing and his obsessed fans and his early biases that he seems to be honestly working on. I want to sample some of his writing, but everything he writes is "Book 7 of a series -- 34 hours" or "Book 2 of 9 -- 42 hours". The longest I've seen from him is a 57 hour book. Whoof. Then I found this... a 3 hour novella. Perfect! But he's only a co-author, so I don't know if it's anything like his usual fare.

But it doesn't matter... the book was great! It's a tight little sci-fi cop action-thriller that has an incredibly inventive premise. Set a few decades in the future, nanotech is advanced enough that everyone has nanites in their bodies that keep them functionally immortal, including rapid repair of the body, ability to clone a dead person (memories and all) from their last backup, and a wickedly cool built-in augmented reality system.

You should just go read it without any more spoilers from me--it's only 3 hours--but if you need more SPOILER WARNING info, read on.

Holly wakes up and realizes she's a clone. The cops tell her that her original murdered her husband and is on the run. The Holly clone (with some edits to her skills) has been deemed a good candidate for the provisional clone program. She has four days to track down and kill her original. If she succeeds, her nanites are made permanent and she picks up her old life. Fail, and her nanites expire and the clone dies. And it's great. The concepts, the action, the visuals, would all make a fantastic movie, or they could flesh out the world even more and make it a TV series.

I had a great time.

[Mike]

The Dinner -- Herman Koch
Whoa... that was messed up! Read Kyle's review. This book is good! This is the story of two couples having dinner, and throughout a much greater and darker story revealed. And the darkness runs deep. It is very much a critical examination of wealth and privilege--and more specifically the pathology of privilege. And the translation from Dutch is simply superb.

This is a book that I would love to sit around and have a book-club style discussion about, because the metaphors are so layered. I took a lot from this, but there has to be so much more that went right over my head.

I want to talk specifics, but I also really don't want to give spoilers.

High recommend.

[Mike]

Do Not Disturb -- Frieda McFadden
No! I did not enjoy this. Not for me.

It's a mystery/thriller that teases some possible horror or supernatural elements but then discards them. It has some complex plotting, but very shallow characterizations. It is very melodramatic, and constantly has the characters' inner monologues summarizing the observable facts for us and then drawing very obviously wrong conclusions from them.

But everything else is secondary to the fact that the book cheats. And I'll give it all away, because I feel compelled to explain how bullshit this is so that I can get it out of my system. Read only if you feel like it.

Quinn is our narrator and her husband is dead. She killed him in self-defense. But then she runs away, because no one will believe her story. A freak blizzard forces her to get a room at the Baxter Hotel, which might as well have had a sign with "Bates" scratched out and "Baxter" painted over it. There's some creepy stuff, but then Quinn is stabbed in the abdomen in the same way she stabbed her husband. Fade to black.

New narrator: Quinn's sister Claudia. Claudia finds the dead husband's body and calls police. But police are incompetent, and Claudia has good reasons to think Quinn is innocent, so she goes to find Quinn before the cops do. This is our largest mystery: what happened to Quinn? And we start switching narrators regularly now. Turns out Claudia has always hated Quinn; Claudia was sleeping with Quinn's husband; Claudia is the one who murdered Quinn as revenge. But here's the thing... when Claudia was narrator, she said and did shit that make absolutely NO sense if she was the killer. We're inside her head getting her overly long winded, non-stop train of thought as she goes into a hotel, gets booked into the same room Quinn had been in, and finds Quinn's ring, thinking "Oh my God. She was here. She was actually here and I just missed her." But a later reveal shows us that she actually found and killed her sister and thrown her into her trunk in the hotel parking lot BEFORE she went in and got a room. So all the whole that she's thinking "Oh my God. My sister was here." she already knew that because she just killed her in the parking lot. Fuck you. That's cheating.

And I'm guessing that if I reread it, all of the narration is probably "technically" plausible and true, but when Claudia got to the hotel, I was expecting her to find her sister's body. I knew Quinn was stabbed in the parking lot immediately upon checking out of the hotel, so I was waiting for Claudia to run into her. But Claudia's narration details her drive out there, discovering the nearly hidden hotel sign, pulling into the parking lot, entering the hotel, checking in, etc. We're getting everything with running commentary, so I knew for sure that she must have missed her sister by minutes. So yeah, when I'm trying to determine whodunnit, it's totally reasonable for me to think, "When Claudia said she got out of her car, entered the hotel and asked for a room, what if what she really meant was that she got out of her car, stabbed Quinn, hid the body in her trunk, entered the hotel and asked for a room?" Bullshit.

[Phoebe]

I need to get a hold of a copy of that Dinner book.

Also:
A Knife in the Sky
Book by Marie-Célie Agnant

[Mike]

I need to get a hold of a copy of that Dinner book.

Yes you do. You and I have very different tastes sometimes, but I feel like this is a book for you.

Also:
A Knife in the Sky
Book by Marie-Célie Agnant

As in... you also need to get this book, or... also, you have read this book?

[Mike]

The Recovery Agent -- Janet Evanovich
I read a lot of sci-fi, and a fair bit of YA fiction (which is most often also sci-fi), so I've been.trying to break it up just a little.

Janet Evanovich is best known for her Stephanie Plum novels about an awkward unemployed woman who becomes a bounty hunter almost by accident and has humorous mishaps while tracking down bad guys. They're broad and funny, and I've read a couple before (Yancey and my wife are both fans). So when I found The Recovery Agent ("#1 in a new series!"), I figured I'd get more of that same tone. I was wrong.

The Recovery Agent is tedious. Our hero is Gabrielle who is hyper-competent and works as a freelance recovery agent, usually for large insurance companies, to retrieve information or assets. She somehow gets roped into a treasure hunt with her ex-husband in an effort to save their dying, storm-ravaged hometown. There's way less humor and much more bloody violence that Evanovich's previous work, and much of the dialogue is loaded with awkwardly placed exposition.

The beginning was talking about finding and decoding clues, and so I was fully expecting something in the vein of a watered down DaVinci Code or National Treasure, but it wasn't even up to the problem-solving prowess required of Indiana Jones. The beginning was "hey we have a map to Blackbeard's treasure" and they find the right place in two steps. Both are places that treasure hunters have swarmed over for decades, but she has this amazing intuition that puts her at the right spot which A) is obvious and B) no one else has thought of in all this time.

Plus, the hyper-competent heroine tends to be the one requiring saving by her ex all the time, which I found gross. Plus the bad guys were evil cultists worshipping some ancient Central/South American devil/snake god. Also gross.

Not worth my time.

[Mike]

A House with Good Bones -- T. Kingfisher
T. Kingfisher is a treasure! I fell in love with her writing through the short story "The Rose MacGregor Drinking and Admiration Society", and recognized her name here. I did a quick search of this site to find the name of that story and found Kyle and Stan had also read some of her stuff, and everyone speaks highly of her work.

And for good reason. A House with Good Bones features Samantha a nerdy, overweight, thirty-something archaeo-entymologist who is the badass hero of this tale. Explanation keeps coming out too longwinded, but short version: Sam has to stay with her mom. Mom is acting weird. Weird things happen. Sam's scientist sensibilities are clashing with fantastical (and sometimes horrific) events that keep happening.

Kingfisher is a master of fantasy, and the first person narrative has such an authentic voice it just blew me away. Sam is a bug nerd, and her inner monologue is 100% true to life. It just felt real.

If you're up for modern gothic fantasy/horror, I can't recommend this enough.

[Kyle]

A Desolation Called Peace- Arkady Martine. This is the sequel to A Memory Called Empire (see review above- my favorite book of the year so far). And while it is great, it falls short of the first book by a hair's breadth. What Martine does in these books is amazing- it's all politics and then she dives deep into the multitude of characters who each have their own political motivations and angles and it is great. This novel focuses on the unknown aliens that were discussed in the first book, and that's all I really want to say about the plot because anything else is too spoilery. If you liked the first, you'll like this one. The one thing that bothered me on this book is that there was one character (not a major one) who does something inexplicable at the end that really made no sense, and was clearly done to push the other characters' narratives in the right direction. And the thing is this: it's hard to write a novel with so many diverging character agendas that have to culminate and clash at the end. So while this bothered me and struck me a little "hand-wavey," it's a minor quibble. The writing is great, the story is great, the book is great.

[Mike]

Thornhedge -- T. Kingfisher
Did I not just tell you that T. Kingfisher is a master of fantasy? Thornhedge is fucking brilliant. It's beautiful and sublime and melancholy and I adore it. The overall feels of it gave me the same sort of emotional vibes I got from This is How You Lose the Time War.

Thornhedge is a literal fairy tale, featuring a literal, very minor fairy sent to the mortal realm with a very small, but important, task. And it has all the earmarks of a classic medieval fairy tale. So much though that you will keep wondering if it's somehow one you know already.

Read it! It's just over four hours. It will make your life richer. You will thank me later.

[Mike]

The Twilight World -- Werner Herzog
This is the story of Hiroo Onoda, the last Japanese soldier of WWII to finally surrender in 1974. It is a surprisingly straightforward story for Herzog. And I've read and heard about Onoda's story many times before. As such, it was certainly interesting but without the emotional impact I was hoping for. There's some minor philosophical musing amidst the facts of the narrative, and Herzog ends with a bunch of pages pondering the nature of reality and waking vs dreaming and similar topics, but the metaphor wasn't quite there for me.

Herzog wrote the book originally in German. Someone else translated it to English, but then Werner himself does the audiobook reading for the English. We all know Herzog's voice, and it was really distracting for me for a long time, but around halfway through it became almost hypnotic. For whatever that's worth.

A strong meh from me.

[Mike]

Reckless Girls -- Rachel Hawkins
A cool little thriller that was addictive and entertaining. Several 20-somethings sail to an idyllic deserted island. At first it seems like paradise, but of course not all is as it seems. Everyone has dark secrets including (possibly) the island itself. As days pass, tensions rise, there's conflict and everything becomes more claustrophobic. There's a ton of emotional melodrama in here, but apparently I'm into that. I thought the characters were well developed, the narrative voices were solid, and the motivations and actions were believable. The plot takes some twists and turns, some of which I predicted, many of which I didn't.

All I know is that I couldn't put it down, and it would probably make a decent movie. Will definitely seek out more stuff from this author.